Bag Job

Cherry picking is a econometric sport, and figuring out the cost of things is often not as simple as a bunny might wish.  Brian had a few posts on fluoridation discussing the fact that there are not only pros, but also cons, and coming to the conclusion that on balance, and with care in application, the pros win.  Eli's attention was drawn to the question of are non-reusable or reusable bags better, and if so which sort and on what basis.  This, as Eli said, is not as straightforward as a bunny might wish.

There is an obvious part of the answer, the more times a bag is used, the cheaper it is, but how many more times is a good question and what are the problems with reusing a bag is another.

The last has an interesting answer, if you put meat, fish, and milk products into a bag, you have to worry about bacteria, and some of the bacteria, E. coli, for example can be nasty.  Well, you can wash the bags (something Eli has never done, but might start) and doing so reduces the risk of contamination, but increases the amount of water and electricity used.

So what is a Rabett to do?  Well Google is a friend and a quick search turned up Life Cycle Assessment of Reusable and Single-use Plastic Bags in California by Joseph Greene from Cal State Chico.  Besides his own life cycle analysis, Greene presents the results of several others, which pretty much agree with his, each within their own limits.

The first step is to figure out what bags one is talking about and how to compare them.  On the non-reusable side the running is pretty much made by High Density Polyethylene (HDPE) and paper, on the reusable side we got woven Low Density Polyethylene (LDPE) and non-woven polypropylene (PP) and cotton.  To compare all of these, the general agreement is to look to carrying capacity, in which case you need about 1500 HDPE bags to carry about the same amount as 1000 of the others.  Of course, HDPE, bags being very thin often spill the carrots.

Impact indicator	1500 HDPE single- use bag	1000 Reusab le PP non- woven single- use	1000 Reusable PP non- woven 8 times	1000 Reusable PP non- woven 52 times	1000 Reusable LLDPE bag with 40% PCR single- use	1000 Reusable LLDPE with 40% PCR bag 8 times	1000 Reusable LLDPE with 40% PCR bag 52 times	1000 Paper bag single -use
Non-renewable energy, GJ	763	3736	467	72	2945	368	57	2620
GHG emissions, CO2 eq	0.04	0.262	0.033	0.005	0.182	0.023	0.003	0.08
Solid Waste, kg	7.0	34.3	4.29	0.7	34.1	4.3	0.7	34
Fresh water consumption, gal	58	426	85	216	250	40	57	1000
Mass, g	6	42	42	42	44	44	44	52

The amount of water includes that used in washing and manufacture.

While the number of times a bag is used is the major issue, such things as the amount of recycled materials, the cost of disposal, the cost of transportation,  biodegradeability, litter and the effects on fauna and flora are also significant in any decision to tax or eliminate different types of bags. It turns out that  cotton or canvas bags are not a good choice because of their weight and the energy needed to grow the cotton and make the bags.  HDPE bags can be recycled and, with a bit of luck, used one or two times, in Eli's experience maybe 1.5 (breaks the other .5).

So, on balance, multiple use woven bags made from LDPE with 40% recycled polyethylene are the best choice.

The Worst Thing In The World

So Eli was in the supermarket with Ms. Rabett, and the checkout clerk went, "Would you like to donate to our owner's favorite charity."  Ms. Rabett knows that this is like asking Eli if he would like to say a nice word about Roger Pielke Jr., and quickly dragged the Bunny away before he could sweetly ask if the supermarket would care to match any donation he made.

In short, this is a cheap way for businesses to pretend they care while doing nothing and annoy Eli at the same time.

I now get why Europeans are disgusted with the European Parliament

The European Parliament last week rejected a fix to their cap-and-trade system that would have set a bottom floor to the price of carbon, a floor that likely helped keep California's system functioning through a tentative start to a better shape (so far).

Among other things that are annoying is that European fossil fuel-dependent industries say that a floor will put them at a competitive disadvantage to Americans, an ironic repetition of what the same American industries say about Indian and Chinese competitors. In Europe's case it also happens to be a lie as far as California's concerned, and dubious in the case of New England (has an existing-if-low price for carbon, and plans to restrict allocations further).

So you've got a system that can work if you make it work. Demanding that the sausage making of government work as well as one's ideal proposal (like a carbon tax that would supposedly emerge unscathed from a political process) is unrealistic, but then the failure to improve the solution is just stupid. The only good aspect is that it's not over - the Parliament left open the door to reconsider their action.

On Mathematics and Science

In the preceding post Eli pointed en passant to an article by EO Wilson where he let the cat out of the bag

For many young people who aspire to be scientists, the great bugbear is mathematics. Without advanced math, how can you do serious work in the sciences? Well, I have a professional secret to share: Many of the most successful scientists in the world today are mathematically no more than semi-literate.

and described his own experience

I speak as an authority on this subject because I myself am an extreme case. Having spent my precollege years in relatively poor Southern schools, I didn't take algebra until my freshman year at the University of Alabama. I finally got around to calculus as a 32-year-old tenured professor at Harvard, where I sat uncomfortably in classes with undergraduate students only a bit more than half my age. A couple of them were students in a course on evolutionary biology I was teaching. I swallowed my pride and learned calculus.

Fortunately, exceptional mathematical fluency is required in only a few disciplines, such as particle physics, astrophysics and information theory. Far more important throughout the rest of science is the ability to form concepts, during which the researcher conjures images and processes by intuition. 

This, of course, brought forth a number of bleats. Eli would, if he were being kind, call these the cries of the inexperienced, if not, those of the clueless.

Wilson is making an important point that everyone is missing, that it is more important to be able to formulate the problem and from the formulation conceptualize the broad outline of the answer before doing the math.

At that point you can go out and learn the math, or learn who the mathematician is who can help you or buy Mathematica or hire a mathturbator. If you think about this in physics story terms, this is pretty much Einstein. His real strength was the ability (and the guts) to par the problem down to its basics not his skill as a mathemagician.  Physicists worship elegance not algebra.

Eli Grabs Another Envelope

Bunnies are not really into complex calculations where the meaning is hidden in the math.  For one thing there is great opportunity to fool yourself, for another, it is pretty simple to mislead others.  To Eli math is something you grab after you have figured out what is happening, and then you grab it in shells, with the easy parts first.  That way if you mess up, you always can look at the inner shell to figure out where you went wrong.  EO Wilson had some recent thoughts about the role of mathematics

Fortunately, exceptional mathematical fluency is required in only a few disciplines, such as particle physics, astrophysics and information theory. Far more important throughout the rest of science is the ability to form concepts, during which the researcher conjures images and processes by intuition.

and simple models help with forming those concepts.  In a recent previous life the Bunny Collective discussed the relative probabilities for emission by a single vibrationally excited  CO₂ molecule that has been vibrationally excited by absorbing a photon.  There are two fates for the little guy, emission of an IR photon.

