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Climate science under fire in new paper

Who wrote this?:

A review of the peer-edited literature reveals a systematic tendency of the climate establishment to engage in a variety of stylized rhetorical techniques that seem to oversell what is actually known about climate change while concealing fundamental uncertainties and open questions regarding many of the key processes involved in climate change.

Was it a cranky skeptic grinding away on his personal blog? Or was it a prominent professor at a major university?

OK. I telegraphed that one. In fact, the author of those words is Jason Scott Johnston, Director of the Program on Law, Environment and Economy at the University of Pennsylvania Law School, in a paper published by The University of Pennsylvania’s Institute for Law and Economics: Global Warming Advocacy Science: a Cross Examination (PDF).

Johnston also writes:

Fundamental open questions include not only the size but the direction of feedback effects that are responsible for the bulk of the temperature increase predicted to result from atmospheric greenhouse gas increases: while climate models all presume that such feedback effects are on balance strongly positive, more and more peer-edited scientific papers seem to suggest that feedback effects may be small or even negative. The cross-examination conducted in this paper reveals many additional areas where the peer-edited literature seems to conflict with the picture painted by establishment climate science, ranging from the magnitude of 20th century surface temperature increases and their relation to past temperatures; the possibility that inherent variability in the earth’s non-linear climate system, and not increases in CO2, may explain observed late 20th century warming; the ability of climate models to actually explain past temperatures; and, finally, substantial doubt about the methodological validity of models used to make highly publicized predictions of global warming impacts such as species loss.

Johnston says that establishment climate scientists have taken to cherry-picking data, dismissing information that would bring their models into question and then hunting up evidence that supports their premises. He criticizes this tendency as resulting in a “faith-based climate policy.”

I’ll note here that Johnston isn’t questioning assertions that the climate is changing; he’s challenging the certainty that many climate scientists express in dismissing possible natural factors, such as solar variation, and their enthusiasm for the supposed accuracy of computer models intended to describe what the climate is doing now and will do in the future. He also points to overtly bad science and the substitution of opinion for inquiry in the claims made by many climate scientists.

All of this matters because the bad science and dismissal of contrary evidence and dissenting opinions is useful only for “conveying a very scary and also very simple picture of the state of the science. Such coarse understanding leads to a very coarse policy prescription: ‘Do something, anything, now!’ Such a policy prescription justifies virtually any policy, however costly or inefficient…”

Interestingly, even though the latest version of the paper was published in May, the only mainstream media mention I can find is in Canada’s Financial Post.

A few thoughts on Glenn Beck

I know it’s fashionable among some of my co-ideologists to deride Glenn Beck as a clown who damages the libertarian brand, but just when I think I’m completely fed up with the guy, he does a great service to the cause of freedom. Right now he’s on Fox News promoting F. A. Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom, along with Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged. He’s also interviewing Thomas Woods from the Ludwig von Mises Institute on the tendency of governments to point to their own failings as reason for more state intervention in the economy, and chatting with Yuri Maltsev (another Austrian economist) about the realities of socialism he experienced in the old Soviet Union.

Does anybody else bring so much advocacy of freedom to such a wide audience? The only other person I can think of is John Stossel — and yes, Stossel is more consistent, serious and intellectual, but he doesn’t have the same following.

Beck may be a clown, but sometimes, it takes a clown.

Note: One day later, The Road to Serfdom has jumped to #1 on Amazon.

Why wouldn’t an anarchist cafe eject a cop?

There are good people wearing police uniforms and there are bad people wearing police uniforms. More to the point, however, people in police uniforms have willingly chosen to take a job in which they act, at best, as enforcers of laws passed by government officials — and often as agents of the whims of those officials. So it really shouldn’t come as a surprise to anybody that the proprietors of the Red and Black Cafe, an avowedly anarchist establishment in Portland, Oregon, asked Officer James Crooker to take his business elsewhere. If you don’t like governments, why would you want to serve people who willingly work for them?

That gut-level, ideological opposition to the role of police officers likely explains the seeming inability of cafe co-owner John Langley to articulate a clear reason he gave the officer the boot at the time of the incident. Crooker is a cop; in Langley’s mind, that was probably reason enough. Langley’s early lack of clarity has been seized upon and mocked by police supporters — generally in poorly spelled and badly reasoned comments that default to mantras about cops being the thin, blue line that stands between decent folk and howling barbarians, even as they threaten arson against the cafe, urge officers to take their time responding to incidents there, and call for the city to have a politicized look at the cafe’s compliance with all rules and regulations.

