Rigorous Scrutiny

There were a couple of errors in the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report, which comprises many hundreds of pages. A Wall Street Journal editorial that scolds the IPCC for its sloppy work comprises 12 short paragraphs. Let's see how well its facts hold up, by comparison.

It has been a bad — make that dreadful — few weeks for what used to be called the "settled science" of global warming, and especially for the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that is supposed to be its gold standard.

Wrong. The errors do nothing to change the "'settled science' of global warming." They change a couple of predictions about its likely effects.

As a subsidiary point, denialists tend to gloat when such errors come to light, because their default position is that all errors and uncertainty support their rosy outlook. In reality, uncertainty is not a reassuring thing, and could just as easily lead us to underestimate the threats we face.

First it turns out that the Himalayan glaciers are not going to melt anytime soon, notwithstanding dire U.N. predictions.

Wrong. The IPCC's correction acknowledges that Himalayan glaciers are not expected to decrease by 80 percent -- let alone disappear -- within the next four decades. However, the IPCC stands by its prediction that "Widespread mass losses from glaciers and reductions in snow cover over recent decades are projected to accelerate throughout the 21st century, reducing water availability, hydropower potential, and changing seasonality of flows in regions supplied by meltwater from major mountain ranges (e.g. Hindu-Kush, Himalaya, Andes), where more than one-sixth of the world population currently lives.”

That's not quite the same thing as saying that "Himalayan glaciers are not going to melt anytime soon." And the phrase "anytime soon" is silly in any case, partly because it's hopelessly vague, and partly because it would not provide grounds for complacency even if it were accurate.

In its 2007 report, the IPCC wrote that "up to 40% of the Amazonian forests could react drastically to even a slight reduction in precipitation; this means that the tropical vegetation, hydrology and climate system in South America could change very rapidly to another steady state."

But as Jonathan Leake of London's Sunday Times reported last month, those claims were based on a report from the World Wildlife Fund, which in turn had fundamentally misrepresented a study in the journal Nature. The Nature study, Mr. Leake writes, "did not assess rainfall but in fact looked at the impact on the forest of human activity such as logging and burning."

Wrong. The author of the study in question says, "The scientific statement in the IPCC WG2 report is essentially correct, but has a referencing error. IPCC WG1 get it right." He went on to call Leake's piece "an outrageous piece of journalism."

The IPCC has relied on World Wildlife Fund studies regarding the "transformation of natural coastal areas," the "destruction of more mangroves," "glacial lake outbursts causing mudflows and avalanches," changes in the ecosystem of the "Mesoamerican reef," and so on. The Wildlife Fund is a green lobby that believes in global warming, and its "research" reflects its advocacy, not the scientific method.

Wrong, inasmuch as this is simply situational ad hominem. By this logic, any institution or scientist "that believes in global warming" is suspect by definition. (Of course, research by denialist groups and individuals remains purely disinterested and objective, no matter who funds it or how many times it's debunked.)

Beyond that, WWF's staff does publish scientific research in peer-reviewed journals, which is more than most denialists can say.

The IPCC has also cited a study by British climatologist Nigel Arnell claiming that global warming could deplete water resources for as many as 4.5 billion people by the year 2085. But as our Anne Jolis reported in our European edition, the IPCC neglected to include Mr. Arnell's corollary finding, which is that global warming could also increase water resources for as many as six billion people.

Wrong, inasmuch as it groundlessly implies the IPCC did something dishonest. In the first place, Arnell specifically told Jolis that the IPCC's representation of his research was appropriate. In the second place, one person's increased "water resources" is another person's increased flooding. As I noted here, Arnell's 2004 paper, and the work he's done since then, is basically in line with IPCC conclusions, and utterly at odds with the WSJ's happy talk.

The IPCC report made aggressive claims that "extreme weather-related events" had led to "rapidly rising costs." Never mind that the link between global warming and storms like Hurricane Katrina remains tenuous at best.

Arguably wrong in factual terms, and certainly wrong in its implication that the IPCC has done something dishonest. The IPCC's conclusions are clearly qualified, and acknowledge that "for a number of regions, such as Australia and India, normalised losses show a statistically significant reduction since 1970." That's not what I would call "aggressive." Furthermore, the IPCC stands by its assessment of the evidence. Unless the WSJ knows something they don't, there are no good grounds for treating this as an "aggressive" overstatement, let alone as an error.

In Holland, there's even a minor uproar over the report's claim that 55% of the country is below sea level. It's 26%.

Yes, but the initial figure came from the Dutch government, which is also the source of the so-called "correction." If they got something this fundamental wrong at the outset, how can we believe anything they say ever again? For all we know, every inch of Holland is well above sea level, and its dike rings were built as part of an alarmist conspiracy, in order to compel citizens to accept nanny-state intervention in their personal lives.

Kidding aside, the Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency's correction states that "55 per cent of the Netherlands is at risk of flooding; 26 per cent of the country is below sea level, and 29 per cent is susceptible to river flooding." So obviously, the IPCC is a joke and Doomsday has been canceled.

Phil Jones, who stepped down as head of the University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit amid the climate email scandal, told the BBC that the world may well have been warmer during medieval times than it is now.

To which the simplest response is, so fucking what? What's at issue is not how warm the world is today, but how much warmer it's going to get over time if no action is taken.

And Jones didn't say this in any case, as one can easily surmise from the lack of an actual quote. Instead, he responded at some length to a wildly hypothetical scenario:

[I]f the MWP was shown to be global in extent and as warm or warmer than today (based on an equivalent coverage over the NH and SH) then obviously the late-20th century warmth would not be unprecedented. On the other hand, if the MWP was global, but was less warm that today, then current warmth would be unprecedented.

We know from the instrumental temperature record that the two hemispheres do not always follow one another. We cannot, therefore, make the assumption that temperatures in the global average will be similar to those in the northern hemisphere.

And of course, whether current warmth is "unprecedented" has no bearing on whether it's anthropogenic. Compared to this tactic, quote-mining is downright respectable. Paraphrasing Jones as the WSJ did is an act of elemental dishonesty that, in my view, dwarfs every single one of the accusations they're making against the IPCC.

Mr. Jones also told the BBC there has been no "statistically significant" warming over the past 15 years, though he considers this to be temporary.

So Phil Jones is right when he says things the WSJ likes, and wrong when he explains what they actually mean. Hooray for the scientific method! And hooray for rational self-interest!

The lesson of climategate and now the IPCC's shoddy sourcing is that the claims of the global warming lobby need far more rigorous scrutiny.

"Shoddy sourcing"? That's pretty fucking rich coming from people who treat Anne Jolis and Jonathan Leake as more credible than the scientists whose work they shamelessly twist to their own ends.

"Rigorous scrutiny?" That's pretty goddamn droll coming from people who've cobbled together a few minor errors of fact, interpretation, or attribution, magnified them ten-thousandfold, garnished them with outright lies, and still ended up with an underwhelming and astonishingly petty case against the IPCC.

As the great Irish phenomenologist Merle O'Ponty noted, there is "no realm in which consciousness is fully at home and secure against all risk of error." That said, it seems pretty clear that this brief, unsigned editorial contains more errors -- and more lies -- than the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report. And unlike that report, there's precious little chance its errors will ever be corrected.

UPDATE: RealClimate covers many of the same points in a lot more detail, but spoils the effect by neglecting to use the word "fucking" as often as circumstances dictate. I say we call it a draw. (h/t: Chris in comments.)

