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Climate Progress

New York Times runs absurdly misleading headline on Revkin’s sea level rise (non)story

By Joe Romm on May 14, 2009 at 10:38 pm

Study Halves Prediction of Rising Seas

You have got to be kidding me. Just for the record, the study doesn’t actually alter the “prediction of rising seas” in your lifetime — or your grandchildren’s lifetimes — one inch.

UPDATE:  Someone read me the print headline, which is equally dreadful (if not worse):  “Study projects seas rising by half of earlier forecasts.“  Not!

More accurate would be Reuters, “West Antarctic ice threat revised down; still dire.“  It’s a good headline because it is specific and focuses on what matters to readers.

Time‘s headline — Sea Level Rise Overestimated, But Things Still Look Grim — is not as good as Reuter’s because it drops the specificity about Antarctica (and thus creates ambiguity), but it is better than the NYT‘s, since it again focuses on the bottom line to readers.

This study is not about a projection of “sea level rise” or “rising seas” as most people understand those terms and as those terms have been widely used, which is to say, a projection of sea level rise in a time frame people care about — namely the rest of this century.  More important, most every recent study that does make such projections has sharply increased expected SLR this century compared to the 2007 IPCC “consensus” forecast, as I discuss below.

Let’s simply assert that what my father taught me — and what legions of editors know — is true:  A large fraction of people never get beyond the headline.  And even fewer get past the first paragraph.

Now if you read the Reuters lede, you’d learn something:

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Politics

Perry again refuses to reject secession.

By Ryan Powers on May 14, 2009 at 8:37 pm

Last month while speaking at a tea party protest, Gov. Rick Perry (R-TX) suggested that his state might have to secede from the union if, in his words, “Washington continues to thumb their nose at the American people.” Today on Fox News, Neil Cavuto asked Perry about his comments. Perry responded by denying he was a secessionist, repeating his claim that the Obama administration’s policies would lead Americans to consider secession, and then refusing to forswear considering secession himself:

PERRY: I didn’t say that. What I said was, ‘We live in a great country…and I saw no reason at all for us to be even talking about seceding, but if Washington continues to force these programs on the states, if Washington continues to disregard the tenth amendment, who knows what happens.’

CAVUTO: So are you saying then, Gov Perry, if that is the case and Washington continues on this front…that you would consider that option?

PERRY: Here’s what I’m saying…I love the concept of the tea parties and people using that first amendment right and I hope that Washington starts paying attention to the tenth amendment.

Watch it:

Perry and the Republican Governors Association are holding a fundraiser tonight that they have dubbed “Tea Party 2.0.”

Politics

Wonk Room’s Igor Volsky discusses health care reform on Fox Business.

By Ali Frick on May 14, 2009 at 7:50 pm

Last night, the Wonk Room’s Igor Volsky appeared on Fox Business Network to discuss health care reform. He disputed the host’s assertion that the Democrats’ goal was to create a single-payer system, and explained why a public option plan was so essential:

What we’ve had so far in this country is a patchwork system of insurance where millions of American falls through the cracks. And what we want to do is create a public option where the most vulnerable Americans, Americans who now forgo coverage, have access to affordable health care. It’s not about socialism; it’s about providing Americans with a choice. It’s what we should all be for — it’s the American solution.

Watch it:

Igor was pitted against Dennis Smith, a Senior Fellow at the Heritage Foundation. When it came to real reform, the Fox Business host admitted that “it’s essentially really two against one here.”

Climate Progress

Is the U.S. consumption binge over?

By Joe Romm on May 14, 2009 at 7:29 pm

It looks like U.S. carbon dioxide emissions peaked in 2007. But are we really seeing the start of an even more fundamental change in the U.S. economy, driven by the hyper-recession, team Obama and other major trends (like peak oil and global warming)?

I’m very interested in what you are seeing and hearing from your friends and neighbors as well as what you think at the macro level.

