Pretzel logic

Many of us here in the United States have been appalled and dismayed by the response some people are having to the recent double-whammy of Hurricanes Helene and Milton, and the attempts afterward to clean up the mess.

First, we have the fact that the meteorologists who were instrumental in predicting the hurricanes' paths, and who almost certainly saved lives by doing so, are being inundated with threats alleging that they're covering up the fact that the hurricanes were created and/or steered by operatives in the United States government itself.  Alabama-based meteorologist James Spann describes being told to "stop lying about the government controlling the weather or else."  

"I have had a bunch of people saying I created and steered the hurricane, there are people assuming we control the weather," said Michigan meteorologist Katie Nickolaou.  "I have had to point out that a hurricane has the energy of ten thousand nuclear bombs and we can't hope to control that.  But it's taken a turn to more violent rhetoric, especially with people saying those who created Milton should be killed...  Murdering meteorologists won't stop hurricanes.  And I can't believe I just had to say that."

Proving the truth of the observation that "everything's a conspiracy when you don't understand how stuff works."

Then there's William James Parsons, the lunatic in North Carolina who threatened to kill FEMA workers who are trying to help residents who lost everything during Hurricane Helene.  News sources are saying Parsons was part of a "militia" -- why they don't call him a "domestic terrorist," which is more accurate, I have no idea.   "This is unprecedented," said Craig Fugate, who headed FEMA from 2009 to 2017.  "I know we’ve had individuals, but not an area or a group that’s threatening FEMA."

My first reaction to all of this was much like Katie Nickolaou's; utter bafflement.  How does it make sense to have a violent response to a fact I don't happen to like?  I can remember being in college classes where I became intensely frustrated by concepts I couldn't manage to understand, and not enjoying that one bit; but even then, I knew my problems would not be remedied by my punching the professor in the face.

But with regards to the current situation, I realized upon reflection that my initial reaction -- that the actions of the people making threats against meteorologists and FEMA workers were completely illogical -- is wrong.  What they are doing follows its own peculiar, twisted logic, that when you view it from a historical perspective makes total sense.

When far-right-wing commentators like Rush Limbaugh first really took off back in the mid-eighties, they did two things.  The first, which to a quick glance seemed the more dangerous, was to spew ultra-conservative talking points -- anti-science, anti-immigrant, anti-equal rights, anti-LGBTQ, pro-corporate, pro-military, pro-unrestricted, unregistered gun ownership.  The other was far quieter, bubbling right beneath the surface, but threaded through the entire message.  And although it was subtler than all the bluster about specific issues, in the long run it was far more insidious.

"Listen to me," Limbaugh said, again and again.  "I'm the only one brave enough to tell you the truth.  Everyone else is lying to you."

Honestly, it's a genius strategy.  Once you have someone disbelieving the facts, and certain that everyone else is lying, they're in the palm of your hands.  

After that, you can convince them of anything.

What we're seeing now is the end game of that strategy.  Donald Trump and his wannabe fascist allies have taken it and stretched it to the snapping point -- and yet it seems to be showing no sign of breaking.  He can say "Haitian immigrants are eating your pets," and instead of laughing at him, his followers make threats against Haitians who are here legally -- and anyone who dares to publicly support them.  He can talk about the media as "the enemy of the people" and his followers obligingly start beating up reporters.  People like the astonishingly stupid Marjorie Taylor Greene can say "They can control the weather.  It's ridiculous for anyone to lie and say it can't be done," and rather than people saying, "okay, now I see you're talking complete bullshit"...

... the MAGA extremists start threatening meteorologists and the FEMA workers sent to help the innocent victims of storms.

While it's maddening and infuriating and any number of other synonyms for "what the actual fuck?", what it's not is illogical.  It's the end result of forty years of being told over and over, "The scientists and politicians and news media are lying to you."  Not, some of them may be lying or are misinformed, so use your brains and the available hard evidence to form your opinions; they're all lying, every last one, all the time and about everything, for their own nefarious reasons.

Oh, except for me.  I'm telling you the truth.  Obviously.

What is kind of hard to understand, though, is that these types call the rest of us "sheep."  That's a truly monumental scale of irony, but not one I'd expect them to acknowledge, or even recognize.

I'm honestly not sure how to combat this kind of pretzel logic.  The Trump wing of the Republican Party long ago ceded its entire identity, heart, and brain to one man's control, and now anything he says is de facto gospel truth.  At this point, he could ask them to do just about anything, and they'd acquiesce without a moment's hesitation.

Which is terrifying -- and an urgent call for anyone who is as appalled by this as I am to get yourselves to the voting booth on November 5.  This man, and his fanatical cult followers, can't be allowed ever to get within hailing distance of public office again.

****************************************

Raising the dragon

I've been trying to stay off the topic of politics lately.

Besides being depressing, the subject has lately been fraught with overtones of futility.  The followers of Donald Trump are more and more becoming a cult, where Dear Leader can do no wrong and his supporters cannot tolerate any criticism.  I have seen, I kid you not, images of Trump as a muscle-bound shirtless prizefighter, and as a Jesus-like figure with robes on a white stallion.  The near impossibility of getting the Trump Party members to see this man as the amoral, lying, narcissistic grifter the rest of us see was discovered last week, to his chagrin, by Joe Walsh, former Illinois representative and staunch conservative Republican.  Walsh, who is running for the GOP nomination -- not that you could tell if you talked to most Republicans -- was speaking to a crowd of GOP supporters in Iowa prior to the primary, and got a reception he described later on Twitter:

