This is the joke I missed the other day after linking Powerloin. Here is Powerloin talking funny nonsense.
We are remiss in not having written about the Peter Gleick scandal. Gleick is a founder of the liberal Pacific Institute and a member of the National Academy of Sciences. He is an expert on water resources, not climate. Like many left-wingers in irrelevant fields of study, he has irrationally strong feelings about global warming.
Here is why this is a very funny joke.
The Heartland Institute maintains a stable of 13 scientists on retainer for the express purpose of attacking the work of the Nobel Prize winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), according to budget information released last week in the Heartland document dump.
The scientists, ranging from one of the world's least credible deniers-for-hire (Dr. S. Fred Singer) to a sessional lecturer on the evolution and history of the domestic dog (Susan Crockford), include no top climate scientists currently publishing in the peer-reviewed literature.
The best paid "expert" on the Heartland list is Craig Idso, a former Director of Environmental Science at Peabody Energy (the largest coal company in the world).
Like many hacks in relevant fields of getting paid, the Heartland hitmen are passionately intense about denying science.
And then there is this colossal trainwreck (I mean this comments section spectacle for the ages).
Seriously, if you have a powerful interest in watching a putz libertarian engineer fight mustachefully to avoid eating science, here it is.
If you're also feeling chipper, you might just wonder what John Fucking Hinderbucker's particular Science Competency might constitute.