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Democracy for New Hampshire: Dean Talks About Not Getting HHS And Post-DNC Plans

Thu, 12 Mar 2009 06:38:22 EDT

By Sam Stein

Huffington Post

March 1, 2009 01:10 PM

Having been bypassed for a cabinet post after leaving the DNC, former Gov. Howard Dean has chosen to pursue a multi-faceted career in health care advocacy, progressive political strategy, speeches, education and energy, and even election monitoring.

The Vermont Democrat, whose [...]

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14th Annual Bay Area Anarchist Bookfair

hughillustration — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 22:48:45 EDT

guest post by Hugh D’Andrade

I’ve been attending the Bay Area Anarchist Bookfair (and creating graphics for it) for at least five years now, and the thing I love about it is the sheer size and cacophony of the event. You step inside and find booth after booth full of books, pamphlets, and zines on every conceivable fringe-y subject â€” plus comics, music, t-shirts, an art show, and speakers on subjects ranging from how to compost to how to survive industrial collapse.

Here’s the poster I created for the event this year.

Here’s a list of items I’ve bought at past Anarchist Bookfairs:

very rare Emma Goldman classic, “My Disillusionment in Russia”
a bike zine on how to build your own cargo bike which I have never used but will some day
actual (pre-Kool Aid) Jonestown pamphlet from 1977, all about the beautiful utopia being built in Guyana
“Resistance is Fertile” t-shirt with cool woodcut graphics
hard-to-find copy of “Mr. Block” cartoons from old IWW papers
Ken Knabb’s excellent memoir, Public Secrets, describing 30+ years of political agitation in the Bay Area

You don’t have to agree with everyone there â€” in fact, that would be impossible, given the wide range of totally contradictory ideas on offer. You’ve heard about the marketplace of ideas? This is what it looks like.

This year’s speakers this year includes my friend Chris Carlsson, talking about his new book Nowtopia: How Pirate Programmers, Outlaw Bicyclists, and Vacant-Lot Gardeners are Inventing the Future Today.

Here are the details for the event:

Bound Together Books Presents:
The 4th Annual Bay Area Anarchist Bookfair
Saturday, March 14, 2009 (10am-6pm)
Sunday, March 15, 2009 (11am-5pm)

SF County Fair Building
Ninth Avenue and Lincoln Way
Golden Gate Park, San Francisco
Valet bike parking and Kid/Family space provided
Free

And here’s a link to the CC-licensed Bookfair posters I’ve designed in years past.

poster by Hugh D’Andrade

This is a blog post from Laughing Squid.

For more content like this, subscribe to the RSS feed, Twitter & FriendFeed.

14th Annual Bay Area Anarchist Bookfair

-Â The 14th Annual Brainwash Drive-In/Bike-In/Walk-In Movie Festival

-Â 14th Annual Bernal Heights Hill Soapbox Derby 2008

-Â 8th Annual Bring Your Own Big Wheel, This Year on Vermont Street

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Praise G-d! Americans Becoming Less Religious

madprofessah@gmail.com (Mad Professah) — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 12:12:00 EDT

Queerty and Joe.My.God are among several blogs that are reporting about a major Religious Identification study which reports that the number of Americans who respond "none" when asked their religion is up to 15%.

According to 365gay.com:

Fifteen percent of respondents said they had no religion, an increase from 14.2 percent in 2001 and 8.2 percent in 1990, according to the American Religious Identification Survey.

Northern New England surpassed the Pacific Northwest as the least religious region, with Vermont reporting the highest share of those claiming no religion, at 34 percent. Still, the study found that the numbers of Americans with no religion rose in every state.

â€œNo other religious bloc has kept such a pace in every state,â€� the studyâ€™s authors said.

Of course, the impact that an increase in the percentage of people who do not believe in ancient homophobic religious dictates is good news for the LGBT rights movement, as a Queerty analysis shows. New England (Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont) contains the states that are the most progressive on LGBT rights in the United States and just happens to be the least religious section of the country, with 34% if Vermonters saying that they have no religion while CT and MA both have marriage equality already and VT and NH have civil unions. In 2009, all 4 states in New England that do not have civil marriage for same-sex couples will be considering bills to legalize the practice--more than half are expected to pass their respective legislatures.

The second least religious area of the United States is the Pacific Northwest (California, Oregon and Washington) three states which have comprehensive domestic partnership statutes which give most or many of the state-bestowed rights and responsibilities of civil marriage to same-sex couples.

The converse is also true. The most religious states are, in order, (Mississippi, Alabama, South Carolina, Tennessee, Louisiana, Arkansas, Georgia, North Carolina, Oklahoma). All of these states have at least 75% of their respondents saying that religion is "an important part" of their daily lives. Notice anything? None of these states have statewide protections against discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity, and all of them except for North Carolina have constitutional amendments banning same-sex marriage.

MadProfessah is definitely in the 15% who would answer "none" to the question of what my religion is and I am very comfortable calling myself an atheist or agnostic....

Ben and Jerry Backhand Haagen-Dazs for Shrinking Ice Cream Cartons

Matt O'Hern — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 10:35:00 EDT

You deserve more ice-cream!

That's the message from Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield founders of Ben and Jerry's Ice Cream, The dynamic duo have never been afraid to speak their mind on political and environmental issues, so it comes as no surprise that they're waging a war of words on one of their arch rivals.

Haagen-Dazs downsized its packaging (ala the Pepsi 8-Pack) and the pint-sized cartons now hold 14 fl. oz rather than 16. Haagen-Dazs rationalized the downsizing as a cost-cutting measure. A page on Haagen-Dazs.com, explains the cause for smaller cartons , citing a 25% rise in ingredients such as "fresh eggs, top-quality raspberries and Madagascar vanilla."Oh,and who could forget the gas excuse.

On the same page, Haagen-Dazs touts its unique form of flavor-blending. This is a direct quote:

Rather than simply slicing and mixing them into ice cream as many do, our berries are 'hugged' to release their juices. We blend these juices into the ice cream before folding in the fruit to maximize the flavor while preserving the berry's beautiful natural color.

(Wow, I didn't realize how expensive hugs are these days.)

In response, Ben and Jerry's launched a campaign "A pint is not a pint unless it's a pint." at Benandjerrys.com , You can read Ben and Jerry's complete statement. An excerpt includes.

We think downsizing pints is downright wrong. We understand that in today’s hard economic times businesses are feeling the pinch. We also understand that many of you are also feeling the same, and think now more than ever you deserve your full pint of ice cream....While our competitor may be experiencing a bit of shrinkage, rest assured that your Ben & Jerry’s will still be standing tall in the freezer.

In my opinion, this was a brilliant move by Ben and Jerry's, because they're portrayed as consumer advocates ,while their arch rival is villanized as greedy corporate pigs. Passion for their brand and reputation are some of the main reasons why Ben & Jerry’s negotiated for parent company Unilever, (NYSE:UL) to let them operate separately. with an independent Board of Directors....

Washington state Senate OKs domestic partner rights expansion

Steve Rothaus — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 08:45:38 EDT

By RACHEL LA CORTE, Associated Press

OLYMPIA, Wash. -- Same-sex domestic partners would have all of the rights and benefits that Washington offers married couples under a measure passed by the state Senate.

Supporters of the bill said it offers same-sex couples fairness that has been denied them under the state's 1998 Defense of Marriage Act, which restricts marriage to unions between a man and woman.

"You have denied us that right," said bill sponsor Sen. Ed Murray, D-Seattle, one of six openly gay lawmakers in the Legislature. "Do not deny us the right to care for our families and build our lives."

The bill passed on a mostly party-line 30-18 vote Tuesday night and now heads to the House. The Senate rejected two Republican amendments, including one that would have sent the measure to voters.

The bill expands on previous domestic partnership laws by adding reference to partnerships alongside all remaining areas of state law where currently only married couples are mentioned, statutes ranging from labor and employment to pensions and other public employee benefits.

The underlying domestic partnership law, which Murray spearheaded two years ago, provided hospital visitation rights, the ability to authorize autopsies and organ donations, and inheritance rights when there is no will.

Last year, lawmakers expanded that law to give domestic partners standing under laws covering probate and trusts, community property and guardianship.

As of Tuesday, 5,112 domestic partnership registrations had been filed since the law took effect in July 2007.

Opponents said the bill alters the traditional definition of marriage.

"Same-sex couples have the right to form meaningful relationships. But I don't think they have the right to redefine marriage for all of us," said Sen. Janea Holmquist, R-Moses Lake.

Gov. Chris Gregoire has said she supports the new expansion measure. Gregoire signed the last two domestic partnership bills into law, as well as a gay civil rights law in 2006.

Only Connecticut and Massachusetts have legalized gay marriage. Same-sex marriage was legal in California for five months until a state referendum to ban it passed last fall.

Vermont, New Jersey, California, New Hampshire, Oregon, Washington and the District of Columbia have laws that either recognize civil unions or domestic partnerships that afford same-sex couples similar rights to marriage. Thirty states have gay marriage bans in their constitutions.

