DID SHAPLEY SEND COPIES TO ELVIS & THE WHIFFENPOOFS?

HASTY PUDDING CLUB - INSTITUTE OF 1770

IN  DEFERENCE  TO  THE MEMORY OF FELLOW  CONSPIRATORS

JOHN  & JOHN QUINCY ADAMS, THEODORE & FRANKLIN ROOSEVELT, 
JOHN FITZGERALD KENNEDY  AND HASTY PUDDING  MAN OF THE  YEAR  AL GORE, 

 I MUST  BRIEFLY REMOVE MY REPTILE SUIT  
TO  REVEAL MY  DEEP,  DEEP SHOCK AT  DR.  TIM BALL'S  LATEST REVELATION  IN WUWT: 

The Complicity of Journals and Magazines in Pushing Flawed IPCC Climate Science

Guest Blogger    Dr. Tim Ball     / 9 hours ago February 28, 2016  

...  latched on like giant sucker fish ... Nature Climate Change is owned by the Nature Publishing Group that is a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited... the publishers involved with ...

one of the greatest acts of censorship in American history, a powerful lobby of establishment scientists forced Macmillan to suspend publication of Immanuel Velikovsky’s “Worlds in Collision” ... a scandal that shook the worlds of science and publishing alike

lsvalgaard

      

February 28, 2016 at 12:11 pm 
That you are pushing Velikovsky just shows how deep the scientific illiteracy rot has gone.

        Tim Ball     February 28, 2016 at 4:32 pm 

Wrong! I am not “pushing” Velikovsky... I was using Velivovsky to illustrate how mainstream academia reacts ...  they disclose their tunnel vision and prejudices quickly and nastily. Harlow Shapley’s despicable behavior in the matter was exposed by the letter he wrote to Macmillan threatening to get all academics to withdraw their textbooks.  The letter was obtained and revealed by the Harvard Hasty Pudding Club.

UPDATE:  BALL'S LATEST INDICATES HE HAS  MISTAKEN HARVARD'S NEWSPAPER, THE CRIMSON,  FOR  AN UNDERGRADUATE DINING CLUB.

VELIKOVSKY PUBLISHED A PROTEST LETTER IN THE CRIMSON ON 24  NOVEMBER 1950.

THE REVOLT OF THE MASSES

No one should be surpised when flagship  science journals  give claques of political activists  carte blanche  to hector their readers on the issues of the day.  Delegating  leader writing to those who share their political views has been an editorial prerogative since Newton's day. If you doubt that science remains  as much a Whig institution as it was in the days of Huxley, Haldane, Bernal, or Science For The People, behold how  Science and Nature' s  opening pages  have become an Op-Ed echo chamber for  a new Climate Establishment bent on  monopolizing the scientific conversation, by dictating  who is allowed to express themselves, and in what ways.  

Face it - the political sociology of scientific activism is an open book, and the political prejudices of  Climate Progress and The Union of Concerned Scientists are as  explicitly activist  as those of Occupy or The Southern Poverty Law Center.   Those  who question their desire to control the scientific conversation, or their reductionist view of the Precautionary Principle:

" We initiate our argument with the known fact that vested interests and political agents have long opposed political or regulatory action in response to climate change by appealing to scientific uncertainty. 

We know from earlier work that uncertainty is no cause for inaction—on the contrary, greater scientific uncertainty should make us worry more, not less, about the potential consequences of climate change. "

are denounced as Anti-Science capitalist tools,  or condescendingly identified  with America’s poorer and less educated demographics, including the Republican Base.

But despite hectoring by a united front of Britons equally addicted to  Nature and The Guardian, and Americans with breakfast plates flanked by copies of both Science and The Nation, a cultural shift  is in progress on both sides of the pond:

Populism is upon us!  It used to be the lower  classes  who were constrained by convention,  while academic  freethinkers and the ruling class  got to experiment with unconventional ideas.  No longer- like the sexual revolution of the Sixties,  today’s  blogs  tweets and social media are a great leveler.  Alternative and often bizarre views  of science and politics rapidly filter down to ordinary people.

