Arizona's Own Espresso Pundit

Riske Business

Last month when the Audit Bureau of Circulations released its semi-annual report on newspaper circulation, I wrote a post called "Why Can't they Just Be Honest?"  Former Arizona Capitol Times reporter Phil Riske wrote a comment to that story in which he said:

You're obsessed. Were you hit in the head by a newspaper as a small child?

Actually no, I wasn't his on the head by a newspaper--I was hit in the head by a boot once, but I totally deserved it. 

I cover the newspaper industry because the newspaper industry refuses to cover itself.  On the day the circulation statistics were released, the Republic led with this story in the business section.

Is the hotel slump a real story?  Of course, and it was really well done.  But the slump in tourism and the industry's response to it is nothing compared to the meltdown that is occurring in the newspaper industry. 

Yet the Republic refuses to cover its own travails and when it does so, actually covers them up.  Here's how they manipulated the last two circulation disclosures. 

Frankly, I've done a lot more than simply cover the newspaper industry's decline.  I've been in front of that decline for years.  Maybe it's my accounting background combined with my outsider point of view, but over three years ago when Goldman Sachs was telling newspaper executives that content was simply going to migrate to the web, I was sounding the warning that the web can't support the current newspaper cost structure.  Here's another example.

Then two years ago when the Tribune announced that it was going to be delivered free, I had this to say.

Frankly, it's hard to see how the Tribune survives for another year.  It has a mainstream media cost structure and New Times distribution structure.  Subscription totals will continue to plummet as individual subscriptions expire.

The transition to a free paper will serve as a double whammy.  Advertising rates are built on a multiple of paid subscriptions.  As the subscription number falls, the advertising rate collapses exponentially.  Additionally, advertisers don't value a free newspaper as much as they do a traditional subscription paper, so the overall multiple will fall even faster. 

The Tribune, with a free daily distribution of some 70,000 units, is now the functional equivalent of the State Press.   But the State Press, of course, is written by Journalism Students who are hoping to leverage their experience into a $9 an hour internship with the Republic.   My guess is that the Tribune doesn't enjoy a similar cost structure. 

This is no temporary setback; the Tribune no longer has a viable business model. 

The Tribune's Lee Templar responded in the comments section that my analysis was "hogwash."  Of course my analysis was right on.  Check out this recent post mortem by the Arizona Capitol Times' Matt Bunk.

The East Valley Tribune’s demise was swift; during the past three years, the company went from an 83,000-circulation daily newspaper that was adding staff and trying to expand its coverage across the Valley to a free paper distributed on racks three days per week.

Since the beginning of 2008, more than 40 percent of its staff was fired, pages of news were eliminated and what was once a proud broadsheet became a tabloid.

The changes resulted in drastically reduced revenue figures. Freedom Communications reported its Arizona operations garnered revenue of $70.2 million in 2007, $53.3 million in 2008 and $17.5 million so far in 2009. The bankruptcy filings also show Freedom’s Arizona division hasn’t been profitable for the past two years.

So that's why I cover the decline of the newspaper industry--it's an important story; the papers refuse to cover it themselves and frankly, my analysis has been years ahead of newspaper management or wall street.

See, that boot probably actually did me some good. 
 

The Sound of Silence

It's been 72 hours since "Climategate" became an international story and despite the fact that one of the University of Arizona's most prominent researchers is at the heart of an international scandal, there has been exactly zero coverage in the local Mainstream Media.  (If you don't know about the story, start here and then work your way back up.)

Well, it's not exactly true that there has been "zero" coverage.  I Googled "Malcolm Hughes" to see if the local media had picked up on the story and found that KOLD in Tucson did a story on Hughes just yesterday.  Incredibly, the story cited Hughes' work without any mention of the unfolding scandal.  Is Hughes work credible?  The emails that have been made public make a compelling case that Hughes has been part of a group that is manipulating data and stifling peer review in order to justify and maintain their pre-conceived notions about climate change. 

In fact, when you Google "Malcolm Hughes" you will find the KOLD story plus 1,052 stories about the unfolding scandal.  So despite the fact that Hughes is local and that Arizona journalists have been quoting him for years, Arizona newspaper readers have no idea what has happened--and KOLD viewers can be excused for assuming that nothing has happened.