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Freeman Withdraws: Israel Lobby 1-Obama 0

Richard Silverstein — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 01:20:19 EDT

The Israel lobby and Republican neocons have scored their first triumph of the Obama administration by derailing the appointment of Chas. Freeman as director of the National Intelligence Council. The next time anyone qvells about how moderate a Republican Olympia Snowe is just remember that it was probably her signature on a letter from every minority member of the senate committee that oversees the intelligence agencies which sealed his fate. So much for moderation. She caved to rightist pressure at the drop of a hat.

To his credit, the feisty Freeman went down swinging. He landed heavy blows on his detractors and smearmeisters:

I have concluded that the barrage of libelous distortions of my record would not cease upon my entry into office. The effort to smear me and to destroy my credibility would instead continue. I do not believe the National Intelligence Council could function effectively while its chair was under constant attack by unscrupulous people with a passionate attachment to the views of a political faction in a foreign country. I agreed to chair the NIC to strengthen it and protect it against politicization, not to introduce it to efforts by a special interest group to assert control over it through a protracted political campaign.

…I am saddened by what the controversy and the manner in which the public vitriol of those who devoted themselves to sustaining it have revealed about the state of our civil society. It is apparent that we Americans cannot any longer conduct a serious public discussion or exercise independent judgment about matters of great importance to our country as well as to our allies and friends.

The libels on me and their easily traceable email trails show conclusively that there is a powerful lobby determined to prevent any view other than its own from being aired, still less to factor in American understanding of trends and events in the Middle East. The tactics of the Israel Lobby plumb the depths of dishonor and indecency and include character assassination, selective misquotation, the willful distortion of the record, the fabrication of falsehoods, and an utter disregard for the truth. The aim of this Lobby is control of the policy process through the exercise of a veto over the appointment of people who dispute the wisdom of its views, the substitution of political correctness for analysis, and the exclusion of any and all options for decision by Americans and our government other than those that it favors.

There is a special irony in having been accused of improper regard for the opinions of foreign governments and societies by a group so clearly intent on enforcing adherence to the policies of a foreign government â€“ in this case, the government of Israel. I believe that the inability of the American public to discuss, or the government to consider, any option for US policies in the Middle East opposed by the ruling faction in Israeli politics has allowed that faction to adopt and sustain policies that ultimately threaten the existence of the state of Israel. It is not permitted for anyone in the United States to say so. This is not just a tragedy for Israelis and their neighbors in the Middle East; it is doing widening damage to the national security of the United States.

The outrageous agitation that followed the leak of my pending appointment will be seen by many to raise serious questions about whether the Obama administration will be able to make its own decisions about the Middle East and related issues. I regret that my willingness to serve the new administration has ended by casting doubt on its ability to consider, let alone decide what policies might best serve the interests of the United States rather than those of a Lobby intent on enforcing the will and interests of a foreign government.

While it is clear that Freeman is right in attacking the Likudist Israel lobby for the “hit” against him. I’m rather uncomfortable with blaming them solely. It is clear that there are domestic political considerations that enabled the Republican right and “liberal” Democrats like Chuck Schumer to ally with the lobby in accomplishing this demolition job. Certainly, Aipac, the Wall Street Journal (Jonathan Chait), Middle East Forum (Steve Rosen), the Weekly Standard (Michael Goldfarb), Commentary (Gabriel Schonfeld), The New Republic (Marty Peretz-James Kirchik), The Atlantic (Jeffrey Goldberg), and other aiders and abettors of the lobby deserve a large measure of the shame. But without Schumer, Snowe and other elected officials who fed the dogs, this couldn’t have happened.

I also believe that progressive Democrats, bloggers, Middle East analysts, and the Obama administration itself didn’t mobilize itself in time to wage a counter-attack against this smear. I hope they won’t be caught as flat-footed next time (and there WILL BE a next time).

Speaking of Schumer, I have always had a sort of grudging admiration for him as a liberal Democrat. Big mouth. Big ego.Â But got the job done.Â But no more. He’s done a “Hillary” on me:

“Charles Freeman was the wrong guy for this position. His statements against Israel were way over the top and went beyond anything I have seen from any administration official,” he said in a statement. “I repeatedly urged the White House to reject him, and I am glad they did the right thing.”

Schumer is now the enemy of any decent, reasonable resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. As far as I’m concerned he’s poison to every issue he touches.Â Chuck ought to be careful.Â This is one of the ways Hillary wore out her welcome as a presidential candidate: one too many sycophantic comments favoring the lobby, security hawks, and the war party.

Which raises another important and obvious point: Democrats are not automatically friends of Israeli-Palestinian peace. A Democrat can be just as much an enemy of peace as a Republican. “Liberal” and “conservative” in their normal domestic context have little or no meaning as far as the conflict. There are liberal bloggers like Markos Moulitsas who haven’t learned that lesson yet and may never because I-P peace is a secondary issue (if it’s even an issue at all) to the primary goal ofÂ attaining and preserving Democratic political power.

Now that we’ve attacked a “liberal” Democrat, let’s sing the praises a liberal Democrat who understands what the issues are and isn’t afraid to express compassion for Palestinian suffering. Of course, he has a small Jewish constituency in the state he represents, Vermont. But nevertheless, Patrick Leahy is a true peace patriot. He attacked Jon Kyl’s amendment to a senate bill which would’ve prohibited any U.S. funding be directed to resettle Hamas members in the U.S. This was his profile in courage:

The senator then compared the Palestinian experience to his own ancestors in Ireland. They too were called terrorists once, because they were “fighting to keep their land,” fighting for their votes and freedom, religion and language. And “hunted” for doing so– “hunted because they had fought to practice their own religion… hunted because they wanted to keep their land…

“Thank goodness the United States had open arms for them.” The amendment, Leahy says, “goes against everything we stand for.”

Now, that is courage I can believe in.

Returning to the Freeman withdrawal: this was a Lexington and Concord for the Israel lobby, the first skirmish in what they know will be a long war against any constructive Obama impulse to address the real issues in the conflict and resolve them. It is the lobby saying: “Take what we tell you very, very seriously or you will know our wrath. And if you do you won’t forget it.”

I am sorry that Obama and Blair withdrew from the field with hardly a fight. It doesn’t augur well for the trench warfare that will be necessary in future if there is ever to be a U.S. role in midwiving peace in the Middle East. In this one, Obama faced the lobby eyeball to eyeball and flinched.

You certainly can try to argue that this appointment was not the type that warranted a major expenditure of political capital. Chas. Freeman is a bridge toward the goal but not the goal itself. There will be significant battles and the administration needs to save its powder for those.

But what is lacking in this analysis is the symbolic importance of the Freeman appointment and its savaging. Politics, like football, is a game of inches. It is a game of momentum. The lobby has tripped up Obama’s momentum and grabbed the agenda, at least momentarily.Â And both Dennis Blair and Barack Obama have lost the benefit of an honest broker who would not be afraid to tell them when they were wearing no clothes.Â Seems to me we’ve just completed eight years of an administration which ran from the truth tellers as fast as their feet would carry them.Â Similarly, the lobby wants no truth tellers when it comes to devising U.S. policy toward Israel.Â It wants sycophants, yes-men, the pols who know how to line up in a straight line.Â We can see how well this policy worked for George Bush.Â And it won’t work for an administration that wants to act as a more honest broker, rather than a cheerleader or enabler of one side’s bad habits.

For all the reasons Freeman outlined above, this is a very sad day for anyone who really wishes for Israeli-Palestinian peace and a vigorous American role in achieving it.

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Forewo/ard, March!

Tue, 10 Mar 2009 19:26:13 EDT

There will be a 2009 edition of Re-imagine! I was asked to write a new foreword—which I did. Finished it last Friday.

Following a rule I generally break, what follows is the first 800 words, with a continuation which you may choose to peruse. We also have a PDF version of the entire 7,000-word piece.

[Please keep in mind that the text is a draft, which Tom urged me to remind you. Changes, as always, are to come.—CM]

Preface to 2009 Edition: Re-imagine

Does any of what follows, in a book published in 2003, make sense if, or as, the world is falling apart? That's the obvious, and only, way to start a foreword in early 2009. The answer, of course, is "Yes"—and "no."

Re-imagine describes a brave new intertwined world of commerce, organizational formats, and career strategies in which many or even most of the old rules have been broken, then shredded. While the economic system is dramatically altered in 2009, and will surely be altered more in 2010 and perhaps beyond, the old rules that were broken that animated the Re-imagine in the first place are still broken; much of the work to be done in 2009, beyond dealing with day-to-day survival issues, comes from the worklist we laid out in 2003—there is far more unfinished than finished business when it comes to readiness for unrelenting, global, speed-of-light 21st century marketplace competition.

