At Der Spiegel, Cordula Meyer writes, The Traveling Salesmen of Climate Skepticism:
 With his sonorous voice, Fred Singer, 86, sounded like a grandfather explaining the obvious to a dim-witted child. "Nature, not human activity, rules the climate," the American physicist told a discussion attended by members of the German parliament for the business-friendly Free Democratic Party (FDP) three weeks ago. Marie-Luise Dött, the environmental policy spokeswoman for the parliamentary group of Angela Merkel's center-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU), also attended Singer's presentation. She said afterwards that it was "extremely illuminating." She later backpedaled, saying that her comments had been quoted out of context, and that of course she supports an ambitious climate protection policy -- just like Chancellor Merkel. Merkel, as it happens, was precisely the person Singer was trying to reach. "Our problem is not the climate. Our problem is politicians, who want to save the climate. They are the real problem," he says. ... Singer is a traveling salesman of sorts for those who question climate change. On this year's summer tour, he gave speeches to politicians in Rome, Paris and the Israeli port city of Haifa. Paul Friedhoff, the economic policy spokesman of the FDP's parliamentary group, had invited him to Berlin. Singer and the FDP get along famously. The American scientist had already presented his contrary theories on the climate to FDP politicians at the Institute for Free Enterprise, a Berlin-based free-market think tank, last December. ... Whether it was the hole in the ozone layer, acid rain or climate change, Singer always had something critical to say, and he always knew better than the experts in their respective fields. But in doing so he strayed far away from the disciplines in which he himself was trained. For example, his testimony aided the tobacco lobby in its battle with health policy experts. |
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At Daily Kos on this date in 2006:
| It's not easy for Republicans to defend their handling of Mark Foley's inappropriate behavior. The facts, developing day after day, simply aren't on their side. But who needs facts when fiction has worked so well for the GOP in the past? Enter the paranoia, stage right. As you know, top-level Republicans are peddling a Grand Conspiracy Theory that the Foley scandal was somehow designed and funded by George Soros and peddled by Clinton operatives. But that's wasn't their first defense tactic. Initially, shocked conservatives tried to argue that the emails were fake. That attempt to derail the scandal was short-lived, given that the authenticity of the emails was confirmed by multiple sources. |
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[Check out askew's diary: Marcy Kaptur's Opponent is a Nazi Re-Enactor.]
continued at Daily Kos....
