At this point, you would think the media would begin to question why it is that everyone attacking the existence of climate change turns out to be a liar, a fraud, or both.
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At this point, you would think the media would begin to question why it is that everyone attacking the existence of climate change turns out to be a liar, a fraud, or both.
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lonesomerobot
because it hurts our American exceptionalistic fee-fees to be blamed for harming the environment?
And you know, both sides, etc. Also, too. And so forth.
Ash Can
What, and throw Fairness and Balance out the window, and get shut out of
barbecuesinterviews with all those Very Serious Politicians? Perish the thought.lonesomerobot
Also John, and this is completely O/T, but Claude Hay is coming to West Virginia in August.
(hope you remember him, solo looping blues performer you linked up in this thread)
eric
i propose that getting caught with your proverbial pants down be called a “Wegie” forever more. Wikipedia? really? they chose a source that is likely to the FIRST entry on a google search of their chosen word usage. Wow…epic fail.
piratedan
@Cole but the shiny, it is elsewhere, kthnxbai! – the media
Special Patrol Group
So awesome.
xian
it’s just another form of wingnut welfare: come out with a “contrarian” academic thesis that bolsters right-wing memes and you’re the toast of the town, till it’s time to throw your uncredited grad student under the bus.
cathyx
I love the part where Wegman blames the grad student for the plagiarism, but has his name as author of the paper.
Daddy-O
This ‘issue’ has been set to rest, and long ago. But the world’s largest corporations will have to be dragged kicking and screaming into the now.
Who’s up to the job? No one I see.
OT, got up and listened to my two favorite West Virginians (you’re third, John, but don’t feel bad!): Tim and Mollie O’Brien. I’ll be in a good mood all day now.
shortstop
The University of East Anglia emails prove that climate change is a total hoax, and these outrageous and unproven charges against the integrity of Dr. Wegman are just an attempt to throw sand in the umpire’s eyes.
No, really, this is exactly what tools like this guy tell themselves every day as they sell their children and grandchildren down the river.
Daddy-O
@xian: I’ve been using the word “wealthfare” a lot lately. Works.
eemom
“you would think the media would begin to question….”
Aw Cole, yer such a cutie.
bryanD
The climate change lobby made a tactical error in adopting the term “global warming” and thus inviting a battle of local weather reports to muck up their own religion.
cathyx
@Special Patrol Group: That’s because Wikipedia is the only place you can find proof that climate change isn’t real.
Valdivia
love what you did with the post’s title.
They plagiarized from Wiki? What are they, freshmen?
Violet
Rush Limbaugh told a female caller to his show yesterday that we’re more likely to experience another ice age than global warming, due to the colder winters in the US the last few years.
She told him she used to believe in global warming, but he “cured her of it.”
piratedan
@Violet: lucky she didn’t call in while feeling gay then……
Joel
Wow, this guy is pure clownshoes…
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
@bryanD: Yeah, they failed to predict that most people wouldn’t bother understanding what they meant by the term “global warming.”
SFAW
Any chance Wegman’s “graduate student” was Miss Anne Elk?
aimai
Because plagiarism fits very neatly into a “he said/he said” model of reporting. It just adds a yet more confusing subset of “he saids” to the entire string:
He said “no global warming”
Some other he said “no, ‘no global warming’ is a plagiarized hoax.’
He said He said “no, no global warming is not a plagiarized hoax, global warming is a plagiarized hoax.”
Some other he said said “no, no global warming…” and etc..
Confusion is the whole point.
aimai
Linda Featheringill
@Violet:
Rush cured her of it, eh?
LOL.
Takes me back to the tent revival meetings, with singing, preaching, healing, and instilling of the Holy Spirit. And of course, “dinner on the ground” [bring a picnic lunch for you and your family].
Ahhhh, Brother Rush.
xian
@Daddy-O: I like it!
Cat Lady
Let’s give USA Today some props here on their reporting of this, and BTW who knew they commit real journalism? I always thought it just provided aggregated news nuggets for people stuck in airports.
