One more time: Recognizing bogus history

2012 is an election year, a time when we make history together as a nation.  Potential turning points in history often get tarred with false interpretations of history to sway an election, or worse, a completely false recounting of history.  Especially in campaigns, we need to beware false claims of history, lest we be like the ignorants George Santayana warned about, doomed to repeat errors of history they do not know or understand.  How to tell that a purported piece of history is bogus?  This is mostly a repeat of a post that first appeared at Millard Fillmore’s Bathtub six years ago.

Recognizing bogus history, 1

Robert Park provides a short e-mail newsletter every Friday, covering news in the world of physics. It’s called “What’s New.” Park makes an art of smoking out bogus science and frauds people try to perpetrate in the name of science, or for money. He wrote an opinion column for the Chronicle of Higher Education [now from Quack Watch; CHE put it behind a paywall] published January 31, 2003, in which he listed the “7 warning signs of bogus science.”

Please go read Park’s entire essay, it’s good.

And it got me thinking about whether there are similar warning signs for bogus history? Are there clues that a biography of Howard Hughes is false that should pop out at any disinterested observer? Are there clues that the claimed quote from James Madison saying the U.S. government is founded on the Ten Commandments is pure buncombe? Should Oliver Stone have been able to to more readily separate fact from fantasy about the Kennedy assassination (assuming he wasn’t just going for the dramatic elements)? Can we generalize for such hoaxes, to inoculate ourselves and our history texts against error?

Perhaps some of the detection methods Park suggests would work for history. He wrote his opinion piece after the Supreme Court’s decision in Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals, Inc., in which the Court laid out some rules lower courts should use to smoke out and eliminate false science. As Park described it, “The case involved Bendectin, the only morning-sickness medication ever approved by the Food and Drug Administration. It had been used by millions of women, and more than 30 published studies had found no evidence that it caused birth defects. Yet eight so-called experts were willing to testify, in exchange for a fee from the Daubert family, that Bendectin might indeed cause birth defects.” The Court said lower courts must act as gatekeepers against science buncombe — a difficult task for some judges who, in their training as attorneys, often spent little time studying science.

Some of the Daubert reasoning surfaced in another case recently, the opinion in Pennsylvania district federal court in which Federal District Judge John Jones struck down a school board’s order that intelligent design be introduced to high school biology students, Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District.

Can we generalize to history, too? I’m going to try, below the fold.

Here are Park’s seven warning signs, boiled down:

Park wrote:

Justice Stephen G. Breyer encouraged trial judges to appoint independent experts to help them. He noted that courts can turn to scientific organizations, like the National Academy of Sciences and the American Association for the Advancement of Science, to identify neutral experts who could preview questionable scientific testimony and advise a judge on whether a jury should be exposed to it. Judges are still concerned about meeting their responsibilities under the Daubert decision, and a group of them asked me how to recognize questionable scientific claims. What are the warning signs?

I have identified seven indicators that a scientific claim lies well outside the bounds of rational scientific discourse. Of course, they are only warning signs — even a claim with several of the signs could be legitimate. [I have cut out the explanations. — E.D.]

1. The discoverer pitches the claim directly to the media.
2. The discoverer says that a powerful establishment is trying to suppress his or her work.
3. The scientific effect involved is always at the very limit of detection.
4. Evidence for a discovery is anecdotal.
5. The discoverer says a belief is credible because it has endured for centuries.
6. The discoverer has worked in isolation.
7. The discoverer must propose new laws of nature to explain an observation.

Voodoo history

Here, with thanks to Robert Park, is what I propose for the warning signs for bogus history, for voodoo history:

1. The author pitches the claim directly to the media or to organizations of non-historians, sometimes for pay.
2. The author says that a powerful establishment is trying to suppress his or her work.  Bogus history relies more on invective than investigation; anyone with an opposing view is an “idiot,” or evil.
   
3. The sources that verify the new interpretation of history are obscure, or unavailable; if they involve a famous person, the sources are not those usually relied on by historians.
4. Evidence for the history is anecdotal.
5. The author says a belief is credible because it has endured for some time, or because many people believe it to be true.
6. The author has worked in isolation, and fails to incorporate or explain other, mainstream versions of the history of the incident, and especially the author fails to explain why they are in error.
   
7. The author must propose a new interpretation of history to explain an observation.

Any history account that shows one or more of those warning signs should be viewed skeptically.

In another post, I’ll flesh out the reasoning behind why they are warning signs.

Right-wingers mistake humorous Audi ad for Obama policy; embarrassment should follow

. . . but perhaps won’t.  I swear it seems as if someone has a concession at Tea Party functions selling self-lobotomy kits, and they’re selling like $10 iPhones.

File this in the “Whom the gods destroy, they first make mad” department, with loss of sense of humor as a key symptom.

You may have seen this ad during the Super Bowl, and though you may have cringed a bit at the way it tweaks people who show concerns about the environment and who urge cleaning up pollution, you probably found it pretty humorous.

But over at the Club the Constitution Constitution Club site, they appear to think it’s an ad from the Obama administration’s Department of Homeland Security.

So some hoaxster with the apt handle The Rat at Club the Constitution Constitution Club dug up a dull, run-of-the-mill document out of the Department of Homeland Security that talks about DHS policies on working to implement the government’s environmental justice policies.  “Environmental justice” is shorthand for “don’t dump garbage or toxic pollution in or close to the homes of poor people just because they are unlikely to have lawyers at the moment.”

Then The Rat flew off the handle, a truly head-exploding, insane Gish-Gallop rant about Homeland Security:

In its just-released Environmental Justice Strategy document, the DHS says the idea is to “include environmental justice practices in our larger mission efforts involving federal law enforcement and emergency response activities” and to incorporate environmental justice in “securing the homeland.” Roll that around in your head for awhile:

“Federal law enforcement” agents conducting “emergency response activities” in the name of “environmental justice” for the purpose of “securing the homeland.” The Green Police. Oh. My. God.

You couldn’t make up craziness like this guy, The Rat, could you? He clearly has no clue about the history of environmental justice (and is Google-challenged on top of that) — or he’s venally working to make people believe falsehoods.  What’s the harm in including “environmental justice practices in our larger mission?”

Does this Rat, who appears to be a complete idiot, fail to understand that “emergency response activities” are commonplace, and occur whenever an 18-wheeler carrying a load of chemicals turns over on the freeway?  Does The Rat fail to understand that spills need to be cleaned up?  (Real rats are very clean creatures, actually.  While they live in filthy, they do not prefer it, and they keep their dens very clean.  This is one way a real rat, say Rattus Norvegicus, or Rattus rattus, is superior to this faux rat.)

Here’s the description of the Audi advertisement from Auto123.com, showing none of the insanity the right wingers try to insert:

As reported by Audi

HERNDON, Va.,– Green Police, the Audi Super Bowl ad, provides an uncommon avenue for green advocates, anteaters, Styrofoam, the legendary rock band Cheap Trick and the 2010 Green Car of the Year to find their inner connectivity.

