The other thread has 312 comments. So… I’m opening this one!
385 thoughts on “Open thread…”
“Central Bankers prefer a little inflation because it isn’t always easy to differentiate between good and bad deflation.”
Central bankers start worrying about deflation when the increase in inflation slows down. Their actions are always in anticipation of deflation. Japan has had some deflation over the years and while they have other economic problems that deflation was not one of them. That perceived threat of deflation is what keeps the Central Bankers in business.
“The person who epitomizes this fear of deflation best is Ben Bernanke, chairman of the Federal Reserve. His interpretation of the Great Depression has greatly biased his view against deflation. It is true that the Great Depression and deflation went hand in hand in some countries; but, we must be careful to distinguish between association and causation, and to correctly assess the direction of causation. A recent study by Atkeson and Kehoe spanning a period of 180 years for 17 countries found no relationship between deflation and depressions. The study actually found a greater number of episodes of depression with inflation than with deflation. Over this period, 65 out of 73 deflation episodes had no depression, and 21 out of 29 depressions had no deflation.”
Kenneth,
You know the saying about hammers and nails: If your only tool is a hammer, every problem is treated like a nail. Central bankers have only one tool.
Kenneth,
Doesn’t that percentage of women in the labor force data imply that participation by men must have declined? The percentage of women went from 32 to 60% while the percentage of the population in the labor force went from slightly less than ~60% to only ~68%. So in 1950 for every 1,000 people of working age, half men and half women, we have 600 employed, 32% of them women. So you have 192 women or 38% of all women of working age and 408 men or 82% of all men of working age. In 2000, you have 680 employed of every 1,000 people of working age, 60% of them women or 408 women, 82% of women of working age, while you have 272 men or 54% of men of working age.
QE has mostly been, if we look at the evidence, about subsidizing huge deficit spending by governments. By rigging the game to prefer unlimited government borrowing over savings, insurance rates have been driven up. Many people who would typically invest in safe havens like long term bonds are instead buying stocks. People who depend on fixed income, like much of the aging population of the world, are forced to take on more risk. Additionally, governments have been able to avoid spending discipline, running up crazy amounts of debt. Stepping back from QE is dangerous: Outside factors, like say a certain quasi-European nation looking to mess with the West, or Iran surprising us with a display of their actual nuke capability, or a cyber-Pearl Harbor, could make that careful QE walk back impossible. Not to mention just plain bad policy execution. Or a significant recession. A failed walk back means deflation of asset prices and/or inflation. The fed does claim to have stopped QE for the time being, but it is the huge debts that still exist that must be retired for this to work out without a wreck.
Interesting editorial in Today”s WSJ titled More Redistribution, Less Income. The conclusion is that, based on recently updated CBO statistics, net income, corrected for taxes and transfer, payments has fallen for the lowest three income quintiles since Obama took office.
The main lesson in these statistics is not about dependence on government. Rather, it is a verdict on Obamanomics. Presidents who put reducing inequality above increasing prosperity end up with less growth and opportunity that benefits everyone, and thus with more inequality.
DeWitt, the same St Louis Fed labor force participation rate for men went from 87.5% in 1940 to 75% in 2000.
I was looking for the total labor force participation rate for 16 years and older at the St Louis Fed to determine internal consistency between men and women rates for the St Louis Fed’s data, but could not come up with it – at least directly.
Using the Fed’s 1948 labor participation rates for women and men, and assuming a 50/50 portion of men and women in the US population, I get 87.5%*0.5 + 32%*0.5=59.75% which is close to your 60% figure for the rate for men and women in 1948 and using the same calculation for 2000 I get 75%*0.5+60%*0.5=67.5% which is again close to your 68% number.
The recent fall off in the participation rate for 16-19 year old’s spurs my interest for a more detailed look at the SL Fed figures.
Kenneth,
Could the falloff in 16-19 year old participation have anything to do with increases in the minimum wage in 2007, 2008 and 2009? That would be heresy of the highest order. The BLS assures us that increasing the minimum wage doesn’t cost anyone a job.
Re: DeWitt Payne on the other thread
Central Bankers prefer a little inflation because it isn’t always easy to differentiate between good and bad deflation.
I think the simpler answer is ‘sticky wages’ arising from basic human behavioral ‘loss aversion bias’. It is hard to tell people to take annual paycuts because of deflation. It seems like those associated with the Cato Institute will also agree on that.
DeWitt, Kenneth,
The drop in teenage labor participation may have to do with an increase in wealth (relative to 1948) for middle class families compared to the number of kids in those families. Income for middle to lower middle class families has been stagnant for over a decade, but from the 1950’s to the 1990’s there was a large increase in middle class and lower middle class family income, and a fall in the average number of children in those families.
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So the drop may be related to less financial need among 16 to 19 year olds. You could maybe tell by looking at how the teenage participation has changed over time. It should have dropped while the middle class income/kids ratio was rising, but been fairly constant since middle class wages have been stagnant.
SteveF
may be related to less financial need among 16 to 19 year olds
Oddly, the requirements for obtaining financial aid can result in a disincentive for those just entering college to earn money!
f parents have low income, student earnings can have a major impact on financial aid: As crazy as it sounds, earning money can hurt a student’s chances of receiving financial aid. However, if the parents have income high enough to eliminate financial aid eligibility, it will not make a difference if the student works or not. This article is not meant to discourage anyone from work, but rather to understand how student income can affect financial aid eligibility. Students from low income households need to know how best to manage the limited financial aid made available, especially during tough economic times. –
The income allowance to avoid getting dinged on financial aid is ~$6,260.
If that student had $10,000 in a savings account under his or her own name, about $2,000 would be added to the expected family contribution – nearly the same amount added by the parents’ $80,000 in assets. Therefore, this family would have been better off saving for college in a 529 plan or savings account under a parent’s name, Amrein says.
While it’s fair to expect kids who can afford college to pay for it, this also can create something of a disincentive for students to take high school jobs with the intention of ‘saving for college’.
I don’t know if this is much of an effect– but I suspect with respect to teen employment “all factors” may matter. So on the one hand, we have fewer kids from families of 10 working for to cover some basics, middle-to-slightly upper middle class kids who know how financial aid works might judge it better to work on academics or activities schools ‘value’ during the application program and so on. The truly rich kids? Well… kids with trust funds decision to work or not was never really affected by financial need.
So… who knows?
RB (Comment #133027)
Of course, the counterpoint to wages not going down in recessions is that wages that are indexed to price inflation or negotiated based on awareness of that inflation can go up or stay the same but not down during a recession because often times we have that residual inflation and not deflation during recessions and thus prices continue to increase or stay nearly the same. The notable period of stagflation that troubled some Keynesians – but only for a little while – was an extreme example of inflation and a stagnated economy occurring simultaneously. Also a clearer thinker might realize that most times we are not experiencing a recession and a brief recession is not sufficient time to adjust wages down and then quickly up again when the inflation pace reengages.
None of the discussion linked talks about the cause of wage stickiness, but surely government power invested to unions has an effect. In fact it was a Keynesian approach that wanted to handled the wage stickiness by fooling workers and particularly union workers about their wages by using price inflation to lower the effective wage rate. Workers and particularly union workers finally figured out that ploy and used cost of living in their contracts or were at least aware of the decreasing buying power of their wages when negotiating pay changes.
In a truly free market of labor the wages would adjust such that a level of full employment would nearly always occur. I think politicians depend on voters being dependent on them and their government largess or at least thinking this to be the case and thus unemployment is something that they need. Minimum wages and increases thereof cause more unemployment with everything else being equal and in order for that to be otherwise in these studies we see, either that everything else was not equal or one of the most basic tenants of economics has been broken. It would appear given these choices that politician will chose more unemployment every time. For the rest, if you believe in Keynesian fairy dust none of this will be convincing.
SteveF (Comment #133028)
SteveF my interest was in the most recent drop in job participation for 16-19 year olds from 50% in 2000 to 34% in 2014. That rate was in the 50-58% range from 1948-2000.
There are probably some correlations that might give us a hint to causation. I was thinking a possible cause would be increases in college entrance rate but that would take a huge change.
The trend for high school graduates entering college from the links below is trending like:
That trend would indicate that at least part of the decrease in the job participation rate for the 16-19 age group is from a higher portion in this group entering college. With ready access to student loans and higher minimum wages and the state of the economy what is to say that these factors did not weigh on the decisions to enter college.
“Graduation rate has become a growing concern in the United States as it has been decreasing over the past decades.[1] High-school dropout and College dropout affect the completion rate as well as the system at large. The percentage of dropouts among 16- to 24-year-olds has shown some decreases over the past 20 years.[2] However, the substantial growth in college enrollment among high school graduates has not been matched with a comparable expansion in college degree attainment.[3] The decrease of completion rate among college students has economical, educational and political implications. At a time of historic budget shortfalls, increasing the college completion rate has been a challenge in the United States. To help colleges and universities in particular improve rates of degree completion, states try to find more efficient ways to spend.”
Since Obamacare was a frequent topic on the previous thread, I will venture a guess as to what the Supreme Court might do with respect to whether Federal exchanges are permissible when particular states elect not to have their own exchange.
The Supreme Court acted quickly to hear the “exchange” appeal — not waiting for a full panel (en banc) hearing the DC Federal Court of Appeals. This caused Linda Greenhouse of the NYTs to throw a fit and say how terrible the Supreme Court is.
The decision to hear the case quickly does seem to indicate that the Supreme Court will rule that the Federal exchanges can’t be used as substitutes for the State exchanges. My supposition is that those justices who believe they should follow the text of the statute believe that less harm will accrue to people if they act quickly rather than deciding the case somewhat later. Also, I suspect that the Supreme Court feels that it gave Congress a “gift” by construing the mandates of the Act as a tax to enable the Act to pass muster the first time. However, I suspect that as an institution the Supreme Court does not want to be put in the position of having to clean up messes created by Congress and that the Supreme Court may well say that in their opinion. I suspect that the Supreme Court will not clean up the mess created by Congress a second time. Additionally, Greenhouse’s apoplexy is an indication that she thinks the court will strike down the Federal exchanges.
JD
The decision to hear the case quickly does seem to indicate that the Supreme Court will rule that the Federal exchanges can’t be used as substitutes for the State exchanges. [[…]] Additionally, Greenhouse’s apoplexy is an indication that she thinks the court will strike down the Federal exchanges.
On the first, I suspect that you are likely correct. At least right now, several judges are leaning that way. But hearing the case will cause them to listen to more arguments, so one can never be sure.
On the latter:Yes. I think she thinks that. I doubt those who want the Fed exchange tax credits being kept in place would mind an early hearing if they felt confident that tax credit would survive the ruling.
JD Ohio,
When John Roberts sided with the liberal block to allow the ACA mandates to be considered a tax, I was dumbfounded, because it was an important ruling that seemed to me utterly contrary to the plain words of the constitution. It was the kind of rubbish “living constitution” argument we expect to hear from Justice Kennedy and the other liberals. Maybe Roberts will come to his senses this time and effectively get rid of the unconstitutional ACA by the back door, but his logical contortions to save the ACA the first time make me think he will find more contortions and side with the liberal block again to keep the act in force.
JD Ohio,
Sorry that should have been Breyer, not Kennedy.
Lucia: ” But hearing the case will cause them to listen to more arguments, so one can never be sure.”
With the extensive arguments that took place before, my guess is that unless something really unusual takes place, all of the justices pretty much know how they will rule now. Oral argument and the briefs are simply routine procedures they have to follow that probably won’t have much impact on Court’s ruling.
SteveF “but his [Roberts] logical contortions to save the ACA the first time make me think he will find more contortions and side with the liberal block again to keep the act in force.”
I think Roberts (this was a close call to me) didn’t want the Court to be in the position of closing down a major initiative of Congress. In this instance, if Congress screwed up the wording, it is not the Court’s fault that Obamacare would fail, but that of Congress. Institutionally, if I was the Court, I wouldn’t want to be in the position of having to clean up mistakes made by Congress. I would tell Congress to do its job correctly. In such an instance, it is hard for someone rational to claim that the Court is reaching to destroy something it doesn’t like. (Of course, a substantial number of liberals are irrational. See Greenhouse and Krugman responses to this case.)
JD
Interestingly to me, DeWitt Payne and I made our ‘forecasts’ back in 2009 . DeWitt more or less bet on massive inflation, I bet on a weak multi-year recovery. The jury is still out on my bet for when the unemployment rate drops back to pre-2007 levels.
Amongst latest news, Austrian Peter Schiff is still barking up the inflation tree .
JD Ohio
if Congress screwed up the wording, it is not the Court’s fault that Obamacare would fail, but that of Congress. Institutionally, if I was the Court, I wouldn’t want to be in the position of having to clean up mistakes made by Congress.
One of the troubles with the “screwed up wording” argument is that the wording isn’t any sort of obvious typo or screw up. Giving individual states discretion and providing ‘carrots’ or ‘sticks’ to cooperate with the fed’s preferences is frequently done by the Feds. So, you can’t just say “of course Congress couldn’t possibly have meant to do this this time. Also, you can’t just go by what “major supporters” or “authors who introduced the bill” hoped for. The entire point of Congress is that bills get passed by majorities. Often to obtain sufficient support, the “supporters/authors/promoters” need to compromise and include features those advocating for the bill dis-prefer. So, one can’t just look to what the major advocates of the bill would have wanted to determine what the majority voting for the bill voted into law. If things worked that way, we would never get bills passed because those who insisted on compromises would ‘know’ that the ‘rule’ was ‘whatever the author intended in the first place even if the rest of Congress thought that sucked and did not want to vote for that.’
So anyway: while some are advancing the “typo” argument, those arguments don’t strike me as very strong. Even if SCOTUS leans towards cleaning up Congresses’ screwups, it’s not at all clear not extending the tax break is any sort of “screwup”. It’s seems more likely that was the intended feature. (And of course, there are plenty of people who prefer the tax credit to not be extended for various and sundry reasons. Even if others don’t like that– it doesn’t mean Congress didn’t ‘intend’ that functionality in the first place. Nor does it mean that not -extending is a “flaw” that needs to be “fixed”. It’s just an “intended features” that has “certain consequences” which “some” like and “others” don’t like!)
I thought Chief Justice Roberts was rather clear that the court had to go to great lengths to make the laws of Congress whole and constitutional by interpretations leaning in that direction. Compelling government interest has often been used by the Court to rationalize their pro-government rulings.
Here we had a Court decision on ACA based on Congress and the Administration calling the penalties or fees for non compliance to purchasing a product like insurance, as opposed to a tax, and did this deliberately to market the legislation to wavering members of Congress and the voting public. After using this line, Justice Roberts evidently judged that the compelling government interests and the Courts obligation to lean toward judging legislation constitutional allowed him to call the penalty a tax and in effect rule and with precedent for future cases that, yes indeed, Congress can legislate mandatory purchase of anything and called it any euphemism it wants in order to pass it and Court will consider it a tax and thus give constitutional status.
That was some very serious adjudication by the Chief Justice and I do not see it as some public relations effort on his part. The issue before the Court in the case under discussion here is of a similar nature in that we have a wording in the law that very likely helped sell it (and by admission of a consultant on the legislation) but if interpreted at face value puts some serious limitations in place. It calls for Justice Roberts to once again apply his judicial magic using the precedents of compelling government interest and/or judicial interpretation leaning in the favor of legislation being constitutional.
Recall also that the administration has changed the implementation of ACA for political benefit and without facing an restraining court action to this point in time which, in effect, makes the political benefits and timing of implementation permanent.
Interesting also is how the constitutionality of the Executive orders to do what Congress ordinarily does, as in the recent example on immigration, will ever be tested given the issue of standing in this matter.
While I am an advocate for much smaller government and individual freedoms (including not being forced to purchase products that the government thinks I should own), I think the Obama administration has done us all great favor by showing the Civics 101 crowd that the Constitution in reality and as interpreted by the Supreme Court is not the fortress against government tyranny that some might have thought or hoped.
KF ” It calls for Justice Roberts to once again apply his judicial magic using the precedents of compelling government interest and/or judicial interpretation leaning in the favor of legislation being constitutional.”
…..
This is where you and I disagree. The rules of construction stating that a court is supposed to lean in favor of the constitutionality of legislation are not applicable here. The court isn’t ruling on the constitutionality of exchanges. It is simply interpreting what Congress wrote. If you now assume that Congress could impose individual mandates, the question then becomes how did Congress implement those mandates. It had multiple ways of doing so in ways that don’t now raise constitutional questions. In the text, it chose a way that is not apparently workable. By holding Congress to what it wrote, the court is, in effect, deferring to Congress.
Again, I am not a Constitutional lawyer, so take my opinion as a lawyer for what it is worth.
JD
I like the argument from the left that Federal exchanges are allowed to offer subsidies in the form of tax credits because a Federal exchange is really a State exchange because the Federal exchange is only acting for the State.
This case seems to me to be much more like the recess appointment case than the individual mandate case. You could see a large majority of the Court voting to enforce the plain language of the law. The recess appointments were struck down 9-0. It’s not Congress that the Court would be overruling by ruling against subsidies by Federal Exchanges, it’s Executive branch overreach.
RB (Comment #133038)
“Interestingly to me, DeWitt Payne and I made our ‘forecasts’ back in 2009 . DeWitt more or less bet on massive inflation, I bet on a weak multi-year recovery. The jury is still out on my bet for when the unemployment rate drops back to pre-2007 levels.
Amongst latest news, Austrian Peter Schiff is still barking up the inflation tree.”
RB, you bring up an interesting point and one that goes directly to Ben Bernanke’s ego in this matter and the defense of the defenders of the Fed.
Bernanke, in his less than polite academic criticism of the BOJ for not being able to use his strategy of inflation being the great mender of recessions and being capable of creating that inflation, has kind of set himself up for like criticism. He and many members of the Fed were attempting in the recent recession to produce more inflation as part of that strategy and they have failed. The defenders of the Fed point to that failure as a success and with the supposition, that can never be tested, that things would have been worse if the Fed had not acted as they did. I think both Bernanke and Milton Friedman had it wrong on the Feds problems in the depression era and that was the case with the recent recession, i.e. the failure to realize that you cannot push on rope.
I am sure that you are aware that how the Fed unwinds its record balance sheet is still very much an issue of its potential influence on the economy. In the bigger picture the mundane and somewhat arbitrary indexes like the consumer price index and the unemployment rate do not provide a very complete picture of the economy as we know when looking at labor participation rate changes and creation of price bubbles like the current stock market might well be on its way to being.
“By holding Congress to what it wrote, the court is, in effect, deferring to Congress.”
JD, is that exactly what Roberts did not do with regard to Congress in calling a penalty a tax? And, by the way, I would feel better if the Court did not defer to Congress. I would prefer that they restrain Congress and proudly point to that restraint as a constitutional matter.
I have heard constitutional lawyers on the left point to precedents for the Court ruling on the intent and not wording of a law. Perhaps we should be discussing those cases.
Re: Kenneth+Fritsch (Comment #133043)
I’d say Bernanke was successful in halting the deflationary spiral and as I linked to in the current thread, the current recovery compares quite well against the previous Big Five banking crises. Thanks to a dysfunctional House, the Fed was the only game in town and so, I’d say much of this recovery owes to Fed policies.
I am sure that you are aware that how the Fed unwinds its record balance sheet is still very much an issue of its potential influence on the economy.
I will daresay that the bulk of the Fed’s treasury purchases will be held to maturity rather than being unwound by sales. It is possible that we might get high single-digit inflation towards the later years but I think it is unlikely that we will experience the hyperinflation that many on the right, particularly those with Austrian leanings, have been warning about since inception.
With regards to Friedman vs the Austrians, I think this old comment is appropos. It is not surprising that the Austrian school has had no traction in policy since 1932.
I should have added above, JD, that you are no doubt correct in calling the current case one of interpretation of the law and not the constitutionality of it and that my referencing to constitutionality was incorrect. Nevertheless I stand by my impression that the Court goes to great lengths to rule in favor of Congress in these matters and that Roberts calling a penalty a tax in the ACA ruling could have bearing on how he rules on the current case.
I am always amazed on how the Court Justices reason their rulings in cases like this one and how far they are willing to go.
RB (Comment #133046)
“With regards to Friedman vs the Austrians, I think this old comment is appropos. It is not surprising that the Austrian school has had no traction in policy since 1932.”
I do not think the Austrians have ever had a lot influence on policy and only recently have their criticisms of current economic policy even been acknowledged.
Keynesian economic theory gave a rationale for what in the past might have been considered bad political behavior and no doubt that is its attraction to and reason for it being so widely accepted by politicians and having the staying power it has had.
Kenneth,
“I think the Obama administration has done us all great favor by showing the Civics 101 crowd that the Constitution in reality and as interpreted by the Supreme Court is not the fortress against government tyranny that some might have thought or hoped.”
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Kelo V New London had already convinced me of this, but the Robert’s ACA ruling confirmed it in a rather convincing fashion. Both cases effectively eliminated important limitations placed on government action by the Constitution; I now have no doubt that any and all constitutional limits on government action, and all guarantees of personal liberties, will be abandoned by the Court if it is politically expedient. The plain words of the Constitution are simply ignored by the Court whenever needed. By refusing to defend the integrity of the Constitution, the Supreme Court has reduced itself to little more than a rubber stamp for politicians on all important constitutional issues. What these absurd rulings show is that relying on the Constitution to protect your liberties… indeed, to protect personal liberty itself…. is foolish; you need to elect politicians who will do that.
Re: Kenneth+Fritsch (Comment #133048)
I do not think the Austrians have ever had a lot influence on policy and only recently have their criticisms of current economic policy even been acknowledged.
I’d say that the Austrian school’s policy view, as exemplified by Mellon’s ‘purging the rottenness out of the system’, peaked in 1930 and declined rapidly in 1932, with even Hayek admitting that the deflation went too far. This is a right-leaning economist’s historical summary of that period.
If one looks back at the history of the USSC on big issues it is surprising at how often the Court has made rulings that history showed to be wrong headed.
Here are a couple of links that taken together might well have Roberts voting for the literal interpretation of ACA (first link) and Scalia against it (second link).
The author of the second linked article would appear to be saying that the Court should make the law whole regardless of how sloppy and ambiguous it might have been written and in the first linked article that the Court further should consider as a practical matter that if the Court tells Congress to rewrite that part it would not given the current political alignment in Congress and thus is in effect striking down that part of the law. In other words that author is saying that the Court needs to consider the politics of the matter.
What bothers me the most is the second article ignoring the very strong probability that the law was written as ambiguously as it was because it was a means of selling it much like calling the tax a penalty.
RB , Austrian economics have evolved over the years and although its theories on opportunity cost, capital and interest, inflation, the economic calculation problem and business cycles have stayed much the same, many libertarians would reject the idea that Hayek was an Austrian in the mold of Mises or Rothbard. If I were asked to chose the economist I most associated with Austrian economics today it would be Rothbard.
I would be interested in some references whereby Austrian policies were carried out by governments in the early 20th century. Mises’ and Hayek’s writings rightfully became popular in pointing out the deficiencies in socialism and controlled economies, but their prescriptions for policies were not put into effect. Maybe Austrians advocating for less government intervention has something to do with that situation. That Paul Krugman goes to great lengths in attempts to discredit what he thinks Austrian economics are, should be an encouraging sign for Austrian proponents, but in my view he is more of a partisan hack defending liberal Democrats – even though he won a Nobel prize for advocating for free trade across national borders.
JD
In the text, it chose a way that is not apparently workable. By holding Congress to what it wrote, the court is, in effect, deferring to Congress.
That’s my view. If they hold Congress to what it wrote that is deferring to Congress. Congress can always pass a bill to change what it wrote. If they don’t pass a bill modifying it, then…well… they don’t.
If they wrote an ‘unworkable’ bill, that’s not something the court can ‘fix’ by interpreting the bill to say something other than what Congress wrote.
So: either justices who support it have to find a way to interpret the bill as actually saying insurance bought in Fed exchanges gets a tax break or the bill doesn’t say that. If it doesn’t and so becomes “unworkable”, so be it. It’s not the first time Congress has passed an “unworkable” bill and it won’t be the last!
Has anyone heard how oral argument went in the Mann libel case today before the District of Columbia Court of Appeals? I saw that there was a live stream, but I wasn’t able to catch it.
RB,
Thanks to a dysfunctional House,
Are you sure you have your time line right? Republicans lost control of both houses on Congress in the 2006 elections. Republicans did not regain control of the House until 2011. And even then, the argument that it was the Senate under Harry Reid that was the dysfunctional body is much stronger, IMO, than it was the House.
When a bank calls a note you get what they say you get, which can be nothing in the worst case which has occurred.
As to deflation, what is the return on a bond during a deflationary period. Zero, or pretty damn close which explains why people with money hate deflation.
Kenneth,
that the law was written as ambiguously as it was
The language allowing the State Exchanges to offer subsidies while the Federal Exchanges couldn’t is not ambiguous at all. It requires tortured logic and an assumption that the word ‘establish’ is ambiguous. when it clearly isn’t, to say that:
PART III–STATE FLEXIBILITY RELATING TO EXCHANGES clearly says: (“if the states fails to properly set up an exchangeâ€) the Secretary shall (directly or through agreement with a not-for-profit entity) establish and operate such Exchange within the State and the Secretary shall take such actions as are necessary to implement such other requirements.
means that an Exchange set up by HHS for the State is an
Exchange established by the State under section 1311
This isn’t Russell’s Who Shaved the Barber paradox. Exchanges are either established by the State or the HHS secretary. They can’t be both.
Again, it’s no different, IMO, than the President saying that Congress being in session is ambiguous so recess appointments can be made whenever he felt like it. And it’s the IRS’ interpretation of the Exchange establishment language that’s being challenged, not Congress’s ability to write the law in the first place. There is no question involving Congress here as there was for the individual mandate. The real torturing in that decision was not so much whether the mandate was a tax or not, but how to make a tax law that did not originate in the House, as required by the Constitution in unambiguous language, pass legal muster.
Eli,
You have it exactly backwards. Bond holders hate inflation, because immediate value of any long term bond drops and the effective return on investment is less, and can be negative, even if held to maturity. The return on a bond will be increased by the rate of deflation, not drop to zero. In deflation, you want to hold cash, not goods. That’s why you can get an economic death spiral during a severe deflation due to deferred purchasing.
Sure the government could default on its obligations to its creditors. But it would require a force majeure for that to happen. The last time the US defaulted on currency issued, greenbacks, was 1862, during the War Between the States. The last bond default was on Liberty Bonds in 1934 during the Great Depression. And even that wasn’t a complete default.
Dewitt, Republicans recaptured the majority in the 2010 elections, fiscal stimulus ended on Dec. 31, 2010. Operation Twist was announced in 2011, QE3 was announced in 2012.
Eli: the other side of inflation/deflation is the credit market. Debtors would benefit from unanticipated inflation while lenders would benefit from deflation that was not anticipated at the time that a loan was contracted. Deflation hurts debtors by increasing the real value of their loans outstanding.
RB,
Dysfunctional is in the eye of the beholder. It was Harry Reid’s Senate that refused to compromise, or frequently even allow votes. If you mean by dysfunctional that the House no longer rubber stamped Democrat authored legislation, then I guess it was dysfunctional. I would say that most of the time it was acting as it was elected to do, unlike the Senate. Compromise is impossible when there is no trust that the other side will keep their end of the bargain. The Democrats have a long history of welshing on their deals. Since the Republicans regained the House, the administration hasn’t even offered to deal legitimately. It’s my way or the highway. The recent immigration flap is the most recent example.
If fiscal stimulus was going to work, it should have been obvious by 2011. It didn’t and therefore wasn’t. Operation Twist and QE have only enriched bankers and Wall Street. Hammers for problems that aren’t nails.
Saying that we have to do something is another logical fallacy, specifically the Politician’s syllogism.
DeWitt, I do not know if you have read from that second link I gave above but what the author is using in his contextual argument is from the following excerpt. He, in my view, is using a more obscurant view of the laws text than those he is criticizing for that. In my view and that of those who were selling the law, the provision of a subsidy for states that provided their own exchanges was to encourage states to do just that. I would also bet that the Budget Office scored the cost to the Federal government based on a large percentage of state exchanges being established. We know that the states take on that cost, or at least part of it, after a period of 3 years – as I recall. From this viewpoint that subsidy proviso is very much within the context of the law and what the article points to is, in actuality, the sloppiness and vagueness in writing the law. Of course, all this could be made moot by the Supreme Court suggesting that Congress simply make their intentions more clear. Both authors to linked article evidently object to that action because, OMG, the politics in Congress have changed since the law was passed.
“On the other hand, as amply detailed in the briefing, the ACA’s text – not its purpose or its legislative history, or anything else that textualists don’t generally consider – is slashed to pieces under the challengers’ reading. Two examples from a list of many offered in the briefing:
Section 36B(f)(3) requires “[e]ach Exchange (or any person carrying out 1 or more responsibilities of an Exchange under section 1311(f)(3) or 1321(c)†to report the premiums doled out. Section 1321 is the federal exchange provision, and so this section is rendered meaningless if the federal exchanges have no subsidies.
Likewise Section 1312(f) provides that only “qualified individuals†can purchase on an Exchange but defines a qualified individual as one who “resides in the State that established the Exchange.†Failure to understand a federally operated exchange as the legal equivalent of a state exchange would mean that federal exchanges have no customers.
Justice Scalia’s own statutory interpretation treatise argues (at pages 63 and 168) that “there can be no justification for needlessly rendering provisions in conflict if they can be interpreted harmoniously,†and that statutory provisions should not be interpreted to render them ineffective or superfluous.”
Re: DeWitt+Payne (Comment #133061)
But I thought you were arguing elsewhere that the massive WW2 spending pulled the economy out of the 1930s depression. Something tells me we will be going around in circles.
RB,
That’s not what I said. What I said was that the New Deal was gutted by WWII.
And even then, things didn’t get really rolling until the confiscatory highest marginal tax rate of 90+% was reduced to 70% during the JFK administration.
Kenneth+Fritsch (Comment #133052)
I was not very impressed with the arguments made at the scotus blog. One thing stated by Gluck was “The 2012 Supreme Court brief of the state governments likewise read the statute as providing subsidies through the federal exchanges….” To me this is the argument of a partisan and not a reasonably objective analysis. What someone states in a brief has nothing to do with determining what a statute means. To me Gluck is trying to lay a basis for partisans to undermine the legitimacy of the Supreme Court if it rules against the federal exchanges.
Wikipedia states: “The ACA legislation includes the language “enrolled in through an Exchange established by the State under 1311” where the IRS regulation implements a more broad definition encompassing both the state exchanges and the federal exchanges set up under section 1321.[2] The legislation includes the phrase “established by the State under 1311″ in nine different locations” (I am too busy at this time to read the whole act or the briefs) See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_v._Burwell
Here is a quote from King v. Burwell where the Court ruled in favor of the Obama interpretation:
“The plaintiffs’ primary rationale for their interpretation is that the language says what it says, and that it clearly mentions state-run Exchanges under § 1311. If Congress meant to include federally-run Exchanges, it would not have specifically chosen the word “state†or referenced § 1311. The federal government is not a “State,†and so the phrase “Exchange established by the State under [§] 1311,†standing alone, supports the notion that credits are unavailable to consumers on 18
federal Exchanges. Further, the plaintiffs assert that because state and federal Exchanges are referred to separately in § 1311 and § 1321, the omission in 26 U.S.C. § 36B of any reference to federal Exchanges established under § 1321 represents an intentional choice on behalf of Congress to exclude federal Exchanges and include only state Exchanges established under
§ 1311.
There can be no question that there is a certain sense to the plaintiffs’ position. ”
………………………..
Also, later on the Court stated: “Having thus explained the parties’ competing primary arguments, the court is of the opinion that the defendants have the stronger position, although only slightly.”
Later on the same page: “However, the court cannot ignore the common-sense appeal of the plaintiffs’ argument; a literal reading of the statute undoubtedly accords more closely with their position.”
So, my quick review of the cases and some articles leads me to conclude that if there weren’t severe practical problems with interpreting the language as prohibiting federal exchanges, that is the way virtually all courts would interpret the language.
JD
Either we get back to having a President that faithfully executes the law or we have a dictator.
We reign in him, finally and firmly, or we see the undoing of the Republic.
Eli,
You have not been well informed on economics. Posters here are offering you some good information. I hope you can gain from it.
open thread..
unrelated hmm if you are a fan of alphabets enjoy the folliwng
the story of hangul turned into a mystery, romance, martial arts tale.
I remember that some time ago Carrick made graphs that “proved” that MBH98/99 was garbage, failed to match any other reconstruction, blah blah blah.
.
Now I see the Klaus Bitterman graph that’s making the rounds (e.g. at the bottom of Eli’s latest blog post) and shows MBH 99 matching PAGES2K with an accuracy that teeters between mind-boggling and ridiculous.
.
Question: Who goofed?
toto,
Don’t know who goofed but I just tried to visit Eli’s blog that is linked it his name and got my Firefox hijacked by whatever stuff rests on his site. He apparently went to court to watch the proceedings on the basis of why it is ok for people to lie about Mann.
So we see on this thread that Eli severely misunderstands high school level economics and finance. And he is clueless about the difference between opinion and fact. Not to mention so partisan that his guy can call anyone any names they want and anyone who disagrees is a liar to be sued. But we are to trust the clever Rabett on all issues climate just because.
JD+Ohio (Comment #133065)
JD my point in this matter was to look at some of the rationale that might be used by the Supreme Court to make ACA whole and let the insurance purchased at the Federal market places be subsidized. I already know that the four liberal justices will be able to rationalize doing this and provide talking points for the MSM.
My general interest in this whole ACA law making, marketing and adjudication has been my recognition of the blatantly dishonest and misleading information disseminated prior to the passing of this law and the failure of the courts to deal with it. Calling the mandate enforcement a penalty and not a tax, and now calling the subsidy incentive for the states to establish their own market places out of context in order to sell the program, and then having the courts give all this a wink and nod in a situation where there is precedent set by Congress and the Executive branches of government in mandating the citizens purchase a product, should make shambles of the naive Civics 101 thinking about government in the US and Constitutional protections.
PAGES2K is somewhat controversial. You might want to look at ClimateAudit. McIntyre has a lot of posts on the subject. If MBH98/99 did happen to be correct, it would be purely by accident. It has been demonstrated to produce hockey sticks from red noise.
I would suggest that both of these reconstructions are wrong because (1) selecting proxies directly or indirectly after measuring the proxy temperature relation is a basic flaw that biases the result and (2) most of the proxies do not agree with one another in a pairwise comparison under Singular Spectrum and Coherence analysis.
“Now I see the Klaus Bitterman graph that’s making the rounds (e.g. at the bottom of Eli’s latest blog post) and shows MBH 99 matching PAGES2K with an accuracy that teeters between mind-boggling and ridiculous.”
.
DeWitt,
” If MBH98/99 did happen to be correct, it would be purely by accident. It has been demonstrated to produce hockey sticks from red noise.”
.
I have given this some thought, and convinced myself that matching red (or red-ish) noise to a target trend does indeed generate hockey sticks, though the tendency is only strong when the noise is quite red. I think there is a reasonable test though: select proxy series for the reconstruction based on correlation with only half the target series (eg second half or first half) and compare the resulting ‘reconstructions’. I think that if the hockey stick is being created mostly out of redness, then the two reconstructions (in the period before the target period) will not be the same. Specifically, the “reconstruction” will diverge from the first half of the target series when proxies for the reconstruction are selected based on only the correlation with the second half of the target series.
Of course, I am not sure there is enough S/N ratio for any reasonable test to be done. In addition, ex-post-facto selection of series based on correlation with the target strikes me as wrong-headed to begin with.
Gergis / Pages2K was the most blatant and verifiable case of confirmation bias I have ever seen.
After CA found the math error in 2012 and the paper was effectively withdrawn, Gergis was put in a very untenable position:
1. Execute the math as described in his paper and lose the HS.
2. Change the math from what is described in the paper to create a HS.
Long story short, he originally attempted to do #2 and the resubmitted paper was rejected by the journal.
Pages2K is an extension of the original #2.
Now what is unavoidable is the charge that it is the HS result that is desired, not some sort of analytical truth. Basically put tree rings and other proxies in a statistical blender and hit mix or puree or whip or liquify until a desired result is obtained.
This exercise also showed how results are very dependent on the processing methods, and not on the strength of the raw data.
Finally got to read Eli’s post onthe Mann censroship lawsuit hearing. differnt computer, better cookie/malware protection I guess. I do like how the Rabett can’t allow people to actually qutoe what Mann & pals have said if the source is from the climategate leaks. It is almost as if the raskly Rabett is, errr denying that those things were actually said and is looking for any little rabett hole to hide in.
Mann, et.al.’s 2008 paper did exactly what you recommend, as I remember. Jeff ID had some posts on that (here’s one). The algorithm was tested against reddish noise too. But Jeff demonstrates that it’s possible to ‘recover’ any signal you want using the 2008 algorithm
One of the problems with MBH98/99 is the sensitivity to just a few proxies, specifically the bristlecone pine series and possibly one other. Remove those and no HS. IMO, that alone invalidates MBH98/99.
By the way, tree ring proxies are indeed quite red. Some of them test as fractionally integrated as well.
SteveF and Dewitt, discussing, analyzing and criticizing these temperature reconstruction requires more than a paragraph or two to detail. Red noise can be more persistent in proxy data than in instrumental temperature series and thus if one chooses to (incorrectly) select proxies after the fact of determining how well those proxies fit the general upward trend in the instrumental record that persistence can create sufficient numbers of proxy series that are otherwise simply red and white noise with some non temperature related cycles mixed in. It makes choosing proxies to fit the modern upward temperature trend an easy proposition provided sufficient numbers of proxies are available to choose. That makes the key here the size of the population to choose from and then by using more of those that bend upward and if necessary upwards by large amounts. I would call this reconstruction problem that of ex post fact selection.
There are many other reconstruction problems with methodology which usually involves allowing subjective choices to enter the picture – like in selecting principle components.
There are other problems like those in Mann 2008 that are more closely associated with deliberate manipulation (my most polite term for what I see) of the data. The proxies used in Mann (2008) include those that were truncated and replaced with other data, proxies with instrumental data included in the ending part, proxies used upside down and a large portion of the proxy data ending in and before the 1980s and then in-filled to 2005 with other data. If you eliminate all those manipulations as I have done and reported at CA you will have a reconstruction that looks like red/white noise and no hockey stick.
I have been doing analyses of reconstructions like Arctic 2K and Australasia2K with an eye to how proxies compare in a pair-wise fashion and how these series differ when looking at the spectral character and coherence. Some of that analyses was reported at CA in the link below. A number Australasia proxies are located in close proximity making comparisons more valid.
What bothers me about criticisms of these temperature reconstructions is that often the person criticizing does not want to clutter his dissertation or comments with all the problems that are seen and thus I think their audience might wrongly assume that the reconstructions would be valid if the criticized problem were cleaned up.
I think a large clue about the weaknesses of these reconstructions is that the authors seldom if ever give any space to talking about the individual proxies – and in good detail. It is as though their interest is merely to show what they already believe to be true, and if they can induce their black boxes to provide that answer, it is the end of their interest and investigation.
“Finally got to read Eli’s post onthe Mann censroship lawsuit hearing. differnt computer, better cookie/malware protection I guess. I do like how the Rabett can’t allow people to actually qutoe what Mann & pals have said if the source is from the climategate leaks. It is almost as if the raskly Rabett is, errr denying that those things were actually said and is looking for any little rabett hole to hide in.”
adopt a sock puppet and mis paraphrase the text he wont show, then challenge him to prove you wrong by quoting the text.
toto:
I remember that some time ago Carrick made graphs that “proved†that MBH98/99 was garbage, failed to match any other reconstruction, blah blah blah.
It wasn’t just me. SKS has a similar plot. Zeke had a post with a similar plot on this blog.
Brandon and I had a constructive exchange on his blog, relating to my version of the figure, but see in particular this comment.
As far as I can tell, nobody in the paleo community takes the MBH result seriously anymore, and it is generally recognized by the community that MBH had too little low-frequency variability.
This latter point on loss of low frequency information was also made at RealClimate in reference to Moberg 2005 though they carefully side step the issue of “if Moberg 2005 has more realistic low-frequency variability” what it implies about MBH98/99.
SteveF, if MBH incoherently added any low-frequency signal from the proxies (this is what a loss of low frequency signal implies), what you’ll end up with is a flat handle that resembles high-pass filtered red noise.
Splitting the dataset into two portions will only confirm that your results are robust in that sense, and not that they are successfully recovering the signal of interest.
I should be very clear that when I talk about the Mann 2008 analyses that I did that I include all the details so that no one who might be interested is mislead. I have linked that analysis and some analysis of other temperature reconstructions below.
I have greatly appreciated SteveM’s return to analyzing temperature reconstructions and I would strongly suggested anyone interested read his recent posts.
I should point out that I did a composite of the Mann (2008) proxies after eliminating all the proxies and ending data that did not belong in a legitimate reconstruction and for the reasons given above. My hypothesis was that these proxies do not have a clear enough temperature signal to appear composited together looking like anything other than a red/white noise series. To that end when I composited these series I did not intend to weight the series by spatial concentration.
Now when it is said that these proxy series appear as white and red noise that is true of some , but other series look like white noise and others appear to have decadal trends and here I am talking about trends that go beyond what would be expected to be generated by red noise and/or long term persistence. These trends at the end the series in the modern period can go up or down. The end result of the composite I did on the Mann 92008) proxy series was a composite that can be fitted to an ARMA model or alternatively an ARIMA model with fractional integration.
Those decadal trends, at least in the case of tree rings, results I think, from what I see whereby these series can have relatively high correlations year over year between tree ring proxy series and/or the temperature series, but the trends for these series can go in very different directions. Awareness of this phenomena is why I am not at all impressed with relatively high correlations of these proxy series with temperature. It is the changes in decadal trends from the modern period to the historical that is of the most critical importance in doing temperature reconstructions. A diverging proxy series can have a good correlation with the temperature series. Further I think that proxies do respond to temperature in some manner but with much noise from other response variables, but that response year over year is sometimes apparent. The problem is that the magnitude in that response does not match the temperature change and thus good correlation between series does not mean the series trends will be near the same.
The algorithm was tested against reddish noise too. But Jeff demonstrates that it’s possible to ‘recover’ any signal you want using the 2008 algorithm
Remember that Mann 2008 used several algorithms. Composite plus scale (CPS) in fact can recover any signal you prefer.
The CPS result was concluded even by Mann to not be robust compared to his errors-in-variables (EIV) method.
There are a ridiculous number of mistakes made in Mann’s 2008 paper, but interestingly to me at least, he still seems to get a result similar to the other reconstructions. I doubt he and Loehle are in collusion, so that’s not a good explanation.
Here’s a plot of correlation to Ljungqvist for the various reconstructions. It’s not an exaggeration to say MBH had nothing in common, nor that Mann 2008 CPS is very much an outlier among long-duration reconstructions.
Steve Mosher,
Thanks for the advice, I still hunt some but don’t hunt Rabbits, lol…..
What is ironic in all this is I bet Eli would be a great guy to sit own with and chit chat over adult beverages.
I didn’t remember, and I didn’t bother to go back and look it up. I just remembered that the 2008 paper had at least as many problems, although different ones, than MBH98/99 and picked out one in a quick search.
DeWitt+Payne (Comment #133084)
DeWitt, in the future I will attempt to go with the often used term as you noted. That way I will not have to state that I used the fractionally integrated form.
You are correct that ARIMA fractionally integrated can have very long apparent trends, but so can ARMA models with high auto correlation With ARFIMA they can be longer.
“The acronyms “ARFIMA” or “FARIMA” are often used, although it is also conventional to simply extend the “ARIMA(p,d,q)” notation for models, by simply allowing the order of differencing, d, to take fractional values.”
When you start looking at lots of these proxies used in temperature reconstructions the issues become more complicated, but not any less condemning of the results obtained. I think SteveM has a good grasp on these issues and probably because he has been analyzing huge numbers of them and over a long period of time. Too bad the authors of reconstructions have not done the same.
RE DeWitt+Payne (Comment #133059)
I’m not sure what Eli meant when he said “people with money hate deflation.” If he meant people who depend on interest income from money markets and short-term CD’s, he might have a point, since deflation can push interest rates down to almost nothing on these securities. If prices also are falling, however, the savings are worth more, but people focused on interest income may not see it that way.
Happy Thanksgiving Lucia and Blackboard denizens!
I’m off to a strong start with the feasting, having started the day off with a hearty serving of homemade French toast casserole and bacon. 2000 calories down, 8000 calories to go! 😉
We require a Thanksgiving Haiku Thread. 😉
Andrew
Sam Katzman, general counsel for CEI gave his evaluation of the Mann oral argument and said he was cautiously optimistic. His comments on Williams arguments were as follows:
“The judges were not that active in questioning Mann’s attorney, John B. Williams, but they made several very telling comments. When Williams claimed that eight separate investigations had exonerated Mann, one judge asked, “What if CEI sincerely believes that those investigations are flawed? They take them apart quite thoroughly in their reply brief.†Another question: “If CEI strongly believes that its statements are true, then how can you ever show malice?†When Williams cited one Supreme Court case as being directly on point, a judge asked, “how is that the right fit for this case?†Another noted that, under Williams’ approach, the Anti-SLAPP law “wouldn’t be doing very much work.†And when Williams claimed that preponderance of evidence should suffice, a judge asked, “but you need clear and convincing evidence for malice.†And the judge noted that Williams failed to ask for the directed discovery that is expressly allowed under the Anti-SLAPP law. Finally, when Williams argued that a jury could evaluate misleading effect, all three judges made some rolling-eye expressions.” See http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/3231058/posts
I have been grossly underwhelmed by Williams’ work on this case, and I would like to hear the audio to see if I agree with Katzman’s observations. The one statement that the anti-slapp law wouldn’t be doing much work if it was construed as advocated by Mann, strongly tends to help the defendants.
……
Also, Harry Passfield apparently attended the oral argument and stated on Bishop Hill: “When the NR (etc) brief was doing his pitch and tearing into the fraud that was the HS – including a good piece of extempore on ‘hide the decline’ – the judges were quite pointed in their questions about how it was so very wrong to use various sources of data in one chart. They really got into detail about the use of the HS in the WMO cover page and IPCC first AR.â€
……..
In general, I think the observations above are substantially positive for the defendants. I was afraid that the Court wouldn’t get beyond Mann’s seemingly high academic qualifications and honors, but it obviously did.
Happy Thanksgiving to everyone.
JD
Regarding deflation, savings, and interest rates:
Deflation does INCREASE future purchasing power ( which is why it’s a problem – why buy anything today that will be cheaper tomorrow? )
In the US, we don’t have deflation – inflation is slow ( ~ 1.5 % a year )
What is significant is REAL interest rates ( interest rates minus inflation ). Real interest rates are negative which costs savers. This is intentional by the Fed to discourage saving and encourage spending. Of course, the poor and middle class are the classes most likely to have interest bearing accounts which have suffered, versus equity investments which have prospered.
To an extent Eli is correct in that reserve banks promote negative interest rates BECAUSE there is a deflation risk.
The US has an advantage because of immigration ( legal or otherwise ) so we have a natural growth factor that Europe, Japan, and soon China will lack. But we are not completely immune because other countries are exporting their deflation through their currency devaluations intended to increase exports.
Also, meager growth outlook has the German 10 year bond now yielding less than 0.75% and the Japanese 10 year yielding less than 0.5% !!!!!!! As a result, Japanese and German investors will gravitate toward buying US 10 year bonds yielding 2.25% which will continue to drag down US yields.
Unfortunately, credit means ‘belief’ – the belief that a borrower will actually pay back the bond. Belief is absolute – either one believes or doesn’t believe. It’s possible that the we will live to see a flip in belief for Japan/Germany or even the US. In some sense, low yields in the developed world indicate a belief in low growth which will be a flip from the developed world to the ’emerging markets’.
Interesting times indeed.
Re Climate Weenie (Comment #133091)
Good post, but I’m not sure I understand what you mean by “believe is absolute.” Some bonds have more risk of default than others and pay higher rates to induce investors to take the greater risk. Wouldn’t faith in these bonds be weaker than faith in bonds with less risk of default?
JD Ohio,
I hope you are right, but suspect you are wrong. These judges are (IMHO) very unlikely to stop the suit. They will almost certainly hold that immediate appeal is allowed, but almost certainly make sure the case goes to trial… to be certain the financial punishment of ideological opponents continues. It is just politics masquerading as jurisprudence; leopards do not easily change their spots.
.
Sorry if that sounds jaded, but my faith in courts being above politics has diminished over the years to very close to zero. Which is of course why everyone gets so worked up over judicial appointments.
.
Happy Thanksgiving.
I too am very concerned that political fads of today could prevail over the law or comon sense. There is a long and sorry history of this in American courts.
This attempt of Mann’s so brazen and its implications so bad for all forms of media and speech. I think this one might get by despite the politics.
My hope is the biggest challenge for the Appeal is how to frame a ruling that protects free speech while still kowtowing to the cliamte obsessed consensus.
The best would be for the panel to reject that the case is about cliamte at all and instead focus on the law and the Constitution. But I am an optimist.
JD and Lucia, two thoughts. First, inmmy view Robert’s ACA ruling is much more hopeful for the future, a new Marbury v. Madison. It (finally) set limits on Congressional use of the commerce clause. And, it said that the individual mandate would have been inconstitutional but for Congressional ability to tax.what we have not seen is any sequellae yet.
And on the state versus fed exchange tax credits, do not overlook the Gruber affair. The importance of which was not saying Congress took advantage of voter stupidity. It is that in those same talks, he made it clear that the Congressional intent was to incentivize states to establish state exchanges, and punish those that did not by denying their citizens the credits if the feds had to set up the exchange. Pelosi is caught out by her own former website touting Gruber. POTUS is caught out by the 17 meetings Gruber had inside the WH during the ACA drafting process.
The congressional language is clear. So is the intent, made crystal clear by Gruber. SCOTUS will almost certainly strike down the Faulty IRS interpretation.
Steve F: “I hope you are right, but suspect you are wrong. These judges are (IMHO) very unlikely to stop the suit.
.
Sorry if that sounds jaded, but my faith in courts being above politics has diminished over the years to very close to zero.”
..
No reason not to be jaded. However, in all fairness, the judges of the court of appeals appear to be far more informed than 99% of the journalists who [mis] cover climate change.
JD
With a functioning legislature, the threat of the SCOTUS making an adverse ruling would be used as leverage to make other desired changes to the ACA that the right supports. You do this for us, and we will correct the typo through legislation. Horse trading.
Most people are fed up with this winner take all, everything is the nuclear option, method of governing.
Don’t confuse this attitude with support for an activist government, grid lock on many things is perfectly fine with me, as it is with anyone where the policy is moving in the wrong direction. There are deals that can be made. Typo fixes for tax reform or whatever.
Rud – not just the WH meeting, but the $400,000 payments.
I am not sure Gruber’s statements can be used to bolster intent of Congress.
Upcoming SCOTUS ruling on King v. Burwell – I do not trust anything right now. However, they did take the case while there is no split.
On another topic: I see where the supposedly destroyed with no backup IRS emails have been found.
:>
Will I get face punched if I ask, ‘What difference does that make now?’
It will make a difference to Lerner’s future.
No, I meant that that line worked so well for Hillary. Why would anybody care about the issue now?
I think the administration successfully ran the clock out on the IRS issue as well. It’d take a gruber of an email to make people care about it again.
(EDIT: don’t misunderstand me. I’d be delighted to find I was mistaken. I’d be deeply pleased to see somebody crucified for some of the more egregious abuses of power this administration has indulged in. I just don’t think it’s going to happen.)
Mark Bofill,
My bet is that team Obama will wish it was only Gruber emails before this is over.
Kan, good point about the Gruber payments.
As to Congressional intent, Gruber was explicit on multiple occaisions. His statements provide at least probitive evidence. Any valid Congressional reason for the language as is cuts hard against the administration’s ‘typo’ argument advanced at the appellate stage. Just as do the separate definitions of state and federal exchanges, plus the exact statutory language which the IRS rule plainly ignores.
Hunter,
That’d make for a merry Christmas indeed in the Bofill household. 🙂 Of course, this’d never have time to properly blow up by Christmas, but you get the sentiment.
Mark Bofill,
I am hoping for more of a nice 2015, one that takes most of the year to develop and really gets going strong for Xmas 2015…..
My understanding is that no statements AFTER the law was passed are admissible to determine legislative intent. This is probably a good rule.
Tom,
Yes, it would be good in principal, but admissions about what the intent was when the law was written potentially seem like a gray area. While I am impressed with how well major media has buried Gruber’s serial admissions, I think it bothers more than a few people and will do so for quite some time.
TS “My understanding is that no statements AFTER the law was passed are admissible to determine legislative intent. This is probably a good rule.”
I suspect that a number of courts have applied that rule. However, it is quite easy to get around. All a judge would have to say is that based on the structure of the Act, the reason for not allowing federal exchanges would be to pressure the states into taking part. (wink – wink). You don’t have to explicitly mention Gruber to argue that not allowing federal exchanges was built into the act for a particular purpose.
JD
“All a judge would have to say is that based on the structure of the Act, the reason for not allowing federal exchanges would be to pressure the states into taking part.”
That would certainly be “legislating from the bench,” which is frowned upon in some parts.
There is nothing in the ACA to support the claim that congress wanted to deny subsides in order to force states to create their own exchanges. There is also no evidence that it was Congress’ intent to pressure states into creating their own exchanges. This is why opponents of the bill are hyping the Gruber videos, which are politically damaging but don’t speak to the question of Congress’ intent at all.
It’s fairly absurd to think that Congress intended to coerce states into creating their own exchanges while keeping this coercion completely secret. That’s not how incentives work. That’s not how the incentives to expand Medicaid worked in the same act.
That is not to say that opponents don’t have a good case, though. I expect the Supreme Court to invalidate the subsides, but I’d expect most states to eventually create exchanges or simply “establish” an exchange that links to the federal exchange.
Boris,
That would certainly be “legislating from the bench,†which is frowned upon in some parts.
Huh? how would it be “legislating from the bench”?
Tailoring bills to pressuring states to act in ways that support a federal goal is a longstanding feature of lots of bill. That’s generally the ‘intention’ of various ‘carrot and stick’ provisions and this sure and heck looks like one.
Anyway, the courts don’t need to “find” this ‘intention’ it’s the side that wants the court to permit deductions for insurance bought through federal exchanges who needs to bring forward evidence that this could not have been the intention. Since this is a very common thing for Congress to ‘intend’, they need to bring pretty strong evidence.
There is nothing in the ACA to support the claim that congress wanted to deny subsides in order to force states to create their own exchanges.
We’ll see what the court rules. But the issue isn’t whether they wanted to “deny”. The issue is what they granted or even intended to grant. I know you might like to flip, and the effect of “not granting” may be to “deny”. But if they didn’t grant a tax deduction then they didn’t grant a deduction.
It’s fairly absurd to think that Congress intended to coerce states into creating their own exchanges while keeping this coercion completely secret.
Huh? Congress “coercing” states by setting up carrots and sticks happens in lots and lots and lots and lots of bills. They did it with the 55 mph speed limit (connecting things to highway funds). There are lots of other cases. It’s hardly “absurd” to think Congress intended to set up ‘carrot/stick’ situations when they do so very often.
That’s not how incentives work. That’s not how the incentives to expand Medicaid worked in the same act.
That this sort of “carrot/stick” approach might not have been done that way with Medicaid in this particular act doesn’t mean it’s “absurd” to think they did it that way for other things. Congress isn’t required to structure everything the same way– not even in the same bill!
I expect the Supreme Court to invalidate the subsides, but I’d expect most states to eventually create exchanges or simply “establish” an exchange that links to the federal exchange.
I expect the states that don’t have exchanges won’t establish them anytime soon. They especially won’t want to assume the burden of exchanges if it turns out that their citizens ‘get’ tax deductions (and for private industries fines) on the same basis whether they state sets up an exchange or not. In such circumstances many states would decide they could just let the Feds assume the costly burden of running the exchanges and not shoulder those costs themselves.