Talking Black

As everyone knows, conservatives are rigid defenders of academic standards (except when it comes to biology, climatology, US history, and Biblical exegesis). That being the case, they object strongly to multicultural relativism (unless you're talking about the right of conservative students to stick their fingers in their ears throughout any class that threatens their personal identity, and still receive an A+).

Nothing exemplifies the bad kind of multiculturalism better than "Ebonics." Which is kind of odd. Considering that the kulturkampfers have developed a culturally oppositional speech community that's basically opaque to outsiders, you'd think they'd have a bit of sympathy for non-standard English.

Or at least, you'd think that if you managed, by some miracle, to forget that conservative culture is racist down to its corpuscles. Fortunately, Mike Adams is here to remind us that this would be a serious error:

Some people call them “wiggers” but I just call them “idiots”. I used to wonder where they learned to be so racially condescending - presuming that dressing and “talking black” was a cool thing to do. But now I suspect that many of them have taken a course under Maurice Martinez, an education professor at UNC-Wilmington.

Prof. Martinez, y'see, teaches his students something called "Black English," which is a bad thing, not least because it takes standard English words like "cool" and subverts their meaning. Worse, knowledge of this barbaric pseudo-language transforms white students into "wiggers" (not that Adams himself would actually call them that, even though the title of his article is "Wigger Please!").

And don't say this scenario is implausible. If it could happen, it will, so it does.

This a slightly inventive wrinkle on a dreary old debate. In more innocent times, "we" worried that black students would fail at life if African-American vernacular English were treated as anything more than pathology. Now, the problem seems to be that studying AAVE will turn white educators into a gaggle of faux gangstas who strut around their classrooms in sagging jeans, babbling about how Frantz Fanon is da shiznit, for reals. This scenario isn't racist, natch, because Adams isn't directly accusing black people of being incoherent halfwits; he's simply pointing out that white people who act like them come across that way.

And how could they not, when they've been corrupted by absurdities like these?

In his class, students are taught that “many African Americans speak and use a form of English that is somewhat different from Standard English.” They also learn that “the rules of Black American English are functional to those who use them.”

They're taught facts, in other words. But not the right kind. The important lesson here -- the only lesson -- is that Black American English is bad English, and identifies the speaker as culturally and therefore intellectually inferior. The solution, obviously, is for everyone to accept this judgment as neutral, objective, just, and final: if Standard English is good enough for Jesus, Shakespeare, Willis Carto, and Sarah Palin, it's more than good enough for black folk.

Of course, once you've realized that White English is correct English, you still need to know which white speakers to ape. Mike Adams would probably consider this person to be the Salt of the Earth, but that doesn't mean he'd cut a working-class black protester any slack for similarly "creative" spelling. As a general rule, blacks are better off imitating George Will or John Derbyshire, rather than the average Teabagger or pandering soi-disant hicks like George W. Bush. Southern colloquialisms that sound charming and folksy coming from Jeff Sessions are going to sound very different coming from an urban black teenager. This has nothing to do with race, though; it's just The Way Things Are. (And why don't you people something about those weird names, while you're at it?)

I should add that I'm old enough to be a bit shocked by Adams' use of "wigger," which I strongly associate with skinhead culture and groups like W.A.R. But of course usage changes -- no, really! -- and these days the term seems to be comparatively mainstream. It may even be "standard," for all I know. I suppose it must be, in Adams' circles, since he felt no need to explain its etymology.

At any rate, I don't think one can logically assume that a class on the structure and meaning of Black English will turn white education students into "wiggers," as opposed to, say, people who know something about the structure and meaning of Black English, and are therefore better equipped to understand and teach people who speak it. But I suspect this is a distinction without a difference in Adams' world.

Anything else I had to say on this subject, I said here. Oh, and here.

(Photo: Freeman Gosden and Charles Correll, aka Amos and Andy.)

Nationality Without Territory

Scientists at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory have glad tidings for current and former residents of the Marshall Islands:

Through Laboratory soil cleanup methods, residents of Bikini, Enjebi and Rongelap Islands - where nuclear tests were conducted on the atolls and in the ocean surrounding them in the 1950s - could have lower radioactive levels than the average background dose for residents in the United States and Europe.

Good to know. Now, all they'll have to worry about is rising sea levels:

According to the vast majority of scientific investigations, warming waters and the melting of polar and high-elevation ice worldwide will steadily raise sea levels. This will likely drive people off islands first by spoiling the fresh groundwater, which will kill most land plants and leave no potable water for humans and their livestock.

Low-lying island states like Kiribati, Tuvalu, the Marshall Islands and the Maldives are the most prominent nations threatened in this way.

The latter article makes a fascinating point:

There are few legal precedents for how these nations can exist without dry land....

"The biggest challenge is to preserve their nationality without a territory," said Lilian Yamamoto of Kanagawa University in Japan. "It is unlikely that they can still have a state without it."

Over the last couple of centuries, the Marshall Islands "belonged" to Spain, which sold them to Germany, which lost them to Japan, which lost them to the United States, which used them as a proving ground for nuclear weapons. They were finally granted sovereignty in 1986, a year after the epochal Villach Conference on the “Assessment of the Role of Carbon Dioxide and of Other Greenhouse Gases in Climate Variations and Associated Impacts," which concluded that “as a result of the increasing greenhouse gases it is now believed that in the first half of the next century (21st century) a rise of global mean temperature could occur which is greater than in any man’s history.” Out of the frying pan and into the fire, as the saying is.

Should one's "nation" remain in the UN even after its territory sinks beneath the waves? Can you conceivably enforce sovereignty over a cultural territory, or a genetic one, or a mental one (as per Elgaland-Vargaland)? What should the status of such territories be under international law? Can one immigrate or emigrate? Could some sort of minimally occupied floating platform anchored over the submerged islands satisfy the legal demand for territory? Or would territory simply be redefined in terms of global position, regardless of the habitability of the space designated? After all, states routinely claim rights to airspace, so perhaps the Marshall Islands could define that as their territory: Cuius est solum, eius est usque ad caelum et ad inferos!

The notion that one can form a new nation without territory has some politically uncomfortable implications, so it's hard to imagine that idea catching on. More plausibly, a new "homeland" could be granted to the displaced population. But that, of course, begs the question of how many people will ultimately be displaced, and what kind of land will be available to them, and what sort of life can be lived on it (i.e., what sort of cultural continuity would the Republic of the Marshall Islands have if it were relocated to, say, the Arctic?).

These strike me as extremely complicated issues, so it's just as well that the recent snowstorms revealed AGW as a hoax.

Sunday Music Blogging

Friday Nudibranch Blogging

Friday Hope Blogging

As you may or may not know, Google is negotiating an information-sharing arrangement with the NSA. If you think this is a bad idea, you can let Google know by clicking here.

The US Department of Labor has reinstated important protections for guest workers:

U.S. Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis announced today reinstatement of protections for imported farm workers that were slashed from the nation’s agricultural guest worker program during the last days of the Bush administration in early 2009.

The Bush administration's changes to the H-2A agricultural guest worker program, which took effect on January 17, 2009, dramatically impacted wages and working conditions for foreign agricultural workers. Under the Bush rules, agricultural employers could more easily access cheap foreign labor with little government oversight.

“The United Farm Workers applauds Secretary Solis for restoring protections for imported farm workers that had been in effect since the Reagan administration. This is a great victory for all farm workers,” said Arturo S. Rodriguez, UFW president.

A couple of large American firms are rejecting fuel sourced from Canadian tar sands:

Two large U.S. retailers listed on the Fortune 500 have announced they won't buy fuel derived from Alberta's oilsands as part of their efforts to fight climate change.

