From "Here are the eight Trump Cabinet picks Democrats plan to target" (in WaPo).
And what about getting Merrick Garland onto the Supreme Court? Here's "Hacking democratic rules isn't good government," by Megan McArdle:
[T]here will be a nanosecond gap between when the outgoing senators leave office, and the new ones are sworn in. During that gap, there will be more Democrats left than Republicans. So the idea is to call that smaller body into session, vote on the nomination, and voila! -- a new Supreme Court justice. Alternatively, President Obama could use that gap to make a recess appointment....But Democrats will say that Republicans stole the nomination from Obama who was legitimately elected President and still President when the vacancy occurred.
The idea behind the nanosecond nomination seems to be that there are two discrete Senates, the old and the new, with a definite gap between them; yet that somehow, though neither the old nor the new Senate exists, there are senators, who can hold a vote on something -- a sort of quantum Senate that pops into and out of existence depending on the needs of the Democratic Party....
Even if these moves could work, they wouldn’t work... When procedural hacks work, it’s because they’re too boring for readers to understand, or care, and therefore take place well outside of the media spotlight. This, by contrast, is pretty easy to understand, and what most voters will understand is that Democrats are trying to do an end run around the results of a legitimate election...
I agree that the question hangs not on the technical and boring procedural question — if it did, you'd go read this now — but on whether it feels wrong to people. I think we've already perceived that the American people did not feel too uncomfortable with holding the Scalia seat open until after the election. The NYT tried to portray it as a great outrage, but it didn't stick. A tricky maneuver tomorrow would gobsmack America. And that's why it won't happen. If it does, it will be the Democrats proclaiming that these are not normal times and they can do abnormal things.
Why would you do that just as you were going out of power? The other party gets to swan in looking like the adults who have finally arrived (and then to take whatever power they like).
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227 comments:
«Oldest ‹Older 201 – 227 of 227"Scientists are some of the most intelligent and knowledgeable people in society;"
Thank you.
"however they are not compensated financially in a way that corresponds to that achievement."
You don't understand the grant system.
I hate the ""XXX OBLITERATES YYY!" style of headline, but Sean Davis came close with this article:
http://thefederalist.com/2016/12/07/no-senate-democrats-cant-use-nuclear-option-confirm-merrick-garland/
Brief summary: there are about five or six different reasons this would never, ever work, from the direct text of the Constitution to the Standing Rules of the Senate.
A man with a mission.
Obviously.
A man for all seasons?
Tune in for our next thrilling episode.
"Believing the Russian prediction of cooling is exactly like believing in the second coming of Christ."
Well. No it's not. You see it is also based on data. Data acquired from a much longer timeline than 150plus years.
About 10 or 12 years ago the NOAA moved dozens of it's sensors that record warming data to areas that would not be influenced by man made interference. To date they have recorded no increase in temps across the continent. CO2 notwithstanding.
The conclusion may be that the mechanisms involved are much more complicated than a simple increase in CO2.
Ocean warming temps were adjusted when the samples from a ships sea water discharge were discontinued and actual ocean sampling was implemented.The warming , of course, ticked downward.
My personal conclusion is that "Climate Science" isn't advanced enough to warrant such a massive change in global economics.
I will assume the Times (to get back on topic ;) ) did not list the personal wealth of the present Cabinet Holders. (I'm not clicking the link to waste one of my free reads).
Because why would you want to add data to a conversation?
btw -- this is an oldie but a goodie for AGW arguments. Physicists are horrible interpreters of atmospheric physics.
The idea that fossil fuels industries who can buy off the 3% of scientists they can manage to corrupt are less incentivized to bias the data than conventional grant foundations without those lucrative conflicting interests as their core mission is so idiotic that you'd have to have a mental allergy to opposing viewpoints to believe it.
R & B, the money on the pro-warming side DWARFS the money questioning it. And in a battle of government v company, a company cannot compete, financially, with an entity that can simply print more money.
Either financial incentives exist or they do not. It makes no sense to assume the pro-warming side ALONE is able to deal with the incentives honestly while everybody else cannot.
There you go with you and your bureaucrats. And yet, nothing to say about why scientists themselves - a bit less corruptible and interested in power than politicians - can only manage to muster 3% support for your "equally corrupt" oil cartel lobby.
That "97% agree that warming is primarily man-made" figure includes papers that do not claim that whatsoever. In fact, MOST of the papers in that study do not claim that. If they IMPLIED that man was even 1% involved, they were put in that category.
If they "aren't interested in money", their obsession with getting grants is truly, truly baffling. That requires considerable time to apply for.