How all of these rather disparate elements come together hasn’t been revealed yet by Audi. But in the end they will provide an entertaining look at how we all face a dizzying array of choices that can impact the environment. Some of these choices are easier than others. But, the Green Police ad will show, one of the best choices is driving the Audi A3 TDI, which won the prestigious 2010 Green Car of the Year award presented by Green Car Journal at the Los Angeles Auto Show in December.

The Audi Green Police ad will air Super Bowl Sunday in the fourth quarter of the largest television event of the year. But Super Bowl ad followers, Audi aficionados and others can get sneak peeks at what’s coming.

Audi released a teaser edit of the Green Police Super Bowl ad today, which highlights the crucial role anteaters can play in keeping the planet green. Think Styrofoam. One Super Bowl reviewer online is already betting the Audi Green Police ad will win top honors for “Best Use of an Unusual Animal in a Super Bowl Ad.” Audi disclaimer: No anteaters were harmed in the filming of the Green Police Super Bowl ad. To find that teaser video, go to www.facebook.com/audi.

Another preview of the Audi Green Police ad is the available download of the theme song of the spot. The legendary rock group Cheap Trick returned to the recording studio to remake their smash hit “Dream Police” into “Green Police.” Fans also can find that download by going to the Audi Facebook page.

For Audi, the Super Bowl has been a premium platform for promoting the performance and prestige of its cars the past three years. But underlying the fun of this year’s Green Police Super Bowl ad is a serious message: If 30% of Americans drove clean diesel cars like the Audi A3 TDI, the nation could reduce oil consumption by 1.5 million barrels a day. What’s more, clean diesel engines reduce CO2 emissions by 30%.

“Those are real-world benefits that the A3 TDI offers for today’s concerns about fuel consumption and greenhouse gas,” said Scott Keogh, Audi of America Chief Marketing Officer. “Super Bowl ads are all about fun, but the best ads point consumers to products that enrich their lives. That’s what we’ve done with the Green Police.”

Got that?  It’s a straight up, funny-as-anything Super Bowl ad pushing Audi’s TDI Diesel engined cars.

Have the right-wingers genuinely lost their humor senses?  Are they so shallow in their reading they didn’t catch the humor?  Can’t they tell a joke from reality?

In contrast, environmental justice is, by now, a rather well-established movement to marry civil rights laws and anti-pollution laws to prevent poor neighborhoods from being unfairly burdened by pollution, in a drive to clean up pollution for the benefit of all.  It’s an old enough concept that it goes by its initials, EJ.  See Wikipedia’s quick and concise entry:

The United States Environmental Protection Agency defines EJ as follows:

Environmental Justice is the fair treatment and meaningful involvement of all people regardless of race, color, national origin, or income with respect to the development, implementation, and enforcement of environmental laws, regulations, and policies. EPA has this goal for all communities and persons across this Nation [sic]. It will be achieved when everyone enjoys the same degree of protection from environmental and health hazards and equal access to the decision-making process to have a healthy environment in which to live, learn, and work.^[5]

The United States Department of Transportation defines three fundamental EJ principles for the Federal Highway Administration and the Federal Transit Administration as follows:

1. To avoid, minimize, or mitigate disproportionately high and adverse human health and environmental effects, including social and economic effects, on minority populations and low-income populations.
2. To ensure the full and fair participation by all potentially affected communities in the transportation decision-making process.
3. To prevent the denial of, reduction in, or significant delay in the receipt of benefits by minority and low-income populations.^[6]

Could a serious-minded American citizen disagree with anything in those two definitions?  That’s right out of the Boy Scout Manual, it’s Leave No Trace writ large — it’s been the policy of the U.S. government since the early 1970s, proposed by Republicans as a means to conserve our nation’s lands, waters, and other resources.

There is nothing in the DHS environmental justice policy statement to suggest the agency will do anything more than worry about whether the agency itself is environmentally friendly, and fair to minority populations in the dumping of its wastes.  Actually, there is nothing in the document opposed to pollution — only statements outlining that every group in the agency is responsible for following policy.  The document says, in too many words, that no one can use the excuse, “It was the custodian’s job to see the used fluorescent light tubes were disposed properly.”

That crazy right wing!  They just get more and more distanced from reality the closer the election looms!

Links to the post at Club the Constitution Constitution Club, with the implied allegation that Obama will be sending cops out to fine you and your local gendarmerie for using Styrofoam cups, make up a new Anti-Green Wall of Shame, made by unthinking people spouting off about what they do not know:

• Obama’s Department of Homeland Security Forms Green Police
•  The Big Picture » Here Come the Green Police! DHS Launches ‘Environmental Justice’ Units « The Constitution Club
• Who’s Up For The Green Police? » Pirate’s Cove
• Who’s Up For The Green Police? | Right Wing News
• April 24, 2012 | Another Slow News Day
• The Church of the Global Warming Fascists (AGW) revising their theology, another fall – Christian Forums
• Hold onto jaw before reading « Pull My Chain
• Where Is He Wrong? | SelfAdoration.com
• THE GREEN POLICE ARE REAL! DHS LAUNCHES ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE STRATEGY | iBC_FN | iBankCoin Financial News
• Forget Homeland Security, Now It’s About “Environmental Justice” – Tea Party Nation « Gds44′s Blog
• Forget Homeland Security, Now It’s About “Environmental Justice”  The Federal Observe
• Here Come the Green Police!  theflyingcameldotorg
• The Mind, It Boggles, Short Little Rebel (Who complains at the next blog, “This was a strategy that Hitler bragged about it.”  Hitler worried about dumping pollution on poor people?  Bullfeathers; the woman knows nothing about the topic.)
• The Mind, It Boggles, Western Rifle Shooters Association (Do you sense an astonishing echo chamber effect here, with no thought at all to what words are actually echoed?) (Note the discussion of shooting federal agents in comments; they must think no one is watching, or cares.) (Ooh.  Also see this astonishing claim by Mike, in comments:  “Marx and Engels discussed using environmentalism to destroy the capitalist west.”  Pretty good, since environmentalism didn’t exist before either Marx or Engels died; nor did they talk abut “destroying” the west, especially since “the west” didn’t become parlance for capitalism until after 1946; Marx died in 1883, Engels in 1895.)
• InfoWars gets the Audi joke, but completely misreads the policy document (there is no new unit of DHS; there is no group of uniformed cops to enforce environmental rules)
• Steven Hayward at Powerline, who probably knows better, gets all panicky and whiny and says you should be fearful
• Intelhub fell for the hoax, and added to it
• (Updated May 3) Alan Caruba never hesitates to pile on if he thinks it’s nasty enough, and he does it again here at the aptly-named Absurd report, not pausing to understand the inaccuracy of the original report, nor giving a thought to the irony of posting such absurdities; Caruba gets suckered again
• Presstitution got suckered
• Caruba has his own echo chamber -- and like an echo, there’s no brain working in the process (Ruthfully Yours)
• gds44 got suckered (again) — more echoing Caruba (doesn’t anyone on the right ever think for themself?)

More than a dozen blogs, operated by at least a dozen bloggers — all of whom conserved a great deal of energy by failing to use any of their gray matter neurons before parroting a hoax.  Oy.  (My experience is that most of those blogs are terrified that someone will leave an opposing opinion in comments — if you successfully post a comment at any of those blogs, will you let us know in comments?  The Ghost of Stalin stalks heavily among the blogs of the unthinking right.)

