I don't buy all the hype that the internet is even the primary culprit of the demise of journalism. The primary culprit is the same as it is all over the country, in every industry and in government: equity extraction.
Let me explain, in short: when executives expect unrealistic profits of 20% and higher per annum on businesses something has got to give. It's an unnatural and unsustainable growth rate. For the first ten or so years of a small to medium size company's life? Sure. But when you are 3M, or GE? Unrealistic and ultimately impossible.
So, when such rates cannot be achieved by organic growth in the business, executives start shaving off perceived fat and before they know it they're cutting off the muscle and then shaving off bone chips. And when they've gotten to the bone chips they borrow other people's money to buy new companies, load up those companies with debt and extract equity form them and then because it looks like the parent is still growing award themselves huge bonuses. It's a shell game.
That is what has happened to the news industry in America. The excessive obsession with unnaturally high profits has led to a vicious circle of cutting budgets, providing less services, which is then followed by even more drastic cuts. The local San Antonio paper is a great example of this. Twenty years ago there were two large dailies in my hometown. Both competed with each other for real scoops. Both had book reviews by local writers, providing local jobs. Both covered the local arts and sports scene. Both covered local politics in depth and local and state news in depth. Both had vigorous investigative teams. Both had bureaus in Mexico and both had offices and reporters on the ground in DC.
And then corner offices of Gannet and Harte-Hanks were populated with Kinsey-esque managers and the rout was on ... So, today, San Antonio has one daily that is as flimsy and tiny as the local alternative ... And 80% of this happened before ... the internet. All in the name of higher industry profits--not some overwhelming fear of the world wide inter-tubes. So, who's profiting? Certainly not the intellectual vigor of the locals? And certainly not the writers who are all now 'journalism entreprenuers.' The only people who profited are the executives who obsessed over profits, to lard up their own bonus pool ...
You can provide a public service with small profits for a long, long time, but if you demand large ones you will destroy it. Just ask the big banks.
Monday, December 28, 2009
Yes, Yemen Has Oil
Yes, Yemen has oil.
The Middle Eastern nation - in the south of the Arabian Peninsula, bordering the Arabian Sea, Gulf of Aden, and Red Sea - has been exporting a couple of billion dollars worth of crude oil per year.
But it's oil supplies are shrinking rapidly, and may be totally depleted within 10 years.
As the Yemen Observer notes:
Yemeni crude oil exports decreased to $1.5 billion during the fiscal period from January –October of 2009, compared with $4.2 billion during the same period of 2008, a decrease of $2.7 billion, the Central Bank of Yemen reported.
And the World Tribune points out:
The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace said Yemen was rapidly losing its crude oil reserves.
In a report, Carnegie said Yemeni oil exports, a key source of foreign currency, declined from 450,000 barrels per day in 2003 to 280,000 in early 2009, Middle East Newsline reported.
"Barring any major new discoveries, energy experts generously estimate that Yemen's oil exports will cease in 10 years," the report, titled "Yemen: Avoiding a Downward Spiral," said.
Friday, December 25, 2009
Thursday, December 24, 2009
Princeton Economist and Computer Scientists Show that Derivatives Are Inherently Vulnerable to Fraud
As I have previously noted, credit default swaps are destabilizing for the economy. And the models used to evaluate financial instruments - such as the Gaussian copula formula for CDOs - are inherently flawed.
Now, Princeton University economists and computer scientists have demonstrated that financial derivatives are also inherently vulnerable to fraudulent pricing.
PhysOrg summarizes Princeton's findings:
In a result that may have implications for financial regulation, researchers from computer science and economics have revealed potentially impenetrable problems with the pricing of financial derivatives. They show that sellers of these investments could purposefully include pieces of bad risk that no buyer could detect even with the most powerful computers.
The research focused on collateralized debt obligations, or CDOs, an investment tool that combines many mortgages with the promise of spreading out and lowering the risk of default. The team examined what would happen if a seller
knew that some mortgages were "lemons" and structured a package of CDOs
to benefit himself. They found that the manipulation may be impossible
for buyers to detect either at time of sale or later when the derivative loses money.
The team consists of Sanjeev Arora, director of Princeton's Center for Computational Intractability, his colleague Boaz Barak, economics professor Markus Brunnermeier, and computer science graduate student Rong Ge.
It is now standard wisdom that a major culprit in the 2008 financial meltdown was use of simplistic mathematical models of risk at financial firms. This paper,
released as a working draft Oct. 15, suggests that the problems may go deeper.
"We are cautioning that even if you have the right model it's not easy to price derivatives," Arora said. "Making the models more complicated will not make these effects go away, even for computationally sophisticated."
Arora noted that the problem arises from asymmetric information between buyers and sellers, and goes against conventional wisdom in economic theory, which holds that derivatives reduce the negative effects of such unequal information.
"Standard economics emphasizes that securitization can mitigate the cost of
asymmetric information," Brunnermeier said. "We stress that certain derivative securities introduce additional complexity and thus a new layer of asymmetric information that can be so severe it overturns the initial advantage."
Brunnermeier noted that the finding came from combining computer science and finance, which has not been done before but has the potential for further insights. “I anticipate that both fields can enrich each other,” he said.
Liberals and Conservatives Question Constitutionality of Healthcare Legislation
Both progressives and conservatives question the constitutionality of the healthcare bill. Specifically, people from across the aisle say that the government cannot force people to buy private health insurance.
On the left, progressives such as law school professor Sheldon Laskin, anti-war activist David Swanson, and Miles Mogulescu are calling the bill authoritarian and unconstitutional.
On the right, Senators John Ensign, Mike Johanns, Lindsay Graham and Jim DeMint and the state attorneys general of Michigan, Washington, South Carolina, and perhaps other several other states are contesting the constitutionality of the mandatory insurance provision in the healthcare bill.
Wednesday, December 23, 2009
Make AIG's Emails Public
Call or write your Congressional and Senate representatives and tell them that you're joining the following people in demanding that all of AIG's emails to be made public, so that we can gain insight into what really caused the financial crisis:
- William K. Black, Associate Professor of Economics and Law at the University of Missouri – Kansas City, and the former head S&L regulator
- Former New York Attorney General and governor Elliot Spitzer (and see this)
- Frank Partnoy, Professor of law at the University of San Diego
- Leading Christian liberal, author of Rediscovering Values: On Wall Street, Main Street, and Your Street--A Moral Compass for the New Economy, and Editor-in-Chief of Sojourners, Jim Wallis
- Television personality Dylan Ratigan
Hillary Clinton: We'll Still Be In Afghanistan in 50 or 60 Years
On December 1st, President Obama talked about withdrawing U.S. troops from Afghanistan within 18 months.
Everyone now knows that there is no firm withdrawal date from Afghanistan. See this and this.
But in testimony to the Senate Armed Services Committee on December 2nd, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton actually gave a much longer horizon for the presence of U.S. troops in America:
Senator UDALL.— So, in an ideal world, we would get the job done militarily in the short term; in the medium and long term, we would have a presence in the region, economically, diplomacy, and politically.
Secretary CLINTON. Well, as we have with so many other countries— obviously, we have troops in a limited number of countries around the world; some have been there for 50, 60 years, but we have long-term economic assistance and development programs in many others. And we think that’s a likely outcome in both Afghanistan and Pakistan, that we would be there with a long-term commitment.
Does this mean that U.S. troops will be in Afghanistan in 50 year?
On the surface, Clinton's statement could be interpreted to mean that troops will leave sooner, but that America will have long-term economic assistance and development programs in Afghanistan for many decades to come.
However, U.S. charities working in Afghanistan report that they are subject to Pentagon sponsorship and control, and so the Afghani people view them as part of the U.S. military (which hampers their aid work).
Therefore, whether or not troops will remain in Afghanistan for a half century or more, the Afghani people and the rest of the world may consider it a permanent occupation.
Remember also that - while the U.S. government has promised to withdraw by December 31, 2011 from Iraq - the U.S. is building numerous permanent military bases in that country. (see this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, and this). So talk is cheap.
Tuesday, December 22, 2009
The Real Reason Newspapers Are Losing Money, And Why Bailing Out Failing Newspapers Would Create Moral Hazard in the Media
Conventional wisdom is that the Internet is responsible for destroying the profits of traditional print media like newspapers.
But Michael Moore and Sean Paul Kelley are blaming the demise of newspapers on simple greed.
Michael Moore said in September:
It’s not the Internet that has killed newspapers ...
Instead, he said, it’s corporate greed. “These newspapers have slit their own throats,” he said. “Good riddance.”
