AGUAS DE MARÇO

Borrowed from James Fallows, who got it from some Japanese guy, who. . . .

It is that good and a fantastic way to start the weekend.  Share it with your honey bunny.  That is all.

Brian's call to Santa Clara County environmentalists to vote for the Safe Clean Water Measure

After the jump below is a shortened version of a letter I'm sending far and wide to the local environmental community in support of a funding measure for the Santa Clara Valley Water District that I represent.  The funding goes to watershed restoration, water supply, and flood control, with this appeal directed to environmentalists.  Mail-in ballots will go out next week.

Letter to Santa Clara County Environmentalists about the Safe Clean Water Measure

Brian Schmidt

October 4, 2012

As a long time environmentalist with what I hope is some “street cred” on valuing the environment and knowing the Water District, I urge you, I beg you, to support the Safe Clean Water measure - Measure B - on the November ballot and to tell your friends to do the same. This fall might be our only chance for a decade or longer to get expanded environmental funding, and it definitely is our best chance based on what we currently know about future circumstances.

(More after the jump....)

Eli Writes

Eli, both cautious and direct (well, damnit this is Eli's blog so what did you expect), is in the habit of asking others what they mean rather than constructing elaborate finger weaves, so when White Beard (he has another missive) pointed out that something was fowl (yes Weasel, Eli knows) with parts of the DOI Inspector Clouseau report, Eli took electrons in hand and wrote to Dr. Rosa Meehan who was quoted in the IG Report in her then role as Division Chief, FWS’ Marine Mammals Management (MMM) program in Anchorage, AK

Dear Dr. Meehan,

I have been reading the DOI IG report on Charles Monnett, and came across the following statement on page 37
---------------------------
Meehan explained the distinction between threatened and endangered listings by stating that threatened “means you’ve got a population that’s in trouble” and endangered means that the “species is one that is in danger of extinction.” Meehan said that the polar bear was designated as a threatened, rather than endangered, species because at the time of MMM’s evaluation, the polar bear population was estimated to be around 200,000, and they were not likely to become extinct.

Meehan further explained that there are instances when species have been listed immediately as endangered.  Meehan said that informal interviews conducted with scientists and subject experts on modeling revealed that the evidence pointed mainly to the change in the ecosystem and its correlation to the polar bears losing prey, losing weight, and other issues.

-----------------------

On the face of it, it appears that the 200,000 estimate is too high by at least an order of magnitude, and I was wondering if you agreed that 20,000 is a better estimate or have a better estimate of the population.  Further, USGS has stated that climate change and the associated decline in summer ice in the Arctic is the most important threat to the polar bears, has the position of FWS shifted on this, or did your statement about changes in the ecosystem refer to the accelerating loss of summer ice in the Arctic?

While I would appreciate a response that I could quote or paraphrase, any request for confidentiality will be honored

Today Ethon flew in with the air Email from Dr. Meehan

Hi -

The 200,000 is definitely a typo/misquote - I usually go with the range of 20 - 25,000.

The explanation I provided is the longer version of simply saying the sea ice is going away. I haven't heard of anyone in FWS or the administration saying anything else.

Hope this is helpful.

Very, and Eli thanks Dr. Meehan because this establishes authoritatively that the best estimate of polar bear population in the Arctic is between 20 and 25K, AND that the major threat to the population is the sea ice decline, the basic implication of Monnett and Gleasons' paper as set forth in a footnote.

Now some, not Eli to be sure, might think the IG evasive in dancing about how the loss of habitat for a species that spends most of its foraging time on sea ice refers to the loss of sea ice.  Very artful the dodgers are, for example, they report on their interview with Douglas Krofta, the Fish and Wildlife Services Chief of the Endangered Species Listing Program,

Krofta “strongly” believed that if Monnett’s manuscript information had not been used for support, FWS would have still gone forward with the listing. Krofta believed that the manuscript helped to create an image about how the loss of sea ice causes bears to have to swim greater distances and the possible relationship between sea ice loss and more bears drowning.

