November 22, 2009
"One of the worst U.S. presidential visits to Beijing in memory"
Saturday Night Live isn't the only unusual source of criticism ot President Obama's trip to China. Max Boot notes that some Democrats were less than impressed. For example, Liz Economy of the Council on Foreign Relations stated:
It was, optically, one of the worst U.S. presidential visits to Beijing in memory. ... Lots of talk, little action -- just the way the Chinese like it. Although I'd like to back the president, I'd place my own bet that being nice to the Chinese leadership isn't going to get us very far. It never has.
Sports Story of the Year?
It could be: Brett Favre's return from his second retirement to quarterback the Minnesota Vikings. Of course, that may be a parochial view. But it's been a long time since I was much of a pro football fan, and I've never really been a Vikings fan even though I live in Minnesota. For just about anyone--even my wife!--the story of a 40-year-old Hall of Fame quarterback's return to greatness is irresistible, especially when the QB is Brett Favre.
Fan opinion was decidedly mixed when the Vikings signed Favre near the end of training camp. Shows what we fans know: after today's 35-9 win over Seattle, the Vikings are 9-1 and Favre is having a season for the ages. He is currently the top-rated passer in the NFL, and after today's game--four touchdown passes, no interceptions--he has 21 TD passes against only three interceptions. If he were to continue that pace through the end of the season (unlikely), it would be the best TD/interception ratio in the history of the NFL. Along the way, Favre has made stars out of players like Sidney Rice, Percy Harvin and Visanthe Shiancoe.
What has most endeared Favre to Minnesota sports fans, however, is not his gaudy statistics, his seeing-eye passes--after surgery on his right arm, he once again can fling the ball with anyone--or the vast experience that allows him to find the open receiver, sometimes after changing the play at the line of scrimmage. No: what Minnesota sports fans (and, I suspect, his teammates) like best is that Favre is--how to put it?--a little bit crazy. He plays with an abandon that makes you wonder how he can possibly make it through a season. After this year's first game, the league fined him for an illegal block on a defensive lineman. Who knew a quarterback could be dangerous to a defensive tackle? A few games later, he completed a long pass and then sprinted 40 yards downfield, where he threw a block on an All-Pro linebacker. When the play was over and Favre and the linebacker were both lying on the ground, the linebacker sat up and said, "What the **** are you doing down here?" That Favre has not only survived 18 seasons but holds the NFL record for most consecutive games started can only suggest that he enjoys some special protection of Providence.
Favre may even save the franchise. The Vikings' lease at the Metrodome expires after 2011, I believe. The team has no intention of signing another lease at the Dome, and until now, at least, the taxpayers have had no desire to finance a new football stadium. (The "love boat" incident was the last straw in that regard.) Most observers have assumed that after 2011 the team would move to Los Angeles or some other, greener pasture. But that could all change now: if the team makes a serious run at the Super Bowl, inspired by an aging quarterback who plays with the sheer joy of a 12-year-old boy, the franchise might well survive.
That would be good. It's hard enough trying to explain what "Lakers" have to do with Los Angeles, let alone "Vikings."
PAUL adds: Fan opinion was decidedly mixed on the signing of Favre, as John recalls. However, Power Line had little doubt it was a good move.
If Obama's Lost Saturday Night Live, He's Lost...
...I dunno, maybe Jon Stewart comes next. I don't accept the proposition that liberal comedians who aren't funny are somehow arbiters of popular culture, let alone public policy. Still, the fact that Obama's actual policies (not his failure to be a liberal messiah) were lampooned in this vulgar, sometimes-funny skit on SNL last night does seem significant:
"I am noticing that each of your plans to save money involves spending even more money." That's not exactly a revelation to those who have been paying attention, but it's legitimate political commentary that may be news to some in the SNL audience.
Who's the Narcissist?
Barack Obama's narcissism has frequently been commented upon, but Glenn Reynolds makes an interesting and potentially important observation:
I think Obama's "charisma" was based on voter narcissism -- people excited not just about electing a black President, but about themselves, voting for a black President. Now that's over, and they're stuck just with him, and emptied of their own narcissism there's not much there to fill out the suit.
If that's right--and I suspect it is--the implications could be considerable. If voter narcissism was satisfied in 2008, there isn't much reason to turn out in 2010 or even 2012.
Crazy, Or Left-Wing? Is There Still A Difference?
Venezuela is sponsoring an international conference of socialist parties in Caracas, which it pretentiously labels the Fifth International. Socialists from 40 countries, representing 50 political parties, are attending. On Friday, Hugo Chavez addressed the conclave. He praised Carlos the Jackal as a hero, describing him as "one of the great fighters of the Palestinian Liberation Organization....They accuse him of being a terrorist but Carlos really was a revolutionary fighter." Likewise, he expressed admiration for Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Robert Mugabe and even Idi Amin, who "[m]aybe...was a great nationalist, a patriot."
News reports indicate that the assembled socialists applauded. It would be interesting to know what left-wing parties are represented. Are there attendees from the United States? If so, who? The news accounts I've seen don't say.
One wonders whether there is anything left of "socialism" other than a frank admiration for evil. But what of the relatively-respectable American and European left, where Chavez is widely applauded? Is there anything to this admiration other than approval of Chavez's anti-Americanism? It's bad enough that cranks like Jimmy Carter, Sean Penn and Bill Ayers consort with Chavez; more troubling is the attitude of the Obama administration. President Obama has been quite friendly toward Chavez:
Perhaps the administration would say that such cordiality was only what was required by diplomacy, but Obama's predecessors engaged in no such friendly photo-ops. Moreover, the Obama administration tried to install Manuel Zelaya as the would-be ruler of Honduras, in violation of Honduran law. Zelaya is best known as a protege of Chavez who seeks to replicate Chavez's socialist dictatorship in Honduras. If there was something other than Zelaya's affinity for Chavez that recommended him to President Obama, what was it?