[1]  CO₂^* -->  CO₂ + hν          Rate constant = k_R

and collisional de-excitation by another, say nitrogren or oxygen molecule

[2]  CO₂^* + M -->  CO₂ + M   Rate constant = k_M

Plugging in the numbers, at atmospheric pressure the Rabett showed that only one in a hundred thousand excited molecules would emit an IR photon.  As several pointed out, high up in the stratosphere this decreases in proportion to the pressure, but, for example, at ~17 km it is one in ten thousand, and at ~ 25 km one in a thousand.

On the other hand, thermal excitation of CO₂, the reverse of reaction [2] is just

[3]  CO₂ + M -->  CO₂^* + M   Rate constant = k_-M

so now, in addition to absorbing an IR photon CO₂^* can be excited by collisions, converting thermal translational energy into vibrational energy. 

How fast a reaction happens is called the reaction rate, and is proportional to the concentration of each reactant and a number called the rate constant which hides all the dynamics, e.g. the quantum chemistry, the probability of a collision having enough energy to actually cause molecular changes, etc.  If the rate of the forward reaction, equals the rate of the reverse reaction,  an equilibrium requires that as many molecules react in the forward direction as in the reverse




[4]  (k_M [M] + k_R )  = k_-M  [CO₂^*][M]

If  k_R < < k_M[M] it can be neglected and then [2] and [3] form a simple equilibrium

[5]  CO₂^* + M = CO₂ + M

which can be rearranged to yield

[6]    [CO₂^*]/[CO₂] = k_-M /k_M = K_eq

The next step is to show how thermodynamics allows a simple estimation of K_eq and [CO₂^*].  The emission rate in photons per second per unit volume will then simply be

[7]   k_R [CO₂^*]

A bad rep for solar tax credit and LEED

Some news and rumors still seem to spread more by word of mouth than online. One of them for me is the issue of potential misuse of solar tax credits in the US, as opposed to feed-in tariffs done elsewhere. Solar tax credits are transferable and cost-based - the higher the cost of the system, then the greater the tax credit that can be sold to other businesses. That's an obvious disincentive to lowering solar costs, but less obviously it incentivizes leasing companies to inflate their cost estimates. When the IRS starts getting involved, that can really damage the political momentum we want to keep in place just as solar becomes increasingly competitive.

The solution is to play clean, folks, and maybe tighter IRS supervision. And maybe a feed-in tariff instead. Same word of mouth tells me the feed-in that's been tried at local levels in California is too small to get business support - we need a state or federal solution.

Similar issue for LEED, an environmental rating system for building design. Word of mouth that I hear is that it's way too easy to game the point system, especially because it's based on design standards instead of actual performance. Additional complication in California is that our state-mandated building design standards do a lot that LEED does, raising the question of what value LEED adds.

I've heard less about the Green Building Council standards, other than that they're supposed to be somewhat more lenient.

Yglesias discusses the issue here. As for his "price carbon" solution, good luck with that, at least on a national level (we're getting somewhere with California's cap-and-trade). Short of that solution, we need to have some performance standards incorporated into the rating system.

How much will the Earth's temperature rise?

Climate sensitivity: how has the Earth responded in the past?

In debates about the change of temperature of the Earth that we can expect in the future, it is illuminating to take a backward glance at the past changes of the temperature of the Earth. How sensitive is the Earth to the buildup of greenhouse gases?

The climate sensitivity is the rise in temperature divided by the forcing (in W/m²). In the absence of any feedback, the climate sensitivity can be shown to be 1/(4 SIGMA T³), where SIGMA is the Stefan-Boltzmann constant, (SIGMA = 5.67 x 10^-8 W/M²K⁴), and the temperature is in Kelvin.

Numerically this is a sensitivity of 0.3 K/(W/m²), meaning that if the increase in forcing is 1 W/m², then the resulting increase in temperature is 0.3 C, in the absence of feedback, when the Earth has come to a new equilibrium with the higher greenhouse gases.

The doubling of CO₂ from pre-industrial levels will produce a forcing of 4 W/m², which implies, in the absence of any feedback, a temperature rise of

4 x 0.3 = 1.2 C (the no-feedback result).

While global climate models are necessary, it is also valuable to have a model-independent estimate of the climate response to increased CO₂. What climate sensitivity did the Earth show during warming that ended the last ice age? This is the large climate change that is closest to us in time (about 10 K years ago), and therefore the most valuable. Earlier times are less relevant, because of continental drift. If you go back 200 million years ago, the continents were not even close to where they are today.

The change in temperature between the ice age and post-ice age was 5 C, and the change in solar forcing was 7.1 W/m². This implies a climate sensitivity of 5/7.1 = 0.7 K /(W/m²). Multiplying this sensitivity by the forcing expected from a doubling of CO₂ from pre-industrial levels, namely 4 W/m², yielding a predicted temperature rise of

0.7 x 4 = 2.8 C (from the Earth’s climate record).

This is consistent with the IPCC prediction of the rise in temperature (in response to a doubling of atmospheric CO₂), which is an increase in the range of 1.5 to 4.5 C. This is the change between the new higher equilibrium temperature and the past equilibrium temperature.

Notice that the paleoclimate data implies that the feedback is positive, at least on the time scales of centuries to millennia. (The feedback may well be positive on a much larger time scale of millions of years, but that is not the relevant time scale for human civilization).

Reference: Seinfeld and Pandis, Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics, (Wiley, New York, 1998).pp. 1102-1103. These authors cite a difference between glacial and interglacial periods of 5 C, and a forcing of 7.1 W/m², and a radiative forcing for doubled CO₂ of 4 W/m².

This refutes some of the arguments made at WUWT here .

County Line

Games Bunnies Used to Play

Life has changed

When Eli was a bunny we had all sorts of organized disorganized team games, slapball, punchball, stickball, ringolevio, skellzie all with elaborate local rules, seasons to play them in and not, and more. Then there were two bunny games, like box baseball, boxball, stoopball, two person slapball etc.  These were passed down from older to younger kids and brought a real thrill to the proposition that kids should go play in traffic. Parents did not have to drag us to some organized team practice and we objected to needing to come in at night. After all there were streetlights. Right?

What went on in your neighborhood?

This Is Where Eli Came In

One of the useful things the Rabett used to do was to explain what happens to the energy when a molecule, say CO2 (carbon dioxide) although you could also say H2O (water vapor) or CH4 (methane) absorbs light. For the purpose of this post, the photon would be in the infrared region of the spectrum.  This is an evergreen for two classes of bunnies

1. Bunnies who don't realize that the molecule can also emit light.  This is a popular one amongst organikers and analytical chemists whose experience with IR spectroscopy is in an absorption spectrum for analysis of samples
2. Bunnies who think that the only way that an excited molecule can get rid of the energy is to emit a photon.  