Boundaries are disappearing—and, altered circumstances or not, neo-protectionism or not, we live in a global village; mindblowing new technologies are announced, it seems, by the day, from Apple's latest to the consequences of fullblown genetic mapping, and new members of the Vital Economy Club only enhance that reality. Most any task can be done anywhere. Alliances of every imaginable flavor are created, do their thing, and evaporate. Radical tools such as "crowdsourcing" change dynamics of work and human communication that are thousands of years old—and such tools continue, regardless of macro-economic circumstances, to arrive on the scene and grow like Topsy with startling regularity. And hence the race to add value to keep one's job, or to keep lots of jobs at home, or to enable a going concern, even a small one, to survive has only intensified.

Hierarchies are dying, at least in larger firms; and the economic situation accelerates that—lard in the superstructure is first on the chopping block, and not just at GM and Citi. We do most of our work via project teams that involve members from hither, thither and yon; and that last a year—or a week. Order shouting is out. These disparate team members from disparate places asked to concoct new stuff based on combining ideas of every description can only be motivated by persuasion and passion and the promise of personal growth, not the rattling of the hierarchical saber. "Who's in charge" varies by the day; Cisco Systems, the communication equipment giant, weathering the current storm by re-inventing itself once again, calls it an organization based on "emergent leadership"—the de facto leader of a critical team can emerge electronically in a literal flash from three levels down in the organization, by dint of her stellar electronic contributions made from a cramped cubicle or her bedroom at home at 3 a.m.

Those of us in the high wage nations, economic uncertainty, even chaos, not withstanding, will only survive by moving up the same "value-added" ladder described in the 2003 edition of this book—and by being prepared, as specified in 2003, for more or less constant re-invention. The rise of the likes of China and India and Brazil proceeds apace—and even with current hiccups, or the flu, the pace of these new major players' growth is nothing short of astounding—and will be more so if your time horizon moves out to, say, 15 years, a fact for readers under 40 or so. Yesterday is over is the ultimate truism, but at the moment more true, if possible, than at any time in the last 100 years.

There is a finance tsunami.
There is a generic economics tsunami.
There is a technology tsunami, just gathering a head of steam.
There is a geo-political tsunami, just gathering a head of steam.
There is a work-structuring tsunami.
There is an organization effectiveness tsunami.
There is a careers tsunami.

And they play out differently and in different combination every day.

So does this brief recitation of forces at work now, most of which were at work then, suggest that "I wouldn't change a word"?

Of course not!
I'd change a lot.
But probably in a direction you'd not expect.

Oddly, I'd look back, not forward, mostly, if I made major modifications. As on Wall Street, I'd pay attention, lots more attention, to the bed rock.
In fact, I beat myself up daily for not having done so before.
(Frankly, I'm irritated with anyone who isn't beating themselves up.)
Oddly on yet another dimension, my re-assessment began a year or so before the fissures in the financial system's understructure began to be visible.
I can even put an exact date on the start of my re-assessment.

April 14, 2006.

There were some very modest signs of Winter reluctantly giving way to Spring at home in Vermont. But my view that April 14th was 100% ice and snow as Air Siberia approached Novosibirsk, Siberia.

Continued reading Forewo/ard, March!...

Posted by Tom Peters | Comments?

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Politicker MA - Massachusetts Politics News, Reaction, and Analysis: [Boston Globe] Dean dismisses surgeon general speculation

Tue, 10 Mar 2009 16:10:00 EDT

The Howard Dean-for-surgeon-general boomlet rose again after CNN medical correspondent Sanjay Gupta dropped out last week. But the former Vermont governor, while averring that politicians never say never, threw cold water on that speculation today. Dean said he can push...

[...]

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Politicker MA - Massachusetts Politics News, Reaction, and Analysis: [Boston Globe] Massachusetts really is liberal

Tue, 10 Mar 2009 08:00:00 EDT

This should come as little surprise to Massachusetts voters, but the Bay State had the most liberal delegation in the US House last year, according to the latest National Journal rankings. The House delegations from Rhode Island, Vermont, and Connecticut...

[...]

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The idiocy of opposition to same-sex marriage

JulieWaters — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 06:39:56 EDT

From m-w.com:

id-i-ot... Middle English, from Anglo-French ydiote, from Latin idiota ignorant person...

A large group of professional organizations have come out in support of same-sex marriage:

Same-sex marriage rights got an endorsement Monday from four Vermont professional organizations who cited research findings that "children of lesbian and gay parents are as likely as those of heterosexual parents to flourish."
[...]
Their statement, which comes as the Vermont legislature prepares to consider same-sex marriage legislation, was released at a news conference called by the Vermont Psychological Association, the Vermont Psychiatric Association, the Vermont Association of Mental Health Counselors and the Vermont chapter of the National Association of Social Workers.

This, however, is not good enough for everybody:

Steve Cable is the founder of the Vermont Marriage Advisory Council, a group opposed to gay marriage. The lack of any landmark study tracking the outcomes of children raised in same-sex households, Cable said, makes it impossible to determine how they fare. The groups' endorsement of gay marriage, he said, uses inconclusive science to justify a political agenda.

First, I find it really funny to see Cable talking about science, as though he gives a damn what science actually says. Ditto for the use of it as a political agenda.

Cable said large-scale studies have proven one fact - that children raised by a married mother and father achieve measurably better outcomes than children reared in nonconventional families.

So let's talk about the actual science here. Studies have shown that children raised by married parents do better than children raised by divorced parents, and that children raised by married parents do better than children raised by single parents.

A sidenote here: this does not mean that divorce is the problem. It could be that being raised by parents who are not a good fit for one another isn't the best thing for kids. The divorce itself may just be a byproduct. We also know that children do better when both parents present a consistent message, and though some divorced couples are great about this, there are probably more divorced couples who present an inconsistent message than married couples, if for no other reason than simplicity of contact.

Now, as far as the science goes, Cable is doing something a bit slimy here. He is pretending that same-sex marriage is the functional equivalent of divorce:

Jackie Winestock, associate professor of human and family development at UVM, is quoted in the same article:

However, Weinstock said it's inappropriate to assume that children raised by gay couples will mirror the statistical outcomes of those raised by single parents or divorced parents.
She pointed to a 2004 policy statement by the American Psychological Association, which concluded that "conscientious and nurturing adults ... homosexual or heterosexual, can be excellent parents. The rights, benefits and protections of civil marriage," according to the statement, "can further strengthen these families."
An American Academy of Pediatrics study, meanwhile, concluded there is "ample evidence" to show that "children raised by same-gender parents fare as well as those raised by heterosexual parents."

Cable is not an idiot. He knows how to manipulate things to pretend they suit his agenda.

What Cable is doing here is appealing to a cadre of useful idiots: trying to pretend that science supports him, giving them cover for their bigotry.

Facts are on our side here, and he's going to lose, eventually, but the real question is whether it will be in months, years, or decades.
Vermont was on the right side of history when this first came up, before anyone else in the union was. Now is not the time to end up on the wrong side.
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JR — Mon, 9 Mar 2009 22:16:00 EDT

THE EVIDENCE IS THAT THE OCEAN IS COOLING, NOT WARMING

An email below from Craig Loehle [Craigloehl@aol.com]

Hansen's theory that CO2 forcing is hiding in the oceans can't be true if the oceans are cooling, as my latest paper shows (Energy & Environment Vol. 20, No. 1&2, 2009).

Excerpt below:

Cooling of the global ocean since 2003

By Craig Loehle, Ph.D. National Council for Air and Stream Improvement, Inc. (NCASI)

ABSTRACT

Ocean heat content data from 2003 to 2008 (4.5 years) were evaluated for trend. A trend plus periodic (annual cycle) model fit with R2 = 0.85. The linear component of the model showed a trend of -0.35 (~0.2) x 1022 Joules per year. The result is consistent with other data showing a lack of warming over the past few years.

1.0 INTRODUCTION

There is great interest in detecting rates of temperature change in the earth system. It has been suggested (e.g., Pielke 2003) that changes in ocean heat content should be particularly informative. A recent study (Lyman et al. 2006) claimed to find rapid cooling of the ocean between 2003 and 2005, but it was later determined that data from certain instruments caused a substantial cool bias in the result (Willis et al. 2007, 2008a; Wijffels et al. 2008). A corrected and longer dataset has now become available to redo this analysis.....

