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2:00PM Water Cooler 7/8/15

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By Lambert Strether of Corrente.

TPP/TTiP/TSA

List of traitors in House and Senate, with phone numbers. Hat tip, reader Vatch. Be sure to visit them when they return to the district. If a traitor is mentioned in Water Cooler, their name is in bold.

2016

Sanders

“Senator Chris Coons is ‘not confident’ that his colleague Senator Bernie Sanders is presidential material” [Bloomberg]. Readers will not be surprised to learn that Chris Coons is a trade traitor.

“The differences between both candidates will be evident during the televised Democratic debates (just ask President Nixon about televised debates), when Bernie Sanders will display attributes that money can’t buy, and Hillary Clinton won’t have the luxury of an expensive campaign apparatus calculating every word” [The Hill].

Governor Jawline also deleted official emails [The Intercept].

O’Malley does not appear to have created any mechanism for public access to any messages that might remain in his Gmail archive. Instead, he relied on an apparently secret legal interpretation according to which the governor’s office does not always count as a state agency under Maryland law.

I’m not sure whether this is more like Clinton, because of the corrupt blurring of public and private boundaries, or more like Obama, because of the secret legal interpretation.

The S.S. Clinton

Clinton, first Iowa interview: “People should and do trust me” [CNN]. Really a no-win. If you have to say it…

“But the effort to script and train local supporters is unusually ambitious and illustrates the extent to which the Clinton campaign and its web of sanctioned, allied super PACs are leaving nothing to chance” [WaPo]. Oh no. Please, no. I don’t think I can stand this. Clinton’s emulating Obot conversion narratives from 2008 at Camp Obama. What next? “Check the website”?

Clinton on Greece [CNN].

[CLINTON:] I think what’s happened in Greece is a tragedy. Their gross national product has dropped by 25 percent. They have youth unemployment over 50 percent. People are suffering. Pensioners are really worrying that they’re not going to be able to afford food. So, I think it’s imperative that there be an agreement worked out with Greece and I urge the Europeans to exert every effort to find one.

You know, Greece is a NATO ally. It’s a member of the European Union. The United States has a great, active, successful Greek-American community. So I want to see a resolution. Obviously, at the end of the day, it’s up to the Greek people to decide what they’re willing to do. And I hope that we can see an outcome here that will actually help Greece recover and keep them in the Eurozone and keep Europe united.

Translation: Greece, I’m sorry your situation is so bad. I just wish there were something I could do!

Democratic one-issue megadonor Haim “Saban has been pouring money into Clinton’s super PAC, $2 million by one estimate. This week, Hillary returned the favor. She wrote a long letter to Saban praising Israel and pledging to fight the Palestinian-led boycott” [Alternet]. Ka-ching.

Republican Clown Car

“Trump Tells Iowa Dairy Farmers He Has Cows 500 Times Bigger Than Theirs” [The Onion].

“The Professional Golf Association and Donald Trump have reached an agreement to move a Grand Slam event away from the Trump National Golf Club in Los Angeles” [The Hill].

Campaign staffer tracker [National Journal].

Stats Watch

MBA Mortgage Applications, week of July 3, 2015: “The purchase index rose 7 percent in the week with the refinance index up 3 percent” due to fall in rates [Bloomberg]. But its volatile!

” When a household is looking to buy a home, financial considerations are usually very important. … When these variables change, this likely affects the price a household is willing and able to pay for a home, and thus the housing market overall. However, measuring the strength of these effects is notoriously difficult [Liberty Street]. The “novel approach” described reminds me of nothing so much as Marxist economists trying to relate price to labor power under the labor theory of value. Or measuring “valuation” generallly.

Water

“Actor Tom Selleck had truckloads of water from a public hydrant delivered to his sprawling Hidden Valley ranch” [Los Angeles Times]. The rich are different. They have steal more water [hat tip, Carla].

“The Palm Springs City Council voted unanimously last week to turn the city’s fountains back on” [USA Today]. As I said.

“[T]he underlying rule of water in the West is that the first people to show up and claim it were the first people to get it, and everyone who came after took a place further back in line. Called “prior appropriation,” this remains the dominant thread in Western water issues, more than 100 years later” [Juan Cole]. A simpler example of the colonial mindset would be hard to find; we’re not exactly looking at water as a common pool resource, are we?

