HinesSight

My Oregon snowstorm survival story

Thank god, I made it through this morning's storm.

Bojack.org's Storm Center 9000 has been ably reporting on how the Portland area has been surviving this wintry mix of rain and snow, with temperatures plunging to the high 30s and winds peaking in the 'teens (Bojack says there was a gust of 14 mph at the airport. Wow!)

Here's how it went in south Salem.

I woke up, rubbed my eyes, and looked out the window. Whiteout. Everything was blurred together, indistinguishable. Then I remembered to put on my glasses. The storm came into focus.

A chill went up my Oregonian-used-to-moderate-weather spine. There was a light dusting of snow. It was so deep, in places the boards on our deck were almost completely hidden (except for the areas where they weren't).

Realizing that a rash move in this weather could be disastrous, I checked our indoor-outdoor thermometer in the living room: 37 degrees. Better dress warmly for the 200 foot trek up the driveway to get the newspaper.

Found my down parka. Called the dog. Two bodies are better than one when fighting hypothermia.

I almost made a fatal error, though. Started to slip into the rubber garden shoes that I usually use for my paper walk. With those on, I could have fallen on one of the slick snowflakes scattered across the asphalt and not been able to get up without more effort than I'm willing to expend that early in the morning.

The dog would have run back home, wanting her breakfast. My wife would have sat inside, refusing to move, per usual, until she ate and read the newspaper. Which would have been clutched in my increasingly frostbitten hands, assuming it is possible to get frostbite when the temperature is well above freezing.

Fortunately, I remembered to put on shoes more suitable for a rain-snow mix, which was still lightly falling. A bit later, my wife excitedly alerted me to a change in the weather.

"It looks sort of like ice pellets now!" I dashed to the window. She was right, aside from the fact that it really was more like slushy rain. Nonetheless, we fed each other's panic, not having anything better to do at the moment.

"If it was actually much colder, and raining much harder, we could have freezing rain that would break branches," Laurel said. "You're right," I told her. "It's hypothetically bad, just like I read on Storm Center 9000."

Mixed in with the rain are actual snowflakes, which could make travel extremely dangerous if the weather turns to all snow, temperatures drop, and several feet of snow accumulate. We are presently just 10 degrees from the freezing mark, and so anything can happen. Forecasters say that there's a 100 percent chance of darkness overnight, followed by periods of light toward dawn.

Then, just when I thought things couldn't get any worse, they did. Right in the midst of pursuing some of my important daily current events research work, our satellite broadband connection went down (I'm vague on the science, but apparently if snowflakes get into the internet tubes, they clog up and stop working).

I switched to dial-up, only to find that the storm had pushed our nerves to a breaking point. A pleading pitiful cry carried into my office from upstairs.

"How much longer are you going to be on the computer?" Laurel asked. "I want to make a call." Suddenly I knew how the Donner Party felt. Cannibalism couldn't be far away, now that we were fighting over the scraps of our sole connection with the outside world (leaving aside our cell phones, two automobiles, and nearby neighbors).

It's afternoon now. I think we're going to make it. But soon I've got to go outside and try to make it up into the carport. We need supplies. My ascent is going to be over these rock steps. I've been studying the photo closely and believe I see a snow-free route.

Sure wish I'd gotten some crampons before the storm hit, though.

Global warming doubters deserve to be scorned

Al Gore did a lot for me last night when "An Inconvenient Truth" won an Oscar for best documentary. We'd just finished watching the movie on DVD. He'd already inspired me to do more to fight global warming.

But my passion was still on simmer. Hearing Gore repeat nine words from the movie raised the heat of my activism:

"It's not a political issue. It's a moral issue."

Driving home from the Academy Awards party where I won the trophy for picking the most winners (including documentary feature and original song, thanks to "An Inconvenient Truth"), I turned on the radio and heard Matt Drudge opining on the Oscars and global warming.

A caller suggested that he should pay more attention to the science of global climate change, rather than base his skeptical view solely on his conservative political beliefs. Drudge replied:

I trust my common sense and conscience rather than the science.

Gore has changed my attitude to ridiculous statements like that. I used to think, "that's so wrong." Now my reaction is, "that's absolute bullshit."

In short, I've become scornful of anyone who refuses to look at the scientific facts. Today's Prickly City comic tells it like I am.

Like I said in my letter to the editor about George Taylor, O.S.U.'s global warming head-in-the-sand climatologist, there's a big difference between skepticism and ignorance.

Skepticism is an integral aspect of the scientific method. Ignorance isn't. If Taylor, or anyone else, doubts the consensus of the world's leading climate researchers that (1) global warming is occurring and (2) humans are largely responsible for it, they need to show why the science is wrong.

If they can't, then they should shut up. What we need is more light on the subject of global climate change, not more people saying, "Put on blinders! Don't look at the facts!"

The science of global warming is akin to the science of evolution. There isn't any significant scientific debate about the basic facts in either area. Yet uninformed doubters love to scream, "Teach the controversy!"

Problem is, there's no controversy. So, nothing to teach.

Greg Hoke has put up a transcript of "An Inconvenient Truth." (a terrific resource; thanks, Greg) For me, one of the most memorable segments in the movie was Gore's bursting of three misconception bubbles. The first is that there's disagreement among scientists about whether the problem of global warming is real or not.

There isn't. Not a bit. Gore says:

Isn't there a disagreement among scientists about whether the problem is real or not? Actually, not really. There was a massive study of every scientific article in a peer reviewed article written on global warming in the last ten years.

They took a big sample of 10 percent, 928 articles. And you know the number of those that disagreed with the scientific consensus that we're causing global warming and that is a serious problem out of the 928: Zero.