4.0 DISCUSSION

It has previously been estimated by Willis et al. (2004) that from 1993 to 2003 the upper ocean gained 8.1 (~1.4) x 1022 J of heat. This study estimates a loss since then of from 0.668 to 2.48 x 1022 J, or 19.4% (up to 31%) of the gain of the prior decade. Ishii and Kimoto (In Press) also show a bias-corrected cooling from 2003 to 2006. On an annual basis, this is a cooling of 0.35 x 1022 J compared to 0.81 x 1022 J warming for 1993 to 2003 (Willis et al. 2004) and slightly less for the same period to 700 m in Ishii and Kimoto (in press). Dominguez et al. (2008) show a 700 m depth annual warming from 1961 to 2003 of 0.38 x 1022 J. Thus the estimate of cooling in the present study is not out of line with past results. It is also consistent with satellite and surface instrumental records that do not show a warming trend over recent years. Another bias-corrected estimate (Gouretski and Koltermann 2007) is based on depth profiles too different to make a comparison. By comparison, Willis et al. (2008a) do not find any significant trend (slight negative trend) for 2003 to 2006, but had a shorter record and performed their trend analysis using simple annual means. Heat loss from the ocean has been estimated to also have occurred in the 1980s (Ishii and Kimoto, In Press; Gouretski and Koltermann 2007; Levitus et al. 2001). The data also indicate an interesting damping with time of the annual fluctuations in heat gain and loss (Fig. 1b). While the current study takes advantage of a globally consistent data source, a 4.5-year period of ocean cooling is not unexpected in terms of natural fluctuations. The problem of instrumental drift and bias is quite complicated, however, (Domingues et al. 2008; Gouretski and Koltermann 2007; Wijffels et al. 2008; Willis et al. 2004, 2008a) and it remains possible that the result of the present analysis is an artifact.

Heartland climate conference-2: session one

by Bob Carter

The opening session of the Heartland-2 Conference opened with a bang here in Manhattan tonight [Sunday evening March 8, 2009]. With registrations of around 700 persons, the conference is almost twice the size of its predecessor last year. The audience for the two opening plenary talks, held over dinner, included an eclectic mixture of scientists, engineers, economists, policy specialists, government representatives and media reporters.

In welcoming delegates, and opening the conference, President of the Heartland Institute Joe Bast also launched two new publications. The first, by Anthony Watts, is a summary of his extensive studies of the weather stations at which U.S. surface temperatures are measured ("Is the U.S. Surface Temperature Record Reliable"), which have revealed that many stations are scandalously poorly sited for their intended purpose. The second, "The Skeptic's Handbook", by Joanne Nova from West Australia, is a succinct and well illustrated briefing paper that summarizes accurately the evidence against dangerous human-caused warming in a humorous and easily understood format.

The first Plenary Address was given by President Vaclav Klaus, who is President of both the Czech Republic and (for a 6 month current term) the European Union. His talk was greeted, both before and after, with standing ovations. In response to a question, he reported a just-released Czech poll, which shows that only 11% of persons questioned in a recent poll believe that man has a significant influence in warming the global climate.

The President commenced his talk by commenting that little change had occurred in the global warming debate since his talk, 12 months earlier, at the Heartland-1 conference. He likened the situation to his former experience under communist government, where arguing against the dominant viewpoint falls into emptiness. No matter how high the quality of the arguments and evidence that you advance against the dangerous warming idea, nobody listens, and by even advancing skeptical arguments you are dismissed as a naâ€¹ve and uninformed person. The environmentalists say that the planet must be saved, but from whom and from what? "In reality", the President commented, "we have to save it, and us, from them".

Klaus reported his discouragement at participating in meetings with other senior politicians at Davos and within the EC. Here, he finds that not one other head of state who will make common cause in support of a rational assessment of the scientific evidence. Instead, all believe that the summaries provided by the IPCC represent the scientific "truth" on global warming.

But the climate data do not support the theory of human causation; the IPCC summaries therefore do not represent science, but instead environmental politics and activism. As a result, large and highly organized rent seeking bureaucracies and groups have emerged, and they further propagate the climate alarmism that is now in their self-interest.

President Klaus professed to be puzzled by the environmentalists' approach to technical progress. It as if they "want to stop economic progress and take mankind centuries back", he said. Applying their ethic of "saving the world", western electorates are being asked for the first time in history to abandon successful current technologies before new technologies have been developed to replace them. Klaus stressed that there is no known, feasible way in which modern technological society can be run based on present sources of renewable, clean, green energy.

The second Plenary Address was delivered by Dr Richard Lindzen of MIT, an acknowledged world leader in atmospheric physics and a doyen of meteorological science. Dr Lindzen started by making the important observation that being skeptical about dangerous human-caused global warming does not make one a good scientist, and nor does endorsing global warming necessarily make one a bad scientist.

He then pointed out the professional difficulties that are raised for many skeptics when scientists whose research they respect nonetheless endorse global warming. In most such cases, however, the science that such persons do is not about global warming in the strict sense. It's just that supporting global warming makes their life, and especially their funding life, easier.

Thus, it is a particular problem for young scientists to oppose the prevailing alarmist orthodoxy, because to do so is to cruel their chances of receiving research funding. For as long as it is the AGW spin that attracts the research funds, for so long will there be a strong disincentive for most scientists to question the hypothesis in public.

Lindzen commented that the politicization of the AGW issue has had an extraordinarily corrupting influence on science. Most funding that goes to global warming would not be provided were it not for the climate scare. It has therefore become standard to include in any research proposal the effect of presumed AGW on your topic, quite irrespective of whether it has any real relevance or not.

Lindzen asserted that it boils down to a matter of scientific logic against authority. The global warming movement has skilfully co-opted sources of authority, such as the IPCC and various scientific academies. For instance, over a period of 20 years, the US Academy of Science has had a backdoor route for the election of environmentalists as Members of the Academy. The success of this tactic is indicated by the fact that the current President of the Academy (Ralph Cicerone) was elected that way and is a strong environmentalist.

But in giving an endorsement of alarm about climate change, the NAS, as well as similar societies in other countries, has never polled their own expert membership. Rather, the pro-alarm policy statements that are issued by various professional societies express the views of only the activist few, who often control the governing Council.

Despite the manifold problems of combating the alarmist climate message, Dr Lindzen concluded his talk with the rousing observation that in time the climate rationalist cause will win. "When it comes to global warming hysteria", he said, "neither gross ignorance nor even grosser dishonesty has been in short supply. But we will win this debate, for we are right and they are wrong".

During an extended question and answer session after the conclusion of the two plenary addresses, Drs Klaus and Lindzen were in close agreement about two things. The first, is that global warming hysteria is being fomented as part of an environmentalist ideology; it is a politically organized movement. The grip that this hysteria now has on public opinion is explained partly by the fact that there is no equivalent, politically organized movement to mount a defense of sound science. Instead, there is simply a collection of persons who are united mainly by their common affront at the gross abuse of science that is going on.

The second common viewpoint was expressed in response to the question "What arguments are the most effective to promulgate the skeptics' cause of building policy, not on authority, IPCC or otherwise, but on sound science".

Both President Klaus and Dr Lindzen agreed that the most important arguments were (i) that sound science demonstrates that human increases in carbon dioxide are not going to cause dangerous global warming, and (ii) that a thorough cost-benefit analysis must be applied to all potential policy options.

For those on all sides of the argument accept that the Kyoto Protocol, despite its high cost, will do nothing towards measurably reducing global temperature; and the public need to be informed that the same is true also for the more ambitious carbon dioxide cuts mooted under cap and trade legislation. If taxpayers are to fund the operation, then it is only fair that they be told that the considerable pain, which will run to many trillions of dollars, will be for no measurable gain.

It was not expected that new science would be presented at the opening Plenary Session of Heartland-2. What participants got, instead, were inspirational messages delivered by two inspirational leaders of the climate rationalist cause.

SOURCE

Monday Morning at the Heartland ICCC - Tom McClintock, Lawrence Solomon, and Some Real Science

We're working hard here. We had to be up early and ready for things to start over breakfast at 7 this morning. There were two keynotes over breakfast, and then we split into tracks; I was in a "science" track and encountered some interesting things which I'll enumerate below.

The first morning speaker was Congressman Tom McClintock; Mr. McClintock was long a lonely but stalwart conservative in the California state assembly, and this past November he won a close and hotly-contested race and became a freshman Congressman. Moe will be having more about this later, and he managed to secure an interview with Mr. McClintock - that's being processed. He mostly noted the policy idiocies that California has imposed on itself that are having catastrophic effects. He humorously noted that as a 3rd grader on a 1964 trip to a natural history museum, he noted from the exhibits that the climate does change over time - and he wonders why Al Gore gets the credit rather than him.

But his descriptions of the way California has been blazing away (on full auto) at its own feet has been horrid to watch. He cited the example of the electric utility in the small mountain city of Truckhee that had just contracted with a coal-burning utility in Utah for electricity at $35 per megawatt-hour - only to have the state greens jump in and force them out of that deal and into one that was "greener" but will cost $65 per megawatt-hour. He finally noted that with all this and now sharply higher taxes (on top of already-high rates), California is losing people at a frightening rate. He cited the long-cited metric that the flow has gotten to be so one-sided that the UHaul rental rate to take a truck OUT of California is now six or seven times the rate to take a truck in.

The next keynote was given by Canadian journalist and environmentalist (!!) Lawrence Solomon. He noted something that hit home to me, since I also see quite a bit of the developing world (particularly sub-Saharan Africa) - that Kyoto compliance is a huge environmental destroyer in the developing world.. mainly because that's where those "offsets" that greens buy are "deployed." For example, one of the largest methods of "doing offsets" is to plant eucalyptus plantations in warmer climates; eucalyptus is a fast-growing tree that is prized as a carbon sink. However, to create these plantations, farmers are often evicted from their land (usually without "just compensation"), and old growth forests are clear-cut to make room for eucalyptus plantations. This to me is a stark case of "out of sight, out of mind" detachedness.

