Scientific Fact, Fiction & Repression [Updated]
Debate about global warming is likely to heat up in the next few days, and not just because the Copenhagen conference is about to begin. Someone hacked into the file server at the prestigious University of East Anglia Climate Research Unit and secured thousands of files and emails dating back to 1999 and then uploaded them to an anonymous FTP server.
Start reading here at the Air Vent, one of the blogs that broke this story.
Then here. (Intimidation and retribution – that’s the ticket!)
And here. (Paranoia or preemption? – Shoot first! Ask questions later!)
And here. (When the data doesn’t fit – Massage it! Hide it! Deny it!)
Examiner.com has been covering this as well. My favorite quote thus far is the one they selected:
One such e-mail makes references to the famous “hockey-stick” graph published by Mann in the journal Nature:
I’ve just completed Mike’s Nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (ie from 1981 onwards) amd from 1961 for Keith’s to hide the decline. Mike’s series got the annual land and marine values while the other two got April-Sept for NH land N of 20N. The latter two are real for 1999, while the estimate for 1999 for NH combined is +0.44C wrt 61-90. The Global estimate for 1999 with data through Oct is +0.35C cf. 0.57 for 1998.
[UPDATE:]
Bishop Hill has a good summary, with citations, of some of the most damaging emails discovered thus far in his post Climate cuttings 33. Much of this boils down to concerted, and seemingly successful, attempts to subvert legitimate Freedom of Information Act requests. Towards the bottom of the page, one of the commenters reprints an email sent after receipt of a FOIA request asking that all parties delete all emails referencing AR4, presumably so that they could reply that none exist.
China’s Empty City for 1 million
That’s not a mistake: The city is built, all of the houses and condos in it are sold, it can accommodate one million people, and not a single person lives there.
(Via Patrick Chovanec)
Chovanec, associate professor at Tsinghua University’s School of Economics and Management in Beijing, China, visited North Korea in October 2008. He recently began a series of posts, including photos, about that experience.
Chovanec’s blog is sure to become a “must visit” for me.
The “Public Option” in Practice
Florida has had a “public option” for homeowner’s insurance since not long after Hurricane Andrew rolled through the state in 1992. How’s that working out for them? Randall Holcombe at The Beacon gives us a hint:
As originally envisioned, [state-owned-and-operated] Citizens [Property Insurance Corporation] would charge rates above those charged by private insurers, to make Citizens the insurer of last resort.
After two bad hurricane seasons in 2004 and 2005 property insurance rates in Florida rose…
Charlie Crist promised voters that if elected he would see that their property insurance bills “dropped like a rock.” [Crist was elected]
One tactic he used was to change Citizens’ rate structure so it was competitive with private insurers.
His idea … is that with a public option, private insurers would have to keep their rates in line or risk losing customers to the government insurer.
That’s what’s happened in Florida.
Today about 30% of homeowners’ policies are written by Citizens, which is the largest property insurer in the state.
It’s about to get bigger too.
Lend a Hand if You Can
As we have read, our friend Annie has been struggling with the devastating fire that left her and Jacques homeless and J. temporarily in the hospice. They now have temporary housing of a sorts. Some might argue she took J. out too early, but Annie will answer that she saw him quickly deteriorating despite the hospice providing care as fine as can be obtained in an institutional setting. Nothing can replace the one-on-one care and activity found at home.
As is typical with her, Annie buried her request for some small help in the middle of the comments section of the video post on the fire. I was thinking it ought be front-paged:
Annie could use some help. Without a landline for the time being, she has to buy time for the GoPhone she was only using for emergencies. This is a budget buster for someone whose budget had absolutely no room for error. We all know that more phone time is unlikely to be her only unexpected expense.
The best way to help is to drop something via Annie’s hat link to her PayPal account on Ambivablog. It looks like this:
It is on the left side of Ambivablog, under the 74% addicted to internet graphic. Click on it and the PayPal page will open. (Sorry, I can’t replicate it here, as it creates a session ID which times out). They don’t have a minimum (or a maximum) and anything anyone gives will be the most effective, and appreciated, donation made this year, even if not tax-deductible!
Thanks in advance to all of you!
Meet Whitey
This stray cat heard me filling my cats’ bowl at 5:00 AM one morning about 5 weeks ago and came rushing up the back hill meowing. When I brought a handful of food out to him, he wanted attention as much as the food, alternately purring up a storm as he was petted and scarfing down the food. Two cups later, he was full but had not had enough attention.
Meeting Karen’s Cows [UPDATED]
An update for those following recent comments to this post about our trip to New England:
Just got off the telephone with Karen.We’re looking forward to meeting Karen, her husband, and their herd of cows tomorrow! Updates on the adventure will be posted to Rambling Around. Who knows, we may even get as far as the Canadian border. (Anyone needing Canadian contraband may apply within.)
Without knowing it, we were half-way to Karen’s farm while driving the back way to Stowe, Vermont today. On our way, we passed dairy farms and stopped at the Cabot Creamery, a cooperative famous for its cheeses. I happened to mention to my mom that I wouldn’t be surprised to learn afterwards that Karen lived in the area. Imagine my surprise at finding her comments today.
I laughed when I read Karen mentioning going to the Wal-Mart and Home Depot in Littleton, the town we were staying in until today. Our hotel (the tres chic Hampton Inn) overlooks both. Actually, the hotel was very nice, and in the New England “Washington slept here” tradition, proudly lets its guests know that “Obama slept here – not once but twice!” (And they have photographic evidence to prove it.)
It is too late to make a long story short, so I’ll say that while New Hampshire was beautiful, once in Vermont the unique colors stretching for miles providing ample evidence that there’s a good reason that everyone talks about Vermont Maple Syrup not New England maple syrup. We weren’t prepared to find acres and acres of corn, though.
(Note: It seems that wireless service is erratic at this hotel – public areas only – so my posts may be erratic for the next few days. Lost much of this one a couple of times.)
[UPDATE:]
Pictures of our visit with Karen can be found here.
U.S. Government’s FICO Score
The website Loans and Credit (All About Finance, Without the Fluff!) calculated the U.S. government’s theoretical credit score. Click on the link for a more readable image. They’ve published some other interesting graphics as well as articles worth perusing.
Ambiance 