Chicago is applying for $106 million in federal-stimulus grants to hire 400 new police officers, even though there’s a costly string attached: When the three-year grants expire, the officers must remain on the city payroll for at least another year.

Daley’s 2009 budget slowed police hiring to a crawl — with only 200 officers expected to be hired throughout the year. The Chicago Police Department is more than 600 officers below its authorized strength. More…

CPD sworn strength:
2009: 13,500
1999: 13,366

Chicago’s Crime Camera System

In 2005, a pilot network of 30 cameras keeps watch over the West Side, capturing images that have been used in more than 200 investigations. It’s the first step on the way to a 2,250-camera system. And the electronic eyes are merely the most visible part of a strategy to completely remake police work in Chicago. A massive set of databases now collects and collates the minutiae of law enforcement - everything from mug shots to chains of evidence. Installed in patrol cars, it turns every PC in every station house into a node on a crime-fighting network. At headquarters, superintendents and commanders use it to pore over patterns of criminal behavior, figuring out how to deploy swarms of cops. Today, the murder rate is at its lowest point since the mid-’60s. Read the whole article….

As of September 2007, the system had 560 crime cameras in place.

Hooked Into the 911 System

Whenever a 911 call is received, the dispatch system automatically scans the city security camera network, in search of a camera within 150 feet of the address of the call.

Video from the camera will appear in the 911 call taker’s computer screen within seconds. The program allows call takers and dispatchers to use the video to provide additional information to first responders and law enforcement in an emergency. More…

Is it Worth it?

Chicago police said that, as of the same day, they had used camera footage in 1,407 arrests, including at least five homicides, since the city began tracking data in February 2006.

Chicago police have not tracked the cost of their cameras, the first of which was installed in 2003, but say more than $5.6 million has been spent on hardware alone. The city’s emergency communications agency will spend $480,000 this year on camera watchers, a spokesman said. More…

How Sweet Are Those Cameras?

“In addition to their phenomenal reliability, what sold us on these cameras was the SNC-RX570N’s 36X zoom lens with its 122.4 millimeter focal length,” said Jim Trofimuk, owner and principal of Waypoint Consulting. “It makes accurate facial recognition and license plate reading possible from a distance of up to 500 feet. The image quality is outstanding and continues to impress anyone who sees it.”

The SNC-RX530N/W and SNC-RX570N cameras offer 360 degrees of endless panning and rotation for precise capture of any object surrounding the camera. They also employ the latest H.264 compression technology – the highest available for image transport and storage. According to Trofimuk, this enables the police department to extend its data storage capacity to up to 30 days, ideal for its incident recording needs. More…

The Happer Letter

Dear Editors:

Fifty-four current and former members of the American Physical Society have signed the attached Open Letter to the APS Council calling for a reconsideration of its November 2007 Statement on Climate Change. The Open Letter includes a proposed Alternative Statement which the signatories find a more accurate representation of the current state of the science than the unsupported assertion of the APS: “The evidence is incontrovertible.”

Regarding the National Policy Statement on Climate Change of the APS Council: An Open Letter to the Council of the American Physical Society

As physicists who are familiar with the science issues, and as current and past members of the American Physical Society, we the undersigned urge the Council to revise its current statement* on climate change as follows, so as to more accurately represent the current state of the science:

Greenhouse gas emissions, such as carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide, accompany human industrial and agricultural activity. While substantial concern has been expressed that emissions may cause significant climate change, measured or reconstructed temperature records indicate that 20th - 21st century changes are neither exceptional nor persistent, and the historical and geological records show many periods warmer than today. In addition, there is an extensive scientific literature that examines beneficial effects of increased levels of carbon dioxide for both plants and animals.

Studies of a variety of natural processes, including ocean cycles and solar variability, indicate that they can account for variations in the Earth’s climate on the time scale of decades and centuries. Current climate models appear insufficiently reliable to properly account for natural and anthropogenic contributions to past climate change, much less project future climate.

The APS supports an objective scientific effort to understand the effects of all processes – natural and human — on the Earth’s climate and the biosphere’s response to climate change, and promotes technological options for meeting challenges of future climate changes, regardless of cause.

