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Hurricanes: bad scenarios

There are three tropical storms in the Atlantic right now, Hanna, Ike and Josephine. We are coming up on peak hurricane season. Flow off Africa suggests there may be 2-3 more disturbances coming up behind those, which could develop into tropical storms. Long range forecasts are generally poor, too many ways in which a small angular deflection of near future trajectories could change long term trajectory drastically, but current projections suggest Hanna will scoot up the east coast, probably as a weak cat 1-2 hurricane, hitting land anywhere between maybe north Florida and North Carolina,…

Velocity dispersions in a cluster of stars

Hrmph. The real issue is the exact proper motion, not the dispersion about the mean. Although I suppose outliers can be interesting, even in small N groups. This is very clever. I award it a clear: "damn, I wish I had thought of that...!" "Velocity dispersions in a cluster of stars: How fast could Usain Bolt have run? H. K. Eriksen, J. R. Kristiansen, O. Langangen, I. K. Wehus (Submitted on 1 Sep 2008 (v1), last revised 2 Sep 2008 (this version, v2)) Since that very memorable day at the Beijing 2008 Olympics, a big question on every sports commentator's mind has been "What would the 100 meter…

iPod iChing - veep

Fabulous friday, and we have just two letters of the Mighty iPod: VP? Whoosh goes the randomizer. Whoosh. iPod divination for newbies - Believe it! The Covering: Visitor for Mr Edmonds - Half Man Half Biscuit The Crossing: Mbh - Billy Bragg The Crown: Midnight Log - The Clash The Root: Song 2 - Blur The Past: Maria - Green Day The Future: Menuett F-Dur KV4 - Mozart The Questioner: My Perfect Cousin - Undertones The House: Rite of Spring 6. Glorification of the Chosen One, Evocation of the Ancestors, Ritual Action of the Ancestors - Stravinsky The Inside: Brindisi: Libiamo, Ne' Lieti Calici…

grade inflation

" ...I am going to warn you one last chance I am going to ask I want a better than a B-," the e-mail read. "If I see this [grade] I swear to god I am going to fucking put you in a wheelchair when I see you..." wrote an undergraduate student to one of my colleagues this week the student was arrested and arraigned for terroristic threats. Well, that's different. I had been worrying that my "curve" was tipping too far, too many As and Bs, but this is not why - in fact student whingeing, if anything, would tip me towards harsher grading. But, there do seem to be more high grades than I expect…

Friday Fun: The Best Sword & Sorcery Stories

If you love sword & sorcery books and stories (and who doesn't!), SF Signal has one of their Mind Meld features in which they ask a bunch of writers and editors to name their favourites of the genre. Here's a taste: Lou Anders "Ill met in Lankhmar" tops any list. How could it not? Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser defined sword & sorcery for me as a child, and I'm thrilled that, having just started rereading their adventures they are thus far holding up. Michael Moorcock's "Stormbringer" is tied or a close second. I haven't read that since I was 15 but the Moorcock I have read hasn't dated.…

the innumeracy of the quants

the root cause of the failure of AIG FP is that they were off by an order of magnitude as to what the risk was they were betting against "The Seed Of Ruin Is Planted - That year, JP Morgan approached AIG, proposing that, for a fee, AIG insure JP Morgan's complex corporate debt, in case of default. According to computer models devised by Gary Gorton, a Yale Business Professor and consultant to the unit, there was a 99.85 percent chance that AIGFP would never have to pay out on these deals. Essentially, this would happen only if the economy went into a full-blown depression, in which case, the…

KITP: green stars

I've never seen a green star I hope to never see one but I can tell you anyhow I'd rather model it than observe it... if you have a bunch of stars of some age, or range of ages, and composition with the stars all different mass over some range of masses, and maybe some binaries and peculiar stars and interacting stars, and bit of dust, then what colour are they? In particular if you are looking at a big clump of stars from far away the easy thing to do is to see the slightly fuzzy blob, plop some filters on your aperture and measure the colour - the difference in brightness in a small number…

