"Retreat To The Upper Levels!"

There's a lot to enrage about this Wall Street Journal op-ed arguing that CO2's role in global warming - and specifically our own output - is in fact exaggerated, but it's all stuff we've seen before.  Deliberate misrepresentation and misinterpretation?  Check.  Accusations by oil company executives that those arguing for global warming have too much money at stake to be trustworthy?  Uh huh.  The conflation of uncertainty in predicting values with uncertainty in predicting trends?  Naturally. Using a piece in a newspaper with a circulation of two point fucking one million to compare themselves to Soviet researchers who were "disappeared" to prevent their research being promulgated?  Yep, that's in there too. [1]

I must confess, however, that I'm grimly amused by the balls on these people.  First we got "There's no evidence the world is warming, and everyone claiming otherwise is lying to you!".  Then it became "It's just possible the Earth is warming, but there's no evidence human activity is contributing to the trend, and everyone claiming otherwise is shilling for money!".

Now, apparently, we've reached a new stage: "It seems the Earth is warming - though everyone else lied about how fast it would warm up - and it seems humanity's actions might be part of the reason why.  But there's no evidence that our contribution is anything like as big as all that, and everyone claiming otherwise is involved in a vast international conspiracy to increase taxes for some reason!"

Lesser minds might have flagged at this point, and wearily admitted that it's just about possible that the accumulation of ever more evidence might once again force them to silently move the goalposts to ensure their lies continue to have the veneer of plausibility conclude they're wrong on this occasion as well, or at least that those on the other side of the issue might at least be arguing in good faith, rather than reading Solzhenitsyn and jotting down ideas.

But, heh: that's exactly the sort of thinking that doesn't get you thrown in a Siberian gulag, and that's not the sort of concession to the enemy those with a selfless dedication to revealing the truth in exchange for money are prepared to make!

[1] Interestingly, Think Progress notes that the WSJ was sent a letter by proponents of the other side of this little fracas, and the paper didn't think it was worth printing.  Now, I don't get to decide what does and doesn't deserve to be printed in the Wall Street Journal - though, really, it's hard to see how I, or a concussed dugong, could do worse than its own staff these days - but one might have hoped that someone involved in this piece at some point might have wanted to reconsider their Soviet gulag analogy.  Whatever one's personal feelings about the USSR in general, I'd think we can all agree that had a scientist received a letter from Director Lysenko saying "knock this shit off", they were unlikely to have gotten away with burning the pages in public and releasing a press release calling him a prick.


"Maybe I'll run another piece on how the phone-hacking scandal
has turned Rupert Murdoch into a helpless victim..."

Conflicting Interests

One of my co-workers is having trouble with a deeply antisocial neighbour, who amongst other things keeps playing music at four in the morning.  She also suspects he might be a benefit cheat, and there's significant evidence that he's gay, so I suggested phoning the Daily Mail.  YOUNG WOMAN KEPT UP BY GAY BENEFIT-CHEAT seems right up their alley.

Except then I remembered that my co-worker is a German immigrant who took one of our jobs.  It's hard to predict which way the Mail would jump on that one.

A Tale Of Cocktails #22

Dennis the Menace

Ingredients

1 oz peach schnapps
1 oz Malibu rum

1 1/2 oz pineapple juice
1 1/2 oz cranberry juice

Taste: 7

Look: 7

Cost: 8
Name: 7
Prep: 8
Alcohol: 5
Overall: 7.1

Preparation:  Shake the schnapps and Malibu along with crushed ice.  Strain into a Collins glass and add the juices.

General Comments:  This is something of a re-working of the inimitable Woo Woo, one of my all-time favourites.  Alas, this cocktail doesn't really measure up.  It's not a bad drink by any means, and all four ingredients blend perfectly together.  Paradoxically, however, this actually ends up working against the drink.  The amount of cranberry juice in a Woo Woo gives the cocktail its bite, by mixing in the pineapple juice, you get far less of an effect.  It's light and refreshing (and more powerful than you'd imagine by taste alone), but it's begging for something extra to provide a kick.

It also looks a bit dull (I think a glace cherry garnish would be a good idea, at least), and the name, whilst nicely playful, doesn't really make any sense. All in all, it's less than the sum of its parts.

Friday Comedy: Mocking The Giants

Much as I love Stewart Lee, a fact demonstrated more than once on this blog, I have to admit that this is a pretty funny deconstruction of his style.

Bring Back National Service (Or Possibly Fur Coats)

Sodding leopards!  They're stealing our cameras now!  I'm sure the tree-hugging eco-maniac types are crying tears of joy into their vegan lasagnas that there's an "unusually high" density of snow leopards in these mountains, but the disgraceful behaviour of their children demonstrate why: it's a big cat council estate.

Well, that or it's a staging area for the upcoming invasion.  Depends if those cubs are uncontrollable snipes flogging hot goods in exchange for cat-nip, or a highly trained paramilitary youth movement helping to fund the leopard war effort. 

If our government starts flogging Harriers to Tajikistan, we'll know what's happened.

Update:  Dammit, now they're trying to blame the oranges!  Link should be fixed now.

Special Bonus Prick

Shorter Rand Paul: "I don't want special treatment because I'm a senator, I want special treatment because I'm white."

The Life-Easing Properties Of Tiny Shit-Cannons

Ah, Cameron's Conservatism.  So... compassionate.

I don't really have anything to say on the specific value of the cap Cameron is proposing.  I lack the necessary data for that.  I would, however, like to point out three things:

1. Arguing that the cap can't be too low because lots of people want it to be lower still is functionally equivalent to saying "A lot of pricks want me to be a bigger prick, so I don't see why my prickishness should be a problem" [1];
2. Telling people that in a time of high employment the cause of child suffering he's focusing on is the people who could work but can't be bothered displays an ear so shot through with tin it belongs down a mine in Poldark;
3. How can a man with four children possibly be so stupid as to sign on to arguments that suggest people view an extra baby or nine as being a good way of avoiding hard work, or ensuring a greater amount of living space?

A quick pitch for a reality TV show: David Cameron and Iain Duncan Smith are invited to live for six months in Blenheim Palace, only to discover on arrival that every one of the staff has been replaced with a three month old baby and a single bag of Pampers.  The entire area is then sealed off, save for a weekly Tesco's delivery, and the resulting mayhem is filmed until it looks like a baby's health might be in danger, or Dave and IDS reconsider this government's social policy.  Or the next election is called, whichever comes first.

Working title: "Rugtwats".

[1] I wonder if Enoch Powell ever tried that one? "A lot of people wanted me to say 'The river Tiber foaming with much blood, and also the piss of darkies and the semen of homos'!"