Friday, February 03, 2012
Obama "love": You've gotta break a few eggs to make an omelet
Our President at yesterday's National Prayer Breakfast:
In Obama's mind, "love" commands this complete destruction of the very concept of an insurance market. Sounds more like the Stalinist dictum that "you have to break a few eggs to make an omelet." Ditto for Obama's other example of his supposed love:
Why would the government have to order banks not to throw money away on bad credit risks? Because for years the government has been enforcing anti-discrimination laws that require banks to lend to bad credit risks. That's where the mortgage meltdown came from. Using the Community Reinvestment ACT for leverage, the Alinskyite "community organizer" group ACORN succeeded in forcing banks to lower their credit standards on the grounds that existing standards (standards that only lend to borrowers who are likely to repay their loans) had a disparate impact on blacks.
(Read the whole thing. In addition to forcing banks to make bad loans, ACORN also succeeded in forcing the quasi-government mortgate companies Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to purchase these loans and implicitly guarantee them with taxpayer dollars, which is what turned the A-bomb into an H-bomb.)
Obama was intimately involved in all of this. He worked for ACORN as a lawyer and was brought in by the woman who pioneered ACORN's pressure tactics against the banks, Madeleine Talbot, to train ACORN personnel in Alinsky tactics. You may have seen the picture of Obama teaching Saul Alinsky's "power analysis" at the University of Chicago Law School:
Obama trained ACORN leaders and foot-soldiers in these commie pressure tactics for years. Here is Obama meeting with the ACORN in 2004:
Oops, I did it again
So Obama screwed everything up when, as "the senator from ACORN," he helped force banks to loan to bad credit risks, and now he thinks the answer is to force them not to lend to bad risks. But guess what? Title X of Frank-Dodd creates and entire new bureaucracy dedicated specifically to enforcing the very anti-discrimination laws that Title XIV of Frank-Dodd is trying to counteract!
Title X is Elizabeth Warren's Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, created to enforce The Fair Housing Act of 1968, the Equal Credit Opportunity Act of 1974, the 1977 Community Reinvestment Act, and a mish-mash of other re-distributionist and anti-discriminatory lending laws.
Each of these moves is in itself destructive. If banks are left alone they won't make bad loans and they won't leave profitable loans un-provided on account of anyone's race. Some individual bank might pass up profitable loans on account of race, but they would just be leaving money on the table for some non-racist bank to come in and pick up, which means some non-racist bank will come in and pick it up.
Remember what it took to stop such equal economic opportunity in the old south: a vast network of Jim Crow laws, working to outlaw the thousands of ways that free economic activity kept treating blacks as equals. Markets are an anti-discriminatory force. To maximize anti-discriminatory effect they should run free. There is no possible benefit to roping them down with anti-discrimination law, but there is vast potential to do any amount of harm, as the mortgage meltdown demonstrates.
Marvel at the sheer manic insanity, ordering one contradictory mandate after another when every single one of them is in itself destructive. We've got Moe Howard in the Oval Office.
You know Moe's gonna get mad, and Curly (should be Elizabeth Warren) is not backing down so: Egg fight!!!!!!! It's a Three Stooges breakfast party, with our lives hurtling like cream pies through the air. Smash everything! Leave no table unturned! Feel the Obama love.
When I talk about making sure insurance companies aren’t discriminating against those who are already sick, I do it because ... I believe in God’s command to 'love thy neighbor as thyself.'Forcing insurance companies to cover people who are already sick (a key Obamacare provision) is like forcing automobile insurers to cover accidents that applicants have already been involved in. It is not insurance at all. It is confiscation, paid for by those who are actually trying to buy insurance instead of get a handout.
In Obama's mind, "love" commands this complete destruction of the very concept of an insurance market. Sounds more like the Stalinist dictum that "you have to break a few eggs to make an omelet." Ditto for Obama's other example of his supposed love:
... making sure that unscrupulous lenders aren’t taking advantage of the most vulnerable among us.What "advantage" have banks been taking? Why they have very cruelly been stuffing the pockets of bad credit risks with far more money then these people could ever pay back. This has been so advantageous for the banks that we had to bail half of them out with tax dollars. Nevertheless, Title XIV of the Frank-Dodd Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act does indeed "impose obligations on mortgage originators to only lend to borrowers who are likely to repay their loans."
Why would the government have to order banks not to throw money away on bad credit risks? Because for years the government has been enforcing anti-discrimination laws that require banks to lend to bad credit risks. That's where the mortgage meltdown came from. Using the Community Reinvestment ACT for leverage, the Alinskyite "community organizer" group ACORN succeeded in forcing banks to lower their credit standards on the grounds that existing standards (standards that only lend to borrowers who are likely to repay their loans) had a disparate impact on blacks.
(Read the whole thing. In addition to forcing banks to make bad loans, ACORN also succeeded in forcing the quasi-government mortgate companies Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to purchase these loans and implicitly guarantee them with taxpayer dollars, which is what turned the A-bomb into an H-bomb.)
Obama was intimately involved in all of this. He worked for ACORN as a lawyer and was brought in by the woman who pioneered ACORN's pressure tactics against the banks, Madeleine Talbot, to train ACORN personnel in Alinsky tactics. You may have seen the picture of Obama teaching Saul Alinsky's "power analysis" at the University of Chicago Law School:
Obama trained ACORN leaders and foot-soldiers in these commie pressure tactics for years. Here is Obama meeting with the ACORN in 2004:
Oops, I did it again
So Obama screwed everything up when, as "the senator from ACORN," he helped force banks to loan to bad credit risks, and now he thinks the answer is to force them not to lend to bad risks. But guess what? Title X of Frank-Dodd creates and entire new bureaucracy dedicated specifically to enforcing the very anti-discrimination laws that Title XIV of Frank-Dodd is trying to counteract!
Title X is Elizabeth Warren's Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, created to enforce The Fair Housing Act of 1968, the Equal Credit Opportunity Act of 1974, the 1977 Community Reinvestment Act, and a mish-mash of other re-distributionist and anti-discriminatory lending laws.
Each of these moves is in itself destructive. If banks are left alone they won't make bad loans and they won't leave profitable loans un-provided on account of anyone's race. Some individual bank might pass up profitable loans on account of race, but they would just be leaving money on the table for some non-racist bank to come in and pick up, which means some non-racist bank will come in and pick it up.
Remember what it took to stop such equal economic opportunity in the old south: a vast network of Jim Crow laws, working to outlaw the thousands of ways that free economic activity kept treating blacks as equals. Markets are an anti-discriminatory force. To maximize anti-discriminatory effect they should run free. There is no possible benefit to roping them down with anti-discrimination law, but there is vast potential to do any amount of harm, as the mortgage meltdown demonstrates.
Marvel at the sheer manic insanity, ordering one contradictory mandate after another when every single one of them is in itself destructive. We've got Moe Howard in the Oval Office.
You know Moe's gonna get mad, and Curly (should be Elizabeth Warren) is not backing down so: Egg fight!!!!!!! It's a Three Stooges breakfast party, with our lives hurtling like cream pies through the air. Smash everything! Leave no table unturned! Feel the Obama love.
Thursday, January 19, 2012
Regulatory Czar wants to use copyright protection mechanisms to shut down rumors and conspiracy theories
As Congress considers vastly expanding the power of copyright holders to shut down fair use of their intellectual property, this is a good time to remember the other activities that Obama's "regulatory czar" Cass Sunstein wants to shut down using the tools of copyright protection. For a couple of years now, Sunstein has been advocating that the "notice and take down" model from copyright law should be used against rumors and conspiracy theories, "to achieve the optimal chilling effect."
What kinds of conspiracy theories does Sunstein want to suppress by law? Here's one:
... that the theory of global warming is a deliberate fraud. [From page 4 of Sunstein's 2008 "Conspiracy Theories" paper.]
Read more...
Freedom of speech requires scope for error
At present, limits on speech are governed by libel law. For statements about public figures, libel requires not just that an accusation must be false, but that it must have been:
... made with 'actual malice'—that is, with knowledge that it was false or with reckless disregard to whether it was false or not. [New York Times v. Sullivan, 1964]The purpose of the "actual malice" standard is to leave wide latitude for errant statements, which free public debate obviously requires. Sunstein thinks that room-for error stuff is given too much weight. He'd like it to see errant statements expunged. From Sunstein's 2009 book On Rumors (page 78):
On the Internet in particular, people might have a right to ‘notice and take down.' [T]hose who run websites would be obliged to take down falsehoods upon notice.Further, "propagators" would face a "liability to establish what is actually true" (ibid).
Suppose you are a simple public-spirited blogger, trying to expose how Michael Mann, Phil Jones, Tom Wigley, and other Team members conspire to suppress the research and destroy the careers of those who challenge their consensus views. If Sunstein gets his way, Team members will only have to issue you a takedown notice, and if you want your post to stay up, you'll have to go to court and win a judgment that your version of events is correct.
Today that should be doable, at great expense. But before the first and second batches of climategate emails were released there were only tales of retaliation, with one person's word against another's. Thus at the most critical juncture, when documentary proofs of The Team's vendettas were not yet public, even a person who was willing to run Sunstein's legal gauntlet might well have been held by a judge to be in error.
