Author Archives: Hue White

Steve Benen at MaddowBlog engages in more than a bit of schadenfreude following the recent indictment of Dennis Hastert, former Speaker of the House.  He references the work of Orin Kerr at The Volokh Conspiracy in summarizing the indiscretions of a number of Republican personalities who chose to vote for the impeachment of President Bill Clinton over his indiscretions with Monica Lewinsky, and then closes with this:

During the impeachment proceedings, I specifically remember testimony from Princeton scholar Sean Wilentz, who told House Republicans that, in the future, they would be seen as “zealots and fanatics,” adding, “History will hunt you down for your cravenness.”

If you, like myself, were not a Republican at the time, and found the uproar to be more than a bit puzzling, then perhaps you, too, glory a little in the schadenfreude over Gingrich (carrying on with an aide), Livingston (affair), Hyde (affair) and now Hastert (alleged sexual contact with a boy).

But you also have to wonder about the nature of these men, particularly if  you are interested in story-telling (and, about that, another post in another time).  Are they so obsessed with power that the hypocrisy of their actions isn’t apparent?  These guys are smart, surely they can see that.

I recall a story from, I believe, Senator Barbara Boxer, concerning another, very senior Senator from her freshman days in the Senate.  She described him as having a self-image of being right next to God.  Perhaps being at the center of government, these Representatives felt they could do no wrong?

Or, more prosaically, they simply hated Clinton?  President Clinton has a history of taking the issues of his political opponents and making them his, to the point where they become lethal weapons against his opponents.  Add in that he is undoubtedly one of the smartest politicians around, and perhaps it’s just raw envy and anger.

This was the time where ideology began to get the better of the GOP, where governing wisely became a secondary – or tertiary – activity, where being in power was the thing, and principle was optional (see the spending habits of Congress, vs what they proclaimed as ideology, 2000-2006).  This chart courtesy The Daily Kos:

Perhaps, even as I grind my teeth over what might have been, this is simply the result of amateurs running government.

Recalling Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s proclamation that Iranian military bases are off-limits with regard to nuclear installation inspections, Lawfare‘s Yishai Schwartz comments:

… some members of the P5+1 appear no less unyielding, with the French foreign minister telling his lawmakers, “France will not accept (a deal) if it is not clear that inspections can be done at all Iranian installations, including military sites.”

At first glance, Iran’s hesitation at allowing international inspectors access to its military sites might appear reasonable. But the history, law, and language of non-proliferation agreements lie squarely on the side of France. Concessions on this issue—even in the form of subjecting certain inspections to the approval of some kind of “joint commission”—would not only dramatically weaken any deal, but would actually constitute a major departure from long-standing principles of nuclear controls. …

Of course, no country liked the idea of foreign inspectors poking around their military bases. But each realized that the comprehensiveness of inspectors’ reach was crucial to the entire system. If there would be inspections-free zones, there could be no guarantee that states’ nuclear programs were peaceful. …

Throughout the years of sanctions and negotiations, Iran has chafed at restrictions and repeatedly demanded to be treated just like any other state. But in insisting on a special exemption denying IAEA access to military site, Iran is actually demanding special, privileged treatment. The fact that the p5+1 would even consider subjecting such visits to a “joint commission” of the IAEA represents a significant, and dangerous, departure from previous practice. The logic of the oversight system rests on the assumption that the IAEA Board of Governors holds ultimate authority to decide where its inspectors go, and that the Security Council serves as its enforcement mechanism. Playing with these details would gut the entire structure.

This is rather interesting in that last week Lawfare suggested the Iran deal could go off the rails without it being a disaster:

After a number of conversations with some of these critics, however, I’m increasingly convinced that there is an alternative, albeit a poorly articulated one. To be sure, it has question marks and uncertainties—and the deal currently being hammered out may yet offer the best balance of risks and benefits. But there is another side of the ledger. Here, then, is a roadmap to that alternative path.

First, American negotiators would have to allow the current round of negotiations to fail, but without blowing up or reneging on any already-made commitments. Doing so should not be too difficult. There are enough unresolved issues that adopting a hard (and reasonable) line on, say, the timing of sanctions relief or the reach of inspections would either force Iranian capitulation (good) or lead to an impasse—which from this perspective would be fine as well.

Perhaps Khamenei is paving that road for them.  Yishai Schwartz continues:

The competing interpretation (and this is something about which far too few of the deal’s critics speak concretely) is that Iran will make some noise, but will actually seek a temporary stop-gap accommodation. It may build a few more centrifuges and reduce inspections by a marginal amount, and in return, the White House and its allies would mildly tighten some existing sanctions. Kirk-Menendez will remain on the shelf and Iran’s breakout time will continue to hover near the three-month mark. There will be Iranian violations and American threats, but both sides will keep their provocations below a certain escalatory threshold, and diplomats will resume talks under an arrangement roughly similar to the JPOA.

And, basically, a status quo.  The important point to note is that Iran doesn’t have resources equivalent to the world’s, so status quo for us merely leaves us with irritating political questions (Obama doesn’t get the legacy he wants), while the Iranian government has more existential questions to consider, between this and its food and water problems.  Of course, one is tempted to say that the Iranian government will find a way to stay on top.  But then, I felt the same way about the East German government, as did just about everyone else – until they collapsed.