He reiterated, however, that they had “very strong” data that suggested that the polar bear’s habitat itself was being lost and the effects on the polar bear were going to be severe. Because of these data, Krofta speculated FWS would have gone forward with its recommendation even without Monnett’s manuscript information.

Eli contemplates writing to the DOI IG about the shoddy work her shop is putting out.

Pass the alert, nae, sound the disaster klaxon far and wide.

One of the things a smart bunny learns is to listen to those who know better about an issue.  So following White Beard's advice Eli went and looked at the link to the IG Report on the matter of Charles Monnett.  Frankly it was auditing at the best, and, yes at one point the ears fell over the eyes, but something did seem a bit funny about the estimate of white bears in the Arctic, but Eli and his ilk were not employed in the polar bear census, still EEGO, 

This was not cool, as White Beard notes in the comments

At the bottom of MS page 37, Division Chief, Anchorage office of FWS’ [Fish and Wildlife Service] Marine Mammals Management’s “Meehan said that the polar bear was designated as a threatened, rather than endangered, species because at the time of MMM’s evaluation, the polar bear population was estimated to be around 200,000...” This eight (oh dear, mustn’t ever UNDERSTATE these things) ten fold OVERSTATED quantity by the IG has the worlds entire economy attremble on the edge of the abyss.

Given that the population of Alaska is about 722,000 that is less than 1 bear per 4 people and at that rate even including the north of Canada,  there would be considerably fewer people as the bears munched through the population.  But wait, there is more.  Look at the next paragraph

Meehan said that informal interviews conducted with scientists and subject experts on modeling revealed that the evidence pointed mainly to the change in the ecosystem and its correlation to the polar bears losing prey, losing weight, and other issues.

Eli would bet that those changes in the ecosystem are dominated by the loss of summer ice.  After all, it is the position of the USGS that

The main threat to polar bears now is thought to be the unidirectional decline of habit as a result of climate warming. Other impacts are human-caused mortality, contaminants and development in the Arctic.

Eli plans to get around to writing to the IG on the matter.  Send the dear a postcard.

False balance and simplistic denunciation of the anti-GMO movement: Keith Kloor and Ed Yong, call your offices

Ed Yong certainly and Keith Kloor possibly understand false balance in climate reporting:  the scientific mainstream and a few outliers should not get equal billing.  Keith Kloor certainly and Ed Yong possibly don't understand the false balance problem in the simplistic and blanket denunciation of opposition to GMO foods that equates the anti-GMO movement to climate denialists.*

Neither can distinguish wheat and chaff, separating a few real environmental concerns and some pretty hypothetical health concerns from an admittedly-large amount of unfounded anti-GMO concerns, particularly about health.  One real environmental concerns is of genetic contamination in the wild from GMO genes, both of species related to domesticated species and of plant species gone "feral".  Another is how GMOs facilitate increased herbicide use through inserting resistance genes in targeted crops.  A hypothetical health concern is from transferring allergenic genes to otherwise non-allergenic foods.  Another (possibly less-hypothetical) is farmworker exposure to the increased herbicide use.

Despite that, the Kloor article that Yong cites has this disingenuous summation:

After 14 years of cultivation and a cumulative total of 2 billion acres planted, no adverse health or environmental effects have resulted from commercialization of genetically engineered crops.

Emphasis added.  Several paragraphs later, even Kloor has to admit poorly-phrased versions of some of the environmental issues, but that didn't get him to remove his summation or false equivalence to climate denialism.  He just then segues into the particularly-inane argument that GMOs are just a fast form of traditional breeding.  No.  Or at least, horizontal gene transfer from wildly different species is so unlikely in traditional breeding as to make it a ridiculous claim.

GMOs have real promise.  I'm particularly interested in the possibility of turning annual grasses like corn into perennials, something that could have significant climate benefits by allowing more carbon to be stored in no-tilled soils.  No point in being simplistic about GMOs though, including their real problems.


