Here’s Triumph the Insult Comic Dog’s take on Michael Jackson supporters.

My good friend jcspaceship wrote the following comment earlier this week:

Check out the NYTimes Editorial today regarding global warming. Here’s the opening paragraph:

“President Bush has been running from the issue of
global warming for four years, but the walls are
closing in. Scientists throughout the world are
telling him that the rise in atmospheric temperature justifies aggressive action. Arnold Schwarzenegger and other prominent Republicans are telling him to get off the dime. His corporate allies are deserting him. And the Senate is inching closer to endorsing a mandatory cap on greenhouse gas emissions.”

And later:

“As if on cue, the National Academy of Sciences and 10 of its counterparts around the world declared that the science of global warming is clear enough to warrant prompt reductions in greenhouse gases.”

Arnold is convinced. Mr. Schwarzenegger is quoted as saying: “The debate is over… We know the science, we see the threat, and we know the time for action is now.”

It’s a sad day for those who have for years parroted the propaganda of the oil industry and its lap dog politicians: they are waking from a trance and finding that the hypnotist has placed them in an embarrassing pose; that they have been fools for the wealthy oilmen. Your critical faculties were not stirred by clues like the appointment of an oil lobbyist to the position of chief of staff for the White House Council on Environmental Quality. Your curiosity is dull enough that you haven

It has taken me a little while to respond to some comments about my post about the NY Times getting huffy about comments from Philip Cooney, formerly of the White House Council on Environmental Quality. One commenter wrote:

Man is this statement glib: “This time Cooney’s description is more accurate than the original.” Where do you get off saying that? It is more accurate to say that the rain drops falling outside right now suggest that “it is raining” not that “it may be raining”. You should read the statement “Many scientific observations indicate that the Earth is undergoing a period of relatively rapid change” again more carefully and actually give it some thought. Your easy dismissal suggests an uncritical, blind acceptance of oil industry propaganda.

There’s an editorial about climate change in the Washington Post today. In part it says: “The aide, Philip A. Cooney — chief of staff for the White House Council on Environmental Quality — is alleged to have made dozens of changes to official reports, inserting qualifiers designed to cast doubt on findings about climate change and to play down the link between climate change and industrial greenhouse gas emissions.” Notice that dozens of changes are alleged.

To answer your daft question “so what’s the big deal?”: The Bush administration has for years tried to protect special interest groups and its own political interest by misleading the public about the threat of global warning. The Times story shows that they continue to take a dishonest and cavalier approach to this issue.

I stand by my previous comment that Cooney’s change is more accurate. There is a big difference between asking if it is raining, which is easily observable and verifiable, and saying that the earth’s climate is changing quickly. What is quickly? What is the appropriate timescale? We have only been measuring the temperature for the last couple hundred years and we have only had accurate measurements for much less time than that. It is hubris to presume that we know what quickly is in earth’s history.

I admit that I should have been more explicit in asking “what’s the big deal?” In the online version the Times only noted the two changes that I referenced. If there was a real smoking gun, you have to expect that the Times would jump all over it. All the Times could do was point to a couple changes. The print version the next day had a graphic which showed more changes, but that still doesn’t explain why the story didn’t give any egregious changes made by Cooney. The Washington Post might have said there were “dozens of changes.” Well, if they were so bad, what were the changes. I’m a big boy, I can decide for myself if Cooney is an evil oil baron trying to screw America. I don’t need the press to tell me what to think, I want the facts so I can decide for myself.

I’m sorry that I don’t buy the environmentalists lines about global climate change. That does not make me uncritical. I examine the evidence and I evaluate it, but the evidence needs to be supported by science and not fantasy.

For where I stand, it is the environmentalists that are the special interest groups. They scare people with horror stories so that they can raise money. The Bush Administration protects special interest groups, but let’s not lose sight that environmentalists are a special interest group themselves, and they are selling fear.

I recieve another comment, this time from jcspacship. JC writes:

The NYTimes plays politics, but you can count on

From Cnet:

Four major PC makers have no plans to sell the media-player-free version of Windows, which Microsoft was ordered to offer by Europe’s competition commissioner.

