The education of our children is an important local priority. Yet we currently measure its effectiveness using yearly standardized tests, as mandated by the federal government. In fact, Connecticut had such tests a decade prior to the intervention of the federal government. But do these tests actually aid in evaluating our schools? How do they measure the value added by our teachers?

Our local high school, Housatonic Valley Regional High School, provides a good case in point. Housy always, almost always, exceeds the state average for students meeting state testing goals. For instance, in reading, Housy exceeded the state average four of the last five years as shown.

This appears to be satisfactory performance, until one realizes that the state average is pulled down by the inner city schools. And this does provide a direct measure of student performance measured against state standards. But is it indicative of the school and its teaching? Does student performance depend on other factors besides the teaching environment?

One of the best ways of measuring the influence of teachers and the curriculum is to build a statistical comparison of the standardized tests, year to year. In that way, the effect of student performance is minimized; we assume that the same students perform the same way, year to year. The model we use, as shown in Meyer and Dokumaci[1], will make use of Connecticut standardized tests. In particular, we will use the Connecticut Mastery Tests (CMT) for the 8th grade and the Connecticut Achievement and Performance Tests (CAPT) for 10th grade. As in the data above, we use the Reading test results because Housy emphasizes the humanities in its curriculum.

CAPT = λ*CMT + [Student Effects] + [State Effects] + [Unknown Student Effects]

The school and district effects are not included; most small towns in Connecticut have only a single high school fed by one or more elementary/middle schools.

In order to evaluate this model, we used over 100 Connecticut schools that met those desired characteristic, and where good data existed at the state level.

As can be seen, the model fits reasonably well. From the R2, the high schools added about 46% of the value of the test on average; the elementary schools provided some of the base. The state effect was negative, but this could easily be due to a difference in the difficulty of the tests. The slope of the model exhibits diminishing returns from education at this level.

Of more interest is the ordered plot of all the schools:[2]

On this plot of reading enhancement, the ranking of the schools is obvious and indicates the value added of each school relative to the other schools. Our local high school was 109th out of 119 schools studied, a very poor ranking for a school concentrating in the humanities.

Of course, we must consider unknown student effects. In particular, a significant number of students in Region 1’s six elementary schools go to private school. This leaves the perception that the remaining students are less capable than those who left, a “brain drain”. Consider the following flow of students:

While it is very difficult to account for the students coming into Housy, we can compare the CMT scores of all students in 8th grade, and the subset that go to Housy. When we do that for reading we find that there is no statistical difference between the two groups; there is no “brain drain”. Private school attendees, on average, are no more capable than those who remain in the public school system.

In summary, we can compare the effects of different schools on a good relative scale. The value added of teaching can be measured. However, we cannot determine the cause of any differences; say the teachers, the curriculum, or the school environment. And measuring individual teachers is likely to be more difficult, not impossible if the subject matter is well tested, just more difficult.[3]

[1] “Value-Added Models and the Next Generation of Assessments”, Meyer and Dokumaci, Value-Added Research Center, University of Wisconsin–Madison, 2011

[2] For the mathematically curious, this data fits a Weibull distribution, not a Normal, so relative separation by standard deviations cannot be used.

[3] http://voices.washingtonpost.com/answer-sheet/teacher-assessment/should-test-scores-be-used-at.htm

At a September political rally, the President of the Teamsters Union, James Hoffa, attacked the Tea Party with rather forceful language. Other than the coarseness of his words, the militaristic references were not dissimilar to other political discourse from all sides. However, is it fair to ask whether his Teamsters really follow up with violent behavior, is the meaning of the words different in this case?

First, Hoffa was speaking at a labor rally in Detroit for Barack Obama, candidate. This was not an introduction for a Presidential speech, but a warm-up at a political rally for the reelection of a staunch supporter of labor union leaders. Hoffa said, “We got to keep an eye on the battle that we face: a war on workers. And you see it everywhere. It is the Tea Party. And you know, there’s only one way to beat and win that war. The one thing about working people is we like a good fight. And you know what? They got a war, they got a war with us, and there’s only gonna be one winner. President Obama, this is your army. We are ready to march. … Everybody here has got to vote. If we go back, and we keep the eye on the prize, let’s take these son of a bitches out and give America back to an America where we belong.”

In terms of heated rhetoric, this was not dissimilar to the rhetoric from Obama’s previous minister, Reverend Jeremiah Wright. Wright, in profanity laced sermons, preached hatred of white America, and radical politics where violence was acceptable. Following criticism of Wright’s language, Obama said, “He contains within him the contradictions – the good and the bad – of the community that he has served diligently for so many years. I can no more disown him than I can disown the black community.”

Yet later Obama distanced himself from Wright. In contrast, Obama has refused to distance himself from the heated rhetoric of Hoffa. In fact, in his own speech 20 minutes later, Obama said that he was proud of Hoffa. Both Obama and Hoffa conveniently forget that many members of the Tea Party are union members as well.

