New York Times

The New York Times publishes fake news false hope in the form of a credulous account of dubious alternative medicine testimonials

oracknows — Wed, 03 May 2017 08:55:20 +0000

The New York Times publishes fake news false hope in the form of a credulous account of dubious alternative medicine testimonials

[Editor's note: Sorry this is a few hours late. I forgot to change the status from DRAFT to SCHEDULE in WordPress last night. D'oh!]

The single most persuasive strategies by which quacks sell their wares and believers in quackery persuade others to try the quackery they believe in is the personal anecdote. Indeed, I established very early on in the history of this blog a type of post that has become a staple that shows up several times a year. In these posts, I deconstruct "alternative cancer cure" testimonials, showing how the story as related doesn't provide convincing evidence that the quackery being touted is actually responsible for how well the person who used it is doing and how the patient's good fortune is usually due to previous conventional treatment and/or being a biological outlier. (There's a reason why I frequently cite a 50-year-old paper showing that about 18% and 4% of women with completely untreated breast cancer are still alive at 5 and 10 years, respectively.) Don't believe me? Click this link. It goes to one of the first posts I ever wrote, which has served as a template for similar posts for over 12 years.

Cancer quacks like Stanislaw Burzynski rely on these stories, so much so that there is an entire website devoted to showing how the vast majority of these patients were exploited and died anyway. The basic narrative is this. A person develops an incurable cancer. (In the case of Burzynski, it's usually an incurable brain tumor.) That person (usually) pursues conventional therapy to the point where it can no longer offer anything other than palliation. It's then at that point that the patient, now considered to be "terminal," finds Burzynski (or another cancer quack) and decides to "take a chance." If the patient does well (at least for a while), he or she becomes a believer and then proselytizes for the Holy Church of Burzynski, who then garners more ~~followers~~ victims. Of course, patients who don't do so well usually die quickly and are never heard from. Moreover, most (close to all, actually) of the "success stories" of these quacks also eventually die, but when they do it's swept under the rug, often with their stories disappearing from the pro-Burzynski websites. It's not just cancer quacks, either. Quacks of all stripes rely on these stories, which are particularly effective in the case of serious diseases whose courses naturally wax and wane and whose temporary improvements can be attributed to whatever alternative medicine was tried at the time.

These stories are very compelling, because we human beings are story telling apes with pattern-seeking brains. It matters not whether the pattern reflects true causality; our brains impose causality on stories. That's how the idea that vaccines cause autism developed; enough children are vaccinated in relatively close proximity to their parents noticing the first symptoms of autism that by random chance alone there are lots of kids whose first symptoms appear to coincide with vaccines that parents confuse correlation with causation. It's also true of a lot of narratives about quackery. It's therefore not surprising that these sorts of stories are appealing to publications that normally should know better. For instance, STAT News painted a young man's quest to undergo treatment by Stanislaw's Burzynski's antineoplastons as a battle against an uncaring FDA, even though the FDA was actually trying to protect patients (and, sadly, failing) against Burzynski's cancer quackery. Earlier this week, the New York Times did the same thing, glorifying anecdotes of patients who used alternative medicine and appear to have gotten better as though they demonstrated efficacy, in an article by Jane Brody entitled Hitting a Medical Wall, and Turning to Unproven Treatments. It's based on a book, The Other Side of Impossible: Ordinary People Who Faced Daunting Medical Challenges and Refused to Give Up, by Susannah Meadows. You can tell the framing of the tale from the title of the book, but in case you can't, here's a description:

You’re faced with a difficult health condition. You have exhausted medicine’s answers. What do you do? Susannah Meadows tells the real-life stories of seven families who persisted when traditional medicine alone wasn’t enough.

Their adventures take us to the outer frontiers of medical science and cutting-edge complementary therapies, as Meadows explores research into the mind’s potential to heal the body, the possible role food may play in reversing disease, the power of agency, perseverance, and hope—and more.

And:

Meadows chronicles her own story, and takes you into the lives of other remarkable people, exploring their heartbreaks and triumphs. One boy who has severe food allergies undergoes an unconventional therapy and is soon eating everything. An organic farmer in Washington State tries to solve the puzzle of her daughter’s epileptic seizures. A physician with MS creates her own combination of treatments and goes from a wheelchair to riding a bike again. A child diagnosed with ADHD refuses to take medication and instead improves his life, and the life of his family, after changing his diet. Other families take on rheumatoid arthritis and autistic behaviors.

So you know right away that Meadows approaches her topic as a true believer, having used "a combination of traditional and complementary medicine they beat the disease [juvenile idiopathic arthritis], and the odds." There is not an ounce of skepticism detected, and unfortunately Brody shows minimal skepticism as well:

In her new book, “The Other Side of Impossible,” Susannah Meadows, a Brooklyn-based former senior writer for Newsweek, has compiled compelling stories about people who faced and ultimately surmounted daunting medical challenges. The book focuses on several families, including her own, who felt they had no choice but to wade into the world of unproven therapies.

The families’ ventures into a realm that some would call quackery were typically inspired by love, desperation and hope, and were fueled by irrepressible grit and determination to find solutions to debilitating health problems that defied the best that conventional medicine could offer.

"Into a realm that some would call quackery"? Um, no. Much of it is quackery, with little or now biological plausibility and, even more importantly, no good clinical trial evidence that it works. So Meadows explores several cases, and, not surprisingly, she found "at least three important influences on well-being that have yet to receive their just due in understanding what might cause or aggravate certain intractable medical disorders." If you've been reading this blog (or, of course, my not-so-super-secret other blog or other medical skeptic blogs), I bet you can figure out what at least one or two of these influences are. I'll give a hint: Think "autism biomed." Here's another hint: I'll mention that, surprisingly, "heavy metal toxicity" (a favorite among the "autism biomed" crowd of quacks) was not one of them; at least it wasn't mentioned in Brody's article. So that leaves a couple of other common bits of quackery common in "autism biomed." Can you guess?

OK, I'll tell you:

One is a characteristic called “leaky gut,” essentially tiny holes in the intestinal walls that allow proteins to reach the bloodstream where they can trigger a vicious immune attack on healthy tissues.

Another is an imbalance of microbes in the gut and how communication between the brain and the gut can adversely affect behavior and emotional stability. A third is the still underappreciated interaction of mind and body, especially the effect that anxiety and fear can have on the body’s response to otherwise harmless substances.

Now, "leaky gut" might be something resembling real syndrome, but the quack version of leaky gut is quite unlike what doctors understand. Think of it as being like celiac disease—only more so. Celiac disease, unlike leaky gut, is a characterized disease. There's no doubt, either, that it's very debilitating to about 1% of the population and can be ameliorated by avoiding gluten in the diet. However, in the hands of popular culture and quacks, "gluten sensitivity" has become the cause of all manner of symptoms, vague or not-so-vague, and is at the root of all diseases, even though "gluten sensitivity" really doesn't exist outside of celiac disease. Like "gluten sensitivity," leaky gut has become a catch-all diagnosis that naturopaths and other quacks love to make to explain all manner of symptoms and justify all manner of quackery. Leaky gut is a particularly popular diagnosis these days among autism quacks. Indeed, you can go all the way back to Andrew Wakefield himself and his "autistic enterocolitis" to find an early version of leaky gut being invoked as a "cause" of autism. In any case, it's worth invoking the Canadian Society of Gastrointestinal Research when it says:

The Myth: According to the proponents of leaky gut syndrome, bacteria and toxins enter the bloodstream through these defective tight junctions and wreak havoc throughout the body, causing bloating, gas, cramps, inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), as well as fatigue, food sensitivities, joint pain, moodiness, irritability, sleeplessness, autism, and skin problems like eczema and psoriasis.

Debunked: This is all speculation, as scientific studies do not validate any of these claims. It is extremely dangerous that a TV doctor personality and some otherwise trusted practitioners are diagnosing and treating this baseless ‘syndrome’.

The same document points out how the treatments proposed for "leaky gut syndrome" range from bogus to dangerous and how the wrong diagnostic tests are frequently used.

Not surprisingly, autism quacks are also fond of invoking the "intestinal microbiome," as it often goes together with "leaky gut" in pseudoscientific circles. Indeed, claiming changes in the intestinal microbiome is now a favorite quack diagnosis and treatments to restore the biome are a favorite among naturopaths. The microbiome is closer to gluten sensitivity in that there is an evolving body of evidence that the microbiome has a significant effect on health and disease. It's not implausible that changes in the microbiome can contribute to disease. However, like epigenetics, the intestinal microbiome is a concept that's been co-opted by quacks of many stripes to explain...well, everything. For yucks, I searched the antivaccine crank quack website Age of Autism for "microbiome" and came up with hundreds of hits. Basically, the microbiome is an important topic for which further research is more than justified, but the vast majority of claims made by those claiming to treat disease by treating the microbiome are without a grounding in evidence, particularly when changes in the microbiome are made for autism, heart disease, autoimmune diseases, diabetes, and pretty much every chronic disease under the sun. None of that stops quacks like Sayer Ji from saying things like, “99% of what it means to be human is microbiome-based."

Basically, the microbiome and "leaky gut" are the new "quantum," in terms of co-optation of the terms by quacks. I wonder if Deepak Chopra has discovered them yet. Oh, crap. He has. He's even said that “we are a few human cells hanging on to a bacterial colony, we are the awakening of bacterial consciousness” and that the microbiome “doesn’t like anything that’s refined, manufactured, processed, GMO’d, because again GMO interferes with its ecology. It is the life of the earth. And when it gets inflamed, it sends out metabolites that cause disruption of the activity, both of the epigenome and of the gene directly.”

So this is what we're dealing with here. We're also dealing with stories like this:

That patient was Dr. Terry Wahls, who overcame a progressive form of multiple sclerosis for which medicine had little to offer.

Once confined to a reclining wheelchair despite trying a range of conventional treatments, Dr. Wahls researched, then adopted, a diet that eliminated grains, dairy and sugar but included 12 cups a day of berries and vegetables supplemented with grass-fed beef, organ meats and oily fish. She combined this with neuromuscular electrical stimulation and exercise.

Within a year, Dr. Wahls had ditched her motorized assists and started riding a bicycle. Eight years later, she shows no signs of her disease. Last summer, the National Multiple Sclerosis Society, which has been tracking research into diet and inflammation, committed more than $1 million to study the effect of her diet on M.S.-related fatigue.

Steve Novella analyzed Dr. Wahls' anecdote three years ago. Let's just say that it's not as convincing as presented here. Novella also points out:

If you could really cure MS with diet alone, it would be easy to demonstrate this in a clinical trial. Drake and Wahls know this, so they have to also endorse (even if just implied) crazy conspiracy theories about Big Pharma, the medical system, and greedy or just pathologically incurious doctors.

Now, let's get back to Meadows and her son Shepherd, who developed idiopathic juvenile arthritis. According to Brody:

She and her husband were told he was unlikely to outgrow it. Facing a choice of doing nothing or treating him with a potent drug that “made him feel bad and did little for his arthritis,” she learned about a child with the same condition who was helped by avoiding gluten and dairy products and taking fish oil, probiotics and a Chinese herb.

“With nothing to lose — if it helped one child, maybe it will help ours,” Ms. Meadows said. “In terms of hope, an example of one is very important.” And as she reported four years ago in an article in The New York Times Magazine, Shepherd got better.

Eventually, with the help of a self-styled healer named Amy Thieringer, who emphasizes the need to calm fear and anxiety when trying to counter food sensitivities, Shepherd was gradually reintroduced to gluten and dairy and “now eats everything without any problems, no more painful, inflamed joints,” his mother said.

"Unlikely to outgrow it"? Notice that it doesn't say how unlikely to outgrow it Shepherd was. It turns out that prolonged remission of juvenile idiopathic arthritis, while uncommon, is not nearly as uncommon as Meadows implies that it is, particularly for certain subtypes. Indeed, the disease can have a highly variable course. Curious, I checked out Thieringer's website. It touts something called the "Allergy Release Technique," which she describes thusly:

Allergy Release Technique™ (A.R.T.™) is an integrative methodology that focuses on building and strengthening the body’s immune system with the goal of eliminating allergic responses. A.R.T.™ is a unique combination of advanced energy medicine and Western technology, working to balance an individual’s energy to allow the immune system to function optimally.

This is pure drivel. If you don't believe me, then look at this further description:

Amy developed a protocol based on functional health using a Galvanic Skin Response Device. She is looking at the body’s systems as a whole, seeing which systems are stressed and figuring out what microorganisms and toxins are creating the stress. Amy has also identified five trigger allergens that habitually create stress in the body and contribute to the heightened immune response. They are mold, dust, chemicals, sugars and additives. When she uses homeopathy to balance the immune system she also makes sure these five allergens do not stress the body.

Along with balancing and strengthening the immune system, A.R.T.™ has varied tools that support the anxiety response in the body: kids tap specific Acupuncture Points to reroute the Autonomic Control System and deactivate old scripting. They use mantras, vision boards and grateful journals to create a new story. They let their “firefighters” (immune response) know that they are strong and ask them to step back so they can safely eat the foods.

Homeopathy? Regular readers know that I refer to homeopathy as "The One Quackery To Rule Them All," and with good reason. Galvanic skin response? It's also quackery. I also note how Thieringer touts how she is featured in Meadows' book, and it's true. From Brody's account, it's clear that Meadows touts at least one other of Thieringer's "success stories." It's also clear that Brody didn't do even minimal checking into what Thieringer actually does in her treatments.

In any case, Thieringer came later. The first person who tried to treat Shepherd through diet was Charlotte Walker, and Shepherd was getting methotrexate at the same time, leading Meadows to admit four years ago:

To be clear: There is no proof that it was Walker’s regimen that drove away Shane’s [Walker's son's] and Shepherd’s arthritis. Shane’s case makes a stronger argument, since he didn’t take methotrexate. Still, his arthritis may have gone into spontaneous remission, and a study of one is not much of a study at all.

It's not clear whether Meadows had yet discovered Thieringer then, but a recent interview on Oprah.com (of course!) featured Meadows praising Thieringer to high heaven.

I agree with Steve Novella that it's extremely disappointing how the NYT has pandered to a simplistic narrative that will benefit quacks everywhere. Unfortunately, it's not just the NYT that failed here. Just yesterday, NPR also published a credulous interview with Meadows, where she offers encourages experimentation in a way that an autism biomed mom would approve of heartily:

The biggest thing that I have learned is that when it seems as if there are no options, you can still look for them and maybe find them. That you have a choice to keep going when others say that you can't. I don't think I had that feeling when Shepherd was diagnosed, but I think his unlikely recovery taught me that.

While persistence is a valuable trait that will take you far, there comes a point when persistence is harmful. That point is when persistence blinds you to pseudoscience. Meadows appears to have reached that point, and Brooks bought into the narrative. I wonder if this is the wave of the future at the NYT, given that it just hired a climate science denialist for its opinion page. On the other hand, Jane Brody has been writing for the NYT for quite some time and has even authored The New York Times Guide to Alternative Health and has a history of promoting the pseudoscience that a "positive outlook" will help your chronic health conditions; so maybe the NYT has its biggest problem with medical pseudoscience rather than climate pseudoscience.

oracknows Wed, 05/03/2017 - 04:55

Categories

Brain and Behavior

I cancelled my NYT digital subscription following Bret Stephens first column (he’s actually done a follow up to some carefully selected comments to his debut column, and it’s at least as offensive as the column). I have responded to Brody numerous times, only to get varying versions of a false equivalency defense. She is definitely past her sell-by date.

The reason I cancelled isn’t so much outrage, as that the Times public editor actually wrote that very few who threaten to do this actually do, so I felt it was important to follow through.

Yeah. After I wrote this, I looked up Jane Brody. Holy crap. She's been doing her personal health column at the NYT for over 40 years now. I think it's definitely time for her to consider retiring if this is the sort of nonsense she's writing these days.

Terry Wahls is now selling *menus* for $200 on her website- along with a large number of other products and corporate affiliate links. But yeah, only Big pHARMa is out for $.

I think it’s definitely time for her to consider retiring if this is the sort of nonsense she’s writing these days.

Brody is just one more symptom of the rot at the Grey Lady. As darwinslapdog@1 notes, they recently hired climate pseudoskeptic Bret Stephens. They still publish the op-ed drivel of people like David "Applebee's Salad Bar" Brooks, Ross Douthat (sp?), and Maureen Dowd. They spent the whole Presidential campaign hyping the nothingburger that was Hilary's e-mail server while ignoring the numerous scandals around Donald Trump (with which they should have been quite familiar, as Trump is a New Yorker). And this has been going on for a while: the Times fell pretty hard for the yellowcake nonsense in the aughties. True, they publish Paul Krugman, a/k/a Krgthulhu, but that doesn't come anywhere close to making up for their other issues.

Their official motto is, "All the News That's Fit to Print", but I think a more accurate motto for the New York Times would be, "All the News That Fits, We Print."

Here is (yet another) excellent XKCD explaining why any discussion of highly improbable outcomes needs to start with a discussion of survivorship bias:
https://xkcd.com/1827/

Though I can see value to making disagreements with opinions and fake news with with small actions such as cancelling subscriptions. However there is something called letters to the editor. Well written rebuttals do get published , though one has to admit these are not alwasy effective. You all may remember when NYT published What We Are Afraid to Say About Ebola and its rebuttal, What We Are Not Afrad to Say About Ebola.. In my opinion fear won out because fear mongering were able to drown out the few reasonable voices.

keep sucking big pharmas dick it's served you well in making millions over your lifetime. You must be like one of the greatest scientists in the world, seeing everyone get chemo and 90%+ of the people die, ohh and not my words but that of the Australian governments long term study on chemo, the only scum here is you.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/15630849/

But you must feel like shit that people are waking up to "fake health".

Well, surely one cannot argue with this testimonial:

http://circa.com/scitech/this-woman-used-oxygen-therapy-to-get-rid-of-s…

Dear Quack,

The link you posted says that 60% of cancer sufferers in Australia are still alive after 5 years. Even if this entire study is valid it doesn't say 90+% die. Please learn to read and try to understand. The future wellbeing of your descendants depends on it.

Quack @7: You do realize that 100% of people will die at some point, right? That is a consequence of living.
60% of cancer sufferers being alive after 5 years gives them the opportunity to die of something else.

Try again, and let's be a little more specific and a lot more accurate this time.

@Quack #7
Oh, this study and its multiple interpretations are quite well known in skeptical circles ; it has been adressed by our host and other skeptics over the years.
http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2011/09/16/two-percent-gambit-chemoth…
https://anaximperator.wordpress.com/2009/09/02/only-3-percent-survive-c…

Once confined to a reclining wheelchair despite trying a range of conventional treatments, Dr. Wahls researched, then adopted, a diet that eliminated grains, dairy and sugar but included 12 cups a day of berries and vegetables supplemented with grass-fed beef, organ meats and oily fish. She combined this with neuromuscular electrical stimulation and exercise.

The Wahls diet popped up a few years ago in ME/CFS bulletin boards, and then faded back into oblivion. A modified version of Paleo dieting, made more extreme, as is the custom. I didn't realise it was still a thing.

Honestly, New York Times? You are entitled to publish all the opinions, but not to endorse your own facts!

gregladen — Mon, 01 May 2017 08:28:53 +0000

Honestly, New York Times? You are entitled to publish all the opinions, but not to endorse your own facts!

Honestly, it is hard to have an honest conversation about science with science obstructors or deniers. That is how you know you are conversing with a denier. You try to have the conversation, and it gets derailed by cherry picking, misdirection, faux misunderstanding, or lies.

I don't care how far a person is from understanding a scientific concept or finding. I don't care how complex and nuanced such a finding is. As long as the science is in an area that I comfortable with as a scientist, educator, and science communicator, I'll take up the challenge of transforming scientific mumbo jumbo into normal descriptive language or an appropriate story, so the person gets from not having a clue to getting the basic idea. That's for regular people having an honest conversation, which generally includes students.

But that is often not how it goes.

A common theme in the non-honest conversation is false balance. The fact that there is an opposing view, regardless of its merits or lack of merit, is sufficient to insist that that view be on the table and given a fair hearing. Someone recently said that global warming is not real because CO2 molecules are the same temperature as the other molecules in the atmosphere, an utterly irrelevant thing meant to confuse and misdirect. That statement is not a required part of an honest conversation, it is utterly non-honest, and should be ignored as nefarious yammering. But, we often see media giving equal weight to such yammering, ignoring the motives behind it.

You already know that the New York Times has hired an OpEd columnist who has a history of denial of science, including climate science. He also has a history of analyses of social or political things that has offended a lot of people.

When pressed to reconsider, by the scientific community widespread, the New York Times responded that lots of people agree with this columnist about climate change, therefore his hire is legit. Here, the New York Times is guilty of false balance, of giving credence to senseless yammering as though it was the same as real science.

I personally don't like the idea of having a lot of far right wing (or even medium right wing) columnists in a publication that I pay for, so I don't subscribe to such publications. But, major national media outlets are going to have a range of columnists and commenters, and there is nothing inherently wrong with that. That is why I am happy to subscribe to the Washington Post even though there are a few right wing columnists there.

But here's the thing. A columnist with a hard right viewpoint is one thing. An Editorial Staff that allows columnists, of any political stripe, to abuse reality and misstate facts about science in order to make a political point is incompetent.

Readers should expect editors to strictly enforce the concept that columnists are very much entitled to their own opinions, but in no way entitled to their own facts. The New York Times is making the mistake of confusing objections to this columnist with an attempt to silence a particular point of view. That is not what it is. Rather, the objections are to the New York Times editorial policy, on the OpEd page, supporting alt-facts.

The facts at risk of denigration and dismissal here are widely accepted and established, usually. In some cases, there are uncertainties that are dishonestly exploited and incorrectly characterized, which is pretty much the same thing as trying to have one's opinions and one's facts at the same time: not valid commentary and bad journalistic practice. This particular columnist has exploited the fact that there is variation in nature to assert that there is variation in scientific opinion. This is a misreading of both nature and science, coming from someone who knows little about either, and that misreading is being sanctioned by the people who run the New York Times.

I don't care, and I think most don't care, if he New York Times has a right winger like Bret Stephens on the OpEd staff. But if the editors of that section of this news outlet allow this individual or any columnist to misrepresent important aspects of reality, as he very much did in his very first column just out, then that editorial staff is acting unprofessionally and should probably look for a job at one of those entertainment outlets that disguises itself as "news."

I'm pretty sure that at this time the editors at the New York Times do not understand this distinction. Keep your conservative columnist, Grey Lady, that's up to you. Some will like that, some will not. But do know that you can't keep being thought of as the paper of record if you allow frequent and unchecked abuse of facts and reality within that discourse. That is just a bad idea, beneath such a widely respected publication, and I and others expect it to stop soon.

gregladen Mon, 05/01/2017 - 04:28

Tags

Greg, instead of writing a letter asking them to fire the person who wrote something you don't like, why not just write a letter challenging the points made? I imagine the editors of letters would be eager to run that one.

NYT: The Tabloid of Record

So, since we're blurring the lines between good and bad journalism, why stop at the OpEd pages? Why stop at all?

For some helpful inspiration, see how the pros do it by studying actual tabloid headlines from the past:

- Sadaam and Osama Adopt Shaved Ape Baby
- Satan's Skull Found in New Mexico
- Farmer Shoots 23-Pound Grasshopper
- Bigfoot Kept Lumberjack as Love Slave
- Man's Head Explodes in Barber's Chair
- Gordon Ramsay Sex Dwarf Eaten by Badger
- Dick Cheney Is a Robot...

Wait, forget that last one. Anyway, this list should be enough to serve as a template.

that editorial staff is acting unprofessionally and should probably look for a job at one of those entertainment outlets that disguises itself as “news.”

They already work for such an organization. It's called the New York Times.

Bret Stephens is just exercising his right to write in a post truth (PT) style. He is being PT , that's all. In a world where the ability to create simulacrums of reality increasingly exceeds the ability of perceivers to discern real from fake, is it not unreasonable to expect that smirk faced punks will take advantage of the zeitgeist to create and sell snake oil? What we are seeing here is just the the interface between PC and PT. So I suggest that we give Bret Stephens and the Gray Lady some slack. That way, when they use up their slack and hit the end of their rope, the abrupt change in momentum will be all the more dramatic and entertaining to watch!

Also, i think that we have to be aware of the fact that, even though scientists have been increasingly marginalized since the time of Ronnie Raygun, there is still, amongst the non-sense crowd, a lot of wistful Science envy . Lacking knowledge of the rules of the physics game, or knowledge of the depths of their ignorance, they wade into the fray and think that they are scoring victory after victory, when, in fact, they are just immortalizing their stupidity in patented Dunning Krueger fossil cement.

I have subscribed to only two newspapers in my entire life, and they both had stirring slogans on their front page. The one I bought today at Starbucks for $2.50 says, "All the News That's Fit to Print" and the other that I obtained by mail dirt-cheap from Victor Kamkin's said (in a foreign language): "Proletarians of All Countries, Unite Yourselves!" The White House says that my New York Times is a "failing newspaper," but I buy it every day anyway, because I have been addicted to it since 1989. The other newspaper, Pravda, was extremely boring except in times of world crisis, so I often threw whole stacks of unread Pravdas in the Dumpster at my U.S. Army duty station in Germany. Some sergeant retrieved them from the Dumpster and laid them on the desk of the commanding colonel of the 101st Ordnance Battalion and said that I must be some kind of Commie infiltrator, but the colonel had no objection to my reading Pravda. Today's Mon.1.MAY.2017 New York Times has a column in which Charles M. Blow says, "Trump has the intellectual depth of a coat of paint." Where else can we get such pithy writing in this day and age? http://ai.neocities.org/NYT.html is my new web-page where I intend to answer back to the "failing New York Times". Tomorrow on Tuesday I get to read the weekly Science Times. So maybe the NYT is a terrible, biased newspaper -- remember what they did to Dr. David Baltimore? -- but I still regard it, among all those awful newspapers world-wide, as the best of the lot.

“All the News That’s Fit to Print”

The New York Times does indeed make that claim.

The reality is closer to, "All the News That Fits, We Print".

"Greg, instead of writing a letter asking them to fire the person who wrote something you don’t like,"

Ah, so he doesn't have freedom of his speech, is it? How about you take a sip of shut-up juice instead?

#1: Shouldn't Greg's or anyone's response to what somewhat writes in a newspaper depend on what kind of thing was written. There's a big difference between not liking what someone writes in a newspaper as an opinion and what someone writes as a fact.

Suppose it were a piece on the sports pages and someone claimed that some player did not belong in the Hall of Fame because his lifetime batting average was only so and so and his RBIs totaled only so and so but the writer's numbers were just plain wrong?

Should that writer just be just challenged in a letter citing the right numbers or should he be be challenged as being unworthy of the job he holds? Is there any adequate excuse for getting freely available facts wrong to further your own agenda?

#6 Very good. I wish I'd thought of that.

The NYT has spent a LOT of time in the past chasing the Clintons, DESPERATE to find something illegal that they could hang on them and chasing every stupid rumor that came along.

The NYT was a cheerleader for Dubya in the lead up to the Iraq war.

I don't see how this climate change denialism is any different.

My letter to the New York Times

gregladen — Thu, 27 Apr 2017 12:08:41 +0000

My letter to the New York Times

The New York Times
Elizabeth Spayed, Public Editor

Dear Elizabeth,

I am writing to express my concern for the addition of Bret Stephens to the NYT team as a columnist.

I don't expect a columnist who seemingly writes about everything to be wrong about nothing. But the Gray Lady should, at the very least, expect a columnist to know something about something.

Stephens doesn't simply express opinions that are not popular in certain, many, circles. He attempts to support his opinions with what we now seem to be calling alt-facts.

For example, his opinion about the importance of climate change is that we don't know what climate change will really do, if it will really do anything, or when. He supports this idea by asserting that there is too much uncertainty in the science for us to know.

Elizabeth, you must know that science is nothing if it is not the study of variation in nature and its causes and properties. While the public face of many scientific findings is often the trend line showing the relationship between two variables, much of the science itself is about the uncertainty around that trend line; measuring, understanding the limits and extent of, and grappling with uncertainty is what scientists do.

As a scientist (not a climate scientist, though I've published in that area) and a science communicator, I can tell you that when Mr. Stephens makes the claim that there is too much uncertainty about anthropogenic climate change to say much about it, he is simply wrong. He does not know the science, he has made up this thing that looks like a fact, and he has used it to buttress absurd arguments, and you, the New York Times, is now set to be a vehicle for passing this misinformation on to the general public.

Many of my friends and colleagues have unsubscribed to the New York Times over this. I have not. Rather, I was just about to subscribe, as part of my overall effort to support good journalism in the Trump Era. In the past few weeks I've subscribed to my local paper, my regional paper, and one national paper (Washington Post) and I was just about to add the New York Times to that list. But now I can't ethically do so, even though much of your other science coverage is pretty good, and even tough I grew up on the New York Times Science Section (remember that?).

But this probable drop in subscription is nothing to you, because trends in the business side of the NYT operation are much larger and more complex than many, if not most, of the world's climate scientists dropping off your list over the addition of Bret Stephens to your staff. The bigger problem is this: The New York Times editorial staff has lost our respect.

I look forward to your prompt and decisive attention to this manner, and the quick repair of the mistake the NYT has made.

Sincerely,

Greg Laden, PhD.

gregladen Thu, 04/27/2017 - 08:08

Tags

Perhaps if everyone who values science and climate science in particular were to follow suit and drop their subscription or let the Grey Lady know they will not subscribe for this reason, it might make a difference.

Doug #2:

I think that is a great idea. Let everybody cancel their subscription to NYT! A circular firing squad. Kill your friends. After all, writing something your clique disagrees with is a killing offense.

"Kill your friends."

That isn't how you cancel a sub, "dick".

(PS what happened about the "invisible hand" and "vote with your dollar"?)

And the only ones killing those with the opposite opinion are the nuts on the right.

One over there shot but failed to kill a Democrat, one over here shot a Labour MP for being for remaining in the EU.