Escalation
The path from Sunstein's 2008 "Conspiracy Theories" article to his 2009 On Rumors book is straightforward. According to Sunstein's 2008 definition, a conspiracy theory is very close to a potentially libelous rumor:
... a conspiracy theory can generally be counted as such if it is an effort to explain some event or practice by reference to the machinations of powerful people, who have also managed to conceal their role. [Abstract]At this time, Sunstein's "main policy idea" was that:
government should engage in cognitive infiltration of the groups that produce conspiracy theories....Government funding of trolls? Sounds like a bad joke, but Sunstein quickly upped the ante. In On Rumors he followed the conspiracy theory as slanderous rumor angle as a way to justify adopting the "notice and take down" artillery from copyright law. So Sunstein already has a history of escalation in his legal crusade against ideas he does not like. If SOPA and PIPA are enacted and the machinery of copyright protection becomes vastly more censorious, its pretty much a certainty that Sunstein will want to use these more powerful tools against rumors and conspiracy theories as well.
... government agents or their allies (acting either virtually or in real space, and either openly or anonymously) will undermine the crippled epistemology of those who subscribe to such theories. ["Conspiracy Theories," pages 14-15]
Sunstein's target has always been the very core of the First Amendment: the most protected political speech
In On Rumors, the rumor that Sunstein seems most intent on suppressing is the accusation, leveled during the 2008 election campaign, that Barack Obama "pals around with terrorists." ("Look Inside" page 3.) Sunstein fails to note that the "palling around with terrorists" language was introduced by the opposing vice presidential candidate, Governor Sarah Palin (who was implicating Obama's relationship with domestic terrorist Bill Ayers). Instead Sunstein focuses his ire on "right wing websites" that make "hateful remarks about the alleged relationship between Barack Obama and the former radical Bill Ayers," singling out Sean Hannity for making hay out of Obama's "alleged associations" (pages 13-14).
What could possibly be more important than whether a candidate for president does indeed "pal around with terrorists"? Of all the subjects to declare off limits, this one is right up there with whether the anti-CO2 alarmists who are trying to unplug the modern world are telling the truth. And Sunstein's own bias on the matter could hardly be more blatant. Bill Ayers is a "former" radical? Bill "I don’t regret setting bombs" Ayers? Bill "we didn't do enough" Ayers?
For the facts of the Obama-Ayers relationship, Sunstein apparently accepts Obama's campaign dismissal of Ayers as just "a guy who lives in my neighborhood." In fact their relationship was long and deep. Obama's political career was launched via a fundraiser in Bill Ayers' living room; Obama was appointed the first chairman of the Ayers-founded Annenberg Challenge, almost certainly at Ayers' request; Ayers and Obama served together on the board of the Woods Foundation, distributing money to radical left-wing causes; and it has now been reported by full-access White House biographer Christopher Andersen (and confirmed by Bill Ayers) that Ayers actually ghost wrote Obama's first book Dreams from My Father.
Whenever free speech is attacked, the real purpose is to cover up the truth. Not that Sunstein himself knows the truth about anything. He just knows what he wants to suppress, which is exactly why government must never have this power.
Soulmates (cue music)
You, on the other hand, are the enemy
In climate science, there is no avoiding "reference to the machinations of powerful people, who have also managed to conceal their role." The Team has always been sloppy about concealing its machinations, but that doesn't stop Sunstein from using climate skepticism as an exemplar of pernicious conspiracy theorizing, and his goal is perfectly obvious: he wants the state to take aggressive action that will make it easier for our powerful government funded scientists to conceal their machinations.
Cass Sunstein may be the most illiberal man ever to present himself as a liberal. He also holds the most powerful regulatory position in existence, overseeing every federal regulation. For a sample of his handiwork, realize that he oversaw the EPA's recently issued transport and MACT rules, which will shut down 8% of current U.S. electricity generation.
Maybe you don't think it's a good idea to unplug critical energy infrastructure just to achieve marginal further reductions in micro-particulates that have already fallen to well below half of their 1980 levels:
Sorry but there is no place in Sunstein's EPA for such doubts and, as far as he is concerned, no place for them in the realm of public debate either. The environmental bureaucracy has everyone's best interest at heart. To question that is the very definition of conspiracy mongering.
Next people will be claiming that Obama actually intends for energy prices to "necessarily skyrocket." Such vile rumors need to be silenced, and this can easily be done. Once the SOPA/PIPA machinery is in place, it will only take one line in some future omnibus bill to extend it from copyright to criticism.
Crossposted at WUWT.
Addendum: Sunstein's version of constitutional interpretation
How to overthrow the clear language of the Constitution in two easy steps. Sunstein, a professor of constitutional law at Harvard, claims to know what end the authors of our Constitution were pursuing when they established freedom of speech as their means. From there he simply claims to have a better means to that end, as if his opinion of what is the better means could in any way alter the means that is framed in the Constitution:
Sunstein quoted Felix Frankfurter as saying, “Freedom of the press is not an end in itself, but a means to the end of achieving a free society.” After offering some examples in which uninhibited press freedom leads to the destruction of other freedoms, he proposed a reconsideration of the idea of the ‘chilling effect’”:Sunstein wants to chill those views (theories even) that the courts judge to be wrong. Instead of letting the contest of information and argument reveal where truth lies, Sunstein wants to let these government overseers decide. But the Constitution establishes the exact opposite answer to the problems that speech can create. The founders didn't want government deciding what is true and what is false. They knew that free exchange advantages truth, while censorship is the handmaiden of falsehood, so they laid down that "Congress shall make no law... abridging the freedom of speech."
“Many First Amendment questions in this domain are resolved by reference to the ‘chilling effect’ concern. Indeed, it has become quite clear that references to the ‘chilling effect’ have had a very serious ‘chilling effect’ on engagement with the constitutional question …The question shouldn’t be whether there’s a chilling effect and how to avoid it, but how to achieve the optimal chilling effect.”
Sunstein thinks by divining the objective of this constitutional requirement, and claiming to have a better way to achieve it, he is thereby justified in replacing that constitutional requirement with its opposite: Congress shall make laws abridging the freedom of speech. His On Rumors book is short on details of how his system would work, but it is clear from the quoted remarks that he does not consider Supreme Court precedent to be any kind of fixed barrier. He thinks the Constitution should be interpreted differently, in a way that gives people like him a free hand to establish what they think are better means than those actually written in the Constitution.
Saturday, January 14, 2012
Interesting paper by Hans Jelbring: The Greenhouse Effect as a function of atmospheric Mass
Does gravity induced atmospheric pressure warm the atmosphere going down? On the one hand, this would seem to be the mechanism behind the adiabatic lapse rate (the temperature change of a parcel of air as it rises through the atmosphere in the absence of any heat exchange with surrounding air parcels):
I have a few naive comments to offer, but my immediate purpose is just to make a 2003 paper on the pressure-warming side of the debate more available. Tallbloke has the whole thing posted but Willis, feeling that Tallbloke has engaged in censorship of contrary views, just censored MY link to Tallbloke's posting of Hans Jelbring's 2003 paper. (Hellooo Froma Harrop!)
If Han's gives me permission, I'll post his full paper. (Done. Thank's Hans.) Here is his abstract:
The Greenhouse Effect as a function of atmospheric mass
JELBRING Hans
Abstract
The main reason for claiming a scientific basis for Anthropogenic Greenhouse Warming (AGW) is related to the use of radiative energy flux models as a major tool for describing vertical energy fluxes within the atmosphere. Such models prescribe that the temperature difference between a planetary surface and the planetary average black body radiation temperature (commonly called the Greenhouse Effect, GE) is caused almost exclusively by the so called greenhouse gases. Here, using a different approach, it is shown that GE can be explained as mainly being a consequence of known physical laws describing the behaviour of ideal gases in a gravity field. A simplified model of Earth, along with a formal proof concerning the model atmosphere and evidence from real planetary atmospheres will help in reaching conclusions. The distinguishing premise is that the bulk part of a planetary GE depends on its atmospheric surface mass density. Thus the GE can be exactly calculated for an ideal planetary model atmosphere. In a real atmosphere some important restrictions have to be met if the gravity induced GE is to be well developed. It will always be partially developed on atmosphere bearing planets. A noteworthy implication is that the calculated values of AGW, accepted by many contemporary climate scientists, are thus irrelevant and probably quite insignificant (not detectable) in relation to natural processes causing climate change.
Journal Title
Energy & environment ISSN 0958-305X
2003, vol. 14, no2-3, pp. 351-356
UPDATE: My earlier comment exchange with Hans Jelbring
The lapse rate is a well established real phenomenon, but I've always had a little trouble squaring it with my own experience with altitude and temperature. Riding up Windy Hill near sunset, it always gets much colder towards the bottom when I'm going back down, not warmer. This "temperature inversion" (where the temperature gradient is opposite of the lapse rate) is a ground effect. Local topology creates local cold spots from which cold air flows into local cold air sinks.