Moore said that newspapers, bought up by corporations in the last generation, have pursued profits at the expense of news gathering. By basing their businesses on advertising over circulation, newspaper owners have neglected their true economic base and core constituency, he said...
And Moore cited newspapers like those in Baltimore or Detroit, his home town, with firing reporters that cover subjects that affect the community.
Ultimately, he said, this was self-defeating. It would be like GM deciding to discourage people from learning how to drive, he said.
“It’s their own greed, their own stupidity,” he said...
Similarly, Sean Paul Kelley writes:
Moral Hazard for Newspapers
There has been talk of bailing out newspapers for months.
But the newspapers have largely driven themselves into the ground with their never-ending drive for higher profits, which led to a reduction in news bureaus, investigation and real reporting, and an increase in reliance on government and corporate press releases.
The newspapers made a speculative gamble that reducing real reporting and replacing it with puff pieces would increase its profits, just as the giant banks made speculative gambles on subprime mortgages, derivatives, and other junk, and largely abandoned the boring, traditional business of depository banking.
Bailing out these newspapers would be a form of moral hazard equivalent to bailing out the giant banks. Instead, we should let the bad gamblers lose, and make room for companies that will actually serve a public need.
The banking industry has become more and more consolidated, which has decreased financial stability.
Likewise, Dan Rather points out that “roughly 80 percent” of the media is controlled by no more than six, and possibly as few as four, corporations. As I wrote in July:
This fact has been documented for years, as shown by the following must-see charts prepared by:
***
This image gives a sense of the decline in diversity in media ownership over the last couple of decades:
If traditional newspaper companies are bailed out, they will be encouraged to continue their business-as-usual, and new, fresh media voices will face a handicap to competition (just as the small banks are now unable to compete fairly against the too big to fails).
We need more real reporting in this country, not less. Bailing out the traditional media will create more consolidation, just as it has in the banking industry.
The last thing we need is moral hazard in media.
What Do Readers Want?
As I wrote in September:
President Obama said yesterday:
I am concerned that if the direction of the news is all blogosphere, all opinions, with no serious fact-checking, no serious attempts to put stories in context, that what you will end up getting is people shouting at each other across the void but not a lot of mutual understanding.But as Dan Rather pointed out in July, the quality of journalism in the mainstream media has eroded considerably, and news has been corporatized, politicized, and trivialized...
No wonder trust in the news media is crumbling.
Indeed, people want change - that's why we voted for Obama - but as Newseek's Evan Thomas admitted:
By definition, establishments believe in propping up the existing order. Members of the ruling class have a vested interest in keeping things pretty much the way they are. Safeguarding the status quo, protecting traditional institutions, can be healthy and useful, stabilizing and reassuring....
"If you are of the establishment persuasion (and I am). . . ."
So traditional newspapers are also losing readers to the extent they are writing puff pieces instead of writing the kinds of things people want to read: hard-hitting stories about what is going on in the country and the world.
Finally, as I wrote in March, the whole Internet-versus-traditional-media discussion misses the deeper truth:
The popularity of some reliable internet news sources are growing by leaps and bounds. For example, web news sources which run hard-hitting investigative news stories on the economy - and do not simply defer to Bernanke, Geithner, Summers and other people "of the establishment persuasion" - are gaining more and more readers.The whole debate about blogs versus mainstream media is nonsense.
In fact, many of the world's top PhD economics professors and financial advisors have their own blogs...
The same is true in every other field: politics, science, history, international relations, etc.
So what is "news"? What the largest newspapers choose to cover? Or what various leading experts are saying - and oftentimes heatedly debating one against the other?
It is not because it is some new, flashy media. It's because people want to know what is going on ... and some of the best reporting can now be found on the web.
Subtle, Unintentional Propaganda?
If there are bailouts of the newspaper industry, will the government take ownership of the media corporations, as it has in AIG and some of the giant banks?
Will that - in turn - lead to a situation in which the government representatives subtly and innocently censors anti-government stories? After all, the object of criticism might be the employer or friend of the government representatives on the newspaper board.
Monday, December 21, 2009
Economists Are Trained to Ignore the Real World
As I have repeatedly noted, mainstream economists and financial advisors have been using faulty and unrealistic models for years. See this, this, this, this, this and this.
And I have pointed out numerous times that economists and advisors have a financial incentive to use faulty models. For example, I pointed out last month:
The decision to use faulty models was an economic and political choice, because it benefited the economists and those who hired them.
For example, the elites get wealthy during booms and they get wealthy during busts. Therefore, the boom-and-bust cycle benefits them enormously, as they can trade both ways.
Specifically, as Simon Johnson, William K. Black and others point out, the big boys make bucketloads of money during the booms using fraudulent schemes and knowing that many borrowers will default. Then, during the bust, they know the government will bail them out, and they will be able to buy up competitors for cheap and consolidate power. They may also bet against the same products they are selling during the boom (more here), knowing that they'll make a killing when it busts.
But economists have pretended there is no such thing as a bubble. Indeed, BIS slammed the Fed and other central banks for blowing bubbles and then using "gimmicks and palliatives" afterwards.
It is not like economists weren't warning about booms and busts. Nobel prize winner Hayek and others were, but were ignored because it was "inconvenient" to discuss this "impolite" issue.
Likewise, the entire Federal Reserve model is faulty, benefiting the banks themselves but not the public.
However, as Huffington Post notes:The problems of a massive debt overhang were also thoroughly documented by Minsky, but mainstream economists pretended that debt doesn't matter.The Federal Reserve, through its extensive network of consultants, visiting scholars, alumni and staff economists, so thoroughly dominates the field of economics that real criticism of the central bank has become a career liability for members of the profession, an investigation by the Huffington Post has found.
This dominance helps explain how, even after the Fed failed to foresee the greatest economic collapse since the Great Depression, the central bank has largely escaped criticism from academic economists. In the Fed's thrall, the economists missed it, too.
"The Fed has a lock on the economics world," says Joshua Rosner, a Wall Street analyst who correctly called the meltdown. "There is no room for other views, which I guess is why economists got it so wrong."
And - even now - mainstream economists are STILL willfully ignoring things like massive leverage, hoping that the economy can be pumped back up to super-leveraged house-of-cards levels.
As the Wall Street Journal article notes:As they did in the two revolutions in economic thought of the past century, economists are rediscovering relevant work.It is only "rediscovered" because it was out of favor, and it was only out of favor because it was seen as unnecessarily crimping profits by, for example, arguing for more moderation during boom times.
The powers-that-be do not like economists who say "Boys, if you don't slow down, that bubble is going to get too big and pop right in your face". They don't want to hear that they can't make endless money using crazy levels of leverage and 30-to-1 levels of fractional reserve banking, and credit derivatives. And of course, they don't want to hear that the Federal Reserve is a big part of the problem.
Indeed, the Journal and the economists it quotes seem to be in no hurry whatsoever to change things:The quest is bringing financial economists -- long viewed by some as a curiosity mostly relevant to Wall Street -- together with macroeconomists. Some believe a viable solution will emerge within a couple of years; others say it could take decades.
Saturday, PhD economist Michael Hudson made the same point:
I think that the question that needs to be asked is how the discipline was untracked and trivialized from its classical flowering? How did it become marginalized and trivialized, taking for granted the social structures and dynamics that should be the substance and focal point of its analysis?...
To answer this question, my book describes the "intellectual engineering" that has turned the economics discipline into a public relations exercise for the rentier classes criticized by the classical economists: landlords, bankers and monopolists. It was largely to counter criticisms of their unearned income and wealth, after all, that the post-classical reaction aimed to limit the conceptual "toolbox" of economists to become so unrealistic, narrow-minded and self-serving to the status quo. It has ended up as an intellectual ploy to distract attention away from the financial and property dynamics that are polarizing our world between debtors and creditors, property owners and renters, while steering politics from democracy to oligarchy...
[As one Nobel prize winning economist stated,] "In pointing out the consequences of a set of abstract assumptions, one need not be committed unduly as to the relation between reality and these assumptions."This attitude did not deter him from drawing policy conclusions affecting the material world in which real people live. These conclusions are diametrically opposed to the empirically successful protectionism by which Britain, the United States and Germany rose to industrial supremacy.
Typical of this now widespread attitude is the textbook Microeconomics by William Vickery, winner of the 1997 Nobel Economics Prize:"Economic theory proper, indeed, is nothing more than a system of logical relations between certain sets of assumptions and the conclusions derived from them... The validity of a theory proper does not depend on the correspondence or lack of it between the assumptions of the theory or its conclusions and observations in the real world. A theory as an internally consistent system is valid if the conclusions follow logically from its premises, and the fact that neither the premises nor theconclusions correspond to reality may show that the theory is not very useful, but does not invalidate it. In any pure theory, all propositions are essentially tautological, in the sense that the results are implicit in the assumptions made."Such disdain for empirical verification is not found in the physical sciences. Its popularity in the social sciences is sponsored by vested interests. There is always self-interest behind methodological madness. That is because success requires heavy subsidies from special interests, who benefit from an erroneous, misleading or deceptive economic logic. Why promote unrealistic abstractions, after all, if not to distract attention from reforms aimed at creating rules that oblige people actually to earn their income rather than simply extracting it from the rest of the economy?
