Fear and Loathing in the New York Times

Eli takes a break from science/policy blogging to bring you the definitive David Brooks takedown by Patrick Non-White at Popehat. Popehat is a libertarian blog that believes in punishing patent trolls and is rather absolute on free speech issues.  David Brooks is a twit who has column inches in the NY Times, a punching bag for many, including Charles Pierce.  Brooks recently outdid himself with a screed on the even more evil weed, and the entire blogosphere, left, right and confused took after his with a mighty grin.  None better than Popehat which starts in best Roger Vadim Claude Lalouche fashion to describe Brook's ride through DC. . ..

The silver 2001 BMW 535i roared through Adams Morgan, occasionally screeching over the sidewalks as my accountant wrenched both hands from the wheel for another toke at the weed-pipe. "Gadzooks, man!" I shouted. "Can you keep it together for another fifteen miles, or at least outside the District limits?"  We were halfway through our 35 mile journey from Bethesda to Falls Church, with enough dangerous narcotics to stun a grizzly bear in the trunk: We'd started with nine ounces of weed, six rocks of crack, a sugar jar full of blow,  36 vicodin tablets,  a cage filled with live Bolivian arrow toads, and two jars of ketamine. Plus two quarts of Beefeater gin, a case of Schlitz malt liquor, and a four ounce ball of Afghan hash: Surely enough to get this pair of degenerate drug addicts to Fall's Church. After that what man could say? . . .

Read the rest only after protecting your LCD

It's Not a Bug

A couple of hours ago, Eli pointed out that the Richard Trolls of the world should be pumping up the Spirit of Mawson expedition as a return to the old time way of privately funding exploration.  After all every bunny knows that goverment funding is the distorting devil, put into words by Richard Lindzen

it mostly comes down to the money—to the incentive structure of academic research funded by government grants. Almost all funding for climate research comes from the government, which, he says, makes scientists essentially vassals of the state. And generating fear, Lindzen contends, is now the best way to ensure that policymakers keep the spigot open."

However Dear Richard is mighty displeased by the science of the Spirit of Mawson, and you know, he might even be right, but, OTOH, while in the world of his dreams money talks, it is not very good at expert peer review, something that is easy to lose in the world of private funding.

Eli Is Puzzled

The recent todo about the Spirit of Mawson expedition has Eli a bit puzzled.  If you want a discussion of whether what they were up to was scientifically justified, hie thee to the Weasel or ATTP if you want the Schadenfreude, well there is always Willard Tony, or any of the other usual suspects.

Eli has a different POV.  If you look at the denialist blogs, they are pretty much libertarian in flavor, or at worst hate on government types, which, at least to Eli would indicate that they like people who raise their own money to go splorin, and sciencin.  OK the Rabett can understand their being embarrassed that the folks on the Akademik Shokalskiy have to be rescued by government ice breakers, but the expedition did what expeditions did in the 15th, 16th, 17th, 18th, 19th and even early parts of the 20th century, especially for polar expeditions.  Yeah, yeah, there are civilians on board, but voyages of discovery often took along the rich guy who provided the benjamins.  Now why WTony would not let the nice Bunny pass a remark on this curious thing at Watts is another amusing question.

You can even Richard Tol this, as  Jonathan Karpoff does in Public vs. Private Initiative in Arctic Exploration

From 1818 to 1909 35 government and 57 privately funded expeditions sought to locate and navigate a Northwest Passage, discover the North Pole and make other significant discoveries in Arctic regions.  Most major Arctic discoveries were made by private expeditions.  Most tragedies were publicly funded. 

Which puts you in mind of an astronaut sitting on top of a Saturn V, ruminating on the fact that the beast was built by the lowest bidder.  So what's not to like with the Spirit of Mawson?

The climate news hook about record cold is that it doesn't happen much. Also, betting opportunities.

So, it looks like record-breaking cold in parts of the US. That's a great hook for newsmakers to remind us that record-breaking cold doesn't happen nearly as often as record-breaking warmth. It's not hard - all they have to do is show this:

If the blue matched the red, then that might indicate a problem with our understanding of climate change. Occasional deviations, like what we're seeing now, doesn't change that.

The years since 2010 have generally followed this pattern, although 2013 didn't. For one year out of the last 20, record cold exceeded record warmth, but this decade is running at a ratio of 3:1 overall between record highs and record lows. If someone thinks 2014 is likely to have more record cold than warm, let's do a bet.

Speaking of which, via Chris Mooney, I see Fox News' Stuart Varney says we have more of a problem with global cooling than warming. So I sent him this:

We'll see what happens.

