Yee-Effin' Haw - THIS is America dammit!

From Bloomberg: EPA-Texas Feud Escalates Over New Carbon Regulations.
This appears to be a still-evolving story, as Bloomberg is still updating it. Latest update added a nice quote from a Sierra Club shill.

This signals the Obama movement to legislate away America is now moving into the 'Regulate- America away' phase.
Bring it, Rubes.

Well, We Dodged Another Bullet

Too bad the Politicos and Activists are concentrating on destroying us from within...otherwise they might have noticed.

From: Watts Up With That

On Friday November 6th at 2132 UT (16:32/ 4:32PM EST) asteroid 2009 VA barely missed Earth when it flew just 14,000 km above the planet’s surface...

...2009 VA was discovered just 15 hours before closest approach by astronomers working at the Catalina Sky Survey.

And as Anthony Watts notes in the post, there is little official worry about this real threat, compared to the hysteria over the Anthropogenic Global Warming bogeyman. It would be an interesting mind experiment to poll policymakers as to how CLOSE does something 'big' have to come to actually hitting the Earth before they are able to grasp the magnitude of the risk to all Humanity. I suspect the populace will have to be the 'leaders' on this issue before the pols at least act like they give a sh**.

Seems like a good time to remind everyone -- Again -- about the basics of Risk Management.

Warm Mongers

Heh Heh...

Mark Steyn on the Watermelons*:

"The environment” is the most ingenious cover story for Big Government ever devised. You float a rumour that George W. Bush is checking up on what library books you’re reading, and everyone goes bananas. But announce that a government monitoring device has been placed in every citizen’s trash can in the cause of “saving the planet,” and the world loves you.

Read it all here.

*'Green' on the outside, but ALL 'Red' on the inside.

More "Verde" Hybrid Nonsense

Hat tip: WUWT

THE Times (Not one of the American ones) has an excellent article dissecting and dissing Honda's new Insight car model (a hybrid). The author, Mr Clarkson, also looks a little closer into the 'green' aspects of hybrids and electric cars. As cited by a commenter at WUWT, Mr Clarkson I believe gets particularly close the what the hub-bub about these so-called 'green' cars is really all about:

The nickel for the battery has to come from somewhere. Canada, usually. It has to be shipped to Japan, not on a sailing boat, I presume. And then it must be converted, not in a tree house, into a battery, and then that battery must be transported, not on an ox cart, to the Insight production plant in Suzuka. And when the finished car has to be shipped, not by Thor Heyerdahl, to Britain, where it can be transported, not by wind, to the home of a man with a beard who thinks he’s doing the world a favour.

(Emphasis mine).

I don't know if there was a 'beard' in this car or not, but the 'doing the world a favor' part definitely applied.

Post script: just drove the new (used) ride cross country: 27+ MPG @ 75-80 MPH. No hybrid under the hood, just a handbuilt AMG 3.2L supercharged engine driving a 5 speed autostick-- made the trip sooo much more fun. About 1500 miles and I only had two brain-dead 'smug' hybrid polluters pass me at those speeds. Yeah I burn premium, but I know those POSs weren't getting as good MPG highway as I was getting either.

Celebrate Earth Day: My Least Favorite Pagan Holiday

Iowahawk has a link up that captures what I believe is the correct spirit for Earth Day, my least favorite Pagan holiday.

Geez, why won't the stupid Hippies just go away already?

Lord Monckton on Global Warming

Former male model G. Gordon Liddy interviews a man he thinks Al Gore fears the most here (mp3 audio).

Brilliant.

H/T American Thinker

More ‘Verde’ Than You…

…you self-aggrandizing, brain-dead, punk-a** pinhead.

So…. A few weeks ago, I was driving back from a visit to my friends and their new beach house in my 2007 Ford Focus, doing ‘about’ the speed limit (translation 3-5 over) and I get this guy (In the unisex Chicago sense of the word) going about 5-10 mph faster than me coming up from behind. We’re on the twisty Hwy 126 between Santa Clarita and Port Hueneme (in the People's Republik of CA).

