What? No obligatory slam about how “East Coast Liberals” are wussies and people in “Real America” would have been out there shoveling until they dropped?

Missed the trifecta, Charlotte.

But when reality knocks, they can’t do the basic stuff

The “they” being a multi-billionaire who bought the mayor’s office.

The people at No Labels will be very sad at this outburst of non-centrism.

Why doesn’t it bother republicans that once thriving middle class families are dying in the streets from hypothermia? Or people are starving because there is no job to be found?

Somebody really needs to help her get her sight back. She is missing all of the show except for one tragedy.

The blizzard is definitely a force for conservatism, and not only because it has had the global-warming crowd scrambling for explanations.

Here’s my explanation: Climate is to weather what the twenty teens are to next Saturday. Now I want an explanation of how someone can graduate college and not know that.

I’ll wait…

Good point. She choked.

So we not only get the “it’s cold somewhere on the planet today, therefore global warming is a hoax” meme, but the “someone died in a natural disaster, which proves government doesn’t work” meme — in one short paragraph!

and this of course right after they gut the public work force to make it nearly impossible to prepare for events that happen every single frigging year

they cause the problem and then blame everyone else for what they themselves caused

BRILLIANT

Gutting the govt is part of the plan to prove the govt doesn’t work.

It’s the conservative way. They create the problem and then sit back in their gated communities and point fingers and say “I told ya so”. In conservativeland, everything is a privilege. I’m waiting for them to figure out how to charge for air.

Why isn’t Charlotte reporting how much of a kickback the black man in the White House is getting each time a Nobel Peace Drone is launched against defenseless civilians?

At Least 42 Killed as US Drones Continue to Rock North Waziristan

The US has launched 115 strikes this year killing over a thousand people. Of these, only a handful were ever identified as “high value targets” and a number of those reemerged later, alive and well. The vast, vast majority will forever be known as “suspects,” despite mounting evidence that they are by and large civilians.

The blizzard is definitely a force for conservatism, and not only because it has had the global-warming crowd scrambling for explanations.

This statement (along with the rest of her wingnut diatribe) is so fucking stupid on so many levels that I need to take a nap before I can absorb it all. I keep thinking that they can’t sink any lower, and then they prove me wrong.

And by the by, quoting from today’s DN:

Bloomberg Faces Criticism over Unplowed Streets in New York City In New York City, Mayor Michael Bloomberg is coming under intense criticism for the city’s failure to clear snow from sections of the city following this week’s blizzard. As of Tuesday, some 250 city buses and scores of ambulances remained stranded in city streets because roads had not been plowed. Union officials blamed the slow snow removal problem on Bloomberg’s decision to slash the size of the Sanitation Department by roughly 400 workers.

Yes.

Cut taxes to the bone, so the fire department and police department and first responders are stretched too thin — then say, “GUBMINT IS THE PROBLEM!!!!!”

Rinse, repeat.

You left out “sell shit that doesn’t belong to them”.

Charlotte Hays is just plain stupid. That is an opinion derived from reading her work product.

There is so much civilian blood being splattered by the Nobel Peace Drones that it could soon melt enough snow for Charlotte’s satisfaction.

They might crib from Mel Brooks on that one and start producing bottles of “Perri-Air”.

Yeah, I was laughing this morning watching the Weather Channel as Al Roker was complaining about the streets still needing to b cleaned. Even Al was inching towards the recognition that budget cuts just might have had some impact on things.

Stephanie Abrams was trying to go “Well wasn’t this a storm of the century deal and therefore not to be expected?”

Al wouldn’t bite though and pointed out the last storm of this size to hit NYC was all of 4 years ago.

Wouldn’t surprise me a bit.

Isn’t Ed Rendell working that corner?

Hays sounds like another nasty piece of conserva-trash.

Pfft! Mighty Ed Rendell was talking cuts to social security yesterday and to his credit, Cenk Uyger was having none of it.

Here is some of that liberal counseling: Eat shit and die, Charlotte.

The global-warming crowd isn’t scrambling for explanations. Hays was just not paying attention when the point was made repeatedly that more severe weather–including blizzards–would be a consequence. Warmer temperatures in the southern hemisphere this time of year means more evaporated water in the atmosphere that freezes and drops to the ground as snow when it reaches the northern hemisphere.

And, he still had time to take in the Iggles game…

Haven’t we been calling it “climate change” for quite some time? Just to simplify things for fucktards like Charlotte?

I’ve been trying but it doesn’t sink in. Al Gore is fat you see.

National Review has surely been prospering under the inspired leadership of Rich “Starbursts” Lowry.

I recall Christopher Buckley’s remark on being fired from National Review by Lowry for announcing in 2008 that he would be voting for Obama: “So, to paraphrase a real conservative, Ronald Reagan: I haven’t left the Republican Party. It left me.”