“[A] new NASA study provides estimates for the global water cycle budget for the first decade of the 21st century” [Phys.org]. The study: “The Observed State of the Water Cycle in the Early 21st Century” [Journal of Climate (abstract only)].

“[U]sing new satellite technology, scientists have mapped trends of groundwater depletion in 37 of the world’s biggest aquifers—about one-third showed signs of highly unsustainable water use” [EarthSky]. “Of the 37 aquifers studied, 16 showed positive accumulating trends and 21 showed declining trends. The aquifers with declining trends are shown in shades of red and yellow in the map below.” With handy map; includes Southern US.

“Drought-weary California received encouraging news Wednesday when officials announced that residential water use had dropped 29% during the month of May — the first real indication that the state might meet unprecedented conservation reductions imposed by Gov. Jerry Brown” [Los Angeles Times]. Victory! Especially since Big Oil and Big Ag can suck all the water they want.

“Thailand’s vital rice belt is being battered by one of the worst droughts in living memory, forcing impoverished farmers deeper into debt and heaping fresh pain on an already weak economy — seen as the junta’s Achilles heel” [Malay Mail].

“Bangkok’s tap water supply may run out in a month, as the country waits for long overdue rains to replenish sources depleted by drought and threatened by seawater creep” [Reuters]. Officialdom has walked this back, however.

“[T]he Bureau of Reclamation has begun studies on the impact of global warming on 22 Western water basins and is drawing up multidecade plans to begin rebuilding its Western water management systems” [New York Times].

A-a-a-n-d corruption [WaPo].

PEER [Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility] says at least some of the $48 million contract was supposed to pay for a feasibility study for fish and wildlife of whether farmers could use groundwater instead of pulling water from the rivers. But instead, the group says, the money was used for office space, equipment, salaries and other expenditures to defray expenses of the company, an association of Klamath Project irrigators.

The biologists discovered that money also was used to pump large amounts of groundwater to supply farmers during drought years until private wells went dry. All of these expenditures were made without any apparent legal authority to do so, PEER claims.

“Could the shafting sharing economy help solve California’s water woes? Don’t laugh” [Mother Jones]. I wasn’t going to laugh. I was going to throw up. Mother Jones is getting worse and worse.

China Markets

“The Psychology Behind China’s Bubble” [Noah Smith, Bloomberg]. Summary of theories for why there are bubbles if investors are rational. Oddly — by which I mean “incredibly,” by which I mean, “Well, the dude’s a professional economist, so what did you expect?” — Smith doesn’t mention fraud, or leverage based on fraud. This after mentioning ” the recent housing bubble, where many models of mortgage-backed bonds assumed that home prices would continue to rise”!

“Some analysts believe the suspensions are instead related to one of the scariest ‘known unknowns’ surrounding the market meltdown — just how many controlling shareholders have pledged their shares as collateral for bank loans. [FT, “Question & Answer: China’s share trading suspensions”]. Wheeeeee!

“China’s stock markets are, for the most part, a mom and pop affair—about 80% of the trading that happens in Shanghai and Shenzhen is done by Chinese individuals. They represent at most 14% of the total Chinese population” [Quartz]. I would imagine that traders follow a power curve. So I am guessing that while mom and pop — hold on to your hats, folks — will suffer in real life, it’s the few “whales” at the top of power curve that might pose systemic risk. Readers more knowledgeable in China: What do you think?

“China’s securities regulator banned major shareholders, corporate executives and directors from selling stakes in listed companies for six months, the latest effort to stop a $3.5 trillion rout in the nation’s equity market” [USA Today].

“We’ve seen these kinds of falls in China before without financial crises so I’m skeptical on the last point. Having said that, the swiftness of the rise this time around does stink of margin so this one may be different. It must also be remembered that China still owns its banks so it can simply order them to lend even when they’re insolvent” [Macrobusiness].