The traffic on the road clears up a bit as we near Santa Clarita and ‘Eco-boy/girl’ whips around on the left and passes me, and asks me (in writing!) the question:

Hmmmm. Now, I lived in an earth-bermed solar home in Northern Utah for ten years. I LOVED the fact that my energy bills in the dead of winter were only equal to about 5% of ANY of my neighbor’s energy bills- BUT!-Not even once, EVER!, did I get an urge strike out on a sacred campaign or did it occur to me to question how anyone else lived. I reasoned (and still do) that everyone gets to make their own choices for their own reasons.

Now this pile of piety believes he/she has a mission to ask everyone he/she passes on the road if they are 'Verde'?

Hmmm. Am I “Verde”? Well… Let’s do a side-by-side comparison shall we?

Vehicle Operation
First, according to one road test, your slime-green Prius only gets a very few more miles to the gallon than my Focus does in the real world at real highway speeds: and that is ONLY if you are driving rationally in the first place. This test bothered the acolytes of the hybrid religion enough to cause them to attempt to rationalize away the disparity between the Prius’ computer calculations and the measured gallons needed to refill the Prius’ tank by claiming that the Prius’ tank construction MIGHT or COULD have caused refill volumes to vary and skew the test. This rationalization gets cherry-picked by treehugger.com who conveniently fails to note that the critique itself is pretty well debunked soon after in the same thread. There’s some other real and imagined problems with the ‘test’, some relevant some not, but the bottom line is that unless you drive the Prius like a complete energy-managing jerk on the highway, you are NOT going to get all that much better mileage than someone else who was driving a small and economical internal combustion vehicle if THEY were also driving like a complete energy-swapping jerk. (My heart warms knowing there are boards and websites out there on HOW to drive like an idiot in the pursuit of the magical maximum Prius MPG. )

Now, having observed your driving style Zippy, I submit that I’m getting as good as or better mileage than you are. Notice I didn’t even bring up the reality of battery replacement costs that are coming down the road.

(Side Note: Please spread this among the faithful: CO2 is NOT a pollutant, and the EPA can’t make it a pollutant any more than a law can successfully make Pi =3.)

Advantage: Focus (or Maybe at worst a Tie)

But what about the other relative eco-life-cycle costs?

Vehicle Manufacturing
“Dust to Dust”, a 'study' claiming less energy expended per mile driven for a Hummer vs. a Prius over the operational lives of each caused quite a ‘dust-up’ itself among the Enviros, spawning self-righteous denunciations from the true believers (see here and here). Admittedly, there was much to criticize Dust to Dust about. But while I do not accept the critics’ views of the Dust to Dust piece entirely I find their criticisms generally have some merit, but they miss (for their own reasons I'm sure) the true problem with Dust to Dust: It was a grandstanding comparison between too dissimilar vehicles.

Dust to Dust got the press’ attention, so you could call it a complete success by one measure. But now we have to listen to the legions of Prius fans thumping their chests over what should be a ‘no duh’ point: Prius has a smaller carbon footprint than a Hummer. Worst of all, the points concerning the environmental damage that is a product of Prius’ battery production, AND the fact that making it is much less earth-friendly than building something like my Focus, a comparable car, is simply lost in the noise.

Advantage: Focus

Vehicle Disposal
Well we’ve covered manufacturing and use: That leaves disposition of the remains at the end-of-life. Since the only thing really different between the Prius (and other similar hybrids of course) is the electrical side of the propulsion package in the Prius, and both cars have an internal combustion propulsion system as well, the waste stream is therefore more complex with more components for the Prius. Fortunately, automobiles contain perhaps the highest percentage of recyclable components of any consumer product, so the extra burden of recycling the battery/charging elements can’t be too much higher than a conventional automobile of similar size, although relative toxin content has to weigh more heavily towards the hybrids. Toyota even has a recycling program that only Heaven knows if it will survive the future wave of obsolete and no-longer-trendy Prius retirements that will come someday. I’ll cut the Prius some slack.

