politics

Go Vote!

733 Comments

I voted. This is the first time there’s ever been a line at my polling place. It took 15 minutes.

I also noticed I spoiled my ballot and got a new one, thereby making the line longer. My husband did the same damn thing. ( We both were hasty on the first ballot measure and didn’t notice the “should foo oppose bar”, and voted the opposite of or intention. So if you want higher taxes you should vote “no” and if you do not want them you vote “yes/si”. We both realized or mistake when the later ballot measures were worded similarly and said…. dang!

Go Vote. (Well…. if you are American and legally entitled to do so.)
Read the ballot measures carefully. And if you don’t and screw up, remember you can replace a spoiled ballot. 🙂

733 thoughts on “Go Vote!”

  1. Great, unbelievably detailed de-construction of the 14th amendment. I'm going to be more pedantic here by saying that I filled out my ballot today and was surprised by the unilateral slant to my google enquiries.

    I just typed Colorado ballot guide into google and got back exclusively democrat results. Literally the first one was the Democrat party site and the next dozen were all liberal. I don't need a non-liberal site to tell me how to vote, I'm just looking for some generic site to explain our seriously stupid state constitution amendments.

    Not a conspiracy theory just a 'doh really observation.

  2. Just saying that two years ago,or four, or eight I was able to find a generic voters guide. I tried like hell today and was unsuccessful.

  3. 2 years ago I woke up [in Australia] to the wife and Mum going shopping and the happy news, on their part, that Hilary was ahead in the counting and would comfortably win.
    When they returned 3 hours later there was great distress that the result was a toss up and that even though ahead by a large number of seats all the results to come were pointing Trump's way.
    Seems a bit different this time but will wake up in morning, check results with trepidation then await the 3 hour rule result. Will buy some shares if Trump's lot wins. But not in polling companies.

  4. Well, hopefully we'll know tonight or possibly by this time tomorrow what the political landscape will look like for the next couple of years. I honestly don't have any confidence in any predictions at this point. It's a little unsettling. At least it'll be over soon!

  5. Jerry (Comment #171962),
    I just tried the same experiment for Georgia ballot guide 2018. Here's the first page voter guides:
    .
    1) League of Women Voters. I believe this guide is entirely composed by candidate responses, not by LWV itself, and it does not have endorsements. The nationally prominent race is Kemp (R) vs Abrams (D), and only Abrams has a response. The Republican candidates for Lt. Governor and Attorney General also have no response. Neither congressional candidate has a response. However, I do have responses from both candidates for a number of less prominent candidates.
    .
    2) Atlanta Journal-Constitution voter guide. AJC is the most prominent newspaper in the state and leans further left than the population at large, but it no longer endorses candidates. Voter guide links to stories AJC has done and I think they at least intend to be neutral; I'd have to dig into details to see how true it really is, I haven't subscribed to this paper for several years.
    .
    3) AJC link to league of women's voters guide, which they host
    .
    4) AJC guide to primaries. Not relevant.
    .
    5) 159 Georgia Together guide. Site is openly "progressive" (their words).
    .
    6) State of Georgia voting guide. Purely mechanical what-you-need-to-vote site.
    .
    7) State of Georgia polling place guide. Where you need to vote.
    .
    8) Georgia Christian Voter Guide. Launching spot for several voter guides by conservative and/or christian groups, the first one listed was the neutrally named ivoterguide, which doesn't seem to endorse specific candidates and relies on candidate responses to questions, but the questions are of interest to social/fiscal conservatives. Also includes ratings from conservative/liberal groups.
    .
    9) ABC News site focusing on mechanical how-to-vote and where-to-vote.
    .
    I didn't go on to further pages, but a better selection than you got. Since it's google, it may well be influenced by my past searches.

  6. I was in and out in under 5 minutes and was the 65th voter in my precinct. I can't really compare that to previous years as I normally vote in the evening and end up in the mid 200s with lines. They also streamlined the registration by having the ID check and sign-ins separate from each precinct's ballots distribution.
    My gut reaction is this is going to be a close one. It really depends on who turns up to vote in the toss-up districts. One of the side effects of the challenging revenue environment for newspapers is the scarcity of polling being done in the individual districts.

  7. My local TV is being inundated with ads for the Bredesen v Blackburn contest. Unfortunately they are the same ads over and over again, sometimes twice in one commercial break. It's more than a little annoying. Is this really an effective use of money? Real question.

  8. My vote at about 9:15 AM was number 265 at my precinct in FL. There was a line out the door, but lots of ballot questions (22!) are slowing things down.

  9. Jerry,
    "I just typed Colorado ballot guide into google and got back exclusively democrat results."
    .
    And the surprising part here is?

  10. The comment in the distant past from my Democrat friends from Chicago on election day was vote early and often. This election I voted early which is a change from my disgust with politics in general and not voting at all. I doubt that it will make any difference as I see Illinois like other blue states getting bluer. I think the problem for Republicans is that red states will not be getting redder and some maybe a bit bluish.

  11. My polling place seemed less crowded than usual. This said, it wasn't the same time of day I normally vote so who knows really.

  12. There was a line of about 20 voters at my polling place in Massachusetts, which was unusual. It turned out that backlog was for one precinct only (of three), I went right in. As the main offices on the ballot are not expected to be close races, this increase in participation (assuming the anecdotal is representative) is likely due to the state-wide initiative questions, especially Question 1 which has drawn *lots* of advertising.

    As I was leaving, I overheard one voter in line say to the next one, something along the lines of "I used to think they were nice people until…" I grew up thinking that, whether they voted with you or against you, these are all neighbors, townspeople, countrymen… I understand that professional politicians are going to make out that the candidates of "the other side" are bad and one shouldn't vote for them, but I don't understand why that attitude is now applied to the voters as well. It makes one despair. To misquote Welch, "At long last, have you left no sense of civility?"

  14. HaroldW,
    "At long last, have you left no sense of civility?"
    .
    Apparently not in Massachusetts; still too angry about Hillary losing and Trump appointing two conservative SC justices. The real anger will start if Ginsburg or Breyer dies or (less likely) retires with Trump in office and Republicans continue to hold the Senate.

  15. Another good laugh: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-018-0651-8#Sec20
    Nic Lewis isn't making any friends among the alarmed. See Nic's comment at the bottom of the page. It seems Nic has learned from Steve McIntyre's experience: if you find an error in a 'climate science' paper, make sure you get it in the public record immediately, so that the authors don't claim they discovered the error themselves and not give you credit.

  16. Here is the publication history of the ocean warming paper in Nature:
    Received
    04 December 2017
    Accepted
    29 August 2018
    Published
    31 October 2018
    .
    Wait…what? Almost 9 months of review and nobody finds an error that Nic Lewis sees in a few minutes on the first page of the paper. Ya gotta love 'climate science', if for nothing else, its comedic value.

  17. DeWitt, typically campaign consultants get 15% of the money spent on ads. They end up preferring to run ads. I think the Democrats have made a move away from this, with outside groups demanding fixed fees to run ads.

  18. SteveF (Comment #171976): "Almost 9 months of review and nobody finds an error that Nic Lewis sees in a few minutes on the first page of the paper. Ya gotta love 'climate science', if for nothing else, its comedic value."

    That is by no means unique to climate science. Peer review is often both crazy slow and extremely cursory. Most of what gets published in scientific journals is junk or near junk.

  19. Mike M,
    "Most of what gets published in scientific journals is junk or near junk."
    .
    Outside 'climate science' I wouldn't go so far as to say most is junk. I'd say most is irrelevant or doubtful, some is pure junk, and a small portion makes a real contribution. At least that is my experience. When I have reviewed papers (just a few times), they frequently contain mistakes… even conceptual mistakes!

  20. SteveF: Junk in Scientific Journals

    ……
    Daniele Fanelli in an issue of Nature said "There is something rotten in the state of scientific research—“an epidemic of false, biased, and falsified findings” where “only the most egregious cases of misconduct are discovered and punished.” https://www.newsweek.com/new-research-claims-science-awash-false-findings-63405

    Unfortunately, American Universities are not highly ethical institutions.

    JD

  21. SteveF (Comment #171979): "Outside 'climate science' I wouldn't go so far as to say most is junk. I'd say most is irrelevant or doubtful, some is pure junk, and a small portion makes a real contribution. At least that is my experience. When I have reviewed papers (just a few times), they frequently contain mistakes… even conceptual mistakes!
    .
    I agree. Irrelevant or doubtful is what I meant by near junk.

  22. Before anyone gets too excited that the curve fit in the Nature paper must certainly be an appalling error that will overturn everything, John Kennedy posted a tweet to that points to the possibility the authors might have done something not entirely illegitimate.

    https://twitter.com/micefearboggis/status/1058817553097785350

    Basically: he reran, weighting by 1/(uncertainty)^2. This is something that IS done sometimes when measurement methods result in data points having largely different uncertainties for some reasons. (For example, for some instruments the uncertainty might be a fixed % rather than a fixed amount. Eg. Δx ~ 5% * x rather than Δx = 0.05.)

    When doing that, it seems he got a higher trend– though evidently not what the author's got.

    Obviously, uncertainty weighting (other than all equal) is something that ought to be explained in a paper. Ideally, the sensitivity to the weighting should be mentioned. But it does suggest something not to insane might have been done but not mentioned in the paper.

  23. JD Ohio (Comment #171980): "Daniele Fanelli in an issue of Nature …"

    Bad statistical analysis and a bias towards novel results. That is just the same old same old that has been recognized for a decade or more and that is slowly changing, I think. But science is very decentralized, so such cultural change occurs at a glacial pace.

  25. lucia (Comment #171982): "John Kennedy posted a tweet to that points to the possibility the authors might have done something not entirely illegitimate."

    Weighting using known uncertainties is not only legitimate, it is the preferable approach, provided that uncertainties are random. But Kennedy's graph shows the errors increasing with time. Why should that be? Nic comments that "these are annual trend errors, so their influence is proportional to the number of years elapsed since the 1991 base year". If so, then weighting is inappropriate. More likely, Nic's explanation is correct: The authors failed to subtract one of the correction terms.

  26. “lucia liljegren (@lucialiljegren) | November 6, 2018 at 4:35 pm
    Before everyone gets to excited, John Kennedy tweeted something 3 days ago that suggests there might be a legitimate reason for the difference. It has to do with weighting data by uncertainty. Weighting by uncertainty is a legitimate thing to do. It is something that would need to be called out in the paper and so on and so on.”
    Guess everyone is still up and excited, at the moment, over there but also noted your comment at Judith’s.
    And now reading SteveF’s here.
    A small question mathematically.
    How does a rebuff of a rebuff come up with exactly the right (weighted) answer?
    1.16.
    Does/should his method give the same SD?
    I would imagine that with the different technique, as you outlined, a different SD would occur as you state it gave a heavier weighting to early (and possibly therefore more unreliable) data, strange thing to do!
    If they do match it would mean using the data in a way that was not explicitly explained in the article. Surely this is bad and sloppy practice.
    I am really, really excited and amazed at the exact match.
    And at your elections.

  27. Strange also that this guy put this out 3 days ago. Means he had picked up the potential error and was looking for an excuse before it was exposed.
    Note Judy made a cryptic comment to the chiefio a day before that Nic Lewis was pepreparing an exciting rebuff to the paper.
    Had word got out?
    Those darn Democrat leakers are everywhere.
    Very strange.
    To rebut an error while sort of not acknowledging an error, in the hope that no one would pick it up.
    Who is he and what contacts does he have with the paper authors?

  28. Lucia,
    There is nothing in the paper to suggest they did that, and as Kennedy himself noted, if the data is weighted that way, then the uncertainty of the slope becomes 1/3 of what they report. A simple math error seems far more likely, and Nic even pointed to one error which gives exactly the slope the authors reported: they forgot to subtract something. Of course, it is unlikely the authors will admit simple error… this is 'climate science' after all.

  29. angech,

    Nic Lewis said he contacted the lead author on November 1, and had spoken to at least one other person (Bosse) about the error around the same time. It is possible both Nic Lewis and John Kennedy independently found the error, but more likely word of the error spread quickly in the incestuous world of climate science once Nic found it and told the lead author. There are eight authors, from at least five different organizations… the first think the lead author would do is forward Nic's email to all the other authors, then it could spread rapidly, and maybe to John Kennedy (UK Met Office).

  30. It would seem that the more egregious error is that the high trend, which isn't supported by, say, sea level and mass data, wouldn't actually justify the author's conclusion, that the lower limit of temperature increase from doubling CO2 should be raised from 1.5 to 2.0 Centigrade.

    Question: Can you justify a linear fit when so many data points in a row are below the trend line? You certainly can't in a process control chart. The process would be deemed out of control.

  31. MikeM
    >possibility the authors might have done something not entirely illegitimate."

    >Weighting using known uncertainties is not only legitimate, it is the preferable approach, provided that uncertainties are random.

    Agreed.

    > But Kennedy's graph shows the errors increasing with time.
    I don't know.
    I asked John the same thing. He's read the paper and knows how he works them out for Hadcrut. His answer (on twitter) was

    "I'm not entirely sure. Some of the errors are expressed as X per year, suggesting that they grow in time. Others are modelled as AR(1) series, which would increase with time as they zero from the first data point"

    If the "uncertainties" are true *measurement* uncertainties, weighting that way strikes me as legit. If they are what Gavin called "weather noise"…. nope.

    I don't undertsand why *measurement* uncertainty of ocean heat content or surface temperature or anything like that should increase with time. It seems unlikely measurement systems have gotten crappier over time. So… we'lll see….

  32. SteveF,

    "…if the data is weighted that way, then the uncertainty of the slope becomes 1/3 of what they report."

    1/3 or 3 x? I would think the uncertainty of the slope would be three times the value reported.

  33. angech,
    >Means he had picked up the potential error and was looking for an excuse before it was exposed.

    Actually…. no. I don't think that's the way John Kennedy operates. I know lots of you guys distrust all climate scientiets, but… nah. I don't think that's John.

  34. lucia,

    "First, they appear to have treated corrosion, leakage and desorption errors in ΔAPOOBS as fixed errors that have the same influence each year."

    I think that implies that the instruments could have degraded over time, increasing uncertainty.

  35. To clarify, I don't think John is looking for an "excuse". I do suspect he looked at the paper and was puzzled by the apparent difference in trend.So the exact thing that struck Nic must have struck John. So he's thinking of an explanation to himself– and my have discussed with people he knows. He happened to tweet something he checked out. But I don't think the motive is to find an "excuse".

  37. “Nicholas Lewis. 4 hours ago
    I have analysed the APO data in Extended Data Table 4 and
    checked the paper's results. I found that the linear trend in the dAPO_Climate data was 0.88 per meg per year, not 1.16 per meg per year as claimed. Moreover the claimed uncertainty in this trend was far smaller than what I calculate using the data error distributions. As the paper's ocean heat uptake rate is
    derived by applying a conversion factor to its dAPO_Climate trend, this meansthat all of the paper's efindings are wrong.”
    Bold statement.
    He sent it to the papers authors.

  38. Lucia,

    If you know John Kennedy, and it seems you do, you could just ask him what prompted him to be playing with the data. Did he see the problem himself, or did he hear of it from someone else. If he is as straight a shooter as you suggest, he will tell you.

  39. SteveF,
    >then it could spread rapidly, and maybe to John Kennedy (UK Met Office).

    Perhaps. But in which case, John is perfectly willing to blab out in public rather than only sending things around to some secret cabal.

    It may be being talked about in hallways at the UKmet office.

    John hasn't said it salvages the paper. Just that he does get something higher that way. You can see in his tweet he reckons he hasn't hit on what the authors actually did because he doesn't get their numbers.

    Certainly Nick getting their exact values does suggest he did replicate their process. If so, it's a cock up on the authors part.

  40. SteveF,
    I don't know him well. I follow him on twitter. We sometimes tweet back and forth. He's a nice guy. I can ask. Dunno if he'll answer!

  41. Oh, and the first ten data points are above the author's trend line, again pointing to the linear model being wrong for some reason.

  42. My apologies re John Kennedy.
    I realise now I was over judgmental.
    Still, he may have been made aware of the problem, was looking at the problem and found this as an answer.
    The 1.16 exact match is a great worry or a great coincidence of itself. Saying that the authors might have meant to do it this way instead of …
    Raises the issue of instead of what? The normal way that anyone reading the paper would assume.
    Worse as an explanation it opens up overweighting of earlier more unreliable observations in place of the newer observations.
    It also leaves open the issue of the standard deviations as to what measure was used.
    If Lewis is right about the simple mathematical mistake the SD should belong to that set. If Kennedy is right they should match his set if he has done them,

  43. DeWitt,
    "The process would be deemed out of control."
    .
    The process in this paper, or climate science in general?

  45. SteveF,

    *sigh*

    Snark aside, it's the weighted linear trend process in the paper. This is why you're supposed to look at residual plots as well as the values plots. Having two runs of ten points on one side of the trend line when there are only 26 data points is, to put it mildly, improbable.

  46. SteveF,

    After reading Nic's reply to lucia in the comments at Climate Etc., I see how the calculated uncertainty in the slope is reduced. It reminds me of the Hockey Stick variance compression in the shaft. I suspect the effective degrees of freedom of the fit is a lot smaller than 26-2.

    From Nic's reply to lucia ( https://judithcurry.com/2018/11/06/a-major-problem-with-the-resplandy-et-al-ocean-heat-uptake-paper/#comment-883028 ):

    "Where data error ranges arise due to trend uncertainty that affect all years’ data in proportion to distance from a base year, it is not appropriate to weight the data values inversely with their error variance, as Kennedy’s method does."

    The trend line is forced to go through the base year, i.e. the uncertainty for that year is zero.

  47. Note that even in Kennedy's fit, reproduced in angech's comment, there's a run of nine points below the calculated trend line for the last nine years of data. That's still very unlikely if the uncertainties were random.

  49. SteveF,
    I'll have to read it tomorrow!!!

    I'm addicted to watching election results. I finished tutoring for the day, poured a glass of wine and I'm going to watch now. (I think I inherited the addition of watching election results from Popsie Wopsie!!)

    Jim is telling me he has no intention of watching. That means he's going to his room and I'm watching downstairs. (Two years ago he came down late at night and asked when I was going to bed. I told him…. we didn't know who won yet. He was like….whaaaaaaaatttttt? He came down a little later and I said, I think they are about to call for Trump. )

    So he'll probably come down late tonight again. (I'll be watching the governors race closely. But honestly, Pritzger will probably win.)

  50. angech,
    Kennedy hasn't said they did it his way. Only that if he uses those uncertainties he gets a particular result. He hasn't even advocated for or against the method.

  51. Uh Huh.
    watching over here but may go to bed. Seem to be a few republicans losing their seats in house already in red areas.

  52. DeWitt Payne (Comment #172006)
    The force through zero with the 1/unc^2 weighting seems arbitrary, and as Nic points out, any point on the graph could be set as the “reference point”, in which case the calculated slope would depend on an arbitrarily chosen reference point.
    .
    The simplest explanation is a simple calculation error, and that the paper’s results are simply wrong. That also makes the most sense in light of what the paper’s conclusions, if correct, would imply: a mountain of gravitational data from Grace is just wrong…. that also seems very unlikely.

  53. angech,
    It may seem odd to you down under, but I'm *more* concerned about the gubenatorial election in Illinois. (I am not unconcerned with who takes congress though.)

  55. I voted by mail in FL. Pretty hassle free. I was also blessed with a TV free six day vacation before election day this year so I gloriously missed the final TV ad blitz. I don't usually watch election returns or debates. I did stay up for the end of the Trump election though, because I checked in once that night and the highly improbable was happening.

  56. The most eventful thing that happened today though was coming home and finding out that a water pipe broke between the meter and my house while I was out and has been sending 12,000 gallons a day into the storm drain. Groan.

  61. Don't move. Do an Archie with feathers. [sorry, bad pun].
    and wait it out. Only 3 years or 4 years?

  62. Out of curiosity…. Jim has a cousin in Tennessee. Anyone have anything to say about the desirability of Chattanoogga for living conditions? (There are also cousins in NC, various parts of VA, and TX.)

  64. Texas Sen. Ted Cruz wins re-election, a victory that enables Republicans to retain control of the Senate on.wsj.com/2QnyTxL

  65. Didn't taxes already rise in IL? I remember it used to be 3% state income tax.

    The House call is surprising, with the House races not called or even close. It looks like like the narrow tossups that looked safe a few weeks ago will flip, for example 3 in Illinois.

  67. Canada or Mexico? Ha ha.
    .
    Florida passed an amendment for a supermajority requirement for tax (and fees!) hikes 66% to 34%, ironically almost a supermajority itself. That doesn't mix well with Gillum's(D) proposal for a $1B tax increase.
    .
    I can't say I'm a big fan of governing by voter referendums, although I'm probably not a big fan of governing by any particular manner lately. Republicans are barely holding a lead in FL Governor and Senate races, likely recount territory.

  68. Tom
    >Canada or Mexico? Ha ha.
    Probably Tennessee. Jim was already planning to visit his cousins in Chattanogga in March. We're checking out ballroom dance venues, health care and property. But taxes are a big issue. (Not making this up.)

  69. Tom
    > Republicans are barely holding a lead in FL Governor and Senate races, likely recount territory.

    Which makes the super majority requirement for tax hikes more relevant than otherwise. . .

  70. I love the Blue Ridge Mountains. Fall colors hiking this last week were very nice. We have been looking in Asheville NC, northern GA, and the general area as we ponder doing a half-back move (moving half the way back from Florida after coming down from the north). You might have to convert to square dancing though.

  71. We rented a house similar to something we might buy and quickly discovered that "master on main" was a bigger issue than we thought. We don't trudge up and down stairs at all in FL and if we are going to live in the house for 20+ years that might become an issue. Almost all houses in the mountain areas are multi-story. One guy selling a house made a big deal about his house being on the high side of the road so he wheeled full trash cans down and empty trash cans up.

  72. lucia,

    Chattanooga has a nice aquarium. It's not what you could call a big city, though. The sales tax is high and hits food too, but no total income tax. But a lot of places that used to have lower sales taxes are now not that less than TN and they do have income taxes.

    There's this weird tax on some investment income, the Hall income tax, that I don't think a lot of people pay. It's odd that there is no minimum below which you don't pay. If you owe $1, you're supposed to pay $1. Seems to me that it would cost a lot more to process a payment that small, but what do I know. TN state and local pensions are in far better shape than IL. I live northeast of Chattanooga in the foothills of the mountings and don't plan to go anywhere else.

  73. Tom,

    The first house we owned in TN was on the high side of the road. It was nice when the creek flooded some of the houses on the other side of the street, nice for us anyway. Either it's never rained as much again or they improved the drainage on the creek because it hasn't happened again.

  74. DeWitt,
    Not being a big city is fine. One of Jim's cousins who we like a lot lives there. There is no hurricane threat. Winters are mild. Jim is retiring. I'm not making up considering moving.

    Last month I googled ballroom dance lessons in Chattanoga. So we really seriously are looking for places.

    Income tax bothers me more than sales tax. 🙂 I guess we'll need to look into the tax on investment income though.

  75. No blue wave in TN. The Senate race wasn't even close in spite of the Republican, Marsha Blackburn, being a hack and a crook. Not that that stopped me from voting for her. If the Democrats can hold their noses in NJ and vote for Menendez, the least I could do was to do the same in TN and vote for Blackburn.

  76. DeWitt Payne,
    Ok. Odd tax. We're fine if we are drawing down distributions as long is it's not dividends or interest? Really weird. But.. uhmm m'kay.

  78. DeWitt,
    Thanks. We probably wouldnt find a property we like and move before 2020 anyway. Ok… maybe 2019. But not this summer.

  79. With the Democrats taking the house, Trump can kiss his border wall goodbye for at least the next two years. OTOH, if the Democrats can't resist the siren call of impeaching Trump and possibly Kavanaugh, then all bets are off for 2021. With two more seats in the Senate, Trump may finally get all his executive branch appointments approved, assuming he gets around to making all of them.

  80. DeWitt,
    So… in TN, there's a state sales tax and a city one? So saletax could be lower just outside a city? (That's the way in IL btw. Sales tax is lower out here in DuPage than in Chi' town.)

  81. lucia,

    There are state, county and city sales taxes. The city gets a cut of the county taxes, so the city taxes are usually small or non-existent. Kingsport, where I live, doesn't have a city sales tax so the tax rate is the same as the county, 9.25%, 7% state and 2.25% county. It's the same in Chattanooga.

  82. It's also less than a two hour drive from Chattanooga to Atlanta if you do want access to a big city.

  84. Trump's rallies seemed to make a big difference. The losses are almost entirely elsewhere.
    No seats lost in Wisconsin, thought Governor Walker might lose.
    3 seats in Virginia, including Dave Brat.
    3 flips in IOWA(only has 4!), vs none in Ohio.
    2 in Texas, but five more are not called.
    Net 3-4 in Penn, from redistricting.
    NY had 8 seats on RealClealPolitics board, 3-5 flips.
    NJ 2-3 flips. IL 2-3 flips.
    Minn had 4 on board, and looks like 2-2 split, with Conor Peterson's seat becoming close after rally(flips when he retires).
    No rally in Mich, and tossup race will flip while 3 Lean R are close.
    Alternatively, no rallies in NC, but no change with 4 on RCP board.
    7 seats at risk in FL, only 2 flipped.

  85. CBS had the Democrats leading by 7% in FL Governor and Senate race this morning. CNN had them leading by 4%. The NYT had them leading by 5%. It looks like the Republicans will win both by about 1%. It's about the same thing that happened in FL 2016 with Trump.

  86. Speaking of hurricanes, I drove through the FL panhandle twice in the past week and holy sh**. I am not kidding when I say I saw at least 10,000 trees down. I've lived in FL 25 years and I've never seen anything like this. There were areas where it looked like a gigantic weed whacker was taken to forests with hundreds of pine trees broken in half at about the 15 foot level and still rooted in the ground.
    .
    This went on for about 50 miles and 20+ miles inland.
    https://www.gannett-cdn.com/presto/2018/10/15/PTAL/c3a8477d-bf2d-40a9-a364-cc83c0d04317-JRON0662.JPG

  88. Ohio Republicans killed it in turnout. Sherrod Brown wasn't even considered a close race, and he won by under 6.

  89. FL Senate race narrowing and will be very close to 0.5% margin for a recount. Thankfully the balance of the Senate will not be at stake causing another epic recount circus to occur.
    .
    Edit: Scott declared winner. FL has two Republican Senators for the first time in over 100 years.

  90. Mike N: "Ohio Republicans killed it in turnout. Sherrod Brown wasn't even considered a close race, and he won by under 6."

    Ohio threw away a decent chance at unseating Brown by a series of primary miscues. I had no confidence DeWine would win as governor, but he won comfortably.

    Very surprised that Dems won 2 Supreme Court Justice seats. Those have strongly tended to break for Republicans over the last 20 years.

    JD

  91. ? Do an Archie with feathers.
    I don't even know what that means
    –
    Bunker down.
    Instead of leaving home.
    just a play on words but I am obtuse at times.

  92. The voter turn out in the urban counties in SW Oh was 50%+ in the early evening which had me concerned until I pulled up the precinct map. The outer suburbs turned out in the 60%+ rate where the more Democrat ones were 40% or below. Too bad it wasn't enough to unseat Brown.
    The confirmation hearings cost the dems their chance at the Senate. My guess is they over reach in the house and those flip back in 2020.

  93. angech,
    >Bunker down.
    >Instead of leaving home.

    Staying in Illinois means higher real estate taxes, higher (net) income taxes, much colder winters, and it's not really pretty around here. We don't have kids. So the only thing really here is my Mom, who for some reason just wants to stay in her house. But really, she needs to move too.

  94. lucia,
    I don't know Chattanooga well, have visited a handful of times for a variety of purposes. Pretty enough place. Chiefly I remember that traffic along I-24 has been rough in recent years (bear in mind that I've gotten used to light Huntsville traffic though).
    Come to Huntsville and help build the Space Force instead!
    Or not. Our state sales tax is 9% and religion is a thing here.

  96. I googled and there is evidently a store at Oak Brook shopping center and one in Westmont. I rarely drive there to shop.

  99. I posted my response to Nic

    ——- ——- ——- ——-
    Nic,
    The uncertainties aren’t really zero in 1991; it is simply that the 1991 data value has been deducted from all years’ data.
    Fair enough. I haven't read the papers. So I assumed theses were some sort of published measurement uncertainties — similar to what we would do with instrumentation. (Hadcrut has published uncertainties that exist external to any individuals decision to fit the data. )

    I agree the uncertainty is defined as zero for 1990, and then that's not legitimate. (If one does want to do that, at least define it as zero in the midpoint of the time range! Even then that's not quite right.)

    ——- ——- ——- ——-

    So, as you see, I'd been under the assumption these "errors" were actual honest to goodness measurement errors. Sort of like if we measure temperature with a thermistor. One actually measures Resistance, which is nonlinear in temperature. The result is if the resistance measurement has a constant R_err you get Τerrs whose size is a function of temperature and it's useful to know that when doing a fit.

    Obviously, "baselining" doesn't suddenly mean one of the temperature measurements has zero error. If it did, the trend based on (T-Tref) vs time is different from the trend based on (T) vs time, and that doesn't make any sense. The trend is the trend. Particularly when we are interested in determining the trend itself it would be pathological to pick one of the data points as the "baseline" and then define "error" based on the uncertainty of our knowledge between the temperature of each data point and *that* data point.

    (There are times when we might want to know that uncertainty. But it's not what we should use for weighting here.)

  100. I wasn't expecting there to be another one. I remember seeing it in Downers Grove, surprised it was next to a bunch of random things like Browns Chicken and Pasta and mechanic shops.

  101. My daughter moved to Huntsville 1.5 years ago, and it seems way better than what I imagined Alabama was like. I'm from WV so I have a legal right to stereotype other states for balance. The real estate in Huntsville is pretty cheap, and it has a decent high tech economy and is a fast growing medium size city. Not too big, not too small. But it's definitely southern, I had to ask what a "meat and three" was, ha ha. The demographics are white, black, and almost nothing else. So if you are an "other" you might have a little adapting to do, although I didn't feel like my Asian wife was getting very many weird looks. Last time I was there some guy went running down the road next to my daughters apartment by himself with a huge Trump flag. Very, very odd. I found the people there to be really nice (relative to FL). If you like BBQ, there is a BBQ restaurant about every 12 feet throughout AL. Rocket City is worth looking at.

  102. "If you like BBQ, there is a BBQ restaurant about every 12 feet throughout AL. Rocket City is worth looking at."
    Yeah, but none of them are good.
    Well… None of them are fantastic. I guess some of it is OK.

  103. I don't seem to be able to post comments at Climate etc., so I will just post a quick comment here.

    I downloaded the paper and noticed something in the data table. The uncertainties in extended data table 2 (the source for Nic's and Kennedy's plots) increase linearly with time. Not roughly linear, nearly a perfect straight line (except for two points that look like typos). So they are not random. To use them for weighting is not questionable, it is flat wrong.

  104. FL Senate going to a recount. It is unlikely to change anything unless some real fraud occurred. In the past these recounts moved things maybe 100 votes at most. The margin is 35,000. The recount is passing ballots through a scanner again.
    .
    The reaction to the election seems muted. Both sides lost and both sides won it seems. The Senate may end up 55-45. Even though the left won by any fair analytical measurement of change in the balance of power the media once again seems disappointed in America for being so (fill in the usual labels) and unable to articulate why people would vote Republican. They cannot fathom that people are voting Republican in spite of Trump, not in support of his antics. Their over confidence in their wonderfulness continues.
    .
    The left winning the house brings the curse of having to govern (versus just screaming) as the right delights in having Pelosi in a high profile position again. It's not hard to imagine the House overplaying their cards against the evil empire and handing Trump the 2020 election. The activist left will demand impeachment regardless of what Mueller finds.

  106. Tom Scharf,
    "as the right delights in having Pelosi in a high profile position again."
    .
    Sure, she says really dumb things and makes herself an easy target. But the other issue is that about 30 Dems (as best I can tell) who won in more moderate districts pledged before the election to NOT support Pelosi for speaker… which probably helped many of those in close races win. Of course, they will vote for Pelosi anyway, since they will likely have no other choice, but if they do, effective 2020 campaign ads against them can probably be written in January 2019. Pelosi could help the Dems by stepping down…. but she won't.

  107. SteveF (Comment #172066): "But the other issue is that about 30 Dems (as best I can tell) who won in more moderate districts pledged before the election to NOT support Pelosi for speaker"

    That likely won't be enough to keep Pelosi out of the Speaker's chair. The real question is whether the moderates will vote the way Pelosi tells them to or be willing to support sensible compromises. The former will likely lead to complete gridlock with nothing at all getting done. Maybe even government shutdowns. The latter could end up being productive.

    Tension between the parties is good. Actual gridlock, with no give-and-take, is bad.

  108. Are there really 30 Dems who pledged not to support Pelosi, or did they merely say they wanted new leadership?

  109. Trump trolling "In all fairness, Nancy Pelosi deserves to be chosen Speaker of the House by the Democrats. If they give her a hard time, perhaps we will add some Republican votes. She has earned this great honor!"

  110. MikeN,
    From NBC News, August 10:
    "Here's the list of the 58 Democratic candidates and incumbents who won't support minority leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., for Speaker if the party takes the House in the November elections."
    .
    I didn't read the whole thing, but you get the idea. Those Dems recognize that Pelosi is toxic outside deep blue districts. Any group of those representatives large enough to take Pelosi's vote count below 218 (about 18?) will be in a position to force her out if they are willing to withhold their votes. But I expect enough will will buckle and vote for her to keep her as speaker; they will however extract plenty of chits from Pelosi leading up to the vote. Like I said, I can see the campaign ads being written right now.

  111. I also prefer a split government, just with a Republican President.
    .
    After the #Resistance I don't think there is any chance whatsoever that the House will be anything but #Obstructionist and hostile as possible to all things Republican. I'm not mad about it, that's what parties do, obstruct their opponents favored policies that they disagree with. In a sane world there could be horse trading for mutual benefit. That's what is missing now. The left media is running stories on what the House's "legislative agenda" should be as if the Senate and Trump didn't exist.
    .
    I'm glad we didn't need cry-ins and PTSD coloring books this election. Maybe some Republican students can request emotional support for their epic distress and see what happens. They might get dragged onto the quad and beaten, don't tell me it can't happen because their legitimate fear is all that matters.

  112. Mike M,
    "The real question is whether the moderates will vote the way Pelosi tells them to or be willing to support sensible compromises."
    .
    Yes, it is a good question. I am betting they do exactly what they are told to do.
    .
    Pelosi will make sure that crazies are in charge of the committees most able to torment Trump and his administration with endless 'investigations' and demands for testimony. Count on the crazies demanding copies of all Trump's tax returns from the IRS. The IRS will refuse, and the SC would find for Trump if it ever went to the courts, but it won't. The Dems will likely have a committee then initiate impeachment hearings, which will never lead to a vote on the floor (Pelosi is just evil, not stupid… it is sort of why she is toxic outside deep blue districts). But it will be a complete fiasco, and will be used to excuse not making tough policy choices, so that they can claim "Trump is the problem" in an effort to minimize the chance Trump will be re-elected. You might remember how many conservatives in Congress wanted only to keep Obama from getting re-elected in 2012. With the Dems and Trump, it's that level of animosity times 10; nothing else matters to them.

  114. SteveF, probably right they will fold. But of the 58, only 21 were elected, and some of those statements are weak.

    I'd count 11 as strong no. I think Conor Lamb has said no to Pelosi more strongly, and Golden may win in Maine.

    That gives 13 out of maybe 230 denying a majority if everyone held. Is plurality enough to get a Speaker?

  115. SteveF (Comment #172070): "Any group of those representatives large enough to take Pelosi's vote count below 218 (about 18?) will be in a position to force her out if they are willing to withhold their votes."

    How would that work? They aren't going to vote for the Republican candidate, so they would have to vote for someone who was not nominated by either party. I suppose they could find someone the Republicans would support. But I suspect the Republicans would just as soon have Pelosi since she makes such a nice target. The other possibility would be to gridlock the Speaker vote for long enough to force Pelosi to withdraw.

  116. Boston elected a Speaker with Republican support over the choice of the Democratic Caucus about 15 years ago.

  118. HaroldW,
    I read that. It's pretty funny.

    Of course one of the big problems for any country with retirement benefits that depend on age is that lots of people would file to increase their age and collect pensions. Imagine if one could increase their age to 70 and start collecting my maximum social security!! There would also be tax breaks available to use and so on.

  119. HaroldW (Comment #172077): "You can change your name. You can change your gender. Why not your age? Nowhere are you so discriminated against as with your age."

    The logic is impeccable. As was Rachel Dolezal's. And Fauxcahontas.

  120. I don't like Pelosi, but she is a fighter and knows how to win these things. She will be speaker. My guess is she will retire before next election as she really wanted to go out on top like all politicians. She may give secret assurances she will step down in order to win this one.

  121. Mike M,
    Once a fraud, always a fraud. May 25, 2018, USA Today: "Rachel Dolezal, former NAACP leader who posed as a black woman, accused of welfare fraud"
    .
    She deposited almost $84,000 in her checking account over a two year period but never reported any of it to the local welfare authority, while reporting income of only $500 per month to qualify for food stamps. She also published a book during the same period, titled "In Full Color: Finding My Place in a Black and White World". This fraud will likely end in jail time.
    .
    Unfortunately, Fauxcahontas got away with her fraud.

  122. Tom Scharf,
    "She may give secret assurances she will step down in order to win this one."
    .
    I hope you are right, but I doubt it. Besides, she is a career politician: any such assurances would be worthless.

  123. Antifa is at it again:

    https://thehill.com/homenews/media/415662-mob-converges-on-home-of-foxs-tucker-carlson-you-are-not-safe

    When is the MSM going to wake up to how dangerous these thugs are?

    On the tribal groupthink thing, apparently it applies to lifestyle choices as well as politics. If you're a straight white man, you can't like ballet and will be ridiculed for wearing a t-shirt with a ballet company logo on it (WSJ opinion piece, I can find a link if anyone's interested). And in the WSJ letters to the editor yesterday there was a reply from a gay man who was ridiculed for being a sports fan.

  124. Let's hope those bewailing likely investigations into a corrupt administration with a venal leader are right. Nunes losing control over the HPSCI may turn out to be the best thing to have occurred due to this election.

  126. DeWitt,
    "When is the MSM going to wake up to how dangerous these thugs are?"
    .
    You are drawing a distinction between the MSM and the thugs which is imaginary. The left never yields and never compromises; the rule of law is something to be bypassed or subverted (like Obama did); they are all thugs.

  127. RB,
    "Let's hope those bewailing likely investigations into a corrupt administration with a venal leader are right."
    .
    It is all 'trumped up' nonsense. I don't doubt for a second that the investigations will be pretty much continuous, but they will be investigating nothing of substance.

  128. It might be a bit hopeful to imagine that the previous two years of hyperventilating rage of the resistance is going to be seen as a dispassionate investigative body for justice in a political committee just because the House changed hands. We are sane now! It's going to be ignored, Mueller will release his report, the House will be forced to vote on impeachment by the activist left, it will all be seen for what it is, political vengeance by those who feel they are entitled to power by their very wonderfulness.
    .
    That it might backfire politically will never cross their minds because the morally ascendant are fighting against Hitler and the brown shirts who want to kill democracy after all. Being pure is difficult work and sometimes a little impurity is necessary to accomplish the things purity demands, which is the righteous in power.

  129. lucia (#172078)
    You're right. I hadn't thought about increasing one's age to take advantage of retirement benefits. Not to mention senior discounts! Avoiding the early-withdrawal penalty for IRAs. And being able to compete in the less-challenging over-90 age group for running or other sports.

    Referring back to the earlier discussion of an under-age Senator-elect, changing historical facts such as his birth date would have come in handy there.

  130. It seems to me a bit surprising that Kennedy would not have accompanied his fit with the caveats that Nic Lewis has noted. Probably not a good idea to do science by tweeting – at least in this context.

    Perhaps we should just take a scientist's tweets with the same seriousness we take POTUS tweets.

  131. Both the Senate and House Democrats have been kept in lock step for critical votes by their leaders over the past several years. From a pure political standpoint I do not see why the Democrats would make a change at this point. The only negatives might be that the far left would want more influence – even though the party is pretty much far left currently – and Pelosi showing her mental age at times – but nothing that would require the sympathetic MSM to publicize.

  132. HaroldW,
    If the Dutch guy filing the suit wins, I'm pretty sure he's going to be very disappointed that the women he's hoping to attract don't suddenly flock to him when when his age is posted as a younger number!

    (I"m not sure why he can't buy a new house at 69. Perhaps the Netherlands has odd laws.)

  135. lucia (Comment #172093)

    I totally agree that tweeting does not allow the detail required to analyze the fitting problem. It can thus be misleading no matter how harmlessly it was tweeted.

    It would be informative for Kennedy to comment at Climate etc on one of the two threads that Nic Lewis has posted and where the second goes into some detailed analysis.

    Just from my memory I believe it was John Kennedy who initiated the inclusion of measurement and coverage errors with standard trends errors for temperature series and that Karl used in his 2015 paper. As I recall Kennedy has published a seminal paper on uncertainties in temperature series.

    I believe the author of the paper that Nic is analyzing here has acknowledged problems with the uncertainties published in her paper, has thanked him for his efforts and is in the process of making corrections.

  136. SteveF,
    I asked. He didn't say. Which is fair enough.

    Kenneth Fritsch,
    Yes. The authors have acknowledged some sort of error related to their uncertainties. I saw a tweet on that too. 🙂

    I don't know the precise nature of the error they think they have in their uncertainties or the effect. Presumably, people have been talking to each other in the background.

    I would not be surprised if there are people who are inclined to be kind to the author and so would prefer not to be stupendously public. It's the way of the world. But I do think the authors have realized there is an "ooooppppsss". We'll see if they say more in the fullness of time.

  137. Lucia,
    Yes, the authors seem to have accepted the paper has a gross understatement of uncertainty. If the uncertainty is 3x larger (as some have suggested) then the paper’s 95% confidence range overlaps all earlier estimates, and then some. That doesn’t address the doubts about how the slope is calculated (and so the central estimate). I really don’t see how that central estimate can be right, but time will tell. With the much broader uncertainty, the central estimate is less important, since there is no real conflict with independent measurements of things like mass increase in the ocean.

  138. "I would not be surprised if there are people who are inclined to be kind to the author and so would prefer not to be stupendously public."