What’s up with George Mason University? It seems to be ground zero of wingnut science and law.
eemom
OT, and out of pure gossipy voyeurism — there is an interesting report afoot about why ex-guvernator Ahnold and the Mrs. are splitsville…..he, shall we say, pulled a Thomas Jefferson. Or, I guess you could call it a John Edwards.
Villago Delenda Est
@bryanD:
“The climate change lobby”
“The climate change lobby”
I just love this phrase. It reduces people who see a trend that endangers continued human existence to the status of Jack Abramoff.
“Oh, that Ogg. He thinks that the future of our society here on Easter Island is endangered by cutting down the last few trees. What an alarmist.”
cathyx
What will Rush Limbaugh tell her this summer when the the temperatures hit new record highs?
SFAW
What, wrote the Tea Party Declaration of Independents? I doubt he moved to Monticello – he had a tough enough time saying Kah-lee-fauh-nya.
R-Jud
@SFAW:
“Anne Elk, brackets Miss brackets.”
piratedan
@eemom: another case of another candidate unable to master the concept of “total recall” when it came to the big head tracking what the little head was doing
Ash Can
@eemom: Nice job pissing off the Kennedys, Ahnold.
jeffreyw
Bah. same tune, different day. Have an omelet, be happy.
Villago Delenda Est
Unless said questioning will improve ratings or ad revenue, or, more importantly and significantly, not reduce ratings or ad revenue, it will not happen.
This has been true for years, when for example some investigative reporter finds massive collusion between auto dealerships in cheating customers, can document it, and suddenly ad revenue drops at the local fishwrap as the auto dealers retaliate, the story is never reported again.
aimai
@SFAW:
Its definitely more of a Thomas Jefferson than a Jonathan Edwards–the woman was a long time member of their household staff and she continued working for them for ten years after the birth of the child. That’s galling in a way that JE’s affair never could have been.
aimai
slag
Holy shit. What an embarrassment. For George Mason, for Computational Statistics and Data Analysis, for everybody. You’d think some people would be getting fired over this.
Villago Delenda Est
@jeffreyw:
Darn you, jeffreyw, darn you to heck.
My mouth cannot stop watering now.
shortstop
@Ash Can: Does it matter these days?
Ash Can
@jeffreyw: Jeffrey, your links always make me happy. Except maybe when I’m already hungry.
SFAW
Unfortunately, with Teddy gone and the rest of them “pursuing other interests”, that means a lot less than it once did.
Beth in VA
After surfacing from some deep-click diving, this situation reeks. George Mason University (GMU) in their economics department and public policy department has numerous associations with very active climate denialists with funding from oil, coal, or Koch industries.
Also Ken Cuccinelli, Virginia notorious AG who has been hassling the University of Virginia for faculty e-mails, is a GMU grad. Figures.
Jazz Superluminar
I thought I’d look for a more credible source than Wikipedia, so of course I visited Conservapedia. Unfortunately, their global warming section, whilst being massively wrong, is a bit dry and lacking in wingnutty goodness. What I found instead was this piece of DougJ bait, which is so totally full of win you should drop what you’re all doing and read it.
Villago Delenda Est
@aimai:
Also, keep in mind that the gropinator maintained the fiction for 10 years that the child was biologically that of the member of the staff’s husband, not the gropinator.
Mind you, the marriage is 25 years old, and the tryst happened 10 years ago.
SFAW
Why, are they Democrats or at least non-conservative? Because there’s been little evidence that Lying-In-The-Service-Of-Advancing-The-Right-Wing-Agenda is considered a firing offense by wingnuts anywhere.
shortstop
@Jazz Superluminar: Plenty of good fun there. I particularly like this one:
I thought wingnuts loved to call Hil a doormat because she didn’t leave Bill after Monica? I particularly remember Wendy Leopardskin Vitter smugly announcing that if her husband had done what Bill did, she’d publicly Bobbittize him. I could see that she was remembering those words as she stood loyally and submissively by during his post-hooker-revelation press conference.
