Seriously, Robby Mook?

I read the Guardian (Aka the Grauniad^*) online, and I find it useful, though, as always with the British press, you need to understand that it comes with a very definite political position.  (Left of Tony Blair, but right of Jeremy Corbyn)

They also publish OP/EDs from any number of people, some of whom you would not expect to get space in the paper.

Today, they published someone who should NEVER have gotten space in the paper writing about the election, former Clinton campaign manager Robby Mook, who, in an orgy of self absolving twaddle,  Is given a platform to scream, "The Russians are Coming".

I get that Mr. Mook had to deal with the fact that he had a sh%$ candidate, but he ran an amazingly sh%$ty campaign.

Dude, your next job should involve asking people if they want fries with that.

That won't happen.  Failure is never punished in Washington, DC, regardless of party, but just admit that you screwed the pooch, and move on, preferably to a research outpost in Antarctica.

^*According to the Wiki, The Guardian, formerly the Manchester Guardian in the UK. It's nicknamed the Grauniad because of its penchant for typographical errors, "The nickname The Grauniad for the paper originated with the satirical magazine Private Eye. It came about because of its reputation for frequent and sometimes unintentionally amusing typographical errors, hence the popular myth that the paper once misspelled its own name on the page one masthead as The Gaurdian, though many recall the more inventive The Grauniad."

Scary Tweet of the Day

DJI did a firmware update on a drone... while mid-flight 😬 pic.twitter.com/YDexjEViFc

— Internet of 💩 (@internetofshit) February 8, 2017

Of course, who cares about a lightweight relatively cheap drone.

Then again, what if this was a self driving car, or even the car that you are driving now? While you are driving it?

Tesla has already done over the air (OTA) updates on their cars, and while you may trust them, (I don't) would you trust the creators of the Chevy Vega?

H/t Naked Capitalism

No Blogging Tonight

Still dealing with a horrible cold.

I'm not even checking out the news.

I would appreciate it if no-one made any news over the next 24 hours.

Quote of the Day

The point is to stop pretending that religion (and in the US we mean good Christian religion) necessarily steers people away from horrible moral and political beliefs, because all that does it give people a magical cloak to hide how horrible they are. Religion might be wonderful for individuals but it doesn't elevate the morals of one group over another. I think this should be somewhat obvious by now.

—Duncan "Atrios" Black

The point that Black is trying to make is that the religious right is right first, and religious second, and that the suggestions by some that appealing to God/Jesus/Allah/Vishnu/The Flying Spaghetti Monster/Etc. is a lost cause.

The religious right's answer to "What would God/Jesus/Allah/Vishnu/The Flying Spaghetti Monster/Etc. do?" is that he/they/his noodley goodness would kick the crap out of those hippies who want to keep lazy black and brown children from starving.

This is how they worship, and it is what it is.

To suggest, as the liberal religious pundits suggest, that we can dictate how they worship is patronizing and wrong.

More particularly, I need to go back to the noted theologian The Right Reverend Shelby Spong, who asked, "Has religion in general and Christianity in particular degenerated to the level that it has become little more than a veil under which anger can be legitimatized?"

I would add bigotry and hatred to the retired Bishop's list.

I F%$#ing Hate Tom Brady

I did not watch the Super Bowl, I was in bed, dealing with a nasty cold, and I really did not care who won the game.

I don't have a problem with his looks, or his wealth, or his celebrity.

I hate him because he can make Sharon,^* a Patriots fan since before the Drew Bledsoe era, scream loudly in ecstasy.

That is MY job, dammit!

^*Love of my life, light of the cosmos, she who must be obeyed, my wife.

Fake News

There is no "There" there

Something that is making the rounds in the right wing press and the wingnutosphere is the claim made by a former NOAA employee that the recent study on anthropogenic climate change was a political work of dubious science.