*This is mostly about Kloor, but Yong has a blog history of simply supporting the anti-anti-GMO people, including this Kloor article.


UPDATE:  Another potentially-good example of a GMO - inserting resistance to a non-native disease in the all-but-disappeared American chestnut.

This is all getting too serious

Through a Reef Darkly

Simon Donner provides a gliss on the fate to come of coral reefs in a warming world, and, to be frank, it ain't pretty.  The reefs are toast in a 2 C warmer world.  Commenting on Freiler, Meinshausen, Golly, Mengel, Lebek, Donner and Hoegh-Guldbergs' paper "Limiting global warming to 2 C is unlikely to save most coral reefs", Simon points to the obvious, if 2 C is an average, then the extremes are worse, and it is the extreme hot spells that doom the reefs.

Frieler et al. relates the projected frequency of heat stress events – what I often call ocean “heat waves” – in coral reefs worldwide – that can cause coral bleaching to global mean temperature change, the metric discussed so often in policy circles, the public and the press.  In past studies, including several of my own (Donner et al., 2005, 2007), we estimated the frequency of bleaching events under different future greenhouse gas scenarios. In those studies, we are able to show the difference in the outcome for coral reefs between futures with different levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide (and other greenhouse gases). For example, my “Coping with Commitment" (open access) paper concludes  with a discussion of the level of atmospheric CO2 necessary to avoid one definition of "dangerous" impacts to coral reefs.

In those past analyses, though, if you wanted to know what the coral reefs picture looked like under some specific global mean temperature increase – like, say, the proposed 2 deg C threshold – you’d need to take apart the results and find the point in the emission scenarios were global average warming reaches (or, depending on your question, stabilizes) at that level. In response to a request in advance of the UN Copenhagen climate summit in 2009, a group of colleagues and I did that analysis (pdf) for the Caribbean and found a clear difference between the coral reef outcomes in +1.5 C and a +2 C world. Frieler et al is the first paper to do a comprehensive analysis of coral reef outcomes under different temperature thresholds for the whole planet.

Now some, not Eli to be sure, might point out how useful proper framing could be in this matter.  Eli is simply depressed.

Too Many Vowels

Celery Stalks at Midnight

Strained Silver and strange predictions on climate

It's not the usual lopsided intellectual battle we discuss here at Eli's.  This is Michael Mann criticizing Nate Silver's somewhat skeptical take of climate prediction capability in Silver's new book:

It's not that Nate revealed himself to be a climate change denier; he accepts that human-caused climate change is real, and that it represents a challenge and potential threat. But he falls victim to a fallacy that has become all too common among those who view the issue through the prism of economics rather than science. Nate conflates problems of prediction in the realm of human behavior -- where there are no fundamental governing 'laws' and any "predictions" are potentially laden with subjective and untestable assumptions -- with problems such as climate change, which are governed by laws of physics, like the greenhouse effect, that are true whether or not you choose to believe them.

As usual, I'll leave the heavy lifting to someone else, Mann in this case.  Also as usual, I haven't read Silver's book, so maybe there's more to it.  What I can add, however, is that it's helpful to look at climate predictions by Silver himself and by a denialist he credulously supports.

Three years ago, Nate offered to bet climate denialists on a monthly basis over whether the temperature in their hometown was one degree above or below the historical average.  As I said at the link, this was a somewhat aggressive bet offer that could've been vulnerable to letting his opponents rely on a short-term seasonal prediction of colder temps to game the system against him.  It would be interesting to see if he discusses his past bet offer and why he's critical of predictions that are much less affected by random noise.

Second is Silver's enthusiasm for the discredited Scott Armstrong, a crackpot climate denier.  In that case, there was a prediction and a betting market created by Armstrong's fans at InTrade, a skewed and unfair prediction that they still managed to lose spectacularly (link goes to a series of posts on Armstrong and the bet).

Like Mann, I'm a Fan of Nate, but he whiffed on this one.

