Deep Fried America  

A report in the Herald today about Rummy's plans to establish an elite force of american death-ninjas who can strike anywhere around the world whenever the Pentagon feels like it (a slightly alarming thought for those who still believe in the now long dead concept of international law rather than "might is right") had an interesting snippet at the end about the CIA sacking a senior intelligence officer for leaking information about overseas prisons operated by the agency, based on "evidence" from a lie detector test.

This seems to be yet another area where the US is apparently working in some different reality to the rest of the planet - and I'm not referring to the cruel practices of rendition, torture and secret imprisonment - I'm talking about the long discredited quasi-science (and technological voodoo) of lie detector machines. John Quiggin at Crooked Timber pondered these machines in a post called "Plagues and polygraphs" recently - I guess Americans should be thankful that, for the time being, they can't be convicted for some random crime based on the evidence of a crack team of government appointed phrenologists.

Following our seminar on The Republican War on Science I heard from John Mangels, science writer for the Cleveland Plain Dealer, who pointed me to this series of reports (free registration required) on Dr Thomas Butler, an infectious disease researcher who (apparently mistakenly) reported missing 30 vials of plague bacteria, and ended up being railroaded into prison by an FBI determined to get a conviction even after it became apparent that the events they were supposedly investigating had never occurred.

It’s an amazing story, which as Mangels says is a metaphor for the clash between science and the Bush administration, and between fear and reason in the post-9/11 world. Much of is the kind of thing that can happen anywhere once the wheels of criminal investigation are set turning.

I was struck, though, by one particularly American feature of the story – the crucial role of the polygraph or “lie detector”. This method is (literally) a piece of witchdoctor magic, tricked out with enough electronic gadgetry to impress the class of believers in technology, as opposed to science, we discussed in the seminar. This group plays a much bigger role in the US than elsewhere, which may be why the polygraph is taken seriously only in the US.

Chris Mooney (whose book, "The Republican War on Science" is referred to above) takes a look at the process of Americans slowly waking up to the reality of global warming in "Deep-Fried America".

Global warming didn't cause Katrina. But the ensuing disaster rightly heightened concern about global warming's impacts on hurricane strength, precipitation and sea level rise. And for other regions of the United States—from the Great Lakes to the Southwest to the Rocky Mountains—the story is similar. California, for instance, is worried about declining mountain snowpack, which poses an ominous threat to water supplies in an already parched region. That, too, remains a concern for the future, but some devastating impacts of global warming are already underway. The Arctic, for instance, is quite literally melting. A definitive scientific work, the 2004 Arctic Climate Impact Assessment, stated that global warming is responsible for declining sea ice and loss of permafrost in the region—which have had a severe impact on native Inuit cultures. Alaskans at the present moment are experiencing the most dramatic climatic change on earth.

In response to these current and future changes, the time is more than ripe for a political shift in the American global-warming debate. This isn't an abstract discussion about atmospheric processes anymore. That story has been told and retold ad nauseum. Now, it's time to talk about real-world effects of global warming, many of which are already taking place.

Such a change of focus is political dynamite. Media scholars like Matthew Nisbet of Ohio State University have shown that how much attention an issue receives is closely linked to how it's defined, or framed. If an issue is framed in technical terms (i.e., "Do industrial emissions cause global warming?") it doesn't scare people as much. It's easy to obfuscate, and hard for non-specialists to access or understand. But if an issue gets dramatized, personalized, humanized—well, then the public can get really roused. At the present moment in the United States, global warming is on the cusp of precisely such a shift.

Understandably, this prospect appears to terrify those who have a strong interest in preserving the status quo. The administration's most dogged attempts to silence NASA expert James Hansen on the subject of global warming followed a speech he gave warning that if we don't act quickly, we're risking catastrophic sea level rise. Similarly, the Bush administration has abetted a conservative campaign to suppress a Clinton-era study entitled "Climate Change Impacts on the United States" (often called the "National Assessment"), a region-by-region account of the potential consequences of climate variability and change. Although National Assessments are required by law every four years, the Bush administration has shown no intention of producing another, updated, one based on new science that was unavailable during the Clinton years. Ignoring the issue won't work forever, though. Many of the changes brought about by global warming will entail real increased risks of damage to people and property.