* The statement of the APS Council, adopted on November 18, 2007 is as follows:

“Emissions of greenhouse gases from human activities are changing the atmosphere in ways that affect the Earth’s climate. Greenhouse gases include carbon dioxide as well as methane, nitrous oxide and other gases. They are emitted from fossil fuel combustion and a range of industrial and agricultural processes.

The evidence is incontrovertible: Global warming is occurring. If no mitigating actions are taken, significant disruptions in the Earth’s physical and ecological systems, social systems, security and human health are likely to occur. We must reduce emissions of greenhouse gases beginning now.

Because the complexity of the climate makes accurate prediction difficult, the APS urges an enhanced effort to understand the effects of human activity on the Earth’s climate, and to provide the technological options for meeting the climate challenge in the near and longer terms. The APS also urges governments, universities, national laboratories and its membership to support policies and actions that will reduce the emission of greenhouse gases.”

These next two quotes are from one of the scientists that signed the letter. They are comments on the WSJ site, including the article which Tom supplied.

The debate isn’t over the reality of climate change. The reality of warming is obvious, as manifested by lengthened growing seasons, melting glaciers and arctic ice, etc. The debate isn’t really over whether warming is the result of anthropogenic greenhouse gases. That is hard to prove rigorously, but it is hard to avoid the conclusion that when you throw a blanket (greenhouse gases) over a heat source (the surface of the Earth, heated by sunlight) it will get warmer. This has been understood for a century; nothing new here, and no “emerging consensus”. It has been known all along.

The debate should be over whether climate change is good or bad for us, and whether (if bad) we should try to slow or reverse it rather than adapting to it. Historical evidence and common sense suggest that longer growing seasons and more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere are, on balance, good for us. We should be grateful for it. People won’t freeze in the dark for the sake of a scientific theory, even a correct scientific theory.(More…)

and this:

As a signatory of the Happer letter, I would like to add a few words, speaking only for myself and not for anyone else. I think the following statements, some of which are controversial, are likely to be closest to the truth:

The climate has warmed in the last century, and particularly in the last 30 years.

Year-to-year temperature changes are like weather, and do not indicate a long term trend.

It is likely, though certainly not proven, that adding greenhouse gases to the atmosphere warms the climate. That is the simplest and most naive consequence of the physics. The actual climate system is complicated, and it is possible, but (to me) somewhat implausible, that the net effect would be the opposite.

Greenhouse warming occurs chiefly when and where the weather is cold: temperate winters and polar regions. Hot weather doesn’t get any hotter, but cold weather gets warmer.

There is no evidence that warming would change the frequency or severity of storms, droughts, or any other bad thing, or that these have become more severe or more frequent in the last few decades. The Sahel is moister than it was twenty years ago, when there were fears the Sahara was expanding southwards.

There is no “emerging consensus”. The basic physics has been understood, approximately, for a century. It isn’t understood any better now. The climate models disagree widely about the amount of warming (though they all agree that there will be warming) and there is no prospect of reducing this disagreement.

The most important effect of warming is longer growing seasons in temperate and sub-arctic regions. This is good for humanity.

Climate changes continually, with or without anthropogenic influence. Like weather, there is nothing we can do about this. People are adaptable, and will adapt to climate change, just as they adapt to weather.

There is no excuse for the recent global warming hysteria, or the attempt to suppress debate by silencing the skeptics. We may not agree with them, but they deserve to be heard, and there is no need to rush to judgement. (More…)

Let’s apply Occam’s razor on the most basic climate change concepts:

• Do greenhouse gasses reduce the loss of heat from the environment?
• Are greenhouse gasses not actually present in the atmosphere at the measured levels?
• Are the noted increase in greenhouse gasses not the result of the burning of fossil fuels and other human activities?

If you answer no to any of the above three statements than you might as well stop reading because you and the entirety of the physical science community are unlikely to ever see eye-to-eye. You are attempting to refute scientific fact.

It is outside of these basic statements where “emerging consensus” must yield the floor to “open debate.” Although the basic science appears incontrovertible, the details are too complicated even today.