Congress actually attempted to coerce states to expand Medicare in the ACA. That’s the part of the act that was struck down in NFIB v. Sibelius.
Congress actually did try to coerce the states to expand Medicare coverage in the ACA. That’s the part of the act that was struck down by the Supreme Court.
Boris “That would certainly be “legislating from the bench,†which is frowned upon in some parts.”
If that is your concern, then you would go by the clear literal language of the act, which does not permit the federal exchanges, which was even recognized by the Appeals Court that upheld the exchanges.
JD
Boris is spinning so quickly he is getting dizzy.
if Boris is concerned about “legislating from the Bench”, I wonder if he is also concerned with “legislating from the Oval Office”.
The interesting speculation is if the President will simply ignore an unfavorable court ruling on this as he has done other times with inconvenient court rulings or pesky laws.
hunter,
“The interesting speculation is if the President will simply ignore an unfavorable court ruling on this as he has done other times with inconvenient court rulings or pesky laws.”
.
Hard to say. He (more-or-less) backed down when the Court ruled his ‘recess appointment’ to the NLRB was unlawful… the appointee left the NLRB and her nomination has now been formally withdrawn from Senate consideration. The mess created by that nominee’s unlawful votes on many NLRB cases remains to be cleaned up.
.
Which reminds me of an interesting video about the different moral priorities for ‘conservatives’ and ‘liberals’. (http://www.ted.com/talks/jonathan_haidt_on_the_moral_mind?language=en) Very liberal people like Mr. Obama (and several judges on the Supreme Court!) tend to value “fairness” and “protecting the weak” above all else, and so are quite willing to sacrifice “less important” things like the rule of law and the explicit limits on government action that are in the constitution, so long as “fairness” is increased. This focus on fairness is why liberals so often talk about “externalities” and “the tragedy of the commons”, and why forcing GHG reductions on the public (even at considerable cost) is easy for liberals to embrace; forcing GHG reductions on energy users increases perceived “fairness” by pricing externalities and controlling access to and use of the commons.
.
IMO, the chaos that Mr. Obama’s lawlessness has brought about will have negative social and political repercussions for a long time after he is gone. I suspect that like most liberals, he either doesn’t think the repercussions will be negative, or doesn’t care much about them.
SteveF,
The odd thing about “tragedy of the commons” is that often the solution to the tragedy is to beef up private ownership of things. Admittedly, this can be impractical, but it works in situations where ‘commons’ were things like “a pasture that could be used by everyone and anyone who owned a sheep” etc.
The other twist on “fairness” is that people don’t always agree on what is “fair”. Some things are obviously unfair, but sometimes people want to absolve others from the “unfair” consequences of their decisions. I mean… it might be “unfair” that I eventually get a heart attack if adopt a diet of 100% chocolate and coffee and red wine, smoke a pack a day and never exercise. At that point, I might be debilitated unable to work and impoverished. (Plus, another consequence is that I would be “so not a babe” that I couldn’t even snag some poor lonely guy to be my sugar daddy and support my chocolate, coffee, wine drinking existence!)
Possibly someone else adopted the same diet– but dodged the bullet on the heart attack. But one would still need to debate the degree of “unfairness” in my ill-fate.
Lucia,
Yes, perceived “fairness” seems to trump all else (like personal responsibility) for many liberals. I even heard a liberal argue that the great thing about the ACA is that it disconnects costs from personal health; someone who chooses to smoke, overeat (and become vastly obese), not exercise, etc pays the same as everyone else. Normal (market based) health insurance rewards prudent personal choices with lower premiums and punishes imprudent personal choices with higher premiums….. but that is deemed too “unfair” to many people. Hummm… reward something and you tend to get more of it, punish something and you tend to get less of it. I don’t understand how this simple reality is lost on so many.
PS Your intellect would probably allow you to snag a sugar daddy anyway. 😉
SteveF,
What I want to know is how the Kelo decision protects the weak. Or why raising the price of electricity by banning fossil fuel powered electricity generation helps the poor. Or how allowing the teachers unions to bargain collectively to gain tenure in K-12 helps students. In fact, how do public employee unions help anyone but their members and their favored politicians? IMO, there’s a fundamental conflict of interest in allowing public employee unions to engage in politics using mandatory dues at all, and that includes teachers unions and school board elections. For liberals, it seems that fairness only applies to groups, not individuals. The interests of the state always seems to trump individual rights, a la Kelo.
I started to write about this, the idea of fairness. But eventually when I checked the definition I had to back up.
See, in my mind, it is fair that somebody who exercises and eats right enjoys the benefits of their sacrifice and discipline. They’re healthier and they’ve personally paid the price to be healthier. It’s also fair (in my mind) that Lucia’s hypothetical chocolate wine coffee drinker end up having heart attacks. They got to enjoy the chocolate and the wine after all.
But going to the dictionary, I don’t see what I expect at all.
Merriam Webster gives me this:
lack of favoritism toward one side or another
Google’s default dictionary whatever it is,
Fairness is the quality of making judgments that are free from discrimination. Judges, umpires, and teachers should all strive to practice fairness. Fairness comes from the Old English fæger, meaning “pleasing, attractive.” This makes sense given that the word is also used to describe physical beauty.
I always thought fairness had something to do with justice. Live and learn I guess.
I can’t quite get past this. All these years, I’d assumed it was the people I disagreed with who had it wrong. Turns out, I’m really not about what’s fair at all. I don’t believe fairness is a virtue.
Since apparently it really isn’t fair to make judgements that discriminate or favor one side or the other. Even if they deserve it. Nope, if that’s what fairness is about I want no part of it.
I feel like I’m progressing on my path towards becoming a Sith lord. 🙂 Now all I need is the ability to sense and control the Dark Side of the Force!
Mark,
The Jedi were mistaken. The Force is. The Dark and Light are supposed to be in balance. They actually get in to how the balance fails at one point in the Clone Wars animated series, Season 3, episode 15: Overlords. The Chosen One, presumably Luke, is supposed to restore the balance that the Jedi helped to upset. Anakin failed the test.
I’m betting that Disney will ignore that aspect completely in the new movies.
Mark Bofill,
Fairness has to be seen through a strong moral lens.
…more later- the lovely Mrs. hunter insists on some more late fall gardening.
🙂 Score.
Not only will Hunter come back and spike the fairness vrs justice ball I’ve setup, but I’ve successfully spawned a The Force Awakens subdicussion!
DeWitt,
Clearly I need to watch those. Honestly now, I’d thought that ‘balance to the force’ had something to do with the number of practitioners on each side. I imagined that Anakin ‘brought balance’ by wiping out most of the Jedi, so that all that was left was Vader and the Emperor balancing Obi-Wan and Yoda.
On a much more superficial topic :> I love the lightsaber broadsword / claymore thing in the trailer! I’m sure it makes no sense whatsoever, but how can one not like an interesting new lightsaber design!
(EDIT: Gah, I got some chores to run too. I be back later)
Mark,
Have you read Harrison Bergeron by Kurt Vonnegut. That’s the reductio ad absurdum of the argument that fairness requires equality of outcome even if individuals have different capabilities.
DeWitt,
“What I want to know is how the Kelo decision protects the weak. Or why raising the price of electricity by banning fossil fuel powered electricity generation helps the poor. Or how allowing the teachers unions to bargain collectively to gain tenure in K-12 helps students. ”
.
There are always going to be sell-outs/corruption no matter who gets elected. Confiscating Kelo’s house and support for public employee unions are just sellouts to favored groups, with a clear expectation of net benefits to the politicians involved.
.
Reducing GHG emissions, even at very high cost, is in fact frequently claimed a “defense of the poor”, with the claim usually made that people in poor countries will ‘pay a terrible price’ for warming. You know, the claims of millions of deaths from weather catastrophes, wars, pestilence, rising sea levels, etc all caused by the selfish, greedy, corrupt GHG emitters in the West, who get all the benefits of low cost energy, while the poor will be paying for those benefits with their lives… for centuries…or even millennia. Now since reducing GHG emissions will in fact raise energy cost worldwide, the evil West (and especially the richest people in the Evil West!) should also pay generous subsidies to the people in poor countries so they are insulated from higher energy prices. See, it’s all based on fairness.
.
BTW, I think I have captured the the mindset of the ‘And then there’s physics’ crowd pretty accurately.
Wow I missed that one. Looking at the synopsis it sounds like a good one. I’ve got to see if I can run down a copy someplace.
Thanks!
SteveF,
the evil West (and especially the richest people in the Evil West!) should also pay generous subsidies to the people in poor countries so they are insulated from higher energy prices. See, it’s all based on fairness.
Of course those subsidies would go to the local governments, not individuals, and straight from there into Swiss bank accounts. The catastrophe argument also ignores that those people are already subject to catastrophic events and lowering ghg emissions may, at best, keep the rate of those catastrophic events constant rather than increasing somewhat.
SteveF (Comment #133120)
“Yes, perceived “fairness†seems to trump all else (like personal responsibility) for many liberals. I even heard a liberal argue that the great thing about the ACA is that it disconnects costs from personal health; someone who chooses to smoke, overeat (and become vastly obese), not exercise, etc pays the same as everyone else.”
The motivation behind these acts is not really related to fairness rather fairness is a term used to obtain appeal for a government action. It is obtaining government action in these matters that motivates this political class. I would suppose the term “fairness” in that political environment must mean whatever the government deems fair or better what a government under the control of modern day liberals deems fair.
Lucia “The other twist on “fairness†is that people don’t always agree on what is “fairâ€.
SteveF “Yes, perceived “fairness†seems to trump all else”.
Um, some people don’t always get what is fair which in my case should have been looks, personality and a better maths brain. Not to mention the odd billion dollars and a sports car.
At least that’s my perception.
SteveF “BTW, I think I have captured the the mindset of the ‘And then there’s physics’ crowd pretty accurately.”
Please, put it in a box and let it contemplate the missing ocean heat, That is if that crowd has one in the first place.
SteveF “BTW, I think I have captured the the mindset of the ‘And then there’s physics’ crowd pretty accurately.â€
Perhaps not so? A comment from the shy and somewhat retiring one,
“maybe someone would surprise me and actually engage in a thoughtful and pleasant discussion. However, I think I’m now convinced that this really is not possible.”
I did point out the paradox of Robbie Burns genie and was surprisingly moderated.
Along with Mosher.
angech,
Sorry, I didn’t understand those comments. Too obscure.
Mark Bofill, your reading of those definitions of “fair” is way off. The first definition says fairness involves a “lack of favoritism.” One doesn’t need favoritism to treat people or things differently. If one child misbehaves and another does not, it is not “favoritism” to punish only the child who misbehaves. It is fair.
Similarly, the second definition says being fair means being “free from discrimination.” I discriminate if I say black people can’t shop at my store. I don’t discriminate if I say a black person who I’ve caught shoplifting in the past can’t shop at my store.
There is nothing unfair about using a relevant factor when making a decision. A person’s history of shoplifting is relevant to a store owner’s decision to allow them in his store. A man’s history of drug abuse is relevant to a medical insurance company’s price for his insurance. Neither involves discrimination or favoritism because both look only at factors relevant to the decisions being made.
The way you’re reading those definitions is like me breaking into your house then complaining because, “You didn’t call the cops on every other person on the street.”
Brandon,
Yeah, I think so too.
Going back to the definition:
Fairness is the quality of making judgments that are free from discrimination. Judges, umpires, and teachers should all strive to practice fairness.
Sort of pointless to have a judge or umpire at all if there’s no judgement to be made, no in or out, right or wrong, true or false, illegal or illegal, what have you.
I thought Hunter was going to take care of it, but you took care of it nicely Brandon. Thanks!
BTW
I don’t organize my thoughts like that deliberately. It’s become part of my style of rhetoric, to occasionally put forward an absurd position for the person I’m talking with to correct. Somehow I find it works better if you let the other guy point out the madness, as opposed to doing it myself.
Works better sometimes, anyways. 🙂
Mark Bofill, no prob.
In other news, Tamino has posted his first blog post in a few months. I think it’s amusingly bad. I left a comment highlighting one rather large absurdity in the post, but there are quite a few more. I also don’t expect my comment to see the light of day. That is, unless Tamino lets it through with some hostile moderator’s remark insulting me for daring to think his blatant cherry-picking is somehow inappropriate.
Did he delete your comment? I don’t see it.
It was cold in the midwest last winter. Lots of us live here. 🙂
….Not spiking the ball too much this evening. After a hard day of gardening and pleasant bike ride left me tired. My trip to the gym to enjoy the whirlpool ended in my leaving my black cell phone out of my gym bag in the black painted locker, and walking out to the car, realizing it was in the gym and going back to find it gone.
So life ain’t fair is one lesson of fairness to never forget, lol. :>(
lucia, Tamino has had my comments go straight to moderation ever since the issue which led to me writing my first blog post (which was on this site). I don’t think I’ve bothered trying to comment there since, but with how long it’s been, I figured I’d give it another try. My comment is still in his moderation queue. I’ll post a screenshot if it disappears.
And oh! I totally missed that people talked about the Force and balance. I remember being confused the first time I heard the prophecy about bringing balance to the Force. It immediately seemed like a bad thing to me because it meant a lot of Jedis would have to die. After all, how else could one person bring balance to the Force when there were dozens (hundreds?) of Jedis on the light side and only a few Siths on the dark?
Apparently that’s a common reaction, and it’s one George Lucas never expected. To him, the force would only be “balanced” if the dark side was eliminated (or at least, not used). That’s right, according to the creator of Star Wars, the only way to balance the Force, which had a light side and dark side, was to completely eliminate one side.
I’m not sure Lucas understands what the word balance means.
Brandon,
That just shows how plots and characters in a work of fiction end up going in directions the author thought he hadn’t intended because the logic of the situation demands it. IMO, the Jedi’s got pretty much what they deserved as arrogant, self righteous SOB’s, in other words, hubris, or possibly power corrupts.
Recently there was either a book I read, movie I watched or possibly even a video game whose denouement revolved around eliminating something bad from human nature or something like that. The joys of getting older. Anyway, the cure was worse than the disease. IMO, you couldn’t eliminate use of the Dark Side of the Force without eliminating access to the use of the Force entirely. The Ring of Power cannot be used safely, it must be destroyed.
I imagine it’s not lost on the SCOTUS that it is their job to interpret the laws passed by Congress, and not the Administrative branch’s. Congress is all huffy due to the executive branch’s law making excesses, and my guess is that the SCOTUS is pretty huffy about the executive branch’s serial non-enforcement and re-interpreting of the ACA. The difference here is that the SCOTUS rarely makes their feelings evident in public. I half believe they accepted this latest ACA challenge in order to draw a line in the sand with the executive branch, and I’m guessing they will not be giving a sympathetic hearing.
I didn’t find Tamino’s post particularly bad, especially compared to the typical fare he offers up. He is of course still convinced that GHG driven warming is a big problem which demands a ‘solution’ (greatly restricting use of fossil fuels, nothing less), but I suspect he is smart enough to recognize that is just not going to happen for at least 20-30 years. By which time climate sensitivity will likely be understood to be modest, and there won’t be so many frantic demands to eliminate fossil fuels. It is a tough time to be a strident green activist….. I have read some are even suffering from pre-traumatic stress syndrome…. which I guess is what happens when a green advocate realizes they are not going to get what they want. Becoming very upset when you realize you can’t have what you want is common among children and adolescents.
Hunter,
I’m sorry to hear it. That stinks.
Brandon,
I’m not sure Lucas understands what the word balance means.
Well, what with the ambiguity of the word ‘fair’ in today’s common usage who can blame the guy. 🙂 But just look at real life, ATTP bows out and Tamino resurrects. The Force remains in balance. I’m not sure what side of the Force that is, but…
Lucia,
The interesting thing about last winter in North America is that while there were lots of records set for low daytime maximum temperature, there were relatively fewer records set for low minimum temperature. This is consistent with the continuing pattern of many more record high minimum temperatures than record high maximum temperatures. I think this is pointing toward a reduction in boundary layer inversion and radiational surface cooling at night as having a big influence on daily average temperature on land. My understanding is that GCM’s can’t handle boundary layer inversions; if so, GCM’s should predict more record high maximums than are observed.
After all, how else could one person bring balance to the Force when there were dozens (hundreds?) of Jedis on the light side and only a few Siths on the dark?
Really big lever arm?
Recently there was either a book I read, movie I watched or possibly even a video game whose denouement revolved around eliminating something bad from human nature or something like that. The joys of getting older. Anyway, the cure was worse than the disease.
Serenity maybe? (If you’re old enough that seems like “recently.” Don’t ask me how I know. I just do.)
Brandon, so far your still up at T’s.
Interesting post in the way he can switch the focus of an argument, attacked the UK coldest winter theme but completely ignored the USA links when he could not disprove it.
I am sure I heard repeated references to second coldest month ever when it was freezing but he focused on the full winter data in the UK.
May be the fault of the presenters not being clear on a definition of winter.
Fellow blog on Arctic Sea Ice has nearly frozen recently due to the dearth of good ice shrinking news.
On a positive note total sea ice is positive again, again.
:>
December 1st, 2014 at 7:51 am
After all, how else could one person bring balance to the Force when there were dozens (hundreds?) of Jedis on the light side and only a few Siths on the dark?
Really big lever arm?
Ask a mechanical engineer a dopey question…
There was an article in the Chicago Tribune this morning that in my view pertains to the fairness issue discussed in this thread and the ongoing ACA debate. I have earlier mentioned the Tribune articles that have appeared spinning ACA favorably by failing to mention the obvious dilemma of the law mandating low income people to buy insurance that even with subsidies the premiums become a large percentage of their income. These low premium bronzed plans have a high deductible in the neighborhood of $5,750 for 2015 in the Chicago area.
There has appeared to be a major disconnect at the Tribune with the editorial staff pointing to problems with ACA and the journalist doing articles in the paper spinning ACA favorably and almost in direct opposition in the same paper issue. I suspect someone on the editorial staff, which did have Obama twice as its choice for President, finally said enough is enough and please write something about those high deductibles.
The article today points to lower income people buying insurance as mandated by ACA and then never using it because they cannot afford to spend the $5,000 or so on medical expenses before the insurance kicks in. Those people instead are going to charitable free or reduced cost health care centers – as they evidently did in the past. One could call this problem an unintended consequence but that hardly would hold water unless we assumed the writers of the law and those who voted for it were rather stupid and/or uninformed. I think rather they saw it as an opportunity for the government to encroach into a new area and whether in the end that was “fair” mattered not at all.
While I am at it there also appeared an article in today’s Tribune that talks about civics as taught in high schools in IL and how there are groups who are encouraging graduation requirements using civics testing and even community service. I have this great disrespect for the teaching of civics that espouses government actions in the most sanitized , idealistic and heroic way possible and never mentions the underlying darker motivations and voter manipulations. Politicians will, of course, want the sanitized version even if they have to mandate it and who, after all, could be against civics education. Forced community service is I suppose another way of aggrandizing the government. The regimes in North Korea, Cuba and Venezuela would be proud.
Spoiler Alert:
The book was the final volume of the Wheel of Time series. The protagonist wins the ultimate battle against the Dark and has the power to completely remove its influence from the world for all time. But he also has the power to see the future consequences of his actions. The world without the Dark is in many ways as bad as it would be if the Dark had triumphed. In the end, he restores the balance between Dark and Light rather than tipping it all the way to the Light.
Steve F,
What the climate obsessed need is a St. Paul to convincingly explain away the delayed apocalypse. Early Christians operated under the assumption that 2nd coming and accompanying apocalypse would be in their lifetimes. Paul was in tune enough to realize that there was a delay developing and that if it were not expalined it would be damaging to the nascent movement. The climate mania faces a different problem: It is ascendant at least in public statements by most leaders. It is not a guerilla movement in schism from a larger movement. But still the climate faithful need some guidance on how to ignore reality and maintain their faith in a CO2 armageddon. Afterall, the windmills must keep turning and solar panels must keep sitting there.
Totally off topic. (I know, open thread, but..)
Is this Maxwell’s demon in the flesh? I’m sort of surprised this works.
SteveF, Tamino let my comment through (with the inserted responses). He justifies his cherry picking by saying:
You have really missed the point. If I had proposed the record warmth of the California winter without any context as being evidence of global warming, maybe. But I didn’t — I used it to illustrate the lack of context in the aforementioned post.
Which is basically him saying, “I have no obligation to look at the data as a whole. All I’m showing is anyone can cherry-pick anything.” He then uses this argument to say:
They used a claim which might be technically correct but is clearly misleading (about U.S. and Canada winters) to cast doubt on global warming. They really should know better, indeed would know better if they were more interested in the truth than in pushing some agenda. And they did it all in a post highlighting the need for accuracy.
Does that amount to culpable ignorance? Dishonesty? You make the call.
Culpable ignorance? Dishonesty? The post he is criticizing discussed a major trend across more than half the United States (and I believe even more of Canada). His only response was to show you can select a few areas where the opposite different trend happened.
Nevermind he wrote most of his post to justify saying:
My opinion: Driessen and Legates used a false claim (about U.K. winters) to cast doubt on global warming.
Ignoring the fact the two authors referred to winters “in the United Kingdom and continental Europe.” Again, he selected a single location and suggested others were dishonest for not discussing it while he refused to discuss what the overall data shows.
His post is basically accusing others of dishonesty for not giving a fair representation of the data by saying you can pick out small amounts of data that give different results.
(Now I need to go see if I can find a convenient record of temperatures across the various parts of Europe.)
Mark,
You shouldn’t be surprised. It’s possible to create coatings that have different reflectivity at different wavelengths. TINOx, for example, has an absorptivity at wavelengths less than 4 μm, i.e. 99% of solar radiation, of greater than 0.95 and an emissivity for wavelengths greater than 5 μm of less than 0.05. So it gets a lot hotter when exposed to sunlight than a black or gray body with constant absorptivity/emissivity at all wavelengths.
The Stanford invention is the opposite of TINOx. It has very low absorptivity, and hence high reflectivity, ( t+r+a ≡ 1, a = e ) for solar radiation wavelengths and high emissivity/absorptivity in the atmospheric window range of 8-14 μm. As a result it will be cooler than a black or gray body when exposed to solar radiation. This does not violate the Second Law. Entropy still increases. Low emissivity window glazing is another example of a wavelength selective coating.
Mark Bofill,
Thanks for the kind words. Replacing a phone while under contract is more complex than I thought. I sacrificed my upgarde so my son the developer could have the Iphone 6. My MIA phone is/was an early HTC, over four years old. My best hope is that the theif will just leave it laying around the 24 hour fitness. Otherwise a solution will involve buying either a used phone or a pre-paid and converting it to regular use.
DeWitt,
Yeah, I can’t put my finger on what I thought the problem would be. I can reflect radiation (edit: at specific wavelengths), more efficiently or less efficiently depending on the material I’m using, that’s not news.
…
I don’t know what bugs me about it. Obviously there is no thermodynamic law violation, because the durned thing works.
…
mmm..
Cause it cools, I guess, is the counterintuitive part that bothers me. I didn’t think I could get rid of heat that way, without producing more heat someplace else…
meh. Obviously I’m not thinking about it correctly. 🙂
Mark,
The way to look at it isn’t that it cools, but that it doesn’t get as hot in the first place. The rate of energy absorption is lower while the rate of energy emission at a given temperature is still high. That makes the steady state temperature where energy in equals energy out lower because the total power is lower.
:> Thanks, I get it now.
Tamino’s response to Brandon is utter nonsense. But in its arrogance quite typical for him of course.
I have little faith in my comments passing moderation at Tamino’s blog, and I don’t feel like waiting another 12 hours to find out if my current one will. As such, here is the comment I just submitted:
Tamino, you say:
[Response: You have really missed the point. If I had proposed the record warmth of the California winter without any context as being evidence of global warming, maybe. But I didn’t — I used it to illustrate the lack of context in the aforementioned post.]
If your problem with a post is lack of context, how does providing a cherry-picked counterexample help? That doesn’t provide context. All it does is show cherry-picking lets you come up with non-representatitive results. While that’s true, it does nothing to show any particular results are non-representative.
Moreover, if somebody says “much of the United States” exhibits a pattern, they’re acknowledging the rest of the United States does not exhibit that pattern. That means these authors acknowledge their results don’t hold true for all of the United States even as they say the results are representative for “much of the United States.”
The images Alex C provided show the results promoted by the authors are the dominant pattern. You are suggesting the authors are dishonest by providing a cherry-picked example which runs counter to the dominant signal.
Side note, when I suggested this dominant signal is a meaningful point that people are right to bring up, you responded:
[Resopnse: No, it’s not, and neither are you.]
I’ve read multiple papers published in scientific journals discussing that abnormally cold winter in the United States and Canada. The same is true for the abnormally cold December of 2010 in the UK (not a record cold in the CET record because the following January and February were warm) and the abnormally cold the beginning to 2012 for large portions of Europe.
When scientists think this stuff is meaningful, worth highlighting and trying to explain, I have to agree with them. That’s true even if it means disagreeing with you.
Upon rereading it, I can see I need to proofread my comments better >.<
DeWitt Payne (Comment #133160 Mark,
The way to look at it isn’t that it cools, but that it doesn’t get as hot in the first place. The rate of energy absorption is lower while the rate of energy emission at a given temperature is still high. That makes the steady state temperature where energy in equals energy out lower because the total power is lower.
?
Still struggling.Sounds like a perpetual energy machine in reverse.
Is the coating a blackbody? No.
Is it a mirror, Yes.
If the mirror is stuck on a blackbody then it reflects its share of incoming light plus as the blackbody around it absorbing heat heats the mirror up it also emits some extra heat.
Just stick mirrors non all the roofs and ignore the other side effects like blinded pilots, car drivers and people in general not to mention roasted birds falling from the sky.
Going further if the material emits IR at a higher frequency level not absorbed by the GHG in the atmosphere [Skeptical +++] then that heat loss is balanced by the heat coming from the rest of the surrounding blackbody which will therefore radiate less heat so there can be no net extra radiative loss into space.
Yes the building might be colder from the mirror part.
The reflected infrared would still heat the air rather than the house
but not any colder than that because the extra radiated heat is coming from the surri=oundings [If they can ever acheive this but
Hate mouses, sorry about premature posting. What I am saying is it all sounds good, just like cold fusion but seems to have a lot of thimble shifting here.
Reminds me of that cartoon explaining every thing with the mistake in step two, ” a miracle happens”.
Angech,
If nobody else clarifies, I’ll write up my understanding in a bit. I worry that because my understanding of thermodynamics aren’t glued all that tightly to me that I’ll explain it poorly. Really, I don’t think there was a mystery in the first place, I just confused myself about what the thing actually does.
angech,
You do have a point about shiny mirrors on roof tops being a problem for aviation. If they’re flat, though, they won’t fry birds. You need a curved mirror to focus sunlight to get hot enough to fry things.
Here are two examples of selective and one non-selective coating with an input flux of 1000 W/m² and ignoring losses or gains by convection:
TINOx LW ε = 0.05 SW ε = 0.95
1000 * 0.95 = 0.05 * σT^4
T = (1000*0.95/(0.05*5.67E-08)^0.25 = 760.8K = 487.7°C
At that temperature, LW ε will be larger than 0.05 because there will be significant emission at wavelengths less than 4μm.
Black body ε = 1 for LW and SW
T = (1000/5.67E-08)^0.25 = 364.4K = 91.3°C
Stanford-like mirror:
SW ε = 0.03, LW ε = 0.95
T = (1000*0.03/(0.95*5.67E-08))^0.25 = 153.6K = -119.5°C
Obviously, in air the TINOx wouldn’t get that hot and the mirror wouldn’t get that cold. If the emissivity is indeed tuned to 8-14μm, ε will be lower than 0.95. But even if it’s as low as 0.2, T = 226.8K = -46.4°C. As long as the LW ε is greater than the SW ε, the mirror will be colder than a black or gray body and can be used as a heat sink.
In some ways the Stanford device is similar to the Romans freezing water in Palestine by using polished shields to cover an open container of water in an insulated hole during the day and exposing it to the sky at night.
Just as an update, Tamino deleted the second comment I submitted, the one I copied here upthread. I’m curious what his supporters would say to justify deleting a comment like that.
Brandon,
Tamino doesn’t want your stuff there. His supporters are mostly the kind who think just not letting you post is somehow ‘the way’ to show…. something!
There’s much to criticize in Tamino’s post. Some of it springs from his attempt to torture what Legates said into having more specificity that it did in the first place. Is “among the coldest” the same as “in the coldest 10%”? Not necessarily– it could mean “in the coldest half“. Maybe that’s what they mean– that meaning would hardly be “misleading”.
One of the main reasons I can’t either criticize or endorse the WUWT article Tamino is discussing is that it’s written in a sort of “deniability” style. I mean are they denying CO2 matters? Much of the way it’s written gives that impression– but they don’t actually say so. They might merely mean it doesn’t matter as much as “some” claim.
In the end, I think the main problems with Tamino’s post is he is to a large extent inferring ideas the WUWT doesn’t actually spit out and then trying to debate those. The WUWT authors aren’t going to even read Tamino– why should they? So, yeah… Tamino criticized something– mostly arguments people didn’t actually make. Yawn.
lucia, oddly enough, the only reason I even read the post through to the end is a semantic one. I hadn’t commented on it before (because I wanted to see if it mattered before bringing it up), but it turns out a significant portion of Tamino’s argument hinges on how one defines “winter.” The definition Tamino uses is not one most people use on a day-to-day basis. It may make sense for “climatological” purposes, but it’s obviously not the one being used in the text he criticizes.
I’d say more, but I just finished writing a post about it, and I don’t feel like retyping it given it’s mostly a stupid semantic argument. For a simple teaser, Tamino’s definition would hold the two most damaging winters for Europe in the five years were relatively mild winters.
lucia,
You wrote, “So, yeah… Tamino criticized something– mostly arguments people didn’t actually make. Yawn.”
The climate concerned are obsessed with a non-problem so why would it be a surprise if in their defense of their concern they argue against things people don’t say?
By the way, I messed with the CSS file for my site a bit, and I think it’s more readable. The biggest change people will notice is text in blockquotes is larger now. I may need to increase it more for people (and/or adjust the main body’s font), but it should be an improvement already.
I still need to update my old posts though. Fixing the font issues just requires resaving them, but getting the images to stop being blurry may be a pain. I really don’t get why WordPress’s resizing feature is causing me problems now that I self-host. It’s weird. I can work around it, but I’d rather not have to redo every image on the site.
hunter,
To be fair, some people do write in a way that sounds like “plausible deniability” sounding way.
Do you get the impression they might think CO2 in no way affects surface temperatures? I have to admit that reading that post, I get the impression they think it might have no effect– or so little that the current generally high temperatures are mere coincidence. But they don’t say anything definite either way.
On the things they do say specifically: I agree we need to better understand natural variation, climate models look ‘off’, and things like land use and so on are given short shrift.
But to be fair to those who “read in” unstated claims about whether CO2 has any effect into that post: it’s pretty easy for someone to infer they are trying to give the impression that CO2 has either no effect or so little as to not matter. That might not be what they intend– but it seems to be what Tamino infers and ‘rebuts’. So: he’s rebutting something that was not said. But…. I suspect lots of people reading that post may have “inferred” that claim.
This sort of writing (i.e. Driessen and Legates) is common in politics. And that is politics. One reason it’s common is it does but others in a position of having nothing specific to rebut!
Brandon wrote [summary hope this is OK ] Tamino defined December-January-February.for 355 U.K. winters, saying
: Driessen and Legates used a false claim when they said
” several recent winters have been among the coldest in centuries in the United Kingdom and continental Europe ”
Brandon had heard about freakishly cold winters in the UK . A Google search showed a Wikipedia article about the “Winter of 2010–11 in Great Britain and Ireland was a weather event that brought heavy snowfalls, record low temperatures. It included the UK’s coldest December since Met Office records began in 1910, with a mean temperature of -1 °C, breaking the previous record of 0.1 °C in December 1981.
The data showed the average temperature in December is ~4C degrees. December, 2009 was -0.7. Only one December in ~350 years was colder (way back in 1890). I’d say that means the United Kingdoms had a freakishly cold winter in December of 2009.
Thanks for that bit of research, Brandon.
Lucia is right that the article at WUWT is a bit, um, boring political propaganda as well, but it should not be criticized of cherry picking by Tamino hypocritically ignoring the facts and cherry picking his definition of cold weather.
angech, that summary looks fine, though I do want to stress there is nothing wrong with the definition Tamino used. It’s useful for a number of things. It’s just not the only definition that is. Most people will use “winter” in other ways because drawing arbitrary lines at the beginning of December and end of February is both weird and difficult to do in one’s memory.
If you had asked me neighbors what season it was last week, I’d wager they’d all say “winter” because we’ve had early snow/frost. I doubt any of them would think “fall” just because it was still Winter. There is one neighbor who might say “fall,” but that’s because he knows December 21st is the start of the astronomical winter.
But basically, Tamino rested most of his post on his decision to assume people were using one, not widely known, definition of “winter” rather than a more common definition. It was because of that he was able to portray people he disliked as dishonest. Well, that and the whole cherry-picking thing I pointed out earlier.
By the way, I haven’t actually read the WUWT post he criticized. I got about halfway through before I gave up on it because of the sort of “arguing” lucia points out it uses. I skimmed the rest of it. I’m definitely no fan. I can think of a number of criticisms I’d raise regarding it. It just amuses me how badly Tamino argues.
angech
Lucia is right that the article at WUWT is a bit, um, boring political propaganda as well, but it should not be criticized of cherry picking by Tamino hypocritically ignoring the facts and cherry picking his definition of cold weather.
Well… sure. After all, there is no “rule” that says “among the coldest” somehow means “in the 10% coldest”. It can perfectly well mean “in the coldest 50%”. If that’s what they mean (which they perfectly well can mean) then one might say: Well…. Yeah. No one has suggested we are already supposed to have every single year/day/month in the top 50% warmest.
As for winter: On the one hand, it’s not unfair to evaluate their claims using ‘climatological winter’ . They use the term ‘winter’ and are discussing the need for ‘climate forecasts’. But it’s not quite right to suggest that must be what they said nor what they must have meant.
On the other hand: one might ask the WUWT guest authors what they didmean. I doubt they’ll answer– mostly because the article is more of a political opinion piece than anything else.
Monckton does similar type of writing. You often can’t prove him “wrong” because if you really look at what was said, very little was directly claimed. It’s atmospherics!
lucia, another reason to write material like that is as bait. People like Tamino will often respond in ways which just make them look bad. For instance, imagine if there was a public exchange between him and one of the authors:
“By climatological standards, the recent winters have been mild.”
“I’m sure the hundreds of people who died from those ‘mild’ winters will be glad to hear that.”
Basically, you don’t commit to any position so your opponent has to pick a position to respond to. If they do a bad job, you get talking points. If they do a good job, you just say it’s non-responsive as you weren’t talking about that.
In my experience, the less precise someone is, the less likely they are to have any meaningful insight. It’s why I decided not to pursue a philosophy degree 😛
Basically, you don’t commit to any position so your opponent has to pick a position to respond to.
Yes. But sometimes I find this helps cut through tedious nonsense too, it’s not just a point scoring technique.
Sometimes people will argue with me over what I consider to be irrelevant trivia that’s got nothing to do with the point I’m making. By letting the other side define the stuff I don’t care about I can just accept whatever makes them happy and move on to the good stuff.
Meh. I shouldn’t have said ‘tedious nonsense’, that needn’t be the case. Cut through stuff that’s not relevant to the point at hand, maybe is a better way to put it.
I have not followed in any detail the debate on coldest winters and the definition of winters, but I would think if nothing else it might point to the usefulness of doing sensitivity tests when someone makes conclusions based on a selected set of data.
I have found the lack of sensitivity testing by a number of climate scientists in published papers problematic and encouraging the questioning of advocacy entering the science.
UAH up 0.329
Actually UAH LT for 11/2014 at 0.33°C is down a little from October’s 0.37°C.
UAH is 0.329 for November 2014.
It is to bad we didn’t have a betting pool for UAH for November 2014.
I was going to bet .329 and I would have won all the quatloos!
(Just kidding!).
But I do miss the betting.
Kenneth Fritsch, I don’t think there has been any real “debate on coldest winters and the definition of winters.” Some people mentioned cold winters. Tamino used one definition of “winter” to say they were wrong and possibly dishonest. I pointed out under a different, more common definition, what they said was perfectly reasonable. That’s about it.
On the issue of sensitivity testing, I’ve always been baffled at those people promoting science who say Year X was the hottest/coldest/whatever. I get they have more confidence in the data than they do, but even they should be able to acknowledge there is some uncertainty in the data. Why do they give focus to a difference of less than a tenth of a degree?
And that’s a relatively tame example. I’ve seen far more troubling ones in a number of papers. It seems many scientists get results, calculate some uncertainty levels (that are probably not right) and decide to publish. That’s (not even) the level of effort I’d put into checking the validity of my results/assumptions in blog posts. It’s like, if you spend 30 or more hours on some analysis, can’t you spend an hour checking how robust it is?
Tamino’s inline response to another comment is hilarious. You should read the whole thing, but my favorite part is:
Am I to be accused of cherry-picking no matter what counter-example I select? Do I have to do all the work to quantify every region of the U.S., or the entire world, just to counter their falsehood? No.
People describe a pattern for “much of the United States and Canada,” and Tamino thinks it is ridiculous people would expect him to look at more than a single state. He thinks people are being so unreasonable that they’d demand he look at “the entire world” to respond.
Here’s a hint Tamino. If you want to rebut a claim about “much of the United States,” you’ll probably need to look at “much of the United States.”
It’s crazy, I know.
Tamino’s takes on climate makes Dr. Ball’s take on motives look reasonable. Makes me glad I don’t waste much time on either.
LOL. Poisoning people’s minds again, Shollenberger? Everybody knows your ideas have taken hold of my mind (such as it is) long ago, I’m essentially your sockpuppet at this point. :p
Tamino is a poet.
Brandon, if you have two different versions of winter and can come to two different conclusions based on those versions, I suspect a sensitivity test was or is in order. I also suspect that this argument is more about slamming the credibility of one side or the other on these issues and less about climate science and is the reason I do not get involved.
Having record cold spells in regions of the globe during the modern warming period is an interesting subject for climate science. I have read the conjectures about the slow moving north to south directed jet stream bringing cold air from the Arctic and the north to south directions causing longer lasting cold/warm fronts and all that in turn being related to the polar amplification coming out of AGW. I would like to hear more discussion of those theories/conjectures.
I hold that sensitivity tests give a better overall picture of a conclusion being tested and helps inform the reader. When that kind of testing is missing and was obviously available to the author I have to suspect an advocacy driven paper and investigation. On a different level I have read newspaper accounts of 2014 being the warmest year on record and without ever once mentioning that we are experiencing a decade and one half pause in the warming trend. One could have a 30 year non trending period and if the 30th year where slightly higher would we still be talking about a record year and ignoring the plateau?
Interesting when I just plotted the UAH data from Dec 1978 to Nov 2014 and see the annual mean global temperature make a regime change jump around 1998 from a non trending earlier period to the current non trending period in the 2000’s. Now that could make for an interesting discussion.
hunter, I looked at Tamino’s blog because I was curious if he explained why he took such a long break. I knew I’d probably regret it, but it was one of those things you just can’t resist.
Mark Bofill, it’s funny to think of me as a corrupting influence given my knack for annoying/angering pretty much everybody. And there’s no way you’re my sockpuppet. I’ve never used “lol” in my life!
Kenneth Fritsch, the problem is way the average person thinks of “winter” is not useful for analysis. There’s pretty much no way to translate it into numbers. Of course, that’s true for how people think of lots of things. The solution is to recognize people can be talking about different things even if they use similar language/words. Basically, try to understand what what they’re saying means.
Sadly, as you say, these writings tend to be about little more than “slamming the credibility” of the other “side.” That makes participating in them mostly pointless as no real discussion is to be had, even if one ought to be had. I only join in because I find entertainment in the absurdity.
Which is sad because there are a number of topics in the global warming discussion I’d love to find out more about.
Kenneth Fritsch –
The current explanation for cold spells in North America and Europe is a change in the jet stream due to global warming. However, in 1975, the identical mechanism was proposed as one of the predicted effects of global cooling. Apparently in the 60s we lived in the best of all possible weather. Pangloss would be proud
From that same 1975 article:
Climatology, however, is still an infant science, and its practitioners have faced their sudden popularity with the blinking uncertainty of squirrels roused from hibernation: Some have dashed forward with instant pronouncements of impending doom, while others have shyly retired behind the complexities of their arcane studies, refusing even to speculate about what changes may lie ahead or what action could be taken to confront them.
HaroldW, I guess that excerpt from the 1975 article is saying a pox on both the warmist/coolist and skeptics houses.
Do you also note from the article the claim for increases in varying and extreme weather with global cooling? Of course now we know that bad effects like that only occur with warming.
“The principal weather change likely to accompany the cooling trend is increased variability-alternating extremes of temperature and precipitation in any given area-which would almost certainly lower average crop yields. The cause of this increased variability can best be seen by examining upper atmosphere wind patterns that accompany cooler climate. During warm periods a “zonal circulation” predominates, in which the prevailing westerly winds of the temperate zones are swept over long distances by a few powerful high and low pressure centers. The result is a more evenly distributed pattern of weather, varying relatively little from month to month or season to season.”
Lucia:
“Huh? Congress “coercing†states by setting up carrots and sticks happens in lots and lots and lots and lots of bills. They did it with the 55 mph speed limit (connecting things to highway funds). There are lots of other cases. It’s hardly “absurd†to think Congress intended to set up ‘carrot/stick’ situations when they do so very often.”
You missed the part about keeping it secret. If you want someone to do something and you set up a “carrot” and/or a “stick”, it is vital to make them aware of the existence of the carrot or the stick. Is there any evidence that anyone said to the states “Make those exchanges or you won’t get subsides”? Incentives need to be KNOWN in order to incentivize.
Yes, it is absolutely absurd to say that congress intended to push states into doing something without ever–not even once–letting them know that there was an incentive or a punishment.
Boris,
You missed the part about keeping it secret.
What secret? They wrote a bill that contained a carrot and stick feature. That carrot and stick feature is publicized by the plain text of the language setting up the carrot/stick feature. That’s not called “keeping it a secret”.
it is vital to make them aware of the existence of the carrot or the stick.
Reading the bill that gives tax breaks to people who buy through state set ups but not federal ones is sufficient to make states aware it is set up that way. So, presumbaly the states that did not set up exchanges “were aware” of the feature. (In fact, back w hen states were deciding to set up exchanges, this was discussed in places like the “Wall Street Journals” etc. The ‘tax deduction’ feature was not a secret.
Incentives need to be KNOWN in order to incentivize.
The were known. It’s just that the Feds got grumpy when it turned out that some states still didn’t want to set up exchanges. The incentive wasn’t big enough to over come the disincentives. That doesn’t mean the bill didn’t mean what the language says.
Yes, it is absolutely absurd to say that congress intended to push states into doing something without ever–not even once–letting them know that there was an incentive or a punishment.
I have no idea what you are on about. The plain language of a bill is ‘the method’ whereby congress “lets” people know what the bill says. Bill’s generally don’t include long details saying “and this is why we are including 1.2.3.a.(2).” And this is why we are inlcuding “3.2.7.b.(3)”.
Oh, and part “124.A.b.(3).a” is meant as an incentive. And so on. They just specify what the language does.
Lots of people understood the carrot/stick aspect of the bill. I realize lots if individual people don’t read bills the moment they are passed, and may not be aware of all the provisions. But this aspect was not “a secret” in any way.
As climate science finds that the main drivers for some climate events are not sourced from CO2, and instead jet stream changes or ENSO, some have started to produce claims that these changes in ENSO/jet stream are caused by CO2 increases. Color me unimpressed. The CO2 infatuation in climate science attribution is tiring. These statements are pretty much rampant speculation in the great journey to blame all of humanities ills on a big CO2 knob.
When serious people think serious thoughts and shake their heads seriously that there is a CO2 – human conflict link, the credibility meter starts to head toward zero.
Boris,
In other words, just because you didn’t know it until now doesn’t mean it was a secret.
“Reading the bill that gives tax breaks to people who buy through state set ups but not federal ones is sufficient to make states aware it is set up that way.”
This is demonstrably false. The states did not read it that way at all when they filed briefs in the 2012 case. They read it the way the administration interpreted it–that subsides would be available on the federal exchanges. How can they argue now that such an interpretation is impossible?
“In fact, back w hen states were deciding to set up exchanges, this was discussed in places like the “Wall Street Journals†etc.”
I don’t think there was any mention of it at all until after SCOTUS upheld the ACA mandate, when people were looking for another way to invalidate the law.
“I have no idea what you are on about. The plain language of a bill is ‘the method’ whereby congress “lets†people know what the bill says.”
But Congress and the bill’s proponents have always acted in a manner consistent with the claim that subsides would be available on the federal exchanges. The CBO scored it that way. Your bizarre contention is that Congress wanted to coerce the states into setting up exchanges and did so by implying that there would be no penalty.
The “plain language” argument would be more believable if plaintiffs against the bill hadn’t come up with two different interpretations. But even so, the authorization of federal exchanges in the ACA is titled “State Flexibility Relating to Exchanges.” Since when does “flexibility” mean “do this or else” in plain language?
Like I said, the plaintiffs’ arguments may win out in front of sympathetic judges. But I haven’t seen any evidence that anyone interpreted the law as you saw it must be interpreted until more than two years after it passed.
In another curious twist, insurance companies, which battled Mr. Obama over health care in 2009 and 2010, are now urging state officials to set up exchanges. They generally prefer state regulation, and they stand to gain because the United States Treasury will send subsidy payments directly to insurers on behalf of low- and moderate-income people who enroll in health plans offered through an exchange.
And what of the states that intend to snub their subcontractor orders from Washington by not setting up an exchange? PPACA directs Sebelius to establish a federal exchange for the state. …So they covered all their bases, right? Not quite. The tax credits in PPACA specifically apply only to individuals who purchase insurance though an exchange established by a state. (See Sections 1401 and 1402 of PPACA)
…
When pressed last Friday by the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee on the clear discrepancy between PPACA’s statutory provisions and Treasury’s implementing regulations, IRS Commissioner Shulman stated: “Congress writes the laws and we interpret them. If you disagree, there’s always the courts.â€
This could not possibly still have been a mystery to anybody paying attention at this point in time, in my view.
Not to mention we have to disregard Gruber’s quotes on the subject to doubt that the plan language was indeed the intent of Congress, which is sort of an odd thing to do I think.
Everybody who was paying attention knew about this. Come on.
Pelosi said, “we have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it.” Clearly she should have said, “We’ll decide after we pass the bill what is in it.”
“Forbes ran a discussion of this in September 2011.
Everybody who was paying attention knew about this. Come on.”
Your own source describes the language in the ACA as a “glitch.” No one denies that the language isn’t problematic.
The Forbes piece does link to Adler and what may be the first piece to suggest that Congress may have intended for subsides to be unavailable on federal exchanges. Then again, he says this:
“As David Hogberg reports in IBD, this has led some to believe the limitation of tax credits to state-based exchanges is a mistake. Under this theory, Congress meant to provide tax credits for any exchange-purchased insurance, because Congress wanted lower-income individuals to be able to purchase health insurance (and comply with the mandate). This may be true.”
So even the guy pushing this case isn’t sure of Congress’ intent in passing the law a full year and a half after the law was signed. But now with a case before the SC we are all going to pretend that that was the clear intent of Congress from the beginning? Come on, man, indeed.
There is also the problem that the states, in official court filings, already interpreted the law the same way as the administration.
Right, so we ignore Gruber? How did Obama spin it? I only knew him well enough to say hello around the Obamacare meeting table.
Sure.
Because Obama has so much credibility established at this point that I wouldn’t dream of questioning his word.
Look Boris,
Regarding whether or not it was a mistake, that’s one question. Clearly some people thought so early on, as you say.
Regarding whether or not anybody knew about this, that’s a different question. It turns out the answer is yes, basically everybody knew about it.
Also, I think it matters what is meant by the word ‘mistake’.
I play chess with someone. I make the move I intend to make, but it’s a stupid move that costs me the game. I made a mistake, but it’s what I meant to do.
As opposed to –
I was playing chess by phone, and the connection was garbled and my remote piece handler misheard me and moved the wrong piece.
Obviously it was a mistake. What sort of mistake was it?
Gruber isn’t the arbiter of what Congress intended. You want to ignore what members of congress say and what reporters who followed the ACA say about the intent of the bill.
And no “basically everybody” didn’t know about it.
Obviously Gruber isn’t the arbiter of what Congress intended. However, it can be informative to go back to statements consultants and advisors made at the time a law was being crafted to determine such things.
Was it a mistake? Sure! I think the whole darn thing was a mistake, like Chuck Schumer has come to realize. So what? Was it what Congress intended?
1) The language of the bill makes us think so.
2) The words of consultants and adivsors from pertinent time periods makes us think so.
3) Clearly, the Administration wanted and expected states to setup their own exchanges, so it isn’t even inconsistent with the facts we know to think so.
Is it possible that Congress made an unintentional mistake? Of course. But do you have evidende to support the idea?
Since the Speaker of the House when the failed helathcare bill was shoved through said we would have to read it to see what is in it, Congress had no particular intent in the bill. It is a deeply flawed un0implementable waste of America’s money.
It failed in its roll out. It has failed to reduce costs. It has failed to significantly im pact uninsureds. It has failed to make healthcare more affordable. It has failed to be implemented as written.
The President and his team admit they lied to America because it was politically convenient to get it passed.
The sooner this disaster is tossed in the trash heap the better.
Starting over is a better option than continuing this pile of crap.
Boris,
You want to ignore what members of congress say and what reporters who followed the ACA say about the intent of the bill.
I’m sorry, I ignored this.
What specfic members of Congress and statements by them am I ignoring? Perhaps you’re correct and I’ve missed something persuasive, can you link me?
With respect to ignoring the reporters, you’re darn tootin I am. If Gruber isn’t the arbiter of what Congress intended our pathetic lickspittle media certainly isn’t either.
I understand that you will say every staffer is lying–and that could be true–but it is still evidence. And their claims are perfectly consistent with the record.
As for the language of the bill, I’ll say it again: The states–and even the conservatives justices of the SCOTUS–interpreted the bill to mean that subsidies were available on the federal exchanges. If the law were as clear as you say then they never would have made that mistake.
Earle,
🙂
It’s a mess. Take a look at this for instance.
Now I’m not arguing that this is correct. There’s alot in there that I don’t have strong direct recollections about and I’ve got no particular interest in doing the fact checking and research on it at this time. But just as an example, if this was really the way it went down, what does that mean for the question of ‘what Congress intended’?
Who’s Congress? Some members of Congress might have liked that version of the bill. Then again, maybe nobody liked it but it was the only compromise they could all agree to. In such a case, what do you really have to use to unravel intent when everybody’s intent was different? All that’s left is the bill as it was written, ’cause in the end that’s what everybody agreed to.
Thanks Boris. I’m sure they’re not lying, actually. It’s evidence. I’ll think it through some more.
🙂
Mark Bofill,
Since the architect, as our President called him, states they chose to lie rather than write an honest bill or poromote it truthfully, and since the President’s won actions show that he depended onlying about the basics of the bill, I think it makes anything anyone who helped write the bill moot as far discerning intent is concerned. The only goal, as with so much to do with this Adminstration’s agenda, is to impose their policy regardless of truth. If the intent is to discern their actual intentions the best thing to do is to toss out what they claim and look at the actual law as closely as possible.
Again: We will be better off with a chastised Executive Branch that is finally willing to sit down transparently and honestly and actually lead by compromising and writing bills that can actually work.
The games playing and deception by the President and his enablers and sycophants needs to end, and the sooner the better.
Boris,
You are mistaking what the staffers and members of congress who advocated for a strong ACA would have wanted the bill to say if they had the votes to pass what they wanted.
But the intent of Congress is not the intent of the staffers nor is it even the intent of the strongest advocates. Different versions of the bill with different wordings were floated. Some contained ‘carrot and stick’ language, some did not. A certain version was the one Congress passed- and that happened to be the one with the ‘carrot and stick’ clause. Presumably, that version (rather than some other) was passed because the one that passed reflected “the will of Congress” (even if staffers might have preferred another bill.)
The final decision to pass that version came when the Democrats lost a senator and feared they would get nothing. Once again: at that point, the choice to pass the House vs. Senate bill was made by Congress not staffers. And Congress operates by reading the language in the bill and then deciding what to pass.
It does not operate by reading the mind of a staffer. So: the Congress chose a bill whose plain language might not match what a staffer thought he was saying or possibly what a staffer wanted the bill to say– or given the evidence– what a staffer now reveals what he thought he meant or intended by language he wrote way back when which — as it happens– says something else.
Well… sorry. But Congress operates by reading the text, and chosing to pass a particular version among other versions. What McDonnough now thinks or sayd he ‘intended’ does not tell us what Congress intended because he’s not only not Congress itself, he is not even a member of Congress!
FWIW: The alternative path to passing the already voted on House or Senate bill was for Congress, to negotiate various clauses during a reconciliation process. It’s possible that clause would have been changed if negotiations had continued or it might not have. We don’t know.
But what we do know is the decision to change language would have depended on ‘the intent of congress’ not the intent of staffers who might prefer something that Congress was unwilling to pass. More likely there would have been no ACA at all.
Beyond that: it’s also not at all ‘crazy’ to not give tax credits to people in states without exchanges because not giving them tax credits means that their employers are also not fined when their employees buy insurance on exchanges. While strong advocate of the strongest possible form of the ACA might want to find employers whose employees buy on exchanges, there are other people who don’t want employers fined when their employees do buy insurance on the exchange. So the clause largely permitted states flexibility in deciding whether they prefer their citizens getting tax breaks to their employers not getting fined.
And while staffers might want something, members of Congress in states where the ACA was not popular could easily want to avoid being booted out of office by — on the one hand– voting to pass the ACA– but on the other hand– leaving some choices to their state legislatures.
The plain language of the bill they actually passed did that– and so was precisely the sort of thing members of Congress do even if staffers don’t intend for Congress to do that.
Boris,
and even the conservatives justices of the SCOTUS–interpreted the bill to mean that subsidies were available on the federal exchanges.
Cite please.
If the Supreme Court had ruled that subsidies were available on the federal exchanges, then why did they take the case which seeks to determine exactly that?
The mere availability of exchange subsidies triggers penalties under the ACA’s employer and individual mandates. Under the statute, then, if a state does not establish an exchange: (1) those subsidies are not available; (2) a state’s employers are exempt from the employer mandate; and (3) the lion’s share of its residents are exempt from the individual mandate.
Note that in this interpretation, the residents of states don’t get tax breaks. But the argument that they somehow “need” them because of the mandate is spurious: they are mostly exempt from the mandate. Moreover, the employers are exempt from the mandate.
So basically: The clause lets states decide to ‘opt-out’. Meanwhile, individuals in the state who wish to buy insurance on a federal exchange may elect to do so if they wish to. But it’s not a mandate, and they buy if they deem the product offered on the exchanges is worth the money.
This is a perfectly sane, not crazy idea of how a law that is structured to let states decide to participate or not would be written. It is exactly the type of law members of Congress who want to vote for their side but are worried their voter base might boot them out for it might pass. Here that could be some Democrats in more right of center states.
It’s also exactly the sort of thing members of Congress who think it’s worth a shot to pass a bill even if they are leaving the ultimate fate to decision making at the state level might intend.
Of course staffers, who are not elected, might want or ‘intend’ something else– but that’s not relevant to Congress intent. Congress votes on a bill with certain language and this bill contains language that would align very well with the sorts of “intentions” Congress has when writing bills.
It might not align with the fondest hopes and dreams of some members of Congress nor their staffers. But … well… their hopes and dreams are not “the intent of Congress”.