I spoke in front of 3,000 Iowa Republicans last night.  It was like a MAGA rally.  I told them we needed a President who doesn’t lie all the time.  The crowd booed me.  I told them we needed a President who wasn’t indecent & cruel.  The crowd booed me.  I told them we needed a President who doesn’t care only about himself.  The crowd booed me.  I told them the Republican Party needed to do some real soul searching.  The crowd booed me.  I told them that, because of Trump, young people, women, and people of color want nothing to do with the Republican Party.  The crowd booed me.  I told them I’m a pro life, pro gun, secure the border conservative, but we need a President who is decent and represents everyone.  The crowd booed me.  I got booed, yelled at, jeered, and given the middle finger for the 3-4 minutes  I spoke to these 3,000 people.  Afterwards, I realized again that 99.9% of these folks don’t support me.  They don’t care that Trump lies, they don’t care that he’s cruel, they don’t care that he cheats to get re-elected, they don’t care that he attacks the free press, they don’t care that he increases the debt, they don’t care that his tariffs have killed Iowa farmers, they don’t care that Trump abuses the Constitution and acts like a dictator.  Afterwards, I realized again that my Republican Party isn’t a Party, it’s a cult.  I realized again that nobody can beat Trump in a Republican Primary.  And most importantly and most sadly, I realized again that I don’t belong in this party.  I have no home in this party.  And I realized again that something new needs to begin.  Whether it’s a political party, or a movement, I don’t know.  But there needs to be a home for conservatives who are decent, principled, and respectful.  Conservatives who embrace all God’s children, acknowledge that climate change is real, get serious about our debt, abide by our Constitution, and tell the truth.  I hope to be a part of this new party.  This new movement. But job #1 in 2020 is to stop Trump.  And all of us from across the political spectrum need to come together to stop Trump.  Let’s make sure Trump is defeated in 2020, then we get back to respectfully debating issues.  Instead of talking about Trump everyday, let's put aside our differences on certain issues now and understand that Trump is the single greatest threat to this Republic.

While I find it unfortunate that Walsh was treated discourteously, and even more unfortunate that no one was taking his message to heart, I have a hard time feeling sorry for the GOP as a whole.  They, and their mouthpiece Fox News, have created a perfect storm of conditions that is so reminiscent of the rise of the Nazi Party in Germany of the 1930s that anyone who doesn't see the parallels must be either ignorant of history or else willfully blind.  The whole thing brought to mind the wonderful quote from novelist Stephen King (which I then tweeted at Walsh, not that he responded to or probably even read it): "Those who have spent years sowing dragon's teeth seem surprised to find that they have grown an actual dragon."

And very few people have done more in the dragon's-tooth-sowing effort than Rush Limbaugh -- who on Tuesday evening was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

[Image licensed under the Creative Commons DonkeyHotey, Rush Limbaugh - Caricature (5337997122), CC BY-SA 2.0]

I haven't been surprised by much in these chaotic last few months -- Trump's defiance of the rule of law, Mitch McConnell's smirking, wink-wink-nudge-nudge defense of him, the Senate's decision to acquit him of charges that make Watergate look like a seventh grader shoplifting a piece of candy from the local grocery store.  But the awarding of the Medal of Freedom to the likes of Limbaugh took me off guard.

Limbaugh's hate-filled rhetoric has been inflaming the Right for decades, convincing them they're threatened (and that their opponents are amoral America-haters) in terms that are nauseating in their quantity and sheer ugliness.  A sampler:

• To an African-American caller on a radio program: "Take that bone out of your nose and call me back."
• Feminism was established so as to allow unattractive women access to the mainstream of society. 
• There are more acres of forest land in America today than when Columbus discovered the continent in 1492.
• Greetings, conversationalists across the fruited plain, this is Rush Limbaugh, the most dangerous man in America, with the largest hypothalamus in North America, serving humanity simply by opening my mouth, destined for my own wing in the Museum of Broadcasting, executing everything I do flawlessly with zero mistakes, doing this show with half my brain tied behind my back just to make it fair because I have talent on loan from God.
• Styrofoam and plastic milk jugs are biodegradable.  You know what isn't biodegradable?  Paper.
• The NAACP should have riot rehearsal.  They should get a liquor store and practice robberies.
• The way liberals are interpreting the First Amendment today is that it prevents anyone who is religious from being in government.
• There are more American Indians alive today than there were when Columbus arrived or at any other time in history.  Does this sound like a record of genocide?
• All composite pictures of wanted criminals look like Jesse Jackson.
• Let me tell you something.  They say [Oliver North] lied to Congress.  I can think of no better bunch of people to lie to than Congress.
• [The torture of prisoners at Abu Ghraib Prison] was sort of like hazing, a fraternity prank.  Sort of like that kind of fun...  I'm talking about people having a good time, these people, you ever heard of emotional release?  You ever heard of need to blow some steam off?
• Look it, let me put it to you this way: the NFL all too often looks like a game between the Bloods and the Crips without any weapons.  There, I said it.
• Liberals should have their speech controlled and not be allowed to buy guns.  I mean if we want to get serious about this, if we want to face this head on, we’re gonna have to openly admit, liberals should not be allowed to buy guns, nor should they be allowed to use computer keyboards or typewriters, word processors or e-mails, and they should have their speech controlled.  If we did those three or four things, I can’t tell you what a sane, calm, civil, fun-loving society we would have.  Take guns out of the possession, out of the hands of liberals, take their typewriters and their keyboards away from ‘em, don’t let ‘em anywhere near a gun, and control their speech.  You would wipe out 90% of the crime, 85 to 95% of the hate, and a hundred percent of the lies from society.

There you have it.  The man that Donald Trump awarded with one of the highest honors given in the United States.  The man Trump just put in the same category as Rosa Parks, Norman Rockwell, Buckminster Fuller, Robert Redford, Carl Sandberg, Eudora Welty, Elie Wiesel, Grace Hopper, and Jonas Salk.

It's almost certain that Trump chose Tuesday night, the same night as the State of the Union speech, to give the award because Limbaugh just announced that he had been diagnosed with advanced lung cancer (after being a lifelong smoker -- and scoffer at the connection between tobacco use and cancer).  I wouldn't wish lung cancer on anyone, after watching the agony two of my uncles went through while dying of the disease, but the fact that he's a very sick man doesn't change the fact that he has spent his entire adult life spewing a venomous message with the sole purpose of fomenting hate.  Joe Walsh's reception at what turned out to be a MAGA rally shows how successful Limbaugh and his colleagues have been -- people like Ann Coulter, Sean Hannity, Tucker Carlson, Laura Ingraham, Rick Santorum, Mike Huckabee, and Glenn Beck, amongst many others.

And the fact that someone like Limbaugh was given a prestigious award for service to his nation shows just how far in the downward spiral we've gone.