How many people will be suckered by this hoax?  More than a dozen so far, and counting.

P.S.:  The Audi advertisement was for the 2010 Super Bowl; that’s some digging.

Update, May 3:  A few wags at the original site now claim it’s parody, that they know it’s not so.  Alas, they don’t post that, and as you can see by the update above, other anti-American Clean Air types continue to pile on, not hesitating to attack our national government for fun.

Bill Moyers warns Rep. West against reviving McCarthyism in 2012

Moyers has better historic video than I could find; Moyers is right on this issue.  Rep. Allen West owes all Americans an apology for his rash and wrong remarks.

Bill Moyers Essay: The Ghost of McCarthyism

April 26, 2012

In this broadcast essay, Bill connects the disgraceful McCarthyism of the past to its modern resurgence in the comments of Rep. Allen West and others. Haven’t we learned this lesson already?

Resources: 

• Website for Moyers & Co. (lots of good video, plus transcripts)
• Politico on West’s remarks
• McCarthyism Reborn in Republican Pitched by Some as Romney Veep (themoderatevoice.com)
• McCarthyism: Was Senator Joe McCarthy Right or Wrong? (theconservativehillbilly.wordpress.com)
• Commentary: Bill Moyers – The Ghost Of Joe McCarthy Slithers Again (freeinternetpress.com)
• The ghost of McCarthyism alive in West (craigconsidinetcd.wordpress.com)
• McCarthyism: Was Senator Joe McCarthy Right or Wrong? (votingamerican.wordpress.com)
• 3/14-15 What was McCarthyism? (dohertyformodernus.wordpress.com) (This is a U.S. history class website)

Oh, grow up:  The Wall of Shame, suckers who grant credence to Rep. West’s McCarthyist whine:

• Don’t Let the Organized Left’s Charges of “McCarthyism” Deter You – Allen West Is Right (nicedeb.wordpress.com) (What more can you say about a site who advertises it’s part of the “Moronosphere News Network?”)
• Cliff Kincaid at the misnamed Accuracy in Media

Is the anti-vaccine movement dangerous?

I get e-mail from Bob Park, the physicist curmudgeon/philosopher at the University of Maryland (I’ve added links):

Robert L. Park (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

“DEADLY CHOICES”: PAUL OFFIT EXPOSES THE ANTI-VACCINE MOVEMENT.

There was never a time before people knew that falling trees and large animals with teeth can kill.  Microbes are another matter. They had been killing us for perhaps 200,000 years before Antonie van Leeuwenhoek showed them to us. Paul Offit and two colleagues worked for 25 years to develop a vaccine for the rotavirus, a cause of gastroenteritis that kills as many as 600,000 children a year worldwide, mostly in underdeveloped countries.  The vaccine is credited with saving hundreds of lives a day.  Offit wrote “Autism’s False Prophets” in 2008 exposing British physician Andrew Wakefield for falsely claiming the MMR vaccineis linked to autism.

H. Fred Clark and Paul Offit, the inventors of RotaTeq. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Vaccination prevents more suffering than any other branch of medicine, but is still opposed by the scientifically ignorant who accept the upside-down logic of the alternative medicine movement.  Because vaccination of schoolchildren against virulent childhood infections is ubiquitous, crackpots, scoundrels and gullible reporters get away with linking it to unrelated health problems as they did in the 1980s with the ubiquitous power lines.  We still hear echoes of the power-line scare in the cell phone/cancer panic. Paul Offit has just written “Deadly Choices: How The Anti-Vaccine Movement Threatens Us All.”  We need to do everything we can to stop it.

You don’t subscribe to Bob Park’s “What’s New?”  You should.

THE UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND.
Opinions are the author’s and not necessarily shared by the
University of Maryland, but they should be.
—
Archives of What’s New can be found at http://www.bobpark.org
What’s New is moving to a different listserver and our subscription process has changed. To change your subscription status please visit this link:
http://listserv.umd.edu/cgi-bin/wa?SUBED1=bobparks-whatsnew&A=1

You’ll be smarter for reading his little missiles missives missiles.

More:

• Should a doctor fire an anti-vax patient? (genome.fieldofscience.com)
• A physician’s guide for anti-vaccine parents (medicalxpress.com)
• Analyzing An Epidemic of Fear (krystinaglobal.wordpress.com)
• Tactics and tropes of the antivaccine movement (scienceblogs.com)
• Anti-anti-vax: Getting to the gist (sciencebasedmedicine.org)
• Childhood Immunizations and Vaccinations | Special Edition | Education.com (education.com)
• The combined measles, mumps, and rubella vaccines and the total number of vaccines are not associated with development of autism spectrum disorder: The first case-control study in Asia. (leftbrainrightbrain.co.uk)
• Anti-anti-vax: Getting to the gist (sciencebasedpharmacy.wordpress.com)
• Listening to Louise Kuo Habakus at a “Vaccine Epidemic” Booksigning and Talk (lizditz.typepad.com)

Earth Day honors Earth, our majestic home — not Lenin (2012 version)

This is mostly an encore post — sad that it needs repeating.

You could write it off to pareidolia, once. Like faces in clouds, some people claimed to see a link. The first Earth Day, on April 22, 1970, coincided with Lenin’s birthday. There was no link — Earth Day was scheduled for a spring Wednesday. Now, years later, with almost-annual repeats of the claim from the braying right wing, it’s just a cruel hoax.

No, there’s no link between Earth Day and the birthday of V. I. Lenin:

One surefire way to tell an Earth Day post is done by an Earth Day denialist: They’ll note that the first Earth Day, on April 22, 1970, was an anniversary of the birth of Lenin.

Coincidentally, yes, Lenin was born on April 22 (new style calendar; it was April 10 on the calendar when he was born — but that’s a digression for another day).

It’s a hoax. There is no meaning to the first Earth Day’s falling on Lenin’s birthday — Lenin was not prescient enough to plan his birthday to fall in the middle of Earth Week, a hundred years before Earth Week was even planned.

My guess is that only a few really wacko conservatives know that April 22 is Lenin’s birthday (was it ever celebrated in the Soviet Union?). No one else bothers to think about it, or say anything about it, nor especially, to celebrate it.

Inventor of Earth Day teach-ins, former Wisconsin Governor and U.S. Senator Gaylord Nelson

Wisconsin’s U.S. Sen. Gaylord Nelson, usually recognized as the founder and father of Earth Day, told how and why the organizers came to pick April 22:

Senator Nelson chose the date in order to maximize participation on college campuses for what he conceived as an “environmental teach-in.” He determined the week of April 19–25 was the best bet; it did not fall during exams or spring breaks, did not conflict with religious holidays such as Easter or Passover, and was late enough in spring to have decent weather. More students were likely to be in class, and there would be less competition with other mid-week events—so he chose Wednesday, April 22.

