More on the Scientific Method...

Here's an excellent essay by a MIT professor on ways to improve federally funded scientific studies.

"Secrecy in Science is a Corrosive Force."

To clarify my position...

In light of my previous posts about the CRU and global warming, I should note that I'm not implying that I believe that the scandal is dispositive one way or the other about the existence of global warming. It isn't.

I aim to suggest instead that the state of science surrounding the issue has serious issues stemming in part from its intersection with politics and ideology, as well as individual failings of scientists who should have been upholding an objective scientific method but weren't for various reasons (be it desire for funding, acceptance, a narrative, whathaveyou).

I find much to agree with in mathematician John Derbyshire's column today about science.

(You may remember Derbyshire from his writing both at National Review and The Secular Right blog).

More from the hacked CRU emails...

This is pretty incredible. (For greater detail, I strongly recommend going here.)

Perhaps related, and equally ridiculous, is that the CRU apparently no longer even has their original raw data for independent experts to check. They threw it all out when they moved buildings in the 1980s and only kept their edited/modified data...Which if the above is an indication of how they work, isn't really surprising.

But it's ok. Because we're all set to impose trillions of dollars worth of damage to the global economies to fix a problem whose existence is based to a non-insignificant degree on the "scientific" work of people at the CRU that disproportionately shaped IPCC reports used by government and issue activists to convince the world of the problem...

So why would we need anything other than their word that their conclusions are based on actual...you know...science.

Obama once again shows his weakness...

I saw on the news that President Obama pardoned two turkeys today as part of a Presidential Thanksgiving tradition.

It seems to me that this once again illustrates the unavoidable weakness and fear of strength that has burrowed to the heart of his squishy liberal soul and will doom America to third-world status in no time.

The pardon ceremony today was a missed opportunity in which a true leader would have summarily executed the birds, thus sending a strong message to the rest of Turkey-dom who wish ill of our great and honorable country.


(If there was a font for facetiousness, it would be on display here. :))

HAPPY THANKSGIVING to each of you. May it be a day of relaxation and contentedness with loved ones. And full of sweet, sweet turkey.

The Death of Intellectual Protestantism...[edited]

In playing catch-up on my reading, I came across this John Derbyshire piece over at The Secular Right that outlines what he views as the death of intellectual conservatism Protestantism in the last century. [Whoops! That must have been a Freudian slip! -e] It had never occurred to me to even think about, but after reading it I find his case to be pretty persuasive.

(As an added bonus, he links to the wiki-page of a fascinating modern catholic intellectual with whom I was not familiar but am now glad to be.)

[edited for accidental word substitution 10:21PSD]

Americans and foreign language...

Apropos of nothing, I came across this old Jay Nordlinger column about Americans and language and wanted to pass it along. I thought it was well done. (Nordlinger, the culture and music guru at National Review, is an extremely erudite fellow, yet I've always admired how he keeps his roots to an "everyman" wordview. I've even had the chance to exchange emails with him a couple of times. Very nice guy.

But without further ado....here's the column.

A Global Warming Scandal?

You no doubt have heard the news about someone hacking into the University of East Anglia's Climate Research Unit (CRU) network and downloading thousands of emails and documents (some 157mb worth of data, which is a lot of emails) from some of the leading Global Warming-theory scientists from around the world.

Despite some protestations that the emails are being taken out of context (one can read the emails here and make up their own mind), the emails seem to suggest concerted efforts by some leading GW scientists from around the world to collude and knowingly manipulate their data to hide contrary evidence to the GW theory (including to manipulate distinct and contrary reports so that they appear to offer agreeing conclusion), collusion to destroy evidence, collusion to silence voices that disagree with their theories by coordinating the blackballing of scientific journals and altering peer-review processes to prevent dissenting voices from being heard, and more (In addition to comments about the death of a critic being a positive thing and statements of desire to do violence against another critic).

