Winds of Change.NET

Wow. Just Wow.

2009-11-20T19:08:48Z

I've been unhappy with the quality of data released to support AGW, and so was unwilling to jump onto the bandwagon - while supporting things like energy independence. And I've been worried that core data - which keeps somehow being unreproducable or unavailable - needs to be rigorously reviewed before we make critical policy decisions.

But I never expected outright fraud.

From: Phil Jones To: ray bradley ,mann@xxxxx.xxx, mhughes@xxxx.xxx Subject: Diagram for WMO Statement Date: Tue, 16 Nov 1999 13:31:15 +0000 Cc: k.briffa@xxx.xx.xx,t.osborn@xxxx.xxx

Dear Ray, Mike and Malcolm,

Once Tim's got a diagram here we'll send that either later today or first thing tomorrow.

I've just completed Mike's Nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (ie from 1981 onwards) amd from 1961 for Keith's to hide the decline. Mike's series got the annual land and marine values while the other two got April-Sept for NH land N of 20N. The latter two are real for 1999, while the estimate for 1999 for NH combined is +0.44C wrt 61-90. The Global estimate for 1999 with data through Oct is +0.35C cf. 0.57 for 1998.

Thanks for the comments, Ray.

Cheers Phil

Prof. Phil Jones Climatic Research Unit Telephone +44 (0) xxxxx School of Environmental Sciences Fax +44 (0) xxxx University of East Anglia Norwich Email p.jones@xxxx.xxx NR4 7TJ UK

This is mindblowing.

What we have is a body of research supported by hundred of millions in research grands based on a premise promulgated and legitimized by a guy who is well on his way to making a billion from claiming to manage it.

And I thought it was bad for hucksters to 'create' issues that they could then sell patent medicine to cure.
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Maersk Alabama: Armed the 2nd Time

2009-11-18T23:40:35Z

Last time pirates hijacked the Maersk Alabama, it took a biilion-dollar AEGIS destroyer and a SEAL team to resolve the situation.

Well, the American-flagged Maersk Alabama was out sailing again, and attacked by pirates again. This time, the pirates encountered a hired on-board security team that shot back, and decided that this wasn't their leaf of qat. Apparently, that boat of pirates is currently missing.

The rest of the KDAF-33 article is mostly interesting for the whining coming from Roger Middleton, a piracy expert at London's Chatham House think tank...

Apparently, the international maritime community remains "solidly against" armed guards aboard vessels at sea, but American ships have taken a different approach." He adds:

"Also, there's the idea that it's the responsibility of states and navies to provide security. I would think it's a step backward if we start privatizing security of the shipping trade."

Well, bucko, the flaccidity of that same so-called community is the main reason pirates remain a problem - and the way the brahmins have structured the problem, there isn't an affordable or effective naval response. So American firms (and others) can spend "millions for defense, bit not one cent for tribute," and their counterparts can spend millions for tribute, and not one cent for defense. Competitive advantage and natural selection can take care of the rest.

I give you Massachusetts Maritime Academy professor Capt. Joseph Murphy, who is also the father of a sailor who was on the Maersk Alabama during the first pirate attack in April. He says that about 20% of the ships off East Africa are currently armed, adding:

"Somali pirates understand one thing and only one thing, and that's force... They analyze risk very carefully, and when the risk is too high they are going to step back. They are not going to jeopardize themselves."

When perverse international law and irresponsible governance make defense difficult, it goes private. People will protect themselves. That's happening here, and it's a long term trend to watch, because the utter incompetence of international bodies like the UN, and persistent refusal to adapt to the modern age, are not going away any time soon.

Hersh Asks: How Safe are Pakistan's Nukes?

2009-11-17T06:10:13Z

The New yorker has an article from Seymour Hersh (yeah, I know) called "Defending the Arsenal: In an unstable Pakistan, can nuclear warheads be kept safe?"