Boris,
Do you have a link to the CBO analysis of the Senate bill? The link at Wikipedia is dead. The brief cover letter available calls out the fact that the Senate bill has lower subsidies than the house bill. Moreover: it matters whether the CBO also assumed all states would create exchanges. If they did, the issue their interpretation of what happens if states don’t create exchanges is moot.
Boris
This is demonstrably false. The states did not read it that way at all when they filed briefs in the 2012 case. They read it the way the administration interpreted it–that subsides would be available on the federal exchanges.
Filed which briefs? In what case? By which states?
Evidence that “states” were making the argument about state exchanges in 2012– this article discusses the argument a state called “Oklahoma” advanced in it’s “briefs” in 2012:
Point one: The ACA offers tax credits and subsidies to individuals and companies that buy insurance through a state-run exchange — if their state has set up such an exchange.
Point two: The federal government establishes exchanges for states that do not set up their own.
Point three: The section of the ACA that establishes these credits and subsidies says they are authorized only for exchanges “established by a state.†(Michael Cannon of the Cato Institute and Jonathan Adler of Case Western Reserve University Law School first noticed this provision of the ACA; the law’s defenders say it is a minor drafting error that courts will and should overlook.)
Point four: The ACA also imposes fines and penalties on individuals who do not buy health insurance, and on businesses that do not buy it for their employees. (Insurance under Obamacare will be significantly more expensive than regular insurance, which is why they have to pay you to buy it and fine you if you don’t.)
That post is dated 2012.
That some cases might wait for a while is also not evidence the argument didn’t pre-exist the case. Legal cases need to wait until (a) they are ripe and (b) the team advancing it is ready to file. Some cases aren’t ripe until certain provisions actually kick in!
(I should also note that arguments are not going to pre-date May 2012 – when the IRS made the rule states are challenging. So what we have here is states filing cases in 2012– shortly after the IRS made the rule they object to– and including the argument the States continue to advice .)
I know you guys are discussing other things, but this was too funny not to share. I think Tamino is taking credit for discovering AR1 autocorrelation does not fully describe the autocorrelation in temperature data sets. In his latest post, he says:
Ross McKitrick recently published a paper in the rather obscure scientific journal Open Journal of Statistics in which he purports to show that the “pause†in the data for lower-troposphere temperature (TLT) from Remote Sensing Systems (RSS) has lasted nearly 26 years. His procedure was just as described for econometrician B, with some added complexity. For instance, he emphasizes that when computing uncertainty in a trend estimate you have to take into account something called autocorrelation, which means the noise isn’t the simple type called “white noise.†He also emphasizes (more than once) that the mathematical model for the noise which is most often used, a model called “AR1 noise,†is insufficient. Perhaps he isn’t aware that I’ve already pointed this out (see Foster & Rahmstorf).
Apparently Tamino thinks someone not citing him for pointing this out is a reason to make snarky remarks.
Side note, the post is kind of incoherent. Tamino describes a scenario with three people (A, B and C) with the third saying something which makes it ridiculous, then says:
Perhaps you’re thinking, “Nothing even remotely like that could ever really happen.†I wish that were true.
But as far as I can tell, never refers to person C or the idea he expressed again.
Yeah, I’m sort of curious about the CBO scoring claim as well.
Apparently Tamino thinks someone not citing him for pointing this out is a reason to make snarky remarks.
It’s not as if Tamino is the first to know this. Lots of people used non-AR1 noise in time series before Tamino and Rahmstorf. Heck many skeptics have– but so have others.
So… why would someone be required to cite Tamino for this “idea”? or even be aware of his paper? (Answer: They aren’t required to know of or cite his paper, which, is destined to linger in obscurity as time progresses.)
“This is a perfectly sane, not crazy idea of how a law that is structured to let states decide to participate or not would be written.”
Wait, now you are arguing that congress intended to allow states to opt out? This goes against the argument that the withholding of subsidies was meant to encourage states to create their own exchanges. If you withhold subsidies hoping that the states will create exchanges, you don’t also allow the states to gain tax advantages and mandate-avoidance advantages by refusing to create an exchange. Also note that your interpretation does not match Gruber’s interpretation. It seems the bill is indeed ambiguous and that the IRS should have authority of interpretation.
I know that staffers are not members of congress, but they did work closely on the bill and draft the bill. It is not proof, but it is certainly evidence of congress’ intent.
Brandon,
Tamino got him some tenacity. I thought the mainstream didn’t question the pause anymore.
Does he really think the 97% of climate scientists who agree that there’s been a pause could possibly be mistaken? There’s some sort of ugly word for counterfactual thinking like that. :O Did I really type that and click Submit!?!? Oh, my.
Wait, now you are arguing that congress intended to allow states to opt out? This goes against the argument that the withholding of subsidies was meant to encourage states to create their own exchanges.
No Boris. This point has already been made but you apparently haven’t taken it in yet:
There is not necessarily in any case (and in this case I think simply not at all) singular intent behind Congress, because Congress is comprised of a whole bunch of different people who disagree. Bills often represent a compromise (I know, it’s easy to forget this in the Age of his Majesty Barack Obama I). Some members of Congress probably wanted and needed that political cover, to let their states opt out. Some members of Congress had no such fears and would have preferred something different.
We’re going to go round in circles until you either accept this idea or say something to refute it.
“Filed which briefs? In what case? By which states?”
The case that was decided by the Supremes in 2012–I forget the exact name. (Oh, it’s in the quote: NFIB v. Sebelius.)
In their 2012 joint dissent in NFIB v. Sebelius, Justices Scalia, Kennedy, Thomas, and Alito read these parts as making no logical sense without one another and also read the statute to include subsidies on federal exchanges:
“Congress provided a backup scheme; if a State declines to participate in the operation of an exchange, the Federal Government will step in and operate an exchange in that State.â€
and then:
“That system of incentives collapses if the federal subsidies are invalidated. Without the federal subsidies, individuals would lose the main incentive to purchase insurance inside the exchanges, and some insurers may be unwilling to offer insurance inside of exchanges. With fewer buyers and even fewer sellers, the exchanges would not operate as Congress intended and may not operate at all.â€
The 2012 Supreme Court brief of the state governments likewise read the statute as providing subsidies through the federal exchanges: “If a State is not willing to create and operate an exchange, the federal government will step in and do so itself. ACA § 1321(c). Subtitle E then establishes tax credits and other subsidies for the lower-income individuals and small businesses that purchase plans on the exchanges. ACA §§ 1401–21.â€
Now, the SC dissent is not precedent or anything, but it’s hard to argue that the law was not commonly interpreted the way the IRS interpreted it.
it’s hard to argue that the law was not commonly interpreted the way the IRS interpreted it.
Which way? The way the IRS originally started to interpret it and write their rules, or the way they interpreted it after the State Dept and the Administration stepped in? here.
(EDIT: Not the Administration and State Dept. I meant HHS and Treasury.)
Boris
Wait, now you are arguing that congress intended to allow states to opt out?
The language of the bill set it up that way. So: looks like they set it up to let states largely opt out of the ‘tax credit/penalty for employers’ and so on part while still letting citizens of that state have access . That’s was Oklahoma’s interpretation — and that’s what the filed in 2012.
This goes against the argument that the withholding of subsidies was meant to encourage states to create their own exchanges.
Huh? Letting the states decided whether to participate (i.e. opt in or out) go hand in hand. Obviously being able to “opt in” means– by definition one can “opt out”.
Those who thought the tax breaks were sufficiently enticing thought making them available only to states that opted in would entice the states to opt in. But meanwhile, states were permitted to opt out.
FWIW: Intending to permit someone to “opt out” is not the same as hoping they will. So: yes. Even those who thought states would “opt in” and who wished to offer a “carrot” to get them to do so, intended to permit them to “opt out”. They just hoped the states would opt in. You need to not confuse what some members of Congress hoped for with what they intended to permit or requirestates to do.
If you withhold subsidies hoping that the states will create exchanges, you don’t also allow the states to gain tax advantages and mandate-avoidance advantages by refusing to create an exchange.
There you go: hoping. Hoping is not the same as “intending”.
But anyway, you are wrong. If you merely hope states will be persuaded by a certain bundle, and you also hope to be re-elected by constituents in your state some of whom might want to reserve rights and decisions to their state legislatures, you might very well use the subsidized to individual voters as a “carrot”. Then you hope those subsidies– which are visible individual voters to persuade their state legislatures to create exchanges. But meanwhile, you might– either to save your cookies in upcoming elections– intend to leave the decision up to the state legislature knowing full well that you might not get what you hoped for.
The fact that some members of Congress hoped for certain behavior by states doesn’t mean the intended to force states to participate. (And beyond that, sometimes, if they actually do try to force states to do something, they can get themselves into a different set of legal battles. I mean– suppose Congress had said states must create exchanges. Point. Blank. And then one of the states did not. Where would we be? Generally, Congress structures things so states are “opt in” to doing things in exchange for Federal funds.)
Also note that your interpretation does not match Gruber’s interpretation.
So what if my interpretation doesn’t match Gruber’s interpretation? Gruber is not a member of Congress. And anyway: what specific thing about Grubers interpretation do you think tells us the ‘intention of Congress”– and could you quote what that was, tell us when Gruber said it and so on.
. It seems the bill is indeed ambiguous and that the IRS should have authority of interpretation.
It may be that SCOTUS will decide that. But past precedent doesn’t quite work that way. If the clear text says something, those who want a different meaning have to explain why the other meaning holds. What a staffer hoped for, or Gruber hoped for etc. isn’t very meaningful in that context.
know that staffers are not members of congress, but they did work closely on the bill and draft the bill. It is not proof, but it is certainly evidence of congress’ intent.
Do you have any staffer quotes or writings explaining their ‘intent’ that predate 2012 when the IRS wrote the rule? Do you have their writings or quote explaining their ‘intent’ to Congress?
Because really, it makes no sense to suggest that staffers can write things whose language says ‘A’ , have Congress read that and– one would think believe it says “A”, and then later permit staffers ‘reveal’ they meant “B”, and then decree that meant Congress intended “B”. Congress passed A.
Boris
The case that was decided by the Supremes in 2012–I forget the exact name. (Oh, it’s in the quote: NFIB v. Sebelius.)
Yes. In a different case about a different complaint, the states didn’t advance this particular argument.
The IRS rule being argued about now was written in may 2012. So of course the state’s argument in Seballius did not complain about the IRS rule that had not yet been written.
If your complaint is that somehow those advancing their argument in court should just suddenly turn it into a different case… well… I’m pretty sure that’s not the way court cases work. Those advancing the argument in Seballius continued to advance the argument in Seballius.
Meanwhile the IRS wrote a rule. Soon after the IRS wrote that rule, Oklahoma filed a brief arguing the IRS rule violates the ACA.
“So what if my interpretation doesn’t match Gruber’s interpretation?”
It shows that the law is ambiguous. For the plaintiffs to win, they must show that the law is not ambiguous.
“The IRS rule being argued about now was written in may 2012. So of course the state’s argument in Seballius did not complain about the IRS rule that had not yet been written.”
This is irrelevant. The states interpreted the law as allowing subsides on the federal exchanges. That is evidence that the law–at the very least–is ambiguous. You can’t seriously argue that a law can be interpreted in one and only one way when you have already admitted a different interpretation.
Boris
Subtitle E then establishes tax credits and other subsidies for the lower-income individuals and small businesses that purchase plans on the exchanges. ACA §§ 1401–21.â€
This doesn’t say Subtitle E establishes tax credits on all the exchanges. This question simply isn’t ‘the’ issue in Sebalius. It doesn’t have to be. And the states not discussing it in a case where it’s not the issue being argued doesn’t tell us anything.
It’s true that if citizens of a state– say Oklahoma– do not get tax subsidizes for buying insurance form an exchange, then the federal exchange in Oklahoma will have few customers. But all that means is that the ACA is ineffective in Oklahoma. And if the law permits states to opt-out in this way… well it does. If the Feds want to step in and offer something on their own nickle.. well… ok.
As for this
Congress provided a backup scheme; if a State declines to participate in the operation of an exchange, the Federal Government will step in and operate an exchange in that State.
Yes. If Oklahoma doesn’t step up, the Feds will do their best to offer citizens an exchange. Yeah. Maybe that won’t work so well… but so? It’s just Oklahoma.
I get that Congress hopedthat very few states would act like Oklahoma but still– if they decided not to tie Oklahoma’s hand, then they didn’t tie them.
And beyond that: Congress can perfectly well intend to modify laws after they learn whether states do step up to form exchanges. Congress is permitted to act on the theory that very few states will act like Oklahoma. Even now, if SCOTUS rules in favor of the states, Congress could step in and write in provisions to do something that would address whatever issue stands after the ruling.
Boris
“So what if my interpretation doesn’t match Gruber’s interpretation?â€
It shows that the law is ambiguous.
How.
For the plaintiffs to win, they must show that the law is not ambiguous.
You have that backwards actually. For the plaintiffs to lose the IRS has to show the law is ambiguous.
“The IRS rule being argued about now was written in may 2012. So of course the state’s argument in Seballius did not complain about the IRS rule that had not yet been written.”
This is irrelevant
Huh? how is it ‘irrelevant’. You complained that the states didn’t advance the current argument when during their argument in Seballius which was about something different. Of course it’s relevant to point out that the current argument is about something different from Seballius and springs from an event that happened after Seballius was going up the courts!
The states interpreted the law as allowing subsides on the federal exchanges.
Can you show me a link to the brief? As far as I can see your ‘evidence’ for this claim is a quote from Scalia etc.. That’s not the states briefs– and beyond that even the dissent you quote didn’t say this! That section talks about exchanges not working if subsidize aren’t provided– that’s true. But it doesn’t address the issue of whether or not Congress could have intended to permit states to opt out even if that meant Fed exchanges in that state might not work well.
So it does not touch on the issue in the current case. The fact is: this issue was not discussed in that case. That case is about whether the mandate is a “mandate”. But it doesn’t address whether the “mandate” applies in all States whether or not those states set up exchanges.
“The section simply doesn’t address the distinction of what happens in states that opt in vs. opt out.”
Again, this doesn’t matter:
“That system of incentives collapses if the federal subsidies are invalidated. Without the federal subsidies, individuals would lose the main incentive to purchase insurance inside the exchanges, and some insurers may be unwilling to offer insurance inside of exchanges. With fewer buyers and even fewer sellers, the exchanges would not operate as Congress intended and may not operate at all.â€
Scalia and etc. are stating that congress’ intention was to have functioning exchanges and that invalidating the federal exchange subsides violates that intention.
It doesn’t matter if they change their minds later–at the very least the law is ambiguous.
Obamacare got bailed out by the USSC once. I think there is good reason to beleive that there will not be a second bail out.
Boris,
“The section simply doesn’t address the distinction of what happens in states that opt in vs. opt out.â€
Again, this doesn’t matter:
Or course it ‘matters’. You are claiming this issue is resolved. And to prove it you are quoting a block of text and putting &rt; b> &rt; \b> tags around a sentence that doesn’t resolve the question about what happens in states that do not create exchanges.
Quoting a block of text that doesn’t address the issue about the states and putting a bit that doesn’t address the issue we are discussing doesn’t magically make that paragraph support your point. Because putting bold tags around a sentence that doesn’t have anything to do with th issue at hand doesn’t magically turn it into something that resolves the issue at hand.
Of course congress may have intended to provide subsidize because other wise the system “collapses”. It would not make sense for them to create a system that would collapse no matter what. That is: it seems unlikely they intended to create a system that would collapse even if all 50 States took the carrot and created exchanges.
But that doesn’t mean Congress didn’t also intend to let individual states to opt out. If that meant the system collapses– so be it. There have been failed programs before and there will be again.
Consider this: if one and only one state had opted out– say Wyoming– the ACA would have survived.
That fact alone means permitting states to opt out doesn’t necessarily mean that the ACA would collapse. The ACA structured that way could at least hypothetically work. In contrast: not having a “mandate” at all would make it “collapse”. (Although, Roberts found an intermediate issue: if it’s a ‘tax’ the system doesn’t collapse either.)
So: the argument you are quoting, which is discussing the mandate, and not addressing whether the mandate is universal in all states nor whether tax breaks are universal and so on simply doesn’t address the current issue. You can keep quoting it and keep bolding it– but unless you explain how you think it addresses the issue of what happens in states that do not set up exchanges, ‘bolding’ can’t carry whatever argument you are trying to make.
It doesn’t matter if they change their minds later–at the very least the law is ambiguous.
That’s what the Federal side has to prove. Maybe SCOTUS will agree with them. But there is little evidence anyone on SCOTUS thinks the law is ambiguous– and the bit you quote doesn’t indicate they do.
Considering that SCOTUS struck down the PPCA state medicaid expansion mandate as unconstitutionally coercive, it would seem likely that if the PPACA had mandated that the states create exchanges, that would have been struck down too.
Considering that SCOTUS struck down the PPCA state medicaid expansion mandate as unconstitutionally coercive, it would seem likely that if the PPACA had mandated that the states create exchanges, that would have been struck down too.
This is why Congress often needs to get buy in from States by ‘giving carrots’ and they do so all the time.
“Quoting a block of text that doesn’t address the issue…”
The Supreme Court dissent clearly states that the Intent of Congress was for the federal exchanges to work and that without subsides, the federal exchanges could not work. Now, maybe your interpretation is different. It doesn’t matter. That’s why I bolded that statement. It is a clear statement of what congress intended, which is why it includes the words “congress” and “intended.”
“But that doesn’t mean Congress didn’t also intend to let individual states to opt out. If that meant the system collapses– so be it.”
You are free to make this argument. But it is not the argument that the SC dissent makes. That dissent, again, very clearly states that the intent of congress was for the federal exchanges to work. You can make up all kinds of nonsense about how congress really intended for the exchanges not to work. You may even be right.
Moreover, the idea that congress would create a system for federal exchanges that they knew would never work is absurd on its face. What is the point of a backup system that is just going to fail?
“Consider this: if one and only one state had opted out– say Wyoming– the ACA would have survived.”
But the federal exchange in Wyoming would collapse. All federal exchanges would collapse. Was that the intent when congress created the “flexibility” for the states to have the feds create an exchange for them? Doubtful, and “no” according to the SC.
“but unless you explain how you think it addresses the issue of what happens in states that do not set up exchanges”
States that don’t set up exchanges have exchanges set up for them by the federal government. Those are exchanges, and exchanges are intended to work.
Proposed constitutional ammendment: “No law shall be voted upon by either house or senate unless the full text has been available for public review for at least 3 weeks during which both houses are in session.”
.
Eliminates all hastily considered laws…. especially those representatives and senators (and their constituents) could not possibly have read and understood.
Boris
The Supreme Court dissent clearly states that the Intent of Congress was for the federal exchanges to work
No it doesn’t. The sentence doesn’t include the word “federal”. But beyond that, why did you edit the quote the way you did eliminated crucial text by inserting “and then”?
Specifically, why did you skip the paragraph just before the second one you quoted. That paragraph in the Scalia dissent ends with
Thus, the federal subsidies must be invalidated.
Geeh. Seems like Scalia clearly says the federal subsidies must be invalidated.
The fact is– not only does Scalia not say what you claim, to make it seem to, one needs to skip whole paragraphs!
That dissent, again, very clearly states that the intent of congress was for the federal exchanges to work.
No. Again. It does not.
And I remind you, the part you skip is preceded by:
Thus, the federal subsidies must be invalidated.
Moreover, the idea that congress would create a system for federal exchanges that they knew would never work is absurd on its face. What is the point of a backup system that is just going to fail?
Nope. Not if it’s only a sub-set used as a stop gap to prevent something they makes it fail in a worse way. and not if they think the likelihood of the “failure” as being very remote.
It is absurde to imagine the set up something that wouldn’t work even if states cooperated. But it’s not absurd to think that they set up something that would work if states cooperated but wouldn’t work so well if they didn’t.
But the federal exchange in Wyoming would collapse.
Maybe. But so? The ACA would survive, and when this happened congress could come up with a fix for the few states the ACA didn’t work for. This isn’t a big problem– and it’s not irrational for Congress to do things that way.
Was that the intent when congress created the “flexibility” for the states to have the feds create an exchange for them?
To avoid violating principles of federalism (which would occur if they forced states to set up the exchanges), while still getting the structure of hte ACA in place for those states who didn’t set up exchanges. That puts Congress in a good position to step in and write bills to remedy issues when the actually occur rather than trying to foresee everything.
This is a totally rational intention.
States that don’t set up exchanges have exchanges set up for them by the federal government.
States that don’t set up exchanges often don’t want them.
Those are exchanges, and exchanges are intended to work.
You can argue that. But it’s not what Scalia actually wrote. He did not say every single exchange is intended to work. He may think that was the intention– or not. But as far as I can tell he doesn’t need to “change his mind” to say that the tax breaks are limited to those states that set up exchanges. Because he never said they weren’t.
lucia:
It’s not as if Tamino is the first to know this. Lots of people used non-AR1 noise in time series before Tamino and Rahmstorf. Heck many skeptics have– but so have others.
Interestingly, Tamino made this remark in an inline response to a comment:
One of the problems is that most scientists aren’t aware that the AR1 noise model is insufficient (McKitrick was right about that).
If he’s right, the scientists he says we should listen to don’t understand basic aspects of this many skeptics do understand. That’s an amusing thought.
By the way, I read the paper he criticized, and it has a really weird definition of the “pause” in global warming. Basically, it says a pause is any period in which we cannot find a statistically significant warming trend over any subset of it which ends in the most recent times (and this criteria must be met by both the north and south hemispheres).
That’s very strange to me. Especially since if all of our temperature data somehow got corrupted, we could wind up with a “pause” lasting forever because we don’t have the data to show there isn’t a pause.
Edit: Mark Bofill, I think Tamino does dispute the idea there is a pause but I’m not positive about that. In theory, he may have just be criticizing a paper for how it defines the “pause.” If so, you can see I think he has a point. The paper’s tests could be interesting, but I don’t see how one could possibly interpret them as proof of a pause.
lucia,
And there are sticks too. When the federal 55 MPH speed limit was passed, states lost their federal highway dollars if the state speed limit wasn’t lowered to 55 MPH. Tennessee stated when they passed the 55 MPH speed limit that it would not be enforced on roads where the speed limit had been higher. I remember seeing the discriminator on dash mounted highway patrol car radar set to 70 MPH.
For convenience,
–snip
Health Insurance Exchanges and Their Federal Subsidies
The ACA requires each State to establish a health insurance “exchange.†Each exchange is a one-stop marketplace for individuals and small businesses to compare community-rated health insurance and purchase the policy of their choice. The exchanges cannot operate in the manner Congress intended if the Individual Mandate, Medicaid Expansion, and insurance regulations cannot remain in force.
The Act’s design is to allocate billions of federal dollars to subsidize individuals’ purchases on the exchanges. In- dividuals with incomes between 100 and 400 percent of the poverty level receive tax credits to offset the cost of insurance to the individual purchaser. 26 U. S. C. §36B (2006 ed., Supp. IV); 42 U. S. C. §18071 (2006 ed., Supp.IV). By 2019, 20 million of the 24 million people who will obtain insurance through an exchange are expected to receive an average federal subsidy of $6,460 per person.See CBO, Analysis of the Major Health Care Legislation Enacted in March 2010, pp. 18–19 (Mar. 30, 2011). Without the community-rating insurance regulation, however,
(——————-page break added by Bofill———————)
60 NATIONAL FEDERATION OF INDEPENDENT
BUSINESS v. SEBELIUS
SCALIA, KENNEDY, THOMAS, and ALITO, JJ., dissenting
(————————————————————————-)
the average federal subsidy could be much higher; for community rating greatly lowers the enormous premiums unhealthy individuals would otherwise pay. Federal subsidies would make up much of the difference.
The result would be an unintended boon to insurance companies, an unintended harm to the federal fisc, and a corresponding breakdown of the “shared responsibil- ity†between the industry and the federal budget that Congress intended. Thus, the federal subsidies must be invalidated.
In the absence of federal subsidies to purchasers, insurance companies will have little incentive to sell insurance on the exchanges. Under the ACA’s scheme, few, if any,individuals would want to buy individual insurance policies outside of an exchange, because federal subsidies would be unavailable outside of an exchange. Difficulty in attracting individuals outside of the exchange would inturn motivate insurers to enter exchanges, despite theexchanges’ onerous regulations. See 42 U. S. C. §18031. That system of incentives collapses if the federal subsidiesare invalidated. Without the federal subsidies, individ- uals would lose the main incentive to purchase insurance inside the exchanges, and some insurers may be unwilling to offer insurance inside of exchanges. With fewer buyers and even fewer sellers, the exchanges would not operateas Congress intended and may not operate at all.
There is a second reason why, if community rating is invalidated by the Mandate and Medicaid Expansion’s invalidity, exchanges cannot be implemented in a manner consistent with the Act’s design. A key purpose of an exchange is to provide a marketplace of insurance optionswhere prices are standardized regardless of the buy- er’s pre-existing conditions. See ibid. An individual who shops for insurance through an exchange will evaluate different insurance products. The products will offer different benefits and prices. Congress designed the ex
(——————-page break added by Bofill———————)
61
Cite as: 567 U. S. ____ (2012)
SCALIA, KENNEDY, THOMAS, and ALITO, JJ., dissenting
(————————————————————————-)
changes so the shopper can compare benefits and prices.But the comparison cannot be made in the way Congress designed if the prices depend on the shopper’s pre-existing health conditions. The prices would vary from person to person. So without community rating—which prohibits insurers from basing the price of insurance on pre-existing conditions—the exchanges cannot operate in the manner Congress intended.
–snip
He seems to specifically be talking about community ratings.
He’s building to the final point:
For the reasons here stated, we would find the Act invalid in its entirety. We respectfully dissent.
by showing that nothing in ACA works the way Congress intended if any of the little parts are invalidated, so the whole thing should be invalidated.
Or something. I’ll look at it more later, I have to go pick up my pizza now. 🙂
Mark Bofill,
Thanks for reminding us that the failed law was written so badly that it is not severable: It stands or falls as a unit.
lol.
Who is counting on what stupidity.
hunter, I believe the lack of severability in a law can be viewed as a good thing. I haven’t looked into this particular case, but laws are sometimes built in a way if you remove one component, the entire thing fails. The main explanation I’ve heard is it helps force people to agree by limiting changes to individual aspects in a, “You mess with what I want; you lose what you want” sort of way.
I’ve also heard it can help with challenges in court as it pressures courts to accept things they might not accept otherwise on the idea the court won’t want to overturn an entire law on one small detail. Another explanation, one I suspect is too charitable, is proponents of the law believe a partial version of the law would be worse than no version, so if they can’t get the entire thing to work, they’d rather have it die in its entirety.
I can’t speak as to which, if any, such reasons might apply in this case, but I would recommend considering the possibility what seems stupid was actually done for an intelligent reason.
Even if not a good one.
hunter,
That was not poor drafting, that was intentional. It was a ploy to try to force SCOTUS to uphold the law. It worked.
So I use an RSS reader to follow some blogs I don’t care for because sometimes I find entertainment from skimming the comments on them. Sometimes it’s in the form of amusement, and other times it’s in the form of interesting commentary. Today there was one I believe fits the former. Blogger Anders said this earlier today:
Okay, let’s say we do this but let’s say we don’t end up with some alternative that’s cheaper than coal and we find ways to more cheaply extract the other remaining fossils fuels. Let’s also say that we get to 2 degrees of warming (which could happen by the mid-2040s) and discover that the impact is quite severe and we become more confident that another 2 degrees of warming would probably be catastrophic, leaving parts of the planet that were once habitable, uninhabitable. What do we do then?
Now, I’m not sure what part of the planet that is currently habitable would supposedly become uninhabitable if we reached four degrees of warming. I find it hard to believe any such place exists. That’s not what intrigued me though.
What intrigues me is Anders apparently believes we could reach two degrees of warming within thirty years. Even given the warming we’ve experience so far, that would take more than .3 degrees of warming a decade. Does anyone actually believe that sort of rate is plausible over a thirty year period?
Brandon,
Anders sounds like one of those people who, when the “The Blair Witch Project” came out thought it was a documentary.
Brandon,
Perhaps one would be Sir David King, at one time Tony Blair’s chief scientific adviser. According to his statement in May, 2004, Antarctica would be the only habitable continent by 2100.
One wonders if these people have ever looked at deep time. Only a few million years ago, it was a lot warmer, and warmer yet before then. Tennessee, for example, was sub-tropical. The PETM had a larger temperature increase over a very short time span and started from a higher level. The high CO2 levels were hard on benthic foraminifera, but it didn’t much affect life on the surface. Horses first appeared about then.
Brandon,
Anders recently said that he was going to give up blogging because there was no civilized dialog to be had. Explaining that one had to be civilized first in one’s dialog to expect to receive said such did not go down to well but was probably very uncivilized or insensitive on my part.
2.0 degrees in 30 years is the secret hope of all warmists and since natural variability x 40 excuses for the pause each at say 0.3 degrees
equals 12 degrees warming we have missed out on he is quite right to be expectant.
angech,
If I recall some BBC wonk recently claimed Australia has warmed by 90o in the past century. The line between climate obsessed and climate loon often seems vanishingly small.
Brandon regarding Tamino, I haven’t taken the time to look at it. Scanning quickly, I got the basic point. Seemed reasonable enough to me. I’m probably being dense (I know, right? How rare is that. :p) but I didn’t follow what you meant here:
Especially since if all of our temperature data somehow got corrupted, we could wind up with a “pause†lasting forever because we don’t have the data to show there isn’t a pause.
The thing that gets obscured, dropped, or lost in MY view in these discussions of the pause is that while we still see warming trends, it’s not warming that’s consistent with the alarmism. In some way shape or form this communications misfire happens a lot. I argue with people who want to demonstrate unequivocal evidence that the world has warmed. I say, sure, the world has warmed. How much have we seen and how much did we expect given the Prophecies of gloom and doom? Often at that part the conversation falls apart, because the opposition hasn’t considered that some warming is not necessarily the same thing as disruptive warming.
Hunter,
Thanks. I knew there was a term for it, it was just eluding me. Severable, that’s it. That’s what I was reminded of in reading through the dissenting opinion. He seemed to be saying in essense that none of the provisions are severable and the whole thing ought to be flushed.
I’m sorry Boris hasn’t gotten back to us, because looking back over the thread I no longer really understand what point he was trying to make by mentioning this in the first place. I think the discussion of this point started here, with his comment,
As for the language of the bill, I’ll say it again: The states–and even the conservatives justices of the SCOTUS–interpreted the bill to mean that subsidies were available on the federal exchanges. If the law were as clear as you say then they never would have made that mistake.
So I guess under the theory that whatever Congress intended should be upheld, Boris found this bit of text
Without the federal subsidies, individ- uals would lose the main incentive to purchase insurance inside the exchanges, and some insurers may be unwilling to offer insurance inside of exchanges. With fewer buyers and even fewer sellers, the exchanges would not operateas Congress intended and may not operate at all.
and ran with it, although what was really being argued (I think) was a lack of severability and that as a result the whole PPACA ought to be scrapped.
Brandon,
Now, I’m not sure what part of the planet that is currently habitable would supposedly become uninhabitable if we reached four degrees of warming. I find it hard to believe any such place exists. That’s not what intrigued me though.
If equatorial regions warmed 4C, there would be times of the year where weather killed due to being too hot. After all: 110F going to 117F? That’s could kill.
This might potentially affect cities in equatorial regions– certainly even if they weren’t uninhabitable, we’d see more deaths due to heat. (Meanwhile, we might see fewer deaths due to cold in other locations. I have no idea what the balance would be.) That said: this isn’t the same as “uninhabitable”.
We have deserts that are pretty much uninhabitable now. I don’t think anyone can survive in Death Valley year round now. Some places on the border of currently uninhabitable places would certainly become inhabitable if it warmed a little. I’m not sure how important that is.
What intrigues me is Anders apparently believes we could reach two degrees of warming within thirty years.
Why do you think Anders believes that?
Even given the warming we’ve experience so far, that would take more than .3 degrees of warming a decade. Does anyone actually believe that sort of rate is plausible over a thirty year period?
Oh…. I suspect it’s not excluded by “the models”. There is probably a model somewhere that predicts it. Especially if the current slow down is due simultaneously to (a) those non-stratospheric volcanoes, (b) the long deep ‘low’ in the solar cycle (c) aerosols and (d) natural factors all at the same time and all flip over to “fast warming” and it turns out that climate sensitivity is high but has been “masked”.
I wouldn’t say that’s impossible but I sure as heck wouldn’t want my money on the side of “that’s going to happen”.
No it doesn’t. The sentence doesn’t include the word “federalâ€.
The sentence contains the word “exchange.” You are not seriously going to argue that a “federal exchange” is not an “exchange”, or are you?
why did you edit the quote the way you did eliminated crucial text by inserting “and then�
Specifically, why did you skip the paragraph just before the second one you quoted. That paragraph in the Scalia dissent ends with
Thus, the federal subsidies must be invalidated.
Geeh. Seems like Scalia clearly says the federal subsidies must be invalidated.
The fact is– not only does Scalia not say what you claim, to make it seem to, one needs to skip whole paragraphs!
Scalia’s opinion on whether the subsides should be invalidated is completely irrelevant to my argument. The only thing that matters is that Scalia interpreted the law in the way that goes against your “plain language” argument. He clearly states that congress intended the exchanges to work and that without federal subsides, they cannot work as congress intended.
Maybe. But so? The ACA would survive, and when this happened congress could come up with a fix for the few states the ACA didn’t work for. This isn’t a big problem– and it’s not irrational for Congress to do things that way.
Again, this is all irrelevant. The point is that Scalia et. a;. have said that Congress’ intent was for exchanges to work. If all federal exchanges collapse, then by definition they did not work as congress intended.
He did not say every single exchange is intended to work.
He said that exchanges were intended to work. Federal exchanges are exchanges (he even notes that the federal exchanges take the place of state exchanges).
But I do look forward to your bizarre logic stating that federal exchanges aren’t really exchanges.
Lucia (#133252): ‘I suspect it’s not excluded by “the models†‘ Ed Hawkins’s graph shows the 95th percentile for RCP4.5 model runs to be about 2.0 K above pre-industrial.
AR5 WG1 Figure 11.25b shows the 5-95% range over all scenarios for 2050 is 1.3-2.8 K above an 1850-1900 baseline. Of course, the same range for 2010 is 0.8-1.2, so it’s got a bit of a head-start. The RCP8.5 multi-model mean is about 2.4 K above its historical baseline by 2050.
But the point is, if you believe the models, it’s not outrageous to be predicting 2.0 K above pre-industrial by the mid-2040s.
Boris,
bizarre logic stating that federal exchanges aren’t really exchanges.
Nice straw man. As for bizarre logic, you should know it.
It’s not a straw man at all. Lucia is arguing that when Scalia said “exchanges” he wasn’t including exchanges created by the federal government. Bizarre.
:>
I get your argument now Boris. But you appear to not care at all about the context Scalia was speaking in. Pardon me for saying so, but isn’t that sort of a dirty no good gosh darn denier type of trick? I’m a little surprised that you’re willing to go that route.
It’s not what Scalia was saying.
Scalia was laying out a conditional chain of failures:
…The exchanges cannot operate in the manner Congress intended if the Individual Mandate, Medicaid Expansion, and insurance regulations cannot remain in force.…20 million of the 24 million people who will obtain insurance through an exchange are expected to receive an average federal subsidy of $6,460…Without the community-rating insurance regulation, however, the average federal subsidy could be much higher…The result would be … an unintended harm to the federal fisc…Thus, the federal subsidies must be invalidated.
In the absence of federal subsidies to purchasers,…Without the federal subsidies, individ- uals would lose the main incentive to purchase insurance inside the exchanges, and some insurers may be unwilling to offer insurance inside of exchanges. With fewer buyers and even fewer sellers, the exchanges would not operateas Congress intended and may not operate at all. There is a second reason why, if community rating is invalidated by the Mandate and Medicaid Expansion’s invalidity, exchanges cannot be implemented in a manner consistent with the Act’s design…
Ultimately everything he’s saying in that block you’re quoting is predicated by the conditional ‘if community rating is invalidated by the Mandate Medicaid Expansions Invalidity’. I’m pretty confident of this because otherwise the ‘there is a second reason why’ part makes no sense. He just finished laying down the first reason.
But I’ll give you this. As a piece of the chain, he said what you think he said. (I think) I understand Lucia’s argument too, and like her I’m not sure he meant what you think he meant. But what this has to do with ‘plain language’ is beyond me. He didn’t say this because the language was unclear, he said this because he was arguing that ACA can’t be implemented the way Congress intended and therefore should be scrapped altogether.
I’ll freely admit that I’m confused though.
The Act’s design is to allocate billions of federal dollars to subsidize individuals’ purchases on the exchanges. In- dividuals with incomes between 100 and 400 percent of the poverty level receive tax credits to offset the cost of insurance to the individual purchaser. 26 U. S. C. §36B (2006 ed., Supp. IV); 42 U. S. C. §18071 (2006 ed., Supp.IV). By 2019, 20 million of the 24 million people who will obtain insurance through an exchange are expected to receive an average federal subsidy of $6,460 per person.
So here’s the thing I’d like to understand. Federal subsidies are supposed to be available to indivduals who purchase policies on State exchanges, nobody disputes this I hope. The question is about federal subsidies for Federal exchanges.
So, when he goes on to conclude Thus, the federal subsidies must be invalidated., does he mean federal subsidies for ~all~ exchanges or just for Federal exchanges?
If he means for ~all~ exchanges, then I think Boris’s argument falls apart. On the other hand, if he specifically means Federal exchanges then maybe Boris is on to something.
What do you guys think? Not enough coffee?
(Heck I know I haven’t had enough coffee. I need to drink some and get back to work actually. 🙂 )
“Ultimately everything he’s saying in that block you’re quoting is predicated by the conditional…”
Again, this is completely irrelevant. Scalia is interpreting the law in that passage. I know you and Lucia want to say “it doesn’t count!” because he is discussing a different case, but that doesn’t matter. Yes, it is a conditional, but so what? Are you saying that Scalia’s statement that Congress intended the exchanges to work only applies to his conditional? That makes no sense whatsoever.
Although I’ll say one more time,
The only thing that matters is that Scalia interpreted the law in the way that goes against your “plain language†argument.
Plain language has nothing to do with this. Scalia is reasoning down a chain that presupposes that ‘the Individual Mandate, Medicaid Expansion, and insurance regulations cannot remain in force’, and that’s how he gets to his conclusion. NOT by the ‘plain language’ of the bill.
What subsides was he talking about Boris? Is it clear to you, cause it’s not clear to me. And why?
Absent verbiage that divides federal subsidies for state exchanges and federal subsidies for federal exchanges, I don’t see how anyone can reasonably conclude he was just talking about federal subsidies for federal exchanges.
If he wasn’t, then he’s saying the system falls apart without federal subsides and that’s not what Congress intended. But we aren’t talking about there being no federal subsidies at all, just no federal subsidies for the federal exchanges.
In other words, he’s talking about a case (no subsidies for ANYBODY) that doesn’t have much to do with what we are talking about (subsidies for federal exchanges).
So, when he goes on to conclude Thus, the federal subsidies must be invalidated., does he mean federal subsidies for ~all~ exchanges or just for Federal exchanges?
He means all exchanges. Scalia is treating all exchanges the same in that dissent.
But no, my argument doesn’t fall apart. Even Jonathan Adler, one of the originators of this line of attack on the ACA, agrees that Scalia’s dissent is problematic:
Although she says we should focus on the text, Professor Gluck cites language from the NFIB v. Sebelius joint dissent endorsing the government’s understanding of how exchanges would operate.
So even Adler agrees that the dissent endorses the government’s view.
Boris,
Are you saying that Scalia’s statement that Congress intended the exchanges to work only applies to his conditional? That makes no sense whatsoever.
No. That’s not what I’m saying.
I’m saying:
1. That Scalia wrote
In the absence of federal subsidies to purchasers,…Without the federal subsidies, individ- uals would lose the main incentive to purchase insurance inside the exchanges, and some insurers may be unwilling to offer insurance inside of exchanges. With fewer buyers and even fewer sellers, the exchanges would not operateas Congress intended and may not operate at all.
1.A. That for my purposes, we can trim some detail and shorten this:
In the absense of Federal subsidies the exchanges would not operate as Congress intended.
2. That there is a difference between ‘absense of subsidies for exchanges’ and ‘absense of subsidies for federal exchanges’.
3. That since the statement is absent any language differentiating between federal and state exchanges, he did not intend to differentiate between federal and state exchanges,
4. that therefore he was talking about an absense of subsidies for all exchanges,
5. that WE are not discussing an absense of subsidies for all exchanges.
Boris is betting on Justice Scalia who voted against Obamacare the first time, to now see the light and support Obamacare the second.
heh.
Oh, I’m sorry. Talking about the conditional and if it matters, yes, I still think it might. I could be wrong. I think the question of all exchanges or federal exchanges might be a more direct route to resolving the matter at hand, but we can circle back to the conditional thing if you’d like.
But we aren’t talking about there being no federal subsidies at all, just no federal subsidies for the federal exchanges.
Again, Scalia is talking about ALL exchanges–including federal exchanges. He then says that without federal subsides, exchanges won’t function as congress intended them to. He makes no distinction between state and federal–they are included together.
Imagine if all the states had decided to use the federal exchange (which was still possible at the time Scalia was writing). Then all the exchanges would be federal. So what would Scalia be talking about when he said “the exchanges would not operate as Congress intended”?
I don’t get the Adler thing. So maybe Adler has been smoking too much crack? I don’t know what to tell you there.
Okay good.
So, where am I still wrong or not understanding?
1) I claim that we’re talking about whether or not the law meant to establish federal subsidies for federal exchanges.
2) We seem to agree that Scalia said without subsidies for all exchanges ACA wouldn’t work as Congress intended.
3) So I conclude that what Scalia was talking about isn’t pertinent to what we were talking about.
Go easy on me, I’m still working on that coffee. 🙂
4. that therefore he was talking about an absense of subsidies for all exchanges,
This doesn’t matter. An absence of subsides for any of the exchanges would cause them to not function in the way congress intended. The process he describes:
Without the federal subsidies, individuals would lose the main incentive to purchase insurance inside the exchanges, and some insurers may be unwilling to offer insurance inside of exchanges
happens in each exchange individually.
Oh.
Imagine if all the states had decided to use the federal exchange (which was still possible at the time Scalia was writing). Then all the exchanges would be federal. So what would Scalia be talking about when he said “the exchanges would not operate as Congress intended�
I missed this.
But gosh Boris, you’ve been going round and round with Lucia on this. You flat out don’t agree that Congress could have passed a bill that they hoped would work a certain way but that might actually flop and not work that way?
Well, fine, but I question whether or not Scalia viewed it that way. Just because it was possible doesn’t mean it was the case Scalia was speaking to.
“1) I claim that we’re talking about whether or not the law meant to establish federal subsidies for federal exchanges.”
Scalia treats them as the same as state exchanges–which is the government’s position.
“Boris is betting on Justice Scalia who voted against Obamacare the first time, to now see the light and support Obamacare the second.
heh.”
Oh, no. I would bet a ton on Scalia being inconsistent and striking down subsides on federal exchanges.
This doesn’t matter. An absence of subsides for any of the exchanges would cause them to not function in the way congress intended. The process he describes:
Without the federal subsidies, individuals would lose the main incentive to purchase insurance inside the exchanges, and some insurers may be unwilling to offer insurance inside of exchanges
happens in each exchange individually.
What do you mean by ‘happens in each exchange individually’?
Boris,
It’s not a straw man at all. Lucia is arguing that when Scalia said “exchanges†he wasn’t including exchanges created by the federal government. Bizarre.
Sigh….. I’m not going to continue to try to explain how you are distorting the logic in the argument entirely. The isn’t isn’t one of a single word. It has to do with “all”, “some” — what the entire argument is (including the effect of the paragraphs you want to edit out as somehow “not mattering” and so on.)
Scalia’s meaning was not what you claim. While he may think what you claim– that is not the meaning of what the dissent wrote. So there’s really no evidence that he has to “change his mind” to rule against maintaining the tax breaks.
I know you and Lucia want to say “it doesn’t count!†because he is discussing a different case, but that doesn’t matter.
It doesn’t count because, among other things, he’s not discussing the topic under consideration and if we use the concept of “parsimony” and also read the other paragraphs– he’s just not expected to go off on a tangent to elaborate on a specific topic that has nothing to so with Seballius.
More importantly: your interpretation of the text is incorrect. You are reading in ideas– and more over, you are doing so by ignoring entire paragraphs– including the sentence that precedes the one you quoted and that was in between the two you quoted.
I’m not going to discuss this more here because we aren’t SCOTUS and there are lots of important issues other than your claim that Scalia said something he happened not to have said. We aren’t going to resolve what SCOTUS will rule because they will. And I’m not going to spend a lot of time delving into the entire ACA.
But when an argument about the meaning of what SCALIA wrote in a dissent is clearly wrong as yours is, I’m going to point that out. I know you will keep on believing your argument is correct. I’m content to agree to disagree on this one.
I gotta get some work done anyway.
Boris (#133262), quoted Adler:
Although she says we should focus on the text, Professor Gluck cites language from the NFIB v. Sebelius joint dissent endorsing the government’s understanding of how exchanges would operate.
Yet this was not an issue in the case beyond the question of severability, and on that question the dissenters’ view did not prevail. It is not a holding of the court. Further, the joint dissent is hardly an authoritative account of the PPACA’s text. Indeed, the dissent makes the indisputably false claim that that “The ACA requires each State to establish a health-insurance ‘exchange.’†The law does not require any such thing. Indeed, under well-established principles, it couldn’t.
Harold,
I already stated that it was not an official holding of the court. Adler’s argument is that the justices agreeing with the government’s interpretation doesn’t matter. That is problematic for him because he is arguing that the plain language of the law means that it could never be interpreted in the way that the justices interpreted it.
Lucia and Mark are arguing that Scalia isn’t endorsing the government’s understanding. Adler says that he is.
I expect we might all agree here that the liberal judges on the court will readily find a way to rationalize the hasty actions of the Congress and Administration in selling and writing the ACA and do it in such a way that it would not be sent back to unfriendly Congress for repair. I would expect those judges to see the ACA as an important milestone in the government’s grab for more power over the citizens choices and the details that sold the law as minor inconveniences that they can readily put a Civics 101 spin onto with a judicial shrug.
I would also think by now that most observers would realize that ACA is not much about the details of the law, the fairness of it, the affordability of health care or any other sweet terminology used to sell it and more about the expansion of government. I continue the see some of its defenders, and particularly the MSM, in the same light as that portrayed on the daytime business shows, where an extravagant and unnamed investment firm is put in a bad light by the competing advertiser showing a spokesperson for the extravagant firm on a building top where the corporate helicopter is landing and after whipping off not one but two pairs of sunglasses saying “We have a helicopter. Why do we have a helicopter? Who knows it is a helicopter.”
Boris,
It would be entirely consistent for a Judge who pointed out that the law was written to not have serability and is unworkable and should not stand to rule that since the law is written so badly (among many, many other badly written parts) as to land in court again to vote against it agaon.
It would take a rather partisan pre-formed less than well informed view to find that inconsistent.
“It doesn’t count because, among other things, he’s not discussing the topic under consideration…”
He is interpreting the law–it doesn’t matter what the topic under discussion is. He could be discussing any number of things. He could be discussing what he had for dinner last night, but if he says that congress intended for exchanges to work, then he thinks congress intended for exchanges to work.
“But when an argument about the meaning of what SCALIA wrote in a dissent is clearly wrong as yours is, I’m going to point that out.”
When even the guy behind the lawsuit against the ACA agrees with my interpretation, it’s pretty impressive that you claim that I’m “clearly wrong.”
And as far as dissenting views not being considered, lol.
In the long history of the USSC it is not unheard of at all for once losing dissenting views to become the foudnation for prevailing views later.
When one considers a President who is flagrantly and repeatedly crossing seperation of powers issues, one can consider that the Courts might just consider sending a wake up call to that President.
lucia:
If equatorial regions warmed 4C, there would be times of the year where weather killed due to being too hot. After all: 110F going to 117F? That’s could kill….
We have deserts that are pretty much uninhabitable now. I don’t think anyone can survive in Death Valley year round now. Some places on the border of currently uninhabitable places would certainly become inhabitable if it warmed a little. I’m not sure how important that is.
I’m pretty sure neither is expected to see four degrees of warming even if the planet receives that much (as warming will be uneven), but I’m not sure offhand how much they might warm. It might be worth me looking into a little.
Why do you think Anders believes that?
After saying “we get to 2 degrees of warming,” he included in parentheses “which could happen by the mid-2040s.” Mid-2040s is 30 years from now, though perhaps an “about” is needed in the sentence. It might be more like 33.
I wouldn’t say that’s impossible but I sure as heck wouldn’t want my money on the side of “that’s going to happenâ€.
I won’t say it is impossible because I don’t understand the physical system well enough (I’m not sure anyone does), but I don’t see anything which could make it seem remotely plausible.
HaroldW:
But the point is, if you believe the models, it’s not outrageous to be predicting 2.0 K above pre-industrial by the mid-2040s.
I’m not sold on this. If all we had were the models, that could maybe make some sense to me. However, we have a temperature record which runs way on the low side of those models. How does argue temepratures will jump from way on the low side to way on the high side in only 30 years? As far as I know, that degree of variability is unheard of and unpredicted.
And while I think that strains credulity as it is, given it is the absolute worst case the models can be said to project, let’s not forget all of this hinges upon the assumption humans will follow an extremely high RCP. If that doesn’t happen, the models offer no support for this argument.
It sounds to me like the argument is:
If humankind follows the worst emissions scenario we can envision, these models, which have thus far been biased to project significantly more warming than has happened, say we cannot rule out, with 95% confidence, the possibility there will be two degrees of warming by mid-2040s.
Which is about the least plausible sounding argument I can imagine a person making without them being completely wrong. And even so, I don’t see how one can offer a physical basis for such unprecedented change in temperature patterns. Nothing like it has (as far as we know) ever happened before. That seems like it should outweigh the projections of models with poor performance history.
“What do you mean by ‘happens in each exchange individually’?”
Each exchange is located within a state–either run by that state or by the federal government. Scalia is describing a process that would happen on any exchange if the federal subsides were unavailable. None of the exchanges would fail because other exchanges fail, so you argument “that therefore he was talking about an absense of subsidies for all exchanges” doesn’t make any sense. Any exchange that did not have federal subsides would fail in the way he describes. And that failure would be, according to him, not what congress intended.
Boris,
I don’t know about pursuing this. Continuing this discussion on the Blackboard without Lucia’s blessing might be a little like skirmishing in Lothlorien without Galadriel’s blessing. It’s possibly not the best idea that we could run with. I’ve presumed on Lucia’s tolerance often enough in the past, I’d hate to push it.
This said, I’m going to presume on Lucia’s tolerance far enough to answer this.
I’m still not sure I understand your point. The crux of what your saying appears to be here:
None of the exchanges would fail because other exchanges fail, so you argument “that therefore he was talking about an absense of subsidies for all exchanges†doesn’t make any sense.
and appears to be founded on some misunderstanding of what I was saying, or some disregard.
Is it that you think that he said that Congress intended for all exchanges to work?
(Edit: I claimed he was talking about an absense of subsidies. Period. Since he didn’t qualify it, I claim that that ‘an absense of subsidies’ is ‘a complete absense of subsidies’ or ‘an absense of subsidies for all exchanges’.)
Anyways, as I said, I believe I’m going to drop this.
“Is it that you think that he said that Congress intended for all exchanges to work?”
Yes, each and every exchange should function.
He is saying that, without federal subsides, each exchange would not function as intended. He makes no distinction between exchanges run by the states and exchanges run by the federal government.
Brandon,
However, we have a temperature record which runs way on the low side of those models. How does argue temepratures will jump from way on the low side to way on the high side in only 30 years? As far as I know, that degree of variability is unheard of and unpredicted.
I’m with you on that.
What is comparable? I imagine the largest global warming event we’ve seen in the data (at least in modern times) was the ’87/88 ElNino? That was good for a ballpark of .3C. So we’d need, what? Four more of those over the next 30 years? (Assuming we’re already counting .8C warming since preindustry)
So that’s one of those type events every 8 years on average.
I doubt it.
The longer we go without seeing them the bigger the event needs to be when it hits I guess, or the steeper the slope of the gradual event. But does our atmosphere ever just heat up gradually? I’ve come to doubt this.
Thanks for discussing ACA with me Boris. I enjoyed it as I generally do enjoy discussions with you. 🙂
Brandon,
From my reading of the ATTP blog, I think Anders is a very slippery fish. When someone points to data showing that a very rapid warming (0.33C per decade for the next few decades!) is not at all supported by empirical data and so very unlikely, he will say ‘while that could be be true’, he continues to insists that we can’t be absolutely certain, so we should err on the safe side and eliminate CO2 emissions ASAP. I find his reasoning, such as it is, high on emotion and low on rationality, and utterly immune to new information….. which is standard fare for most climate change activists.
.
I don’t think Anders or his blog is worth the effort; his mind is made up, and nothing is going to dissuade him from the need for immediate and drastic public action to reduce fossil fuel use.
he continues to insists that we can’t be absolutely certain, so we should err on the safe side and eliminate CO2 emissions ASAP. I find his reasoning, such as it is, high on emotion and low on rationality,
Well, yes. After all, we also can’t be absolutely certain ebola won’t suddenly spread all over the world causing a stupendous drop in human population and we can’t be absolutely certain HIV won’t undergo a mutation making it insect born and we can’t be absolutely certain that….
The fact is: there are very few things we can be absolutely certain about. The notion that lack of absolute certainty means one must (or must not) do any particular thing is irrational. Of course, the ‘lack of absolute certainty’ card cuts both ways– but often, when someone is pulling that out, they follow on with draconian recommendations or conversely, totally complete inaction. Both arguments tend toward complete irrationality. We do want to act based on what seems plausible or likely. We want some safeguards for the unlikely. But making enormous sacrifices for something that is not remotely likely on the basis that “we can’t be absolutely certain” it will not happen, is nutso. There are just too many things in that category and in the end: life has risks. (None of us get out of it alive either!)
However, with all things AGW, new and different statistical methods have come to different conclusions. My understanding is that unsurprisingly the death rates of both are decreasing as time goes by. The elderly are the most common victims and it may be the case that many of these victims would have died sooner or later due to weakened cardiovascular systems anyway, the straw that broke the camel’s back.
lucia (Comment #133290)
And, of course, we always have the uncertainty of the outcome for the proposed remedy for the uncertain problem. Perhaps we feel better emotionally knowing we are doing something even if it does not solve the problem, albeit real or imaged.
We also have an issue of deciding on how to best go about solving an uncertain problem given that there are alternative approaches. I often think we have a plethora of approaches just awaiting a problem to resolve.
Tom+Scharf (Comment #133291)
I suspect we have too many prognosticators who have not fully considered man’s ability to adapt when they are given that opportunity. Air conditioning and heating have made places otherwise uninhabitable or inhabitable with difficulty comfortably inhabitable. I am afraid that government programs would greatly stifle man’s capability to adapt by removing alternative choices.
Interesting that some have claimed in recent studies of rapidly changing climate in the Africa that it was those changes and man’s adaption to the changes that were critical in developing man’s brain to process information beyond that of his cousin apes. And without carbon taxes no less.
Lucia,
“But making enormous sacrifices for something that is not remotely likely on the basis that “we can’t be absolutely certain†it will not happen, is nutso.”
.
For sure. The rational parallel is buying life insurance. The priorities change somewhat with the individual’s circumstances, of course, but any rational person examines the cost for the insurance, the size of the benefit, and the probability (and consequences!) of dying during the insured period. The disconnect with climate change activism is that the costs for draconian action are mainly borne by people who are NOT climate activists, and who do not share climate activists’ perception of relative costs and benefits for draconian public action. It is a little like choosing your life insurance coverage based on only having to pay a small fraction of the total cost…. so of course, the coverage selected will be huge. At the bottom, the conflict is mainly about a smallish minority of people who want to force their own priorities/values/etc. on everyone else…. because the ‘science demands it’. It is politics masquerading as science.