Meanwhile, data for the other 98% of the earth's surface would be nice. I probably just haven't looked hard enough. I did find this paywalled Coumou/Robinson/Rahmstorf abstract saying in our warming world record heat is happening five times as often as you'd expect in a non-warming world, so it seems likely there's at least a similar large disparity in heat to cold record ratios worldwide.  

UPDATE:  thanks to Steve Bloom in the comments (and Eli) for finding unpaywalled versions of the Coumou et al. piece. The full article doesn't address cold records, but it clearly shows the ratio of heat records is off the hook because of global warming. And per Daniel Wirt in the comments, the climate change effect of a warming Arctic could be shifting the location of the cold, causing our current cold records.

Methane and Ozone

Some time ago, Eli discussed the atmospheric oxidation of methane a topic to which he now returns in the context of ozone pollution and the effects on air quality and human health. Tropospheric ozone is a result of NOx chemistry, where NOx, either referred to as NO ex, or nocks, is the sum of NO (nitric oxide) and NO2 (nitrogen dioxide) in the atmosphere.

Tropospheric ozone is formed by the photodissociation of NO2 between 400 and 300 nm, with the long wavelength limit set by the bond strength of O - NO, and the lower one by the absorption cut off of stratospheric ozone which absorbs all of the solar light below 300 nm (to be fussy 306 nm or so and as long as the bunnies are being fussy somewhere like 420 nm on the high end because of thermal population of excited vibrational levels)

The red and blue lines are the NO2 absorption spectrum at 294 and 220 K, the black line represents the ozone cut off for UV light at the surface.  Essentially no UV light below 300 nm reaches the surface because of strat ozone absorption

NO2 + hν --> NO + O(³P)  [1]

hν stands for a photon in the active wavelength region and O(³P) is the ground state of the oxygen atom, which then reacts with an oxygen molecule in the presence of another molecule in the air, M, (nitrogen or oxygen)

O(³P) + O2 + M --> O3 + M [2]

The reconversion of NO to NO2 by reaction with ozone is fairly slow

NO + O3  --> NO2 + O [3]

So the more NO2 there is, the more ozone will be produced during the day.  The natural source of NO2 is lightening which splits N2 molecules, the anthropic source is high temperature combustion such as in autos. Also the more sunlight, the more photodissociation, so one expects more ozone during the summer.

If Reaction 2 is assumed to be fast (it is because there is so much oxygen and nitrogen around) the rate at which ozone is produced is j [NO2] where j is the flux of UV light and the rate at which it is consumed is k3[NO][O3] where k3 is the rate constant for reaction 3[X] means the concentration of X.  Under steady state conditions when production via Reaction 1 equals destruction via Reaction 3

k3[NO][O3] = j [NO2] 

which can be solved for an estimate of the ozone concentration

[O3] = j [NO2]/k3[NO] 

in terms of the steady state concentrations of NO and NO2

While reaction [3] appears to limit the amount of ozone that can form, other reactions which cycle NO back to NO2 without consuming ozone would lead to much higher ozone concentrations. Volatile organic compounds (VOCs) provide such a path, and methane is the VOC with the highest atmospheric concentration.  Moreover, as a non-condensible gas not very susceptible to rain out,  it spreads worldwide in ways that heavier VOCs do not.  Looking at the reaction scheme for methane oxidation

we see (light blue boxes) two additional paths.  The lower one is shown for methane, although an equivalent exists for other VOCs.  The methane is oxidized by reaction with hydroxy radicals

CH4 + HO --> CH3 + CH4+ H2O [4]

The methyl radical then quickly combines with an oxygen molecule

CH3 + O2  --> CH3O2  [5]

and the methylperoxy radical,  CH3O2 then can react with NO to cycle back to NO2 leaving methoxy

CH3O2 + NO --> CH3O + NO2

The more VOCs, the more ozone. . .

Kloor Meltdown Scheduled

In the NYTimes On Hawaii, a Lonely Quest for Facts About GMOs.

From the moment the bill to ban genetically engineered crops on the island of Hawaii was introduced in May 2013, it garnered more vocal support than any the County Council here had ever considered, even the perennially popular bids to decriminalize marijuana.

Public hearings were dominated by recitations of the ills often attributed to genetically modified organisms, or G.M.O.’s: cancer in rats, a rise in childhood allergies, out-of-control superweeds, genetic contamination, overuse of pesticides, the disappearance of butterflies and bees.

