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January 22, 2008
Reading Supreme Tea Leaves

Other than my obvious displeasure with parts of the Solicitor General's brief, things have been progressing quickly to the hearing of Heller v. DC. One of the unmentioned silver linings of the SG's brief that I've pointed out to those close to the case is that it allows the pro-rights side to argue more against the US's position and focus less on the more specious claims that the Second Amendment isn't an individual right. Oral argument was scheduled this morning for Tuesday, March 18, at 10:00 a.m. at the Supreme Court.

However, what drives my post today is Ali v. Federal Bureau of Prisons. It's a not too interesting case overall but it does lead some credence to my earlier prognostications that Justice Ginsburg could potentially be a swing vote in Heller as she, not Kennedy, was the 5th vote needed to side with the conservative 4 in Ali.

Posted by hoffmang at 10:43 AM

January 07, 2008
Remove Urbanization and Global Warming Slows

In a not completely surprising turn of events, a paper called "Quantifying the influence of anthropogenic surface processes and inhomogeneities on gridded global climate data" shows that there seems to be a direct correlation between indicators of urbanization and an increase in local temperatures. When that correlation is removed, the temperature increases over the years that we have satellite temperature data appears to line up. For those not up on it, the satellite temperature data shows some warming, but a much smaller amount than the ground stations that lead to the Mann Hockey Stick.

Now lest anyone be confused, I'm a big fan of using innovation to reduce our burning of fossil fuels for a whole host of reasons. I really want to have solar efficiency increase due to Moore's Law type technology and economic drivers instead of the painful incremental increases we're seeing. Bring on solutions to the battery problem!

Posted by hoffmang at 05:10 PM
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