lies

I got a letter from a Minnesota-based teacher who is getting inundated by students asking questions about Paris. Many of those questions are dogwhistles (the students do not realize that) indicating that they've been getting their information from Trump supporters, or so I can confidently guess. (The school is in an area where many voted for Trump.) Here's my response. Short version: he lied about everything. Most people in Minnesota who have asthma have it because of coal plant generated pollution. Shutting down the coal plants is a primary step in reducing climate change. So, even…
It is generally felt that Trump's claims of voter fraud, especially, apparently, by illegal aliens -- Or some kind of alien, not sure -- could be a prelude, or excuse for some kind of widespread voter suppression campaign. In any event, these repeated claims were once thought of as an odd and embarassing bit of yammering by the President elect, but now they have become a keystone of the White House's current activism, foregrounded by the hapless Sean Spicer, who appears to not believe the claims himself. From NBC: The White House doubled down on President Donald Trump's widely debunked…
I've been thinking about Trump's attempt to blackmail the voters. He intimates that he might not accept the election results unless he wins. The word goes around that his followers will go to the streets and carry out acts of violence if Trump does not win. It is a bully tactic by a bully's bully. But I have been having thought about this, about how it is actually likely to go down. I mentioned this already. Some of his supporters will go and take over a wildlife reserve somewhere, for a few weeks. A few others will carry out acts of violence here and there, but by count, not much. Mostly…
I suppose I could have made him a tosser, but I decided the the traditional rhyming slang was better. Fred Pearce seems to have made a bit of a career out of being rubbish recently, but has now stooped to just making things up (or, just possibly, that good old journo standby, being so clueless as to what you're talking about that your paraphrases are so inaccurate as to descend into lies). Anyway, Pearce's current lies [Update: as DC notes, the Newt updated its page on 2011/02/07, but without apology. Whether that means Pearce accepts his error or has been bludgeoned by the Editors, we don'…
Or so says KLIMARETTER.INFO. Here is the google auto-trans from the German: Provocative it is, but apparently it is not enough: the issue of the conservative magazine, Focus on the benefits of global warming is only a little German kiosks have been sold to the. The booklet, entitled "Great atmosphere!" is , according to the Hamburger Abendblatt 84 000 times over the counter moved only - that is the worst result in the entire year 2010. Just in time for the world climate summit in Cancun, Mexico made the Focus a frontispiece with, the polar bear with sunglasses showing a. For this, the…
[Originally posted 27/7; updated a few times and now again (see end) so re-publishing with current date to push it to the top] It looks like it is finally time to announce Judith Curry's departure for the dark side, prompted by her comments at RC. I still think she has good intentions, at heart, but has been "captured by the septic narrative" or somesuch. In some respects this intervention is fairly typical of her previous stuff - which is to say, she mouths off without having done her homework, then tries to back off. But the direction she mouths off in is very revealing. So, where to start…
Help! Help! I'm being repressed. Somehow, that is the image I have gotten in the three weeks since the very last shred of Andrew Wakefield's facade of scientific respectability tumbled. As you may recall, at the end of January, the British General Medical Council found Andrew Wakefield, the man whose trial lawyer-funded, breathtakingly incompetent, and quite possibly fraudulent study in 1998 launched the most recent iteration of the anti-vaccine movement, not to mention a thousand (actually, many more) autism quacks, guilty of gross research misconduct, characterizing him as "irresponsible…
"Just when I thought I was out... they pull me back in." At least, that's what Michael Corleone said in The Godfather, Part 3, and even though I'm not a mafia don, I can sort of relate to where he's coming from, if you know what I mean. It seems that whenever I try to get away from blogging about the nigh infinite level of stupidity and pseudoscience that emanates from the disease promotion movement (i.e., the antivaccine movement), it seems as though they somehow find a way to pull me back in. Of course, I'd rather like to think of myself as the reluctant gunslinger pulled out of retirement…