As I have previously written, mainstream economists and financial advisors who promote flawed models are not necessarily bad people:
I am not necessarily saying that mainstream economists were intentionally wrong, or that they lied because it led to promotions or pleased their Wall Street, Fed or academic bosses.
But it is harder to fight the current and swim upstream then to go with the flow, and with so many rewards for doing so, there is a strong unconscious bias towards believing the prevailing myths. Just like regulators who are too close to their wards often come to adopt their views, many economists suffered "intellectual capture" by being too closely allied with Wall Street and the Fed.
As Upton Sinclair said:It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.
The Elephant in the Room: The U.S. Military is One of the World's Largest Sources of C02
Sara Flounders writes:
By every measure, the Pentagon is the largest institutional user of petroleum products and energy in general. Yet the Pentagon has a blanket exemption in all international climate agreements.
***
The Feb. 17, 2007, Energy Bulletin detailed the oil consumption just for the Pentagon's aircraft, ships, ground vehicles and facilities that made it the single-largest oil consumer in the world.
***
Even according to rankings in the 2006 CIA World Factbook, only 35 countries (out of 210 in the world) consume more oil per day than the Pentagon.
***
This information is not readily available ... because military emissions abroad are exempt from national reporting requirements under U.S. law and the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change" ...
Bryan Farrell in his new book, "The Green Zone: The Environmental Costs of Militarism," says that "the greatest single assault on the environment, on all of us around the globe, comes from one agency ... the Armed Forces of the United States."
Just how did the Pentagon come to be exempt from climate agreements? At the time of the Kyoto Accords negotiations, the U.S. demanded as a provision of signing that all of its military operations worldwide and all operations it participates in with the U.N. and/or NATO be completely exempted from measurement or reductions.
After securing this gigantic concession, the Bush administration then refused to sign the accords.
***
Although the U.S. had already received these assurances in the negotiations, the U.S. Congress passed an explicit provision guaranteeing U.S. military exemption. Inter Press Service reported on May 21, 1998: "U.S. law makers, in the latest blow to international efforts to halt global warming, today exempted U.S. military operations from the Kyoto agreement which lays out binding commitments to reduce 'greenhouse gas' emissions. The House of Representatives passed an amendment to next year's military authorization bill that 'prohibits the restriction of armed forces under the Kyoto Protocol.'"
***
According to environmental journalist Johanna Peace ... "The military accounts for a full 80 percent of the federal government's energy demand."
As I pointed out out last week:
The fact that the U.S. military is one of the world's largest sources of C02 is an open secret that no one is addressing. If C02 causes warming and the military is one of the largest producers of C02, then any talk of climate change which does not include the military is nothing but hot air.Professor Michael Klare noted in 2007:
Sixteen gallons of oil. That's how much the average American soldier in Iraq and Afghanistan consumes on a daily basis -- either directly, through the use of Humvees, tanks, trucks, and helicopters, or indirectly, by calling in air strikes. Multiply this figure by 162,000 soldiers in Iraq, 24,000 in Afghanistan, and 30,000 in the surrounding region (including sailors aboard U.S. warships in the Persian Gulf) and you arrive at approximately 3.5 million gallons of oil: the daily petroleum tab for U.S. combat operations in the Middle East war zone.And in 2008, Oil Change International released a report showing that:
- The [Iraq] war is responsible for at least 141 million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent (MMTCO2e) since March 2003. To put this in perspective, CO2 released by the war to date equals the emissions from putting 25 million more cars on the road in the US this year.
- Between March 2003 and October 2007 the US military in Iraq purchased more than 4 billion gallons of fuel from the Defense Energy Support Center, the agency responsible for procuring and supplying petroleum products to the Department of Defense. Burning these fuels has directly produced nearly 39 million metric tons of CO2 Just transporting 4 billion gallons of fuel to the military in Iraq consumed at least as much fuel as was delivered nearly doubling overall fuel-related emissions.
- Emissions from the Iraq War to date are nearly two and a half times greater than what would be avoided between 2009 and 2016 were California to implement the auto emission regulations it has proposed (but that the Bush Administration struck down).
Of course, the escalation of the war in Afghanistan will lead to a huge surge in greenhouse gas emissions as well.
- If the war were ranked as a country in terms of annual emissions, it would emit more CO2 each year than 139 of the world’s nations do, more than 60% of all countries on the planet...
Sunday, December 20, 2009
Is America Still a Nation of Laws?
Congress and the White House may have been co-opted by the big lobbyists and Wall Street insiders, but you may assume that at least the third branch of government - the courts - are still following the rule of law and protecting the little guy.
Unfortunately, the American system of justice is also under attack.
I'm not talking simply about judicial corruption. True, as I pointed out on February 17, 2009:
Senior judges in Pennsylvania have pleaded guilty to falsely convicting and imprisoning hundreds of youths (they got kickbacks from the prisons).
***
The Pennsylvania Supreme Court refused to hear a case regarding the corrupt judges. A month later, only after the judges confessed to criminal wrongdoing, did the Supreme Court change its mind and take any interest
In fact, I'm talking about something much more disturbing than simple corruption. I am talking about abandoning the very foundations of our judicial system.
For example, as I noted on July 21, 2009:
The New York Times is providing important coverage of the U.S. Supreme Court's May 18, 2009 decision in the case known as Ashcroft v. Iqbal:
The lower courts have certainly understood the significance of the decision, Ashcroft v. Iqbal, which makes it much easier for judges to dismiss civil lawsuits right after they are filed. They have cited it more than 500 times in just the last two months.
“Iqbal is the most significant Supreme Court decision in a decade for day-to-day litigation in the federal courts,” said Thomas C. Goldstein, an appellate lawyer with Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld in Washington.
Why is Iqbal such an important case?
As the Times notes:
So what is the real world effect of the Supreme Court's decision?For more than half a century, it has been clear that all a plaintiff had to do to start a lawsuit was to file what the rules call “a short and plain statement of the claim” in a document called a complaint. Having filed such a bare-bones complaint, plaintiffs were entitled to force defendants to open their files and submit to questioning under oath.
This approach, particularly when coupled with the American requirement that each side pay its own lawyers no matter who wins, gave plaintiffs settlement leverage. Just by filing a lawsuit, a plaintiff could subject a defendant to great cost and inconvenience in the pre-trial fact-finding process called discovery...
Information about wrongdoing is often secret. Plaintiffs claiming they were the victims of employment discrimination, a defective product, an antitrust conspiracy or a policy of harsh treatment in detention may not know exactly who harmed them and how before filing suit. But plaintiffs can learn valuable information during discovery.
The Iqbal decision now requires plaintiffs to come forward with concrete facts at the outset, and it instructs lower court judges to dismiss lawsuits that strike them as implausible.
“Determining whether a complaint states a plausible claim for relief,” Justice Anthony M. Kennedy wrote for the five-justice majority, “requires the reviewing court to draw on its judicial experience and common sense.”
Note those words: Plausible. Common sense.
The Times provides some hints:Indeed, the Plaintiff in Iqbal himself, was a Pakistani Muslim working and living in Long Island, who claims he was arrested 2 months after 9/11 and then beaten and tortured. But the court didn't want to hear about it:“It obviously licenses highly subjective judgments,” said Stephen B. Burbank, an authority on civil procedure at the University of Pennsylvania Law School. “This is a blank check for federal judges to get rid of cases they disfavor.”
Courts applying Iqbal have been busy. A federal judge in Connecticut dismissed a disability discrimination suit this month, saying that Iqbal required her to treat the plaintiff’s assertions as implausible. A few days later, the federal appeals court in New York dismissed a breach of contract and securities fraud suit after concluding that its account of the defendants’ asserted wrongdoing was too speculative.
In other words, the Court found the allegation that an innocent person was tortured as "implausible". It has become apparent to everyone, however, that many innocent people were tortured.Justice Kennedy said Mr. Iqbal’s suit against two officials had not cleared the plausibility bar. All Mr. Iqbal’s complaint plausibly suggested, Justice Kennedy wrote, “is that the nation’s top law enforcement officers, in the aftermath of a devastating terrorist attack, sought to keep suspected terrorists in the most secure conditions available.”
