491 posts tagged “politics”

I still laugh at the concept of a "new" politician because the game is still the same.

John Taylor writing for the Financial Times had this to say about our government spending practices. 

Best line? 

Ask and your shall receive:

The debt was 41 per cent of GDP at the end of 1988, President Ronald Reagan’s last year in office, the same as at the end of 2008, President George W. Bush’s last year in office. If one thinks policies from Reagan to Bush were mistakes does it make any sense to double down on those mistakes, as with the 80 per cent debt-to-GDP level projected when Mr Obama leaves office?

I guess transparency is just another word used to help get elected.

I guess in the end politicians are just that... politicians.  And promises made during their campaign are just... rhetoric?

Wow.

I have nothing else to add.  I mean they got 14 sentences out of it.

Talk radio is interesting.

For what seems like years now, conservatives on the radio have been trying to "debunk" global warming claiming that the science is wrong and there are political agendas with climate change, etc.  They claim we don't know what is going to happen because we are talking about planetary climate models and these models possess assumptions.

Yet it what seems to be a very short period of time with regard to the emergence a new H1N1 flu strain that has jumped from pigs to humans and now from human to human -- there are all kinds of calls for government intervention, closing the Mexican border, and calling up the National Guard.

The irony in all of this is that we don't know how this new strain is going to pan out.  It could be a major pandemic that, at worst, kills many people or, at best, it could just be another mild flu strain that will have to evaluated every flu season during flu shot development.  There are many assumptions here, but no conclusive data either way yet.  That is why CDC is sort of in this - be prudent, but don't go Defcon 1 just yet.

So with global warming science -- there are years and years of data and evaluation on the subject and conservatives cry foul.

Now with swine flu -- there is a full court press to politically pile on to the Obama administration for not doing enough.

Ain't politics grand?

With all due respect, they do care.  And that is why those inside the beltway don't get it.

Thank you for reinforcing why I voted for McCain.

I love reading articles that seem to count their chickens before they hatch.  Take this one about how 2008 we will be known as the year that anthropogenic global warming was disproved.

Easily one of the most important stories of 2008 has been all the evidence suggesting that this may be looked back on as the year when there was a turning point in the great worldwide panic over man-made global warming.

The three main events that are cited are the current dip in global temperature, the Manhattan Declaration, and the economic downturn / global recession.

First, the current leveling of global temperature is not a predictor of anything.  If you look at the instrument temperature record there are plenty of subtle downturns over the course of the temperature anomaly (but the prominent slope of the graph is up).  So to say that the current downturn is evidence to debunk climate change is disingenuous.  There is just not enough evidence at this point to back that claim and there is no reason to think that the overall warming trend is not stopping.

Second, the Manhattan Declaration is not what I would call a turning point in terms of scientific dissent on climate change.  I mean -- you probably need a few hundred more medical physicians, bachelors of chemistry, engineering majors, and masters of administration to beef up your list of climate experts to seriously have any credibility.

Third, the case about politicians not wanting to spend money to implement solutions because of the global economic mess is not evidence to say climate change is not happening anymore.  It is just a sign that politics and the economy are not in a perceived condition to start addressing the problem in broader contexts.

There is not a smoking gun in all of this.  Skeptics still think there is a simple key to turn and lock the door on this all together.  One year is not going to prove anything.  Heck, three years is not going to prove anything.  There will probably need to be decades of data to prove it has stopped or reversed.

I am sure they will wait.

What I find interesting with the global warming skeptic camp is that they can easily glom onto headlines when it is convenient to their belief system while ignoring other contradicting, more compelling data sets.

Take for instance the latest set of buzz regarding 2008 and its status on the warming hierarchy.  RealClimate has a great post about this.

The great thing about complex data is that one can basically come up with any number of headlines describing it - all of which can be literally true - but that give very different impressions. Thus we are sure that you will soon read that 2008 was warmer than any year in the 20th Century (with the exception of 1998), that is was the coolest year this century (starting from 2001), and that 7 or 8 of the 9 warmest years have occurred since 2000. There will undoubtedly also be a number of claims made that aren't true; 2008 is not the coolest year this decade (that was 2000), global warming hasn't 'stopped', CO₂ continues to be a greenhouse gas, and such variability is indeed predicted by climate models.

And George Monbiot has an excellent observation about the skeptic camp.

Until now, the "sceptics" have assured us that you can't believe the temperature readings at all; that the scientists at the Met Office, who produced the latest figures, are all liars; and that even if it were true that temperatures have risen, it doesn't mean anything. Now the temperature record - though only for 2008 - can suddenly be trusted, and the widest possible inferences be drawn from the latest figures, though not, of course, from the records of the preceding century. This is madness.

But what I truly find interesting about all of this is the inference of how the global warming / climate change movement is rooted in some sort of religious cult whackoism.  That there is this giant conspiracy among climate scientists to push a global socialist agenda.  That there is this belief system that twists science to push that agenda.

Well, the science speaks for itself.  In my mind it is the skeptics that use religious type of arguments (much like misguided creationist cherry-picking type arguments against evolution) to prove it is all hype and not science.  Using a talking point here to disprove the mountain of evidence there.  That is not science.  That is religion.

There is no smoking gun for skeptics.  Either you address all of it or none of it. 

The irony of linking climate change to religion is that we will have an answer to what is being predicted now in due time.  We are not waiting for a rapture or a second coming here.  We are not talking about predicting god in a computer model. 

We will definitely have more observations and even better understanding in the near future.

Present day hypotheses will be answered.   

But one thing is for sure.  And that is science and data will be at the heart of policies in the next administration.

You see... saving the economy and creating bailout bills is hard work.

A crumbling economy, more than 2 million constituents who have lost their jobs this year, and congressional demands of CEOs to work for free did not convince lawmakers to freeze their own pay.

Instead, they will get a $4,700 pay increase, amounting to an additional $2.5 million that taxpayers will spend on congressional salaries, and watchdog groups are not happy about it.

They were just too busy to prevent the automatic pay increase.  But don't worry, I am sure this raise will only serve to boost approval numbers for Congress.

Maybe instead of demanding plans from American automakers that would show how they think they will return to profitability, Congress should figure out their own plan to reduce our nation's debt.

Then we can talk about raises.