Category Archives: Uncategorized

In a discouraging (well, for me, at least – entertain me!) development, the Trump University suits have been settled, according to CNN/Money:

Donald Trump has agreed to pay $25 million to settle three lawsuits against Trump University.

The deal will keep the president-elect from having to testify in a trial in San Diego that was set to begin November 28.
The settlement ends a suit brought by New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, as well as two class action suits in California.

About 6,000 former students are covered by the settlement. The victims will receive at least half of their money back, said plaintiff attorney Jason Forge at a court hearing Friday.

I still think they should have sat tight and demanded every last penny back, but their attorneys were probably being realistic when they advised their clients to take the deal. The trial would have been deeply fascinating & revealing.

Keeping up to date on this story, Elon Musk announces his new roof will cost less than a conventional roof – right out of the gate. Electrek has the news:

Elon Musk made quite the announcement today. During the special shareholders meeting to approve the merger with SolarCity, which they approved by 85%, he said that he was coming back from a meeting with the SolarCity engineering team about the solar roof and that he now feels confident that they could deliver the product at a lower cost than a regular roof – even before energy production.

That’s different from what the company was claiming before the meeting today.<

And it’s an incredibly bold claim since if it turns out to be true, no homeowner would have any reason not to choose a solar roof when buying a new roof.

That opens a few questions, such as what is the profit margin on these roofs? What is the profit margin on a traditional roof? Will those suddenly shrink in order to remain competitive? Are we in danger of putting small businesses out of work? Or will they have a part of the new business as well?

On National Review, Rich Lowry lambastes the Democrats and progressives for losing the election as if this provides the last barrage needed to bury them – nevermind the loss was by such a slight margin that it it illuminates a potential problem with our electoral system. While doing so, he ignores an important question:

Another progressive assumption is that the nation-state is bound to decline, as supranational institutions like the European Union grow and cross-border migrations increase. In a trip to Germany in April, President Obama deemed Angela Merkel’s policy of welcoming a massive wave of migrants as “on the right side of history.” Never mind that its recklessness has caused a backlash that is still brewing. Obama believed the same of his own latitudinarian views on immigration, apparently never imagining people might consider it progress to tighten our borders rather than render them more porous.

So what do you do with those refugees? It’s difficult for the xenophobic mind to understand, but kindness and generosity is often rewarded. Let’s take the opposite tack, which might have been to meet the refugees with machine guns on the beaches. News of this behavior would have filtered back to the sources of those refugees, and the nations responsible would have been branded as barbaric. And while this may, in fact, stem the tide, achieving an immediate goal, it fails in the more important, long term goal – stopping war. It’s still true that you can’t fight a war without an army, and if the citizenry is wondering why they’re being asked to fight a war against those countries which welcomed your sister’s family when they were refugees, it’s a lot harder to get that war going than if the same guy’s thinking about his dead sister, lost in the Med with bullet holes all over her.

Another question is how your nation is perceived by high value emigres. Without question, the United States has benefited from many such emigres, who bring their genius, their drive, and their insights with them from their home countries, sometimes because we were perceived as a better place – and sometimes because we were only the last, best hope. Losing all that they can bring with them is a real problem.

It doesn’t help his cause that he indulges in the minor falsehood of a porous border. From azcentral.com:

“I crossed in the middle of the city, in the daytime,” recalled Sanchez Valladares, who was deported to Mexico in 2008, leaving behind four children in the U.S., two of them in Charlotte. “It took me about 15 minutes.”

Now crossing illegally is “very hard,”  conceded Sanchez Valladares, who is barred from legally returning to the U.S. for 10 years.

That is confirmed by a new internal Department of Homeland Security report, obtained by The Arizona Republic and azcentral.com, that concludes ramped-up border enforcement is working, helping to reduce successful crossings to one-tenth of what they were a decade earlier across the southern U.S. border with Mexico. The research is based on complicated mathematical calculations using published and internal Border Patrol data. …

According to the DHS report,  the number of successful illegal entries — including people making multiple attempts  — between ports of entry along the entire southern border with Mexico has plummeted from 1.7 million in 2005 to 170,000 in 2015. The calculations are based on a mathematical formula using published Border Patrol apprehension data and internal re-apprehension data and years of data from surveys conducted by researchers in Mexico with deported migrants in Mexico.