Organic food store Whole Foods and home furnishings chain Bed, Bath and Beyond are believed to be the first major private-sector companies to tell their fuel suppliers they don't want gasoline or diesel refined from crude oil coming from the oilsands.

The Church of England has withdrawn investment funds from a controversial mining company:

The Church of England has dropped is 3.8 million pound stake (5.9 million US dollars) in controversial mining company, Vedanta Resources, citing concern over the company's human rights record. The Indian company has come under considerable criticism for its plan to build a bauxite mine on Niyamgiri Mountain, threatening the mountain, forests, and the local tribe Dongria Kondh tribe.

Canada has established a new national park in its boreal forest:

The park reserve will protect 4,100 square miles (10,700 square kilometers), which will make it the largest national park in eastern Canada.

The Newfoundland and Labrador Government will establish a waterway provincial park to protect the Eagle River, adjacent to the proposed national park reserve. The waterway park in the river watershed will encompass 1,200 square miles (3,000 square kilometers) of wilderness and include almost the entire length of the Eagle River from the headwaters to the sea.

Together these areas will protect over 5,000 square miles (13,000 square kilometers) of boreal forest.

In related news, British Columbia won't allow mining and energy exploration near Glacier National Park:

At issue is the province's management plan for the Flathead River Valley, a million-acre watershed straddling the border of Montana and British Columbia....

The two sides collided last December after MAX Resource Corp. struck gold in the valley. The company insisted any extraction would occur through underground mines with no discharge into the Flathead, but environmentalists and U.S. Sens. Max Baucus (D) and Jon Tester (D) of Montana pressured the province to ban development....

MAX President Stuart Rogers said Point's announcement effectively kills further development of its "Crowsnest" gold deposit.

In response, Montana's senators announced a similar plan for their side of the valley:

"We need to show the Canadians we're working in good faith on our side of the border, as well," said Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont.

Baucus intends to join Sen. Jon Tester, D-Mont., in introducing legislation "to ensure Montanans will be able to hunt, fish and hike in the North Fork of the Flathead for generations." The law would prevent all mining, oil and gas development and coalbed gas extraction on the area's federal lands....

According to Will Hammerquist, of the National Parks Conservation Association, more than 90 percent of the Montana land base in the North Fork is federal land, and will be covered by the proposed mining ban.

Apropos of which, Carolyn Fraser writes on the trend towards "rewilding":

A Marshall Plan for the environment, rewilding promotes the expansion of core wilderness areas on a vast scale, the restoration of corridors between them (to fight the “island” effect of isolated parks and protected areas), and the reintroduction or protection of top predators.

Known by a shorthand formula — “cores, corridors, and carnivores” — rewilding was first proposed in 1998 by the founder of conservation biology, Michael Soulé, and his fellow conservation biologist, Reed Noss. It was quickly adopted by grassroots initiatives, such as the Yellowstone to Yukon Conservation Initiative (Y2Y), a plan to protect and restore connectivity of ecosystems throughout the Rocky Mountains.

I have mixed emotions about this, but it's probably a good idea on the whole:

An old battleground of California's water wars could turn into one of the largest solar farms in the world, with thousands of shiny black and blue panels mounted across the desiccated, salty white crust of Owens Lake....

The project may eventually generate 3 to 5 gigawatts of power -- enough for 10 percent of California's power supply -- and include other utilities like PG&E and Southern California Edison and independent power producers....

The proposed site of the solar complex is where Los Angeles in 1913 built the first of two aqueducts to carry water from Owens Valley to the growing city. The lake was dry by the end of the 1920s.

IBM has found a cheaper way of making solar panels:

IBM researchers have recently published a paper in the journal Advanced Materials about a very promising breakthrough in solar technology. How is it different from existing solar technologies such as silicon-based solar cells, or CIGS thin film? The main thing is that it's made from earth abundant materials that can be found in large quantities relatively inexpensively (not quite dirt cheap, but cheaper than what we have now), making it easier to scale up and drive prices down.

HP has opened the world's first air-cooled data center:

The data center is located near the North Sea in northeast England, and is 100% air cooled with eight 2.1-meter stainless steel and plastic fans that suck cold air from outside into the building, where it then runs through filters and into the data center through the floors.

A few other eco-friendly tricks HP has utilized include using light colored server racks that better reflect light and drop the need for additional lighting by 40%, and the building has tanks for harvesting rainwater, which can be used to humidify the air cycling into the building when needed.

Italy plans to electrify idling cruise ships:

Port authorities in Italian cities like Venice plan to install equipment to connect ships like giant cruise liners to the electricity grid while berthed to cut fuel consumption and to curb emissions, according to Enel, an Italian electricity utility.

The initiative could reduce carbon dioxide emissions by more than 30 percent, nitrogen oxides and particulates by more than 95 percent, and it could eliminate noise pollution entirely, Enel said Tuesday.

In Manhattan, parts of Broadway will remain closed to vehicles:

New York’s ambitious experiment that closed parts of Broadway to vehicles last spring will become permanent, city officials said on Thursday, even though it fell short of achieving its chief objective: improving traffic flow.

Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg said that a reduction in injuries to pedestrians and motorists, along with a warm response from merchants and tourists, had persuaded him to retain the eight-month-old pedestrian plazas in Times Square and Herald Square, a marquee initiative for his administration that re-engineered the Midtown street grid.

Photo: Ozier Muhammad/The New York Times
Portugal's parliament has passed a bill legalizing same-sex marriage:

Portuguese lawmakers Thursday definitively adopted legislation legalising homosexual marriage, although President Anibal Cavaco Silva, a practising Roman Catholic, must give final approval....

Cavaco Silva could still veto the measure, a move that would mean a new vote in parliament but would merely delay it becoming law.

Iowa Republicans have failed in their latest attempt to outlaw gay marriage:

Republicans failed on Tuesday in their effort to start the process of amending the Iowa Constitution to ban gay marriage -- meaning it will likely be 2014 at the earliest before voters could decide on the issue.

The Republican lawmakers tried procedural moves to pull measures out of committees and force a vote, but they couldn't get enough votes in either the House or Senate.

And the IRS has ruled that treatment for gender identity disorder is a deductible medical procedure:

In 2002, Rhiannon O’Donnabhain deducted the costs of her hormones, genital surgery and breast augmentation from her federal taxes. The IRS said no in 2005, and she took the case to tax court in 2007. Earlier this week, the court ruled 6-4 in her favour – mostly. They didn’t allow her to deduct her breast augmentation because the evidence apparently showed that her breasts had developed as a result of hormone therapy. (Which might suggest that, if she hadn’t had breast development from hormones, then the breast augmentation deduction might actually have been allowed).

Here's an interesting approach to pest control:

Researchers at Northern Arizona University recently revealed a new weapon against swarms of tree-eating bark beetles. Rather than dousing them with environmentally unfriendly pesticides, researchers exposed the bugs to recordings of their own mating calls. And their reaction was to freeze, flee, or violently attack one another.

India has halted plans to release genetically engineered eggplant:

Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh said more independent research must be conducted to ensure the hybrid eggplant was safe for human consumption, after a government committee approved the commercial release of the genetically modified, pest-resistant crop in October.

''It is my duty to adopt a cautious, precautionary principle-based approach and impose a moratorium,'' he said.

In Peru, farmers are switching from coca to cocoa:

Like hundreds of thousands of other farmers in Peru's fertile San Martin region, Angulo participated in the global cocaine trade.

