Regulating Carbon Dioxide

This seems almost impossible to believe:

The Environmental Protection Agency is expected to act for the first time to regulate carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases that scientists blame for the warming of the planet, according to top Obama administration officials.

(NY Times, Feb 18, 2009).

Sometimes I think like I fell dead a few months ago and have woken up in a completely foreign world.

I am still not optimistic, though, that we -- i.e. the world -- can get to a zero-carbon society anytime soon, which is really what we need. These are good starts, though 30 yrs too late.

Talk at the MAC, March 6th

I'll be at the Multnomah Athletic Club in Portland, Oregon on Friday, March 6th, 11:30 am, to talk about global warming. I believe it's only open to MAC members. Look for the meeting room of the "Entrepreneur's Underground Group."

I'll talk for about 20 minutes, meteorologist Chuck Weiss will talk for about 20 minutes, and then there will be about 30 minutes of Q&A.

Should be interesting.

George Will and Global Warming

As he does about once a year, George Will again wrote a column denouncing anthropogenic global warming. Except he got a few vital facts wrong, and this time the very scientific organization he quoted called him out on it.

This is, unfortunately, nothing new. In the past I've written to Will's given email address, georgewill@washpost.com, about errors in his column. Of course, no one ever writes back.

I just don't understand how a supposed esteemed columnist can get away with making such blatant errors. Perhaps this time there is more pressure than usually to get him to correct. You can help by writing to Will at the above address, and/or his editor Fred Hiatt, demanding objective and factual reporting.

Harrison Schmidt

It is difficult to know what to make of this article about former astronaut, former New Mexico Senator, and MIT-educated geologist Harrison Schmidt, written by the Associated Press.

The article says:

Schmitt said historical documents indicate average temperatures have risen by 1 degree per century since around 1400 A.D., and the rise in carbon dioxide is because of the temperature rise.

It is difficult to see how Schmidt can be right in either of these claims.

The article is sloppy and doesn't say whether Schmidt is referring to Fahrenheit or Celsius degrees, but even if it's the former that would be a 6°F (3°C) degree increase in average global temperatures since the middle ages. I have never seen any scientific paper that shows anything like that, by a factor of at least 5.

Also, I thought it was well-established that the carbon dioxide being added to today's atmosphere by human activities is different than "natural" carbon dioxide by its carbon isotopes.

The AP article did not bother with any other opinions or appear to have fact-checked Schmidt's claim in the least. Nor did Tom Sharpe, the reporter at the Santa Fe New Mexican from which this article seems to have originated.

Could an MIT-PhD in geology really not know this? Or am I missing something?

Transit Ridership Up, Services Down

With the economic downturn and the continuing difficulty with energy prices, you'd think use of mass transit would be up. And it is. But Portland's TriMet is culling back its services. Why?

Because the system is heavily subsidized. Fares only pay for about 20% of the cost of a ride. The rest comes from taxing businesses, and those businesses are suffering.

So, just when it's needed most, public transportation is being cut back. Clearly something doesn't compute here, but it's difficult to see another solution.

(Personally, I would raise gas taxes by about 50 cents/gal and give it all to mass transit.)

Wyden in Oregon

Senator Ron Wyden makes a point of visiting every county in Oregon every year.

There are 36 counties in Oregon, and it is the 9th largest state in the country.

That's a pretty good Senator.

Bloggers Asking Questions

John Quiggin is again blogging about my post of awhile back, asking why bloggers can't pick up the phone once in awhile and ask a few questions, instead of sitting back and waiting for journalists to do it for them.

My example was Kevin Drum asking about the governor of Alaska. Come one, all Kevin Drum has to say is that he's with Mother Jones magazine. He is with Mother Jones magazine. That's all the entr'ee he needs, and it's far more than most bloggers have.

As a freelance journalist I face this problem all the time -- how do you poke around and find out enough information to see if there's a story, when you don't yet have an assignment and can't say you're writing for X magazine? Well, you just screw up your courage and do it. You just say you're a freelance journalist looking into a possible story. Call yourself a "citizen journalist" if you must.

I thought bloggers took pride in being "citizen journalists."

If traditional newspaper journalism is dying, then citizen journalism is one of the models that is going to take its place. And if you want to be a citizen journalist you need to be no less bulldogged, courageous, and (when it's called for) pissy than traditional journalists. Those in authority won't want to answer your questions either way. They never have. That's exactly why you're needed.

At the very least, you're a citizen, aren't you? Start acting like one. Because they are counting on your docility.

So if you're a blogger, especially from a major magazine or even a major blog (like Crooked Timber certainly is), or you just want to make a difference, get over your fear and make some calls anyway. Already we see that people are responding to blogs and their worth -- Obama called on the Huffington Post in his first press conference, didn't he?

Camille Parmesan profile

I have an article about assisted migration of species in response to global warming, as part of a profile of associate professor of biology Camille Parmesan of Univ Texas at Austin, in the March issue of Scientific American.

Battlestar Galactica

I gave up television a year and a half ago, and I have no regrets.

Sure, there are some good programs there.

But there are also many programs that are, let's face it, simply crap.

In fact, most of the are.

Not to mention that you have to spend 1/3rd of the time watching advertisements.

So now I rent DVDs from my local library -- which is, frankly, a really, really great library for a community this size -- or even rent a few from the local Blockbuster.

Lately I am into Deadwood Season 2 and Battlestar Galactica S1 E5+. I have never watched television when you were supposed to, when it first came out. I only discovered Seinfeld about 2002, long after it was in syndication. Same now for Deadwood and BG.

But I don't mind.

Anyway, my sister saw The Gourds the other night in Portland, and it turns out they're pretty good:

Consensus on Climate Economics

In Slate, Eric Pooley -- who spent a semester at Harvard studying this -- says that not only is there an scientific consensus on the causes of climate change -- something anyone here knows -- but that there is an emerging economic consensus on the costs and benefits of addressing the problem.

You can read his detailed thoughts here. The bottom line is:

• "...there is a broad consensus that the cost of climate inaction would greatly exceed the cost of climate action—it's cheaper to act than not to act. Reducing greenhouse gas emissions by moving to alternative energy sources and capturing carbon from coal-fired power plants will cost less in the long run than dealing with the effect of rising sea levels, drought, famine, wildfire, pestilence, and millions of climate refugees."
• the cost of acting is less than 1% of GDP through the middle of the century,
  

US GDP in 2007 was $13.8T. One percent of that is $140 billion/yr, or about what all environmental regulations currently cost the US.

Is this affordable? It's about 1/4th of what we spend on the military, and about 1/2 what we spend on servicing our debt.

It is, of course, only a fraction of what we're currently spending to bail out banks and stimulate the economy. Last quarter the US GDP fell at an annual rate of 3.8% -- four times more than solving the climate problem entails.

Stuff

Stuff I've come across lately:

• NASA GISS says Jan 2009's global surface temperature anomaly was +0.52°C, much warmer than the previous January's +0.15°C.
• This is wholly depressing: According to a new poll from Gallup, only 39% of Americans say they believe in Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection. 25% do not believe in it, and 36% had no opinion. Even among people with postgraduate degrees, 27% did not believe or had no opinion. And maybe even worse, only 55% could associate the name "Darwin" with the correct scientific idea.
  