In an interview before The Republic obtained a copy of the report, Roberts noted that the calculation is based on migrants from Mexico trying to cross the border without being caught. The number does not include the nearly 80,000 unaccompanied minors and families from Central America who turned themselves in to the Border Patrol in 2015 seeking asylum.¹

The border is and has been tightening under President Obama. Now, it’s unfortunate that President Obama didn’t further explore why these immigrants are attracted to us; perhaps we could have done more to keep them at home. In a sense, our attempts to remove the dictator of Syria, Assad, is just such a tactic, although it’s an extreme case and fraught with problems.

But Lowry, in his hurry to bury his ideological opponents, feels it necessary to tear down a very humane response by world leaders to a crisis, without feeling it necessary to offer a reasonable alternative. Hopefully, those refugees, those human beings, can return to their homes someday soon, and if so they’ll have warm thoughts towards the Europeans who helped them out – and that will be helpful in the eternal fight against evil.

But to Lowry, they’re less than chess pieces, and I think that’s a sad thing.

¹Even more interesting:

The DHS report calculates that the probability that a migrant will give up trying to cross the border and go home due to stepped-up border enforcement has soared from about 11 percent in 2005 to 58 percent in 2015. Roberts’ version presented at the Cato Institute calculated the change from about 12 percent to nearly 70 percent.

Kazan’s Viva Zapata! (1952) is an American morality tale masquerading as a Mexican biopic. Emliano Zapata (Marlon Brando) is the son of the shabby gentility of Mexican – a proud family name, but no money, no land. Therefore, no wife. With this motivation, he and his brother (Anthony Quinn) lead a rebellion against the local government, taking back land and eventually winning a leading role in the government.

And, in that role, becoming what he most despised.

This is not a movie of grand battles, of strategies and reversals. Betrayals, yes, most often met with gunfire, as we are introduced to the rough justice of spies and betrayal, as well as the myths of the downtrodden rebels and the symbols of freedom. But for all that, through the dusty, dirty war they fight, we learn that heartbreak accompanies such glorious feats; that, if you are not a man, then your role is to bury your man; if you are a farmer, it is not your place to speak.

But the American morality tale? It’s easy to spot, since we’re told point-blank. We see the weak civilian government, eventually overwhelmed by the treasonous military, led by men who believe in the realpolitik of killing one’s enemies at the first opportunity; men laden with their decorations, devoted to little more than their prestige, they slowly destroy everything around them in their avariciousness. As they possess great resources, what are Zapata and his farmers to do?

Lead them into the hills and mountains. His wife, relegated to the desperate woman role, implores him to not take the possible bait of a cache of supplies; his men need a strong leader, she proclaims.

Zapata: They don’t need me anymore.

Wife: They have to be led.

Zapata: Yes, but by each other. A strong man makes a weak people. Strong people don’t need a strong man.

And so we have our central lesson. Concentrate power in a man, and he comes under intense pressure. If he’s lost, then it’s a disaster. Decentralize, and then the loss of a man can mean little.

Or even, as one Mexican general notes,

Sometimes a dead man can be a terrible enemy.

This is not entertainment so much as it is a lesson, perhaps for now as much as for then. It’s not nearly as grim, as nihilistic as Paths of Glory, but its merciless depiction of the mighty abusing the lowly has no touch of romanticism; the dejected are dejected, the dead are buried, if they’re lucky. The women may care for your corpse, your wife will weep, and then it’s time to move on.

This may not be fun, but you won’t feel like you’ve wasted your time if you take the movie seriously.