But does any of this really matter? Words are just words, after all, unless they are followed up by actions. What actions do the Teamsters Union bosses encourage? One good reference should suffice.

However, one series of NLRB cases in 1999 stands out. The legal stipulation from these cases was published in 2003, and required the Teamster Union to cease and desist from certain violent activities as well as monitor that such restrictions were followed. (see below and the full stipulation).

Just the verbs are enough to conjure up nefarious activities of union thugs: brandishing weapons, threatening to kill, damaging, disabling, endangering, impeding, battering, assaulting, spitting on, etc.. Note that in order that the union to be required to cease and desist, they must have engaged in such activities. And these are the union thugs that Obama coddles and supports.

So, this is the difference between the militaristic language that many use in the political arena, and the language of James Hoffa; he means it literally. His thugs really do engage in violent activities. This is not an incitement of others, but an unvarnished promise of known Teamster thugery. And we now have a President who threatens others by association.

Ah, the dreaded value-added tax (VAT). The typical socialist response to taxation: hide an enormous sales tax from public view, burden all small business with increased administrative costs, create 100,000 new unproductive public jobs to regulate it, and build an onerous barrier for innovation. VAT is also a nice regressive tax to increase poverty as well as dependence on the state handouts.

Democrats in Washington are, once again, considering a national VAT as a means to raise revenue, ahem …taxes. Senator Kent Conrad (D-ND), Chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, said, “"There is a growing awareness of the need for fundamental tax reform. I think a VAT and a high-end income tax have got to be on the table.” Yet, the National Retail Federation, testifying before Congress and citing a 2010 Ernst and Young study, said that a VAT would cause a loss of 850,000 jobs in the first year alone, and severely reduce both the GDP and retail spending.

There also appears to be considerable confusion about VAT. Quite simply, it is a tax levied at every stage of the production of a product or service but is not shown to the consumer as extra cost.(1) Every entity involved in production is taxed according to their value added, and must account, in detail, to government auditors. Sound complicated? The VAT is an accountant’s dream.

The VAT is widely used in socialist countries, and is especially ubiquitous in the Europe Union. Yet some believe that the VAT is not a socialist concept; that socialism is when government owns business. Further, they believe that the VAT would reduce administrative costs and bring simplicity to taxation. Nothing could be further from the facts.

Socialism is, among others things, the control of production in a planned economic system. Government ownership of business is the most draconian form of socialism, but certainly not the only means of controlling production. The VAT is an indirect means of controlling production through the size and variation of tax rates, and, as such, is very much a socialist concept.

The VAT is an enormous sales tax, but it is hidden from the consumer; the manufacturer, distributor, and retailer each pay a portion and pass it on the consumer as an increase in price, not as a visible tax. There is no feedback to the consumer, and therefore no check on government’s ability to raise rates. In the European Union, the VAT is required of all member states and is between 15% and 25%. Can you imagine the public response to a 20% national sales tax in this country? The proper check and balance of government action, absent in socialism, is a very important concept and one on which our country was founded.

The VAT adds a considerable burden to businesses, especially small business where the cost of compliance does not scale. As a small businessman, I can say that a VAT would double my administrative costs because I would be forced to hire an accountant to process the necessary forms. I would not be able to afford the time or accounting software myself. Even large firms would be burdened, because the national VAT would not, and could not, remove state and local sales taxes. Those other governments must be served as well.

The VAT also would create over 100,000 new government jobs to administer the tax, all of them unproductive jobs that add nothing to the well-being of our nation. The Gross Domestic Product (GDP) would not increase one iota; it actually would decrease due to the decreased economic activity as well as the administrative burden on business.

The Government Accounting Office (GAO) prepared a report for Congress in 1993 on the VAT. Their estimate of staffing for a simple VAT was over 30,000 man years per year, mostly in auditing the accounts of business. (They did not estimate the costs and manpower for business of such audits.) They also reported that the government offices responsible for the VAT implementation (IRS, Customs, and the Federal Reserve System) had indicated that this staffing was grossly underestimated. And this was for a simple, all inclusive, single rate VAT, implanted at the federal level. When has the federal government ever done taxation simply?

The VAT would also create a barrier to innovation in two ways. First, although patent applications are usually zero-rated (0% VAT), patent attorneys are not. And patent attorneys account for most of the cost of patents. Second, research costs are also taxable when they are apportioned to the initial product costs. Research becomes the equivalent of raw material; the tax is not recoverable. In both cases that extra 20% adds up for small business, especially those just starting out. A VAT is an extra barrier to entry in any innovative market.

Finally, the VAT is regressive, in that is it raises prices for everyone on all products including those least able to pay. Some countries currently offset this by zero-rating products (0% VAT) like food or shelter, but this does not accomplish the socialist ideal of wealth redistribution. To compensate for this, most socialist implementations use either a tax credit or a transfer payment (or both) to low income individuals. Naturally, this makes low income individuals increasingly dependent on the government for their sustenance. The higher the tax, the more politically dependent this class of people becomes, without any real increase in income.