The Iqbal decision is - literally - an assault by the Supreme Court on the American system of justice. For it prevents plaintiffs from having their day in court if either:People may ask "the Supreme Court interprets and enforces the American justice system, so how can it gut that system?
- The judge doesn't want to hear the case; or
- The defendant has hidden the evidence of wrongdoing, so that the plaintiff cannot provide the details of defendant's wrongdoing without the use of the formal discovery process which only starts once litigation has commenced
Well, Congress members and the President are supposed to represent the interests of the American people. Have they always done so?
Judges - like people in the White House and Congress - are human beings with political and personal viewpoints. Some stick to the case precedent while others - no matter how high and mighty - abandon it for political or personal reasons. That is the dirty little secret that those who work inside the justice system know.
In rendering the Iqbal decision, the Supreme Court abandoned some of the fundamental principals of justice, leaving a system which only pays lip service to that word.
Several Supreme Court justices dissented with the majority's opinion in Iqbal. As Raw Story writes:Departing Justice David H. Souter sided with the minority in this case, expressing dismay in his dissent and suggesting the decision could “upend,” said the Times, the federal civil litigation system. He argued that complaints should be accepted “no matter how skeptical the court may be,” so long as the accusations are not “sufficiently fantastic to defy reality as we know it.”“[Claims] about little green men, or the plaintiff’s recent trip to Pluto, or experiences in time travel,” he said, should be the bar for disqualification.
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg agreed, suggesting the court had “messed up the federal rules” for civil suits.
Now, Chris Floyd and Yves Smith point out another worrisome Supreme Court decision:
If the president or one of his subordinates declares someone to be an “enemy combatant” (the 21st century version of “enemy of the state”) he is denied any protection of the law. So any trouble-maker (which means anyone) can be whisked away, incarcerated, tortured, “disappeared,” you name it. Floyd’s commentary:
After hearing passionate arguments from the Obama Administration, the Supreme Court acquiesced to the president’s fervent request and, in a one-line ruling, let stand a lower court decision that declared torture an ordinary, expected consequence of military detention, while introducing a shocking new precedent for all future courts to follow: anyone who is arbitrarily declared a “suspected enemy combatant” by the president or his designated minions is no longer a “person.” They will simply cease to exist as a legal entity. They will have no inherent rights, no human rights, no legal standing whatsoever — save whatever modicum of process the government arbitrarily deigns to grant them from time to time, with its ever-shifting tribunals and show trials.
It is hard to overstate the significance of this horrid decision. The fact that the Supreme Court authorized this land grab says we no longer have an independent judiciary, that the Supreme Court itself is gutting the protections supposedly provided by the legal system. Per Floyd:
In fact, our most august defenders of the Constitution did not have to exert themselves in the slightest to eviscerate not merely 220 years of Constitutional jurisprudence but also centuries of agonizing effort to lift civilization a few inches out of the blood-soaked mire that is our common human legacy. They just had to write a single sentence.
Now Floyd saw this mainly as an issue of the treatment of enemy combatants and Obama hypocrisy about torture, which is bad enough:
The Constitution is clear: no person can be held without due process; no person can be subjected to cruel and unusual punishment. And the U.S. law on torture of any kind is crystal clear: it is forbidden, categorically, even in time of “national emergency.” And the instigation of torture is, under U.S. law, a capital crime. No person can be tortured, at any time, for any reason, and there are no immunities whatsoever for torture offered anywhere in the law.
And yet this is what Barack Obama — who, we are told incessantly, is a super-brilliant Constitutional lawyer — has been arguing in case after case since becoming president: Torturers are immune from prosecution; those who ordered torture are immune from prosecution….let’s be absolutely clear: Barack Obama has taken the freely chosen, public, formal stand — in court — that there is nothing wrong with any of these activities.
Yves here. The implications are FAR worse. Anyone can be stripped, with NO RECOURSE, of all their legal rights on a Presidential say so. Readers in the US no longer have any security under the law.
Roman citizens enjoyed a right to a trial, a right of appeal, and could not be tortured, whipped, or executed except if found guilty of treason, and anyone charged with treason could demand a trial in Rome. We have regressed more than 2000 years with this appalling ruling.
Is America still a nation of laws? Or is it a nation in which judges get to throw out cases soon after filing because the plaintiffs claims go against the judge's belief system or world view and the President can decide that someone is entitled to no legal protection whatsoever?
Friday, December 18, 2009
Non-Binding "Sham Agreement" Reached At Copenhagen. “Rich Countries ... Sought to Bribe and Bully Developing Nations"
An agreement - of sorts - was reached at Copenhagen.
The Copenhagen Accord is not legally binding and - apparently - does not specify either target emission reductions or monetary contributions of various countries. Here is a copy of the actual Copenhagen Accord (notice that the Appendices for target emissions and monetary contributions are blank).
Friends of the Earth says of the Copenhagen Accord:
Climate negotiations in Copenhagen have yielded a sham agreement with no real requirements for any countries. This is not a strong deal or a just one -- it isn't even a real one. It's just repackaging old positions and pretending they're new.A Greenpeace representative said:
This latest draft is so weak as to be meaningless.And a representative of the anti-poverty group, World Development Movement said:
This summit has been in complete disarray from start to finish, and now appears to be culminating in a shameful and monumental failure ... The leaders of rich countries have refused to lead and instead sought to bribe and bully developing nations ...
Obama's Current Science Advisor Warned in the 1970's of a New Ice Age ... And Is Open to Shooting Soot Into the Upper Atmosphere
Preface: My entire purpose for writing this essay is to urge that decision-makers do what is best for our planet and not do something which will cause more harm than good. Environmentalists should check my background below before dismissing this out of hand.
When I pointed out a couple of days ago that a group of scientists and much of the popular press warned in the 1970s of an imminent ice age, I didn't realize they had such a prominent member.
Specifically, as New York Times science columnist John Tierney noted in September:
In 1971, long before Dr. Holdren came President Obama’s science adviser, in an essay [titled] “Overpopulation and the Potential for Ecocide,” Dr. Holdren and his co-author, the ecologist Paul Ehrlich, warned of a coming ice age.
They certainly weren’t the only scientists in the 1970s to warn of a coming ice age, but I can’t think of any others who were so creative in their catastrophizing. Although they noted that the greenhouse effect from rising emissions of carbon dioxide emissions could cause future warming of the planet, they concluded from the mid-century cooling trend that the consequences of human activities (like industrial soot, dust from farms, jet exhaust, urbanization and deforestation) were more likely to first cause an ice age. Dr. Holdren and Dr. Ehrlich wrote:
The effects of a new ice age on agriculture and the supportability of large human populations scarcely need elaboration here. Even more dramatic results are possible, however; for instance, a sudden outward slumping in the Antarctic ice cap, induced by added weight, could generate a tidal wave of proportions unprecedented in recorded history.
Shooting Soot into the Upper Atmosphere
And when I wrote that some scientists considered pouring soot over the Arctic in the 1970s to help melt the ice - to prevent an ice age - I didn't realize that soot was still on the table as a way to battle climate change.
Specifically, Dr. Holdren has suggested (as a last resort):
Shooting pollution particles into the upper atmosphere to reflect the sun’s rays.
The most common type of man-made "pollution particle" is soot. Indeed, as the American Lung Association points out:
Soot is an old name for particle pollution.So President Obama's science advisor, Dr. Holdren, is now saying that we might need to use soot to stop runway global warming. (Soot in the upper atmosphere can reflect sunlight and cool temperatures, but soot on the surface of ice helps warm and melt the ice by absorbing sunlight).
What's Wrong with That?
What's wrong with that?
Well, soot is a major cause of ice warming and melting in the Arctic and in the Himalayas.
And as NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies has shown, soot in the upper atmosphere ends up on the surface of ice sheets and glaciers, such as Arctic ice cap:
South Asia is estimated to have the largest industrial soot emissions in the world, and the meteorology in that region readily sweeps pollution into the upper atmosphere where it is easily transported to the North Pole.I don't know whether Dr. Holdren was one of the scientists recommending using soot to melt the ice cap in the 1970s, but the fact that he would even consider shooting soot into the upper atmosphere now to cool the planet is very troubling.
If scientists had convinced policy-makers to pour soot over the Arctic ice cap in the 1970s, we might have had real problems. If scientists convince them to shoot soot into the upper atmosphere now, we might get the exact same end-game.
First, Do No Harm
I have previously pointed out numerous decisions regarding the environment which have caused more harm than good, such as the government forcing a switch from one type of chemical to a chemical which turned out to be 4,470 times more potent as a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide.