    That was my thought on why Kennedy has been hesitant to get more involved in the discussion. If he is as nice a guy as you say he is I would guess he would do the same if the authors were in any other camp.

  139. SteveF,
    Agreed. I may eventually actually read the dang thing. But IF as some suggest uncertainty is zero at 1991, I will not believe tje s;p[e. That might be an uncertainty in *something*, but if it's zero in 1991, it's *not the right uncertainty* to use for estimating weights for a slope. If they claim it is, they are either (a) deluded or (b) lying. (I'm happy to go with deluded.)

  140. Lucia,
    “I'm happy to go with deluded.”
    .
    Sure, just like with Steig et al and ‘dramatic warming over all of Antarctica’, who made a silly error, liked the result, and went with it in the paper. The fact that their results conflicted with on-the-ground measured temperature trends was simply ignored, because the results of their analysis were just as ‘alarming’ as they had expected/hoped. Not only was Steig et al simply wrong, more recent work shows that there should in THEORY be little or no warming in Antartica at high elevations (that is, over most all of East Antarctica)… just as Steig et al would have found if they had done their calculations correctly, and just as O’Donnell et al did find when they refuted Steig et al.
    .
    The ocean heat paper is deja vu all over again…. dramatic result in a leading journal (Nature) that is likely wrong, followed by blaring press releases and the usual suspects (including the authors!) quoted in the MSM about the dire need for immediate restrictions on the use of fossil fuels. One grows tired of the confirmation bias, but more, of the obscene politicization of ‘dramatic’ results which turn out to be at best very dubious, and more likely, flat wrong. Maybe the authors will issue a correction which walks back the drama, or maybe someone like Nic will have to publish a refutation, but in either case, there won’t be any press releases, and the public will NEVER hear the truth, only the original alarm. It is why I call it ‘climate science’, rather than climate science, because it clearly isn’t science.
    .
    I don’t know what “tje s;p[e” is.

  141. SteveF,
    I'm happy to go with deluded …. until the specific evidence suggests otherwise. 🙂 We'll see what these authors ultimately say.

  142. One thing that puzzles me about the paper is the press take that it impacts the difficulty of staying under the arbitrary warming-since-not-really-preindustrial target. Even if it were true that there was additional heat hiding out in the ocean, undetected by Argo, the arbitrary target is about atmospheric warming and I don't see an obvious mechanism for warming in the deep ocean (and having a miniscule effect, given its vast capacity for warming) to suddenly leap out and make the atmosphere slightly warmer. What am I missing?

  143. > to suddenly leap out and make the atmosphere slightly warmer. What am I missing?

    The ocean can only warm so much. So the argument would be it will warm up and then stop being a sink for heat. So the rate of warming of the upper atmosphere would then increase compared to the current rate of warming.

    Whether this is true or not could be debated.

  145. SteveF (#172100):
    "I don’t know what “tje s;p[e” is." [found in #172099]

    It's what you get when you try to type "the slope" but your right hand is one key to the right of its normal "home" position.

  146. HaroldW (Comment #172105)

    Sherlock Harold strikes again. Now can you tell us what Lucia was wearing when she typed that post?

  147. DaleS (#172102):
    "I don't see an obvious mechanism for warming in the deep ocean … to suddenly leap out and make the atmosphere slightly warmer. What am I missing?"

    Nic Lewis wrote, "TCR and ECS were estimated from the ratio of the change ΔT in global mean surface temperature (GMST) between a base and a final period, to the corresponding change ΔF in radiative forcing respectively before and after deducting the change ΔQ in planetary heat uptake rate. These ratios were then scaled by the forcing from a doubling of CO2 concentration, F2xCO2, taking the AR5 value of 3.71 Wm−2, to give the TCR and ECS estimates."

    Therefore, a larger ΔQ implies a higher estimate of ECS, and one would expect more *long-term* warming from greenhouse gases. It does not affect the estimate of TCR, which is relevant to *short-term* warming.

  148. I wonder if I could learn to read that at a glance.

    tjos os a test/ Tjos os pm;u a test/

    No, I better not try. My luck I'd probably end up forgetting how to parse plain English.

  150. Dale S (Comment #172102)

    I believe Nic Lewis covered this point in his first thread on the paper where the authors make the same claim and that the media are merely parroting. The goal for GMST warming in the time period prescribed would be best predicted using TCR and that calculation does not include the change in the ocean heat content (OHC) whereas ECS would. I guess we could quibble about how fast that heat into the ocean would reappear at the surface.

    OHC is an interesting point here and particularly in light of the estimates that Lewis has made in a recent publication for TCR and ECS from observed values and critically the ratio and absolute differences of these two estimates. From memory the Lewis estimates are 1.25 and 1.65, respectively, for TCR and ECS while the mean values from a large ensemble of CMIP5 models is something like 1.8 and 3.2. The differences between the observed and modeled ratio of TCR to ECS values in my mind have to be the result mainly of differences in OHC used.

    I am currently eyeballing a plot of the CMIP5 historical OHC that would be in line with authors claim (at least what they think they have derived from the oxygen potential) as being around 8.3 W/m2 for 1991-2016 and 60 percent higher than the CMIP5 estimates – I think.

    A (too) prolific poster at Climate Etc, Robert Ellison wants to go with the authors mean trend because he claims it is in agreement with 2 other estimates. I am not that well read on the topic of OHC but is that true and if so why would the claim of 60 % higher be such a big issue then?

    Nic Lewis correctly replied to Ellison that he is and should only look at the data that the authors used. That reply, however, did not answer my above question.

    As an aside I do like the detailed analysis that Nic is doing in his second thread on the subject.

  151. Cross posted with HaroldW on the ECS and TCR issue, but still interested in any poster here providing background on OHC estimates.

  152. Kenneth, HarroldW,
    The paper is at bottom a defense of the accuracy of the GCMs against empirical estimates of relatively low transient and equilibrium sensitivity (like Nic Lewis has published). The brouhaha about 2C above pre-industrial and very long term effects (eg claims of near complete melting of Greenland) depend at least in part on the relatively high sensitivity estimates of CGMs. If you claim the oceans are gaining more heat than Argo based measurements indicate, then it is easy to show that biases the empirical estimates of equilibrium sensitivity low. It should have no influence on empirically estimated transient sensitivity, which is far more critical for public policy.
    .
    WRT 60% higher heat uptake (higher than previous estimates) being a big issue: Previous ARGO based estimates, combined with estimates of mass increase of the ocean via Grace satellites, appear relatively consistent with measured (by satellite) increases in sea level. Boost the ocean heat uptake by 60% and the Grace data has to be far from correct…. and that seems to me very unlikely. The most troubling part of the paper is the naive acceptance of a result which is broadly inconsistent with MEASURED (rather than modeled) data of ocean heat uptake and ocean mass increase. That inconsistency should have led the authors and reviewers to look a lot more carefully at the plausibility of the result. Like I said, it is a 'climate science' paper, not a science paper.

  154. The media exposure to these type of papers is more or less an ambush. The authors and usual suspects say what they want before anybody can really refute their statements. The media (… activist environmental journalists …) get their desired message out and move on. If it later requires something more nuanced or walked back then that isn't covered at all, or is buried. It's an endless cycle of "scientists say the world will end if benevolent environmentalists aren't given a blank check to run the world".
    .
    Anybody who has followed environmentalism over the past decades recognizes this pattern and ignores most everything coming out of environmental journalism. As I have stated before I find climate science propaganda to be mostly a media corruption issue. It goes beyond the normal "if it bleeds it leads" media preference. Activist scientists know they can exploit this corruption, and they do. Exactly what the hard working honest climate scientists can do about this is unclear. Torpedoing their own profession just isn't productive, ask RPJ. One of the few journalists I found who wasn't completely corrupt was Andrew Revkin, who has since left the NYT. He cared about fixing the problem, not allocating blame and demonizing others.
    .
    When the media becomes corrupt and self serving, there isn't a fifth estate around to police them.

  155. Tom Scharf,

    I think the problem with the media is a combination of groupthink and mental laziness. Few people really want to pay the cost of being different from those around them. It also takes time and energy to actually think about something. Most people would rather not.

  156. Florida … is being Florida again. They are finding thousands of new votes in Broward County (heavily leans D). This is the same county that was sued after the last election because they wouldn't produce ballots for inspection and the elections supervisor illegally approved that the ballots be * destroyed *. Supposedly they were to be supervised by adults this election. The official story is that they are really slow counting mail in ballots after an influx of last minute mail ins. They won't even say how many uncounted ballots they have at the moment. The have to submit results by tomorrow. The Senate race will now go to a manual recount, which will become a partisan war.
    https://www.local10.com/news/florida/broward/broward-county-elections-supervisor-illegally-destroyed-ballots-judge-rules

  157. SteveF (Comment #172113)

    Yes, you are, of course, correct. Also OHC would normally be reported in joules and the 0.83 figure is converting that heat globally to watts/m2.

    HaroldW is usually my corrector. He must be busy eleswhere.

  158. SteveF (Comment #172112)
    November 9th, 2018 at 9:36 am

    Thanks for your inputs, but from where is Ellison getting his data?

    I think that the case for a number of climate scientists is that when the "correct answer" (preconceived) pops out of their methods and investigations they stop looking and thinking about how the method might be faulty. Probably the same with some reviewers. The dearth of published sensitivity testing bears out this hurry to publish.

  159. Tom,
    I hear they have some "wet ballots". We had some of those in an Illinois race way back when. I think I was in high school or college. Ballots kept being found … in basements… etc.

  160. Kenneth Fritsch (Comment #172118): "I think that the case for a number of climate scientists is that when the 'correct answer' (preconceived) pops out of their methods and investigations they stop looking and thinking about how the method might be faulty. Probably the same with some reviewers."

    I think that is pretty common in most, if not all, areas of science. That difference is that climate science is one of the fields where the preconceived answer gets headlines.

  161. lucia (Comment #172119): "I hear they have some "wet ballots". We had some of those in an Illinois race way back when. I think I was in high school or college. Ballots kept being found … in basements… etc."

    Where I grew up, it was basically assumed that (absentee ballots) = (vote fraud). Cook County had nothing on Lackawanna County when it came to dead people voting, precincts reporting more than 100% turnout, and such.

    In New Mexico's 2nd district, the Republican won by a couple percentage points. Then the absentee ballots were counted and went 75-80% to the Democrat, reversing the result. Just sayin'.

  162. Tom Scharf,
    "Exactly what the hard working honest climate scientists can do about this is unclear."
    .
    Follow Peilke Jr's lead and find another field to work in. From the very beginning, 'climate science' has been corrupted by strong and sincerely held political views (green/progressive). It has always been a field dominated by people who demand the entire world change its economy (and people's way of life!), and it always will be. Anyone who wants to participate, but does not hold similar political views, will be constantly abused, like Pielke Jr. A few smart and financially independent people, who also have a very tough hide, like Nic Lewis, can jump in and disagree with the consensus, but that will never be common.
    .
    Political problems have political solutions… so vote for people who will mostly ignore the alarmed.

  163. Kenneth,
    "..from where is Ellison getting his data?"
    .
    Donno. I rarely read what he writes. I think he is claiming that ARGO and CERES independently make a measurement of global imbalance, but I believe the CERES data is adjusted to match ARGO, so it is not independent at all.

  164. I have a feeling there has been a migration from Cook County to south FL lately.
    .
    Nelson filed a lawsuit demanding that signatures that don't match be counted anyway, ha ha. Politics is dirty business.

  165. Tom Scharf,
    "Nelson filed a lawsuit demanding that signatures that don't match be counted anyway"
    .
    Of course! But probably only in Broward, Miami Dade, and Palm Beach counties. 😉 In my county (Martin), the poll worker visually verifies your signature against what is on file plus the signature on your photo-ID BEFORE you are ever handed a ballot. There is zero doubt about the validity of each ballot.
    .
    Mailed in early voting ballots? Much more doubt.

  166. MikeM,
    I think Chicago and DuPage county used to view for who could find the most late ballots. . .

    Tom
    >I have a feeling there has been a migration from Cook County to south FL lately.

    Likely. The thing is, now that Pritzker has replaced Rauner, it's not unlikely the rest of the state is going to be taxed to cover up Chicago's profligacy. I don't want to pay for that.

    Turns out he said "Chattanooga" for some reason. But his cousin actually lives in northern Alabama. (They have two homes, the other one is in Florida). Additional cousins live in Florida, but we don't want to move there because we don't want to be on a coast and non-coastal Florida isn't all that splendid.

    So… looks like our plan is in January or February, Jim will visit his cousin in Alabama in an area reputed to be beautiful. (I've seen pictures.) Then he'll look around, and in the summer, we'll both go looking. We'll schedule about a month in the area to get a flavor of "living there". (So, get an apartment. Take some local dance lessons. Check out what residents– not just visitors– do. )

    It looks like there are nice places near Huntsville, and that's probably enough "city" for me. (I don't need a huge city. But I don't actually want to be in a complete farm town that is no where near anything at all. )

    By summer 2020, if we like the area, we'll have moved there. (If we don't like the area, we'll look other places.)

  167. Lucia,
    "we don't want to move there because we don't want to be on a coast"
    .
    Not so common. Do you not like the ocean? Another option is Arizona, though it is so hot near Phoenix in the summer that you would need to escape…. escape is close by though: up the mountains a hundred odd miles toward Flagstaff. Unfortunately, it tends to be pricey real estate near Flagstaff, but beautiful 5+ months a year.

  168. Lucia,

    Hooray! I hope you find North Alabama to your liking. I complain about this and that with respect to Huntsville because I more or less complain about everything, but I'd be hard pressed to name a place I'd rather live.

  169. You have Gainesville (UF), Ocala (Horse Country), and Orlando (Tourist Central) in FL off the coasts and that is about it. Anywhere else and it is redneck rural and pretty poor. We looked around in Ocala a bit but nothing too striking.
    .
    North Georgia zip code 30143 was also somewhere we looked at. It has rolling hills, not mountains and looked nice. Have not visited yet.
    .
    We visited and actively looked in Blue Ridge, GA but decided it was too touristy and too rugged mountainy. Some nice new "modern mountain" homes there.
    .
    There is a show on HGTV – Mountain Life – that covers lots of different areas including Blue Ridge, Hendersonville (like that area), TN and NC among others.
    https://www.hgtv.com/shows/mountain-life/episodes

  171. Tom:
    Yep. Florida is out. I like warm, but Florida can be too warm for too long. Even if I liked horses, there are a lot of horsey places in the US. So I still wouldn't want FL.

    I also just don't want to deal with hurricanes too much. Southern Alabama, Lousianna, Miss are all out for that reason.

    There's a lot of "middle of nowhere" in the US. Often the most beautiful places are in the middle of nowhere. So we'd like some place where there is something other than a farm.

    Mark,
    When I visit, I need to check out this place:

    https://www.southernelegance.info/

    Hopefully they take old not very good dancers as students. (I assume they need to. Dance studios really can't survive without paying customers and old, not very good dancers tend to be the $$$$ paying group for that hobby.)

  172. I cannot possibly let this one go … ummmm … unwasted.
    Why Did Bill Gates Give A Talk With A Jar Of Human Poop By His Side?
    https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2018/11/09/666150842/why-did-bill-gates-give-a-talk-with-a-jar-of-human-poop-by-his-side
    .
    "His highest praise, however, was for Gates Foundation staff. "I want to thank the people at the foundation who prepared the jar of poop for Bill," he said laughing. "That is truly a new level of dedication.""

  173. And now for something completely different: Representatives of the global scientific community will vote on Nov. 16 whether to redefine some physical constants in terms of fundamental constants rather than physical objects. This will involve specifying exact values for things like Planck's constant. Planck's constant, h, will then define mass rather than the standard kilogram mass in Paris. The Boltzmann constant will define the Kelvin. The mole and the ampere will also be redefined.

    https://www.nist.gov/video/scientists-vote-metric-makeover-english-full

  174. Lucia, skimming your moving options, I have one suggestion. My former boss was from Raleigh No. Carolina. From his discussions seems like a good place, with much variety in terms of housing accommodations.

    ….
    I happened to visit on Jan. 15 one year for business, and it was gorgeous. About 47 degrees, sunny and no wind. Much nicer than Columbus, OH weather at that time. Because of the different topography from the Atlantic to the mountains, you have your choice of micro-climates. If I was you, I would take a look at Raleigh and other cities in No. Carolina. From what I understand, it typically snows something like 2-5 days per year. (Rough guess from memory)

    JD

  175. lucia,

    At least one person I know who worked in NC moved to TN near Nashville for tax reasons when he retired. He had been living in western NC near Asheville. OTOH, I know a lot of people who live in NC and seem quite happy.

  176. DeWitt/JD,
    Taxes are an issue when picking a place for retirement. So is beauty. But in this case, also where we have a few relatives. Jim's relatives are clustered all over the south east. (Mine are either near here or flung around willi-nilly. There is no cluster.)

    There is a candidate in SC, but that's definitely in the path of hurricanes. There was an ill relative in nothern virginia..the area was very beautiful. . But sadly, he died. There are some further south in Virginia…. but coastal. So hurricane. (Not as big a risk as Florida, but still….)

    Being near Jim's Alabama relative puts is in just a nice area for visiting all the other ones, while in a low tax area, beautiful, nice weather and much less horrible winters than Chicago.

  177. lucia,
    I'm pleased as can be that you're looking at Huntsville. I have this perverse impulse to try to list out all the cons though. Maybe in the back of my mind I irrationally think you'd blame me if you don't like it here, which is pretty silly.
    Your plan is the way to go of course. Come check the place out sometime and see what you think. The only thing that comes to mind right this minute that wouldn't be obvious from a visit is – the window of *really nice* weather between too cold and too warm can be brief (4-6 weeks) some years. Cold is relative; I'm sure where you are now gets colder and more snowy.

  180. So if you are Broward County and are under intense scrutiny for being less than transparent, incompetent, and possibly corrupt in a contested election, then my advice is this is the very last thing you want to do:
    http://www.tampabay.com/florida-politics/buzz/2018/11/10/uh-oh-broward-mixed-rejected-ballots-with-valid-ones/
    .
    Yesterday they had a group of 205 votes to be inspected which were apparently removed from the envelopes, after which 20 of them were found invalid (missing signature, etc.). They have no idea which 20 they were, and now there is no possible way to find out. The only choice is to count 20 invalid votes, or don't count 185 possibly valid votes.

  181. mark bofill,
    I have used that site many times in evaluating possible places to live (or even visit). What I tend to look at most is the summer/winter differential… in the case of Huntsville, about 40F. Ideally for me that would be under 20F, and centered around 70F…. but there are not many places like that, so I split time between Florida and Cape Cod, which narrows the range to well below 20F and daily temps are centered not too far from 70F for most of the year. Of course, I have endured a few Hurricanes over the past 24 years, but that’s a price I’m willing to pay for mostly good weather.
    .
    If you want pretty much ideal, check Aibonito, PR. But not much there besides good climate.

  182. Steve,
    I like some degree of seasonal variation (within reason) but yes. I think it's nice to have weather centered around 60-70F for lengthy periods of time as well.
    One annoying feature of Huntsville is sometimes the *daily* range of temperatures seem a little wide to me. There are spring and fall mornings that are uncomfortably cold and by afternoon are quite warm. Maybe I'm picking nits.
    And absolutely yes – there are places with wonderful climates that have other problems that would make me want to never live in those places. Suburbs of San Francisco come to mind, although it's been a long time since I've visited there.

  183. mark bofill (Comment #172142): "I like some degree of seasonal variation (within reason) but yes. I think it's nice to have weather centered around 60-70F for lengthy periods of time as well.
    One annoying feature of Huntsville is sometimes the *daily* range of temperatures seem a little wide to me."

    I like seasons. When I lived in Southern California, I found the weather boring.

    For me, humidity is the big issue in summer. But the mid-90's and above are uncomfortable even with low humidity. We get that here in New Mexico in June, but the weather is mostly fine for me the rest of the year in spite of wide temperature ranges. Sometimes the daily range can be a bit inconvenient.

  184. mark,
    The thing about elevated locations in the southern US is Chicago rivals their top temperatures. We always get some 90-100 F days, and they are humid. We probably get fewer +90F days, but we do get them. Our winters are definitely much, much colder.

    Mind you, Florida gets many, many more +90F days, as does Texas. So there are places where summer is long and hot. Since I don't want the coast, lots of these places are of my list anyway.

  185. It might be that I make too big a deal about the religious slant of the place as well. It's not like unbelievers are shunned. It's more along the lines of being not all that unusual for someone to ask where you go to church. This is probably a bigger deal for children and less an issue for adults; my daughter had a rough time of being an outspoken atheist here in middle / high school.
    *shrug* I don't think they mean any harm [the religious adults]. Just being neighborly, maybe.

  186. If anyone wants to see what is wrong with ‘climate science’, look at what the Princeton website does with Raspleny et al: https://environment.princeton.edu/directory/laure-resplandy
    .
    They underline the blaring advocacy claims and headlines, nothing else. I’m guessing they won’t be withdrawing all that when ir is acknowleged the damned paper is just wrong. It is a sick field.

  187. mark,
    I grew up with kids asking where you go to church. It's not a big deal for me. OTOH, when I was a kid, my answer was "St. Joes". It might have been different if it had been "we don't".

  188. Reopening an old discussion: I have been looking into the history of citizenship laws in the U.S., in order to better understand what was meant by the citizenship clause of the 14th Amendment. Here is a brief summary of what I found.

    The 1st sentence of the 14th Amendment reads:
    "All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside."

    There are two ways to interpret "and subject to …". One is that it is a condition that must apply at the time of birth or naturalization. The other is that it is a condition in addition to birth or naturalization. I am convinced that the second reading is the original meaning. However, thanks to the Warren court, the first reading is currently the law of the land.

    The first reading implies that citizenship under the 14th Amendment is permanent. No allowance is made for ending such citizenship by either the government or the citizen. In other words, the Amendment appears to adopt the doctrine of perpetual allegiance, which was still quite common in 1868.

    But we know that was not so. The U.S. always rejected that doctrine. The dispute with the U.K. over perpetual allegiance was one of the causes of the War of 1812. On the day before the adoption of the 14th Amendment was proclaimed, President Johnson signed into law the Expatriation Act explicitly affirming the right to renounce citizenship. That right is still recognized by both the State Department and the Supreme Court.

    Current law is that individuals can renounce their citizenship, but that it can not be taken from them. That follows from a misbegotten decision of the Warren court (Afroyim v. Rusk, 1967) that overturned a century of precedent. For instance, in 1868, the same year the Amendment was adopted, the Senate ratified the first of the Bancroft treaties. In those treaties the signatories agreed that when their citizens were naturalized in the other country, they would cease to be citizens of their original country. They also set conditions under which a naturalized person's citizenship would revert to that of their original country. Dual citizenship was not allowed.

    By the 20th century, the international situation was that perpetual allegiance was largely gone and dual citizenship hardly existed. That came about in large part due to the efforts of the U.S. A number of Supreme Court decisions upheld the power of the U.S. government to revoke citizenship while sometimes placing limits on that power, such as that it must be the result of a voluntary act and can not be simply as punishment for a crime. Those include: MacKenzie v. Hare (1915), Nishikawa v. Dulles, (1958), Perez v. Brownell (1958), Trop v. Dulles (1958), and Kennedy v. Mendoza-Martinez (1963).

    I think that when the 14th Amendment is read in the context of the above, it is clear that the original meaning is that there are two conditions on its guarantee of citizenship. One is that the person be born or naturalized in the United States. The other is that the person be subject to the jurisdiction of the United States. However, unless the Supreme Court overrules Afroyim v. Rusk, the Amendment can not be read that way in law.

  189. MikeM
    > In other words, the Amendment appears to adopt the doctrine of perpetual allegiance, which was still quite common in 1868.

    https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/28/242/
    I''m not sure where you get the idea that early precedents meant people could lose citizenship. It seems to me early precedent said people kept their citizenship. In Shanks v. Dupont 1830, SCOTUS held an expatriate woman retained citizenship when she lived overseas.

    SCOTUS wrote (among other things)
    >The general doctrine is that no person can, by any act of their own, without the consent of the government, put off their allegiance and become aliens.

    That pretty much shows this claim of yours is wrong: "The U.S. always rejected that doctrine".

  190. lucia (Comment #172150): "That pretty much shows this claim of yours is wrong: "The U.S. always rejected that doctrine".

    Yep. I was careless. In my detailed notes I wrote "the U.S generally rejected the doctrine of perpetual allegiance". I knew that there were court decisions that applied the English common law principle of perpetual allegiance in spite of what seems to have been the general policy of the government. I did not know there was a Supreme Court decision to that effect. In the 1860's the U.S. complained about the British government's treatment of some naturalized Americans, saying that when they became U.S. citizens, they ceased to be British citizens. The Brits threw a number of U.S. court decisions back in our faces; Shanks v Dupont was probably one of them. Embarrassment over that is what lead to the Expatriation Act.

  191. MikeM
    >I did not know there was a Supreme Court decision to that effect.
    Yep. Pretty darn early one too.

    > In the 1860's the U.S. complained about the British government's treatment of some naturalized Americans, saying that when they became U.S. citizens, they ceased to be British citizens.

    Yes. Americans can renounce their citizenship. We think people can renounce british citizenship. That's different from having it taken away. However, in the case I cited, someone vying for an inheritance suggested the plaintiff LOST citizenship by merely moving away and living outside the US jurisdiction. The court says nope. Merely living outside the US doesn't cause one to lose jurisdiction. Nor does marrying a UK citizen.

    This is pretty well on point to your claim that if one doesn't currently live under the legal jurisdiction of the US, they could lose citizenship. Very early on SCOTUS said nope to that.

    >The Brits threw a number of U.S. court decisions back in our faces; Shanks v Dupont was probably one of them.

    Nope. It didn't throw US court decisions back in our faces. She didn't renounce citizenship. She failed to lose it in the way you claim one could lose it. And the courts said she can't lose it that way.

    There is no contradiction with the later cases.

  192. lucia,

    SCOTUS has repeatedly ruled that people can lose their citizenship without expressly renouncing it. The laws setting the conditions for that have varied over time.

  193. MikeM,
    They've never ruled that for merely moving out of the country. That would be necessary for your claim about the meaning of jurisdiction.

    The other reasons aren't relevant to your claim about the meaning of jurisdiction. If you want to discuss a different subject unrelated to the 14th amendment, you may. But let's not pretend that being able to lose it for treason has anything to do with the interpretation of "jurisdiction" nor when one must be in it. Or you can pretend so. I'm not going to.

  194. A couple of interesting S. Ct. cases on renouncing citizenship that I haven't read closely are: Afroyim v. Rusk, 387 U.S. 253 (1967) and Vance v. Terrazas, 444 U.S. 252 (1980).

    JD

  195. Not sure if this is off point, but I recall seeing a case where a US citizen is automatically stripped of their US citizenship when they voluntarily take up arms for a foreign country. The case I recall is a person joining the Australian army (I believe).

    Something about the oath they take, which could put them into opposition to the USA.

  196. lucia (Comment #172154): "They've never ruled that for merely moving out of the country."

    True, I think. But they have ruled that a woman born here can lose her citizenship for marrying a non-citizen. MacKenzie v. Hare (1915)
    .
    lucia: "That would be necessary for your claim about the meaning of jurisdiction."

    But in my rethink (Comment #172148) I made no claim about the meaning of jurisdiction. But I did imply that it is up to Congress to define it, as they have done on a number of occasions.

    ————–
    RickA (Comment #172157): "Not sure if this is off point, but I recall seeing a case where a US citizen is automatically stripped of their US citizenship when they voluntarily take up arms for a foreign country."

    That used to be definitely so. I don't think SCOTUS has heard such a case since the Afroyim v. Rusk (1967) ruling. I think that Appeal Courts have, and have upheld the loss of citizenship. But since 1990, State Department policy has been that they would ask such a person if they meant to give up citizenship and if the person answers "no" they get to keep their citizenship.
    .
    Then there is Hamdi: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yaser_Esam_Hamdi#Early_years

    Born in the U.S. to Saudi parents. Taken to Saudi Arabia where he grew up, never to set foot in the U.S. again of his own volition. Joined the Taliban and fought against the U.S. Still a citizen until he renounced his citizenship in exchange for being released from detention.

  197. MikeM,
    Vis-a-Vis Mackenzie: The courts used to have lots of injustices towards women. That falls under the courts taking certain acts as implying revocation. Not leaving the jurisdiction. So it's still not relevant to your interpretation of jurisdiction.

    Vis-a-Vis Hamdi: Clearly, this does not support your view of the interpretation of jurisdiction. Quite the opposite.

    Not sure where you are going here. But nothing is supporting anyone every adhered to your interpretation of "in the jurisdiction". You're just showing citizenship could be revoked under some circumstances. No one has ever denied that.

  198. MikeM
    Interestingly, MacKenzie cuts against your interpretatino of "under the jurisdiction". She continued to reside in the US

    >he facts, which involve the construction and constitutionality of the Citizenship Act of March 2, 1907, and the status as to citizenship of a woman born under the jurisdiction of the United States and married to a native of a foreign state but residing in the United States, are stated in the opinion.

    So whatever they interpreted about how voluntarily marrying a foreigner might affect her citizenship, the clearly thought her citizenship was voided even though she remained in the US!

  199. lucia (Comment #172159): "So it's still not relevant to your interpretation of jurisdiction."

    I'm lost. I have no idea of what my "interpretation of jurisdiction" is or what it has to do with my claim that the correct reading of the 14th Amendment should be that it require two separate conditions to be met for the guarantee of citizenship.

  200. lucia (Comment #172159): "You're just showing citizenship could be revoked under some circumstances."

    That is all I intended to show.
    .
    lucia: "No one has ever denied that."

    Under current law there are no circumstances under which my citizenship could be revoked. It might or might not be possible to revoke your citizenship since you were neither born in the U.S. or naturalized.

  201. Mike M.
    Yes. Laws change. No one denies this.

    Granting of my citizenship does not spring from the 14th amendment. I've said so from the start.

    I'm pretty sure current interpretation of citizenship is that once one is a citizen, citizenship is citizenship. The methods of revocation must be the same for all citizens. To the extent that yours cannot be revoked, neither can mine. If yours can be revoked for treason, so can mine and vice versa. If yours can be revoked because you assume the office of prime minister or England, so can mine– and vice versa.

  202. Correction: I should have said, with the sole exception of being able to hold the office of president and vice president, citizenship, once conferred is citizenship.

  203. Just lurking, but not all citizens are the same. Naturalized citizenship can be revoked for a fairly long list.

    Not germane directly to the 14th I think, but goes to the point that Congress could change the rules for naturalized citizens as it wished.

    Any way my 2 cents worth for what its worth, which is not much.

  204. MikeM
    >I'm lost. I have no idea of what my "interpretation of jurisdiction" is or what it has to do with my claim that the correct reading of the 14th Amendment should be that it require two separate conditions to be met for the guarantee of citizenship.

    Your rather long post involves telling us what you consider the correct parsing of "subject to the jurisdiction". For example, you start a paragraph with "There are two ways to interpret "and subject to …".

    The word after "and subject to" is "jurisdiction".

  205. Ed,

    I didn't know that. So I googled, are three reasons.

    https://www.uscis.gov/policymanual/HTML/PolicyManual-Volume12-PartL-Chapter2.html

    The first is "concealment". In principle, anyone can have their citizenship revoked for that. But obviously, a newly born baby cannot conceal anything. The second is an act that "is prima facie evidence that he or she concealed or willfully misrepresented material evidence that would have prevented the person’s naturalization."

    So, in some sense, this difference is like observing that only women can get pregnant and men can't. It's not really something dictated by the constitution, but just a practical reality.

    The military one does make a difference in the rights of naturalize and natural born. I wonder if it would stand up in court — I suspect someone would need to argue it was also concealment.

    FWIW: I'm not naturalized. So my citizenship can't be revoked for any of those reasons. It can be revoked on the same basis as MikeM's can be revoked.

  206. MIkeM,

    >Under current law there are no circumstances under which my citizenship could be revoked. It might or might not be possible to revoke your citizenship since you were neither born in the U.S. or naturalized.

    Looks like under current law, you and I can lose citizenship on exactly the same bases.

    https://immigration.findlaw.com/citizenship/can-your-u-s-citizenship-be-revoked-.html

    Laws can be changed. But under current law, it looks like we both can have our citizenship revoked for refusal to testify before congress!

  207. MikeM

    To be clear, you advanced this argument:

    >There are two ways to interpret "and subject to …". One is that it is a condition that must apply at the time of birth or naturalization. The other is that it is a condition in addition to birth or naturalization. I am convinced that the second reading is the original meaning. However, thanks to the Warren court, the first reading is currently the law of the land.

    The "I am convinced that" part suggests to the reader that you are advocating one reading and not the other.

    The McKenzie case would cut against that 2nd reading being the one the courts support. The woman was (a) born here and (b) remained on US soil. So, remaining on US soil didn't do her a bit of good.

    Based on the McKenzie case, Congress could write a law that would permit a US citizen who was born here to lose their citizenship even though they never stepped a foot off US soil.

    If people believed that still, Congress could pass a law saying you, an american born here, could lose your citizenship if you married a Canadian while remaining a resident of the US and not even so much as vacationing in Canada. SCOTUS's interpretation at the time was you'd have undertaken an voluntary act of renunciation because you knew that's what would happen before you married your Canadian wife.

    Even today, SCOTUS accepts you — though born here– can renounce your citizenship. There's a formal process you can follow. (You'll need to pay taxes.) They just no longer accept quite so many acts as being things that *imply* you want to renounce your citizenship and the acts tend to be rebuttable.

    FWIW. I don't see any evidence the 2nd reading was ever the one anyone thought applied. There's no evidence anyone ever thought a citizen ceased to be a citizen if the drove to Canada and crossed the border. Birthright US citizenship wouldn't be worth much of anything if it was lost merely by virtue of leaving the country.

  208. lucia (Comment #172163): "I'm pretty sure current interpretation of citizenship is that once one is a citizen, citizenship is citizenship. The methods of revocation must be the same for all citizens."

    That may be the case in practice at present. But it was not the case 50 years ago:
    Rogers v. Bellei (1971) – "was a decision by the United States Supreme Court, which held that an individual who received an automatic congressional grant of citizenship at birth, but who was born outside the United States, may lose his citizenship for failure to fulfill any reasonable residence requirements which the United States Congress may impose as a condition subsequent to that citizenship."
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rogers_v._Bellei

    But ever since Afroyim v. Rusk (1967), I can only lose my citizenship if I actually renounce it.

    The specific requirement that was at issue in that case has been rescinded by Congress. But the conditions listed in your passport and based on
    https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/8/1481
    might technically still apply to you, but not to me unless I tell the State Department that I took the action with the intent of renouncing my citizenship. But I think they are not actually enforced for anyone.

  209. lucia (Comment #172169): "that you are advocating one reading and not the other."

    Yes. But it has nothing to do with the meaning or interpretation of "jurisdiction".
    .
    lucia: "The McKenzie case would cut against that 2nd reading being the one the courts support. The woman was (a) born here and (b) remained on US soil. So, remaining on US soil didn't do her a bit of good."

    When she married, she acquired her husband's citizenship. So as an alien, she was no longer subject to the jurisdiction of the U.S. Mind blowing, in my view. And way stronger than what I claim.
    .
    lucia: "Based on the McKenzie case, Congress could write a law that would permit a US citizen who was born here to lose their citizenship even though they never stepped a foot off US soil."

    Yes, but only under limited circumstances. It would have to be due to a voluntary act and it would have to amount to swearing allegiance to a foreign power. So if Mexico invaded the U.S. and I joined the Mexican forces in New Mexico, then when the Mexican army got driven out, leaving me behind, I could be stripped of my citizenship. But not under current law.
    .
    lucia: "If people believed that still, Congress could pass a law saying you, an american born here, could lose your citizenship if you married a Canadian while remaining a resident of the US".

    No, because marrying a Canadian would not make me a Canadian citizen. Or you, unlike 100+ years ago.
    .
    lucia: "FWIW. I don't see any evidence the 2nd reading was ever the one anyone thought applied. There's no evidence anyone ever thought a citizen ceased to be a citizen if the drove to Canada and crossed the border."

    The key principle seems to have been that one could not be a citizen of two countries. So you would lose your citizenship if you became a Canadian citizen.
    .
    Let's say an emigre from Prussia became a naturalized U.S. citizen in 1870. He would no longer be a Prussian citizen. If he moved to Canada, he would have remained a U.S. citizen no matter how long he lived there, provided that he did not become a Canadian citizen. If he became a Canadian citizen, he would cease to be a U.S. citizen. If instead, he returned to Prussia and established residence there for two years, he would then automatically regain his Prussian citizenship and lose his U.S. citizen.

  210. Mike M. (Comment #172171): "But it has nothing to do with the meaning or interpretation of "jurisdiction".

    Wish I could edit, that is terribly worded. The issue not the meaning of jurisdiction, it is when jurisdiction applies.

  211. Mike M,
    >Yes. But it has nothing to do with the meaning or interpretation of "jurisdiction".

    I agreed. I worded badly. It cuts against your favored interpretion about how the "subject to jurisdiction" clause should be read relative to the "born" part of the sentences. That is: it cuts against your favored interpretation.

    >When she married, she acquired her husband's citizenship.

    American law can't dictate who becomes British no matter what we write. No reason to believe she'd become british.
    https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/239/299/

    >So as an alien, she was no longer subject to the jurisdiction of the U.S. Mind blowing, in my view. And way stronger than what I claim.

    Nope. When she married, a law kicked in that revoked her US citizenship. US law can't grant her her husband's citizenship. She may have ended up with no citizenship.

  212. MikeM,
    The law they upheld said this:

    >"That any American woman who marries a foreigner shall take the nationality of her husband. At the termination of the marital relation, she may resume her American citizenship, if abroad, by registering as an American citizen within one year with a consul of the United States, or by returning to reside in the United States, or, if residing in the United States at the termination of the marital relation, by continuing to reside therein."

    Like it or not, Congress cannot confer British citizenship on her– and there is no reason to believe she gained it. They could write precisely the same law switching "woman" to "person" and so on, and if they still applies you would lose your citizenship by marrying a Canadian. That Canada disagrees about your status as a Canadian citizen would be irrelevant under this published reasoning.

  213. Ok.. evidently the UK did confer British citizenship on her. That said, the US law didn't require her to have been conferred her husband's citizenship to lose US citizenship. It merely decreed she had. But since our congress can't actually confer citizenship in another ocuntry, that's just a flourish.

    Our Supreme court said nothing about her having citizenship in another country in their ruling. To the contrary, the "no limitation of effect" would seem to mean it doesn't matter whether the husband's country agrees that she'd gained that citizenship.

    "There is no limitation of place; there is no limitation of effect, the marital relation having been constituted and continuing. For its termination there is provision, and explicit provision. At its termination, she may resume "

    Evidently, based on the above, she could get her US citizenship back if her husband died or they divorced. So this seems to have little to do with the other countries jurisdiction — the other country need not claim any jurisdiction at all. (Basically, she's treated as chattle. 🙂 )

  214. lucia (Comment #172175): "That said, the US law didn't require her to have been conferred her husband's citizenship to lose US citizenship."

    Perhaps. It would depend on how it was written. But a woman automatically getting her husband's citizenship was the norm at the time; it might even have been universal. Some countries still do it. So that was assumed. We don't know what would have happened if a woman married a man from a country that did not automatically grant citizenship to wives. That was never decided.
    .
    lucia: "the 'no limitation of effect' would seem to mean it doesn't matter whether the husband's country agrees that she'd gained that citizenship."

    It would seem to. But that appears to be a dicta, not a decision. So we don't really know what would have happened in that case, or even if it was even possible to happen.
    .
    lucia: "Basically, she's treated as chattle."

    Yep. That provision lasted about two years after the adoption of the 19th Amendment.

  215. MikeM
    >It would depend on how it was written
    Yes. It would depend how the act was written. To be clear what I meant was, as written, the law didn't require her to gain her husbands citizenship to lose her own.

    This is how it's worded
    ——
    Sec. 3. That any American woman who marries a foreigner shall
    take the nationality of her husband. At the termination of the mari-
    tal relation she may resume her American citizenship, if abroad, by
    registering as an American citizen within one year with a consul of
    the United States, or by returning to reside in the United States, or,
    if residing in the United States at the termination of the marital rela-
    tion, by continuing to reside therein.
    ———-
    See https://archive.org/stream/jstor-2212395/2212395_djvu.txt

    >But a woman automatically getting her husband's citizenship was the norm at the time

    Not in the US. This seems to be the naturalization act in effect at the time.

    https://www.loc.gov/law/help/statutes-at-large/59th-congress/session-1/c59s1ch3592.pdf

    >So that was assumed.
    It seems unlikely the "assumed" all women became citizens on marriage when foreign women did not become so when they married American's. They needed to renounce their previous citizenship and naturalize.

  216. lucia (Comment #172177): "See https://archive.org/stream/jstor-2212395/2212395_djvu.txt"

    me, previously: "a woman automatically getting her husband's citizenship was the norm at the time"

    lucia: "Not in the US"

    The link above says:
    "Sec. 4. That any foreign woman who acquires American citizenship
    by marriage to an American shall be assumed to retain the same after the termination of the marital relation if she continue to reside in the United States …"

    Sounds to me like a women could become a U.S. citizen by marrying an American.

  217. https://www.archives.gov/publications/prologue/1998/summer/women-and-naturalization-1.html

    As of 1855: "[a]ny woman who is now or may hereafter be married to a citizen of the United States, and who might herself be lawfully naturalized, shall be deemed a citizen."

    "until 1922 the courts generally held that the alien wife of an alien husband could not herself be naturalized."

    "In innumerable cases under the 1855 law, an immigrant woman instantly became a U.S. citizen at the moment a judge's order naturalized her immigrant husband. … Prior to 1922, this provision applied to women regardless of their place of residence. Thus if a woman's husband left their home abroad to seek work in America, became a naturalized citizen, then sent for her to join him, that woman might enter the United States for the first time listed as a U.S. citizen."

  218. Mike,
    Weird. How does a 1855 supercede a law passed in 1906? That one describes the "only" way someone can become a citizen. (I guess people were only men?)

  219. Honestly then Mike, if women's naturalization and citizenship followed a different path from men, nothing about women's citizenship or revocation can tell us anything much about what people considered the 14th amendment to mean.

  220. lucia (Comment #172180): "How does a 1855 supercede a law passed in 1906?"

    It doesn't. The 1855 law was not superceded until 1922. I don't know why you think otherwise. I guess it must have something to do with something you saw in the long. blurry document you linked to earlier. But I have no idea what that is.
    .
    lucia (Comment #172181): "if women's naturalization and citizenship followed a different path from men, nothing about women's citizenship or revocation can tell us anything much about what people considered the 14th amendment to mean."

