The religious reason for the Bush escalation

1. Bush believes that God wanted him to be President.

2. Invading Iraq was the most important decision that Bush took.

3. God couldn't have wanted Bush elected in order to do something disastrous.

4. De-escalating in Iraq would be basically admitting a disastrous failure, even if it would somewhat limit the consequences of failure compared to staying indefinitely.

5. Keeping the same force level doesn't appear to be working, has no political support, and could lead to de-escalation.

6. God must have made it possible for his chosen President, George Bush, to obtain victory in the most important action Bush took.

7. Neither de-escalation nor keeping the same force level leads to victory.

8. Therefore, God must want Bush to take the only course that leaves a chance for victory, even if it is no more clear to us how that will occur than it was clear to Abraham's wife, Sarah, that at 90 years old she would have her firstborn child, Isaac.

It's not hard to figure out what role is being played by those who oppose the escalation.

I'd also note that someone with more religious sophistication than Bush could question #3 above, but I doubt Bush will.

One more in the Misinterpretation of the IPCC Parade

Stoat notes Viscount Monckton (who won't bet) has incorrectly claimed the IPCC just reduced its estimate of our effect on climate by one-third.

RealClimate found the Wall Street Journal making the same mistake.

I just thought I'd add that National Review Online also repeats the talking point:

The new IPCC report has also reduced its estimate of the human influence on warming by one-third (though this change was not flagged for the media, so few if any news accounts took notice of it).

It appears this type of "knowledge" is continuing to circulate through that side of the blogosphere.

Being Caribou, and a personal note

Just watched the documentary, Being Caribou, about a Canadian couple's five-month, 1500 km hike from Canada to Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to follow migrating caribou. Their aim besides just going on the trip was to highlight the danger of oil field development in ANWR.

I highly recommend the documentary, it was a fascinating trip, and they had some great footage of wildlife and scenery (they saw wolverines, which I never saw in six summers in Alaska). While the couple had a slight New Age-y feel to their discussion about the caribou, it wasn't enough to get annoying, and they're very likeable. Their third partner on the trip was a plastic figurine of George Bush, who provided some comic relief.

One of my political heresies, though, is I'm not convinced that the caribou will be harmed by ANWR drilling. There's no evidence of harm in Prudhoe Bay, which has far more development than ANWR would. Nothing in the film changed my mind, although in their defense, it was an experiential film, not a science documentary. And while my best guess is drilling in ANWR would not be much of an environmental problem, I see no reason to rush in and disturb this pristine area - the oil's not going anywhere, so if we really need it, we can get it later.

The personal note - while this isn't a "personal life" blog, I just thought I'd mention that my girlfriend and I got engaged over the weekend, while snow-camping in the Sierras near Lake Tahoe. Karen's a very good sport and enjoyed our 8-day backpacking trip in Alaska last summer, but she informed me that for our honeymoon, we're not doing a 5-month backpacking trip like these people did. Oh well, maybe we can do a four-month trip.

Reading the AEI and Exxon tea leaves on global warming

Leaving aside the propriety issue of the American Enterprise Institute's attempt to buy anti-IPCC studies, it's interesting to look at the angle they're taking:

..... AEI would like to commission a series of essays from a broad range of experts on various general and specific aspects of the issue [climate policy]....

....climate change has tended to be caught in a straightjacket between so-called “skeptics” and so-called “alarmists,” with seemingly little room left in the middle for people who may have reasonable doubts or heterodox views about the range of policy prescriptions that should be considered for climate change of uncertain dimension. This perception is mistaken, of course, as Andrew Revkin’s recent New York Times article on “an emerging middle ground” on climate change made evident. Nonetheless, we would like to attempt to break out of this straightjacket and see if it is possible to create a space for an identifiable “third way” of thinking about the problem....

.... One idea is to solicit essays in two categories. The first category would be along the lines of a blue-sky essay on “What Climate Policies Would I Implement If I Was King for a Day.” The second category would be specific critiques of existing or proposed policy responses such as will appear in Working Group III or have been put forward in reports such as the Stern Review....

The two actors who motives we need to consider are AEI as an institution, and ExxonMobil. AEI wants to keep its snout in the trough that is Exxon funding, and whatever similar funding it can get from that part of the economic spectrum. Exxon has trouble funding complete denialism now, given its recent promises not to, so AEI is positioning itself to follow the moving trough into a "Third Way," something that's allegedly Not-Denialism.

Exxon, meanwhile, has done a somewhat strange conference call with mid-ranking climate change bloggers to explain its position. Nothing against those bloggers (they're bigger than little ol' me), but there are bigger ones who write regularly about climate, and still more popular blogs like Washington Monthly and Talking Points Memo that understand the issues. My guess is it's a trial balloon and a chance to refine their message, and the message Exxon claims to be giving out is "climate change is a serious issue and that action must be taken."

There's an unsurprising fit between AEI and Exxon's latest stance. But, what does it mean? You can take the plain English approach, and I won't discount the possibility that even at the highest levels of one of the worst oil companies, there's a limit to the lying.

Somewhat more sinister would be that they're still going to lie as always, while restrained by the fact that there's only a certain distance that they can stretch between the truth and their lies. As the truth is getting more clearly in one direction, they have to shift in that direction, but still lie.

Third, and sadly most likely, is it's the standard response of a regulated industry to imminent regulation: "if you can't beat 'em, delay 'em." Let a thousand alternative policies bloom, and declare that government should do nothing while the debate continues as to the best approach. Every year of delay means that much more profit, at least in the short term quarterly earnings perspective.

Part of the reason why I think the third outcome is most likely is that I share the opinion of most of the other climate bloggers I read, that Revkin's article didn't really come up with a "third way," and the people he cited believe in controlling emissions. AEI might come up with a third way, or a thousand third ways, but they'll be bogus.

Here's hoping I'm wrong.

A third motive for defending Gitmo detainees

Jonathan Adler, slumming it over at The Corner, speculates on why some lawyers from premier law firms choose to spend their pro-bono hours defending Guantanamo detainees:

I don't think it's because they are getting paid off. I also don't think that it is because most of them harbor secret, anti-American sentiments (though some may). Rather, I believe it is a combination of a) a desire to work on sexy, high profile issues that are more exciting than the cases on which they bill most of their hours, anbd b) a sometimes-misguided sense of noblesse oblige combined with a desire to "make a difference."

I'll add a third: nothing might be more exciting for a lawyer than getting factually-innocent defendants free from jail, and given the evidence, these lawyers may actually believe and have good reason to believe their clients are completely innocent. Adler missed that motive.

Mitigating this oversight, though, is Adler's belief that Gitmo detainees deserve a fair hearing, a belief not shared by the other authors at The Corner.

"More likely than not" is plain English enough, I think

Roger Pielke Jr. translates the "more likely than not" human influence on hurricanes from the IPCC summary:

In plain English this is what is called a "hypothesis" and not a "conclusion."

That seems like playing games with the plain English connotation that "hypothesis" is little different than a "guess" from which we cannot draw conclusions. In the real world, people appropriately draw conclusions and take actions all the time based on information that is only more likely than not to be true. RPJr might not want people to draw conclusions, but they have the ability to take IPCC's information and act accordingly.

As to the lengthy discussion elsewhere about whether the WMO's "no firm conclusion" really differs from the IPCC, it kind of reminds me of when people debate what really happens to characters in a movie after the movie ends ambiguously. There is no reality to the characters beyond what happened in the movie, so the question doesn't make much sense.

For the WMO and IPCC, the best we can guess at is the intentions of the people involved. Since some of them are the same, the 51-66% certainty range for hurricane intensity probably doesn't correspond to a "firm" conclusion, so for those people at least, there's no conflict between the two positions.

And are we mortals allowed to draw "conclusions" when the WMO forbids "firm" conclusions? How about "tentative" conclusions? Can I say that?

