A recent Boston Globe article has highlighted the same thing (h/t EconomistMom).  More and more studies are now confirming that once a person ‘believes’ something, even facts that prove them wrong do not change their belief.

In case you missed that, even when we are conclusively proved to be wrong, we very often don’t change our belief.  We dismiss the facts rather than change our minds.

Which goes a long way towards explaining things like the Birthers, or why so many intelligent people believe Bush’s tax cuts increased revenue, or (not to pick too much on the right wing) the overwhelming belief among Democrats that George W Bush is stupid.

It also goes a long way towards explaining the influence of entertaining (but factually challenged) political commentators (cough, Glen Beck, cough), and the fervor of their followers.

Unfortunately, it means that one of the goals of this blog – to encourage people to think beyond the sound bite – is ultimately doomed.

But I’m an optimist, and ultimately believe (perhaps despite the facts) that there are those who are willing to at least entertain the idea that if the data doesn’t support their belief, they may need to adjust their belief.

Here’s hoping…

Conservative Republicans cried foul.  “It’s inherently wrong and un-American”, says the current governor, and she is “uncomfortable with the intrusive nature of the system”.  It’s an invasion of privacy, and spying on the citizens, says the website of the Arizona Citizens Against Photo Radar.  Oh, and because the technology was developed in Australia, it is also a violation of sovereignty.

The cameras will be turned off this week.

Meanwhile, the state has passed legislation that, in effect, says if you look like you might be Mexican (or not ‘American’), you are required to carry proof of legal residence.  Which, of course, is not an invasion of privacy at all.

This is what passes for conservatism in the US today.  Cameras which catch people clearly breaking the law are “wrong and un-American” while requiring anyone with darker skin to carry proof of residence is simply enforcing the law.

UPDATE:  Now they have Nazis with assault rifles patrolling the border.

From the abstract:

We find that blog readers gravitate toward blogs that accord with their political beliefs. Few read blogs on both the left and right of the ideological spectrum. Furthermore, those who read left-wing blogs and those who read right-wing blogs are ideologically far apart. Blog readers are more polarized than either non-blog-readers or consumers of various television news programs, and roughly as polarized as US senators.

The study discusses how blog authors of similar political persuasion tend to reinforce each other’s beliefs and push further from the center, with something similar occurring among blog readers.  Only 6% of those who read political blogs read both right and left wing blogs.  The remainder, 94%, read only left wing or right wing but not both.

Which fits in with a few earlier comments on polarization of the US electorate, but suggests the View From Down Under is unlikely to appeal to the majority of blog readers.

Which is fine by me.

UPDATE:  There is also a cool chart in the study showing how liberals watch PBS Newshour and conservatives watch Fox News.  We all knew that, but the graph is well presented.

Here is Obama compared to the last two one-term Presidents – George HW Bush and Jimmy Carter.  So far, Obama is tracking pretty closely to Jimmy Carter’s trajectory.

Not looking so good for Obama, although I was also interested in the amazing collapse in popularity of Bush Sr.  His popularity in early 1991 was nearly 90%.  One year later he was below 40% and never recovered.  Perhaps he was better at being President than campaigning for it.

Let’s have a look at how Obama  is tracking against two very popular two-term Presidents: Reagan and Clinton.

Hmm.  Obama not looking too bad here.  Slightly more popular than Reagan at this point in the Presidency, slightly less popular than Clinton.

Clearly what counts for re-election is how popular a President is at day 1400, not day 400.

Final point of interest:  Obama v George W.  The Sep 11 attacks had an extraordinary impact on the popularity of the President (as well as Congress).  Interesting that at the 2004 election, W was down to just over 50% approval, and deteriorated pretty consistently after that.

The argument for tort reform is that  frequent malpractice claims and high awards have forced doctors into prescribing extra, and unnecessary, tests and procedures in order to reduce their potential exposure in a lawsuit.  Therefore reforming the malpractice system should reduce those unnecessary activities and reduce costs.

This assumes that these extra procedures are, in fact, unnecessary and add nothing to the value of health care received.  It also assumes that many malpractice claims are based on the desire of plaintiffs to ‘hit the jackpot’ and not on genuine malpractice.

Some on the left wing argue that this is far from proven.  Ezra Klein notes that Texas, which enacted tort reform in 2003, also has the city with the highest medicare costs per enrollee (McAllen).  Indeed Texas as a whole has one of the highest medicare reimbursement rates per enrollee, even adjusting for age, sex, and race.  (As a Texan who enjoys my vegetables battered and fried, I wonder if there is a bit of cultural self selection there).  So the link between tort reform and cost reduction looks tenuous.