Helping me wander about left field, my Facebook correspondent responds:

By “recover from damage” I meant in such a way that mankind could continue to live comfortably and sustainably on this planet. We’re wrecking it for ourselves, and for millions of species we have and are exterminating. But life will go on, on this planet, with or without us. Many species will adapt. So it’s just self interest. I’d like to not have to worry if my grandkids are going to be wiped out by pestilence or war or hunger or thirst simply because current day peoples are too stupid and short-sighted. We are a part of nature, sure. But we’ve got more influence over our natural world than all the rest of the species put together.

Yes, I suppose so, although I can’t help but note the AntBlog, back in 2010, has made some notes concerning total biomasses:

Worldwide biomass estimates for individual species are very difficult to come by. The most rigorous estimates are for humans and domesticated animals. There are probably a little more than 6.7 billion humans alive right now, and together, we might weigh as much as 335,000,000,000 kg (or 737,000,000,000 lbs.) This figure is based on an average human weight of more than 100lbs, though (50kg, to be exact). I don’t know how accurate this estimate is, especially considering that about 1/3 of us are children. There are supposedly around 1.3 billion cattle in the world, and, put together, they may weigh almost twice as much as our species.

The only non-domestic, super-abundant species for which serious attempts have been made at estimating biomass is a type of shrimp that lives in the cold waters around Antarctica: the Antarctic krill, Euphausia superba,. They are the primary food for many fish and baleen whales (suborder Mysticeti). In a really interesting study (click here for more) Atkinson and colleagues (2009) calculated the world biomass of krill to be between 117 and 379,000,000,000 kg (note that the upper estimate is slightly above what people have suggested for the total human biomass). Truly, these organisms are successful. They might be the only wild species that could compete with Homo sapiens for the title of “species with the most biomass.”

However, we can’t forget that as much animal biomass as there is, there is even more plant and bacterial biomass. Probably at least ten times as much as the biomass of all animals put together. Scientists still argue about which has more biomass on earth: bacteria or plants. Worldwide, they both probably have about the same amount of Carbon, but Bacteria probably contain about 10 times more Nitrogen and Phosphorus (read more here ) Like ants, though, there are many many species of bacteria and plants, and I don’t know of any studies that attempt to estimate world-wide biomass for a single species of either.

But I’ll agree with you ahead of time, it’s not really relevant – just very interesting.  What are all those bacteria up to, anyways?

Continuing this topic, North Carolina legislators discover that business will, indeed, pay attention to legislation which appears to ignore scientific realities, as Sami Grover on Treehugger.com reports:

Does $20K buy you a Senator these days?  Or did their lobbyists simply make such a strong presentation that he felt that he had to break the rules?  From the News & Observer:

In light of the questions, Democratic Leader Dan Blue of Raleigh told Rucho he wanted a “division” of the vote, which would allow for an individual tally rather than just by voice. Rucho refused, and when Blue asked him by what rule he was refusing, Rucho said it was his prerogative as chairman and then called for the vote.

The rules the Senate adopted earlier this year say the presiding officer shall conduct a division if it is called for prior to the vote, which in this case it was.

After the meeting, Rucho emphasized to Blue that he had the authority not to allow a division.

I have no idea what sort of punishment can be meted out to a committee chairman who won’t follow the rules.  Removal from the chairmanship?  Kicked out of the legislature?  But if the Republicans are in control, would anyone even dare to bring up the idea?

NewScientist (23 May 2015, paywall) interviews Slawek Tulaczyk concerning how to stem the rising of sea levels:

Are you talking about geoengineering ice streams to control sea level rise?
Yes. When we talk about geoengineering we usually mean bringing down levels of carbon dioxide or controlling Earth’s reflectivity to sunlight. We haven’t yet considered putting the brakes on ice streams and glaciers, but we should be considering this possibility. Last month in Nature, new results corroborated previous evidence showing that the loss of mass from polar ice sheets accelerated in the last decade (DOI: 10.1038/nclimate2635). …

How might we slow down the flow of ice?
One mechanism has to do with decreasing the amount of water at the base of the ice stream, to increase the friction between the base and the bedrock. Basically, we’d need to remove water by increasing drainage. Paradoxically, that may require something counter-intuitive, like drilling a hole from the top of the ice stream to the base and injecting water. You would have to work out how the sliding of the ice would respond to the injection of additional water, but in certain scenarios, the excess water would create a new, bigger channel beneath the ice, and this would help drain the water that’s already there faster than before. Typically when you drive water out from beneath a glacier, you are making it harder for ice to flow.

There are other ways. One would be to prevent warming ocean waters from reaching the ice sheets.

What do you mean?
One reason why many ice streams and glaciers are flowing faster into the ocean is because warming waters are melting the floating ice shelves that surround them and normally act as buttresses. We think that warm water is channelled in through deep troughs in the continental shelf.

And you are saying we can prevent this warm water from reaching the ice?
That’s right. You should be able to build submarine barriers. I’m not suggesting huge concrete structures; you can build something that has the right density to float 300 to 400 metres underwater. You attach some kind of barrier to the floats. The currents in these troughs are not very strong and the barriers don’t have to stop the flow of water, just slow it down. And you could have openings in them to enable life to pass through.

