Backseat driving

Very long NY Times Magazine article on whales being sociable with humans, mostly our local gray whales in their non-local nursery lagoons in Baja Mexico. One important piece of information I got out of it was that whales escaping from sonar and other underwater explosions show evidence of the bends because of their rapid ascent to avoid the sounds. While my view, that highly intelligent animals should be treated as if they have rights, is a minority position, there's a strong societal consensus that we shouldn't cause unnecessary pain to animals. The bends can be extremely painful in humans; we don't have any reason to assume it's better for whales.

Another interesting piece of information was the implication that only some gray whales, the "Friendlies", were sociable in the Baja lagoons while the rest kept their distance. Understanding which ones interact and which don't could go a ways towards explaining their behavior. Finally, the article pointed out that the whales weren't getting food from people, so it's not the usual reward system involved that tames wild animals. It's fascinating behavior.

Unfortunately though, the rest was quasi-New Age speculation that kept a veneer of scientific respectability by being posed as questions rather than stated as assertions. One example was when the author asked the main scientist being interviewed whether the whales' sociability showed "forgiveness" for past violence directed at gray whales (only token numbers have been hunted in the last 60 years). The scientific response should have been "your guess is as good as mine," but instead she says:

“Those are the kinds of things that for the longest time a scientist wouldn’t dare consider,” she said. “But thank goodness we’ve gone through a kind of cognitive revolution when it comes to studying the intelligence and emotion of other species. In fact, I’d say now that it is my obligation as a scientist not to discount that possibility. We do have compelling evidence of the experience of grief in cetaceans; and of joy, anger, frustration and distress and self-awareness and tool use; and of protecting not just their young but also their companions from humans and other predators. So these are reasons why something like forgiveness is a possibility.

Oh well. And this'll attract attention to the Baja lagoons, where I was hoping (selflishly) to visit sometime soon. Oh well. Maybe we can sort out the New Agey stuff and still be concerned with protecting whales and interacting with them.

Labels: animal rights, Great Ape Project, whales/dolphins

I regularly monitor and leave comments on one conservative blog, Tigerhawk, that periodically posts "information" suggesting climate change isn't a problem. The main blogger there says he's not a denialist, but he reposts claims from WattsUpWithThat and other nonsense sites that support the denialist position. I can't keep up with WattsUp but this gives me a chance to respond to claims that are sufficiently appealing to those types of folks that they're spreading around the blogosphere.

Anyway, I think it's a good idea to adopt blogs like TH. Dedicated denialist blogs like WattsUp are useless - no factual knowledge will influence them, but blogs like TH that only occasionally attack climate actions are more likely to change their focus away from climate when they see their sources get refuted. It might help that in TH's case, the main blogger is actually respectful of critical commenters, so maybe it would be hard to find similar conservative blogs. But it might be worth checking out.

Labels: climate communication, denialists

Andy Revkin points to a proposed climate solution in PNAS focusing on reducing carbon from high-emitters regardless of where they live. From the PNAS article (includes Robert Socolow as an author):

We present a framework for allocating a global carbon reduction
target among nations, in which the concept of ‘‘common but
differentiated responsibilities’’ refers to the emissions of individuals
instead of nations.... We then propose a simple rule to derive a universal cap on global
individual emissions and find corresponding limits on national
aggregate emissions from this cap....For example, reducing
projected global emissions in 2030 by 13 GtCO2 would
require the engagement of 1.13 billion high emitters, roughly
equally distributed in 4 regions: the U.S., the OECD minus the U.S.,
China, and the non-OECD minus China. We also modify our methodology
to place a floor on emissions of the world’s lowest CO2
emitters and demonstrate that climate mitigation and alleviation
of extreme poverty are largely decoupled.
....
National responsibilities are derived by summing the excess emissions of all ‘‘high emitter’’
individuals in a country—‘‘high emitters’’ are those whose
emissions exceed a universal individual emission cap. The
scheme does not specify how any nation meets its responsibilities.