The economic downturn is forcing a return to a culture of thrift that many economists say could last well beyond the inevitable recovery.

So began a front-page NYT story this week.  With the huge recent devaluation of two key retirement assets — houses and 401ks — thrift is the word of the day and the year and maybe much longer:

I expect that the savings rate will end up at the end of this recession higher than it was going into it,” said Jonathan A. Parker, a finance professor at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University. “It’s hard to see how it wouldn’t.”

But this isn’t just about spending less and saving more.

This is about a shift to a form of consumption that is based on renewable resources, that doesn’t destroy the planet’s livability — a sustainable economy, not a Ponzi scheme.

Here is where Obama comes in.  His stimulus package and first 100 days were the biggest push away from dirty energy in U.S. history, accelerating a massive transition to clean, safe sources of energy that never run out!  It is a key reason CO2 emissions have probably peaked.

In his big speech on science and R&D last month — “Our future on this planet depends on our willingness to address the challenge posed by carbon pollution,” vows “we will exceed [R&D] level achieved at the height of the space race.” — Obama took direct aim at a purely consumption-based economy:

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Politics

After years of berating Hillary Clinton, Savage asks her for help lifting his UK ban.

By Ben Armbruster on May 14, 2009 at 7:02 pm

savageweb0514Earlier this month, the British government announced a list of people barred from entering the country because of their history of fostering extremism or hatred. Included on the list was American hate radio host Michael Savage, who has since expressed his outrage at the decision. “It is demented,” Savage said. “I want my name off of that list and I want a letter of apology from this [British Home Secretary] Jacqui Smith.” Now it appears that Savage is seeking help from an old nemesis: Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. The San Fransisco Chronicle’s Rich Lieberman reports that “[l]awyers for Savage are formally asking [that] she call on the British Government to withdraw its ban.” It’s interesting that Savage is now turning to Clinton for help, considering what he has had to say about her in the past. Some examples:

– “Hillary Clinton, the most Godless woman in the Senate.”

– Regarding one of Clinton’s speeches: “That’s rubbish. That’s Hitler dialogue. Goebbels would be proud of you, Hillary Clinton. I know Mao Zedong would have been proud of you.”

– “[Clinton has] destroyed the war effort against terror. And if, God forbid, a suitcase bomb goes off you’ll know who to blame.”

– On Clinton’s run for the presidency: “[She would] stir up a race war, a civil war in the country to get that hag, that harridan elected.”

Savage also once suggested that Clinton had something to do with the death of John F. Kennedy Jr. so she could run for U.S. Senate in New York.

Politics

Hoekstra says waterboarding was legal, claims ‘there is a wide range of waterboarding.’

By Satyam Khanna on May 14, 2009 at 6:17 pm

In a tense interview on Fox News today, host Shep Smith repeatedly pressed Rep. Pete Hoekstra (R-MI) if waterboarding is torture. Hoekstra initially dodged, saying, “I don’t know if it’s torture or not.” “I’d like an answer, sir,” Smith responded. Asked a fourth time, Hoekstra finally said he believes that interrogations used in the “immediate aftermath” of 2002 — which included waterboarding — were “consistent” with the law:

Q: And waterboarding is or is not torture?

HOEKSTRA: There is a wide range of waterboarding. I’m telling you, that I know waterboarding was used, Shep. I’m not mincing words. I’m saying that I believe the techniques used in 2002, in 2003, which included waterboarding in a specific format that I’m aware of how they used it, that I believe that was consistent with U.S. law.

Watch it:

Of course, waterboarding has for decades violated domestic and international law.

Related Posts

Security

Former SERE Instructor: ‘We Created’ An ‘Al Qaeda SERE School’

By Ben Armbruster on May 14, 2009 at 5:27 pm

Many conservatives, including Liz Cheney, who is the daughter of Vice President Cheney, have been defending the Bush administration’s torture regime arguing that many of the techniques authorized were derived from U.S. special forces training called Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Evasion (SERE) and were used on American troops.