Here's a catchy phrase to summarize the philosophy of the oh so compassionate, empathetic, civil, gentile assholes like Bret Stephens and RickA when it comes to dealing with the effects of climate change:

“Hopefully we'll be dead.”

Greg, are you trying to imply that this is a more important story than nuclear bombs?

"Mike", are you trying to say you don't care about anything else but nuclear bombs?

Greg, Stephens is a great addition to The New York Times. Your bar you are setting for the Times is not met by The Washington Post who publishes people with identical views regarding climate science as Stephens holds. As a PhD student in political science, there are hundreds of people with better analysis of history, international affairs, and foreign policy than Stephens yet Stephens still is a respectable thinker. He is well read and though I often disagree with him, he is worth reading.

This is sanctimonious shit you are espousing. I study climate change as a national security threat; it seems to be existential. And I still think that Stephens has particularly compelling views.

Patrick: " not met by The Washington Post who publishes people with identical views regarding climate science as Stephens holds." Name the comparable individuals. They may well be there, and if so, I'd want to complain about them. Can't think of them, though, so please enlighten us.

https://thinkprogress.org/bret-stephens-climate-flip-flop-c05c6230e36c

Is the editorial board's having lost your respect the reason you repeatedly address this senior staffer as "Elizabeth" rather than "Ms. Spayed", while being careful to conclude your own name with PhD? That looks a little disrespectful, or mansplainy, to me.

Why did oyu use the name "jane"? Why not your full name? Why did you not capitalise it? Do you think you are unworthy of a Proper Noun Capital?

Plainly you hate women, all women.

Tell me, do you ask that people address you formally at all ties and call you "Mz whatever"? Or do you only do that with people you don't know at all?

"And I still think that Stephens has particularly compelling views."

What and why?

Jane, no, that's just her name being Elizabeth and me happening to have a PhD while simultaneously representing science in my own way. Happy to explain that to you.

Wow, I didn't ask you, but take a look at the newspaper. Wondering if I am interpreting it right, or if Greg intended another message.

You don't have to ask for a question first. It's how questions work, dumbass.

Now, you didn't answer. Are you saying that you only care about nuclear bombs?

If you intended a different message, then you would have been able to say so, but you haven't so far. Are you saying I'm right?

Why did oyu use the name “jane”? Why not your full name? Why did you not capitalise it? Do you think you are unworthy of a Proper Noun Capital?

Plainly you hate women, all women.

Stay classy, Wow.

http://scienceblogs.com/gregladen/2017/04/28/out-of-the-gate-bret-steph…

"Stay classy, Wow."

Willco.

Stay deliberately obscure so as to hide from needing to explain yourself dumdum.

I had to read this howler from Patrick half a dozen times to actually believe that he wrote it: "I study climate change as a national security threat; it seems to be existential".

Patrick, climate change is not an 'existential' threat to our planetary ecological life support systems. It is a very real and serious one. It may very well decimate interactions in communities and ecosystems to such an extent that they will be unable to sustain themselves, precipitating collapse that will reduce the planet's ability to sustain us. There won't be any national security to ponder over in an ecologically ravaged planet.

Why do you write such piffle?

Patrick, you have a point about the standards set for the New York Times versus the standards set for the Washington Post, but I think the comparison falls apart under closer examination.

I assume you are referring to George Will, who is indeed as bad as Bret Stephens on the issue of climate change, if not worse. But Will has been writing for the Post or Newsweek since the 1970's. The outlines of climate change were known to some climate scientists back then, but knowledge of the problem and appreciation of its implications were not widespread at that time. Moreover, it's probably safe to assume that Will was several decades away from writing his first column on the topic when he was first hired.

Stephens, on the other hand, is being hired in April, 2017, a time when climate change is widely understood and the risks are fully appreciated. And Stephens has already shown his willful ignorance on the topic on many occasions in many articles. So the Times is knowingly hiring a climate misinformer at a time when clear, factual information and thoughtful commentary are desperately needed.

I don't mean to be defending Will. In fact I cringe every time he writes or speaks on the topic. But a new hire is different than a 43 year-long tenure.

BBD, regular readers of ScientismBlogs know that there's no point in trying to communicate with Wow unless you fervently agree with his every belief and opinion.

Greg, let me explain to you that addressing mature adult strangers by their first names in formal contexts is considered less than respectful in our society, and that treating people with disrespect does not encourage them to adopt your views, especially if they happen to be women or minorities who have found that people from their own group are less likely to receive the customary honorifics.

BBD, regular readers of ScientismBlogs know that there’s no point in trying to communicate with Wow unless you fervently agree with his every belief and opinion.

Oh, we go back. I know :-)

"ScientismBlogs"

Ah. the tell of the idiot.

"unless you fervently agree with his every belief and opinion."

Nope. But I DO realise that it makes morons sit easier in their high chair eating their eggy soldiers to believe so.

"Greg, let me explain to you that addressing mature adult strangers by their first names in formal contexts is considered less than respectful in our society"

Where? Some bumfuck nowhere? It's considered IMpolite in western society to use second names unless you're in a formal occasion with someone you know.

YOU want to use your first name. Therefore you want us to disrespect you. But there you go whining and whinging when I do just that.

"and that treating people with disrespect does not encourage them to adopt your views"

Yet the same people have no fucking problem with not bothering to do that themselves. And the evidence is that they're not adopting our views because they DO NOT WANT to, so it's rather pointless to whine and whinge and bitch and moan about tone.

Again, I'll point you to the bullshit that is the tone argument.

http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Tone_argument

The tone argument (also tone policing) is a logical fallacy that occurs when an argument is dismissed or accepted on its presentation: typically perceived crassness, hysteria or anger. Tone arguments are generally used by tone trolls (esp. concern trolls) in order to derail or silence opponents lower on the privilege ladder, as a method of positioning oneself as a Very Serious Person

Your trying, and I repeat again, TRYING to make deniers' intransigence the fault of others because YOU don't want to change your mind and want to make out that you're RIGHT to be mulishly ignorant on the subject.

You know, the same BS that has morons go "Well I'm gonna go out and drive an SUV" in response to a cut in GHG emissions or some environmental protection law being passed.

All you're doing, if you were being honest and really believed that bollocks, is saying that they're DELIBERATELY not accepting the argument, NOT because it's invalid or uncertain, but because their feelings are being hurt.

And that's the same dipshits who sneer about leftist snowflakes...

Doesn't work, cupcake.

" I know"

That you're better off with the belief that I just want youy agreeing with me than actually face the fact that your arguments for nuke fuffing are shit?

We ALL know that, buddy.

You are a lunatic, wow, and really, really should be banned.

Really, I think he's called Wow because that's what people say when they read his comments. As usual, he's all about the ad hominems. I know anthropogenic climate change to be a fact, and never even implied otherwise, but he pretends to know otherwise because it fits his Manichaean worldview. And of course there's nothing grossly sexist about calling a woman who has disagreed with you "cupcake."

If you don't mind, Wow, you may address me as "dr. doe" from now on.

"You are a lunatic, wow,"

Nope, you're just desperate, dumdum. And you have no argument, only shouting.

"Really, I think"

Really, you don't.

" he’s"

"He?" How do you know?

"As usual, he’s all about the ad hominems"

As usual, th emorons who can;t argue will avoid the content and avoid the facts and instead tone troll and whine about the words used, not whether the facts are right.

Because you can't refute the facts but you don't want to accept them.

I think jane here is a fuckwitted little troll who is a creationist retard who is trying to shit all over the site with tone arguments (the very first post was a tone argument), because they have no ability to argue coherently, so have to run for the feels, because they don't require evidence or argument, only proclamation.

"And of course there’s nothing grossly sexist about calling a woman who has disagreed with you “cupcake.”"

Nope. Not even if it was a woman calling a woman cupcake.

It's a term of disrespect.

I disrespect YOU.

Not women.

I, unlike you, do not despise women and hate them for independence. I accept them, flaws and all, as valid human beings the same as any other.

But you haven't got anything other than whining about the words others use, you've not done anything else.

Because you are, frankly, intellectually incapable of anything requiring intelligence.

Thanks for the smile!

Jane, ad hominems galore. I pointed Wow to a post on the blog of one of Mann's fiercest defenders and he called him a denier.

Aaaaw. But you're so unreliable about what you say, "mike". Hardly possible to believe you, even if you were right.

"Thanks for the smile!"

Excellent! Given you completely missed the point (so did BBD, classless oik that he is) the first time, I thought you'd missed it this one, and considered you were either too close to it and reading (as you so frequently do) what you want to believe is there based on your biases and bigotries, or were, really, just too stupid to see it.

Glad you spotted it.

I guess you'll stop taking some tiny fragment of evidence and proclaiming a shitload of negative assertions about someone else (like you did with Greg in your very first trolling appearance here) as if they were established fact.

Or you're just laughing because you spotted it but don't give a fuck, you're deliberately and maliciously making BS clams.

Oh, and "mike", as with every other denier it appears on the planet, you mistake "insults" with "ad hom".

Know how to tell the difference? The insult is a personal attack against you because of the evidence given that your claim is wrong.

And an ad hom is the assertion of insult as proof that the evidence is wrong.

Of course, there IS a third option, you're unable to counter and concede the argument and you're just insulting me, in which case the insults are irrelevant as to whether I am wrong or not, and therefore the point conceded. You have to sort of indicate that you concede the point, even if you have to leave it with "I'll check up because I think you're wrong, but have no evidence or rational explanation for why yet".

Do you both want me to accept your insults are irrelevant because you concede the point and have lost the argument?

Dear New York Times: Climate Change Is Real

gregladen — Thu, 27 Apr 2017 10:02:42 +0000

Dear New York Times: Climate Change Is Real

~~I've been meaning to write a letter to the New York Times~~ I just wrote this letter to the New York Times about their very wrong decision to add a climate science denier to their editorial staff. When they were recently challenged about this idea, the response was, paraphrasing, "millions of people believe this man that climate change is not for real."

Coming from the New York Times I find that deeply disturbing and overwhelmingly offensive.

Anyway, I haven't written my letter yet, but my friend and colleague Stefan Rahmstorf, climate scientist, did, and he says it is OK to post it. So, here is Stefan's letter:

To the executive editor
The New York Times
27 April 2017, via email

Dear editor,

I am a climate researcher, professor for physics of the oceans and have worked for eight years as advisor to the German government on global change issues. I regret to have to tell you that hereby I cancel my subscription to the New York Times in the wake of you hiring columnist Bret Stephens. Let me explain my reasons.

When Stephens was hired I wrote to you in protest about his spreading of untruths about climate change, saying “I enjoy reading different opinions from my own, but this is not a matter of different opinions.” I did not cancel then but decided to wait and see. However, the subsequent public defense by the New York Times of the hiring of Stephens has convinced me that the problem at the Times goes much deeper than a single error of judgement. It concerns its attitude towards seeking the truth.

The Times argued that “millions agree with Stephens”. It made me wonder what’s next – when are you hiring a columnist claiming that the sun and the stars revolve around the Earth, because millions agree with that? My heroes are Copernicus, Galilei and Kepler, who sought the scientific truth based on observational evidence and defended it against the powerful authority of the church in Rome, at great personal cost. Had the New York Times existed then – would you have seen it as part of your mission to insult and denigrate these scientists, as Stephens has done with climate scientists?

The Times has denounced the critics of its decision as “left-leaning”. This is an insult to me and was the final straw to cancel my subscription. There is no left-leaning or right-leaning climate science, just as there is no republican or democrat theory of gravity. I have several good climate scientist friends who have been lifelong republicans. Their understanding of climate change does not differ from mine, because it is informed by the evidence.

Quite unlike Stephens’ views on climate change, which run counter to all evidence. He is simply repeating falsehoods spread by various “think tanks” funded by the fossil fuel industry.

In December 2015, Stephens called global warming “imperceptible” and the Paris climate summit a “meeting to combat a notional enemy in the same place where a real enemy just inflicted so much mortal damage”. My colleagues and I have analysed 150,000 temperature time series from around the world, finding that monthly heat records occur five times more often now as a result of global warming than in an unchanging climate (Coumou et al, published in Climatic Change 2013). One of those record-hot months was August 2003 in western Europe. 70,000 people died due to this heat wave. Was global warming “imperceptible” to these people and the ones they left behind? On 15 August 2003, the New York Times reported: “So many bodies were delivered in recent weeks to the Paris morgue that refrigerated tents had to be erected outside the city to accommodate them all.” Was that just a “notional” problem?

Stephens doubts that global warming will continue, claiming that in hundred years “temperatures will be about the same”. That is a shockingly ignorant statement, ignoring over a century of climate science. Our emissions increase the level of CO2 in the atmosphere, it is higher now than in at least 3 million years. CO2 is a greenhouse gas, as demonstrated first in the year 1859 by physicist John Tyndall. CO2 traps heat – more CO2 means a warmer climate. That is basic physics, borne out by the history of climate. Denying these well-established facts is about as smart as claiming the Earth is flat, and best left to cranks, ideologues and fossil fuel lobbyists.

Stephens has claimed that “in the 1970s we were supposed to believe in global cooling.” That’s an age-old climate denier myth. It would have cost Stephens just 60 seconds with Google to find out it is wrong. (Try and google “Did scientists predict an ice age in the 1970s”.) But Stephens is clearly not interested in evidence or seeking the truth about matters.

Last Friday, you sent me an email with the subject: “The truth is more important now than ever.” It made me cringe seeing this in my inbox. It said “thank you for supporting news without fear or favor.” The hypocrisy of that is unbearable, and I will support your newspaper no more. Instead, I will give the money to ClimateFeedback.org, a worldwide network of scientists sorting fact from fiction in climate change media coverage. It is much better invested there.

Best regards,

Prof. Stefan Rahmstorf

Also posted on Stefan's Facebook page

gregladen Thu, 04/27/2017 - 06:02

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I was curious about one part of the letter that was quoted, where Prof Rahmstorf attributed a European heat wave and the accompanying deaths to global warming. In Feb 2015, the NE US appears to have experienced the coldest month ever (as long as records have been kept). It is not uncommon to hear deniers offer up those kind of 'counter-'examples to scoff at global warming, and the layman (which would be me) explanation I usually hear is that of course there are other factors that can overwhelm the general trends in specific areas of the world, weather is not climate, etc, all of which I agree with.

I was just curious then what is different about these two situations since they are both addressing specific periods in time instead of trends, since the heat wave is attributed to global warming but the cold snap (I think) isn't related to it. The article I read about the cold snap attributed it to a stubborn jet stream, but is there something different then about the causes of the European heat wave? How do we know that the European heat wave was a result of global warming as opposed to actually having been caused by other factors that apparently caused the cold spell?

I suspect there is something more scientific going on to differentiate these two events and was curious as to what those differences are, since at a thousand-foot surface level they seem inconsistent. I would think the professor, again based on my surface understanding of the science, would have better used the examples of the problems caused by rising sea levels, which is a result of a global warming trend, rather than attributing the casualty count of one specific heat wave to global warming.

DL: Good question, and the answer is very interesting.

The heat wave and the cold snap were both caused by the same outcome of global warming as we are seeing it today.

Interestingly, Dr. Rahmstorf is a key member of the team that has figured this out. The idea, briefly, is that the existence and nature of the jet streams is a function of the differential in heat between the equator and the polls. Global warming has caused a change in that differential, and this has caused the jet streams to set up a curvy, slower moving, and generally persistent pattern, which in turn changes weather patterns dramatically. A given area of the Northern (and probably southern, but the research has not addressed that) hemisphere can experience persistent warmth, or cold, or wet, or dry, for a much longer than usual period of time, including the movement of either very cold air south or very warm air north.

See this: http://scienceblogs.com/gregladen/2017/03/28/global-warming-has-and-wil…

Well said! Two thumbs up.

Ah, thanks! I'll have to read that link more thoroughly when work isn't getting in the way of more interesting topics, but I had overlooked the other layman point that global warming increases extreme weather of all kinds. I had mistakenly applied a shallow, 'the causes of record cold periods are orthogonal to/greater factors than global warming, so it seems inconsistent then to attribute heat waves to it', when in fact it is a factor in both.

" In Feb 2015, the NE US appears to have experienced the coldest month ever "

There's going to be SOMEWHERE, though as time goes on you'll have to pick a smaller and smaller region of space and time to manage this, that has the "coldest $PERIOD ever".

That cold snap was due to the f-up of the arctic. It was, IIRC, 20-30C warmer than normal at that time. And the big thing that keeps the polar jet running, and therefore the polar air at the poles, is the huge temperature difference of a frozen surface solid and on moving keeping the cold dense air at the poles.

But without the ice, the ocean moves much easier and it can warm the air more than the ice would have and reduce the cold temperatures, making it easier to mix and less dense than the temperate or returning polar airmass, so therefore it would get much much further south than it used to.

IIRC too, the other side of the USA was seeing near-summer temps...

When the air moves around, it's a little like moving an air lump under the newly laid wallpaper.

Here's my letter: http://scienceblogs.com/gregladen/2017/04/27/my-letter-to-the-new-york-…

Commendably restrained Greg. Now let's hope a major advertiser feels the same way and pulls its ad spend in protest. Several would be even better.

But who allows principles to get in the way of sales? Certainly not the NYT, so perhaps it is unreasonable to expect its advertising base to behave any better.

The New York Times Bites It With New Climate Denier Columnist

gregladen — Thu, 13 Apr 2017 14:28:40 +0000

The New York Times Bites It With New Climate Denier Columnist

The New York Times has a history of supporting a certain degree of climate change science denial, while at the same time supporting some very good journalism in this area. Just now, the Times jumped over one big giant shark by adding Bret Stephens to its opinion page staff.

Stephens comes to the Times from the Wall Street Journal, a Murdoch anti-science rag you are all familiar with.

In 2011, he wrote,

Consider the case of global warming, another system of doomsaying prophecy and faith in things unseen.

As with religion, it is presided over by a caste of spectacularly unattractive people pretending to an obscure form of knowledge that promises to make the seas retreat and the winds abate. As with religion, it comes with an elaborate list of virtues, vices and indulgences. As with religion, its claims are often non-falsifiable, hence the convenience of the term "climate change" when thermometers don't oblige the expected trend lines. As with religion, it is harsh toward skeptics, heretics and other "deniers." And as with religion, it is susceptible to the earthly temptations of money, power, politics, arrogance and deceit.

"OK," you say, "That was like six years ago. Maybe he stopped being a jerk since then."

Nope. According to Joe Romm,

...in 2015, he wrote that climate change — along with hunger in America, campus rape statistics, and institutionalized racism— are “imaginary enemies.”

"OK," you say, "That guy is even more of a jerk now than he was then!"

Indeed.

Romm also quotes climate scientist Michael Mann on Stephens' hiring.

“sadly, the New York Times itself seems to have fallen victim to this malady, hiring one one of the most notorious climate change deniers, Bret Stephens, to promote climate denial propaganda on the once-hallowed pages of the Grey Lady.”

Media Matters has assembled a number of examples in which Stephens mislead readers on a number of matters including climate science. For example:

So global warming is dead, nailed into its coffin one devastating disclosure, defection and re-evaluation at a time. Which means that pretty soon we're going to need another apocalyptic scare to take its place.

[...]

As for the United States, Gallup reports that global warming now ranks sixth on the list of Americans' top 10 environmental concerns. My wager is that within a few years "climate change" will exercise global nerves about as much as overpopulation, toxic tampons, nuclear winters, ozone holes, killer bees, low sperm counts, genetically modified foods and mad cows do today.

Something is going to have to take its place.

The world is now several decades into the era of environmental panic. The subject of the panic changes every few years, but the basic ingredients tend to remain fairly constant. A trend, a hypothesis, an invention or a discovery disturbs the sense of global equilibrium. Often the agent of distress is undetectable to the senses, like a malign spirit. A villain—invariably corporate and right-wing—is identified. [The Wall Street Journal, 4/6/10; Media Matters, 4/6/10]

My friends at DeSmog Blog, a central clearing house for information on climate science deniers, will probably do something as well. I'll link to it here should that happen.

gregladen Thu, 04/13/2017 - 10:28

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Categories

I just cancelled my NY Times account after reading of Bret Stephens' hiring. They offered a 25% reduction in price, then a 50% reduction in price to stay with them. I made it clear Stephens' hiring was the reason I was cancelling.

I only had it to read Paul Krugman anyways and his columsn and blogs are quoted pretty extensively on the economic blogs I read.

Kevin, honestly, I was really just about to subscribe to the NYT ... ask anybody, I've been selectively subscribing to news media as a show of support under the Trump Regime. But I've cancelled my plans to subscribe to the NYT!

Hmm. I subscribe to the NY Times and the Washington Post. The latter still runs columns from Charles Krauthammer and George Will, both elderly climate change deniers, though the Post hasn't run any 'skeptical' columns of theirs for years, at least not that I recall. The NYT would put a lot of minds at rest if it publicly stated that Stephens will NOT be writing on climate, science, or the environment.

So existing subscribers can cut their costs by half if they call in to cancel? I wonder if that would hold if everyone did it, or is there a limit. I remember when I called to cancel a different newspaper with this in mind, the guy said, "OK I've canceled your subscription."

The point of The New York Times is to get readers, and not having a single viewpoint on every issue would help. Wall Street Journal had Al Hunt for a long time. Fox News puts up some liberals, CNN hired a Trump booster and even his campaign chairman to provide some counterweight.

" and not having a single viewpoint on every issue would help"

So there should be someone from ISIS to give a different viewpoint?

I guess they should hire a paedo too to give a different viewpoint.

And, this is a bit of a leap and MASSIVELY unlikely to go ahead, since this is the group so most heavily vilified in the USA, they should have an atheist write on Sunday about how that god shit is all bunk.

Yeah, yeah, the last one is never going to happen. But you DID claim they had to have multiple views. Quite why wrong ones are acceptable can solely be due to your idiotic denial.

I have subscribed to the NYT for many decades, and I think it silly to give up my subscription just because they hired a conservative. I disagree with Stephens on about everything, but his views are common in the country. He was probably hired mostly because of his hard line pro-Israel stance. It is tough for a NY newspaper not to have someone representing that view.
I hope that the editorial page has some control over what is published there. Bombastic statements, with no effort to support them, probably will not fly.

The viewpoint that climate change is not real is not something other than a single viewpoint. It is energy company right wing hippie punching propaganda. It is bullshit. I have no doubt that, for now, the NYT will argue that they want this "other point of view" but what they've really got is some dude who things he's seen Bigfoot. Not another point of view. Bullshit.

I for one welcome the decline in WSJ EdBoard idiocy intrinsic in Stephens removal to the Times, where he will paradxically moderate rather than exacerbate the existing problem of scientific partisanship.

Will has l lost interet with age and where he fulmnates is a matter of diminishng concern- he miight actually consititute an improvement at Conde-Nast

T Marvell, who has had this position before now, after William Safire left?

#10 - no one except guest commentators.
#8 - it is traditional at old line newspapers to have a wide range of views on the editorial page.

Pulitzer prize winner, anti-Trump conservative, sounds like something The New York Times might want.

When was he hired? In a Google search, there is a link to his twitter dated Feb 18, 2017, labelling him with NYT.

The NYT is a mixed bag, but they do a good deal of reasonable reporting on climate and science, and have half a dozen good reporters. All this circular firing squad stuff doesn't help, my opinion. Best to fight from within. I've copied some materials from their "contact us" page and will paste it in a further comment. For climate news, you're better off with the Washington Post or the Guardian, and these blogs.

They often have comment sections, and the NYT commentariat is more progressive than the main paper. I'm not sure it's particularly useful to comment, except as an outlet for frustration and writing exercise, but voicing objections is probably better than taking your toys and going home.

NYT has a "fawning press release". I don't see how they could have considered hiring him, but it will be even harder for them to change their minds. Another deviant is Arthur Brooks, who comes in for special mention in Jane Mayer's Dark Money as a star in the Kochtopus firmament: Opinion is supposed to be inclusive.
http://www.nytco.com/bret-stephens-joins-nyt-opinion/

James Bennet, who wrote this pukeworthy praisefest, replaced Andrew Rosenthal, is credited with revitalizing The Atlantic. The whole thing is curious.

I'm posting this in batches. The next bit is some edited material about contacting NYT. Some of it came from here:
http://www.nytimes.com/help/index.html#newsroom

Pasted material from two pages: (1) Share Your Feedback

To send feedback to our newsroom's leadership, email us.
executive-editor@nytimes.com

Journalistic Integrity and News Judgment: Our public editor, Liz Spayd, looks at issues of journalistic integrity and news judgment at The New York Times. You can reach her by email (twitter and her column)
public@nytimes.com

Submit to Our Editorial Pages
- Send a Letter to the Editor:
http://www.nytimes.com/content/help/site/editorial/letters/letters.html
(there were instrux for OpEd etc. as well)

Reach Our News Departments: To send feedback or story ideas to our news desks, email:
National | Science (links on NYT page)

Reach a Reporter: If you are using NYTimes.com on a desktop or laptop computer, you can reach most reporters by clicking the byline of any article by that reporter. This will take you to a collection of that reporter’s articles, where you can click Email Author on the lower right side of the page.

* (2) How to Submit a Letter to the Editor

Letters should be exclusive to The New York Times or The International New York Times. We do not publish open letters or third-party letters.

Letters should preferably be 150 to 175 words, should refer to an article that has appeared within the last seven days, and must include the writer's address and phone numbers. No attachments, please.

We regret that because of the volume of submissions, we cannot acknowledge unpublished letters other than by an automated e-mail reply. Writers of letters selected for publication will be notified within a week. Letters may be edited and shortened for space.

To send a letter to the editor:
letters@nytimes.com
(for readers of The New York Times)

Additional Information
To reach the public editor:
public@nytimes.com

Come on, let's face it, the corporate media has been on an elite kick since the 1970s when the the rich and powerful began to really see democracy as a threat. The NY Times is no better. Look at its coverage of events leading up to the greatest crime of the 21st Century (so far), the illegal invasion and destruction of Iraq. Judith Miller channeled lies from the Pentagon directly to the Times and reported them as facts. Not a single editorial leading up to the invasion mentioned the two most important words, 'international law' or their twin, 'UN Charter'. It is as if they didn't exist. Without the cheerleading power of the allegedly 'liberal' media in the lead up to the invasion, including that by the Washington Post, the Iraq war would have been impossible. The corporate media made it possible. So why be shocked when the same media hires a climate change denier? Its par for the course.

Thanks for the useful links and email addresses, Susan. Though the hiring decision has been made, readers and subscribers can at least make their views known about what the NYT should let Stephens write about under its masthead.

I don't know which is funnier, this or when National Organization for Women boycotted NYT because they ran ads with Rush Limbaugh.

Why would you find that "funny"? Starved of entertainment?

#8 "Not another point of view. Bullshit".
So true, and which makes (for me) Jon Stewart's final farewell "Bullshit is Everywhere" monolog (http://www.nydailynews.com/entertainment/tv/jon-stewart-bulls-t-speech-… ) that much more a truism. I try to watch it at least once a month.

For someone who is supposed to be a "beautiful writer", that there Bret Stephens, he sure don't write all that gud. Here. I fixed his little piece on religion and climate for him.... like an editor might ......

"As with religion, conservatism is presided over by a caste of spectacularly unattractive people pretending to an obscure form of knowledge that promises to make the seas retreat and the winds abate. As with religion, conservatism comes with an elaborate list of virtues, vices and indulgences. As with religion, conservatism's claims are often obscurantist, hence the convenience of terms such as “ originalism ” when the work of arriving at a just interpretation of the law for the the people of the nation is “too hard” and when it might harm the selfish interests of the rich and powerful. As with religion, conservatism is harsh toward skeptics, heretics and other “deniers.” And as with religion, conservatism is highly susceptible to the earthly temptations of money, power, politics, arrogance and deceit. "

There. Ain't that better?

Climate change denialist are in the same same category as Holocaust denialists.
They should not be given media space.

A newspaper has the obligation to present a wide range of viewpoints — arguably, even viewpoints that clearly are nutty — in its editorial pages. There is always the risk that presenting nutty viewpoints will at some point lose the paper a good many subscribers. Most newspaper staffs understand this tradeoff and balance their mix of editorials accordingly.

But hiring someone whose viewpoint is known to be nutty falls into a different category. The Boston Globe once had a science columnist who disputed the reality of climate change. I've forgotten his name, and I don't follow the Globe so I don't know if he's still there. But if I subscribed to either newspaper I might well cancel over the hiring of such a person.

>A newspaper has the obligation to present a wide range of viewpoints

Yes, they have liberal opponents of Trump, moderate opponents of Trump, and conservative opponents of Trump.

According to Media Matters, Bret Stephens has written, My wager is that within a few years “climate change” will exercise global nerves about as much as overpopulation, toxic tampons, nuclear winters, ozone holes, killer bees, low sperm counts, genetically modified foods and mad cows do today.

He lists a scattershot assortment of things. Some are non-problems; others, like toxic shock syndrome, were serious problems that have been dealt with. I would expect anyone worthy of hiring by a great metropolitan newspaper to know the difference.

Of course, recent history has shown that many newspapers have lowered their standards.

Also, I am very curious whether Stephens has made a real wager by putting some of his own money behind his claim. If so, I might subscribe to the Times just in order to see him have to pay up.

And, MikeN, if Bret Stephens' views are being presented accurately, a conservative supporter of Trump — for that is what someone who thinks climate change is an illusion is likely to be.

Chris, you may not have noticed, but some people find other aspects of Trump to be less than perfect. Bret Stephens is a NeverTrumper.

"A newspaper has the obligation to present a wide range of viewpoints"

No it doesn't. This, like the ridiculous meme "corporations have to maximise shareholder value", is wrong but parroted merely to "justify" the moronic desires of the speaker.

MikeN has shown many times that he inhabits a different planet from the rest of us. Opponents of Trump? From the same paper that wrote a recent editorial claiming that by bombing Syria, Trump has proven that he "has a heart?" As long as Trump continues to support the military-industrial complex the NY Times will fawn over him. That any of the corporate media in the United States is 'liberal' is a well cultivated myth. All of supports US empire in its various guises. Friel and Falk wrote some books about the record of the NY Times on foreign policy, They set the record straight. On climate change the media may occasionally claim that its a problem but very seldom will they say what we should do about it. That is because the solutions conflict with the profit maximization agendas of media owners and corporate advertisers. Its all clearly evident if one reads Herman and Chomsky's classic 'Manufacturing Consent'.

