April 30 - The Second Time in History

No one died. Hardly anyone was hurt. That's the good news. In Oakland today a freeway collapsed. If you have ever driven across the Oakland Bay Bridge, you know that the maze of freeways coming into Oakland is large and complicated and carries a huge amount of traffic. A collapse of a freeway, there, is going to cause serious problems for months to come. More than a quarter million people will be affected daily.

How it happened was quite simple. A tanker truck carrying a load of gasoline crashed into an abutment. Normally this would not have led to catastrophe, but the fuel ignited. The heat of the fire melted the girders and rivets that composed the bridge, causing it's collapse.

As mentioned previously, a number of people think that the WTC Tower collapses on 9/11 were the result of an inside job. Not too long ago, Rosie O'Donnell said, on "The View", that 9/11 was the first time in history that fire had melted steel implying that only explosives could have brought the buildings down. Today's accident must come as something of a shock to her, marking the second time in history that fire has melted steel... to the extent that she understands history, anyway.

Maybe Roseanne Barr has better knowledge of history.

April 27 - The Cold War Revisited

Having grown up and lived through the last 20 or so years of the cold war, I remember all too well the tension and fear caused by saber rattling.

That is why news like this causes some long buried unsettling feelings to resurface.

Terrorism is quite bad enough, thank you very much. I hope our children don't also have to grow up with another cold war as we did.

April 24 - People Make Emotional Decisions for Rational Reasons

Uh, well, that was a nice break.

“People make emotional decisions for rational reasons.” I don’t know who first said it, but I first heard it from a guy named Jim Zackrone. Jim is a sales guy in the high stakes world of semiconductor capital equipment, stuff that sells for the bargain price of 500,000 and goes up from there. He was fond of that quote. What it meant was that, basically, people make up their minds about what they want and then they find the facts to fit their decision. This is a process called rationalization and it applies to a great many things people do, not just purchasing decisions.

Fifteen years or so ago, I decided to start riding a motorcycle. This was for two reasons. The first was financial. An old bike was all I could afford to get around on. The second was because I truly enjoyed riding motorcycles. Not long after I made this decision, I started hearing from various people about the perils of riding. From anecdotes of emergency room doctors calling them “donor-cycles” to loved ones assuring me that they knew I would ride responsibly, “but what about the other crazy drivers out there?” To all these people, a motorcycle was an assured death trap.

I rode anyway.

I rationalized, myself, about this. My thoughts were mostly about my being in control and I thought that was a fairly good argument, to me. I was responsible. I did wear a helmet. But, I did think about it. What did I really know. I knew one thing. Motorcycles were not actually so dangerous that they had been banned. On the basis of this, I could pretty much conclude that they were not actually assured death traps.

So who was rationalizing, I wondered. Me or the folks concerned for me? I began looking into it. It turns out the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration compiles very good statistics on all sorts of accidents of all sorts of vehicles. They track the contributing factors to the accidents such as alcohol consumption, seatbelt use, etc. From this it is possible to determine two things. How dangerous are cars and how dangerous are motorcycles. I’ll sum it up, though you can read something called the Hurt report if you’d like more detail. Motorcycles are 4 times more dangerous than cars. 4 times more likely to result in serious injury or death. That might seem like a lot until you understand how surpassingly unlikely it is that you will suffer serious injury or death in a car. It might seem like a lot until you compare it to all the things you do every day that are far more dangerous than 4 times the likelihood of dying in a fiery wreck.

Things like, oh, say, going for a swim, taking a shower, riding a bike. That’s right, bicycles are incredibly more dangerous than motorcycles. Start looking at the various things that cause death. Next time you tsk. about a motorcycle rider, think about putting down that burger and eat some celery. You are going to die a miserable death of heart disease before he dies riding.