Below are some helpful primers and descriptions on the whole affair (the WSJ had a nice central location for everything, hence my multiple links to it). Particularly given the technical nature of some of the email discussions, the primers are helpful in explaining just why their apparent activity was so outrageous:

• "Global Warming With the Lid Off" in the WSJ
• James Taranto on the affair (printed in the WSJ)
• British Critic James Delingpole makes a more vociferous attack in the Daily Telegraph
• And Delingpole offers here a more straightforward argument for "Why it matters."
• A selection of the some of the emails in the WSJ

It'll be interesting to see if this makes any headway in the media. Some reports have appeared in the mainstream media, though somewhat couched it seemed to me, to minimize the significance (Here is mostly straightforward NYTimes article, and a minimizing Washington Post article). While I'd like to sound open-minded and say that it probably just sounds bad but really isn't, in reading some of the emails and commentary from knowledgable scientists about what exactly these scientists were doing, I don't think there's anyway to justify this sort of willful manipulation of data. It's pretty damning.

As I find more commentaries on the scandal, I'll post them.

The Spectator on US-British relations...

Thought this was an interesting article from across the pond on a perceived withering of the "special relationship" between the US and Britain.

More importantly...

I give you the best television shows of the 2000s.

From what I know, it does a pretty good job, though I haven't seen a number of them.

On the decision to bring KSM and Co. to trial in civilian courts...

What are everyone's thoughts?

While I'm not surprised that the Obama administration would think it's a good idea (they've been promising to do it since the election), I'm pretty disgusted with it. (That they decided to do the typical Friday announcement thing to bury the story is particularly galling, given how significant the issue is however one feels about it).

Because I know you wished to see it, here's NRO's take.

The First Pacific President...

Apropos of nothing, but I thought this was amusing. If only from an factual accuracy of presidential rhetoric:

Via The Corner:

"America's first Pacific president" [John J. Pitney Jr.]


“As America's first Pacific president,” said President Obama in Tokyo, “I promise you that this Pacific nation will strengthen and sustain our leadership in this vitally important part of the world.”

It is true that the president was born in Hawaii (sorry, birthers), lived from ages six to ten in Indonesia, and attended a Honolulu prep school. But he is not our first Pacific president. Richard Nixon was born in California in 1913, and spent much more of his life in the Pacific region than the current president has. Moreover, while Barack Obama made his career in Chicago and Springfield, Ronald Reagan made his in Los Angeles and Sacramento.

And the incumbent is hardly the first chief executive to have lived in another Pacific Rim country. William Howard Taft was governor-general of the Philippines. Dwight Eisenhower had military postings in the Philippines and the Panama Canal Zone. Herbert Hoover worked as a mining engineer in Australia and China; he even learned to speak Mandarin. Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, and Bush 41 all served in the Pacific during the Second World War. What they did as adults was perhaps more consequential than what Obama did as a child.

— John J. Pitney Jr. is the Roy P. Crocker Professor of American Politics at Claremont McKenna College.

The Fiscal Hawk Argument

I'm very sympathetic to those who think the federal budget deficit has gotten out of hand, and that serious steps need to be taken to address it lest all civilization falls apart and our children (think of the children!) turn into vicious mongrels.

But I'm also very suspicious of those who oppose certain policies -- say, the current House health care reform bill -- citing the deficit, only to turn around and vote for other costly programs (like, say, military interventions in other countries). Sen. Max Baucus danced this little pirouette earlier in the year, when he voiced concerns about the cost of health care reform, but then later blackballed any effort that would reduce federal farm subsidies, a truly absurd entitlement program crying for adjustment. If the deficit were the overriding concern, then those awful subsidies should have fallen by the wayside alongside Medicaid expansions and what not.

In an earlier discussion, we talked about the meaning of "begging the question," which doesn't mean "to raise a question," but to badly answer one (e.g.: "Why is this thing beautiful?" Answer: "Because it is pretty.").

There's something to that in the fiscal-deficit-argument. Instead of addressing specific political concerns with expenditures or programs, they simply answer that the containing the deficit matters more. At the same time, they don't say what they would cut to bring things in order (because that would actually force them to make choices).