Microsoft will make an updated version of Window XP N available on Wednesday, but none of the computer manufacturers that ZDNet UK spoke to are considering preinstalling it on desktops or laptops.

Dell, Hewlett-Packard, Lenovo and Fujitsu Siemens all said they have no firm plans to install Windows XP N, citing a lack of customer demand. A Dell representative added Tuesday that customers expect to have a media player included.

Dell will continue to offer European customers Microsoft’s Windows operating systems including the Windows Media Player utility on Dimension desktops and Inspiron notebooks,” the representative said.

“Customers purchase computers expecting them to come equipped with the capability of playing back digital media files, and it’s our obligation to meet this need. (Windows XP N will) not (be offered) at this time. We’ll monitor the market to see if XP N is in high demand.”

Great job European antitrust regulators! Your remedy sure worked well!

From Slate–Lucas vs. Spielberg–the worst friends in Hollywood. It’s an interesting article, but it’s sad that George Lucas won’t let Spielberg direct a Star Wars movie. Lucas is great at special effects, but he can’t direct people, and Spielberg can.

Edward Jay Epstein has some good insight into the need for the press to reveal its sources:

Journalists cannot hope to approach an accurate rendering of an event without revealing their sources. Every source who has supplied a journalist with a part of a story has selected that bit of information, whether it is true or false, for a particular purpose. That purpose may be to advance his own career, to advance (or subvert) the interests of the agency he works for, to discredit an enemy, to advance an ideological agenda, or simply to assist a reporter. The bits of information thus supplied can be properly evaluated only in light of the circumstances and context in which they were given. It is not enough simply to present the assertion of an interested party

The NY Times currently has a headline that reads, “Official Played Down Emissions’ Links to Global Warming.” That sounds like it could be bad, so I read the article to read the smoking gun. In the first paragraph the Times tells us that it has “internal documents” and in the second paragraph the Times tells us that “Philip A. Cooney, removed or adjusted descriptions of climate research that government scientists and their supervisors, including some senior Bush administration officials, had already approved.” So what are the changes? Here’s the first one:

In one instance in an October 2002 draft of a regularly published summary of government climate research, “Our Changing Planet,” Mr. Cooney amplified the sense of uncertainty by adding the word “extremely” to this sentence: “The attribution of the causes of biological and ecological changes to climate change or variability is extremely difficult.”

I can see why some people are upset, but is this as bad as it gets? Yep. Here’s the only other change the Times reports:

Mr. Cooney’s alterations can cause clear shifts in meaning. For example, a sentence in the October 2002 draft of “Our Changing Planet” originally read, “Many scientific observations indicate that the Earth is undergoing a period of relatively rapid change.” In a neat, compact hand, Mr. Cooney modified the sentence to read, “Many scientific observations point to the conclusion that the Earth may be undergoing a period of relatively rapid change.”

This time Cooney’s description is more accurate than the original. The main change is the Cooney change “is” to “may be undergoing a period of relatively rapid change.” Scientists following the scientific method can’t make statement like, “Earth is rapidly changing” when there is uncertainty–and in climate change, there is uncertainty. The accurate may to say it is that “Earth may be undergoing change.”

So what’s the big deal? Why will this merit a front page story in tomorrow’s NY Times? If Times says that it has the documents and this is as good as they can do? It seems to me that they are reaching here. And they are reaching for political reasons, since President Bush is meeting with Tony Blair and Blair is trying to convince Bush to sign the Kyoto Protocol.

The DC Examiner Editorializes:

So ask yourself: If you were an executive at an ice cream company thinking of building a new plant, and you have to pay more for the wood and steel and cement to construct the plant in the U.S. and twice as much for the sugar to put in the ice cream – would you rather build your plant here or somewhere you could get the materials you need for less and the workers you need for less?

Isn’t it the job of Congress to help ALL American workers succeed, instead of protecting a favored few at the expense of the rest?

I don’t think the Washington Post can do math when it gets in the way of the point that want to make. From Daily Thoughts:

Commenter Jason notes (some minor formatting changes made by me),

I was reading through the Washington Post Editorials this morning, and I came across the following article on drilling in ANWR:

Advocates of drilling say that opening up ANWR would make America less dependent on oil imports and thus more secure. At best this idea is illogical; at worst, it