Land of Hope and Glory

Read the comments, it's a stew of depressing, snarky and hopeful.

Inside Job

One of the bunnies noticed a note from the Department of the Interior Office of the Inspector General sent to Sen. Inhofe, that Inhofe has posted.

1 x 106

Rabett Run just hit 1 x 10⁶ visits

78.72.XX.21 (TeliaSonera AB)
Country : Sweden (Facts)

C'mon down and collect your winnings

The Editorial Staff. . .

Sometimes Eli, or John or Brian will compose a post and then leave it for a day or two in order to ripen. In such a case, Blogger may, or may not post it on top. The Editorial Staff may then rearrange things to reflect the order in which they were actually posted.

An Odd Introduction to a New Paper

Oh, wonder!
How many goodly creatures are there here!
How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world,
That has such people in ’t!

Note: Moved up to take account of cross posting

Just less than two years ago Eli (well there was another name on his tag, but let us not go there even in the comments) was wandering through the poster forest at the AGU National Conference in San Francisco when he came across a presentation by Bruce D. Malamud and Donald L. Turcotte.

Temperature trends at the Mauna Loa Observatory, Hawaii: A direct measurement of global warming?

Observations at the Mauna Loa Observatory, Hawaii, established the systematic increase of anthropogenic CO2 in the atmosphere. Here, we examine the hourly temperature records at this observatory for the 30-year period (1977-2006). We determine the linear trends in the annual averaged data as a function of the time of day. For night-time data (22:00 to 6:00 local time) we find a near uniform warming trend, dT/dt ≈ 0.04 °C/yr. During the day, the warming trend moderates to a slight cooling, with dT/dt ≈ -0.01 °C/yr at 12:00 (noon). Our hourly data shows that there is a mean daily warming trend dT/dt = 0.022 °C/yr for this period.

It looked interesting, was about temperature trends at the Mauna Loa Observatory (MLO), something Eli has a passing interest in, and so he paused and looked and started to discuss the poster with the two presenters, Bruce Malamud and Don Turcotte. . . . . . and then Eli blurted

"I've seen this somewhere"

Which was a considerable shock to Bruce and Don. Where? How? and slowly it came back, somewhere on the net. . . Oh yes, I've blogged about this. Huh? Yeah, your presentation can be downloaded. Much consternation.

Turns out, there was a PowerPoint version at York University which Eli had found. The search was motivated by a post of Tim Curtin's on Marohasy's (nil nisi) that claimed there was no relationship between the temperatures measured at MLO

The temperature data at Mauna Loa from 1955 do not support the conclusions of the paper, of extreme warming at ‘high altitude Hawaii” to the extent of 0.268 C per decade since 1975. Actually as the graph shows there is a slight declining trend in the annual increases in temperatures at Mauna Loa.

and the ensuing bun fight. In any case, Eli found the Malamud and Turcotte presentation which showed a +0.22 C per decade trend. But there was something else confusing about Curtin's take on the matter

Note that this regression is for only the 1959 (first full year of [CO2] measures) to 1992 period, as the Mauna Loa Slope Obervatory ceased regular daily recording of temperature on cold days from the day Al Gore took up residence next door to Bill.

The answer is that MLO itself is not part of the US Historical Climate Network, but there have been other stations on the mountain for which data can be found. Or go here and search for Mauna Loa. This turned out to be a strong hint that Tim was not looking at the records for MLO, but for other stations on the mountain which closed down/moved/got spotty after 1992, and indeed the Malamud and Turcotte work used the hourly MLO data which are continuous to today. Indeed there are a few such hourly records which can be downloaded from the NOAA Earth System Research Lab, which is what Malamud and Turcotte did

bld - Boulder - Jan. 1, 1994 to Present
brw - Point Barrow - Jan. 1, 1977 to Present
mlo - Mauna Loa - Jan. 1, 1977 to Present
smo - Samoa - Jan. 1, 1977 to Present
sum - Summit - Aug. 12, 2005 to Present
spo - South Pole - Jan. 1, 1977 to Present
thd - Trinidad Head - Jan. 11, 2007 to Present

Eli wrote to Bruce Malamud the next day while huddling in the snow in Chicago.

For another, a good summary of ML meteorology is Ryan, S. (2001), Estimating volcanic CO2 emission rates from atmospheric measurements on the slope of Mauna Loa, /Chem. Geol., 177/, 201-211 and Quiescent Outgassing of Mauna Loa Volcano 1958-1994. You can find an on line copy of this

The paper says that there are measurements of wind direction, humidity, etc going back to 1958, but that the early data, before 1977 is still on paper. Also, winds blow up from the base during the afternoon. Ryan is still there, I interchanged some Email with him a couple of months ago and he knows where all this data is. At least some of it can be found on NOAA data servers.

