The latest temperature trends look grim. And the person saying so is not some Gore-sniffing alarmist lunactic — it’s Ron Bailey, a “good skeptic” on climate change. And yet the GOP remains less informed on the issue than on online humor magazine.

That Cracked article, in addition to being funny, outlines many good points on the debate. Specifically, the potential positive effects of global warming but the necessarily dangerous risks we are taking. In the end, that’s what the issue comes down to for me. The planet is pretty habitable right now. It’s certainly possible — in fact, very likely — that the deleterious effects of global warming are exaggerated. But do we really want to find out what how bad AGW is by irreversible experimentation? Again, I’m not on board with radical solutions. But a carbon tax combined with an overhaul of the corporate tax code and investment in R&D that is doled out by scientists (not politicians) seems a low price to pay to mitigate a potential danger.

That having been said, I think the science community is wrong in praising the decision to let the EPA start setting global warming policy. Yes, the Court decided that this was within the purview of the Clean Air Act. But with such a contentious issue, i would much rather have Congress be making the decisions. Not because they will do a better job, but because Congress is accountable and the decisions it reaches have to come from something approaching a consensus. Putting these decisions into the hands of an unaccountable bureaucracy that can rule by fiat is a recipe for political, if not scientific, disaster.

Moreover, pawning this off on the EPA is Congress trying to weasel out of their obligations and pawn difficult choices onto an unaccountable bureaucracy. This is simply the latest iteration in their general refusal to govern. Congress won’t pass a budget this year. They notoriously punted the decision on the Iraq War to the President. I’m disinclined to allow more of this nonsense. They need to govern, if it means occasionally means doing something unpopular and getting unelected.

One aspect of my libertarianism is that I am obsessed with process. The reason, a Megan McArdle likes to say, is that if you govern with a good process, you will, on average govern better. Too many people are focused on the goal — doing something about global arming — and not focused enough on the process. The Iraq War is a perfect example of what happens when you ignore the process. If Congress had done its Constitutional duty — debated the War and then issued a declaration of War — we might have gotten a better result than we ultimately did.

I doubt those applauding this decision would applaud Bush if he’d authorized HHS to regulate abortion. Or would cheer if he’d given the military authority over all national security issues, including habeas (although, in the latter case, they’d probably have defended the Constitution better than Bush’s Legal Creeps). And therein lies the dilemma. People cheer when their side “does something”. But they shudder when the other side does. If we respect the process, these problems are mitigated.

For several decades, the liberal agenda was advanced by judges, not legislatures. And while some of the causes were worthy (civil rights, for example), the manner in which the agenda was advanced hardened the opposition; made them feel like the were being controlled by an unelected and unaccountable judiciary.

If we go the same route this time, it will simply give the Right more ammunition to claim that AGW is all a big conspiracy to empower government. Do we really need more of that?

A great interview with the director of The Cartel, a documentary on our broken public school systems:

In a similar vein, there’s this story looking into NYC’s school system.

When I rage against the school system and the unions, I’m often misunderstood. I’m not anti-union, per se, and I’m certainly not anti-education. I’m not even anti-government-paying-for-education. I just think the government monopoly on education — and the unholy nepotistic relationship between teachers unions and the Democratic party — are destroying the futures of millions of young children.

The failure of inner city schools, of course, is not “just” a social problem. It’s an economic one as well. We are spending billions of dollars to destroy trillions of dollars in future productivity from a well-educated citizenry. Having seen some of these things first hand, I can tell you that they system is the problem. There’s no question in my mind.

I used to tow to the Democrat line on this — that the solution to our education woes is more money, bigger salaries, smaller classrooms. Granted, that was partially because that line was spoon-fed to me by my own public school teachers.

But the evidence is now overwhelming that the “more money recipe” simply does not work. The turning point for me was an argument made by Walter Williams, which runs approximately so: poor people have decent cars. They’re not Rolls Royces, but they move. Poor people have decent clothes. It’s nor Armani, but it’s wearable. Poor people tend to have livable homes. It’s not suburbia, but it’s a roof and walls. Poor people tend to have decent food. In fact, obesity is higher among the poor than the rich. However, they have terrible educations. As bad as the poor’s choice in clothing, cars, food and housing might be, they’re choice in education is far worse. If they ate, drove and slept like they learn, they would be driving broken cars, living on sewer grates and eating rotten food.

What’s the difference between those things? Education is provided by a monopoly; the rest by the market. We have long decided that having the government actually make people’s food, sew their clothes, build their homes and assemble their cars was a recipe for disaster. So, instead, we give poor people money to acquire those thing from the market, to level the playing field as it were. Education is the exception. And it’s not a shining one.

Prior ranting on this subject here.

Some genuine posts coming up soon, I promise. It’s just hard to concentrate when I’m not sure what time zone I’m in.