• The climate models disagree widely about the amount of warming;
• Is climate change good for society (longer growing seasons) or bad for society (rising oceans);
• To what extent should a response to climate change be preventative and to what extent should it be ameliorative;
• Poverty. Cheap energy alleviates poverty. Regardless of whatever else may or may not have to happen in order to make said energy clean, cheap energy alleviates poverty. China knows this. India knows this. Hard-core climate changers are purposefully blind to it.

Just because the floor has been opened to debate does not mean that now is a time for complacency. Regardless of what the ultimate climate change solutions end up being, we know their basic framework: conservation where it doesn’t impact your lifestyle, technology where it does.

I strongly believe that, for better or worse, Americans are not going to change their lifestyles on account of the long-off threat of climate change. But there are lots of things that you can do which don’t impact your lifestyle even remotely and more importantly, they will save you money while you wait for technology to save the day.

• Change your light bulbs.
• Insulate your water heater.
• Drive the small car whenever possible.
• Recycle.
• Get an electric heat pump.

Humans are adaptable. Time after time for millenia, we have overcome obstacles. Man-made climate change is like a mosquito on the face of history. The best case scenario is an annoying little itch. The worst case is a little malaria.

Just be glad its not a Tsetse fly.

FWIW

Two other points/arguments to refute.

• Just because the earth’s climate has changed in the past, and it has, without anthropogenic or episodic (volcao, etc.) influence does not mean that is the case this time.
• The “global cooling” consensus of the 1970’s never existed and was mostly media hype. There were more published papers in the peer-reviewed journals about potential global warming than global cooling during the ’70s, along with more citations of global warming papers.

  Major publications such as Newsweek, Time, the New York Times and National Geographic published articles in the 1970’s about the possibility of a new ice age, but Thomas Peterson of the National Climatic Data Center surveyed dozens of peer-reviewed scientific articles from 1965-1979 and found the following…….

  7 supported global cooling.
  44 predicted warming.
  20 were neutral in regards to future climate trends.

But, Just For Fun…

When it comes to saving the planet do celebrities practice what they preach?

‘It’s true - we’re hypocrites over our huge carbon footprint,’ confesses Sting’s wife

Al Gore wouldn’t dream of suggesting that the Hollywood Establishment lavish jet-setting and gas-guzzling lifestyles could be reined in for the good of the environment.

MD Governor O’Malley expresses support to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 90% between now and 2050.

MD Governor O’Malley bars wind turbines from being built on state land.

Government officials and activists flying to Bali, Indonesia, for the United Nations meeting on climate change will cause as much pollution as 20,000 cars in a year.

Joel Makower, environmental author and lecturer, embarrassed by the 51 flights he took in 6 months, but won’t stop flying anytime soon.

Barbara Streisand lists simple things you can do to help stop Global Warming.

Barbara Streisand tours with the help of 13 trucks and a private jet.

Comparison: Al Gore’s house vs. George W. Bush’s house

Brian,
I’d be really interested to hear why someone would get the same amount of money if they trade in a truck/suv but only get a smaller increase in mpg than someone trading in a car. Any chance you can look into this? Since I don’t trust detroit or their lobby, I would guess someone in congress caved on this one so that people would trade in their older SUV for a newer one that might get a couple extra mpg.

http://money.cnn.com/galleries/2009/autos/0905/gallery.clunkers_cash/index.html

Joe, while I bet that you are correct to assume that the law’s final form was detrimentally influenced by the Detroit lobby, there is still a fair bit of logic behind the bill.

First, let’s reiterate something that I’ve talked about before: Miles Per Gallon is not a very accurate way of measuring the fuel savings associated with getting better gas mileage.

A better way to look at it is Gallons per 100 Miles.

The basic premise of the government’s Cash for Clunkers program is that replacing fuel inefficient cars is one of the easiest/cheapest ways to cut carbon output.

Replacing a car that gets 17 mpg with a car that gets 25 mpg saves about as much gas as replacing a car that gets 25 mpg with one that gets 50 mpg. Thus, rather then giving everyone Prius’s (remember, Obama’s already promising both rainbows and unicorns) its cheaper to get the older “clunkers” off the road.

That’s Great In Theory, But…

About 7 tons of CO2 are emitted in producing a new car. This means that the new car, if it uses one Gallon Per Mile less than the trade-in would be carbon-neutral at 70,000 miles.