KITP: sph

today we start turning our minds back to techniques, before we start contemplating what to do about white dwarfs Stephan tutors us on SPH. Smooth Particle Hydrodynamics models fluid flow using a Lagrangian method - rather than constructing a grid, as in Eulerian techniques, SPH is not constrained by prior geometry. Rather SPH samples the fluid flow with particles, which have a compact smoothing kernel to sample overlapping adjacent fluid elements. The modern implementation of SPH as used in astrophysics goes back to the classic paper of Hernquist and Katz (1988), who combined the relatively…

Financial Crisis Solved

US Treasury Bonds sold at -0.005% interest h/t CR Yes, to lend the US Treasury $1000 for three months, you would have to pay them. About $0.01 for the term. They sold $27 billion of these, which means financial institutions are paying the US government. They are paying the US about a quarter of a million dollars if they would, please, not actually lose the money by march. Cheaper than any other option. I infer. Solves a lot of problems if they can convince people to keep it up for a few more quarters. Since Treasury Rates never go up, just as Housing Prices never go down, the very large…

The 1% Perspective

700,000,000,000 6,850,000,000 The lower number is the requested NSF budget for 2009, which represents an inconceivably bold 14% increase over 2008, in an attempt to get the budget back on the widely agreed upon track called for by the American Competitiveness Initiative. The actual 2009 budget will likely be a continuing resolution, with same dollar amount as 2008 and no increase for science. Which is of course a net cut after inflation. The $800 million increase would pay for about 16,000 new graduate student years, or say 2-3,000 new PhDs in the sciences. In practise maybe only half…

Proof That Harry Potter is Bigger Than God

tags: Harry Potter, Jews, Israel, god When the sixth Harry Potter book was released, it was a Saturday morning, which if you are Jewish, is the Sabbath. The Sabbath runs from sunset on Friday to sunset on Saturday, and it is a time during which pious Jews shun business dealings. At that time, I was teaching a biology class and most of my students were Jewish, so I felt terrible for them because they were not allowed to read the book until after the Sabbath was over. Once again, because Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows will also be released on a Saturday morning, Jews are facing a terrible…

Elusive Smiling Bird Rediscovered

tags: recurve-billed bushbird, Clytoctantes alixii, ornithology, birds, avian, endangered species This male Recurve-billed Bushbird, Clytoctantes alixii, was recently photographed by ProAves staff, Adriana Tovar and Luis Eduardo Uruena. This is the first time this globally endangered species has been captured on film. [larger]. [listen to this species' song] For the first time ever, an elusive recurve-billed bushbird, Clytoctantes alixii, has been photographed in the wild. The bird, recently rediscovered by scientists in Colombia a Colombian ornithologist named Oscar Laverde after a 40-…

Vancouver Surgeons Perform Surgery on .. a Vulcan?

tags: green blood, medicine It was the middle of the night when surgeons were preparing to perform emergency surgery in Vancouver, Canada. The man they were going to operate on had developed compartment syndrome in his legs after he fell asleep while kneeling. Compartment syndrome is a dangerous medical condition where pressure builds up in the deep muscle tissues and can cause permanent nerve damage. However, when the surgical team established an arterial line in the man's wrist, they were surprised to discover that his blood was dark green instead of bright red. Even though the man is not a…

Limbless Lizard Discovered in India

tags: limbless lizard, reptiles, snakes, India A new species of limbless lizard was discovered in a forested region about 1,000 km southeast of New Delhi, India. The 18-cm (7-inch) lizard resembles a small snake. Image: Sushil Kumar Dutta. A new species of limbless lizard was discovered in eastern India, an Indian zoologist revealed today. The newly found 18-centimetre-long lizard (pictured above) resembles a small, scaly snake and it prefers to live in a cool retreat with soft soil. "The lizard is new to science and is an important discovery. It is not found anywhere else in the world…

