Nominations for ‘conference’ take-home message are now open!

cite as: F. Bi. 2009. Nominations for ‘conference’ take-home message are now open! Intl. J. Inact., 2:28–29

Yes, it’s less than 2 weeks before the Heartland Institute’s “2009 International Conference on Climate Change”, during which a few talking heads will prattle on and on about how this ‘global warming crisis’ thing is really a huge hoax perpetrated by crypto-Marxists to implement totalitarian rule or something, and 1,000+ people who can’t care less about the whole global warming ‘debate’ will be there just to enjoy the free catered food while pretending to listen to the speakers. DeSmogBlog has informed us that they’ll be going. :)

Now, if last year’s any guide, the ‘conference’ proper will be pretty boring, and the fun stuff will come in the form of media stunts and what not that occur outside of the presentations. Indeed, during last year’s gathering the right-wing blogosphere made a lot of noise over weatherman John Coleman’s appearance on the media, and the take-home message of the ‘conference’ practically became this:

JOHN COLEMAN IS GOING TO SUE AL GORE!!!!!!

So I guess we can expect there to be a similar take-home message for this year’s ‘conference’. But what will it be? Here are a few possibilities I came up with after, well, storming my brain a bit:

We are really, really suing Al Gore really, and here is a silly graph

cite as: F. Bi. 2009. We are really, really suing Al Gore really, and here is a silly graph. Intl. J. Inact., 2:14–16

The inactivist New Zealand Climate ‘Science’ Coalition just made a grand announcement, with lots of pomp and fanfare, about the upcoming lawsuit against Al Gore or something. In Viscount Christopher Monckton’s own words:

There are now serious discussions afoot to lodge complaints against Gore to the federal financial and legal authorities, in that he fraudulently talks up the imagined “climate crisis” in the hope that he and his “green” investment corporation can profit by the baseless alarm that his falsehoods generate.

There are “serious discussions”… “now”? I wonder if this means that the “discussions” in the last 10 months or so about suing Al Gore were, in fact, not “serious”? (That sounds about right, since I can see no trace of the “notable attorneys” discussing this supposed case who Coleman claimed exist. In the meantime, you can sign the “Sue Us” Petition to get them to sue Al Gore for real.)

Also, here’s another gem from Monckton’s missive:

Al Gore is the Jim Crow of Liberal Fascism

cite as: F. Bi. 2009. Al Gore is the Jim Crow of Liberal Fascism. Intl. J. Inact., 2:8

Well, the weather here’s insane, and while this doesn’t prove or disprove global warming, it probably does explain why I’m feeling somewhat irritated at the moment.

But that aside. The International Climate ‘Science’ Coalition is now touting a new ‘children’s climate science book’ (in the upper right corner of its web site) titled We’re Not Scared Anymore Mr. Gore.

This ‘children’s book’ is a collection of many of the usual inactivist canards, logical fallacies, and insinuations of wrongdoing. Personally, I think the best part of the book is the very first graphic, which tries to suggest that Al Gore owns a private jet. Read the whole thing, as they say. :)

Web 2.0 is fat?

cite as: F. Bi. 2008. Web 2.0 is fat? Intl. J. Inact., 1:190–192

Well, Al Gore thinks that this “Web 2.0” thing can help stop global warming, restore democracy, and bring balance to the cosmos. Now, if you’ve been reading this blog you’ll know that I like the idea of stopping global warming. Alas, things aren’t that simple. For one thing, some “Web 2.0” techniques such as AJAX and Adobe Flash like to guzzle lots of CPU power, which means more CO₂ emissions and thus more global warming.¹

A bigger problem is that “Web 2.0” and the “New Media” — well, the kinds of stuff normally associated with these buzzwords — don’t really give me a good way to do what I want. I’ve been thinking, “hmm, how can I make it easier for myself (and others) to maintain the think-tank diagram?” I figure that what I’d really like is

• a more automated way to collect the information we’ve been collecting — domain name to IP mappings, IP to domain name mappings (canonical name lookups at least), hyperlinks between sites, etc.;
• a proper database system to maintain this information; and
• a way to allow people who aren’t me to add to this information, and to easily process the updated information into a pretty little diagram.

And here’s the rub: no combination of Facebook, YouTube, WikiWikiWeb, Movable Type, etc. will be enough to achieve this.^{2, 3} What will achieve this, well, is some good old programming gruntwork. That is, unless some of you have better ideas… :)

Footnotes

1. Except for those who have moved to 100% alternative energy sources, or who harness these techniques to avoid even greater power consumption elsewhere.
2. And come to think of it, the RealClimate wiki may suffer from a similar problem. It’s supposed to be a collection of links to debunkings of inactivist nonsense, indexed by topic, by myth, by author, and by media outlet — probably a tailor-made database structure will be more suited for this than a wiki.
3. “But Frank,” one may say, “Web 2.0 isn’t just a hodgepodge of technologies; it’s a philosophy, it’s a mindset, it’s a way of life! And what you’re trying to achieve is perfectly within the spirit of Web 2.0! Don’t criticize Web 2.0; improve on it!” No.

