Iran Makes Another Proposal

There is a war of words going on in the negotiations with Iran over its nuclear program. Very likely, a war of policies is also going on within Iran.

In the reporting and analysis, there seem to be many implicit assumptions. The assumptions differ with the source. On the one hand, much of the mainstream media in the United States has assumed that Iran's goal is to have a nuclear weapon. On another hand, there is a strain of analysis that assumes Iran's nuclear program is totally innocent. My own judgement, and all of these are judgements, are that Iran wants a nuclear program that will allow it to build nuclear weapons in a relatively short time, and that if that program allows it to build a civilian nuclear power program as well, so much the better.

Further, I believe that there is a range of opinion within the Iranian government, from those who would go directly to building nuclear weapons to those who feel that nuclear weapons are against the teachings of Islam but who find the scientific achievement of having a nuclear program a source of national pride. These opinions are complicated by a desire not to accede to the countries that have behaved colonially toward Iran in the past and a conflict within the government as to who is truly practicing the ideals of the 1979 revolution.

It is possible to find support for my conclusions, but not strong support, because of Iran's intricate and secretive governmental processes. The same is true of the other viewpoints, although I do believe that both the "run for a bomb" and "Iran is innocent" scenarios are undermined by available evidence.

Within that context, today's proposal by Iran looks like an attempt to buy time and perhaps to conclude a deal. Various US officials, most recently Defense Secretary Robert Gates, have commented that sanctions may be next, and the Senate is considering a vote on sanctions. Israel continues to make noises about its security, meaning bombing Iran. So Iran must reply.

Its reply is not very different from what it has proposed before:

Manochehr Mottaki said Iran agreed with a UN deal proposed in October in which up to 1,200kg of its uranium would be exchanged for fuel rods to power its research reactor.

"We accepted the proposal in principle," he said.

"We suggested in the first phase we give you 400kg of 3.5 per cent enriched uranium and you give us the equivalent in 20pc uranium."

Reports differ as to where the swap would take place, perhaps on the Iranian Kish Island.

This seems to be a different proposal than an earlier Iranian proposal, which required all the fuel elements for the Tehran Research Reactor (referred to as "the equivalent in 20pc uranium") first, with Iran's 3.5% enriched uranium to be delivered in later instalments. So perhaps there is some movement. Iran has reason to be suspicious too and wants to hedge its bets.

The fact that this offer was made at the end of the week supports the idea that it is for buying time. The question is whether that time is for further enrichment or an attempt to deal with differences within the Iranian government. Both are possible; the enrichment continues, although it has been slowed during the fall.

The early US response is not positive, but the official response has not yet been formulated:

A senior Obama administration official said Mottaki's remarks appeared to fall short of demands.

"Iran's proposal today does not appear to be consistent with the fair and balanced draft agreement proposed by the IAEA in consultation with the United States, Russia, and France," the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity because the U.S. has yet to formulate an official response to the development.

Mohamed ElBaradei, who was an intermediary in his post as IAEA Director, has urged patience with Iran.

COP15

Now in Copenhagen towards the end of the day in the Bella Center, where the COP15 climate meetings are taking place. What's most interesting right is outside of the Center. A large protest downtown is apparently moving towards the Center. Should be fun.

There hasn't been a lot yet accomplished, at least on the other side of closed door sessions. Standing in the cold in line for my badge, I read through the draft text of the Working Group (.pdf) and pretty much anything of dispute remains in brackets, which is how a treaty text says that some part of it is still under dispute. Targets, timetables, money, demands on developing nations, demands on developed nations. All in brackets.

Bits and Pieces - December 11, 2009

The residents of Cuttyhunk Island are looking forward to having a windfarm in their backyard.

Why do Republicans hate the United States?

Equity extraction as the reason for the decline of journalism in the United States.

Despite the rightwing noise machine, voters support the climate and clean energy bill.

The Little Black Whatever

I don't know why people do this.

Since 1869, Black Friday has meant

A precipitous drop in a financial market . The original Black Friday occurred on September 24, 1869, when prospectors attempted to corner the gold market.

Since (perhaps) 1966, the phrase has been used in another way.

Black Friday is the Friday following Thanksgiving Day in the United States, which is the beginning of the traditional Christmas shopping season.

Supposedly it's the day that retailers go "into the black," meaning making a profit for the year.

I'm sorry, but for me and many other people, "Black Friday" has depressing connotations, particularly since our recent financial crash. And there are others.