Some of this language parsing is getting a little ridiculous, even for a lawyer.

January 2007 Iraq casualties

Avg. daily Coalition fatality rate during the last month: 2.81
(nearly all Americans, and excluding Iraqis)

Previous averages
December 2006: 3.74
November: 2.57

Last year, January 2006: 2.06.

Overall daily average to date is 2.36. Total US dead as of today: 3093.


Iraqi monthly military and police fatalities: 91.

Previous military/police fatality rates
December 2006: 123
November: 123

Last year, January 2006: 189.
Total Iraqi military dead: 6034.

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


Iraqi monthly civilian fatalities: 1711

Previous
December: 1,629
November: 1,741

Last year, January 2006: 590.

To-date civilian total, begining in March 2005: 24,040. 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: Now five months in a row with American casualties above average, no prior bad stretch lasted longer than three months. Continuing a trend found in recent months, Iraqi military fatality rates continue to be low, more evidence that they're sitting out the civil war. Also as before, civilian casualties remain terrible.

Volokh Correction #18: The Republican War on Science

When the Volokhs move away from legal analysis and libertarian theory into straight political posts, we often get something like this post by Jonathan Adler (who's one of the better Volokhs): a mix of one part wrong, two parts grossly exaggerated, three parts biased, and one part legitimate point.

Adler is criticizing Chris Mooney's book, The Republican War on Science. I won't critique all of Adler's post, but here are a few arguments:

One of the best examples of the politicization of science by the "left" — and one of the few that Mooney acknowledges — is the treatment of agricultural biotechnology, and the decision to subject such products to more stringent regulatory review than those developed with other methods. This policy has no scientific basis, as the National Academy of Sciences has stated many times.

Hardly a criticism of Mooney when he acknowledges the issue. It's only partly right, anyway. While the left has greatly exaggerated the public health dangers, the danger of contaminating wild relatives of cultivated crops with Frankengenes are real, as are the dangers of creating resistance to the few effective organic insecticides by artificially inserting Bt genes in agricultural plants. And before Adler completely dismisses potential health effects, he should consider the biotech industry position that because it's extensively, legally regulated, it should not be liable to common-law litigation claims in the event something "untoward" happens. If the industry was truly confident it wasn't creating a risk, it would waive that argument.

Another example would be claims by environmentalist groups that pesticide residues on foods pose a significant cancer risk, a claim which the NAS has also rejected.

Talking about alar, maybe? Adler's on shaky ground. Being vague about the subject might help escape specific criticisms, but it doesn't help persuasiveness.

A third would be seeking endangered species listings for the purpose of halting development.

What's unscientific about that? Ulterior motives might give you ground to suspect what a group says, but it doesn't make it unscientific. Pro-life people these days are all interested in the health effects of abortion - there's reason not to trust them or their own studies, but that doesn't by itself make the claim a war on science.

A fourth would be efforts to claim asthma incidence (as opposed to asthma attacks) are related to outdoor air pollution, when there is no data to support such a claim.

The massive increase in asthma, which Adler avoids mentioning outright, is a critical issue in modern public health. I think Adler's outright wrong in saying there's no data, the real issue is definitive proof. Something is going very wrong, and outdoor air pollution, especially the mostly unregulated small particle pollution, is a suspect.

A fifth would be the EPA's second-hand smoke study, which a federal court found was driven to reach a predetermined result.

If anyone cares to bet over whether second-hand smoke causes thousands of deaths annually, I'm open to it. As to whether one particular study on the issue was flawed, who cares. This was an interesting issue for Adler to light on - I've been trying to compare the state of science over global warming to other controversies, and considered second-hand smoke as a decent analogy. My amateur opinion of both fields though, is that we're even more confident about global warming than we are about second-hand smoke.

A sixth would be claims that the "precautionary principle" is a "science-based" approach to risk, when it acutally reflects a normative policy judgment about how to weigh and evaluate risks.

I don't know what he's talking about here - who couldn't figure out that the precautionary principle is a policy method for handling the risks established by science. To establish an abuse of science, Adler must demonstrate lies or deception. He hasn't. Some on the left have articulated a ridiculous version of the precautionary principle that involves proving a negative - but that's just stupid, not a deceptive abuse of science.

A seventh would be the compounded conservatisms that are embedded into many agency risk assessments, such as those conducted for the federal Superfund program.

Funny - sounds like a normative judgment about the appropriate level of risk - how's that an abuse of science?

An eighth would be molding "ecosystem management" to satisfy non-scientific normative preferences about how land should be managed.

Land management typically involves multiple goals. Adler needs to give specifics showing a widespread, leftist policy of using their land management goals in a way that abuses science.

And so on.

One of his better arguments.

In 1993, Princeton University physicist William Happer was fired from the Department of Energy because he disagreed with Vice President Al Gore's views on stratospheric ozone depletion.

Happer was a Bush I political appointee, so Clinton and Gore had every right to get rid of him. I don't recall if Mooney criticized Bush II for firing a political appointee, although maybe I missed that. Anyway, firing an idiot who denies the destruction of the ozone layer is a service to the country. Do I need to offer yet another bet over this issue too?

In 1994, President Bill Clinton rejected the finding from the Embryo Research Panel of the National Institutes of Health which declared that the intentional creation of human embryos for genetic research was ethical. Clinton simply banned any federal funding for such research.

How is a dispute over the ethical approach an abuse of science? Adler needs to get beyond whatever grievances he has and show deception.

Others include the witholding of agency analyses so as to prevent their publication at poltiically inconvenient times and the gross misrepresentation of scientific findings by agency officials in speeches and media appearances.

The first claim is standard practice, and not really a science abuse unless withholding is delayed for months instead of for the Friday media dump cycle. He doesn't substantiate the second claim.

If we are allowed to consider the plaintiffs' bar as a "left" interest — as corporate groups are considered to be on the "right" — then there are many more examples relating to all sorts of "junk science" tort claims, some of which my co-blogger David Bernstein has documented

This would be a legitimate point except that Mooney isn't attacking corporate lying but the Republican and Bush Administration's political support for their lies. Again, Adler needs to point to prominent Democrat and Clinton administration misdeeds to make his point (and before anyone talks about Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and vaccines, I'd note that he isn't even an elected official).

It is certainly possible that the Bush Administration is worse than prior Democratic Administrations, but I don't think Mooney makes his case because he doesn't seriously examine the most serious charges against prior administrations, nor does he consider the broader institutional context.

Adler has not come up with any serious charges. As for institutional context, one point I might agree with is that one should consider overall funding levels as part of the determination of whether the Republicans are at war with science, so I'd disagree with Mooney's decision to exclude that issue from his consideration.

More fundamentally, it is hard to go from the avalanche of science-abusing anecdotes in Mooney's book to a definitive conclusion that the Bush Administration is far worse than previous ones. On the other hand, it's a very impressive avalanche, especially compared to what Adler has just put out. The number of Republicans who are revolted at what Bush has done to science is also indicative. Most persuasive was the one time where Bush and Clinton both took the same position at odds with the science, but Bush lied about the science while Clinton didn't.

So some legitimacy of the attacks on the left, little of which extends to the Clinton Administration, and very little in the way of substantive criticism of Mooney's book.

UPDATE: Welcome, Intersection readers, and thanks for stopping by. My main page is here, and my review of RWOS is here. And just to be a little contrary, I've got an occasionally-updated post linking to right-wing blogs when I think they've got the better argument, and one of them is an Adler post.

The Stern Review and the Bush v. Gore Supreme Court opinion

I've not blogged about the Stern Review analyzing the impacts of climate change because I've not had anything intelligent to say. But I haven't let that stop me in previous situations, so here's a far-fetched analogy.

