I’m trying to figure out how many I need. 1 for me, 1 for my sister-in-law that makes Bruce look like he’s to the right of Ghengis Kahn, 1 for the my brother in law that makes me look to teh far left of Bruce, 3-4 for friends, so that puts me up to 6-7…
To continue the theme of our glorious Dems leadership being totally nuts:
Durbin Admits Premiums Will Go Up If Health Care Bill Is Passed Sen. Dick Durbin, March 10, 2010: “Anyone who would stand before you and say ‘well, if you pass health care reform next year’s health care premiums are going down,’ I don’t think is telling the truth. I think it is likely they would go up.” Obama Says Health Premiums Will Go Down President Obama, March 8, 2010: “Our cost-cutting measures mirror most of the proposals in the current Senate bill, which reduces most people’s premiums.”
It is obvious that they don’t care that it is screwed up. It’s not about health care; it is about political power. The more screwed up that this stage 1 reform is, the better it is for their holy grail: Single Payer.
And now a more simple question for my lefty friends.
Where are the anti-war protestors???
Was it really just becuase we had a R as President? They really didn’t care about the war, just about bringing down Bush?
We just got below 100K in Iraq – over a year after the inaugaration. We could have moved the entire troop set out of Iraq in 3 months if we wanted (with all the equipment). Yet we are obviously going to be there for a long, long time…
Afghanistan has ramped up (in an attempt to repeat the successful surge in Iraq) and we have pretty active operations in Pakistan. UAV strikes are way up as we attack people in countries we are not at war with. Bahgram Airbase is full of prisoners. And oviously we have just started offensive operations that will continue through the summer and into the fall. Funding and congressional support is still, since inception, overwelming and bi-partisan.
GITMO is still open (heck we could have closed that place in 10 days or less if we wanted too. Just fly all the detainees to Bahgram…) and no real idea when it will close.
FISA & Patriot Act all were bi-partisanly passed originally with overwelming support, and now have once again been passed and signed into law by Obama with overwelming bi-partisan support. So obviously the Dems fully back these laws.
So I ask you guys. Did no one really care about the policy and it was all about the fact that there was an ‘R’ in the Whitehouse and if Gore had done all this you would have been fine with it? The left and the Dems seem to be just fine with it now with a ‘D’ in the office.
C’mon Buff, you know where they are! They’re home sitting on their hands. You called the future very, very well.
What amazes me is the dirth of success with the vaunted Lib/Progressive/Dem policies we heard so much about all through the last administration. Moreover, the thing that really impresses me is the depth of caring for the poor down trodden unemployed. Jobs are what they need and want. Extended unemployment with benefits is what they are getting. More trust me. I’m from the Govt and I’m here to help. (Only the help is to maintain subsistence existence.)
Which “O” policies have worked?????? Lessee, continuation of Bush GWOT policies? Yup, successful, and “O”/Biden are taking credit. Homeland security polices (also Bush’s.) Yup, but not as well as Bush, since at least a dozen or more have been killed by terrorists in the US. Bringing to trial terrorists? Nope. The whole process is on hold while they figure out that the Bush policy was best. Closing Gitmo? Nope! Can’t find a better place and process without totally compromising their previous claims.
I won’t even go into the econoic policy. We are living daily with that lack of success.
So, I ask again. Which “O” policies have been a success?
Even though I have stopped updating my blog, I still spend a great deal of time reviewing the latest commentary.
1) Much of the attention has shifted from Global Warming to just getting the estimates of warming correct. There are multiple ongoing efforts, both official and private, that are evaluating the current approaches for calculating average temperature and producing new revisions to them.
2) One of the ongoing discusssions concerns the recent dropping of a large percentage of reporting stations. One school claims they have no discernible effect on temperature anomalies. But, my preferred approach is taking apart the raw data to determine the biases inherent in that data to compare whether they are accurately corrected.
3) The official IPCC reports are finally being independently reviewed, and they have been found to have many serious errors. More importantly they have been found to be replete with “gray” references. (Gray referecnce are material that has not bee peer reviewed.) Some of these more amazing results from this review is that some of the “Gray” materials were not even reports but only press releases and nonscientific magazine articles. The end result has been that the IPCC today announced an independent review of the past IPCC Reports.
4) The EPA used those very same IPCC Reports in making the Green House Gas Findings. When those several court cases against that finding are actually tried, the IPCC Report issues should be pivotal.
So, my bottomline impression is that the whole issue is becoming an “official” embarassment. Policies based upon Carbon/Anthropogenic GW science are being ignored and future actions are being tabled. The era of catastrophic predictions is over. Seems like every time a new such prediction is presented it has nearly no coverage due to the howls of derision.
buff, corev, You guys are still missing a crucial point. Buff is not wrong to point out the similarities between Bush and Barry. He’s wrong to think that the protests were against a Republican administration. The lack of zeal these days is more likely due to liberal minded Democratic candidate voters suddenly relaizing that they were really voting for more of the same. Look at the policy decisions from Clinton, to Bush to Obama. Look at the personnel and how they seem to all emerge from a similar ideological place. Yes, sure the Bush crowd seemed far more anti-democracy and pro business. As i said before on this dite, Dem and Repub administrations are more and more looking like two slightly dissimilar sides of the same coin.
So to get back to Buff’s thesis, no it isn’t because the war was first waged by Republicans. In fact a case could be made that Bush was only continuing the Clintonian campaign in the ME. It is far more likely the total frustration setting in amongst Democratic voters who are beginning to recognize that it makes little difference who’s in the Presidency. You know, “here comes the new boss, same as the old boss.” Unfortunately the American voter has a never ending capacity to be “fooled again.” Maybe the Who would do well to re-issue that tune. It rings so true to this day. Change you can believe in is the alternative to the more things change the more they stay the same. Funny how such hackneyed phrases have the ring of truth.
Jack, I’m sorry there is a greater difference between the parties than you recognize. Those differences can be seen in the approaches for implementing a HC Reform Bill.
What is also amazing is the proclivity for Dems (with the help of Am voters) to elect a cleuless outsider. Carter, Clinton and now “O” really were outsiders and that’s how they campaigned. Clinton was the better politician and was able to salvage his presidency, but Carter, and I suspect “O” will not do so. IMO liberal beliefs are just too alien to the average American. Liberal idealogs can seem to get elected, but can not seem to govern from that position.
Buff: I think what Obama meant to say is “Our cost-cutting measures mirror most of the proposals in the current Senate bill, which reduces the amount some people have to pay for their premiums, because Bill Gates will be pitching in the difference.”
You can have premiums go up and the amount certain people pay go down. It just takes a bunch of guys with the authority to fire a weapon at you if you do not bend over and take it up the @$$ from the federal government.
We just got below 100K in Iraq – over a year after the inaugaration. We could have moved the entire troop set out of Iraq in 3 months if we wanted (with all the equipment).
Sorry, but this is just complete crap. Tell us what the throughput “washer” capacity is at Arifjan. Tell us how many unopened CONEX containers are sitting north of the border. Tell us how many containers can be offloaded and shipped to the receiving depots each week. Tell us how many southbound containers per week the Kuwaiti customs folks allow to cross the Iraq/Kuwait border. Learn some logistics. Almost every logistics professional who has studied the issue agrees that a withdrawal would take ~12-18 months. And that’s what I was saying a year ago when Obama said he wanted troops out in a year…I said that a 12 month goal was on the very edge of the possible.
