Over at Downsizing Government, we focused on the following issues this week:

• Another example of why the U.S. Postal Service should be privatized.
• Given the federal government’s continued post-emergency bureaucratic bungling, Congress should devolve responsibility for disaster assistance to state and local governments, private insurance companies, and charities.
• Federal taxpayers helping foot the tab for renovations to a local wine bar? It sounds crazy, but that’s par for the course with HUD’s Community Development Block Grant program.
• Much of the increase in nondefense discretionary spending during the past decade came when the GOP controlled the House, Senate, and White House. So now is the GOP’s chance to start reversing all those Bush-era increases.
• Republicans should use the debt limit vote as an opportunity to press the administration for budgetary reforms that address a potentially ruinous debt burden that has been driven by the profligate spending of both parties.

The origins of the federal government’s statutory debt limit can be traced back to 1917, when the country was borrowing money to finance the Great War. Congress has voted to increase the limit numerous times over the decades, including 10 times since 2001.

The present debt limit is $14.3 trillion, and total outstanding debt subject to the limit currently stands at just under $14 trillion. Given that policymakers don’t have the will to cut spending immediately in order to keep the debt from hitting the limit, a political battle over raising it is unfolding.

The Obama administration is basically warning that congressional (i.e., Republican) intransigence over raising the limit could potentially lead to the federal government defaulting on its debt, because it needs to borrow money in order to make its debt payments. Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner warned Congress that failing to increase the limit would result in “catastrophic economic consequences that would last for decades.” The president’s chief economic adviser, Austan Goolsbee, warned Congress not to “play chicken” over whether to raise the debt limit, as failing to do so would cause “a worse financial economic crisis than anything we saw in 2008… This is not a game. The debt ceiling is not something to toy with.”

Back in 2006, then-Senator Barack Obama apparently wasn’t concerned about the “catastrophic economic consequences” when he voted against raising the debt limit. ABC News recalls Obama’s stated reason for his “no” vote:

The fact that we are here today to debate raising America’s debt limit is a sign of leadership failure,” he said on March 16, 2006. “Leadership means that ‘the buck stops here.’ Instead, Washington is shifting the burden of bad choices today onto the backs of our children and grandchildren. America has a debt problem and a failure of leadership. Americans deserve better. I therefore intend to oppose the effort to increase America’s debt limit.

That’s actually well stated, although we now know that Obama’s own failure of leadership is also “shifting the burden of bad choices today onto the backs of our children and grandchildren.”

The president’s press secretary says that Obama voted against raising the debt limit because the outcome wasn’t in doubt and “to make a point about needing to get serious about fiscal discipline.” While the revelation is as unsurprising as it is cynical, it demonstrates that the debate over raising the debt limit is mainly driven by politics.

I strongly doubt that the Republicans will ultimately take actions that lead to the federal government defaulting on the debt. They’re simply using the debt limit issue to make political hay over the administration’s fiscal failures, just as Obama did when he was in the Senate and fiscal policy was being made by Republicans.

The never-ending political posturing by both parties when it comes to raising the debt limit has caused some commentators and budget analysts to suggest that Congress should just do away with the limit altogether. They argue that the political brinkmanship simply isn’t worth the risk to the country’s economic well-being.

I believe that forcing policymakers to spar publicly over fiscal policy is healthy, especially at a time when analysts generally agree that the country is headed toward an economic catastrophe if Washington’s mounting debt isn’t brought under control. The country’s economic well-being is already at risk, so I don’t see what there is to be gained from scrapping a tool, albeit a politicized one, that focuses needed attention on a serious problem.

A 2005 paper by Prof. Anita Krishnakumar is similarly supportive:

First, the statute is the last remnant of congressional control or accountability over the national debt—and the primary vehicle through which Congress fulfills its constitutional obligations under Article 1, Section 8 to oversee the borrowing and payment of the public debt. Second, the debt limit statute encourages legislators to consider the interests of the general public and future generations, rather than those of special interests, and thus acts as an important institutional check on party and interest group politics.

As this Article details, the general budget process is party- and interest-group dominated, and involves numerous competing concerns and aggregate figures, among which the annual deficit (borrowing) figure and the status of national debt are only one [sic] of many concerns. Within this framework, debt limit increase bills provide an independent and focused opportunity for Congress to step back and consider the consequences of its deficit-spending decisions, to evaluate its fiscal policies, and even to implement fiscal reform if it decides that it has been borrowing too much too fast.

Krishnakumar concludes that although the debt limit requirement is “far from perfect,” the “criticisms leveled against the statute … are both exaggerated and misdirected.”