In his own words, Nelson spoke of what he was trying to do:

After President Kennedy’s [conservation] tour, I still hoped for some idea that would thrust the environment into the political mainstream. Six years would pass before the idea that became Earth Day occurred to me while on a conservation speaking tour out West in the summer of 1969. At the time, anti-Vietnam War demonstrations, called “teach-ins,” had spread to college campuses all across the nation. Suddenly, the idea occurred to me – why not organize a huge grassroots protest over what was happening to our environment?

I was satisfied that if we could tap into the environmental concerns of the general public and infuse the student anti-war energy into the environmental cause, we could generate a demonstration that would force this issue onto the political agenda. It was a big gamble, but worth a try.

At a conference in Seattle in September 1969, I announced that in the spring of 1970 there would be a nationwide grassroots demonstration on behalf of the environment and invited everyone to participate. The wire services carried the story from coast to coast. The response was electric. It took off like gangbusters. Telegrams, letters, and telephone inquiries poured in from all across the country. The American people finally had a forum to express its concern about what was happening to the land, rivers, lakes, and air – and they did so with spectacular exuberance. For the next four months, two members of my Senate staff, Linda Billings and John Heritage, managed Earth Day affairs out of my Senate office.

Five months before Earth Day, on Sunday, November 30, 1969, The New York Times carried a lengthy article by Gladwin Hill reporting on the astonishing proliferation of environmental events:

“Rising concern about the environmental crisis is sweeping the nation’s campuses with an intensity that may be on its way to eclipsing student discontent over the war in Vietnam…a national day of observance of environmental problems…is being planned for next spring…when a nationwide environmental ‘teach-in’…coordinated from the office of Senator Gaylord Nelson is planned….”

Nelson, a veteran of the U.S. armed services (Okinawa campaign), flag-waving ex-governor of Wisconsin (Sen. Joe McCarthy’s home state, but also the home of Aldo Leopold and birthplace of John Muir), was working to raise America’s consciousness and conscience about environmental issues.

Lenin on the environment? Think of the Aral Sea disaster, the horrible pollution from Soviet mines and mills, and the dreadful record of the Soviet Union on protecting any resource. Lenin believed in exploiting resources, not conservation.

So, why are all these conservative denialists claiming, against history and politics, that Lenin’s birthday has anything to do with Earth Day?

Can you say “propaganda?”  Can you say “political smear?”

Good information for 2012:

• Earth Day Network
• “President Obama issues Green Schools Proclamation”
• US EPA Earth Day page
• Nature Conservancy site on Earth Day
• Today is Earth Day! Let’s all celebrate it! (yabbedoo.wordpress.com)
• Earth Day (goodolewoody.wordpress.com)
• Earth Day! (holyfamilysisters.org)
• 10 Apps to Help You Go Green for Earth Day and Beyond (mashable.com)
• Earth Day Facts: When It Is, How It Began, What to Do (news.nationalgeographic.com)
• About.com, “Is Earth Day a communist plot?”; “U.S. Sen. Gaylord Nelson, the guy who dreamed up the nationwide teach-in that became Earth Day, once tried to put the whole “Earth Day as communist plot” idea into perspective.”On any given day, a lot of both good and bad people were born,” Nelson said. “A person many consider the world’s first environmentalist, Saint Francis of Assisi, was born on April 22. So was Queen Isabella. More importantly, so was my Aunt Tillie.”

Good information from 2011:

• Interview with Kathleen Rogers of Earthday Networks, Washingtonian’s Capital Blog
• “The Best Earth Day Investments,” from Reuters Blogs
• Natural Resources Defense Council says it’s time to act
• Time Magazine blog: Earth Day Network’s launch of the Billion Acts of Green campaign
• Brookings Institution calls for green schools in the U.S.

Good information from 2010:

• National Geographic Society, “Earth Day at 40 – How It Began, Where It’s Going“
• Calgary Herald
• ABC News (North America, not Australia)
• Bill McKibben in the Washington Post, notes that the environment, and Earth’s people, are losing the environmental fight
• Earth Day reading from The Baltimore Sun
• USA Today worries that Earth Day has run too far in the opposite direction from Lenin, too corporate
• Washington Post on Earth Day activities in 2010
• EPA on Earth Day

Wall of Lenin’s Birthday Propaganda Shame from 2012:

• Happy Earth / Communism Day
• Do You Know Why Earth Day is April 22? (johnmalcolm.me)
• Do you know why Earth Day is April 22? (gds44.wordpress.com) [This blog appears not to accept any dissenting views . . . funny, Leninist tactics from a guy who claims not to like Lenin.]
• “Earth Day’s Dark Side,” at Peak Oil
• LibertyNews.com
• The Freepers got suckered, too
• Rich Kozlovich at Paradigms and Demographic; Kozlovich repeats these fantastic lies, without even bothering to hint at any backup:  “There is one factor that is known. This whole green stuff was imposed in Nazi Germany and in Soviet Russia and their views are virtually identical to the views of modern greenies and it is a reasonable assumption to think they were inspirational to the green movement of today; who have morphed into the step child of socialism. I think it is fair to question any denials on their part, in that their denials can be being likened to cow flatulence. Back to today.” [Editor's note:  Complete and utter balderdash.]
  
• Alan Caruba went all Bolshevik at SodaHead
• They are still out of Prozac at World Net Daily

Wall of Lenin’s Birthday Propaganda Shame from 2011:

• The formerly respectable Human Events pushes the hoax, still
• RightSide News hoaxes its readers
• The New American pushes the hoax, and slams children singin. Go figure.
• Steven Hayward went haywire at Powerline; keep your fingers out of the sockets, guys!
• Canada Free Press engages wholly in fiction
• The Orange County (California) Register, of course — Agnew-land

Wall of Lenin’s Birthday Propaganda Shame from 2010:

• David Zeimer, writing in The Wisconsin Law Journal (This guy is particularly nutty. He notes the successes of cleaning up the air and water in and around Milwaukee, and then claims that clean air and water are false goals. Nuts.)
• Orange County Register comments (of course)
• Inaptly named (propaganda doublespeak?) American Thinker (Sussman runs with an odd crowd; and why does his friend always shout “Lenin’s birthday!” at Sussman’s speeches? Who needs a friend like that?)
• One of the ways you know Earth Day is innocently timed is that the FBI investigated it; in 1970, the FBI investigated hippies, but not organized crime. Go figure.
• Capitalism Magazine announces they have fired all of their fact checkers
• Front Page pushes the Lenin hoax
• Careful Thought blog abandons its name
• Tarpon’s Swamp just scrambles history and current issues inexplicably
• Don Surber may be as nutty as Zeimer, above – he notes words of concern from 1970, then dismisses the progress that resulted because people worked to change things; clean air is bad, to him, I guess
• Free Republic, never concerned with clashing facts, or facts at all, gets things exactly wrong
• Lubos Motl, a man not known for getting any facts straight, joins in the hoax at the Reference Frame (and don’t pretend Motl doesn’t know it’s a hoax)
• Making the case that economics should be left to professionals, the Amateur Economist pulls out a laundry list of hoaxes

Warn people not to be sucked in by the hoax:

ObamaCare: Making stuff up to complain about

Collected on Facebook, April 16, 2012:

It even offers a page and line -- page 114, line 22. But that page has nothing to do with what the caption on the truck says.