For Lawfare, Christopher Mirasola reviews the first three picks for the National Security team. Here’s his take on Rep Mike Pompeo (R-KS), nomineee for CIA Director:

Representative Pompeo’s statements are also likely to raise the ire of some members of Congress. He criticized the 2014 “Torture Report” attacking the CIA’s harsh interrogation practices, saying that “the programs being used were within the law [and] within the Constitution.” Earlier this month, he alleged that U.S. Central Command manipulated intelligence to downplay the threat of the Islamic State in Iraq. Pompeo has been a consistent critic of the Obama administration’s nuclear deal with Iran, arguing that sanctions should be extended and alleging that the administration has effectively helped build Iran’s Air Force. He has also repeatedly criticized Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server, calling for her intelligence briefings to be halted and demanding an investigation into so-called quid pro quo arrangements between the State Department and FBI.

Most controversially, Pompeo has made a series of comments regarding the role of Muslim-Americans in combating terrorism. Just over a month after the Boston marathon bombing, he said falsely that “the silence of Muslim leaders has been deafening.” He later told the Wichita Eagle that “Islamic clerics in mosques and the madrassas around the world have an obligation to consistently denounce terrorism done in the name of their faith.”

Nevertheless, the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, Adam Schiff, praised Pompeo as “someone who is willing to listen and engage, both key qualities in a CIA director.” Committee Chairman Devin Nunes was also supportive, saying that “I am confident that his nomination will be widely supported within the CIA and I look forward to his fast approval by the Senate.” And former CIA and NSA Director Michael Hayden, who has been a vocal critic of Trump, said that he was “heartened by the choice.”

I can’t help but wonder if the Democrats’ comments are heartfelt, or if they’re just wishing to be rid of someone who appears to be rather far to the right.

Among other sources, University of California-Santa Cruz is reporting evidence of movement of geological features on Pluto:

Source: NASA/JPL/CalTech

A liquid ocean lying deep beneath Pluto’s frozen surface is the best explanation for features revealed by NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft, according to a new analysis. The idea that Pluto has a subsurface ocean is not new, but the study provides the most detailed investigation yet of its likely role in the evolution of key features such as the vast, low-lying plain known as Sputnik Planitia (formerly Sputnik Planum).

Sputnik Planitia, which forms one side of the famous heart-shaped feature seen in the first New Horizons images, is suspiciously well aligned with Pluto’s tidal axis. The likelihood that this is just a coincidence is only 5 percent, so the alignment suggests that extra mass in that location interacted with tidal forces between Pluto and its moon Charon to reorient Pluto, putting Sputnik Planitia directly opposite the side facing Charon. But a deep basin seems unlikely to provide the extra mass needed to cause that kind of reorientation.

“It’s a big, elliptical hole in the ground, so the extra weight must be hiding somewhere beneath the surface. And an ocean is a natural way to get that,” said Francis Nimmo, professor of Earth and planetary sciences at UC Santa Cruz and first author of a paper on the new findings published November 16 in Nature. Another paper in the same issue, led by James Keane at the University of Arizona, also argues for reorientation and points to fractures on Pluto as evidence that this happened.

The best guess is that the ocean, if it exists, is a water/ammonia mix. Absolutely fascinating.

But what if you have suspicions that New Horizons, the name of this probe, is entirely fictitious? There are others out there, as Newsweek documented more than a year ago. I suppose some people just have no trust of their fellow man. Now, I suppose if they could find the name of a principal investigator on the ownership papers for a Scottish castle….

Kimberly Mok on Treehugger.com discusses one of the most interesting cases to be brought before the Federal courts:

Last week, a group of 21 young people, aged 9 to 20 years, won the right to sue the US government for its actions that cause climate change, when an Oregon federal judge ruled that the plaintiffs’ lawsuit was valid and could proceed to trial.According to Motherboard, the lawsuit, which is being spearheaded by Our Children’s Trust, a civic engagement nonprofit for youth, charges President Obama, the fossil fuel industry, and other federal agencies for violating the plantiffs’ constitutional right to life, liberty, property, and to vital public trust resources, by continuing to use fossil fuels.