I don't know what else to say.  I'm saddened, sickened, and disheartened by what my country has become and is becoming.  I fear that we haven't reached bottom yet, something I find profoundly frightening.

In fact, I think the dragon the GOP has grown is just beginning to rear his ugly head.

*********************************

This week's Skeptophilia book of the week is both intriguing and sobering: Eric Cline's 1177 B.C.: The Year Civilization Collapsed.

The year in the title is the peak of a period of instability and warfare that effectively ended the Bronze Age.  In the end, eight of the major civilizations that had pretty much run Eastern Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East -- the Canaanites, Cypriots, Assyrians, Egyptians, Babylonians, Minoans, Myceneans, and Hittites -- all collapsed more or less simultaneously.

Cline attributes this to a perfect storm of bad conditions, including famine, drought, plague, conflict within the ruling clans and between nations and their neighbors, and a determination by the people in charge to keep doing things the way they'd always done them despite the changing circumstances.  The result: a period of chaos and strife that destroyed all eight civilizations.  The survivors, in the decades following, rebuilt new nation-states from the ruins of the previous ones, but the old order was gone forever.

It's impossible not to compare the events Cline describes with what is going on in the modern world -- making me think more than once while reading this book that it was half history, half cautionary tale.  There is no reason to believe that sort of collapse couldn't happen again.

After all, the ruling class of all eight ancient civilizations also thought they were invulnerable.

[Note: if you purchase this book using the image/link below, part of the proceeds goes to support Skeptophilia!]

Ideology vs. hurricanes

There are several topics about which I think, "Okay, I've said all that needs to be said about that.  I've plumbed the depth of absurdity and foolishness on that particular subject."

And then things keep getting worse.

It will come as no surprise to long-time readers of Skeptophilia that what I'm referring to once again is climate change.  What touched off this particular salvo on that topic was the announcement two days ago that any research grant awards from the Environmental Protection Agency have to go to a Trump administration aide to make certain they're consistent with the party line before they're officially approved.

Yes -- we're at the point where science is being held hostage to the standard of ideological purity.

In particular, the aide in charge, one John Konkus, says he looks for the "double c-word" (guess what that means) and automatically eliminates from consideration any grant proposals that mention The Piece Of Reality That Shall Not Be Named.

The EPA isn't the only place this is happening.  Last month, the Department of the Interior cancelled a $100,000 project by the National Academy of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine to study the effects of surface mining on the environment and on people living nearby because it doesn't jibe with the "Drill, Baby, Drill" policy of the current administration.

It probably bears reminding people what happens when the politicians start requiring science to abide by party agenda.  You end up with Trofim Lysenko, who became rich and famous under Josef Stalin by falsifying experimental data to make it look as if the environment could change the genetic makeup of an organism (you might recognize this as a latter-day Lamarckianism).  This idea, of course, was in line with Stalin's hatred of the idea of heredity-as-destiny, and it also bolstered his goal of revolutionizing Soviet agriculture.

Unfortunately, it was based on incorrect science and bogus data, invented because Lysenko knew what side his bread was buttered on.  The result was that Soviet scientific progress was stalled for decades, not only in genetics but in other fields, when researchers recognized how Lysenko had succeeded -- and what happened to the people who dissented.

All of this, however, is part-and-parcel of Trump's determination that ideology comes first, profitability comes second, and reality is dead last.  Especially ironic that all of this is happening while the Gulf Coast of the United States is still cleaning up from one of the costliest storms in history, and Hurricane Irma has broken every record for strength in Atlantic storms, and besides Irma there are simultaneously two other hurricanes brewing in the Atlantic and the Gulf of Mexico.

Oh, but none of that has anything to do with climate change, according to noted meteorologist Rush Limbaugh, who said (and no, I'm not making this up) that hurricanes are part of a liberal plot to push a climate change agenda.

"There is a desire to advance this climate-change agenda, and hurricanes are one of the fastest [ways] to do it," Limbaugh said.  "You have people in all of these government areas who believe man is causing climate change, and they’re hell-bent on proving it, they’re hell-bent on demonstrating it, they’re hell-bent on persuading people of it...  Unlike UFOs, which only land in trailer parks, hurricanes are always forecast to hit major population centers.  Because, after all, major population centers [are] where the major damage will take place and where we can demonstrate that these things are getting bigger and they’re getting more frequent and they’re getting worse.  All because of climate change."

Hurricane Irma [image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

It's funny, I always thought that gays were the most powerful force known to nature, given that they've been blamed for causing earthquakes, hurricanes, tornadoes, and wildfires.  But that's apparently incorrect.  Liberals cause all of that stuff.

You know, I kind of wish that were true, because if I could create a hurricane, I'd send one to Rush Limbaugh's house, and also one to Mar-a-Lago.  But I'd want it to be a really focused hurricane, so no one else gets hurt, because I'm just a bleeding heart snowflake that way.

What gets me most about all of this is how much of this political posturing is based on ignorance.  I'd be willing to bet cold hard cash that most of the Trump supporters who are snarling about "government inefficiency" and "government red tape" and "bureaucracy" couldn't give you facts about a single specific example.  It's why bloviating gasbags like Rush Limbaugh are still around; he can make idiotic claims like the one above, and people just nod and go, "Yeah!  Damn liberals!  That all makes sense!"

So here we are, once again discussing climate change deniers.  All of which makes me feel like we're moving backwards, that our leaders are actually getting progressively stupider.  And I'd like to say this is the last time I'm addressing this in Skeptophilia, but chances are, circumstances will prove me a liar.

View from the fringe

Call me masochistic, but every so often I like to check in and see what people like Rush Limbaugh and Alex Jones are saying.

Those two, and various others I could name, always have seemed to me to be seated right at the triple point between true belief, crass commercial pandering, and outright batshit craziness.  Far be it from me to make a determination between the three; I think both of them have some measure of all three.  (Okay, with Jones, there's a bigger proportion of craziness, but still.)  As evidence, let's see what our two pals have been up to this past week.

Rush Limbaugh went on record as saying that President Obama's latest scheme to overturn life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness was unleashing hordes of lesbian farmers on the midwest.  The midwest, Limbaugh claims with some degree of accuracy, is the last bastion of the solidly conservative Republican core in the United States (although you might make the same argument for much of the southeast).  So naturally, given a largely right-leaning region, what else should someone like Obama do but search and destroy?

