This week’s recommendations are a varied lot. All worth reading in full. Esp note the climate science articles. Only science driving the media’s narrative gets seen by the public. Here you see the rest of the story.
Contents
- “End the University as We Know It“, Mark C. Taylor, op-ed in the New York Times, 26 April 2009
- “Meteorological trends (1991-2004) at Arctic Station, Central West Greenland (69º15′N) in a 130 years perspective“, Birger U. Hansen, Bo Elberling, Ole Humlum & Niels Nielsen, Danish Journal of Geography, volume 106(1), 2006 – The arctic’s weather is changing in ways similar to that of the past 130 years.
- “Solar Cycle 24 – don’t panic yet!“, Leif Svalgaard and Hugh Hudson, 13 April 2009 — About the late start to Solar Cycle 24, concern warranted but not panic.
- “Farewell, the American Century“, Andrew J. Bacevich, TomDispatch, 28 April 2009 — “Rewriting the Past by Adding In What’s Been Left Out”
- Afterword and for more information
Announcing the end of the world!
Nope, it’s just Lester Brown predicting doom, again. ”Could Food Shortages Bring Down Civilization?“, Lester R. Brown, Scientific American, May 2009 — “The biggest threat to global stability is the potential for food crises in poor countries to cause government collapse.” No excerpt given. For links to authoritative articles about this see the FM reference page Food – articles about this global crisis.
Instead I suggest reading some good news: “Global warming alarmists out in cold“, Andrew Bolt, Herald Sun (Australia), 19 April 2009 — It’s a popular science article, so follow the links to more detail. Hat tip to Anthony Watts website, Watts Up with That!
Climate myth-busting: ”The Source of Europe’s Mild Climate“, Richard Seager, New Scientist, July-Aug 2006 – “The notion that the Gulf Stream is responsible for keeping Europe anomalously warm turns out to be a myth”
Excerpts
(1) “End the University as We Know It“, Mark C. Taylor, op-ed in the New York Times, 26 April 2009 — I do not agree with all of this, but makes many interesting points. Opening:
Graduate education is the Detroit of higher learning. Most graduate programs in American universities produce a product for which there is no market (candidates for teaching positions that do not exist) and develop skills for which there is diminishing demand (research in subfields within subfields and publication in journals read by no one other than a few like-minded colleagues), all at a rapidly rising cost (sometimes well over $100,000 in student loans).
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More weekend reading recommendations! All worth reading in full; excerpts appear below.
- “Archbishop of Canterbury: Society is coming round to my views on sharia“, Daily Telegraph, 15 February 2009 — “The Archbishop of Canterbury has defended his controversial comments about the introduction of Islamic law to Britain and claimed that public opinion is now behind him.”
- “Check the Numbers: The Case for Due Diligence in Policy Formation“, Bruce McCullough and Ross McKitrick”, Fraser Institute, February 2009 (44 pages)
- “United States and Global Data Integrity Issues“, Joseph D’Aleo, Science and Public Policy Institute, 29 January 2009 (28 pages)
- “Is Food the New Sex?“, Mary Eberstadt, Policy Review, Feb/Mch 2009 — “A curious reversal in moralizing”
This week’s climate science news:
Another instance of ”outsiders” discovering substantial climate science data errors. A few weeks ago it was data corruption in the records of some Antarctica automated weather stations (AWS), described here. This week it is the National Snow and Ice Data Center’s (NSIDC) daily record of arctic sea ice. Several websites were involved; this shows the relevant posts at Anthony Watts’ site Watts Up With That.
- NSIDC makes a big sea ice extent jump – but why?, 16 February — An oddity is found in this week’s data.
- Errors in publicly presented data – Worth blogging about?, 16 February — People question if the data error was significant.
- NSIDC: satellite sea ice sensor has “catastrophic failure” – data faulty for the last 45 or more days, 18 February — They acknowledge the serious error, extending back into January’s data.
