Sarah Palin, edited

Dear Ms. Palin,

Re: "Copenhagen's political science" as published in the Washington Post. As the Post didn't see fit to edit or fact-check your piece, I thought I'd save you any embarrassment that might result if you see fit to publish it elsewhere.

I will begin with this paragraph:

The e-mails reveal that leading climate "experts" deliberately destroyed [deleted copies of] records, manipulated adjusted data to "hide the decline" in global select North American temperatures [tree-ring proxy data that conflicted with observational records], and tried to silence [challenge] their [non-expert] critics' by preventing them from publishing [competency and the wisdom of allowing flawed papers to appear] in peer-reviewed journals. What's more, [T]he documents show that there was no a real consensus even within the CRU crowd. [While s]ome scientists had strong doubts about the accuracy of estimates reliability of temperatures [proxy data] from centuries ago [the last three decades, estimates used to back claims that more recent temperatures are rising at an alarming rate, [the observational data since 1850 only confirms the science behind anthropogenic climate change].

Hmm. On second thought, that took too much work for a single paragraph, and now it says nothing very interesting. In any case, I don't have the time to conduct a similarly rigorous edit of the rest of the essay. Sorry to get your hopes up. Recommend you start over from square one. An introductory course in climatology would be a good idea before tackling this issue again.

More like this

I will pay you five dollars to do that to her entire book.

By Pepe Silvia (not verified) on 09 Dec 2009 #permalink

Palin gets a free pass from fact checking every time.
Mainstream TV news shows (yes, they are idiotic anyway) are reporting that she has a shot at the whitehouse...WTF?????

Sarah Palin/Fabio 2012!

Clearly "rigorous" has a different meaning where you come from.

You know, it probably wouldn't be hard to set up a simple AI to do that for you. You could get plenty of practice on blogs, since they all repeat the same crap.

Nicely done though :)

Clearly "rigorous" has a different meaning where you come from

Yes, indeed, informed by reality.

And if I'm wrong, why did Palin talk about global warming a year ago, saying it was obvious in Alaska?

@dhogaza

Not sure what she wrote a year ago, but if you have the stomach to read the whole article you will see that she claims warming is obvious in this article as well.

So which is it? The decline in temps was hidden, or it is obvious that temps have gone up?

When I began to blog almost 5 years ago, I wanted to share stories of my graduate school experience with other women scientists in the hopes that we could form a virtual support network for each other. Back then it took me weeks to find even one other woman doing the same thing with a blog.

What I don't get is why some publications want to call the scientists who are trying to warn people and do them a favor, "alarmists." What they are saying is, 'here's a problem that we've discovered is unfolding, here's what could feasibly happen based on scientific principles. We thought you should know." And remember, Bush tried to edit and conceal what they wanted to get out to the world about their findings. A conspiracy of silence, in effect. But yet, we have the "GW skeptics" who refute practically everything the learned scientists present, while taking snippets of pilfered emails out of context to make them sound supremely sinister, and at the same time cite the local weather as evidence that years of GW/GCC research are basically a hoax and worthless data. What kind of reasoned and honest skeptic flatly denies _all of the scientific evidence,_ years of tedious and carefully obtained evidence from all over the world? Even Michael Shermer, who was originally a GW skeptic (a true skeptic), has changed his opinion on GW and has found the scientific evidence points a finger straight at mankind. These conspiratorial obsessed people should be called GW "deniers" in these publications, rather than the erroneous moniker of "skeptics."

And then Palin has the (expected) audacity to say, "But instead of staying home from Copenhagen and sending a message that the United States will not be a party to fraudulent scientific practices..."

So she unfairly and thoughtlessly judges the bulk of the accumulated evidence on some 10 year old edited for conspiratorial effect emails to make her plea to President Obama. "Boycott Copenhagen." And the global warming & global climate change deniers will gobble it up like it was hot pancakes and syrup after a hunger strike. Read some of the comments at the W.P. for examples. Looks like the 'environmental and climatologist expert' Sarah is as much a "skeptic" as the GW deniers are. Boycott Palin's unreasonable ramblings, instead.

By fred edison (not verified) on 10 Dec 2009 #permalink