anti-science fanatics

Scenes from the Inquisition: heretic Nathan Myhrvold speaks.

(H/T: Instapundit) Get a cup of coffee, because you’re going to enjoy reading this.

Political movements always have extremists — bitterly partisan true believers who attack anybody they feel threatens their movement. I’m sure you know the type, because his main talent is making himself heard. He doesn’t bother with making thoughtful arguments; instead, his technique is about shrill attacks in all directions, throwing a lot of issues up and hoping that one will stick or that the audience becomes confused by the chaos.

Although not for the reasons Mr. Myhrvold thinks. He thinks that he’s correcting some unfortunate, hysterical, and inaccurate criticisms of his work that were made by a anti-carbon enthusiast; what he’s actually done is help legitimize the religious fanatic by taking him seriously enough to address. At great length. Which will now be seized upon by said religious fanatic and parsed until he can find something else to hammer Myhrvold on, thus hopefully sparking another rebuttal in the Freakonomics NYT blog.

Well, this is how you learn to learn better. The sooner Myhrvold works out that this has more to do with theology instead of politics – and that he’s the heretic – the happier he’ll end up being.

Moe Lane

Crossposted to RedState.

Left’s War on Science Watch: Bill Maher edition.

Via Hot Air, and the best part? Watching the faces of his guests curdle. Ever so slightly. They start around the point where Maher starts babbling about inoculations. (Language warning):

Interestingly, the people who most like to beat their chests and howl about all those awful fundamentalist ‘Christianists’ on the Right* absolutely hate it when the entire anti-vaccination Left thing comes up. Their utter lack of self-awareness of just how ironic their responses tend to be should provide the interested observer with hours of fun at parties – for a given value of ‘fun,’ of course…

Moe Lane

*All the while hoping that you don’t know how many of them vote Democrat. Hint: lots.

Hope and Change: Obama administration kills Kyoto treaty.

Fair’s fair: if the previous administration had to take the heat for refusing to flush the American economy down the toilet for the sake of that nonsensical treaty, then so can this one. This one goes out to every voter whose primary motivation for voting Democratic was climate change:

The United States never ratified the agreement because it doesn’t require any action from the developing world, including China, the world’s largest emitter. The Bush administration considered that a fatal flaw. And so does the Obama White House.

“The notion that we should have an agreement which looks explicitly and exclusively at a handful of countries, doesn’t seem right. The whole purpose of this is to move the world to a better place, not to move one set of countries down that road,” said Jonathan Pershing, a top U.S. negotiator.

Odd how this never came up during the campaign; in fact, quite the opposite. Of course, now that the President’s in charge he has to actually do something besides pander to religious extremists like the Greens; so a more… nuanced stance becomes necessary. Besides, it’s not like “It’s Bush’s fault” isn’t this administration’s handy-dandy, one size fits all excuse anyway.

Via Ronald Bailey of Reason Hit & Run (via Instapundit), who wants to know when Waxman-Markey’s going to go away now. I assume that he’s being sarcastic: there’s too much money earmarked towards Democratic allies in that monstrosity to make it disappear right away.

Moe Lane

Crossposted to RedState.