Obama re-reverses on space policy, and I'm glad

In February 2008, Obama was expressing doubt about the Bush plan for manned spaceflight that would replace the Space Shuttle, the Constellation/Ares/Orion program, and suggested delaying it in order to pay for increased funding for science and education.  Some months after that, competing with Hillary Clinton and then John McCain for Florida voters, he reversed and supported the Bush plan, with all the money it entailed in Florida expenditures (and Alabama and Texas, but they weren't in play).

Now Obama has re-reversed and even gone beyond where he was before, cancelling the over-budget and delayed Constellation program entirely.  He didn't kill the manned space program (although that would've been fine with me), but instead will contract out the "space taxi" business to get astronauts to the space station, extend the station's life from 2016 to 2020, and redirect money to research on more advanced heavy lift vehicles that could ultimately get humans out of low-Earth orbit, although not in this decade.

To get the best details currently available, read the pdf (especially page 4).  None of this is guaranteed, by the way, because existing programs will use their pet congressional reps to fight back.  Killing Constellation is good.  Extending the space station lifespan is bad but probably necessary politically and diplomatically.  The slight increase in space station budget to do some actual science is good but only if we're keeping the station.  Switching parts of the manned program to advanced research creates some real-world utility.  There's also $3b of that funding for robotic exploration as precursors of manned flight, which could be a good way to sneak actual science into otherwise wasted money.

Science does well, with earth climate observation getting funding it needs, as does research on green aviation.  Rightwingers who deny climate change are attacking the funding for climate science, without noticing the contradiction in their attempt to shut down science that they claim will ultimately vindicate them.

They say they're fully funding the Hubble replacement, Juno robotic mission to Jupiter, and already-planned future missions to Mars and Europa.  Nothing too surprising - robotic scientific missions have done well (at least in comparison to the manned program).

Then there's my hobbyhorse, the Terrestrial Planet Finder space telescope whose budget was zeroed out by the Bushies in order to fund the manned space program.  Because this mission could detect atmospheric spectra on habitable planets on other starts that could provide pretty-conclusive evidence of life elsewhere.  So just a potential, partial answer to life, the universe, and everything.

Unfortunately, no answer as to whether TPF is coming back.  Page 16 of that pdf I linked to says a new decadal survey will determine astrophysics priorities, which will apparently be released in mid-2010.

We'll see what happens.  Meanwhile, I plan to revolutionize everything with a Facebook group I just established called "Launch the Terrestrial Planet Finder Space Telescope!"  I'm sure this will make it a lock in the future budget.

Pachauri conflict of interest charge pretty murky at this point

The forces of inaction on climate change are gunning for the head of the IPCC, Rajendra Pachauri, to resign.  I doubt it has much anything to do with him and everything to do with pretending the IPCC is a mess and the science is discredited.  The next logical step would be to demand a complete reworking of the process of compiling Assessment Reports and a several-year delay added to the schedule for the next Report. 

The effort to try and take him down has little to do with whether he's done a good job, which in reality is a bit of an open question.  I actually think his aggressive reaction to criticism has been mistaken, resulting in a climbdown on the-minor-but-embarrassing mistake over the rate of Himalayan glacier melt (and some more dodgy citation is alleged for the IPCC Working Group II report on impacts here, which would also be embarrassing if true). As for Pachauri's main job of running the IPCC, however, I have no idea if it's run well or not.

Instead of focusing on something real, the inactivists first blamed him for the partial mistake about Himalayan glaciers and demanded he resign, which is just stupid.  Slightly more realistic is pointing to his paid positions with some business and research institute organizations, and to contracts between those organizations and a nonprofit energy institute (TERI) that Pachauri runs, saying that constituted a conflict of interest.  Pachauri responds that all money goes to his non-profit and not to him (he does get paid by TERI, however).

There's a lot of heat but little light.  Roger Pielke Jr. waves some UN and WMO conflict policies for employees (Pachauri isn't an employee, he's unpaid) and says "Since we do not have details on Dr. Pachauri's activities or compensation from these various organizations and businesses, it is impossible to tell what, if any, conflicts actually may exist."  Roger tried again later, arguing "IPCC Chairman Pachauri was making public comments on a dispute involving factual claims by the IPCC at the same time that he was negotiating for funding to his home institution justified by those very same claims."

Worth mentioning that the dispute, responding to criticism by the Indian government of the IPCC, only partially concerned the rate of Himalayan glacier melt.  Also that the funding grant for TERI (no indication given that Pachauri was involved in negotiation, although he did make a favorable statement after it was given) was not principally about the mistaken claim that glaciers would melt by 2035.  And that no one disputes that the reason for the grant - responding to melting Himalayan glaciers - is still valid despite the false 2035 claim.  So Roger's overstating things, but what else is new.

This isn't nothing, though.  I would say first, Pachauri would have a conflict of interest at the various boards he serves on if he doesn't recuse himself from decisions between that board and his nonprofit.  I haven't seen this alleged, though, and even if it were, the conflict is at the board level and not at the IPCC.

At the IPCC, there's little question that its work can affect the future of the energy research institute that pays Pachauri a salary.  This is the real issue that Roger seems to stumble around.  The problem is that virtually every high level player in the IPCC will have a similar issue of having fingers in multiple pots that could be affected by their volunteer work at the IPCC.  That problem can't be totally fixed for everyone, but it should be fixable at the highest level.  The IPCC Chair and maybe a few other top officials should be generously-paid executive officers, and that should be their exclusive job, with the same conflict of interest rules that apply to top UN officials.

Reviewing The Greatest Show on Earth: read The Ancestor's Tale instead

I'm a big fan of Richard Dawkins' science writing (haven't been interested in his atheism stuff). His latest book, The Greatest Show on Earth, unfortunately doesn't appeal that much to me, and I can only think of a limited audience who should read it. Science and evolution afficianados should instead read The Ancestor's Tale or any other Dawkins book, instead.

I guess he felt he hadn't comprehensively addressed the evidence for evolution.  You can't - Darwin had compiled too much evidence to do the comprehensive job he had planned, and it's increased exponentially ever since.  If you're trying to provide a tool useful for arguments with creationists, though, I wouldn't write a narrative book at all - I'd create a manual, something that allows easy referencing and searching for various arguments, maybe based on Panda's Thumb or the countless other resources out there.  Dawkins kept recommending Jerry Coyne's book, Why Evolution Is True, and maybe that's a better book for the evolution champions.

The book would be an excellent read for someone who actually takes creationism seriously, but I doubt they'll read it (or this blog post).  It might also be good for Dawkins fans who've read everything else from him and want something new - he's said his next book will be a children's book on myths, so the good science will be a while before we see it again.  Everyone else should find more interesting content in Ancestor's Tale.

UPDATE:  maybe worth adding that Greatest Show has received pretty good reviews, so most people disagree with me.



Bonus blogging:  why in heck did John Kerry have to hire a conservative that was spreading, in a stupid or deceptive fashion, extensive pro-torture propaganda?  If he wanted to reach out with an affirmative action hire of a conservative, there are plenty out there still who don't believe in torture.

Commenting fixed, mostly, I hope

Haloscan/Echo is out, Blogger comments are in.  Please let me know if you're trying to retrieve old comments.  Still can't figure out how to get posts to show the number of comments so people can figure out if there are any new ones, but I'll keep trying.

Apologies from the management:

Climate betting baseline set

The always-pleasant David Evans emailed me a little while back, reminding me that we now have the baseline measurement sent for our bet of $6,000 - $9,000 that temps will increase at reasonably rapid rate. The bet we made in 2007 was for the increase above the five-year GISS average for 2007, which wasn't established until the end of 2009. It's .55C above the 1951-1980 baseline, and the five years include the three highest temps in the 130-year GISS record. Nothing especially weird happened in those years - fairly typical/slightly warm from my perspective, and just what you'd expect prior to a slowdown in warming from David's perspective.