People aren’t upset with Obama because they understand that we’re on the way out of Iraq and because troops aren’t getting killed. If Obama wasn’t pulling troops out and if the body counts were still as high as they were four years ago, then you can bet your bottom dollar that the left would be slamming Obama.
Paul Krugman does a nice job of slamming Rep. Ryan’s “Roadmap” tax plan. He includes a nice graph on the tax rates. Basically the rich make out like bandits and most folks in the middle (60 percent of tax units) see tax increases.
And as Krugman notes: “basically, Ryan pulled a fast one by having the CBO evaluate his spending proposals but not his revenue-bleeding tax proposals.”
I don’t know what planet you live on, but here on Planet Earth global warming is becoming an even bigger issue. For example, a few days ago MIT just dramatically revised their take on the risks of global warming…and they didn’t say the risk is diminishing.
Of course, I’m sure you’re scientific and math skills are far superior to those pointy headed academics at MIT…hey, it’s in a blue state afterall.
And speaking of pointy headed academics in blue states, here’s a paper on the proper way to view risk under conditions of extreme uncertainty. This paper has been getting a lot of buzz over the last week. The gist is that when dealing with models that are shot through with uncertainty piled on top of uncertainty, the right way to view risk is to keep in mind that you sum up the tails. You do not look at the central tendencies, you look at the fat tails.
The western hemisphere can have clean air and reduced CO2 using a mix of energy independence and clean renewable sources. New technology from fuel cells, to nuclear generators, to high tech low energy coal scrubbers, to more wind. solar and tide generated energy as well as burgeoning sources of domestic natural gas…………………..
Why did DC have more snow than Boston this year?
Global cooling? Global warming?
The model which says that with global warming that the NE US gets colder?
Northrop Grumman announced that it is disserting Trent Lott, and their scheme to create French, English, Dutch and German aerpospace jobs in Toulouse, the Midlands, and Mobile, Alabama and not sending US militarist welfare for the rich jobs to the European Aeropace and Defense System (EADS) also known as the socialist Airbus constortium.
I guess Boeing got through that US war profits for welfare for the rich needs to stay in the US.
Mc Cain has to stop torturing Boeing.
Stop send US welfare for the rich to the French.
I am no fan of Boeing, but US tax dollars for nothing should stay in the US.
ILSM, The East and CA had weather caused by the El Nino. It was anticpated and predicted. It changed the wind patterns which concentrates effects. What was unique was the timing of the storm components that made them near perfect.
Having lived through three of the big ones and a couple of smaller ones this year, I admit that I was more than surprised.
So all the commentary re: it was/was not due to GW is rubbish. Just predictable wather.
Buff, read the CBO report for the details on this one. Premiums will both go down AND up. They’ll go down for a given amount of coverage, but because the amount of coverage that large numbers of people receive will increase, they’ll go up for the people who now have more coverage. People currently receiving the Wal-Mart pseudo-insurance that pays only for band-aids and $5 a day of hospital expenses will pay more because that pseudo-insurance will no longer qualify as insurance for the purposes of this bill. People with real insurance today will pay less. Does that make it any clearer?
Co, Obama is not, and never has been, a “liberal ideologue”. Unlike you and the loonie lefties, I actually read his policy positions on his web site prior to his election, not the sound bites reported by the media. Obama basically proposed doing whatever the polls told him polled best — i.e., a fairly moderate middle-of-the-road course that did nothing exciting, that, indeed, Richard Nixon, Barry Goldwater, or Dwight D. Eisenhower would have been quite comfortable with. I’ve been especially amused by right wing extremists attempting to paint Obama as a liberal on health care. No. A liberal would have proposed Medicare For All. Obama has *never* proposed Medicare For All. Instead, he proposed a reform whose core component, an employer mandate (i.e., employers must provide insurance for their workers, or pay a fine), has been consistently supported by almost EIGHTY PERCENT of Americans dating back to when the Kaiser Foundation started running tracking polls on the subject back in 1997. Eighty percent support by the American public is “radical leftist” only in the minds of deranged lunatics — do conservatives truly believe that 80% of the American public is radical leftists?!
Of course, this is also getting Obama blasted by the radical left, who are upset that Obama isn’t pushing for Medicare For All, didn’t just arbitrarily withdraw all troops from Iran and Afghanistan the day after his inauguration, and so forth… but if they would have read his policy positions on his web site prior to his nomination instead of falling for the pro-Obama propaganda spewed by folks like Kos, they wouldn’t be surprised. There’s a *reason* why I, someone who favors positions slightly to the left of Obama, did not vote for Obama in the Democratic primaries. And it’s because I recognized that Obama was fundamentally conservative in the Barry Goldwater/Dwight D. Eisenhower sense of the word, i.e. that he might be all hopey changey and all that, but fundamentally he was about making the existing system work better, not about real change. And unfortunately I do think we need real change — both our system of government and our economy have become fundamentally dysfunctional, and without real change, the collapse of the Soviet Union will look like a minor historical event.
Before this year I was there once when snow was on the ground. That about 6 inches.
How many double digit snows?
Of course, closing the gumint is good for the deficit!
Lots of predictable, variable, uncertain weather. No trends…….
El Nino certainly sends rain to the Northeast, but not snow in the middle Atlantic and rain in the north. And whether there are more than usual El Nino’s and more or less intense is statisically TBD.
Is this reversal of trends staying constant, warming or cooling, what do you think? Why?
ILSM, we had three double digits. Two of them were nearer 1 1/2 to two feet than one, and one was ~ 1 foot. 2 others were in the 3-4 inch range.
Trends? Which trends are you talking about? Warming/cooling/El Ninos/Las Ninas/Jet Stream shifts/Ocean Current shifts? Ocean currents, Pacific and Atlantic, are the big kahunas.
What we are finding is that the raw temperature data is so poor that it is major work to process it, and the official calculations are so rife with procssing errors that their results are suspect. Bad data and bad processing leads to bad results. Always has been so.
As for the trends, we have been warming since the end of the last glaciation. Peaks and valleys do exist. The Medieval Warm Period, Roman Warm Period and the Little Ice Age are just a few of the more recent examples.
Why? that’s what the world is spending ~$70B on science to discover. Many theories and few fully supported.
Could you please give reasons why you won’t respond to 2slugs point about MIT and Harvard, other than the bits of sarcasm in his post.
Also, you say, “What we are finding is that the raw temperature data is so poor that it is major work to process it, and the official calculations are so rife with procssing errors that their results are suspect. Bad data and bad processing leads to bad results. Always has been so.” Evidence for any of this would be nice.
four eyes, I have been following Jeff Id’s recalculation of the temperatures plus Chiefio’s, Tamino’s, Zeke’s, and CCC’s efforts to calculate the effect of stations dropped from the record. My preference is Chiefio’s effort to analyze the biases in the data first before calculating the station drop impacts.
For those not following the GW discusssions those latter efforts (not Chiefio’s to date) claim that the station drop out is not an issue as the trend lines do not change. OK! But, the nuances of the data biases are buried in the use of multiple averages used to develop their temp trends. No one answers the questions re: how much impact is there in the biase nuances and their sum.
Chiefio, has not reached this point in his analysis he is still analyzing the raw data for the variety of biases and the magnitude of their impacts. A very brief list of the data issues is: site changes, data drop out, time of collections, stations site, urban heat island, airport heat island, use of urban versus rural, gridding, and filling-in of data. (Note: this is an incomplete list.)