 For every CO2 molecule there are roughly 3000 2500 other molecules in the same volume of air.  When a CO2 molecule collides with one of the other molecules, almost certainly an oxygen or nitrogen molecule, energy transfer occurs.  Each CO2 molecule can be described as having translational, vibrational and rotational energy and the same is true of the collision partner.  Any collision can in principle change the amount of any of these forms of energy by any amount subject to conservation of energy and momentum.  The probability of this happening depends on the relative translational energy of the collision, the relative orientation of the molecules, their distance of closest approach and the distribution of energy in each of the collision partners prior to the collision.  The detailed study of such effects is called collision dynamics or molecular dynamics. 

Fortunately, we can take thermal averages over many of these variables, either theoretically or experimentally which makes life, theory and experiments much simpler and a hell of a lot less expensive and time consuming.  That sort of thing usually goes under the rubric of reaction (when there is one) kinetics or energy transfer studies when there isn't.

The fate of the energy in a vibrationally  excited CO2 molecule can be thought of as a race between emission of a photon taking essentially all of the vibrational energy away and a collision that does the same.  Here Eli is going to tell you who wins the race, something that is generally handwaved, correctly handwaved, but handwaved none the less.

For the lowest vibrational level, the 667 cm^-1 doubly degenerate bend, labelled as (0,1⁰,0), the only lower state is the unexcited ground state (0,0⁰,0)

 CO2(0,1⁰,0) + M --> CO2(0,0⁰,0) + M

where M is any other molecule.  The probability of this happening depends on M, but it can be measured by exciting a small amount of CO2 mixed into a large bath of M and then watching how long it takes for the excited CO2 to decay away.   This behavior is captured by the rate equation

d[CO2^*]/dt = - kR [CO2^*] - kM[CO2^*][M]    (1)

where kR is the radiative emission rate in the absence of collisions and kM is the collisional quenching rate, the rate at which collisions with M de-excite the CO2.  The square brackets indicate the concentration of whatever species is inside.  If [M] is very large compared to [CO2] we have what is called pseudo first order conditions, because the effect of the collision on the quantum state of M will be very small and Eq. 1 is a first order differential equation whose solution is

[CO2^*] =  [CO2^*]_t=0 exp (-{kR  + kM[M]}t)

where t is time and we are assuming that the CO2 is being excited during a very short time so we can neglect the competition between excitation and de-excitation which simplifies the kinetic analysis.

The best study of this process for CO2 was The vibrational deactivation of the (00o1) and (0110)Modes of CO2 measured down to 140 K by Siddles, Wilson, Simpson, Chemical Physics 189 (1994) 779-91.  They measured collisional quenching cross-sections for CO2 (0,1⁰,0) and the higher lying (0,0⁰,1) levels against a number of gases, including carbon dioxide, the rare gases, nitrogen, oxygen and deuterated methane and deuterium.  Oxygen and nitrogen have quenching rate constants of 5.5 and 3.1 x 10^-15 cm³/molecules-sec respectively at 295K, decreasing roughly linearly to about a factor of five less at 140K.  To make sense of this number, we can compare it to what is known as the gas kinetic quenching rate, e.g. what the rate would be if every collision were 100% effective, of the order of 10^-10 cm³/molecules-sec.  More to the point, at atmospheric pressure where the concentration is ~2.6 x 10¹⁹ molecules/cc (Loschmidt's number)
the rate of collisional de-excitation for CO2(0,1⁰,0) by N2 will be

kM[M] ~ 5 x 10^-15 cm³/molecules-sec x 2.5 x 10¹⁹ molecules/cm³ ~ 10⁵ s^-1

Note the ~ meaning oom or order of magnitude.  It's not that Eli can't afford a calculator, it's that who needs one in this sort of calculation when toes and ears are available.  The lifetime will be the reciprocal of this, 10^-5 s or 10 us.

What about the radiative lifetime?  Radiative lifetimes of vibrationally excited states are long.  Insight into why this is so can be found by looking at the relationship between the Einstein A and B coefficients.  Roughly put, the A coefficient is proportional to the rate of spontaneous emission and the B coefficient to the rate at which photons can be absorbed by the molecule.  assuming that the transitions are between two isolated levels

A/B = 8 π h ν³/c³

 The ν³ is what makes emission from low lying vibrational levels so slow.  The isolated radiative lifetime of CO2(0,1⁰,0) is ~1.1 s.  The (0,0⁰,1) lifetime is 2.4 x 10^-3, but remember it occurs at 2350 cm^-1 where the ν³ factor can do its work.

Comparing the radiative rate kR (the inverse of the lifetime) to the collisional deactivation rate kM[M], provides a quick estimate that only one out of 100,000 CO2 molecules excited into the (0,1⁰,0) by collision or absorbing a photon, will emit.

Bob G Returns to Normalcy

Bob Grumbine has a couple of posts( #1 and #2) asking when was the climate normal.  His conclusion is

• Climate was 'normal' only between 1936-1977
• Every year 1987-present has been warmer than any year before that
• 1976 was warmer than any year before 1926
• 1978 (next coldest year of the recent run) was warmer than any year before 1940
• 1937 is much warmer than all the preceding years.

In #2, Bob makes some important points about why this matters.  Further, those who insist that GISS needs to redefine its base period for anomalies (1951-1980) might take heed and GISS itself might want to shade a couple of years off. 

California Democratic state convention and Grover Norquist

My two activities this weekend were to listen to the podcast of Grover Norquist speaking to the Commonwealth Club and attending the annual California Democratic Party convention in Sacramento. Norquist played up the libertarian angle, probably a smart move when a conservative addresses a liberal crowd. He definitely threw the Bushies under the bus on Iraq and claimed to oppose occupying nations (something contrary to his position back when it counted). He also claimed the Democrats drive up the size of government to increase the number of people dependent on government and therefore supportive of Democratic positions, making opposition to government spending a partisan issue on purely partisan grounds. A lot of it was either disingenuous or vague, like supporting tort action as a substitute for environmental regulation, when torts are incredibly inefficient and often limited by the Republican Party.

The best part of the Democratic state convention was a panel on strengthening partnerships to communities of color. The really interesting thing these independent organizations are doing is targeting intermittent, low-frequency voters and get them to turn out on issues (not for specific candidates). I can attest from my own campaign that those voters are not campaign primary targets - when you have limited money, you put your effort into reaching someone who votes 80-100% of the time, not 20%. While California is majority-minority, the stats they showed had a majority of voters being white and disproportionately wealthy, and until the electorate reflects the population, they argued that governmental priorities won't reflect popular needs - quite the opposite of the problem Norquist sees of a too-big government.