I found really interesting the number of people, especially my fellow lawyers, who were outraged by the Supreme Court decision to hand the 2000 election to Bush, but never actually read the decision. Here it is. When I read the "per curiam" decision of the five judges, I found that it really analyzed four or five separate questions that led to their ultimate conclusion. For each one of those questions, my thinking was something like "well, I disagree with that particular argument, but I can see that someone might reach that viewpoint." The problem was that every single one of those subsidiary questions had to be answered in the way the majority did for them to be able to get the conclusion they wanted - Bush as president, and no recount for Gore. That combination of always picking the subsidiary outcome in the direction they wanted it to go was what convinced me of bias.

So that leaves the Stern Review. RealClimate has a rundown of the science issues, and my superficial impression of the economic issues is similar: "he strays on the high side of various estimates and picks the high side to talk about in the summary. This high-end bias lends the Review open to charges of 'alarmism'."

I don't think this requires conscious bias, however. I'd guess that at least two of the Supreme Court conservatives (O'Connor and Kennedy) weren't consciously choosing to throw the election to their guy. And unlike the Supreme Court case, I think many of the choices Stern makes are defensible. The problem that they always seem alarmist is what's disturbing.

I think this is too much and too important for a single person and project. It really should be made a regular part of the IPCC process. And rather than giving a single outcome for things that require value judgments, like social time discounting, they could split the analysis and give alternative outcomes depending on which value judgment you choose.

Why reasonable libertarianism results in more liberty than simplistic libertarianism

Yes, I am spinning it by using "reasonable" and "simplistic" terms for libertarians, something the simplistic libertarians might object to. Still, I think the terms apply well to a discussion I heard on NPR's Talk of the Nation called "The Privacy Train Has Left the Station." The radio segment features simplistic libertarian Katherine Mangu-Ward of Reason Magazine. She says that because there's no reasonable expectation of privacy in public places, there's little reason to worry about the growing proliferation of cameras monitoring every person's every step, recording it forever, and being instantly available to government snoopers. Her main concern is that nobody ever tell private property owners what to do or not do with cameras.

This mirrors what a Volokh Conspiracy post called "the longstanding division between those who endorse an absolutist interpretation of libertarian principle versus those who take a maximizing approach." Mangu-Ward can't see a gray area in the loss of privacy due knowledge of one's activities becoming so much more widespread, so it's no problem. Reasonable libertarians like myself do see a problem, and while the solution is less clear, acknowledging a problem is the first step.

I'm not going to deny the advantages of cameras. I think a camera trained on a bicycle rack increases liberty by allowing people to ride bikes that don't get stolen, more than it decreases liberty by monitoring people for the brief time they're locking their bikes (I've had many bikes stolen over the years). Carefully targeted cameras might be the solution.

More broadly, I think the loss of privacy might possibly be inevitable, and it might not be all bad - maybe we'll learn to be who we are and not care who knows about it. But pretending there's no problem with this future, and therefore doing nothing to nudge the future in the right direction, is simplistic.

P.S. Some discussion of reasonable libertarianism over at Kevin Vrane's renovated digs, No Se Nada.

P.P.S. In Mangu-Ward's defense, she evolves partially beyond simplistic libertarianism in the Op-Ed she wrote on the camera issue:

The New York police recently announced plans to create "a citywide system of closed-circuit televisions" operated from a central control center, funded primarily by federal antiterrorism money.

Admittedly, this is where the surveillance nation gets dicey. Concerns about misuse of public cameras by authorities are reasonable, and violations should be punished. Several cases now wending their way through the courts are expected to set standards regarding proper uses of, and punishment for abuse of, surveillance.

She needs to keep moving in this direction.

This anti-tree thing has gone too far

There has been a lot of discussion on blogs about the various reports saying that planting trees outside of the tropics can actually cause a problem as far as global warming is concerned. The argument is that trees have a lower albedo than farms, pastures, or soil, so planting trees could make the earth darker overall, increasing light absorption, and warming the Earth. (There has also been some claim that more trees mean more water vapor but that seems to be less of a concern.)

I think a lot of this discussion is overblown. First of all, I don't know who is talking about replacing farms and pastures with trees, except in tropical countries where there's no controversy regarding forest benefits, and it's not something that I have heard any serious discussion about. And on the question of albedo, planting trees and cities and suburban areas could actually make albedo higher instead of lower. A 7% reflectivity in urban areas is less than 9% for pine forests, and 13% for deciduous trees (the ones usually planted in cities).

So while the anti-tree thing may intrigue people because it's counterintuitive, you still have to look at the particular tree planting program to determine whether or not it is problematic. Any we should definitely plant trees in the cities.

UPDATE: Thought I'd add that the most important global warming impact of urban trees is the amenity effect - by making cities nicer places to live, people will be more willing to stay rather than commute from the suburbs.

Partially nonstupid editorial in Wall Street Journal on an environmental issue

Yeah, it surprised me too, but the Jan. 25th print version had an editorial by Bruce Berkowitz that said something reasonable about the environmental problem of space junk (no mention of the global warming connection, though). Berkowitz argues the US should involve China in an international convention to control debris. A nonwrong opinion in the Journal!

Of course, it was part of an otherwise wrong article saying China's antisatellite test was no big deal, and it incorrectly stated that China has "as much interest as the U.S. to limit debris" (as a minor player in space, most of the external costs of China's debris gets imposed on the big player, the U.S.). And, it's a guest column, not something written by the insane editors of the Journal. But still.

Well, it wasn't a Nixon-to-China moment on global warming

Here's a typical rumor that went around last fall:

September 19, 2006

Will Bush Change His Mind on Global Warming?

"President Bush is preparing an astonishing U-turn on global warming," according to The Independent. "After years of trying to sabotage agreements to tackle climate change he is drawing up plans to control emissions of carbon dioxide and rapidly boost the use of renewable energy sources."

"Administration insiders privately refer to the planned volte-face as Mr Bush's 'Nixon goes to China moment,' recalling how the former president amazed the world after years of refusing to deal with its Communist regime. Hardline global warming sceptics, however, are already publicly attacking the plans."

And here's what we got:

America is on the verge of technological breakthroughs that will enable us to live our lives less dependent on oil. These technologies will help us become better stewards of the environment -- and they will help us to confront the serious challenge of global climate change.

Draw your own conclusion, I suppose. I think it's kind of like Iraq - too little, too late.

UPDATE: Not global warming, but too good to skip: a trip down memory lane with previous Bush State of the Union speeches.

Informed guts, Fred Hutchison, and known unknowns about climate

Over at Stoat, James Annan needles Steve Bloom for not automatically taking an alleged "informed layperson" position of guessing the most dangerous outcome is always the right one. This follows comments at Inkstain where John Fleck criticizes David Roberts for saying the layperson's informed gut feeling could be useful where the consensus position is silent.*

In the Inkstain comments, James criticizes Steve for supporting the idea that an intelligent lay person could think the high (dangerous) end is more likely:

Depends what you mean by high end versus low end, but if you assume that the presentation is intended to be an unbiased one according to the approximate consensus of a large number of experts then your “intelligent lay person” is simply claiming that these experts are all wrong, with no apparent justification for such an assertion.

If someone puts up some argument as to why the science is wrong, that’s another matter entirely. Most likely such a person would be a scientist with some demonstrated understanding of the area, although in principle anyone could do it.

James is criticizing Steve's overweighting the high end outcome against the consensus while implicitly supporting his own underweighting of the high end position.

So what am I, an allegedly intelligent layperson, supposed to think of this? My starting point is Fred Hutchison, the intellectual pioneer I once wrote about who believes he's disproven relativity, evolution, and global warming. First thing is, don't be Fred.

Second, if you're going to predict something that goes beyond the consensus, you better have darn good reasons, and here I think both James and Steve are distinguishable from Fred. James makes a scientific claim, and his referees didn't contradict him. Steve points out "known unknowns" expressed in more depth by Eli Rabett could make the high end more likely. The consensus doesn't speak about the unknowns since they're unknown, but if you don't count on luck, then it seems there's a decent chance that at least some of them will be increase the high end odds. The consensus position has also seemingly ignored James' argument. In both cases, and distinguished from Lindzen, Pielke Sr., and Fred Hutchison, these arguments seem reasonable and don't directly contradict the scientific consensus.

