Climate & Climate Politics
- A great article by Greg Laden that does a lot to explain how science denial and in this case climate science denial works: Why you sound so stupid when you say “global warming has stopped” – Greg Laden’s Blog One excerpt:
People can see or feel when it is hot and cold, to a lesser extend they can know when there is drought, when there are major storms, when there are fires, and if they are paying attention they can observe when the sea rises up and eats part of New Jersey. But they can’t see when the surface of the earth, the ground, below your feet, goes up a half a degree, or when the ocean at depth gets a tiny bit warmer. They can see, on the news, the melting of the Arctic ice, but they may not “see” (as in “get”) the connection whereby Arctic ice melts and sucks energy out of the atmosphere that might otherwise have been a heat wave in Paramus.
But Science can see that!
There is not a hiatus in global warming. There is not a plateau in global warming. Global warming has not stopped. However, climate change (including and especially global warming) is one or two orders of magnitude more complex that, say, the plot of this book:
Global warming is slightly more complicated than this, despite the usual commentary by conservative columnists in The Economist, the Wall Street Journal and elsewhere, who apparently can’t find their belly buttons.
But you wouldn’t know that from what we often see in the press, among commenters who demand that global warming be simple, or at least, exploit the belief that it is simple to misconstrue the meaning of any evidence of complexity. Shame on them.
- And yet another great article form Greg Laden: The Ocean is the Dog. Atmospheric Temperature is the Tail. – Greg Laden’s Blog
Politics
- New on The Republican Party Circular Firing Squad: Illinois GOP official pens allegedly racist attack on black GOP candidate : News
A county Republican Party chairman in central Illinois called a black female congressional candidate the “love child” of the Democratic party; a “street walker” whose “pimps” are party leaders; and suggested that after the election, she will be “working for some law firm that needs to meet their quota for minority hires.”
And it’s a Republican candidate he’s talking about.
Montgomery County GOP Chairman Jim Allen wrote the comments in an email to a Republican website, regarding Erika Harold. She is the former Miss America and Harvard Law grad who is seeking the Republican nomination for the 13th Congressional District, which stretches from Champaign to the Metro East.
The episode is an illustration of the unusual state of the GOP in Illinois, where the party tends to fight with itself more than it does with the ruling Democrats…(read the complete article…)
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