The misconception that there is disagreement about the science has been deliberately created by a relatively small number of people. One of their internal memos leaked and here is what it said according to the press. Their objective is to reposition global warming as a theory rather than fact. This has happened before. after the Surgeon General's report [on smoking and lung cancer].

One of their memos leaked 4 years ago. They said, "Doubt is our product, since it is the best means of creating a controversy in the public's mind."

But have they succeeded? You'll remember that there were 928 peer reviewed articles. Zero percent disagreed with the consensus. There was another study of all the articles in the popular press. Over the last fourteen years they listed a sample of 636. More than half of them said, "Well, we are not sure. It could be a problem, may not be a problem." So no wonder people are confused.

Well, I'm determined not to let this blog contribute to the confusion. Regularly I get comments on my George Taylor and global warming posts from people who mouth the right-wing party line: "The science isn't certain."

Open-minded blogger that I am, I typically respond to their uninformed views with a fact-based comment of my own. And I'll probably continue to do that.

But from now on I'm going to do something else. If the global warming skeptic hasn't referenced a peer-reviewed scientific article that supports his or her position, that comment is going to be branded with a reader warning:

Caution: no peer-reviewed scientific evidence is cited here. So be highly doubtful that what is said is anything more than a personal opinion.

There's a lot of room for subjective opinion in the blogosphere. However, when it comes to global climate change, the world can't afford to be distracted by political posturing that masquerades as serious skepticism.

If you believe there's another side to the consensus scientific view of global warming, show it to me. Cite the peer-reviewed journal in which the alternative conclusion appears. Then we can have an informed discussion.

If you can't do that, then you have a choice: either keep your personal opinion to yourself, or accept that your comment on my blog is going to be accompanied with a Caution statement.

You've got a right to express your unscientific beliefs. And I've got a right to be scornful of them.

(Global warming skeptics: a good place to start your re-education is this Scientific American piece, "Are You a Global Warming Skeptic? Part IV." It'll probably tax your brain to read facts rather than politically-inspired blather, but consider this an exercise for your grey matter).

Salem’s Paragon Construction lives up to its name

Thank you, Paragon Construction, for helping to heal us. About ten years ago we had our downstairs bathroom remodeled by an incompetent company that just about drove us insane. As I wrote in our 1996 Christmas Letter:

Laurel…was able to maintain her equilibrium during a seemingly endless series of delays, mixups, and screwups by using a time tested therapeutic tool for stress reduction: almost daily, she would calmly step into the center of the yet unfinished remodeling project, making a sacred space by pushing aside the myriad tools and pieces of sheet rock that littered the floor, then fold her hands in front of her while taking a vital breath of life, and utter a powerful healing mantra: "I CAN'T BELIEVE THIS IS HAPPENING!!"

What a difference a decade and, more importantly, a different company makes. Recently John Eibert of Salem's Paragon Construction finished some earthquake renovation work that was recommended after we had a seismic survey done by a structural engineer.

Our house was built in 1974, before stricter earthquake codes went into effect. We had wood posts supporting the main floor beams that weren't rigidly connected to either the beams or the concrete pads on which they sit. Our carport was equally shaky. And a large roof beam in our living room wasn't firmly connected to a supporting column.

John and his co-worker did a great job. Plus, they love dogs. And were pleasant company during the time they worked on our house. (John is on the left; the photo shows one of his newly installed unpainted carport support structures).

Paragon Construction doesn't do much work for individual home owners, so we felt grateful that John took our project on. I kidded him about not having any direct presence on the web. Or even an email address. Maybe this bit of blog praise will raise his Internet visibility.

I recall John saying that he was raised in Minnesota. I can believe it. He's got that solid, no-nonsense, straightforward, honest way about him that I associate with the upper Midwest. When he'd sit down with us and talk for a spell, I'd almost forget that he was our contractor. Friend seemed more like it.

"Paragon: model of excellence or perfection of a kind." Yes, John picked a fitting name for his company.

Oregonians in Action spreads lies about Measure 37

An acquaintance of ours just got a phone call from someone who tried to get her hysterical about SB 505, the reasonable bill that would temporarily put Measure 37 subdivisions on hold while fast-tracking claims for single-family homes.

She was told that SB 505 is going to stop all development under Measure 37, forever! You can bet that Oregonians in Action (OIA) is behind these lies, because the Land Use Watch blog has called them on their falsities. Which are still being spread.

The SB 505 summary tells the bill like it is:

Except for written demands for compensation for land use regulations seeking to build one single-family dwelling or divide land for purpose of building one single-family dwelling, temporarily stops time periods relating to written demands for compensation until June 30, 2007, or adjournment sine die, whichever occurs first. Preserves rights of claimants who die during time period temporarily stopped.

A Measure 37 claimant can still have a single-family dwelling on his or her previously homeless property, so all development isn't being stopped. And see that word, "temporarily"? Oregonians in Action should consult a dictionary. It doesn't mean "forever."

Given the deceptive way Measure 37 was sold to Oregonians, glossing over the many subdivisions that would be sprouting on farmland, it isn't surprising that OIA president Dave Hunnicutt is still pumping out untruths.

His letter to Measure 37 claimants says, "Right now, the Oregon legislature is considering Senate Bill 505, a proposal by Measure 37 opponents that would suspend all Measure 37 claims, including those that have been filed and those that have been approved."

Not true, as I just noted. You can find SB 505 right on the OIA website. Hunnicutt either didn't read it closely or, more likely, consciously chose to inflame his troops with a false description of the bill.

This week my wife testified in favor of SB 505 at a Land Use Fairness Committee hearing. She said that legislators had to tell the rabid anti-SB 505'ers that the bill doesn't do what they were complaining about: suspend Measure 37 indefinitely and stop all development by claimants.