For myself, I'm not sure whether growing inequality is caused by unfair governmental processes biased against the poor, or by the nature of our current economy, but either reason to me justifies countervailing action. I'm not buying Norquist's argument that we just need government to leave us alone. That doesn't mean he's always wrong though - finding the areas where government doesn't work well or should be less intrusive could be an area of agreement. A cap-and-trade or carbon tax is a good example, as opposed to typical regulation. Just waiting for the Republicans to pick that one up.

The Bees Are Buzzed

Wright et al, report in Science that "Caffeine in Floral Nectar Enhances a Pollinator's Memory of Reward".  Some flowers, including those of, of course, coffee plants, but also citrus and tea,  incorporate a bit of caffeine in their nectar.  Curiously, according to the authors, all the citrus varieties they studied did this but not all the coffee plants.  As any college bunny getting ready for exams knows, caffeine helps keep you alert and enhances the memory.  Fortunately the bees appear to dislike the taste of solutions with dangerous (to bees) levels of caffeine.  They will not be buzzing your energy drinks but they do have a fondness for sodas.

That's the good news.   The bad news is that bees are disappearing.  One of the causes is the use of neonicotinoid  pesticides and organophosphates.  The later has been used to wipe out Varroa mites, one of the major pests of bees.  It turns out that these pesticides make the bees stupid, wiping out brain cells that the bees use to learn things, like where the good caffine nectar is.  Industry, of course, doesn't want to know

"Christian Maus, a safety manager at Bayer Crop-Sciences which makes clothianidin, cautions that it's tough to determine what happens to bees in nature from this study, because it was conducted on isolated bee brains in direct contact with insecticides, without any of the normal protective barriers or metabolism."

Various organizations have filed a suit against EPA approval of two neonicotinoids because the effect on bees was not dealt with, other organizations are seeking ways to limit exposure.  For example, corn seeds are often coated with the neonicotinoids to protect the seeds from pests.  When the seeds rub against each other in hoppers during planting the neonicotinoids are released.  The newly formed Corn Dust Research Consortium recently accepted proposals to limit the pesticide dust, either by making the seeds stickier or limiting powders seed lubricants needed for flow of the seeds through mechanical planters.

The emphasis here is on commercial apiaries, but anyone walking about, even in the biggest cities knows that wild pollinators are also important.  Eli, for example,rents to a bunch of carpenter bees in his wooden fence.  Large, one could even say bumbling insects, they calmly go about their business, interacting with the birds and squirrels which make the miniature carrot patch a delight.  The wild pollinators are not having the best of times, which is bad news

Garibaldi, et al, again in Science, point out how key these guys are

The diversity and abundance of wild insect pollinators have declined in many agricultural landscapes. Whether such declines reduce crop yields, or are mitigated by managed pollinators such as honey bees, is unclear. We found universally positive associations of fruit set with flower visitation by wild insects in 41 crop systems worldwide. In contrast, fruit set increased significantly with flower visitation by honey bees in only 14% of the systems surveyed. Overall, wild insects pollinated crops more effectively; an increase in wild insect visitation enhanced fruit set by twice as much as an equivalent increase in honey bee visitation. . .

Human persistence depends on many natural processes, termed ecosystem services, which are usually not accounted for in market valuations. The global degradation of such services can undermine the ability of agriculture to meet the demands of the growing, increasingly affluent, human population (1, 2). Pollination of crop flowers by wild insects is one such vulnerable ecosystem service (3), as the abundance and diversity of these insects are declining in many agricultural landscapes (4, 5). 

 Garibaldi, et al, looked at the relative roles that domesticated and wild pollinators play in 41 crop systems distributed across the globe.  One might call this macroecology.  Burkle, Marlin and Knight,  replicated an  study in a small area, near Carlinville IL done by Charles Robinson in the late 1800s, who categorized the types of pollinators that visited different plants.  That study had already been replicated in the 1970s.

The news is not good.  The number of different interactions between plants and pollinators had declined by almost 50% (ok 46%)

Bee extirpations contributed substantially to the observed shifts in network structure. Of the 407 lost interactions, 45% (183) were lost because bee species were extirpated from the study region; all 26 forbs remained present. It is unlikely that the dramatic loss of bees observed in the contemporary data set resulted from differences in sampling effort between the historic and contemporary studies. Robertson observed the pollinators of each forb species for 1 to 2 years before moving on to other species. In our intensive resurvey over 2 years, we found less than half (54 of 109) of those bee species. Although Robertson’s sampling effort in each season is unknown, we were able to extrapolate our data based on sampling effort and found that our observations were close to the “true” richness (table S1). If Robertson’s sampling was less intense on a per plant species basis than ours, then the bee extirpations are a conservative estimate. Furthermore, the loss of bees was nonrandom, such that bees that were specialists, parasites, cavity-nesters, and/or those that participated in weak historic interactions were more likely to be extirpated (table S2), congruent with other findings. Specialists were lost more than generalists (even after correcting for potential observation bias), despite the fact that their host plants were still present 

With all types of pollinators declining the hard place is not as far away as one might hope.  Jason Tylianakis puts it bluntly

Are concerns of a pollinator crisis exaggerated, and can we make do with better management of honeybee colonies? Two articles in this issue provide compelling answers to these questions. On page 1611, Burkle et al. demonstrate that native wild pollinators are declining. On page 1608, Garibaldi et al. show that managed honeybees cannot compensate for this loss. 

The Origin of the Two Most Annoying Things in the World

nonono. not the regrets of James Delingpole's mom, or even the "what have I done note" from Chris Monckton's Latin tutor, to name the two most annoying Brit twits, but the blinK, which as any sane bunny might imagine, was born in a bar

Back in 1994 I was a founding engineer at Netscape, prior to that I had written the Lynx browser, which predated all of the other popular browsers at that time.    Lynx had been and still is a text only browser and is commonly used in a console window on UNIX machines.   At Netscape we were building software that used a graphical user interface and could express vastly more text styles and layouts as well as images and other media.   We spent a lot of time thinking about the future of the web and new technologies that would enable new classes of documents, applications and uses.    A few examples of those thoughts were, HTML Tables, SSL for secure communications, Plugins for extensions, and JavaScript to enable dynamic HTML.

Sometime in late summer I took a break with some of the other engineers and went to a local bar on Castro street in Mountain View.   The bar was the St. James Infirmary and it had a 30 foot wonder woman statue inside among other interesting things.    At some point in the evening I mentioned that it was sad that Lynx was not going to be able to display many of the HTML extensions  that we were proposing,  I also pointed out that the only text style that Lynx could exploit given its environment was blinking text.    We had a pretty good laugh at the thought of blinking text, and talked about blinking this and that and how absurd the whole thing would be.     The evening progressed pretty normally from there, with a fair amount more drinking and me meeting the girl who would later become my first wife.

 Saturday morning rolled around and I headed into the office only to find what else but, blinking text.

