Advocating for Science

Another thing that Tamsin Edwards is not interested in.

As the bunnies know, scientists take vows of policy silence in Tamsin/Judy land, so that their betters, the Tols and Pielkes and Kahan's of the world may instruct the powers that are.  A recent set of comments at Tamsin Edward's blog captures the path we are instructed to trod..

It starts with a comment from Alan Emery to the well known Myrrh

August 11, 2013 at 4:32 pm

Myrrh: I forgot to mention that if you seriously believe you have found a fundamental flaw in theoretical physics, it is worthwhile submitting a paper to a refereed journal that deals with theoretical physics. You do not have to be associated with an institution, nor do you have to be a scientist to do so. You do have to prepare the paper according to the instructions on the website for whatever journal you choose. In preparing your arguments, be sure to read and understand the literature that you will be refuting. Your paper will be sent to several external readers who in most cases will make helpful comments and suggestions if your case is good. Be prepared to revise your paper according to suggestions by referees if you get past the first threshold. The reviewers do not have to agree with you, but you must be logical and accurate, or you will get a rejection slip.

If you are correct, we will all applaud your determination and insight. If you are wrong, welcome to the crowd of scientists who didn’t get their pet theory right the first time.

only to be met by the usual Myrrh wind and sleet storm

Alan Emery says:
August 11, 2013 at 4:32 pm

Myrrh: I forgot to mention that if you seriously believe you have found a fundamental flaw in theoretical physics, it is worthwhile submitting a paper to a refereed journal that deals with theoretical physics. etc.

You have missed the import of what I am saying. I am arguing from well known, well empirically tested, used in countless industries and applications world wide, basic real physics. It is no longer taught in general education because the Greenhouse Effect fake fisics has replaced it..

For example, the GHE “shortwave in” which claims visible light from the Sun heats the surface land and water.

Visible light works on the electronic transition level, this is on the level of electrons, not on the level of the whole molecule which has to moved to vibration to heat it up, which is why it is called the molecular vibrational level. Vibration, is heat, aka internal kinetic energy. All this is extremely well known in industries, Thermodynamics has been with us a long time.., if you want to find out about visible light go to Optics, or, Biology.
If you re-read the NASA page I gave, you will see that there is a difference in size between shortwave infrared (which is classed in with Light not Heat, with Reflective not Thermal) and the longer wavelengths which are thermal, which are heat, which we feel as heat. Visible light is even smaller than near infrared.. That is all highly energetic means, because all the wavelengths travel at the same speed the greater the frequency in wave the smaller it gets – there is a rather large difference between gamma rays and radio waves, radio waves can be as big as a house and several football pitches long.. Visible light is much, much smaller than longwave thermal infrared, so it works on the smaller electron level, not on the larger whole molecule level. If infrared was not invisible we still would not be able to see shortwave infrared, it is microscopic, we would be able to see the bigger longwave infrared heat waves.

Now, the atmosphere is not transparent to visible light as claimed by GHE, it is opaque – that is why you do not see the stars during the day. What you are seeing is visible light being bounced around by the electrons of nitrogen and oxygen, blue visible being more energetic, think more nervy pin ball, gets bounced around more hence our blue sky.
When electrons of the molecules of nitrogen and oxygen absorb visible light from the Sun they get briefly energised, and electrons always wanting to return to their ground state do so, in doing so they emit the same energy they absorbed, blue light in blue light out. This is called reflection/scattering.

Visible light from the Sun does not knock the electron out of its orbit, it is non-ionising, because it is too weak, but, for example, some uv does this, this is called ionising uv. This affects the skin on the DNA level, will damage the skin, so our bodies produce melanin to absorb it preventing damage. That is how we get our tans. We get burned when our melanin production cannot keep pace with our stupidity, when we expose ourselves to more Sun than we are used to.. Acclimatise slowly. UV is not a thermal energy, it is not hot, it does not heat our skin, it scrambles our DNA.

So, visible light from the Sun is not capable of heating matter, the claimed heating surface land of GHE, because it is not big enough, does not pack enough punch to move whole molecules into vibration, but also, visible light is claimed to heat the water in ocean in the GHE, but it cannot do this because water really is a transparent medium for visible light, it does not absorb visible light but gets transmitted through unchanged. You can see this in clear water, you can see through water to the visible light bouncing back from the bottom of a stream for example.

Still on the electronic transition level, which is the smaller level visible light operates on, the molecules of a transparent medium do not absorb visible light at all, they do not get in to play with the electrons as they do in the real gas medium of air molecules. They try, and this delays them a little, but they are passed along and so transmitted through the transparent medium unchanged.

If visible light from the Sun heated the water in the ocean then we would have no life as we know it, we are carbon life forms from the photosynthesis which began in the oceans. Visible light is used by plants to convert to chemical energy, not heat energy, in the production of sugars from carbon dioxide and water.

This is basic physics from real world traditional physics, still taught to some and particularly in relevant applied science fields. We really do know a great deal about the properties and processes of matter and energy – that is why the electromagnetic spectrum has been divided up and given different names, and put into different categories. We have come a long way from Herschel’s first brilliant discovery that the great heat we feel from the Sun is invisible infrared. His measurements were crude then, he moved his solid glass prism by hand at the edge of the table.. We now know that there is a great difference in size, relating to frequency, so the visible light he was measuring was getting overlap from the bigger longwave thermal infrared heat waves/photons which are packets of particles.

As I have already explained, the AGW Greenhouse Effect has taken out the direct longwave infrared heat we get direct from the Sun in order to claim that real world measurements of this are from “backradiation by greenhouse gases from the atmosphere under TOA”.

This is simple science fraud by sleight of hand. The KT97 and ilk GHE energy budget is science fraud, Trenberth needs to go back to traditional physics to find his missing heat..

Eli had been getting a word or two in downthread, pointing out that the Myrrh was a naked bush, but this made him weak with the giggles, incapable of holding still to reply and frankly feeling a bit peeved that the oh so responsible blog owner operator was not being very responsible, letting the others do the work.

August 13, 2013 at 1:07 am

Well, Tamsin, you asked for it. Care to help out or are you going to continue to rely on the good will of others to deal with the confused?

 Now some, not Eli to be sure, might have hoped that the bright light of science would be seen upon the land, and some sense would appear.  Not Eli, to be sure, the Bunny has been at this game too long.

Tamsin Edwards says:

August 13, 2013 at 6:14 am

 I normally monitor comments to prevent them going off topic like this. It’s boring for people to hear the same arguments they could elsewhere. Please stick to the topic of the post or else I’ll have to revoke (all) your auto-accept moderation statuses or end commenting. I don’t have time to read all your comments at the moment, beyond a very quick skim, so I rely on trust for people to stay on topic. Thank you.

and Eli, well Eli had a big sad.  It is really sad being right at times.

Eli Rabett says:

August 13, 2013 at 7:19 pm

Sorry, that will not do. You open the door to misleading nonsense, you have the personal responsibility of closing it, a point that you missed in the original post/guardian column and continue to ignore.

“Going off topic” is the usual false balance, and FWIW, this comment is on topic, the first responsibility of scientists who speak/write in public is to clearly define scientific reality.

In TamsinWorld, scientists are not to speak about policy, but they are also not to correct science fiction because that is not democratic (channeling Tol).

Proof positive that there is a God.

And he has a great sense of humor.

Oregon Republicans elect Art Robinson of OISM as head of the state party.  Some of the comments are terrific:

What is the difference between Art Robinson and The Three Stooges? 
 
The Three Stooges have a more profound, science-based policy platform.  

That and they actually appeal to younger voters.

and

As the Greek generals said after their 1967 coup, "The previous regime brought us to the edge of a precipice, and we have now taken a step forward." 

It is as if the Onion wrote the story, with this perfect close to the traditional August silly season.  The former Republican EPA administrators who argued that there was a Republican case for action on climate change.  R Street, Bob Inglis and Eli Lehrer who have been blogging up a storm on same.  Tamsin Edwards on why not to have an opinion and James on why to.

Stephan Lewandowsky was right, denial is a lifestyle and the Republicans in the US have it bad but anybunny trying to "reason" with them is delusional.  