Once Wall Street trembled at what muckrakers, Shaw, and Mencken might have to say.  Now , with  political wevils like Trump drilling into an angry electorate, it’s the scientific ruling class that's looking over its shoulder.   Hidebound by political correctness, it is fearful lest raw  democracy question the climate oligarchy's  right  to frame a controversy  that continues despite  endless declarations that “the debate is over.”

Tell that to Donald Trump. People, scientists included , don’t need  permission to express  controversial views- there is no safe zone in the Climate wars, a post-modern change the hegemons of  Public Television,  The Guardian, The New Yorker, and The Nation Institute may not much like, but universal suffrage  has bound them with chains of  received opinion they themselves help forge. 

What can  bien pensant climateers  and throwbacks to the days of CND marches do in the face of the lumpenklimatariat, when nature fails to cooperate, and temperature trends sullenly refuse to follow the playbook and behave as  exponentially as modelers might wish ?  Should they volunteer  as  Trump’s science advisors ?  Go trick or treating for UNICEF?  Take over UKIP? Tell Anne Klein to lighten up?

Nick Gillespie shrewdly notes at Reason :

“America’s new elites, fancying themselves superior to the rural, the old, the religiously inclined and the rest, have increasingly turned politics into something that is done to people, for their own good, rather than by people according to their moral outlook. And then they wonder why people go looking for something else, something less sneering.
In Britain, meanwhile, the Third Wayists are losing sleep over the EU referendum, when ordinary people — including people who watch the football and wave the St George’s flag! — will get to have their say on Britain’s future relationship with the EU. What madness is this, they wonder of democracy.”

The real wonder is that so many have forgotten how much of  this election year's events  Ortega y Gasset foresaw,  years before Orwell,  in The Revolt Of The Masses, published in 1930. 

JUSTICES SCALIA & GINSBURG INSPECT THE STRATOSPHERE

Massachusetts V.  The Environmental Protection Agency ; 2007 :

Justice Scalia: Mr. Milkey, I had… my problem is precisely on the impermissible grounds. To be sure, carbon dioxide is a pollutant, and it can be an air pollutant.

If we fill this room with carbon dioxide, it could be an air pollutant that endangers health.

But I always thought an air pollutant was something different from a stratospheric pollutant, and your claim here is not that the pollution of what we normally call “air” is endangering health.

That isn’t, that isn’t… your assertion is that after the pollutant leaves the air and goes up into the stratosphere it is contributing to global warming.

Mr. Milkey: Respectfully, Your Honor, it is not the stratosphere. It’s the troposphere.

Justice Scalia: Troposphere, whatever.
I told you before I’m not a scientist.

[Laughter]


That’s why I don’t want to have to deal with global warming, to tell you the truth.

Mr. Milkey: Under the express words of the statute… and this is 302(g)… for something to be an air pollutant it has to be emitted into the ambient air or otherwise entered there.

Justice Scalia: Yes, and I agree with that.

It is when it comes out an air pollutant.

But is it an air pollutant that endangers health?

I think it has to endanger health by reason of polluting the air, and this does not endanger health by reason of polluting the air at all.

Mr. Milkey: Your Honor, respectfully, I disagree, and there is nothing in the act that actually requires the harm to occur in the ambient air.

In fact, some of the harm here does occur there.

Justice Scalia: Well, it talks about air pollution all the time.

That’s what the, that’s what the thing is about, air pollution.

It’s not about global warming and it’s not about the troposphere.

WILL HEARTLAND HIRE THE UNABOMBER ?

THE ERMINE VERMIN OBSERVES:

The Heartland Institute is sad. Because, like the Watties, they don’t like their wiki page (ar). But they aren’t going to take it lying down, oh no:

In recent months, left-wing activists have hijacked The Heartland Institute’s profile at Wikipedia, removing objective descriptions of our programs and publications and replacing them with lies, errors, and outright libelous claims. Our efforts to correct the site have been rejected by the editors of the self-described “free encyclopedia.” Can you help?(my bold).

Weirdly, although that was posted on “February 19, 2016” not a simple wacko denialist has showed up to help; their bench really is very thin indeed nowadays. And that’s despite them posting careful instructions for how to edit the page into the shape they want. As Trump would say: Losers!