I don't think that President Obama fully approves of Hugo Chavez, let alone Carlos the Jackal and Idi Amin. But I wish there were a few more degrees of separation between the Obama administration and the worst tyrants of our time, and that the administration gave some sign of understanding the evil that is socialism.
Here We Go
Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and his confederates are gearing up for a media spectacle:
A lawyer for one of five men facing trial for the Sept. 11 attacks says the men plan to plead not guilty and use the trial to express their political views. Attorney Scott Fenstermaker says his client Ali Abd al-Aziz Ali and the others will not deny their role in the 2001 attacks but will tell the jury "why they did it."
He says the men will explain "their assessment of American foreign policy."
Fenstermaker met with Ali last week at the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay. He says the men, including professed 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, have discussed the trial among themselves.
Yes, I'll bet they have. Eric Holder's decision to give them a jury trial must have seemed like a gift from Allah.
Scott Fenstermaker is a criminal defense lawyer from New York who has represented a number of Guantanamo Bay detainees.
November 21, 2009
An awakening in Afghanistan?
Dexter Filkins reports from Afghanistan that "American and Afghan officials have begun helping a number of anti-Taliban militias that have independently taken up arms against insurgents in several parts of Afghanistan, prompting hopes of a large-scale tribal rebellion against the Taliban." Filkins notes that "the plan echoes a similar movement that unfolded in Iraq, beginning in late 2006, in which Sunni tribes turned against Islamist extremists."
The Taliban proved itself to be a vicious, blood-thirsty lot when it held power prior to 9/11. There is no evidence that it has changed and there's plenty of anecdotal evidence that it has not. Thus, it's quite plausible to believe that the Taliban is vulnerable to a large-scale tribal rebellion like the Sunni uprising in Iraq.
What's the biggest difference between Afghanistan now and Iraq in early 2007? I think it's the fact that in 2007 the U.S. had a president who was committed to victory in Iraq, whereas today the U.S. has a president who is committed to finding an exit from Afghanistan. An uprising is significantly less probable when those who might undertake one think they cannot count on help from the U.S.
Via Abe Greenwald.
The Louisiana Purchase
Mary Landrieu announced today that she will vote for cloture on the Democrats' government medicine bill tonight. The Democrats now have 60 votes and will be able to pass their version of government medicine.
UPDATE: Well, I suppose we shouldn't jump the gun. The Democrats will need 60 votes once more. It's remotely possible that one of the wavering Senators who voted for cloture today--Landrieu, Blanche Lincoln, Ben Nelson--might go the other way next time. Presumably that would happen only if public outcry were such that a vote for government health care by a swing-state Senator would be seen as suicidal.
PAUL adds: Don't forget about Joe Lieberman. He has said he will not vote to end a filibuster over a final bill that contains the public option.
I admit that banking on Lieberman, who has always been an out-and-out liberal on domestic issues, to block landmark liberal domestic legislation is not where one would like to be. But Lieberman is his own man, especially now, so I'd probably bank on him before I would one of those mushy so-called moderates like Landrieu, Lincoln, or Nelson.
It's also good news that no Republican - not Olympia Snowe, not Susan Collins - voted for cloture. I suspect, though, that Snowe is still one we need to watch out for.
When In Doubt, Delete
One of the hacked East Anglia emails that has gotten considerable play on the web indicates that several alarmist scientists deleted emails that were subject to a Freedom of Information Act request rather than produce them. That's true; here is the context.
On May 27, 2008, David Palmer, who is in charge of "data protection" at the University of East Anglia, wrote to Tim Osborn about a Freedom of Information Act request the university had received from one David Holland:
Please note the response received today from Mr. Holland. Could you provide input as to his additional questions 1, and 2, and check with Mr. Ammann in question 3 as to whether he believes his correspondence with us to be confidential?
Although I fear/anticipate the response, I believe that I should inform the requester that his request will be over the appropriate limit and ask him to limit it....
I just wish to ensure that we do as much as possible 'by the book' in this instance as I am certain that this will end up in an appeal, with the statutory potential to end up with the ICO.
Thus, the same day, Tim Osborn wrote to Caspar Amman of the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado:
Our university has received a request, under the UK Freedom of Information law, from someone called David Holland for emails or other documents that you may have sent to us that discuss any matters related to the IPCC assessment process. We are not sure what our university's response will be, nor have we even checked whether you sent us emails that relate to the IPCC assessment or that we retained any that you may have sent. However, it would be useful to know your opinion on this matter. In particular, we would like to know whether you consider any emails that you sent to us as confidential.
Sorry to bother you with this,
Tim (cc Keith & Phil)
The point was to lay foundation for an objection to producing such emails on the ground that they were "confidential." Amman replied:
Oh MAN! will this crap ever end??
Well, I will have to properly answer in a couple days when I get a chance digging through emails. I don't recall from the top of my head any specifics about IPCC.
I'm also sorry that you guys have to go through this BS.
