Farewell. The Flying Pig Has Left The Building.

Steve Hynd, August 16, 2012

After four years on the Typepad site, eight years total blogging, Newshoggers is closing it's doors today. We've been coasting the last year or so, with many of us moving on to bigger projects (Hey, Eric!) or simply running out of blogging enthusiasm, and it's time to give the old flying pig a rest.

We've done okay over those eight years, although never being quite PC enough to gain wider acceptance from the partisan "party right or wrong" crowds. We like to think we moved political conversations a little, on the ever-present wish to rush to war with Iran, on the need for a real Left that isn't licking corporatist Dem boots every cycle, on America's foreign misadventures in Afghanistan and Iraq. We like to think we made a small difference while writing under that flying pig banner. We did pretty good for a bunch with no ties to big-party apparatuses or think tanks.

Those eight years of blogging will still exist. Because we're ending this typepad account, we've been archiving the typepad blog here. And the original blogger archive is still here. There will still be new content from the old 'hoggers crew too. Ron writes for The Moderate Voice, I post at The Agonist and Eric Martin's lucid foreign policy thoughts can be read at Democracy Arsenal.

I'd like to thank all our regular commenters, readers and the other bloggers who regularly linked to our posts over the years to agree or disagree. You all made writing for 'hoggers an amazingly fun and stimulating experience.

Thank you very much.

Note: This is an archive copy of Newshoggers. Most of the pictures are gone but the words are all here. There may be some occasional new content, John may do some posts and Ron will cross post some of his contributions to The Moderate Voice so check back.


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Friday, August 26, 2011

The Irene Mistake

Commentary By Ron Beasley


I am a climate change believer and I think that CO2 emissions are in part responsible. I also have a great deal of respect for Bill McKibben.  But this is a mistake:



Irene�s got a middle name, and it�s Global Warming,� environmental activist Bill McKibben wrote Thursday night in The Daily Beast. He argued that this year�s hot Atlantic Ocean temperatures and active spree of hurricanes � coupled with droughts, floods and melting sea ice elsewhere on the globe � are �what climate change looks like in its early stages.�



Irene is a big storm but not unusual.  It's not really all that intense.  The thing that makes it so potentially dangerous and destructive is it's path. Blaming Irene on global climate change is wrong and will only increase skepticism even among believers.  He might be better off talking about the lack of hurricanes in the Gulf of Mexico.  Texas could use a hurricane or two to end the severe drought it is experiencing.  The blocking high pressure area that is responsible for the drought and the lack of hurricanes is predicted by climate change models.  A hurricane like Irene - not so much.



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2 comments:

  1. Bill H.August 26, 2011 at 6:00 PM

    Why do people never learn that one falsehood, even one "stretched truth," just one such silly utterance, destroys the effect of years and years of honest discourse?

    ReplyDelete
  2. RonboAugust 27, 2011 at 1:54 AM

    Nothing here folks keep moving. Record heatwaves, earthquakes, huricanes.... (wave of hand) You aren't seeing anything new.
    Let's keep that frog in the water pot on the stove, just a bit longer. We need the tar sands pollution to really give Mother Nature a kick in the pant. Let's see what else she can do.

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