Here's another one. The mongoose was introduced to Hawaii in order to control the rats (which were eating the sugar cane used to make rum). It didn't work out very well - mongeese are daylight-loving creatures while rats are nocturnal - and the mongeese trashed the native species in Hawaii.
My whole point is that we should make sure that our actions do not cause more harm than good.
Note 1: I have an extensive background working to preserve natural areas and reduce urban pollution. Indeed, my environmental resumé is as good as just about anyone's. I studied environmental science at a top university in the early 1980's.
Note 2: I not only do not receive a penny from oil or any other energy, industry or political person or organization of any nature whatsoever (I make a few peanuts from ads on this site, which I do not choose, but are selected without my input by my ad service), I am also wholly and completely against big oil, big coal and big nuclear. As I have repeatedly argued, power should be taken away from the oil giants and decentralized. I have repeatedly argued for microgeneration and for alternative energy. These things are beneficial for a number of reasons - including better health, less corruption of our political systems through decentralization of power, and a boost to our economy - in addition to the environmental benefits they may have.
Thursday, December 17, 2009
Why We Write Anonymously
Several people have asked me why I write under a pen name.
In fact, some of the leading writers have used pen names.
As one of the best financial bloggers, Tyler of Zero Hedge, points out (edited slightly for readability):
Though often maligned (typically by those frustrated by an inability to engage in ad hominem attacks), anonymous speech has a long and storied history in the United States. Used by the likes of Mark Twain (aka Samuel Langhorne Clemens) to criticize common ignorance, and perhaps most famously by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison and John Jay (aka publius) to write the Federalist Papers, we think ourselves in good company in using one or another nom de plume.Most of what we write is backed up with links to original materials from credible sources, so that you can verify that the claims are true yourself.
Particularly in light of an emerging trend against vocalizing public dissent in the United States, we believe in the critical importance of anonymity and its role in dissident speech.
Like the Economist magazine, we also believe that keeping authorship anonymous moves the focus of discussion to the content of speech and away from the speaker - as it should be.
Note: You are welcome to re-print or re-post anything we have written if you use it for educational uses, and so long as you:
(1) Do not misquote or take anything out of context (please leave in the links, if you can, as it is more complete that way)
and
(2) Give proper attribution and credit to Washingtons Blog (if on the Web, please link to this site)
Wednesday, December 16, 2009
Scientists Considered Pouring Soot Over the Arctic in the 1970s to Help Melt the Ice - In Order to Prevent Another Ice Age
(Environmentalists: Kindly start by reading the end notes to see my background and why I am writing this)On April 28, 1975, Newsweek wrote an article stating:
Climatologists are pessimistic that political leaders will take any positive action to compensate for the climatic change, or even to allay its effects. They concede that some of the more spectacular solutions proposed, such as melting the Arctic ice cap by covering it with black soot or diverting arctic rivers, might create problems far greater than those they solve. But the scientists see few signs that government leaders anywhere are even prepared to take the simple measures of stockpiling food or of introducing the variables of climatic uncertainty into economic projections of future food supplies. The longer the planners delay, the more difficult will they find it to cope with climatic change once the results become grim reality.Here is a reprint of the article in the Washington Times, and here is a copy of the 1975 Newsweek article.
Why were scientists considering melting the arctic ice cap?
Because they were worried about a new ice age.
Newsweek discussed the 1975 article in 2006:
In April, 1975 ... NEWSWEEK published a small back-page article about a very different kind of disaster. Citing "ominous signs that the earth's weather patterns have begun to change dramatically," the magazine warned of an impending "drastic decline in food production." Political disruptions stemming from food shortages could affect "just about every nation on earth." Scientists urged governments to consider emergency action to head off the terrible threat of . . . well, if you had been following the climate-change debates at the time, you'd have known that the threat was: global cooling...Newsweek was not alone. Some scientists and the press have been warning about an ice age off and on for over 100 years.
Citizens can judge for themselves what constitutes a prudent response-which, indeed, is what occurred 30 years ago. All in all, it's probably just as well that society elected not to follow one of the possible solutions mentioned in the NEWSWEEK article: to pour soot over the Arctic ice cap, to help it melt.
For example, on February 24, 1895, the New York Times published an article entitled "PROSPECTS OF ANOTHER GLACIAL PERIOD; Geologists Think the World May Be Frozen Up Again", which starts with the following paragraph:
The question is again being discussed whether recent and long-continued observations do not point to the advent of a second glacial period, when the countries now basking in the fostering warmth of a tropical sun will ultimately give way to the perennial frost and snow of the polar regions.
In September 1958, Harper's wrote an article called "The Coming Ice Age".
On January 11, 1970, the Washington Post wrote an article entitled "Colder Winters Held Dawn of New Ice Age - Scientists See Ice Age In the Future" which stated:
Get a good grip on your long johns, cold weather haters--the worst may be yet to come. That's the long-long-range weather forecast being given out by "climatologists." the people who study very long-term world weather trends.
In 1972, two scientists - George J. Kukla (of the Lamont-Doherty Geological Observatory) and R. K. Matthews (Chairman, Dept of Geological Sciences, Brown University) - wrote the following letter to President Nixon warning of the possibility of a new ice age:
Dear Mr. President:
Aware of your deep concern with the future of the world, we feel obliged to inform you on the results of the scientific conference held here recently. The conference dealt with the past and future changes of climate and was attended by 42 top American and European investigators. We enclose the summary report published in Science and further publications are forthcoming in Quaternary Research.
The main conclusion of the meeting was that a global deterioration of climate, by order of magnitude larger than any hitherto experience by civilized mankind, is a very real possibility and indeed may be due very soon.
The cooling has natural cause and falls within the rank of processes which produced the last ice age. This is a surprising result based largely on recent studies of deep sea sediments.
Existing data still do not allow forecast of the precise timing of the predicted development, nor the assessment of the man’s interference with the natural trends. It could not be excluded however that the cooling now under way in the Northern Hemisphere is the start of the expected shift. The present rate of the cooling seems fast enough to bring glacial temperatures in about a century, if continuing at the present pace.
The practical consequences which might be brought by such developments to existing social institution are among others:
(1) Substantially lowered food production due to the shorter growing seasons and changed rain distribution in the main grain producing belts of the world, with Eastern Europe and Central Asia to be first affected.
(2) Increased frequency and amplitude of extreme weather anomalies such as those bringing floods, snowstorms, killing frosts, etc.
With the efficient help of the world leaders, the research …
With best regards,
George J. Kukla (Lamont-Doherty Geological Observatory)
R. K. Matthews (Chairman, Dept of Geological Sciences, Brown U)
The White House assigned the task of looking at the claims contained in the letter to its science agencies, especially the National Science Foundation and NOAA, who engaged in a flurry of activity looking into the threat of an ice age.
On August 1, 1974 the White House wrote a letter to Secretary of Commerce Frederick Dent stating:
Changes in climate in recent years have resulted in unanticipated impacts on key national programs and policies. Concern has been expressed that recent changes may presage others. In order to assess the problem and to determine what concerted action ought to be undertaken, I have decided to establish a subcommittee on Climate Change.
Out of this concern, the U.S. government started monitoring climate.
As NOAA scientists Robert W. Reeves, Daphne Gemmill, Robert E. Livezey, and James Laver point out:
There were also a number of short-term climate events of national and international consequence in the early 1970s that commanded a certain level of attention in Washington. Many of them were linked to the El Niño of 1972-1973.On June 24, 1974, Time Magazine wrote an article entitled "Another Ice Age?" which stated:A killing winter freeze followed by a severe summer heat wave and drought produced a 12 percent shortfall in Russian grain production in 1972. The Soviet decision to offset the losses by purchase abroad reduced world grain reserves and helped drive up food prices.
Collapse of the Peruvian anchovy harvest in late 1972 and early 1973, related to fluctuations in the Pacific ocean currents and atmospheric circulation, impacted world supplies of fertilizer, the soybean market, and prices of all other protein feedstocks.
The anomalously low precipitation in the U.S. Pacific north-west during the winter of 1972-73 depleted reservoir storage by an amount equivalent to more than 7 percent of the electric energy requirements for the region.
As they review the bizarre and unpredictable weather pattern of the past several years, a growing number of scientists are beginning to suspect that many seemingly contradictory meteorological fluctuations are actually part of a global climatic upheaval. However widely the weather varies from place to place and time to time, when meteorologists take an average of temperatures around the globe they find that the atmosphere has been growing gradually cooler for the past three decades. The trend shows no indication of reversing. Climatological Cassandras are becoming increasingly apprehensive, for the weather aberrations they are studying may be the harbinger of another ice age.
Telltale signs are everywhere ...
