The politics of ‘trust us’ is wearing thin
We’ve reached a moment of truth for the climate-change debate, which is a good thing since “the truth” is what everyone has been screaming about all along.
Last week, someone released thousands of emails and other documents from the highly influential Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia in England. I say “someone released” because it’s unclear whether the deed was done by an outside hacker, an inside whistleblower or someone else.
In any case, the contents are staggering.
Now on display are the scientists’ apparent attempts to manipulate climate data to fit their narrative of an ever warming planet. So, too, are their schemes to withhold and even delete documents sought under Freedom of Information laws, as well as to prevent contrarian researchers from publishing work in scientific journals and United Nations climate-change reports.
Then there’s the plainly incoherent climate data at the heart of their work, as described by the poor computer programmer tasked with compiling it in a database upon which governments around the world depend.
So far there have been no protests from the scientists or the university that any of the information was falsified, only laughably weak attempts to act as if none of it is terribly important.
Yet this episode obliterates the public credibility once enjoyed by these scientists. And these are not just any scientists: Their work has been integral to the reports of the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the related push for legal restrictions on carbon emissions. It is hard to imagine what they could do to re-earn such prominence and trust.
This new information is extremely timely, because next month the U.N. will meet in Copenhagen with hopes of drafting a climate-change treaty that would regulate trillions of dollars worth of global commerce.
Any new treaty would be based in no small way on the work of the scientists involved in the present scandal. The only responsible option is to postpone the Copenhagen agenda while this new information is digested.
Yet as critical as the climate-change debate’s outcome is to our future, this story has even broader significance than that. For it fits the running theme of 2009’s big news stories: truth versus “trust us.”
In the past year-plus, the politics of “trust us” has brought Americans bailouts for Wall Street and Detroit, a $787 billion stimulus bill, and health “reform” bills with cost estimates about which the estimators themselves are skeptical.
This is a partial list. The politics of “trust us” is wearing thin.
The trust deficit, if not the budget deficit, was supposed to be made whole once George Bush left office. Yet the Obama administration, rather than operating with the promised transparency, has been burning through public trust as fast as it’s been spending real currency.
The administration’s attempts to restore this trust keep falling flat. Look no further than the job-creation statistics the White House rolled out to show the stimulus was working. Journalists and bloggers doing basic fact-checking uncovered wild inflation in these figures, including hundreds of phony jobs in non-existent congressional districts.
The politics of “trust us” points to one of the most fundamental arguments for limited government. When government is involved in activities it can’t account for, it is too big.
Like the East Anglia crew, it doesn’t matter whether big government is intentionally deceptive or just incompetent. The result is the same: We just can’t trust it.
***
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256 comments Add your comment
Mrs. Norris
November 29th, 2009
11:10 pm
Regardless of whether climate change is man-made or even happening at all, common sense tells you that tons of carbon-monoxide in the air cannot be good. Not to mention that as long as we are so reliant on oil, the middle east has us by the ….. It’s past time we look for alternative fuels and ways to use less gasoline.
Al Gore
November 29th, 2009
11:21 pm
Oh this is just tooooo funny!!!! “Global Warming” is the “Bernie Madoff” of the environmental movement……
I can’t believe all these idiots fell for it, ha ha ha ha ha ha …….
Meanwhile, I’m sittin in my 50,0000 sq ft Tennessee mansion with my supersized carbon footprint…
I make gazillions of dollars off of these idiot drones…..and they give me a Nobel Peace Prize…..what IDIOTS!!!!!!
Jesus luvs Cannabis
November 29th, 2009
11:30 pm
Time to end the war on drugs, it says in the bible-”Jesus toked the holy oil which contained cannabis at the last supper and thru-out his trip on earth, that’s why he saw so many visions”
Sunshine and Thunder
November 30th, 2009
12:12 am
Peter, you wrote:
“WMDs was labeled just that…….Cost plus contracts should be considered another, and how about “Mission Accomplished”…..
How was America helped by any of these ?”
WMD’s were found in Iraq. What would you do? You (and the rest of your mindless peers) claim that Bush used fraudulent intelligence. You have no proof that he knew it was fraudulent. Of course if he HADN’T acted on it and then something happened you and your Monday morning quarterback crew would have skewered him. What a bunch of second guessing idiots.