Those of you who have some spare time might think of organizing a project to digitize the data. It is important to (and Rabett Run has permission) to quote the reply for what it shows about the intersection between blogs and climate science, or at least the parts of it that are not concerned with climate change

It is now one day later since your e-mail, and Don and I have now had a chance to go through your blogs and then the corresponding blog of Jennifer Marohasy with all the communications from Tim Curtin, Louis Hissink, etc. All I can say is 'wow'! We're still going through all the comments.

Neither Don or myself had any idea this was out there in the internet [neither of us keeps up with blogs in the climate community], and we are now going through all the 'constructive' comments, to see how they correspond to the current paper that we are getting ready to submit, pulling out major objections and criticisms to see if we have responded to them [already] or whether we need to respond to them (or just leave it be, as we might not agree).

One thing I was genuinely confused about was comments that we could not have data after 1992. {-See above - Eli} I pulled it off the internet, and then corresponded with the people at Mauna Loa, and the data seemed real. One of the reasons we went for this particular data set, is it is very difficult to get long records that are records to 0.1 degrees [either F or C] hourly--most are to the nearest integer. This makes a large difference in the overall statistics we look at. And yes, there were gaps in the hourly data (missing values), which I interpolated, using some fairly standard techniques. I'm pretty up front about this. But, I don't understand why people think we could not have had data after 1992. . . . . . .

Although I am of course interested in how this all relates to climate change, I at the beginning was more interested in working with data and then we found an extremely nice looking curve. In other words, I (we) worked with the hourly trend data first, with definitely no set agenda or expectations of what it would come up with.

We exchanged Emails again in early 2010. Fishing a comment out of the interchange

I'm having a lot of fun introducing Don Turcotte to the idea of blogs (he had never seen one before, and had no idea they existed).

And that was that until an Email fluttered into the mailbox today from Bruce Malamud

I hope you are well!

I thought I'd better wait to respond to you until the final Mauna Loa Observatory (MLO) paper was published in Climate of the Past, which it now has been today.

Donald Turcotte, Sue Grimmond {-Joined the team soon after AGU - Eli} and myself spent a number of days back in December 2009 going through all the blogs you pointed us to (there were many hundreds of comments in different blogs), and tried to 'answer' as many of the [constructive] critical comments as we could in the paper that we submitted in 2010. Our submission went through a discussion phase (all online) including our detailed responses to those people (it was open to anyone) who wrote in with comments.

After the discussion phase and our response, we then received the go ahead to prepare a final manuscript, which we did, along with another set of detailed reply to editor and reviewer comments (along the lines of what we published online) and the final paper was published today (and is attached). The paper is open access so others can post it if they want; the link is available

Malamud BD, Turcotte DL, and Grimmond CSB (2011) Temperature trends at the Mauna Loa observatory, Hawaii, Climate of the Past, 7, 975-983, doi:10.5194/cp-7-975-2011.

I would of course appreciate your blogging about this paper and the ideas in it if you are willing and feel it would still be of interest to the general community. I know it was controversial before, without even being a paper but rather a talk. Hopefully we've taken on board many of the comments from the blogs and the reviewers in our significantly revised version of the context of how we presented our original research (but the main facts remained, although slightly elaborated for the seasons), and that the scientific information presented in the attached will be taken in appropriate context of whatever 'arguments' people decide they wish to make.

It has been a reasonably long journey to this point, but am pleased to finally see it published. Thanks again for introducing yourself to us in December 2009 at AGU, as your help was invaluable. If you have any ideas about other appropriate publicity for this paper (e.g., places we should 'make it known') that would of course be appreciated.

In every way this has been a very satisfying experience for the staff at Rabett Run and Eli thinks an interesting and useful one for Drs. Malamud, Turcotte and Grimmond. Discussion of the published paper is now open here (and hopefully elsewhere). Some of the authors might join in.
To get started, here are the two abstracts

AGU Talk Abstract Observations at the Mauna Loa Observatory, Hawaii, established the systematic increase of anthropogenic CO2 in the atmosphere. Here, we examine the hourly temperature records at this observatory for the 30-year period (1977-2006). We determine the linear trends in the annual averaged data as a function of the time of day. For night-time data (22:00 to 6:00 local time) we find a near uniform warming trend, dT/dt ≈ 0.04 °C/yr. During the day, the warming trend moderates to a slight cooling, with dT/dt ≈ -0.01 °C/yr at 12:00 (noon). Our hourly data shows that there is a mean daily warming trend dT/dt = 0.022 °C/yr for this period. The global temperature trend inferred from CO2 data by the IPCC in 2007 was dT/dt = 0.017(+0.009, -0.006) °C/yr. The direct measurement from our observations is in quite good agreement with the IPCC value. A decrease in the diurnal temperature range (DTR) is a direct signature of a greenhouse effect of CO2. For the Mauna Loa Observatory data we find a relatively large decrease in DTR with a yearly DTR change of d(DTR)/dt = -0.051 °C/yr over the 30 year period under consideration. It is of interest to compare the high altitude Mauna Loa data with the sea level data at the Tutuila Observatory, American Samoa, for the same period. At Tutuila, the mean temperature trend is dT/dt = -0.013 °C/yr and d(DTR)/dt = -0.051 °C/yr. The greenhouse effect is the same at the two observatories, but the temperature trend is quite different. The latter can be attributed to the buffering effect of the ocean. We suggest that the temperature trends observed at the Mauna Loa Observatory are consistent with the observed increases in CO2 concentrations at the observatory, and the role of CO2 as a greenhouse gas.