• A recent email from DeSmog blog advertises an upcoming book, Keeping Our Cool, by "Nobel Laureate" Dr. Andrew Weaver. This guy. The Nobel Laureate appellation is because of his participation as an IPCC scientist.

  I have all the respect for any IPCC scientist and they can be certainly be proud of their part in its being awarding half the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize. But as the prize went to the organization, comprised of hundreds (if not thousands) of scientists, it seems to me a bit haughty to then call yourself a "Nobel Laureate." Ironically (and hypocritically), DeSmogBlog called this out when Fred Singer did something similar. It shouldn't depend what side of the fence you're on.

  By all means, any IPCC scientist deserves to note that he/she was part of the Nobel-winning IPCC team. But "Laureate?" It seems appropriate the way Mann notes it:

  "Co-awarded (along with several hundred other scientists) the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize for involvement in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (lead author of chapter 2 of the Third Assessment Report, 2001)."

Portland's Downtown Stadium

Something very suspicious is going on in the Portland (OR) sports scene, and I don't see anyone from anywhere covering this.

Portland has an absolutely beautiful baseball stadium, PGE Park, directly adjacent to its downtown area (about 10 blocks north) and only about 3 minutes by public transportation from downtown.

This park sits well-placed where it is, home to the minor-league team Portland Beavers and Portland State University's home football games.

It's a beautiful park, better even than Fenway -- which says a lot. I've only been to Fenway once, and even then had a big thick neck brace on after a surgery, and sat in the far right-field bleachers with all the other mopes, but right after then game when the crowds left I sat there mostly alone and watched the park and it was a glorious thing.

And PGE Park is equally well situated.

So why are the city commissioners of Portland trying to undo this thing of beauty? The son of Henry Paulson -- himself worth $800M and a big architech of the Bush's administration's supposed bailout in the administration's last months -- is trying to move the Beaver's out of this stadium so it can be used for professional soccer.

He expects the city to build a new stadium, somewhere out in the Lents district.

What a complete, utter waste. First of all, this is a beautiful, functional baseball stadium. Why replace it?

Second of all, why can't the Paulson's build their own fucking stadium? They're worth $800M. What's stopping them, if this is such a good investment?

There is something very suspicious going on here, and Portland's city commissioner's aren't talking at all.

The Senate's Stimulus Plan

The Senate today passed the administration's stimulus plan.

Whoopee.

I think. Maybe not. I mean, who the hell knows what this plan really is.

Let's face it: 98 out of 100 Americans have absolutely no idea if this plan is good, bad, or indifferent. They have absolutely no idea what it does.

Quick: name one thing this plan does. Just one.

I didn't think so.

--

All I know is they are spending another $800+ billion that we apparently don't have. Didn't we just spend about $800 last fall before the Bush administration finally croaked to shore up Wall Street and various banks?

I sure as hell don't know. I read that as much as $87B of this was wasted.

Who knows?

--

The New York Times -- supposed to be the paper of record -- produces a completely useless article announcing the stimulus package.

Tell me, from reading this article, what it is all about.

I dare you.

You can't. I can't either.

--

Let's face it -- the vast, vast majority of Americans have no idea what is being done right now in Washington, what is being spent, how much, where, or anything like that. This is all a huge crap shoot.

It is the best argument for Schumacher's "Small is Beautiful" that I can possibly imagine.

--

Where can I go to join another country -- or, better yet, be part of no country whatsoever? I am only halfway serious -- but that definitely leaves the other half where I am serious....

Wind Employs More than Coal

The wind industry now employs more people than than the coal mining industry.

That's according to a recent report from the American Wind Energy Association.

So don't tell me that a switch to a green economy is some kind of communist plot intended to put the US on a path to socialism.

Energy efficiency is a job-generating paradigm, no less than is replacing old bridges or building new, energy-sucking buildings.

Bill Gates's Mosquitoes

"Gates said the mosquitoes were malaria-free. But this was a Microsoft release -- there's no way it didn't have some virus."

-- Stephen Colbert, Feb 9, 2009

UAH temperature anomaly

UAH's global tropospheric temperature anomaly for Jan 2009 is +0.30°C, just about the same as RSS.

That's the warmest since Mar-07.

Stuff

Some interesting stuff I've come across lately:

• frequent and/or long-term marijuana use may increase a man's risk of developing the most aggressive type of testicular cancer by up to 70%.
• Barack Obama at yesterday's press conference:

  "When people suggest that, what a waste of money to make federal buildings more energy efficient -- why would that be a waste of money? We're creating jobs immediately by retrofitting these buildings, or weatherizing 2 million American's homes, as was called for in the package. So that right there creates economic stimulus. And we are saving taxpayers when it comes to federal buildings potentially $2 billion. In the case of homeowners, they will see more money in their pockets, and we're reducing our dependence on foreign oil in the Middle East. Why wouldn't we want to make that kind of investment?"

• Galileo first used a telescope in 1609, 400 years ago this year.
  

• 
  

Vandals Took the Handles

I swear, if anyone else tried to do this -- you or me -- just showed some cards as the song played -- we'd look like first class idiots. But Dylan pulls it off without even trying. Where's the difference?

Australlan Wildfires

The wildfires in Australia have killed at least 173 people, as of today.... Australia's population is only about 21.6M -- so an equivalent number for the U.S. would be an inconceivable 2,430 burned to death.... essentially another 9/11....

This heat wave in Australia has been said to be (from what I've read) a one-in-a-hundred year event.... and the accompanying wildfires.... well, it's exactly the kind of thing predicted to be more frequent as the globe warms. (I think I read that the last 1-100 fire in Australia was 1973.)

I suspect this event is going to rank with the 2003 French heat wave, where about 35,000 people died.... and no, it's not direct proof of anthropogenic global warming. No single weather fluctuation can be proof of anything. But, let's be clear, it is exactly in line with the kind of increase in tragedy that one expects with AGW.... Yes, I'm sure that the number of deaths in Australia have been larger because there is more development going on in Australia and its population is growing year-by-year....

When the Aliens Arrive

The current issue of The New Yorker has a great little short story, "The Invasion from Outer Space," by Steven Millhauser, that is probably more realistic than anything Heinlein, Asimov, or Spielberg ever wrote. And even better in its own way. It probably wouldn't make as good a movie, though. Read it.

January RSS temperature anomaly

RSS says that January's troposphere was +0.322°C above the long-term average. That's the largest figure in year and a half and much larger than last January's -0.066°C.

It's interesting to read the comments at What's Watts Up With That. This number must be wrong, of course, because it's too large for their ideologies. Of course, the numbers seemed alright last year when they were relatively low. So it goes. Kind of reminds me what Planck said:

"An important scientific innovation rarely makes its way by gradually winning over and converting its opponents: it rarely happens that Saul becomes Paul. What does happen is that its opponents gradually die out, and that the growing generation is familiarised with the ideas from the beginning."