And that will bring not just finger-pointing, but litigating. Recently the attorneys general of several progressive-leaning states brought a lawsuit against a group of U.S. electric power companies, trying to hold them responsible for the current and future impacts of global warming on their respective states.

Grist has a post on "Apocalypse 101" - a compendium of links about global warming.

If you are at the absolute beginning of understanding concepts such as what global warming is, and why the ozone hole is distinct from it: the Union of Concerned Scientists maintains a Global Warming 101 site, and I start you with their FAQs. The Exploratorium Museum in San Francisco has a nicely arranged primer with basic information as well as introductions to issues in the atmosphere, cryosphere, hydrosphere, and biosphere (and neat charts, which I love). And to throw in a government body, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's National Climatic Data Center also has nice FAQs, with good links. They start going into slightly technical topics -- things like "reduced diurnal temperature range" -- a good way to figure out which autodidactic technique is next for you.

Perhaps you comprehend the very basic vocabulary and would like to learn specifics -- for example, how thermal expansion is connected to rising sea levels, or why water vapor isn't blamed for more problems. I've pointed to the FAQ from the UNEP-WMO, PDQ RSPDW site before (just kidding about most of those -- that would actually be the U.N. Environment Program's FAQ page), and it directly answers the latter question. Here is a very dense site from the Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center, with a FAQ page full of questions ranging from "What is the greenhouse effect?" to "Where can I find information on the use of liquefied carbon dioxide in the extraction of alkaloids from plant materials?" (I wish I had found this page a month ago. Any of you who have sent me a climate-change question, including any related to automobiles, are likely to find it here. From Actual Scientists! They'll answer your question, too.) ...

The Oil Drum has a look at some oil price graphs - the pattern of the past couple of years seems to be repeateing again.



Ford has announced a huge loss - however when you look at the detail, it appears they are slightly less badly positioned for the future than GM, whose relatively better performance has been due to increasing their reliance of the soon to be extinct dinosaur of the roads - the SUV.

Ford, which is closing 14 plants and cutting up to 30,000 factory jobs in North America, posted a first-quarter net loss of $US1.19 billion ($A1.62 billion), or 64 cents per share, compared with a profit of $US1.21 billion ($A1.64 billion), or 60 cents per share, a year ago.

The loss was Ford's largest since a $US5 billion ($A6.79 billion) loss in the fourth quarter of 2001, reflecting charges for an earlier restructuring that coincided with the start of Chief Executive Bill Ford Jr's tenure at the helm of the company his great grandfather founded.

Bear Stearns analyst Peter Nesvold said Ford's sales appeared weaker even than cross-town rival General Motors Corp., which is undertaking its own sweeping restructuring. Unlike GM, which has introduced a new line of full-size SUVs, Ford has come to rely more heavily on less-profitable passenger cars and crossover utility vehicles, he said. Unlike traditional truck-based SUVs, crossovers are built off car platforms and tend to be more fuel efficient.

Past peak has a post on the enormous new US embassy under construction in Baghdad - the "biggest in the world - by far".

A remarkable feature of US public discourse is the extent to which discussion is based on what the government says, not what it does. For example: in all the discussion of Iraq — what the US war aims really are, whether the US intends to stay in Iraq long-term, whether the US ever intends to let Iraq have an independent democracy, instead of a puppet government — people mostly ignore certain glaring facts on the ground. There are the enormous military bases the US is constructing in various locations in Iraq. Even more glaring, because it's located in the center of Baghdad itself, is the new US embassy currently under construction. It's going to be colossal, the largest embassy anywhere in the world. By far.