No one can identify the impacts of many of them individually nor their accumulated impacts. How much of the temp increase/decrease is due to them and/or processing artifacts? many questions and no answers to date.
With all thses data issues how can anyone say with any certainty that the temp has raised a fraction of degree C or F in any given time? So there is a basic question over the accuracy of the current temp calculations. For all these reasons I prefer to wait for the Chiefio results. His latest (long) explanation can be found here: http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2010/03/08/assume-a-spherical-cow-therefore-all-steaks-are-round/
As to why did I ignore 2slugs? We have a long history of discusssion on this blog, and he often uses arguments that are based upon “appeal to authority.” As was this one. If you reread my explanation you will find that what I explained was that the authorities have been seriously questioned. Moreover, their (IPCC, CRU, Mann, et al.) previous findings have been found inaccurate. So, I chose to ignore another such argument.
Much of the C/AGW commentary is rife with hyperbole and some out right lies to impact future policy. It is these problems that are primarily under review, not the science.
I’m just curious about your opinion about the polar ice caps and the glacial areas which are described, and seem to be clearly shown in satellite images, as melting away. Is this reduction of large ice fields in the northern regions of the planet not a reality. If it’s real, how do you account for it? Should I be buying land in Bakersfield which may some day soon be beach front? And will the Rockies become an island chain? I repeat. Where’s the ice going and why?
yeah I have been pretty good with my predictions here. Thanks for the support.
Jack,
Your comment has a ring of truth in it. I’m just still waiting for the left to notice that none of Bush’s poliices that they risked getting sunburned on the mall over have yet to change. Even the pullout from Iraq is going on Bush’s timetable under Bush’s generals…
Bad Tux,
I voted for Hillary in the Dem primary and my wife even caucused for her. First time for either for us in Dem politics (and first time that active) becuase we both felt that almost any Dem put up would run reguardless of who the R put on the ticket. We felt Hillary would be a better choice and a more effective Pres.
But everyone, including the right, imprinted what they thought Obama was about. As many on both sides of the aisle have mentioned, he was a blank slate. Now we are finding out he’s an empty suit.
2slugs, I have studied logistics. We could have easily gotten out of Iraq in three months with the bulk (90% +) of our heavy equipment. I did NOT say we would be back in the states. Most would be intransit or in Kuwait. The 12-18 months timetable was for a slow deliberate walk out. I was talking a cut-and-run strategy so beloved by Kerry and the left during the 2004-2006 period.
And we are NOT leaving Iraq. Just drawing down. I wish you guys would actually understand the difference. We won the war, democracy has been established in a tyrannical hellhole, and thus we don’t need the huge combat footprint anymore. BUt will anyone bet real money that we won’t have at least 30-50K US soldiers/sailors/and airmen still in Iraq on Nov 2012?
Iraq has the potential to follow South Korea and join civilization. Or it can fall back into tyrrany like North Korea or Vietnam. But just like South Korea we have provided it with the oppurtunity. I am hopeful that the Iraqi people will take their chance.
BTW, where are all teh pictures of our dead servicement that the press so desperately wanted to show during the ‘R’ administration.? heck, you can actually go days without seeing the wars even mentioned on the major nightly news, but Lindsey Lohan is right up there in front!!
So when can I see the anti-war demonstrators risking sunburn again?
Is there any wheels at all on the climategate bus anymore!!!
2Slugs,
Once again in small words, how do you plan to get China and Indai to go along? They basically gave Obama the finger at Copenhagen. Without the #1 world polluter (China) on board nothing we do will matter at all.
Except to reduce individual freedom and increase government control – but its “for the children”
Jack, Polar icecaps? The Antartic is actually growing. The Arctic trend is increasing since the low in 07. What is seldom reported is that some of the latest reports explain Arctic ice loss is more affected by wind direction and strength as temp.
Doing a quick Google on “wind causes Arctic ice loss” will show these effects have been know for years before the 07 low. But, even NSIDC couches its own explanations in near hyperbolic terms.
I have been following the downfall of this once great state ever since I stumbled on Kevin Drum’s blog 9-10 years ago. One of my first. His insights into California’s troubles were always on the money it seemed. So even though I don’t live there (except for once for 6 months at Castle AFB) and have turned down every job offer from there, I watch the the states demise like the proverbial canary in the coal mine.
Its about the student protests over the coming tuition rate hikes. Here is an except I thought telling but you should read the whole thing (not very long).
“ In 2007 Raymond Keating formulated a Small Business Survival Index, which is a composite of various aspects of the climate for business in a particular state: business and personal taxes, regulations, mandates, and so on. In that index California ranked 49 among the 50 states. Rhode Island ranked just above California, and its unemployment rate is 12.7. At the bottom of the Index is D.C., and its unemployment rate is 12.1. In the component parts of the SBSI index, California ranks worst of 51 (including D.C.) on top personal tax rates, worst on top capital gains tax rates, 42 on corporate taxes, 43 on health insurance mandates, 46 on electric utility costs, 47 on workman’s compensation costs, rock bottom again on state gas taxes, 45 on state and local government five year spending trends, and 47 on state and local per capita government spending. It also ranks 49 among the states on the US Economic freedom index, and it has the highest state sales tax rate too: where some states have an income tax but no sales tax, and others have a sales tax but no income tax, California has both, AND it has the highest rates in both. In short, California is a disaster for business. The state has piled up so many taxes, regulations and mandates that businesses are leaving the state. Just this week I learned that a spare part order for my Lennox fireplace is delayed because Lennox is moving this division of its business to Tennessee. Wealthy individuals are also fleeing the state to avoid the country’s highest tax bracket. When both wealth and wealth creation leave the state, tax revenues leave with them.”
Add the 12+ % unemployment and the continued housing bubble bursting and California is definitely circling the drain….
The most recent look at biases in the surface temp record was Menne (2010). From the abstract, “Results indicate that there is a mean bias associated with poor exposure sites relative to good exposure sites; however, this bias is consistent with previously documented changes associated with the widespread conversion to electronic sensors in the USHCN during the last 25 years. Moreover, the sign of the bias is counterintuitive to photographic documentation of poor exposure because associated instrument changes have led to an artificial negative (“cool”) bias in maximum temperatures and only a slight positive (“warm”) bias in minimum temperatures.
Sorry, four eyes, that was a look primarily at siting bias. Only one bias? Not good enough. The original issue was dropping of temp stations from the “official record” around the world. That is why I cited the Chiefio article. He may go ahead and submit his work to a journal, but that is not his normal business. His work has already created a bunch of related/contradictory work.
BTW the Menne paper was created due to Watts look at siting issues at the US Temp network. We are still waiting for the Watts paper re: his siting findings. What we do know is that ~80% are well out of spec, and I suspect that is why NCAR (Menne) tried to minimize the embarassment re: siting of their stations.
If it is not obvious, the process for publishing climate science is slowly changing. Using a/the blog(s) for preliminary review seems to be quite common and working very well. There are several studies being developed/produced using this option. Even the Menne report was first issued unoffically.
If you are a Tamino follower I presume you also follow RealClimate. Correct?
