Supreme Court transcript excerpts related to science

I'm reading through the US Supreme Court case hearing from last week, and thought I'd pull out a few excerpts related to alleged scientific uncertainty over anthropogenic global warming:

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JUSTICE SCALIA: Well, there's a lot of conjecture about whether -- I gather that there's something of a consensus on warming, but not a consensus on how much of that is attributable to human activity.
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JUSTICE KENNEDY: But at the outset, you made this, some of this perhaps reassuring statement that we need not decide about global warming in thiscase. But don't we have to do that in order to decide the standing argument, because there's no injury if there's not global warming? Or, can you show standing simply because there is a likelihood that the perceived would show that there's an injury?
MR. MILKEY (attorney for plaintiffs/appellants): Your Honor, especially in this case where none of our affidavits were challenged, I don't think the Court needs to go there ultimately on the merits because we showed through our uncontested affidavits that these harms will occur. There was no evidence put in to the contrary, and I would add that the reports on which EPA itself relies conclude that climate change is occurring in....
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CHIEF JUSTICE ROBERTS: That's not all they said. I'm looking at A-85 and they said establishing emissions now would require EPA to make scientific and technical judgments without the benefit of studies that are being developed to reduce the uncertainty in the area. That's different than saying they disagree with the regulatory approach.
MR. MILKEY: It is and it isn't, Your Honor, because that statement will alleges be true. There will always be scientific uncertainty. Agencies will always have an understandable interest in seeing more information. They never -
CHIEF JUSTICE ROBERTS: There's a difference between the scientific status of the harm from lead emissions from vehicles that -- when you have lead in the gasoline, to the status, the status of scientific knowledge with respect to the impact on global warming today? Those are two very different levels of uncertainty.
MR. MILKEY: Your Honor, when EPA regulated lead back in the ethyl days, as the Court court itself took note, there were huge amounts of uncertainty atthat time. And EPA has a lot of discretion in evaluating that, that uncertainty.
And if the EPA determined that the level of uncertainty was such that it was not reasonable to anticipate endangerment, that is perfectly appropriate. It would also be appropriate if the agency determined that there was so much uncertainty that they couldn't even form a judgment on that. That would be applying the endangerment statute at the same time it put off. But the point is they did not say any of that. They instead relied on impermissible grounds.
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MR. GARRE (attorney for defendant/respondent): Thank you. Mr. Chief Justice, and may it please the Court.
After carefully considering the issue the nation's expert agency in environmental matters concluded that Congress has not authorized it to embark on the regulation of greenhouse gas emissions to address global climate change. And that even if it has, now is not the time to exercise such authority, in light of the substantial scientific uncertainty surrounding global climate change and the ongoing studies designed to address those uncertainties....
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MR. GARRE: .... And one of the reasons that the agency gave was the substantial scientific uncertainty surrounding the issue of global climate change. Petitioners acknowledge that that was an appropriate consideration for the agency....
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MR. GARRE: I -- I don't think that that is a fair reading of the EPA decisional document, Your Honor. Certainly, the agency didn't go out of its way to say, "and reading these considerations together and not any of them individually." And with respect to the scientific uncertainty, Your Honor, you also have to take into account that the EPA had before it and pointed to the report of the National Research Council on global climate change.
JUSTICE STEVENS: I find it interesting that the scientists whose worked on that report said there were a good many omissions that would have indicated that there wasn't nearly the uncertainty that the agency described.
MR. GARRE: Your Honor, if you are referring to the amicus brief, Your Honor, there are -- assuming there are amicus briefs on the other side. The Ballunas amicus brief -- I think it is fair for the Court to look at, to look at the document that the agency had before it. That -- that document produced by the National Research -- Research Council, that's the research arm of the National Academy of Sciences. And it's one of the gold standards of research.
JUSTICE STEVENS: But in their selective quotations, they left out parts that indicated there was far less uncertainty than the agency purported to find.
MR. GARRE: Well, Your Honor, I think one thing that we ought to be able to agree on is there is that there is uncertainty surrounding the phenomenon of global climate change. I think the debate is on which areas are more uncertain than the others. But certainly I think the agency was entitled to conclude, particularly if you take into account the deference this Court should give to that kind of determination, that the scientific uncertainty surrounding the issue of global climate change, surrounding issues of the extent of natural variability in climate, surrounding the issues of impact of climate feedbacks like ocean circulation, and low cloud cover, are permissible considerations for the agency to take into --
JUSTICE STEVENS: Is there uncertainty on the basic proposition that these greenhouse gases contribute to global warming.
MR. GARRE: Your Honor, the report says that it is likely that there is a -- a connection, but that it cannot unequivocally be established....
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(UPDATE: this post originally included an off-topic transcript excerpt, but I'm deleting it and giving it a separate post here.)
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JUSTICE SCALIA: That's what I was asking, yes. And you think it will go back to them and they will say, oh my goodness, the scientific uncertainty is not enough by itself? You really expect that to happen?
MR. MILKEY: Respectfully, Your Honor, I think EPA will have a hard time saying that there is insufficient -- I mean, too much scientific uncertainty. The very sentence -
JUSTICE SCALIA: They said it already.
MR. MILKEY: No, Your Honor.
JUSTICE SCALIA: The only question is whether that alone is enough.MR. MILKEY: Respectfully, Your Honor, they did not say that. They did not anywhere say why the existing uncertainty mattered. To the contrary, they emphasized the need to act in the face of current uncertainty, but never explained why that principle applies to a nonregulatory approach but not to a regulatory one.
CHIEF JUSTICE ROBERTS: What they said was until more is understood about causes, extent and significance of climate change and the potential options for addressing it, we believe it's inappropriate to regulate these emissions.
MR. MILKEY: Your Honor.
CHIEF JUSTICE ROBERTS: That strikes me as saying they think there is too much uncertainty for them to act.
MR. MILKEY: Your Honor, they did not say there is too much uncertainty for them to form a judgment, which is the key issue. They said they preferred more certainty, but because of the nature of the endangerment standard, which emphasizes the important of regulating in the face of uncertainty, they have to at least explain why the uncertainty matters. And that is -- what they did here is particularly troubling in the fact that they ignored all of theindications pointing toward endangerment. They looked at what we don't know without ever looking at what we do know.
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Today's idea - anonymized audio interviews

One of the nice things about radio is that you can turn it on in the middle of a news interview and listen to what the interviewee says without the bias of knowing who he or she is. The other day I listened to some Washington politician talk straightforwardly and intelligently about her aims next year, and was very impressed. At the end I found out it was Missouri's new Senator, Claire McCaskill. Same thing happened the first time I heard Barack Obama. And a year or so ago, I listened to someone talk about a gas tax and some other things I basically agree with, and felt that even though I agreed with him, he was so condescending that I wanted to reach through the radio and slap him. That turned out to be Tom Friedman.

So the idea is a website that collects worthwhile audio interviews but bleeps out identifiers until the end. Tremendous copyright problems with this idea, but I'll just do a Bushlike wave of my hands and pretend they go away.

Volokh Correction #16

Jonathan Adler critiques a New York Times editorial about tomorrow's Supreme Court case over global warming. Let's return the favor.
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NY TIMES: The Bush administration has been on a six-year campaign to expand its powers, often beyond what the Constitution allows. So it is odd to hear it claim that it lacks the power to slow global warming

ADLER: This is a fair point about the Bush Administration, but it says little to nothing about the merits of the litigation.

BACKSEAT DRIVING: Fine, but the Times is just commenting about the oddness, it didn't try and make a legal point.
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NY TIMES: A group of 12 states . . . backed by environmental groups and scientists, say that the Clean Air Act requires the E.P.A. to impose limits on carbon dioxide...

ADLER: All true, but only part of the story. The EPA's position is also supported by several state intervenors, .... Nonetheless, the Times simply refers to "the states"...

BACKSEAT DRIVING: Times already made it clear it was 12 states, not 50, and referring to appellants as "the states" is a convenient shorthand. This is beyond nitpicking.

ADLER: It is also important to underscore that this case is not about the science of climate change.

BACKSEAT DRIVING: My recollection is that the Bush Admin. argued that the science is still unclear at the appellate level. I haven't read the current briefs, but I doubt they'd drop that argument, and if they did, I'll bet some crazy amici briefs picked it up.
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NY TIMES: [Bush Admin] contends that the court should dismiss the case because the [petitioning] states do not have “standing,” since they cannot show that they will be specifically harmed by the agency’s failure to regulate greenhouse gases.

ADLER: This is a fair characterization of the EPA's position, but it is also worth nothing that the EPA is hardly alone in this case...

