Today’s links to interesting news and analysis. If you find this useful, pass it to a friend or colleague.
- “A Commedia for our times“, Spengler, Asia Times, 5 January 2010
- Briefing on “Training the Afghan army“, Lawrence Sellin (Colonel, US Army Reserve, retired), UPI, 5 January 2010
- A brief description of our most pressing economic problem: “America’s Employment Dilemma“, J. Bradford DeLong (Prof Economics, Berkeley), Project Syndicate, January 2010
- Interesting and timely: “Haiti and the Dominican Republic: One Island, Two Worlds “, Jared Diamond, The Globalist, 20 January 2010
- Now that it has done its work and convinced many Americans that torture is OK (for us, evil when done by others), the lies slowly get exposed: “CIA Man Retracts Claim on Waterboarding“, Foreign Policy, 26 January 2010 — Will we see retractions from conservatives who trumpeted his testimony?
- “The myth of China’s blithe consensus“, Michael Pettis (professor at Peking U), 26 January 2010 — Esp note the links.
- Good news! Gobal warming is not flooding the Pacific’s atolls: “Floating Islands“,Willis Eschenbach, Watts Up with That, 27 January 2010
- More science on the importance of soot as a climate driver: “News Release On The Importance Of Soot In The Climate System“, Roger Pielke Sr, 27 January 2010 — Note the links to the papers.
- Another conservative who believes Americans are bed-wetting cowards: “The Real State of the Union: Fear“, Michael Ledeen, Pajamas Media, 27 January 2010 — He has not a shred of evidence, but hopes this will become so. Fearful people are easily led.
- Burying the lede, as the headline should be “Scientists broke the law“, not “Scientists in stolen e-mail scandal hid climate data”, The Times, 28 January 2010
- A valuable perspective on global economics: “The Ring of Fire“, Bill Gross, PIMCO, February 2010 — The graph is brilliant, and deserves attention.
Today’s feature articles:
A. More peer-reviewed research, slowly chipping away at the exaggerated claims about AGW
B. Update to the conservative attacks on ACORN
(A) More peer-reviewed research, slowly chipping away at the exaggerated claims about AGW
Slowly scientists outside the IPCC bubble examine the claims about anthropogenic global warming. Slowly they chip away at them. No one paper is dramatic by itself (that often would be dangerous for the authors in the present climate). It’s the process of science at work. Today’s example, as reported by the BBC, a stalwart global warming loyalist (but unwilling to follow the US newspapers into bankruptcy): “Temperature and CO2 feedback loop ‘weaker than thought’“, 27 January 2010 — Opening:
The most alarming forecasts of natural systems amplifying the human-induced greenhouse effect may be too high, according to a new report. The study in Nature confirms that as the planet warms, oceans and forests will absorb proportionally less CO2. It says this will increase the effects of man-made warming – but much less than recent research has suggested.
The article: “Ensemble reconstruction constraints on the global carbon cycle sensitivity to climate“, David C. Frank et al. Nature, 28 January 2010.
For a brief and simple explanation of this article’s significance: “Nature: carbon cycle feedback is 80% weaker than advertised“, Luboš Motl, the Reference Frame, 27 January 2010.
(B) Update to the conservative attacks on ACORN
“Conservative ties bind 4 La. phone plot suspects“, AP, 27 January 2010 — Excerpt:
Four men accused of trying to tamper with Democratic U.S. Sen. Mary Landrieu’s office phones shared a common experience as young ideologues writing for conservative publications. Federal authorities said two of the men posed as telephone workers with hard hats, tool belts and fluorescent vests and walked into Landrieu’s office in a New Orleans federal building Monday. The others are accused of helping to organize the plan.
The most well-known suspect is James O’Keefe, 25, who posed as a pimp for a hidden-camera expose that damaged the reputation of the liberal community-organizing group ACORN and made him a conservative darling.
This is not a surprise to anyone paying attention (i.e., to those reading more than conservative websites):
- “An Independent Governance Assessment of ACORN: The Path To Meaningful Reform“, Scott Harshbarger and Amy Crafts, 7 December 2009
- For a discussion of the review and its implications see “ACORN videos were propaganda“, Joe Conason, Salon, 11 December 2009 — “A report hammers the organization’s leadership but points out duplicity in the famous tapes.”
Afterword
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