Sarah Palin and The Washington Post's Global Warming Denial Duet
Not content to be associated with just one group of reason-averse conspiracists, Sarah Palin has decided that she also needed to force herself into the fray of Climategate, the bullshitroversy concerning climatologists emailing things that right wing pundits can't understand to other climatologists.
The Washington Post — needing someone who could make sense of complicated statistics, understand technical jargon and had a deep enough understanding of the scientific method to write an opinion piece on this — obviously jumped at the chance to print a re-hash of Sarah Palin's latest Facebook rant.
From the actual fucking Washington Post real newspaper…
"Climate-gate," as the e-mails and other documents from the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia have become known, exposes a highly politicized scientific circle — the same circle whose work underlies efforts at the Copenhagen climate change conference…
This scandal obviously calls into question the proposals being pushed in Copenhagen. I've always believed that policy should be based on sound science, not politics…
In his inaugural address, President Obama declared his intention to "restore science to its rightful place." But instead of staying home from Copenhagen and sending a message that the United States will not be a party to fraudulent scientific practices, the president has upped the ante. He plans to fly in at the climax of the conference in hopes of sealing a "deal." Whatever deal he gets, it will be no deal for the American people.
Oddly enough, lots of commentators were less with impressed with The Post's decision to print Palin's dishonest, anti-science op-ed for some weird reason…
Shortly after the op-ed was published online, Post media reporter Howard Kurtz tweeted that his paper was being "ripped for running Palin op-ed." Kurtz highlighted a blog post whose author refused to link to the op-ed because "[t]hey shouldn't be rewarded with the clicks, which is pretty much what this is about, I figure."…
The response to the op-ed was even more critical from science writers. ScienceBlogs.com's Tim Lambert chose to headline his piece on Palin's op-ed: "The Washington Post can't go out of business fast enough."
I beg to differ with Lambert. I do think The Washington Post can go out of business fast enough.
By the way, this post from Media Matters does an excellent job of picking Palin's piece apart and explaining reality.
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Good comment. Just a minor editing point. The Koch brothers name is pronounced "Coke" because it is of German origin. The name of their company is also pronounced and spelled the same.
Randi Rhodes' radio show talked today about the connections between oil n' gas and astro turf funders the Coke brothers and the hacked and taken out of context emails that appear to have surfaced in Saudi Arabia.
Gee, now who more than the oil and gas industry, would benefit, from scrapping the whole idea, of fuel efficiency, or capping emissions?
Interesting how they thought this would bring down Climate Science, but it won't.
Ice core data, independendent research that had nothing to do with tthose emails, and worldwide scientific consensus trumps a few emails, taken out of context, by some Saudi connected oil n' gas thugs.
She also pointed out exactly who funds the Washington Post, as well as the astroturf front groups that the Coke brothers operate while pretending the tea parties are "grass roots."
I knew there had to be more to this story than Fox was letting on….