And what better weapon than lesbian farmers?  I guess that "learning to use heavy equipment" is now officially part of the "gay agenda."

Don't believe me?  Here's the quote:

They are trying to bust up one of the last geographically conservative regions in the country; that’s rural America … So here comes the Obama Regime with a bunch of federal money and they’re waving it around, and all you gotta do to get it is be a lesbian and want to be a farmer and they’ll set you up … apparently enough money it make it happen, and the objective here is to attack rural states.

So there you have it.

But that's small potatoes compared to the latest from Alex Jones.  He interviewed Steven Quayle (the guy who thinks that HAARP is still operational, and is what is currently creating hurricanes in the south Atlantic, because that doesn't happen every year or anything) and Gary Heavin (conservative activist and founder of the Curves fitness center chain) to discuss how the descendants of fallen angels are currently running the world.

I kid you not.  Here's the conversation:

Quayle:  Donald Trump, in my opinion, is God’s prosecuting attorney.  He’s laying out the evidence.  It’s like everything evil is swarming upon him.  I think the fascinating thing about this is that, you probably heard this, I gave a word that I really thought was an answer to prayer, God said, "Before I allow America to be destroyed by the Russians and the Chinese, now this is hard to take, I’m going to reveal the sins of America’s leaders to the people and the people’s sins before a Holy God."

Jones:  Doesn't that always biblically happen, that before a country goes under judgment, they're given warning after warning, then one really big warning? 

Quayle:  The big warning is coming.  I believe the ultimate warning is coming. 

Heavin:  Let me just...  Steve's taught me a lot about this.  You know, there's no aliens; there's demons.   And Steve has a great explanation, you know, he's taught me about this.   Where these demons come from.  We know that fallen angels rebelled against god, came down to Earth, and we know they had sex with human women.   We know that the offspring were these entities that Steve will talk about... 

Jones: That's in the bible. 

Heavin:  It's all biblical. 

Jones:  So that's why the elites intermarry, to try to keep that bloodline. 

Heavin:  Absolutely.  The idea is, Satan knew that if he could contaminate the human DNA, he could prevent the coming of Jesus, because Jesus had to be of pure DNA.  A lot of the really awful things that happen in the bible, entire cities being wiped out, driving out the bad guys, was to cleanse the DNA so that Jesus, Satan could not prevent Jesus from coming.

So there you have it.  While the militia composed of lesbian farmers attacks the country's midsection, the elite people with angelic DNA will be having lots of sex to create progeny that will go back in time and prevent Jesus from being born.  Unless Donald Trump does something to avoid the evil swarming upon him, and stop all of that from happening.

Don't forget: you heard it here first.

Anyhow.  I can totally understand why people still listen to Limbaugh and Jones; it's the undeniable attraction of listening to someone who might without provocation say something that's loony enough to be funny.  It'd be nice to get them off the air, though -- the last thing this country needs is to have more people spreading around conspiracy theories.  But since listeners = sponsors = money, it's unlikely to happen any time soon.  I can only hope that the majority of the people paying attention to what they say are not leaning back and thinking, "My god!  That makes total sense!"

Although that would explain a lot about how we get the elected officials we always seem to end up stuck with.

Admissions of idiocy

Can I suggest that now, in the midst of the Information Age, there are certain questions you might ask and arguments you might make that are tantamount to shouting, "Hey, everyone, look at me!  I'm extremely stupid!"

The issue comes up, predictably enough, because of Rush Limbaugh, who felt he had to weigh in on last week's incident at the Cincinnati Zoo.  You probably have heard about it; a child got away from his mother and fell into the gorilla enclosure, and when Harambe the gorilla grabbed the child, zoo workers shot and killed the gorilla.  (The child, fortunately, was unharmed.)

Limbaugh approached the issue in his signature bombastic style.  "There’s no way human beings are going to not be interested in animals," Limbaugh told his listeners.  "Gawking at them.  Out on safari, hunting them...  But we have PETA activists who oppose the capture of animals because they obviously have not read Genesis."

[image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

And because apparently that wasn't loony enough, Limbaugh went on to say, "Then we have the evolution crowd who are searching for a missing link.  They think we were originally apes, right?  If we were the original apes, then how come Harambe is still an ape?  And how come he didn’t become one of us?"

Okay.  Two things.  First, an individual animal evolving into a member of a different species does not happen in real life.  You're thinking of Pokémon.  Second, "if we came from apes, why are there still apes?" is as sensible as if I said, "My ancestors came from France.  Why are there still French people?"

So I would vote for the "if we came from monkeys, why are there still monkeys?" question as the first on our list of statements that are equivalent to saying, "I am a complete moron who is incapable of reading a Wikipedia article."  Here are a few others:

• Stating that physicists researching the Big Bang believe that "nothing exploded and then made everything."
• Using non-standard definitions of any of the following: frequency, resonance, vibrations, entanglement, vortex, energy, dimension, harmonics, space-time continuum, fractal, relativity.
• Claiming that radioisotope dating is highly inaccurate, so the estimated age of the Earth is off by a factor of a million.
• Saying, "Scientists have been wrong in the past" as an argument for or against anything.
• Asking why, if evolution is true, we don't ever see a dung beetle morph into a baboon.  (Although I have to admit that this would explain Rush Limbaugh's existence.)
• Stating that atheism is a religion.  (Atheism is a religion in precisely the same fashion as "not collecting stamps" is a hobby.)
• Damn near everything ever written about HAARP and "chemtrails."
• Claiming that quantum physics means that anything is possible, and proves (check any that apply): telepathy, precognition, coincidences, interconnectedness, whatever religion you happen to prefer.
• Saying, "Evolution is just a theory."

There.  That's enough for a start.  I mean, I'm not averse to discussing science, or even speculation and scientific misconceptions, but the above-mentioned have been dealt with so many times, in so many places, that anyone saying them is not only very likely to be stupid, but lazy as well.

So thanks to Rush Limbaugh for once again affording me the opportunity to highlight a particularly annoying form of idiocy.  I suppose I should be glad for people like him; at least they keep Skeptophilia in business.

