All Tricks, No Treat

Evidently the Republican caucus will boycott a committee vote on S. 1733 (PDF), which aims to reduce GHG emissions. The boycott is among several procedural obstructions that Republicans have in their trickbook:

Boxer cannot hold the markup unless at least two Republicans show up, and EPW ranking member James Inhofe (R-Okla.) signaled that he has unanimous support among the panel’s minority members to boycott the session until they get more data on the legislation from U.S. EPA and the Congressional Budget Office.

Inhofe said he will wait for Boxer to file an official notice of the markup — expected today — before responding with his own declaration of the GOP’s markup strategy.

Just Around the Corner

Raymond Pierrehumbert (U Chicago, Geophysical Sciences) has a must-read open letter to his colleague Steven Levitt. It’s direct, simple, and collegial — in a fuck you kinda way. Here, see for yourself:

By now there have been many detailed dissections of everything that is wrong with the treatment of climate in Superfreakonomics , but what has been lost amidst all that extensive discussion is how really simple it would have been to get this stuff right. The problem wasn’t necessarily that you talked to the wrong experts or talked to too few of them. The problem was that you failed to do the most elementary thinking needed to see if what they were saying (or what you thought they were saying) in fact made any sense. If you were stupid, it wouldn’t be so bad to have messed up such elementary reasoning, but I don’t by any means think you are stupid. That makes the failure to do the thinking all the more disappointing.

You’re not stupid. You’re just an imbecile. (I love to watch the big kids battle it out!)

Prof. Pierrehumbert kindly provides a helpful map from Levitt’s office to his own, should they ever decide to beer summit. Chicago residents, please call me if you catch them sneaking a pint.

Carbon and the Coffee Bean

Whee. This is fun. Size comparison between a carbon atom and a coffee bean. Pesky little bugger.

Goose and Gander

On this fine Friday afternoon, how about partaking in a bit of “Gender Bias Bingo.”

Nonstop Silliness

Levitt and Dubner apparently don’t back down. Here’s their article from Wednesday’s USA Today. I’m sure they’re selling a lot of books, but in doing so, they’re being disingenuous: acting one way and simultaneously decrying what they’re doing; doing ethics and claiming not to do ethics. For what follows, I’ll ignore their scientific claims. As I’ve said, I’m not qualified to criticize the climate science. Let’s just start here, with their scenario:

Imagine for a moment that a terrible, unforeseen threat to humankind had suddenly arisen, one so grave that it endangered the very future of the planet. Two teams of respected scientists immediately set to work, trying to find a solution to the impending disaster.

The first set of scientists returned with a potential solution, but it had some shortcomings. It was expensive, with a price tag in the trillions of dollars. It also required nearly every human being on the planet to change his or her behavior in fundamental ways. And even if the scientists’ scheme worked, it would take decades for the benefits to be felt.

The second set of scientists returned with a very different answer. Their solution cost less than one-thousandth as much to implement and did not require anyone to change his behavior. The scientists could get their solution up and running in roughly a year, with the benefits to be felt immediately. And if the simple fix turned out to not work as expected, it was quickly and easily reversible.

Fair enough. Fun example. From what I can tell, it has nothing to do with climate science, but okay. Deltoid has the full scoop on why it’s a terrible comparison.* I’ll just mention a few points…

Red in Tooth and Claw

Taylor Mitchell, a young singer-songwriter, has died from her injuries after being mauled by coyotes while on a nature hike. Condolences to the family.

Endanger Mouse

Dave Cherney notes that a recent lawsuit by the Center for Biological Diversity seeks to list five different species of Pika. As Cherney notes, what makes this lawsuit unique is that the Center is claiming that the sole threat to the Pika is climate change. Surmising that no feasible management strategy could be adopted to address this problem, Cherney then speculates that perhaps this is primarily a symbolic battle.

Ooh-eck. Ooh-fiddle.

I’m no lawyer, but I suspect there’s more to it than sheer symbolism. Concrete management strategies may not emerge out of a ruling, true; but if it can be demonstrated in court that climate change is the primary mover, such a ruling will either give Interior greater jurisdiction and justification to regulate emissions, just as EPA does with pesticides (and maybe soon GHG emissions), or it will result in a re-examination of the scope of the act. Indeed, the Center played a similar card a few years ago with EPA.

Curly Wants His Money Back

Steve McIntyre gives the impression in his recent post that I somehow think peer review is a closed system. He doesn’t say as much, but I gather that he assumes I don’t attribute much weight to the role of blogs in the peer review system. Here’s what he has to say, specifically regarding my comments:

Roger Pielke Jr had opined hopefully that this concession would finally settle at least one small point in paleoclimate. Pielke said that “it looks like this dispute will in fact be resolved unequivocally through the peer-reviewed literature, which for all of its faults, is the media of record for scientific claims and counterclaims”. Pielke was obviously aware of the role of blogs (both Climate Audit and in Finland) in this dispute and was here focusing more on the fact that Kaufman was admitting the upside down use in a formal venue, rather than the role of the journals in extracting the admission from Kaufman. This point was misconstrued by Ben Hale here who interpreted Roger’s post as evidence that the Kaufman error had been detected and resolved by journal peer review and due diligence, when that’s not what happened at all. (I posted a comment at Hale’s to this effect.)

I added the colorful language. More after the jump…

Pock Party

Environmental Graffiti has a pretty nice collection of images depicting damages from large-scale mining projects.

New Blog

Dave Cherney has a new blog: The Counteroffensive. Go offend him.