Dissecting Ed Begley Jr.’s Freak-out

  

11190No comments yethttp://www.parcbench.com/2009/11/30/dissecting-ed-begley-jr-s-freak-out/Dissecting+Ed+Begley+Jr.%27s+Freak-out2009-11-30+13%3A42%3A25Ryan+Anthony

Written by Ryan AnthonycloseAuthor: Ryan Anthony Name: Ryan Anthony
Email: mica1884@gmail.com
Site:
About: 20-something Tennessee Journalism student and relentless sports fan.See Authors Posts (214) on November 30, 2009

If ever the inverse of last year’s OISM petition rejecting the mythos of man-made global warming were crafted, I can tell you right now how the first paragraph will look:

Cut out the pussyfooting. Stripping of certification and mock Nuremberg trials will do entirely too little to scare dissenters into submission. We request they be prepped for gladiatorial sacrifice to Mother Gaia, whereupon their life force will be noisily quashed under the scythed wheels of Perez Hilton’s shocking pink chariot. Only then can we effectively communicate: Change is needed now . . . or else.

No, not really. But it’s a safe bet we here at Parcbench can count Ed Begley Jr. as one of the signatories.

Apparently the perennial guest actor has thrown in his twenty-sided die with the true believers, and proven his wit with a few minutes worthy to be counted alongside Bob Beckel rant or Michael Moore-style explosion in the halls of television inanity.

Didn’t hear of it yet? Neither did I, until the day before Thanksgiving. So, now that I’m done ingesting copious amounts of turkey and stuffing, let me turn my snark-o-meter off for a moment and explain what happened:

Stu Varney, guest host on the so-called Republican propaganda network of Fox; the selfsame one that ripped W’s beer windshield immediately before his election, had environmental activist Begley sit down for a tête-à-tête whereupon the five-hundred-page blown whistle from the UK’s East Anglia Climatic Research Unit was laid upon.

All of the now-infamous details regarding big names in the AGW business withholding information, willfully corrupting data not to their liking, and boiling their inability to account for the lack of warming in the world down to a “travesty” – as though they’re unhappy sea levels aren’t going to rise six feet and swallow us all.

It soon turned into a night-màrê where neither of them would shut up, they both talked one over the other, and Ed seriously lost his cool. I can count on more than one hand the number of times Ed jabbed his finger in Stu’s face, on all four appendages the condescending behavior displayed by same, and I’m still going through every individual hair on my body trying to comprehend the senselessness of it all.

Since when did Easy-Bake ovens threaten their users with mercury poisoning on breakage? Since when does global warming have anything to do with health care? Or seatbelts?

Whew, my head’s close to exploding from the whole thing. That and I’m getting a little ahead of myself here.

Let me take an Advil and point out a couple of things. The same peer-reviewed journals Ed held up showing anthropogenic global warming to be the Holy Grail, are the same journals that those of the venerable Institute want to either keep free of anything that runs counter to their “consensus,” or ignore when their feet are held to the fire.

A few emails in the stack, which would have likely been touched on had they not been arguing, mention Stephen McIntyre. McIntyre is a climate fact-checker from Canada and owner of the web site Climateaudit.org.

In one email, “hockey stick” graph creator Michael Mann warned a New York Times reporter – what a surprise – that due to his skeptical views, McIntyre was not to be trusted. Another email goes so far as to brand the retired businessman with the liberal scarlet letter of McCarthyism, which is a laugh since all of this builds up to their eventual goal of making McIntyre; for that matter, anyone who doesn’t subscribe to their mindset, a pariah.

There were e-mails sent back and forth that allude to redefining peer-review acceptance criteria to keep those that don’t toe the activist line out, and even to blacklisting journals themselves should they publish material from the other side of the controversy.

So Ed basically didn’t use his head. When you seek out a predetermined conclusion from the start, you find it.

Secondly: Regarding the argument for assessing information only via sources deemed credible (as if one sided publications really are, anyway) our old man seems to believe that politicians-turned-scientists have brains that open the way to an all consuming dimensional vortex, sucking the energy from around them and replacing them with nothingness.

Among his peers, he’s not alone in that sentiment; liberal journalist Christopher Mooney even alluded to such in his ’05 whine-fest The Republican War On Science, where he described James Inhofe (R-OK) as having “basically thrown himself in front of a moving train.”

Suicide is a rather brainless act, ergo, Inhofe must not have the lobes to comprehend the complexity of it all. He is a politician first, and scientist second.

Never mind that former Vice President Gore is himself the epitome of Holiday Inn Express climatology.

Oops.

But, the massive lapse in Mr. Begley’s reasoning – which I’m both surprised Stu didn’t bring up and hadn’t even remembered until a while ago – has less to do with ManBearPig and more with our over-reliance on credentialization as a society. In an email dated October 9, 1997 sent by Joseph Alcamo regarding the Kyoto Protocol, the United Nations Environmental Program’s Chief Scientist Designate and BFF of the IPCC said this:

I am very strongly in favor of as wide and rapid a distribution as
possible for endorsements. I think the only thing that counts is
numbers. The media is going to say “1000 scientists signed” or “1500
signed”. No one is going to check if it is 600 with PhDs versus 2000
without . . . Forget the screening . . . Get those names!

Tsk, tsk. Are we too stupid to ask if the people that want to direct every aspect of our lives know what they’re talking about? We must be.

Even defenders of the man-made global warming hypothesis – such as George Monbiot, who is now calling for one of the scientists in the middle of the act to resign – have acknowledged the stack of e-mails to be a serious blow to their cause. This was not understood by Living With Ed‘s star; for his part, Stu had very little control over the proceedings, or his own reactions. How much experience does he have as a guest host? I shudder to think of it.

Next time, can we watching at home actually be rewarded for our time with something on-topic and less screechy, please? If the West Wing-politician-turned-scientist keeps this up, he’ll be guesting on a second season of Mental.

Related Articles

No related photos.