gregladen | January 25, 2017I'm only just digesting this, but it appears that Judith Curry, climate scientist turned anti-climate change activist (more or less) has joined the Koch Brothers front group "Cause of Action".
How do we know this? Because she has filed an Amicus Brief (2017.01.25 Mot. for Leave to File, Nos. 14-cv-101 14-cv-126 (D.C.))( on behalf of the National Review and the Competitive Enterprise Institute in the case of Mann vs. Those Guys, with council at Cause of Action Institute.
Go read the brief. It is pretty nasty.
Also related, this: 2017.01.25 Br. of Amicus Dr. Judith A. Curry Nos. 14-cv-101 14…
gregladen | January 25, 2017This is a press release from the Natural Resources Committee Democrats, US House of Representatives concerning President Trump's decision and actions to push ahead with two highly controversial petroleum pipeline projects.
These projects had previously been stopped because they did not meet environmental standards, or because they violated tribal agreements. It is still quite possible that these reasons still matter, and that President Trump cant' simply wish the projects back into existence. Or maybe he can. It remains to be determined.
Here is the statement:
Washington, D.C. – Ranking…
gregladen | January 24, 2017The solar energy field now produces the larest share of jobs in US Power generation. There are 374,000 jobs i Solar right now, compared to fewer than 190,00 in coal, gas, and oil.
This corresponds to shifts in the amount of electricity produced by these various sources, as indicated in the Department of Energy graph shown above.
The biggest states for this job growth are California followed distantly by Massachusetts, Nevada, New York, New Jersey, Texas, Arizona, Florida, and North Carolina.
Given current trends inside the beltway, I expect the Department of Energy to make this report…
gregladen | January 24, 2017It is a good idea to occassionally experience history. This helps us understand ourselves, and our possible futures, better. Much of this is done through reading excellent texts. For example, I'm currently reading Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln by Doris Kearns Goodwin. Goodwin's objective is to contextualize Lincoln by looking at him in the broader context of the individuals that ran against him for the Republican nomination, and whom he later added to his cabinet. Goodwin succeeds, at several points, in placing the reader in a time or place of great import.…
gregladen | January 24, 2017From ClimateTruth.org, in response to Trump gag orders on the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA):
“President Trump and his administration have ignored scientific reality, and now they’re trying to hide it.
“Merely five days into Donald Trump’s presidency, the administration is silencing the agencies tasked with protecting our environment, our health, and our food supply. This gag order sets a dangerous precedent and is sending a chilling message to civil servants throughout the country.
“We knew the Trump administration would go…
gregladen | January 24, 2017It is generally felt that Trump's claims of voter fraud, especially, apparently, by illegal aliens -- Or some kind of alien, not sure -- could be a prelude, or excuse for some kind of widespread voter suppression campaign. In any event, these repeated claims were once thought of as an odd and embarassing bit of yammering by the President elect, but now they have become a keystone of the White House's current activism, foregrounded by the hapless Sean Spicer, who appears to not believe the claims himself.
From NBC:
The White House doubled down on President Donald Trump's widely debunked…
gregladen | January 24, 2017The science is clear: Human caused global warming is happening and is serious. Building and expanding infrastructure to make it easier to burn fossil fuels is a very bad idea. The Keystone XL pipeline and the Dakota Access pipeline were two such projects, and in recent years, the environmental community, politicians, and others managed to stop these projects.
Today, President Trump signed an executive order that brings these projects back to life and moves them forward.
From Rhea Suh, president of the National Resources Defense Council:
“It’s appalling that Trump wants to throw open our…
gregladen | January 23, 2017April 2016, white house correspondents dinner:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NxFkEj7KPC0
gregladen | January 23, 2017I'm not sure this has happened before, and most people are unaware, so I thought a quick note was in order.
If you were previously following the President of the United States on Twitter, when it was Barack Obama, you followed @POTUS.
Twitter has created an account called @POTUS44, which is for President Obama. You are now automatically following that handle.
Twitter redesignated @POTUS to apply to President Trump, and left all of the President Obama followers on that account as well. So, you are now following President Trump at @POTUS.
The same applies, in parallel, to the First Lady and…
gregladen | January 20, 2017This is not a time to be distracted, to turn away from politics, to eschew activism. In fact, if you are an American Citizen, you have to look back at your life and recognize that you screwed up, in two ways. First, whatever time you spent agitating and activating and acting out, turns out, was not enough. You needed to spend something like 10% more time on that. Second, whatever decisions you made as to exactly what sort of activism you would do on a given day were likely flawed. Instead of yammering about Bernie after the primary you should have been going after Trump. At the beginning of…
gregladen | January 19, 2017The West Wing Version:
Josh, Toby, Leo, and Donna are in Leo's office. They have just gotten word that a major auto manufacturer plans to build a plant in Mexico, and will likely close a corresponding plant in Michigan. Josh is pacing, Leo is behind his desk, Donna is standing near the door, and Toby is sitting in a chair smoking an unlit cigar. All four had just come from a poker game with the President and others.