It's OK, Wow. I don't like you either.

MikeN (#27): Bret Stephens is a NeverTrumper.

You're right. He's been consistently blasting Trump all over the place, even in the Daniel Pearl Memorial Lecture (as reported by Time.)

Also, he won a Pulitzer for his commentary in 2012. Maybe he's not such a bad hire after all, from the NYT's viewpoint.

But he's still wrong about climate change, and about claiming in his 2014 book America in Retreat that the U.S. had turned isolationist under President Obama.

"It’s OK, Wow. I don’t like you either."

What? Where the fuck did that come from? It may be true you don't like me, but "either"? And do you normally tell people that randomly on the internet????

Hi -- I created a petition asking The New York Times to rescind its offer to Mr. Stephens and instead hire a columnist who is not going to falsify the import of scientific data to support his arguments. Could everyone please SIGN the petition and SHARE in your personal and professional networks? Thank you!

https://www.change.org/p/tell-the-new-york-times-do-not-promote-climate…

Why is liberals attitude to try and get people fired for saying something they disagree with?

mikeN, how did you react to O'Reilly's support for the firing of a George Mason employee who spoke out with concern over the influence of the hate group National Organization for Marriage? Did you ask "Why is conserative's attitude to try and get people fired for saying something the disagree with?"

Why is rigntwinger attitude to try and get people fired for saying something they disagree with?

See Tomi Lahren (spelling may be off). See also ACORN.

Dean, I didn't react, since I didn't watch OReilly very much in the last 15+ years, so I never heard of this. As you characterize it, I would be against it. Looking it up, it appears OReilly's issue was that it was an admissions officer who would have such attitudes and be considering prospective students as 'worthless pieces of trash' for their views and would keep them out. It appears the GMU guy was misquoted by O'Reilly too.

"Dean, I didn’t react, since I didn’t watch OReilly"

Because you don't mind when republicans do it, you just wanted to whine about it being theoretically done by liberals, and run the histrionics schtick.

But, if you WERE being honest, this would have opened your eyes to your confirmation bias, where you only read about liberals doing it but don't read about rightwingers doing it. Negating your cries it being a "liberal thing".

You didn't.

" I would be against it"

It's still happened. There's no "would" here. It has happened, ARE you against it? You would have said "I am against it" if you were. Again, yet more proof you are not against it, only wanting to complain about liberals.

And, as with the attempts to get Mann fired, and his suit against his libellers, and with Ivanka's suit against her libellers, you are busy making "reasons" why the rightwingers are right to do this, but never bothering with trying to make up a reason for those not of your political clique to do it, because you really would prefer just to complain and whinge.

Actually my question about Melania was an attempt to equate with Mann. No one took the bait and said they were against Melania's lawsuit though.

Melania had an actual case - what the person wrote about her was wrong.

Just as what was said about Mann's work was blatantly false.

And, as he did with every issue, O'Reilly was lying about the case.

Here's a clue: if O'Reilly says X is true you can be sure X is absolutely false.

"Actually my question about Melania was an attempt to equate with Mann."

Ah, nope, you're lying about what you said again, shithead.

You made excuses and thought she was right but didn't think Mann was, despite them both having the same valid reason.

Wow #41:

Melania won because her case settled.

Mann's case isn't over yet.

So we don't know if Mann's reason is "valid" yet.

I think Mann will lose on the merits, which means I think his reason for suing isn't "valid".

But justice is pretty slow and we are still waiting for the rehearing en banc motion on appeal and for the actual merits to be acted upon by the district court.

So it is hard to equate the two cases until both are over (in my opinion).

"Melania won because her case settled."

She didn't win. I twas settled. No win or lose. Settled. Retard.

"So we don’t know if Mann’s reason is “valid” yet."

Yes we do. It is.

"I think Mann will lose on the merits"

But that is a complete and utter ass-pull form you based only on what you want to happen, nothing else. Even the judges involved think it a shoe-in.

You're wrong.

"So it is hard to equate the two cases "

No it is very VERY easy. You don't want to because you hate Mann for being a scientist and showing evidence of AGW, and melania isn't "a leftist" so you don't care, even though the cases are identical in law.

"in my opinion"

Actually, no. Your opinion is that Mann will win, but you're holding out for the really REALLY long shot, a' la OJ Simpson. Hence your refusal to deal with reality.

Basic Standards of Human Decency vs. Donald Trump

gregladen — Thu, 13 Oct 2016 13:18:49 +0000

Basic Standards of Human Decency vs. Donald Trump

First, Michele Obama's full speech earlier today:

You know two news outlets have produced confirming evidence of actual sexual assault by Donald Trump. So, naturally, Trump intends to sue.

But, this from Media Matters:

Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump’s threats to The New York Times for reporting allegations that he committed sexual assault are legally far-fetched and provide a troubling portrait of how a Trump administration would handle the press, according to experts interviewed by Media Matters.

...

Several experts tell Media Matters his latest threats of legal action against the Times are further evidence of what would likely be a problematic relationship between the press and Trump if he were to be elected president.

“It just confirms how difficult he would be with the press and how he would view the press as an enemy,” George Freeman, Media Law Resource Center executive director and former New York Times assistant legal counsel, said about the latest attack. “It would be a very contentious relationship in all probability, particularly in that his whole character is built on beating up anyone who attacks him.”

...

Freeman of the Media Law Resource Center called the legal claim “a pure loser.”

“I think it’s all bluster,” he said. “But it’s not surprising given that he is always threatening litigation. As a presidential candidate, he would have to prove actual malice. … It seems to me it would be virtually impossible for Trump to even come close to showing the Times had serious doubts about the claims of groping when the women seem so credible and it was confirmed and substantiated by many other people they had spoken to.”

Tags

I don't know where to put this, and apologies if someone as already posted it.
Governor Chris Christie, who supports Trump (and emulates him in some ways), may find himself in jail.
http://www.politicususa.com/2016/10/13/chris-christie-facing-10-years-p…

I have to say, from an outsiders perspective

Michelle Obama is about the singular most impressive thing about the USA at the present time

Personally I think she is fantastic and embodies all that is great about the US

The double standard on the left is incredible. What is decent about the Obamas having rap artists at the White House who talk about "bitches and 'ho's"? And, of course when Bill was having oral sex in the Oval Room (and lied that he didn't)) the press told us it was no big deal - it's just about sex.
All this is a diversion from the real issues: Obamacare failure, poor economy and open borders that will threaten our security.

Jill, we can add a list of deplorable things that the Cheney-Bush administration did that's 10x as long as your list... (Including actually causing the deaths of 100,000+ innocent people.)

But tell us, what do the shortcomings of various prior administrations have to do with "the real issues" of THIS election, namely, the incredible list of reason why Donald Trump should NEVER be considered for ANY public office by ANYONE?

Best stick to the subject of THIS election, not elections past.

(BTW, Jill, you may not have noticed while you were frothing, but the economy has been growing steadily under Obama's guidance since 2009, following those disastrous right-wing economic policies under Cheney-Bush -- even with a malicious anti-American do-nothing Congress trying everything they can to hinder him.)

Jill, before you get all upset, the fact that they Obamas have those opinions tells me (IMO) that they have shitty taste in music. But -- they (and I, and most adults) are able to distinguish between "art" and real life. Trump is actively saying that sexual assault is his right, because he is a "celebrity". If the women who have come forward are to be believed (and, if you believe the women who accuse Bill Clinton, you have to believe these women or your outrage isn't worth crap) Trump actually carried out such assaults. Expressing outrage towards the Obamas and Bill Clinton, but not toward Trump, shows a huge amount of hypocrisy on your part.

Finally: don't come back with the "But look at what Hillary said about the woman Bill carried on with" bullshit unless you repeat the stuff Trump himself said about them, and quote him saying 'Bill is the victim in this.' - his comment from the late 90s.

You exhibit the largest flaw in the anti-Hillary group: you are so lazy that you repeat things that are either insignificant, or meaningless, or, most often, flat out lies. If you would do a little work (there is the problem, I realize) you could find many serious issues to object to and give as concerns.

I won't hold my breath that you'll do that.

... Not to mention that one of the women accusing him now has already filled a legal statement on court where she said that anything that happened between herself and Bill Clinton was purely consensual.

Think about that: If she's reversing her story now (because she's maybe being paid by Trump?) then she's admitting that she committed perjury earlier. Why would she commit perjury.. to defend Clinton? But that's even stranger... Why not continue to defend him now? Payoff? Did she lie then, or is she lying now? Who could trust her? No one! Ever!

Keeping Hillary off the Half Dollar

milhayser — Mon, 04 Apr 2016 18:31:20 +0000

Keeping Hillary off the Half Dollar

In January, Hillary Clinton still possessed the benefit of the doubt. Memories of her and Bill snarling at Barack Obama in 2008 had faded, and despite her long and dreadful record, it's always possible to turn over a new leaf. But Clinton's ongoing response to Bernie Sanders shows why she is unfit for the presidency. Even as the frontrunner, Hillary shows no leadership ability; she, too, follows Sanders, trailing him to the left as he takes meaningful positions on issues like income inequality and campaign finance reform. Her saccharine smile says "I can do that too!" but truly she should be inspired by competition, not forced to shift uncomfortably because of it. Her recent anger at being asked about money from the fossil fuel industry illustrates her shortcomings perfectly. Confronted with a fair election, faced with her own record, she becomes defensive instead of inspired. She says something that isn't true to blunt the inappropriateness of her rage. She enjoys the benefits of Citizens United just as they were meant to be enjoyed: as a carte blanche that allows her and other mainstream candidates to deny the corrupting influence of big money even as millions of industry dollars are spent on her behalf.

But Clinton has never shown interest in a fair contest; she moved to New York in 2000 because it was the only state in the union that might elect her to the Senate. In her 2008 bid for the White House she carried herself as though presidential candidates are anointed by the Democratic National Committee, a private organization having no constitutional roots. She dismissed the possibility of nominating Obama just as she has dismissed Sanders. She and her jolly encampment harp on her inevitability; one of their favorite terms for her is "our next president." Having every superdelegate in your pantsuit pocket is one thing, but insulting Americans by saying they have no choice is just asking to get burned.

Clinton seems to think her sex, along with her inimitable résumé, is a golden halo; although she is a lackluster feminist, she yearns to set a historical precedent as the first female president, and casts aspersions on anyone who would deny her the opportunity. Look at her inane campaign slogan: "I'm With Her." But do you remember Gloria Steinem, advocating for Hillary, saying girls who support Bernie are only doing it to impress the boys? Do you remember the Clintons throwing Monica Lewinsky under the bus after Bill had thoroughly exploited her in the Oval Office? According to CNN, Hillary called Lewinsky a "narcissistic loony toon," which is at least somewhat ironic. And do you remember Hillary deliberately praising Nancy Reagan for her crusade against AIDS last month, either out of sheer ignorance or else to saint the memory of an arch-conservative? Do you remember how until 2013 she advocated against gay marriage and now she thinks it's great? Hillary Clinton is not a feminist, she's simply a woman, and if that's her strongest claim to the White House, it's not enough. Her posturing is sexist in and of itself.

Meanwhile Clinton and her handlers and her campaign staff and the last godforsaken newspapers in this country have worked tirelessly to influence public perception with rhetoric and omission rather than take a stand on important issues. Outlets like The Washington Post and The New York Times have seriously undermined their credibility by covering this race not as a democratic contest, but as a victory march beset by ungrateful and even dangerous support for Bernie Sanders. First they say "Sanders can't win" and then they say "Unite! Or Trump will take over in November" and now they say "Bernie is fighting dirty!"

But let's think about Donald Trump for a minute. Like Hillary, Trump has a long public record, and along with the fact that he used to be very liberal, we all know he's a world-class hustler and con artist. One thing Trump repeats throughout his fascist babblings is true: he's a really smart guy. He knows exactly what he's doing. But do we? Even if he becomes more centrist and "presidential" in the coming months he'll never win back women and minority voters. But everything he says riles up the GOP's most steadfast supporters, which is why he can't be denied their nomination without the whole party going down in flames. Trump's campaign has been carefully calculated to disrupt and even destroy the GOP. Should he win their nomination, he should be an easy target for the democratic coalition and sensible independents and Republicans.

There are two things that matter to the future of the United States in 2016: income inequality and climate change. Not surprisingly, they are directly related. They both result from an economic system that gives corporations free rein. Like King George III in the colonial era, corporations exploit us with no intent of letting us gain independence. They are designed to pay laborers as little as possible, tell sell the fruits of labor for as much as possible, and to keep all the profit for themselves. As a result the middle class becomes steadily less rich and more people slip into poverty, where some resort to crime. The U.S. compensates for the criminality it engenders by imprisoning more people than any other nation on Earth, and the truly sickening part of it is, many U.S. prisons are now privately owned and for-profit. They want more human beings within their walls, for longer periods of time. Corporations control the media through advertising dollars, and control the government through campaign contributions and even "speaking fees." They control you and me. This is not how America is supposed to work.

The image at the top of this post shows two cents: the so-called Indian Head and the Lincoln. The Native American figure is not just anyone; she's a woman, she's a symbol, and she has a name: Columbia. She appeared on the cent for 116 years; Lincoln has been on it for 107. While the tradition of a noble women conferring respectability on a country's coinage predates the United States, Columbia once provided to us a beautiful symbol of ourselves, long before she briefly appropriated the ceremonial headdress. In 1909, Abraham Lincoln was the first historical figure to appear on a United States coin, and now our pockets and purses are full of mens' heads. Even the heraldic eagle has been removed from the quarter in favor of honorary dioramas. This is the best ideal we aspire to now: fame, or at least enough influence to leave a mark and thus be remembered. We used to aspire to something greater: justice for all. Despite the fact that he's a democratic socialist, Bernie Sanders offers a return to our foundational roots, the chance to re-assert our right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, rather than the right to liberalism, and the pursuit of security. Hillary Clinton, on the other hand, probably wants her profile on the half dollar.

The global ecosystems that nurtured us as a species are withering all around us; climate change is not only raising sea levels, it's precipitating mass extinction that will likely lead to our own. Even if some of us survive, we won't be human anymore, we will evolve into something else—hopefully something that can metabolize ash and plastic. Our pollinators are dying, the last big animals on Earth will no longer be wild, and ocean acidification may wipe out the food chain. There will be so many of us and our new smartphones that we will starve, or else live on bread and jellyfish and soylent whatever. Capitalism has played a valuable role in the development of our economies; but the hard truth is that our economies must not be developed any more, they must be stabilized, streamlined, and even diminished. Democratic socialism is the future, and it is also the present, as some European countries exemplify. Personally I like being human, and I think every human being has the right to be grateful for their existence, and that is why I will vote for Bernie Sanders. I encourage everyone who still has a say in this primary to do the same. It is time to demand that our policies are determined by science and not by for-profit interests.

I understand that you make think of Hillary as your ally, I understand that many in Congress and the executive branch have worked with her and respect her, I understand that she herself is friends with many on Wall Street and around New York; she and her family have made connections everywhere. I don't think Clinton is a bad person. But I know she has never been a leader.

This election is the opportunity of a lifetime. It's about more than personal loyalty. Bernie Sanders has offered America the possibility of a political revolution. Without it, we will run the risk of a real one. That's my two cents.

milhayser Mon, 04/04/2016 - 14:31

Categories

Life Sciences

Sanders biggest issue is that he is unelectable. America (if there is a generic America) is not ready for, and does not want, a revolution. It simply will not happen in our lifetime. Hillary (regardless of whether or not you like the woman) is electable and much preferable to Trump or Cruz.

IMO the GOP has been strategically ignoring Bernie. Hillary has been a target for over twenty-five years and as such they really are going to have to stretch to find new material and even then she is a tough old bird who has had it all said about her. She knows how to hunker down and play the short game between talk radio fusillades while letting the congress punch themselves out in endless investigations.

Bernie, I really do like his soaring optimism and far reaching goals, hasn't had to exist under constant investigation and attack. I don't know how he will hold up.

I also think that whichever gets elected they will be stymied by a GOP majority in the House. IT is likely to be a spare, if not entirely empty record of legislative accomplishments.

I think this gives Hillary the edge again. She has the Vast-Right-Wing-Conspiracy (VRWC) and Clinton Derangement Syndrome(CDS) talking points down pat. Bernie talks about a "revolution" but I doubt the GOP is going to care, or go along, if even the vast majority of the American people, and GOP for that matter, want them to. Obduracy is the house specialty on the GOP menu.

There are two things that matter to the future of the United States in 2016: income inequality and climate change.

Ya think?

Racial justice, gender justice, environmental justice ... don't matter?

Endless spying, data mining, and blatant lying by governments and corporations alike ... don't matter?

Terrorism and power grabs by religious fanatics ... don't matter?

Demographic shifts, ecological depletion, technological revolution ... don't matter?

I agree with you about Clinton (in fact, I think you left out some of her biggest drawbacks), but please - leave egregious oversimplifications to television pundits where they belong!

Vani Hari, a.k.a. "The Food Babe," doubles down on the misinformation in her response to the New York Times

oracknows — Tue, 17 Mar 2015 05:45:55 +0000

Vani Hari, a.k.a. "The Food Babe," doubles down on the misinformation in her response to the New York Times

To put it mildly, I'm not a big fan of Vani Hari, who has achieved Internet notoriety as a highly misguided "food activist" better known as The Food Babe. As The Food Babe, Hari has improbably become a minor celebrity by attacking food companies over various ingredients their products and, unfortunately, seems poised for more. Indeed, given how media- and social media-savvy she has become, it's not inconceivable that she could become the Dr. Oz of food. The problem with that, of course, is that what she pushes is not good information but rather misinformation. Indeed, she appears to live by the adage that if you can't pronounce a chemical's name, it shouldn't be in food, a particularly brain dead adage if ever there was one. Even for ingredients that she'd demonized that are inarguably natural, such as isinglass, which is derived from the swim bladders of fish, she seems to apply a standard that can best be characterized as an "appeal to yuckiness." In practice, this means that if it grosses Hari out, for whatever reason, similarly it shouldn't be used in food, even if there's a long history of its safe use. Basically, it it's a chemical with a difficult-to-pronounce name or an ingredient derived from a less than savory-sounding animal part, to Hari it is evil.

Examples abound. The first time I encountered Hari was when she attacked Subway for using azodicarbonamide, which is a chemical commonly (and safely) used as a foaming agent in bread, because it's also used in making foam rubber. That led her to the admittedly clever tactic of referring to azodicarbonamide as the "yoga mat chemical." Of course, this tactic was intellectually dishonest as well, because it implied (intentionally) that Subway was putting yoga mat foam rubber in bread. Of course, chemicals are used for different purposes all the time, some of which might be in food, and food scientists and skeptics were very vocal about the lack of science behind The Food Babe's attacks. It's not for nothing that I pointed out that The Food Babe is to food as Jenny McCarthy is to vaccines. Her ignorance of basic chemistry is epic, too, the most famous example occurring when she became concerned about what's in beer, leading her to confuse propylene glycol (used in antifreeze) with propylene glycol alginate, an ester of alginic acid, which is derived from kelp. That was the same incident in which she attacked isinglass, a gelatin-like substance derived from fish swim bladders used to clear the beer of yeast and solid particles.

So it was with much amusement and a bit of schadenfreude that I saw on Friday an article in the New York Times by Courtney Rubin entitled Taking On the Food Industry, One Blog Post at a Time. It's a fairly balanced article that ends up making Vani Hari look not particularly good, which is not difficult because she is so clueless. Of course, I am a bit biased because Rubin quoted a fair number of Hari's critics, including yours truly at my other blogging gig on my not-so-super-secret other blog, including the bit where I referred to her as the "Jenny McCarthy of food," which was a modified version of the same post crossposted there. In fairness, I can't take credit for that comparison because Steve Novella made it first, but such is life. In any case Rubin's article also quoted other Food Babe critics more notable than I, such as Joe Schwarcz, a chemist at McGill University and Director of McGill's Office for Science & Society and Kevin Folta, chairman of the horticultural sciences department at the University of Florida, who almost out-Oracs Orac by referring to Hari's lecture at his university last October as a "corrupt message of bogus science and abject food terrorism" (which is why I like him). To her credit, Rubin also prominently mentioned what is arguably the most ridiculous Food Babe post of all, "Food Babe Travel Essentials":

In another much-mocked post, “Food Babe Travel Essentials — No Reason to Panic on the Plane!” Ms. Hari criticized the air on an airplane. Because of cost concerns, the air “pumped in isn’t pure oxygen, either, it’s mixed with nitrogen, sometimes at almost 50 percent,” she wrote. Except ambient air isn’t pure oxygen, either. It’s roughly 78 percent nitrogen. The widely discredited post, where Ms. Hari also complained about the flight attendants’ stinginess with water in first class, was removed swiftly.

In an interview, Ms. Hari said she didn’t remember the post, which Mr. Cook brought up by name. She then said it would have disappeared from the blog because it was old. Weeks later, in an email, she admitted that it had been removed because of mistakes, and said that she planned to start noting when she clarified or corrected posts.

Steve Novella and I have both discussed this particular post, which, although she removed it from her website, is still available because the Internet never forgets. It reveals a misunderstanding of science so unbelievable that when in the same article Hari brags about how her undergraduate major was actually in the College of Engineering at the University of North Carolina, Charlotte and she took "hard science," I laughed out loud. Either she's forgotten everything she's learned or she knows she's peddling chemical misinformation. Take your pick. Actually, what she neglects to note is that her major was computer science, which requires almost no knowledge of chemistry or biology. (Indeed, in the NYT article she boasts about taking Physics and Calculus, but those disciplines are not really relevant to her activism; chemistry, physiology, and biology are.) One also notes that she's been promising to note clarified or corrected posts for a while now, and has yet to do it, although it's been noted that she did admit her mistake in publishing this article, albeit buried on her Facebook page; in other words, nowhere easy to find.

Hilariously, her response to that is:

Ms. Hari said the these particular posts (which she wouldn’t acknowledge as having been discredited) were a feeble exercise in nit-picking that detracted from her mission.

“If you’re going to pick apart every little sentence I’ve written ,” she said, her voice trailing off. She added of her critics, “They have to dig so far and deep to find something to make me look crazy because what I’m saying now is so sane and is so real.”

Of course, this is about as disingenuous as it gets. Her critics are just "digging far and deep" to "nitpick" when we point out massive errors in science in her posts that are obvious to many people with a high school education. Of course, we didn't have to "dig so far and deep" to find examples of Food Babe idiocy when she was in the middle of her "yoga mat chemical" and beer campaigns. Those were front and center on her blog and activism, and her errors of science and fact were almost as egregious as the post about airplane air. Oh, wait, they have been just as bad, such as her claim that microwave ovens somehow destroy the nutrient content of food irretrievably and her most risible claim of all, namely that "there is just no acceptable level of any chemical to ingest, ever.." Given that food is made of chemicals, I wished her good luck surviving living by that particularly dumb adage.

The pressure must be finally getting to her again, because she actually responded to the NYT article. Unfortunately, she responded to it on Sunday after I had already written my posts for both this blog and my not-so-super-secret other blog; so I was unable to respond until now. Predictably, Hari entitled it Response: NY Times Lets Biased Freelancer Attack Food Babe and makes it clear that she's learned absolutely nothing from the legitimate criticism of her science and dishonest tactics and calling Rubin's article a "hatchet job." (To be honest, from my perspective, it was, if anything, too mild. But, then, it was in the NYT.) Predictably, Hari also goes straight for the "shill" gambit:

The reporter featured only the views of certain academics who attack us – every single one of whom has a conflict of interest due to their associations with the food or chemical industries (and this is not disclosed). Although I gave Ms. Rubin the names of scientific, medical and consumer experts who support our work, these did not appear in the story, with one exception (Ken Cook of the Environmental Working Group) and even his quote was chosen to support her obvious bias.

Yes, it's a variation of the pharma shill gambit, something I first wrote about nearly a decade ago, except in this case it's the the food industry shill or the chemical company shill gambit. It's also particularly amusing to hear her accuse anyone of being a shill given how skilled she has become at using affiliate-marketing arrangements to monetize her activism. Truly, Hari is not particularly creative, certainly no more so than an antivaccinationists. Not surprisingly, she's been known to spout off some antivaccine views from time to time, particularly about the flu vaccine.

First up, Hari attacks Joe Schwarcz:

Dr. Joseph Schwarcz is the Director of McGill University’s “Office for Science & Society”, which has in the past received funding from the biotech (GMO) industry Dow, Monsanto, and Dupont through the Council for Biotechnology Information (1). Dr. Schwarcz is also on the Editorial Board for the magazine of the Chemical Institute of Canada, ACCN. Based on his advocacy, one could say Dr. Schwarcz hasn’t met a chemical he doesn’t like.

That bit about "never having met a chemical he doesn't like" is particularly silly, as though chemicals are things to be "liked" or not. (On second thought, I do rather like ethyl alcohol from time to time.) One could far more accurately retort that The Food Babe has never met a chemical she did like. As Schwarcz wrote in his reply, the ACCN is not an industry group and his office's funding from the Council of Biotechnology Information was over a decade ago for student interns, none of whose work had anything to do with biotechnology.

I will reluctantly admit that Hari did have one point, and I hope Joe, being a friend, will take this observation to heart, and that's Hari's assertion that his comments about her appearance do sometimes come across as being a bit sexist. At least they do to me, particularly in light of the misogynistic comments directed at her. Think of it this way. Some people, myself included, have harped on Jenny McCarthy's past as a Playboy Playmate of the Year while criticizing her antivaccine views. I don't do it any more because I came to realize that they were irrelevant and, yes, sexist. Making condescending comments about Hari's appearance in the context of criticizing her pseudoscience is cut from the same cloth and only serves to undermine that criticism. On the other hand, Hari's whining that Schwarcz says derogatory things about her knowledge and intelligence made me chuckle, because if anything Joe's said about her is spot on it's his criticisms of her ignorance. In fact, Hari's writing, indeed her very reply to criticism, validates pretty much everything Schwarcz has said about her knowledge base and then some, as his retort to her demonstrates well:

It is also true that I have questioned her mental abilities. How could I not when she wrote a piece about believing that the properties of water were affected by a label on the bottle that had either loving or hateful words written on it. Let me also mention that on numerous occasions I invited her to be a guest on my radio show to air her views and she refused. I stand by my opinion of her. She is a possibly well-meaning, scientifically illiterate publicity hound who bullies companies to conform to her mostly ignorant demands. As far as being addicted goes, the only thing I’m addicted to is proper evidence-based science. And the Food Babe most assuredly does not fall into that category.

Absolutely.

There was indeed a time that the Food Babe Dr. Masaru Emoto's amazing water woo with complete credulity. That was part of her post on microwave ovens. Emoto, if you remember, liked to claim that he could "imprint" emotions and messages on water just by thinking about it and writing various words on the label of the bottles holding the water. He did some hilariously pseudoscientific "studies" in which he claimed to show that "intent" changed the shape of water crystals. The Food Babe invoked his work as though it had any merit and was later forced to take it down. Couple that with her airplane oxygen post and her blunt statement that"there is just no acceptable level of any chemical to ingest, ever" and, if anything, Schwarcz was being too kind about Hari's scientific knowledge base. She goes way, way beyond scientifically illiterate, her bragging bout having taken a major at an engineering college notwithstanding.

As for people posting stuff on her Facebook page, I would suggest that Hari just deal with it. I've been critical of misogyny posted on her Facebook page, which is unacceptable and which she has every right—even duty—to delete. Ditto abusive comments. However, to encounter links to articles posted on her page deconstructing her nonsense is just par for the course. Readers post links criticizing me all the time; I either respond or not. Either way, I generally leave them up. It says a lot more about her that she immediately removes them than it does about anyone posting them.

Not surprisingly, she fires up the shill gambit into overdrive for Kevin Folta, chair of the Horticultural Sciences Department at the University of Florida, mainly because he studies genetically modified organisms (GMOs) and Professor Dr. Fergus Clydesdale of the University of Massachusetts is on the Board of Sensient Technologies, a “global manufacturer of colors, flavors and fragrances” – which means they make synthetic food additives. She might have have had a reasonable point that perhaps Dr. Clydesdale's affiliation should have been mentioned, but unfortunately she just goes all-in for the shill gambit and these are her only complaints about these two; she can't refute a single criticism they make of her (or, in Folta's case, that he's ever made of her). She's never been able to refute valid scientific criticism.

Perhaps Hari's most hilarious inept attempt at a shill gambit comes here:

The piece mentions Dr. David Gorski, who also has received pharmaceutical industry funding (6). He likes to vilify “quackery”, and has even attacked the venerable Cleveland Clinic for using some alternative medicine (7). He is simply wrong that there is no propylene glycol, the antifreeze kind, in some beers and alcohol. We know Fireball Whiskey contains it (8) and it’s listed as an approved ingredient in alcohol on the government website ttb.gov (9). This is easy to prove if you aren’t looking to discredit someone. I answered this previously in a response to my critics back in December 2014 (10), but this was ignored and has been re-hashed time and time again.

Wow! Guilty as charged, at least with respect to vilifying quackery and having criticized the Cleveland Clinic more than once. (She says that as though it were a bad thing!) As for the pharmaceutical company funding, it was modest, for one year, and what on earth does that have to do with the food industry or anything said about the Food Babe anyway? It's not as though I've ever worked on GMOs. At least, I've never worked on GMOs for food. Certainly over the years as part of my experiments on cancer and cell biology, I've genetically modified plenty of organisms (specifically, bacteria and mammalian cells) with various plasmids and viral vectors, but no one ever ate them. There are strict OSHA rules against that, you know.

