Find out how Cooch took $55,000 from the disgraced "U.S. Navy Veterans Association," in apparent exchange for his promise to get the Virginia Office of Consumer Affairs (which had "notified Thompson's group that it no longer qualified for an exemption from state registration requirements") off the group's back. Can we say "pay-to-play?" Find out more.
Cuccinelli's crusade to criminalize climate science clipped by cops confronting the correct crooks!
Yes, a mere two years after thieves with obvious ulterior motives hacked hundreds of thousands of emails from the University of East Anglia, police in the UK and US are now investigating the crime.
It's about freaking time. The climate scientists allegedly implicated by these emails have been cleared by no less than 9 investigations finding no wrongdoing whatsoever on their part. Of course, it is possible that the investigators, ranging from the UK House of Commons to the US Department of Commerce Inspector General to Penn State U. to East Anglia to the National Science Foundation, are all part of the vast conspiracy. But...I kinda doubt it.
It makes a lot more sense to investigate the hackers in this case, who had the capability and resources to break into the University's system, target and steal emails from specific climate scientists, cull through the full 200,000+ of them to find the ones that could be the most easily twisted and misrepresented to fulfill the agenda of the Fossil Fuel Lobby, and then skillfully release them in two batches, both before major international climate summits, in an obvious attempt to influence global climate policy. And gosh, don't you wonder where they might have gotten those resources? (Hmmm...)
I have a fantasy that the Democrats will solidify their claim on the suburban vote by making it clear that we believe in science and the Republicans don't.
This thought comes to mind again because of Rick Santorum's latest comments, as reported in the Des Moines Register:
Discussing controversial classroom subjects such as evolution and global warming, Santorum said he has suggested that "science should get out of politics" and he is opposed to teaching that provides a "politically correct perspective."
We as Democrats -- in 2012, 2013, and beyond -- need to wrap this idiocy around the necks of every Republican until the Republicans repudiate it and join the 21st Century.
In July, 2004, John Kerry asked this question -- "Wouldn't it be great to have a President who believes in science?" The answer that the country gave was, "Nah." John Kerry might not have been the right messenger, but the question was the right question.
Presidential candidate Jon Huntsman might be best known for tweeting his support for the science of evolution and climate change. But at a blogger event today at the polluter-funded Heritage Foundation, TPM reports Huntsman was flip-flopping his way back to the GOP presidential pack's consensus science denial:
Jon Huntsman attended a packed blogger sit down at the Heritage Foundation in Washington, D.C. on Tuesday. TPM's Evan McMorris-Santoro attended, pressing the GOP presidential candidate about his position on climate change.
In August, Huntsman acknowledged the broad body of science pointing to climate change. Seated at an elite conservative think tank, however, Huntsman played a different tune, saying climate scientists "owe us more" information before we can decide if climate change is real.
"I think there's probably more debate to be played out within the scientific community," he said.
Obviously, it can't be considered a good thing when the leaders of a major political party are required to reject mainstream science. But then again, it wasn't exactly helping the scientific cause to have Huntsman be the only GOP candidate in the field to fully accept climate science ... while polling at 1%. And it was crazy to see reporters overlooking Huntsman's extremist plan to raise taxes on seniors, veterans & the poor to fund huge tax cuts for the 1%, calling him "moderate" solely based on his support for science.
What IS heartening is that the Republican field's climate science denial may actually be turning some voters into climate science believers. A Reuters/Ipsos poll showed the public's awareness of climate threats up in recent months. Meanwhile, majorities of Republican voters continue to say the world's temperature is going up, and that it's partly or mostly due to human activities. And a new Pew poll shows the GOP primary race hurting the party among independents, with 29% taking a dimmer view of the party, compared to just 10% with a more favorable view (the unmoved 61% is probably a testament to just how few voters are paying attention yet).
So do I wish Huntsman had stuck to climate reality? Sure. But his abandonment of the truth says a lot more about his own desperation to get in lockstep with an out-of-touch GOP field than it does about climate science.