Al Gore’s adipose and the global warming conspiracy

cite as: F. Bi. 2008. Al Gore’s adipose and the global warming conspiracy. Intl. J. Inact., 1:187

The Truth about global warming, like all other The Truths, has been summarily ignored by the mainstream media.

You are in a little twisting maze of think-tanks, all different

cite as: F. Bi. 2008. You are in a little twisting maze of think-tanks, all different. Intl. J. Inact., 1:179–180

From an essay regarding Al Gore’s film, An Inconvenient Truth, on the web site of the State Policy Network, written by Deborah Thornton of the “Public Interest Institute” (limitedgovernment.org):

An English High Court ruling states there are “so many demonstrable errors in An Inconvenient Truth that it can not be shown [in England] unless students are also taught its errors and the opposing views.”

Um, the above quote looks authoritative, but I can’t find it in the text of the High Court ruling… and besides the court only found 9 errors, and stated that AIT “is substantially founded upon scientific research and fact”. But Thornton goes on to say:

We must demonstrate the difference between propaganda and fact.

Yeah, right. The lady doth protest too much methinks…

More interestingly, the web address of the “Public Interest Institute” turns out to be another nexus of think-tanks.

You are in a twisting maze of little think-tanks, all different

cite as: F. Bi. 2008. You are in a twisting maze of little think-tanks, all alike. Intl. J. Inact., 1:162–163
cite as: F. Bi. 2008. You are in a twisting maze of little think-tanks, all different. Intl. J. Inact., 1:162–163

So, the Tennessee Center for Policy Research (TCPR) is still busy pointing out that Al Gore is Fat (and therefore global warming’s a scam!). No matter, because Brian D has uncovered something made of Epic Win: he found that the IP address 198.161.90.18 is host to not 5, or 6, or 7, but — let’s put it this way — a whole metric truckload of free-market think-tank web sites!

And yes, the TCPR site is one of them.

Now, it’s not unusual for several disparate web sites to be hosted on the same machine under the same IP address. But a single IP hosting several ‘independent’ web sites with similar goals — especially when the hosting company normally doesn’t do this¹? I think it means something non-trivial is going on — probably involving, say, someone buying lots of ‘independent’ domain names in bulk.

(There’s a more extended discussion by Brian over at Manpollo.)

Footnotes

1. The address 198.161.90.80 is for the San Francisco Climate Challenge, whose site happens to be one of the Lexicom Ltd.’s showcase sites. Note that the SFCC site shares the same IP with several other sites of largely unrelated content.

Surge, groupthink, petition

cite as: F. Bi. 2008. Surge, groupthink, petition. Intl. J. Inact., 1:112–114

Primo

On Monday, my blog got a plug from Mark Hoofnagle of Denialism… and this has caused a huge surge in hits on this blog as shown here. :) Thanks, Mark!

Secundo

So, I’d like to use this great opportunity to float a new idea of mine (while the attention mojo coming from Mark hasn’t yet run out…).

Just the hate, ma’am

cite as: F. Bi. 2008. Just the hate, ma’am. Intl. J. Inact., 1:78–80

Drill offshore now to spite the Saudis and also Gore is fat!

A recent topic in the current US presidential campaign is whether, in the light of the current high oil prices, the federal ban on offshore oil drilling should be lifted. Of course, the natural question to ask is, ‘will such a measure be worth it?’ This is a question we can answer with science and facts. Kevin Zelnio at Deep Sea News quotes a CNN report saying

“If we were to drill today, realistically speaking, we should not expect a barrel of oil coming out of this new resource for three years, maybe even five years, so let’s not kid ourselves,” said Fadel Gheit, oil and gas analyst with Oppenheimer & Co. Equity Capital Markets Division.

Zelnio also mentions a figure quoted by US President Bush:

Bush: Experts believe that the OCS can produce about 18 billion barrels of oil. That’d be enough to match America’s current oil production for almost 10 years.

And furthermore…

Gorbachev Bavariæ

cite as: F. Bi. 2008. Gorbachev Bavariæ. Intl. J. Inact., 1:68–71

Exposed

Climatologist Gavin Schmidt has recently revealed that the entire climate science community is controlled by the iron fist of a secret cabal — the Climatati!

It’s a fair cop, we are all paid up members of the climatati – a secret society formed in Bavaria in the depths of the Little Ice Age, dedicated to subverting all authority.

I’ll conveniently ignore the sentence immediately after that, because I just received, from an anonymous source, proof positive that the Climatati exists! The figure on the right shows a fragment of an early manuscript of the cabal’s meeting proceedings. The words on this mere fragment should send chills down anyone’s spine: besides talking about the Climatati, it also mentions a Goracle, an agenda, albedo, an Inquisition, a Senate conspiracy, as well as a coded reference to Nostradamus… and that’s not all! Be afraid, be very afraid.

Conspiracy triglossia

The presence of the Climatati may explain why, when climate change inactivists touch on climate conspiracy theories, there seem to be 3 different levels (or registers) of discourse: