What does Krugman mean by rhinoceri? Are they people with thicker skin than he has?
ALASKA CALLING: The best piece yet on Alaska’s warming is now up on TechCentral Station. Here’s the money section:
Twenty-two of the thirty individual locations defining Alaska’s temperature history show either no warming trend or a significant cooling trend after 1977. Nor does the USNA’s Alaska record show a meaningful man-made warming trend in the period beyond the Great Pacific Climate Shift of 1976 – 1977. Those facts contradict the predictions from the climate simulations. As for the future, University of Washington researchers find that the northern Pacific Ocean temperatures dropped back to a state of cold around 1998 – 1999. That should mean sharply colder temperatures in Alaska for the next twenty to thirty years.
The rise in temperature is largely a function of a big rise in 1977, caused most probably by a shift in Pacific ocean patterns. TCS even has a whizz-bang interactive map of thirty different measuring stations over the last thirty years. Surprise! Despite growing levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, Alaska is getting cooler. Tim Egan should probably find an igloo somewhere and stay very quiet for a while.
WHY POWELL NOW? The MinuteMan suggests an obvious motive. The Times doesn’t want war with Iraq. This is an early puff-piece to justify later support for Powell’s alleged ambivalence about taking out Saddam.
THEY’RE USED TO IT: The Hill reports that gay and lesbian candidates are encountering less and less prejudice out there. Shhhh. Don’t tell Richard Goldstein. It’ll ruin his day.
THANKS: 41,000 visits yesterday. And it’s July.
RUBIN AND THE SEC: I published a letter from a financial analyst reader that claimed that Robert Rubin had cut the SEC’s budget by 60 percent. Other readers queried this notion. Here’s the letter-writer’s response:
I goofed. I have made a classic Washington D.C. error, by examining cuts in the rate of growth in the funding of the SEC funding, and calling them a real cut. Mea culpa. However, I have checked with the New York SEC office, which tells me that staffing levels in the New York SEC office have fallen by 60% and this is where I got the figure from. In fairness, this cannot be blamed on Rubin; likely that a private sector salary during a huge boom was too attractive for many securities lawyers. But the drop in staffing levels helps to explain why so many accounting abuses went undetected for so long.
The Dish 