    Only if you ignore context. But there is a lot of context that tells us about how people thought about citizenship and that tells us about how people would have understood the 14th Amendment. Citizenship was regarded as mutable but indivisible, a person could only be a citizen of one country at a time.

  221. MIkeM,

    >t doesn't. The 1855 law was not superceded until 1922.

    IN otherwords, you are syaing it does superceded the 1906 law. That's my question. To elaborate:
    The 1906 law describes how to nationalize and the language says it's the ONLY method. That should superceded other laws governing the exact same thing– naturalization.

    Your answers is merely "it doesn't". You haven't answered HOW. By what mechanism does the 1906 law NOT superceded the 1855 law?

    >But I have no idea what that is.
    Your eyes must be bad. It is the naturalization act of 1906. It's a pdf and no more blurry on my screen than other scanned pdfs.

    >Only if you ignore context. But there is a lot of context that tells us about how people thought about citizenship and that tells us about how people would have understood the 14th Amendment.

    I'm not ignoring the context! I think you are suggesting you get to decree the context and moreover, you are leaving out a big context.

    I think the context is people didn't think women were full persons, but rather chattle. So laws describing how "persons" naturalize and what rights "persons" have didn't necessarily apply to women. Oh. And due process didn't prevent states or the nation from allowing women to vote, own land and so on and so on.

    Your choice of context doesn't actually explain what they were doing. After all: they could think of citizenship as mutable but indivisible and still allow a married woman to keep citizenship by merely dropping a note the the US government and rejecting the other countries citizenship. That solves the "mutability" standard and prevents other countries from decreeing that American women owe them allegiance.

    Your choice of context also doesn't explain why the laws did this to women, not men. They could have taken or granted the other way around, but did not. That's because the context was men were "full persons" and women were "chattle". Except every now and then a court saw women as full persons– but not often.

    If the context is women were not "full persons", then we can't interpret what they thought of citizenship for "persons" because…. well… women were chattle.

  222. lucia (Comment #172183): "You haven't answered HOW. By what mechanism does the 1906 law NOT superceded the 1855 law?"

    Because it doesn't. I suppose you are referring to
    "SEC. 4. That an alien may be admitted to become a citizen of the United States in the following manner and not otherwise"

    It does not say that wives and minor children need to be naturalized independent of their husbands/fathers. That is because it was assumed that they were naturalized automatically at the same time. The wives part may not be obvious when read with 21st century prejudices. But the act was written in the context of early 20th century prejudices. In any case, it should be obvious that minor children were not excluded by that act.

    Furthermore, the act implies that a man's wife and minor children were carried along with his naturalization.
    On page 2: "Second … if he is married he shall state the name of his wife and, if possible, the country of her nativity and her place of residence at the time of filing his petition; and if he has children, the name, date, and place of birth and place of residence of each child living at the time of the filing of his petition".
    On page 3: "Sixth. When any alien who has declared his intention to become a citizen of the United States dies before he is actually naturalized the widow and minor children of such alien may, by complying with the other provisions of this Act, be naturalized without making any declaration of intention."

    Those might be puzzling if the act is read de novo, but not if read in the context of prior law.

  223. lucia (Comment #172183): "If the context is women were not "full persons", then we can't interpret what they thought of citizenship for "persons" because…. well… women were chattle."

    If you insist, go back to my Comment #172148 and strike the words "MacKenzie v. Hare (1915)". It does not change anything.

  224. Uh oh. The Dutch guy who wants to change his legal age has had his day in court.

    "His case was heard before a court in Arnhem on Monday. Ratelband told The Washington Post that at first the judge laughed at him, but then became more receptive to his arguments after he spoke about how 'we are a free people.' He compared his situation directly with those of people who desire that official records say they are the opposite sex."

    "The judge admitted that 'a lot of years ago we thought that was impossible,' for someone to change his gender, The Guardian reported."

    http://thefederalist.com/2018/11/13/using-transgender-arguments-dutch-man-demands-birth-certificate-say-hes-20-years-younger/

    The author of the above has some interesting comments about the relative merits of trans-ageism, transgenderism, and trans-racialism.

  226. For example

    This claim is erroneous. It does not "appear" to do what you claim.
    >In other words, the Amendment appears to adopt the doctrine of perpetual allegiance, which was still quite common in 1868.

    All it "appears" to do is say that when a child is born in the US and under US jurisdiction, they are granted citizenship *at that time*, present tense. "Is".

    It says nothing about whether citizenship could be stripped or relinquished– and event in the future. That could be done both before and after the amendment and rules for that are left to Congress.

    This claim you made was inaccurate.
    >Current law is that individuals can renounce their citizenship, but that it can not be taken from them

    As many here pointed out, citizenship CAN be taken from them for various causes. Congress retains that right. The first sentences of the amendment says nothing about perpetual allegiance and so on. It only says "When X occurs at time T, someone "is" present tense an American citizen at time T."

    Nothing modifies Congresses right to make other rules– but they need to be applied to everyone uniformly. If they wrote "On day 2 all blacks lose citizenship", that wouldn't fly due to *other* parts of the Amendment.

    And so on.

    This claim was simply false:

    >But we know that was not so. The U.S. always rejected that doctrine.

    T

  227. MikeM,
    I still think it's funny the guy thinks he looks 20 years younger than his age. Mind you: that doesn't make any difference to the transgender analogy. In the transgender case, they person doesn't have to say they think they look like the opposite sex. Often they don't look like the opposite sex at all– guys may have kept their junk intact and so on.

  228. lucia (Comment #172188): "All it 'appears' to do is say that when a child is born in the US and under US jurisdiction, they are granted citizenship *at that time*, present tense. 'Is'."

    I am convinced that is the correct reading.
    .
    lucia: "It says nothing about whether citizenship could be stripped or relinquished– and event in the future."

    I agree. SCOTUS does not agree.
    .
    lucia: "That could be done both before and after the amendment and rules for that are left to Congress."

    That was so up until 1967. It is no longer the case.
    .
    lucia: "This claim you made was inaccurate.
    >Current law is that individuals can renounce their citizenship, but that it can not be taken from them"

    That is current law.
    .
    lucia: "As many here pointed out, citizenship CAN be taken from them for various causes. Congress retains that right."

    Not so. One finds things like the listing on your passport, but the law enacting those is pretty much a dead letter. If you were born here, your citizenship can not be revoked unless you say you want to give up your citizenship. Naturalization can be revoked if it was fraudulently obtained, but I think that is such cases the position is that the naturalization was never valid. The law says that naturalization can be revoked for other causes, but they might not survive challenge in court. I'd be interested in knowing if they have survived challenge since 1967.
    .
    The significance of 1967 is due to Afroyim v. Rusk https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Afroyim_v._Rusk#Subsequent_developments
    .
    lucia: "The first sentences of the amendment says nothing about perpetual allegiance and so on. It only says 'When X occurs at time T, someone "is" present tense an American citizen at time T'."

    That is how I read it.

  229. MikeM,
    I know you are convinced that your preferred reading is the correct one. You are also aware it is not SCOTUS's. You also have not given a convincing explanation that your preferred reading is more correct.

    >I agree. SCOTUS does not agree.
    What do you think SCOTUS says it says about people relinquishing it?
    What do you think SCOTUS says it says about people being stripped of it? Real questions.

    >That was so up until 1967. It is no longer the case.
    Oh? Afroyim v. Rusk, 387 U.S. 253 (1967) doesn't say Congress can't make a law that strips someone of citizenship. They still can and do. Congress has laws that currently strip citizenship from people for certain acts that that imply renunciation even if the person claims they want to keep citizenship. (See below.)

    >>Current law is that individuals can renounce their citizenship, but that it can not be taken from them"

    Ok. Your reading "not taken" a bit differently from what I meant.

    The law permits a person's renunciation *to be assumed* by their actions– but with a possibility of rebuttal. I should have said it can be taken without them formally renouncing in words or writing. That is current law.

    If you become prime minister of England, the law assumes you renounced. You can fight that revocation; you'd lose. Most people could consider that to having your citizenship "taken". But if you want to read otherwise, ok. We've elaborated to be more precise.
    See current law:
    https://www.usa.gov/renounce-lose-citizenship

    In my view, this means Congress still has a right to strip people of their citizenship because a citizen who claims they want to keep it can have it stripped by virtue of their actions. This is current law.

    At the very least, Congress has the impression they can continue to make laws.

    >lucia: "As many here pointed out, citizenship CAN be taken from them for various causes. Congress retains that right."

    >Mike: Not so.

    Yes so. At least the way I use the word "taken", your citizenship can be taken if you become prime minister of England. It will be revoked even if you come in and insist that you want to keep it. I consider that taken. If you don't, then we merely have a difference of opinion on what "taken" means.

    Congress retains the right to make these rules.

    >The significance of 1967 is due to Afroyim v. Rusk https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Afroyim_v._Rusk#Subsequent_developments

    Which doesn't say what you seem to suggest it does. You are over-reading the extent to which it limits Congress. Congress continues to make laws revoking citizenship. See
    https://www.usa.gov/renounce-lose-citizenship

    >That is how I read it.

    Please quote the first sentence, and then point to the language that says "and retain it forever"? Or "it will be perpetual"? It's not there. That means you are reading something into the sentence. It's not actually there.

  230. lucia (Comment #172191): "What do you think SCOTUS says it says about people relinquishing it?"

    That is allowed. I don't think anyone disputes that.
    .
    lucia: "What do you think SCOTUS says it says about people being stripped of it?"

    Here is what Hugo Black said in his majority opinion:

    " 'All persons born or naturalized in the United States … are citizens of the United States….' There is no indication in these words of a fleeting citizenship, good at the moment it is acquired but subject to destruction by the Government at any time. Rather the Amendment can most reasonably be read as defining a citizenship which a citizen keeps unless he voluntarily relinquishes it. Once acquired, this Fourteenth Amendment citizenship was not to be shifted, canceled, or diluted at the will of the Federal Government, the States, or any other governmental unit."
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Afroyim_v._Rusk#Opinion_of_the_Court

    And here are some events in consequence:

    "In 1980, the administration of President Jimmy Carter concluded that the Bancroft Treaties—a series of bilateral agreements, formulated between 1868 and 1937, which provided for automatic loss of citizenship upon foreign naturalization of a U.S. citizen—were no longer enforceable, due in part to Afroyim, and gave notice terminating these treaties.[86] In 1990, the State Department adopted new guidelines for evaluating potential loss-of-citizenship cases,[87] under which the government now assumes in almost all situations that Americans do not in fact intend to give up their citizenship unless they explicitly indicate to U.S. officials that this is their intention.[88] As explained by Peter J. Spiro, "In the long run, Afroyim's vision of an absolute right to retain citizenship has been largely, if quietly, vindicated. As a matter of practice, it is now virtually impossible to lose American citizenship without formally and expressly renouncing it."
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Afroyim_v._Rusk#Subsequent_developments

  233. :> SInce you're bored,
    This odd idea occurred to me driving into work this morning. I figured if I could contrive an elastic collision between a payload destined for space and a 747 flying near top speed, manage the angle properly and so on, if the payload was less than 7 tons I figured it'd achieve escape velocity.
    I'm not sure what G's the payload would be subject to, but I'm fairly sure they'd be catastrophic.

  235. Yeah. I see now. I figured what would happen if *all* the momentum of the plane went into the payload. Even if the mass of the payload is zero (assuming the payload isn't already moving) it can't end up with a velocity more than twice that of the plane.

  237. MikeM,
    I still don't know what your unique view is that leads you to your interpretation.
    >Rather the Amendment can most reasonably be read as defining a citizenship which a citizen keeps unless he voluntarily relinquishes it.
    Yep. No one is disputing you on this. And yet one relinquish it while believing one has not done so. Go figure.

    Really, you need to engage on the bits that you think that are different from others. So for example, explain why, in fact congress can and does write laws describing acts that result in citizenship being taken away. Otherwise, you aren't advancing anything to support what appears to be your notion that they can't do what Congress thinks they can do and which SCOTUS has never said they can't do.

    Unless what you are claiming is that the current interpetation of the law is exactly correct– including Congresse's interpreation that permits revocation for certain acts — Jimmy Carter stuff is pretty irrelevant to what you seems to be claiming.

  238. Mark. Sounds like you are trying to think about the "what happens when a heavy baseball bat hits a small baseball problem". 🙂

  239. lucia,

    I don't see how the following two statements can be compatible with each other.

    SCOTUS (in Afroyim v. Rusk): "the Amendment can most reasonably be read as defining a citizenship which a citizen keeps unless he voluntarily relinquishes it."

    lucia (Comment #172200): "congress can and does write laws describing acts that result in citizenship being taken away."

    Doesn't one of those have to be wrong? Real question.
    —————-
    Up until 1967, Congress could and did write laws describing acts that result in citizenship being taken away. Congress is no longer allowed to do that because now citizenship is something "which a citizen keeps unless he voluntarily relinquishes it".

  241. MikeM,
    See my example of you (hypothetically) losing your citizenship if you become prime minister of England above ((Comment #172191) . I wrote it precisely to address the issue you are now pointing out by quote. You haven't engaged that example (or really anything in the comment.

    After you read the example, with that "inconsistency" in mind, address the example when saying you don't "see" how they are not inconsistent.

    >Congress is no longer allowed to do that because now citizenship is something "which a citizen keeps unless he voluntarily relinquishes it".

    And yet they write these laws and people can lose their citizenship even if *the person* does not consider themselves to have voluntarily relinquished citizenship, but rather has done so.

    Please read Comment #172191 (and others) and actually engage points and examples. If you won't engage specifics of what I write, there is really no point in going on. There's really little needs for a conversation where someone doesn't pay attention to what the other person says.

  242. Mark:
    For elastic head on collisions, there is a "short cut" for analysis. Conservation of mechanical energy becomes "velocity difference swaps". So if we use 1 and 2 as subscripts, the two governing equations become

    m1 V1I + m2 V2I = m1 V1f+ m2 V2f
    V1I – V2I = -V1f + V2f

    Classic billiard ball hits other ones are with m1=m2. V1I=1, V2I=0.
    Ball hits wall m1=1 m2=∞. V1I=1, V2I=0 .
    Heavy bat hits motoinless ball on a stand : m1=1 m2=big. V1I=0, V2I=1 .

    Moving bat hits ball coming toward it. m1=1 m2=big. V1I=-1, V2I=1 .

  243. mark bofill,
    In any straight-on elastic collision, the relative approach velocity must equal the relative rebound velocity. So in the case of one body of near infinite mass and one of much lower mass, the original velocity of the massive object is not changed significantly, while the lower mass object retreats from the massive one at the same relative velocity as the approach. So the best you can ever do is add 200% of the massive object’s velocity to the initial velocity of the low mass object. If the 747 was going 600 MPH and the spacecraft going 1400 MPH in the opposite direction, that makes the closing velocity 2000 MPH, and the rebound velocity of the spacecraft 2000 + 600 = 2600 MPH. A perfectly elastic golf ball struck by a very heavy golf club does not go into Earth orbit, but instead takes off at twice the approach speed of the club. In fact, a golf ball is not perfectly elastic, and the club not so heavy…. the ball takes off at about 1.4 times the club speed.

  244. Thanks Steve. So it'd take more like a fleet of 747's, something like 50 collisions to get to the ballpark.
    It might be better to make the 747 hit object1 and let o1 hit o2, and so on. 7 or 8 such collisions might do it.
    Dont ask me why I'm thinking about this. Will e coyote possession or something.

  245. lucia (Comment #172204): "See my example of you (hypothetically) losing your citizenship if you become prime minister of England"

    But you would not lose your citizenship by becoming Prime Minister.

    A few years ago, the Mayor of London, Boris Johnson, sold his London home and got a huge tax bill from the IRS. In 2015 he paid it: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-30932891

    A few months after that, he was elected to Parliament. A little over a year later, he was considered the front runner to become Prime Minister. On July 13, 2016 he become Foreign Minister. He seems to have still been a U.S. citizen.

    Sometime in 2016 Johnson renounced his U.S. citizenship: https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/feb/08/boris-johnson-renounces-us-citizenship-record-2016-uk-foreign-secretary
    That appears to have been done in the 4th quarter: https://www.quora.com/Did-Boris-Johnson-actually-renounce-his-US-citizenship-as-he-promised
    .
    lucia: "You haven't engaged that example"

    But you have not actually given any examples. You have just speculated based on outdated laws that are no longer enforceable.
    .
    lucia: "And yet they write these laws and people can lose their citizenship even if *the person* does not consider themselves to have voluntarily relinquished citizenship, but rather has done so."

    No. Congress wrote such laws, but the Supreme Court struck them down in 1967.
    .
    lucia: "There's really little needs for a conversation where someone doesn't pay attention to what the other person says."

    I was thinking about saying something like that about you, but decided it would not be helpful.

    The problem here is that you insist on believing something that just is not so and are complaining that I refuse to believe it too. The majority opinion in Afroyim v. Rusk says:
    "Held: Congress has no power under the Constitution to divest a person of his United States citizenship absent his voluntary renunciation thereof."
    That is not some dictum found in the opinion. That is the ruling.

  246. The syllabus of the SCOTUS decision is here:
    https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/387/253/#

    "Held: Congress has no power under the Constitution to divest a person of his United States citizenship absent his voluntary renunciation thereof. Perez v. Brownell, supra, overruled. Pp. 387 U. S. 256-268.

    (a) Congress has no express power under the Constitution to strip a person of citizenship, and no such power can be sustained as an implied attribute of sovereignty, as was recognized by Congress before the passage of the Fourteenth Amendment, and a mature and well considered dictum in Osborn v. Bank of the United States, 9 Wheat. 738, 22 U. S. 827, is to the same effect. Pp. 387 U. S. 257-261.

    (b) The Fourteenth Amendment's provision that "All persons born or naturalized in the United States . . . are citizens of the United States . . ." completely controls the status of citizenship, and prevents the cancellation of petitioner's citizenship. Pp. 387 U. S. 262-268."
    ———————
    I'd have used blockquote for that, but I don't know if it would work and I can't edit.

    If you want to download the pdf of the full opinions, the link is here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Afroyim_v._Rusk#External_links
    Click on "Library of Congress".

  247. I see at Climate Etc. that the authors of the paper that Nic Lewis was criticizing concerning trend and trend uncertainity have acknowledged the uncertainty error and have sent a correction to Nature, but I see nothing from the authors concerning Lewis' criticism of their method of estimating the trend itself.

  249. Kenneth,
    Ya, it’s more than a little strange. The apparent error in estimating the trend is the bigger issue, and there has been not a peep about that. Nic will probably have to publish a refutation, but it seems very unlikely Nature will accept it…. too politically incorrect. It’s like Steig et al all over again.

  250. HaroldW,

    Yes, groupthink.

    "Groupthink is a psychological phenomenon that occurs within a group of people in which the desire for harmony or conformity in the group results in an irrational or dysfunctional decision-making outcome. Group members try to minimize conflict and reach a consensus decision without critical evaluation of alternative viewpoints by actively suppressing dissenting viewpoints, and by isolating themselves from outside influences."

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Groupthink

    Current examples include academia and large parts of Silicon Valley. There are many others.

    There was an opinion piece in yesterday's WSJ about how at Facebook (I think) it was probably OK to be a libertarian, but not a Republican. Being a Republican, and especially a Trump supporter, gets you fired.

  251. HaroldW,

    In science, another example of groupthink was the resistance to continental drift, particularly in the geology departments at US universities. And then there's the quote from Max Planck:

    " Eine neue wissenschaftliche Wahrheit pflegt sich nicht in der Weise durchzusetzen, daß ihre Gegner überzeugt werden und sich als belehrt erklären, sondern vielmehr dadurch, daß ihre Gegner allmählich aussterben und daß die heranwachsende Generation von vornherein mit der Wahrheit vertraut gemacht ist.

    A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it."

  253. DeWitt,
    Getting fired for political views expressed outside work is illegal in a few places (California, Colorado, New York, North Dakota), but in most places, if you disagree politically with the boss (or worse, their boss!), and they are aware of it, you may well find yourself either fired or made so miserable at work that you choose to leave on your own.
    .
    It is clear that Silicon Valley companies will not tolerate exposition of conservative views within the company. What they would do about expression of those views outside the company is less clear, but my guess is that anything obvious, like campaigning for a conservative Republican on your own time, would be fatal for your career, even if retaliation is officially illegal in California.

  254. It's near impossible to have a rational conversation about climate change. Activism has made the penalty for disagreeing, or even merely questioning, unworthy of the risk for almost everyone. Ironically moral preening doesn't cut it in mixed company for advocates either, because they tend to be very ill informed on the facts and can get humiliated easily by standard issue skeptics who aren't going to put up with the preening. The end result is a total shutdown of debate.
    .
    I started reading with interest over 10 years ago and have definitely reached the "Bored now" phase. There just isn't a materially new way to process old data, and there isn't a way to get new historical data. "Real" climate data of interest is decades long noisy data patterns so even annual updates are of only mild interest. Building out the measurement infrastructure is important, as is energy technology development. The rest has become snoreville. What you see at the Guardian, WP, and NYT is just propaganda at this point. Everything environmental is written for maximum emotional impact and is thus no emotional impact.
    .
    I still find it humorous that David Attenborough is vilified because his nature documentaries are not pessimistic and activist enough. Are we short on alternate "humans are evil" documentaries somehow? That this is a controversy says everything. Attenborough and the BBC, enemies of the environment.
    David Attenborough has betrayed the living world he loves. By downplaying our environmental crisis, the presenter’s BBC films have generated complacency, confusion and ignorance
    https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/nov/07/david-attenborough-world-environment-bbc-films
    .
    https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/nov/04/attenborough-dynasties-ecological-campaign
    "Attenborough: “We do have a problem. Every time the bell rings, every time that image [of a threatened animal] comes up, do you say ‘remember, they are in danger’? How often do you say this without becoming a real turn-off? It would be irresponsible to ignore it, but equally I believe we have a responsibility to make programmes that look at all the rest of the aspects and not just this one,” Attenborough, 92, told the Observer."

  255. Tom Scharf,
    Yes, there is very little real debate, and way too much green moral preening, especially in the (mostly unknowing) MSM. For them it's just hewing without question to the progressive policy line.
    .
    But I can't see a way I can ever reach the "bored now" state, in part because the potential damage and potential benefits from warming remain very uncertain, but more because the potential damage to humanity from nutty green policies is almost unlimited. My 'alarm' about really stupid and damaging policies is not ever going to go away.

  256. MikeM
    >But you have not actually given any examples. You have just speculated based on outdated laws that are no longer enforceable.
    The law you claim is "outdated" is presently posted on the US governments' web site right now.
    https://www.usa.gov/renounce-lose-citizenship

    I'm pretty sure that web page wasn't written before 1967. But perhaps I'm wrong. If you can show me that was written before 1967 but for some slovenly reason has failed to be maintained and updated, maybe I'll believe your claim the law is outdated.

    If you think the law is "outdated" you are going to have to point to some evidence that the US government thinks it's outdated!

    That the state department might not have moved expeditiously vacate Johnson's citizenship (if that even occurred) would merely indicate an oversight on the part of people who do that. (Those people don't happen to be the IRS).
    He served as prime minister from July 2016- July 2018. In 2014 he said he planned to renounce US citizenship. He then did so in 2016.
    https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/feb/08/boris-johnson-renounces-us-citizenship-record-2016-uk-foreign-secretary

    Even though you indicate he renounced in the 4th quarter, that doesn't show it would not be revoked. Our government doesn't generally sit around watching and waiting to inform people they are no longer citizens. It merely does things like refuse to let people register to vote (which he likely didn't do) or refuse to issue a passport (which he likely didn't apply for.) Basically: those who actually do something to claim a right as a citizen are informed at the time they claim a right.

    In Boris's case, they may have contacted him to discuss his status, and after some discussion, Boris filed paperwork which simplified everything. The state department would have told him their position, he wouldn't have any reason to not comply, and everything would be easier by just filing the paperwork.

    So you have not shown that Boris Johnson's citizenship would not be revoked based on his being prime minister. The guy wasn't making any claims the government would refuse him on the basis that he wasn't a US citizen. And he may have had discussions and filed after he no longer qualified to retain it.

    The law as it stands said his citizenship would be revoked. He no longer had it shortly after the relevant event. It's gone. This *absolutely* does NOT support your claim his citizenship would not be revoked for that act. To support your claim he would *need to still have it*.

    As for the SCOTUS case: I've read it. Congress and the State do not interpret the bit you quote to mean what you think it means. You deeming laws actually on the book and posted on the official US goverment and state department ages "outdated" doesn't magically make them so. Nor does it make the law vanish nor not be enforced.

  257. SteveF,

    The damage from some nutty green policies can be seen right now in California. The severity of the wildfires is in large part due to very poor forest management practices that have effectively been mandated by the green lobby through a maze of required permitting to get anything done like clearing deadwood, harvesting timber and controlled burns. This is being done to allegedly protect endangered species and the environment. But the inevitable wild fires are far more damaging.

  258. Thanks Sue
    At the Realclimate article, Keeling admits a mistake in how they treated uncertainties in measurements resulted in both
    (a) a high bias in their trend and
    (b) underestimate of the uncertainty intervals.
    They thank Nic Lewis for noticing.

    http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2018/11/resplandy-et-al-correction-and-response/

    Quote——–
    This led to under-reporting of the overall uncertainty and also caused the ocean heat uptake to be shifted high through the application of a weighted least squares fit.
    ————-

  259. I think my boredom arises from the near equality of spending 1000 hours of research over the next year versus 1 hour of research into climate change and learning almost nothing different of importance. Obviously one can learn many new things such as the viability of intermittent clean power and how to overcome these obstacles and so forth (SoD does an exemplar job here). What one can't do is learn anything much new about the actual risks of future climate change based on the last 100 years of observations and what the science predicts.
    .
    It's going to continue to warm at some rate and clean energy will be adapted at some other rate. Environmentalists will continue to over sell the problem and taxpayers will continue to not foot the bill for paranoid predictions from those with a bad track record.
    .
    Next year will not be much different than last year, or the year before. I can't think of anything significant that has happened in the last 5 years. There isn't any significant acceleration of warming, sea levels, or extreme events. The science is boring because it is slow moving, the politics are interesting because some people are batsh** crazy.

  260. Lucia, Sue,
    Keeling is clearly a stand-up guy.
    .
    I note that in addition to the more appropriate estimation of the trend, they simultaneously changed another of the assumptions in their original calculation: the "oxidative ratio (OR) of land carbon" was 1.1 in the paper, but in the revised calculation this was reduced to 1.05. This change had the effect of increasing the estimate of the trend by 0.15, yielding a net of 1.05 ± 0.62 per meg/y­r. Absent the change in oxidative ratio, the revised calculations would have produced a trend of 0.90 (+/- 0.62), almost exactly the same as Nic suggested (0.89).
    .
    So it looks like Nic won't need to publish a refutation, and with the very broad uncertainty, the Rasplandy et al result is now perfectly consistent with other recent estimates of ocean heat uptake, not "60% higher than previously thought". I am waiting for the MSM to trumpet the revision to the paper and walk back the worse than we thought headlines. (I'm joking, of course!)

  261. lucia (Comment #172219): "The law you claim is "outdated" is presently posted on the US governments' web site right now.
    https://www.usa.gov/renounce-lose-citizenship"

    I know that. It is also in your passport. That is weird. But the alternative is that the government is ignoring a clear decision of the Supreme Court.
    .
    lucia: "Our government doesn't generally sit around watching and waiting to inform people they are no longer citizens. It merely does things like refuse to let people register to vote (which he likely didn't do) or refuse to issue a passport (which he likely didn't apply for.) Basically: those who actually do something to claim a right as a citizen are informed at the time they claim a right."

    Johnson had an up to date passport. https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/jan/22/boris-johnson-settles-us-tax-demand
    .
    lucia: "Congress and the State do not interpret the bit you quote to mean what you think it means".

    I do not see two wins to interpret: "Congress has no power under the Constitution to divest a person of his United States citizenship absent his voluntary renunciation thereof."

    I'll believe you when you can explain that.
    .
    Your link says you lose citizenship if you "Intentionally acquire citizenship in a foreign country except if you acquire it through marriage to a foreign national; you may become a dual national instead."

    But this web site https://uk.usembassy.gov/u-s-citizen-services/u-s-passports/u-s-passport-faqs/u-s-citizenship/ says:
    "Naturalization in a foreign country, employment with a foreign government, and/or voting in a foreign election does not automatically jeopardize U.S. citizenship. However, please note that all U.S. citizens, even dual nationals, must enter and depart the United States on U.S. passports."

    and this one https://jp.usembassy.gov/u-s-citizen-services/citizenship-services/loss-u-s-citizenship/
    "The automatic acquisition or retention of a foreign nationality does not affect U.S. citizenship; … In order for loss of nationality to occur under Section 349(a)(1), it must be established that the naturalization was obtained with the intention of relinquishing U.S. citizenship. Such an intention may be shown by a person’s statements or conduct. If the U.S. Government is unable to prove that the person had such an intention when applying for and obtaining the foreign citizenship, the person will have both nationalities."
    .
    This is not the government, but it is typical of many legal sites:
    https://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/when-us-citizens-can-lose-us-citizenship.html
    "For all the acts listed above, it is not enough to appear to commit the act–even voluntarily–to lose U.S. nationality; the person must also commit the act in order to relinquish the nationality."

    Unless the government can prove intent, they can not take away your citizenship. That is a nearly impossible bar unless you say it was your intent.

  262. MikeM,
    Your interpretation is different from Congress and the State department.

    The US embassy quotes you post do not contradict the material at the State department. And I would advise that posting quotes indicating that you do "not *automatically* jeopardize U.S. citizenship" for X doesn't mean you might not jeopardize it *at all*. It also doesn't mean you won't jeopardize it for doing "Y". So that quote doesn't mean someone can't lose their US citizenship!

    To show someone can't lose their US citizenship for something, you need to show the list of things you CAN lose it for contains no entries. You haven't done that except by decreeing the law posted on CURRENT us government sites is "outdated". That's a rather unconvincing claim.

    I advise you read the detailed write up at the State Department:
    https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/legal/travel-legal-considerations/Advice-about-Possible-Loss-of-US-Nationality-Dual-Nationality/Loss-US-Nationality-Foreign-State.html

    And avoid quote-mining to find quotes that say things like "you might not necessarily have your citizenship yanked" as evidence it CAN'T be at all. That's not the way English works.

    >Unless the government can prove intent, they can not take away your citizenship. That is a nearly impossible bar unless you say it was your intent.

    Nonesense. Even the nolo link you cited (which is by lawyers you can hire to dispute you lost citizenship) the article states

    ———-
    Even in the fourth and seventh cases (joining a foreign military or being convicted of treason), the loss of nationality will not be automatic. Instead, it will depend on the U.S. Department of State’s finding based on evidence that a person intended to lose his or her nationality by committing the relevant act. Such a finding would later be open to contestation in court. (The State Department does not have a clear appeal process, but could certainly review or reconsider its decision if faced with new evidence or new legal interpretations.)
    ———
    So: the State department (not you) will decide whether they think you intended to give it up. If THEY think that was your intend, they revoke. Then you can dispute their decision that you must have intended to renounce– and you need to dispute this in court. Where you can lose.

    As far as I can tell that amounts to the US can take away your citizenship even if you dispute you intended to give it up by some particular act. It requires due process. Even the first step involving the state department making a decision will require time and will involve talking to you if they can. (This would totally explain a lag between, for example, Boris Johnson becoming prime minister and the State Department contacting him– which for all we know they did. Or maybe not.)

    They, in the fullness of time, your citizenship could be revoked by the State department and in even more fullness of time, you could go to court, and likely lose.

    Or, if you have any sense and you became prime minister of England, you skip the whole "disputing in court" step and the whole "embarrassing newspaper articles reporting you refuse to give up American citizenship" and file paperwork to renounce. (Notice– he didn't renounce when people were merely coming after him for taxes. But once he had done something his citizensip could be revoked by the State Department, he finally did renounce. Go. Figure.)

  263. Mike
    >Johnson had an up to date passport.
    In January 2015, he held a passport. Not sure what your point is.

    They last 10 years. It's not designed to burst into flames or walk itself to the embassy and turn itself in when someone becomes prime minister of the UK. I suspect he turned it in when he filled out paperwork. That he once held one doesn't change the fact renouncing citizenship promptly after becoming Prime minister (the specific office that would trigger likely revocation) suggests even he agreed his US citizenship was kaput. His handing in a renunciation was the best political move he could make since fighting US law wasn't going to do him much good.

  264. It's nice to see a mea culpa from Ralph Keeling. It's ironic that it went to realclimate, given that the paper's mention in the previous thread had just one comment from Lewis, pointing to his critique at Judith's site, and the few responses to the critique were either "publish in Nature and we'll listen" or "can't take you seriously when you post at the same sites as those dodgy deniers." No one directly addressed Nic's claims at all.
    .
    One post did see fit to criticize Nic for bringing this up when his "close colleague" Willis Eschenbach miscalculated a trend in his article on California Fire, claiming the temperature had risen by 0.02C per decade instead of 0.12C per decade as the data he linked to showed. Apparently detecting this sort of thing should be Nic Lewis' job, even though it's a different blog than he originally posted his criticism at, and despite the fact that the error was detected by somebody else within 24 hours and acknowledged and fixed in less than 12 hours after that. Not good enough for our realclimate poster, who bemoans "Yet, the damage is already done as all the WUWT blog readers have since moved on to more recent posts, convinced that Willis found another problem with consensus science. So mission accomplished for fake science, and truly sad that Willis took advantage of the terrible situation in California just to score points for his political agenda." As if the "consensus science" explained the growth in fires from a mere 0.12C/decade warming. Ironically, there's the same number of comments on Willis' thread after the *correction* than there are in the open realclimate thread since Willis' thread was *posted*, if WUWT readers have moved on from that article than realclimate readers have moved on entirely. And that's the last mention of Lewis in the thread.
    .
    There is currently exactly one comment on Keeling's post, and that's merely a link to a washington post article on the admission. WUWT's newest post on the subject has 94 comments. The original two posts at Climate etc are now up to 217 comments, a far cry from the lack of discussion at realclimate.

  265. SteveF,
    Yep. He admitted the error. He's not being snippy or back handed in admitting it nor trying to take jabs at Lewis or Curry.

  266. DaleS,
    It's just as well it was at Real Climate. It forces those who want to "deny" Nic to accept that… well… yes, Keeling has admitted the paper is wrong. And Keeling admitted it "even though" the criticism was posted at Judy's blog.

    Perhaps a few people will manage to bring themselves to comment over at RC.

    Obviously, Nic — and anyone who sees an error– as every right to point it out. That holds even if your "close colleague" has made a mistake in the past. Heck it holds even if Nic himself had once made a mistake!

    Quite likely Nick doesn't read WUWT regularly. It posts too frequently for mere mortals to keep up with.

  267. There are stand up guys in climate science of course, they just don't get media attention very often, ha ha. I'm glad to see Keeling breaking the normal trend of these things. Now what will happen is that this will no longer be a controversy at all because the error was gracefully acknowledged. There might be something to learn here …

  268. Mike on this:
    >Unless the government can prove intent, they can not take away your citizenship. That is a nearly impossible bar unless you say it was your intent.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vance_v._Terrazas

    Terrazas was born in the US and lost his citizenship. Terraza and his lawyer's position was the acts he undertook did not mean he gave his "assent" to lose his citizenship. The courts disagreed.

    The case also makes it clear that Congress does retain the power to describe acts that imply "assent" and also made it clear that they get to decide on the standard of evidence for proving assent, which is preponderance of the evidence– not that high.

    https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/444/252/

    =======

    =======

  269. Lucia,
    “Quite likely Nick doesn't read WUWT regularly. It posts too frequently for mere mortals to keep up with.”
    .
    The issue with WUWT is less the frequency of posts and more the nuttiness of both many of the posts and many of the comments. The same wacko comments about how rising CO2 can’t possibly be due to fossil fuel burning remains a (crazy) common thread, after a decade of people carefully and completely explaining why this is utterly wrong. WUWT is not technically serious, and will not be until the crazies are prohibited from commenting. I won’t hold my breath.

  270. Tom Scharf,
    “There might be something to learn here.”
    .
    Sure…. we learn that real peer review is not pal-review, and the best reviewer is someone who explicitly opposes the political consensus, not someone who agrees with the consensus. The problem is that most climate scientists refuse to see that critical review is needed to counteract widespread confirmation bias. They are lost.

  272. SteveF (Comment #172232),
    I'm not sure WUWT is intended to be "technically serious", nor that it is necessary desirable. The posts are a combination of exposing work done elsewhere and original submissions by a limited number of volunteers, so are certainly uneven in value, but they clearly aren't restricted to technical content. I think it's unfair to come down on WUWT for oft-refuted arguments showing up repeatedly in *comments*, whether those are from skydragons or alarmists. WUWT is a high-volume site, I don't think you could practically vet comments for content and maintain that.
    .
    I find Willis' posts generally interesting enough to read, though I skip some of his purely biographical posts and didn't get around to reading the one referenced at RC until it had already been fixed. I have no idea why the RC poster thought Willis should be considered a "close colleague" of Nic Lewis by any definition. I don't remember ever seeing a comment from Nic on any of Willis' posts at WUWT, nor am I aware of any work they did jointly anywhere.

  273. Dale S,

    >I think it's unfair to come down on WUWT for oft-refuted arguments >showing up repeatedly in *comments*, whether those are from >skydragons or alarmists.

    I have nothing in particular against WUWT. It's got a huge volume, the comments are (methaphorically) endless and definitely contains some crackpottery. I have nothing against Anthony allowing open comments.

    But I think it's a bit much to suggest that it's *unfair* to observe that there is crackpottery in the comments there. It's also a bit much to suggest that pointing out the endless crackpottery in comments has the effect of making the blog on the whole not be technically serious.

    You can call that "coming down" on them. But the diagnosis is accurate.

    Of course some regular posters posts are more interesting than others. So: yes, some things at WUWT are mostly technically ok and get corrected when that's found. Others not so much. Everyone is allowed to budget their time and decide what they want to read.

  274. Dale S,
    "I think it's unfair to come down on WUWT for oft-refuted arguments showing up repeatedly in *comments*, whether those are from skydragons or alarmists."
    .
    Not sure why you think it unfair to note the truth. WUWT does have some very non-technical posts (as does this blog), and that's perfectly OK. But the technical posts are VERY uneven in quality, and *both* some posts and many of the comments include the same wacky arguments that have raged at WUWT since it was started. If you make a reasoned comment about a post, the chances are very good it will attract multiple wacky (and aggressive) comments…. which are pointless to reply to, since that will bring only more wacky comments. A useful exchange of information is difficult in the sea of nonsense you always find in the comments.
    .
    I had a couple of guest posts at WUWT before I realized it was a waste of time to post there. One crazy thread from years ago is illustrative: a guest post claimed that solid CO2 can form in Antarctica due to the very low temperatures there. A few people tried (in vain) to explain in the comments that was impossible because the partial pressure of CO2 in the atmosphere is very low, and the sublimation temperature for solid CO2 at that partial pressure is far lower than any possible temperature in Antarctica. It was a waste of everyone's time. I asked Anthony via email to consider having all technical posts pre-screen for obvious rubbish. He was not interested. The lack of quality control makes WUWT not a serious technical blog, even if *some* posts are serious and worth reading. It is a S/N ratio problem, and the noise, unfortunately, overwhelms the signal.

  275. Steve,
    .
    Nothing you're saying is incorrect as usual.
    .
    I suspect WUWT is often a first stop for people who:
    1. Usually (often?) aren't all that left leaning. I can't actually support this idea with any evidence, it's more of a hunch.
    2. who know absolutely nothing about climate science but who become interested in it for whatever reason.
    .
    It's not a place without value for people new to the whole shebang I think. People who visit with reasonable persistence and intelligence start to pick up what's reasonable, what's less reasonable, and what's rubbish on both sides. Eventually they move on. At least, that's how it worked for me.
    .
    Probably it *is* a place without much value to people who've already sorted through all this.
    .
    Maybe. I haven't really thought this through, just ideas that came to mind.
    .
    [Edit: I still call myself a denier, even though the substance of my position actually makes me a lukewarmer who doesn't deny much of anything except CAGW. Partially a holdover from the old days, partially for social / political reasons.]

  276. mark bofill,
    Thanks. You don’t seem any kind of denier, since you appear reality centered. If you want to see denial in action, read a couple of posts and comment threads at Ken Rice’s blog (called ATTP, but I think better would be MIR…“Malthus in Rage”). Most everyone denies reality with alarming frequency: they can’t accept the reality that the world is just not going to abandon fossil fuel use in the near term, nor economic growth (independent of time frame) to instead live in a green paradise of social justice (AKA poverty). Most won’t even accept that nuclear power is the technically obvious path toward substantial reduction in fossil fuel use, even though that is their desired outcome! I visit the blog for the dark humor content, and I am never disappointed, but it is useless to try to comment there.

  277. mark,
    What you say is true. Some people will certainly find it valuable that there are places where they can read contrary ideas even if that place also attracts a certain level of crackpottery. The problem is that the alternatives are moderation at a level that wipes out *all* contrary ideas *or* a quite active main blogger who engages the crackpottery on a technical level to explain why it's wrong. The former isn't good. The latter is difficult and time consuming. So it's rare for blogs that permit contrary ideas to exist and not have some level of crackpottery.

    I think it's better for them to exist than the opposite. I know "some" (e.g. the person at RC who seems upset that somehow Nic isn't going over to WUWT and somehow stemming the craziness) thinks all sorts of harm is done by the mere existence of these comments on a blog. I don't think that. I think as long as we have free speed (which is a political good) attempts to utterly surpress them will fail. Having them appear some place where those who want to rebut them can find them means those wishing to rebut have a chance to learn WHAT they even need to rebut. (The alternative is these things are all spread out over reddit and 4Chan. The arguments will still exist and spread. Those who wish to rebut don't even know WHAT they need to rebut.)

    That's one reason I don't mind the existence of WUWT despite the level of crackpottery in comments..

    At the same time, I don't accept it if someone says it's somehow unfair to point out that the level of crackpottery in comments does make it hard to take seriously technically. I also don't want to engage in comments there because… well.. oy.

    Obviously, in the past years, my blog is no longer technical, but for an entirely different reason. I'm just not posting anything technical.

