Who is John Galt?

where's the oil?

As this Time article points out, only Limbaugh predicted this.

Yes, the spill killed birds — but so far, less than 1% of the birds killed by the Exxon Valdez. Yes, we've heard horror stories about oiled dolphins — but, so far, wildlife response teams have collected only three visibly oiled carcasses of any mammals. Yes, the spill prompted harsh restrictions on fishing and shrimping, but so far, the region's fish and shrimp have tested clean, and the restrictions are gradually being lifted. And, yes, scientists have warned that the oil could accelerate the destruction of Louisiana's disintegrating coastal marshes — a real slow-motion ecological calamity — but, so far, shorelines assessment teams have only found about 350 acres of oiled marshes, when Louisiana was already losing about 15,000 acres of wetlands every year.

remember, this should all be *good* news

From the UK Telegraph, via Drudge.  If you think this is bad news, then you need to do some soul-searching.

The chief defence offered by the warmists to all those revelations centred on the IPCC's last 2007 report is that they were only a few marginal mistakes scattered through a vast, 3,000-page document. OK, they say, it might have been wrong to predict that the Himalayan glaciers would melt by 2035; that global warming was about to destroy 40 per cent of the Amazon rainforest and cut African crop yields by 50 per cent; that sea levels were rising dangerously; that hurricanes, droughts and other "extreme weather events" were getting worse. These were a handful of isolated errors in a massive report; behind them the mighty edifice of global warming orthodoxy remains unscathed. The "science is settled", the "consensus" is intact.

But this completely misses the point. Put the errors together and it can be seen that one after another they tick off all the central, iconic issues of the entire global warming saga. Apart from those non-vanishing polar bears, no fears of climate change have been played on more insistently than these: the destruction of Himalayan glaciers and Amazonian rainforest; famine in Africa; fast-rising sea levels; the threat of hurricanes, droughts, floods and heatwaves all becoming more frequent.

All these alarms were given special prominence in the IPCC's 2007 report and each of them has now been shown to be based, not on hard evidence, but on scare stories, derived not from proper scientists but from environmental activists. Those glaciers are not vanishing; the damage to the rainforest is not from climate change but logging and agriculture; African crop yields are more likely to increase than diminish; the modest rise in sea levels is slowing not accelerating; hurricane activity is lower than it was 60 years ago; droughts were more frequent in the past; there has been no increase in floods or heatwaves.

Furthermore, it has also emerged in almost every case that the decision to include these scare stories rather than hard scientific evidence was deliberate. As several IPCC scientists have pointed out about the scare over Himalayan glaciers, for instance, those responsible for including it were well aware that proper science said something quite different. But it was inserted nevertheless – because that was the story wanted by those in charge.

climate tragedies

Okay, suppose you're a crazy liberal obsessed with concerned about global warming.  Every day, a little evidence turns up to suggest that things are not as bad as global warming alarmists have been saying.  The question is: How are you supposed to feel about this?

I mean, if you're a rational person, and you're worried about a climate apocalypse, then anything that turns the balance of available data against the gloom-and-doom forecast is a good thing, right?

But how do you think liberals really feel when they learn that global warming "science" is made up?

Try it this way:  Maybe you're a liberal, and you actually like big government regulating all the wealth that you think mankind should feel guilty about.  Sure, climate-saving measures overlap with your Master Plan, but that's just a perk, right?  I mean, the real point is drowning polar bears, rising sea levels, evaporating glaciers, record temperatures and the hockey stick graph, isn't it?

So I guess if you learn that the polar bears were just swimming, and that their population is growing, that could be a good thing.  Unless, of course, you fear that we could all remain complacent about the rising sea levels, record temperatures and the hockey stick graph, right?  After all, if you care about those things, you might be a little troubled by news that the polar bears are okay.  At the very worst, it's good-news/bad-news, and it still threatens the Master Plan.

Then you find out that the whole sea-level thing's not so bad, either.  We're centuries from drowning.  That's a relief, right?  Unless of course, it fosters complacency about evaporating glaciers, record temperatures and the hockey stick graph.  And, ultimately, the Master Plan.

You see where this is going.  So the question is, which are the fools who really believe the global warming stuff a little too much, and which are the ones who are really in it for the Master Plan?

Well, your first clue is that the ones who really care will be relieved by good news, and the ones who care about the Master Plan will say anything to keep the scheme alive.

And the problem is that the Master Plan is much more important to many more people than it should be. 

Perhaps even enough to reach that critical mass "scientists" call "consensus."

Oh, I almost forgot -- this is very powerful stuff.  Imagine going up to a tree hugger liberal every time some aspect of climate change is debunked, and asking them two questions:  First, "Do you feel relieved at this news?"  And, second, "Why or why not?"

Because you already know how he's going to feel about it, even if he says he's relieved.  But I'm willing to bet that he's never stopped to ponder why.

It'll make them think.  And God knows they need that.

in the long run, keynes is dead.