Here's a great example of a story by the Star's Tom Beal.  The story is only a week old and tells us how the story of Global Warming can be understood though Malcolm Hughes' work.  So how about an update Tom?  After all, Hughes is one of the most prominent professors at the University of Arizona and you cited his work approvingly as recently as last week.  How about making it 1053 stories and one of them can be local. 

Pretty soon I'm going to start to believe that the local environmental coverage is skewed and reporters leave out information that doesn't fit their pre-conceived narrative.  Golly, that would be shocking.

Meanwhile, while the Mainstream media covers up the story, the populace has realized that "Hide the Decline" is a defining moment in the climate change saga.  I think you will enjoy this.

UA Story Goes National

If you are not up to speed on what is being called "Climategate," you would do well to read my previous post.  The emails that I highlighted in the previous post have proven to be key to the entire scandal and UA's Malcolm Hughes is right in the middle of them.  The scandal has three prongs--it appears that the researchers:  manipulated their data, hijacked the peer review process and violated the Freedom of Information Act. 

Here's a link to what the Wall Street Journal considered to be some of the key emails.  And here's the accompanying WSJ Editorial.

The Mainstream media has treated Malcolm Hughes like a prophet.  Here's a great example from the Arizona Daily Star.  This incident will be a great test of the MSM's ability to overcome cognitive dissonance and group think.  I'm sure that the Star's Tom Beal and Tony Davis are just SURE that Malcolm Hughes' work is true--despite the mounting controversy over whether some of that work is fraudulent.  But will the Star acknowledge to the controversy?  Unlikely.  

Academic Fraud at the University of Arizona? Updated to Include the Smoking Gun.

By now you have probably heard about this bombshell.

The biggest news story of the day is one that has barely begun to break and will continue to reverberate for months or years to come. Someone hacked into a computer at the University of East Anglia's Hadley Climatic Research Centre, one of the main centers of anthropogenic global warming research. The hacker downloaded 62 megabytes of data from the server, consisting of around 1,000 emails and a variety of other documents. He uploaded them to an FTP server, where they were available to the public, apparently, for only a few hours.

I'm not all that familiar with the Scientific Method, but I'm very familiar with running political campaigns and the emails have the look and feel of James Carvil's War Room. 

One email in particular is getting a lot of attention because it seems to show climate scientists manipulating the data to achieve a desired result--classic political spin.  Here's a key line.

I've just completed Mike's Nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (ie from 1981 onwards) amd from 1961 for Keith's to hide the decline.

Click here to read the full email.

"Mike's nature trick" appears to be a reference to Michael Mann's now famously debunked "Hockey Stick" graph.    I don't usually weigh in on national stories, but this one has a local connection--one of the researchers who participated in this email exchange in which they discuss using a "trick" to "hide" the decline is Malcolm Hughes who is the "meso-climatologist and Regents' Professor of Dendrochronology* in the Laboratory for Tree-Ring Research at the University of Arizona."

I'm sure that Malcolm Hughes and his friends are a true believers and would be shocked that people will look at the these thousands of emails and conclude that he has been part of a massive research fraud. But even the most charitable reading of "using Mike's trick" to "hide the decline" shows that Hughes and his associates are engaging in politics instead of research--and with the amount of money that they have received from the federal government, their deceptions seem to surpass mere politics and PR and have moved into outright fraud. 

Footnote:  Will "Dendrochronology" Go the way of Phrenology?

Our own Mr. Hughes is a "Dendrochronologist."   That means that he studies tree rings to learn about climate history.  Powerline has an interesting analysis of the emails behind one of the tree ring paper that turned out to have used bad data, and one of the emails questions the basic premises behind what I predict will turn out to be a pseudoscience.

This is clearly not some kook who wants to convince an engineer about a perpetual motion machine.  The email is written by a Ph. D. in environmental plant physiology who has some basic questions about "Dendrochronology".  The researchers decide that the best response was to ignore the email and its follow up.  Here's the professor's question.

As an environmental plant physiologist, I have followed the long debate starting with Mann et al (1998) and through to Kaufman et al (2009). As time has progressed I have found myself more concerned with the whole scientific basis of dendroclimatology. In particular;

1) The appropriateness of the statistical analyses employed
2) The reliance on the same small datasets in these multiple studies
3) The concept of "teleconnection" by which certain trees respond to the "Global Temperature Field", rather than local climate
4) The assumption that tree ring width and density are related to temperature in a linear manner.