So where can Heartland find a webmonkey to help win its Wiki Wars?  
The low-budget think-tank clearly needs a smart guy with time on his hands,  that  they  already know,  with  few  qualms  about  rhetorical violence.  Someone  willing to work for a few cartons of cigarettes or cans of mackerel that  Donor's Trust can credibly deny providing.

Perhaps it's time for  Heartland  Science Director Jay Lehr PhD.  to chat up  his fellow Federal Penitentiary alum,  Florence  supermax prisoner Ted Kaczinsky!

     IF  WATTS AND  THE  CHICAGO  SCHOOL  CLIMATE WEASELS  WANT A  MORE  DIGNIFIED  ADVERISING  MEDIUM  THAN  WIKIPEDIA
THEY CAN ALWAYS  PUT JOSH  TO WORK ON MOSAIC BILLBOARDS:

IN THIS # SHALL YOU CONQUER

SEMIOTICIAN  UMBERTO  ECO'S  WORK  LIVES  ON,  AS

   THE  CLIMATE  WARS  ESCALATE  INTO  THE  EMPIRE  OF  SIGNS

"The climate sign communicates unity for climate action

As the climate sign spreads, it builds a social norm of climate-conscious living, and fosters support for climate groups and progressive world leaders... "

Raise the #climatesign to show your dedication to climate action in 2016 ! "

"The climate sign was selected through a collaborative process...

13 top environmental organizations and branding agencies contributed their thoughts"

The climate sign communucates unity for climate action

  

 Ken Berlin raises the #climatesign to show his dedication to climate action!  Mr. Berlin is the current president and CEO of the Climate Reality Project,

Thank you, Mr. Berlin, for raising the climate sign !"

END OF EXCERPTS FROM CLIMATESIGN WEBSITE

DOES THIS LOOK FAMILIAR ?

 MICROAGRESSION  WARNING : 

ALWAYS  TURN  OFF  GODWIN  ALARM  BEFORE  

EXTENDING   RIGHT  ARM   IN  ' C  HAIL ! '  SALUTE   

THIS IS FEBRUARY-- IT MUST BE THE GRENADINES

    In Which Ye  Author  Most Shamelessly Plugs Both

THE  PYRITES  OF THE  CARIBBEAN & 

Brig  Astrid, since sunk.

A NATURAL HISTORY OF MUSTIQUE

Patrick O'Brien novels are best read while messing about aloft on a tall ship. No where else can a mere lubber   keep track of the Gish Gallop of tackle and sail  names that gushes through his prose.

I've just graduated from the brig Astrid,  on which in 1994  I  put aside The Nutmeg Of Consolation to swing from the mainyard garnet 'neath the futtocks and slide down  the quarterdeck ratlines, to  check the synthetic aperture radar, to a more modern conveyance , a five master that alas rarely made full sail lest it scare the passengers. 

Satellite weather, current &  sea state integrators, like  the  animated data feed 
http://earth.nullschool.net/#current/wind/isobaric/1000hPa/orthographic=-75.00,0.00,244
are smart as paint  for  navigating the Spanish Main, but what about ashore ?

From meteorology to  mineralogy, a lot of natural history is encountered cruising the Caribbean. Bequia's late great Captain Raul King used to swear " Nothing in this sea will harm you",  but you need to know enough about the local flora and fauna not to bite into manchineel fruit, pass up low-hanging pommes de Macassar, poke the lion fish, grab the fire coral  or step on the sea urchins instead of eating them. That calls for 

 A Natural History Handbook  So I helped write one.

It focuses on a tight little Grenadine island, wondrously rich in geology for its size, its rocks swarming with the Pyrites of the Caribbean , as well as the chalcopyrites, zeolites , and both epidotes and epicenes in their dotage.

Though it abounds in glitterati,  birds of bright plumage, and ants, plants and tortoises galore, the isle is paparazzi-free, with  few sycophants and  fewer elephants, as  it seemed imprudent to replace the last one after it ran amok on St. Lucia. 