Climate of the Past Paper Abstract Observations at the Mauna Loa Observatory, Hawaii, established the systematic increase of anthropogenic CO2 in the atmosphere. For the same reasons that this site provides excellent globally averaged CO2 data, it may provide temperature data with global significance. Here, we examine hourly temperature records, averaged annually for 1977–2006, to determine linear trends as a function of time of day. For night-time data (22:00 to 06:00 LST (local standard time)) there is a near-uniform warming of 0.040 °C yr−1. During the day, the linear trend shows a slight cooling of −0.014 °C yr−1 at 12:00 LST (noon). Overall, at Mauna Loa Observatory, there is a mean warming trend of 0.021 °C yr−1. The dominance of night-time warming results in a relatively large annual decrease in the diurnal temperature range (DTR) of −0.050 °C yr−1 over the period 1977–2006. These trends are consistent with the observed increases in the concentrations of CO2 and its role as a greenhouse gas (demonstrated here by first-order radiative forcing calculations), and indicate the possible relevance of the Mauna Loa temperature measurements to global warming.

Libya wrap-up: Nato should stay away from Sirte, Alexander Cockburn should stay away from analysis

1. The hard part in Libya is over, and an easy path to clean, Norway-style petro-democracy lies ahead. (Pssst - no, I don't actually believe that, but so many people are warning us not to believe it that I thought I could drive traffic here by being the only person on the Internet saying it, who could then get linked and debunked by all the wise people out there.)

2. I was pretty unconcerned about Obama's War Powers Act violation, but maybe I can balance it here: Nato/US air support for the final attack on Sirte and maybe Sabha is illegal and unethical, although it might make good politics. I'm not aware of any evidence that Gaddhafi forces are attacking civilians in Sirte, where his tribal affiliations seem to keep him popular. Nato's right of action is to protect civilians, so that legal justification goes away. Ethically, the loss of air support might make the TNC a little more willing to negotiate things to avoid bloodshed. While the TNC has the natural right to revolution and this battle appears to be the final stage of exercising that right, it's their right and not Nato's when civilian protection isn't involved.

3. I am also concerned about a President Rick Perry using the Libya precedent to justify a repeat of the Venezuelan military coup, but this time with US air support in an internal war. Or maybe somewhere else like Bolivia. However, this type of Flubber argument isn't enough to overcome the value of our justified involvement in saving civilians and helping the Arab Revolution continue.

4. It remains mysterious to me why the rebels successfully fought off military force for over two weeks early in the revolution, then collapsed and had to be rescued. This led to my rotten prediction of quick victory in late February, although ultimately it seems correct. The rebels had two weeks of military success in a time period I figured that they would be the most disorganized, so I thought there was no turning back. I've yet to see analysis explain why Gaddhafi was unsuccessful for the first two weeks and then turned things around. I'll guess that he couldn't and didn't trust his own forces and had to fight an auto-coup first, but that's just a guess.

5. News reports generally described the war as a stalemate from late March to end of July, even early August. By mid-May, they were wrong (see the previous link). I think you could start a one-month rule looking forward from that point: virtually no territory rebels held a month earlier would be taken from them a month later, and rebels always held more territory than they did a month earlier. Maybe it was a stalemate in the east, but rebels were slowly winning in Misurata and the west.

6. In the field of Libya predictions that start wrong and stay wrong, let's try Alexander Cockburn, one of the very few lefties who also disbelieves in climate change:

It requites no great prescience to see that this will all end up badly. Qaddafi’s failure to collapse on schedule is prompting increasing pressure to start a ground war, since the NATO operation is, in terms of prestige, like the banks Obama has bailed out, Too Big to Fail. Libya will probably be balkanized.

(Via Juan Cole.) He got his lack of prescience right, at least. I think Cockburn has his own version of hippie punching. He hates liberals from a leftist perspective, so anything moderate liberals believe is therefore wrong. I'm not aware of any evidence that he's backed from his climate denialism, btw, but I'm happy to bet him if he wants to put his money where his mouth is.

7. Domestic politics means the US is locked into a biased position on the Arab-Israeli conflict that will remain a major obstacle in relations with Arabs. However, the same domestic politics creates problems for China and Russia regarding the Arab Revolution. It might take some time, but the US and Western Europe might slowly generate some goodwill, because the Arab Revolution isn't going away.

Climate probabilities have multiple outcomes over time (Roger forgets the Fourth Dimension)

At the risk of repeating Roger Jr.'s mistake of not really knowing what I'm talking about, it seems like the fact's been obscured that we're betting not on one climate outcome at a single point in time but at multiple points in time.