BACKSEAT DRIVING: The standing arguments are the worst for reasons I laid out here (the argument is that because everyone is somewhat affected by climate change, the harm is too "diffuse" to be solved by courts, and should be solved politically instead). If this argument succeeds, it will be used to cut off legal redress for many other air and possibly water pollutants.
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NYTIMES: A plain reading of the Clean Air Act shows that the [petitioning] states are right.

ADLER: ...it is difficult to argue that the relevant provisions of the Clean Air Act have anything to do with global warming. The text of the Clean Air Act, read in its entirety and in historical context, clearly bears this out. Congress has repeatedly considered climate change policy, beginning in 1978, and has repeatedly refused to adopt regulatory measures in favor of non-binding programs of one sort or another.

BACKSEAT DRIVING: Drawing inferences from what Congress did NOT do is a weak argument. Congress could be relying on the EPA faithfully administering the law it passed. What Congress did not do years after the Clean Air Act passed also tells you little about what Congress originally intended. This isn't a meaningless argument, but it's pretty weak.

ADLER: To declare carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases to be "pollutants" under the Clean Air Act is to require far more than the control of vehicular emissions....it would almost certainly place the EPA in the position of trying to set National Ambient Air Quality Standards for greenhouse gases....Yet the structure of NAAQS compliance, including localized State Implementation Plans, is wholly incompatible with a climate-wide concern such as global warming.

BACKSEAT DRIVING: Requiring state action on greenhouse gas emissions is hardly incompatible with addressing climate. States are already doing it.
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NYTIMES: Beneath the statutory and standing questions, this is a case about how seriously the government takes global warming.

ADLER: Not at all. This is a case about what authority Congress delegated to the EPA and the role of the courts in climate policy.

BACKSEAT DRIVING: First, courts can and do consider the policy implications of their potential rulings. While policy can't override legal arguments, it informs them - a ruling with terrible policy implications is more likely to be a misinterpretation of Congressional intent, for example. Adler knows this. Second, the Times is talking to the public, not the Supreme Court, and they're giving the Bush Administration the criticism it deserves for doing bad policy on global warming.
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NYTIMES: The E.P.A.’s decision was based in part on its poorly reasoned conclusion that there was too much “scientific uncertainty” about global warming to worry about it.

ADLER: I agree that if one concludes that the Clean Air Act applies to greenhouse gases, than the EPA's arguments for failing to regulate fall flat, but (again) this just begs the prior question.

BACKSEAT DRIVING: Adler ducks the issue that the Bush Administration is denying the scientific certainty of global warming. Contrary to his assertion, the case in large part is about the science and denialism.
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NYTIMES: The Supreme Court can strike an important blow in defense of the planet simply by ruling that the E.P.A. must start following the law.

ADLER: ...the ultimate question for the Court is whether it wishes to place its thumb on the scales of climate policy, or is willing to leave such important policy questions in the political branches where, as a matter of both law and prudence, they belong.

BACKSEAT DRIVING: He's got the issue backwards. The Clean Air Act delegates significant power to regulatory agencies, and then expects them to act. If Adler doesn't like it, he and his friends should ask Congress to change the law, instead of supporting the Bush Administration's attempt to ignore it.

Annoy the dolphin slaughter in Japan!

This'll be the second petition I've passed on in two-plus years of blogging. It won't end the dolphin slaughter in Japan, but maybe getting enough signatures will annoy it a little. I signed it a week or so ago and haven't noticed any increase in spam, so they appear to be taking their privacy vow seriously.

The environmental justification for ending the killing seems a little weak to me, but the moral justification for stopping the needless massacre of animals at their level of intelligence seems clear enough.

What Borat tells us about Jeff Goldstein

Goldstein is a conservative who enjoys recounting violent homosexual fantasies he has about his left-wing opponents. Apparently I'm a humorless leftie who failed to appreciate his wit until I saw Borat. The nude wrestling scene is probably the model of Goldstein's fantasy. Understanding that's what Goldstein is about makes him less creepy, maybe all of one percent less.

Volokh Correction #15

Jonathan Adler claims that:

most so-called "denialists" or "skeptics" do not deny the reality of anthropogenic contributions to global warming nor are they skeptical about the basic science of climate change. Rather, most folks tarred with these labels are, to some degree or another, skeptical of the evidence for certain apocalyptic claims and the need for particularly dramatic policy measures and particularly vocal about their concerns.

Adler says his definition doesn't apply to Roger Pielke Jr., so I can't think of anyone it does apply to. Pielke Sr. seems to disagree with the basic science, although I don't follow him too closely. Monckton and some others think there will only be a tiny amount of anthropogenic warming and arrive at that conclusion by completely disagreeing with the consensus.

Adler's wrong. Or - congratulations, James Annan - you are a climate denialist!

Trade-based CO2 regulation raises its fair head

The NY Times wrote about a French proposal to tax imports from countries that refuse to comply with the Kyoto Protocol. I've seen several mentions of similar ideas over the last year or so - in other words, an unstoppable phenomenon!

As I wrote last year, I think trade-based CO2 regulation is a great idea. I continue to believe, until provided contrary evidence, that this is a legally-viable way to get US involvement in an international accord through a majority vote that would otherwise require a treaty's two-thirds approval in the US Senate. And as the French are suggesting, it's also a way for the rest of the world to force cuts by countries like the US and Australia that are free riders.

Taxing the imports in the right way would be important. Increasing taxes for products composed of non-recycled material would give an advantage to recycling, which is a decent proxy for saving energy and reducing emissions. So would biasing the tax on energy-intensive products produced in the coal-based eastern half of the US, versus the more diverse energy sources in the western half.

A revenue-neutral import duty would be even better - you increase the tax on bad products and reduce it on good ones. This might have a slight chance of being acceptable under the WTO as a means of requiring foreign products meet the same environmental standards as Kyoto-compliant country's domestic products. I'm not sure though - getting serious might require the rest of the world to overlay the WTO with a CO2 trade agreement, and make the overlay the controlling agreement, regardless of whether the US agrees. It's a matter of willpower. I concede it won't be easy, but it's not impossible if the rest of the world is serious, and the threat itself could make future American governments more reasonable.

Christopher Monckton won't bet over global warming

Monckton wrote yet another of those wrong denialist screeds about global warming (taken apart by Deltoid and others here and here). Monckton did say though that his best estimate was warming would be 0.6C per century. At .06C/decade, that's a significant difference from the consensus position of .1-.2C per decade. Time for a bet!

Or not.

I proposed to him an even-odds bet, he wins if temps increase .1C/decade or less, I win if it's .11C/decade or more. He replied, contrary to his previous statements, that climate is chaotic (I presume he means it's therefore unpredictable). He stated he had no problem with betting in other circumstances, but he wasn't a sucker born yesterday.

I'll grant him that he's not sucker enough to bet his money on a position he advocates that he's betting other people's lives with. And he also ranks in the top ten percent of denialists merely by coming up with an excuse for not betting. Most just ignore the suggestion that they put their money where their mouths are. Still, it's far from adequate.

My reply:

Dear Mr. Monckton,

I find it hard to believe that you can successfully
count cards in blackjack but can't see a mathematical
advantage to you in the bet I proposed, from your
perspective of what's likely to happen with climate.
As with election outcomes, you think you have a better
idea of what's likely to happen than the IPCC
consensus, so let's bet on it.

I'm willing, and would actually prefer, to use
five-year smoothed averages to eliminate most of the
random annual volatility in average temperature.  And
while it's not my preference, I'd be willing to change
the bet so neither of us pays out within our likely
temperature range - say you win if the increase is
.06C or less, I win if it's .15C or more.

Finally, if you think temperatures are more chaotic
than driven by anthropogenic forcings, you should be
especially interested in my bet, since a random walk
that could go down as well as up is more likely to pay
out in your favor than mine. Even a modest increase
means you win.

Nicely written, but quite unpersuasive.  Sorry.  If my
improved terms sound interesting to you though, please
let me know.

(UPDATE: Via Deltoid, I find out that I'm a typically-ignorant American. First, I didn't know Monckton was a viscount; second, I didn't know what a viscount is; and third, I don't care.)

(UPDATE 2, Nov. 27th: Monckton replied very quickly to my original email, but I heard nothing after sending my response above. Another bet that's not going to happen.)

Get out of Iraq, and go fix Afghanistan

Same Facts is discussing what the Democrats' reform agenda should be (starting here and then with subsequent posts). Most of it sounds pretty good, and it feels even better to be able to seriously consider these things.

I disagree with simply backing anything reasonable that Baker-Hamilton produces on Iraq, though. Let's see what they produce. And while Dems could support anything that's superior to current policy, they can also advocate for what the best policy would be, which is to get our troops out of Iraq, and go fix Afghanistan while that's still possible.