.
The reasoned public response to a very uncertain long term threat (and GHG driven warming is that) is much like rationally evaluating life insurance (risks, costs, benefits). In the case of GHG driven warming, the most prudent course is to better define the risks, costs, and benefits, before committing to enormously costly public actions. Making a huge public commitment in the face of very large uncertainty is indeed nutso. If someone says it is impossible to ever accurately define the risks (something which climate activists regularly say!) then the reasoned response is that it is therefore impossible to rationally justify the costs for public action.
Indeed De Witt…
according to Wiki
“The increase in mammalian abundance is intriguing. There is no evidence of any increased extinction rate among the terrestrial biota. Increased CO2 levels may have promoted dwarfing[32][33] – which may have encouraged speciation. Many major mammalian orders – including the Artiodactyla, horses, and primates – appeared and spread around the globe 13,000 to 22,000 years after the initiation of the PETM.[
What’s not to like about that? In fact, these days, some “researchivists” are claiming that shrinkage of the Alpine ilex etc is a sign of the malignant effrects of the barely-detectable global warming.
hunter (Comment #133250)
If I recall some BBC wonk recently claimed Australia has warmed by 90o in the past century.
To be fair she confused 0.9 degrees a century with 0.9 degrees a year for 100 years.
It was an astonishing oversight but I am sure I have got my decimal points wrong a few times in the past as well. I know I have.
Mark Bofill:
The longer we go without seeing them the bigger the event needs to be when it hits I guess, or the steeper the slope of the gradual event. But does our atmosphere ever just heat up gradually? I’ve come to doubt this.
Remember, one of the most current responses to the “pause” is that the extra energy is going into the ocean. The idea, at least as I understand it, of El Nino causing warming isn’t that it will add energy to the system. Instead, El Nino will take energy not currently in the (portion of the) atmosphere we’re measuring
and shift its location.
If something takes energy from the ocean to warm the atmosphere, the energy in the ocean will drop. That means there will be less energy to take from the ocean. That means it is physically unreasonable to expect multiple large warming bursts to come from ocean heat becoming atmospheric heat. The only way to argue for it is to claim each warming burst takes only a portion of the excess energy from the ocean.
I’m hoping people wouldn’t make such an argument. The idea a degree of atmospheric warming could come from natural shifts of energy from the ocean to atmosphere seems… beyond implausible.
SteveF:
I don’t think Anders or his blog is worth the effort; his mind is made up, and nothing is going to dissuade him from the need for immediate and drastic public action to reduce fossil fuel use.
If you saw my recent exchange with him at Bishop Hill, you could probably guess I mostly share your sentiments. My reason for following Ander’s blog (to the limited extent I do) is it entertains me. Not 18 hours ago one of Anders’s regulars got so upset he cussed at another commenter. And Anders has let it be.
Apparently Anders is trying “to keep the discussion civil” by allowing people to cuss at one another. It’s a tactic I’ve never considered trying.
Regarding El Nino events: Their net impact is to move energy out of the ocean, into the atmosphere and out into space. It would make sense to consider that the 1998 El Nino would be the peak of recent cliamte and that things would pause/cool since then.
Since energy moves out of the ocean, it must also move in. But that raises the question of how deep is the part of the ocean that holds most of the energy moving out. And how much energy in absolute and relative terms is actually moving around in an El Nino: What is the energy budget of an El Nino? How efficient is the El Nino mechanism at removing energy from the part of the Pacific in which it operates?
Brandon,
The only way to argue for it is to claim each warming burst takes only a portion of the excess energy from the ocean.
Right. And to be fair, this isn’t impossible. We know the specific heat of water is far greater than air (specific heat is about 3850 J/(kg C) for seawater (some random lecture), 1.006 kJ/kg.K (equal to kJ/kg.oC) for air
(Engineer’s toolbox). WOW. I knew it was greater, I didn’t remember it was that much greater. But I digress.
So I think it’s certainly possible that even an El Nino like the big one in 98 only discharges a fraction of the potential heat energy it could into the atmosphere. A lot of other details matter in figuring this out. Like for instance, the energy budget of an El Nino, like Hunter says (yay segues!).
Hunter,
And how much energy in absolute and relative terms is actually moving around in an El Nino: What is the energy budget of an El Nino?
Exactly, and well put. I’d like to understand the energy budget of an El Nino as well, seems like that’s a big chunk of understanding how plausible or implausible the idea that we might catch up with model predictions is.
🙂 I’m seriously thinking about buying some of Bob Tisdale’s ebooks on this, now that we’re talking about it. I’ve always meant to and just never gotten around to it. Trouble is I’m cheap. I’d feel guilty paying for something I hadn’t spent a few hours scrounging around the internet looking for free info on.
Oh, I also meant to remark on ATTP.
Sometimes it looks like interesting things are touched on. My trouble is that I won’t comment on blogs where I feel like I have to pay too much attention to … how do censor’s justify it again? Oh yes, making sure I’m not spreading disinformation.
Bloggers ought to decide. If they’re running some sort of school, spreading what they consider to be valid information, that’s great. Don’t invite controversial discussion then, and censor away. On the other hand, if you want me to come with my controversial viewpoints and give your people an interesting discussion, you’d darn well better not snip my remarks merely because you think I’m wrong.
I refuse to play that game. I think controversy and different viewpoints draws participants to a blog and makes for interesting discussion. If you want to have a lively blog and you want my help in accomplishing that, you’re gonna hafta restrain your progressive impulses and not censor me left right and center. Otherwise you can run a Skeptical Science type site and average 3 comments a topic. (ATTP is noteworthy in that despite the snipping a good bit of discussion still goes on there. Regardless, too much for my taste. When Steven Mosher complains of getting snipped there for example, that passes my personal arbitrary tolerance level. Anyway)
To give ad naseum information on my position that nobody cares about 🙂 (I’m putting this in for my piece of mind), I don’t disagree with censoring those who come merely to screw up the discussion for everybody else. The spammers and the skydragon who shall not be named, so on. So it might be a matter of degree rather than principle. whatever. 🙂
Why does an ElNino stop? Is it because almost all of the available energy in the surface water has been exchanged, I.E., the air has warmed and the water has cooled and the difference between them isn’t very much anymore? Or is it that the winds change, or what?
(Edit: Heck, are we even talking about all el ninos or some subset?)
Mark Bofill,
I think the reasoning is that tropical easterlies over the Pacific are what causes the pseudo-cyclical behavior. When the Pacific surface cools during a la Nina, the magnitude of the Hadley circulation (driven by thunder storms along the tropical convergence zone) drops, and with that drop in Hadley circulation the prevailing easterlies (which are due to the Hadley circulation) drop in intensity. When the easterlies drop, there is not enough shear applied to the ocean surface by the wind to maintain the difference in height between the western Pacific warm pool and the eastern Pacific. So the warm water flows back toward the east over the surface. As the Pacific surface warms, thunder storms increase, the Hadley circulation increases, and along with that the easterlies begin to increase…. ultimately driving the warm water west again, starting a new cycle. I’m sure there are lots of complicating factors, but that is the basic cycle. Where and how much it rains in the tropics and subtropics is part-and-parcel of the ENSO.
🙂 Thanks! I see I didn’t ask what I meant to. Why/when does the warming caused by an El Nino stop. But you may have answered that question too, lemme think it through.
Brandon,
“Apparently Anders is trying “to keep the discussion civil†by allowing people to cuss at one another. It’s a tactic I’ve never considered trying.”
I think it was Rachel moderating, not Anders. Still, I would not allow that sort of comment to remain if it were my blog. As is quite typical of many politically motivated blogs, what level of invective is allowed in comments depends a great deal on whether the writer agrees with the position of the blog…. Anders is no different, and his blog exists to advance a specific set of policy goals: drastically reduced global energy consumption (of all types), forcing a ‘simpler life’ on everyone, and requiring a ‘fairer’ distribution of global wealth via forced income transfer (with intellectual midgets like Anders deciding what is more fair, of course).
.
His views are deep green, leftist, arrogant, and foolish, but most of all, utterly infantile. He simply can not understand how anyone could possibly hold a legitimate view different from his…. IMHO, he’s a moron.
Still, I would not allow that sort of comment to remain if it were my blog. As is quite typical of many politically motivated blogs, what level of invective is allowed in comments depends a great deal on whether the writer agrees with the position of the blog
There’s too much navel-gazing that goes on in blogs, but I personally don’t read anything particular into the moderation efforts. For example .
Steve,
I’m pretty sure you’re correct, it seems to me I’ve read/seen the substance of your explanation before. The more I think about that the more I realize I don’t understand why an El Nino causes atmospheric temperatures to change. At all.
So what that the warm water sloshed…
…oh. Is it that the surface air temperature is way colder over in the eastern Pacific? That’d explain why more energy makes it out into the atmosphere I guess. Or is it that there’s more .. what’s the word, mixing? Normally people use the word mixing to indicate heat exchange between ocean layers I think, I mean in this context more heat exchange between the air and the water because of .. heck I don’t know.
…
Gah I gotta run errands. I sort of look forward to eventually being a retired old codger who can play on blogs all day long. 🙂
Mark,
In addition to what SteveF said about the Pacific Warm Pool, the Easterlies also drive the Pacific Ocean gyres. The gyres act as heat pumps to move warm water from near the equator to high latitudes where it cools. Slow it down and less heat is transported away, so high latitudes cool and low latitudes warm. In theory, a more uneven temperature distribution should cause the global average temperature to decrease if there is radiative balance at the TOA. But there probably isn’t. Combine that with the fairly poor coverage of surface temperature stations for high latitude and you get an increase in average temperature when the strength of the Easterlies drops.
Thanks DeWitt. More pieces to think about.
I realized that El Nino’s could also heat the atmosphere by virtue of the sloshing providing a greater surface area for the warm water atmosphere interface. Even if the air temp isn’t that much colder over the eastern pacific, provided it’s at least colder than the water, energy is going to go up. The larger the area of the interface, the more energy is going to go per unit time.
Wow. Looking at gyres now it’s highly interesting.
Mark,
Once you get past ocean gyres, you can move on to the thermohaline circulation. The Easterlies are the main driver of the ocean gyres, but in the North Atlantic particularly, there is a substantial contribution from thermohaline circulation. Deep water formation in the North Pacific is not as significant, leading to the deep water taking much longer to turn over. The age of the deep water can be determined by 14C dating and some Pacific deep water is more than 1000 years older than the surface water.
SteveF:
I think it was Rachel moderating, not Anders.
I don’t know who did what moderating, but Anders was commenting in the same thread. He saw the comment. He chose not to remove it.
As is quite typical of many politically motivated blogs, what level of invective is allowed in comments depends a great deal on whether the writer agrees with the position of the blog
Yup. I’d wager there are times you could use someone’s exact words, replacing only those needed to invert its position, and get moderated.
Mark Bofill:
Right. And to be fair, this isn’t impossible. We know the specific heat of water is far greater than air (specific heat is about 3850 J/(kg C) for seawater (some random lecture), 1.006 kJ/kg.K (equal to kJ/kg.oC) for air
(Engineer’s toolbox). WOW. I knew it was greater, I didn’t remember it was that much greater. But I digress.
So I think it’s certainly possible that even an El Nino like the big one in 98 only discharges a fraction of the potential heat energy it could into the atmosphere.
It can be difficult to determine what energy is “excess energy,” but the thing you have to ask yourself is, if the ocean starts releasing excess energy, why would it stop while it still has excess energy? If you’ll forgive a bad analogy, this argument is like claiming a boiling pot will stop boiling for a while then start boiling again later on. It’s not impossible, but you have to provide some explanation as to why it would happen. Just saying, “There’s still more excess energy” doesn’t explain anything.
When Steven Mosher complains of getting snipped there for example, that passes my personal arbitrary tolerance level.
I’d have to see what he wrote that got moderated to tell. It’s not like Mosher has a reputation for great civility to use his comments as a litmus test.
So it might be a matter of degree rather than principle. whatever. 🙂
It’s more about type. Moderating comments because of behavior is good. Moderating comments because of the views they express is bad. It shouldn’t matter if you hold stupid or intelligent positions. If you behave civilly and discuss reasonably, you should be allowed to be wrong. The reason the people you mention being moderated should be moderated is they pretty much never behave civilly or discuss reasonably.
By the way, Tamino said this in an inline response to a comment:
I agree; sometimes I feel like a “lone voice†maintaining consistently that I’m not persuaded there even has been any pause (but I know I’m not the only one). Still, it’s a testament to climate scientists that they are keeping an open mind and trying to *understand* what’s happening.
So that answers the question of whether or not Tamino thinks there has been a pause.
DeWitt,
Thanks. 🙂 I’d bumped into that before and already knew at least a bit about it.
Brandon,
It can be difficult to determine what energy is “excess energy,†but the thing you have to ask yourself is, if the ocean starts releasing excess energy, why would it stop while it still has excess energy?
Good question. I’ve realized I don’t know enough about how El Nino’s work to speculate on this, but I’m working on it. I’m getting reluctant to risk boring the hell out of everybody by talking about it without spending a little time and effort to go learn something about it first.
It’s not like Mosher has a reputation for great civility to use his comments as a litmus test.
Just personal opinion. I’ve got no idea what his comment was. Heck, I don’t even know I’ve got it right that he got snipped. Seems like I have some vague recollection of scanning a comment referring to this over at Climate Etc. some time back. I’m not sure because I wasn’t all that terribly interested anyway.
But I like Steven Mosher as a litmus test because he seems to have a gift for pissing everybody off, warmist and skeptic alike. Part of the reason I branched out from WUWT into the wider world was due to the regular chorus of boos and hisses most of his comments seem to garner there. Made me curious about other perspectives in the blogosphere. Not that this really matters. 🙂
Still, it’s a testament to climate scientists that they are keeping an open mind and trying to *understand* what’s happening.
It’s a testament to climate scientists that they act like scientists?
…
uhm, okay.
I withdraw my feeble attempt to be snarky :>
I read
A testament is a declaration of a truth, or a bearing of witness that something is true.
So Tamino’s testament and phase usage is entirely right and proper I guess.
Weird, I wonder where I get my crazy ideas. I’d always thought that expression ‘it’s a testament to’ meant or implied something extraordinary, not just a declaration of truth.
Yea verily, scientists are scientists, and computers are computers, and tautologies are true by definition. World without end, now and forever, aMen.
I’m going to bed.
Mark Bofill:
But I like Steven Mosher as a litmus test because he seems to have a gift for pissing everybody off
Yeah, but he gets moderated by everybody too 😛
So Tamino’s testament and phase usage is entirely right and proper I guess.
Weird, I wonder where I get my crazy ideas. I’d always thought that expression ‘it’s a testament to’ meant or implied something extraordinary, not just a declaration of truth.
Well, first off, Tamino’s usage is wrong in form. You have testaments to traits (adjectives), not things (nouns).
Second, you shouldn’t rely upon single line definitions so much. Or at least, if you’re going to, you ought to parse them more carefully. Definitions often rely upon subtle distinctions.
Leaving aside the difference between “testament” and “testament to,” the definition you cite says “a declaration of a truth.” It’s not merely a casual statement. It’s not a flippant remark. It’s a declaration. This is emphasized in the second clause when it says “a bearing of witness.” One does not bear witness every time they make a statement regarding a fact.
The phrase “it’s a testament to” means what you thought it meant. The object must give proof of something, and that something must be believed important enough to warrant the call for a formal proof.
You shouldn’t doubt yourself so much 😛
The moderation at anders is capricious.
for example. The last go around someone attacked Thune.
So I posted his record
More attacks.
So, I noted that both sides showed intolerance.
no comment directed at an individual.
no swear words
just an observation.
of course its a game figuring out a moderator.
the trick at AATP is to pick a thread where the moderator is letting locals violate the rules and then do something similar but not as bad..
then watch.
so if the mod is letting people say inflamatory things.. then write a comment that is just a tad spicey.. not inflamatory.. just spicey
then you will witness the moderators bias.
or off topic stuff.. pick up a comment that is off topic.. commment on it.. let the counter attack on you build up..
maybe a day or so.. then come back with something calm ..
watch..
Oh, I think I forgot to respond to something I meant to respond to earlier. Mark Bofill said he didn’t follow what I meant when I said:
Especially since if all of our temperature data somehow got corrupted, we could wind up with a “pause†lasting forever because we don’t have the data to show there isn’t a pause.
I was discussing a methodology in a recent paper published by Ross McKitrick. In it, he came up with a definition for “pause” I think is highly unusual. He said a pause is any period in which we cannot find a statistically significant warming trend over any subset of it which ends in the most recent times (and this criteria must be met by both the north and south hemispheres).
That is, he went back in time, year by year, calculating a trend for the period of that year to 2014. The “pause” lasts however far he can go back in time like that without running into a statistically significant trend (in either hemisphere). This is peculiar because the more uncertainty in the data, the less likely there is to be a statistically significant trend.
There are uncertainties in the process used to generate the temperature records which don’t propogate through to this analysis (and haven’t actually been quantified). If we could calcaluate and propogate the uncertainties through to McKitrick’s analysis, we’d find they increase the length of the “pause” he finds. The worse our data, the longer his “pause” lasts. If all of our temperature data magically got corrupted, we wouldn’t be able to find a statistically significant trend for any period. As such, McKitrick’s definition would hold the pause has been going on indefinitely.
I think it’s silly to define the “pause” in a way which makes your position “stronger” as you become less certain of your data. I also think it’s silly to cherry-pick 2014 as an endpoint. If he had done the analysis two years ago, he’d have likely found the “pause” began at a different point. If he repeats the analysis in two years, he’ll likely find the “pause” begins at yet another point.
The analysis might be interesting and/or useful, but I don’t see how this definition of the “pause” could be practical in any communication strategies other than, “Let’s redefine ‘pause’ in a way to exaggerate our views since most people won’t know what our analysis actually shows.”
Mark Bofill,
The specific heat of water is ~4.187 KJ/Kg-C
The specific heat of dry air is ~1.006 KJ/Kg-C
You were missing a decimal point in the water value. The specific heat of moist air is a bit higher, but the difference is always a factor of ~4 unless condensation is taking place.
Despite the rather bizarre word usage, the irony in this statement:
.
“Still, it’s a testament to climate scientists that they are keeping an open mind and trying to *understand* what’s happening.”
.
is lost on Tamino; no surprise there. Seems to me it is more a testament to the widespread bias in the field, and shows that climate scientists, and camp followers like Tamino, twist themselves into pretzel-like contortions to avoid the most obvious (and most likely!) explanation for ‘the pause’: the GCM’s are way too sensitive to GHG forcing, probably by a factor of about 1.5-2. The field’s obvious bias toward high climate sensitivity is nothing to worry about, because reality will not listen to appeals to authority, gives not a whit about climate models, and will not conform to support a green policy agenda. Continued contortions by the field to preserve the fantasy of high climate sensitivity will only invite public ridicule, and that ridicule will be very richly deserved. Of more importance to climate scientists, the field risks public defunding of their efforts if factual reality continues to be so consistently ignored.
Brandon,
I think it’s silly to define the “pause†in a way which makes your position “stronger†as you become less certain of your data.
If your position is “we lack certainty”, your position will automatically become stronger when your data are less certain. It’s not “silly”, it just is.
I have read Ross’s paper, so I don’t have any opinion on it.
The definition of “pause”– not sure it should be “period with no statistically significant trend”. On the other hand…. at least he did define what he means by the term, and many do seem to mean that. I mostly try to avoid characterizing the period in a way that suggests “not warming”. Certainly, the observed warming trend is slower than in the 90s.
Brandon
I do not think 2014 is a cherry picked end point, it is the end point because it is 2014, next month the end point will be 2015 , last year it was 2013.
The pause as some attempt to define it as the longest period from the current date backwards to where where the anomaly was zero contains numerous smaller pauses and trends up and down.
It starts in one gratuitous data set RSS near a cherry picked 1998, why cherry picked?
Because it was the last surge upwards in temperatures which caused this long flat spell of 18 years 2 months.
Interestingly the pause extends backwards before 1998 and could go further back if the current temps decline a bit more (not this year)
so if the mod is letting people say inflamatory things.. then write a comment that is just a tad spicey.. not inflamatory.. just spicey
then you will witness the moderators bias.
I’ve got snipped at McIntyre’s blog, while he lets people on his team get away with far worse .. one can then choose to comment or not on sites as one prefers.
I also got the impression that McKitrick’s definition of pause is too generous. Not so much because of the raw data uncertainty — if you have really crappy data, then there’s only a weak case to be made for warming, cooling, pause, whatever. But because he counts the pause as beginning when the lower uncertainty bound becomes negative, rather than when the linear trend estimate goes negative. While I haven’t done the math to prove it, it would seem that McKitrick’s method, applied to a relatively constant warming, would claim perhaps a 10-year “pause”, due to the very large uncertainty window for short durations.
But then, I’ve never liked talking about pauses. It’s not important whether warming has gone to zero — however determined — just that it’s considerably less than prognosticated by the models. And hence the dire predictions of doom are premature.
When comparing the heat capacity of water and air, one should probably use the volumetric capacity rather than the mass. Water has a density of 1,000kg/m³ while air at sea level is 1.2kg/m³. So the heat capacity per unit area of the entire atmosphere is equal to a volume of water with the same area that is ~3m deep.
Also, air near the surface over at least 70% of the surface of the Earth is in contact with water. If one assumes that relative humidity remains constant with average temperature, than most of the energy required to increase the temperature of a volume of moist air at 30°C by 1 degree is used to evaporate the water necessary to maintain constant RH. That air will then, at the same rate of mass transport, carry more energy.
RB,
Sure, we all can choose where to comment. The dearth of comments at heavily moderated, heavily political blogs does suggest that moderation should be light and unrelated to whether or not the commenter toes the policy line of that particular blog. I personally have zero motivation to comment at blogs where many on-topic comments are snipped….. better to publish a book than run a blog if you are afraid of comments from people who do not agree with you.
Steve Mosher is right about moderation at anders. I’ve commented there on some threads quite a lot. The problem is that those with whom the moderator agrees are allowed very liberal use of name calling, sarcasm, and off topic ad hominum responses. The thing that’s bothering about it is the double standard employed there. I gave up after a while. No technically correct point is accepted and references are never read. Steve Bloom is among the worst. BBD is not far behind.
lucia:
If your position is “we lack certaintyâ€, your position will automatically become stronger when your data are less certain. It’s not “sillyâ€, it just is.
Sure. But when you use such a position while coming up with a new, previously unheard of definition, you have to know you’re going to play upon people misinterpreting what you mean when you say “pause.” The paper doesn’t even do anything to address the inevitable misinterpretations.
It’s good the paper defines what it means, but if you’re going to redefine a word, you should discuss why or at least offer some caveats to address the inevitable confusion which arises from using a definition nobody else uses.
Certainly, the observed warming trend is slower than in the 90s.
Ah, but if we were less certain of the data, we wouldn’t be able to say that. We could have a “pause” where the data (ignoring uncertainties) increased faster than at any previous point. That seems pretty silly to me. This sort of analysis might be useful, but I don’t see how it is useful to define a “pause” by it.
angech:
I do not think 2014 is a cherry picked end point, it is the end point because it is 2014, next month the end point will be 2015 , last year it was 2013.
The pause as some attempt to define it as the longest period from the current date backwards to where where the anomaly was zero contains numerous smaller pauses and trends up and down.
If it isn’t cherry-picking, then it’s begging the question. The definition you’re suggesting for the “pause” inherently assumes temperature rise has currently paused. That’s tautological. You’re looking for a pause with an approach that assumes there is a pause. That’s why I say the endpoint is a cherry-pick. I think that’s a better interpretation than saying the analysis assumes it’s conclusion.
The authors repeated the analysis with one endpoint moved many times. It would be easy for them to have moved the other endpoint as well. That would have made their approach more fair. It would also mean they could have applied it to other portions of the temperature series for comparison purposes.
Oddly enough, I’ve previously suggested trying an analysis like this with every segment possible. It’s basically just a form of smoothing the data (with the length of the segment being a parameter). I know it can be done with OLS trend calculations. I’m not sure about with the new aspects the paper adds in. I imagine it could be, but I don’t know how it would be done.
Long story short, my opinion is if you want to look for a “pause” in a series, you shouldn’t assume it must exist in a certain period. I also don’t think one should encourage people to interpret a lack of certainty in one conclusion as increased certainty in the inverse conclusion.
Brandon,
It doesn’t assume that there was a pause. If the first three points have a trend where the error bars on the slope don’t include zero, then there is no pause. Of course that’s unlikely as the error bars with only three points are probably going to be large. But it is possible to say that there isn’t a pause even with three points. I don’t see your problem with not being able to detect a trend with really noisy data. That’s just what happens when you have really bad data. You cannot draw conclusions.
David Young
I have a personal metric – if Steve Bloom and BBD are allowed to comment without snipping, then the site is a joke. ATTP is a joke. There are people like Eli, Tobis and Arthur Smith who are just so comical that they can be ignored, but at least they do not fling insults at you. Possibly Eli does, but I can never understand what he is saying since he talks a different language to me – I am British. He says things like “putting people on the dime” and I have no clue what he means.
diogenes,
Steve Bloom isn’t always an over the top radical. His comments on the Ghosts of Climates Past series at Science of Doom were intelligent, on topic and notably lacking in rancor.
Then again, it could have been a different Steve Bloom.
grumbleGrumbleGrumble.
Just wrote a bundle of thanks and responses to responses and comments that errored out when I clicked submit. Been in the car all day just got back in.
Brandon, Steven, DeWitt, thanks for your responses and remarks! I’m not about to try and retype my verbose dropped response, but at least I wanted to say that much.
DeWitt Payne, the authors didn’t even calculate the trend for the first three points. From the paper:
Table 1 presents the surface results. The data are monthly but we only consider annual increments for J, and only for durations of more than m = 5 years, as failure to reject the null of no trend in the vicinity of the end of the sample could, in the case of such a short interval, arise simply due to the small size of the subsample.
They don’t offer any explanation as to why a five year “pause” could arise from the small size of the subsample but a six year “pause” wouldn’t. The number is arbitrary. No testing was done to choose it. Or at least, no such tests were reported.
If the pause ended in 2010, this methodology wouldn’t recognize that. By this methodology, the pause must have continued all the way to 2014 unless there was a statistically significant trend over a six year period. That’s a pretty meaningless caveat given nobody in the field expects trends to be statistically significant (under tests easier than those used in this paper authors).
I don’t see your problem with not being able to detect a trend with really noisy data. That’s just what happens when you have really bad data. You cannot draw conclusions.
I have no idea why you think I have a “problem with not being able to detect a trend with really noisy data.” I don’t. I’ve never said I do. What I have a problem with is claiming noise in the data means we know global warming has paused.
The authors didn’t report any power testing of their methodology. That means we have no way to know what the results would be if they chose a different ending endpoint. It’s possible their methodology would find 10-15 year “pauses” all over the same temperature series, even during periods generally accepted as having warmed. Theoretically, it could find longer pauses in such period. We don’t know. Without having any sort of power testing or comparative results, we have no way to interpret these results as more than:
Temperatures series are noisy.
I did a quick test of endpoint effects on this methodology. Since 1998 is such a well-known peak, I decided it’d be interesting to see what the methodology would show if it was run as though we only had data up to 1997. I only ran it on the HadCRUTv4 data set because I had to modify the code to get even that data to load. I figure one data set is enough to demonstrate why I dislike this methodology.
After getting HadCRUTv4 to load, I modified the code to allow us to set any ending endpoint we want. I then tried some values. Given 1998 is such a famously high point, I decided to start by choosing 1997. When I did, I found there was a “pause” from 1984-1997. When I moved further back, I found a “pause” from 1980-1995.
But when I moved forward in time, things changed dramatically. While before 1998, there were 10+ year pauses, beginning in 1998, there was no pause. At all. I’m going to go out on a limb and say it’s probably a bad sign if your methodology for searching for “pauses” causes you to find 10+ year pauses that can vanish completely if you add one year of data.
Just think. In a year or two, we may be able to repeat this analysis and find temperatures have paused for ten years. Then we can “know” the pause started at 2005.
And just pretend the year before we hadn’t “known” the pause started in 1995.
DeWitt, A raccoon does not change its stripes. Bloom has been very prominent in trying to bully Tamsin Edwards, so much so that Richard Betts has been unusually strong in her defense. He also has used lying as a tactic to discredit people. This happened to me at James where Bloom pretended to be concerned about my influence on climate science. His real concern was to discredit.
“Steve Bloom isn’t always an over the top radical. His comments on the Ghosts of Climates Past series at Science of Doom were intelligent, on topic and notably lacking in rancor.
Then again, it could have been a different Steve Bloom.”
nope same guy. a real life radical
Brandon Shollenberger (Comment #133333)
” After getting HadCRUTv4 to load when I moved forward in time, things changed dramatically. While before 1998, there were 10+ year pauses, beginning in 1998, there was no pause. At all. I’m going to go out on a limb and say it’s probably a bad sign if your methodology for searching for “pauses†causes you to find 10+ year pauses that can vanish completely if you add one year of data”.
If you use Hadcrut 4 you will find no pause after 1998 because there is no pause in that data. Heck they even extol that over at Real Climate. Your methodology is right the data set is wrong [if being tautological and looking for a pause]
If you use RSS you will find a pause for 18 years and in most data after 1998.
” I do not think 2014 is a cherry picked end point, it is the end point because it is 2014, next month the end point will be 2015 , last year it was 2013.”
“If it isn’t cherry-picking, then it’s begging the question. The definition you’re suggesting for the “pause†inherently assumes temperature rise has currently paused. That’s tautological. You’re looking for a pause with an approach that assumes there is a pause.”
No,No, Yes, I do inherently assume the temperature rise has currently paused because we are looking for a pause. Now. Being tautological is not the problem. Refusing to admit a pause exists in a data set like Tamino [not you] and pointing to other data sets which do not contain a pause as proof no pause exists is wrong . If we had the hockey stick going upwards I would not bother looking for a pause because, like Hadcrut 4, there would be no pause.
Samples from RC “Recent global warming trends: significant or paused or what?
by Stefan “But the question the media love to debate is is the warming since 1998 significantly less than the long-term warming trend? Significant again in the sense that the difference might not just be due to chance, to random variability? And the answer is clear: the 0.116 since 1998 is not significantly different from those 0.175 °C per decade since 1979 in this sense. a number of studies, including one by Grant Foster and myself, has shown that it is mostly related to El Niño / Southern Oscillation.) There simply has been no statistically significant slowdown, let alone a “pauseâ€.
Using the HadCRUT4 hybrid data Over the interval 1999-2010 the warming trend is actually larger than the long-term trend of 0.175 °C per decade.
Can anybody spot a ‘hiatus’? No? I certainly can’t.”
angech, it’s amusing to see you say:
If you use Hadcrut 4 you will find no pause after 1998 because there is no pause in that data. Heck they even extol that over at Real Climate. Your methodology is right the data set is wrong [if being tautological and looking for a pause]
As HadCRUTv4 is the data set given the most attention by Ross McKitrick in the paper I’m discussing. It is the data set he supposedly found a 19 year pause in. I only got 17 years when I ran his code, but I chalk that up to the few extra months of data.
No,No, Yes, I do inherently assume the temperature rise has currently paused because we are looking for a pause. Now. Being tautological is not the problem.
You just said you are looking for a pause so you assume there is a pause. That is about as obvious a case of begging the question as there is. So yes, it is tautological. And it is a problem.
By the way guys, I should point out I’ve written a post about this paper. I think it does a good job showing why I find this methodology… questionable.
angech,
The basic problem with Stefan’s comment is that his paper is rubbish. Really, the paper is a joke. He and Tamino set out to find the closest possible fit to a continuous linear rise, using many adjustable parameters, and allowed those parameters to assume plainly non-physical (even bizarre) values, and (surprise!) they succeed in ‘proving’ the pause doesn’t exist. Which is to say, they proved nothing about the underlying secular trend, but did demonstrate their lack of technical competence and obvious confirmation bias. The fact that such tripe passes peer review and gets published underlines what is so very wrong with the field…… too much alarmist rubbish is passed off as ‘science’ because it confirms the existing (alarmist) beliefs of those working in the field.
.
I made some effort to point this out in two guest posts here, and Troy masters also did some posts on the same silly paper at his blog (more technically elegant posts than mine!). In any case, Stefan and Tamino are just wrong about the underlying secular trend. There almost certainly has been a significant slowing in the underlying rate of rise compared to 1979 to 2001.
.
What Stefan and Tamino did prove was that John von Neumann (‘four free parameters draws an elephant’) was a lot smarter about curve fitting than they are…. and more aware of the danger of confirmation bias.
SteveF —
O/T for this thread, but apropos of von Neumann’s famous quip, see figure 1 of this article. [Non-paywalled version here.]
HaroldW,
Very funny.
SteveF –
Well, they’ve cheated a bit — I count 5 complex parameters as 10 degrees of freedom — but I got a chuckle out of reading it. A mathematical scherzo on a cold and dreary Monday morning.
HaroldW,
I am currently in the Northeast of Brazil (~9 degrees south latitude); 29C and sunny, with prevailing easterlies at about 10-15 Km per hour….neither cold nor dreary. I’m returning to Florida tonight. (also neither cold nor dreary 😉 )
So the climate obsessed are going full circle, now performing heroic acts of data torture to rationalize deny*ng (ahem) the pause.
The consistent climate obsessed behavior seems to be that data must be tortured and reality ignored to sustain the credibility of a climate apocalypse.
Brandon and gang have, to use the youthful slang, punked themselves: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/12/07/changepoint-analysis-as-applied-to-the-surface-temperature-record/
Re: HaroldW (Comment #133340)
Harold, thanks for posting that. I loved it! I’ve forwarded it already to half my colleagues. I really should read the American Journal of Physics more often and more carefully (especially considering that I occasionally publish there!).
hunter, I’ve what now?
So the climate obsessed are going full circle, now performing heroic acts of data torture to rationalize deny*ng (ahem) the pause.
The consistent climate obsessed behavior seems to be that data must be tortured and reality ignored to sustain the credibility of a climate apocalypse.
Brandon and gang have, to use the youthful slang, punked themselves: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/12/07/changepoint-analysis-as-applied-to-the-surface-temperature-record/
Are you saying I’m part of “the climate obsessed” gang? And I’ve engaged in data torture? Don’t let my disbelief fool you. I’d really like an answer to these questions. I’d especially like to know when I became climate obsessed or tortured data to deny “the pause.”
Ross McKitrick used a methodology which, amongst other things, I demonstrated is incredibly sensitive to endpoint selection. It is so sensitive to endpoint selection a single year’s data can not just end a “pause” he claims to find, but can completely erase the “pause” from the books. I said that’s bad, but I don’t see how that makes me a pause denier. If anything, I criticized the torturing of data McKitrick engaged in.
And really, I don’t see how anyone can link to the post you linked to while accusing others of torturing data. Have you read the post? I have. It’s terrible. It uses an analysis with no meaningful statistical underpinning, arbitrarily chosen parameter values and makes at least one major claim that’s completely wrong. When I discussed this, the author of the post responded in a way which makes it seem he has absolutely no idea what he’s talking about.
He couldn’t even get the basic point of what kind of changepoint the function he used looked for right. I pointed out the methodology he was criticizing used trend-based breakpoints unlike his mean value-based breakpoints. His response was to claim I was wrong, denying the cpt.mean function assigns individual segments with 0 mean. In what has to be a height of absurdity, he claimed the individual segments each had a different trend, despite having shown the breakpoint graph with each segment’s 0-mean value plotted as a line for the segment.
I’m not entirely sure what you were trying to say in your comment hunter, but every interpretation I come up with just makes me shake my head. Ross McKitrick’s claims to have found a “pause” of various lengths are suspect, at best, and the WUWT article you linked to is terrible. Those are points everyone should be able to agree to no matter what their views on global warming might be.
Harold W,
Thanks. What a hoot. That paper will be making the rounds.
The implication is that our climate obsessed friends have not only made the elephant wiggle its trunk but do so while dancing on a ball at the same time.
Over at RC they are now showing that the new fangled “change point analysis” demonstrates there is no pause. Who would have thought? Apparently moving window averages are so out of style now as to now be worthy of showing, even for reference. We are also told selecting 1998 for trend start is an “extreme cherry pick” followed by using 1980 as the start for a linear trend to date.
If there is one thing that should always be a red flag, it is the changing of mathematical techniques to analyze new observations that has no obvious mathematical advantages (desired results doesn’t count), especially when they choose not to show the results with previous good enough techniques.
Tom+Scharf, yes I saw that. It’s a very poor effort.
Basically one change point algorithm was selected, no attempt to perform a sensitivity analysis on the algorithm chosen, one particular time series was selected–apparently because it already minimized the so-called pause.
In other words, it’s an “extreme cherry pick” itself.
I did want to weigh in on Ross McKitrick’s paper here. I think Brandon is exactly right that McKitrick’s definition of the pause is all wonky.
For any time series, if you make the analysis window short enough, you’ll always find a trend that is statistically indistinguishable from a zero trend.
So with Ross’s methodology, you end up with global warming as simply being the sum of a series of pauses.
As I said, this is a bit wonky.
Tom Scharf,
RC and gang are now in the final stages of dealing with the pause:
The ocean did not eat it, the missing volcanoes did not mask it, the models are perfect and the pause never even existed in the first place.
No introspection, no honest reflection, no doubt and no science.
Carrick,
I like the ending of the deconstruction on the CPA scam at WUWT:
Taken to its logical conclusion, RC’s abuse of CPA shows that the entire warming the climate obsessed are so concerned with (in the most rent seeking sense of the word) is a costly example of anthropomorphic projection. Played out on a scale much grander than finding the Madonna in a tortilla.
Carrick, It’s worth highlighting this statement from the author of the analysis used in the RealClimate post:
Therefore, the prior suggests that the change point has equal probability of occurring anywhere between 1880 and 2014.
This may have just been a careless a slipup, but the statement is incredibly wrong. The prior distributions for the parameters may not have been biased, but there is no way the algorithm had an equal chance at finding a break point at 2013 as it did 1960. There is a minimum amount of data needed on both sides before such probability could become equal (dependent upon parameter values tested).
In fact, I’m not even convinced the probability is consistent through time at all. We know a certain amount of space is needed on each side of a change point. That skews the distribution of change points. The more change points you use, the fewer distributions of change points possible. That would skew the probabilities to favor results with relatively even spacing like those shown in the post.
I’m not sure how one would determine probabilities when considering different change point counts though. I don’t think you can assume each number of change points is equally likely, but I don’t know how you could assign probabilities to each.
In addition to hunter’s comments here, he said this in response to me over at WUWT:
lol. Brandon can’t see the woods or the trees.
I have to say, I don’t get his sort of behavior. Why do people make belittling remarks directed at people who’ve put effort into studying and discussing problems while not making any effort into specifying what those people have done wrong? I’m thinking maybe it’s an outlet for people who want to participate but lack the skill or knowledge to, but maybe people just like pointing and laughing?
I ask because I see it happen all the time, and I never understand it. I’ve followed blogs on climate change almost since their inception. For years, I didn’t comment. The reason is I didn’t have anything useful to say.
Some time back I started writing a program intended to filter out comments that don’t even try to add to discussions. I’m curious how much less material there’d be if a perfect version of it were added to all comment filters.
Sorry for the triple post, but I just saw something I find hilarious. WebHubTelescope, who seems to have developed a strange obsession with me, just posted a comment at Anders’s blog which is remarkable:
Yes, it figures that Brandon Shollenberger can’t respond. Ever since he posted this youtube video
he would be ridiculed for making an appearance here.
I don’t know why WebHubTelescope brought my name up there. My best guess is it’s because I’ve discussed a topic sort of similar to what the post is about (broadly, Anders and I have recently discussed the “pause”). I don’t know though. He’s weird. He’s also seemingly unaware of the fact I’ve been banned there.
But what I find hilarious about this is the video he links to is one I made to test the idea of a video introducing people to the hockey stick debate.* He doesn’t say anything in the video is wrong. He just shared a link to it and acted like it’s ridiculous. The effect is he’s basically (and presumably inadvertently) just promoting it. This is hilarious because if someone who agreed with me tried to post a link to the video on that site, it’d likely get them in trouble.
*If I were less lazy and/or had any talent for visual editing, I’d be pursuing that project right now.
Brandon,
he would be ridiculed for making an appearance here.
Well, I’d ridicule you for making an appearance there. :p
But see, you’d qualify as a good litmus test too. I had no idea you were banned over there. And being climate possessed you vex and disturb people over at WUWT as well. Let me know what other blogs ban or moderate you and I’ll cross them off my list as well. 🙂
Brandon,
Good point. You are serious and deserve more respect. I apologize.
Brandon, I sympathize. Webby is an odd case. He is pretty hostile to people who disagree with him, often in a very personal and nasty way. I am surprised Anders allowed the comment as he has said in the past he would not allow comments about people who had been banned since they couldn’t respond. Wouldn’t surprise me if that rule has gone by the board.
hunter, I don’t really care about respect. My experience is most calls for civility are disingenuous. What matters to me is if people contribute anything. I’d rather a person make interesting arguments and hurl invective at me than treat me respectfully and add nothing of use.
David Young, apparently WebHubTelescope is following this discussion. He posted another comment where he said:
OK, now I get it. I shouldn’t say anything about Brandy because he can’t respond, and the reason he can’t respond is because he is banned here. Can’t argue that …. unless one applies the Chewbacca defense
I’m not sure if Anders has ever followed a rule such as you describe. I don’t follow his blog very closely, but I do know I was talked about there just two weeks ago as well.
Mark Bofill, I’m intrigued by the idea of being climate possessed. Just imagine, the climate, with it’s ever important perspective on the global warming issue, possesses someone and then promptly proceeds to discuss everything about global warming that strikes it as silly without ever actually caring about global warming itself 😀
On moderation, I’ve been banned (or Tamino-esque banned) at Tamino’s, Collin Maessen’s and Anders’s blogs. I’ve had experience with Watts Up With That. I had one comment here deleted because it contained a sentence lucia thought might cause some legal risk (I reposted it without the sentence). I had a comment at Climate Audit deleted because it used religious beliefs as examples when discussing how Lewandowsky’s methodology can produce absurd results (I reposted with a different example). I’ve had a few blog owners ask me to stop discussing a subject because of food fights developing. Oh, and RealClimate has refused to post any number of comments but did recently allow me to comment on the McKitrick paper (go figure).
That pretty much sums up my experiences with moderation on blogs. I didn’t list Skeptical Science because it’s not really a blog, and I think we all know what its moderation is like. There was also a blog where a moderator snipped parts of my comments then responded in a way that misrepresented what I had said. I can’t remember the guy’s name off hand.
Strangely, of all my moderation experiences, the one with WUWT still bothers me the most. The moderation was weird, but then Anthony Watts went around telling people things about the situation he either knew, or should have known, were false. That bothers me because I expect that sort of behavior from some people/sites, but I thought WUWT was better than it.
David Young,
I noted that Webby worsened when people told him his stupid curve fit model of the climate is…. well, a stupid curve fit. But what really set him off was the long argument about what kind of statistics should apply to water molecules in cloud formation (at Judith Curry’ blog), where most people accused him of using a tiny nit-pick to write a very negative review of a book Judith co-authored. Since then he has (thankfully) retreated to echo chamber blogs like ATTP, where he mostly posts comments that are critical of people he doesn’t like. Webby joins a host of green advocates who appear frustrated by the ‘lack of progress’ instituting draconian reductions in fossil fuel use. He would be better off accepting that is not happening any timesoon.
Brandon,
Yeah, that’s rough. It’s hard for me to be confident of my objectivity about WUWT because that is my tribe. At least as far as I’m concerned, I can’t speak for all the regulars there. 🙂 But at least I don’t maintain any illusions about it, I guess.
What matters to me is if people contribute anything. I’d rather a person make interesting arguments and hurl invective at me than treat me respectfully and add nothing of use.
I hang out here specifically because all of the regulars either know more about math, data analysis, science, or are simply in general smarter than I am. So to be fair, I ought to mention I’m pretty sure I fall on the ‘taker’ end of the scale rather than the ‘giver’ end with my participation here. Mostly I contribute dumb jokes. I don’t have a problem with it, but then again I benefit from the situation. But I don’t think I’m benefiting at anyone’s expense. At least I hope not.
Heck I don’t know. I reread my last comment and it’s not quite right, but I don’t know that the issue is worth the time it takes to think about it.
Well, Bob’s El Nino guide for Dummies agrees that it’s the increased surface area of all that warm water spreadout across half the globe that causes the increased heating of the atmosphere. Not that that makes it gospel of course, but after I check a couple more things unless I’m surprised I’m going to run with that as a working theory.
Mark Bofill, that’s fine as long you don’t jump into discussions to tell people they’re wrong. Arguing when you have nothing to contribute on a subject is bad form. Talking when you have nothing to contribute on a subject is socializing.
David Young, I’m amused by the change to the page I just saw:
[Mod : Sorry, try to avoid mentioning people here who can’t respond.]
[Mod : Yes, agreed, but if he can’t respond, then I’d rather not have him mentioned at all.]
[Mod : Yes, you’ve got it]
It amuses me because Anders and Rachel both commented in a topic not two weeks ago where I was discussed. Neither said a word or did anything. It happens against now, we talk about it here, and suddenly he cares.
Maybe it’s a coincidence.
Huh. A quick Google search turns up a comment on another post by Anders where the moderator added these notes:
[Mod : If someone can’t respond, then it’s only fair that they don’t get mentioned]
[Mod : Again, if someone can’t respond here, then I’ll redact their name]
And yet, it is easy to find multiple comments insulting me on his site, often on posts where Anders and/or Rachel were actively participating in the discussion. There’s even a post where Anders explicitly mentioned me by name, where commenters openly insulted me in response. Best yet, there is even one comment where part of a comment describing me was removed but my name was not.
There is even one lengthy comment discussing me which explicitly mentions the fact I’ve been banned. And Anders was responding to the discussion!
Edit: Apparently WebHubTelescope has posted the same video at Anders’s blog before. It didn’t get moderated either.
Mark Bofill,
“I hang out here specifically because all of the regulars either know more about math, data analysis, science, or are simply in general smarter than I am.”
.
With all due respect, I think there are many regulars at WUWT who know so little science that they are not worth having a conversation with. You need only look at the (many ad nauseum) threads on where rising CO2 in the atmosphere comes from to understand just how terribly mistaken many of those folks are. These are not people who are interested in learning much of anything, and no matter how clearly you explain, they will never accept anything which says GHG’s significantly warm the Earth’s surface. Many have odd “ideas” of how things work that are utterly wrong. They are as technically bad as (and many times far worse than!) the ATTP crowd which will never accept clear data showing climate models diagnose too high a sensitivity to GHG forcing, and who insist ‘the pause’ either doesn’t exist (a la Tamino) or must have some explanation other than the obvious…. that is, the GCM’s are fundamentally wrong in their parameterizations and kludges, and Earth’s sensitivity to GHG forcing is actually pretty low.
SteveF,
Sure, that’s correct. I started off as one of those ignorant fools on WUWT myself. And look at me now. Just look at me! I’m one of those ignorant fools on a few other blogs!
No, seriously, I’ve learned a little bit since then. I think WUWT can be like an emergency first aid for people who’s heads are about to ‘splode from overexposure to alarmist nonsense. It helps, it’s valuable, I personally owe what shreds of sanity I (edit: still)possess to bumping into WUWT, but eventually maybe it’s time to move on from that. Not all the dissenting viewpoints out there are by super villians in dormant volcano’s (except Dana. Dana Nucitelli IS a supervillian I just KNOW it.); sometimes it’s just that nobody knows everything about everything. At least that’s my view.
HaroldW (Comment #133322)
December 7th, 2014 at 8:42 am
“But then, I’ve never liked talking about pauses. It’s not important whether warming has gone to zero — however determined — just that it’s considerably less than prognosticated by the models. And hence the dire predictions of doom are premature.”
I agree. In fact if one goes back in time the added degrees of freedom become your friend in showing significant differences between the observed and modeled temperature anomalies. I like to go back into the 1970s as a starting point.
I sometimes think the whole purpose of making these comparisons gets lost when dialing in on the “pause” -as does a judgment on the value of the model results when the ensembles intra and inter model CIs are large.
SteveF, I agree the quality of the commentary on WUWT is very low (unfortunately this extends to many of the front-page commentaries on new research).
I do peruse the site—mostly watching for nuggets to drop out, like links to recent papers such as this one by Phil Jones.
One of the claims that is made in the linked press report is this comment:
“There really hasn’t been a pause in global warming,†Robeson said. “There’s been a pause in Northern Hemisphere winter warming.â€
That doesn’t actually match up with the data very well.
If we compare northern versus southern hemispheric averaged data, the “pause” is clearly visible in both:
It’s a bit troubling when the main claims of a paper that appears in Nature are so easily shown to be false.
“It’s a bit troubling when the main claims of a paper that appears in Nature are so easily shown to be false.”
hmm I think zeke might have something for AGU on this or at least relevant to the discussion of extrema.
I think one can make a distinction between posts and comments. I think WUWT ha some interesting posts. Sometimes. But the comments are really not worth while reading (though I think the award for the stupidest commentstors I would give to Roy Spencer’s otherwise good site). As Climate etc., I think, as what ever subject gets hijacked by a handful of deliberately obnoxious (mostly warmist) crack pots and every discussion becomes a stupid food fight. For me the only sites with really worth while comments are Climate Audit this one here. But that’s just my personal oppinion, of course
“… Not worth having a conversation with.”
That depends on what makes a conversation worthwhile.
I’d rather speak up and be exposed as a fool, than stay quiet and remain a fool.
It’s also worthwhile to have the mistakes of those who misunderstand science be answered by those who do understand it. Even if the original, erroneous poster never gets the point, other readers can see both the error and the answer, which makes the exercise worthwhile.
WUWT’s light moderation permits more nonsensical comments, but contrast that with Tamino’s heavy-handed censorship. No matter how plausible you might find any of his articles, you can be certain he has censored every criticism of it, and so you cannot trust his conclusions.
Contrast that with Tamino’s site.
Oh, and Bishop Hill is good for both content and comments, I think.
Steven Mosher:
hmm I think zeke might have something for AGU on this or at least relevant to the discussion of extrema.
Alas, I won’t be able to attend AGU this year. Maybe you can persuade him to post his results somewhere.
Sven, back in the day when Jeff Condon was making technical posts, there were some very good discussions on that blog (noconsensus) Nick Stokes blog (moyhu) sometimes has posts that generates good discussions too. Science Of Doom is another one.
BishopHill is better when Rob Wilson and other mainstream researchers comment there (even when I don’t always agree). Most of what the BH regulars say I find repetitive, predictable and generally policy/politics driven.
Yes, Carrick, I agree. My point on the comments was not just about the “technical” or “scientific” level but also about overall civility (as well as about plain stupidity). BH is indeed more of a (mostly UK) policy driven site, but good as such.
Web Hubble Telescope fell from my radar when he kept going on about the end of oil and refused to reconsider his position. He is immune to new information and his interpretations of old information tends to be incorrect.
As John Le Carre would call him, he is a neverwuzzer.
Brandon, not to over use literary/pop culture references irt to Anders and similar blogs: They are dead, Jim.
But I still find WUWT comments (even though, for the reasons above, I do not read them) better than the activist sites as RC, Tamino or SkS. At least there’s democracy there. The three suite more to Putin’s Russia, I think.
Carrick,
The Jones paper looks very much like the many other ‘arm wave away the pause’ papers. In fairness, some papers (eg. Cowtan and Way), have some merit, but most seem to be rubbish… like the group that forced a climate model to match the known temperature history of the tropical Pacific and learned (shockingly!) that a forced match to ENSO conditions improved the model’s hind cast. I doubt either of us could ever have guessed that result. 😉
.
They concluded (mindlessly, it seems to me) that the only problem with the model is the lack of ability to match ENSO, while ignoring that their forced match of the tropical Pacific meant vast quantities of heat were systemically dumped from the model into a black hole. The problem with their model (GDFL if I remember right) is not an inability to match ENSO, it is that the model does not allow sufficient heat to escape to space. AKA it’s too damned sensitive. Why on Earth is that group not scratching their heads and asking: “Gee, why is our GCM too sensitive?” I wonder if they are too cowed by the consensus to ask the obvious question, or just not very good scientists.
.
One interesting thing about your north versus south plot is the dramatic difference in shourt term variation between the hemispheres. The north has MUCH more variation than the south. The dramatic spikes in the north (both warm and cool) suggest changes in polward heat transport…. the dreaded volar vortex?
SteveF:
One interesting thing about your north versus south plot is the dramatic difference in shourt term variation between the hemispheres. The north has MUCH more variation than the south. The dramatic spikes in the north (both warm and cool) suggest changes in polward heat transport…. the dreaded volar vortex?
Remember these are HADCRUT (rather than CRUTEM), so they are a mixture of both land and SST records.
There is of course considerably more land in the NH than the SH, and as we both know, air temperature over land is much more volatile than air temperature over ocean. So you’d expect more variability in the NH average just do to that. (But I haven’t checked to see if this difference in land-mass fraction explains all of the difference in variance.)
I believe that the shift in polar vortex mostly happens in November and December, and may be associated with a later freezing of the Arctic Ocean.
Anyway, I went back and split up the data series by month, then computed the trends for 1985-1999 (incl.) and 2000-2014 (incl.).
And here’s the difference in trends between the two periods Difference in trend
So yes there does seem to be a NH only seasonal effect associated with wintertime (and to a lesser degree fall) months, but in addition there is clearly a reduction in the rate of warming for 2000-2014 vs 1985-1999.
The claim “There really hasn’t been a pause in global warming. There’s been a pause in Northern Hemisphere winter warming” is certainly false.
I got banned.
Carrick,
What happens if you leave 1998 out, say use 1982-1986 instead of 1985-1999? Or is there a volcano or something in 1982-1984? Including 1998 would seem to bias the trend up if included in the first half or bias the trend down if included in the second half.
Carrick (Comment #133379)
I like the difference graph best. Usually looking at differences will reduce the standard deviations and thus make determining significance an easier proposition.
What about confidence intervals and significant differences for months and years?
DeWitt:
Including 1998 would seem to bias the trend up if included in the first half or bias the trend down if included in the second half.
This is a good point. I decided to compare 2000-2015 to 1975-2015. (I can give my reasoning if it isn’t obvious.)
Kenneth–the 1-sigma uncertainty in the trends for this curve is roughly 0.06°C/decade.
If you pose the statistical question as “is the rate of warming smaller?” (1-sided test)—that is, “is there a slowdown in warming?”—the difference in trends for p=0.95 is about —0.1°C/decade.
S, the difference in trends is significant wrt that test for Nov-Apr, but not for May-Oct.
I should note that an alternative explanation of the seasonal effect on the difference in trends is the ENSO:
It seems to me the really important implication of the pause is that it makes the probabilities of worst case scenarios (the long tail) more and more less likely. Even if we were “on schedule” with models, the longer we stay near the median, the more the long tail has to be dragged inward. It seems a bit sketchy that the PDF hasn’t really been revised very much (at all?) given the longer trend history.
Interesting comments
“Brandon, I haven’t been presented any justification for them, so even if they are right, I have no reason to believe it.
Mark+Bofill (Comment #133361)
What matters to me is if people contribute anything. I’d rather a person make interesting arguments and hurl invective at me than treat me respectfully and add nothing of use.
SteveF (Comment #133366)
These are not people who are interested in learning much of anything, they will never accept anything which says GHG’s significantly warm the Earth’s surface. Many have odd “ideas†of how things work that are utterly wrong. They are as technically bad as (and many times far worse than the ATTP crowd”
I tend to read WUWT, Climate etc and The Blackboard interchangeably and am very glad Lucia has kept this going.
I read Arctic Sea Ice blog [though banned], Tamino [when active] plus Bishop Hill when things are slow.