If you’re an ideological supporter of government power, it’s easy to fall back on unreasoning support for the state’s servants (and, ironically, validate objections to government power in the process).

Given time to ponder, Langley came up with clearer articulation of his concerns:

I don’t have anything against this particular officer and I don’t know anything about him…A police officer in uniform makes people feel unsafe because of previous experiences…

We’re gonna value the people that have been victims of police violence. Some of them have talked about having their belongings being taken away or sprayed with water. It is exacerbated by the situation in Portland right now. The response to the mental health crisis is shooting people and beating people to death.

The anarcho-entrepreneur didn’t pull his reasons out of thin air. Less than a month ago, after a series of police shotings and complaints about the official response, Portland Mayor Sam Adams booted the city’s police chief and took direct control of the police department. In a press conference, he said (PDF), “Despite the extraordinary efforts of the courageous few who wear the badge, the relationship between the citizens of Portland and their police officers is not what it needs to be. Too many Portlanders express concern about their own safety–not because of crime, but rather fear of their own police force.”

Less dramatically, police are clearly working these days less as a thin blue line against crime than as tax collectors who selectively enforce laws with an eye to maximizing revenue for the government. In 2008, the Detroit News found that Michigan police departments were stepping up traffic enforcement solely to increase the money they collected.

“When I first started in this job 30 years ago, police work was never about revenue enhancement,” Utica Police Chief Michael Reaves said. “But if you’re a chief now, you have to look at whether your department produces revenues. That’s just the reality nowadays.”

Officials elsewhere are equally open about their roadside revenue-enhancement efforts. It’s difficult to see a public safety aspect to the use of laws as means for mugging the public. If there’s a thin blue line, it leads directly to people’s wallets — and tags police as, too often, nothing more than agents of state power, for any purpose, good or bad.

Yes, police can do good deeds and often play a legitimate role in responding to crimes against people and property — maybe the critics will be right and John Langley will someday wish a cop were present to deal with a stick-up artist. But he and his colleagues have good reasons, ideological and practical, to object to the presence of a police officer in their place of business.

At least a few people agree with the Red and Black Cafe’s stance — business is reportedly way up since the incident.

On vacation

I know I haven’t been chatty recently, and now I’ll be even less talkative, since I’m off on a much-anticipated family vacation. I’ll be back to rant and rave on June 7. And, I promise, I’ll  become bloggier (if it ain’t a word, it should be) once a big project ends for me in mid-August.

Since the spambots are so super-eager to have their say here, I’ve been moderating all comments. Unfortunately, that means no comments will publish until my return.

Love America? Not unconditionally — and with an option for divorce

Public discussion in this country sometimes seems to degenerate into a competition to see who can declare the greatest unconditional love for America. Immigrants love America, kids love America, and politicians really love America — sometimes several times, at a discounted rate. But in a land that often says, “America, love it or leave it,” I’ll admit that I’m at least willing to consider heading for the exit.

“Love” America? That’s a tall order, isn’t it? It’s a big and diverse place, so if I “love” the whole thing, does that really have to include rush-hour traffic and midwestern food? Or, more seriously, does it have to include the DEA, the NSA, the IRS and the various factions of control freaks that all-so-often dominate the country’s politics?

I love lots of distinct things about America; among them, backpacking in the Grand Canyon, bourbon, jazz and a long tradition of distrust of government and a preference (imperfectly implemented though it may be) for leaving people alone to guide their own lives and make their own choices. That last point is especially important. My family has a history of shopping for places to live where they won’t be hassled.

My paternal grandmother’s maiden name was “Marano” which supports oral history suggesting that her ancestors converted under duress from Judaism to Christianity and then fled to Italy to escape the Inquisition. I guess they didn’t love Spain enough.

My maternal grandmother told me that her father came to the United States, in part, to escape the military draft in Austria-Hungary. No love there, either.

In America, my family found more breathing room compared to the countries in which they were born. They had reason to be thankful, since they were more free than they had been in the old country. So, after all these centuries, has the migration at last come to an end?