They do contradict each other though, and I have no basis myself to say which is right. I will argue this, though: there's nothing wrong with saying where your gut tells you the likely scientific conclusion will be, so long as you don't pretend that prediction is scientific. For example, I'm predicting that whenever the Fifth Assessment Report comes out (not the one due next month), it will say that it's more likely than not that AGW has already caused intensification of tropical storms. This goes beyond the consensus position that only discusses future warming.

Am I to be condemned for saying this? Someone can do better than condemn me for such foolishness, and bet me over it instead.

*I think Fleck overstates his criticism, btw, by implying that Roberts' position supports using your informed gut to contradict the consensus. Roberts would disagree with that, based on his full post.

What Al Gore says about his travels

William at Stoat doesn't like Al Gore's "jet-setting lifestyle," and my defense of Gore also didn't impress him. While looking for something else in the book version of An Inconvenient Truth, I found this on pages 136-139:

From Pole to Shining Pole

One can read field studies, talk to scientists, and scrutinize charts, but there's nothing like seeing things for yourself

...my own journey toward understanding the crisis has also involved a literal journey to many hard-to-reach places where global warming is in clear evidence....I have been drawn to these excursions not only because of my hnger to learn as much as I can about the climate crisis, but also in part, I think, because they take me outdoors again and give me a chance to see many truly fascinating places...

I read that as saying he's travelled not just for the cause of fighting global warming, but acknowledges some personal reasons.

...The reasons for my two trips under the Arctic ice cap was to learn more about global warming and to convince the U.S. Navy to release top-secret data to the environmental scientists specializing in the study of global warming's effects on Arctic ice...the Navy has long used a special upward-looking radar to measure the thickness of ice above the subs as they make their long journey...It was that five-decade record of ice thickness, marked "top secret", that I was after....At first the Navy strenuously resisted...I worked with the Navy...Bruce DeMars...and President Reagan's CIA director, Bob Gates, were the ones who came up with an innovative solution...the information proved to be even more significant and alarming than the scientists had expected....

Since every journey took me back home, I have returned each time with a deeper conviction that the solution to this crisis that I have traveled so far to understand must begin here at home.

So he accomplished something with his trips, he doesn't claim to travel purely for altruistic reasons, and he says it helps renew his conviction to do something.

I expect that if Gore had never cared about warming and did the same travels just as a lark, no one would care. For all I know, maybe he could do a better job of avoiding travel, but I think the criticism is mostly misplaced.

Notes on Stephen Schneider presentation, Jan. 17th at Stanford

My random notes, no particular order. Some of what he said was more or less off the record, so I'll skip that stuff.

On Kyoto:
-The most important accomplishment of Kyoto isn't controlling emissions, it's setting up an ongoing process for countries to work together to manage climate change.
-Instead of a cap-and-trade system, he proposed at Kyoto an income tax-and-transfer system that would transfer payments to poorer people who produce fewer emissions. He said he was laughed at.

The IPCC:
-People who would spout nonsense in large, crowded auditoriums always become reasonable in small conference rooms.
-The US used to act as a fair broker between OPEC nations and nations with exposed coastlines, but no longer.

US politics and climate change:
-Climatologists like him used to have a contentious and negative relationship with previous Republican administrations (Reagan and Bush I). With Bush II, there's no relationship at all - this administration doesn't even want to talk to climatologists.
-Pre-early 1980s, science wasn't polarized like it has been in the last two decades. It hasn't been polarized in California politics, and he's not sure why. (My comment - I can think of several reasons why California is different, at least on climate: no coal industry, little car industry, long involvement with air pollution regulation, and the collapse of the state Republican party in the mid-1990s.)
-He believes there's now a sea change in business attitudes and moderate Republican in the United States generally. He now talks to business people more than environmentalists.

Tools for reducing emissions:
-Conservation is the low-hanging fruit. California's requirement of energy standards for refrigerators, later copied by the Reagan Administration for the rest of the country, has reduced emissions more than all the installed photovoltaics in the country.
-Cautious supporter of underground carbon sequestration, never mentioned ocean sequestration.
-More cautious supporter of solar towers, which I'd never heard of (possibly referring to concepts like this).
-Skeptical of nuclear power - said that cost-effective ways to eliminate meltdowns and safely store nuclear waste are needed.
-Supports carbon offsets, especially in the form of technology transfer to industrializing countries.

Role of scientists:
-Can't answer value questions - is opening an Arctic shipping route more important than destroying Inuit/Eskimo culture? Politicians ask scientists to create cost-benefit analyses where it's not possible to do it.
-Shouldn't portray certainty where it doesn't exist - like giving a value to four decimal places when in reality they're not sure if the value is positive or negative.

His website for more info.

Neocons say Bush is hiding the actual troop-punt figure

In an interesting post at the Corner, Rich Lowry calls Bush a liar (okay, "low-ball"-er) for saying his punt of five brigades and one regiment to Iraq is only 21,000 troops. Lowry says the true figure to support that level is more like 30,000 troops (or more, he's not clear).

The apparent reason for lying is to conceal how much Bush is escalating the war. Considering that the increase is correctly being accused of being too little to have an effect, that seems a little strange. And the Bush Administration is dumb enough to short-change the number of logistical support troops.

As for Lowry's reliance on a decent military commander, the Bushies are still the bosses, and they will screw things up. And that commander who Lowry trusts says that 120,000 troops are needed in Baghdad. It's not going to work.

Kleiman digs further down a hole; I blast straight through Godwin's Law

The normally-excellent Mark Kleiman wrote a not-excellent post about geoengineering to combat global warming a while back. Kleiman felt it had promise and was being ignored. RealClimate did a much better discussion about the unproven and highly speculative geoengineering field earlier, noting this "ignored" subject was in the New York Times.

Kleiman then had to dismiss an attempt to ally him to a non-existent, "centrist" position between denialists and global-warming believers. While doing so, he says "there's been roughly no money to do the studies." He needs to back up that statement with some facts, or he's just digging the hole further down. There have in fact been studies of geoengineering, and there was even an experiment with seeding the ocean with iron to study (in part) whether micro-organisms can absorb carbon dioxide efficiently. The fact that these studies are being done suggests there's some level of funding for it.

These concepts are getting a moderate level of interest and moderate level of resource commitment, and that's what they deserve at this point. Should these studies look promising, then it's time to scale up the resources.

Where I want to blast through with my Godwin's Law violation is regarding the belief in modern magic - Technology! - as the easy solution to all problems. That's what Hitler thought. From the Wikipedia article on the V-2 rocket:

Dornberger had always wanted a mobile launch platform for the missiles, but Hitler pressed for the construction of massive underground blockhouses from which to launch them. According to his plans, V-2s should have arrived from a number of factories in a continuous stream on several redundant rail lines, and launching should have been almost continual.
....
Despite being one of the most advanced weapons in WWII, the V-2 was militarily ineffective. Its guidance systems were too primitive to hit specific targets, and its costs were approximately equivalent to four-engined bombers, which were more accurate (though only in a relative sense— see discussion in strategic bomber), had longer ranges, carried many more warheads, and were reusable. Moreover, it diverted resources from other, more effective programmes.

The desire for magical solutions is persistent in history, but it's not particularly helpful.

P.S. One more thing - Kleiman wrote in his second post:

If you really think that the Gulf Stream might stop running ten years from now, as Gore suggests in his movie (as I understand it, such a catastrophe isn't likely, but can't be ruled out)...

From the text facing page 150 of the book version of An Inconvenient Truth:

At Woods Hole Research Center, Dr. Ruth Curry is especially concerned about the rapid melting of ice in Greenland, which is adjacent to the area in which the [thermohaline] pump operates.