Advantage (slight): Focus

Therefore, in case you missed my earlier answer to your question:

Since you asked, I am MORE ‘Verde’ than you, you self-aggrandizing, brain-dead, punk-a** pinhead.

Honestly, the world is full of these types. How do the rest of us survive?

Epilogue:
I almost forgot: After rushing up on me in their poor-handling, high body-rolling POS hybrid econobox, and whipping (as much as a Prius can 'whip' anyway- more like 'lurching')around me as soon as it cleared enough, Zippy here came back into my lane, hit the brakes and turned right shortly after I snapped the pic. I had to swerve to get around him.

Updated 21 Mar 09 11pm Central: corrected and clarified some minor points.

Political Scientist?

Update: This is now my low point as a blogger, and one I had hoped to avoid. I'm keeping this post only because I hate it when others just get rid of their mistakes like it never happened. I completely misread the entire article referenced below. Reasons unknown but unimportant. My sincere apologies to Mr Yulsman for my mischaracterization of him and his interview.
*************************************************
I found this article (via Climate Audit) very interesting. It was this particularly enjoyable paragraph that stimulated my interest:

It is hard to say who is outside and who is inside scientific circles anymore. McIntyre now publishes regularly in the peer reviewed literature. [Pielke is speaking of Steve McIntyre, whom I would describe as a climate change gadfly; he publishes a blog called "Climate Audit"] Gavin Schmidt blogs and participates in political debates. [Schmidt is a NASA earth scientist who conducts climate research.] Lucia Liljegren works at Argonne National Lab as an expert in fluid dynamics and blogs quite well on climate predictions for fun. She is preparing a paper for publication based on her work, but she has never done climate work before. I am a political scientist who publishes in the Journal of Climate and Nature Geoscience and blogs. Who is to say who is 'outside' and who is 'inside'? Is participation in IPCC the union card? How about having a PhD? Publishing in the literature? Testifying before Congress?

The guy who wrote the article, Tom Yulsman, self-identifies as a political scientist. Guess what 'discipline' his training/degrees are in and what he teaches? A first glance, I see that there at least two logical fallacies in the excerpt above. How many can YOU spot?.

My youngest brother has degrees in Political Science and Public Administration, did the Ha-vaad Yaad post-grad gov't program thing, and is a recognized leader in his field, yet does not refer to himself as a 'political scientist'. Which leads to a question for Mr. Yulsman. By what stretch of the imagination, may a journalist legitimately make that claim?

I sent this article to a Special Correspondent (everyone gets a title these days) last night and he provided an interesting observation this morning:

Removed: It wasn't the Special Correspondent's fault I blew the citation

I'll follow up and expand on this topic in a later post after readers have a chance to mull it over a bit.

"Eco Moms" - Riiight

H/T Instapundit

Eco Moms? Who hoo! I think I'm going to be revisiting these concerned and caring people in the future. Of course I wouldn't have to if they weren't budding 'activists'. I'm thinking of setting up a counter organization. Hmmm, it will need a catchy name. I'll work on it.

Up front let me state I'm definitely NOT anti-conservation or anti-'ecology' Who IS? (Outside of Red China of course). Hell, for a decade I lived in a solar home in Northern Utah that was also partially earth-sheltered, and probably saved more energy than any ten of these people will in their lifetimes-and all without giving up any trappings of modern civilization. From the article, I'm guessing some might be spending more on 'therapy' than most of us will ever lay out for energy.

I'm more of a "better living through progress" kind of guy, and I get the feeling that these Eco Moms, like so many of the "dripping concerned", yearn for a simpler time. One that really never was.

Dr Heidi: “Scientist”

“Dr. Cullen, a climatologist with a doctorate from the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory at Columbia University” gets interviewed by a self styled ‘science’ reporter for the NY Times.

I found the interview revealing: it looks very much like a poor attempt at damage control. (Emphasis mine unless otherwise noted)

Extract 1:

Q: How did the Weather Channel executives know of you?