To me, the title falls into the "Duh, of course not" category, especially as you lengthen the time horizon. Some of the folks I talk to say the best hope for Pakistan is a losing civil war that takes a while, because then there might be time and space get key bomb materials/ components out. Now throw in all the Muslim states that have informed the IAEA they're starting nuclear energy programs, and the odds of a nuclear war in my lifetime closely approach 1.0.

I suppose this may come as news to some of the uneducated readers of the New Yorker, who know only what their college professors and the New York Times have deigned to tell them. If so, Hersh may have done a service.

Interesting to see one of the principals in Hari's "Renouncing Islamism" piece indirectly referenced in Hersh's article, though...

Converts FROM Islamism: The Quilliam Foundation

2009-11-17T05:12:33Z

Johann Hari's article in The Independent, "Renouncing Islamism: To the brink and back again," is the result of his interviews with some unusual people - British Muslims who first joined violent global jihad, then very publicly abandoned and began to battle against Islamism.

Some interesting passages. This one, about the impellers that led them into violent jihad as an identity:

"As children and teenagers, the ex-jihadis felt Britain was a valueless vacuum, where they were floating free of any identity.

Ed Husain, a former leader of HT, says: "On a basic level, we didn't know who we were. People need a sense of feeling part of a group - but who was our group?".... From the right, there was the brutal nativist cry of "Go back where you came from!" But from the left, there was its mirror-image: a gooey multicultural sense that immigrants didn't want liberal democratic values and should be exempted from them. Again and again, they described how at school they were treated as "the funny foreign child", and told to "explain their customs" to the class. It patronised them into alienation.

"Nobody ever said - you're equal to us, you're one of us, and we'll hold you to the same standards," says Husain. "Nobody had the courage to stand up for liberal democracy without qualms. When people like us at [Newham] College were holding events against women and against gay people, where were our college principals and teachers, challenging us?"

Without an identity, they created their own."

Hari also talks about the effects of both foreign policy and domestic protest on their journey in and out, and it's a mixed bag. My nagging concern is that for someone like Hari, who writes from a Euston Manifesto leftist perspective, the things he takes away confirm a bit too closely to his own beliefs. That may in fact be the picture he's given - but I'd feel better if I saw a few things in these accounts that would be apt to upset him on a personal level. That comes out of Totten's reports from the Middle East, for instance, and seeing that acknowledgment from him is part of what tells me he's a (rare) reporter, instead of an advocate.

I'll throw in one more Hari excerpt:

"Just as their journeys into the jihad were strikingly similar, so were their journeys out. All of them said doubt began to seep in because they couldn't shake certain basic realities from their minds. The first and plainest was that ordinary Westerners were not the evil, Muslim-hating cardboard kaffir presented by the Wahabis. Usman, for one, finally stopped wanting to be a suicide bomber because of the kindness of an old white man.... Many of the ex-Islamists discovered they couldn't ignore the fact that whenever Islamists won a military victory, they didn't build a paradise, but hell.

At the same time, they began to balk at the mechanistic nature of Wahabism. Usman says he had become a "papier-mâché Muslim", defining his faith entirely by his actions, while being empty inside. "Wahabis are great at painting themselves [an Islamic] green on the outside, but when it comes to that internal aspect, it's not there. You pray five times a day, but why? Because God's told you to pray five times a day. You pay your charity - why? Because God's told you to pay your charity. This God of yours is telling you a lot. And why does he tell you to do that? Because if you don't do it, you'll end up in a fire. It's all based on being frightened. There's nothing to nourish you."

If this sounds a lot like the ex-communists that played such an important role in throwing the religion of 100 million skulls on the hell-heap of history, well, that isn't a coincidence. Modern Islamism borrows very strongly from 20th century totalitarianism, on a number of levels. Unsurprisingly, it shares some of its predecessor's faults, to go along with its unique characteristics and dynamics.