To go back to the betting on a weighted die analogy, we're not just betting on a single outcome, but how often the die face saying "getting even warmer" shows up at each point in time as the die rolls. And we're able to make new bets at each point in time. From a policy perspective, we're able to use past experience with models to decide if we want to continue to rely on those predictions.

A related flaw in the delayist/denier argument is the alleged long-term consequences of policies - based on supposedly incorrect predictions of change - won't actually happen. If the predictions are wrong, we can stop investing in seawalls and solar panels in a decade or two. We'll have multiple outcomes over time to test those predictions.

(Per the comments, the title has been updated.)

No Title Again

The weasel likes to recycle his comments, so why not? RP Sr. has shown up in the comments over at John Nielsen Gammon's blog to defend the family honor (John is not exactly buying, but he is very polite and it is worth reading). Among this that and the other Senior wrote

RPS said:

There is also conflicting information on the other climate metrics that you present, such as glacial retreat. It is more complicated as there are quite a few glaciers that are advancing.
—————————
Eli replied

As compared to how many are retreating this is declaring the needle a haystack and a warning sign that the author is playing with 53 cards.

Do not play with a joker who is using 53 cards.

Clowns on Ice

Unhappily for the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management and the Department of the Interior Inspector General, PEER has been putting all of the material from their jihad against Charles Monnett on line. Eli has been picking up a few crumbs.

All the bunnies know that Dr. Monnett has been directed to go back to work AND that there is now an investigation of BOEMRE AND that the Department of Justice has declined Eric May's polite suggestion of a criminal prosecution, but Eli can go a bit further by pointing first to the letter of suspension that put Monnett on administrative leave with pay which states in the first paragraph

You will remain on administrative leave pending the final results of an Office of Inspector General (OIG) investigation into integrity issues

but now we have the BOEMRE spokeswoman, Melissa Schwartz saying

The return of an employee to work does not suggest that future administrative actions cannot/will not be taken. Federal regulations create a presumption against lengthy administrative leaves. Lengthier administrative leaves are reserved for exceptional situations when all other options are considered insufficient to adequately protect the government's interests.

But wait, there is more. The latest letter from the IG's office is not from Eric May, but David Brown, the Special Agent in Charge, they are providing some adult supervision, and Brown is still headed down the yellow brick road.

Regarding the Mineral Management Service's sole source Contract # 1435-01-05-CT-39151, you admitted to assisting Dr. Andrew Derocher in preparing his proposal in response to the government's Request for Proposal (RFP). You further acknowledge that you then filled the position as Chair of the Technical Proposal Evaluation Committee (TPEC) for this particular contract. Accordingly, as the Chair of the TPEC, you were the government official responsible for reviewing Dr. Derocher's Proposal in order to ensure the Proposal met the minimum qualifications of the RFP. Essentially, you admitted that you reviewed a Proposal as the Chair of a TPEC, and thus the government official responsible for protecting the government's interest, that you helped draft.

How does Eli know that the OIG is headed right into the swamp? There is a letter on the PEER site from another contracting officer's technical representative who is [snark] asking for additional training.

Although I have been on Agency Technical Proposal Evaluation Committees (TPECs) for 30 years and a Contracting Officer’s Representative/Contracting Officer’s Technical Representative/Project Officer (COR/COTR/PO) for over 20 years, the issues being raised by Office of Inspector General (OIG) in regard to Dr. Monnett demonstrate that my COR training is incomplete. I therefore request that BOEMRE provide me and other CORs additional training in appropriate COR/pre-COR appointment/ potential contractor/grantee interactions. I recommend that such training be the focus of COR certification renewal training that is required during the current 2-year recertification period. This may be particularly important training for the inexperienced, first-time CORs who have taken over most of Dr. Monnett’s contracts.

and he goes on to ask some embarrassing questions

Sole-Source Contracts State of Understanding:

o I am unclear what I can share in a proposed sole-source contract. Obviously we need to find out whether the proposed sole-source “contractor” is interested and available before it makes sense to try to establish the Solicitation. FAR 15.201 encourages contact and exchange with interested parties until the solicitation is issued; at which time, further exchange of information must start going through the CO. Once the decision to solesource has made past the FedBiz notification period without comment, the language in FAR 15.201 suggests sharing of draft RFPs, one-on-one meetings, etc. with the one potential Offeror (see FAR 15.201(c)) is appropriate and encouraged. The language in FAR15.201 suggests that discussion of a presolicitation draft proposal based on a draft RFP could be appropriate in a sole-source contract for agency “participants in the acquisition process.” However, if the COR participates in any of these presolicitation, encouraged contacts and exchanges and then as usual serves as the TPEC Chair for the subsequent proposal, has the COR, in OIG words “reviewed a Proposal as …the government official responsible for protecting the government’s interest, that you helped draft?” Detailed training should be provided on the application of FAR 15.201 in sole-source procurement.

with several further examples

o I am unclear what I can share in a proposed cooperative agreement. We can have
competitive contracting or a sole-source co-op. Obviously, for the latter, we need to find out whether the co-op “contractor” is interested and available before it makes sense to try to establish the co-op. In either case, the meaningful participation role of the PO in the co-op has to be established before the Proposal can be approved. The TPEC-chair PO then reviews the revised proposal and in OIG words “reviewed a Proposal as …the government official responsible for protecting the government’s interest, that you helped draft.” Training should clarify why this help in preparing Proposals and then reviewing them is okay for co-op proposals.

