Political Games - Where the fuck’s the reset button?

Now I don’t remember if Mike wrote about this on his own blog or in comments in our discussions on science, but he was discussing some of the discrepancies in global warming theory; particularly that some data shows no atmospheric temperature change or even cooling. Well, after going through the data and conducting research on it, scientists just announced that they have discovered why: Their data-collecting instruments weren’t working correctly! Irregular Times has a good summary here:

The beauty of the scientific process is that scientists actually listened to the critiques of these lobbyists and Fox News pundits. They asked themselves if the critique could be valid. They looked at the numbers. They engaged in a professional examination of the data, which did indeed seem to point to significant patches of global cooling in the atmosphere.

The scientific process worked. This week, scientists announced that they had discovered the source of the discrepancy in the data on global warming temperatures. It appears that the satellite that had been taking atmospheric temperatures over all those years had drifted off course. As a result, as the years passed, what the satellite was recording as daytime temperatures were actually nighttime temperatures. Now, as everyone knows, the atmosphere cools off at night. So, the satellite was comparing old daytime temperatures with new nighttime temperatures. It is no wonder that the satellite data appeared to find global atmospheric cooling over time.

With the data corrected for the satellite’s drift over time, the observations are now shown to confirm global warming instead of to contradict it. So, thank you to all the corporate and Republican naysayers for pointing out this discrepancy. A critical examination of the issue has brought a greater understanding of global atmospheric measurements to the scientific community, and in the end, confirmed the very global warming theory that you were seeking to discredit.

Science: 2; Crazy Republican-Voting Groups: 0

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Satire plays an integral part in our discourse. Not only is it one of the highest forms of mockery and humor, it also usually contains golden nuggets of truth. Take this post from The Benquirer. It talks about the airplay Cindy Sheehan has [rightfully] been getting. It then contrasts it with the coverage the millions of people who marched before this war to stop it:

This focus group wanted to stop some war on a stupid country really far away, that was full of terrorists who were fixing to take over the United States.

“Of course we didn’t give these people much coverage,” said NBC correspondent Brian Mitchell, “The biggest anti-war focus group in history doesn’t mean diddly-squat. We were busy covering more important stories, like Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction.”

[Sidebar: They use the term focus group because that’s what Bush called a protest of over 10 million people: a focus group.]

The punchline here is that one woman asking questions about why her son had to die more than 2 years after the war began is getting more media coverage than 10 million people asking questions about why their sons/daughters/brothers/sisters/fathers/mothers/friends were about to be sent to kill and die in a war that hadn’t started yet. We didn’t get a truthful answer then; don’t expect Commander Cuckoo Bananas to give us one now.

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