Over at Glacier Hub, Dan Kandy considers how to build new glaciers:

How do you make a glacier? You can transport tens of thousands of tons of ice from a place where retreat is fast to a pre-prepared location where retreat is slower; you can set up barriers around an existing ice field, increasing snow accumulation and transforming the area into a small glacier; or you can cover an existing one with a “geotextile” sheet or rocky debris to slow ablution. A minimum of three years is required for some of these methods, according to [Cedomir] Marangunic, [sic]

While stimulating the growth of new glaciers or slowing the retreat of established ones sounds great, project must simulate a “natural process” and avoid damage to local ecosystems, according to Marangunic, who claims this as a priority for his projects.

Also at Glacier Hub, Tsechu Dolma reports on a conference concerning the shrinking glaciers of Mt. Hood:

That method was created by Chewang Norphel, a civil engineer in Ladakh, India, who pioneered a way to “grow” glaciers in the Himalayas. A short film about Norphel’s mission to create small glaciers in Nepal, “Beyond Prayer”, shows the retired engineer describing his technique, which relies on the redirection of streams in the winter to cool areas, and constructing breaks to slow the flow of water. The water freezes along the mountain slope at regular intervals. During the winter, an ice sheet covers these frozen pools, creating small, artificial glaciers.

“When it comes to Alzheimer’s, iron may not be good ferrous”

Augh!  NewScientist loves its headlines, but that one just makes me ITCH!

Anyways, it’s about a study in Australia:

Researchers at the University of Melbourne in Australia followed 144 older people who had mild cognitive impairment for seven years. To gauge how much iron was in their brains, they measured ferritin, a protein that binds to the metal, in their cerebrospinal fluid. For every nanogram per millilitre people had at the start of the study, they were diagnosed with Alzheimer’s on average three months earlier.

(NewScientist 23 May 2015, paywall, and the headline is only in the print edition.)

The Egyptian correspondence leads to an off-topic point on my part.  First, I’ll reiterate the correspondent’s innocent remark:

I was channeling Jared Diamond when I wrote that — a non-optimistic version of Jared, that is. Right — 100 years ago we were divinely (innocently?) naive and innocent. And the earth could recover from the damage we had done. Today, at 7 billion plus strong, it’s a far worse story — but we like to pretend it’s not there or not so bad. You should read Diamond’s “Collapse”. It’s long and wordy, but very informative.

… but the entire “recover from the damage” remark is interesting in its implication that there’s an ideal “natural” state which we humans have damaged.  I don’t  believe there’s ever an ideal natural state in isolation from humanity, nor do I generally feel we humans are somehow outside of Nature.  Until we re-insert the human viewpoint into the conversation (and I believe that it’s very important that the viewpoint be explicitly stated), there are simply states, which can be characterized in any number of ways – species diversity, population densities, mineral presence, etc.  Once we restate with the human viewpoint (or interest), then it’s possible to credibly say, “Well, it’s ruined for human occupation because of xyz …”

Perhaps it’s all a fine point, but to me there’s this confusion of the first statement implying that the Universe was made for humanity’s use – because we attach value statements to state perturbations of Nature – while, to me, the proper detached viewpoint requires not attaching a value statement to an observation until the proper interest – humanity’s – has been established.  The implicit – and unstated – assumptions can really twist a deductive series until the final conclusion doesn’t really bear any connection to the original set of observations, particularly if prescriptives are suggested.

The Egyptian correspondence continues:

I was channeling Jared Diamond when I wrote that — a non-optimistic version of Jared, that is. Right — 100 years ago we were divinely (innocently?) naive and innocent. And the earth could recover from the damage we had done. Today, at 7 billion plus strong, it’s a far worse story — but we like to pretend it’s not there or not so bad. You should read Diamond’s “Collapse”. It’s long and wordy, but very informative.

I’ll put it on the list.  My suspicion, however, is that either the peace movement or the epidemiologists are going to lose – and a lot of us will suddenly die.  As creatures of Nature, we may find ways to modify the rules of Nature, but outright breaking them may be beyond our capacities.

Back in 2011 NewScientist reported (24 October 2011, paywall) on an analysis of global capitalism and the rule of thumb that some firms are too large to fail:

The idea that a few bankers control a large chunk of the global economy might not seem like news to New York’s Occupy Wall Street movement and protesters elsewhere (see photo). But the study, by a trio of complex systems theorists at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, is the first to go beyond ideology to empirically identify such a network of power. It combines the mathematics long used to model natural systems with comprehensive corporate data to map ownership among the world’s transnational corporations (TNCs). …

Crucially, by identifying the architecture of global economic power, the analysis could help make it more stable. By finding the vulnerable aspects of the system, economists can suggest measures to prevent future collapses spreading through the entire economy. Glattfelder says we may need global anti-trust rules, which now exist only at national level, to limit over-connection among TNCs. Sugihara says the analysis suggests one possible solution: firms should be taxed for excess interconnectivity to discourage this risk.

NewScientist now presents an extension of the analysis (23 May 2015, paywall) that continues to suggest that interconnectedness may be the key:

NEVER again? The global financial crisis of 2008 saw banks around the world bailed out to the tune of billions by governments worried that the entire financial system was in meltdown. “Too big to fail”, the thinking went, and since then, efforts have been made to increase scrutiny of large institutions. But the latest research suggests a much more sophisticated analysis is needed to prevent another crisis.