Aftermath of the storm

The biggest winter storm yet this season has spun its way out into the north Atlantic, after burying parts of the northeast under as much as four feet of snow, and this has activated two groups of people.

The first is the cadre of folks who don't understand meteorology, and think that multi-variable analysis of winds, surface and upper atmosphere temperatures, air moisture content, and pressure gradients should give you predictions of snowfall totals accurate to five significant figures.  You have your people who got more snow than they thought they were going to, inconveniencing their lives (clearly the weather forecasters' fault), and the ones who got less than they feared, causing them to batten down the hatches unnecessarily (again, blame the forecasters).

"I want that job!" one person commented.  "Half right half the time, no better than guessing, and they still get paid."

I dunno.  Considering that Long Island, most of Boston and Providence, and coastal Maine are still digging themselves out, the forecasters did pretty damn well.  We'd have experienced a tad more inconvenience, don't you think, if we hadn't had any warning that the storm was coming?

Aftermath of Winter Storm Juno in New York [image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

But worse than the scoffers is the group of people who think that "it gets cold in winter" is equivalent to "climate change isn't real."  These include Donald Trump:

This very expensive GLOBAL WARMING bullshit has got to stop.  Our planet is freezing, record low temps, and our GW scientists are stuck in ice.

Amazing that someone could pack so much nonsense into two sentences.  First of all, "global warming" hasn't been "very expensive" yet, because we haven't done a fucking thing about it, mostly because our leaders are still arguing over whether it exists.  The planet's not freezing, nor are we experiencing "record low temps;" in fact, 2014 was the hottest year on record.  And you'd think Trump himself would be nice and warm, considering the dead possum he wears on his head.

Then there's RedState.com's Erick Erickson, who added a religious filagree to the whole thing with the following baffling statement:

The difference between people who believe in the 2nd coming of Jesus and those who believe in global warming is that Jesus will return.

Maybe if Jesus does return, he could explain to these mental midgets the difference between "weather" and "climate."

Then there's Fox Business's Stuart Varney, who apparently not only doesn't know the difference between weather and climate, but doesn't understand the Law of Conservation of Mass.  A recent study found that Antarctic sea ice was increasing in volume, and Varney says that because of this, we should be "looking at global cooling, not global warming" -- neglecting the fact that Antarctica is losing continental ice faster than it's gaining sea ice, meaning that there's a net loss.  (And even the gain in sea ice was predicted by climate change models; it's due to warmer air temperatures, higher humidity, and higher precipitation in the form of snowfall.)

But no such spew of foolishness would be complete without Rush Limbaugh weighing in.  Every time his name comes up, I marvel that anyone is still listening to this bloviating gas bag, but apparently enough people are that he's still on the air.  And here's his take on the weather:

I can't tell you the number of times a record or major snow storm has been forecast -- this year alone -- I was just trying to think last night, trying to recall a couple of instances where they forecast something that is going to be really, really bad, and it hasn't even come close to being, not even close to bad, much less really, really bad. And not just in New York but elsewhere around the country. It's been a horrible, horrible year for forecasts. And the reason is, if i can cut to the quick, the left has corrupted everything. Just like the left has corrupted the professoriate, the faculty at major institutions of higher learning, the left has populated all of these bureaucracies. The Department of Commerce runs the National Weather Service, and do not believe that they're not politicized.

So now the weather has a liberal bias?

What earthly reason would liberals (or anyone else, for that matter) have for exaggerating storm impacts?  Oh, wait, I forgot; the left wants to destroy America.  Because, um, bwa ha ha ha ha ha ha ha, that's why.  So they bring major cities along the East Coast to their knees with warnings about a nonexistent winter storm, so as to accomplish their evil goals.  And then... the storm shows up, pretty much right on target, bringing the cities even more to their knees.  Faked 'em out, didn't they!  Ha!

That's how evil those liberals are.

Maybe the liberals even created the storm, you think?  Using their commie pinko leftist snow-making machines, imported directly from the Soviet Union.  (Yes, I know the Soviet Union doesn't exist any more.  Shush, I'm on a roll.)  Who knows what they'll do next?  Maybe this year they'll use their Tornado-making Machine to send tornadoes to Kansas, and their Hurricane-making Machine to launch hurricanes at the Gulf Coast, thereby sending these areas exactly the kind of weather they usually get.

Now that's some first-class evil.

Look, as I've mentioned before, I'm really not very political myself.  I'm a science nerd, not a political science wonk.  I'm much happier wearing my lab coat and my black plastic-framed glasses with electrical tape around the middle than I am discussing policy.  So although I don't much care what you believe in terms of politics, I can say with some authority that we all need to stop believing the talking heads like Rush Limbaugh and Erick Erickson and Donald "Scalp Possum" Trump, and start listening to the scientists.  They may not be 100% accurate, but their models and predictions are a damn sight better than they were even ten years ago.

On the other hand, maybe it's just easier to wait until a really hot day this summer, and point out that if a snowy day in winter disproves climate change, then a hot day in summer proves it.  If that's the kind of logic that works with these people, it's worth trying.

It's a little like the guy who is asked by his friend to go behind his car and see if the turn signal is working, and yells back, "Yes.  No.  Yes.  No.  Yes.  No."

Damned aliens!

I wonder sometimes how outrageous public figures have to become before people will stop following them.

Just last week, we had Rush Limbaugh claiming that the media coverage of the downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17 was a deliberate attempt to distract us from the problem of how President Obama is handling illegal immigrants.  "I don't want appear to be callous here, folks, but you talk about an opportunity to abandon the Obama news at the border?" Limbaugh said, in his radio show last Thursday. "And, no, I'm not suggesting anything other than how the media operates."

To which I have two responses:  (1) Trying to do anything at this point about your "appearing callous" is a bit of a lost cause.  (2)  Why haven't you lost your entire audience yet, you bloviating blob of blubber?

I had a similar reaction when I read yesterday about the latest pronouncement from Ken Ham.  Ham, the president of Answers in Genesis, is best known for having his ass handed to him in a debate with Bill Nye last year.  But that didn't stop him from moving forward with his project called "Ark Encounter" wherein he intends to build a life-sized model of Noah's Ark and demonstrate once and for all that there's no way it could have held pairs of every species on Earth.