"Coca brought lots of easy money … mucho dinero," says Angulo with a wistful smile. "But now we feel comfortable and safe. We don't have to hide from anyone."

Peru's drug traffickers have moved into more remote areas, and cocoa growers from across the globe are coming here to learn how to duplicate Peru's success.

Canadian researchers hope to make insulin from safflower:

While today’s insulin is effective, it’s also expensive to produce. In many of the poorest nations of the world, diabetic patients often can’t afford the $800 a year it costs for a year’s supply.

According to the World Health Organization, the West is home to about 35 per cent of the world's diabetics and yet consumes more than 70 per cent of the world's insulin....

Each acre of safflower flowers could produce more than one kilogram of insulin, which could treat 2,500 diabetic patients for one year. That means just 16,000 acres of safflowers could meet the world's total demand each year.

Danger Room discusses a new, bacteria-based water purification system:

Scientists at Sam Houston State University (SHSU) have successfully designed portable, efficient, bacteria-based water treatment units. Two of the devices are on their way to Army bases in Afghanistan, and the research team is in talks with the Pentagon about sending a working prototype to help relief efforts in Haiti.

The systems, called “bio-reactors,” clean putrid water using the same bacteria you’d find in a handful of dirt. The bacteria filter the water, then eat up the sludge that’s a common byproduct of waste treatment. It’s all done in less than 24 hours, and from devices smaller than a standard shipping crate.

To put that into perspective, an average waste-water treatment process can take up to a month, and produces toxic sludge as an inevitable byproduct.

The University of Portland has banned sales of bottled water:

Officials at the Catholic university feel strongly that access to water is a basic human right and shouldn't be privatized or sold in single-use plastic bottles with present and looming water shortages. Environmental concerns played a role, too: The bottles are a petroleum-based product, they're trucked around and often not recycled. Worldwide, it takes 17.6 million barrels of oil annually (not including transportation of the finished product) to manufacture single-use plastic water bottles, according to Food & Water Watch.

"Every time a university or city bans the use of bottled water," says Julia DeGraw of the group, "they're making a huge statement and forwarding this message to the public that they need to be conscious of where their water comes from and they need to make informed decisions about where they get their water." Sixty-four campuses nationwide have a student-led "Take Back the Tap" campaign with Food & Water Watch, and at least 24 campuses in addition to UP have banned its sale, including the University of Montana Western, Colgate University and Harvard.

I was also cheered, this week, by Tim Lambert's account of his public debate with Christopher Monckton, 3rd Viscount Monckton of Brenchley:

You know that famous scene in Annie Hall where a bore is going on and on about Marshall McLuhan's work and Allen produces McLuhan who tells the bore that he got McLuhan all wrong? Well, that's kind of what happened in my debate with Monckton. Based on what he had identified as his most important argument in previous talks I was pretty sure he would argue that climate sensitivity was low based on his misunderstanding of Pinker et al Do Satellites Detect Trends in Surface Solar Radiation?. And sure enough, he did.

If you read the title of Pinker's paper, you'll see that it's about changes in surface solar radiation, not climate forcing as Monckton would have it. In ideal world I could have had Rachel Pinker appear from behind the curtain to tell Monckton that he was wrong about her paper, but I was able to do the next best thing. I first played a recording of Monckton's building up Pinker as good scientist who was not interested in the global warming debate, and where he got her gender wrong again and again. Then I played a recording of a female colleague with an American accent reading out Pinker's message to me on how Monckton had misunderstood her work. It was as if she was there.

Anyway. Moth trails and sewing patterns. An American Time Capsule. Art by urban sketchers. Japanese industrial expo posters. Australian popular publishing, 1950s-1990s. 1965 Monochrome. And photos by David Plowden.


Saturn's aurorae. Field recordings of Antarctica by Chris Watson. Gummy worm chromosomes. The shocking facts about Lumpen Orientalism. The writings of Sanora Babb. Images from Russian expeditions to the North Pole. The architecture of Esenwein and Johnson. Photos by Harold Cazneaux. And winter reconnaissance.


Little Camera. The Goldin Collection blog, featuring "a collection of radio programs featuring news, politics, health, science, religion, music, dramas, and much more from the 1930s through the 1950s." Travelling for Love. Photos by Shotaro Shimomura. Photos by Barbara Alper. A sun halo over Cambodia. And a green aurora over Orsta, Norway.


And now, a word from our sponsors.



(Photo at top via That Girl.)

Sunday Music Blogging

Friday Nudibranch Blogging

I strongly advise you to turn off the sound before watching.

Friday Hope Blogging

A dangerous cabal of egregiously gay homosexual queers will soon control the US military:

If the ban is lifted homosexuals will flock to the military and overrun it and have the full force of military law behind them, the military will be theirs.

Better yet:

[T]he next thing you know, we will have a military in fuchsia with feather boas — and that’s just the guys. The women will go for black tuxedos.

And of course, "I Will Survive" will replace "Taps" at military funerals.

A new Pentagon policy ensures that non-gay military sex will be just as sinfully nonprocreative as the other kind:

The Department of Defense will begin making the morning-after pill Plan B available at all of its hospitals and health clinics around the world, officials announced Thursday.

In nonsexual news, the Obama administration is allocating $400 million to address the problem of food deserts:

The White House proposal is modeled after a Pennsylvania effort that has steered more than $57 million in grants and loans to develop 74 local food markets in lower-income areas of the state. The Obama administration's version would be anchored by $250 million in New Market Tax Credits, which give developers incentive to launch new projects in economically distressed areas.

A federal judge has directed the Ohio EPA to enforce clean air rules:

A federal judge has ruled that Ohio environmental regulators have violated the federal Clean Air Act by allowing thousands of low-level polluters to go without the latest air-scrubbing technology.

In a decision issued late Tuesday, magistrate judge Mark Abel of the U.S. District Court in Columbus ordered Ohio Environmental Protection Agency Director Christopher Korleski to lift an exemption that his agency has been giving since 2006 to emitters of 10 tons of pollution or less per year.

Meanwhile, the EPA may be moving away from the voluntary compliance programs that were all the rage in recent years, and refocusing on regulation:

"I believe that we've made tremendous progress with the voluntary programs, but if we're going to begin to regulate more effectively, some of the voluntary programs may no longer be the priority issues and we may want to shift resources," McCarthy told a panel of EPA air quality advisers at a meeting in Arlington, Va., this week.

"There are many areas where the past administrations have been less willing to move forward with regulatory requirements, and we are willing and they are the better strategy, so that means we need to relook at what we do," she said.

A federal judge has rejected the government's request to dismiss a lawsuit brought by a US citizen who was pointlessly detained at an immigration center for seven months:

Army veteran Rennison Castillo claims officials failed to act on his pleas in 2005 to check his military record and Social Security number.

It wasn't until immigration attorneys stepped in that his citizenship was confirmed and he was freed.

Yet another anti-immigrant argument seems to have been debunked:

[T]he “effect of immigration from 1994 to 2007 was to raise the wages of U.S.-born workers, relative to foreign-born workers, by 0.4% (or $3.68 per week).” Even the small (and shrinking) number of “U.S.-born workers with less than a high school education saw a relative 0.3% increase in wages (or $1.58 per week)” as a result of immigration during this period.

Although these are relatively modest increases, they are a far cry from the dire claims of economists such as George Borjas that immigration significantly reduces wages for native-born workers.

Cameroon will recognize its portion of Lake Chad as "as a wetland of international importance."