We already know that firm size isn’t the only problem in a financial crisis. In 2011, New Scientist revealed that 147 interconnected entities – not all of them large financial institutions – control the network of global capitalism. A problem with any of them could have a significant effect on the system, demonstrating the ongoing potential for vulnerability. …

The Financial Stability Board was created in 2009 to attempt to understand and monitor the situation.  They’ve published a list of firms, based on their interconnectedness rather than their size, which, if one gets in trouble, could trouble others.  Those meeting the criteria must increase reserves, even at the expense of profitability. From NewScientist:

Most of the emphasis in SIFI designation is placed on this interconnectedness, which has been much studied by academics, along with size, which is easy to determine. To date, relatively little attention has been paid to the third part of the SIFI designation – complexity – says Robin Lumsdaine of American University in Washington DC.

To better understand complexity, Lumsdaine and her colleagues used tools from network science to analyse the corporate structure of a variety of financial institutions, including Goldman Sachs, Barclays and HSBC. The researchers anonymised the firms – identifying them only by their country – and used snapshots of data from 26 May 2011 and 25 February 2013 to see if the firms’ complexity had changed.

Their method involves mapping out a firm’s subsidiaries, and then each subsidiary’s subsidiaries and so on. These “control hierarchy” networks are then labelled according to the country or industry of each subsidiary (see diagram).

Sadly, the diagram is broken on the web page, but the print edition’s view is quite attractive and compares American and Japanese firms.  The former is unbalanced and difficult to understand, while the latter is almost pretty in that it appears the subsidiaries are carefully sized to match each other.  However, the US firm is characterized as “large”, while the Japanese firm is “small” – the complexity comes in the number of industries involved.

FSB’s work may be having an effect:

Across the board, country complexity seems to have fallen between 2011 and 2013, the researchers found. That’s in line with a recent report in The Economist showing that banks aren’t seeing the expected returns from globalising their operations and are starting to withdraw, says Stefano Battiston of the University of Zurich, Switzerland, who carried out the 2011 interconnectedness work.

Conclusions?

In other words, we may be over-emphasising the “too big to fail” mantra: even small companies can be complex in a way that could threaten financial stability if they failed.

“It speaks to the size threshold as being inadequate,” says Lumsdaine. Regulators already know this, she adds, but the team’s analysis highlights the need for change. “There should be greater focus on complexity and more metrics are needed.”

So Bernie Sanders (I/D – VT) may want to rethink his proposal in light of this fascinating article.

The associated academic article on measuring complexity is here.

Some brief poking at the The Financial Stability Board‘s website did not reveal a helpful list of SIFIs.  If I can find them – or a helpful reader provides them – I’ll post them.

A correspondent on the situation in Egypt:

Just another of the many coming ecological and societal disasters resulting from overpopulation and “mining” of what could have been renewable resources (actual mining takes, e.g, gold ore out of the ground and once it’s gone, it’s gone — in contrast to harvesting wood from a forest, which can be done sustainably such that the forest continues to produce wood for eternity). We have been “mining” fertile cropland soil, water resources, forest resources, ocean fisheries, etc. for decades upon decades — centuries in some more localized cases, foolishly imagining them to be endless or simply living in denial. There are simply far too many people on the face of the earth, consuming far too many resources. We are effectively borrowing — well, plundering — them all from the future. It’s all going to start coming home to roost very soon.

The Earth is a big place and we’re very small beings, comparatively speaking – so it might be a bit harsh to suggest that we were fools 100 years ago.  No, just ignorant of how many of us were going to be around now, and how much strain that implied.

But your primary point is also evident in this WorldPress.org article on Egypt from Joshua Goldfond:

To say that Egypt is a country on the edge of crisis should be a surprise to no one. As one of the richest, largest and most influential countries in the Middle East and North African (MENA) region, the state’s regression to military control four years after the Arab Spring has left many of the movement’s most hopeful advocates despairing. And yet, these ideological disappointments pale in comparison to the larger existential threat it now faces. Like much of the MENA region, Egypt’s failure to stem corruption, address economic inefficiency and directly address climate change is exacerbating its already acute problem with food security. A three-step plan involving subsidy reform, technological development and caloric diversification could ease some of this danger. …

The nation’s yearly shortfall of 7 billion cubic meters of water can be expected to skyrocket if rising levels of the Mediterranean Sea flood Egypt’s northern lakes, choking off fresh water sources and destroying its fish hatcheries.

A Facebook correspondent responds to my reaction to The New York Times:

While I agree that more more money chasing “product” tends to inflate the cost of that product, I think there are other large drivers of college tuition. Looking at a graph (which I don’t have at hand, sorry) of general inflation (e.g. CPI) over the past 4 decades versus the cost of health care versus the cost of tuition is rather revealing. Any personnel-intensive industry with well-compensated (i.e. including fully-insured) people is going to see its costs go up with the far steeper than inflation curve belonging to health care costs. (This problem is eating government, too.) But universities have managed to exceed even health care’s curve by as large a gap or scaling factor as it exceeds general inflation.

So I guess I’d say, I agree with you and I agree with the NYT at the same time — and throw in health care to boot.

I just see the excess funding provided by the cheap loans as the enabler of all of this.