Providing essential products with zero-rating (0% VAT) has another deleterious side effect: an extreme sensitivity to recession. The elasticity of revenue and revenue collection to bad economies is very non-linear.(2) Government revenue decreases faster than the economy, leaving government to borrow in the worst of times. (This effect is not dissimilar to over taxation of high incomes as several states, such as California, have found recently.)

As a tax idea for the U.S., the value-added tax appeared as a European transplant during hard economic times. For instance, at the start of World War II, Paul Studenski, a Russian émigré, wrote one of the most cogent papers on the VAT in 1940.(2) In it, he described the rational for such a tax:

Government would be treated as an agent of production in private enterprise, just as the entrepreneur, the lender of capital, management, and labor. It would share in the earnings of the enterprise together with the other agents of production, in proportion to its contribution thereto and, moreover, would share in them at the same time as they do.

This is the basis for much of the early socialist involvement in the control of production, as a first step toward total planning of economic activity. That is, society has created the market for business use, and government should be compensated for the maintenance of that market. This argument is fallacious, ignoring as it does the true origins of wealth involved in capitalism and risk taking.(3) Entrepreneurs create markets and only in a free society. Further they maintain them through their agency; government tends to distort and destroy markets through regulatory interference.

Ah, the dreaded value-added tax.

1. For instance, a producer of raw materials pays tax on all sales. The manufacturer, who buys the raw material and produces a product, pays tax on all sales, but recovers the tax paid on raw materials. The distributor, who buys from the manufacturer, pays tax on all sales, but recovers the tax paid to the manufacturer. The retailer, who buys from the distributor, pays tax on all sales, but recovers the tax paid to the distributor. The consumer pays the price charged by the retailer, but never sees the tax as a separate charge. That’s four times the accounting for the same tax revenue as a sales tax, even in this simple example.
2. Cemile Sancak, Ricardo Velloso, and Jing Xing, “Tax Revenue Response to the Business Cycle”, IMF Working Paper, 2009
3. Paul Studenski, "Toward a Theory of Business Taxation," Journal of Political Economy 48, no. 5 (1940), 646
4. Eric D. Beinhocker, “The Origin of Wealth”, Harvard Business School Press, 2006

Bank failures are now a common occurrence. The federal government has even forced many larger banks to simulate tough times. And, for some banks, these simulations have indicated the need for more capital to be set aside to further reduce risk (the risk of being taken over by the government). So, rather than lend these funds as mortgages, or commercial loans, banks now hold onto their extra capital out of fear. Banks are now hard on the outside, but soft and chewy on the inside.

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), an independent agency of the federal government, monitors all U.S. banks. It acts as the receiver for many failed banks, before passing them onto an acquiring bank. The acquiring bank gets most of the assets and the liabilities of the failed bank, as well as the backing of the Federal Government to cover all losses. The government covers not only your savings up to a limit (currently up to $250,000 per depositor), but also losses on the relevant loans through a discounted sale. In fact, the acquiring bank makes money on the deal (else why would they do it?).

Up until 2008, bank failures were fairly infrequent. But then the financial crisis took its toll, and failures peaked at over 10 per month. So why were all these banks failing?

The public information on bank failures released to the press by the FDIC gives very little information as to cause. Consider a bank recently closed in Florida, the LandMark Bank of Florida.

“On Friday, July 22, 2011, LandMark Bank of Florida, Sarasota, FL was closed by the Florida Office of Financial Regulation, and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) was named Receiver. …As of March 31, 2011, … LandMark Bank of Florida had total assets of $275.0 million and total deposits of $246.7 million. In addition to assuming all of the deposits of [LandMark], American Momentum Bank agreed to purchase essentially all of their assets. ”

According to the Investigative Reporting Workshop, LandMark Bank had $47,435,000 in total troubled assets, but only $11,716,000 in Reserves. Troubled assets include loans unpaid for over 90 days; people stopped paying. This example is in Florida, but other states with significant problems include Georgia and Illinois. In contrast, Connecticut has not had a bank closure since 2002.

Earlier this year, the FDIC said that 884 of their financially insured banks were troubled, that is, had very low capital cushions against risk. That’s 12% of all banks. So many banks had insufficient capital, that the FDIC required the largest banks to simulate the failure of part of their portfolios in various ways. This led to an estimate of the necessary extra capital for each institution to cover this expanded estimation of risk.

The simulations involve a statistical evaluation of the overall failure rate for the FDIC, as well as bank stress tests for each institution. The statistical evaluation at the bank level included possible negative scenarios, and required each bank to detail its capital plans. Unfortunately, the statistical analysis forced on the banks was poorly designed with historical data and erroneous statistical assumptions, in other words, poor modeling.

The results showed that some of the largest banks needed significantly more capital. For instance, Bank of America needed $33.0 Billion in additional capital. And that type of result has caused fear in the banking industry, especially with unguarded talk of nationalization, that is a socialist takeover of banks. William Dudley, President of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, said, “Going into the spring of 2009, there was a prevailing view that several of the largest banks would have to be nationalized.”

Banks, even smaller ones, started to withhold capital from the market, but needed a place to put it. So the Federal Reserve offered to borrow this excess capital at a low, but safe, interest rate, 0.25%. In fact, the loans to the Federal Reserve are so safe, that the risk of normal bank activity may be too high. Because of the unstable labor market and economic climate, mortgages and commercial loans may be lower yielding, in net, than this safe haven.

The net result: about $1.6 Trillion was taken out of the market place starting with the financial crisis in 2008 and continuing to this day. Banks stopped loaning money, and have been hoarding it instead out of fear of the federal government. And this has drastically affected both the mortgage market and commercial loans as can be seen from the total market picture given by Investigative Reporting Workshop.

Note that bank lending has declined by about $0.8 Trillion, but that is less than is currently stored in the Federal Reserve. Single family mortgages are down 13.5% over the period of the financial crisis and the continuing recession. The lack of mortgage money reduces worker mobility.

But where did the rest of the $0.8 Trillion in the Federal Reserve account come from? Perhaps that amount is the buffer that banks keep to be able to meet their flow of business, but 10% seems a lot. Possibly some of these funds come from investors who view the Federal Reserve as safer than U.S. Treasury bonds (no threatened default). In any event, the Excess Reserves account has become an interesting place to park capital while the global economy suffers.  And that doesn’t include capital lost to risky loans and other foibles.

Of course, on July 12 2010, Ben Bernanke, Federal Reserve Chairman, said. “Making credit accessible to sound small businesses is crucial to our economic recovery and so should be front and center among our current policy challenges.” Ah, but don’t forget the stress tests mandated by the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act which was signed into law on July 21, 2010. Try to imagine a statement and action, juxtaposed in time, yet so contrary in their import. Actions speak louder than words.

The other day, I heard someone refer to the Tea Party as terrorists, giving voice to that liberal progressive mantra (supposedly from Vice President Joe Biden). Because terrorists are, by definition, those who frighten others and cause fear, I wondered who could create such havoc among liberals. They turn out to be a little bit of everybody, and a lot of somebody.

First, of course, it pays to know how many Tea Party supporters exist; there is no register of such. According to a Gallup poll, fully 28% of U.S. adults self-identify as Tea Party supporters. According to Rasmussen, 21% of U.S. voters are members of the Tea Party, with another 11% having friends or relatives who are involved. Given the margin of error in such polls, the Tea Party, with their supporters, seems to be approximately one quarter of all Americans, a sizable group. If these be terrorists, then they probably cause fear by sheer number.

These polls contrast sharply with a New York Times/CBS poll that listed only an 18% response for Tea Party support. However, the NYT was careful not to list its sampling techniques, so the honesty of such a poll is questionable.

Understanding the Tea Party goals is not straightforward, because they have no single spokesman. However, they seem to have a common thread: fiscal prudence. They believe in reduced government spending along with no tax increases. They believe in reduced government intervention in the economy, either through legislative policy or onerous regulation. They believe in restoring the government of the constitution. This message comes through load and clear in the Contract from America, a representative expression of their ideals.

So who is the Tea Party? According to the Gallup poll, the Tea Party crosses mainstream America. They know no age group, nor education level, nor employment status. However, they tend to be middle class and working class but not, so much, low income. In other words, the Tea Party consists of the tax paying class, minus the liberals.

Now, fully 46% of American households don’t pay any income tax this year, so there isn’t much reason for these people to support the Tea Party, is there? However, many of these people make more than enough income to fall outside Medicaid. And they fall in that group who must buy health insurance in a few years whether they want to or not. You don’t suppose that self-interest…

One other group deserves mention, public sector employees. They comprise about 12% of all employment and depend upon government for their sustenance, at least some extent. Yet, no poll seems to have studied their support for the Tea Party, or the lack thereof.

In short summary, the Tea Party is comprised of the tax paying class with the obvious adjustments for self-interest, about 25% of all Americans. Self-identified liberals comprise about 21%, so the Tea Party outnumbers liberals. No wonder liberal progressives are terrorized. And the Tea Party is still growing…

Reverse English is a billards shot whereby side spin is imparted to the cue ball to cause to carom off a cushion in a slightly backward direction. However, it is also the misuse of words to cause their meaning to be the opposite of the normally intended meaning. Part of reading the news is the discovery that some politicians use the side spin of reverse English to harpoon their opponents. (What, you’ve never called a cue stick a harpoon?)

Statement: My opponent needs to act like an adult. Translation: My opponent needs to act like a child so I can bully him.

Statement: The administrative leader of this organization makes too much money. Translation: The employees of this organization make too much money, and I’m trying to deflect attention from that fact.

Statement: With this action, we are saving a lot of money. Translation: We are already spending a lot more, so reducing it a bit doesn’t hurt.