Here’s the text from H.R. 3200, the Affordable Care Act, on page 114.  Where’s the language this guy complains about?

17 ‘‘(b) LIMITATIONS ON USE OF DATA.—Nothing in this
18 section shall be construed to permit the use of information
19 collected under this section in a manner that would ad
20 versely affect any individual.
21 ‘‘(c) PROTECTION OF DATA.—The Secretary shall en
22 sure (through the promulgation of regulations or otherwise)
23 that all data collected pursuant to subsection (a) are—
24 ‘‘(1) used and disclosed in a manner that meets
25 the HIPAA* privacy and security law (as defined in

[continuing to page 115]

1 section 3009(a)(2) of the Public Health Service Act),
2 including any privacy or security standard adopted
3 under section 3004 of such Act; and
4 ‘‘(2) protected from all inappropriate internal
5 use by any entity that collects, stores, or receives the
6 data, including use of such data in determinations of
7 eligibility (or continued eligibility) in health plans,
8 and from other inappropriate uses, as defined by the
9 Secretary.

That GPO version of the bill is searchable in .pdf form — searching for “Congress” I find no reference to any part that exempts Congress.  Searching for “exemption,” I find no mention of any exemption from any provision that applies to Congress or the President.

So, what are the anti-ObamaCare fanatics really concerned about?  Is there language in the bill that exempts either Congress or the President, from any provision?

Some guy is so obsessed with hatred for President Obama and health care reform that he paints the offending part on his truck.  But he gets the law wrong.

Dear Reader, what am I missing?  Can you explain?

I wonder if the guy is into tattoos.

_____________

*  HIPAA is The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA; Pub.L. 104-191, 110 Stat. 1936, enacted August 21, 1996)

_____________

PPS:  Here’s the text of H. R. 3590, the number of the bill that finally passed.  I can’t find any more light there, either.

_____________

Update: In comments, blueollie refers us to a Forbes blog article that both reveals the truth of the matter — Congress and the President get no special treatment — and the origins of the hoax.

So, here’s the real deal –As things currently stand, Members of Congress and their staff, until 2014, will continue to participate in the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program (FEHBP). This program, considered among the best in the nation, allows federal employees- including Members of Congress and their staff- to choose from a wide range of health plans and select the one that best suits their needs. Note that the current plan is neither ‘government’ insurance, ‘free’ insurance nor any other sort of sweet deal that the public has been led to believe is the case. The federal employee’s program involves private insurance policies with premiums, deductibles, co-pays, etc.

Here’s the surprise – come 2014, when the lion’s share of the ACA provisions come on line, Members of Congress and their staff will be required to buy their health insurance on an exchange. In fact, their choices will be even more limited than our own. While it is expected that some 24 million people will elect to purchase their health care policy on a state run exchange, we are not required by law to do so. Members of Congress and their staff, however, must buy their insurance in this way.

There you have it.  That guy, whoever he is, had his truck painted erroneously.  We hope he doesn’t have a close relationship with the tattoo parlor.

_____________

So many hoaxes relating to Barack Obama; do you think there’s a shop somewhere with a dozen people sitting around dreaming up these hoaxes?  What else explains the sheer number of Obama-related hoaxes?

No attempted political smear like an old attempted political smear

This New York Times photo feature is making the e-mail and Facebook rounds of Republicans and anti-Obamaniacs:

Should have noted, it’s making the rounds yet again.

In the note I got most recently, the sender posted this — probably a copy and paste message:

This picture will stun you

If each person sends this to a minimum of 20 people on their address list, in three days,
all people in The United States of America would have the message.
I believe this is one proposal that really should be passed around.
________________________________________________________________

THIS WILL CURDLE YOUR BLOOD AND CURL YOUR HAIR

Description: cid:image001.jpg@01CCB96D.4D1AFD50

The name of the book Obama is reading is called: The Post-American World, and it was written by a fellow Muslim.

“Post” America means the World After America ! , Please forward this picture to everyone you know, conservative or liberal. , Democrat or Republican, Folks we need to be aware of what our president is thinking–or planning
We must expose Obama’s radical ideas and his intent to bring down our beloved America!

Oy.  Where to begin with the factual corrections?

First, Zakaria is not exactly a Muslim extremist.  He was born in India, a secular nation which practices religious diversity by law, his mother a former editor of The Sunday Times of India, his father a member of the popular Indian National Congress, the party of Jawaharlal Nehru, Indira and Rajiv Gandhi, and Manmohan Singh, to mention four famous Prime Ministers of India.

Editor, Newsweek International was a featured speaker at Charles Schwab Institutional Impact 2007 at the Mandalay Bay Convention Center, Las Vegas, Nevada, United States. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)”]

Fareed Zakaria, [then

Second, Zakaria is a highly-respected journalist with great experience in international affairs.  He’s a former columnist for of Newsweek, and was editor of Newsweek International (is that American enough?).  Currently he has a column in Time, and a regular slot on CNN, Fareed Zakaria GPS, after a program on PBS and assignments for ABC.  You probably know the man by sight, and he doesn’t scare you in your living room.

Third, it’s not about “after” America — it’s about life in the world after several other nations figure out the U.S. secrets to success (freedom and trade), and apply them to become, like the U.S., a world power.  Not the world “after America,” but the world after the domination of America and Pax Americana.  The note in the New York Times said:

Writing in the Book Review a few weeks ago, Joseph Joffe said about Zakaria’s book:

Zakaria’s is not another exercise in declinism. His point is not the demise of Gulliver, but the ”rise of the rest.” After all, how can this giant follow Rome and Britain onto the dust heap of empire if it can prosecute two wars at once without much notice at home? The granddaughters of those millions of Rosie the Riveters who kept the World War II economy going are off to the mall today; if they don’t shop till they drop, it’s because of recession, not rationing.

“Not another exercise in declinism.” Want to bet the people passing the photo around didn’t bother to read Zakaria’s book?  Heck, they didn’t even bother to check it out on Amazon, or Wikipedia.  Anyone who thinks this photo sinister clearly could use a good read of the book — if they can read.

Fourth, Zakaria’s book has an entire chapter on keeping the U.S. from falling into decline — it’s not a book to”bring down our beloved America,” but is instead a book aimed at doing the exact opposite.  Zakaria outlines how the U.S. can maintain influence and power in a world where superpower influence is problematic rather than an enormous advantage at all times, and a world where trade is better than war.

Fifth, The Post-American World got a lot of praise from conservative, Republican- and Libertarian-leaning people when it was published.  The pedestrian Wikipedia explained:

The Post-American World, at 292 pages long, was described as “a book-length essay”^[5] and a “thin book that reads like one long, thoughtful essay”.^[6] Written with an optimistic tone, it features little new research or reporting, but rather contains insights and identification of trends.^[5] The reviewer for The Wall Street Journal described the tone as “infectious (though not naive) sunniness…but without Panglossian simplicity”.^[1] The American Spectator reviewer noted that the prose had a journalistic style^[7] while the reviewer for The Guardian noticed the writing sometimes displayed “news magazine mannerisms”.^[8]

Zakaria’s view on globalisation was said to be similar to journalist and author Thomas Friedman.^[9][10] Friedman reviewed The Post-American World and called it “compelling”.^[11] The review in American Conservative compared this book with Rudyard Kipling‘s poems “Recessional” and “The White Man’s Burden“, both written at the height of British power and warning against imperial hubris.^[12] The American Spectator review listed it as adding to similar themed books, comparing it to Oswald Spengler‘s The Decline of the West (1918), Arnold Toynbee‘s A Study of History, Paul Kennedy‘s The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers (1987), and Robert Kagan‘s The Return of History and the End of Dreams (2008).^[7] Kagan labeled The Post-American World as “declinist”;^[13] however, Martin Woollacott of The Guardian labeled Zakaria an exceptionalist.^[8] The Commentary review added the works of Samuel P. Huntington and Francis Fukuyama to the list of comparisons and suggested there is now a sub-genre of books that consider the decline or demise of American hegemony.^[14]

Wall Street Journal, American Spectator, Commentary — any self-respecting, halfway well-read neo-conservative would have all of those sources on her desk today.

Having read Zakaria’s book should be an indication of American patriotism.  Dwight Garner’s comment at Art Beat, a blog of the New York Times, said the photo was a “stylish book-ad,” and he meant it as a compliment.  He closed off his note:

Anyone know what book John McCain is — or should be — carrying around?

Grand question.  I’ll wager McCain knows the book, if he hasn’t read it.

But what about Mitt Romney?  I’ll wager he didn’t bother to read it.  Rick Santorum?  Surely not.  Newt Gingrich probably read it quickly, over-analyzed it, found some minor issue of historical interpretation to disagree with, and pronounced it not worthy of actual citation.

The people who try to raise fears with the photo?  They probably don’t read newspapers, don’t have library cards, and they hope to hell you’re too busy updating your Facebook profile to know anything at all about reality and world history.  Would they send the photo around if they had Clue #1?

Sixth, the book came out in 2008.    Even the paperbacks are in new editions with revisions, it’s been out so long.

How desperate are the Obama-obsessed folk?  They’re so desperate they are recycling hoaxes from 2008.  Worse, they find people willing to be hoaxed all over again, forgetting they got hoaxed back then.

Voter identification?  How about a voter sanity check?  Given a choice, a sane person might say “let illegal aliens vote, instead” — they know more about America and what makes it great than the perps of this hoax.

Is it significant that Zakaria has not been shy about criticizing serious policy errors promulgated by Republican candidates for president?  Nah.

More:

• Truth or Fiction debunked the hoax — in 2008
• Snopes.com called the claims with the photo false – in 2008

Even Mmre, with help from Zemanta

• Zakaria: How America can thrive in a post-American world (globalpublicsquare.blogs.cnn.com)
• Zakaria: It’s a new world, Mitt – CNN (globalpublicsquare.blogs.cnn.com)
• Fareed Zakaria to Grover Norquist: ‘Aren’t You to Blame’ for Rising Debt? (newsbusters.org)
• Robert Kagan: Whey The World Needs America (thewesternexperience.com)
• Zakaria: The Republican Party’s demographics problem (globalpublicsquare.blogs.cnn.com)
• From Fareed Zakaria to Mitt Romney: “Today, we are in a different era” (dinmerican.wordpress.com)

Debunking claims of climate hoaxes, or evidence of the End of Civilization as We Know It

Found this on the Grist site today:

Grist infographic: Idea of climate change hoax makes no sense

The problem?  Far too many people not only don’t weigh ideas to see if they make sense, but instead they actively seek out ideas, no matter how crazy, just because they like the concept.

In short, the fact that such a chart is necessary at all suggests that it may not be useful.  Anyone who had the common sense to figure out that the globe is warming, and the scientists who say so are mostly honest as the day is long (and warm), won’t accept the judgment of Grist, either.

I mean, Peter Gleick exposed the immoral and perhaps illegal acts of the so-called Heartland Institute, virtually walking through the front door of the group’s offices and asking, “Will you show me all your dirty work?”  John Mashey’s painstaking work confirms Gleick’s blowing the whistle on Heartland, and Heartland’s fellow travelers.

What has Heartlandgate brought?  Heartland is spending thousands of dollars on a public relations campaign to impugn Gleick, and widely-read sites like the anti-science Watts Up get suckered in (well, Heartland was paying for Anthony Watts’ pet project . . . what should we expect?).  Even Andrew Revkin at his New York Times Blog can’t find his way to label actions as they should be labeled.

Will it make a difference to state the facts, the common sense version of reality?  My actual hope is that I am in error, and that such a graphic, if pasted around the internet, will make a difference.

Is my hope wholly misplaced?

Update:  At the Washington Post blogs, Stephen Stromberg wrote that Gleick erred by failing to follow the rule that climate scientists must be more than twice as morally straight as the “skeptics.”  I’m not convinced Gleick erred; he’s done yeoman service to exposing the truth.  I’m struggling to find any illegal act he committed.  Heartland claims there may be some fraud, but not all the elements of any crime of fraud are present.  If, as Heartland argues, the documents are fakes, there was no value lost.  If, as most of us suspect, the documents are not fakes, I still see no harm to Heartland in their having their feet held the fire on being honest with the IRS and the public.  Heartland claims an absolute right to fib to the public, and somehow Mr. Gleick interfered?  Where’s the harm to the public good?  Certainly not in exposing Heartland’s dark secrets.  No harm, no crime, in this case.

Bathtub myth still haunts the ghost of Millard Fillmore

Presidents Day this year brought out columns and commentary in newspapers and other media across the country, with trivia about presidents.

Millard Fillmore in a daguerreotype by Matthew Brady in March, 1849, in a sitting at the U.S. Capitol. In 1849 the presidential inauguration took place in March -- this may be a photo taken on inauguration day, but almost certainly when Fillmore was Vice President. Wikipedia image

What did we learn?  We learned that the old hoax, that Millard Fillmore put the first bathtub in the White House, still stands strong.  The ghost of H. L. Mencken, the guy who started the hoax, high-tails it to the nearest hotel bar for a beer; the ghost of Santayana smiles and shakes its head.  Fillmore’s ghost looks around for a good book to read.

Did one of the wires services run a story on the trivia that reporters picked up?

In the Diamond Bar (California) Patch, in a column of presidents trivia, editor Catherine Garcia reported:

• Millard Fillmore installed the first bathtub and kitchen stove in the White House.

In that version of history, presidents were both dirty and hungry from 1801 to 1850, I suppose.

In the Quincy (Illinois) Herald-Whig, Steve Eighinger seconded the error:

º For some reason, Millard Fillmore, the 13th president, has been the butt of a lot of jokes over the years and I don’t know why. The guy seems pretty upstanding. When Fillmore moved into the White House, it didn’t have a Bible, so he corrected that oversight. He and his wife, Abigail, installed the first library at the White House, plus the first bathtub and kitchen stove. Fillmore could not read Latin and refused an honorary degree from Oxford University, saying a person shouldn’t accept a degree he could not read. (So how did the first 12 presidents take a bath?)