He's actually a big opponent of hydroelectric projects on similar grounds; for example, the construction of the (in)famous "Three Gorges" Dam in China displaced millions of people and flooded an immense area of very fertile land. In his view, hydro is no longer economically-viable - because all of the "good sites" for hydro have already been used. The irony is that the "Kyoto subsidies" are tilting the playing field, and making high-impact hydro "viable" again.

He noted that during the 1980s, large labor unions began to develop a strong interest in "environmental issues" - mainly as a method of slowing the erosion in the membership. He also noted that during the 1990s, large "foundations" moved into the space and became "pro-active" - actively working to set the agenda and force policies.

He concluded by noting that polling data shows that when people hear - at least twice - that there is a continuing debate, they quickly become skeptics; this is proving to be true in both Canada and in the United States. He noted that the 11% belief rate in the Czech Republic is due to continual "education" on the subject from the President himself. As he concluded, "We need to clone Vaclav Klaus."

Since he's Canadian, I asked him the Q&A to tell the audience about Hydro Quebec. The short take is that this was a Quebec-nationalist thing back in the early 1980s, with the goal of energy independence for Quebec via huge hydro projects up in James Bay. Vermont is heavily dependent on this power. At first, the enlightened people liked it, mainly because (back in the late 1980s) it meant that we didn't need nuclear power because of it. But when it emerged that (see above) the flooding was driving large numbers of Cree Indians off their land, the enlightened people turned 180 on HQ. The long-term contracts into eastern North American are expiring, and the new rates will be market-based and much higher. Keep an eye on the Hydro Quebec story in the years ahead - I guarantee that you WILL hear more about this soon.

After that, we broke into smaller sessions; I went to a climatology session that was very good (probably the best science session on the schedule), and I wanted to be sure to get this report out this morning since there are some things in here to which some of our reader-writers can contribute.

Tom Segalstad from Oslo University (Norway) gave a very interesting talk on carbon isotopes and mass-balance modeling. I'll provide just a few interesting highlights. He noted that the IPCC models treat sea water as being completely pure - as pure as distilled water.. which is of course a gross offense against basic chemistry. He also notes that the amount of CO2 tied up in the oceans is at least 50 times that in the atmosphere.

The most interesting part to me though was to see him actually mention the word "buffer" when it came to CO2 and the oceans - particularly as the formation of calcium carbonates are involved. Since I have some chemistry background, I've long wondered why this subject was never discussed, since when you mix CO2, calcium, and water you are getting into acid-base chemistry and that leads you quickly to the topic of buffering and buffering agents as a means of stabilizing pH. The ocean carbonates act as a buffer, and buffers act as a negative feedback mechanism (there's that phrase again!!) - which is exactly what buffering does. I'll yield the floor here, since perhaps "Chemical Sam" can tell us more about buffering, buffering agents, and how they work.

The next talk was given by the very distinguished Professor Syun Akasofu, who is one of the co-founders of the International Arctic Research Center at the University of Alaska/Fairbanks. This talk was lengthy and rather technical, but I wanted to break out his main conclusions and include a photo I took of his "money chart" that he screened several times.

In his view, the climate is presently in a period of long, slow recovery from the "Little Ice Age" that ran for 300 or so years and ended in about 1850. This gives us a large-scale secular trend of about 0.5 degrees Celsius per century of linear rise - but the underlying trend is punctuated by multi-decade-long oscillations around that larger-scale trend. We'll get back to the implications of this in a moment, but he noted that if this is the long-term underlying secular trend, it may end soon, or it may continue.. but by historical standards it should not last for more than about another 100 years.

This resonated very nicely with me personally, since I've long complained that in the "climate science world" (and as I noted again last night with regard to Richard Lindzen's comments) things are treated in a overly-deterministic fashion - an overly-deterministic view which simply just does not jibe with how nature (and her penchant for "fluctuations") actually works. The natural world, in my humble lifetime of experience (which I'm glad to see seems to mesh with the thinking of the better climate scientists) is that nature (particularly at short time scales) is dominated by fluctuations and statistical variations about variation "centers."

More HERE

Czech President Vaclav Klaus on why the discussion about global warming is a monologue

For Vaclav Klaus, the inconvenient truth is this: Global warming is far from being proved, and the problem is that everybody has jumped on the bandwagon before any real debate has taken place. Mr. Klaus won his second five-year term as president of the Czech Republic in February 2008. He studied at the Prague School of Economics, where he currently holds a professorship in finance. Mr. Klaus talked to Robert Thomson, managing editor of The Wall Street Journal. Here are edited excerpts of their discussion.

THOMSON: Mr. President, obviously during the dark days of communism, America was a beacon for you and many other people in Central and Eastern Europe. What are your impressions of contemporary America?

KLAUS: Sitting here in this room in the last two hours and the coming from, first Europe, and, second, from a former communist country where I spent most of my life, I almost don't believe my eyes to see how much you believe in government and how much you don't believe in the market. This is for me a shocking experience. And I have to say that very loudly. As a professor of economics, I have my theoretical arguments about the impossibility of running the economy from above.

As a person who spent almost 50 years of his life in a communist country, I know how crazy it is to introduce schemes like the cap and trade and similar ideas, how devastating and damaging for the economy all those ideas really are. So I'm rather frustrated. It seems to me that to fight for freedom, free markets, is still the task of today, even if we hoped almost 20 years ago in the moment of the fall of communism that it was over. This is the same in Europe these days. There is one EU summit after another one weekend after another, there is a summit trying to find solutions. But I don't think that this solution will come from the government.

THOMSON: Now, you're also well known for your views on the environment. Are you concerned more about the environmental debate or the lack of debate that seems to be implicit in some people's approach to the environment?

KLAUS: I'm afraid that a serious debate about that issue has not yet started. What we witnessed are monologues, a conference of believers in global warming. The debate has not yet started. Nevertheless, I'm afraid the politicians have already accepted this idea, understood that it's a good political project, and now the things are moving in a way which I consider extremely dangerous. And I know that not only politicians, the businesspeople discovered that it's very attractive investments to get taxpayers' money and to start doing some things. So this is another problem. But I would like to make one thing clear, let's really differentiate the protection of the environment from the debate about global warming and decarbonizing the economy. I am not against the protection of the environment. I am against global-warming alarmism. Those are conceptually, structurally, two totally different issues.

THOMSON: But a person could argue, "Look, frankly, you've lost the debate on global warming. And what you're doing now is just blaming political correctness for your inability to win an argument you've already lost."

KLAUS: To win an argument you must have a potential place to argue, but I am afraid it does not exist anymore. And to speak about the scientific consensus about global warming, it's not true. To speak about a very strong relationship between carbon dioxide and the temperature in the world, again, not true. And I am really frustrated, I must say.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: I have great respect for your work in promoting freedom. And at the heart of the current situation regarding climate change, I'd like to compare it to the water-scarcity issue that you identified in California. At our breakout session this morning, I think we pretty much reached a unanimous conclusion that one of the causes is a failure to price water appropriately. It's priced below market. Isn't that a failure in terms of dealing with the environment overall, a failure to price environmental goods?

KLAUS: Well, of course, as an economist, I am aware of the externalities. I am aware of various cases of market failure. Nevertheless, I am first convinced that the government failure is incomparably bigger than any imaginable market failure in history. With regard to the question of water, I think it's rather difficult to introduce the real market in the case of water. I wouldn't mind doing it in some respect. We are used to doing it differently, without paying attention to the real cost of water. It was a mistake, definitely so. I wouldn't be against, not rationing water, but introducing some sort of market mechanism in consuming water and then paying for that.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: I'm an environmentalist. But I want to applaud your willingness to take on and to try to separate the sometimes frustratingly intertwined topics of climate change or, say, global warming, versus environmental conservation. The Amazon rainforest, for instance, we're looking the equivalent of about 180 football fields every three minutes in deforestation. And that's not a sustainable model in my opinion. Can you comment on what it means to help conservation without overheating the argument around carbon?

KLAUS: Well, there are several points. The first one, I thank you for stressing the difference between protection of the environment and global-warming alarmism and decarbonization of the economy. Those are two separate issues. By the way, communism is the nonexistence of real economic prices on the one hand, and state ownership, no private ownership, was a disaster for the environment. Everyone knows that. So we solved the environmental issues in our country in the moment of the fall of communism. By reintroducing normal prices, which give you the real scarcity of one thing or another, plus by introducing private property forced the solution for the environmental protection in general. This is my very strong, strong belief. The policy, the government policy for the environment, was not secondary but much lower importance as compared to those two systemic changes, prices and property rights.

Second, thank you for differentiating conservationism from environmentalism. Environmentalism is really a doctrine, religion, ideology, which has no connection to climatology or environment or anything else.