Oh, well, since Hillary is both a lesbian and a former lover of Vince Foster, I guess she can simultaneously be a spineless wife and a ballbuster.
Dennis SGMM
This one setback won’t discourage the wingers. They’ve created an alternative history and an alternative version of economics both of which are, for them, the real versions. Any attacks on either are viewed as the work of left-wing, pointy-headed intellectuals out to sap and impurify the wingers’ precious bodily fluids.
Science frightens and confuses them so they’re creating an alternative science. They’ll believe it just as fervently as they believe their made-up history.
These are the same people who would pay a door-to-door salesman one hundred dollars for a sliver from The One True Cross.
LGRooney
@Cat Lady: Yes, sadly, it seems to be turning into that. I graduated from there for my BA a little more than 20 years ago when it was just a regional university with decent students. Since then, Buchanan won the Nobel for his collaboration 30 years before that on Public Choice Theory. Since this made many cons cream themselves (that’s an econ term, BTW) they put GMU on the list of right-wing hadjes. The leadership at the school has been all too happy to accept grifter money in exchange for more such hiring and the legend is born.
bryanD
@belaphon: That’s right. The “cultural enlightenment” aspects of the propaganda campaign were half-assed. There was never an advancement of knowledge by degrees. The Arctic ice cap HAS melted away. Why no incessant PICTURES of this in paid ads in Sunday newspapers? Why only man-eating polar bears at fat kids?
@Villago Delenda Est: I’ll use “dudes” “dudettes” and “guys” next time.
On second thought, I’ll stick with the best word. If you have a better one, let me know.
SFAW
Yeah, those assholes can preach it, but they can’t practice it. Fidelity? Patriotism? Bumper stickers slogans that they can barely read, let alone understand.
cathyx
@aimai: And don’t forget the wife has cancer while you cheat on her and father a child part.
Citizen_X
I am loving the phrase “self-refuting paper.” For that accomplishment, doesn’t Wegman deserve some sort of Lifetime Achievement Award from the Journal of Irreproducible Results?
Jazz Superluminar
Now this is some awesome anti-science stuff.
Goddarned liebruls, promoting their sciency stuff that misleads people’s political views…
SFAW
Which he’ll need to share with Stanley “The Dog Ate The Peer Review Results, I Swear!” Azen.
ETA: But not the grad student who either did or did not work on the paper.
Roger Moore
Each individual climate change denial must be debunked separately because each one is subtly different from previous denials. To notice that none of the people doing the criticism have any qualifications to do so and stop listening to them would be unfairly treating a group of distinct individuals as a class. Meanwhile, all of the climate science supporters are saying essentially the same thing, so it’s obvious that they must be conspiring with each other.
Villago Delenda Est
The same mental gymnastics involved in “Oceania is at war with Eastasia” apply to this, which is further evidence that the wingtards are the people Orwell was warning us about.
Josie
@jeffreyw: I think you have exactly the right attitude. I have some fresh tomatoes from the garden and some bread I made last night. I am going forthwith to the kitchen to make a bacon and tomato sandwich. It will make me feel better, but I will still hate Paul Ryan.
Odie Hugh Manatee
He probably thought the Wingnut Warriors had ‘fixed’ the page to reflect proper Wingnut Beliefs and thus it was credible material to quote. I like to cruise the Discussion pages for certain Wikipedia entries to read the Wingnut Warriors getting called out on their bullshit edits to alter material so it suits their purposes.
The butthurt and howling that ensues when they get caught doing it just makes me smile. They really believe the bullshit they espouse and that Wikipedia is a liebrul conspiracy to spread liebrul lies to the world.
Citizen_X
@bryanD:
Try “the scientific community.” That’s the most accurate.
slag
@SFAW: Yeah. But there’s a different standard for universities and academic journals. My first thought upon reading that the paper had been published was that the journal’s editor certainly had to get the boot. Even they have a reputation to protect.
Chris
@Jazz Superluminar:
At least “Born In The U.S.A.” wasn’t on the list. That was Reagan’s whoopsie.