If you can read the news with this sort of filter, the actions of politicians, and the press, become much more understandable. In fact, reverse English can’t be used without the complicity of the press. Always, when reading the news, ask yourself what the reporter has left out. Invariably that’s how story bias is built in. How often does a reporter question the integrity of a statement by presenting conflicting facts? How often does a reporter question the integrity of statements at all? Accurate translation of such statements requires awareness that such translation is necessary.

Statement: My opponent is racist. Translation: I’m bigoted so my opponent must be.

Frequently, politicians will ascribe a negative trait to an opponent that they themselves possess. In essence, they know the trait so well that they see it in others as a reflection. They are presenting a mirror image of themselves.

How can anyone arrive at this translation accurately? Sometimes previous actions of the speaker can be used, but usually the only approach is to look at which person has the most to gain from such purposeful distortion. For instance, racism can be an integral part of affirmative action. Someone who has benefited from affirmative action can hardly use, or have others use in support, a reciprocal reference to racism. The translation is obvious at that point.

This type of reverse English isn’t limited to racism. Such statements can include references to corruption, infidelity, political partisanship, and a host of other traits. Be wary of such characterizations without documented evidence.

Statement: My opponent’s legislative ideas would harm [whoever]. Translation: My own legislation already harms [whoever], and I’m trying to deflect attention from that fact.

This reverse English is used so frequently that news stories that contain it should come with a legal warning about brainwashing: “Statements in this story may harm your mental acuity.” If you see this type of statement, expect to see it repeated often. Repetition, provided by the complicit press, supplies the controlled indoctrination or, at the very least, confusion necessary to your attitude adjustment.

In this type of statement, the only way to arrive at an accurate translation is to actually read the original legislation and collect any data available. Of course, the press should be trusted to do this for you, but experience has shown that such detailed analysis is beyond them. For instance, the current federal healthcare law contains explicit language which allows rationing and denial of service for Medicare recipients, so expect any proposed changes to that law to be denigrated accordingly.

Statement: We should invest in education. Translation: We should support the jobs and high compensation for teachers.

This is one of the most blatant forms of reverse English because it seems to offer something we want, better education. However, it is frequently used to maintain the status quo, or even worse, featherbed the educational organizations. More compensation for teachers has never led to better education; look at the data on educational standards for our states compared to student costs. The level of educational expectations is totally uncorrelated to cost.

And, again, this type of reverse English is not limited to education, but is also used to refer to any government project such as construction or maintenance of public works. If we change the verb, invest, to bailout, it was even used to describe the blatant theft of General Motors from the stock and bond holders. Unions are frequently the recipients of such largess, but, on local levels, developers may also step up to the trough.

Apparently, there is no cure for reverse English; such speakers will always put side spin on their statements. Frequently, political groups will script a reverse English response, so that multiple sources will say the same thing. Beware such scripted politicians. Look instead for the spontaneous responses.

Frequently, the unexpected question is the only way to overcome reverse English. That’s why some politicians require all questions be submitted in advance.

We should invest in our politicians.

War is a disease. War is not the people who fight each other, nor the people who started the action or responded to it, nor the people who oppose it. War infects the human mind, reaching emotional peaks well past reason. Yet, the body of mankind is not at fault any more than one person is at fault for the common cold. A prayer for peace is a prayer for health of the human body, not a usurpation of human actions.

We each have our own odyssey in life over the course of years. War impinges on more images than is usually thought. I’ve been a peace advocate for most of my time, except at the extremes of defense, due to my own journey through life. Yet, the inconsistencies of the anti-war label have dogged me throughout.

My early years occurred during that freedom that men and women found after the end of the disease known as World War II. The freedom was short lived. My uncle, who served in the army from 1939 until 1945, had 5 years and 9 months in his six year reserve commitment finished when President Truman called up the reserves for the Korean War. That call up destroyed his business and his personal life; my grandparents never forgave Truman. How many other lives fell to the disease of war in that time?

In my teenage years, I attended a Friends School near Philadelphia. I learned firsthand about the pacifism of the Quakers (and so can appreciate the actions of Jacob Bull in our own town during the Revolution). While I did not follow in their footsteps, I did come to understand the separation of the disease, war, from its victim, mankind. Toward the end of that time, President Johnson promised never to involve our country in military action in Vietnam; he was reelected. He had lied, starting the Vietnam War two years later. Yet Johnson, even in his culpability, was a victim to the disease. How many other lives fell to the disease of war in that time?

Kent 2008

Add to this the most annoying symptom of the disease of war, the bludgeon of anti-war protests. Some such protests are indeed genuine peace protests, concerned with the disease of war itself. But many are media shows aimed at nothing more than political gain and media sales. Our current crop of anti-war protestors were not that at all, but anti-Republican protestors; see the picture of an anti-war protest in Kent in 2008 complete with placard supporting the Democratic candidate for U.S.Representative. Should these people be ashamed of themselves? Of course they should, for they were and are tainted by war as much as any leader.