A: I think they’d been asking around. They were hunting for a Ph.D. scientist who could explain the science behind climate news. As it happened, my doctoral thesis has a lot of relevance to current affairs. Part of it involved looking at how to use climate information to manage water resources in the Middle East. It’s often said that the next war in the Middle East will be fought over water.

For my thesis, I studied droughts and the collapse of the first Mesopotamian empire — the Akkadian civilization. I was able to show that a megadrought at roughly 2200 B.C. played a role in its demise. I found the proof by examining the sediment cores of ancient mud. When one looked at the mud from the period around the Akkadian collapse, one found a huge spike in the mineral dolomite. That substance is an indicator of drought.

Here’s a tip to those who aspire to be thought of as “scientists”. Scientists understand the difference between ‘indications’ and ‘data’ . They also know the difference between ‘evidence’ and ‘proof’. They never confuse any two of the aforementioned. And they never fail to establish bounds around their assertions or hypotheses. I’ve read the paper(PDF here) (co)authored by Dr. Cullen.

While the paper presents evidence of correlation in time between drought and collapse, there is no “proof” per se as far as I can divine*. I see lots of (quite proper) weasel words and caveats. So I would also remind Dr. Cullen that scientists can tell the difference between ‘correlation’ and ‘cause’. It appears Dr Cullen knew the difference when she authored the paper, but it isn't clear she remembers it now.

*My Caveat: I concede the obvious and non-paper-worthy observation that droughts, in all likelihood, do not make anything easier on any society or culture. Duh.

Extract 2.

Q: What’s the point of knowing this?

A: Because until recently, historians, anthropologists and archaeologists were reluctant to say that civilizations could collapse because of nature. The prevailing theories were that civilizations collapsed because of political, military or medical reasons — plagues. Climate was often factored out.

And yet, indifference to the power of nature is civilization’s Achilles’ heel. I think the events around Hurricane Katrina reminded us that Mother Nature is something we haven’t yet conquered.

O-Kaaaaaaay…..
Now, I am far more ancient than Dr. Cullen, and even I learned in school that ‘nature’ was a major factor in the disappearance of the Anasazi (although we kids just knew them as ‘cliff dwellers’ back then). Perhaps Dr. Cullen is using the term ‘recently’ in terms of a geologic scale?

I only ask, because a quick side trip to the JSTOR archives confirms my childhood memories: in scientific journals, climate/drought shows up repeatedly in the 1940s as one possible factor in the depopulation of cliff dwellings. By the 1970’s, the number of papers published identifying climate/drought as a PRIME factor was growing.

Extract 3.

Q: Rush Limbaugh accused you of Stalinism. Did you suggest that meteorologists who doubt global warming should be fired?

A: I didn’t exactly say that. I was talking about the American Meteorological Society’s seal of approval. I was saying the A.M.S. should test applicants on climate change as part of their certification process. They test on other aspects of weather science.

Wow. Leading and inflammatory question aside, Dr Cullen is doing a little Three Card Monte with the truth in her response. What she wrote (link in original):

"I'd like to take that suggestion a step further. If a meteorologist has an AMS Seal of Approval, which is used to confer legitimacy to TV meteorologists, then meteorologists have a responsibility to truly educate themselves on the science of global warming.

Using the Reasonable Man approach to his statement, what else could “confer legitimacy to TV meteorologists” mean other than “confer employability”?

Global Warming and Argumentum ad numerum

OK, please try to follow the spoor trail here because it’s a little long but trust me - It's worth it.

James Taranto at Best of the Web Today (first item) calls attention to Scientific American blogger Christopher Mim’s cherrypicking of data from a poll mentioned on yet another blog site, in a vain attempt punch up the Global Warming scare with a kind of pop-consensus angle.

Taranto promptly skewers the poll and its silly findings with his ‘sarcasm tag’ discretely hidden:

“Well, if 63% of the American public says it, it must be true, right? That's how science works!”

Which is a great deal more entertaining than flatly pointing out that some people are engaging in Argumentum ad numerum .