For those who haven't made it their business to memorize the bet details, they're here:

We have three bet periods -10, 15, and 20 years - and two bets for each period - an even-odds bet and a 2:1 bet in David's favor. The even-odds bet centers around a temperature increase rate of 0.15C/decade with a 0.02 void margin on either side (bet voids if temps increase between .13 and .17C/decade). The 2:1 bet centers on 0.1C/decade with a .01 void margin. Even-odds bets are for $1,000 each, and the 2:1 bets increase over time, with me betting $1,000, $2,000 and $3,000, and David betting half that. My exposure is $9,000; his is $6,000.

Temps from 2010 through 2014 won't directly affect who wins, although they'll give an increasingly good idea of who's likely to win (note though that because 2005 was the GISS record and included in the 2007 five-year average, the 2008 average will only be higher if 2010 is a new record). With the baseline established, our two bets each for 2017, 2022, and 2027 averages are centered at .6C and .7C above the 1951-1980 period for 2017; at .65C and .775C for 2022; lastly at .75C and .85C for 2027.

The other (and original) significant-money bet was between James Annan and two Russian cosmologists, where the Russians predict cooling. I thought I'd look at how it's going - a slightly different data set, 6-year average, baseline set at 1998-2003 and compared to 2012-2017. I'll just be lazy and compare to the 5-year GISS averages in the links above. 1998-2002 is .45C above baseline, and latest five-year average, 2005-2009, is .55C. For the Russians to win, they need temps to start declining soon, and fairly dramatically. James can start making plans for his $10,000, I think.

And there's William "Always the Bridesmaid, Never the Bride" Connolley who hasn't been able to arrange any big bets on warming. Lots of small ones though, including one against me for $10 that he won but I think he's forgotten about, and I'm not going to remind him.

I've had a couple of nibbles for bets, but nothing's worked out - I could probably try a little harder to make them work, and might try and revive some prospects.

Not much else on climate betting that I've heard. Nate at Fivethirtyeight.com wrote in favor of climate prediction market, and argued it's unlikely to be manipulated by people placing bad bets in order to support their political arguments. I agree, on the basis that it wouldn't take too much money against us to tap out me, William, and the few others who are out there taunting denialists to put their money where their mouths are, but no one's done it. Too bad.

UPDATE:  Crandles points out in the comments that he won $1300 betting on 2009 being one of the five warmest years at Intrade.  Some other interesting bet options there, maybe.....

Avatar story line is cliched but accurate (mostly)

The basic story in Avatar is that a technologically-advanced civilization intrudes upon another with less technology, and bad things happen to the latter group. Rightwingers see the obvious parallels to Native Americans, and this makes them oh so angry.

One can critique the film's plot as not being especially deep, but that doesn't make it wrong. If it's at all helpful to the wingers, this kind of thing happened and is happening all the time. Instead of white Europeans and Native Americans, I saw a similar process in Burma between the ethnic Burmese military junta and the minority/hill tribe Karen people where the junta wanted to run a natural gas pipeline to Thailand, (with French and American oil company help). Jared Diamond's book Collapse discussed how gun-wielding Maori decimated the hunters of Chatham Island.*

I'll make these critiques of the Avatar story line in terms of accurately depicting our world:

• The natives remained completely united. That never happens. The colonizer always finds allies among the natives, exploiting existing rivalries and tensions.

• The natives don't want anything the moderns have. That's not true, although they might be better off without much of it - alcohol, opium, shiny beads, guns, and saggy pants.

• The natives are completely good. Also untrue - instead of bad guys versus good guys, the real world is more like bad guys versus less-bad guys. The distant or maybe not-so-distant ancestors of the natives almost always did what's being done to them, taking the land from someone who was there first. I doubt there's any human society that didn't do bad things on a regular basis to themselves or their neighbors.

None of the above excuses the worse sins of the invaders, of course.

We could say these aren't flaws in Avatar because the natives aren't human, but then it's also not much of an allegory for this world.


*Wiki does claim the Chatham Islanders were nonviolent, which strikes me as complete bull.

A negotiated solution will eliminate any need for violence in Avatar sequels (spoilers)

(Avatar plot spoilers below)

Readers will be relieved to learn that the violent action sequences in Avatar do not need to be repeated in the two sequels that Cameron's been talking about.

It seems pretty obvious that as Cameron plans it, the humans will still want the unobtainium, and won't be caught by surprise as was the case this time with a small human expeditionary force facing the globally-united Na'vi. So the sequel will be a massive human attack on Pandora - call it, say, The Humans Strike Back. It will end somewhat inconclusively, until the third movie where the Na'vi leave their world, get into an outer space battle, unexpectedly convert one of the bad guys to their side and then win. Call that one the Return of the Na'vi.

That sequence is all unnecessary. The key issue is that Hometree, which formerly blocked human access to the largest amount of unobtainium in hundreds of miles, is now gone. Obviously it would be better to have been saved - riches of Pandora are at the surface and all that -but I've learned in my environmental career that once you've lost, you move on.

So rather than fight each other, I can provide a completely different plot for the two sequels. In the first sequel, we have a Star Trek Next Generation-style plot, where everyone sits around a table and conducts dramatic negotiations that if they break down, could lead to violence. Fortunately, Pi'kart of the Na'vi realizes that they can let the humans mine the unobtainium where Hometree used to be, without further harm to the moon's environment. They also allow mining at other already-disturbed sites, and they offer cooperation on learning about the planet's biological wealth. Everybody wins!!

In the last movie, the Na'vi return to their hunter-gatherer lifestyle. We've already seen the hunting side, so this movie should focus on gathering. I suggest two-and-a-half hours of watching the Na'vi dig out blueish tubers from the ground. The climax would be a fifteen-minute struggle to pull out an especially-tough tuber, with a team effort victoriously resulting in a slow-mo explosion of dirt as the tuber is finally wrenched out.

No need for Cameron or the fans to thank me for the plot fixes.

News results for Guantanamo suicides and the IPCC glacier mistake

There's some extremely disturbing evidence that the three simultaneous "suicides" at Guantanamo actually died during a torture session and were subject to an ongoing coverup. Google News returns 367 hits for this subject. Nothing in the New York Times; Washington Post carried the AP news report.

A single paragraph in the 3,000 page International Panel on Climate Change report has been shown to be wrong, correctly stating that the Himalayan glaciers are melting but incorrectly stating that they will be gone by 2035. This claim was never highlighted or given much importance by the IPCC. Google News returns 1,789 hits on this mistake. Feel free to draw your own conclusions about the comparison of news report numbers.

Regarding the IPCC mistake, Tim Lambert, John Nielsen-Gannon, and William Connolley have written the most interesting stuff. I think Tim shows this was an unusual mistake that was almost caught in the draft review process - I find that somewhat reassuring as just a screwup instead of an accepted procedure. From William's comments though, the section of the IPCC dealing with impacts needs to improve its game.

My unsupported speculation is that the mistake is tied into some internal, office-politics conflict among Indian climate scientists, and that has something to do with the sloppy work in this particular instance.

Democrats are blowing it, and they need to learn from Bush

I promise to let go of this soon, but I can't handle the Democratic foolishness.

While the Republicans had terrible policies with horrible results that earned them their current, out-of-power position, they were good at getting those policies enacted. So how did the Bush Administration react when the entire national electorate kicked Republican butts out? They offered one sacrifice - Rumsfeld - and then doubled down on their policies with the surge in 2007. And while the surge was a worse policy choice than initiating a drawdown as Bush agreed to in 2008, it was better than the status quo and somewhat improved Republican electoral outcomes in 2008.

Now we have one Democratic state rejecting one Democratic candidate who ran a lousy campaign, where the only clear fact is that the electorate supports the in-state version of health care that's planned nationally, and the Ds can't decide what to do.