-- Max Planck

Phelp's Pot

I am, frankly, happy to see that a few tokes by Michael Phelps on a bong are not getting very far in the media -- despite the best efforts of the always atrocious British press to make a controversy out of every little thing, as they always do.

It's just pot. It's no worse than alcohol, and, in terms of the damage each inflicts on society, probably even less benign. All of our recent presidents have done it -- and worse -- and you can hardly be a normal member of society and not have tried marijuana (at least) in your youth. There's almost something wrong with you if you have not.

When are we going to stop playing this stupid game of demonyizing pot, spending billions on a drug war that doesn't matter (and, worse, gets no results), and imprisioning perfectly sane people who like to get a little high (no different than a little buzz)?

The problem, I suspect, is that too many companies who run prisons and too many enforcement agencies who have nothing better to do are getting rich/jobs off this scheme.

This is really getting insane.

ADDITION: Tunku Varadarajan of Forbes.com wrote: In the hierarchy of life forms on this, our earth, the British tabloid journalist lies somewhere between the hagfish and the dung beetle. However, a story Sunday in the News of the World (proprietor: Keith Rupert Murdoch) has made me scratch my chin and wonder whether we are, in fact, being a tad unkind to the dung beetle.

And here's the best part: Given that Michael Phelps' career would have remained blissfully undestroyed had the paper chosen not to publish the photograph, one has to marvel at the amoral audacity of the News of the World: in purporting to report on the potential harm to Phelps' image and career from his having smoked cannabis, the newspaper was, in fact, perpetrating that very harm.

It's no different than the Limbaugh's/Hannity's/Beck's of the world, who say the most outrageous things they can get away with because they know that people like to be outraged. It only adds to their ratings.

It is a screwed up world.

Usama Young

Usama Young of the New Orleans Saints make a commercial that appeared during the Super Bowl:



Where are the Republicans making fun of his name? Where are the Ann Coulters implying that he's somehow a terrorist because he name is spelled like Osama bin Laden?

Nowhere, of course. He's an NFL hero -- they're afraid of him.

Man, I really, really hate politics. It was bad enough this year, but it never seems to change. And notice how quickly the cowards shut up as soon as the election is decided.

From what I've read, it was just as nasty in the 19th century as it is now. And it's always the same old cowardly people. Why can't this change?

Overrating the Fishing Industry

There's something I have noticed about Oregon, but I think it's probably true about a lot of places. It was back in New England.

The fishing industry here gets a lot of coverage. In particular, it gets a lot of scientific analysis from the state universities. It's a noble industry, old, part of the state's heritage, no less than timber. For example, everyone seems to fret about the salmon catch every year, or its prospects, or about whether its fisherman need state or federal help.

But the coverage is, it seems to me, all out of proportion to the industry's impact. Commercial fishing in Oregon nets about $300M/yr and employs roughly 10,000 people.

Meanwhile, the state's GDP is about $140B (2006). It's population is 3.7M.

The fishing industry is, in Oregon, tiny. By comparison, about 2% of Oregon's GDP comes from the solar industry -- roughly $3B/yr, or 10 times that of the fishing industry.

But, when times are hard or the fish run scarce, you see lots of stories about laid off fisherman, yet very few about laid off solar engineers. They are, for the most part, men who have spent their entire lives in the field -- which is, admittedly, one of the most dangerous jobs in the world -- and have little training or education for anything else. And people here, just as they did in New England, like their heritage and like to think about the old days. So the fisherman tend to get a lot of attention and a lot of help.

I'm just not sure it's really the best way to support the economy.

Hadley December temperature anomaly

Hadley says...that December's 2008 temperature anomaly was +0.308°C

(Q: why does Hadley report temperature anomalies to 3-significant digits but NASA GISS only to two?)

So, for the 3rd month in a row, surface temperatures are warmer than the previous year's -- and for five out of six of past months. But overall Hadley has 2008 cooler than 2007, +0.327°C to +0.399°C, and 2008 as the coolest year since 2000.

Meanwhile, as RealClimate wrote today, the world's continue to melt. And this decade's temperatures are far ahead of last decade's. How exactly do you want to slice this data?

John Updike

I was sad to see that John Updike died yesterday. I had my Updike period, when I was living on Long Island, going to graduate school at Stony Brook. I had to take a semester off for a back surgery, and one of the first books I read during my recovery was a large edition of Updike stories, 600 or so pages, a thick paperback with a red cover. It's still around here somewhere. It appealed to me because I thought that was how adults were supposed to live, that I would be leaving graduate school in two years or so and and taking a train to the City like so many of Updike's characters, carrying a briefcase and an umbrella, and coming home and drinking a slow bourbon or two and feeling generally...absolutely, fucking lost.

I don't remember its title, but the story I remember the most is about this guy who ventured around his upper-middle-class neighborhood swimming through all the pools in all the backyards, one after the other. That is what adventure had come to mean to him. That was scary.

I think you can only get Updike it you once lived somewhere within 40-80 miles of NYC and at least a few times took a train there, from Connecticut or Long Island or New Jersey. That was the life of his characters, on the train, waiting for the train, waiting to be picked up from the train, in their London Fog jacket (yes, I have one), the trees bare and the scene cold, or maybe the trees hot and breezy, but no one ever all that happy, every man looking to bang every wife who pulled up in front of every train station to pick up her husband, but of course it was all just fantasy.

I think John Updike always wanted to be Robert Frost, but knew he could never pull it off. I don't know who Robert Frost wanted to be.

Obama (week 1), and Iran

Barack Obama has been about as impressive as is humanly possibly in his first week, and (as I somewhat fear) he seems ready to take on all possible problems at once. Including climate change (not so much on health care yet, though).

It's impressive that he gave his first TV interview to a station representing Muslims. This is clearly a guy with a very big brain above his shoulders.

Iran is sort of the weird cousin in the Middle East, so maybe Obama's letter will do a little good. But from everything I can tell, their problem with us is that we're over there in the first place, especially with large troop numbers in Saudi Arabia. Bin Laden has said so.

And why are we there? Oil. We invaded Iraq for it and we're establishing multiple permanent bases in Iraq for it and it's no wonder they resent our presence, any more than we would if the Chinese or Afghanis started to build camps in northern Montana or positioned ships in the Gulf of Mexico.

I don't see Obama's letters or interviews addressing any of that. I don't seem him as power-craven as Cheney/Bush, but he still has a lot of pressure behind him from the American business community.

And it's going to take more than a TV interview and a letter to undo that. And I can't blame anyone in the Middle East for thinking the same thing.

Blogging vs Journalism, and Kevin Drum

As you know, I have previously expressed doubts about the usefulness of blogging and its inadequacy in replacing real journalism -- which more and more, as traditional newspapers expire, people think blogging is supposed to do.