What I’m getting from E.M. Smith (Chiefio) is a couple things. 1. He doesn’t like the anomaly method, but since both skeptics and warmists accept the method, I won’t touch that point. 2. He also says that latitude, altitude and airport percentage create biases in the data. Ron Bromborg looked at the claims about latitude and altitude and did not find evidence of bias. Personally I think all this is moot since all you need to do is compare surface station temps with satellite temps which is exactly what Zeke did: http://www.yaleclimatemediaforum.org/pics/0110_Figure-42.jpg and shock they match. I don’t know how someone can look at that graph and say serious biases effect the surface record. I know the Menne paper uses Watts surfacestation.org data, that is how he was able to determine that bad sites had a cooling bias on the temp record. I also noticed a change in climate science, Siddall et al. withdrew their findings on sea level rise after errors were pointed out on RealClimate. Open review is probably a good thing, more peer-reviewed journals should start practicing open review.
I have studied logistics. We could have easily gotten out of Iraq in three months with the bulk (90% +) of our heavy equipment.
Moving the heavy equipment is a trivial problem. That’s not what’s complicating the withdrawal. What’s complicating the withdrawal is all of the ammo, concrete barriers (by law those have to be destroyed), classified computers, spare parts, 10 square miles of tires stacked 20 feet high. Stuff like that.
In any event, Obama specfically said that he would NOT make a fast withdrawal. He said many times as a candidate that he wanted to leave Iraq a carefully as we were careless in going into Iraq.
Everyone understands that there will be some troops remaining in Iraq. No one cares because those troops will be in garrison and doing training. Just as no one cares that we still have a few troops in Bosnia. Hey…some folks even like Bosnia because the nearby beaches are nice.
Ironically it’s probably China’s use of dirty high sulfur coal that’s temporarily holding down temperatures. Of course, that’s just a transient effect and over the long run China’s CO2 emissions will dominate.
One way to give China an incentive to reduce CO2 emissions is to slap a steep tariff on imports from China if they don’t agree. But so far it’s not be the Chinese that have been the biggest problem…it’s been the US.
Jack, Polar icecaps? The Antartic is actually growing. The Arctic trend is increasing since the low in 07. This is wrong. A couple months ago it was discovered that the satellites were misinterpreting the signal from the ice and what scientists thought was old ice was actually thin new ice. The Antarctic ice is shrinking. Try to keep up.
I’m not a scientist, so I do tend to rely on real scientists, and I think there is general agreement that the folks at MIT are competent scientists and mathematicians. What CoRev didn’t tell you was that he too relies upon what he considers expert authorities. For example, CoRev is out of his depth when it comes to standard time series analysis, so he farms out the job to folks that he considers experts. A good example is the old Hockey Stick debate. He proudly points to the fact that it is now widely agreed that the original analysis was flawed because of the way the Principal Components Analysis (PCA) was done. And because that work was flawed CoRev has concluded that the Hockey Stick debate is over. What CoRev doesn’t know is that the guys who first criticized the PCA were later found to have commtted an ever bigger error in their choice of weights when they redid the PCA. After correcting M&M’s error it turned out that most of the original Hockey Stick analysis survived. But worse yet, CoRev thinks that the Hockey Stick debate is important. It isn’t. What’s happening to current temperatues is really something of an irrelevance. The real global warming debate is about what temperatures will be like 100 years from now. If we want to have a chance at influencing temps 100 years from now, then we need to reduce emissions today because CO2 is very slow to decay. And the MIT physicists assure us that given CO2 levels of 800ppm we can be certain that there will be global warming so stark that no one can deny it. But CoRev would rather distract the discussion with nitpicks about small errors an biases from temperature readings taken 30 years ago.
No thanks. I lived there for about a year as a Presidential intern assignment. It was the worst year of my life. Texas has no income tax and it shows. The air is foul, the water putrid and the beer overpriced and flat….assuming you can actually buy a beer depending on the county. Never saw a state with more screwed up liquor laws. I hope Rick Perry gets his way and Texas does secede.
Four eyes, I was unaware of Broberg’s effort. Another interesting attempt to compare before and after views of the station drop out issue. I also see we seem to agree on the development of a more open review process.
As to the Chiefio and anomaly interpretation, I disagree. He is more interested in analyzing the “raw” data for biases before processing. He is in that way testing the efficacy of the “official” attempts at processing. He will eventually have to use an anomaly approach to compare apples to apples.
I also observe most are responding to Chiefio’s assertions while misunderstanding or misrepresenting his actual “preliminary” findings. Once he has teased out the biases in the data then he can compare how well the “official” processes are adjusting for them.
Another common issue is that the comparisons claiming to use “raw” data are using less than raw data. IIRC the USHC data RB used was actually homogenized. This was the same argument that Watts used when the preliminary version of the NCDC/Menne report was released.
Homogenization of the data is one of the processes that Chiefio’s efforts should/will be able to clarify its efficacy.
2slugs, sigh!!!! Saying this with your normal arrogance: “ The Antarctic ice is shrinking. Try to keep up.“
Just flies in the face of reality. But the reality is: “But NSIDC seems to be thinking differently in their March 3, 2010 newsletter. They say Antarctica is cooling and sea ice is increasing (makes sense – ice is associated with cold.)”
Thanks for finally admitting we are going to still be in Iraq for a long time….nice to finally see some of you guys admiting we are not going anywhere…
As for the rest, the barriers could just be left, same with the tires, blow any ammo you can’t take with you, computers destroyed in place or taken – papper shredded, its really very easy and was what the Dems were advocating Bush do for a very long time. The Dems just didn’t have the guts to actually, you know, do anything about it and continued to overwelmingly support Bush even after they took control of Congress.
And yes Bosnia is fairly nice, and I have actually be to some of those beaches. Nice, secluded and way off the tourist routes.
Well, my order is in. Cactus will get some payback in $s for all the time spent answering me.
My orders are in.
I’m trying to figure out how many I need. 1 for me, 1 for my sister-in-law that makes Bruce look like he’s to the right of Ghengis Kahn, 1 for the my brother in law that makes me look to teh far left of Bruce, 3-4 for friends, so that puts me up to 6-7…
Aaaarggh, there goes the budget for March…
ON a more open topic theme:
From good old Nacy Pelosi (with linky)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KoE1R-xH5To
“We have to pass the health care bill so that you can find out what is in it.”
You guys really want to pass this monstrocity??? When even the leader of the charge says things like this?
Islam will change
To continue the theme of our glorious Dems leadership being totally nuts:
Durbin Admits Premiums Will Go Up If Health Care Bill Is Passed
Sen. Dick Durbin, March 10, 2010: “Anyone who would stand before you and say ‘well, if you pass health care reform next year’s health care premiums are going down,’ I don’t think is telling the truth. I think it is likely they would go up.”
Obama Says Health Premiums Will Go Down
President Obama, March 8, 2010: “Our cost-cutting measures mirror most of the proposals in the current Senate bill, which reduces most people’s premiums.”
So did Durbin just call Obama a liar???
Islam will change
Buff,
It is obvious that they don’t care that it is screwed up. It’s not about health care; it is about political power. The more screwed up that this stage 1 reform is, the better it is for their holy grail: Single Payer.
And now a more simple question for my lefty friends.
Where are the anti-war protestors???
Was it really just becuase we had a R as President? They really didn’t care about the war, just about bringing down Bush?