  278. Speaking of alternative energy sources, the BBC reports on maybe-ten-years-away fusion. https://www.bbc.com/news/business-46219656

    They cite the old line about fusion always being 30 years in the future — I recall reading a Scientific American article back in the 70s with such expectations. Stop me if you've heard this before, but one company's CEO claims, "We expect to have energy gain capability by 2022 and be supplying energy to the grid by 2030."

    [It's interesting that one of the links in that article is to one they wrote just last year entitled "Fusion energy pushed back to beyond 2050", referring to EIROfusion. https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-40558758 ]

  279. Thanks lucia.
    >>At the same time, I don't accept it if someone says it's somehow unfair to point out that the level of crackpottery in comments does make it hard to take seriously technically.
    Agreed.
    .
    >>…thinks all sorts of harm is done by the mere existence of these comments on a blog. I don't think that.
    I also strongly agree with [you regarding] this. One of the ways I learn is to put forward an idea that seems to make sense in discourse with others. Almost invariably, at least some part of what I'm saying is incorrect in some way, and some kind (or not kind, doesn't really matter, but since they do me a service I try to be grateful) soul will help me scrape some of the mud off the idea. Or demonstrate why the core of the idea is scrap worthy. This really is a really good thing; otherwise people like me end up wasting time and effort thinking about putting payloads into orbit by ramming into them with 747's, to choose a recent example 🙂
    .
    >>The problem is that the alternatives are moderation at a level that wipe out *all* contrary ideas *or* a quite active main blogger who engages the crackpottery on a technical level to explain why it's wrong. The former isn't good. The latter is difficult and time consuming.
    Absolutely. SkS is an example of the former. There is little discussion on the threads there because to a large extent anyone posting anything …contrary and incorrect, or even contrary and *possibly incorrect* lets say, gets moderated out. It's a poor environment for discussion.

  280. Mark bofill,
    The other problem with the heavy moderation is that people who have even slightly different ideas are aware of the moderation and they know alternate ideas are moderated. So they don't trust the discourse is unbiased, and don't believe the level of agreement at that blog is evidence of agreement. Of course they are correct in these conclusions.

  281. Lucia,
    .
    Yeah. That's true too.
    .
    Plus they're boring.
    .
    But again, it's a free net. I've got no issue with people running boring, heavily moderated blogs, I mostly ignore those. Who can say. Maybe there are people who love that sort of environment, and more power to them I guess if they do. I'm just glad there's a wide enough variety that I can find the sort I like.

  282. The problem with WUWT is the same as Vox, they mix good and crackpot content and there is no easy way to tell the difference. The crackpot content tends to correlate highly with ideology.
    .
    Fox picked up the story on OHC.
    https://www.foxnews.com/science/error-in-major-climate-study-revealed-warming-not-higher-than-expected
    .
    "A study co-author took responsibility for the error. “I accept responsibility for these oversights because it was my role to ensure that details of the measurements were correctly understood and taken up by coauthors,” study co-author Ralph Keeling wrote in an explanation of the revision."
    .
    Gracefully acknowledged errors won't be gracefully acknowledged in controversial areas I guess.

  283. According to a federal judge, a press pass for the White House press conferences is a right, not a privilege. So, assuming the White House does give the CNN reporter a pass again, is the judge going to order the President and the Press Secretary to take his questions?

    From what I can glean from this NYT article, probably not:

    https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/16/business/media/cnn-acosta-trump.html

    I suspect that this is something else that's going to backfire on CNN in particular and the White House press corps in general.

  284. I like that our laws tilts towards outrageous protection for the press. I had no idea that:
    "The administration’s process for barring the correspondent “is still so shrouded in mystery that the government could not tell me” who made the decision, Judge Kelly said from the bench. Taking away the pass that gave Mr. Acosta access to the White House amounted to a violation of his right to a fair and transparent process, the judge ruled."
    I had no idea that the President had a legal responsibility to give reporters a fair and transparent process before barring obnoxious reporters. I wonder what law that is.
    Still, good enough I guess.

  285. > a press pass for the White House press conferences is a right, not a privilege.

    The judge did not declare a 1st amendment right to a press pass, but said taking it away was a 5th amendment rights violation. It is not a final ruling, but a temporary injunction.

  287. DeWittt,
    The strange thing about the White House press conferences is that they don’t have multiple mics which are turned on only when a repoter has been called on. When someone acts like Acosta, just turn off his mic and turn on a different one. Hard for them to continue without an audio feed. Trump is crazy to personally hold press conferences at all; once a week (say late Friday afternoon) for a couple of hours with Sara Sanders seems about right for a press corps that is adamantly opposed to the administration.
    .
    I have come to the conclusion that many (many!) Federal Judges are just very stupid people.

  288. SteveF (Comment #172250): "I have come to the conclusion that many (many!) Federal Judges are just very stupid people."

    Not stupid. But like many smart people, many have become educated idiots. They are used to applying convoluted reasoning to a large body of arcane knowledge. So much so, that commonsense and basic principles get ignored and they find it easy to get the result they prefer.

  291. Lucia,
    Do you think that because it is a reasonable thing to do, or because you have read it will be done?

  292. SteveF,
    Because you brought it up. Then it occurs to me that it is possible to do. I think it is entirely reasonable to do– just at it is reasonable for the person making an appearance to the press to decide who to call on and to say when they have finished with that interviewer. Since someone– the guy at CNN– seems intent on violating the protocol that he stop holding the floor when asked, and refused to hand back the mike, and a judge is ruling that the WH can't just kick reporters out (w/o 'due process') I think the WH needs to use mikes that can be deactivated, and deactivate when a member of the press refuses to conform to protocols.

    Even if later judges rule differently, the WH can do. I'm sure they will in future.

    It seems to be the only way to deal with this. Obviously, while the CNN guy was refusing to yield the mike, other reporters didn't have it either. The interview system is going to break down if one reporter can simply take and hold the floor refusing to yield to anyone else.

  293. Harold,
    Thread winner. 🙂 I have *never* wondered about such a thing, but now that you've brought it to my attention I'm consumed by morbid curiosity. Finishing up work right now but I'm definitely looking at that later tonight!

  294. Case of Sherrill v Knight, a reporter for The Nation challenged a denial of White House access by the Secret Service. Ruling said it could not be done without due process. Here Acosta already had a pass and is challenging removal.

  295. HaroldW,

    In the Game of Thrones novels, several heads were dipped in tar of some sort for preservation. But in one case, it was also to make it harder to positively identify the victims. But there is no mention of what sort of tar it was. Pine tar would be an obvious choice, though, in the absence of petroleum seeps. Some sort of tar, also known as pitch, is essential in the manufacture of wooden ships. Making charcoal, which produces tar, would also be essential in making iron and steel.

  296. > Making charcoal, which produces tar, would also be essential in making iron and steel.

    I think they use dragon flame to make strong steel. 😉

  297. MikeN
    > a denial of White House access by the Secret Service
    Turning off microphones would not deny access. He would still be in the room, able to hear questions and answers. He just couldn't take over, which is a different thing.

  298. I presume the microphones are given out to people the President has indicated he wants to take a question from.
    First step would be to send Acosta to Coventry, just do not acknowledge him or give him the microphone when he puts his hand up to ask a question.

    Only problem would be a set up from his pals or co workers who might take the microphone then hand it on to him.

    Grandstanding in this way would be hard to avoid though would show Acosta as rude and a reason to exclude him. Maybe then have the microphone able to be switched off as a backup.

  299. Angech,
    Acosta refused to relinquish a microphone and kept demanding his questions be answered. If the microphone power or pick up was cut remotely, that would have solved that problem.

  300. True.
    Enjoying all the blogs a the moment.Have not had a look at Tamino or SOD for a while.
    "I visit the blog for the dark humor content, and I am never disappointed,"
    There is light humor as well, I think?
    Even better is the Sea Ice Forum with the slapstick on 2018 sea ice area and extent data. The belated extent recovery is a bit like getting a pie in the face for the true believers.
    WUWT having a change at the moment due to Anthony having been caught up in those fire problems unfortunately and CTM taking over for quite a while.
    Rudd has a post up. Does he ever comment over here?

  301. angech,
    Light humor at ATTP? No, like all true believers, they take themselves and their cause far too seriously to find anything funny…. the end of the world, don’t ya know, is never funny. They are utterly unaware how disconnected from reality they are, and I do find that funny.

  302. Nic Lewis has another post on Resplany et al up at Judith’s blog. It has more detail on the problems with the paper’s methodology, but goes on to point out that the correction Keeling posted at RealClimate shaded the value for oxidative ratio for land carbon to *lower* that the reference he used to justify reducing the value from 1.10 to 1.05…. the paper Keeling referenced actually said 1.06… which would have lowered the corrected estimate of heat gain significantly. To me, it really does look like the authors were (are) under a lot of pressure, and doing their best to ‘save’ whatever part of the paper they can. I think a quick withdrawal of the paper would have been better for them, and for the reputation of ‘climate science’. Too much to ask of true believers I guess.

  303. angech,

    The sea ice doom and gloomers need to start looking at global sea ice rather than concentrating on the Arctic. While the Arctic isn't melting as fast and may even be showing signs of recovery, Antarctic Sea ice is not only no longer increasing, but has dropped significantly. As a result, global sea ice is continuing its relatively steady decline.

    This may be what I've been expecting to see for some time, a shift in ocean currents southward. I think it's linked to the AMO Index, which shows signs of peaking in its apparent 60+ year cycle. I wouldn't be surprised to also see some moderation in the rate of increase of NH air temperatures as well.

  304. Also, those who are trying to link California drought to anthropogenic climate change have to deal with the problem that far more severe and longer droughts occurred in the last 1200 years than what we've seen in the instrumental period.

    "Paleoclimatic data for southwestern North America provide extensive documentation of past droughts (21, 22). Records collectively suggest a broader range of hydroclimatic variability than contained in instrumental records, particularly with respect to drought extent, duration, and severity. Several notable droughts extended across much of western North America, including severe and sustained droughts in the late 16th century and the medieval period, between 900–1300 AD (23–25). In this period, episodes of extensive severe drought are documented by a variety of proxy data, but most dramatically by evidence of trees rooted in lakes and river courses in the Sierra Nevada and northwestern Great Basin (26, 27). These droughts appear to have exceeded the duration and magnitude of any subsequent droughts in western North America (5, 25)."

    http://www.pnas.org/content/107/50/21283

    Note that in this paper there is the usual lip service to anthropogenic climate change by implying that temperature was the causative factor in previous droughts.

  305. > While the Arctic isn't melting as fast and may even be showing signs of recovery,

    Not a problem. Any recovery at the Arctic will still show a long term negative trend, unless ice returns to its long term average. Same argument was made against a global warming pause.

  306. Recounts, what a laugher. The Broward county saga continues. during the machine recount the vote totals came up 2040 votes short of the original count. This gave a net vote difference in the favor of the Republican of about +700 votes. Broward then reported those results 2 minutes past the deadline so they weren't accepted. After the hand recount today apparently the Broward canvassing board decided to use the original higher "correct" vote count instead of the machine recount. I'm not sure what the point of a recount is? Is it look at a series of vote counts over a week and pick the one that favors your outcome and report it? They still don't know where the 2040 votes are, but claim they are "definitely in the building somewhere".
    .
    What I don't get at all is how unimaginative the media is here, not even speculating the new vote count may be the correct version and taking a clearly incompetent process at its word. It's barely even critical about it. It's just so strange. Snipes then was quoted as saying that criticism about the process and her was probably racism. The media doesn't even write a ubiquitous "Snipes claimed without evidence …" article.
    .
    In the infamous 2000 recount my county had a similar problem with a lower vote count on the recount (it barely changed the vote difference though). They investigated it and determined that the original vote count had inadvertently counted one polling station twice, and the recount was correct.
    .
    The media seems convinced the Republican will win the recount but doesn't say why they are convinced of this. They seem to have inside knowledge of recount totals they can't report.

  307. MIkeN,
    >Same argument was made against a global warming pause.

    I'm all for critcizing those who insisted there was no pause because blah…blah…. The pause happened. But one does have to admit the pause ended and temperature resumed rising, which is what I expected.

    Quite likely, artic melt will resume. That's what I think will happen.

  308. lucia and MikeN,

    Global sea ice, i.e. the daily sum of Antarctic and Arctic ice has never stopped decreasing on average during the satellite imaging period as I mentioned above. Over the last couple of decades, Antarctic sea ice was actually increasing, but the decrease in Arctic sea ice more than made up for it. That meant that Arctic sea ice was decreasing faster than expected. But that rapid decrease was then taken as the norm while claiming that the Antarctic was somehow sheltered from climate change and the increase there didn't mean anything.

    So then there were claims that the Arctic would be ice free almost any day now. There was actually one prediction that it would happen in 2013. That's likely going to get pushed off for a while. It may yet happen. It might well have happened at some point during the Holocene Optimum 5,000 to 9,000 years ago. Polar bears are still here. But then they weren't being hunted from airplanes back then.

  309. Tom Scharf (Comment #172270): "Recounts, what a laugher."

    It looks like both Gillum and Nelson have now conceded, so all the Democrat shenanigans have come up short. They will have to do better next time.

  310. lucia (Comment #172271): "The pause happened. But one does have to admit the pause ended and temperature resumed rising, which is what I expected".

    The pause may not have ended, temperatures are just about back to where they were 15 years ago:
    http://www.drroyspencer.com/2018/11/uah-global-temperature-update-for-october-2018-0-22-deg-c/
    But the pause was certainly interrupted. We shall have to wait and see if temperatures are rising or if the pause is back.

    I also expect temperatures to eventually start rising. My guess is about 5-10 years after the AMO shifts to its cool phase, which might happen soon.

  311. MikeM,
    What's the 15 year least squares trend? I could calculate. But I'm guessing not zero. I don't go by instantaneous temperatures.

    But… sure, If it stays here for 5 years or so, then we might decree the pause did not end. Right now, it looks like it's still "over".

  312. I've seen billboards claiming that sea ice is decreasing by 15%/year. That may be true for September in the Arctic for 2012, but it's much, much less for global annual average sea ice. That is decreasing at a rate of 0.3%/year or about 10% since 1979 in round numbers. With the global annual average north of 20 million square kilometers, that's still going to take a long time to get to zero. I do see a lot more variability year to year in the last decade, though.

  313. lucia,

    I think ENSO makes a 15 year trend not mean very much. Given the somewhat chaotic nature of the temperature record, one would expect fairly long runs of up, down or sideways with exactly the same underlying trend, if that's even the correct term to use. IOW, I think there is a case to be made that the 'pause' was an artifact.

  314. DeWitt,
    Sure. But if someone is going to deem that the pause is ended because the current temperature are instantaneously back to the level 15 years ago, I'm going to ask them to look at the trend.

    If they want to find the 20 year trend, fine. That's not going to show the pause persisting either.

    I agree the case can be made the pause may have been an artifact. But MikeM is trying to suggest it's continuing, which is, in a sense, the opposite of what you are suggesting.

  315. lucia (Comment #172275): "If it stays here for 5 years or so, then we might decree the pause did not end."

    I agree. We sure don't know now.

    lucia: "Right now, it looks like it's still "over"."

    Maybe. Maybe not. I don't go by instantaneous temperature.
    .
    lucia (Comment #172278) : "But if someone is going to deem that the pause is ended because the current temperature are instantaneously back to the level 15 years ago, I'm going to ask them to look at the trend."

    OK, so where is the trend?

    It is not zero of course. But I doubt is is significantly different from zero, especially if you account for correlation in the data.

  316. DeWitt Payne (Comment #172277): "IOW, I think there is a case to be made that the 'pause' was an artifact."

    Karl tried to argue that, but I am very skeptical that it is just a measurement error.

  318. DeWitt, Lucia,

    I continue to believe you can account for known influences that generate much of the noise in the trend: ENSO, volcanos, and some sharp temperature spikes (same magnitude as ENSO in the tropics) of a couple of months duration, both up and down, and which only happen in the northern hemisphere’s winter…. not in the tropics and not in the southern hemisphere. After taking these into account, the ‘underlying trend’ really is much less noisy, so you have a better chance of seeing if ‘the pause’ is over. IIRC, a back of envelope estimate for the cleaned up 40 year trend is ~0.15C per decade.
    .
    The sharp temperature spikes are very interesting, and I have never heard them described or explained.

  319. DeWitt Payne (Comment #172267
    “The sea ice doom and gloomers need to start looking at global sea ice rather than concentrating on the Arctic. While the Arctic isn't melting as fast and may even be showing signs of recovery, Antarctic Sea ice is not only no longer increasing, but has dropped significantly. As a result, global sea ice is continuing its relatively steady decline.”
    We only have 40 odd years of satellite data.
    Antarctic had been high and getting higher for most of that time.
    Arctic had been shrinking severely most of that time.
    The rapid and massive changes in the last few years giving total ice a change of 5- 7 SD with known cause other than the El Niño is astounding.
    No hot sun no loss of cloud cover that anyone cared to report. Hence, in the absence of rational answers for what on SD should have been a one in 500 year event or worse, one can only conclude natural variation and therefore a complete lack of understanding by scientist of how variable the ice can be.

  320. Lucia, thank you for noting that a pause seemed to have occurred.
    My understanding is that you have to have equal weight under the line as well as above the line for the pause to reform.
    Hence just getting temp back to the level of 15 years ago once is not enough.
    We need a La Niña with reduced temps for at least 18 more months.
    Some comments. The pause usually dates from 1998 because that was quite a spike and gave lots of room to accomodate pauses from then on.
    If it does reform then it will be much longer than 18 years and as a consequence may extend back very quickly to 1997 or even 1996.
    Something like this will be the only rational way to disprove CAGW though it might also reduce belief in some AGW which would be a necessary shame.
    I cannot believe how rapidly the Arctic is trying to freeze the last 3 weeks even though I said above no one has really come to terms with the wide range of natural variability.
    Total sea ice as DeWitt said is low, third lowest but all it takes is the Antarctic to return to average and it will be back to normal.
    If only.

  321. The pause was mostly just an indicator that there are long enduring natural processes at work that haven't quite been accounted for yet. It was important because the activists were claiming the temperature runup before the pause was likely to continue at the cherry picked rate and get even worse. "It's worse than we thought" was quoted every day back then. The 4C to 6C by 2100 prediction became much less likely with the pause in place.
    .
    What's not clear to me is whether volcanic activity is normal post Pinatubo or whether some heating is due to lower than expected volcanic activity. I've never seen any data on this.

  322. angech,
    The main problem with diagnosing "the pause" is getting a good definition of precisely what it is. There certainly was a fairly long — serveral ENSO cycles in time– during which temperatures seemed to either be oscillating about mean or increasing at a slow rate. It went on long enough for lots of people to be insisting warming "stopped" and for people to write papers about the event. That period was called "the pause". In that sense, I certainly think "the pause" happened. It shouldn't take much for someone to admit that period of time happened.

    I know other people might have other ideas about what the term "the pause" means. Certainly, people have disaggrements about what the existence of that period means.

    To say "the pause" continues, I really think you need to have temperature remain low enough to have the trend of ordinary least squares fits to annual average temperature T vs time become statistically indistinguishable from zero starting around the time people consider the beginning of "the pause". That could be 1998. It could be 2000. I don't think that matters much. Right now, eyeballing, we are not there. Maybe we'll get there. I doubt it, but that's a prediction. So we just have to wait and see.

    Obviously, one could try to figure out if the recent rise is mostly due to ENSO by correcting for that. I certainly think that would knock down the trend, but I doubt it will get to zero.

    I've made my self pretty busy recently, so I'm not going to do the ENSO correction to see.

  325. MikeN –
    In #172274, Mike M. cited the UAH TLT series for his statement that "temperatures are just about back to where they were 15 years ago."

    I think that initiated the topic of temperature trend.

  328. MikeN where is the evidence that temperature is the same as or lower than in 1998?
    Most data sets have an El Niño spike in 1998.
    That was, at the time, an extremely high rise. Temperatures fell afterwards possibly up to a degree C. So we are speaking about quite a large range.
    Temperature gradients range from 0.12 C per decade UAH to ?

  329. I didn't realize that UAH diverged from the other sets so much. GISTEMP shows current temperatures above 1998, and hasn't even had a single month below 1998 annual temperature in 4 years.

  330. MikeN,

    It's not just UAH that is different from GISTEMP. RSS v4.0 currently shows temperatures below the 1998 peak anomaly for the lower troposphere of 0.892 degrees. RSS v4.0 has a significantly higher trend for TLT than UAH 0.19 degrees/decade compared to 0.13 degrees/decade for UAH v 6.0 or 0.12 degrees/decade for RSS v 3.3. The annual average anomaly for 2017 with RSS v4 was slightly higher than for 1998 0.63 compared to 0.58. For UAH v 6.0 the annual average for 1998 was 0.48 degrees and for 2017 was 0.37 degrees. The 2018 averages for both UAH and RSS should be lower than for 2017.

    Eyeballing the RSS plot, any pause is not very obvious. But the least squares linear trend is going to be influenced by the double peak El Nino in 2017 and 2018 and volcanic cooling in the early years.

  331. MikeN (Comment #172293): "I didn't realize that UAH diverged from the other sets so much. GISTEMP shows current temperatures above 1998, and hasn't even had a single month below 1998 annual temperature in 4 years."

    As DeWitt points out, it may be GIS that is different. I think that may be because it has been massaged to remove the pause (e.g., Karl et al.). Also, I think the satellite data sets show much more distinct El Nino peaks than the surface data.

  332. As Spencer has pointed out before, if you want to know what the climate is doing it is better to examine the entire atmosphere (and the entire ocean) versus just measuring the surface. The surface is the most relevant to humans and there is more historical data for surface measurements. It is likely that if we had good historical records for the entire volume of the climate then we would understand the surface variations better. People who dismiss atmospheric measurements are doing so out of bad faith for the most part. Once we have 60 years worth of ocean/atmospheric measurements we should have a more accurate prediction of the future.

  334. Tom Scharf,

    The silver lining is that 50% of highly cited psychology studies do replicate. It could have been a lot worse. Did you catch that online bettors were quite good at sniffing out the studies that wouldn't replicate? Maybe that should be part of the project approval process.

  335. DeWitt,
    I wonder if the 50% of studies which do replicate agree with each other, or if they are, as I suspect, a bit random. Garbage subject, garbage papers.

  336. MikeN (Comment #172293)
    I didn't realize that UAH diverged from the other sets so much. GISTEMP shows current temperatures above 1998, and hasn't even had a single month below 1998 annual temperature in 4 years.
    –
    Must be hot in USA or somewhere then. we are freezing over here, sort of. Oceans are warmish.

  337. I thought the bettors thing was pretty interesting, although not entirely surprising. The more surprising the result, the less likely it will replicate. A rule of "things the social justice left wish were true" not replicating would also be a good start to making money.

  338. >50% of highly cited psychology studies fail to replicate has ironically been replicated.

    And fitting the theory, the second paper has not been replicated.

  339. There's no obvious pause in the BEST global anomaly plot either. It's a more or less linear increase starting in about 1975. Surprisingly, to me at least, the 1998 El Nino doesn't really stand out in the BEST data. The recent El Nino shows what looks like a much higher peak compared to the underlying trend than 1998.

  340. DeWitt,
    I suspect the reason bettors can tell is they are able to notice when the experiment amounts to datamining. Some experiments have so many things tallied that one is bound to find something that becomes "statistically significant" provided they ignore the Bonferroni correction. Whether due to incompetence of guile, it's easy enough for authors to not report that they looked at the possibility of correlation of anything with anything and just reported the things that came up positive.

    Bettors could look at these sorts of studies and think, "Hey, they reported that X12 is found to predict Y with a statistically significant result. But if I look at the survey instrument in the appendix, I can see the studied whether X1, X2…. X2 might predict Y. This could just be the result of fishing. " That result is going to be less likely to replicate than if the authors had gone out to study if X12 predicts Y without throwing in a whole bunch of other things.

    Also, if someone does 20 small inexpensive experiments with low power on different subjects instead of 1 big expensive one with high power there's a good chance one of the 20 low power experiments will be "statistically significant" through random chance. If that happened through random chance, it's likely not to replicate.

    Given the reality of publish or perish, some researchers creating the 20 cheap experiment might not even restrain themselves to looking at plausible or important things. They just think anything that seems potentially interesting is worth testing. It is worth testing to some extent. But the ease with which it's possible to dream up things that might predict other things in psychology means lots of 'pilot' scale stuff is bound to be done consequently lots of false positives are going to happen.

  341. DeWitt Payne (Comment #172305)
    There's no obvious pause in the BEST global anomaly plot either. It's a more or less linear increase starting in about 1975. Surprisingly, to me at least, the 1998 El Nino doesn't really stand out in the BEST data.
    –
    The BEST plot, like that of GISS, is not the same plot in 2018 that it was in 2010. Countless revisions, sometimes daily are mandated by systems put in place by people like Zeke. He acknowledged that keeping the present correct involves cooling the past.
    Always? Well at least while global temps are going up.
    My feeling is that if we do have a pronounced cooling trend of say a degree for 3 years the same algorithms might restore the 1998 peak but that is wishful thinking.

  342. lucia (Comment #172306) I suspect the reason bettors can tell is they are able to notice when the experiment amounts to datamining. Some experiments have so many things tallied that one is bound to find something that becomes "statistically significant" provided they ignore the Bonferroni correction.
    –
    Have a lovely little book on gambling and racing. One investigation. 700 races, fields 8-18 horses. Tote takes 15%. Only 2 bets get you over money back, The second last for a place and the 6th for a win.
    Tried it but alas it must have been "the result of fishing".
    Even if it had worked the amount of time involved, the large chance of a prolonged run of losses and the very small actual average return makes it useless practically.
    –
    There is an Australian guy runs a Modern Art museum in Tasmania who has perfected and used an arbitrage gambling system but that is out of the range of everyone [99.999999999] percent of people.

  345. Andrew Kennett –
    Savage indeed.
    "For example, when over 50 nutrition claims were examined, “100% of the observational claims failed to replicate” and five conjectures were statistically significant “in the opposite direction” "

  346. I have taken part in two nutritional trials. The first one did involve measuring everything I ate. (weigh your intake and accurately weigh everything you put into every recipe you make). 6 weeks of that and I said I would never do it again. However, friend in dietary dept twisted my arm (and my wifes) and did again a year later. The interesting part though was that 6 months later they asked me to fill in dietary questionaire on what I eaten in BOTH studies. They had little faith in dietary surveys and were testing it. Lack of faith was justified. Doing it properly though is just hard. Doing it for more than 6 weeks and your subjects rebel. You start cooking on basis of what is easy to weigh.

  347. Phil,
    I took part in a survey to study a dishwasher. They brought in the new dishwasher and I was supposed to run it "normally", lot things, take photos. I can't remember how long it went on for.

    After a while, I didn't want to admit I'd filled the dishwasher, and run it…. I kept at it. But oy! What a freakin' pain in the butt. Especially if family came over and I wanted to run it twice in a short span of time and needed to log things after unloading at 9:30 pm before reloading to run before the morning.

    Eating would have been so much worse. It would have been so very tempting to not log snacks. It would be easy to "forget" that I bought a candy bar, coffee, donut or what have you at some snack time during the day. And just as easy to "forget" to log a cinnamon roll, handful of nuts or glass of wine consumed while watching tv. Needless to say, "remembering" the next morning would be even less reliable than if I logged the night before.

    (Our grocery stores sells wonderful packages of mixed nuts. The vanish. Just turning in my grocery receipts would be somewhat more reliable than my logging the "few" nuts we eat each night. Those things disappear. OTOH, they people doing the study would think we ate a lot more lettuce than we actually eat. I think at least 50% of the lettuce I buy goes to waste. Other vegetables not so much. But I'm always thinking I should eat green salads, then I don't. )

  348. Hummm…. measuring and documenting everything you eat sounds a bit like being in prison…. so maybe dietary studies could be accurately conducted in prisons, where presumably it is possible (at least in theory) to precisely control and document what people eat.

  349. SteveF,
    I'm pretty sure soem dietary studies have been conducted in prisons!

    I really wouldn't want to carry around a notebook to log everything I ate. I suppose it might be easier now with a phone based ap than in the past. Still, logging would definitely also affect how much I ate.

    I'm absolutely sure subjects involved in a study would cheat both out of laziness and out of not wanting to admit how much of certain "bad foods" they ate. ("Bad" would probably include cake, donuts, candy bars and liquor. )

  350. This second part study, no recommendations, repeats claims of up to 5C warming by 2100 from 1850's, fear gloom, doom, plagues, floods droughts, SLR.
    So we are doomed unless we all jump off a cliff and instantly stop using fossil fuels?
    At least they released it on the coldest day ever in parts of eastern USA.
    DeWitt, thanks. Any thoughts on how the ice can refreeze so quickly this year. No one predicted the late slowdown or the massive increase despite all our currents and SST. Are they just incompetent or is natural variability just so much greater than everyone is prepared to admit.
    Should stop now, it has done enough increasing.

  351. angech,
    “So we are doomed unless we all jump off a cliff and instantly stop using fossil fuels?”
    .
    Nah, we just need to accept a green socialist ‘paradise’ of global social justice (AKA poverty). Nobody is going to accept this ‘solution’.
    .
    5C above pre-industrial by 2100 is simply nutty; not going to happen… a bit over 2C is probably closer. But the truth is fossil fuel use will for certain have fallen substantially long befor 2100. So the rate of warming will, if anything, drop considerably later this century. In spite of the endless rants from climate chicken littles, humanity will work it out.

  352. SteveF,

    The worst case scenario, which the alarmists usually refer to as business as usual, is something like the old A1F1. As I remember, and I haven't looked at it in a while, it assumes that fossil fuel use and population will still be increasing in 2100. To put it mildly, that seems unlikely.

    However, you have to drastically reduce carbon emissions to get atmospheric CO2 to even level out any time soon. Soon being sometime in the next fifty years or so. If emissions stop increasing and remain level, atmospheric CO2 will continue to climb, just not quite as fast.

  353. DeWitt,
    "However, you have to drastically reduce carbon emissions to get atmospheric CO2 to even level out any time soon."
    .
    I think we have been through this before. It all depends on how accurate an approximation is that green plant sequestration plus ocean uptake. A reasonable first guess is 50% to 60% of current emissions are being 'sequestered'. So if there were an instantaneous drop in emissions of 40% to 50% of current emissions, then there would be a immediate halt in the rise if atmospheric CO2. Of course, that is a relatively short term result (decadal). Further reductions in global in emissions would be needed to continue reducing atmospheric CO2 past a year or so.

  354. SteveF,

    Yes we have been through this before and you're still wrong. It only looks like ~50% of each year's emissions are immediately absorbed. But that's not the way it works. Only about 13% of each year's emissions are absorbed in the first year and less each year after that. It takes ~30 years before half the emission is absorbed. It takes nearly 200 years to absorb 70%.

    I've run the model for freezing emissions at 50% of 2005 emissions in 2006. The CO2 concentration still increases by 0.14ppmv in 2006 from 379 to 379.14 ppmv. That rate increases each year until 2049 at a maximum of slightly over 0.66 ppmv/year. But even in 2100, the rate of increase is still over 0.62 ppmv/year. If you want to hold atmospheric CO2 constant, you have to reduce emissions by slightly over 50% the first year and continue to reduce emissions further each year after that.

    If 50% of each year's emissions were, in fact, absorbed the succeeding year, then atmospheric CO2 wouldn't have increased much at all. We would also be either overwhelmed by biomass or the ocean pH would have dropped a whole lot or some of both.

    Since the ocean mixing time is on the order of 1,000 years, it takes a very long time for the atmosphere to equilibrate to a given level of emissions. It took about 100,000 years for the temperature spike from the (apparent) carbon emission that triggered the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum to return to the baseline temperature.

    Btw, the polynomial equation of the Berne model for calculating atmospheric CO2 from a given injection of carbon in one of the IPCC reports, which I used in my spreadsheet, is a relatively short term approximation of the actual GEOCARB model.

    http://climatemodels.uchicago.edu/geocarb/

  355. The rate of change of emission cuts is pretty steep for the first few years, but then it drops off some. Specifically:

    2006 46.6%
    2007 40.9%
    2008 37.5%
    2009 35.5%
    2010 34.0%
    2011 33.0%
    2012 32.2%

    So if you cut emissions by 60% and maintained that rate, you'd only see a drop in atmospheric CO2 in the first two years and then it would start going back up again slowly. Cut by 70% and maintain and the initial drop would be steeper. It would take longer, but eventually atmospheric CO2 concentration would start going up again.

    I've seen some speculation that fossil fuel demand, rather than supply, may be peaking. But even if that's true, I doubt we will see a drop in global emissions of even 20% for decades, absent some breakthrough in energy generation and storage or a global catastrophe resulting in a massive reduction in population.

  356. DeWitt,
    If you believe the Berne model is accurate, then the consequences you describe of course follow. I just think the Berne model isn’t accurate at all. Most of the CO2 uptake is driven by thermohaline circulation, with cold water absorption at high latitudes in winter dominating, not (exponentially decaying) diffusion down the thermocline. The Berne model is “consistent” with the past…. and so are GCMs, and for exactly the same reason: it is easy to fit a model to match the past, no matter how crazy-wrong the model is. I think neither type of model is credible.

  357. DeWitt,
    I failed to note two things:
    1) Land sequestration can’t plausibly have any short term exponential decline…. forests don’t know that they need to exponentially slow down their CO2 uptake (in response to higher atmospheric CO2) to satisfy the Berne model’s exponential decay rate.
    2) My original point stands: the rate of future forcing increase from CO2 will for certain decline, even if there were a continuing (but slower) increase in atmospheric CO2, if only because the forcing is proportional to the log of CO2, not linear.

  358. SteveF,

    The Bern model is both consistent, reasonably accurate and based on simple physics. Comparing it to AOGCM''s is nugatory. A pulsed exponential decay model with a decay rate of 2.5%/year also gives a reasonably good fit to the atmospheric CO2 concentration and emission data.

    http://euanmearns.com/the-half-life-of-co2-in-earths-atmosphere-part-1/

    The amount of water in the thermohaline circulation is small compared to the total volume of the ocean. It's not even all that large compared to the cold deep water. Which is, of course, why the mixing time, 1,000 years, is so long and the half life of CO2 is about 30 years, not one year. The cold deep water in the northern Pacific, for example, hasn't been in direct contact with the atmosphere for about 1,000 years according to 14C dating. The North Atlantic turns over a bit faster, but it's still on the order of 300 years older than the surface.

  359. SteveF,

    I haven't done kinetics in a while, but my memory says that if reaction rate is proportional to concentration, you get exponential decay of that concentration. Plant growth, as I recall, is somewhat proportional to CO2 concentration, assuming no other limits to growth.

  360. DeWitt,
    I think we will have to just disagree. Clearly the Berne model is consistent with historical data, it’s just not physically plausible, and so can’t make plausible projections.

  361. DeWitt,
    Your description of the Berne model sounds oddly familiar (‘based on simple physics’)… a bit like the common descriptions of GCMs. And that is most certainly not nugatory.

  362. SteveF (Comment #172331): "1) Land sequestration can’t plausibly have any short term exponential decline…. forests don’t know that they need to exponentially slow down their CO2 uptake (in response to higher atmospheric CO2) to satisfy the Berne model’s exponential decay rate."

    As DeWitt points out, a linear increase of uptake with concentration leads to exponential decay. So that aspect of the model is perfectly plausible. I think the uncertainties have to do with saturation effects. For chemical equilibria with the oceans, those are on a sound basis. But for land biota, not so much. For the biological pump in the ocean, I think the models still assume an invariant Redfield ratio; that is, they assume that atmospheric CO2 has no effect on the ratio of carbon to nitrogen and phosphorus in precipitating dead organic matter. But from what I have read, marine ecologists no longer believe that is correct.
    .
    SteveF: "2) My original point stands: the rate of future forcing increase from CO2 will for certain decline, even if there were a continuing (but slower) increase in atmospheric CO2, if only because the forcing is proportional to the log of CO2, not linear."

    I think that is correct. A continued linear increase in forcing (and therefore T over a sufficiently long time span) is probably an upper bound to what the future holds. That implies a bit under 1.0 C from now to 2100, so maybe 1.9 C total. If that is indeed the upper bound, I don't see a reason for great concern.

  363. SteveF,

    I don't understand why you don't think the Bern model, or any other exponential decay model, is physically plausible. It's basically a solution to a continuous flow, stirred tank problem. That seems to be a very close analog of the problem. Your sketch of a mechanism is not physically plausible to me and is insufficiently detailed to model.

    If CO2 emissions were to completely cease, what do you think the decay curve would look like? Real question.

    An AOGCM is very loosely based on simple physics and requires thinks like non-physical viscosity to not blow up completely. And that's for the atmosphere part. The ocean part is much worse. It is not at all comparable to a relatively simple problem like atmospheric CO2 concentration behavior.

  364. DeWitt, Mike M,
    What I am saying is that CO2 uotake is *nothing* like gradual saturation of liquid in a stirred tank reactor. The solubility pump is closer to a plug flow reactor, with many century residence time. There is zero reason to think ocean uptake is going to display exponential decay at constant atmospheric CO2, and every reason to think the rate of uptake will remain mainly proportional to the atmospheric concentration of CO2 above the pre-industrial atmospheric concentration (above ~280 ppmv). The inventory of CO2 from the industrial revolution until now resides primarily in the deep (and very cold) waters of the north atlantic, not in surface waters everywhere. (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:WOA05_GLODAP_invt_aco2_AYool.png)
    Yes, there has to be some surface disolution most everywhere, but that is small compared to deep/cold water dissolution. It is the relative rate of dissolution at high latitudes to release of CO2 to the atmosphere where upwelling water warms, which dominates the net ocean uptake rate.
    .
    Similar arguments about non-physicality can be made for land sequestration, but there is no need to dig into that here. The Bern model, with four arbitrarily selected decay constants, can easily match the historical trend. That doesn’t make it a reasonable description of the physical processes. The true attraction of the Bern model to ‘climate science’ is that it makes scary projections of very slow drops in atmospheric carbon dioxide, supporting claims of very long term (extreme!) warming “unless we act now!”. IMO, it is rubbish.

  365. DeWitt, Mike M,
    I had a long a detailed comment (apparently) eaten by WordPress… second time in three days; seems it doesn't like my ISP right now. I will try again.
    .
    "It's basically a solution to a continuous flow, stirred tank problem. That seems to be a very close analog of the problem."
    .
    Sure, it is the solution to the stirred tank problem (I worked on stirred tank reactors back in the mid-to-late 1970's). But the physical process in the ocean is *nothing* like a stirred tank. It is a lot closer to a plug-flow reactor with a residence time of multiple centuries. Most of the accumulated CO2 in the oceans resides in deep, cold water, not surface water, and is due to the solubility pump of the thermohaline circulation. (https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/c0/WOA05_GLODAP_invt_aco2_AYool.png/300px-WOA05_GLODAP_invt_aco2_AYool.png)
    .
    Most of the ocean contains relatively little CO2 from the industrial revolution; it is found mostly deep cold water formed in areas of deep (cold) convection. It is only when this cold water with extra CO2 up-wells and warms (long in the future) that the net rate of the solubility pump rate drops. The rate of uptake is equal to the rate of solubility of CO2 in cold high latitude water less the rate of out-gassing as up-welling deep water warms.

    The Bern model can match the historical data (four independent adjustable parameters can match almost anything). That is meaningless, because it is a curve fit, not an accurate model of the physical processes involved. It is technically rubbish, but convenient for 'climate science' because it projects only a very slow (and scary!) fall-off in CO2 concentration when emissions fall.

  366. SteveF (Comment #172339): "But the physical process in the ocean is *nothing* like a stirred tank."

    A great deal of the short term CO2 uptake by the ocean is into the well-mixed layer. That part is like a stirred tank.
    .
    SteveF: "Most of the accumulated CO2 in the oceans resides in deep, cold water, not surface water, …"

    Yes, but that is not where most of the anthropogenic CO2 is.
    .
    SteveF: "… and is due to the solubility pump of the thermohaline circulation."

    I am pretty sure that the biological pump is much stronger than the solubility pump although it is assumed (probably incorrectly) to be insensitive to atmospheric CO2.
    .
    SteveF: "Most of the ocean contains relatively little CO2 from the industrial revolution; it is found mostly deep cold water formed in areas of deep (cold) convection."

    I am pretty sure it is mostly in the surface ocean. If Redfield ratios are invariant (doubtful), then I think you are correct that most of the anthropogenic CO2 in the deep ocean got there via the solubility pump.
    .
    SteveF: "It is only when this cold water with extra CO2 up-wells and warms (long in the future) that the net rate of the solubility pump rate drops."

    I think that is correct. That is why CO2 uptake has a term with a very long time constant. But there are also faster processes that are more important on short time scales.
    .
    SteveF: "The Bern model can match the historical data (four independent adjustable parameters can match almost anything). That is meaningless, because it is a curve fit, not an accurate model of the physical processes involved. It is technically rubbish"

    But the Bern model is not a fit to historical CO2 data. It is a fit to a detailed carbon cycle model. Because it is a fit to a model, it can independently fit various processes (biota, surface ocean, deep ocean, …) and do so over very long time scales. I have little doubt that is how they can constrain so many parameters (more like 8 or 10, I think). The detailed models are themselves highly constrained by chemical equilibria, mass transport rates, and details of ocean overturning currents as well as by data relevant to the biological processes.

    The major uncertainties are, I think, the biological processes. Life is so inconvenient.

  367. Mike M,
    "A great deal of the short term CO2 uptake by the ocean is into the well-mixed layer."
    No, it is areas of relatively deep convection (mostly 30 to 60 South) and very deep convection (high latitude North Atlantic). The dissolved CO2 inventory in the North Atlantic (map I linked to) is not only where there is deep convection; the cold bottom water, high is dissolved CO2, is already moving slowly south in the deep Atlantic.
    .
    "Yes, but that is not where most of the anthropogenic CO2 is."
    Please look at the diagram of CO2 inventory I provided.
    .
    "I am pretty sure it is mostly in the surface ocean."
    No, tracer studies (fluorocarbons) as well as direct measurements show that most of the anthropogenic carbon has been taken up in areas of relatively deep to very deep convection, mainly at higher latitudes.
    .
    "I am pretty sure that the biological pump is much stronger than the solubility pump although it is assumed (probably incorrectly) to be insensitive to atmospheric CO2."
    From Wiki: "Presently, about one third (approximately 2 gigatons of carbon per year)[2][3] of anthropogenic emissions of CO2 are believed to be entering the ocean. The solubility pump is the primary mechanism driving this flux, with the consequence that anthropogenic CO2 is reaching the ocean interior via high latitude sites of deep water formation (particularly the North Atlantic)."
    The magnitude of the biological pump is claimed to be uncertain and difficult to quantify.
    .
    The Bern model most certainly is fitted to match historical data.