One more thing:  Nate apparently wrote something about Gavin Schmidt (no relation) and his unwillingness to get involved in betting over climate models.  As someone who is willing to bet over climate, here's my response about climate denialists who won't bet over their predictions:

Of course any particular skeptic might honestly not be interested in betting, but the widespread lack of interest tells you something.

There's a difference between an individual's disinterest in betting versus the widespread disinterest among denialists as a community (with honorable skeptic exceptions) in putting their money where their mouths are.

Don't Look at the Little Man Behind the Curtain

Inspector Clouseau has, after twenty seven or so months of excruciating labor, given birth to a minor reprimand for Charles Monnett.  Bunnies will recall the surreal set of cross examinations lead by Eric Colouseau May of the Department of the Interior's Inspector General Division.

Special Investigator May was indeed special in at least one sense of the word.  It was always unclear what about the polar bear paper that Monnett and Jeffrey Gleason wrote that got this amateur gumshoe with a shiny badge going.  However, the little man has indeed peaked from the curtain.  First,  the BOEM press secretary admitted the obvious

"We have confirmed that the [inspector general's] findings do not support a conclusion that the individual scientists involved engaged in scientific misconduct,"

Given the back and forth over the months it will be interesting to finally see what is in those findings, but, at least to Eli, the revealing point is what the reprimand was about, and indeed, most likely the entire farago.  Monnett

has received a letter of reprimand for allegedly improper disclosures back in 2007 and 2008 which helped reveal that Bush administration Arctic offshore drilling reviews illegally suppressed adverse environmental consequences.

and if you dig a bit into the letter of reprimand itself, lo and behold,

On April 5, 2007 you made an  improper release of an internal government document.  You forwarded an email message with the subject "Weekly report" to Robert Suydam of the North Slope Borough and to Rick Steiner, who at the time was a professor at the University of Alaska and has since served on the Board of Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER).

PEER, of course is the group that has been providing legal representation to Dr. Monnett, who, the bunnies now learn, had been serving as an important whistle blower to PEER, and, among other things, these leaks resulted in an important loss in federal court for BOEM in a case about oil development in Alaska.  Steiner himself was involved at the University of Alaska in a very messy case where he was stripped of a grant by the University and later resigned his position.

It all goes back to BOEM and the state of Alaska wanting to develop oil resources.  Oil, not money, is at the root of all farces.  Slippery stuff.

Angry Rabett

Angry Bear is quite wroth with the work rate of the current US Supreme Court, Eli's POV is more the more they work the more problems they create, however, there is one case on the docket that rings the Rabett's chimes. 

As old time readers of Rabett Run know, every Fall Eli goes on a five alarm rant about the practices of textbook publishers and the co-respondent faculty.  This year the US Supremes confront a case that could significantly lower the cost of textbooks.

A few years ago, an enterprising math grad student at Berkeley, Supap Kirtsaeng, noticed the large difference in price between the inexpensive (ok, not so pretty) textbooks at home in Thailand and those in Berkelistan.  Supap wrote home and told his folks to buy every textbook in sight and ship them to him in the US, which, upon arrival he resold.

John Wiley threw a fit and sued after Dr. (now) Kirtsaeng had earned about a million bucks.  The issue is picky picky and goes by the name of the first sale doctrine, e.g. that the publisher can only control the price of the original sale, the point of contention is whether this only applies to books printed in the US or all books on which there is a US copyright.  Lower courts have sided with Wiley but the decisions were narrow and everyjudge moaned that the Congress could have been clearer on that point.  There is some related law in a suit where Omega sued Costco and won for selling grey market watches at cut rate prices.

One can only hope.

Shorts

1. AAUP proposes revisions of rules on research misconduct:

The proposal defines research misconduct as "fabrication, falsification, or plagiarism in proposing, performing, or reviewing research, or in reporting research results." To arrive at a finding of research misconduct, in-vestigators would have to establish that the conduct in question was a significant departure from accepted practices in the relevant research community, and that the action was committed intentionally, knowingly, or recklessly.