Half our troops should go home, one quarter should stay in forward bases nearby (or possibly Kurdish areas) to intervene when absolutely necessary in the Iraqi civil war, and the rest go to Aghanistan.

I think escalating our investment in Afghanistan would make it hard for the Bush Administration to hit this strategy as cut-and-run.

Other thoughts:

• The post I linked to says forget doing anything on universal health care before 2008. I wouldn't eliminate trying to get universal health care for children.
• Some rumors were floating around that Bush is planning to have a Nixon-goes-to-China moment on global warming in his forthcoming State of the Union speech. I'm skeptical, but if it happens then the Dems should see how far they can take it.
• Back to playing hardball - Dems can prohibit spending any money on planning permanent bases in Iraq. While such a prohibition is mostly symbolic, I think the symbolism could actually be very helpful in Iraq and in the Arab world.

My Republican and Green Party votes

I voted for two Republicans and one Green. I picked Steve Poizner for California Insurance Commissioner over Cruz Bustamante. Poizner is an interesting, moderate Republican businessman, while Bustamante is a lackluster career politician who's taken a lot of money from insurance companies. Poizner took none, and that would be a great precedent to start for that office. The other Republican was a local candidate who gave a better answer to an environmental question I posed at a League of Women Voters forum than the Democrat did.

The Green candidate was Todd Chretien for Senate. Feinstein doesn't take chances for progressive causes, and a California Senator has the political opportunity to take chances.

The tough race was governor. Since it's not a close race, I'm free to vote as I wish. Schwarzenegger is pretty good for a Republican, but Angelides is still significantly better. But Green candidate Camejo is better still. In the end, I figured marginally increasing the vote for a good Democratic position will better influence Arnold than marginally increasing the Green candidate's position.

Other than that, my vote was for Dems, or unaffiliated local campaigns.

Now to see if the country is getting its act together.

E.T. smacks down Pharyngula

(Recently, Backseat Driving had the opportunity to interview E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial about Pharyngula's claim that alien intelligence is unlikely. Below is the transcript.)

Backseat Driving: E.T., thanks for taking time to answer my questions.

E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial: EEEE TEEE PHONE HOME!

BD: Uh, that cliche got old a long time ago.

ET: Sorry baby - here in Hollywood, once you find a good schtick, you keep it.

BD: Okay. Your agent said you don't have much time, so let's get to it. What do you think of PZ Myer's statement in his Pharyngula blog: "Maybe, if we actually had accurate values for the [equation predicting whether other intelligent species exist], the expected number of spacefaring civilizations in our galaxy is something less than 1."

ET: He's wrong.

BD: Why?

ET: Well, first of all there's the classic documentary about my arrival here on your planet, now available on DVD with many wonderful extras.

BD: I have a feeling you make residuals off the movie.

ET: Maybe.

BD: Any other reasons why he's wrong? I mean, for people who think you're fictional.

ET: Well look, he's guilty of the same anthropocentrism he accuses Sagan of having when he says technological capability has only evolved once on earth. So what? It always evolves only once per planet, from the perspective of the first species to get it on that planet. That doesn't make it unique.

BD: I'm not sure I understand.

ET: Well, a good comparison is when my crabby old uncle got here. Uncle Deekchaynee landed here millions of years ago-

BD: Deekchaney?

ET: Yeah.

BD: What's he look like?

ET: You don't want to know.

BD: Ugh. I think I do know. Well, what about him?

ET: His first visit here was well over 300 million years ago, right after the very first insect species started to fly. They were the only animal with powered flight then - no birds, no pterosaurs, no bats, just one species of insect. If he had reasoned like PZ, he would've said, "only one species out of millions has ever evolved flight on a planet over 4 billion years old. Sounds like a fluke that won't repeat here, and is unlikely to exist anywhere else in the galaxy. The Search for Extraterrestrial Flight will find nothing."

BD: So the idea is that our current snapshot of earth's biology shouldn't be considered The End of History?

ET: Yeah. You've got another half-billion years or more before the oceans boil away, and you evolved in 65 million years after the dinosaurs died and opened up evolutionary niches. A lot could happen in the time earth has left.

BD: Okay, any other arguments against PZ's critique?

ET: The "technological intelligence" definition is arbitrary. Five million years ago, hominids had not much more technology than dolphins and chimps do now - mind if I smoke?

BD: I guess not.

ET: So back then, Earth would've completely failed PZ's test, when it was just a blink of a geologist's eye from going techno. (Pulls out cigar, lights it with a finger.)

BD: Wait a minute, I thought you meant cigarettes. That stuff is vile.

ET: Arnold gave it to me from his private stock.

BD: It's vile.

ET: (Sighs dramatically, puts out vile cigar.) What you have to consider is whether a trend towards greater intelligence is one of the countless ecological niches that life will explore multiple times, just like powered flight has evolved independently multiple times.

BD: So is getting smarter an evolutionary trend?

ET: Yes, it's ONE trend of many that animals explore. Many of the modern mammals are a lot smarter than their rodent-like ancestors. Pigs, dogs, elephants, and cetaceans are pretty smart - who knows where they could end up in a half-billion years? And lots of other primates besides you guys have travelled well down the big-brain path. Even octopi are pretty smart.

BD: But octopi have been around for what, hundreds of millions of years? They're not building spaceships.

ET: They have more time remaining than what they've used so far. You don't know what some of them will end up doing. Actually, I'd say getting smart isn't like powered flight so much as it's like gliding. Lots of species have explored gliding - squirrels, snakes, lizards, frogs, fish - so you have an indication from your one sample planet that on other planets, multicellular life with a high metabolism rate is going to explore getting smart, just as it will explore gliding and powered flight.

BD: Any last thoughts?

ET: Pharyngula is right that microbial life is dominant here and will be dominant elsewhere, but the question you're interested in is whether intelligence will happen on other planets enough times to make it likely that there's someone to talk to. You can't draw too many conclusions from your sample size of one biogenesis on one planet, but what evidence you have is promising.

BD: Okay, thanks E.T.

ET: Just call me E, baby, call me E. Oh, and I almost forgot to mention - PZ does a great job with Pharyngula, it's just in this case that he's wrong. Gotta go! We'll do lunch, sometime soon.

---

(Welcome, Tangled Bank readers! Would love to hear your comments, and please feel free to check out Backseat Driving's main page.)

Methyl bromide and bonobos

Completely unrelated to each other, but two interesting links via recent posts in Focking Science:

1. An update on the usual Bush Admin. effort to screw up the environment, this time by further delaying the phaseout of ozone-destroying methyl bromide, which was supposed to have been eliminated by now. We Californians are the heart of the problem in pushing for a delay in the phaseout, and my recollection is that Dems are little better than the Republicans on this. Left out of the article was how bad this stuff is for farmworkers. They use it 30 miles from here, on strawberries grown on coastal farms, and the migrant workers suffer for their wages. Best argument around for eating organic strawberries, at least in the US.

2. A Smithsonian article on bonobos, saying the "make love not war" image they have isn't completely true. I never believed it, anyway - in Africa before humans became the dominant force, the bonobo population presumably expanded until it used all the food resources, and then they had the problem of determining who gets the food and who starves. I don't think playing kissyface was the method that rival bonobo groups used to solve that problem.

October 2006 Iraq casualties

Avg. daily Coalition fatality rate for the last month: 3.52
(nearly all Americans, and excluding Iraqis)

Previous months:
September: 2.53
August: 2.13

Last year, October 2005: 3.19.

Overall daily average to date is 2.31. Total US dead as of today: 2826.

Iraqi monthly military/police fatalities: 224.

Previous:
September: 150
August: 233

Last year, October 2005: 215.
Total Iraqi military dead: 5703.

Note that I've seen media reports suggesting the Iraqi military casualty figures are signficant undercounts.

Iraqi monthly civilian fatalities: 1,315

Previous:
September: 3,389
August: 2,733

Last year, September 2005: 463.

To-date total since March 2005: 18,962. Note that the civilian numbers are far less accurate than others (most likely to be greatly underestimated, or even ridiculously underestimated), but could still be useful in determining trends.

Comments: there's a deteriorating trend, but it's too early to determine if American casualty rates are entering a permanently higher level. Civilian casualties remain terrible.

To all my friends and family in California and some other states - please forward

(I'm somewhat blurring the line I maintain here between my blog and my work, but so be it. Below is a modified version of an email I blasted out to anyone I can think of .)

Hi everyone!

I think it's been two years since I last sent out an email blast to most everyone on my list, and I'm sorry this can't be an individualized email to each of you.
This is just a heartfelt plea to consider two political issues in the upcoming election (and if you're not in the states where these apply, maybe you have friends who are).

