Wednesday, May 31, 2006

The Finger to Roper

This one's for you knucklehead.

hurricanes-and-global-warming

Realclimate on Gore's Movie

My request is this: read the links and refute if anyone here can, with facts, not innuendo and misinformation. Even if some advocate hyping the facts, such as Iraq was an imminent, increasing threat for example, that doesn't erase what we know collectively in the scientific community. Media people are prone to hype. That doesn't mean what they're hyping isn't real and a serious threat to human survival nonetheless. You may not think a field biologist like me knows anything, but at the field level the US Government doesn't hire morons. It takes a political appointment to pull that off.

For Christ's sake educate yourself or get out of the mocking bird business. You're amateurs.

The Wall Street Idiots

They didn't allow it. I'm shocked.

The following letter has been submitted via the OpinionJournal article response feature.
Contents of response as follows:
#---

Name: Mark A. York
E-mail: mark_y48@msn.com
City/State: Sunland, CA
Date: Wed, May 31st, 2006

Subject:
Re: Warmed Over

Comment:
"Here's a test. What if science showed conclusively that global warming is produced by natural forces, with all the same theorized ill effects for humanity, but that human action could forestall natural change? Or what if man-made warming were real, but offsetting the arrival of a natural ice age? Would Mr. Gore tell us meekly to submit to whatever nature metes out because it's "natural"?"

Well it may feel good to Mr. jenkins, but alas it is this statement that is fiction, not what Mr. Gore has portrayed. It shows the opposite. It's not natural. The appeal to appropriate authority such as NASA trumps what an unpublished thinktank shill says. Yes Mr. Jenkins, the real world is tough and fake ideas get called what they earn. The warm world is already haunting us, yes even through blind eyes like those of this editorial board who keep repeating falsehoods in hope of obsfucating the Inconveinient Truth. Now do you get the title?

Tuesday, May 30, 2006

Yeah

"Swift Boating the Planet
By PAUL KRUGMAN
Al Gore and others who hope to turn global warming into a real political issue are going to have to get tougher, because the other side doesn't play by any known rules."

I haven't read it but I know what he said.

Kicking the Gore Basher's Butts

Previous centuries weren't warmer than today, as far as we can tell. But neither of those two points has much to do with whether people are causing GW today. That the globe has warmed over the past century is accepted by all but the wacko fringe - William Connally, British Climate Scientist


You hear the same false arguments all the time. Misuse of The Little-Ice Age, Mann's hockey stick profile is flawed and so on. It isn't. Gore is right, and the mistakes in the film are minute. Real experts say so: appeal to appropriate authority.

Monday, May 29, 2006

Internet Forum Shuffle

This is where you chime into a forum with a contrarian post, subsequently upsetting the masses. Somehow this is disrespectful going in one direction only. My contention of course is the opposite. Then along comes a moderator after 100s of pile ons from the group to defend against the Great Satan on the thread and A Stoning in Canaan is the result. Been there done that.

In this case, the refugee thread at a certain editor's blog some 500+ posts long by absolutewrite junkies displaced in that bizarre ISP eviction. Supposedly, this shutdown was caused by a threat from a scam agent. I wasn't convinced, but this clique involves true believers whatever the topic. These people not only act like they're in high school, some are actually in high school. The sniveling wimpishness of writer forums is still boundless. And of course they're just about all anonymous. I call this group-trolling.

Sunday, May 28, 2006

Kick em Back Kerry

It's about time.

Thursday, May 25, 2006

Benedict Arnold's Navy

Jim Nelson of Harpswell, Maine's new book is out, Benedict Arnold's Navy and is the first major publication to use my work on Reuben Colburn and the march to Quebec, although it's about the Battle of Valcour Island in 1776. I'm hoping this citation will help me attract a publisher for mine.
Thank you to Mark A. York, a descendant of Reuben Colburn, for information about the crucial role his ancestor played in Arnold’s march to Quebec. The Colburn House in Pittston, Maine is on the National Register thanks to his efforts and is open to the public.
Many thanks to Jim for contacting me during his research.

Update:6/6/06 Apparently The quote from the acknowledgement page in the printed copy, as a recent trip down to B&N revealed, was left out due to author error according to the author, and not deliberate editing. However this same editor (and also the editor of Frank Baron's little baitfishing book for those following the absolutewrite story, where I was banned long ago) did send him my way by virtue of a "200 bateaux" notation on the draft if not by name. I gladly gave the author the information for credit. The editor had rejected my manuscript two years ago. It was a written contract via e-mail and valid. Now there's no credit in the text or anywhere else. A remedy has been proposed and I accepted. It's an unfortunate occurance and things like this can always be avoided by citing your sources fully. All writers want is credit. Without that nothing will ever come our way.

H.R.5429

They're at it again, debating ANWR in the form of H.R.5429 My new novel Warm Front is set there, Fairbanks and Antarctica. The whole thing is folly of course. Nothing will stop these gas prices. Scientists who work there are against this because they know no balance can be found. Prudhoe Bay is an industrial mess spreading east and west to the Canning River. Opening one more will just help to warm the Earth to the tipping point of floods, droughts, and imperiled cities.