Headline: “How China’s Stock Market Tumble Is Affecting the US,” and ” 1. U.S. Stock Market and Your 401(k)” [ABC]. Yeah, boy howdy, what a great idea it was to make your chances for retirement in dignity dependent on Chinese stock speculation.

Grexit?

“US’s Lew: Greece Can Be Fixed With Enough Political Will” [Market News]. Lew says the “gap” could be “bridged” with a couple of billion. So if the U.S. writes a fat check, that would solve the “political will” issue tout suite. Or make it easy on ourselves: Grease the skids with some arms deals or something? Sell the Finns some F-35s for no cash down and easy terms?

Health Care

“With Merger Deal, Aetna, Humana Get Ahead of the Pack–Update” [NASDAQ]. So when the market finally consolidates to one or two firms, can we euthanize these guys and move to single payer?

Class Warfare

“Warren Buffett makes $2.84bn donation to Gates Foundation and charities” [Guardian]. Elite shifts money from one pocket to another.

News of the Wired

“A Representative Democracy to Reduce Interdependency in a Multimodel Ensemble” [Journal of Climate]. I found the title intriguing:

We would argue that, although the collection of models arising from the “ensemble of opportunity” is often seen as sacrosanct, the democratic policy of one model, one vote is no longer a logical one in the increasingly complex family tree of models available to the researcher. A subset of 10–20 models that are reasonably independent and perform well for the criteria that are judged to be relevant is very likely to be more skillful than the full ensemble.

Super-nerdy. I hope knowledgeable readers will weigh in.

“London is a city whose two priorities are being a playground for corrupt global elites who turn neighbourhoods into soulless collections of empty safe-deposit boxes in the sky, and encouraging the feckless criminality of the finance industry. These two facts are not unrelated” [Cory Doctorow, Boing Boing (PT)]. So he’s moving to Los Angeles.

Good history of the union movement and collective bargaining [Dissent (TG)].

For American conservatives, there is also a larger principle at stake. They disdain organized labor because the union movement stands explicitly for a set of ideas and social impulses they find abhorrent: social solidarity, employment stability, and limits on the workplace power of corporate ownership, plus a defense of the welfare state, progressive taxation, financial regulation, and a government apparatus energetic enough to supervise the health and safety of American workers and consumers.

Perhaps “conservatives” believe these principles, and “liberals” merely accept them, but the end result is the same. Say, how’s card check coming? Obama put on his shoes and walk the line for that one?

* * *

Readers, feel free to contact me with (a) links, and even better (b) sources I should curate regularly, and (c) to find out how to send me images of plants. Vegetables are fine! Fungi are deemed to be honorary plants! See the previous Water Cooler (with plant) here. And here’s today’s plant (Rex):

Dasylirion wheeleri 20150614_164721

Rex writes:

Sotol (Dasylirion wheeleri), south central NM. Bees were swarming stalk flowers, save for photo during light rain.

Wow! I’m focused so much on the garden — right in front of me, as I type ♥♥♥ — that I forget the beauty to be found in the wilderness…

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About Lambert Strether

Readers, I have had a correspondent characterize my views as realistic cynical. Let me briefly explain them. I believe in universal programs that provide concrete material benefits, especially to the working class. Medicare for All is the prime example, but tuition-free college and a Post Office Bank also fall under this heading. So do a Jobs Guarantee and a Debt Jubilee. Clearly, neither liberal Democrats nor conservative Republicans can deliver on such programs, because the two are different flavors of neoliberalism (“Because markets”). I don’t much care about the “ism” that delivers the benefits, although whichever one does have to put common humanity first, as opposed to markets. Could be a second FDR saving capitalism, democratic socialism leashing and collaring it, or communism razing it. I don’t much care, as long as the benefits are delivered. To me, the key issue — and this is why Medicare for All is always first with me — is the tens of thousands of excess “deaths from despair,” as described by the Case-Deaton study, and other recent studies. That enormous body count makes Medicare for All, at the very least, a moral and strategic imperative. And that level of suffering and organic damage makes the concerns of identity politics — even the worthy fight to help the refugees Bush, Obama, and Clinton’s wars created — bright shiny objects by comparison. Hence my frustration with the news flow — currently in my view the swirling intersection of two, separate Shock Doctrine campaigns, one by the Administration, and the other by out-of-power liberals and their allies in the State and in the press — a news flow that constantly forces me to focus on matters that I regard as of secondary importance to the excess deaths. What kind of political economy is it that halts or even reverses the increases in life expectancy that civilized societies have achieved? I am also very hopeful that the continuing destruction of both party establishments will open the space for voices supporting programs similar to those I have listed; let’s call such voices “the left.” Volatility creates opportunity, especially if the Democrat establishment, which puts markets first and opposes all such programs, isn’t allowed to get back into the saddle. Eyes on the prize! I love the tactical level, and secretly love even the horse race, since I’ve been blogging about it daily for fourteen years, but everything I write has this perspective at the back of it.

