Are We Going to Let John Die? – NYTimes.com

This is pathetic, but I’m a little puzzled. The article says: “The data were gathered from weather stations around the world and then adjusted to take account of variables in the way they were collected.” Were these weather stations run by this university? That’s the only way that I can envision the data being truly lost. But, even if the data exists elsewhere, there’s no excuse for this sort of sloppy record keeping.

I have no doubts that this (and the recent emails by different idiots) will further fuel speculation that global warming is a myth. There are of course many other sources of climate information (even going back into history), so though this data may be lost, it does not mean that there aren’t other ways to examine what has been happening with global temperatures over the past 150 years. My fear is not for the science (which has many other sources of data) but for the public perception of and trust in science. Sloppy scientists (to be generous) do science an enormous disservice.

One problem is that there are people (like Rush .. see the clip provided) who think that it's entirely OK for comprehensive health care to be for the wealthy (he compares it to the wealthy being able to afford a house on the beach and seems to see no difference between the two cases).

http://www.newser.com/story/75224/shatner-lashe…

The point of my providing the link to Rush is to point out that there
is not universal agreement that we OUGHT to worry about getting health
care to all. We don't even all agree that it is a problem that people
become bankrupt when someone in their family is struck by a disease.
People act as though it is a given that there is a problem with a
system that denies health care to the poor or with a system that
allows financial devastation to follow health devastation. What many
don't realize is that there are people (I would find it hard to
believe that Rush is alone on this) who don't see any problem with
these things.

Of course, but I've seen nothing in the plans being debated that I
think would be worse than doing nothing.

Policy reform should not include distractions that do not help towards improvement. We can fear what talking heads will expound at length upon ad nauseum, or we can get to work. At our level, it shouldn't be what politico darlings are vouching for our trust, it should be what specifics we can endorse as changes for good, or maintain for the same.

I'll pass on the Rush link. I do not feel the need to compensate for his extremism with any reaction of my own. And I can only hope this hype isn't fuel for justifications for rampant policy overreactions by the left, which induces rationlisms for overreactions again on the right. In fact, not only is it hard for any policy to be enacted in this climate, it's even harder still to get a proper policy done, and even harder still to get the best one.

The devil is in the details, man. Let's do battle, with them.

-=T=-

One thing I'm sure you'll agree with is that overreacting can make things worse.

-=T=-