My emphasis added.  Doesn't sound all that different from current rules that are being flaunted by George Mason University over plagiarism among their climate denialist academics.

UPDATE:  No wonder it sounded familiar, it actually was the old set of rules - I stumbled through a link and thought it was new (HT to John Mashey).  Even more importantly, I should've said "flouted" the rules instead of "flaunted" the rules.

2. My sadly-unpaid advertising for Chris Mooney's Point of Inquiry continues, this time about the Truth Markets innovation that attempts to reward truth in political discourse with money.  Great idea, no idea if it will work.  I don't share Mooney's concern that the conservative reaction to the mostly truthful wikipedia - creating Conservapedia - represents a successful response on any level.  OTOH, the proposal for a Truth Campaign, "Over 95% of American scientists believe climate change is real" is problematic.  It should read "over 95% of climatologists publishing on climate change believe climate change is real."  Still, I hope the overall idea works out.

3. Nice Felix Salmon article about the positive interaction between straight regulation, a gas tax, and a theoretical carbon tax:

Porter is also right that in countries with higher gas taxes, fuel economy tends to be much higher. But he’s not necessarily right that the higher gas taxes alone are responsible. Porter implies that the US only has fuel-economy standards just because “a tax on gasoline doesn’t stand a chance” of being passed. But the fact is that even countries with very high gas taxes have fuel-economy standards as well. And, guess what, they’re significantly tougher than ours, and they always have been.... 

Auto emissions pollution was a problem in the 70s and 80s; it’s not a problem now, with today’s much cleaner cars. [Wow, that was a really wrong sentence in an otherwise smart article - Ed.] 

The fact is that fuel-economy standards are a pretty good way of ensuring that carmakers can plan for a more fuel-efficient future, without worrying about competitors undercutting them with gas-guzzlers. If the US government ever comes to its senses and increases the gas tax, or if it — wonder of wonders — actually implements a broader carbon tax, then at that point you would have three different forces conspiring to make America’s fleet more efficient. You’d have the tax, you’d have the fuel-economy standards, and you’d have the general global increase in fuel efficiency.

I added the emphasis, a point that I hadn't thought of before.

Your Joe Bastardi entertainment moment

In 2010, predicting a big recovery in sea ice nearing historical levels in 2011, and slow progress over 20-30 years to above normal levels:


Apparently he now claims it's all just cycles that will turn around.  Funny how cyclical effects are producing new records, and they just happen to tend to be records you'd see from humans changing the climate....

Another Damn Survey

Grist does a Lewandowsky  but with better cartoons.

Chill Out

Romney refuses to disclose whether he paid a significant amount of income taxes before 2010

The headline above is the takeaway I get from the "disclosures" by the Romney campaign that just went up an hour or so ago.  All they're saying is percentage of adjusted income spent on taxes, not whether the income is virtually eliminated by tax strategies like write-offs from capital losses.  If the vast majority of his $250 million is in investments that lost money, and he made some money on speaking fees that paid normal income taxes, his overall tax bill would be not that much larger than someone in the upper middle class.

What they need to do is show the tax returns, which would give some way to examine if they've been playing games.  Failing that, they should at least provide brief details with actual amounts paid in each of the years they've summarized, just like they did for 2011.  If we believe the summaries released today, Romney did pay taxes every year, but we don't yet know if the taxes amounted to a hill of beans.

The Fat Man Swings

Willard Tony and Dr. Who

Now some, not Eli of course, have had their fun with Willard Tony, but Eli has always been serious and respectful (oh yeah, well this one was early days).  OTOH there are, to be sure, problems with his approach, his papers and his all around understanding of what he is doing, many of which surfaced with what Roger Pielke the Elder called the major game changing paper in the history of the world, and NigelSteve called crap

Over at the Weasel's, Evan Jones is proclaiming that all is well and fixed.  Well, young Eli asks, what do you find, and Evan says

The City
September 2, 7:52 am

 4.) We find that Tmean trend for compliant (i.e., Class 1\2 stations using Leroy 2010 proximity ratings) stations is fully 0.11C lower than that of poorly sited stations (Class 3\4\5). This includes consideration for both TOBS and MMTS.