The bunnies should remember that the Derocher proposal started as a coop agreement.

o The CMI Program Announcement suggests that “Proposals for topics that may be highly relevant…should be discussed with the CMI Director and BOEMRE contracts in advance of proposal development.” The BOEMRE contact is the PO and in the language of the OIG the PO would have “assisted…in preparing…Proposal.” The PO manages the review of the initial submitted Proposal. Authors of proposals which make it through the subsequent Technical Steering Committee review are told to contact the PO to discuss changes the PO wants in the proposal, including providing a meaningful participation role of the PO in the project. The PO then reviews the revised proposal and has in OIG words “reviewed a Proposal as …the government official responsible for protecting the government’s interest, that you helped draft.” Training should clarify why this help in preparing proposals and then reviewing them is okay for CMI proposals.

The snark light is lit. Smoke em'.

Winds of Change

Environmental journalist Eugene Linden, in an excellent article in the Los Angeles Times, writes that climate change is already having bad effects, even (or perhaps especially) on states whose governors loudly sneer at anthropogenic global warming: Texas, New Mexico, and Oklahoma. Texas governor Rick Perry proclaimed three official days of prayer, in which the good citizens of Texas prayed fervently for rain, with predictable results.

Linden is the author of a 2007 book, The Winds of Change: Climate, Weather, and the Destruction of Civilizations.

The LA Times is a real newspaper. Too bad Las Vegas doesn't have one.

I'm trying not to porkbarrel, but it's complicated

I haven't written much about my glamorous life as an international spy water district director, but I thought about it today as I spent my Saturday politely sparring with officials from other agencies.

I got elected on an environmental agenda but have spent as much or more time dealing with money and budget issues. That's appropriate - the public doesn't want the Water District dollars wasted.

So here's the real tricky part - I often try to help our taxpayers and ratepayers by fighting with other agencies over who's going to pay for what, but if we're just transferring costs amongst ourselves, are there any real savings?

I think the answer is partly yes - an efficient allocation of resources depends on the communities that receive the benefits being the ones that pay for them (adjusting for any transfers done to fix social problems). Agencies and communities that want our resources without pitching in comparably will demand more than they should, and our community will be willing to pay less than they should.

In today's example, we have a creek flooding issue that crosses two counties, and since more flooding happens on our side, it's somewhat appropriate that we've been paying more. At the same time we also have tidal flooding that will get worse from sea level rise that's partially integrated with our creek flooding (someone tell Roger about that) but is also more evenly spread between the two counties. I supported beginning plans to rebuild the levees to address the tidal flooding, but also said that if damages are more equal between counties then we have to revisit cost allocations. I want the problem addressed and the costs addressed appropriately.

So how does this fit a Stoat post on the failings of politicians? I guess we need to structure elected government so that the ability to win elections derives more from the competence values. If I fight for Water District cost reductions, including some real reductions, maybe that will be rewarded. We'll see.

I also want to see campaign finance reform for our little district, but that's another issue....

Court to Repubs: kill EPA climate regulations and you'll get blowback

The headline is my takeaway from this Jonathan Adler post at the Volokhs, although it may not be his. Here's the appellate court ruling, about whether actions risking the spread of the invasive species, Asian carp, require a preliminary injunction against a public nuisance:

. . . In our view, the plaintiffs presented enough evidence at this preliminary stage of the case to establish a good or perhaps even a substantial likelihood of harm – that is, a non-trivial chance that the carp will invade Lake Michigan in numbers great enough to constitute a public nuisance.... That does not mean, however, that they are automatically entitled to injunctive relief. The defendants, in collaboration with a great number of agencies and experts from the state and federal governments, have mounted a full-scale effort to stop the carp from reaching the Great Lakes, and this group has promised that additional steps will be taken in the near future. This effort diminishes any role that equitable relief would otherwise play. Although this case does not involve the same kind of formal legal regime that caused the Supreme Court to find displacement of the courts’ commonlaw powers in American Electric Power, on the present state of the record we have something close to it. In light of the active regulatory efforts that are ongoing, we conclude that an interim injunction would only get in the way. We stress, however, that if the agencies slip into somnolence or if the record reveals new information at the permanent injunction stage, this conclusion can be revisited.

(Emphasis added.)