DonorsChoose Challenge Classroom Proposal Focus

tags: DonorsChoose2008, education, public school education, fund raising, evolution education, nature education, bird education Mrs. G is seeking supplies for a microbiology lab. I, as a microbiologist, recognize the value (and the intense fascination!) of teaching students about the natural world, particularly microbes! I teach 7th grade Science in a school where the majority of the students are classified as Title 1, meaning that they need remedial help with their basic skills. Even without that classification, students this age are hard to motivate, especially in the content area of…

Palin is Her Own Parody

tags: Palin-Couric interview, Sarah Palin, Katie Couric, Palin Foreign Policy experience, streaming video Apparently, during an interview with Katie Couric, Sarah Palin made a mockery of herself as a vice presidential candidate, as a governor of the state of Alaska, and as a woman. I have a video (below the fold) of part of this interview with Katie, along with the transcripts of part of that interview where Sarah describes her foreign policy experience. Hey Sarah, what do Alaska and Russia trade? Polar Bears?? There is NO WAY this moron is qualified to do anything at all. I have potted…

Natural Selection Turns 150 Years Old Today

tags: natural selection, evolution, Alfred Russel Wallace, Charles Darwin, Darwin Year, Linnean Society of London Image: Gary Larson. This morning, I was pleased to hear National Public Radio was celebrating the 150th birthday of Natural Selection, the mechanism whereby evolution occurs. One hundred and fifty years ago today, two papers were read in front of the Linnean Society of London. One of those papers was written by Alfred Russel Wallace and the other consisted of two excerpts from Charles Darwin's unpublished writings about the origin of species. It turns out that while Wallace…

Dulce et Decorum Est

tags: Dulce et Decorum Est, Wilfred Owen, poetry, National Poetry Month April is National Poetry Month, and I plan to post one poem per day every day this month (If you have a favorite poem that you'd like me to share, feel free to email it to me). Today's poem was suggested by a reader, Mike, who writes "This has been one of my favorites for a long time. It reminds me that poetry need not be beautiful, nor speak of beautiful things to be meaningful. Indeed it is the very ugliness of this poem and the situation that sticks with me and makes it all the more poignant." Dulce et Decorum Est…

Suggestions for What to See and do in London

Okay, everyone, I am getting some wonderful suggestions in email for what to see and do in London in August, so I have decided to start a thread where you all can suggest things for a person who lives (and travels) on a shoestring. I already have gotten some suggestions from birders (they are such a great group of people) that I will share with you to start things off; David Lindo at The Urban Birder is one source I'll be contacting for more information and I'll be purchasing Where to Watch Birds in the London Area by Dominic Mitchell. Besides birding, I plan to see as much of London as…

Mesopotamia

tags: Mesopotamia, Rudyard Kipling, poetry, National Poetry Month April is National Poetry Month, and I plan to post one poem per day, every day this month (If you have a favorite poem that you'd like me to share, feel free to email it to me). Today's poem was suggested by a reader and friend who writes that "my favourite poet is Kipling; sad to say, this [poem] is as appropriate today as it was 91 years ago. The question is still valid and I fear we'll do nothing, as our ancestors did nothing, those who embroiled us in the war will retire in comfort and assumed honour. The dead will lie…

The Birdbooker Report 1: Notes on Bird (and Natural History) Books

tags: Birdbooker Report, bird books, natural history books "One cannot have too many good bird books" --Ralph Hoffmann, Birds of the Pacific States (1927). A friend of mine, Ian Paulsen, loves books as much as I do, and possibly (gasp!) moreso! I know this is difficult to believe, but he has collected books about birds and natural history themes for as long as I've known him, which has been a fairly long period of my life. As far as I know, Ian reads all of his collected books, too, unlike most book collectors. Further, Ian knows just about every publisher out there who has ever published a…

Oh, no! I'll never be able to mock Texas again!