More than likely, a lot of people at the hearing got all their information about SB 505 from Hunnicutt's misleading letter.

Well, what would you expect from an organization that pays lip service to land use fairness, yet is responsible for bringing Oregon a law that has brought massive unfairness? Watch the video, "And fairness for none: The impact of Measure 37 on Oregonians and Oregon's landscape."

The truth is there, and here. If you want lies about Measure 37, you'll have to talk to Oregonians in Action.

West Point dean condemns “24” torture scenes

Even though I'm a progressive, I love "24." Torture away, Jack, I'll say to myself as my man, counter-terrorism agent Jack Bauer, shoots a bad guy in the knee and screams Talk!

But now I'm looking at the show in a new light. The dean of West Point says that "24" isn't just entertainment. It's taken as real by our soldiers around the world. And that's hurting the American military.

In a fascinating The New Yorker article, "Whatever it takes, Jane Mayer writes:

This past November, U.S. Army Brigadier General Patrick Finnegan, the dean of the United States Military Academy at West Point, flew to Southern California to meet with the creative team behind "24." Finnegan, who was accompanied by three of the most experienced military and F.B.I. interrogators in the country, arrived on the set as the crew was filming. At first, Finnegan—wearing an immaculate Army uniform, his chest covered in ribbons and medals—aroused confusion: he was taken for an actor and was asked by someone what time his "call" was.

In fact, Finnegan and the others had come to voice their concern that the show's central political premise—that the letter of American law must be sacrificed for the country's security—was having a toxic effect. In their view, the show promoted unethical and illegal behavior and had adversely affected the training and performance of real American soldiers. "I'd like them to stop," Finnegan said of the show's producers. "They should do a show where torture backfires."

You can listen to Mayer discuss her article, while watching "24" clips, courtesy of a The New Yorker online extra, "Making them talk."

She points out that on one episode Jack Bauer declines medical help for a gunshot victim until the person tells where a bomb is. This reportedly is the same technique that was actually used on an Al Qaeda suspect who'd been shot in the groin.

In these fearful days, a lot of citizens say "So what?" If torture saves lives by getting terrorists to reveal their "ticking clock" plans, what's the problem?

Well, this is the problem: torture makes us less safe, in part because it rarely works. A former Army interrogator in the war in Iraq, Tony Lagouranis, accompanied Finnegan on his visit to Hollywood. Mayer writes:

"In Iraq, I never saw pain produce intelligence," Lagouranis told me. "I worked with someone who used waterboarding"—an interrogation method involving the repeated near-drowning of a suspect. "I used severe hypothermia, dogs, and sleep deprivation. I saw suspects after soldiers had gone into their homes and broken their bones, or made them sit on a Humvee's hot exhaust pipes until they got third-degree burns. Nothing happened." Some people, he said, "gave confessions. But they just told us what we already knew. It never opened up a stream of new information." If anything, he said, "physical pain can strengthen the resolve to clam up."

I won't stop watching "24." Got to see how Jack deals with his dad, and whether the President escapes an upcoming assassination attempt.

But I hope the show's right-wing co-creator and executive producer, Joel Surnow, listens to Gen. Finnegan and his interrogation experts. They know that operational details hardly ever are revealed under torture. It's better to establish rapport with a subject instead of water-boarding him.

Plus, on "24" you almost always know that the person being tortured is part of a nefarious plot. After all, a scene or two before you saw them working on a suitcase nuclear bomb.

Real life is a lot different. A man can be whisked up by U.S. agents, sent off to Syria to be tortured for 10 months, and then released as an innocent with not even a "Sorry, we made a mistake."

That's bad enough for the image of the United States. All the "24" DVDs floating around the globe makes things worse.

Mayer says, "We can talk all we want about the Geneva Convention. Yet what the world sees is Jack Bauer. And Jack Bauer is torture."

George Taylor is a loser, not a winner

I couldn't agree more with a beautifully written and thoughtfully argued letter in today's Salem Statesman Journal, "Climate theory not a winner."

The fact that I wrote it just adds self-centered luster to this shining rebuttal of the newspaper's ill-considered awarding of a Weekly Winner prize to an OSU climatologist, George Taylor.

In my first three sentences, I establish the foundation for demolishing this editorial travesty:

On Friday, Feb. 9, George Taylor was a Statesman Journal "winner" for challenging the conventional science about global warming. I assume the editorial board will next applaud those who still believe the Earth is flat. There's a big difference between skepticism and ignorance.

In my next three, the wrecking ball smashes:

Taylor, who uses the title of state climatologist (even though this position doesn't officially exist anymore), says that it is unsure whether carbon dioxide causes atmospheric warming. When I heard him say this on a right-wing radio talk show, I e-mailed a respected scientist at Oregon State University's College of Oceanic and Atmospheric Sciences. Professor Jim Coakley told me, "George's assertion that we can't prove whether CO2 causes warming or cooling, is, of course, nonsense."

Finally, Taylor's credibility crumbles in a logical coup de grâce

The scientific evidence is clear: Human-caused global warming is occurring due to emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases. Taylor doesn't contribute to genuine scientific debate in this area. He doesn't publish in peer-reviewed journals. He simply uses his soapbox of head of the Oregon Climate Service to echo the party line of global-warming deniers: "The science isn't in."

But it is. George Taylor is misinformed, not a skeptic. That makes him a loser, not a winner.

The sorrow of sowing invasive deer food

Laurel likes deer. She also dislikes barren slopes filled with dead, decaying blackberry vines. So last year this combined like and dislike led her to sow deer food on part of our property.

Fortunately, not a large part. Big enough, though, for us to spend much of yesterday and today pulling up the damn stuff.