I've thought a little about these things while mountain biking, but I never sat down before and tried to figure out how the lapse rate and local ground effects combine to explain my own experience. That is, until about a week ago, when I first saw Han's Jelbring's 2003 paper at Tallbloke's. Reading his paper prompted me to try to figure out the Windy Hill to Portola Valley temperature dynamics, and I left my rumination on the subject as a comment on Tallbloke's Jelbring post.
Han's very nicely left me a reply that filled in a key point. I surmised that the sun dropping behind the ridge of the Santa Cruz Mountains was creating create a local cold spot on the east slope of the mountains. At the same time, the sun would still be heating the western slope on the east side of Portola Valley, and since the difference in afternoon sun exposure can be a couple of hours, it seemed that a pretty big east-west temperature differential could develop, creating a U-shaped flow of cold air streaming down the shaded slope towards the valley floor, pushing warm air up on the still lit side of the valley.
This would explain why the warmest location in such an area will be well up from the valley floor, but in his reply Hans added another crucial element to this story, explaining why these warmest locations can be surprisingly warm: it is because when the cold air flows down the shaded mountainsides, it doesn't just push air up on the other side of the valley, but it also pulls air down from up above the shaded hillside, and as this air is pulled down, its potential energy is converted into heat energy at the adiabatic lapse rate.
Of course the question arises: shouldn't this air have been colder by the adiabatic lapse rate before it got pulled down? Why would this air from above be warmer than what it displaces? But there could well be reasons for that, maybe convection of air from local hot spots during the day tends to accumulate a certain distance above the hilltops. In any case, there is an empirically documented phenomenon of an especially warm layer that can often be found a few hundred meters above a valley floor.
Not this leads me now to a further speculation: that the warm elevation on the western side of a valley (the east facing slope) might turn out to be substantially warmer than the warm elevation on the east side of the valley, or at the least there could tend to be a systematic difference between the temperature on the two side, because the source of the evening warm-belt air on the two sides will tend to be very different. On the west side of the valley, it will be air that is pulled down from above, replacing the down-slope cold air that is sliding to the valley floor. On the east side of the valley, it would be air from below, pushed up by the cold air coming in from the west side of the valley. As this air gets pushed up from the valley floor it will cool at the adiabatic lapse rate, and if it had already lost its hot-spot air to convection, it might end up on the cool side.
Or maybe the fact that the east side is in sunlight longer offsets, or more than offsets, any such effect, leaving the east-side warm-belt as warm as, or warmer than, the west-side warm-belt. Just the fact that there is a glaring asymmetry in the sources of these warm-belts makes it an interesting empirical question whether there tends to be any systematic temperature differential between east and west side warm-belts.
If there is, it might even be important to know. Current survival advice is for people caught out at night to get themselves well up off of a valley floor should it it be easy enough to do so. If it is actually more advantageous to be up on one side of a valley than the other, serious outdoorsmen might want to know that too.
In any case it could be an interesting exercise for amateur naturalists, if they live in an area where some data points could be collected.
UPDATE II: Jelbring vs. Eschenbach
I also collected some thoughts on Eschenbach's "proof" that gravity induced atmospheric pressure cannot be a source of surface warming. In short, I think he is right, and that the explanation for how this can be squared with the fact of the adiabatic lapse rate is pretty simple: the lapse rate implies a temperature gradient, but it does not by itself imply anything about the level at which this gradient is set. It can shift up or down, and its position is determined by the surface temperature. To think that atmospheric pressure is creating the surface temperature is backwards. It is surface temperature that creates atmospheric pressure by causing the atmosphere to evaporate up from the oceans, at least in the special case world under consideration.
Anyone who wants to bother with this might want to read Willis' post first. Here is my comment. Willis asked for an account of Jelbring's theory that can be summarized in an elevator conversation. I offered instead:
A maintenance elevator story FOR Willis' QED
He already provided a simple enough argument (an express elevator story) but the following working-through of the history of a liquid planet dropped into a uniformly irradiated environment might help flesh it out a bit:
Assume the liquid is just like water, except that it does not freeze, and its gaseous form is not a GHG. Instead of water, call it fauxter. Assume that the incoming radiation levels are such that the SB equilibrium temperature of the planet Fauxter is below the boiling point of fauxter, and that when it pops into existence, Fauxter is entirely liquid and is colder than the SB equilibrium temperature.
When incoming radiation starts to strike Fauxter's ocean, the ocean will begin to warm and some of the surface fauxter molecules will transition to vapor. Evaporation will cool the oceans as energy gets pumped into the atmosphere, but the overall effect will be warming. Both the oceans and the atmosphere will gain heat content, and the more the planet warms, the more readily the surface fauxter will transition to fauxter vapor, building the atmosphere.
In this initial phase, incoming radiation exceeds outgoing radiation. The difference is stored both in the rising heat content of the ocean and the atmosphere, and in the increased potential energy of the atmosphere as it gets lifted up through the planet's gravity well.
Conduction should tend to bring the surface temperature of the ocean together with the near-surface atmospheric temperature. If they are brought fully together then the temperature above would lapse from the ocean surface temperature according to ideal gas law, decreasing with decreasing atmospheric pressure as altitude increases.
This seems to me to be the crux of the issue. The heat content of the atmosphere is all determined by the ocean surface, both through the warming of fauxter into fauxter vapor, and by heat conduction between ocean and atmosphere. If we assume no convection, then the temperature profile from the surface on up just follows the lapse rate, and it is the surface that determines the LEVEL of this profile. The temperature profile can be stepped up or stepped down but the level of the profile is driven from the bottom of the atmosphere, not the top.
This is why atmospheric pressure cannot warm the surface. The causality goes the other way, at least in this GHG-less-atmosphere example. It is surface heat that lifts the atmosphere in the first place and is responsible for the level of the temperature profile going up. That result of the surface temperature cannot in turn be the cause of the surface temperature. The push only goes one way. Atmospheric mass does determine the lapse rate, but not the level of the temperature profile.
Once the ocean surface temperature reaches the SB equilibrium temperature, the system does not gain or lose energy. Solar radiation will still pry fauxter vapor from the ocean, but an equal amount of fauxter should be phase transitioning back to liquid.
The upshot is that atmospheric pressure will not drive surface temperatures above the SB equilibrium surface temperature because the causality goes the other way. It is surface temperature, not atmospheric pressure, that determines the level of the atmospheric temperature profile.
You have now arrived at the Fawlty Towers penthouse. How's the view?
As air descends through the troposphere it experiences increasing atmospheric pressure. This causes the parcel volume to decrease in size, squeezing the air molecules closer together. In this case, work is being done on the parcel. As the volume shrinks, air molecules bounce off one another more often ricocheting with greater speed. The increase in molecular movement causes an increase in the temperature of the parcel. This process is referred to as adiabatic warming.On the other hand, Willis Eschenbach over at Watts Up With That has offered a proof that gravitational warming of the atmosphere would violate conservation of energy:
[This website does not relate the temperature gain to the loss of potential energy from descending the gravity well, but I think they should be equal.]
I hold it can be proven that there is no possible mechanism involving gravity and the atmosphere that can raise the temperature of a planet with a transparent GHG-free atmosphere above the theoretical S-B temperature."The theoretical S-B temperature" is the theoretical equilibrium temperature of the planet's surface in the absence of an atmosphere. Thus Willis is claiming that an atmosphere can only cause warming through the mechanism of heat trapping green house gases (GHGs), and his argument seems airtight. (Check it out here.)
I have a few naive comments to offer, but my immediate purpose is just to make a 2003 paper on the pressure-warming side of the debate more available. Tallbloke has the whole thing posted but Willis, feeling that Tallbloke has engaged in censorship of contrary views, just censored MY link to Tallbloke's posting of Hans Jelbring's 2003 paper. (Hellooo Froma Harrop!)
If Han's gives me permission, I'll post his full paper. (Done. Thank's Hans.) Here is his abstract:
The Greenhouse Effect as a function of atmospheric mass
JELBRING Hans
Abstract
The main reason for claiming a scientific basis for Anthropogenic Greenhouse Warming (AGW) is related to the use of radiative energy flux models as a major tool for describing vertical energy fluxes within the atmosphere. Such models prescribe that the temperature difference between a planetary surface and the planetary average black body radiation temperature (commonly called the Greenhouse Effect, GE) is caused almost exclusively by the so called greenhouse gases. Here, using a different approach, it is shown that GE can be explained as mainly being a consequence of known physical laws describing the behaviour of ideal gases in a gravity field. A simplified model of Earth, along with a formal proof concerning the model atmosphere and evidence from real planetary atmospheres will help in reaching conclusions. The distinguishing premise is that the bulk part of a planetary GE depends on its atmospheric surface mass density. Thus the GE can be exactly calculated for an ideal planetary model atmosphere. In a real atmosphere some important restrictions have to be met if the gravity induced GE is to be well developed. It will always be partially developed on atmosphere bearing planets. A noteworthy implication is that the calculated values of AGW, accepted by many contemporary climate scientists, are thus irrelevant and probably quite insignificant (not detectable) in relation to natural processes causing climate change.
