Doctor alive only because he defied a "gun-free zone"

As reported by USA Today, a doctor shot a patient after the patient shot and killed a caseworker in his office. The facility is a "gun-free zone," which means that the doctor violated that policy. Thank God he did because otherwise it is almost certain that he'd be dead as well as an unknown number of others. It is another illustration of what gun advocates have been saying for years: "gun-free zones" are places where only the criminals have guns. Fortunately, there are some peaceful citizens who defy the policy.

Desertion? Is that bad?

Chuck Todd of NBC said the administration was expecting "euphoria" over their announcement of the release of Bowe Bergdahl. An illustration of how far off the administration was was Susan Rice's statement on television that Bergdahl "served with honor and distinction." Some are speculating over the reason for the White House's gross misreading of what the reaction would be. Here's my theory: Obama and the White House are so ignorant of things military that they didn't understand what a serious matter desertion in a combat zone is. Desertion carries a possible death penalty. That hasn't happened since 1945, and I'm not recommending it for Berdahl, but it illustrates how serious an offense it is. Anyone who's been in the service understands it very well, especially the troops who were there in Afghanistan. Obviously, the White House didn't.

Left and right in the climate debate

There are few issues in politics where the alignment between left and right is clearer than in the matter of catastrophic anthropomorphic global warming. In case there's any mystery in the  reason for that, it is cleared up succinctly by Bob Ludwick in a comment on Judith Curry's blog:  

As you [another commenter] point out, ‘Catastrophic Anthropogenic Climate Change’ is not the problem, it is the solution.

And the problem? How to concentrate power and money in the hands of the ‘progressives (Democrats/liberals/socialists/Marxists/communists/greens/politically correct euphemism du jour)’.

And a huge and growing success it has been in achieving just that.

Bengtsson defects

  Lennart Bengtsson, former director of Germany's Max Planck Institute for Meteorology, recently announced that he was joining the board of the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF), a well-known skeptic organization. The reaction in the climate science community, which he compared to "McCarthyism," was so strong that he quickly withdrew. The event has occasioned a widespread debate in the community about the extent to which the science has been politicized, well summarized in an article in Der Spiegel by Axel Bojanowski. 

  Bojanowski quotes various members of the community with opinions on all sides of the issue. Comments by Roger Pielke Jr., an environmental scientist at the University of Colorado, were on the money: "In a democracy people will organize around all sorts of shared interests, as they should, and many will share values that I don't. So what? Bengtsson's justifications for associating with GWPF are perfectly legitimate. That he was pressured by his peers with social and other sanctions reflects the deeply politicized nature of this issue."Also Roger Pielke Sr.: "Unfortunately, climate science has become very politicized and views that differ at all from those in control of the climate assessment process are either ignored or ridiculed. From my experience, I agree 100 percent with the allegations made by the very distinguished Lennart Bengtsson."

  There is an orthodoxy in climate science from which no dissent can be tolerated. The truth is that the whole structure is based on a shaky foundation, and everyone knows it. To admit it, though, would threaten the fiction of "settled science" and the gushers of money that goes into grants and other sources of money from governments. Climate science is a hot topic, and scientists who play their cards right can win fame and fortune: being called to testify before Congress, appearing on television, writing books. The whole game is threatened by a few spoil sports who insist on telling the truth, and they must be stopped.

Peer review: not what it's cracked up to be

Peer review is held up as the holy grail in scientific papers. The IPCC trumpets its strict policy of using only peer-reviewed literature in its proceedings (but has been caught deviating from it, but that's another story). I had no reason to doubt the efficacy of the process until I became aware of these two things: (1) the leaked emails from scientist in the "climategate" controversy and (2) the disintegration of Michael Mann's Hockey Stick.

Peer review consists of the review of papers submitted for publication by independent panels of scientists chosen by editors. The reviews are voluntary, anonymous, and unpaid. When defined this way, it is already clear that the process is not going to be in the depth that some may assume.

In the email controversy the scientists at Climatic Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia were caught attempting (and probably succeeding to some degree) using the peer-review process to prevent the publication of papers that they deemed damaging to their campaign to promote the theory of anthropomorphic global warming. There can be no doubt that that's what they were up to, and they were quite explicit about it.

With respect to Michael Mann's Hockey Stick, his original papers in 1998 and 1999 were duly peer-reviewed and published in prestigious journals, but were soon comprehensively debunked (in my opinion) by Canadians Steve McIntyre and Ross McKitrick. The story of their efforts has been told in excruciating detail and remains controversial, but the Hockey Stick, while making quite a splash at first, has gone out of style, so to speak, the victim of a torrent of criticism from many directions.

Whatever the truth of the matter, a significant lesson learned from the experience of the Hockey Stick is how superficial peer review is. Apparently, McIntyre, a retired mining engineer well versed in statistical analysis, was the first person to look closely at Mann's results, close enough to raise very substantive questions about the data and methods of analysis. Also learned from McIntyre's work was that the availability of the underlying data and methods of analysis, supposedly required by the written policies of the scientific journals to be made available, may not be at all. It was only by the energetic efforts of the two Canadians, both outsiders to the closed community of climate science, to raise some real issues with the Hockey Stick.

Firing of Jill Abramson at the New York Times

There's quite a kerfuffle going about the firing of Jill Abramson as Managing Editor of the New York Times. The Times is owned by the Sulzberger family and run by Arthur Sulzberger, Jr. as Publisher, who abruptly fired Ms. Abramson last week. There is much consternation about it including accusations of sexual discrimation, both for the firing and an allegation that Ms. Abramson was paid less than her male predecessor in the position.

Now I could care less about the New York Times' problems. I think the attention to this business in the press is well overblown, particularly since most of it seems sympathetic to Ms. Abramson and the discrimination charge. It is said that Ms. Abramson is not taking it lying down.

The working principle for employment used to be "at will," meaning that it was entirely a matter discretion on the part of the employer, and workers could be fired any time with no requirement to justify it to anyone. That is no longer the case, of course, and labor laws are shot through with all kinds of requirements having to do with unfair labor practices, etc.

However, at the dizzying heights of top corporate management, we all know that top mangers are fired all the time, albeit many with "golden parachutes" that are built into their contracts. In fact, I would be very much surprised if Ms. Abramson was not working on a contract, which would certainly have had explicit terms covering termination.

So I would say to Ms. Abramson, stop whining, you're in the big league and managers get fired all the time. Get used to it.

George Will today on Fox today (5/16/2014)

On the subject of the VA scandal: "This is a little glimpse into the rationing of health care by bureaucratic obfuscation and in some cases cruelty, so this is our future."