It was the Islamic Sufi scholar Rabi'a al-Adawiyya of Basra who called on Muslims to join her in serving Allah without fear of hell, or expectation of heaven, but out of love alone.

Still wise words to live by, for any religion.

Many don't, of course. The people Hari interviewed are being threatened, and are seen as apostates by Britain's numerous Islamists (penalty... what else? death), but some of them are also banding together to form The Quilliam Foundation, a think-tank and resource center aimed at countering Isamist radicalization at all levels of society. In its place, they do not offer watered down Islamic supremacism; based on their papers I've read, they're for real - pluralist integrationist, and admirably frank.

Their most recent work has got a fair bit of attention... "Unlocking Al-Qaeda: Islamist extremism in British prisons" says that senior Islamists continue to issue directives and guidance to jihadis from within British prisons. The Times reports that the Ministry of Justice is bureaucratically dismissive, but the report has legs, as well as friends across the political spectrum. I suspect the Ministry will find itself forced to offer more than just airy dismissals before all is said and done.

As Ed Husain notes: "Once a truth is spoken, it takes on its own life." Amidst the avalanche of misunderstanding and outright lies that continue to poison all levels of discourse about Islam and Islamism in our society, The Quilliam Foundation is a badly-needed tonic.

Let us hope it can gather to the level of a therapeutic dose...

Corporate Hate Speech for Investors

2009-11-17T00:23:14Z

Barron's Magazine recently ran a feature entitled "Watch Their Language," (subscription required) which focused on some "dirty words" used in 10-K and 10-Q filings. James A. Kaplan, the Chairman and CEO of a firm called Audit Integrity, adds some publicly-accessible "Devil's Dictionary" type translations of terms found in corporate financial reports. Worthwhile reading for any investor.

The Vector of Media Today...Conversation.

2009-11-16T22:05:34Z

As I note over on my work blog, the folks at eMediaVitals.com asked me to put up an article about the state and direction (the vector!) of media businesses building on my remarks to the LA Press Club a few weeks ago.

Oil: Supply Gaps, International Substitution, and the Jevons Paradox

2009-11-16T17:30:29Z

A pair of interesting pieces at The Oil Drum, a site whose views lean strongly toward Peak Oil. One is a reproduced letter to The Guardian by Colin Campbell, one of the worlds preeminent depletion analysts, and co-author of the 1998 Scientific American article, "The End of Cheap Oil." He's not a crank - read his pedigree, and the background information he brings to his commentary. It is remarkable, and the letter offers a good short summary of his analysis.

Which brings us to the second, related topic. The Jevons Paradox (sometimes called the Jevons effect) is the proposition that technological progress that increases the efficiency with which a resource is used, tends to increase, rather than decrease, the rate of consumption of that resource. It's counter-intuitive, but sometimes true.

The second piece is an interesting "what if" look at oil demand in the OECD countries, and outside of it. "A New Geopolitical Jevons Paradox? A Look at Non-OECD Oil Demand" assumes slightly rising production, but wonders if a series of recessionary shocks that drive down oil demand in 1st and 2nd world countries might just result in substitution by demand from non-OECD countries.

Free Rent, and Stealth Stimulus

2009-11-16T17:23:06Z

Interesting piece on stealth local stimulus, at a blog called ForeclosureTruth:

"...we remain in housing limbo, with millions of homeowners underwater on their mortgages and unable, or unwilling to make their payments; yet with few being foreclosed, as lenders and the government desperately search for alternatives.... one effect of this housing limbo is the free rent we're effectively giving to those homeowners, and the contribution this free rent provides to the local economy.

When homeowners quit paying $1500 per month on their mortgage, that cash is available for other parts of the family budget. I've purchased 150+ foreclosures, and I can't remember a single homeowner that wasn't broke when it came time to move. Rather than saving, they're going out to dinner, subscribing to sports packages on TV, and buying iPhones or netbooks.... When I go out to dinner I look around and wonder - how many folks around me are out tonight thanks to a delayed foreclosure, and no mortgage payments."