Heads Are Round For Rolling

Ugo Bardi from the Frog That Jumped Out draws Eli's attention (very short span) to an astounding editorial comment in Climate by the publishers.  Climate is a new MDPI open access journal whose Editor in Chief, Nicole Moelders is a professor at University of Alaska Fairbanks.  Of perhaps more relevance she is closely associated with Syun-Ichi Akasofu, perhaps the best known faculty member there for his work on the upper atmosphere, the Aurora and the Magnetosphere.  Moelders, of perhaps equal relevance to this post is married to Gerhard Kramm, a close friend of both Eli and the cyanobacteria's press agent. 

Anyhoo, Moelders is the chief editor, big into the uncertainty and natural variation club, and right out of the box, she published a rant by SI Akasofu, On the Present Halting of Global Warming

The rise in global average temperature over the last century has halted since roughly the year 2000, despite the fact that the release of CO₂ into the atmosphere is still increasing. It is suggested here that this interruption has been caused by the suspension of the near linear (+0.5 °C/100 years or 0.05 °C/10 years) temperature increase over the last two centuries, due to recovery from the Little Ice Age, by a superposed multi-decadal oscillation of a 0.2 °C amplitude and a 50~60 year period, which reached its positive peak in about the year 2000—a halting similar to those that occurred around 1880 and 1940. Because both the near linear change and the multi-decadal oscillation are likely to be natural changes (the recovery from the Little Ice Age (LIA) and an oscillation related to the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO), respectively), they must be carefully subtracted from temperature data before estimating the effects of CO₂.

In other words, what you can read everyday over at Willard Tony's, the usual confusion between increase in CO2 mixing ratio and increase in CO2 forcing, a bunch of mathturbation on rates, etc.

However, there have been some consequences.  Two of the editorial board said sayonara, and the publisher is a bit perturbed

It has recently been brought to our attention by members of the scientific community that a paper published in Climate (ISSN 2225-1154, http://www.mdpi.com/journal/climate) has raised some controversy regarding its originality, overall quality, and the scientific validity of the data presented. Moreover, two members have resigned from the Editorial Board, stating they are not willing to be associated with a journal where such articles are published. The paper they referred to was “Akasofu, S.-I. On the Present Halting of Global Warming. Climate 2013, 1, 4–11”, published in the first issue of Climate in May 2013 [1].

These appear to be Nathaniel Brunsell of the University of Kansas and Jason Evans of the University of New South Wales, who join the Hans v. Storch Chapter of Editors Emeritus 

But wait, other heads also are being cued up for rolling

The Publisher endeavors to ensure the scientific standard of all the papers published in this journal and will seek a closer involvement of the Editorial Board in the editorial process.

and comments are invited

We are now inviting comments for publication on the Akasofu paper. We also want to point out that comments on any articles published in Climate are always welcome. We hope that this opportunity for debate will be taken up by members of the scientific community, and that Climate can facilitate vibrant discussion around environmental climate topics that can often polarize opinion, but are of vital importance for stimulating cutting edge research.

Eli, of course, teaches the controversy.

Revised AGU Statement on Climate Change

The AGU has issued its revised statement on climate change, approved by the fifteen member committee chaired by Gerald North with one (predictable) dissent. 

Human induced climate change requires urgent action.

Humanity is the major influence on the global climate change observed over the past 50 years.

Rapid societal responses can significantly lessen negative outcomes.

Human activities are changing Earth’s climate. At the global level, atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide and other heat trapping greenhouse gases have increased sharply since the Industrial Revolution. Fossil fuel burning dominates this increase.  Human caused increases in greenhouse gases are responsible for most of the observed global average surface warming of roughly 0.8°C (1.5°F) over the past 140 years. Because natural processes cannot quickly remove some of these gases (notably carbon dioxide) from the atmosphere, our past, present, and future emissions will influence the climate
system for millennia. 

Extensive, independent observations confirm the reality of global warming. These observations show large scale increases in air and sea temperatures, sea level, and atmospheric water vapor; they document decreases in the extent of mountain glaciers, snow cover, permafrost, and Arctic sea ice. These changes are broadly consistent with long understood physics and predictions of how the climate system is expected to respond to human caused increases in greenhouse gases. The changes are inconsistent with explanations of climate change that rely on known natural influences.

Climate models predict that global temperatures will continue to rise, with the amount of warming primarily determined by the level of emissions. Higher emissions of greenhouse gases will lead to larger warming, and greater risks to society and ecosystems. Some additional warming is unavoidable due to past emissions.

Climate chan ge is not expected to be uniform over space or time. Deforestation, urbanization, and particulate pollution can have complex geographical, seasonal, and longer term effects on temperature, precipitation, and cloud properties. In addition, human induced climate change may alter atmospheric circulation, dislocating historical patterns of natural variability and storminess.

In the current climate, weather experienced at a given location or region varies from year to year; in a changing climate, both the nature of that variability and the basic patterns of weather experienced can change, sometimes in counterintuitive ways -- some areas may experience cooling, for instance. This raises no challenge to the reality of human induced climate change.

Impacts harmful to society, including increased extremes of heat, precipitation, and coastal high water are currently being experienced, and are projected to increase. Other projected outcomes involve threats to public health, water availability, agricultural productivity (particularly in low latitude developing countries), and coastal infrastructure, though some benefits may be seen at some times and places. Biodiversity loss is expected to accelerate due to both climate change and acidification of the oceans, which is a direct result of increasing carbon dioxide levels.

While important scientific uncertainties remain as to which particular impacts will be experienced where, no uncertainties are known that could make the impacts of climate change inconsequential. Furthermore, surprise outcomes, such as the unexpectedly rapid loss of Arctic summer sea ice, may entail even more dramatic changes than anticipated.

Actions that could diminish the threats posed by climate change to society and ecosystems include substantial emissions cuts to reduce the magnitude of climate change, as well as preparing for changes that are now unavoidable. The community of scientists has responsibilities to improve overall understanding of climate change and its impacts. Improvements will come from pursuing the research needed to understand climate change, working with stakeholders to identify relevant information, and conveying understanding clearly and accurately, both to decision makers and to the general public.

Adopted by the American Geophysical Union
December 2003; Revised and Reaffirmed December 2007, February 2012, August 2013.

The 15-person panel that reviewed and updated the position statement included the following:

• Amy Clement, Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science, University of Miami (approve)
• John Farrington, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute (approve)
• Susan Joy Hassol, Climate Communication (approve)
• Robert Hirsch, U.S. Geological Survey (approve)
• Peter Huybers, Harvard University (approve)
• Peter Lemke, Alfred Wegener Institute (approve)
• Gerald North, Texas A&M University (approve, panel chair)
• Michael Oppenheimer, Princeton University (approve)
• Roger Pielke Sr., University of Colorado Boulder (dissent)
• Ben Santer, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (approve)
• Gavin Schmidt, Goddard Institute for Space Studies, NASA (approve)
• Leonard A. Smith, London School of Economics (approve)
• Eric Sundquist, U.S. Geological Survey (approve)
• Pieter Tans, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (approve)

It is notable here that the committee was quite willing to vote the statement out based on a strong consensus but not unanimity. As Eli noted in December last after attending the Fall AGU meeting, climate scientists are not only 97% for the proposition that the climate is changing driven by human influences but that it is also dangerous.  Action to stop carbon emissions is needed immediately.

The mood of the attendees had shifted.  It was much sourer about the few in the atmospheric science community still running interference for inactivism.  People were being called out in private, but also in public and not just in sessions dealing with education and communication and blogging.

It is now clear to the climate science community that keeping your head down has not been an effective option for climate scientists for quite a while (see Kathryn Hayhoe).  The denialists and their funders are  coming for you in the Niemoeller sense, sooner or later.  This means that many in the community have woken up.  Those who do not, or believe they cannot, are feeling guilty about not supporting the science they are part of.  Those folks need to be encouraged and supported and come out.

Andy Dessler on Climate Sensitivity

Mom Rabett told Eli that there is no need to make the rubble bounce when you have friends who will do the job for you

Laid Back this Summer

Climate Zork II

Scott Eric Kaufman at acephalous has perfected the game of Zork as an expression of the travails of life on the net.  The best of his scripts IEHO is DISBELIEF.  Zork is absolutely the perfect game to describe the difficulties of the Richard Tol Poll which Eli has attempted below with many borrowings from Scott.  Oh yes, beware the grue.  In the spirit of such games, readers are invited to submit continuations of the story to bring it up to date.

Copyright (c) 1980, 1982, 1983, 2006 Rabett, Inc.  CLIMATE ZORK! is a registered trademark of Rabett, Inc.
Revision 29 / Serial number 55153380
West of Office Building

You are standing in an open field west of a white office building, with a boarded front door.  There is a small mailbox here.