A closer examination reveals that the former employee question would not be in a position to observe fraud, and the nature of the study makes it next to impossible to fake the data, since the data was publicly available and peer reviewed:

On Sunday, the UK tabloid Mail on Sunday alleged a seemingly juicy (if unoriginal) climate science scandal. At its core, though, it’s not much more substantial than claiming the Apollo 11 astronauts failed to file some paperwork and pretending this casts doubt on the veracity of the Moon landing.

The story’s author, David Rose, has published a great many sensational articles over the years, falsely claiming to present evidence undermining the threat of climate change or the human cause behind it. But this latest article is noteworthy in that it appears to reveal the supposed “whistleblower” who has been cited by the US House Science Committee in its ongoing clash with climate scientists at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

The committee’s Twitter account, as well as the account of Committee Chair Lamar Smith (R-Texas), has gone hog-wild tweeting about the story. For example, the committee account tweeted, “@NOAA obstructed the committee's oversight at every turn. Now we know what they were hiding.”

………

The paper concluded that there was no evidence of a slowdown in global warming over the last decade or so, an idea that had been a focus of people who reject the seriousness of human-caused climate change.

………

Rep. Smith claimed that a whistleblower at NOAA had provided his office with information proving that the study had been inappropriately rushed for political reasons. The Mail on Sunday claims the same thing and presents NOAA scientist John Bates as a whistleblower.

………

In a blog post, Maynooth University research Peter Thorne—who worked on both the land and sea databases underlying the Karl paper but not the Karl paper itself—disputed many of Bates’ claims. First off, Thorne notes that Bates was not personally involved in the research at any stage. And while Bates claims that Karl made a series of choices to exaggerate the apparent warming trend, Thorne points out that this would be difficult for Karl to do since he didn’t contribute to the underlying databases. Karl’s paper simply ran those updated databases through the same algorithm NOAA was already using.

Ars talked with Thomas Peterson, a co-author on the Karl paper who has since retired. Peterson provided some useful context for understanding Bates’ allegations. The satellites that Bates worked with were expensive hardware that couldn't be fixed if anything went wrong after they were launched. The engineering of the software running those satellites sensibly involved testing and re-testing and re-testing again to ensure no surprises would pop up once it was too late.

………

There may also be something beyond simple “engineers vs. scientists” tension behind Bates’ decision to go public with his allegations. Two former NOAA staffers confirmed to Ars that Tom Karl essentially demoted John Bates in 2012, when Karl was Director of NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Information. Bates had held the title of Supervisory Meteorologist and Chief of the Remote Sensing Applications Division, but Karl removed him from that position partly due to a failure to maintain professionalism with colleagues, assigning him to a position in which he would no longer supervise other staff. It was apparently no secret that the demotion did not sit well with Bates.

Office politics aside, the claims in the Mail on Sunday article that the Karl paper exaggerated the warming trend fall down when you examine any of the other surface temperature datasets. In a paper we recently covered, a team led by Berkeley researcher Zeke Hausfather compared the updated sea surface temperature dataset to shorter but simpler and independent sets of measurements made by satellites and automated floats. That analysis confirmed that the updated dataset is more accurate than its predecessor.

In a post for Carbon Brief, Hausfather noted that NOAA’s updated dataset doesn't cause it to show more warming than the datasets run by NASA, the Berkeley team, and the UK Met Office. Instead, the update caused NOAA to stop showing less warming than everyone else.

(Bold smallcap emphasis mine, all other emphasis original)

Needless to say, the folks who are terrified that Al Gore was right about this will not listen to reason, so expect a few weeks (months?) of flying monkey style stupidity about this.

I would also add that over the next few months, I would expect Bates to get a lucrative book deal from Regnrey or its ilk, along with some 5-figure speaking gigs, because that is how wingnut welfare works.

I'm Brewing a Cold

So I am taking it easy for tne next few days.

Light posting for me.

It started hitting me last night, hence my lack of posting on Saturday.