Maybe I'm missing something, but this sounds like another way to describe a per-capita emission allocation - not that it's a bad thing, I think per-capita is the only fair way to go. The advantage might be in the marketing - focusing on super-polluters tends to disarm the status quo defenders.

In some ways this approach would discriminate against developed nations that have controlled their population growth and will continue to accept immigrants from other nations. On the other hand, legacy emissions from the last 150 years aren't addressed, so it might even out.

The authors note a trade issue: "By imputing national emissions to individuals, we neglect embedded carbon in exports and imports, a component that is relevant for countries with
large shares of trade in their economy.... a complete scheme suitable for use in negotiations would need to take them into account." I think that's one reason why the tariff component in the Waxman-Markey legislation is a good idea (along with the importance of using international agreements that aren't treaties to move forward on climate).

Labels: climate legislation, climate solutions

My prediction is that Obama will finally move on Don't Ask Don't Tell in 2010 as an election-year issue, both to energize gay-rights supporters and to paint conservative opponents as placing their prejudices ahead of national security.

And no, just because I'm usually wrong in my political predictions doesn't mean I'm always wrong in what I predict.

Labels: homosexuality, politics, prediction

There were two opportunities for a good outcome in the short term for Iran: that security forces would split or side with protesters, forcing a compromise or overthrow of the regime; or that former president Rafsanjani, a political opponent of Ahmadinejad and Khamanei, would use his chairmanship of the Assembly of Experts to remove Khamenei and compromise with protesters.

The security forces never split, and Juan Cole reports the bad news that's been ignored elsewhere:

Rafsanjani has clearly decided to defer to Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei on
handling the outcome of the elections, and has come out as critical of the crowd
politics and occasional turbulence they produced. As a multi-billionaire and man
of the establishment, he may well have been frightened that the massive street
rallies for Mousavi a week ago signalled a danger to the status quo, which he is
attempting to preserve.

Rafsanjani doesn't want the increased repression of Khamenei and Ahmadinejad, nor potential revolution. Looks like he's chosen sides.

Sadly, change in Iran will likely have to take some time now. Troublemakers in Iran will have the upper hand for a while, and so will potential troublemakers in Israel who want to start a military conflict.

Labels: democracy, foreign policy, Iran

I've put up a new article on wiki, "History of climate change science," covering the history of scientific developments from late 1700s to 1988. What I wrote is really just an abbreviated history of the science of carbon dioxide and climate science - a lot can and should be added about water vapor and other gases. Please jump in and make improvements!

I'm hopeful this article will be less contentious than other climate articles, while still making clear that climate change wasn't something invented by hippies to advance their socialist plots.

Labels: climate change, climate communication, history, science, wikipedia

The Volokhs have been on jihad against legislation to fight the climate change they generally acknowledge to be a real problem, and I haven't been able to keep up with their nonsense. Here's one sample though: Jonathan Adler is horrified that something he claims is a national energy efficiency building code will result.

The American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air Conditioning Engineers already works to develop energy efficiency standards, and the legislation could put some incentives behind adoption of revised standards. Many local building codes already apply state and national standards.

This is a typical, delayist nothingburger of a critique.

Labels: Volokh Correction

(UPDATE: so it passed 219-212, Grist calling it one more than the 218 minimum needed to pass (that doesn't sound right to me, but whatever). Regardless, I'd like the enviros who think it's too weak to support to explain how they would both strengthen it significantly and still get a majority. Next is trying to get 60 votes in the Senate. I'd be pretty amazed to see even something as strong as this version make it all the way through.)

I think there's some wrong information about the Waxman-Markey bill, like this opposition message from the Climate Crisis Coalition:

ACESA's Major Flaws:

1) Weak cap. ACESA's cap on greenhouse gas emissions represents reductions of only 1‑4% below 1990 levels by 2020, far less than climate scientists deem necessary.