Journal Title
Energy & environment ISSN 0958-305X
2003, vol. 14, no2-3, pp. 351-356
UPDATE: My earlier comment exchange with Hans Jelbring
The lapse rate is a well established real phenomenon, but I've always had a little trouble squaring it with my own experience with altitude and temperature. Riding up Windy Hill near sunset, it always gets much colder towards the bottom when I'm going back down, not warmer. This "temperature inversion" (where the temperature gradient is opposite of the lapse rate) is a ground effect. Local topology creates local cold spots from which cold air flows into local cold air sinks.
I've thought a little about these things while mountain biking, but I never sat down before and tried to figure out how the lapse rate and local ground effects combine to explain my own experience. That is, until about a week ago, when I first saw Han's Jelbring's 2003 paper at Tallbloke's. Reading his paper prompted me to try to figure out the Windy Hill to Portola Valley temperature dynamics, and I left my rumination on the subject as a comment on Tallbloke's Jelbring post.
Han's very nicely left me a reply that filled in a key point. I surmised that the sun dropping behind the ridge of the Santa Cruz Mountains was creating create a local cold spot on the east slope of the mountains. At the same time, the sun would still be heating the western slope on the east side of Portola Valley, and since the difference in afternoon sun exposure can be a couple of hours, it seemed that a pretty big east-west temperature differential could develop, creating a U-shaped flow of cold air streaming down the shaded slope towards the valley floor, pushing warm air up on the still lit side of the valley.
This would explain why the warmest location in such an area will be well up from the valley floor, but in his reply Hans added another crucial element to this story, explaining why these warmest locations can be surprisingly warm: it is because when the cold air flows down the shaded mountainsides, it doesn't just push air up on the other side of the valley, but it also pulls air down from up above the shaded hillside, and as this air is pulled down, its potential energy is converted into heat energy at the adiabatic lapse rate.
Of course the question arises: shouldn't this air have been colder by the adiabatic lapse rate before it got pulled down? Why would this air from above be warmer than what it displaces? But there could well be reasons for that, maybe convection of air from local hot spots during the day tends to accumulate a certain distance above the hilltops. In any case, there is an empirically documented phenomenon of an especially warm layer that can often be found a few hundred meters above a valley floor.
Not this leads me now to a further speculation: that the warm elevation on the western side of a valley (the east facing slope) might turn out to be substantially warmer than the warm elevation on the east side of the valley, or at the least there could tend to be a systematic difference between the temperature on the two side, because the source of the evening warm-belt air on the two sides will tend to be very different. On the west side of the valley, it will be air that is pulled down from above, replacing the down-slope cold air that is sliding to the valley floor. On the east side of the valley, it would be air from below, pushed up by the cold air coming in from the west side of the valley. As this air gets pushed up from the valley floor it will cool at the adiabatic lapse rate, and if it had already lost its hot-spot air to convection, it might end up on the cool side.
Or maybe the fact that the east side is in sunlight longer offsets, or more than offsets, any such effect, leaving the east-side warm-belt as warm as, or warmer than, the west-side warm-belt. Just the fact that there is a glaring asymmetry in the sources of these warm-belts makes it an interesting empirical question whether there tends to be any systematic temperature differential between east and west side warm-belts.
If there is, it might even be important to know. Current survival advice is for people caught out at night to get themselves well up off of a valley floor should it it be easy enough to do so. If it is actually more advantageous to be up on one side of a valley than the other, serious outdoorsmen might want to know that too.
In any case it could be an interesting exercise for amateur naturalists, if they live in an area where some data points could be collected.
UPDATE II: Jelbring vs. Eschenbach
I also collected some thoughts on Eschenbach's "proof" that gravity induced atmospheric pressure cannot be a source of surface warming. In short, I think he is right, and that the explanation for how this can be squared with the fact of the adiabatic lapse rate is pretty simple: the lapse rate implies a temperature gradient, but it does not by itself imply anything about the level at which this gradient is set. It can shift up or down, and its position is determined by the surface temperature. To think that atmospheric pressure is creating the surface temperature is backwards. It is surface temperature that creates atmospheric pressure by causing the atmosphere to evaporate up from the oceans, at least in the special case world under consideration.
Anyone who wants to bother with this might want to read Willis' post first. Here is my comment. Willis asked for an account of Jelbring's theory that can be summarized in an elevator conversation. I offered instead:
A maintenance elevator story FOR Willis' QED
He already provided a simple enough argument (an express elevator story) but the following working-through of the history of a liquid planet dropped into a uniformly irradiated environment might help flesh it out a bit:
Assume the liquid is just like water, except that it does not freeze, and its gaseous form is not a GHG. Instead of water, call it fauxter. Assume that the incoming radiation levels are such that the SB equilibrium temperature of the planet Fauxter is below the boiling point of fauxter, and that when it pops into existence, Fauxter is entirely liquid and is colder than the SB equilibrium temperature.
When incoming radiation starts to strike Fauxter's ocean, the ocean will begin to warm and some of the surface fauxter molecules will transition to vapor. Evaporation will cool the oceans as energy gets pumped into the atmosphere, but the overall effect will be warming. Both the oceans and the atmosphere will gain heat content, and the more the planet warms, the more readily the surface fauxter will transition to fauxter vapor, building the atmosphere.
In this initial phase, incoming radiation exceeds outgoing radiation. The difference is stored both in the rising heat content of the ocean and the atmosphere, and in the increased potential energy of the atmosphere as it gets lifted up through the planet's gravity well.
Conduction should tend to bring the surface temperature of the ocean together with the near-surface atmospheric temperature. If they are brought fully together then the temperature above would lapse from the ocean surface temperature according to ideal gas law, decreasing with decreasing atmospheric pressure as altitude increases.
This seems to me to be the crux of the issue. The heat content of the atmosphere is all determined by the ocean surface, both through the warming of fauxter into fauxter vapor, and by heat conduction between ocean and atmosphere. If we assume no convection, then the temperature profile from the surface on up just follows the lapse rate, and it is the surface that determines the LEVEL of this profile. The temperature profile can be stepped up or stepped down but the level of the profile is driven from the bottom of the atmosphere, not the top.
This is why atmospheric pressure cannot warm the surface. The causality goes the other way, at least in this GHG-less-atmosphere example. It is surface heat that lifts the atmosphere in the first place and is responsible for the level of the temperature profile going up. That result of the surface temperature cannot in turn be the cause of the surface temperature. The push only goes one way. Atmospheric mass does determine the lapse rate, but not the level of the temperature profile.
Once the ocean surface temperature reaches the SB equilibrium temperature, the system does not gain or lose energy. Solar radiation will still pry fauxter vapor from the ocean, but an equal amount of fauxter should be phase transitioning back to liquid.
The upshot is that atmospheric pressure will not drive surface temperatures above the SB equilibrium surface temperature because the causality goes the other way. It is surface temperature, not atmospheric pressure, that determines the level of the atmospheric temperature profile.
You have now arrived at the Fawlty Towers penthouse. How's the view?
Wednesday, November 23, 2011
Secure the border first: to be "comprehensive," immigration reform must be a 2-step process
Newt Gingrich risked his standing with conservatives last night by calling for a "comprehensive approach" to immigration reform. "Comprehensive immigration reform" is a poisonous a term to conservatives because of the reckless dishonesty with which it has been applied to a long series of bills that have been anything BUT comprehensive. In particular, these bills have promised to both secure the border and establish a path to citizenship for those illegals who are already here (amnesty), while only actually providing amnesty, which together with our still unsecured borders dramatically increases illegal immigration. It's like hosing gasoline on a burning house and calling it "a comprehensive approach to firefighting." Comprehensively dishonest and comprehensively disastrous perhaps.
It took a huge fight to turn back the last such attempt (the McCain-Kennedy Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act of 2007). Newt had been asked about his vote for the first such phony-comprehensive bill and stepped in it by making a renewed appeal to comprehensiveness:
A comprehensive approach vs. a comprehensive bill
It is a tricky rhetorical question: how to call for a genuinely comprehensive approach to immigration reform when the term "comprehensive immigration reform" has been systematically used in the most dishonest fashion as cover for what are actually pro-illegal-immigration policies? But there is a simple answer. Truly comprehensive immigration reform MUST be a two-step process. The border must be secured FIRST. Until that is accomplished, even to talk of amnesty, never mind legislate about it, only increases illegal immigration.
In other words, a "comprehensive immigration" BILL is the diametric opposite of a comprehensive immigration APPROACH. Anyone who talks about a comprehensive immigration reform bill (McCain) is a anti-conservative fraud who should be routed out of the party.
Newt's control-the-border-first statement shows he understands the problem, but does he understand the solution? Does he understand that a comprehensive approach to immigration requires, not just that legislation to control the border comes first, but that actual achieved control of the border has to come first, before any other steps can be taken?
It is not a good sign that Gingrich spent most of his "comprehensive" immigration reform comment talking about the need to provide a path to citizenship for long-term illegals. A lot of us agree with him that such a path should be enacted AFTER the borders are secure. But if Newt would try to achieve it through the same bill that initiates border control it's a total fail, it's hosing the burning house with gasoline. If Newt wants to keep from terrifying his would-be supporters, he needs to be specific that by comprehensive reform he does not mean a comprehensive bill, but a comprehensive approach that enacts and achieves border security before any amnesty legislation is considered.