Trump should also argue that any Department who does not need anybody in charge for a week due to Democrats being unable to vet different candidates in different committees should no longer exist as a department.
Unprecedented wealth? John Kerry. Andrew Mellon.
Yeah. Tillerson's net worth is $228M. Kerry is worth $194M. I can see why Tillerson requires so much more vetting.
The part I don't understand is why Democrats are in a majority in the quantum Senate. Really I don't see what their argument is.
I'd wonder how a quorum would be possible with 1/3 of the Senate gone. How would, say, the Judiciary Committee do its job and pass the nomination through with several members missing?
It is not 97% of all scientists, but 97% of climate scientists, and the number came from a survey of submitted papers in the genre that showed 97% agreement that world climate has warmed since 1850, but by no means any agreement about the causes and much less that human activity was the main cause. Someone did a spot check on names actually quoted as supporting AGW and the persons contacted mostly said "no, that is not what I said," that is a misrepresentaion of what my paper," etc., etc.
@Howard, you can argue that Mann's hockey stick graph isn't meant to be a predictive model, however (1) Mann himself appears to be using it that way and (2) the flat part of the hockey stick, as I stated, overlooks both the Little Ice Age and the Medieval Warm Period so as a temperature reconstruction it is a total failure. I didn't bother to click on your first link -- I continue to be appalled at how the climate research community covers up Mann's slipshod work.
You set yourself up a quaint straw man with your second link. No one I know doubts that CO2 is a greenhouse gas. However the model whose inner workings I am most familiar with assumes that CO2 will cause more water vapor to enter the atmosphere and, H2O being even more absorptive of IR energy a feedback loop will be established where water vapor heats up the atmosphere leading to more evaporation leading to more IR absorption leading to more evaporation leading to ... a runaway system. The problem for that model is that (1! It ignores the albedi effect of clouds (can I assume, Howard, that you've never flown in an airplane flying above heavy clouds?) and hence large amounts of solar radiation never reach the earth's surface. Also there is s limit as to how much water vapor the atmosphere can hold before it precipitates out as rain or snow, which also pushes back against the feedback loop.
So, Howard, I'm not skeptical because I don't understand what is going on, but because I do. There are cues that should cause a reasonable person to be skeptical, starting with phrases like "believe in" and "consensus" and especially the notion that any science is "settled." Once a skeptical mathematician (that''d be me) starts digging in, the more reason one has to be skeptical.
@Howard, @MadisonMan let me lose with a few questions for you to gnaw on and respond to.
(1) Let us stipulate that temperatures have been rising since 1850 (the Little Ice Age ended not long before). What is the optimal temperature and how do you propose to keep us at that optimum once we get there?
(2) Is anthropogenic global warming bad? Or will a lower demand for fossil fuels to heat homes in winter and longer growing seasons at higher latitudes be a good thing?
(3). Is cap and trade the sole solution to global warming, or are there cheaper ways -- ways less open to graft and corruption -- that will do as well or better?
Rusty, like the other Althouse deniers, are quick to discount the modern instrument record and simple radiative physics, while at the same time embrace crazy theories, like a prediction of future cooling using discredited solar models, the super accurate global temperature increases on other planets and think the Viking Greenland experience is a global proxy.
That said, AGW has been oversold by the democrats, their activists and ambitious scientists in Universities and government. This is analogous to the over-selling of the WMD meme that has resulted in the great Middle East slaughter and instability. Apparently chickenhawk teabaggers are more concerned with subsidized solar than subsidized murder.
What is the optimal temperature and how do you propose to keep us at that optimum once we get there?
I would say the optimal temperature is one that does not allow catastrophic ice melt. I will define catastrophic as occurring over timescales of less than 10 years. A shorter timescale than that makes infrastructure adaptation pretty difficult.
Big Mike:
Water Vapor Part 1
Water Vapor Part 2
Nothing is settled, but we are conducting a huge geoengineering experiment on the only known life-supporting planet in the Universe. We have measured increasing temperatures and progressive arctic land and sea ice loss. The result might be good, it might be bad... no one knows. Unfortunately, the discussion is focused on the nutters on both ends of the issue between CO2 is the mothers milk of the environment to we will exterminate life as we know it.
Most economists agree that a simple revenue neutral carbon tax is best, starting at a low number like $10/ton and slowly raising it to shape the market to create pressure to invest in decarbonization. This isn't remaking the whole economy, it's a modest transformation. I have doubts because no new tax is ever revenue neutral. I prefer tax breaks for industry to decarbonize, but the left will never get onboard with that.