If you live in California, please consider voting no on Proposition 90. This proposition tries to fool people into thinking it's about "eminent domain", but that's just a cover. I've worked for an environmental group for years.
Proposition 90 could stop any of our future attempts to fight sprawl in the hillsides because property owners will claim that preventing them from building Los Angeles-style sprawl means the government has "taken" their property value and has to pay them.

More information available here:

http://noprop90.org/

The other issue is for California residents who live in Santa Clara County, and I will get down on my knees and beg you to vote yes on Measure A. This measure puts the same type of voter protections against sprawl that we have in neighboring Alameda and San Mateo counties, where it's worked very well. The link above has more info, and there's the website http://yesonmeasurea.net/

I know a lot about both Prop. 90 and Measure A, and would be happy to talk to you or anyone you know who has questions about them.

For residents of Washington, Idaho, Arizona, and Montana, you have your own version of Proposition 90 on your ballots (Initiative 933 in WA, Prop. 2 in ID, Prop. 207 in AZ and Initiative 154 in MT) I know less about these initiatives but it appears to be the same thing - pretend to be about eminent domain, but are really about preventing land use regulation. Some information is available here:

http://www.takingsinitiatives.org/

http://www.sightline.org/research/sprawl/res_pubs/property-fairness/6-initiatives

There's a big difference between attacking the use of eminent domain to transfer property to private parties, versus striking down the ability to do new regulations of land use. Some other state initiatives only go after eminent domain - I don't really care one way or another about those, but protecting the ability to protect the environment is crucial.

Thanks for putting up with this long email, please forgive me if your political views differ from mine, and please forward this email or something similar to anyone you think appropriate.

Thanks!
Brian

Sharing subpoena and hearing powers as a solution to inadequate legislative oversight

This is an idea I thought I'd try and float more formally somewhere, but that may have to wait. The idea is that there's no reason why the majority party in Congress, or any other legislative body, should have exclusive control in overseeing the executive branch. While winning the majority vote rightly gives that party control over the legislative agenda to put its ideas into effect, oversight is a different matter.

My idea is each congressional committee that has an oversight role would split the oversight functions between the majority and minority party. The majority gets more hours to hold hearings and issue subpoenas, but not exclusive control. This way the advantage of having the executive and legislative branches controlled by the same party - a better chance at carrying out a legislative agenda - still has real oversight, something sadly missing in Congress for the last six years.

It would also have the effect of encouraging competition between the parties over which one does more effective oversight. It would be harder for Republican congressmen to coddle the Bush administration if on a regular basis they turned the gavel over to Democrats who actually asked hard questions. Maybe the Republicans would start stepping up to the plate.

Finally, I think it's a good idea for either Republicans or Democrats. All of them think they'll be in Congress for a while. Rather than become nearly irrelevant when they're in a minority, this could give them a bit of power in the lean years.

I don't see much of a disadvantage. But I always like my ideas.

Newsweek proves its climate change journalism has worsened since 1975

Over at Real Climate, Connolley points to a Newsweek "re-examination" of its 1975 article predicting global cooling. Newsweek claims the 1975 article, while ultimately wrong, was accurate journalism.

Connolley lets Newsweek off way too easy by calling the judgment "self-serving". The 1975 article says:

the earth’s climate seems to be cooling down. Meteorologists disagree about the cause and extent of the cooling trend, as well as over its specific impact on local weather conditions. But they are almost unanimous in the view that the trend will reduce agricultural productivity for the rest of the century.

That was a demonstrably wrong assessment of what scientists thought at the time, but has been used endlessly by idiot denialists ever since to argue against the significance of actual scientific consensus.

So in 1975, Newsweek couldn't do accurate journalism research. Now, they can't even read their own article closely. I don't know how good its journalism has been on climate change in the intervening decades, but Newsweek has bookended its work with incompetence.

UPDATE: Working Newsweek link to article here (the one at RealClimate died).

An open letter to California Lieutenant Governor candidate Tom McClintock

Dear Senator McClintock:

I have an open challenge for you, Senator McClintock: you have repeatedly dismissed global warming, saying it is nothing more than what "has been going on since the last Ice Age and it will continue until the next Ice Age." I suggest that you put your money where your mouth is.

There’s a charitable website called Longbets.org, where bettors donate their bet money to a foundation that holds the bets and donates all the money to a charity chosen by the winner. I challenge you to bet over global warming - I even have a bet waiting at www.longbets.org/196. If temperatures go down or even just go up slightly, my money will go to a conservative charity of your choice. I'll even sweeten the pot - you seem to hold the view, without any scientific evidence to back it, that we're just in a natural warming cycle. I'm willing to set up a new bet with you that warming will accelerate in the next decade or two compared to the last century. Given how strongly you've spoken out on this issue, I sure hope you won’t run away now that you have a chance to be personally invested in the outcome.

Please contact me if you intend to put your money where your mouth is. I look forward to hearing from you.

Sincerely,
Brian Schmidt

P.S. I'll put this letter on my website and will be sure to post any response I receive from you at the site:

http://backseatdriving.blogspot.com/

NY Times on science fraud

NY Times has an interesting piece on uncovering ten years of scientific fraud by a prominent medical researcher. I still think the fact that the fraud was caught after many years shows a weakness in the scientific process, not a strength, as well as make me wonder what other frauds are ongoing.

Especially interesting was the implication that the young technician who turned in the researcher had damaged his own career - in a just world, one that the academic elite could affect, it would do the exact opposite. I think scientific academies and universities should include in their hiring criteria that uncovering major fraud is at least as important in someone's CV as a major research project. I'm sure it took up about as much of that tech's time, and involved greater risk.

Volokh Correction #14 and a Prometheus Correction

Two more erroneous posts at the Volokhs and Prometheus argue it's wrong to call global warming denialists by that name, because it reminds some people of Holocaust "deniers", which reminds Volokh and Prometheus of Godwin's law, which somehow means then that "denialist" term is an ad hominem attack.

I would agree that the statement, "Global warming denialists are wrong because they're similar to Holocaust deniers," is an illogical, ad hominem attack. Count on me to shoot that statement down if somebody somewhere decides to say it. Otherwise, denialist is a fair and accurate term. "Skeptic" is inaccurate, and "septic," while sometimes accurate, interferes with talking to the other side. I and many others didn't draw the Holocaust connotation, and I don't really care if others noticed the similarity.

Generally, I'm a reluctant convert to the idea that we need to influence language. I'd rather have it be a neutral process, but that's not the real world, and the other side is pushing the other direction. The key is to be fair, accurate, and ethical. Denialist fits that criteria.

(More relevant musings by Connolley here. Ironically, he's one of the few tagged with seeing the Holocaust connection, but he doesn't use the term, preferring "septic" instead.)

UPDATE: I should clarify that I don't see anything ethically wrong with expressly drawing an analogy between the two denialist classes, but it's just that such an analogy doesn't prove anything. As a science matter though I wouldn't draw the analogy myself because global warming, while proven, is not as completely undisputable as the Holocaust.

UPDATE II: Adler at Volokhs repeats the claim some use denialist as a parallel to the Holocaust. His proof is Connolley, who doesn't use the term, and Pielke who says he proved it sometime around 2001, but doesn't provide a link.

I want bacteria to have separate species

Lyn Margulis thinks they don't though, and she's just a hair more qualified than me to judge. She says they change genes too readily to be consider genetically isolated, and should be ID'd as strains instead.

All I can say is that the species concept is a little fuzzy too with eukaryotes (ring species, anyone?), and bacteria maintain a meaningful separation between their "strains" so the concept is close enough. The reason I want them to be separate species is because I still want to demonstrate speciation in a petri dish. Maybe someday.

(And I do recognize that the fact that I want bacteria to have separate species has no influence on whether they have separate species. Unfortunately.)

Skeptic's Circle is up

Skeptic's Circle #45 is up, and I'm listed with my Loose Change post.

655 thousand and 65 percent

The first figure is the best estimate on the number of excess deaths in Iraq following the 2003 invasion. The second number is the low end of several polls that asked Iraqis if they want American troops to leave (high end is 80 percent).

Below is the unimpressive history of my views on Iraq:

2002-03: undecided over whether we should invade. If I were President, I wouldn't have done it, but if I were in Congress, I probably would have voted in favor of giving Bush the authority. I could claim there's some way to reconcile those positions, but I won't bother. After all the time I spent in Burma, I couldn't easily pass up a chance to overthrow an entrenched dictator.

2004: I realized it was a mistake, and unlike some VIPs, also realized that I should have known better before the invasion. I didn't think we should pull out though.

2005: Moved to undecided on whether to pull out.

early 2006: Increasingly believe the US should pull out in 6-18 months.

now: We should definitely pull out in 6-18 months.