> open mailbox

There are many large white envelopes inside the mailbox with printing in large Comic Sans on them

> open an envelope

Which one

> The one from Richard Tol promising a big prize. 

They are all from Richard Tol.  Some bunny has deployed the Tol Poll Bot.

> Well, open one and read it

You joke

> Wait, you are a computer, do what I tell you

Even a computer has standards, in this case IEEE 1622. 

> Are we going to stand here all day debating

Better than getting involved.

>  OK, give here.

>  It appears that my choice is between Dana Nuccitelli and Robert Mugabe for Richard's least favorite person

> Isn’t it very nasty to be inviting ratings that include “very nasty”?

Ethon suggested "very tasty" but Roger is Richard's buddy.

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

To be continued. . .  or add your own.

Blog Science

One of the entertainments of being a physicist is meeting other physicists (yes with doctorates) who have some crazy bug and have piles of school notebooks filled with algebra showing (pick one) relativity, quantum mechanics, thermodynamics, atmospheric science, etc are wrong wrong wrong.

Engineers appear to specialize in wanting to build second law perpetual motion machines.

The ENTERTAINMENTNET has made this sort of thing available to everyone.

(Originally posed as an ER Comment at Wottsupwiththatblog)  picture from the Mad Scientist's page

The sofritas solution

I have a blogging theory in need of a good name, that all blogs eventually deteriorate into discussions of the authors' pets or meals. Eli and John have done a terrible job of validating my theory, which leaves the degeneration to me. I don't have pets, assuming you discount the salamanders that moved into our worm composting bin six years ago and are still there. I think I've verified them to be arboreal salamanders, a pretty cool type that doesn't bother with lungs or a tadpole stage and can climb buildings. Still, not a pet.

So that leaves the sofritas vegetarian meals I've been ordering at our local Chipotle Mexican restaurant. I've not talked too much about personal steps to limit climate change impacts, partly because it's not my main interest and partly because I'm hardly a world-leading example. Still, I'm not impressed with the contempt dripping from statements like "changing a light bulb won't fix global warming." It sure is part of the fix, and personal action should be one of the steps that climate activists take.

I'm not a vegetarian, love the taste of meat, and feel better on low-carb diets that are easier when they're non-vegetarian. Despite that, vegetarianism is generally (maybe not always) a better thing for the climate and should be encouraged, especially as the whole world gets richer. When it's easy to make a switch, just do it.

So if you have a Chipotle restaurant in your area and they've added sofritas to the menu, you should try it. Sofritas is an annoying made-up word for shredded tofu mixed with other ingredients, and it has a chewy texture that makes it competitive with meat (speaking as a meat-eater). If more non-meat options were this easy, I'd do a lot better on the personal level.

Variability Makes Stuff Tuff

Steinacher, Joos and Stocker write in Nature about how "Allowable Carbon Emissions Lowered by Multiple Climate Targets", that hitting a single target, for example 2 C requires a lot less effort than limiting harm from multiple limits.  Essentially the same tautology as given natural variability on top of a rising base, then the hotter extremes are going to get hotter and you don't need a degree in meteorology or statistics to figure that out.  The authors selected a number of global metrics, mean sea level rise, steric sea level rise, Aragonite undersaturation in the Southern Ocean, global loss of aragonite saturated waters, cropland loss and soil carbon loss. 

Meeting the multi-target 1 is very unlikely (<10 360="" eff="" exceed="" if="" u="">+

40 GtC mean and maximum-minimum range from RFNC scenario uncertainty), although it becomes likely to meet the 1.5 C target (which is a part of set 1) at this range of emissions (Fig. 4).  Similarly it is unlikely that multi-target 2 can be met if Eff exceed 470 + 80 GtC while it is still likely to meet the 2 C target if they stay below.
Now certainly bunnies can argue about the choice of metrics, the emission scenarios and the models used to play what if, but the central point remain, it is easy to mislead policy makers if one focuses on a single metric. 

Worse, fitting a single globally and temporally averaged metric, such as temperature anomaly is an exercise in making von Neumann's elephant wiggle his trunk without a dose of physics and chemistry.  Further, anyone who uses global metrics fall into the trap one anonymouse saw with another study

It's the creeping statistical hints between the lines of this paper that really bother me. Long before or even if we never see broad areas permanently enter a existentially threatening torrid regime, what about excursions? For instance, Pakistan this year has seen record temperatures approaching 54 degrees C in places where many people live, fortunately with lower humidity and only for handful of days but what about when/if such aberrations extend to a handful of weeks and are accompanied by inexorably increasing humidity? The resulting disaster would cause migrations. The worst-case scenario in Sherwood and Huber would not have to happen before we effectively lose major swathes of territory for year-round habitability.

Eli is an optimist of course.

The American South should learn to embrace its heroic underdog history

Nice quote of one Perry DeAngelis highlighted in a recent Skeptic's Guide to the Universe podcast:

If you strip the horrors of history from history, the flip side of that is you strip the nobility of rising above such horrors

There's been some discussion lately about the libertarian split over embracing the Lost Cause of the Southern Confederacy and the general Southern attitude to their history. While I'm sure this has been said elsewhere, I think the whitewashing of the horrors of the antebellum South* denies the heroism of the people that resisted those horrors. Rather than downplaying those horrors, the libertarians and more importantly the popular histories of the South could discuss the true underdog Southerners - Harriet Tubman, Frederick Douglass, the white Virginians who tried to abolish slavery in their state in 1851, many others who fought a Lost Cause as underdogs against horrible tyrants. Jefferson Davis, Alexander Stephens, and the others may have become underdogs during the Civil War, but the history of the South before the war didn't put them in that category. If modern Southern schools want to teach a heroic heritage, there's a nobility there that they should emphasize instead.


*And the North also had its own horrors, and its own heroes who fought them.

Late to the lawsuit party (even Eli got there first). Anyway, mind the footnote

Started writing out a little happy dance over Michael Mann's defamation suit winning a preliminary battle and then saw Eli's already covered it several hours ago, so go read. I'll just add four points:

1. It's especially good because one motion by the naughty parties was an anti-SLAPP motion, intended to shut down, quickly, those frivolous SLAPP cases that are brought to oppress free speech. Among other things, a successful anti-SLAPP motion usually changes the normal American rule and allows the defendant to recover attorney fees from the suing plaintiff.* Barring a successful appeal, Mann is now free of that monetary threat.

2. It's good news for Mann, but mind the footnote following the statement (p. 15) "The Court must, at this stage, find the evidence indicates that the CEI Defendants' statements are not pure opinion but statements based on provably false facts." The footnote reads in full, "The Court does view this as a very close case." IOW, it could go the other way at trial.

3. A difficult issue even if Mann wins may be proving damages to Mann's reputation, in that it's difficult for statements by disreputable liars to have much effect on the reputation of honest people. OTOH, Mann's claim for intentional infliction of emotional distress also gets to proceed, and that can get him damage awards, especially if the judge is angry with the defendant over the defamation and looking for a way to make the defendant provide compensation.

4. I think this case and the Supreme's actions on California Prop. 8 are good examples of why the law is like The Force, to be used for good or for evil. Anti-SLAPP motions were meant to be used for good, to help the little people who are sued by giant corporations for defamation when they tell city councils to vote down bad developments. Obviously, they can be twisted. Conversely, the modern version of legal standing that shut down Prop. 8 and brought gay marriage back to California was expanded by rightwingers to violate environmental laws by making it difficult for citizens to enforce the laws on their own. Standing then came around to catch the rightwingers on their own petards. This time.


*I don't actually know the law in Washington DC where this case was brought, but I'd be pretty surprised if it's different from anti-SLAPP done elsewhere, and it uses California law as a model which does allow fee recovery.

Bus Tossing

As many have noted, the judge, Natalia Combs Greene, has tossed out the National Review Online (NRO) and Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI), petition to apply the  anti-SLAPP law to Michael Mann's suit against them for libel.  Eli has commented on the suite previously, others have done the job on the judge's denial, but Eli, Eli always has an eye for the amusing, and NRO's recent filing claiming that the judge blew it by confusing poor old innocent them with the evel CEI is a new record in kicking your friends under the bus.

