Health Care Reform Passes House! World Doesn't End!

The problem with predicting the apocalypse should your political opponents pass a bill you don't like is that if they pass it, and if the world doesn't end, you look rather foolish.

The health care reform bill is a centrist measure which concedes almost nothing to progressives. Yet Republicans bet the farm on painting it a radical socialist attack on "The best health care system in the world", a high-risk gamble they now appear all but certain to lose. November is suddenly looking a better for Democrats.

Climate Change - Is Wisconsin Warming?

Is it getting warmer in Wisconsin? Given all the recent controversy over climate change, I thought it would be interesting to look at historical Wisconsin temperature data to see if there are any discernible trends. Although the continental US is warming significantly slower than most other temperate regions, we have good temperature records going back more than a hundred years, so if it is getting warmer in Wisconsin we should be able to see it.

And we can. The chart below shows the statewide average annual temperature since 1895, overlaid with a linear trend line. The increase is only about a degree, but it's quite clear.

(Click for larger chart)

Now, folks who don't believe in global warming will probably look at the chart above and say it doesn't prove anything. That the relatively small increase it shows could be due to the "heat island" effect, bad temperature stations, the sun, or perhaps even astrology, as the rather conservative South Dakota legislature seems to believe. But, with the exception of astrology, we have enough data to examine those possibilities. Climate models predict that human-caused temperature increases in Wisconsin should be seen mostly in the winter, but biased temperature measurements or changes in solar output should affect all four seasons more or less equally. As you can see from the next chart, almost all the warming in Wisconsin has indeed occurred during the winter, exactly as one would expect from anthropomorphic global warming.

(Click for larger chart)

While a one-degree increase in average yearly Wisconsin temperature over a hundred years isn't much, the three-degree winter increase, which has occurred mostly in the past thirty years, is a significant and noticeable change!

So, is this the final nail in the coffin of Wisconsin global warming deniers? Unfortunately, no. Their beliefs are based on ideology, not science or data. No amount of evidence will change their minds because they simply ignore or distort anything that doesn't fit their preconceived notions.

The data I used in the charts came from the Wisconsin State Climatology Office. It's a great resource for looking at local climate issues and concerns.

Conservative Economics Coming Home to Roost

The American dream is dying. Every year we have to work longer and harder for less and less. Except, of course, for the very wealthy. If you're one of the fortunate few at the peak of our socio-economic system, not only has your income increased significantly in recent years, but your federal tax rate has dropped almost in half. The charts below say it all:




This might be defensible if our economy was doing well, or, to use a Republican analogy, if a rising tide was indeed lifting all boats. Unfortunately, as the rich have become ever richer, the rest of us have not. Average income has been stagnant, despite significant increases in worker productivity.

These trends are the inevitable result of conservative policies designed to benefit business and the wealthy, and to weaken organized labor. Policies that began during the Reagan administration and reached fruition under George W. Bush. Policies that, unfortunately, have been aided and abetted by far too many "moderate" Democrats.

Bankers Love Them Some Teabaggers!

Teabaggers may not like bankers, but bankers sure do love teabaggers. Just look at the donations that poured in at the last minute to Scott Brown's campaign for US Senate in Massachusetts. Almost half a million bucks from the financial industry in less than a week! The big money folks think they can let the teabaggers do all the work, and then just buy out their candidates if it looks like they're going to win. Unfortunately, teabaggers, at least judging by the ones I've talked to, aren't smart enough to figure out that they're being taken advantage of.

While it'll be kind of fun watching teabaggers getting used and abused, the resulting damage will be considerable. The left and the populist right share a common concern about the abuse of corporate power, even if we prefer somewhat different solutions. Unfortunately, teabaggers are uniquely vulnerable to corporate manipulation, both because of their anti-intellectualism and because of their conservative/libertarian ideology. We've already seen several cases of the Republican establishment running roughshod over various teabag groups, with varying degrees of success, but the corporate boys are a hell of a lot better at this game than party operatives. The teabaggers aren't even going to know what hit them.

A New Approach for Democrats

Great humor from Liam Sullivan.



And the best comment from YouTube:

Democrats with Balls?  You're kidding right?

Supreme Court Opens Door to Foreign Influence in US Elections

In today's 5-4 Supreme Court decision on corporate election spending, conservatives once again showed that they're willing to sacrifice American sovereignty at the alter of corporate profits.

This risk is clearly noted in Justice Stevens' dissenting opinion:

"In the context of election to public office, the distinction between corporate and human speakers is significant. Although they make enormous contributions to our society, corporations are not actually members of it. They cannot vote or run for office. Because they may be managed and controlled by nonresidents, their interests may conflict in fundamental respects with the interests of eligible voters."

Nonresidents are quite properly forbidden from spending money to influence US elections, but this decision opens the door to unlimited spending by foreign individuals, groups, and even governments. All they have to do is set up an American corporation or nonprofit, and use it to funnel as much money as they want into "independent expenditures". Perfectly legal. China doesn't have to bother with diplomacy anymore, now it can get what it wants by simply buying our elections.