Just a couple of days ago, however, Ham showed that he had not yet reached the nadir of his credibility, by offering up the opinion that we should give up the search for extraterrestrial life because any alien life out there is going to hell regardless.

Here's the direct quote, from an article he wrote over at AiG's website on Sunday:

I’m shocked at the countless hundreds of millions of dollars that have been spent over the years in the desperate and fruitless search for extraterrestrial life.  Life did not evolve but was specially created by God, as Genesis clearly teaches...   

Christians certainly shouldn’t expect alien life to be cropping up across the universe.  Now the Bible doesn’t say whether there is or is not animal or plant life in outer space. I certainly suspect not.  You see, the Bible makes it clear that Adam’s sin affected the whole universe.  This means that any aliens would also be affected by Adam’s sin, but because they are not Adam’s descendants, they can’t have salvation.  Jesus did not become the ‘GodKlingon’ or the ‘GodMartian’!  Only descendants of Adam can be saved.  God’s Son remains the ‘Godman’ as our Savior.

Once again, I have two responses:

(1)  You're spending millions of dollars to build a replica of Noah's Ark, and you have the balls to criticize NASA for wasting money?

(2)  So in your view, a loving and all-powerful god might have created intelligent extraterrestrial life, but in his infinite mercy, he's making certain that they are all tortured forever in the Lake of Fire for something some dude and his wife did here on Earth?

I don't know about you, but this makes his pronouncements on why we should all abandon science and become young-earth creationists seem lucid and rational.

So, my advice: shut up, Ken.  If your ignominious thrashing at the hands of Bill Nye wasn't humiliating enough, you're now becoming a laughingstock.  I'll end with a quote that has been variously attributed to Will Rogers and British politician Dennis Healey:

The polar vortex agenda

Dear readers,

Before I get to today's post, I want to point out something that you probably have already noticed -- a new feature in the upper right-hand corner of Skeptophilia labeled "Donate."  If you're a regular reader -- or even if you're not, and just want to support the effort and time it takes to bring posts to you six days a week that leave you thinking or laughing or both -- then consider making a donation!  You can contribute securely through PayPal, and your (much appreciated) donation will help assure that we will be able to continue to provide you with skeptical content for a long time to come.

And now, back to our regularly scheduled programming.

cheers,

Gordon

*************************************

Rush Limbaugh is kind of predictable.  All you have to do is watch the weather map. If we have any sort of anomalous weather, you can guarantee that a day or two later he will be drawing on his skills as a climatologist to inform his loyal listeners that whatever it is had nothing to do with global warming.  It's just like clockwork, sort of like intestinal gas after a meal at Taco Bell.

This time, though, he's gone a step farther.  The piece of the polar vortex that has been spinning its way across the northern United States, causing widespread damage, thousands of school closings, and wind chills in some places lower than -50 Fahrenheit, is not real, Limbaugh says.  It's all a hoax.  And guess who is perpetrating this hoax?  You'll never guess.

The liberals.  Told you you'd never guess.

Here's what he had to say in Monday's Rush Limbaugh Show:

Do you know what the polar vortex is? Have you ever heard of it? Well, they just created it for this week...  Now, in their attempt, the left, the media, everybody, to come up with a way to make this sound like it's something new and completely unprecedented, they've come up with this phrase called the "polar vortex."  If you've been watching television, they've created a graphic, all the networks have, and it basically consists of a view of the planet if you are right above the North Pole. They put this big purple blob, or blue blob, or red blob, depending on the network you're looking at, over the entire North Pole, and they call that the polar vortex. It actually sounds like a crappy science fiction movie to me, but anyway, that's what they're calling it.

We are having a record-breaking cold snap in many parts of the country.  And right on schedule the media have to come up with a way to make it sound like it’s completely unprecedented.  Because they’ve got to find a way to attach this to the global warming agenda, and they have.  It’s called the ‘polar vortex.’  The dreaded polar vortex.”

Liberals are in the middle of a hoax, they’re perpetrating a hoax, but they’re relying on their total dominance of the media to lie to you each and every day about climate change and global warming.  So they created the polar vortex, and the polar vortex, something’s happened, and that cold air which normally stays is in the North Pole, something’s happening, something deeply mysterious and perhaps tragic is happening.

Whatever it is that keeps the polar vortex vortexed in the Arctic Circle is vanishing, and that cold air is coming to us. Normally it stays up there. But now it's down here. How did it get here? That's the deepening mystery. That is the crisis. That is what is man-made. Man is destroying the invisible boundaries that keeps that air up there. How did it get cold in previous winters? Well, it got cold in previous winters, but, see, as far as most people are concerned, this is as cold as it's ever been in their lives. Well, but, Snerdley, I'm just telling you their technique. Forget truth. The truth and the Democrat Party, the truth and the American left never intersect.

My point is you have a lot of people who are believing that this is as cold as it’s ever been.  You might think that flies in the face of global warming.  Ah, ah, ah, ah.  Global warming’s not climate change, and we, folks, are causing all of this, you must understand.  The hoax continues.

So, let's analyze this, shall we?

First of all, let's look at his first contention, which is that the "polar vortex" was just invented by liberals last week to scare everyone, for reasons unknown.  Strange, then, that the term was first used 150 years ago to describe the Arctic air circulation (Littell's Living Age, #495, 12 November 1853, p. 490), and has been standard terminology in climate science ever since.  All you have to be able to do is to use Wikipedia -- something that apparently is outside of Mr. Limbaugh's rather limited skill set -- to find out that the reduced ice coverage in the Arctic Ocean, coupled with weakening of the polar air circulation, has been known for years to cause "meanders" in the jet stream that sometimes cause whirling blobs of cold air to break loose from the main polar vortex -- just like what happened this week.