The policy choices seem to me to be either pass the Senate bill unchanged combined with a possibility of improvements in separate legislation, or alternatively to work for a slight possibility of a few piecemeal reforms instead. How anyone can hesitate in light of those choices is beyond me.

The politics seem clear too - the Democrats need this achievement to have something to run on in November.

I'm not the political expert - maybe I'm missing something. But the Obama Administration, the Democratic party leadership, and any Democratic congressional member who doesn't push for it, all seem to me to be screwing it up.

There's some quote about snatching defeat from the jaws of victory that Lincoln might have said (I couldn't confirm). I think the Democrats are half way to doing it now. I still hope and think they can fix it.

What to learn from Edwards' idiocy

So John Edwards finally admitted paternity of his mistress' child, after previously saying the affair ended too soon for him to be the father. I assume he lied about paternity because he was still lying to his wife about the length of the affair. The Edwards are now separated.

I could care less about him, but the story's relevant to our political discourse and our role of trying to identify and support the best possible candidates. Ezra Klein says gossipy campaign books like Game Change are useless because the incentives are to suck up to winning candidates and kick the losers - standard Village journalism practice.

Understood, but when I read the chapter on Edwards, I felt like even more of a fool for being a supporter than I had previously. On the other hand, the chapter seems likely to be mostly correct, and quite a contrast to the political reporting during the campaign. All you heard during the campaign was how emotionally dependent John was on Elizabeth, and worries that her potential death from cancer might leave him emotionally dysfunctional in office. I'm not sure what should have tipped me off during the campaign and kept me from being a supporter, aside from the fact that establishment Democrats didn't like him (but I didn't trust them), and not-very-concrete arguments that he was superficial.

The book is useful in telling us how useless the campaign reporting was. What to do about that information isn't clear, though.

So much for the left-wing strategy of waiting for better bills on climate and health

(IMPORTANT UPDATE: the obvious strategy some bloggers are announcing - call up your Representative, if the Rep is Democratic, and tell him or her to pass the Senate health care bill as is.)


With Democrats now having lost their 60th seat in the Senate, we can assess how likely it is that left-wing hopes will come true in 2010 for better bills on climate change and health care. The political left isn't strong enough to be solely responsible for the slow work on legislation, but they played their role.

The right wing view is that the electoral defeats for Democrats are a repudiation of the Democratic platform. The real world view is that the Democratic platform hasn't been tried, and the electorate is repudiating inaction.

Democrats can complete the repeat of 1994 by not passing health care, or they make use of their more limited options they have now, like the House passing the Senate bill without alteration, and moving forward. Similarly, there are a few Republican Senators who don't want to be on the wrong side of history regarding climate change, so there's still a chance there, but on their terms.

Anyone on the left who thinks the 2010 elections will allow for better legislation in 2011 needs to have their head examined. The only semi-logical reason for opposing existing climate and health care legislation is to believe they make things worse than the status quo. It's a completely wrong belief, but that's how far you'd have to go to make any sense out of the opposition from the left.

Finally, for any half-way significant bloggers who wanted the Democrat to win the seat and who felt like getting in recriminations and negative public perceptions in the hours and days before the election finished: you're part of the problem. You should fight for victory when it's possible rather than exude a sense of defeat. Now, on the other hand, is the time for recriminations.

UPDATE: what I should've mentioned is that the moderate-to-conservative Dems are the most at fault, and they're the ones who will lose their seats if the public judges the Democrats to be failures. From their incorrect perspective, there's a risk if Congress passes something too strong, but I think there's even more of a risk if Congress does nothing. They're being idiots.

Racial bias on Haiti from the right and the left

Rush Limbaugh should be getting more grief over this comment telling people not to help Hait than anything else he's said:

There are people who have been trying to save Haiti, just as we're trying to save Africa. You just can't keep throwing money at it cause the dictatorships there just take it all.

It seems pretty clear that Rush is for no logical reason grouping Africa together with Haiti only because they're both predominantly black. Rush says Haiti and "Africa" are dictatorships, despite the fact that Haiti isn't and the majority of sub-Saharan Africa isn't. Rush says their economies are hopeless, despite the fact that Haiti had a fragile economic recovery going before the quake, and sub-Saharan Africa has done well as a group for a decade. The implication Rush leaves for his listeners is that black people can't govern themselves and that attempts to help them are hopeless. This is the most prominent conservative voice in the country, with the possible exception of Sarah Palin.

Then there's Pat Robertson, who thinks a pact with Satan is how Haitian slaves overthrew French slave owners. Anne Laurie at Balloon Juice nails it:

Forget the religious disagreement—the “Curse of the Revolution” fantasy has been passed down from bigot to bigot for two hundred years and counting because it’s simply impossible for them to believe that a bunch of African savages and half-breeds could win an actual war against the majesty, however tattered, of the extremely white French nobility.

Only Satan can explain how blacks can win a war against whites, apparently. And btw, God supports Christian slaveowners when non-Christian slaves fight for freedom.

These blatant examples of bias aren't the end of the story. I should start by repeating what I've said before that racial bias is so widespread in society/the planet, that saying X statement is prejudiced doesn't mean the maker of X statement is any more biased than anyone else, just that the maker ought to consider the implications.

Anyway, here is the "We didn't break it, but we might own it" Haiti post coming from Talking Points Memo:

As of today, for all practical purposes, Haiti is an American Protectorate. Its own government, to the extent it ever functioned, has now collapsed....Other states and international institutions will contribute aid and resources. Perhaps the UN will expand its current mission in the nation, and assume formal responsibility. But the only nation capable of keeping Haiti from absolute collapse is the United States. Irrespective of the bodies through which we choose to work, the responsibility is ultimately ours.
....
How this response unfolds, how we structure our responsibilities, whether we choose to assume them alone or through international institutions, what sort of future we design for Haiti - these are vital questions. Ultimately, they are also political questions that will be decided by political actors. And the answers they provide will shape and constrain a wide array of seemingly unrelated policies.

(Emphasis added.)

Haiti is not Iraq - it had and it continues to have an elected government, and it's up to Haitians to design their future. We have a responsibility as fellow human beings to help, but we're not in charge.

I recognize that the government, fragile even before the quake and even more so now, can't provide the normal level of direction. But thinking we can or even should control things is the wrong approach.

More broadly, the sense that "these people weren't running things and need us to run it for them" that I get from the argument has some disturbing implications. I'm sure they're unintentional, but they need to be examined.



Bonus unrelated blogging: Ed Yong might be my favorite general science blogger for combining quality and quantity (with libertarian/conservative/atheist science blogger Razib Khan a close second). Yong's piece on metabolic rates of social insect colonies as superorganisms is a great example of his stuff. I'd known the general idea that bigger animals have slower metabolism, which I ascribed to surface to volume ratios. I can throw out that idea now - it must have something to do with ecological efficiency, and not just simple physiology. That's pretty interesting.

One image showing why short time periods give rotten conclusions on climate

The above image, copystolen from WoodforTrees.org, shows why the denialist technique of cherry-picking short time periods to find a cooling trend is so screwed up. The red line connects measurements by satellite, adjusted by the UAH, for the lower troposphere. The blue line uses that data to construct a trend line from 2001 to 2009, and voila, gives us a downward, cooling trend that skeptics latch onto. Same data except adding a single year, so it's from 2000 to 2009, gives the warming-trending green line.

Too short a timeline give noisy results. Too long a timeline, say from 55 million years ago to today will show a cooling trend, but miss the fact what's happening in the last century. Finding something at a realistic time frame is what counts, and cherry picking short timelines whose results change in a single year isn't a realistic frame.

UPDATE: Tamino provides a sophisticated version of the same argument here.



Bonus blogging: This statement, "“tundra as we imagine it today will largely be gone throughout the Arctic. It may take longer than 50 or even 100 years, but the inevitable direction is toward boreal forest or something like it,” strikes me as unlikely (I was proud of myself for recognizing the picture of tundra in the middle of the post is from Denali Park, though). Much of the tundra is many hundreds of miles north of boreal forest, or up at elevation, or both. It's not going away.

