Via Politico (With my apologies), crazy-eyed Michelle Bachmann has clarified her comments that God was sending disasters because he wanted less government spending on the middle-class and poor:

Of course I was being humorous when I said that. It would be absurd to think it was anything else,” Bachmann said on Monday on a campaign stop in Miami. “I am a person who loves humor, I have a great sense of humor,” she said.

So there you have it, Bachmman just has delightful sense of humor which happens to include speaking for the sacred deity known as Republican-Jesus whom she openly adores and defends.

This incessant yammering from the Rick Perry’s and Bachman’s about what God[s] wants is so blatantly transparent, so clearly and intensely political in nature, and so very misleading. It’s particularly annoying to hear Christians, who ostensibly believe in a divine being which commands generosity, help for the poor and sick, being led into serfdom by the town criers of today’s greed-crazed neo-medieval lords. And yet it’s been a staple of politics since the Hittites went mano-a-mano with Rameses the Second. You’d think people would see through it by now. But no, there always seem to be enough insecure, gullible peasant class foot soldiers to keep it going.

You know what would make it even more insufferable? If Bachmann scored a wingnut-welfare high-dollar book deal making her a premium Fox News grifter. Do’h!

I thought this was old news, my spin-doctor detection meter is going crazy seeing it hit the headlines again. I suspect someone is trying to make a political hit of some sort. But I have no evidence, and apparently it’s an actual topic of discussion in the media today. So, Ron Paul announces he doesn’t accept evolution, at least as far as humans are concerned:

“Well, first i thought it was a very inappropriate question, you know, for the presidency to be decided on a scientific matter,” he said. “I think it’s a theory…the theory of evolution and I don’t accept it as a theory. But I think the creator that i know, you know created us, every one of us and created the universe and the precise time and manner and all. I just don’t think we’re at the point where anybody has absolute proof on either side.”

Face/palm. Huckabee made a similar evasive quip about science not being important to the presidency on one of his debate appearance back in 2008. Which is disturbing: a president of a nation that depends critically on science for basically, everything, should either understand that science doesn’t run on “absolute proof,” or have someone at hand who can explain that to them in as much detail as necessary.

Back to Ron Paul, I’m in Texas, in the heart of what used to be called Bush country, and have a good friend who is a big, big fan of the good Dr Paul. We’ve talked about it a bit, and the thing I try to get across is I love some of the stuff Paul says. He was the first sitting GOP politician who cast doubt on the Iraq War, he’s against drug prohibition and the insane laws and breaches of rights that go along with it. Paul’s view on evolution is more nuanced than the quote above, at least as represented in his writings and statements elsewhere.

But he also seems to believe some bug-fuck crazy shit that forces me to question the man’s judgement, and casting doubt on whether or not humans evolved like every other living thing is just the tip of the iceberg. Moreover, this has gotten worse, not better, with the rise of the know-nothing right. I think Paul has been affected by that; its human nature, he likes the attention, applause and celebrity can be quite seductive. One of the biggest strike against him, in my view, is his son Rand Paul, a full on ignorant anti-government sociopath who seems hell bent on stealing the Social Security and Medicare I’ve paid into for almost 40 years and feeding it to Paris Hilton as tax cuts, and who claims to believe we can really run the world’s greatest super-power on a loosely confederated state government system that doesn’t work anywhere else in the world and didn’t work here for more than a few decades.  Ron Paul the senior has not intervened in that crazy talk, not in any way that I’m aware of. Ron Paul would have to change quite a bit before I would vote for him over a generic democrat, much less volunteer for his campaign. Starting with denouncing his own son’s core beliefs as bat-shit insane.

 

After many and tries by several teams, one group of astronomers have succeeded in developing a fair facsimile of the entire Milky Way galaxy using the known laws of physics and a few ideas from leading theorists:

“Previous efforts to form a massive disk galaxy like the Milky Way had failed, because the simulated galaxies ended up with huge central bulges compared to the size of the disk,” said Javiera Guedes, a graduate student in astronomy and astrophysics at UC Santa Cruz and first author of a paper on the new simulation, called “Eris.”

How’d they do it? Well, first you need nearly unlimited access to NASA’s state of the art Pleiades super computer. Then it’s simply a matter of:

To perform the Eris simulation, the researchers began with a low-resolution simulation of dark matter evolving to form the haloes that host present-day galaxies. Then they chose a halo with an appropriate mass and merger history to host a galaxy like the Milky Way and “rewound the tape” back to the initial conditions. Zooming in on the small region that evolved into the chosen halo, they added gas particles and greatly increased the resolution of the simulation. High resolution means tracking the interactions of a huge number of particles.