I just saw the posting from [Diaspora co-founders Daniel Grippi, Ilya Zhitomirskiy, and Max Maxwell Salzberg] with their explanation of why I left. I hadn't planned to post anything more about it than what I had already said. But I was pretty upset when I read their account, a little bit because what they wrote is a blatant lie, but mostly because their description makes me sound like some power-grabbing impulsive whack job, and I may be many things but I'm not greedy, I'm not power hungry, and I really don't think I'm an impulsive whack job.
The truth of the matter is that I have worked for Diaspora* for the past year-and-a-half without every receiving a single dollar in compensation. I wasn't doing it for the money -- I was doing it solely because I believe in the idea, and it was fun for me for a very long time. And then, it wasn't fun any more. I learned relatively recently that the business was not being managed the way I thought it should have been. So I wrote to the board and said that either they needed to find new leadership -- me or somebody else -- or I wouldn't be able to continue to be involved. So they offered me the position of President and CEO (still unpaid, of course, since we don't have a lot of extra money), and I accepted. And I did write some messages referring to myself as President and CEO because I had been told I was. And then I found out that, although the offer had been made, no legal changes had occurred to that effect. When I insisted that they change my legal status, the board told me they were reconsidering the offer and wanted to negotiate some more. So at that point, I put my foot down and said things either had to change immediately, or I was going to resign as President and CEO and leave Diaspora entirely. As you all know, they decided to let me go. And so I went.
This is the last message I will send on this topic, no matter what other ridiculous statements about me may be released, including that I'm secretly part of the Stanford Puerto Rican mafia, that I have a hideout in my basement where Mark Zuckerberg and I plan world domination, that I was named after Yosemite National Park, or that I ever contacted Dan, Ilya, Max, and Rafi for any reason other than I thought their idea was a great one, and I thought a little band of 19- and 20-year-olds could use a little business mentoring to make it all happen.
I will also try to remember what it felt like when I was 23-years-old and somebody criticized or ditched me, and my feelings got hurt. I'm sure I probably also reacted in a way that was less than impressive. And I'm sure 10 years from now when they are my age they will look back on their behavior and be a little bit embarrassed or ashamed of it all. But then again, isn't embarrassing yourself the entire point of your early 20s anyway? :)
Ultimately, I'm just happy to be out and to return to my pre-Diaspora life of Stanford and @Liberationtech, and I wish everybody still involved in Diaspora the best.
A paper came out a couple of months ago questioning climate science. It quickly became the great shining hope of the climate science denial crowd. An actual scientific paper! Accepted by an actual scientific editor! And published in an actual scientific journal!
But a review of the paper by Roy Spencer and William Braswell published in Remote Sensing is dashing the hopes of climate deniers on the rocks of reality:
The paper itself? "Fundamentally flawed" and contains "false claims."
The editor? Apologized for accepting the paper and resigned.
The question has become, how many scandals will it take for the media to apply any degree of skepticism to what climate science deniers say? Deniers hype "Climategate" - independent investigation finds no wrongdoing. Deniers attack Michael Mann - independent investigation vindicates Mann. Deniers tout work of Edward Wegman - independent investigation finds Wegman's work riddled with plagiarism & inaccuracies.
Instead, the media breathlessly hypes whatever lies the deniers push, but barely mentions the independent investigations that reveal the truth. And the scientific consensus on climate change remains as inconvenient as ever - Earth is warming, man-made carbon pollution is to blame, and we're running out of time make the transition to clean energy as climate disasters multiply.
Look, WUSA TV-9's Topper Shutt is an excellent meteorologist, but his expertise is in short-term forecasting, not long-term climate modeling. And, just as I don't think Topper would like it if a climate scientist or a clean energy expert/businessperson/etc. casually, and without any proof, dismissed meteorology as a field, something tells me that climate scientists and folks in the clean energy industry don't appreciate him doing exactly that to them. Case in point: yesterday's and today's blog posts by Shutt, both on the issue of climate change and environmental/energy challenges more broadly. In the first column, entitled "World's Biggest Threat," the WUSA-TV chief meteorologist strays outside his swim lane, and in doing so, makes a number of egregrious errors. For instance, there's so much wrong with sentences like the following, it's hard to know where to start. Here are a few examples (in bold) with my comments (in italics).