We just got below 100K in Iraq – over a year after the inaugaration. We could have moved the entire troop set out of Iraq in 3 months if we wanted (with all the equipment). Yet we are obviously going to be there for a long, long time…
Afghanistan has ramped up (in an attempt to repeat the successful surge in Iraq) and we have pretty active operations in Pakistan. UAV strikes are way up as we attack people in countries we are not at war with. Bahgram Airbase is full of prisoners. And oviously we have just started offensive operations that will continue through the summer and into the fall. Funding and congressional support is still, since inception, overwelming and bi-partisan.
GITMO is still open (heck we could have closed that place in 10 days or less if we wanted too. Just fly all the detainees to Bahgram…) and no real idea when it will close.
FISA & Patriot Act all were bi-partisanly passed originally with overwelming support, and now have once again been passed and signed into law by Obama with overwelming bi-partisan support. So obviously the Dems fully back these laws.
So I ask you guys. Did no one really care about the policy and it was all about the fact that there was an ‘R’ in the Whitehouse and if Gore had done all this you would have been fine with it? The left and the Dems seem to be just fine with it now with a ‘D’ in the office.
So where are the anti-war protestors?
Islam will change
C’mon Buff, you know where they are! They’re home sitting on their hands. You called the future very, very well.
What amazes me is the dirth of success with the vaunted Lib/Progressive/Dem policies we heard so much about all through the last administration. Moreover, the thing that really impresses me is the depth of caring for the poor down trodden unemployed. Jobs are what they need and want. Extended unemployment with benefits is what they are getting. More trust me. I’m from the Govt and I’m here to help. (Only the help is to maintain subsistence existence.)
Which “O” policies have worked?????? Lessee, continuation of Bush GWOT policies? Yup, successful, and “O”/Biden are taking credit. Homeland security polices (also Bush’s.) Yup, but not as well as Bush, since at least a dozen or more have been killed by terrorists in the US. Bringing to trial terrorists? Nope. The whole process is on hold while they figure out that the Bush policy was best. Closing Gitmo? Nope! Can’t find a better place and process without totally compromising their previous claims.
I won’t even go into the econoic policy. We are living daily with that lack of success.
So, I ask again. Which “O” policies have been a success?
An Update on Global Warming
Even though I have stopped updating my blog, I still spend a great deal of time reviewing the latest commentary.
1) Much of the attention has shifted from Global Warming to just getting the estimates of warming correct. There are multiple ongoing efforts, both official and private, that are evaluating the current approaches for calculating average temperature and producing new revisions to them.
2) One of the ongoing discusssions concerns the recent dropping of a large percentage of reporting stations. One school claims they have no discernible effect on temperature anomalies. But, my preferred approach is taking apart the raw data to determine the biases inherent in that data to compare whether they are accurately corrected.
3) The official IPCC reports are finally being independently reviewed, and they have been found to have many serious errors. More importantly they have been found to be replete with “gray” references. (Gray referecnce are material that has not bee peer reviewed.) Some of these more amazing results from this review is that some of the “Gray” materials were not even reports but only press releases and nonscientific magazine articles. The end result has been that the IPCC today announced an independent review of the past IPCC Reports.
4) The EPA used those very same IPCC Reports in making the Green House Gas Findings. When those several court cases against that finding are actually tried, the IPCC Report issues should be pivotal.
So, my bottomline impression is that the whole issue is becoming an “official” embarassment. Policies based upon Carbon/Anthropogenic GW science are being ignored and future actions are being tabled. The era of catastrophic predictions is over. Seems like every time a new such prediction is presented it has nearly no coverage due to the howls of derision.
buff, corev,
You guys are still missing a crucial point. Buff is not wrong to point out the similarities between Bush and Barry. He’s wrong to think that the protests were against a Republican
administration. The lack of zeal these days is more likely due to liberal minded Democratic candidate voters suddenly relaizing that they were really voting for more of the same. Look at the policy decisions from Clinton, to Bush to Obama. Look at the personnel and how they seem to all emerge from a similar ideological place. Yes, sure the Bush crowd seemed far more anti-democracy and pro business. As i said before on this dite, Dem and Repub administrations are more and more looking like two slightly dissimilar sides of the same coin.
So to get back to Buff’s thesis, no it isn’t because the war was first waged by Republicans. In fact a case could be made that Bush was only continuing the Clintonian campaign in the ME. It is far more likely the total frustration setting in amongst Democratic voters who are beginning to recognize that it makes little difference who’s in the Presidency. You know, “here comes the new boss, same as the old boss.” Unfortunately the American voter has a never ending capacity to be “fooled again.” Maybe the Who would do well to re-issue that tune. It rings so true to this day. Change you can believe in is the alternative to the more things change the more they stay the same. Funny how such hackneyed phrases have the ring of truth.
Jack, I’m sorry there is a greater difference between the parties than you recognize. Those differences can be seen in the approaches for implementing a HC Reform Bill.
What is also amazing is the proclivity for Dems (with the help of Am voters) to elect a cleuless outsider. Carter, Clinton and now “O” really were outsiders and that’s how they campaigned. Clinton was the better politician and was able to salvage his presidency, but Carter, and I suspect “O” will not do so. IMO liberal beliefs are just too alien to the average American. Liberal idealogs can seem to get elected, but can not seem to govern from that position.
“Repeal it!” The next winning campaign slogan.
Buff: I think what Obama meant to say is “Our cost-cutting measures mirror most of the proposals in the current Senate bill, which reduces the amount some people have to pay for their premiums, because Bill Gates will be pitching in the difference.”
You can have premiums go up and the amount certain people pay go down. It just takes a bunch of guys with the authority to fire a weapon at you if you do not bend over and take it up the @$$ from the federal government.
buffpilot,
We just got below 100K in Iraq – over a year after the inaugaration. We could have moved the entire troop set out of Iraq in 3 months if we wanted (with all the equipment).
Sorry, but this is just complete crap. Tell us what the throughput “washer” capacity is at Arifjan. Tell us how many unopened CONEX containers are sitting north of the border. Tell us how many containers can be offloaded and shipped to the receiving depots each week. Tell us how many southbound containers per week the Kuwaiti customs folks allow to cross the Iraq/Kuwait border. Learn some logistics. Almost every logistics professional who has studied the issue agrees that a withdrawal would take ~12-18 months. And that’s what I was saying a year ago when Obama said he wanted troops out in a year…I said that a 12 month goal was on the very edge of the possible.
People aren’t upset with Obama because they understand that we’re on the way out of Iraq and because troops aren’t getting killed. If Obama wasn’t pulling troops out and if the body counts were still as high as they were four years ago, then you can bet your bottom dollar that the left would be slamming Obama.
Paul Krugman does a nice job of slamming Rep. Ryan’s “Roadmap” tax plan. He includes a nice graph on the tax rates. Basically the rich make out like bandits and most folks in the middle (60 percent of tax units) see tax increases.
And as Krugman notes: “basically, Ryan pulled a fast one by having the CBO evaluate his spending proposals but not his revenue-bleeding tax proposals.”
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/03/10/who-do-you-love-part-ii/
CoRev,
I don’t know what planet you live on, but here on Planet Earth global warming is becoming an even bigger issue. For example, a few days ago MIT just dramatically revised their take on the risks of global warming…and they didn’t say the risk is diminishing.
http://globalchange.mit.edu/pubs/abstract.php?publication_id=990
Of course, I’m sure you’re scientific and math skills are far superior to those pointy headed academics at MIT…hey, it’s in a blue state afterall.
