Francis Porretto - typical arrogant, ideology-driven right-winger

Ironically, Fran Porretto deigned not to allow my response to his hysterics to see the light of day on his website - ironic because the gist of his original article was to complain about the supposed censorship of right-wing lies. But he did write me this funny email:

My dear fellow, if you had bothered to show me even a modicum of courtesy, I might have deigned to educate you, but given your behavior I think your leftist-anticorporatist religion would reject anything I might say, however relevant or specific. So I shall leave you to wonder what your arrogance and insults might have cost you. [*see what I mean about ironic? - sp*]

Perhaps your ignorance will be of some comfort to you as you and yours attempt to vote away American sovereignty and economic dynamism for the sake of a phantom "crisis" which, even if it were real, human action could never affect.

Yours,
Francis W. Porretto
Eternity Road

Lots of awfully certain statements in there for a 'scientist', no? I guess in right-wing circles not heaping undue accolades upon a ranter like Porretto is considered discourteous. The ironuies just keep a comin' from these folks...

So anyway, I replied:

Dear Fran the Physicist,

You are little more than a typical paranoid, overconfident right wing hack. Your inability to grasp simple facts - like for example why I left the link on your website in the first place - demonstrates this. You clearly did not read the article, for it said very little about GW as such and instead documented the deceptive, dishonest tactics of the producers of the video.

But your pomposity would not allow you even to acknowledge that.

Your arrogant ignorance fuels your paranoia.

Have fun in your miserable life. By the way - I am chronicling your right-wing nuttery for posterity. not that you'll need much help for that.

Not subtle, perhaps, but for crying out loud he did not even reply to what I referred to! He simply assumed that I was making a case for global warming! Any fool could have understood the reason I linked to the article I did - it documented the dishonest and decpetive practices of the producers of The Great Global Warming Swindle, which Porretto has been supporting! These right-wing paranoiacs can't seem to grasp simple concepts like that - most liklely because of their absolutist, ideologically-driven mindset.

Person A writes an article defending Subject A.
Person B informs Person A that the content of Subject A is in dispute.
Person A attacks Person B.
Person B tries to point out to Person A the true intent of the discourse.
Person A censors Person B, calls him names in a very projective manner.

Happens all the time with these Conmservative pseudo-know-it-all types.

Some Right-Wingers are just way too full of themselves....

Take Francis W. Porretto.

A fella wrote a short letter to the editor in my local newspaper urging folks to see the disgraced and deceptive video "The Great Global Warming Swindle." I remembered reading something about that, but I couldn't remember exactly what, so I did a little Googling. One of the returns that came up was to Porretto's site, specifically, this essay that he had written. Porretto writes glowingly of the video, but of course spends most of the screed yammering on about how the Left [insert scary music here] is trying to suppress it, censor it, etc. I had earlier visited a couple of articles on The Independent's website, in which the dishonesty of the claims in the video were pointed out (here is one example). So, I left the following message at Porretto's site:

You folks might want to read this:
http://www.medialens.org/alerts/07/0313pure_propaganda_the.php
Then again, probably not....

Terrible, right?

I guess so. Well, 'Fran' replies:

I could refute those claims about fifty different ways, Doppelganger. So could anyone who actually knows a shred or two about atmospheric physics. (I hold a Ph.D. in physics.) For one thing, CO2 is not the most potent greenhouse gas, water is.
But leaving trivia such as technical accuracy to the side for a moment, why should conservatives treat with respect the assertions of a writer—yourself—who positions himself as against “right-wing nuttery?” Or those of MediaLens, which claims to oppose “the distorted vision of the corporate media?”
Show a little respect for your political opponents if you want your opponents to take your views seriously. Among other things, some of us are brighter and better informed than you think—or are.

Well, I guess he told me, eh? A PhD in physics.... Well, I guess I am not as bright or as informed as Fran Porretto, but I do know how to use scientific journal search engines. And lo and behold, not a single return for Frannie the Physicist. I suppose I should not have expected any - such a towering intellect as Fran cannot waste his precious time doing scientific research. Istead, he busies himself writing 4 star book reviews for Ann Coulter - whom Fran the Physicist admires - on amazon.com.