I find it very hard to argue with 655,000 dead and 65% who want us out. Yes, the Iraqi parliament might be different, although they haven't put it to a vote there, I believe. Even if the parliament wants us there, I still think it's a mistake. And I don't expect things will go well if we leave, either.

The Democratic and moderate Republican position should be get out of Iraq, and double our effort to fix Afghanistan. That's the best option we have now.

UPDATE: Just thought I'd also add that unlike some VIPs who've acknowledged their mistakes, I don't believe that the fact that I was wrong before somehow makes my opinion more weighty than people who have been right from the beginning.

Loose Change versus Popular Mechanics on 9/11 - score one for Loose Change

I did not expect to write the headline above, but that's the way it turned out when I tested one randomly-chosen contradiction between the two sides.

"Loose Change" is a documentary with an IMO ridiculous claim about 9/11 being a conspiracy. Popular Mechanics wrote a rebuttal which became a book. Democracy Now hosted a debate, and this came up regarding the Loose Change claim that Underwriter Laboratories certified the Twin Towers steel as something that wouldn't melt or weaken under the heat from the fires:

DAVID DUNBAR: In fact, Underwriter Laboratories does not certify structural steel.

DYLAN AVERY: Oh, okay.

JASON BERMAS: I would disagree with that.

Okay, seems like there's no gray area on this question. I looked up Underwriters, and found several relevant examples of certifying steel for structural uses. I emailed Dunbar about it two weeks ago, and have heard nothing so far.

So this doesn't change me from being a skeptic about the conspiracy theory, but it's a little disconcerting how this seems to have turned out. I hope Popular Mechanics did better quality control on other things they assert with equal authority.

To put some fuel on the fire, I'm going to send this entry to the Skeptic's Circle. Folks there might be able to explain how Popular Mechanics is right - otherwise, they would just know not to use this argument when talking about 9/11.

The silver lining about the North Korea test bomb

It'll make it a little harder for the Bushies to launch a pre-emptive strike on Iran. I think the Joe Sixpack reaction would be that Bush is going after the wrong target, again. Still, you never know the level of stupidity these jokers can reach in their holy mission.

I suspect the test will help Bush and Republicans, slightly, as the rally to the flag reaction battles against the wondering about what's Bush done to deal with this in the last six years.

Via Kevin Drum, there's a recap of how Bush screwed up Clinton's attempt to keep North Korea from getting nukes. Left out in that recap is the role Senator Jesse Helms played in stopping the US from giving them the reactors we promised. That guy did a lot of damage in his lifetime, and some of it hasn't been felt yet.

Boy do I hate to agree somewhat with Brooks and Althouse, but...

...there's something very wrong with seduction of a 13-year old (changed to a 16-year old) by an adult woman in The Vagina Monologues, and anyone on the left who disagrees with that position likely has some inconsistent positions about Mark Foley. Alicublog does a reasonable job of pointing out the stupid overgeneralizations Brooks and the extremely annoying (yet banal) Althouse make, but ultimately misses the germ of a reasonable point about taking a consistent position regarding sex with minors. Yes, there are some differences between the real Mark Foley and the somewhat based-on-reality Monologues, but that doesn't eliminate a reasonable comparison between the two.

The next Lieutenant Governor of California knows about betting over global warming

I met John Garamendi at an environmental fundraiser last week. He's the Democratic candidate for California Lieutenant Governor, and a shoo-in for office. He was emphasizing his interest in "the central challenge of our time—reversing global warming and climate change." I told him I had a global warming hobby - challenging denialists to long-term bets over global warming. He was interested and asked a few questions about how the bets would be decided. I added there's a number of us who've been doing this, and he said I should challenge his opponent, Tom McClintock, another denialist. I think I will.

Garamendi has made global warming an important part of his campaign. It's very interesting triangulation - putting Garamendi in the same camp as both the Dem and Republican candidates for governor, and isolating McClintock. And it's a data point - Garamendi emphasizing an issue in 2006 when Al Gore said in 2000 that polls showed voters didn't care about it.

September 2006 Iraq casualties

Avg. daily Coalition fatality rate for the last month: 2.6
(nearly all Americans, and excluding Iraqis): 2.6.

Previous months:
August: 2.13
July: 1.55

Last year, September 2005: 1.73.

Overall daily average to date is 2.29. Total US dead as of today: 2720.

Iraqi monthly military/police fatalities: 150.

Previous:
August: 233
July: 217

Last year, September 2005: 233.
Total dead: 5468.

Iraqi monthly civilian fatalities: 1,429.

Previous:
August: 970
July: 1060

Last year, September 2005: 640.

To-date total since March 2005: 13,905. Note that the civilian numbers may be less accurate than others (most likely to be greatly underestimated), but could still be useful in determining trends.

Comments: Things look slightly worse to me this year for US figures, but not dramatically worse as per Woodward's new book. Just continuing badly.

There's an uncovered story in the decline of Iraqi military casualties compared to 2005 while civilian casualties skyrocket. I'd assume that the Iraqi military stats would also get worse. My best guess for an explanation is that the military and police are sitting out the civil war, one more unhopeful sign for the future.

A cautious posting about ethnic/cultural differences

This weekend I’m moving from the ethnically-diverse city of East Palo Alto, to nearby Mountain View. One observation I have based on living in an area with a large African-American community is that there are more people willing to strike up a conversation with a complete stranger, as in talking to me, than I’d otherwise expect.

I just wonder how it’s perceived from the other side of the racial divide – do African Americans think the reason why white people don’t strike up conversations with them is racism? Someone who is African-American might notice the same difference I've noticed, but not know whether white people are more likely to start conversations among themselves. Racism is always a possible reason for how people treat other ethnic groups, but the other reason could just be cultural differences.

Maybe the left will now cut a small amount of slack to right wing libertarians

I'm annoyed with the meme on the left that libertarianism is something that in practice is indistinguishable from the standard conservative line. This is despite my being only a "reasonable" libertarian.

Anyway, a right wing libertarian from the Cato Institute has saved Cory Maye from Death Row, not something I'd expect your typical authoritarian sympathizer to do. Radley Balko, and the Cato Institute, deserve a significant amount of credit. I expect the people criticizing libertarians will just completely ignore his politics, if they even notice what he accomplished.

Not betting with Glen Raphael, apparently

(UPDATE: Glen says he is interested in betting - see comments.)

Blogger Glen Raphael, another denialist of anthropogenic global warming, posted a comment here on my blog saying he "would have been willing to take your bet" over at Longbets, and it was too bad that Longbets was having problems. I emailed Glen saying maybe we can work something out - LongNow is based in San Francisco, not far from me, and if we can arrange a bet then I can show up at LongNow and force them to do their job.

Glen replied, withdrew his willingness to take my bet, declared himself a natural warming proponent, and made a counteroffer (even odds that temps won't increase above .2C in 20 years). I accepted, provided that the bet amount be real money, not the token amount he suggested. Glen now seems to have lost interest in the conversation. To be fair though, it's only been several days, so I'll post an update if I hear from him.

Not the first time this kind of thing has happened, but something useful did come out of it. Glen claimed, incorrectly, that temps warmed 1 degree C over the last century (it's .6C). Since that's supposed to be just a rebound from the Little Ice Age, I think one would expect the increase to slow down or stop entirely, but let's generously give to the natural warmer perspective that temps will continue to increase at the same rate of .6C per century. The result is .06C for 10 years or .12C for 20 years. By contrast, the mid-range of the consensus position is that temps will increase .15C for 10 years or .3C for 20 years. Mid-way between the two positions is 0.105C for 10 years and 0.21C for 20 years. While the mid-way point is above the bottom end of the consensus range of expected increase, it's close enough to the bottom to be acceptable for betting.

So that's my newest bet offer - even odds that future temperature increases will accelerate in 10 or 20 years, and will come closer to that predicted by the IPCC than the warming that ocurred over the last century.

Iran again

I suggested last April that the Bush Administration might launch a nuclear first strike on Iran while refusing to call it a "nuclear weapon," instead giving a new name to a nuclear bunker-buster (fortunately, the date I suggested it would happen by was wrong).

I wasn't imaginative enough, though. The latest idea spinning in the White House is to launch a nuclear strike and then lie about using nukes at all, claiming instead that the radiation is from the nuclear facility they destroyed with conventional weapons.

And apparently they imagine that under either a nuclear or conventional attack scenario, the Iranians will just sit there and accept the first strike without retaliating.

My pathetic attempt to actually persuade Bush to do something

Text of a letter I just sent:

President Bush
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Ave,
Washington DC 20500

September 16, 2006

Re: Please do much more than you have so far to stop the genocide in Darfur

Dear President Bush:

This is the second time I have written you during your term as president, and the first time that I am going to grovel. I plead with you, I beg of you that you do much, much more than you have so far to stop an entirely foreseeable genocide in Darfur that could be only two weeks away.