2) Offsets further weaken the cap. ACESA overwhelms its own cap by allowing two billion tons of dubious "offsets" annually, with up to two‑thirds from international sources which could allow U.S. emissions to keep increasing until 2040. ACESA's offsets provisions have been further weakened by the latest compromise: transerring EPA oversight to the Department of Agriculture and excluding indirect impacts of biofuels production.

3) Fails to put a meaningful price on carbon. The weak cap combined with offsetts, would result in a price on carbon far too low to produce the changes in energy use ncessary to avert climate catastrophe. Free allowances to utilities and energy intensive industries further mute the price signal needed to shift to a low-carbon economy.

4) Trading Combined with "subprime" offsetts will lead to speculative bubbles. ACESA's trading provisions would create a volitile $2 trillion carbon market with unregulated derivatives that could crash financial markets again. Linking trading systems internationally would lead to even larger opportunities for speculation, gaming and fraud.

5) Weak Renewable Energy Standard. ACESA's Renewable Energy Standard (RES) is watered down to just 15% by 2020, barely greater than "business‑as‑usual." Furthermore, ACESA defines "renewable energy" to include dirty sources such as waste incineration.

6) Handouts for the coal and oil Industries. Through free allowances and a hidden utility tax, the coal industry would receive approximately $150 billion over the bill's lifetime for "deployment" of carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) technology that presently doesn't exist and may never materialize. If feasible, CCS would require far more mining, transportation and burning of coal to produce electricity. ACESA would also give approximately $24 billion to oil refiners under the pretext that the world's most profitable industry needs still more financial assistance.

7) Pre‑emption of EPA Authority. ACESA would pre‑empt EPA's authority to regulate sources of greenhouse gas emissions under the Clean Air Act, while also overriding stronger laws at the state and regional levels. By disabling this regulatory backstop, ACESA ensures that its failure as climate policy will be catastrophic.

I commented at Island of Doubt:

#3 and #4 are contradictory - if the price is low, how can it be a $2 trillion market?

#6: "If feasible, CCS would require far more mining, transportation and burning of coal to produce electricity." What's this supposed to mean? CCS is a big question mark, but if it works it could be the sweet spot in minimally changing our economic systems while evading climate impacts.

#2 and #7: My understanding is the EPA retains control over non-farm offsets and under the bill can still impose new climate change regs over everything except coal plants. If I'm right (and I'm relying on secondary sources here) then either these guys don't know what they're talking about or are deliberately overstating their case.

The problem is finding out what the current language says. The Thomas guide has it when it came out of committee, but the latest deals aren't included. This Grist article says "The biggest flaws environmental organizations have identified in Waxman-Markey include the removal of the EPA’s authority to regulate greenhouse gas regulations under the Clean Air Act," but elsewhere I've seen the removal is only over coal plants. Actual information would be useful.

I wonder if the congress reps tomorrow will know what they're voting on. (And yes, I think they do need to pass it, even with significant holes.)

UPDATE 2: found this (and if that link stops working, this one might work):

" ``PART C--EXEMPTIONS FROM OTHER PROGRAMS

``SEC. 831. CRITERIA POLLUTANTS.

``As of the date of the enactment of the Safe Climate Act, no greenhouse gas may be added to the list under section 108(a) on the basis of its effect on global climate change.

``SEC. 832. INTERNATIONAL AIR POLLUTION.

``Section 115 shall not apply to an air pollutant with respect to that pollutant's contribution to global warming.

``SEC. 833. HAZARDOUS AIR POLLUTANTS.

``No greenhouse gas may be added to the list of hazardous air pollutants under section 112 unless such greenhouse gas meets the listing criteria of section 112(b) independent of its effects on global climate change.

``SEC. 834. NEW SOURCE REVIEW.

``The provisions of part C of title I shall not apply to a major emitting facility that is initially permitted or modified after January 1, 2009, on the basis of its emissions of any greenhouse gas.

``SEC. 835. TITLE V PERMITS.

``Notwithstanding any provision of title III or V, no stationary source shall be required to apply for, or operate pursuant to, a permit under title V, solely because the source emits any greenhouse gases that are regulated solely because of their effect on global climate change.''."

So my Clean Air Act knowledge is rusty, but criteria pollutants have to have plans for their reductions, so that's off the table. New coal plants could be regulated (I think) but old coal plants can't.

Labels: climate legislation, Waxman-Markey

I haven't had much to contribute about Iran. I hope things turn out well, while fearing it could be another Burma. A colleague of mine is Iranian-American, and she emigrated back to Iran last summer to work on environmental issues there. I get occasional emails about what's going on, and hope she's okay too.

As to the "Obama should take the side of protestors" meme from the right, I think it's a matter partly of how one thinks American involvement in Iranian politics would be perceived in Iran. If you think the Iranian public would perceive American involvement as instantly friendly and non-oppressive, then it would be foolish to not weigh in. If on the other hand you recognize our role in overthrowing an elected government, long-term support for a brutal dictator, and subsequent military support for Iran's opponent in a brutal war that killed hundreds of thousands of Iranians, it might seem less wise to take sides. It's just a matter of which is a more accurate way to anticipate how Iranians would react to our taking sides.

Labels: foreign policy, Iran

The above is the title for an old 2006 James Annan post that I tried to find earlier, about Roger Pielke Jr.'s approach criticizing those who attempt to estimate the current level of damage from AGW. An excerpt:

A recent comment of [Pielke's] provides a nice opening:

As you well know much of science works through hypothesis - falsification. Across climate science the null hypothesis used to guide research has been that a human signal is NOT present, and research is then done to falsify this hypothesis. In some cases such research has been done allowing attribution of climate effects to an anthropogenic forcing. This null hypothesis is chosen because of Occam's razor, it is a simpler explanation for what is observed.

He is essentially posing the question as initially one of detection - can we show that the AGW has had an effect, and that the observations are not just the result of climate variability? - before moving on to attribution - how much of a change can we describe as being due to this particular cause?

There is, however, an entirely different but equally valid approach that could also be used from the outset, which is: what is our estimate of the magnitude of the effect? The critical distinction is that the null hypothesis has no particularly priviledged position in this approach.

James goes on to point out one of the two reasons why this is a bad approach:

It is amusing to see Roger, very much at the sharp end of policy-relevant work, promoting the scientifically "pure" but practically less useful detection/frequentist approach rather than the more appropriate estimation/Bayesian angle.

The business interests who will be hurt by action to address emissions know who they are, but the people who will be hurt by inaction don't know who they are. Damage estimates will help people know they are being affected and be more likely to balance the polluters in policy development.

The other reason why estimates are valuable is for climate change litigation. If we can estimate how much damage polluters are causing, we're much closer to figuring out what they owe to society. I'm certain this is something that fossil fuel lawyers and lobbyists are thinking about, and at some point they're going to want a deal: in return for immunity from litigation, they'll give a concession on climate change legislation. The more scared they are of litigation means the bigger the concession that they'll offer.

Back to James' post - in the comments, Roger shows up to say he mostly agreed with James on policy, but was not advocating but just "noting" the IPCC approach. Fast forward to more recently:

The attribution of health impacts to greenhouse gas emissions relies on work done by the WHO. Here is how the WHO describes its own analyses:

In 2002 the WHO explained (at p. 26 in this PDF):

Climate exhibits natural variability, and its effects on health are mediated by many other determinants. There are currently insufficient high-quality, long-term data on climate-sensitive diseases to provide a direct measurement of the health impact of anthropogenic climate change, particularly in the most vulnerable populations. Quantitative modelling is therefore the only practical route for estimating the health impacts of climate change.

And by quantitative modeling, they mean a model with assumptions included for the effects of GHG-driven climate change.

Roger calls this "non-empirical" and says estimates can be altered to say anything. Only "empirical" data can be used. I assume he means a disproof of the null hypothesis, which he had said before isn't a good way to do policy. Maybe I've misunderstood....

Worth noting that this WHO stuff is the same that Stoat says is badly done. And I'll concede that taking the additional step of estimating the human impact after estimating the AGW climate damage adds more squishiness to the calculation. But Roger says it shouldn't even be attempted, a different approach from saying the attempt was flawed.

(And I'll just put in a marker that I'm not convinced that William's right about the WHO, but I'm going to have to look at that more closely to see if I have anything intelligent to say....)

Labels: climate communication, climate solutions, Roger Pielke Jr.

The Onion provides it here with this video, Obama Drastically Scales Back Goals For America After Visiting Denny's. I'd like to see some other country top that video. We're Number One!

The unfortunate part being that self-mockery only works if it has an element of truth to it....

(I actually would be interested in similar self-mockery videos from elsewhere, could be an entertaining cultural experience.)

Labels: humor

Grist has been full of pro and con debates from enviros about the Waxman-Markey (one of the later salvos here). Just thought I'd add that it's pretty obviously the only game in town, and if it fails, it's unrealistic to expect anything else this year. Doing something is a whole lot better than doing nothing.

The only reason I can think of for holding off is the hope that next year, EPA will have come up with CO2 regulations that scare the bad guys enough to cut a deal in return for legislation that makes EPA back off. Too many problems with this, though, mostly problems of delay - EPA may not finish new regulations for over a year, and then the litigation will start and delay things even longer. Only after they've lost all the battles with EPA will the bad guys cut a deal.

A better approach is to get the best legislation that we can pass by 60 votes, now. When EPA issues draft regulations in a year or two, the polluters can try and strike a deal, but the baseline that they will have to improve from is the halfway-okay Waxman-Markey, as opposed to the present situation of nothing.

I don't think the relatively-smaller enviro groups opposing W-M have much of a leg to stand on.

UPDATE: a recent Nature Podcast commentary (not sure if it was June 4 or June 11) had another good point - if the US walks into the Copenhagen conference after the end of the year with no climate legislation in place, we will have no response to India and China saying they shouldn't put limit on their emissions either. If I were conspiratorial I'd think the polluters were cooperating on this tactic.

UPDATE 2: According to Mother Jones, the current version of W-M strips EPA of authority to regulate coal emissions for climate reasons (apparently not other aspects of climate change though). Consider part of my argument shot down, then.

Labels: climate crisis, climate legislation

My usual blogging timeliness here. News broke several weeks ago that the Foxp2 gene, one that is nearly identical in all mammals except humans and is associated with language problems when it's defective, had been experimentally altered in mice to partially resemble the human gene. They found the mice vocalized differently, behaved differently, and had more developed neurons in the parts of the brain controlling fine motor activity necessary for vocalizing.

So I think it would be very interesting to see how the same change would work on chimps. Those who think that chimps are on the far side of some ethical line that separates humans from everything else shouldn't really see any problem with this idea. I would hesitate and think a long time before genetically altering chimps to make them smarter, but the main change from this gene, probably, might just make it easier for chimps to verbalize what they can already do by sign language (or maybe it would do nothing that substantial, who knows). I think that change, if it happened, would strongly affect us and how we deal with great apes if all of us could hear them talk.

Labels: animal rights, Great Ape Project, science

The girl whose over-praised acting got her an Oscar nomination for Juno did a much better job in an earlier, better, and very different movie - Hard Candy. Almost every review I've read included a spoiler from the first third of the movie (even the label on the Netflix DVD had a spoiler), so I'll avoid that by just saying it follows the consequences during one afternoon when a male photographer is inappropriately flirtatious with a teenage girl. If you like movies with a lot of moral ambiguity, even some remaining at the end, this is a good one. There's one stomach-churning scene, but the violence is implied and off-screen. You also have to suspend your disbelief about aspects of the girl's character, but not as much as in Juno.

I can't say too much more without giving away spoilers, so I'll just stop by recommending it.

Labels: reviews

RP Jr.'s got his third post up now in his attack-dog series against attaching a number to death and destruction from climate change. I can't keep up, but here's a note or two.