The declaration by the Cameroon Republic that its portion of Africa's fourth largest lake is being declared a wetland of international importance under the 1971 Ramsar Convention on Wetlands follows similar declarations by Niger and Chad (both in 2001) and Nigeria (2008).

Cameroon's announcement will also clear the way for Lake Chad to become the largest of the world's few recognised trans-boundary international wetlands, where countries make a formal agreement for joint protection and management of shared aquatic ecosystems and their resources.

Rwanda's Gishwati National Conservation Park will expand:

Efforts will begin this year to expand the Gishwati National Conservation Park in Rwanda by 21 percent and begin the development of a 30-mile (50 km) forest corridor to Nyungwe National Park for a group of 14 chimpanzees facing extinction. Organizers of the Gishwati Area Conservation Program (GACP) say that in 2010 they will fund reforestation of 647 acres (262 hectares) in the Kinyenkanda area of Rutsiro District in Rwanda's Western Province.

Those efforts will increase the size of the Gishwati National Conservation Park from 3,018 acres (1,222 hectares) to 3,665 acres (1,484 hectares) and stabilize steep hillsides in an area that has been plagued by landslides and severe erosion into the Sebeya River.

And the African Commission on Human and People's Rights has made an important ruling in favor of indigenous people's rights:

The Kenyan government evicted the Endorois people, a traditional pastoralist community, from their homes at Lake Bogoria in central Kenya in the 1970s, to make way for a national reserve and tourist facilities. In the first ruling of an international tribunal to find a violation of the right to development, the Commission found that this eviction, with minimal compensation, violated the Endorois' right as an indigenous people to property, health, culture, religion, and natural resources. It ordered Kenya to restore the Endorois to their historic land and to compensate them. It is the first ruling to determine who are indigenous peoples in Africa, and what are their rights to land....

The Commission requires Kenya to take steps to return the Endorois land and compensate them within three months.

A birder has discovered a previously unknown population of long whiskered owlets, and has also captured the first footage of this extremely rare bird:

"As far as we know, this is only the fourth time this rare bird has ever been seen in the wild - and the first time it has been captured on video [see below]," says co-founder of Neotropical Primate Conservation, Noga Shanee, who also viewed the owlet. The researchers counted five individual owlets, making it the largest grouping of the birds ever recorded.

Photo by Sachar Alterman / NPC.
A new type of excluder for shrimp trawlers reduces bycatch by as much as forty percent.

A new law requiring shrimp fishers in the South American department of France to use devices that reduce unwanted fish catch will help better protect marine turtles and other vulnerable marine species in the region, WWF said in a news statement last night....

Nearly half of the world's recorded fish catch is unused, wasted or not accounted for, according to estimates in a scientific paper co-authored by WWF, published last year. The paper, Defining and Estimating Global Marine Fisheries Bycatch, calculated that each year at least 38 million tonnes of fish, constituting at least 40 percent of what is taken from oceans by fishing activities, is unmanaged or unused and should be considered bycatch.

Obama's 2011 education budget includes funding for environmental education, presumably in hopes that future generations will be smarter than, say, Ken Salazar.

It proposes $265 million dollars (a 17% increase) to support five subjects listed as vital to a complete curriculum. Environmental literacy is one of them, so schools may finally receive funding to educate kids on the impact of greenhouse gases, what happens to trash thrown on the ground after it rains, and how to recycle.

Saudi Arabia apparently plans to stop using oil to run desalinization plants:

Up to now, the more than 28 desalination plants scattered around the Kingdom have had to rely of fossil fuel, most notably fuel oil, to provide to power to run the equipment used to extract salt and other minerals from sea water.

Much of this may be changing, however, as Saudi Arabia is now interested in using solar energy to provide the power needed, instead of oil. According to an article on the UAE Top News media site, the Kingdom is now planning to build solar energy based desalination plants in order to save on energy costs, as well as be in tune with new environmental polices.

Michael Mann has been cleared of serious wrongdoing in the idiotic "Climategate" scandal.

An internal investigation by Penn State University has determined that one of the key players in 'Climategate'has been entirely cleared of the most serious allegations of misconduct made against him--falsifying climate data, destroying data or emails, misuse of confidential information. On a fourth allegation (did Mann's conduct deviate from acceptedacademic practice) the inquiry was inconclusive.

California is setting up the country's first statewide monitoring system for greenhouse gases:

The first objective of the network, which will place analyzers around the state to measure methane in the atmosphere, will be to determine if actual emissions match estimates....

“The ultimate goal is that this network will give you a gridded methane inventory where you can pinpoint exactly where the emissions are occurring,” said Jorn Dinh Herner, a scientist with the California Air Resources Board.

Renewables comprised 61% of new power generation in the EU last year:

Renewable energy made up the bulk of new power generation capacity added in the European Union last year, the European Wind Energy Association, or EWEA, said Wednesday.

Renewables accounted for 61% of new electricity generating capacity in 2009. Of the total new capacity, 39% was from wind power and 16% was from photovoltaic solar power, EWEA said.

There's talk of powering highway lights with wind turbines.

TAK’s wind-powered light uses the moving air from cars zipping by on the highway to generate energy that can be used to power roadside lighting. It’s a controversial idea–could wind from passing cars actually provide enough power for lighting?–but one that has the potential to save lots of cash in already wind-heavy regions.

It's an interesting idea, but I mention it mainly as an excuse to post this picture.

This is interesting:

Solar engineers have long sought to develop an energy-generating glazing that is as capable of producing power as it is easy on the eyes. The feat may just have been accomplished by The Center for Architecture Science and Ecology (CASE), who have developed a concentrating solar system that is not only modern and attractive but extremely efficient and cost effective. The system is made up of rows of pyramid-shaped glass receptors that move with sunlight throughout the day, magnifying the incoming light and capturing it in a small photovoltaic cell located in the center of each pyramid.

Michigan has been using a five-point plan to reduce bloodstream infections in hospitals, and it seems to be working well:

Peter Pronovost, M.D., Ph.D...says the widely heralded success in Michigan — the first state system to tackle in a wholesale fashion infections in central-line catheters ubiquitous in intensive-care units — has significantly changed the way physicians think about these infections.

"Prior to our work, we thought these were largely inevitable infections and that they were simply a cost of being in the hospital," says Pronovost, the report's leader and the developer of the checklist. "Now we know they are universally preventable. We've reset the benchmark."

Here's one way of dealing with peak oil:

As oil supplies become more scarce and the Hummer looks more and more like an extravagant joke, it only makes sense that someone would decide to turn the jumbo car into the ultimate symbol of bygone times: the horse cart.

New York-based artist Jeremy Dean turned a $15,000 Hummer H2 into a horse cart as a throwback to “Hoover carts” — old cars reclaimed as horse carts during the Great Depression.

And speaking of peak oil, here's a public service message from Alex Steffen:

The conventional human responses -- relocalism (draw in, bunker down, look to survival, plan for community in the aftermath) and nostalgic retreat (embrace a return to some vision of pre-post-industrial society; go back to a time when, we imagine, things were more sustainable, or more, if you're a fundamentalist, righteous) -- are both completely understandable, but they're forlorn hopes....

The world we need is one we've never yet seen.

Apropos of which: Unclaimed lands. A typical incendiary blog post (thank God it can't happen here!). Land and cityscapes by Marquis Palmer (via things). Photos by Roger Fenton. And incredible photos of Siberia by Emile Hyperion Dubuisson.