I enjoy seeing some of these beltway pricks get slapped around on live TeeVee. During a weak, spasmodic moment yesterday afternoon, I happened by CNN and hung around just long enough to see Amy Goodman slap the snot out of Ed Rollins about exiting Afghanistan. (She said the process could (and should) be started immediately, whereas Rollins…you can guess the rest.)

Yeah, I was never really a fan of Uyger but am rapidly becoming a convert as he moves further and further away from his conservative roots. Unlike John Cole who is just as rigidly ideological as he ever was, Cenk seems to have completed the hero’s journey and embraced policy over personality.

How could Charlotte Hays be expected to pay attention to weather patterns that don’t happen directly outside of her window? If it doesn’t happen to her, it can’t be something that might concern her. /narcissistic personality

These people seem to forget that global warming affects the whole world.
People like this writer must live in little bubbles. Californians are bracing for another round of torrential rains,while the folks down under are bailing out from their last bout with mother nature.
Geez! What’s it gonna take?

She was too busy paying attention to the weather patterns occurring in the vast expanses of empty space inside her skull.

Yep. Her world is her gated community and overseas travel is limited to visits to other compounds and gated communities.

National Review, where failed talentless gossip columnists, like Charlotte Hays, go to die

It’s hard to take a step down from gossip columnist, but writing “opinion” for the National Review pretty much does it.

Cenk used to be a conservative, like me? Really? Do you know what motivated his shift from Right to Left?

These people seem to forget that global warming affects the whole world

Again all you have to do is re-define climate to mean weather and viola! No more problems. See?

Bush II

No shit!

LMAO! Comment of the day! Right? How do you underdo a gossip column gig? Work for Rich Lowry!

So it had to be that extreme? I take pride in having made the shift just before the Iran-Contra scandal broke, during Reagan’s second term – at the very time when by superficial standards the triumph of conservatism appeared to be complete. If I had any remaining doubts, Iran-Contra removed them.

What particular aspects of Shrub did it for Cenk? The Iraq war?

She’s an alien, probably got here 6,000 years ago…what the hell does she know..Besides, I lived in NYC for many years, and we had plenty of big snow storms..under Giuliani (that librul), they never plowed out Harlem and many of us complained…Same problem now, you get what you’re worth to them. Oh yeah, and she’s a moron and so is Bloomberg.

No idea. I don’t think it was any single event or not that I’ve heard him say anyway

I jumped on this thread, because I’ve been thinking about this topic all day long. I read in the news this morning that areas in Australia and most of the state of California were dealing with rains and flooding.Areas here on the East Coast dealt with flooding rains last spring, and for the second year in a row we’ve had major blizzards.And this shit ain’t happening just here, this is going on all over the world!

Hence the phrase “climate change”. Gonna do a diary on that subject very soon now.

David Dayen has a fresh cross-post already in progress: Right Wing CPAC Crackup over Gay Rights Group

Do they want to believe their own lyin’ eyes, or do they want to believe the lies they are told by the companies that lobby to continue polluting the planet? It is clear that “global warming” should be “climate change”…They all buy into the “doubt” as to whether it is man-made or a natural occurrence..the stupid thing is that either way, pollution by man contributes enormously to the problem which includes extremes of heat and cold and extinction of the habitats of all life on earth. First they went after “pollution”, then they went after “acid rain”, then they went after “global warming”..when they ever get around to opening their eyes, it will be too late and Mother Nature will come after everything..Just sayin’.

You guys need to give this lady some credit.
Charlotte found out the way to monitor global warming is to get down the the nitty gritty and do some research. She’s discovered the best way to test the fluctuations in temperature is to personally probe the surface of the earth. The most sensitive instrument for reading these gradients happens to be the sub-tragion region of the human head. Also the most advantagious locality to do this monitoring is in the sand. She and an army of concerned conservatives have committed themselves to this task. They’ve named themselves the Association of Sand/Head Analysis Temperature Screeners. aka ASSHATS

Um, err, Climate is in fact a average of specific weather events:

…the weather in some location averaged over some long period of time

Climate encompasses the statistics of temperature, humidity, atmospheric pressure, wind, rainfall, atmospheric particle count and numerous other meteorological elements in a given region over long periods of time. …

Um so therefore, Climate is a linear function, but weather is not:

Weather is a set of all the phenomena occurring in a given atmosphere at a given time

see this:

http://www.oregonlive.com/opinion/index.ssf/2010/12/climate_science_the_real_reaso_1.html

He happens to hold a PhD from the University of Chicago but then, all PhD’s are not created equal, are they?

I suggest a serious study of Karl Popper: Open Universe”. He proves that Scientific Determinism is false. Projecting Climate future from extrapolation is Scientific Determinism.