Store aisles were jammed. Escalators were nonstop people. It was the first day of the Christmas shopping season and despite the economy, folks here went on a buying spree. ... "That's why the bus drivers and cab drivers call today 'Black Friday,'" a sales manager at Gimbels said as she watched a traffic cop trying to control a crowd of jaywalkers. "They think in terms of headaches it gives them." [from Wikipedia]

I'm probably hopelessly out of date, but today I found out about another black repurposing.

Nearly everyone in the film industry will be reaching for their BlackBerrys or iPhones this morning for an e-mail that will shape the film industry next year. Known as the Black List, this annual ranking of the year's most-talked-about unproduced screenplays has the power to catapult an unknown screenwriter into instant talks with a major studio.

Up until today, I thought that a Hollywood blacklist had to do with the craven submission of the studios to Joseph McCarthy's witch hunting in the early 1950s.

I've worked for an organization that liked to repurpose acronyms, sometimes by stretching a name so that it would fit an already-understood acronym. The user of the neo-acronym would strut and preen his wit and agility in confusing the rest of us.

I don't know if that is what has motivated this black repurposing, although my sense is that the users of the neologisms do seem to radiate that self-regard.

We don't need more confusion. Stop it.

North Korea "Reforms" Its Currency

US media aren't much covering this story; what we're getting from the major outlets is that US envoy Stephen Bosworth was there and talks seem to have gone favorably. Here's the Washington Post, which completely ignores the much bigger story: they're changing the currency.

North Korea, for a very short time, allowed the rise of a few real markets; not the financial kind, the kind where people buy and sell stuff. Last summer, they started cracking down on the biggest one in Pyongyang and didn't allow foreigners in, as they had earlier.

Now the government is revaluing the currency and requiring that all the old currency be exchanged in less than a week. They are also limiting the amount of currency that can be exchanged by an individual, which means that many people's savings will be destroyed.

Less currency in circulation means less opportunity for those markets. It will also hit people who have been capitalistically making money from them.

North Koreans are reported to be frantically spending the money they won't be able to exchange. There are also reports of protests and violence, and a beefing-up of the security forces.

Climate Bits and Pieces - December 10, 2009

The chief executive officer of the American Association for the Advancement of Science responds to Sarah Palin's WaPo op-ed.

Kofi Annan on why Copenhagen is important.

Some beautiful places that will change as the climate changes. I have mixed feelings about this: some of the places will change, but we don't know how. Lake Baikal, for instance. But it's not going to disappear any time in the next century or so.

One of the denialists' funders.

And then there's the third Viscount Monckton of Brenchley. He and his supporters seem to enjoy using long titles, of which this is one variation. His basic argument is that there is no such thing as global warming, but there is a world-wide communist conspiracy that is using this fiction to impose a world communist government. It's hard to know whether he is serious. His qualifications seem thin; note that "he has advised on" but we don't learn what degrees he has earned to underpin that advising. And the students who are demonstrating in favor of that communist world government? According to him, they're Nazis.

Chempedak

Danish

Quick! How many correlations can you make between a danish (as in prune danish) and anything having to do with climate? You have five minutes... to write an article for any number of dailies.

Iran Sanctions?

The reports that the Senate was going to vote for sanctioning Iran during the dark of last night seem to have been false. Or perhaps sounding the alarm kept it from happening.

The rush to sanctions seems to be related more to emotion (We'll show Iran!) and less to strategy. Here are three strategic thinkers on sanctions for Iran: sanctions will be difficult to apply and probably will give the opposite result from what we want. That is, if we want Iran to come to an agreement on oversight of its nuclear program and don't want it to go for a nuclear weapon.

Negotiations with Iran will not be easy, but it would be a mistake to assume in advance, as most of the U.S. press and punditry appeared to do in the days leading up to the October 1 opening of negotiations in Geneva, that negotiations will fail.

Those eager for sanctions (or sanction legislation) should also consider that Iran's position will be strengthened if sanctions fail.

Gary Sick participated in a gaming exercise to examine the players' strategies. He concluded

The lesson was not so much that Iran could "win" this game so easily; it was that the US and its allies were unable even to imagine any alternatives.

Those who would have sanctions are pushing us into a box.

Kareem Sadjadpour, of the Carnegie Endowment, offers some insight into Iran's internal unrest and how it impacts the nuclear negotiations. It is very likely the recognition of the inability to respond caused by this unrest that is the reason the Obama administration has put this issue on the back burner.