What I learned from this process is that us people are terrible at assessing risk. We make decisions based on a few anecdotes. The horror of the anecdotes set our minds, and any more information that comes our way, we slot it in to fit our view. Alternatively, we rationalize on the basis of desire or necessity and diminish the horror of whatever anecdote or information comes our way. Whatever. To make a good decision, you need raw information. I don’t ride much anymore, but it isn’t because of fear, but simply a lack of time. It turns out a motorcycle is an extremely selfish mode of transportation. Since I became a dad, I can not really justify taking off for an afternoon ride much, anymore.

I did learn a few other things about motorcycles that really make one wonder. For all the talk that motorcyclists talk about the other ignorant drivers, motorcyclists cause more than 60% of the accidents they are in. The reasons are many, but most experts are convinced that it has to do with the connection between the eyes and the motion of the body. When we move around we tend to go where our eyes are looking. Try turning your head while walking or running and see if you don’t tend to go in the direction you look. Because cycles (bi and motor) are so sensitive to body motions, they actually amplify this tendency. Combine this with the human tendency to fixate on something that is a threat, like an on-coming car, and you can quickly see how this could lead to disaster.

Every motorcyclist should be taught this. Without knowing this you may never recognize it when it happens in time to correct.

Aside from that, motorcycle danger is enhanced far more by external influences, especially intoxication. when you read the NHTSA data and you start adding alcohol into the mix and the danger shoots up to, if I recall correctly, something over 20 times more dangerous. Don’t drink and ride.

From here I’ll next explore “anything for the children”, but in reference to last week. What, exactly, do you suppose the risk from firearms is in this country? Anecdotes and individual experience, I'm afraid, are just not the sorts of things you can base decisions on. They are not enough for you to know the comparative risk to see if they are even worth addressing compared to the things that cause the most danger.

YetAnotherJohn finally weighed in on the last post considering the hazards of gun ownership...

April 17 - Virginia Tech

I doubt anyone is unaware of what happened at Virginia Tech yesterday. A young man, a student, took firearms and killed over 32 other students and professors. At the end, he walked into one of the schools buildings, chained the doors shut and began killing people. Not one of his victims, or potential victims, was armed, of course, the school being a gun-free zone. His victims had no chance.

How would things gave gone differently if the school permitted students with concealed carry permits to carry on campus? We'll never know. How would things have been differently if even one of the students or professors in the building was armed? How could it have gone differently. At least there would have been a chance to reduce the loss of life.

Neal Boortz asked this question on his radio show, today: If you could, would you have armed at least one of the students or professors? Let's suppose, he asks, you could sneak a gun through an A/C grate to a student in the building. Would you? Now ask yourself why you would not want to permit qualified law abiding people to possess firearms on that campus.

Concealed carry holders statistically a) are not involved in accidental shootings (any mis-use of their firearms) and b) are not involved in illegal use of their firearms. As these people do not present a threat at other times, why would you not want them to be on-hand and capable of acting under these rare but tragic circumstances?

By ensuring that the college is a gun free zone, sadly, a ready pool of defenseless victims stands by at all times for events just like this one.

April 16 - Trouble in Paradise

Happy Income Tax day.

It seems that there is unrest in Russia. Current Russian politics gets little press in this country since it stopped being the evil menace, the U.S.S.R. However, there has been a growing autocratic trend with former KGB agent Putin at the helm. As an example of this, Putin has initiated a change to their governmental structure whereby their equivalent to American state governors are appointed by the President, subject to approval or disapproval of the state residents. The somewhat violent suppression of this peaceful demonstration is another example.

As the wall fell, while we were cautious, we were relatively quick to embrace Russia as a new global partner in democracy. As time has passed, we've seen their democracy troubled by war, insurgency and crime. Putin has a very high (approximately 80%) approval rating. The populace of Russia became dis-enchanted with the idea of democracy as violence and crime and corrupt decadence rocked their world. Putin represents a return to the old ways which, from a short term perspective, are seen as better. We may yet again square off against the communist menace.

In other news, the paternity of Daniellynn has been determined. The father of Anna Nicole Smith's daughter is Larry Birkhead. I hope you can rest easy, now that that is settled.