There is good news tho, the blinK may be going away but not before claiming a few more victims.  On the other hand, Comic Sans will be with us as long as there are poster sessions.

Biodiversity

This week's Science Friday had a segment with Lincoln Brower, an entomologist' entymologist who studies the monarch butterfly.  The monarch population is collapsing faster than the Arctic ice cap, with the area of their wintering grounds in Mexico going from 52 acres to less than 3 in twenty years.  In Brower's words

"In previous years we had seventeen sites with colonies, this year eight of those sites had zero butterflies, and the rest of them had very few butterflies.   Only one of the colonies had significant numbers.  My worry is that they are winking out one by one and they may not be able to recover"

There are several reasons for this, among them that the Oyamel forest is being thinned which exposes the area under the canopy and makes it harder for the butterflies to shelter from winter frost in the high forest.  Monarchs have an absolutely crazy life cycle.  Simplified, overwintering butterflies in Mexico (there are also populations in California, and they ain't in good shape judging from the last few times Eli was on the Monterey Peninsula) leave Mexico in late March and head for Texas, where they feed on milkweed and create a new generation.  The new generation is short lived, and starts the migration north to the Great Lakes region and the east coast.  They, in turn, lead to two other short lived generation, with the fourth and final one being the one that migrates back to Oyamel and overwinters.  You can follow this on Journey North, a science activity for young and old.  Another great site to learn more is Monarch Watch.

Monarch larvae are fussy eaters, depending on milkweed the way that pandas depend on bamboo.  It is the only thing that they feed on in that stage of their lives.  This has made them indirectly vulnerable to GMOs.  The introduction of Roundup Ready crops has lead to broadcast spreading of Roundup, which kills everything EXCEPT the Roundup Ready crops, including the milkweed (and also nectar yielding plants which does nasty things for pollinators).  This breaks the Monarch's lifecycle.

Roundup Ready GMOs are creating food deserts for Monarchs and many other species.  Not only those that enrich our lives, but others that we depend upon.

Good Business

From the Exxon Hates Your Children group.

1. Exxon must hate your children because their business model depends on drilling for more and more of the fuels that cause climate disruption, even though fossil fuel companies have already discovered significantly more oil, gas and coal than scientists say we can safely burn. They are creating climate chaos every day — and they’re getting rich doing it.. . .
   
   
2. Exxon must hate your children because, for years, they spent millions funding a coordinated campaign to create confusion about climate science, which slowed the move towards a more sustainable future. Now Exxon (finally) admits that climate change is a problem, but…
   
   • They say they can’t predict what will happen, and
   • Therefore they will continue business as usual.. . .
   
   
3. Exxon must hate your children because they and other fossil fuel companies send campaign contributions to candidates for Congress, and in turn, they get massive subsidies…at the expense of more important causes. For every one dollar Big Oil spends on political contributions, they get $59 back in subsidies — a 5800% rate of return. . . .
   
   
4. Exxon must hate your children because climate change threatens the future of all of our children, and they seem to just ignore it.
   

Nil Nisi Thatcher

Many Americans are bewildered by the mixed reception that Baroness Thatcher's death has received in the United Kingdom.  Having lived in England for a year or so during her time as Prime Minister, Eli will refrain from commenting on her political career, but there was something he wrote over at the Curry Shack that is worth repeating.   Curry posted remarks from Michael Kelly of the Oxburgh panel

During Mrs Thatcher’s period as Prime Minister, UK science was squeezed hard, and I would argue came out of it better, leaner and fitter. Like dieting, it is not a healthy permanent state, but its absence is definitely unhealthy. In times of plenty, one ‘lets a thousand flowers bloom’ and in tough times, one redoubles the effort to exploit the stock of recently acquired new knowledge, rather than generate more new knowledge and leave it unexploited. This makes sound economic sense. It is the point I made in a lecture (sponsored by Intel) to the Irish Academy of Engineering in Dublin in December 2011.

Michael Kelly is completely wrong about what Thatcher and the conservative government did to research at British universities but the story is instructive.

The first move was to arbitrarily declare all of the polytechnics (locally focused teaching institutions) universities in 1992. This greatly increased the pool of those who could compete for support. Of course, the amount of support stayed the same or went down and the polys now unis didn’t get anything near the level of support needed to move into the research university ranks.

The “response” was to institute departmental rankings, the effect of which was to kill research at many of the older (red bricks) universities as with some exceptions they did not come top of the pile. Almost no departments in the former polytechnics were able to compete and thus received little research funding, while departments at the “best” places, Oxbridge and such, got more of the pie.

A number of very good research groups were left high and dry by this especially since assessment was done by department and not research group. Eli pointed out that the entire farce was a poisoned pawn at the time to friends at both the polys and unis. Eli is Cassandra.

A List of Links

UPDATES GALORE BELOW:)

Eli has lost his jump, and pretty much ain't got much these days (wait until tomorrow) but there are a couple of things the bunnies might be amused by

First, a number of FAQ like objects about Marcott et al., nothing really new but short summaries to send to your uncle rabetts who always send you stuff from Chris Monckton or Rush Limbaugh (btw, Chris seems to be waking up to the fact that his grift is not paying well anymore).

Dana at Skeptical Science has a summary, which points out the cleft stick that Willard Tony and Steve are on.  If there really were sharp jumps and falls in the GLOBAL climate (please, Eli knows about Greenland), then climate sensitivity is way high, in Myles Allen uniform prior territory

Rick Piltz at Climate Science Watch posts the FAQ from Climate Nexus

And, of course, the Real Climate response by Shaun A. Marcott, Jeremy D. Shakun, Peter U. Clark, and Alan C. Mix

But let us not forget Sou who has been having his way with Willard Tony (that one esp) and Steve

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

Lucia reminded Eli of the new industry claiming copyright infringement to hold innocents up.  Invented by the record industry to block downloading this has developed into a living for grifters (there's that word again).  Rank Exploits has had bad thoughts for one Linda Ellis, who has been supporting herself by threatening those who use a rather soapy poem she wrote in funeral handouts and thus, he was alert when he came across a similar case written up int the LA Times, basically a law firm that supported itself by suing people who downloaded pornographic films and a judge who is in the process of telling them to take it and shove it.

Which, of course, led to a blog, popehat,  which is enjoying obsessing about the same, which in turn, lead to a truly ROTFLMAO case

Colin Purrington made an error in judgment.

His error was this: he believed that simply because he had created something himself — specifically, a helpful guide for creating scientific posters — that it was safe to go about asking other people not to appropriate it for their own profit.

Colin was wrong. This is America, Colin. What were you thinking?

See, Colin saw that an outfit called the Consortium for Plant Biotechnology Research was using some of his language in appendices to its grant applications. Colin, as is his practice, sent a wry missive asking that they stop, with a humorous coda:

If you can cover the shipping charges, I would be grateful if you to send me the head of the person who did this.