The cost plus contracts for Haliburton were negotiated under the Clinton administration Einstein.
Mission Accomplished. This one is a real doozy. None of you left nuts have any clue how the military works. The “mission” Bush was talking about was the mission to accomplish the fall of Baghdad. The forces DID IT!!.. MISSION ACCOMPLISHED!! GET IT? Bush was trying to pat the armed forces on the back. I know that is a concept that you weridos can’t understand.
Sunshine and Thunder
November 30th, 2009
12:15 am
Palin committed a few gaffs on TV. She also lost her teleprompter at the onset of her speech at the Republican convention – her introduction – and she ad libbed like a Jay Leno. Brilliant.
But I ask again: what in Obama’s background qualifies him to be president? At least Palin was a former chief executive and CIC of the Alaska Nat. Guard.
Horrible Horace
November 30th, 2009
7:43 am
ObaMao is unqualified to hold a mens room attendant job, all though he would probably do ok at it. Wiping and re-wiping, placating and bowing to one and all.
Secondly…this global climate change is pure BS. The UN delegates are bigger thieves, child molesters, crooks than our jerkoff in Congress and thats saying something.
Chris Broe
November 30th, 2009
9:12 am
Sounds like someone’s been breathing into a brown paper bag. (Plenty of CO2 there replacing the Oxygen)
Peter
November 30th, 2009
9:27 am
Boy is a bunch of baloney…….”The cost plus contracts for Haliburton were negotiated under the Clinton administration Einstein.”
The War wasn’t started by Clinton.
Right off the desk of Cheney……… Mission Accomplished….the bilking of America !
How much has the WAR cost today with interest ?
Yes Palin saw the coast of Russia, and said she understood the world, but hey Africa is a country according to her ! Brilliant !
Please get real !
David Axelfraud
November 30th, 2009
9:39 am
Peter, yeah but most evolutionist believe that we are nothing but evolved animals. Re-read what I wrote and touch on some of those points of evolution. Again, evolution is a theory, a hypothesis. Not set in stone.
Palin brought in more votes for Mccain. Even he acknowledged that fact. If she was a burden then why does she draw massive crowds and sell out tours?
David Axelfraud
November 30th, 2009
9:41 am
Peter, Obama said that he’d been to all 57 states. So in your terms of experience, he has none.
Bottom line: Obama is the biggest mistake since Jimmy Carter. Sarah Palin is all smiles right now.
F-105 Thunderchief
November 30th, 2009
10:04 am
Congratulations on the victory of your l’Universite du Georgia Bulldogs.
Now, I repeat my viewpoint on the whole “climate change debate.” Who cares? The U.S. needs to be developing and bringing to market all forms of renewable energy technologies, as if our lives depended on it. Why? Our lives depend on it. Doing this brings economic security by putting this clearly necessary industrial sector in our hands. It stops the flow of trillions of dollars to the Middle East and greatly reduces our need to interact with those there who plot 24-7 to harm us.
So, economic and national security = good. Climate change debate = stupid distraction from the business at hand.
Chris Broe
November 30th, 2009
10:41 am
What is the cold science of global warming?
Planets are a byproduct of star formation. Earth orbits inside our sun’s atmosphere. We all literally evolved inside of a star, if you consider the atmosphere of a star as part of the star.
We’ll never decode the chaos inside of stars, so we’ll never know why the mean global temperature of our own atmophere describes a wave function. (NASA). It heats up. It cools down. Then it repeats. Then it rinses. (Mayan calendar, Vidal Sassoon, and Glenn Breck)
SO there’s no need to get yourself in a lather over global warming.
Peter
November 30th, 2009
11:06 am
Ok….I agree……”Again, evolution is a theory, a hypothesis”……….The same goes for God !
I guess if King Bush had been a good Honest President who didn’t make UP a WAR, and bankrupt America for his personal pleasures, then Obama would have never been elected
Then of course if Palin wasn’t on the ballot, more folks would have voted for McCain….Or if the Republican’s actually had a better candidate, then Obama might have not been elected.
Pollution is the reason the CO2 clammier is happening…all man made pollution. Common Sense.
