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A pal of mine, despite my warnings about internet magazines/blogs/local media, has launched a Vancouver blog just in time to be Down and Out for the Vancouver Olympics. The best thing, not a word about the Olympics. Trust me, this is a feature not a bug.
The Dependent, (and yes, I did try to stop Matt Chambers on the title, but, hey, whatever) is about a set of personal reflections on Vancouver. Sex, drinks and art; but I repeat myself. There is an article about a suitcase full of dildos – does anyone need that many? Apparently.
Worth a visit. If Matt is really really, lucky, (and smart) he will ask me to contribute a weekly pinup and very doubtful book reviews. Hell, I’d even be willing to be the book editor. I like free books.
Check it out.
U.N. Climate Panel and Chief Face Credibility Siege
Four months (well four years actually) late, it dawns on the Times that there may be a tiny problem with this “climate change stuff”.
Of course the Times could not be bothered doing the digging itself…instead it reports stories from the Telegraph and the London times….Perhaps the New York Times has become a blog.
But the good new is that it is reporting the wobbles in climate science only a day after the Globe and Mail. Right on the news…good work NYT!
Ha…I laugh at the attempts of Five Feet, BCF and Flea! [Though all are inspiring – except the Doukhobors which are simply scary.]
The truth is that a single ad on Craigslist in Victoria and I have brilliant, beautiful women just dying to wear more clothes than they are in on the beach. And not just any women…women who have never know frostbite, women whose skin is caressed by the sweet moisture laden breezes of El Nino. Who hike and camp and eat turnips grown within twenty miles of their front door…You will never win…never! Not even with the whole of the internet to hotlink…Bwaaaahahaha!
Update: An Olympic moment live from Vancouver. Not safe whether you’re at work or at home….
Update II: I always say to my models that they will have more on than they would at the beach…but not this much :)
At a weekend conference, Wildrose Alliance Leader Danielle Smith signalled her own willingness to push the envelope of provincial autonomy, suggesting that Alberta should look to imitate Quebec by creating its own pension plan, taking control of its immigration and pushing health-care reform more aggressively. Chantal Hébert
Wild Rose is articulating the same sort of intelligent autonomy as the PQ and Bloc made real in Quebec. It would be deeply encouraging to see Alberta strike out on its own in pensions, immigration and health. And, if Alberta did there would be even more reason for British Columbia to do the same.
Deborah Jones, the Townhall editor at j-source seems a pleasant enough person; but if someone dares notice the lack of research on the part of a leading Canadian science journalist she sure is not going to print that comment and here is why:
There are many places to argue over the specific details of issues like climate change. This ain’t one of them. Here’s why—taken from the policy right below the box where comments are entered: “This forum is intended for discussion of the craft of journalism, not of the issues of the day that journalists cover.”
Those with something to say about how the craft of journalism has dealt with an issue, please join in. Those who want to comment on that issue—or focus on someone’s character—will need to go someplace else. In cases of overlap where the difference is not clear, moderation will side strongly with journalism.
Deborah Jones, editor, Townhall
Here’s the comment I was trying to have published:
[2nd try at this – the captcha ate the first one]
Stephen, the problem is that you did not put methane into any sort of context And by failing to do so you pushed along the AGW hysteria even as you discussed cow burps.
You missed three important facts about CH4: a) its concentration is 1/200th that of CO2, b) its persistence in the atmosphere is 8 years rather than the IPCC’s estimate of 100 years for CO2 (a number I would treat with a good deal of skepicism) c) even at 20 times the GH gas potency of CO2 there is so little of the stuff that it has 1/10th the effect. source
Mentioning these facts render ruminant tummy rumbles entirely irrelevant in the ongoing AGW conversation. You have not posed a “wicked problem” you have posed a faux problem which simply does not matter even if AGW is true.
Now, what saddens me about this is that you are one of Canada’s leading science writers and should know better. What about the other lumps in the legacy media who are largely bereft of science and strikingly innumerate. If we can’t rely on our science writers to at least put their stories in context why would we rely on people covering policy, economics and politics to have even the slightest clue.
You really should do better Stephen.