Not that I basically disagree with what we need to be doing with things like fossil fuels, but to use a point of view that has been discredited years ago (Popper) taxes my patience. And my trust

But most likely, few will remain here to read and respond, because new stuff is upstairs.

This non-sentient being named “Charlotte Hays” is an asswipe, which definitely demeans the process of ass-wiping, but to call her stupid, ignorant or an idiot is truly UNFAIR to the stupid, ignorant & idiots out there.

Hahaha. Many years ago, when I lived in an old apt. building in NYC, we had no heat, and it was freezing inside and outside. The owner of the building came to our apt. and pulled a thermometer out of his shirt and announced that we were crazy to say it was cold, because he showed it to us and said, “it’s 98 degrees in here”. Go figure.

And this shit ain’t happening just here, this is going on all over the world!

Climate change is, indeed, a global phenomenon, and is, irrefutably, “happening.” But because Al Gore is irrefutably FAT, conservatives don’t give a shit about anywhere but their own narrow, selfish, narcissistic, entitled, victimizing backyards… because that’s all that’s “important” to them. So There!!! /not totally snark

You should have replied, “That’s a rectal thermometer, it only works when it’s properly positioned. Here, let me do that for you.”

Well I guess if left wingnuts can claim hot summers equal evidence of global warming and republicans health care plans are for people to die then the right wingnuts such as Charlotte Hays can pop off with her extreme opinions and theories now can’t they?

How dare you point out these FDL’s are anything but absolutely right and the truth as they see it and their opinions are beyond reproach.

Notice that to post you must “submit”.

I do not submit well!

He happens to hold a PhD from the University of Chicago but then, all PhD’s are not created equal, are they?

My appeal to authority (90% of the world’s climate scientists), to go with every major scientific organization in the world (including NASA), is better than your appeal to authority (1 PhD).

I don’t exactly agree with everything she said, but I wouldn’t call it wingnuttery, either. She qualified her statements somewhat and said, “the unplowed city streets provide a metaphor for the nanny state: It can order us to do anything, but it can’t take care of the basic obligations of government,” like making sure a desperate 911 call is answered in a reasonable amount of time, snowstorm or no snowstorm. Don’t New Yorkers pay enough in taxes yet to expect minimally competent service? Every time they walk out their doors they are gouged by one tax or another. And of course Michael Bloomberg IS a nanny-stater and the sort of corporate Democrat that people at FDL have been denouncing for some time now.

The other day I posted something that didn’t fit in with the majority mindset here and someone said my post looked “suspicious,” as if he thought I were a corporate mole.

I disagree with your interpretation of Popper. Popper’s point is merely that one cannot regard a specific event as “proving” anything. He would regard that predicting CLIMATE trends (as opposed to weather events) as perfectly within his hypothetico-deductive system. The “theory” is a tool based upon “best knowledge” that can be tested and revised if patterns do not match the predictions.

For example, past Plio-Pleistocene climate patterns can be very easily predicted from Milanhovich’s sidereal and global tilt cycles. The exception appears to be the current phase were are in…which should be progressing toward an ice age (a finding made in the 1970′s and misinterpreted) yet is demonstrating a two century trend of increasing global average temperatures with dramatic increases in the last two decades. Other features, such as permafrost melt, loss of polar ice pack and glacial retreats suggest that anthropomorphic effects are involved. This ties in with the independent prediction made from those involved in atmospheric sciences…that increasing greenhouse gases would increase temperatures. Thus one has two independent theoretical models that coincide, and independent data from many sources that converge. This provides a consilience of data and theoretical predictions.

yeah, the dreaded “LIBERALS”. As stated above, the mayor of NY is a billionaire Republican. These right wings assholes never let facts get in the way of their rhetoric.

Thanks for that FACT. But as we know reality has a such a dreaded Liberal bias. I, too, was taken aback when somehow the likes of billionaire known-Republican conservative Blumenthal is suddenly lumped into the “liberal” category and called Mr. Nanny-state. WTF???

Starbuck’s interpretation of Popper is erroneous. His position on indeterminacy is not what you suggest it is. He is merely stating that complex systems can have multiple deterministic causation and that individual events within them may be unpredictable (sort of like trying to predict the ACT of a particular radioactive atom decaying within the next second). This does not hobble or “falsify” the use of Scientific Theory methodologically to predict patterns of many events – just as it would not falsify the half-life models to predict the decay of particular radioactive isotopes.

Popper (a philosopher, not a scientist) was arguing about the proper “role” of theory in Science. He was stating that theories are constructs of human minds attempting to find pattern and causation and are thus subject to falsifiability. In order to work they must be predictive, but a singular event may not satisfy the falsifiability criteria. For some theories, which are statistical in nature (for example, climate theories) one needs to amass a number of falsifiers and contrast them with corroborative events.

It does not mean that we need to retreat into “supernaturalism”.

JC’s okay. His eyes are open, he just has to learn one issue at a time.