It's the American way.

Pity the Poor Widdle Teabaggers...

Seems a few teabaggers are all bent out of shape because some cartoonist made fun of them. Mark Fiore does Flash-based animated cartoons from a liberal perspective, and last November he published the cartoon below, poking fun at teabaggers as dummies who are unwilling, or unable, to deal with complex policy debates.



Not exactly subtle, but it's clever and contains more than a grain of truth. Classic Fiore.

All was well until Bill O'Reilly noticed Fiore's cartoon. Then the wailing began. The left is trying to "...marginaliz[e] opposing views by any means necessary." Tea party members actually want polite and intelligent policy discussions, but those big bad leftist bullies, knowing they can't win a rational debate, actually sink to the level of ...political humor!

It might be easier to take the complaints from teabaggers seriously if O'Reilly's minions of hate weren't flooding Fiore with death threats, and if there weren't quite so many signs containing words like nazi, communist, socialist, and anti-Christ, at tea party events. It is rather difficult to contemplate having a thoughtful policy discussion with the guy in the picture below, who I met at the Madison tea party this past spring. Teabaggers may not like the scorn Fiore has heaped on them, but they've certainly worked extremely hard to earn it.


Don't want to be treated like an idiot? Try not acting like one.

See more pictures of considerate well-informed teabaggers at my post on the '09 Madison, Wisconsin tax-day tea party.

Letter to a Denier

I moderate a progressive email group, and recently a global warming skeptic joined in. We've had several private email exchanges regarding his posts. This is the most recent message I sent him:

Hi V-,

I'm not going to put your latest post, "Nature will decide Earth's future", on the group. It's not science in any real sense of the word, and posting he said/she said articles from the popular media doesn't advance the debate. It would be better if you were to write a post explaining why we should believe that article, although you'd get shredded by others making the same point that I just made: It's not science.

Last night I was thinking about our email exchange regarding lunar warming, and it occurred to me that you're missing the big point. Debating lunar warming is pointless unless you can tie it to the Earth's climate. The denialist argument that warming on other solar system bodies explains warming on Earth has pretty much fallen by the wayside as the quality of solar monitoring has improved. Given the current state of the science it's not really a viable argument anymore. Pretty much never was, for that matter. There was no real science behind it, just speculation by people disinclined to believe in AGW.

I'm somewhat unusual, V-, in that I straddle the technical and political worlds. I know enough about the politics, the science, and about both politicians and scientists, to understand who the players are and how the game is played. The stakes may be larger this time around, but the pattern is the same every time science collides with politically powerful vested interests. I watched it play out over the smoking-cancer link, CFC's and the ozone layer, and SO2 and acid rain. I see it now in the approval and regulation of medicines, where I just happen to have a bit of an inside seat. If your goal is to maintain the status quo as long as possible, despite the science, the most effective way to do so is to make sure that the debate isn't about the real science. And there's a well developed and profitable industry to do exactly that.

If you don't believe me try doing a little research about the Heartland Institute's role in the smoking debate. Do you really think it's a coincidence that they're also at the center of global warming denailism?

The techniques to to obscure and denigrate science were first developed by the tobacco companies decades ago. They include things like paying scientists to take positions against the scientific mainstream, creating "independent" scientific organizations and think tanks that support the industry's view, cherry-picking the science to create seemingly plausable alternatives, finding flaws in research, no matter how minor, and using them to discredit the entire body of knowledge, planting psuedo-science to blur the real science, particularly in the minds of the public, and attacking individual scientists to turn the debate to their motives and personal fallibilities.

You're being used, V-, by a bunch of very smart people who earn their living by manipulating the public. I know, because I play that game too, although on a much smaller scale. The difference is that I believe right and wrong should be based on the common good, not profit. And I think you feel the same. That's why it bothers me so much to see how you, and so many other good people, have become pawns of powerful forces that don't give a damn about our individual welfare.

Those prospering under the status quo will always seek to preserve it. That's human nature. But in an era of multinational corporations that rival governments in terms of power and influence, the risks of putting profits ahead of science are far greater. In the end, of course, science always wins, as it did in each of the controversies I mentioned earlier. You can only spit in the face of reality for so long. The only question is what price we will pay for ignoring the lessons of the past.

Russell

Extraordinary Atmospheric Phenomena

Given the weather tonight this seems appropriate. Here are a couple of beautiful pictures that caught my fancy. The first, by NYT photographer Ragnar Axelsson, shows the northern lights over a house in the tiny Inuit village of Tinnittaqilaq in Greenland. Many more great pictures at the link.


The second shows a phenomena few people have witnessed. Can you guess what it is? I'll give you a hint: If you do see something like this it'll probably be about the last thing you'll ever see. Click on it for a bigger version.