Stoat, Eli, Climate Audit and a couple of right wing Jo Nova, Bolt when things are really slow.
Climate Audit [very good] is too infrequent and too serious most of the time plus the maths is a bit like here, out of my reach a lot of the time.
Rare to stray to Real Climate unless people comment on articles there
Re “Many have odd “ideas†of how things work that are utterly wrong”
I still am hung up on the idea that energy in equals energy out , constant source sun variables in solar power and distance and albedo effects* means that the patterns we see, El Nino , transient global atmospheric warming etc are not reflective of any true gain of heat in the system, just variability in where the heat is distributed and that there can be no true storage of extra heat in the oceans as the same amount of heat goes out as comes in there is no extra heat to store.
Why I am hung up on an odd idea nobody else can see.
Tamino has posted his excuse for no pause. He uses an elegant system requiring proof for a pause that requires all the data sets to do a massive temperature drop to fit his prescription of 0.05 proof. Is this mathematically fair, Lucia et al?
Tamino “I seem to be one of very few who has said all along, repeatedly and consistently, that I’m not convinced there has been what is sometimes called a “pause†or “hiatus,†or even a slowdown in the warming trend of global temperature — let alone in global warming.”
I think it is more correct that you have been one of the very few who has denied that there is a pause.
“Why am I not convinced? Because the evidence for claims of a “pause†or “hiatus†or even slowdown is weak. Far too weak.”
I replied
Weak evidence is still evidence as in there is no smoke without a fire. What happens if more evidence emerges which is stronger?
Does the evidence have to be incontrovertible to be accepted?
Because if there is some[very weak] evidence for a pause then it means the pause cannot be ruled out.
And it’s the trend that’s the real issue,
True but which trend, and which data are you talking about. There is the real issue.
The data sets you wish to use promote your thesis. The ones that raise a concern are denigrated. True science should not denigrate data collection.
Now as to your use of maths
“So here’s the test: see whether or not we can find any start year from 1990 through 2008 for which the p-value is less than 0.05 (to meet the statistical standard of evidence). If we can’t find any such start year, then we conclude that the evidence for a trend change just isn’t there”
What a mathematical pretzel!
As you are fully aware your maths knowledge is much greater than mine.
But this is a swindle.
The reason being as you are fully aware that multiple data sets mentioned, virtually all of them except HADCRUT, show a pause where a pause is defined as a trend line of zero from the start point to the end point for differing periods of time from 5 to [in RSS ] 18 years.
All of them have flat or negative slopes for shorter end points which anyone who eyeballs the graphs can see..
Yet for your test to work, ie to prove that the fact that they are flat is statistically important, would require them to drop by at least 1 degree centigrade over this time frame which is virtually impossible. In other words you are requiring the data to pass impossible levels to prove that there is virtually no possibility that the variation is in natural levels.
Sophistry is not a good look.
As in your dice example if you throw a 12 on the only throw throwing a dice that could lose you could suspect the game is rigged.
On the fact of throwing 12 once in 20 times disproving this rubbish.
The test would be throwing a dice 20 times where the result is wheher youy win or lose the game on the throw, not just rolling it 20 times in a row. Anyone capable of rigging a dice would make it roll a 12 less often to fool you into risking your money again. In fact the 1 in 20 result confirms the dice game is more likely to be rigged.
Winning in the game at all costs is greatly to be admired when you are on the right and winning side.
Re: angech
I still am hung up on the idea that energy in equals energy out …
Yeah, sure, to consider a simplified model – let’s say that adding CO2 increased atmospheric resistance and after a certain delay we have an equilibrium such that heat in = heat out. Sun = constant current source. In terms of an electrical analog, before atmospheric resistance was increased, there was a certain potential difference between surface and empty space that ensured current in = current out. After atmospheric resistance is increased, to still ensure that current in = current out, we need potential difference between surface and space to increase. Or… surface temperature should rise (or the energy stored in the oceans has increased to a new ‘equilibrium’ value just as total charge stored in a capacitor is higher if it is charged to a higher voltage).
Carrick,
That works for me.
angech: still am hung up on the idea that energy in equals energy out
That’s only true if the system has zero memory. If you shout into a cave, does the echo come out immediately, or is there a time delay?
The same idea applies to climate. If you have a continuos forcing of the Earth, it will take a finite time for it to reach equilibrium.
Only at equilibrium is the energy per unit time (really “power”) equal for input and output. For the Earth, this time period is several thousand years.
Carrick
“The same idea applies to climate. If you have a continuous forcing of the Earth, it will take a finite time for it to reach equilibrium.”
A continuous forcing implies extra energy into a system but the black body idea implies that any energy into a body has to come out. Thus if you increase the amount of energy the same increased amount of energy must come out.
Almost instantaneously.
Solar radiation is an instantaneous direct radiative forcing so the energy per unit time (really “powerâ€) equal for input and output should still be virtually in equilibrium.
There is a concept of delay in the envelope of air and also in the envelope of water around the earth. The air has the property due to GHG of heating up to a higher temperature with extra GHG before the energy is released back to space.
This extra heat is transferred to the water layer as well but because the water layer is so many thousands of times dense it warms thousand of times more slowly.
I guess it would take several thousand years to reach the new equilibrium due to the increased CO2 levels on their own.
I would argue that while the earth’s atmosphere imperceptibly warms the amount of energy in and out is for all real intent and purpose instantaneously equal, now today and tomorrow.
If there is increased albedo due to any temperature rise the energy coming in will be less and equilibrium at the current rate with the increased CO2 would occur.
A continuous forcing implies extra energy into a system but the black body idea implies that any energy into a body has to come out. Thus if you increase the amount of energy the same increased amount of energy must come out.
Almost instantaneously.
I think it’s the almost instantaneously part that’s the problem. If you increase the temperature of an object, it will start to radiate instantaneously. I should say, it will increase the amount of energy it’s radiating instantaneously; it was already radiating unless it was at absolute zero.
However, it will not instantaneously radiate all of the excess energy; it will not instantaneously radiate itself into thermal equilibrium. Energy in won’t equal energy out until the darn thing is done changing temperature, is what I’m trying to say and probably saying badly. There’s not an energy balance until something reaches constant temperature, cause it takes energy to change an object’s temperature.
It’s hard to find intuitive examples because just about everything hot that cools in our experience is exposed to the atmosphere and thus cools mostly by convection.
I don’t know if this completely misses your point or not, I sort of suspect it might, but anyway. If it does, my apologies!
Don’t know if this will clarify or obscure, but hoping it clarifies:
Why do I claim the above? Because thermal radiation varies as the temperature of the object doing the radiating varies, and we know objects subjected to excess energy don’t instantaneously change temperatures. It takes time for them to heat up.
Each instant along that interval, the thermal radiation output of that object is increasing, because the thermal radiation output is a function of temperature and the temperature of the object is increasing. So clearly it doesn’t ‘instantaneously’ equal the total input energy until maybe the end of the time interval, when the object is done heating. I say maybe because even then, it will be radiating energy, as likely as not cooling and therefore changing temperature again. Out of equilibrium.
angech,
The summer peak in solar intensity (in the north) is on ~June 20, But the maximum temperature on land comes around a month later, when solar intensity is already falling. Same thing in winter, minimum intensity on ~December 20, but minimum temperature about a month later. Please think about why there is not instantaneous tracking of temperature with solar intensity. Then consider that the seasonal temperature swing in the ocean surface is much smaller than on land, lags further behind the solar intensity than on land, and decreases rapidly in size at increasing depth. Ask yourself why those things are true.
Okay I have an intuitive example. Even though it’s not at all perfect because of convection shouldn’t matter, all the convection does is emphasize the point.
Think about a piece of metal in a forge fire. It gets red hot, then white hot. You remove it from the fire. It doesn’t suddenly flash, blasting out all of it’s energy at once. No, it’s hot, it radiates white for awhile. It’s not in thermal balance, energy out is greater than energy in. It takes time to cool in the air. Eventually, it cools to red in the air. It keeps cooling to black. There’s nothing instantaneous about it. Truthfully, the cooling process happens a whole lot faster and we get to equilibrium much more quickly because of convection than we would if it was just radiatively cooling.
SteveF (#133394) –
Further to your point, the global solar power input is maximum at perihelion (around Jan. 3 currently), but the highest monthly average surface temperature is in July. Only above ~20 km does the average temperature peak when the solar input is maximal.
SteveF (Comment #133394) angech,
“The summer peak in solar intensity (in the north) is on ~June 20, But the maximum temperature on land comes around a month later, when solar intensity is already falling. Same thing in winter, minimum intensity on ~December 20, but minimum temperature about a month later. Please think about why there is not instantaneous tracking of temperature with solar intensity.”
true but I think you are missing a salient point, that is the summer peak in the North is completely and utterly balanced by the winter minimum temperature in the South.
So the total energy coming in is the same as the energy going out, for the planet as a whole. That is why it is represented as a black body. It is not just the face facing the sun, it is the dark side radiating as well.
Yes there is a delay in maximum heating but this is because the heat comingin is acting on a much hotter substrate than in winter and hence the summer peak is purely due to more warmer air to ac on for that month after the Summer peak. There is no more energy in the earth’s atmosphere as a whole [May help to visualize a non rotating ball and see how the heat distribution goes, true it will not match our earth but the energy input and output are the same. The thing missing in Mark’s intuitive example is that the energy coming in to heat the metal in the forge does not suddenly stop. While he is taking that sword out of the forge the other blacksmith on the other side is putting it in].
It is all really very counter intuitive until you give it a lot of thought.
No, because there is much less annual variation in temperature in the Southern Hemisphere because there is much less land and more ocean.
angech,
I was thinking of the leaky bucket analogy – water flowing in = water flowing out, but the height of water in the bucket depends on the size of the hole. Actually, it turns out, that this is explained exactly this way for the climate system in a book called ‘Modeling dynamic climate systems’ by Walter Robinson and you can read the relevant sections on google books.
Angech,
Well, sure. The real case is more complicated than the example and the example I used doesn’t capture that part.
But still, why do you say that the energy going out on the nightside equals the energy coming in on the sunny side?
This might be the case, but there is nothing inevitable about it and absent some specific reason to think so I rather doubt it. Why should the energy going out on the dark side be the same as the energy going in on the light side?
Here’s the thing. I argue that for our purposes in thinking about this, the thermal radiation of any specific object depends solely on the temperature of that object. Period. The amount of energy that radiates from the night side depends on the temperature of the stuff on the night side, not on the amount of energy entering on the daylight side.
Now, it may happen that everything balances out, but think about how unlikely that is. Even in the simple case of a homogeneous perfect sphere orbiting a fixed orbit around a constant energy radiator, even in that case, if the orbit is a parabola or ellipse, most of the time the object will be either warming or cooling, right, since the distance from the energy radiator will be changing depending where the object is in it’s orbit.
(edit: This said, it’s cyclical. There should be at minimum two instants when there is energy balance; when the heating stops and cooling begins, and when the cooling stops and the heating begins.)
So, why did I jump from day and night to different points in the orbit? Oh. First off, a side will warm in the day and cool in the night. Over time one might think the shape of this heating and cooling curve would always be the same. It won’t; the orbit will change this if nothing else does.
Because otherwise in that simple case the object would hit a constant average temperature I think and energy in and out would be balanced.
Okay my examples and explanations are confusing even to me so I’m going to shut up now. 🙂
Another analogy would be an RC circuit with a sinusoidal voltage applied. Only if the sinusoidal period is much, much larger than time constant, R*C, will the voltage at the capacitor be close to in phase and have the same magnitude as the applied signal. When the period is much shorter than the time constant, the phase shift approaches 90 degrees and the magnitude of the voltage change at the capacitor approaches zero. Heat capacity is much like capacitance. The heat capacity of land is much smaller than the heat capacity of the ocean. Hence, the diurnal variation of temperature of the ocean surface is much smaller than for the land surface.
angech,
Wow. You really are lost my friend. Warming or cooling of any body takes time, and is never instantaneous; the rate of warming is equal to the net flux of energy (heat) divided by the heat capacity of the object that is changing temperature.
dT/dt = (dH/dt)/C
where T is temperature of the object, t is time, H is heat, and C is heat capacity if the object, and lower case d represents a differential. In spoken form: the first derivative of temperature with respect to time is equal to the rate of net heat gain or loss divided by heat capacity. If this makes no sense to you, then there is no practical way for us to converse about how the Earth warms and cools.
DeWitt,
Good explanation, but I bet he will not get it. If someone does not grasp the behavior of the simplest systems, then they can’t possibly grapple with a complex system with a wide range of heat capacities which are only evident when a range of frequencies are applied. Some well meaning folks just don’t know enough to understand the physical world. This is why I rarely comment at WUWT; it is almost never worth the effort. You end up unable to convince people of the kinds of things that are taught in a high school level chemistry or physics class.
I’m closing this thread and shifting the final few (other than mine)!
If the Supreme Court throws out subsidies for states with no exchanges, they would then be under some pressure to set up exchanges. However, there is the job effect of such a decision. If there are no subsidies given out to people in a state, then a business cannot be fined for not providing government approved health insurance, as the fine only takes effect if an employee is subsidized. This would eliminate the push towards part-time work that is occurring with some major restaurant chains limiting workers to 29 hours a week.
“Central Bankers prefer a little inflation because it isn’t always easy to differentiate between good and bad deflation.”
Central bankers start worrying about deflation when the increase in inflation slows down. Their actions are always in anticipation of deflation. Japan has had some deflation over the years and while they have other economic problems that deflation was not one of them. That perceived threat of deflation is what keeps the Central Bankers in business.
http://mises.org/library/what%E2%80%99s-so-scary-about-deflation
“The person who epitomizes this fear of deflation best is Ben Bernanke, chairman of the Federal Reserve. His interpretation of the Great Depression has greatly biased his view against deflation. It is true that the Great Depression and deflation went hand in hand in some countries; but, we must be careful to distinguish between association and causation, and to correctly assess the direction of causation. A recent study by Atkeson and Kehoe spanning a period of 180 years for 17 countries found no relationship between deflation and depressions. The study actually found a greater number of episodes of depression with inflation than with deflation. Over this period, 65 out of 73 deflation episodes had no depression, and 21 out of 29 depressions had no deflation.”
Kenneth,
You know the saying about hammers and nails: If your only tool is a hammer, every problem is treated like a nail. Central bankers have only one tool.
Kenneth,
Doesn’t that percentage of women in the labor force data imply that participation by men must have declined? The percentage of women went from 32 to 60% while the percentage of the population in the labor force went from slightly less than ~60% to only ~68%. So in 1950 for every 1,000 people of working age, half men and half women, we have 600 employed, 32% of them women. So you have 192 women or 38% of all women of working age and 408 men or 82% of all men of working age. In 2000, you have 680 employed of every 1,000 people of working age, 60% of them women or 408 women, 82% of women of working age, while you have 272 men or 54% of men of working age.
QE has mostly been, if we look at the evidence, about subsidizing huge deficit spending by governments. By rigging the game to prefer unlimited government borrowing over savings, insurance rates have been driven up. Many people who would typically invest in safe havens like long term bonds are instead buying stocks. People who depend on fixed income, like much of the aging population of the world, are forced to take on more risk. Additionally, governments have been able to avoid spending discipline, running up crazy amounts of debt. Stepping back from QE is dangerous: Outside factors, like say a certain quasi-European nation looking to mess with the West, or Iran surprising us with a display of their actual nuke capability, or a cyber-Pearl Harbor, could make that careful QE walk back impossible. Not to mention just plain bad policy execution. Or a significant recession. A failed walk back means deflation of asset prices and/or inflation. The fed does claim to have stopped QE for the time being, but it is the huge debts that still exist that must be retired for this to work out without a wreck.
Interesting editorial in Today”s WSJ titled More Redistribution, Less Income. The conclusion is that, based on recently updated CBO statistics, net income, corrected for taxes and transfer, payments has fallen for the lowest three income quintiles since Obama took office.
DeWitt, the same St Louis Fed labor force participation rate for men went from 87.5% in 1940 to 75% in 2000.
http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/LNS11300001
The labor participation rate for 16 to 19 year olds went from 51% in 1948, to 58% in 1978, to 50% in 2000 and to 34% in 2014.
http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/LNS11300012
Here are some categories of historical labor participation rates from the St Louis Fed.
http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/categories/32449
I was looking for the total labor force participation rate for 16 years and older at the St Louis Fed to determine internal consistency between men and women rates for the St Louis Fed’s data, but could not come up with it – at least directly.
Using the Fed’s 1948 labor participation rates for women and men, and assuming a 50/50 portion of men and women in the US population, I get 87.5%*0.5 + 32%*0.5=59.75% which is close to your 60% figure for the rate for men and women in 1948 and using the same calculation for 2000 I get 75%*0.5+60%*0.5=67.5% which is again close to your 68% number.
The recent fall off in the participation rate for 16-19 year old’s spurs my interest for a more detailed look at the SL Fed figures.
Kenneth,
Could the falloff in 16-19 year old participation have anything to do with increases in the minimum wage in 2007, 2008 and 2009? That would be heresy of the highest order. The BLS assures us that increasing the minimum wage doesn’t cost anyone a job.
Re: DeWitt Payne on the other thread
I think the simpler answer is ‘sticky wages’ arising from basic human behavioral ‘loss aversion bias’. It is hard to tell people to take annual paycuts because of deflation. It seems like those associated with the Cato Institute will also agree on that.
DeWitt, Kenneth,
The drop in teenage labor participation may have to do with an increase in wealth (relative to 1948) for middle class families compared to the number of kids in those families. Income for middle to lower middle class families has been stagnant for over a decade, but from the 1950’s to the 1990’s there was a large increase in middle class and lower middle class family income, and a fall in the average number of children in those families.
.
So the drop may be related to less financial need among 16 to 19 year olds. You could maybe tell by looking at how the teenage participation has changed over time. It should have dropped while the middle class income/kids ratio was rising, but been fairly constant since middle class wages have been stagnant.
SteveF
Oddly, the requirements for obtaining financial aid can result in a disincentive for those just entering college to earn money!
http://www.lendkey.com/studentloans/2011/07/11/maximize-financial-aid-while-keeping-your-summer-job-the-fafsa-income-allowance/
The income allowance to avoid getting dinged on financial aid is ~$6,260.
And
http://www.usnews.com/education/best-colleges/paying-for-college/articles/2013/05/13/how-college-savings-can-affect-financial-aid
While it’s fair to expect kids who can afford college to pay for it, this also can create something of a disincentive for students to take high school jobs with the intention of ‘saving for college’.
I don’t know if this is much of an effect– but I suspect with respect to teen employment “all factors” may matter. So on the one hand, we have fewer kids from families of 10 working for to cover some basics, middle-to-slightly upper middle class kids who know how financial aid works might judge it better to work on academics or activities schools ‘value’ during the application program and so on. The truly rich kids? Well… kids with trust funds decision to work or not was never really affected by financial need.
So… who knows?
RB (Comment #133027)
Of course, the counterpoint to wages not going down in recessions is that wages that are indexed to price inflation or negotiated based on awareness of that inflation can go up or stay the same but not down during a recession because often times we have that residual inflation and not deflation during recessions and thus prices continue to increase or stay nearly the same. The notable period of stagflation that troubled some Keynesians – but only for a little while – was an extreme example of inflation and a stagnated economy occurring simultaneously. Also a clearer thinker might realize that most times we are not experiencing a recession and a brief recession is not sufficient time to adjust wages down and then quickly up again when the inflation pace reengages.
None of the discussion linked talks about the cause of wage stickiness, but surely government power invested to unions has an effect. In fact it was a Keynesian approach that wanted to handled the wage stickiness by fooling workers and particularly union workers about their wages by using price inflation to lower the effective wage rate. Workers and particularly union workers finally figured out that ploy and used cost of living in their contracts or were at least aware of the decreasing buying power of their wages when negotiating pay changes.
In a truly free market of labor the wages would adjust such that a level of full employment would nearly always occur. I think politicians depend on voters being dependent on them and their government largess or at least thinking this to be the case and thus unemployment is something that they need. Minimum wages and increases thereof cause more unemployment with everything else being equal and in order for that to be otherwise in these studies we see, either that everything else was not equal or one of the most basic tenants of economics has been broken. It would appear given these choices that politician will chose more unemployment every time. For the rest, if you believe in Keynesian fairy dust none of this will be convincing.
SteveF (Comment #133028)
SteveF my interest was in the most recent drop in job participation for 16-19 year olds from 50% in 2000 to 34% in 2014. That rate was in the 50-58% range from 1948-2000.
There are probably some correlations that might give us a hint to causation. I was thinking a possible cause would be increases in college entrance rate but that would take a huge change.
The trend for high school graduates entering college from the links below is trending like:
1992 > 54.3%; 1996> 58.5%; 2000>56.7%; 2006>61.6%; 2010> 62.5% and 2013>65.9%
That trend would indicate that at least part of the decrease in the job participation rate for the 16-19 age group is from a higher portion in this group entering college. With ready access to student loans and higher minimum wages and the state of the economy what is to say that these factors did not weigh on the decisions to enter college.
http://www.higheredinfo.org/dbrowser/?year=2000&level=nation&mode=data&state=0&submeasure=63
http://www.bls.gov/news.release/hsgec.nr0.htm
“Graduation rate has become a growing concern in the United States as it has been decreasing over the past decades.[1] High-school dropout and College dropout affect the completion rate as well as the system at large. The percentage of dropouts among 16- to 24-year-olds has shown some decreases over the past 20 years.[2] However, the substantial growth in college enrollment among high school graduates has not been matched with a comparable expansion in college degree attainment.[3] The decrease of completion rate among college students has economical, educational and political implications. At a time of historic budget shortfalls, increasing the college completion rate has been a challenge in the United States. To help colleges and universities in particular improve rates of degree completion, states try to find more efficient ways to spend.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decreasing_graduation_completion_rates_in_the_United_States
Since Obamacare was a frequent topic on the previous thread, I will venture a guess as to what the Supreme Court might do with respect to whether Federal exchanges are permissible when particular states elect not to have their own exchange.
The Supreme Court acted quickly to hear the “exchange” appeal — not waiting for a full panel (en banc) hearing the DC Federal Court of Appeals. This caused Linda Greenhouse of the NYTs to throw a fit and say how terrible the Supreme Court is.
The decision to hear the case quickly does seem to indicate that the Supreme Court will rule that the Federal exchanges can’t be used as substitutes for the State exchanges. My supposition is that those justices who believe they should follow the text of the statute believe that less harm will accrue to people if they act quickly rather than deciding the case somewhat later. Also, I suspect that the Supreme Court feels that it gave Congress a “gift” by construing the mandates of the Act as a tax to enable the Act to pass muster the first time. However, I suspect that as an institution the Supreme Court does not want to be put in the position of having to clean up messes created by Congress and that the Supreme Court may well say that in their opinion. I suspect that the Supreme Court will not clean up the mess created by Congress a second time. Additionally, Greenhouse’s apoplexy is an indication that she thinks the court will strike down the Federal exchanges.
JD
On the first, I suspect that you are likely correct. At least right now, several judges are leaning that way. But hearing the case will cause them to listen to more arguments, so one can never be sure.
On the latter:Yes. I think she thinks that. I doubt those who want the Fed exchange tax credits being kept in place would mind an early hearing if they felt confident that tax credit would survive the ruling.
JD Ohio,
When John Roberts sided with the liberal block to allow the ACA mandates to be considered a tax, I was dumbfounded, because it was an important ruling that seemed to me utterly contrary to the plain words of the constitution. It was the kind of rubbish “living constitution” argument we expect to hear from Justice Kennedy and the other liberals. Maybe Roberts will come to his senses this time and effectively get rid of the unconstitutional ACA by the back door, but his logical contortions to save the ACA the first time make me think he will find more contortions and side with the liberal block again to keep the act in force.
JD Ohio,
Sorry that should have been Breyer, not Kennedy.
Lucia: ” But hearing the case will cause them to listen to more arguments, so one can never be sure.”
With the extensive arguments that took place before, my guess is that unless something really unusual takes place, all of the justices pretty much know how they will rule now. Oral argument and the briefs are simply routine procedures they have to follow that probably won’t have much impact on Court’s ruling.
SteveF “but his [Roberts] logical contortions to save the ACA the first time make me think he will find more contortions and side with the liberal block again to keep the act in force.”
I think Roberts (this was a close call to me) didn’t want the Court to be in the position of closing down a major initiative of Congress. In this instance, if Congress screwed up the wording, it is not the Court’s fault that Obamacare would fail, but that of Congress. Institutionally, if I was the Court, I wouldn’t want to be in the position of having to clean up mistakes made by Congress. I would tell Congress to do its job correctly. In such an instance, it is hard for someone rational to claim that the Court is reaching to destroy something it doesn’t like. (Of course, a substantial number of liberals are irrational. See Greenhouse and Krugman responses to this case.)
JD
Interestingly to me, DeWitt Payne and I made our ‘forecasts’ back in 2009 . DeWitt more or less bet on massive inflation, I bet on a weak multi-year recovery. The jury is still out on my bet for when the unemployment rate drops back to pre-2007 levels.
Amongst latest news, Austrian Peter Schiff is still barking up the inflation tree .
JD Ohio
One of the troubles with the “screwed up wording” argument is that the wording isn’t any sort of obvious typo or screw up. Giving individual states discretion and providing ‘carrots’ or ‘sticks’ to cooperate with the fed’s preferences is frequently done by the Feds. So, you can’t just say “of course Congress couldn’t possibly have meant to do this this time. Also, you can’t just go by what “major supporters” or “authors who introduced the bill” hoped for. The entire point of Congress is that bills get passed by majorities. Often to obtain sufficient support, the “supporters/authors/promoters” need to compromise and include features those advocating for the bill dis-prefer. So, one can’t just look to what the major advocates of the bill would have wanted to determine what the majority voting for the bill voted into law. If things worked that way, we would never get bills passed because those who insisted on compromises would ‘know’ that the ‘rule’ was ‘whatever the author intended in the first place even if the rest of Congress thought that sucked and did not want to vote for that.’
So anyway: while some are advancing the “typo” argument, those arguments don’t strike me as very strong. Even if SCOTUS leans towards cleaning up Congresses’ screwups, it’s not at all clear not extending the tax break is any sort of “screwup”. It’s seems more likely that was the intended feature. (And of course, there are plenty of people who prefer the tax credit to not be extended for various and sundry reasons. Even if others don’t like that– it doesn’t mean Congress didn’t ‘intend’ that functionality in the first place. Nor does it mean that not -extending is a “flaw” that needs to be “fixed”. It’s just an “intended features” that has “certain consequences” which “some” like and “others” don’t like!)
I thought Chief Justice Roberts was rather clear that the court had to go to great lengths to make the laws of Congress whole and constitutional by interpretations leaning in that direction. Compelling government interest has often been used by the Court to rationalize their pro-government rulings.
Here we had a Court decision on ACA based on Congress and the Administration calling the penalties or fees for non compliance to purchasing a product like insurance, as opposed to a tax, and did this deliberately to market the legislation to wavering members of Congress and the voting public. After using this line, Justice Roberts evidently judged that the compelling government interests and the Courts obligation to lean toward judging legislation constitutional allowed him to call the penalty a tax and in effect rule and with precedent for future cases that, yes indeed, Congress can legislate mandatory purchase of anything and called it any euphemism it wants in order to pass it and Court will consider it a tax and thus give constitutional status.
That was some very serious adjudication by the Chief Justice and I do not see it as some public relations effort on his part. The issue before the Court in the case under discussion here is of a similar nature in that we have a wording in the law that very likely helped sell it (and by admission of a consultant on the legislation) but if interpreted at face value puts some serious limitations in place. It calls for Justice Roberts to once again apply his judicial magic using the precedents of compelling government interest and/or judicial interpretation leaning in the favor of legislation being constitutional.
Recall also that the administration has changed the implementation of ACA for political benefit and without facing an restraining court action to this point in time which, in effect, makes the political benefits and timing of implementation permanent.
Interesting also is how the constitutionality of the Executive orders to do what Congress ordinarily does, as in the recent example on immigration, will ever be tested given the issue of standing in this matter.
While I am an advocate for much smaller government and individual freedoms (including not being forced to purchase products that the government thinks I should own), I think the Obama administration has done us all great favor by showing the Civics 101 crowd that the Constitution in reality and as interpreted by the Supreme Court is not the fortress against government tyranny that some might have thought or hoped.
KF ” It calls for Justice Roberts to once again apply his judicial magic using the precedents of compelling government interest and/or judicial interpretation leaning in the favor of legislation being constitutional.”
…..
This is where you and I disagree. The rules of construction stating that a court is supposed to lean in favor of the constitutionality of legislation are not applicable here. The court isn’t ruling on the constitutionality of exchanges. It is simply interpreting what Congress wrote. If you now assume that Congress could impose individual mandates, the question then becomes how did Congress implement those mandates. It had multiple ways of doing so in ways that don’t now raise constitutional questions. In the text, it chose a way that is not apparently workable. By holding Congress to what it wrote, the court is, in effect, deferring to Congress.
Again, I am not a Constitutional lawyer, so take my opinion as a lawyer for what it is worth.
JD
I like the argument from the left that Federal exchanges are allowed to offer subsidies in the form of tax credits because a Federal exchange is really a State exchange because the Federal exchange is only acting for the State.
This case seems to me to be much more like the recess appointment case than the individual mandate case. You could see a large majority of the Court voting to enforce the plain language of the law. The recess appointments were struck down 9-0. It’s not Congress that the Court would be overruling by ruling against subsidies by Federal Exchanges, it’s Executive branch overreach.
RB (Comment #133038)
“Interestingly to me, DeWitt Payne and I made our ‘forecasts’ back in 2009 . DeWitt more or less bet on massive inflation, I bet on a weak multi-year recovery. The jury is still out on my bet for when the unemployment rate drops back to pre-2007 levels.
Amongst latest news, Austrian Peter Schiff is still barking up the inflation tree.”
RB, you bring up an interesting point and one that goes directly to Ben Bernanke’s ego in this matter and the defense of the defenders of the Fed.
Bernanke, in his less than polite academic criticism of the BOJ for not being able to use his strategy of inflation being the great mender of recessions and being capable of creating that inflation, has kind of set himself up for like criticism. He and many members of the Fed were attempting in the recent recession to produce more inflation as part of that strategy and they have failed. The defenders of the Fed point to that failure as a success and with the supposition, that can never be tested, that things would have been worse if the Fed had not acted as they did. I think both Bernanke and Milton Friedman had it wrong on the Feds problems in the depression era and that was the case with the recent recession, i.e. the failure to realize that you cannot push on rope.
I am sure that you are aware that how the Fed unwinds its record balance sheet is still very much an issue of its potential influence on the economy. In the bigger picture the mundane and somewhat arbitrary indexes like the consumer price index and the unemployment rate do not provide a very complete picture of the economy as we know when looking at labor participation rate changes and creation of price bubbles like the current stock market might well be on its way to being.
“By holding Congress to what it wrote, the court is, in effect, deferring to Congress.”
JD, is that exactly what Roberts did not do with regard to Congress in calling a penalty a tax? And, by the way, I would feel better if the Court did not defer to Congress. I would prefer that they restrain Congress and proudly point to that restraint as a constitutional matter.
I have heard constitutional lawyers on the left point to precedents for the Court ruling on the intent and not wording of a law. Perhaps we should be discussing those cases.
Re: Kenneth+Fritsch (Comment #133043)
I’d say Bernanke was successful in halting the deflationary spiral and as I linked to in the current thread, the current recovery compares quite well against the previous Big Five banking crises. Thanks to a dysfunctional House, the Fed was the only game in town and so, I’d say much of this recovery owes to Fed policies.
I will daresay that the bulk of the Fed’s treasury purchases will be held to maturity rather than being unwound by sales. It is possible that we might get high single-digit inflation towards the later years but I think it is unlikely that we will experience the hyperinflation that many on the right, particularly those with Austrian leanings, have been warning about since inception.
With regards to Friedman vs the Austrians, I think this old comment is appropos. It is not surprising that the Austrian school has had no traction in policy since 1932.
I should have added above, JD, that you are no doubt correct in calling the current case one of interpretation of the law and not the constitutionality of it and that my referencing to constitutionality was incorrect. Nevertheless I stand by my impression that the Court goes to great lengths to rule in favor of Congress in these matters and that Roberts calling a penalty a tax in the ACA ruling could have bearing on how he rules on the current case.
I am always amazed on how the Court Justices reason their rulings in cases like this one and how far they are willing to go.
RB (Comment #133046)
“With regards to Friedman vs the Austrians, I think this old comment is appropos. It is not surprising that the Austrian school has had no traction in policy since 1932.”
I do not think the Austrians have ever had a lot influence on policy and only recently have their criticisms of current economic policy even been acknowledged.
Keynesian economic theory gave a rationale for what in the past might have been considered bad political behavior and no doubt that is its attraction to and reason for it being so widely accepted by politicians and having the staying power it has had.
Kenneth,
“I think the Obama administration has done us all great favor by showing the Civics 101 crowd that the Constitution in reality and as interpreted by the Supreme Court is not the fortress against government tyranny that some might have thought or hoped.”
.
Kelo V New London had already convinced me of this, but the Robert’s ACA ruling confirmed it in a rather convincing fashion. Both cases effectively eliminated important limitations placed on government action by the Constitution; I now have no doubt that any and all constitutional limits on government action, and all guarantees of personal liberties, will be abandoned by the Court if it is politically expedient. The plain words of the Constitution are simply ignored by the Court whenever needed. By refusing to defend the integrity of the Constitution, the Supreme Court has reduced itself to little more than a rubber stamp for politicians on all important constitutional issues. What these absurd rulings show is that relying on the Constitution to protect your liberties… indeed, to protect personal liberty itself…. is foolish; you need to elect politicians who will do that.
Re: Kenneth+Fritsch (Comment #133048)
I’d say that the Austrian school’s policy view, as exemplified by Mellon’s ‘purging the rottenness out of the system’, peaked in 1930 and declined rapidly in 1932, with even Hayek admitting that the deflation went too far. This is a right-leaning economist’s historical summary of that period.
If one looks back at the history of the USSC on big issues it is surprising at how often the Court has made rulings that history showed to be wrong headed.
Here are a couple of links that taken together might well have Roberts voting for the literal interpretation of ACA (first link) and Scalia against it (second link).
The author of the second linked article would appear to be saying that the Court should make the law whole regardless of how sloppy and ambiguous it might have been written and in the first linked article that the Court further should consider as a practical matter that if the Court tells Congress to rewrite that part it would not given the current political alignment in Congress and thus is in effect striking down that part of the law. In other words that author is saying that the Court needs to consider the politics of the matter.
What bothers me the most is the second article ignoring the very strong probability that the law was written as ambiguously as it was because it was a means of selling it much like calling the tax a penalty.
http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-hasen-roberts-supreme-court-obamacare-20141113-story.html
http://www.scotusblog.com/2014/11/symposium-the-grant-in-king-obamacare-subsidies-as-textualisms-big-test/
RB , Austrian economics have evolved over the years and although its theories on opportunity cost, capital and interest, inflation, the economic calculation problem and business cycles have stayed much the same, many libertarians would reject the idea that Hayek was an Austrian in the mold of Mises or Rothbard. If I were asked to chose the economist I most associated with Austrian economics today it would be Rothbard.
I would be interested in some references whereby Austrian policies were carried out by governments in the early 20th century. Mises’ and Hayek’s writings rightfully became popular in pointing out the deficiencies in socialism and controlled economies, but their prescriptions for policies were not put into effect. Maybe Austrians advocating for less government intervention has something to do with that situation. That Paul Krugman goes to great lengths in attempts to discredit what he thinks Austrian economics are, should be an encouraging sign for Austrian proponents, but in my view he is more of a partisan hack defending liberal Democrats – even though he won a Nobel prize for advocating for free trade across national borders.
JD
That’s my view. If they hold Congress to what it wrote that is deferring to Congress. Congress can always pass a bill to change what it wrote. If they don’t pass a bill modifying it, then…well… they don’t.
If they wrote an ‘unworkable’ bill, that’s not something the court can ‘fix’ by interpreting the bill to say something other than what Congress wrote.
So: either justices who support it have to find a way to interpret the bill as actually saying insurance bought in Fed exchanges gets a tax break or the bill doesn’t say that. If it doesn’t and so becomes “unworkable”, so be it. It’s not the first time Congress has passed an “unworkable” bill and it won’t be the last!
Has anyone heard how oral argument went in the Mann libel case today before the District of Columbia Court of Appeals? I saw that there was a live stream, but I wasn’t able to catch it.
RB,
Are you sure you have your time line right? Republicans lost control of both houses on Congress in the 2006 elections. Republicans did not regain control of the House until 2011. And even then, the argument that it was the Senate under Harry Reid that was the dysfunctional body is much stronger, IMO, than it was the House.
When a bank calls a note you get what they say you get, which can be nothing in the worst case which has occurred.
As to deflation, what is the return on a bond during a deflationary period. Zero, or pretty damn close which explains why people with money hate deflation.
Kenneth,
The language allowing the State Exchanges to offer subsidies while the Federal Exchanges couldn’t is not ambiguous at all. It requires tortured logic and an assumption that the word ‘establish’ is ambiguous. when it clearly isn’t, to say that:
means that an Exchange set up by HHS for the State is an
This isn’t Russell’s Who Shaved the Barber paradox. Exchanges are either established by the State or the HHS secretary. They can’t be both.
Again, it’s no different, IMO, than the President saying that Congress being in session is ambiguous so recess appointments can be made whenever he felt like it. And it’s the IRS’ interpretation of the Exchange establishment language that’s being challenged, not Congress’s ability to write the law in the first place. There is no question involving Congress here as there was for the individual mandate. The real torturing in that decision was not so much whether the mandate was a tax or not, but how to make a tax law that did not originate in the House, as required by the Constitution in unambiguous language, pass legal muster.
Eli,
You have it exactly backwards. Bond holders hate inflation, because immediate value of any long term bond drops and the effective return on investment is less, and can be negative, even if held to maturity. The return on a bond will be increased by the rate of deflation, not drop to zero. In deflation, you want to hold cash, not goods. That’s why you can get an economic death spiral during a severe deflation due to deferred purchasing.
Sure the government could default on its obligations to its creditors. But it would require a force majeure for that to happen. The last time the US defaulted on currency issued, greenbacks, was 1862, during the War Between the States. The last bond default was on Liberty Bonds in 1934 during the Great Depression. And even that wasn’t a complete default.
Dewitt, Republicans recaptured the majority in the 2010 elections, fiscal stimulus ended on Dec. 31, 2010. Operation Twist was announced in 2011, QE3 was announced in 2012.
Eli: the other side of inflation/deflation is the credit market. Debtors would benefit from unanticipated inflation while lenders would benefit from deflation that was not anticipated at the time that a loan was contracted. Deflation hurts debtors by increasing the real value of their loans outstanding.
RB,
Dysfunctional is in the eye of the beholder. It was Harry Reid’s Senate that refused to compromise, or frequently even allow votes. If you mean by dysfunctional that the House no longer rubber stamped Democrat authored legislation, then I guess it was dysfunctional. I would say that most of the time it was acting as it was elected to do, unlike the Senate. Compromise is impossible when there is no trust that the other side will keep their end of the bargain. The Democrats have a long history of welshing on their deals. Since the Republicans regained the House, the administration hasn’t even offered to deal legitimately. It’s my way or the highway. The recent immigration flap is the most recent example.
If fiscal stimulus was going to work, it should have been obvious by 2011. It didn’t and therefore wasn’t. Operation Twist and QE have only enriched bankers and Wall Street. Hammers for problems that aren’t nails.
Saying that we have to do something is another logical fallacy, specifically the Politician’s syllogism.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politician%27s_syllogism
DeWitt, I do not know if you have read from that second link I gave above but what the author is using in his contextual argument is from the following excerpt. He, in my view, is using a more obscurant view of the laws text than those he is criticizing for that. In my view and that of those who were selling the law, the provision of a subsidy for states that provided their own exchanges was to encourage states to do just that. I would also bet that the Budget Office scored the cost to the Federal government based on a large percentage of state exchanges being established. We know that the states take on that cost, or at least part of it, after a period of 3 years – as I recall. From this viewpoint that subsidy proviso is very much within the context of the law and what the article points to is, in actuality, the sloppiness and vagueness in writing the law. Of course, all this could be made moot by the Supreme Court suggesting that Congress simply make their intentions more clear. Both authors to linked article evidently object to that action because, OMG, the politics in Congress have changed since the law was passed.
http://www.scotusblog.com/2014/11/symposium-the-grant-in-king-obamacare-subsidies-as-textualisms-big-test/
“On the other hand, as amply detailed in the briefing, the ACA’s text – not its purpose or its legislative history, or anything else that textualists don’t generally consider – is slashed to pieces under the challengers’ reading. Two examples from a list of many offered in the briefing:
Section 36B(f)(3) requires “[e]ach Exchange (or any person carrying out 1 or more responsibilities of an Exchange under section 1311(f)(3) or 1321(c)†to report the premiums doled out. Section 1321 is the federal exchange provision, and so this section is rendered meaningless if the federal exchanges have no subsidies.
Likewise Section 1312(f) provides that only “qualified individuals†can purchase on an Exchange but defines a qualified individual as one who “resides in the State that established the Exchange.†Failure to understand a federally operated exchange as the legal equivalent of a state exchange would mean that federal exchanges have no customers.
Justice Scalia’s own statutory interpretation treatise argues (at pages 63 and 168) that “there can be no justification for needlessly rendering provisions in conflict if they can be interpreted harmoniously,†and that statutory provisions should not be interpreted to render them ineffective or superfluous.”
Re: DeWitt+Payne (Comment #133061)
But I thought you were arguing elsewhere that the massive WW2 spending pulled the economy out of the 1930s depression. Something tells me we will be going around in circles.
RB,
That’s not what I said. What I said was that the New Deal was gutted by WWII.
And even then, things didn’t get really rolling until the confiscatory highest marginal tax rate of 90+% was reduced to 70% during the JFK administration.
Kenneth+Fritsch (Comment #133052)
I was not very impressed with the arguments made at the scotus blog. One thing stated by Gluck was “The 2012 Supreme Court brief of the state governments likewise read the statute as providing subsidies through the federal exchanges….” To me this is the argument of a partisan and not a reasonably objective analysis. What someone states in a brief has nothing to do with determining what a statute means. To me Gluck is trying to lay a basis for partisans to undermine the legitimacy of the Supreme Court if it rules against the federal exchanges.
Wikipedia states: “The ACA legislation includes the language “enrolled in through an Exchange established by the State under 1311” where the IRS regulation implements a more broad definition encompassing both the state exchanges and the federal exchanges set up under section 1321.[2] The legislation includes the phrase “established by the State under 1311″ in nine different locations” (I am too busy at this time to read the whole act or the briefs) See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_v._Burwell
Here is a quote from King v. Burwell where the Court ruled in favor of the Obama interpretation:
“The plaintiffs’ primary rationale for their interpretation is that the language says what it says, and that it clearly mentions state-run Exchanges under § 1311. If Congress meant to include federally-run Exchanges, it would not have specifically chosen the word “state†or referenced § 1311. The federal government is not a “State,†and so the phrase “Exchange established by the State under [§] 1311,†standing alone, supports the notion that credits are unavailable to consumers on 18
federal Exchanges. Further, the plaintiffs assert that because state and federal Exchanges are referred to separately in § 1311 and § 1321, the omission in 26 U.S.C. § 36B of any reference to federal Exchanges established under § 1321 represents an intentional choice on behalf of Congress to exclude federal Exchanges and include only state Exchanges established under
§ 1311.
There can be no question that there is a certain sense to the plaintiffs’ position. ”
………………………..
Also, later on the Court stated: “Having thus explained the parties’ competing primary arguments, the court is of the opinion that the defendants have the stronger position, although only slightly.”
Later on the same page: “However, the court cannot ignore the common-sense appeal of the plaintiffs’ argument; a literal reading of the statute undoubtedly accords more closely with their position.”
So, my quick review of the cases and some articles leads me to conclude that if there weren’t severe practical problems with interpreting the language as prohibiting federal exchanges, that is the way virtually all courts would interpret the language.
JD
Either we get back to having a President that faithfully executes the law or we have a dictator.
We reign in him, finally and firmly, or we see the undoing of the Republic.
Eli,
You have not been well informed on economics. Posters here are offering you some good information. I hope you can gain from it.
open thread..
unrelated hmm if you are a fan of alphabets enjoy the folliwng
the story of hangul turned into a mystery, romance, martial arts tale.
http://www.dramafever.com/drama/4050/Tree_With_Deep_Roots/
I remember that some time ago Carrick made graphs that “proved” that MBH98/99 was garbage, failed to match any other reconstruction, blah blah blah.
.
Now I see the Klaus Bitterman graph that’s making the rounds (e.g. at the bottom of Eli’s latest blog post) and shows MBH 99 matching PAGES2K with an accuracy that teeters between mind-boggling and ridiculous.
.
Question: Who goofed?
toto,
Don’t know who goofed but I just tried to visit Eli’s blog that is linked it his name and got my Firefox hijacked by whatever stuff rests on his site. He apparently went to court to watch the proceedings on the basis of why it is ok for people to lie about Mann.
So we see on this thread that Eli severely misunderstands high school level economics and finance. And he is clueless about the difference between opinion and fact. Not to mention so partisan that his guy can call anyone any names they want and anyone who disagrees is a liar to be sued. But we are to trust the clever Rabett on all issues climate just because.
JD+Ohio (Comment #133065)
JD my point in this matter was to look at some of the rationale that might be used by the Supreme Court to make ACA whole and let the insurance purchased at the Federal market places be subsidized. I already know that the four liberal justices will be able to rationalize doing this and provide talking points for the MSM.
My general interest in this whole ACA law making, marketing and adjudication has been my recognition of the blatantly dishonest and misleading information disseminated prior to the passing of this law and the failure of the courts to deal with it. Calling the mandate enforcement a penalty and not a tax, and now calling the subsidy incentive for the states to establish their own market places out of context in order to sell the program, and then having the courts give all this a wink and nod in a situation where there is precedent set by Congress and the Executive branches of government in mandating the citizens purchase a product, should make shambles of the naive Civics 101 thinking about government in the US and Constitutional protections.
Re: toto (Nov 25 23:26),
PAGES2K is somewhat controversial. You might want to look at ClimateAudit. McIntyre has a lot of posts on the subject. If MBH98/99 did happen to be correct, it would be purely by accident. It has been demonstrated to produce hockey sticks from red noise.
I would suggest that both of these reconstructions are wrong because (1) selecting proxies directly or indirectly after measuring the proxy temperature relation is a basic flaw that biases the result and (2) most of the proxies do not agree with one another in a pairwise comparison under Singular Spectrum and Coherence analysis.
“Now I see the Klaus Bitterman graph that’s making the rounds (e.g. at the bottom of Eli’s latest blog post) and shows MBH 99 matching PAGES2K with an accuracy that teeters between mind-boggling and ridiculous.”
.
DeWitt,
” If MBH98/99 did happen to be correct, it would be purely by accident. It has been demonstrated to produce hockey sticks from red noise.”
.
I have given this some thought, and convinced myself that matching red (or red-ish) noise to a target trend does indeed generate hockey sticks, though the tendency is only strong when the noise is quite red. I think there is a reasonable test though: select proxy series for the reconstruction based on correlation with only half the target series (eg second half or first half) and compare the resulting ‘reconstructions’. I think that if the hockey stick is being created mostly out of redness, then the two reconstructions (in the period before the target period) will not be the same. Specifically, the “reconstruction” will diverge from the first half of the target series when proxies for the reconstruction are selected based on only the correlation with the second half of the target series.
Of course, I am not sure there is enough S/N ratio for any reasonable test to be done. In addition, ex-post-facto selection of series based on correlation with the target strikes me as wrong-headed to begin with.
Gergis / Pages2K was the most blatant and verifiable case of confirmation bias I have ever seen.
After CA found the math error in 2012 and the paper was effectively withdrawn, Gergis was put in a very untenable position:
1. Execute the math as described in his paper and lose the HS.
2. Change the math from what is described in the paper to create a HS.
Long story short, he originally attempted to do #2 and the resubmitted paper was rejected by the journal.
Pages2K is an extension of the original #2.
Now what is unavoidable is the charge that it is the HS result that is desired, not some sort of analytical truth. Basically put tree rings and other proxies in a statistical blender and hit mix or puree or whip or liquify until a desired result is obtained.
This exercise also showed how results are very dependent on the processing methods, and not on the strength of the raw data.
Finally got to read Eli’s post onthe Mann censroship lawsuit hearing. differnt computer, better cookie/malware protection I guess. I do like how the Rabett can’t allow people to actually qutoe what Mann & pals have said if the source is from the climategate leaks. It is almost as if the raskly Rabett is, errr denying that those things were actually said and is looking for any little rabett hole to hide in.
Re: SteveF (Nov 26 09:26),
Mann, et.al.’s 2008 paper did exactly what you recommend, as I remember. Jeff ID had some posts on that (here’s one). The algorithm was tested against reddish noise too. But Jeff demonstrates that it’s possible to ‘recover’ any signal you want using the 2008 algorithm
One of the problems with MBH98/99 is the sensitivity to just a few proxies, specifically the bristlecone pine series and possibly one other. Remove those and no HS. IMO, that alone invalidates MBH98/99.
By the way, tree ring proxies are indeed quite red. Some of them test as fractionally integrated as well.
SteveF and Dewitt, discussing, analyzing and criticizing these temperature reconstruction requires more than a paragraph or two to detail. Red noise can be more persistent in proxy data than in instrumental temperature series and thus if one chooses to (incorrectly) select proxies after the fact of determining how well those proxies fit the general upward trend in the instrumental record that persistence can create sufficient numbers of proxy series that are otherwise simply red and white noise with some non temperature related cycles mixed in. It makes choosing proxies to fit the modern upward temperature trend an easy proposition provided sufficient numbers of proxies are available to choose. That makes the key here the size of the population to choose from and then by using more of those that bend upward and if necessary upwards by large amounts. I would call this reconstruction problem that of ex post fact selection.
There are many other reconstruction problems with methodology which usually involves allowing subjective choices to enter the picture – like in selecting principle components.
There are other problems like those in Mann 2008 that are more closely associated with deliberate manipulation (my most polite term for what I see) of the data. The proxies used in Mann (2008) include those that were truncated and replaced with other data, proxies with instrumental data included in the ending part, proxies used upside down and a large portion of the proxy data ending in and before the 1980s and then in-filled to 2005 with other data. If you eliminate all those manipulations as I have done and reported at CA you will have a reconstruction that looks like red/white noise and no hockey stick.
I have been doing analyses of reconstructions like Arctic 2K and Australasia2K with an eye to how proxies compare in a pair-wise fashion and how these series differ when looking at the spectral character and coherence. Some of that analyses was reported at CA in the link below. A number Australasia proxies are located in close proximity making comparisons more valid.
http://climateaudit.org/2014/11/22/data-torture-in-gergis2k/#comment-741831
What bothers me about criticisms of these temperature reconstructions is that often the person criticizing does not want to clutter his dissertation or comments with all the problems that are seen and thus I think their audience might wrongly assume that the reconstructions would be valid if the criticized problem were cleaned up.
I think a large clue about the weaknesses of these reconstructions is that the authors seldom if ever give any space to talking about the individual proxies – and in good detail. It is as though their interest is merely to show what they already believe to be true, and if they can induce their black boxes to provide that answer, it is the end of their interest and investigation.
“Finally got to read Eli’s post onthe Mann censroship lawsuit hearing. differnt computer, better cookie/malware protection I guess. I do like how the Rabett can’t allow people to actually qutoe what Mann & pals have said if the source is from the climategate leaks. It is almost as if the raskly Rabett is, errr denying that those things were actually said and is looking for any little rabett hole to hide in.”
adopt a sock puppet and mis paraphrase the text he wont show, then challenge him to prove you wrong by quoting the text.
toto:
It wasn’t just me. SKS has a similar plot. Zeke had a post with a similar plot on this blog.
Brandon and I had a constructive exchange on his blog, relating to my version of the figure, but see in particular this comment.
As far as I can tell, nobody in the paleo community takes the MBH result seriously anymore, and it is generally recognized by the community that MBH had too little low-frequency variability.
This latter point on loss of low frequency information was also made at RealClimate in reference to Moberg 2005 though they carefully side step the issue of “if Moberg 2005 has more realistic low-frequency variability” what it implies about MBH98/99.
SteveF, if MBH incoherently added any low-frequency signal from the proxies (this is what a loss of low frequency signal implies), what you’ll end up with is a flat handle that resembles high-pass filtered red noise.
Splitting the dataset into two portions will only confirm that your results are robust in that sense, and not that they are successfully recovering the signal of interest.
I should be very clear that when I talk about the Mann 2008 analyses that I did that I include all the details so that no one who might be interested is mislead. I have linked that analysis and some analysis of other temperature reconstructions below.
I have greatly appreciated SteveM’s return to analyzing temperature reconstructions and I would strongly suggested anyone interested read his recent posts.
I should point out that I did a composite of the Mann (2008) proxies after eliminating all the proxies and ending data that did not belong in a legitimate reconstruction and for the reasons given above. My hypothesis was that these proxies do not have a clear enough temperature signal to appear composited together looking like anything other than a red/white noise series. To that end when I composited these series I did not intend to weight the series by spatial concentration.
Now when it is said that these proxy series appear as white and red noise that is true of some , but other series look like white noise and others appear to have decadal trends and here I am talking about trends that go beyond what would be expected to be generated by red noise and/or long term persistence. These trends at the end the series in the modern period can go up or down. The end result of the composite I did on the Mann 92008) proxy series was a composite that can be fitted to an ARMA model or alternatively an ARIMA model with fractional integration.
Those decadal trends, at least in the case of tree rings, results I think, from what I see whereby these series can have relatively high correlations year over year between tree ring proxy series and/or the temperature series, but the trends for these series can go in very different directions. Awareness of this phenomena is why I am not at all impressed with relatively high correlations of these proxy series with temperature. It is the changes in decadal trends from the modern period to the historical that is of the most critical importance in doing temperature reconstructions. A diverging proxy series can have a good correlation with the temperature series. Further I think that proxies do respond to temperature in some manner but with much noise from other response variables, but that response year over year is sometimes apparent. The problem is that the magnitude in that response does not match the temperature change and thus good correlation between series does not mean the series trends will be near the same.
Mann (2000):
http://climateaudit.org/2014/10/01/sliming-by-stokes/#comment-734591
Kaufmann Arctic2K:
http://climateaudit.org/2014/10/27/the-third-warmest-arctic-century/#comment-740865
http://climateaudit.org/2014/10/11/decomposing-paico/#comment-737206
MBH(1998):
http://climateaudit.org/2014/10/01/sliming-by-stokes/#comment-733619
DeWitt:
Remember that Mann 2008 used several algorithms. Composite plus scale (CPS) in fact can recover any signal you prefer.
The CPS result was concluded even by Mann to not be robust compared to his errors-in-variables (EIV) method.
There are a ridiculous number of mistakes made in Mann’s 2008 paper, but interestingly to me at least, he still seems to get a result similar to the other reconstructions. I doubt he and Loehle are in collusion, so that’s not a good explanation.
Here’s a plot of correlation to Ljungqvist for the various reconstructions. It’s not an exaggeration to say MBH had nothing in common, nor that Mann 2008 CPS is very much an outlier among long-duration reconstructions.
Steve Mosher,
Thanks for the advice, I still hunt some but don’t hunt Rabbits, lol…..
What is ironic in all this is I bet Eli would be a great guy to sit own with and chit chat over adult beverages.
Re: Kenneth+Fritsch (Nov 26 16:06),
The acronym for ARIMA with fractional integration is either FARIMA or ARFIMA. I personally prefer ARFIMA. And LTP can give quite long apparent trends.
Re: Carrick (Nov 26 16:19),
I didn’t remember, and I didn’t bother to go back and look it up. I just remembered that the 2008 paper had at least as many problems, although different ones, than MBH98/99 and picked out one in a quick search.