Osborn replied:
Hi again Caspar,
I don't think it is necessary for you to dig through any emails you may have sent us to determine your answer. Our question is a more general one, which is whether you generally consider emails that you sent us to have been sent in confidence. If you do, then we will use this as a reason to decline the request.Cheers
Tim
That was followed by this more formal response from Amman on May 30:
in response to your inquiry about my take on the confidentiality of my email communications with you, Keith or Phil, I have to say that the intent of these emails is to reply or communicate with the individuals on the distribution list, and they are not intended for general 'publication'. If I would consider my texts to potentially get wider dissemination then I would probably have written them in a different style. Having said that, as far as I can remember (and I haven't checked in the records, if they even still exist) I have never written an explicit statement on these messages that would label them strictly confidential.
Caspar
In the meantime, though, Osborn and his colleagues had already taken matters into their own hands. On May 29, Phil Jones wrote to Michael Mann, with the subject heading "IPCC & FOI":
Mike, Can you delete any emails you may have with Keith re AR4? ["AR4" is common shorthand for the U.N. IPCC's Fourth Assessment Report, which was released in 2007.] Keith will do likewise. He's not in at the moment - minor family crisis.
Can you also email Gene and get him to do the same? I don't have his new email address.
We will be getting Caspar to do likewise.
These emails appear to show that, when faced with a legitimate request under Britain's Freedom of Information Act, these global warming alarmists preferred to delete their emails with one another about the crucially important IPCC report--the main basis for the purported "consensus" in favor of anthropogenic global warming--rather than allow them to come to light. This is one of many instances in the East Anglia documents where the global warming alarmists act like a gang of co-conspirators rather than respectable scientists.
The Alarmists Do "Science": A Case Study
A fascinating, hot-off-the-presses story emerges from the emails that were hacked yesterday from the University of East Anglia's Hadley Climatic Research Centre. It is one of many exchanges that shed light on the priority that the global warming alarmists give to politics and career advancement over science.
The story began when Steve McIntyre, the same researcher who was largely responsible for destroying Michael Mann's "hockey stick" graph purporting to show unprecedented warming in the 20th century, turned his attention to a famous article published by Keith Briffa of East Anglia's CRU in 2000. This article analyzed the diameters of tree rings, including rings from an area called Yamal in Siberia, and conveniently generated another hockey-stick shaped graph. You can read an account of the ensuing controversy here. McIntyre's work appeared to show that Briffa had cherry-picked trees in order to get the result he was looking for. One fact that this story highlights is that global warming alarmists publish their results in scientific journals, but refuse to make the underlying data publicly available so that the validity of their analyses can be checked.
McIntyre's revelations caused a firestorm of controversy, in response to which the alarmist community circled its wagons to fend off the threat from an outsider. This process can be clearly seen in the East Anglia emails.
The alarmists' effort to respond to McIntyre was complicated by the fact that Briffa had been ill and undergone surgery, and was then recuperating. So several of them wrote to Briffa's co-author, Tim Osborn, for advice on how to respond to McIntyre's critique. Osborn replied on September 29, 2009:
Hi Mike and Gavin, thanks for your emails re McIntyre, Yamal and Keith. I'll pass on your best wishes for his recovery when I next speak to Keith. He's been off almost 4 months now and won't be back for at least another month ....
Regarding Yamal, I'm afraid I know very little about the whole thing -- other than that I am 100% confident that "The tree ring data was hand-picked to get the desired result" is complete crap. Having one's integrity questioned like this must make your blood boil....
Apart from Keith, I think Tom Melvin here is the only person who could shed light on the McIntyre criticisms of Yamal. But he can be a rather loose cannon and shouldn't be directly contacted about this....
So: these scientists don't really have any idea whether McIntyre's critique of Briffa's work is correct or not. Even Briffa's co-author professes ignorance. There is one person they could approach who could "shed light on the McIntyre criticisms of Yamal." But they don't do it. Why? Because "he can be rather a loose cannon and shouldn't be directly contacted...." In other words, his loyalty to the cause of climate alarmism may not be absolute. This is much like the case noted here where Michael Mann, one of the recipients of the above email, warns against sharing information with someone named Andy because he is "not as predictable as we'd like."
Despite having no idea what the facts are, the alarmists don't hesitate to formulate a position. Thus, on the next day, September 30, Osborn writes:
Keith's temporarily come in to get a handle on all this, but it will take time. Likely outcome is (1) brief holding note that no cherry-picking was done and demonstrating data selection is defendable by our time tomorrow; (2) longer piece with more evaluation etc. in around a week. No point is posting something that turns out to be wrong.
That's good enough for Osborn's fellow alarmists. Michael Mann replies:
great--thanks Tim, sounds like we have a plan. in our post, which we'll target for tomorrow as well, we'll simply link to whatever CRU puts up and re-iterate the sentiment of the temporary short response (i.e. that there was no cherry-picking, a careful and defensible selection procedure was used) and we'll mostly focus on the broader issues, i.e. that any impact of this one series in the vast array of paleoclimate reconstructions (and the importance of the paleoclimate reconstructions themselves) has been over-stated, why these sorts of attacks are not legitimate science, etc.
Note that the alarmists are willing to denounce McIntyre's work as "not legitimate science" even though, at this point, they still have no idea whether his analysis was right or wrong. That is not, however, what they tell the outside world. On September 29, Andrew Revkin, environmental reporter for the New York Times, wrote to Mann asking about McIntyre's critique:
needless to say, seems the 2008 pnas paper showing that without tree rings still solid picture of unusual recent warmth, but McIntyre is getting wide play for his statements about Yamal data-set selectivity.
Has he communicated directly to you on this and/or is there any indication he's seeking journal publication for his deconstruct?
Mann, ignorant of the facts, responds by slandering McIntyre:
Hi Andy, I'm fairly certain Keith is out of contact right now recovering from an operation, and is not in a position to respond to these attacks. However, the preliminary information I have from others familiar with these data is that the attacks are bogus.