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77 comments

  2. Carla

    “Actor Tom Selleck had truckloads of water from a public hydrant delivered to his sprawling Hidden Valley ranch” [Los Angeles Times]. The rich are different. They STEAL more water.

    There. Fixed it for ya.

  4. NotTimothyGeithner

    So Hillary’s campaign is under the impression taking a pro-Likud stance will sit well with voters especially younger voters Team Blue has aggressively turned off? Oy-vey.

    Any bets on how long until Hillary surrogates start to accuse Bernie of anti-Semitism?

    1. ambrit

      The Likud licking was probably to get the help of the Hasbara networks. The attacks will begin soon.
      Since the Hillary surrogates will be singing from the same songbook, may I suggest, the ClinTones? For the more visually oriented, the ClinToons?

    2. Oregoncharles

      Bernie’s Zionism (as in blind support of Israel no matter how may Palestinians they slaughter) is his biggest single issue with the left.

      1. Yves Smith

        You make it sound as if he is religious about it. It’s awfully hard to find any Congresscritters who are anti-Israel. AIPAC goes after them forcefully. And I even have political collaborators in DC who write me privately all bent out of shape and accuse me of being anti-Semitic if I cross post a piece that is critical of Israel, even when that it not the main focus of the piece! So the enforcers feel compelled to beat even small fry like me into line.

        I’m not saying Bernie is estimable on this topic. Nor am I pumpiong for him to be President, but I think he is doing important public service by getting issues of economic justice into the national debate. It’s long overdue and if he’s the one to do it, why not support him? Trust me, the good oppo will come out soon enough and start cutting him down to size. But is he making Israel hawkishness a major part of his campaign? And tell me who of the effective Congresscritters on domestic economic issues gets a good mark here. Alan Grayson is pro-Israel, and he actually sits on one of the defense-related committees. I’m not sure where Sherrod Brown or Jeff Merkeley are on this issue.

        1. C. dentata

          Elizabeth Warren strongly supports Israel’s current policies. Pick your battles, so forth.

        2. Oregoncharles

          I’m following Lambert’s advice: issues, issues, issues. That one and militarism are the reasons he couldn’t get the Green Party nomination – if he’d asked.

          Jeff (one of my senators) has been pretty discreet on the topic, I think, but the vote to support Israel’s latest atrocity was 100-0, the reason a Green ran against him last year. As you say, the control is shockingly complete, to the point of treason – another reason to challenge those who submit to it.

          Better Bernie than Hillary, if he survives the campaign (a concern, I think), but I believe it’s futile. If need be, the Dems are just as capable of cheating as the Reps are.

          And in general, I think longer term than that, or i wouldn’t be a Green.

          1. Lambert Strether

            As with Clinton, the empire is not Sanders’ strength. Worse, it’s continuing, parasitic presence will probably vitiate everything else he wants to do. Who knows… Maybe as Clinton tries to hog his space on the left, he’ll differentiate! It’s not like there aren’t opportunities….

  5. Kokuanani

    “Warren Buffett makes $2.84bn donation to Gates Foundation and charities” [Guardian]. Elite shifts money from one pocket to another.

    I’d like more info on where the Gates Foundation $$$$$ goes. All I’m aware of is its work on fighting malaria in Africa — which I’ve got no problem with — and its support of the Common Core and charter schools, which troubles me greatly.

    1. geoff

      Well, I know they (the Bill And Melinda Gates Foundation) help fund NPR, since they never shut up about it. Commercial free my a$$!