Which was in response to Stephen Strauss’ comment:
Posted by Stephen Strauss 2010-02-05 10:03:12
This must reflect on how poorly I made my argument, because Jay you miss the point I was trying to make. The debate over whether or not humans have or are producing climate change is essentially two-sided. You can say: Here are the arguments for and here are the arguments against. Here is the evidence for, here is the evidence against those arguments. You can reflect this quoting people who believe human actions are making a significant difference in global warming and people who don’t think so. Everything is bipolar and that means you can apply the traditional journalistic sidedness approach to reporting what is going on. However if you move beyond that, if you accept humans are doing something significant, and you try and talk about what to do about human actions, the yes/no schema simply falls apart. I used the cows’ burps as an example. Solutions here contradict themselves not the least because they go against solutions to other issues. Remediation is both a very wicked problem and almost impossible for journalists to convey to the general public using their traditional Hegalian paradigm. Rather we – the journalists and those who read what we write – find ourselves in a universe where the Latin quotation “Caedite eos. Novit enim Dominus qui sunt eius” seems to sum up best our feelings about what to do about the contradictions which lie before us. That is: “Kill them all; let god sort it out.”
Signed: Clearly A Tofu Ass
The link to Stephen’s CBC article is here.
Now call me crazy but I would say that calling out a leading science writer for failing to do the basic research is onside when it comes to commenting on the “craft” of journalism. Especially when that journalist has asserted that I, personally, “missed” his point.
It appears that Miss Jones brings the moderating skills of a playground monitor to J-Source’s Townhall: Anything to avoid controversy.
Which is, of course, precisely what is wrong with Canada’s lard ass legacy media. They are too lazy to deviate from the Establishment narrative or even question it thanks to people like Miss Jones.
Update: For those interested in how a) journalism, b) the criticism of journalism is actually done go read Donna Laframboise here, here and here. Ms. Jones could learn a bit about criticism and Mr. Strauss could pick up some tips on research.
Sure this is old news. And sure Eric Rugly is writing from Rome rather than Front Street; but the good, grey, Globe and Mail has staggered into the climategate/IPCC fakery/CRU fraud story.
Jeffery Simpson will be pissed.
  I have not run a pinup for a while. While I was not blogging Saturday I was shooting and was delighted to find a really pretty girl the camera loves.
While I enjoy shooting the kids and the dog and pretty flowers and such like, the fact is that taking pictures of pretty girls and trying, usually unsuccessfully, to make good pictures is great fun. With Tamy, the girl in these pictures we were really just doing a test shoot to see how she photographed. My partner, Susan, who styles the shoots (and yes, I do know I am an astonishingly lucky man) wanted to do a bit of a mash up of 30’s and 50’s. The full arm tattoo was a tiny bit challenging but as I shot I began to like it.
I note that BCF has posted the ever lovely Anne Hathaway. I scent a pinup war for Valentines Day.
Climate Guerrillas....you’ll recognize the names. And it is good to see them get the recognition they deserve.
Deborah Jones 2010-02-04 10:19:21
“Lard asses” ???? Did commentator Jay Currie REALLY call people in what he calls the “Canadian legacy media” “lard asses” who, he suggests, can’t comprehend the climate issue because it’s “To, (sic) well, sciency” ???
Really, man? This is how you foster intelligent debate? Seriously? j-source
Ms. Jones appears to be the comments editor at j-Source…and she is absolutely right; I did call Canadian legacy media “lard asses”
As the rather conflicted Mr. Monbiot is being cited as some sort of journalistic guru, perhaps another quote:
“It’s no use pretending that this isn’t a major blow. The emails extracted by a hacker from the climatic research unit at the University of East Anglia could scarcely be more damaging(1). I am now convinced that they are genuine, and I’m dismayed and deeply shaken by them.
Yes, the messages were obtained illegally. Yes, all of us say things in emails that would be excruciating if made public. Yes, some of the comments have been taken out of context. But there are some messages that require no spin to make them look bad. There appears to be evidence here of attempts to prevent scientific data from being released(2,3), and even to destroy material that was subject to a freedom of information request(4).
Worse still, some of the emails suggest efforts to prevent the publication of work by climate sceptics(5,6), or to keep it out of a report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change(7). I believe that the head of the unit, Phil Jones, should now resign. Some of the data discussed in the emails should be re-analysed.
monbiot back in november while you were pretending climategate was a fiction
You lard asses in the Canadian legacy media could not be bothered with climategate. I guess that many emails, not to mention disastrously awful code and long repressed data, were a bit too dense. To, well, sciency.
You completely missed the story – Mark, Lorne and Lawrence have been on it for years. Little wonder legacy media circulation is tanking and no one watches TV. j-source
And I backed up the assertion here (the material on Stephen Straus’ article will likely be the subject of another post…I like Straus’ work except when he wanders into climate science)
I did indeed call the journalists in Canadian legacy media “lard asses”.