5.) Unless LeRoy 2010 is wrong in a manner which reflects on our use of it or unless our ratings are incorrect (or both), our findings are consistent with the hypothesis that stations with poor sitings not only have higher readings, per se, but significantly higher trends as well.

6.) Stations with both good microsite and mesosite warm at a rate of approximately half their NOAA-adjusted trends, which, in turn, coincide with the adjusted trends for poorly sited stations.

7.) Therefore US ground surface temperature is exaggerated by that amount of difference.

Far be it from your humble bunny to throw a spanner into the wheels of progress, but this is EXACTLY what you would expect from the Dr. Who Effect (TM E Rabett).  As Eli pointed out back in the year dot, taking pictures of surface stations today (or in 2009) tells you nothing about the condition of the stations in 1980 or 1950 or whatever, without a functioning time machine.

Watt and Jones classify stations based on recent condition.  If the condition were the same in 1980 or 1950 or whatever, this would yield (with TOBS correction, etc.) a valid trend.

What about stations that were, let us say worse, in 1980, 1950 or whatever, why assuming as they do that measured temperatures for class 3-5 stations are higher, then the trend will be lower.  The Dr. Who Effect which lowers any trend in the Class 1/2 today stations.

One If By Law Two If By Executive Order

Don't tell Eli or your local US government official that the Obama administration is ignoring climate change.  They may not be passing laws but they are doing stuff, often under cover of bureaucratese, but things that really affect the nation (EPA CO2 regs) and more.  Not noticed by many, Executive Order 13514, issued October 5, 2009 set forth serious motherhood

In order to create a clean energy economy that will increase our Nation's prosperity, promote energy security, protect the interests of taxpayers, and safeguard the health of our environment, the Federal Government must lead by example. It is therefore the policy of the United States that Federal agencies shall increase energy efficiency; measure, report, and reduce their greenhouse gas emissions from direct and indirect activities; conserve and protect water resources through efficiency, reuse, and storm water management; eliminate waste, recycle, and prevent pollution;leverage agency acquisitions to foster markets for sustainable technologies and environmentally preferable materials, products,and services; design, construct, maintain, and operate high performance sustainable buildings in sustainable locations;strengthen the vitality and livability of the communities in which Federal facilities are located; and inform Federal employees about and involve them in the achievement of these goals.

but EO 13514 does have hard and fast goals for reducing some emissions, including those from motor vehicles

reducing, if the agency operates a fleet of at least 20 motor vehicles, the agency fleet's total consumption of petroleum products by a minimum of 2 percent annually through the end of fiscal year 2020, relative to a baseline of fiscal year 2005;

More importantly it set up a consistent set of requirements for reporting emissions across the federal government AND contractors and required formulation of plans to REDUCE total greenhouse gas emissions.

within 90 days of the date of this order, establish and report to the Chair of the Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ Chair) and the Director of the Office of Management and Budget(OMB Director) a percentage reduction target for agency-wide reductions of scope 1 and 2 greenhouse gas emissions in absolute terms by fiscal year 2020, relative to a fiscal year 2008 baseline of the agency's scope 1 and 2 greenhouse gas emissions.Where appropriate, the target shall exclude direct emissions from excluded vehicles and equipment and from electric power produced and sold commercially to other parties in the course of regular business [TVA clause-ER].

Scope 1 is ghgs directly produced by the feds, scope 2 is ghgs resulting from the generation of power used by the feds and scope 3 (they had 240 days to report) are ghgs produced by others in activities related to federal government activities. Like everyone else, NIH is signed up  and OMB is issuing scorecards to the agencies, some doing better than others but they do have to bring them home and show em to dad and mom.

Quibbling may commence, but Eli was at a meeting last week where some of the large agencies described, en passant to the assembled peasants how this is controlling their planning.