Mint Spectacles on: Yet More Misinformation by a popular blogger- this time about Penguins and Global Warming

I wasn’t going to write another post because I decided to re organize this blog and set up another one.  But when I logged onto wordpress a few minutes ago I saw this “hawt post” about “Nutty Story of the Day: “Global Warming” is Killing the Penguins in Antarctica.” “

I clicked on the story, mainly because I found it incredible that someone could doubt that.

What did I find?

I found that a poorly written newsreport had been very carefully cherry picked all the way from the United Kingdom. To make it seem as though it was misguided, links were placed to Audubon society and the like but of science, nary a view. Unless one counts another cherry picked chart of temperatures.

And what is the science? There are several studies that indeed confirm that penguins are at risk. However in the interest of my time and yours, I picked these 5 links for 3 different types of media:

1) An old national geographic news story here

2) A recent study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. You can read the extract here. To read the entire study requires access to a library or subscription to the proceedings.

3) Some bloggers’ take on the matter:

here -this describes the full PNA study.

here - this gives a very even handed view of gloal warming in general and on the issue of ice.                                  Recommended reading in general.

4) An editorial in the Journal Science here which puts that cherry picked temperature chart in perspective. Science is the most prestigious journal on the planet- for those who may not be aware of the prestige associated with different journals.

You know the really sad part – disinformation is always read more! More on that tomorrow.  And if you liked this post then you might want to read this one too about global warming deniers here

Mint Spectacles on: When Should a Liberal Pretend to be a Conservative

Continuing the conversation on why conservatism sells (the first part is here). If you were a liberal, when would you want to pretend that you were a conservative?

When you want to make money of course!

How so?

How many liberals do you see with merchandise displaying their belief such as say, global warming exists  or that we did ascend or descend (as your preference might be) from apes? Not many. Truly – look around you.

Whether it is tee shirts or mugs or key chains or whatever, conservative stuff sells more.  Just like the blogs with conservative point of view on how global warming doesn’t exist or how the earth was created 10000 years ago get far more traffic than their liberal/progressive counterparts. So do blogs that say that the science behind evolution or global warming is not science.

This was gently pointed out to me when I was thinking of putting up an online store with my smart alecky slogans about global warming and some creative insults etc.  So naturally I got to thinking why there was this imbalance.

It’s not like conservatives have more income or that they work less hard or are somehow different. I knew some really, really nice people who voted for Bush in 2000.  In short, conservatives aren’t different from others except in their doggedly held opinions.

And so my final hypothesis is:

that conservatives spend so much time and money on reiterating their opinions because they need to constantly reaffirm to themselves that they are right about things.

Now it may be that you are disappointed by this hypothesis. I was. I said really – is that all?  Then I began to see what it meant. It meant that anyone who makes conservatives feel good about their beliefsis sitting on a gold mine. On the other hand, liberals/progressives et. al are so comfortable with their beliefs that they don’t need to display them on  tee shirts.

So someday I may write a post about why conservative beliefs  about global warming etc are so lightly held that they need constant reassurance that they are right!

And a note:

Some of you may wonder why I did not have a hypothesis that conservatives buy stuff because they feel like they are in a minority. I didn’t because the fact is conservatives talk to other conservatives and really don’t have very much reason to suppose that they are in a minority.

Mint Spectacles on: Making Money Off Conservativism or Why It Sells Part 1

Sometime ago I read about a guy who said he had a six figure income from selling tee shirts with conservative slogans on cafepress (you can read the article here) .  Which got me to thinking about why is it that conservatives spend so much on stuff that basically keeps repeating what they believe.

When I say spend, I don’t mean just money, but also time. Conservative blogs whether on wordpress or elsewhere have dedicated readers.  One of the few liberal blogs which has a huge readership is the Huffington Post.  If there are other such blogs with a million plus readers, please do let me know.

Now why is that?

One reason could be:

All the conservatives have more money and therefore do not have to work so much and therefore have all the time in the world to congregate on the Internet, whether to promote creationism, now called intelligent design, or to tell each other global warming doesn’t exist or that science and scientists know squat.

But although this may seem to explain why conservative stuff sells, it is not supported by data. Conservatives that spend their time and money are not likely to be richer than progressives, scientists and liberals. At least I can’t find any data that says one is richer than another. I have seen comparisons between red and blue states but every state has both conservatives and liberals so to say blue states are richer and therefore liberals are richer is simply not good logic.

So if that is probably not the answer, then what other reasons could there be?

More tomorrow.

An aside: for all those who think that the globe is cooling (a.k.a. global cooling), Northern Californians now feel the need for fans and air conditioners – ask anyone who can remember 20 years ago or earlier about how cool Northern California has always been. Remember Mark Twain’s famous San Francisco quote?

“the coldest winter I ever saw was the summer I spent in San Francisco”

I should mention that all Twain scholars are not convinced that he actually said this.

Mint Spectacles on: Gun laws and Global Warming Connection?

In case you missed the news, the Supreme Court overturned Washington DC’s ban on handguns. This naturally has been a topic of conversation all over, including the exciting (some of the time – see oakbook link) character-laden city I call home.