Josh Leyman: Screw the auto industry. If they decide to move another plant to Mexico, we just slap a 35% tariff on them!
Leo Mcgarry: That won't go well, Josh, and you know it.…
gregladen | January 19, 2017I've got this press release that will be of interest to many:
An international team including researchers at the university of Edinburgh and Antoine Wystrach of the Research Centre on Animal Cognition (CNRS/Université Toulouse III—Paul Sabatier) has shown that ants can get their bearings whatever the orientation of their body. Their brains may be smaller than the head of a pin, but ants are excellent navigators that use celestial and terrestrial cues to memorize their paths. To do so, they use several regions of the brain simultaneously, proving once again that the brain of insects is more…
gregladen | January 17, 2017Yes there are Nixon-Trump similarities. But in the end, probably not many. (A lot of Congresspersons boycotted his second inaugural, by the way). Also, for those who are not familiar with Watergate, I'll tell you this: The medium to worst case scenario of Trump's election, which would include Russian Hacking and possibly the Trump Dossier (but you don't need the dossier in this scenario) is about 400% worse than Watergate. The Watergate scandal, after which we now name all scandals, was also about stealing an election. It is not as clear that the Plumbers stole the election for Nixon that it…
gregladen | January 17, 2017My current phone, a Google Nexus made by Motorola, is still working fine. I'm much more worried about Amanda's Samsung, which is a nightmare. The storage on that phone is used up by Samsung proprietary gunk that can't be removed, and she can't insert a microSD card because the phone will not operate as an actual phone (reliably) when there is a microSD card in it. Her "deal" at Verizon is running out soon, and I'm personally hoping she goes with the Pixel. And, eventually, I'll be in the market for an upgrade as well.
One must make proper comparisons. So I did.
The bottom line:…
gregladen | January 16, 2017This is a descriptive model of Donald Trump's behavior, which ultimately works out to a prediction that Donald Trump won't last very long. In an evolutionary sense, at least.
I've found that many people use the term "spite" incorrectly. Many assume it has to do with vitriol or nastiness, or otherwise, is motivated negative behavior of some kind. This is not even close to the scientific definition of the term. A daffodil plant can carry out an act of spite, and a daffodil plant is unlikely to engage in motivated behavior.
Spite involves carrying out an act where the ultimate cost to…
gregladen | January 15, 2017A lot of people are just catching up on who John Lewis is. One way to do that is to read his memoir, Walking with the Wind: A Memoir of the Movement.
U.S. Rep. John Lewis (D-GA) is presented with the 2010 Medal of Freedom by President Barack Obama.
He is a senior African American Representative to the House who was famously involved in the civil rights movement of the 1960s, along side Doctor King. If you watch any news at all you've seen him plenty of times. He is now also known as the latest person Donald Trump decided to denigrate and insult on Twitter.
I would like to see everyone…
gregladen | January 14, 2017Ah yes, I remember it well.
"Hammurabi, Hammurabi, I beg to report to you,
In Year 1, 0 people have starved.
101 people came to the city
The population is now 124
We harvested 4.5 bushels per acre
We planted 998 acres of wheat
But rats at 300 bushels of wheat
You now have a surplus of 1443 bushels of wheat
How many acres do yo uwish to feed to the people?
How many acres do you wish to plant with seed?
Oh, and you have died of Cholera!"
Or, this one:
Remember?
I went to a special high school, in an era when individuals and high schools alike did not have computers, but we did. Since we were a…
gregladen | January 13, 2017My friend Peter Gleick tosses this question aside and informs us that there are actually better questions. Is California having a wet year? How does the snowpack look? Are the reservoirs filling up? Will the groundwater recharge? Will the forests in the Sierra recover with all this precip? Will farmers get all the water they want this year? Will a wet year help the endangered salmon? Will governor Brown cancel the drought declaration? Can Californians stop conserving water and throw some on their lawn?
It turns out that the answer to most of these questions is not what you would assume…
gregladen | January 13, 2017ADDED: It has been suggested that I clarify an important point about this post.
So, dear reader, please understand that the information provided here is my best attempt at analysis of the information that I have available. There is clearly conjecture here. So, of course, read all this with a grain of salt. The size of that grain of salt can be as small or large as you like. I also amended the title of the post.
-gtl
ADDED Feb 1
I'll just be putin' this link here: http://money.cnn.com/2017/02/01/news/fsb-kaspersky-arrests/index.html?sr=twcnni020217fsb-kaspersky-arrests0129AMStoryPhoto…
gregladen | January 12, 2017Remember that movie? I mainly remember it because I was a kid in Gloucester when it was being filmed. Anyway, here they come again.
This happened today on C-Span.
https://twitter.com/bubbaprog/status/819632340272054272
LOL
Then, C-Span released this statement (Hat Tip: Sheril Kirshenbaum):
https://twitter.com/Sheril_/status/819657729534988288