In sum, the federal government is not going to default on its debt obligations in the coming months because of a failure to raise the debt limit. The real intrigue is the political gamesmanship that a vote to raise the debt limit will engender. In this regard, Republicans should use the vote as an opportunity to press the administration for budgetary reforms that address a potentially ruinous debt burden that has been driven by the profligate spending policies of both parties.

Nicholas Kristof provides “a useful reminder of the limitations of charity and foreign aid” in his New York Times op-ed about Haiti today. “Nearly a year after the earthquake in Haiti,” he notes, “more than one million people are still living in tents and reconstruction has barely begun.”

He emphasizes the importance of “trade, not aid” and of the role of business: “It’s hard to think of a charitable project that will be as beneficial as the Coca-Cola Company’s decision to build up the mango juice industry in Haiti, supporting 25,000 farmers.”

He also cites a seemingly successful microfinance aid project that lends money to poor women in Haiti to begin and expand business ventures by, for example, investing in livestock or growing fruit for sale. It is impossible to evaluate the record of that organization based on the anecdotes Kristof provides, but, while microcredit may for a time alleviate the conditions under which poor recipients live (and be successful at pulling some recipients out of poverty), there is little evidence from its overall record that microcredit effectively reduces poverty. It is certainly not a way to reduce poverty on a widespread or sustainable basis. David Roodman of the Center for Global Development notes, for example, that “microfinance institutions in Haiti only reach perhaps 250,000 people, about 2.5% of the population.” (For a critique of some of the claims of microcredit proponents see Thomas Dichter’s Cato study.)

In line with Kristof’s main argument and with decades of evidence of successful countries around the world, the most effective way to reduce poverty in economically repressed Haiti is by opening its markets and increasing economic freedom. Unfortunately, Haiti’s reconstruction and long-term development plan, according to which the United States and international donors have pledged more than $15 billion, reads like a relic of central planning with virtually no mention of policies that promote economic freedom. Two sentences in the document mention the importance of clarifying land titles. One page mentions the role of the private sector, but it is in regards to its cooperation with the government’s “development centers” that will operate throughout the country to stimulate predetermined industries using government funds and guarantees and for “better redistribution of [the] population.”

We’ve been down this road before. If the Haitian government wishes to avoid disappointment and free itself from dependence on international aid, it needs to rethink its approach to development.

With the start of the 112th Congress, Senate Democrats have offered a set of rule changes, most of which are geared toward the filibuster. Some of these changes, such as guaranteeing the minority at least three amendments, make a great deal of sense. I’ve long thought that the practice of the majority leader (of any party) “filling the amendment tree” did not make for good legislating. And I say that, recalling as a former Senate staffer, the practice made my life easier on numerous occasions.

One part of the package, however, that of ending “secret” holds, strikes me as rather uninformed as to actual Senate practice. First let’s recall that a “hold’ is essentially a method for senators to tell the majority leader that if the leader were to try to move a nomination or piece of legislation by unanimous consent, that Senator would object on the Senate floor. 

There are lots of reasons why senators might put a hold on a bill. They object to the bill and would like to be able to vote “no,” which is impossible when moving bills by unanimous consent (UC). Maybe they’d like to offer an amendment. Or, I know this sounds crazy, maybe they (or their staff) would like time to actually read the bill.

The rules change package does aim at ending “secret” holds, where the senator placing the hold is not publicly known. Again speaking from my own experience of seven years as a Senate committee staffer and having helped passed dozens of bills by UC, I have never once had a problem of figuring out who was behind a hold. In fact, most the time the Senate office in question would call me and let me know what their problem was. The vast majority of the time we were able to address the issue and move forward. Many holds only lasted a few hours. Several offices, such as Senator Coburn’s, actually read every bill that was brought to the floor, and all they wanted was a little time to do so. I can’t see how anyone would have a problem with that.

As to the secret nature of holds, I have yet to see a case where that knowledge didn’t become public. The risk to making it public immediately is that every special interest involved in the bill would swarm upon whoever placed the hold. And that is what removing the “secret” hold is really about: giving special interests further opportunities to pressure senators before they have the time to actually learn the issue and perhaps work out a compromise with their colleagues.

At its core, the hold is simply a courtesy between senators. And courtesy is something I think the Senate needs more of, rather than less. Of course, holds would not matter at all if we just made two simple changes: no more moving bills/​nominations by unanimous consent (have actual votes), and announce at least a week ahead of time which bills will be voted on and have the bill language publicly available.

We all know there are too few good schools and too many lousy ones. The trouble is, we lack a mechanism for reliably scaling up the former and crowding out the latter. Competitive markets perform this service in other fields, from coffee-shops to cell phones. Can the same thing work in education?