Jess
November 30th, 2009
11:12 am
Peter,
….How much has the war cost to date?…
Iraq war costs to date are $687 billion. Far less than the stimulus package or any proposed health legislation.
Peter
November 30th, 2009
11:17 am
Long-term health care costs
A recent study indicated that the long term health care costs for wounded Iraq war veterans could range from $350 billion to $700 billion.
Peter
November 30th, 2009
11:18 am
The Iraq War Will Cost Us $3 Trillion, and Much More
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/03/07/AR2008030702846_pf.html
Linda
November 30th, 2009
11:28 am
Peter@10:41 PM, You asked me to read about trees. Read what I wrote about trees @ 6:52 PM.
A car emits N2, CO2 & H2O, all benign. The offensive emissions are handled by the catalytic converters
@10:50 Palin ran a city, the Alaska Oil & Gas Conservation Commission, a state & her own business. Obama never ran anything before he was elected.
Linda
November 30th, 2009
11:34 am
Mrs. Norris@11:10 PM, the issue with global warming has absolutely nothing to do with regulating carbon MONOXIDE, a pollutant. It targets carbon DIOXIDE, a harmless, non-toxic, good, pure, clean, natural, scarce, colorless, odorless gas that is essential for our survival on earth
Peter
November 30th, 2009
11:40 am
Come on Linda…….folks kill themselves with cars in their garage….that is benign.HA HA HA !
Yes Plain ran a town into the ground, and got more pork per person than in any other place in the country………Please she even quit……
Horrible Horace
November 30th, 2009
12:19 pm
Peter
November 30th, 2009
9:27 am
No…Africa is a craphole that should be left to solve its own problems.
Linda
November 30th, 2009
12:22 pm
Peter, It’s still possible to die in a car with the motor running in the garage, if the car is old, has no catalytic converter & uses leaded fuel. There was a girl who started her diesel Rabbit, ran a hose from the tailpipe to the interior & passed out drunk. The next morning, she woke up with a hang-over, smelling like diesel exhaust.
If you go into a sealed room, you will eventually die. No car is necessary.
I’m no longer debating you to be helpful. I am using you. Your statement about Palin serves my purpose well.
Jess
November 30th, 2009
12:25 pm
Peter,
The Iraq war costs are $687 billion. These are numbers from the current administration. I regard the link you posted with the same credibility as our climate scientists. $687 billion is the cost, period.
Peter
November 30th, 2009
12:40 pm
LInda and Jess funny folks no substance !
dewstarpath
November 30th, 2009
12:42 pm
- It’s almost incomprehensible how stupid some of
these posts are.
Linda – Carbon Dioxide is not benign to human beings.
That’s why we exhale it. If you inhale too much of it, you
die of acidosis. Look up the Lake Nyos tragedy in
Cameroon (1988).
Horrible Horace – Voting is an adult activity. Don’t worry
about who’s in office, the UN, or anything political – until
you grow up.
dewstarpath
November 30th, 2009
12:44 pm
- Linda – Also, tetraethyl lead-based fuels were
largely discontinued in the 1970’s, due to concerns
about smog pollution.
dewstarpath
November 30th, 2009
12:47 pm
- F-105 – Excellent point about energy tech.
It clearly is the next wave. We can keep pace
or get left behind. It’s that simple.
Linda
November 30th, 2009
12:47 pm
According to costofwar.com, the Afghanistan War for 8 yrs. & the Iraq War for 7 yrs., 15 yrs. total have cost $937,542,400,000+. The costs of those wars as of 2/09 was about the same amount as the cost of the Economic Stimulus bill, $787,000,000,000, the most expensive bill ever passed in the history of our country, passed less than 3 wks. after the inauguration, in a matter of a few hrs., unread, when unemployment was 7.6%, with the promise that it would not exceed 8%, which is now 10.2%, unless you count the real number of people who are unemployed, which is about 17.5%, a bill that was never designed to stimulate the economy, hasn’t stimulated the economy & which has made the economy worse. It was a Dem celebration & its funds went to blue states & blue districts in red states.
Another amazing coincidence is that the cost of wars as of 2/09, the cost of the economic stimulus bill & the national debt to China are about the same.
dewstarpath
November 30th, 2009
12:48 pm
CORRECTION: The Lake Nyos tragedy was in 1986.