April 14 - CO2 in Review

CO2 causes global warming. This is not a hypothesis, this is pretty much fact. Therefore, anthropogenic (a big word for man-made) CO2 causes global warming. This is not subject to much debate. What is subject to a lot of debate is how significant are the contributions of CO2 and, more specifically, anthropogenic CO2. Here is some science to help you decide...

The reason CO2 is a cause of global warming is that it is opaque to certain wavelengths of light. When radiation at those wavelengths hit a molecule of CO2, it is absorbed, causing the molecule to retain the energy... heat. Now, for a moment, imagine a bottle filled with CO2. If you pass that light through the bottle, some will hit the CO2 and some wont. That which hits the CO2 causes an increase in heat energy within the bottle. Now put twice as much CO2 in the bottle. Now when you pass the light through the bottle, twice as much radiation hits CO2, causing a proportional increase in heat energy. If you keep adding CO2 to the bottle, eventually nearly 100% of the light that is passed into the bottle hits CO2 molecules and fails to reach the other side. The CO2 has become effectively opaque to light at those wavelengths. Now, if you add more CO2 to the bottle, there is practically no further warming effect because nearly all of the light is already being absorbed.

Global average levels of CO2, prior to the industrial revolution are reported to be around 290 parts per million (PPM). Today, they are 380PPM. At 290PPM, the amount of heat added to the atmosphere is around 33 degrees Celsius. Furthermore, at those levels, the atmosphere is already a little better than 90% opaque to the wavelengths of light it absorbs. If you do the math, there, you will realize that warming due to complete saturation of CO2 could only produce a warming effect of about 3.3 degrees (actually a little less.) To see even 1.6 degrees of warming, CO2 levels would have to double from the pre industrial revolution levels to 580PPM. That doesn't seem so far away. but it still implies a delta of 2X what we have seen, thus far.

What we did not discuss is where that CO2 came from. It is kind of implied by the "pre industrial revolution" statement that the CO2 increase came from mankind burning fuels, but that is not actually proven. When talking about green-house effects, scientists talk about drivers and non-drivers. A non-driver is an effect. Basically the premise for non-drivers is that when climate changes, a change results in the quantity of the green house gas and the reverse is not necessarily so. A driver means that climate is affected by increases in the greenhouse gas.

The meaning isn't exactly clear until you are exposed to the idea that the CO2 in the air is not there because we put it there, exactly. The level of CO2 in the atmosphere could be called, in the language of control systems, an error signal. It is a byproduct of the production and consumption rate of many systems on the planet. The two dominant systems are dissolution and biological carbon fixation.

When water is exposed to a soluble gas, such as CO2, it absorbs it. It does so in proportion to it's pressure or, when it is a partial constituent of the gas mixture, what is called it's partial pressure. When the partial pressure goes up, the gas is absorbed into the water to correct the imbalance. If the gas in the water leaves it without re-entering the gaseous solution for whatever reason (it does for several), then the water will take up more, again, to correct the imbalance.

biological carbon fixation might be the only method of removing CO2 from the atmosphere that most of us have knowledge of. This idea is fairly simple, when a plant grows, it consumes CO2, seperates the carbon from the Oxygen, uses the carbon to build itself and releases the oxygen. So we are left with the idea that we need to plant a bunch of trees. What is far less well undertood is that we don't necessarily need to plant these trees. This is another feedback system that will tend to keep atmospheric CO2 in balance. When CO2 levels rise, plants are encouraged to grow and fix more carbon, thereby reducing atmospheric CO2 levels.

There are many systems that contribute to the CO2 balance, but the upshot is that CO2 enters and leaves the atmosphere at roughly equal rates. As the rates rise, the atmospheric concentration will change to reflect the state of the systems. So, this is not like the chlorofluorocarbon debate of years past where we were supposed to be directly injecting the gas into the atmosphere. CO2 enters and leaves the atmosphere at a prodigious rate. It does not stick around long.

