How can we tell which scientists are right about climate change?

On the surface, Kevin Williamson sounds reasonable here:

Scientific disputes are highly specialized, and meaningful participation in them requires a great deal of non-generalist knowledge. I’m generally skeptical of argument from credential, but there’s a time for it. For instance, a great number of scientists have a particular view of global warming. Richard Lindzen has reservations about that view. Professor Lindzen is an atmospheric physicist a full-on professor at MIT. Your average politician is not packing the gear to get in the middle of that fight. I’m not. Chait isn’t, either. Is Lindzen not a real scientist? Is he a kook? Is Jonathan Chait going to make that case? Given two scientists with different opinions about climate forecasting, why exactly ought I to consult Jonathan Chait, or Jon Huntsman?

But here's the thing: We laypeople don't have to referee a dispute between two scientists. We can look at what the broader scientific community has to say about the topic. And it's not a 50-50 proposition.

In 2010, the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences published a survey of 1,372 climate researchers, finding that 97 to 98 percent of those publishing in the field said they believe humans are causing global warming. That’s the same majority that existed in a similar 2009 survey. Dissenters do exist, the PNAS study found, but “the relative climate expertise and scientific prominence of the researchers unconvinced … are substantially below that of the convinced researchers.” Either way, the ranks of dissenters don’t appear to be swelling.

Now, is it possible that more than 1,000 climate scientists who comprise the leaders in their field are wrong about this? Sure. Anything's possible. But given the overwhelming consensus, it would seem that folks like Rick Perry who claim science has disproven climate change have an added burden to make their case.

That would be the case in the scientific realm. In the political realm, it's different, of course.

I'm concerned that Rick Perry (seemingly) cavalierly denies climate science because that suggests to me that he has decided to entirely disregard true facts and the conclusions that emerge from them. I have more respect for conservatives like Jim Manzi and Steve Hayward who generally acknowledge the scientific consensus and argue more about the appropriate response. (They think liberal solutions would do too much damage to the economy to be worth the trade-off, roughly speaking.) That's a great debate to have. But it seems ridiculous to debate whether climate change exists when the knowledgeable dissenters are so few.

Yes, that's exactly what we meant when we said Rick Perry is anti-science

Rick Perry's Sophisticated Campaign Machine | The Weekly Standard: "While his critics have been eager to dismiss the Texas Governor as anti-science, the The New York Times takes a look at an upcoming electronic book, "Rick Perry and His Eggheads: Inside the Brainiest Political Operation in America." The book's author shows Perry's approach to politics is at once rigorously scientific and unconventional."

Pennsylvania public workers not overcompensated

News from EPI: Pennsylvania public-sector workers not overcompensated, EPI study finds: A new Economic Policy Institute study released today finds that full-time state and local government employees in Pennsylvania are not overcompensated, when compared to otherwise similar private-sector workers.  Pennsylvania public employees’ hourly compensation costs are a statistically insignificant 2.1 percent lower than that of private-sector employees.

That's a local note, but it's consistent with the findings of most similar studies. Republicans are trying to paint public workers as unfairly and grossly overcompensated, but generally speaking, they're not.

E.J. Dionne is delusional this morning

His column reads like a fit of pique, instead of the usual smart commentary from a columnist who knows how the real world works.

President Obama has only one option as he ponders a world economy teetering on the edge: He needs to go big, go long and go global.

Obama should not be constrained by what the Tea Party might allow subservient Republican leaders in Congress to do. He should state plainly, eloquently and in detail what he thinks needs to happen. Neither history nor the voters will be kind to him if he lets caution and political calculation get in the way.

Ah, surely Dionne must be coming up with a laundry list of ideas that depend on executive action instead of a recalcitrant Congress! Let's hear them!

Going big means immediate action to boost the economy, even though this will increase the short-term deficit. His proposals to continue the payroll tax cut, extend unemployment insurance and enact patent reform are good, but they are not enough.

Wait. Pretty sure those items would all require action from a recalcitrant Congress...

At the same time, Obama should put forward a plan of his own to close the long-term deficit. He should not be hemmed in by his negotiations with congressional Republicans to get the debt ceiling raised. They don’t hold the nation’s credit hostage anymore. He should lay out exactly what he would do and abandon his practice of making preemptive concessions to his opponents.

That means Obama should not be shy about urging eventual tax increases, particularly on the wealthy. And let’s be clear: These would not be immediate tax hikes; they’d kick in a year or two from now.

Yeah, this really requires the cooperation of a recalcitrant Congress...

Ah, but won’t congressional Republicans block as much of this program as they can? That’s the wrong question.

Well, no, not really.

Count me among those who believe that Obama hasn't been a very effective negotiator, ceding ground to Republicans in his opening moves instead of making them make him give up stuff. That means the whole process gets pulled to the right. And what's more, I think Dionne's list makes sense.