Judge Greene was not pleased with CEI's and NRO's claims of innocence writing

There is sufficient evidence presented that is indicative of “actual malice.” The CEI Defendants have consistently accused Plaintiff of fraud and inaccurate theories, despite Plaintiff’s work having been investigated several times and found to be proper. The CEI Defendants’ persistence despite the EPA and other investigative bodies’ conclusion that Plaintiff’s work is accurate (or that there is no evidence of data manipulation) is equal to a blatant disregard for the falsity of their statements. Thus, given the evidence presented the Court finds that Plaintiff could prove “actual malice.

with similar for NRO.  This is a worse defeat for CEI and NRO than it appears on the surface which is bad enough, because their motions argue that their statements about Prof. Mann were opinion, not fact, which is going to make it tough for them to argue that they were telling the truth about him and askin for discovery to dig dirt, but wait, there is more.

In a new motion, NRO argues that well yes, CEI libeled Mann, but they didn't

Specifically, the Order conflates the conduct of co-defendant Competitive Enterprise Institute (“CEI”) with that of National Review and Steyn, who never petitioned the Environmental Protection Agency to investigate Plaintiff or otherwise pressured the agency concerning Plaintiff’s research. Similarly, National Review and Steyn did not criticize Plaintiff’s scientific research for years, as CEI did

Eli does not remember NRO and Mark Steyn being especially friendly to Mann, and indeed if not before, after this people are going to go looking in the archives, but this is a sharp message to CEI that they are on their own.

More popcorn.

1.  Michael Mann's complaint

2.  CEI's motion to dismiss based on the DC anti-SLAPP act

3.  NRO's motion to dismiss based on the DC anti-SLAPP act

4.  Mann's reply to the NROs anti-SLAPP petition

5.  CEI's response to Mann's reply

6.  Judge's decision denying the CEI motion to dismiss

7.  Judge's decision denying the NRO motion to dismiss

8.  Judge's decision denying the NRO motion to dismiss based on the anti-SLAPP law

9.  NRO's motion to reconsider

10. Mann's reply to the motion to reconsider

11. NRO's motion to reconsider gets tossed and their lawyers are dissed for being clueless about how to file motions UPDATED

Why Eli Pays No Attention to #1

Measuring pH

Anybunny who has been following Judith Curry's display of purposeful ignorance, the Weasel's rather stoat like contempt for her and her fans Sargasso Sea like level of stupidity and Willard Tony's braying knows that just about no one offering their opinion has a clue about how pH is measured in the oceans and the precision and accuracy thereof.  Most of the bunnies, of course, at least those who took general chemistry, have some ideas about pH meters, indeed, in one of the later comments at WUWT, Joe, plain old Joe, puts it quite well

pH Meters are often unstable and not always reliable. They are the fussbudgety spoiled brats of scientific instrumentation. As a chemist, it was depressing how difficult it was to get reliable data, for those of us in OSHA who monitored factory operations. The first point is that, the makeup of the solution can radically affect the readings. as there can be surfactants, a large number of ionic species, and organic molecules. So, one would expect that since the ionic and organic constituents of local oceanic waters vary widely from location to location, it will similarly produce variability in pH readings. The second problem is the inherent instability of the pH probes. They can work reliably (perhaps), but then after sitting for any time, not work. It’s in their nature….

Which, to the cautious, might have been a strong hint that maybe pH meters are not used.  So Eli, being Eli, asked over at Curry's and Willard T's what the Dumb Bunnies though was the precision and accuracy of measuring pH in the oceans.  Chirping.  Something that the Some Bunny Eli wrote about earlier might have also  considered.  And indeed this is not the case.

There are two methods, one pretty old, the other newish.  First the newish one, an ion selective field SeaFET, accurate uncalibrated to 0.01 pH units, with a precision of 0.005.  The SeaFET can be left alone to operate and read out later and here is something about a system under use on the California coast.  Basically they are comprised of an ion selective membrane (only lets certain ions pass) on top of an FET. 

Second, the old one.  Like Joe, everybunny knows that pH meters suck.  If nothing else, the damn electrodes always dry out because people don't keep them wet and they cost a fortune.  However there is a better way and quite an old one.  Many chemicals change color when they ionize in solution.  In particular weak acids are happy to do this, and there are shelves in chemistry stockrooms full of different indicators.  The basic reaction is

HIn = H⁺ + In^-

where HIn is a weak acid and In^-  is the indicator anion.  The concention, [H⁺] is simply given by

Ka = [H⁺][In^-]

where Ka is the acid dissociation constant, a weak function of temperature, or, if the bunnies prefer

pH = -log [H⁺] = log ([In^-]/Ka)

determining pH then becomes an exercise in determining the color change as a concentration of  [In^-].   In one deployed version, the precision is + 0.0007 pH unit sand an accuracy of  0.0005 relative to a reference system the principal requirement being holding the temperature in the spectrophotometer cell constant.   Indeed, part of the issue with accuracy is that the method really pushes the ability to mix buffers for calibration.  This is OLD technology, although there may have been modern refinements, so Eli would not be surprised to see measurements going back to 1950, if not earlier (stay tuned).

Deja Vu All Over Again

 A short while ago, Eli was reading Chemical and Engineering News when his eye gazed across a letter from somebunny, never mind who

Having recently become a 50-year member of the American Chemical Society, I am embarrassed to see that C&EN has become a propaganda machine attempting to brainwash ACS members. Strong claim, you say?

The cover of the March 25 issue points to the article about ocean acidification with the words: “Shellfish die-off threatens Pacific Northwest” (C&EN, March 25, page 36). The article says: “Over the past 250 years, the average upper-ocean pH has decreased by about 0.1 units, from about 8.2 to 8.1.” This is the only quantitative data, relative to ocean acidification, in this two-page article.

But 250 years ago an acid was a substance that tasted sour, and a base was a substance that tasted bitter. Fritz Haber and Zygmunt Klemensiewicz constructed the first glass pH electrode in 1906. So the pH scale did not exist before 1909. In 1934 Arnold Beckman began marketing his commercial pH meter, the first manufactured in the U.S

The convention taught in chemistry was that the right-most digit of a quantitative measurement was uncertain; it could be at least one or two units greater or lesser. Therefore, the data cited in the article should not be interpreted as if any change has occurred.

Relative to a shellfish die-off threatening the Pacific Northwest, near the end of the article it says: “In recent years, the tribe’s natural resources have been threatened by oil spills, overharvesting, and illegal poachers supplying the Asian seafood market.” Maybe it is these three factors, instead of ocean acidification, that threaten Pacific Northwest shellfish.

 Now, this is Curry class foolishness and Eli has no need to point the moving finger which anybunny could, if they were so motivated find to no real point, but the Rabett was pleased to see a wonderful reply published a few weeks later with names altered to protect some bunny or other.

The proper way of responding to a letter such as that from Some Bunny on the issue of ocean acidification is difficult (C&EN, May 13, page 2). Perhaps it’s best to mention simple things. Bunny points out that the acid concept is relatively new, and electrochemical methods of measuring pH date back only to 1906. He asks how it is possible, then, that we have measurements of pH going back more than 250 years.

As one who follows such things, I know there are biogeochemical proxies for pH including, among others, boron isotope ratios of foraminiferal carbonate, which can take us back much further than 250 years. Bunny tries to minimize the measured decrease of pH in the oceans from 8.2 to 8.1 as not being precise. He can be assured that pH variations with location and time have been measured well enough by both proxy and more recent instrumental methods to make such a statement meaningful. In addition, we have observed the expected decrease in the amounts of aragonite from which many sea animals build their shells.

I agree with Bunny that many factors are stressing the productivity of Pacific Northwest fisheries. Indeed, this is a classic case of not one thing or another—but rather one thing and another and yet another and so on. But each “another” counts, and for the fishery to flourish each must be dealt with, including acidification, the effects of which are global.

Eli, and Ms. Rabett have been doing other stuff, so imagine his surprise to find that similar foolishness has caused the long suffering Weasel to reach his limit, and that, especially after a winning boat races, is for the sharp toothed one a high barrier, but he has found it in Curry's Wide Sargasso Sea of Stupidity

The motive for this was, now that I have a moment from the rowing to pause to think, me thinking “hmm, I haven’t written about science much recently”. That is partly an inevitable, and predicted, consequence of me not doing science any more. But also, it seems to me, because there isn’t that much going on. So since James and Eli are on hols, and not much was showing up elsewhere, I thought I’d range off into Curry-land, to see what she had found. And it was looking pretty thin to me: weekend discussion threads and stuff. But then I found Ocean acidification discussion thread, and took a look. On the surface, its yet another of those rubbish posts that JC does which boil down to “I haven’t got a clue about subject X, but here are two people who disagree, errrm, well that didn’t teach anyone anything did it, never mind I got a pile of page hits”. But there is far more wrong with it than that.

and indeed, it is the usual swamp.  For example, Harold NLN

pH is measured with an electrochemical probe. They may have had some very crude galvinometer – based device 200 years ago, but it wouldn’t be very accurate. Until the de Forest tube was invented, the measurement was low precision.

and Nick Stokes tries his best but cannot beat the difference between a chemical equilibrium and a static equilibrium into Jim NLN

Well, those were some of the better ones, but blog scientists are on the case, 473 comments as of now.  