*"Some would have us believe that 'global warming', or now as it is called 'climate change' is our biggest threat to humanity."
That's just silliness; as NASA explains, "global warming became the dominant popular term in June 1988, when NASA scientist James E. Hansen had testified to Congress about climate, specifically referring to global warming....Hansen's testimony was very widely reported in popular and business media, and after that popular use of the term global warming exploded." The thing is, though, "temperature change itself isn't the most severe effect of changing climate," and for this reason, "'global climate change' is the more scientifically accurate term." That's not so hard to undrestand, now is it Mr. Shutt?
Let's just hope that the scandals enveloping Rupert Murdoch and Company will ultimately bring down Faux "News," aka "Mouthpiece of Big Oil and Big Coal" (not mention "Mouthpiece of the Republican Party"). Just on the climate science issue alone, Rupert Murdoch et al deserve whatever happens to them, as well as our schadenfreude at watching it happen to them.
By the way, why is it that the Faux isn't doing the flip of what they did during "snowmageddon," running wall-to-wall coverage of the ongoing, year-after-year, relentless heat waves (and rapidly melting polar ice caps) we're experiencing on our planet, but this time using it to prove that there IS global warming (which also happens to be the correct answer)? Because, again, Faux "News" isn't "news," it isn't "fair and balanced," it isn't truthful or honest, it's just the Big Lie in the year 2011.
The Washington Post has a story this morning about how Mitt Romney acknowledges the science, at least in general terms, that man-made carbon emissions are driving global warming.
Let's count the "experts" quoted:
GOP workers & activists: 3
Polluter-funded front groups: 2
Rush Limbaugh: 1
Climate scientists: 0
As Media Matters reported this week, when it comes to reporting on climate science, climate scientists are the last people the media seeks out.
An alternative school an hour southwest of Roanoke has been allowing many of its students to go unvaccinated - allowing a rare disease to make a comeback:
A small, private Floyd County school has closed for the week after more than half its students became ill with whooping cough.
At least 30 people associated with Blue Mountain School have been diagnosed with the highly contagious disease, also called pertussis, including 23 of its 45 students, said Shelly Emmett, the alternative school's director.
As Seth Mnookin writes, "when parents choose not to vaccinate, they are not making a 'purely personal' decision - they are making one that has the potential to affect everyone their children come in contact with."
What will happen to society if science not only finds a way to prevent or cure cancer---- but if one consequence of finding that cure is also the ability to extend the human life span, almost forever? We appear to be almost at that point in biological science, as reports of tests here on human cancer treatment based on telomerse (ends of cell reproduction) are coming in. It's not too soon to talk about the implications of extended human life span. We've always intuitively understood the connection among stress, negativity, hostile personalities and a healthy, longer life; and there's been an obvious connection between the out-of-control growth of cancer cells and the normal time limit on reproduction of healthy cells, which cease growing and then age, and die. If we now understand that connection and how to use it, we can stop cancer in its tracks, killing its out-of-control growth---- but also extending normal growth for years beyond our previous time limit, creating immortality (or close enough for government work). What will that do to Social Security? Employment? Society? Science fiction stories have taken a look at these questions, but now we may have to look at them for real. Here's a connection to a Smithsonian video on the what and how of the science, and what it might mean. It's easy, and fun for a lay person to follow, and well worth a few minutes of your time:
As required by the Clean Air Act and the science, EPA has put forward a series of rules to control greenhouse gases in a sensible way, including the endangerment finding, vehicle rule, and tailoring rule. Big polluters, right wing interest groups, and some states, including Virginia and Texas, immediately challenged the rules and called for the D.C. Circuit to take the extreme step of staying -- or blocking -- the rules from going into force before the court could even rule on the merits. The Department of Justice, many states, including California, Massachusetts, and New York, and environmental groups, including the Sierra Club, NRDC, and EDF, opposed that stay.