UPDATE: Details of Gingrich plan make him sound like another McCain, or worse (if that is possible)
See Ace's critique here. A tidbit:
The other week I posted a comment on why I support Newt's candidacy at this point, regardless of his (sometimes glaring) imperfections. This in response to an astute analysis of Newt's pretend walk-back of his global-warming love-in with Nancy Pelosi (where he actually only said that his advisors had convinced him that he should distance himself from the issue, regardless of his beliefs):
It took a huge fight to turn back the last such attempt (the McCain-Kennedy Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act of 2007). Newt had been asked about his vote for the first such phony-comprehensive bill and stepped in it by making a renewed appeal to comprehensiveness:
I did vote for the Simpson-Mazzoli Act. Ronald Reagan, in his diary, says he signed it -- and we were supposed to have 300,000 people get amnesty. There were 3 million. But he signed it because we were going to get two things in return. We were going to get control of the border and we were going to get a guest worker program with employer enforcement.
We got neither. So I think you've got to deal with this as a comprehensive approach that starts with controlling the border, as the governor said.
A comprehensive approach vs. a comprehensive bill
It is a tricky rhetorical question: how to call for a genuinely comprehensive approach to immigration reform when the term "comprehensive immigration reform" has been systematically used in the most dishonest fashion as cover for what are actually pro-illegal-immigration policies? But there is a simple answer. Truly comprehensive immigration reform MUST be a two-step process. The border must be secured FIRST. Until that is accomplished, even to talk of amnesty, never mind legislate about it, only increases illegal immigration.
In other words, a "comprehensive immigration" BILL is the diametric opposite of a comprehensive immigration APPROACH. Anyone who talks about a comprehensive immigration reform bill (McCain) is a anti-conservative fraud who should be routed out of the party.
Newt's control-the-border-first statement shows he understands the problem, but does he understand the solution? Does he understand that a comprehensive approach to immigration requires, not just that legislation to control the border comes first, but that actual achieved control of the border has to come first, before any other steps can be taken?
It is not a good sign that Gingrich spent most of his "comprehensive" immigration reform comment talking about the need to provide a path to citizenship for long-term illegals. A lot of us agree with him that such a path should be enacted AFTER the borders are secure. But if Newt would try to achieve it through the same bill that initiates border control it's a total fail, it's hosing the burning house with gasoline. If Newt wants to keep from terrifying his would-be supporters, he needs to be specific that by comprehensive reform he does not mean a comprehensive bill, but a comprehensive approach that enacts and achieves border security before any amnesty legislation is considered.
UPDATE: Details of Gingrich plan make him sound like another McCain, or worse (if that is possible)
See Ace's critique here. A tidbit:
Gingrich proposes, goofilly, that we'll have "Community Boards" to decide on whether or not illegal immigrants within specific communities will be granted amnesty or deported.Could he really support such an arbitrary and STUPID process?
For starters, it is very odd to say that ordinary citizens will essentially be elevated to the position of judge -- without any sort of standards binding their decisions -- to essentially grant illegal immigrants an immunity from the operation of the law, or to order them deported.
...illegal immigrants would just game the system by moving to the blue areas where they know the Commmunity Boards would give them amnesty.What is worrisome about Newt is that he is as confident in his stupidest ideas as he is in the things he actually understands and gets right. How is that possible? But he does get a lot right.
The other week I posted a comment on why I support Newt's candidacy at this point, regardless of his (sometimes glaring) imperfections. This in response to an astute analysis of Newt's pretend walk-back of his global-warming love-in with Nancy Pelosi (where he actually only said that his advisors had convinced him that he should distance himself from the issue, regardless of his beliefs):
Seems like you've hit on the most likely interpretation. Well, Newt has a lot of flaws, which can pretty much all be attributed to his being bullheaded on things he is wrong about. He gets an opinion in his head and is absolutely uninterested in hearing any contrary reason and evidence. BUT, we don't need the president to be right about everything, or even reasonable about everything.
If Republicans can get control of Congress, then Congress can keep Newt's failings in check. As long as he is competent on enough important things, and will spend the bulk of his energy on them, he'll make a good president, and Newt has the one strength that is missing from pretty much all other Republican pols: he knows that our deepest problem, what has allowed all of our problems to proceed, is our lying Democrat controlled media, who spin absolutely everything for maximum partisan advantage.
Newt is willing to fight that enemy and he has the skills to do it effectively. Bush was a great war president but decided not to fight the Democrat media, effectively handing the presidency to the Democrats. With EVERYTHING on the line, he decided not to campaign AT ALL in the 08 election. Insane. Newt is a different animal entirely, and will fight that most important battle.
He doesn't need to get everything else right. I would rather have Bolton or Palin but, inexplicably to me, both bowed out early. Of the folks still in, Gingrich has the best combination of competence and conservatism. So we'll have to fight him on a few things. What else is new?
Friday, November 18, 2011
Friday not-so-funny: Europeans can now be imprisoned (2 yrs!) for claiming that water protects against dehydration
"It took the 21 scientists on the panel three years of analysis into the link between water and dehydration to come to their extraordinary conclusion," reports the UK Express. To be precise, the European Union has barred vendors from claiming that "regular consumption of significant amounts of water can reduce the risk of development of dehydration." Apparently there are some skeptics:
Perhaps a dictionary would have helped. Dehydration, from "hydor," the Greek word for water, means to lose water, or suffer water deprivation.
"The euro is burning, the EU is falling apart and yet here they are, highly paid, highly pensioned officials trying to deny us the right to say what is patently true," says Conservative MEP Roger Helmer.
Wait a minute. How does an anti-science flat-earther like Helmer rate mainstream ink? Leave science to the scientists!
UPDATE: EFSA and/or EFBW issue a blatantly fraudulent "clarification," lying about the actual basis of EFSA's ruling
Anthony Watts links to what seems to be a clarification by EFSA, scolding the press for what it claims are misrepresentations of its ruling. (I say that the clarification seems to be be from EFSA because that is how it is written, but instead of being posted on the EFSA website, it is posted on the website of one of the organizations that EFSA regulates (the European Federation for Bottled Water), with no indication of authorship. It's hard to believe that the regulated body would have posted such a clarification without guidance from EFSA, so it is most likely that this IS an EFSA clarification, but as yet this is uncertain. Given the blatant dishonesty of the statement, authorship really should be established.)
The "clarification" claims that the EFSA ruling rejected the proposed health claim on the grounds that dehydration is not recognized as a disease (leaving the implication that since no actual health claim was made, there would be no prohibition on making it):
This is incredibly stupid. Failure to drink enough water is not a risk factor for dehydration? Just to try to make this distinction is nonsensical enough, but then they get it wrong to boot, on the most trivially simple matter: can drinking water help prevent dehydration?
Also, EFSA does declare the claim unauthorized, meaning disallowed, which would not be the case if they had ruled that it was not actually a health claim. So everything in the clarification is just a fraud. It seems they got embarrassed when people noticed how stupid their ruling was and concocted a completely dishonest excuse.
I emailed both EFSA and EFBW inquiring whether EFSA had provided guidance on the clarification posted by EFBW, or whether EFBW was just brown-nosing on their own initiative. Hey, no answer. I may have to try a Freedom of Information request.
Even if this was just brown-nosing, EFSA is complicit by not correcting the bogus "clarification," and for a government agency to be involved at all with this kind of blatant dishonesty is serious in itself, regardless of the inanity of the issue.
UPDATE II: The UK Register's attempt to make sense of EFSA's ruling is also at odds with the ruling
From the UK Register's report, the same day as the Express story:
Not to suggest that the ruling would have been reasonable if it were based on a sufficiency argument. The claim in question was very modest. It only said that drinking water "can reduce the risk of development of dehydration.” So a negative ruling (if the actual issue had been reached) would have said no, drinking water cannot reduce the risk of dehydration. Really, it can't? Not ever? Can't even reduce the risk? That would be almost as insane as their actual ruling.
Perhaps a dictionary would have helped. Dehydration, from "hydor," the Greek word for water, means to lose water, or suffer water deprivation.
"The euro is burning, the EU is falling apart and yet here they are, highly paid, highly pensioned officials trying to deny us the right to say what is patently true," says Conservative MEP Roger Helmer.
Wait a minute. How does an anti-science flat-earther like Helmer rate mainstream ink? Leave science to the scientists!
UPDATE: EFSA and/or EFBW issue a blatantly fraudulent "clarification," lying about the actual basis of EFSA's ruling
Anthony Watts links to what seems to be a clarification by EFSA, scolding the press for what it claims are misrepresentations of its ruling. (I say that the clarification seems to be be from EFSA because that is how it is written, but instead of being posted on the EFSA website, it is posted on the website of one of the organizations that EFSA regulates (the European Federation for Bottled Water), with no indication of authorship. It's hard to believe that the regulated body would have posted such a clarification without guidance from EFSA, so it is most likely that this IS an EFSA clarification, but as yet this is uncertain. Given the blatant dishonesty of the statement, authorship really should be established.)