Two thoughts: (1) Aren't you glad you sacrifice to pay your mortgage or rent every month? (2) With the overhang of foreclosures waiting out there, this might be a fine time to start a pawn shop chain, backed by an online resale platform.

OK, No Matter Who You Are, This Is Just Funny...

2009-11-16T07:19:56Z

Law professor and critical theory grad Darren Hutchinson gets his inner coprophile on and blasts the critics of Obama's bow (my own views here).

The post is pretty standard stuff for the juicebox Jane Hamsher crowd, and in my view, pretty much unintentionally satirizes critical theorists.

So you can skip it if you like. But you've just got to go to the comments and watch Professor Hutchinson get taken to school.
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Raised By Wolves?

2009-11-15T19:27:37Z

An email to my shooting list:

Went to Disney Hall downtown last night to hear Dudamel conduct and Dawn Upshaw sing ...

We're sitting in the grown-up section, where tickets are $125 each; and TG and I spent the first half of the program shutting people up.

WHAT THE F***?? Were these people raised by wolves?

So I'm wondering if a silenced Colt Woodsman, shooting subsonic ammo, aimed just above the knee would be too noisy to use in that environment...(not really, but thinking about it is making me feel better).

I can excuse the couple in back of us who had never been to a concert before (date between a 45 year old guy and a 20 year old girl...), and who clammed up immediately on my giving him a "shhh".

But the guy who was HUMMING Schubert's Unfinished Symphony until I jabbed him in the leg with my program?

The guy who was talking to his twenty-something son in a stage whisper for half the show until I confronted him at intermission?

Seriously, people...I may have to stop going to classical concerts and go back to hard rock...it's bad for my stress levels.

Marc

One reply sent me a link for tranquilizer darts that can be used in blowguns...hmmmm....
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The Bow And The Mao

2009-11-15T19:03:34Z

Count me among the exasperated at Obama's willingness to bow before royalty - it's funny actually, that such an avowed progressive (the group that believes in dissolving the connections of power) is so willing to reify power by being so deferential to hereditary royalty.

And no, it's not a diplomatic custom (see this series at Hot Air Pundit), and it's not even Japanese custom (contrary to dimwitted claims to the contrary) - you don't shake his hand and bow, and the bow that Obama offered is certainly not the kind of Japanese bow between equals (see Wikipedia).

Obama seems to suck up to royalty that isn't on our side (Saudi Arabia) is marginally on our side (Japan) while snubbing those who have been among our core allies (Britain). So let's ask Obama to throw his protocol droid under the bus as well, and move along.

For those among my patriotic friends on the right who are so deeply distressed, let me offer this story - possibly the first encounter between an American citizen and foreign royalty (the contacts between Adams, Jefferson, Franklin and the French preceded the British surrender, and so one can make a claim that they were not yet truly American citizens).

John Adams was presented to King George as the first American Ambassador to the Court of St. James (from Page Smith's delightful John Adams biography)...

The Foreign Secretary then carried Adams with him in his coach to the court and ushered him to the antechamber, "very full of ministers of state, lords, and bishops, and all sorts of courtiers." The Dutch and Swedish ministers, perhaps noticing Adams' agitation came up to chat and in a few minutes Carmarthen returned to escort him to the King's closet. The door was closed after him and Adams found himself alone with the Killoro and the Foreign Secretary. He bowed the three times that etiquette required - at the door, again halfway into the room, and a third time standing directly before His Majesty. It was a strange and dramatic confrontation - two short, stout men, both rather choleric, stubborn and strong-willed, sharing a certain emotional instability and a native shrewdness and wit. They were both great talkers and both, in their hearts, farmers. They both lived in worlds where they felt frequently that every man's hand was turned against them. One was the King of the most powerful nation in the world, the other's permanent rank that of a provincial lawyer and farmer. It was the New England fanner who represented victory and the King who had been forced to accept defeat. The name of Adams, John or Samuel, had been a stench in the nostrils of George III for almost twenty years and now an Adams stood before him, ambassador from those colonies which not so long ago had been the King's special treasure.

