Ryan Cooper

For those just tuning in, let's have a quick recap. Here's the argument in favor of strong climate policy: Unchecked climate change looks bad, potentially very bad, therefore we should cut the greenhouse gas emissions which cause it. In his " lukewarmer " manifesto articles, Oren Cass disputes the "potentially very bad" clause of the argument, asserting that there is no scientific consensus behind predictions of extreme devastation from climate change, and that continued economic growth would allow us to buy our way out of any problems we might have. In my response , I argued this was improperly conflating predictions about possibilities with ones about what is most probable . It is true that the IPCC summary of what is most likely to happen does not generally track with the most alarming predictions (though as Michael Mann — an actual climate scientist, unlike either of us — points out , Cass rather understates the actual level of alarm in the IPCC a...

Very good:

This is a question of of tone and confidence. Which report provides a more stark view of the dangers of climate change? (I'm comparing the summaries since that's the only part the vast majority of people will read, and therefore is a good view on what the IPCC Working Group II wanted to emphasize.) On current effects of climate change: 2007 : With regard to changes in snow, ice and frozen ground (including permafrost), there is high confidence that natural systems are affected... Based on growing evidence, there is high confidence that the following effects on hydrological systems are occurring: increased runoff and earlier spring peak discharge in many glacier- and snow-fed rivers [1.3];  warming of lakes and rivers in many regions, with effects on thermal structure and water quality There is very high confidence, based on more evidence from a wider range of species, that recent warming is strongly affecting terrestrial biological systems... Based on sa...

Have a video.

This time I narrated it myself. Probably again quite amateurish, but I think it came out reasonably well considering my lack of experience. Check it out: Comments or suggestions appreciated, though please remember I'm still a noob at this stuff.

Whoa:

I got into a discussion with Yves Smith about caffeine here , and somehow my comment got eaten, so I'd like to finish it up here. She said about this Raw Story piece about a girl who allegedly died from drinking two Monster drinks in two days, "The FDA lapse here is terrible. Caffeine is extremely toxic. We just happen to get highly diluted doses in coffee and tea." I commented: Yves, your implication about caffeine is incorrect on several levels. Most Monster drinks have about 10 mg of caffeine per fluid ounce, which is much less than even drip coffee (18 mg/oz) and WAY less than espresso (51 mg/oz). ( Source ) The whole idea of dilution is misguided in any case. The relevant measurement for caffeine intoxication (and most poisoning generally) is the total amount taken, not the concentration. Concentration is something to worry about, as it can make a lethal dose easier to take on, but the main concern there is pure caffeine pills, not energy drinks which are mostl...

It's a Reid Gower -style illustration of a David Roberts talk , set to some music. Check it out: Probably pretty amateurish, but I figure video editing is a good skill to have and this is one of the best ways to learn. I got mostly finished with this days ago, but I've been obsessively tweaking it for probably too long and I'm starting to question my aesthetic judgement. I think the smart move is to just let it loose and see how my loyal readers react. So if you've got a few minutes, I'd very much appreciate any feedback, aesthetic, technical or otherwise.

Ben Goldacre unloads on the medical-industrial complex: Not many places where you will hear that kind of baldly radical rhetoric widely displayed to an elite audience. You can pre-order his book here .

Kevin Drum comes at my point from Thursday from a different angle : So far at least, the conservative approach has been....different. Their patron saint going into the last few weeks of the 2012 campaign is Dean Chambers, a blogger who runs a site called UnSkewed Polls. Chambers does not dig deep into the numbers. He doesn't explain sample sizes and cell phone biases. He does just one thing: he reweights all the polls so they have the same proportion of Democrats and Republicans estimated by Rasmussen Reports, a pollster with a longstanding Republican house effect. Then he announces what the numbers are after his reweighting is done. Romney is a big winner every time...  This is, to put it bluntly, nuts. And it suggests a fundamental difference between left and right, one that Chris Mooney wrote about earlier this year in The Republican Brain. Neither side has a monopoly on sloppy number crunching or wishful thinking, but liberals, faced with a reality they didn't like, e...

Matt Yglesias was plugging this Slate piece on Twitter today, " GMO Opponents Are the Climate Skeptics of the Left :" I used to think that nothing rivaled the misinformation spewed by climate change skeptics and spinmeisters. Then I started paying attention to how anti-GMO campaigners have distorted the science on genetically modified foods. You might be surprised at how successful they've been and who has helped them pull it off. I’ve found that fears are stoked by prominent environmental groups , supposed food-safety watchdogs , and influential food columnists ; that dodgy science is laundered by well-respected scholars and propaganda is treated credulously by legendary journalists ; and that progressive media outlets, which often decry the scurrilous rhetoric that warps the climate debate, serve up a comparable agitprop when it comes to GMOs. In short, I’ve learned that the emotionally charged, politicized discourse on GMOs is mired in the kind of fever swamps...

This is just a first pass at this article , but it's very good and tracks quite closely with the little that I know about the subject. Money quote: Since time immemorial, a very specific community of organisms — microbes, parasites, some viruses — has aggregated to form the human superorganism. Mounds of evidence suggest that our immune system anticipates these inputs and that, when they go missing, the organism comes unhinged. The idea is that autism is one of a whole slew of disorders that have been increasing at a galloping rate, all tied to autoimmune problems, and the problem is a too-clean environment is leading to poorly calibrated immune systems. I have a special interest in this because my father (an otherwise quite healthy guy in good shape) was diagnosed with Type I diabetes awhile back. That kind (which has little to do with your diet) has also been on the increase , and some have postulated a similar hypothesis there. This theory has been around for awhile (check ...

Devastated. ...adding, strange voice, but amazing how precise and controlled he sounded. Quite good at speaking for such a notorious recluse.

"Congratulations to the MSL team and NASA JPL for the most flawless execution of an utterly insane plan. Our species has landed a goddamn truck on the surface of another world using a parachute and a flying crane . There are no words." -- Maki Epic win.

One of the posts I did at the Monthly was on the FDA's approval process . Rand Paul got a proposal passed saying the FDA must accept science done in the EU and elsewhere in the developed world into their approval process, with the idea of speeding things along. Alex Tabarrok proposed that any drug or treatment approved in the industrialized world (meaning Canada, the EU, Japan, Australia, New Zealand, and South Korea) would receive automatic approval here in the US in 90 days, and I somewhat hastily agreed. The background here is that the FDA is notoriously slow about new drug and treatment approval; personally I'd like to see the artificial pancreas delivered as fast as possible for my father, who despite being a generally healthy, slim guy, developed type I diabetes a couple years back. Commenters on the post brought up thalidomide , which is surely worth considering. Briefly, that was a drug used for a short time in Britain, Australia, and elsewhere used to treat mornin...