JustOneMinute

Was It Over When The Germans Bombed Pearl Harbor?

Forget it - Michelle Bachman was rolling, with a Metaphor Mangler that would make a great Christmas gift for the blogger on your list.  More Code Red coverage here.

Fire It Up!

Harry Reid rallies the Senate.  Ooops, here we go.

Linking A Carbon Dioxide Tax To Temperatures - Clever, But...

John Tierney mentioned this yesterday and Alex Tabarrok of Marginal Revolutions went with it:

John Tierney relays today what seems like a very sensible idea from economist Ross McKitrick, tie a carbon tax to the temperature.  If the temperature rises the tax goes up, if the temperature does not rise (as McKitrick, a climate change skeptic thinks) the tax will stay at a low level.  Temperature of the troposphere would be measured by satellite at the equator and averaged over a period of time.  (More here and a more detailed version here).

In theory, both climate change proponents and skeptics ought to agree to this proposal, but I predict the proponents will object.

Hmm, by what theory should all "skeptics" agree to this?  Let's flash back to Tierney for more details:

If the skeptics are right and the earth isn’t warming, then the penalties for burning carbon would stay small or maybe even disappear. But if the climate modelers and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change are correct about the atmosphere heating up, then the penalties would quickly, and automatically, rise.

I think that "skeptics" can be subdivided into those who think warming isn't even happening, and those who believe warming may be happening (e.g., as we move out of the Little Ice Age) but doubt whether the human contribution to that warming is significant.

That second group of skeptics will have no interest in taxing humans in response to cyclical variations in sunspots, or whatever.

Last Call At Last Chance Saloon

Obama explains to worried Senators that the history of human achievement begins and ends with him:

In a provocative argument designed to rescue his foundering health care plan, President Barack Obama will warn Senate Democrats in a White House meeting Tuesday that this is the "last chance" to pass comprehensive reform.

Obama will contend that if it fails now, no other president will attempt it, aides said.

If not even His Awesomeness of the sub-50 approval rating can get this done, well, what hope have mere mortals?

Obama should have explained that if health care isn't passed soon it never will be, because the failure of the Copenhagen talks will result in human extinction within a decade.  That would make about as much sense.

I will guess that the ashes of this bill will provide fertilizer for a modest, sensible centrist bill, which will emerge in 2011 for Obama's re-election push.

Neuropsych On A Cell Phone

The human brain processes a lot less than we realize, and has pretty low awareness of its deficiencies.  This is an interesting story based on that, with significant implications:

What Clown on a Unicycle? Studying Cellphone Distraction

How much do you miss when you’re distracted by a cellphone conversation?

Researchers at Western Washington University in Bellingham, Wash., decided to study whether talking on a cellphone was such a distraction that people wouldn’t notice obvious events happening in the world around them. They theorized that people engrossed in a phone call had “inattentional blindness,” meaning that they looked at their surroundings as they talked, but none of it registered.

A student volunteer pedaled a unicycle around a pedestrian square; researchers surveyed passers-by to see whether they noticed him:

Among pedestrians who were listening to music or walking alone, one in three mentioned that they had just seen a clown on a unicycle. Nearly 60 percent of people who were walking with a friend mentioned the clown. But among people who had been talking on the cellphone, only 8 percent spontaneously remembered the clown.

Then the researchers followed up with a second question: “Did you see the unicycling clown?” With prompting, 71 percent of the people walking with a friend remembered the clown. The numbers were also higher for people listening to music (61 percent) and those who were walking alone (51 percent).

But among those who had been talking on a cellphone, the ability to recall seeing the clown still was startlingly low. Only 25 percent of cellphone talkers remembered seeing a clown on a unicycle, according to the report in the journal Applied Cognitive Psychology.

“It’s a huge dropoff of awareness of the environment around them,” Dr. Hyman said. “It shows that even during as simple a task as walking, performance drops off when talking on the cellphone. They’re slower, less aware of their surroundings and weaving around more. It shows how much worse it would be if they were driving a car, which is a more complex task to manage.”

I suppose I could dispute his conclusion about driving safety: walking in a familiar spot is a low risk/low attention activity; maybe the brain registers the clown, dismisses is as a threat, and moves on.  To conclude that the brain would behave similarly during a high-risk activity like driving may be a logical leap too far.

That said, I would expect that driving on a familiar road while chatting on the cell phone could be very dangerous.  Remember - if you don't see the clown show, you many become part of the clown show.

It Is Better To Look Good Than To Feel Good

Science confirms what might have seemed like common sense:

Study: Looking young may mean living longer

...Research published online Monday in the British medical journal BMJ suggests that people who look younger than their years also live longer.

In 2001, Danish researchers conducted physical and cognitive tests on more than 1,800 pairs of twins over aged 70, as well as taking photos of their faces. Three groups of people who didn't know the twins' real ages guessed how old they were. The researchers then tracked how long the twins survived over 7 years.

The experts found that people who looked younger than their actual age were far more likely to survive, even after they adjusted for other factors like gender and environment. The bigger the difference in perceived age within any twin pair, the more likely it was that the older-looking twin died first.

They also found a possible biological explanation: people who looked younger also tended to have longer telomeres, a key DNA component that is linked to aging. People with shorter telomeres are thought to age faster. In the Danish study, the more fresh-faced people had longer telomeres.