This is too short a forum and I do not have the expertise to discuss all of the many systems affecting the CO2 balance. It is the existence of these systems that determine the forcing versus non-forcing categorization. However, which CO2 is, is far from clear. Some of the systems will release CO2 if atmospheric temperatures increase. This suggests that CO2 could be non-forcing. However, many climate scientists think that CO2 is forcing. This is not fact, but is still a matter under investigation.

These systems are somewhat understood, but the extent to which they are understood leave a lot of room for error. When you compound the inaccuracies associated with every model of every system, you wind up with a lot of unpredictability. Too, much, as of this day, to make the sort of predictions about the source and the future of CO2 levels that many are making today.

Why does any of that matter if, after all that, only a 3 degree or so rise in temperature could result in the worst case. It potentially matters because of other systems in play that regulate climate. Unfortunately the nature of these systems are far less related to very hard science like physics and therefore much more poorly understood and modelable. These systems predict a change in temperature based on changing temperature. The problem is that, in most cases, we can not know whether the change is positive and reinforcing or negative diminishing. To give a couple of examples we need to briefly visit where the radiation that causes the CO2 warming comes from.

Oh, you thought it was the sun? Well, that is sort of correct. Almost all energy at the earth's surface has the sun as it's original source, but usually we describe it as where it comes from directly. For instance, oil is storing energy originally provided by the sun but we do not typically call it solar energy, no? Right. Well, the source of the warming for CO2 is the surface of the earth, itself. Solar radiation rains down on the earth's surface, predominantly in the higher wavelengths of visible and ultra-violet light. This light, in turn, heats the earth's surface. The earth, thus heated, re-radiates that energy at lower, infra-red wavelengths which is then absorbed by the CO2. In other words, precious little of the energy stored in atmospheric CO2 is received from the sun.

"albedo" is a word that roughly means how reflective an object is. A high albedo means an object reflects a lot of incoming radiation. A low albedo means the object absorbs a lot of incoming radiation. Dark things have low albedos and light things have high albedos. When something with a low albedo is illuminated it tends to get warm. When something with a high albedo is illuminated it tends to reflect the illumination.

Remember that system from above where higher CO2 might stimulate plant growth which would thereby reduce CO2? Plants tend to have a lower albedo than their surroundings and therefore radiate more heat energy, producing an increase in atmospheric temperature. This is more true if rising temperatures cause plants to grow in previously arctic regions. So which is the greater effect? decreasing surface albedo or the greater carbon fixation capability of more plant life. Don't trust anyone who tells you they know, because this is very new science.

Another system that might contribute more heat to the atmosphere is the changing albedo of the planet due to melting polar ice. As more ground and ocean (with low albedos) spend more time uncovered by ice (with a very high albedo), they absorb more solar radiation and re-radiate it as heat. The question here, is, is the small change directly due to anthropogenic CO2 generation sufficient to cause the polar ice to melt. Again this is very unclear to climate scientists. Some say yes, others disagree.

But all of these systems are trumped by the water cycle. The most prevalent greenhouse gas in the atmosphere is water vapor. It is responsible for something like than 90 percent of atmospheric green-house effect (this is determined by how much heat it stores and it's prevalence in the atmosphere.) The problem is that water vapor also increases planetary albedo (due to cloud formation) and, increasing temperatures tend to produce more water vapor. Scientists presently have a lot of error in their models regarding precisely how water vapor affects atmospheric temperature, but it does seem to have a regulatory effect. This error leaves a lot of room for skepticism regarding conclusions based on climate models.

So the "takeaway" point, here, is that a little very well understood science about CO2 physics drives a lot of less well understood science about CO2 regulatory mechanisms which in turn drive very poorly understood science about biological and geological systems from which we try to infer information about past present and future planetary climate. The large amount of uncertainty in all of this should leave one with a healthy does of skepticism about what we are told today about climate change.

April 12.1 A Gift Revisited

In a brief follow-up to April 4.1, John Bolton, former U.S. ambassador to the U.N., also seems to think that Iran won a political victory. This Article by Mr. Bolton was originally published on the Financial Times website, but that requires registration.