  368. SteveF (Comment #172341): "No, it is areas of relatively deep convection … Please look at the diagram of CO2 inventory I provided."

    The areas of deep convection are essentially areas where the well-mixed layer is very deep. So if those are included in the mixed layer, it definitely has most of the anthropogenic carbon. Even if they are not included, I don't know that most is not in the surface layer. There are higher columns in some places, but there are much larger areas with lower column amounts. The latter is likely more total.
    .
    SteveF: "the cold bottom water, high is dissolved CO2, is already moving slowly south in the deep Atlantic."

    I think that it is relatively low carbon water (relative to most deep water) spreading out from the areas of deep convection. Then carbon accumulates due to the biological pump. But with more CO2 in the atmosphere, the starting point for the deep water is higher in carbon.
    .
    SteveF, from Wiki: "Presently, about one third (approximately 2 gigatons of carbon per year)[2][3] of anthropogenic emissions of CO2 are believed to be entering the ocean. The solubility pump is the primary mechanism driving this flux, with the consequence that anthropogenic CO2 is reaching the ocean interior via high latitude sites of deep water formation (particularly the North Atlantic)."

    I think that is what I said. The biologic pump dominates carbon transport, but is assumed to be insensitive to atmospheric CO2, so the solubility pump is assumed to provide most of the extra carbon uptake.
    .
    SteveF: "The Bern model most certainly is fitted to match historical data."

    No, it is not. It is a fit to detailed a carbon model that uses historical CO2 as one of many inputs.

  369. Mike M,
    “I think that it is relatively low carbon water (relative to most deep water) spreading out from the areas of deep convection. Then carbon accumulates due to the biological pump. But with more CO2 in the atmosphere, the starting point for the deep water is higher in carbon.”
    .
    The purest of nonsense. Are you joking? (real question) Measured dissolved CO2 profiles of the north Atlantic show the highest CO2 in the areas of deep convection, where cold bottom water forms, with obvious flow of cold bottom water with high CO2 away from those areas. This cold bottom water is higher in CO2 than bottom water which was formed many decades ago (and so is now further south.)

  370. "not wanting to admit how much of certain "bad foods" they ate." Laziness was certainly a factor but there were blood tests as well to check for honesty. Pretty sure all this was published a few years ago but struggling to find the reference. Must look up the principal researchers name…

    The important bit however was that questionaires on food didnt match actual diaries in numerous ways. On the plus side though certain types of conclusions could be drawn from questionaires (ie if the subject said they used butter rather than margarine, then this was reliable. If they said they were vegetarian, then this is also reliable etc.)

  372. SteveF (Comment #172347): "Are you joking?"

    I am not joking. You are failing to distinguish between CO2 and the small portion that is thought to be anthropogenic.

  373. DeWitt,
    Here is the measured flux of CO2 between atmosphere and ocean over the entire ocean (not the increase due to higher CO2 in the air), for the year 2000: https://www.pmel.noaa.gov/co2/files/takahashi_flux.jpg
    .
    The influence of thermohaline circulation is very clear, at least to me. Note that even with a substantial increase in atmospheric CO2, compared to pre-industrial concentrations, there is still enormous out-gassing of CO2 in the tropical Pacific where upwelling deep water warms at the surface. A ballpark figure of the net outgassing in that region is 40 gigatons of carbon per year, much larger than the 10-11 gigatons of carbon emitted each year by humans. The perturbation of the solubility pump (the increase in cold water uptake less the decrease in warm water outgassing) is a very big part of net ocean uptake of CO2…. and it most certainly can’t be reasonably represented by any kind of exponential decay function.
    .
    Net global thermohaline flow (as best I can figure from plublished data) is in the range of 1 to 1.5 million cubic km per year, which compared to the total ocean volume of 1.33 billion cubic km, gives the expected ocean turn-over time of about 1,000 years.

  374. Mike M,
    I understand the difference perfectly. Most organic matter is oxidized to CO2 in the upper ocean, not at great depth (see oxygen minimum depth). Oxygen concentration in the deep ocean is actually high compared to surface water in warm regions, because oxygen is more soluble in cold water than warm, and deep water forms in very cold regions.

  375. SteveF,

    Anthropogenic 14C absorbed by the ocean, i.e. bomb 14C, does not mostly reside in the deep ocean. That completely trashes your conjecture that anthropogenic CO2 is primarily absorbed by the deep ocean. There are clear signatures in bomb 14C of mixing and diffusion.

    https://journals.uair.arizona.edu/index.php/radiocarbon/article/download/3615/3121

    Then there is the slowdown in CO2 absorption in the 1990's apparently caused by increased overturning circulation. The increase in absorption from down flow was more than compensated by increased outgassing of upwelling water. The excess CO2 in upwellling water likely comes from decomposition of organic material.

    https://physicstoday.scitation.org/do/10.1063/PT.5.7353/full/

  376. Today's WSJ has a piece by Steven Koonin (Mr. Koonin, a theoretical physicist, is a University Professor at New York University. He served as undersecretary of energy for science during President Obama’s first term.) titled The Climate Won't Crash the Economy. The hundreds of billions of dollars of damage by 2100 in the latest government report amounts to a rounding error in projected GDP growth. If the US GDP averages 2% growth from now to 2100, a lowball estimate, the projected damage from worst case climate change would reduce the increase in GDP from 400% to 385%.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-climate-wont-crash-the-economy-1543276899

  377. SteveF,

    Here's another reference refuting your assertion about deep ocean storage of anthropogenic CO2:

    "Estimates of the oceanic concentration of anthropogenic carbon, shown in figure 4, demonstrate that, except in a few locations, carbon from human activities generally has not yet penetrated in significant amounts below a depth of about 1000 m."

    figure 4: https://physicstoday.scitation.org/na101/home/literatum/publisher/aip/journals/content/pto/2002/pto.2002.55.issue-8/1.1510279/production/images/large/1.1510279.figures.f4.jpeg

    https://physicstoday.scitation.org/doi/10.1063/1.1510279

  378. DeWitt,
    "That completely trashes your conjecture that anthropogenic CO2 is primarily absorbed by the deep ocean."
    .
    Nonsense. The rapid bomb C14 reduction path was mainly an exchange of carbon between relatively fast sinks. It is *weakly* connected to the long term solubility pump. So, do you simply reject the measured net surface flux of CO2 in 2000 (Takahashi et al)? Really, I am having a hard time understanding your rational. Do you doubt the values for estimated thermohaline circulation, the measured CO2 surface flux, or is there some other issue you doubt?
    .
    "The excess CO2 in upwellling water likely comes from decomposition of organic material."
    Once more, nonsense. In the ocean, the solubility pump dominates. Settling organic matter is decomposed everywhere, relatively near the surface, and not just where there is up-welling. Your reference is tangential at best.

  380. DeWitt Payne (Comment #172356): "Here's another reference refuting your assertion about deep ocean storage of anthropogenic CO2:"

    Thanks for that figure, DeWitt. It shows quite clearly that anthropogenic carbon is overwhelmingly in those parts of the ocean that are in reasonably fast contact with the surface. That is, the well-mixed surface layer and areas of deep convective mixing. Smaller amounts are in the thermocline with only a very little in the deep ocean (typically taken as depths > 1500 m). Eventually, most of it will end up in the deep ocean, but that will take centuries, if not millennia.

  381. DeWitt,
    Can you provide actual links to the published papers you referenced, or at least the paper title, journal, and authors?

  382. SteveF (Comment #172360): "DeWitt, Can you provide actual links"

    I think he did, at least for the first one: https://physicstoday.scitation.org/doi/10.1063/1.1510279

    The figure DeWitt linked is Figure 4. Also, see Figure 1: https://physicstoday.scitation.org/na101/home/literatum/publisher/aip/journals/content/pto/2002/pto.2002.55.issue-8/1.1510279/production/images/large/1.1510279.figures.f1.jpeg
    That shows the biologic pump as 11 Pg C/yr, compared to 2 Pg C/yr for the oceanic sink of anthropogenic carbon.

  383. " The excess CO2 in upwelling water likely comes from decomposition of organic material."
    If cold water rising from the depths it has more CO2 and as it rises it heats up it releases more CO2.
    The excess might just come from warming water. Deep water does not support organic material in quantities enough to decompose and give extra CO2.
    Just a thought bubble. I had a long and uncomfortable discussion with BBD several years ago on CO2 deposition in the deep ocean layers and silt and clay and impermeability [I was losing].

  384. The Greek is suggesting that multiple informants were sent at him to create the Trump Russia story. This includes the alleged Russian agent Joseph Mifsud who told him that Russia had dirt on Hillary. Sent agent to plant the story, and another(Downer) to receive the story back.
    Also, it looks like they planted $10,000 in cash on him so they could catch him at the airport not declaring it. When he showed up without the money, they had to arrest without warrant.

  385. angech (Comment #172362): "If cold water rising from the depths it has more CO2 and as it rises it heats up it releases more CO2.
    The excess might just come from warming water. Deep water does not support organic material in quantities enough to decompose and give extra CO2."

    The vapor pressure of CO2 in deep waters is about double the partial pressure in the atmosphere. That is in spite of it being cold. In intermediate waters (around 1000 m) the vapor pressure can be up to five times equilibrium. When water is brought to the surface, the vapor pressure of CO2 can be 5-10 times the partial pressure in the atmosphere; the solubility pump would limit that to about a factor of two (solubility in cold Arctic waters is roughly double that in the tropics).

    Photosynthesis occurs in the upper ocean. Some of the dead organisms (about 10%, if memory serves) sink into the thermocline and below. That organic matter provides the base of the food chain in deep, dark waters; otherwise there would be no life below 100 meters or so. The organic matter eventually becomes CO2 that accumulates to high concentrations since the turnover is so slow.

  386. SteveF,

    Figure 4 shows a small amount of anthropogenic carbon flux into the deep ocean in the North Atlantic Ocean, but it also shows that the vast majority of anthropogenic carbon has not penetrated below 1000m. The majority of the anthropogenic carbon is also in the Pacific, not the Atlantic.

  387. DeWitt,
    I could not get the link to the original paper your graphic came from to work. Here is a review paper from 2013 comparing four measurement based estimates of the distribution of anthropogenic cO2 in the ocean and two CGM based estimates. The measurment based estimates are constrained by measuring tracer gases in the ocean (fluorocarbons): https://www.biogeosciences.net/10/2169/2013/bg-10-2169-2013.pdf
    Note the measurement based distributions (figure 3) show much greater penetration of CO2 (to ~3000 meters in the north Atlantic), while the GCM based estimates show little or no penetration below 1000 meters in that region.
    .
    Please provide a link to the original paper your figure came from, or the title and lead author’s name.

  390. Mike M.,

    "Although there are some problems with the report (assuming worst case scenario)…."

    The scenario used for the report is RCP8.5. Calling it worst case is giving it far more credit than it is due. It's so far beyond a rational worst case scenario that it is simply not plausible. It's not merely bad science, it's bad science fiction.

  391. DeWitt, Mike M. —
    The lede in the NYTimes was that "the [climate change] damage will knock as much as 10 percent off the size of the American economy."
    https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/23/climate/us-climate-report.html

    The 10% figure was derived not only from RCP8.5, but is an outlier projection within that scenario, with a 21st-century increase of average global temperature of 9 K !
    https://nca2018.globalchange.gov/img/figure/figure29_3.png

    Pointed out by Roger Pielke Jr.
    https://twitter.com/RogerPielkeJr/status/1067209652205641728

  393. HaroldW,
    "The 10% figure was derived not only from RCP8.5, but is an outlier projection within that scenario, with a 21st-century increase of average global temperature anomaly of 9 K !"
    .
    In this case, there may be a fairly close relationship between the words "outlier", and just plain "liar". The report, and the reporting on the report, are nothing but political advocacy: we are all doomed… DOOMED!… don't ya know, unless we repent… NOW!
    .
    If they played it straight (RPC 8.5 is not really going to happen, the temperature increases for any of the scenarios are unlikely to be the worst case for each scenario), then the 80-years-out impact on the economy would be a few percent… of an economy 3 times as large as today. Big yawn.
    .
    Of course, one needs to have one's head examined if one believes any accurate economic projection can be made for a decade from now…. never mind eight decades from now. I suspect climate advocacy is nearing a tipping point… they are actually beginning to go insane.

  394. When discussing here the issue of journalistic spinning and misinterpreting an issue related to AGW and its potential consequences, I hope that we do not think that that spinning is unique to climate issues. For example I see graphics every day in papers that have been cut from what should have been a larger graph in order to put into perspective an apparent change that was not all that large when viewed in proper context. Another problem is journalistic (over)reaction to changes that appear to be part of the noise in the data being presented.

    This same problem at a different level can even be seen in climate science papers that I have analyzed or viewed from other party's analyses where the authors are not untruthful but have nonetheless misrepresented the published investigation and research by what has been left out either through ignorance, rush to publish or intentionally to make a preconceived point.

    Such actions by those who write in this manner could be considered "fake news" if the definition of fake news were more precisely applied to cases where out and out lies are not the problem but rather being problematic by not presenting all the pertinent facts or making a reasonable attempt to show the uncertainty of the results. What is needed is a venue for an analysis of these presentations where a counter interpretation can be presented that would show problems with the original interpretation. I think this is the only way by which the reading public will ever show the proper skepticism for what they see published by journalists and scientists.

    It is much too easy currently for the offenders of good journalism and science to point to vague accusations as not being applicable criticisms and in fact can readily counter with the criticism being merely anti science or somehow against freedom of the press.

  395. I'm beginning to think Trump's wall might actually be a good idea. AMLO, the Mexican president-elect has invited Maduro from Venezuela and Morales from Bolivia to his inauguration. We'll need a really big wall if we end up with a new Venezuela on our border as a result of AMLO channeling Hugo Chavez.

    And speaking of Trump, tariffs, according to him, are supposed to increase production in the US. It's not working for the Ford Focus. Trump jawboned Ford into not moving production to Mexico and the threat of tariffs killed a move to China. So Ford's response is to stop selling the Focus in the US. It will still be manufactured outside the US, but not imported and sold here. GM is also killing the Chevrolet Cruze and closing plants. Sedans just aren't selling like they used to.

    [edit working for the moment]

    test

    [but not bold and italics]

  396. SteveF,

    Once 14CO2 has been absorbed into the ocean, it will behave like any other CO2 molecule. It can't be distinguished from (other than by mass spectrometry or radioactive decay counting), pre-existing dissolved CO2 (and carbonate and bicarbonate ions and salts) and anthropogenic CO2 except by concentration differences. That makes bomb 14CO2 a useful tracer for the oceanic carbon cycle. On the time scale of ocean mixing, the atmosphere is very well mixed. The geographic variation of 14CO2 in the atmosphere is small.

  397. Trump still thinks much like his former Democrat self on issues like trade where politicians live in a dream world. I would not be surprised to see him reverting back to his Democrat ways in attempts to compromise with congressional Democrats who will compromise on a lot of issues providing they can grow the government big time.

  398. Kenneth,

    " I would not be surprised to see him reverting back to his Democrat ways in attempts to compromise with congressional Democrats who will compromise on a lot of issues providing they can grow the government big time."

    Not if they try to impeach him, but otherwise it wouldn't surprise me either. I don't see many Republican small government champions either. It's trillion dollar deficits as far as the eye can see, or at least until things fall apart. I expect another credit crisis within three to five years. A recession has probably been put off until late 2020 at the earliest. Then things will get really ugly whoever wins the 2020 election.

  399. "That organic matter provides the base of the food chain in deep, dark waters; otherwise there would be no life below 100 meters or so."
    Interesting concept of life in the dark and under pressure.
    I believe, probably wrongly, that there is more life on land under the surface than on it in terms of biomass though too small for us to see.
    Except for the blasted tree roots in my plumbing system!
    I also believe, probably wrongly that the oceans with their 2/3 size to 1/3 land contain more life and vegetation in biomass than the land.
    Nonetheless the food chain in deep waters, 100 meters not that deep, over most of the world is probably sparsely inhabited and not of much concern. The organic material becomes silted over and not available, hence carbon sinks.
    I must go watch some of those deep sea U tubes and see how much there actually is on the bottom, more a desert I thought.

  400. Ford's saying they can't make cars makes me think their truck business is doomed.
    Now GM is following along, killing the Cruze and Impala.
    Having multiple divisions is hurting GM. The Impala is deliberately being throttled to be worse than a Buick. Some basic features for a Kia or Hyundai are being left out of Chevy.

  401. Michael Cohen has pled guilty to lying to Congress about discussions of Trump Tower Moscow. These discussions did not stop before the Iowa caucuses, but continued into June.
    There was an abrupt cancellation of plans for a foreign trip to discuss this on June 14, five days after Trump Tower meeting.

    Andy McCarthy suggests Manafort figured out they were played by Putin, and word was sent out to cancel all dealings with Russia.

  402. "It's trillion dollar deficits as far as the eye can see, or at least until things fall apart. I expect another credit crisis within three to five years."
    A trillion dollars is a relative amount, not a fault in itself. If the economy was a 200 trillion a year effort 1% would not be an issue.
    Obama had large deficits. Despite his extra military spending Trump is in the same ballpark as the last 8 years.
    And the economy itself is a lot better.

  403. Mike N,
    US car makers continue to have the same problems they have had for decades: High labor cost and slow, poorly implemented adoption of technological improvements. What I found looking at SUVs a year ago was the US manufacturers were either a few years behind foreign makers (even those manufacturing in the States!) in technology, or significantly higher in price for comparably equipped cars. After the bailouts a decade ago, GM remained stuck with relatively generous labor contracts, especially retirement obligations…. no surprise with the Obama administration effectively taking over the company on behalf of the workers. Normal bankruptcy, and a clean sheet on labor costs, would have helped, but that was not going to happen. Investors took the hit and workers were protected.

  404. Mike N,
    These same companies can compete outside the states, especially where they have relatively lower labor costs. See the list of Ford manufacturing facilities here: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Ford_factories
    I see locally manufactured Ford cars most everywhere I travel to.
    The 25% “chick tax” is why the US manufacture of light trucks dominates… without that protection, that too would face stiff competition.

  406. HaroldW,

    That's right on up there with Antarctica will be the only habitable continent by 2100. In case you forgot, the British government's chief scientist, Professor Sir David King actually said that in public in 2004.

    https://www.independent.co.uk/environment/why-antarctica-will-soon-be-the-only-place-to-live-literally-58574.html

    Even if the Arctic Sea becomes ice free at some point during the year, it will still freeze over when the sun goes below the horizon.

  407. SteveF (Comment #172382): "US car makers continue to have the same problems they have had for decades: High labor cost …"

    I don't know about that since there is now so much automation in making cars. Labor is about 10% of the cost: https://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/10/business/economy/10leonhardt.html?_r=0
    .
    SteveF: "and slow, poorly implemented adoption of technological improvements."

    That seems more likely. Many U.S. customers just don't much like the cars made by U.S. manufacturers.

  408. Mike M,
    As of 2015 (latest figures I could find), GM's fully loaded labor cost was $58 per hour. VW's Tennessee plant (where my SUV was produced) had a fully loaded cost of $38 per hour. That may not seem like much, but it represents a significant difference in net profit per car, even if labor cost is not a big number compared to total cost. The UAW has been trying hard (I believe so far without success) to unionize the VW plant…. no surprise there. The VW plant has ~$80 million per year lower cost than if they paid the GM labor cost, amounting to ~$500 lower cost per car produced. There are other factors, of course, but labor cost differences are significant.

  409. SteveF (Comment #172387): "As of 2015 (latest figures I could find), GM's fully loaded labor cost was $58 per hour. VW's Tennessee plant (where my SUV was produced) had a fully loaded cost of $38 per hour."

    That does not sound like an apples to apples comparison. Does the GM number include costs for retirees? VW would not have many of those in the U.S.

    Even so, that amounts to a few hundred dollars per car. That would matter for identical vehicles. But the relative desirability of the vehicles would be a bigger factor.

    If memory serves, the Saturn plant in Tennessee had a favorable union contract and still went under.

  410. In good news, the obscene practice of asset forfeiture was up before the SC on Wednesday.
    https://www.wsj.com/articles/fines-and-punishment-1543533985
    .
    "Defendant Tyson Timbs was caught dealing heroin in a sting operation. On route to his third transaction, cops arrested him and seized his Land Rover valued at $42,000."
    .
    All smart drug dealers now lease their vehicles for this reason, ha ha.
    .
    "Justice Stephen Breyer asked Indiana’s solicitor general whether someone caught driving five miles an hour above the speed limit could be forced to forfeit his Bugatti, Mercedes or Ferrari. Yes, replied Indiana’s SG."
    .
    This is another of those times when defendants have no choice but to answer a hard question with something that makes them look bad. You can't avoid the question with the SC. If he answers no, then the next question is "Can you show me where the law limits you?". Indiana's position is there are no limits and the federal government can't tell the state how to set limits (the legal issue at hand). The opposition wants to set limits based on an excessive fines provision in the bill of rights. Although Indiana may lose it seems the SC isn't very interested in setting firm boundaries.
    .
    "… the Indianapolis police department sets annual targets for forfeiture funds. In one case, Indianapolis prosecutors sued to forfeit a teen’s car because they found Gatorade bottles and candy stolen from a playground concession stand."
    .
    Asset forfeiture should just be banned outright. Taking a citizen's assets with no conviction, nor even criminal charges, and forcing them to go through an arduous process to get it back is just … un-American.

  411. DeWitt –
    Thanks for that quotation. Don't think I ever heard that. When Sir David said that in 2004, I wasn't following the global warming discussion. From that same article:
    [begin excerpt]
    The last time [CO2 concentration] were at this level – 379 parts per million – was 60 million years ago during a rapid period of global warming, he said. Levels soared to 1,000 parts per million, causing a massive reduction of life.

    "No ice was left on Earth. Antarctica was the best place for mammals to live, and the rest of the world would not sustain human life," he said.
    [end excerpt]

    Well, in one way he was correct: there was no human life 60 mya. But it's not at all correct to say that the rest of the world could not sustain human life. Nor was Antarctica the best place for mammals to live. [Although no magazine's "best places to live" articles have survived, as far as I'm aware.]

  412. 8.7C of warming, current rate is approx 0.15C / decade. The warming rate will only need to increase 600% … starting tomorrow. I consider this an environmental journalism conservative underestimate, they are usually off by a factor of 1000% to 2000% when talking about sea level rise rates. I still find it incredible how these type of numbers make it on the front page.
    .
    The Atlantic: "If carbon pollution continues to rise, a huge swath of the Atlantic coast—from North Carolina to Maine—will see sea-level rise of five feet by 2100". Well, scientists surely agree that carbon "pollution" will continue to rise, so five feet is a sure thing by my reading. The IPCC says the max range of the worst case case RCP8.5 will be 1M, but whatever, this report is newer and must be better. Journalists just don't have enough words to print those boring nuances, who can blame them? I do.
    .
    It is true that the media over inflates most everything because fear sells. They are especially guilty with climate news though. They can't be held accountable here because their predictions won't be proven wrong for another 50+ years. Then the predictable statements will be that only through the heroic efforts of journalists was catastrophe avoided.
    .
    1. Falsely declare disaster is imminent.
    2. Falsely declare the only way to avoid disaster is to follow a favored policy.
    3. Scare everyone into following the policy.
    4. Nothing really changes, but you get to declare yourself a hero.
    .
    The only way to call the bluff is to not follow the policy and see if disaster happens. If you sense your declaration of said disaster is based on false premises, one might appear rather desperate to get the policy implemented, possibly even over inflating over inflated rhetoric.

  413. It is quite clear that the Lancet editorial is explaining that they plan to use health concerns related to global warning to propagandize at the individual level in order to subsequently push governments and international organizations to take action. I am not being impolite when I use the term propaganda given the language used in this editorial.

  414. HaroldW (Comment #172390)

    Just to let you know that your smart as$ remarks do not go unnoticed or unappreciated.

  415. "Moreover, two-thirds of the purported 10 percent damage to the economy comes from just one category: heat deaths."
    .
    If only there was a way to locally control air temperature, and one can only dream that this situation might be improved in 80 years along with medical advances, but I guess I'm a dreamer. Some studies found cold weather is 20x more deadly than hot weather, since then more … nuance … has been found. Scientists now disagree, just ignore that consensus and the data, it's now controversial.
    .
    According to Vox there have been DOZENS of weather related deaths over the past couple years in the US. Strangely Arizona and Alaska are way up in the statistics for some reason. Clearly states that start with 'A' is the problem.
    .
    How one counts deaths is all over the place. Most people who are searching for the "right" answer go well beyond the number of corpses found in the desert and snow or examining death certificates for hypothermia, models are needed and required. Please, don't look at something so simple as death rates by month, don't corrupt your thinking, this is COMPLICATED! I would go so far as to never even mention this when discussing the subject.
    .
    I grieve when thinking of all the snow plow drivers that will lose their jobs. We need to impose trade tariffs on summer.

  416. Tom Scharf,
    " They can't be held accountable here because their predictions won't be proven wrong for another 50+ years. Then the predictable statements will be that only through the heroic efforts of journalists was catastrophe avoided."
    .
    Indeed. It is at least a little funny to read the headlines from the late 60's (The Population Bomb – 1968) and 70's (Limits to Growth – 1972). It was always reported breathlessly that humanity was doomed to famine, social collapse, and even extinction, before the year 2000.
    .
    In spite of these predictions being utterly wrong in every case, those who promoted them *still* will not accept that the predictions were wrong simply because their underlying hypotheses were completely wrong. Paul Erlich to this day insists humanity is doomed if it continues to adopt a policy of economic development…. like all green fanatics, he is immune to persuasion by reality, which seems to me a good working definition of insane.

  417. Tom,

    As you are probably aware, heat related deaths, other than things like leaving a child in a car, involve people who are likely to die soon anyway. There is always a reduction in mortality in the months following a heat wave.

    Besides, I'm seeing more and more claims that medical advances to slow aging, increase healthspan and compress final morbidity are coming practically any day now. I've also seen claims that aging will be reversed. So saying there will be more heat related deaths is very similar to the claim that there will be a drop in GDP while ignoring that the drop will be from a much larger GDP.

  418. SteveF,

    The limits to growth crowd claim they just got the timeline wrong and catastrophe is still right around the corner. It's like all the other end of the world lunatics. When the end of the world date passes, they just recalculate.

    I wonder how many of those folks who saw Avengers: Infinity Wars sympathized with Thanos when he killed off half the people in the universe to, he claimed, prevent ecological catastrophe and make life better for those left behind.

  419. Tom,
    I saw the SCOTUS case. At Volokh, they suggested all justices are inclined to incorporate the 3rd amendment to states. So that looks promising. However… other than that, we'll see!

  420. DeWitt,
    Well…. there probably are limits to growth. That said, catastrophe being *around the corner* is one of the important claims of most of those emphasizing that. They generally aren't just suggesting there must be *some* upper limit to total growth but that we are no where near that limit.

    The thumping is always that something like "Soylent Green" is just around the corner. Or that we are about to reach "Mark of Gideon" levels of population:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ChKC5AR8um4

  421. lucia (Comment #172399): "I saw the SCOTUS case. At Volokh, they suggested all justices are inclined to incorporate the 3rd amendment to states. So that looks promising. However… other than that, we'll see!"

    Third Amendment? That is the one about quartering troops. I think you mean the excessive fines clause of Eight Amendment. The rest of that amendment (cruel and unusual, excessive bail) have been ruled to apply to states.
    .
    Quickly skimming Wikipedia, it looks like the court has never said that clause doe not apply to states, but has tended to defer as to what is an excessive fine. They have said: "We can only interfere with such legislation and judicial action of the states enforcing it if the fines imposed are so grossly excessive as to amount to a deprivation of property without due process of law."
    And that the 8th Amendment would not be violated unless the fine was"grossly disproportional to the gravity of a defendant's offense."
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eighth_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution#Excessive_fines
    .
    What I don't understand is how civil asset forfeiture is not a violation of due process.

  422. Mike M,
    I agree the most egregious part of civil forfeiture is the lack of due process. It is nothing but theft of private property by government agencies (usually local police departments). Unfortunately, many courts historically supported seizing property gained via criminal activities (eg private planes purched by drug lords to smuggle drugs). An argument can be made that this type of seisure makes perfect sense, but witout due process (proof in court the assets were gained via illegal means), the Courts set in motion a movement of local governments toward arbitrary seizure of property. The Federal courts should long ago have put a stop to this outrage. There is clear sentiment on the Court to stop it, but I fear a worm like Roberts will weaken what should be a sweeping ruling, leaving in place at least some seizures witout due process.

  423. @HaroldW (Comment #172384)
    thanks for the link – but never fear –

    "The Lancet Countdown on health and climate change reports on the facts and data."
    https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(17)32464-9/fulltext

    header reads –

    "The Lancet Countdown tracks progress on health and climate change and provides an independent assessment of the health effects of climate change, the implementation of the Paris Agreement, and the health implications of these actions. It follows on from the work of the2015 Lancet Commission on Health and Climate Change, which concluded that anthropogenic climate change threatens to undermine the past 50 years of gains in public health, and conversely, that a comprehensive response to climate change could be “the greatest global health opportunity of the 21st century”.

    ps – Kenneth Fritsch got there first
    pps – Harold – thanks for finding these open but hidden links.

  424. MikeM
    >>Third Amendment? That is the one about quartering troops. I think you mean the excessive fines clause of Eight Amendment

    Ok… Ok… the 8th. I think I remember hearing there are no SCOTUS cases about quartering troops. It's too clear for anyone to bother to violate.

    >that clause doe not apply to states

    Well… no. That's probably true. The way it seems to work is some states like to assume it doesn't apply until SCOTUS specifically says it does.

    >>What I don't understand is how civil asset forfeiture is not a violation of due process.

    It looks like the court is going to say precisely this. But, owing to lack of appropriate prior cases, they don't happen to have actually said it. In the mean time, states have had a $$ motive to assume it does not apply to states.

    Beyond that, there is a cock-a-maime argument that the law takes away "property" when the "property" (not its owner) is guilty. So using this odd notion, the *owner* is not "fined". Its someone the "property" that is …. guilty. And I guess the "property" (not the owner) is then punished?? The argument is bizarre and should land is a trash heap.

  425. lucia (Comment #172406): "Beyond that, there is a cock-a-maime argument that the law takes away "property" when the "property" (not its owner) is guilty."

    Yes, that is nuts. It seems that the law is more and more about abstract arguments rather than common sense.

    A case can be made for seizing property that was acquired illegal or using the proceeds of illegal activity. But it seems to me, that would require convicting the owner of a crime. But the police have been seizing all sorts of property. Where I live, until recently, if you let a friend drive your car and he got caught driving drunk, you could kiss your car goodbye. A federal court struck that down last spring.

  426. >until recently, if you let a friend drive your car and he got caught driving drunk, you could kiss your car goodbye. A federal court struck that down last spring.

    Yep.

    Imagine this potentially terrifying situation:

    Your 16 year old daughter is caught selling 1 oz marijuana from your front porch. Your *house* is not "guilty" of being 'involved' in the drug deal. So the "house" is seized (as punishment for the "house's" guilt..)

    Worse: imagine if our daughter is not even charged because the evidence is not sufficiently strong to convict her. But the cops seize the house. After that, you– the owner — discover that *you* are considered to have no due process right in this because …. well YOU aren't charged with anything. Your "house" is the guilty party!!

    As long as inanimate objects can be "found guilty" — and neither they object or it's owner can hire a lawyer to adjudicate it's guilt, the government can concoct evidence to seize anything. You– the owner can be deprived of the now "guilty" property.

    Those seizing do at least try to skirt things well enough to make it not totally utterly ridonculous. But the more counties and states get away with, the shorter that skirt gets!

    Let's hole SCOTUS fixes this because it's ridiculous.

  427. Mike M, Lucia,
    The SC has an opportunity to issue an historic ruling which is the constitutional (and moral) opposite of Kelo v New London. Let’s hope they don’t blow it with a narrow ruling which focuses on procedures, processes, earlier cases, and details. The case calls for a clear, broad ruling that says “States, this is plainly unconstitutional, and you can’t ever do it again”, not a mealy-mouthed-split-the-difference Roberts style opinion that enables the continuation of Court sanctioned theft of private property by government, like the revolting Kelo opinion did. They should cite the 5th, 8th, and 14th ammendments in their ruling.

  428. The high end drug game is kind of ridiculous. The amount of cash can be so excessive that they resort to weighing it instead of counting it, ha ha. That may be an urban legend but you get the point. When the DEA makes a drug bust and finds $100M in cash at the warehouse beside the pallets of cocaine it is probably not reasonable to accept the explanation that this was the owner's retirement fund he scrupulously saved by collecting aluminum cans. So go ahead and keep it until we prove you are guilty? I suggest that cash will disappear. I think that's the problem they are trying to address.
    .
    What has happened is that law enforcement has gotten lazy and drove a truck through this loophole and the usual bad actors who are in every profession have sometimes abused this. Hispanic carrying $10K in his beat up car? Seize it, must be a drug dealer. I bring up this stereotypical example because there was an article in our newspaper a decade ago about why Hispanics were robbed at a much higher rate. Turns out Hispanics used to be distrustful of banks, so they kept all their money in cash. The perpetrators who profiled and targeted them referred to the victims as "walking ATM's".
    .
    The wild wild west of asset forfeiture needs to end. It may need to be retained but at a much more restricted level.

  429. Tom,
    The cops sometimes seized stuff without charging anyone, much less the owner, with a crime. They certainly ought to have at least restricted themselves to only seizing property when it's *actual owner* was charged with the crime the "property" was supposedly involved in. This was obviously ridiculous and the fact if it occurring is likely to color people's opinions even if that's irrelevant to the current case.

    The SCOTUS case at least is one where the property owner was charged with a crime they committed while driving the vehicle. (I think they were convicted too.)

    It's an excessive fine from any *reasonable* interpretation though.

  430. A preview of how global warming policies are received if they actually have a financial impact. France's new energy policy has new higher fuel taxes and the public isn't very enthusiastic. Two weeks of protests have turned violent.
    .
    Paris Rioting Puts Macron’s Economic Overhaul to the Test
    https://www.wsj.com/articles/paris-rioting-puts-macrons-economic-overhaul-to-the-test-1543789867
    "The gilets jaunes movement, sparked in October by Mr. Macron’s proposal to raise fuel taxes to reduce pollution, gained strength in areas outside big cities where people depend on cars. It has since broadened to a rallying cry for those who say his policies favor the wealthy and punish the working class."
    …
    "After the meeting, Mr. Macron’s spokesman, Benjamin Griveaux, said the president was considering declaring a state of emergency, which allows authorities to prevent protests and other public gatherings."
    .
    I doubt that plan would go over well.

  431. I was amused by the juxtaposition of these paragraphs in
    https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/the-baltic-sea-offers-a-preview-of-whats-to-come-with-global-warming/2018/11/29/f52f470a-95c3-11e8-818b-e9b7348cd87d_story.html
    .
    [begin excerpt]
    “We know that E.U.-bashing is now very much en vogue all across Europe and the U.S.,” Reusch said. “But the good flip side of it is, of course, that the E.U. Commission now has a catalogue of sanctions they can impose on countries when they don’t meet, for example, their nutrient reduction goals. And I think that’s a good thing.”
    .
    The environmental protection regime has its shortcomings. There has been no crackdown on countries that allow massive amounts of agricultural runoff into the Baltic. “Basically every country is failing that,” Reusch said.
    [end excerpt]

  432. Tom Scharf,
    Well…. *our* government can't prevent protests or public gatherings!! 🙂

    Also: No. I don't think forbidding the gilet jaunes from protesting is going to stop the protests.

  433. The EU pays about $6 for a gallon of petrol and EU bashing has been "en vogue" in the EU for a looooooong time, just nothing ever comes of it. I suspect the unpopularity of the project was predicted and the reason the executive was firmly isolated from democratic oversight. Couldn't have the plebs voting against their best interests.
    .
    During the Thatcher years in the UK, Neil Kinnock was leader of the socialist opposition. He failed to get elected a few times and finally stepped down… straight into a job in the EU executive, followed by his wife.
    .
    I think Brexit is the only referendum that went against the EU which hasn't been subject to a revote or a change in the rules to circumvent the decision (yet).

  434. For those of you with reasonably decent memories, you may find it interesting to note that Nick Stokes at Wattsup is claiming to have not discussed the law related to the Steyn case on this blog. See comment JD Ohio December 3, 2018 at 8:27 am at https://wattsupwiththat.com/2018/12/01/analysis-of-court-of-appeals-defamation-opinion-holding-that-climategate-inquiries-exonerated-michael-mann/?cn-reloaded=1#comment-2540411

    …….

    At Wattsup, I quoted him discussing Evid. Rs., 1001, 1003, 1004 & 1008.

    JD

  435. After the protest 70% of people in France supported the protesters in a poll.
    .
    'Yellow Jacket' protests in France leave gas stations running dry; Paris riots worst since 1968
    https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/france-anti-tax-protests-leave-gas-stations-running-dry-n942871
    .
    "Macron says the increased fuel taxes are part of his effort to combat climate change, wanting to persuade French drivers to exchange diesel-fueled cars for less polluting models."
    .
    Persuade? Also the riots were apparently in the richest neighborhoods of Paris. Obviously that makes things different. France has had this kind of stuff going on for a long time, mostly strong union backed efforts for protectionism. Messing with the trucker's union in France is a perilous endeavor. Realistically these are a bunch of socialists for the most part, I guess they don't like climate taxes either.
    .
    You can't help but see how this tax is perceived as making those outside of cities pay to assuage the climate guilt of the politically correct.
    .
    I'll repeat it again, you can't fix global warming by punishing the carbon sinners from upon high, you have to make other energy sources competitive.

  437. Tom Scharf,
    Government expenditures in France represent 56% of GDP; in Europe, only Denmark is higher (58%): https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/3a/Depense-publique-sur-PIB.png
    Combine that sorry rate of expenditure with ~10% unemployment, 45% top marginal income tax rate, 25% VAT on most everything, obscene food prices (got to protect those farmers from competition!), growth averaging ~1% for the past decade, and 5 million mostly unassimilated Muslims, and you have the potential for lots of unhappy people in France. Macron is, of course, oblivious to the reality French people face; charismatic leaders never worry about such things. The good news for Macron is that France no longer uses the guillotine.

  438. Tom Scharf,

    Once again irony increases: "…wanting to persuade French drivers to exchange diesel-fueled cars for less polluting models."

    European policy until very recently forced drivers to buy, or at least prefer to buy, diesel-fueled cars. Audi raced a diesel-fueled car in the World Endurance Championship that includes the 24 Hours of Le Mans. The last time I passed a gas station and looked at the prices, diesel fuel was nearly 50% higher than gasoline.

  439. More evidence that life expectancy is a lousy statistic for evaluating a nation's health care system. The life expectancy in the US decreased in 2016 for the second year in a row. The primary cause was a drastic increase in drug overdose deaths. More than 42,000 Americans died in 2016 from opioid overdoses, up 28% from 2015. More than 70,000 died from opioid overdoses in 2017.

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/fueled-by-drug-crisis-us-life-expectancy-declines-for-a-second-straight-year/2017/12/20/2e3f8dea-e596-11e7-ab50-621fe0588340_story.html?utm_term=.bb2f27993b60

    https://www.cnn.com/2018/11/29/health/life-expectancy-2017-cdc/index.html

    According to this article, opioids are no better at controlling chronic pain than ibuprofen or acetaminophen.

    https://www.cbc.ca/news/health/opioids-prescription-pain-1.4564201

  440. DeWitt Payne (Comment #172422): "According to this article, opioids are no better at controlling chronic pain than ibuprofen or acetaminophen."

    That seems like an apples to oranges comparison since the efficacy of a pain killer depends on dose. Acetaminophen is not a very effective pain killer unless used in conjunction with opioids. It is a very high risk drug since the gap between the recommended dose and the maximum dose is very small. There are something like 100,000 acetaminophen overdoses a year in the U.S. Fortunately, overdoses are highly treatable, so deaths are rare.

  441. DeWitt wrote: "European policy until very recently forced drivers to buy, or at least prefer to buy, diesel-fueled cars."
    .
    The price of diesel was lower than petrol, they got tax breaks, they were subsidized and they were promoted as the more environmentally friendly option.

  442. JD, Nick Stokes's comment reminds me of Martin Vermeer once complaining about how poorly written was Steve McIntyre's computer code that I posted.
    (Later he realized it was actually Mann's code and backtracked.)

  443. Thank goodness we got rid of paper shopping bags too, plastic is so much more environmentally friendly. Or am I 5 years behind the correct thinking? If only there was a carbon free energy source that had small footprint and runs off the same almost limitless concept as the sun, that would make the greens really happy.
    .
    In another striking episode of incoherence. A week ago Macron announced: "Outlining France’s energy strategy for the next 30 years, Macron said the government will by 2035 shut down 14 nuclear reactors out of the 58 now running at 19 plants."
    .
    This turns out to be a delay from the original goal of 2025. They will cap nuclear energy at 50%, it is about 75% today. Saving the planet works in mysterious ways.

  444. DeWitt,
    A relatively small part of the (US) difference in pruce between gasoline and diesel is the higher thermal content for diesel, but most is the extra taxes for “roaduse/damage” by heavy diesel trucks. As DaveJR notes, that is not the situation in Europe: gasoline is absolutly hammered with taxes to discourage use. Can’t do that with trucks the economy depends on.

  445. Vox, The Guardian, BBC, and the NYT all covered the French protests today and not one of them mentioned climate change, ha ha. Reuters wasn't so willfully blind.
    .
    France's Macron learns the hard way: green taxes carry political risks
    https://www.reuters.com/article/us-climate-change-france-protests/frances-macron-learns-the-hard-way-green-taxes-carry-political-risks-idUSKBN1O10AQ
    .
    "Macron’s plight illustrates a conundrum: How do political leaders’ introduce policies that will do long-term good for the environment without inflicting extra costs on voters that may damage their chances of re-election?"
    .
    That is not a new problem. The authoritarian left doesn't care and just wants to rule by fiat, they know what's good for people and there is no need to query them. Since this goes against the preferred narrative the coverage and pictures tend to be rather unsympathetic to the protesters. Mobs! Looters! Injuries! Deaths! Mean angry men. Heroic police being attacked while defending citizens. A month from now the media will be perplexed why the populist wave is taking over France, it must be bigotry and xenophobia on the rise.