Then you mentioned the Brazilian forests. Well, tragic problem. Nevertheless, I think that the real stimulus for deforestation in many developing countries, including Brazil, was the crazy idea of biofuels. And those ideas came from the environmentalists. Now, they discovered it was a wrong idea, so they tried to pretend that they forgot the idea. So I'm afraid the deforestation in Brazil and the environmentalism is deeply, negatively connected.

SOURCE

WARMISM ROUNDUP FROM AUSTRALIA:

Three current articles below

Queensland weather pattern returns to 1970s

Weather bureau boss says 20 more years of data needed to draw conclusions about climate change. Note: Queensland is roughly twice the size of California

WEATHER patterns have returned to those of the 1970s - the past two summers had featured a good monsoon season and a couple of cyclones. Weather bureau boss Jim Davidson said despite the "normality" of the past two seasons, three unusual events had dominated Queensland's weather this summer. They were the flooding in northwest Queensland and the Gulf of Carpentaria, north Queensland's Ingham being hit with two major back-to-back floods and Cyclone Hamish at one stage hitting category 5 - the strongest possible. Last year major floods also hit central Queensland, in places such as Charleville, Longreach, Mackay and Rockhampton.

Mr Davidson said the past two summers showed the extreme weather patterns that a state as large as Queensland could experience. He had warned in October that coastal residents should prepare for a summer cyclone and flood season, with monsoon activity expected to be above normal. Mr Davidson said the season was dominated by a rain-bringing La Nina weather pattern as opposed to the El Nino conditions that had occurred through much of the decade-long drought. As well, the north had been boosted by an active monsoon. The three cyclones - Hamish, Ellie and Charlotte - were an average number for a season, although more cyclones could continue to form until about mid-April.

Mr Davidson said it was unusual that Hamish was the fourth category 5 cyclone to form in the past five years, but it was "too early" to put that down to climate change. "There's no obvious explanation for this happening," he said. "They are hard to predict, not easily explained and it's far too early to put this down to climate change. "It will take at least 20 years of scientific and statistical observations before we can make that sort of call. "We have very cyclical weather patterns."

While a huge slab of north, east and western Queensland has been swamped by the best wet season in years, the Murray Darling Basin on the NSW border is so dry entire rivers have stopped flowing. Little water has made it into the basin, about 260,000 sq km of which is in Queensland. University of NSW wetlands researcher Richard Kingsford has labelled conditions a disaster. Mr Davidson said the situation in the Murray Darling showed there was rarely a time in a state as large as Queensland that there was not some place in drought.

SOURCE

Climate change - it's part of natural cycle

A carbon tax is unnecessary and will ruin the Australian economy, a leading academic has warned. With an arm-long list of achievements, Adelaide University geology Professor Ian Plimer told the PGA Convention that there were fundamental problems in the science being put forward in favour of climate change. "An emission trading scheme is based on flawed science and its constraints will destroy the agricultural industry," Prof Plimer said.

"And the interesting thing about ruminants, which is a main argument for climate change, is that there are more of them on earth now than there were 20 years ago, however the methane deposit is going down; so how do we explain that?

"I think the agriculture sector can suffer very badly from emissions trading and the mining and manufacturing industry will also suffer but the reality is those people living in Sydney and Melbourne are driving the political agenda. "The problem is that (people in) the bulk of the electorates live in cities, never experience drought, they always get fresh food, they don't realise that drought is part of living in Australia. Unfortunately the agricultural vote is the same vote as a drongo living in the city who is doing nothing to expand the economy.

"We are a country with first world thinking and third world infrastructure, we cannot afford to make make a mistake on this. "The science is flawed; and if the science is flawed then the whole concept of emissions trading is invalid." Prof Plimer said climates always change, always have and always will. "Climates change in cycles and will change randomly," he said.

"Where those cycles change are based on where that solar system is in the galaxy, how our orbit wobbles, how energetic the sun is, tidal effects and extraordinary events such as massive volcano eruptions." "What you don't see is any evidence in the past, and that is only 4567 million years, that carbon dioxide has driven climate change. "It is the exact inverse."

SOURCE

Scientists cast doubt on deal to tackle global warming

Two leading [British] climate scientists have broken ranks with their peers to declare that hopes of getting a meaningful deal on halting global warming this year are already lost. Professor Kevin Anderson, director of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research, and Professor Trevor Davies, one of the centre's founders, said it was time to start looking for alternatives to an international deal.

They made their comments on the eve of a three-day conference in Copenhagen this week in which thousands of climate change researchers will meet to discuss the latest discoveries in the field. The findings will be used in December when world leaders attend a UN summit, also in Copenhagen, to try to work out an international treaty on greenhouse gas emissions.

Professor Anderson and Professor Davies expect politicians at the summit merely to pay lip service to scientific evidence that greenhouse gas emissions need to be brought under control within a decade, if not sooner. They said that rather than wait for an international accord it was time now to consider what action could be taken. "We all hope that Copenhagen will succeed but I think it will fail. We won't come up with a global agreement," Professor Anderson said. "I think we will negotiate, there will be a few fudges and there will be a very weak daughter of Kyoto. I doubt it will be significantly based on the science of climate change." He is certain that negotiators will place a heavy reliance on technological solutions that have yet to be invented or proven, rather than recognise the scale and urgency of the problem.

Their comments came as Climate Change Minister Penny Wong prepared to release legislation to establish Australia's Climate Pollution Reduction Scheme tomorrow. Greens leader Bob Brown insists the Government cannot water down its commitment to emissions cuts because of the global financial crisis. "We don't accept for one moment the quisling attitude that this economic downturn means that climate change should be put on the shelf," he said "That is very dangerous and irresponsible thinking."

Professor Anderson believes that the severity of the likely impacts of climate change has been underplayed, and that to doubt that temperature rises could be limited to 2C is a political heresy. He said that scientists had been held back from voicing their doubts. "The consequences of the numbers we come up with are politically unacceptable. It's difficult for people to stand up. To rock the boat significantly is difficult for them."

Professor Davies, Pro-Vice Chancellor of the University of East Anglia (UEA), where the Tyndall Centre is based, shares this assessment and regards geoengineering schemes as a potential insurance policy. The GeoEngineering Assessment and Research initiative (Gear) has now been set up at UEA to assess the projects that have been suggested. Among the geoengineering solutions that have been proposed are putting mirrors into orbit to reflect sunlight away from Earth, and encouraging the growth of plankton by pouring nutrients into the oceans. "An increasing number of scientists are talking about Plan B now, the big, global geoengineering things," Professor Davies said. "That's one of the reasons we've set up this centre - not that we think many of the aspects are sensible but because we think it's necessary to assess them."

SOURCE

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For more postings from me, see DISSECTING LEFTISM, TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here. For readers in China or for times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site here.

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Midday open thread

Mon, 9 Mar 2009 16:00:04 EDT

My two-year-old daughter has hit the Republican phase of her life: her two favorite words are "mine" and "no!"

A Liddy Dole consultant claims his boss lost because:

We knew we had three weaknesses. A report by Congress.org had ranked Dole 93rd out of 100 senators in effectiveness. She voted with President Bush more than 90 percent of the time. And during the two-year period when she was chairman of the NRSC, she only traveled to North Carolina a handful of times.

But wait, we were told during the stimulus vote that Republicans are "back" because they were unified! Yet here's another Republican noting that unity was one of Dole's "weaknesses". Of course, as I've written several times, the GOP's blind obedience is a major factor in its demise. And not just obedience when Bush was popular, but even when he was unpopular on unpopular issues like stem cell research and SCHIP.

But let them keep thinking that "unity" is their salvation. We could use a few more Liddy Doles in 2010, including the other North Carolina Republican Senator, Richard Burr, up for reelection in 2010.

Surprising.

[D]espite growth and immigration that has added nearly 50 million adults to the U.S. population, almost all religious denominations have lost ground since the first ARIS survey in 1990.

In 1990, 86 percent of Americans self-identified as Christians. That number is now 76 percent. Mainline Protestants dropped from 17 percent of the total to 12.9 percent. USA Today has nifty flash charts to display the data by state. The least religious states?
1. Vermont
1. New Hampshire
1. Wyoming
1. Washington
1. Maine
1. Oregon
1. Nevada
1. Idaho
1. Delaware
1. Massachusetts
1. Colorado
1. Montana
1. Rhode Island
1. DC
1. California
New England and the West dominate the list. As for the most religious?
1. Mississippi
1. North Dakota
1. Louisiana
1. Arkansas
1. Tennessee
1. Georgia
1. North Carolina
1. South Carolina
1. Kansas
1. Oklahoma
1. Alabama
1. Minnesota
1. Texas
1. South Dakota
1. Kentucky
They don't call it the "Bible Belt" for nothing. And can you spot the political implications of this data? They are pretty obvious. Only three Red states in the top list, and Montana will soon be a Blue state. And only two Blue states in the bottom list, with North Carolina barely making the cut. The two Dakotas were single-digit Red states, and trended our direction, and Texas threatens to eventually become competitive, but other than those states, this is the GOP's base states. (Georgia isn't trending our way, at least not yet, even if record-breaking African American turnout made it surprisingly close.)