But let's consider other sources.  They had a lot to say about the phenomenon this week over at ClimateCentral.org, where in an article on this week's weather we read:

The forecast high temperature in Fairbanks, Alaska, on Monday was in the 20s Fahrenheit — warmer than many locations in Georgia and Alabama. That fits in with the so-called “Arctic Paradox” or “Warm Arctic, Cold Continents” pattern that researchers first identified several years ago. Such patterns bring comparatively mild conditions to the Arctic while places far to the south are thrown into a deep freeze...  The warmth in the Arctic made headlines in early December when the temperature hit 39°F in Prudhoe Bay, north of the Arctic Circle. That was the highest December temperature on record there since at least 1968, according to the National Weather Service.

Even more interesting was what Rick Grow, writing for The Washington Post, had to say:

Large atmospheric waves move upward from the troposphere — where most weather occurs — into the stratosphere, which is the layer of air above the troposphere. These waves, which are called Rossby waves, transport energy and momentum from the troposphere to the stratosphere. This energy and momentum transfer generates a circulation in the stratosphere, which features sinking air in the polar latitudes and rising air in the lowest latitudes. As air sinks, it warms. If the stratospheric air warms rapidly in the Arctic, it will throw the circulation off balance. This can cause a major disruption to the polar vortex, stretching it and — sometimes — splitting it apart.

What is unusual about this week's event is that instead of just spawning a minor meander, nearly the entire polar vortex came unhinged and started drifting south -- which you can see on the following map, showing that while Chicago was in the deep freeze, northern Labrador was experiencing far warmer than normal conditions:

 

What I find interesting about this is that when we set record high temperatures -- like we did two weeks ago in the Northeast, when in my usually chilly home town we shattered all previous records for that day with a balmy 67 Fahrenheit -- the climate change deniers point out that as everyone knows, there's a difference between weather and climate.  That was just a single day's high, nothing to be concerned about.  But when we have cold weather, you have bloviating windbags like Mr. Limbaugh ranting about how the icy conditions show that global warming is a hoax.

Sorry, dude, you can't have it both ways.  If you can't use single weather events to support climate change, you can't use single weather events to deny it, either.  But the problem is that then, you're forced to look at trends -- which means that you'd have to be honest and admit that the global average temperature is increasing steadily.  Which is the last thing that Limbaugh and his cadre want to do.

So who is it, exactly, that seems to have no intersection between their agenda and the truth?

As I've said before: to reject the basic tenets of climate change, you have to ignore mountains of hard data from the last fifty years, coupled with the predictions of climate models developed by some of the best climatologists in the world.  Because they have no particular difficulty coming to consensus; well over 90% of climate scientists not only believe that the Earth is warming, they believe that the warm-up is due to human activity, especially the burning of fossil fuels.

The problem is, more people listen to fools like Rush Limbaugh than listen to the scientists, which is exactly what people like him want.  Dumb folks down.  Science is hard, and often confusing; here, let me tell you what to think.  The people who are trying to get you to change your ways are just liars and hoaxers with a secret agenda to destroy the U. S. of A.  It's okay, you can still drive your Hummer around with a clear conscience.

And outside, the wind is still howling, and the weather is becoming more and more unpredictable.  Today, as I write this, it's -4 F.   By Saturday, it's predicted to be 48 F and raining.  In upstate New York, in mid-January.

Liberal agenda, my ass.

Straw man media

I think that mental laziness contributes more to the prevalence of media idiocy than any other factor.

I mean, let's face it.  The simplistic, single-cause vitriol poured into newspapers, magazines, and websites by the likes of Ann Coulter and Ted Rall would get nowhere if the consumers were willing to get up off their metaphorical asses and do the hard work of evaluating the actual arguments these people make.  When what they say constitutes an actual argument, that is, which is seldom.  Most of it seems to be one long free-floating ad hominem, delicately laced with unintentional irony -- such as yesterday's pronouncement by Rush Limbaugh that lesbians were obese substance abusers.

No, he apparently didn't realize why everyone else thought that this was screamingly funny.  I guess oxycodone addiction can make you a little slow on the uptake.

The problem is, once you have a critical mass of consumers who think of media as being pithy sound-bites that loudly confirm what they already thought, you have dulled the whole lot of them to learning anything from what they read.  And wasn't the original purpose of news media to inform?  I sure thought it was.

I was sent an especially good example of this by a friend and frequent contributor to Skeptophilia yesterday.  The whole thing started with an article in the Boston Globe online entitled, "Report Slams State for Lack of Corrections Reform."  In the article, posted last Sunday, writer Wesley Lowery describes a recent study by MassINC, a non-partisan research group that looked into incarceration patterns over the past forty years in Massachusetts.  The group produced a forty-page report that found, amongst other things, a puzzling statistic -- that as incarceration rates climbed steeply, the rate of violent crime was falling equally steeply.

Okay, so far, so good.  But then Michael Graham, radio talk show host and GOP consultant, weighed in with "Boston Globe-Democrat Asks: Why is Crime Going Down If We're Putting So Many Crooks in Prison?"  And in this stunning piece of investigative journalism, we read the following:

So you don’t understand why prison enrollment is going up while crime is going down? You don’t see the connection between more criminals off the street and fewer crimes in your neighborhood?

Okay….

After all, if crime is going down with all the crooks in jail, why are we wasting money keeping them in jail? Let’s let them back out on the streets.

What could possibly go wrong?

So, we have three fallacies at once here:

1)  If-by-Whiskey -- defining a term however you damn well please, and acting as if that definition were the correct one.
2)  Red Herring -- throwing in an irrelevant or misleading statement to throw your opponent off his stride.
3)  Straw Man -- recharacterizing your opponent's argument as an oversimplified or ridiculous parody of its actual stance, and arguing against that.

Mr. Graham has, probably deliberately (although as with the case of Rush Limbaugh, you can never be certain if they see it themselves), confused the rates of crime and incarceration with the raw numbers of criminals in jail and on the street.  It's not an easy point; consider how tricky it is to understand the fact that (for example) right now, the number of people on the Earth is increasing, but the rate of growth is decreasing.  If all that the report found was that the numbers of criminals on the street went down as the number of criminals in jail went up, that would hardly be surprising.  But it is curious that the rate of violent crime is declining as the rate of incarceration is increasing, and that statistic certainly deserves a better answer than the ridiculous If-by-Red-Straw-Herring Man-Whiskey that Mr. Graham saw fit to create.

