The Dish

Pomfret, Connecticut, 11 am.

Glenn Reynolds has posted a short piece that grapples with climate change and what to do about it. I agree with most of it, although the man-made impact in global change is surely, at this point, more than "far from certain." It’s "very likely." Glenn is right that carbon-based energy is dumb and dirty anyway, even without the climate change drawback. And I second the notion that we need to make green reform innovative and entrepreneurial rather than of the take-your-medicine variety. I’m also intrigued by the idea of making a new and hefty carbon tax revenue-neutral. It might help sell it to the right: cut income tax and tax carbon instead. But there’s no need to ban private jets. Just tax the bejeesus out of them. A little sugar for the left as well.

A reader who covers tennis emailed to say that

"this is the single most amazing point I’ve seen in tennis, and I don’t think there’s a single other player, ever, who could have pulled this shot off. Roddick’s reaction says it all."

Check it out:

The full text can be read here. I see nothing wrong with it.

It’s now in America. Money quote:

"The Shiites were very happy that they killed Saddam, but the Sunnis were in tears," Aqeel Al-Tamimi, 34, an immigrant Iraqi truck driver and a Shiite, said as he ate roasted chicken and flatbread at Al-Akashi restaurant, one of the establishments damaged over the city line in Detroit. "These people look at us like we sold our country to America."

The response to this should not be to throw out hands up in despair but to figure out how we can exploit these rifts in the Middle East to protect and defend the interests of the West and of secular-minded Arabs.

Stimson resigns.

A helpful and sane analysis:

Contrarians will no doubt be disappointed here. The conclusions have been significantly strengthened relative to what was in the TAR, something that of course should have been expected given the numerous additional studies that have since been done that all point in the same direction. The conclusion that large-scale recent warmth likely exceeds the range seen in past centuries has been extended from the past 1000 years in the TAR, to the past 1300 years in the current report, and the confidence in this conclusion has been upped from "likely" in the TAR to "very likely" in the current report for the past half millennium. This is just one of the many independent lines of evidence now pointing towards a clear anthropogenic influence on climate, but given all of the others, the paleoclimate reconstructions are now even less the central pillar of evidence for the human influence on climate than they have been incorrectly portrayed to be.

The uncertainties in the science mainly involve the precise nature of the changes to be expected, particularly with respect to sea level rise, El Niño changes and regional hydrological change – drought frequency and snow pack melt, mid-latitude storms, and of course, hurricanes. It can be fun parsing the discussions on these topics (and we expect there will be substantial press comment on them), but that shouldn’t distract from the main and far more solid conclusions above.

I’ve long been an advocate of empirically-based, market-friendly policies that ensure we do not damage the sacred inheritance of our planet. I wrote one of the first pamphlets arguing that conservatism and environmentalism are not just compatible but intertwined. It was for Margaret Thatcher in 1985 – and she promptly ignored all of it. I have long had an open mind on climate change, but an open mind now means, it seems to me, a clear, empirical conclusion. Climate change is happening, it is almost certainly man-made, although some doubt persists as to quite how deep and swift the change will be. I write this not as a statement of dogma but as a statement of the best inference from the data we now have. This is not – or should not be – a right-vs-left issue. It’s a fact vs fantasy issue. Right now, the fantasists are those saying we have nothing to worry about. We do. The question is merely how best to adapt. A big increase in taxes on carbon is the obvious starting point. Once government sets incentives, the amazing ingenuity of the American marketplace will do the rest.

The latest spat. Has he been lying?

For my straight male and lesbian readers, a Fed-lech alternative:

In Michigan, the full impact of the state amendment barring any legal protections for gay couples is beginning to be felt. You may recall that the anti-gay marriage forces insisted that they only intended to ban marriage as such, and that domestic partnerships or civil unions would be unaffected. They lied – and they are still lying. In Michigan, where the theocons celebrated victory in 2004, the state court of appeals has just ruled that government employees or employees at public universities have no right to any domestic partnership benefits, including healthcare. Money quote:

"The marriage amendment’s plain language prohibits public employers from recognizing same-sex unions for any purpose," the court said.

Remember this when you’re told that the intent of identically worded amendments would leave domestic partnerships untouched. I wonder how many straight marriages now feel more secure knowing that some gay spouse has just lost healthcare benefits.