Whatever the cause of the cooling trend, its effects could be extremely serious, if not catastrophic. Scientists figure that only a 1% decrease in the amount of sunlight hitting the earth's surface could tip the climatic balance, and cool the planet enough to send it sliding down the road to another ice age within only a few hundred years.
(here's the printer-friendly version).
Science News wrote an article in 1975 called "Chilling Possibilities" warning of a new ice age.A January 1975 article from the New York Times warned:
The most drastic potential change considered in the new report (by the National Academy of Sciences) is an abrupt end to the present interglacial period of relative warmth that has governed the planet's climate for the past 10,000 years.A May 21, 1975 article in the New York Times again stated:
Sooner or later a major cooling of the climate is widely considered inevitable.A 1994 Time article entitled "The Ice Age Cometh?" stated:
What ever happened to global warming? Scientists have issued apocalyptic warnings for years, claiming that gases from cars, power plants and factories are creating a greenhouse effect that will boost the temperature dangerously over the next 75 years or so. But if last week is any indication of winters to come, it might be more to the point to start worrying about the next Ice Age instead. After all, human-induced warming is still largely theoretical, while ice ages are an established part of the planet's history. The last one ended about 10,000 years ago; the next one -- for there will be a next one -- could start tens of thousands of years from now. Or tens of years. Or it may have already started.Note 1: I have an extensive background working to preserve natural areas and reduce urban pollution. I studied global warming at a top university in the early 1980's. I was taught - as Al Gore was taught in college - that temperatures are directly correlated with CO2 levels.
Note 2: I not only do not receive a penny from oil or any other energy, industry or political person or organization of any nature whatsoever (I make a few peanuts from ads on this site, which I do not choose, but are selected without my input by my ad service), I am also wholly and completely against big oil, big coal and big nuclear. As I have repeatedly argued, power should be taken away from the oil giants and decentralized. I have repeatedly argued for microgeneration and for alternative energy. These things are beneficial for a number of reasons - including better health, less corruption of our political systems through decentralization of power, and a boost to our economy - in addition to whatever climate benefits they may have.
Note 3: One of the main reasons for writing this essay is to point out that we must make sure that our "solutions" are not more dangerous than the problems themselves. For example, the Washington Post noted that the government forced a switch from one type of chemical to another because it was believed the first was enlarging the ozone hole. However, according to the Post, the chemical which the government demanded be used instead is 4,470 times more potent as a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide.
Currently, "government scientists are studying the feasibility of sending nearly microscopic particles of specially made glass into the Earth's upper atmosphere to try to dampen the effects of 'global warming.' " Others are currently suggesting cutting down trees and burying them. Other ways to geoengineer the planet are being proposed.
And Noam Chomsky has said that he would submit to fascism if it would help combat global warming:
Suppose it was discovered tomorrow that the greenhouse effects has been way understimated, and that the catastrophic effects are actually going to set in 10 years from now, and not 100 years from now or something.Are those ideas any better than pouring soot on the North Pole?
Well, given the state of the popular movements we have today, we'd probably have a fascist takeover-with everybody agreeing to it, because that would be the only method for survival that anyone could think of. I'd even agree to it, because there's just no other alternatives right now." (page 388).
Our primary responsibility must be to ensure that we are not doing more harm than good.
Note 4: Given that scientists considered pouring soot on the North Pole to melt the ice in the 1970's, it should come as no surprise that soot may be having a dramatic effect on the ice sheets and glaciers now.
Note 5: Some global warming advocates warn that a warming-induced shut down of the huge ocean current known as the thermohaline circulation could cause a new ice age in certain limited parts of the world that are warmed by the by the North Atlantic current, such as Iceland, Ireland, the Nordic countries, and Britain. But scientists in the 1970s were talking about something different: the start of a worldwide ice age due, for example, to a 100,000 year cycle in solar radiation hitting the Earth.
Note 6: For further information on the swing between warnings of ice ages and runaway global warming, see this and this. I have verified all of the facts made in the main post above, but I have not yet verified all of the claims made in the last two aforementioned web pages.
Officials and Experts Warn of Crash-Induced Unrest
Numerous high-level officials and experts warn that the economic crisis could lead to unrest world-wide - even in developed countries:
- Today, Moody's warned that future tax rises and spending cuts could trigger social unrest in a range of countries from the developing to the developed world, that in the coming years, evidence of social unrest and public tension may become just as important signs of whether a country will be able to adapt as traditional economic metrics, that a fiscal crisis remains a possibility for a leading economy, and that 2010 would be a “tumultuous year for sovereign debt issuers”.
- The U.S. Army War College warned in 2008 November warned in a monograph [click on Policypointers’ pdf link to see the report] titled “Known Unknowns: Unconventional ‘Strategic Shocks’ in Defense Strategy Development” of crash-induced unrest:
The military must be prepared, the document warned, for a “violent, strategic dislocation inside the United States,” which could be provoked by “unforeseen economic collapse,” “purposeful domestic resistance,” “pervasive public health emergencies” or “loss of functioning political and legal order.” The “widespread civil violence,” the document said, “would force the defense establishment to reorient priorities in extremis to defend basic domestic order and human security.” “An American government and defense establishment lulled into complacency by a long-secure domestic order would be forced to rapidly divest some or most external security commitments in order to address rapidly expanding human insecurity at home,” it went on. “Under the most extreme circumstances, this might include use of military force against hostile groups inside the United States. Further, DoD [the Department of Defense] would be, by necessity, an essential enabling hub for the continuity of political authority in a multi-state or nationwide civil conflict or disturbance,” the document read.
- Director of National Intelligence Dennis C. Blair said:
"The global economic crisis ... already looms as the most serious one in decades, if not in centuries ... Economic crises increase the risk of regime-threatening instability if they are prolonged for a one- or two-year period," said Blair. "And instability can loosen the fragile hold that many developing countries have on law and order, which can spill out in dangerous ways into the international community."***
"Statistical modeling shows that economic crises increase the risk of regime-threatening instability if they persist over a one-to-two-year period."***
“The crisis has been ongoing for over a year, and economists are divided over whether and when we could hit bottom. Some even fear that the recession could further deepen and reach the level of the Great Depression. Of course, all of us recall the dramatic political consequences wrought by the economic turmoil of the 1920s and 1930s in Europe, the instability, and high levels of violent extremism.”
Blair made it clear that - while unrest was currently only happening in Europe - he was worried this could happen within the United States.
[See also this].
- Former national security director Zbigniew Brzezinski warned "there’s going to be growing conflict between the classes and if people are unemployed and really hurting, hell, there could be even riots."
- The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff warned the the financial crisis is the highest national security concern for the U.S., and warned that the fallout from the crisis could lead to of "greater instability".
- The head of the World Trade Organization
- The head of the International Monetary Fund (and see this)
- The head of the World Bank
- Senator Christopher Dodd
- Congressman Ron Paul (radio interview on March 6, 2009)
- Britian's MI5 security agency
- Leading economic historian Niall Ferguson
- Leading economist Marc Faber and billionaire investor Jim Rogers
- Leading economist Nouriel Roubini
- Leading economist John Williams
- Top trend researcher Gerald Calente
- European think tank Leap2020
Copenhagen Police Use Force on Unarmed Protestors
Police at the climate summit in Copenhagen are using force on unarmed protestors:
Copenhagen has turned into Chokenhagen ...
For background, see this, this, and this.
Senator Merkley: No On Bernanke
I received this by email.
WASHINGTON, DC – Oregon’s Senator Jeff Merkley, a member of the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Development, issued the following statement on his intention to vote against Ben Bernanke’s nomination to a second term as Chairman of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System:
“Tomorrow, I will vote against confirming Ben Bernanke as Chairman of the Federal Reserve. The reason, in short, is that as Chairman, Dr. Bernanke failed to recognize or remedy the factors that paved the road to this dark and difficult recession. Following our economic collapse, it is also apparent that he has not changed his overall approach to prioritizing Wall Street over American families.
“My decision is based on my fundamental belief that our economy cannot recover if we do not put Main Street first.
“Our nation is just beginning to emerge from the greatest financial crisis since the Great Depression, and there is no guarantee we will continue on the road to recovery over the long or short terms. Unemployment remains far too high, credit is unavailable to too many businesses, and families are plagued by falling home prices and high foreclosure rates. Even as we move forward with our efforts to get our economy back on track, it is critical we carefully examine what led us to this point.