But anyway, let's revisit Fran's hysterical reply to me:

I could refute those claims about fifty different ways, Doppelganger. So could anyone who actually knows a shred or two about atmospheric physics. (I hold a Ph.D. in physics.)

Well, I replied and asked Fran to refute the claims. I said I'd settle for one, not the 50 he boasts of being able to do. In fact, I am going to alter my reply to him thusly:

Just refute this:

"My [Carl Wunsch's] appearance in the ‘Global Warming Swindle’ is deeply embarrassing, and my professional reputation has been damaged. I was duped---an uncomfortable position in which to be."

You see, the video that you liked deceptively edited snippets from their interviews with Wunsch, for example, to make it appear as though he did not accept global warming on some level. So please, Fran, refute away! In fact, just refute that one way. I'm sure you can, what with your software engineer background and your PhD in physics! I mean, you DID read the article, didn't you?

For one thing, CO2 is not the most potent greenhouse gas, water is.

Great! Funny thing is, the article I linked to was not even about global warming per se, it was specifically about pointing out some of the deceptive, dishonest claims made in the video that you liked and defended. You did see the video, didn't you? You did read the article I linked to, didn't you, such that you just know you can refute the claims 50 ways? Or was that just the usual right-wing hubris gurgling up?

But leaving trivia such as technical accuracy to the side for a moment, why should conservatives treat with respect the assertions of a writer—yourself—who positions himself as against “right-wing nuttery?”

I did not realize that leaving a link would be considered an assertion. But hey - you are brighter and better informed than poor little me! Oh - by the way, your near hysterical response is a very nice example of right wing nuttery! Thanks! And as far as respect, well, I'll get to that in a moment...

Or those of MediaLens, which claims to oppose “the distorted vision of the corporate media?”

Yeah, OK... Did you have a point? I mean other than making it clear that you did not read the article I linked to that you will soon refute 50 ways even though it was not even about global warming per se?

Show a little respect for your political opponents if you want your opponents to take your views seriously.

OK - how is this:

Next time I talk to you, I'll use a baseball bat!

If you had a brain, you'd be a liberal!

You're a traitor!

Is that showing respect for you Fran?

Say - that really IS easier than thinking! And you CANNOT be upset by it - after all, I just borrowed a couple of oh-so-clever and witty phrases from right-wing pundit Ann Coulter, of whom you approve and admire!

Among other things, some of us are brighter and better informed than you
think—or are.

I am sure there are conservatives who are brighter than me, and liberals, too. I am also sure that there are better informed folks than me on all sides.

But I don't think it is you, Mr. Porretto. Not by a long shot.

Why am I not surprised?

Discovery Institute hack Jonathan Witt writes on his blog, regarding The Great Global Warming Swindle:

I haven't had a chance to watch The Great Global Warming Swindle, but Jonathan tells me it's very good, as does Jay Richards...

Presumable referring to hack propagandist Jonathan Wells.

Should anyone be surprised that the right-wing fringe crackpots at the Discovery Institute would give so deceptive a film good reviews?
Or maybe ol' Jonny and Jay just put as much critical thought into it as they would, say, when writing about evolution...

What's the deal with James Inhofe (R-OK)????

Suffering from a bout of insomnia last night, I was clicking through the channels at about 2 a.m. and stumbled across CSPAN (or was id CSPAN-2? Who knows...) re-airing Al Gore's Senate testimony on Global Warming. As fate would have it, that conspiracy-mongering loon James 'Global Warming is an anti-captalistic hoax*' Inhofe was questioning Gore. I onkly caught the last few minutes of Inhofe's posturing and antics, but it really made my stomach turn to see how transparently dishonest and idiotic the man is. First, he rambles on about how 'thousands' of scientists disagree with Gore's claims, then asks Gore if he is right and all those scientists wrong (I only heard Inhofe mention 2 people, not thousands, but like I said, I tuned in late...). Gore then replies by naming off a few examples of the national and international scientific organizations that have made statements regarding global warming and so forth. Inhofe retorts - after whining about not having a lot of time and interrupting Gore while he was trying to answer - that Gore did not answer his question!
And in that few minutes that I saw, it just went downhill from there (as far as Inhofe's ranting goes).