It should be fascinating to see how this plays out. Will Congress grant the fossil fuel industry immunity from such suits, as they did for gun manufacturers? Will the suit get national publicity and continue to spark the national discussion concerning what to do about climate change?

In her ruling, US District Judge Ann Aiken wrote that the case is not about “not about proving that climate change is happening or that human activity is driving it”:

This action is of a different order than the typical environmental case. It alleges that defendants’ actions and inactions—whether or not they violate any specific statutory duty—have so profoundly damaged our home planet that they threaten plaintiffs’ fundamental constitutional rights to life and liberty. [..] Federal courts too often have been cautious and overly deferential in the arena of environmental law, and the world has suffered for it.

The plaintiffs counsel has urged President Obama to come to an agreement with a binding court order while he still can, which would certainly give Trump problems. Seeing that Trump was the leader of the shameful SCOTUS blockade, it seems only appropriate to jam a club into his gears. Not to mention it would contribute to species survival.

Florian Egloff warns against legalizing cyber privateering in LawFare:

Think of Corporation A in a country being authorized to investigate Corporation X in another country. Corporation A may just find it convenient to profit from information found about Corporation Y during the investigation authorized against Corporation X. Will the strict controls applied to privateers hold? Maybe in societies with a strong separation of powers and a tradition of checks and balances. But in other countries, where power is not kept as much in check, probably not.

A reader writes concerning sunspots:

Oh boy, more cosmic rays. More cancer?

According to Universe Today, yes:

A paper published in 2007 in the International Journal of Astrobiology looked at data for cancer deaths from around the world for the past 140 years, and found a strong correlation between rises in cancer deaths and the variation over time in the amount of galactic cosmic rays we encounter here on Earth.

In a paper titled, Correlation of a 140-year global time signature in cancer mortality birth cohorts with galactic cosmic ray variation by Dr. David A. Juckett from the Barros Research Institute at Michigan State University, he showed that the amount of deaths due to cancer on a global scale was higher when the background cosmic rays originating from outside the Solar System were more numerous.

The study looked at available cancer death data from the United States, United Kingdom, Australia, Canada and New Zealand for the past 100-140 years. These data were compared with the amount of variations in galactic cosmic rays during the same period, taken from analysis of ice core samples from Greenland and Antarctica.

Dr. Juckett showed that as the amount of cosmic ray activity increased, the number of people who died from cancer was also higher. There are two peaks in cosmic ray activity during this point, around 1800 and 1900, and a low point around 1860. The total deaths due to cancer were highest, though, around 1830 and 1930, and lowest in the 1890’s.

There is a 28-year lag between the increased presence of cosmic rays and the increase in cancer deaths. It’s not so simple as a person being exposed to cosmic rays and then developing cancer immediately afterwards. What is called the “grandmother effect” comes into play; the cosmic rays actually damage the germ cells of one’s parent while that parent is still in the grandmother’s womb.

Fascinating, in a morbid sort of way.

Here’s some election advice from across the pond.

https://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=Jonathan+Pie&qft=+filterui%3avideoage-lt10080&view=detail&mid=C686C1ED5DBDA0572214C686C1ED5DBDA0572214&FORM=VRDGAR

Melissa Breyer on Treehugger.com has assembled a fascinating slideshow of drowned churches. Here’s the first one, a Bulgarian church.

Cool stuff.

The Tehran Times reports on a persistent problem in Tehran, and how the nuclear deal may help clear it up:

The air quality indices [in Tehran] have surged up so much so that all healthy people are likely to experience irritation or discomfort while breathing as well as those with heart and lung condition. …

13 organizations in charge, none held accountable

[Eqbal Shakeri, head of urban development committee of Tehran City Council,] went on to say that some 13 organizations are in charge of dealing with air pollution but none has been held responsible so far.

“No one has ever bothered to apologize the public for the air pollution or even explain what’s happening,” he added.

80% of air pollution caused by cars, motorcycles

Shakeri also pointed out that some 80 percent of the air pollution is caused by cars and motorcycles.

