Cumulative Model

Really?! Who's trying to move the football?

And, who's not falling for it?

Not me for one.

The Economist has developed a very strange concept of "insurance". It advocates anti-global-warming policies as "insurance". Funny that the insurance industry insures by saving and investing so that resources are available to be moved where they are needed when the unexpected happens instead of spending recklessly and frantically on unproven, highly speculative, risk mitigation efforts.

Doug Feith's office made the entire case for war, that Saddam controlled al Qaeda, and they did it 6 months after the invasion.

To summarize: Kevin Drum quotes an article written by Stephen Hayes about a memo, drafted in Oct. 2003, as if it were Doug Feith's words. He insinuates that he lied and railroaded us into the Iraq war with a memo written 6 months after the invasion and based much on intelligence gathered as a result of the invasion.

Words matter, so do false attributions and dates.

UPDATE: Apparently, providing both actual and likely instances of Saddam/al Qaeda relations is the same as using the politically charged phrase "Operational Relationship".

IPCC Report

Some amuzing observations:

The Sum of Calculated Individual Contributions to Increased Sea Levels is less than the contribution of just the Antartic Ice Sheets. Where did the extra water go, did it evaporate?

The summation is also shown to have a greater amount of certainty than the individual components:

Rate of sea level rise (m per century)
Source of sea level rise 1961 – 2003, 1993 – 2003
Thermal expansion 0.042 ± 0.012, 0.16 ± 0.05
Glaciers and ice caps 0.050 ± 0.018, 0.077 ± 0.022
Greenland ice sheets 0.05 ± 0.12, 0.21 ± 0.07
Antarctic ice sheets 0.14 ± 0.41, 0.21 ± 0.35
Sum of individual climate
contributions to sea level rise 0.11 ± 0.05, 0.28 ± 0.07
Observed total sea level rise 0.18 ± 0.05a, 0.31 ± 0.07a
Difference
(Observed minus sum of estimated
climate contributions)
0.07 ± 0.07, 0.03 ± 0.10

And. The projections don't fit the observations:

Likelihood that trend
occurred in late 20th
century (typically post
1960) * Likelihood of a human
contribution to observed
trend --> Likelihood of future
trends based on
projections for 21st
century using SRES
scenarios

Warmer and fewer cold days
and nights over most land
areas:
Very likely * Likely --> Virtually certain

Warmer and more frequent
hot days and nights over
most land areas:
Very likely * Likely (nights) --> Virtually certain

Warm spells / heat waves.
Frequency increases over
most land areas:
Likely * More likely than not --> Very likely

Heavy precipitation events.
Frequency (or proportion of
total rainfall from heavy falls)
increases over most areas:
Likely * More likely than not --> Very likely

Area affected by droughts
increases:
Likely in many regions
since 1970s * More likely than not --> Likely

Intense tropical cyclone
activity increases:
Likely in some regions
since 1970 * More likely than not --> Likely

Increased incidence of
extreme high sea level
(excludes tsunamis):
Likely * More likely than not --> Likely