- Satellite sensor errors cause data outage, NSIDC, 18 February — Here is the NSIDC’s post about the bad data and its cause.
- “Arctic Sea Ice Underestimated for Weeks Due to Faulty Sensor“, Bloomberg, 20 February 2009 — The media picks up the story.
Excerpts
(1) “Archbishop of Canterbury: Society is coming round to my views on sharia“, Daily Telegraph, 15 February 2009 — Excerpt:
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Four different perspectives on the world, hopefully ones you have not seen lately!
- “The Myth of the Oil Crisis” by Robin M. Mills (2008) – Website for the book.
- “‘Soviet’ Britain swells amid the recession“, Abul Taher, The Times, 25 January 2009
- The Feeding of the Nine Billion: Global Food Security for the 21st Century“, Alex Evans, Chatham House Report, January 2009
- “The Big Banks vs. America“, Roundtable with David Kotok and Josh Rosner, The Institutional Risk Analyst, 26 January 2009
Excerpts
1. “The Myth of the Oil Crisis” by Robin M. Mills (2008) – Website for the book. Excerpt:
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The pace of change for the world has accelerated. Perhaps a glance at these stories can help keep your Orientation current!
- “Farm-Credit Squeeze May Cut Crops, Spur Food Crisis“, Bloomberg, 27 October 2008
- “Ryan Says Treasury to Need `Unprecedented’ Financing“, Bloomberg, 28 October 2008
- “U.S. Borrowing Needs to Reach $2 Trillion in 2009“, Bloomberg, 30 October 2008
- “The Age of Prosperity Is Over“, Arthur B. Laffer, op-ed in the Wall Street Journal, 27 October 2008 — “This administration and Congress will be remembered like Herbert Hoover.”
Excerpts
“Farm-Credit Squeeze May Cut Crops, Spur Food Crisis“, Bloomberg, 27 October 2008
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This week’s stories about Food, Science, Nature — and Geopolitics.
Contents
1. “Production Forecasts and EIA Oil Production Numbers“, The Oil Drum, 30 August 2008 — Much of the reporting on The Oil Drum is first-rate, excellent presentation of important data. Their oil production updates are IMO must-reading for people interested in geopolitics. Esp note the graphs of forecast — the range of sources included is the widest I have seen, and illustrates the great uncertainty about the future supply of this vital resource. Note: all liquids includes biofuels (except where mentioned otherwise).
2. “Activity is quiet on the sunspot front“, Mark S. Lawson, On Line Opinion (e-journal), 29 August 2008 — The period 2014-2015 keeps on turning up in the debate on greenhouse science — on both sides.
3. “New Solar Cycle Not Packing Much Punch“, The Arizona Daily Star, 19 May 2008 — Description of the controversial Livingston and Penn paper predicting a “small” solar cycle, probably meaning a cold cycle.
Also: Global famine called-off on account of good news. Looks like this year will produce big wheat crops. USDA estimates that US will be up 20%, Australia +90%, EU up 20%, Canada up 25%, Russia up 15%, Ukraine up 60%. Among the major exporters, only Argentina is expected to have a small crop than in 2007-08.
Excerpts from these stories
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Mark Matthews is a Merrill Lynch strategist based in Hong Kong. Here is his analysis of the widespread reports about food riots in Asia. The following is excerpted from “Guanxi” (23 May 2008).
Food scares are exaggerated, but good copy for media
We noted on our European trip a high degree of concern over rising food prices and their impact in Asia. This concern is understandable, given media attention. The IMF warns of famine. UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said food shortages have reached emergency proportions. The World Food Program has issued an emergency appeal for funding in food aid. Many high-profile newspapers have dedicated front-page articles to the subject. Time magazine wrote about “The World’s Growing Food-Price Crisis“. A CNN article was headed “Riots, instability spread as food prices skyrocket“.