He goes so far as to say that the weak response by the U.K. makes the acquisition of nukes by Iran more likely and will contribute to greater violence in Iraq.

April 12 - Sacrifice

Rolando Ocampo seems to love his Wife and Daughter intensely. He must love God intensely too. Rolando is a devout Catholic in the Philippines. When his wife was giving birth to his daughter, complications arose. While praying to beg for a safe delivery for both, Rolando made a promise to have himself crucified on Good Friday. Both his daughter and wife came through safely and he makes good on his promise every year. Story and video, here.

I am not sure if this is crazy (using the term loosely) or not. If you assume it is, was the crazy part making the oath, following through on it or both? All I know is that at the end of the video, I was very much impressed by Rolando's dedication and moved by his sense of honor and the level of sacrifice he was willing to endure for his family.

April 11 - Avoiding Anti-Trust

I need to begin this post by saying that I technically love AMD microprocessors. I also like AMD as a company and all of the individuals who I have met who work there. At my last CPU upgrade, I built an AMD Athlon64 system and have never been happier with my PC. With all that said, I still need to be clear that I intend absolutely none of the following to be hurtful.

AMD recently announced some fiscal bad news. According to the press release, AMD is facing greater than anticipated competitive pressure and that has led them to lower performance expectations. I doubt this will last too long. In fact, the faster they lose market share, the more quickly they will be back in the black. Huh?

AMD sets the market's pace. No, really. Intel does not. It makes no sense for Intel to determine what the market will be. And, Intel depends on the existence of AMD more than any other company in the world. By set the market's pace, what I mean is determine what the specifications (performance and features) of the current crop of microprocessors will be.

This does not mean that AMD has, is or will always be measurably better than Intel, it just means that Intel is willing to let them be if it servers their interest.

So how can a short, sharp period of financial pain help AMD return to profitability? Why does Intel care if AMD exists? Why would Intel, a company 15 times larger than AMD permit AMD to set the pace for development? The answers to these questions are rooted in Intel's greatest fear, Anti-trust Laws. Intel very carefully maintains it's near-monopoly position and it's ability to use anti-competitive monopolistic tactics so long as AMD exists.

So, here is what (I'm guessing) Intel does. They decide what constitutes an acceptable portion of the market for AMD to have. As long as AMD has less than that share, Intel appears to rest on it's laurels (in reality they are developing many technologies for later use). They milk their existing line for as long as they can, extracting the most profit they can because they don't need to to maintain their market share. When AMD achieves a share of the market greater than Intel can stomach, Intel brings it's huge capitalization to bear on the problem of setting it to right by rapidly developing and releasing just enough new technology to acieve technical superiority over AMD. This, in turn, drives the market to buy more Intel chips and before too long everything is right again in Intel's eyes.

If Intel got too good, AMD would die. If Intel rested too long, AMD would have a chance at achieving sufficient market share to not survive at Intel's pleasure. I think this almost happened recently as Hell froze over not too long ago when Dell started buying AMD processors.

So, how can AMD minimize their pain when Intel fights back? It seems to me that if they start fighting right away, they will have large expenditures with a slowly decreasing market share because Intel will not let up until things are in what they perceive to be balance. On the other hand, if they can manage a very quick downturn, then they conserve their capital and perhaps come to market with dramatic new technology that finally pushes their financial fortunes fast enough to become an equal competitor to Intel.

Because that is what will have to happen for this situation to change. AMD will have to develop microprocessor technology so good and with a sufficient roadmap that they can carry their fortune all the way to 40-50% market share and a much larger market cap. They very nearly achieved this with the introduction of their 64 bit processors. It cost Intel greatly to reverse their 64 bit plans and follow AMD's lead and they were slow to do it because they had to work through many issues associated with, effectively, abandoning it's huge investment in Itanium.

AMD will know it has been successful when Intel tries to destroy them. Until then, Intel will be the company that cares the most about AMD's survival, aside from AMD itself.