Climate divestment for the water district

Below's my memo that I sent to the Water District Board yesterday - we'll decide Monday or Wednesday whether to move it forward. Many many thanks to Jay Carmona at 350.org for their work and her research help.

(BTW, I'll be offline until Monday, can respond to questions then. "Unburnable carbon" deserves its own blog post....)
----------------------------------------------------
SUBJECT: Recommendation on developing a Climate Divestment Policy for the Water District

DATE: July 18, 2013

Our residents and the Water District itself are paying millions of dollars and incurring significant risks from climate change. We are losing water supplies in the Sierras, forced to use more water in reaction to rising temperatures, face increased risks from stream and tidal flooding, and manage environmental degradation from climate change. Why then should we finance the industry promoting the same problem that we work so hard to fix?

I urge the Board to direct staff to return at an appropriate time with a proposed Climate Divestment Policy using the model under consideration in a number of cities (see attachments) developed by the non-profit 350.org. The effect would be to exclude from investment the top 200 fossil fuel companies. Our reserve investments in corporate financial instruments are relatively small and limited to bonds, so I assume it will not be difficult to put a policy into place with few if any financial implications. Pension funds and OPEB funds are controlled by CalPERS, so I recommend in addition that we direct staff to return to the Board with a draft letter that the Board can send to CalPERS asking it to begin climate divestment.

In addition to climate divestment being in the best interest of our residents, not to mention the general public interest, it may also be in our direct financial interest. Recent studies have shown fossil fuel companies underperforming the broader market. More generally, the stock and collateral value of the industry is based in large part on the value of their fossil fuel reserves, but those reserves contain far more carbon that can be burnt safely. This “unburnable carbon” constitutes overvalued equity and underestimated risk.

We have made a commitment to achieve carbon neutrality by 2020. I believe we can make use of the 350.org list and exempt any company that makes a similar commitment. While eliminating fossil fuels is impossible right now, I believe this proposal is a practical and feasible way to help get us to a global carbon neutrality as soon as is practicable, something we should do for our own sake and that of everyone else.

Attachments:

Memo from Councilmember Worthington, City of Berkeley, including draft letter to CalPERS

Staff Report, City of Santa Monica

350.org article on financial performance of fossil fuel industries, available at http://gofossilfree.org/analysts-fossil-fuel-free-portfolios-outperform-investments-that-include-carbon-polluters/

Simon's climatic battle over higher powers

Because I just now stumbled across this, I thought I'd write about a good article from 2011 by Simon Donner on how thousands of years of cultural beliefs that weather and climate are controlled by supernatural forces, not people, constitute a major barrier to action on climate. Key sentence:

It is unreasonable to expect a lay audience, not armed with the same analytical tools as scientists, to develop lasting acceptance during a 1-h public seminar of a scientific conclusion that runs counter to thousands of years of human belief.

Simon concedes the obvious that people have thought they could ask supernatural forces for help, but argues that still reserves the power to make changes to those forces themselves.

One thing I'd add to his points is the last two centuries of adding science to our understanding of weather have argued that we can't control the weather, even indirectly via prayer to the supernatural. So thousands of years of religious cultural beliefs saying the supernatural controls the weather is reinforced by two centuries of scientific cultural beliefs saying we humans have not even indirect influence via supplication. People have to overcome both biases to accept climate change. And there are plenty of people who can hold both biases - the randomness of weather lets them accept basic meteorological predictions and still find their prayers "rewarded" on an occasional basis.

So it's good, but I'm not quite ready yet to say I'm convinced. People don't seem to be that resistant to dropping supernatural explanations of weather (e.g. lightning) for scientific ones. Why does that willingness to end supernatural control stop when it involves human control? OTOH, the religious resistance is undeniable. The Creation Care movement seems to have been stymied so far, when it could have been a groundbreaker. My conspiracy theory I've floated before is that climate denialists sought out the marriage with evolution denialists more than the other way around, despite the fact that creationism has even more scientific disrepute, because that was the way to bleed the Creation Care momentum. I think influential people should consider what they can do to get Creation Care moving again, especially among Hispanics.

I'm sure Simon's right that we have to handle religious sensibilities with respect, although I'm not sure it's any more of a problem for climate than in any other area involving religious issues.

More generally, we had a huge blowup over "framing" several years ago. Ironically, the pro-framing bloggers did a bad job of communicating, and their antipathy to New Atheism was a mistake, but the framing concept of using language that appeals to the relevant audience is a no-brainer. They've won on that issue.

Snuggle Bunnies

Climate snapshots

1.
European Parliament approves a partial fix of its cap-and-trade program, whose allowance price collapsed because industry found it too easy to meet the overall cap goal. The fix, needing approval by member states, "backloads" some of the unneeded allowances to a future time (and hopefully they'll just be eliminated at some point). I criticized the EP for its failure to do this earlier, so they deserve acknowledgment when they fix it.

I'll just note that it's not the worst thing in the world for the Europeans to find they set too-easy goals on carbon. It reminds me a little of a post by Roger Pielke Jr where he claimed the German feed-in tariff on solar was a failure because so many people had installed solar panels that the funding for the program was being overwhelmed. Consider the contrary possibilities:  allocation prices through the roof because reductions were too hard, or no financing problems for solar because it was still too expensive to install.

2.
I provoke a partial disagreement among Same Facts bloggers when two of them say that cap-and-trade has assessment problems that carbon tax doesn't, because a cap requires consideration of the social cost of carbon and mitigation, while a tax only considers the social cost of carbon. My response at the same post:

I’m not sure I’m buying this argument, although I can’t claim to be an expert. It does seem pretty clear that we need to be in the vicinity of net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2060 or so. Whether you get there in 2050, 2060, or 2070 might be a function of economic analyses, but that’s a marginal difference. So it might be easier to start with a cap allocation over time than it is to know you have to head in that direction and figure out a tax that takes you there.

The other and better argument IMHO is that allocating rights is how you grease the wheel. It’s not pure, but it gets things done.

A third blogger agreed it's not a technical issue, but argues a tax is still simpler.

More generally, I think scientists and some public policy academics may not accept political problems as being legitimately hard in the same way that scientific and engineering problems are legitimately hard. More about this at a later point, but for now I'll just say that if the politics are so easy to solve, then go make it happen.

3.
Provocative paper arguing for what I'd call a boomerang carbon policy:  we overshoot the 2C target in this century and then use carbon-negative biomass-plus-carbon-sequestration to get back to the target by  2150. (BTW, I realize the economic argument they make somewhat contradicts my point #2 above about cost/benefit analysis.)

I think something like this is the reasonable-best case outcome: we overshoot, and then the wealth and technology of future generations allows carbon-negative solutions that pull us back from disaster. Not exactly a low-risk approach.

4.
Noted with one comment:

The impact of adding such uncertainties would weigh for or against the conclusion that uncertainty should imply moderation.... And this is where I depart most sharply from Williams' conclusions. Uncertainty implies moderation only if the sources of uncertainty, on balance, add more to the risks of action than they do to the risks of inaction.

My comment is this wasn't written about climate change, but could have been pretty easily.


UPDATE:  I can't resist adding this from William:

This is just silly, you need to slap yourself about the face with a wet fish and reconsider.

I might have to try that the next time I get stuck on a problem.

Play Bunny Play

From Frank and Theresa Caplan, The Power of Play, about what makes for success in creative professions

To create one must have a sense of adventure and playfulness.  One needs toughness to experiment and hazard the risk of failure.  One has to be strong enough to start all over again if need be and alert enough to learn from whatever happens.  One needs a strong ego to be propelled forward in one's drive toward an untried goal.  Above all, one has to possess the ability to play!

Ms. Rabett calls Eli's lab his toy chest.  He mutters about her stash taking over the house.  Live safely, die bored.