Monday, May 22, 2006

National Review Flim-Flammery

The media war on global warming is on, but the opposition is still stuck on stupid. So dimwitted are the writers for National Review who like other thinktank shills paid for by CEI and the Petroleum Institute, as are their sources, all they can do in response to TIME is to ad hominem attack them and recant the same debunkd fallacies about melting ice sheets. That doesn't make their misunderstanding true. It's deliberate disinformation and false.
Those numbers sound impressive, but the chances of the ice caps fully melting are about as high as the chances of Time as giving you an honest story on global warming. The truth is that there's no solid evidence supporting the conclusion that we've locked the ice caps in to a melting trend. Let's look at Antarctica and Greenland in turn.

About Antarctica, University of Virginia climate scientist Patrick J. Michaels is direct: What has happened is that Antarctica has been gaining ice. He explains that there has been a cooling trend over most of Antarctica for decades. At the same time, one tiny portion of the continent the Antarctic Peninsula has been warming, and its ice has been melting. The peninsula constitutes only about 2 percent of Antarctica's total area, but almost every study of melting Antarctic ice you've heard of focuses on it.
Unfortunately for this writer total ice mass in Antarctica has declined despite some new snowfall in specific interior locations. Get that? Declined as has Greenland. This piece is a lie.

Sunday, May 21, 2006

DVC Infringement

I don't know what will become of this case but for readers here who may not visit Lew Perdue's sites this is the headline of the takings by Dan Brown.

The Da Vinci Legacy (Perdue, 1983) The Da Vinci Code (Brown, 2003)

1. A Da Vinci scholar is killed. 1. An art curator and senechaux of the Priory of Sion is killed.

2. He is the fourth of his type to be killed. 2. He is the fourth of his type to be killed.
3. Before he dies, he leaves a last message, 3. Before he dies, he leaves a last message,
4. written in his own blood, 4. written in his own blood,
5. on his own body. 5. on his own body.
6. This occurs on page 35. 6. This occurs on page 35.

Expert Analysis Of Plagiarism Evidence In The Da Vinci Code

Update: Lewis Perdue informs me his publisher TOR formally known as Tom Doherty and associates has dumped him under pressure from Random House Dan Brown's publisher. I wonder what Teresa and Patrick Neilsen Hayden have to say about this? Not that editors have any say in the matter I suppose.

Saturday, May 20, 2006

DVC Review

I give it four stars. First, I like long films. Second, Ron Howard followed the book to the letter. It works. The acting was superb, especially Ian McKellan. Tom Hanks WAS Robert Langdon complete with insecurities. Tautou was mystifying as Sophie Neuvo. The only change I would have made is a bulkier albino monk, but then you hire the actors you know for the mostpart and Bettany was in house. He did a fine job as well. I've read so much about this story it's almost dizzying, mostly the process of debunking it with real history, the message seems clear to me: It's pro-faith if not pro-Christianity as it's been told.

Christians have always been sensitive to the foibles and abuses of the theology in practice. It's not wrong or incorrect to point that out in my view. As I've said, the idea that Christ was mortal is the logical choice. Only in faith can he be supernatural. The message remains as real as the man even if he couldn't fly or walk on water. That's what this story really says.

Aiding and Abetting

This is what Jay Rosen of NYU does every day at pressthink. He continually allows wingnut villains to post long recurring real time screeds for months, years even, and yet bans me. It's amazing really. This is wingnut affirmative blog comment action. The thing is an anti-press nut magnet, yet you only ban your own kind. Now that's false fairness in play.

Friday, May 19, 2006

Defending J-School

My copyedited version of an OpinionJournal comment.

"A four-year undergraduate education can cost anywhere from $50,000 to $150,000."

In the high, wildly over priced private sector, sure. But not so in public universities like my alma mater Cal State-Northridge, where it it didn't cost me anything to get the highest quality journalism education. While Mr. Last does a good job outlining the upper echelon of sample coursework, he misses the context of a Bachelor's program in anything. And this is, at least 90 semester hours are in the field of general education both upper and lower division that run the gamut of required area subjects. Yes, Hume and Locke for me. End of that, "they don't take a history class" myth. We did. Moreover, we had to have either a minor or a collateral field in another major besides journalism. Mine is in environmental biology, a current and past profession so out of the 130 units for the BA degree only 30 are actual journalism courses in news reporting, mass comm, one in diversity, article writing, editing, graphics and international journalism, plus a required stint at the school paper the Daily Sundial.

The problem of course, is all those high priced graduates, and a handful low low wage jobs. I haven't been able to get one, so a degree in journalism, as you've illustrated adeptly, is no key to anything except ridicule and insult, even from editors if my experience is any indication, which it is for me.

All you have to do is figure out how to live in high falutin America ca. 2006 on 18 to 23K a year if you can get it. These days that's like the chances of an ice cube in the Sahara; or Alaska.

Then again, some of the lucky get jobs without graduating at all, so there you have it.