Chris
@Odie Hugh Manatee:
EVERYTHING is a liebrul conspiracy to spread liebrul lies. You can reach no other conclusion unless you’re willing to consider that the bullshit you espouse may be wrong, which… you know.
Dennis SGMM
@Jazz Superluminar:
Who controls the British crown?
Who keeps the metric system down?
Liberals, Liberals
Who keeps Atlantis off the maps?
Who keeps the Martians under wraps?
Liberals, Liberals
Who holds back the elctric car?
Who makes Steve Gutenberg a star?
Liberals, Liberals
Who robs gamefish of their site?
Who rigs every Oscar night?
Liberals, Liberals
shortstop
@Jazz Superluminar: I’m cryin’ over here. I think Doug has already been into this list:
I’m also loving this:
Poopyman
Glad to see folks have already connected this to GMU & the Kochs.
@Cat Lady:
GMU is strategically located in the Virginia suburbs of DC, and provide a large variety of post-graduate courses and degree programs for already-employed professionals. In other words, a perfect place to inoculate the government worker bees, who are or will be seeded through the govt. And they don’t even have to know they’ve been inoculated. Wingnut win!
jeffreyw
@Josie: Mmm…Bacon! Pictures?
DBrown
@bryanD: Unlike you – the head of the completely stupid lobby – to reverse this, try reading facts – this is called AGW because the world is warming on average (big word – look it up- esp. its meaning.)
Cat Lady
@Villago Delenda Est:
The wingtards aren’t the problem, it’s their patrons – the Kochs, Murdochs and Scaifes of the world. The wingtards are sheeple. The war on objective measurable reality must continually be funded to be waged, since we know that facts have a well known liberal bias. Right wing think tanks wouldn’t be necessary if any of their policies worked in the real world, hence the constant battle to find more ways to up the signal to noise ratio, and dumb down the populace. It’s really quite remarkable how coordinated they are.
gene108
@Valdivia:
Fixed it for you.
Villago Delenda Est
@Cat Lady:
Point well taken…although Orwell did point out that the war hysteria of Oceania was most intense at the Inner Party level.
bryanD
“This one setback won’t discourage the wingers. They’ve created an alternative history and an alternative version of economics both of which are, for them, the real versions.”—Dennis SGMM
Everyone in the West, including atheists, lives in unconscious thrall to a Biblical mindset that promises all of our lives will go on as usual until a series of supernatural events occurs sometime in the future. This event will indeed coincide with awesome atmospheric events, however the good will at this time heal the bad quickly (I’m keeping this as non-eschatological as possible).
So the global warming skeptics say (or intuit) “Why worry?”. That’s the Western instinct exhibited forever.
As for the East, well, fuggediboutit. Buddhists? Yin/yang.
Animists: New Age and sasha and zuzumi &c.
That just leaves the “managers” and bureaucrats and their hired prospectors and home hobbyists, who our unconscious training informs us are Scribes and Pharisees and Jezebels and maybe even demonic. Certainly, they are busybodies!
That’s that. It’s beyond dispute. Be happy within your elite.
SFAW
As someone said, so much wingnutty goodness, so little time.
Josie
@jeffreyw: Oh, goodness, there is no way I could do food presentation and photography like you do. I am pretty good and cooking and eating, however.
SFAW
Yes, because you “feel” it to be true. Keep up the great “work”!
cleek
@bryanD:
prove it
lonesomerobot
The really fantastic thing about this is that it’s all part of an elaborate plan to do nothing about the our dependence on oil and the national security problem it creates for us.
You don’t have to be a tree hugger, you don’t have to care about climate change at all. All this “science” Exxon-Mobil pays for, it just makes us a weaker, more vulnerable country. But at least we get to punch some hippies!
Citizen_X
@bryanD: People, you wake-and-bake and start commenting, and this is the result.
Oh, and “our unconscious training” = “my ass.”
Ash Can
“Bryan”? Wasn’t his name Bill? And what happened to his brick oven?