If you don’t believe that, where are the anti-war protests today? Anti-war who? From the copperheads of the Civil War who bedeviled Lincoln to the treason artists of the Vietnam War to yesterday’s wannabes, war infects the political part of our society easily. So today, the current wars are still there and expanding; the political protests are not.

Our society defends itself with free speech. However, due to our media, how much of our speech is free? Anti-war who?

Note: There is an email link embedded within this post, please visit this post to email it. ]]> http://www.stoneforge.com/2011/03/22/anti-war-who/feed/ 2 http://www.stoneforge.com/2011/01/17/global-warming-is-cool-2/ http://www.stoneforge.com/2011/01/17/global-warming-is-cool-2/#comments Mon, 17 Jan 2011 13:22:31 +0000 Editor http://www.stoneforge.com/?p=4575 By John Mauer

For those of us who like numbers, picking apart past predictions by experts is sheer fun. In 1975, the world was cooling from peak temperatures in the 1940s. The predictions of climate scientists were cataclysmic: a new ice age was upon us. Sure feels like it today. Have you ever considered melting the arctic ice cap by covering it with black soot?

Several articles, both popular and scientific, were published in the 1970s which showed the global temperatures had peaked and headed downward. I’m going to pick on just one, the Newsweek article on The Cooling World from April 25, 1975, as shown here. Newsweek, of course, still sees nothing wrong with this kind of reporting; the scientists are to blame.[1]

The Cooling World

There are ominous signs that the weather patterns have begun to change dramatically, and that these changes may portend a drastic decline in food production – with serious political implications for just about every nation on earth. The drop in food output could begin quite soon, perhaps only 10 years from now.

Newsweek Temperature Data

The shortage of food was to occur as early as 1985. Remember it? (The main shortage of food today is in third world countries because we are burning biomass.)

If this introduction sounds familiar, it should. The story projects changes in weather patterns derived from climate change. No data is given to substantiate that claim is given. This is eerily similar to the 2007 report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)[2] where severe changes in weather are also predicted, but from global warming, not cooling. (Remember, models aren’t data.)

The evidence in support of these predictions has now begun to accumulate so massively that meteorologists are hard pressed to keep up with it. In England, farmers have seen their growing season decline by about two weeks since 1950, with a resultant over-all loss in grain production estimated at up to 100,000 tons annually. … Last April, in the most devastating outbreak of tornadoes ever recorded, 148 twisters killed more than 300 people and caused half a billion dollars’ worth of damage in thirteen U.S. states.

Meteorologists study the atmosphere and focus on weather processes and forecasting, in contrast with climatology.[3] Here, as elsewhere, the intermixing of the two disciplines is done without distinction.

A survey completed last year by Dr. Murray Mitchell of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reveals a drop of half a degree in average ground temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere between 1945 and 1968. According to George Kukla of Columbia University, satellite photos indicated a sudden, large increase in Northern Hemisphere snow cover in the winter of 1971-1972. And a study released last month by two NOAA scientists notes that the amount of sunshine reaching the ground in the continental U.S. diminished by 1.3 per cent between 1964 and 1972.

But on to the only significant data quoted in the article: the drop in the measured global temperature. The data appears to come from the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Boulder, Colorado, but is referenced from the Met Office Hadley Center in the United Kingdom[4]. They have been keeping world-wide temperature data since 1850.

Global Temperature Data Comparison

So what does the same data look like today? A plot of the Newsweek data against the Hadley yearly global temperature data of today shows quite a difference. (The offset of temperature is normalized to 1884.)

Remember, this is the same data, just being reported 35 years later. So ask yourself, would you draw the same conclusion from the Hadley data today that Newsweek drew from it 35 years ago.

Extremes: Meteorologists think that they can predict the short-term results of the return to norm of the last century. … an increase in extremes of local weather such as droughts, floods, extended dry spells, long freezes, delayed monsoons and even local temperature increases

Wow. Just think about that. If global cooling can cause all that, just think what global warming can do. We must be on the cusp of just the right temperature. Or maybe climate science is not all it’s cracked up to be.

Climatologists are pessimistic that political leaders will take any positive action to compensate for climate change, or even to allay its effects. … The longer the planners delay, the more difficult will they find it to cope with climatic change once the results become grim reality.

And climatologists demand that government must act. Where have we heard that chorus before? Maybe we should melt the ice caps as suggested, or stockpile food. Ah, but we can’t stockpile food anymore; we burn biomass for inefficient fuel. And I guess that the polar bears weren’t a concern in those days. Amazing how political bedfellows can change the scientific message.

All in all, junk science is still junk science. The ice man cometh, but NOAA still exists. And reporters still can’t tell the difference.

[1] Remember Global Cooling?, Newsweek, Oct 23, 2006

[2] IPCC, Climate Change 2007: Synthesis Report

[3] Wikipedia, Meteorologists

[4] Met Office Hadley Center, there are all sorts of temperature data here. The main combination data set, land and sea, is HadCRUT3 which is gridded data, but yearly and monthly averages are also here. Gridded data is extrapolated data from widely spread measurements.

