Wednesday, May 22, 2013

Pielke Sr: Climate research makes children die in tornadoes

In a particularly ugly and nonsensical Idiot Comment of the Day, we have this:

Drink in the crazy. Yes, Roger, we should defund science and send the money to Oklahoma for tornado shelters.

Never mind that what bothers you about climate science is its success in predictions and what those predictions are, not a supposed lack of skill. Never mind that tornado deaths have plummeted in the last hundred years because scientists have learned to more effectively forecast (or "develop projections of") when and where they will strike.

Never mind that "Too much science research" is the very last reason that home-of-Senators-Coburn-and-Infoe doesn't have an adequate public safety net in the most literal sense of the word -- that if any state embodies the principle of damn-the-science, and should therefore have plenty of money for public goods like tornado shelters, if their hostility to science were not matched by an equal or greater hostility to government action to promote the general welfare.

As I say: never mind that. To come out with that crap while they are still sifting through the wreckage of their lives is just crass. Not everything is about your pet issue, fer Chrissake. Twenty in the Douchebag jar, Roger.

UPDATE: IDK, maybe I'm being too hard on the man. If only there were some form of incontrovertible and objective evidence that this little brainstorm was an ill-mannered, whiny bitch slap of weapons-grade stupidity. But there's one one way we could ever know that for sure . . .

. . . and there you go. That's $20 in the Jar for you, Tony. It's the one you've labelled "Retirement Fund."

6 comments:

  1. Hard to believe this. It's more than appallingly bad taste. Just how low will deniers stoop?

    Is Pielke Sr saying he'll give up his job so that a shelter can be built?

    There were undoubtedly many lives saved because the warning was issued earlier than normal - because of advances in weather and climate studies. Shelters aren't any good if you don't know a tornado is coming.

    I didn't hold these people in high regard before. After this I regard Roger Pielke Sr and Anthony Watts and his crowd as the scum of the earth. No, even that is raising them above their station.

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  2. Pielke,Sr: lie down with dogs,get up with fleas. He is not prospering in his relationship with Watts.

    Too cynical to ask more relevant questions about how observation feeds through to municipal and state policy on shelters.

    Tornado shelters and building standards is a great issue,and I wonder,given that tornado hot-spots are well defined by observation,why domestic shelters are an option at all within the hottest.

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  3. Like son, like father.

    Pielke Jr issues a passionate call for inaction.
    http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/political-science/2013/may/24/climate-sceptics-winning-science-policy

    If only those noisy environmentalists aka activists would stand down, Pielke Jr would be able to convince all his conservative friends to throw a few bucks the climates way, maybe, in a few decades perhaps when we are all fantastically rich.

    For anyone who is persuaded by Kahan via Pielke - the answer is found not in Psychology 101 but in Politics 101. The "activist" Koch brothers certainly understand it - but criticism of the activism of the right will never pass the Pielke's lips.



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    Replies
    1. You are so right. I fell afoul of the Younger's inactivism earlier today: http://theidiottracker.blogspot.com/2013/05/like-father-like-son.html.

      Delete
  4. I'm being too hard on the man. If only there were some form of incontrovertible and objective evidence that this little brainstorm was an ill-mannered, whiny bitch slap of weapons-grade stupidity. Buy League of Legends Account

    LOL Boost

    ReplyDelete
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