Citizen_X
OT: Looks like Newt’s run is already getting torpedoed by his fellow Republicans.
Martin
@Citizen_X: Damnit, Newt! Why won’t you strap this vest on?
Wires?! Fuck the wires, they’re decoration!
Martin
Huh. Arnold cheated on Maria and had a kid. He was more Republican than I gave him credit for.
Fucen Pneumatic Fuck Wrench Tarmal
ya’ll academic types keep tarnishing the reputation of the intercollegiate athletic programs your diploma factories, and research contracts get associated with, and someone is gonna wanna take action. you are making the jocks on campus look bad.
Omnes Omnibus
@Ash Can: This guy needs to get hooked up with m_c ASAP. They are perfect for one another.
jeffreyw
@Josie:
I’d be happy with that on my Tombstone. Pizza. LOL
fasteddie9318
@Omnes Omnibus:
And then they need to go off and start their own special blog together. Their own special, batshit crazy blog.
Ash Can
@Citizen_X: Karma’s a bitch.
Cat Lady
@Citizen_X:
Ha ha ha “even the conservative Newt Gingrich”. Krauthammer reads lefty blogs?
Couldn’t happen to a fatter nastier amoral fuckstick. The best part about it is he’s getting crucified for saying the only thing he’s ever said that approximates the truth. How long til he drops out? Looks like no gooper running can deviate one speck from the Ryan
PlanBoat Anchor. They’re making this too easy.Tim F.
As a rule professors can pass the buck to postdocs. I have seen it done several times and only once has it maybe backfired. However, you just can’t do that with grad students. As long as the student does not yet have that degree his or her sins are your sins and any flaw in a paper is on your head and not his or hers.
Thus Wegman’s latest gambit is not only most likely a lie, but also one more bit of proof that he is worthless as an academic. In the places I have studied profs with that kind of reputation have an extremely hard time finding students to work for them.
slag
@Omnes Omnibus: For a second there, I thought it might actually be m_c.
Roger Moore
@Tim F.:
The key point is that a plagiarized paper has gone out with his name on it. Either he plagiarized it himself and now he’s trying to shift the blame onto a grad student, or he tried to claim exclusive credit for his student’s work without checking it. One way or the other, he’s guilty of academic misconduct serious enough that it ought to destroy his career. Ought to. Something tells me he’ll be protected by his wingnutty patrons.
Josie
@jeffreyw:
Jeffrey, if you’re still there, here is my picture. I hate not being able to do something, so I got out my trusty little camera and figured it out. Thanks for the inspiration.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/49146863@N03/
catclub
@Villago Delenda Est: “It reduces people who see a trend that endangers continued human existence….”
I am fully convinced that climate change is really coming, and yet this phrase drives me up the wall. There are human beings on every singe continent. they are extremely adaptable to a variety of climate conditions. They are zero predictions by honest climate scientists that human existence will be endangered by climate change. Many other species with limited ranges, yes, but NOT humans — they are fucking everywhere.
The actual impacts of climate change will be disproportionate on poor people living in low lying areas. But there is NO threat to human existence from that. The sun going red giant is a threat to human existence.
jake the snake
@Cat Lady:
See Koch brothers funding of GMU.
http://www.americablog.com/2011/05/it-isnt-just-florida-koch-brothers.html
aimai
@catclub:
That is a bizarre misreading of the difficulties that climate change will present to Humans, both as a species and as members of particular communities. Sure, our habitat range is huge–that’s another way of saying we’ve filled up the available ecological niches. But when a certain region can’t be exploited anymore–becomes too dry or too wet–we have to abandon it. That’s what has happened in the Sahara and what will happen in parts of Bangladesh. So the remaining population will be squeezed into smaller and smaller portions of formerly habitable lands.