The "clarification" claims that the EFSA ruling rejected the proposed health claim on the grounds that dehydration is not recognized as a disease (leaving the implication that since no actual health claim was made, there would be no prohibition on making it):
Among those claims was a claim related to the role of water in the prevention of dehydration filed earlier this year by two German scientists. At the time, the claim had to be rejected by EFSA because it was filed under the wrong legal provision (Article 14 of Regulation 1924/2006/EC instead of Article 13). In short, Article 14 deals with diseases and illnesses whereas dehydration was not regarded by EFSA as a disease.The actual ruling, however, says no such thing, but quite clearly accepts that dehydration IS a disease:
… the applicant proposed water loss in tissues or reduced water content in tissues as risk factors of dehydration. On the basis of the data presented, the Authority concluded in its opinion received by the Commission and the Member States on 16 February 2011 that the proposed risk factors are measures of water depletion and thus are measures of the disease. Accordingly, as a risk factor in the development of a disease is not shown to be reduced, the claim does not comply with the requirements of Regulation (EC) No 1924/2006 and it should not be authorised. [Emphasis added.]As this excerpt makes clear, EFSA's actual grounds for rejecting the proposed claim was a bizarre assessment that the claim does not address a risk factor for the disease, but only a measure of the disease, and hence is not a valid claim about reduction of a risk factor.
This is incredibly stupid. Failure to drink enough water is not a risk factor for dehydration? Just to try to make this distinction is nonsensical enough, but then they get it wrong to boot, on the most trivially simple matter: can drinking water help prevent dehydration?
Also, EFSA does declare the claim unauthorized, meaning disallowed, which would not be the case if they had ruled that it was not actually a health claim. So everything in the clarification is just a fraud. It seems they got embarrassed when people noticed how stupid their ruling was and concocted a completely dishonest excuse.
I emailed both EFSA and EFBW inquiring whether EFSA had provided guidance on the clarification posted by EFBW, or whether EFBW was just brown-nosing on their own initiative. Hey, no answer. I may have to try a Freedom of Information request.
Even if this was just brown-nosing, EFSA is complicit by not correcting the bogus "clarification," and for a government agency to be involved at all with this kind of blatant dishonesty is serious in itself, regardless of the inanity of the issue.
UPDATE II: The UK Register's attempt to make sense of EFSA's ruling is also at odds with the ruling
From the UK Register's report, the same day as the Express story:
After due deliberation, the panel concluded that "the proposed claim does not comply with the requirements for a disease risk reduction claim pursuant to Article 14 of Regulation (EC) No 1924/2006". This sticking point appears to be whether water alone, and how much, will cure dehydration.One understands the need of the human brain to impose order onto chaos, but the ruling itself is quite clear. There is nothing in it about the inadequacy of water as a means of reducing risk of dehydration. EFSA never reached that question, thanks to its ludicrous decision to declare that drinking water does not address a risk factor for dehydration, but only a measure of dehydration. (What?) Sorry Register, but you need to restrain your reporters from substituting what their subjects might sensibly have said for what they did say.
Not to suggest that the ruling would have been reasonable if it were based on a sufficiency argument. The claim in question was very modest. It only said that drinking water "can reduce the risk of development of dehydration.” So a negative ruling (if the actual issue had been reached) would have said no, drinking water cannot reduce the risk of dehydration. Really, it can't? Not ever? Can't even reduce the risk? That would be almost as insane as their actual ruling.
Wednesday, November 09, 2011
Republicanism, not democracy, is what we should be promoting in the Middle East
With popular sovereignty and populist revolution bringing Islamofascism (or orthodox Islam) to power across the Arab world, it is important to remember that democracy is not the criterion of legitimacy. To be legitimate, government must be republican. That is, it must serve to establish a system of liberty under law. If the majority use democracy to violate the natural liberty rights of the minority, that "tyranny of the majority" is no more legitimate than the "tyranny of the minority" that is exercised by unelected dictators. Such, at least, is the founding ideology of the United States.
The framers of our Constitution were highly suspicious of democracy, which they often denigrated as "mob rule." To them democracy was a necessary evil. If we must be ruled, let it be by ourselves. But there are many ways in which we are not supposed to be ruled at all, but are supposed to be free, according to natural law (i.e. according to what can be understood about right and wrong on the basis of moral reason, regardless of whether our capacity for moral reason comes from God or from godless nature).
Hence the enumeration of limited federal powers in Article I of our Constitution, and the enumeration of individual rights in the Bill of Rights (explicitly incomplete). Unfortunately, our Democratic Party seems to take its name literally. They have been systematically breaking down constitutional limits on majority power since the New Deal, when FDR tore down the Constitution's system of limited federal power.
With the Democrats in control of all of our information industries (academia, news and entertainment media, all of our biggest philanthropies, all of our professional organizations), the priority of liberty is no longer widely understood. As a result, democracy is often held up as a first principle, when in our system it's value is purely instrumental. It is valued as a way to secure liberty, and it is without value if it fails to be advantageous for that purpose.
Our loss of understanding of the priority of liberty leaves the nation standing perplexed as the Arab world falls in a single sweep to popular tyranny. Democracy—our supposed criterion of right—is leading to the most evil outcome: the empowerment of al Qaeda and Iran in country after Middle Eastern country, while America mumbles half a cheer and a lot of quiet fretting.
Daniel Pipes on the disastrous consequences of regarding democracy as principle in the Middle East
Pipes has a nice piece on our state of impotent discombulation. He does not say anything about democracy not being the correct criterion of legitimacy—very likely he does not understand this point himself—but he nicely sums up the confusion that is created when U.S. policy-makers treat democracy as principle in the Arab-Muslim world:
But is inconsistency really the problem? Obama has actually been perfectly consistent. Where dictators are friendly or pliable, he throws them to the wolves (demanding that Ghaddafi and Mubarak leave). Where they are hostile to the U.S. and not at all pliable, he is silent and unmoved when protesters are slaughtered en masse (Iran and Syria).
The obvious explanation is that Obama himself is not just a Muslim, but is an Islamofascist. (The evidence for both is overwhelming.) He skillfully uses the Democratic Party's immoral priority of democracy over republicanism to advance democracy where the outcome will be anti-republican, and suppress it where republicanism is likely to prevail.
The key is Iran. A democratic Iran would almost certainly embrace liberty/republicanism, but so long as it remains in the hands of the Islamofascists, it can usurp every populist movement in the area to the Islamofascist side. Hence Obama's determination to see that Iran gets The Bomb.
Assert republicanism over democracy
Faced with a president who is actively making use of the errant principle of democracy to undermine the national interest, it is not enough to advocate some wise balancing of democracy and interest. Instead, it is necessary to clarify and insist that republicanism, not democracy, is our principle, and that democracy should only be advanced where doing so advances the cause of liberty. Until we get regime change in Iran, that means no-where else in the Islamic world should we be pressing yet for democracy. Iran has to come first, or it will usurp every other attempt at democratic reform.
This strategy would expose Obama for what he in fact is doing, using a false principle to advance the Islamofascist cause. Pipes, in contrast, casts Obama as a bumbler, presumably well intentioned. Would that it were the case. Pipes' suggestions for how to deal with the conflict between democracy and interest are fine as far as they go:
Addendum: the New Deal actually ushered in a new (and un-ratified) Constitution
Since everything affects interstate commerce in some way, post-New-Deal Supreme Courts have held that Congress is empowered to regulate anything and everything under its power to regulate interstate commerce. Pre-New-Deal Courts had rejected that interpretation on the grounds that it violated Justice Marshall's first principle of constitutional interpretation:
That system of limited enumerated powers stood in the way of FDR's desire to implement a Soviet-style command economy, where the government dictates to industry the quantities that it will produce and the prices it will charge. Yes, Roosevelt did actually try to implement such a system, dictating prices and quantities to every major industry in America. That was the job of the NRA (the National Recovery Administration), created by the National Industrial Recovery Act of 1933 (NIRA). (See FDR's Folly, by Jim Powell, chapter 9.)
NIRA was struck down by the Supreme Court, prompting FDR's infamous court-packing scheme and "the switch in time that saved nine." Intimidated by a popular president during a time of national agony, the Supremes agreed to abandon the Constitution, and we have never gotten it back.
UPDATE: Secretary of State Clinton endorses Islamist regimes, calls their ascention to power a triumph for freedom
Robert Danin lists some main points from Hillary's November 7th speech:
Certainly faithful Muslims can thrive in a democracy, and they might even respect the rules of democratic politics, where doing so is an effective way to advance Islam, but they can never be small "r" republicans, at least if they are orthodox, and that is what matters.
The bold ruthlessness with which the Obama administration is using the false principle of democracy as a weapon against the genuine principle of republicanism could hardly be more explicit. Clinton actually declares unabashed tyranny of the majority—the electoral triumph of unabashed totalitarians—to be a triumph for "freedom." This blatant dishonesty invites the obvious and correct response. Yes, "freedom" is the right criterion, but no, totalitarianism is not freedom.
RELATED: How the Democrat-endorsed Occupy morons are explicitly calling both for tyranny of the majority and for the destruction of liberty. It's right in their two names: "the 99%" and "Occupy." They are urging everyone not in the top 1% of earners to Occupy (to take over, to confiscate) what the 1% has.