To find out, we’ve invited experts from both hemispheres to tell us what their nations have learned from decades of experience with private-school choice. Peje Emilsson founded the largest chain of for-profit private schools in Sweden’s nationwide voucher program. Humberto Santos has studied the academic performance of public schools, independent private schools, and chains of private schools in Chile’s voucher program. Responding to their findings and asking challenging questions will be Education Week journalist Sarah Sparks.

I hope you can join us for this fascinating discussion, and lunch, at noon on January 28th. Click here to register. The sooner we can stop “Waiting for Superman,” the better.

The Current Wisdom is a series of monthly posts in which Senior Fellow Patrick J. Michaels reviews interesting items on global warming in the scientific literature that may not have received the media attention that they deserved, or have been misinterpreted in the popular press.

The Current Wisdom only comments on science appearing in the refereed, peer-reviewed literature, or that has been peer-screened prior to presentation at a scientific congress.

Better Model, Less Warming

Bet you haven’t seen this one on TV: A newer, more sophisticated climate model has lost more than 25% of its predicted warming! You can bet that if it had predicted that much more warming it would have made the local paper.

The change resulted from a more realistic simulation of the way clouds work, resulting in a major reduction in the model’s “climate sensitivity,” which is the amount of warming predicted for a doubling of the concentration of atmospheric carbon dioxide over what it was prior to the industrial revolution.

Prior to the modern era, atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations, as measured in air trapped in ice in the high latitudes (which can be dated year-by-year) was pretty constant, around 280 parts per million (ppm). No wonder CO₂ is called a “trace gas”—there really is not much of it around.

The current concentration is pushing about 390 ppm, an increase of about 40% in 250 years. This is a pretty good indicator of the amount of “forcing” or warming pressure that we are exerting on the atmosphere. Yes, there are other global warming gases going up, like the chlorofluorocarbons (refrigerants now banned by treaty), but the modern climate religion is that these are pretty much being cancelled by reflective “aerosol” compounds that go in the air along with the combustion of fossil fuels, mainly coal.

Most projections have carbon dioxide doubling to a nominal 600 ppm somewhere in the second half of this century, absent no major technological changes (which history tells us is a very shaky assumption). But the “sensitivity” is not reached as soon as we hit the doubling, thanks to the fact that it takes a lot of time to warm the ocean (like it takes a lot of time to warm up a big pot of water with a small burner).

So the “sensitivity” is much closer to the temperature rise that a model projects about 100 years from now – assuming (again, shakily) that we ultimately switch to power sources that don’t release dreaded CO₂ into the atmosphere somewhere around the time its concentration doubles.

The bottom line is that lower sensitivity means less future warming as a result of anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions. So our advice… keep on working on the models, eventually, they may actually arrive at something close puny rate of warming that is being observed

At any rate, improvements to the Japanese-developed Model for Interdisciplinary Research on Climate (MIROC) are the topic of a new paper by Masahiro Watanabe and colleagues in the current issue of the Journal of Climate. This modeling group has been working on a new version of their model (MIROC5) to be used in the upcoming 5^th Assessment Report of the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, due in late 2013. Two incarnations of the previous version (MIROC3.2) were included in the IPCC’s 4^th Assessment Report (2007) and contribute to the IPCC “consensus” of global warming projections.

The high resolution version (MIROC3.2(hires)) was quite a doozy – responsible for far and away the greatest projected global temperature rise (see Figure 1). And the medium resolution model (MIROC3.2(medres)) is among the Top 5 warmest models. Together, the two MIROC models undoubtedly act to increase the overall model ensemble mean warming projection and expand the top end of the “likely” range of temperature rise.

FIGURE 1

Global temperature projections under the “midrange” scenario for greenhouse-gas emissions produced by the IPCC’s collection of climate models. The MIROC high resolution model (MIROC3.2(hires)) is clearly the hottest one, and the medium range one isn’t very far behind.

The reason that the MIROC3.2 versions produce so much warming is that their sensitivity is very high, with the high-resolution at 4.3°C (7.7°F) and the medium-resolution at 4.0°C (7.2°F). These sensitivities are very near the high end of the distribution of climate sensitivities from the IPCC’s collection of models (see Figure 2).

FIGURE 2

Equilibrium climate sensitivities of the models used in the IPCC AR4 (with the exception of the MIROC5). The MIROC3.2 sensitivities are highlighted in red and lie near the upper und of the collection of model sensitivities. The new, improved, MIROC5, which was not included in the IPCC AR4, is highlighted in magenta, and lies near the low end of the model climate sensitivities (data from IPCC Fourth Assessment Report, Table 8.2 and Watanabe et al., 2010).

Note that the highest sensitivity is not necessarily in the hottest model, as observed warming is dependent upon how the model deals with the slowness of the oceans to warm.