In order for tort reform to have an impact on medical costs, it must either reduce the number (or type) of tests and procedures being prescribed, or reduce malpractice premiums (which would then be passed on to consumers).

This sounds like a theory that can be tested, and this afternoon I was wondering if there is any data which could tell us if tort reform has a meaningful impact on health care costs.

Turns out there is.  A recent study looked at the differences in tort reform enacted by various states and correlated that against the costs of employer sponsored health insurance plans over an eight year period.  They looked at four different kinds of tort reform:

• caps on pain and suffering awards;
• collateral source reforms (reducing payouts if plaintiffs have already received insurance or other payments);
• joint and several reforms (limiting ability of plaintiffs to sue a deep pocket for the full amount even if they are only partly at fault); and
• caps on punitive damages.

The authors concluded that the first three types of reform lowered insurance premiums of self insured plans by 1-2% (caps on punitive damages had no impact).  That sounds like a good outcome and should provide encouragement for further tort reform by the states.

However, for fully insured plans (HMOs) there was no decrease in premiums as a result of tort reform.  The authors conclude that HMOs are already doing a good job of monitoring care and avoiding unnecessary activities.

The Congressional Budget Office looked at this study as well as a number of other studies done in the last decade, and have concluded that enacting the four reforms above would likely reduce the total health care costs of the government by 0.5%.

It is not a silver bullet for solving the problems in the US health care system, but is definitely worth pursuing as part of any comprehensive reform.

The view from down under is that this kind of theatre is necessary to govern in the US, which is kind of sad in a way, and kind of scary in another.

One thing is clear, it is not about policy – only politics.  As Ezra Klein pointed out, if McCain had been elected, and a similar plan were in front of Congress (like the one McCain championed in his campaign), would Democrats support it?  Would Republicans?

“The point is made, ‘We don’t waterboard anymore or use extreme interrogation techniques.’ Most of those extreme interrogation techniques and waterboarding were done away with in the Bush administration. They’ve been made officially done away with in this current administration.”

“The Transportation Security Administration created by George Bush is still in action working in our airports; they take care of me every day that I go to an airport.  The Office of the Director of National Intelligence was also created under President Bush, and it is still under President Obama working hard. Our counterterrorism authorities and forces are hard at work. Our law enforcement officials are hard at work. We have gone after the enemy in Afghanistan with 50,000 more troops, more predators are striking al Qaeda and Taliban leaders in Pakistan. We have continued the policies that President Bush put in place with respect to Iraq.

“The bottom line answer is the nation is still at risk. Terrorists are out there. They’re trying to get through. But to suggest that somehow we have become much less safer because of the actions of the administration, I don’t think that’s borne out by the facts.”

Despite Mr Cheney’s rhetoric, Colin Powell recognizes that the US is actually much closer to being safe from Al-Qaeda than it was during Mr Cheney’s administration.

First, the facts.  The Obama administration has reached out to other countries, particularly Muslim countries, in a way that previous administrations have not.  He has already visited Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey.  He will be visiting the world’s largest Muslim country, Indonesia, in March.

These trips are part of a concerted effort to change America’s image abroad, and Obama has been extremely successful at this.  He has restored America’s soft power (for which he received the Nobel Peace Prize).  Perceptions of the US around the world have been enormously improved, particularly in Islamic countries.

The policy of the United States living up to its own values by stopping torture and closing Guantanamo, strongly supported by General Petraeus and other high ranking officers, has been instrumental in this change in perceptions.

Iraq is starting to stabilize, largely due to the surge and other strategies implemented by Robert Gates.  The December 09 quarter saw the lowest US casualty rate of any quarter since the war began in 2003.

Pakistan has been aggressive in pursuing the Taliban within its tribal areas.  With Pakistanis viewing the US more favorably, the Pakistani government is able to take these kinds of initiatives.

In 2009, more Al Qaeda fighters and senior leaders have been killed than in 2008. 

Largely as a result of these efforts, Al Qaeda and fellow organizations have increasingly turned to attacking Muslim civilians.  As these attacks continue, and the perception of the US improves, the number of Muslims supporting Al Qaeda continues to plummet.

As Peter Beinart put it recently:  In countries like Pakistan and Jordan, where al Qaeda keeps slaughtering innocent Muslims, its public support has fallen off a cliff. During the Bush years, the only thing that kept al Qaeda from complete ideological collapse was Muslim hatred of America’s wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, our unblinking support for Muslim dictatorships and for Israel, and our use of torture at places like Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo Bay. Now Obama, by pledging to withdraw U.S. troops from Iraq and close Gitmo, and by eschewing torture … is cutting al Qaeda’s throat.