Now, there are some who truly think the deficit matters more than anything else, but none of them lives in Washington, D.C. On the Republican side, supporting tax cuts outweighed any deficit qualms; on the Democratic side, stimulus and government programs count for more than silly issues with a long-term rise in interest rates.

You'd think they keep the deficits going if only because they provide a valuable political excuse to squirm their way out of standing for something.

Climate Change Scientist

I thought this New Republic interview with climate expert Stephen Schneider should be read by denier and skeptic alike. It's a great discussion about the scientific method, the definition of risk (probability times consequence) and how we come to know what we know. Excerpts below:

For example, we don't understand to this day why smoking causes cancer, so we still retain an element of skepticism. But the data associating smokers with cancer is so statistically overwhelming that you would have to be a fool or a liar to deny it. It’s exactly the same in climate science. There’s an overwhelming preponderance of evidence that it’s warming, that the last thirty to forty years have been mostly due to human activities, that it’s raining more in higher latitudes, that there are more droughts and flooding, that ice is melting rapidly.

Then there is what’s going to happen to precipitation in Kansas. We don’t know. So the deniers come along and say, "We don’t know the precipitation in Kansas. These models are no damn good. It isn’t proved." That’s like saying "There are thirty-five tobacco studies; thirty-three of them show a dramatic statistical significance between smoking and cancer; two of them are equivocal. But until those two are resolved, it isn’t proved. Let’s not regulate cigarettes."

[...]

When I’m asked, "What is the probability that the Greenland ice sheet will melt if temperatures rise X degrees?," I speak in percentages. My very good friend and colleague Jim Hansen says, "One degree." I don’t think Jim knows that. I don’t think I know that. The problem is too complicated for us to know that, so I frame it as a risk management problem: One degree? 25 percent chance. Two degrees? 60 percent chance. Three degrees? 90 percent chance. Is that the truth? Of course not. That’s as honest as I can be based on my subjective reading of the evidence. However, just so you don’t think I’m an optimist relative to Jim, I also think there’s a 5 percent chance that it’s already too late.

What To Make Of Joe Lieberman?

We should probably start talking more about health care, seeing as how a bill may or may not pass in time to land under our Christmas trees this year. For the record, there's much I like in the House bill -- especially allowing people to be covered under their parents' plan until they're 26! -- but I was always most enamored with Sen. Ron Wyden's plan. (David Leonhardt made the best pitch for that reform, pronounced dead on arrival in Congress, here.) I'm not entirely convinced the House bill will reduce premiums and where it offers some financial assistance, it does so only by appropriating private costs with federal subsidies. Not very promising.

And, of course, I'm disappointed with the abortion compromise. I'm mature enough to admit, however, that the amendment more or less confirmed the conservative critique that allowing for more government regulation could also lead to less consumer choice. Here's a fine example: the government says private insurers who receive any federal subsidies cannot cover abortions, even for women who would not rely on those subsidies to pay their premiums. Sigh.

Then again, is it entirely hypocritical to argue, on the one hand, that certain government interventions can help, while others may not? Unlike conservatives, who have a certain core of first principles to follow, liberals are allowed at least some pragmatic wiggle room. (Look at me rationalize!)

But I wanted to end this post with some thoughts on Joe Lieberman, and his latest antics about the public option. I don't begrudge the man for saying what he believes or even his position (I'm no big fan of that plank of reform, even if I think Republicans have overstated its potential power). No, I'm mad because Lieberman always wants to appear as if he's taking independent, courageous stances, when, in fact, he's just as sniveling a politician as the rest of them. One minute, he comes off away from the Democrats; the next, he chums up to them so he can keep whatever precious committee leadership positions he has.

The harsh truth is that Lieberman is, more or less, a conservative. He may not always have been, but in the last few years, he's switched sides ideologically. He should drop this "above it all" holier-than-thou aura and change his party registration.