        1. Carla

          Actually, NPR is just real-people-of-any-perspective free. Like so many other things in modern life, “National Public Radio” is a sick joke. My Democrat friends — er — associates, get so mad when I say that.

    2. human

      The super rich are, inherently, the super Preppers. They fund high end initiatives like seed banks, no jurisdiction land masses, life extending medical research, etcetera while maintaining their private armies.

    3. Steve H.

      Well the two of them did go to the tar sands together and then work to corner the market on the trains to move the stuff…

  6. timbers

    Probably O-Team’s (and Hillary) only interest in Grexit is because it could benefit Putin in some small way. Doubt they could care less about actual people.

  8. geoff

    London must be pretty bad if it makes L.A. look good! It was not really affordable for mere mortals (unless you wanted to spend three hours+ a day on the freeway) when we left twenty years ago.

    “The USA is putting curbs on surveillance, expanding its national healthcare, and there are mass parental boycotts of standardised testing in its public schools.” (Doctorow)

    I think he’s protesting too much. (Curbs on surveillance? Really?)

    1. MyLessThanPrimeBeef

      One day in the future, people will have to commute from Mars to work here on Earth.

      1. cnchal

        Banksters in their space yachts? To collect from deadbeat earthlings that borrowed all that Martian money, and pissed it away.

    2. Clive

      Yes, Cory is right, London (actually, it is the entire South East of England) does seem determined to turn itself into some sort of rainy Dubai. But moving to LA as a fix ??? I can, erm, think of slightly better choices if you’re trying to escape London’s particular set of woes.

      And I can’t help thinking he’s just making excuses for being homesick. Nothing wrong with that. I adored living in Tokyo, a great place to live (but like most capitals only really if you have money or someone else is paying for the exorbitant cost of accommodation).

      But it wasn’t England and never would be. And the list of things I missed grew and grew while the things that annoyed similarly lengthened. You can’t ever logically make a case for claiming a stunning metro system and store clerks that go out of their way to make every visit make you feel like you’re King for the Day can be trumped by a nice cup of tea and a chocolate Hob Nob with the mother-in-law’s cat trying to edge you out of your chair on a gloomy Sunday afternoon, but here I am saying it.

      1. MyLessThanPrimeBeef

        If Cory could bring with him London’s rainy weather, he would be worshiped here in Los Angeles, as divine, as the legend says – a water god returning from the east over the sea.

        1. Clive

          Couldn’t you all just stick straws into Tom Selleck’s lawn and suck really hard?

        2. Gio Bruno

          …if the growing ENSO (El Nino) becomes a reality, SoCal is but a few months from humongous mudslides, coastal inundation, and slippery freeway.

      2. Mojah

        That whole line about how he would be considered 1% elsewhere made me feel a bit quesy, but hey I don’t know much (if anything) about his work.

    3. Praedor

      It’s a relative thing. Compared to the “V for Vendetta” level (or “1984”) of surveillance growing like a tumor in the UK, the US IS cutting back and more controlled with its anti-democratic surveillance. And no way the US govt gets backdoors the way the UK will.

    4. efschumacher

      Sorry but I have no sympathy whatsoever for Cory Doctorow’s predicament. Of course London is an armpit: it always has been. It has never been a place where you can safely raise children. It has never been a place where a squalid but central rabbit hutch has been anything but exorbitant – compared to the English Regions, say. And why oh why would anyone imagine that the only alternative to a megalopolis cess-pit is a similar sized such?

      What’s wrong with York, where you can buy three times the dwelling for a third of the money? Or Edinburgh, if you want one of the most vibrant City Culture’s in the known world?

      I think it’s mostly a case of London-centric immigrant syndrome, where they like the Tube and they like the fast links to Heathrow, but they are clueless about the attractions of the rest of England, and because they have two passports they can just flip to some overseas pied-a-terre on a whim.

    5. vidimi

      i agree with him about london (and the uk generally) going to the dogs, but if he’s looking for salvation in LA, he’s got another thing coming. the US is way ahead of the UK in being a police state.

