The Heartland ‘Institute’ mindlessly propagates Janet Albrechtsen’s ‘UN world government’ conspiracy theory regarding the coming Copenhagen treaty. (Tim Lambert had already addressed this conspiracy theory.) [cached: 1, 2]

The Climate ‘Science’ Coalition of America, in an effort to show that temperature records are worthless — or something — makes vague allusions to “new”, “self-published reports” and “important developments”: [cached]

Most people should know that a large part of the “evidence” that supports the anthropogenic global warming [...] theory is the historical temperature trend data [...] How good are those data? In this and future postings, we’ll explore that question [...] We’ll be relying on self-published reports, not the peer-reviewed literature. That’s not our usual preference, but there have been important developments. In many cases the reports are so new that peer-reviewed papers could not possibly be prepared or published (which make take many months).

Duh.

The Heartland Institute has put up an initial list of the “co-sponsors” (ahem…) for its upcoming Fourth International ‘Conference’ on Climate Change. Have fun with it.

(The “co-sponsor” list is cached.)

Yet another Best Conspiracy Theory Ever: the Heartland Institute claims that the Free Software movement is rooted in Marxism, and that it’s really a pretext to crush your freedoms! [cached]

The [US Federal Communications Commission] chairman [...wants] to claim for the FCC the power to decide how every bit of data is transferred from the Web to every personal computer and handheld device in the nation. This is exactly what the radical founders of the net neutrality movement had in mind.

The concept can be traced to an iconoclastic figure, Richard Stallman, a self-described software freedom activist who introduced the term “copyleft” in the mid-1980s. In his 2002 essay “Free Software, Free Society,” Stallman fiercely attacks the idea that intellectual property rights are one of the keystones of individual liberty, so important that patents and copyrights are affirmatively protected in the body of the [US] Constitution. [...]

Eben Moglen’s 2003 treatise The dotCommunist Manifesto is more honest about the thinking behind net neutrality — it’s sprinkled throughout with the language of communism’s great and bloody revolutionaries. [...]

[...] Net neutrality divests control over the Internet from the private sector to the government. And in typical Marxist fashion, innocuous words — the language of neutralism and liberty — cloak an agenda that would crush freedom.

Brian D collects responses to the book Superfreakonomics.

Grace Nearing stumbles upon a great idea:

Gotta confess, I love the latest blog genre, the prove you’re not, you farkin’ basterd website. [...A] classic site in the genre is Did Glenn Beck Rape and Murder a Young Girl in 1990? It wonderfully plays off Beck’s wacked-out metier.

Why won’t Glenn Beck deny these allegations? We’re not accusing Glenn Beck of raping and murdering a young girl in 1990 – in fact, we think he didn’t! But we can’t help but wonder, since he has failed to deny these horrible allegations. Why won’t he deny that he raped and killed a young girl in 1990?

Background Paper to the 2010 World Development Report: Cognitive and Behavioral Challenges in Responding to Climate Change. [cached]

Climate scientists have identified global warming as the most important environmental issue of our time, but it has taken over 20 years for the problem to penetrate the public discourse in even the most superficial manner. While some nations have done better than others, no nation has adequately reduced emissions and no nation has a base of public citizens that are sufficiently socially and politically engaged in response to climate change. This paper summarizes international and national differences in levels of knowledge and concern regarding climate change, and the existing explanations for the worldwide failure of public response to climate change, drawing from psychology, social psychology and sociology. On the whole, the widely presumed links between public access to information on climate change and levels of concern and action are not supported. The paper’s key findings emphasize the presence of negative emotions in conjunction with global warming (fear, guilt, and helplessness), and the process of emotion management and cultural norms in the construction of a social reality in which climate change is held at arms length. Barriers in responding to climate change are placed into three broad categories: 1) psychological/conceptual, 2) social and cultural, and 3) structural (political economy). The author provides policy considerations and summarizes the policy implications of both psychological and conceptual barriers, and social and cultural barriers. An annotated bibliography is included.

(Via Brian D.)

John Fleck critically examines the science and financing behind the “CO2 is Green” campaign in New Mexico. [cached]

Tamino discusses statistical model testing and the Kullback-Leibler divergence.

(This is also a test of WordPress’s “Post by Email” feature.)

From Scriptoids: [cached]

Term of the day: techno-cornucopian triumphalism

Definition: The quasi-religious belief that someday someone somewhere will come along and solve one or more nasty problems facing society, and make nice profits for the oligarchs too.

… for example, that ‘new technology’ will magically emerge to solve the Peak Oil problem.