That’s hard to believe. After all, this column focuses on violations of personal freedom by government agents, and I rarely have to wander across the border in order to find issues to cover. The inclination toward personal freedom that so attracted immigrants to American shores is continuously under attack from politicians from both major political parties. Those officials often proclaim their love for the country, but they seem to want to love it out of all recognition, into a place where travelers are stopped and scrutinized and homes are invaded by armed men over a choice of intoxicants or a taste for games of chance. They love telling us what we can eat, where we can smoke and when we can drink. They whisper their affections while they pick our pockets, constrain our business ventures in red tape (to the tune of $8,164 per household (PDF) in 2000, just to comply with federal regulations) and generally threaten us with laws and regulations we may not even know about.

This is not to say that the United States is especially bad when compared to other countries, which generally suffer under abusive governments of their own. And some things have definitely improved over the decades, such as equality before the law for women and racial minorities, and respect for sexual diversity. But the United States is, perhaps, no longer such a standout performer when it comes to respecting and defending individual liberty. That is, it’s no longer so uniquely enticing if you’re shopping for a place to live based on the local willingness to let you live your own life. To tell the truth, maybe America still looks as … well … OK-ish as it does not by an absolute standard, but only by comparison with the equally flawed competition.

No wonder there’s such an emphasis on unconditional love for America! Frankly, though, unconditional love is appropriate only for babies and puppies. If we stop and think rationally, we may someday decide that the place we now call home is no longer as loveable as it once was, and go shopping for a new address that puts more effort into earning our affection.

Pit bull breakout

I’m a big-time dog lover, just a tad anti-authoritarian and sufficiently well-informed on the subject to reject the demonization of pit bulls as some sort of super-vicious devil dogs, so I find the following very amusing:

Max, a 70-pound pit bull that bit two people earlier this year, cheated death Wednesday and is on the run – with some human help.

The 3-year-old red nose pit bull was stolen from the Alameda Animal Shelter, just hours before he was to be euthanized for being a dangerous animal.

Note that Max does have a history of biting people, which may be a temperament issue, or else a matter of training and circumstance. I sincerely hope there are no further biting incidents, no matter who freed the dog and currently has him in their care. But I applaud the rescue of the dog from an imminent death, and his chance for a new life.

Run, Max, run!

By the way, while there’s not really a standard definition of “pit bull,” a couple of breeds and associated mixes are usually included in that category. Of those breeds, the American Temperament Test Society, a national not-for-profit organization that uses uniform standards for evaluating the temperament of dogs and then breaks the results out by breed, reports that 85.3% of American Pit Bull Terriers and 83.9% of American Staffordshire Terriers have passed its tests.

And no, their jaws don’t “lock.” (PDF)

http://www.atts.org/stats5.html

Now the know-nothings are chasing citizens out of Arizona

My wife — a pediatrician in rural Arizona — is about to lose a valued employee because of the state’s new and brutal immigration law. The employee isn’t Hispanic, but a close member of her family is. With nativist sentiment festering in the state and people with brown skin increasingly being harassed by law enforcement (even legal residents), it’s becoming increasingly attractive for people who fear they’ll be targeted by the police to head for the exits with their loved ones. That means fewer workers and customers for those who stay behind.

The bulk of the enforcement activity is in the Phoenix area where Maricopa County’s own Sheriff Joe Arpaio combats his legal problems by playing to the know-nothing yahoos eager to pledge him their votes so long as the police state he’s building targets dusky furriners. Even before the new law — often referred to as “SB 1070” in shorthand — was signed by Governor Jan Brewer, my wife had Hispanic patients afraid to go to Phoenix to see medical specialists. That’s a problem because our area is too sparsely settled to support highly specialized physicians, and the situation is only a little better in Flagstaff and Prescott. That means a trip to or through anti-immigrant Maricopa County to see specialists in Phoenix and Tucson. Some families swallow their fear; others get lesser care for their children.

But immigrants are also being hassled beneath the radar elsewhere, in smaller communities like Sedona and Prescott, where much of the hard labor is done by Mexican illegals who are welcome in good times but vulnerable to police action when public sentiment turns nasty — like now. Largely unreported by the news, the small-scale efforts of the past in these towns have turned into larger sweeps with more, and more-serious, agents.