I confess. One of the staple sources of creationist lunacy I document here has always been Texas (with Florida as a close runner-up), which seems to be thickly infested with ignoramuses who get elected to high office. It's the kind of place that inspires the Molly Ivins of the world. Lately, we've been appalled at the idiots the Texas government wants to put in charge of science education, but there's another victim in the gunsights, too: history and social studies. The same abysmal talents that can muck up biology also want to turn social studies into patriotic mulch. Alas, they can't get…

Life in My Own Private Zoo

tags: parrots, aviculture, conservation, personal story Things are going well with the parrots, especially the new hawk-headed parrot (this bird has been living with me for one week and one day now). As I already mentioned several times, this bird is eating on his(her?) own now, although I still handfeed the bird each evening before we all go to sleep. Speaking of food, this little bird is as eager an eater as any of my birds are. This morning, for example, I gave all my birds their breakfast* and the hawkheaded parrot immediately dove in to the bowl, head-first and began eating. Elektra,…

The Woes of a Hillarack Grrl: Like, Why Can't We Have Both??

tags: presidential primaries, super tuesday, Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, Democratic primaries Image: NYTimes. This picture represents my fantasy: I see a great presidency resulting from the combination of two intelligent and passionate minds together: two people who discuss things between themselves (and with others) before making important decisions -- unlike the typical relationship between a president and vice president in this country, where the president more or less ignores the vice president. But Hillary and Barack are not like all those others that came before them, so why…

How long has this argument been going on?

This is an excerpt from a letter Richard Feynman wrote in March 1958, back when I was just about exactly one year old and still wearing diapers. He'd been doing some consulting work for the entertainment industry, and wasn't very happy with their attitude. The idea that movie people know how to present this stuff, because they are entertainment-wise and the scientists aren't is wrong. They have no experience in explaining ideas, witness all movies, and I do. I am a successful lecturer in physics for popular audiences. The real entertainment gimmick is the excitement, drama and mystery of the…

Update from the Land of Licorice

tags: Helsinki, Finland A sunny day in Helsinki, Finland. Image: GrrlScientist, 25 February 2009 [larger view]. As you can see from the image above, yesterday was a gorgeous, sunny day. It was so warm, comparatively speaking, that I thought that some of the snow might melt. I spent part of the day at the Viikki campus of the University of Helsinki, where the biological sciences are located. I went to a grad student seminar where a mathematical model regarding reproductive strategies (brood parasitism versus stay-at-home-and-nest versus a mixture of these two strategies) was being tested…

Birdbooker Report 54

tags: Birdbooker Report, bird books, animal books, natural history books, ecology books "One cannot have too many good bird books" --Ralph Hoffmann, Birds of the Pacific States (1927). The Birdbooker Report is a special weekly report of a wide variety of science, nature and behavior books that currently are, or soon will be available for purchase. This report is written by one of my Seattle birding pals and book collector, Ian "Birdbooker" Paulsen, and is edited by me and published here for your information and enjoyment. Below the fold is this week's issue of The Birdbooker Report which…

Support Wikipedia

I received this in my email today and thought I would pass it on to AFTIC readers as I think Wikipedia is one of the greatest things on the web. Dear Coby, Here's how the Wikipedia fundraiser works: Every year we raise just the funds that we need, and then we stop. Because you and so many other Wikipedia readers donated over the past weeks, we are very close to raising our goal for this year by December 31 -- but we're not quite there yet. You've already done your part this year. Thank you so much. But you can help us again by forwarding this email to a friend who you know relies on Wikipedia…