It is unclear that this particular series was used in any of our reconstructions (some of the underlying chronologies may be the same, but I'm fairly certain the versions of these data we have used are based on a different composite and standardization method), let alone any of the dozen other reconstructions of Northern Hemisphere mean temperature shown in the most recent IPCC report, which come to the conclusion that recent warming is anomalous in a long-term context.So, even if there were a problem w/ these data, it wouldn't matter as far as the key conclusions regarding past warmth are concerned. But I don't think there is any problem with these data, rather it appears that McIntyre has greatly distorted the actual information content of these data.
Given what is said in the other emails, that last attack on McIntyre appears to be simply fabricated out of whole cloth. Mann concludes by buttering up Revkin:
Fortunately, the prestige press doesn't fall for this sort of stuff, right?
mike
Of course not! Revkin replies, "Thanks heaps."
At the same time they were issuing these assurances to outsiders, however, the alarmists' internal communications were much more equivocal. On September 30, the day after he corresponded with Revkin, Mann asked Tim Osborn to confirm that a key 2006 paper co-authored by Osborn and Briffa was untainted by what is implicitly acknowledged to be Briffa's bad Yamal data:
And Osborn and Briffa '06 is also immune to this issue, as it eliminated any combination of up to 3 of the proxies and showed the result was essentially the same (fair to say this Tim?).
Osborn's reply is hedged at best, and includes a rather insouciant admission that he is "amazed" that the journal Science agreed to publish his paper in the first place:
Mike,
yes, you're right: figs S4-S6 in our supplementary information do indeed show results leaving out individual, groups of two, and groups of three proxies, respectively. It's attached.
I wouldn't say we were immune to the issue -- results are similar for these leave 1, 2 or 3 out cases, but they certainly are not as strong as the case with all 14 proxies.
Certainly in figure S6, there are some cases with 3 omitted (i.e. some sets of 11) where modern results are comparable with intermittent periods between 800 and 1100. Plus there is the additional uncertainty, discussed on the final page of the supplementary information, associated with linking the proxy records to real temperatures (remember we have no formal calibration, we're just counting proxies -- I'm still amazed that Science agreed to publish something where the main analysis only involves counting from 1 to 14!
:-)).
But this is fine, since the IPCC AR4 and other assessments are not saying the evidence is 100% conclusive (or even 90% conclusive) but just "likely" that modern is warmer than M[edieval] W[arm] P[eriod]. ...So, this Yamal thing doesn't damage Osborn & Briffa (2006), but important to note that O&B (2006) and others support the "likely" statement rather than being conclusive.
Cheers
Tim
Another member of the climate alarmist cabal, Tom Wigley, gave this darker assessment of Briffa's errors with regard to the tree ring data on October 5. Note in particular his concern about the alarmists' practice of withholding data from public review:
Phil,
It is distressing to read that American Stinker item. But Keith does seem to have got himself into a mess. As I pointed out in emails, Yamal is insignificant. And you say that (contrary to what M&M say) Yamal is *not* used in MBH, etc. ...
But, more generally, (even if it *is* irrelevant) how does Keith explain the McIntyre plot that compares Yamal-12 with Yamal-all? And how does he explain the apparent "selection" of the less well-replicated chronology rather that the later (better replicated) chronology?
Of course, I don't know how often Yamal-12 has really been used in recent, post-1995, work. I suspect from what you say it is much less often that M&M say -- but where did they get their information? I presume they went thru papers to see if Yamal was cited, a pretty foolproof method if you ask me. Perhaps these things can be explained clearly and concisely -- but I am not sure Keith is able to do this as he is too close to the issue and probably quite pissed of[f].
And the issue of with-holding data is still a hot potato, one that affects both you and Keith (and Mann). Yes, there are reasons -- but many *good* scientists appear to be unsympathetic to these. The trouble here is that with-holding data looks like hiding something, and hiding means (in some eyes) that it is bogus science that is being hidden.
I think Keith needs to be very, very careful in how he handles this. I'd be willing to check over anything he puts together.
Tom.
This strikes me as a damning commentary on the entire alarmist enterprise. Meanwhile, not only are Briffa's data flawed and seemingly cherry-picked, the assumptions on which the tree-ring studies are based may be bogus in the first place. The email collection includes these two messages from a plant scientist, both within the last 60 days:
Dear Professor Briffa, my apologies for contacting you directly, particularly since I hear that you are unwell. However the recent release of tree ring data by CRU has prompted much discussion and indeed disquiet about the methodology and conclusions of a number of key papers by you and co-workers.
As an environmental plant physiologist, I have followed the long debate starting with Mann et al (1998) and through to Kaufman et al (2009). As time has progressed I have found myself more concerned with the whole scientific basis of dendroclimatology. In particular;
1) The appropriateness of the statistical analyses employed
2) The reliance on the same small datasets in these multiple studies
3) The concept of "teleconnection" by which certain trees respond to the "Global Temperature Field", rather than local climate
4) The assumption that tree ring width and density are related to temperature in a linear manner.Whilst I would not describe myself as an expert statistician, I do use inferential statistics routinely for both research and teaching and find difficulty in understanding the statistical rationale in these papers. As a plant physiologist I can say without hesitation that points 3 and 4 do not agree with the accepted science.
There is a saying that "extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof". Given the scientific, political and economic importance of these papers, further detailed explanation is urgently required.
Yours sincerely,
Dr. Don Keiller.