Distilled geography. The fascinating story of Operation Micemeat. (In related news, Colossus is fit and working again.) Soundscapes, and a topology of sound maps. The Dresden Codex. Rubbish goes here. Photos by Kamila Kulik. And a terrific Luminous Lint exhibition called O Canada.


Women, Snakes, and Stalkers (via Peacay). Mars as Art (see also An Astrosociological Approach to Defining Indigenous Martian Architecture). Explosion + freezing = a scenic attraction. Victorian photocollage. Lots and lots of actresses (via Agence Eureka). And photos by Tim Simmons.


And as per usual, here's a short film.



(Photo at top: "Snow on Garage Door, Rochester, New York" by Minor White, 1960.)

Playing a Role

A press release from the Society for Research in Child Development explains the findings of a new study:

Moms influence how children develop advanced cognitive functions

Executive functioning is a set of advanced cognitive functions — such as the ability to control impulses, remember things, and show mental flexibility — that help us plan and monitor what we do to reach goals. Although executive functioning develops speedily between ages 1 and 6, children vary widely in their skills in this area. Now a new longitudinal study tells us that moms play a role in how their children develop these abilities.

The study "looked at 80 pairs of middle-income Canadian moms and their year-old babies." (Apparently, all the fathers were out hunting mastodon.) Here's how the lead author describes her findings:

"The study sheds light on the role parents play in helping children develop skills that are important for later school success and social competence," according to Annie Bernier, professor of psychology at the University of Montreal and the study's lead author.

That's pretty straightforward, and reflects the language of the paper itself. So why does the press release focus on "moms," as though executive functioning were dependent specifically on the (middle-income) mother's presence and level of engagement? Beats me. But since this sort of distortion often happens when research into gender roles, sexuality, and parenthood is summarized for the media, I assume that the people in charge of PR know their market, and have a good sense of which emphasis is more likely to get the research noticed.

Which leads me, naturally enough, to this quote from Pierre Bourdieu:

[S]ocial scientists, and especially sociologists, are the object of very great solicitude, whether it be positive - and very often profitable, materially and symbolically, for those who opt to serve the dominant vision, if only by omission (and in this case, scientific inadequacy suffices) - or negative, and malignant, sometimes even destructive, for those who, just by practising their craft, contribute to unveiling a little of the truth of the world.

The Art of the Possible

Even though Reagan proved deficits don't matter, the Obama administration has proposed budget cuts that will affect Endangered Species Act protections:

The Obama administration has proposed to cut funding for listing of endangered species by 5 percent. Currently, there are 249 species that are designated as candidates for listing as endangered species. Candidate species, including the New England cottontail, yellow-billed loon, Yosemite toad, and many others, are species that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has determined do need protection, but for which they claim they lack the resources to actually provide that protection. Many animals and plants have been waiting decades for protection, and most are gravely endangered. To date, the administration has only protected two species under the Endangered Species Act. By comparison, the Clinton administration protected an average of 65 species per year....

The proposed budget also cuts funding for candidate conservation, which is supposed to provide protection to candidate species in the absence of listing, by almost 9 percent; cuts funding for endangered species law enforcement by almost 4 percent; and is nearly flat for recovery.

Oddly enough, the administration has also declined to raise the federal fee applied to livestock that are grazed on public lands:

On Friday the U.S. Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management announced that in 2010 it would not increase the paltry $1.35 monthly fee charged for each cow and calf that the livestock industry grazes on western public land. The fee remains far below what the agencies spend to administer grazing permits, it remains far below market rates, and it remains far short of providing revenue needed to correct the severe ecological damage caused by livestock grazing.

Habitat destruction caused by livestock is a primary factor contributing to the decline of threatened and endangered species including the desert tortoise, Mexican spotted owl, southwestern willow flycatcher, least Bell’s vireo, Mexican gray wolf, Oregon spotted frog, Chiricahua leopard frog, in addition to dozens of other species of imperiled mammals, fish, amphibians, and spring snails that occur on western public land. Livestock grazing is also a primary factor contributing to unnaturally severe western wildfires, watershed degradation, soil loss, and the spread of invasive plants.

Could a higher grazing fee prevent cuts to ESA protections that are necessary in part because of the livestock industry?

Who knows? Who cares?

In other news, Phoenix, AZ will make up its budget shortfalls by taxing staple foods:

Phoenix's mayor argues that while people need to eat, they also need basic services like police and firemen, and without closing gaps in the city's budget with a food tax, they wont be available.

(Photo: "A trough stands out on a landscape made barren by grazing. - Awapa Plateau, Dixie National Forest." Via Utah Environmental Congress.)

Speaking Out

OneNewsNow.com discusses a lawsuit filed by the Thomas More Law Center against USAG Eric Holder, which claims that the Matthew Shephard Act oppresses bigots by criminalizing expressions of bigotry.

According to the TMLC attorney, this law criminalizes those who speak out against homosexuality based on biblical principles and violates the plaintiffs' rights to freedom of speech, expressive association, and exercise of free religion as protected by the First Amendment....

"It is equating those pastors and religious persons who teach what the Bible teaches on homosexuality with somebody who might express racist comments," [Robert] Muise contends. "I think what this is about is chilling and inhibiting freedom of speech, the free exercise of religion, and the right of expressive association in particular for Christians."

See, racist comments are qualitatively different from homophobic ones, inasmuch as sexual orientation is a "choice" according to fundamentalist dogma, while not being white is simply an unhappy accident.

And of course, even if homosexuality isn't a choice, you can still choose not to act on its promptings, just as Jews can overcome their inborn desire to wear yarmulkes, run pawnshops, and follow the Protocols.

Remember: It takes two to tango. If it weren't for perverts and subhumans, bigotry wouldn't exist! Why should society protect these...these...people from the logical consequences of their bad personal decisions?

Anyway...putting aside the fact that hate speech per se is not criminalized by the MSA, and the logical problems with claiming that there's a constitutional right to deny other people constitutional rights on religious grounds, and my personal suspicion that Robert Muise is as bent as a safety pin, what's really ludicrous about this article is the poll that appears at its end.


As you can see, they've left out an option for "all of the above."

It's a private site, of course, and they can do what they like. But personally, I don't want to be lectured about freedom of expression by people who can't even grant readers the option for dissent on something as meaningless as a fucking online poll.


(Photo of TeaParty.org founder Dale Robertson via Morons With Signs.)

A Sense of Security

Richard Cohen says "there is almost nothing the Obama administration does regarding terrorism that makes me feel safer." At the risk of shocking you, this leads him to make an imperious demand for less civilization and more torture.

Which reminds me of something I said in this post:

Having a wingnut tell you that you're weak on national security is like having Howard Hughes tell you that you don't wash your hands often enough. The obvious problem with this is that you can't wash your hands often enough to satisfy a maniac; there's not enough soap and water on earth.

As well as something I said in this post:

Cohen insists that the accommodation his own defective nature has made to brutality comprises some self-evident spiritual axiom for the rest of us.

If I could leave it at that, I'd probably be a better person. I'd certainly be a happier and calmer one. But Cohen's beliefs are too grotesque not to repudiate at greater length. It won't impress him, natch...but at least our supremely rational transhuman descendants will have evidence that some of Cohen's contemporaries thought he was an absolute fucking monster.

Here, he explains why we should be allowed to lock people away in perpetuity:

It's true that the world does not like Guantanamo, but then it's also true that the world is not an al-Qaeda target.

I thought the unique horror of al-Qaeda was that they intended to force the entire civilized world under the yoke of sharia, and then cut everyone's heads off. I was also under the impression that they'd attacked and killed people in a variety of countries, including Muslim ones.

