Daily Archives: 22 July 2016

Some More Thoughts on Climate

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…via Watts Up With That?

On the matter of Earth suffering the fate of Venus [boldface emphasis in the original, italics emphasis added]:

  • Venus is closer to the Sun. Venus is aprox 0.72 AU distant from the sun (72% of Earth’s), with a total solar irradiance (TSI) almost 2x that of Earth.
  • Venus has a denser atmosphere. The pressure on Venus is 93x that of Earth, the equivalent of almost 1 kilometer under the ocean. This is probably the largest factor causing its high temperature.
  • The clouds of Venus are mostly sulphuric acid (not water vapor)—a powerful greenhouse agent.
  • The atmosphere of Venus has nearly 3000x more CO2 than Earth’s atmosphere. Venus is 96.5% CO2 by volume vs 380 [parts] per million for Earth (0.038%). Goldblatt el al say that with CO2 at 30,000 ppm Earth would have “no stable temperate climate.” That would require burning 10x more than Earth’s estimated fossil fuel resources.

On the matter of Earth’s own history.  From our Eocene period (56 million to 34 million years ago, the age when mammals began taking over from the dinosaurs):

  • With the solar constant 1% less than today and a few thousand ppmv CO2, the mean temperature was 10oK (roughly 20oF) warmer than today. With CO2 and temperature both higher then than we expect in the foreseeable future, this implies that an anthropogenic runaway greenhouse is unlikely.
  • We expect a runaway greenhouse on Earth 1.5 billion years hence if water is the only greenhouse gas, or sooner if there are others.

That last, especially, would seem to be a period beyond the useful timeframe of even the most hubristic climatista’s policy demands.

Another Judicial Misbehavior

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The Fifth Circuit, in a 9-6 ruling, has said that Texas’ Voter ID law violates the Federal Voting Rights Act and returned it to the trial court to…fix…it.

[The appellate court] instructed a lower court to come up with an “interim remedy” before the November election.

Therein lies a major part of the problem.  Regardless of what one might think of the particular law, any alteration to it is a political matter, to be done by the people and their elected representatives.  The courts have no authority whatsoever to write law or to rewrite an extant one; indeed, our Constitution explicitly bars the courts from such things.

There’s more.  Writing for the majority, Judge Catharina Haynes wrote this, having already acknowledged that there is no direct evidence of discriminatory intent.

In this day and age we rarely have legislators announcing an intent to discriminate based upon race, whether in public speeches or private correspondence. To require direct evidence of intent would essentially give legislatures free reign to racially discriminate so long as they do not overtly state discrimination as their purpose and so long as they proffer a seemingly neutral reason for their actions.  This approach would ignore the reality that neutral reasons can and do mask racial intent….

In other words, whenever legislators disagree with judges, judges must proceed from a presumption of dishonesty on the part of the legislators.  Direct evidence be damned.

[C]ourts may consider both circumstantial and direct evidence of intent as may be available.

Because circumstantial evidence, especially in the absence of direct evidence, can be interpreted in any way convenient to the judge’s predisposition—or to a litigant’s narrative.  That’s why circumstantial evidence is so sketchy in the first place.

The dissent, written by Judge Edith Jones, makes the majority’s shameful behavior plain.

No one doubts our unwavering duty to enforce antidiscrimination law. But in this media-driven and hyperbolic era, the discharge of that duty requires the courage to distinguish between invidious motivation and shadows. The ill-conceived, misguided, and unsupported majority opinion shuns discernment. Because of definitive Supreme Court authority, no comparable federal court precedent in over forty years has found a state legislative act motivated by purposeful racial discrimination.

All of that represents a very serious bit of judicial misbehavior, and it puts a premium on getting this 2016 election right.  A Progressive-Democrat in the White House, together with a Democrat-owned [sic] Senate, will have damaging effects far beyond the Supreme Court damage I’ve been on about in other articles: they’ll have their impact on lower courts, too, and throughout our judicial system.

The ruling can be seen here.