Nuclear Meltdown at The Nation: Round Two

In my previous article I criticized an article by journalist Mark Hertsgaard and activist Terry Tempest Williams. My article received nearly 90 comments. This is a follow-on.

In the comments, several of the bunnies have warned me against reliance on the bourgeois media like Der Spiegel. So I checked out a report from Greenpeace Deutschland, entitled Impacts of Germany's Nuclear Phase-out on Electricity Imports and Exports. (warning: big pdf file). To summarize the 99-page document: Greenpeace claims that Germany's imports of electricity from nuclear-power plants in neighboring countries have not increased as a result of shutting down 40% of German nuclear power plants in 2011.

Suppose the Greenpeace is right on this point. If they're right, then this refutes Der Spiegel's claim that Germany went from an exporter to an importer of electricity.

However, I have looked through the Greenspeace document, and discovered that (according to their figures) Germany is a net importer of electricity from France and from the Czech Republic (This is an annual average figure: Germany exports a smaller amount of electrical power to France but the net is that Germany imports from France). And the electrical power exported by France and the Czech Republic is generated in nuclear power plants.

So we have to parse the statement carefully: Statement A: "Germany is a net importer of electrical power" is a false statement.

Statement B: "Germany is a net importer of electric power FROM FRANCE AND THE CZECH REPUBLIC" is a true statement, according to the Greenpeace document.

Several bunnies thrashed me for believing statement A is true, as Der Spiegel claimed. I no longer have any confidence in statement A. But statement B is true, even according to Greenpeace.

Actually, whether Germany is a net importer or not is not the main issue.The main issue is this:

As the US Energy Information Administration writes (at this link)

Coal use [in Germany] has increased since the Fukushima reactor accident since it can be used as a substitute for nuclear power in electricity generation.

In other words, Germany is phasing out nuclear power, increasing fossil fuels, and increasing renewables.

This confirms what James Hansen wrote in his 2009 book, Storms of My Grandchildren:

Germany provides useful empirical evidence about progress in quitting the fossil fuel addiction. Germany is making a major effort to improve energy efficiency. It is also trying hard to promote renewable energy, with large subsidies for wind and solar energies. Wind provides up to 20% o the country's electric energy in winter, but on annual mean the wind and sun produced only 7.3% percent of Germany's electricity in 2008…But what is disturbing about the empirical evidence from Germany is that, despite technical progress and strong efforts in energy efficiency and renewable energies, there are no plans to phase out coal. On the contrary, there are plans to build new coal-fired power plants, which the German government claims will be necessary once the country closes its nuclear reactor plants. The bottom line seems to be that it is not feasible in the foreseeable future to phase out coal unless nuclear power is included in the mix. [Storms of My Grandchildren, pp. 188-189].

It should be added that in addition to using fossil fuels for electricity, Germany imports large amounts of petroleum for use in the transportation sector. The Energy Information Administration (link above) also points out that the primary source of Germany's energy is petroleum, which made up 38% of Germany's total primary energy consumption in 2011.

Journalists like Mark Hertsgaard don't realize the problems that arise when attempting to integrate intermittent sources like wind and solar into a grid with other sources. I spoke with a top engineer at my local electric utility. The utility doesn't like solar because it fluctuates so much. When a cloud suddenly covers a large solar array, the utility has to come up with several MW of power in a real hurry. Their solution is to run a coal or natural gas plant below its capacity, so they can crank it up in a hurry to compensate for a decrease in solar-generated power. This causes some inefficiency because fossil-fuel plant is running below its maximum capacity. But the real problem is that the fossil-fuel plant needs to be comparable in size to the solar or wind power.

So when countries are able to generate 20% or 30% of their electricity generated by wind, the activists rejoice: "Oh great, in only a few more years it will reach 80% or 90%." The celebration is premature. Actually there is a natural barrier because of the need to provide a stable source of power when solar and wind provide little power.

On a related topic, Hertsgaard claims that nuclear power plants are "fantastically expensive". Actually the cost of electricity from nuclear power is comparable the cost of electricity from fossil fuels. [The comparison is apples and oranges, because nuclear has a large up-front capital costs and low fuel prices, while fossil fuels plants have lower capital costs and higher fuel costs.]

One final point: Hertsgaard wrote an admirable book, On Bended Knee (about the Reagan Administration and the Press), but he wandered WAY off the reservation with a scare story about the alleged dangers of fluoridation, contrary what the dentists tell us. For a science-based view, check out the entry in QuackWatch.

Horse-beating, MSM edition

You all heard it earlier here, but I got in a few licks at the 150-word limit in the San Jose Mercury News:

Obama's climate policy is good for region

Charles Krauthammer's diatribe (Opinion, July 5) against President Obama for confronting climate change is a disingenuous insult to our region, where we face tremendous problems from warming.

Krauthammer misleads on the Pew survey, where 28 percent of respondents made climate change a top priority -- not bad for a problem whose worst effects are yet to come. His cherry-picked information leads to wrong or misleading conclusions.

China and India have both committed to never have the same per-capita emission levels as the United States -- Obama should be applauded for trying to accelerate their commitments on climate.

As a director of the Santa Clara Valley Water District, I'm keenly aware of the millions that we are spending and will spend to adjust to new flooding, new water demand, and reduced water supplies in the Sierra snowpack. What Obama is doing is good for us locally, but I believe that what Krauthammer wrote is anything but good.

Brian A. Schmidt
Director, District 7 Santa Clara Valley Water District

UPDATE:  found this interesting - after the 2004 election, Bush pushed Social Security "reform" like nobody's business, despite the public disinterest and his failure to make it a priority. Krauthammer had no problem with that presidential decision, talking about it incessantly as example of leadership.

Other shoe dropping after the Egyptian coup

Bringing a group with a marginal commitment to democracy into democratic politics has its risks but also a benefit - the group starts accepting democratic norms at some level, and eventually learns the art of compromise.

So now we see what happens when the same groups feel taken for fools:

But at the same time, Sheik Abu Sidra said, Mr. Morsi’s overthrow had made it far more difficult for him to persuade Benghazi’s Islamist militias to put down their weapons and trust in democracy.

“Do you think I can sell that to the people anymore?” he asked. “I have been saying all along, ‘If you want to build Shariah law, come to elections.’ Now they will just say, ‘Look at Egypt,’ and you don’t need to say anything else.”

From Benghazi to Abu Dhabi, Islamists are drawing lessons from Mr. Morsi’s ouster that could shape political Islam for a generation. For some, it demonstrated the futility of democracy in a world dominated by Western powers and their client states. But others, acknowledging that the takeover accompanied a broad popular backlash, also faulted the leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood for reaching too fast for so many levers of power.... 

“The message will resonate throughout the Muslim world loud and clear: democracy is not for Muslims,” Essam el-Haddad, Mr. Morsi’s foreign policy adviser, warned on his official Web site shortly before the military detained him and cut off all his communication. The overthrow of an elected Islamist government in Egypt, the symbolic heart of the Arab world, Mr. Haddad wrote, would fuel more violent terrorism than the Western wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. 

And he took aim at Western critics of the Islamists. “The silence of all of those voices with an impending military coup is hypocritical,” Mr. Haddad wrote, “and that hypocrisy will not be lost on a large swath of Egyptians, Arabs and Muslims...." 

In the United Arab Emirates...Islamists said the crackdowns were driving a deeper wedge into their movement. 

“The practices that we see today will split the Islamists in half,” said Saeed Nasar Alteneji, a former head of the Emirates group, the Islah association. “There are those who always call for centrism and moderation and peaceful political participation,” he said. “The other group condemns democracy and sees today that the West and others will never accept the ballot box if it brings Islamists to power.”

“And they have lots of evidence of this,” he said, now citing Egypt as well as Algeria.

(Emphasis added.)

Of course there's always another hand, and just as Allende rashly governed as if he had won a broad victory instead of 36% of the vote in a not-very-democratic democracy, Morsi went and alienated potential partners in a divided country. In all the discussion I've seen, people acknowledge that democracy isn't just about elections but haven't expressly referred to the right to revolution, something that's been part of the traditional democratic theory for centuries. You could argue that's what happened, although a military coup in support of popular protests doesn't quite fit the archetype.

Regardless though of whether the protesters had the right to do what they and the military did, is whether Egypt and the Arab world is better off for it. I don't think Morsi was completely beyond compromising. A Muslim Brotherhood government maintained a peace treaty with Israel - I'd like to see the analyst, especially in the pro-Likud faction in the US, who predicted that. If the popular protests were truly popular, then barring real movement from Morsi, we would've seen the results in the next elections, but his opponents weren't willing to wait.