      1. vidimi

        30 years ago, if you had told someone who wanted to stay in a dynamic city to leave london or new york or los angeles and go to berlin, you would have been institutionalised. but that’s exactly what people such as laura poitras are doing these days. maybe doctorow should, too.

  9. Jerry Denim

    “Why I’m Leaving London”

    Could have very easily been titled why I left Manhattan.

    Reminds me of the British band Art Brut’s “Moving to LA”

    There’s not much glam about the English weather
    There’s nothing left keeping us together

    Sunshine on a rainy day
    Makes me wanna move away
    I think I’ve got it sorted
    I’m going to get myself deported..

    (Chorus)
    I’m considering a move to LA
    He’s considering a move to LA
    I’m considering a move to LA
    He’s considering a move to LA
    I’m considering a move to LA
    He’s considering a move to LA

    Hang around with Axl Rose
    Buy myself some brand new clothes

    Everything is gonna be just fine
    I hear the murder rate is in decline…
    Maybe grab a piece of action

    (Chorus)

    When I get off the plane, the first thing I’m gonna do is
    Strip naked to the west and ride my Harley Davidson
    Up and down Sunset Street, I may even get a tattoo

    My problems are never gonna find me
    I’m not sending one letter or even a postcard back
    I’m drinking Hennessey with Morrissey
    On a beach, out of reach, somewhere very far away

    (chorus)

    Goodbye

  10. Jess

    “[T]he underlying rule of water in the West is that the first people to show up and claim it were the first people to get it, and everyone who came after took a place further back in line. Called “prior appropriation,” this remains the dominant thread in Western water issues, more than 100 years later” [Juan Cole]. A simpler example of the colonial mindset would be hard to find; we’re not exactly looking at water as a common pool resource, are we?”

    The water question in CA (and perhaps other places) isn’t so simple. Often those people with senior water rights needed that water for their businesses. IOW, they invested in farms or ranches precisely because they had rights to the water necessary to sustain those enterprises. In addition, real estate developers control building regulations at virtually every level of government. It was constant Build-Build-Build despite any concern for the idea that we may be putting too many people into one state (or sub-area, such as SoCal or the greater SF-SJ area where people drive two hours to work because they can only find suitable housing in the hinterlands).

    Back in the late 70’s or early 80’s CA passed a law that developers could only build new planned communities and other large developments if they could prove they had sufficient water sources to service the new project. The law was ignored for a couple of decades until a plan was put forward to build a massive new planned community (a new city) in the Stevenson Ranch section of the San Fernando valley. This would have required widening the 101 (Ventura) Freeway. Folks along the freeway naturally objected to losing their homes, or having the freeway come right up to the side of their lot, so they fought back with petitions and mass protests, etc.

    Of course, the widening plans were totally inadequate for the number of additional vehicles that would be added to the daily commute. However, what actually stopped the development project (and thus the freeway widening) was when the protest group discovered that water requirement law and were able to prove in court that the developer could not meet the water guarantee standard. Project never got built. (Thank God.)

  11. MyLessThanPrimeBeef

    “We’ve seen these kinds of falls in China before without financial crises so I’m skeptical on the last point. Having said that, the swiftness of the rise this time around does stink of margin so this one may be different. It must also be remembered that China still owns its banks so it can simply order them to lend even when they’re insolvent”

    And if those godless communists, sorry, capitalists don’t worship their government as God, it would be indeed miraculous.

    “We here in China believe in an omnipotent Godvernement.”

  12. MyLessThanPrimeBeef

    Today’s plant.

    Nature is full of (more or less) straight lines…and male symbols, I think, or maybe just the Arabic numeral one.

  13. Uahsenaa

    I knew Noah Smith in grad school, meaning we bumped into each other at parties and moved among the same large circle of acquaintances. I remember him being a remarkably reductive, uncreative thinker, though he was the darling of his department. An actual exchange: I recall one time trying to explain to him why literary scholars would take an interest in ethics. He asked me to explain what I meant by “ethics,” so I did, to which he replied, “oh, you mean, like, an alternative psychology.” No, not alternative psychology, ethics. I literally could not get him to understand the concept of ethics. This piece is very much of a kind with the way he tended to argue things.