Tree ring studies are vitally important to the conclusions reached by the U.N.'s IPCC report, which is the main foundation for the claim that anthropogenic global warming has been "proved." That being the case, one would think that Briffa, one of the two or three primary authors of the tree ring studies, would have a ready response to these very basic questions. But no: he did not reply to Dr. Keiller's email. That prompted this second inquiry from Dr. Keiller:
Dear Professor Briffa, I am pleased to hear that you appear to have recovered from your recent illness sufficiently to post a response to the controversy surrounding the use of the Yamal chronology; ([5]http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/people/briffa/yamal2009/cautious/cautious.htm) and the chronology itself; ([6]http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/people/briffa/yamal2009/)
Unfortunately I find your explanations lacking in scientific rigour and I am more inclined to believe the analysis of McIntyre ([7]http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=7588) Can I have a straightforward answer to the following questions
1) Are the reconstructions sensitive to the removal of either the Yamal data and Strip pine bristlecones, either when present singly or in combination?
2) Why these series, when incorporated with white noise as a background, can still produce a Hockey-Stick shaped graph if they have, as you suggest, a low individual weighting?
And once you have done this, please do me the courtesy of answering my initial email.
Dr. D.R. Keiller
Again, one might assume that if the science surrounding global warming is settled, the alarmists would have good answers to such basic questions, and certainly would be willing to engage in debate in a spirit of open-minded inquiry. Such, however, is not the case. Phil Jones of East Anglia advised Briffa against trying to respond to the plant scientist on October 20:
Keith,
There is a lot more there on CA now. [I'm pretty sure CA is Climate Audit, a web site where McIntyre posts.] I would be very wary about responding to this person now having seen what McIntyre has put up.
You and Tim talked about Yamal. Why have the bristlecones come in now. [1]http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=7588#comments
This is what happens - they just keep moving the goalposts. Maybe get Tim to redo OB2006 without a few more series.
Cheers
Phil
As far as I can tell from the email archive, Briffa never did respond to the plant scientist. Jones's email warning Briffa to be "very wary about responding to this person now having seen what McIntyre has put up" was written just three weeks ago. It, along with the rest of the email archive, makes an utter mockery of the alarmists' claim that the science of global warming is settled in their favor.
On the contrary, the conclusion an observer is likely to draw from the CRU archive is that the climate alarmists are making up the science as they go along and are fitting facts to reach a predetermined conclusion rather than objectively seeking after truth. What they are doing is politics, not science. When I was in law school, this story was told about accountants: A CEO is going to hire a new accountant and summons a series of candidates. He asks each applicant, "What is two plus two?" The first two candidates answer, "Four." They don't get the job. The third responds, "What do you want it to be?" He gets hired. The climate alarmists' attitude toward data appears to me much the same as that fictional accountant's attitude toward arithmetic.
November 20, 2009
Clueless in Kabul
We've noted the Obama administration's penchant for bullying America's allies and kowtowing to its adversaries. This Washington Post story presents another case-in-point -- our treatment of Afghan President Hamid Karzai. As Afghan presidents go, Karzai makes a good mayor of Kabul (in a bad year). Nonetheless, right now the U.S. needs Karzai and Karzai needs the U.S. Thus, in the words of one senior administration official, "it's not sustainable to have a 'War of the Roses' relationship [I assume he means the movie, not the real war] where we basically throw things at each other."
This, though, has been our relationship with Karzai since Barack Obama became president. As one senior Pentagon official put, "We've been treating Karzai like [Slobodan] Milosevic" and "that's not a model that will work in Afghanistan."
The reference to Milosevic is also a reference to Richard Holbrooke who played a major role in dealing with the former Yugoslavia and, under Obama, is a special envoy to Afghanistan. According to the Post, Holbrooke's "aggressive style has infuriated" Karzai.
But Holbrooke is not alone in this respect. Our vice president, Talkin' Joe Biden, reportedly became Shoutin' Joe Biden during a dinner with Karzai shortly before Obama's inauguration, as the two argued about Karzai's response to civilian casualties caused by U.S. and NATO operations. It doesn't seem to have dawned on "Slow Joe" that Karzai must strike a balance between his relations with the U.S. and his relations with various factions in his country.
Hillary Clinton did her part to stoke tensions. During her confirmation hearings shortly after Biden's outburst she referred to Afghanistan as a "narco-state" with a government "plagued by limited capacity and widespread corruption."
But at the root of our "arrogant" approach to Afghanistan has been President Obama himself. It was he who discontinued the bi-monthly videoconferences with Karzai that President Bush had instituted. It was he who appointed Holbrooke and granted him wide latitude to bully Karzai. And it was he who decided that Holbrooke should signal the administration's desire for many candidates to challenge Karzai in presidential elections.
But now, according to the Post, the administration is realizing that its "initial strategy may have done more harm than good, fueling stress and anger in a beleaguered conspiracy-minded leader whom the U.S. needs as a partner." That conclusion seems inescapable. As the Post notes, Karzai's fear that he no longer had U.S. support caused him to ally with figures the U.S. found even less desirable than the ones it had criticized him for associating with. And with the U.S. perceived as cultivating a number of candidates to oppose Karzai, the opposition never coalesced around a single figure, which played into Karzai's hands. By May, it seemed clear that Karzai would be re-elected, but the U.S. continued to send what Karzai took to be signals it wanted him to lose.
Now, at last, we're attempting a "reset." The CIA has sent a field officer who has strong relations with Karzai to be its Kabul station chief and Hillary Clinton - the Secretary of Reset - tried to charm Karzai at a dinner earlier this week. Meanwhile, Holbrooke is spending more time in Washington and has focused on obtaining international support of reconstruction projects and development programs. This sounds like his highest and best use.
