Falling out of the clown car, down the stairs and into the electric eel pond

Shamelessly stolen from Brian at Eli's (this is about plagiarism, after all) is the Ed Wegman, Yasmin Said, Milt Johns Sue John Mashey For $2 Million as reported by JM.

Brian's

My one semi-serious comment is that this is the quality of the opposition. We ought to be kicking their butt.

is worth a ponder. Arguably, we are "kicking their butt" - any sane government dialogue on the issue acknowledges the reality of GW. All that's missing is a sane response, viz carbon taxes.

Refs

* Makes retraction watch

More like this

[May 26th: Pulled to the top to update with the Nature editorial which, as well as noting the paper being pulled, also notes the mysteriously dilatory George Mason University investigation. June 3rd: And pulled again, since Science have a piece on the actual retraction, and again note the GMU lack…
InsideClimateNews (who I've been unimpressed with before) via Brian at Eli's tell us that Exxon may claim to favour a carbon tax, but aren't exactly enthusiastic about it. Because someone else was saying it, my natural initial reaction was to disagree; but having poked their sources a bit, it looks…
Retraction Watch have an article up about the Wegman plagiarism stuff (also covered by Eli). GMU aren't making the full report public, though, doubtless to protect the guilty (which I think largely means the shoddiness of the report). There is an oddity in what they have released: As sanction,…
Lifted from comments. John Mashey writes: The saga continues... inspired by Deep Climate, I've been examining the Wegman Report in detail. Plodding patience pays off... but the latest is an example of breathtakingly-bizarre incompetence. Many WR references were sourced through Barton staffer Peter…

William,

Do you have any opinion whatsoever with respect to Rand Paul.

He is in your above graphic on the RHS.

As for kicking butt, our only hope is in 2016, as we are stuck with two chambers chuck full of Deniers for the next two years.

I am really hoping that the R's nominate RP. I'm actually quite giddy just thinking about it. Then the D's could dig up Richard Nixon and nominate his corpse, as Nixon would now be considered to the left of all the D's (Bernie Sanders is an I, he was the mayor of my hometown, Burlington, VT, he ran at that time under the Socialist Party, 2 (or 3) terms).

The corpse would probably beat his living 1972 electoral results (KY still has fewer EC votes than MA had when Teddy ran for POTUS).

Signed,
Sicko

By Everett F Sargent (not verified) on 21 May 2015 #permalink

Arguably, we are “kicking their butt”

That may be true in other parts of the world, but given who is running things on Capitol Hill these days, that isn't true of the US. The one part of the world that has seen persistent negative temperature anomalies the past two winters happens to include both Washington and New York, which is what led to Inhofe's snowball stunt a few months ago.

@1: I don't expect Rand Paul to win the Republican nomination for President. For one, the money people in the Republican party seem to be backing other candidates (though they have not yet agreed on a candidate). For another, Paul's senate seat is up for election next year, and while some states allow a candidate to appear on both the President/VP line and the Senate line, Kentucky is not among those states. So Paul will have to decide between persisting in his Presidential run or defending his seat--and the Democrats have a plausible potential candidate for that seat in Gov. Beshear, who is term-limited in his current office. I expect Paul to drop the Presidential run no later than the week of the New Hampshire primary. Jeb Bush and Scott Walker are the ones who so far have attracted interest from the money people, and if that remains true, one of those two will win the nomination. Bush should be easy to beat in the general election, for obvious reasons, but underestimate Scott Walker at your peril.

By Eric Lund (not verified) on 21 May 2015 #permalink

What is the root of most land ownership?

I should give an answer, but should be obvious to anyone that thinks. Not all Libertarians, however. So here are some clues. Who owns your house, and why? Does it trace back to William the Conqueror? How did William the Conqueror get title? An arrow in the eye of Harold Godwinson is one account.

By Phil Hays (not verified) on 21 May 2015 #permalink

Cripes Phil, does Eli have to say it?

By Eli Rabett (not verified) on 21 May 2015 #permalink

William,

Well in other news (meaning off topic), the ATTP RPSr thread has gone into some sort of partial Limbo.

That is all.

(please delete this post too, as you see fit).

By Everett F Sargent (not verified) on 21 May 2015 #permalink

Actually, on 2nd thought, it's nighttime across the pond, posts are probably now turned off (given its relative contentiousness).

