Hey, there! Log in / Register

Why does Jeff Jacoby still have a job?

Jeff Jacoby writes an article in the Globe claiming that global warming doesn't exist. It's one of many; he posts the same crap every few months.

Jacoby's article mentions a Heartland Institute convention and calls them "a Chicago-based think-tank." He's absolutely right, but is taking advantage of public misconception about the groups and doesn't disclose what they're really about. The short of it: their board is stuffed with executives from oil, car, and tobacco companies. They feel that global warming and secondhand smoke are both a sham, and they use a small handful of skeptics to wage a war against decades of climate research.

Jeff also regularly mentions Richard Lindzen in his columns. Guess where his interests lie? (hint: getting money from the oil industry, claiming global warming doesn't exist, and claiming that secondhand smoke isn't harmful, despite no medical background whatsoever.) As far back as 2004, Jacoby has mentioned both climate change and second-hand smoke as issues we apparently care too much about and spend too much time and money on.

Topics: 


Ad:


Like the job UHub is doing? Consider a contribution. Thanks!

Comments

I'm all for freedom of speech, but some people go to far!

up
Voting closed 0

n/m

up
Voting closed 0

Jacoby is a token - and like most carefully selected tokens, he teeters between incompetence and buffoonery by design.

The Globe could never hire a competent conservative to round out its perspective on the editorial page, as a flaming wingnut with a penchant for plagerism and logic-defying prose serves only to discredit the entire "class" to which he belongs.

up
Voting closed 0

Yeah but alot of the "conservative" people around here like him and like people like Howie Carr as well. I never said the conservatives around here were smart (as a group) but he speaks to them, so Im not so sure if he was only chosen to "discredit" the conservative cause. He has a following.

up
Voting closed 0

So long as Jacoby the Buffoon is around, the Globe can pretend that it has an "authentic conservative voice" when all it really has is a Palin Parrot that parrots the other parrots and whom the other parrots parrot.

Jacoby is easy to shrug off, as are those who constitute his "following" because they are all marching lock-step in closed circles of superstition and fantasy. What the Globe doesn't want is the more moderate and traditional conservative voices that could challenge its editorial stance from a credible perspective. There are plenty of these types around New England who have little stomach for the right wing nut jobs, but the Globe's leadership finds them too challenging to tap.

up
Voting closed 0

What the Globe doesn't want is the more moderate and traditional conservative voices that could challenge its editorial stance from a credible perspective.

Too bad, huh. I miss traditional fiscal conservatives who believed government should stay out of people's bedrooms and healthcare. More importantly, Progressives would better off with a debate on the merits.

Look at the massive failure of our financial system. You can't blame it on one party but you can blame it on both parties and their addiction to wall street campaign contributions, but mostly misguided free market globalization ideology without regulation of massive flows of capital, and then there's the profit-ization and anti-government movement.

The one's who saw this coming, Stiglitz and Krugman, are not on the team and while the ones who enabled it, Summers and Geihtner will be running the show.

up
Voting closed 0

It's too bad that Jacoby's columns consistently use very poor logic and pejoratives to make his points. I would love to read a legitimate conservative voice in the Globe for a different point of view.

up
Voting closed 0

Be grateful we don't have the despicable war-mongering Bill Kristol.
IMAGE(http://i279.photobucket.com/albums/kk143/nfsagan/kristol.jpg)

up
Voting closed 0

He's a hack, a Kristol wanabee

up
Voting closed 0

Don't shoot the horse because the cart is missing a wheel.

The Boston Globe's entire op-ed section is abysmal and the first person who should be fired is the editor of the op-ed pages, the apparently incompetent Marjorie Pritchard.

up
Voting closed 0

Is Jacoby the worst? Only because of his tired right-wing hackery and chickenhawkery, perhaps.

Now David Wilson and Donald Murray were real conservatives, intelligent and lively writers.

Derrick Jackson is just as boring as Jacoby.

How long do we have to watch James Carroll work out his daddy issues?

Ellen Goodman is past her sell-by date.

Vennocci is occasionally readable.

The Metro columnists are better. Walker is kind of dull, Cullen is too much of the house Oirishman, but I read both of them faithfully.

Yvonne Abraham is the best Globe columnist. She's a lively writer who really gets into the city in the way Barnacle did before he got tired.

up
Voting closed 0

The truly interesting thing about Richard Lindzen is that he doesn't deny the reality of global warming - he just doesn't care. From his notorious Newsweek commentary of a couple of years ago:

"There has been a net warming of the earth over the last century and a half, and our greenhouse gas emissions are contributing at some level. Both of these statements are almost certainly true. What of it?"

up
Voting closed 0

... even if I were inclined to spend money on the Globe, Jacoby's anti-reality screeds piss me off so much that I won't.

Alas, unlike my cable system, I can't put "block" on Boston.com's op-ed section. Pfeh!

up
Voting closed 0

Are you afraid the kiddies might click on it? :-).

up
Voting closed 0

It's not a matter of ideology alone.

Howie Carr at his best is better than any other columnist, brave and cutting. When he's writing about local matters, but about half of his output is tired wingnut crap now.

Howie, you'll never be a national star: stick to the local stuff. That goes for your radio show, too, Syndication ruined you.