And speaking of pointy headed academics in blue states, here’s a paper on the proper way to view risk under conditions of extreme uncertainty. This paper has been getting a lot of buzz over the last week. The gist is that when dealing with models that are shot through with uncertainty piled on top of uncertainty, the right way to view risk is to keep in mind that you sum up the tails. You do not look at the central tendencies, you look at the fat tails.
http://www.economics.harvard.edu/faculty/weitzman/files/ExtremeUncertaintyCliCh.pdf
Buff,
I am a little busy these days.
But I have stated on this blog that Obama gave in to the militarists in not firing Mc Chrystal.
I am no fan of Obama!
ilsm won’t change.
CoRev,
The western hemisphere can have clean air and reduced CO2 using a mix of energy independence and clean renewable sources. New technology from fuel cells, to nuclear generators, to high tech low energy coal scrubbers, to more wind. solar and tide generated energy as well as burgeoning sources of domestic natural gas…………………..
Why did DC have more snow than Boston this year?
Global cooling? Global warming?
The model which says that with global warming that the NE US gets colder?
ilsm won’t change.
Northrop Grumman announced that it is disserting Trent Lott, and their scheme to create French, English, Dutch and German aerpospace jobs in Toulouse, the Midlands, and Mobile, Alabama and not sending US militarist welfare for the rich jobs to the European Aeropace and Defense System (EADS) also known as the socialist Airbus constortium.
I guess Boeing got through that US war profits for welfare for the rich needs to stay in the US.
Mc Cain has to stop torturing Boeing.
Stop send US welfare for the rich to the French.
I am no fan of Boeing, but US tax dollars for nothing should stay in the US.
ilsm will not change.
ILSM, The East and CA had weather caused by the El Nino. It was anticpated and predicted. It changed the wind patterns which concentrates effects. What was unique was the timing of the storm components that made them near perfect.
Having lived through three of the big ones and a couple of smaller ones this year, I admit that I was more than surprised.
So all the commentary re: it was/was not due to GW is rubbish. Just predictable wather.
There are a lot of things that are utterly screwed and no one fixes:
militarism and the war machine, the FAA, the DoE, NASA, Agricultural subsidies et alia.
No one wants to worry on welfare for the rich.
Even though welfare for the rich works no better than socialism for the poor.
Socialism for the rich don’t work either.
Buff, read the CBO report for the details on this one. Premiums will both go down AND up. They’ll go down for a given amount of coverage, but because the amount of coverage that large numbers of people receive will increase, they’ll go up for the people who now have more coverage. People currently receiving the Wal-Mart pseudo-insurance that pays only for band-aids and $5 a day of hospital expenses will pay more because that pseudo-insurance will no longer qualify as insurance for the purposes of this bill. People with real insurance today will pay less. Does that make it any clearer?
Co, Obama is not, and never has been, a “liberal ideologue”. Unlike you and the loonie lefties, I actually read his policy positions on his web site prior to his election, not the sound bites reported by the media. Obama basically proposed doing whatever the polls told him polled best — i.e., a fairly moderate middle-of-the-road course that did nothing exciting, that, indeed, Richard Nixon, Barry Goldwater, or Dwight D. Eisenhower would have been quite comfortable with. I’ve been especially amused by right wing extremists attempting to paint Obama as a liberal on health care. No. A liberal would have proposed Medicare For All. Obama has *never* proposed Medicare For All. Instead, he proposed a reform whose core component, an employer mandate (i.e., employers must provide insurance for their workers, or pay a fine), has been consistently supported by almost EIGHTY PERCENT of Americans dating back to when the Kaiser Foundation started running tracking polls on the subject back in 1997. Eighty percent support by the American public is “radical leftist” only in the minds of deranged lunatics — do conservatives truly believe that 80% of the American public is radical leftists?!
Of course, this is also getting Obama blasted by the radical left, who are upset that Obama isn’t pushing for Medicare For All, didn’t just arbitrarily withdraw all troops from Iran and Afghanistan the day after his inauguration, and so forth… but if they would have read his policy positions on his web site prior to his nomination instead of falling for the pro-Obama propaganda spewed by folks like Kos, they wouldn’t be surprised. There’s a *reason* why I, someone who favors positions slightly to the left of Obama, did not vote for Obama in the Democratic primaries. And it’s because I recognized that Obama was fundamentally conservative in the Barry Goldwater/Dwight D. Eisenhower sense of the word, i.e. that he might be all hopey changey and all that, but fundamentally he was about making the existing system work better, not about real change. And unfortunately I do think we need real change — both our system of government and our economy have become fundamentally dysfunctional, and without real change, the collapse of the Soviet Union will look like a minor historical event.
CoRev,
I’ve spent a lot of time in DC over the years.
Before this year I was there once when snow was on the ground. That about 6 inches.
How many double digit snows?
Of course, closing the gumint is good for the deficit!
Lots of predictable, variable, uncertain weather. No trends…….
El Nino certainly sends rain to the Northeast, but not snow in the middle Atlantic and rain in the north. And whether there are more than usual El Nino’s and more or less intense is statisically TBD.
Is this reversal of trends staying constant, warming or cooling, what do you think? Why?
ilsm won’t change.
Just so you know…
U.S. Debt Held by the Public blew through $8 trillion last week.
http://www.treasurydirect.gov/NP/BPDLogin?application=np
.
Buff
my local democrats are still out protesting the war. but no one pays any attention to them.
even i don’t. i wish they were out protesting the “deficit commission.” but they don’t want to talk about that.
as my good friend buff P. pointed out, “you didn’t really expect it to be any different, did you?”
MG, getting more and more scary with few even wondering nor worrying.
ILSM, we had three double digits. Two of them were nearer 1 1/2 to two feet than one, and one was ~ 1 foot. 2 others were in the 3-4 inch range.
Trends? Which trends are you talking about? Warming/cooling/El Ninos/Las Ninas/Jet Stream shifts/Ocean Current shifts? Ocean currents, Pacific and Atlantic, are the big kahunas.
What we are finding is that the raw temperature data is so poor that it is major work to process it, and the official calculations are so rife with procssing errors that their results are suspect. Bad data and bad processing leads to bad results. Always has been so.
As for the trends, we have been warming since the end of the last glaciation. Peaks and valleys do exist. The Medieval Warm Period, Roman Warm Period and the Little Ice Age are just a few of the more recent examples.
Why? that’s what the world is spending ~$70B on science to discover. Many theories and few fully supported.
2slugs, I’m sorry, but I’m just not gonna bite.
Corev,
As per your point number two about station drop out, you should read Tamino’s posts, this is the last one: http://tamino.wordpress.com/2010/03/05/global-update/#more-2382
Could you please give reasons why you won’t respond to 2slugs point about MIT and Harvard, other than the bits of sarcasm in his post.
Also, you say, “What we are finding is that the raw temperature data is so poor that it is major work to process it, and the official calculations are so rife with procssing errors that their results are suspect. Bad data and bad processing leads to bad results. Always has been so.”
Evidence for any of this would be nice.
four eyes, I have been following Jeff Id’s recalculation of the temperatures plus Chiefio’s, Tamino’s, Zeke’s, and CCC’s efforts to calculate the effect of stations dropped from the record. My preference is Chiefio’s effort to analyze the biases in the data first before calculating the station drop impacts.