Easy-but-not-cheap 72-hour emergency kits for home, with purchase links

It's hardly responsive to the Haiti quake, but I've been meaning to write about the earthquake/emergency kits I put together for Christmas presents. At least it's a way to lessen the burden on emergency services should something similar happen here.

There are nine members of my wife's family in the Bay Area, and when I found out no one had the 72-hour emergency kits we're supposed to have, I put them together as presents (in-laws loved the kits, too). My emphases were making them easy for me to put together, easy for people with no camping experience to use, and ones that would last as many years as possible without needing replacement or maintenance. In return I was willing to pay more, be more bulky than the minimum possible, and have limited control over food selection.

72-Hour Home kits:

• Water in plastic jugs, 3 gallons/person
• Iodine water-purification pills in case water goes bad (after 6 months, assume it's bad), in case it's leaked away, or in case you need more water (UPDATE: chlorine tabs have been suggested as lasting longer in storage than iodine)
• Mountain House 72-Hour Emergency Meal Kit, 1 per person
• Mountain Oven Flameless Heating Kit: each kit can be used 5 times and can prepare 2 meals at a time. So 2 kits per two people in a household, but also 2 kits in a single-person household.
• Plastic silverware
• Emergency phone numbers/contact list

The above is the absolute minimum. Meals can be eaten in their pouches, so no dishes are needed. Flameless heating kits eliminate the need for cooking stoves (water has to be purified, though). Emergency meals also can be eaten with cold (purified) water although they taste bad. The food and flameless kits should be good for at least 3 or 4 years, and probably more than twice that long.

Your kit should be stored outside your home in case you can't get inside. So in your yard, your car, or somewhere else. The only maintenance this requires is to simply look every six months to see if the water's leaked through the seams of the plastic jugs - it happens fairly often.

Additional useful items:

• Cheap flashlight/headlamp
• Spare batteries in clear plastic bag so you can see if they've become corroded over time
• Plastic tarp and cord as a rain shelter
• Swiss Army knife
• Emergency shelter, 1 per 2 people
• Cheap or expensive first aid kit (I went with cheap kits from the local drugstore)
• Cheap rain gear, spare shoes and clothes

Don't let the extras delay you from putting together the minimum.

I also made better-than-nothing emergency kits for everyone's car, in case you're stuck on the road:

Car kits:

• Half-liter water bottle (enough to keep you hydrated for a few hours until you can find a water source. Keep more than one if you have kids.)
• Iodine (can disinfect murky water from ditches, and you might need to) (or chlorine tabs)
• Emergency shelter
• Small amount of long-lasting food (I found tins of honey-roasted peanuts that were good for four years)
• Cheap rain poncho (I didn't include this, but should have)
• Emergency contact list
• Shoes you can walk many miles in, if that's not what you normally wear
• Cheap, tiny flashlight

You can do much better than this car kit, but it's something in case destroyed roads/bridges keep you from getting home for 12-24 hours.

Additional tricks for both kits: put the contact lists in their own ziplock plastic bags to reduce the chance that they'll mold/get wet over the years. I've also found that the metal caps on the iodine bottles tend to rust over a few years, so I bagged them in their own ziplock bags, and poured a little table salt in the bags to absorb humidity.

Hopefully this is all unnecessary.

Comments/suggestions welcome, as always.

Credible scientists don't necessarily mean credible science

There seems to be increasing connections between climate denialism and evolution denialism, with the creationist Discovery Institute increasingly interested in denying anthropogenic warming.

At my most cynical, I think this is a bank shot by the more strategic climate denialists who are worried about the Christian envangelical environmental movement getting out of hand, and see this as a way to slow it down. Only slightly less cynically, it's the creationists trying to glom on to a slightly less discredited form of science denialism than their own dreck, and using climate denialism as a gateway drug to the harder stuff.

I just finished watching Judgment Day: Intelligent Design on Trial, the Nova documentary about the lawsuit that blocked using public schools to teach intelligent design as a way to introduce creationism in the classroom. It's a good documentary although it could've gone faster (which is why Netflix is great - I watched most of it at 1.4x speed, and some of it at 2x speed).

The documentary is a useful reminder to realists and a caution to climate skeptics, in that it shows a tiny handful of real scientists, professors even in the relevant fields, who deny evolution. If you're a climate skeptic that just hates it whenever we compare your views to creationism, this is a problem. The view of a few credible scientists who oppose the mainstream view on evolution either negates the existence of a consensus, or alternatively the climate skeptics have to acknowledge having a few aging climate researchers on their side isn't sufficient proof to deny the climate consensus.

I think the most reasonable view is that a small number credible scientists can go off the deep end and believe something unreasonable even in their own field. That's what happened with evolution and happened in the climate field.

Attempts to redeem Strom Thurmond not working well

The better conservatives and better conservative commenters are saying that Senator Reid's offhand, cringe-inducing comment about "Negro dialect" isn't equivalent to Trent Lott saying we would be better off if segregationist Strom Thurmond had won the 1948 presidential election.

Where some of them go off the rails though is in trying to salvage anything from Strom Thurmond's racist legacy. We hear from The American Spectator:

Although Thurmond was born and raised in the segregated south, he eventually renounced his past. In 1970, he became the first Southern senator to hire a black staffer and he was the first to recommend a black man to be a federal judge. He then sent his daughter to a heavily integrated public school.

The "first Southern senator to hire a black staffer" is all over the wingnutosphere; many of them are not content with this and expand it to first senator from anywhere to hire an African-American staffer.

So how do all these claims play out in the real world? Thurmond never renounced his past, so that's wrong. As for the rest, I got into a discussion at TigerHawk (I hope I was polite, some folks seem a tad offended). I'll save time and recopy it here:

1. Tigerhawk posted something interesting recently about an apology deficit as a failure to take responsibility. Applies in spades to Thurmond. A few affirmative action hires, if they even occurred, hardly makes up for his past.

2. We're agreed the quote about first Southern Senator with black staff is likely wrong. (The South had black senators in the Reconstruction period, and they likely had black staff.)

3. Your NY Times verification on the first staff hire isn't a NY Times report, it's a Maureen Dowd Op-Ed, which get little to no fact-checking and therefore does little to help you. If you're happy to have Thurmond on your side, I suggest you take Dowd as well. She's useless.

4. Your Time and CNN sources on first staff hire are somewhat better, but they're tossed-off half-sentences, not central to the reports so they provide not too much confidence in their accuracy.

5. Time and CNN confirm that American Spectator was wrong about the date of the hire - it was 1971.

6. You have not provided outside support for any of Spectator's other claims.

7. The CNN transcript led me to Thurmond's biographer and her book, "Strom Thurmond and the Politics of Southern Change." She discusses racial issues extensively. On page 413 she describes his hiring of Tom Moss, in what looks like an attempt to beat out Fritz Holling from hiring a black aide first. Nowhere that I found did she describe this as the first by a post-Reconstruction Southern Senator.

8. Given South Carolina's racial history, I think it's quite likely that Moss was the first black hire for a post-Reconstruction Senator from that state. That's all that's been established on that issue.

9. Lots of misinformation in the Right blogosphere that Thurmond was the first Senator from anywhere to hire a black aide. (Some misinformation in the mainstream as well.)

10. The biography says on page 486 that Thurmond helped a black man chosen by, wait for it, Jimmy Carter, become the first black federal judge in South Carolina. Again, one state and not the entire South.

11. Looks like Judge James Lopez Watson (appointed by Pres. Johnson) precedes Carter's selection as the first judge to head a federal court in the South:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Lopez_Watson

No evidence of Thurmond's involvement. There may be other judges too. There's a black judge appointed by Carter in Alabama, but I'm not sure if it's earlier or later.