  446. Nothing wrong with shutting down nuclear plants; they have a limited lifespan.
    I'm hoping they are putting in replacements.

  448. What are the Germans going to do when France shuts down nuclear plants? The Germans rely on France to supply electricity when the sun isn't shining and the wind isn't blowing. The power output of French nuclear plants can be adjusted over a fairly wide range. Throttling them down isn't economic, but when you can charge the Germans an arm and a leg for electricity when you need it and they practically pay you to take electricity when they have too much, it all works out.

    Pielke, Jr. mentions in his book The Climate Fix, that while the majority of the people are aware that releasing greenhouse gases is warming the planet, they aren't willing to pay much, when given a choice, to do anything about it.

  449. The Germans can buy energy from Poland's coal plants, ha ha. It's the perfect solution. It lets them continue to virtue signal their peers and be smug about the immorality of the Polish.
    .
    France puts the fuel taxes on a "6 month moratorium" to try to appease both sides, it might make things even worse. Sometimes splitting the baby just doesn't work.
    .
    France Suspends Fuel Tax Increase That Spurred Violent Protests
    https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/04/world/europe/france-fuel-tax-yellow-vests.html
    .
    "To the protesters, Mr. Macron, a 40-year-old former banker with no political experience before he was elected, is concerned about “the end of the world,” while they are worried about “the end of the month.”"
    .
    "Throughout Paris, where the cost of damage has been estimated at 4 million euros, or $4.5 million, protesters sprayed graffiti that read “Macron resignation” and, on the Arc de Triomphe, “We’ve chopped off heads for less than this.”"

  450. Tom Scharf,
    “We’ve chopped off heads for less than this.”
    .
    I think it's an idle threat; they haven't done any beheading in France for a while. The last person to be executed in France was Hamida Djandoubi, who was guillotined on 10 September 1977, before Mr. Macron was born. Still, Macron needs to stop doing really stupid things, but it is not clear that is within his behavioral range. Macron is supposed to be in office until May of 2022… that's a long time if he continues on his current trajectory.

  451. Tom Scharf,
    "France puts the fuel taxes on a "6 month moratorium" to try to appease both sides, it might make things even worse."
    .
    Well, it is a lot more pleasant, not to mention politically effective, to riot and disrupt tourism in June, at the start of peak season, than in December. So it could in fact be much worse in 6 months. I think it quite likely the 'green' fuel tax increases will be quietly delayed 'indefinitely' before the 6 months moratorium is up.
    .
    One of the small ironies here is that yellow safety vests are available to everyone because you are required by the French nanny state to have at least one in your car at all times… in case you break down and have to get out of your car on the side of the road. No silly yellow vest requirement would mean no instant nation-wide uniform for the protesters.

  452. I can't figure out if the delay is to appease the protestors and the plan is to put the taxes in 6 months from now, or it is to appease the elites so he doesn't look like he is backing down to the mob and has no plan to put the taxes back in. My guess is Macron doesn't know either, and doing nothing wasn't an option at this point.

  453. You really have to wonder how many times the elites are going to see the peasants / rural / blue collar / low skill people visibly and sometime violently object to the direction of policy before they get the message. If Trump, Brexit, and the peasants storming Paris doesn't do it then burning down a city might be required, metaphorically of course.
    .
    Let's just hope Trump's challenger in 2020 has the courage and intestinal fortitude to proudly propose carbon and fuel taxes to save the world, ha ha. The good news is this little episode will not go unnoticed by the globalists. They do fear the common man at this point, and because they no longer seem to know him, that fear is turning into paranoia. I think I'll start a secure fencing company for elite neighborhoods.

  454. Tom Scharf,
    Fence? Heck no; start building security walls to keep the deplorables out. "Deplorable Security Wall Co." has a nice ring.

  455. SteveF (Comment #172434) "One of the small ironies here is that yellow safety vests are available to everyone because you are required by the French nanny state to have at least one in your car at all times"

    I was wondering how they all got the vests so quickly.

  456. MikeM,
    Yep. They got them quickly. Using them involved no extra expense!!

    Bastille Day is in July. Perhaps Macron will time things to encourage the next riot to occur on July 14.

  457. Lucia,
    I am pretty sure Bastille day will arrive after the green fuel crisis is long past. In spite of Macron being apparently either slow witted in the extreme or remarkably unaware, I expect his more experienced advisors will explain the situation to him: people are not willing to suffer immediate and certain economic harm in the hope of a very uncertain benefit for their great great grandchildren. Macron really has to be either very stupid or not very well read to imagine otherwise. I mean, the polls everywhere are absolutely consistent: no broad acceptance of real and painful cost now in exchange for a hypothetical climate benefit a hundred years hence.

  458. The Weekly Standard has been NeverTrump central for the last three years. Looks like it could fold at year's end.

  459. Wasn't The Weekly Standard also a supporter of Big Government conservatism? That's what I remember, but I don't care enough to bother to look it up. Whatever, I won't be sorry to see it go.

  460. MikeN,
    An interesting development. Not that surprising, but interesting. When the Standard decided to adopt the editorial stance of the Washington Post WRT the Trump administration, they lost readers. There is plenty about Trump to criticize, of course, but the Standard became essentially 100% opposed to Trump, even in his successes. I found it very strange…. but the Standard really does act like the Washington Generals depicted in “The Flight 93 Election”. That is probably why they are done.

  464. Macron's preening public lecture to Trump on climate change recently looks pretty humorous in hindsight. Trump is a bozo in many ways, but he also has better insight to the electorate than a lot of the leadership class. France already has about the lowest per capita emissions in the west due to their nuclear power, so their crackdown on fuel emissions seems unnecessary to start with, especially in a struggling economy.
    .
    Macron also lectured Trump on nationalism, "Nationalism is a betrayal of patriotism". As if the French weren't the most nationalistic people on earth. I don't have a problem with that except Macron's willful blindness of it.
    .
    On the other side of the ledger Macron is trying to force the loosening up of employment laws as it is currently about impossible to fire anyone in France. This is also unpopular. The French want guaranteed high paying jobs just like everyone else. It is instructive to realize that once benefits are granted to people they are very difficult to take back.

  465. True to form, accusations of "speciesism" are leveled at one species in particular while the rest get a free pass to be as species-ist as they like.

  466. Weekly Standard has increased their online viewership, primarily by adding sports material like Tuesday Morning Quarterback. Having it shut down before end of the season would be tough, though it has moved around a lot.

  468. Tom Scharf (Comment #172447): "Trump is a bozo in many ways, but he also has better insight to the electorate than a lot of the leadership class."

    A lot? More like all.

  469. If anyone at the NRCC wrote something stupid in an email at this point they are the dumbest people alive. I don't discount that possibility.

  470. More doings at Harvard: (from BWI PSU message board –PSU alumnus)

    ……

    "I just received this e-mail from the CEO of my college fraternity. … It indicates that Harvard University is taking punitive action against any Harvard students who join fraternities, sororities or single sex social organizations. This seems like an infringement of students' First Amendment free association rights and/or a violation of Title IX.. I wonder if it will stand a court challenge.

    ……
    Have any other fraternity members out there received a similar notice? I am assuming that many, if not most, National Intrafraternity Conference (NIC) fraternities have sent (or will send) a similar notice to their members. They have apparently formed a website (standuptoharvard.org) as part of their campaign.
    …..
    Dear ________:
    ……
    Our right to brotherhood is in jeopardy!
    ……
    Today, Pi Kappa Phi stands in support of a group of sororities, fraternities and students who filed a pair of lawsuits challenging Harvard’s sanctions policy that punishes students who join off-campus, single-sex social organizations. Even though we do not have a chapter at this specific school, it is critical that we stand together to protect members’ right to shape their own leadership and social paths.
    ……
    Before Harvard announced its policy, one in four undergraduates belonged to sororities, fraternities or all-women’s or all-men’s final clubs—opportunities protected by Title IX and the First Amendment. Starting this fall, members of our organizations are, in a word, blacklisted—stripped of opportunities to hold leadership roles in Harvard organizations and athletic teams and to obtain post-graduate fellowships and scholarships influenced or controlled by Harvard.
    ……
    We can’t sit back and allow Harvard to set a precedent that could be followed by others. This policy blatantly infringes on the rights of Harvard students.
    ……
    We need you! Share our social media posts to add your voice to the support as we #StandUpToHarvard
    ……
    Learn more at standuptoharvard.org
    …….
    Fraternally,

    [​IMG]​
    [​IMG]
    MARK E. TIMMES
    Chief Executive Officer"

    …..
    To answer the poster's question without any research on my part. In my mind, because Harvard is private, it almost certainly doesn't violate the First Amendment. However, Harvard undoubtedly receives a substantial amount of federal funding, and it could potentially violate the terms of some of that funding.

    JD

  471. I think this is just step 1. They plan on extending the punishment to expulsion for being a member.

  472. JD Ohio,
    "Harvard undoubtedly receives a substantial amount of federal funding, and it could potentially violate the terms of some of that funding."
    .
    Truth be told, Harvard has thumbed it's nose at Federal rules for a long time. Doesn't matter. What does matter is angry alumni. The idea that frats and sororities are going to be explicitly condemned by Harvard is not going to pass muster with many alumni. The Harvard administration and faculty are closely aligned with Mr. Macron… which is to say, the purest of a$$holes!

  473. SteveF: If the alumni were as influential as you believe, I think Harvard would be a much less Leftist institution.

    Also, as an aside, I clicked on a link where, in videos, Harvard students summarize the legal case dealing with Asian admissions. Wasn't at all impressed with the maturity of the students who were analyzing the case. Even more of a reason for my son to avoid the Harvards and Yales of the world.

    JD

  474. JD Ohio (Comment #172456): "If the alumni were as influential as you believe, I think Harvard would be a much less Leftist institution."

    I think the alumni are highly influential. I also think that they recognize that their social status depends strongly on the proper virtue signaling. To criticize the politically correct nonsense emanating from their alma mater would jeopardize their social standing. So they hold their tongues.

    Being a member of the elites that run the U.S. (and many other countries) is not a matter of competence. It is a matter of connections and credentials. The Harvards and Yales of the world provide appropriate connections and credentials. So they are doing what the elites demand of them, even if their students learn little of value.
    .
    JD appears to be one of those silly people (like me) who still think that education should be about acquiring useful knowledge and skills.

    p.s. – Please do not overlook the fact that I place myself in the ranks of "silly people".

    p.p.s – In case it is not obvious, the most useful knowledge and skills are the ones that enable a person to think independently.

  476. DeWitt,
    Poor guy! Now he'll continue being rejected by hot young babes because of his age!! 😉

    He must have money to be able to pursue this. (Or he makes it writing about his ongoing projects.)

  477. lucia,

    Sad, I know. OTOH, if he has a lot of money, there are plenty of hot babes who will pretend to ignore his age, whatever it is.

  479. DeWitt,
    They might ignore his age provided he's willing to spend lavishly on them. Oddly, some guys with money would spend money on things *they* like — like perhaps an expensive lawyer to help then wield their political axe or material things for themselves, but not buy the nice house the girl of his dreams might wish. He might not grant an indulgent allowance to buy things gold diggers want– like clothes, jewels, opera tickets, dinner with her friends and so on.

    The new article had a photo taken by a journalist. It really is funny the guy thinks he doesn't look 69 years old. He looks every day of his age.

  480. lucia,

    "He looks every day of his age."

    Yep. At least. As I noted above, he could pass for 75 easily.

  481. blockquote didn't work either and I couldn't edit, which I had been able to do the last couple of posts.

  482. I gave all my youthful good looks to my children….sort of the opposite of Dorian Grey’s picture.
    Edit Test….

  483. Bold test
    Italics test
    When in the course of human events….
    .
    Nope, no HTML.
    .
    Edit works some ofthe time.

  484. Chuck Schumer has announced Democrats will not go along with improving infrastructure without concurrent ‘action’ on climate change. IOW, the Democrats are not interested in infrstructure as a common good. I predict this will not end well for Democrats.

  485. The Democrat position on compromise is the same as it has been for the last decade: Give us what we want, or no deal.

  486. Do what on climate change? In terms of decarbonizing our economy and total carbon emissions we're doing as well as or better than most of the developed world. Globally, China is the problem, not us.

    I saw somewhere where our carbon emission is back to the 1992 level. Other than some sort of virtue signaling, I don't know what else we can do. You can see from the protests in France what could happen if we try to do something that causes people actual pain.

  487. They also said they were against the new NAFTA update because "it didn't go far enough". I might have missed the part where they were previously not fans of NAFTA and fighting to rewrite it "far enough". Politics gives you plenty of ammunition each day to stay cynical about politics.
    .
    The NYT realizes the French riots might have a lesson for climate change.
    ‘Yellow Vest’ Protests Shake France. Here’s the Lesson for Climate Change.
    https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/06/world/europe/france-fuel-carbon-tax.html
    .
    Their answer is basically "let them eat cake". You need to subsidize electric cars with your fuel taxes to make them cheaper for the rubes and this will pacify them. The words "electric pickup truck" were never used in this explanation.
    .
    I saw a bumper sticker years ago that stuck with me "If you got it, a truck brought it". Those are the people who will bear the brunt of this tax. Trucks are invisible to the knowledge class, everyone can get by with a Chevy Volt (now discontinued).
    .
    These taxes are regressive and that has always been the theoretical problem. It's no longer theoretical. Their answer is to redistribute the taxes in a mysterious unspecified manner, all the while taking a huge cut for a green slush fund. Why not just tax the correct people to start with? Because only the carbon sinners must be punished, those that emote the correct shibboleths shall be set free from the burdens of sin. Have you been saved?

  488. Two signs in the rear window of a car I saw today:

    On the left, Truth Virtue

    On the right, Trump has neither

    My immediate thought was: And this is different from Obama how?

    AFAICT he lied almost every time he spoke about anything substantive. Someone who lies that much can't be considered virtuous IMO.

  489. More to the point: And this makes him different from Hillary how? She is an out and out crook and, of course, lies about it.

  490. “If the left didn’t have double standards, they’d have no standards at all.”

  491. DeWitt,
    "Do what on climate change? In terms of decarbonizing our economy and total carbon emissions we're doing as well as or better than most of the developed world. Globally, China is the problem, not us."
    .
    Sure, China is a larger (and rapidly growing) emitter of CO2, and the Chinese have no intention of changing that. India and eventually Africa will follow China. The sensible thing to do, if you really think CO2 emissions a big problem, is to fund research into advanced, inherently fail-safe nuclear, reduce regulation and road-blocks to allow that advanced nuclear to be put into service quickly, and share the technology with developing nations. But greens are not interested in 'sensible'… they demand a "fundamental change in how people live their lives"… advanced nuclear doesn't fit that demand. The stupid, it burns.
    .
    FWIW, there has been real progress with electric car batteries… the Chevy Bolt is now claimed to have a 238 mile range and a price tag of $37,000. A bit more range and ~$8,000 lower price and the Bolt makes both economic and environmental sense…. if the electricity you charge up the battery with doesn't come from coal fired plants.

  492. DeWitt,
    "She is an out and out crook and, of course, lies about it."
    .
    Sure, and always has. The good news is Bill and Hillary are now the "Spinal Tap" of US politics…. they just can't get anyone to attend their "evening with the Clinton's" talks…. even when the ticket price drops from $70 to $6. (https://www.investors.com/politics/editorials/clintons-speaking-tour-ticket-prices/)
    .
    We can only hope the two criminals will *finally* go quietly into the night so that nobody has to suffer their lies any longer.
    .
    "Someone who lies that much can't be considered virtuous IMO."
    .
    Misleading the 'deplorables' by any means available is indeed virtuous if it enables "political progress"…. toward ever less personal liberty and ever more public control of individuals.

  493. SteveF,

    "FWIW, there has been real progress with electric car batteries… the Chevy Bolt is now claimed to have a 238 mile range and a price tag of $37,000. A bit more range and ~$8,000 lower price and the Bolt makes both economic and environmental sense…. if the electricity you charge up the battery with doesn't come from coal fired plants."

    Maybe, if people were still buying sedans. But they're not, or at least nowhere near as many as they used to. Besides, I'm not at all sure that's actual progress with batteries, or that they've just found ways to cram more current technology batteries into the car to increase the range.

    Even with a 240 mile range, all you still have is a commuter vehicle, not a true family car that you can take on a vacation trip to Disney World or the beach. It's still not practical for folks in flyover country or urban sprawl, for that matter. When I was in college in Pasadena, CA, I remember driving at least that far on a date. A plug-in hybrid is still far more practical than a pure electric until electric vehicle batteries can be recharged in no more than 10 minutes. For a 60kWh battery pack, that's at least 360kW or 900A at 400V, assuming 100% efficiency, which you wouldn't get a that rate. That would be quite a connector.

  494. The French apparently abandoned their fuel taxes, not delayed them. There were riots in Paris anyway today. The people in the rich neighborhoods reportedly left town. There was also a planned climate march that had to have its route rearranged, ha ha. They were chanting "End of the world, end of the month, it's all the same battle". The greens, incoherent as always. The Paris protests have morphed into something nobody can quite define. It's another leaderless protest (OWS) that will ultimately die from lack of focus.

  495. The Atlantic tries to sort out French riots and climate change.
    .
    France’s ‘Yellow Vest’ Protesters Aren’t Against Climate Action – Just because they oppose Emmanuel Macron’s proposed fuel-tax hike does not mean that the French activists will oppose any policy designed to fight climate change.
    https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2018/12/france-yellow-vest-climate-action/577642/
    .
    "Macron’s environmental agenda was both practical and symbolic, a way to make France more ecological and to distinguish himself, not just in Europe but on the world stage."
    .
    … i.e. virtue signaling.
    .
    "The fact is, the yellow-vest demonstrations have never been against Macron’s climate-change policies in general; they have been against the fuel tax in particular, which they see as unfairly targeting lower-income households."
    .
    Everyone is for fighting climate change if it's free of sacrifice, everyone is also against poverty and starvation.
    .
    "In other words, in a context of social unrest and economic instability, the Macron government didn’t sell its policy well enough to its citizens."
    .
    Let's bring out the tired Obama "they aren't repudiating me, I just didn't communicate well enough" sophistry. This article is full of humorous statements like this.
    .
    "What’s not unique are the political costs of climate-change legislation. In this, France now offers a cautionary tale, unfolding in real time."
    .
    Earth to greens, "they" don't want to pay for elite climate virtue signaling, "you" can pay for it yourself.

  496. Virginia teacher fired for refusing to use "preferred pronoun" of trans student.
    https://www.nationalreview.com/news/virginia-teacher-fired-after-refusing-to-call-trans-student-by-preferred-pronoun/
    .
    “My religious faith dictates that I am to love and respect everyone, whether I agree with them or not. Because we are all made in God’s image,” Vlaming said during Thursday’s public hearing. “I am also aware of, and agree with, speech limits that are placed on public-school teachers concerning matters of religious faith. I represent the state in my role as a public-school teacher and therefore speak with a certain authority. That authority is not to be used to promote any one specific worldview, and I don’t. However, we are here today because a specific worldview is being imposed upon me.”
    .
    I doubt this government compelled speech (see Jordan Peterson) is going to pass constitutional muster.

  497. Tom Scharf,

    It's not as if it wasn't known that people aren't willing to pay much for climate change policies. Roger Pielke, Jr in his 2010 book The Climate Fix: What Scientists and Politicians Won't Tell You About Global Warming, postulated that there was an iron law of climate policy, that when policies focused on economic growth confront policies focused on emissions reduction, it is economic growth that will win out every time. In other words, wide support for emission reduction doesn't mean that people are willing to pay a lot.

    "A poll in the United States conducted in the summer of 2009 helpfully illustrates the iron law of climate policy. The poll asked respondents about their willingness to support a climate bill in the U.S. Congress at three different annual costs per household. At $80 per year a [slim] majority said that they would support a bill (see Figure 2.4). But at $175 per year support dropped by almost half, with a majority expressing opposition to such a bill. At $770 per year opposition exceeds support by about a ratio of ten to one. Some might argue that the poll indicates that the environment and the economy are in fact necessary trade-offs. This would be an incorrect reading of the poll. What the poll shows is that when the environment and the economy are presented as trade-offs, the economy invariably wins. The implication is not that such a trade-off is inevitable; rather, any policy that seeks to achieve an accelerated decarbonization of the global economy must be designed such that economic growth and environmental progress go hand in hand."

    Of course Pielke, Jr. was effectively run out of town on a rail for espousing such obviously inconvenient beliefs. However politicians like Macron ignore the obvious at their peril. Increases in fuel prices for any reason have caused widespread protests in the not so distant past, the summer of 2008, for example.

  498. DeWitt,
    The Bolt is a smallish SUV, not really a sedan. The reviews I read said that the passangers sit pretty high off the street (due to the battery pack under the floor). It certainly is not a family car for vacations, more second car for around town and modest length commutes. The 60 KWH battery bank costs $15K to replace (plus some installation labor). It is projected to last >8 years with a 20% loss of capacity.

  499. Tom Scharf,
    The climate concerned will of course spin the events in France to avoid facing reality: people really do put climate change at the bottom of their list of concerns. They sure as heck won’t pay a lot to reduce CO2 emissions if given a choice…. which is why the climate concerned want to avoid giving voters a choice. They prefer to force their desired policies on people, not convince people of the merit of their ‘green’ policies.

  500. SteveF,

    If the Bolt qualifies as an SUV, then so does the Prius. There's a Prius model that has about the same profile. It's actually a four door hatchback. I doubt it even qualifies as a crossover. With a 240V, 32A charger, it takes an hour of charging per 25 miles of range.

  501. Even with fast DC charging, it still takes more than an hour to fully charge (90 miles/30 minutes).

  502. DeWitt,
    You should probably not buy a Chevy Bolt.
    (I am not going to either.)
    But if they can reduce the battery cost, add a little to range, and get the battery life to >3000 cycles, I think there are plenty of people who could buy it and who would be OK with mostly overnight charging, especially if they could get cheaper off-peak metering.

  503. Fox and CNN both run articles suggesting Trump is likely to be impeached for campaign finance violations due to Cohen's testimony. I don't see the point. I don't see the republican majority Senate removing President Trump over an issue that's usually handled with a fine.
    But in a way, I wish they'd get on with it, waste their shot, and be done with it. I think once the House [impeaches] and it fails [to remove Trump], for all practical purposes the Mueller impeachment game is over.

  504. DeWitt,
    Where I live, off peak power is $0.04 per KWH, so a charge of 40KWH would cost $1.60…. that’s cheap for 150 miles of driving. Of course, off peak metering means that on-peak uasge becomes more expensive ($0.19 per KWH instead of $0.12 per KWH), so for it to make sense, you would need to move as much usage as possible to off peak (after 10:00 PM). In Florida, most on-peak is air conditioning, so it might not be practical.

  505. Mark Bofill,
    The Dems will drag out the possibility of impeachment for as long possible. The point is not to remove Trump from office (they know that won’t happen), it is to have constant ‘investigations’ and accusations of 2016 malfeasance through the 2020 election campaign. They want a Democrat elected in 2020….. that’s all.

  506. Fox's article isn't about impeachment, but indictment by SDNY. Andy McCarthy has been discussing this risk to Trump for almost a year.

  507. There is nothing wrong with a 300 mile range in a second car. If you only have a single car then even though 99% of trips will be under that range, the 1% really matters. I want to be able to leave the state of FL without meticulous planning for power stops and the risk associated with them. When electric cars become viable in cost and convenience they will sell themselves.

  508. I find it a bit humorous that the establishment / media just loves Macron and the French approval rating is 23% and they hate Trump and his US approval rating is twice that.
    .
    I think it is universal that perceived disrespect from others is what really annoys people the most, and some leaders such as Macron and Clinton have a really hard time convincing people out of their peer group that they respect them. Now Trump openly disrespects the establishment so that rule is in effect there as well.

  509. Mike, thanks. That's correct, my mistake.
    Steve, that would be more sensible. I'm somewhat curious to see if the sensible course of action is the one that House Democrats follow.

  510. SteveF,

    I suspect the cost of electricity to charge a Bolt or other plug-in EV is small on a per mile basis, However, I'd like to see a fully allocated lifetime cost per mile comparison. I'm thinking that electricity cost would be a minor component and the cost per mile won't be small.

    My guess would be that 4,000 miles per year would be on the high side and unless there's a significant trade-in value for the battery pack, when it goes, the car is effectively totaled. For that, even with the tax break, you're paying more for the car than you would for a conventional car or even a hybrid.

    Once there are a lot of electric vehicles, there may be no such thing as off-peak or tax breaks either. Put up a lot of roof top solar panels and I can imagine that power at night could be more expensive than during the day.

  511. DeWitt,
    The projected life of the EV battery, like all batteries, depends on a number of factors, especially depth of discharge. The best estimates I can find indicate that 50% average depth of discharge will give about 1500 to 2000+ cycles to 20% loss of capacity. If you get 100 miles per cycle, that is 150,000 to 200,000 miles until the battery is effectively shot. If you assign zero value to the car at that point, then it works out to about $0.20 to $0.25 per mile depreciation. Of course, the residual value wouldn’t really be zero, but would likely be low. This site has some useful information:
    https://www.plugincars.com/what-you-need-know-about-electric-car-battery-warranties-132884.html
    .
    I agree that an apples to apples comparison is needed to evaluate an EV relative to a gasoline car, but I was surprised at the combination of range and expected battery lifetime (compared to earlier EVs).

  512. SteveF (Comment #172495): "The projected life of the EV battery …"

    I think that EV battery lifetime would not be a big deal provided that battery capacity is large compared to normal daily use, as is the case for Tesla. The reason is that owners will typically top up their battery every night, thus avoiding the deep discharge cycles that compromise battery life. If you have an 80 kWh battery (~240 mile range) and you drive about 30 miles on a typical day (10 kWh), you should have no problem with getting many thousands of cycles.

    But the situation is very different for a plug in hybrid. Unless the battery is severely oversized for the desired electric range, it will undergo deep discharge on a daily basis and will be toast in a few years. I suspect that is a big factor in the lack of attractive plug in hybrids on the market.

  513. Mike M,
    Hundai has a small “crossover” SUV available in January, with a lifetime warrantee on the battery bank for the original buyer, 258 mile claimed range, about $37,000 for the base model, $40,000 for the upgraded trim package. It qualifies for a $7,500 tax credit. All that’s really left to worry about is max range…. no cross-country road trips, but for a second car, it looks OK.

  514. Mike M,
    My Dutch distributor has a plug-in hybrid with about 10 mile all-electric range. (He bought it for the generous tax incentives.) He works most days out of a home office, so most trips are just a few miles (he lives in a very small town). When he travels to his business office (20 miles) or to visit customers, I believe he turns off the electric to not abuse the battery…. but I will check on this.

  515. Tom
    >>"The fact is, the yellow-vest demonstrations have never been against Macron’s climate-change policies in general; they have been against the fuel tax in particular, which they see as unfairly targeting lower-income households."

    They are against *personally paying* for climate-change policies.

    The thing is, some climate change activists want "good for climate" to be used as a motivation to raise money *at least* for climate, and sometimes for more things. Whether or not the fuel tax was going to help climate, it was going to raise revenue and Macron wanted to do it. Perhaps he thought the climate justification would avoid the grumbling. At a minimum, it appears Macron can't use the words "climate-change" to cause them to support policies that cost them something.

    This shouldn't come as a surprise. Even examining the behavior of climate activists we see *they* think it's fine to burn fuel motoring greenpeace ships all over the place, or flying to conferences or taking "environmental" vacations to "see" the vanishing glaciers before they are gone and so on and so on. If the supposedly most motivated to "save" CO2 burn CO2 generating fuel with abandon, it's hardly surprising the man in the street doesn't want to be the one forced to give up using fuel.

  516. SteveF,
    After numerous inquiries to Jim and me over time my Mom bought a hybrid. She didn't say she was planning to buy– just hypothetically. We always told her hybrid was not worth the extra cost. They aren't. You definitely get fewer features to pay for the hybrid feature.

    We also told her she should wait until reliability is proven over time, not speculated based on a few years of data. They've been out enough time to perhaps make this not so important anymore.

    Despite our general advice against buying a hybrid…. she bought a hybrid. Then she "discovered" it didn't have a feature she KNEW she wanted– built in navigation. Evidently her "friends" (who she listens to) told her "all" cars have it. Sigh….

    (This has always been the way my mom is. She *always* asks us. She pretty much *never* takes our advice. She listens to whatever her friends say no matter how little they know about the topic in general, or what she needs. She doesn't write down her needs and focus on them. Then…. she "discovers" something after a big ticket expenditure. Sigh….)

    She can live without navigation. But she's 82. Navigation would have been a better thing to spend money on than "hybrid". She does say she's happy with the car, so I guess all is ok. But… Oh. Well.

    Seriously, if I'd been picking for her, I'd want the extra in
    * navigation and
    * every possible drivers assistance feature possible.

    Jim's drivers package would have been great for her.

  517. lucia,

    Built in navigation is something you DON'T want. It's a PITA to update the maps and when it goes bad, and it will, it will cost a small fortune to fix it unless you're lucky and it's covered by the warranty. But that still means a trip to the car shop to fix it.

  518. Lucia,
    "If the supposedly most motivated to "save" CO2 burn CO2 generating fuel with abandon, it's hardly surprising the man in the street doesn't want to be the one forced to give up using fuel."
    .
    Or woman in the street. 😉 Falls in the general category of: far easier to 'talk the talk' than to 'walk the walk'. It is of course lost on all those only-talkers that other people actually believe their use of fossil fuels (eg for car or air travel) is also very important.
    .
    WRT your mom not listening to anyone but her friends: I believed that was a behavior only commonly found in one's children; I was obviously mistaken.
    .
    WRT to navigation: it is easier to blue-tooth link the car to a smart-phone (automatic link each time the car starts and the cellphone is present), so you get voice instructions over the car's audio system. Most new cars can do this. Maps are always current, and you get traffic information as well.

  519. lucia,
    I got the built-in nav system with my new car (2016 model). But I much prefer using the phone's system if it's available. [That is, I remembered to bring my phone, it isn't low on charge, etc.] As SteveF wrote, the maps are always up-to-date, and (better) traffic information. The one thing I prefer on the car's nav is the context display — showing signage and which lane(s) you should be in.

    The driving safety features, though — those are awesome. I hope your mom got as many as were available.

  520. It's a virtual certainty that once the electric car transition starts in earnest, our benevolent government will see fit to tax the power that charges electric cars, just as they tax gasoline up the wahzoo.
    This fuel tax makes some sense as it indirectly charges the people who use the roads the most, and roads need to be built and maintained. Dropping fuel tax revenue will be replaced, so whatever the tax per mile gasoline has now, electric cars will eventually have it as well.

  521. My advice: Never buy a car that doesn't support Android Auto. I use this exclusively and Google Maps (or Waze) in the car is the killer app. My car's native navigation allows destinations to be entered via voice … well at least that is the theory according to the manual. In my reality this theory is quite unusable in practice. Google Maps works reliably almost all the time. Real time traffic, wreck notifications and reroute, etc. The only thing I wish it had was a weather map. You also get audio book apps and music apps if you have a subscription to one of the services. TuneIn app for real time sports. Reliable text messaging via speech. Android Auto is also updated with new features, unlike car software which never, ever, gets updated. Paying $80 for a map update is history.
    .
    However if you drive off the cell grid then that is a big problem. It won't start navigation without an internet connection. You can download offline maps for this but most people don't pre-plan this way. I had to fallback to my car's native system once in the past two years.
    .
    FYI: You can download Android Auto and run it on your phone to see what it is like. All the Android auto apps are restricted user input for the usual driver distraction reasons.

  522. Tom —
    Certainly highway maintenance funds have to come from somewhere. (In some places I suspect that a portion of gas tax receipts is siphoned off into other purposes; or if the gas tax is insufficient, general revenues are used for road maintenance .)

    Assuming that one wishes to allocate taxes based roughly on use, taxing vehicle charging makes sense. If this is often done at home, it would probably mean a surtax on all electrical usage.

    Or perhaps mileage charges, as mentioned in this article https://www.trucks.com/2016/06/15/california-fuel-taxes-mileage-charges/
    If a state has a mandatory manual inspection, I can imagine having the odometer read at that time, and billing based on that. More intrusively, one could require the installation of a "black box" which would record and report mileage.

  523. Tom Scharf,
    "You can download offline maps for this but most people don't pre-plan this way."
    .
    I have done it many times for driving outside the States when I didn't have local wireless broadband service. Works perfectly OK…. no traffic information, of course.

  525. By the way, a friend of mine has a Tesla. When he let me drive it, he noted that Tesla recommends charging to only 90% capacity for normal use. IIRC, you have to jump through hoops to go over 90%. I suspect that you don't want to take it below 30% regularly either. So your range in daily driving would be ~60% of the claimed range, assuming you're not heating or cooling the cabin air, largely not true in my neck of the woods.

  526. Dewitt,
    I LOVE my built in navigation. I haven't had any trouble updating. I absolutely, positively hate using google's navigation. Abhor it. I know my mother would find it very difficult to use.

    Anything that breaks requires a trip to the service department and $$ to fix. If that was an argument against a feature, my car also wouldn't include a radio, air conditioner, heater or other nice features I use regularly.

  527. Steve and Dewitt,
    My mom doesn't want a smart phone and can't seem to be made to convert to using one. So that option is off the table at least until we get her to be willing to use a smart phone.

  529. Oh guys, I should add: I specifically hate the *audio* instructions. I like the map showing on my dashboard and the graphic driving directions on the steering wheel. Both Jim and one of his coworkers talk back to the audio instructions. . . (Very annoying as a passenger. But they'll say things like, "no. I'm not going to do that…" Of course it keeps pestering you to take the way it prefers even though you've decided to take a different route and so on. )

  530. I should add: My car's navigation has re-routing and knows when traffic jams are ahead. I know because it's warned me in the past. So I don't give that up by not using google maps.

  531. lucia,

    Waze tells you where the cops are and other possible hazards like parked cars or truck tire tread on the road. It's somewhat like CB radio used to be, by the time you get there, the cops are usually gone, but not always. It depends on how close you are to the Wazer ahead who reported the location. It also tells you the speed limit and tells you your speed if you are exceeding the limit. Google Maps doesn't do that. Google and Waze don't always agree on what alternate route to take when there is a traffic jam. I've been burned by both apps when I guessed wrong on which one to use.

    One thing I've decided is that if it's switching back and forth between taking a detour or not, take the detour.

    On my friend's relatively new Jeep, the GPS on the onboard navigation went wonky. It still showed movement but the location was hundreds of miles off.

  532. For a single cell lithium ion battery that is charged to 4.2V discharge will cutoff at around 3.0V. What you don't want to do is let it discharge a lot further than that. Li-Ion has a self discharge (leaky) of about 10% per month or so. If you discharge the battery and let it sit around for very long periods it can cause the damaging type of discharge. There is a difference between discharging the battery to 0% (3V) and letting it go all the way down to 0V.
    .
    Everything you ever wanted to know about batteries.
    https://batteryuniversity.com

  533. Lucia,
    “But they'll say things like, "no. I'm not going to do that…"”
    .
    Damn, I say the same annoying things to the navigation girl. The good thing is you don’t have to ride with me in places where I need navigation assistance.

  534. I always mute the audio navigation prompts and only use the visual. What drives me crazy is when it is giving me detailed audio instructions on how to leave my own neighborhood. I can figure that part out, thank you.
    .
    Google's map display is far superior and routing is better. If I tell my native navigation to go to local places that I know the best route, Google picks the optimal route more often.
    .
    Google also has a creepy feature where it automatically pops up possible destinations on the main screen based on your appointments and other stuff in emails. Curiously it has been rather bad at navigating to a contact name's address, some crazy security issue. Tell Google things like "go to airport" and it can figure out the local context most of the time. AA's Audible book interface is also nice to have on the main screen.
    .
    Unfortunately in order to get AA in most cars you must pay for the in house navigation first. BMW was going to charge a subscription fee just to use Apple Play, that was a non-starter.
    .
    Live traffic is usually free for a few years, but then they want to charge you a subscription fee. YMMV. Google maps warns of traffic problems ahead even when it's not explicitly navigating.
    .
    I'm pretty sure my car has a radio, but I would have to check, ha ha.

  535. Tom Scharf,
    “I'm pretty sure my car has a radio, but I would have to check, ha ha.”
    .
    I am sure my car has radio (and satellite radio), I have just never turned them on in 11 months. I’d rather think without interruption.

  536. Waze is good for cops. I think the problem is too many people report police that are just driving on the road and so there are a lot of false alarms. I haven't got a speeding ticket in decades so it's of marginal benefit for me. What Waze is supposed to be very good at is hyperactive reroutes for places like LA where commuting is a nightmare. I used Waze for a while but ultimately use Google maps most of the time. Google maps understand destinations better, and doesn't put you through twenty question and clicks to confirm a destination. Most of the time you tell it to go somewhere, and it just starts navigation.

  537. It should be stated that the quality level between manufacturers varies dramatically. The Japanese seem to be pretty bad at it. I think they must use the same people who do Canon camera interfaces.

  538. DeWitt, I calculated on here awhile back that garage solar panels could charge a Tesla with approximately the same footprint.

  540. In car navigation has probably saved countless marriages according to my experience. Some people are a bit … unforgiving … when a navigator gives a wrong or late instruction.

  541. Tom Scharf,
    My onboard navigation has often found better ways to get places than I used to use.

    On other features people have mentioned: I would never, ever use a audio book reading app nor the sports. I might want something to pick music to my taste if I drove more. I'm not sure though. I actually like hearing not-tailored to me music choices on the radio and getting familiar with whats currently popular. So those extra features wouldn't motivate me to download a different navigation tool. I like my onboard navigation and haven't experienced the problems some of you guys seem to have experienced. (And I seem to have features some of you guys don't have– like suggesting routes around traffic issues. So it must know somehow. Honestly, I don't know how. But the routes do change from time to time and they are based on things like construction and so on.)

    So I'm sticking with my on board until I have a problem.

    Mom doesn't have a smart phone. So none of those things will work for her unless I persuade her to get a smart phone. *someone* (not me) will persuade her eventually. Probably whoever told her the hybrid was "what is done" for whatever reason.

  542. Lucia
    "I'm pretty sure she got none. Zero."

    Ah that's too bad. My 78 year old father recently bought a new SUV and he asked my opinion on all those gadgets. I told him he should buy them all, stopping, lane assist, cameras everywhere and if he didn't I'd pay for them out of my own pocket. Surprisingly he listened to me and got them all. It makes me sleep slightly better knowing he's a car looking over his shoulder.

    Still not enough comfort for me to have him drive across Denver at night for his grandsons basketball game. Am I a bad son for not telling him about 8pm Friday night games cause the traffic could be challenging for him?

  543. Tom
    >Some people are a bit … unforgiving … when a navigator gives a wrong or late instruction.

    Well… and some people are terrible navigators. My mother… ohhh….

    Actually, when I was traveling in Norway with her, I had an epiphany. I think my Mom can't read maps. Seriously. I'd always thought she just didn't listen to me or…. blah…blah…. But we were in various groups. Some of us would read the map and we'd be looking for signs and so on. Mom would always dash off to ask some complete stranger (often walking ways quickly enough and far enough to make it difficult for the ones trying to read the map to read a sign and locate ourselves on the map. ) Then after she'd gotten "directions" (often garbled) from a complete stranger, she was totally impatient that the map readers would be trying to relate that to the map (as required to (a) verify and (b) be able to continue correctly for more than 2 blocks.)

    I related this to my sisters. We'd all traveled with Mom as children and had observed her behavior. They all said… oh. Yeah… That's exactly what she does. I think you are right.

    Let me tell you, it is very stressful to drive with Mom taking the job of "navigator". Since she isn't following a map, she really only goes by landmarks. So she can't give directions like, "in about two blocks, turn left". It's sort of like go… go… go. Turn NOW!!"

    Actually, when we discussed my theory about Mom and maps, we all then discussed trying to get mom to *draw* a map. I remember some… oy!!! The problems were mostly scale. The order of turns (left, left, right…. etc.) where ok. But the distance between the turns was distorted beyond description.

  544. My wife sometimes finds it difficult to make it back home. We live outside of Denver so no matter where you are the mountains are west but that isn't enough of a clue to set her internal compass. Someone above said navigation aides were a marital godsend, nope usually they have you doing stupid stuff. When my wife has to decide who to believe she goes with the navigation "lady" as I'm sitting in the passenger seat saying Wrong! Don't go that way!

    Now I'm tasked with all the driving duties. Not hard, I look up where it's at and a few turns and drive there.

  545. Lucia,
    An inability to read maps is a lot more common than you might imagine. In South America, there are whole cities of 2+ million people where it is impossible to even find a road map for purchase. When I have shown people a map of their own city, they often don’t grasp that it is an overhead two dimensional view of the surface; it usually means nothing to them. Everyone navigates by landmarks, and there are few helpful road signs.

  546. Speaking of maps, here are two interesting (to me) differences.
    When walking in an unfamiliar city, some friends can only follow a map when it is rotated to match the direction they're facing. E.g. if they're facing south, they must rotate the map 180 degrees in order to make sense of it. [Assuming the map is oriented north-up, as is typical.]
    .
    A possibly related fact is that I seem to be alone in preferring to drive with the nav maps — whether the car's or the phone's — oriented north-up. Everyone else much prefers the ahead-up orientation. I can see that it makes it easier to recognize whether the next turn is a right or a left, but it bothers me to see the map rotate as the car turns. My mental processes seem to be "stuck" at north-up.

  547. Driving with your spouse is inherently stressful, navigation system or not (one wants it on, the other not, for example). Best if the one not driving is sleeping. There are more stressful marital activities (eg one teaching the other something new, golf being a worst case example), but not many.
    .
    My brother in law is a fair golfer (mid-high 80s), but he says while on the course with my sister (a terrible golfer), he is basically limited to the words ‘good’ and ‘shot’.

  548. Harold W,
    I too orient all navigation system maps (marine or land) with north up… otherwise I can’t confirm direction with obvious physical cues, like the sun rises in the east, or the magnetic compass says I am traveling south. Having the direction I am going always ‘up’ is for me disconcerting.

  549. Harold, Steve,
    I also hole maps north up. I don't carry a compass, but occasionally I'd like to have one. (I guess I should check if my phone has on. 🙂 )

    It's really disconcerting to have the map flip around to make the direction I am going be "up".

  550. SteveF,
    The thing about not being able to read maps…. is I think Mom doesn't want to admit she really can't. She also doesn't want to admit that she can't give good directions partly because she doesn't grok maps and partly because she can't quite describe her landmarks. She knows them when she sees them, but it's always a bit like "Oh. I'll know the sign when I see it!".