Laurel thought that it would only come up once. Since this vegetation, a "deer greens" blend of brassica and purple top turnip, isn't very attractive, that was the hope when it sprouted and grew rapidly. The deer liked it. We didn't, so hoped that it'd just make a one-time appearance.

With the weather warming, that hope was dashed, even though the blend supposedly is an annual. As spouts began to appear, it dawned on Laurel that she'd seemingly unleashed an invasive plant on the land that we'd just cleared of the invasive Himalayan Blackberry.

Often leaving well enough alone is the best approach. Especially when dealing with nature. Left to its own devices, bare rural land in western Oregon has no trouble replanting itself.

I'd reminded Laurel of this when we stood and stared at the plot that finally had been cleared of what had previously been filled with really expensive blackberries. But wives, like our president, are the deciders. She wanted green growth, now.

Well, we got it. Along with sore backs and knees today.

So, think twice before you spread deer food around your property. I guess this is pretty common. Not being a hunter, or even a meat-eater, until I Googled "deer food" I didn't realize that planting food plots to attract deer is an accepted practice.

Our motivation was to do something nice for the deer. But I suspect a more nefarious reason is involved when the ad copy for a planting mix says "Best of all, every buck, young and old, will carry a heavier rack and more body weight!"

Well, our neighborhood deer will have to adjust to being a touch leaner from now on. Hopefully they aren't able to read certain news stories. We want them to believe that thin is in.

Climate models undermine global warming skeptics

Along with the usual blather I hear on right-wing talk shows, there's a fresh falsity being spread over the airwaves: computer climate models are unsophisticated attempts to mirror changes in the Earth's weather and shouldn't be trusted.

This isn't true. So don't believe global warming skeptics like George Taylor, who isn't Oregon's state climatologist but likes to pretend that he is.

I heard Taylor spout his uninformed criticisms of climate models on KPAM's Victoria Taft show. Since those models show both that global climate change is going to be an increasingly serious problem, and that humans are responsible for a large share of the rise in carbon dioxide that is helping to drive global warming, ExxonMobil supported pseudo-scientists like Taylor try to discredit the models.

Recently Taft echoed the unscientific party line, claiming that the models don't include basic factors that affect the climate. Such as, Taft said, "the sun." I suspect she meant to say sunspots, or some other subtlety of solar radiation, but that wasn't what came over my car radio. I remember hearing: "Gosh, those models don't even include the sun. How crazy is that?"

Well, not crazy at all. Because Taft and Taylor don't know what they're talking about. Here's the graphical bottom line that proves them wrong, courtesy of the Woods Hole Research Center, along with a couple of paragraphs of Woods Hole commentary.

Look, read, and believe in the models. (As noted in the commentary, "forcing" means an influence on global temperature; "anthropogenic" means human-caused.)

For example, recorded global temperature change can be compared with computer models that predict temperature change under different "forcing" scenarios, (with "forcings" signifying external influences on the solar radiative budget of the planet - greenhouse gases, aerosols, increased solar radiation, and other agents). Fig. 2 above compares observed temperature anomalies from the historic mean (red line) with the results of computer models that attempt to predict temperature based on the interactions of other environmental influences (gray line).

The top two charts in the figure illustrate that models using natural and anthropogenic influences alone [(a) Natural Forcing Only & (b) Anthropogenic Forcing Only] fail to match the observed record of temperature anomalies since 1866. But the combination of natural and anthropogenic models [(c) Natural + Anthropogenic Forcing] produces a close match to the measured data. This is seen as a clear "thumbprint" of human impacts on climate change.

These graphs also are in Alan J. Thorpe's informative (and readable) paper, "Climate Change Prediction: A challenging scientific problem." Thorpe starts out by saying:

Predictions of future climate change, based on numerical global climate models, are the critical outputs of climate science. Whilst much has been written about the details of the predictions themselves, skepticism about the prediction models is rife and this is why this paper is devoted to de-mystifying the prediction methodology…There is little doubt that a lack of knowledge about how climate change is predicted and the associated uncertainties are amongst the main reasons for ill-informed comment on climate change.

And he concludes with:

So why do commentators imagine that top scientists are deluded about anthropogenic climate change? The stakes are high and rarely are scientists under such scrutiny. Scientists are appalled that they could be suspected of distorting the evidence to enhance their reputations or funding opportunities. Of course scientific hypotheses and analysis can be refuted by later discoveries but this is not the same as complicity. The fact that everyone experiences weather and climate may explain why nonscientists feel confident in attempting to refute the scientific evidence.

The complexity of the climate system and its many interacting and compensating physical processes means that simple arguments that gloss over this complexity have to be approached with a significant degree of scepticism. A common method of arguing starts by identifying a single cause or physical process that either has not been included or has been included in an imperfect way, into climate models. But the climate changes because of a multiplicity of interacting processes and any one process alone cannot be the whole story.

The search for the one and only cause of climate change is doomed to failure. Climate modellers attempt to include in the models all the processes that are even remotely likely to have a detectable effect – any newly discovered process will quickly find itself incorporated into the models!

So be highly skeptical of global climate change skeptics. Thorpe says that the models they dismiss with off-hand comments ("doesn't even include the sun!") have about three-quarters of a million lines of computer code.

Compare that with the miniscule iota of sense made by global warming deniers such as George Taylor and Victoria Taft. Believe the models, not them.

 

OSU stiffs Kulongoski on “state climatologist” title request

A week ago Oregon's governor, Ted Kulongoski, made a reasonable request of Oregon State University: stop calling George Taylor the state climatologist, since no such position exists.

Taylor uses that title because he took over many of the duties the actual state climatologist used to perform before the position was abolished.