Meanwhile, severe climate change fluctuations will alter previously exploited agricultural assets–as things get warmer in the northern latitutudes the grain belt, to take one example, starts moving north. But the amount of daylight during the growing season doesn’t change so we may not be able to simply shift the production of certain key agricultural products along with the climate shift. That’s true everywhere, btw–lots of factors go into producing enough food for all of humanity. As the climate shifts and becomes more unstable previous ways of growing and distributing food may have to be abandoned or modified. Are we up to the challenge? Individual regions and countries may be but all of us probably aren’t. Vanishing South Pacific Islands and their populations won’t be, for example.
aimai
Catsy
@Jazz Superluminar: I’m amazed they managed to overlook “Silent Scream”. I guess there are no Slayer fans on Conservapedia.
Calouste
@slag:
You’d expect that if the editor of Computational Statistics and Data Analysis doesn’t get the sack after confessing that he published an article without even the most basic review, any selfrepecting university (obviously not including GMU) would cancel their subscription, as they would be paying hundreds of dollars per year for something that amount to little more than toilet paper.
Yutsano
@Josie: I warn you right now: food pr0n is a horrible addiction. Soon you’re sneaking your camera into restaurants and flashing at the breakfast table…it’s an ugly cycle.
And the sammie looks delish beyond belief, horrible white stuff notwithstanding.
Josie
@Yutsano: Ah, another mayophobe, like Omnes.
Cat Lady
@jake the snake:
Shame on Brown. On the plus side, now we know way more about how they’re operating than we did a short while ago, and really, it was more thanks to Ian Murphy punking that POS Walker then anything else.
Villago Delenda Est
@catclub:
The climate change itself may not kill us, but our reaction to the change (in the form of that favorite sport of humans, warfare) may well do the trick.
This is huge. It has vast impacts…aimai outlines a number of them. The thing is, those changes WILL cause political upheaval that will make the climate change itself seem trivial by comparison.
It’s no wonder that DoD sees climate change as a huge national security issue. They understand the broader issues…that climate change will trigger other events that do indeed threaten human existence, particularly as we know it now.
WaterGirl
@Josie: I’d eat that!
Edit: How did you find red tomatoes this time of year?
Rihilism
@catclub:
Not trying to pick a fight here, but there are few honest scientists (climate or otherwise) who would claim that humans are immune from extinction, except for red giant or asteroid scenarios, due to our presence on multiple continents and our apparent robustness as a species…
JR
@shortstop:
This is a totally misleading statement of the situation. A painstaking analysis of those stolen emails showed that the researchers involved were aboveboard and doing professional scientific work at the highest level.
If you want to claim otherwise, provide some quotes, in context, to show that there was any underhandedness on the part of the scientific community involved.
Personally, whether global climate change is man-made or not, I think we should do everything in our power to slow or stop the progress of that change lest we create a world in which our hi=tech civilization is no longer supportable.
Denying global climate change is absurd, as anyone can look at 80-year-old pictures of glaciers, compare them with modern photos, and see that ice all over the world is retreating faster and faster.
When nations begin running out of potable water and food, world war may become inevitable.
shortstop
@JR: JR, turn on your snark detector. Failing that, read my second paragraph.
Rihilism
Why does this remind me of “Tide goes in, tide goes out. Never a miscommunication.”?…
SFAW
O really?
Josie
@WaterGirl: Thanks. I grew them.
jrkrideau
@Jazz Superluminar:
Personally I was much more impressed with
# The action-at-a-distance of quantum entanglement.[7]
# The action-at-a-distance by Jesus, described in John 4:46-54 and Matthew 27:51.
Since Albert was not even a believer in quantam mechanics is this a valid point. Come to think of it since I believe he was an agnostic of Jewish background the John and & Mathew refss may not work either. He may not have read the literature on that area of research
dj spellchecka
also, gmu was first alerted to the problem on march 5, 2010, but they didn’t start investigating until october.
wegman hasn’t been disciplined in any way that i know of.
WaterGirl
@Josie: Probably too late for you to see this, but… Wow. They are gorgeous!
Middle of May, how did you do that??
JR
@shortstop:
My humble pie tastes great, please accept my groveling; nay, revel in it!
Nothing more I can say, ‘cept crow would be better with hot sauce!