But apparently, they're only angry at us. Which means that no one's allowed to criticize us for indefinitely detaining suspects, or suspected suspects, or alleged associates of suspected suspects, or their next-door neighbors. A man's gotta do what a man's gotta do!

No doubt George Bush soiled America's image abroad with what looked liked vigilante justice and Dick Cheney's hearty endorsement of ugly interrogation measures. But more is at stake here than America's image abroad -- namely the security and peace of mind of Americans in America.

And what could America's image abroad possibly have to do with its security? Barbra Streisand probably thinks there's some sort of connection, but real Americans know that furriners who perceive the USA as a land of cruel, lawless, hypocritical bullies are much less likely to launch deadly attacks on our cities. And they also know that other countries are much more likely to help us fight terrorism when we make it perfectly clear that we don't give a fuck what they say or think about our methods. That's just common sense.

As is this:

[T]he paramount civil liberty is a sense of security....

Not even security, which would be bad enough, but a sense of security: the kind you get when you see photos like these and realize that they're not just comforting, but also sort of arousing.

I don't know about you, but I don't want my government to do whatever it takes to help Richard Cohen sleep peacefully, partly because I have no desire to live in a neo-monarchist police state that's run like a game of Calvinball, and partly because I don't think a monomaniacal warmonger like Cohen deserves to sleep peacefully. It irritates me that despite the widely acknowledged horrors of the Iraq War, and Abu Ghraib, and every other act of unjustifiable cruelty that this awful little man cheered as though it were Yanni's third encore, Cohen still mistakes his chickenshit bloodlust for the promptings of our collective soul.

That's how come I've decided to take up a collection in order to make Cohen as secure as possible. I say we inoculate him against smallpox and anthrax and Q-fever, put him in a heavily padded suit of armor, seal him in an unmarked bathyscaphe well stocked with potassium iodide and duct tape, and drop his sorry ass into the Marianas Trench so he can run out the clock in perfect safety, just like the Prince of Pompadoodle. To keep him happy as well as safe, we'll broadcast clips from Salo and tell him they're excerpted from US interrogations conducted in the underground prison complex of some Near Eastern client state.

Of course, he won't be able to write any more of this ugly crypto-fascist nonsense, lest the jihadists trace his Intertube signals and blow him up with suitcase nukes. But who wouldn't give up the right to make an abject fool of oneself in print, in order to gain a sense of security?

In related news, Daniel Pipes advises Obama to salvage his approval ratings by attacking Iran. I feel safer already!

UPDATE: Instead of impotently cursing the darkness a la yours truly, The Editors offer to protect Lower Manhattan from the forces of Islamo-liberal constitutionalist juridicalism.

(Image at top via lurkertech.)

Figures Don't Lie

Kos has conducted a poll of self-identified Republicans, and it has confirmed his theory that most of them are insane. I think they're pretty nuts myself, but I have some problems with his methodology all the same. For example:

Do you believe your state should secede from the United States?

Yes 23
No 58
Not Sure 19

Kos claims that this means "42 percent of Republicans aren't really patriotic...these traitors don't believe in democracy, in our nation's founding ideals, or in our flag." Perhaps this is a joke. If not, it seems like a bit of a stretch, especially since we don't know how many people answered "not sure" simply because they don't know what "secede" means. As someone who used to work in the business, I can say that drawing grandiose conclusions from noncommittal or uncomprehending answers is usually a bad idea.

Also, I suspect you could find left-leaning respondents, especially in California and the PNW, who wouldn't be entirely averse to secession, so I'm not convinced this is strictly a right-wing phenomenon.

Should public school students be taught that the book of Genesis in the Bible explains how God created the world?

Yes 77
No 15
Not Sure 8

This question is badly conceived and written. Some people might answer "yes" simply because this is a basic point of cultural literacy. Since there's no follow-up question about whether evolution should be taught, I guess we're supposed to jump to the conclusion that learning what Genesis says is tantamount to rejecting science, or smashing the barrier between church and state, or whatever. Honestly, this isn't much better than the loaded poll questions Lou Dobbs used to post. I'd rather not see people on "my" side embracing these tactics.

Are marrigiages equal partnerships, or are men the leaders of their households?

Men 13
Equal 76
Not Sure 11

Interestingly, the option of female leadership is left out: either men are leaders, or men and women are equals. I'm hoping this is simply a matter of assuming a priori that all Republicans everywhere are much too regressive to consider women "leaders." Otherwise, it could be taken as evidence that the Left occasionally has its own blind spots when it comes to taking women seriously.

This stuff irritates me. I've been known to call people names and caricature them and heap scorn on their heads. But I don't approve of using dubious statistics to give this abuse a pseudoscientific veneer. Outside of encouraging the sort of dehumanization that Kos objects to elsewhere, I really don't know what purpose this survey is supposed to serve.

And just for the record, I'm less worried about what Republicans believe than I am about the unexamined assumptions the right and left tend to share. The problem, as I see it, is that Americans agree on far too much.

But that's a rant for another day.

(Image via Media Matters.)

Increased Runoff

When you're conducting a massive, semiconscious experiment with the climate of the only planet you have, it's important to remember that things may possibly turn out well, for some people.

Certain "experts" argue that we're running a terrible risk, but that's only because they've focused ghoulishly on the worst-case scenario. Which tells you all you need to know about their priorities: Who but an enemy of capitalism would weigh the costs of a devastated world against the benefits of a very slightly improved one, and come down on the side of realism and responsibility?

With these concerns firmly in mind, Anne Jolis of the WSJ does something the Warmists never do. She looks at the science:

According to a 2004 paper [link added, since Jolis couldn't be bothered] by British geographer and climatologist Nigel Arnell, global warming would likely reduce the world's total number of people living in "water-stressed watersheds"...even though many regions would see increased water shortages. Using multiple models, Mr. Arnell predicted that if temperatures rise, between 867 million and 4.5 billion people around the world could see increased "water stress" by 2085. But Mr. Arnell also found that "water stress" could decrease for between 1.7 billion and 6 billion people. Taking the average of the two ranges, that means that with global warming, nearly 2.7 billion people could see greater water shortages — but 3.85 billion could see fewer of them.

According to Jolis, the IPPC emphasizes the negative scenario and "largely ignores the greater number likely to see more water courtesy of climate change."

The problem is, you can't simply balance drought here with extra rainfall there, as though they were debits and credits in some cosmic ledger. What matters is where and when droughts and rainfall and snowmelt occur, and the overall effect on ecosystems as well as population and infrastructure. As a simplistic example, more runoff (and perhaps flooding) in Turkey isn't necessarily going to make up for drought, forest loss, and wildfires in the Amazon. As Arnell himself explains:

People living in these watersheds have an apparent decrease in water resources stress, but in practice the extra water may not alleviate water stress because it may occur largely during increased flood flows.

Jolis gets her information from Indur Goklany, a cornucopian dingbat whom she claims was formerly "with the U.S. Department of the Interior" (even though his career with thinktanks like Cato and the Heartland Institute should be far more impressive in her circles). Needless to say, Goklany is neither a climatologist nor a hydrologist. But then, neither is Al Gore, so it all evens out.

Since Arnell's work provides the evidence Jolis requires in order to trash the IPCC, you might think she'd treat him with a bit of deference. But it turns out that he's part of the problem:

Mr. Arnell, who helped author the summary and some sections in the full report, told your correspondent he is "happy" with the way his work was represented. He said one reason for the omissions was "space"....The other reason Mr. Arnell cited — which he emphasized in his 2004 paper — is that increased and decreased water stress are asymmetrical indicators, and comparing them is "misleading."