Of course that is very far from a majority opinion. It is more like a 1% opinion, or at worst (I hope) a 10% opinion. But as an expression of their anti-republican ambition, the label is appropriate. What a heap of moral trash, and they look like it too:
An island of human flotsam planted with an America-hating upside-down flag and the blood red flag of the left's favorite sadistic communist mass-murder, plus cheery slogan.
Good for Newt for shaming these idiots:
From Zombie, who notes:
The male-looking masked coward seems to have poop on his pants.
UPDATE II, 11-25-2011: Obama still pushing hard for Islamofascist take-over of Egypt
The only hope for Egypt not to go to the bin Ladenists is if the Egyptian military re-asserts control and forcibly suppresses the Muslim Brotherhood (which is trying to forcibly suppress everyone else). So what does our Islamofascist president do? Exactly what you would expect:
See also "False AP report." (No, Obama did NOT say that Iran must respect voters' choice.)
The framers of our Constitution were highly suspicious of democracy, which they often denigrated as "mob rule." To them democracy was a necessary evil. If we must be ruled, let it be by ourselves. But there are many ways in which we are not supposed to be ruled at all, but are supposed to be free, according to natural law (i.e. according to what can be understood about right and wrong on the basis of moral reason, regardless of whether our capacity for moral reason comes from God or from godless nature).
Hence the enumeration of limited federal powers in Article I of our Constitution, and the enumeration of individual rights in the Bill of Rights (explicitly incomplete). Unfortunately, our Democratic Party seems to take its name literally. They have been systematically breaking down constitutional limits on majority power since the New Deal, when FDR tore down the Constitution's system of limited federal power.
With the Democrats in control of all of our information industries (academia, news and entertainment media, all of our biggest philanthropies, all of our professional organizations), the priority of liberty is no longer widely understood. As a result, democracy is often held up as a first principle, when in our system it's value is purely instrumental. It is valued as a way to secure liberty, and it is without value if it fails to be advantageous for that purpose.
Our loss of understanding of the priority of liberty leaves the nation standing perplexed as the Arab world falls in a single sweep to popular tyranny. Democracy—our supposed criterion of right—is leading to the most evil outcome: the empowerment of al Qaeda and Iran in country after Middle Eastern country, while America mumbles half a cheer and a lot of quiet fretting.
Daniel Pipes on the disastrous consequences of regarding democracy as principle in the Middle East
Pipes has a nice piece on our state of impotent discombulation. He does not say anything about democracy not being the correct criterion of legitimacy—very likely he does not understand this point himself—but he nicely sums up the confusion that is created when U.S. policy-makers treat democracy as principle in the Arab-Muslim world:
•Democracy pleases us but brings hostile elements to power."As interest conflicts with principle," says Pipes, "consistency goes out the window."
•Tyranny betrays our principles but leaves pliable rulers in power.
But is inconsistency really the problem? Obama has actually been perfectly consistent. Where dictators are friendly or pliable, he throws them to the wolves (demanding that Ghaddafi and Mubarak leave). Where they are hostile to the U.S. and not at all pliable, he is silent and unmoved when protesters are slaughtered en masse (Iran and Syria).
The obvious explanation is that Obama himself is not just a Muslim, but is an Islamofascist. (The evidence for both is overwhelming.) He skillfully uses the Democratic Party's immoral priority of democracy over republicanism to advance democracy where the outcome will be anti-republican, and suppress it where republicanism is likely to prevail.
The key is Iran. A democratic Iran would almost certainly embrace liberty/republicanism, but so long as it remains in the hands of the Islamofascists, it can usurp every populist movement in the area to the Islamofascist side. Hence Obama's determination to see that Iran gets The Bomb.
Assert republicanism over democracy
Faced with a president who is actively making use of the errant principle of democracy to undermine the national interest, it is not enough to advocate some wise balancing of democracy and interest. Instead, it is necessary to clarify and insist that republicanism, not democracy, is our principle, and that democracy should only be advanced where doing so advances the cause of liberty. Until we get regime change in Iran, that means no-where else in the Islamic world should we be pressing yet for democracy. Iran has to come first, or it will usurp every other attempt at democratic reform.
This strategy would expose Obama for what he in fact is doing, using a false principle to advance the Islamofascist cause. Pipes, in contrast, casts Obama as a bumbler, presumably well intentioned. Would that it were the case. Pipes' suggestions for how to deal with the conflict between democracy and interest are fine as far as they go:
Aim to improve the behavior of tyrants whose lack of ideology or ambition makes them pliable. They will take the easiest road, so join together to pressure them to open up.If Obama was merely a bumbler, he could learn from this advice. Since he is actually an Islamofascist, the only counter is to assert correct moral principle: that our goal is to advance liberty, and that democracy is only on the side of principle where it serves to promote liberty. Otherwise Obama can just continue to pretend to be acting on American values as he helps elevate Islamofascists to power across the Middle East.
Always oppose Islamists, whether Al-Qaeda types as in Yemen or the suave and "moderate" ones in Tunisia. They represent the enemy. When tempted otherwise, ask yourself whether cooperation with "moderate" Nazis in the 1930s would have been a good idea.
Help the liberal, secular, and modern elements, those who in the first place stirred up the upheavals of 2011. Assist them eventually to come to power, so that they can salvage the politically sick Middle East from its predicament and move it in a democratic and free direction.
Addendum: the New Deal actually ushered in a new (and un-ratified) Constitution
Since everything affects interstate commerce in some way, post-New-Deal Supreme Courts have held that Congress is empowered to regulate anything and everything under its power to regulate interstate commerce. Pre-New-Deal Courts had rejected that interpretation on the grounds that it violated Justice Marshall's first principle of constitutional interpretation:
It cannot be presumed that any clause in the Constitution is intended to be without effect; and, therefore, such a construction is inadmissible unless the words require it. [5 U.S. 137, 174 (1803).]Allowing everything to be regulated under the commerce clause did not just render one clause of the Constitution without effect, it vitiated the entire system of limited enumerated powers.
That system of limited enumerated powers stood in the way of FDR's desire to implement a Soviet-style command economy, where the government dictates to industry the quantities that it will produce and the prices it will charge. Yes, Roosevelt did actually try to implement such a system, dictating prices and quantities to every major industry in America. That was the job of the NRA (the National Recovery Administration), created by the National Industrial Recovery Act of 1933 (NIRA). (See FDR's Folly, by Jim Powell, chapter 9.)
NIRA was struck down by the Supreme Court, prompting FDR's infamous court-packing scheme and "the switch in time that saved nine." Intimidated by a popular president during a time of national agony, the Supremes agreed to abandon the Constitution, and we have never gotten it back.
UPDATE: Secretary of State Clinton endorses Islamist regimes, calls their ascention to power a triumph for freedom
Robert Danin lists some main points from Hillary's November 7th speech:
– reaffirmation of the “Freedom Agenda” and America’s commitment to democracy in the Middle East, exclaiming “What a year 2011 has been for freedom in the Middle East”Islamofascist triumph in Tunisa, YAY! But while the Islamofascists are making great headway in Egypt, the military is threatening to block them from taking complete control, BOOOOO! The worst bit (via Barry Rubin) was her opening:
...
– a headline grabbing pledge for the United States to work with the Islamist al-Nahda party in Tunisia
– an oblique reference for the need of “unelected officials” (read: the military) in Egypt to relinquish their role as the most powerful political force lest they plant the seeds for future unrest
...
Not all Islamists are alike. Turkey and Iran are both governed by parties with religious roots, but their models and behavior are radically different. There are plenty of political parties with religious affiliations—Hindu, Christian, Jewish, Muslim—that respect the rules of democratic politics. The suggestion that faithful Muslims cannot thrive in a democracy is insulting, dangerous, and wrong. They do it in this country every day.Actually, as Rubin notes, all Islamists ARE alike, as Obama's Turkish hug-buddy Erdogan proves every day. ("Erdogan is openly taking steps to transform Turkey into an Islamic state along the lines of Iran," summarizes Carolyn Glick.)
Certainly faithful Muslims can thrive in a democracy, and they might even respect the rules of democratic politics, where doing so is an effective way to advance Islam, but they can never be small "r" republicans, at least if they are orthodox, and that is what matters.
The bold ruthlessness with which the Obama administration is using the false principle of democracy as a weapon against the genuine principle of republicanism could hardly be more explicit. Clinton actually declares unabashed tyranny of the majority—the electoral triumph of unabashed totalitarians—to be a triumph for "freedom." This blatant dishonesty invites the obvious and correct response. Yes, "freedom" is the right criterion, but no, totalitarianism is not freedom.
RELATED: How the Democrat-endorsed Occupy morons are explicitly calling both for tyranny of the majority and for the destruction of liberty. It's right in their two names: "the 99%" and "Occupy." They are urging everyone not in the top 1% of earners to Occupy (to take over, to confiscate) what the 1% has.