      2. Uahsenaa

        Well played, sir!

        All that said, he was at least goofy, so not altogether unpleasant to be around.

    2. Legendary bbigfoot

      Scientismist. The effort to make complex social sciences resemble the clarity of physics through misapplication of maths and gross oversimplification of social and cultural interactions.

      Did he wear a lab coat?

  14. tyaresun

    On the Journal of Climate article: Think of it as an attempt to reduce the double and triple-counting of votes.
    From the article:
    “The presence of duplicated code as well as shared forcing and validation data in the multiple models in the archive raises at least three potential problems: biases in the mean and variance, the overestimation of sample size, and the potential for spurious correlations to emerge in the archive because of model replication. Analytical evidence is presented to demonstrate that the distribution of models in the CMIP5 archive is not consistent with a random sample, and a weighting scheme is proposed to reduce some aspects of model codependency in the ensemble”

  15. Synapsid

    For some perspective about water use, here is a number on Big Oil and Big Ag, from Texas the fracking capital of the world (since I often come across mention of all the water used for fracking):

    In 2011 (latest data) the amount of water used for fracking in Texas equaled 0.7% of the amount used for agriculture.

    Texas is not the agriculture giant that California is but it isn’t negligible either. Fracking has increased in Texas since 2011 but I doubt by enough to whittle down the preponderance of agricuture’s role in Texas’ use of water.

    I’d rather see water used for agriculture than for obtaining oil and natural gas, but I’d sure rather see a more rational approach to what to grow where than “growing dichondra in the desert in the summer.” Or almonds in the Great Valley, for that matter.

    1. Jess

      Agree that big Ag uses too much water to grow things in climates that are meant for this or that particular crop. However, one thing about fracking is that the water it uses is water gone forever. It’s my understanding that once mixed with the foul chemicals used in fracking that water becomes part of a new chemical stew and never returns to being water. Lost forever.

    2. vidimi

      how much has fracking frown in texas since 2011? i imagine it was still an immature industry then.

      not saying you’re wrong, but that we might not be getting the full picture. furthermore, water that is used for fracking may as well be mercury as it can never again be used. water for agriculture can remain in the precipitation cycle indefinitely.

      1. Synapsid

        Jess, vidimi,

        Fracking “produced water” is sometimes used for further fracking, matter of fact, but there’s no set percentage that I know of; each project faces different problems, and procedures and the actual fracking mix will be tailored for them. Most of what comes back up is brine–natural salt water–and that is most of what is injected into disposal wells, sometimes setting off quakes.

        Even brine is used for fracking sometimes (Halliburton can do this, likely other companies too), showing that the frack compounds can be adjusted for high salinity. In the Great Valley of California, the major breadbasket, some produced water is used for irrigation.

        Overall, as you say, much of the water used is disposed of, not returned for use as plain water, but there’s a great deal of variability, case by case.

    3. Propertius

      “A more rational approach” should probably also include not moving millions of people to areas that don’t have enough water to sustain them.

  16. Oregoncharles

    “Super-nerdy. ”
    You mean it uses deliberately boring, obfuscatory language – probably in order to hide its lack of content?

    1. Lambert Strether Post author

      No, I don’t mean that. The Journal of Climate Studies typically has content. I’m just wondering what the content actually was. Given the title, why aren’t you?

      1. Oregoncharles

        I thought I explained that.
        I have a very low tolerance for that kind of language. If there’s content worth knowing, which I doubt, I’ll let someone with more time left in their life figure it out.

  17. OpenThePodBayDoorsHAL

    China stock bail: the issuer of the currency stepping in first to encourage stock buying (on margin), then to buy equities and ban selling…um, what is that, precisely, at its core? Stocks are then a new form of money, aren’t they? Or ask the largest single holder of equities in the world, the Swiss National Bank, what they are thinking? The old CB, whose job it was to lend in times of crisis to good credits at high prices…has morphed into something altogether different.
    All the old models, MMT, Keynes, Friedmanism, Volcker-ism no longer apply, with ZIRP the “stock market” is pressed into service as a surrogate bond market, with new forms of scrip that actually provide yield. Precious little appreciation or discussion of this among the punditocracy it would seem.