The main water source for Egypt is the Nile, as graphically illustrated by this map from Lonely Planet:

Ayah Aman reports on the Nile’s condition for AL Monitor:

An intensive media and political momentum is taking place in Egypt in regard to the conflict with Nile headwaters countries over securing Egypt’s annual share of the Nile waters. At the same time, the pollution of the Nile River remains a pending issue that is being underscored in Egypt with every water poisoning incident caused by the dumping of hazardous waste in the river. The debate usually ends when the government reassures the public, and emphasizes that the water is safe and suitable for human consumption, without establishing long-term policies to resolve the crisis. …

Kareem Khaled, a water-quality researcher at the University of Duisburg-Essen, spoke to Al-Monitor about the water quality in Egypt. He said, “The absence of a single administrative body in charge of water management and quality improvement from the High Dam to the riverbed, and up to the point where it [water] is delivered to people’s homes, is the reason behind water pollution in Egypt.”

Khaled added, “The state of the Nile water still needs to be precisely and scientifically defined, and we need to find out what pollutants are in the water. The river is subject to all forms of pollution, the most dangerous of which is the untreated, solid industrial waste, which is causing an accumulation of heavy metals in the aquaculture and drinking water, and therefore causes many health problems.”

Problems are blamed on management and pollution:

… since it consumes far more water than it can replenish. In addition to other problems that weigh down on the country — such as population density and the dilapidated pipe network, which alone is behind 35% of wasted water every year — Egypt is the world’s largest wheat importer, because there is not enough water to grow the crops locally.

Earlier this year Mz Aman had reported on an agreement between Egypt, Sudan, and Ethiopia as the nations seek peaceful means to allocate the Nile:

Since the presidents of the Eastern Nile countries of Egypt, Sudan and Ethiopia signed the Declaration of Principles of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam on March 23, relative official and public acceptance have prevailed in Egypt. After a long historical feud over the Nile waters that Egypt considers part of its national security, Ethiopia and Egypt are trying to rebuild trust. …

The historical agreements giving Egypt an annual quota of the Nile waters, estimated at 55.5 billion cubic meters per year, remain the main issue for Egypt. The Egyptian Foreign Ministry asserted that these agreements will remain intact, particularly the 1959 water-sharing agreement signed with Sudan. Upstream countries have rejected the agreement, claiming that it gives the lion’s share of the water to Egypt. …

Sisi sent several messages in his impromptu statement during the signing of the Declaration of Principles in Khartoum.

“The Renaissance Dam still constitutes a concern for Egyptians, especially since the Nile is their only source of water,” he said, but asserted, “God commands water to flow into Egypt so that Egyptians can live and revive their civilization.” Sisi tried to break the ice with Ethiopia by saying, “We could have lived for years in dispute and doubt, but we have opted for cooperation and trust.”

FutureDirections International (referenced by Mz Aman, above) notes:

• The Entebbe Agreement has shifted control over the Nile away from Egypt and Sudan, who previously had a monopoly over the river’s resources as a result of colonial agreements.
• The food and water security situation in Egypt is extremely vulnerable, due to population growth and environmental factors that have raised deep concerns amongst the nation’s political leaders, already concerned about the geo-political shift in the Nile basin region.

And they agree concerning water availability:

These Nile Basin nations have a combined population of over 450 million people and estimates indicate that over 200 million of them rely directly on the Nile for their food and water security. The Nile is the only major reliable source of renewable water supplies in the region. The Nile Basin’s population is expected to double in the next twenty-five years.

Aljazeera America has a 15 month old opinion piece which is necessarily out of date, but does have an excellent interactive map of the Nile basin, including dam sites.  It is not embeddable, so I recommend you go to the site to see the map.

The New York Times claims to know the real reason for the rise in college tuition:

By contrast, a major factor driving increasing costs is the constant expansion of university administration. According to the Department of Education data, administrative positions at colleges and universities grew by 60 percent between 1993 and 2009, which Bloomberg reported was 10 times the rate of growth of tenured faculty positions.

I see this as a chicken and egg argument.  In my previous post on the subject, I argued that the flood of federal and private loans amounts to the printing and infiltration of money into a market, which, as well all (should) know, results in inflation.  The New York Times not only hides their great discovery at the bottom of the article, they commit a flagrant foul – they fail to ask WHY administration staff grew at a much higher rate.  And while there are no doubt contributing factors such as regulations and laws to be supported, to my mind the great flood of money is the great enabler: someone or something must absorb it.  Staff is it.

(h/t Kathy Melaas and Mary Newstrom)

In response to this, a Facebook correspondent responds:

I’m confused. Lomborg is a climate change skeptic, and yet he calls for removing fossil fuel subsidies to reduce their global warming effect?

Perhaps he’s simply offended by the concept of subsidies for fossil fuels.  I certainly am, but I’m not familiar with the current arguments in favor of subsidies.

But from what little I have read, he doesn’t seem to deny climate change so much as claim it’s not going to be as severe as claimed; or perhaps he just meant the change will happen at the specified magnitude, but the impact on human civilization won’t be as severe as predicted.

Hal Hodson reports on another approach to the water problem in California in NewScientist (16 May 2015, paywall):

The traditional method of storage is to create a reservoir by damming a river. But dam-building is expensive, can be environmentally damaging, and most of the good spots are already in use. An alternative is to push water underground using recharge ponds or injection wells. Recharge ponds are constructed surface basins that allow water to collect and seep through the soil; injection wells use high-pressure pumps to actively push water down into aquifers. …

Groundwater management has several advantages over other methods. It is generally cheaper than building dams or desalinating water. What’s more, aquifers lose no water through evaporation, do not flood ecosystems, and in California they have capacity for between 17 and 26 times as much water as all of the state’s reservoirs combined.