APHA Annual Meeting focuses on prevention and wellness

The American Public Health Association's annual meeting is taking place this week in San Francisco, with the theme of "Prevention and Wellness Across the Life Span." If you're not there (or if you're there but can't possibly attend all the sessions you want to), the APHA Meeting Blog is a great way to get a taste of the research and ideas being discussed. Among the annual meeting bloggers is Kim Krisberg, a regular Pump Handle contributor. She covered the meeting's opening session, which featured APHA Executive Director Georges Benjamin, UnitedHealth’s Reed Tuckson, House Minority Leader…

Legislation signed on Camp Lejeune survivors and Massachusetts temp workers

We've written recently about two bills that had been passed by US and Massachusetts legislatures  but not yet signed, so I wanted to close the loop and report that both are now law. On August 6, President Obama signed into law the "Honoring America's Veterans and Caring for Camp Lejeune Families Act of 2012," which, among other things, provides that the Department of Veterans Affairs will give hospital care and medical services to veterans and their families who were exposed to contaminated water at Camp Lejeune, from 1957 to 1987, and have developed conditions associated with TCE, PCE,…

Fatigued oil and gas workers and deadly highway crashes

Earlier this week, Ian Urbina reported in the New York Times that hundreds of oil and gas workers have been killed over the past decade in highway crashes. A CDC analysis found that one-third of the 648 oil field workers who died on the job between 2003 and 2008 were killed in these crashes. Workers falling asleep at the wheels of trucks after working long shifts are a major factor in this high rate of vehicle fatalities -- but, Urbina explains, the industry continues to enjoy exemption from federal rules designed to keep sleep-deprived truck drivers off the road: Across all industries,…

Unpaid OSHA penalties in fatality case involving Walmart's construction contractor

The Boston Globe's Megan Woolhouse reported earlier this week on a civil lawsuit against construction contractors and Walmart for the wrongful death of Romulo de Oliveira Santos, 47. The Brazilian immigrant and a crew of other workers were assigned to tear down the ceilings and walls on the night of September 8, 2008 at a Walmart in Walpole, Massachusetts. The workers weren't made aware of the live electrical wires, and Santos was electrocuted and fatally burned. Woolhouse writes the victim's family seeks: "$5 million in damages from Walmart and two subcontractors, alleging the conditions…

Actor Steve McQueen honored posthumously by asbestos disease advocacy group

The late Steve McQueen---the King of Cool---will be honored later this year by the Asbestos Disease Awareness Organization (ADAO) with its "Keep Me in Your Heart" memorial tribute award. McQueen starred in dozens of films including the The Great Escape (1963), The Thomas Crown Affair (1968), Bullitt (1968), and Papillon (1973). He died in November 1980 after being diagnosed a year earlier with pleural mesothelioma, a cancer caused by exposure to asbestos. His wife, Barbara Minty McQueen, will accept the award on her late husband's behalf at ADAO's annual conference scheduled for March 30…

Scientists join case against Trump’s 2 for 1 regulatory order

The Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) filed an amicus brief in support of a lawsuit against one of President Trump’s deregulatory efforts. Executive Order 13771 (EO) requires an agency to rescind two regulations for each one it wants to adopt, and have the action's combined incremental costs total no more than $0, regardless of the benefits. When the President announced it in January 2017, I called it the "one step forward, two steps back" edict. A lawsuit filed in February by Public Citizen, the Natural Resources Defense Council and the Communications Workers of America argues that the EO…

Bernie Sanders: a reliable progressive

by Anthony Robbins, MD, MPA When Bernie Sanders announced his candidacy for the Democratic nomination for President, I cheered. For the first time in my life, we would know what a candidate for President really believed and what she or he would do. For me, I am doubly pleased, as I agree with Bernie's ideas. Bernie began his political career in Vermont in the 1970s just as I was beginning my government career in Vermont.  By the time he was elected to the House of Representatives in 1990, I had worked in Washington for both the executive branch (National Institute for Occupational Safety and…