"Cuccinelli continues to waste Virginia tax payers' dollars on frivolous litigation," said Glen Besa, Director of the Sierra Club Virginia Chapter. "Climate change as real, it is here now and we need to act."
Today, the court agreed that the polluters had not met the "stringent standards" required for a stay and denied their motions. This means that the greenhouse gas controls will go forward, starting this January. We expect that it will shortly become very clear that, contrary to industry scare tactics, EPA's rules protect the public and the economy by requiring careful measures to control global warming pollution from the biggest smokestack industries and by working with the automakers to increase fuel efficiency and cut vehicle emissions.
"The litigation is not over but this is an important victory," said Besa.
In sum, Cooch loses, the rest of the human race wins!
A judge has set aside Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli's subpoena of climate science documents from the University of Virginia:
Judge Paul M. Peatross Jr. ruled (PDF) that Cuccinelli can investigate whether fraud has occured in university grants, as the attorney general had contended, but ruled that Cuccinelli's subpoena failed to state a "reason to believe" that Mann had committed fraud.
The ruling is a major blow for Cuccinelli, a global warming skeptic who had maintained he was investigating whether Mann committed fraud in seeking government money for research that showed the earth has experienced a rapid, recent warming. Mann, now at Penn State University, worked at U-Va. until 2005.
According to Peatross, the Virginia Fraud Against Taxpayers Act, under which the civil investigative demand was issued, requires that the attorney general include an "objective basis" to believe fraud has been committed. Peatross indicates that the attorney general must state the reason so that it can be reviewed by a court, which Cuccinelli's failed to do.
Under the McDonnell-Bolling-Cuccinelli administration, Virginia has threatened to become a new national leader in the war on science. Judge Peatross' ruling is a major step towards steering Virginia back to the path of facts & reason ahead of corporatist ideology.
UPDATE by Lowell: "Senator McEachin Commends Ruling on Cuccinelli Demands on University of Virginia Professor" after the "flip."
UPDATE #2 by Lowell: Sen. Mark Herring's reaction after the "flip."
UPDATE #3 by Lowell: Chap Petersen promises legislation next year to rein in Cuccinelli's power. Excellent, but while you're at it, how about impeachment on the grounds that Cooch is dangerous and insane?
Eighty years ago, Josef Stalin found a scientist he liked. This was bad news for the scientists who were not so popular with the Soviet leadership.
Trofim Lysenko, with Stalin's approval, directed the Soviet Institute of Genetics. He promoted the theory that characteristics acquired during an organism's lifetime can be passed on genetically to future generations.
This fit well with the communist objective of creating a "New Man". It did not fit quite so well with the truth.
Lysenko's theories would have been laughed out of the lab had he not found a sponsor willing and able to apply the full coercive power of government to reward those who supported Lysenko and punish those who disagreed. Thousands of scientists suffered under Lysenko, losing their jobs and often being imprisoned.
It takes enormous courage to "speak truth to power" when you have a tyrannically-minded leader using power to threaten the truth. Which brings me to Ken Cuccinelli.
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Cuccinelli's crusade to criminalize climate science clipped by cops confronting the correct crooks!
I have a fantasy that the Democrats will solidify their claim on the suburban vote by making it clear that we believe in science and the Republicans don't.
I just saw the posting from [Diaspora co-founders Daniel Grippi, Ilya Zhitomirskiy, and Max Maxwell Salzberg] with their explanation of why I left. I hadn't planned to post anything more about it than what I had already said. But I was pretty upset when I read their account, a little bit because what they wrote is a blatant lie, but mostly because their description makes me sound like some power-grabbing impulsive whack job, and I may be many things but I'm not greedy, I'm not power hungry, and I really don't think I'm an impulsive whack job.
Look, WUSA TV-9's Topper Shutt is an excellent meteorologist, but his expertise is in short-term forecasting, not long-term climate modeling. And, just as I don't think Topper would like it if a climate scientist or a clean energy expert/businessperson/etc. casually, and without any proof, dismissed meteorology as a field, something tells me that climate scientists and folks in the clean energy industry don't appreciate him doing exactly that to them. Case in point: 
Good news from the 