Here's a perfect example of what I'm talking about:

Kevin Drum, writes, as MotherJones.com's main blogger:

Just When You Thought It Was Safe To Go Back In the Water

JUST WHEN YOU THOUGHT IT WAS SAFE TO GO BACK IN THE WATER....She's b-a-a-a-a-ck! And she wants you to know that she's not just a smarmy, pathetically ignorant right-wing attack dog whose 15 minutes expired three months ago. In fact:

Gov. Sarah Palin believes all Americans must work together for the future, regardless of their party affiliation. Gov. Palin is the official chair of SarahPac, and its supporters are Republicans, Democrats, Independents, and those unaffiliated with any political party.

Roger that. I'm sure there are just loads of Democrats who are signing up to support Sarah. I can't wait to see the list.

Kevin can't wait to see the list.

But, as a "blogger," he apparently will just sit back and wait until this list is delivered to him.

If it is, maybe he'll dare to comment on it. If not, he'll surely ignore his curiousity and move on to the next subject -- cats or something, whatever he falls across at 8:57 in the morning, Pacific Time when he's on the line.

But don't count on anything.

It never seems to occur to Drum that he himself might be the one to contact the Palin camp and actually ask the question, who are the Democrats supporting Palin?

It's a good question -- I want to know too. So why can't Kevin make a phone call or two -- or six -- to Alaska and find out? Is Mother Jones not paying his phone expenses? Are phone calls to Alaska really that expensive anyway? (No, they're not.)

So what's keeping Kevin Drum from this very small investigation, from a couple of cheap phone calls? Simply the cojones to dare to ask?

It's laziness. It's complacency. It's the blogger mentality.

Bloggers think someone else needs to do the research, and they're just a typing monkey who repeats what they read, with maybe clever thought added (and maybe not).

Oh, and ten times the readership.

This is exactly why blogging will never replace journalism -- and why it's a crime that any blogger gets paid more than a few $K/yr to spout their opinion -- it's based on nothing.

Do you people want facts, or just guesses? Do you want commenters afraid to make a simple phone call to a governor's office, or do you want people who will give you an answer or two?

Honestly, I can' tell.

Random Science

Some interesting things I have come across:

• Apple juice might help prevent Alzehemier's Disese -- at leat in mince. Drinking apple juice helped mice perform better than normal in maze trials, and prevented the decline in performance that was otherwise observed as these mice aged.
• Tree death rates have more than doubled over the last few decades in old-growth forests of the western United States, most probably because of global warming. The death rate is now about one tree/acre/yr.
• About nine in 10 Americans heard the rumor that Barack Obama is a Muslim, making it possibly the most prevalent rumor of the 2008 presidential campaign, according to a nationwide survey. However, only 22 percent of those surveyed said they actually believed that Obama is a Muslim. (Still far too large, in my opinion.)
• lasers might someday be as small as a speck of dust.
• MRSA has been found in swine and swine workers in the US midwest.

Radio Interview Today

I'm going to be on the Lars Larson Show (KXL 750 am Portland) today at 12:30 pm PST. You can listen online here.

UPDATE: Due to an apparent bad cell phone connection, my interview didn't last longer than about 15 seconds. Alas.

Global Warming Polls Dead Last

This Pew Research Center poll isn't very encouraging: concerns about climate change come in dead last in a list of 20 choices. Jobs and other belly-filling activities come first. We humans are just not evolved to consider slow, century-long problems, even if they might be the end of us.

I try to be an optimist but reality keeps getting in the way.

Faking the Inaugural Music

I didn't have a chance to watch the presidential inaugural live, as I was driving into Portland for an appointment that morning. But I heard the Yo-Yo Ma/Itzhak Perlman instrumental, called "Air and Simple Gifts," on the radio and it was quite moving. Later my mother, who was in town and who watched it live, called it the highlight of the ceremony.

And now we learn that it was faked. Recorded beforehand. The musicians were just playing along for show.

In this NY Times article they have a dozen reasons why that was OK. It was too cold. Strings might have broken. It was windy.

God forbid actual nature should be any part of the ceremony, that it should alter the perfect plan.

Mr. Perlman said the recording, which was made on Sunday at the Marine Barracks in Washington, was used as a last resort. “It would have been a disaster if we had done it any other way,” he said in a telephone interview on Thursday. “This occasion’s got to be perfect. You can’t have any slip-ups.” The musicians wore earpieces to hear the playback.

In fact, the occasion did not have to be perfect. Nothing ever is. Obama's recitation of the constitutional oath wasn't perfect, and he did a do-over, and so what -- it adds to the charm and memory of the situation. Had their performance been affected by the weather, history would have noted their brave attempts to do their best in trying circumstances. Had their performance overcome the weather, they would be heroes.

Now, they just look a little like cretins.

Like my note yesterday about the inaugural field trip for some California teenagers, let's try and drop the notion that life is supposed to be perfect. It was never intended to be so, and it never will be, no matter how hard anyone tries. In the cracks between perfection, we find our great moments and our weak moments, and, most of all, the real moments. They are clunky and smelly and awkward and funny, but they are genuine. Is that what this is all supposed to be about?

Honestly

So some parents of some California teens paid for them to go to the Inauguration in DC, and -- imagine this -- the trip didn't work out as planned.

Missed buses, missed events, missed sleep -- you surely know the scene.

Except that these parents are now threatening to sue.

Really. As if life is some kind of guaranteed amusement park ride, where you put your kid on and, sometime later, she comes out having been scared and amused by all the promised spooks, and none but them too much. Like this is how life works out.

I predict that, 20 years from now, these kids will look back on their trip fondly, hardly remembering the cold or that they missed most of the Inauguration and most of its events, but instead recall that they sneaked a pee behind the bushes next to the Justice Department, that the delectible, brown-haired beauty of the ninth-grade Jennifer Doherty, drolls in her sleep (though her breasts still looked magnificant), and that they got extra fries at the McDonalds in Chantilly, Virginia at 2:30 in the morning.

Chill, parents. This is life.

The Superstitions

A dozen years or so when I was living in Arizona, my girlfriend and I were hiking into the Superstition Mountains outside Phoenix, with packs on, to spend the night down in a gulch somewhere, just to get out under the stars, something I don't do enough of anymore.

We had been hiking a few miles and we can to a fork in the trail and stopped to take a drink of water, and then out of the shadow of a big cactus this guy on a big horse appeared. He was drekked out in full cowboy regalia, and his horse was big and strong and beautiful, in full splendor, like that Robert Redford movie with Jane Fonda. He had on all the requisite equipment, and looked like he had been on the trail since Mexico or somewhere, or maybe for his whole, entire life.

He looked down at us with his mustache and squinted eyes and ever so slightly tipped his hat, and we looked up at him and nodded hi, not a word exchanged, and then he and his horse wondered off down the trail like this was 1865. Sharon and I looked at each other, shook our heads and smiled, and then moved on to look for a campsite. Even still it seems like a dream, but I swear it happened.

Lyric

"I'm burning gas until I feel alright."

-- Eagles of Death Metal, Wannabe in L.A.

Electrical Industry Research

"The electrical industry famously spends as much on research as the dog food industry."