Gelzinis is OK.

The op-ed page is a torrent from Neocon Central. A parade of nutty warmongers like Cliff May, Michelle Malkin, Krauthammer.

I feel like it's my patriotic duty to deny these chickenhawks any revenue, lest they lead the country into bankruptcy, military disaster and further moral obloquy. So I never buy the Herald. I'll read it if I find it somewhere.

up
Voting closed 0

Howie Carr is a jerk who depends on tired old stereotypes for 99 percent of his writing. He had certain areas that he liked no matter what, and other areas (always the working class areas to boot) that he always kind of slams on.

up
Voting closed 0

Ok, I know I'm going to get a screed of crap about this, but the issue I have with the whole global warming thing is that there seems to be this assumption that the debate is closed and ended. Since when did scientists conclude that something was beyond further debate? There is no such thing as scientific consensus; the two words are incompatible. While it's might be true that there is a warming trend going on (and I'm not entirely convinced of it) why can't people talk about it? Why is it that if you're a skeptic you're automatically marginalized?

Of course it's all about the money. When you've got entities like the American Meteorological Society in the tank and their so-called scientists screeching high and low there's no chance you're going to let something like a dissenting view ruin it for you.

up
Voting closed 0

Route 66, you seem a little bit confused about exactly what there is a scientific consensus about and what there is scientific debate about.

There is no scientific debate about the objective, observable fact that the world is currently getting warmer. Anybody can do the math, and it comes out the same no matter who does it. The Northwest Passage is open for business this year because the ice melted.

Denying the fact that the planet is warmer this year than it was a few decades ago is just ignorance. You might as well insist that there's still debate about heliocentrism. Go that way if you will, but recognize that you bow out of any obligation on anybody else's part to take you seriously as a member of the reality-based community.

There is scientific debate about why the planet is getting warmer, whether it will continue to do so, and, especially, about what we could do to change it. If you wish to question whether reducing greenhouse gases at this point will actually reverse the trend, you may find scientists asking the same question.

There's plenty of debate about things that haven't happened yet - whether the sea will rise and by how much, whether the gulf stream will be affected, to what extent agricultural growing areas will change - and also room for debate about theories that can't actually be proven - such as that carbon in the atmosphere caused global warming, rather than being correlated with it. Reasonable people do in fact discuss these questions.

But going off and using hyperbolic language suggesting there's some conspiracy among thermometers or something is simply silly.

up
Voting closed 0

One screed of crap begets the same.

Scientists conclude that *without contrary evidence* something can be considered true. If it's true, then there's no point in debate, since there's nothing contrary to be made into a debatable issue. Science *is* consensus. Provided evidence, scientists make a hypothesis as to cause. This hypothesis is tested against itself and if it holds true then it's adopted as real. As more and more evidence provides the same conclusion, then the result can be considered good scientific theory for how the world works. It's a long and iterative process where derailing it is so easy to do that when you go so long without derailment of the conclusion, it's pretty solid ground to consider the truth of the why/how you started investigating at the beginning. If after all this evidence and analysis and research, you are still a skeptic, then you have by definition marginalized yourself.

Here's the problem in today's anti-science world: all of the analysis, research, and conclusions in the world can be ignored, or worse, denied, if you have enough money and/or press attention to say otherwise. Due weight is a completely foreign concept in today's "gotta justify our existence" 24/7 media saturation environment. If there were a news story on "man burns babies in his backyard" (a moral concept accepted as a "wrong" so polarizing as to be considered a "pure moral truth"), these days it wouldn't surprise me to see a news network attempt to get its own angle on the story with a teaser of "were the babies asking for it? you be the judge". Anyone getting their news from that source primarily would then walk around believing that maybe the guy wasn't such a bad person after all. It's really pretty shameful we've devolved our level of discourse so low.

Evolution, climate change, vaccination...the beat goes on. Given a stage, the viewing audience will just assume that anyone is an "expert". Hell, people are listening to Playboy's Ms. October 1993 Playmate of the Month on how to vaccinate their kids instead of medical research! Unbelievable!

And wait, did you just say the AMS is some sort of huge, well-funded, group that goes around hefting its weight and throwing "so-called scientists" onto the scene to squash dissenters? Seriously? Fuck you. You're worse than Jacoby. Jacoby only ignores the sources and attributions of his incorrect data in order to pretend to stand on the same ground as good science, thereby confusing the public. Instead, you're trying to villify the *actual* science with the very characteristics of the oil/corporate shills who are tainting the discussion with false data and intentionally mis-analyzed conclusions. "All about the money"...seriously? Get out and take your self-fulfilling prophecy of "dissenters" being banished with you. There should be no room for liars whether they agree with you or not.

up
Voting closed 0

There's a whole lot more evidence for global climate change (the Northwest Passage, photos of glaciers from this year and 10 years ago, etc) than there is for any "threat to traditional marriage" from allowing same-sex couples.

Naturally, Jacoby says there's no meaningful evidence for the former, and makes stuff up to throw against the latter. (Remember when he said that Vermont's civil unions were "responsible for ending 2000 marriages"? He didn't bother to compare the percentage of previously-married folks getting civil unions with the percentage of previously-married folks getting married again!)

up
Voting closed 0