Both men were agitated and ill at ease. Adams, obviously nervous, ("I felt more," he wrote later, "than I did or could express") delivered his speech as best he could and the King listened "with a most apparent emotion .. . very much affected" and replied with a tremor in his voice: "Sir...the circumstances of this audience are so extraordinary, the language you have now held is so extremely proper and the feelings you have discovered so justly adapted to the occasion, that I must say that I not only receive with pleasure the assurance of the friendly dispositions of the United States, but that I am very glad the choice has fallen upon you to be their minister. . . . I will be very frank with you," the King continued slowly, rather haltingly, searching out his words. "I was the last to consent to the separation; but the separation having been made, and having become inevitable, I have always said, as I say now, that I would be the first to meet the friendship of the United States as an independent power." Then in a more informal spirit the King asked Adams if he had come most recently from France. "Yes, Your Majesty." The King gave his short, barking laugh. "There is an opinion among some people that you are not the most attached of all your countrymen to the manners of France." Adams was disconcerted at the remark, but he adopted the King's light air and answered: "That opinion, sir, is not mistaken; I must avow to Your Majesty I have no attachment but to my own country."

"A honest man will never have any other," the King replied.

The King spoke a few words to Lord Carmarthen and then turned and bowed to Adams, signifying that the audience was at an end. The American retreated, walking backward with as much grace as he could affect, bowed a last time at the door, and withdrew.

So it's quite possible to bow and speak frankly in defense of American interests.

Let's judge Obama less on the bowing and the dressing and pay more attention to the speaking.
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I'm Not Typically Paranoid...

2009-11-14T17:09:49Z

...about much. But this snippet over at Politico got my attention.

According to the documents, George Soros' Open Society Policy Center pays the annual salary of the NIAC staffer who heads the Campaign for a New Policy on Iran, according to an email among NIAC officials. And the minutes of a series of meetings including NIAC and other coalition members offer a glimpse of the strategy and tactics involved in the push for a rapprochement with the Islamic Republic, from an attempt to undermine the appointment of Dennis Ross as Iran envoy to a planned "Send Hillary to Iran" campaign.

At some point it would be nice if there was a decent amount of transparency around what Soros is doing; if he genuinely believes in open societies, he ought to lead it, but since he doesn't - perhaps a decent journalistic project would be to connect the dots and create a map of his involvement in US and foreign affairs.

My hackles go up not only because of the notion that a reclusive, ideological billionaire has decided to reshape the American polity, but because that billionaire makes his billions in part by investing based on changes in international markets - which are in turn effected by national and international politics.

To the extent that Mr. Soros' engagement is transparent, and we can demonstrate a lack of linkage to his investment activities, good for him.

Otherwise I feel a bit like we're in Al Gore's world where as a political actor he drums up demand for products that he sells.
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Fearless Prediction: Khalid Sheikh Mohammed's Trial Will Be A Train Wreck

2009-11-13T18:08:53Z

I Am Not A Lawyer, but trust me, it will be a train wreck - legally because a decent defense attorney will use it as a platform to place the entire War on Terror on trial, shifting the focus from Mohammed's acts to the government's and to a grandiose litany of America's wrongs in the world - and politically, because the American public is going to be really, really cranky when they see the mastermind behind 9/11 being aggressively defended in court.

Back in the dark prehistory of my blog, I pointed out that I thought the Clinton Administration had done a pretty good job of legally prosecuting terrorists, and that the terrorist movement had managed to grow rather dramatically regardless.