Her second bit is, not surprisingly, a rather massive straw man about propylene glycol. For one thing, it was never claimed that whiskey didn't contain it. The discussion was about beer, and this is what Hari wrote in response to criticism that she was exhibiting chemical ignorance when she claimed that there was propylene glycol in beer:

There are a few blog posts circulating that indicate propylene glycol is used in the external chilling system at breweries and that it’s never is added to beer. They go as far to say that the only way it could be in beer is if there is a tank leak. Well, I’m not talking about leaking tanks here. The chemical Propylene Glycol Alginate (PGA) is added to some beers as a stabilizer for foam control and it is sold as an additive under various commercial names such as Stabilfoam. Another potential source of PGA is as a carrier for some “natural flavors” in fruit-flavored and cider beers. Propylene Glycol is added to many foods and drinks, it’s a very common food additive and I see it on ingredient lists everywhere at the grocery store. I know this because ingredient lists are on those items – but rarely on beer. In Germany, Propylene Glycol Alginate is listed as an ingredient on this bottle of Corona as “E405 Alginat” (the European food additive number for Propylene Glycol is E405), and you will also find it on this ingredient list on Sinebrychoff’s website in Finland. So, I’m really curious to know if and what other beers Anheuser-Busch and MillerCoors may add this ingredient to.

Propylene glycol alginate is not the same thing as antifreeze. It's alginic acid (which is derived from kelp) to which propylene glycol is attached as an ester to some of the carboxyl groups. If you're not a chemist or haven't taken organic chemistry, don't worry about it. Just realize that, as I said at the time, it is not the same chemical as propylene glycol, not even close. It is not antifreeze.

Back to Fireball Whisky. It's odd that she should mention that particular whisky, because my wife and I were in the supermarket the other day and saw it on the shelf. I remember this because I distinctly remember saying that the thought of cinnamon in whiskey did not sound at all appealing to me. Be that as it may, whisky wasn't under consideration. More importantly, I find it very telling that the best Hari could come up with was a reference to whisky and a link to a government website, the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau, and a list of Flavoring Substances and Adjuvants Subject to Limitation or Restriction, which lists propylene glycol.

Interesting, no, that this is the best she can come up with? I mean, seriously, if Hari had been able to find a single example of honest-to-goodness propylene glycol (and not propylene glycol alginate) in beer—or anything other than in Fireball Whisky—you know she would have mentioned it. I can just picture her furiously Googling to look for such an example, and the best she could come up with were an article in a men's magazine about propylene glycol in Fireball Whisky and this government web page. Even if there were beers with actual, honest-to-goodness propylene glycol in it, that doesn't mean they're unsafe. Indeed, propylene glycol is considered "generally recognized as safe" by the FDA up to 5%. In the end, Hari's harping on "antifreeze" in beer is no different than the way antivaccinationists try to claim there's "antifreeze" in vaccines. It's intellectually dishonest fear mongering.

Finally, what about that bit where it's claimed that she responded to criticisms of her "antifreeze in beer" gambit but was ignored. Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong. Of course, the funny thing is that this response of hers is basically a rehash what was already responded to back in December.

It's good to see that the heat is finally getting to Hari. I tend to agree with Joe Schwarcz's characterization of her. She's probably well-meaning, definitely self-righteous as hell (and not in a good way), and, of course, completely illiterate about chemistry. None of this would be a problem if she hadn't, through a combination of social media and marketing savvy coupled with an accident of fate that led her to her particular new calling, figured out how to effectively bully companies into making public relations moves that have no discernable real effect on food safety, all in the name of saving us from scary-sounding chemicals and gross-sounding natural ingredients. There are many things the food industry does that could benefit from reform, and a true, science-based activist would be a useful contributor to the entire debate about nutrition, food additives, and the food industry. Such people exist, but unfortunately they appear to be nowhere near as famous as Vani Hari. Equally unfortunately, The Food Babe is about as far from science-based as an activist can be, not to mention that she doesn't even practice what she preaches when it comes to selling products.

oracknows Tue, 03/17/2015 - 01:45

Categories

Environment

the European food additive number for Propylene Glycol is E405

What say you, easily-googlable European additive list?
E 405 Propane-1,2-diol alginate
E 1520 Propane-1, 2-diol (propylene glycol)

@HDB

Fact checking... how does it work???

Not well for the Fraud Babe.

Wow. -- that cabin air remark takes the cake, and a big and tasty cake it is too (though probably pumped up with the yoga mat chemical). Somehow I think that living with a high partial pressure of pure oxygen would be a Bad Idea. I"m sure Mssrs. Grissom, White, and Chaffee would agree if they were still with us.

If I ever have an attack of "imposter syndrome", the best therapy will surely be to think of Hari's bone-ignorance about of chemistry. It'll make it much easier to forgive myself for never quite mastering some details of quantum physics, or whatever.

"The Jenny McCarthy of food?" Not a bad analogy - but I'd also like to think of her as the Sarah Palin of food - each just as clueless in her own bailiwick as the other.

Brace yourself for a shock. Vani wants us to eat grub tainted with a toilet bowl cleaner active ingredient ! How could you, Vani ?
Yes, it's true, she recommends spinach for human comsuption, although it's schock-full of that nasty chemical, oxalic acid. See for youself -here

I bet if you look into this Gorski's past as an ER doc, you'll find out that numerous times he administered or made someone else administer ethyl 3-[(1R)- 1-phenylethyl]imidazole-5-carboxylate (and note that particular name hides the fact there's carcinogenic benzene in it), possibly made by the HOspital conSPIRAcy company, dissolved in propylene glycol, straight into the veins of hapless patients, and then took satisfaction when they slumped into unconsciousness.
He has expressed a liking for a flammable chemical that is cytotoxic, a broad spectrum biocide, an industrial solvent, an antifreeze, a motor fuel, a teratogen - and on and on.
Clearly he's in the pocket of Big Chemical.

Heh -- and now conflating beer with whiskey? On St Patrick's Day in particular this seems very amusing to me, as many today will be consuming both things in large quantities. Probably best not to get them confused. Although, if she does confuse whiskey and beer, that might explain a few things about her "fact" checking.

:-D

I love how her rebuttal to "no, there is not propylene glycol in beer; it's a different chemical with a similar name" boils down to "IT IS SO THE SAME CHEMICAL BECAUSE REASONS!"

:-P

Doug @ 6: I cannot decide if this is a post mocking Hari's way of thinking or if you are serious. I suppose Poe's law is proven accurate once again.

If you conflate beer with whiskey do you get a boilermaker?

GregH, I'm mocking Hari.
The compound I refer to is etomidate, which is a fast acting very short duration IV anesthetic often used for ER procedures like insertion of an endotracheal tube. Hospira is a major supplier. The IV preparation is typically 35% propylene glycol.
She has babbled about additives in beer, but totally missed the fact that ethanol is an important and widely used chemical that isn't entirely benign.

Yep. And most beer is around 5-6% ethyl alcohol. Wine, which Hari likes drinking, is usually around 12% ethyl alcohol. Whisky tends to be around 40% ethyl alcohol.

Perhaps in response to people calling her out, Food Babe has been leaving up some threads that have been critical of her and also responding to some.

Someone was very angry at her for allegedly making the Subway bread worse: "Thanks for making the bread at Subway suck. I mean it's really bad now. It crumbles and has a horrible feel/ texture to it. I have never seen so many crumbs. Next to that, I have never thrown away a sandwich from them til now. Thanks for ruining my favorite lunchtime food. "

And her response was "Maybe try eating real food for a change? It's still highly processed ;-)"

So she admits it: She would never have eaten Subway, with or without her yoga mat chemical.

Then she tries to say that it was more about "creating awareness" and protecting workers!

Orac:

Yep. And most beer is around 5-6% ethyl alcohol. Wine, which Hari likes drinking, is usually around 12% ethyl alcohol. Whisky tends to be around 40% ethyl alcohol.

And it's . . .*gasp* . . . a CARCINOGEN!

A major cause of liver cancer is alcoholism, right?

She's not just stupid, she's also a grandstanding diva. Her only dog in this whole fight is just whether or not she can preen and look smart and clever and anti-establishment for her adoring fans. It's about boosting her ego. Nothing else.

A major cause of liver cancer is alcoholism, right?
</blockquote?

Actually, alcohol's implicated in quite a number of cancers - mouth, esophageal, even breast cancer.

I still like the stuff, though. I'm debating whether I'm going to go out drinking today - a holiday is a good excuse to get drunk, I suppose, but it's also amateur's day, and things can get obnoxious quick in a college town.

If Ms Hari ever saw this page, she'd probably never eat chocolate again.
http://www.sacredchocolate.com/scientific-cacao-chocolate-health-resear…
Aspariginase - a cancer chemotherapy drug! Chromium and copper - toxic metals! Formic acid - that's the stuff that makes ant bites so painful! Histamine - it makes allergic reactions so unpleasant! Oxalic acid - mentioned above, in toilet bowl cleansers! Coumarin - used to make anticoagulant drugs! Palmitic acid - used to make napalm!!!! Spermine - found in semen - yuck!
Oh well, more chocolate for the rest of us.

Beware of those sexism allegations. I'm sure not every use of the word "boob" in writings about Ms. Hari is a reference to her secondary sexual characteristics.

Yes, propylene glycol is an antifreeze, but it is not ethylene glycol, the primary ingredient in the antifreeze in your car's radiator, which is toxic. It actually takes a lot of propylene glycol to make you sick. That is precisely why it is used as a circulating refrigerant in cooling tanks in the food industry like in the wine tanks here in California. If there is a leak, it doesn't constitute a hazardous waste emergency; you just rinse it down the drain with no harm done, even if it goes to a septic tank and out to a leach field.

Calli Arcale, it's not just "about boosting her ego". Yoga Mat-a Hari's nonsense is more about boosting her bank account.

Yes, propylene glycol is an antifreeze, but it is not ethylene glycol, the primary ingredient in the antifreeze in your car’s radiator, which is toxic. It actually takes a lot of propylene glycol to make you sick.

Yep. That's why the antivaccine claim that there's antifreeze in vaccines is almost more plausible than The Food Babe's claim that there is antifreeze in beer because polyethylene glycol, ethylene glycol, it's all the same thing, right? (Yes, I'm being sarcastic.)

http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2014/04/14/jenny-mccarthy-thinks-in-s…

http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2008/06/03/the-jenny-mccarthy-rally-t…

Amusingly, propylene glycol is commonly used as a vaporizing agent in e-cigarettes, but Jenny McCarthy has no problem with that:

http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2013/08/19/jenny-mccarthy-and-the-sel…

:-)

IIRC propylene glycol has been associated with a blood disorder IN CATS which led to it being removed from cat food whilst it is considered safe for dogs and people.
But I doubt that many of Hari's readers are cats.

Yeah, don't criticize her looks. Don't attack her for being a woman. Those are good rules to live by if you want your counterarguments to stick. However...

Has the Food Babe justified her use of the word "babe"? A babe to me has to have brains on top of looks. I once thought Dominique Swain was a babe, and then she asked what "P.E.T.A." stood for just as she was about to pose for their "I'd rather be naked than wear fur" campaign. Very disappointing.

So I wouldn't classify Vani as a babe. But that's just me, I don't find dumb people attractive.

I wonder if this prompted the NYT article. She's on a Time "Most Influential" list.
http://time.com/3732203/the-30-most-influential-people-on-the-internet/

I'm don't know if I'm old or out of touch but there are quite a few here that have me wondering either "Who?", "How on earth?" or "FFS surely not"

A babe to me has to have brains on top of looks

Marlene Dietrich springs to mind.

I think the Food Babe is overlooking a far more dangerous chemical than ethyl 3-[(1R)- 1-phenylethyl]imidazole-5-carboxylate, or propylene glycol, or anything else.

She should bring public awareness to the dangerous chemical dihydrogen monoxide. It is a colorless, odorless chemical found in all kinds of foods and liquids used in human consumption. Inhaling it can kill you. It is used as an athletic performance enhancer. It is allowed to be introduced freely into our rivers, lakes, and oceans.

She is totally overlooking the dangers of this chemical.

On the matter of "ick", I'm not even convinced that Hari realizes the alcohol in her wine is fungus pee.

If you root around on the web, you can find an article comparing propylene glycol to its more ol'y cousin glycerine as a solvent in pharmaceuticals. I have to run off to get poked in the eyes right now. May post link later.

Panacea, she should also warn of the dangers from oxidane and hydrogen hydroxide.

Although her looks have nothing to do with her views or intelligence (or lack thereof), her looks would have had some bearing on her success, i.e. the halo effect. Both male and female woo peddlers leverage this, though female peddlers probably attract more censure for it.

She should be called the FUD Babe from now on.

Here's the problem. Like many woman who post publicly on the Internet, Hari has faced a lot of misogyny, which is to be condemned in no uncertain terms. She does, however, use that misogyny, purposely cherry picking the most vile attacks directed at her in order to tar her critics as knuckle draggers making rape threats:

http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/vani-hari-a-k-a-the-food-babe-final…

Besides its being just wrong to be sexist, it's also better to avoid giving her more ammunition which making this about her looks as a woman rather than the pseudoscience she peddles can do. At least, having learned my lesson dealing with Jenny McCarthy, I won't do it with Vani Hari and recommend that others avoid it as well.

I still like the stuff, though. I'm debating whether I'm going to go out drinking today – a holiday is a good excuse to get drunk, I suppose, but it's also amateur's day, and things can get obnoxious quick in a college town.

Being the old fart that I am, I plan on being nowhere near any bars today (not that I go to bars very often on a weeknight—almost never). The most I'll imbibe tonight might be a single beer, and probably not even that. As I said, it's a work night and I have to get up early tomorrow, not to mention that I have a late meeting that will keep me at work later than usual tonight.

@JP, I'll second the comment about Marlene Dietrich with a bonus point for Hedy Lamarr, but my current favorite is Danica McKellar.

@23 (JP):
Hedy Lamarr also comes to mind.

@28 (ryanodine):
Around here, FUD is the brand name of a line of processed meats (hot dogs, sausages, bacon, cold cuts) sold in Hispanic stores. I haven't tried them, but I'm sure the Food Babe would disapprove of them.

I also find her promotion of apples (contain arsenic) and pears (contain high levels of formaldehyde) quite hypocritical.

Wait... isn't that PEG stuff I drank 4l of before my colonoscopy Polyethylene Glycol ? You Mean I DRANK 4 liters of Antifreeze! Help! Call a Doctor! Call a Surgeon! Somebody Call me a Cab! Oh wait. . . you mean it's not the same as ethylene glycol? I'm not poisoned and waiting to die ? okay, a half liter of it did come back out the way it went in. but damn. you try drinking 4L of that stuff ! but seriously folks... 4 liters of PEG was the worst ever procedure prep. worse even than the 2 fleet "Green" enemas. next colonoscopy, can't I just like, go on a clear liquid diet for 2 weeks or something ?

Calli

Heh — and now conflating beer with whiskey?

I will let Corb Lund answer that eh.

@DLC: Ugh. I need to have my first colonoscopy (which I've been procrastinating on), and your description reminds me why I've been procrastinating. Still, I need to do it sometime in the next couple of months. Ugh.

Oh God, you just reminded me of my PEG experience - had to do it twice in three days because of a mis-diagnosed rupture appendix.....I never want to go through that again.

Orac: "Still, I need to do it sometime in the next couple of months. Ugh."

Definitely put in the Crystal Light flavoring that is okay, and make sure you use enough. Dear hubby put only one packet for the entire four liters and pretty much gagged (fortunately he only needs to do this every ten years, I have to do every five years).

Then park yourself near a toilet, and get some videos to watch to just pass the time. The first time I did it I had a laptop on the bed, and was on the side nearest the toilet. The second time I stayed in the basement between the TV and toilet. Fun times.

At the appointment they do cover with a warmed blanket.

But I doubt that many of Hari’s readers are cats.

Cats aren't that dumb.

Re: Colonoscopy prep.

I added artificial cherry flavor to mine and thought of Ms. Hari as I eliminated it. Made the process almost enjoyable.

Old Rockin' Dave:

Calli Arcale, it’s not just “about boosting her ego”. Yoga Mat-a Hari’s nonsense is more about boosting her bank account.

She's so strident (and so defensive) that I honestly think that for her, the boost to her bank account is a happy side effect. The ego really is the main thing. She's a self-absorbed narcissist who enjoys having power and influence. Money comes with power and influence, of course, but I think the power and influence is what she really wants.

That's just an opinion, mind you, but she strikes me as extremely full of herself, and not just a basic money-grubbing con artist.

It's frustrating how much influence the Food Babe has and her food babe army are, alas, effective. I do hope the mainstream press start realising how off base she is and do a 'Gillian McKeith' on her.

Being the old fart that I am, I plan on being nowhere near any bars today (not that I go to bars very often on a weeknight—almost never). The most I’ll imbibe tonight might be a single beer, and probably not even that. As I said, it’s a work night and I have to get up early tomorrow, not to mention that I have a late meeting that will keep me at work later than usual tonight.

The only thing I have in the "mornings" is an 11 am Ukrainian class, which does at least get me out of bed and out of my apartment 4 days a week.

I probably won't go out, either. I'm sure the bars are going to be packed, loud, and obnoxious, which is not my favored drinking milieu. Plus it occurred to me that I'm actually meeting with my advisor tomorrow afternoon, provided that his plane gets in on time, and I should probably be firing on all cylinders.

Definitely put in the Crystal Light flavoring that is okay, and make sure you use enough.

Having had two last year, I'm down with just well-chilled, unflavored, and gulped. I wasn't minding it in the slightest that way the second time around. (The talents of the GI fellow doing the scope that time is another matter.)

Let's get this straight:

She complains that her critics "have to dig so far and deep to find something to make me look crazy" but then criticized Orac for receiving some small pharmaceutical industry funding.

She complains that her critics have associations with the food or chemical industries, and then sells products on her website.

Self awareness is not one of her most notable characteristics.

Ms. Hari also complained about the flight attendants’ stinginess with water in first class

Given the amounts I've been served in cattle class, I find myself wondering just how much she was asking for, and how much of the flight she spent on the toilet.

herr doktor bimler

E 405 Propane-1,2-diol alginate

E 1520 Propane-1, 2-diol (propylene glycol)

Well, duh, the word alginate must be an adjective or something, not part of the chemical name.
From the NYT article

Ms. Hari said that chemistry shouldn’t be necessary to decipher what to eat.

Maybe not, but it would help you from making mistakes such as this one.

Ms. Hari also complained about the flight attendants’ stinginess with water in first class

Given the amounts I’ve been served in cattle class, I find myself wondering just how much she was asking for, and how much of the flight she spent on the toilet.

Maybe she should learn not to waste her money on domestic F.

I just had a colonoscopy Fri 13th. Prep was not that bad. Mag citrate and of course PEG. I just mixed with Powerade. First time I was completely under though. Done for 10 years assuming I'm still around. I'll be 80 then. BTW I love the blogs.

Apparently I'm being way too serious for this comment thread.

Nomenclature, especially organic chemistry nomenclature?

“I mean, who likes those?”

Given the amounts I’ve been served in cattle class, I find myself wondering just how much she was asking for, and how much of the flight she spent on the toilet.

I'm reminded of a fight to Russia a few years ago - I took some crappy airline, United or something. We ended up sitting on the tarmac for at least 2 hours because there'd been a screw-up with one of the back-up generators, and they had to draw up a different route "to fly closer to land just in case something happens," which is not a nice thing to hear if you're a nervous flier.

So at some point, everybody's a bit disgruntled of course, and a stewardess starts walking up and down the aisle offering everybody "free water." "Oh, great, guys, there's free water!"

I missed my connection in Zurich, of course, and had to be rerouted through Paris. The Charles de Gaulle Airport, incidentally, has to be pretty much the worst airport in the world.

I know everyone likes to complain about United, but they've been fine to me. And fill me to bursting with water and Diet Coke in cattle class. Not as good as Hawaiian (actual meals and guava juice!), but they go more places.

Still, they're really stingy with their oxygen. I don't think it's ever been more than ~20% of the air on their flights.

The Charles de Gaulle Airport, incidentally, has to be pretty much the worst airport in the world.

I think Brussels, Dulles (the tall people movers are fascinatingly SF, but not if you're trying to make a connection), Newark, and Guangzhou are worse than de Gaulle. Arriving at terminal 4 at Heathrow from the US is always an adventure in queuing theory as well.

The best airport in the world in my experience is Changi Airport in Singapore.

I know everyone likes to complain about United, but they’ve been fine to me. And fill me to bursting with water and Diet Coke in cattle class. Not as good as Hawaiian (actual meals and guava juice!), but they go more places.

I've had several really bad experiences with United. The actual transatlantic flights aren't bad, it's the stateside connections that go haywire. I once got to spend an extra 24 hrs, and get shipped between three different airports, just trying to get from the D.C. area back to DTW. I couldn't even get a freaking hotel voucher out of them.

^ But hey, they're usually the cheapest, and I'm a grad student, so...

Squirrelite @31 -- Didn't know who Danica McCkellar was, but now I do, and amen. I love it when girls talk "Percolation and Gibbs states multiplicity for ferromagnetic Ashkin-Teller models on \mathbb{Z}^2" to me.

The Charles de Gaulle Airport, incidentally, has to be pretty much the worst airport in the world.

It's worse if you're coming down from mushrooms used to pass the time on a trans-Atlantic leg. But as others have noted, it has some stiff competition.

Derek @32 -- That's HEDLEY!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8vjEnkQdaHM

DLC
Somebody Call me a Cab!

OK. You're a cab.
I don't know you well enough to call you a Hansom cab.

I love it when girls talk “Percolation and Gibbs states multiplicity for ferromagnetic Ashkin-Teller models on \mathbb{Z}^2″ to me.

At the risk of venturing too many tangents too early, there's a reason it's called blackboard bold, you know.

It’s worse if you’re coming down from mushrooms used to pass the time on a trans-Atlantic leg. But as others have noted, it has some stiff competition.

Yeah, I've only really experienced European and USian airports, but I've found it to be the worst among those. Something about riding around that freaking little shuttle/train thing five or six times trying to get to your gate just gives you some real insight into the Gallic mind.

I've heard there are some real contenders (for worst airport in the world) in Central Asia. This airport, thankfully, is imaginary.

I remember Pulkovo Airport in St. Petersburg being particularly unpleasant, but that was in part because my luggage had gotten lost, and I spent a fair bit of time getting yelled at by the lady in the lost-and-found booth thingy because I didn't understand the Russian word for "boarding pass." (I definitely know it now.)

I feel like there should be a sign when you deplane in Russia:
"Welcome to Russia. Your troubles have just begun."

Yup, in the original wiki article it looked like the "Z" used on a blackboard to represent the complex plane.

I've never had cause to use such a symbol in anger, except when explaining the easy way of solving the harmonic oscillator to very skeptical intro physics classes.

I remember Pulkovo Airport in St. Petersburg being particularly unpleasant

My experiences departing from there were definitely exacerbated by the discovery, having taken the bus to Pulkovo 2, that Condor Air was unique among mezhdunarodnij airlines in flying out of Pulkovo 1 (which was a domestic terminal at the time).

Going back to this comment about Hari:

Ms. Hari said that chemistry shouldn’t be necessary to decipher what to eat.

That much may be true, but chemistry is necessary if your proclaimed vocation is commenting and criticizing the chemistry of food.
It seems to me the Hari has launched into a war without realizing that’s basically unarmed. She seems to think that vocal activism and charisma replace actual knowledge of your subject matter.

One of the issues here is that her premise is actually plausible - a profitable industry is harming the public’s health by hiding their production practices – and that her audience lacks the same scientific knowledge she lacks. They just get on board with “wow – that sounds bad.”

I mentioned organic nomenclature. Your average high school student in the US isn’t likely to know how to name an ester, even if they know what one is. They’ll be lucky if a small amount of organic chemistry is included at the end of a full year chemistry class, and that goes for the first year of college general chemistry (and high school AP classes) as well. Students need to take organic chemistry – majors or non-majors level – before they are presented this level of information in detail.

How many students outside of science or health related fields take organic chemistry? Maybe we need to rethink what we include in general science courses in this country.

JP:
I read somewhere that United knowingly includes nitrogen in their cabin air. As some people may be aware, nitrogen is one of the main ingredients in NITROUS OXIDE, a Big Pharma anesthetic! They do this to keep the SHEEPLE FROM WAKING UP and asking for more water.

@CTGeneGuy:

Nitrogen is also a principal ingredient in CHEMTRAILS.

I read somewhere that United knowingly includes nitrogen in their cabin air. As some people may be aware, nitrogen is one of the main ingredients in NITROUS OXIDE, a Big Pharma anesthetic! They do this to keep the SHEEPLE FROM WAKING UP and asking for more water.

I wish you could get nitrous oxide on flights; it'd make the whole experience much more enjoyable. As it is, I stick to liquor.

@DLC, Orac and Chris,

Thanks for the suggestions. I have my colonscopy prep next month. They gave me Gavilyte G, but it's still polyethylene glycol with a bunch of electrolytes.

I'll probably be using raspberry lemonade Crystal Light since that's what we have.

No fun, but they found benign polyps the last two and my dad had colon cancer which was successfully treated with chemo and radiation, so I need to get it out of the way.

They've been 10 years apart with a bit of a delay for this one, but I'll see what they recommend for the next.

I’ll probably be using raspberry lemonade Crystal Light since that’s what we have.

I'm pretty sure pink colorings are out.

I am surprised that the Food Babe is not mentioning the most dangerous chemical in beer, CARBON DIOXIDE. This chemical can be used as a refrigerant, in its gaseous form it is toxic in small concentrations, and it is a significant contributor to global warming!

Let's start a petition requesting Chiquitas (TM) to remove Ethyl Butyrate from their Organic all-natural Banana.

Reason #1: It's not listed as part of their ingredient. But it's there, and we required transparency in the food industry.

Reason #2: It's hard to pronounce therefore it is a toxic chemical. We don't need that in a banana.

Reason #3: It is use as artificial flavor, but also as a plasticizer for cellulose. Cellulose is one of the main component for Cellophane. It's like they are feeding us with plastic bag.

Oh, my, I just took a look at her latest entry:

Paleo: Watch out for the ingredient “carrageenan” found in alternative nut milk products. This ingredient is linked to intestinal inflammation. Don’t overdo the meat consumption which can make the body overly acidic – the emphasis should be on whole plant based foods. Consider eating beans, they have been shown to prevent heart disease, diabetes, and help keep you slim.

"It’s worse if you’re coming down from mushrooms used to pass the time on a trans-Atlantic leg."

We flew into and out of Amsterdam on our big Euro trip. At the time, we did it for cost, but the side bennie was having space cake right before the flight back to the US. I'm not one to pretend that marijuana cures cancer, but it sure helps with a long flight.

Unlike our last flight, where the only free movie we could both agree on was Fog of War. It didn't exactly get us in the holiday mood.

Thankfully I have a few years until my first colonoscopy. My older brother has hit that golden age where he's due. I sent him a 5 pound bag of sugar free gummi bears (xylitol) to 'prep' him for it.

Vani is just a clusterf*ck of stupidity. I'm sorry. The more she opens her mouth, the more I just hear rattling.

And as far as airlines go, Air France is the worst ever.

I refer my first colonoscopy as my "concussion colonoscopy." I passed out while on the toilet and fell forward and cracked my head on the tub. The second one was less eventful.

Nope, Aeroflot is.

And as far as airlines go, Air France is the worst ever.

Granted, it's been a few years (about thirty, in fact) but I have unpleasant recollections of what is now called Air China.

Nope, Aeroflot is.

It's definitely up there.

What is the problem people have with seaweed extracts?

Why, seaweed's gross, like fish swim bladders, of course, silly.

But isn't seaweed supposed to be a health food or something? But I mean, it's not like we can expect Food Babe or her ilk to be self-consistent or anything, I guess.

Orac: "Why, seaweed’s gross, like fish swim bladders, of course, silly."

Then Ms. Hari should stay away from Japanese restaurants.

But seriously, Orac: event the *name* carrageenan is derived from an ancient Irish word for "little rock" and those selfsame ancient Irish, living naturally on the seaside, harvested this lovely flower of the sea and ate it, saving themselves from starvation. That's not gross- it is living in harmonious accord with Nature.

And here I've been putting seaweed in my homebrew...

I have to admit the first time I tried instant seaweed soup I was a little apprehensive. It was pretty tasty, though. I'm sure the home-made is better.

the *name* carrageenan is derived from an ancient Irish word for “little rock”

Wait, so it's from Arkansas? Now I'm confused.

@ Mephistopheles O'Brien:

No, it's Gaelic. Different 'little rock'.

Re: colonoscopy...use a thick straw (like the ones they give you at McDonalds) to drink the goop. You can bypass most of your taste buds by placing the straw mid-tongue and as far back as you can stand it. This was in the actual instrucitons from Gundersen-Lutheran Clinic.

Actually, altho' I know about the uses of this crappy stuff in Ireland for a long time, I just saw a cooking show where one of the chefs lovingly gathered it from a tidal pool and the other chef cooked it up with some really miserable looking fish and sea creatures. But it was all natural.

It's simple. If it is whole seaweed or sold by Big Organic or Big Supplement it is healthy.

If you extract something out of it and use it and are part of Big Pharma or Big Phood then it must be bad for you.

Orac,
Don't worry about the colonoscopy. Its not so bad.
Granted, the stuff you drink before is kinda gross,
but if you mid it with some Gatorade and pinch your nose,
It's much easier to take. The procedure's a breeze and they
Knock you out with the good stuff. Go out for pacakes and bacon after.

Further to the colonoscopy routine, split-dose prep fares well. I'm still irritated that I received a "fair" grade on both occasions, though, despite the nurse's assurance that "Dr. X never gives anyone a 'good'."

Next time, I'm going low-residue for a few days, to boot.

I'm probably due for my second colonoscopy, so it's about time I got my first, I guess. That's two days wasted in my life coming up.

Is there a chance that, like screening mammograms, screening colonoscopies will be found to be over-rated?

All this discussion of chemicals in food makes me recall the time when, as a fresh young chemistry grad student, I decided to check out the closest supermarket.

This turned out to be a health food store called "Bread & Circus", in Cambridge MA. Anyway, everything in the meat dept. was labeled with little stickers reading "contains no chemicals".