On the climate file (and much else but we’ll stick to the climate file).
When did a legacy journalist first interview or go to Steve McIntyre or Ross McKitrick for comment on the Mann “hockey stick”. Which they refuted. They are, after all, both Canadians and both in the Golden triangle – how hard would it have been?
Were Canadian journalists all over the fraudulent but iconic “drowning polar bear” pic?
Did any of them bother to check the “science” in Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth” before it was rubbished in a British Court?
To this day has any enterprising legacy journalist bothered to examine the efficacy of a ban on incandescent lightbulbs in a cold country like Canada?
Could you cite the last hard, or even neutral, interview of David Suzuki conducted by a member of the Canadian legacy media?
Have any of the lard asses managed to read through the “Climategate” emails and data – as poor Fred Barnes at the Guardian has now gotten around to?
Where was the coverage of the declining count of thermometers north of 60?
Stephen Strauss, whose work I occasionally read to my kids, gives an unintentionally good example. The article he cites simply takes for granted that there is AGW. He assumes that the science is settled when, in fact, the “science” is barely underway.
A better article would have acknowledged that the climate models relied upon by the IPCC are losing traction steadily as the overall climate cools. Not one of them predicted this and, on that basis alone, all are incorrect. That is not to say they cannot be recalibrated; rather it is to say that they cannot be relied upon until they are. Strauss knows better. But, in the usual lazy legacy media style, he simply wanders along with the herd mooing that the “end is nigh, or, at least close”.
I don’t want to pick on Strauss, but the fact is that his article is very much of a piece with the vast majority of reporting in legacy media on climate.
The Establishment view of the IPCC is assumed correct and then we can get on to the interesting question of cow belches and methane.
While Strauss acknowledges a need of “other sidedness”, he cannot be arsed to find a person who speaks for the other side. Instead he quotes Lord Stern, of the now discredited “Stern” Report, on vegetarianism. You could not possibly find a better exemplar of the Establishment than Lord Stern and there he is popping up on the question of cows.
Did Strauss bother to compare cow methane to natural sources? Did he consider the persistence of methane in the atmosphere? Did he raise the question of why the political classes are obsessing about CO2 when methane is, as Strauss points out, 20 times more potent as a greenhouse gas than CO2?
No he did not. And that is hardly a surprise because he has already accepted that AGW is true. His objectivity has left the proverbial building.
Legacy journalists in Canada have been lazy on the climate file. They have not challenged the underlying assumptions of the science and, worse, the policy which flows from the science.
So, yup, by and large they are lard asses. j-source
Needless to say there has yet to be a cogent response to any of the questions I asked with respect to the legacy media’s non-coverage of climate science.
“The British public are sceptical about man’s contribution to climate change – and becoming more so,” he added.
“More people are now doubters than firm believers.”
The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs’ (Defra) chief scientific adviser, Professor Bob Watson, called the findings “very disappointing”.
“The fact that there has been a very significant drop in the number of people that believe that we humans are changing the Earth’s climate is serious,” he told BBC News.
“Action is urgently needed,” Professor Watson warned.
“We need the public to understand that climate change is serious so they will change their habits and help us move towards a low carbon economy.” bbc
Poor Professor Watson.
He wants the public to buy into the scare but over 70% of the great British public is not buying it. And Climategate is just hurrying the process along. Even with media cheerleading and the political elites in the tank, once the skeptical position hits 80% there will simply not be any political chance of inflicting the assorted idiocies of climate change policy on the public. And given how fast public opinion is shifting that magic number should arrive just in time for the widely predicted British Spring Election.
One’s a Turkey, the other one involves a Bigger Turkey.
A Flying Banana “art attack” on George Bush never got off the ground but $130,000.00 of taxpayer dollars did fly out of your pocket - and out of the country.
What’s even sadder is that no “arts bureaucrat” will lose his job over this, in fact I wouldn’t be surprised to find they were promoted.
Our pal Dawg has an interesting post up on Democracy. The comment thread is promising.
A key question in democracy is how it interacts with the concept of egalitarianism and, of course, self interest.
So, a couple of questions for my commentors:
Imagine a politician gave you a choice between everyone being 5% better off or you, personally, being 25% better off. Which promise would get your vote?
And then, same situation but this time the politician offered you – everyone being 5% better off but you would be 25% (less the 5 for everyone) worse off.