Except that CPBR hired a butcher from Arnold and Porter (expensive DC law firm) to respond.  CPBR through the lawyer, David Metzger claimed that they had created the material in 2005 and it was Colin Purrington who had violated the copyright.  As Eli always tells the bunnies, RTFR, because Purrington had been posting versions of the material since 1997 and his 2004 version is mighty close to what CPBR wrote.

However, in keeping with the traditions of internet trolls everywhere, Metzger claims that his clients were super threatened by Purrington asking to have someone's head Fed Exed to them

This language was interpreted by CPBR’s staff as a physical threat against their personal safety. Should you make any further similar threats, CPBR staff will have no choice by to contact authorities to protect themselves.

UPDATE:  For anyone interested in how this is done by professionals, consider the case of head on a pike Loomis (the head was attached to Wayne LaPierre, head of the National Rifle Association.  As far as Eli knows it is still attached).

 Retraction Watch has ordered popcorn, the Chronicle of Higher Education has put the pot on

I called the main number for the Consortium for Plant Biotechnology Research and was told that the president and chairman, Dorin Schumaker, was not available and might not be available for weeks. Schumaker is the only paid employee listed on the nonprofit’s most recent available Form 990 tax filing (her salary, according to the filing, is $213,964). I then called a number listed for a Dorin Schumaker in St. Simons Island, Ga., where the consortium is based. The person who picked up the phone declined to answer questions and hung up when asked if she was Dorin Schumaker. The consortium’s lawyer, David Metzger, also hung up on me. In a follow-up e-mail, he said he was abiding by his client’s wishes.

As for Purrington

Personally, I’d like (1) a check from them that fully covers my legal costs, (2) a written apology from the  CEO that is posted on their home page for 1 year, (3) a message emailed to all past proposal applicants and research directors stating that Appendix 5 was plagiarized from my site, and (4) an all-expense paid trip to St Simons Island, Georgia for me and my family, to compensate us for the pain and suffering that their bullying has caused.  And about that last one — we better end up having a damn good time on St Simons Island.  No poison in the soup, or anything like that!  Or maybe (5) $150,000 in damages, for each of the years that they infringed upon my copyright?? Oh, and (6) it goes without saying that they can never, ever use my material in the future…so if you are on their mailing list and get the next announcement, please send me a copy if you see my text in Appendix 5 again (I’ll send you cookies if you’re the first!). Finally, (8) I think it would be good to have the plagiarizer fired — that amount of plagiarizing in college would get you expelled for a semester, and is equally inexcusable in the private sector…there should be consequences.

UPDATE:  More links
https://www.techdirt.com/blog/?tag=colin+purrington
boingboing.net/2013/04/08/consortium-for-plant-biotechno.html 

UPDATE:  Colin wants a favor

This is where you come in. Or could come in, if you want. My personal El Guapo has a budget in the hundreds of millions of dollars, and they apparently have every intention of pursuing litigation. So even though they plagiarized from me, they could ultimately get my site taken down if I run out of money before they do, a likely outcome of the litigation. So how can I defeat El Guapo? I can sew! Actually, that’s true (I own two sewing machines), but that’s not going to help me in this situation, regrettably. The only thing I can do is use this darn blog to defeat them. That’s where you come in. What I’d really appreciate is for people with influence to help advertise this situation so that CPBR feels the scrutiny of taxpayers, and, by extension, the scrutiny of politicians who give CPBR its millions in yearly allocations. That’s right: CPBR is using some of those funds to hire expensive lawyers to file fraudulent copyright infringement claims. If you pay taxes on April 15, you should be outraged. So if you can Tweet this post to your followers, my situation might eventually get known by those in D.C. who vote on such distributions of government funds. And if you don’t Tweet or Facebook, but know important people, please consider calling them. And then email me so that I can properly thank you.

 Eli only knows some bunnies, but the rest of you are free.  Ethon will do his bit

MORE UPDATES:  But of course, the mystery deepens.  CPBR has sent out the trolls in the comments at BoingBoing from yumtacos

 If you do a bit more digging, you may see suggestions that Ms. Schumacher's organization thinks they own his intellectual property precisely because they administered and funded the research grant that covered its creation via his university.

to which dr replied

As this was evidently created as part of his instructional activity, the only possible claimant would be the college, but Swarthmore has formal intellectual property policy that explicitly defaults the rights to such work to the faculty member.

Purrington had prereplied in any case

Actually, I've applied to a few granting agencies for plant biotechnology research (not from CPBR, though) and also spent a year away from Swarthmore College at a major biotech corporation that is a member of CPBR.  Wouldn't surprise me at all if CPBR first found my website via my research on safety of genetically modified crops. If you want sample, please see http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pu....

 As quantum mechanics, life is not only stranger than Eli thinks, it is stranger than Eli can think

A temporary end to bliss

With a rare exception or two, I've been blissfully ignoring Roger Pielke Jr's recent stuff for the last year or so as he slid into irrelevance. As long as I didn't read his stuff, I could keep open the possibility that he was doing something useful.

Or not, regarding the Marcott paper. The Oglaf comic is great though, but highly inappropriate.

Others have handled it, (Eli shows up in the comments at the link), but I'll just add the parallel I see between this and how James Annan spotted the Pielkean confusion between detection and estimation of climate change effect on disasters, way back when in 2006.* Back then, people were trying to estimate what aspect of disasters were climate change-related, which Pielke denounced as failing to scientifically detect climate change in disasters. They weren't doing detection until more recently, as the science improved and disaster dice started rolling 13s.

IOW:

RPJr: You say X (percent of disaster damages) proves Y (climate change)
Rest of humanity:  No, I said assuming Y, here's our estimate of X.
RPJr.: You're wrong to say X proves Y!

(paraphrasing, not actual quotes)

It's the same issue or even less valid with RPJr and the post-1850 hockey stick/wheelchair component in Marcott. The paper is very clear in that they're not attempting to prove the current rise in temps via proxies. They even warn you not to consider their estimate robust, and they indicate the modern record they add is not theirs.

I agree that the press release could be clearer, but also agree with Stoat that it doesn't matter. It's like a paper examining Mars' orbit around the sun, where a press release might confuse a reader to think it also was about the fact that earth orbits the sun. There's no controversy about whether the earth orbits the sun. And the paper's clear.

So, just more of the same from RPJr.


*I think I spotted it too but could never find where I wrote it, thus reducing my own claim to a bitter, bitter footnote.

Meta-analysis in the middle

My general view both in general and as a policymaker in my small local-office pond is that a widely held (few expert dissenters) and strongly held (high confidence) consensus position might as well be a fact as far as the policymaking is concerned. A contradictory study is just that, a study. If it turns out to be accurate, then the consensus will eventually fracture soon enough and create problems for policymakers, but there's no need or even a rational way for policymaking to jump the gun.