This can require removal of man-made structures such as levees which restrict flooding of floodplains – which is precisely the mechanism for feeding aquifers, in many cases.  Can man’s pride – and perverse economic incentives – be overcome to, basically, return an area to a semblance of its natural state?

The National Ground Water Association is here.

Continuing this developing story, the dailytarheel.com reports that 46 degree-granting programs within the University of North Carolina system are being discontinued:

Thursday morning, the Board of Governors educational planning committee voted to discontinue 46 degree programs across the UNC-System, including one at UNC-Chapel Hill: human biology. Some of the programs will be reformatted as concentrations or consolidated into other majors. The entire Board voted Friday to adopt the recommendations voted on by the committee Thursday.

Other schools saw more programs discontinued than UNC-CH. East Carolina University and UNC-Greensboro saw eight programs discontinued each. …

[Board member Steven] Long said he didn’t think the programs addressed by the report necessarily needed more scrutiny.

“We’re capitalists, and we have to look at what the demand is, and we have to respond to the demand.”

The report is relatively emotion free; the comments attached to the report are vitriolic.  Up until that last line about being capitalists, the report could be evaluated as simply some hard decisions being made by school administrators; however, Universities are not, or should not be run by capitalists.  Capitalists favor running corporations as the method for managing production.  While capitalists can run non-profits, most run for-profits.

Education is not an institution centered on the idea of profit, but rather an institute for equipping citizens for their participation in society.  Not all skills lead to directly to profit, and yet it is important to society that a fair proportion of the citizenry have those skills.  Attempting to run a full-blown university system based on the needs of the capitalist corporations that surround you – and, in some cases, no doubt having a poor understanding – or, to be blunt, letting your ideological sensibilities lead you off into the wilderness – is beneficial neither to society nor even those corporations you think you’re serving.

Equally as importantly, the research universities must support the researchers who are out in the intellectual wilderness, scouting for new knowledge, new ways of thinking – sometimes striking out, sometimes succeeding.  That’s the glory of the research university, but it’s not going to be directly profitable, and attempting to shape such research towards immediately profitable ends is a fool’s errand.  The businessman wants to know how much profit he’ll make in the next financial quarter; the researcher may pursue a plan that’ll last 20 years and perhaps fail in the end.  Who’s more important?

The researcher.

Some damage is easy to repair, but restarting degree-granting programs is probably a challenge.  Poor North Carolina.

(h/t LamontCranston @ The Daily Kos)

A reader works out a bit of frustration:

To reinforce their title of Scions of Entropy, one of the cats jumped on my laptop’s keyboard yesterday, jamming down the “p” key.  This pretty much locked the whole thing up, as all the machine had CPU room for was typing a “p” every half-second or so.  Of course I rebooted, then performed many other fruitless rituals over my computer.  No luck.  I even tried prying off the key and disassembling the rocker inside.  I basically took the keypad all the way down to its printed chip, and it was still happily “p”ing all over my display, to the exclusion of all else.

So, I took my laptop to Best Buy to talk to the Geek Squad:  Lug in the machine.  Wait in line for 20 minutes.  (Mind you, there was no line.  Just me waiting behind the “Wait here” sign.  About every 5 minutes or so, someone at the merchandise return window would lean over to tell me someone would be right with me.  That person had no line either.  He was just hangin’ around back there not going and looking for the Geek squad staff that would be helping me any minute now.)  Finally, a technician shows up and takes a look at my machine, which was happily “p”ing on his counter.  Breaks off stuff that wasn’t broken before.  (The P key and the two little plastic components under it were already off, but I figured with any luck they could be snapped back into place.  The Geeks at Best Buy ripped off the clear silicone pad that springs the key back up to a neutral position once you stop pressing it.  That’s a piece that definitely won’t snap back into place.  And I don’t have the piece any more.  They just threw it on the floor, then looked to see if I was watching.  I was.)

So, the Best Buy Geek has no idea how to fix anything.  Says the present keyboard can’t be disabled.  Says it’ll cost $200 to send the machine to Kentucky, where they’ll take 6-8 weeks to look at it, then they’ll call me with an estimate of how much additional cash and time it’ll take to fix it, if they even can.  Or, I can buy a new $500-$1500 laptop, and they’ll ONLY charge me $110 to transfer the data from the old laptop to the new one.  If they can figure out how to transfer the data without use of a keyboard, that is.

Oh yeah, and every last one of the non-apple machines that Best Buy sells has Windows 8 on it.  Because NO ONE still sells Windows 7, they say.  You just can’t get it anywhere, they say.  So you have to use the much, much crappier Win 8 interface, they say.

Compare that to Computer Revolution (formerly Computer Renaissance):  I took my laptop over to them the next morning.  In about 5 minutes, they unhooked the built-in keyboard so I can take it home and plug in a peripheral, and they ordered me a new keyboard component.  It should arrive in 5-7 days.  Then I’ll bring the laptop back to them and they’ll put it in while I wait.  Total bill:  $79.00.

Oh, and guess what?  They have computers for sale too, if your old one is just too far gone to salvage.  And if you buy from Computer Revolution, they’ll very happily install Windows 7 on any machine you choose, if it doesn’t already have it installed, which the vast majority of theirs do.

Did I mention that I’m never going back to Best Buy for computer stuff ever again?