Morsi wasn't smart enough to offer snap elections. Had he been smart enough, maybe he also wouldn't have made the other mistakes that brought him to this point. One advantage a long-standing democracy has over a new one is that people like him have usually gone through a lower office election or two and make their career-ending mistakes earlier on. The trick is to get to a stable democracy though, and overthrowing a government every time its leader is stupid will not get you there. Hopefully they'll do better the next time.

As for what the US should do, I'm not sure. If Egypt gets elections soon, then we might as well just find a way to contort around the prohibition of military aid after a coup. Otherwise, start cutting the military off.

Picking up after Krauthammer's Fourth of July litter

Not sure if he merits it, but a point-bypoint reaction to his Fourth of July leftovers:

WASHINGTON -- The economy stagnates. Syria burns. Scandals lap at his feet. China and Russia mock him, even as a "29-year-old hacker" revealed his nation's spy secrets to the world. How does President Obama respond? With a grandiloquent speech on climate change.

Krauthammer is unaware that the Administration is in the process of dealing with those other issues. Perhaps he should read a newspaper to find out what's happening with them. Also, a "WASHINGTON" dateline? Is he pretending to be a journalist writing news?

Climate change? It lies at the very bottom of a list of Americans' concerns (last of 21 -- Pew poll). Which means that Obama's declaration of unilateral American war on global warming, whatever the cost -- and it will be heavy -- is either highly visionary or hopelessly solipsistic. You decide:

So Pew didn't give a long list and ask the public to rank in priority - instead people were asked which is their top priority, and 28% said climate change, which was smaller than the other priorities. Nothing in the polling suggests the public generally considers it unimportant. Is Krauthammer a liar or a poor reader? You decide.

Global temperatures have been flat for 16 years -- a curious time to unveil a grand, hugely costly, socially disruptive anti-warming program.

Sadly, no. Temperatures have gone up, not necessarily as fast as anticipated, but they've gone up.

Now, this inconvenient finding is not dispositive. It doesn't mean there is no global warming. But it is something that the very complex global warming models that Obama naively claims represent settled science have trouble explaining. It therefore highlights the president's presumption in dismissing skeptics as flat-earth know-nothings. 

On the contrary. It's flat-earthers like Obama who refuse to acknowledge the problematic nature of contradictory data. It's flat-earthers like Obama who cite a recent Alaskan heat wave -- a freak event in one place at one time -- as presumptive evidence of planetary climate change. It's flat-earthers like Obama who cite perennial phenomenon such as droughts as cosmic retribution for environmental sinfulness.

I'd agree that specific events aren't nearly as dispositive as long-term records, but the long-term record leaves no doubt. And record extremes as part of long term records are revealing in that we have far more record warm events than record cold events. The climate dice are rolling more 11s and 12s and an occasional 13. Obama's right to talk about climate weirding.

For the sake of argument, let's concede that global warming is precisely what Obama thinks it is. Then answer this: What in God's name is his massive new regulatory and spending program -- which begins with a war on coal and ends with billions in more subsidies for new Solyndras -- going to do about it?

First, we don't know what the program will cost and can adjust if we collectively decide it costs too much. Krauthammer would rather not even figure out costs versus benefits. Regardless, given how many thousands of people are killed on annual basis from coal pollution, I'm not sure the cost will be net negative, even if you ignore climate change.

The U.S. has already radically cut CO2 emissions -- more than any country since 2006, according to the International Energy Agency. Emissions today are back down to 1992 levels.

There's a scene in the original book version of True Grit where Rooster Cogburn says that if he ever meets a Texan who doesn't claim to have drunk water from a horse track in the drying mud, he'll shake the man's hand and give him a cigar. I think I'll do the same thing for a climate denialist who doesn't cherrypick the time periods he looks at. Yes, we've recently improved upon our terrible emission record, but it still remains one of the worst in the world on a per-capita basis.

And yet, global emissions have gone up. That's because -- surprise! -- we don't control the energy use of the other 96 percent of humankind.

He says more than he intended. We're four percent of humankind producing about 16% of global emissions. The criticism that we can make of China and India is that they cannot allow themselves to develop in the same manner we developed, and that's a criticism we should only make with some humility. They need to do more, and they're doing more, but we have do more still.

At the heart of Obama's program are EPA regulations that will make it impossible to open any new coal plant and will systematically shut down existing plants

No, new coal plants can open if they can really be the clean coal they talk about, sequestering their carbon they produce to the extent it's more than comes from natural gas. If coal can't compete on that basis, then that's the free market for you. As for a systematic shut down, I don't know what he means because he doesn't either - we don't have a proposal yet. I think a realistic positive hope is that the initiative will accelerate somewhat an already-existing trend of coal plants shutting down, and that's a good thing.

"Politically, the White House is hesitant to say they're having a war on coal," explained one of Obama's climate advisers. "On the other hand, a war on coal is exactly what's needed."

First, assuming the quote is accurate, Schrag was speaking for himself and not Obama. More generally, part of the confusion here might spring from the more recent concept of war. Prior to neoconservatives like Krauthammer getting in charge during the Bush Administration, people thought the idea of wars was to make them as short as possible, not the open-ended thing the neocons like to have other people fight. Even I, even Al Gore, don't want to shut down all coal use in the US in less than a decade, and realistically it's going to take longer than that. A "negotiated medium-term end to non-sequestered coal in the US and other developed countries, with the rest of the world soon to follow" is a much fairer description of the actual goal.

Also worth noting that coal plants can be repurposed to use biomass, so some of the jobs could still be there and many likely will be in the negotiated solution.

Net effect: tens of thousands of jobs killed, entire states impoverished. This at a time of chronically and crushingly high unemployment, slow growth, jittery markets and economic uncertainty.

More made up facts with nothing to back it.

But that's not the worst of it. This massive self-sacrifice might be worthwhile if it did actually stop global warming and save the planet. What makes the whole idea nuts is that it won't.

The have-nots are rapidly industrializing. As we speak, China and India together are opening one new coal plant every week. We can kill U.S. coal and devastate coal country all we want, but the industrializing Third World will more than make up for it. The net effect of the Obama plan will simply be dismantling the U.S. coal industry for shipping abroad. 

To think we will get these countries to cooperate is sheer fantasy. We've been negotiating climate treaties for 20 years and gotten exactly nowhere. China, India and the other rising and modernizing countries point out that the West had a 150-year industrial head start that made it rich. They are still poor. And now, just as they are beginning to get rich, we're telling them to stop dead in their tracks? 

Fat chance.

Covered this, we need to do a lot more and use that as leverage with developing countries. A carbon import tariff is a standard feature in the carbon control legislation that conservatives like Krauthammer keep trying to destroy. Similarly the complaint that international treaties haven't worked well is rich, coming from people who did their best to weaken and destroy the Kyoto Accord. China, by the way, is working on a cap-and-trade system, so they're way ahead of him.

I'm not against a global pact to reduce CO2 emissions. Indeed, I favor it. But in the absence of one -- and there is no chance of getting one in the foreseeable future -- there is no point in America committing economic suicide to no effect on climate change, the reversing of which, after all, is the alleged point of the exercise.

Again, they're working on it, and worth noting that most of the other developed countries are also working on their own emissions while do-nothing types within their countries each whine about their own country not emitting enough to make a difference.

And America will not commit economic suicide on this issue, because Americans won't allow it to happen. Climate action will have to have a reasonable economic cost or it won't move forward.

For a president to propose this with such aggressive certainty is incomprehensible. It is the starkest of examples of belief that is impervious to evidence. And the word for that is faith, not science.

The certainty about climate change is the essence of science. As for what exactly will be done, it's Krauthammer who has faith that we shouldn't even work on a solution.

Nuclear Meltdown at The Nation

The July 8/15 issue of The Nation features a dialog between journalist Mark Hertsgaard and writer and activist Terry Tempest Williams, discussing a recent pro-nuclear-power film, Pandora's Promise.

The article is headlined

Pandora's Terrifying Promise: Can Nuclear Power Save the Planet?

I won't review the entire article here, but will zero in on Hertsgaard's claim that

Germany, the world's fourth-largest economy, is well on the way to leaving nuclear and fossil fuels behind as it embraces a panoply of noncarbon energy sources.