Recently, she observed: "The possibility of such extreme events precludes ruling out that disruption of the North Atlantic Conveyor in the 21st century could occuras a result of greenhouse warming."

Depending on the probability level one assigns to "precluding" catastrophe, Curry might represent an outlier, but there's no hint of anything happening in ten years.

Get out of Iraq so we can fix Afghanistan, redux

The meme is catching on, now at Talking Points Memo:

For Democrats opposed to the Iraq war who still fear a backlash for not being tough enough, advocating for more resources for the wars in Afghanistan and against global terrorism has the dual benefit of showing a stiff spine and pursuing the right policy.

Notes on going to improv class for the first time

I've wanted to try out doing improv theater for over ten years, despite not being a theater person and despite not being particularly dramatic or even extroverted. I finally went over the weekend, due to the encouragement and participation by my girlfriend.

It's pretty fun, and very different from anything else I've done. For some reason I had thought I might be good at it, but there wasn't any evidence for that during the 2-hour class.

It's a little disturbing that the easiest exercise was the Status Game - you pair up with somebody, and each of you get 3 playing cards that you're not allowed to look at. You start improvising a relationship, say two people fixing a car. Each of you put a card on your forehead whose value denotes your status level, you can't see your own card but you can see the other's, and you both switch to one of your other two cards at random intervals. You then improvise your status relationship based on the other person's card and on the signals you receive from the other person about your card's status level. It was really interesting, but we humans are disturbingly good at hierarchies.

I'm glad I did the class, but I'm not sure if I'll pursue it further.

Asking the wrong question about Al Gore's lifestyle

I disagree with criticism by Stoat and many others about Gore's "jet-setting" lifestyle, consisting of his riding commercial airplanes to give presentations about global warming, and occasional travel to exotic locations to see the effects of warming.

First and less important, Gore buys offsets to balance his carbon footprint, a fact noted by Stoat's commenters. Stoat makes a legitimate point that Gore might have addressed his lifestyle in his movie, but in turn, any critique of his lifestyle should also address his attempt to fix the problem.

There are questions about the effectiveness of the offsets, but it's unlikely that they're completely useless. I expect the market for voluntary purchases of emission credits will be driven by quality, and chintzy frauds will find themselves exposed by their competitors. Early adopters speed up this process. And yes, the whole world can't buy carbon offsets. I really wish that were the problem we face right now, though - we'd be in a much better shape if it were.

But more important than offsets is the better question to ask of Gore - whether he's doing the best possible job of reducing emissions overall (another issue noted by a Stoat commenter). I suppose that instead of travelling to presentations, Gore could stay home and do them by live teleconference feeds. He'd then get less than half the people to attend, and there would be no movie that has now been seen by millions worldwide. Overall, emissions would be worse.

Travelling to the South Pole is a somewhat closer question, but it has its justifications. One of the few things I remember from reading Earth in the Balance fifteen years ago was Gore's description of flying over the Amazon treetops in a tiny plane, watching clouds develop from the moisture of the rainforest. Instead of travelling there, he could've reproduced a conversation about the rainforest that he had with some professor, but bozos like me would retain no memory of that lesson. Eyewitness testimony is much more memorable.

Of course I've got my own biases, having travelled on two volunteer vacations to Montana and Alaska related to global warming. I certainly have less justification than Gore in travelling - millions of people won't learn about melting glaciers from me. I probably could have done more about global warming from home than by adding a tiny amount of data by lugging a GPS unit around glacier edges. But I'm imperfect, not a saint, and would not have spent my two-week vacation writing letters to the editor. Given the alternative, it was pretty good. Given how Al Gore chooses to spend his time compared to the vast majority of the elite, what he does is more than pretty good.

UPDATE: Stoat's response is here.

How they'll spin the Iraq troop punt, two years from now

I forget where I read that the best term for the "surge" isn't escalation but a troop "punt" - the idea is to punt responsibility for the inevitable drawdown to the next president. The problem for Republicans is handling the moderate chance that the next president will be Republican.

So my prediction - if a Democrat wins, the failure in Iraq only became inevitable because of the new president's mistakes in not sticking it out in Iraq. If a Republican wins, then blame for failure and withdrawal in 2009 lies squarely at the feet of the responsible party - the Iraqi people, for whom the Republicans gave every possible advantage. Republicans will oppose withdrawal in 2009 done by a Democratic president, and support it if done by a Republican.

While that's the plan, it's hardly a strong political position. McCain has no choice but to follow the troop punt plan, given his pro-Iraq war position generally, and pray for a weak Democratic nominee. Senator Brownback (R-Crazy) is trying to create a little space between himself and an implosion in Iraq that could take down McCain. It'll be interesting to see the choices of the other major Republican candidates.

And meanwhile, shades of Tora Bora again as the Bush punt takes troops out of Afghanistan who would be fighting a resurgent Taliban. I'm sticking with my framing argument for Democrats and sane Republicans - the strategy should be get out of Iraq so we can go fix Afghanistan. The exact opposite of Bush's plan.

P.S. Thought I'd add this chart - first figure is Iraqi police/military fatalities, and the second is Iraqi civilian fatalities. See any sign that Iraqi security forces will move to stop sectarian violence?

Jan-06	189	590
Feb-06	158	688
Mar-06	191	901
Apr-06	201	809
May-06	150	969
Jun-06	132	738
Jul-06	217	1063
Aug-06	233	2733
Sep-06	150	3389
Oct-06	224	1315
Nov-06	123	1741
Dec-06	123	1629

Update on betting over global warming - nothing. Don't read the rest of this post.

Nobody will bet. James Inhofe won't bet. Christopher Monckton won't bet. Tom McClintock, Lubos Motl, Glen Raphael, Onar An, Steve Hemphill, Jim Clarke, other denialist commenters at Prometheus, and others I've surely forgotten won't do honest bets that test the denialist-versus-consensus positions on global warming.

I've come up with a few more bet proposals. I'm especially proud of the offer that warming will accelerate relative to the post-1850 average, but no interest. Kind of makes you wonder.

(If you think you know someone who'll bet, please send him or her my way.)

Finally understanding why archaeologists like teeth so much

Just pointing out a cool post by Afarensis, showing and analyzing pictures of an Australopithecus skull, in comparison with modern ape skulls. The thing that clarifies to me more than anything else that Australo is not an ape, contrary to the creationists, is the teeth.

Pictures like these could be very helpful in fighting the battle against ignorance.

All quiet on Bush's conversion to global warming

Several months ago, there was a minor buzz in the blogosphere that Bush would do something dramatic about global warming in the 2007 State of the Union speech, a "Nixon goes to China" moment. Since then, nothing. You'd think we'd hear a little more by this point.

He's got to talk about something besides Iraq and his newly-minted hatred of Congressional budget earmarks. I'd welcome something dramatic about global warming. I'd actually welcome even just an outright acknowledgment of global warming. No sign of that happening so far though.

UPDATE: The rumors resurface here. Also, I saw somewhere a single admission by Bush in 2005 that human activities affect climate, but he sure hasn't been vocal about that.

December 2006 Iraq casualties

Avg. daily Coalition fatality rate during the last month: 3.74
(nearly all Americans, and excluding Iraqis)

Previous averages
November: 2.57
October: 3.52

Last year, December 2005: 2.19.

Overall daily average to date is 2.35. Total US dead as of today: 3003.


Iraqi monthly military and police fatalities: 123.

Previous military/police fatality rates
November: 123
October: 224

Last year, December 2005: 193.
Total Iraqi military dead: 5,937.

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


Iraqi monthly civilian fatalities: 1,629

Previous
November: 1,741
October: 1,315

Last year, December 2005: 344.