Scientific determinism or not, the snowstorm wasn’t unusually cold, it just had an unusually high amount of moisture behind it. Wingnuts can’t even figure out the right point to attach their bogus arguments to.

To repeat what others said above, Bloomberg slashed the sanitation department workforce due to huge budget shortfalls because the astoundingly rich people who runs the astoundingly profitable banks and Wall Street brokerages do not, in fact, pay enough taxes. And all the Galtian will in the world will not get an ambulance down a Manhattan crosstown street blocked by abandoned cars.

The Mayor of New York is a Republican, the slow snow removal was due to too little government rather than too much, and even if cold temperatures somehow disproved the idea of global climate change the blizzard had nothing to do with unusually cold temperatures. Other than that, Charlotte’s arguments were spot on.

Thanks for that fact, too. I cannot back up what you said, but I happened to be on the east coast when it started and got going (managed to get out just in the nick of time). From my own experience, it was not a particularly cold snow, and having blizzards like this one can be *expected* at this time of year.

Plus there is often a delay in road clearing, no matter how well prepared everyone is. It was a holiday weekend, for heaven’s sake. And yes, every govt dept has been slashed & trashed, not just in NYC, but across the nation. It was my understanding that all these bullying, self-centered conservatives wanted/dreamed of/begged & bullied for was SMALLER govt… because in their Ayn Rand delusional fantasies this makes *some kind of sense* to them.

Yet when it all falls apart, as predictably it will, suddenly we get the assholes and clowns crawling out from under their comfortable rocks to wag their fingers and nag at the dreadful awful LIEbruls who *must somehow* be made responsible for this crime against humanity. And if the FACTS don’t fit their Tea-bagging John Galt fantasy world, why just make up JUNK like Blumenthal is a liberal Nanny-stater.

Sheesh… rant off (for now).

No, it’s not my interpretation. It’s his.

“I personally believe that the doctrine of indeterminism is true and that determinism is completely baseless.”
p41
“Open Universe”
-Karl Popper.

To go on and list all his arguments, which, btw, is based on sound science, (Relativity, probabilistics, etc) which can be found in that volume is beyond the scope of my very short post.

And inasmuch as his field is philosophy, he is uniquely qualified to make, present and prove his case, which he does. In fact, this continues from his early work which is now basic in science. His “Falsifiability Theory” which now all scientific theories have as the sine qua non of proof, that is to prove the theory by running a critical experiment that falsifies the theory, and have that experiment fail. They do not necessarily fail completely, so that they become a subset of a larger theory, such as Newton with respect to Einstein ‘s General Relativity.

If you examine the work, he certainly does not use a singular event with respect to statistics, but through the careful examination of what he called “Accountability’ as to the precision of the outcome of the prediction,he showed that the necessary accountability cannot be provided, and why.

There are climatologists that run with his conclusions on indeterminism:

http://www.his.com/~sepp/Archive/NewSEPP/Climate%20models-Tennekes.htm

Finally, note must be taken that while Popper explicitly stated as I quoted in that volume, he goes on to say that his conclusions apply to scientific Determinism, and determinism in general cannot be subjected to the rigors he uses for Scientific Determinism.

I bring all this up because of the way that people who disagree with the tenor of the beliefs at FDL get trashed and thrashed (verbally, of course!)undeservedly. People have been told to shut up, and in a very recent thread (DADT event) a demand that his/hers comments be deleted and access denied. Putting it very explicitly, that sucks!

And I reiterate that in no way do my comments and beliefs expressed which are contrary to the prevailing ones here translate any farther than that. I am deeply troubled by the effects of human dependence of fossil fuels for relatively casual uses, at the sometimes horrible efficiencies which accompany their application.

Here’s a little bit of unscientific determinism that even the most primitive societies on earth have used to their advantage: if you piss in the well, you foul the water.

Um, err, Climate is in fact a average of specific weather events:
…the weather in some location averaged over some long period of time

Kind of missing something there: it isn’t the mean, it’s the median: what it does most often. Which, now, means that it’s getting less predictable, and, generally speaking, less comfortable for most of us.

And all the extra moisture came from the central Pacific, somewhere near Hawaii, and was turned into snow by cold fronts from Siberia via Alaska.

Whoops, I’m in EPU land. No matter. The thing about global warming is that there are extremes in the weather. Extremely hot, extremely cold, extremely wet, extremely dry, extremely windy, and so on. What we have in this phase of la nina is classic for a highly disturbed atmosphere mainly by fucking assholes who buy big fat ass SUVS and Trucks for their fat asses and the fat asses of their fat ass offspring/spawn.

There are climatologists that run with his conclusions on indeterminism:

Again, with an appeal to authority. But you’ll keep losing that argument, since there are far more climatologists who have concluded that the Earth is warming and that it’s caused by man.