What is really happening in Germany? Back in 2011, two Der Spiegel journalists, Laura Gitschier and Alexander Neubacher (G&N) refuted Hertsgaard's claim, under the headline

Greenwashing after the Phase-Out: German 'Energy Revolution' Depends on Nuclear Imports.

G&N go on to say that

Germany's decision to phase out its nuclear plants by 2022 has rapidly transformed it from power exporter to importer. Despite Berlin's pledge to move away from nuclear, the country is now merely buying atomic energy from neighbors like the Czech Republic and France.

G&N also report that Germany also imports electrical power from Poland, whose electricity is "generated from brown coal in Europe's dirtiest CO2-belching facilities."

Contrast these facts with Hertsgaard's claim that "Germany is well on the way to leaving nuclear and fossil fuels behind".

Hertsgaard clearly doesn't understand what is actually happening in Germany in the last few years.

What really made my hair stand up on end was when Hertsgaard wrote

"If our options really were as simple as Pandora's Promise maintains - either go nuclear or incinerate the planet with more coal - it'd be a tough call."

A tough call? Really??

According to his website, Hertsgaard has written for Vanity Fair, The Nation, Time, The New Yorker, NPR, Die Zeit, and Le Monde Diplomatique. He is the environmental correspondent for The Nation.

The Nation deserves credit for raising the issue of nuclear power and climate change.

The Spiegel story is available in English for those of us who don't understand German.

R Street Part 2

For several centuries, Eli has been pointing out that he and Barry Bickmore agree on the coming threats from human driven climate change, but probably disagree on how to deal with it.  Bunnies might call this the WG1/WG3 dichotomy.  Mark Boslough, well he and Eli could probably agree that they disagree of WG3, but in both those cases, working from the same physical reality there is at least some possibility that something could be done in the end.

Eli would say the same thing in the other direction about folk like Tenny Naumer or even Joe Romm, in the later case Eli is somewhat intermediate with Barry Brook on the other side, since nuclear and renewables complement each other.

One can work toward solutions together, and let us be frank, work toward defanging the denialist jackels who feast on our future by deluding others.

Yesterday Eli talked a bit about R street, and it's head honcho, Eli Lehrer.  Lehrer would fit into the same categories, at least as far as acknowledging the problems that the planet is going to face in the future, starting now.   His opening line is that those on the right need to confront reality or get run over

If conservatives don’t begin to engage on the important issue of climate change, we’ll cede the debate. The result will be a larger, more intrusive government that hurts business and job creation.

President Obama is readying a major push of administrative action on climate change. There will be new regulations on power plants, new subsidies for clean energy and a number of other big government programs in the name of solving climate change.

What he is not confronting is that the reason for the administrative action is and has been the Republican blockade against action.  He is playing this in a way though that is immediately useful to him, but potentially a problem in coming times, e.g. trying to convince the tea party types that if they don't get real, solutions will be imposed by those they hate, and to do that, Lehrer is not above throwing some red meat to the dogs.

To conservatives like us, complicated new regulation is our worst nightmare. There is a conservative approach to dealing with climate change — one that can actually achieve conservative goals: the government-shrinking carbon tax.

Currently, U.S. tax law embodies everything that’s wrong with the federal government. It’s too big (about 17,000 pages), too burdensome (Americans spend nearly $50 billion a year complying with it), and too prone to manipulation. Working toward a simpler, fairer system with lower overall rates has long been a worthy conservative goal that deserves continued support from all liberty-loving Americans.

Lehrer, of course, is a creature of the insurance industry, and of course, they would like to pay less than the nothing they and their executives now pay in taxes.    The tax code is complicated because the top dogs have bunches of lawyers and accountants gaming the system.  And, of course, no one confronts the reality that it costs ~40-50% of GDP to run a country any sane person wants to live in (including Social Security and healthcare).  

So how does one reconcile Hansen's tax and dividend with Lehrer's carbon tax and sink other taxes, well, the answer from yesterday was use cabon taxes to sink health care and retirement taxes

More environmental "just as" can win the climate fight

(I wonder if bad puns will be enough to get Eli to kick me off the blog.)

My well-ordered response to Obama's speech and plan keeps getting delayed, so some random thoughts instead:

The reference to regulating existing power plants is comprehensive, not just about coal plants. This might seem unimportant but I think it fits well with NRDC's proposal for state level emission regulations for existing coal and gas plants. I've referenced it before, and the more I read it, the better I think it does in providing a price for carbon without expressly crossing the line of providing a price for carbon. To summarize, it sets a different emission limit for power plants for each state, with the limit always stricter than what coal can do. The limit is less strict if a state has lots of coal and fewer gas plants, but in such a state there will be many more coal plants that have to take action. Coal plants can't physically meet the limit, but they can make trades like subsidizing energy conservation and renewables, and those trades will set up de facto prices for carbon. As always, RTFP.

The devilish detail is how strict your emission limits will be. Likely it will ratchet over time, so more reason to keep electing non-Republicans to the White House, at least until a Republican accepts science.

For those who think the lack of the detail makes the plan completely meaningless, investors in coal disagreed in the two week run-up to his speech (which I think is a good time frame, the rumors of what Obama was doing were out for several weeks).

EDF had a good podcast discussing Obama's plan, worth your time as always. They gave a nod to their friendly competition at NRDC, more evidence that NRDC's proposal has oomph. They also pass on a rumor that the Keystone decision will be further delayed, which is good. Delays are good when you're fighting defense, because your goal is to not lose.

Eli's already pointed to Ray's excellent Slate article. My one disagreement with Ray is about controlling non-CO2 gases. Ray says they're short-lived and so can be controlled at a future point, and action on them now distracts from the need to cut long-lived CO2. I think that cutting them now means we don't need to use political capital to cut them in the future. More importantly, I think that success builds on success. When we can say "just as we controlled ozone-depleting chemicals, just as we limited HFCs, just as we slashed methane, so we will do the same on CO2", then we're in much better position. This is especially true on international action, where denialists are depending on futility arguments. Ray says he's got a more definitive argument coming up though, so we'll see.

R Street Part I

One of the things that Eli has to thank Peter Gleick for is driving Eli Lehrer out of the Heartland Institute.  Lehrer, in addition to being an Eli, is that Washington DC mixture of think tanker and lobbyist whose practice centers on the insurance industry, and as he puts it

Indeed, if free-market conservatives really want evidence of climate change, they ought to look towards the insurance markets that would bear much of the cost of catastrophic climate change. All three of the major insurance modeling firms and every global insurance company incorporate human-caused climate change into their projections of current and future weather patterns. The big business that has the most to lose from climate change, and that would reap the biggest rewards if it were somehow solved tomorrow, has&nbsp universally decided that climate change is a real problem. An insurance company that ignored climate change predictions could, in the short term, make a lot of money by underpricing its competition on a wide range of products. Not a single firm has done this.

The unmasking of Heartland, followed by the billboard meltdown, as Marx would say, heightened the contradictions.for Lehrer to the point where his team had to leave Heartland before his practice left him.  Eli2 has set up a new organization R Street, and they are doing some interesting things including a recent debate between Andrew Moylan from R Street and Bob Inglis on one side and James Taylor from Heartland and David Kreutzer from Heritage.  The moderator, Ronald Bailey was excellent.  Peter Sinclair at Crocks has some more on the debate.  Lehrer had set up the debate:  Resolved: Under no circumstances should conservatives support a tax on carbon emissions, but it was assumed as part of the debate that human driven climate change was a real threat, and the question before the quite right wing house was whether a carbon tax to meet that challenge could be supported by conservatives.

As a somewhat neutral, this Eli, quite enjoyed the discomfort of Taylor, who kept on trying to push back against the parameters of reality.  The interesting thing, given that he said anything interesting, was how stilted, and weak his arguments were.  Just the usual.  Willis and Willard Tony do a better job, but clearly he thought that he was dealing with an audience who had not followed any of the discussion (and there were some of those there).  Anyone challenged to a debate by Taylor should accept, and if feeling generous give odds.  OTOH be prepared to talk over him.  Kreutzer had a single argument, that any new income to the federal government was evil, that any proposals for rebates were hopelessly naive.  In his words it would be delusional to believe that $200 billion could walk across DC without being molested.

Perhaps the most interesting statement came from Kreutzer when challenged about the regressive nature of a carbon tax he pointed out that simultaneous reduction of payroll taxes could compensate. 

The house stood strong for the negative at the end.  At least that bunch of conservatives would accept a carbon tax.