Like some others on the nine-member Council, Greggor Ilagan was not even sure at the outset of the debate exactly what genetically modified organisms were: living things whose DNA has been altered, often with the addition of a gene from a distant species, to produce a desired trait. But he could see why almost all of his colleagues had been persuaded of the virtue of turning the island into what the bill’s proponents called a “G.M.O.-free oasis.”

And in more good news, we have from the soon to be retired Bob Tisdales byebye taking, a comment of interest from Donna Laframboise

…as all but a few best-selling writers know, it’s damn near impossible to support oneself on book sales.

This is, indeed, the sad state of affairs. The skeptic book-buying community is not as large as some of us suppose. It also appears to have been shrinking recently. More people are getting on with their lives, convinced by the hard work of people such as yourself that there’s no compelling reason for alarm.

Eli hopes for a soon end to the long con.

They keep talking carbon treaties, and I'll keep talking carbon trade agreements

More speculation on a carbon treaty in the news lately, so I'll once again point out that treaties require 67 votes in the Senate while trade agreements require majorities in both houses. Which do you want?

The best-while-feasible outcome may be a treaty without teeth describing goals that maybe could get 67 votes, and then put the real dealmaking in a trade agreement. Or as per the discussion below, blur the distinction between treaties and executive/legislative agreements, and just submit it for majority vote in both houses.

Next-best would be the model the Bushies used with strategic nuclear weapons - reduce our own arsenal but only on the condition that we don't obtain a mutual promise from Russia to do the same. Yes, unilateral concessions are preferable to Republicans over mutual agreements. Maybe simultaneous global unilateral concessions to reduce emissions can happen.

Anyway, a repost from wayback in 2009:

The climate treaty won't be the international agreement with teeth 

Jonathan Zasloff, a friend/law prof/Same Facts blogger, is publishing a proposal in the Northwestern University Law Review suggesting that the US Trade Representative rather than the State Department should take the lead in negotiation a new international climate agreement. (Abstract here, you should also be able to download the full text.) His argument that USTR is better suited than State to coordinate positions of many US governmental agencies makes sense to me. He also argues that the climate agreement could include trade concessions. 

This argument reminds me of one I've made for several years, that trade agreements instead of treaties should provide the real teeth for international climate agreements. The main reason is that treaties need 67 votes in the Senate while trade agreements only need 60 to overcome an initial filibuster. 

I've thought I've been making a lonely argument, but maybe not. I corresponded with Jonathan, and he goes even further. Relevant parts of his email, with his permission to blog them:

I suppose that I disagree with your position because it's not clear to me why climate change agreements need to be submitted as treaties. The Third Restatement of US Foreign Relations Law endorses a pretty broad interchangeability argument.

To be sure, there are those scholars who argue against interchangeability, but it may prove too much. Laurence Tribe has at least suggested quite strongly that all agreements must be submitted as treaties, and so I think he rejects the trade/climate distinction. That could throw out more than 90% of America's international agreements! John Yoo says that something must be submitted as a treaty if it is outside Congress' Article I power, which makes sense, but then he lists a whole lot of things outside that power, which doesn't...

The most recent scholarly statement on the matter is Oona Hathaway's piece in Yale, where she basically says that outside very narrow limitations (not relevant to climate), everything can and should be submitted as an executive-legislative agreement. Her argument is basically policy-based, saying that it makes more sense to do agreements through executive-legislative agreements, and saves the treaty clause from superfluity by these very narrow limitations. 

My very tentative approach is what might be called the Meat Loaf principle, i.e. two out of three ain't bad. The Treaty Clause makes sense because it essentially says that if you're going to ignore the House, you've got to get 2/3 of the Senate; if you're going to override a Presidential veto of a law implementing an international agreement, then you've got to get 2/3 of both Houses. (Interesting and subtle questions of whether an "executive-legislative agreement" can be passed over a Presidential veto, i.e. what's the difference between an executive-legislative agreement and a normal law?). It's a political issue--the way in which an agreement should be submitted depends upon the political context, i.e. whether you can get it through the House or not. 

I think Jonathan is disagreeing with my exclusive reference to trade agreements, and I think he's right that any executive-legislative climate agreement would be constitutional. Doing it as a trade agreement makes political sense, though. 

The other argument for why treaties shouldn't and don't need to be used was in yesterday's New York Times. Johns Yoo and Bolton argue that treaties must be used for a next climate agreement. Anything written by those two johns, particularly by them together, is guaranteed to be both wrong and evil. In particular I don't seen a logical reason why trade agreements under their own argument shouldn't be subject to two-thirds vote. I'm sure Yoo has his nonsensical reason for excluding them, but meshing a climate agreement into a trade agreement would help tie their arguments even further up in knots. 