It’s impossible to know if the front line folks are poorly trained or are trained to simply deny the truths as noted here, but someone somewhere is lying in the interests of increasing revenues and (presumably) profits.  Is this considered ethical by the Business Schools of our country?

Should it be?

This country has a mythology of it being a meritocracy, and consequently bumbling public officials are often poorly tolerated, although personal charm can be ameliorative.  Remember how Bush’s bumbling caused his approval numbers to drop into the dumpster?

Australia’s relationship to climate change continues to change as the University of Western Australia reneges on an agreement to host

…an Australia Consensus Centre to undertake detailed economic cost benefit analysis into many of Australia’s, and the world’s, biggest challenges.

The Centre is unique in that it’s to deliver robust, evidence-based knowledge and advice to the Australian Government on potential policy reforms and other interventions that will deliver the smartest, most cost-effective solutions in areas ranging from poverty, social justice and food sustainability. Many of these issues will form the basis of the United Nation’s post 2015 Development Goals.

It was to be run by Bjørn Lomborg, noted climate change skeptic (his web site is here).  Why is the University reneging?  The University’s President remarks:

However, the creation of the Australia Consensus Centre attracted a mixed reaction from staff, students and the general public. The scale of the strong and passionate emotional reaction was one that the University did not predict. …

I have stated many times that it is not a centre to study climate change, that the University was not providing any direct funding to the Centre, and that that Bjorn Lomborg would not be involved in its day-to-day operations. …

Despite all this, there remains  strong opposition to the Centre. Whilst I respect the right of staff to express their views on this matter, as all universities should be places for open and honest sharing and discussion of ideas, in this case, it has placed the University in a difficult position.

NewScientist (16 May 2015) notes that the government still wishes to establish the center, but

… the Royal Society of New South Wales, the country’s oldest science academy, has called on all universities not to accept.

This despite Lomborg’s association with Nobel prize winning economists.  He seems to be an interesting chap; I’ve heard his name from time to time over the last 15 years, particularly in Libertarian circles.  However, I’ve not followed his career or what he’s said.  So I have to depend on his Wikipedia entry, which I think paints him as quite nuanced and probably makes a lot of people unhappy:

The Lomborg Deception, a book by Howard Friel, claims to offer a “careful analysis” of the ways in which Lomborg has “selectively used (and sometimes distorted) the available evidence”,^[29] and that the sources Lomborg provides in the footnotes do not support—and in some cases are in direct contradiction to—Lomborg’s assertions in the text of the book;^[30] Lomborg has denied these claims in a public response.^[31] Lomborg has provided a 27-page argument-by-argument response.^[32] Friel has written a reply to this response,^[33] in which he admits two errors, but otherwise in general rejects Lomborg’s arguments.

A group of scientists published an article in 2005 in the Journal of Information Ethics,^[34] in which they concluded that most criticism against Lomborg was unjustified, and that the scientific community misused their authority to suppress Lomborg.

The claim that the accusations against Lomborg were unjustified was challenged in the next issue of Journal of Information Ethics^[35] by Kåre Fog, one of the original plaintiffs. Fog reasserted his contention that, despite the ministry’s decision, most of the accusations against Lomborg were valid. He also rejected what he called “the Galileo hypothesis”, which he describes as the conception that Lomborg is just a brave young man confronting old-fashioned opposition.

In April 2015 Lomborg gained further attention as a climate contrarian when he issued a call for all subsidies to be removed from fossil fuels on the basis that “a disproportionate share of the subsidies goes to the middle class and the rich”…making fossil fuel so “inexpensive that consumption increases, thus exacerbating global warming”.^[36]

It’s hard not to like someone who calls for removal of all fossil fuel subsidies.  I wonder how many members of the University of Western Australia are aware of his positions in detail.  Or how misleading the Wikipedia entry might be.

A Facebook correspondent responds to this post:

If we were imperial, wouldn’t all that roughly $1 trillion in “defense” spending be resulting in us “owning” a few new countries over the decades — like the former British Empire did?

Oh, I think we do – but because we’re the product of colonial Britain, Spain, and France, the American public is fairly allergic to the term “imperial”.  So we try to operate behind the scenes (for example, the Shah of Iran), and keep a few “territories” which perhaps fit the bill of being owned.  Then things blow up and the natives get their hate on and it’s all such a godawful mess….

Then there’s the inevitable corruption and waste for which we must pay.  And don’t forget the existential threats that Marco Rubio claims we’re facing … or was that Lindsey Graham?  I can’t keep track of who’s more afraid of the outside world these days.

This sage saga continues as Wisconsin Public Radio reports on the status of the investigation in an interview with Howard Schweber, a law professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison:

Secondly, Schweber said, the Wisconsin Supreme Court plays a primary role in the investigation.

“The claim is that Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce, primarily, unlawfully engaged in campaign coordination with Gov. Walker,” said Schweber. “Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce made and funneled major contributions not only to Walker, but to the current sitting justices of the Wisconsin Supreme Court.”

This puts the Wisconsin Supreme Court in an unusual position, according to Schweber.

“The Wisconsin Supreme Court has some of the loosest rules in the entire country, allowing its justices to rule on cases involving major campaign contributors,” he said. “Those rules, allowing the justices to preside over the case, were written by Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce and approved by the current sitting justices. The corruption of the Wisconsin State Supreme Court has reached a point of absolute nadir.”