Give Mr. Eighinger credit.  In that parenthetical question, he begins to see the problems with the story, the hoax Mencken wrote.  Too bad he didn’t chase it down.

Yes, the Fillmores installed the first library in the White House — though it was more out of their love of books than a lack of a Bible.  And they updated the kitchen, but certainly someone had some sort of stove to cook on prior to 1850.

Punditty (a nome de plume, I hope) got the facts right at AllVoices:

13. Millard Fillmore wasn’t really the first president to have a bathtub installed in the White House. The actual answer is more complicated. See the link below under “Additional Sources.” He was, however, a member of three political parties during his lifetime: Anti-Masonic (1828-1832); Whig (1832-1856, including his presidency of 1850-53); and American (1856-1860).

I didn’t find the link to “Additional Sources.”  Perhaps the author referred to the notes under the Wikipedia article on Fillmore, which was linked from the site.  You should remember that the “American Party” to which Fillmore belonged, and on whose ticket he ran for the presidency in 1856, was also known as the “Know-Nothing Party.”

How many other newspapers carried the hoax in the past week, that my news hounds did not find?

Even in 1952, when President Harry Truman told the hoax, there was general knowledge that the story was false.  Why does it still circulate, 95 years after Mencken invented it?

When did the first plumbed bathtub go into the White House, and who was president at the time?

DDT news: Ethio Sun reports, “Ethiopia and Botswana in banned DDT pesticide deal”

How many hoax claims of Steven Milloy, Roger Bate and other DDT advocates are exposed in this one news story?

Somebody count.  The story reveals

1. African nations still use DDT.
2. There’s a lot of DDT in Africa to be used.
3. Some nations don’t use DDT due to fear of health effects on people; they appear to have weighed the alternatives, and found better ways to fight malaria without DDT.
4. DDT is cheap in Africa (US$4.50/kilogram).
5. Despite the U.S. ban on DDT use on U.S. crops, some nations in Africa kept using DDT (the article misstates the case for a worldwide ban — there has never been a worldwide ban).
6. DDT use is not assumed in Africa to be a great way to fight malaria.

I don’t mean to suggest EthioSun as a sterling source of information; but it’s not difficult to find stories like this with frequency, out of Africa.  Each of them refutes the case for more DDT, so that there really is no good case to be made for more DDT, anywhere.

Ethiopia and Botswana in banned DDT pesticide deal

Posted By EthioSun On Thursday, January 12, 2012 06:32 AM.

Ethiopia is set to export about 15 tonnes of the banned pesticide, DDT, to Botswana, it has been revealed.

This follows a recent suspension on the use of the pesticide by the Horn of Africa nation, which cited adverse effects of human health and the environment as reasons for the decision.

Adami Tulu Pesticide, a state owned company has huge stocks of DDT, which it will reportedly sell to Botswana at US$4.50 per kilogramme.

It is estimated the company has 450 tonnes of DDT in stock.

The US led a worldwide ban on the use of DDT as a pesticide in 1972 following reports of adverse side effects on humans.

However, Ethiopia along with a few other countries continued the use of DDT in the fight against malaria.

Activists have demanded that the ban be lifted, in order to allow the use DDT in the elimination of malaria, especially in developing countries.

More than half of the estimated 80 million people in Ethiopia are said to be at risk of contracting malaria.

According to the World Health Organisation some countries still use DDT to fight malaria.

The disease killed over half a million people worldwide last year, most of them in Africa.

There was no immediate confirmation from Botswana about the planned export.

Steve Milloy, Roger Bate, Richard Tren, Henry I. Miller and others hoax us when they say DDT can save mankind, or even help save mankind.  See also Tim Lambert’s takedown of Goklany’s post.

Millard Fillmore at 212 – boiling mad?

Millard Fillmore was born January 7, 1800. Had he lived, Millard Fillmore would be 212 years old today, very cranky, and looking for a good book to read.  Had each year been a degree Fahrenheit, he’d be boiling!

Millard Fillmore clipart from University of South Florida - Free! Click image to go to USF site.

Would you blame him for being cranky? He opened Japan to trade. He got from Mexico the land necessary to make Los Angeles a great world city and the Southern Pacific a great railroad, without firing a shot. Fillmore promoted economic development of the Mississippi River. He managed to keep a fractious nation together despite itself for another three years. Fillmore let end the practice of presidents using slaves to staff the White House, then called “the President’s Mansion,” eight years before the election of Abraham Lincoln.

Then in 1852 his own party refused to nominate him for a full term, making him the last Whig to be president. And to add insult to ignominy, H. L. Mencken falsely accused him of being known only for adding a bathtub to the White House, something he didn’t do.

As Antony said of Caesar, the good was interred with his bones — but Millard Fillmore doesn’t even get credit for whatever evil he might have done: Fillmore is remembered most for being the butt of a hoax gone awry, committed years after his death. Or worse, he’s misremembered for what the hoax alleged he did.

Even beneficiaries of his help promoting the Mississippi River have taken his name off their annual celebration of the event. Fillmore has been eclipsed, even in mediocrity (is there still a Millard Fillmore Society in Washington?).

Happy birthday, Millard Fillmore.

Millard Fillmore, free clipart from University of South Florida

Millard Fillmore was a man of great civic spirit, a man who answered the call to serve even when most others couldn’t hear it at all. He was a successful lawyer, despite having had only six months of formal education (a tribute to non-high school graduates and lifelong learning). Unable to save the Union, he established the University of Buffalo and the Buffalo and Erie County Historical Society. During the Civil War, he led the local militia in support of the war effort, many rungs down from his role of Commander-in-Chief. And, it is said of him that Queen Victoria said he was the most handsome man she had ever met.

A guy like that deserves a toast, don’t you think?

Resources:

• Gateway to Millard Fillmore history at Millard Fillmore’s Bathtub
• Millard Fillmore Papers, volume 1, edited by Frank H. Severance, secretary of the Buffalo Historical Society, 1907. Also, the index to both volumes; Table of contents. From Cornell University Library’s collection, New York State Historical Literature. This volume contains the autobiography Millard Fillmore did not finish, but which contains the only serious treatment of his youth, including the story of how he threatened to kill the first man to whom he was apprenticed as a wool carder. Particularly for those elementary and junior high school students looking for stories of presidents’ youth, this is the most authoritative account.
• Millard Fillmore Papers, volume 2, edited by Frank H. Severance, secretary of the Buffalo Historical Society, 1907. Also, the index to both volumes; Table of contents. From Cornell University Library’s collection, New York State Historical Literature.
• The Gospel of Millard Fillmore, a sermon by a Unitarian minister with a solid narrative and a view to redeem the reputation of Fillmore
• Looking for Millard Fillmore, a post at American President’s Blog, listing resources on Fillmore.
• Gateway to Fillmore sources at Electratig
• Resources on Millard Fillmore from the Miller Center of Public Affairs at the University of Virginia
• Fillmore entry at WhiteHouse.gov
• MFB entry on Fillmore’s Birthday, 2008; also here; 2007 entry here
• Did Fillmore actually say that?
• Even William Federer, that great distorter of history, gets some things right about Fillmore — but he leaves out the important stuff, and the best stuff.
• New in 2012:  Trail Baboon wonders how a hoax affects your personal morality and life

If stupid and arrogance shone like the Sun . . .