Here's hoping that Obama listens to the johns and does the opposite. 

(One additional note - this isn't to say there should be no treaty at all. A treaty in addition to some other agreement would be fine, but the teeth should be elsewhere.) 

UPDATE: Just checked, and Jonathan wrote about this issue yesterday.

And if that's not an old-enough post, here's another on the same from my blog toddlerhood in 2005.

Welcome to the 2014 elections

The Hill anticipates a climate change focus in the elections this year where both sides attempt to use it to their advantage. Their argument is anecdotal rather than data driven, but it seems logical enough. Per their anecdote, the first attack ad on a politician for being a climate denier happened last year, and maybe we'll see some more this time around.

Which side will benefit overall is another question, but it's all local. Yours truly will also be up for re-election this year, and if I drew an opponent who denied climate change then that would make things much easier for me. In the Alaska and Kentucky Senate races, climate reality has to overcome some people's self interest and world view.

There's a parallel between the demographic issues the old-guard Republican leadership faces and the climate issue. Young people accept climate science more than the older ones, and demographic replacement marches on. Economic issues may also be getting more complex. The old guard's right that coal jobs are disappearing although they ignore the long-term causes, while renewable energy jobs are growing everywhere and give people reasons to embrace reality. In contrast to that hope, non-presidential elections tend to be more conservative and older. This year will also see many more Democrats than Republicans up for election in the Senate, although the ratio reverses strongly in 2016.

Fun times ahead.

2013: the year in review

The old year is past. What weirdness shall we remember from 2013?

In Iowa last fall, debate raged over whether or not blind people could obtain a gun permit. It would be a violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act to deny a gun permit to someone just because that someone is blind. The story was picked up by USA Today (a.k.a. McPaper) and also by the online publication The Daily Beast.

But why should the Second Amendment be limited to pistols and rifles? Why not include machine guns or nuclear weapons? What could possibly go wrong?

The novelist Philip Roth is most famous for Portnoy's Complaint (a.k.a. "The Gripes of Roth"), along with many other novels. (Enough novels to justify the creation of a new literary journal, devoted to Philip Roth Studies) Roth wrote decades ago that the challenge facing a novelist in America today is that reality is stranger and more grotesque than anything the novelist can imagine.

Roth wrote the truth. The stand-up comic Mort Sahl got his best material from the headlines. Too bad Mort missed this one: back in the Reagan Administration, a US official spoke to an official about the effects of sea-level rise on low-lying Bangladesh: "Now you have cows. In the future you'll have fish!"

I am the object of people power at Change.org (all four of them)

The parallels between climate denial and fluoride opposition continue to intrigue, especially their mutual rejection of the importance of scientific consensus and their occasionally-sophisticated amateur understanding of the field.

Change.org put up a petition announcing I was personally legally responsible (news to me) for the damages and death caused by our decision to fluoridate our water. My response to the masses of four people* who've signed so far:

Thank you for caring about the quality of the public's water. This water is monitored and tested to a far greater extent than, for instance, bottled water, and is much safer as a result.

I have spent a great deal of time examining the health issues regarding fluoride. My conclusion is that I should not make my own conclusion, as there is too much conflicting information for me as a non-expert to make an adequate conclusion. Instead I look to see if there is a scientific consensus on this issue (and not just this issue but also climate change, evolution, or engineering issues). I think the scientific consensus is that water fluoridation does help prevent caries, and the prevention of caries can also prevent serious health complications from tooth decay. It also seems especially helpful for economically disadvantaged children. I do not think there is a scientific consensus that fluoride is harmless. At the present time, the risk from fluoride is only a potential risk, while the harm from not fluoridating is proven. In my opinion, that justifies fluoridation.

If you think the consensus is wrong, I suggest that you work to change the consensus.

I have written extensively on this at the links below:

http://rabett.blogspot.com/search?q=fluoride&max-results=20&by-date=true

http://backseatdriving.blogspot.com/2011/04/dupont-and-ozone-exxon-and-climate.html 

http://backseatdriving.blogspot.com/2011/03/fluoridating-water-or-funny-thing.html 

Finally, the petition severely overstates its arguments in several respects. Let's choose just one section:

"According to the National Research Council (NRC) and the 2012 Harvard University comprehensive review of the studies, fluoride in drinking water, even at low levels, damages the brain and significantly reduces intelligence. Animal studies conducted in the 1990s by EPA scientists found dementia-like effects at the same concentration (1 ppm) used to “fluoridate” water...."