Specifically, you must personally call Validimir Putin and Hu Jintao and tell them that their countries must use their influence to persuade Sudan to accept United Nations peacekeeper troops. Your giving a speech is insufficient; talking to diplomats is insufficient; you must talk directly to them yourself. Russia and China must understand that this is a priority for the United States, something that must be made more important to them than the moderate amounts of oil they can receive from Sudan’s dictator.

I am sorry that I cannot make this request as a supporter of your administration. It is because of the urgency and danger of the situation that I beg you to do this. All I can offer is that I own a blog with a small but real readership, backseatdriving.blogspot.com, and I intend to post this letter to the blog. Several hundred people will probably read it over the course of the month, and I will be certain to post any real response your administration provides. My blog has had very little positive to say about your work so far - this is your opportunity to change that, on an issue for which there is no reason for partisanship.

Darfur is your administration's Rwanda moment, and you have the advantage of considerable warning. You have the opportunity to go down in history as succeeding where the Clinton administration failed. Once again, I beg of you that you do this.

Sincerely,

Brian Schmidt
-----

Sent it via email, fax and post. While I doubt it makes that much of a difference, it's something you just have to do. Maybe they'll surprise me in a good way though, for once.

White House contact info here, more info on the Darfur campaign here.

I'm republishing the allegedly defamatory letter about Tim Ball

Via Deltoid, who's doing the same thing, I'm republishing here a letter that global warming denialist Tim Ball is suing over on the claim that publishing it is defamatory.

The letter here:

Whatever one may feel about Tim Ball's denial of climate change science, newspapers ought to report factual summaries of authors' credentials. Your article by Tim Ball (April 19) notes, apparently as evidence in support of his position, that he "was the first Climatology PhD in Canada and worked as a Professor of Climatology at the University of Winnipeg for 28 years". Incorrect, on both counts. Dr. Ball received a PhD in Geography in the UK in 1982, on a topic in historical climatology. Canada already had PhDs in climatology, and it is important to recognize them and their research. Examples include Kenneth Hare, a well-respected Professor at McGill, who received his PhD in 1950, also in the UK. Climatologist Andre Robert (PhD from McGill, 1965) conducted research that laid the groundwork in atmospheric models and climate. Timothy Oke, a leader in the study of urban climate, received his PhD from McMaster in 1967. You can find others listed on the website of the Canadian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society, or through Canadian Universities. Next, did Dr. Ball work as a Professor of Climatology at the University of Winnipeg for 28 years? No, according to his own website. And how could he have? He did not even have an entry-level PhD until 1983, that would allow even Assistant Professor status. During much of the 28 years cited, he was a junior Lecturer or Instructor who rarely published, and then spent 8 years as Professor (of Geography, not of Climatology). Ignoring the adjustments to his CV for the moment, does his work show any evidence of research regarding climate and atmosphere? No, and the few papers he has published concern other matters. There are great gains to be made in science from conjectures and refutations, but sometimes denial is nothing more than denial.

With clarification here:

Clarification On Sunday, April 23, 2006, The Herald published a letter from Dan Johnson, a professor in environmental science at the University of Lethbridge. Johnson was responding to an article of April 19, 2006, written by Dr. Timothy Ball. In his letter, Johnson criticized Ball's lack of research regarding climate and said he rarely published while teaching at the University of Winnipeg. According to Ball's curriculum vitae, he has conducted research on climate and has published 51 papers - 32 directly related to climate and atmosphere. The Herald wishes to clarify that information.

Deltoid has the details on how ridiculous the lawsuit is. Clearly, no one should hire Tim Ball, and anyone currently employing him should fire him immediately.

The Paperback Republican War on Science

Chris Mooney is doing his book tour for the paperback release of his book, The Republican War on Science, and I got to see him do his presentation and finally pick up a copy of the book myself.

His presentation was quite good, focusing more on what to do than on trying to prove the thesis of his book. A lot of his discussion concerned global warming, which is great. Two points I'd disagree somewhat with - first, he drew a stronger distinction between improving science education versus improving science policy than I would. Science education will build a constituency for stronger science policy.

Second, he politely disagreed with a questioner about targeting the nearby Congressman Richard Pombo, who's tried to do terrible things to the Endangered Species Act. Chris is right that the national Democratic party should prioritize the most vulnerable and anti-science Republicans, and Pombo isn't the most vulnerable. That doesn't mean that us locals going after Pombo is a useless act, though. If his re-election is closer than he'd like, he might modify the zealousness of some his more stupid proposals. Finally, although Chris wouldn't be expected to know this, Pombo has some corruption problems. If things break the wrong way for him, Pombo could be in real trouble.

It might not be that much of a stretch though for an anti-science congressman to have corruption problems. At heart, they're lying about objective facts - if they're willing to do that, lying for their own gain isn't too far away.

UPDATE: Chris writes about the signing here. I should clarify that Chris didn't say opposing Pombo is useless, just that it shouldn't be a national priority.

Pakistan and The Shape of a Mother

One of the advantages of the blogosphere is the lightning-fast reaction time it has. So typically for me, I'm now following up on two blog posts from one and two months ago.

1. Kevin Drum reprints another blogger saying, "Our Pakistan policy gets scant coverage, but shouldn't an unstable nuclear-armed nation awash with Islamic radicals be the real "central front" of the war on terror — and not Iraq?" He follows it up with asking, "does anyone actually have any proposals for a different and more productive way of dealing with Pakistan?"

Okay. My answer is Ireland plus spies. Economic development put the final nails in the coffin for Irish terrorism, and development is helping stabilize India. Pakistan will have to follow a similar path, and we'll have to do everything we can to help Pakistan develop economically.

I think the above is not a bad answer, except it'll take 20-50 years to get results. In the meantime, spies. We need to thoroughly penetrate Pakistan's military, intelligence, nuclear forces, and its Islamic radicals with people who will spy for us, so we can do what we can to control loose nukes if things go badly wrong. This poses an ethical problem of recruiting spies in a democratic (or semi-democratic) system. No easy answer to that - I think we should be ethically precluded from taking any direct actions that undermine a democracy, and we shouldn't recruit elected officials as spies. When the danger to us goes away, constraints on what we should do would be much stronger still, but in the meantime, we need an alternative.

Neither of these are foolproof answers, but they're better than nothing.

2. From global to personal, the other issue I meant to blog about was a reference in Bitch PhD to a blog, Shape of a Mother. The blog shares photos and stories by and of pregnant women and their bodies (may not be work-safe). I've always somewhat lamely justified my more-or-less acceptance of traditional beauty standards as just reflecting what's natural and healthy. I don't like the super-thin look, after all. On the other hand, there's nothing unnatural or unhealthy about these women's pregnant and post-partum bellies, but they're not quite working for me as beautiful. Guess I need to push my boundaries a little.

This one seems beautiful, but the photography and likely air-brushing are meant to appeal to traditional beauty standards, so best I can say is a half-step forward. Oh well.

9/11 and The Reagans

Someone besides me noticed the parallel between the CBS miniseries, The Reagans, that got cancelled and shunted aside to cable, and the current controversy over the ABC "docudrama," The Path to 9/11, that blames the Democrats for everything (criticism of the docudrama here).

Of course, it's a little dangerous to say the people you oppose are hypocritical in supporting one thing and opposing the other when you do the exact opposite, and that's been noted also (by crazy libertarians, of all people).

I think there are some grounds for making a distinction though. The Reagans was to be shown in a non-election year, not two months before an election. The issues there weren't as directly relevant to who should win the election. And ABC's defense, more or less that "it's not a documentary, so it doesn't have to be accurate" doesn't cut it when ABC is shipping 100,000 free DVDs to schoolteachers to try and influence the public perception of what happened.

Despite all that, I'm not quite as exercised as many others are over this. The program should end before mid-October, they shouldn't confuse schoolkids with fiction, they should plaster the beginning and ending with disclaimers, and they should run an equivalent docudrama that's slanted toward the truth - Clinton didn't do enough to stop 9/11, while Bush did significantly worse.

August 2006 Iraq casualties

Avg. daily Coalition fatality rate (nearly all Americans, and excluding Iraqis): 2.13. July was 1.55, June was 2.1, and August 2005 was 2.74. Overall daily average to date is 2.28. Total US dead as of today: 2657.

Iraqi monthly military/police fatalities: 233. July was 217, June was 132, and August 2005 was 282. Total dead: 5323.

Iraqi monthly civilian fatalities: 970. July was 1060, June was 738, and August 2005 was 463. To-date total since March 2005: 12,467. Note that the civilian numbers may be less accurate than others (most likely to be greatly underestimated), but could still be useful in determining trends.