For those not following the GW discusssions those latter efforts (not Chiefio’s to date) claim that the station drop out is not an issue as the trend lines do not change. OK! But, the nuances of the data biases are buried in the use of multiple averages used to develop their temp trends. No one answers the questions re: how much impact is there in the biase nuances and their sum.
Chiefio, has not reached this point in his analysis he is still analyzing the raw data for the variety of biases and the magnitude of their impacts. A very brief list of the data issues is: site changes, data drop out, time of collections, stations site, urban heat island, airport heat island, use of urban versus rural, gridding, and filling-in of data. (Note: this is an incomplete list.)
No one can identify the impacts of many of them individually nor their accumulated impacts. How much of the temp increase/decrease is due to them and/or processing artifacts? many questions and no answers to date.
With all thses data issues how can anyone say with any certainty that the temp has raised a fraction of degree C or F in any given time? So there is a basic question over the accuracy of the current temp calculations. For all these reasons I prefer to wait for the Chiefio results. His latest (long) explanation can be found here: http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2010/03/08/assume-a-spherical-cow-therefore-all-steaks-are-round/
As to why did I ignore 2slugs? We have a long history of discusssion on this blog, and he often uses arguments that are based upon “appeal to authority.” As was this one. If you reread my explanation you will find that what I explained was that the authorities have been seriously questioned. Moreover, their (IPCC, CRU, Mann, et al.) previous findings have been found inaccurate. So, I chose to ignore another such argument.
Much of the C/AGW commentary is rife with hyperbole and some out right lies to impact future policy. It is these problems that are primarily under review, not the science.
I’m just curious about your opinion about the polar ice caps and the glacial areas which are described, and seem to be clearly shown in satellite images, as melting away. Is this reduction of large ice fields in the northern regions of the planet not a reality. If it’s real, how do you account for it? Should I be buying land in Bakersfield which may some day soon be beach front? And will the Rockies become an island chain? I repeat. Where’s the ice going and why?
CoRev,
yeah I have been pretty good with my predictions here. Thanks for the support.
Jack,
Your comment has a ring of truth in it. I’m just still waiting for the left to notice that none of Bush’s poliices that they risked getting sunburned on the mall over have yet to change. Even the pullout from Iraq is going on Bush’s timetable under Bush’s generals…
Bad Tux,
I voted for Hillary in the Dem primary and my wife even caucused for her. First time for either for us in Dem politics (and first time that active) becuase we both felt that almost any Dem put up would run reguardless of who the R put on the ticket. We felt Hillary would be a better choice and a more effective Pres.
But everyone, including the right, imprinted what they thought Obama was about. As many on both sides of the aisle have mentioned, he was a blank slate. Now we are finding out he’s an empty suit.
2slugs,
I have studied logistics. We could have easily gotten out of Iraq in three months with the bulk (90% +) of our heavy equipment. I did NOT say we would be back in the states. Most would be intransit or in Kuwait. The 12-18 months timetable was for a slow deliberate walk out. I was talking a cut-and-run strategy so beloved by Kerry and the left during the 2004-2006 period.
And we are NOT leaving Iraq. Just drawing down. I wish you guys would actually understand the difference. We won the war, democracy has been established in a tyrannical hellhole, and thus we don’t need the huge combat footprint anymore. BUt will anyone bet real money that we won’t have at least 30-50K US soldiers/sailors/and airmen still in Iraq on Nov 2012?
Iraq has the potential to follow South Korea and join civilization. Or it can fall back into tyrrany like North Korea or Vietnam. But just like South Korea we have provided it with the oppurtunity. I am hopeful that the Iraqi people will take their chance.
BTW, where are all teh pictures of our dead servicement that the press so desperately wanted to show during the ‘R’ administration.? heck, you can actually go days without seeing the wars even mentioned on the major nightly news, but Lindsey Lohan is right up there in front!!
So when can I see the anti-war demonstrators risking sunburn again?
My bet not until we see a ‘R’ in the Whitehouse….
Islam will change
CoRev
Looks like NASA’s numbers were even worse than the Climateguys numbers and then
NASA used the bad data!!!
Linky: http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/climategate-stunner-nasa-heads-knew-nasa-data-was-poor-then-used-data-from-cru/
Is there any wheels at all on the climategate bus anymore!!!
2Slugs,
Once again in small words, how do you plan to get China and Indai to go along? They basically gave Obama the finger at Copenhagen. Without the #1 world polluter (China) on board nothing we do will matter at all.
Except to reduce individual freedom and increase government control – but its “for the children”
Islam will change
Jack, Polar icecaps? The Antartic is actually growing. The Arctic trend is increasing since the low in 07. What is seldom reported is that some of the latest reports explain Arctic ice loss is more affected by wind direction and strength as temp.
Doing a quick Google on “wind causes Arctic ice loss” will show these effects have been know for years before the 07 low. But, even NSIDC couches its own explanations in near hyperbolic terms.
California,
I have been following the downfall of this once great state ever since I stumbled on Kevin Drum’s blog 9-10 years ago. One of my first. His insights into California’s troubles were always on the money it seemed. So even though I don’t live there (except for once for 6 months at Castle AFB) and have turned down every job offer from there, I watch the the states demise like the proverbial canary in the coal mine.
So this article caught my attention by John Ellis. Linky: http://www.mindingthecampus.com/originals/2010/03/how_the_megacampuses_helped_ru.html
Its about the student protests over the coming tuition rate hikes. Here is an except I thought telling but you should read the whole thing (not very long).
“
In 2007 Raymond Keating formulated a Small Business Survival Index, which is a composite of various aspects of the climate for business in a particular state: business and personal taxes, regulations, mandates, and so on. In that index California ranked 49 among the 50 states. Rhode Island ranked just above California, and its unemployment rate is 12.7. At the bottom of the Index is D.C., and its unemployment rate is 12.1.
In the component parts of the SBSI index, California ranks worst of 51 (including D.C.) on top personal tax rates, worst on top capital gains tax rates, 42 on corporate taxes, 43 on health insurance mandates, 46 on electric utility costs, 47 on workman’s compensation costs, rock bottom again on state gas taxes, 45 on state and local government five year spending trends, and 47 on state and local per capita government spending. It also ranks 49 among the states on the US Economic freedom index, and it has the highest state sales tax rate too: where some states have an income tax but no sales tax, and others have a sales tax but no income tax, California has both, AND it has the highest rates in both.
In short, California is a disaster for business. The state has piled up so many taxes, regulations and mandates that businesses are leaving the state. Just this week I learned that a spare part order for my Lennox fireplace is delayed because Lennox is moving this division of its business to Tennessee. Wealthy individuals are also fleeing the state to avoid the country’s highest tax bracket. When both wealth and wealth creation leave the state, tax revenues leave with them.”
Add the 12+ % unemployment and the continued housing bubble bursting and California is definitely circling the drain….
So come to Texas!!!
Islam will change
The most recent look at biases in the surface temp record was Menne (2010).
From the abstract, “Results indicate that there is a mean bias
associated with poor exposure sites relative to good exposure sites; however, this bias is
consistent with previously documented changes associated with the widespread conversion to
electronic sensors in the USHCN during the last 25 years. Moreover, the sign of the bias is
counterintuitive to photographic documentation of poor exposure because associated instrument changes have led to an artificial negative (“cool”) bias in maximum temperatures and only a slight positive (“warm”) bias in minimum temperatures.