"ROFL" sort of described my reaction.

B & C was later bought out by Whole Foods. While I don't think Whole Foods puts the silly stickers on the meat anymore, they do contribute to this kind of silliness.

I don't think commenting on her appearance should be off-limits, when calling herself a "babe" seems to be the only true claim that she's ever made. Beautiful, but unfortunately either very dishonest, or very stupid.

Elliott - So, wait, what happened to Purity Supreme?

Perhaps those stressing about colonoscopies could spend this odd day of the celebration of the exploits of an Englishman abroad getting in the spirit(s) by drinking poitín and watching PEG o' My Heart. - in preparation for future drinking PEG and wanting the potty.

Is there a chance that, like screening mammograms, screening colonoscopies will be found to be over-rated?

I'm going with probably not.

Jeff F - I respectfully disagree. I think any comments related to her babeitude (such as, "if she were president, she'd be Baberaham Lincoln") would be held against you.

It worked for Wayne's World, but comments about her looks will do you no good when discussing her ideas.

I’m going with probably not.

Damn.

Carrageenan is not something you would bother putting in your own home cooking and I for one am happy to avoid it.* Narad may have been more concerned with the advice that "meat consumption [...] can make the body overly acidic", in which Hari sidles towards the body-pH cancer scam.

* The Gazoogle leads me to a cornucopia of websites offering carrageenan-free almond milk, or advice on making your own unprocessed almond milk. WHY WOULD YOU DO THAT?! Almonds have no uses except to squander aquifers.

David Sedaris has an entertaining account of his first colonoscopy in Let's Explore Diabetes With Owls. I've been looking for an audio version - I went to a reading of his a year or two ago where he read that story - but so far, no dice.

The drugs, at least, are pretty nice, at least according to Mr. Sedaris.

I quite like some seaweed. I live above a sushi restaurant, which is nice. Also, one of the reasons I miss living on the east coast of Canada is dulse. Salty, wonderful purple stuff. Used to be able to get it in big paper bags, but the only time I see it now is in little tiny bags, often in health food stores.

The drugs, at least, are pretty nice, at least according to Mr. Sedaris.

I seem to react particularly, er, well to anesthetics. I was scoped through the other end a few years ago and was out for the rest of the day. I barely remember being walked out to the car and have no idea how I got home, much less upstairs to bed.

@ HDB, I rather like Lewis Black's rant about the ridiculousness (is that a word?) of calling soy/almond/rice milk, milk. I won't repeat here in case of offence.

@Science Mom - are there teats on an almond? I think not.

JP:
"Nope, Aeroflot is.
It’s definitely up there."
Of course it's "up there". It's an *airline*. As long as their planes are "up there" when they're supposed to be, and not "down here", then they're definitely ahead of the game.

The drugs, at least, are pretty nice, at least according to Mr. Sedaris.

I was pretty lightly sedated for the first one; the only discomfort was when they made the turn from the transverse to the ascending colon. On the second, they were early in the descending when I relented and said "this seems to be much more uncomfortable than last time." Then it was "better give him the rest," and I was a bit hazy for the remainder of the procedure. I still wound up taking the bus home on my own.

A quick check shows that it was 5 mg IV midazolam – fairly stiff – and 100 μg IV fentanyl, which ain't much. (Oh, and "patient tolerated the procedure well." Weirdly, the report from the first one was identical, IIRC.)

Irish seaweed may or may not be tasty, but it at least makes a nice song.

I flew Asiana to Manila and back a few times. Kenpo Airport looked like my old elementary school; Incheon has pretty much replaced it, and it was everything a US airport is not.
One caveat about Asiana - they were serving Korean wine. Don't. Just don't.

I’m going with probably not.

Damn.

Beats the alternative. I got a head start on the scopes because derm started wondering about Gardner syndrome, and now I'm on the five-year schedule.

On the other hand, no Gardner, so I get to keep the plumbing.

Of course it’s “up there”. It’s an *airline*. As long as their planes are “up there” when they’re supposed to be, and not “down here”, then they’re definitely ahead of the game.

There is a sort of charming tradition within former Soviet countries of giving a round of applause when the pilot lands the plane. It's actually a little bit disturbing, if you stop to think about it for a minute.

Anyone with an interest in air travel should check out Patrick Smith's "Ask the Pilot" blog: http://www.askthepilot.com/.
A while back, in successive posts he discussed airline livery and the old Soviet-era planes still being used by third-world airlines.
I said you could sum the two up with one line from Joe Jackson: "You gotta look sharp, and you gotta have no Ilyushins."

Purity Supreme? Gone.
Bought out by Stop and Shop (one of the less pretentious, shall we say, New England chains)

Ren@21:

Has the Food Babe justified her use of the word “babe”? A babe to me has to have brains on top of looks.

Or at least an ego that isn't the size of Mr Creosote.

Then it was “better give him the rest,” and I was a bit hazy for the remainder of the procedure. I still wound up taking the bus home on my own.

Anesthetics are funny. I've had nitrous oxide once, at the dentist, and actually quite enjoyed it. Local anesthetics, for whatever reason, don't seem to work well for me, and usually require a couple rounds before I quit moaning. I had some dental work done in my first year of grad school, since I had the insurance to do it. After a couple rounds of local anesthetics, I started feeling woozy as all get out, and almost passed out. Nearly scared my poor dental student to death. I don't think that's normal, and I suspect it had something to do with the fact that I had recently started on an SSRI, and hadn't been eating much at all due to lack of appetite.

^ I'm also aware that nitrous is actually a dissociative - it was actually kind of a "party drug" on the Portland scene back when I was living there, which just doesn't make any sense to me at all.

I've got a better name for her... ;)

@74 Narad

She is not even getting Paleo correct. Beans are to be avoided on this diet.

I’ve had nitrous oxide once, at the dentist, and actually quite enjoyed it. Local anesthetics, for whatever reason, don’t seem to work well for me, and usually require a couple rounds before I quit moaning.

I had nitrous when my wisdom teeth were removed (not quite enough, as I came up with a pair of pliers rocking back and forth in my mouth). The emergent babbling coupled with amnesia doesn't sit well with me.

As a recreational substance, it's a loser in comparison with ether, but all that was long ago.

I reject a local for fillings; fortunately, my dentist took over his dad's practice – "It's you and the 90-year-old Japanese guys." I get the impression that lidocaine poops out earlier than expected for derm surgeries in my case. So it goes.

I had nitrous when my wisdom teeth were removed (not quite enough, as I came up with a pair of pliers rocking back and forth in my mouth).

I was told at one point that I'd have to get my wisdom teeth out eventually. They're apparently enormous for the size of my mouth - I've seen an X-ray, and it's true - and they just sort of keep trying to come in and not quite getting around to it, so it'll probably require cutting my gums open, which I'm not looking forward to. OTOH, I'm 27, and so far so good, so who knows?

As a recreational substance, it’s a loser in comparison with ether, but all that was long ago.

As a recreational substance at parties, I find it's really hard to beat ethyl alcohol. It at least provides a certain conviviality, and makes people more animated, even if it can cause some interesting and stupid situations at times.

I’m also aware that nitrous is actually a dissociative

Only among Erowid types and their lower rent cousins, as far as I'm aware.

The last time I went to a dentist who gave nitrous was when I was a teen. I had my wisdom teeth out on a combination of nitrous oxide and Novocaine. However, it was never a particularly good feeling.

4 liters is a lot of prep for colonoscopy. I couldn't even finish the 2 liters of the Mira-lax/Gatorade mix.

However, with the protocol my doctor was using, bisacodyl was given. And, it helped that I started fasting 12 hrs earlier than I needed to (because I did not want to have to return in a year because my prep was poor).

It ended up working well; during the procedure my doctor keep commenting on how "clean" I was. I recall this because there was no sedative or pain medication used. Not sure why sedation is even needed for a healthy individual but that's another subject.

DHMO !!
don't do it. Billions infected & ingested each year!

"... midazolam ..."
Mmmmmm! Midazolam. The nice man gave me some of those nice benzo's sublingually for my first round of burn, chop and emulsify (interspersed with stabbing with a sharp implement).
Alas, today I just got a couple of drops of Alcaine (registered trade name of the folks at Alcon). Just not the same, and they did nothing to make me feel any better about spending six thousand dollars for the premium plastic bits that at this time benefit me not the slightest over the free (well, ponied up for by the public purse) generic bits. I may see if I can't score some more Midazolam when I get around to using a sharpened melon baller to do what I should have done in the first place.

Only among Erowid types and their lower rent cousins, as far as I’m aware.

Okay, well, whatever. I mean, it's not ketamine or anything.

The high point of the spousal unit's colonoscopy (for me) was when he was coming back up out a drug induced fog and became very verbal.

Startling, because he's one of the most silent men I've ever known, doubly startling because his speech was very flowery and polite. Practically 17th century (French. Normally he's a 17th century Scottish, complete with glower and edged weapons).

"... dissociative ..."
Dissociative. You want dissociative? Get you some ketamine.
And then there is propofol, a.k.a. Milk of Amnesia.

And then there is propofol, a.k.a. Milk of Amnesia.

I do wonder what was used for induction when the nerve block was deemed to be insufficient ("I was twitching too much," according to the recovery nurse) back when I had arthroscopic knee surgery as a result of objecting to random street violence upon my person.

back when I had arthroscopic knee surgery as a result of objecting to random street violence upon my person.

Speaking of which, I am getting a bit buzzed at the moment, in hopes it will loosen me up for a tango lesson I've been roped into going to (long story). My bum ankle, resulting from a similar situation in my youth (or further back in my youth) is giving me some grief, probably because I'm not wearing the tightly-laced Doc Martens which help that ankle out, again, in anticipation of the tango lesson.

4 liters is a lot of prep for colonoscopy.

I think it's pretty standard. I'd have happily gone more for a better grade (and, I mean, the report contains snapshots). Nothing but the PEG here.

@Science Mom – are there teats on an almond? I think not.

Exactly!

My bum ankle, resulting from a similar situation in my youth (or further back in my youth) is giving me some grief, probably because I’m not wearing the tightly-laced Doc Martens which help that ankle out, again, in anticipation of the tango lesson.

Oh but think of how much more fun and interesting it would be to keep the Docs on? But for the sake of not being a sadist, run by your local pharmacy and grab a neoprene ankle support.

@ Denice

That’s not gross- it is living in harmonious accord with Nature.

Some years ago, me and a Chinese friend compared name and composition of many of our respective cultures' most outlandish dishes.
Nothing fancy, really. Just using about everything as a source of meat.
A vegetarian Indian friend was listening to us. I don't think that "harmonious accord with nature" was how he characterized our culinary examples.
And I didn't even mention snails.

Re carageenan and chemical ignorance in general:

I don't yell at the TV very often, but one commercial that always made me do it was the old one for Breyer's ice cream, with some gomer reading ingredients off other brands' labels: "Care-uh-gheenan? Guar gum? etc."

I would always yell: "Yes, jackass! The fact that Breyer's doesn't have carageenan or guar gum in it is why you need a hammer and chisel to get it out of the carton until it quite suddenly melts!" infuriated me to no end.

JP,

David Sedaris has an entertaining account of his first colonoscopy in Let’s Explore Diabetes With Owls. I’ve been looking for an audio version – I went to a reading of his a year or two ago where he read that story – but so far, no dice.

There's an active torrent out there, should you be so inclined, either way it's evidence that a commercial version exists somewhere, though I don't know if it's him reading it. It must be, surely. Who else could do it justice?

MOB - If you are really averse to anesthetics you can do it without any drugs. Our next door neighbour has polyps and does his frequent colonoscopies without drugs.

I had to drive myself from the only one I have had, so I did it without any drugs. Except for going around the corners it wasn't bad at all. For the corners, the nurse was using her elbows in way that would put Gordie Howe to shame. I got to see everything including some stray coffee grounds that had to be sluiced away. At the start I told the doctor I wanted to make sure he he didn't implant a New World Order mind control chip during the procedure. I am definitely not a "tough guy", with at best and average tolerance for pain (hen I had a root canal the dentist was surprised at the number of injections he had to give me), but everybody there seemed to think I was a major hardass. The prep was worse than the procedure.

@ JP:

Tango in Doc Martens? OK. But they're HEAVY!
I tried to find decent shoes for my own dance classes and settled on a pair of very light exercise shoes made by a tennis company that feel like ballet shoes. It's amazing. I realise of course that *real* Latina dancers doing these routines would probably wear heels and I have tried ( at home only). My instructor wears lightweight running shoes that are supposed to be just like being barefooted (now made by various companies).
You need something that doesn't stick too much because you have to pivot or turn. ( Real tennis shoes usually have a circular stamping at the ball of the foot for this reason).
Have fun!

@ Helianthus:

Heh. I have it on good authority that my grandfather liked pickled eels. My mother ate diverse concoctions involving fish in jars- usually herring.
My aunt enjoyed eating cakes of baker's yeast.. I dated a guy who would occasionally order sea cucumber in Chinese restaurants.
No thanks. But I do really like blue/ bleu cheeses. And salmon.

@Narad

The colonoscopy prep doesn't work well for some people. It hardly works at all for me. For my last colonoscopy, I did a low residue diet and the prep. I show up for the procedure and wasn't cleaned out enough, so the Gastroenteroligist sent me home with a prescription for different prep. and an appointment for another scope the next day. Even with the second attempt I still wasn't cleaned out enough for the doctor to do a good scope, but he said he had prescribed the maximum amount of prep. (I've been looking for some of the sugar free Haribo gummy bears to see if they might work. See comments on Amazon). In my city the Outpatient Surgery Center has started using Propofol and then a fast wake up drug of some sort. I felt pretty alert after this last colonoscopy so my husband and I ate lunch at a restaurant and shopped a little. Somewhere along the way I picked up a stomach virus and two days later I had one of the worst stomach viruses I've ever had. This was not a good week.

I had to drive myself from the only one I have had, so I did it without any drugs. Except for going around the corners it wasn’t bad at all.

I was honestly confused enough that it took me a moment to get to the next sentence.

The colonoscopy prep doesn’t work well for some people.

The nurse tried to console me with the notion that it was probably just the diverticula, but I'm not convinced. And I really need to hide this report before I freak right the hell out.

@Krebiozen:

Ah-ha. Thank you.

@Denice:

Oh, the things I do for the sake of pretty girls. I honestly have two left feet, really, and if I'd gotten Science Mom's message before the class, I would've stopped off and gotten an ankle support before the class, 'cause I was dancing in my socks, and now my ankle is killing me.

One has to imagine that an invitation to a tango class is a come-on, though nothing happened immediately after it tonight, but when you've been instructed to "lean into each other, about five pounds of weight," and you're standing there going, "Oh geez, your hair smells like vanilla," I mean... yeah.

^ I'm generally pretty clueless when it comes to issues of romance, though. I recall my first date, which I didn't realize was a date.

he Charles de Gaulle Airport, incidentally, has to be pretty much the worst airport in the world.

I think Brussels, Dulles (the tall people movers are fascinatingly SF, but not if you’re trying to make a connection), Newark, and Guangzhou are worse than de Gaulle. Arriving at terminal 4 at Heathrow from the US is always an adventure in queuing theory as well.

Midway. Don't get stranded there.

(It was only once, and maybe I just had bad luck. But I still shudder at the memory.).

it’s evidence that a commercial version exists somewhere

YouTube concurs.

@ JP:

I would venture that being invited to tango is more likely than not, a come on.
If anyone invites you to do anything with her/ him, it means that she/ he is interested: the romance part may or may not be involved. BUT tango? If it were folk dance, I'd say it's only a friendly gesture. But it is tango.
And it takes two, you know.

There is a slight problem, which is that I am her part-time research assistant. (On the payroll and all.) Because the Slavic Department and the Judaic Studies Department just roll like that, I guess.

But we'll see.

Midway. Don’t get stranded there.

They used to have a decent tiki bar, a long time ago. Given that there's a White Castle across the street at 63rd and there used to be Marzano's Clearing Bowl a little west, it was a decent trip.

I imagine the Soundproof Motel on Cicero across from MDW is also long gone.

^ But wouldn't you have to be on Southwest to actually be stranded there?

Because the Slavic Department and the Judaic Studies Department just roll like that, I guess.

Not on Shabbos?

Sometimes. But today's Tuesday.

My good Polish-Jewish friend and colleague has somehow managed to get money out of an organization called "Moishe House" for all kinds of parties she has hosted, usually coincidentally happening on Friday nights or on Jewish holidays. She's a real kombinatorka in the Polish tradition.

Sometimes. But today’s Tuesday.

Something something thinking about long-gone bowling alley something Lebowski something something.

honestly have two left feet, really, and if I’d gotten Science Mom’s message before the class, I would’ve stopped off and gotten an ankle support before the class, ’cause I was dancing in my socks, and now my ankle is killing me.

Well do it anyway, it will help.

I, for one am amazed at the loops this comment thread is taking. And that coming from a long-time commenter here. I mean, food kemiculz, colonoscopies, bad airlines, tango lessons, acceptable footwear and now an invocation of "The Dude".

IT'S ALL MY FAULT.

And here's a good take on my general strategy with people I fancy.

Narad

I was honestly confused enough that it took me a moment to get to the next sentence.

After I typed that sentence I realized it could be misconstrued. However, I am glad that I manged to confuse you for a change. Usually it is the other way around ;).

On an an episode of Drew Rae's Disastercast podcast he describes how a China Air crew turned an engine failure in a 747 into a 5 g aileron roll and dive. They became disoriented in cloud and assumed their artificial horizon was malfunctioning instead. They managed to land the somewhat bent aircraft without killing anyone.

http://media.blubrry.com/disastercast/p/s3-eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/disa…

I think all of you are assholes. Why do you pick on the food babe? She's doing us a huge service to us helping us understand our food and stand up to Monsanto who is ruining the world. Further, she investigates chemicals that could harm us. Why is that bad? You elitist scientists are all shills funded by the man anyway. I used her food babe way and was cured of both Cancer and autism.

Just kidding. She's actually a total fucktard. She makes a pile of shit look smart.

Abstract of paper Dietary effects of propylene glycol alginate in humans
"The study therefore indicates that the ingestion of propylene glycol alginate at a high level for 23 days caused no adverse dietary or physiological effects ..."
Which again demonstrates Hari is a liar or incompetent at so-called research.

As regards my general incompetence in romantic matters - it's a mildly entertaining and cute story, my first date:

I was 16 or so, a college kid, fresh off the farm. There was a girl in my class, we sort of hit it off:

"Oh, you like old movies?"
"Yeah, I love that kinda thing. Laurel and Hardy, Jimmy Stewart, old movies and stuff."
"You should come over some time, we can watch old movies!"

So we went to the video store, we settled on Singin' in the Rain.

Afterward, we said we could go up to her room to talk. And we went up to her room and actually talked. And at some point I was like, "Geez, Lauren, it's getting pretty late, I hafta get up early in the morning for work, I mean."

So she walked me to the bus stop. And on the way, she said,

"You're so cute."
"Well, Lauren, I think you're cute too."
"No, I mean, I think you're really beautiful."
(Oh.)

I'm still fond of Toronto City airport (previously known as Toronto Island): there was something charming about the plane landing, them setting up the Customs/Immigration counter for 30-odd passengers, and then a two-minute ferry ride puts you downtown. If I ever have another excuse to visit Toronto...

and now an invocation of “The Dude” Walter Sobchak

Clarify'd.

Krebiozen: "There’s an active torrent out there, should you be so inclined, either way it’s evidence that a commercial version exists somewhere, though I don’t know if it’s him reading it. It must be, surely. Who else could do it justice?"

Well it was broadcast a few months ago on BBC 4, though not presently on their iPlayer (nor RSS podcast feed).

I see Narad posted an hour long YouTube reading based on the book. I do not know if the colonoscopy is on that, because I turned my laptop speakers off since it is bedtime (and dear hubby complained I woke him up talking to night owl daughter at 10pm yesterday).

Science Mom: "I mean, food kemiculz, colonoscopies, bad airlines, tango lessons, acceptable footwear and now an invocation of “The Dude”."

It is Respectful Insolence. An antidote to Facebook.

@51 JP - I fly a lot for work and have to agree that Charles de Gaulle Airport is not a very nice airport.

@53 Mephistopheles O'Brien - I don't really mind Brussels airport. My main criteria for airports are 1) how fast can I shoot through customs 2) did I get lost finding my gate 3) Ease of getting to the airport. Brussels worked well for me using these criteria.

@162 Vicki - I too am partial to Billy Bishop Toronto City Airport, so close to the city centre and a nice little terminal building. These days I'm quite partial to the international terminal of Tokyo Haneda ... not the prettiest or newest airport by any means but when evaluated by the criteria I wrote above then it is a match made in heaven (and I get to take a 1.5 hour Hitachi Joban line train to the lab rather than a 3 hour bus journey from Narita).

This blog post is in serious need of proper proof reading. It is painful to read.

JP: thanks for the Eddy Izzard link, it made my day! Wish my mind worked as fast as his...

That said, per any alleged sexism from Schwartz, at the same time, by her moniker, the "Food BABE" partially leaves herself open to this does she not?

Sheepmilker,

JP: thanks for the Eddy Izzard link, it made my day! Wish my mind worked as fast as his…

I have read that Izzard has to practice a lot to make it look improvised ;-) However, that may just be sour grapes from another envious comedian. Improvised or not, I love his work. Don't miss his skit on the Death Star canteen.

I wouldn't be so quick to criticize Dr. Joe as sexist on this issue. Part of her shtick is to exploit her attractiveness in calling herself a babe, for heaven's sake. She, thus, invites people to take note of her as nice to look at. Her beauty serves to mask her ignorance, at least from the less savvy.

This blog post is in serious need of proper proof reading.

Would you care to specify a preferred decade while you're at it?

Kreb -- re Eddie Izzard

Don’t miss his skit on the Death Star canteen.

$\times \hbox{a million}$

(That one's for you, Narad.)

@ Gryph

This blog post is in serious need of proper proof reading. It is painful to read.

I know, right?
Reading the Food Babe's unscientific assertions always give me an headache. I too wish she uses a proof reader.

Oh, you meant Orac's post? I didn't notice anything.

@ SocraticGadfly

by her moniker, the “Food BABE” partially leaves herself open to this does she not?

It's true that she is using her good looks as part of her sale pitches. But criticizing her on this is still too close to sexism for comfort - it's talking about the package, where the issues are mostly about the content.
Using one's appearance to persuade is common to all genders , so focusing on this part could also qualify as double standard.

We have been guilty of this too on past threads of this blog, when talking about Jenny McCarthy. That her only credentials behind her "expertise" on vaccines is her Playboy bunny past should be irrelevant in judging her claims.
To start with, a number of very smart women have been known to pose in the nude (if asked for examples, I will plead the 5th). And even someone - man or woman or whatever - who is under average intelligence/wisdom may still come with pertinent observations.
Sometimes being smart results in being very good at deluding oneself.

It's an awfully silly way to go about it.

^ The \hbox, that is.

Actually, if she wants to take a journey on an airplane full of 100 % oxygen, i have have the same advice i have for people who want a diet free of "foods containing DNA": Give it a shot! Let us know how it goes!

I figure if we let these people try their ill-informed schemes, the problem will resolve itself in a hurry, thus removing the problems from our gene pool.

(I am not normally this callous, i promise. I do not actually want anyone to die in a fiery plane crash. Sadly, she would need a pilot to pull off her stunt, and that's the death of an innocent, which i cannot condone.)

Well, perhaps all roads lead to the Dude! Why not?

Unlike many others, I seem to have had little to no horrible experiences at airports except for cold, late night waits and worries about being arrested ( long story- I did nothing wrong but a doctor gave me meds that may have been illegal where I would land and I didn't want to toss them).

Recently, I had a delay of an extra 6 hours or so because there had been a runway crash the day previously and many flights were cancelled or re-routed but it was surprisingly tolerable altho' my companion b!tched for most of the extra 6 hours. Lovely fellow.

Then there was that time that the air seemed unbreathable inside Salt Lake terminal where one would expect pristine mountain purity or suchlike.

Helianthus, I agree that discussing Hari using her appearance might veer close to sexism but I think that we can stipulate that it ISN'T because she's a woman. Men do it as well. And perhaps they all suggest that by following their lead into woo-dom, customers might also improve their own looks without resorting to more drastic means.

In other words, they are misleading people into thinking that they look as they do BECAUSE of the woo. They sell youth and beauty and THINNESS which may have nothing to do with their diet plans or bizarre supplement rituals. There is heredity and perhaps, additional assistance from exercise trainers, stylists and cosmetic surgeons. I don't think that she looks as she does in photo shoots when she wakes up in the morning.

I would submit that any woman who refers to herself as a "Babe" in order to exploit her own sexuality for the purpose of selling her "product," is thereby appearing to invite sexist comments.

I am not excusing sexism or misogyny, simply pointing a fundamental reality of the human psyche.

Hi Narad -- I'm a troglodyte who still uses plain TeX for a lot of things. As it is I already spend too much time on what I describe as "tool-sharpening", i.e. tuning software to some task I have in mind.

I'm reminded of a grad school acquaintance from the South, who once memorably expressed his impatience with certain arcane galactic structure analyses he was being marched through in class, as his instrument project remained unbuilt, by exclaiming

Who wants to re-derahve effin' Oart's Limit when there's SAHNCE waitin' to be done!!

(Bowdlerized slightly.)

I am not excusing sexism or misogyny, simply pointing a fundamental reality of the human psyche.

Actually, excusing sexism and misogyny strikes me as being exactly what you are doing, all while denying it with a dismissive, "It's just human nature."

Actually, if she wants to take a journey on an airplane full of 100 % oxygen, i have have the same advice i have for people who want a diet free of “foods containing DNA”: Give it a shot! Let us know how it goes!

In fairness, it would be possible to eat a diet free of foods containing DNA. However, it would require eating highly artificial, processed foods, such as protein extract and processed sugar. There couldn't be an fresh fruits, vegetables, fish, or meat. Not quite what those people had in mind. :-)

20 years ago we flew on Air China from Nanchang to Shanghai. The plane was delayed while I watched the flight crew literally duct tape over a section of the fuselage.

I don't remember anything else about that flight--in fact, I don't think I thought about anything else for the entire flight.

Re: The principle of " if you can’t pronounce a chemical’s name, it shouldn’t be in food"

Does that mean that someone with any sort of classical education or a talent for languages or, heck, a native of Greece can safely eat things that most people can't?

Do chemicals stop harming you after you learn to pronounce their names?

Chemicals are fairy-tale characters, I guess--knowing their true name gives you power over them!

Denice,

Unlike many others, I seem to have had little to no horrible experiences at airports except for cold, late night waits and worries about being arrested ( long story- I did nothing wrong but a doctor gave me meds that may have been illegal where I would land and I didn’t want to toss them).

I'm reminded of arriving at Detroit Airport a few decades ago during a period of experimentation with high dose vitamin C (I was experiencing a lot of viral infections and I thought it worth a try). It was only when I was stopped by an immigration official and searched that it occurred to me that traveling with an unlabeled bag of white powder wasn't the brightest of ideas. Thankfully they had a drug screening kit so I was only delayed by an hour or so (in a holding area with some very dodgy looking characters).The vitamin C had no noticeable effect on my health, by the way. I live and learn.

But she is a babe indeed! That is, she is naive and inexperienced in what she blogs about. Wether that is willfully so, just plain ignorance, or cynical exploitation and manipulation is left as an exercise for the student.

"Re: The principle of ” if you can’t pronounce a chemical’s name, it shouldn’t be in food”

Does that mean that someone with any sort of classical education or a talent for languages or, heck, a native of Greece can safely eat things that most people can’t?"

Or how it may effect the diet of someone with a speech impediment.

So according to Food Boob, I should throw away my prenatal vitamins? There are so many chemicals listed on the bottle...

JGC, you should follow my advice about the Ask the Pilot blog.
In all likelihood, what you saw was not duct tape, but something rather different.
http://www.askthepilot.com/duct-tape/
Of course, Patrick Smith is probably a shill for Big Air.

"It can hardly be a coincidence that no language on Earth has ever produced the expression 'as pretty as an airport'.

" Airports are ugly. Some are very ugly. Some attain a degree of ugliness that can only be the result of a special effort. This ugliness arises because airports are full of people who are tired, cross, and have just discovered that their luggage has landed in Murmansk (Murmansk airport is the only known exception to this otherwise infallible rule), and architects have on the whole tried to reflect this in their designs.

" They have sought to highlight the tiredness and crossness motif with brutal shapes and nerve-jangling colours, to make effortless the business of separating the traveller for ever from his or her luggage or loved ones, to confuse the traveller with arrows that appear to point at the windows, distant tie racks, or the current position of Ursa Minor in the night sky, and wherever possible to expose the plumbing on the grounds that it is functional, and conceal the location of the departure gates, presumably on the grounds that they are not."

-- from "The Long Dark Tea-time of the Soul", chapter 1, by Douglas Adams

@ Krebiozen:

I can imagine that in vivid detail. Yiiiiii!

One of the idiots I survey insists that air travellers be scrupulously careful because of bacteria, viruses and blood clots. Thus he recommends a medley of woo-centric solutions:
- wear an air purifier ( that he sells) on a neck chain that cleans the toxic air
- clean off your seat and tray with a pre-mixed antiseptic and then put paper towels on surfaces to keep your hand clean
- do a series of leg exercises every 20 - 30 minutes
- ingest green juices, various supplements and TAKE 500 mg of vitamin C every hour.

That last one is hilarious.

The last trans-atlantic flight I was on featured what might be the most trascendentally clueless passenger health effort I've ever seen. They ran a video featuring a group of presumably famous fitness experts demonstrating a series of exercises that they had designed to be performed in an airline seat. Brillaint idea, right?

Not so much. They demonstrated their exercises in a row of ariliner seats stuck on a beach someplace tropical, and most of them involved motions that not only would invade your neighbor's personal space, but would also require passing directly through the row directly in front of you. When they got to the leg lifts (sticking legs straight out in front, at full extension, which they were expecting us to actually be attempting in our seats), I actually burst out laughing, so I guess it was at least beneficial in relieving tension. ;-)

I meant "transcendently" there, not "transcendentally". :-P

Re: The principle of ” if you can’t pronounce a chemical’s name, it shouldn’t be in food”

Does that mean that someone with any sort of classical education or a talent for languages or, heck, a native of Greece can safely eat things that most people can’t?