“For too many years, federal regulators turned a blind eye to signs of an impending financial crisis. Tricks and traps proliferated in the credit card and consumer lending industries. Predatory mortgage loans exploded, fueling an unsustainable housing bubble. Regulators lifted rules requiring banks to keep adequate capital, and a laissez-faire approach to securitization, derivatives, and proprietary trading encouraged excessive risk-taking on Wall Street. As a member of the Board of Governors, Chair of the Council of Economic Advisers, and then ultimately as Chairman of the Board of Governors, Dr. Bernanke supported each of these decisions, failing to take the necessary precautionary steps that could have averted or mitigated financial collapse.
“These failures are very relevant to the future. We need economic leaders who understand that the ultimate goal of economic policies and the key to meaningful economic recovery should be financially successful families, not oversized Wall Street profits.
“Indeed, it should be recognized that although Wall Street prospered in the short-term from reduced leverage requirements, securitization of faulty mortgages, and the explosion of derivatives, Americans did not. The expansion that occurred from 2002 to 2007 became the first economic expansion in which working families were worse off at the end than at the beginning. This is not a path that we can afford to travel again.”
Global WARming
As I have previously pointed out:
I now have some figures to back this up.Continuing the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq will more than wipe out any reduction in carbon from the government's proposed climate measures ...
The continuance of the Afghanistan and Iraq wars completely and thoroughly undermines the government's claims that there is a global warming emergency and that reducing carbon output through cap and trade is needed to save the planet.
I can't take anything the government says about carbon footprints seriously until the government ends the unnecessary wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Professor Michael Klare noted in 2007:
Sixteen gallons of oil. That's how much the average American soldier in Iraq and Afghanistan consumes on a daily basis -- either directly, through the use of Humvees, tanks, trucks, and helicopters, or indirectly, by calling in air strikes. Multiply this figure by 162,000 soldiers in Iraq, 24,000 in Afghanistan, and 30,000 in the surrounding region (including sailors aboard U.S. warships in the Persian Gulf) and you arrive at approximately 3.5 million gallons of oil: the daily petroleum tab for U.S. combat operations in the Middle East war zone.And in 2008, Oil Change International released a report showing that:
- The war is responsible for at least 141 million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent (MMTCO2e) since March 2003. To put this in perspective, CO2 released by the war to date equals the emissions from putting 25 million more cars on the road in the US this year.
- Between March 2003 and October 2007 the US military in Iraq purchased more than 4 billion gallons of fuel from the Defense Energy Support Center, the agency responsible for procuring and supplying petroleum products to the Department of Defense. Burning these fuels has directly produced nearly 39 million metric tons of CO2 Just transporting 4 billion gallons of fuel to the military in Iraq consumed at least as much fuel as was delivered nearly doubling overall fuel-related emissions.
- Emissions from the Iraq War to date are nearly two and a half times greater than what would be avoided between 2009 and 2016 were California to implement the auto emission regulations it has proposed (but that the Bush Administration struck down).
- If the war were ranked as a country in terms of annual emissions, it would emit more CO2 each year than 139 of the world’s nations do, more than 60% of all countries on the planet.
The report also notes:
The emissions associated with the war in Iraq are literally unreported. Military emissions abroad are not captured in the national greenhouse gas inventories that all industrialized nations, including the United States, report under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. It’s a loophole big enough to drive a tank through.Of course, the escalation of the war in Afghanistan will lead to a huge surge in greenhouse gas emissions as well. As the Washington Post noted on December 15th:
The military is planning for thousands of additional tanker truck deliveries a month, big new storage facilities and dozens of contractors to navigate the landlocked country's terrain ...
The military's fuel needs are prodigious. According to the Government Accountability Office, about 300,000 gallons of jet fuel are delivered to Afghanistan each day, in addition to diesel, motor and aircraft gasoline. A typical Marine corps combat brigade requires almost 500,000 gallons of fuel per day, according to a recent study by Deloitte Analysis, a research group. Each of the more than 100 forward operating bases in Afghanistan requires a daily minimum of 300 gallons of diesel fuel, the study said.
The GAO report said that in June 2008 alone, 6.2 million gallons of fuel went for air and ground operations, while 917,000 gallons went for base support activities including lighting, running computers, and heating or cooling ...Another measure of the fuel needs -- and the long-term planning associated with them -- can be seen in the number of solicitations for storage facilities being put forward in the past months.
The largest would construct a new bulk fuel storage system for Bagram. It would require tanks to hold 1.1 million gallons of fuel, along with pumps, controls and supporting facilities. The overall facility, including electric, water, sewer, curbs and security measures, is to cost up to $25 million.
Although Obama has said that U.S. forces would begin returning home in 18 months, the fuel storage facility at Bagram would take almost 15 months to build, once the contract is awarded early next year. The contract requires storage for 6 million gallons of U.S.-standard jet fuel, 3 million gallons of Russian standard jet fuel and 1 million gallons of diesel fuel. The facility must be capable of receiving fuel from up to 100 tank trucks a day, 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
Facilities that can store 3 million gallons will be built in Ghazni and at Sharana.
Tuesday, December 15, 2009
Any Climate Treaty Which Does Not Dramatically Reduce Soot Is Not Worth the Paper It's Written On
Preface: I studied global warming at a top university in the early 1980's. I was taught - as Al Gore was taught in college - that temperatures are directly correlated with CO2 levels.
This essay will not address the question of whether global temperatures are rising, and if so, how much. Others have written extensively on that issue. This essay also will not look at questions of the percentage of climate change attributable to natural factors, such as variations in solar output, volcanic activity or El Niño (also called the "southern oscillation"). These are important issues, but this essay will not address them.
Whether or not you believe the planet is warming or that it is warming because of CO2 is irrelevant for the purpose of this essay. Either way, you will benefit from reading this.
Finally, I am against big oil and big coal. As I have repeatedly argued, power should be taken away from the oil giants and decentralized. I have repeatedly argued for microgeneration and for alternative energy. These things are beneficial for a number of reasons - including better health, less corruption of our political systems through decentralization of power, and a boost to our economy - in addition to whatever climate benefits they may have.
Do you remember the stories a couple of years ago about all of the dust coming from China?
There were headlines such as:
Unfortunately, it's not just dirt. It's also soot, or "black carbon".As the Wall Street Journal wrote in 2007:
"There are times when it covers the entire Pacific Ocean basin like a ribbon bent back and forth," said atmospheric physicist V. Ramanathan at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla, Calif.
On some days, almost a third of the air over Los Angeles and San Francisco can be traced directly to Asia. With it comes up to three-quarters of the black carbon particulate pollution that reaches the West Coast, Dr. Ramanathan and his colleagues recently reported in the Journal of Geophysical Research."
And the New York Times wrote in 2007:
Soot and Climate ChangeOne of China's lesser-known exports is a dangerous brew of soot, toxic chemicals and climate-changing gases from the smokestacks of coal-burning power plants.
In early April, a dense cloud of pollutants over Northern China sailed to nearby Seoul, sweeping along dust and desert sand before wafting across the Pacific. An American satellite spotted the cloud as it crossed the West Coast.
Researchers in California, Oregon and Washington noticed specks of sulfur compounds, carbon and other byproducts of coal combustion coating the silvery surfaces of their mountaintop detectors. These microscopic particles can work their way deep into the lungs, contributing to respiratory damage, heart disease and cancer.
Filters near Lake Tahoe in the mountains of eastern California "are the darkest that we've seen" outside smoggy urban areas, said Steven S. Cliff, an atmospheric scientist at the University of California at Davis.
Time Magazine wrote last month:
Black carbon [another name for "soot"] in the air actually absorbs sunlight as it comes from space, directly heating up the atmosphere. "The soot particles are like the parts of a blanket, and it's getting thicker," says Ramanathan. "The smoke absorbs sunlight and heats the blanket directly."The world's leading crusader against global warming - Dr. James Hansen - said in 2003:
Soot in snow and ice, by itself in an 1880-2000 simulation, accounted for 25 percent of observed global warming.
NASA wrote in 2005, based on Hansen's work:
Far in the frigid north, glaciers rule and temperatures are harsh. It is not the sort of place one would expect pollution to be a problem, but new NASA research reveals that soot is traveling farther north than previously believed. Soot, or black carbon, could have a huge impact on the delicate Arctic environment by speeding up the melting of Arctic ice, altering temperatures and cloud formation, and changing weather patterns.
Black carbon is released into the atmosphere when fossil fuels are not completely burned, either in vehicles, home heating appliances, or when trees and other plants are burned. When large quantities of soot enter the atmosphere, they create a haze that absorbs energy from the Sun, so the temperature of the atmosphere increases. This atmospheric heating can affect weather patterns and cloud formation.
Dorothy Koch and James Hansen, climate scientists at NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS), modeled the transport of black carbon particles around the world using the GISS general circulation model. The above images show some of their results. The top image shows where black carbon is concentrated in the atmosphere, and thus where surface temperatures and weather patterns might be affected, and the lower image shows where carbon is predicted to settle on the ground.