That's like saying you're married to a divorced woman because you're living with her and otherwise filling the role of the spouse she used to have. Legally, you're not. In the eyes of the world, you're not.

But OSU won't relinquish the fiction that George Taylor speaks for the state on climatological issues such as global warming, on which he holds some ridiculously unscientific views.

For some reason, OSU is letting Taylor use his unmerited title while planning for an Oregon Climate Center is going on. Maybe there's a bit of bureaucratic blackmail happening here.

If OSU gets funding for the center, its director (who surely wouldn't be Taylor) would likely become the official state climatologist. And the governor would be relieved of an embarrassment.

When I asked the OSU news and communication office to update me on the George Taylor title controversy, I got this reply:

As has been reported, the university and the governor have reached an understanding on the need for a climate change research center at OSU, an integrated proposal that the university has been developing for a year and that would have implications for the Oregon Climate Service, which George Taylor manages. No immediate changes are planned while that proposal is under consideration. The Oregonian story that you reference from Saturday's paper was fairly complete on this matter, and we have nothing further to add at this time.

Well, the Oregonian reported that Taylor's dean, Mark Abbott, intends to let Taylor keep his title until June 30, when his contract as head of the Oregon Climate Service expires.

Sure sounds like OSU is sticking it to the governor. Kulongoski is doing his best to make Oregon a leader in finding creative and economically viable ways to deal with human-caused climate change problems. But he's got Taylor running around spouting his crazy "don't worry about global warming" notions, claiming all the while that he's the state climatologist.

The good news is that this story has gotten so much publicity, George Taylor's credibility is much diminished now.

If you ever are in the audience when he's speaking and you hear him introduced as the "state climatologist," a snicker would be an entirely appropriate response.

Bloggers, you’ll love Word 2007

Oh, my god, I'm in love. At first blog post. I just installed Word 2007, which I bought at Amazon for a reasonable $90 (upgrade price). Right away I wanted to see if the blog publishing feature worked as promised.

It did. Appropriately, my first Word 2007 post was about Shakira's "Hips don't lie" Grammy performance last night. She's beautiful. So is Word's new blogging capability.

I write my posts in Word. I don't like to use TypePad's online editor. One glitch and all your writing can disappear. Plus, I like to have a backup of posts on my laptop.

But it's been frustrating to have to reformat the Word 2003-generated post after I copied it into the TypePad post editor. Italics, boldface, hyperlinks—all that stuff had to be manually put back in, because of some incompatibility between Word and the HTML TypePad expected (I'm vague on the technical details).

Now, though, what I write in Word is what appears on my blog. I can publish directly from Word 2007.

The setup was simple, once I figured how to get the blog post ball rolling (strangely, Word's Help wasn't much help in this regard—I discovered on my own how to click on the circle thingie in the upper left, then select "publish," followed by "blog").

Here's some set-up tips from another happy Word 2007 blogger.

This is going to change my blogging life. I'll have more time to cruise YouTube for Shakira videos, now that I don't have to fuss around so much with the TypePad text editor.

Except for photos, it seems. I had no problem inserting a photo into my post, but it was full-sized. It'd be nice to be able to use TypePad's thumbnail feature directly from Word. For now, it looks like I'll have to add photos from the online text editor, along with indenting quotes, perhaps.

"Well, let's try a test. Can I indent the left side of this fake quoted paragraph? Yes, I can. But whether it can be indented on the right side also, that is another question. But I can highlight it!"

Aside from its blogging feature, Word 2007 looks much improved in other ways. The "menus" now are tabs, laid out in a pleasing writer-friendly fashion. Microsoft does a lot of things wrong. With Word 2007, though, I give the often evil software empire a big thumbs up.

[Update later in the day: Well, here's one downside to Word 2007. If you buy it singly, like I did, you'll find that now you can't compose email messages in Word with Outlook 2003. You're confined to using the Outlook email editor, which doesn't do spell checking and some other stuff.

So, okay, I'll play the Microsoft game and fork out another $90 to get Outlook 2007, even though I didn't really want or need it. A bit frustrating, though.]

Shakira shakes at 2007 Grammys

Ah, a great way to renew the day. If, like me, you missed last night's Grammy Awards show, and saw mention of Shakira performing "Hips don't lie" in the newspaper, and thought damn, I wish I'd seen her, there's no need to fret.

Thanks to Lelo in Nopo, I found a video of her singing and hip-shaking at ShakiraMedia. Enjoy. I sure did.

Relax, right-wingers: George Taylor isn’t being fired

When the person who calls himself the Oregon state climatologist is compared to Galileo, it’s obvious that right-wing paranoia has gone over the edge.

The headline of today’s Oregonian story (“To governor, Oregon has no ‘climatologist’”) might lead conservative conspiracy theorists to believe that Gov. Kulongoski has ordered George Taylor to disappear into the dungeon where he keeps state employees who disagree with his policy on global warming.

Actually, the truth is much milder. Kulongoski wants Taylor to stop using the title of “state climatologist” because there is no such position in state government. That’s a fact.

George Taylor isn’t going to be fired from his job as head of the Oregon Climate Service. If the governor gets his way, Taylor just won’t be able to claim (or strongly imply) that he speaks for state government on climate matters.

Today state Senator Brad Avakian phoned me after I’d emailed him some questions about the Oregonian story. Avakian has been working on legislation that would allow the governor to appoint an official state climatologist. He said that the bill probably won’t be introduced now, since the governor and Oregon State University seem to have reached an understanding about Taylor’s role.

However, I told Sen. Avakian that the story said OSU officials weren’t rushing to correct Taylor’s title, which is disturbing. I don’t understand why, now that it’s been pointed out to them that Taylor is claiming to occupy a non-existent position, OSU doesn’t stop spreading the falsity that he is the state climatologist.