Do chemicals stop harming you after you learn to pronounce their names?

Chemicals are fairy-tale characters, I guess–knowing their true name gives you power over them!

So if you can't pronounce it, you can't eat it? Given what my daughters tell me, I'd be SOL at a French restaurant.

I'm reminded of the time I was in the (now sorely-missed) Manhattan restaurant, The Brasserie. At the next table was a family form Texas, which I knew from their strong accents. When it was the dad's turn to order, he told the waitress, "I'll have some of that there Quick Lorraine" It was funny, but a lot of people wouldn't have the nerve to try it and would order something they could pronounce instead. Quelle courage!

@Denice Walter #193

You mean scientist/doctor/saint/philanthropist/athlete/investigative reporter/author/nutritionist/consumer advocate/civil rights and social justice advocate/genius/trailblazer/historian/philosopher, man who almost died from an overdose of his own supplement, Gary Null, right?

there’s SAHNCE waitin’ to be done!!

I really want to adapt that as my team's new rallying cry.

Wow, Vancouver is really home for pseudo-science here.

Newest diet trend:

http://www.theprovince.com/health/juice+juice+Vancouver+dietitians+dump…

@ Paul Hewitt:

You are correct.

And most likely, anyone who followed his plan regarding the 500 mg per hour vitamin C regime on a long flight would be quite busy pooping across America or the Atlantic- as the case might b-e thus negating the need for the twice or thrice hourly exercise routines.

I’m a troglodyte who still uses plain TeX for a lot of things.

I realize that I'm just being persnickety, but you still don't need the \hbox. (In real life – i.e., absent competent manuscript editors – such constructions are a recipe for having in-line text rendered by MathJax or as GIFs. The same goes for units unless forced to, which essentially comes down to only displays and subs/sups.)

It was worth it today just to read the comments. My two cents:
Worst airport I have been in - Vegas. Because they even have slot machines and booze everywhere in that airport but no decent food anywhere. There is an almost palpable aura of desperation hanging over the place.
Colon prep - I did one for a barium lower GI scan (due to some issues I was having) the prep really didn't bother me that much, though I missed an entire 2 days of work and spent way too much quality time in the bathroom. You don't get any nifty drugs though. The procedure is uncomfortable, more due to the fact they pump your colon full of barium and then air so you are really (really) bloated afterward and uncomfortable. Plus you end up doing pirouettes to coat the sides so they can image it so its pretty funny. I was joking with the nurse and the radiology guy because hey why not have some fun with this procedure. And the nurse was so nice and so grateful to me. She said a lot of people get really angry and yell at them because they were uncomfortable. She was so solicitous (presumably because I wasn't berating her) it was a bit uncomfortable actually. Hubby had a colonoscopy done a couple of years ago due to the fact that when I bullied him into a physical his blood pressure was high, they put him on two meds, which dropped it like a stone and he ended up with some severe GI issues. Which was later attributed to a sudden decrease in blood flow and his entire intestinal lining dying and sloughing off. Which scared the crap out of both of us. He did not handle the bowel prep well. He cannot take pain, and any kind of GI discomfort will have him vomiting. So he was running from both ends through the whole prep. I felt bad. But he takes to anesthetics like a champ, he doesn't even remember the procedure at all. And then I took him home and he slept all day. To this day he is on the lowest dose possible of lisinopril which manages his blood pressure fine. Unfortunately small child is a lot like his father, the first sign we had that he was ill (which turned out to be a sore throat) was when he started spectacularly vomiting everywhere. They only reason I have for the vomiting has to be pain. I feel sorry for him. I also feel a bit sorry for us having to clean it up because no one vomits more spectacularly than a small child.

And let's not forget that referring to one's self as a "Babe" sort of invites commentary thereon, and thus such comments shouldn't be considered sexist. "You started it!"

Um. No. The comments are still sexist, but nice try. Well, not really. (As if I haven't heard that one a million times before, a couple of times already before you in this very thread.)

I feel sorry for him. I also feel a bit sorry for us having to clean it up because no one vomits more spectacularly than a small child.

You have my sincere condolences.

And let’s not forget that referring to one’s self as a “Babe” sort of invites commentary thereon, and thus such comments shouldn’t be considered sexist.

*sigh*

Scenario: a woman calling herself "Wonderful Babe" is providing sound dietary/lifestyle advice - like some sort of fitness regimen and 5 portions of veggies a day.
She is calling herself a "Babe". Is this inviting commentary thereon?
If yes, why? I thought we were picking on the "Food Babe" because her advice is mostly wrong.
If not, why? Focusing on her gender sure looks sexist.

For those readers who have (plenty of) time, I would recommend perusing the articles on gender representation on the TVTropes website, starting maybe with
Men Are Generic, Women Are Special or another classic, The Smurfette Principle.
These articles don't really provide ethical answers, but they help define our cultural background and main tendencies.

Even if we accept the premise, that Vani Hari "started it" by nicknaming herself "Babe", it doesn't mean we have to play the same game. It's childllke.

Militant Agnostic -

If you are really averse to anesthetics you can do it without any drugs.

It's not so much that I'm averse to them, it's just that I'm useless the rest of the day after getting a general anesthetic. Combine that with a day of prep, and that's two days down the tubes. So to speak.

everybody there seemed to think I was a major hardass.

For getting a colonoscopy without anesthesia? I see what you did there.

For the Brits on the board -- the gastroenterologist who did the spousal unit's colonoscopy is named Dr Quazi.

Shay @199

I really want to adapt that as my team’s new rallying cry.

I think you could do a lot worse. The group I was in produced an astonishing number of heavy hitters (present company excepted, somewhat, though I haven't done badly).

Narad @202 -- I generally use \hbox within displayed equations. I realize that there were only single dollar-signs around my example expression, so that may have been misleading. Sometimes \hbox is expedient, e.g.

$$\hbox{Barycentric JD of mid-eclipse} = 2457032.2830(1) + 0.1373527(2) E,$$
where $E$ is the cycle number..

Call me crazy and/or a shill of I don't even know what, but I'm pretty much done listening to anything someone has to say if they've ever claimed that the air on a plane is "sometimes almost 50 percent" nitrogen.

It's the double blunder of a) that is obviously not true, yet you are saying it and b) your clear ignorance of what "air" even is.

I'm not sure what the precise air system airlines use is, but I find it implausible to suggest that they carry massive, massive oxygen tanks for the sole purpose of trying to cause oxygen toxicity in both passengers and crew on long-haul flights, and having been *on* very very long flights, I can say with confidence that the experience was not characterised by super-oxygenated air.

"I find it implausible to suggest that they carry massive, massive oxygen tanks for the sole purpose of trying to cause oxygen toxicity in both passengers and crew on long-haul flights"

No, the massive tanks are for dispersing chemtrails. Duh.

From what little I understand, passenger aircraft strike a balance between fuel economy and comfort by recirculating some of the air in the cabin, mixing it something like 50:50 with fresh outside air. That outside air has to be compressed, which process uses engine energy. It's still just plain air, which is naturally a mix of 79% nitrogen, 20% oxygen, and 1% or so CO2 and other gasses. This is off the top of my head from casual reading and college chemistry, so some details may be off a bit. Ms. Hari's blog, on the other hand, is so far off of reality that I wouldn't recognize the color of the sky on her planet.

sometimes almost 50 percent nitrogen

Given Hari's typical degree of accuracy, claiming cabin air is 50% nitrogen is, in relative terms, extraordinarily accurate.

100% oxygen would certainly learn them washroom smokers a thing or two.

It is certainly possible to extract quite pure oxygen from air with "portable" equipment, though the energy input for continuously-refreshed cabin air would probably be rather obscene.
People with respiratory problems can buy oxygen extraction units for home use. Some tire stores use basically the same process, but throw away the oxygen and keep the nitrogen (and you can find claims, I believe at the NASCAR site, that the pressure in nitrogen-filled tires doesn't change when they get hot).

For those interested in how airplane cabin pressure actually works.
http://www.airspacemag.com/flight-today/how-things-work-cabin-pressure-…

For the record:
As Jenny McCarthy's only claim any vestige of authority is her celebrity, and since the prime source of her celebrity is as a Playmate, I believe it is relevant to the subject of her anti-vaccine activism. She would not be an effective or credible activist if she weren't a celebrity to begin with, and wouldn't be a celebrity if not for being a Playmate. I wouldn't consider it sexist, either, as I woukd consider it equally relevant if she were a man who's sole qualification was "posed for Playgirl."

I know nothing about the Food Babe, outside of what you've written. But if her arguments were based on an equally specious "argument to celebrity" rather than massive ignorance, I'd consider the source of that celebrity fair criticism as well.

doug @ 214:

I always understood the rationale of filling racing tires with nitrogen to be to keep oxygen from attacking the rubber (well, on the inside anyway) when they got really hot.. Oxygen is an extremely corrosive gas.

JerryA, you are right about the recirculation of the air in the cabin. The outside air is bled off from the compressors in the engines, has the same composition as outside air, and is pressurized to about the 6,000 foot level. The only oxygen the planes carry is for the emergency masks, which only has to last until the plane comes down to a sufficiently lower altitude, normally only a few minutes. Airlines and aircraft designers fight to cut literally every ounce of weight they can from a plane, so carrying tanks of anything not absolutely necessary doesn't go.

My shot at Food Babe style of fear-mongering, which I've used a number of times, is this:

Sodium is a substance which explodes on contact with water and is a basic component of gunpowder. Chlorine was a poison gas used to kill or maim tens of thousands during the First World War. Despite this record, sodium chloride is found in virtually all processed foods, even those marketed as "natural." Many people unwittingly keep this substance in their kitchens and sprinkle it on their food. Big Food markets this deadly combinations as "table salt," "sea salt," and Kosher salt." Stand up to Big Food and demand Congress ban salt.

The reason nitrogen is used for filling race car tires is because the nitrogen from a gas supply house is very dry, so the variation in pressure with temperature is predictable. If any gas is heated in a fixed volume the pressure will increase regardless for any gas. (PV =zNRT) * At tire pressures, this is close enough to ideal gas that the pressure will be proportional to absolute temperature. The service life of race tires is so short that any oxidation at high temperatures is not an issue. If the tires are filled from a compressor, a small amount of liquid water may be entrained in the air, resulting in an unpredictable increase in pressure as the tire heats up and the liquid vaporizes.

*P = Pressure, V = Volume, z is gas "deviation" or "super-compressibility factor" which accounts for the devitiation from ideal gas behaviour (mostly due to van der Waals forces and the finite size of the gas molecules), N = number of moles of gas, R is constant dependent on the units used, T is absolute temperature.

$$\hbox{Barycentric JD of mid-eclipse} = 2{,}457{,}032.2830(1) + 0.1373527(2) E,$$

Be kind to the reader. "E\,," is also a nice touch.

BTW, what the hell happened to the AJ? Three hundred and two pages for all of 2014? It seems to have cratered starting in 2011. (I was looking to see the extent to which they were just belching up author [La]TeX, but the few papers I looked at were so ugly that I couldn't go on.)

Is it really so "sexist" to point out that someone who has traded on her good looks and who calls herself a "babe" to increase her appeal to viewers/consumers has actually succeeded in that objective?

@Rockin'Dave
"Airlines and aircraft designers fight to cut literally every ounce of weight they can from a plane"
True, but I never understand why they constantly redo their planes livery, using several tons of paint each time.

I also feel a bit sorry for us having to clean it up because no one vomits more spectacularly than a small child.

Best Olympic event EVAH.

Hi Narad -- AJ has stopped actually printing, and I think ApJ has as well, going entirely online. I believe AJ had some throughput issues last year, at the editorial level, but hopefully they've been resolved; this may have contributed to the low volume. There's some thought of merging all the AAS journals into a gigantic blobule of content. The move from the University of Chicago Press to IOP some years ago was a rocky one, and it caused quite a lot of damage to production standards, though I have to say that my print-design sense isn't anything like yours.

Oh, and as for JD, everyone knows that full JDs have 7 digits to the left of the decimal point; commas are uses rarely.

(In case anyone else is curious -- Julian Date is a system by which days are simply numbered sequentially, with an essentially arbitrary starting point around 4047 BC, before historical time. Time-of-day is handled by simple fractions (extra decimals). This has the huge advantage that once you can find the time interval between any two events by simply their dates and times to JD -- and subtracting! )

Narad again -- The level of word salad in the previous comment shows why I should never be a copy-editor.

"... commas are USED rarely"

"... by simply CONVERTING their dates ... "

@Tom -

For the record:
As Jenny McCarthy’s only claim any vestige of authority is her celebrity, and since the prime source of her celebrity is as a Playmate, I believe it is relevant to the subject of her anti-vaccine activism.

So when discussing, say, Danica McKellar's popular treatments of mathematics (such as "Kiss My Math: Showing Pre-Algebra Who's Boss"), you'd feel it was relevant to include her work in The Wonder Years and her pictures in Maxim?

Oh, and as for JD, everyone knows that full JDs have 7 digits to the left of the decimal point; commas are use[d] rarely.

There were at least 35 years during which the ApJ wouldn't let you do that.

@ dingo199

Depends.
Do we also take Mike Adams and Vladimir Putin to task for doing essentially the same thing, in a male version?

@Helianthus:

I dunno who "we" are, but mockery of Putin's macho posing is hardly rare.

@John McKay
Close, but do you really think the Food Babe and her followers would reliably draw the connection between "chlorine" and "chloride"?

Narad - man, that's a beautiful result in that paper.

Especially when I'm making tables that have lots of JDs in them, I'll generate the tables using scripts that read directly from data files and set up the LaTeX formatting automagically. It's possible to insert commas in this step, but quite awkward, and of course that makes the tables much less easily machine-readable if that should be an issue. I figure that the advantages of leaving long strings of digits "untouched by human hands" outweighs the disadvantages for human legibility.

Then, of course, there are the Europeans who use commas in place of decimal points ...

This is both arcane and off-topic. I can hear the eye-rolling among the regulars from here $\ldots$

I dunno who “we” are, but mockery of Putin’s macho posing is hardly rare.

Then we are good :-)

Dingo199: "True, but I never understand why they constantly redo their planes livery, using several tons of paint each time."

The paint is to prevent the aluminum skin from eroding. There was a debate decades ago, but with pressurized planes it was decided to protect the skin. Small divots and stress fatigue on the skin can cause cracks and catastrophic failure.

Examples include the DeHaviland Comets that fell out of the sky and the plane in Hawaii where part of the upper fuselage blew off. Maintaining the fuselage skin and stringers is very important.

The bottom line is that if you have to repaint your aircraft every X years *anyway*, you might as well freshen up the decor at the same time. ;-) It pretty much costs the same either way. This is also why it takes years for an airline's fleet to completely change color -- barring purchase by another airline (which might drive quicker repainting for legal reasons), they're only being repainted when they're up for repainting anyway.

Narad -- A colleague of mine is reporting that Astrophysical Journal is asking him to submit his article all laid out in two-column format as he'd like it to appear in the Journal. He rightly objects, pointing out that graphic design layout is not what he's trained for.

Ugh. For those halcyon days, when S. Chandrasekhar read every paper in the Journal personally, and the layout was perfect ...

A colleague of mine is reporting that Astrophysical Journal is asking him to submit his article all laid out in two-column format as he’d like it to appear in the Journal.

That doesn't make a great deal of sense, since one doesn't even have the same fonts available.* It's not just the Letters macro package to gauge page length? I may be able to make some inquiries. Or start up a cottage industry.

For those halcyon days, when S. Chandrasekhar read every paper in the Journal personally, and the layout was perfect …

Hey, Gould used to lay out the AJ himself.

* No, I didn't run one through Acrobat Pro/Enfocus before saying that.

^ Of course, it's a lot easier when you're not setting on 21 pica columns. (La)TeX's default spacing rules aren't very good at this, either.

the plane in Hawaii where part of the upper fuselage blew off. Maintaining the fuselage skin and stringers is very important.

That's why FSM gave us duct-tape.

hdb: "That’s why FSM gave us duct-tape."

R...i...g...h...t:
https://iconicphotos.wordpress.com/2010/04/24/aloha-airline-accident/

By the way, I going on what I had learned in an engineering class I took decades ago on how design decisions can create unexpected benefits/deficits, plus classes I did on metal fatigue, fracture mechanics and brittle materials. I did find an actual airliner manufacturing page on the relative costs of painting versus polishing:
http://www.boeing.com/commercial/aeromagazine/aero_05/textonly/fo01txt…

The summery: "Though the weight of paint adds to fuel consumption, the fuel-cost savings offered by polished surfaces is outweighed by the cost of maintaining the polished surfaces. However, because this difference is a very small percentage of operating cost, many operators decide to paint or polish their airplanes based on marketing and environmental impact considerations. Some believe that a distinctive image can best be achieved with a full paint scheme, while others believe the image can be projected best by mostly polished surfaces. The availability of safe solvents and facilities that comply with environmental laws can also play a role in the choice between painting and polishing."

@ dingo199

Depends.
Do we also take Mike Adams and Vladimir Putin to task for doing essentially the same thing, in a male version?

I think Dr. Oz is a pretty close equivalent. And I don't think I've ever heard or seen anyone trash him for trading on his good looks and/or masculine charms to attract a worshipful, predominantly female audience to whose fears and desires he panders.

But that's definitely what he does do.

So there you have it.

@palindrom:

OK, I've looked at the most recent open-access ApJ PDF that I could find (the 2015 March 1 erratum for Whalen et al., which itself could use some editing, as it reads more like some sort of minor addendum). I have a sinking feeling.

They appear to have abandoned professional typesetting software wholesale. This was set entirely in LaTeX (with hyperref! yay!), with the dvips fed to Adobe Distiller on a Windows box to make PDF.

<tldr>
They are using Adobe text fonts plus MathTime fonts,* all in what seems to be a post hoc CFF wrapper for the underlying Type 1 subset. And the whole thing isn't PDF/A-1 compliant. So long as they're still making HTML in the usual fashion, there has to be an underlying representation that takes in LaTeX, makes what it can of it, and spits out both HTML and fresh LaTeX, if demonstrated by nothing other than duplication of spacing errors (PDF) and a presumption of inertia.

I have, however, figured out what I thought was a plummeting page count: they've also abandoned sequential pagination.This is a fairly natural outcome, given that TOCs, which were formerly carefully ordered, would no longer add anything much to a print edition. Why the concomitant fiction of volumes and numbers persists calls for a professional** opinion.

I suspect that the content-blob model has a reasonable chance of success; if it happens, though, I would view the likely "natural evolution" rationale with a jaundiced eye unless it's brutally fiscal and doesn't appeal to a sympathetically constructed look-back time.
</tldr&gt***

In summary, yah, I can imagine where the idea of bailing wholesale on responsibility for the PDF outcome might be floated in a test fashion. I can also imagine 2.5–3 "reasons," all fundamentally crappy.

If your colleague objects, he or she should go straight to the EIC. It would at least help to force the question whether the policy is actually as follows:

If you care what it looks like, that's your responsibility. We haven't been doing that anyway, and don't suppose that there is any guarantee that your efforts will actually manifest like you thought, much less that either of us has something resembling what competence would mean in the first place.

* Which is hilarious, because Michael Spivak – whose introductory calculus text is typographically unique in my experience – loathed (h_tps://groups.google.com/forum/?hl=en#!msg/comp.fonts/QGiBHRwmdyA/z3193T-rgkAJ) Knuth's calligraphic font. But that's a longer story. It must have taken somebody a good 45 minutes, or days involving teleconferences, or something, to remap '\cal'.
** Hi, Ms. Walter.
*** I cut out way more, if that helps.

^ One semicolon short of what became the finish line.

@ann:

I think Dr. Oz is a pretty close equivalent. And I don’t think I’ve ever heard or seen anyone trash him for trading on his good looks and/or masculine charms to attract a worshipful, predominantly female audience to whose fears and desires he panders.

Does he call himself the Medicine Hunk?

@ narad:

Heh. Heh. *Ms* Walter. Why so formal? you know-
I don't do titles.
Nor am I *entitled*.

Seriously, I can't dx that on the internet. Athough Orac's minions may, unless professional guidelines prohibit it.
But not self-censoring over-the-top fantasies is rather obvious.

@ ann:

Dr Oz certainly trades on his good looks ( however I never really thought so, despite the fact that he's one of those so-called Mediterranean-ish ones that I usually enjoy) but doesn't go about calingl himself Dr Hottie.
Sure, he's more sophisticated and brighter than Hari. He doesn't need to say it.
And Hari can always say it's tongue in cheek.

In general, many woo-meisters (* et maitresses de wu*) keep up appearances suggesting, often in a subtle way. that 'living right' and eating correctly leads to health, longevity, thinness and sexual desirability.

As you may know, Mike Adams used to have photos of himself posing *a la* Putin on the Health Ranger site ( now scrubbed and replaced with videos of ducklings and suchlike). He posted his height, weight and blood chemistries, too. Also scrubbed.

I think he gained weight- thus the lab coat

Similarly. Gary Null's sites are filled with photos and videos of him, running, dancing, posing. He claims that people endlessly tell him that he looks the same as he did 30 years ago whilst they themselves have aged terribly. He even has comparison photos up- I swear!

There's even a site/ poster known as 'Raw Beauty' often featured at Vaccine Machine facebook.

Correction:
That may be Raw FOR Beauty ( raw beauty is something else)

As you may know, Mike Adams used to have photos of himself posing *a la* Putin on the Health Ranger site ( now scrubbed and replaced with videos of ducklings and suchlike).

Really? Like riding bears and sh*t? Or comets?

Dr Oz certainly trades on his good looks ( however I never really thought so, despite the fact that he’s one of those so-called Mediterranean-ish ones that I usually enjoy)

Yeah, I mean, considering I'm something like a 4.5 on the ol' Kinsey scale, I'm prob'ly not the person to ask, but I never really got it. I have unconventional tastes, though.

@justthestats --

No, he does not. But from a predominantly-female-daytime-TV-audience perspective, the "Dr." does the same job, when attached to a dark, handsome man bearing miracle weight-loss formulas. For lots of reasons. Including sexism, actually.

In any event, so what, though? She calls herself a babe. I can see how that makes stating one's opinion on whether she is or is not babelicious fair game -- ie, "I don't know, She just doesn't do it for me," etc.

But I can't see how it otherwise leaves her open to revilement on gender-based/-inflected) grounds. She's attractive. It's a professional asset to her. That's show-biz.

@ JP:

No, Mikey was just posing like a body builder to show off his arms. ( circa 2010? the site must be dig-up-able) Bad enough. There was a video of him on a beach spinning around with some apparatus on a chain for exercise.

Oz is somewhat good looking I suppose but not my type. I do like usually darker men- altho' one of the creatures I currently tolerate is quite the golden boy. I do know ( or keep) so-called Black Irish who are hot and I was fortunate enough to have a tattooed Moroccan living next doors with the gay men for a while. And there's a lovely Spanish 50 year old working at the supermarket.

But I digress, in short I think that most women would like Oz' looks but he's no George Clooney.

-btw- one of my cousins, in international banking, had to address Putin through a translator. He wasn't pleased.
Putin is rather short but still frightening.

I do know ( or keep) so-called Black Irish who are hot

I was once asked if I was "Black Norwegian," which I guess maybe refers to the Sami people or something? But the general presence of pigmentation they were picking up on comes from the other side of the family. (My brother, OTOH, is as Nordic-looking as they come, yet another example of how we are "as different as night and day." Genetics are funny.)

Putin is rather short but still frightening.

Yes, in the manner that cold-hearted and completely sociopathic people tend to be. I actually had a dream once, about a year ago, where I met Putin - I recounted it to some Ukrainian friends, and they asked, "What's wrong with you that you didn't try to kill him?"

A friend mentioned recently that she and her husband met The Babe at an event before she was notorious/famous. I enjoy all the digressions in this thread but want to mention that I was told Babe was hungry for attention and inappropriately flirted with her husband. Showbiz indeed. The friend is a registered dietitian and was appalled at this woman's crass marketing approach and stone-cold ignorance. No excuse for the sexist attitudes toward her, though. The ignorance should stand on its own absence of merit.

JP: "I was once asked if I was “Black Norwegian,” which I guess maybe refers to the Sami people or something?"

Not in my family. With us it was referring to Norwegians with darker hair, and sometimes more olive skin. My grandfather was called a "Black Norwegian." It was explained that we were descendents of those the Vikings had dragged back from the Mediterranean and Black Sea regions.

I believed it when I was seventeen, but now not so much. Over the years I have learned that family stories can be mostly characterized as family myths.

@ Chris:

Right. My cousin's Black Irish husband truly believes that he is somehow descended from a Spanish sailor shipwrecked from the Armada in the time of Elizabeth.

The other BI one in my life believes he's Celtic

My Irish friend's genetics test out at 15% Spanish..

My own mother ( not Irish) could pass herself off as a person from the Middle East.

Let's face it, people in all cultures/ ethnicities are diverse looking.

Exactly. Folks did get around a few centuries ago.

Still, I believe the accuracy of certain commercial genetic tests as much as I believe family stories.

I've considered doing one of those genetic tests for the heck of it sometime, but I never seem to have 100 bucks lying around to devote to the purpose. A friend of mine of Polish descent - second-generation - did one, and it came back 99% Northern European and 1% Asian. There was a Cossack somewhere in the lineage or something, I guess.

And now I have to run along to a pagan rite.

Happy Spring, everybody!

JP @259

A friend of mine of Polish descent – second-generation – did one, and it came back 99% Northern European and 1% Asian.

Why not? Geographically, Poland’s smack in the middle of everything,* and throughout history has been invaded from all sides. Including from the east: Asia.

There was a Cossack somewhere in the lineage or something, I guess.

You’re stretching. According to my maps, Ukraine is in Europe.

*OK, yeah, I know, the whole world isn’t Northern Europe

COI declaration: I have a Cossack somewhere in my lineage, too.

Oz is somewhat good looking I suppose but not my type.

Ditto Hari, Ainscough. Nothing whatever appealing about McCarthy. I tend to wonder why people bother with making blanket assertions about attractiveness in the first place.

Similarly. Gary Null’s sites are filled with photos and videos of him, running, dancing, posing. He claims that people endlessly tell him that he looks the same as he did 30 years ago whilst they themselves have aged terribly.

Amazing what a crummy hair dye job can do.

@ Narad:

I suspect that there is a prototypical *attractive* male/ female image that these people can easily fit into or manipulate** -

thin, average-to-tall, no very outstanding features, reasonably normal hair, current styles of grooming/ clothing choices with minor variance to account for ethnic differences..
Wanna-bes can consult any fashion magazine or hire a stylist. It's big bizness and television enables it more.

** h3ll, I can make myself look extremely *acceptable* and I HAVE on occasion succeeded beyond my wildest.
BUT I no longer attempt taming my hair.

There was a Cossack somewhere in the lineage or something, I guess.

You’re stretching. According to my maps, Ukraine is in Europe.

Perhaps this is due to confusion among Cossack, Hassock and Ottoman.

thin, average-to-tall, no very outstanding features, reasonably normal hair, current styles of grooming/ clothing choices with minor variance to account for ethnic differences..

This strikes me as the definition of "plain," not "attractive."

I tend to wonder why people bother with making blanket assertions about attractiveness in the first place.

I meant for the "by conventional, commonly recognized cultural standards" to be implied. And I guess I also more or less meant "photogenically good-looking" -- ie, regular features, high cheekbones, wide-set eyes, well-defined jaw, etc. Although you don't have to be flawless in every regard to take a good picture, obviously. In fact, I note a distinct absence of pictures of Vani Hari's hips. She's always sitting down, leaning forward, or cropped at the waist. I regard that as telling.

In any event. There's no arguing about taste, on an individual level. None of the parties under discussion is appealing to me personally, fwiw.

Denice,

My cousin’s Black Irish husband truly believes that he is somehow descended from a Spanish sailor shipwrecked from the Armada in the time of Elizabeth.

Not entirely implausible, with some Irish surnames, Costello for example, sounding Spanish (I had an Irish colleague who believed this), but accounts I have read suggest that all survivors were summarily executed, not invited to stay and start a family with a comely Irish lass, sadly. The claim that the Scottish marmalade tradition started with oranges salvaged from wrecked Armada ships may (or may not) be true - the Armada got swept off course and had to get home by traveling north over Scotland and then down past Ireland.

Narad,

This strikes me as the definition of “plain,” not “attractive.”

Weirdly, what most people find attractive is the average face, not the exotic, as one might expect. Well, kind of, anyway.

@Chemmomo:

Yeah, I'm aware that Ukraine is in Europe, but Cossacks themselves had a certain Turkish admixture thing going on. Could been a Russian, too, I suppose - scratch a Russian and you'll find a Mongol, as the saying goes.

Re: Poland being invaded by everyone all the time: just the past few hundred years, really. It did quite well for itself throughout most of its noted history, most notably during the period of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. It went into a sad decline, largely due to internecine strife and abuse of the liberum veto among the nobility.

Speaking of "Asiatic" Poles, you should look up the Sarmatians sometime. They're great for a laugh.

^ Coulda been.

JP: "Re: Poland being invaded by everyone all the time: just the past few hundred years, really. It did quite well for itself throughout most of its noted history, most notably during the period of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth."

A good book on Polish scientists and WWII is The Fantastic Laboratory of Dr. Weigl: How Two Brave Scientists Battled Typhus and Sabotaged the Nazis by Arthur Allen. Some of the history of previous eras is explained.

@ Krebiozen:

There's an artist who photographically merges photos of a thousand people or so who live in various cities ( see Face of Tomorrow.org/ artwork) producing a face for each city: the images seem to have an abstract or even aethereal quality to my eyes- all of the individuals' distinct variations are eradicated.
I wonder if that's what some Renaissance artists did ( mentally of course) to create faces of saints and angels

(It occurs to me that "noted history" was probably meant to be "recorded history" in the blurb from me above.)