“Following the implementation of the nuclear deal [Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA)] at least we expect the government to provide the country with some 1,000 wagons for the subway system, 400 buses, 20,000 taxis and electric motorcycles,” he added.

AL Monitor’s Changiz M. Varzi reports:

The geographical situation of the capital, which is surrounded by mountains, consumption of low-quality fuel because of international sanctions and industrial pollution have been declared the main reasons for the deaths of 412 citizens in the past 23 days, according to Habib Kashani, a member of Tehran’s municipal council.

On Nov. 15, Kashani accused Iran’s Environmental Protection Organization of “ineffectiveness” and “incompetence,” saying, “The government and the [Tehran] municipality have announced that they are not blameful on this issue. So sole blameful are people who are losing their lives!”

When air pollution is shutting down your schools, you’re endangering your future.

Ever wondered about the Clinton scandal circus? CriticalRationalist on The Daily Kos, who characterizes himself as a lawyer with 30+ years experience responding to a client wishing to discuss the election, talks about the Clinton scandals in the context of the entire Trump debacle:

[The GOP] think[s] Clinton is a “liar” and “corrupt,” but all they know is the propaganda they have been fed for decades by right-wing hate media. They think her speaking fees make her corrupt but couldn’t care less about the fact that Trump stiffed thousands of people who sold him goods and services.  They think she is a liar because she mischaracterized something James Comey said (which he shouldn’t have discussed in the first place), but overlook the daily deluge of lies coming out of Trump’s mouth.  I have followed the Clintons and the right-wing vendetta against them ever since I was in law school 33 years ago. Hate media (Fox, Rush, Savage, Jones, Drudge, Breitbart, Falwell Jr. et al.) use exactly the same propaganda techniques used by Goebbels in the 1930s and by Radio Moscow in the 1970s-1990s, only slicker.  And people eat it up.  In fact, these past few months it was hard to tell the difference between the Russian state-controlled media and Fox News.  Both sounded just like the old communist Radio Moscow, using their usual propaganda techniques, but this time to shamelessly promote Trump and just as shamelessly denigrate Clinton. In reality, Hillary Clinton has dedicated her life to public service, to the betterment of the country.  She is comprehensively knowledgeable about public policy and the world (an in particular is under no illusions about Russia), and knows how to get things done in a bipartisan manner.  She is as honest as any politician can be.  I’ve had a top secret clearance and worked in intelligence, and the email circus was just that.

Which correlates with my far more casual observations.

On Colbert tonight:

Trump Place = Rectal Pump

Curious about the Solar Sunspot Cycle? Spaceweather.com has the lowdown:

Source: Spaceweather.com

SUNSPOT CYCLE AT LOWEST LEVEL IN 5 YEARS: The sun has looked remarkably blank lately, with few dark cores interrupting the featureless solar disk. This is a sign that Solar Minimum is coming. Indeed, sunspot counts have just reached their lowest level since 2011. With respect to the sunspot cycle, you are here:

They go on to explain that we get a different set of risks when the Sun is this quiet.

But repealing the ACA is not going to be a walk in the park, according to Kevin Drum:

So sure, there are more ways to skin the incentive cat than a tax penalty. But I think we’re putting the cart before the horse here. We really ought to be talking about something else: the pre-existing conditions ban. Unlike the individual mandate, which can be repealed by a simple majority because it affects the federal budget, Republicans can’t repeal the pre-existing conditions ban without Democratic votes. And if it’s not repealed, Republicans can’t do much of anything else. As long as the ban is in place, any Republican plan is almost certain to cause total chaos in the health care market.¹ It would be political suicide.

So if Republicans want to do something that’s not political suicide, they need Democratic votes. And that means Democrats have tremendous leverage over the final plan. They can either negotiate for something much better than what Republicans are proposing, or they can simply withhold their votes and leave Republicans between a rock and a hard place: either abandon Obamacare repeal, which would enrage their base, or pass a plan that would cause chaos for the health care industry and for millions of registered voters. This is not leverage to be given up lightly.