To-date civilian total, begining in March 2005: 22,345. 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: Four months in a row with American casualties above average, a first in the war. As before, Iraqi military fatality rates continue to be low, more evidence that they're sitting out the civil war. Also as before, civilian casualties remain terrible.

Caveat emptor for Alaska Airlines tickets

So here we are once again, sitting in San Jose Airport for hours, waiting for the Alaska Airlines flight to replace the one they cancelled once again. They seem to specialize in doing this for early a.m. flights. Last time we had to get up at 4:30 a.m., and the rescheduled flight didn't leave until past noon. This time it was 5:30 a.m., and the flight they found for us leaves at 6:30 p.m.

Thought I'd bore you all with this. Think twice before flying with them.

Uncertainty over certainty

Via Deltoid, Kevin Vranes and Andrew Dressler have differing views over whether scientists perceive themselves as having oversold certainty about global warming. The comment thread for Kevin's post is especially interesting.

I want to hear more evidence before I can believe this extends beyond the debate between the moderate warmers and those that think nearly-catastrophic, pre-year 2100 warming is possible.

My Komodo dragon deduction

News report:

Scientists report of two cases where female Komodo dragons have produced offspring without male contact...Tests revealed their eggs had developed without being fertilised by sperm - a process called parthenogenesis, the team wrote in the journal Nature... "Parthenogenesis has been described before in about 70 species of vertebrates, but it has always been regarded to be a very unusual, perhaps abnormal phenomenon..."But we have seen this in two separate, unrelated female Komodo dragons within a year, so this suggests maybe parthenogenesis is much more widespread and common than previously considered...Because of the genetics of this process, he added, her children would always be male.

and another:

Only about 4,000 dragons remain in the wild, of which 1,000 are female.

The news reports generally say it's unknown how commonly this occurs in the wild, but we have this information:

1. Komodo females can reproduce by parthenogenesis.

2. The viable reproduced eggs from this process are all males.

3. There are three times as many males as there are females in the wild.

My deduction: Komodo dragon parthenogenesis is common in the wild.

News you can use, only here at Backseat Driving.

Let's see the denialists spin this bit of insurance news

If denialists bother to acknowledge how concerned the insurance industry is with global warming, they say it's just a scam to justify increasing insurance premiums.

So now, this piece of news, from "Global Warming Ate My Insurance Policy":

Allstate plans to stop offering property insurance in nearly a dozen counties along the Chesapeake Bay starting in February.

The reason: the increased risk of hurricane damage due to rising ocean temperatures, possibly caused by global warming.

According to the Baltimore Sun, Allstate is part of a growing number of insurance companies that are refusing to cover hurricane-prone areas. The trend started in Florida, which sustained millions of dollars in damage from Hurricane Andrew, and is now moving up to our neck of the woods.

Nationwide Mutual Insurance decided to limit the amount of business it does in coastal areas two years ago and not do any new business in two ZIP codes near Ocean City, Md.

Hard to fit this action with the supposed motive of trying to justify rate increases. I expect the denialists will pirouette with the agility of Rush Limbaugh in a tutu, and come up with a new, completely different explanation: insurance companies are moving out for reasons of their own, and use global warming as a convenient excuse.

That doesn't really work though - why come up with an explanation that provides a justification for the competitors who remain in those areas to jack up the rates?

I should note it's not completely clear if the insurers are expressly relying on global warming concerns as their reason for butting out, but it seems likely. We can list inability to get insurance coverage as a likely present-day cost of global warming.

Restoring faith in democracy, or at least local democracy

I try to keep a pretty strict separation between my personal blog and my work, but in this case I will bring up a general observation that I've developed from my work. My job brings me in a lot of contact with local governments, giving me a chance to see local democracy in action. It can be really annoying and petty, and even have hints of corruption here and there, but the volunteerism can also be amazing.

This week I had a chance to see a city-organized volunteer task force present to the Palo Alto City Council their proposal for what the city could do to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions. Forget for a moment how effective it will be, I really don't know. I just remain impressed by the extent to which dozens of people are willing to put in total hundreds of hours of volunteer time on this one project, which is just an example of what people will do. The volunteerism also goes up a fair ways in the local government food chain. Many people are unaware that most local elected officials are either unpaid or paid so little as to hardly make a difference. The various commissions in even the smallest towns also consist of volunteers, usually trying to do the rirght thing.

I've generally believed the Winston Churchill quote that democracy is just the least bad of all alternatives for governance. And I have to acknowledge that for all the volunteer work I saw this week by local people, there is probably an equivalent amount of volunteer work elsewhere by people trying to keep evolution from being taught to schoolchildren. Still, I've got my little piece of evidence that the better side of human nature can ever so slightly outweigh the worst side, and democracy can actually sometimes be a half-decent method of governance.

Number-crunching the Congressional resolution authorizing the Iraq invasion

The rightwingers have wasted a lot of bandwidth arguing that democracy, not WMDs or Al Qaeda, was the real reason Congress gave Bush approval to attack Iraq. They seem less interested in democracy these days and more interested in strongmen, but it has been their main argument justifying the invasion. I thought I'd test it by number-crunching the words in the Whereas justificatory sections of the Congressional resolution authorizing force.

I've reprinted the Whereas part below with the democracy-related provisions in bold italics. The whole section runs at 1,259 words, and I count 143 words as discussing democracy. Eleven percent doesn't make democracy anything like the primary cause. If you read the resolution, it's primarily about non-existent WMDs, secondarily about non-existent ties to terrorism, and last about everything else.

The rightwingers are wrong about history, just as they've been wrong about Iraq.
---
Congressional Resolution:

Whereas in 1990 in response to Iraq's war of aggression against and illegal occupation of Kuwait, the United States forged a coalition of nations to liberate Kuwait and its people in order to defend the national security of the United States and enforce United Nations Security Council resolutions relating to Iraq;

Whereas after the liberation of Kuwait in 1991, Iraq entered into a United Nations sponsored cease-fire agreement pursuant to which Iraq unequivocally agreed, among other things, to eliminate its nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons programs and the means to deliver and develop them, and to end its support for international terrorism;

Whereas the efforts of international weapons inspectors, United States intelligence agencies, and Iraqi defectors led to the discovery that Iraq had large stockpiles of chemical weapons and a large scale biological weapons program, and that Iraq had an advanced nuclear weapons development program that was much closer to producing a nuclear weapon than intelligence reporting had previously indicated;

Whereas Iraq, in direct and flagrant violation of the cease-fire, attempted to thwart the efforts of weapons inspectors to identify and destroy Iraq's weapons of mass destruction stockpiles and development capabilities, which finally resulted in the withdrawal of inspectors from Iraq on October 31, 1998;

Whereas in 1998 Congress concluded that Iraq's continuing weapons of mass destruction programs threatened vital United States interests and international peace and security, declared Iraq to be in "material and unacceptable breach of its international obligations" and urged the President "to take appropriate action, in accordance with the Constitution and relevant laws of the United States, to bring Iraq into compliance with its international obligations" (Public Law 105-235);

Whereas Iraq both poses a continuing threat to the national security of the United States and international peace and security in the Persian Gulf region and remains in material and unacceptable breach of its international obligations by, among other things, continuing to possess and develop a significant chemical and biological weapons capability, actively seeking a nuclear weapons capability, and supporting and harboring terrorist organizations;

Whereas Iraq persists in violating resolutions of the United Nations Security Council by continuing to engage in brutal repression of its civilian population thereby threatening international peace and security in the region, by refusing to release, repatriate, or account for non-Iraqi citizens wrongfully detained by Iraq, including an American serviceman, and by failing to return property wrongfully seized by Iraq from Kuwait;

Whereas the current Iraqi regime has demonstrated its capability and willingness to use weapons of mass destruction against other nations and its own people;

Whereas the current Iraqi regime has demonstrated its continuing hostility toward, and willingness to attack, the United States, including by attempting in 1993 to assassinate former President Bush and by firing on many thousands of occasions on United States and Coalition Armed Forces engaged in enforcing the resolutions of the United Nations Security Council;