However: Dionne is urging the president to lay out an agenda that has no chance of being enacted with Congress in its current political configuration. Doing so would most likely make the president look even weaker than he already does. This stuff would be great on the campaign trail, but as an actual agenda for the next year of governance it's suicide.

Free lunch for all those rich kids in Detroit public schools

Via Rick Henderson, I see that Henry Payne is trying to stir up class warfare against the rich at National Review ... by taking aim at a program meant to help the poor. Specifically, it's a federal program that would provide free lunch to every student in Detroit's public schools, whether or not they qualify for free or reduced lunches.

The post is called "Richie Rich's Free Lunch," and it gets populist from there:

Funnily enough, they failed to mention the recent $4.5 billion expansion of the Healthy Hunger-Free Kids Act, which will now provide free lunches to ALL — rich and poor, needy and non-needy — of Detroit’s 65,800 public school-students. (Detroit is one of three pilot programs starting this month for a free-for-all that will ultimately cover similar districts nationwide.)

This new program is part of Obama’s orgy of spending, a binge that has ballooned the federal budget by 25 percent since his inauguration. But the program’s logic is even more insane than the price tag: The administration says it is giving rich kids free food to eliminate the shame that less-fortunate students may feel in receiving free food. We’re not making this up.

What’s next — handing out free Chevy Volts to all 16-year olds in order to reduce the stigma that low-income kids feel driving used 1990 Geo Metros?

Does anybody but a desk-bound government bureaucrat honestly think that class stigma will disappear if you give Richie Rich a free lunch? School districts with 62.5 percent or more of students from homes below 130 percent of the poverty level qualify — a threshold Detroit easily clears with 78 percent.

I don't know if this is a worthy program or not, and I think Payne's concerns—less inflammatorily expressed—might be the genesis for a good debate: do we want to provide for families that can provide for themselves?

But Payne expresses himself in fundamentally dishonest fashion, imagining a world where gangs of rich public school kids roam the halls of Detroit High School (or whatever) fat on taxpayer-supplied baloney sandwiches. Why dishonest?

• Because do rich parents generally send their kids to inner-city public schools? C'mon. (Payne, who lives near Detroit, is presumably familiar with the situation.)

• As Payne himself notes, 78 percent of Detroit students fall below the qualifying standard for free-and-reduced lunches anyway. It's not a stretch to presume that a chunk more exist just above the threshhold. (If that presumption is incorrect, I'll happily retract the statement.) If there are any rich kids benefiting from the program, they comprise a small—and probably nearly non-existent—minority.

I can easily imagine a government program that becomes more efficient by just providing the lunch to every student instead of trying to separate out the few who don't qualify. Money, time, and bureaucratic energy are saved and a few people who don't deserve benefits get them anyway. Big whoop.

Again, I don't know if the program is necessarily worthy. But I know that Payne's framing doesn't fairly represent who, exactly, will be served by the program. Dishonest argumentation isn't very persuasive.

How to respond to urban violence?

Ben and I talk about the Philadelphia "flash mobs" and the London riots in this week's Scripps Howard column. I argue that recession-era austerity isn't just cutting the safety net—it's also undermining our ability to police our cities:

Urban violence is nothing new but American city-dwellers are used to the problem being mostly contained to poor, largely minority areas of our cities. The recent incidents in Philadelphia, Chicago, and Kansas City are notable for one commonality: they took place in those cities' glitzier shopping districts, "good neighborhoods" usually untouched by strife.

Cynicism is easy; violence only matters when it happens to the white and well off. But the perception of increased violence, fair or not, can create a negative feedback loop that has real effects on a city and its prospects. Think of New York in the 1970s; it took decades for the city to make a comeback.

So while we need to plug away at underlying social ills -- and there are many -- we should also take quicker and more direct action. We must flood the streets with cops.

The idea has an honorable liberal pedigree. It was President Bill Clinton, after all, who pushed to put 100,000 new police officers on American streets back in the 1990s. And smart police forces have adopted "community policing" methods -- where officers walk a beat, like in the old days, getting to know neighborhood residents -- that have proven effective in preventing crime, but require manpower.

Here's where government austerity compounds the problem: The police forces in Philadelphia, Chicago, and Kansas City have been stretched in recent years by recession-era budgeting. The problem will get worse: Federal grants to local police forces across the country are being slashed in the name of deficit cuts. Police forces are being asked to do more with less. Like everybody else, they can't.

The drive to slash domestic spending isn't just affecting social programs and the safety net. It's cutting into protective services that could help put a lid on violence and unrest. Be sure to give thanks to the Republican Party.

Still here...

...obviously, I'm still posting the column once a week. But most of my energy this summer has gone to recovering from surgery. One more surgery in September. I want to get back to writing regularly, but this has proven to be quite the ordeal. Hope I'll see you soon.