He’s not a real influential fella from what I can tell, but this is still weird — if it’s not some kinda sick joke:

Brothers and Sisters , I have been seriously considering forming a ( Christian ) grassroots type of organization to be named “The Christian National Registry of Atheists” or something similar . I mean , think about it . There are already National Registrys for convicted sex offenders , ex-convicts , terrorist cells , hate groups like the KKK , skinheads , radical Islamists , etc..
This type of “National Registry” would merely be for information purposes . To inform the public of KNOWN ( i.e., self-admitted) atheists.

Known and self admitted … And there’s lot more crazy at the link that stuff came from. Yes, yes, I know PZ and others probably saw this a day or two ago, but I just got wind of it.

Michelle Bachmann can hear God so clearly in her head, she wonders why everyone else isn’t listening:

“I don’t know how much God has to do to get the attention of the politicians. We’ve had an earthquake; we’ve had a hurricane. He said, ‘Are you going to start listening to me here?’ Listen to the American people because the American people are roaring right now. They know government is on a morbid obesity diet and we’ve got to rein in the spending.”

God is speaking through moderate earthquakes and category 1 hurricanes? And not only that, God is saying via those mild events that We the People should unquestioningly do exactly what Michelle Bachmann has been saying we should do as part of her GOP primary campaign? Bachmann reporting God affirming that Bachmann was right all along. … How incredibly convenient, not to mention transparent and laughable.

I guess the idea of God as a control freak is nothing new. But one would think a being which can create quasars and butterflies by sheer force of will would be able to speak with a clearer voice, instead of being drowned out by the statistical noises afforded by routine wind and rain.

I’m so conflicted. He’s such a ridiculous character by the standards of the oval office it’s hard not to have fun with him. And of course one never knows how much of Rick Perry’s rhetoric to take seriously and what is mere political stagecraft. Maybe he’s not an arrogant, ignorant clown who got lucky. But if he believes even half of it we could be in for a very bad ride. Here we have a nice article about how Perry the rural farmer is actually a millionaire (No surprise) and became one while he was in office, again not a shock:

Since his first race for office more than a quarter-century ago, Gov. Rick Perry has emphasized his roots as a rural farmer. Yet Perry’s bank account no longer reflects those humble beginnings as his bottom line has soared in recent years, records show, thanks largely to a handful of real estate deals that critics allege were achieved through the presidential candidates’ political connections. In just about every campaign Perry has run since 1989, allegations of his using his position for financial gain have come up.

The article above by the Miami-herald is well worth reading. It introduces readers to the major financial and political events in Perry’s career, some of which may come under intense scrutiny in the months ahead. It’s going to be awesome sauce.

 
Irene has wound down to a disorganized rain blob leaving behind sections of New England in much better shape than she could have. The storm has passed, and nothing left to do but clean up. The LA Times has a nice photo collectionof storm damage and had this to say:

The main New York power company, Consolidated Edison, didn’t have to go through with a plan to cut electricity to lower Manhattan to protect its equipment. Engineers had worried that salty seawater would damage the wiring. And two pillars of the neighborhood came through the storm just fine: The New York Stock Exchange said it would be open for business on Monday, and the Sept. 11 memorial at the World Trade Center site didn’t lose a single tree.

There is flooding and some power outages all the way through Vermont, but it could have been worse. Then again you can say that about practically every hurricane. One funny thing though, a buddy of mine who works in DC was sounding a little smug about dealing with an earthquake and a hurricane in the same week. Comparing this to a serious earthquake or major hurricane would be like my fellow Texans comparing one of our one-inch snow flurries with a major nor’easter. Don’t get cocky.

Last Saturday I had the chance to visit with Dr Jeff Masters of the superb WeatherUnderground on the Daily Kos radio show (If you’ve never read Jeff’s harrowing account of flying into category 5 Hurricane Hugo and suffering an engine fire, almost forcing a crash water landing inside the eye, check it out). Hosts Armando and David Waldman joined in, and most of the conversation centered on hurricanes. Not surprising, Irene was bearing down on the eastern seaboard. It was informative, so much so we hope to have some more science guests on in the near future. And as luck would have it, I managed to hog the mic and ask Masters a couple of non Irene specific questions.

The first of these was on behalf of my friends and family in Texas: was there any end in sight to the record drought plaguing the Lone Star State? Masters answered without hesitation, saying there was nothing in the data suggesting any break, and this late in the season, odds were good the only relief to Texas and neighboring states will come with the change of seasons. This was disappointing, perhaps Rick Perry should pray harder, much harder. We haven’t had rain in 6 months, and it was officially 112 in Austin on Sunday. It would almost be worth having to put up with Perry smugly strutting around like God’s personal water bearer just to put an end to the late summer misery.

The other question was could a greater frequency in tropical cyclones like Irene, along with record droughts and floods, be examples of what atmospheric scientists call the loaded dice of Climate Change? I actually apologized for some reason when asking it. I wish there was a transcript, but working purely from memory, Masters’ reply was something along the lines of “That’s a perfectly legitimate question.” And went on to say essentially, absolutely, we’ll know more after the data is in and crunched. But cyclones and droughts could be examples of loading the dice, and some of them probably are.