For good reason, many of my wife’s Hispanic patients, and at least one employee, now plan to leave the state. At least 100,000 have fled already. And because many people are more willing than the average Arizona voter to cross ethnic and linguistic lines, they’re taking with them perfectly legal, English-speaking relations who don’t want to be separated from loved ones.And all of those people are taking with them their skills, their demand for goods and services and their money.

My wife can probably replace one worker, but with her patients leaving too, that may not be necessary. That doesn’t bode well for the future.

I do not think that word means what you think it means

Maybe it shouldn’t annoy me, but the shorthand misuse of the word “fascist” to mean “I disapprove of this, and all other right-thinking people should do so too,” just bugs the shit out of me. For one thing, it’s an end-run around making an argument — just use the appropriate code word and let group think take care of the rest. And, for another, it dilutes and pollutes the actual definition of a word that has real (and odious) meaning of its own.

Take, for example, David Edelstein’s brief review in New York magazine of the Michael Caine movie, Harry Brown. I haven’t seen the movie, but it’s apparently a British version of Death Wish. Edelstein writes:

The chief problem is that Caine makes a grave, soulful vigilante avenger, and first-time director Daniel Barber gives the film a dank, streaky, genuinely unnerving palette. Moral artists have no business making a fascist, reactionary movie this effective. To hell with them.

Again, I haven’t seen the movie, so I have no idea if I’d like it or loathe it, approve or disapprove of its ideas, or find the film ideologically defensible or  despicable. What I do know is that tales of private citizens taking the law into their own hands and punishing criminals while evading the police can not be credibly termed “fascist” if that word is to retain any meaning. After all, an important motto of the Fascist regime in Italy was “Tutto nello Stato, niente al di fuori dello Stato, nulla contro lo Stato” (Everything in the State, nothing outside the State, nothing against the State).

Similarly, an official Italian government publication from the 1930s attributed to Benito Mussolini, said:

Anti-individualistic, the Fascist conception of life stresses the importance of the State and accepts the individual only in so far as his interests coincide with those of the State, which stands for the conscience and the universal will of man as a historic entity. …

The Fascist conception of the State is all-embracing; outside of it no human or spiritual values can exist, much less have value. Thus understood, Fascism is totalitarian, and the Fascist State—a synthesis and a unit inclusive of all values—interprets, develops, and potentiates the whole life of a people. …

Bypassing the government’s law-enforcement system as a self-motivated individual to pursue a personal vision of justice very explicitly runs up against the fascist celebration of the omnipotent state.

This doesn’t mean that Harry Brown is a good (or bad) movie or that waging personal war on the neighborhood thugs is necessarily a wise (or terrible) idea. It does mean, though, that it’s damned ignorant to dismiss the movie — or any story celebrating action outside the law — as “fascist.” Harry Brown, good or bad, is about as un-fascist as a movie can be.

And David Edelstein is a lazy reviewer.

Anti-individualistic, the Fascist conception of life stresses the importance of the State and accepts the individual only in so far as his interests coincide with those of the State, which stands for the conscience and the universal will of man as a historic entity.

Defend the culture? Which culture?

Over at When Falls the Coliseum, I have a personal take on the immigration wars, and on what’s worth defending — and what isn’t.

Here’s your ‘tough on crime’ captured on video

It’s hard to lose votes in the United States by advocating “tough on crime” tactics. Sure, everybody wants those rapists and murderers behind bars. But “tough on crime” too often degenerates into “murderously insane,” even when minor, victimless “crimes” are at issue.

Take, for instance, the February SWAT raid on the Columbia, Missouri, home of Jonathan E. Whitworth. Whitworth was ultimately charged with possession of drug paraphernalia, possession of marijuana and second-degree child endangerment (he ultimately pled guilty to a misdemeanor charge for possessing drug paraphernalia and paid a $300 fine according to Missouri’s Case.net — all other charges were dropped). The drug charges were apparently related to the discovery of what news reports described as “a grinder, a pipe and a small amount of marijuana.” The child endangerment charge seems to be the result of Whitworth daring to be at home with his wife and seven-year-old son when the storm troopers burst in and shot two family dogs — killing a pit bull and injuring a corgi.

Who endangered whom?

Video of the raid has just been made available and is below. This is “tough on crime.” If this is what you want, may you get it, at your home, in abundance.

Whitworth, not surprisingly, is considering legal action.

Thanks to Radley Balko for tooting the horn about this incident.