DeWitt+Payne (Comment #133084)
DeWitt, in the future I will attempt to go with the often used term as you noted. That way I will not have to state that I used the fractionally integrated form.
You are correct that ARIMA fractionally integrated can have very long apparent trends, but so can ARMA models with high auto correlation With ARFIMA they can be longer.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autoregressive_fractionally_integrated_moving_average
“The acronyms “ARFIMA” or “FARIMA” are often used, although it is also conventional to simply extend the “ARIMA(p,d,q)” notation for models, by simply allowing the order of differencing, d, to take fractional values.”
When you start looking at lots of these proxies used in temperature reconstructions the issues become more complicated, but not any less condemning of the results obtained. I think SteveM has a good grasp on these issues and probably because he has been analyzing huge numbers of them and over a long period of time. Too bad the authors of reconstructions have not done the same.
RE DeWitt+Payne (Comment #133059)
I’m not sure what Eli meant when he said “people with money hate deflation.” If he meant people who depend on interest income from money markets and short-term CD’s, he might have a point, since deflation can push interest rates down to almost nothing on these securities. If prices also are falling, however, the savings are worth more, but people focused on interest income may not see it that way.
Happy Thanksgiving Lucia and Blackboard denizens!
I’m off to a strong start with the feasting, having started the day off with a hearty serving of homemade French toast casserole and bacon. 2000 calories down, 8000 calories to go! 😉
We require a Thanksgiving Haiku Thread. 😉
Andrew
Sam Katzman, general counsel for CEI gave his evaluation of the Mann oral argument and said he was cautiously optimistic. His comments on Williams arguments were as follows:
“The judges were not that active in questioning Mann’s attorney, John B. Williams, but they made several very telling comments. When Williams claimed that eight separate investigations had exonerated Mann, one judge asked, “What if CEI sincerely believes that those investigations are flawed? They take them apart quite thoroughly in their reply brief.†Another question: “If CEI strongly believes that its statements are true, then how can you ever show malice?†When Williams cited one Supreme Court case as being directly on point, a judge asked, “how is that the right fit for this case?†Another noted that, under Williams’ approach, the Anti-SLAPP law “wouldn’t be doing very much work.†And when Williams claimed that preponderance of evidence should suffice, a judge asked, “but you need clear and convincing evidence for malice.†And the judge noted that Williams failed to ask for the directed discovery that is expressly allowed under the Anti-SLAPP law. Finally, when Williams argued that a jury could evaluate misleading effect, all three judges made some rolling-eye expressions.” See http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/3231058/posts
I have been grossly underwhelmed by Williams’ work on this case, and I would like to hear the audio to see if I agree with Katzman’s observations. The one statement that the anti-slapp law wouldn’t be doing much work if it was construed as advocated by Mann, strongly tends to help the defendants.
……
Also, Harry Passfield apparently attended the oral argument and stated on Bishop Hill: “When the NR (etc) brief was doing his pitch and tearing into the fraud that was the HS – including a good piece of extempore on ‘hide the decline’ – the judges were quite pointed in their questions about how it was so very wrong to use various sources of data in one chart. They really got into detail about the use of the HS in the WMO cover page and IPCC first AR.â€
……..
In general, I think the observations above are substantially positive for the defendants. I was afraid that the Court wouldn’t get beyond Mann’s seemingly high academic qualifications and honors, but it obviously did.
Happy Thanksgiving to everyone.
JD
Regarding deflation, savings, and interest rates:
Deflation does INCREASE future purchasing power ( which is why it’s a problem – why buy anything today that will be cheaper tomorrow? )
In the US, we don’t have deflation – inflation is slow ( ~ 1.5 % a year )
What is significant is REAL interest rates ( interest rates minus inflation ). Real interest rates are negative which costs savers. This is intentional by the Fed to discourage saving and encourage spending. Of course, the poor and middle class are the classes most likely to have interest bearing accounts which have suffered, versus equity investments which have prospered.
To an extent Eli is correct in that reserve banks promote negative interest rates BECAUSE there is a deflation risk.
The US has an advantage because of immigration ( legal or otherwise ) so we have a natural growth factor that Europe, Japan, and soon China will lack. But we are not completely immune because other countries are exporting their deflation through their currency devaluations intended to increase exports.
Also, meager growth outlook has the German 10 year bond now yielding less than 0.75% and the Japanese 10 year yielding less than 0.5% !!!!!!! As a result, Japanese and German investors will gravitate toward buying US 10 year bonds yielding 2.25% which will continue to drag down US yields.
Unfortunately, credit means ‘belief’ – the belief that a borrower will actually pay back the bond. Belief is absolute – either one believes or doesn’t believe. It’s possible that the we will live to see a flip in belief for Japan/Germany or even the US. In some sense, low yields in the developed world indicate a belief in low growth which will be a flip from the developed world to the ’emerging markets’.
Interesting times indeed.
Re Climate Weenie (Comment #133091)
Good post, but I’m not sure I understand what you mean by “believe is absolute.” Some bonds have more risk of default than others and pay higher rates to induce investors to take the greater risk. Wouldn’t faith in these bonds be weaker than faith in bonds with less risk of default?
JD Ohio,
I hope you are right, but suspect you are wrong. These judges are (IMHO) very unlikely to stop the suit. They will almost certainly hold that immediate appeal is allowed, but almost certainly make sure the case goes to trial… to be certain the financial punishment of ideological opponents continues. It is just politics masquerading as jurisprudence; leopards do not easily change their spots.
.
Sorry if that sounds jaded, but my faith in courts being above politics has diminished over the years to very close to zero. Which is of course why everyone gets so worked up over judicial appointments.
.
Happy Thanksgiving.
I too am very concerned that political fads of today could prevail over the law or comon sense. There is a long and sorry history of this in American courts.
This attempt of Mann’s so brazen and its implications so bad for all forms of media and speech. I think this one might get by despite the politics.
My hope is the biggest challenge for the Appeal is how to frame a ruling that protects free speech while still kowtowing to the cliamte obsessed consensus.
The best would be for the panel to reject that the case is about cliamte at all and instead focus on the law and the Constitution. But I am an optimist.
JD and Lucia, two thoughts. First, inmmy view Robert’s ACA ruling is much more hopeful for the future, a new Marbury v. Madison. It (finally) set limits on Congressional use of the commerce clause. And, it said that the individual mandate would have been inconstitutional but for Congressional ability to tax.what we have not seen is any sequellae yet.
And on the state versus fed exchange tax credits, do not overlook the Gruber affair. The importance of which was not saying Congress took advantage of voter stupidity. It is that in those same talks, he made it clear that the Congressional intent was to incentivize states to establish state exchanges, and punish those that did not by denying their citizens the credits if the feds had to set up the exchange. Pelosi is caught out by her own former website touting Gruber. POTUS is caught out by the 17 meetings Gruber had inside the WH during the ACA drafting process.
The congressional language is clear. So is the intent, made crystal clear by Gruber. SCOTUS will almost certainly strike down the Faulty IRS interpretation.
Steve F: “I hope you are right, but suspect you are wrong. These judges are (IMHO) very unlikely to stop the suit.
.
Sorry if that sounds jaded, but my faith in courts being above politics has diminished over the years to very close to zero.”
..
No reason not to be jaded. However, in all fairness, the judges of the court of appeals appear to be far more informed than 99% of the journalists who [mis] cover climate change.
JD
With a functioning legislature, the threat of the SCOTUS making an adverse ruling would be used as leverage to make other desired changes to the ACA that the right supports. You do this for us, and we will correct the typo through legislation. Horse trading.
Most people are fed up with this winner take all, everything is the nuclear option, method of governing.
Don’t confuse this attitude with support for an activist government, grid lock on many things is perfectly fine with me, as it is with anyone where the policy is moving in the wrong direction. There are deals that can be made. Typo fixes for tax reform or whatever.
Rud – not just the WH meeting, but the $400,000 payments.
I am not sure Gruber’s statements can be used to bolster intent of Congress.
Upcoming SCOTUS ruling on King v. Burwell – I do not trust anything right now. However, they did take the case while there is no split.
On another topic: I see where the supposedly destroyed with no backup IRS emails have been found.
:>
Will I get face punched if I ask, ‘What difference does that make now?’
It will make a difference to Lerner’s future.
No, I meant that that line worked so well for Hillary. Why would anybody care about the issue now?
I think the administration successfully ran the clock out on the IRS issue as well. It’d take a gruber of an email to make people care about it again.
(EDIT: don’t misunderstand me. I’d be delighted to find I was mistaken. I’d be deeply pleased to see somebody crucified for some of the more egregious abuses of power this administration has indulged in. I just don’t think it’s going to happen.)
Mark Bofill,
My bet is that team Obama will wish it was only Gruber emails before this is over.
Kan, good point about the Gruber payments.
As to Congressional intent, Gruber was explicit on multiple occaisions. His statements provide at least probitive evidence. Any valid Congressional reason for the language as is cuts hard against the administration’s ‘typo’ argument advanced at the appellate stage. Just as do the separate definitions of state and federal exchanges, plus the exact statutory language which the IRS rule plainly ignores.
Hunter,
That’d make for a merry Christmas indeed in the Bofill household. 🙂 Of course, this’d never have time to properly blow up by Christmas, but you get the sentiment.
Mark Bofill,
I am hoping for more of a nice 2015, one that takes most of the year to develop and really gets going strong for Xmas 2015…..
My understanding is that no statements AFTER the law was passed are admissible to determine legislative intent. This is probably a good rule.
Tom,
Yes, it would be good in principal, but admissions about what the intent was when the law was written potentially seem like a gray area. While I am impressed with how well major media has buried Gruber’s serial admissions, I think it bothers more than a few people and will do so for quite some time.
TS “My understanding is that no statements AFTER the law was passed are admissible to determine legislative intent. This is probably a good rule.”
I suspect that a number of courts have applied that rule. However, it is quite easy to get around. All a judge would have to say is that based on the structure of the Act, the reason for not allowing federal exchanges would be to pressure the states into taking part. (wink – wink). You don’t have to explicitly mention Gruber to argue that not allowing federal exchanges was built into the act for a particular purpose.
JD
“All a judge would have to say is that based on the structure of the Act, the reason for not allowing federal exchanges would be to pressure the states into taking part.”
That would certainly be “legislating from the bench,” which is frowned upon in some parts.
There is nothing in the ACA to support the claim that congress wanted to deny subsides in order to force states to create their own exchanges. There is also no evidence that it was Congress’ intent to pressure states into creating their own exchanges. This is why opponents of the bill are hyping the Gruber videos, which are politically damaging but don’t speak to the question of Congress’ intent at all.
It’s fairly absurd to think that Congress intended to coerce states into creating their own exchanges while keeping this coercion completely secret. That’s not how incentives work. That’s not how the incentives to expand Medicaid worked in the same act.
That is not to say that opponents don’t have a good case, though. I expect the Supreme Court to invalidate the subsides, but I’d expect most states to eventually create exchanges or simply “establish” an exchange that links to the federal exchange.
Boris,
Huh? how would it be “legislating from the bench”?
Tailoring bills to pressuring states to act in ways that support a federal goal is a longstanding feature of lots of bill. That’s generally the ‘intention’ of various ‘carrot and stick’ provisions and this sure and heck looks like one.
Anyway, the courts don’t need to “find” this ‘intention’ it’s the side that wants the court to permit deductions for insurance bought through federal exchanges who needs to bring forward evidence that this could not have been the intention. Since this is a very common thing for Congress to ‘intend’, they need to bring pretty strong evidence.
We’ll see what the court rules. But the issue isn’t whether they wanted to “deny”. The issue is what they granted or even intended to grant. I know you might like to flip, and the effect of “not granting” may be to “deny”. But if they didn’t grant a tax deduction then they didn’t grant a deduction.
Huh? Congress “coercing” states by setting up carrots and sticks happens in lots and lots and lots and lots of bills. They did it with the 55 mph speed limit (connecting things to highway funds). There are lots of other cases. It’s hardly “absurd” to think Congress intended to set up ‘carrot/stick’ situations when they do so very often.
Congress actually attempted to coerce states to expand Medicare in the ACA. That’s the part of the act that was struck down in NFIB v. Sibelius.
Congress actually did try to coerce the states to expand Medicare coverage in the ACA. That’s the part of the act that was struck down by the Supreme Court.
Boris “That would certainly be “legislating from the bench,†which is frowned upon in some parts.”
If that is your concern, then you would go by the clear literal language of the act, which does not permit the federal exchanges, which was even recognized by the Appeals Court that upheld the exchanges.
JD
Boris is spinning so quickly he is getting dizzy.
if Boris is concerned about “legislating from the Bench”, I wonder if he is also concerned with “legislating from the Oval Office”.
The interesting speculation is if the President will simply ignore an unfavorable court ruling on this as he has done other times with inconvenient court rulings or pesky laws.
hunter,
“The interesting speculation is if the President will simply ignore an unfavorable court ruling on this as he has done other times with inconvenient court rulings or pesky laws.”
.
Hard to say. He (more-or-less) backed down when the Court ruled his ‘recess appointment’ to the NLRB was unlawful… the appointee left the NLRB and her nomination has now been formally withdrawn from Senate consideration. The mess created by that nominee’s unlawful votes on many NLRB cases remains to be cleaned up.
.
Which reminds me of an interesting video about the different moral priorities for ‘conservatives’ and ‘liberals’. (http://www.ted.com/talks/jonathan_haidt_on_the_moral_mind?language=en) Very liberal people like Mr. Obama (and several judges on the Supreme Court!) tend to value “fairness” and “protecting the weak” above all else, and so are quite willing to sacrifice “less important” things like the rule of law and the explicit limits on government action that are in the constitution, so long as “fairness” is increased. This focus on fairness is why liberals so often talk about “externalities” and “the tragedy of the commons”, and why forcing GHG reductions on the public (even at considerable cost) is easy for liberals to embrace; forcing GHG reductions on energy users increases perceived “fairness” by pricing externalities and controlling access to and use of the commons.
.
IMO, the chaos that Mr. Obama’s lawlessness has brought about will have negative social and political repercussions for a long time after he is gone. I suspect that like most liberals, he either doesn’t think the repercussions will be negative, or doesn’t care much about them.
SteveF,
The odd thing about “tragedy of the commons” is that often the solution to the tragedy is to beef up private ownership of things. Admittedly, this can be impractical, but it works in situations where ‘commons’ were things like “a pasture that could be used by everyone and anyone who owned a sheep” etc.
The other twist on “fairness” is that people don’t always agree on what is “fair”. Some things are obviously unfair, but sometimes people want to absolve others from the “unfair” consequences of their decisions. I mean… it might be “unfair” that I eventually get a heart attack if adopt a diet of 100% chocolate and coffee and red wine, smoke a pack a day and never exercise. At that point, I might be debilitated unable to work and impoverished. (Plus, another consequence is that I would be “so not a babe” that I couldn’t even snag some poor lonely guy to be my sugar daddy and support my chocolate, coffee, wine drinking existence!)
Possibly someone else adopted the same diet– but dodged the bullet on the heart attack. But one would still need to debate the degree of “unfairness” in my ill-fate.
Lucia,
Yes, perceived “fairness” seems to trump all else (like personal responsibility) for many liberals. I even heard a liberal argue that the great thing about the ACA is that it disconnects costs from personal health; someone who chooses to smoke, overeat (and become vastly obese), not exercise, etc pays the same as everyone else. Normal (market based) health insurance rewards prudent personal choices with lower premiums and punishes imprudent personal choices with higher premiums….. but that is deemed too “unfair” to many people. Hummm… reward something and you tend to get more of it, punish something and you tend to get less of it. I don’t understand how this simple reality is lost on so many.
PS Your intellect would probably allow you to snag a sugar daddy anyway. 😉
SteveF,
What I want to know is how the Kelo decision protects the weak. Or why raising the price of electricity by banning fossil fuel powered electricity generation helps the poor. Or how allowing the teachers unions to bargain collectively to gain tenure in K-12 helps students. In fact, how do public employee unions help anyone but their members and their favored politicians? IMO, there’s a fundamental conflict of interest in allowing public employee unions to engage in politics using mandatory dues at all, and that includes teachers unions and school board elections. For liberals, it seems that fairness only applies to groups, not individuals. The interests of the state always seems to trump individual rights, a la Kelo.
I started to write about this, the idea of fairness. But eventually when I checked the definition I had to back up.
See, in my mind, it is fair that somebody who exercises and eats right enjoys the benefits of their sacrifice and discipline. They’re healthier and they’ve personally paid the price to be healthier. It’s also fair (in my mind) that Lucia’s hypothetical chocolate wine coffee drinker end up having heart attacks. They got to enjoy the chocolate and the wine after all.
But going to the dictionary, I don’t see what I expect at all.
Merriam Webster gives me this:
Google’s default dictionary whatever it is,
I always thought fairness had something to do with justice. Live and learn I guess.
I can’t quite get past this. All these years, I’d assumed it was the people I disagreed with who had it wrong. Turns out, I’m really not about what’s fair at all. I don’t believe fairness is a virtue.
Since apparently it really isn’t fair to make judgements that discriminate or favor one side or the other. Even if they deserve it. Nope, if that’s what fairness is about I want no part of it.
I feel like I’m progressing on my path towards becoming a Sith lord. 🙂 Now all I need is the ability to sense and control the Dark Side of the Force!
Mark,
The Jedi were mistaken. The Force is. The Dark and Light are supposed to be in balance. They actually get in to how the balance fails at one point in the Clone Wars animated series, Season 3, episode 15: Overlords. The Chosen One, presumably Luke, is supposed to restore the balance that the Jedi helped to upset. Anakin failed the test.
I’m betting that Disney will ignore that aspect completely in the new movies.
Mark Bofill,
Fairness has to be seen through a strong moral lens.
…more later- the lovely Mrs. hunter insists on some more late fall gardening.
🙂 Score.
Not only will Hunter come back and spike the fairness vrs justice ball I’ve setup, but I’ve successfully spawned a The Force Awakens subdicussion!
DeWitt,
Clearly I need to watch those. Honestly now, I’d thought that ‘balance to the force’ had something to do with the number of practitioners on each side. I imagined that Anakin ‘brought balance’ by wiping out most of the Jedi, so that all that was left was Vader and the Emperor balancing Obi-Wan and Yoda.
On a much more superficial topic :> I love the lightsaber broadsword / claymore thing in the trailer! I’m sure it makes no sense whatsoever, but how can one not like an interesting new lightsaber design!
(EDIT: Gah, I got some chores to run too. I be back later)
Mark,
Have you read Harrison Bergeron by Kurt Vonnegut. That’s the reductio ad absurdum of the argument that fairness requires equality of outcome even if individuals have different capabilities.
DeWitt,
“What I want to know is how the Kelo decision protects the weak. Or why raising the price of electricity by banning fossil fuel powered electricity generation helps the poor. Or how allowing the teachers unions to bargain collectively to gain tenure in K-12 helps students. ”
.
There are always going to be sell-outs/corruption no matter who gets elected. Confiscating Kelo’s house and support for public employee unions are just sellouts to favored groups, with a clear expectation of net benefits to the politicians involved.
.
Reducing GHG emissions, even at very high cost, is in fact frequently claimed a “defense of the poor”, with the claim usually made that people in poor countries will ‘pay a terrible price’ for warming. You know, the claims of millions of deaths from weather catastrophes, wars, pestilence, rising sea levels, etc all caused by the selfish, greedy, corrupt GHG emitters in the West, who get all the benefits of low cost energy, while the poor will be paying for those benefits with their lives… for centuries…or even millennia. Now since reducing GHG emissions will in fact raise energy cost worldwide, the evil West (and especially the richest people in the Evil West!) should also pay generous subsidies to the people in poor countries so they are insulated from higher energy prices. See, it’s all based on fairness.
.
BTW, I think I have captured the the mindset of the ‘And then there’s physics’ crowd pretty accurately.
Wow I missed that one. Looking at the synopsis it sounds like a good one. I’ve got to see if I can run down a copy someplace.
Thanks!
SteveF,
Of course those subsidies would go to the local governments, not individuals, and straight from there into Swiss bank accounts. The catastrophe argument also ignores that those people are already subject to catastrophic events and lowering ghg emissions may, at best, keep the rate of those catastrophic events constant rather than increasing somewhat.
SteveF (Comment #133120)
“Yes, perceived “fairness†seems to trump all else (like personal responsibility) for many liberals. I even heard a liberal argue that the great thing about the ACA is that it disconnects costs from personal health; someone who chooses to smoke, overeat (and become vastly obese), not exercise, etc pays the same as everyone else.”
The motivation behind these acts is not really related to fairness rather fairness is a term used to obtain appeal for a government action. It is obtaining government action in these matters that motivates this political class. I would suppose the term “fairness” in that political environment must mean whatever the government deems fair or better what a government under the control of modern day liberals deems fair.
Lucia “The other twist on “fairness†is that people don’t always agree on what is “fairâ€.
SteveF “Yes, perceived “fairness†seems to trump all else”.
Um, some people don’t always get what is fair which in my case should have been looks, personality and a better maths brain. Not to mention the odd billion dollars and a sports car.
At least that’s my perception.
SteveF “BTW, I think I have captured the the mindset of the ‘And then there’s physics’ crowd pretty accurately.”
Please, put it in a box and let it contemplate the missing ocean heat, That is if that crowd has one in the first place.
SteveF “BTW, I think I have captured the the mindset of the ‘And then there’s physics’ crowd pretty accurately.â€
Perhaps not so? A comment from the shy and somewhat retiring one,
“maybe someone would surprise me and actually engage in a thoughtful and pleasant discussion. However, I think I’m now convinced that this really is not possible.”
I did point out the paradox of Robbie Burns genie and was surprisingly moderated.
Along with Mosher.
angech,
Sorry, I didn’t understand those comments. Too obscure.
Mark Bofill, your reading of those definitions of “fair” is way off. The first definition says fairness involves a “lack of favoritism.” One doesn’t need favoritism to treat people or things differently. If one child misbehaves and another does not, it is not “favoritism” to punish only the child who misbehaves. It is fair.
Similarly, the second definition says being fair means being “free from discrimination.” I discriminate if I say black people can’t shop at my store. I don’t discriminate if I say a black person who I’ve caught shoplifting in the past can’t shop at my store.
There is nothing unfair about using a relevant factor when making a decision. A person’s history of shoplifting is relevant to a store owner’s decision to allow them in his store. A man’s history of drug abuse is relevant to a medical insurance company’s price for his insurance. Neither involves discrimination or favoritism because both look only at factors relevant to the decisions being made.
The way you’re reading those definitions is like me breaking into your house then complaining because, “You didn’t call the cops on every other person on the street.”
Brandon,
Yeah, I think so too.
Going back to the definition:
Sort of pointless to have a judge or umpire at all if there’s no judgement to be made, no in or out, right or wrong, true or false, illegal or illegal, what have you.
I thought Hunter was going to take care of it, but you took care of it nicely Brandon. Thanks!
BTW
I don’t organize my thoughts like that deliberately. It’s become part of my style of rhetoric, to occasionally put forward an absurd position for the person I’m talking with to correct. Somehow I find it works better if you let the other guy point out the madness, as opposed to doing it myself.
Works better sometimes, anyways. 🙂
Mark Bofill, no prob.
In other news, Tamino has posted his first blog post in a few months. I think it’s amusingly bad. I left a comment highlighting one rather large absurdity in the post, but there are quite a few more. I also don’t expect my comment to see the light of day. That is, unless Tamino lets it through with some hostile moderator’s remark insulting me for daring to think his blatant cherry-picking is somehow inappropriate.
Did he delete your comment? I don’t see it.
It was cold in the midwest last winter. Lots of us live here. 🙂
….Not spiking the ball too much this evening. After a hard day of gardening and pleasant bike ride left me tired. My trip to the gym to enjoy the whirlpool ended in my leaving my black cell phone out of my gym bag in the black painted locker, and walking out to the car, realizing it was in the gym and going back to find it gone.
So life ain’t fair is one lesson of fairness to never forget, lol. :>(
lucia, Tamino has had my comments go straight to moderation ever since the issue which led to me writing my first blog post (which was on this site). I don’t think I’ve bothered trying to comment there since, but with how long it’s been, I figured I’d give it another try. My comment is still in his moderation queue. I’ll post a screenshot if it disappears.
And oh! I totally missed that people talked about the Force and balance. I remember being confused the first time I heard the prophecy about bringing balance to the Force. It immediately seemed like a bad thing to me because it meant a lot of Jedis would have to die. After all, how else could one person bring balance to the Force when there were dozens (hundreds?) of Jedis on the light side and only a few Siths on the dark?
Apparently that’s a common reaction, and it’s one George Lucas never expected. To him, the force would only be “balanced” if the dark side was eliminated (or at least, not used). That’s right, according to the creator of Star Wars, the only way to balance the Force, which had a light side and dark side, was to completely eliminate one side.
I’m not sure Lucas understands what the word balance means.
Brandon,
That just shows how plots and characters in a work of fiction end up going in directions the author thought he hadn’t intended because the logic of the situation demands it. IMO, the Jedi’s got pretty much what they deserved as arrogant, self righteous SOB’s, in other words, hubris, or possibly power corrupts.
Recently there was either a book I read, movie I watched or possibly even a video game whose denouement revolved around eliminating something bad from human nature or something like that. The joys of getting older. Anyway, the cure was worse than the disease. IMO, you couldn’t eliminate use of the Dark Side of the Force without eliminating access to the use of the Force entirely. The Ring of Power cannot be used safely, it must be destroyed.
I imagine it’s not lost on the SCOTUS that it is their job to interpret the laws passed by Congress, and not the Administrative branch’s. Congress is all huffy due to the executive branch’s law making excesses, and my guess is that the SCOTUS is pretty huffy about the executive branch’s serial non-enforcement and re-interpreting of the ACA. The difference here is that the SCOTUS rarely makes their feelings evident in public. I half believe they accepted this latest ACA challenge in order to draw a line in the sand with the executive branch, and I’m guessing they will not be giving a sympathetic hearing.
I didn’t find Tamino’s post particularly bad, especially compared to the typical fare he offers up. He is of course still convinced that GHG driven warming is a big problem which demands a ‘solution’ (greatly restricting use of fossil fuels, nothing less), but I suspect he is smart enough to recognize that is just not going to happen for at least 20-30 years. By which time climate sensitivity will likely be understood to be modest, and there won’t be so many frantic demands to eliminate fossil fuels. It is a tough time to be a strident green activist….. I have read some are even suffering from pre-traumatic stress syndrome…. which I guess is what happens when a green advocate realizes they are not going to get what they want. Becoming very upset when you realize you can’t have what you want is common among children and adolescents.
Hunter,
I’m sorry to hear it. That stinks.
Brandon,
Well, what with the ambiguity of the word ‘fair’ in today’s common usage who can blame the guy. 🙂 But just look at real life, ATTP bows out and Tamino resurrects. The Force remains in balance. I’m not sure what side of the Force that is, but…
Lucia,
The interesting thing about last winter in North America is that while there were lots of records set for low daytime maximum temperature, there were relatively fewer records set for low minimum temperature. This is consistent with the continuing pattern of many more record high minimum temperatures than record high maximum temperatures. I think this is pointing toward a reduction in boundary layer inversion and radiational surface cooling at night as having a big influence on daily average temperature on land. My understanding is that GCM’s can’t handle boundary layer inversions; if so, GCM’s should predict more record high maximums than are observed.
Really big lever arm?
Serenity maybe? (If you’re old enough that seems like “recently.” Don’t ask me how I know. I just do.)
Brandon, so far your still up at T’s.
Interesting post in the way he can switch the focus of an argument, attacked the UK coldest winter theme but completely ignored the USA links when he could not disprove it.
I am sure I heard repeated references to second coldest month ever when it was freezing but he focused on the full winter data in the UK.
May be the fault of the presenters not being clear on a definition of winter.
Fellow blog on Arctic Sea Ice has nearly frozen recently due to the dearth of good ice shrinking news.
On a positive note total sea ice is positive again, again.
:>
Ask a mechanical engineer a dopey question…
There was an article in the Chicago Tribune this morning that in my view pertains to the fairness issue discussed in this thread and the ongoing ACA debate. I have earlier mentioned the Tribune articles that have appeared spinning ACA favorably by failing to mention the obvious dilemma of the law mandating low income people to buy insurance that even with subsidies the premiums become a large percentage of their income. These low premium bronzed plans have a high deductible in the neighborhood of $5,750 for 2015 in the Chicago area.
There has appeared to be a major disconnect at the Tribune with the editorial staff pointing to problems with ACA and the journalist doing articles in the paper spinning ACA favorably and almost in direct opposition in the same paper issue. I suspect someone on the editorial staff, which did have Obama twice as its choice for President, finally said enough is enough and please write something about those high deductibles.
The article today points to lower income people buying insurance as mandated by ACA and then never using it because they cannot afford to spend the $5,000 or so on medical expenses before the insurance kicks in. Those people instead are going to charitable free or reduced cost health care centers – as they evidently did in the past. One could call this problem an unintended consequence but that hardly would hold water unless we assumed the writers of the law and those who voted for it were rather stupid and/or uninformed. I think rather they saw it as an opportunity for the government to encroach into a new area and whether in the end that was “fair” mattered not at all.
While I am at it there also appeared an article in today’s Tribune that talks about civics as taught in high schools in IL and how there are groups who are encouraging graduation requirements using civics testing and even community service. I have this great disrespect for the teaching of civics that espouses government actions in the most sanitized , idealistic and heroic way possible and never mentions the underlying darker motivations and voter manipulations. Politicians will, of course, want the sanitized version even if they have to mandate it and who, after all, could be against civics education. Forced community service is I suppose another way of aggrandizing the government. The regimes in North Korea, Cuba and Venezuela would be proud.
Spoiler Alert:
The book was the final volume of the Wheel of Time series. The protagonist wins the ultimate battle against the Dark and has the power to completely remove its influence from the world for all time. But he also has the power to see the future consequences of his actions. The world without the Dark is in many ways as bad as it would be if the Dark had triumphed. In the end, he restores the balance between Dark and Light rather than tipping it all the way to the Light.
Steve F,
What the climate obsessed need is a St. Paul to convincingly explain away the delayed apocalypse. Early Christians operated under the assumption that 2nd coming and accompanying apocalypse would be in their lifetimes. Paul was in tune enough to realize that there was a delay developing and that if it were not expalined it would be damaging to the nascent movement. The climate mania faces a different problem: It is ascendant at least in public statements by most leaders. It is not a guerilla movement in schism from a larger movement. But still the climate faithful need some guidance on how to ignore reality and maintain their faith in a CO2 armageddon. Afterall, the windmills must keep turning and solar panels must keep sitting there.
Totally off topic. (I know, open thread, but..)
Is this Maxwell’s demon in the flesh? I’m sort of surprised this works.
SteveF, Tamino let my comment through (with the inserted responses). He justifies his cherry picking by saying:
Which is basically him saying, “I have no obligation to look at the data as a whole. All I’m showing is anyone can cherry-pick anything.” He then uses this argument to say:
Culpable ignorance? Dishonesty? The post he is criticizing discussed a major trend across more than half the United States (and I believe even more of Canada). His only response was to show you can select a few areas where the opposite different trend happened.
Nevermind he wrote most of his post to justify saying:
Ignoring the fact the two authors referred to winters “in the United Kingdom and continental Europe.” Again, he selected a single location and suggested others were dishonest for not discussing it while he refused to discuss what the overall data shows.
His post is basically accusing others of dishonesty for not giving a fair representation of the data by saying you can pick out small amounts of data that give different results.
(Now I need to go see if I can find a convenient record of temperatures across the various parts of Europe.)
Mark,
You shouldn’t be surprised. It’s possible to create coatings that have different reflectivity at different wavelengths. TINOx, for example, has an absorptivity at wavelengths less than 4 μm, i.e. 99% of solar radiation, of greater than 0.95 and an emissivity for wavelengths greater than 5 μm of less than 0.05. So it gets a lot hotter when exposed to sunlight than a black or gray body with constant absorptivity/emissivity at all wavelengths.
The Stanford invention is the opposite of TINOx. It has very low absorptivity, and hence high reflectivity, ( t+r+a ≡ 1, a = e ) for solar radiation wavelengths and high emissivity/absorptivity in the atmospheric window range of 8-14 μm. As a result it will be cooler than a black or gray body when exposed to solar radiation. This does not violate the Second Law. Entropy still increases. Low emissivity window glazing is another example of a wavelength selective coating.
Mark Bofill,
Thanks for the kind words. Replacing a phone while under contract is more complex than I thought. I sacrificed my upgarde so my son the developer could have the Iphone 6. My MIA phone is/was an early HTC, over four years old. My best hope is that the theif will just leave it laying around the 24 hour fitness. Otherwise a solution will involve buying either a used phone or a pre-paid and converting it to regular use.
DeWitt,
Yeah, I can’t put my finger on what I thought the problem would be. I can reflect radiation (edit: at specific wavelengths), more efficiently or less efficiently depending on the material I’m using, that’s not news.
…
I don’t know what bugs me about it. Obviously there is no thermodynamic law violation, because the durned thing works.
…
mmm..
Cause it cools, I guess, is the counterintuitive part that bothers me. I didn’t think I could get rid of heat that way, without producing more heat someplace else…
meh. Obviously I’m not thinking about it correctly. 🙂
Mark,
The way to look at it isn’t that it cools, but that it doesn’t get as hot in the first place. The rate of energy absorption is lower while the rate of energy emission at a given temperature is still high. That makes the steady state temperature where energy in equals energy out lower because the total power is lower.
:> Thanks, I get it now.
Tamino’s response to Brandon is utter nonsense. But in its arrogance quite typical for him of course.
I have little faith in my comments passing moderation at Tamino’s blog, and I don’t feel like waiting another 12 hours to find out if my current one will. As such, here is the comment I just submitted:
Upon rereading it, I can see I need to proofread my comments better >.<
DeWitt Payne (Comment #133160 Mark,
The way to look at it isn’t that it cools, but that it doesn’t get as hot in the first place. The rate of energy absorption is lower while the rate of energy emission at a given temperature is still high. That makes the steady state temperature where energy in equals energy out lower because the total power is lower.
?
Still struggling.Sounds like a perpetual energy machine in reverse.
Is the coating a blackbody? No.
Is it a mirror, Yes.
If the mirror is stuck on a blackbody then it reflects its share of incoming light plus as the blackbody around it absorbing heat heats the mirror up it also emits some extra heat.
Just stick mirrors non all the roofs and ignore the other side effects like blinded pilots, car drivers and people in general not to mention roasted birds falling from the sky.
Going further if the material emits IR at a higher frequency level not absorbed by the GHG in the atmosphere [Skeptical +++] then that heat loss is balanced by the heat coming from the rest of the surrounding blackbody which will therefore radiate less heat so there can be no net extra radiative loss into space.
Yes the building might be colder from the mirror part.
The reflected infrared would still heat the air rather than the house
but not any colder than that because the extra radiated heat is coming from the surri=oundings [If they can ever acheive this but
Hate mouses, sorry about premature posting. What I am saying is it all sounds good, just like cold fusion but seems to have a lot of thimble shifting here.
Reminds me of that cartoon explaining every thing with the mistake in step two, ” a miracle happens”.
Angech,
If nobody else clarifies, I’ll write up my understanding in a bit. I worry that because my understanding of thermodynamics aren’t glued all that tightly to me that I’ll explain it poorly. Really, I don’t think there was a mystery in the first place, I just confused myself about what the thing actually does.
angech,
You do have a point about shiny mirrors on roof tops being a problem for aviation. If they’re flat, though, they won’t fry birds. You need a curved mirror to focus sunlight to get hot enough to fry things.
Here are two examples of selective and one non-selective coating with an input flux of 1000 W/m² and ignoring losses or gains by convection:
TINOx LW ε = 0.05 SW ε = 0.95
1000 * 0.95 = 0.05 * σT^4
T = (1000*0.95/(0.05*5.67E-08)^0.25 = 760.8K = 487.7°C
At that temperature, LW ε will be larger than 0.05 because there will be significant emission at wavelengths less than 4μm.
Black body ε = 1 for LW and SW
T = (1000/5.67E-08)^0.25 = 364.4K = 91.3°C
Stanford-like mirror:
SW ε = 0.03, LW ε = 0.95
T = (1000*0.03/(0.95*5.67E-08))^0.25 = 153.6K = -119.5°C
Obviously, in air the TINOx wouldn’t get that hot and the mirror wouldn’t get that cold. If the emissivity is indeed tuned to 8-14μm, ε will be lower than 0.95. But even if it’s as low as 0.2, T = 226.8K = -46.4°C. As long as the LW ε is greater than the SW ε, the mirror will be colder than a black or gray body and can be used as a heat sink.
In some ways the Stanford device is similar to the Romans freezing water in Palestine by using polished shields to cover an open container of water in an insulated hole during the day and exposing it to the sky at night.
Just as an update, Tamino deleted the second comment I submitted, the one I copied here upthread. I’m curious what his supporters would say to justify deleting a comment like that.
Brandon,
Tamino doesn’t want your stuff there. His supporters are mostly the kind who think just not letting you post is somehow ‘the way’ to show…. something!
There’s much to criticize in Tamino’s post. Some of it springs from his attempt to torture what Legates said into having more specificity that it did in the first place. Is “among the coldest” the same as “in the coldest 10%”? Not necessarily– it could mean “in the coldest half“. Maybe that’s what they mean– that meaning would hardly be “misleading”.
One of the main reasons I can’t either criticize or endorse the WUWT article Tamino is discussing is that it’s written in a sort of “deniability” style. I mean are they denying CO2 matters? Much of the way it’s written gives that impression– but they don’t actually say so. They might merely mean it doesn’t matter as much as “some” claim.
In the end, I think the main problems with Tamino’s post is he is to a large extent inferring ideas the WUWT doesn’t actually spit out and then trying to debate those. The WUWT authors aren’t going to even read Tamino– why should they? So, yeah… Tamino criticized something– mostly arguments people didn’t actually make. Yawn.
lucia, oddly enough, the only reason I even read the post through to the end is a semantic one. I hadn’t commented on it before (because I wanted to see if it mattered before bringing it up), but it turns out a significant portion of Tamino’s argument hinges on how one defines “winter.” The definition Tamino uses is not one most people use on a day-to-day basis. It may make sense for “climatological” purposes, but it’s obviously not the one being used in the text he criticizes.
I’d say more, but I just finished writing a post about it, and I don’t feel like retyping it given it’s mostly a stupid semantic argument. For a simple teaser, Tamino’s definition would hold the two most damaging winters for Europe in the five years were relatively mild winters.
http://www.hi-izuru.org/wp_blog/2014/12/what-is-winter/
lucia,
You wrote, “So, yeah… Tamino criticized something– mostly arguments people didn’t actually make. Yawn.”
The climate concerned are obsessed with a non-problem so why would it be a surprise if in their defense of their concern they argue against things people don’t say?
By the way, I messed with the CSS file for my site a bit, and I think it’s more readable. The biggest change people will notice is text in blockquotes is larger now. I may need to increase it more for people (and/or adjust the main body’s font), but it should be an improvement already.
I still need to update my old posts though. Fixing the font issues just requires resaving them, but getting the images to stop being blurry may be a pain. I really don’t get why WordPress’s resizing feature is causing me problems now that I self-host. It’s weird. I can work around it, but I’d rather not have to redo every image on the site.
hunter,
To be fair, some people do write in a way that sounds like “plausible deniability” sounding way.
I mean: If you read Paul Driessen and David R. Legates at http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/11/24/needed-accurate-climate-forecasts/ can you tell whether they at least do think current temperature are high relative to pre-industrial revolution? I can’t. They don’t actually say so.
Do you get the impression they might think CO2 in no way affects surface temperatures? I have to admit that reading that post, I get the impression they think it might have no effect– or so little that the current generally high temperatures are mere coincidence. But they don’t say anything definite either way.
On the things they do say specifically: I agree we need to better understand natural variation, climate models look ‘off’, and things like land use and so on are given short shrift.
But to be fair to those who “read in” unstated claims about whether CO2 has any effect into that post: it’s pretty easy for someone to infer they are trying to give the impression that CO2 has either no effect or so little as to not matter. That might not be what they intend– but it seems to be what Tamino infers and ‘rebuts’. So: he’s rebutting something that was not said. But…. I suspect lots of people reading that post may have “inferred” that claim.
This sort of writing (i.e. Driessen and Legates) is common in politics. And that is politics. One reason it’s common is it does but others in a position of having nothing specific to rebut!
Brandon wrote [summary hope this is OK ] Tamino defined December-January-February.for 355 U.K. winters, saying
: Driessen and Legates used a false claim when they said
” several recent winters have been among the coldest in centuries in the United Kingdom and continental Europe ”
Brandon had heard about freakishly cold winters in the UK . A Google search showed a Wikipedia article about the “Winter of 2010–11 in Great Britain and Ireland was a weather event that brought heavy snowfalls, record low temperatures. It included the UK’s coldest December since Met Office records began in 1910, with a mean temperature of -1 °C, breaking the previous record of 0.1 °C in December 1981.
The data showed the average temperature in December is ~4C degrees. December, 2009 was -0.7. Only one December in ~350 years was colder (way back in 1890). I’d say that means the United Kingdoms had a freakishly cold winter in December of 2009.
Thanks for that bit of research, Brandon.
Lucia is right that the article at WUWT is a bit, um, boring political propaganda as well, but it should not be criticized of cherry picking by Tamino hypocritically ignoring the facts and cherry picking his definition of cold weather.
angech, that summary looks fine, though I do want to stress there is nothing wrong with the definition Tamino used. It’s useful for a number of things. It’s just not the only definition that is. Most people will use “winter” in other ways because drawing arbitrary lines at the beginning of December and end of February is both weird and difficult to do in one’s memory.
If you had asked me neighbors what season it was last week, I’d wager they’d all say “winter” because we’ve had early snow/frost. I doubt any of them would think “fall” just because it was still Winter. There is one neighbor who might say “fall,” but that’s because he knows December 21st is the start of the astronomical winter.
But basically, Tamino rested most of his post on his decision to assume people were using one, not widely known, definition of “winter” rather than a more common definition. It was because of that he was able to portray people he disliked as dishonest. Well, that and the whole cherry-picking thing I pointed out earlier.
By the way, I haven’t actually read the WUWT post he criticized. I got about halfway through before I gave up on it because of the sort of “arguing” lucia points out it uses. I skimmed the rest of it. I’m definitely no fan. I can think of a number of criticisms I’d raise regarding it. It just amuses me how badly Tamino argues.
angech
Well… sure. After all, there is no “rule” that says “among the coldest” somehow means “in the 10% coldest”. It can perfectly well mean “in the coldest 50%”. If that’s what they mean (which they perfectly well can mean) then one might say: Well…. Yeah. No one has suggested we are already supposed to have every single year/day/month in the top 50% warmest.
As for winter: On the one hand, it’s not unfair to evaluate their claims using ‘climatological winter’ . They use the term ‘winter’ and are discussing the need for ‘climate forecasts’. But it’s not quite right to suggest that must be what they said nor what they must have meant.
On the other hand: one might ask the WUWT guest authors what they didmean. I doubt they’ll answer– mostly because the article is more of a political opinion piece than anything else.
Monckton does similar type of writing. You often can’t prove him “wrong” because if you really look at what was said, very little was directly claimed. It’s atmospherics!
lucia, another reason to write material like that is as bait. People like Tamino will often respond in ways which just make them look bad. For instance, imagine if there was a public exchange between him and one of the authors:
Basically, you don’t commit to any position so your opponent has to pick a position to respond to. If they do a bad job, you get talking points. If they do a good job, you just say it’s non-responsive as you weren’t talking about that.
In my experience, the less precise someone is, the less likely they are to have any meaningful insight. It’s why I decided not to pursue a philosophy degree 😛
Yes. But sometimes I find this helps cut through tedious nonsense too, it’s not just a point scoring technique.
Sometimes people will argue with me over what I consider to be irrelevant trivia that’s got nothing to do with the point I’m making. By letting the other side define the stuff I don’t care about I can just accept whatever makes them happy and move on to the good stuff.
Meh. I shouldn’t have said ‘tedious nonsense’, that needn’t be the case. Cut through stuff that’s not relevant to the point at hand, maybe is a better way to put it.
I have not followed in any detail the debate on coldest winters and the definition of winters, but I would think if nothing else it might point to the usefulness of doing sensitivity tests when someone makes conclusions based on a selected set of data.
I have found the lack of sensitivity testing by a number of climate scientists in published papers problematic and encouraging the questioning of advocacy entering the science.
UAH up 0.329
Actually UAH LT for 11/2014 at 0.33°C is down a little from October’s 0.37°C.
UAH is 0.329 for November 2014.
It is to bad we didn’t have a betting pool for UAH for November 2014.
I was going to bet .329 and I would have won all the quatloos!
(Just kidding!).
But I do miss the betting.
Kenneth Fritsch, I don’t think there has been any real “debate on coldest winters and the definition of winters.” Some people mentioned cold winters. Tamino used one definition of “winter” to say they were wrong and possibly dishonest. I pointed out under a different, more common definition, what they said was perfectly reasonable. That’s about it.
On the issue of sensitivity testing, I’ve always been baffled at those people promoting science who say Year X was the hottest/coldest/whatever. I get they have more confidence in the data than they do, but even they should be able to acknowledge there is some uncertainty in the data. Why do they give focus to a difference of less than a tenth of a degree?
And that’s a relatively tame example. I’ve seen far more troubling ones in a number of papers. It seems many scientists get results, calculate some uncertainty levels (that are probably not right) and decide to publish. That’s (not even) the level of effort I’d put into checking the validity of my results/assumptions in blog posts. It’s like, if you spend 30 or more hours on some analysis, can’t you spend an hour checking how robust it is?
Tamino’s inline response to another comment is hilarious. You should read the whole thing, but my favorite part is:
People describe a pattern for “much of the United States and Canada,” and Tamino thinks it is ridiculous people would expect him to look at more than a single state. He thinks people are being so unreasonable that they’d demand he look at “the entire world” to respond.
Here’s a hint Tamino. If you want to rebut a claim about “much of the United States,” you’ll probably need to look at “much of the United States.”
It’s crazy, I know.
Tamino’s takes on climate makes Dr. Ball’s take on motives look reasonable. Makes me glad I don’t waste much time on either.
LOL. Poisoning people’s minds again, Shollenberger? Everybody knows your ideas have taken hold of my mind (such as it is) long ago, I’m essentially your sockpuppet at this point. :p
Tamino is a poet.
Brandon, if you have two different versions of winter and can come to two different conclusions based on those versions, I suspect a sensitivity test was or is in order. I also suspect that this argument is more about slamming the credibility of one side or the other on these issues and less about climate science and is the reason I do not get involved.
Having record cold spells in regions of the globe during the modern warming period is an interesting subject for climate science. I have read the conjectures about the slow moving north to south directed jet stream bringing cold air from the Arctic and the north to south directions causing longer lasting cold/warm fronts and all that in turn being related to the polar amplification coming out of AGW. I would like to hear more discussion of those theories/conjectures.
I hold that sensitivity tests give a better overall picture of a conclusion being tested and helps inform the reader. When that kind of testing is missing and was obviously available to the author I have to suspect an advocacy driven paper and investigation. On a different level I have read newspaper accounts of 2014 being the warmest year on record and without ever once mentioning that we are experiencing a decade and one half pause in the warming trend. One could have a 30 year non trending period and if the 30th year where slightly higher would we still be talking about a record year and ignoring the plateau?
Interesting when I just plotted the UAH data from Dec 1978 to Nov 2014 and see the annual mean global temperature make a regime change jump around 1998 from a non trending earlier period to the current non trending period in the 2000’s. Now that could make for an interesting discussion.
hunter, I looked at Tamino’s blog because I was curious if he explained why he took such a long break. I knew I’d probably regret it, but it was one of those things you just can’t resist.
Mark Bofill, it’s funny to think of me as a corrupting influence given my knack for annoying/angering pretty much everybody. And there’s no way you’re my sockpuppet. I’ve never used “lol” in my life!
Kenneth Fritsch, the problem is way the average person thinks of “winter” is not useful for analysis. There’s pretty much no way to translate it into numbers. Of course, that’s true for how people think of lots of things. The solution is to recognize people can be talking about different things even if they use similar language/words. Basically, try to understand what what they’re saying means.
Sadly, as you say, these writings tend to be about little more than “slamming the credibility” of the other “side.” That makes participating in them mostly pointless as no real discussion is to be had, even if one ought to be had. I only join in because I find entertainment in the absurdity.
Which is sad because there are a number of topics in the global warming discussion I’d love to find out more about.
Kenneth Fritsch –
The current explanation for cold spells in North America and Europe is a change in the jet stream due to global warming. However, in 1975, the identical mechanism was proposed as one of the predicted effects of global cooling. Apparently in the 60s we lived in the best of all possible weather. Pangloss would be proud
From that same 1975 article:
HaroldW, I guess that excerpt from the 1975 article is saying a pox on both the warmist/coolist and skeptics houses.
Do you also note from the article the claim for increases in varying and extreme weather with global cooling? Of course now we know that bad effects like that only occur with warming.
“The principal weather change likely to accompany the cooling trend is increased variability-alternating extremes of temperature and precipitation in any given area-which would almost certainly lower average crop yields. The cause of this increased variability can best be seen by examining upper atmosphere wind patterns that accompany cooler climate. During warm periods a “zonal circulation” predominates, in which the prevailing westerly winds of the temperate zones are swept over long distances by a few powerful high and low pressure centers. The result is a more evenly distributed pattern of weather, varying relatively little from month to month or season to season.”
Lucia:
“Huh? Congress “coercing†states by setting up carrots and sticks happens in lots and lots and lots and lots of bills. They did it with the 55 mph speed limit (connecting things to highway funds). There are lots of other cases. It’s hardly “absurd†to think Congress intended to set up ‘carrot/stick’ situations when they do so very often.”
You missed the part about keeping it secret. If you want someone to do something and you set up a “carrot” and/or a “stick”, it is vital to make them aware of the existence of the carrot or the stick. Is there any evidence that anyone said to the states “Make those exchanges or you won’t get subsides”? Incentives need to be KNOWN in order to incentivize.
Yes, it is absolutely absurd to say that congress intended to push states into doing something without ever–not even once–letting them know that there was an incentive or a punishment.
Boris,
What secret? They wrote a bill that contained a carrot and stick feature. That carrot and stick feature is publicized by the plain text of the language setting up the carrot/stick feature. That’s not called “keeping it a secret”.
Reading the bill that gives tax breaks to people who buy through state set ups but not federal ones is sufficient to make states aware it is set up that way. So, presumbaly the states that did not set up exchanges “were aware” of the feature. (In fact, back w hen states were deciding to set up exchanges, this was discussed in places like the “Wall Street Journals” etc. The ‘tax deduction’ feature was not a secret.
The were known. It’s just that the Feds got grumpy when it turned out that some states still didn’t want to set up exchanges. The incentive wasn’t big enough to over come the disincentives. That doesn’t mean the bill didn’t mean what the language says.
I have no idea what you are on about. The plain language of a bill is ‘the method’ whereby congress “lets” people know what the bill says. Bill’s generally don’t include long details saying “and this is why we are including 1.2.3.a.(2).” And this is why we are inlcuding “3.2.7.b.(3)”.
Oh, and part “124.A.b.(3).a” is meant as an incentive. And so on. They just specify what the language does.
Lots of people understood the carrot/stick aspect of the bill. I realize lots if individual people don’t read bills the moment they are passed, and may not be aware of all the provisions. But this aspect was not “a secret” in any way.
As climate science finds that the main drivers for some climate events are not sourced from CO2, and instead jet stream changes or ENSO, some have started to produce claims that these changes in ENSO/jet stream are caused by CO2 increases. Color me unimpressed. The CO2 infatuation in climate science attribution is tiring. These statements are pretty much rampant speculation in the great journey to blame all of humanities ills on a big CO2 knob.
When serious people think serious thoughts and shake their heads seriously that there is a CO2 – human conflict link, the credibility meter starts to head toward zero.
Boris,
In other words, just because you didn’t know it until now doesn’t mean it was a secret.
“Reading the bill that gives tax breaks to people who buy through state set ups but not federal ones is sufficient to make states aware it is set up that way.”
This is demonstrably false. The states did not read it that way at all when they filed briefs in the 2012 case. They read it the way the administration interpreted it–that subsides would be available on the federal exchanges. How can they argue now that such an interpretation is impossible?
“In fact, back w hen states were deciding to set up exchanges, this was discussed in places like the “Wall Street Journals†etc.”
I don’t think there was any mention of it at all until after SCOTUS upheld the ACA mandate, when people were looking for another way to invalidate the law.
“I have no idea what you are on about. The plain language of a bill is ‘the method’ whereby congress “lets†people know what the bill says.”
But Congress and the bill’s proponents have always acted in a manner consistent with the claim that subsides would be available on the federal exchanges. The CBO scored it that way. Your bizarre contention is that Congress wanted to coerce the states into setting up exchanges and did so by implying that there would be no penalty.
The “plain language” argument would be more believable if plaintiffs against the bill hadn’t come up with two different interpretations. But even so, the authorization of federal exchanges in the ACA is titled “State Flexibility Relating to Exchanges.” Since when does “flexibility” mean “do this or else” in plain language?
Like I said, the plaintiffs’ arguments may win out in front of sympathetic judges. But I haven’t seen any evidence that anyone interpreted the law as you saw it must be interpreted until more than two years after it passed.
This was late February 2012, NYTimes, Robert Pear.
Here’s another reference to it in August 2012, although for this one the author clearly thinks it was an oversight or a mistake:
This could not possibly still have been a mystery to anybody paying attention at this point in time, in my view.
Not to mention we have to disregard Gruber’s quotes on the subject to doubt that the plan language was indeed the intent of Congress, which is sort of an odd thing to do I think.
I’m not buying it anyways. 🙂
EDIT / UPDATE:
Forbes ran a discussion of this in September 2011.
Everybody who was paying attention knew about this. Come on.
Pelosi said, “we have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it.” Clearly she should have said, “We’ll decide after we pass the bill what is in it.”
“Forbes ran a discussion of this in September 2011.
Everybody who was paying attention knew about this. Come on.”
Your own source describes the language in the ACA as a “glitch.” No one denies that the language isn’t problematic.
The Forbes piece does link to Adler and what may be the first piece to suggest that Congress may have intended for subsides to be unavailable on federal exchanges. Then again, he says this:
“As David Hogberg reports in IBD, this has led some to believe the limitation of tax credits to state-based exchanges is a mistake. Under this theory, Congress meant to provide tax credits for any exchange-purchased insurance, because Congress wanted lower-income individuals to be able to purchase health insurance (and comply with the mandate). This may be true.”
So even the guy pushing this case isn’t sure of Congress’ intent in passing the law a full year and a half after the law was signed. But now with a case before the SC we are all going to pretend that that was the clear intent of Congress from the beginning? Come on, man, indeed.
There is also the problem that the states, in official court filings, already interpreted the law the same way as the administration.
Right, so we ignore Gruber? How did Obama spin it? I only knew him well enough to say hello around the Obamacare meeting table.
Sure.
Because Obama has so much credibility established at this point that I wouldn’t dream of questioning his word.
Look Boris,
Regarding whether or not it was a mistake, that’s one question. Clearly some people thought so early on, as you say.
Regarding whether or not anybody knew about this, that’s a different question. It turns out the answer is yes, basically everybody knew about it.
Also, I think it matters what is meant by the word ‘mistake’.
I play chess with someone. I make the move I intend to make, but it’s a stupid move that costs me the game. I made a mistake, but it’s what I meant to do.
As opposed to –
I was playing chess by phone, and the connection was garbled and my remote piece handler misheard me and moved the wrong piece.
Obviously it was a mistake. What sort of mistake was it?
Gruber isn’t the arbiter of what Congress intended. You want to ignore what members of congress say and what reporters who followed the ACA say about the intent of the bill.