American Electric Power was the attempt to bring a public nuisance case against a variety of companies for greenhouse gas pollution. The Supreme Court, with the support of the Obama Administration, threw the case out because the EPA was regulating greenhouse gas anyway. I argued a while back that the Obama Admin positioned itself this way to provide a disincentive to Republicans for killing (or more likely, defunding) Clean Air Act climate regulations and enforcement, that doing so would revive the public nuisance lawsuits.

Now we have a similar issue, expressly citing AEP, that warns that "somnolence" can bring about public nuisance injunctions. As I said in my previous argument, I'd rather have a public nuisance case and EPA regulations, but there is a reason behind Obama's strategy.

Somewhat tangential: Adler is an interesting type, btw. Previously I would've classified him as a delayer/lukewarmist, and dismiss as unimpressive his position of semi-supporting little other than a politically infeasible carbon tax. I think he may have shifted a bit, though, along with a few other conservative intellectuals who are having troubles with the anti-science positions on their side of politics.

Boemreang

The Rat brings word: PEER sums up BOEMRE gate (Eli has not pride)

“By assigning clueless criminal investigators to paw through the scientific peer review process, the Inspector General is generating heat but shedding no light,” added Ruch, pointing out that after nearly a year-long probe the IG still refuses to specify just what it is investigating and why. “Unfortunately, this fishing expedition appears to be as expertly guided as the boat trip to Gilligan’s Island.”

It's clear that the IG, the Department of Interior and the Bureau of Ocean Energy, Management, Regulation and Enforcement something or other is having to walk this back, but they got hit by their own pie, and others in the IG Office are now auditing the auditors.

• Fellow BOEM colleagues of Dr. Monnett have come forward to state that his handling of the Canadian study was completely proper and conducted under standard agency procedure;

• As the IG begins to examine other research contracts, the hard drive of a key BOEM manager was found to have been wiped clean after the IG asked to examine his files; and

• The IG inquiry into the peer review publication of a paper by Dr. Monnett and a colleague on sightings of drowned polar bears following a storm is drawing outrage from scientists in both the U.S. and abroad and undermining the Obama administration’s posture on climate change.

For This Eli Pays Taxes

The theater of the absurd continues. From the comments, Charles Monnett has been ordered back to work,

"Chuck is planning to go to work. He just doesn't know what the work is going to be," says attorney Jeff Ruch of Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility

and the butt covering has commenced

Melissa Schwartz, a spokeswoman for the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement, confirmed in an email that Monnett's administrative leave is coming to an end.

"He was informed that he will have no role in developing or managing contracts and will instead be in our environmental assessment division," Schwartz said in the email.

"The return of an employee to work does not suggest that future administrative actions cannot/will not be taken," Schwartz added. "Federal regulations create a presumption against lengthy administrative leaves. Lengthier administrative leaves are reserved for exceptional situations when all other options are considered insufficient to adequately protect the government's interests."

Time to investigate Michael Mann again.

The Observant Among the Anonymouses. . .

are neither celebrating Ramadan, not fattening up for Yom Kippur, nor out there spotting the tree for Christmas, but rather have noticed that Eli has added another blog to the list on the right, the Idiot Tracker, with its Idiot of the Day feature (and there are some beauts).

Anybunny who wants to start somewhere (and who does not?) could do worse than

Between the science and a hard place:
The intellectual incoherence of lukewarmism.
Part One: jimming the Overton window.

which does a good job of how the break in artists

avoid three major pitfalls of denialism:

1. They do not have to deny the basic physical laws which dictate that greenhouse gases cause warming.

2. They do not have to refute the massive physical evidence that the climate is warming.

3. They do not have to pretend that the vast majority of scientists who accept the theory of AGW are participating in a vast conspiracy to hide the truth about (1) and (2).

The lukewarmist position also allows one to position oneself as a moderate threading the needle between two extremes.

pointing out that

Here's the problem. Lukewarmism doesn't get its adherents where they want to go – because even if we accept at face value their claims, the world would still require intense efforts to reduce the emissions of greenhouse gases in order to stave off disaster.

Scientists estimate a warming of 2C as the upper limit of what our civilization can adapt to, and not suffer disaster on a planetary scale. This is probably an optimistic number:

and that with current emission rates even using a climate sensitivity of 1.1 C/CO2 doubling

put us on course for 2.5C of warming this century. In other words, the lukewarmers' own numbers belie their causal attitude to reducing greenhouse emissions.

Now the deniers – sorry, excuse me, the "lukewarmers" – may say the projected emissions are much too high; that the IPCC is way off with those numbers as well. Or they could take the bull by the horns and claim, despite all the evidence to the contrary, that warm can tolerate warming of 3C or 4C without any major problems (the last time the world was that hot was several million years ago; there were no ice caps to speak of and the sea level was hundreds of feet higher). The trouble with that position is that it undermines the whole thrust of lukewarmism – which is to acquire credibility (or, to be fair, possibly to exercise intellectual honesty) via the advantages (1), (2), and (3).