Of course that is very far from a majority opinion. It is more like a 1% opinion, or at worst (I hope) a 10% opinion. But as an expression of their anti-republican ambition, the label is appropriate. What a heap of moral trash, and they look like it too:
An island of human flotsam planted with an America-hating upside-down flag and the blood red flag of the left's favorite sadistic communist mass-murder, plus cheery slogan.
Good for Newt for shaming these idiots:
There is no such thing in America as 99 percent. We are all 100 percent Americans.Of course they think they are just the loveliest people:
From Zombie, who notes:
Rule #451 of protest sign-making: If you put a unicorn on it, no one can accuse you of malice.What a cute little liberty-hater:
The male-looking masked coward seems to have poop on his pants.
UPDATE II, 11-25-2011: Obama still pushing hard for Islamofascist take-over of Egypt
The only hope for Egypt not to go to the bin Ladenists is if the Egyptian military re-asserts control and forcibly suppresses the Muslim Brotherhood (which is trying to forcibly suppress everyone else). So what does our Islamofascist president do? Exactly what you would expect:
The White House demanded the transfer of power to a civilian government in Egypt must be "just and inclusive" and take place "as soon as possible". "Most importantly, we believe that the full transfer of power to a civilian government must take place in a just and inclusive manner that responds to the legitimate aspirations of the Egyptian people, as soon as possible," White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said in a statement.To our democratic but not republican president, the "legitimate aspirations of the Egyptian people" is whatever the Islamofascist majority or minority is able to impose through elections, however corrupt. He already proved in Iran that his criterion of democratic legitimacy is not an honest election, but just the outcome of the de facto election process, whatever that may be. His only proviso there was that not too many of the people who were protesting the stolen election should be murdered in the process:
My understanding is, is that the Iranian government says that they are going to look into irregularities that have taken place. ...He doesn't care whether their votes are counted correctly. He just doesn't want too many of them to be stifled (or killed, which is how the Iranian Mullahcracy "stifles").
I think it's important that, moving forward, whatever investigations take place are done in a way that is not resulting in bloodshed and is not resulting in people being stifled in expressing their views.
See also "False AP report." (No, Obama did NOT say that Iran must respect voters' choice.)
Friday, October 28, 2011
Explaining Muller vs. Muller: is BEST blissfully unaware of cosmic-ray-cloud theory?
Crossposted at Watts Up
Here is the puzzle, as noted by Nigel Calder and others: how can BEST insist that a modicum of additional evidence of late 20th century warming should put skepticism of the CO2-warming theory to rest, while at the same time admitting that they never even tried to examine the possible causes of warming?
Elizabeth Muller's press statement in support of anti-CO2 alarmism is extreme:
Elizabeth Muller, co-founder and Executive Director of Berkeley Earth, said she hopes the Berkeley Earth findings will help “cool the debate over global warming by addressing many of the valid concerns of the skeptics in a clear and rigorous way.” This will be especially important in the run-up to the COP 17 meeting in Durban, South Africa, later this year, where participants will discuss targets for reducing Greenhouse Gas (GHG)emissions for the next commitment period as well as issues such as financing, technology transfer and cooperative action.She is strongly implying that BEST's findings not only support the CO2 theory of late 20th century warming, but justify radical worldwide government action to reduce carbon emissions.
Richard Muller's statement of ignorance on the cause of the observed warming is equally absolute:
What Berkeley Earth has not done is make an independent assessment of how much of the observed warming is due to human actions.Contradictory, yes, but also explanatory. Muller et al. must be so ignorant of this climate science subject that they are brand-new to that they are not even aware that the leading competing climate theory, where solar-magnetic activity modulates cloud formation, also predicts and explains late 20th warming. All they know is that the CO2 theory predicts warming, prompting them to see evidence of warming as evidence for that theory.
This is the only logical explanation for Muller vs. Muller, and it would also explain why BEST made such a complete hash of the only part of their data that does have any power to discriminate between CO2-warming and solar-warming.
Continue reading...
Opposite temperature predictions for quiet-sun era
If late 20th century warming was mostly caused by the industrial release of atmospheric CO2, then warming should be continuing apace, but if 20th century warming was mostly caused by the 80 year grand maximum of solar activity that waned in the 1990's and ended in 2005, then planetary temperature (as measured by the heat content of the oceans) should have been falling for several years now. In a less smooth way, surface temperatures would also be passing the peak of the Modern Warm period.
Nature is right now conducting an ideal experiment for determining which theory is right, but on this crucial part of the temperature record—what happened when solar activity waned and then dropped into the cellar—BEST's presentation is remarkably confused. The sample station analysis that they released shows substantially more post-98 cooling than any of the other land records, while their full data set has recent temperatures going up compared to the other records.
Here is a zoom-in on figure 1 from BEST's "decadal variations" paper. It shows the most recent temperatures for a sub-sample of temperature stations ("[t]he Berkeley Earth data were randomly chosen from 30,964 sites that were not used by the other groups"):
Wow, this sub-sample really favors the sun as the primary driver of climate, certainly compared to the NOAA, GISS and Hadley evidence. The BEST temperatures are equal or above the other temperature records throughout the 80's and 90's, then drop precipitously below them over the last ten years, as the sun has gone quiet.
BEST's full data set tells the opposite story. Here is their 12 month average surface temperature (figure 8 from their "Temperature Averaging Process" paper):
The second part of figure 8 shows the differences. NOAA and GISS both drop off a couple of tenths of a degree relative to BEST after 2000, while Hadley drops off about a half a degree!
Wow, compared to the evidence provided by the other temperature records, BEST's full sample really favors the CO2 theory over this critical period. Thus on the only part of the temperature record that is probative, BEST displays two strongly contradictory graphs without a word of commentary. That's a pretty good sign that they are oblivious to the discriminatory power of this part of the record, indicating again that they are not even aware of the GCR-cloud theory and its implications. No wonder they can do such incredibly biased things as calling "the late part of the 20th century," "the anthropogenic era" (p. 30). Anthropogenic warming is their premise.
BEST evidence is not best evidence
Almost all of the heat capacity of the biosphere is in the oceans. Thus climate change over time means a change in ocean heat content. Land surface temperature is a volatile expression of this global temperature, depending on whether colder or warmer ocean currents are at the surface. That volatility makes surface temperatures an iffy way to track climate change, and today, better evidence is available.
In recent years, ARGO's automated fleet of temperature sounding devices provides much improved direct measurement of ocean temperature. According to NOAA, data from these floats show ocean heat content for the top 700 meters as close to flat for about 10 years now:
(Bob Tisdale says that NOAA has recently started reporting heat content for the top 2000 meters, but apparently it is still a work in progress, as they don't display it on their heat content page.)
Ocean heat content can also be measured by sea level, which is determined by the thermal expansion of the oceans, plus net land-ice melt. Here is NOAA's sea level data, compensated for land-ice melt and variations in salinity. It shows ocean heat content as roughly flat for about the last eight years:
This best evidence indicates that global warming has stopped, which militates against the CO2 theory of late 20th century warming, but the oceans do not show the global cooling that the solar-theory predicts, so it does not clearly favor the cosmic-ray-cloud hypothesis either. The very latest sea level data, however, may finally be telling the tale:
Steve Goddard, September 2011: "The latest sea level numbers are out, and Envisat shows that the two year long decline is continuing, at a rate of 5mm per year."
That's actual sea level, not steric sea level. Subtract out the ongoing land-ice melt from our currently warm climate and thermosteric sea level is falling even more rapidly. If cosmic-ray-cloud effects do dominate CO2 effects, we'll probably have full proof within the next couple of years.
Can BEST actually be unaware of the cosmic-ray-cloud theory, or are they just accepting the CO2-alarmists' excuses for dismissing solar effects?
Unless Muller is a world-class fruitcake, he can't have waded into the climate arena without at least being aware of Svensmark's theory. He must also know that the sun has gone quiet, and his Nobel-physics brain would be able to figure out how this natural experiment provides a test of which theory is right. Yet he might still act as if he is unaware of solar warming theory if he has been convinced by the alarmists' bogus excuses for why recent warming can't have been caused by the sun.
Over and over, these folks claim that late 20th century cannot have been caused by the sun because solar activity was not rising over this period. e.g. Rasmus Benestad, 2005:
A further comparison with the monthly sunspot number, cosmic galactic rays and 10.7 cm absolute radio flux since 1950 gives no indication of a systematic trend in the level of solar activity that can explain the most recent global warming.That reasoning obviously requires an assumption that ocean temperatures had equilibrated to the high level of 20th century solar forcing by 1950. Otherwise the continued high level of solar forcing (the hypothesis under consideration) would cause continued warming until ocean equilibrium was reached. Yet Benestad did not even acknowledge this assumption, never mind make any case for it, and this has been the pattern.
I have written several posts on the alarmists' excuses for dismissing the solar explanation and how they utterly fail to stand up to scrutiny. But without even going into those details, the more basic point is that the various rationales for dismissing the solar warming hypothesis are theoretical. They are, in effect, part of the CO2 warming theory. Our recently quiet sun offers a test of which theory makes the right prediction. To ignore that test because one already agrees with one of the theories, as BEST seems to be doing, is to put theory over evidence, the opposite of what scientists are supposed to do.
