Rick Perry's Climate-Science Whoppers Not Shared by Texas State Climatologist

Texas Governor and GOP Presidential front-runner Rick Perry:

“I do believe that the issue of global warming has been politicized. I think there are a substantial number of scientists who have manipulated data so that they will have dollars rolling into their projects. I think we’re seeing it almost weekly or even daily, scientists who are coming forward and questioning the original idea that man-made global warming is what is causing the climate to change. Yes, our climates change. They’ve been changing ever since the earth was formed. But I do not buy into, that a group of scientists, who in some cases were found to be manipulating this data.”

 WaPo's "FactChecker" blog quickly assessed Perry's claim on two key points--first, that climate scientists have manipulated data in order to obtain funding for research, and second, that a growing number of climate scientists are questioning the consensus of climate change.  In both cases, Perry's claim earned WaPo's "four Pinocchios" category.  To earn that, Perry had to go beyond the lesser sins of "shading the truth", "significant omissions and/or exaggerations", and even "significant factual error and/or obvious contradictions" (this last covered in their "three Pinocchios" category).  No, Perry's four-Pinocchio fabrications were graded by the WaPo in a single word:  "Whoppers". 


Perhaps not surprisingly, Perry can't get any help on his claims even from his own Texas State Climatologist, a Bush appointee and Professor of Atmospheric Sciences at Texas A&M University.  The scientist, John Nielson-Gammon, writes an excellent blog at the Houston Chronicle.  I'm guessing neither Perry nor his staff have read it.  If they had, the Governor might have a much fuller understanding of the very-real nature of anthropogenic global warming, and he also might better understand how climate science came to be so politicized:

Most scientific research is not politicized. So it hums along, with funding levels driven by scientific opportunity, agency and societal needs, and opportunities for commercialization.

Climate science is not like that. The present and recent past have seen all three possible funding consequences of the politicization of science. For the sake of argument, I’ll broad-brush Democrats as being in favor of reductions in Tyndall (greenhouse) gas emissions and Republicans as being opposed to reductions in Tyndall gas emissions.

Back in the late 1990s and early 2000s, Democrats generally saw global warming as a looming problem requiring action and supported increased amounts of climate research to help pin down the magnitude of the problem and guide policy actions. Meanwhile, Republicans generally saw action to curb global warming as premature and unjustified and supported increased amounts of climate research as an excuse to delay policy actions. With strong support from both sides, climate science boomed.

The outcome of the bulk of the research to date has been to confirm global warming as a looming problem requiring action. Thus Democrats continue to support climate research, for the original reasons as well as to lend further support to policy actions. Meanwhile, Republican support for climate research has declined tremendously as most new scientific results making the news confirm the magnitude of the problem and tilt public opinion toward policy actions. Inaction is now better served by as little new science as possible.

In other words, global warming deniers had no problem with politicization of science so long as it served the purpose of delaying any form of policy change.  But once 98% of the scientists involved had reached consensus that global warming was real, and that humans were a significant cause of it--only then did politicization of climate science become an objectionable issue for Perry and his fellow Republicans.

The Conversion of Osama bin Laden

Neither the short- nor long-term legacy of America's killing of Osama bin Ladin are clear.  Never the less, it is possible to make some fragmentary observations that I think will be relevant going forward.

In no particular order:

• Put most plainly, OBL is not as important as he once was, nor is al Qaeda.  This is not so much because the capabilities of AQ have been diminished (they have), but because the events of the Arab spring have eclipsed AQ, and OBL, just as they have eclipsed (to a lesser extent) US dominance/relevance in the region.

• Speaking of the "Arab Spring", it is highly likely that both the US administration and OBL viewed the Arab Spring in the same light:  unwanted.  I think they largely shared that view.

• The attempt to deny a martyrdom shrine to OBL by burying him at sea won't work.  The US strike on Obama's compound was not just a killing.  It was actually more of a conversion.  What that conversion will be depends largely on how the US behaves in the region going forward.

• For US Middle East policy, OBL's death will provide fuel for both sides of a debate: those wishing to remove the US from Iraq, Afghanistan, etc., and those wanting to stay engaged there.  One side will point to the nominal mission being accomplished.  The other will see it as proof that progress in our wars, occupations, and "kinetic military actions" is possible, and that we should "stay the course".  Regardless, it is likely that OBL's death will be viewed as general support for the thesis that American militarism works.