"Having a bit more [water] is not as good as having a bit less is bad," Mr. Arnell explained....

Jolis complains that "Mr. Arnell's 22-page paper is rife with caveats and uncertainties," but this doesn't prevent it from being a sturdy club with which to beat the IPCC. After all, "uncertainties" in climate science always support the status quo, even when authors emphasize (as Arnell does) that they're probably understating the problems we face.

What's really sad is that some of the uncertainties in predicting water stress depend on our own willingness to mitigate or prepare for warming, which in turn depends on the extent to which know-nothings like Jolis are allowed to influence the debate.

As a working scientist, Arnell has more recent papers and more current statements on this issue, and they underscore the fact that there really isn't a "bright side" here. But who cares? All that matters is that the IPCC has taken some hits lately, and lots more mud needs to be thrown as quickly as possible. Since Goklany had a readymade complaint from several years ago, which could be recirculated with a minimum of effort, Jolis is dutifully trotting it out.

If you claim that a warmer world will be better world, readers might be tempted to leave all their lights on 'round the clock, regardless of personal expense, in hopes of making their own small contribution to human happiness. That's a slippery slope indeed, and so Jolis is careful to stress that what's needed here is not activism but complacency:

The point here is not to suggest that pollution and any resulting warming will deliver the Third World from its troubles, or that emitting ever-more carbon dioxide should be pursued as humanitarian policy. Clearly any benefits of global warming are extremely speculative — but then so are the costs.

Lovely, isn't it? When Arnell projects water decreases in Europe and North America and China, it's "extremely speculative" and therefore not worth worrying about. Meanwhile, there may be a bit more water in some areas of the Third World, for reasons and with results that don't bear going into. This is also extremely speculative, but it's still useful as a counterweight to the hysterical claims of "alarmists"...like, for instance, Nigel Arnell.

In other news, Brazil intends to dam the Xingu River.

Critics say the Belo Monte plant will be hugely inefficient, generating less than 10% of its capacity during the three to four months of the low-water season.

The New Feudalism

According to Joel Kotkin, the fifty-year War on Suburbia ended definitively in 2005, then restarted a year later, then threatened to re-restart in 2009 because of Obama's tendency toward eco-Malthusianism, and has now been launched in earnest.

In everything from land use and transportation to “green” energy policy, the Obama administration has been pushing an agenda that seeks to move Americans out of their preferred suburban locales and into the dense, transit-dependent locales they have eschewed for generations.

When Kotkin says that Americans prefer suburbs, what he really means is that they generally prefer single-family homes. And of course, there are single-family homes in cities and small towns, just as there are apartments and condos in suburbia. But as I've complained before, Kotkin tends to treat all non-urban communities as functionally equivalent. It doesn't much matter whether you're in Old Westbury or Lost Hills, Grosse Pointe or Palmdale; as long as you don't live in a big city, your "choice" tends to prove whatever anti-urban point he wants to make.

Unfortunately, the smug urban sophisticates in the Obama administration lack Kotkin's grasp of Human Nature:

[T]he Obama administration seems almost willfully city-centric.

For example, Obama is in favor of high-speed rail.

Economics writer Robert Samuelson, among others, has denounced the high-speed rail idea as “a boondoggle” not well-suited to a huge, multi-centered country like the United States.

'Cause when you think about it, what possible value could high-speed rail have in a country like ours, where multiple urban centers are separated by large distances?

Obama is also threatening to reduce national greenhouse gas emissions, which we can all agree is egregiously city-centric.

[R]egulators can use the threat of climate change as a rationale to stop funding—and permitting—for even well-conceived residential, commercial, or industrial projects construed as likely to generate excess greenhouse gases.

Next thing you know, they'll be using the toxicology of lead as a rationale to deny permits to well-conceived residential projects that just happen to use lead water pipes.

Since Kotkin doesn't seriously believe in global warming, or peak oil, or carrying capacity, or resource depletion, or anything else that could conceivably be invoked as a sensible argument against cornucopian happy talk, he's baffled and a little frightened by people who choose to live in a nightmare world of limits, no matter how tentatively those limits inform their actions.

Administration officials have also started handing out $300 million stimulus-funded grants to cities that follow “smart growth principles.” Grants for cities to adopt “sustainability” oriented development will reward those communities with the proper planning orientation. There is precious little that will benefit suburbanites, such as improved roads or investment in other basic infrastructure.

That "precious little" includes $27.5 billion in highway funds, which my trusty abacus informs me is a lot more than the $300M allocated to smart growth "smart growth." (Scare quotes like these are central to Kotkin's argument, so it'd be unfair to edit them out.)

As you'd expect from someone who's very fond of military metaphors, Kotkin seems to see urban planning as a zero-sum game: every federal dollar that doesn't explicitly benefit his beloved suburbs is part of a scorched-earth attack on the middle class, and therefore on humanity itself. The idea that good urban planning might actually benefit suburban residents seems alien to him. For instance, he treats suburban growth around Portland, OR as a rejection of that city's planning decisions...as though people were flocking to these areas despite their proximity to Portland, rather than because of it.

Although we're in terrible danger, what with all these New Urbanist radicals threatening our way of life, Americans are sensible people, so everything will be fine.

[S]uch policies have little or no chance of being passed by Congress. Too many representatives come from suburban or rural districts to back policies that would penalize a population that uses automobiles for upwards of 98 percent of their transportation and account for 95 percent of all work trips.

In other words, the fact that we currently have low walkability and poor mass transit is the reason we can't have high walkability and better mass transit. The system works!

Better yet, technological advances will soon make cars much more fuel-efficient, without improving the efficiency of mass transit in any way. This means that we get to compare the glorious new supercars of the Kotkinian workers' paradise with today's antiquated buses, which are ridden primarily by basilisk-eyed welfare queens and hoboes with 100-proof vomit all over their shoes. Never underestimate the power of new technology to carve conventional wisdom in stone!

Speaking of which, did you know that many of our environmental problems can be solved by telecommuting? From suburbia, I mean? Laugh if you want, but modern technology has allowed Kotkin to retool the same pro-sprawl arguments again and again, and send them electronically to various media outlets without leaving his gracious single-family home. Multiply that gain in efficiency by, say, 150 million people, and you can see that federal regulation of CO2 emissions is a waste of time, in addition to being immoral.

From here, we proceed directly to Kotkin's traditional litany of complaints against liberal snobbery and doomsaying. Tweedy academics say suburbs are drab and ugly, even though the people who live in them seem to like it just fine. Liberals say suburbs are "the racist spawn of 'white flight,'" just because "in 1970 nearly 95 percent of suburbanites were white." Environmentalists say it's possible to run out of oil and water and land, even though that kind of talk makes people feel bad. With enemies like these, suburban developers and homebuyers (and the banks who lend to them, and the politicians who subsidize them) must be doing something right!

In conclusion, Kotkin warns us about a looming "new feudalism," in which "questions of land ownership and decision making would be shifted away from citizens, neighbors, or markets and left in the hands of self-appointed 'betters.'" As if anything could be "better" than market decisions with which Kotkin agrees! Nulle terre sans seigneur, motherfuckers!

Be sure to tune in next month, when the War on Suburbia will either end again or start anew, depending on whether the coin Kotkin flipped came up heads or tails.

(Image at top: Oppressed cottagers use appropriate technology to create a locavorist "garden city" on a royal desmesne in 12th-century Northumberland.)