Whereas members of al Qaida, an organization bearing responsibility for attacks on the United States, its citizens, and interests, including the attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, are known to be in Iraq;

Whereas Iraq continues to aid and harbor other international terrorist organizations, including organizations that threaten the lives and safety of American citizens;

Whereas the attacks on the United States of September 11, 2001 underscored the gravity of the threat posed by the acquisition of weapons of mass destruction by international terrorist organizations;

Whereas Iraq's demonstrated capability and willingness to use weapons of mass destruction, the risk that the current Iraqi regime will either employ those weapons to launch a surprise attack against the United States or its Armed Forces or provide them to international terrorists who would do so, and the extreme magnitude of harm that would result to the United States and its citizens from such an attack, combine to justify action by the United States to defend itself;

Whereas United Nations Security Council Resolution 678 authorizes the use of all necessary means to enforce United Nations Security Council Resolution 660 and subsequent relevant resolutions and to compel Iraq to cease certain activities that threaten international peace and security, including the development of weapons of mass destruction and refusal or obstruction of United Nations weapons inspections in violation of United Nations Security Council Resolution 687, repression of its civilian population in violation of United Nations Security Council Resolution 688, and threatening its neighbors or United Nations operations in Iraq in violation of United Nations Security Council Resolution 949;

Whereas Congress in the Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq Resolution (Public Law 102-1) has authorized the President "to use United States Armed Forces pursuant to United Nations Security Council Resolution 678 (1990) in order to achieve implementation of Security Council Resolutions 660, 661, 662, 664, 665, 666, 667, 669, 670, 674, and 677";

Whereas in December 1991, Congress expressed its sense that it "supports the use of all necessary means to achieve the goals of United Nations Security Council Resolution 687 as being consistent with the Authorization of Use of Military Force Against Iraq Resolution (Public Law 102-1)," that Iraq's repression of its civilian population violates United Nations Security Council Resolution 688 and "constitutes a continuing threat to the peace, security, and stability of the Persian Gulf region," and that Congress, "supports the use of all necessary means to achieve the goals of United Nations Security Council Resolution 688";

Whereas the Iraq Liberation Act (Public Law 105-338) expressed the sense of Congress that it should be the policy of the United States to support efforts to remove from power the current Iraqi regime and promote the emergence of a democratic government to replace that regime;

Whereas on September 12, 2002, President Bush committed the United States to "work with the United Nations Security Council to meet our common challenge" posed by Iraq and to "work for the necessary resolutions," while also making clear that "the Security Council resolutions will be enforced, and the just demands of peace and security will be met, or action will be unavoidable";

Whereas the United States is determined to prosecute the war on terrorism and Iraq's ongoing support for international terrorist groups combined with its development of weapons of mass destruction in direct violation of its obligations under the 1991 cease-fire and other United Nations Security Council resolutions make clear that it is in the national security interests of the United States and in furtherance of the war on terrorism that all relevant United Nations Security Council resolutions be enforced, including through the use of force if necessary;

Whereas Congress has taken steps to pursue vigorously the war on terrorism through the provision of authorities and funding requested by the President to take the necessary actions against international terrorists and terrorist organizations, including those nations, organizations or persons who planned, authorized, committed or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001 or harbored such persons or organizations;

Whereas the President and Congress are determined to continue to take all appropriate actions against international terrorists and terrorist organizations, including those nations, organizations or persons who planned, authorized, committed or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored such persons or organizations;

Whereas the President has authority under the Constitution to take action in order to deter and prevent acts of international terrorism against the United States, as Congress recognized in the joint resolution on Authorization for Use of Military Force (Public Law 107-40); and

Whereas it is in the national security of the United States to restore international peace and security to the Persian Gulf region;

Now, therefore, be it resolved by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled,

SEC. 1. SHORT TITLE.

This joint resolution may be cited as the "Authorization for the Use of Military Force Against Iraq".

Tangled Bank #69

Tangled Bank #69: War on Christmas is up. My post, E.T. Smacks Down Pharyngula, is part of this TB.

Peiser's anti-global warming list is off to a bad start

Benny Peiser claimed that Naomi Oreskes' proof of a scientific consensus on global warming was wrong, but has since recanted part of that claim. Not all of it, though:

as I have stressed repeatedly, Oreskes entire argument is flawed as the whole ISI data set includes just 13 abstracts (less than 2%) that explicitly endorse what she has called the 'consensus view.'

He then posts the thousand-plus abstracts and invites us to "Check for yourself!"

Okay - here's the second abstract of the thousand abstracts he posted:

A stochastic approach is developed to estimate the probability of wet days, and the mean and standard deviation of local daily nonzero precipitation reflecting global climate change scenarios. The approach is based on the analysis of daily atmospheric circulation patterns (CPs) and the linkage between types of CPs and daily precipitation. Three CP data sets are used for the 500-hPa pressure field: 40-year historical, 10-year 1 X CO2, and 10-year 2 X CO2 scenarios obtained from the atmospheric general circulation model of the Canadian Climate Centre. CP types obtained by clustering techniques and their frequency distribution are similar for the three data sets. The linkage between CP types and precipitation considers an additional variable, the spatial average pressure height within each CP type. The difference in pressure heights among the three CP data sets makes it possible to estimate the effect of global change on local precipitation statistics. Under the dry continental climate of eastern Nebraska the effect of 2 X CO2 scenario on local precipitation regime is spatially variable and significant: the number of wet days slightly decreases but both the mean and variance of daily precipitation increase resulting in a more variable precipitation regime.

(emphasis added)

Somehow I doubt this abstract made his list of the thirteen that explicitly endorse a consensus position on climate change, but it makes my list.

I doubt there's any part of Peiser's study that's accurate.

An Inconvenient Bayesian Truth?

James Annan feels his (and Hargreaves') paper, which says that the high end of predicted temperature changes from global warming is unlikely for a doubling of CO2 levels, has been unjustly rejected for publication, possibly because it is not an alarmist result. Stoat agrees.

I don't have anything like the math chops to make my own judgments, but I accept James' statement that multiple referees may have had criticisms but didn't consider his work to be fundamentally flawed. Given that, and because Annan gets a result that eliminates possibilities no one else has eliminated, it seems pretty obvious the paper should be published. Let the debate then go on as to whether the paper's right.

Several points worth mentioning though - Annan thinks the resulting temperature increase is still enough to warrant emission reductions. His result doesn't support the next line of defense by fossil fuel industry - the "forget reductions, let's just adapt" nonsense. It also only deals with doubling CO2 - if we don't control emissions, they'll more than double and cause much more trouble. Eli Rabett also points out that what Don Rumsfeld would call "known unknowns" are mostly dangerous - at best, they won't make things worse, and at worst, they will. Those unknowns weren't (and couldn't be) included in Annan's result. Not a flaw in the paper, but another reason to do something about greenhouse gases.

And one of Annan's commenters notes that it's hard to draw conclusions about peer review of a single paper in terms of demonstrating institutional bias. The only conclusion Annan may be able to draw from being screwed over is that he's been screwed over. Hopefully, the paper will get published somewhere appropriate.

How to cook Tim Blair, Andrew Bolt, and Patrick Michaels

1. Place Blair, Bolt, and Michaels in a large, water-filled pot equipped with a step ladder they can use to escape at any time. Set initial water temperature at average levels.

BLAIR/BOLT/MICHAELS: We're quite comfortable, thank you!!

2. Increase temperature to an unambigous, new historic high.

BLAIR/BOLT/MICHAELS: No big deal! Not going to last!

MICHAELS: Want to bet it won't be this warm again?

3. Drop temperature back down, but still far above average.

BLAIR/BOLT/MICHAELS: See!! Vindication!! There is no potboiler warming! Not a problem!

4. Gradually increase temperature to near or above the historic high.

BLAIR/BOLT/MICHAELS: We deny it's above the historic high! Deny it!

MICHAELS: And, uh, the bet offer is withdrawn.

5. Keep temperature very high, but a tiny bit below Step 4.

BLAIR/BOLT/MICHAELS: The science behind potboiler warming is bogus, and we'll stay here for as long as it takes to prove it!

BLAIR: I'm not feeling hot - crank it up, people!

BOLT: Me neither!

6. Repeat Steps 2 through 5 until done. Don't worry, they won't use the step ladder to get out. Process will be sped by the fact that their brains were already cooked.

Please, please, please, may some denialist point out to me that we haven't yet repeated Step 2 - just be prepared to put your money where your mouth is about what will happen in the near future.

(Hat tip: Deltoid.)

UPDATE: From RealClimate:

Most bizarre new contrarian claim:
"Global warming stopped in 1998".
By the same logic, it also stopped in 1973, 1983, and 1990 (only it didn't)

So we have repeated steps 2 through 5, multiple times.

Global warming's effects on the space program

Global warming is good for space program because it thins the outer atmosphere, says the usually-reliable Planetary Society blog. Thinning the outer atmosphere reduces the drag it has on orbiting satellites, which means they need to use less fuel to prolong their lifespan.

Global warming is bad for space program because it thins the outer atmosphere, says a Reuters report on the same study referenced by the Planetary Society. Thinning the outer atmosphere reduces the drag it has on orbiting space junk, meaning the junk will stay in space longer, threatening satellites and astronauts, before burning up (they do note the positive benefits on satellites).

Neither of these two sources tries to weigh the positive against the negative, but my guess is like most aspects of climate change, the negative outweighs the positive. The solution to atmospheric drag on satellites is to provide more fuel. It has a cost, but no comparable solution presents itself to the problem of space junk, a problem that's expected to get signficantly worse.

Volokh Correction #17

Outsourced to Tim Lambert via a lame, not-much-of-a-retraction by Jonathan Adler, regarding the claim that the IPCC is reducing its estimate of future global warming. Adler could try just admitting the report he referenced was completely wrong.

The Republican War on Science, and Imperial Life in the Emerald City

I finally had the time to finish Chris Mooney's book, The Republican War on Science. Like everyone says, it's a very important and useful book. While it may be a little inappropriate to compare RWOS to a book I've only heard about but haven't read, Imperial Life in the Emerald City, I was stuck with how both books reference the Bush Administration's insistence on ideological screening of people for job positions that should be apolitical.

I thought the Bush insistence on "conservatives only" for Iraq reconstruction jobs had a clear cause. They refused to allow companies from countries that opposed the Iraq war to compete for reconstruction contracts, and they fought the UN's initial efforts to get involved in Iraq, all because they felt that spoils belong to the winner. It was conservatives who had the brilliant idea of invading Iraq, so non-conservatives had no right to participate in the "spoils" of reconstructing it.

Same thing with science. Conservatives won the 2000 and 2004 election, and so to them belong the spoils of manipulating science. The alternative idea, that they were elected to do the job of serving the voters and their responsibility is to do the best job possible, seems to have escaped them.

A few other thoughts on Mooney's book:

He mentions Dr. David Hager's abuse of science while leaving out Hager's personal scandals. Mooney may be above mentioning that, but I'm not.

On page 253 of the paperback edition, Mooney writes that given the evidence, "we can infer that the Bush Adminstration almost certainly had politicized science to an unprecedented degree." While I think he's right, it's a hard statement to prove, going beyond a bunch of anecdotal observations to actual conclusions. After all, Roger Pielke Jr. put together a bunch of anecdotes saying the media and others overexaggerated the threat from global warming. Did he prove his case?

I think Mooney's best evidence is the number of prominent Republicans he found who criticize the Bush war on science. His second best piece though is on page 255, where he found that both Bush and Clinton took a similar position on an issue that wasn't supported by the science (exchanging needles with drug addicts to prevent HIV). Bush lied about the science, Clinton didn't. Anecdotes like that are powerful evidence, especially in the absence of counter-examples.

Mooney says early in the book that he's not considering funding issues. I would disagree with that decision - if an administration is abusing some science while generously funding science in general, it might be hard to say that it's worse than another administration that only starved science. Still, abusing science is done either for religious or business reasons, and either one involves important societal issues. From global warming to women's reproductive choices, the Bush Administration is screwing up important science, and their general support for science funding doesn't overcome that.

Finally, my one stylistic criticism is that as a visual learner, I could use something eye-catching to reinforce the text - graphics, charts, tables, or even a list of the many repeat characters and their roles. Mooney has another book coming out, Storm World, covering a subject ideal for visual aids, so hopefully we'll get some eye candy inthat book.

Tangled Bank #68

Tangled Bank #68 is up - my post on the Supreme Court's discussion of alleged uncertainty over the science of global warming is part of Tangled Bank, where it says "It was also crucial to understand the uncertainties of the weather [Backseat Driving]."

Computer-printed paper ballots are the solution to electronic voting

A federal election commission rejected requiring a paper record of electronic voting on the grounds that it's too much work:

"They should be longer-range goals," said Britain Williams of the National Association of Election Directors. "You are talking about basically a reinstallation of the entire voting system hardware."

Yes, we are. You all screwed it up, so go make it right. And paper trails create problems of their own with privacy and paper jams. The best solution I heard was on NPR's Science Friday - don't have computers print out a paper trail but rather an actual paper ballot that will be used to register a vote. This combines all the advantage of clarity and access for disabled voters that computers have, with the voter security and robustness of a paper ballot system. And if the computers or printers fail, voters just fill out the ballot by hand.

Six years of embarassing elections are more than enough. Let's fix this.

The solution to a collective action problem is to stop people from doing anything about it...

...according to the honorable Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia. I had pointed out this excerpt from last Wednesday's Supreme Court hearing in an earlier post:

JUSTICE SCALIA: I presume the problem that they have in mind is that we have nothing to give in international negotiations. If we have done everything we can to reduce CO2, you know, what deal do we make with foreign nations? What incentive do they have to go along with us?
MR. GARRE: That's right, Your Honor. We've got a unique collective action problem, and yet, the reaction experience of the agency in dealing with the issue of stratospheric ozone depletion rate had precisely that situation, where the U.S. initially took steps. The stratospheric ozone depletion worsened, and it was only after international agreement was reached in the Montreal Protocol that a global solution to the problem was reached.

It's outrageous given the context, which I suspect Scalia knows nothing about. The United States has been a millstone around the neck of the Kyoto and post-Kyoto efforts to fight global warming. Not only has the Bush Administration done what it could to keep other countries from ratifying Kyoto, the US unwillingness to do anything about global warming has limited the political will in other nations to do something.

By this blighted standard, the rest of the developed world has acted immorally by adopting Kyoto without requiring binding reductions from Third World countries, and only the virtuous
American decision to pump unlimited amounts of CO2 in the atmosphere makes a global limit on CO2 still achievable.

Scalia is unbelievable. The only comparison is Tim Blair, who also thinks that not doing your part is the thing to do.

November 2006 Iraq casualties

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

Previous averages
October: 3.52
September: 2.53

Last year, November 2005: 2.87.

Overall daily average to date is 2.32. Total US dead as of today: 2900.


Iraqi monthly military and police fatalities: 123.

Previous military/police fatality rates
October: 224
September: 150

Last year, November 2005: 176.
Total Iraqi military dead: 5823.

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


Iraqi monthly civilian fatalities: 1,741

Previous
October: 1,315
September: 3,389

Last year, November 2005: 592.

To-date civilian total starting from March 2005: 20,754. 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: Three bad months in a row for the Coalition is enough to identify a trend. As before, Iraqi military fatality rates continue to be low, more proof they're sitting out the civil war. Also as before, civilian casualties remain terrible.