Ideally, Taylor would keep doing what he seemingly does well: maintain and analyze Oregon weather data. But his training is in meteorology, not climatology. He isn’t competent to be speaking for anyone other than himself on climate change issues. Amazingly, Taylor doesn’t even know that carbon dioxide causes atmospheric warming.

Hopefully money will be found to establish the Oregon Climate Center that Kulongoski wants. A genuine climate expert can be recruited to run the Center and serve as the state climatologist.

Global climate change is going to affect Oregon in many ways. It’s important to have someone on board in state government who understands both why the world’s weather is changing because of human influences and what can be done about it. George Taylor clearly isn’t that person.

Recently I heard from Peter Bock. He shared with me a message that he’d sent to the president of Oregon State University and the dean of the College of Oceanic and Atmospheric Sciences, where Taylor works. Bock shows why Taylor’s unscientific position on global climate change is more than wrong; it’s dangerous.

To those, like Mr. George Taylor, who doubt the urgency of addressing the problem of global warming and the need to reduce atmospheric concentration of greenhouse gases, I ask the question... Suppose you are right. What does proactive action cost us?

It costs us an investment in renewable energy technology such as solar, wind, geothermal, tidal, etc... an investment that reduces our dependence on foreign petroleum... an investment that reduces our need to station our troops around the world to defend that petroleum and the despotic regimes that sell it to us... an investment that reduces our risk of asthma, cancer, stroke, heart disease, emphysema and other diseases caused by breathing auto exhaust and petroleum and coal pollutants.

But... suppose Mr. Taylor is wrong? What is the cost then? What will the Earth that we leave to our grandchildren look like? Is it an earth with ocean levels forty feet higher, with no polar ice caps, with no Amazon rain forests, with most coastal cities under water, with a desert in the American Midwest, with permanent global El Nino conditions?

Is it an Earth with a population of 2 billion rather than 6 billion? And thirty years from now, if we are wrong, are we prepared to look into the faces of our grandchildren and answer their question... "Why didn't you take action when you still had the chance?"

Facts about George Taylor and the “state climatologist”

Here, finally, are some solid facts about the Oregon state climatologist position that supposedly is occupied by George Taylor, who minimizes both global warming and the impact humans are having on global climate change.

For well over a week I’ve been waiting for answers from the Oregon State University (OSU) News and Communication Office to my questions about Taylor and the “state climatologist” title that he holds.

Patience pays off. I just got a couple of emails from Mark Floyd. At the end of this post you’ll find, verbatim, the first message he sent me. After I read it, I wrote back to Mark, asking him to correct me if I was wrong about any of five assumptions. His reply concerning each is shown in italics.

(1) There is no position called “state climatologist” authorized by the State of Oregon.
As far as I know, you are correct on No. 1.

(2) The title of “state climatologist” has been given to the head of the Oregon Climate Service by OSU.
No. 2 also is correct, though it is stated simply, which ignores the context of history.

(3) Within Oregon state government, there is no description of what the job of state climatologist entails, nor a list of duties, because the person who has this title doesn’t occupy an actual position with that name.
No. 3: OSU is, in fact, a state agency of sorts. If your intent is to ask if there is a governor-appointed state climatologist, I assume the answer is no, though that is a question for the governor.

(4) Because Taylor does something similar to what the person who truly was the state climatologist did previously, he’s called the “state climatologist,” even though this position doesn’t exist.
No. 4: That sounds right. You should know that the origin, funding, duties, and history of state climatologists vary from state to state.

(5) The American Association of State Climatologists recognizes Taylor as the state climatologist because OSU has given him this title, even though the position doesn’t exist in state statute.
No. 5: I can’t assume the reasons the AASC recognizes Taylor as state climatologist. It may or may not be because of his OSU-given title. There may be several reasons. I can’t speak for the group.

Well, this vindicates what I’ve been saying here and here, along with Kari Chisholm, the governor, state Sen. Brad Avakian, and others who recognize (even without the OSU News and Communication Office clarification) that Taylor isn’t really the state climatologist, because the title he wears so proudly has no actual position attached to it.

Hopefully this will stop such right-wing claptrap as “Tucker Carlson’s Hot Air on Kulongoski and Climate Change.” And World Net Daily’s putting George Taylor in the same censored scientist category as Galileo. Give me a break.

Indeed, there’s been a lot of conservative hot air expended on Taylor and the state climatologist position. Now that it’s been confirmed that such a position doesn’t exist, so there’s no way he can be fired from it, maybe they’ll turn their attention to a real problem: global warming.

Here’s Mark Floyd’s message:

The history of the climate service and state climatologist go back to 1978, when OSU and NOAA signed a memorandum of understanding to establish the Office of the State Climatologist at Oregon State University. The first person to serve in that position, I believe, was Allan Murphy. In 1982, Kelly Redmond joined the OSU Department of Atmospheric Sciences and served as assistant state climatologist in the Center for Climatic Research. He took over as state climatologist in 1984, funded by a combination of state funds and external grants.

The Office of the State Climatologist was eliminated in 1989 because of budget cuts and Redmond left the university. George Taylor was hired on a part-time basis in 1989 in the Department of Atmospheric Sciences as a meteorologist. Two years later (1991), Oregon Senate Bill 661 passed, establishing the Oregon Climate Service at OSU. Taylor was hired on a full-time basis, and the department head in atmospheric science at that time requested to OSU that Taylor’s title be changed from meteorologist to state climatologist because his role was so similar to that which Redmond held.