Whilst I would not describe myself as an expert statistician, I do use inferential statistics routinely for both research and teaching and find difficulty in understanding the statistical rationale in these papers. As a plant physiologist I can say without hesitation that points 3 and 4 do not agree with the accepted science.

There is a saying that "extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof". Given the scientific, political and economic importance of these papers, further detailed explanation is urgently required.

Yours sincerely,
Dr. Don Keiller.

Those seem like really good questions.  In fact, question number three seems really obvious.  What makes us think that the tree ring width is based on historic global climate rather than the local climate?

Frankly, it seems like the reporters who coverDr. Hughes understand the, shall we say, "ephemeral" nature of his research. 

Bristlecones have long been the gold standard for dendrochronologists — researchers who tease scientific information from the number and width of rings deposited annually by growing trees.

The emails make it clear just how much "teasing" it takes to get the right answer.

I think Professor Hughes should provide the answer to Dr. Keiller's questions as part of the package in which he explains why he didn't blow the whistle when he found out that his fellow researchers were using "Mike's nature trick" to "hide the decline".

As for the Arizona reporters who have been quoting Malcolm Hughes findings as Gospel all these years...maybe it's time for them to ask a few questions of their own.

Update:  Here's the Smoking Gun. 

The emails show that the researchers are manipulating their data in an overt attempt to bolster predetermined conclusions. I pointed out earlier that UA's Malcolm Hughes was copied on one of the emails in which a researcher was "using a trick to hide the decline."

Check out this astonishing email from the UA's Gary Funkhouser. It is so devastating that I want to print it in its entirety.  

From: Gary Funkhouser <gary@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>
To: k.briffa@xxxxxxxxx.xxx
Subject: kyrgyzstan and siberian data
Date: Thu, 19 Sep 1996 15:37:09 -0700

Keith,

Thanks for your consideration. Once I get a draft of the central
and southern siberian data and talk to Stepan and Eugene I'll send
it to you.

I really wish I could be more positive about the Kyrgyzstan material,
but I swear I pulled every trick out of my sleeve trying to milk
something out of that. It was pretty funny though - I told Malcolm
what you said about my possibly being too Graybill-like in evaluating
the response functions - he laughed and said that's what he thought
at first also. The data's tempting but there's too much variation
even within stands. I don't think it'd be productive to try and juggle
the chronology statistics any more than I already have - they just
are what they are (that does sound Graybillian). I think I'll have
to look for an option where I can let this little story go as it is.

Not having seen the sites I can only speculate, but I'd be
optimistic if someone could get back there and spend more time
collecting samples, particularly at the upper elevations.

Yeah, I doubt I'll be over your way anytime soon. Too bad, I'd like
to get together with you and Ed for a beer or two. Probably
someday though.

Cheers, Gary
Gary Funkhouser
Lab. of Tree-Ring Research
The University of Arizona

"America's most potent advocate of limited government,"

Wow, check out what Conservative columnist George Will had to say about the Goldwater Institute.

In 2006, long before there was an Obama administration determined to impose a command-and-control federal health-care system, a young orthopedic surgeon walked into the Goldwater Institute here with an idea. The institute, America's most potent advocate of limited government, embraced Eric Novack's idea for protecting Arizonans from health-care coercion. In 2008, Arizonans voted on Novack's proposed amendment to the state's Constitution:

Blind Carbon Copying

Our grandfathers were builders.  Our fathers were maintainers and we, alas are dismantlers. 

Theodore Roosevelt looked at the isthmus of Panama and envisioned a canal. Then Roosevelt looked at the arid west with its raging rivers and envisioned dams and irrigation.  That's why we can live here.  It's why Phoenix isn't like Egypt--400 miles long and a mile wide, lifeless desert cut by the thin blue ribbon of the Nile

Then men like Carl Hayden, Morris Udall, John Rhodes and Barry Goldwater looked at Arizona and realized that it has plenty of water--it's just in the wrong place.  They envisioned a project that would move 1.3 million acre feet of Colorado River water over a distance of 300 miles, with a rise of 3,000 feet.