Note: There is an email link embedded within this post, please visit this post to email it. ]]> http://www.stoneforge.com/2011/01/17/global-warming-is-cool-2/feed/ 0 http://www.stoneforge.com/2011/01/02/pentagon-leaks/ http://www.stoneforge.com/2011/01/02/pentagon-leaks/#comments Sun, 02 Jan 2011 13:28:05 +0000 Editor http://www.stoneforge.com/?p=4555 By John Mauer

In 1971, the secret Pentagon Papers were first published by the New York Times.   They were not censored, except by the journalist himself.  Contrast that with the recent release of secret U.S. documents by WikiLeaks, an online publication.  WikiLeaks has been roundly reviled, perhaps rightly so. However, the attempts at government censorship were obvious and disgraceful; online journalism is currently extremely vulnerable.  By moving away form the printed word, we are leaving ourselves open to electronic manipulation.

After the initial release of the Pentagon Papers, the federal government tried to censor the news through the courts.  With WikiLeaks, the government has used cyber warfare and political intimidation instead of court action.  The response of our government is chilling.  Electronic news is more vulnerable than the printed word.    Let’s take a look at the relevant details.

The Pentagon Papers were a series of studies, compiled secretly within the Department of Defense during the 1960s, which documented the relationship of the United States with Vietnam from 1945 to 1967.  They outlined the perfidy of the administration of President Lyndon Johnson with regard to the startup and conduct of our military and political involvement in Vietnam, among other details.  They were leaked to the press by Daniel Ellsberg, who had worked on the report.  The New York Times published excerpts of the report, starting in June, 1971.  Other newspapers soon followed.

The federal government attempted to quash any further release, but were rebuffed by the U.S. Supreme Court which indicated that the government had failed to meet the burden of proof required for such an injunction.   Justice Black wrote, in the decision, “Our Government was launched in 1789 with the adoption of the Constitution. The Bill of Rights, including the First Amendment, followed in 1791. Now, for the first time in the 182 years since the founding of the Republic, the federal courts are asked to hold that the First Amendment does not mean what it says, but rather means that the Government can halt the publication of current news of vital importance to the people of this country.”

Ellsberg was charged with stealing and holding secret documents, but the judge dismissed the charges because the federal prosecutors botched the case.

Julian Assange

Contrast this activity with release of secret U.S. government documents in late 2010 by WikiLeaks, an online publication run by Julian Assange and like-minded individuals.  The documents are, for the most part, embarrassing to the diplomatic corps of the United States, as reported by the Huffington Post.  Unlike the Pentagon Papers, they do not disclose any illegal activity.  However, the release has been roundly criticized for its lack of editorial discretion, and its damage to international relations.

A limited set of the documents were also released to the New York Times, the Guardian, and several other international newspapers and were republished in those newspapers.

Shortly after the release of latest documents in late November, the WikiLeaks web site, then located on an electronic host in Sweden, came under electronic attack.  Early in the morning of November 28, 2010, a Twitter line from the site said, “We are currently under a mass distributed denial of service (DDOS) attack.”  Such an attack combines the use of a distributed array of computers to flood a website with the goal of shutting it down due to overload.  Note that the only organization injured by the release of documents was the U.S. government.

U.S. Senator Joe Lieberman started the official response.  As Chairman of the Senate committee on homeland security, he stated, “"I call on any other company or organization that is hosting Wikileaks to immediately terminate its relationship with them. Wikileaks’ illegal, outrageous, and reckless acts have compromised our national security and put lives at risk around the world. No responsible company – whether American or foreign – should assist Wikileaks in its efforts to disseminate these stolen materials.”  Note that, while the theft of the secret documents was illegal, their publication by WikiLeaks and several newspapers was not, at least by Supreme court standards established by the Pentagon Papers.

Several days later, the site was experiencing a DDOS attack greater than 10 Gigabits per second (a real lot, about 1,000,000 greater than most sites.)  At some point, Amazon.com shut down the WikiLeaks site, which had moved to their servers.  (Amazon has amazing resilience to electronic traffic.  Remember the Christmas rush.)  Amazon cited a violation of their acceptable use policy, but this was a dishonest response made necessary by the political pressure.  WikiLeaks said, “If Amazon are so uncomfortable with the first amendment, they should get out of the business of selling books.”

As reported on Gawker, the U.S. government struck directly on December 3, 2010 when the Library of Congress shut off access to WikiLeaks on its computers.  The Department of Defense followed suit for all its employees, including warnings about private viewings.  Soldiers were forbidden to view WikiLeaks.

Students at Columbia University were warned that even discussing WikiLeaks online could cost them employment opportunities.  In passing along information from the U.S. State Department, Columbia officials said, in part, “Engaging in these activities would call into question your ability to deal with confidential information, which is part of most positions with the federal government.”