Speaking of religion, it's shit like this that drove me from the Catholic Church.

And Street Prophets, unsurprisingly, has lots more.

New FDL campaign: tell Congress no more dough until we know where it goes. Transparency in the use of taxpayer dollars is such an obvious concept, that it's unconscionable we have to fight the Obama Administration to get it.

Did you hear about the latest manufactured controversy? The one in which Obama is somehow stupid because he uses a teleprompter? Yeah, only idiots use teleprompters.

The Census won't count gay Americans because it's a "lifestyle" choice.

What a horrible nightmare. And what a weird conservative reaction to it.

Remember how Obama "overreached" by carrying out his campaign promises?

Conservative columnist David Brooks is not among the 16 percent of Americans who have a favorable opinion of House GOP leader John Boehner.

BROOKS: The problem with them and the problem with Limbaugh in terms of intellectual philosophy is they are stuck with Reagan. They are stuck with the idea that government is always the problem. A lot of Republicans up in Capitol Hill right now are calling for a spending freeze in a middle of a recession/depression. That is insane. But they are thinking the way they thought in 1982, if we can only think that way again, that is just insane.

...

Howard Dean Joins DC Lobbying Firm

Mon, 9 Mar 2009 15:30:04 EDT

So sez the Washington Post:

Speaking of doctors, former Democratic National Committee chairman and six-term Vermont governor Howard Dean is the latest star to join the government affairs practice of law and lobbying mega-firm McKenna Long & Aldridge. He's not only a physician but also a "thought leader" on politics and policy, a man whose "network of relationships will benefit clients who are working in states and municipalities across the U.S.," the firm announced last week. Ah, yes, we knew that 50-state strategy made sense.

Sounds as though he's going to be doing some lobbying and strategizing for those clients. During last year's presidential campaign, you may recall, Dean spoke most unkindly of lobbyists.

"John McCain -- and this has been well documented -- is talking all the time about being a reformer and a maverick, and in fact he has taken thousands of dollars from corporations, ridden on their corporate jets, and then turned around and tried to do favors for them and get projects approved," Dean told the National Journal. "He has tons of lobbyists on his staff. This is a guy who is very close to the lobbyist community, a guy who has been documented again and again by taking contributions and then doing favors for it. This is not a guy who is a reformer. This is a guy who has been in Washington for 25 years and wants to give us four more years of the same, and I don't think we need that."

Dean joins an impressive lobbying team, including fellow senior policy adviser and former Georgia governor Zell Miller, the Democrat who gave that stirring keynote speech condemning his party and endorsing the greatness of President George W. Bush at the 2004 GOP convention in New York. (And this was before Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman, the Democrat-turned-independent from Connecticut, made these speeches fashionable.)

Should make for interesting chats at the water cooler.

There were mixed reports that Dean was interested in being Surgeon General, a position which reopened last week when President Obama's original choice, Sanjay Gupta, removed himself from consideration. This move suggests that either Dean wasn't interested in the position, or that he concluded that he wouldn't get the spot.

...

Most religious groups in USA have lost ground, survey finds

dennis — Mon, 9 Mar 2009 14:56:46 EDT

This survey is making the rounds this morning.Â Lots to think about.

Most religious groups in USA have lost ground, survey finds

By Cathy Lynn Grossman, USA TODAY

When it comes to religion, the USA is now land of the freelancers.

The percentage. of people who call themselves in some way Christian has dropped more than 11% in a generation. The faithful have scattered out of their traditional bases: The Bible Belt is less Baptist. The Rust Belt is less Catholic. And everywhere, more people are exploring spiritual frontiers â€” or falling off the faith map completely.

INTERACTIVE GRAPHIC, VIDEOS: Compare states, dates, religious groups and non-religious numbers

FAITH & REASON: What's your religious 'path'?

THE 'NONES': Now 15% of the population

These dramatic shifts in just 18 years are detailed in the new American Religious Identification Survey (ARIS), to be released today. It finds that, despite growth and immigration that has added nearly 50 million adults to the U.S. population, almost all religious denominations have lost ground since the first ARIS survey in 1990.

"More than ever before, people are just making up their own stories of who they are. They say, 'I'm everything. I'm nothing. I believe in myself,' " says Barry Kosmin, survey co-author.

Among the key findings in the 2008 survey:

â€¢ So many Americans claim no religion at all (15%, up from 8% in 1990), that this category now outranks every other major U.S. religious group except Catholics and Baptists. In a nation that has long been mostly Christian, "the challenge to Christianity â€¦ does not come from other religions but from a rejection of all forms of organized religion," the report concludes.

â€¢ Catholic strongholds in New England and the Midwest have faded as immigrants, retirees and young job-seekers have moved to the Sun Belt. While bishops from the Midwest to Massachusetts close down or consolidate historic parishes, those in the South are scrambling to serve increasing numbers of worshipers.

â€¢ Baptists, 15.8% of those surveyed, are down from 19.3% in 1990. Mainline Protestant denominations, once socially dominant, have seen sharp declines: The percentage of Methodists, for example, dropped from 8% to 5%.

â€¢ The percentage of those who choose a generic label, calling themselves simply Christian, Protestant, non-denominational, evangelical or "born again," was 14.2%, about the same as in 1990.

â€¢ Jewish numbers showed a steady decline, from 1.8% in 1990 to 1.2% today. The percentage of Muslims, while still slim, has doubled, from 0.3% to 0.6%. Analysts within both groups suggest those numbers understate the groups' populations.

Ihsan Bagby, associate professor of Islamic studies at the University of Kentucky-Lexington, says that most national telephone surveys such as ARIS undercount Muslims, and that he is conducting a study of mosques' membership sponsored by the Hartford (Conn.) Institute for Religious Research.

Meanwhile, some Jewish surveys that report larger numbers of Jews also include "cultural" Jews â€” those who connect to Judiasm through its traditions, but not necessarily through actively practicing the religion.

Meanwhile, nearly 2.8 million people now identify with dozens of new religious movements, calling themselves Wiccan, pagan or "Spiritualist," which the survey does not define.

Wicca, a contemporary form of paganism that includes goddess worship and reverence for nature, has even made its way to Arlington National Cemetery, where the Pentagon now allows Wiccans' five-pointed-star symbol to be used on veterans' gravestones.

Religion as a hobby

Since the first ARIS study was released, other major national surveys have offered snapshots of the USA's faith.

The Baylor University Religion Surveys in 2006 and 2008, each based on 35,000 interviews, were distinguished by a look at how people described and understood God. The Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life released its Religious Landscape Survey last year, also based on 35,000 interviews, mapping Americans' beliefs state by state. It found that 41% of people had switched their religion at some point in life.

BAYLOR: How far is heaven? At least half will make it, Americans say

PEW: How people from different faiths answered questions on Hollywood, homosexuality, politics and prayer

The initial ARIS report in 1990 set the table for those surveys.

It was based on 113,000 interviews, updated with 50,000 more in 2001 and now 54,000 in 2008. Because the U.S. Census does not ask about religion, the ARIS survey was the first comprehensive study of how people identify their spiritual expression.

Kosmin concluded from the 1990 data that many saw God as a "personal hobby," and that the USA is "a greenhouse for spiritual sprouts."

Today, he says, "religion has become more like a fashion statement, not a deep personal commitment for many."

Kosmin is now director of the Institute for the Study of Secularism in Society and Culture at Trinity College in Hartford, Conn.; ARIS co-researcher Ariela Keysar is associate director.

The ARIS research also led in quantifying and planting a label on the "Nones" â€” people who said "None" when asked the survey's basic question: "What is your religious identity?"

The survey itself may have contributed to a higher rate of reporting as sociologists began analyzing the newly identified Nones. "The Nones may have felt more free to step forward, less looked upon as outcasts" after the ARIS results were published, Keysar says.

Oregon once led the nation in Nones (18% in 1990), but in 2008 the leader, with 34%, was Vermont, where Nones significantly outnumber every other group.

Meabh Fitzpatrick, 49, of Rutland, Vt., says she is upfront about becoming an atheist 10 years ago because "it's important for us to be counted. I'm a taxpayer and a law-abiding citizen and an ethical person, and I don't think people assume this about atheists."

Not all Nones have made such a philosophical choice; most just unhook from religious ties.

Diane Mueller, 43, of Austin, who grew up Methodist, says she's simply "totally disengaged from the church and the Bible, too." Sunday mornings for her family mean playing in a park, not praying in a pew.

Ex-Catholic Dylan Rossi, 21, a philosophy student in Boston and a Massachusetts native, is part of the sharp fall in the state's percentage of Catholics â€” from 54% to 39% in his lifetime.