Also, it makes more sense to eliminate traditional air pollution first because it will have a faster influence on climate and will reduce toxic and carcinogenic exposures. Of course, Goldman Sachs doesn't want to have cleaner air or to force China and India to reduce their monstrous air pollution, so that solution is dead in the water as well. Every dollar spent on environmental control reduces the banks vig and we keep electing their butt-boys.
Ultimately, one of the private equity ventures is going to fund the right startup that makes the breakthroughs required to economically decarbonize.
It is not 97% of all scientists, but 97% of climate scientists, and the number came from a survey of submitted papers in the genre that showed 97% agreement that world climate has warmed since 1850, but by no means any agreement about the causes and much less that human activity was the main cause.
So we need to stop a totally natural process that does not have widespread agreement was caused by man?
Why?
Why should we replace a situation that might not be caused by man with one absolutely caused by man?
And to do this, that does require an answer to what the temperature should be and the like. If you want to change the environment so fundamentally, you have an exceptionally steep hill to climb to make those demands.
Nothing is settled, but we are conducting a huge geoengineering experiment on the only known life-supporting planet in the Universe.
You seem to be demanding that we do even MORE of one...
@MadMan, that's a weak effort; you can do better.
@Howard, thank you for the links. I will read them later.
Your second paragraph disqualifies itself with its first sentence. As numerous economists have pointed out, the notion of a "revenue neutral" tax is like the concept of a benevolent dictator -- possible only in theory but impossible in a real world. Who gets hurt by a carbon tax? Old people on a fixed income (which these days includes me). Poor people. It would be a totally regressive tax targeted entirely at the most helpless portion of society.
Beyond that your comments are an interesting mix of original thought (about 10% - 15%) with a lot of "drank too much Kool-Aid in the university." You have some potential or perhaps you hang with and have picked up some good ideas from some smart, independent thinkers. I peg you as a college student or possibly junior faculty or -- feasible but lower likelihood -- too recently graduated to have internalized the notion that all but a handful of your old professors are caught up in groupthink and consequently full of shit.
Your remark about "chicken hawk teabaggers" is a case in point. As a socially moderate fiscal conservative I am proud to support the Tea Party and as s Vietnam Era veteran I regard the people who supported our adventures in Kosovo, Libya, Syria, etc., as the true chickenhawks. Spit out the Kool-Aid and press on. You might also want to investigate whether sea ice really is disappearing (that pesky historical record tells us that Antarctic sea ice has been pretty stable over the past century or longer).
Anyway, you do show some promise, but try harder to break away from the groupthink.
This is another story that's all about the narrative -- whichever one you subscribe to. What's most striking about it is how the key player -- that would be Judge Garland -- is completely absent. Even if Team Obama was willing to give this a try, it's impossible to believe that Garland would ever go along with it.
Perhaps a "journalist" would see fit to ask any of the Democrat Senators talking of delays in confirmation of Trump's billionaire nominees exactly how they plan to accomplish that without the filibuster?
@MadMan, that's a weak effort; you can do better.
Not with a trip for work next week I can't ;)
"Why would you do that just as you were going out of power? The other party gets to swan in looking like the adults who have finally arrived (and then to take whatever power they like)."
Because loss of power has driven them mad. Both GOPe and Democrats. Think of the efforts to not give Trump the nomination after he'd gained the votes. Think the faithless elector efforts. Think the recount effort.
Each a parade of madmen riding unicorns.
It wouldn't work anyway. The seating of a new Senator takes parlimentary precedence over all other business, including considering a Supreme Court nominee.
No, it just highlights the true goals of the AGW movement.
An interest in not denying objective data, in not rejecting the most likely explanations for observed phenomena, in concern for a planet whose atmospheric composition isn't artificially altered beyond that in which civilization developed - these things are not movements. These are things that 70% of the American people agree with and that anyone rational accepts. Concern for a stable planetary environment - including the systems that broadly maintain its climatic patterns as is - is not a "movement." It's basic common sense and a priority that anyone who doesn't hold money to be more important than life as we know it shares.
Now shilling for powerful and mature and already heavily subsidized industries - regardless of their externalities, regardless of what the best evidence says about those externalities - that's a movement. It's irrational and serf-like. You would rather make a rich and powerful industry richer and more powerful than take a critical look at the impact it has on how the planet's hydrology cycles can remain more or less as they were for the 10,000 years that it took for human population to grow from a few thousand to 7 billion.
It's because you are insane and value money (not even your own, but other super-rich people's money) more than life.
You belong in Saudi Arabia. That country's rulers seem to share your viewpoint.