The Crapshooters Dance

Some, not Eli to be sure, think that you can spot a Rabett post by the presence of snark. Now Eli will admit to a fondness for the stuff, but nothing like Ethon who likes his with liver, and has been snacking over at James' Empty Blog

The subject of all this, is as the proprietor over there puts it

But principally, I think it's important to realise that Roger's blizzard of posts is a very straightforward smokescreen to bury the car crash of his original claims. His goal is to get everyone to agree that it's all far too complicated and even experts disagree. But they can't disagree on whether his original idea is credible, because it's obviously nonsense to think that the correctness of a probabilistic claim can be determined solely on the observed outcome. Which is where I came in :-)

Steve Scolnik discusses the Red Queen

"I daresay you haven't had much practice," said the Queen. "When I was your age, I always did it for half-an-hour a day. Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast."

RPJr is clearly going for a new world record

Mo gets a bit impatient

Concerning JA's last paragraph: Question: what is worse - having somebody tell you your fly is down, zipping it up, then berating that somebody for "snark"? Or, doing the same, except then stomping away petulantly with your fly still wide open?

Answer: I don't know, but today I learned that in the intersection of impenetrable high self-esteem, low competence, and a low standard for argumentation, there exists a hero.

but Bob Grumbine had the nutshell version

.* Scientists should be forthcoming about their uncertainty.
But:
* To be less than 100% certain is to be wrong (by the amount of the difference).

Hokay. A little more subtle than 'heads I win, tails you lose', so I suppose points for creativity

Still that's Ethon's organ meat, Eli is more interested in some science, which goes back to Roger's original claim that

How many claims of the IPCC AR4 are incorrect, answer 28%

based on the idea that the "average" confidence the IPCC panels assigned to their findings was 72% ( it is really not clear how Lunch got this, but no, never mind), rather let's look at the ranges assigned to the measures of likelihood

Unequivocal
Virtually Certain (>99%)
Extremely Likely (>95%)
Very Likely (>90%)
Likely (>66%)
More Likely than not (> 50%)
About as likely as not (33% to 66%)
Unlikely (<33%)
Very Unlikely (< 10%)
Extremely Unlikely (<5%)
Exceptionally Unlikely (<1%)

There is, of course, a basic nonsense here, because, as James points out something rated exceptionally unlikely has a 99% probability of being wrong in Roger world and contributed to that 72% mystery, but there is also something interesting in these rankings which Eli has never seen commented on.

Take the ranking of Likely. This does not mean that the IPCC expects that of 1157 such predictions a minimum of 764 will be observed.

What, you say?

Look at the rankings, Likely is for a prediction that has a likelihood of > 66%, Very Likely is something that has a likelihood of > 90% . If the panel thought something had a likelihood of more than 90% it would have assigned a Very Likely rating to it, if it thought the prediction had a likelihood of less than 66% of the time it would have assigned a ranking of More Likely than not.

From this we conclude that the panel thought the likelihood of something the labelled as Likely was between 66 and 90%. Moreover, it is UNLIKELY that a substantial number of panel members or whoever did the rankings would have assigned a likelihood of exactly 66 or 90%, otherwise they would have down or up rated the likelihood, which leaves us most conservatively with a uniform prior across the interval between 66 and 90%, and an average likelihood of 78% over a huge number of instances, or much more likely with some sort of bell shaped distribution centered in the interval whose width is somewhat less than the interval at worst. It is unlikely that a substantial number of panel members would have been holding out for lower or upper limits. It would be pretty silly to rate something that was right on the dividing line.

What's not to like? But you could, if you were desperate, get a paper out of this. Tell them Eli sent you.

Earthquake

Earthquake along the US east coast. Fortunately Eli was eating lunch with a friend from CA who knew what to do: Run outside. Equally fortunately he was a bit gimpy so Eli made it to the door first.

Ms. Rabett who was up on the 10th floor of a building said the whole place shook. Eli's grad student hugged his glass vacuum manifold, and a couple of things fell off the shelf (magnitude 5.9 or so)

We live in interesting times.

UPDATE: Minor damage in DC and along the coast. Traffic jams left and right. Commuter rail shut down, Metro running at a crawl until tracks are inspected. Nuclear plants at Lake Anna near the epicenter are scrammed and running with generator power

Otherwise, beautiful weather so folk are just standing outside talking.

Soon to Be Audited

The NSF Inspector General has presented another certificate for not committing research misconduct to Michael Mann. Read the report, and Joe Romm, Richard Littlemore, the weasel, and more. Eli expects the spin cycle has started over at the auditorium. One interesting thing is that from the report it is clear that the NSF IG spoke to the M&Ms and friends. Of further interest it is to be speculated that they may have spoken to Prof. Wegman. The IG pretty much came down where Gerry North and Eli were

The research in question was originally completed over 10 years age. Although the Subject's data is still available and still the focus of significant critical examination, no direct evidence has been presented that indicates the Subject fabricated the raw data he used for his research or falsified his results. Much of the current debate focuses on the viability of the statistical procedures he employed, the statistics used to confirm the accuracy of the results, and the degree to which one specific set of data impacts the statistical results. These concerns are all appropriate for scientific debate and to assist the research community in directing future research efforts to improve understanding in this field of research. Such scientific debate is ongoing, but does not, in itself, constitute evidence of research misconduct

For Mr. Cuccinelli,

Concerning False Claims, 18 USC #287 and 31 USC ##3729-33 and False Statement, 18 USC #1001, we examined the elements of each suggested offense and have concluded that there is insufficient evidence of violation of any of these statutes to warrant investigation.