Peter
November 30th, 2009
1:17 pm
Hey Linda,
Your made up War costs……… similar to the actual made up Iraq war……… or US invasion of Iraq…… may be some what correct if the US actually had the money to pay for it…….but we are paying for it like a credit card, and you have not taken into account the wounded, and health care issues following the war.
Seems King Bush has been the only president in US history to start a war, and NOT raise taxes to pay for it…..
Yes he has been so irresponsible, he has given this debt to the next generation for his own and a few’s benefit.
Typical !
Chris Broe
November 30th, 2009
1:19 pm
Methane is a naturally occuring gas in our atmosphere, and in our blogosphere. It is 20 times more effective at trapping heat than Co2.
Is it a coincidence that a source of methane in our atmosphere is termites?
Churchill's MOM
November 30th, 2009
1:24 pm
I have been over to the political insider blog and there are actually people over there as stupid as DUKEFRAUD.
Linda
November 30th, 2009
1:26 pm
Dewstarpath, The 3 main emissions of a car engine, N2, CO2 & H2O are mostly benign. The other 3, CO, VOCs & NOx are toxic. The main purpose of a catalytic converter is the oxidation of CO to CO2.
Even too much oxygen will cause death.
When I mentioned lead in gas, I was trying to prove a point that it is more difficult today to die in a garage with a car running. It’s still possible but takes longer. My post @ 12:22 points out that the need for a car is unnecessary if the garage is sealed. My husband has a ‘69 car & was able to buy leaded gas from airports as long as he wanted to.
The point with all this is that CO2 is not a pollutant. It’s a harmless, non-toxic, good, pure, clean, natural, scarce, colorless, odorless gas & essential to our survival.
Peter
November 30th, 2009
1:33 pm
Linda……. just suck up the auto emissions from your car directly via a hose…..tell us how it works out for you.
There should be little to zero damage to you, according to your opinion….that will be great science !
Linda
November 30th, 2009
1:39 pm
Peter, thank you for the compliment, but I did not found the National Priorities Project & their costofwar.com website is not mine.
If I told you it was rainy & cloudy outside today, you would say I made that up, too.
If I told you that there is a body of Congress up there in Washington, DC that must vote on going to war, you would never, ever believe that.
Do you, by chance, watch MSNBC? Do you have a remote control?
David Axelfraud
November 30th, 2009
1:42 pm
Peter, if God is made up then explain how nothing in the Bible has ever been proved wrong. Also, if God is made up then explain how the smallest details in the human body can’t be explained by evolution.
David Axelfraud
November 30th, 2009
1:44 pm
Peter, also, one thing that I am 100% confident of is where I am going to spend eternity.
No amount of evolution theory can explain the afterlife. The leading evolutionist, Christopher Hitchens, screwed up and said that he believes that we all came from aliens.
NOW THAT TAKES GREAT FAITH!!!! LOLOLOL
Truth Serum
November 30th, 2009
1:45 pm
First the email leaks from the Draconian AGW so-called scientists, and now this:
“SCIENTISTS at the University of East Anglia (UEA) have admitted throwing away much of the raw temperature data on which their predictions of global warming are based.
It means that other academics are not able to check basic calculations said to show a long-term rise in temperature over the past 150 years. The UEA’s Climatic Research Unit (CRU) was forced to reveal the loss following requests for the data under Freedom of Information legislation. The data were gathered from weather stations around the world and then adjusted to take account of variables in the way they were collected. The revised figures were kept, but the originals — stored on paper and magnetic tape — were dumped to save space when the CRU moved to a new building.”
Oh SUUUURRRRE. Just like everything else is mindless liberal land, probably some FACTS didn’t sit right and they had to be inconveniently deleted. Now THAT is what I call an inconvenient truth. These moonbats and other various left wing nuts are in a hurry to push through their fascist, capitalist-hating junk science into some sort of global team legislation. Naturally, anything that attacks capitalism is rooted in liberal left wing nut ideology.
The truth and facts always prevail in time. Just think, the Algorebots and moonbats nearly got away with the lies & distortions of the junk science known as man made global warming. Stupid sheep.