Do you know how much power it takes to move 1.3 million acre feet of water up 3,000 feet and across 300 miles?  It takes an entire power plant.  Our Grandfathers who built the canal and the power plant also realized that they could use Navajo and Hopi coal to power that plant and give the tribes a revenue source for generations to come. 

Today's "leaders" want to close the plant--We've gone from "envisioning" to "building" to "maintaining" to "dismantling" in four generations.  And each generation seems to find a novel way to screw the Indians. 

In yesterday's post, I pointed out the irony of Representative Tom Chabin railing against Carbon despite representing a district whose main industry is coal power production.  Today, I point the finger more widely.

Sure, some have argued that we could tear down the Navajo generating station and replace it with a solar plant.  Those who make that argument don't understand that a 2,200 Megawatt solar plant would cost $9 billion and still only have 30% capacity. 

If you want to understand the magnitude of the cost of tearing down the Navajo Generating Station, watch this five minute video by CAP President Susan Bitter-Smith. 

After you watch it, ask your self what your grandfather would think about it.

Post Script:  While it's obvious that our political leaders lack the gravitas of previous generations, what about our journalists?

In early November I pointed out the Republic's use of inflammatory and inaccurate caption on the photograph of the Navajo Generating Station. 

Then, last Friday, the Republic ran another article on Arizona's carbon production that focused on the Navajo plant and was based on this statement.

Carbon dioxide contributes to poor air quality and is a component of pollution that can cause respiratory illnesses.

The Carbon debate is the most pressing environmental issue of our time and that sentence was written by the Republic's environmental reporter and yet Shaun McKinnon got that sentence--and thus the story it undergirds--completely wrong.

I'm not saying it's wrong in some sort of Global Warming Denier kind of way.  I'm saying that every environmental scientist will tell you it's wrong.   You might even say there's a "consensus" that it's wrong.

Carbon dioxide goes straight into the atmosphere.  It is not an ambient air pollutant, so it does not "contribute to poor air quality" and it is not a "component of pollution that can cause respiratory illnesses".  The entire carbon debate is limited to carbon's effect on humanity through its impact on the global climate.  There is obviously a lot of good liturature on the topic, but here's a good start.

There was a time when reporters knew as much about their subjects as the practitioners themselves did, but the expert curmudeons are gone--replaced by interns and newbies. 

Now someone who last week was editing the entertainment section  can have a job criticizing Congressmen.  The readers can spot fraud.  It's not just the kids who no longer subscribe, it's also the professionals.  The kids instinctively don't trust the papers, while the professionals know the articles aren't accurate. 

Our grandfathers could build, they could lead and they could write.  Our generation is replacing the reporters with bloggers...but who will replace the builders and leaders?

Who Does Tom Chabin Represent?

What's the biggest industry in Northern Arizona:  Well, it used to be timber harvesting, but that industry is gone.  Modern environmentalists prefer to keep the forests pristine until they burn.  So then the leading industry in Northern Arizona was mining the coal that powers the Mohave Generating Station near Laughlin and the Navajo Generating Station near page.  But the EPA shut the Mohave Generating Station down in 2005--not because of health issues, but because of concerns about visibility.  So now, the biggest industry in Northern Arizona is selling coal to the Navajo Generating Station. 

The coal is held in trust for the Navajo and Hopi Tribes and they split the revenue evenly.  While the Navajo have some alternative sources of revenue, the Hopi do not.  So the closure of the Mohave station crippled the Tribe.  Now nearly 90% of their revenue comes from one source--the sale of coal to power the Navajo power plant.

Now, the EPA and environmentalists have targeted the Navajo Generating Station as well.  On November 2nd, the Legislature held a hearing about the possible closure and it's impact on the State.  In this video you can watch Hopi General Counsel Scott Canty describe the economic devastation that the Hopi will face if the plant is shut down. 

The issue made national news when the Navajo and Hopi Tribes kicked their former allies in the environmental movement off the reservation.   

FLAGSTAFF, Arizona — The leader of the country's largest Indian reservation threw his support behind the neighboring Hopi Tribe, whose lawmakers declared environmental groups unwelcome on the reservation.