(1) Let us stipulate that temperatures have been rising since 1850 (the Little Ice Age ended not long before). What is the optimal temperature and how do you propose to keep us at that optimum once we get there?
Optimal temperature? The one that we had while human civilization developed thanks to agriculture and that allowed its population to swell from several thousands to more than a few billion.
(2) Is anthropogenic global warming bad?
Is the creation of conditions that threaten 90% of the species on this planet somehow not bad?
Or will a lower demand for fossil fuels to heat homes in winter and longer growing seasons at higher latitudes be a good thing?
I wonder how ignorant someone has to be of basic knowledge to forget that biology is fundamental to economics. If you alter life on this planet to the degree that we and our climate project are doing, then it's hard to imagine that a system of exchanging "goods" and "services" will make up for the devastation to our basic way of life that that would cause. It is simply not possible to live on a concrete lot within an aluminum structure and no natural systems that evolved over millions of years to be suited to it. Life comes first, then money, you f*&^tard. It's like Condi Rice said of the Iraqis - if she's the speaker you need to get it: They can't eat their oil.
Spit out the Kool-Aid and press on. You might also want to investigate whether sea ice really is disappearing (that pesky historical record tells us that Antarctic sea ice has been pretty stable over the past century or longer).
Denying that polar ice is disappearing at unprecedented rates takes astounding arrogance or ignorance - flat earth level of ignorance, really. Sea ice is thin and transient and may grow at greater rates as the poles heat up and the lost sea currents then fail to contain cold temperatures to the poles. But loss of the thicker, older and more long-term land-based ice definitely offsets any minor gain further out at sea. It's like you're looking at chunks of ice that have broken off of a melting cube in water and proclaiming a cooling effect. And that's because, like most AGW denialists, your knowledge is a mile wide and an inch deep. The most rational explanations, like usual, already account for all this. But they're apparently no match for your willingness to buy into the disinformation campaign waged by Exxon Mobil et al by the same folks who previously fought Phillip Morris' disinformation campaign. That's right. The same people who said cigarettes don't cause cancer are the same PR hacks who have spoon-fed you what you're parroting here about sea ice.
Anyone who believes economics can trump biology deserves to be buried in thousand dollar bills. Perhaps they can buy off all the lost sea life and pay a jellyfish to transform itself into something edible. Pity about the loss of habitat to those extinct and endangered food chain inputs, but maybe Big Mike will house enough of them to sustain their ecosystems in a controlled environment instead. Something about being more "economical".
Beyond that your comments are an interesting mix of original thought (about 10% - 15%) with a lot of "drank too much Kool-Aid in the university."
Notice the confusion here between "original thought" and true or supported or rational thought. Cigarettes cause cancer? How unoriginal! Come up with something better! Unoriginal =/= untrue. But then, BM's interest in truth seems tenuous at best. The truth has no requirement to entertain your easily distracted mind, boy.
The giveaway is when people start asking whether I "believe in" anthropogenic global warming.
You don't have to "believe" something to believe it's not worth taking a risk with. Especially given the unprecedented melt rates of long-term ice and the rising levels now flooding Miami Beach and Bangladesh and wherever and the fact that human habitation is concentrated mostly near major bodies of water. I know the flyover people are very resentful, but if what you really want are large scale climate refugees you should just say that's worth it to you to take a gamble with. Surely not disruptive at all to economies, although living in Dhaka one might be inclined to disagree. Losing that much cropland to seawater ain't good.
There is no such thing as "settled" science. But there is such a thing as science settled enough to not risk something with. Maybe AGW isn't settled enough to satisfy Exxon Mobil's shareholders and marketing departments. But it is to the insurance industry and the Pentagon. Which of those three have an actual stake in the matter? I know it sure ain't Exxon Mobil. But asking a basic cui bono question and applying it while fully aware of the meaning of something as rudimentary as "conflict of interest" seems to be a talent that escapes Republicans at the present moment.
Watching Ritalin & Bawls get torn to shreds, then denounce everyone and start over, will never get old. The fact that it is done so easily doesn't change that at all.
Show their work. It should be that easy.
Howard said...
Rusty, like the other Althouse deniers, are quick to discount the modern instrument record and simple radiative physics, while at the same time embrace crazy theories, like a prediction of future cooling using discredited solar models, the super accurate global temperature increases on other planets and think the Viking Greenland experience is a global proxy.
You're not helping yourself by calling me names and not addressing the issues I brought up.
And as far as I know "they" aren't using solar models but historic data. Tree rings and ice cores. Much like professor Mann. Why has the NOAA not recorded a temp. increase?
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