Business, Economics, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Science And Society

Does CO2 Cause Warming?

8 Comments

…or does warming cause CO2?

Darn that pesky “correlation is not causation” thingie.

[Update a few minutes later]

This seems sort of related — does iron-rich dust cause ice ages?

The thinking goes that, during warm periods, much of the Southern Ocean is an oceanic desert because it lacks the iron crucial for plankton growth. That changes at the start of ice ages, when a wobble in the planet’s orbit causes an initial cooling that dries the continents, generates dust storms – particularly in central Asia – and sends dust onto the surface of the Southern Ocean.

The plankton that then bloom take the carbon they need from the water, causing the oceans to absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere to compensate. This cools the atmosphere further, creating yet more dust-producing regions, and the cycle continues, sinking Earth into an ice age.

When the planetary wobbles, known as Milankovitch cycles, eventually choke off the cooling, the feedback goes into reverse: continents warm, dust storms subside, the Southern Ocean is starved of iron, and CO2 levels in the atmosphere rise again.

Emphasis mine.

Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Social Commentary

Homecoming

15 Comments

…from death row:

Just a few months after that December 2001 raid, The New York Times mentioned Maye, Jones and Prentiss in a front-page story about how the drug trade was wreaking havoc on the poor and rural south. That article, in contrast with my own reporting, shows how drastically a journalist’s own perspective can alter a story’s narrative. Certainly there’s no question that two families were devastated as the result of a drug raid gone wrong. But when I first came upon Maye’s story, it immediately struck me as an example of collateral damage from the drug war, not of the drug trade. One family lost a young, likable son and brother forever; another family had a young, likable son, brother and father taken from them for a decade. And the pile of bodies resulting from the policy of sending cops barreling into private homes in the middle of the night to stop people from getting high has only grown since the night Cory Maye shot Ron Jones.

I found Maye’s story while researching a paper about the overuse of SWAT teams and paramilitary search tactics. And so where the Times saw another cop killed by a drug dealer, I wondered why a guy who had no criminal record and no real drugs to speak of in his home would knowingly take on a team of raiding police officers, kill one of them, then surrender with bullets still remaining in his gun. It seemed much more like a series of mistakes resulting in a tragedy — a tragedy compounded by Maye’s subsequent conviction and death sentence.

The evil and societal damage of the drug war vastly exceeds that of the drug sellers (let alone users) and drug trade, all the more because it is well intentioned.

Media Criticism, Political Commentary

Neither Awe Nor Inspiration

12 Comments

The secret to Barack Obama’s non-success:

He has a strange, three-step habit that has the effect of turning off both opponents and his base supporters: (a) the initial audacity-of-hope call for civility, working across the aisle, and bipartisanship in melodic cadences; (b) followed by an unleashing of a Chicago-style assault on his opponents with a wide array of martial imagery (e.g. “hostage takers,” “gun to a knife fight,” “get in their faces,” get “angry,” “kick ass,” etc.), general derision (“moats and alligators,” “back seat,” “punish our enemies”), especially aimed at the affluent (“corporate jet owners,” “millionaires and billionaires,” “those making above $200,000,” “fat-cat,” “at some point” “made enough money,” spread the wealth, redistributive change, unneeded income, etc.). That has the psychological effect of making it nearly impossible for those targeted and caricatured to eventually work out a deal with the president.

And then just when his base is fired up by such combative and confrontational red meat, Obama either votes present and hits the links during debate and argument, or drops the “don’t call my bluff” braggadocio and settles for what he can get. The common denominator here is rhetoric — Obama’s once great gift and now greater nemesis. He sounds much tougher and more divisive to enemies than his later walk back would indicate and he postures as a Chicago-style Alinsky organizer only to disappoint the faithful wanting tough action to follow tougher words.

And the worst thing (from his and his supporters’ point of view) is that he is incapable of changing. It is who he is.

[Update a few minutes later]

Obama: Still the Alynskyite.

For all the good it will do him.

Biting Commentary about Infinity…and Beyond!