    1. NotTimothyGeithner

      DWS thought she was going to run. She found recruiting a Republican no matter how socially liberal he might be behind doors to run for governor and attacking the pro-marijuana initiative didn’t sit well.

  20. ewmayer

    Re. Doctorow on London: “…encouraging the feckless criminality of the finance industry.”

    I think (hope) he intended “reckless’, as feckless implies half-arsed bumbling-amateur-style criminality, the very opposite of the kind practiced in the global center for elite financial fraud which the PTB in London have worked so very hard to make it.

  22. Steve

    Interpreting “A Representative Democracy to Reduce Interdependency in a Multimodel Ensemble”:

    Break-down of terms:

    “representative democracy” = “meaningfully selected stand-ins for the whole”
    “multimodel ensemble” = “climate modeling using more than one model”
    “interdependency” = “shared data, assumptions, etc.”

    The article is basically an effort to develop a test of various models in a given collection (i.e., Phase 5 of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project) of climate data/models to determine which will lead more trust-worthy results when they are combined. In the hypothetical popular zine “Climate Today,” the article might be retitled as “Sampling Climate Models for Reliable Aggregation Outcomes.” (Okay, that’s not a very pedestrian friendly title either, but it is a bit more transparent.)

    2. participant-observer-observed

      The way i read this “abstract,” they are basically saying that the distribution of the models’ aggregate “quality” density is non-linear and without a normal function, and therefore, it cannot be sampled as if it was a gaussian distribution with normal density coherence.

      Similar to the idea that a chi-square test is invalid if running on sample without a normal distribution (normal test is run first).

      So if the chi-square is invalid, basically the regression analysis is useless. Structural equation modeling (SEM) goes into this point in great detail. See Metheun and Methuen i think is the spelling they have lots of materials on SEM on their M-PLUS SEM software website.

  23. craazyboy

    Just checked up on the rainfall here this year and the Rain God is smiling on us. As of end of June we are actually a little ahead of the historical average. And it rained twice in July already.

    But I’m not telling where “here” is, because now I fear CA, Bangkok, and Cory Doctorow will want to move here, if they find out where here is. Tom Selleck is still OK with CA it seems.

    2. Paul Tioxon

      Well, I am really lucky. I don’t have to hide or lie about Philadelphia to keep people away, I just have to open my mouth or mention Philadelphia, and the invisible dome of “you’re not from here are you? repellent” does all of the dirty work. We have plenty of rain this month, 2 rivers, more creeks than you can shake a stick at and within the city limits 4 municipal owned public golf courses that are as green as Ireland in the spring. We have so much water that it regularly gushes out into the city streets by the millions of gallons per second. It does this all of time. But please stay away anyway, unless you’re coming to see the Pope or Hillary at the 2016 Dem convention. In that case, stay as long as you have money to spend then please leave. Cory might be invited to come here as he does not write about how livable the city and region is. We have enough people moving here from Brooklyn as it is, I’m not sure how we would take to Londoners that did not play in Led Zeppelin or the Who or The Kinks or someone along those lines.

  24. different clue

    I just got done reading a Reddit posting from the AMA moderator(s) explaining why they shut down the AMA subreddit for a temporary interlude of 12 or whatever it was hours.

    The last part of the posting was so sad . . . so very sad . . . After showing that they had understood their true power, they threw that power away by earnestly hoping that the RedditCo Incorporated Headquarters would be more nice to them in the future, and would they please hire somebody as good as the Ms. Taylor they fired? If I had been them, I would have kept AMA down until RedditCo Headquarters was forced to hire Ms. Taylor back. I don’t know if I would have overplayed my hand by further demanding that the Ms. Pao person who fired Taylor to begin with be fired herself. I sure would have felt like it.

    But the AMA group brought itself back up after its symbolic shutdown, with nothing to show for it but an insincere apology from headquarters. No respect, no Ms. Taylor back, nothing. And now Headquarters knows it can do anything to them it wants to and Headquarters will suffer no meaningful Revenge in return. Ah well . . . the AMA moderator(s) must be liberals . . . as Ian Welsh might put it.

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