During this period the WikiLeaks domain name server, EveryDNS.net, severed ties to the site.  A domain name server (DNS) provides the electronic correspondence between the site name, in this case “wikileaks.org”, and an internet numbered address.  EveryDNS.net also cited its acceptable use policy, although this was a cover for the continued strong electronic attack of its servers. Guess who was attacking?  The web site ReadWrite reports, “Losing the DNS means most people can’t access the site. This has come about through the actions of the U.S. Government. The government’s statements about WikiLeaks have forced companies to analyze their Terms of Service.”

The WikiLeaks site moved to Switzerland, although their bank account there has been frozen.  Moreover, more than 500 mirror sites have popped up, some listed here.  (Mirror sites are exact duplicates of content at a direct address.)

More damaging to WikiLeaks was its loss of PayPal and the credit card companies, on which its financial support had depended, again through political pressure.  This occasioned anonymous supporters of WikiLeaks to electronically attack those companies, and restrict their sites.  Welcome to a real cyber war.

Although the U.S. government has talked about charging Assange, they have not yet done so.  According an online publication, the Daily Beast, the Obama administration has asked Britain, Germany, Australia, and other allies to consider criminal charges against Assange for his Afghan war leak and to severely limit his nomadic travels across international borders.  Senator Lieberman has also introduced legislation to make further leaks illegal, but this is bound to tread on the freedom of speech of all Americans.

Nothing WikiLeaks has done is illegal, anymore than the New York Times did anything illegal with the publication of the Pentagon Papers.  Private Bradley Manning, who apparently leaked the secret documents, is being held in a military brig in Virginia and will be tried this year.  The real culprit here is the U.S. Congress, who demanded the communication system that allowed a marine private in Iraq to have access to these documents.

Now, having looked at the details, can anyone imagine the public response if the federal government prevented the presses of the New York Times from running during its release of the Pentagon Papers, or had threatened their distributors.  What would happen if the bank account of the NYT had been frozen during the Pentagon Papers time frame?  Yet this is exactly what is happening now.  Electronic news is currently exposed to government censorship by intimidation of the electronic infrastructure.

A time line of the recent WikiLeaks activities can be found at The Guardian.

As of January 1, 2011, the Facebook page for WikiLeaks is still up with nearly 1.5 million followers.

Note: There is an email link embedded within this post, please visit this post to email it. ]]> http://www.stoneforge.com/2011/01/02/pentagon-leaks/feed/ 0 http://www.stoneforge.com/2009/12/01/science-run-amok/ http://www.stoneforge.com/2009/12/01/science-run-amok/#comments Tue, 01 Dec 2009 16:59:27 +0000 Editor http://www.stoneforge.com/?p=3389 Rarely do outside events reach into Kent in a meaningful way. A business failure or downsizing in New Milford will cause some of our residents to lose their jobs. A crash on the stock market will cause the second-home market to dry up. Yet, except for our soldiers, international events seem far removed from every day life here. However, such is not the situation with recent events in global warming science.

Professionally, I am, first, a trained physicist, (atomic and molecular physics), second, a working statistician specializing in stochastic models, and, lately due to illness, the editor of a local on-line newspaper. And, being naturally curious, I have followed the scientific debate over global warming.

• I understand the measured increase in background CO2 concentration, and the concerns there from.
• I understand the decrease in the carbon isotope ratio, and the possible causes.
• I understand the correlation of measured temperatures with CO2 concentration, albeit with no correlation in the last decade. (Mind, correlation is not cause and effect.)
• I understand the importance of good models, or lack thereof, for cloud formation. Reflection of sunlight by clouds aids cooling, and water vapor is the predominant greenhouse gas by far.
• I understand the measurement of emissivity of the earth over time, and the contradiction that poses for many climate models.
• I understand the erroneous statistical model used by climate scientists to evaluate historical temperatures over the last few millennium.
• I understand the dearth of chaotic and stochastic processes in climate models that produces a false robustness. (insufficient computing power)

I understand, and I am still learning, as any scientist would. But I cannot explain my knowledge to lay people; I lack that skill. Even my neighbors laughed at me when I tried, so little did they understand of what I said. So I have remained silent.

But I cannot remain silent when important climate scientists are found to be dishonest in their work. And this is what happened with the release of over 1000 emails from Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia in Great Britain. In those emails, the scientists admitted to falsifying temperature data and jury-rigging their models. They admitted choosing to hide, or possibly, destroy original data rather than release such data to the public. (Why hide data unless it condemns your work?) They blackballed their critics, forcing them out of peer reviewed journals, even to the point of having journal editors removed who would not cooperate. One scientist even celebrated the death of a critic.

What makes this important is straightforward; these are the very scientists who wrote a good part of the United Nation’s latest report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). That report is the reason for the EPA’s regulation of CO2 emissions, the basis for the cap and trade legislation before Congress, and the driving force behind the proposed Copenhagen treaty. Any one of those governmental changes will drive the cost of energy, and transportation, up astronomically. And Kent is a town whose economy depends on transportation.

Of course, my voice is small and inconsequential in the face of such a political juggernaut. But the total lack of personal and scientific integrity in these men requires whatever amplification I can give it.