The CRU email folks

We reviewed the emails and concluded that nothing contained in them evidenced research misconduct withing the definition of the NSF Research Misconduct Regulation. The University had been provided an extensive volume of emails from the Subject and determined that the emails had not been deleted. We found no basis to conclude that the emails were evidence of research misconduct or that they pointed to such evidence.

Libya learning and persuasion

I don't expect the right-wingers to learn, let alone acknowledge, their mistakes on Libya. The one intervention that saved civilian lives (probably), killed no Americans, and cost less than one percent of the Iraq-Afghanistan interventions, and the right opposed it. With a few exceptions like McCain.

We'll see whether the opposition on the left has anything to say. And to be fair, there's plenty of time for things to go badly. The big lesson of Iraq, one that I didn't realize in advance, is that chaos can be even worse than the Leviathon of tyranny (somebody should write that concept up).

Apropos of this, one Kevin Drum post:

I've been a skeptic of the Libyan operation from the start, but if this keeps up — and if the revolutionary government goes on to establish a decent regime — then it looks like President Obama's judgment in this matter may indeed have been better than mine. At a modest cost in dollars, virtually no cost in coalition lives, and no requirement for postwar occupation or rebuilding, we've backstopped an indigenous uprising against a brutal dicatator who was on the verge of slaughtering thousands of his own people. Not bad.

And another on persuasion:

My own experience, which I think is fairly generalizable, is that within the course of a single conversation hardly anybody ever changes their mind — including me.

He says he changes his opinion over time, though. What works for me is new information. Even if I'm not persuaded originally, new info might convince me - but maybe not so much because it's new but because it's a crutch, an excuse that lets me shed my stupid original opinion. Anyway, good for Kevin for reacting to Libya.

Human Events takes anti-Renaissance views seriously

New Yorker covered Michelle Bachmann's anti-Italian Renaissance ideology with her favorite documentary by Francis Schaeffer:

The iconic image from the early episodes is Schaeffer standing on a raised platform next to Michelangelo’s “David” and explaining why, for all its beauty, Renaissance art represented a dangerous turn away from a God-centered world and toward a blasphemous, human-centered world

This conclusion by Nancy Pearcey that Bachmann supports also demonstrates her thought process:

There may “be occasions when Christians are mistaken on some point while nonbelievers get it right,” she writes in “Total Truth.” “Nevertheless, the overall systems of thought constructed by nonbelievers will be false—for if the system is not built on Biblical truth, then it will be built on some other ultimate principle. Even individual truths will be seen through the distorting lens of a false world view.”

Bachmann doesn't care if she's wrong on such things as science and history, and has no interest in corrections, because her overall thought system is infallible.

Human Events appears to fall in the same category. They're pumping a (somewhat doubtful) claim of malfeasance on drowning polar bears that Eli has checked, and found this expert conclusion:

“I think it’s very illustrative of the problems with government research on endangered species, and raises the question as to whether government should be in the business of science,” Ramey said.

I think Dr. Rob Roy Ramey and some government-supported madrasas in Pakistan should share notes. Incidentally, Dr. Ramey sez the survey was only intended to look for whales, when the protocol was actually to record all sightings:

ERIC MAY: Okay, you mentioned earlier other mammals, so are all mammal observations recorded in that database?

JEFFREY GLEASON: Yes.

ERIC MAY: Okay, so give me an example, what other mammals?

JEFFREY GLEASON: Bearded seals, walruses, ringed seals, polar bears, beluga whales, gray whales. That's sort of the big ones.

Also they took photos:

ERIC MAY: When you did take the photos, were you able to tell what they were?

JEFFREY GLEASON: Most of the time, yeah. We saw some dead polar bears at one time, and it was pretty obvious with the naked eye what it was. But the pictures, they just kind of turned out to be a white blob in the photos. And I can't remember, we probably took three or four pictures, and it's sort of white blob floating in the ocean, so it's pretty hard to tell.

A certain Coyote Blog couldn't handle the truth on that one, saying the resulting study was produced without "even getting a picture of them." I'm also impressed by Coyote's assertion that white bears swimming at the surface are harder to see than grey-colored whales that swim below the surface and only come up every few minutes to breathe.

Not to worry though, the denialist overall worldview is infallible. Or maybe is S Molnar is right, and Bachmann and pals will bring us back to pre-Industrial Revolution, pre-Renaissance economies.