Roger sez:

I focused my critique on the disaster impacts because it seems common wisdom that the attribution of malaria, diarrhea and malnutrition deaths to greenhouse gas emissions needs no further critique. I was wrong about the common wisdom.

Roger finally admits he was only talking about less than 5% of the deaths. As to his claim that he omitted critiquing the 95% of the study because he was being nice, decide for yourself if you think he's telling the truth.


Moving along:

The attribution of health impacts to greenhouse gas emissions relies on work done by the WHO. Here is how the WHO describes its own analyses:

In 2002 the WHO explained (at p. 26 in this PDF):

Climate exhibits natural variability, and its effects on health are mediated by many other determinants. There are currently insufficient high-quality, long-term data on climate-sensitive diseases to provide a direct measurement of the health impact of anthropogenic climate change, particularly in the most vulnerable populations. Quantitative modelling is therefore the only practical route for estimating the health impacts of climate change.

And by quantitative modeling, they mean a model with assumptions included for the effects of GHG-driven climate change. To be clear, these assumptions are not based on observations or measurements.

So we're back, yet again, to Roger's shibboleth, his saying you can't start with an estimate of known climate impacts and use that to attribute a percentage of deaths and economic costs. Why? He says it's hard to do it accurately, that a slight change in the assumptions will give large changes in the numbers.

What he calls nonempirical is what normal humans would call an estimate. If you can't estimate perfectly, then you try to do it conservatively, and make clear that you're being conservative.

Roger thinks that if you can't get a perfect number, then don't do it at all, and give polluters a free ride instead.

UPDATE: Roger says in his post that tweaking the assumptions could result in an analysis where climate change actually reduces deaths instead of increasing them. That sounds to me like a great way for Roger to falsify this method - show that different but equally-reasonable assumptions lead to radically different conclusions. Incidentally, that's also how the fossil fuel companies could have backed up their assertion that climate models are useless - they could build their own with defensible parameters and assumptions and get different outputs. The fact that they never did it (publicly, anyway) suggests to me that any defensible model leads to a similar conclusion.

UPDATE 2: See William's post - he thinks the study's flawed, and makes the good point that my attack on Roger's critique sounds like a defense of the study. It's not meant to be.

Labels: climate delayers, Roger Pielke Jr.

(META-UPDATE: As I said in the update to the post following this one, go read William's critique of the GHF study. What I'm trying to do here is not to defend the study but to argue that Roger did a lousy job of critiquing it, especially in his originally critique that he sent to the NY Times.)


Unfortunately, Roger Pielke Jr. seems to be the NY Times' go-to guy to say something contrary about climate stuff (OTOH, finding anyone who's semi-consistently contrary, but non-denialist, and not as credibility-wrecked as Lomborg, has got to be tough).

Latest is reporting on a study estimating over 300,000 deaths are now caused annually climate change, where RP Jr. says categorically the report is "deeply flawed" and a "methodological embarassment". His critique in full is here, and it really comes down to claiming that past attempts to pull a climate signal out of disaster noise have failed, and that this new attempt - comparing earthquake disasters and weather disasters over the same 25 year time period to determine whether increased disaster stats are from socioeconomic growth or climate - doesn't control for confounding factors.

First and most important, he condemns the entire report while offering reasons on just one small part. Disasters account for a little over 10% of the 300k death estimate (UPDATE: I was sloppy - it's actually less than 5%, and that figure also includes droughts, another thing I don't think Roger has critiqued). Most of the non-disaster-related deaths come from environmental degradation (methodology here) of which Roger has nothing to say.

Second, we don't know if earthquake regions have experienced less growth than other areas. Maybe they've had more growth, and the report is an underestimate. All we really know - and what would have been a valid criticism - is that this method is necessarily crude and has wide error bars for disaster attribution.