That "Harvard" study, which I've read, was a study by several researchers affiliated with Harvard. I've no doubt you'll find other "Harvard" studies that support fluoridation. It also neglects the 2010 Health Canada analysis (a true consensus document, unlike the Harvard researchers) that found that most of the same Chinese studies used by the Harvard study were too unreliable and too poor quality to rely upon. The 2006 NRC report, which I've also read, reached the same conclusion that more research was needed. The petition's overstatement doesn't assist its goal.

I'm sorry I'm not in agreement with you. I do think certain issues like vulnerable individuals (guardians of infants reliant on milk formula, maybe others) could use separate education about the issues they face and possible advice to use other water sources. Meanwhile I will rely upon the consensus position, if one exists and as it changes over time. I urge you to go change it if you think that is that is the right approach.

*Not denigrating them at all, I'm glad they're involved, and I'm just recognizing that I swim in a small pond.

Where Has All the Sea Ice Gone

It has been a pretty warm Fall in the Northern Hemisphere, and sea ice appear to be close to a record low for this time of year.  While IJIS is the Weasel's favorite, Cryosphere Today sea ice area is low, but not bottom of the chart, still sea ice growth has been slower than usual since September.  At first glance it looks like less ice in Baffin Bay and the Barents and Greenland Seas, and very little outside the Bering Strait.

A Wacky Vicuna With a Classical Degree Will Show the Way

Gavin shows where the boot is

Dissent blowback, or two cheers for Justice Scalia

I guess it's lawblogging day, so here's an idea I've been thinking about for years but haven't seen in the legal literature (maybe it's there somewhere):  when the dissent says the majority opinion could have massive legal implications, the dissent is helping making those implications happen.

Let's count down in reverse chronicological order, cheering for Justice Scalia and the anti-gay marriage lawyers:

Hooray!:  Judges in Utah and Ohio say Scalia in dissent was right in saying the Windsor decision requiring federal recognition of gay marriage requires those two states to give some recognition of gay marriage. 

Hip!:  Court majority refuses to respond to dissent's draft argument in a way that limits the potential legal implications of their conclusion. 

Hip!:  Dissent, following the initial vote that shows its opinion will be the dissent and not the majority, argues in a draft response to the draft majority opinion that it will have far-reaching (and by the dissent's perspective, negative) implications. 

Hooray!:  Lawyers/advocates opposing same-sex marriage, not yet knowing the outcome, argue that striking down DOMA could eventually strike down state laws prohibiting same sex marriage. 

Hip!:  Lawyers supporting same-sex marriage dance around implications of striking down DOMA 

Hip!:  Legal action against DOMA begins, but what are the broader legal implications of victory for either side?

I put in bold the two decision points where actors should have known that they were creating a risk of making things worse from their own perspective, but they went ahead and did it anyway. For a dissenting judge, I think the issue is that the judge has his own policy perspective, but he's also interested in being right. I bet Scalia may consider himself vindicated right now, even as he's also horrified at the prospect of loving gay couples being treated like real human beings.

The advocates OTOH might not want to be right about the broad negative implications of losing, but at the time they make their argument, they don't know they're going to lose, so they make the broad argument in hopes that it helps them win.

And while I think Scalia et al. are on the wrong side of history, the dissent blowback problem is value-neutral. If you're arguing for the good guys, you also have to consider what will happen when you say the other side's viewpoint will have huge implications, and the court goes with the other side anyway.

The Appeals Fairy Declines Jurisdiction

If you only read the comments and ignore the post, Volokh can get you through what happened in Mann vs. Steyn a week ago.  Briefly put, the Court of Appeals pointed out that the appeal against the original complaint was moot because there was an amended complaint, sent the whole thing back to the District Court, and told the District Court to allow a marginally allowed friend of the court brief from the ACLU to be considered.  For orientation, the original Judge, hearing the case was Judge Combs-Green, who retired transferring the case to Judge Weisberg.  There are a couple of good summaries, including this from Justin VC

The new trial court stated: "The only scenario likely to cause further delay of concern to Plaintiff is the possibility that the Court of Appeals will not rule on the jurisdictional issue or on the merits, but will dismiss the appeal as moot, concluding that the trial court should not have denied the motions to dismiss the first complaint after the Plaintiff had filed his amended complaint."