The situation is vastly different in the new MIROC5 model. Watanabe et al. report that the climate sensitivity is now 2.6°C (4.7°F) – more than 25% less than in the previous version on the model.[1] If the MIROC5 had been included in the IPCC’s AR4 collection of models, its climate sensitivity of 2.6°C would have been found near the low end of the distribution (see Figure 2), rather than pushing the high extreme as MIROC3.2 did.

And to what do we owe this large decline in the modeled climate sensitivity? According to Watanabe et al., a vastly improved handling of cloud processes involving “a prognostic treatment for the cloud water and ice mixing ratio, as well as the cloud fraction, considering both warm and cold rain processes.” In fact, the improved cloud scheme—which produces clouds which compare more favorably with satellite observations—projects that under a warming climate low altitude clouds become a negative feedback rather than acting as positive feedback as the old version of the model projected.[2] Instead of enhancing the CO2-induced warming, low clouds are now projected to retard it.

Here is how Watanabe et al. describe their results:

A new version of the global climate model MIROC was developed for better simulation of the mean climate, variability, and climate change due to anthropogenic radiative forcing….

MIROC5 reveals an equilibrium climate sensitivity of 2.6K, which is 1K lower than that in MIROC3.2(medres).… This is probably because in the two versions, the response of low clouds to an increasing concentration of CO2 is opposite; that is, low clouds decrease (increase) at low latitudes in MIROC3.2(medres) (MIROC5).[3]

Is the new MIROC model perfect? Certainly not. But is it better than the old one? It seems quite likely. And the net result of the model improvements is that the climate sensitivity and therefore the warming projections (and resultant impacts) have been significantly lowered. And much of this lowering comes as the handling of cloud processes—still among the most uncertain of climate processes—is improved upon. No doubt such improvements will continue into the future as both our scientific understanding and our computational abilities increase.

Will this lead to an even greater reduction in climate sensitivity and projected temperature rise? There are many folks out there (including this author) that believe this is a very distinct possibility, given that observed warming in recent decades is clearly beneath the average predicted by climate models. Stay tuned!

References:

Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, 2007. Fourth Assessment Report, Working Group 1 report, available at http://​www​.ipcc​.ch.

Watanabe, M., et al., 2010. Improved climate simulation by MIROC5: Mean states, variability, and climate sensitivity. Journal of Climate, 23, 6312–6335.

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[1] Watanabe et al. report that the sensitivity of MIROC3.2 (medres) is 3.6°C (6.5°), which is less that what was reported in the 2007 IPCC report. So 25% is likely a conservative estimate of the reduction in warming.

[2] Whether enhanced cloudiness enhances or cancels carbon-dioxide warming is one of the core issues in the climate debate, and is clearly not “settled” science.

[3] Degrees Kelvin (K) are the same as degrees Celsius (C) when looking at relative, rather than absolute temperatures.

A top agenda item for the incoming House Republicans is to immediately start cutting spending. The GOP promised to reduce “nondefense” (or alternatively “nonsecurity”) spending for 2011 to the 2008 level, representing a $100 billion cut. GOP leaders are now being accused of backsliding on that promise, so let’s take a look at the numbers.

The idea is to reduce fiscal 2011 “budget authority” to the level it was in fiscal 2008. The chart shows the growth in nondefense budget authority since 2000. The spike in 2009 is from $265 billion in discretionary spending authorized in the “stimulus” bill.

Congress currently has a “continuing resolution” in place that keeps 2011 spending at about the same level as 2010, as shown in the chart. Thus, the House GOP will need to cut spending for the remainder of this fiscal year by about $55 billion to hit the 2008 level. That is less than $100 billion, but the higher cut number was based on proposed spending by Obama for 2011 that wasn’t enacted. 

The important thing is that Congress needs to start cutting all types of spending right away. We face a fiscal emergency as debt is exploding, and there are many federal spending activities that are damaging to society and the economy. The GOP should cut defense and entitlement spending as well, but nondefense discretionary cuts are a good place to start.

In considering cuts, note that about $136 billion in nondefense discretionary “stimulus” bill money is still sloshing through the government in 2011 and beyond, so spending cuts (unfortunately) won’t starve the bureaucracies as much as liberals might fear.

The chart puts proposed spending cuts in context. House GOP leaders now admit that they spent too much during the past decade, and indeed the chart shows that nondefense discretionary spending jumped $264 billion over the last decade. Much of the increase came when the GOP controlled the House, Senate, and White House, so now is the GOP’s chance to start reversing out those Bush-era increases.

Data note: current stimulus and nondefense discretionary budget authority data are available on pages 13 and 21 of CBO’s August outlook.