And no “basically everybody” didn’t know about it.
Obviously Gruber isn’t the arbiter of what Congress intended. However, it can be informative to go back to statements consultants and advisors made at the time a law was being crafted to determine such things.
Was it a mistake? Sure! I think the whole darn thing was a mistake, like Chuck Schumer has come to realize. So what? Was it what Congress intended?
1) The language of the bill makes us think so.
2) The words of consultants and adivsors from pertinent time periods makes us think so.
3) Clearly, the Administration wanted and expected states to setup their own exchanges, so it isn’t even inconsistent with the facts we know to think so.
Is it possible that Congress made an unintentional mistake? Of course. But do you have evidende to support the idea?
Since the Speaker of the House when the failed helathcare bill was shoved through said we would have to read it to see what is in it, Congress had no particular intent in the bill. It is a deeply flawed un0implementable waste of America’s money.
It failed in its roll out. It has failed to reduce costs. It has failed to significantly im pact uninsureds. It has failed to make healthcare more affordable. It has failed to be implemented as written.
The President and his team admit they lied to America because it was politically convenient to get it passed.
The sooner this disaster is tossed in the trash heap the better.
Starting over is a better option than continuing this pile of crap.
Boris,
I’m sorry, I ignored this.
What specfic members of Congress and statements by them am I ignoring? Perhaps you’re correct and I’ve missed something persuasive, can you link me?
With respect to ignoring the reporters, you’re darn tootin I am. If Gruber isn’t the arbiter of what Congress intended our pathetic lickspittle media certainly isn’t either.
@Mark Bofill,
You’re ignoring Nancy Pelosi of course! 🙂
See here.
I understand that you will say every staffer is lying–and that could be true–but it is still evidence. And their claims are perfectly consistent with the record.
As for the language of the bill, I’ll say it again: The states–and even the conservatives justices of the SCOTUS–interpreted the bill to mean that subsidies were available on the federal exchanges. If the law were as clear as you say then they never would have made that mistake.
Earle,
🙂
It’s a mess. Take a look at this for instance.
Now I’m not arguing that this is correct. There’s alot in there that I don’t have strong direct recollections about and I’ve got no particular interest in doing the fact checking and research on it at this time. But just as an example, if this was really the way it went down, what does that mean for the question of ‘what Congress intended’?
Who’s Congress? Some members of Congress might have liked that version of the bill. Then again, maybe nobody liked it but it was the only compromise they could all agree to. In such a case, what do you really have to use to unravel intent when everybody’s intent was different? All that’s left is the bill as it was written, ’cause in the end that’s what everybody agreed to.
Thanks Boris. I’m sure they’re not lying, actually. It’s evidence. I’ll think it through some more.
🙂
Mark Bofill,
Since the architect, as our President called him, states they chose to lie rather than write an honest bill or poromote it truthfully, and since the President’s won actions show that he depended onlying about the basics of the bill, I think it makes anything anyone who helped write the bill moot as far discerning intent is concerned. The only goal, as with so much to do with this Adminstration’s agenda, is to impose their policy regardless of truth. If the intent is to discern their actual intentions the best thing to do is to toss out what they claim and look at the actual law as closely as possible.
Again: We will be better off with a chastised Executive Branch that is finally willing to sit down transparently and honestly and actually lead by compromising and writing bills that can actually work.
The games playing and deception by the President and his enablers and sycophants needs to end, and the sooner the better.
Boris,
You are mistaking what the staffers and members of congress who advocated for a strong ACA would have wanted the bill to say if they had the votes to pass what they wanted.
But the intent of Congress is not the intent of the staffers nor is it even the intent of the strongest advocates. Different versions of the bill with different wordings were floated. Some contained ‘carrot and stick’ language, some did not. A certain version was the one Congress passed- and that happened to be the one with the ‘carrot and stick’ clause. Presumably, that version (rather than some other) was passed because the one that passed reflected “the will of Congress” (even if staffers might have preferred another bill.)
The final decision to pass that version came when the Democrats lost a senator and feared they would get nothing. Once again: at that point, the choice to pass the House vs. Senate bill was made by Congress not staffers. And Congress operates by reading the language in the bill and then deciding what to pass.
It does not operate by reading the mind of a staffer. So: the Congress chose a bill whose plain language might not match what a staffer thought he was saying or possibly what a staffer wanted the bill to say– or given the evidence– what a staffer now reveals what he thought he meant or intended by language he wrote way back when which — as it happens– says something else.
Well… sorry. But Congress operates by reading the text, and chosing to pass a particular version among other versions. What McDonnough now thinks or sayd he ‘intended’ does not tell us what Congress intended because he’s not only not Congress itself, he is not even a member of Congress!
FWIW: The alternative path to passing the already voted on House or Senate bill was for Congress, to negotiate various clauses during a reconciliation process. It’s possible that clause would have been changed if negotiations had continued or it might not have. We don’t know.
But what we do know is the decision to change language would have depended on ‘the intent of congress’ not the intent of staffers who might prefer something that Congress was unwilling to pass. More likely there would have been no ACA at all.
Beyond that: it’s also not at all ‘crazy’ to not give tax credits to people in states without exchanges because not giving them tax credits means that their employers are also not fined when their employees buy insurance on exchanges. While strong advocate of the strongest possible form of the ACA might want to find employers whose employees buy on exchanges, there are other people who don’t want employers fined when their employees do buy insurance on the exchange. So the clause largely permitted states flexibility in deciding whether they prefer their citizens getting tax breaks to their employers not getting fined.
And while staffers might want something, members of Congress in states where the ACA was not popular could easily want to avoid being booted out of office by — on the one hand– voting to pass the ACA– but on the other hand– leaving some choices to their state legislatures.
The plain language of the bill they actually passed did that– and so was precisely the sort of thing members of Congress do even if staffers don’t intend for Congress to do that.
Boris,
Cite please.
If the Supreme Court had ruled that subsidies were available on the federal exchanges, then why did they take the case which seeks to determine exactly that?
BTW: This interpretation is useful
http://www.scotusblog.com/2014/11/symposium-seven-myths-about-king-v-burwell/
Note that in this interpretation, the residents of states don’t get tax breaks. But the argument that they somehow “need” them because of the mandate is spurious: they are mostly exempt from the mandate. Moreover, the employers are exempt from the mandate.
So basically: The clause lets states decide to ‘opt-out’. Meanwhile, individuals in the state who wish to buy insurance on a federal exchange may elect to do so if they wish to. But it’s not a mandate, and they buy if they deem the product offered on the exchanges is worth the money.
This is a perfectly sane, not crazy idea of how a law that is structured to let states decide to participate or not would be written. It is exactly the type of law members of Congress who want to vote for their side but are worried their voter base might boot them out for it might pass. Here that could be some Democrats in more right of center states.
It’s also exactly the sort of thing members of Congress who think it’s worth a shot to pass a bill even if they are leaving the ultimate fate to decision making at the state level might intend.
Of course staffers, who are not elected, might want or ‘intend’ something else– but that’s not relevant to Congress intent. Congress votes on a bill with certain language and this bill contains language that would align very well with the sorts of “intentions” Congress has when writing bills.
It might not align with the fondest hopes and dreams of some members of Congress nor their staffers. But … well… their hopes and dreams are not “the intent of Congress”.
Boris,
Do you have a link to the CBO analysis of the Senate bill? The link at Wikipedia is dead. The brief cover letter available calls out the fact that the Senate bill has lower subsidies than the house bill. Moreover: it matters whether the CBO also assumed all states would create exchanges. If they did, the issue their interpretation of what happens if states don’t create exchanges is moot.
Boris
Filed which briefs? In what case? By which states?
Evidence that “states” were making the argument about state exchanges in 2012– this article discusses the argument a state called “Oklahoma” advanced in it’s “briefs” in 2012:
http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/334887/oklahoma-versus-obamacare-jillian-kay-melchior
That post is dated 2012.
That some cases might wait for a while is also not evidence the argument didn’t pre-exist the case. Legal cases need to wait until (a) they are ripe and (b) the team advancing it is ready to file. Some cases aren’t ripe until certain provisions actually kick in!
(I should also note that arguments are not going to pre-date May 2012 – when the IRS made the rule states are challenging. So what we have here is states filing cases in 2012– shortly after the IRS made the rule they object to– and including the argument the States continue to advice .)
I know you guys are discussing other things, but this was too funny not to share. I think Tamino is taking credit for discovering AR1 autocorrelation does not fully describe the autocorrelation in temperature data sets. In his latest post, he says:
Apparently Tamino thinks someone not citing him for pointing this out is a reason to make snarky remarks.
Side note, the post is kind of incoherent. Tamino describes a scenario with three people (A, B and C) with the third saying something which makes it ridiculous, then says:
But as far as I can tell, never refers to person C or the idea he expressed again.
Yeah, I’m sort of curious about the CBO scoring claim as well.
It’s not as if Tamino is the first to know this. Lots of people used non-AR1 noise in time series before Tamino and Rahmstorf. Heck many skeptics have– but so have others.
So… why would someone be required to cite Tamino for this “idea”? or even be aware of his paper? (Answer: They aren’t required to know of or cite his paper, which, is destined to linger in obscurity as time progresses.)
“This is a perfectly sane, not crazy idea of how a law that is structured to let states decide to participate or not would be written.”
Wait, now you are arguing that congress intended to allow states to opt out? This goes against the argument that the withholding of subsidies was meant to encourage states to create their own exchanges. If you withhold subsidies hoping that the states will create exchanges, you don’t also allow the states to gain tax advantages and mandate-avoidance advantages by refusing to create an exchange. Also note that your interpretation does not match Gruber’s interpretation. It seems the bill is indeed ambiguous and that the IRS should have authority of interpretation.
I know that staffers are not members of congress, but they did work closely on the bill and draft the bill. It is not proof, but it is certainly evidence of congress’ intent.
Brandon,
Tamino got him some tenacity. I thought the mainstream didn’t question the pause anymore.
Does he really think the 97% of climate scientists who agree that there’s been a pause could possibly be mistaken? There’s some sort of ugly word for counterfactual thinking like that. :O Did I really type that and click Submit!?!? Oh, my.
No Boris. This point has already been made but you apparently haven’t taken it in yet:
There is not necessarily in any case (and in this case I think simply not at all) singular intent behind Congress, because Congress is comprised of a whole bunch of different people who disagree. Bills often represent a compromise (I know, it’s easy to forget this in the Age of his Majesty Barack Obama I). Some members of Congress probably wanted and needed that political cover, to let their states opt out. Some members of Congress had no such fears and would have preferred something different.
We’re going to go round in circles until you either accept this idea or say something to refute it.
“Filed which briefs? In what case? By which states?”
The case that was decided by the Supremes in 2012–I forget the exact name. (Oh, it’s in the quote: NFIB v. Sebelius.)
From Abbe R. Gluck:
Now, the SC dissent is not precedent or anything, but it’s hard to argue that the law was not commonly interpreted the way the IRS interpreted it.
Which way? The way the IRS originally started to interpret it and write their rules, or the way they interpreted it after the State Dept and the Administration stepped in? here.
(EDIT: Not the Administration and State Dept. I meant HHS and Treasury.)
Boris
The language of the bill set it up that way. So: looks like they set it up to let states largely opt out of the ‘tax credit/penalty for employers’ and so on part while still letting citizens of that state have access . That’s was Oklahoma’s interpretation — and that’s what the filed in 2012.
Huh? Letting the states decided whether to participate (i.e. opt in or out) go hand in hand. Obviously being able to “opt in” means– by definition one can “opt out”.
Those who thought the tax breaks were sufficiently enticing thought making them available only to states that opted in would entice the states to opt in. But meanwhile, states were permitted to opt out.
FWIW: Intending to permit someone to “opt out” is not the same as hoping they will. So: yes. Even those who thought states would “opt in” and who wished to offer a “carrot” to get them to do so, intended to permit them to “opt out”. They just hoped the states would opt in. You need to not confuse what some members of Congress hoped for with what they intended to permit or requirestates to do.
There you go: hoping. Hoping is not the same as “intending”.
But anyway, you are wrong. If you merely hope states will be persuaded by a certain bundle, and you also hope to be re-elected by constituents in your state some of whom might want to reserve rights and decisions to their state legislatures, you might very well use the subsidized to individual voters as a “carrot”. Then you hope those subsidies– which are visible individual voters to persuade their state legislatures to create exchanges. But meanwhile, you might– either to save your cookies in upcoming elections– intend to leave the decision up to the state legislature knowing full well that you might not get what you hoped for.
The fact that some members of Congress hoped for certain behavior by states doesn’t mean the intended to force states to participate. (And beyond that, sometimes, if they actually do try to force states to do something, they can get themselves into a different set of legal battles. I mean– suppose Congress had said states must create exchanges. Point. Blank. And then one of the states did not. Where would we be? Generally, Congress structures things so states are “opt in” to doing things in exchange for Federal funds.)
So what if my interpretation doesn’t match Gruber’s interpretation? Gruber is not a member of Congress. And anyway: what specific thing about Grubers interpretation do you think tells us the ‘intention of Congress”– and could you quote what that was, tell us when Gruber said it and so on.
It may be that SCOTUS will decide that. But past precedent doesn’t quite work that way. If the clear text says something, those who want a different meaning have to explain why the other meaning holds. What a staffer hoped for, or Gruber hoped for etc. isn’t very meaningful in that context.
Do you have any staffer quotes or writings explaining their ‘intent’ that predate 2012 when the IRS wrote the rule? Do you have their writings or quote explaining their ‘intent’ to Congress?
Because really, it makes no sense to suggest that staffers can write things whose language says ‘A’ , have Congress read that and– one would think believe it says “A”, and then later permit staffers ‘reveal’ they meant “B”, and then decree that meant Congress intended “B”. Congress passed A.
Boris
Yes. In a different case about a different complaint, the states didn’t advance this particular argument.
Note also: Court cases advancing argument against the individual mandate began in Jan 2011 when Florida filed. (See wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Federation_of_Independent_Business_v._Sebelius )
The IRS rule being argued about now was written in may 2012. So of course the state’s argument in Seballius did not complain about the IRS rule that had not yet been written.
If your complaint is that somehow those advancing their argument in court should just suddenly turn it into a different case… well… I’m pretty sure that’s not the way court cases work. Those advancing the argument in Seballius continued to advance the argument in Seballius.
Meanwhile the IRS wrote a rule. Soon after the IRS wrote that rule, Oklahoma filed a brief arguing the IRS rule violates the ACA.
“So what if my interpretation doesn’t match Gruber’s interpretation?”
It shows that the law is ambiguous. For the plaintiffs to win, they must show that the law is not ambiguous.
“The IRS rule being argued about now was written in may 2012. So of course the state’s argument in Seballius did not complain about the IRS rule that had not yet been written.”
This is irrelevant. The states interpreted the law as allowing subsides on the federal exchanges. That is evidence that the law–at the very least–is ambiguous. You can’t seriously argue that a law can be interpreted in one and only one way when you have already admitted a different interpretation.
Boris
This doesn’t say Subtitle E establishes tax credits on all the exchanges. This question simply isn’t ‘the’ issue in Sebalius. It doesn’t have to be. And the states not discussing it in a case where it’s not the issue being argued doesn’t tell us anything.
As for the scaliaetc. dissent you can get the full thing here
http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=2&ved=0CDAQFjAB&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.supremecourt.gov%2Fopinions%2F11pdf%2F11-393c3a2.pdf&ei=prGAVKyDA4OqyQTLr4LgBg&usg=AFQjCNEbnk45Ud-Rl4lBKT4wsz0RRAn_CQ&sig2=-XzxAdC-C-ZUDgZAQUvYsw&bvm=bv.80642063,d.aWw
The section simply doesn’t address the distinction of what happens in states that opt in vs. opt out.
It’s true that if citizens of a state– say Oklahoma– do not get tax subsidizes for buying insurance form an exchange, then the federal exchange in Oklahoma will have few customers. But all that means is that the ACA is ineffective in Oklahoma. And if the law permits states to opt-out in this way… well it does. If the Feds want to step in and offer something on their own nickle.. well… ok.
As for this
Yes. If Oklahoma doesn’t step up, the Feds will do their best to offer citizens an exchange. Yeah. Maybe that won’t work so well… but so? It’s just Oklahoma.
I get that Congress hopedthat very few states would act like Oklahoma but still– if they decided not to tie Oklahoma’s hand, then they didn’t tie them.
And beyond that: Congress can perfectly well intend to modify laws after they learn whether states do step up to form exchanges. Congress is permitted to act on the theory that very few states will act like Oklahoma. Even now, if SCOTUS rules in favor of the states, Congress could step in and write in provisions to do something that would address whatever issue stands after the ruling.
Boris
How.
You have that backwards actually. For the plaintiffs to lose the IRS has to show the law is ambiguous.
Huh? how is it ‘irrelevant’. You complained that the states didn’t advance the current argument when during their argument in Seballius which was about something different. Of course it’s relevant to point out that the current argument is about something different from Seballius and springs from an event that happened after Seballius was going up the courts!
Can you show me a link to the brief? As far as I can see your ‘evidence’ for this claim is a quote from Scalia etc.. That’s not the states briefs– and beyond that even the dissent you quote didn’t say this! That section talks about exchanges not working if subsidize aren’t provided– that’s true. But it doesn’t address the issue of whether or not Congress could have intended to permit states to opt out even if that meant Fed exchanges in that state might not work well.
So it does not touch on the issue in the current case. The fact is: this issue was not discussed in that case. That case is about whether the mandate is a “mandate”. But it doesn’t address whether the “mandate” applies in all States whether or not those states set up exchanges.
“The section simply doesn’t address the distinction of what happens in states that opt in vs. opt out.”
Again, this doesn’t matter:
“That system of incentives collapses if the federal subsidies are invalidated. Without the federal subsidies, individuals would lose the main incentive to purchase insurance inside the exchanges, and some insurers may be unwilling to offer insurance inside of exchanges. With fewer buyers and even fewer sellers, the exchanges would not operate as Congress intended and may not operate at all.â€
Scalia and etc. are stating that congress’ intention was to have functioning exchanges and that invalidating the federal exchange subsides violates that intention.
It doesn’t matter if they change their minds later–at the very least the law is ambiguous.
Obamacare got bailed out by the USSC once. I think there is good reason to beleive that there will not be a second bail out.
Boris,
Or course it ‘matters’. You are claiming this issue is resolved. And to prove it you are quoting a block of text and putting &rt; b> &rt; \b> tags around a sentence that doesn’t resolve the question about what happens in states that do not create exchanges.
Quoting a block of text that doesn’t address the issue about the states and putting a bit that doesn’t address the issue we are discussing doesn’t magically make that paragraph support your point. Because putting bold tags around a sentence that doesn’t have anything to do with th issue at hand doesn’t magically turn it into something that resolves the issue at hand.
Of course congress may have intended to provide subsidize because other wise the system “collapses”. It would not make sense for them to create a system that would collapse no matter what. That is: it seems unlikely they intended to create a system that would collapse even if all 50 States took the carrot and created exchanges.
But that doesn’t mean Congress didn’t also intend to let individual states to opt out. If that meant the system collapses– so be it. There have been failed programs before and there will be again.
Consider this: if one and only one state had opted out– say Wyoming– the ACA would have survived.
That fact alone means permitting states to opt out doesn’t necessarily mean that the ACA would collapse. The ACA structured that way could at least hypothetically work. In contrast: not having a “mandate” at all would make it “collapse”. (Although, Roberts found an intermediate issue: if it’s a ‘tax’ the system doesn’t collapse either.)
So: the argument you are quoting, which is discussing the mandate, and not addressing whether the mandate is universal in all states nor whether tax breaks are universal and so on simply doesn’t address the current issue. You can keep quoting it and keep bolding it– but unless you explain how you think it addresses the issue of what happens in states that do not set up exchanges, ‘bolding’ can’t carry whatever argument you are trying to make.
That’s what the Federal side has to prove. Maybe SCOTUS will agree with them. But there is little evidence anyone on SCOTUS thinks the law is ambiguous– and the bit you quote doesn’t indicate they do.
Considering that SCOTUS struck down the PPCA state medicaid expansion mandate as unconstitutionally coercive, it would seem likely that if the PPACA had mandated that the states create exchanges, that would have been struck down too.
This is why Congress often needs to get buy in from States by ‘giving carrots’ and they do so all the time.
“Quoting a block of text that doesn’t address the issue…”
The Supreme Court dissent clearly states that the Intent of Congress was for the federal exchanges to work and that without subsides, the federal exchanges could not work. Now, maybe your interpretation is different. It doesn’t matter. That’s why I bolded that statement. It is a clear statement of what congress intended, which is why it includes the words “congress” and “intended.”
“But that doesn’t mean Congress didn’t also intend to let individual states to opt out. If that meant the system collapses– so be it.”
You are free to make this argument. But it is not the argument that the SC dissent makes. That dissent, again, very clearly states that the intent of congress was for the federal exchanges to work. You can make up all kinds of nonsense about how congress really intended for the exchanges not to work. You may even be right.
Moreover, the idea that congress would create a system for federal exchanges that they knew would never work is absurd on its face. What is the point of a backup system that is just going to fail?
“Consider this: if one and only one state had opted out– say Wyoming– the ACA would have survived.”
But the federal exchange in Wyoming would collapse. All federal exchanges would collapse. Was that the intent when congress created the “flexibility” for the states to have the feds create an exchange for them? Doubtful, and “no” according to the SC.
“but unless you explain how you think it addresses the issue of what happens in states that do not set up exchanges”
States that don’t set up exchanges have exchanges set up for them by the federal government. Those are exchanges, and exchanges are intended to work.
Proposed constitutional ammendment: “No law shall be voted upon by either house or senate unless the full text has been available for public review for at least 3 weeks during which both houses are in session.”
.
Eliminates all hastily considered laws…. especially those representatives and senators (and their constituents) could not possibly have read and understood.
Boris
No it doesn’t. The sentence doesn’t include the word “federal”. But beyond that, why did you edit the quote the way you did eliminated crucial text by inserting “and then”?
Specifically, why did you skip the paragraph just before the second one you quoted. That paragraph in the Scalia dissent ends with
Geeh. Seems like Scalia clearly says the federal subsidies must be invalidated.
The fact is– not only does Scalia not say what you claim, to make it seem to, one needs to skip whole paragraphs!
No. Again. It does not.
And I remind you, the part you skip is preceded by:
Nope. Not if it’s only a sub-set used as a stop gap to prevent something they makes it fail in a worse way. and not if they think the likelihood of the “failure” as being very remote.
It is absurde to imagine the set up something that wouldn’t work even if states cooperated. But it’s not absurd to think that they set up something that would work if states cooperated but wouldn’t work so well if they didn’t.
Maybe. But so? The ACA would survive, and when this happened congress could come up with a fix for the few states the ACA didn’t work for. This isn’t a big problem– and it’s not irrational for Congress to do things that way.
To avoid violating principles of federalism (which would occur if they forced states to set up the exchanges), while still getting the structure of hte ACA in place for those states who didn’t set up exchanges. That puts Congress in a good position to step in and write bills to remedy issues when the actually occur rather than trying to foresee everything.
This is a totally rational intention.
States that don’t set up exchanges often don’t want them.
You can argue that. But it’s not what Scalia actually wrote. He did not say every single exchange is intended to work. He may think that was the intention– or not. But as far as I can tell he doesn’t need to “change his mind” to say that the tax breaks are limited to those states that set up exchanges. Because he never said they weren’t.
lucia:
Interestingly, Tamino made this remark in an inline response to a comment:
If he’s right, the scientists he says we should listen to don’t understand basic aspects of this many skeptics do understand. That’s an amusing thought.
By the way, I read the paper he criticized, and it has a really weird definition of the “pause” in global warming. Basically, it says a pause is any period in which we cannot find a statistically significant warming trend over any subset of it which ends in the most recent times (and this criteria must be met by both the north and south hemispheres).
That’s very strange to me. Especially since if all of our temperature data somehow got corrupted, we could wind up with a “pause” lasting forever because we don’t have the data to show there isn’t a pause.
Edit: Mark Bofill, I think Tamino does dispute the idea there is a pause but I’m not positive about that. In theory, he may have just be criticizing a paper for how it defines the “pause.” If so, you can see I think he has a point. The paper’s tests could be interesting, but I don’t see how one could possibly interpret them as proof of a pause.
lucia,
And there are sticks too. When the federal 55 MPH speed limit was passed, states lost their federal highway dollars if the state speed limit wasn’t lowered to 55 MPH. Tennessee stated when they passed the 55 MPH speed limit that it would not be enforced on roads where the speed limit had been higher. I remember seeing the discriminator on dash mounted highway patrol car radar set to 70 MPH.
For convenience,
–snip
–snip
He seems to specifically be talking about community ratings.
He’s building to the final point:
by showing that nothing in ACA works the way Congress intended if any of the little parts are invalidated, so the whole thing should be invalidated.
Or something. I’ll look at it more later, I have to go pick up my pizza now. 🙂
Mark Bofill,
Thanks for reminding us that the failed law was written so badly that it is not severable: It stands or falls as a unit.
lol.
Who is counting on what stupidity.
hunter, I believe the lack of severability in a law can be viewed as a good thing. I haven’t looked into this particular case, but laws are sometimes built in a way if you remove one component, the entire thing fails. The main explanation I’ve heard is it helps force people to agree by limiting changes to individual aspects in a, “You mess with what I want; you lose what you want” sort of way.
I’ve also heard it can help with challenges in court as it pressures courts to accept things they might not accept otherwise on the idea the court won’t want to overturn an entire law on one small detail. Another explanation, one I suspect is too charitable, is proponents of the law believe a partial version of the law would be worse than no version, so if they can’t get the entire thing to work, they’d rather have it die in its entirety.
I can’t speak as to which, if any, such reasons might apply in this case, but I would recommend considering the possibility what seems stupid was actually done for an intelligent reason.
Even if not a good one.
hunter,
That was not poor drafting, that was intentional. It was a ploy to try to force SCOTUS to uphold the law. It worked.
So I use an RSS reader to follow some blogs I don’t care for because sometimes I find entertainment from skimming the comments on them. Sometimes it’s in the form of amusement, and other times it’s in the form of interesting commentary. Today there was one I believe fits the former. Blogger Anders said this earlier today:
Now, I’m not sure what part of the planet that is currently habitable would supposedly become uninhabitable if we reached four degrees of warming. I find it hard to believe any such place exists. That’s not what intrigued me though.
What intrigues me is Anders apparently believes we could reach two degrees of warming within thirty years. Even given the warming we’ve experience so far, that would take more than .3 degrees of warming a decade. Does anyone actually believe that sort of rate is plausible over a thirty year period?
Brandon,
Anders sounds like one of those people who, when the “The Blair Witch Project” came out thought it was a documentary.
Brandon,
Perhaps one would be Sir David King, at one time Tony Blair’s chief scientific adviser. According to his statement in May, 2004, Antarctica would be the only habitable continent by 2100.
One wonders if these people have ever looked at deep time. Only a few million years ago, it was a lot warmer, and warmer yet before then. Tennessee, for example, was sub-tropical. The PETM had a larger temperature increase over a very short time span and started from a higher level. The high CO2 levels were hard on benthic foraminifera, but it didn’t much affect life on the surface. Horses first appeared about then.
Brandon,
Anders recently said that he was going to give up blogging because there was no civilized dialog to be had. Explaining that one had to be civilized first in one’s dialog to expect to receive said such did not go down to well but was probably very uncivilized or insensitive on my part.
2.0 degrees in 30 years is the secret hope of all warmists and since natural variability x 40 excuses for the pause each at say 0.3 degrees
equals 12 degrees warming we have missed out on he is quite right to be expectant.
angech,
If I recall some BBC wonk recently claimed Australia has warmed by 90o in the past century. The line between climate obsessed and climate loon often seems vanishingly small.
in other news, Orion is UP! Yay capsule tests!
Brandon regarding Tamino, I haven’t taken the time to look at it. Scanning quickly, I got the basic point. Seemed reasonable enough to me. I’m probably being dense (I know, right? How rare is that. :p) but I didn’t follow what you meant here:
The thing that gets obscured, dropped, or lost in MY view in these discussions of the pause is that while we still see warming trends, it’s not warming that’s consistent with the alarmism. In some way shape or form this communications misfire happens a lot. I argue with people who want to demonstrate unequivocal evidence that the world has warmed. I say, sure, the world has warmed. How much have we seen and how much did we expect given the Prophecies of gloom and doom? Often at that part the conversation falls apart, because the opposition hasn’t considered that some warming is not necessarily the same thing as disruptive warming.
Hunter,
Thanks. I knew there was a term for it, it was just eluding me. Severable, that’s it. That’s what I was reminded of in reading through the dissenting opinion. He seemed to be saying in essense that none of the provisions are severable and the whole thing ought to be flushed.
I’m sorry Boris hasn’t gotten back to us, because looking back over the thread I no longer really understand what point he was trying to make by mentioning this in the first place. I think the discussion of this point started here, with his comment,
So I guess under the theory that whatever Congress intended should be upheld, Boris found this bit of text
and ran with it, although what was really being argued (I think) was a lack of severability and that as a result the whole PPACA ought to be scrapped.
Brandon,
If equatorial regions warmed 4C, there would be times of the year where weather killed due to being too hot. After all: 110F going to 117F? That’s could kill.
This might potentially affect cities in equatorial regions– certainly even if they weren’t uninhabitable, we’d see more deaths due to heat. (Meanwhile, we might see fewer deaths due to cold in other locations. I have no idea what the balance would be.) That said: this isn’t the same as “uninhabitable”.
We have deserts that are pretty much uninhabitable now. I don’t think anyone can survive in Death Valley year round now. Some places on the border of currently uninhabitable places would certainly become inhabitable if it warmed a little. I’m not sure how important that is.
Why do you think Anders believes that?
Oh…. I suspect it’s not excluded by “the models”. There is probably a model somewhere that predicts it. Especially if the current slow down is due simultaneously to (a) those non-stratospheric volcanoes, (b) the long deep ‘low’ in the solar cycle (c) aerosols and (d) natural factors all at the same time and all flip over to “fast warming” and it turns out that climate sensitivity is high but has been “masked”.
I wouldn’t say that’s impossible but I sure as heck wouldn’t want my money on the side of “that’s going to happen”.
The sentence contains the word “exchange.” You are not seriously going to argue that a “federal exchange” is not an “exchange”, or are you?
Scalia’s opinion on whether the subsides should be invalidated is completely irrelevant to my argument. The only thing that matters is that Scalia interpreted the law in the way that goes against your “plain language” argument. He clearly states that congress intended the exchanges to work and that without federal subsides, they cannot work as congress intended.
Again, this is all irrelevant. The point is that Scalia et. a;. have said that Congress’ intent was for exchanges to work. If all federal exchanges collapse, then by definition they did not work as congress intended.
He said that exchanges were intended to work. Federal exchanges are exchanges (he even notes that the federal exchanges take the place of state exchanges).
But I do look forward to your bizarre logic stating that federal exchanges aren’t really exchanges.
Lucia (#133252): ‘I suspect it’s not excluded by “the models†‘
Ed Hawkins’s graph shows the 95th percentile for RCP4.5 model runs to be about 2.0 K above pre-industrial.
AR5 WG1 Figure 11.25b shows the 5-95% range over all scenarios for 2050 is 1.3-2.8 K above an 1850-1900 baseline. Of course, the same range for 2010 is 0.8-1.2, so it’s got a bit of a head-start. The RCP8.5 multi-model mean is about 2.4 K above its historical baseline by 2050.
But the point is, if you believe the models, it’s not outrageous to be predicting 2.0 K above pre-industrial by the mid-2040s.
Boris,
Nice straw man. As for bizarre logic, you should know it.
It’s not a straw man at all. Lucia is arguing that when Scalia said “exchanges” he wasn’t including exchanges created by the federal government. Bizarre.
:>
I get your argument now Boris. But you appear to not care at all about the context Scalia was speaking in. Pardon me for saying so, but isn’t that sort of a dirty no good gosh darn denier type of trick? I’m a little surprised that you’re willing to go that route.
It’s not what Scalia was saying.
Scalia was laying out a conditional chain of failures:
Ultimately everything he’s saying in that block you’re quoting is predicated by the conditional ‘if community rating is invalidated by the Mandate Medicaid Expansions Invalidity’. I’m pretty confident of this because otherwise the ‘there is a second reason why’ part makes no sense. He just finished laying down the first reason.
But I’ll give you this. As a piece of the chain, he said what you think he said. (I think) I understand Lucia’s argument too, and like her I’m not sure he meant what you think he meant. But what this has to do with ‘plain language’ is beyond me. He didn’t say this because the language was unclear, he said this because he was arguing that ACA can’t be implemented the way Congress intended and therefore should be scrapped altogether.
I’ll freely admit that I’m confused though.
So here’s the thing I’d like to understand. Federal subsidies are supposed to be available to indivduals who purchase policies on State exchanges, nobody disputes this I hope. The question is about federal subsidies for Federal exchanges.
So, when he goes on to conclude Thus, the federal subsidies must be invalidated., does he mean federal subsidies for ~all~ exchanges or just for Federal exchanges?
If he means for ~all~ exchanges, then I think Boris’s argument falls apart. On the other hand, if he specifically means Federal exchanges then maybe Boris is on to something.
What do you guys think? Not enough coffee?
(Heck I know I haven’t had enough coffee. I need to drink some and get back to work actually. 🙂 )
“Ultimately everything he’s saying in that block you’re quoting is predicated by the conditional…”
Again, this is completely irrelevant. Scalia is interpreting the law in that passage. I know you and Lucia want to say “it doesn’t count!” because he is discussing a different case, but that doesn’t matter. Yes, it is a conditional, but so what? Are you saying that Scalia’s statement that Congress intended the exchanges to work only applies to his conditional? That makes no sense whatsoever.
Although I’ll say one more time,
Plain language has nothing to do with this. Scalia is reasoning down a chain that presupposes that ‘the Individual Mandate, Medicaid Expansion, and insurance regulations cannot remain in force’, and that’s how he gets to his conclusion. NOT by the ‘plain language’ of the bill.
What subsides was he talking about Boris? Is it clear to you, cause it’s not clear to me. And why?
Absent verbiage that divides federal subsidies for state exchanges and federal subsidies for federal exchanges, I don’t see how anyone can reasonably conclude he was just talking about federal subsidies for federal exchanges.
If he wasn’t, then he’s saying the system falls apart without federal subsides and that’s not what Congress intended. But we aren’t talking about there being no federal subsidies at all, just no federal subsidies for the federal exchanges.
In other words, he’s talking about a case (no subsidies for ANYBODY) that doesn’t have much to do with what we are talking about (subsidies for federal exchanges).
He means all exchanges. Scalia is treating all exchanges the same in that dissent.
But no, my argument doesn’t fall apart. Even Jonathan Adler, one of the originators of this line of attack on the ACA, agrees that Scalia’s dissent is problematic:
So even Adler agrees that the dissent endorses the government’s view.
Boris,
No. That’s not what I’m saying.
I’m saying:
1. That Scalia wrote
1.A. That for my purposes, we can trim some detail and shorten this:
In the absense of Federal subsidies the exchanges would not operate as Congress intended.
2. That there is a difference between ‘absense of subsidies for exchanges’ and ‘absense of subsidies for federal exchanges’.
3. That since the statement is absent any language differentiating between federal and state exchanges, he did not intend to differentiate between federal and state exchanges,
4. that therefore he was talking about an absense of subsidies for all exchanges,
5. that WE are not discussing an absense of subsidies for all exchanges.
Boris is betting on Justice Scalia who voted against Obamacare the first time, to now see the light and support Obamacare the second.
heh.
Oh, I’m sorry. Talking about the conditional and if it matters, yes, I still think it might. I could be wrong. I think the question of all exchanges or federal exchanges might be a more direct route to resolving the matter at hand, but we can circle back to the conditional thing if you’d like.
Again, Scalia is talking about ALL exchanges–including federal exchanges. He then says that without federal subsides, exchanges won’t function as congress intended them to. He makes no distinction between state and federal–they are included together.
Imagine if all the states had decided to use the federal exchange (which was still possible at the time Scalia was writing). Then all the exchanges would be federal. So what would Scalia be talking about when he said “the exchanges would not operate as Congress intended”?
I don’t get the Adler thing. So maybe Adler has been smoking too much crack? I don’t know what to tell you there.
Okay good.
So, where am I still wrong or not understanding?
1) I claim that we’re talking about whether or not the law meant to establish federal subsidies for federal exchanges.
2) We seem to agree that Scalia said without subsidies for all exchanges ACA wouldn’t work as Congress intended.
3) So I conclude that what Scalia was talking about isn’t pertinent to what we were talking about.
Go easy on me, I’m still working on that coffee. 🙂
This doesn’t matter. An absence of subsides for any of the exchanges would cause them to not function in the way congress intended. The process he describes:
happens in each exchange individually.
Oh.
I missed this.
But gosh Boris, you’ve been going round and round with Lucia on this. You flat out don’t agree that Congress could have passed a bill that they hoped would work a certain way but that might actually flop and not work that way?
Well, fine, but I question whether or not Scalia viewed it that way. Just because it was possible doesn’t mean it was the case Scalia was speaking to.
“1) I claim that we’re talking about whether or not the law meant to establish federal subsidies for federal exchanges.”
Scalia treats them as the same as state exchanges–which is the government’s position.
“Boris is betting on Justice Scalia who voted against Obamacare the first time, to now see the light and support Obamacare the second.
heh.”
Oh, no. I would bet a ton on Scalia being inconsistent and striking down subsides on federal exchanges.
What do you mean by ‘happens in each exchange individually’?
Boris,
Sigh….. I’m not going to continue to try to explain how you are distorting the logic in the argument entirely. The isn’t isn’t one of a single word. It has to do with “all”, “some” — what the entire argument is (including the effect of the paragraphs you want to edit out as somehow “not mattering” and so on.)
Scalia’s meaning was not what you claim. While he may think what you claim– that is not the meaning of what the dissent wrote. So there’s really no evidence that he has to “change his mind” to rule against maintaining the tax breaks.
It doesn’t count because, among other things, he’s not discussing the topic under consideration and if we use the concept of “parsimony” and also read the other paragraphs– he’s just not expected to go off on a tangent to elaborate on a specific topic that has nothing to so with Seballius.
More importantly: your interpretation of the text is incorrect. You are reading in ideas– and more over, you are doing so by ignoring entire paragraphs– including the sentence that precedes the one you quoted and that was in between the two you quoted.
I’m not going to discuss this more here because we aren’t SCOTUS and there are lots of important issues other than your claim that Scalia said something he happened not to have said. We aren’t going to resolve what SCOTUS will rule because they will. And I’m not going to spend a lot of time delving into the entire ACA.
But when an argument about the meaning of what SCALIA wrote in a dissent is clearly wrong as yours is, I’m going to point that out. I know you will keep on believing your argument is correct. I’m content to agree to disagree on this one.
I gotta get some work done anyway.
Boris (#133262), quoted Adler:
Which is immediately followed by
Harold,
I already stated that it was not an official holding of the court. Adler’s argument is that the justices agreeing with the government’s interpretation doesn’t matter. That is problematic for him because he is arguing that the plain language of the law means that it could never be interpreted in the way that the justices interpreted it.
Lucia and Mark are arguing that Scalia isn’t endorsing the government’s understanding. Adler says that he is.
I expect we might all agree here that the liberal judges on the court will readily find a way to rationalize the hasty actions of the Congress and Administration in selling and writing the ACA and do it in such a way that it would not be sent back to unfriendly Congress for repair. I would expect those judges to see the ACA as an important milestone in the government’s grab for more power over the citizens choices and the details that sold the law as minor inconveniences that they can readily put a Civics 101 spin onto with a judicial shrug.
I would also think by now that most observers would realize that ACA is not much about the details of the law, the fairness of it, the affordability of health care or any other sweet terminology used to sell it and more about the expansion of government. I continue the see some of its defenders, and particularly the MSM, in the same light as that portrayed on the daytime business shows, where an extravagant and unnamed investment firm is put in a bad light by the competing advertiser showing a spokesperson for the extravagant firm on a building top where the corporate helicopter is landing and after whipping off not one but two pairs of sunglasses saying “We have a helicopter. Why do we have a helicopter? Who knows it is a helicopter.”
Boris,
It would be entirely consistent for a Judge who pointed out that the law was written to not have serability and is unworkable and should not stand to rule that since the law is written so badly (among many, many other badly written parts) as to land in court again to vote against it agaon.
It would take a rather partisan pre-formed less than well informed view to find that inconsistent.
“It doesn’t count because, among other things, he’s not discussing the topic under consideration…”
He is interpreting the law–it doesn’t matter what the topic under discussion is. He could be discussing any number of things. He could be discussing what he had for dinner last night, but if he says that congress intended for exchanges to work, then he thinks congress intended for exchanges to work.
“But when an argument about the meaning of what SCALIA wrote in a dissent is clearly wrong as yours is, I’m going to point that out.”
When even the guy behind the lawsuit against the ACA agrees with my interpretation, it’s pretty impressive that you claim that I’m “clearly wrong.”
And as far as dissenting views not being considered, lol.
In the long history of the USSC it is not unheard of at all for once losing dissenting views to become the foudnation for prevailing views later.
When one considers a President who is flagrantly and repeatedly crossing seperation of powers issues, one can consider that the Courts might just consider sending a wake up call to that President.
lucia:
I’m pretty sure neither is expected to see four degrees of warming even if the planet receives that much (as warming will be uneven), but I’m not sure offhand how much they might warm. It might be worth me looking into a little.
After saying “we get to 2 degrees of warming,” he included in parentheses “which could happen by the mid-2040s.” Mid-2040s is 30 years from now, though perhaps an “about” is needed in the sentence. It might be more like 33.
I won’t say it is impossible because I don’t understand the physical system well enough (I’m not sure anyone does), but I don’t see anything which could make it seem remotely plausible.
HaroldW:
I’m not sold on this. If all we had were the models, that could maybe make some sense to me. However, we have a temperature record which runs way on the low side of those models. How does argue temepratures will jump from way on the low side to way on the high side in only 30 years? As far as I know, that degree of variability is unheard of and unpredicted.
And while I think that strains credulity as it is, given it is the absolute worst case the models can be said to project, let’s not forget all of this hinges upon the assumption humans will follow an extremely high RCP. If that doesn’t happen, the models offer no support for this argument.
It sounds to me like the argument is:
Which is about the least plausible sounding argument I can imagine a person making without them being completely wrong. And even so, I don’t see how one can offer a physical basis for such unprecedented change in temperature patterns. Nothing like it has (as far as we know) ever happened before. That seems like it should outweigh the projections of models with poor performance history.
“What do you mean by ‘happens in each exchange individually’?”
Each exchange is located within a state–either run by that state or by the federal government. Scalia is describing a process that would happen on any exchange if the federal subsides were unavailable. None of the exchanges would fail because other exchanges fail, so you argument “that therefore he was talking about an absense of subsidies for all exchanges” doesn’t make any sense. Any exchange that did not have federal subsides would fail in the way he describes. And that failure would be, according to him, not what congress intended.
Boris,
I don’t know about pursuing this. Continuing this discussion on the Blackboard without Lucia’s blessing might be a little like skirmishing in Lothlorien without Galadriel’s blessing. It’s possibly not the best idea that we could run with. I’ve presumed on Lucia’s tolerance often enough in the past, I’d hate to push it.
This said, I’m going to presume on Lucia’s tolerance far enough to answer this.
I’m still not sure I understand your point. The crux of what your saying appears to be here:
and appears to be founded on some misunderstanding of what I was saying, or some disregard.
Is it that you think that he said that Congress intended for all exchanges to work?
(Edit: I claimed he was talking about an absense of subsidies. Period. Since he didn’t qualify it, I claim that that ‘an absense of subsidies’ is ‘a complete absense of subsidies’ or ‘an absense of subsidies for all exchanges’.)
Anyways, as I said, I believe I’m going to drop this.
“Is it that you think that he said that Congress intended for all exchanges to work?”
Yes, each and every exchange should function.
He is saying that, without federal subsides, each exchange would not function as intended. He makes no distinction between exchanges run by the states and exchanges run by the federal government.
Brandon,
I’m with you on that.
What is comparable? I imagine the largest global warming event we’ve seen in the data (at least in modern times) was the ’87/88 ElNino? That was good for a ballpark of .3C. So we’d need, what? Four more of those over the next 30 years? (Assuming we’re already counting .8C warming since preindustry)
So that’s one of those type events every 8 years on average.
I doubt it.
The longer we go without seeing them the bigger the event needs to be when it hits I guess, or the steeper the slope of the gradual event. But does our atmosphere ever just heat up gradually? I’ve come to doubt this.
Thanks for discussing ACA with me Boris. I enjoyed it as I generally do enjoy discussions with you. 🙂
Brandon,
From my reading of the ATTP blog, I think Anders is a very slippery fish. When someone points to data showing that a very rapid warming (0.33C per decade for the next few decades!) is not at all supported by empirical data and so very unlikely, he will say ‘while that could be be true’, he continues to insists that we can’t be absolutely certain, so we should err on the safe side and eliminate CO2 emissions ASAP. I find his reasoning, such as it is, high on emotion and low on rationality, and utterly immune to new information….. which is standard fare for most climate change activists.
.
I don’t think Anders or his blog is worth the effort; his mind is made up, and nothing is going to dissuade him from the need for immediate and drastic public action to reduce fossil fuel use.
Obamacare is to medical reform what the Comet was to aviation.
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/ist/?next=/history/comets-tale-63573615/
And Boris offers arguments that it must be kept flying because the engineers intended for it to work.
SteveF
Well, yes. After all, we also can’t be absolutely certain ebola won’t suddenly spread all over the world causing a stupendous drop in human population and we can’t be absolutely certain HIV won’t undergo a mutation making it insect born and we can’t be absolutely certain that….
The fact is: there are very few things we can be absolutely certain about. The notion that lack of absolute certainty means one must (or must not) do any particular thing is irrational. Of course, the ‘lack of absolute certainty’ card cuts both ways– but often, when someone is pulling that out, they follow on with draconian recommendations or conversely, totally complete inaction. Both arguments tend toward complete irrationality. We do want to act based on what seems plausible or likely. We want some safeguards for the unlikely. But making enormous sacrifices for something that is not remotely likely on the basis that “we can’t be absolutely certain” it will not happen, is nutso. There are just too many things in that category and in the end: life has risks. (None of us get out of it alive either!)
It would appear future warming will be larger in the poles than the tropics, possibly by a large margin if trends continue.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/capital-weather-gang/wp/2013/09/04/an-unmistakably-compelling-chart-of-global-warming/
Not sure how this plays out in absolute numbers.
Cold has generally been thought to cause 2x the deaths of heat in the US:
http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nhsr/nhsr076.pdf
However, with all things AGW, new and different statistical methods have come to different conclusions. My understanding is that unsurprisingly the death rates of both are decreasing as time goes by. The elderly are the most common victims and it may be the case that many of these victims would have died sooner or later due to weakened cardiovascular systems anyway, the straw that broke the camel’s back.
lucia (Comment #133290)
And, of course, we always have the uncertainty of the outcome for the proposed remedy for the uncertain problem. Perhaps we feel better emotionally knowing we are doing something even if it does not solve the problem, albeit real or imaged.
We also have an issue of deciding on how to best go about solving an uncertain problem given that there are alternative approaches. I often think we have a plethora of approaches just awaiting a problem to resolve.
Tom+Scharf (Comment #133291)
I suspect we have too many prognosticators who have not fully considered man’s ability to adapt when they are given that opportunity. Air conditioning and heating have made places otherwise uninhabitable or inhabitable with difficulty comfortably inhabitable. I am afraid that government programs would greatly stifle man’s capability to adapt by removing alternative choices.
Interesting that some have claimed in recent studies of rapidly changing climate in the Africa that it was those changes and man’s adaption to the changes that were critical in developing man’s brain to process information beyond that of his cousin apes. And without carbon taxes no less.
Lucia,
“But making enormous sacrifices for something that is not remotely likely on the basis that “we can’t be absolutely certain†it will not happen, is nutso.”
.
For sure. The rational parallel is buying life insurance. The priorities change somewhat with the individual’s circumstances, of course, but any rational person examines the cost for the insurance, the size of the benefit, and the probability (and consequences!) of dying during the insured period. The disconnect with climate change activism is that the costs for draconian action are mainly borne by people who are NOT climate activists, and who do not share climate activists’ perception of relative costs and benefits for draconian public action. It is a little like choosing your life insurance coverage based on only having to pay a small fraction of the total cost…. so of course, the coverage selected will be huge. At the bottom, the conflict is mainly about a smallish minority of people who want to force their own priorities/values/etc. on everyone else…. because the ‘science demands it’. It is politics masquerading as science.
.
The reasoned public response to a very uncertain long term threat (and GHG driven warming is that) is much like rationally evaluating life insurance (risks, costs, benefits). In the case of GHG driven warming, the most prudent course is to better define the risks, costs, and benefits, before committing to enormously costly public actions. Making a huge public commitment in the face of very large uncertainty is indeed nutso. If someone says it is impossible to ever accurately define the risks (something which climate activists regularly say!) then the reasoned response is that it is therefore impossible to rationally justify the costs for public action.
Indeed De Witt…
according to Wiki
“The increase in mammalian abundance is intriguing. There is no evidence of any increased extinction rate among the terrestrial biota. Increased CO2 levels may have promoted dwarfing[32][33] – which may have encouraged speciation. Many major mammalian orders – including the Artiodactyla, horses, and primates – appeared and spread around the globe 13,000 to 22,000 years after the initiation of the PETM.[
What’s not to like about that? In fact, these days, some “researchivists” are claiming that shrinkage of the Alpine ilex etc is a sign of the malignant effrects of the barely-detectable global warming.
hunter (Comment #133250)
If I recall some BBC wonk recently claimed Australia has warmed by 90o in the past century.
To be fair she confused 0.9 degrees a century with 0.9 degrees a year for 100 years.
It was an astonishing oversight but I am sure I have got my decimal points wrong a few times in the past as well. I know I have.
Mark Bofill:
Remember, one of the most current responses to the “pause” is that the extra energy is going into the ocean. The idea, at least as I understand it, of El Nino causing warming isn’t that it will add energy to the system. Instead, El Nino will take energy not currently in the (portion of the) atmosphere we’re measuring
and shift its location.
If something takes energy from the ocean to warm the atmosphere, the energy in the ocean will drop. That means there will be less energy to take from the ocean. That means it is physically unreasonable to expect multiple large warming bursts to come from ocean heat becoming atmospheric heat. The only way to argue for it is to claim each warming burst takes only a portion of the excess energy from the ocean.
I’m hoping people wouldn’t make such an argument. The idea a degree of atmospheric warming could come from natural shifts of energy from the ocean to atmosphere seems… beyond implausible.
SteveF:
If you saw my recent exchange with him at Bishop Hill, you could probably guess I mostly share your sentiments. My reason for following Ander’s blog (to the limited extent I do) is it entertains me. Not 18 hours ago one of Anders’s regulars got so upset he cussed at another commenter. And Anders has let it be.
Apparently Anders is trying “to keep the discussion civil” by allowing people to cuss at one another. It’s a tactic I’ve never considered trying.
Regarding El Nino events: Their net impact is to move energy out of the ocean, into the atmosphere and out into space. It would make sense to consider that the 1998 El Nino would be the peak of recent cliamte and that things would pause/cool since then.
Since energy moves out of the ocean, it must also move in. But that raises the question of how deep is the part of the ocean that holds most of the energy moving out. And how much energy in absolute and relative terms is actually moving around in an El Nino: What is the energy budget of an El Nino? How efficient is the El Nino mechanism at removing energy from the part of the Pacific in which it operates?
Brandon,
Right. And to be fair, this isn’t impossible. We know the specific heat of water is far greater than air (specific heat is about 3850 J/(kg C) for seawater (some random lecture), 1.006 kJ/kg.K (equal to kJ/kg.oC) for air
(Engineer’s toolbox). WOW. I knew it was greater, I didn’t remember it was that much greater. But I digress.
So I think it’s certainly possible that even an El Nino like the big one in 98 only discharges a fraction of the potential heat energy it could into the atmosphere. A lot of other details matter in figuring this out. Like for instance, the energy budget of an El Nino, like Hunter says (yay segues!).
Hunter,
Exactly, and well put. I’d like to understand the energy budget of an El Nino as well, seems like that’s a big chunk of understanding how plausible or implausible the idea that we might catch up with model predictions is.
🙂 I’m seriously thinking about buying some of Bob Tisdale’s ebooks on this, now that we’re talking about it. I’ve always meant to and just never gotten around to it. Trouble is I’m cheap. I’d feel guilty paying for something I hadn’t spent a few hours scrounging around the internet looking for free info on.
Oh, I also meant to remark on ATTP.
Sometimes it looks like interesting things are touched on. My trouble is that I won’t comment on blogs where I feel like I have to pay too much attention to … how do censor’s justify it again? Oh yes, making sure I’m not spreading disinformation.
Bloggers ought to decide. If they’re running some sort of school, spreading what they consider to be valid information, that’s great. Don’t invite controversial discussion then, and censor away. On the other hand, if you want me to come with my controversial viewpoints and give your people an interesting discussion, you’d darn well better not snip my remarks merely because you think I’m wrong.
I refuse to play that game. I think controversy and different viewpoints draws participants to a blog and makes for interesting discussion. If you want to have a lively blog and you want my help in accomplishing that, you’re gonna hafta restrain your progressive impulses and not censor me left right and center. Otherwise you can run a Skeptical Science type site and average 3 comments a topic. (ATTP is noteworthy in that despite the snipping a good bit of discussion still goes on there. Regardless, too much for my taste. When Steven Mosher complains of getting snipped there for example, that passes my personal arbitrary tolerance level. Anyway)
To give ad naseum information on my position that nobody cares about 🙂 (I’m putting this in for my piece of mind), I don’t disagree with censoring those who come merely to screw up the discussion for everybody else. The spammers and the skydragon who shall not be named, so on. So it might be a matter of degree rather than principle. whatever. 🙂
Why does an ElNino stop? Is it because almost all of the available energy in the surface water has been exchanged, I.E., the air has warmed and the water has cooled and the difference between them isn’t very much anymore? Or is it that the winds change, or what?
(Edit: Heck, are we even talking about all el ninos or some subset?)
Mark Bofill,
I think the reasoning is that tropical easterlies over the Pacific are what causes the pseudo-cyclical behavior. When the Pacific surface cools during a la Nina, the magnitude of the Hadley circulation (driven by thunder storms along the tropical convergence zone) drops, and with that drop in Hadley circulation the prevailing easterlies (which are due to the Hadley circulation) drop in intensity. When the easterlies drop, there is not enough shear applied to the ocean surface by the wind to maintain the difference in height between the western Pacific warm pool and the eastern Pacific. So the warm water flows back toward the east over the surface. As the Pacific surface warms, thunder storms increase, the Hadley circulation increases, and along with that the easterlies begin to increase…. ultimately driving the warm water west again, starting a new cycle. I’m sure there are lots of complicating factors, but that is the basic cycle. Where and how much it rains in the tropics and subtropics is part-and-parcel of the ENSO.
🙂 Thanks! I see I didn’t ask what I meant to. Why/when does the warming caused by an El Nino stop. But you may have answered that question too, lemme think it through.
Brandon,
“Apparently Anders is trying “to keep the discussion civil†by allowing people to cuss at one another. It’s a tactic I’ve never considered trying.”
I think it was Rachel moderating, not Anders. Still, I would not allow that sort of comment to remain if it were my blog. As is quite typical of many politically motivated blogs, what level of invective is allowed in comments depends a great deal on whether the writer agrees with the position of the blog…. Anders is no different, and his blog exists to advance a specific set of policy goals: drastically reduced global energy consumption (of all types), forcing a ‘simpler life’ on everyone, and requiring a ‘fairer’ distribution of global wealth via forced income transfer (with intellectual midgets like Anders deciding what is more fair, of course).
.