-- Lisa Margonelli, "A Green Stimulus For the People," The Nation, Jan 12/19, 2009

Worldwide Energy Consumption

Worldwide energy consumption is about 500 Quadrillion BTUs. (A quadrillion is 10¹⁵.) I was trying to figure out what that means, and it turns out to be the kinetic energy of the Earth if it were moving about 1 cm/sec. I find that impressive, I think. Hey, it's a big planet.

Oregonian Op-Ed

I have an op-ed in today's Oregonian: "Climate Change: The Last, Final Problem."

Basically, it argues that climate change is, long-term, essentially an insolvable problem. The proposals being advocated today -- take less car trips, car pooling, mass transit, making your home energy efficient (if you can) -- are far, far too little, and far too late.

The drastic and overwhelming changes we need to address the global warming problem as so enormous that we cannot afford to delude ourselves into thinking that a few small lifestyle changes will solve the problem. They won't. We literally need to completely remake our lives -- and that has never happened in the history of mankind, and there's absolutely no evidence that it will happen today, or anytime in the future.

It's not a pleasant situation, and I don't know the answer. Geoengineering is probably the best answer, with all its uncertainities and unintended consequences. The long-term physics are simply against us. We should have have listened to scientists like Wallace Broeckner three decades ago. We did not. We can't even get it together today, and there's no evidence we will get it together tomorrow.

Obama and Climate Change and Financial Reality

I found this on Benny Peiser's CCNet list: 
Don't expect the American government of president-elect Barack Obama to spend a fortune combatting climate change, an economist said Saturday at Guelph's annual environmental symposium. "The U.S. government's broke," University of Guelph economic professor Ross McKitrick told an audience of almost 150 attendees at Rozanski Hall. "Don't look for any costly action in the next few years," said McKitrick, a skeptic of man-made global warming.
    --Vik Kirsch, Guelph Mercury, 12 January 2009
Unfortunately, I think this is true. I've never seen an incoming administration with so many expectations on it, going in -- a symptom, I think, of how horrendous the Bush administration has been for this country. Obama is expected to solve the financial crisis, the health care problem, the climate change problem, the social security problem, the Middle East problem, rebuilt American's image in the world, etc. It's simply impossible. And the climate change problem, because it's still seen as something 25-75 yrs in the future, will probably be one of the first issues sacrificed.

Just Some Stuff

A few interesting things I've come across:

• Yale University has put some of their basic courses online, if you miss your freshman days.
• Joost is going to broadcast the Presidential Inauguration live, if you aren't near a TV that day.
• James Hansen was chosen by his peers to receive the 2009 Carl-Gustaf Rossby Research Medal, the highest honor bestowed by the American Meteorological Society.
• NASA GISS says Dec 2008 was +0.45°C above the long-term average
  
• Hansen has a new note out on 2008 temperatures, saying about what you'd expect it to say: 2008 was warm, not quite as warm as some of the past few years, but pretty warn if you compare it to a couple of decades ago.

UAH Dec temperature anomaly

UAH's temperature anomaly for Dec 2008 is +0.18°C, essentially the same as RSS's.

Thus, the last two month's worth of satellite data is warmer than the previous year's. Year-by-year, though, it's the coldest satellite year since 2000.

Flying Cars

The Times of London has an article about a new flying car, really, a car that converts into an airplane. It sounds impressive, but I think it really shows that flying cars aren't practicable, and aren't ever going to be practicable.

This flying car -- the Terrafugia Transition -- cruises at 115 mph, and stalls at 51 mph. It requires 1700 ft to take off.

How is that ever going to replace the car? Bernoulli's Principle just doesn't all it in any realistic sense. It's not like Inara Serra just punches the controls and her shuttle climbs out of its port and back towards Serenity.

I'd love to have a flying car, believe me. I just don't see it happening.

Best Television Ever

The best three minutes in the history of television: The Bodeans on Letterman, 1987:

Arlington National Cemetary

Last night I was reading about the Arlington National Cemetery.

Near the end of the Civil War, the Union was running out of room for new burials in plots in Washington DC and Alexandria.

So, looking to expand, they took over Robert E Lee's farm in Arlington for additional room, putting graves literally in his front yard. Lee was busy fighting (and losing) in central Virginia.

So some of the north's most hallowed ground was really established as a thumb in the face to R.E. Lee and his wife.

It was a very brutal war.

“Before enlightenment, chop wood, carry water.
After enlightenment, chop wood, carry water."

– Zen saying

Light Bulb

"Either this kid has a light bulb up his butt, or his colon has a great idea."

-- Scrubs

RSS Temp Anomaly

RSS is first out of the blocks with their December temperature anomaly: +0.174°C.

That's warmer than last November. but otherwise the coldest month in 6 months.

Mote for Oregon's Climate Change Research Institute

Oregon State University just made a great choice for director of its newly established Oregon Climate Change Research Institute: Philip Mote, the current Washington State climatologist.

Mote is well-known here in the Pacific Northwest and an impressive scientist, especially on issues of climate impacts in the Pacific Northwest on snowpacks, etc. I've heard him talk a couple of times and he's always impressive, and very science-based.

Along with OSU's Jane Lubchenko being appointed head of NOAA, Oregon science is looking pretty good these days.

Time to Start Walking

From Robert Lee Hotz's Jan 2 column in the Wall Street Journal, "The Warming Earth Blows Hot, Dry, and Chaotic":

Alaska's low-lying ice fields are disappearing at two to three times the rate of a decade ago, according to aerial surveys by researchers at the University of Alaska. Since 2000, Greenland alone has lost 355.4 square miles of ice -- an area 10 times the size of Manhattan -- Ohio State University researchers reported. Using data from two NASA satellites, they determined that Greenland's 32 largest glaciers lost three times as much ice last year as the year before.

"I wouldn't run for the hills," says glacier analyst Eric Rignot at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. "But it might be time to start walking."

More on the Oregon Mileage Tax

The LA Times has an article today on the proposed Oregon mileage tax, and tomorrow's radio program "Think Out Loud" on Oregon Public Radio is covering the topic (9:00 am PST).

Regardless of what any state official says, this system clearly has the ability to track where you're at. One of the functional requirements listed in the program's Final Report (p. 14) is

Zone differentiation and mileage counting. An on-vehicle device must have an ability to collect and differentiate miles driven within pre-established geographic zones, and provide mileage information to motorists.

Obviously this requires positional tracking, though at what frequency I'm still not sure.

Also, let's dismiss with the notion that the state will not be able to access this detailed data. The ODOT official in charge said:

In more than one interview with the Democrat-Herald and others, James Whitty, the ODOT official in charge of the project, tried to assure the public that tracking people’s travels was not in the plans....

“The concept requires no transmission of vehicle travel locations, either in real time or of travel history,” the report said. “Accordingly, no travel location points are stored within the vehicle or transmitted elsewhere. Thus there can be no ‘tracking’ of vehicle movements.”

As anyone who has ever written even a small computer program knows, you will always be able to access the most intimate data in any system so that you can debug it and troubleshoot it when necessary. Sure, there might not be nice, neat administration screens in ODOT headquarters where this data can be readily called up, but all that means is that you go to the administrator running the system, he/she logs in as a superuser, and has access to everything. At worst, you call up the programmer who built it all, and of course he knows all the ways in. Anyone who has ever dealt with a computer system of any extent whatsoever knows this -- to deny otherwise is kind of insulting.

Also, the costs look high. From p. 31 of the Final Report, the prototypes cost $662 per unit. Yes, the costs of a final program would be less, but the state does not quote a price, saying only that GPS units will likely fall below $100/chip in a few years.

So clearly this is going to cost car owners at least a couple of hundred of dollars per car, just for installation.

Station costs seem over $400/station.

The Final Report estimates (p. 32) the state's operation cost at $1.6M/yr, or less than 3% of the total mileage fee collected at the pump.

Alarmingly, "vehicle-to-pump associations" -- how often the pump recognized your car when you pulled into a service station -- was only about 80% at the trial's end (Final Report, p. 36). A 20% failure rate is huge.

The CO2 of Your Offspring

Americans emit on average about 23 metric tonnes of CO2e per year per person.

So, over an average lifetime, one American will emit roughly 2000 mt.

However, having a child changes everything. According to a new paper in Global Environmental Change,

Under current conditions in the United States, for example, each child adds about 9441 metric tons of carbon dioxide to the carbon legacy of an average female, which is 5.7 times her lifetime emissions. A person’s reproductive choices must be considered along with his day-to-day activities when assessing his ultimate impact on the global environment.

This is interesting but not, of course, a reason not to have children (though I'm sure some skeptic will twist it in that way.) Humans aren't going to solve global warming by deciding not to have children. Sure, we could use less reproduction, but obviously we can't do without it and the solution we're looking for involves technological change and not living in mud huts without children. But it's something to think about.

Happy New Year

(via Dark Roasted Blend)

Here's an interesting poll result:

While 64% of Americans say they significantly changed their driving habits earlier this year as gas prices soared, only 12% now say they have reverted to their old habits as pump prices have plunged in recent months.

This agrees with data from the EIA: Gas prices are down about 45% from this time last year, while gas demand per person is down about 5%.

Oregon Wants to Track Your Car

The governor of Oregon wants to replace the gasoline tax with a "mileage tax," proportional to the amount of miles you drive. The state's gas tax revenue is declining, and the thinking is that people who drive buy gas-efficient vehicles are somehow cheating the government because they use less gas per mile traveled and so pay less tax per mile traveled, when the impact of their vehicle on the road stays more or less constant.

Sure, it makes sense in theory. But it's a very bad idea, I think. One is that it will require a great deal of expensive new infrastructure -- GPS units in all vehicles, and units in all gas pumps that will read the chips whenever you get gas and calculate how much you owe. It's another thing that can go wrong and will no doubt be costly to fix. Etc. All that sounds expensive.

And I can't imagine that the difference between taxing on mileage and taxing on gallons is going to be very different for most people, except for people who are trying to do the right thing by driving an efficient car, who have less externalized costs on the climate (but not, granted, on the roads).

How do out-of-staters pay taxes, if at all? And I read some comment that asked if you will get reimbursed for miles you drive on private property -- a good question if, say, you own a farm.

But mostly, it's a horrible idea for privacy reasons. The government will now be able to know where you are at all times, by reading your GPS unit.

In more than one interview with the Democrat-Herald and others, James Whitty, the ODOT official in charge of the project, tried to assure the public that tracking people’s travels was not in the plans....

The final report detailed the technical aspects of the program. It also stressed the issue of privacy.

“The concept requires no transmission of vehicle travel locations, either in real time or of travel history,” the report said. “Accordingly, no travel location points are stored within the vehicle or transmitted elsewhere. Thus there can be no ‘tracking’ of vehicle movements.”

This last paragraph cannot possibly be true. If all you want to do is calculate mileage between gas pump visits, a non-GPS unit would do that sends your odometer's reading to the pump when you get gas.

Why then use GPS units?

But if you have a GPS unit someone in the government will be able to track you. And we all know that these sorts of programs quickly get expanded by power hungry authorities and bureaucrats, just like the drive-through toll collection system did. If the data is there, authorities will demand it in the name of crime prosecution or finding missing persons. All such data collection technologies get abused in this way -- all of them. It is a law of nature -- you know it, I know it, and Whitty knows it. And it will happen here, too.

This is a bad idea, and not an elegant solution to the problem.

--

Here is the task force's final report (Nov 2007).

Radio Interview

I'm going to be interviewed on the radio tomorrow, talking about global warming.

I'll be on The Lars Larson Show here in Portland (KXL 750 AM), guest-hosted by Rob Kremer, at 1:00 pm PST. You can listen online here.

Arctic Sea Ice Update

Sea Ice extent in the Arctic continues to be a horse race with that of recent past years, and has now slipped to 4th place. But, since it shouldn't be covered like a horse race, I'm going to stop with this graph unless something dramatic happens:

(Click to enlarge; vertical axis in sq km.)

Hansen's AGU Lecture

James Hansen's Bjerknes Lecture at the recent AGU meeting is well-worth reading -- it's thought-provoking and I learned a lot.

For example:

• it's simply a good review of the state of much of today's climate science
• clearly shows the effects of this past year's relatively strong La Nina
• shows ice age climate forcings and, from that, calculates a climate sensitivity of 3/4 C per W/m2, or 3 C for 2xCO2 and says he's "nailed it". (On his blog, Anthony Watts criticizes this but gets it completely wrong, thinking that Hansen used Mann data of the last 1400 yrs when, in fact, he uses ice-agey data of the last 20 Kyr.)
  
• gives lots of pretty charts neatly summarizing lots of data.
• shows a new method of calculating recent past and future climate, based on response functions, that is 100 trillion times faster than computer climate models. (This calculation actually shows a relative flattening of global temps for the first decade of this century, then resumed warming.)
• says he believes that our climate will "possibly" runaway if we burn all our coal and with runaway with "dead certainty" if we burn all coal + tars.
• repeats that our target goal for CO2 needs to be 350 ppm.

and lots more. I understood many of Hansen's points better than I did last May when I said I thought his "Target atmospheric CO2" paper had a lot of hand-waving arguments. (This paper has since been published in Open Atmos Sci J (2008) v2 p 217. You can download it here.) I mean, it's not the kind of rigorous calculation that physicists like, but it depends on a far smaller chain of hand-waving reasoning than I thought. But what do I know?

Anyway, it's worth an hour of your time.

Merry Christmas

Still Milgram

Jerry Burger of Santa Clara University repeated some of the famous Stanley Milgram
experiments of 1961, and found more or less the same (depressing) results -- people are willing to hurt other people if they are told to do so by an authority figure.