April 10 - Peer Review Works, I Think

When I started this blog, it was on the premise that there would be enough material appearing on the front page of Wikipedia on a daily basis to fuel the prosaic muse. what actually happened was that I found interesting (to me) material all over the place. I do still check out Wikipedia every day, though, and often use it for fact-checking.

One of the things I've noticed is that Wikipedia is a target for vandals. This is most evident when viewing the article of the day. Chances are good, when viewing that page, that it will be littered with obscene graffiti and often have material destroyed or seriously altered. Such is what can happen when anyone can edit the articles.

What is particularly heartening is that other folks monitor and reverse the damage pretty much as fast as it occurs. Try it some time. Go to Wikipedia, navigate to the article of the day and press refresh and watch the page change on a minute by minute basis. It is good to see that there are at least as many folks out there who are willing to put as much volunteer effort into the public good as there are people seeking to diminish it.

It is good to be mindful that Wikipedia can contain bias because of this public editing. Encyclopaedia Brittanica can contain bias, too, and there you have no opportunity to identify or correct it. At least with Wikipedia, you have a good possibility of most positions being represented in a given article. In fact, what one often finds in Wikipedia is that sections which are likely to contain opinion or bias are so labeled.

I have been pleased and impressed with Wikipedia's accuracy, general lack of bias, shear breadth of information and demonstrable resistance to malice.

April 9 - Noam Chomsky

Noam Chomsky seems to be an incredibly intelligent guy. One wonders, then, why his politics seems to be so terribly radical. I would tend to think that, as one gains wisdom and experience, one would tend towards some moderation. Noam, in some contrast, seems to be just a little to the left of Lenin. Well, maybe not that far, but he certainly is for suppressing his own country in favor of others.

His work on linguistics has been so complete that he has successfully developed a framework that usefully describes all languages, human and computer. By usefully, I mean the concepts have been used to make computer language development better. The breadth of work evident in this is such that it shows him to have a unique intellect. And yet he has meaningful contributions in psychology, too.

I suspect he has fallen into the trap that many people do. That trap is thinking that developing some authority in one area makes you qualified to render opinions in another.

The problem with Noam is that his opinions are so strong that, unless you tend to agree with his politics, you form a very bad opinion of him and you therefore might overlook his really useful work. Imagine if Einstein lobbied against capitalism and American foreign policy. Oh, wait...

April 8 - Happy Easter

Hi all, I'm taking a break to enjoy my family over easter. I'll be back again with something obnoxious or trite, tomorrow.

Happy Easter

April 6 - The Feminine Mistake: Are We Giving Up Too Much? - Leslie Bennetts

This is not a book review. I've not read this book, but I just heard about it and it seems interesting.

This is a non-fiction book that looks at the trend of women leaving the working world to raise children. It suggests to women that is a mistake primarily because of the question, what if things go wrong? The three main things that can go wrong are: 1) your husband dies, 2) you divorce your husband, 3) your husband loses his job. The book apparently suggests that it just does not make sense for a woman to lose her marketability and that, given the risks, it is actually not good for her kids.

In answer to what if, I propose: 1) have a good life insurance policy 2) don't leave your husband and 3) marry well :-) Actually, for 3), I've heard there are some old fashioned approaches to money management that will cover that possibility but I understand that it is no longer in vogue to have "savings", whatever they are.

It is really interesting how changes wrought by feminism have led to unexpected consequences. First (well, not actually first) women fought for the right to work so they could if they wanted. Then society changed so economics made it so two income families were desirable or even necessary so women lost some choice in the matter, they had to work. Then some fought for the ability to not work to be able to enjoy being mothers. Now this Author is suggesting that working is a requirement for any semblance of security.

Along with all the empowerment and equality issues all I can say is, what a mess. I am glad I am not a woman. Men have it much simpler though not necessarily easier. We don't have any choices here. Our role is fairly well defined by society. We work and support our families to the best of our abilities. Today, our wives might work too if we don't bring in enough and that is now alright. Anything less is generally looked down upon. It always has been and likely will be for a long time.