In the top image, the regions with the most haze—higher optical thickness—are white, while the least-affected areas are blue. As the image shows, Koch and Hansen found that soot in the atmosphere is most concentrated over southern and eastern China, where industry pumps black carbon into the atmosphere, and over central Africa, where fires are widely used for agriculture. Other regions with high concentrations of black carbon include the United States, Central Europe, and India. The model also reveals that instead of being clear of soot, the Arctic is blanketed with black carbon haze. About one-third of the haze, Koch and Hansen say, comes from Asia, one-third comes from fire around the world, and the remaining third comes from the United States, Russia, and Europe.
Soot does not stay in the atmosphere; it falls out in rain or with dust. Koch and Hansen’s research reveals that soot might have a longer range than previously believed, with higher concentrations reaching far into the Arctic. As dark soot falls on the snow and ice of the Arctic, it turns the white, reflective surface into a dark surface that absorbs the Sun’s energy. This extra energy makes the snow melt more quickly.
Studies by other mainstream scientists also demonstrate that much of the melting of Himalyan glaciers is due to soot:
Soot emitted when fuels like diesel, wood and coal are burned, may have a bigger impact on climate in some areas than greenhouse gases. New research presented here at the American Geophysical Union meeting shows that the 20 percent decrease in the extent of Himalayan glaciers since the 1960s may be partly due to an influx of black carbon [i.e. soot] from Asian cities.
As NASA writes:
A new modeling study from NASA confirms that when tiny air pollution particles we commonly call soot – also known as black carbon – travel along wind currents from densely populated south Asian cities and accumulate over a climate hotspot called the Tibetan Plateau, the result may be anything but inconsequential.
In fact, the new research, by NASA’s William Lau and collaborators, reinforces with detailed numerical analysis what earlier studies suggest: that soot and dust contribute as much (or more) to atmospheric warming in the Himalayas as greenhouse gases.
Indeed, some scientists think that the role of soot is much bigger. As an article from 2002 pointed out:
The research, published in this week's Science, suggests that soot — produced by diesel engines, cooking fires and other sources — could have nearly as much impact on climate change as carbon dioxide, which has long been considered the primary culprit in global warming.And an article published in the journal Nature Geosciences (subscription required) concludes “increasing concentrations of black carbon have substantially contributed to rapid Arctic warming during the past three decades”, and that aerosols are responsible for “half or more” of Arctic warming.
A group of US and Chinese researchers used a global climate model to simulate how black carbon affects weather patterns. They found that soot can influence regional climate by absorbing sunlight, heating the air and affecting rainfall.
Emissions of soot are particularly large in China because cooking and heating are done with wood, cow dung and coal at low temperatures that do not allow for complete combustion.
Indeed, Dr. Hansen himself now admits:
Black soot is probably responsible for as much as half of the glacial melt.A paper published by the National Academy of Science in July 2009 notes:
Our ability to predict how global temperatures will change in the future is currently limited by the large uncertainties associated with aerosols. Soot aerosols represent a major research focus as they influence climate by absorbing incoming solar radiation resulting in a highly uncertain warming effect. The uncertainty stems from the fact that the actual amount soot warms our atmosphere strongly depends on the manner and degree in which it is mixed with other species, a property referred to as mixing state. In global models and inferences from atmospheric heating measurements, soot radiative forcing estimates currently differ by a factor of 6, ranging between 0.2–1.2 W/m2, making soot second only to CO2 in terms of global warming potential. This article reports coupled in situ measurements of the size-resolved mixing state, optical properties, and aging timescales for soot particles. Fresh fractal soot particles dominate the measured absorption during peak traffic periods (6–9 AM local time). Immediately after sunrise, soot particles begin to age by developing a coating of secondary species including sulfate, ammonium, organics, nitrate, and water. Based on these direct measurements, the core-shell arrangement results in a maximum absorption enhancement of 1.6× over fresh soot. These atmospheric observations help explain the larger values for soot forcing measured by others and will be used to obtain closure in optical property measurements to reduce one of the largest remaining uncertainties in climate change.This is a new discovery. As Time notes:
The science is evolving — it's so new that black carbon wasn't even listed as a warming agent in the most recent report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change — but it cannot be ignored.Soot Has a More Immediate Effect than CO2
The key is that there is a much shorter lag time between soot and temperature that between CO2 and temperature. As Time writes:
Unlike CO2, which can hang around in the atmosphere for centuries — CO2 that was emitted by the first coal-powered train is probably still in the air, warming the planet — black carbon has a relatively brief life span. It remains just a few weeks in the air before it falls to earth. That's key, because if the world could reduce black carbon emissions soon, it could help blunt warming almost instantly. "You can wait a week or a month and the totals in the atmosphere can be significantly different," says Eric Wilcox, an atmospheric scientist with NASA. Meanwhile, if we were to vastly reduce new CO2 emissions immediately, the billions of tons that already exist in the atmosphere would keep warming the planet for decades.
Because black carbon only remains in the atmosphere for several days to weeks, reducing it can bring about almost immediate mitigation of warming, whereas decreases in temperature lag reductions in CO2 by 1,000 years or more.Good News
Time points out that it is relatively easy to reduce soot:
The good news is that while taking CO2 out of our energy cycle has proven very difficult — especially in poorer developing nations — black-carbon emissions should be easier to curb. Reducing deforestation will help — the burning of tropical rain forests is a big contributor to the black-carbon load. Next, diesel filters in cars can be upgraded, and biomass-burning stoves can be exchanged for technology that uses solar power or natural gas. These changes will cost money, but they should be cheaper than decarbonization. And cutting back on black carbon will also pay immediate health dividends, with less air pollution and fewer deaths from respiratory diseases. We might even be able to see the sky in New Delhi again.
The New York Times also notes the cost-effectiveness of reducing soot:A neglected fast-action strategy presented in the paper is reducing black carbon soot, an aerosol produced largely from the incomplete combustion of diesel fuels and biofuels, and from biomass burning. It is now considered to be the second or third largest contributor to climate change.
“If we reduce black carbon emissions worldwide by 50% by fully deploying all available emissions-control technologies, we could delay the warming effects of CO2 by one to two decades and at the same time greatly improve the health of those living in heavily polluted regions,” said Dr. Ramanathan.
Decreasing black carbon emissions would be a relatively cheap way to significantly rein in global warming — especially in the short term, climate experts say ...For these reasons, any international treaty or domestic law which does not focus on significantly reducing soot is not worth the paper it's written on.
Note 1: As I have previously noted, Dr. Hansen, the economists who invented cap and trade, and the head of California's cap and trade offsets program for the EPA are all opposed to cap and trade. I have also noted that the person who invented credit default swap derivatives is one of the key people pushing cap and trade.
Therefore, any treaty which pushes cap and trade at the exclusion of soot reduction is doubly worthless.
Note 2: As one example of an inexpensive soot reduction measure, solar cookers or plans for building them could be given to millions of people in the developing world, thus slashing soot from the burning of wood and dung.
Monday, December 14, 2009
Tony Blair: Whether Or Not the Stated Reasons Are True, We Must Do It Anyway
Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair told the Iraq War investigation that - whether or not Iraq had weapons of mass destruction - he would have backed the Iraq war. As the Guardian notes:
He explained it was "the notion of him as a threat to the region" because Saddam Hussein had used chemical weapons against his own people.
"This was obviously the thing that was uppermost in my mind. The threat to the region. Also the fact of how that region was going to change and how in the end it was going to evolve as a region and whilst he was there, I thought and actually still think, it would have been very difficult to have changed it in the right way."
Given this admission, are those pushing to impose a framework for global warming sure it's smart to have Blair as a keynote speaker at Copenhagen?
Indeed, as the Telegraph notes:
The world must take action on climate change at Copenhagen even if the science is not correct, Tony Blair, the former Prime Minister has suggested ...
Following the 'climategate scandal', Mr Blair said the science may not be “as certain as its proponents allege”.
But he said the world should act as a precaution against floods, droughts and mass extinction caused by climate change, in fact it would be “grossly irresponsible” not to.
Whatever one believes about climate science, it is too easy to discredit Blair as a messenger. Whether you think global warming is an imminent threat or not, having Blair justify the cause with language eerily reminiscent of his defense for the Iraq war is not very effective. It is too easy to argue that - in both cases - Blair is saying that whether or not the stated reason is true, we must do it anyway.
The Copenhagen framework would not significantly reduce carbon emissions (see this and this). Just as the Iraq war did not increase the national security of the United States. See this, this and this.
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