In short, the US is much closer to winning the war against Al Qaeda now than when Obama took office. 

But apparently, the Republicans would rather have tough talk and less progress.

Having decided not to move here, I moved on in my head to attempting to describe all the countries I’ve been to in a few words.

…

America is brazenly self-confident, often irritatingly cheerful, and utterly naive in a very aggressive way. It carries within itself the full knowledge of its own superiority, as well as a creeping fear that this brings horrible dangers. It’s deeply caring and sympathetic, but lacks empathy for cultures incongruous with its own. In many ways, it is a 19 year old, charging around the world full of passion and idealism while doing everything it can to fill its room with as much stuff as it can fit in there. It covers itself in self-confidence like cheap cologne, and all the while doubt that maybe not everything can be fixed is eating at its insides.

…

Australia is young too, but it’s a rougher kind of young than America. Similar creation stories at similar times, but Australia is so much less idealistic than America. Our creation story has no Independence War, or Civil War or Thanksgiving myth. We made for ourselves myths and heroes out of Ned Kelly and the jolly swagman rather than Washington and Lincoln. Our heroes are people subverting the world around them simply to survive, America’s heroes are idealists who took radical action to make their ideals reality, and subverted reality for a “higher purpose”. America grew a nation out of a rich land, a land of brown loam and mountains, bountiful prairies and huge forests. Australia grew out of red dirt that was dead long before we got there, and forests of gum trees too crooked to build with.

We’re (Australians) a broad, rough, honest people. Irreverent and coarse, blunt and loud. Cynical without bitterness, sarcastic without meanness. Practical with a “that’ll-do” approach to that which we don’t think is that important. A hard creation myth that makes us feel as though we’ve weathered something, a weird cultural love of ‘larrikinism’ and a mass buying into of the myth of ‘mateship’. But buying into those myths makes them real in their outworking, so there’s a kind of glowing pride associated with surviving in a mostly dead country, and a love for the underdog, and a feeling of responsibility to each other as long as you’re ‘mates’. We have a fascination for other places, but never lose sight of our own personal sense of superiority. We’re young but like to think we’re old, and pretend to be less idealistic than we are or want to be. As wonderful as it is to not have to respect something simply because everyone else does, it is sad that we find it hard to respect anything at all. Irreverence as a habit isn’t always the best policy.

Very honest and perceptive descriptions, in my opinion.  Maybe some day, I’ll be able to write that well.

First, the things we can know with certainty.

The global climate system has warmed over the last 100 years.  This is unequivocal, and supported by increases in global air and water temperatures, widespread melting of snow and ice, and rising global average sea level.  Yes there are yearly variations around the trend line, and some years are cooler than the previous year, but the trend is real.  (This data comes from NASA Goddard Institute)

The levels of CO2, methane, and nitrous oxide have increased dramatically in the last 100 years.  CO2 levels have increased roughly 35% over the last 50 years.  Methane has increased 48%, and nitrous oxide has increased 18%.  All of these are substantially above the natural range over the last 650,000 years as determined by ice core analysis.

These increases are due primarily to human activity.  Use of fossil fuels, agriculture, and change in land use are the primary contributors to the increase.

The levels of greenhouse gases are highly correlated with increasing global temperatures – and have been for millennia.  The data below comes from analysis of Antarctic ice cores.

These are facts regardless of whether you or I believe them to be facts.

There are other things we can know with a very high degree of certainty.

Climate models have been around for nearly 50 years, and are continuously getting more accurate as more data arrives.  These models are developed both independently and collaboratively by scientists in many countries.  None of these models are able to predict the current increase in global temperatures and sea levels without taking into account the man-made increases in greenhouse gases.  There is a very high degree of certainty that global warming is the result of human activity.

The big unknown is how much more the climate will change in the future.  As you can imagine, this will depend on the level of greenhouse gases we emit.  Estimates for temperature change by the end of this century range from alarming (1.8°C assuming global population peaks mid century and a rapid shift to clean technologies) to catastrophic (4.0°C if economic growth continues to be driven primarily by fossil fuels).

Despite all the certainty surrounding global warming,  the impact of continued climate change on human endeavours is unknown.  Scientists can estimate impacts on sea levels, precipitation, surface temperatures, and more, but calculating the cost of global warming in economic, social, or environmental terms has so far proven to be very difficult.  As has estimating the cost of avoiding further climate change.

But there is no doubt that global warming is real and will continue for some time.