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4 Responses to “Al Gore Serves Endangered Fish”

1. Sue Denim Says:
   August 27th, 2007 at 9:15 pm

   Mike:

   It says in your blog bio that you are a biometrician. I understand that to mean that you use numbers to measure and otherwise describe life, and particularly in your instance, forest life. Is that correct, or pretty close?

   If so, I have a question for you: is a footprint a reasonable measure for considering personal carbon use throughout a lifetime? Our feet usually remain almost exactly the same size from our late teen years until we stop walking, no matter what we do. No matter what types of light bulbs we buy, cars we drive, or fatty foods or endangered species we might eat during our life, our footprint remains about the same.

   Does that seem right? Shouldn’t a measure over time be able to reflect change? If so, wouldn’t a more reasonable measure be a buttprint, which really does seem to measure food intake and methods of locomotion pretty good over the course of time. What I’d like to know is: what is Algore’s Carbon Buttprint?

   Thank you for taking the time to consider this question, and keep up the good work!

2. Mike Says:
   August 27th, 2007 at 9:23 pm

   Sue, That is absolutely correct. As a biometrician I measure life. And mortality, which is a fundament aspect of life. So you could call me an occasional bio-mortician.

   I am mortified at your suggestion that I measure Al’s buttprint, however. Not my forte.

   Recent news reports have variously blamed moose, cows, and beavers for increasing methane emissions, in the case of the first two, via flatulence. As a professional biometrician, I wonder how the data is collected.

   Does it involve tubes and canisters? How is that done? Hard to imagine. A wild moose? As I said, not my forte.

3. Cedar Sue Says:
   August 29th, 2007 at 8:21 am

   From the Wall Street Journal, Aug 29, 2007; Page A14

   http://online.wsj.com/article/SB118835472067611877.html

   Not So Hot

   The latest twist in the global warming saga is the revision in data at NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, indicating that the warmest year on record for the U.S. was not 1998, but rather 1934 (by 0.02 of a degree Celsius).

   Canadian and amateur climate researcher Stephen McIntyre discovered that NASA made a technical error in standardizing the weather air temperature data post-2000. These temperature mistakes were only for the U.S.; their net effect was to lower the average temperature reading from 2000-2006 by 0.15C.

   The new data undermine another frightful talking point from environmentalists, which is that six of the 10 hottest years on record have occurred since 1990. Wrong. NASA now says six of the 10 warmest years were in the 1930s and 1940s, and that was before the bulk of industrial CO2 emissions were released into the atmosphere.

   Those are the new facts…

   Still, environmentalists have been making great hay by claiming that recent years, such as 1998, then 2006, were the “warmest” on record. It’s also not clear that the 0.15 degree temperature revision is as trivial as NASA insists. Total U.S. warming since 1920 has been about 0.21 degrees Celsius. This means that a 0.15 error for recent years is more than two-thirds the observed temperature increase for the period of warming…

   If nothing else, the snafu calls into question how much faith to put in climate change models. In the 1990s, virtually all climate models predicted warming from 2000-2010, but the new data confirm that so far there has been no warming trend in this decade for the U.S. Whoops.

   These simulation models are the basis for many of the forecasts of catastrophic warming by the end of the century that Al Gore and the media repeat time and again. We may soon be basing multi-trillion dollar policy decisions on computer models whose accuracy we already know to be less than stellar…

   What’s more disturbing is what this incident tells us about the scientific double standard in the global warming debate. If this kind of error were made by climatologists who dare to challenge climate-change orthodoxy, the media and environmentalists would accuse them of manipulating data to distort scientific truth. NASA’s blunder only became a news story after Internet bloggers played whistleblower by circulating the new data across the Web.

   So far this year NASA has issued at least five press releases that could be described as alarming on the pace of climate change. But the correction of its overestimate of global warming was merely posted on the agency’s Web site…

   So let’s get this straight: Mr. Hansen’s agency makes a mistake in a way that exaggerates the extent of warming, and this is all part of a conspiracy by “skeptics”? It’s a wonder there aren’t more of them…

4. Mike Says:
   August 29th, 2007 at 8:29 am

   Also at WSJ this AM was this article which I enjoyed:

   http://online.wsj.com/article/SB118826947048110677.html?mod=most_viewed_day

   It’s all about the Paw’s, Ma and Pa Paw, and little Winkle Paw. The Paw’s give one pause. They live in boxes, little boxes, little boxes made of ticky-tack, and they all look just the same.

   They workee in the laundlee. No tickee, no laundlee. They laundler money for Hillary.

   Fascinating and tragi-comic.

   Big Source of Clinton’s Cash Is an Unlikely Address

   Family’s Donations Closely Track Those Of Top Fund-Raiser

   By BRODY MULLINS, August 28, 2007; Page A3

   DALY CITY, Calif. — One of the biggest sources of political donations to Hillary Rodham Clinton is a tiny, lime-green bungalow that lies under the flight path from San Francisco International Airport.

   Six members of the Paw family, each listing the house at 41 Shelbourne Ave. as their residence, have donated a combined $45,000 to the Democratic senator from New York since 2005, for her presidential campaign, her Senate re-election last year and her political action committee. In all, the six Paws have donated a total of $200,000 to Democratic candidates since 2005, election records show.

   It isn’t obvious how the Paw family is able to afford such political largess. Records show they own a gift shop and live in a 1,280-square-foot house that they recently refinanced for $270,000. William Paw, the 64-year-old head of the household, is a mail carrier with the U.S. Postal Service who earns about $49,000 a year, according to a union representative. Alice Paw, also 64, is a homemaker. The couple’s grown children have jobs ranging from account manager at a software company to “attendance liaison” at a local public high school. One is listed on campaign records as an executive at a mutual fund.

   The Paws’ political donations closely track donations made by Norman Hsu, a wealthy New York businessman in the apparel industry who once listed the Paw home as his address, according to public records. Mr. Hsu is one of the top fund-raisers for Mrs. Clinton’s presidential campaign. He has hosted or co-hosted some of her most prominent money-raising events.

   People who answered the phone and the door at the Paws’ residence declined requests for comment last week. In an email last night, one of the Paws’ sons, Winkle, said he had sometimes been asked by Mr. Hsu to make contributions, and sometimes he himself had asked family members to donate. But he added: “I have been fortunate in my investments and all of my contributions have been my money.”

   Mr. Hsu, in an email last night wrote: “I have NEVER asked a single favor from any politician or any charity group. If I am NOT asking favors, why do I have to cheat…I’ve asked friends and colleagues of mine to give money out of their own pockets and sometimes they have agreed. …

   Looks like Hsu put the bite on Winkle. This is how America works, people. At a level of absurdity that hurts.

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