- Wordage is deep and densely packed. In one article from a respectable newspaper recently, tensions, violence, eruptions, insecurity, desperate, and afraid all managed to be squeezed into nine paragraphs. Food-related riots have been reported in Pakistan, India, the Philippines, Indonesia and Vietnam. But when we called our offices and associates in each of those countries, each one told us there had been no riots.
- Photographs of machine gun-toting guards protecting rice supplies in the Philippines, for example, or crowds of jostling women at rice distribution centers in Indonesia, paint a thousand words. But visitors to the Philippines know that guns are a fairly common sight there. Contrary to press reports, there have been no riots in the Philippines.
- The Bangladesh Rifles were deployed to markets in that country. Not because there were riots, but instead to ensure an orderly disbursement of food, so that middlemen could not hoard it in order to push the price up.
And in Indonesia for example, Mr. Kevin O’Rourke, Jakarta-based author of the Reformasi Weekly political analysis newsletter, told us:
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Much nonsense has been written about the food crisis, much of it by people using it to build support for their personal causes. It is a multi-faceted problem. Some aspects have been discussed on this blog, such as decades of underinvestment, rising demand, and inflation. Another key factor is government policy, the subject of this post. Today’s instructor is Dennis Gartman; this is an excerpt from his always interesting newsletter, The Gartman Letter, of 19 May 2008.
Teach a man to fish
The wisdom of the old saying that the world is best served by teaching a man to fish rather than giving him a fish to eat rings true down through the ages. If an aid society, wishing to do the right thing, simply chooses to give food to starving people rather than teaching that same group of starving people how to fish or farm, damage is done that can take generations to fix.
The damage wrought upon the native Indian population in the US as the Department of Indian Affairs has chosen to subsidise the indigenous Indian populations is all to well documented and ever more well publicised. It is the failure of government of the good intentions of ill-advised “do-gooders” at its most evident. Now food riots are taking place in a large number of Third World nations, with the blame put upon the 1st world nations that supposedly have not done enough to keep the people of Mali, or Chad, or Haiti from starving.
This morning we look at Haiti, for it is closest to us here in the US.
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Contents
- “John McCain’s “100 Years” — putting the controversy to rest“, Moira Whelan, posted at Democracy Arsenal (30 April 2008) – This gives McCain’s actual words on the war, at various times and places.
- “In France, Prisons Filled With Muslims“, Washington Post (29 April 2008) — Another decline of the State special report.
- “Bluff and Bloodshed“, Christopher Dickey, Newsweek (1 May 2008) — “The Persian Gulf is more dangerous than ever. Will the U.S. and Iran go to war at sea?”
- “Barack in Iraq“, Michael Crowley, The New Republic” (7 May 2008) — “Can he really end the war?”
- “At least we know how the US financed its trade deficit in April (and March too)“, Brad Setser, RGE Monitor (2 May 2008) — “Record central bank financing continues.”
- Four important new articles about the food crisis, including one about about Wheat Leaf Rust appearing in the US.
Also — The government did not inflect African-Americans with Syphilis in the Tuskegee study. See the Wikipedia entry for details. How astonishing that this pernicious lie is so widely believed!
The articles, with excerpts
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Here is a modest proposal for a small step to help better utilize the world’s food supply: feed the pets more scraps and less pet food — then donate some of that money to the World Food Program.
I. “UN to set up task force to tackle global food crisis“, AP (29 April 2008) – Opening (bold emphasis added):
The United Nations will establish a top-level task force to tackle food shortages and escalating prices that threaten to touch off a “cascade of related crises” around the world, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said Tuesday. Ban, who will lead the task force, said the group agreed on a series of measures for the medium and long term, with its first priority to meet the $755 million shortfall in funding for the World Food Program. …
II. “In 2005, dog and cat food sales in the US reached a new record high of over $14.3 billion.” — from The Pet Food Institute, citing “Pet Food & Pet Care Products in the US”, Euromonitor International (2005)
It is just a thought.
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