By Everett F Sargent (not verified) on 21 May 2015 #permalink

This latest salient from Team Cuccinelli lacks the gravitas of Mary Baker Eddy's witchcraft & telepathy lawsuit against Daniel Spofford, of Salem, Massachusetts, for practicing mesmerism, on Christian Scientist, Lucretia Brown, who in 1878 said that he had bewitched her.

As this was before the discovery of tin foil hats, Eddy organized a 24-hour watch on spofford, instructing 12 students to think about him for two hours each to block malicious mesmerism. Though she arrived at the court with 20 supporters, Judge Horace Gray dismissed the case.

The attempt to have Spofford tried did not end of the dispute. In October 1878 Eddy's husband and another student were charged with conspiring to murder Spofford. A barman said they had offered him $500 to do it; but the charges were dropped when a witness retracted his statement. Eddy attributed the allegation to a plot by former students to undermine sales of the second edition of Science and Health, just published.

Clearly a case in which the Wiki has outdone the Brittanica.

By Mnestheus (not verified) on 22 May 2015 #permalink

"Declaring a King is drastic; that implies ownership, which that FAQ either doesn’t realise, or deliberately evades -W"

Ownership's root is the use of force or the threat of use of force. Declaring a King requires only a successful use of force or the successful threat of force. Ownership follows. See William the Conqueror, etc. Etc.

It's too bad, in some ways, that there isn't a large low altitude tropical country, nuke armed to the teeth, paranoid, slightly crazy in a few other ways and realizing that their future as a nation completely depended on preventing large amounts of climate change.

Is that what Eli was suggesting I say?

By Phil Hays (not verified) on 22 May 2015 #permalink

Actually, in thus case, I despite all the GMU / Cuccinelli connections, i'd guess this was yet another dubious Wegman/Said moneymaking idea, likely one that GMU/Kochs had nothing to do with. As a result, some useful documents public that weren't.

They would have been wise to have watched Monty Python Holy Grail scene *before* attacking the rabbit (not Eli, although he has teeth too).

By John Mashey (not verified) on 22 May 2015 #permalink

Well, to be honest Eli was more into property is theft which has a nice effect on libertarians, and of course, as Harold would point out good title cannot be found.. Yet Phil has an excellent point.

{property is theft is a pretty slogan but once people own houses and money they tend to give up such conceits -W]

By Eli Rabett (not verified) on 23 May 2015 #permalink

Phil, would you settle for Pakistan when the wet bulb temperature goes above 37 C in the Indus Valley?

By Eli Rabett (not verified) on 23 May 2015 #permalink

King Harold got the point. As well as the shaft. But lost the title.

Pakistan? Who knows what the future holds?

By Phil Hays (not verified) on 23 May 2015 #permalink

John Quiggen's second lesson at Crooked Timber the one the Weasel has not learned

"To understand the central issues in economic policy debates, we need not one lesson, but two. The first lesson, implicit in Hazlitt’s One Lesson is:

Lesson 1: Market prices reflect and determine opportunity costs faced by consumers and producers.

The second lesson is the product of more than two centuries of study of the way markets work, and the reasons that they often fail to work as they should:

Lesson 2: Market prices don’t reflect all the opportunity costs we face as a society."

[Eli, please try to keep up. The prior post was all about externality costs. What you're presenting as a shiny new idea that others are unaware of is in fact the bleedin' obvious -W]

By Eli Rabett (not verified) on 23 May 2015 #permalink

(Off topic) Arctic sea ice is starting to look interesting. Record low extent for the date, with warm temperatures forecast for the next week over much of the Arctic Ocean. Not much noise from the Nevenish crowd, at least yet. Will be interesting to watch.

Coordination problem seems to be ignored, as is typical for Libertarian types. Consider Russia vs Pakistan, for example. The possible gains from 2C of climate change seem to me to be substantial to Russia, and the possible loss from climate change seems to be to be substantial for Pakistan. I can see why Pakistan might agree to impose an internal carbon tax, even if all other countries didn't. Russia, on the other hand...

By Phil Hays (not verified) on 24 May 2015 #permalink

After a pretty miserable May I reckon Yorkshire stands to gain a lot from 2C of climate change!

[You're one of the few people who had free choice of where to live, so don't complain -W]

By James Annan (not verified) on 25 May 2015 #permalink