Serreze on Arctic Ice

The NSIDC's Mark Serreze responded to my question about the recent data on Arctic sea ice extent, using their own data:

We are quite certain that the almost complete lack of increase in ice extent since about December 10 is real. We cross checked using data from the AMSR (advanced microwave sounding radiometer) instrument and we see the same pattern. This gives us independent confirmation. Past 10 days has also seen a very unusual atmospheric pattern. It has been very warm over the Arctic Ocean, and wind patterns have favored a compact ice cover. While the lack of increase in ice extent is certainly quite unusual, I would not read too much into it right now at is appears to be weather related versus climate related. It will be interesting to see what happens over the next week.

This is, after all, a weather fluctuation, so you can't put too much into it. But then, the slight gain in sea ice this past summer could well have been a weather fluctuation too. You can only really trust the long-term data, which is, of course, bad.

Lambert on Sea Ice

Tim Lambert has more details on Arctic sea ice, and concludes:

Given that there is now no possible cherry pick that the denialists can now use to make it look like Arctic sea ice is increasing, I predict that they will start talking about Antarctic sea ice.

Sea Ice at Record Low

Arctic sea ice extent is now at a record low -- as of yesterday, below even last year's number. This is based on IARC-JAXA data (International Arctic Research Center - Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency.

The National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) has the same result:

Note: This is ice extent, which is not the same as area (though easier to measure). (For that matter, what really matters is volume, but though I hear people are working on ways to measure that, they're not there yet.)

Here's a way of thinking about the difference between extent and area: imagine a checkboard with lots of checkers on it, more than usual. Some places the checkers will touch, but there will be spaces between them. Their extent is the area of the entire checkerboard, but their area is the area of the checkerboard minus the gaps in-between all the checkers.

Thus, extent is always greater than area.

There are, of course, uncertainties associated with each day's measured ice extent, but the IARC-JAXA site doesn't give them (as far as I have been able to tell). So to within the precision of the satellite measurements, today's numbers are essentially the same as last year's. But the ice extent growth rate is very small in the last few weeks:

Ice Extent growth rate, Nov 30 - Dec 21 (thousands of sq-km/day):

2002	55
2003	84
2004	67
2005	64
2006	106
2007	79
2008	53

Why is this happening? Warmth. Here's the NSIDC commentary from Dec 3 (2008):

The period of very rapid ice growth that characterized October and early November has ended. The rise in ice extent over the past three weeks has been much slower, and should continue to slow until the expected seasonal ice extent maximum is reached sometime in March. Air temperatures over the Arctic Ocean stayed well above average during November, partly because of continued heat release from the ocean to the atmosphere and partly because of a pattern of atmospheric circulation transporting warm air into the region.

Energy Policies

"We need to pick a target CO2 concentration and work backwards to get to an energy policy, rather than guessing at an energy policy with fingers crossed, hoping for a climate outcome that is tolerable."

-- Saul Griffith

Via: Only in it for the Gold (Michael Tobis)

The Farmer's Almanac (Mis)Prediction

Joseph D'Aleo was the first Director of Meteorology at the cable TV "The Weather Channel," and, now, a noted global warming skeptic.

He was also chosen as the weather expert for this year's "The Old Farmer's Almanac," published in the tiny town of Dublin, NH, which you would most likely miss if you were to drive through it on NH's Rte 101.

D'Aleo gets a lot of publicity from his GW skepticism. So how well does he do in forecasting the weather?

Not very good, from what I can tell. Not very good at all.

I bought a copy of The Old Farmer's Almanac 2009 about two months ago, complete with its hole in the upper left-hand corner so you can hang it by a string in your outhouse. For the Pacific Northwest, here's what D'Oleo predicts for this time of year:

Dec 14-18: Occasional rain, mild
Dec 19-23: Rain, then sunny, mild

Needless to say, our weather in the last several days has been anything but this: lower temperatures than normal, with cold, lots of snow, and very little sun. Not "mild" in the least.

--

The Farmer's Almanac says their weather forecasts are based on a "secret formula" devised by the Almanac's founder, Robert B. Thomas, in 1792. Thomas "believed that weather on Earth was influenced by sunspots, which are magnetic storms on the surface of the Sun."

The Farmer's Almanac claims an accuracy rate of 80% for their weather predictions. I have no evidence to back that up, and they present none either.

I don't believe them for a second.

Serreze on Arctic Ice

For a really good review of the state of knowledge of Arctic Sea Ice, you can listen to Mark Serreze's (of NSIDC) lecture at last week's AGU meeting:

http://www.agu.org/webcast/fm07/Serreze/index.html

Winter Solstice

In case you worship witches or something, the Winter Solstice is tomorrow at 12:04 UT (7:04 am EST, 4:04 am PST).

--

We're having a wonderful winter storm here for the last two days, all over Oregon. Here in St. Helens it's been snowing on and off for about two days, and right now we have about 4 inches of snow. There's a high chance of snow for the next several days, and chains are required on the highways, to get into Portland. (Portland freaks out at times like this.)

Here's a St. Helens weather cam, about 1.5 miles from my house:

http://www.wh6ko.net/wxcam.html

Dock Ellis dies

Dock Ellis wasn't exactly a hero of mine, but he was a Pittsburgh Pirate and that was essentially the same thing. He died yesterday at age 63. I remember him pitching a no-hitter, though I didn't know until much later that he said was under the influence of LSD the entire game:

I can only remember bits and pieces of the game. I was psyched. I had a feeling of euphoria. I was zeroed in on the (catcher's) glove, but I didn't hit the glove too much. I remember hitting a couple of batters and the bases were loaded two or three times. The ball was small sometimes, the ball was large sometimes, sometimes I saw the catcher, sometimes I didn't. Sometimes I tried to stare the hitter down and throw while I was looking at him. I chewed my gum until it turned to powder. They say I had about three to four fielding chances. I remember diving out of the way of a ball I thought was a line drive. I jumped, but the ball wasn't hit hard and never reached me.

Perhaps not his best moment, but who can say? But maybe this was:

Incensed that the Reds were bullying his Pirates, he hit Pete Rose, Joe Morgan and Dan Driessen in succession on May 1, 1974, and tried to hit Tony Perez but missed. After aiming two pitches at Johnny Bench's head he was pulled.

Man, the Pirates back then were a great team.

--

Here's Ellis explaining his no-hitter (with the bonus of the call by the legendary Bob Prince):

Hitchens Gives Warren the Business

Christopher Hitchens lets Rick Warren have it with both barrels -- deservedly so:

As Barack Obama is gradually learning, his job is to be the president of all Americans at all times. If he likes, he can oppose the idea of marriage for Americans who are homosexual. That's a policy question on which people may and will disagree. However, the man he has chosen to deliver his inaugural invocation is a relentless clerical businessman who raises money on the proposition that certain Americans—non-Christians, the wrong kind of Christians, homosexuals, nonbelievers—are of less worth and littler virtue than his own lovely flock of redeemed and salvaged and paid-up donors.