All three links are meaty and well worth reading.

Climate Bits and Pieces - December 9, 2009

Even if you take away everything the scientists who wrote the hacked e-mails have contributed, you still have overwhelming evidence of anthropogenic global warming.

Marc Ambinder fisks Sarah Palin's Washington Post op-ed.

More on that Tamiflu study.

I can barely keep up with Climate Progress, which has a lot of stuff worth reading. RealClimate too.

Bits and Pieces - December 9, 2009

TSA posts screening procedures as part of an online solicitation. Contract solicitations seem to exist in a different mental space than other information. India has given away nuclear weapons information this way, too. Hey, if they're going to work for us, they need to know what they'll be doing, right?

But the public has no right to know what the clinical trials show about Tamiflu's effectiveness.

The 1st world nations with the highest levels of belief in God, and the greatest religious observance are also the ones with all the signs of societal dysfunction. These correlations are truly stunning. They are not "barely significant" or marginal in any way. Many, such as those between popular religiosity and teenage abortions and STDs have correlation coefficients over 0.9 and the overall correlation with the SSS is 0.7 with the US included and 0.5 without. From here.

Pigs Fly! Wall Street Journal Drops The Use Of "Death Tax"

Jon Stewart Calls Out Gretchen Carlson For "Dumbing Herself Down"

Those last two are small indications that we may be moving out of the era of nonsense.

Why Nonsense Can So Easily Be Propagated

Tom Friedman:

Yes, the climate-denier community, funded by big oil, has published all sorts of bogus science for years — and the world never made a fuss. That, though, is no excuse for serious climatologists not adhering to the highest scientific standards at all times.

He's correct, of course. The observation that few have made a fuss about big oil's support of deniers is correct. He is also correct that serious climatologists should be adhering to the highest standards.

But why, then, does he so casually write off all that bogus science? If you're not a serious climatologist and, instead, say, a hereditary peer with no scientific training, you can say any damn thing and have it published with the same implicit endorsement by the media?

Nonsense

The business about the hacked e-mails is dredging up all the nonsense that has been spread around about global warming. But it is also reminding me how much nonsense we’ve all swallowed for a very long time.

Lyndon Johnson thought we could have “guns and butter” during the Vietnam war. Or thought he could convince us that we could. But the draft continued, and not only were young men faced with the prospect of guns and no butter, those guns just might take their lives. Nixon eliminated the draft, so that the illusion of guns and butter could become more plausible to more people. There are other reasons for having a volunteer army, but most of us, who don’t have a family member in the military, have become more disconnected from the waging of war, which thus becomes easier.

Politicians have always wanted to tell us that we can have what we want without having to pay for it. Ronald Reagan, Newt Gingrich, and other Republicans pushed the idea that the lower the tax rates, the more taxes would be collected. That result depended on numerous assumptions that appear not to be true. It did make an effective campaign message, especially when combined with the message that the government was wasting your taxes anyway. This left out the utility of collective action on roads, communications, electrical transmission, schools, and any number of other things that a large and complex society needs. And those same politicians felt that any amount of spending on defense-related items was necessary and legitimate. So defense is the largest part of our national budget, while civilian infrastructure decays.

Many people now believe that lowering taxes will give us ponies and drown the ugly government in the bathtub, and that this will be a good thing. They have been told that for three decades now, by people in that same government, so it must be true, never mind the contradiction. They join the hysterical tea party movement to make their feelings known.

The Clinton administration was passive; instead of actively propagating nonsense, it remained inert when opportunities arose, like the end of the Soviet Union. This allowed the free-marketeers to raid what was left of that agglomeration and removed attention from the fact that Russia’s people and nuclear weapons continued to exist. It also allowed a celebration of the unipolar moment to overtake good sense in relations with most other countries while sub-national threats grew.

The Bush administration was the most active in marketing nonsense. It doesn’t much matter whether this came about because of a president who loved nonsense and fart jokes or because large corporations were running wild with the messages they felt were necessary to their future profit or because Karl Rove thought that it was a good idea to encourage a know-nothing Republican base. Nonsense was what we got, and, even if you tried to plug your ears and think, it corrupts your mind. Eight years of that.