I think what bugs me, however, is how easily suckered the readers are.  I read the comments following Michael Graham's article, and not one recognized what was, to me, an obvious problem with it -- half of them (the conservatives) responded with a rah-rah-right-on-dude, and the other half (the liberals) with messages decrying the inequities of the American justice system and their cost to society.  Nobody, or at least not in the first few pages of comments, said, "Wait a minute.  Your argument has a hole in it big enough to float the Queen Elizabeth through."  (The ship, not the monarch.)

So, anyway, that's today's frustrated anti-media rant.  It's not like the problem would be easy to fix; clear thinking is hard work, and people seem to like easy answers.  Going har-de-har-har at a blatant straw man is certainly simpler than putting your mind to figuring out what's really going on.  I just wish so many of the media wonks weren't getting rich off of it.

Storms, consipiracies, and divine retribution

Last night the remnants of Hurricane Isaac swept through upstate New York, bringing electrical storms and some much-needed rain to our area, and doing little damage except for scaring the absolute hell out of my neurotic border collie, Doolin, who seems to think that thunder is the Footsteps Of Monsters Who Eat Dogs.  So other than straightening up the things she knocked over in trying to get Somewhere Safe, we actually were rather fortunate.

Sadly, the residents of southern Mississippi and southeastern Louisiana (especially Plaquemines Parish) weren't so lucky, and there are thousands that are still flooded out, and tens of thousands without electricity.  The prediction that it would make landfall as "only a Category 1" storm turned out to be correct, but a Category 1 storm turns out to be capable of a lot of damage, especially if it moves slowly, as Isaac did.

The science of predicting hurricane tracks has improved vastly, but it's still a highly complex business, dependent on a great many variables that can be hard to measure.  Still, we're better off than we were in 1900, when a hurricane slammed into Galveston, Texas with very little warning, claiming an estimated 8,000 lives.

Of course, that hasn't stopped the crazies from claiming that hurricanes are not controlled by such prosaic variables as air moisture, sea surface temperature, shear, and steering currents.  Big storms being due to purely natural causes?  No, that would be way too simple.

First, we have noted meteorologist Rush Limbaugh, who claimed that the folks over at NOAA were predicting the storm's path based upon their desire to disrupt the Republican National Convention:

So this whole thing has been politicized, as the Democrats politicize everything, and that's why we are talking about it. Now, I want to remind you: All last week... And, no, at no time here am I alleging a conspiracy. At no time. With none of this am I alleging conspiracy. All last week what was the target? Tampa. What was going on in Tampa this week?

The Republican National Convention. A pretty important one, too. Introducing the nominee, Mitt Romney. It's only after the convention that Romney can actually start spending all of this money that he's raised, so this convention is very important. It's a chance to introduce Romney to a lot of people who don't know him yet. And I noticed that the hurricane center's track is -- and I'm not alleging conspiracies here. The hurricane center is the regime; the hurricane center is the Commerce Department.

It's the government.

It's Obama.

Oh, right!  Okay!  That's perfectly believable, as long as you have a single kernel of Kettle Corn where most of us have a brain.  The hurricane is Obama!  Barreling toward the Republican National Convention!  With the destructive Winds of Liberalism!  I'm certain that the storm itself cared deeply about who wins the presidential election, because, you know, that's how weather works.

Of course, Limbaugh is bush-league crazy compared to Joe Kovacs over at WorldNetDaily, who claims that god sent Hurricane Isaac toward New Orleans deliberately to screw up Southern Decadence, an annual gay pride festival:

New Orleans is still hosting Southern Decadence with open homosexuality manifesting in the streets of the city. It could be that God is putting an end to this city and its wickedness. The timing of Hurricane Isaac with Southern Decadence is a sign that God’s patience with America’s sin is coming to an end. … Let’s all watch this very closely, because if New Orleans is destroyed, it is a sure sign that the final judgment for the national sin of America has arrived.

And as additional proof, we have a quote from Alabama Senator Hank Erwin, showing that government officials are only as intelligent as the people who elected them:

America has been moving away from God.  The Lord is sending appeals to us.  As harsh as it may sound, those hurricanes do say that God is real, and we have to realize sin has consequences.

No, Senator, what those hurricanes say is that low pressure centers form over the eastern Atlantic during the summer, increase in strength during conditions of warm surface waters and low shear, and get pushed toward the Caribbean and the southern United States by the prevailing winds.  Homosexuality really has very little to do with it.

Even this doesn't end the litany of wackos who have weighed in on the cause of hurricanes.  Over at Chemtrail Planet, we hear that the path of the storm was determined by Evil Government Officials putting chemicals in jet fuel, so that the exhaust contrails could change the weather:

High on the list of suspects for deployment of “chembombs” is the fleet of Evergreen Air B-747 tankers equipped with Evergreen’s own patented aerosol deployment system capable of spraying a wide variety of aerosols depending on the mission.

The huge 20,000 gallon system was originally promoted as a new technology for fighting wildfires even though the patent claims equal capability at releasing aerosols for the purpose of "weather modofication" [sic].

Suspicions are growing that Evergreen’s fire-fighting promotion was a decoy to hide their primary mission of covert climate modification.

This is accompanied by a highly informative YouTube video that made me weep softly while banging my head against my computer keyboard.

And last, our parade of wingnuts would not be complete without a salvo from Alex Jones, who as you might expect posted a YouTube video claiming that Hurricane Isaac was created by the US government using their magical superpowers, better known as HAARP.  "We would be weird to not say it could be government-created as some type of disaster for the election," Jones said.  "That’s not outside the realm of possibility."

Which is true only in the sense that earthquakes being caused by the leaping about of Giant Subterranean Bunnies is also, technically, not outside the realm of possibility.

What always puzzles me about this sort of thing is the fact that people listen to, or read, this stuff, and at least someone must find it plausible.  In fact, in the case of Limbaugh and Jones, the evidence is that a lot of people find what they say plausible, despite the fact that much of it is blatant horse waste.  Why, I wonder, don't people look folks like this in the eye when they make their ridiculous pronouncements, and say, "May I please see your Ph.D. in meteorology or climate science?  Or, in fact, any kind of science at all?  Oh, you don't have one?  Then SHUT THE HELL UP."

But people never do, for some reason.