I watched a few more exchanges, but largely saw party-line posturing (with some notable exceptions).

But I came away wondering if Inhofe is for real - it was as if he had memorized some sort fo right-wing script in whihc the replies are pre-ordained, regardless of the actual discussion at hand. The 'you didn't answer my question' after Gore did exactly that is a case in point. Who do people like Inhofe think they are fooling? Perhaps themselves?



*I was going to insert a link to documentation that Inhofe believes this. I know he does, he made some sort of speech at some right-wing organization a few months ago saying just that - but as I did a simple search for such documentation, I discovered that there are A LOT of people - right wing people - that have signed on to such a notion. This is just moronic nationalism. Not only do a bunch of conservatives fully believe this, many go on to demonize whom they refer to as "so-called researchers" or "so called scientists" as money-grubbing liars and incompetents. I wonder if these folks but into 'Intelligent Design'?

You'd think a neurosurgeon and 'expert' on evolution could spell evolution-associated words correctly....

But apparently not:

"Profanity seems to be a particular problem with the computer-math Darwinists. A dysfunctional clad, perhaps. "

Well, Doctor Professor Egnor, the word is "clade", not clad.

Now, it could, of course, just be a typo, and I would be the last person to complain or point out the typos of others, seeig as how I make so many so often.

But part of me does not think this is a mere typo. I think Egnor was just trying to make it seem as though he knows a lot about evolution, but blew it. This is not so crazy when one considers some of the other really stupid things this latest creationist with a medical degree has written on the subject... Not that the folks at the DI would know, of course.

**UPDATE**

Googlebombing for Egnor

Seems hero-worshipping will get the DI and its mindless minions nowhere...

Wrote too soon.... PLEASE non-biologists - stop writing about biology as if you understand it!

Bergerson is a trainwreck of stupidity that just keeps crashing:


"First, the concepts that 1) genetic evolution occurs in all cell division sequences and 2) genetic evolutionary theories can be tested in any cell division sequence, follow from basic scientific logic. Second, there is no published concept or theory asserting that based on neo-Darwinian theories, or any other theories, genetic evolution can only occur in germ cell lines"

This guy is too ignorant to understand how little he actually understands...

On the dangers of pontificating on subjects you are ignorant of...

"Whether you introduce 9 variations per life into a 9 letter message or a 30 million letter message the impact is the same. "
- Warren Bergerson

The above quote can be found here, scroll about halfway down, written by the poster "LifeEngineer", which is one Warren Bergerson's screen name there. Bergerson is apparently an actuary (or an engineer, he never actually says) who has a bizarre disdain for Darwinian evolution. He repeatedly claims to have 'falsified' Darwinian evolution (i.e., "random mutation and natural selection"; RM&NS", which is not really Darwinian evolution anyway, but hey - its his party) by applying 'actuarial math' to 'data'. He has been making this claim for at least several years, yet has admitted to having never actually done the calculations. I guess he just 'knew' that the outcome would be to his liking, and so never did them. Nor has he ever been willing to provide the sources for his 'data.' Which is odd for someone claiming to have a better way of 'doing science'*.
Let us examine the above quote. First, to avoid being accused of misrepresenting the quote, I have linked to the source above but recreate the entire discussion board post in question below. I have bolded the portion that I quoted in the opening above.