12. I just did a quick check on the integrated public school claim, didn't come up with much info.

I could check on putting his daugher in integrated schools, but I think I've wasted enough time on this relic. It's very good that he's out of the Senate. UPDATE: I overlooked a good link by my debating opponent that seems to establish the school claim, so they got one thing right.

I'll just add again that even more common than the unsuccessful Thurmond redemption claims is the assertion that William F. Buckley renounced racism in the mid-1960s. I've looked all over for this mid-1960s quote, and I can't find it. There's a statement of his in 2004 that "I once believed we could evolve our way up from Jim Crow. I was wrong." He's clearly distorting his overtly racist statements in the 1950s. He may be getting credit 40 years earlier than he deserves.

The Europa science conspiracy is no climate science conspiracy

It seems doubtful that a scientific conspiracy to oppress alternative scientific viewpoints is even possible at the level denialists claim, a level so successful that "Since 2007, no scientific body of national or international standing has maintained a dissenting opinion" against human-caused warming.

There are some of my fellow space nuts who think they've proven that it's at least possible for a massive scientific conspiracy to exist, and they point to research about Jupiter's moon Europa as their example. Astronomer Richard Greenberg, member the Galileo space probe team, alleges repression of the view of his team that Europa has a thin ice sheet and not a thick one that separates its oceans from the surface. He's got a book out that I've read, Unmasking Europa, that makes exactly this case.

At first read, it gives some support to an argument that parallels denialists, saying

It seems bizarre that political clout would be used to promote a scientifically weak position...[but] the situation is both familiar and disturbing....Deviation from [the scientific "party line"] is risky business....less secure [researchers] may feel pressure to toe the party line or move on to other fields.

(page 7).

Things go downhill from this point on though, if you're trying to use Europa as a metaphor for the alleged climate conspiracy. It starts with Greenberg's next paragraph:

The political aspects of the story of Europan science play out largely within the scientific community. In this way they are different from the even more ominous attempts at political control of science from the outside, such as the recent efforts to discredit the scientific consensus on climate change.

(emphasis added).

Yup, Greenberg might agree that there's a conspiracy related to climate science, except that it's about powerful interests trying to obscure the understanding that we are changing the climate.

On a broader level, Greenberg and other thin-ice supporters think science can work through the peer-review process, saying "even the hard-line isolated ocean are starting to hedge their bets" (page 34). He's doing exactly what the reality-based faction are suggesting to climate skeptics, that they prove their case in and through the scientific process.

Greenberg also argues that political power in Europa research was highly centralized in a small team that controlled access to Galileo imagery (current NASA missions allow easier and quicker access to data), and one government agency, NASA, indirectly controls their future careers. Climate change involves thousands of scientists in a broad range of fields - climatology, physics, oceanography, geology - where a small shadowy cabal can't run everything.

Another major distinction between Europa and climate is that Greenberg isn't arguing that his view has been completely excluded from the scientific process. He has even been included on the design team for the next mission to the Jupiter system that will definitively resolve the issue, although not until 2026.

So denialists will have to look elsewhere to show that it's even possible to find an example of a scientific conspiracy at the level they're describing.

Setting this all aside, Greenberg's book is well-written, persuasive, and has gorgeous photographs. He's also quite willing to name names about who's unfairly working against his viewpoint.

I have no idea who's right, and my opinion would be worthless anyway. Reading the wiki article on Europa is a good balance to Greenberg's point of view (the article acknowledges the lack of consensus, of course). I can say, however, that Greenberg's contrarian inclinations are obvious. For example, he claims it's good that the probe's main communication antenna failed, because this kept the researchers from being overwhelmed with data and could concentrate on a small set of images instead. That is simply ridiculous. Being a contrarian isn't ridiculous -they can sometimes make the big leaps - but it's something to keep in mind.

Greenberg and his book will either be considered a visionary or a footnote when the next probe finally gets to Europa. It'll be interesting to find out which.

Does racial familiarity breed contempt or understanding?

Matt Yglesias points to a somewhat optimistic result from an unintentional experiment in India that brought Hindus and Muslims in close contact in a public housing complex: majority Hindus improved their opinion of Muslims, while minority Muslims had no change of opinion for better or worse of Hindus. One and a half cheers for incremental progress! Hip hip, hooray! Hip hip

Less cheeringly, a knowledgeable commenter sez casual contact usually reinforces prejudice, and only intense contact such as military desegregation really breaks it down. This fits my anecdotal understanding of why New Orleans was so racist when I lived there for several weeks in the early 1990s - working class/unemployed whites had casual contact with black population living in the hellhole public housing complexes scattered everywhere. They couldn't easily avoid each other, unlike Washington DC for the same period.

Still, there seems to be a positive long term trend that casual contact studies might be missing. I left this comment:

I also think the theory, that casual contact increases prejudice, conflicts with the tendency of racial conflicts to eventually resolve over long periods of time of several generations or more. Sometimes they’re resolved through genocide or racial expulsion, but in the modern period it seems like relaxation and eventual merger of the two particular races/ethnicities is more likely.

Maybe the way to make sense of this is that casual contact creates occasional “pockets” of intense interaction, where (for example) intermarriages and business relationships have effects similar to the military effects you describe – maybe not so much on the married couple/business partners who likely are less prejudiced, but in their immediate social circle.

And maybe short-term studies of casual contact miss some of these effects that happen rarely but lead to decreased prejudice.

Just guessing here….

Bonus Yglesias blogging wherein I quote myself: Matt thinks it's no big deal that potential Al Qaeda affiliates tried to contact Latin American drug dealers, because they failed. I think this is wrong, and part of the broader framework of the left wrongly thinking our porous borders are no big deal for national security. I babbled:

I’m going to somewhat disagree with Matt on this. If the African guys truly were Al Qaeda, then the incident shows an attempt, an attempt, by Al Qaeda to link to drug trafficking networks. That’s worrying because drug traffickers and immigrant smugglers have fairly effective systems of getting through US borders. It isn’t something to dismiss as unimportant.

Unfortunately, wingnuts on the right have grossly distorted and exaggerated it to serve their own loony interests on Cuba and Venezuela. It’s really a problem that one of our two political parties has no interest in actual, effective policy.

Cato and Pat Michaels bouncing on the edge of defamation

If you consider climatologist Michael Mann to be a private figure rather than a public one, Cato and Pat Michaels have probably violated defamation law by misattributing a quote to Mann which they consider an indication of Mann's unfitness to conduct science. I disagree with Joe at the link in calling it a lie - it appears to be an honest mistake, if also an indicator of Pat Michaels' work quality. The quote, a suggestion to exclude two poor-quality denialist papers from the IPCC process, was written by climatologist Phil Jones in an email to Mann (the papers weren't excluded).

People mess up "To" and "From" attribution in normal conversation, but I'd say a reasonable person writing a strong attack on someone for major media publication would read a short email carefully, so this mistake is a negligent one. That's enough fault when defaming a private individual, but attacks on public figures require a reckless disregard for the truth, which would be difficult to show here. I think Mann is a public figure on climate issues in the US, although he might have a shot of claiming otherwise in the UK.

An interesting twist on whether the quote actually made by Jones indicates that the speaker is an unfit scientist. I'm sure Jones would disagree. Trying to exclude bad work may have been a mistake, but I don't think it sinks to a level of indicating unfitness. However, Pat Michaels clearly thinks otherwise, and estoppel might prevent him from arguing in court differently from how he argued to the world.

Final aspect of the case is damages. Pat Michaels is a never-important and long-discredited figure in climatology, so his defense would be something like "no one in climatology takes seriously what I have to say, and it doesn't really harm the plaintiff that I misinformed the general public." Cato could point to its own plunging reputation as well (some Cato hack repeated the mistake on the Cato website). These are pretty good defenses.

All in all, it's what lawyers call a colorable, non-frivolous case, but not one I'd bring. Instead, I'd send a letter to Michaels and everyone who published his mistake, telling them that they're not going to get sued but requesting a published correction. Then I'd publish the letter and get some credit for being the better man, even if that's not a difficult achievement in this case.