It's nice that the administration has seen the error of its ways. But what are to make of a president who takes almost a year to figure out that alienating our partner in a war makes little sense? The administration was correct in perceiving that Karzai has major limitations. But why did it conclude that trying to humiliate him was the answer? Why didn't it conclude, as apparently it has now, that cultivating a close working relationship is the best way to enable Karzai to fix at least some of his problems and to better achieve U.S. goals?
The administration's approach is so counter-intuitive that I don't think it can be attributed solely to inexperience. The answer has more to do with Obama's bad, even perverse, instincts as described at the beginning of this post. The real wonder, then, is not that Obama started out on the wrong track but that he's fixing to change course, if in fact he really is.
Global Warming Bombshell
The biggest news story of the day is one that has barely begun to break and will continue to reverberate for months or years to come. Someone hacked into a computer at the University of East Anglia's Hadley Climatic Research Centre, one of the main centers of anthropogenic global warming research. The hacker downloaded over 200 megabytes of data from the server, consisting of around 1,000 emails and a variety of other documents. He uploaded them to an FTP server, where they were available to the public, apparently, for only a few hours. The event is described here.
Before the documents disappeared from that location, several people had downloaded them and posted them in other locations. I downloaded all of the material earlier today and have begun to review it. The emails are stunning. They are authored by many of the leading figures in the global warming movement: Michael Mann, James Hansen, Phil Jones, Keith Briffa, Stephen Schneider, and others. They are remarkably candid; these individuals talk to each other with the knowledge that they are among friends.
The emails I've reviewed so far do not suggest that these scientists are perpetrating a knowing and deliberate hoax. On the contrary, they are true believers. I don't doubt that they are sincerely convinced--in fact, fanatically so--that human activity is warming the earth. But the emails are disturbing nonetheless. What they reveal, more than anything, is a bunker mentality. These pro-global warming scientists see themselves as under siege, and they view AGW skeptics as bitter enemies. They are often mean-spirited; the web site American Thinker is referred to as "American Stinker;" at one point an emailer exults in the death of a global warming skeptic; another one suggests that the Ph.D. of a prominent skeptic should be revoked because of an error he made decades ago in his dissertation; another says that he is tempted to "beat the crap out of" the same scientist. The emails show beyond any reasonable doubt that these individuals are engaged in politics, not science.
They also suggest that pro-global warming scientists fudge data to get the results they are looking for. Just over a month ago, on September 28, 2009, Tom Wigley wrote to Phil Jones of the Hadley Centre about his efforts to get the right-sized "blip" in temperatures of the 1940s:
Phil, Here are some speculations on correcting SSTs to partly explain the 1940s warming blip. If you look at the attached plot you will see that the land also shows the 1940s blip (as I'm sure you know). So, if we could reduce the ocean blip by, say, 0.15 degC, then this would be significant for the global mean -- but we'd still have to explain the land blip.
I've chosen 0.15 here deliberately. This still leaves an ocean blip, and i think one needs to have some form of ocean blip to explain the land blip (via either some common forcing, or ocean forcing land, or vice versa, or all of these). When you look at other blips, the land blips are 1.5 to 2 times (roughly) the ocean blips -- higher sensitivity plus thermal inertia effects. My 0.15 adjustment leaves things consistent with this, so you can see where I am coming from. Removing ENSO does not affect this.
It would be good to remove at least part of the 1940s blip, but we are still left with "why the blip".
This and many other emails convey the impression that these theorists are making the "science" up as they go along, with data being manipulated until it yields the results that have been predetermined by political conviction.
Left-wing politics is a common theme of the emails. Thus, Michael Mann, author of the notorious "hockey stick" hoax, attacked those who don't buy the AGW theory on September 30, 2009:
Its part of the attack of the corporate-funded attack machine, i.e. its a direct and highly intended outcome of a highly orchestrated, heavily-funded corporate attack campaign. We saw it over the summer w/ the health insurance industry trying to defeat Obama's health plan, we'll see it now as the U.S. Senate moves on to focus on the cap & trade bill that passed congress this summer.
This sort of paranoid thinking is odd, since the vast majority of the money in climate science is on the pro-global warming side. Among themselves, the pro-AGW scientists make no bones about their desire to get their hands on some of that cash. Thus, a British scientist wrote last month:
How should I respond to the below? [an article questioning AGW theory] (I'm in the process of trying to persuade Siemens Corp. (a company with half a million employees in 190 countries!) to donate me a little cash to do some CO2 measurments here in the UK - looking promising, so the last thing I need is news articles calling into question (again) observed temperature increases--
No wonder pro-global warming scientists are dogmatically committed to their theory, no matter what the data say: their livelihoods, as well as their professional reputations, depend on it. As a result, they conduct themselves like a secret cabal. Outsiders--that is to say, independent thinkers--are viewed with suspicion. One of the most striking emails I've come across so far is from Michael Mann to Phil Jones. It replies to an email from Jones that was copied to another scientist named Andy, relating to a recent fiasco in which tree ring research that was a basis for the U.N.'s IPCC report on global warming proved to be inaccurate if not fraudulent. [UPDATE: A reader says that "Andy" is Andy Revkin of the New York Times. That's possible, but I can't see anyplace in this email or elsewhere where "Andy" is identified.] Mann included this postscript in his reply:
p.s. be a bit careful about what information you send to Andy and what emails you copy him in on. He's not as predictable as we'd like
A world in which those who are "not as predictable as we'd like" are viewed with suspicion is a world of politics, not science.