. . . we could solve all energy crises forevermore.

Over at Watt’s Up With That, the leading anti-science blog on the web, Anthony Watt turned the podium over to the indefatigable, often inscrutable, sometimes-funny-but-almost-always wrong, Willis Eschenbach, who worries about when solar power may run out:

Their study includes “renewable” sources like solar, although I’ve never found out exactly how they plan to renew the sun once it runs out.

In a just and sane world, Dave Barry would be preparing to sue Eschenbach for infringing on Barry’s humor patent.

Just when will energy from Old Sol run out?  The Sun will die one day, but well after President Obama’s second term has expired, and long after all current photo-voltaic devices have worn out from providing cheap energy.

The facts:

Our Sun won’t last forever. Dr. Carolyn Brinkworth explains the ramifications for our home planet in this ‘Ask an Astronomer’ video.

What Will Happen to the Earth When the Sun Dies?, posted with vodpod

Shorter Eschenbach:  Don’t worry about cleaning the air to fight global warming, because in the looooooooooooooooooooooooooooong run, we’re all dead.  Certainly after 4 billion years.

 

Obama and Christmas: Sparkling rebuttals to the hoax claims

Christmas at the White House with the Obamas takes on a particularly merry glow of the  better spirits of the season.

"WASHINGTON, DC - NOVEMBER 30: The official White House Christmas tree, the centerpiece of the Blue Room, is on display during the first viewing of the 2011 White House Christmas decorations November 30, 2011 in Washington, DC. Honoring Blue Star families, the 18-foot 6-inch balsam fir tree is decorated with framed military medals and handmade holiday cards created by military children living on installations around the world. The theme, 'Shine, Give, Share,' runs throught the White House with a 400-pound White House Gingerbread House and 37 Christmas trees." Getty Images

How that must frost people who blindly and often stupidly oppose the president.

Consider, from today’s Washington Post:

• 37 Christmas trees in the Executive Mansion, reflecting the Obama Christmas theme, “Shine, Give, Share”
• Two trees honoring veterans and military service, one Gold Star tree, one Blue Star tree, to promote awareness of the meaning of the blue and gold star traditions
• Two trees honoring veterans and military service, one Gold Star tree, one Blue Star tree, to promote awareness of the meaning of the blue and gold star traditions
• Lots of kids — receptions for children of servicemen have provided a parade of cheeriness
• Bo, the dog, stars in a variety of ways, including a recyclable replica of the dog made from trash bags
• 85,000 holiday visitors
• Entertainment for 12,000 volunteers, Congressmen, staff, Secret Service, and others
• The 2011 White House holiday guidebook distributed to visitors, created by eight students from the Corcoran College of Art and Design (the Corcoran Gallery is just around the corner)

Christopher Monckton, Orly Taitz, Bill O’Reilly and John Boehner will deny, or lament, all of it.  If living well is the best revenge, celebrating  the holidays well comes close to the best rebuttal of the hoaxes.

More: 

• Photographic slide show from The Washington Post featuring visitors and decorations to the 2011 Christmas White House

“White House hates Christmas” hoax season opens

Christmas gets underway at the White House, with a special guest appearance by Bo, the dog:

One long-standing American Christmas tradition is the Christmas hoax about the president.  Probably the most famous, if not the first, was H. L. Mencken’s column in December 1917, in which he claimed Millard Fillmore a failure as president, whose only achievement was putting the first bathtub in the Executive Mansion — all of it make up, whole cloth fiction.

Since the election of Barack Obama we’ve seen claims that Obama had banned Christmas trees, claims that Obama required only Marxist and communist ornaments, and other wild stories that only a fool, a victim of lobotomy, a Bill O’Reilly fan or Michelle Bachmann would believe after the second cup of coffee in the morning.

What will the hoax claims be this year?  ABC posted this raw footage of the delivery of the Christmas tree, but that alone will not inoculate us from a Yule-tide hoax.

What atrocious inventions will the Obama-haters send our way this year?  If it’s a claim that there’s no tree, you know better already.  You’ve seen the video.

More:

• ABC, “Christmas decorating with the First Ladies”
• ABC, “White House prepares for the holidays”
• ABC, “A White House Christmas”
• Yeah, Common Sense Conspiracy is all over it
• Snopes.com already collected the 2011 version of the hoax claim that the White House has banned Christmas trees altogether, or will only allow them to be referred to as “holiday trees”
• At the Bathtub:  “Merry Christmas to the ‘right’ people (not you, Mr. President)”
• LA Times story on right-wing efforts to complain about culture at the White House, every Christmas
• “Liberty Counsel” Christmas hoax

Stupid-Boy-Cries- “Wolf” Department: Thieves release more e-mails stolen from climate scientists

In his clear style, Tim Lambert at Deltoid lays out the basic facts:

Some more of the emails stolen from the Climate Research Centre in 2009 have been released. This time they are accompanied by a readme with out-of-context quotes that asserts the purpose of the release is information transparency, but that’s an obvious lie, since they’ve sat on them for two years and released them just before Durban conference. The timing suggests that the people behind the theft and release have a financial interest in preventing mitigation of greenhouse gas emissions. It is most unlikely that there is anything incriminating in these emails — if there was, it would have been released two years ago.

Gavin Schmidt is providing context for the emails, Brendan DeMelle has an extensive roundup and Stephan Lewandowsky writes about the real scandal.

I remind readers that the last round revealed wrong-doing only by accomplices and friends of the thieves, and revealed no wrong-doing on the part of climate scientists.

Especially, the last round revealed no data to show warming is not happening, nor any data to show anything but righteous and noble concern to mitigate or stop the human contribution to the pollution that causes unnatural global warming.  This round of releases will do the same, I predict.

Joe Romm illustrated his post on the issue (which you will want to read) with this cartoon from Drew Sheneman of the Newark Star-Ledger:

Drew Sheneman, Newark Star-Ledger, on politics around findings of global warming; polar bears won't read the stolen e-mails, refuse to be convinced findings of warming comprise a hoax

(Does anyone have the date on that cartoon?  Is it, like this one from Tom Toles, so old it indicates denialists do nothing new under the sun?)

In the two years since the last release of stolen e-mails, a few hundred studies on global warming have been published confirming the fact that warming occurs, and confirming the links to human activity as a cause of unnatural warming.  Even Anthony Watts’s work was published, but when analyzed, it also showed global warming and not miscalculations of data or misreadings of data  (Watts denies the results from his data).

So, in two years, climate change denialists have been unable to find any significant chunk of data to support any of their claims, while the planet continues to warm at an increasingly alarming rate. 

How many times do we allow the miscreant to call “wolf” falsely?  Why would we believe him on any other issue?

More, Resources: 

• Here’s one site where you can read and search the stolen e-mails; in classic denialist fog-the-issue fashion, the site is named “FOIA,” though it has absolutely nothing to do with a legitimate use of any Freedom of Information Act.  FOIA is not stealing stuff.
• New York Times story on the event