In the gray zone between just one study and a consensus is the meta-analysis, and I'm still trying to figure out what policymakers should do with them. If the meta-analysis reinforces the consensus position - say, Oreskes' review of scientific abstracts on climate change - then it's just a helpful tool in examining the consensus. OTOH, if the meta-analysis seems to point in a different direction - say, Choi et al. on adverse neurological effects of high-fluoride exposure in China and Iran - that presents a bit of a problem.

My assumption, generally, is that the consensus should be handling this. The main Canadian health research arm, Health Canada, looked at a lot of the same studies and reached a different conclusion:

These studies were included in the review conducted by the Expert Panel on fluoride convened by Health Canada in 2007. Despite the consistency in the results from these studies, the panel agreed that the weight of evidence does not support a link between fluoride and IQ deficit. There are significant concerns regarding the available studies, including quality, credibility, and methodological weaknesses, such as the lack of control for confounding factors, the small number of subjects, and the dose of exposure (Health Canada, 2008). Most of these studies performed in China were also included in the reviews conducted by other organizations and/or committees, which also mentioned that the significance of these studies is uncertain (IPCS, 2002; ATSDR, 2003; NRC, 2006).

I think Health Canada is probably closer to showing what the fluoride consensus is than Choi, although I think there's reason to believe the consensus, that therapeutic levels of fluoridated water are generally safe, isn't as solid as the climate consensus. Worth noting one difference between meta-analysis and consensus is the meta-analysis is only as good as the meta-analyst, while consensus hopefully has a broader base.

Maybe the consensus will change, but this is what we've got.

History Licking Its Chops to Judge George Bush

America's most accurate news organization interviews History

“And if you think I’m going to miss my shot to examine the bastard’s denial of climate change through the lens of contemporary scientific consensus, then you’ve got another fucking thing coming,” the perpetually growing branch of knowledge added.

History went on to say that it had already sized up numerous aspects of the Bush legacy for in-depth scholarly appraisal, admitting that it was eager to “have its way” with Bush’s stances on stem cells, drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, the near doubling of the national debt . . . .

 More at the link

Hoping history rhymes

Before Heartland Institute made real trouble, and maybe taking a more prominent role than the US Chamber in fighting climate action, the Global Climate Coalition once united a wide range of big corporations to fight the legislative bad fight in Washington. Wiki says, wrongly, that it died in 2002 because:

A major scientific report on the severity of global warming by the IPCC in 2001 led to large-scale membership loss.

I don't think that's right - instead of beautiful science, it was a realistic alternative that killed the beast. GCC had been around since 1989, and the 1991 and 1996 IPCC reports had plenty of science sufficient to kill its mission if GCC had been open to science.  What was new and different instead was Pew Foundation's establishment in 1998 of the Business Environmental Leadership Council to engage businesses in real solutions to climate problems. BELC succeeded despite its acronym in providing a forum for climate realist companies to get involved in legislation, and then gradually peeled off members from GCC:

Some of the exiting companies, such as BP Amoco, Shell, and Dupont, joined a progressive new group, the Business Environmental Leadership Council, now an organization of some 21 corporations. This new outfit, founded by the Pew Center on Global Climate Change, says, “We accept the views of most scientists that enough is known about the science and environmental impacts of climate change for us to take actions to address its consequences.”

I'm sure that there was a lot more going on behind the scenes that eased companies out of GCC and into BELC. Having something like BELC around meant there were people who did this easing as their job. And now everything is perfect! Okay, it's not, but denialism at the corporate level has to hide itself quite a bit more.

The US Chamber continues to be a problem, but here's hoping that history will rhyme.

Get Their Attention

There is a bad joke which describes how a farmer buys a donkey at the fair after being told that the animal was obedient.  About five minutes later the farmer returned complaining to the seller that the donkey had simply stopped on the road and would not move.  The wrangler, nodded picked up a bat and walked with the farmer to the place the animal had stopped.  Walked about it twice and hauled off and clonked the donkey between the eyes, remarking, first you have to get his attention.

Media Matters prints eight tips from scientists on covering polar bear survival.  The last flare up was driven by the usual idiots on the appearance of a new book by your ignoramous of the day, Zak Unger.  Eli will only print the first of the eight tips which pretty much show where Mr. Unger was coming from

1. Anecdotal Evidence Doesn't Trump Scientific Evidence.

In February, Fox News repeatedly promoted a book by firefighter Zac Unger on his time in Churchill, Manitoba to claim that "the polar bears are doing just fine." Even though bears in that region are actually among the subpopulations in decline, Fox News suggested that the book undermined climate science. Dr. Andrew Derocher, a scientific advisor to Polar Bears International, called that premise "flawed" and told Media Matters that "scientific literature shows very clearly the loss of sea ice in the satellite record and the projections (many many scientific papers) show that the future will be particularly challenging for polar bears as the sea ice disappears." He added, "I've worked on polar bears for 30 years and the changes are incredibly easy to see but as scientists, we don't just look at bears, we measure them and analyze the data."

Stirling criticized Unger for "a very sad piece of deliberately misleading and dishonest writing" that "tells only parts of the story that suit him." Similarly, Derocher said it was "unfortunate" when "someone who clearly doesn't understand a subject well botches up the science." Furthermore, media should not rely on anecdotal information when there is "a lot of data" on sea ice and polar bear body condition. He added:

The book you mentioned was written by someone who spent a few months in 1 place with his family talking to people. What I did on my last trip to Kentucky doesn't qualify me to rewrite the history [of] the eastern US. I've worked on polar bears for 30 years. Many of my colleagues for even longer. You don't go to a plumber for heart surgery but when it comes to polar bears "everybody is an expert". In science, an expert has to demonstrate expertise. Hanging around in Churchill for a few months talking to the locals doesn't qualify as an expert. Our last paper on polar bears in Conservation Letters had something like 200 years of cumulative polar bear expertise. How it can be that media put the scientific perspective on par with a casual observer is beyond me.

In fact, some reports that rely on polar bear sightings to conclude they are doing "fine" may be unwittingly underscoring the urgency of sea ice melt. As lost habitat drives bears from their hunting grounds, they sometimes wander into towns and garbage dumps. This may lead to more contact with humans, and an overall impression that polar bears are abundant, even to the point of being a nuisance. In fact, as Dr. Steven C. Amstrup, a former polar bear project leader at the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), told Media Matters, a bear sighting in a new place "probably means the bears are having a hard time making a living where they used to make a living."

Mr. Unger and his friends clearly need some bashing.

Eli Appreciates James Hansen

James Hansen retired today as Director of the Goddard Institute for Space Science.  Justin Gillis summarizes the political and policy nexus that motivated Hansen to retire.  This was Hansen's decision impelled by his concern for the future.