DataDoc,
The evolution simulator provides a simplified illustration of the impact of random variations on complex messages. Random variation destroys rather than changes complex messages. Whether you introduce 9 variations per life into a 9 letter message or a 30 million letter message the impact is the same. Eventually random variations destroy complex messages with an essentially zero probability of producing an alternative valid message. You can perform a more realistic experiment with a long computer program or a long piece of text. The more complex example may have survive for several generations due to redundancy and non-essential coding but over the long term the result will be the same. The evolution simulator provides a simplified demonstration that random variation and natural selection would produce death and extinction. If you can not visualize that result from the simple example, then you can perform more formal analysis to confirm the same result. As I have said a number of times, high school students seem to quickly learn the lesson provided by the simulator. The concept does seem to be beyond the grasp of people who have more extensive indoctrinations.Added in Edit: It is interesting how many people believe that changing some a few minor details will automatically change the conclusion of an analysis. There are well established 'Sensitivity testing' techniques for determining if a variable or factor will materially impact the results or conclusions. It would be helpful if a few people actually learned something about this kind of testing

I will ignore for now the fact that Life Engineer does not seem to grasp how genes and other ‘complex messages’ do not function in the exact same manner.
The "evolution simulator" mentioned can be found here. Bergerson apparently does not understand what the so-called 'evolution simulator' purports to do, and if he really thinks that it "provides a simplified demonstration that random variation and natural selection would produce death and extinction" then he does not understand what 'random variation and natural selection' are, either. The 'evolution simulator', which, by the way, is the product of The Society for the Advancement of Creation Science, utterly (purposefully?) misrepresents the very nature of what 'random variation and natural selection' entails. The simulator claims to be 'searching' for the word "evolution." In order to do this, it presents a string of nine random letters. About twice a second, the entire 9-letter string is replaced by another random 9-letter string. Accompanying this exercise in silliness is a blurb about probabilities, with the predictable non sequitur that because it is so improbable for a single, specified 9-letter sequence (e-v-o-l-u-t-i-o-n) to arise randomly, that it must be impossible for even a small gene of 390 bases of DNA to have arisen in such a manner, and by extension, evolution could not have occurred, at least via 'random' natural means.

But does evolution postulate randomly replacing all the characters in a search string in each iteration (i.e., all the nucleotides in a genome in every generation)?

To anyone even remotely familiar with what genetics and evolutionary biology indicate, the answer is an obvious and clear-cut NO. That is, this organization is either, out of the sheer ignorance of its members or by calculated dishonesty, inaccurately portraying tenets of evolutionary theory for the purposes of making those unaware of the facts doubt its veracity.
And yet there is Warren Bergerson, supposedly with a background in actuarial math and engineering, not only defending the strawman argument (fallacy) of the 'simulator', but endorsing it and using as "evidence" that evolution is untenable.

Not only that, but he is claiming that there would be no difference in effect whether you are changing all 9 letters in a string of 9 letters or altering 9 letters in a string of 30 million!
I am not a mathematician, but I am fairly certain that there is a qualitative (not to mention quantitative) difference between a 100% change and a 0.000003% change.

As the subject is letters, let us consider a book whose total word volume is made up of 30 million letters. Let us say that during printing, there is an error and 9 letters are randomly changed from the original manuscript (of 30 million).

Do you think you might be able to muddle through the unchanged 29,999,991 letters (organized into words, of course) and figger' out what the book was about?
Say this happens during the course of 1,000 printings, and 9,000 letters are now randomly replaced. Now a full 0.03% of the letters have been randomly changed. Would the book be unreadable?

According to Bergerson, it would have been unreadable by changing only 9 letters in the first place.
A couple other statements struck me in Bergerson's diatribe:

The evolution simulator provides a simplified demonstration that random variation and natural selection would produce death and extinction. .

What Bergerson ignores is the fact that natural selection also gets rid of bad mutations (especially when coupled with sexual recombination). Not all of them, certainly, but it keeps them at a tolerable 'happy medium.'

As I have said a number of times, high school students seem to quickly learn the lesson provided by the simulator. The concept does seem to be beyond the grasp of people who have more extensive indoctrinations.

Bergerson's rants are typified by these snipes at the scientific establishment. Yet the irony of it is palpable - here is an individual that often denigrates** those he believes are less prepared than he to discuss certain topics pontificating on topics that he - demonstrably - knows very little about and is presenting his uninformed, unsupported opinions on these matters as unimpeachable truths. The arrogance is overwhelming.
Also, I wonder if Bergerson might consider the possibility that high school students - that get, by and large, very little if any instruction on evolution, or mathematical modeling, for that matter - simply do not yet have the information/knowledge to understand the concepts he is discussing? Apparently not.
A nice example of how evolutionary biology is best left to those that understand it.