Rossi says he's typical among his friends: "If religion comes up, everyone at the table will start mocking it. I don't know anyone religious and hardly anyone 'spiritual.' "

Social mobility a factor

Anger and dismay over the clergy sexual abuse scandal, which erupted in Boston in 2002, may be reflected in declining rates of Catholics across New England. But the total percentage of Catholics in the USA declined only slightly from 1990 to 2008, from 26.2% to 25.1%. Analysts say immigration and other demographic shifts account for most of the changes.

"It's not that everyone in New England lost their Catholic faith since 1990. It's not the same people in New England," says sociologist Mary Gautier, senior researcher at the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate, the research arm of the Catholic Church in America.

Membership in New England's Catholic churches is shrinking as older Catholics have died or moved to sunnier climates. Young adults are choosing non-Catholic partners, having civil weddings and skipping baptism for their babies. And those moving in to areas served by the churches are young adults who often find their communities of work and friendship online, not in parish halls.

"I sometimes wish I had a sky hook to take people from dying parishes up North and plunk them down in the parishes around Austin or Atlanta â€” and bring their beautiful buildings with them," Gautier says.

Bishop Gregory Aymond would be happy to have those resources in Austin. He's spiritually delighted and financially challenged as his Texas diocese has doubled in numbers with retirees, Mexican immigrants, students at five major universities and Californians moving in for high-tech jobs.

"And demographers expect it to double again in the next 10 to 12 years," he says.

In Mount Pleasant, S.C., a suburb of Charleston, "everyone from Ohio is here," says Msgr. James Carter, pastor of Christ Our King Catholic Church. The church has grown so big so fast that it has spun off another parish and a mission church, and it plans outdoor split-shift services for Easter to accommodate about 2,500 families.

South Carolina also exemplifies the Protestant faiths' shrinking share of the national religion "pie." The state has more Catholics (10%, up from 6% in 1990) and the percentage of Nones has more than tripled, from 3% to 10%. The share of Protestants is 73%, down from 88% in 1990.

Like Gautier, the Rev. Kendall Harmon, theologian for the Episcopal Diocese of South Carolina, blames social mobility.

"Mobility means your ideas are more challenged and your family and childhood traditions have less influence, particularly if you are not strongly rooted in them. I see kids today who have no vocabulary of faith, and neither do many of their parents."

Harmon recalls, "A couple came into my office once with a yellow pad of their teenage son's questions. One of them was: 'What is that guy doing hanging up there on the plus sign?' "

Kosmin and Keysar also found a "piety gap" in how Americans understand God: While 69% say they believe in a personal God, the Judeo-Christian understanding of the Almighty, an additional 30% made no such connection.

The piety gap defines the primary sides in the culture wars, Kosmin says.

"It's about gay marriage and abortion and stem cells and the family. If a personal God says, 'Thou shalt not' or 'Thou shalt' see these a certain way, you'd take it very seriously. Meanwhile, three in 10 people aren't listening to that God," he says.

"There's more clarity at the two extremes and the mishmash is in the middle," Keysar adds.

Mark Silk, director of the Greenberg Center for the Study of Religion in Public Life at Trinity College, sees in the numbers "an emergence of a soft evangelicalism â€” E-lite â€” that owes a lot to evangelical styles of worship and basic approach to church.

"But E-lite is more a matter of aesthetic and style and a considerable softening of the edges in doctrine, politics and social values," Silk says.

Additional narrowly focused surveys, with closer looks at Catholics, evangelicals, mainline Protestants, and African-American Christians, will be released later this year by Trinity's Program on Public Values, which sponsored ARIS, Silk says.

Some believers might be alarmed by the ARIS findings, but Tom Haynes isn't. Haynes, 46, a Houston entrepreneur, is the brother of Diane Mueller, the Austin mom who claims no religion. Same Methodist upbringing. Totally different spiritual choices.

Haynes, like 69% of Americans, said in the ARIS survey that he believes there is "definitely a personal God." He calls himself a deeply committed "follower of Christ," rather than aligning with a specific denomination. He attends a non-denominational community church where he likes the rock music, but Bible study is the focus of his faith.

"We just look to Jesus," he says. "That's why I don't pay attention to surveys. Christianity is moving totally under the radar. It's the work of God. It can't be measured. It happens inside of people's souls."

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High Court Limits Voting Rights Act; Dismisses Cases Over Gun Makers' Liability

blog@acslaw.org (News) — Mon, 9 Mar 2009 14:03:20 EDT

The U.S. Supreme Court today limited the reach of the Voting Rights Act. In a 5-4 ruling, the high court said the voting rights law does not require lawmakers to fashion new voting districts where the minority population is less than 50 percent of the total population. The Associated Press reported that the decision in Bartlett v. Strickland “could make it harder for southern Democrats to draw friendly boundaries after the 2010 Census.” SCOTUSblog’s Lyle Denniston noted that Kennedy’s “plurality opinion did say that, if state legislatures wished to create a district when a minority group would have less than 50 percent majority, federal law does not forbid that. Still Kennedy went on, the Court was not saying that legislatures could pass a law that would ‘entrench’ a majority district in which minorities dominate; that would raise constitutional problems, the opinion said.”

The majority opinion upheld a 2007 North Carolina Supreme Court decision that invalidated a district created by the legislature in which blacks made up only about 39 percent of voters. Writing for the majority, Justice Anthony Kennedy said the justices would avoid “serious constitutional concerns under the Equal Protection Clause” in the face of any doubt that might exist over the federal voting rights law’s majority-minority rule upheld by the majority. Citing a 1989 high court case, Richmond v. J.A. Croson, Kennedy noted that, “Of course, the ‘moral imperative of racial neutrality is the driving force of the Equal Protection Clause,’ and racial classifications are permitted only ‘as a last resort. Racial classifications with respect to voting carry particular dangers. Racial gerrymandering, even for remedial purposes, may balkanize us into competing racial factions; it threatens to carry us further from the goal of a political system in which race no longer matters – a goal that the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments embody, and to which the Nation continues to aspire.’”

Kennedy, citing precedent, continued that if the court were to interpret the voting rights law “to require crossover districts throughout the Nation, ‘it would unnecessarily infuse race into virtually every redistricting, raising serious constitutional questions.’”

Writing in dissent, Justice David Souter, said, “In the plurality’s view, only a district with a minority population making up 50% or more of the citizen voting age population (CVAP) can provide a remedy to minority voters lacking an opportunity to ‘elect representatives of their choice.’ This is incorrect as a factual matter if the statutory phrase is given its natural meaning; minority voters in districts with minority populations under 50% routinely ‘elect representatives of their choice.’ The effects of the plurality’s unwillingness to face this fact are disturbing by any measure and flatly at odds with the obvious purpose of the Act. If districts with minority populations under 50% can never count as minority-opportunity districts to remedy a violation of the States’ obligation to provide equal protection opportunity [under the act], States will be required under the plurality’s rule to pack black voters into additional majority-minority districts, contracting the number of districts where racial minorities are having success in transcending racial divisions in securing their preferred representation.”

The Supreme Court also issued the following decisions:

In Vaden v. Discover Bank, the justices ruled on the Federal Arbitration ACT (FAA), saying that an entity seeking arbitration can ask a federal court to take the case only if it involves a controversy under federal law. Writing for the majority, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said that a federal court does not have jurisdiction to compel arbitration over a portion of a complaint whose overriding controversy is not within the court’s purview. SCOTUSblog noted that the decision came in a “dispute over a claimed failure of a consumer to pay a credit card balance.” The court’s decision is available here.
The Court by a 7-2 vote overturned a Vermont Supreme Court’s decision vacating a criminal conviction on the grounds that the convict had been denied his right to a speedy trial. Writing for the majority in Vermont v. Brillon, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said, “The Vermont Supreme Court erred in attributing to the State delays caused by ‘the failure of several assigned counsel … to move his case forward.” Ginsburg continued, “An assigned counsel’s failure ‘to move the case forward’ does not warrant attribution of delay to the State. Contrary to the Vermont Supreme Court’s analysis, assigned counsel generally are not state actors for purposes of a speedy-trial claim.” The Court’s opinion is available here.
In a unanimous opinion, the high court invalidated a federal Special Master’s Report on what to a pay expert witness in a federal court proceeding. Justice Samuel Alito, writing for the Court in Kansas v. Colorado, concluded that a $40 per day fee for witness in regular court proceedings also applies in cases “brought under our original jurisdiction ….” The decision is available here.

The Supreme Court today also rejected lawsuits seeking to hold gun makers responsible for firearms that end up in illegal markets. Without comment, the justices rejected New York v. Beretta and Lawson v. Beretta, where New York City had sought a court order forcing gun makers to more closely monitor dealers who sell guns later used to commit crimes, The Associated Press reported. The Court’s action allows to stand a 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals decision that federal law shields gun manufacturers from such lawsuits.

The justices granted certiorari in Jones v. Harris Associates, involving a 7th U.S. Circuit Court decision on an Investment Company Act’s decision regarding fees in an investment adviser dispute. See SCOTUSblog for more information about the case here.

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