Nowhere is this split between the Tribes and Environmentalists as profound as it is in Northern Arizona.  So I was intrigued when I attended an energy policy meeting in the House last week and Flagstaff Representative Tom Chabin sat in for the presentation.  Which way would he go--with the traditionally Democratic Tribes without whom no Democrat  can hope to get elected in District 2, or the environmentalists--without whom no Democrat can hope to get elected in District 2? 

In order to access his remarks, click on the video link and then drag the cursor over to about 1 hour and 10 minutes into the presentation.  Chabin's first remarks are about electric competition and he certainly could have ended it there, but he had to take it just one step further.

'Finally,I would appreciate a genuine discussion of the long term costs of carbon." 

Chabin then goes on a long screed about healthy forests, night time temperatures in Phoenix and Global Warming generally.  I guess we have our answer.  Why not take the opportunity to stand up for the Navajo Generating Station?  Why not represent the needs to the biggest economic interest in his district?  Chabin may represent the Hopi and Navajo tribes geographically, but he certainly doesn't represent them economically. 

"...a genuine discussion of the long term costs of carbon"...?

Really Mr. Chabin?  How about a a genuine discussion of the long term effects of wiping out the Hopi and Navajo tribes?

It looks like Gabby, Harry and Ann may pay a price for walking Pelosi's Plank.

I thought it was interesting that all three of Arizona's vulnerable Democratic Congressmen voted in favor of the Nationalized Health Care Plan.  Speaker Pelosi has been protecting them, but it looks like she needed every vote. 

The folks at the Benjamin Rush League--lead by Dr. Eric Novack--must sense some vulnerability because they are running ads against all three.

Here's the Gabby version.  You can simply subsitute the names to get the Harry and Ann version.

Gabby 60

Update:  One of the commenters has taken offense at my description of Gabby, Harry and Ann as "Vulnerable."  As if you need any outside confirmation to this obvious fact, I'll offer this article from this morning's issue of non partisan National Journal.

VP Biden hits the campaign trail for four more vulnerable House Democrats today, continuing his role as the administration's political point man.

In Phoenix, Biden will host a fundraiser for Reps. Harry Mitchell (D) and Ann Kirkpatrick (D). Later, he will attend events for Reps. Harry Teague (D) and Martin Heinrich (D) in Albuquerque. The events come a day after Biden raised money for Rep. Dina Titus (D-NV) in Las Vegas. All five could face strong challenges in 2010.
 

As the Media Lay Dying

The few members of the fourth estate who still have jobs often use the Espresso Pundit comment section to remind me that I'm not a "real" journalist.  Rather than reply with a long dissertation of the true meaning of journalism, I would direct you to today's rambling and virtually incoherent Arizona Daily Star Editorial and ask the simple question...did someone actually go to school to write like this?  Take a moment and read the whole thing, or just enjoy this uncut sample from about the last 3rd of the editorial.  It's like judging a Bad Faulkner Contest. 

Swallow a number of recent voting irregularities across America and you have civic indigestion of an intolerable scale.

 

We regret to inform the elections staff that we Americans want what we want and we want it now. And Tucsonans are Americans — only more so.

 

Doing a pretty good job is insufficient in this democracy.

 

Those in public service must be keenly aware that the slightest perception of hanky panky makes Lady Liberty reach for the hanky because, justified or unjustified, it taints the legitimacy of the vote in the eyes of the already too cynical denizens of Pima County.

 

As of today, thank goodness, the news is good.

 

The election was Nov. 3 and the results were tallied on Tuesday the 10th, we are pleased to say, in the very same century.

 

We are delighted the discrepancy was found and, thankful that the issue was simply a procedural pratfall and not tampering.

Hoodwinked

We've had a week to absorb the tragedy at Fort Hood and it seems to me that some clear patterns are emerging. 

We know for example that Major Hasan's bizarre  behavior was observed by many of the soldiers with whom he worked, but they were reticent to report him for fear of looking like they were discriminating against a Muslim.

Despite this, immediately after the shooting, we see Janet Napolitano in Abu Dhabi warning against an "anti Muslim" backlash. 

We also learn that Hasan's anti American screeds were overlooked by US intelligence officials at the same time that Secretary Napolitano was sounding the warning to be on the look out for...American Conservatives. 

Does Napolitano understand that the war on terror is real?  Perhaps this is what happens when someone who has absolutely no training or qualifications receives a high level Cabinet position based on the fact that she endorsed the President early.