Ticking time bomb torture and Inglourious Basterds

Ticking time bombs are a topic again on the right, thanks to The Underpants Bomber. Could it have made sense to "harshly interrogate" the bomber after subduing him to find out if there are other bombers on other planes, they ask. Given that neither the Underpants Bomber nor the Shoe Bomber from years earlier were involved in coordinated attacks, I think their cases argue against the hypothetical reasons to torture people.

But what about 911, where there was a coordinated attack? I think the problem with the moral "dilemma" is actually making the time short enough to rule out traditional interrogation while still being able to acquire reliable information from someone who has the easy choice of lying for a few minutes. My response to this argument:

I think torture could result in accurate information, but only when there's time to corroborate the tortured person's claims and inflict more severe torture if it turns out he or she lied. Game theory has shown that repeat player games are the ones that establish a level of trust.

That's the main problem with many ticking time bomb scenarios, including the hypothetical one that didn't actually happen last Xmas - the tortured person's best strategy, if he's got useful info for the other side, is just to lie during the few minutes that he needs to lie. Soon he's in the hands of the police.

Or the bomb explodes, which is preferable to captured person and there's no way for the interrogator to know otherwise. Even if you defeated and captured Mohammed Atta on the plane he hijacked, he can deny he knows of other hijack attempts or even name wrong flights, and there's nothing you can do about it.

Ticking time bomb justifications seem to either come as a vague claims, or hypotheticals that haven't occurred in real life. I don't doubt that it's possible to come up with a dangerous hypothetical, and maybe torture would be justifiable then, but a pro-torture policy doesn't seem to have a lot of justifiable application in the real world.

The exception to this would be wartime. I finally watched Inglourious Basterds, an okay-but-not-great Tarantino World War II film. In one scene, the American soldiers fighting behind German lines have captured German soldiers and need info on what threats they face. This seems a good case of a ticking time bomb scenario, and the Americans could have set up a scenario to retaliate against an informer giving false information. I think this could happen a lot during war. The fact that wartime torture of enemy soldiers is the one area where torture is most disfavored seems meaningful to me.

Federal NEPA environmental rules to consider climate change (except they do already)

The news says Obama administration will come out soon with guidance on how climate change is to be incorporated into the National Environmental Policy Act, the main federal law on how environmental impacts are to be taken into consideration whenever the federal government takes action.

Sounds a little bigger than it is - NEPA disclosures have already considered climate impacts for years. When I was a law student in the late 1990s, we pushed for and got climate change consideration in a Forest Service NEPA document, overcoming some initial resistance. What's new (and beneficial) is formal, administrative guidance on how to handle the issue.

The news article also says this:

In a letter responding to Inhofe and Barrasso, Sutley said the act "cannot be used to regulate greenhouse gas emissions," suggesting that the administration would not block projects simply because they would add carbon dioxide to the air.

I think the reporter is reading too much into that statement, which really means that NEPA will not provide substantive controls over greenhouse gases as a whole. Under NEPA, any administrative decision-maker could theoretically decide that the negative climate impacts of a project outweigh its benefits, and kill the project.

There is a more general problem, however, with NEPA and its California equivalent, CEQA. Small projects with small impacts are supposed to get only limited environmental review unless they cumulatively contribute to large impacts, in which case they're supposed to get extensive and expensive environmental review. Any honest assessment of small projects with climate impacts would determine they have a cumulatively significant impact, but it's not feasible to do massive review on every small project. I'm not sure how they're going to solve this issue.

Bonus blogging: I don't know why some people like The Caryatids, but I'd give it a B-minus at most. Some interesting ideas about what might happen in the climate-changed future, combined with some not-at-all interesting ideas about a supervolcano under Yosemite and the sun going nova, with a plot where virtually nothing but exposition happens for the first sixty pages and for many interludes afterwards.

Denialist taxonomy

Continuing a discussion in the previous post's comments, I think it's helpful to come up with categories of denialists. The overall point is to use a word that's distinguishable from skeptic - a skeptic displays rational doubt, while a denialist displays irrational or insincere doubt ranging to certain disbelief.

(This is my simplified and somewhat different version of John Mashey's Reasons for Anti-Science, well worth reading.)

• True Believer: sincerely believes each subsidiary argument that he (yes, he) uses. Computers climate models don't work, all the instrumental record compilations don't work, no proxy for paleotemperature works, satellite records are too short, who would trust weather balloon data, and physics is too tricky.

• Kitchen Sinker: will asset subsidiary claims that the denialist doesn't necessarily believe, while believing the overall conclusion that anthropogenic global warming is a hoax. More ethical variants of Kitchen Sinkers will merely "note" arguments that support their side while not overtly stating their belief in those arguments.

• Cure Evader: these ones think the cure is worse than the disease, but instead of making that argument they claim that there is no disease. They may or may not believe that the disease exists, but what really motivates them is their certainty that the cure is a mistake.

• Gamer: they're not really concerned with the truth or falsity of the subsidiary argument or broader issue, or with the broader effect that their position has, but with fighting the game for themselves or possibly their side. I'm pretty sure this describes Steve Milloy of Junk Science, and maybe Marc Morano as well.

Overlays of contrarian personalities, Dunning-Kruger (overconfidence in self expertise, underconfidence in others), ideological disbelief in inconvenient facts, retired-professor-disease, and economic interests for a small percentage can all influence the above.

I'd also emphasize Locked-In-Syndrome, which may be my one semi-original contribution to this study. A new hypothesis appears with only a small amount of evidence, and some people for any of the above reasons come out against it. They've started the process of being Locked In, where it's easier for them to reject each new piece of evidence than it is to reject their belief structure. This might be why science sometime proceeds one funeral at a time.

And then, just to screw up everything I've said so far, is my tendency to label people as "true skeptics" and not denialists if they're willing to put their money where their mouths are and bet over climate change. The idea is the person has shown sincerity and depth of commitment to their position by putting skin in the game. But the true skeptic could be just as irrationally wrong as a True Believer, and a True Believer just as sincere as a true skeptic.

In conclusion, I am inconsistent and contradictory in terminology - but only somewhat so! Maybe the "true skeptic" label is just an indication of respect for betting opponents. Anyway, I'm open to alternative terminology that distinguishes false skepticism form the worthwhile version.

American Civil War denialism

Along with all the other forms of denialism, here in the US we have a large fraction of political conservatives who deny that our Civil War was primarily or even partially about slavery in the South. You can see it in this Krugman post that pointed out the obvious, and some of the comments that still couldn't see the obvious. Here's one by Hal Horvath:

I think I’ll stick to the well-known scenario: Lincoln started the war for the public reason: to preserve the Union, and only changed the primary reason much later, in order to justify the bloodshed and uplift the nation.

Yes, Lincoln used sneaky Jedi mind tricks to start the war by making the Confederates attack Fort Sumter.

Contrary to Horvath, both pro- and anti-slavery forces in the US prior to the Civil War believed that slavery had to expand to new states in the West in order for it and the Southern Way of Life to survive. Lincoln and the Republicans opposed expansion, and that was enough for some Southern states to secede when Lincoln won the presidency. More at wiki for those who care.

Add another denialism to the list. It would be interesting to see how many denialist beliefs can be found in a single person.

Environmental Defense's take on Copenhagen

Environmental Defense has its Insider podcasts several times a year, a conference-call briefing of major donors on the climate issues that they later put online. They recently did one on Copenhagen. Some interesting points:

They think whatever monitoring protocol developed in future US climate legislation will become the international standard, apparently because the size of the market will be so large in the US that it will be easier for other nations to just match it.

They're pushing for immediate changes in the Kyoto Clean Development Mechanism, and no longer support offsets under the current CDM for India and China. I've thought some anti-offset and anti-CDM criticisms were overblown, but I've also considered Environmental Defense a supporter of both. If they're backing off, that's meaningful (tho they didn't reject a new and improved offset system).