Hat tip to CafeHayek.  I wouldn't be surprised if the cost of "snowmageddon" turns out to be in the billions, but make no mistake about it: that cost is a cost.  Here's someone who explains how Keynesians see that same cost as "stimulus." 

Bastiat first described the broken window fallacy over 150 years ago.  Apparently, it wasn't translated into English in time to help John Maynard Keynes.  Fortunately, it's been translated since then, and so we don't all have to make the same mistake today.

When you pay to have your streets plowed (or your city's snow plows repaired), it's true that certain workers do get welcome employment.  But if you're the taxpayer footing the bill, it's not like you weren't going to use your money to buy something else.

Suppose you were going to buy some nice steaks instead of having your street plowed.  Bastiat's point was that in addition to the plow driver getting paid, you not only have to go without steak, but the butcher shop now goes without a sale, too.

Keyesians believe it would be stimulus if the government just paid people to dig ditches.  The scary part is that an actual demand for ditches never enters into the equation.  Philosopically, Keynesian stimulus is just welfare with a couple of unusual means tests: You must be able to work, and obviously you can't show up to dig ditches if you already have a real job somewhere else.

For purely political reasons, Keynesians try to keep the work a little more constructive than just digging ditches -- using the workers for public works projects, for example, or perhaps contracting them out as cheap/free labor for contributors' projects.  But to the Keyesian, if we simply divided the labor into two teams -- one of which dug ditches while the other filled them back in -- that would suffice.  It's the job, not the productivity, which matters to Keynes.

stossell: serious about crony capitalism

"hide the decline" lite

In case you haven't seen it yet...

"hide the decline"

Keep your eye on the green line.

Full article here. 

they must be using a different constitution

Associated Press: House Panel Passes College Football Playoff Bill

The bill, which faces long odds of becoming law, would ban the promotion of a postseason NCAA Division I football game as a national championship unless that title contest is the result of a playoff. The measure passed by voice vote in a House Energy and Commerce Committee subcommittee, with one audible "no," from Rep. John Barrow, D-Ga.

"With all due respect, I really think we have more important things to spend our time on," Barrow said before the vote, although he stressed he didn't like the current Bowl Championship Series, either.

...In a statement before the vote, BCS executive director Bill Hancock said, "With all the serious matters facing our country, surely Congress has more important issues than spending taxpayer money to dictate how college football is played."

nasa climate secrecy

From The Washington Times (H/T Drudge): NASA stonewalling on release of climate source data. 

...NASA has refused for two years to provide information under the Freedom of Information Act that would show how the agency has shaped its climate data and would explain why the agency has repeatedly had to correct its data going as far back as the 1930s.

"I assume that what is there is highly damaging," Mr. Horner said. "These guys are quite clearly bound and determined not to reveal their internal discussions about this."

The numbers matter. Under pressure in 2007, NASA recalculated its data and found that 1934, not 1998, was the hottest year in its records for the contiguous 48 states. NASA later changed that data again, and now 1998 and 2006 are tied for first, with 1934 slightly cooler.

Mr. Horner, a noted global warming skeptic and author of The Politically Incorrect Guide to Global Warming and Environmentalism, wants a look at the data and the discussions that went into those changes...

...Mr. Horner said he's seeking the data itself, but he also wants to see the chain of e-mails from scientists discussing the changes.

This behavior is complete bull's hit.  Data is data.  It is what it is.  A is A.  The only reason to conceal the source data is if it doesn't actually support the conclusions NASA's "scientists" have been reporting.

Time for some real peer review.  Let the facts speak for themselves -- for a welcome and long overdue change.

science vs. politics

Science is the pursuit of knowledge.  Knowledge, as an understanding of facts; and pursuit, as the process of obtaining that knowledge.  There's no wiggle room for manufacturing your own facts: science is a search, and the facts simply are whatever they happen to be.  That's why we call them findings.

Since the East Anglia CRU emails surfaced, I've seen all sorts of rationalization of the contents.  It's possible that some of the "incriminating" content is innocent -- dialogue with contexts we outsiders are not privy to, the scientists' own jargon being mischaracterized as something nefarious.

Every time you multiply by ten in your head, you're using a "trick."  You didn't really do the math, you just applied a shortcut.  Similarly, when the East Anglia climatologists refer to a "trick," it could just be a shortcut for a completely legitimate method of normalizing data.  I've seen some of the emails explained that way, and it's not unreasonable.

But science is not about concealing methods, hiding data, or excluding criticism.  Peer review is the scrutiny that good science must withstand in order to be good.  When your critics can't fault your findings, that's science.  It's why peer review means something -- because, presumably, critics have had a shot at the research, and at the very least the work's methods are understood.

But when your critics can't even access the data, that's not "peer review."  You can call it peer review, but your critics will disagree.  It's only peer reviewed after your critics agree it's been peer reviewed.  If you're choosing your peers from among friendly, sympathetic colleagues, then those aren't peers at all -- they're co-conspirators.