Sorry, four eyes, that was a look primarily at siting bias. Only one bias? Not good enough. The original issue was dropping of temp stations from the “official record” around the world. That is why I cited the Chiefio article. He may go ahead and submit his work to a journal, but that is not his normal business. His work has already created a bunch of related/contradictory work.
BTW the Menne paper was created due to Watts look at siting issues at the US Temp network. We are still waiting for the Watts paper re: his siting findings. What we do know is that ~80% are well out of spec, and I suspect that is why NCAR (Menne) tried to minimize the embarassment re: siting of their stations.
If it is not obvious, the process for publishing climate science is slowly changing. Using a/the blog(s) for preliminary review seems to be quite common and working very well. There are several studies being developed/produced using this option. Even the Menne report was first issued unoffically.
If you are a Tamino follower I presume you also follow RealClimate. Correct?
What I’m getting from E.M. Smith (Chiefio) is a couple things.
1. He doesn’t like the anomaly method, but since both skeptics and warmists accept the method, I won’t touch that point.
2. He also says that latitude, altitude and airport percentage create biases in the data.
Ron Bromborg looked at the claims about latitude and altitude and did not find evidence of bias.
Personally I think all this is moot since all you need to do is compare surface station temps with satellite temps which is exactly what Zeke did: http://www.yaleclimatemediaforum.org/pics/0110_Figure-42.jpg and shock they match. I don’t know how someone can look at that graph and say serious biases effect the surface record.
I know the Menne paper uses Watts surfacestation.org data, that is how he was able to determine that bad sites had a cooling bias on the temp record.
I also noticed a change in climate science, Siddall et al. withdrew their findings on sea level rise after errors were pointed out on RealClimate. Open review is probably a good thing, more peer-reviewed journals should start practicing open review.
buff,
I have studied logistics. We could have easily gotten out of Iraq in three months with the bulk (90% +) of our heavy equipment.
Moving the heavy equipment is a trivial problem. That’s not what’s complicating the withdrawal. What’s complicating the withdrawal is all of the ammo, concrete barriers (by law those have to be destroyed), classified computers, spare parts, 10 square miles of tires stacked 20 feet high. Stuff like that.
In any event, Obama specfically said that he would NOT make a fast withdrawal. He said many times as a candidate that he wanted to leave Iraq a carefully as we were careless in going into Iraq.
Everyone understands that there will be some troops remaining in Iraq. No one cares because those troops will be in garrison and doing training. Just as no one cares that we still have a few troops in Bosnia. Hey…some folks even like Bosnia because the nearby beaches are nice.
buff,
Ironically it’s probably China’s use of dirty high sulfur coal that’s temporarily holding down temperatures. Of course, that’s just a transient effect and over the long run China’s CO2 emissions will dominate.
One way to give China an incentive to reduce CO2 emissions is to slap a steep tariff on imports from China if they don’t agree. But so far it’s not be the Chinese that have been the biggest problem…it’s been the US.
CoRev,
Jack, Polar icecaps? The Antartic is actually growing. The Arctic trend is increasing since the low in 07.
This is wrong. A couple months ago it was discovered that the satellites were misinterpreting the signal from the ice and what scientists thought was old ice was actually thin new ice. The Antarctic ice is shrinking. Try to keep up.
four eyes,
I’m not a scientist, so I do tend to rely on real scientists, and I think there is general agreement that the folks at MIT are competent scientists and mathematicians. What CoRev didn’t tell you was that he too relies upon what he considers expert authorities. For example, CoRev is out of his depth when it comes to standard time series analysis, so he farms out the job to folks that he considers experts. A good example is the old Hockey Stick debate. He proudly points to the fact that it is now widely agreed that the original analysis was flawed because of the way the Principal Components Analysis (PCA) was done. And because that work was flawed CoRev has concluded that the Hockey Stick debate is over. What CoRev doesn’t know is that the guys who first criticized the PCA were later found to have commtted an ever bigger error in their choice of weights when they redid the PCA. After correcting M&M’s error it turned out that most of the original Hockey Stick analysis survived. But worse yet, CoRev thinks that the Hockey Stick debate is important. It isn’t. What’s happening to current temperatues is really something of an irrelevance. The real global warming debate is about what temperatures will be like 100 years from now. If we want to have a chance at influencing temps 100 years from now, then we need to reduce emissions today because CO2 is very slow to decay. And the MIT physicists assure us that given CO2 levels of 800ppm we can be certain that there will be global warming so stark that no one can deny it. But CoRev would rather distract the discussion with nitpicks about small errors an biases from temperature readings taken 30 years ago.
buffpilot,
So come to Texas!!!
No thanks. I lived there for about a year as a Presidential intern assignment. It was the worst year of my life. Texas has no income tax and it shows. The air is foul, the water putrid and the beer overpriced and flat….assuming you can actually buy a beer depending on the county. Never saw a state with more screwed up liquor laws. I hope Rick Perry gets his way and Texas does secede.
Four eyes, I was unaware of Broberg’s effort. Another interesting attempt to compare before and after views of the station drop out issue. I also see we seem to agree on the development of a more open review process.
As to the Chiefio and anomaly interpretation, I disagree. He is more interested in analyzing the “raw” data for biases before processing. He is in that way testing the efficacy of the “official” attempts at processing. He will eventually have to use an anomaly approach to compare apples to apples.
I also observe most are responding to Chiefio’s assertions while misunderstanding or misrepresenting his actual “preliminary” findings. Once he has teased out the biases in the data then he can compare how well the “official” processes are adjusting for them.
Another common issue is that the comparisons claiming to use “raw” data are using less than raw data. IIRC the USHC data RB used was actually homogenized. This was the same argument that Watts used when the preliminary version of the NCDC/Menne report was released.
Homogenization of the data is one of the processes that Chiefio’s efforts should/will be able to clarify its efficacy.
2slugs, sigh!!!! Saying this with your normal arrogance: “ The Antarctic ice is shrinking. Try to keep up.“
Just flies in the face of reality. But the reality is: “But NSIDC seems to be thinking differently in their March 3, 2010 newsletter. They say Antarctica is cooling and sea ice is increasing (makes sense – ice is associated with cold.)”
From this article. http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/03/08/nsidc-reports-that-antarctica-is-cooling-and-sea-ice-is-increasing/
Please note the date on the newsletter.
Re: the Arctic Ice Cap. If it has grown (min/Max) since 07, what do you think that means for multi-year ice?
I will not respond to baiting, appeal to authority commentary. Not worth the effort. G’day to Ya.
2slugs,
Thanks for finally admitting we are going to still be in Iraq for a long time….nice to finally see some of you guys admiting we are not going anywhere…
As for the rest, the barriers could just be left, same with the tires, blow any ammo you can’t take with you, computers destroyed in place or taken – papper shredded, its really very easy and was what the Dems were advocating Bush do for a very long time. The Dems just didn’t have the guts to actually, you know, do anything about it and continued to overwelmingly support Bush even after they took control of Congress.
And yes Bosnia is fairly nice, and I have actually be to some of those beaches. Nice, secluded and way off the tourist routes.
My point still stands. Where are the protesters?
Oh that’s right a ‘D; is in office so its all OK.
Islam will change
sorry buff
i was with a lot of protestors against the war when a D was in the white house. fella by the name of Johnson.