There have been many descriptions of Hansen's contributions to climate science, some of them even at Rabett Run, but Eli would like to point to yet another facet of a remarkable career:  GISS.

GISS was founded in 1961 to accommodate Robert Jastrow who did not want to move down to DC to join NASA Goddard Space Flight Center.  The emphasis as shown by their publications was on space studies and planetary science.  The world is a small place, at least at certain levels, and Jastrow, together with Fred Seitz and William Nierenberg founded the Marshall Institute, which starting from when it was founded led a push back against climate science. 

Jastrow was (Eli hears) forced to resign in 1981, running afoul of civil service rules, at which point Hansen, who had come to GISS in 1967 as a post doc, became director.  By that time Jim Hansen's interests had shifted away from the morning star, Venus, to the most important planet, the Earth, and he changed the emphasis at GISS and assembling a great team.  Eli has often wondered about how the relationship between Jastrow and Hansen shaped the denial of the Marshall three about human driven climate change.  It is also fitting that Hansen has won the Nierenberg Prize for science in the public interest.

NASA by nature is a funny beast.  As is the case for most federal laboratories, it has more contractors than civil servants.  GISS is exceptional, only ~20% of the staff is civil service.  That means that a budget has to be raised each year to fund them.  The total staff including civil servants today is about 140.   Ones that the bunnies are most familiar with include Andy Lacis, David Rind, Drew Shindell, Gavin Schmidt, and Hansen's close collaborators Makiko Sato and Reto Ruedy. 

Because Hansen is not a gifted orator, his delivery being kind of Iowa flat, he is easy to underestimate but his appointment as Director of GISS at a relatively early age, his negotiation of the NASA shark tank over thirty years, the way in which he destroyed the 2005 attempt to muzzle him, are testimony to his mastery.   Further, Hansen has displayed a rare ability to capture political and press attention for the issue of climate change starting with congressional testimony in the 1980s and continuing today with his use of non-violent protests to mobilize opposition to the Keystone Pipeline.  Hansen has always been three steps ahead of his detractors. 

Two short stories capture Hansen's style.  When Steve McIntyre started to download the entire GISSTemp data base, in a convincing imitation of a DOS attach which locked others out and was in turn dumped by the webmaster, McIntyre raised an almighty whine.  Hansen's reaction?

There are some desperate characters trying to make a mountain out of a mole hill.

and

Do we want to lower ourselves to debating with a court jester? Of course that's what he wants.

I don't have a strong preference as long as it is not taking a significant amount of my time.

I have not read the stuff you are referring to [McIntyre's whinge to Town Hall], but as I recall, as soon as I was told about the matter, I said that he was welcome to the data

The second may be apocryphal.  When told that a colleague after much work and study had concluded that, yes, Hansen was right and climate change was a major problem, Hansen, as Eli recalls replied something like "That's good, but what is he going to do about it?"

And that is the question that James Hansen answered today.

The Nanny Often Knows Best

John Stuart Mills' On Liberty is the basis of western political thought,  or at least the non authoritarian version.  According to Mills

The only purpose for which power can rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will is to prevent harm to others.  His own good, either physical or mental, is not a sufficient warrant.  he cannot rightfully be compelled to do or forbear because it will be better for him to do so, because it will make him happier, because in the opinion of others, to do so would be wise or even right.

Eli's attention has been drawn to a book by Sarah Conly, Against Autonomy:  Justifying Coercive Paternalism reviewed by Cass Sunstein.  To Conly and Sunstein Mill's point of view can only stand if it is empirically justified that each is the best judge of their own good. 

Mill’s claim has a great deal of intuitive appeal. But is it right? That is largely an empirical question, and it cannot be adequately answered by introspection and intuition. In recent decades, some of the most important research in social science, coming from psychologists and behavioral economists, has been trying to answer it. That research is having a significant influence on public officials throughout the world. Many believe that behavioral findings are cutting away at some of the foundations of Mill’s harm principle, because they show that people make a lot of mistakes, and that those mistakes can prove extremely damaging.

 There are many arguments supporting Sunstein's proposition sustained by research on the subject.  People overestimate their own capacities, underestimate risks, concentrate on the present to the cost of the future and cannot be expert on all of the issues upon which decisions need be made.  Still following Conly

There are those, however rare, who continue to think that all paternalistic constraints are unjustified - who would prefer a world without prescriptions for medicines, seat belts, or limits on interest rates, whatever the human costs.  For those who reject any paternalistic attempt to help people avoid the results of their own ignorance or poor choices , no argument may avail;  they may have a fundamentally different, and I would argue, morally unjustified, sense that people deserve to suffer for their own mistakes.  

Beyond this, in a world where people interact, there have to be paternalistic rules, if only to keep us from each others throats.  Conly stresses that paternalism implies a reciprocal duty to help others.  In her view it is not morally justified to leave others to suffer, something that Mills' requires, but paternalism involves us all in social interactions, the natural state of humans. 

Conly emphasizes that people confuse means and ends, they treat their decisions about means with the things they actually want and this is one place where paternalism can help people get what they want, for example health, by paternalistic limitations on what they do, for example, smoking and drinking. 

While the Adam and Eve is deeply ingrained in western culture, humans evolved in tribes where survival required mutual support and subjugation of autonomy.  Our increased control of our environment has opened up the possibilities of increased autonomy, but unlimited autonomy as we have seen degrades the environment upon which our autonomy depends. 

So it's a balancing act and it is easy to go too far in either direction, but to pretend that there is no ethical, historical, biological or economic justification either for autonomy or for paternalism is corrupt.  The old saw is that your freedom ends at the Bunny's ears, but the problem is that in an increasingly tangled world that boundary is not easy to find.

The Sea Is Not Flat

One of the surprising things is that the sea is not flat, but there are places where sea level is lower than others, rising faster than others or slower.  Mostly bunnies just look at the averages, but the money, just as with temperature and precipitation changes is local.

Turns out that the northeast US coast, from Cape Hatteras on north up to Maine is the so called Northeast Hot Spot (NEH) and the rate of sea level rise since 1950 or so is three times the global. Sallenger Doran and Howd explore the "Hotspot of accelerated sea level rise on the Atlantic coast of North America".  Turns out it's not all bad news because

In the late twentieth century, sea levels were relatively low along the North American east coast, particularly north of Cape Hatteras8,9. Sea-surface gradients sloped down towards the coast away from the Gulf Stream and its continuation to the northeast, the North Atlantic Current10. The sharp pressure gradients balance the Coriolis force to sustain these narrow and strong geostrophic currents, leading to low coastal sea levels.

But the recent rate of change in this area is large.  The figure to the left shows the Sea Level Rise Differences from 1970-2009 along the coast, that on the right shows the SLRD time series for start years from 1894 to 1970.  The former has a length of 115 years, the latter 40 years.