This quite simply cannot stand.... A president may by all means use his office to gain re-election, to shore up his existing base, or to attract a new one. But the day of his inauguration is not one of the days on which he should be doing that. It is an event that belongs principally to the voters and to their descendants, who are called to see that a long tradition of peaceful transition is cheerfully upheld, even in those years when the outcome is disputed. I would myself say that it doesn't need a clerical invocation at all, since, to borrow Lincoln's observation about Gettysburg, it has already been consecrated. But if we must have an officiating priest, let it be some dignified old hypocrite with no factional allegiance and not a tree-shaking huckster and publicity seeker who believes that millions of his fellow citizens are hellbound because they do not meet his own low and vulgar standards.

Via: Portland Mercury blogtown.

Arctic Sea Ice

So this is a little interesting: lately this year's sea ice extent in the Arctic is not growing nearly as fast as it did in the last two years:

(y-axis units = sq km). Here's this year's area compared to last year's:

Holdren for Science Advisor

Science magazine is reporting what would be another excellent choice for the Obama administration: John P. Holdren reportedly for science advisor.

Holdren is past president of AAAS, and has heavily focused on climate change, energy technologies, and the dangers of nuclear weapons and proliferation.

Like Chu, hard to imagine a better choice.

Food Stamps in Oregon

Wow: 1 in 7 people living in Oregon are now receiving food stamps.

Oregon seems to have a lot more trouble with hunger than most states, which I haven't understood yet.

Knutti quote

If I had a convincing argument that climate sensitivity is small I would send it to Nature or Science today, and I would be famous tomorrow, and the world would be happy because the climate problem is not as bad as we thought. Unfortunately, the data suggests otherwise.
  --Reto Knutti, Institute for Atmospheric and Climate Science, ETH Zurich

(via Benny Peiser's CCNet list).

Che

"A real revolutionary goes where he is needed."

-- Che Guevara, Che

Deming's opinion

David Deming -- a professor of geophysics at the University of Oregon -- is a politically active academic who is, if he were on the other side (like James Hansen), be criticized by skeptics.

But Deming is OK because he's on their side.v But his views are extreme and, more important, wrong.

Just look at this op-ed piece he published in The Edmund Sun on Sept 24, 2008, in which he wrote:

Obama is a vapid demagogue, a hollow man that despises American culture. He is ill-suited to be president of the United States. As the weeks pass, more Americans will come to this realization and elect McCain/Palin in a landslide.

He could hardly have been more wrong.

Why doesn't this matter?

Skin Cancer in Australia

Did you know that the number of cases of melanoma in Australia are up 50% in the last decade?

I'm sure it has nothing to do with the ozone hole above them.

The Day the Earth Stood Still

Sunday night -- a cold night here in Oregon, in the 20s, with some ice on the roads, which this state takes as a sign to completely shut down but which back in New Hampshire would have been a sign of encroaching spring -- I went to the local theatre here in St Helens and watched The Day the Earth Stood Still with about six other people. The Columbia Theatre is one of those great old-fashioned theatres that everyone loves and which no one attends, and you wonder how they stay open, especially considering that the Boise paper mill here in St Helens, which employs about 10% of the town, is closing in a month.

Spoilers ahead.

I liked this movie alot, and if you like SciFi movies you probably will too. The first 20-30 minutes presented the most realistic depiction of an alien invasion of Earth that I have ever seen on film. As was the depiction of a "gray goo" of microbots (not nanobots) that swarmed around ready to cleanse the Earth of anything relating to humans.

The rest of the movie wasn't bad. It wrapped up a little too easily, with Klattu seemingly becoming convinced of humanity's potential by a sappy hug in a cemetary. But who sees a SciFi film for anything like that? The depictions were cool. Gort was a bit old-fashioned, just with a twist.

Check it out, preferably on a cold, icy night with six other people in the theatre.

Steven Chu quote

Here's a quote from Steven Chu, Obama's choice for Energy Secretary: 
"Stronger storms, shrinking glaciers and winter snowpack, prolonged droughts and rising sea levels are raising the specter of global food and water shortages. The ominous signs of climate change we see today are a warning of dire economic and social consequences for us all, but especially for the poor of the world," Chu has said. "The path to finding solutions is to bring together the finest, most passionate minds to work on the problem in a coordinated effort, and to give these
researchers the resources commensurate with the challenge."
Not sure where this is from (or that it matters) -- it was sent around today by LBL media. Can you really imagine a high-level governmentperson who actually gets it?

Hadley November Anomaly

Hadley's global temperature anomaly (HadCRUT3) is in for November: +0.386°C.

I don't like playing the month-to-month temperature game, but if you want to, note:

• the last two months of 2008 (YTD) were warmer than the corresponding months of 2007.
• four of the last five months of 2008 (YTD) were warmer than the corresponding months of 2007.
• RSS and UAH MSU's also have Nov-08 warmer than Nov-07.

Cooling = Warming?

Can anyone make heads or tails out of this paragraph from the Associated Press, especially the last sentence?

Mother Nature, of course, is oblivious to the federal government's machinations. Ironically, 2008 is on pace to be a slightly cooler year in a steadily rising temperature trend line. Experts say it's thanks to a La Nina weather variation. While skeptics are already using it as evidence of some kind of cooling trend, it actually illustrates how fast the world is warming.

La Nina I get. "Slightly cooler" I get. But a "cooling trend" as an illustration of how fast the world is warming? That I don't get.

(No I don't believe we're in a cooling trend. But I also don't see how one, if it existed, would necessarily be evidence of global warming.)

Credit Where It's Due

You have to give Bush credit: he deftly dodged both shoes thrown at him, and barely flinched at the second one. The journalist had pretty good aim, too, and still Bush wasn't hit. Then he quickly managed a joke about it. Well played on all sides.

Guardian article

I have an opinion article in today's Guardian: "Let's Get Real on the Environment."

Here's an excerpt:

The world desperately needs to get serious, including President-elect Obama, Europe's leaders and every UN bureaucrat who dined handsomely in the evenings in Poznan. The truth is, the world is not going to be cutting greenhouse gases anytime soon. If ever....

Not one of us – you, me, Obama or the greenest activist anywhere in the world – is willing to live without the comforts fossil fuels provide us – heat, light, instant hot food, convenient transportation, modern agriculture and airplane travel....

Given this, what can we do? Be realistic, first of all. Let's fund geo-engineering research to the hilt, exploring how we can someday modify our planet's natural systems to produce a slight atmospheric cooling. It is our destiny.

But most of all, let's open our eyes and begin to be honest. You will fly to Jamaica this winter instead of cutting your greenhouse gases. Fine. Can we please accept this and begin to move on?

No Gore Effect in Poznan

The UNFCCC has been meeting in Poznan, Poland for the last nine days in a huge climate conference, COP 14.

So how has the weather been in Poznan over this time? 5.4°F above average.

In fact, every day of the conference has seen higher temperatures than usual, and no day has been less than 3°F above normal.

In fact, every daily high and every daily low for each day of the conference has been above normal -- one day as high as 10°F above normal.

Where are all the people always proclaiming about the "Gore Effect?" (Gore spoke in Poznan today.)

Here's the data: http://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=pW5aV1sypLjIpjKn5rwQtTQ

--

(Yes, it is sad that one must debunk such an absurd, illogical notion as the "Gore Effect.")