By the way, George Taylor is past president of the American Association of State Climatologists, and the Oregon Climate Service is a recognized state climate office, as certified by that association…

Mark Floyd
OSU News and Communication

Measure 37 shouldn’t be a guarantee to get rich

It’s often said that Measure 37 pits neighbor against neighbor. True. But this ill-considered effort to trash Oregon’s land use laws also pits testifier against testifier.

I learned that yesterday afternoon as I fought my way through a crowd of people trying to sign up to speak before the Joint Committee on Land Use Fairness. Fortunately, I found myself standing behind a diminutive friend, Frances Chapple, who makes up in assertiveness what she lacks in stature.

She helped clear the way for me to the sign up sheet. I got on the first page and waited for my two minutes before the committee, which was gathering background information on Measure 37 before drafting proposed changes to the law.

The members got an earful. And not for the first or last time. My wife had testified at a similar hearing last Thursday. Yesterday not everyone got to have their say in the two hours allotted for testimony, so they’ll be carried over to another hearing tomorrow.

It’s an emotional issue. People on both sides of the Measure 37 debate spoke passionately. Being all too familiar with the problems Measure 37 has brought to Oregon, not surprisingly I felt that the opponents had by far the better arguments. Such as, mine.

I made so much sense in my 120 seconds or so, I expected the committee to stand as one and applaud. The packed audience too. But as so often happens, my brilliance went unrecognized—apart from Corbett’s John Christensen, a kindred anti-Measure 37 soul who told me after the hearing that he liked what I said, and a neighbor who phoned today and left some praise on our voice mail.

Soon I’m going to write up a recollection of my largely extemporaneous remarks and submit them as written testimony. The committee members should be able to hold the truth that I spoke about Measure 37 in their hands. And this is: there’s a big difference between wanting to live on land and wanting to make money from land.

[Update on 2/9: I've written up a version of my testimony before the Land Use Fairness Committee. Gave it to committee staff yesterday. Sure makes a lot of sense to me. But then, I'm me. It's short. Take a read:]
Download measure_37_testimony.doc

This difference is reflected in the governor’s recently announced proposal, SB 505. This would speed up Measure 37 claims that seek to build only one house, while putting on hold other development claims—such as the 217 acre proposed subdivision on farm land in our neighborhood.

Lots of people spoke in favor of SB 505 at the hearing yesterday, even though the Land Use Fairness Committee wasn’t formally taking testimony on the bill. Philosophically it’s in tune with what I told the committee: there’s no reason why people who buy property for investment purposes should be protected from government actions that reduce the value of what they own.

As I’ve blogged before, government bodies do things all the time that change the value of investments. Stocks, bonds, commodities, precious metals, the list goes on and on. So why should those who invest in real estate be treated differently from other sorts of investors?

I told the committee that I owned some limited partnerships prior to passage of the Tax Reform Act of 1986. A financial planner had urged me to buy them for their tax benefits. Those benefits largely disappeared after 1986.

Did I cry, “Unfair! This is a government taking! Rules were changed in the middle of my investment game. Either I should be compensated for the money that I’ve lost, or the Tax Reform Act should be waived for me because I bought my limited partnerships when other tax laws were in effect.”

No, I didn’t. I never ever thought of this. I realized that investing is risky. Situations change. As they do, the value of an investment rises and falls. If you want a sure return on your money, keep it in a bank account.

Yesterday I heard talk about Measure 37 restoring “constitutional rights.” Huh? The Constitution doesn’t guarantee that you’ll make money on a real estate investment. It doesn’t guarantee that laws won’t change during the time you own a piece of property. Yet Measure 37 is predicated on the assumption that if the value of property has been reduced by government action, you’re entitled to be compensated.

That’s ridiculous. Most people who testified recognized this. They made a distinction between someone whose primary motivation is to live on their land, versus someone whose sole desire is to make money from their land.

A single home on a Measure 37 claim, no problem. A large subdivision on a Measure 37 claim, no way. In between a single home and a subdivision—that’s where the Land Use Fairness Committee will have to strike a balance.

The first hearing on SB 505 is tomorrow at 5:00 pm. Head on down to Hearing Room B at the State Capitol and have your say. I recommend that you get there by 4:30 to sign up early.

If there’s a small retired Willamette University emeritus professor of chemistry in line with you, get behind her. Frances knows how to work a queue.

Lastly, I enjoyed talking with the Measure 37 claimant, Leroy Laack, that the Keep Our Water Safe committee (headed by Laurel) has been battling. We don’t like Laack’s plan to plunk a 217 acre subdivision on farmland adjacent to our neighborhood. But I found Leroy himself to be eminently likable.

We’d shared time on a TV news story before, but had never spoken to each other. After the hearing Leroy approached me and we chatted for about fifteen minutes. Didn’t agree on a whole lot, but that’s okay. I respect his 79 year old tenacity, even though I wish he was determined to leave a beautiful vineyard as a legacy rather than a subdivision.

A committee staffer took a photo of us. I told Leroy that I’d look like him in twenty more years. Actually, I sort of already do.

Leave God out of the Super Bowl

Before I write this post, I want to thank the holy Tao for inspiring me. There’s nothing of me in what I’m about to say—it’s all Tao. Without you, the everlasting source of my yin-ness and yang-ness, I wouldn’t have been able to blog about God and the Super Bowl.

If you like this sort of praise be! sentimentality, you must have loved how the Indianapolis Colts’ coach and owner brought God into their post-game remarks.

Driving around tonight I heard right-wing talk show host John Gibson ranting about the progressives’ distaste for such God talk. Gibson claimed that the Daily Kos had a post called “God hates the Bears,” but all I could find with this title was a brief comment on a general Super Bowl discussion thread.