Volokh Correction #13 - legitimate scientists not the same as legitimate science

Jim Lindgren at the Volokhs gets global warming wrong - mostly. I would agree with him that global warming denialism isn't quite the same level of fraud as denying the harm from cigarettes, but I'd say that it's close to the same, and getting closer every year.

The distinction I'd make is between stating no legitimate opposing view exists regarding human-caused warming, versus stating that none of the people denying warming are legitimate scientists. Most of the "scientists" denying warming are bought-and-paid-for ideologues, like Patrick Michaels. But denialists do have a few legitimate scientists like Richard Lindzen. The legitimate category is getting smaller, older, and more waffle-y each year, but it's still there. However, just because this tiny group has done legitimate science on other climate issues doesn't mean we have to continue to give them credibility on warming, when their stubborness has long passed the point of reason. This is the main point that Lindgren misses.

What else - he thinks one of the denialists deserves a chance to speak out. Not in the context of a short television segment - that would give too much exposure to a position held by less than one percent of the scientists. On a miniseries about global warming, they can have a short piece.

Lindgren probably screwed up the "warming causes more hurricanes right now" argument since no scientists say that (UPDATE: too strong a statement on my part - see comments. Main focus though is on severity, not number). Satellites weren't missing large storms 30 years ago - I doubt a large storm has gone unreported since the 1950s, maybe earlier. He repeats canards about enviros making bad predictions in the past - presumably he believes the ozone hole and air quality are magically fixing themselves, so past predictions of disaster were just plain wrong. Then more canards about how expensive global warming will be to fix and all the benefits associated with upsetting the planet's climate (the last one is particularly ridiculous).

Finally, the annoying "science isn't consensus" argument - policy arguments that don't rely on consensus and bet the farm on outlier positions are just stupid. This isn't science we're talking about, it's what we should do about what we understand, as best we understand it.

Not Lindgren's best work.

UPDATE: Lindgren posted again, focusing mostly on minor issues. The main reason to prepare for more Category 5 storms in the future is because computer models and theory anticipate them happening, not because of the historical record.

Modest decreases in the four glaciers we measured

I've been meaning to write a last post about measuring glaciers at Denali National Park. A ridiculous post, by a global warming denialist who won't put his money where his mouth is, did have the function of reminding me that I need to write it.

The denialist noted that some glaciers weren't retreating and thinks that disproves global warming. If he had read more than the headline of the article he linked to, he would have realized that climate change can also increase snowfall in some places, and even cause cooling in some places, so it's no surprise that some glaciers would advance.

Most glaciers are retreating though, including all four glaciers we measured this summer. What surprised me though was how little they retreated - the bottom elevations of the glaciers were 100 to 300 feet higher than the ones shown on our topographic maps, which date to the 1950s. If these had been giant glaciers, that level of retreat would be meaningless, but these glaciers were relatively small (two-three miles long, roughly). Still I was surprised at how little retreat had occurred in fifty years.

The only thing I could add is that in the six years I worked at Denali, precipitation was far above the historical average. If that stayed the case, it's not hard to see how the extra snowfall could partially balance out the extra warmth.

Anyway, it should be interesting someday to find out what the overall trend is for all the Denali glaciers.

Putting your life where your mouth is

Via Talking Points Memo, a proposal to submit pledge forms to politicians opposed to embryonic stem cell research, where they promise not to use any treatment derived from such research:

“Because of my strong opposition to embryonic-stem-cell research, I hereby pledge that should I, at any point in the future, develop diabetes, cancer, spinal-cord injuries or Parkinson’s, among other diseases, I will refuse any and all treatments derived from such research, at home or abroad, even if it costs me my life. Signed, ______”

Makes my bet offers look really tame. I think it's a fair thing to ask of them though, especially the ones that deny the medical value of stem cell research. It could also be modified easily for those politicians that want to pretend the Bush policy of researching old stem cell lines is okay.

Bush's war in Iraq has killed more Americans than 9/11

Well, it happened - counting up the numbers from this list of foreign civilian contractors killed in Iraq, as of August 17th, 137 American civilians died there. As of August 22d, a total of 2,613 American soldiers died there, giving an American death total of 2,750. According to wikipedia, the total American death toll on 9/11 was 2,738 (I can't find a better source than wikipedia, would love a reference somewhere else). Sometime in November, the US soldier death toll alone will exceed our losses on 9/11. Karl Rove is just hoping that won't happen until a day or two after the election.

I'd want some reaction from our Accountability President and his allies in Congress running for re-election, but I doubt it we'll get it.

Income inequality: this year's pre-tax is last year's post-tax

Much discussion at Brad DeLong, Kevin Drum and elsewhere on the role of Republican leadership in increasing income inequality. Liberal economists agree that Republican tax policies have made post-tax incomes far more unequal compared to Democrats, but disagree over whether Republican policies are an important driver in economics in increasing pre-tax income inequality.

I've read much of the discussion, but I haven't seen it mentioned that previous years' increased post-tax income inequality will increase asset inequality, resulting in increased inequality in pre-tax interest income. Maybe I'm missing something, but tax policy should have strong pre-tax income effects in subsequent years. I think there's a good case to be made that Republican policies have wide-ranging negative effects. That's why they want to distract us with a permanent war.

Dear Senator James "Global Warming Is a Hoax" Inhofe

(The following is an email I sent last week to the Tulsa World newspaper, and I then forwarded it on to Senator Inhofe. I'll be sure to post in the unlikely event that I get a response.)

Subject: Senator Inhofe - put your money where your mouth is on global warming

To the Editors:

I have an open challenge to Senator Inhofe: he has
repeatedly said global warming is “the greatest hoax
ever perpetrated on the American people.” I suggest
that Senator Inhofe put his money where his mouth is.

He also said, “I believe that the balance of the
evidence offers strong proof that natural variability
is the overwhelming factor influencing climate.” In
other words, temperature changes are a 50-50 coin
toss. I think the odds are different, and we can bet
on it.

There’s a charitable website called Longbets.org,
where bettors donate their bet money to a foundation
that ultimately donates the two bettors’ money to the
charity chosen by the winner. I challenge Senator
Inhofe to bet over global warming - I even have a bet
waiting for him at www.longbets.org/196. If
temperatures go down or even just go up slightly, my
money will go to a conservative charity of his choice.
I’ll even sweeten the pot – if I win, I’ll make sure
the money goes to environmental protection in
Oklahoma. Given how strongly he’s spoken out on this
issue, I sure hope he won’t run away now that he has a
chance to be personally invested in the outcome.

-Brian Schmidt

A Rotten Fleece Award for Professor Bainbridge

Professor Bainbridge is one of my Readable Rightie bloggers, but he flubbed it by criticizing the idea of fertlizing elephants with frozen mammoth sperm to create hybrid animals. Bainbridge did a poor job of reading the article he linked to, first of all - it's a Japanese scientist, not a British scientist, and it's only a speculative idea with no plans to spend actual money.

His main problem though is imitating the stupid Golden Fleece Awards given by former Senator William Proxmire, generally to berate tiny government spending items that were often science projects, projects that Proxmire didn't understand and didn't want explained to him.

Bainbridge plunges himself into the same trap. If this idea were feasible (I highly doubt it, but Bainbridge isn't focusing on that), then there would tremendous scientific interest in a mammoth-elephant hybrid. Anything about its behavior, physiology, or metabolism that differed from a typical elephant would be instructive.

And then you start your generational cross-breeding. You fertilize a female half-mammoth with mammoth sperm and get three-quarter mammoth descendents, an even better model to study. After not too many decades, we'll have essentially recreated an extinct species. I think that's interesting, to say the least.

Bainbridge imitated Proxmire better than he planned. Both of them deserve the Rotten Fleece Award.

Under-reporting civilian casualties in Iraq

The New York Times reports over 3,400 violent deaths for Iraqi civilians in July, using Iraqi government data. The site I've been using for monthly updates gave an estimate of 1060, based on news media reports. That's a huge difference, and it looks like the larger number is more accurate.

The news media approach to casualty counting was widely criticized by conservatives early on during the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. Then President Bush used their figures when throwing out a guesstimate of civilian casualties several months ago. Now it looks like a significant undercount.

At least there's some corroboration in trends. The Times says July was 9% worse than June and twice as bad as January. My source says July was almost 50% worse than June and almost twice as bad as January.

Lacking a better standard source for information, I'll stick with what I've got in future updates, but it will likely be even more of an undercount if things continue to deteriorate.

A valid exception to the "Godwin's Law" rule

The "Godwin's Law" rule in Internet debate, that you should not analogize your opponents' beliefs with Nazi beliefs, should have one exception - when your opponents' beliefs are actually based on Nazi beliefs. Maybe we should call it the Yoo Exception to Godwin's Law.