For the moment I’d like to stick to money, but you can imagine the same argument with respect to free speech, healthcare or education.
Do you vote your interest or the interests of the society at large.
[Note: these are hypotheticals and, for fun, we’ll pretend that the politician is telling the truth in every case and can, in fact, deliver…call them counter-factual hypotheticals.]
Update: to help you in you consideration:
The drive to slash spending at Los Angeles City Hall is starting to crumble, as a growing number of City Council members waver in the face of angry constituents, disgruntled community groups and powerful union leaders.
With a vote scheduled Wednesday on whether to eliminate 1,000 jobs to help counter the city’s $208-million budget shortfall, some members have begun speaking out against the various plans to scale back services and shut the city’s smallest departments.
A majority of the council’s Budget and Finance Committee has refused to sign off on the job-cutting plan.
Councilman Jose Huizar suggested that the city balance its books by borrowing more money. And Councilman Bill Rosendahl vowed to protect the city’s calligraphers, the handful of artists who design ornate proclamations that elected officials hand out to constituents. la times via mish
Writing in the Guardian George Monbiot notices – but falsely sources – that maybe, just maybe, Phil Jones and CRU really did have something to hide and that they hide it by stonewalling legitimate FOI requests. And he suggest they have to go.
Along the way he completely ignores a) the huge contributions of Watt and McIntyre, b) the BS claims of hacking on the part of people like Gavin Schmitt at RealClimate, c) the fact his own sloppy journalism lead to his cheerleading the AGW circus for years.
Most importantly, Monbiot, is still convinced, in the face of the crumbling “evidence” that climate warming is real. As the evidence melts, Monbiot and his ilk are revealed in their undying faith. Believing in climate change has never rested upon evidence, so the collapse of that evidence is of little matter in questions of the faith. Monbiot has got religion and he’s got it bad.
Mark Steyn points to an article at the ever hilarious j-source.ca in which Chris Woods dimwittedly writes:
Even were an East Anglian cabal plotting to subvert the global temperature record (and independent reviews by The Associated Press and FactCheck.org found no support for that charge), to declare human-induced climate change thereby proven a hoax that Canadians can safely ignore goes beyond cherry-picking facts to reckless endangerment.
In a twist on the old legal saw, it is the equivalent of failing to shout fire in a crowded theater that is slowly filling with deadly fumes.
To pass it off as journalism is professional negligence. chris woods
I responded:
“The wheels are falling off the AGW bus Chris.
The IPCC had to apologize for claiming the Himalayan glaciers were melting when they weren’t. Phil Jones is cited in the Guardian for cooking the books on the UHI effect in China. It turns out that the entire temperature record of New Zealand has gone “missing.”
And so on.
The fact is that most of the MSM has been in the tank for global warming/climate change/climate chaos/AGW for the last decade. No less a lefty than George Monbiot admitted he failed as a journalist because he simply took the “scientists” at their word.
The real work of journalism is to look for the truth and to be sceptical of Establishment claims. Nothing is more Establishment than the hysteria over CO2. And you lazy slack asses in the MSM fell for it hook line and sinker. Dear Lord, Jeffery Simpson has – without a second’s reflection – given AGW a five year tongue bath slavishly regurgitating silly lines about drowning polar bears and evil tar sands.
The people who made the running here were bloggers – Steve McIntyre first and foremost. Anthony Watts – who actually goes out and collects data – and a host of others.
Whereas you tired apologists for the Establishment have simply done stenography for big government and big oil. As you fall to your knees to fellatiate the fabulist Al Gore, you might ask if you have the slightest idea if he and Hansen and Mann and Jones are actually correct in their claims. And if you don’t then you might be a bit more modest as you hurl accusations.”
The report, however, contains interesting information, suggesting a far more subtle approach to the question of wealth and poverty than Brown’s. For example, it listed the average net household wealth in Britain by religious affiliation. The figures were as follows (I convert into American dollars):
Muslim: $68,000
None: $224,000
Hindu: $337,000
Christian: $361,000
Sikh: $371,000
Jewish: $684,000
Theodore Dalrymple, city magazine
Just noticing is a sin, writing about it is surely a jailing offence…but wait, it was in an official government report from the British “National Equality Panel”.
Turns out it is not about race (if race is about “browness”) because the rather dusky, but largely non-exploding, Sikhs come second to the not at all dusky Jews. It may just be about culture…who’d have thought it?
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