Much more to come. In the morning, we'll see how liberal scientists circled the wagons to stave off criticism of inaccurate or fraudulent tree ring data.
UPDATE: This is the email that has gotten the most attention so far:
The language is certainly suggestive--using a "trick" to "hide the decline." This is one of many emails that suggest pro-global warming scientists manipulate data freely to achieve their desired political ends, but it's possible the words used could have a relatively benign explanation. The surrounding emails do not provide context that sheds any light on what those words mean.
UPDATE: More here.
The Obama administration -- ask it no questions, it will tell you some lies
Even congressional Democrats are disgusted with the Obama administration's phony accounting of what the stimulus plan supposedly is accomplishing. Earlier this week, House Appropriations Committee Chairman David Obey lambasted the government's flawed data purporting to show that $160 billion in stimulus spending has created or saved at least 640,000 jobs. In response to reports that the administration has been forced to delete 60,000 jobs from its list and that it claimed to have created 30 jobs in a non-existent congressional district, Obey had this to say:
The inaccuracies are outrageous and the administration owes itself, the Congress and every American a commitment to work night and day to correct the ludicrous mistakes. We designed the Recovery Act to be open and transparent. Whether the numbers are good news or bad news, I want the honest numbers and I want them now.
At the Washington Post, however, Alec MacGillis sees the problem not as a combination of dishonesty and incompetence by the Obama administration, but rather as the administration's "decision to provide numbers in the first place." This seems like an odd position for a newspaper man to take. Isn't lack of transparency a bad thing? That was always the Post's view during the Bush administration.
MacGillis points out that it is "exceedingly difficult for even the most conscientious government agency to calculate the jobs impact of a stimulus grant." But if that's true, and I'm pretty sure it is, then it must be even more difficult (and probably impossible) to calculate the jobs impact of stimulus legislation before it has been adopted. Yet, Obama didn't hesitiate to make this "calculation," promising that the stimulus proposal would save or create 3.5 million jobs in two years.
The essence of the problem, then, is Obama's bogus projection. But MacGillis apparently is willing to give the president a pass on that.
Once Obama made his baseless promise about the impact of the stimulus legislation, he had little choice but to track in some fashion the legislation's impact on employment. Had he declined to do so, surely the Washington Post and other MSM watchdogs would have been all over the administration, citing the president's promises of "transparency" and the need to hold him accountable for....
Come to think of it, MacGillis is right -- Obama did make a strategic mistake by agreeing to provide data.
A hack argument
There's a stock column appearing in left-liberal MSM outlets all over the country, The author varies, but the main point is the same: Republican Senators are guilty of "hypocrisy" for attempting to filibuster one of President Obama's judicial nominees after having criticized Democrats for filibustering a host of President Bush's nominees a few years ago. This piece by Dana Milbank in the Washington Post is an example of the genre.
But why is it hypocritical for Republicans to resist a regime under which judges nominated by a Republican president need 60 votes for confirmation -- as so many did for years and some did until the bitter end -- while judges nominated by a Democratic president need only 50 votes? Milbank has no answer. His response to Senator Sessions' articulation of this point is to sniff "Un-huh."
This is vintage Milbank -- fourth-rate analysis coupled with third-rate irony.
November 19, 2009
Geithner on the Hot Seat
Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner appeared before the Joint Economic Committee today. One striking feature of Geithner's testimony was how partisan it was. In keeping with the Obama administration's mantra, he repeatedly tried to cast blame on the Bush administration while failing to acknowledge that when the financial crisis developed, he was the head of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, and as such one of the most influential figures in our financial system. If he saw the crisis coming, or thought that the administration's policies were badly misguided, he had every opportunity to speak up, and his words would have been highly influential. But he did no such thing.
I had lunch with Geithner a couple of years ago, when he headed the New York Fed and before the crisis developed. It was an odd encounter: he seemed to want to convey the impression that he was in the know and privy to deep secrets, and that he was wiser than the other leading figures responsible for economic policy. But he did this without ever saying anything substantive or even, frankly, very coherent. If he had any disagreement with the policies of the Fed or of the Bush Treasury Department, he never hinted at what they might be.
Fireworks broke out on several occasions in today's hearing, as when Kevin Brady of Texas called on Geithner to resign. I thought this exchange with Congressman Michael Burgess was actually more interesting; I've bolded some of Burgess's key observations:
BURGESS: Secretary Geithner, you were referencing in your answer to an earlier question about when the financial catastrophe started in September, October of last year, if I understood you correctly, you said that this country did not have the tools to manage that panic. But the inference that I took from that was that there were countries overseas that did have such tools.
Now, I recall a phone call with your predecessor in late October of 2008, when it became public that the United States was pumping monies into the central bank in Europe, and other places. And I suggested that was not the correct thing to be doing. And he said, if the United States is not helping these countries, then they will collapse.
So, which is it?Were we the savior of those countries that, according to the current president, didn't even like us that much until he took office? Were we the savior of those banks and those countries? Or were we, in fact, incapable of dealing with the problem?
And was that money, in fact, going to foreign banks at that time, in October of last year? This was widely reported in the press.
GEITHNER: Congressman, there is no country that came into this crisis with the tools to manage it effectively. And the basic failure I described here was a common failure.
One thing you saw around the world was...BURGESS: Well, let me ask you a question. Then how did George Bush cause those countries to be unprepared for a financial crisis?
Glass-Steagall has come up this morning. If I recall, Glass- Steagall was repealed -- that bill was signed by Bill Clinton...
GEITHNER: You're right about that.
BURGESS: ... not George Bush.