As many creatures have migrated from from the Antilles to the Grenadines, readers will find this book Indispensable on all islands Leeward & Windward

Published by  by The Mustique Company, with a foreword by a surprisingly intelligent London School of Economics drop-out :

The Natural History of Mustique  includes a hopelessly  amateur introduction to Grenadine geology that I am doomed  to update by  returning every  winter  I can afford until  get it right-- 
Such is ones grim duty to science.

 A Natural History of Mustique 
includes 360 color photos covering all creatures great and small, from harmless insects the size of birds, to vinegaroons, hummingbirds the size of bees, and a snake easily mistaken for a keychain. Every reptile from St. Barts to Barbados, from the noble tortoise geochelone to lividly green lizards, is vividly depicted in this handbook.

Despite its name, Mustique is phenomenally poor in mosquitoes, but rich in Wi Fi bandwith in The Excellent Bar  of Basil Charles O.B.E.  

In which Music of several Sorts may be heard :

 

And a most excellently air conditioned Library where one may  read  each week's issue of Nature, for  there  my subscription is delivered. 

The spiral bound and  surprisingly waterproof  Natural History of Mustique is an absolute snip at forty bucks. Available at better rum shops & bookstores in the Spanish Main or send fifty to mnestheus@paypal, and I'll autograph one. 

While pyrite crystals may be pried from Virgin Islands lamprophyre veins, and jade from DR riverbeds,  the Grenadines offer glittering chalcopyrite  and glowing  zeolite crystals. More touristed isles, like St. Lucia are barely cooled piles of lava and  ill mineralized volcanic ash but  ancient basement rocks endow  the older Grenadines with richer and more eventful geology. Mustique  boasts glittering  botryoidal  pincushions of quartz, and wheat sheave and bow-tie sprays of zeolites like stilbite and mesolite. For a really hot diving spot, try Kickem Jenny, the underwater volcano perking its way to the surface  a long days sail southwest. A Must See for Bob Carter and other coal flacks spewing nonsense about underwater CO2 and thermal fluxes.

Newcomers  may find  St.Vincent and Bequia more welcoming than the 0utlying Grenadines,  desert islands suitable only for stranding statisticians and PR flacks. The exception is the Tobago Cays , where yachts anchoring  alee to limit eutrophication can oogle the turquise seascape seen in  Pirates of the Caribbean , while enjoying 170 proof  rum   delivered by the Jack Iron moonshiners of Petit Martinique.

Newer and more elegant editions of the handbook will report more on where  the Grenadine  pyrites are buried , but go in June,  and you will find  the outlying islets and pinnacles. like  Battowia and Baliceaux abuzz with congregations of boobies worthy of a Heartland Institute Climate Conference

Alas, the brig Astrid , shown above, passed into less vigilant  hands in 2012, and at the goodly age of 92, ran aground on the rocks of Cork. 

One always needs a bigger boat, and I've come ashore after a weeks sailing in the  Grenadines sail  aboard Mikael Krafft's modern recreation of  the  five-master  Preußen:

 

She's called Royal Clipper, though the passengers in the main were anything but.  So it's good to be back in Mustique, where a princely flotilla of tall  sloops  has  just arrived to refresh the  totty posh supply,  the pyrites having long since turned to rust.

THE MINISTRY OF EMPTY GESTURES PRESENTS:

You can't make these things  up:  #Climatesign the peace sign of our time  strives to unite all viewers with a single empty gesture:

"The climate sign was selected through a collaborative process... for feedback on cultural appropriateness...

13 top environmental organizations and branding agencies contributed their thoughts"  

ORIGIN OF THE CLIMATE SIGN

     ... The climate sign communicates unity for climate action

As the climate sign spreads, it builds a social norm of climate-conscious living, and fosters support for climate groups and progressive world leaders... 

Raise the #climatesign to show your dedication to climate action in 2016 ! "

  

            

THE POST-PARIS FOCUS GROUP CRISIS

As the climate crisis enters its fourth decade of conciousness-raising, framing, and fund raising, and   PBS  ponders whether to rebrand the Anthropocene the Era of Repressive Patriarchy, or to replace it with a non-sexist  transgender era, focus group  fixers & social entrepreneurs from both sides of K-Street have embarked on a quest for the next big thing in climate questions: