The reptiles had a neat trifecta of stories the other day - what, say it ain't so, the world's finest, Cory and Harry gone, while "vocal critics" vocalise at the Court - and then along came the ice …
As if to make a point about barking mad Court's talk of fundamentalist damnation and hellfire, pundits rushed off to their Robert Frost …
Some say in ice.
From what I’ve tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.
Meanwhile, as the reptiles, with great fanfare and nauseating self-serving self-promotion, spent this tabloid day promoting their devotion to community, Scotty from marketing was conducting internal warfare on heresy …
Sheesh, talk about mixed messaging, with the hapless Keen sent to coventry and Tasmania's leader showing he doesn't have a clue as to how to fit in …
The pond regrets not mentioning his name, but frankly the pond doesn't even know who he is, which it seems is a common political ailment these days …
It was left to Crikey to ask, and answer in the very same breath, a rather naive question …
But there was the hint of a tremor on the front page of the digital reptile rag this day …
Uh huh, and as for that Crikey 'pivot', the pond will admit to being unsettled for a nanosecond, but then turned to a safe pair of hands …
Good old Dame Groan, steadfast and true, and a reliable stocking filler for climate denialists, even in January, long after the stockings have been tucked away …
It's a novel approach, as far as climate science denialism goes, but the pond is up to the task, and keen to show how it works in many areas …
You see, what you do is cherry pick, and nag away, and soon enough you're in a post-modernist relativist state where you can't be certain about anything …a kind of post-scientific world where the Donald rules, and Dame Groan scribbles ...
The pond understands this scientific method, and is keen to show how it can apply to journalism as much as psychology, medical sciences and climate science …
A few examples, both as it happens from the New York Times, which recently did their best to guarantee that Elizabeth Warren and Amy Klobuchar are out of the race …
The first can be found in full here, though paywall affected ...
And the second could be found in full here …
The conclusion is obvious.
Two journalists proved to be singular misleading wretches, so QED, every reptile, including Dame Groan, can't be trusted …not a word they scribble, not a thought they utter, can really be trusted, because … Blair and Miller …
It's Dame Groan's unique scientific method, as applied to journalism.
Now let's see Dame Groan prove this thesis …
Yes, let Dame Groan and the pond remind everyone that climate science simply can't be trusted, which at least is different from the usual response, as outlined by Wilcox …
But back to Dame Groan's scientific method in full featherless flight in a final gobbet …
Ah, but see how Dame Groan realises that, thanks to her scientific study, the policy journey is the same.
With all climate science in doubt thanks to Dame Groan's intrepid logic, it follows that policy makers should be extremely cautious about using any science whatsoever …
Better to exist in a vacuum, a policy void, than make a false move based on science which is likely to be wrong, wait, will undoubtedly be wrong, because … clownfish ...
Cometh the hour, cometh the man, cometh the reptile reporting, though the pond hastens to add that this reptile piece simply can't be trusted. It might change with the wind, or a Canberra gale, or a breeze, or a zephyr …
And with that, the pond turns to the immortal Rowe, with more Rowe here …
And now the pond realises that it proposed never speaking of the Devine again, but let's face it, the Dame Groan piece was short weight, and as the pond's summer holyday season is almost over, where's the harm in a few more period Devine pieces …
This one was in the Sydney Morning Herald on 2nd October 2003 … masochists will click on to enlarge, and discover that the Bjorn truth was being heiled long ago …
And this one was inn the Sydney Morning Herald on 13th November 2003 …
And with all that, a final thought from the infallible Pope …
Dame Clownfish sounds like an apt moniker to me.
ReplyDeleteOn a more bigly matter....this should pop DivineMiranda’s anti green view. Life was never meant to be easy but I’m certain she will give it a go. In Murdoch world you can never have to many clowns. Cheers.
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2020/jan/20/greenpeace-hits-out-at-davos-banks-for-14tn-climate-hypocrisy?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other
What a beautiful piece of sophist rhetoric by Dame Groan: oh look, the single unconfirmed clownfish study has overturned about 80 years of repeatedly, and repeatedly, and repeatedly replicated climate science.
ReplyDeleteGood one, Groanie - now we'll apply the same criteria to all of your publications, yes ?
But if any loonponders have any doubts, here's some good reading:
Scientists have gotten predictions of global warming right since the 1970s
https://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/2019/12/4/20991315/climate-change-prediction-models-accurate
Ah but give The Devine credit, DP; she did say "the driest inhabited continent on earth".. Though that obviously should have been "on Earth", citing a place name and not a load of soil. Though "on Terra" would have been even better.
But then we get onto the main thesis where The Devine loudly claims for Bjorn that: "There are more pressing environmental problems than global warming, he says. Air pollution is the most urgent."
Of course it never seems to occur to either The Devine or Bjorg that these problems might be intimately co-related. Nor, and this is the main issue, that working to solve global warming will take a long time, a lot of effort and much international cooperation. Aspects that humanity has never managed to make happen before.
And mostly, that 'climate change', and its consequent global warming, is cumulative. We can't just turn off the CO2 tap and it all goes away because the CO2 we've released stays out and active for centuries. So every week we delay, means another cumulative couple of months of serious climate disruption.
Oh, and just perhaps if it hadn't been for the 'miracle' of the Green Revolution which started to have effect in the late 1960s, Ehrlich might just have been tragically right - or at least right enough to have been very, very noticeable.
But then The Devine, in the second piece, unconsciously destroys Bjorg's bullshit with this: "It is a pattern of all modern government: deal weakly or not at all with a small problem so that it becomes a big problem..."
Couldn't have said it better myself. And it clearly remains the political modus operandi of choice as SloMo shows us every single day. But otherwise, The Devine's 13 Nov 2003 article is just a fine testimony to how long the reptile War Against The Greenies has been running; since before The Devine became a registered reptile, even.
So it goes.
"Ioannidis studies scientific research itself, especially in clinical medicine and the social sciences... His 2005 paper "Why Most Published Research Findings Are False" is the most downloaded paper in the Public Library of Science".
ReplyDeleteHow does he know? There are about 2.5 million scientific papers published each year. Even if you restrict yourself to the social sciences, there are hundreds of thousands of papers. As they say in the schoolyard, he is a bullshit artist.
I reckon Ioannidis himself is pretty much on the ball, Joe, but it is highly amusing how long it's taken the reptiles - and even then such a minor one as Dame Groan - to notice his existence and decide to egregiously misrepresent him in pursuit of their own total anti-science.
ReplyDeleteHi Dorothy,
ReplyDeleteFor a practitioner of the dismal academic field of economics to lecture The Science on methodology takes some brass neck.
That Dame Groan and her fellow augurs have shown an almost infallible inability to predict economic recessions would suggest she is not well placed to lecture real scientists about their research.
https://www.theguardian.com/money/2017/sep/02/economic-forecasting-flawed-science-data
Still what can you expect from a pseudoscience that had to buy its own Nobel Prize.
https://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2015/02/09/are-economists-overrated/overreliance-on-the-pseudo-science-of-economics
DiddyWrote
Ah but, DW, the fact that very unedifying people (eg Dame Groan) "believe" in economics shows clearly that they have no idea what constitutes either science or logic. Or mathematics in most cases: the branches of "descriptive economics" and "mathematical economics" do appear to be completely disjunctive.
DeleteI do love the way that especially non-mathematical economists always seem to be caught up by the approach of "doing the same thing over again, hoping it turns out better this time". I instance our current Reserve Bank leader and his insistence on lowering the interest rate no matter how badly "too much of nothing" can put us all at unease.
Exactly what I was thinking.
DeleteFor the most part, economics is more like a religion than a science. There are articles of faith and established answers to every question - it's just that the answers don't match up with reality.
When common folk point this out they are generally ignored, however, I note that the guys at London School of Economics felt obliged to answer the Queen when she asked them “Why did nobody notice it?" immediately after the GFC. After initially being unable to respond the learned gentlemen issued a written response. "In summary, extent and severity of the crisis and to head it off, while it had many causes, was principally a failure of the collective imagination of many bright people, both in this country and internationally, to understand the risks to the system as a whole."
There you go - lack of imagination! But it was alright because lots of other people were wrong also. I don't think it would go down too well if the bridge fell down or the plane crashe, the patients all died and so on.
Aggh - "crashed"
DeleteDame Groan’s shameless expropriation of John Ioannidis’s article is Denialism 101 and barely worthy of a newly hatched skinkling in the herpetarium typing pool. Dare we expect better? Or worse?
ReplyDeleteThe hissy hussy has conveniently ignored the fact that Ioannidis is a geneticist and his paper is specifically related to the medical field, where obscenely rich pharmaceutical companies fund biased research and clog the literature with false and/or misleading claims in order to sell their products.
And also in imaginary fields such as evolutionary psychology. And Goop.
Delete