We have to wonder, what the future holds? The effects of climate change have barely begun, there’s enough greenhouse gases in the atmosphere to drive a warming cycle for at least centuries, if not millennia. The one thing working in our favor is the big fat reservoirs are being affected by peak production limits. Large ones like Ghawar may be at or near decline. There are no other large reservoirs anywhere near the size of the handful which produce about half the world’s oil. So once they started peaking, the price goes up, less oil is burned simply because it’s expensive, and alternative forms of energy become more attractive. It’s a way out, almost like a an escape hatch built into nature.

But there’s plenty of coal left. There’s a big uptick in wanting to frac every last cubic foot of domestic natural gas. Deposits of oil in tar sands and shale, up to now considered too deep or think or dilute to produce economically in volume, are generating intense interest. And that reminds me of what James Hansen said when I spoke with him and reviewed his book Storms of my Grandchildren. After building up the scientific basics of what drives earth’s climate, Hansen wrote in the book (And affirmed to me) that, “After the ice is gone, would Earth proceed to the Venus syndrome, a runaway greenhouse effect that would destroy all life on the planet, perhaps permanently? While that is difficult to say based on present information, I’ve come to conclude that if we burn all reserves of oil, gas, and coal, there is a substantial chance we will initiate the runaway greenhouse. If we also burn the tar sands and tar shale, I believe the Venus syndrome is a dead certainty.”

I don’t see how this thing survives the budget-and-throat cutting mania that has conveniently gripped the political and traditional media class ever since a democrat came into power. And for that I’m conflicted:

“NASA has completed a JWST replan that assumes a revised life-cycle-cost of about $8.7 billion and a launch readiness date of October 2018,” agency spokesman Trent Perrotto said in an Aug. 26 email to Space News. “The $8.7 billion life-cycle-cost includes development, launch, and five years of operations and science costs.”

Translation, it will cost more than $8.7 billion and it won’t be ready until after 2018. That’s just how these deals work. The JWST is a big quantum leap in space telescopes. So was the Hubble of course. But unlike Hubble, JWST is millions of miles distant with electronics and optics far ahead of anything we’ve done to date. If something goes wrong, there won’t be a repair mission for many years, if ever. Other critics have pointed out the price tag, as high as $10 billion dollars, has to come at the expense of a suite of exciting unmanned missions in the works.

But some at NASA are convinced it will be a public relations coup like Hubble. And the science JWST might return if it ever is launched and it does work would be the awesome sauce of awesome sauce.

The National Hurricane Center indicates Hurricane Irene is passing the eastern North Carolina and Virginia border and heading back out to sea as a solid Category 1 storm. She has reportedly claimed at least four lives. Delaware, eastern Maryland, and the New Jersey shoreline are now or will soon be feeling the maximum effects of Irene’s 80 mph winds and deceptively powerful storm surge during a new moon high tide. In addition, the system is inundating wide swaths of the region with heavy rain. Via WeatherUnderground:

The latest NWS forecast is calling for a 5 – 8 foot storm surge in New York Harbor, which would easily top the flood walls protecting the south end of Manhattan if the storm surge occurs at high tide. High tide is near 8 am Sunday morning. A research storm surge model run by SUNY Stonybrook predicts that water levels at The Battery at the south end of Manhattan will peak at 2.2 meters above Mean Lower Low Water (MLLW) at high tide Sunday morning …

Even relatively moderate winds, combined with driving rain, can combine to leave behind damage that will have to be repaired quickly. Wind and rain exploit structural weaknesses, shingles loosen, eaves are drenched and start to rot, ceilings mildew. It’ll be a big insurance mess, if you were thinking roof job before the storm, you’ll have to get one soon after. And the same scenario will be played out on a far grander scale in the densely populated urban centers in New York, Connecticut, and up into New Hampshire beginning early tomorrow. Hurricane Agnes in 1972 was also a Cat 1. Agnes did over $2 billion in damage to sections of northeastern Pennesylvania as a tropical storm, and that was in early 70s dollars in a region with comparatively low population density. The storm surge and of this storm will probably more comparable to Hurricane Isabel, the most costly storm of the 2003 Atlantic season. When all is said and done, Irene could theoretically cost more than $10 billion.

There’s been some news footage of people almost playing in the wind and rain — bad idea. This storm may be moderate, but it’s a moderate hurricane. A chunk of two-by-four hitting at 50 mph can snap bones and crack skulls. Broken glass in shallow water can slice feet and tires, tangled power lines can electrocute, jagged pieces of whirling plywood or sheet metal can slash a throat. And it’s the freak accident that usually gets people in a storm like this. I expect we’ll have some examples of full blown Darwin Award winning behavior before this is over. If you’re in the storm, please resist the urge to be among those trying out for a lead role.