Sounds like leverage – that goes both ways, though. If the Democrats have something they really want to pass, then the ACA becomes a hostage in the negotiations.

For those interested in the numbers on money saved on healthcare by the ACA, Fortune‘s Laura Lorenzetti has a report from June of 2016:

The United States will save about $2.6 trillion on health care expenses over a five-year period compared to initial projections made right after the passage of the Affordable Care Act.

Consilience:

We can rely on the consensus on human-caused global warming because its foundation is a consilience of evidence – many independent observations pointing to a single, coherent conclusion.

John Cook, Letters to the Editor, Skeptical Inquirer (November/December, 2016, offline only)

Also, your correspondent also had a letter published in the same column. A silly bit of fluff, but I’m tickled.

Heard in a meeting today at work:

… inverse, converse, uh …, oh yeah, perverse. This is the perverse of …

He was more than a little annoyed with the phenomena in question.

Iran will be one of the most impacted nations by the US election results, but according to the Tehran Times, it makes no difference to Supreme Leader Khamenei:

Trump had raised the prospect of pulling out of the nuclear deal reached in July 2015 between Iran and six world powers, including the U.S.

“Unlike some of those in the world who have either been bemoaning or celebrating the results of the American elections, we are neither bemoaning nor celebrating because the results make no difference to us. Nor do we have worries, and by the grace of God, we are ready to encounter any likely incident,” the Leader asserted while addressing thousands of people.

The no-difference stance on the U.S. presidential seat makes more sense once seen through a historical lens.

The Leader noted as of the 1979 revolution, Washington, regardless of who was president, has been hostile to the Iranian nation.

“We have no judgment about this election (the U.S. presidential election) because America is the same America, and over the past 37 years either of the two parties which has been in office not only has done no good (to the Iranian nation), but has always been an evil to the Iranian nation.”

Ayatollah Khamenei also rapped the U.S. for its policies in the Middles East and wars it has waged against regional countries.

“In recent years, the U.S. has spent its people’s money on dishonorable wars, whose result is the massacre of tens of thousands of civilians and destruction of infrastructures in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, and Yemen,” the Leader stated.

President Rouhani also sees no change in plans, according to Vos Iz Neias?, a Yiddish news source:

Trump’s much publicized criticism of the nuclear deal and his campaign vows to renegotiate the terms and increase enforcement of the deal that put off the threat of Tehran developing atomic weapons has sent jitters across Iran.

“If a president is changed here and there, it has no impact on the will of Iran,” Rouhani said in a speech broadcast live on state TV from the city of Karaj, where he was visiting. “Based on the deal, we implement our commitment.”

Without mentioning Trump by name, Rouhani said that “the world is not under the will of a single individual and party. The reality of the world will impose many things on extremists.”

“Nobody should imagine it is possible to play with Iran,” he added.

The former commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps is, perhaps, slightly less unperturbed, the Tehran Times reports:

“I am not optimistic, but we have to wait and see what he will do in practice in the incoming months and year,” said Major General Yahya Rahim Safavi on the sidelines of the International Conference on Geopolitical Crises in the Islamic World.

Rahim Safavi pointed out that it is still premature to “judge Mr. Trump’s policies, because he may change his mind about his campaign remarks.”

The overall impression is that Trump will pursue an economic agenda rather than practice an expansionist policy, the military veteran said.

“He’s a businessman and pays more attention to the economy and America’s internal affairs,” he noted.

Given the utter unpredictability of Trump, the Iranians have good reason to be nervous. That and the foam-at-the-mouth temperamentality of the GOP these days.

ABC News is reporting that Officer Yanez will be prosecuted for the fatal shooting of Philando Castilo:

A Minnesota prosecutor says the police officer who shot and killed a black motorist in suburban St. Paul in July had no good reason to use deadly force.

Ramsey County Attorney John Choi announced Wednesday that he is filing second-degree manslaughter charges against St. Anthony police officer Jeronimo Yanez.