Taranto then takes up Mim’s invitation to check the rest of the results and then uses what he finds to further beat down the Global Warmers. But what really caught my eye in the BOTW piece was the closing paragraph, where he refers to two poll questions on page 3 of 8 in the questionnaire (link to .pdf ):

And if you think the people in the survey are unqualified to weigh in on such matters, they beg to differ: 71% of them agreed with the statement "I consider myself an intellectual," and 59% agreed that "I have more ability than most people." We'll bet a high proportion of them read Scientific American.

And based upon those responses I’ll bet an even higher proportion of them are unskilled and unaware of it (.pdf).

The (few) regular visitors to this blog have seen this linked reference before, but for anyone who visits rarely or never before, it takes your browser to a wonderful APA paper that explains a lot of things you may have been wondering about. It has the winning little title of “Unskilled and Unaware of It: How Difficulties in Recognizing One's Own Incompetence Lead to Inflated Self-Assessments”. Get your own copy and read the fascinating AND entertaining findings. If the title didn’t grab you here’s the overview (emphasis mine):

People tend to hold overly favorable views of their abilities in many social and intellectual domains. The authors suggest that this overestimation occurs, in part, because people who are unskilled in these domains suffer a dual burden: Not only do these people reach erroneous conclusions and make unfortunate choices, but their incompetence robs them of the metacognitive ability to realize it. Across 4 studies, the authors found that participants scoring in the bottom quartile on tests of humor, grammar, and logic grossly overestimated their test performance and ability. Although their test scores put them in the 12th percentile, they estimated themselves to be in the 62nd. Several analyses inked this miscalibration to deficits in metacognitive skill, or the capacity to distinguish accuracy from error. Paradoxically, improving the skills of participants, and thus increasing their metacognitive competence, helped them recognize the limitations of their abilities.

I view this ‘poll’ for what it is: an indicator of the how well the global-warming scaremonger propaganda machine has performed to date. Too bad for the ‘Warmer’s side that Langmuir plays the long game.

Addendum: Wow! What are the Odds? Scrolling further down in BOTW to the fifth item, we find a ‘Kos Kid’ who from the skills demonstrated, also might have been a majority respondent in the Yale poll.

To close, in case anyone is interested in seriously exploring the Global Warming issue, I gave some good starting links a while back here.

Update: I decided to read the comments at the Mim's SciAm site and 'The Sietch'. At The Sietch, I found the post's author declaring he wasn't taking a position, just passing along information. I take him at his word and wanted to tell him so. Therefore I tried to leave the followup comment on his site -- but I don't leave real e-mail addresses where they are published. If I had been able to leave a comment I would have told him:

If you were just passing along the info, you should have mentioned that fact in your post where I could have seen it BEFORE I lumped you in with SciAm's Mim at my place. Advocacy such as: "It’s clear that the public is not waiting for the government to take the lead. Americans no longer think it’s entirely the domain of government to solve environmental problems. They expect companies to step up and address climate change and other concerns” when passed along without comment,looks an awful lot like "agreement".

Climate Alarmists: Politicos in Lab Coats

I’ve said all that needs to be said (by me anyway) about ‘Global Warming’ here. Now the high priests of the Climate Crises religion are going for broke: pushing their same tired (although some of it is in a new party dress) junk on the public as ‘consensus’.

Looking at that old post again just made me think of something else: I love Glenn Reynold’s ‘Instapundit’ as much as the next fan, but I would humbly recommend his enquirer pass up asking a law professor questions and start the journey of discovery with a trip to three websites:

1. http://www.co2science.org. Here visitors will get pointers that direct them to the vast body of research on CO2 and climate that climate alarmists fail to mention, mock or play down. The site really puts CO2 and it’s effects/role in climate in perspective, and is a great jumping off point to ‘hard science’ research papers. Also, be sure to check their “Temperature Record of the Week” ! Every week the site presents a temperature chart of someplace in the U.S. showing average temperatures dropping over the last 70 years.

2 & 3. Visit Climate Audit and Real Climate -- in that order. At the first site you will find devastating arguments against the climate alarmist’s theories and methodologies are the norm. At the second, you will find ad hominem attacks against those who oppose the climate alarmists are the norm. The first website touts empirical evidence, repeatable findings, and multi-disciplinary research. The second…......doesn’t (but they have “models”!).