Read Up, Write, Repeat

I'm doing the final library work for my Bronze Age book. When working on a big research project, I always find it a little difficult to calibrate the most economical way to schedule my reading. Of course, I have to know early on what's in the literature on the subject I'm working with. But I also like to start writing early. And I'd rather not put too much time into re-reading stuff after I've figured out how it's relevant to my theme. I read some of it before I start writing, most of it while I'm writing, often at the computer, and then I inevitably save some of it until I'm almost done…

November Pieces of My Mind

Selected Facebook updates: John Lennon offers a grammar lesson: "A working-class hero is something to be". It's an adjective and a noun. Not a verb. A friend of mine is rehearsing Orff's Carmina Burana and not loving it: "I'm liking the work less with every rehearsal and we're performing it three times in one week, so pity me in my Nazi-approved quasi-Medieval dungeon where the artistic ceiling is looow indeed!" Kelly Link believes that reindeer have manes. Swedish Xenophobe Party tries to get Parliament fact finders to list MPs with foreign citizenship. You couldn't make this up. The next…

Hubbard's Caveman

Kai gave me this lovely piece of old Scientology propaganda. The 1968 book Scientology: A History of Man is a re-titled edition of something L.R. Hubbard completed in 1951-52 and disseminated under the title What To Audit. After the formerly secret teachings about Xenu the evil space emperor etc., this is probably the most widely ridiculed text of Scientology. But with the fine cover image (apparently painted by Hubbard himself) and the new title, the book clearly aims to say something about humanity's ancient past – which is my job. In the foreword Hubbard assures the reader that "This is a…

The sea ice post!

People have been asking for the sea ice post, so here it is. I've been putting it off, obviously. The $10k bet comes due this year but its looking like a bad year; and secondly I don't really have all that much to say. Just to remind you, the terms are If both NSIDC and IARC-JAXA September 2016 monthly average sea ice extent report are above 4.80 million km^2, RD pays WMC US$ 10,000. If both are below 3.10 million km^2, WMC pays RD US$ 10,000. In all other cases the bet is null and void. You should also read the argument that Rob presented in that post. That bet was arranged in 2011. 5 years…

How to decarbonize? More free market!

mt has a nice post pointing at an article by Ray Pierrehumbert, How to decarbonize? Look to Sweden. mt and I both like the article, though we choose to emphasise slightly different aspects of it. I offer you: In my experience, inaction on restraining carbon dioxide emissions does not stem from insufficient understanding of the science or insufficient fear of the consequences of warming. Instead, it is more due to excessive fear of the nature of the solutions... The problem is not too much capitalism, but rather too little, and even a lack of faith in the power of the ingenuity unleashed by…

The argument from oranges

What is it with creationists and fruit? I hope you've had your coffee already, because this is an unpleasant way to wake up. The clip below is from a public hearing in Orlando, Florida, in which citizens had a chance to stand up and state their opinions of evolution. Are you braced to handle a little smug and stupid this morning? I'm sure this guy thought he was rhetorically brilliant, with a knock-'em dead argument against evolution. Why, nobody with any common sense could possibly believe that people (or their pets) could be related to an orange! Just pointing out the obvious to everyone…

Campainging on climate change

Interesting article Why the BBC should stand up to its climate campaign critics about whether the BBC should be campaigning on climate change. They have a charter, so they can go all lawyerly and examine whether they are acting in accordance with it. But the same question applies to scientists. [Update: seems the BBC changed its mind And perhaps unsurprisingly, some people are unhappy] From the article: Peter Horrocks reportedly attacked the plans, arguing that "I absolutely don't think we should [campaign on issues such as climate change] because it's not impartial". He added that: "It's not…

The pathetic AAPG

For a long time the AAPG enjoyed the dubious distinction of being the only organisation with any kind of scientific credibility that maintained an officially septic position on climate change, as reported by the official journal of record, wikipedia. That changed recently when they adopted a new statement. The old statement was at least brave in being boldly scientifically illiterate, and was (presumably) only there to demonstrate to the left that some of their prejudices against Big Oil were correct. The new one, as Eli points out, is pathetic in its desire to appease both sides,. and yet…