GEITHNER: You're absolutely... BURGESS: And I frankly don't understand. If that's such a good protection, this president's been in office for 10 months. Where's the signed legislation reinstating Glass-Steagall? What...
GEITHNER: Actually, I would not support reinstating Glass-Steagall. And I don't actually believe that the end of Glass-Steagall played a significant role in the cause of this crisis.
But...BURGESS: Well, that's not being stated to this committee. Let me move on, because my time is going to be limited. I do hope we'll be able to submit some of our questions in writing... because this is a critical hearing, and time is limited.
All right. We've got the TARP. It's supposed to expire. Why won't we let it die a natural death, rather than letting it painfully linger and absorbing tax dollars?
GEITHNER: We are working to put the TARP out of its misery. And no one will be happier than I am...
BURGESS: Well, according to my figures...
GEITHNER: .. to see that program terminated and unwound. And I want to point out that, we are moving very aggressively to close down and terminate the programs that defined TARP at the beginning of the crisis. Now...
BURGESS: Well, it looks like the money is going out with little or no oversight...
GEITHNER: No, that's absolutely not true.
BURGESS: Well...
GEITHNER: The Congress established three separate oversight committees...
BURGESS: Your own special inspector general for the Troubled Asset Relief Program has got several concerns about it. Why not just stop spending on the TARP funds? And why not repeal the program? We don't need it anymore. The American people never liked it. Let's just do away with it.
GEITHNER: Let me just point out the disagreement between what your colleague said and I think what most people across the country understand and believe, which is that, if you look at what's happening in housing, if you look at what's happening to small businesses, this economy still faces tremendous financial challenges.
BURGESS: What's happening in small businesses is people are frightened to add jobs, because they don't know what we're going to do to them in health care. They don't know what we're going to do to them in financial regulation. They're scared of what we might do with energy prices in the future with cap and trade. Small business -- medium sized business is frightened at jobs right now.
I could help the president and his panel. He doesn't need another program. We don't need another stimulus. We need to provide some tax relief and then get the heck out of the way, and the American economy will recover as it has always done.
GEITHNER: That broad philosophy helped produce the worst financial crisis and the worst recession we'd seen in generations. We had a pretty good test of that philosophy -- a pretty good test of those policies that did not serve the country well. Now...
BURGESS: Mr. Geithner, when I came here in 2003, we were in a jobless recovery. Tax relief was passed in May of 2003, and as a consequence by July of that year, we were adding jobs at a significant rate. It seems to have worked fairly well.
Note how dishonest Geithner's response to Burgess is. The recent financial crisis arose largely out of, and was fueled largely by, government policies and programs--the Community Reinvestment Act; other regulatory policies that pressured banks to make bad loans to underqualified borrowers; Fannie Mae; Freddie Mac; the multiple bailouts of the 1990s that convinced Wall Street that the government would come to its rescue if risk-taking didn't pan out. For the details, read Architects of Ruin. It is telling that our Secretary of the Treasury is not able to rise above such crude and misleading partisanship.
Leahy Lunacy
We noted last night that under the Obama administration's law-enforcement approach to terrorism, if we capture Osama bin Laden the first things we'll have to do are read him his rights and get him a free lawyer. When Lindsay Graham pointed this out to Eric Holder in yesterday's Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, Holder feebly responded that maybe we wouldn't have to Mirandize bin Laden because the evidence against him is "overwhelming."
This answer was essentially nonsensical, but Pat Leahy amplified it this morning, in a further effort at spin control:
Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), the chairman of that committee, said that arguments raised by Republican senators about whether bin Laden would be afforded Miranda rights if he were captured was a "red herring."
"The red herring that my friend [Sen.] Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) was covering is not realistic," Leahy said during an appearance on "Washington Journal" on C-SPAN.
"For one thing, capturing Osama bin Laden -- we've had enough on him, we don't need to interrogate him," Leahy added.
There you have it: under the Obama administration's approach we won't be able to interrogate bin Laden, but that's OK--we don't need to! Do you think bin Laden might know a thing or two about al Qaeda's plans, operations, personnel and methods that it might be useful for us to find out? Leahy's claim is beyond stupid, but this is what happens when the administration embarks on a policy that simply cannot be defended.
Via The Corner.
Senator Leahy's pre-9/10/01 mentality
Responding to Sen. Lindsey Graham's concern that under administration policy we might have to "Mirandize" Osama bin Laden, Sen. Patrick Leahy claims that "If the U.S. captures bin Laden, there's no need to interrogate him." Leahy explained that we already "have enough on" bin Laden.
Conservatives like to say that the Democrats are reverting to a pre-9/11 mentality whereby we treat Islamist terrorism mainly as a law enforcement issue. But I'm pretty sure that, even pre-9/11, we would have interrogated a captured terrorist leader not just to "get enough on him" for a prosecution, but also to find out where his fellow terrorists could be found and what they might be planning.
Via NRO's Corner.
To Create Jobs, Cut Taxes and Spending
We've commented before on how often voters' experience and common sense allows them to see through the fog of misdirection that emanates from politicians and the media. The latest example: 62% say that "tax cuts are a better way to create jobs and fight unemployment. Only 21% believe that additional stimulus spending is a more effective tool." Overall, 58% say that increased government spending tends to be bad for the economy. Consistent with these views, 58% don't believe the government's claims about how many jobs the stimulus bill has "saved or created."
This reveals what a hollow exercise the administration's "jobs summit" next month will be. Here as in other areas, the Obama administration will dither because its ideological blinders won't allow it to consider what most people know is the most effective course of action. This will only deepen the general perception that the Obama administration and Congressional Democrats are out of touch with the nation's problems.
