The Policy Lass

Here’s my 2010 summary courtesy of the helper monkeys at WordPress! Thanks to everyone who visited and who posted. It’s been an experience.

The stats helper monkeys at WordPress.com mulled over how this blog did in 2010, and here’s a high level summary of its overall blog health:

The Blog-Health-o-Meter™ reads Wow.

Crunchy numbers

About 3 million people visit the Taj Mahal every year. This blog was viewed about 60,000 times in 2010. If it were the Taj Mahal, it would take about 7 days for that many people to see it.

[in other words, I’m the tiny shop at the end of the huge bazaar!]

In 2010, there were 94 new posts, growing the total archive of this blog to 96 posts. There were 137 pictures uploaded, taking up a total of 8mb. That’s about 3 pictures per week.

The busiest day of the year was August 16th with 1,106 views. The most popular post that day was The Eternal Return .

Where did they come from?

The top referring sites in 2010 were rabett.blogspot.com, climateaudit.org, initforthegold.blogspot.com, scienceblogs.com, and deepclimate.org.

[Thanks to Rabett, IIFTG, DC  and others for providing links to my blog or posts or coming here from those blogs — appreciated!]

Some visitors came searching, mostly for far side cartoons, beelzebub, policy lass, shewonk, and donkey.

Attractions in 2010

These are the posts and pages that got the most views in 2010.

The Eternal Return August 2010
39 comments

The One — Chopped Down to Size February 2010
160 comments

One of these things is not like the other… February 2010
13 comments

Enron and the Case of the Zombie Fungus February 2010
210 comments

The Oxburgh Report April 2010
18 comments

Is it just me, or has there been a noticeable shift in the tone of the lukewarmers and lukewarmistas over the past year or so?

I may be inaccurate, but to me, the term “lukewarm” tends to suggest that a person is tepid, or has a tepid acceptance of something. They are not hot for the idea, nor are they cold to it. They are so-so. Middle of the road. When it comes to the Lukers, they agree that warming is happening, but that it will likely be on the low end of projections. Nothing much to worry about. 2C at doubling, with little likelihood or evidence of positive feedbacks.

I was reading over at Lucia’s Blackboard and noticed this — strategy??? –  on the part of Mosher and Lucia that seems to imply they “believe” in AGW and willingly speak of “warming” and write things like “as the earth warms” and even step in to openly deny accusations of fraud launched against the Team by the more strident deniers in the comments. What they do is complain about the attitude and behavior of some climate scientists towards “skeptics”.

IOW, they are concern trolls in the great global warming debate.

Here’s Mosher:

Here is the problem you face with lukewarmers. we accept the science. we dont accept some of the behavior of a small number of scientists. We think the science can and does survive this behavior, so we have NO PROBLEM saying the behavior was not best practices.

So, what is it with the lukers?

Continue reading →…

File this in the “I read the stupid so you don’t have to” and the “A little levity” categories.

I am continually amazed at how much pure unadulterated stupid takes place on Watts Up With That. I mean, it takes the stupid cake, doesn’t it?  Reading over at WUWT is a  guilty pleasure of mine, like eating a McD’s Big Mac —  you know it’s junk food, greasy, no nutrition beyond empty calories, but you can’t help yourself.

The commentary there is just a comedienne’s dream — a goldmine of yuks. It’s almost too easy, it’s so full of juicy stupid.

I’d personally be embarrassed to admit that so much stupid followed my blog and posted in the comments. Take the most recent post: “Do We Care if 2010 is the Warmest Year in History?”

WTF?

First, it must be really hard for the denier to keep a stiff upper lip, given the records set for high temperature in the past few years. The only solution is to — why, to deny, of course. The whole global warming phenom is just a hoax, a lie, a big scam by the socialists hoping to create a one-world order to destroy the US of A. Besides it’s really cold in Europe and the eastern seaboard of the USA, right?  Besides, in the USA, 1934 is really warmer than 1998, so there must not be any global warming. Hansen is just a liar.

And Al Gore is fat.

Continue reading →…

This post on Climate Etc. got me thinking about one of the most-oft repeated mantras of the more paranoid part of the denialist crowd — that global warming is just a big hoax by statists hoping to enlarge social control, create one world government, increase taxes and other scary things. Punkster is an example of this group as anyone familiar with his posts on this blog can attest.

According to this group of fantasists hysterics skeptics/contrarians, global warming is a hoax perpetrated by socialists hoping to beggar the developed world and enrich the developing world by creating one world order OMG!!!112.

Here’s the post at Climate Etc. by Douglas Chang, which excerpts Noel Sheppard’s article in NZZ:

Douglas Chang | November 18, 2010 at 8:01 pm | Reply
“BREAKING: UN IPCC Official Admits ‘We Redistribute World’s Wealth By Climate Policy’

By Noel Sheppard | November 18, 2010 | 11:27

If you needed any more evidence that the entire theory of man-made global warming was a scheme to redistribute wealth you got it Sunday when a leading member of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change told a German news outlet, “[W]e redistribute de facto the world’s wealth by climate policy.”

Continue reading →…

It’s been a year since I was pulled back into the climate wars. I’d been a frequent visitor and sometime poster before the CRU email hack – aka “Climategate” – but had been busy with other matters, work and personal and so I had been absent for probably a year or more from the climate blogosphere. Sure, I still read the occasional blog and received email updates for Real Climate, so I read all the posts there. But surfing the climate blogs was not a major preoccupation.

I’ve always loved a good debate, enjoyed the fray involved in the clash of ideas, but the climate wars just tired me out. The unrelenting sameness of the battle, the immovable front, the same ol same ol dead horse flogged into a pulp… It became too much and I took a break.

I figured that no matter what I did or didn’t do to participate, the thing would live on like a bad case of zombie fever — and I was right!  Feeling very much like Michael Corleone, when I did get drawn right back in through a hat-tip about the CRU hack from an old libertarian adversary-friend, I found the armies and tactics pretty much the same. Mostly the same players, mostly the same refrain, although the tenor of the debates became a bit more hysterical with deniers gleefully cherry-picking emails for quotes to mis-represent and a number of AGW supporters wondering what it all meant.

Continue reading →…

I was ill earlier this week and spent my time on the couch watching youtube. Of course, being the wonk that I am, I spent my youtube time not watching funny cats or silly dancing girls and men, but watching videos about global warming.

I watched Bjorn Lomborg’s five part series, “The Facts About the Environment” since he claims if you watch his presentation, you don’t have to buy the book, “The Real State of the World”. Always interested in saving trees and money, I took him up on it.

His lecture in a nutshell?

Don’t worry. Be happy.

Yes, that’s right, folks. As far as I can tell, his message is this:

We can’t make proper decisions if we think we have a gun at our heads. Alarmism on the part of environmentalists and climate scientists prevents a rational discussion. We can’t properly prioritize our goals and objectives if we feel under threat.

Luckily, there is no gun. Continue reading →…