But that was not the basis of the Court's mootness ruling. It did not find that the appeal was moot because the trial court ruled on the motion to dismiss after the filing of the amended complaint. Rather, it found the appeal moot because the appealed complaint was not the operative complaint anymore, regardless of the timing of the trial court's decision. The distinction may elide the new trial court, but the appellate court's decision does not specify anything that should eradicate law of the case. Perhaps law of the case should not apply due to the judge's initial error anyway, but that wasn't the basis of the COA's decision.

Which goes back to not filing frivolous appeals. Knowing that they were not entitled to an interlocutory appeal, they filed one anyway. This was not good legal strategy. If the first decision was fortuitously not law of the case - because of the judge's decision to rule on the initial motion to dismiss - then that argument should have been made and decided at the trial level; exactly like it now should. At best, your argument that these lawyers are geniuses is that they set up a frivolous appeal to get a mootness ruling that could be used to confuse the trial court in order to issue a ruling they are probably entitled to anyway. That's simply a waste of resources.

And note that Judge Weisberg telegraphs that he understands Judge Combs-Green's ruling to be procedurally deficient. So defendants' attorneys didn't need to waste the Court of Appeals' time to explain that to Judge Weisberg. He's likely to do what he would have done absent the frivolous appeal in the first instance.

PS - If I was a judge, and someone filed an appeal with me that lacked jurisdiction due to mootness, and counsel admitted they knew it was moot when they filed it, I would sanction counsel for abuse of process. 

However, the thing about the VC comments which could potentially have repercussions was the appearance of one of the defendants, Rand Simberg, dissing Judge Combs-Green.  While she has taken retired status, it is never a good idea to mouth off about a colleague of the sitting judge.Jukeboxgrad put it pretty well

Number comments in this thread posted by Rand Simberg: 61.

Number comments in this thread posted by Rand Simberg that Rand Simberg's attorneys wish he hadn't posted: 61.

 Among them for sure

Exactly.

This has been a case run on luck so far. We've had bad luck by having the previous judge, but her incompetence has also been ultimately to our favor, and against Mann's.

That is why we are breaking out champagne.

UPDATE:  Eli has never been one to resist

Something Romantic for the Snuggle Bunnies

Well Eli is  a combustion scientist.  As a hint this is pretty much the nerd version of a burning log.  You have to provide the action.

Wish They Were Here

Preventable things are happening where you would expect folk like Tony Watts, Steve McIntyre, Lucia, Steve Mosher, Judith Curry and others of that direction to lend a hand in alleviating the problems. 

 First, as Eli has been talking a bit about, the Keeling Curve is under threat and needs support.  If anyone cares about climate records, this is certainly a worthy project. 

Second, JPvan Yperselee tweets that Canada is dismantling libraries that contain a great deal of original material from research projects including seven key ones owned by the Department of Fisheries and Oceans.  Much is irretrievably lost

As reported by The Tyee earlier this month, key libraries dismantled by the government included the famous Freshwater Institute library in Winnipeg; the historic St. Andrews Biological Station (SABS) in St. Andrews, New Brunswick (that's where famed environmental scientist Rachel Carson did some of her research for Silent Spring) and one of the world's finest ocean collections at Northwest Atlantic Fisheries Centre in St. John's, Newfoundland.

At the same time the government has killed research groups that depended on those libraries such as the Experimental Lakes Area, the Hazardous Materials Information Review Commission and the DFO's entire contaminants research program. The Freshwater Institute as well as the Centre for Offshore Oil, Gas and Energy Research (COOGER) has lost much of their funding and staff, too.

You could read this as a bit of snark, it is not.  Eli, really thinks this is the sort of thing where all sides could be on the same side.  Eli recalls reading about the need for data preservation.  Remind the others.

An Appeal from Ralph Keeling

Ralph Keeling has written a letter to the world, appealing for help in keeping the Scripps  CO2 and O2 programs going.  Those bunnies who have not contributed yet, might do so now.  Others could spread the word.  The big button on the left takes you directly to the donation page. 
 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Friends,

I am writing as the director of the Scripps CO2 and O2 programs, which keep track of how these vital gases are changing in the atmosphere over time.  The CO2 measurements include the iconic Mauna Loa record, now commonly known as the “Keeling Curve”, which was started by my father in the late 1950s.


The O2 measurements, carried out on samples from Mauna Loa and many other stations, also provide critical information about how the planet is changing.  The measurements show that the world’s O2 supply is slowly decreasing, and have helped prove that the CO2 increase is caused by fossil fuel burning, but offset by natural sinks of CO2 in the land and oceans.