I’d like to think that we’re coming out of that mass stupidity. Like any detox, it’s going to take time. The media fell prey to it, which is why so many of us in the blogosphere have so much bad to say about the MSM. It’s not clear that they are recovering; James Fallows, of the MSM, produced a series of blog posts about the irresponsible news coverage of President Obama’s trip to China and today compares the New York Times’s and Washington Post’s coverage of the climate change “controversy.” He reports that the Times actually describes the sides as "’decades of peer-reviewed science" and politically-motivated opposition,” whereas the Post provides the familiar “critics say”, as if Sarah Palin knew what she was talking about. I don’t see much of the MSM following Fallows’s lead, and I am looking forward to seeing whether he and The Atlantic feel that his observations are worthy of a full article.

It may be postmodernism with a vengeance. Stanley Fish pens an appreciation of Sarah Palin’s book; it’s an autobiography, he says, and it doesn’t matter whether an autobiography is true or not but whether it represents its writer. Or something like that. Fish is, of course, a postmodernist of the left and also a professor of law, according to the Times blog. Wikipedia identifies him as a literary theorist, which is the way I had thought of him. It seems naïve not to consider that Palin might have had other motives in writing the book than simply expressing her essence, but I’m not a literary theorist.

Or we learn that Moscow hopes to lessen its snowfall by cloud seeding. I thought that most people knew that cloud seeding was a scam, but apparently not the Los Angeles Times. Or maybe they just thought that it was a good story, bringing to light the feelings of a number of Russian scientists and politicians in the postmodern mode. And maybe it can overcome global warming!

Speaking of the Russians, I can’t figure out why a conservative European commentator would swallow the Russian line on the Baltics to try to discredit the Soviet Union. Or something. I’m not good at all those twists and turns. Deconstruction here.

We’ve been stupefied by the idea that health insurance from employers is a “benefit,” when its cost is balanced by what you don’t get in wages. That was why it was started back in the days of wartime wage controls, but hey!

And now we know that yes indeed, Osama bin Laden was at Tora Bora when we called off the chase. I still don’t know why, and Donald Rumsfeld doesn’t seem to be saying. We also know that ACORN is not a threat to the republic, but it’s achieved symbolic stature at the tea parties, so we’ll probably hear more about its supposed wrongdoings.

Debate goes on forever in the Senate over the health care reform bill, and apparently an AIPAC-sponsored bill for sanctions against Iran will be quietly passed tonight unless one senator can find some spine (M.J. Rosenberg, Stephen Walt). Congress is a rich source of these contradictions and learned ignorance, combined with that lack of spine. Legislating under the best of circumstances may be about as pretty as sausage-making, but what we’ve got right now is worse. Although the Senate did duck the Stupak bullet today.

And then there are the amplifiers of the nonsense, not to mention what is happening to Christianity.

Paul Krugman tries to figure out why

Nothing gets me as many crazed emails and comments as any reference to climate change. The anti-global-warming people are just filled with hate for anyone who suggests that maybe, just maybe, the vast majority of scientists are right.

I've always believed that policy should be based on sound science, not politics. Mnmh, yeah. Me too. Like that the past decade is the warmest on record.

This is just a sampling from today. Tomorrow there will be another load. We have too many real problems to spend time refuting nonsense. In science, we talk about the signal-to-noise ratio. If we’re going to solve our problems, we need more signal, less noise.

Climate Bits and Pieces - December 7, 2009

There's a lot being written about the climate summit in Copenhagen. Here are some pieces I found particularly insightful or useful. I'll continue this feature for the week.

James Hansen is raging that cap-and-trade isn't as good as a carbon tax, and therefore we should give up on the cap-and-trade bill. I have to admit I haven't followed this controversy all that closely. Cap-and-trade seems to have worked well for other emissions, and, as for the health reform bill, I think that something in generally the right direction is better than nothing. But Paul Krugman says that Hansen is wrong; that the two schemes should produce the same economic result. But (ahem) while Krugman is right that some physical scientists have to reinvent others' wheels, not all of us feel that urge.

Fifty-six newspapers in 45 countries are printing this editorial today on their front pages, urging fast and big action on climate change. Looks like The Miami Herald is the only one in the US.

India, as usual, is doing its own thing relative to climate change and making sure that the rest of the world has the opportunity to appreciate its stand. Here's some background on India's approach. India is also setting up a network of 220 scientists at 20 institutions within India to develop an “independent and credible research capacity” to counterbalance the “sensationalism going on in the name of climate science.” It hopes to have an independent assessment by late 2010.

In addition to the stolen e-mails, a climate researcher in Canada has experienced a break-in at his office that seems to have targeted data.