Wisdom of the ages.

Heck of A Job, Barack

The NY Times delivers a brutal front page for Obama:

Here we go - across the top the stories are:

Poll Reveals Trauma of Joblessness in U.S.

Yes, it is Bush's recession but no one wants to hear it and we can't un-elect Bush again.

Rebuffing U.S., Pakistan Balks at Crackdown

Obama's July 2011 deadline has undermined Pakistani will and prompted them to doubt our commitment to the region.  Even though Team Obama has explained that the deadline was just for domestic US consumption, it still gives Pakistan an excuse to not do what they don't want to do anyway.

The Obama administration wants Pakistan to turn on Mr. Haqqani, a longtime asset of Pakistan’s spy agency who uses the tribal area of North Waziristan as his sanctuary. But, the officials said, Pakistan views the entreaties as contrary to its interests in Afghanistan beyond the timetable of President Obama’s surge, which envisions reducing American forces beginning in mid-2011.

And the Copenhagen talks are in shambles, even though the world loves us now that Bush is out:

China and U.S. Hit Strident Impasse at Climate Talks

"Strident"?  Yike.

Down a bit, Obama met with some bankers to rail at them; three biggies skipped the flogging op, blaming fog.

Obama Presses Biggest Banks to Lend More.

Quite a batch of headlines.  The grim (heroic!?!) story of Lieberman holding health care hostage is at the bottom:

Lieberman Gets Ex-Party to Shift on Health Plan

Feel the gestalt shifting.

Just Warming Up

First, The MinuteMan gets results!  The NY Times runs a correction to their Dec 7 story which erroneously asserted that the 2007 IPCC report has said there was "no doubt" that human activity was causing global warming; the IPCC had said it was "very likely", which is to say, a greater than 90% probability.

Secondly, the Times runs a guest piece with an interesting yet weirdly incomplete taxonomy of the climate debate:

CLIMATE talks have been going on in Copenhagen for a week now, and it appears to be a two-sided debate between alarmists and skeptics. But there are actually four different views of global warming. A taxonomy of the four:

DENIALISTS They are loud, sure and political. Their view is that climatologists and their fellow travelers are engaged in a vast conspiracy to panic the public into following an agenda that is political and pernicious. Senator James Inhofe of Oklahoma and the columnist George Will wave the banner for the hoax-callers.

...SKEPTICS This group is most interested in the limitations of climate science so far: they like to examine in detail the contradictions and shortcomings in climate data and models, and they are wary about any “consensus” in science. To the skeptics’ discomfort, their arguments are frequently quoted by the denialists.

In this mode, Roger Pielke, a climate scientist at the University of Colorado, argues that the scenarios presented by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change are overstated and underpredictive. Another prominent skeptic is the physicist Freeman Dyson...

...WARNERS These are the climatologists who see the trends in climate headed toward planetary disaster, and they blame human production of greenhouse gases as the primary culprit. Leaders in this category are the scientists James Hansen, Stephen Schneider and James Lovelock. (This is the group that most persuades me and whose views I promote.)

...CALAMATISTS There are many environmentalists who believe that industrial civilization has committed crimes against nature, and retribution is coming. They quote the warners in apocalyptic terms, and they view denialists as deeply evil. The technology critic Jeremy Rifkin speaks in this manner, and the writer-turned-activist Bill McKibben is a (fairly gentle) leader in this category.

Hmm, what name is missing?  I am trying to think of an Oscar and Nobel Prize winner who is a former Vice President and President (in his dreams, briefly).  Surely Al Gore merits a mention as a leader of one of these groups.  But is Big Al a mere Warner, or is he a Calamitist?  How Mr. Brand managed to persuade his editors to let him duck this one would be a tale in itself.

Also missing is Bjorn Lomborg, the Skeptical Environmentalist who may well belong in a fifth category - let's call him the leader of Warners Curious To See A Cost-Benefit Analysis.

Monday, Monday!

Away we go.

Traditional Sunday Evening Open Thread

I am a bit snowed in, so this may be a Monday morning thing, too.

There Will Be Growth In The Spring - Summers

Larry Summers finds his inner Peter Sellers.

Saturday Arrives, As Do I

The traditional Saturday afternoon open thread.

A Billion Here, A Billion There...

Europeans pledge $3 billion as their contribution to the Copenhagen feel-good photo op:

BRUSSELS — The European Union will contribute about $3 billion starting next year to help poorer countries deal with climate change, Prime Minister Gordon Brown of Britain announced on Friday, a move that seeks to improve the chances of reaching an accord next week at climate change talks in Copenhagen.

Hmm - the WSJ reported a few weeks back that Obama was changing his plans and going to Copenhagen at the end of the summit in pursuit of a $10 billion deal involving "rich nations".  If Europe is only in for $3 billion, I don't see where the rest of the money will be coming from - Japan for $3 billion, the US for $4 billion?  Good luck!

OK:  Yes, Canada and Australia ought to pony up as well, but their populations are tiny by comparison.

News You Need

Jenny Sanford, the First lady of South Carolina, is filing for divorce, presumably to pursue a relationship with Tiger Woods.