Third, Roger should have welcomed the approach to begin with, because it's the only one he acknowledges as legitimate. For years he's attacked as illegitimate the analyses that take what are generally-accepted levels of current climate change and tried to estimate what level of current disaster losses can be attributed to them. It took me forever to figure out his real critique was claiming these studies were attempting to prove a climate signal in the disaster noise, which is a complete misinterpretation (James Annan figured this out too, but I can't find where he wrote about it on his blog). This new report, by contrast, tries to do what Pielke Jr. wants, and instead he's just mad.

Fourth, if he wants to stand by previous analyses, he should have tried to figure out how to improve the study by making a prediction: that narrowing the geographic focus to areas with earthquake disasters would show no difference in trends between earthquake disasters and weather disasters (or at least, decreased diffence than what the present study found). That would remove much of the socioeconomic factors that Roger thinks are the problem. It would be interesting to see the answer to this narrower focus.

UPDATE: per Eli's comment, Roger's played a role in staking "ownership" of a policy area. And I thought I remembered this earthquake thing before.

Labels: climate communication, Roger Pielke Jr.

Just thought I'd highlight this Climate Progress piece from a while back, saying the science behind the claim that no-till farming sequesters carbon is unsettled. I think Joe overstates the case (read the comments), but it was pretty surprising to me that there even was any question about it.

Labels: climate solutions

I normally like listening to the Washington Week in Review podcast as a way to catch up on news I might have missed and hear some analysis, but the critique of the mainstream media being morally empty has some application to their May 15th show. First, they were mystified as to why Pelosi and CIA would get in such a bitter public fight over whether she had been misled in the torture briefings. I can help out with that - it's because at least one of the two parties involved is lying, and the other party could be expected to be angry in that situation. I don't know who it is yet, but that circumstance justifies a public fight.

The other issue is Obama's reversal on releasing torture photos. The show participants describe it as a "nick" in his promise of transparency and can't see any reason to release them. It's interesting that the press has so little interest in the truth.

One thing that might help this show is if they encouraged posting comments on their website. Left, Right, and Center is a weekly news review that does exactly that, and I think they do a better job overall - even Tony Blankley on the right has become more accurate over time.

Final thought about Obama and the torture photos - the national security argument he's making has already been rejected by the courts, and he's never described how he could improve it. I think he's counting on the courts to force him to release the photos, so it's not his fault. I don't give a lot of credit to this type of behavior but it's not quite as bad as it could be.

Labels: Barack Obama, ethics, media

His post in full:

Unarmed in Yosemite [Ramesh Ponnuru]

I yield to few in my admiration for Heather Mac Donald, but if it comes down to an unarmed Mac Donald against a bear I'm betting on the bear. (Jonah: If The Fair Jessica wants to weigh in on the wisdom of going into the Alaskan wilderness without a side-arm, I'd love to hear it.)

I've spent a lot of time in Yosemite - most recently, last weekend - and six summers in central Alaska. In Yosemite, bears are everywhere. There was one about 20 feet from my rock-climbing group on Saturday. They're very dangerous to your cars and your tents if you leave food in them, but they're almost completely non-dangerous to people. Guns in parks translate into drunken idiots in crowded campgrounds, shooting bears that are breaking into cars where the idiots left their food instead of putting the food away in lockers.

As for Alaska, I never had a gun and never needed one. Use some intelligence instead. But if you rely on a gun, what the hell does Ponnuru think a sidearm is going to do to a grizzly bear?

And I think the Corner writers actually get some kind of pay to produce this stuff.

Labels: stupidity

Since they're not on the short list I better blog about it before it becomes outdated, but two of my Stanford Law professors have been mentioned as Obama picks: Pam Karlan and former dean Kathleen Sullivan. I don't actually know that much about them as far as their scholarship goes, but I can say that both are excellent professors. Sullivan in particular was one of the two clearest instructors I had in school, which I think does translate into clearly conveying and arguing for her opinion on an issue.

Karlan probably has more of the empathy thing that people talk about, at least on the overt telegenic level that could help in confirmation. Sullivan is extremely cerebral, although she was nice to students, and helped me out on one research project even when I wasn't her student any more (she also gave me grief for repeatedly signing up and then dropping a class of hers because it was too early in the morning).