The need to continue these measurements has not diminished. The planet is undergoing dramatic changes, unprecedented for millions of years.  This past year, our group reported that CO2 topped 400 parts per million at Mauna Loa for the first time. We also reported a shockingly large and unexpected increase in the seasonal swings in CO2 between summer and winter at high latitudes in the Northern Hemisphere.  The boreal forests are evidently behaving very differently than 50 years ago.  Meanwhile, the oceans are acidifying, ice is melting, sea level is rising, the frequency of extreme storms seems to be increasing.  Scientists from around the world are scrambling to figure out what is going on and what the future holds, as CO2 continues to rise.  Others are working on ideas for adapting to these changes or mitigating their impacts on society.  While we urgently need solutions to cope with these challenges, we also can’t afford to take our eyes off the planet.

The Scripps CO2 and O2 measurements now face severe funding challenges.  The situation is most urgent for the O2 measurements.  These measurements have been supported for decades through proposals submitted every few years to the federal agencies.  The value of these measurements is not questioned, but federal funding for these programs has never been so tenuous.  This is the basis for this unusual appeal to the public at large.

So why is adequate federal support not available?   You might think that funding cutbacks are the main problem.  Actually, there are other factors that are probably more important.

One is that measurements with global scope tend to fall between the cracks of the different federal agencies. Our measurements provide insight into land and ocean processes, and into changes in the Arctic, Antarctic, tropics, and temperate latitudes.  Ironically, it’s less challenging at present to support smaller-scale observations, such as of a forest, coral reef, or city, than to support observations with holistic planetary importance.  In reality, of course, we need both kinds of measurements.

Another reason is that long-term observations of the environment continue to be viewed as outside the scope of normal scientific research.  After 20 or 30 years of proposals, the science agencies take the view that continued support ought to be someone else’s concern.   While the measurements gain importance with time, their longevity actually makes them harder, not easier, to support.

I have struggled throughout my career to cope with these challenges, and I will continue the struggle.

The quest for continued federal support will not end.

For now, I ask for your support so that we can keep up these activities and sustain our watch on the planet in this time of unprecedented global change.

Sincerely,

Ralph F. Keeling

Who's Funding the Climate Change Deniers?

A recent article by a sociology professor at Drexel University, Robert Brulle, has uncovered the semi-secret network of funding for the climate change deniers. It's not just the Koch brothers and Exxon-Mobil any more. These two funders are now anonymous, as the climate change denier network has shifted to untraceable sources. Most of the funds are now laundered through trusts that give anonymity to both the donor and the recipient.

Prof. Brulle found 91 think-tanks and other organizations, handling $7B from 2003-2010. Nearly 80% of these organizations are incorporated as non-profit charities for tax purposes.

Many of the donors are from the fossil-fuels industry. Are you surprised? Me neither.

But I have to admit being surprise at the billion-dollar-a-year level of funding.

The article, published in Climatic Change, can be found along with the *excellent* news release from the Drexel University website, located here.

I found out about it from an article by Duncan Geere, on the UK edition of Wired., whose story was picked up by the David Packman show,which in turn was picked up by the Common Dreams news aggregator, where I picked it up.

It's an old story, which has gotten worse recently, since a Supreme Court decision in which the Supremes declared that corporations are people, with rights protected by the Constitution. Some of the right-wingers on the Supreme Court claim to be strict constructionists, holding to the original intent of the Founding Fathers, authors of the Constitution. Three questions for anyone believing this nonsense: where does the Constitution declare that corporations are people? Can a corporation be put in jail? Can a corporation be given the death penalty?

Earlier I reviewed a book by James Lawrence Powell, The Inquisition of Climate Science, in the May 2012 issue of Monthly Review magazine(which can be found on their website). The editor of MR said nice things about the article. And I advertised the article on Rabett Run for the gentle and (not-so-gentle) readers.

The Art of the Grift

Eli had a giggle after reading Roger Sr.'s submission, but the Bunny's immediate concern was, of course,  finding enough calories for his feathered friend in the UK IPCC 5th Assessment Review.  After all, the winds have been strong,  up to 160 kph, but that's at ground level, up in the jet stream, where the Raptor flies it is a record 458 kph, with the low of the storm maybe at 930 mbar, enough even to blow the guy backwards. 

Not to worry, Ethon tweeted, while shining his beak, a Donna Laframboise for desert after an empty Pielkepie is tasty, if not nourishing.  A piece of  fruitcake after  thin gruel.  Well, Junior High School fruitcake, cause that is probably the place she last took a science course, and her understanding of what science is, is, let Eli be charitable in this season, lacking.