That means, for the most part, that you’re looking at needing at least a three mpg fuel efficiency increase to be carbon neutral at 70,000 miles.

In order to be carbon neutral at 30,000 miles:

12 MPG must be raised to at least 17 MPG
13 MPG must be raised to at least 18 MPG
14 MPG must be raised to at least 21 MPG
15 MPG must be raised to at least 23 MPG
16 MPG must be raised to at least 26 MPG
17 MPG must be raised to at least 28 MPG
18 MPG must be raised to at least 31 MPG

But What About Joe’s Question?

In the current economic environment, and given the other ways this money would be spent by the Democrats, I’m not really opposed to the program.

First, this Cars for Clunkers program is properly looked at as a way to exchange a vehicle that gets less than 18 mpg for a car or a truck. The way CNN presents it, the initial impression is that you have to exchange a car for a car or a truck for a truck.

That is not the case.

Second, this Cars for Clunkers program should really be looked at as a way to get SUV’s off the road, not cars. Any vehicle redeemed for a voucher under the Cars for Clunkers program needs to be rated at less than 18 mpg. There are far fewer cars than SUVs on the road that get less than 18 mpg.

The vehicles turned in under the Cars for Clunkers program will be predominantly SUV’s.

So, should buying a car get you a bigger voucher than buying an SUV?

Sure…maybe…I guess.

• There is nothing in the law which prevents a person from buying a more fuel efficient car. What Joe’s really saying is that you shouldn’t get the voucher for saving 2 mpg on the SUV.
  

  But we’ve already learned that its probably more important to get the old SUV’s off the road than it is to get the Accord driver into the Prius.

• Replacing a vehicle that gets 18 mpg with one that gets 40 mpg saves $7,640 in fuel costs over 100,000 miles. That’s more than the top amount on the vouchers, and thus arguably enough of an incentive in and of itself.
• There is already in place the up to $3,400 tax credit for hybrids. Well, not really, since its already gone for Toyota and Honda and will phase out for Ford next April.

On the other hand, none of this is really going to do any good global warming wise. Eventually, the solution is to either innovate our way out of it or everybody takes four steps up the hill.

Paying people to drive cars that get 35 mpg isn’t going to solve anything.

Its All About the Unions Anyway

For those of you thinkin’ this is all just pork disguised as a green movement, yeah, you’re probably right. Its just one Democrat special interest group scratching the back of another. Just ask the Senator from Michigan.

“This is a big victory for families across Michigan and across our country,” said Stabenow. “This is a bill that saves jobs and helps small businesses affected by the economic downturn, all with the added benefit of helping the environment. This program will provide an economic stimulus at a time when hardworking families need it most.”

Under the program, consumers may trade in their older vehicles and receive vouchers worth up to $4,500 toward the purchase or qualified lease of a new, more fuel-efficient car or truck. The program will be authorized from July 1, 2009 to November 1, 2009 with $1 billion in emergency funding.

The trade-in vehicles must:
• Be in drivable condition
• Be continuously insured and registered to the same owner for at least one year
• Have a combined fuel economy value of 18 mpg or less (Work trucks must be pre-2002 regardless of mpg)
• Not be more than 25 years old with historic or aesthetic value. These vehicles are valued by hobbyists or are a valuable source of restoration parts.

New vehicles
• The new vehicle must have a manufacturer’s suggested retail price of less than $45,000.

• Passenger Cars: The older vehicle must get 18 mpg or less. New passenger cars with mileage of at least 22 mpg are eligible for vouchers. If the mileage of the new car is at least 4 mpg higher than the old vehicle, the voucher will be worth $3,500. If the mileage of the new car is at least 10 mpg higher than the old vehicle, the voucher will be worth $4,500.

• Small Trucks and SUVs: The old vehicle must get 18 mpg or less. New small trucks or SUVs with mileage of at least 18 mpg are eligible for vouchers. If the mileage of the new truck or SUV is at least 2 mpg higher than the old vehicle, the voucher will be worth $3,500. If the mileage of the new truck or SUV is at least 5 mpg higher than the old vehicle, the voucher will be worth $4,500. (More…)

Or, why not just inflate your tires properly.

What do you think? Could it possibly be true?