The whole REDD anti-deforestation thing made significant progress but still wasn't completely finished. I think this issue is a policy sweet spot - India and China don't want deforestation to emit CO2 that they'd rather be able to, the developed world also looks for ways to reduce emissions, and the countries with the forests should be happy to be bought off. For those who are anti-offsets however, please note that this is basically an offset.

Basic impression is of incremental progress, not collapse. Whether you see that as a failure depends on your expectation, I guess.

Right imitates left in a good way (if you're on the left)

One of the few things that conservatives did better than progressives in the US was to welcome converts. On the left, it seemed that anyone repudiating their past just got criticized for their past, while people on the right loved conversion stories.

But now, following Representative Parker Griffith's party switch from Democratic to Republican, the conservatives are trying to make life as difficult for him as possible. Yes, the switch is minor bad news for the Dems, although it's part of the long history of conservative Southern congressional seats switching to the Republican party. The consolation for the left is the hostile reaction Griffith is getting on the right, and what it says about the insularity of the conservative movement.

On a related note, climate denialists still seem to love a good conversion story, something like "I used to believe in global warming, but then I heard the excellent points raised by Rush Limbaugh and Glen Beck and now know the truth." I translate that as really meaning "I used to pay no attention to global warming and was only vaguely aware of the issue. When I finally became more interested in my conservative political values, I started paying attention more, but only to factoids that reinforce my conservativism, and global warming doesn't fit what I would like to believe." Maybe they'll start hating the converts too as their circle shrinks.

Unrelated bonus blogging - recently watched two good movies, The Descent and Out of the Past. Descent was a good horror flick, with an all-female cast and some technically accurate rock-climbing (ignoring that the skill required is professional level, not something amateurs could do). Out of the Past was a great 1947 film noir with Robert Mitchum and Kirk Douglas at the beginning of their careers. Also watched Oldboy - I've gotten used to violence in films over the years, but that was just too harrowing for me.

The China-Copenhagen Syndrome

The Guardian reports that China was responsible for making Copenhagen much less comprehensive than it could have been, while avoiding any public responsibility for it. This sounds plausible to me - they take global warming seriously there, with energy efficiency, carbon sequestration, renewable power, and nuclear power all getting significant investment, while at the same time pumping out as many coal plants as possible. Coal power plants are meant to run for 30 years or more. China wants to keep its options open.

Maybe this has something to do with the resistance to China's call for reparations - why write a climate-related check to a country that is screwing up attempts to address climate. I'm sympathetic to this resistance regarding China, whose per-capita emissions may be one third of the US but are still far too high. Other countries, however, have done far less to increase CO2 concentrations, and to tell them that we get the benefit of polluting while they have to hold back the same as we do isn't going to cut it.

Matt Yglesias misses the point by apparently believing climate debt presents a binary choice of blank checks for dictators, or doing nothing to rectify past emissions (his choice). I think we can be a little more subtle than that.

And while I'm being cranky, the New York Times misses the point on focusing on safety concerns for China's nuclear expansion by neglecting the alternative - even more coal plants. Coal pollution kills thousands each year here in the US - I can't imagine the numbers in China. A nuclear meltdown every couple decades would kill far fewer people. I'm not a huge fan of nukes due to costs, nuclear weapons proliferation, exposure to terrorism and (in the US) restriction on legal liability, but safety isn't an issue.

Admin note: comments are dead. Long live the comments!

The Haloscan-powered comments to this blog are trying to switch me to an "upgrade", and I think I'll switch to Blogger-powered ones instead. I think it will work better, with the downside that I think I'll lose all the old comments. I've got a file with all old comments that are a pain to access, but will keep them alive in some form on my computer. If you want any of your insightful comments saved for yourself, go to old posts and get them while you can - I won't be able to keep them online for more than a week or so.

I will copy a few of the longer comment threads and more recent comments into Blogger. There will be some experimenting in terms of spam prevention. Please bear with me, and leave comments here or send me an email if something's screwed up.

We'll see what happens....

I very much wish this wasn't my 1,000th post: Neil Kelly, age 55, RIP

I started this blog in April 2004, and now my 1,000th post is about the death of a friend last week, my climbing partner Neil Kelly, killed in a car accident on his way to work.

This blog isn't generally about personal events, but I just want to recognize Neil as a self-made man in a very different sense from what you usually hear in news reports about billionaires. Neil had a more tumultuous life as a younger man long before I knew him, but from that he constructed a stable and happy life for himself and everyone who was part of it - his wife Colleen, their kids, and of course all his many friends and colleagues. I think it's a far more unusual accomplishment than sacrificing everything for the sake of making a lot of money.

We have his black-and-white photograph of bristlecone pines from the White Mountains in our condo, and also here is the monstrous-sized treadmill that Neil, another friend and I scraped through the hall, up the stairs, and around various twists into the bedroom. And I shouldn't omit what a good climbing partner he was - very safe, and always encouraging.

He was part of our lives and will be missed.

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Joy Behar should debate Marc Morano

(I'm expanding this from a comment I left on a Chris Mooney thread on how to deal with Morano.)

A while back I had a random radio moment where I listened to someone I'd never heard before, Joy Behar, take apart the evil and smart creationist/denialist, Ann Coulter. Behar is one of a number of talking heads that CNN has - she's a liberal but seems primarily interested in pop culture and only secondarily in politics.

Unfortunately I can't find the clip online, but Behar did two things very effectively that were the exact opposite of what I would've done. First, she kept throwing a rapid-fire variety of attacks at Coulter, barely responding to Coulter's evasions before taking up a new attack . By contrast, I would've stuck to one narrow subject to try and prove beyond a doubt that I was right and that Coulter/Morano was wrong. Behar has instead found her own response to the Gish Gallop, (the "Behar Canter"?), simply by attacking repeatedly but truthfully, and beating the other side at their own game.

Second, Behar's attacks were all directed at Coulter's side and Coulter's political allies, but never at Coulter herself. This contrasts to my thinking that debating someone like a Lomborg or a Lott is a chance to focus like a laser on all his misrepresentations, and get him the reputation he deserves. Behar instead keeps audience's sympathy by avoiding a "mean" attack on Coulter herself. She might have also flummoxed Coulter a little more because Coulter wouldn't be as familiar with lies said by her allies as she would be with her own lies. (Update: maybe I should clarify that the exchange Behar had with Coulter wasn't about climate, but it was still relevant.)

Just an impression, anyway, but maybe worth copying. Behar couldn't do a long debate alone against Morano without knowing more about climate, but she could take him on her show for a five-minute segment. I'd like to see that, which is the only publicity I've ever wished for Morano. I might even email my suggestion to Behar.

Just to finish off, here's the alternate advice I suggested at Chris Mooney's for debating Morano: "the debate be solely about the following: 'Resolved, the items posted on a Climate Depot for the week of [pick one week randomly] were mostly accurate.' The only way to counter the Gish Gallop is to nail Morano down to a record. Even a week might have too many posts to conclusively prove him to be full of frass, so a shorter period might be needed."

Does Gore's speech mean I'm out $333??????

I've been taught by skeptics that the only thing that matters in the climate change debate is how it affects me. I've bet Joe Romm $333 that the Arctic will NOT be 90% ice-free before 2020, while Gore's saying new data shows it might happen in 2013. Do I need to start socking my pennies away?

It's worth noting that the actual prediction is for 80% loss (as stated at the link, Gore messed it up slightly), but if we do hit 80% by 2013, then 90% isn't that far away. Still, I think I'm on the winning side. Mark Serreze, who's been somewhat aggressive on predicting ice loss, is sticking with 2030. OTOH, Serreze isn't dismissive of the prediction, which is a little scary for my pocketbook, and a lot scarier by showing that 2013 is not crank-level over-alarmism. I'd guess the odds are in my favor still, but not as much as before.