IS THIS SCIENCE?

she writes

"The IPCC is a scientific body," proclaims the IPCC's website. But is this true? Does the mere fact that scientists are involved make an entity a scientific body? Would we describe a chess club as a scientific body simply because members were scientists? 

 There is a name for this fallacy, actually several, but Eli prefers Logic Fail.  The trick is to get the reader going so fast that she floats right over the wait, this is not that.   Eli might not describe a chess club with scientists as members a scientific body, but, Donna, the Royal Society, is also composed of scientists, you wanna argue that it is a chess club?  Though Laframboise is no scientist, she is a master of the false analogy which Eli assigns as indirect prevarication, not really a straight out lie, but designed to mislead.  Of course, once the bait has been swallowed, the indirect prevaricator reels in the fish 

Now some, not Eli to be sure, have been putting out the rumor that Donna L will be giving oral testimony at the Parliament.  Were Eli a member of the committee, he would start by asking her, if she considered the Royal Society and friends to be scientific bodies.  It can only go downhill from there as the bunnies will see. The written submission then stretches this already broken analogy using a rather adolescent understanding of science. 

The IPCC website acknowledges that it "does not conduct any research." Its reports are massive literature reviews. IPCC personnel survey the scientific literature and, in the course of writing multi-thousand-page assessment report make thousands of judgment calls as to what that literature tells us about climate change, humanity, and the relationship between the two.

Judgment calls are not science They are influenced by an individual's assumptions, breadth and depth of experience, cultural and spiritual, economic and political analyses, and so forth.

On the other paw, some, like Lucia, would busy out looking at how many pages there are in the IPCC AR5 or AR4.  Eli is above that.  Still, were Eli Lucia or Steve Mosher, something Ms. Rabett forbids on pain of messy divorce, a fierce debate would ensue about whether less than 3000 pages is many thousand and how this is a major scientific issue fail.  This would be blamed on Michael Mann and Steve McIntyre would be thanked for his helpful contribution.  The bunny is bigger than that and there are tastier fish in this barrel

Let us start with that somehow, somehow, scientific education got left off and experience in the area under study got pushed under the rug, but to really understand where she is going, take a look at the next in Laframboise's little listie.

IPCC personnel can be compared to members of a jury. Evidence is evaluated. Decisions are made as to what conclusions are warranted. No one considers a jury a scientific body - even when forensic science provides much of the evidence

The good Junior High School Scientist now throws her ace down on the table.  After all, she is a scientifical person who watches CSI on TV.   Having established her indirect prevarication (weren't looking were you Bucky?) she now reels in the fish.  Except, well, except that a jury of laypeople selected from the community is not like an IPCC working group.  The useful mapping of the IPCC working groups is to National Academy of Science or Royal Society panels pulled together to investigate questions of national and international interest.  And, of course, there are multi-hundred page reports generated like

Abrupt Impacts of Climate Change:-Anticipating Surprises (2013)
The Nexus of Biofuels, Climate Change, and Human Health:-Workshop Summary (2013)
Climate Change: Evidence, Impacts, and Choices:-PDF Booklet (2012)
Ecological Impacts of Climate Change- (2008) Advancing the Science of Climate Change- (2010)
Adapting to the Impacts of Climate Change- (2010)

and, again, were Eli to be on the Parliamentary Committee, the Bunny would have a few of these on hand to show Ms. Laframboise and ask her precisely what she meant.  Eli would also recommend a wearing a face covering safety shield and a bunny suit to block the word salad that will emerge, but the important point is not to accept the "just like", it ain't. 

FIT FOR JURY DUTY

Well, if you have a false analogy, push it to the limit, and the next section of Donna's rant tries to say that anyone who knows about anything and has an opinion on it is not fit to render judgement on the thing.  This ignores a lot, but it is designed to appeal to the legally trained whose job is to keep the jury ignorant about facts that are inconvenient to their case and another part of which is to confuse the jury.  DL hauls out the names of a few AR5 authors and reviewers she considers tainted.  Folk like Michael Oppenheimer who was chief scientist at the Environmental Defense Fund.  Eli can see that, Haroon Kheshgi who works for Exxon Mobil Corportate Strategic Research, and raise Mustafa Babiker, from Saudi Aramco. 

Let us close for the day, perhaps more tomorrow, with Eli's Analogy, Donna Laframboise is like a crooked nail. Just as a crooked nail must be either be discarded, or straightened out so must Donna Laframboise,

or as Robert put it Donna Laframboise is an inspiration to self-published resume-padders everywhere.

A Wonderful Christmas to All