There's been some media attention to both of them being lesbians. I don't remember anything about Karlan, but Sullivan's orientation was considered an open secret at school ten years ago. I don't know anything about it directly, and for the most part it doesn't seem to play too big a role now. One more good sign in our national social development.

Less well known fact about Sullivan: she recently took part in a climate change lawsuit, but represented the bad guys, automakers trying to shut down tightened vehicle emission standards. It's perilous to try and guess someone's motivations, but Sullivan is far too intelligent and non-rightwing to be a denialist. Maybe she actually believes their legal position is right (which doesn't have to coincide with whether climate change is bad). Or maybe she was trying to build some political viability by not always taking the standard lefty position. That last is kind of unfair speculation, but I can't rule it out. Anyway, I'm pretty sure the automakers just got their lawsuit nuked by new Obama administration regulations and will be dropping it, which may be another thing Sullivan counted on.

My real reason for writing this post though is to talk about the one time in law school that I kind of outfoxed Kathleen Sullivan. Not that anyone else should or would care, but I'm going to write it. The story is that one morning before her class, I read the newspaper and noticed the Supreme Court had just decided a case that dealt with the issues we'd be talking about that day. I was very surprised though that she didn't mention the case in that class. Logic said either she wasn't up on her game and didn't know about the Court decision (probability near 0%), or she deliberately decided not to mention it.

Two months later, my study group was prepping for the final exam (which was 100% of the grade), and I found the Court decision, made our group study it, and we all wrote our own practice answers based on the facts the Court dealt with. Several days later, the case was a major part of our final exam, with only somewhat-changed facts. The test was open book, so each of us could just pull out our practice answers and revise them. I was very popular with my study group, and that was my huge triumph in school.

Sometimes it pays to read the newspaper.

Labels: environmental law, law

The Hitler-throws-a-fit scene upon realizing he's the lost the war in the German movie Downfall (excellent movie, by the way) has inspired a lot of viral video parodies. Below is a parody I worked up for the worst of the climate denialists and a few others:




(If the subtitles don't show up, click on an upward-pointing triangle in the bottom-right corner, and then click on the letters "CC" that should pop up.)

A few links:

Fred Singer: a discredited former scientist who plays on what's left of his reputation to defend tobacco companies and whatever else floats his political boat. After denying warming was happening at all, he now claims it's a natural 1500 year cycle.

Richard Lindzen: not as bad as Singer but still deceptive and slippery. An example about Lindzen that I should probably bring up: he claims to be a Holocaust survivor. In fact, he was born in the US in 1940 and wasn't in Germany during the war and Holocaust. His Jewish parents emigrated from Germany in the 1930s before it started. He meets no generally accepted definition of a Holocaust survivor, and this gives a general indication of his trustworthiness.

Marc Morano, Pat Michaels, and Tim Ball: two-bit denialists, but loud ones. I'll raise my estimate of them if they ever put their money where their mouths are and bet over climate change. Michaels sometimes says things that are accurate, but usually doesn't.

Koch Industries: a shadowy, private corporation that funds all kinds of anti-environmental efforts.

Chris Monckton: some denialist secretary or viscount or something. Much more info here and a nice story here.

Roy Spencer: one of the scientists who screwed up the satellite data for years to deny global warming, until someone finally fixed their mess. His awesome science skillz has also led him to conclude that evolution is bogus and that Intelligent Design/creation models rock.

I'll probably add a few more notes over time. If anyone feels like doing something similar, the tools are out there for adding your own captions. Most didn't work for me, but this one did. I did have to hand-edit afterward, and I used a repair site too that might have helped. Accurate subtitles for this clip are here, and the clip with no subtitles here.

Go here to see this version on Youtube.

Part of me feels slightly bad for my Godwin violation. On the other hand, it's a joke, and it's nothing compared to the bad faith they use when approaching the science.

UPDATE: fleshed out some details, and new links. Will probably do some more over time.

Labels: denialists, Hitler