From a City of Falcon Heights e-mail:

The City of Falcon Heights respects the decision of the County Attorney to pursue criminal prosecution of Officer Yanez based on findings from the State’s Bureau of Criminal Apprehension.

We have heard concerns since the shooting of Mr. Castile from residents and non-residents about issues involving current law enforcement procedures in our community and we will continue to work diligently to review and address those concerns.

We have and will continue to have frank discussions with leaders from the City of St. Anthony Village about those procedures, and work with the City to develop a plan to address them.

Along with the cities of St. Anthony Village and Lauderdale, Falcon Heights will continue to be a part of the tri-city workgroup to review the use of officer worn body cameras.  Falcon Heights has also established an Inclusion and Policing Task Force.  The Task Force will address the topics of police policies, procedures, and training.

Our goals are to unify our community around a plan to address the concerns we have heard since this tragic incident, and to work to restore trust between law enforcement officers, and the residents and city visitors whom they serve.

I have not attended the informational meetings Falcon Heights has hosted on the matter, so I don’t know how much has come out on the procedures to follow when a motorist declares they have a legally permitted weapon in the car.

A friend sent me a mail pointing at an article by David Greenfield in FrontPage Mag, a conservative magazine. It’s a bit interesting in that it reminds me of a parasite on the flank of an animal – it’s trying to hijack this election’s phenomenon for its own purposes.

This is not an article of close analysis, nor does it pretend to be. Rather, it reaches for lyricism as it attempts to describe the Trump voter bloc. No doubt it gets some things right – but as it goes along, it certainly has an ulterior motive. Here’s a chunk:

It’s midnight in America. The day before fifty million Americans got up and stood in front of the great iron wheel that had been grinding them down. They stood there even though the media told them it was useless. They took their stand even while all the chattering classes laughed and taunted them.

That the fringe-right – and possibly Donald Trump – cannot be bothered by the idea of anthropocentric climate change is not unknown. How they’ve fought that idea, though, may be – and may have knock-on effects. Skeptical Inquirer publishes an interview with climatologist and geophysicist Michael Mann, who made his career with the “hockey stick” of climate change. Since SI concerns itself with proper skepticism, which is skepticism informed by science, the interview concerns itself primarily with the improper, amateur skepticism Mann has faced over the years. The interviewer is physicist Mark Boslough

The original northern hemisphere hockey stick graph of Mann, Bradley & Hughes 1999.
Source: Wikipedia

Mark Boslough: … Why do you think they have they singled you out from the scientific community as their poster child for sustained vilification?

Michael Mann: Well—there are certainly other leading climate scientists who have been frequent targets of climate change deniers. But I suppose there are a few things that are different in my case. For one, I am directly associated with one of the most prominent graphs in all of climate science, the “Hockey Stick” curve that my coauthors and I published back in the late 1990s. That curve became an icon in the climate change debate. It told a simple story—that the warming of the planet we’re experiencing is unprecedented. That made it a threat to fossil fuel interests and, as I detail in my book The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars, it made me a direct target of the industry-funded climate change denial machine. The Eye of Sauron was fixed on me. Rather than shrink from the battle, I chose to fight back—by defending my work in the public sphere and by devoting myself to public outreach and education. That no doubt further antagonized climate change deniers. Ultimately, they provided me a platform for informing the public discourse over what is arguably the greatest challenge we have faced as a civilization. I consider that a blessing, not a curse.

Literature research published in Skeptical Inquirer has indicated that > 97% of climate scientists agree with the anthropogenic climate change hypothesis – and that’s a conservative estimate. It’s safe to say that there is no major controversy within the scientific community on the topic, although there are always discussions about data collection and a thousand other topics. With this in mind, it’s a bit mind-boggling that fossil-fuel corporations and their politicians continue a fight that, frankly, endangers the continued existence of this country – and humanity. And how do they fight?

Boslough: … Do you think you were the main target of Sauron’s initial wrath because you were first author or because deniers mistook you for easy pickings?

