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November 9, 2007
Friday link round up
by Sylvia S Tognetti
a few links worthy of attention:
Apocalypse Now: the drought. Rick Perlstein puts the drought and wildfires into political context and sees an apocalypse for the conservative vision of government. And not just because both the House and the Senate voted to override Bush's veto of the first water bill in 7 years. I can't find a way to excerpt it without spoiling the punchlines - just read it.
Via Climate Science Watch - a feature article by Chris Mooney in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, about what made the the National Assessment of Climate Change unique, and how it was suppressed. This is an issue that I have been following for a long time, and have intended to blog but haven't, because I haven't had the time to do it justice. More on that in the not too distant future.
Al Gore on "30 Rock", spoofing NBC's Green Week - Huffpo has the video - for whatever it is worth, he seems to have lost some weight.
Posted by Sylvia S Tognetti at 10:38 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
November 8, 2007
Required reading
by Sylvia S Tognetti
Is the press trying to instigate a fight among Democrats? This is going somewhat off topic for this blog to the broader context of science and policy but I'm afraid this will get buried when it needs to instead be nipped in the bud. Via Media Matters, read what Bill Clinton said (in a speech to the American Postal Workers Union), and you tell me if he said or even implied that Hillary was getting "swiftboated" by other Democrats - which is how it was widely reported. Then read it again, for what he actually said:
PRESIDENT CLINTON: [T]he point I'm here to make to you is whoever you're for, this is a really big election. We saw what happened the last seven years when we made decisions in elections based on trivial matters. When we listened to people make snide comments about whether Vice President [Al] Gore was too stiff. When they made dishonest claims about the things that he said that he'd done in his life. When that scandalous Swift boat ad was run against Senator [John] Kerry [D-MA].
When there was an ad that defeated [former Sen.] Max Cleland [D] in Georgia -- a man that left half his body in Vietnam. And a guy that had several deferments ran an ad with Max Cleland's picture with Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden, because he dared to vote against the president's version of the Homeland Security bill.
Most Americans still don't know the truth. The president was against the Homeland Security bill for eight and a half months. And [former White House senior adviser] Karl Rove told him they were going to lose the 2002 elections unless the American people were scared about terror again. So, they decided to be for a bill they'd opposed -- and they put a poison pill in it.
That bill was designed by the president to take the job rights away from 170,000 federal employees that had no access to secure information, no access to secure technology, no business being treated like CIA agents. Look, we need to be able to fire CIA agents without going through a long process in the public, right? ... But we don't need to treat secretaries at FEMA [Federal Emergency Management Agency] that way. I mean, the whole thing was a scam.
So Max Cleland said, "I didn't go to Vietnam and leave one arm and two legs to come home and hold my job by stripping the job rights from 170,000 good, hard-working Americans. I won't do it. So they put an ad on comparing him to Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden.
Why am I saying this?
Because, I had the feeling, at the end of that last debate, we were about to get into cutesy land again. "Ya'll raise your hand if you're for illegal immigrants getting driver's licenses." So, we'll then let the Republicans run an ad saying, "All the Democrats are against the rule of law."
I don't -- look, I think it's fine to discuss immigration. We should. Illegal immigration needs to be discussed, and it's fine for Hillary and all these other guys to be asked about Governor Spitzer's plan -- but not in 30 seconds, yes, no, raise your hand. This is a complicated issue. This is a complicated issue.
So, do I hope you'll vote for my wife? You bet I do. It'd be good for America and good for the world. But, more than that, I came here to tell you today: Don't you dare let them take this election away from you. This belongs to you and to your children -- and to the future of America.
Don't be diverted. Don't be divided. Our best days are still ahead, claim them. Thank you.
Then go to Media Matters and read the whole post. To his credit, even Bill O'Reilly didn't believe it and didn't report it because he couldn't find where Bill said such a thing. Nonetheless, asked to respond to Bill Clinton's "charge" that they had engaged in "swiftboating," Obama was stunned. Dodd was outraged. Democrats: please, please, please, question such questions before answering them.
To bring this back to science and policy, consider what is at stake in the next election. It may be the blogs that take back our post-normal public discourse.
Posted by Sylvia S Tognetti at 11:27 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
November 5, 2007
Known unknowables
by Sylvia S Tognetti
Via ThinkProgress - Al Gore on the NBC Today show, in response to a question from Meredith Viera, regarding a predictable op-ed by so called climate skeptic John Christy:
But, Meredith, part of the challenge the news media has had in covering this story is the old habit of taking the on the one hand, on the other hand approach. There are still people who believe that the Earth is flat, but when you’re reporting on a story like the one you’re covering today, where you have people all around the world, you don’t take — you don’t search out for someone who still believes the Earth is flat and give them equal time.
To be fair, perhaps Christy should get a kudo for recognizing that there is indeed indeed uncertainty about climate change, but it isn't just in science. In the second post on this blog, I even gave kudos to the Bush administration for recognizing and pointing out that changes in climate are uncertain, pointing out that, under a business as usual scenario, which assumes the continuation of current trends, the climate itself will only become more uncertain. Christy goes on to recite the usual fallacies that aren't even worth responding to, even confusing weather with climate....
Less predictable is the sensitivity of the climate itself, as is explained in this must read RealClimate post that discusses a new paper by Gerard Roe and Marcia Bakerk, which explains certainty of uncertainty in the relationship between climate forcing and the range of potential temperature changes. Perhaps even more uncertain is whether all obtainable scientific information would actually make any difference in policy decisions and whether we have the capacity to actually make high stakes policy decisions in which uncertainty and value conflicts are part of the equation. But we do know that the earth is round, and that even small changes can make a big difference.
For more discussion of this and other recent and noteworthy climate papers, you might want to listen to last week's edition of Science Friday, in which guests included Gerard Roe together with Chris Field, Steve Rayner and Eileen Claussen.
Addendum: this morning I found this YouTube video which has the complete interview. Gore still doesn't "have plans" to be a candidate, but asked about whether he might serve in some high-level capacity in an Obama administration, he added that he has "no plans to go back into government service in any other capacity." I have nothing against the other candidates, but next to Gore, they just seem very small. I realize it could have something to do with how demeaning the campaign process has become. All the more reason to Draft Gore. Running by not running provides an opportunity to change that too, and to start evaluating candidates on their merits.
Posted by Sylvia S Tognetti at 11:39 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack