But it's cool where Rush Limbaugh lives—no climate change!
Naomi Oreskes on climate change.
Scientists have often been accused of exaggerating the threat of climate change, but it’s becoming increasingly clear that they ought to be more emphatic about the risk. The year just concluded is about to be declared the hottest one on record, and across the globe climate change is happening faster than scientists predicted.
Science is conservative, and new claims of knowledge are greeted with high degrees of skepticism. When Copernicus said the Earth orbited the sun, when Wegener said the continents drifted, and when Darwin said species evolved by natural selection, the burden of proof was on them to show that it was so. In the 18th and 19th centuries, this conservatism generally took the form of a demand for a large amount of evidence; in the 20th century, it took on the form of a demand for statistical significance. ... Typically, scientists apply a 95 percent confidence limit, meaning that they will accept a causal claim only if they can show that the odds of the relationship’s occurring by chance are no more than one in 20.
As Oreskes details, the standards scientists have adopted for accepting new claims, such as that of climate change, are so high that they often slow down action on even the most obvious problem. Rather than being radicals, out to demand action on tenuous claims, scientists have more often sat on their hands, waiting for statistical evidence to reach a level that's not just extremely high, but so high that just waiting for the required level of certainty can prevent science from providing warnings in time, And it's not just climate change that's affected.
When applied to evaluating environmental hazards, the fear of gullibility can lead us to understate threats. It places the burden of proof on the victim rather than, for example, on the manufacturer of a harmful product. The consequence is that we may fail to protect people who are really getting hurt.
We're not quite fiddling while Rome burns, but we are "still collating" when we ought to be out there taking action.
Read this whole article if you want to have a better sense of how statistics are used in science. It's also not a bad piece to toss as skeptics... though I have a 95 percent confidence level that anyone still maintaining that global warming is either not happening, or not because of human actions, isn't interested in science, data, or simple facts.
Some come on in, let's see what else is up...
Eugene Robinson on the GOP's cozy relationship with proud racists.
Here’s some advice for House Majority Whip Steve Scalise that also applies to the Republican Party in general: If you don’t want to be associated in any way with white supremacists and neo-Nazis, then stay away from them.
Do not give a speech to a racist organization founded by former Ku Klux Klan grand wizard David Duke, as Scalise did when he was a Louisiana state legislator before running for Congress. Do not pretend to be the only Louisiana politician who could possibly have failed to grasp the true nature of the event, as Scalise did this week when the 2002 speech became public.
Come on, a group called the European-American Unity and Rights Organization (EURO), established by one of the nation’s proudest and most vocal bigots? ...
Whatever feelings he might have in the deepest recesses of his heart, Scalise was simply following the well-thumbed Republican playbook by signaling to avowed racists that he welcomed their support.
I think the biggest thing I learned in 2014 wasn't that racism still lived, I know that. What surprised me was that there were so many people who were still
unashamed to express racist and sexist attitudes.
Richard Florida continues to be one of the most maddening analysts alive. For instance...
Blue states, like California, New York and Illinois, whose economies turn on finance, trade and knowledge, are generally richer than red states. But red states, like Texas, Georgia and Utah, have done a better job over all of offering a higher standard of living relative to housing costs.
Wait? How's that?
Red state economies based on energy extraction, agriculture and suburban sprawl may have lower wages, higher poverty rates and lower levels of education on average than those of blue states — but their residents also benefit from much lower costs of living.
Oh wait, now I get it. You're saying that people in red states are underpaid, under served, and under educated, but they get compensation in the form of
living in a less desirable area. Which is exactly what lower housing costs define. Florida insists on pulling out a version of the "American Dream" straight from Madison Avenue circa 1962, and also manages to oh-so-smoothly conflate two unrelated issues. See if you can spot the subtle maneuver.
For a middle-class person , the American dream of a big house with a backyard and a couple of cars is much more achievable in low-tax Arizona than in deep-blue Massachusetts.
The insertion of taxes into this is damn near impossibly misleading. How about this pretty simple analysis: Housing is a lot cheaper in places where there's little infrastructure, poor schools, few services, and few high paying jobs than it is in places where there are good schools, good services and infrastructure, and high paying jobs, because
people like to live where there are good schools, good services, and good job prospects and are willing to pay more to do so. If they weren't then prices wouldn't be higher.
As Jed Kolko, chief economist of Trulia, recently noted, housing costs almost twice as much in deep-blue markets ($227 per square foot) than in red markets ($119).
That alone tells you everything you need to know about the relative desirability of living in blue states vs. red states. But throughout this article, Florida makes out that red states are "doing a better job." You know, by making their states so miserable that their housing prices are in the basement. Florida goes on to treat public transit as a negative.
Blue state knowledge economies are also extremely expensive to operate ... Their size and density require expensive subway and transit systems to move people around.
You see, cities where people actually want to live, and where core urban areas are active and desirable, are a negative in this analysis, while sprawling suburbs that push the transit burden onto individual cars is a positive. And here's the thing: I know Florida doesn't buy most of this. He's building a slew of weak arguments, just to provide some support for the idea he untilmately wants to pitch. Which is... well, I kind of forgot. Because Florida spends so much of the article trying to force everything into such a simplistic model (as long as people can own more square footage, they don't care if they live in a trash heap a thousand miles from the nearest decent school, get paid in moldy bread, and there's no future for their children) that by the time he reaches the heart of the article, he's lost all credibility.
Ross Douthat trots out his list of "what I got wrong" and concludes that his biggest mistake in 2014 was not taking Jeb Bush seriously. All I can say is that my days of not taking Ross Douthat seriously are definitely coming to a middle.
Frank Bruni looks at the next round in our own War of the Roses.
Jeb and Hillary. Hillary and Jeb. It’s getting to the point where a mention of one yields a reference to the other, where they’re semantically inseparable, presidentially conjoined. Should we just go the extra step, save ourselves some syllables and keystrokes? The 2016 matchup as envisioned by many: Jebary. Or, more economically still, Heb.
The fascination with this pair as possible rivals for the White House makes perfect sense, because it defies belief. We’re talking about tomorrow while trafficking in yesterday. We’re saying we need to turn the page by going back to a previous chapter.
Can I say that the "fascination with this pair" is so great that... I haven't heard it at all? I've seen plenty of "Ready for Hillary" bumper stickers, and I've heard plenty of anti-Hillary rhetoric from those who still mumble about Webb Hubbell and lesbian hair styles, but I've heard exactly zero people mention Jeb Bush. I think it's safe to say that "Jebary" is an obsession that afflicts no one other than a few pundits.
Fareed Zakaria thinks American innovation is less innovative than it looks.
A set of new studies suggests that the glittering examples of Facebook, Snapchat and Uber are deceptive. American innovation is in trouble.
“Over the past 30 years, the rate of start-up formation in the United States has slowed markedly, and the technology industry has come to be dominated by older companies,” writes Robert Litan in the current issue of Foreign Affairs. In 1978, start-ups — companies less than a year old — made up almost 15 percent of all U.S. companies. But by 2011, that figure had slumped to 8 percent. “For the first time in three decades, business deaths exceeded business births,” notes Litan.
Zakaria treats this as an immigration issue, and letting in more immigrants with ideas is... a good idea. But I strongly suspect that the rate of new business formations is more directly related to other issues... and likely not the best measure of innovation.
The St. Louis Post-Dispatch explains why your visit to grandma was so painful.
Perhaps the worst, and least noticed, business trend in the last eight years has been undertaken by America’s airlines (most of them, anyway). They’ve deliberately made basic services worse to entice customers to pay for upgrades. “Calculated misery” is what legal scholar (and frequent flier) Tim Wu of Columbia University calls it. ...
This business model works because there’s no practical alternative to long-distance travel and government-approved mergers have reduced competition. “Calculated misery” depends on oppressing people for its success. It has brought class warfare to the skies, and sadly, is a perfect metaphor for our times.
Once upon a time I took a flight on RyanAir, Ireland's notoriously cheap airline. At the time, it was amusing to see the ends they would go to in order to squeeze in more passengers and extract every dime. Now I think of RyanAir as innovators. I can't think of any misery they inflicted that hasn't been bettered by the "major airlines," and at least RyanAir gave you cheap flights.
Many of the usual pundits are still on holiday this week. Expect to see more familiar names next Sunday... and don't say I didn't warn you.