• Ultimately, the meaning of OBL's death and the US role in it has yet to be established.  However, if there is a significant shift in US policy towards disengagement, his death will have been highly significant and beneficial to the nation he attacked on 9/11.  If, on the other hand, the US continues its current policies and actions unchanged, America by its own actions will render OBL's death meaningless. After all, how important could it be if it changes nothing?    Ultimately, the true meaning of the event is what the US makes of it through its own actions--not the event itself.

Hard Times

Washington's bipartisan response to joblessness continues down the wrong and damaging road of austerity strategies and budget cuts.  

I can't help but be reminded of Stephen Foster's classic "Hard Times Come Again No More."  Written prior to the American Civil War, the song is frequently treated as a historical piece.   It shouldn't be--the theme of economic despair and extreme disparities between rich and poor is once again the soundtrack to our current American economic folly.   Here are two covers for this remarkable song.  First, Mavis Staples.

Let us pause in life's pleasures and count its many tears, 

While we all sup sorrow with the poor;

There's a song that will linger forever in our ears;

Oh Hard times come again no more.

Chorus:Tis the song, the sigh of the weary,

Hard Times, hard times, come again no more

Many days you have lingered around my cabin door;

Oh hard times come again no more.

While we seek mirth and beauty and music light and gay,

There are frail forms fainting at the door;

Though their voices are silent, their pleading looks will say

Oh hard times come again no more.

(Chorus)

There's a pale drooping maiden who toils her life away,

With a worn heart whose better days are o'er:

Though her voice would be merry, 'tis sighing all the day,

Oh hard times come again no more.

(Chorus)

Tis a sigh that is wafted across the troubled wave,

Tis a wail that is heard upon the shore

Tis a dirge that is murmured around the lowly grave

Oh hard times come again no more.

(Chorus)

Another excellent version by the supergroup composed of James Taylor, Yo-Yo Ma, Edgar Meyer, and Mark O'Connor.  

The Next Disappointment: Obama to Back Simpson-Bowles as Budget Debate Starter

Booman: "I don't get disappointed by a whole lot because my expectations are so low."

And when the president makes budget cuts at a time when increased federal spending is one of the only ways to reduce unemployment, of course it is frustrating. But I think it shows a degree of political immaturity to not understand that the president is going to take credit for brokering a deal that both lowers the deficit and keeps the government open. The alternative wouldn't have helped unemployment either. The alternative wouldn't have prevented a lot of people from being hurt or inconvenienced. 

Part of what is annoying me is that everything is being put through this prism where government spending goes in and a rainbow of awesome stuff comes out. Yes, in the particular situation we finds [sic] ourselves in, more government spending makes sense. But, as a general matter, our government spends way too much fucking money, which is why we are trillions of dollars in debt with no end in sight to the bleeding. When I hear people moaning that the president is legitimizing budget cuts, it just rubs me the wrong way.

Well yeah, if you view Obama as nothing more than "a broker"--a disinterested neutral party who's sole task is to establish an agreement between two competing sides, then he did everything he should have done.  But we didn't elect Obama to be a neutral broker.  And liberals didn't expect that Obama would be using the other side's talking points.  We didn't expect that he'd simply abandon our own arguments and inhabit theirs.  If calling out Obama and most other Democratic leaders on that point rubs Booman the wrong way, I'm very sorry about that.  Get used to it.

While Booman does see the need for deficit spending now, his belief that government spends too much generally is both unsubstantiated (at least by Booman)  and untimely.  Now is not the time to worry about deficits.  One reason liberals are angry, I think, is that there are a bunch of economists out there who strongly disagree with all the deficit kool-aid being drunk by people who should know better--including Obama and most of the current Democratic leadership. Liberal economists tend to see the deficit scam, including efforts like the Simpson-Bowles Deficit Commission, as economically harmful.  Premature deficit-reduction measures, they argue, are highly damaging to an economy in which true unemployment is hanging in the vicinity of 16% or so (I haven't seen the latest U6 unemployment number but it is somewhere in that area).  Instead, they see the entire deficit argument as an attack on vital socioeconomic institutions that huge numbers of Americans depend on.  But such economists, like this one, either can't or won't be heard by Obama:

The Simpson-Bowles Commission, just established by the president, will no doubt deliver an attack on Social Security and Medicare dressed up in the sanctimonious rhetoric of deficit reduction. (Back in his salad days, former Senator Alan Simpson was a regular schemer to cut Social Security.) The Obama spending freeze is another symbolic sacrifice to the deficit gods. Most observers believe neither will amount to much, and one can hope that they are right. But what would be the economic consequences if they did? The answer is that a big deficit-reduction program would destroy the economy, or what remains of it, two years into the Great Crisis.