Bits and Pieces - December 7, 2009

This article seems to sum up all that's wrong with combining personal convenience, technological advancement, and an ethos of removing any consideration of societal side-effects. They've been selling cell phones this way since the early 1960s, and now we have to deal with the consequences of texting while driving.

Samuelson gets it right, then undercuts himself in the last two paragraphs.

The wrong-headed policies of the Bush years begin to flower. This is what you get when you declare a crusade against Islam. Sometimes policies take a long time to work out, as did Teddy Roosevelt's with Japan.

I thought about doing something like this in my Christmas letter, having received some right-wing e-mails during the year. Then I chickened out and just wrote about people.

Turkey's Prime Minister, , is in Washington this week. Marc Lynch gives some good background.

Bits and Pieces - December 6, 2009

If you feel like you've been reading too much shouting on your computer screen, this is for you. I do enjoy that poem, and what it's about is why I love my roadrunner.

It has long seemed to me that too much of environmentalism is pietistic. Mike Tidwell, the executive director of the Chesapeake Climate Action Network, takes on that individualistic attitude in a WaPo op-ed today. Part of the problem, as in so many things, is that we've been hearing the rightwing pietistic, individualistic propaganda for almost thirty years now, with not enough pushback.

Speaking of which, Jared Diamond suggests that perhaps industry is part of the larger environmental action that Tidwell sounds like he'd like to see.

Joby Warrick interviews Muhamed ElBaradei. Not much new here.

Some of Iran's religious leaders urge others to cool it.

The response, in case your winger relatives are bombarding you with Ted Petruna's claim that political correctness is giving the country to the terrorists.

Isn't This Called Facebook?

Monkeys Recognize Their Pals in Photos

The Roadrunner Returns! - Updated

Three years ago, a roadrunner showed up at my house. I was delighted, of course, and did what I could to persuade her to stay. A heavy snow helped to motivate her, and she has shown up intermittently since. (More posts here, here, here, here, and here.)

I didn't see her through the summer. Yesterday and today are the coldest days so far this year. This afternoon, she was back.

Now, you may say this could be another roadrunner, but she went right to the sheltered place where I fed her.

I'm delighted.

The photo is from an earlier visit.

Update (12/05/09): There were four, er, deposits right in the spot where I used to put the food dish. There is a dish there now with a sardine in it. Talk about effective interspecies communication!

Major News for the Copenhagen UNFCCC Summit

The White House released a statement an hour or so ago saying that Pres. Obama will be in Copenhagen on the final day of the meetings, December 18th, rather than on the 9th. This is hugely significant in itself. Further, this is the major part of the statement:

This week, the President discussed the status of the negotiations with Prime Minister Rudd, Chancellor Merkel, President Sarkozy, and Prime Minister Brown and concluded that there appears to be an emerging consensus that a core element of the Copenhagen accord should be to mobilize $10 billion a year by 2012 to support adaptation and mitigation in developing countries, particularly the most vulnerable and least developed countries that could be destabilized by the impacts of climate change. The United States will pay its fair share of that amount and other countries will make substantial commitments as well. In Copenhagen, we also need to address the need for financing in the longer term to support adaptation and mitigation in developing countries. Providing this assistance is not only a humanitarian imperative – it’s an investment in our common security, as no climate change accord can succeed if it does not help all countries reduce their emissions. [my highlighting]

One of the central obstacles has been financing for adaptation and mitigation efforts in the most vulnerable countries (vulnerable most often because poor). All of a sudden, we have a real possibility of a major agreement coming out of Copenhagen. It's about time.

All The News...

I happened to catch a part of President Obama's town hall meeting this morning, at the bank while I was talking to a friend, and Obama seemed to be talking about the "smart grid" that his administration has gotten Congress to provide a first installment of funding for.

This is really important: a smart grid for the national distribution of electrical power across America will encourage wind and solar energy by making it easier to shift power around and for individuals to sell power to their electrical companies. It will prevent the massive power outages we've been having every few years. It will save energy. It will provide jobs in the building and probably open up new ones.

It is the electrical equivalent of President Eisenhower's national highway program. Getting it underway is one of Obama's significant achievements.

There's been a lot of whining about Obama's lack of achievement so far. So the national news outlets might be looking for achievements, you know, on the basis of that objectivity they are so proud of?

Here's how the New York Times's Sheryl Gay Stolberg reported it.