David Axelfraud
November 30th, 2009
1:47 pm
Peter, excuse me, Richard Dawkins is the leading evolutionist.
David Axelfraud
November 30th, 2009
1:49 pm
Peter, let me also ask you this. Do you ever question the people you follow? Meaning, Al Gore and Darwin. I question Christianity just like everyone else should. Nothing wrong with asking questions. It’s blind loyalty without facts that get people in trouble.
David Axelfraud
November 30th, 2009
1:58 pm
Hey Kyle, you should really check out this column on the Politico. It’s reallllllllllly interestin’.
7 stories Barack Obama doesn’t want told
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1109/29993.html
David Axelfraud
November 30th, 2009
2:00 pm
Peter @ 1:33, you’ve got a lot of nerve ranting on other people when here you are laughing and joking about Linda killing herself. Lot of nerve.
David Axelfraud
November 30th, 2009
2:01 pm
Churchill’s MOM, I’d weigh my Duke MBA against your UGA degree in pottery making any day. Dumb A$$.
David Axelfraud
November 30th, 2009
2:02 pm
Churchill’s MOM, sorry to hear about your “partner” leaving you for yet another bull dyke. I guess your Thanksgiving was full of late drunken tirades, huh?
David Axelfraud
November 30th, 2009
2:06 pm
Churchill’s MOM, also, I think it’s funny and ironic that someone from UGA is calling someone from Duke, stupid. That’s like a garbage man or in your case garbage transexual, calling Steve Jobs an idiot.
LOL, you’re too funny Churchill’s MOM!
Linda
November 30th, 2009
2:12 pm
Peter, I just reported you. Suggesting that I try to commit suicide &/or harm myself is crossing the line. That was evil.
Ron Mexico
November 30th, 2009
2:12 pm
Linda – After reading all of these posts, you seem to be the only one who understands what comes out of the tailpipe of a car. That said, trees also release VOC’s, which combine with NOx to produce smog. So trees create pollution. We can make science say whatever we want it to say. There is nothing wrong with science, but remember that scientists are the lenses though which the world views it. Sometimes those lenses are out of focus.
Kyle Wingfield
November 30th, 2009
2:19 pm
Thanks, everyone, for a mostly civil discussion on here while I was gone for the holidays. I’m back in the office this afternoon and will resume normal blogging shortly.
One specific point: A request was made for me to take down Peter’s comment about Linda inhaling her car’s emissions, on the grounds that he was suggesting that she go kill herself. I am sensitive to this topic, and I do think Peter could have made his point in a way that didn’t come across as hateful. However, because this comment came in a thread in which there was much discussion about the danger to human health of car emissions, I’m choosing to leave it up as part of that discussion.
I will monitor the comments in this thread closely, so please don’t step so close to the line.
David Axelfraud
November 30th, 2009
2:25 pm
Climate-cult con is hard to ‘bear’
When did global warming turn into a forced religion?
My daughter came home from school re cently with a spring in her step and a song on her lips. With no foreshadowing — or time to call an exorcist — out came this chilling refrain:
” . . . You can hear the warning — GLOBAL WARMING . . . ”
By the time her father and I removed our jaws from the floor, we had learned that:
A) All the kids had been coerced into singing this catchy ditty, which we called “The Warming Song,” at a concert for parents.
B) Further song lyrics scolded selfish adults (that would be us) for polluting our planet and causing a warming scourge that would, in no short order, kill all the polar bears and threaten the birds and bees.
http://www.nypost.com/p/news/national/net_result_sure_beats_nut_revolt_qafIP4m2M9TAty2eLxyz5M
Chris Broe
November 30th, 2009
2:40 pm
The children still sing about another catastrophe that nobody took seriously: “Ring around the rosie…pockets full of posey…ashes, ashes, we all fall down!”
That my friends, was a little tiny outbreak of a insignificant viral infection.
It’s name was the Black Plague.
When the Right starts using Mother Goose sing-a-longs to make a scientific objection to this serious topic, then it’s time to start name calling.
David Axelfraud
November 30th, 2009
2:48 pm
Chris Broe,
Black plague happened in the 1340s.
Ring around the rosie originated in 1790.
Hardly a warning song.