While the situations are clearly not analogous (mainly because the circumstances in which techniques are applied are “very different“), former master instructor and chief of training at Navy’s SERE school Malcolm Nance said last night on MSNBC that that argument is “ridiculous on its face” and he called those making it “torture apologists”:

Host Rachel Maddow then asked Nance if he would use SERE techniques in the “faulty” premise of a “ticking time bomb scenario.”

MADDOW: In the case of an actual ticking time bomb scenario, which is a faulty premise because things don’t work out this way in the real world, would you do SERE, these techniques on a prisoner in that scenario? [...]

NANCE: No of course not, because one, it defeats the ticking time bomb scenario, in that all the prisoner has to do is not answer the question or, better yet, the prisoner will lie. And once the prisoner lies, especially with al Qaeda members. Let me tell you something, their ideology — they have a concept within their ideology called “al-warrah el barrah” (sp) and that is absolute devotion to their god, but absolute disavowal and hatred of anything that’s not their god.

Nance added that when these techniques were used, detainees knew they were were giving “gibberish,” thus seeing “that as a victory.” “[W]hat we’ve done is we created al Qaeda SERE school for them,” Nance said. Watch it:

Incidently, “torture apologist” Liz Cheney also made this ticking time bomb argument earlier this week: “We are talking about a situation in which there are imminent threats to the United States so if you say to me, this guy’s got information that’s gonna save my kids’ lives and your kids lives that’s going to keep this country safe but we gotta waterboard them to get it, I got no problem with that.”

Transcript: Read more

Yglesias

What’s a Trillion Dollars

By Matthew Yglesias on May 14, 2009 at 5:26 pm

One significant impediment to political understanding is that people don’t have a great deal of intuitive ability to process very large magnitudes. But this right here is a very effective demonstration of what one trillion dollars means relative to other magnitudes.

I found that via the Graphic Sociology where Flaneuse explains:

I have heard on NPR that it’s hard for people to make decisions about monetary volumes once the order of magnitude goes above 7 or 8, that humans unconsciously shift to logarithmic scale thinking which leaves 100 million dollars being only slightly less than 1 billion dollars. That’s like thinking that 100 dollars is only slightly less than 1000 dollars.

Of course in some contexts logarithmic scales are appropriate. But we shouldn’t let our choice of scale be determined merely by the size of the quantity we’re thinking about. Oftentimes when talking about budgetary matters in the United States, I think it would be helpful to come up with something other than raw dollar totals to discuss. Talking about a given initiative costing $X per person or per household, or being such-and-such a percent of total economic output, might give people a better understanding of the relative costs of different things.

Climate Progress

Waxman’s big get: VA Rep. Boucher says, I intend to vote yes and I intend to encourage all other members of the committee to do the same — but who called the bill a legislative Susan Boyle? Pelosi backs off summer floor vote

By Joe Romm on May 14, 2009 at 5:10 pm

“Key Dem backs Waxman climate bill” is how Politico reported this afternoon’s big breaking news.  Boucher is

… a coal-country Democrat whose support signals the backing of industrial state Democrats in the south and Midwest.

“I intend to vote yes and I intend to encourage all other members of the committee to do the same,” Boucher said.

Boucher has acted as a key negotiator for many Democrats on the committee, who feared that the new regulations could hurt hometown industries and consumers.

It is the man who replaced Boucher as Chair of the Energy and Environment Subcommittee who said made the Boyle comparison, Rep. Ed Markey (D-MA):

Boucher’s approval rebukes the months of “conventional wisdom” that had described the global warming bill as dead, and it helps lay the groundwork for passage in both the House and Senate, Markey said. “What we have in front of us now and we will next week is the legislative Susan Boyle,” he said, referring to the British amateur singer who shocked audiences with her professional voice last month.

How big a deal is this?  Big enough to make Energy and Commerce Committee ranking member Joe humans should just ‘get shade’ Barton eat most of his words in one 12-hour news cycle:

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