Climate skeptics may be loathe to admit this, but they have a Monckton problem. The guy is just too clownish to be taken seriously, as Lucia recently demonstrated. Yet, there's no denying he's the go-to-guy, the U.S. Congressional Republican witness, the conference headliner, the unofficial spokesman who is quoted prominently by the NYT. So this George Monbiot column headline is dead on:
Monckton's climate denial is a gift to those who take the science seriously
And a cross to bear for climate skeptics who want to be taken seriously. Similarly, it's too bad that Jeff Id can't grasp that his political rantings undermine his otherwise serious technical posts. Here he is in full froth, going on about "corrupt liberals" and "our extremist in chief." What's got his goat? The Federal Trade Commission recently put out a discussion paper on some not-so-brilliant ideas on how to "reinvent" journalism. The paper includes, among other things, a hefty dose of government intervention in the form of tax breaks, subsidies, and shudders (!), increased funding for public television and radio. Now if you want to read a well argued rebuttal to the FTC's proposed meddling in the news business, Jeff Jarvis is your man (and I largely agree with him). But if you want to read boilerplate liberal bashing that verges on unhinged hysteria, then the other Jeff is your man. Here he is, near the end of that post, reading the tea leaves of Obama's policies:
We are way past our limits, but this is truly evil. There is going to be a revolt soon, we are NOT Russia yet but there is a reason that half of Obama's appointments have been self proclaimed Marxists at one point or another.
Jeff, that alarmist doom and gloom schtick works both ways, you know. You and the peak oilers and climate advocates who also portend the end of capitalism have more in common than you think.