Those beautiful white trails in the sky are eight nuclear warheads falling towards their targets during the test of a Peacekeeper missile. Dummy warheads in this case, but if real each would be twenty times more powerful than the bombs we dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

WMC Opposition to Global Warming Regulations Based on Bogus Model

If you've been following "climategate", you know that one of the denialists' main lines of attack is that the stolen CRU emails "prove" that current mainstream climate science can't be trusted because climate scientists are hiding their models and data.^* Given that, you might believe that the folks who oppose global warming regulations, like Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce and the Wisconsin Policy Research Institute, would base their opposition on actual verifiable facts and research.

Not so much. A couple of weeks ago WPRI released "The Economics of Climate Change Proposals in Wisconsin" a study they commissioned from the Beacon Hill Institute, which uses an economic model called STAMP. A proprietary economic model. As in top-secret. Beacon Hill won't release their computer code, the model's coefficients, or their input data, so none of it can be independently verified by real economists. Sounds kind of fishy, doesn't it? Now, why would Beacon Hill be so reticent about sharing the fruits of their research? Perhaps there's a hint in their mission statement, which says, in part, "Grounded in the principles of limited government, fiscal responsibility and free markets...".

It's fairly simple to rig a complicated economic model to get answers that support your ideological preconceptions. Just looking at the limited info on STAMP that's publicly available I can see some pretty obvious biases. Without open and independent verification WPRI's study is completely worthless. They might as well have pulled the numbers out of a hat. Beacon Hill lets groups like WPRI and WMC slap a pseudo-academic veneer of respectability on their policy positions, but it's all just smoke and mirrors designed to take advantage of the public's, and the press', gullibility.

Paul Soglin has a nice post on this issue, and he beat me to the punch by a couple of weeks!

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^*The denialists' claim that climate models and data aren't available is simply a lie. All the significant climate models and almost all of the data (with the exception of data that was purchased from vendors with non-disclosure agreements) is easily available, most of it online.

Killer Koi

I keep koi; the picture above is a few of my fish. Koi are a domesticated version of the common carp, Cyprinus carpio, which is a widespread invasive species. There are common carp in almost every lake and river in Wisconsin, and they cause significant problems in some areas due to their habit of stirring up the mud to look for food. Common carp are actually pretty good eating, although most people in the US consider them trash fish.

But there's a far more evil side to carp. They can be killers. A species called the silver carp has the bad habit of leaping out of the water when boats scare them. For most types of fish that wouldn't be a problem, but silver carp can grow to over forty pounds and jump ten feet high! Getting slammed by one when you're cruising at speed can be lethal. I don't know much about the first picture below, but the women in the second picture ended up with a broken jaw.

(Picture source)

(Picture from Troutunderground.com)

Silver carp are one of several large introduced species collectively referred to as Asian carp. Far more important than their attempts to assassinate fisherman is the damage they can do to our native aquatic ecosystems. Asian carp have spread throughout the Mississippi River basin and are now on the verge of getting onto the Great Lakes. The only thing keeping them out is an electric barrier on the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal. If that barrier fails, and it inevitably will, Asian carp will get into almost every major lake and river in the Eastern US.

Map - 2008 Hate Crime Rate by State

The map below shows the reported number of hate crimes per million residents in 2008, color-coded by state. The data is from the FBI's latest hate-crime report, which came out earlier today. Wisconsin, with a rate of 16.3, is in the low-middle of the range, but comparable with neighboring states. This is a significant change from a few years ago when Wisconsin had a extremely low hate crime rate, although that was probably due to under-reporting. Click on the map for a larger version.



To be included as a hate crime in the FBI statistics, a crime must first be reported to a local law-enforcement agency, which then makes a determination if it is a hate crime. That agency must then report it to the FBI, either directly or through the state's Attorney General or Department of Justice. Not all law-enforcement agencies report data to the FBI, and many that do probably do not accurately characterize hate crimes. Hate crimes also tend not to be reported or investigated in jurisdictions that that are hostile to the victimized minority.

There are obvious discrepancies in the map. Pennsylvania, Mississippi, Alabama, and Georgia appear to vastly under-report hate crimes. There are a number of possible explanations, but given the clear state-by-state differences, the most likely is that hate-crime investigation and reporting by local law-enforcement agencies is not supported, or perhaps even discouraged, by the Attorney General and/or the Department of Justice in those states. Other states, Delaware for example, appear to have anomalously high hate-crime rates. This could be real, but it could also be the result of particularly intensive hate crime reporting and investigation efforts.

UPDATE: Some links and additional info:

FBI 2008 hate crime statistics: http://www.fbi.gov/ucr/hc2008/index.html
Caution on conclusions: http://www.fbi.gov/ucr/hc2008/variables.html

Some of the reporting on the new hate crime statistics, like this story from Fox, have been somewhat irresponsible. Fox's headline is "Reported Hate Crimes Surge in 2008". Reported hate crime did rise by 11%, but as Fox actually points out in the story, this could be due simply to improved reporting, not an actual increase in crime. The discrepancies in the my map clearly show that hate crime reporting is, at best, extremely uneven across the country.

To make the map I used Index Mundi's map creator. Very highly recommended.