Over the weekend I discovered that the views, global warming ain’t happening, and that handguns should be owned by anyone who wants one can exist in the same person. So a global warming denier can also be a gun acquirer! I made me an old fashioned Venn diagram which is a most excellent visual aid to understanding this beautifully crazy world.

I wonder what proportion of those who deny global warming also happen to believe that owning handguns is great? Anyone have any guesstimates for the G & G? Please comment if you do!

All I want to know is this:
If
People believe that is it perfectly logical that one should own a gun to defend against an improbable event
Then
Why isn’t it logical for everyone to take action to prevent global warming, an event/process for which the probability is close to 1?

Of course IMHO global warming is already occurring – witness the extreme weather events all over the world, not to mention the glaciers and the poles. That said, if we make an effort, things can get better.

Now at the end, I should make my own position about guns clear. I don’t much care for guns and I don’t want one in my home because well designed studies have made it clear that there are way too many accidents in homes with guns. And the incidence of guns being used in self defense in almost the entire western world is negligible – anything under 5% is negligible for me. But policy implications of studied are apparently more difficult, at least based on the studies mentioned in all the leading newspapers.

For policy implications I’d like to see behavioral experiments with guns as well as better statistical analysis. But my gut feel is that better policing is answer to making citizens feel safe. Just like two wrongs don’t make a right, two guns in a room does not mean that the right one will stay safe.

Mint Spectacles on: Global Warming and its Deniers Part 2

After my last global warming post, I discovered the deniers in the blogosphere and it got me thinking. About those who write that:

global warming is a left wing conspiracy or

that global warming does not exist or

the one that makes me laugh the hardest is the globe is cooling and their tag words will list global cooling. Hmm I should add that as a tag word.

All this got me to thinking why that is so. Usually I just wonder what the grandkids of global warming deniers are going to say to them. But this time I asked something more fundamental – why do they think the way they do?

Here are my top 6 reasons.

Reason No. 6
Global Warming Deniers don’t like to think. They may not know who George Bernard Shaw was (a great playwright and a Nobel Laureate) but they agree with what he said “Two percent of the people think; three percent of the people think they think; and ninety-five percent of the people would rather die than think.”

Reason No. 5
Global Warming Deniers hate to recycle. What, separate the paper from the food? What a funny notion.

Reason No. 4
Global Warming Deniers like to believe the advertisers. After all McDonalds does give you a 99cent burger when they advertise that special so when a coalition of big business says hey if business were to worry about global warming, your taxes will go up….they believe them.

Reason No. 3
Global Warming Deniers think to be right they have to be the opposite of left.
So they must believe the opposite of any thinking that is labeled left.

Reason No. 2
Global Warming Deniers are oil company investors. They love their dividends.

And The Top Reason
Global Warming Deniers saw lots of war movies when they were kids and they always wanted to be the guy who gets trapped and valiantly stands on his toes as water gushes into the room. The water rises, to his chin but he did not give up raising his gun above his hands.
So now they get to be the guys who will valiantly defend their right to consume without looking at or considering anything or anyone else. They know that climate scientists agree that rich countries will be hurt a lot less than the developing world as the oceans keep rising.
But if there is water in the streets and you own a large vehicle? Which brings us to the Real Reason No. 1
Global Warming Deniers want to feel good about owning their Hummers and hope one day, to look good in them

Anyone else has other reasons to add to this list?

Mint Spectacles on: Global Warming and its Deniers

In a phenomenon as old as global warming, the media, specially well-written journalistic jokes like The Economist, have always talked about scientists who do not agree with the science of global warming. What the media, any media, rarely mention is that most of these scientists happen to be either professors of business schools or the like, who rarely have any credentials in any aspect of global warming. A Ph.D. does not necessarily make someone an authority on something so far removed from their expertise.

Forget the professors and experts. Lets just use our common sense. We all know how different the planet has become because of human actions. We know how the rivers were and are being ravaged, plants and animals are still facing extinction, and the earth is still being scarred from the quarrying and mining. In short, planet earth certainly is not the lush paradise, teeming with all sorts of life and beauty that the ancients said it was. This has also been confirmed by studies in history, anthropology and paleontology. We all can see that earth has been impacted by human action.

I guess global warming is harder to understand because we don’t see the atmosphere. If we use our logical skills then it makes sense that the smoke plumes, the nineteenth and early twentieth century symbol of industrialization, (still seen in every continent except the poles) did affect and alter the atmosphere.

The change in the atmosphere in turn messed with the way sunlight reached the planet which affected the water and so our climate has been messed up.

Atmosphere change
↓
amount and type of sunlight received changed → temperature of earth’s crust changed
↓                                                                                           ↓
temperature of water changed →       amount of water evaporated changed

Now how hard is that to understand?

Now the global warming deniers have become organized and have an association called climate science coalition.  Let’s see – less than three dozen scientists from fields which have something to do with climate.  The rest are from business, statistics, humanities etc. So in a world populated by thousands of scientists, fewer than hundred or maybe a couple of hundred believe – are you ready for this – they believe the world is cooling!

Undoubtedly they also regard the melting of glaciers as a figment of imagination – what did you say satellite photos and actual evidence! Their explanation is that climate is not stable – Six thousand years is stable enough for me!