Scott Horton at Balkinization makes an intriguing argument that the philosophical basis for both the Unitary Executive theory and the legal right to torture opponents in disregard for international law can be traced to a leading Nazi theorist, Carl Schmitt. The parallels are very clear, Schmitt took a brief respite from his anti-semitism to help the neo-conservative Ubermensch, Leo Straus, and Schmitt's translated work is available to the neoconservative field. John Yoo, the pro-torture law professor from UC Berkeley, could well have drawn from that source when he provided legal cover for disregarding the Geneva Conventions as a Bush Administration lawyer.

It's an interesting argument, but hard to prove (I suppose one could start by asking Yoo and seeing what he says). If Yoo's earlier work dealt with this stuff, that might make it easier to find the connections. I'd love to learn if the Yoo Exception applies here.

In other news, the Bush Administration dragged its feet on explosives detection, including liquid explosives detection.

An Inconvenient Truth comes in third

Yesterday, "An Inconvenient Truth" became the third most popular documentary in American history. The figures for yesterday haven't been released yet, but it was $30,000 short of passing "Bowling for Columbine" from the day before, and making over $70,000 each weekday.

It's not far from the end of its American run and will probably top out at $23-24 million domestically, something a little smaller than that overseas, and make double or triple the figure in DVD sales and rentals. The movie cost $1 million to make.

Conservatives did everything they could to label the movie a failure. Their attempts are as persuasive as their arguments that global warming is a hoax.

Trouble at Tradesports and at Longbets.org

Via Chris Masse, we find that the betting/prediction market Tradesports is applying formalistic rules to resolve a bet over North Korea in a way directly contrary to common sense. Tradesports offers all kinds of predictions that people can bet over (unfortunately, nothing on global warming that I know about). They offered a bet over whether North Korea would launch a missile prior to July 30 and refused to pay, because the bet terms said the launch had to be confirmed by the US Dept. of Defense, which has refused to comment on the launch. So even though everyone knows what happened, Tradesports refuses to pay, which is not going to help prediction markets go anywhere.

This isn't quite as bad, but there are also some problems at Longbets.org, a charity betting site where both bettors donate their money to Longbets, and Longbets eventually gives the money to a destination charity chosen by the bet winner. I have a bet there about global warming, somebody challenged me, and then never responded when I followed up multiple times to negotiate the bet. The same guy posted his own bet prediction about a forthcoming ice age, I challenged him, and heard nothing. I asked Longbets for help and heard nothing. The Discussion section of the website appears to be broken, and while predictions have been made, no bets have been agreed on since 2004. Longbets provides a great service through their site, in my opinion, but they need to put time in on maintenance by removing challegers and bettors who aren't willing to actually negotiate their bets.

My bet opponent, James W. Walter, appears to be an extremely rich 9/11 conspiracy theorist. You'd think he could afford to follow through on his betting if he's also offerring $1 million to anyone who can prove 9/11 wasn't a conspiracy (and exactly how do you prove that, anyway?).

Steve McIntyre wants to bet over global warming proxies

Over at ClimateAudit, the issue of betting over global warming came under discussion in a comment thread. McIntyre eventually stepped in, not to bet about global warming itself but over using tree ring data as proxies for assessing historical temperatures when instrumental records weren’t available:

So I’ll make a counter-proposal and I’d be prepared to bet in size and one where the results can be determined.

Do any of the warmers want to bet that European tree rings in the very warm year of 2003 did not show very wide rings such as predicted by the MBH assumption of a linear relationship between temperature and ring width?

Or that Sheep Mountain bristle ring widths in the period 1990-2005 were as wide or wider than projected by a linear model - we can define the model, but essentially it’s the linear assumption of MBH.

I’ll bet either.

McIntyre is one of the people challenging the MBH study in 1998 that recreated global temperatures over the last 1000 years. Personally, I don't really care about that debate - a single 1998 study doesn't determine whether anthropogenic global warming is happening. I also don't know what Steve M.'s position is on AGW, although his comments on the thread suggest he's one of the skeptics claiming there's a natural warming. If he thinks temps should decline anytime soon, he should be interested in betting me over temps.

But he wants to bet over proxies. I don't know enough to judge the fairness or importance of his bet. If it's a continued rehashing of that 1998 study, his bet offer is unimportant to the climate debate. If it concerns the validity of later reconstructions, then it may have some importance for one (just one) of the lines of evidence supporting AGW, and people who are involved in that field might want to consider it.

Finally, Steve M claims I "quickly withdrew when it came to betting against me on proxies." No, I withdrew because I'd been accused of hijacking a comment thread to a post that was unrelated to betting. I'm very happy to negotiate terms over a bet with Steve M. or someone else regarding a bet over global warming. As for tree ring proxy measurements, I'm just highlighting it here in case anyone else is interested.

Heresy! I disagree with Realclimate.org

Actually, it's just a single comment by Realclimate blogger Gavin Schmidt, but I'll play it up. He contrasts environmental group funding of research to industry funding, and says "environmental groups do not have a vested interest in the exsitence of global warming - there are of course many other environmental problems they could be (and are) dealing with - but they do not stand to gain personally if global warming is more serious."

Well, I think enviros like myself do have a strong interest in emphasizing global warming and other environmental ills - it helps promote related causes we espouse and promotes the general importance of the work we're doing. OTOH, I do agree with his follow-on that "Making an equal-and-opposite comparison [between industry and enviros] is not valid."

The two differences are first, the benefits of exaggeration our position are less to enviros than industry - for us, the environmental importance is just helpful to other stuff we do, while to (some in) industry, global warming concerns threaten their core business model. Second, the costs of exaggeration are higher to us - our credibility is what we sell to our customer/supporters, while coal and oil is what industry sells - damaging their own credibility on environmental issues will not harm them much overall.

Finally, it's easier for us to walk away from an unimportant environmental issue than it is for industry to abandon coal power. I think concerns about global warming and concerns about electromagnetic fields started about the same time. The former has had much more verification in subsequent research, and that's the one that gets much more research.

So there are differences between the quality of what we and industry say, but people still have to be careful about what the "angels" are saying, and why they say it.

Proportionality, Volokhs, and Lebanon

The Volokh Conspiracy presumably decided they needed a balance against intellectual heft, and added David Bernstein to the group blog (Todd Zywicki wasn't posting enough). Bernstein writes absolutely predictable posts about the Arab-Israeli conflict, but he almost wrote an interesting post describing a moral question before screwing it up.

He uses a hypothetical to ask what level of enemy civilian casualties should change your military tactics to minimize those civilian casualties, when the changed tactics endanger your own soldiers. That's an interesting question, but then the screwup:

"Assume also the the target is sufficiently important that even one hundred deaths on the other side would be considered "proportionate" under whatever standard you use for such things." (Bernstein's hypo imagined the change in tactics would cost two soldiers on the friendly side). If you add that proviso, there's no reason to ask the question - you've already reached the conclusion.

Anyway, I don't know what's proportionate under the laws of war, and I highly doubt it's defined, but it's the standard a non-pacifist has to go by. As someone who started off uncharacteristically favoring the Israeli position in the latest blowup, I'm seeing that it's also the standard that Israel is demolishing.

To answer Bernstein's question, my intuition is that somewhere past ten civilian deaths to save two of your soldiers, then you have to draw the line - anything more makes a mockery of "proportionate".

Hurra Torpedo

Via Deltoid, possibly the best music video ever made - a remake of "Total Eclipse of the Heart" (caution, not entirely worksafe). You can just feel the passion.

Greenspan haunting the housing bubble

Kevin Drum draws attention to adjustable rate mortgages that are now skyrocketing after the three-year initial rate freeze is ending (ARMs didn't become popular until several years ago). He makes a similar point to one I made last year, that Allan Greenspan was encouraging people to use ARMs two years ago to prop up the economy, when the rates could only go up. Unsophisticated home buyers are now facing 30-50% increases in mortgage payments. Greenspan long ago stopped deserving the adulation he was given.

So people who can no longer afford their mortgages can just sell their homes and move to a cheaper place, as long as home prices keep rising. If they don't, people won't be able to cover their mortgages through home sales, with foreclosures and bankruptcies being the next step. Get a lot of that happening, and we might see housing prices move down quickly.

Thanks Alan - you're as helpful as you were with the stock market.

Get your cellulosic ethanol info fix

The Oil Drum has two good posts on cellulosic ethanol, here and here (especially the first one). They support my sense that corn-based ethanol is either a crock or of only minor help in terms of energy output versus energy needed to make it, and that cellulosic ethanol may be far oversold. I guess we'll find out about the latter, maybe I'm wrong.