Mann: That’s right. Interestingly, much of the focus was on me alone, rather than my two senior coauthors, Ray Bradley and Malcolm Hughes. I suspect the reason was two-fold. I was the first author and was quoted in most of the media coverage, so I was the scientist most directly associated with the research. But additionally, I was viewed as far more vulnerable to attack, as I was only a post-doc at the time, a far cry from the job security of a tenured faculty position (which both of my coauthors had). The climate change denial machine wanted to bring me down, to destroy my professional career before it even got going, to make an example of me for other younger scientists who might too consider speaking out about climate change. In The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars, I refer to this as the “Serengeti Strategy.”

Boslough: Seems like this strategy backfired spectacularly in your case. Have they successfully destroyed anyone else’s career? Are they still pursuing the Serengeti method, or did they learn their lesson?

Mann: Well, yes—I like to think the hyenas tangled with the wrong zebra.

It’s worth talking about the assumptions behind this interview. In science, it is not – or should not be – about the scientists, but about the facts. The goal is to establish the truth about some hypothesis, using the strongest known methods in an attempt to pin down the slipperiest of targets, a the true/false property of an assertion about reality. By removing the personalities from the debate, the targeting, even assassination of proponents and critics, and focusing on the only factors that really matter, we have a chance to ascertain truth about reality.

What Mann describes are the actions of entities that inhabit other spheres, other sectors of societies, doesn’t it? People who think it’s all politics, that if enough of the populace believes their tale of reality, why, then reality will conform to their expectations. People who may think that nothing fundamental ever really changes. People for whom things, not principles, are the most important (but that’s for tomorrow’s post). Perhaps, most dangerously, people who think their God positively favors them, so how could burning fossil fuels be bad?

When men with power attack those who bear bad tidings, what negative impacts does that have on the field?

Mann: I suspect the real impact of the attacks is more difficult to detect. On the one hand, scientists coming into the field now appear to be more mobilized, more willing to confront misinformation and disinformation head on, more willing to engage in the public discourse, whether through social media or other means. But, what I worry about, are the young scientists we are losing to other fields, scientists confronted by a choice between those areas of science perceived as “safe” (e.g., dark matter, quarks, and black holes) and “unsafe” (e.g., climate change and other areas of environmental research) from attacks by vested interests and the politicians who do their bidding.

Unfortunately, given the general lack of science background in the older generations of Americans, I doubt it’s possible to run off such incompetents as Lamar Smith of Texas, who has been responsible for many of these shameful actions. That he permits the contributions he’s received from the fossil fuel industry to dictate his views is corruption; that he attempts to ruin the careers of men and women who are doing more for the world than himself is shameful.

It’s a good, if depressing, interview, well worth the read, and I have to admire the energy and spunk of Dr. Mann. For that matter, Skeptical Inquirer can be a thought provoking magazine, bringing a scientific viewpoint to subjects that are sometimes short on such viewpoints. I’ve subscribed for decades, and have learned a lot.

Israel’s been riding the Trump roller-coaster since the U.S. election, according to Ben Caspit of AL Monitor:

Ever since the morning of Nov. 9, various spokespeople for the Israeli right have competed among themselves to find the most enthusiastic superlatives to describe the president-elect and to sketch out settlement-expansion plans for immediate action. They wanted to strike while the American iron was still red hot.

Naftali Bennett, the chairman of HaBayit HaYehudi, overshadowed everyone when he made the festive assertion that the results of the US election mean that “the era of a Palestinian state is over.”

The ride up the initial riser is exhilerating as the shadow of Clinton fades from the scene. But then comes the long walk down the mountain:

The settlers released a video clip in which Trump confidante David Friedman, considered the leading candidate for American ambassador to Israel, spoke behind closed doors with leaders of the settlement movement about Trump’s pro-Israel platform. Listing all of its advantages, Friedman noted that even if Israel annexes Judea and Samaria, Jews would still make up just 65% of the population between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea. In other words, it would be wrong to say that Israel would no longer be a Jewish state.