    Using landmarks if you are driving yourself. But it's useless if you are trying to describe how to get someplace but can't describe "that building" (between all the other "buildings") where you turn left or if you inevitably can't tell the driver they are approaching someplace where the driver needs to do things. The driver needs to know to get in the correct lane, or that they are preparing to turn at least as soon as the driver *ought* to turn on their turn signals. (This is true even if the driver doesn't actually use their turn signals.) A person who navigates by landmarks just doesn't give enough time.

    Mom has been oddly grumpy if the driver doesn't respond instantly to her late navigation. It isn't just torture to me when I am driving. It was torture when she would insist on "navigating" with my Dad or a sibling driving. The passengers could all tell whose fault it was the driver didn't turn…. but no one wanted to have a big fight when she got all grumpy the turns were missed.

    (FWIW: people who navigate by landmarks can be pretty bad getting you BACK to the right turn because, lacking a map, they don't know the landmarks on the path you actually ended up taking.)

  551. Lucia,
    I think nearly all smartphones have a compass function. I recently got a new phone, and the compass is quite good: almost instantaneous response, very accurate (inside ~1degree), and unaffected by tilt of the phone. That requires a combination of a multi-axis magnetometer and multi-axis accelerometer. The last time I saw that combination of accuracy/response was in a $5000 marine autopilot system I purchased 7 years ago. Now it is just a very small part of a $600 smartphone. With a suitable app and a bluetooth link to a hydrolic pump controller (to control the boat’s direction) my phone could easily become a complete marine navigation system…. as an afterthought. Technological progress is relentless.

  552. SteveF,

    Solar panel charging of a car only works if you only drive at night or have battery storage for the solar energy when the car isn't in the garage.

  553. SteveF,

    Wrt smartphone compass, you also have three axis rotation rate sensors in the inertial navigation unit in the smart phone which works in combination with the accelerometer. Drones use similar inertial data systems to navigate and maintain orientation. With the GPS, the compass also 'knows' the correction for the magnetic compass to give you true north. The compass in your car isn't that smart. You have to set the zone you're in to minimize the error. Somewhere in the car user manual, it tells you how to do it.

  554. DeWitt,
    "solar panel charging of a car only works if you only drive at night or have battery storage for the solar energy when the car isn't in the garage."
    .
    I don't think I suggested home mounted solar panels are a suitable charging source for EVs. Clearly they are not for people who have to drive during the day. Besides, if you needed (say) 25 KWH per day to keep the battery charged up, that would be a pretty expensive solar installation.

  555. lucia (Comment #172536): "A person who navigates by landmarks just doesn't give enough time."

    I find that odd. I navigate a lot by using landmarks, but I use them largely to give myself plenty of time to get in the correct lane well in advance of a turn. I have no problem reading maps, but once I have driven an unfamiliar route I rely on landmarks much more than street names. I am pretty much indifferent to how a map is oriented.

    When I use my GPS, I rely on the audio since I think that is much safer. I only look at the maps on my GPS when I am stopped. But I do glance at it ahead of a turn to see the indicator that tells me how many turn lanes there are and which one I should be in.

  556. A north up map is fine with me (and probably others) when you know that your route has to take you from a start point to your destination by way of a general direction. Maybe it gives confidence that the directions are correct. On the other hand, if I have navigator or navigation device in which I have complete confidence I will prefer the route path being up and telling me right or left and not east, west etc.

    I very much appreciate the Google directions when driving to an unfamiliar destination and particularly the audio versions. I have a female voice directing me and who never is impatient with my driving or questioning whether I know what I am doing. I can talk back to her without getting a negative or emotional response. I can tell her in no uncertain terms and even sarcastically that I am taking an alternative route without any emotional response from her. She is very flexible and even when I make a wrong turn I do not get criticized but rather I get a calmly stated new direction to the destination. (I tried out "missing " my destination several times when I first started using Google directions and almost fully expected to finally get a response something like: "You idiot you are on your own and please stop wasting my time". But, no, the lady stayed with me to the end.

    One of my most memorable driving experiences was driving a blind co-worker to a home to where I had never been. The co-worker was a designer and had to "visualize" how an end product would look. He would do this by reading a description in Braille. His accounts were always as good or better than his sighted fellow department workers who look at and study the product. He had had a few drinks the evening of our trip and was giving me directions by way of streets and landmarks. This worked well until we were very close to his home and I could not readily discern his directions. He get a bit impatient with me asked that I let him out so he could walk home. I asked him for one my chance and I finally got him home and into his house. What a help would have been my Google gal, but unfortunately she had not even been born at that time.

  557. … ahem … Google now sometimes gives directions with landmarks. It told me "Turn right after the Taco Bell" recently.
    .
    People … if you take a wrong turn, the world does not end, you do not drive off a cliff and suffer a horrible fiery death. There is a simple fix which is turning around and getting back on track. Yes, you may suffer the agony of being delayed a minute or two, but the overall impact to your life and everyone else in the car is minimal. Driving is goal oriented, reaching the destination is the goal. It's not a race or a test. Driving can be stressful because people are unbelievably paranoid about missing a turn.
    .
    Driving with my Dad was stressful. He is legally blind and still tries to give me directions when I have a GPS. "Dad, if I need your help I will ask for it".
    .
    Some of this paranoia is justified by our experience with old school directions. Someone tells you to turn right on Maple Ave. but fails to tell you how far it is. So if you miss it you then drive who knows how far before turning around (should we turn around yet?) and trying to find it again. Everyone has a story about someone turning the wrong way on an interstate and driving hours before realizing it in the pre-GPS days.
    .
    Following directions and reading a map are skills, but giving old school directions is even a higher level skill. When you are listening to someone give really bad directions it is a bit frustrating.
    .
    I gave my kids the map back in the day and told them to tell me how to get to the destination to train them.

  558. All recent phones have a GPS, compass, gyroscope, and accelerometer (MEMS technology). They perform "sensor fusion" to overcome the inherent drawbacks of each sensor. This is actually very complicated and technically pretty interesting.
    .
    Sensor Fusion on Android Devices: A Revolution in Motion Processing
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C7JQ7Rpwn2k
    .
    I had the "brilliant" idea to use an accelerometer as a distance traveled sensor a while back. One eventually discovers that sensor measurement errors integrate over time instead of cancelling out.

  559. MikeM,
    Sorry.. what I should have said is a non-driving *navigator* often doesn't give the *driver* enough time. A driver who knows where they are going can generally know the correct landmarks and is just fine. But someone like my mom…. well… it's definitely specific landmarks. There is a time lapse between when she sees the landmark and when she tells you to turn. I've learned to proactively solicit "which lane should I be in"? About how long before I need to turn and so on. Because it just doesn't seem to occur to her that the driver doesn't know if she doesn't tell the driver.

    It's not only when I drive this happens. I've seen it whenever she is sitting in the passenger seat giving directions.

  560. "People … if you take a wrong turn, the world does not end, you do not drive off a cliff and suffer a horrible fiery death."

    That reminds me of another driving story – it will be my last for a while, I promise – with my 90 something father who even in his later years was a very excitable passenger. I was taking him back to a recovery facility where he was recuperating from falling off a riding lawn mower and I missed the turn to the road to the facility. It was like an end of the world experience for him and so I attempted to put this all in perspective for him by telling him that I was going to turn around and attempt to make the correct turn and I added if I miss it again I will turn around again until I get it right. When we arrived at the facility and I had driven him to the front door he said he would ride with me in the car to make sure I did not get lost in the short drive to the main road. I told him no way and that he had to get out at the front door and make the short walk into the facility. He finally relented and as I was driving to the main road I spotted out of the corner of my eye an old man trotting along the sidewalk beside my car. It was dear old Dad on a mission to help his poor confused son make his way back home.

  561. The teacher who got fired over the trans pronouns turns out to be even more absurd.
    .
    https://www.nbcnews.com/feature/nbc-out/teacher-fired-refusing-use-transgender-student-s-pronouns-n946006
    "It’s not suggested that the 47-year-old West Point High School French teacher deliberately referred to the student using female pronouns in the student’s presence, but in conversations with others.
    Witnesses described a “slip-up” when the student was about to run into a wall and Vlaming told others to stop “her.” When discussing the incident with administrators, Vlaming made it clear he would not use male pronouns, a stance that led to his suspension referral for disciplinary action."
    …
    "Vlaming’s attorney, Shawn Voyles, says his client offered to use the student’s name and to avoid feminine pronouns, but Voyles says the school was unwilling to accept the compromise."
    …
    "Vlaming said he loves and respects all his students but when a solution he tried to reach based on “mutual tolerance” was rejected, he was at risk of losing his job for having views held by “most of the world for most of human history.”
    .
    Compelled speech vs trans rights vs religious rights vs government workplace rules. It's going to get messy.

  562. All the high end phones have a magnetometer sensor but the low endphones don't. I just replaced my wife's old Samsung Galaxy phone with a Motorola Moto G6. A compass was one of the features I wanted her phone to have so that she can always get her bearings even if off the cell network.

    The $250 price point is about where the magnetometer starts to become standard. Many of the cheaper phones lack the magnetometer.

    It's interesting to me that even the low end phones have GPS sensors that can receive signal from the Russian and Chinese satellite systems. The precision one can get now in consumer electronics amazes me.

    A useful web site for looking at phone specs: https://www.gsmarena.com/

  563. Earle,
    "The precision one can get now in consumer electronics amazes me."
    .
    A single receiver GPS system of good quality (one that receives both US and Russian satellites) is usually good to +/-3 meters, sometimes better. Dual receiver systems can consistently get down to a foot or two of uncertainty in absolute position, even when on the move. It is really quite amazing.

  564. I tend to just turn off the nav display now. There have been times where I noticed I was watching the map screen instead of the road.

  565. Tom Scharf,

    "I had the "brilliant" idea to use an accelerometer as a distance traveled sensor a while back. One eventually discovers that sensor measurement errors integrate over time instead of cancelling out. "

    Indeed. The integral of white noise is a random walk. Double integration of accelerometer data to get position makes the drift even faster. That's why drone flight control systems that include navigation also include GPS. GPS doesn't have the update rate to use directly, but it's plenty fast enough to correct for drift from noise integration. Inertial guidance systems for ballistic missiles and submarines use extremely low noise accelerometers to minimize drift. It used to be three rotating beryllium spheres with the rotation axes perpendicular, but I think ring lasers have taken over now. But submarines still need to get the occasional fix because low noise is still not zero noise.

  566. SteveF,

    Spend enough money and you can get centimeter level accuracy from GPS. IIRC, surveying is now mostly done with high precision GPS.

  567. DeWitt,
    I believe the super-high resolution GPS receivers for survey work do a fair amount of time averaging at a single position to get a better fix. The dual receivers for navigation, with 1 to 2 feet accuracy, give you that while moving, without any averaging.

  568. Steve,
    I was almost inclined to mention that, yeah. Some autonomous military systems / UGVs and such use GPS 'landmark' locations that have been GPS mapped with (presumably) very high precision. The method is to sit a GPS receiver on the landmark for a long time and average. JAUS supported this as I recall.

  569. Tom,

    Yep. Augmented reality apps depend heavily on this. It's publicly available to play with these days, ARKit for IOS and ARCore for Android. I think the term was 'SLAM' (simultaneous localization and mapping) last year when I was interested in it. But yep, by combining the accelerometer and gyroscope inputs with what can be deduced about the way identifiable points in the camera appear to be moving, one can do a pretty decent job of figuring out how one is moving through the environment. I still think it's really interesting. Unfortunately I have no particular use for it right now, which is a bummer. But it's neat!

  570. The WSJ talks about how Flynn was setup by the FBI, guess who was one of the agents who interviewed him? Strzok. Who setup the meeting? McCabe. Flynn was interviewed without his lawyer, his own decision. The FBI specifically decided to not inform him they knew the answers to the questions they asked. When he answered wrong, they didn't tell him about their knowledge, but instead prosecuted him later. Comey proudly said they would never have been allowed to interview someone without counsel approval in "organized administrations". Flynn said he "misremembered" the exact facts of the case, perhaps. This is not a search for the truth, it is a setup for prosecution when they don't have a real crime.
    https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-flynn-entrapment-11544658915

  571. Tom Scharf,
    Of course. Outgoing Obama administration staff were working 24/7 since the November 2016 election to undermine Trump. The biggest mistake Trump made was to not fire every single Obama apointee the day he was sworn in, effective that afternoon. The second biggest mistake was to not move every high level “career” person at Justice, FBI, and EPA to closets in the basements of those respective organizations, with no phone, no email, and no work to do. The third biggest mistake was to not fire Sessions as soon as he recused from the Russia investigation.

  573. Steve,
    I'm curious about your reasoning on Sessions. Supposing Trump had done this and picked up a different AG, what could have & should have gone differently?
    [Edit: Earle, thanks. I'll watch later, in the office with no headphones :/)

  574. mark and SteveF,

    You can get real-time up to centimeter level precision if the known location receiver is also a transmitter. The transmitter sends correction data for each satellite to the moving receiver. It's called Real-time kinematics or RTK for short.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Real-time_kinematic

    "It uses measurements of the phase of the signal's carrier wave in addition to the information content of the signal and relies on a single reference station or interpolated virtual station to provide real-time corrections, providing up to centimetre-level accuracy.[1] With reference to GPS in particular, the system is commonly referred to as carrier-phase enhancement, or CPGPS.[2] It has applications in land survey, hydrographic survey, and in unmanned aerial vehicle navigation."

  575. There's an excerpt from Comey's testimony in the 12/12/2018 WSJ that casts a lot of doubt that there's a credible case for his firing being somehow obstruction of justice. Basically, Comey didn't know, or claims he didn't know, jack squat about the investigation, particularly the Steele Dossier. If you weren't actively involved in the day to day running of the investigation, it seems unlikely that removing you would have any effect.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/notable-quotable-comey-cant-remember-11544572789?mod=searchresults&page=1&pos=1

    " Rep. Trey Gowdy: How did Chris Steele’s information reach the FBI?

    Comey: I don’t know for sure. I have some recollection that he passed it to an agent that he knew and that that agent sent it on to headquarters. I think that’s the way in which it reached the Counterintelligence Division, but I don’t remember the specifics of that."

  576. … and Comey then later says he is * positive * there was no bias in the investigation he apparently barely knew anything about.

  577. DeWitt,
    That doesn’t really work on the open ocean; seems perfectly OK for serveying, where there are precise locations where a transmitter can be located.

  578. Mark Bofill,
    Someone else (not Sessions) who doesn’t want to throw Trump out of office could say “No, you can’t investigate that. It has nothing to do with collusion with Russia to steal the election.”. In a few words: stop the endless witch hunt.

  580. I've been downloading Weekly Standard issues, and have noticed something strange. If I go the website, click on magazines, and choose an individual issue, it will ask for a password when I click download, but if I reload the page, it stops asking. If I reload again, I might get asked for a password. I am right clicking and selecting save link as, but if I right click a second time it will again want a password, suggesting that the browser Firefox is bypassing the firewall by itself.
    Can anyone else get this behavior?

  584. SteveF,

    Real-time centimeter level accuracy can be important when you're looking at vehicle dynamics like race cars, not just surveying. I'm not sure why you would need better than meter level accuracy in the open ocean.

  585. The long awaited report on the missing Strzok texts from the FBI is out. Their explanation is that a FBI wide tool to collect agent texts had a sordid history of being buggy and non-functional. For the most damning text in question the FBI tool was only picking up one side of the conversation (Page) and missed Strzok's reply. It was only after doing digital forensics on a wiped phone that Strzok's reply was found. It sounds plausible, government software being spotty. I haven't read the actual report yet, just news coverage.

  586. "government software being spotty…buggy and non-functional.."
    What?!? *I* write government software! Sort of.
    .
    No I'm joking. Definitely plausible. It terrifies me occasionally to think of some of the worst examples that go out the door and into real working systems. My colleagues assure me that *real* testing does get done somewhere down the chain and the worst stuff never makes it to the field, and things do mostly appear to work, so maybe they're right. But still. It's spooky at times.

  587. DeWitt,
    Of course, you normally need no better than several meters on the ocean… which is why few pay (a lot!) extra for less than a meter accuracy. The most common application is to automatically hold a position in wind/current, often in close quarters, like in a navigation channel or a harbor, or over a dive site.

  588. Tom Scharf,
    "For the most damning text in question the FBI tool was only picking up one side of the conversation (Page) and missed Strzok's reply."
    .
    William of Ockham would likely smile at this claim and shake his head.
    .
    No, I think it much more likely somebody deleted Strzok's reply, specifically *because* it was so damaging. Everything else surrounding that single reply was faithfully recorded… just not the most damaging comment, which was 'by the purest of coincidences' not recorded by the spotty system. Please. My eyes can only roll at this claim.
    .
    Like most bureaucracies, the FBI's primary objective is to protect the FBI.

  589. Strzok seems a bit of an obsessive. He sent 9,311 texts in a 5 month period, 8,358 of them were to Page. That's 55 texts every day between him and Page.
    .
    https://www.politico.com/f/?id=00000167-a934-df8f-adff-a97d48360000
    "In addition, for the period prior to the collection tool failure, when the OIG compared the text messages in the enterprise.db database with those the OIG obtained from FBI ESOC, it became apparent that there were messages found in the enterprise.db database that had not been collected by the FBI's collection program, as well as some messages that were not in the enterprise.db database but that had been collected by the FBl's collection program. As an example, although the FBl's collection program had collected (and therefore produced to the OIG) the text message on August 8, 20 I 6, from Page to Strzok that stated, "He's not ever going to become president, right? Right?!", it had not collected Strzok's response that same day which stated, "No, No he's not. We'll stop it." It was only through the enterprise.db extraction that the OIG obtained this Strzok text message."
    .
    The FBI's collection tool failed intermittently, missing single messages and groups of message on different days. The OIG says no discernible pattern for the failures. Some missing messages were not of interest. They had a 10% to 20% failure rate on all Samsung phones.
    .
    The FBI admins configured the Samsung Knox system to store everything in enterprise.db, and this would later be sent to the FBI's record keeping program. The OIG found this file, but the FBI wasn't apparently smart enough to know it was there as part of their own system, probably because an outside vendor did the work. The FBI probably didn't want to try too hard to embarrass themselves by doing a scorched earth search.
    .
    The OIG did their job here, the FBI has buggy software. Nothing burger.

  590. So I don't know. I think it could have been either.
    Buggy software could explain it. Even if somebody at the FBI *would have* deleted it if the software retained it, I don't see how anybody can be certain that it wasn't the software defect that did the dirty work.
    I don't disagree with Steve's notion that organizations try to cover their asses though. It could have been that as well.
    *shrug*

  591. The more extensive forensics involved looking thru the enterprise.dp file that is on most phones. Many tech guys thought this did not capture text messages, but for some reason on these phones it did.
    It also did not capture all messages, and they found no pattern to the messages that were not captured by either tool that were captured by the other.

  592. "All good things come to an end. And so, after 23 years, does The Weekly Standard." Bill Kristol

    Someone pointed out Bill is saying The Weekly Standard is not good.

  593. Tom Scharf,
    "Nothing burger."
    .
    Well, except the single most offending Strzok text was miraculously lost. The key question is: what fraction of texts between the (star crossed) lovers for the 24 hours before and 24 hours after the "We'll stop him" text were similarly 'not collected'? My guess: zero.
    .
    Really, it is almost certain someone erased Strzok's most offending text. Maybe the stinking worm himself (Strzok) erased it, before automatic archiving of the message could happen; but more likely, someone reviewing messages that would be sent to Congress decided that one was not going to be sent. Page's iPhone was surprisingly "reset" to factory state the day she turned it in… eliminating all of her non-archived texts. All losses of texts were 'co-incidence' and innocent, for sure.
    .

  594. Mike N,
    "Someone pointed out Bill is saying The Weekly Standard is not good."
    .
    It was not at all good in its final years, though better than The Economist (which became a cheer-leader for socialism). The remaining alumni can get jobs as CINOs at CNN and MSNBC (joining Bill Kristol), where they will sell their souls for a modest price. 'Washington Generals' is too kind a description…. maybe more accurate is performing monkeys held in small cages by their progressive owners.

  595. I'm not talking about the old Cathy Newman interview here. I'm amazed (and in a strange way relieved) at the number of people who still appear to genuinely not understand what Jordan Peterson's argument was with respect to lobsters and serotonin. And as a result knock down some odd straw men.
    .
    I'm relieved because there was I time I would torture myself, wondering if I'd only explained something more clearly or eloquently if it would have made a difference in persuading someone. My relief comes from the realization that many people really aren't paying much attention, and it doesn't actually matter how clearly something gets stated. In other words, if people can't get what Peterson was saying there – pfft. Compared to me Peterson is off the scale in clarity and eloquence. It wouldn't have made any difference.

  597. Mike N,
    There has been some news coverage, but mostly interviews with ACA supporters who say the ruling will be overturned. I don’t think the outcome is obvious: with no means to enforce the individual mandate, the ACA is absurd on its face. There is some chance Roberts will come to his senses and get rid of the ACA on constitutional grounds, like he should have in the Sebelius case. I read yesterday’s ruling, and there is clear legal reasoning to strike the ACA. Unfortunately, this is a political issue, not a legal issue, and Roberts being Roberts (that, is political to the max), I wouldn’t say the chance of striking the ACA is any more than 25%.
    .
    I should add that the same means the Republicans used to get rid of the individual mandate penalty (one that can’t be blocked by filibuster) could be used at any time to put in place heavy penalties for not buying health insurance. This is why I think the ACA remains a threat to freedom: under the logic of the ACA and Robert’s (idiotic) Sebelius ruling, the Federal government can financially coerce individuals to do almost *anything* against their will, and the Constitution will provide no protection against that blatant coercion.

  599. Mike M,
    "Looks to me like a conservative judge trying to prove that he can be just as silly as liberal judges."
    .
    Not nearly as silly; he issued no injunction, only a legal argument and ruling based on that argument. He was actually only forcing an appeal. The case is by no means frivolous: twenty states brought the action, and it will almost certainly end up at the Supreme Court. By contrast, liberal (AKA 'progressive') judges usually issue injunctions, without bothering with legal reasoning much beyond "I don't like this, so you have to stop it."
    .
    Did you read the ruling?

  600. A friend sent me a map pointing out that the caravan of asylum seekers going to California instead of the closest border crossing in Brownsville, TX meant that they traveled 1500 miles further than they needed to just get to the US border.

  601. SteveF (Comment #172585): "Not nearly as silly; he issued no injunction, only a legal argument and ruling based on that argument. He was actually only forcing an appeal."

    That is indeed a very significant difference from what many liberal judges do. It makes the decision much less obnoxious, but not less silly.

  602. DeWitt,
    "..they traveled 1500 miles further than they needed to just get to the US border."
    .
    Proving they are quite aware of US politics.

  603. Mike M,
    "….but not less silly."
    It would help if you would explain why you think the ruling is silly.

  604. mark
    *at the number of people who still appear to genuinely not understand what Jordan Peterson's argument was with respect to lobsters and serotonin. *
    I'm not amazed that people would not understand the argument. It's exactly the sort of thing people will not look into. I have no idea what his argument was (and I don't care.) For the most part, I don't pay attention to Jordan Peterson; most people don't.

    He does seem to have some irrational and/or bizarre dislike of the Disney movie Frozen.

    Back to the compelled speech thing: I also doubt government compelled speech is going to pass muster in the US. In Canada (where Jordan lives)… dunno.

  605. SteveF (Comment #172589): "It would help if you would explain why you think the ruling is silly."

    The question of whether the law can work without the mandate is a political question, not a judicial question. Congress removed the mandate (de facto) and left the rest of the law in place. A court has no business saying Congress can not do that, no matter how stupid it might be.

  606. Lucia,
    "He does seem to have some irrational and/or bizarre dislike of the Disney movie Frozen."
    .
    First I heard of this. Can you provide a link or explanation?

  607. MikeM, Congress did not remove the mandate. If Congress had removed the mandate, the judge would likely have ruled the other way.
    This ruling is because Congress eliminated the portion of the law that allowed Roberts to declare the mandate is a tax and therefore Constitutional. Now that escape hatch is gone, therefore the mandate is no longer Constitutional. Then the judge adopts the argument from the Supreme Court that if the mandate falls the rest of the law has to fall.

    "under the logic of the ACA and Robert’s (idiotic) Sebelius ruling, the Federal government can financially coerce individuals to do almost *anything* against their will, and the Constitution will provide no protection against that blatant coercion. "
    This is also the logic of the dissent in that case. The only dispute between the two was whether the individual mandate was a tax. If it were clearly written as a tax, the dissenters would have upheld the law.

  608. SteveF,
    Google on Frozen Jordan Peterson
    There's quite a bit of commentary on things he says. It was a formal write up. But my recollection:

    1) He seems miffed it doesn't stick to Jungian archtypes. My take: Ok. It probably doesn't. So what? There's no law that says good movies, cartoons in general, fairy tales or Disney moves are required to stick to Jungian archetypes.

    2) He thinks it "propaganda" which he seems to think makes it "not art". Well… I have no idea if it's "propaganda". But that wouldn't make it "not art". Leni Reifenstaff (sp) stuff was both propaganda and art. So was some of our government funded depression stuff.

    3) He seems miffed that the people who made it had a message they wanted to communicate. (This is related to the propaganda bit.) Uhmmm… so what?

    4) It didn't seem to move him. Uhmmm… so what? It moved me. I cried when the one sister sacrificed herself to save the other one.

    I like many of the themes in the movie. As I see them:
    (1) The true love that saves you is the one you have for other people.
    (2) Everyone is (or at least seems) flawed.
    (3) We can overcome our flaws.
    (4) People can and will love you despite your flaws.

    I think all of these are at least as meaningful messages as anything of the erudite "jungian" messages that are supposedly found in Sleeping Beauty (and which, sorry, we have to dig deep and have explained to grok.)

    But evidently he doesn't like the movie.

  609. Mike M,
    Since Marbury v Madison, the Federal courts most certainly have assumed the right to declare laws passed by Congress contrary to the constitution, and have done so multiple times, declaring them null and void. I am honestly puzzled you would think otherwise.
    .
    In Sebelius, the court split 5:4 to keep the ACA in place based on the construct that the ACA fine for not buying health insurance was really just a tax. The Supreme Court majority ruled it would be unconstitutional to impose that requirement if it were not actually a tax. The Texas judge said that without a fine (tax) for not having health insurance, Congress requiring individuals to have health insurance in the ACA is inherently unconstitutional. You may not agree with the argument, but it is not a silly argument. You should take the time to read the opinion, if you have not already done so.

  610. DeWitt, my guess would be that the caravan was paid for by someone who runs a refugee center in San Diego, California and not Brownsville, Texas.

  611. Lucia,
    "But evidently he doesn't like the movie."
    .
    I watched in Portuguese with my 10 year old daughter…. I admit I kind of drifted off a few times. I just thought it was a typical Disney animated movie… maybe jazzed up a little with PC themes. But that is fine with me; Disney can do what they want. I was (with my daughter) on the Disney World ride based on the movie a couple of days ago… nothing special.

  612. SteveF, that is not MikeM's point. It is not about whether the individual mandate is constitutional, but whether the rest of the law must be thrown out along with it.
    The argument is that making the tax payment zero was a de facto elimination of the mandate, and thus you can no longer say that Congress intends the law to only exist with the mandate in place, which is what is needed to throw out the whole law.
    That was true when the appeal was heard, but the argument is that the change was also an expression of intent to have ObamaCare without the mandate.

  613. Mike N,
    That is not what I got from reading the opinion. The judge went to great lengths to point out that Congress had obviously and plainly intended the penalty to be just that: a penalty for not doing something Congress wanted… to compel individuals to purchase something they did not want to purchase. He then points out that the Roberts ruling that the penalty was a tax was a tiny fig leaf to preserve the law, having nothing to do with the actual text of the law, and finally said that absent the "tax" (penalty) the legal requirement of purchasing health insurance, which remains in force, is then clearly unconstitutional. The argument about severability was: since Congress stated explicitly in the text that the law would not be workable absent the individual mandate, the (still in force) mandate is unconstitutional but inseparable from the rest…. the whole law is rubbish.

  614. Hurray! A lucia comment!
    .
    I'm actually about to start a project with my in-laws fixing up my attic. I don't want you to misconstrue my lack of response for lack of interest. I'll get back to this!
    Thanks.

  615. SteveF,
    The only way in which the theme is 'PC' is that the most central characters happen to be women and the main one (actually Anna who sacrifices herself for the ice queen sister Ilsa) happens to ultimately save herself. (It is her own willingness to sacrifice herself for her sister who she loves that saves her.)

    I guess that's PC, in the sense that the message is acceptable to "modern" sensibilities. But if *that's* the definition of PC lots of perfectly decent messages are PC.

    In contrast, at least Superficially, Sleeping Beauty is "not PC". prince charming waves Sleeping Beauty up, which makes Sleeping Beauty herself pretty passive. (Her stepmother is pretty powerful but evil.)
    The only powerful woman is the supreme evil; the step mother seems to have no redeeming qualities.

    The "good" woman everyone loves is the quintessence of passive. And of course, being beautiful is an important thing for a woman.

    Now I realize there are all sorts of psychologists (which Peterson is) who read much more into the story line. But if he can see that deeply into Sleeping Beauty I'm mystified his reading of Frozen is so shallow. He seems to see it merely as "anti-Sleeping Beauty". Sorry… but huh? The heroine not being passive and the other sister having a power that harms which she cannot control doesn't make it an "anti-Sleeping Beauty".

    The movie does periodically allude to the notion that "true loves kiss" will save you. Well… yeah. Everyone is familiar with this. But heck…Shrek alludes to that notion. So do lots of other things. People are familiar with it. It happens to be a cause of some confusion in the plot line. That people have false beliefs that are cursed is not generally considered a problem.

    Anyway, I can understand someone sleeping through the movie. It's a cartoon, has periods of silliness, is aimed for children and so on. But… Peterson seems to be a bit off on his view of the movie.

  616. Lucia,
    "The "good" woman everyone loves is the quintessence of passive. And of course, being beautiful is an important thing for a woman."
    .
    Being good looking always is nice (for both men and women!). Sorry, but all else equal, I do find beautiful women attractive. ;-0
    .
    I have no special attraction to passive women, and those women I have been close to during my life have been anything but passive; perhaps I am not like everyone.
    .
    BTW, Shrek was way more PC.

  617. SteveF,
    I have nothing against men preferring beautiful women. Women prefer good looking men, though many stories don't make that the most important defining feature of the man. The thing is in the Disney movie, Sleeping Beauty has two main features: (a) Beautiful (b) passive (as in comatose). And her mother-in-laws gripe with sleeping seems to be that Mom-in-law used the be the most beautiful in the land, but now Sleeping is. So Mom-in-law want to get rid of her.

    (Beauty does cheerfully clean around the dwarves home before going to sleep, and wish for love. So, there's that. Note Prince Charming is also handsome. He's pretty 1-D in sleeping beauty also.)

    At least in Cinderella, Mom-in-laws gripe with Cinderella is not her beauty. It's not quite clear why she's *quite* so bad to Cinderella. But it pretty much just seems to be favoritism to her own daughters.

    Of course, Cinderella *is* beautiful– but that doesn't quite seem to be her defining feature. Her being treated badly, but quietly acquiesing (possibly having no choice) seems to be her defining feature. (The prince, also handsome is more 1-D than Cinderella.)

    The thing with the early disney princess movies is many of the characters were one dimensional. That's not necessarily horrible, but obviouisly, it makes those few traits they have assume a huge importance in the story line.

    The characters in the more recent disney princess movies (and for that matter Shrek) are a little more fleshed out. Mind you, they are still cartoons. I have no objection to anyone enjoying or not enjoying those movies. They have fun bits; they have silly bits. Oh. Well….

  618. Lucia,
    I think you're likely referencing Snow White instead of Sleeping Beauty. It was Snow White who had an evil stepmother and was woken by Prince Charming; Sleeping Beauty had no stepmother and was woken by Prince Philip, who had already courted her as Briar Rose. Both of Princess Aurora's natural parents were alive at the end of the movie (a rarity for Disney). I actually think the embrace between Aurora and her mother is one of the most touching moments of the movie (and that she most definitely looks better in blue than in pink.)
    .
    I like Frozen more than Sleeping Beauty but consider them both wonderful movies with wonderful music. But I also know people who were quite reasonably annoyed by repeated renditions of "Let it Go" by pre-school girls.

  619. Lucia,
    I must admit to being at this moment totally “princessed out” after working (and that is the right description) to have my daughter meet/greet and get autographs from 9 different Disney princesses. Does that make me a non-PC dad? Probably, yes. But that is what she wanted; dads are often suckers for what their daughters want…. always have been.

  620. Frozen and Cinderella are in the same universe.

    Rapunzel is seen at Elsa's wedding. It is likely that Elsa's parents died on the shipwreck coming back from Rapunzel's wedding three years earlier. This shipwreck could be what is seen in The Little Mermaid, off the coast of Denmark en route from Norway(Frozen) to Germany(Tangled). In the wedding in The Little Mermaid, there are two characters from Cinderella in the background.

    Also, Hercules(Herakles) and Ariel are cousins via Triton/Poseidon.

  622. The judge's ruling covers the issue I was highlighting then- whether a law with no penalty can be challenged.
    Two affidavits were filed from people who claimed injury from the mandate despite the lack of penalty. At the time, it looked like the standing was from states hurt by other provisions in ACA.
    The judge adopts Josh Blackman's reasoning on this point.
    http://joshblackman.com/blog/2018/03/07/understanding-texass-new-challenge-to-the-acas-individual-mandate-part-i/

  623. MikeN (Comment #172598): "that is not MikeM's point. It is not about whether the individual mandate is constitutional, but whether the rest of the law must be thrown out along with it."

    That is right.
    .
    MikeN: "The argument is that making the tax payment zero was a de facto elimination of the mandate, and thus you can no longer say that Congress intends the law to only exist with the mandate in place, which is what is needed to throw out the whole law.
    That was true when the appeal was heard, but the argument is that the change was also an expression of intent to have ObamaCare without the mandate."

    Right. But I may have misunderstood MikeN. The passive voice is an enemy of clear writing.
    .
    SteveF (Comment #172599): "The judge went to great lengths to point out that Congress had obviously and plainly intended the penalty to be just that: a penalty for not doing something Congress wanted… to compel individuals to purchase something they did not want to purchase."

    Yes, and that would have been a plausible reason to argue inseverability had the court struck down the mandate in Sebelius. However, Congress obviously and plainly changed its mind about the necessity of the mandate. So there is no longer a basis to claim inseverability.
    .
    SteveF: "He then points out that the Roberts ruling that the penalty was a tax was a tiny fig leaf to preserve the law, having nothing to do with the actual text of the law …"

    The judge's opinion of the Roberts ruling is irrelevant, except to signal what is really behind his decision.
    .
    SteveF: "… and finally said that absent the "tax" (penalty) the legal requirement of purchasing health insurance, which remains in force, is then clearly unconstitutional."

    What nonsense. If a tax of $1000 is constitutional, then so is a tax of $0.01 or $0.00.

  624. DaleS,
    Oh. You're right. Which shows how much of an impression Sleeping Beauty has on my psyche. (None!!) Maybe I'll have to get it and watch. (Does it have any good tunes? 🙂 )

    SteveF, I can totally understand being "princessed out". That said– it does not seem to be Peterson's objection to Frozen.

  625. Lucia,
    .
    The discussion of Frozen and the princesses are a good example of your original point. I don't know what Peterson's beef with Frozen is because I've never cared enough to try to find out.
    The thing I was marveling at was that people who specifically try to address Peterson's argument with respect to lobsters often appear to me to not understand what his argument was all about. I'd think that people who want to debunk him or debate with him would at least have made an effort to understand what he's actually saying.
    .
    To be fair, he makes his argument a lot clearer in clips than he does in '12 Rules for Life' in my opinion. The lobster discussion is in chapter 1, and he interweaves a lot of stuff into the twenty eight pages that perhaps makes the point less clear. On page 11,
    'Why is all this relevant? First, we know that lobsters have been around … for more than 350 billion years… This means that dominance hierarchies have been an essential permanent feature of the environment to which all complex life has adapted. A third of a billion years ago, brains and nervous systems were comparatively simple. Nonetheless, they already had the structure and neurochemistry necessary to process information about status and society.'
    .
    A couple of interesting interpretations:
    38:40 in
    "…the thing people take away from that is that male lobsters compete for female lobsters and that says something about
    society now, that men need to be dominant because if lobsters do it then there's something that we can read about humans…"
    https://www.gq-magazine.co.uk/article/jordan-peterson-interview-2018

    18:15 in
    "…if you think of the lobsters and the ants not so much as an argument that Peterson is making that you know, lobsters ants
    supposedly have these heirarchical setups therefore capitalism's best…"
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c_sEPK9krzQ
    .
    There is yet another clip where a lady asks why Peterson doesn't mention the matriarchy of killer whales instead of the lobsters, as if this somehow invalidates his point. I haven't had time to run down a link to that one yet.
    .
    This comment feels long. I'll stop here and re-assess.

  626. The point he seems to argue in all of the clips I find is that hierarchies are *not* a social construct or a consequence of capitalism. For example, obviously dominance hierarchies in animals are not a result or capitalism or social construction.
    .
    It doesn't seem like something that ought to be a point of contention. But even if it is. Even if Peterson is wrong. There are a number of really strange ideas about what he was saying.
    .
    anyways.

  628. Marc Bofill,
    “…for more than 350 billion years.”
    .
    Ummm.. you are off by a factor of 1000 (million, not billion years). Lobsters have been around for a while, but not since long before the “big bang”. Big bang estimates put the age of the (present) universe at about 12 billion years. No matter, in the long term we are all dead. ;-). My personal view is the big bang is rubbish…. but that is a philosophical discussion for another day.

  629. ~grin~
    Thanks Steve, of course. That was rather egregious typo.
    [Edit: That was *my* typo. 12 Rules for Life indeed says 350 million.]

  630. Lucia,
    I think "Once upon a Dream" is the highlight musically of Sleeping Beauty, one of the few pieces with words. Nearly all the music is taken from Tchiakovsky's (sp?) Sleeping Beauty ballet, and I love his music. Sleeping Beauty also has a unique animation style, trying to look like a manuscript illustration come to life. And I absolutely love the fight with Malificent as a dragon. IMO, Disney's best villain ever.

  631. Mike M,
    I keep thinking you haven’t actually read the opinion, which is, of course, much easier than actually reading it. Especially for those who like to toot nonsense out their behind.

  632. Lucia,
    .
    FWIW, I agree with you about Frozen. I really don't give a hoot about it's archetypical correctness or the motives of the writers. I thought it was a reasonably entertaining movie for the genre with reasonably good songs.
    .
    [Edit: I think sometimes a heavy hand with an apparent ideological agenda can spoil some stories. IMO this happened to Star Wars The Last Jedi. Bleck. ]

  633. Lucia,
    There are eight sound tracks associated with Sleeping Beauty. As far as I can tell, they are all pretty mild. Sleeping beauty seems pretty normal to me in behavior.
    The actress they had playing Sleeping Beauty at Disney World a couple of days back was lacking only one thing: beauty.

  634. Mark Bofill,
    “The Last Jedi.”
    .
    It was a lame movie, but the lead actress (Daisey Ridley) was so drop-dead gorgeous that I could have turned off the sound and lost very little.

  635. Steve,
    🙂 She *is* attractive. I like the character she plays as well, despite that there is possibly reasonable criticism of it. One of the small redeeming features of the movie.
    Oh, and lightsabers. Heck, I'll watch videos of cats fighting dogs with lightsabers. Here:
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v-z7bAfDBNo

  637. MikeN (Comment #172622): "A tax of 0 is not a tax."

    Nonsense.

    I think it is ridiculous to claim that a tax of $0.00 on everyone makes Obamacare unconstitutional, but a tax of $0.01 only on people with an income of at least $1G would make it constitutional.

  638. Obamacare is not what's ruled unconstitutional. The mandate is.
    The mandate was previously ruled constitutional only by saying it looks like a tax. At $0 it no longer looks like a tax.

  640. Here is a hypothetical that I think sheds some light: Suppose Congress modified the ACA, leaving in place the requirement of purchasing health insurance, but substituting 1 day in prison for the original $700 penalty, escalating to two weeks in prison over 5 years. Would that be constitutional? How about if the penalty was 1 day of ‘supervised community service’, escalating to two weeks? The SC decision in Sebelius, which Roberts fudged horribly with his “its only a tax” nonsense, already answered this question: no, it would not be constitutional, because the commerce clause, allowing Congress the regulation of interstate trade, can’t rationally be used to punish people as criminals for commercial non-activity. That is at bottom the issue; Congress simply does not have the authority under the Constitution to coerce citizens to act in commerce against their will. Roberts may of course find some kind of fudge to not strike the ACA, since his mealy-mouthed opinions have no lower bound in rationality, but the constitutional argument is still a strong one.

  641. MikeN (Comment #172624): "Obamacare is not what's ruled unconstitutional. The mandate is.
    The mandate was previously ruled constitutional only by saying it looks like a tax. At $0 it no longer looks like a tax."

    Yes, and the mandate no longer looks like a mandate either.
    .
    SteveF (Comment #172626): "Congress simply does not have the authority under the Constitution to coerce citizens to act in commerce against their will."

    I agree. The problem is the coercion. Starting January 1, there will no longer be any coercion.
    .
    So what MikeN, SteveF, and the Texas judge are saying is that by removing the unconstitutional feature of the law (the coercion), Congress has magically transformed a constitutional law into an unconstitutional law.

    Could an unconstitutional law be made constitutional by adding an unconstitutional feature? Of course not. But I suppose some educated idiot could argue so, perhaps by means of an elaborate version of two negatives make a positive.

  642. The Founders were "common sense realists". That school of thought was largely a reaction to elaborate philosophical arguments that gave absurd results. The realist argued that if the result of the argument is absurd, then there is something wrong with the reasoning or the assumptions.

    The individual components of the Texas judge's argument might seem plausible, but the result is absurd.

  643. The judge in Texas has given the SC another bite at the constitutional apple. The question for Roberts is if he will become just another in the long line of “conservative” justices who become “living constitution” progressives once on the SC, or if he will come to his senses and use the Constitution to defend personal liberty against the endless intrusion of the leftist nanny state. Based on past rulings, I suspect he will fudge it yet again. If he does, you can count on ‘progressives’ to use the ACA as a model for unlimited coercion of individual behavior the moment they get a chance. And count on the ACA “tax” to be reinstated and multiplied manyfold.