On the purely practical side, though, I would hate terribly to feel so dependent and, were I a woman, would appreciate the authors stated position completely. I am curious to see if the book has a political or practical agenda. Stay tuned...

April 5 - Pelosi Frustrated

It seems that Nancy Pelosi is a frustrated president wanna-be. First she leads the house to try to take back executive powers and act as Commander in Chief in determining how the war on terror should proceed and now she is grabbing the executive responsibility of setting foreign policy. It's a good thing she is completely incompetent in this respect. On her first trip outside of the country she managed to lie to a foreign dignitary on the unrequested behalf of another foreign dignitary. Fortunately, the worst that will come of this is she will be treated like the king's in-bred, idiot offspring, indulged and ignored.

Republicans would do well to remember that this is what you get when you don't go to the polls.

Hillary must be snickering.

April 4.1 - A Gift

President Ahmedinejad, today, announced that he will release the 15 British soldiers Iran abducted from Iraqi waters. He said he will pardon them.

This seems like good news, but it is very mixed. Certainly the goal of getting the soldiers back is being met. If that were the sole goal, however, Britain would have capitulated to admission of being in Iranian waters long ago.

The problem with this resolution is that the claim of British forces being in Iranian waters remain and acceptance of the pardons implies guilt. Even if no other concessions were extracted for the sailors' release, this is a net PR win for Iran.

April 4 - My Favorite Link

My all time favorite spot on the internet is this: NASA's Astronomy Picture of the Day. The picture for today was just so astonishing that I thought I'd share. It is a picture of what is probably the largest active volcano in the solar system.

Every day the folks who run that site select a new picture that shows off astrological, geological and meteorological science. They keep an archive easily accessible on the page of every picture they have published over the last ten years or so.

I hope you enjoy it as much as I do.

April 3 - Hot Air

Yesterday, the Supreme Court ruled that the EPA could regulate CO2 and other greenhouse gases coming from new cars and trucks.

Erm. This could put a crimp in our automotive lifestyle. I don't know about the other gases, but CO2 is practically impossible to scrub out of exhaust meaning that this is pretty much another avenue to impose mileage requirements on cars.

This is really quite amazing, because Carbon Dioxide is not actually a pollutant, as such. We breath vast amounts of it in and out every day. In fact, it is the fourth most common gas composing our atmosphere after Nitrogen, Oxygen and Argon. It is not poisonous.

Interesting is that the court begins it's opinion citing current thinking on global warming, a matter of still substantial debate. Man made CO2 caused global warming is absolutely not settled science. One wonders, if the opinions shift and, for instance, solar flux turns out to be the real cause of temperature variation does that automatically invalidate the courts ruling? Of course not.

April 2 - MIHOP, LIHOP, Conspiracy Theory Goes Mainstream

I could not post this yesterday because of the confusion April Fool's day would have caused. If you are not familiar with the Liberal blogosphere, what I write next is just too crazy to believe. Unfortunately belief in these ideas is prevalent.

MIHOP and LIHOP stand for "Made It Happen On Purpose" and "Let It Happen On Purpose". These two initialisms are usually prepended by "Bush" or some derogatory name for the President and they always refer to the attack on and subsequent collapse of the World Trade Center in New York on Sept. 11. I don't remember the exact numbers, but something north of 70% of the readers of The Daily Kos and The Democratic Underground believe that this administration either planned and executed the attack or were completely aware of the plan and let it occur as a pretext to wage war.

Further, many of these nutjobs believe that the towers were not brought down by the planes, but rather by explosives planted in advance, also by the administration, or so the claim goes. You have not heard about this because it was mostly kept out of the mainstream press and off the networks because even they seemed to know that was to product of insanity.

Until now.

Apparently the extremely valuable addition to "The View", Rosie O'Donnell, has seen fit to share her belief in these very ideas. Popular Mechanics Has seen fit to respond to her claims. Rosie has a undeservedly large following who will be swayed by her opinion. I certainly hope that ABC shares what the experts think on this matter in order to balance her influence. In fact, I rather think they should be required to.