I Don't Give A Damn About My Apple Products

Steve Jobs is dead, an unfortunate victim of cancer and quackery. I never paid him much attention while he lived. Nor did I ever care much about Apple's products. "Aha", I hear you say, "this is one of those 'PC is better than Mac' screeds". Not so. Because I have been an off-and-on Mac user since the mid 80s. But I don't care about Macs. Nor about PCs. I could go so far as to say that I'm a bit annoyed with recent versions of Windows. But it's no big deal to me. These things all work well enough. In '84, my cousins' first Mac introduced me to the mouse and the window environment. We drew in…

Littering

Littering really annoys me, indoors, in the streets, in parks - and particularly in woods and wilderness. My whole family often collects bagfuls of garbage on walks or visits to the lake. I can't understand the mind of a person who drops an ice cream wrapper on a forest trail, particularly one that they walk themselves all the time. To me, its like crapping on your own couch. But thinking dispassionately about it, I realise that most litter is an aesthetic problem and not an ecological one. It isn't toxic. Few pieces of litter hurt wildlife in any mechanical way. Most of it quickly degrades…

Scientific Errors With the IPCC Statement for Policymakers!?!

Well thats what RP Sr sez. Although he immeadiately gets cold feet and adds "Or, At Best Cherrypicking". I think he should make up his mind - if he is going to throw around a rather hard term like "errors" in the title he shouldn't wimp out to "or at best..." a moment later. So, first off, does he find any errors? No, of course not. None of the 4 things he lists are wrong. And the person cherry picking appears to be RP. The first one is about "... snow cover have declined on average in both hemispheres." Which of course it has (fig SPM-3). Or, if you prefer, the graph RP directs you to. His…

SPM proves less exciting than expected

Call me an old grump but the SPM for the IPCC AR4 report wasn't terribly exciting. Which was, perhaps no great surprise: having read the draft chapters, or at least skimmed them, it was clear that nothing revolutionary was going to appear. They throw in the phrase Warming of the climate system is unequivocal which is a nice sound-bite but was true for the TAR too. Climate sensitivity is likely to be within 2-4.5 oC, but since this is only a 66% statement its quite weak; though they do go on to diss > 4.5 oC a bit. And the attribution key text is: Most of the observed increase in globally…

The Models Don't Have Clouds

This is just one of dozens of responses to common climate change denial arguments, which can all be found at How to Talk to a Climate Sceptic. Objection: Clouds are a very large negative feedback that will stop any drastic warming. The climate models don't even take cloud effects into account. Answer: All of the Atmospheric Global Climate Models used for the kind of climate projections reported on by the IPCC take the effects of clouds into account. You can read a discussion about cloud processes and feedbacks in the IPCC TAR. It is true however that clouds are one of the largest sources…

Free Republic, Then and Now

Gene Healy at the Cato Institute blog has an absolutely perfect illustration of how partisanship leads to hypocritical howls of outrage. He links to this post at Free Republic from 2000, before Bush took office, about how the FISA court rubber stamps pretty much anything the president wants when it comes to intelligence gathering. The commenters were appalled - absolutely appalled - at this outrageous power grab by the administration. A few samples: "This is beyond frightening. Thank you for this find." "This does not bode well for continued freedom." "Franz Kafka would have judged this to…

Balko on the War on Terrorism

Radley Balko has a very interesting post about the war on terrorism and why we should not allow it to close up our free society and violate our constitutional protections. He bases this in part on an article by James Fallows in The Atlantic, which I have not read. But I find Balko's logic quite compelling: The gist of Fallows' thesis is that the terrorists will never conquer the west, and they know that. Public consciousness of the threat, and the absence of a sanctuary in Afghanistan have neutered al-Qaeda. They're now a loose-knit group of desperados acting on their own accord. Fallows…