BloombergPolitics updates with the news that SCOTUS won’t stop the investigation:

The U.S. Supreme Court refused to end a state investigation into Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker’s 2012 recall campaign, rejecting an appeal from a conservative group that says its constitutional rights are being violated.

The rebuff leaves the future of the investigation in the hands of the Wisconsin Supreme Court, which is considering a separate bid to stop the probe. The criminal investigation, on hold during the court fight, might complicate Walker’s potential campaign for the Republican presidential nomination.

Pema Levy at Mother Jones has a lengthier report on the history of how the formerly august Wisconsin Supreme Court has been made into a laughingstock:

The Wisconsin Club for Growth and WMC first began pouring millions into state Supreme Court elections in 2007, when the groups spent an estimated $2.9 million on ads backing conservative candidate Annette Ziegler for an open seat on the Supreme Court and attacking her opponent. Total spending on that election topped $5.8 million, four times the previous record for a Wisconsin Supreme Court race. The following year, the same groups spent more than $2.7 million on ads aimed at unseating sitting Justice Louis Butler, a liberal, and electing conservative candidate Michael Gableman. The election was so nasty that racially-tinged ads released by Gableman’s campaign were compared to the infamous Willie Horton spot from the 1988 presidential election.

The partisanship and massive interest-group spending of the 2007 and 2008 state Supreme Court elections spurred Wisconsin lawmakers to take action. In 2009, the Legislature passed the Impartial Justice Act, setting up a robust campaign finance system for Supreme Court elections, including a matching funds provision to help candidates counter negative ads run against them. But in 2011, Walker quietly repealed the public financing law with language tucked into his first budget as governor.

The New Yorker also has a fine article.  PR Watch notes the numbers:

In every single one of the most recent elections for the court’s four Republican justices — Justices David Prosser, Michael Gableman, Annette Ziegler, and Patience Roggensack — spending by WiCFG, its surrogates, and WMC amounted to almost all of the independent support for the candidate. Together, the two groups and their surrogates have spent over $10 million since 2007 helping elect the court’s four-justice conservative majority, in most cases spending more than the candidates themselves. Some of the elections were decided by just a handful of votes.

The total spent by the groups under investigation is higher than previously estimated, based on new documents obtained from WMC.

For those interested in a more in depth look at spending on judicial elections, there’s The New Politics of Judicial Elections Online.

PuddyTat @ The Daily Kos covers the change to the Wisconsin Constitution:

A very heavily promoted and propagandized Constitutional amendment recently passed in Wisconsin changing the selection of the Chief Justice of the Wisconsin Supreme Court. Since the Court was founded in 1852, the most senior Justice has automatically become the Chief Justice. With the newly passed amendment, the Chief Justice will now be elected by members of the State Supreme Court – a move designed to ensure that a RW Justice will become Chief, replacing liberal Shirley Abrahamson who has served as a Justice for the past 39 years and became the most senior member, therefore Chief Justice, in 1996.

Last week, as soon as the passage of the amendment was certified, the 4 RW justices of the State Supreme Court voted by email to make Justice Patience Roggensack their Chief Justice. The 3 liberal/moderate justices weren’t even consulted or notified.

PuddyTat continues with another post detailing more amateur-hour antics.  Finally, the Urban Milwaukee‘s Bruce Murphy goggles at the circus:

There was something unseemly about Supreme Court Justice Patience (Pat) Roggensack contacting state legislators and urging them to support a constitutional amendment that would allow members of the court to elect the chief justice. Court watchers assumed such a vote would result in Roggensack’s selection, so her lobbying looked Shakespearean, the younger justice looking to kill the queen.

It also contrasted with Chief Justice Shirley Abrahamson, who served based on having the longest tenure on the court and now stood to be displaced, yet desisted from lobbying, saying: “My position is that it is important not to politicize the court.” …

Roggensack could have simply contacted the paper and let them know she was abiding by the will of the people and hoped her colleague would accept this democratic outcome. Instead, the obviously miffed justice rushed to talk on air with incendiary radio host Charlie Sykes and quickly attacked both Abrahamson and the Journal Sentinel!

“I intend to work with people on a consensus basis, rather than a dictatorial basis,” Roggensack told Sykes, in an obvious dig at Abrahamson. Just one week earlier, Roggensack said her key task as chief justice was “to begin repairing damage that has been done to the reputation of the Wisconsin Supreme Court,” and so she does this by sullying her fellow justice, and letting the world know the bickering on the court is not about to stop.

Looks like our friends in Wisconsin have had the wool pulled firmly over their eyes.  Gotta wonder how long it’ll stay there…

Measles can result in brain damage or it can kill you.  And even if you survive it, reports Debora MacKenzie (paywall) at NewScientist (16 May 2015),

The measles virus kills white blood cells that have a “memory” of past infections and so give you immunity to them. Those cells were assumed to bounce back because new ones appear a week or two after someone recovers.

However, recent work in monkeys shows that these new memory cells only remember measles itself; the monkeys lost cells that recognise other infections. If humans get similar “immune amnesia”, childhood deaths from infectious diseases should rise and fall depending on how many children had measles recently, and how long the effect lasts, says Michael Mina of Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia.

Human models are better than monkey models, but they’re close enough that this is worth worrying about – if you don’t have a vaccination already.  So if you’re an anti-vaxxers kid, and you get measles, now you can count on repeating all those other diseases to which you thought you’d acquired immunity.  The hard way.