There were also some very key Polish code breakers working during WWII. I've never understood the whole "dumb Pollack" thing at all. I mean, Copernicus? Marie Curie? Their names don't sound Polish, I suppose.

O/T, but at this party I was at last night - this was before the effigy-burning portion of the evening - I learned from an epidemiology guy that DNA from VRE has mosied on over to mingle with MRSA and there's now a thing called VRSA. There have apparently only been 13 cases so far nationwide, but 8 of them are in Detroit.

Wow, amazing timing to see the discussion about the Irish connection with the Spanish. Yesterday I looked up what they now know about the black Irish after I got DNA results for my family that included origins in Ireland and the Iberian Peninsula. Turns out there are strong genetic ties, so I figure that the trace of Spanish ancestry is probably through an Irish ancestor. Nowhere else do I have ancestry in that region.

DNA shows Irish people have more complex origins than previously thought
http://www.sott.net/article/263587-DNA-shows-Irish-people-have-more-com…

@Krebiozen,
I'm curious what sources you've read about the Armada.
I'll have to do some digging, but what I recall talks about the Spanish sailors being rescued by the Catholic Irish (don't know about the Scots). Those were both still independent countries and neither was particularly friendly with the English.
On the beauty thing, I recall a study a few years ago that did computer averaging of characteristics and seemed to show that a very "average" face was perceived as more beautiful.

There were also some very key Polish code breakers working during WWII.

I am contractually obliged to explain that it was before WWII, in the mid 1930s, that Marian Rejewski and the rest of the Polish Cipher Bureau were reverse-engineering the Enigma machines.

Fair enough.

squirrelelite,

I’m curious what sources you’ve read about the Armada.
I’ll have to do some digging, but what I recall talks about the Spanish sailors being rescued by the Catholic Irish (don’t know about the Scots). Those were both still independent countries and neither was particularly friendly with the English.

It was a long time ago that I looked into this, but this page delves into the history and concludes it is a myth:

There exists no corroborating evidence to support the story of shipwrecked Spanish sailor's relations with Irish women and their resultant progeny. There does exist, however, a quantity of written testimony describing instances in which members of the Spanish Armada's shipwrecked crew were stripped naked, robbed and delivered over to English authorities or summarily murdered by the Catholic Irish peasants themselves.

JP @268
Good points. I’ll admit to trimming my remarks just to see how you’d reply.
Part of my point was you can’t rule out direct importation of genes considering the geography and history. And Poland, especially in the days of the Commonwealth, has always stood at the crossroads.

I suppose the real question is exactly what the testing company considers Asian and how do they categorize the Turks?

And don’t start me on that liberum veto: how to ruin a perfectly reasonable political system.

I’ll also thank you for getting me to pick up the book (Zamoyski’s) I have on Polish history again.

Thanks for the link, Krebiozen.

It's interesting reading.

I guess most of the references I've seen were only in pop literature, which doesn't given them much historical value.

The bit about preserving the claim as a way of asserting a prouder origin reminds me a bit of the large number of Americans who claim to be "partly Native American" with virtually no genealogical evidence.

Here in New Mexico (I've been told), there is a small community who try to maintain the pure line of descent from the original Spanish settlers in the 16th century. As far as I know, I've never met any of them. The closest I might have come was regularly serving pizza to the head of a family for whom one of the major streets in Albuquerque is named.

But since I have an ongoing interest in British history and one branch of my ancestry traces back to Northern Ireland, I'll try to do some more reading and refresh my knowledge.

I suppose the real question is exactly what the testing company considers Asian and how do they categorize the Turks?

Given that the Turkic peoples have their origin in Siberia/Central Asia, I would find it odd if they were genetically considered to be non-Asian. I'm not sure, though, and "Asian" is a really broad category anyway. I think this company basically tells you about continent of origin, with some continents broken down into smaller areas, I guess, like Northern Europe. In any case, it was a brief conversation as we were sitting around waiting for my advisor to show up to our little Polish lit seminar. It just sort of struck me as odd when I heard it, I guess.

And don’t start me on that liberum veto: how to ruin a perfectly reasonable political system.

It does seem to me an utterly nonsensical idea. Imagine what Congress would be like if the senators and representatives had such a power.

squirrelite,
Irish history is fascinating. I wasn't taught anything about it at school, and had to learn for myself just how shamefully the English behaved there, over a period of centuries. They tried to commit cultural genocide, for all practical purposes, banning the teaching of Gaelic, for example. One of the nastiest laws the English passed in Ireland was one granting the first son of a Catholic to convert to Protestantism the right to inherit his father's property.

BTW:

Those were both still independent countries and neither was particularly friendly with the English.

Ireland was pretty much under English rule by the time of the Armada (1588): the Kingdom of Ireland was declared by Henry VIII in 1541.

If your ancestry goes back to Northern Ireland you may well find it is actually Scottish*. The mass migration of Protestant planters from Scotland to Northern Ireland is the historical origin of The Troubles.

* My stepson's family on his father's side also has roots in Northern Ireland, but when I told him he was probably of Scottish ancestry (also based on his surname), he was mortified. Why is it that an Irish ancestry is seen as better than a Scottish one by many Americans?

Why is it that an Irish ancestry is seen as better than a Scottish one by many Americans?

I wasn't really aware that it was - I have a couple friends who are very much into their Scottish heritage, for whatever reason, and a friend who makes self-deprecating jokes about being descended from "shanty Irish." Those Scots by way of Northern Ireland, though, have a name in the States - Scots-Irish. In the South at least, "Scots-Irish" is basically synonymous with "white trash," which explain things to some extent.

I wasn’t taught anything about it at school, and had to learn for myself just how shamefully the English behaved there, over a period of centuries.

My dad's side of the family is a real cultural and genetic grab-bag,* but somehow managed to pass down an English surname, which has been a source of perpetual embarrassment for me. I'm sure my English forebears were just peasants or something, but still. (Somebody once told me my name sounded "fancy," actually, which made me giggle a little.)

*It is also the side of the family with all the smart/f*cked people in it.

^ "which might explain things to some extent."

^^ There was also supposed to be a hyphen and an "up" after "f*cked," though I suppose both meanings are actually pretty accurate.

Since this thread seems to have turned into a free-for-all:

Anyone looking for a new hobby related to health and science matters could spend many joyful hours calling out the complete nonsense found at eHow. It seems much of what is written is from general-purpose "professional writers" rather than people that actually know things. Have a boo at entries for hydrogen peroxide or tetanus (eating too much rust might cause a low type of tetanus that can be cured in day with a shot) or make-your-own hand sanitizers for some samples.

Ha!
We have a family myth/ legend that one of the ancestors came across the Channel with William- which I really doubt-
more likely, he sold the conquerors shoes or pies and became a hanger-on, adopting a Norman name.

HOWEVER because of this story many of us have artsy franchified Christian names ( *comme moi*) and were encouraged to learn French and visit France. Which I did.

Thus we have a large Trans-Atlantic family and many follow ancestral tales, business lore, writings and commune together. ( -btw- I am not descended from the newspaper family; someone created a fine gin though).

I look like the generic European - altho' the whiteness may throw them at first, I've been asked if I'm at least 10 nationalities- Irish, Swedish, Italian, Yugoslavian whatever. I suspect that there is some mixture.

My aunt married an Irishman and that huge family has even wilder tales except for the true one, which modern medicine has resolved:
cardiac technology has shown why many of them died suddenly young in past eras and now quite a few have had interventions ( pacemakers, conversions) to compensate- including a 14 year old girl.

"Why is it that an Irish ancestry is seen as better than a Scottish one by many Americans?"

Perhaps it has to do with marketing. After the potato famine many Irish immigrated to the USA, and it a backlash here. Apparently it was common to see "Irish need not apply."

Then by sheer numbers, they did start to take on the politics (especially in New York) and change it all in the early part of the 20th century:
http://www.historyplace.com/worldhistory/famine/america.htm

My brother is digging deep into our ancestry from the folks who came to the American colonies a few yeas after the Mayflower, and established a couple of town in Massachusetts, then spread all over.

Oh, and my brother is presently stationed in the UK, so he is taking advantage of all of the resources there. He has found sections that came from Norway, and those who also were part of the Norman evasion, plus one who was part of group to do engineering in Scotland, etc.

JP,

I wasn’t really aware that it was – I have a couple friends who are very much into their Scottish heritage, for whatever reason, and a friend who makes self-deprecating jokes about being descended from “shanty Irish.”

I may well have a warped perception of people's attitudes in the US - it's hard to generalize about 300 million people, though that doesn't seem to stop anyone. Or maybe it's because there are more Irish-Americans than Scots-Americans.

Those Scots by way of Northern Ireland, though, have a name in the States – Scots-Irish. In the South at least, “Scots-Irish” is basically synonymous with “white trash,” which explain things to some extent.

My wife often teases me that most of the hillbillies and rednecks in the US are descended from Brits - she is of German and Lithuanian descent.

My dad’s side of the family is a real cultural and genetic grab-bag,* but somehow managed to pass down an English surname, which has been a source of perpetual embarrassment for me. I’m sure my English forebears were just peasants or something, but still. (Somebody once told me my name sounded “fancy,” actually, which made me giggle a little.)

Is it really that bad having an English name? I must admit I am proud of my Welsh and Scottish ancestry and a bit ashamed of my mostly English blood. It's funny how national pride in England is perceived to be the preserve of right wing racists, though that has changed a bit in recent years.

*It is also the side of the family with all the smart/f*cked people in it.

Mixing up the genes does seem to result in more interesting people, to throw out yet another gross generalization :-)

If we are trading ancestral stories, a great-aunt on my dad's family found out recently that the Swiss (I think Swiss-German, although the surname is funny and unique) branch of the family can be traced back to an extremely infamous organized crime family back in Zurich. I am somehow not terribly surprised.

Chris,

Apparently it was common to see “Irish need not apply.”

The same was true in the UK not too many decades ago - "no blacks, no Irish, no dogs" was the classic sign outside boarding houses. An Irish friend of mine once told me, "they don't know you're black until you open your mouth". I like to think things are better these days.

Is it really that bad having an English name? I must admit I am proud of my Welsh and Scottish ancestry and a bit ashamed of my mostly English blood.

I was being a bit hyperbolic - it's a fine-sounding enough name, I suppose, and if I ever have children I'll probably saddle them with it. I remember being pretty appalled at the general historical behavior of the English when I first started doing some extra-curricular readings in history as a teenager.

I remember being pretty appalled at the general historical behavior of the English when I first started doing some extra-curricular readings in history as a teenager.

It's true, though people in general behaved rather horribly back then. If you look at how other colonial powers behaved in Africa, (here's an example grabbed from my memory more or less at random), the English don't seem quite so bad in comparison.

I'm reminded of a very similar practice that Christopher Columbus engaged - cutting of the hands of the natives of Hispaniola if they failed to bring him enough gold. Rather different from the whitewashed "in fourteen hundred ninety-two, Columbus sailed the ocean blue" version we were getting in school.

Given that the Turkic peoples have their origin in Siberia/Central Asia, I would find it odd if they were genetically considered to be non-Asian.

Ah, but remember the Tocharian culture in central Asia, writing an Indo-European language, until they were absorbed by Uighur tribes from Mongolia with their own Turkic language.
From the same area, "Asian" includes the blue-eyed, light-haired Tarim mummies.

Yeah, I remember seeing some fascinating Central Asian thangkas featuring red-haired, blue-eyed monks.

The Tocharian language, of course, shouldn't be confused with Tokharistan, the successor culture to Ancient Bactria, another fascinating Central Asian culture, one with which I became familiar largely through doing translation work (from Russian) for an archeology grad student.

The Tocharian language, of course, shouldn’t be confused with Tokharistan

I am always making that mistake. No wonder I don't get invited back.

And there are well-known green eyed women from places like India and Afghanistan ( actor Aishwarya Rai and the refugee photographed by Nat Geo ).

Well, the name "Tocharian" is based on the conflation, so I'd say it's easily forgivable. ;)

Have you been? I had the opportunity, as an undergrad, to go on a sort of "Silk Road" organized trip thingy, but I'd have had to take out a loan to do it, which I managed to avoid doing entirely throughout college, which I'm glad about in the end. Plus I was really more hot to go to Russia and Eastern Europe anyway, which I ended up being able to do in grad school.

Have you been?
Only in my active fantasy life.

Only in my active fantasy life.

Ah. I have taken the mental time machine to Ancient Bactria myself once or twice - in my imagination, at least, it is a very groovy place.

Bringing things back 'round to Vani Hari, she likes to exploit her Indian heritage as well as her looks for the sake of self-promotion, in a manner which is often hilariously stupid:

“Dad and Mom had my brother first and then, seven years later, me. They named me Vani, a name I hated as a child because my schoolmates made fun of it and no one could pronounce it. But in Indian, it means “voice”—how prophetic, because I’ve definitely developed one.”

Really? Her name means "voice" in Indian?

I imagine she is dumbing things down for her readership who would be confused by weird words like "Bengali" or "Gujarati" or whatever.

@Krebiozen (and JP),
I think my interest in English history began with some encyclopedia articles I read as a kid. My parents bought a Book of Knowledge when I was born and I was curious what was in all the other volumes.
My mother used to say we were a "duke's mixture", that is Irish, Scots-Irish (I think she said Scotch-Irish), Pennsylvania Dutch, Swedish and some other mixtures.
You don't have to go back all that far to find that all Europeans are related.
http://www.stat.yale.edu/~jtc5/papers/Ancestors.pdf
And like so-called past life memories, people are more interested in their high profile ancestors. It probably helps that there are better genealogical records for the nobility as well. As least before the Catholic church started recording everyone's birth, very few people bothered keeping track of the bastard children of the village scrubwoman.

The Belgian example is gruesome and not all that long ago.

We English did pretty well at treating everyone we could as badly as possible. For some reason we like to wallow in guilt over past atrocities. Does every nation do this? I remember reading that the Scots were originally from Ireland and that the Irish who came to 'Scotland' happily slaughtered the existing inhabitants before becoming the existing inhabitants. Humans....what a bunch of b&stards.

It seems only fitting to feel some sort of contrition over the atrocities one's own nation has committed; I have to sort of wonder about people who don't. I mean, there are some truly great things about the US, some of which I didn't realize or appreciate until I started traveling to other countries, but it's also a nation built on slavery and genocide. One could point out, true, that most nations, historically speaking, have been founded on genocide and have engaged in slavery, but I don't actually benefit on a day-to-day basis from, say, the oppression of the Ainu by the ethnic Japanese.

squirrelite,

You don’t have to go back all that far to find that all Europeans are related.

Since the British Isles were uninhabitable for thousands of years during the last Ice Age, we are all immigrants. Even the Picts came from Europe. There was an interesting genetic survey recently that found that Roman, Viking and Norman invasions did surprisingly little to alter the genetics of people living in Britain.

JP,

It seems only fitting to feel some sort of contrition over the atrocities one’s own nation has committed;

The sins of the fathers? I agree about contrition, though I also vaguely resent being held responsible for acts I did not and would not commit. As for righting wrongs, I struggle to know where to draw the line. Should the descendants of slaves be compensated? Slavery still undoubtedly has an impact that is visible today (also, let's not forget that slavery is alive and well in several parts of the world). For example, the Africans I know mostly have robust extended family structures, whereas the Caribbean people I know often do not. The phenomenon of the baby-mother (one man having several children by different mothers) in Caribbean cultures is a relic of slavery, which destroyed traditional cultural structures. Many of the problems experienced by the descendants of slaves are passed on from generation to generation. Some institutions and the wealth of some families are rooted in slavery. How should this be addressed, if at all? I don't know. I wish I did.

I agree about contrition, though I also vaguely resent being held responsible for acts I did not and would not commit.

Yeah; it's not that I feel responsible for those acts, but I do realize that they created the world I live in and so, somehow, I'm a little bit complicit, even though I'd rather not be. I mean, I haven't exactly had it easy in life, and none of my ancestors were slaveholders that I know of, or anything, but I did eventually realize that I do have certain advantages just because I'm white and have a white-sounding name, for instance. It bothers me because it isn't fair, but I also don't know what to do about it.

You're both right and there's not much that we can do except express our discontent..

I've always thought that the efforts of governments have to be the answer:
if better educational opportunities are available to dis-advantaged people at least some of the differences will be addressed eventually. This will probably take centuries.
And the wealth gap between whites and blacks is achingly apparent in most western nations. Perhaps not as bad as 50 years ago but shockingly bad.

As long as we're on ancestry, mine too is a mixed bag. My mother did one of those genetic things, and we found out she has both Neandertal and Denisovan genes. She has some Tatar genes as well, no surprise with her blue eyes and red hair, especially as one line on her side is Hungarian Jewish, and some of Hungary's Jews were Khazars who went west with the Magyars.
Family legend is even more fun. Her paternal line claimed descent from Maimonides, which is cool enough, but it also makes me a descendant of King David.

Since I couldn't attack Vani Hari's nonsense about the air on an aeroplane where she might see it, I went to a different post and recommended that she avoid eggs and bananas on the basis that they are "full of formaldehyde, even the organic ones". Hey, if the crazy lady wants to malnourish herself, then I'm just gonna help her! }:D

New York Times Puts AGW Above The Fold, But ...

gregladen — Sat, 17 Jan 2015 11:25:00 +0000

New York Times Puts AGW Above The Fold, But ...

The New York Times put the news of 2014 being the warmest year on their front page, in the precious space known as "Above The Fold." But, the venerable paper of record continues to give credence to science denialists by calling them "skeptics," and continues to imply that there really is a debate between consensus based science and politically motivated denial of science. To underscore this point I created the above graphic.

I would also like to congratulate the Washington Post for putting this piece by Joby Warrick and Chris Mooney on the front of section A1.

And, TIME has also placed the latest AGW news in a prominent place, and explicitly puts deniers in their place: A Bad Day for Climate Change Deniers … And the Planet. (Hat tip: Paul Douglas)

gregladen Sat, 01/17/2015 - 06:25

Tags

Climate Change

climate change graphics

climate change graphics

Calling anti-skeptics "skeptics" is an insult to skeptics such as as myself. New twitter hash tag: #BEHEADTHOSEWHOINSULTSKEPTICS

Your use of the offensive denier term helps poison the debate, Greg. Is that your intention?

Please read this: http://www.thespec.com/opinion-story/5257712-errors-in-thinking-are-sab… . A similar piece was published in over a dozen papers over the past month, so editors are obviously fed up with the destructive language too, Greg. Please stop it.

Tom Harris, B. Eng., M. Eng. (Mech.)
Executive Director,
International Climate Science Coalition (ICSC)

www.climatescienceinternational.org

Your use of the offensive denier term helps poison the debate

Fact #1: there is no debate: the issue was settled decades ago.

Fact #2: the word "denier" fits perfectly, and is the correct word.

If you dislike the word "denier," feel free to come up with a better word or phrase. (Good luck with that.)

Denier must strike close to home eh Tom? Your organization still taking money from the Koch brothers? Tell us, does your organization pay better than what you got by being an energy shill?

According to the ICSC website,

"Since its formation in 2007, ICSC has been funded and supported exclusively by private individuals... We have never received financial support from corporations, foundations or government."[2]

Yet ICSC received $45,000 from the Heartland Institute in 2007, according to Heartland's Form 990 for that year.[3].

ICSC unwilling to resolve discrepancy

Requests that ICSC resolve this apparent discrepancy between IRS records and the ICSC assertions have been rebuffed.[4]

Perhaps my favorite denier assertion of year 2014 was from a denier at the denier conference in Las Vegas Nevada put on by the denier organization "Nonintergovernmental Panel on Climate Change" (the denialist Heartland Institude Church) when the denier denied in front of over a dozen deniers (and several people pretending to be deniers) that he has never been paid by the petroleum industry--- after being paid by the ExxonMobil and the American Petroleum Institute to deny it. Who was that? Fred Singer, again? The same denier who was paid by the tobacco industry? Deniers are all the same, so it is hard to remember one denier from other deniers.

The faux outrage over the term "denier" is what is called denial of denial.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denial#Denial_of_denial

It's a reflex to reject the idea that one is in denial.

The faux outrage over the term “denier” is what is called denial of denial.

If deniers dislike the word, they are free to come up with a better one. "Liar" is still available.

Tom Harris: "And calling someone an eco-nut or a denier is an ad hominem logical fallacy, against the man, instead of the idea, a tactic that has no place in rational discourse."

Illogical: Science denialism is a real problem and science denialist are real people who need to be taken to task for their destructive promotion of anti-scienctific propaganda. Do you not understand that heavily criticising science deniers is NOT an ad hominem logical fallacy?

@#2 I followed your link. You start off with what sounds like a balanced view. But then quickly devolve into a climate denier/anti science agenda. You set up any researcher for failure by saying only Math can tell you a "truth". Who said anything about a "truth". So everyone but Mathematicians are lairs? Really Mr. Harris. How does it feel when your head is in the logic vise?

Unfortunately I suspect you and your ilk will be censored in the future. Not by any governing body or organization but by unfolding events. The changes this Earth goes through and the misery it brings will make your words shallow and worthless to anyone who can read. Everyone will be severely and directly affected by climate changes and you will be without allies.

What they'll said, Tom. Well said, all.

If you dislike the word “denier,” feel free to come up with a better word or phrase.

= CRICKETS =

So now it's OK to BEHEAD those that disagree with you. What's the difference between Scienceblogs and ISIS? You guys create more problems for scientists that any "denier". Disgusting lot.

So now it’s OK to BEHEAD those that disagree with you.

Why, yes. Yes, it is okay to behead people. You have my permission.

Happy now?

I just now looked up "International Climate Science Coalition (ICSC)." That's the church Tim Ball preaches at, it looks like. An association of mechanical engineers and "free market" fundamentalists.

The church is still attacking Al Gore on its front page, for the love of gods! How funny is that?! As if President Elect Gore is the only sane, intelligent, education person on the planet that just happened to mention humans have caused and are causing climate change--- and attacking him means the missing ice will come back.

I read Reverend Ball's book, wherein he claimed the tort litigation against him ended in his favor. I immediately put down my Kindle reader and looked up the facts. He was still being sued, and he was still trying everything to delay the judicial verdict including, if I read correctly, evading the discovery phase. If Reverend Ball thought the case against him is not valid, wouldn't he want to have the judge issue a judgement? And why lie about the law suit not existing? Why claim Dr. Mann "faces bankruptcy?"

Maybe Tom Harris here can explain why the book with Reverend Ball's name as the author made such false claims--- and yet his web site claims they are "interested in scientific integrity."

LOL, Desertphile is the perfect example of why everyone is laughing at you "climate hawks".

Desertphile is the perfect example of why everyone is laughing at you “climate hawks”.

Thank you. You can enjoy me on The Discovery Channel's new reality TV show in the fall.

I just now looked up “International Climate Science Coalition (ICSC).” That’s the church Tim Ball preaches at, it looks like. An association of mechanical engineers and “free market” fundamentalists.

Yup - I know when I want information on physics and statistical issues I run to mechanical engineers.
That dogma tank also has a habit of denying they accept money from places like the Heartland Institute - but their IRS disclosures show the opposite - as I mentioned earlier. Real center of integrity the ICSC (/snark)

Das

The only people laughing at what you call climate hawks are those either too stupid, or too venal, to understand the reality of man made global warming, deniers. Far be it from me to say which of those two categories you fit.

Well golly, I sure hope people are laughing at me. I work very hard to be funny.

@1. Desertphile :

How 'bout this alternative suggestion?

Nobody* gets beheaded but the Deniers get ignored and laughed at and taken as little seriously and with as little respect as we take those who still say the Earth is flat?

Seriously, jokes aside, I don't think beheading is side-splittingly hilarious whoever it happens too and whilst I agree the Deniers are utterly evil - no. They deserve to be mocked, ignored, treated with contempt and I hope they wake up, accept reality as the science tells us and move past the stage of denial into the other stages of grief.

But chopping heads off? That jus ain't right.

* Okay , yeah this is this one (or five) odd folks who maybe kinda do deserve beheading .. or so I'm almost tempted to say.

But chopping heads off? That jus ain’t right.

Indeed. My polite, perfectly reasonable suggestion was that people who insult skeptics should have their heads whacked off because #1 I am some times paid to be funny and #2 I'm weary of people using the word "skeptic" incorrectly, and death is the best solution to make them stop. A joke, you see....

Humans being such flawed beasts, they often have no idea what a skeptic is. Perhaps that is a product of far too many people not being skeptical. It's freaky to see people call anti-skeptics "skeptics." It's like calling bigots and greedy venal bastards "liberal."

I recall Nero Wolfe burning a dictionary, calling is "subversive," because some of the proposed word usages were demonstrably wrong. I like his solution, but humans are much harder to light on fire.

Or funny.

@15. Das :

"LOL, Desertphile is the perfect example of why everyone is laughing at you “climate hawks”.

Everyone? Yeah? Prove it. I'm not. Doubt many are actually.

Climate hawks? Huh?

Would that include 98 out of 100 experts in the field of climatology? Y'know people who do know what they are talking about then? Just who do you mean to cover by that remark please?

@13. Desertphile - pretty clearly saying sarcastically but :

"Why, yes. Yes, it is okay to behead people. You have my permission."

Xie doesn't have mine. No beheading okay. That stuff ain't cool nor helpful.

@2. Tom Harris : What everyone else has said. Don't want to be called a Denier - then don't deny reality.

@12. Das :

So now it’s OK to BEHEAD those that disagree with you. (1) What’s the difference between Scienceblogs and ISIS?(2) You guys create more problems for scientists that any “denier”. Disgusting lot. (3)

(Numbers added for ease of reference. - Ed. Moi. )

1) No, it isn't. Not by me or most everyone I know.

2) Holy hyperbole Batman! Really? Okay, one really big difference amongst about a bazillion and one others (which ain't hyperbole but rather understatement instead) - Daesh (IS-IL/S) aim to murder people and Scienceblog's bloggers and commenters do not. D'uh!

3) In your erroneous opinion which you are entitled to hold but are also still very wrong to do so. We're disgusting? Because? We disagree with you and say so in a number of ways. We support the scientists - in this case specifically the climatologists - and are willing to listen to them and appreciate what they say. OTOH, the Deniers are not and a fair percentage of the Deniers have been accusing the climate experts and scientists of all sorts of absurd and offensive things and are even sending them death threats quite regularly. Those latter courses of action are what I, for one, find disgusting, dude.

“Your use of the offensive denier term...”

Evidently it's escaped everyone's attention that Greg didn't use the term denier. The term he used was denialist. Though my reasoning isn't the same as Tom Harris', I agree with him that the term denier is inappropriate.

What does it mean to call someone a climate denier? Does it mean that they deny the existence of climate? Does it mean that they deny the reality of climate change? The answer to the first question is a clear no. A fairly standard response to the second question, “The climate is always changing,” indicates that the term denier has limited descriptive value and is too easy to refute.

Denialist and denialism make much more sense. They infer an ideologically based opposition to recognizing the severity of climate change, and taking action to limit it. The ideology also involves attempts to minimize human responsibility combined with fealty to the fossil fuel industries. Perhaps Tom Harris would prefer to be called a fossil fuel industry whore?

Closely related to denialist and denialism are contrarian and contrarianism. My own preferred term is (climate) septic, which was an attempt at meeting more than halfway a denialist who had complained that he should be called a skeptic.

I agree with him that the term denier is inappropriate.

Alas, I do not see how "denier" does not fit people denying the evidence for human-caused climate change. Neither do the psychiatrists, psychologists, and sociologists who have studied the people who deny the evidence for human-caused climate change.

My own preferred term is (climate) septic....

Yes, and that is wrong. Skeptics accept evidence: deniers deny evidence. Regarding the evidence for human-caused climate change, the skeptics were all convinced decades ago: only deniers are left.

Yup – I know when I want information on physics and statistical issues I run to mechanical engineers.

Much like how Big Name Creationists are often engineers: they are qualified to "educate" people about how evolution did not and is not happening, and how evolutionary theory is wrong, because they learned where to place the decimal point when using a slide rule.

There is one physicist that I am aware of that denies the fact that humans have caused and are causing climate change: he lives in Russia, if I recall correctly. He looked at what the sun is currently doing (cooling), and concluded Earth is "going into a new ice age:" he ignored the fact that Earth has an atmosphere. It is a fine example of a perfectly reasonable conclusion that is wrong.

Desertphile –

This is what I wrote:
"My own preferred term is (climate) septic, which was an attempt at meeting more than halfway a denialist who had complained that he should be called a skeptic."

Can you see the difference between septic and skeptic? Do you understand the difference? Do you bother to understand what you read, or do you prefer to jump to conclusions?

Do you bother to understand what you read, or do you prefer to jump to conclusions?

I prefer the latter: I'm American.

What does it mean to call someone a climate denier?

To me your objection is based on the notion that these terms are used in isolation, out of any context. In fact they are part of a broader, well-established discussion, and "climate denier" is understood to mean "a person who denies the scientific consensus on climate change".

I would say it goes a little further than "climate s(k)eptic" as bandied back and forth above: "climate septic" gives me the message that the person is merely part of a group, while "denier" implies an active participation.

.... while “denier” implies an active participation.

According to the literature on the subject (such as Sally Weintrobe, et al) there are two major versions of denialism regarding the evidence for human-caused climate change.

One version, what we see in the USA Congress and the "free market" fundamentalism cults (I know of no better word to use) such as the Heartland Institute, is the public denial of that which they know is true--- for venal and therefore political reasons. This is also known as "disavowal:" about 70% of the USA Republican Party members in the Senate disavow the evidence for human-caused climate change even though they are not in fact as ignorant and stupid as they claim to be.

The other version is the "true denier:" one who denies what she or he knows to be true, and therefore holds both mutually self-contradictory beliefs to be correct. This is a trait common among humans: they believe as true that which they know to be false--- and the trait has been observed and written about for at least 2,300 years. I offer Senator James M. Inhofe as an example of this: his chief (and it appears his only) constituent is the petroleum industry, according to the public records that show who has bribed him with the most money), so one can think with reason that he is merely a greedy anti-social bastard who does not care about human life and heath--- but some of his behavior, including expending his own money on various properties and projects, suggest he really does believe the claims he has made that he also knows to be false. The trait is so common among humanity that it isn't even considered a mental health care issue.

