400 prominent scientists? Not so much….

 I see Sen. Inhofe (R-Exxon) put out some trash for the media on the day when he figured all the real scientists went home for Christmas. I guess he hoped this gobbledygook would sit around unanswered for a couple of weeks.  The surprising thing is that the NY Times gave this thing any kind of respect.

Climate Progress: 

“Padded” would be an extremely generous description of this list of “prominent scientists.” Some would use the word “laughable” (though not the N.Y. Times‘ Andy Revkin, see below). For instance, since when have economists, who are pervasive on this list, become scientists, and why should we care what they think about climate science?

I’m not certain a dozen on the list would qualify as “prominent scientists,” and many of those, like Freeman Dyson — a theoretical physicist — have no expertise in climate science whatsoever. I have previously debunked his spurious and uninformed claims, although I’m not sure why one has to debunk someone who seriously pushed the idea of creating a rocket ship powered by detonating nuclear bombs! Seriously.

Even Ray Kurzweil, not a scientist but a brilliant inventor, is on the list. Why? Because he apparently told CNN and the Washington Post:

These slides that Gore puts up are ludicrous, they don’t account for anything like the technological progress we’re going to experience…. None of the global warming discussions mention the word ‘nanotechnology. Yet nanotechnology will eliminate the need for fossil fuels within 20 years…. I think global warming is real but it has been modest thus far – 1 degree f. in 100 years. It would be concern if that continued or accelerated for a long period of time, but that’s not going to happen.

And people say I’m a techno-optimist. So Kurzweil actually believes in climate science — rather than the reverse, as Inhofe claims — but thinks catastrophic global warming won’t happen because of a techno-fix that stops emissions. If wishes were horses … everyone would get trampled to death. In the real world, energy breakthroughs are very rare, as we’ve seen, and it’s even rarer when they make a difference in under several decades.

Then we have the likes of this from Inhofe’s list:

CBS Chicago affiliate Chief Meteorologist Steve Baskerville expressed skepticism that there is a “consensus” about mankind’s role in global warming.

Wow, a TV weatherman expressed skepticism. If only the IPCC had been told of this in time, they could have scrapped their entire report. Seriously, Wikipedia says “Baskerville is an alumnus of Temple University and holds a Certificate in Broadcast Meteorology from Mississippi State University.” I guess Inhofe has a pretty low bar for “prominent scientists” — but then again he once had science fiction writer Michael Crichton testify at a hearing on climate science.

I don’t mean to single out Baskerville. Inhofe has a lot of meteorologists on his list, including Weather Channel Founder John Coleman. I have previously explained why Coleman doesn’t know what he is talking about on climate, and why meteorologists in general have no inherent credibility on climatology. In any case, they obviously are NOT prominent scientists.

Mitt Romney: hallucinating or lying about Martin Luther King?

Romney really creeps me out. This Martin Luther King story is a real hair-raiser. Yes, I know that a couple of “eyewitnesses” have come forward; sorry, that’s crap; I can find lots of people who claim to have been in flying saucers, too.  All the media in Michigan, Detroit and the country would not have missed a story that Martin Luther King marched in Detroit with George Romney.  That’s not the way the world was, nor the way King was, nor Romney. None of the news sources posted by the Romney campaign suggest that King was there.

Balloon Juice:

Mitt Romney has been forced to get into some serious verbal gymnastics over his previous declaration about seeing his father, the late Michigan Gov. George Romney, marching with Martin Luther King. A close examination of the historical records shows that the elder Romney, while he was a strong support of civil rights, never actually appeared with King.
“I’ve tried to be as accurate as I can be,” Romney told reporters. “If you look at the literature or look at the dictionary, the term ‘saw’ includes being aware of — in the sense I’ve described.”

“I’m an English literature major,” he added, after the questions didn’t stop. “When we say I saw the Patriots win the World Series, it doesn’t necessarily mean you were there.” (Yes, he did speak off the cuff about the idea of a football team winning the World Series.)

Mitt Romney went a step further in a 1978 interview with the Boston Herald. Talking about the Mormon Church and racial discrimination, he said: “My father and I marched with Martin Luther King Jr. through the streets of Detroit.”

Yesterday, Romney spokesman Eric Fehrnstrom acknowledged that was not true. “Mitt Romney did not march with Martin Luther King,” he said in an e-mail statement to the Globe.