*,**Bergerson advocates what he calls the "falsify and replace" method of "science" which is performed via "structured discussions." This is the methodology that he insists on applying in many discussions in which he takes part. In this method, an individual (himself) is allowed to make essentially any claim they (he) want. They are (he is) not required to provide any sort of evidence, rationale, or documentation that might support their claim. But, this claim stands as 'science' and unfalsified unless another person provides an alternative explanation using the same parameters as the originator. Some of the many obvious problems of this 'method' are discussed here. To see Bergerson's "superior method" in action, see this thread. It is long and tedious, but early on one can easily see what Bergerson's ('Life Engineer') method produces - an opportunity for him to stroke his ego, a way of allowing junk “science” to see the light of day, and little more, and one can also see that he tends not to follow his own rules nor even read, much less attempt to understand, his opponent's position. He, like so many creationists/'Intelligent Design' advocates/anti-'Darwinists', simply know that their position is the correct one, and that anything that might show their position to be in error is therefore itself in error, and those that advocate that other position are themselves deluded/ignorant/uninformed/etc.
If I were a psychologist, I'd write a book about this stuff.

Will this moron NEVER shut up?

I've written a bit about retired actuary Warren Bergerson (e.g., here, here, here), who seems to actually believe things like:
- only a handful of people in the world understand how to actually engage in scientific research (and he is, of course one of them)
- that he has disproved evolution by using actuarial math (despite having admitted to never doing the actual math)
- that all 'real' scientists employ his 'falsify and replace' version of scientific research (despite not being able to namea single person that does)
- etc., etc., etc.

Well, he is back at it - this time declaring that a paper on mutations in cancer cells - which he has not even read - disproves 'Darwin'.
It interesting to note that despite Bergerson's constant self-adulation and declarations of his intellectual superiority to all that dare disagree with his claims, he makes a number of high
school-level errors in his discussion on genetics. As quoted in that thread:

From conception until old age, cells in the human body continue to divide and reproduce. At each cell division, there is a chance of mutation and the resulting cells are subject to Darwinian natural selection. If you consider the following three different sequences of cell reproduction from the fertilized egg to:1. The sperm or eggs involved in reproduction 2. Healthy cells in mature individuals and 3. Cancer cells If the only significant genetic change processes involved are random mutation and natural selection, then you would expect or predict that the genetic change ocurring in the three sequences would be very similar. If you measured the average amount of genetic change in 300 of each type of sequence you would expect or predict based on neo-Darwinian genetic theory that the amount of measured genetic change would be close to the same for each of the sequences. Are there any readers who don't understand or agree with the predictions or expectations produced by neo-Darwinian theory? The opinions of anonymous ideologues are not really significant since we know they will say anything to support their silly ideologies.

Are there any readers who don’t understand or recognize that the actual measurements of genetic changes in cancer cells are in direct and dramatic conflict with the predictions of neo-Darwinian genetic theory?

Are there any readers who don’t understand or recognize that neo-Darwinian genetic theories are falsified by these experimental finding?

Are there any readers who don’t understand or recognize that the data gathered from this research is only compatible with intelligent design theories or intelligence based teleological theories?

Clearly the peer reviewers who allowed this research to be published
either didn’t recognize or understand the scientific significance of the finding so I would expect that despite the fact that the logic seem fairly straight forward, most readers are not able to follow or understand the logic. I would be interested to know at what point individuals failed to understand. If you want to avoid attacks from the Darwinists, you can contact me directly with your answers.

His errors (and projection) are later laid out by 'escherichia' and others, but Bergerson, poster-boy for the Dunning-Kruger effect, in his self-aggrandizing megalomania, just cannot accept the fact that he si out of his element.

Because, after all, everyone else is wrong and incompetent, not HIM...