  644. IIRC, Roberts wrote a lot more lines to hand wave his way around the problem that a tax bill must originate in the House when the ACA as passed originated in the Senate than he did to justify that the mandate was actually a tax.

    Without a mandate with teeth, the ACA makes no economic sense. You need a lot of healthy young people buying insurance to keep premiums from going through the roof. That wasn't happening even with the 'tax' being non-zero. It's also the fundamental problem with Social Security and Medicare in an aging population. There aren't going to be enough young people paying in to support payouts for the retired unless the retirement age is raised a lot more even if you eliminated the cap on SS taxes, which would be an incredibly bad idea.

  645. DeWitt,
    When you are making constitutional fudge, you can’t worry about niceties like what the Constitution actually says. It is why I think Roberts is a terrible Justice. And a dishonest one: he claims to actually care about the Constitution, unlike the four ‘progressives’ who are at least honest about their belief the Court should bend the meaning of the Constitution via Orwellian reading of the text to align with the political winds of the day…. and enable ‘progress’ of course. That the process renders the Constitution ever less meaningful and neuters the protections it provides against the excesses of government is for the progressive justices a feature, not a bug.

  646. The SS shortfall (difference between annual taxes and distributed benefits) is expected under current law to rise to about 25% of benefits by 2035. A person reaching age 67 (the full retirement age for SS benefits by 2027) will on average live to age 84, so 17 years of benefits. 25% of 17 years is 4 years 3 months, so the system becomes long term solvent if the retirement age rises to ~71. Alternatively, SS taxes could increase by 12.5% (by any means) and the retirement age increased to ~69. Of course, a big increase in average longevity would swamp the system, but that seems unlikely over the next few decades.

  647. I'm glad my kids grew up before Disney had to be viewed through a political lens. Sometimes stories are just stories and there are no deep inner meanings to be conveyed or received. I was recently informed Rudolph was problematic, and all along I thought it was about a reindeer saving Christmas. I can only imagine the deep psychological damage I have been a victim of with Rudolph, Frosty, and, of course, The Grinch. Don't even get me started on the Island of Misfit Toys and the anti-dentist bias. They need to provide toll free trauma counseling numbers with these vicious programs.

  648. Tom,

    I'll bite. What's problematic about Rudolf? Real question. I'm thinking taking the Bumble's teeth? Or enslavement of dogs to run sleds? Is it gender norms? (The women do go out to find rudolf. So it's not as if they actually *obey* anyone's dictate that doing so is not women's place. . .)

  649. Jordan Peterson's book is now a best seller in South Korea. Some publishers there refused to print his book, ha ha. The most fascinating part about this is how harmless and common his views really are. He is truly one of the most misrepresented people on earth in the media. I don't feel sorry for him because it made him (in)famous and rich. Go read the hatchet jobs on him and then go watch his videos. Very few people engage his actual arguments, it's just an attempted social ban for wrongthink that backfired spectacularly.
    http://www.koreaherald.com/view.php?ud=20181214000596

  651. Tom,
    Typical of our times.
    But I find it encouraging in a way. The further this type of nonsense goes, perhaps the more leftists will finally realize how absurd these social justice crusades really are. For example, here is Whoopi Goldberg / the View of all people saying nope, this is silly:
    http://toofab.com/2018/11/29/why-whoopi-goldberg-is-not-here-for-your-rudolph-the-red-nosed-reindeer-shade/
    .
    [Edit: lucia, your guess was correct. From the whoopi article:
    "When Sunny Hostin mentioned how she had a problem with Hermey the wannabe-denist elf pulling out all of the Bumble's teeth, Goldberg doubled down. "What is the problem, he has a job!" she replied. "He was working, he's a dentist, it's Christmas!"'
    Hah.]

  652. Mark,
    Honestly, I think some of the tweets were meant as jokes. For example: the murdered bird. It's a continuity error thing.

  653. lucia,
    .
    I'm admittedly more than a bit colorblind when it comes to differentiating between people joking about something absurd and people who are genuinely outraged about something absurd. I've gotten into trouble that way my whole life. Absurd all looks the same to me.
    .
    But good I guess if that's so. I hope people find the whole idea silly enough to make jokes about.

  654. It'd be great if Trump were joking about this:
    https://www.foxnews.com/entertainment/donald-trump-tweets-nbc-snl-should-be-tested-by-courts-after-christmas-parody-sketch
    I don't think he is.
    .
    The media is generally biased left. I sometimes find it abrasive and annoying. But the notion that the government ought to interfere with it is completely wrong in my view. Dumb position for Trump to take; it makes him look a little more genuinely like a real threat to our country to me. And over what, some people making fun of him? Puhleeze.

  655. Mark,

    The jokes may be being made by people making fun of social justice warriors. That's the only way I can interpret the "murdered bird" accusation. But yeah…. it's hard to know for sure.

    Trump is definitely overly sensitive about SNL and asking for something that he should not ask for. Fortunately, he doesn't have the power to shut SNL up. So there's that.

  656. "Congress simply does not have the authority under the Constitution to coerce citizens to act in commerce against their will."

    I agree. The problem is the coercion. Starting January 1, there will no longer be any coercion.

    Roberts wrote that the tax was not coercive, and if it was high enough to be coercive, then it would be unconstitutional.
    January 1 makes no difference to SteveF's point, as the dissenters in the first decision said the tax power was sufficient to coerce citizens to act in commerce against their will(though presumably they would agree with Roberts about not too much tax).

  657. >by removing the unconstitutional feature of the law (the coercion),

    The judge did not agree that Congress removed the coercive portion of the law, only the tax portion.

  658. CBO concluded that the mandate even with the tax penalty removed would still 'coerce' people to buy health insurance.
    It estimated removal of the mandate and penalty would reduce spending by $338 billion, but removal of penalty alone would reduce spending by only $318 billion. There is more spending as subsidies for people who sign up.

  659. Ilya Somin says this better than I could:

    "O'Connor demonstrates at length that Congress considered the individual mandate to be an "essential" part of the Affordable Care Act when it was first enacted back in 2010. However, the mandate that reasoning applies to was the original version that included a penalty. Congress' 2010 legislative findings and other statements about the importance of the mandate simply do not apply to the post-2017 version, which no longer imposes any penalty for violation. It just doesn't make any sense to conclude that an essentially toothless mandate is "essential" to the ACA. And that is the version whose relevance the court must consider in the current case."
    http://reason.com/volokh/2018/12/14/thoughts-on-todays-federal-court-decisio

  660. Mike N,
    The entire basis of the ACA is coercion of individuals to act contrary to their personal interests. Coercion is and was part and parcel of the law, and indeed, the foundation of the law. The fact that a some idiotic, deluded, or foolish SC justices becamed (apparently) confused about the law and its negative implications does not change the reality: pure usurpation of personal liberty in persuit of ‘social justice’; surrender of personal freedom to advance ‘the collective good’. Excuse me while I throw up….

  661. Congress's findings are in the ACA itself, and they do not say 'mandate and associated penalty are essential' but that the mandate is essential.
    Another possibility is the Supreme Court could throw out the tax cut that rendered ObamaCare unconstitutional. Of course the tax cut has no severability clause either, so the result would be a tax hike for most of the country. I thought it was a joke brief that the judge was covering as a formality, but the precedent from the Frost case is pretty strong. The judge rejected it because no one challenged the tax cut. If some states filed a challenge to the tax cut because it makes ObamaCare unconstitutional, then they have a stronger case than I expected.

  662. Mike M,
    No matter the Volokh analysis, if the ACAs “illegality“ of not buying specified insurance stands, then it is almost inevitable (so long as the idiot Roberts sits on the SC) the penalty will be re-introduced, in spades, the moment it is politically possible to do so. Yes, the cancer is at this moment in remission, but it could return to kill the patient after any election. Volokh agrees that coersion of the individual, which is the entire basis of the law, is unconstitutional, but seems odly to suggest leaving an unconstitutional law on the books is a good/proper thing to do. My head spins; I can offer no reasoned reply to this idiocy,

  663. Stepping back a bit: If the sweeping legislation that the ACA is were passed with bipartesen support, it would *NEVER* have included an individual mandate. Sweeping and far reaching legislation, passed without a broad consensus, is almost always bad law, and worse, always socially destructive. The ACA is probably the most socially destructive law passed in my entire lifetime. Stupid, destructive, immoral, and dangerous.

  664. > if the ACAs “illegality“ of not buying specified insurance stands, then it is almost inevitable (so long as the idiot Roberts sits on the SC) the penalty will be re-introduced, in spades, the moment it is politically possible to do so.

    This is the case regardless of the court result. The Supreme Court never erases a law, so if they throw out ObamaCare in full over the individual mandate, later reintroducing the penalty, even at 1 cent would put ObamaCare back in place.

  665. SteveF (Comment #172650): "If the sweeping legislation that the ACA is were passed with bipartesen support, it would *NEVER* have included an individual mandate. Sweeping and far reaching legislation, passed without a broad consensus, is almost always bad law, and worse, always socially destructive."

    That is the biggest problem with the ACA, even more than specifics such as the mandate and the huge implicit tax I have to pay to get insurance.

  666. I'm sure some of the Rudolph comments were satire, however it can be a bit difficult to tell the difference with the quantity of real absurdity out there. Obviously the press was having a hard time determining if it was serious or not, and there is no doubt some activists who jumped on the bandwagon thinking it was another opportunity to push people around and score points with their peers.

  667. The progressive 'fix' to the ACA won't be reimposing some sort of penalty, it will be single payer for everybody, Medicare for all or something. IMO, ACA was intentionally FUBARed to achieve this end. If I worked in the health insurance industry and wasn't close to retirement, I would be worried. I also wouldn't touch a health insurance company stock except possibly to short it. It's probably too soon for that, though.

  668. And in the discouraging news category, a piece in the WSJ said that a poll showed that 56% of Americans believe that the Trump campaign colluded with Russia to win the election. That's why Trump would be insane to fire Mueller. The big lie technique works yet again.

    According to Wikipedia, Hitler coined the term big lie.

    "A big lie is a propaganda technique. The expression was coined by Adolf Hitler, when he dictated his 1925 book Mein Kampf, about the use of a lie so "colossal" that no one would believe that someone "could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously""

  669. Congress has been using coercion on states to get around the constitutional limitations on the federal government for quite some time. The first I remember personally was the National Minimum Drinking Age act. Higher drinking ages were pushed on the states by threatening loss of federal Highway funds. The SC found that law constitutional in 1987 (South Dakota vs Dole). I would have thought that was an easier decision against congress than the ACA as that was a blatant attempt to force revision of laws that were left to the states without any directly involved federal funding. At least with ACA medicaid is already jointly federal and state funded, so some rational for an added federal tax to support its expansion can be made. ACA's legal status would have been easier if the ACA was written that way ,i.e. a raised tax with a reversing credit for those with coverage. I'm surprised the democrats didn't take that route as it would have been a faster path to a single payer system. The Compliant ID is a more recent version but at least that only causes issues with identification for air travel or federal facilities and federal passports are a valid work-around. In any case, the Supreme Court hasn't shown much interest in reeling in congress when they cross over in to rights assigned to the states.

  670. DeWitt,
    Possibly I lack the necessary imagination. I don't understand how a collusion with Russia could possibly have made any difference in the election.
    I've heard for example that Russia employed bots on Facebook I think. Ok, I can easily believe this. Also, I've heard operatives made up fake Facebook groups and fake news. Alright, fine.
    It's like the underpants gnomes problem.
    Step 1 — Steal underwear (or Russia does some small things that are so commonly done anyway they seem lost in the noise)
    Step 2 — ??? (and ???)
    Step 3 — Profit! (or Trump wins the election)
    Great! But about that second step…
    [Edit: I mean, I'm sure Putin would tell us that Russian bots and Russian fake news are the best in the world, much like Russian prostitutes. But even so. It seems like more is required to really swing an election.]

  671. Oh. I forgot. How could I forget? Wikileaks. They pin that on Russia. All the emails showing Hillary and the DNC shenanigans.
    .
    Meh. I'd like to believe that had something to do with something, but honestly I doubt most people even noticed.

  672. mark bofill (Comment #172657): "Possibly I lack the necessary imagination. I don't understand how a collusion with Russia could possibly have made any difference in the election."

    Imagination is the key since any collusion of Trump with Russia is purely imaginary.

  673. Mike,
    .
    I agree. The three potential elements seem to be the bots, the fake newsgroups, and wikileaks:
    .
    The bots and the fake news are too feeble in concept. I don't think it's credible to posit a conspiracy between Trump and Putin to sway the election in this manner, because both men would have scoffed at the notion that this could possibly be effective. Further, I don't see why Trump would go to Putin for such a thing. Surely he could get it done domestically. Unless Trump really was abstracting from the idea that since Russian prostitutes are undoubtedly the best in the world… Nah. 😉
    .
    The Wikileaks thing; the airing of HRC and DNC dirty laundry. It seems to me that it's more plausible that Trump could believe this would influence the election. The main problem I have with this is, why would Trump be involved at all. If Putin want[ed] to sway the election in this manner, he didn't require a conspiracy with Trump. There was nothing for Trump to do. Except to be in his debt, perhaps.
    .
    At any rate, I don't think there's much evidence that wikileaks was by any means a decisive factor in the election. 538 (I know, 538 again, always 538 with me, it's my 538 fetish) had an article that looked at the timing of the wikileak releases and HRC poll numbers and concluded that there wasn't much of a relationship, if I remember correctly. Lemme see if I can find the link.
    https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/wikileaks-hillary-clinton/
    Oh. They were comparing google search interest and poll numbers.
    .
    An aside: I imagine people want to make this argument, that Trump colluded with Putin over wikileaks to win the election. The funny part to me is that it's an argument that HRC partisans apparently don't want to make too clearly, since HRC and DNC never disputed the *validity* of the emails. They never came out and said that the emails were forgeries. So – in order to make the argument that wikileaks is what cost HRC the election, one sort of needs to argue that the wicked interference that Russia indulged in was in essence *letting the American people know what was really going on in the DNC and HRC's campaign.* Heh.

  674. Andrew P,
    "In any case, the Supreme Court hasn't shown much interest in reeling in congress when they cross over in to rights assigned to the states."
    .
    Since at least Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal, when the Court reversed 100+ years of jurist prudence to enable clearly unconstitutional usurpation by Congress. My favorite was the Court ruling that a farmer could not grow wheat for his family to eat on his own land…. based on the commerce clause! It has only gotten worse since.

  675. Was there Russian collusion is now just a proxy question for whether you support Trump or not. The correlation is probably 0.9999. A more interesting question would be what leads someone to believe that. We can all feel secure that the millions who believe this are all fact based truth searchers, unlike those who don't believe it.
    .
    Someone pointed out the stark difference in the methods used in the Mueller investigation with FBI entrapment etc, and how the Clinton investigation was handled. I'm guessing finding somebody lying here wouldn't have been very hard.

  676. mark bofill (Comment #172660): "The three potential elements seem to be the bots, the fake newsgroups, and wikileaks"

    For sure, the Russians tried to mess with the election, with minimal effect. But as mark points out, there is no sane reason to think Trump was involved or had any reason to be involved. The Russian meddling was clearly aimed at the front runners. To the extent that anyone benefited , it was Sanders and Trump since they were never front runners.

  677. Google's CEO testified that Russia spent $4700 on the election, not sure on what part of Google.
    Facebook said around $150,000 I think.

    The Mueller indictment actually includes the detail that this interference may have been to sell ads. The Facebook material linked to articles at their own site. They were spending money to acquire readers, where they sell ads for $50-$100. This explains why they were supporting Trump and Bernie, with large fanbase.

  679. Tim Scharf,
    “Total spending on the presidential election in 2016:
    $2,400,000,000.”
    .
    Neither surprising nor useful (in and of itself). The reality is that a wealthy country can afford to spend a lot on an election. Presidential spending is on the order of 1 Part in 1000 of the economy. I don’t find this surprising at all.

  680. Steve,
    Sure. But it puts the Russian numbers into perspective. Even if they are just a part, they'd have to be a darn small part of a much much larger whole to be a significant part of the U.S. game.

  681. I should have consulted the column by Peggy Noonan first. It's 56% of respondents who approve of the Mueller investigation. 48% think there was coordination between the Russian government an the Trump campaign. That's up from 40% in June. Why that's up is beyond me.

    Here's a link to the actual Fox News poll: https://www.foxnews.com/politics/fox-news-poll-document-12-12-18?mod=article_inline

    The relevant questions about the Mueller investigation are 49-53.

    For those with a WSJ subscription, here's Noonan's column:

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-magic-pony-is-the-wrong-horse-to-back-11544745886

    "Trump, like Obama before him, appealed primarily to emotion. That’s a troubling political trend."

    Speaking of magic ponies, I saw today a report that if Macri in Argentina doesn't get his act together, we could see the Peronist Kirchner back in office. Before Peron, Argentina used to be reasonably well off. *sigh*

  682. DeWitt,
    Before Peron, Agentina was arguably a first world country. Politics (especially of the idiotic Peron variety) have consequences….. usually very negative consequences.

  684. I still say Trump may not make it through the primary in 2020. He benefited last time by the vote effectively being split among all the other traditional contenders. Not sure who might beat him though.

  685. Tom,
    It's hard for someone to beat a sitting president in the primary. I think that's unfortunate– and not just in the instance of Trump being the sitting president. But it is difficult for someone to gain enough steam against what amounts to a presumptive nominee.

    The field would need to be small for one contender to attract enough votes.

  686. Trump is probably in the "Past performance is not an indicator of future results" category. It would probably have to be another outsider, aka the sane Trump. There was speculation that Trump might not even run and declare he had accomplished everything he wanted to, quit while he is moderately ahead. That might be the optimal outcome.

  687. Tom,
    .
    I think Trump will run in 2020. I don't see a contender to defeat him in the primaries.
    I think the Democrats best bet is to run Joe Biden, personally. If Joe Biden comes across as a moderate and sensible left center type, along with the expected media support and cooperation I think he'd have a good chance of taking it.
    It's all still a good long way away. The picture will undoubtedly be different when the time comes.

  688. Trump will do, with regards to any actions he takes as POTUS or running for office, what he thinks is good for Trump. His narcissistic tendencies are apparent every time he opens his mouth. I believe that he ran for President not to win but rather to improve his brand.

    Having said that I do believe that Trump has served up a good object lesson in what is wrong systemically with our government. His lying and exaggerations without the cover of the proclivities of a slicker politician to make these utterances more acceptable are there for all to see and perhaps ask the question: Is not this what most all politicians do and particularly so when running for election – just that they are somewhat less obvious than a Trump?
    We also see the over reaction of many in the government employ and the media who are reacting to the man and not his policies as can been seen, for example, in the bizarre recent comments of a Comey and a Judge Sullivan. It is not in defense of Trump that we ought to paying attention here but rather what is inherently wrong with our government that allows it to be damn near capricious in how it reacts to different individuals.

    One of my biggest disappointments in this whole Mueller affair has been the reactions of a libertarian compatriot of mine in Judge Andrew Napolitano who, instead of pointing to the power that government has over our lives and how it can be applied in a capricious manner, has been defending his buddies in these government agencies. The liberals, outside of Alan Dershowitz, are obviously going to be hypocritical with the Trump case because Trump is Trump and also not a liberal in their eyes and the conservatives appear to have a difficult time calling out the law enforcement agencies like the FBI and would rather concentrate on the bad apples in the agency and not the agency itself. Judge Napolitano has no excuse – he should know better.

  689. Mark Bofill,
    Joe Biden is a better candidate than Hillary was, but that is a low bar to clear. Biden is gaff prone and way too “handsy/creepy” with women, over a long career in Washington. I think the me-too movement would endorse him, but without much enthusiasm. He will also be 78 in January 2021, which seems to me (and probably other voters) too old to be entering office…. with 4 (or 8!) demanding years ahead of him. Entering office at 78 would mean Biden would have only a ~50% chance of living 8 years…. not to mention the real possibility of age-related mental decline.
    .
    I very much doubt the Dems will nominate him, but if they do, he will not be a very strong candidate.
    .
    The Dems have plenty of younger options, but the problem is most all are absolutely-positively-over-the-top-bonkers socialists, who are even less likely to win a general than Biden. Barak Obama damaged the party in many ways, including lack of development of electable future candidates; plenty of crazies advanced under Obama, but few good potential candidates.

  690. Kenneth,
    Ya, politicians…ahem… stretch the truth, and most are revoltingly full of themselves to boot… they actually seem to believe their campaign ads! Your comments reminded me of the old joke: Q: “How can you tell when a politician is lying?” A: “Whenever his lips move.”

  691. Steve,
    Biden is not without flaws. I'd lost track of his age, honestly; didn't realize he was quite as old as that. Still. All candidates will have advantages and disadvantages.
    The gauntlet a Democratic challenger will need to run in my view is to somehow make it through the Democratic primary and win without going so far to the left as to lose appeal to independents and become an easy target for Trump. If Trump can successfully paint a democratic challenger as a radical or as an off in the weeds leftist… Well, I'd think a challenger ought to try to avoid that.
    With Bernie purportedly interested in running, it will be a difficult feat to manage. But we shall see!
    Do you guys think universal healthcare / single payer is coming to be perceived as a more centrist idea? I don't think it is, but a surprising (to me) number of my casual acquaintances seem to believe it's a reasonable idea.

  692. Mark Bofill,
    “Do you guys think universal healthcare / single payer is coming to be perceived as a more centrist idea?”
    .
    I think there has been a modest political shift in that direction, unfortunately. I say unfortunately because I’m pretty sure most people do not appreciate the consequences…. all national health systems control costs by paying caregivers much less and strictly rationing care. If costs are not controled, then health care costs will overwhelm the Federal budget. People in the USA are not used to that, and will not like it. But by the time it happens (if it happens) there will be no going back. Even with rationed care, marginal tax rates would likely have to increase by a third to cover the costs. 45% to 50% top Federal rate seems almost certain.

  693. Mark Bofill,
    Bernie would be 79 in January 2021…. too old I believe, and a life-long dedicated communist as well, who thinks Cuba is just swell, and Venezuela would be swell except for US interference. He is as crazy an old coot as there is. I hope he pulls all the Dems even further into the leftist lunacy than they already are, but I suspect even most Dems unserstand that a communist is not going to win the general, so he will not get far.

  694. Bernie would be 79 in January 2021…. he is not going to ever be President…. he won’t even be nominated.

  695. I'm starting to realize I'm getting older. None of these guys seem all that old to me. Hmph.

  696. Steve,
    –>Even with rationed care, marginal tax rates would likely have to increase by a third to cover the costs. 45% to 50% top Federal rate seems almost certain.
    Yeah. That part frustrates me, that everybody seems to think 'we'll pay a little more in taxes'. Uhm, no. It's going to be a LOT more in taxes. Well, *I'll* pay a lot more in taxes anyway. We're talking an extra trillion or two a year, depending on who's numbers we use.
    Granted, not paying for health insurance will help some. Not enough for those who are already in higher brackets though in my opinion.

  697. mark,

    If marginal rates rise that high, Americans will start evading taxes as in Greece. (See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corruption_in_Greece ). I'm not pretending no American's evade taxes, but right now, relative to most countries, American's are pretty good about self reporting and paying. That can change if things get toooooo costly. Once the habit of evasion is in place, it will be hard to get people to revert to good behavior even if taxes drop.

  698. The cost of healthcare needs to be addressed. People will accept single payer in order to try to shake up a system that seems incapable of changing. "Everything is fine, nothing to see here, just move along" is a great plan to lose an election. The left at least acknowledges there is a problem, although their answer may not make anything better. The right is losing this battle because they refuse to address it.

  699. Tom Scharf,

    Assuming that lifestyles don't change and the US continues to have one of the highest percentages of obesity in the world and other problems like violence and suicide, the only way to lower health care costs is to consume less. Single payer would have to accomplish that by some form of rationing. What's commonly used in the rest of the world is long wait times for procedures and denying access to procedures that are considered to be too expensive.

    Medicare for all is a delusion. The assumption seems to be that Medicare could continue to reimburse at current rates for everybody, not just those 65 and over. That isn't true. Medicare doesn't reimburse at full cost. Hospitals and other organizations collect the difference from insured and uninsured patients. If they couldn't do that, they would go belly up in a heartbeat.

    I don't see a route to single payer other than a full nationalization of the health care system, i.e. government ownership of all health care facilities and all health care providers becoming government employees, a la the UK's NHS. A partial nationalization would lead to a multi-tier system with the wealthy getting much better care than those who can't afford to use private health care.

  700. We are on a path to full nationalization of healthcare. Speculating it won't solve anything without an ironclad convincing counter argument will not stop it from happening. The left can, and will win on this issue. They will make vague promises about how it will solve everything, and then end up making it even more expensive. It will then be too late.
    .
    We all ration everything. Of course we want it all, but when we are spending our own money we ration our own services. I don't have Gigabit internet, a Ferrari, or the latest computer hardware. OK, I have the latest computer hardware but that is because I ration what I buy according to my priorities. The concept of health care rationing is met with a "duh" in my mind. If you want cheaper rates, then you accept fewer services. We all understand this. You want cheaper rates and lower taxes, then you need to accept death panels.
    .
    That's only part of it though. Healthcare services have to accept less payments, the pharmaceutical industry has to change their hidden cost model and distribute prices globally. All cost factors have to be addressed, and they are all a problem in the US. Over consumption, costly services, overly defensive healthcare. We have discussed this before at length, the incentives are all wrong for everyone.
    .
    If people want gold plated healthcare then they should be able to get it, and pay for it. Lowering the standard of Medicare is going to be met with riots in the streets unfortunately. The million senior march won't be pretty. All those black clad masked thugs in wheelchairs and walkers will send a message.

  701. Tom,

    "the pharmaceutical industry has to change their hidden cost model and distribute prices globally."

    They would love to do that. But until other countries can no longer threaten to void patents on drugs, they can't. That's a really big stick to use in negotiations. I very nearly put scare quotes around negotiations because when the other side holds all the cards, which they do, it isn't really a negotiation.

    Drug prices aren't a huge factor in overall healthcare costs even if they can be overwhelming for an individual. You would probably do more to reduce drug costs by reforming the FDA to streamline new drug approval and reign in the plaintiffs bar to minimize lawsuits. I don't see either of those happening either.

  702. Tom Scharf (Comment #172688): "The right is losing this battle because they refuse to address it."

    Tom Scharf (Comment #172690): "We all ration everything. Of course we want it all, but when we are spending our own money we ration our own services."

    The right recognizes that third party payment drives up costs. They do not refuse to address it. But they have been powerless to do anything about it because the hospitals and insurance companies are happy with things as they are and the public is afraid of change.
    ———
    DeWitt Payne (Comment #172689): "the only way to lower health care costs is to consume less."

    That is one way to lower costs. It need not lead to poorer medical care since a lot of spending is unnecessary. But of course, if the government decides who gets what it will lead to much poorer care.

    Another way to lower costs is to provide services more efficiently. There is little incentive for that in the current system (or under single payer).

    Yet another way to lower costs is to stop innovating. One reason why U.S. health care costs are so high is that we pay for a disproportionate share of the costs of innovation.
    .
    DeWitt Payne: "Single payer would have to accomplish that by some form of rationing. What's commonly used in the rest of the world is long wait times for procedures and denying access to procedures that are considered to be too expensive."

    True. But also they impose price controls that force the U.S. to pay for most innovation.

    If the U.S. were to go to single payer, a lot of Canadians would be screwed since the U.S. would no longer be available to take overflow.
    .
    DeWitt Payne: "Medicare doesn't reimburse at full cost."

    Half true. Medicare pays for more than the full marginal cost of providing care. What gets shifted to the private sector is a disproportionate share of fixed costs.

  704. Jeez we live in a weird world:
    https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/19/us/alabama-senate-roy-jones-russia.html
    .
    The project’s operators created a Facebook page on which they posed as conservative Alabamians, using it to try to divide Republicans and even to endorse a write-in candidate to draw votes from Mr. Moore. It involved a scheme to link the Moore campaign to thousands of Russian accounts that suddenly began following the Republican candidate on Twitter, a development that drew national media attention.

    “We orchestrated an elaborate ‘false flag’ operation that planted the idea that the Moore campaign was amplified on social media by a Russian botnet,” the report says.
    .
    [Edit: Just because something can be called a conspiracy theory is not a sufficient bar in this day and age to flat out reject it as not possible, is my disgusted takeaway.]

  705. Mike M.,

    "Half true. Medicare pays for more than the full marginal cost of providing care. What gets shifted to the private sector is a disproportionate share of fixed costs."

    A distinction without a difference. Fixed costs are still costs of doing business and hospitals would go broke at Medicare rates of reimbursement for 100% of patients.

    IMO, the plaintiff's bar is still responsible for a lot of 'wasted' spending on excessive clinical testing. That the insurance companies and self-insured corporations are willing to pay for these tests reflect that they are going to bear the brunt of malpractice law suit costs.

  706. DeWitt Payne (Comment #172699): "A distinction without a difference. Fixed costs are still costs of doing business and hospitals would go broke at Medicare rates of reimbursement for 100% of patients."

    The distinction is an important one since it explains why virtually all providers accept Medicare in spite of "losing money" on every patient. Or, if you prefer, why having everyone pay Medicare rates would bankrupt providers in spite of the fact that they "make money" on every Medicare patient.

  707. Medicare for all means either dramatic tax increases (think Denmark), aggressive rationing, arbitrary (set by bureaucrats) fees for services, or a combination of all three.

  708. Interesting to read how shocked lots of people are about Der Spiegel reporter who was recently fired and found out about fabricating parts of his reporting stories over many years. It is my view of a lot of journalism today that an agenda is the starting point and all the journalists need do is to find or in the case of the Der Spiegel reporter to invent facts that fit the agenda. Before I stopped watching this program I would see this tactic used many times by Sixty Minutes where it became obvious shortly into the expose' that the viewer would only see one side of the story and of the facts behind the issue being discussed.

    I see comments online wondering about how the numerous fact checkers at Der Spiegel could have missed this deceit for so long. I would surmise that reason is because what the reporter was reporting fit an agenda with which this left leaning publication favored. Had his reporting gone against that agenda it would have been intensely and microscopically examined.

    To some extent I see this same agenda phenomena in climate science publications and peer review of these publications. It is very seldom that the authors get the facts wrong or at least intentionally do it in these publications, but rather the facts they sometimes leave out that could well change the conclusions that the reader might take away from these discussions. While leaving facts out does not rise to the level of bad behavior that does being untruthful with the facts, I think both types of actions have roots in having an agenda as a starting point and then filling in the blanks to fit that agenda.

    I think the prudent reader with any intellectual curiosity at all needs to be aware of this phenomena and particularly when the story being conveyed is agreeable to the reader. When the story subject turns out all bad or good and with great certainty of the badness or goodness you might want to look behind the curtain.

  709. You could also translate that to healthcare is going to require dramatic premium increases, aggressive rationing, arbitrary fees for services or a combination of all three. That is how healthcare in the US has been going for the last decade or so. Healthcare is expensive. Especially if you want access to bleeding edge treatments.
    Private insurance only accounted for funding 34% of health care costs (3.5 trillion total) in the US in 2017. 40% is coming from governmental insurance programs and 10% is out of pocket. (cms.gov) Out of pocket costs are rising as the providers and insurance companies learn how to maximize their take in the current environment. Providers and insurance companies have full time staff maximizing their revenue flows. The average consumer does not.
    Out of pocket and private insurance revenue came to around 1.54 trillion in 2017. Using the FICA model it is going to take a 20-25% tax to replace that revenue. As the average consumer's out of pocket approaches the maximums, that tax increase is going to be on par or less then what a majorities of families and their employers are already paying. That's without any cost savings due to consolidation or benefits from government pricing power.
    We are already paying almost twice per capita than other comparable countries without covering everyone. This means those comparable countries are providing coverage for all at a rate just for just over what we are funding for Medicare, Medicaid, and VA programs (1.7 trillion vs 1.4 trillion for our population).
    The consumer has very little pricing power in the current system outside of choosing to avoid the system all together. We ended up with a 14k bill (max out of pocket) for a single emergency room visit a few years back. That's when we learned that being moved to a hospital room isn't the same as being admitted and just because the hospital is in network doesn't mean all care provided by will be considered in-network. We had the ability and knowledge to appeal, getting that bill cut it in half, and pay it off. Note everyone does. The CFPB did a study in 2014 that found 1 in 5 credit reports had significantly overdue medical debt that was impacting their credit score. As those situations happen to more people, they will also start to wonder if burning the entire system down and starting over with single payer is the way to go.
    As has been said before if conservatives continue to ignore the issues with health care funding, they will come out on the wrong side in the end. The current US system works for those on the either end of the income range, but is broken and getting worse for those in the middle.

  710. Trump Derangement Syndrome is a wonder to behold. From Bloomberg:
    "Mattis’s abrupt resignation as defense secretary and Trump’s rapid-fire moves to reshape the U.S. military footprint abroad are provoking fears that there’s no one left to restrain the president’s most combative and isolationist impulses."
    https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-12-21/mattis-s-exit-takes-leash-off-trump-s-america-first-doctrine?srnd=politics-vp

    How on earth is a resignation effective 10 weeks in the future "abrupt"?

    What, exactly are these "rapid-fire moves"? The gradual draw down of our remaining troops in Syria? The reduction of troop numbers in Afghanistan to 40% less than when Trump entered office promising to get out of Afghanistan?

    But the topper is "combative and isolationist impulses". Which one is it?

    Questions not meant to be rhetorical, only to indicate wonderment.

  711. Mike,
    >>But the topper is "combative and isolationist impulses". Which one is it?
    ~grin~
    They wanted to cover all bases. Trump is wrong in all possible scenarios, and all of his decisions inevitably lead us to our D-oooom.

  712. andrew p,
    "Private insurance only accounted for funding 34% of health care costs (3.5 trillion total) in the US in 2017. 40% is coming from governmental insurance programs and 10% is out of pocket."
    .
    So where is the other 16% coming from?
    .
    "Using the FICA model it is going to take a 20-25% tax to replace that revenue. As the average consumer's out of pocket approaches the maximums, that tax increase is going to be on par or less then what a majorities of families and their employers are already paying."
    .
    A flat 20-25% earned income tax to fund single payer health care does the following: it taxes high earnings individuals to fund the health care of low income individuals. It will increase the Federal tax burden for upper middle class earners to somewhere in the range of 40% to 50% marginal rate. Add to that State and local taxes, and Denmark starts to look pretty cheap tax-wise. Forcing undeserving people to pay for deserving people is *of course* the whole point, and always has been. Much like forcing healthy people to fund the health care of unhealthy people (the ACA). But you can bet on one sure thing: only earned income will be so taxed… individuals who have great wealth and high total income, but little or no earned income will always skate… and continue to contribute heavily to the Democrats.

  713. Kenneth Fritsch,
    I had the same experience with 60 minutes about 20 years ago, a show that I really liked and respected They finally ran a program I had a lot of prior knowledge on and I was thinking "this is totally one sided and inaccurate". As I continued watching it more closely you could easily see how they were framing issues with bias and not really allowing both sides a legitimate argument. I lost a lot of respect, I no longer watch it. Their 10 second lead in ads grate my nerves, mostly hit pieces. News has become so agenda driven at this point as to be basically entertainment.

  714. TDS is definitely in full force when the left goes into a tizzy when Trump demands a WITHDRAWAL of forces from a foreign country. It's certainly possible Syria could blow up again as happened after the Obama Iraq withdrawal, but I have a sneaking suspicion the usual suspects would complain even more if Trump ordered more troops instead of less.

  715. Tom Scharf,
    "I no longer watch it."
    .
    I stopped watching 25+ years ago, when it became clear that they were mostly setting up political hits on conservatives. I should have never started watching in the 1970's.
    .
    In 1973-4 I was involved in data analysis on liver cancer induced in workers with long term exposure to a compound which was not previously known to be a carcinogen: vinyl chloride gas. The gas had even been used in operating rooms as an anesthetic, because it's effects were judged to be pretty benign. After months of collecting field data on worker exposure, and seeing what exposure levels and years of exposure lead to cancer, he were able to make an estimate of the range of potential number of future cancer cases (exposure controls had already drastically… 2+ orders of magnitude… reduced worker exposure). We though the long term likely range of number cases was modest…. perhaps a total of a couple dozen cases in the USA over the lifetime of the exposed workers. This in fact turned out to be a pretty accurate estimate.
    .
    When one of the networks got wind of the cancer cases, they did an "investigation", and produced a very alarming news special titled (IIRC) "The Plastic Peril"… because vinyl chloride is used to make plastic. I watched the program in shock…. they claimed multiple thousands of workers 'could' or 'would' die from liver cancer. Their most important sources were union leaders (angling for gigantic payouts to workers), and "independent experts", who in fact knew absolutely nothing about the actual data. At that moment, I should have realized that TV news is mostly rubbish, and the more "alarming" the story, the more likely it is pure rubbish. But being young at the time, it took a few more instances where I knew the subject matter of a news story before I finally recognized that 'TV journalism' is mostly a means to package and sell politically motivated rubbish for a profit.

  716. "vinyl chloride gas"

    Isn't that the stuff that outgasses from the vinyl in the old cars? Best thing ever to phase that out as it gave instant headaches to lots of kids who had no choice but to suffer through it.

  717. A problem with the news is that they don't even attempt to relay statistics because (1) they don't think viewers will understand them or (2) they don't understand them themselves. And of course (3) The story is more alarming with implied chances of doom and gloom.
    .
    Up to 10M of sea level rise!!!! Why bother with fancy numbers nobody will understand, at some time scale (milleniums) and some probability (effectively zero). Certainly the viewers wouldn't understand that "it has almost no chance of happening according to experts, and even if it did it would take 1000's of years". It is much clearer to say "scientists say to expect 10M of sea level rise". If we are lucky we might only get 5M of sea level rise, right? Why do "we" even allow people to build on the coast?

  718. The other disturbing feature of these programs with an agenda that is mostly obvious only to the informed audience is the slick presentation of the information and the confident and seemingly knowing tone of the person presenting the information. If the same information were to be presented in an emotional manner by a not so slick presenter I think red flags would go up for a good part of the audience.

  719. Kloaman,
    * it gave instant headaches to lots of kids who had no choice but to suffer through it*

    Perhaps. But headaches and dying from cancer aren't exactly the same thing.

  720. Kloaman, Lucia,
    Vinyl chloride does not “outgas” from vinyl plastics; this is chemically (kinetically) impossible. Once converted to a polymer, the monomer (vinyl chloride) can not reform. There are plenty of other monomers which *can* revert to their monomers under the right conditions…. cut ‘plexiglas’with a saw and you will smell a trace of acrylic monomer.
    .
    The characteristic smell in old cars with vinyl seating was due to inexpensive (and bad smelling) additives in the vinyl plastic, usually combinded with an odorant (perfume) to make it smell a little less bad. Eventually the ‘new car smell’ would dissipate, of course.

  721. I should add that vinyl is still used in car interiors, but people have substituted materials with little or no odor in the vinyl compounds, so new cars today usually have much less “new car” smell than 40 years ago.

  722. Polyvinyl chloride is a rigid solid at room temperature. It can be made soft and flexible, plasticized, by adding a very high boiling solvent, frequently a phthalate derivative. It's the plasticizer that gradually exudes from the polymer that makes it sticky or greasy and gets all over the inside of your car windows, particularly the windshield directly over the dash.

    http://www.pvc.org/en/p/plasticisers

    As I remember, there are people who claim that a lot of phthalate plasticizers are estrogen mimics.

    It was the pieces by 60 Minutes on unintended vehicle acceleration and exploding gas tanks (or something like that) that made me realize the show was no better than a tabloid. The unintended acceleration piece barely, if at all, mentioned the possibility of driver error, which is the real explanation, and the exploding car video was actually faked, sort of like Mythbusters, but dishonest. For similar reasons, I haven't read Consumer Reports in decades.

  723. Polyvinyl chloride is a rigid solid at room temperature. It can be made soft and flexible, plasticized, by adding a very high boiling solvent, frequently a phthalate derivative. It's the plasticizer that gradually exudes from the polymer that makes it sticky or greasy and gets all over the inside of your car windows, particularly the windshield directly over the dash.

    http://www.pvc.org/en/p/plasticisers

    As I remember, there are people who claim that a lot of phthalate plasticizers are estrogen mimics.

    It was the pieces by 60 Minutes on unintended vehicle acceleration and exploding gas tanks (or something like that) that made me realize the show was no better than a tabloid. The unintended acceleration piece barely, if at all, mentioned the possibility of driver error, which is the real explanation, and the exploding car video was actually faked, sort of like Mythbusters, but dishonest. For similar reasons, I haven't read Consumer Reports in decades.

  724. DeWitt Payne (Comment #172740): "It's the plasticizer that gradually exudes from the polymer"

    It is my understanding that plasticizers are the issue with whether a particular plastic is safe for use in a microwave.

  725. DeWitt,
    Good quality plasticizes are very "compatible" (soluble in) PVC, and they never exude except at extremely low temperature (below -30C over months to years).
    .
    Low fog (higher MW) plasticizers are in routine use for cars now.

  726. Mike M.,

    Not all plastics need plasticisers. Condensation polymers like polyesters and polyamides (nylon, e.g.) usually don't. The company I worked for developed a dual ovenable (microwave and conventional) plastic tray for food contact molded from a modified polyester for direct from freezer to oven use. The key to get FDA approval for food contact is to have extractables in food simulating solvents at appropriate extraction temperatures be low enough and preferably GRAS (Generally Recognized As Safe). I would be surprised if any plasticized addition polymer (polypropylene or PVC, e.g.) in a high temperature food contact application would pass.

  727. DeWitt,
    Vinyl polymers are absolutely allowed in direct food contact applications, and have been for many decades. Some examples: Flexible closure seals (the “gasket” material in metal screw top glass containers), the lining of the cans used for many kinds of caned goods, and many more. Where used, plasticizers are either shown to have de-minimis extractables (polymeric) or are known safe materials (eg fatty citrate esters). Really, vinyls (plasticized or not) are very widely used around the world in food contact applications.

  729. DeWitt,
    Most food contact applications include thermal sterilization of the container and the food in it at or above 100C. I don’t know if that falls within your definition of high temperature.

  732. Mike, the article was funny in a way. Saying a power plant would be too noisy for an area was alleged to be an unlicensed practice of engineering. Hah.
    I'm going to start telling my wife that when she uses common sense to tell me things I dont want to hear. Unlicensed engineering!

  733. MikeN,
    I saw that. Pretty funny!

    It's nice to see the courts are sensible and they thwoppped the engineering "oversight" board for overreach.

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