"active participation"

Dean, would that be as opposed to an "inactive participation? D'oh.

That's what I get for typing while watching a bad movie on SyFy.

Desertphile –

A mea culpa:
I've noticed that the post uses both denialist and denier, so I too should have been more careful. I appreciate your self-deprecating humor.

dean –

Here are some definitions of septic:

adjective, Pathology
1. pertaining to or of the nature of sepsis; infected.
2. putrefactive.

septic sep·tic (sěp'tĭk)
adj.
1. Of, relating to, having the nature of, or affected by sepsis.
2. Causing or producing sepsis; putrefactive.
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/septic

The difference between septic and skeptic is not a matter of subtle nuance, and climate septic does not in any way deal with individual versus group. It suggests that “climate skepticism” is pathological and miasmatically poisonous.

I accept that the term climate denier functions within a context, but I also find that it's easy to object to in the ways I've mentioned. I prefer denialist because we're not primarily talking about isolated individuals, but about more or less organized adherents of an ism. The arguments are provided by right wing media and conservative think tanks. And the ism isn't motivated by the rejection of climate science, but by support for the fossil fuel based status quo and opposition to threats against it.

Re. #23

To finish my little cleaning job:

“I agree with him that the term denier is inappropriate.”

No. Inappropriate was a very bad choice. Not as exact or precise as it could be would have been better, so the stated agreement with Harris doesn't apply here.

Just for the record I'm not interested in giving much thought to the use of terms like denier, denialist, etc. beyond what I've already spent on it (which is not a small amount). The words are all appropriate for those who chose a conservative anti-environmental agenda over the science, at any level.

Greg, why don't you link to the 'supplemental/page 1' of the (NOAA) Global Analysis - Annual 2014 - Calculating the Probability of Rankings for 2014?

Is it because it states quite clearly that 2014 was only 0.04°C higher than 2005 & 2010 with a ±0.09°C level of uncertainty or "margin of error"?

Or, is it because it states quite clearly that because of this known uncertainty, NOAA are only 48% confident ("more unlikely than likely") that 2014 is/was the hottest year on record?

I do believe that Gavin Schmidt from NASA (GISS) is only 38% confident that 2014 is/was the hottest year on record also.

To their credit, BEST thinks it's too close to call as it's impossible to conclude from their analysis which of 2014, 2010, or 2005 was actually the warmest year.

They also state “that the Earth’s average temperature for the last decade has changed very little".

As a journalist, I'm sure that you would only like to report the truth and you wouldn't like to misinform your readers, wouldn't you Greg... ;)

BruceC... It's pretty amazing that you folks are arguing this point.

Even if the figure had come in just below the previous record it would still be highly significant since this has occurred without the assistance of a strong El Nino.

Think about it for just a second. We've had all sorts of negative (cooling) factors in play over the past 15 years and still the global surface temperature has refused to fall. No one is talking about statistically significant cooling trends, have they?

What's going to happen when all those cooling influences turn positive (toward warming)?

Think about it for just a second. We’ve had all sorts of negative (cooling) factors in play over the past 15 years and still the global surface temperature has refused to fall.

The ININO5 value for year 2014 was +0.24 and yet it was still the record high year global average temperature: that has not happened in the entire Kaplan reconstruction (started year 1856). It means ENSO was neutral (lower than +0.5 or greater than -0.5) on the yearly average, and yet the derived surface temperature average still set a record high---- and "BruceC" here is complaining about the new record falling within a wide margin of error, therefore it was not *REALLY* a new record high.

When deniers engage in this behavior, why do they get upset when they are called deniers? By the gods, it's a perfect example of denialism.

They also state “that the Earth’s average temperature for the last decade has changed very little”.

(sigh)

You just not understanding the significance of this. This doesn't suggest that there's something wrong with AGW theory. It's merely an interesting aspect of global warming relative to surface temperatures and little to no implication for long term temperature rise due man-made carbon emissions.

Rob, I'm not interested in your babysitting RC and/or SkS spin-talk, my questions are simple.

Why didn't Greg or the MSM link to NOAA's page regarding the uncertainties involved in the so-called '2014 Hottest Year Ever' claim?

@24. Desertphile :

"Indeed. My polite, perfectly reasonable suggestion was that people who insult skeptics should have their heads whacked off because #1 I am some times paid to be funny and #2 I’m weary of people using the word “skeptic” incorrectly, and death is the best solution to make them stop. A joke, you see…."

Okay. I kinda figured it wasn't a serious suggestion but I gotta say I'd didn't find it terribly funny as jests go. I don't think its helpful indeed quite the opposite. I'm sure you can find funnier ways of putting things so please I hope you do so in future.

The Bad Astronomer, Phil Plait, has this good blog post :

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2009/06/09/im-skeptical-…

on the difference between skeptics and deniers. I also agree with Greg Laden here :

The words are all appropriate for those who chose a conservative anti-environmental agenda over the science, at any level.

By now with all the overwhelming weight of evidence and science and understanding that we've developed since the days of Svante Arrhenius denying the reality of Human-Induced Rapid Global Overheating (HIRGO) is pretty much equal to denying evolution, gravity and saying the Earth is flat and has our daytime star going around it.

O...M...G. Now I've heard everything...HIRGO. Just as well I just finished my mouthful of beer. Astrostevo, can you help me in citing the peer-reviewed study in which this came from? Is it included in Cook et al's 41 (out of 11,450) papers that endorse AGW >50%? I can't seem to find it anywhere??

HIRGO - Human-Induced Rapid Global Overheating. THIS is defiantly a keeper.

Sorry, of course that should be definitely instead of defiantly. Had too many tears in my eyes from laughter.

Tell me Astrostevo, would this HIRGO be the 0.836°C/Century from Jan 1901 to Dec 2014, or the 0.374°C/Century from Jan 2001 to Dec 2014 as per GISS?

https://twitter.com/ClimateOfGavin/status/556142616862289920

Tom Harris: " A similar piece was published in over a dozen papers over the past month"

And why would that be? It's not because you submitted it to TWO dozen papers, is it? It really looks like your value to Heartland is based purely on the NUMBER of articles appearing in local papers. Which is weird - I would have thought a competent propagandist would want to count hearts and minds, not tendentious newspaper articles.

By the way, I also notice that your article has been removed from several papers. It appears that many small papers will print anything, until they find out what you're selling.

http://grist.org/climate-energy/climate-hawks-are-not-impressed-by-obam…

Once again Greg refuses to answer any questions.

And Desertpile, where is this ININO5 region? AFAIK there are only 3 ENSO regions: NINO3, NINO3.4 and NINO4.

But what would I know, you guys are the experts.

ENSO for the past 2 months and current.

November
NINO3 +0.8
NINO3.4 + 0.8
NINO4 +1.0

December
NINO3 +0.9
NINO3.4 + 0.9
NINO4 +1.0

Currently
NINO3 +0.5
NINO3.4 + 0.5
NINO4 +0.8

We are currently still in an El Niño-like condition. You do know what the ENSO thresholds are don't you?

EDIT. Dec & Nov figures should be swapped. Sorry, my mistake.

BruceC, what question?

ININO5 is NINO3.4

No one has declared an El Nino for those time periods, though there are some El Nino-like conditions. It is, however, not coming together. If the major meteorological agencies are not declaring an El Nino, you can't really overrule them in a blog post comment.

However, yes, there is heat coming out of the Pacific, having been storing up there for a while, and we can expect more of that. This is as predicted. Most of the storing up and releasing of heat over time actually happens vis-a-vis the global ocean, with a lot of that happening on the tropical Pacific. I'm not sure how the fact that this is happening is especially relevant to the issue. It isn't like the Pacific is some magical non-global-warming entity. The effects we are seeing there are the effects of global warming.

Most of the storing up and releasing of heat over time actually happens vis-a-vis the global ocean, with a lot of that happening on the tropical Pacific.

Who was the USA Senator who insisted Earth was not warming due to human-released greenhouse gases, but was warming because "the oceans are getting warmer?" When I read that, I literally had hot cocoa spew from my nostrils from laughing so hard.

Over a very brief time period (159 years), ENSO variation has summed to zero (R^2 = 0.0062 negative slope). It seems to me, guessing, unsupported by any evidence at all, that eventually ENSO will start to be over-all positive, as the anomalously warming layers in other oceanic regions and depths become "saturated" with heat. If so, El Nino events would no longer belch out all of the stored heat, but will start retaining some of it.

http://climexp.knmi.nl/data/inino5.dat

No one has declared an El Nino for those time periods, though there are some El Nino-like conditions.

Australia meteorological predicted El Nino conditions at various times for the past 20 months and "everyone" is still baffled over why it didn't happen. The best guess is that air surface temperature was too warm.

First of all Greg, thank you for replying. My question is/was:

Why didn’t Greg or the MSM link to NOAA’s page regarding the uncertainties involved in the so-called ‘2014 Hottest Year Ever’ claim?

Simple question, which only needs a simple answer. Why?

Regarding the 2014-15 ENSO, even though no one has officially called it an El Niño 'event', it has been borderline since at least May-June 2014 and going on the latest Aust. BoM data appears to be ramping up again in the 3 major zones. This El Niño may end up being an El Niño 'Modoki' (Japanese for same, but different). Who knows? Technically speaking, the 2014-15 ENSO is far from neutral as all zones have been above +0.5 since around March-April of 2014. Infact, they are at the highest they have been since 2010.

NOAA ranked global land temperatures as the 3rd highest, it is because of 2014's so-called 'neutral' El Niño that drove the global temperatures up, especially in the 2nd half of the year.

Also, can you supply me with an 'official' reference/link to this so-called [I]NINO5 region? I cannot find it anywhere. According to the BoM, there are only 5 NINO regions;

1&2 are small regions of the west coast of South America, then you have the three major ENSO regions, 3, 4 and 3.4. 3.4 overlaps both 3&4, hence it's name.

Desertpile, your best guess would be wrong.

The best guess would be that the SOI, Southern Oscillation Index (sea level pressure differences between Tahiti and Darwin, Australia) levels have only averaged out at about -6 during 2014. One needs a sustained negative value below −8.

P.S. Thank you Desertpile for the link to NINO3.4. In other words there's no such region as ININO5. Just another made up name like HIRGO.

In other words there’s no such region as ININO5

Let me see. You are a member of an anti-science cult, and you are telling us sane educated intelligent people that the sea surface dataset record for earth's latitude region between 5N to 5S doesn't exist.... Ah, okay. Does that mean the 40+ temperature buoys NOAA has out there don't also exist, or does that mean NOAA doesn't exist, or does that mean Earth is two separated hemispheres kept apart by mysterious forces ("ANYTHING BUT CO2!", and that ten degrees of latitude are missing between -120 and -170 longitude, with secret Nazi war bases on the flat inner sides?

And your church really expects us sane people to take your complains seriously?

Oh dear, I seem to have upset Desertpile and now he calls me uneducated and not intelligent and I belong to some sort of 'anti-science cult' (what-ever that is?). Desertpile, the very first words of that data link you supplied are;

'NINO3.4 index'. Can you show me where it states, 'ININO5'?

As far as the rest of your post.......WTF?

"Why didn’t Greg or the MSM link to NOAA’s page regarding the uncertainties involved in the so-called ‘2014 Hottest Year Ever’ claim?"

I've written about this before, and about half my posts on "warmest year" probably link to my main post on the uncertainties. Otherwise, I linked to an excellent explainer that covers that. Overall what I've written here and what I've linked to cover that topic at least as well as the link to which you refer does. So, no particular reason that I didn't like to it, but it is an important topic to cover, and I've done so at length.

ININO5 isn't a region, it is a data set. It uses 3.4. As stated, it is bounded N/S at 5 degrees. Desertphile put a link to it above. Pretty standard.

I'll take my ENSO from the ENSO experts, if you don't mind, Bruce. You can argue until you are blue in the face about when we have El Nino vs. not, but you won't be correct until you agree with the experts. Because you are, in fact, not El Galileo.

But, again, see my remarks above about Tropical Pacific heat. There's plenty of it.

Funny thing is, Bruce, you can't have your cake (the pause) and eat it too (heat coming out of the Pacific).

I’ll take my ENSO from the ENSO experts, if you don’t mind, Bruce.

Like high school sex education.

[Good gods! I need a vacation!]

I don't get "my" science from blogs, nor from the petroleum industry, nor from "free market" cults (i.e., "on the streets"). I get science from scientists. When I am told by a member of an anti-science "free market" church that there is no such thing as the ININO5 dataset, even when I am staring at the ININO5 dataset at that very moment, I am forced to re-evaluate my opinion of humanity "downward" another ratchet notch.

My preference for the data series of sea surface temperatures spanning the equatorial Pacific between -120 to -170 is because it is the median range and therefore less prone to extremes: watching that region gives the best estimates on if (and in some cases when) the ENSO state changes. The ITCZ has the effect of "repaving" the Pacific cooling / warming cycles (if there are cycles), and allows scientists to have a "clean slate" to work with (i.e., lowest noise level, strongest signal) every few years.

As far as I know, no science body has said El Nino formed in year 2014, nor does El Nino currently exist. Yet the median global average temperature estimate for year 2014 set a record high value: something I would have wagered a few hundred dollars would not happen for another 15 years or so. This, during a period of slow solar TSI. As far as I know, the event has no precedent in the data going back at least 156 years; as far as I can tell (and I am a cattle ranch hand, not a scientist) this shows two things:

#1: all of the world's scientists working in the related science venues are correct about human-released greenhouse gases being responsible, and;

#2 Earth's climate is extremely sensitive to tiny changes.

Low climate sensitivity can be a good thing as well as a bad thing. It means geoengineering to solve the crisis can be done in very tiny steps, cautiously, and the effects still be measurable.

The odd complaint, once again, is that the new high temperature record falls within the error bars of the previous record high, and vice-versa, is just..... silly. The complaint makes no mathematical sense. Pick any point in the error margin--- bottom, top, or center: it's the same bloody thing.

By the way, the error bars keep narrowing. It means year 2014's error margin is a tiny bit smaller than year 2013; year 2013 was a tiny bit smaller than year 2012. Shouldn't "BruceC" be complaining more about year 2013's value? Year 1998's value has a larger error bar than year 2014: where's his complaint about that? Why pick year 2014 and year 2010?

If I estimate the atmospheric CO2 for year end of 2014 at 398.5 ppmv (2 ppmv more than last year), PPMCC then stands at 0.93150 with a global average temperature of 14.68c which is exactly what all of the physicists and climatologists in the world said would happen---- no sign at all of this mythical "pause" deniers love to claim has happened (all the while insisting it never warmed in the first place, and at the same time saying it's cooling, and at the same time saying it's warming but humans are not the cause).

@BruceC - #41, 42 & 43 :

O…M…G. Now I’ve heard everything…HIRGO. Just as well I just finished my mouthful of beer. Astrostevo, can you help me in citing the peer-reviewed study in which this came from?

This terminology came from a discussion or three on the Bad Astronomy blog some years ago where it was suggested by a commenter there. (Not myself. I think I recall the originating commenter's nym but would have to do a lot of checking back to confirm it for sure.)

I use that acroynm and terminology because I think it best and most directly describes and names the problem which goes by a range of other terms from "The Greenhouse Effect" (most commonly used in the mid-late 1980's) through to (Catastrophic*) Anthropogenic Global Warming or often more simply Global Warming.

It stresses - without technical jargon - that this current change in climate is created by Human activities. (Human-Induced.) That it is excessively rapid in contrast to previous slower climate changes such as those induced by the Milankovitch effects, occurs world wide in scale. Finally it emphasises that the problem is that the planet and its environments are over-heating - getting too hot - rather than using the milder word "warming' which has deceptively pleasant and positive connotations.

The "Greenhouse effect' is a slightly different phenomenon and isn't actually problematic indeed it has enabled life on Earth to thrive throughout prehistory.

'Climate change' is very generalised and non-specific and can refer to a whole series of changes caused by a whole set of varying variables.

That's why I think HIRGO is better and like to use it and wish more folks would do so. Not quite sure why you found my use of HIRGO so humourous but glad I gave you a bit of a laugh! World could always do with more laughter - and less excessively hot planetary average temps. (More GAGs fewer GHGs I say!)

Tell me Astrostevo, would this HIRGO be the 0.836°C/Century from Jan 1901 to Dec 2014, or the 0.374°C/Century from Jan 2001 to Dec 2014 as per GISS?

The HIRGO reality - which is ongoing - would cover both of those timespans and indeed many more periods of unnaturally increased planetary average temperatures and changes dating back far earlier.

The Industrial Revolution is often taken as a common starting point for HIRGO (when atmospheric Co2 now 400 ppm was down at only 280 ppm) but other people have argued it could have begun even at the very dawn of human history when our species first started altering regional and global environments by land clearance, farming, etc ..

* Funnily enough its usually the deniers that use the 'C' word in front of AGW in that particular formulation. No, not that other 'c' word!

@55. Desertphile :

Australia meteorological predicted El Nino conditions at various times for the past 20 months and “everyone” is still baffled over why it didn’t happen. The best guess is that air surface temperature was too warm.

Yes. A good suggestion noted by this Slate blogplexy-thingummy article here :

http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2014/11/06/el_ni_o_prediction_2…

Angela Fritz, of the Washington Post’s Capital Weather Gang, explains:

"When the ocean surface is warm all over, there’s no strong temperature gradient for the atmospheric component to build from.

And most importantly, for El Niño’s purposes, the gradient in sea surface temperature is not strong across the equator from Australia to South America, either. This gradient—from cool in the west to warm in the east—drives winds across the equator, which in turn causes a stronger temperature gradient, and so on."

In essence, a gradually warming Pacific Ocean is at once reducing our ability to predict Earth’s single most important seasonal climate phenomenon, and tampering with it as well.

If things are this hot without an El Nino, I hate to think how its going to be when (not 'if') we do get an El Nino.

That's funny Greg, my ENSO data DOES come from ENSO experts, The Australian Bureau of Meteorology,

http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/enso/nino_3.txt
http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/enso/nino_3.4.txt
http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/enso/nino_4.txt

The BoM have been on El Niño 'Watch' or 'Alert' since ~Feb-March 2014, as have the JMA. Although they rely more on the NINO4 region, which has been the highest of all three zones.

According to my uneducated, non-intelligent, insane mind reading data supplied by an 'ENSO expert', my comment still remains, 2014 had the highest ENSO recordings since 2010.

... 2014 had the highest ENSO recordings since 2010.

Yes. El Nino did not form, however; ENSO was still neutral. Yet year 2014 set a record high global average temperature, and all of the world's scientists working in the related science venues agree on why. =SHRUG!=

UPDATE: Latest BoM ENSO report, released just today (within the past hour actually).

http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/enso/

Please note their first sentence;

Issued on 20 January 2015

Since late 2014, most ENSO indicators have eased back from borderline El Niño levels. As the natural seasonal cycle of ENSO is now entering the decay phase, and models indicate a low chance of an immediate return to El Niño levels, neutral conditions are considered the most likely scenario through into autumn.

Central tropical Pacific Ocean surface temperatures have fallen by around half a degree from their peak of 1.1 °C above average in late November. Likewise, the Southern Oscillation Index has weakened to values more consistent with neutral conditions, while recent cloud patterns show little El Niño signature. As all models surveyed by the Bureau favour a continuation of these neutral conditions in the coming months, the immediate threat of El Niño onset appears passed for the 2014–15 cycle. Hence the ENSO Tracker has been reset to NEUTRAL. The Tracker will remain at NEUTRAL unless observations and model outlooks indicate a heightened risk of either La Niña or El Niño developing later this year.

BoM have just revised their ENSO meter to 'neutral'.

As I stated in an earlier comment, the 2014 ENSO event was far from 'neutral', and it was this late 2014 ENSO event that drove up the 2014 global figure...all be it a huge, we're melting, we're all gunna die, 0.04°C with a ±0.09°C level of uncertainty.

In other-words, nothing, nada, zip, SFA, 2/3's of 7/8's of FA, or 0.037°C/Decade from Jan 2001 to Dec 2014 as per GISS (trend supplied by Nick Stokes).

P.S. Astrostevo, noticed I haven't used the 'c' word in any of my posts... ;)

P.P.S. Desertpile, your an idiot.

Desertpile, your an idiot.

My an idiot? Huh? I own an idiot?

A correction to one of my above comments. I stated that NOAA's land only was 3rd highest. This is incorrect, it was rated 4th.

Must have been all those Hiroshima's deep within the ocean where it can't be measured.

Since late 2014, most ENSO indicators have eased back from borderline El Niño levels.

That's right: not El Nino conditions at any time last year. Everyone here but you already said that. And?

Meanwhile, Earth set a record high global average temperature in a year (2014) when El Nino didn't exist: all of the world's scientists working in the related science venues agree on why. Why does that fact upset you?

Tropical Pacific Ocean moves from El Niño to neutral
Issued on 20 January 2015 | Product Code IDCKGEWW00
Since late 2014, most ENSO indicators have eased back from borderline El Niño levels. As the natural seasonal cycle of ENSO is now entering the decay phase, and models indicate a low chance of an immediate return to El Niño levels, neutral conditions are considered the most likely scenario through into autumn.
Central tropical Pacific Ocean surface temperatures have fallen by around half a degree from their peak of 1.1 °C above average in late November. Likewise, the Southern Oscillation Index has weakened to values more consistent with neutral conditions, while recent cloud patterns show little El Niño signature. As all models surveyed by the Bureau favour a continuation of these neutral conditions in the coming months, the immediate threat of El Niño onset appears passed for the 2014–15 cycle. Hence the ENSO Tracker has been reset to NEUTRAL. The Tracker will remain at NEUTRAL unless observations and model outlooks indicate a heightened risk of either La Niña or El Niño developing later this year.

BruceC, your data may come from experts but you are in no position to interpret it correctly, based on the things you are saying here.

BruceC, your data may come from experts but you are in no position to interpret it correctly, based on the things you are saying here.

"Free market" fundamentalist's behavior is very much like Creationist's behavior, and often they use the same phrases and excuses. "We have the same data; we just have different world views to interpret those data" is often heard from both cults. Thus observed reality is recast in to "just people's opinions."

As for expert's data, as I noted I am uneducated and ignorant: I try damn hard to *NOT* interpret the data experts have compiled: I accept the expert's interpretations instead, I hope. This is what separates skeptics like myself from True Believers like "BruceC" here.

.... plus he just wrote that I own an idiot. What's up with that?

"According to my uneducated, non-intelligent, insane mind reading data supplied by an ‘ENSO expert’, my comment still remains, 2014 had the highest ENSO recordings since 2010."

Yes, it did, but that doesn't mean that there was an El Nino, officially. Highest wasn't high. It was at best borderline. And yes, everyone's been on an El Nino watch. About half the time we are either in an El Nino or on an El Nino watch, actually.

Highest wasn’t high. It was at best borderline

The index is arbitrary: >1 = El Nino, <-1 = La Nina. Nature doesn't cooperate with humanity's desires to fit observations in to well-defined niches. By definition, El Nino did not exist throughout year 2014, and by definition it was "borderline" in November.

Has The New York Times Dropped The Ball On The Most Important Story Ever?

gregladen — Sat, 23 Nov 2013 16:56:47 +0000

Has The New York Times Dropped The Ball On The Most Important Story Ever?

“Simply assuming that this is an interesting controversy that we should check in on occasionally is not correct. The survival of human civilization is at risk. The news media should be making this existential crisis the No. 1 topic they cover.”

That was Vice President Al Gore being quoted in a New York Times piece by the newspaper's public editor, Margaret Sullivan. Sullivan's article, "After Changes, How Green Is The Times?" examines environmental reporting since the Times dismantled its environmental reporting facility last January. Sullivan's analysis, which seems fair, actually shows the Times as not having entirely dropped the ball, but it is clear that coverage of environmental issues since the Time scrapped its special team (called, ironically, a "pod") to have diminished in both quantity and depth. Environmental issues have become more numerous and more important nearly every month over the last few years, and as Vice President Gore notes, there is no longer any question that these issues are existential. Seeing a drop in environmental reporting at America's Most Important Newspaper now would be analogous to seeing a drop in reporting of World War Two after the invasion of Normandy. It is impossible, in fact, to see the New York Times being relatively blasé about the environment as something other than bad management or sloppy journalism. Seeing this sort of thing sends one to Wikipedia to find out who owns the newspaper. So I did. I was surprised. Murdock and Big Oil don't own them, they don't own stakes in coal mines, nothing. The company that owns the Times seems to also own the Boston Red Sox. That doesn't explain much.

Consider for a moment what some of the most influential or important news stories have been. Looking at "top ten stories" internet lists for just 2010-2012, here's what people have listed as the most important stories (I've added the term at the beginning of the phrase to place them into categories):

Environment: World flooding
Environment: Deepwater Horizon
Environment: Mass animal deaths
Environment: Ajka Alumina Plant Accident
Environment: Superstorm Sandy
Nature: Eruption of Eyjafjallajökull
Nature/Animals: Bedbugs take over
Energy: Copiapo Mining Accident
Leaks: Wikileaks
Leaks: Snowden
Sports: Death of Nodar Kumaritashvili
Crime: Capture of the Grim Sleeper
Crime: Sandy Hook
Crime: Penn State, Jerry Sandusky
Crime: Trayvon Martin Shot, Zimmerman Acquitted
Crime: Aurora Shooting
Politics: Obama Re-elected
Politics: Obamacare Passed
Social Justice: Gay Marriage Normalization
Economy: Fiscal Cliff
Economy: Us economy upswing
World: Libya government turns over
World: Syria

Eight of the 23 stories would be top headlines covered by the science and environment "pod" reporters. Two of the stories are cases of people doing things the New York Times should probably have done, like in the old days, but didn't. Of the other stories, one or two, including Syria and possibly Libya, have strong environmental connections. This list does not include a lot of other environmental stores such as reaching 400ppm CO2 in the atmosphere, not because they are not important, but, possibly, because new agencies like the New York Times didn't say they were important. And the New York Times isn't even owned by Big Oil!

And there's another problem at the New York Times. Michael Mann wrote about this just a few days before Margaret Sullivan's piece came out (making me wonder if Mann's article prompted Sullivan's) in a piece at the Huffington Post called "Something Is Rotten at the New York Times." Mann notes, "When it comes to the matter of human-caused climate change, the Grey Lady's editorial page has skewed rather contrarian of late." Mann goes on to document a particular case of a broader phenomenon we see at the Times and elsewhere: The "hones broker" phenomenon. This is where all the science tells us that A is true, but there is a bought and paid for (or sometimes, just cranky "get off my lawn" motivated) "viewpoint" that is utterly wrong claiming that B is true, and the "honest broker" tries to mediate between the two views as though simply throwing out "B" wasn't the appropriate thing to do. Mann:

The New York Times does a disservice to its readers when it buys into the contrived narrative of the "honest broker"...Especially when that white knight is in fact sitting atop a Trojan Horse--a vehicle for the delivery of disinformation, denial, and systematic downplaying of what might very well be the greatest threat we have yet faced as a civilization, the threat of human-caused climate change.

So, with that, here's my open letter to the New York Times:

Dear Editors,

Please try to do your jobs.

Thank you very much.

Everybody

Click here to send them your letter.

gregladen Sat, 11/23/2013 - 11:56

Tags

Climate Change

Global Warming

New York Times

Environmental issues are not going away. They will increase in importance across the board precipitously for the next 4 decades at a minimum.

Environmental issues shouldn't be a section we can delete or displace. It should be contained as a necessary component in every section. A news story about Chicago should include information about its local environmental concerns. A story about trade across the Canadian border should include information about wilderness and the use of fossil fuels to sustain the businesses.

If these issues don't become a reflexive part of our analysis, we are going to regret it.

Why _The Times_ behaves that way:

1) Controversy, whether real or contrived, engages the emotions of conflict. Conflict sells. How many movies have you seen, and fictional books have you read, that involve lots of conflict, compared to those that have little to no conflict?

Hypothesis test: ask that question of 100 people and count up the answers. Prediction: significant difference favoring conflict-heavy stories at better than p < .001. Do it formally and you can publish the result in a peer-reviewed journal.

Direct implication: the media will always milk any possible controversy for all the conflict-emotions it's worth. This extends to the level of creating "controversies" where there are none, such as by giving climate denialist quacks a platform.

Further direct implication: the way to deal with denialist quacks isn't by ignoring them (someone else will un-ignore them to our detriment) but by subjecting them to vicious ridicule of the type that's normally reserved for medical quacks and perpetual motion quacks.

Action item: Stop using the word "denlaiist" and start using the word "quack." "Climate quacks." Quack quack quack. "If it ducks like a quack, it's a quack." In public debates call them that to their faces. Use analogies to medical quackery and perpetual motion machines. Over time this will stick, and it will work.

2) Money is an ass-cushion. Ass-cushions alter behavior.

People at the very top end of the economic curve (including those who own newspapers and broadcast stations) have grown used to the notion that they can "write a check" (or "swipe a card" or "call someone") to solve whatever troubles come their way. If their house gets destroyed by a natural disaster or climate impact, they just relocate to their other house, or their third or fourth house. If their place of employment gets wiped out, they can live on the return on investment of their capital assets. This produces climate apathy, along with disaster apathy in general.

The rest of us don't have those luxuries, so we're less likely to fall into apathy about the big things that can squish us or eat us.

By analogy, observe the behavior of cyclists and motorists on a main road that has lots of potholes. Vehicles with very little cushion (tires, suspension, padding on the seats) between the road surface and the driver's/rider's ass, maneuver around the holes: bicycles, motorcycles, sports cars. Vehicles with lots of cushion go right through or over the holes: SUVs, large pickup trucks, large trucks generally.

Extreme disparity of wealth is a direct driver of climate denialism and its evil twin, climate apathy. Exceptions only highlight the rule. The solutions are obvious but unspeakable in Washington DC, starting with a highly progressive tax on all income regardless of source.