Regardless, the guy raises a good question: Does God hate the Bears? One has to assume so, or at least that he loves them less than the Colts, given the way both head coach Tony Dungy and Colts owner Jim Irsay were talking. Irsay said:

“Now there's an awful lot of shining glory, even more than last time up here. But we're giving it all to God again because that's what got us here ... sticking together and believing that we could, and I know God has looked after us on this journey and bonded us into such a tight family.”

Shining glory? For winning a Super Bowl game? How egotistical can you get, even if you claim to be giving all that glory to God? For you’re saying that God got you to the championship victory stand, implying that the poor God-deprived Bears were lacking in the divinity department (along with the quarterback department).

Gibson couldn’t understand why anyone would take issue with all the post-game praising of God. Well, John, you need to get out more.

Like, into the rest of the world. And a good share of the United States too, where people believe that religion is a humble private matter between them and the Almighty—not something to be proudly paraded before the public at every opportunity.

I have some friends who visit Europe regularly. They tell me that there it would be almost inconceivable for a politician to make his or her belief in God a campaign issue. It just doesn’t come up. But here, an admitted unbeliever probably couldn’t be elected to a major office.

This isn’t something the United States should be proud of. It’s a defect, not a virtue. Spirituality concerns the spirit, not believing that God cares who wins the Super Bowl. Or, who wins the war in Iraq.

Many Americans have a strange belief that God is on the side of the United States. Have you ever heard the leader of another country ending speeches with a “May God bless [name of nation]”? It’d sound funny, wouldn’t it? Crazed fundamentalist.

Well, actually I do recall a few others apart from American politicians expressing this sentiment: Islamic terrorists. Which shows that when people believe that God favors them rather than others, bad things often follow.

At the extreme, planes destroying buildings and killing thousands of people. At the least, an us vs. them theology that separates rather than unites. Colts, Bears—I’m pretty sure that the Tao doesn’t look upon them any differently.

There’s already plenty of competition in sports. We don’t need coaches, players, and owners also competing for who God supposedly likes most.

Death on a power pole

You just never know what the day will bring. Especially if you’re a squirrel. Who must have heard our front door open,and sensed a dog begin to come out. Who made a fatal choice: to run up a power pole instead of an oak tree.

Life. Death. Not much separates them. One moment you’re frisky and bushy-tailed. The next instant you’re popping, crackling, and smoking on top of a power pole. Flaming too. Or maybe it was the pole that was briefly on fire.

Regardless, it was exciting enough to warrant calling 911. I was told that if a power line wasn’t down, Portland General Electric needed to handle the aftermath of the squirrel electrocution. Which they did, after our power was out for a few hours.

When they woke up, these guys didn’t know that their Saturday afternoon was going to be controlled by animal instinct—a split second decision to dash here rather than there.

Life: who can figure it?

The flames coming from the top of the power pole got the attention of several neighbors who came over to see what was going on. But our tale of smoking squirrel fur can’t begin to compete with that of the dead deer on top of a power pole. (A true story, it seems.)

[Photographic note: I’m liking my Sony HDD camcorder. It takes stills with the 12x zoom. Handy for getting close-ups of dead squirrels on top of power poles. And a live deer standing next to a metal heron in our front yard.]

Oregon’s state climatologist flunks Climate Change 101

You’d think that someone called the “state climatologist” would understand basic facts about climate. But George Taylor isn’t big on facts.

He doesn’t believe that humans are having a significant effect on global climate change, which puts him at odds with the world’s experts who just said otherwise. Of course, I’m sure there are a few biologists here and there who don’t believe in evolution.

Hopefully none of them have the title of “state biologist.” If any do, I’m embarrassed for that state. Just as I’m embarrassed that George Taylor has the title of state climatologist in Oregon.

Taylor has irritated me for several years. Now I find him more laughable than irritating, since the science of climate change has left him so far behind, it’s amusing to observe him trying to defend his “What, me worry about global warming?” attitude.

Willamette Week’s headline back in August 2005 captured Taylor perfectly: “Hot or Not. Oregon’s official weatherman has some good news about global warming—it doesn’t exist.” The story was good too. It showed how little Taylor knows about what a climatologist should know a lot about.

Climate.

Wednesday evening I was driving around, doing errands, listening to talk radio. Victoria Taft (KPAM) had George Taylor as a guest. I didn’t hear all of the interview but caught this gem from Taylor as I was pulling into our carport:

“We can’t prove that CO2 [carbon dioxide] causes or doesn’t cause warming.”

Are you kidding me? was my instant reaction. A story in today’s Washington Post says:

With at least 90 percent certainty, the IPCC's "Summary For Policymakers" concludes human-generated greenhouse gases account for most of the global rise in temperatures over the past half century. Hundreds of scientists from 113 countries prepared the report, which represents the most comprehensive overview of scientific climate research since 2001.

I also asked a distinguished faculty member at O.S.U.’s College of Oceanic and Atmospheric Sciences, where Taylor works, to comment on Taylor’s notion that it isn’t known whether carbon dioxide causes warming of the atmosphere. Jim Coakley’s email reply said, in part:

George's assertion that we can't prove whether CO2 causes warming or cooling, is, of course, nonsense. But then, no one tries to pin George down on what he means by "we can't prove..." First, one should ask what proof is needed? Would seeing the 3-5 C rise in temperature that we're predicting for this century serve as proof? Can you imagine the dilemma waiting to see such a rise would pose? We can't wait. Waiting is stupid.

Interestingly, Taylor himself agrees we shouldn’t listen to him on global warming. Which is exactly what all of us should do. Taylor is having a good time playing his “state climatologist” role, which he may or may not be (Kari Chisholm, the governor, and me all have our doubts).

Just don’t take him seriously. There’s no reason to trust a climatologist who flunks Climate Change 101.