Pick your side, but choose carefully – someday most people will notice that all these climate models couldn’t predict the present, much less the future

Current News:
Climate Audit has noted a peculiar ground rule for the latest IPCC ‘report'. Seems the final draft can only be changed to make the ‘scientific’ report match the executive summary. Now that is ‘science’ the United Nations way!

The Army of Davids, Gatekeepers, and the Global Warming Debate

Information is Royalty – Instant Access is Divinity

I experienced two independent events today that have a common element: Barriers to communication and information are disappearing. They are not doing so voluntarily, but are being forcibly knocked down.

First Encounter:

I looked at the newspaper rack as I went through the turnstiles to work this morning and noticed the top headline was something I had read all about online. Yesterday.
Before I went to work.
Again.

I immediately thought about Glenn Reynolds’ meme in his new book: Army of Davids. It’s not released yet, but the subtitle reveals the general thrust of it: How Markets and Technology Empower Ordinary People to Beat Big Media, Big Government, and Other Goliaths. I’ll probably buy this one instead of borrowing it from the library, because it’s a concept with major implications in all areas where there is competition (which essentially means ‘everything’). There are also direct implications in my Military Operations Research work. Gatekeepers are potential chokepoints or 'centers of gravity': potential weaknesses that can be exploited.

There are a lot of constructs for thinking about how information (or anything else for that matter) is created, accessed, and distributed. ‘Stocks and Flows’ and ‘Producers and Gatekeepers’ are two of the more widely known constructs. The thought occurred to me (once again) that newspapers would be a lot better off if they changed their business model from getting incomplete or incorrect information out as fast as possible to a business approach that would provide more accurate detailed information on complex news. This would leverage their inherent advantage in research resources and production capability, and stop a losing battle against the millions of ‘Davids’ who have picture phones and camcorders and are on the scene everywhere. Let the ‘Davids’ get the ‘instant’ word out: Newspapers could give us the ‘meat’ of the story.

I don’t hold much hope of it happening though. It looks like the allure of the ‘scoop’ still holds sway.

Second Encounter:
(Sidebar for Full Disclosure: I am an Anthropogenic Global Warming Skeptic. I understand the difference between models and reality, data and evidence, anecdote and proof.)

So tonight I am researching the latest Global Warming news and I come across an interesting post at Climate Audit. What caught my eye, beyond the excellent article referenced, was this comment (#12, emphasis mine):

My father-in-law, Dr AB Hollingshead, a noted social scientist and department head at Yale in the 60s and 70s were [sic] discussed the weakness of the peer review processes over a couple of beers in my back yard in 1973. He pointed out that most shifts in scientific theory comes at generational boundaries, as those protecting 20-30 years of academic work die off, allowing the next generation to stake their reputation on new ideas and better information. He saw peer review as nothing more than a job protection mechanism, newly minted academics conformed to the current dogma, or they do not get published. In a [sic] publish or perish environments, this could have long term implications for young professors, but it was job protection for the old guard. In dad’s view when the old guard died off, there was a window of opportunity to introduce new ideas. Now, we have outsiders like Steve and Ross, who are not waiting for a generational boundary to identify the errors of the old guard and providing new insight to the problems of calculating past temperature trends from cherry picked tree rings.

That last sentence aptly identifies the Climate Audit authors as the ‘Davids’ of this little corner of scientific controversy.

A little later in my daily reading on the same subject, I came across this excellent opinion piece, highlighting the point that (from my POV) Climate Alarmists seem to think as little of the ‘Anti-Alarmist’ Davids, as the MSM does of theirs:

Phil Maxwell makes the snide comment that “most of the Global Warming Deniers are elder members of the scientific community desperately carrying on a rearguard action”. It is indeed true that a large proportion of these independent scientists are retired people. They can afford to be independent.

Thus, from the news of the day to pressing scientific issues, the Army of Davids are on the march.