Thursday, May 18, 2006

Bravo Lara Logan

"I tell the American commanders all the time: When we can get in our cars and drive to the opening of a store and interview people on camera without fear of being killed, or getting everyone involved with us killed, the good-news stories will be told," CBS News war reporter Lara Logan tells Howard Kurtz.

Political Compass Test

I took the test and came out with Gandhi, Nelson Mandela and the Dali Lama. I'll take that company any day.

Tuesday, May 16, 2006

Supreme Decision

Justices Uphold State Rules in Decision on Dam Licenses
This is an excellent decision because it affirms the idea that the state can overrule economic hegemony by powerful corporations operating on their public waterways such as S.D. Warren in Maine, my home state. Hopefully the days of corporate polluters are numbered. Well done Justice Souter et al.

Illegal Immigration

"Unfortunately, low-skill immigrants don’t pay enough taxes to cover the cost of the benefits they receive." Paul Krugman.

That's about it. Here in LA the medical safty net I use when necessary is crushed daily by Mexican nationals. Hospitals that served poor black areas have closed. It takes months to get an appontment and going stand-by is like a visit to Mexico. As for the cliche they "do the jobs Americans won't do" I just don't buy it. If they weren't here Americans of all ethnicities and educational levels would do them. Are they telling me the United Farms Workers don't have workers? They're irrelevant now because of illegals. Who believes anyone will step forward to become a guest who must return home?

Sunday, May 14, 2006

Happy Mother's Day Mom



Norma Colburn York is a descendant of Reuben Colburn of Pittston, Maine. I'm her only son and she's been the best mother a man ever had. Colburns are long-lived, she recently turned 90 and still drives. May she continue to live long and thrive. I love you mom for everything you've been to me and done on my behalf over the years.

Saturday, May 13, 2006

Da Vinci Code

Before we get into too much hype over the movie, I've mentioned before how the facts and the code don't coincide well. Or at all. But the debunkers with a cross to bear fail to realize that just because people believed Jesus to be divine in the second century (and not because of a decree at the council of Nicea) only supports the fact that followers thought he was because he supposedly said so. It's only an example of things people believe and nothing more. When we link back, which is what the word religion means, we come straight to a ? regarding the assertions of believers as to divinity of anything.

The message I get is we are all divine in that sense. The "supernatural" is fiction no matter who tells it be it the Church or anyone else. Dan Brown clipped together a fast moving thriller using other writers' work. The hook is a married Jesus. This is fictional as much as the supernatural abilities of this extraordinary man we really know very little about.

Thursday, May 11, 2006

Al Gore's Movie

It gets good scientific marks from Realclimate, with only a couple of small mistakes that can only be described as trivial. Naysayers won't believe it though, but then their point-by-points would be fallacious anyway so... It's off to a good start. My novel hit 70,500 words today. That's where my efforts are at the moment.

Friday, May 05, 2006

Fracking

"Absence of proof is not proof of absence -- that's not good science," says Geoffrey Thyne, a geology professor at the Colorado School of Mines, based in Golden. As Garfield County's geological expert, he speaks in steadied tones. "There's a real dearth of baseline information. I don't think any fracking expert would tell you that we are 100 percent sure where the fractures go. No one has studied how often there are lateral leaks into nearby aquifers. People out here kind of figure that the government is looking out for them, and if there was a real problem, some expert would come forward and say so. Unfortunately, because no one's studying this, it might be a while."


I suspected the natural gas boom would be a nightmare for local water supplies. It is.

Writing Is Hard, But Working is Harder

So says Garrison Keillor. Yeah maybe so, but try it with the neighbor's imprisoned German Shepard barking all morning. That's a handicap I'd cure with an Al Capone ride if I had my druthers but will wait for animal control to issue an official edict to the cretin owner. Digging ditches is hard too as I recall. I'd rather write and fish.

Wednesday, May 03, 2006

ANWR Drilling

Nothing has changed even with the rise in price according to the USGS in their latest report on ANWR potential as an oilfield. Five to 10 billion barrels is the range, and the cost to get it is high in more ways than one. My concern is wildlife. The oil is a drop in the bucket compared to what we use and current development of 2/3 of the north slope has done nothing to quell oil prices. Neither would this. Some things never change, but climate isn't one of them.

Tuesday, May 02, 2006

Oil Exports

These numbers don't make sense to me.


TOTAL EXPORTS
202 Australia
16,521 China
24,506 Japan
46,694 Korea, South
10,823 Taiwan
98,746 Total

PRODUCTION
2,171,342 Total
2,115,295 North Slope
8632%
56,047 South AK
ERR

4.5% Exported to For. Countries [?]

98,746 thousand barrels are exported, update: 56,746 barrels apparently is production from south Alaska fields not exported per se. This was sent to me in a spreadsheet by request. The export ban was lifted in 1996 for Alaska oil.

"From the spreadsheet you can see that these exports of Alaskan crude oil started in Feb 1987 and steadily grow through April 2000. Exports from Alaska ceased after that until April 2004, when an export of 854,000 barrels occurred."

That's quite a jump. Why?

EIA
The Environmental Webring
The Environmental Webring
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