His views are deep green, leftist, arrogant, and foolish, but most of all, utterly infantile. He simply can not understand how anyone could possibly hold a legitimate view different from his…. IMHO, he’s a moron.
There’s too much navel-gazing that goes on in blogs, but I personally don’t read anything particular into the moderation efforts. For example .
Steve,
I’m pretty sure you’re correct, it seems to me I’ve read/seen the substance of your explanation before. The more I think about that the more I realize I don’t understand why an El Nino causes atmospheric temperatures to change. At all.
So what that the warm water sloshed…
…oh. Is it that the surface air temperature is way colder over in the eastern Pacific? That’d explain why more energy makes it out into the atmosphere I guess. Or is it that there’s more .. what’s the word, mixing? Normally people use the word mixing to indicate heat exchange between ocean layers I think, I mean in this context more heat exchange between the air and the water because of .. heck I don’t know.
…
Gah I gotta run errands. I sort of look forward to eventually being a retired old codger who can play on blogs all day long. 🙂
Mark,
In addition to what SteveF said about the Pacific Warm Pool, the Easterlies also drive the Pacific Ocean gyres. The gyres act as heat pumps to move warm water from near the equator to high latitudes where it cools. Slow it down and less heat is transported away, so high latitudes cool and low latitudes warm. In theory, a more uneven temperature distribution should cause the global average temperature to decrease if there is radiative balance at the TOA. But there probably isn’t. Combine that with the fairly poor coverage of surface temperature stations for high latitude and you get an increase in average temperature when the strength of the Easterlies drops.
Thanks DeWitt. More pieces to think about.
I realized that El Nino’s could also heat the atmosphere by virtue of the sloshing providing a greater surface area for the warm water atmosphere interface. Even if the air temp isn’t that much colder over the eastern pacific, provided it’s at least colder than the water, energy is going to go up. The larger the area of the interface, the more energy is going to go per unit time.
Wow. Looking at gyres now it’s highly interesting.
Mark,
Once you get past ocean gyres, you can move on to the thermohaline circulation. The Easterlies are the main driver of the ocean gyres, but in the North Atlantic particularly, there is a substantial contribution from thermohaline circulation. Deep water formation in the North Pacific is not as significant, leading to the deep water taking much longer to turn over. The age of the deep water can be determined by 14C dating and some Pacific deep water is more than 1000 years older than the surface water.
SteveF:
I don’t know who did what moderating, but Anders was commenting in the same thread. He saw the comment. He chose not to remove it.
Yup. I’d wager there are times you could use someone’s exact words, replacing only those needed to invert its position, and get moderated.
Mark Bofill:
It can be difficult to determine what energy is “excess energy,” but the thing you have to ask yourself is, if the ocean starts releasing excess energy, why would it stop while it still has excess energy? If you’ll forgive a bad analogy, this argument is like claiming a boiling pot will stop boiling for a while then start boiling again later on. It’s not impossible, but you have to provide some explanation as to why it would happen. Just saying, “There’s still more excess energy” doesn’t explain anything.
I’d have to see what he wrote that got moderated to tell. It’s not like Mosher has a reputation for great civility to use his comments as a litmus test.
It’s more about type. Moderating comments because of behavior is good. Moderating comments because of the views they express is bad. It shouldn’t matter if you hold stupid or intelligent positions. If you behave civilly and discuss reasonably, you should be allowed to be wrong. The reason the people you mention being moderated should be moderated is they pretty much never behave civilly or discuss reasonably.
By the way, Tamino said this in an inline response to a comment:
So that answers the question of whether or not Tamino thinks there has been a pause.
DeWitt,
Thanks. 🙂 I’d bumped into that before and already knew at least a bit about it.
Brandon,
Good question. I’ve realized I don’t know enough about how El Nino’s work to speculate on this, but I’m working on it. I’m getting reluctant to risk boring the hell out of everybody by talking about it without spending a little time and effort to go learn something about it first.
Just personal opinion. I’ve got no idea what his comment was. Heck, I don’t even know I’ve got it right that he got snipped. Seems like I have some vague recollection of scanning a comment referring to this over at Climate Etc. some time back. I’m not sure because I wasn’t all that terribly interested anyway.
But I like Steven Mosher as a litmus test because he seems to have a gift for pissing everybody off, warmist and skeptic alike. Part of the reason I branched out from WUWT into the wider world was due to the regular chorus of boos and hisses most of his comments seem to garner there. Made me curious about other perspectives in the blogosphere. Not that this really matters. 🙂
It’s a testament to climate scientists that they act like scientists?
…
uhm, okay.
I withdraw my feeble attempt to be snarky :>
I read
So Tamino’s testament and phase usage is entirely right and proper I guess.
Weird, I wonder where I get my crazy ideas. I’d always thought that expression ‘it’s a testament to’ meant or implied something extraordinary, not just a declaration of truth.
Yea verily, scientists are scientists, and computers are computers, and tautologies are true by definition. World without end, now and forever, aMen.
I’m going to bed.
Mark Bofill:
Yeah, but he gets moderated by everybody too 😛
Well, first off, Tamino’s usage is wrong in form. You have testaments to traits (adjectives), not things (nouns).
Second, you shouldn’t rely upon single line definitions so much. Or at least, if you’re going to, you ought to parse them more carefully. Definitions often rely upon subtle distinctions.
Leaving aside the difference between “testament” and “testament to,” the definition you cite says “a declaration of a truth.” It’s not merely a casual statement. It’s not a flippant remark. It’s a declaration. This is emphasized in the second clause when it says “a bearing of witness.” One does not bear witness every time they make a statement regarding a fact.
The phrase “it’s a testament to” means what you thought it meant. The object must give proof of something, and that something must be believed important enough to warrant the call for a formal proof.
You shouldn’t doubt yourself so much 😛
The moderation at anders is capricious.
for example. The last go around someone attacked Thune.
So I posted his record
More attacks.
So, I noted that both sides showed intolerance.
no comment directed at an individual.
no swear words
just an observation.
of course its a game figuring out a moderator.
the trick at AATP is to pick a thread where the moderator is letting locals violate the rules and then do something similar but not as bad..
then watch.
so if the mod is letting people say inflamatory things.. then write a comment that is just a tad spicey.. not inflamatory.. just spicey
then you will witness the moderators bias.
or off topic stuff.. pick up a comment that is off topic.. commment on it.. let the counter attack on you build up..
maybe a day or so.. then come back with something calm ..
watch..
Oh, I think I forgot to respond to something I meant to respond to earlier. Mark Bofill said he didn’t follow what I meant when I said:
I was discussing a methodology in a recent paper published by Ross McKitrick. In it, he came up with a definition for “pause” I think is highly unusual. He said a pause is any period in which we cannot find a statistically significant warming trend over any subset of it which ends in the most recent times (and this criteria must be met by both the north and south hemispheres).
That is, he went back in time, year by year, calculating a trend for the period of that year to 2014. The “pause” lasts however far he can go back in time like that without running into a statistically significant trend (in either hemisphere). This is peculiar because the more uncertainty in the data, the less likely there is to be a statistically significant trend.
There are uncertainties in the process used to generate the temperature records which don’t propogate through to this analysis (and haven’t actually been quantified). If we could calcaluate and propogate the uncertainties through to McKitrick’s analysis, we’d find they increase the length of the “pause” he finds. The worse our data, the longer his “pause” lasts. If all of our temperature data magically got corrupted, we wouldn’t be able to find a statistically significant trend for any period. As such, McKitrick’s definition would hold the pause has been going on indefinitely.
I think it’s silly to define the “pause” in a way which makes your position “stronger” as you become less certain of your data. I also think it’s silly to cherry-pick 2014 as an endpoint. If he had done the analysis two years ago, he’d have likely found the “pause” began at a different point. If he repeats the analysis in two years, he’ll likely find the “pause” begins at yet another point.
The analysis might be interesting and/or useful, but I don’t see how this definition of the “pause” could be practical in any communication strategies other than, “Let’s redefine ‘pause’ in a way to exaggerate our views since most people won’t know what our analysis actually shows.”
Mark Bofill,
The specific heat of water is ~4.187 KJ/Kg-C
The specific heat of dry air is ~1.006 KJ/Kg-C
You were missing a decimal point in the water value. The specific heat of moist air is a bit higher, but the difference is always a factor of ~4 unless condensation is taking place.
Despite the rather bizarre word usage, the irony in this statement:
.
“Still, it’s a testament to climate scientists that they are keeping an open mind and trying to *understand* what’s happening.”
.
is lost on Tamino; no surprise there. Seems to me it is more a testament to the widespread bias in the field, and shows that climate scientists, and camp followers like Tamino, twist themselves into pretzel-like contortions to avoid the most obvious (and most likely!) explanation for ‘the pause’: the GCM’s are way too sensitive to GHG forcing, probably by a factor of about 1.5-2. The field’s obvious bias toward high climate sensitivity is nothing to worry about, because reality will not listen to appeals to authority, gives not a whit about climate models, and will not conform to support a green policy agenda. Continued contortions by the field to preserve the fantasy of high climate sensitivity will only invite public ridicule, and that ridicule will be very richly deserved. Of more importance to climate scientists, the field risks public defunding of their efforts if factual reality continues to be so consistently ignored.
Brandon,
If your position is “we lack certainty”, your position will automatically become stronger when your data are less certain. It’s not “silly”, it just is.
I have read Ross’s paper, so I don’t have any opinion on it.
The definition of “pause”– not sure it should be “period with no statistically significant trend”. On the other hand…. at least he did define what he means by the term, and many do seem to mean that. I mostly try to avoid characterizing the period in a way that suggests “not warming”. Certainly, the observed warming trend is slower than in the 90s.
Brandon
I do not think 2014 is a cherry picked end point, it is the end point because it is 2014, next month the end point will be 2015 , last year it was 2013.
The pause as some attempt to define it as the longest period from the current date backwards to where where the anomaly was zero contains numerous smaller pauses and trends up and down.
It starts in one gratuitous data set RSS near a cherry picked 1998, why cherry picked?
Because it was the last surge upwards in temperatures which caused this long flat spell of 18 years 2 months.
Interestingly the pause extends backwards before 1998 and could go further back if the current temps decline a bit more (not this year)
I’ve got snipped at McIntyre’s blog, while he lets people on his team get away with far worse .. one can then choose to comment or not on sites as one prefers.
I also got the impression that McKitrick’s definition of pause is too generous. Not so much because of the raw data uncertainty — if you have really crappy data, then there’s only a weak case to be made for warming, cooling, pause, whatever. But because he counts the pause as beginning when the lower uncertainty bound becomes negative, rather than when the linear trend estimate goes negative. While I haven’t done the math to prove it, it would seem that McKitrick’s method, applied to a relatively constant warming, would claim perhaps a 10-year “pause”, due to the very large uncertainty window for short durations.
But then, I’ve never liked talking about pauses. It’s not important whether warming has gone to zero — however determined — just that it’s considerably less than prognosticated by the models. And hence the dire predictions of doom are premature.
When comparing the heat capacity of water and air, one should probably use the volumetric capacity rather than the mass. Water has a density of 1,000kg/m³ while air at sea level is 1.2kg/m³. So the heat capacity per unit area of the entire atmosphere is equal to a volume of water with the same area that is ~3m deep.
Also, air near the surface over at least 70% of the surface of the Earth is in contact with water. If one assumes that relative humidity remains constant with average temperature, than most of the energy required to increase the temperature of a volume of moist air at 30°C by 1 degree is used to evaporate the water necessary to maintain constant RH. That air will then, at the same rate of mass transport, carry more energy.
RB,
Sure, we all can choose where to comment. The dearth of comments at heavily moderated, heavily political blogs does suggest that moderation should be light and unrelated to whether or not the commenter toes the policy line of that particular blog. I personally have zero motivation to comment at blogs where many on-topic comments are snipped….. better to publish a book than run a blog if you are afraid of comments from people who do not agree with you.
Steve Mosher is right about moderation at anders. I’ve commented there on some threads quite a lot. The problem is that those with whom the moderator agrees are allowed very liberal use of name calling, sarcasm, and off topic ad hominum responses. The thing that’s bothering about it is the double standard employed there. I gave up after a while. No technically correct point is accepted and references are never read. Steve Bloom is among the worst. BBD is not far behind.
lucia:
Sure. But when you use such a position while coming up with a new, previously unheard of definition, you have to know you’re going to play upon people misinterpreting what you mean when you say “pause.” The paper doesn’t even do anything to address the inevitable misinterpretations.
It’s good the paper defines what it means, but if you’re going to redefine a word, you should discuss why or at least offer some caveats to address the inevitable confusion which arises from using a definition nobody else uses.
Ah, but if we were less certain of the data, we wouldn’t be able to say that. We could have a “pause” where the data (ignoring uncertainties) increased faster than at any previous point. That seems pretty silly to me. This sort of analysis might be useful, but I don’t see how it is useful to define a “pause” by it.
angech:
If it isn’t cherry-picking, then it’s begging the question. The definition you’re suggesting for the “pause” inherently assumes temperature rise has currently paused. That’s tautological. You’re looking for a pause with an approach that assumes there is a pause. That’s why I say the endpoint is a cherry-pick. I think that’s a better interpretation than saying the analysis assumes it’s conclusion.
The authors repeated the analysis with one endpoint moved many times. It would be easy for them to have moved the other endpoint as well. That would have made their approach more fair. It would also mean they could have applied it to other portions of the temperature series for comparison purposes.
Oddly enough, I’ve previously suggested trying an analysis like this with every segment possible. It’s basically just a form of smoothing the data (with the length of the segment being a parameter). I know it can be done with OLS trend calculations. I’m not sure about with the new aspects the paper adds in. I imagine it could be, but I don’t know how it would be done.
Long story short, my opinion is if you want to look for a “pause” in a series, you shouldn’t assume it must exist in a certain period. I also don’t think one should encourage people to interpret a lack of certainty in one conclusion as increased certainty in the inverse conclusion.
Brandon,
It doesn’t assume that there was a pause. If the first three points have a trend where the error bars on the slope don’t include zero, then there is no pause. Of course that’s unlikely as the error bars with only three points are probably going to be large. But it is possible to say that there isn’t a pause even with three points. I don’t see your problem with not being able to detect a trend with really noisy data. That’s just what happens when you have really bad data. You cannot draw conclusions.
David Young
I have a personal metric – if Steve Bloom and BBD are allowed to comment without snipping, then the site is a joke. ATTP is a joke. There are people like Eli, Tobis and Arthur Smith who are just so comical that they can be ignored, but at least they do not fling insults at you. Possibly Eli does, but I can never understand what he is saying since he talks a different language to me – I am British. He says things like “putting people on the dime” and I have no clue what he means.
diogenes,
Steve Bloom isn’t always an over the top radical. His comments on the Ghosts of Climates Past series at Science of Doom were intelligent, on topic and notably lacking in rancor.
Then again, it could have been a different Steve Bloom.
Brandon,
Moving windows:
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/4520911/Climate/Correlation/GMST_Autocorrelation_15year.png
grumbleGrumbleGrumble.
Just wrote a bundle of thanks and responses to responses and comments that errored out when I clicked submit. Been in the car all day just got back in.
Brandon, Steven, DeWitt, thanks for your responses and remarks! I’m not about to try and retype my verbose dropped response, but at least I wanted to say that much.
DeWitt Payne, the authors didn’t even calculate the trend for the first three points. From the paper:
They don’t offer any explanation as to why a five year “pause” could arise from the small size of the subsample but a six year “pause” wouldn’t. The number is arbitrary. No testing was done to choose it. Or at least, no such tests were reported.
If the pause ended in 2010, this methodology wouldn’t recognize that. By this methodology, the pause must have continued all the way to 2014 unless there was a statistically significant trend over a six year period. That’s a pretty meaningless caveat given nobody in the field expects trends to be statistically significant (under tests easier than those used in this paper authors).
I have no idea why you think I have a “problem with not being able to detect a trend with really noisy data.” I don’t. I’ve never said I do. What I have a problem with is claiming noise in the data means we know global warming has paused.
The authors didn’t report any power testing of their methodology. That means we have no way to know what the results would be if they chose a different ending endpoint. It’s possible their methodology would find 10-15 year “pauses” all over the same temperature series, even during periods generally accepted as having warmed. Theoretically, it could find longer pauses in such period. We don’t know. Without having any sort of power testing or comparative results, we have no way to interpret these results as more than:
I did a quick test of endpoint effects on this methodology. Since 1998 is such a well-known peak, I decided it’d be interesting to see what the methodology would show if it was run as though we only had data up to 1997. I only ran it on the HadCRUTv4 data set because I had to modify the code to get even that data to load. I figure one data set is enough to demonstrate why I dislike this methodology.
After getting HadCRUTv4 to load, I modified the code to allow us to set any ending endpoint we want. I then tried some values. Given 1998 is such a famously high point, I decided to start by choosing 1997. When I did, I found there was a “pause” from 1984-1997. When I moved further back, I found a “pause” from 1980-1995.
But when I moved forward in time, things changed dramatically. While before 1998, there were 10+ year pauses, beginning in 1998, there was no pause. At all. I’m going to go out on a limb and say it’s probably a bad sign if your methodology for searching for “pauses” causes you to find 10+ year pauses that can vanish completely if you add one year of data.
Just think. In a year or two, we may be able to repeat this analysis and find temperatures have paused for ten years. Then we can “know” the pause started at 2005.
And just pretend the year before we hadn’t “known” the pause started in 1995.
DeWitt, A raccoon does not change its stripes. Bloom has been very prominent in trying to bully Tamsin Edwards, so much so that Richard Betts has been unusually strong in her defense. He also has used lying as a tactic to discredit people. This happened to me at James where Bloom pretended to be concerned about my influence on climate science. His real concern was to discredit.
“Steve Bloom isn’t always an over the top radical. His comments on the Ghosts of Climates Past series at Science of Doom were intelligent, on topic and notably lacking in rancor.
Then again, it could have been a different Steve Bloom.”
nope same guy. a real life radical
Brandon Shollenberger (Comment #133333)
” After getting HadCRUTv4 to load when I moved forward in time, things changed dramatically. While before 1998, there were 10+ year pauses, beginning in 1998, there was no pause. At all. I’m going to go out on a limb and say it’s probably a bad sign if your methodology for searching for “pauses†causes you to find 10+ year pauses that can vanish completely if you add one year of data”.
If you use Hadcrut 4 you will find no pause after 1998 because there is no pause in that data. Heck they even extol that over at Real Climate. Your methodology is right the data set is wrong [if being tautological and looking for a pause]
If you use RSS you will find a pause for 18 years and in most data after 1998.
” I do not think 2014 is a cherry picked end point, it is the end point because it is 2014, next month the end point will be 2015 , last year it was 2013.”
“If it isn’t cherry-picking, then it’s begging the question. The definition you’re suggesting for the “pause†inherently assumes temperature rise has currently paused. That’s tautological. You’re looking for a pause with an approach that assumes there is a pause.”
No,No, Yes, I do inherently assume the temperature rise has currently paused because we are looking for a pause. Now. Being tautological is not the problem. Refusing to admit a pause exists in a data set like Tamino [not you] and pointing to other data sets which do not contain a pause as proof no pause exists is wrong . If we had the hockey stick going upwards I would not bother looking for a pause because, like Hadcrut 4, there would be no pause.
Samples from RC “Recent global warming trends: significant or paused or what?
by Stefan “But the question the media love to debate is is the warming since 1998 significantly less than the long-term warming trend? Significant again in the sense that the difference might not just be due to chance, to random variability? And the answer is clear: the 0.116 since 1998 is not significantly different from those 0.175 °C per decade since 1979 in this sense. a number of studies, including one by Grant Foster and myself, has shown that it is mostly related to El Niño / Southern Oscillation.) There simply has been no statistically significant slowdown, let alone a “pauseâ€.
Using the HadCRUT4 hybrid data Over the interval 1999-2010 the warming trend is actually larger than the long-term trend of 0.175 °C per decade.
Can anybody spot a ‘hiatus’? No? I certainly can’t.”
angech, it’s amusing to see you say:
As HadCRUTv4 is the data set given the most attention by Ross McKitrick in the paper I’m discussing. It is the data set he supposedly found a 19 year pause in. I only got 17 years when I ran his code, but I chalk that up to the few extra months of data.
You just said you are looking for a pause so you assume there is a pause. That is about as obvious a case of begging the question as there is. So yes, it is tautological. And it is a problem.
By the way guys, I should point out I’ve written a post about this paper. I think it does a good job showing why I find this methodology… questionable.
angech,
The basic problem with Stefan’s comment is that his paper is rubbish. Really, the paper is a joke. He and Tamino set out to find the closest possible fit to a continuous linear rise, using many adjustable parameters, and allowed those parameters to assume plainly non-physical (even bizarre) values, and (surprise!) they succeed in ‘proving’ the pause doesn’t exist. Which is to say, they proved nothing about the underlying secular trend, but did demonstrate their lack of technical competence and obvious confirmation bias. The fact that such tripe passes peer review and gets published underlines what is so very wrong with the field…… too much alarmist rubbish is passed off as ‘science’ because it confirms the existing (alarmist) beliefs of those working in the field.
.
I made some effort to point this out in two guest posts here, and Troy masters also did some posts on the same silly paper at his blog (more technically elegant posts than mine!). In any case, Stefan and Tamino are just wrong about the underlying secular trend. There almost certainly has been a significant slowing in the underlying rate of rise compared to 1979 to 2001.
.
What Stefan and Tamino did prove was that John von Neumann (‘four free parameters draws an elephant’) was a lot smarter about curve fitting than they are…. and more aware of the danger of confirmation bias.
SteveF —
O/T for this thread, but apropos of von Neumann’s famous quip, see figure 1 of this article. [Non-paywalled version here.]
HaroldW,
Very funny.
SteveF –
Well, they’ve cheated a bit — I count 5 complex parameters as 10 degrees of freedom — but I got a chuckle out of reading it. A mathematical scherzo on a cold and dreary Monday morning.
HaroldW,
I am currently in the Northeast of Brazil (~9 degrees south latitude); 29C and sunny, with prevailing easterlies at about 10-15 Km per hour….neither cold nor dreary. I’m returning to Florida tonight. (also neither cold nor dreary 😉 )
So the climate obsessed are going full circle, now performing heroic acts of data torture to rationalize deny*ng (ahem) the pause.
The consistent climate obsessed behavior seems to be that data must be tortured and reality ignored to sustain the credibility of a climate apocalypse.
Brandon and gang have, to use the youthful slang, punked themselves:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/12/07/changepoint-analysis-as-applied-to-the-surface-temperature-record/
Re: HaroldW (Comment #133340)
Harold, thanks for posting that. I loved it! I’ve forwarded it already to half my colleagues. I really should read the American Journal of Physics more often and more carefully (especially considering that I occasionally publish there!).
hunter, I’ve what now?
Are you saying I’m part of “the climate obsessed” gang? And I’ve engaged in data torture? Don’t let my disbelief fool you. I’d really like an answer to these questions. I’d especially like to know when I became climate obsessed or tortured data to deny “the pause.”
Ross McKitrick used a methodology which, amongst other things, I demonstrated is incredibly sensitive to endpoint selection. It is so sensitive to endpoint selection a single year’s data can not just end a “pause” he claims to find, but can completely erase the “pause” from the books. I said that’s bad, but I don’t see how that makes me a pause denier. If anything, I criticized the torturing of data McKitrick engaged in.
And really, I don’t see how anyone can link to the post you linked to while accusing others of torturing data. Have you read the post? I have. It’s terrible. It uses an analysis with no meaningful statistical underpinning, arbitrarily chosen parameter values and makes at least one major claim that’s completely wrong. When I discussed this, the author of the post responded in a way which makes it seem he has absolutely no idea what he’s talking about.
He couldn’t even get the basic point of what kind of changepoint the function he used looked for right. I pointed out the methodology he was criticizing used trend-based breakpoints unlike his mean value-based breakpoints. His response was to claim I was wrong, denying the cpt.mean function assigns individual segments with 0 mean. In what has to be a height of absurdity, he claimed the individual segments each had a different trend, despite having shown the breakpoint graph with each segment’s 0-mean value plotted as a line for the segment.
I’m not entirely sure what you were trying to say in your comment hunter, but every interpretation I come up with just makes me shake my head. Ross McKitrick’s claims to have found a “pause” of various lengths are suspect, at best, and the WUWT article you linked to is terrible. Those are points everyone should be able to agree to no matter what their views on global warming might be.
Harold W,
Thanks. What a hoot. That paper will be making the rounds.
The implication is that our climate obsessed friends have not only made the elephant wiggle its trunk but do so while dancing on a ball at the same time.
Over at RC they are now showing that the new fangled “change point analysis” demonstrates there is no pause. Who would have thought? Apparently moving window averages are so out of style now as to now be worthy of showing, even for reference. We are also told selecting 1998 for trend start is an “extreme cherry pick” followed by using 1980 as the start for a linear trend to date.
If there is one thing that should always be a red flag, it is the changing of mathematical techniques to analyze new observations that has no obvious mathematical advantages (desired results doesn’t count), especially when they choose not to show the results with previous good enough techniques.
Tom+Scharf, yes I saw that. It’s a very poor effort.
Basically one change point algorithm was selected, no attempt to perform a sensitivity analysis on the algorithm chosen, one particular time series was selected–apparently because it already minimized the so-called pause.
In other words, it’s an “extreme cherry pick” itself.
I did want to weigh in on Ross McKitrick’s paper here. I think Brandon is exactly right that McKitrick’s definition of the pause is all wonky.
For any time series, if you make the analysis window short enough, you’ll always find a trend that is statistically indistinguishable from a zero trend.
So with Ross’s methodology, you end up with global warming as simply being the sum of a series of pauses.
As I said, this is a bit wonky.
Tom Scharf,
RC and gang are now in the final stages of dealing with the pause:
The ocean did not eat it, the missing volcanoes did not mask it, the models are perfect and the pause never even existed in the first place.
No introspection, no honest reflection, no doubt and no science.
Carrick,
I like the ending of the deconstruction on the CPA scam at WUWT:
Taken to its logical conclusion, RC’s abuse of CPA shows that the entire warming the climate obsessed are so concerned with (in the most rent seeking sense of the word) is a costly example of anthropomorphic projection. Played out on a scale much grander than finding the Madonna in a tortilla.
Carrick, It’s worth highlighting this statement from the author of the analysis used in the RealClimate post:
This may have just been a careless a slipup, but the statement is incredibly wrong. The prior distributions for the parameters may not have been biased, but there is no way the algorithm had an equal chance at finding a break point at 2013 as it did 1960. There is a minimum amount of data needed on both sides before such probability could become equal (dependent upon parameter values tested).
In fact, I’m not even convinced the probability is consistent through time at all. We know a certain amount of space is needed on each side of a change point. That skews the distribution of change points. The more change points you use, the fewer distributions of change points possible. That would skew the probabilities to favor results with relatively even spacing like those shown in the post.
I’m not sure how one would determine probabilities when considering different change point counts though. I don’t think you can assume each number of change points is equally likely, but I don’t know how you could assign probabilities to each.
In addition to hunter’s comments here, he said this in response to me over at WUWT:
I have to say, I don’t get his sort of behavior. Why do people make belittling remarks directed at people who’ve put effort into studying and discussing problems while not making any effort into specifying what those people have done wrong? I’m thinking maybe it’s an outlet for people who want to participate but lack the skill or knowledge to, but maybe people just like pointing and laughing?
I ask because I see it happen all the time, and I never understand it. I’ve followed blogs on climate change almost since their inception. For years, I didn’t comment. The reason is I didn’t have anything useful to say.
Some time back I started writing a program intended to filter out comments that don’t even try to add to discussions. I’m curious how much less material there’d be if a perfect version of it were added to all comment filters.
Sorry for the triple post, but I just saw something I find hilarious. WebHubTelescope, who seems to have developed a strange obsession with me, just posted a comment at Anders’s blog which is remarkable:
I don’t know why WebHubTelescope brought my name up there. My best guess is it’s because I’ve discussed a topic sort of similar to what the post is about (broadly, Anders and I have recently discussed the “pause”). I don’t know though. He’s weird. He’s also seemingly unaware of the fact I’ve been banned there.
But what I find hilarious about this is the video he links to is one I made to test the idea of a video introducing people to the hockey stick debate.* He doesn’t say anything in the video is wrong. He just shared a link to it and acted like it’s ridiculous. The effect is he’s basically (and presumably inadvertently) just promoting it. This is hilarious because if someone who agreed with me tried to post a link to the video on that site, it’d likely get them in trouble.
*If I were less lazy and/or had any talent for visual editing, I’d be pursuing that project right now.
Brandon,
Well, I’d ridicule you for making an appearance there. :p
But see, you’d qualify as a good litmus test too. I had no idea you were banned over there. And being climate possessed you vex and disturb people over at WUWT as well. Let me know what other blogs ban or moderate you and I’ll cross them off my list as well. 🙂
Brandon,
Good point. You are serious and deserve more respect. I apologize.
Brandon, I sympathize. Webby is an odd case. He is pretty hostile to people who disagree with him, often in a very personal and nasty way. I am surprised Anders allowed the comment as he has said in the past he would not allow comments about people who had been banned since they couldn’t respond. Wouldn’t surprise me if that rule has gone by the board.
hunter, I don’t really care about respect. My experience is most calls for civility are disingenuous. What matters to me is if people contribute anything. I’d rather a person make interesting arguments and hurl invective at me than treat me respectfully and add nothing of use.
David Young, apparently WebHubTelescope is following this discussion. He posted another comment where he said:
I’m not sure if Anders has ever followed a rule such as you describe. I don’t follow his blog very closely, but I do know I was talked about there just two weeks ago as well.
Mark Bofill, I’m intrigued by the idea of being climate possessed. Just imagine, the climate, with it’s ever important perspective on the global warming issue, possesses someone and then promptly proceeds to discuss everything about global warming that strikes it as silly without ever actually caring about global warming itself 😀
On moderation, I’ve been banned (or Tamino-esque banned) at Tamino’s, Collin Maessen’s and Anders’s blogs. I’ve had experience with Watts Up With That. I had one comment here deleted because it contained a sentence lucia thought might cause some legal risk (I reposted it without the sentence). I had a comment at Climate Audit deleted because it used religious beliefs as examples when discussing how Lewandowsky’s methodology can produce absurd results (I reposted with a different example). I’ve had a few blog owners ask me to stop discussing a subject because of food fights developing. Oh, and RealClimate has refused to post any number of comments but did recently allow me to comment on the McKitrick paper (go figure).
That pretty much sums up my experiences with moderation on blogs. I didn’t list Skeptical Science because it’s not really a blog, and I think we all know what its moderation is like. There was also a blog where a moderator snipped parts of my comments then responded in a way that misrepresented what I had said. I can’t remember the guy’s name off hand.
Strangely, of all my moderation experiences, the one with WUWT still bothers me the most. The moderation was weird, but then Anthony Watts went around telling people things about the situation he either knew, or should have known, were false. That bothers me because I expect that sort of behavior from some people/sites, but I thought WUWT was better than it.
David Young,
I noted that Webby worsened when people told him his stupid curve fit model of the climate is…. well, a stupid curve fit. But what really set him off was the long argument about what kind of statistics should apply to water molecules in cloud formation (at Judith Curry’ blog), where most people accused him of using a tiny nit-pick to write a very negative review of a book Judith co-authored. Since then he has (thankfully) retreated to echo chamber blogs like ATTP, where he mostly posts comments that are critical of people he doesn’t like. Webby joins a host of green advocates who appear frustrated by the ‘lack of progress’ instituting draconian reductions in fossil fuel use. He would be better off accepting that is not happening any timesoon.
Brandon,
Yeah, that’s rough. It’s hard for me to be confident of my objectivity about WUWT because that is my tribe. At least as far as I’m concerned, I can’t speak for all the regulars there. 🙂 But at least I don’t maintain any illusions about it, I guess.
I hang out here specifically because all of the regulars either know more about math, data analysis, science, or are simply in general smarter than I am. So to be fair, I ought to mention I’m pretty sure I fall on the ‘taker’ end of the scale rather than the ‘giver’ end with my participation here. Mostly I contribute dumb jokes. I don’t have a problem with it, but then again I benefit from the situation. But I don’t think I’m benefiting at anyone’s expense. At least I hope not.
Heck I don’t know. I reread my last comment and it’s not quite right, but I don’t know that the issue is worth the time it takes to think about it.
Well, Bob’s El Nino guide for Dummies agrees that it’s the increased surface area of all that warm water spreadout across half the globe that causes the increased heating of the atmosphere. Not that that makes it gospel of course, but after I check a couple more things unless I’m surprised I’m going to run with that as a working theory.
Mark Bofill, that’s fine as long you don’t jump into discussions to tell people they’re wrong. Arguing when you have nothing to contribute on a subject is bad form. Talking when you have nothing to contribute on a subject is socializing.
David Young, I’m amused by the change to the page I just saw:
It amuses me because Anders and Rachel both commented in a topic not two weeks ago where I was discussed. Neither said a word or did anything. It happens against now, we talk about it here, and suddenly he cares.
Maybe it’s a coincidence.
Huh. A quick Google search turns up a comment on another post by Anders where the moderator added these notes:
And yet, it is easy to find multiple comments insulting me on his site, often on posts where Anders and/or Rachel were actively participating in the discussion. There’s even a post where Anders explicitly mentioned me by name, where commenters openly insulted me in response. Best yet, there is even one comment where part of a comment describing me was removed but my name was not.
There is even one lengthy comment discussing me which explicitly mentions the fact I’ve been banned. And Anders was responding to the discussion!
Edit: Apparently WebHubTelescope has posted the same video at Anders’s blog before. It didn’t get moderated either.
Mark Bofill,
“I hang out here specifically because all of the regulars either know more about math, data analysis, science, or are simply in general smarter than I am.”
.
With all due respect, I think there are many regulars at WUWT who know so little science that they are not worth having a conversation with. You need only look at the (many ad nauseum) threads on where rising CO2 in the atmosphere comes from to understand just how terribly mistaken many of those folks are. These are not people who are interested in learning much of anything, and no matter how clearly you explain, they will never accept anything which says GHG’s significantly warm the Earth’s surface. Many have odd “ideas” of how things work that are utterly wrong. They are as technically bad as (and many times far worse than!) the ATTP crowd which will never accept clear data showing climate models diagnose too high a sensitivity to GHG forcing, and who insist ‘the pause’ either doesn’t exist (a la Tamino) or must have some explanation other than the obvious…. that is, the GCM’s are fundamentally wrong in their parameterizations and kludges, and Earth’s sensitivity to GHG forcing is actually pretty low.
SteveF,
Sure, that’s correct. I started off as one of those ignorant fools on WUWT myself. And look at me now. Just look at me! I’m one of those ignorant fools on a few other blogs!
No, seriously, I’ve learned a little bit since then. I think WUWT can be like an emergency first aid for people who’s heads are about to ‘splode from overexposure to alarmist nonsense. It helps, it’s valuable, I personally owe what shreds of sanity I (edit: still)possess to bumping into WUWT, but eventually maybe it’s time to move on from that. Not all the dissenting viewpoints out there are by super villians in dormant volcano’s (except Dana. Dana Nucitelli IS a supervillian I just KNOW it.); sometimes it’s just that nobody knows everything about everything. At least that’s my view.
HaroldW (Comment #133322)
December 7th, 2014 at 8:42 am
“But then, I’ve never liked talking about pauses. It’s not important whether warming has gone to zero — however determined — just that it’s considerably less than prognosticated by the models. And hence the dire predictions of doom are premature.”
I agree. In fact if one goes back in time the added degrees of freedom become your friend in showing significant differences between the observed and modeled temperature anomalies. I like to go back into the 1970s as a starting point.
I sometimes think the whole purpose of making these comparisons gets lost when dialing in on the “pause” -as does a judgment on the value of the model results when the ensembles intra and inter model CIs are large.
SteveF, I agree the quality of the commentary on WUWT is very low (unfortunately this extends to many of the front-page commentaries on new research).
I do peruse the site—mostly watching for nuggets to drop out, like links to recent papers such as this one by Phil Jones.
One of the claims that is made in the linked press report is this comment:
That doesn’t actually match up with the data very well.
If we compare northern versus southern hemispheric averaged data, the “pause” is clearly visible in both:
plot.
It’s a bit troubling when the main claims of a paper that appears in Nature are so easily shown to be false.
“It’s a bit troubling when the main claims of a paper that appears in Nature are so easily shown to be false.”
hmm I think zeke might have something for AGU on this or at least relevant to the discussion of extrema.
I think one can make a distinction between posts and comments. I think WUWT ha some interesting posts. Sometimes. But the comments are really not worth while reading (though I think the award for the stupidest commentstors I would give to Roy Spencer’s otherwise good site). As Climate etc., I think, as what ever subject gets hijacked by a handful of deliberately obnoxious (mostly warmist) crack pots and every discussion becomes a stupid food fight. For me the only sites with really worth while comments are Climate Audit this one here. But that’s just my personal oppinion, of course
“… Not worth having a conversation with.”
That depends on what makes a conversation worthwhile.
I’d rather speak up and be exposed as a fool, than stay quiet and remain a fool.
It’s also worthwhile to have the mistakes of those who misunderstand science be answered by those who do understand it. Even if the original, erroneous poster never gets the point, other readers can see both the error and the answer, which makes the exercise worthwhile.
WUWT’s light moderation permits more nonsensical comments, but contrast that with Tamino’s heavy-handed censorship. No matter how plausible you might find any of his articles, you can be certain he has censored every criticism of it, and so you cannot trust his conclusions.
Contrast that with Tamino’s site.
Oh, and Bishop Hill is good for both content and comments, I think.
Steven Mosher:
Alas, I won’t be able to attend AGU this year. Maybe you can persuade him to post his results somewhere.
Sven, back in the day when Jeff Condon was making technical posts, there were some very good discussions on that blog (noconsensus) Nick Stokes blog (moyhu) sometimes has posts that generates good discussions too. Science Of Doom is another one.
BishopHill is better when Rob Wilson and other mainstream researchers comment there (even when I don’t always agree). Most of what the BH regulars say I find repetitive, predictable and generally policy/politics driven.
Yes, Carrick, I agree. My point on the comments was not just about the “technical” or “scientific” level but also about overall civility (as well as about plain stupidity). BH is indeed more of a (mostly UK) policy driven site, but good as such.
Web Hubble Telescope fell from my radar when he kept going on about the end of oil and refused to reconsider his position. He is immune to new information and his interpretations of old information tends to be incorrect.
As John Le Carre would call him, he is a neverwuzzer.
Brandon, not to over use literary/pop culture references irt to Anders and similar blogs: They are dead, Jim.
But I still find WUWT comments (even though, for the reasons above, I do not read them) better than the activist sites as RC, Tamino or SkS. At least there’s democracy there. The three suite more to Putin’s Russia, I think.
Carrick,
The Jones paper looks very much like the many other ‘arm wave away the pause’ papers. In fairness, some papers (eg. Cowtan and Way), have some merit, but most seem to be rubbish… like the group that forced a climate model to match the known temperature history of the tropical Pacific and learned (shockingly!) that a forced match to ENSO conditions improved the model’s hind cast. I doubt either of us could ever have guessed that result. 😉
.
They concluded (mindlessly, it seems to me) that the only problem with the model is the lack of ability to match ENSO, while ignoring that their forced match of the tropical Pacific meant vast quantities of heat were systemically dumped from the model into a black hole. The problem with their model (GDFL if I remember right) is not an inability to match ENSO, it is that the model does not allow sufficient heat to escape to space. AKA it’s too damned sensitive. Why on Earth is that group not scratching their heads and asking: “Gee, why is our GCM too sensitive?” I wonder if they are too cowed by the consensus to ask the obvious question, or just not very good scientists.
.
One interesting thing about your north versus south plot is the dramatic difference in shourt term variation between the hemispheres. The north has MUCH more variation than the south. The dramatic spikes in the north (both warm and cool) suggest changes in polward heat transport…. the dreaded volar vortex?
SteveF:
Remember these are HADCRUT (rather than CRUTEM), so they are a mixture of both land and SST records.
There is of course considerably more land in the NH than the SH, and as we both know, air temperature over land is much more volatile than air temperature over ocean. So you’d expect more variability in the NH average just do to that. (But I haven’t checked to see if this difference in land-mass fraction explains all of the difference in variance.)
I believe that the shift in polar vortex mostly happens in November and December, and may be associated with a later freezing of the Arctic Ocean.
Anyway, I went back and split up the data series by month, then computed the trends for 1985-1999 (incl.) and 2000-2014 (incl.).
Here’s what I found for the trends:
NH/SH seasonal trends
And here’s the difference in trends between the two periods
Difference in trend
So yes there does seem to be a NH only seasonal effect associated with wintertime (and to a lesser degree fall) months, but in addition there is clearly a reduction in the rate of warming for 2000-2014 vs 1985-1999.
The claim “There really hasn’t been a pause in global warming. There’s been a pause in Northern Hemisphere winter warming” is certainly false.
I got banned.
Carrick,
What happens if you leave 1998 out, say use 1982-1986 instead of 1985-1999? Or is there a volcano or something in 1982-1984? Including 1998 would seem to bias the trend up if included in the first half or bias the trend down if included in the second half.
Carrick (Comment #133379)
I like the difference graph best. Usually looking at differences will reduce the standard deviations and thus make determining significance an easier proposition.
What about confidence intervals and significant differences for months and years?
DeWitt:
This is a good point. I decided to compare 2000-2015 to 1975-2015. (I can give my reasoning if it isn’t obvious.)
Here are the plots:
NH/SH seasonal trends
Difference in trend
Kenneth–the 1-sigma uncertainty in the trends for this curve is roughly 0.06°C/decade.
If you pose the statistical question as “is the rate of warming smaller?” (1-sided test)—that is, “is there a slowdown in warming?”—the difference in trends for p=0.95 is about —0.1°C/decade.
S, the difference in trends is significant wrt that test for Nov-Apr, but not for May-Oct.
I should note that an alternative explanation of the seasonal effect on the difference in trends is the ENSO:
ENSO positive phase is synchronized to season.
See e.g.. “El Niño marches to the same beat as seasonal change”
Technical reference here: link
It seems to me the really important implication of the pause is that it makes the probabilities of worst case scenarios (the long tail) more and more less likely. Even if we were “on schedule” with models, the longer we stay near the median, the more the long tail has to be dragged inward. It seems a bit sketchy that the PDF hasn’t really been revised very much (at all?) given the longer trend history.
Interesting comments
“Brandon, I haven’t been presented any justification for them, so even if they are right, I have no reason to believe it.
Mark+Bofill (Comment #133361)
What matters to me is if people contribute anything. I’d rather a person make interesting arguments and hurl invective at me than treat me respectfully and add nothing of use.
SteveF (Comment #133366)
These are not people who are interested in learning much of anything, they will never accept anything which says GHG’s significantly warm the Earth’s surface. Many have odd “ideas†of how things work that are utterly wrong. They are as technically bad as (and many times far worse than the ATTP crowd”
I tend to read WUWT, Climate etc and The Blackboard interchangeably and am very glad Lucia has kept this going.
I read Arctic Sea Ice blog [though banned], Tamino [when active] plus Bishop Hill when things are slow.
Stoat, Eli, Climate Audit and a couple of right wing Jo Nova, Bolt when things are really slow.
Climate Audit [very good] is too infrequent and too serious most of the time plus the maths is a bit like here, out of my reach a lot of the time.
Rare to stray to Real Climate unless people comment on articles there
Re “Many have odd “ideas†of how things work that are utterly wrong”
I still am hung up on the idea that energy in equals energy out , constant source sun variables in solar power and distance and albedo effects* means that the patterns we see, El Nino , transient global atmospheric warming etc are not reflective of any true gain of heat in the system, just variability in where the heat is distributed and that there can be no true storage of extra heat in the oceans as the same amount of heat goes out as comes in there is no extra heat to store.
Why I am hung up on an odd idea nobody else can see.
Tamino has posted his excuse for no pause. He uses an elegant system requiring proof for a pause that requires all the data sets to do a massive temperature drop to fit his prescription of 0.05 proof. Is this mathematically fair, Lucia et al?
Tamino “I seem to be one of very few who has said all along, repeatedly and consistently, that I’m not convinced there has been what is sometimes called a “pause†or “hiatus,†or even a slowdown in the warming trend of global temperature — let alone in global warming.”
I think it is more correct that you have been one of the very few who has denied that there is a pause.
“Why am I not convinced? Because the evidence for claims of a “pause†or “hiatus†or even slowdown is weak. Far too weak.”
I replied
Weak evidence is still evidence as in there is no smoke without a fire. What happens if more evidence emerges which is stronger?
Does the evidence have to be incontrovertible to be accepted?
Because if there is some[very weak] evidence for a pause then it means the pause cannot be ruled out.
And it’s the trend that’s the real issue,
True but which trend, and which data are you talking about. There is the real issue.
The data sets you wish to use promote your thesis. The ones that raise a concern are denigrated. True science should not denigrate data collection.
Now as to your use of maths
“So here’s the test: see whether or not we can find any start year from 1990 through 2008 for which the p-value is less than 0.05 (to meet the statistical standard of evidence). If we can’t find any such start year, then we conclude that the evidence for a trend change just isn’t there”
What a mathematical pretzel!
As you are fully aware your maths knowledge is much greater than mine.
But this is a swindle.
The reason being as you are fully aware that multiple data sets mentioned, virtually all of them except HADCRUT, show a pause where a pause is defined as a trend line of zero from the start point to the end point for differing periods of time from 5 to [in RSS ] 18 years.
All of them have flat or negative slopes for shorter end points which anyone who eyeballs the graphs can see..
Yet for your test to work, ie to prove that the fact that they are flat is statistically important, would require them to drop by at least 1 degree centigrade over this time frame which is virtually impossible. In other words you are requiring the data to pass impossible levels to prove that there is virtually no possibility that the variation is in natural levels.
Sophistry is not a good look.
As in your dice example if you throw a 12 on the only throw throwing a dice that could lose you could suspect the game is rigged.
On the fact of throwing 12 once in 20 times disproving this rubbish.
The test would be throwing a dice 20 times where the result is wheher youy win or lose the game on the throw, not just rolling it 20 times in a row. Anyone capable of rigging a dice would make it roll a 12 less often to fool you into risking your money again. In fact the 1 in 20 result confirms the dice game is more likely to be rigged.
Winning in the game at all costs is greatly to be admired when you are on the right and winning side.
Re: angech
Yeah, sure, to consider a simplified model – let’s say that adding CO2 increased atmospheric resistance and after a certain delay we have an equilibrium such that heat in = heat out. Sun = constant current source. In terms of an electrical analog, before atmospheric resistance was increased, there was a certain potential difference between surface and empty space that ensured current in = current out. After atmospheric resistance is increased, to still ensure that current in = current out, we need potential difference between surface and space to increase. Or… surface temperature should rise (or the energy stored in the oceans has increased to a new ‘equilibrium’ value just as total charge stored in a capacitor is higher if it is charged to a higher voltage).
Carrick,
That works for me.
angech: still am hung up on the idea that energy in equals energy out
That’s only true if the system has zero memory. If you shout into a cave, does the echo come out immediately, or is there a time delay?
The same idea applies to climate. If you have a continuos forcing of the Earth, it will take a finite time for it to reach equilibrium.
Only at equilibrium is the energy per unit time (really “power”) equal for input and output. For the Earth, this time period is several thousand years.
Carrick
“The same idea applies to climate. If you have a continuous forcing of the Earth, it will take a finite time for it to reach equilibrium.”
A continuous forcing implies extra energy into a system but the black body idea implies that any energy into a body has to come out. Thus if you increase the amount of energy the same increased amount of energy must come out.
Almost instantaneously.
Solar radiation is an instantaneous direct radiative forcing so the energy per unit time (really “powerâ€) equal for input and output should still be virtually in equilibrium.
There is a concept of delay in the envelope of air and also in the envelope of water around the earth. The air has the property due to GHG of heating up to a higher temperature with extra GHG before the energy is released back to space.
This extra heat is transferred to the water layer as well but because the water layer is so many thousands of times dense it warms thousand of times more slowly.
I guess it would take several thousand years to reach the new equilibrium due to the increased CO2 levels on their own.
I would argue that while the earth’s atmosphere imperceptibly warms the amount of energy in and out is for all real intent and purpose instantaneously equal, now today and tomorrow.
If there is increased albedo due to any temperature rise the energy coming in will be less and equilibrium at the current rate with the increased CO2 would occur.
I think it’s the almost instantaneously part that’s the problem. If you increase the temperature of an object, it will start to radiate instantaneously. I should say, it will increase the amount of energy it’s radiating instantaneously; it was already radiating unless it was at absolute zero.
However, it will not instantaneously radiate all of the excess energy; it will not instantaneously radiate itself into thermal equilibrium. Energy in won’t equal energy out until the darn thing is done changing temperature, is what I’m trying to say and probably saying badly. There’s not an energy balance until something reaches constant temperature, cause it takes energy to change an object’s temperature.
It’s hard to find intuitive examples because just about everything hot that cools in our experience is exposed to the atmosphere and thus cools mostly by convection.
I don’t know if this completely misses your point or not, I sort of suspect it might, but anyway. If it does, my apologies!
Don’t know if this will clarify or obscure, but hoping it clarifies:
Why do I claim the above? Because thermal radiation varies as the temperature of the object doing the radiating varies, and we know objects subjected to excess energy don’t instantaneously change temperatures. It takes time for them to heat up.
Each instant along that interval, the thermal radiation output of that object is increasing, because the thermal radiation output is a function of temperature and the temperature of the object is increasing. So clearly it doesn’t ‘instantaneously’ equal the total input energy until maybe the end of the time interval, when the object is done heating. I say maybe because even then, it will be radiating energy, as likely as not cooling and therefore changing temperature again. Out of equilibrium.
angech,
The summer peak in solar intensity (in the north) is on ~June 20, But the maximum temperature on land comes around a month later, when solar intensity is already falling. Same thing in winter, minimum intensity on ~December 20, but minimum temperature about a month later. Please think about why there is not instantaneous tracking of temperature with solar intensity. Then consider that the seasonal temperature swing in the ocean surface is much smaller than on land, lags further behind the solar intensity than on land, and decreases rapidly in size at increasing depth. Ask yourself why those things are true.
Okay I have an intuitive example. Even though it’s not at all perfect because of convection shouldn’t matter, all the convection does is emphasize the point.
Think about a piece of metal in a forge fire. It gets red hot, then white hot. You remove it from the fire. It doesn’t suddenly flash, blasting out all of it’s energy at once. No, it’s hot, it radiates white for awhile. It’s not in thermal balance, energy out is greater than energy in. It takes time to cool in the air. Eventually, it cools to red in the air. It keeps cooling to black. There’s nothing instantaneous about it. Truthfully, the cooling process happens a whole lot faster and we get to equilibrium much more quickly because of convection than we would if it was just radiatively cooling.
SteveF (#133394) –
Further to your point, the global solar power input is maximum at perihelion (around Jan. 3 currently), but the highest monthly average surface temperature is in July. Only above ~20 km does the average temperature peak when the solar input is maximal.
SteveF (Comment #133394) angech,
“The summer peak in solar intensity (in the north) is on ~June 20, But the maximum temperature on land comes around a month later, when solar intensity is already falling. Same thing in winter, minimum intensity on ~December 20, but minimum temperature about a month later. Please think about why there is not instantaneous tracking of temperature with solar intensity.”
true but I think you are missing a salient point, that is the summer peak in the North is completely and utterly balanced by the winter minimum temperature in the South.
So the total energy coming in is the same as the energy going out, for the planet as a whole. That is why it is represented as a black body. It is not just the face facing the sun, it is the dark side radiating as well.
Yes there is a delay in maximum heating but this is because the heat comingin is acting on a much hotter substrate than in winter and hence the summer peak is purely due to more warmer air to ac on for that month after the Summer peak. There is no more energy in the earth’s atmosphere as a whole [May help to visualize a non rotating ball and see how the heat distribution goes, true it will not match our earth but the energy input and output are the same. The thing missing in Mark’s intuitive example is that the energy coming in to heat the metal in the forge does not suddenly stop. While he is taking that sword out of the forge the other blacksmith on the other side is putting it in].
It is all really very counter intuitive until you give it a lot of thought.
No, because there is much less annual variation in temperature in the Southern Hemisphere because there is much less land and more ocean.
angech,
I was thinking of the leaky bucket analogy – water flowing in = water flowing out, but the height of water in the bucket depends on the size of the hole. Actually, it turns out, that this is explained exactly this way for the climate system in a book called ‘Modeling dynamic climate systems’ by Walter Robinson and you can read the relevant sections on google books.
Angech,
Well, sure. The real case is more complicated than the example and the example I used doesn’t capture that part.
But still, why do you say that the energy going out on the nightside equals the energy coming in on the sunny side?
This might be the case, but there is nothing inevitable about it and absent some specific reason to think so I rather doubt it. Why should the energy going out on the dark side be the same as the energy going in on the light side?
Here’s the thing. I argue that for our purposes in thinking about this, the thermal radiation of any specific object depends solely on the temperature of that object. Period. The amount of energy that radiates from the night side depends on the temperature of the stuff on the night side, not on the amount of energy entering on the daylight side.
Now, it may happen that everything balances out, but think about how unlikely that is. Even in the simple case of a homogeneous perfect sphere orbiting a fixed orbit around a constant energy radiator, even in that case, if the orbit is a parabola or ellipse, most of the time the object will be either warming or cooling, right, since the distance from the energy radiator will be changing depending where the object is in it’s orbit.
(edit: This said, it’s cyclical. There should be at minimum two instants when there is energy balance; when the heating stops and cooling begins, and when the cooling stops and the heating begins.)
So, why did I jump from day and night to different points in the orbit? Oh. First off, a side will warm in the day and cool in the night. Over time one might think the shape of this heating and cooling curve would always be the same. It won’t; the orbit will change this if nothing else does.
Because otherwise in that simple case the object would hit a constant average temperature I think and energy in and out would be balanced.
Okay my examples and explanations are confusing even to me so I’m going to shut up now. 🙂
angech,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heat_capacity
Another analogy would be an RC circuit with a sinusoidal voltage applied. Only if the sinusoidal period is much, much larger than time constant, R*C, will the voltage at the capacitor be close to in phase and have the same magnitude as the applied signal. When the period is much shorter than the time constant, the phase shift approaches 90 degrees and the magnitude of the voltage change at the capacitor approaches zero. Heat capacity is much like capacitance. The heat capacity of land is much smaller than the heat capacity of the ocean. Hence, the diurnal variation of temperature of the ocean surface is much smaller than for the land surface.
angech,
Wow. You really are lost my friend. Warming or cooling of any body takes time, and is never instantaneous; the rate of warming is equal to the net flux of energy (heat) divided by the heat capacity of the object that is changing temperature.
dT/dt = (dH/dt)/C
where T is temperature of the object, t is time, H is heat, and C is heat capacity if the object, and lower case d represents a differential. In spoken form: the first derivative of temperature with respect to time is equal to the rate of net heat gain or loss divided by heat capacity. If this makes no sense to you, then there is no practical way for us to converse about how the Earth warms and cools.
DeWitt,
Good explanation, but I bet he will not get it. If someone does not grasp the behavior of the simplest systems, then they can’t possibly grapple with a complex system with a wide range of heat capacities which are only evident when a range of frequencies are applied. Some well meaning folks just don’t know enough to understand the physical world. This is why I rarely comment at WUWT; it is almost never worth the effort. You end up unable to convince people of the kinds of things that are taught in a high school level chemistry or physics class.
I’m closing this thread and shifting the final few (other than mine)!
If the Supreme Court throws out subsidies for states with no exchanges, they would then be under some pressure to set up exchanges. However, there is the job effect of such a decision. If there are no subsidies given out to people in a state, then a business cannot be fined for not providing government approved health insurance, as the fine only takes effect if an employee is subsidized. This would eliminate the push towards part-time work that is occurring with some major restaurant chains limiting workers to 29 hours a week.