On to climate news almost as important as my finances: Exxon for the first time is hedging against a climate-changed future, and doing it big time with the $41 billion purchase of XTO, a natural gas company. Other oil companies have taken similar actions with renewable power investments, while natural gas is an important bridging fuel over the next few decades.

Hopefully this means less resistance by Exxon to greenhouse gas regulation. Skeptics might say that the company will now game the rents in public legislation and has nothing to do with Exxon's evaluation of climate reaility. I think if they can afford $41 billion to adjust to legislation, they could've afforded $100 thousand or so to come up with an alternative climate model that realistically disputes warming, if one could've been constructed. My guess is they're adjusting to scientific reality, somewhat.

A WISE result could bring extrasolar exploration in this century

2010 looks to be a boring year in space, at least for space buffs like me who want eye candy.Cassini will continue to do its amazing thing, but that's been going on for a while. Same with theMars Rovers. We'll find out in a few weeks if Phoenix will have survived the Martian Arctic winter, which would be cool, but a stationary lander doesn't bring much in the way of new images.

Mars Science Laboratory was to be the big thing in 2010, but they blew the deadline along with the budget, and now it's delayed to 2012.

On the bright side, the Kepler space telescope should finally put out some results on its search for extrasolar planets. It's not eye candy, and it won't be until later that it finds how many Earth-sized planets are in Earth-sized orbits around stars, but next year we'll finally get some statistically-valid information on the percentage of stars with planets in short-period orbits.

And then there's WISE, the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, a space telescope that launched yesterday. Other telescopes are more sensitive for detecting cold objects in space, but they can view only tiny parts of the sky, while WISE will survey the entire sky. That means it could find brown dwarfs (massive planets/failed stars) or stray gas giant planets that are closer to our solar system than the Centauri star system, the closest known stars that are four light years away.

If WISE finds a brown dwarf within .5 light years or less, I think it's conceivable that a robotic mission to explore it could be launched and arrive there in this century. If aerocapturetechnology gets sufficiently developed, it might even go into orbit instead of being a flyby.

Not exactly a mission to another star, but pretty close.

UPDATE: Cool Cassini pic of sunlight on a lake on Titan. No one has ever seen sunlight on a lake anyplace besides Earth, until this picture was taken. I guess we will have some eye candy in 2010.

When contrarianism is and isn't good

Some examples:

A contrarian business venture: excellent! May a thousand business flowers bloom! If you think Stirling engines are the wave of the future, or horse buggies, or private space planes, and want to sink your money into it, well, you go, girl! (Or guy.) Of course, most new businesses fail, even the ones that aren't trying to break the mold, but the businesses that make it help move progress forward.

A contrarian business venture financed with my money: well, hold your horses, there. Now we're talking about something with a potential downside. I'd have to be incredibly convinced before I'd bet my money that the rest of the business world is wrong. And I'd still be likely making a mistake in investing.

A piece of contrarian scientific research: excellent! May a thousand scientific research avenues bloom! Why bother proving something that science has long suspected but not firmly proven, when you can overturn your entire field instead. Again, it could be a waste of your time and someone's research money to attempt to prove something that 90% or more of the world's experts think is wrong, but Galileos do come along every few centuries - maybe it's your turn!

(Hypothetically) doing my thesis to prove contrarian science: you can probably figure out where this is going.

I'm going to speed this up.

Contrarian investment firms and contrarian scientific careers: this is a way to spread your contrarian bets. You can be wrong lots of time and score big the few times you're right. Whether it's really the best long-term strategy is another question. I think it might work a little better for investment firms than for a single scientist, because the firms can make a lot more bets than a scientist can do research projects.

Betting your nation/planet on a single contrarian economic or scientific policy: shall we switch the country to the gold standard? I'm sure there are a handful of economist PhD.s out there who say this is a good idea and "the only way to avoid the imminent economic collapse". Same question of whether we ignore the vast majority of scientists on climate and follow the few, allegedly-brilliant iconoclasts who say differently. When there's no way to spread your bets, at least not at any one time,* betting the farm on the tiny minority position is about as smart as betting the farm usually is.

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This was intended to be my last followup to the Superfreakonomics issue, and generally on why contrarian policy choices, done not as an experiment but as an all-out commitment, are incredibly risky. Also relevant to a wiki discussion on whether describing Richard Lindzen as a contrarian is somehow a huge slur against him, as opposed to simply describing his career strategy and possibly his temperament.

*There is the option of changing your policy choice at a later date. This is another reason for skeptics to lighten up - they seem to be convinced they're going to be proven right in less than a decade. Any economic damage they see after 2020 from reducing pollution won't happen - the policies will have changed, and we'll have plenty of money to build statues in their honor.

John Bolton leads us on the path to peace

Prophets are rarely recognized in their own country, but it's even more rare for a prophet to not recognize himself.

John Bolton criticized Obama's call for reducing international violence, saying

You know, homo sapiens are hard-wired for violent conflict, and we’re not going to eliminate violent conflict until homo sapiens ceases to exist as a separate species.

But Bolton did a great job himself of avoiding violent conflict as a young man. If everyone else followed the path of Bolton and Limbaugh, the world would truly be a peaceful pace.

More snows of San Francisco Bay

We're going on five days now of snow in the high-elevation hills above San Francisco Bay. We've got the possibility of more snow on the way, so some of this snow could last for two weeks.

Thought I'd take advantage of this to recycle two posts: first, on how the Bay Area and anywhere else with intermittent snowfall will see some significant effects of climate change as we go from a few snowfalls per year to a few snowfalls per decade. In addition to what I wrote before, I'll just add the aesthetic impact: hills turn into mountains when their top halves are snow-covered. It'll be sad to have that happen less often.

And second, a post on how we'll see increased flooding because winter storms that would've stored some of their precipitation as snowfall at higher elevations will be more likely to drop it all as rain, all at the same time. I think it should be possible to model this effect quantitatively.

UPDATE: bonus blogging - GingkoGate is now breaking in the comments at Jules' and James' blog. They won't get away with it.

Why hasn't the fossil fuel industry created a pro-skeptic climate model?

According to the denialists, the existing climate models can conclude whatever the designers want them to conclude: a fine tuning here and there, and presto, dangerous warming in the future, but only because the modeller wanted that conclusion.

So my question: why haven't skeptics produced computer models that support their own conclusion, models showing that increasing CO2 and other greenhouse gases will have minimal effects? It certainly isn't beyond their financial capability to do it, even as a confidential exercise they could try first before unveiling it to the world.

One possible reason is that every coal and oil corporation in the world realizes they could do this, but they understand that computer climate modeling is not good science, and they are simply too ethical to do something like that.

I was going to go on and speculate about other reasons for the lack of skeptic models, but I think the one I just mentioned is really makes a great deal of sense and must be the reason.

Afghanistan's a mistake and I hope it works

After years of my saying that we should get out of Iraq and into Afghanistan, I'm now saying that putting the extra 30,000 troops in is a mistake. I'm ambivalent about my position, but I think a deeply corrupt, unpopular regime that is about as illegitimate as the Iranian one isn't going to be a good partner in nation-building.

OTOH, a Taliban reconquest is unacceptable too. I think the best option is to wait out the Karzai government, keeping it alive and in power in the major Afghani cities at the lowest cost in blood and treasure, until a competent government is in place. Kind of like the Soviet strategy in Afghanistan - hardly the greatest selling point, but as Matt Yglesias points out, we've got advantages that the Soviets didn't.

While I don't usually have a high opinion of Joe Biden, he had a great point that we're focusing on the wrong country by putting 95% of our money into Afghanistan relative to Pakistan. If minimizing our effort in Afghanistan could redirect some of it to Pakistan, all the better.

The long-term solution for Pakistan, as far as I can tell, is development (same answer I had before). Not a quick solution, but maybe Pakistani society will look at how India is doing so much better than they are, and get inspired/threatened enough to make a change.