I hope I'm wrong on all counts. But I don't think I am.
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Proximate Knowledge

2009-11-13T15:00:50Z

I didn't manage to attend the Memorial at Fort Hood on Tuesday, but on Memorial Day itself I went to a nearby ceremony that LTG Cone spoke at.

Of course he spoke to last week's events, particularly the noble actions of numerous soldiers at the scene, two in particular: A Captain who was grazed in the head by one bullet, then struck in the thigh by another, but even after these injuries used her body to shield that of a pregnant fellow soldier. She was struck once more, in the stomach, but is of good spirits, recovering in the hospital. Another soldier was struck twice in the waist and hip, but still helped guide many, many of his fellow soldiers to safety outside.

I personally hope that these soldiers are appropriately recognized with purple hearts and other awards appropriate to their bravery under fire, just as they would be in a combat zone. They displayed great personal courage in a situation where, lets face it, no one went there that day mentally preparing themselves, for something like this.

Other than saying this, and my previous post, I've decided not to comment on this. I've given it long thought, and while I think it is more than appropriate that people speak up, I have a good reason not to. Many worthy points can be made about Major Hasan, his position, and the decisions that got such a man posted to Fort Hood to take care of soldiers. I have some knowledge of Ft Hood's psychiatric care, of soldiers who have been through it, and happen have become slightly acquainted with two who were under Maj. Hasan's care. Not only that, I was a kilometer away on Fort Hood from where he conducted his attack on fellow soldiers.

But I wasn't there. Someone who is close to an event is often granted extra credibility. Even if I strive not to imply it, people may infer it: "Porphy was there" or "Porphy knows people who Hasan treated, he knows that Major Hasan behaved inappropriately towards those under his care".

I don't really have any extra knowledge beyond that which you can get elsewhere. While it is often the case that people involved in an experience have greater knowledge of it, it is not always the case. Too often, I think, people trade on the credibility that is gained from being close to something, when they don't really know anything more (or less) than others can get.

Yes, blogging is often saying things other people are also saying. Few posts are truly unique, contain truly unique ideas or information, and I'm positive that in the future I'll babble about stuff that you could just as easily read elsewhere. In this particular case, though, I think I'll let others carry the water. A lot of things need to be said and thought about, and more power to those who are doing just that.

But I'm uncomfortable doing so, precisely because "I was there" without being there. I wasn't at the SRP site, and did not experience what those who were there experienced. I don't really have any additional information about Major Hasan and his behavior than is described elsewhere (I can say, though, that the experiences of the soldiers I'm acquainted with who were under his care, what little they told me supports rather than contradicts what you're hearing elsewhere. I guess I can go that far).

For me, a bit of reticence seems to be the responsible thing.

I'm Sure These Two Things Are Somehow Related

2009-11-12T23:41:00Z

But probably not in obvious ways.

I read a lot of stuff, and often get great ideas by reading things that are from sources that are pretty widely disparate.

Here's one - a discussion of unemployment by Reuters writer James Pethokoukis:

Gluskin Sheff economist David Rosenberg, formerly of Merrill Lynch, thinks the unemployment rate is going to at least 12 percent, maybe even 13 percent. Optimists, Rosenberg explains, underestimate the incredible damage done to the labor market during this downturn. And even before this downturn, the economy was not generating jobs in huge numbers.

Read the whole thing and be very, very depressed.

On the other hand, there's this:

The culture of participation is forcing efficiencies that can have deflationary effects on our economy. This allows us to purchase more with less, but also gives us less to purchase with, if it is forcing upon us lower wages and fewer work hours. What it may give us is *more free time* (whether we want it to or not). So if that free time is part of what allows this culture of participation to help create these efficiencies, and the efficiencies create more free time... Then you have not just deflation, but a deflationary spiral that doesn't end until the traditional economies (based on real scarcity) have absorbed the new efficiencies.

That's both depressing - and interesting as the ecology is left open to smaller, faster-breeding businesses.

We've seen how that drama works out before...
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