I've got to dress this up for faxing, but it is going to my Senators and Reps by Monday. Improvements requested. My writing won't improve but I welcome suggestions on strategic technique to increase my influence above 0.00000001%

-------

Senators X and Y
via FAX
RE: the homebuilders tax break

You have got to be kidding!

that while McCain was a Vietnam POW he was brainwashed... like the Manchurian Candidate (pun alert!)

Many years ago, a deep slow voice...

- YOU WILL PASS McCAIN FIENGOLD...

- YOU WILL PASS McCAIN KENNEDY FOR THE MEXICAN INVASION...

h/t: Boortz, responding to an idiot caller

I gather there are some econ types here, so let me give this a shot. Maybe it is hopeless at my age, but for a year I have been struggling to learn both statistics and the statistics package "R".

If anyone knows a starving senior or grad econ/stat student that needs a few bucks on the side, maybe $20-30 per hour (please tell me what's fair), let me know at this addy:

jam [doh] wellfunction.com

Must know and actually use R and not some other stat pack. Also ANOVA, bootstrapping/monte carlo, and perhaps very basic time series analysis.

I cannot guarantee how much time. Sometimes 20 hrs a month but often zero.

(Here is a slightly edited reply to the Jim Miller on Politics blog. Notice I've linked to the Forvm!)

Dear Mr. Miller:

In your recent blog post, Here's an Inconvenient Fact, you write about the recent temperature trend and say that you will be posting a chart for discussion. If I may, let me head you off at the pass a little bit. For the record, I am not a climatologist but have a science background and follow the debate closely. Also for the record, I can be described as a global warming skeptic.

One factoid has been misused by both sides: global temperatures in 1997/1998 were anomalously warm due to a strong El Niño. This event is clearly observed in the satellite temperature measurements as well as ground observations (see chart below). At the time, the warming crowd pointed to the high temperatures but conveniently did not mention the El Niño, which was known to them. Similarly, those on my side of the debate are now saying that the atmosphere has cooled in the last decade or since 1998. Well, that is cherry picking. The truth is that the El Niño and La Niña Southern Oscillation has nothing to do with greenhouse warming and everything to do with oceanic and atmospheric circulation patterns. Of course temperatures are lower now than in 1998. My Mom is taller than me when she's standing on a chair, too.

I just covered my MBIA short (symbol: MBI). Yesterday S&P reaffirmed MBIA's credit rating but lowered its outlook. It is down 25-30% today. It is probably headed lower but I always take a sudden windfall like this.

A couple of weeks ago Moody's announced MBIA was not meeting capital requirements and that MBIA's rating might itself be downgraded. Then, the private group Pincus something or other announced they were providing MBIA with 1 Billion of capital. This sent the stock up 25%, but in 2 days time this move was all sold off, and then some. I guess a Billion isn't what it used to be.

I just learned that Herb Saffir of Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Scale fame passed away last week at the age of 90. I will put aside my snide anti-AGW rants in honor of a man that by all accounts was a tireless advocate for public safety. A nice write-up on him is here.

And here is a guest post by Mr. Saffir to Roger Pielke Sr.'s Climate Science weblog not long after Katrina:

Let's see, the largest bank in the U.S., Citigroup, raises $7.5 billion from Abu Dhabi and by today's standards pays an almost usury rate of 11%. This is supposed to be GOOD news???

Mr. Market says yes, it is. The Dow was up 215 today. In a strange disconnect, C was down 1.3%.

I guess C needed the money and the corner Cambiamos Cheques franchise didn't quite have enough. Or as someone wrote today, This makes C the world's largest sub-prime borrower. :)

Speaking of dead cats, here's what I think:

Dr. Craig Loehle of the National Council for Air and Stream Improvement (NCASI.org) decided to find out what past temperatures look like without using tree ring proxies, which in some circles are increasingly problematic. He looked at 18 existing non-tree ring proxies that extend back 2,000 years. The full paper (PDF) is here. Here's the abstract:

I got a kick out of this.

Over at ClimateAudit.org today Steve McIntyre posted a query wondering what data set Gore used for his paleoclimate temperature reconstruction in AIT. Gore says or strongly implies it's from Lonnie Thompson's ice cores. Steve is familiar with Thompson's work yet couldn't pin it down--and posted NUMEROUS possible candidates.

Steve took Gore's words at face value:

Before posting any more remarks on global warming in the comments of this forum I want something that I can link back to that states my own position and why I believe it. The following is a rather long (sorry) rewrite of something from a while ago. Basically, AGW is real in that man's actions will produce an increase in temperature that will be measurable and perhaps even noticeable, but the increase will be far less than predicted by the IPCC. Therefore, I am a Luke-Warmer :-)

My apologies if this reads like some sort of tutorial. That wasn't intended. I just don't know any other way to write it. I'm no climatologist; following the debate is a hobby.