The truth about climate change

For those of you who are interested in the truth about the state of climate change science, here is a link to a 22 minute talk by Nir Shaviv.

This talk is EXCELLENT.

Professor Nir Joseph Shaviv is an Israeli‐American physics professor. He is professor at the Racah Institute of Physics of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, of which he is now its chairman.

Shaviv started taking courses at the Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa at age 13. He graduated with a BA in physics in 1990, and finished as best in class. During his military service (1990–93) he continued his studies and co-authored his first papers in astrophysics. In 1994 he received a Master of Science in physics and a doctorate during 1994–96. During 1996–99 he was a Lee DuBridge Prize Fellow at Caltech's TAPIR (Theoretical Astrophysics) group. During 1999–2001 he was in a postdoctorate position at the Canadian Institute for Theoretical Astrophysics. In 2001–6 he was a senior lecturer at Racah Institute of physics at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. In 2006-2012 he was an associate professor, and full professor since 2012. Between 2008 and 2011 he was the head of the faculty union of the Hebrew University, and he served as the chairman of coordinating council of faculty unions between 2010 and 2014. In 2014 he became a member of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, and chairman of The Racah Institute of Physics in 2015.

I have provided NS's background so that you will be able to differentiate him from the ninnies you usually hear from about climate change.

Red Flag laws are an unconstitutional knee-jerk reaction that reduce everyone’s freedom.

Don't take my word for it - here is what Judge Andrew Napolitano thinks.
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When tragedy strikes, as it did in two mass killings earlier this month, there is always the urge to pressure the government do something. Governments are animated by the belief that doing something — any demonstrable overt behavior — will show that they are in control. I understand the natural fears that good folks have that an El Paso or a Dayton episode might happen again, but doing something for the sake of appearance can be dangerous to personal liberty.

When the Constitution was written, the idea of owning arms and keeping them in the home was widespread. The colonists had just defeated the armies of King George III. The colonial weapon of choice was the Kentucky long rifle, while British soldiers used their army-issued version of Brown Bessies. Each rifle had its advantages, but the Kentucky (it was actually a German design, perfected and manufactured in Pennsylvania) was able to strike a British soldier at 200 yards, a startlingly long distance at the time. The Bessies were good for only about 80 yards.

Put aside the advantages we had of the passionate defense of freedom and homeland, to say nothing of superior leadership, it doesn't take any advanced understanding of mathematics or ballistics to appreciate why we won the Revolution.

It is a matter of historical fact that the colonists won the war largely by superior firepower.

Six years after the war was over, delegates met in Philadelphia in secret and drafted what was to become the Constitution. The document, largely written in James Madison's hand, was then submitted to Congress and to the states, which began the process of ratification.

By then, Americans had already formed two basic political parties. The Federalists wanted a muscular central government and the Anti-Federalists wanted a loose confederation of states. Yet the memory of a Parliament that behaved as if it could write any law, tax any event and impair any liberty, coupled with the fear that the new government here might drift toward tyranny, gave birth to the first 10 amendments to the Constitution — the Bill of Rights.

The debate over the Bill of Rights was not about rights; that debate had been resolved in 1776 when the Declaration of Independence declared our basic human rights to be inalienable. The Bill of Rights debates were about whether the federal government needed restraints imposed upon it in the Constitution itself.

The Federalists thought the Bill of Rights was superfluous because they argued that no American government would knowingly restrict freedom. The Anti-Federalists thought constitutional restraints were vital to the preservation of personal liberty because no government can be trusted to preserve personal liberty.

Second among the personal liberties preserved in the Bill of Rights from impairment by the government was the right to self-defense. Thomas Jefferson called that the right to self-preservation.

Fast-forward to today, and we see the widespread and decidedly un-American reaction to the tragedies of El Paso, Texas, and Dayton, Ohio. Even though both mass murders were animated by hatred and planned by madness, because both were carried out using weapons that look like those issued by the military, Democrats have called for the outright confiscation of these weapons.

Where is the constitutional authority for that? In a word: nowhere.

The government's job is to preserve personal liberty. Does it do its job when it weakens personal liberty instead? Stated differently, how does confiscating weapons from the law-abiding conceivably reduce their access to madmen? When did madmen begin obeying gun laws?

These arguments against confiscation have largely resonated with Republicans. Yet — because they feel they must do something — they have fallen for the concept of limited confiscation, known by the euphemism of "red flag" laws.

The concept of a "red flag" law — which permits the confiscation of lawfully owned weapons from a person because of what the person might do — violates both the presumption of innocence and the due process requirement of proof of criminal behavior before liberty can be infringed.

The presumption of innocence puts the burden for proving a case on the government. Because the case to be proven — might the gun owner be dangerous? — if proven, will result in the loss of a fundamental liberty, the presumption of innocence also mandates that the case be proven beyond a reasonable doubt.

The Republican proposal lowers the standard of proof to a preponderance of the evidence — "a more likely than not" standard. That was done because it is impossible to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that an event might happen. This is exactly why the might happen standard is unconstitutional and alien to our jurisprudence.

In 2008, Justice Antonin Scalia wrote for the Supreme Court that the right to keep and bear arms in the home is an individual pre-political right. Due process demands that this level of right — we are not talking about the privilege of a driving a car on a government street — can only be taken away after a jury conviction or a guilty plea to a felony.

The "might happen" standard of "red flag" laws violates this basic principle. The same Supreme Court case also reflects the Kentucky long gun lesson. The people are entitled to own and possess the same arms as the government; for the same reason as the colonists did — to fight off tyrants should they seize liberty or property.

If the government can impair Second Amendment-protected liberties on the basis of what a person might do, as opposed to what a person actually did do, to show that it is doing something in response to a public clamor, then no liberty in America is safe.

Which liberty will the government infringe upon next?

China vs. Trump

While the following is somewhat simplified and ignores some relevant consequences, it provides useful perspective.

China has made an unforced error that makes it possible for the US to gain at China’s expense. Trump can win if he plays it right.

First, Trump put tariffs on US imports from China. Downward sloping demand curves and upward sloping supply curves imply that:

•  Prices to US consumers of Chinese products rise, but not nearly by the amount of the percentage tariff.

•  US imports of Chinese products decline.

Suppose the US and China do nothing more. Then over time:

• Other countries with production costs almost as low as China’s would sell to US consumers at prices only slightly above the US pre-tariff prices of Chinese products.

• Assuming the other countries’ production rates did not increase, Chinese manufacturers would sell their products to the other countries’ consumers to make up the difference.

The result, over time, would be:

• US imports of Chinese products would decline substantially.

• US imports of these products from other countries would rise substantially.

• US consumer prices of the products involved probably would decline and approach their pre-tariff levels.

• Tariffs collected by the US would decline substantially.

• The distribution of production of the products involved across the various countries would not change much.

• Neither the US nor China would lose or gain much.

But China responded by devaluing its currency relative to the US dollar. Assume the devaluation percentage is the same as the US tariff percentage. Then China has given a free lunch to the US. To see this, consider the simplistic case where a US tariff increases the US consumer price by the percentage tariff and imports of Chinese products is unaffected.

Before China devalues its currency:

• The price of Chinese products to US consumers has risen by the tariff percentage.

• US consumers are paying the tariff to the US government and the pre-tariff price to China.

• The US government is collecting a substantial tariff.

Next:

• China devalues its currency with respect to the dollar by the tariff percentage.

• China’s pre-tariff price to US consumers drops by the tariff percentage.

• US consumers pay the tariff to the US government and the new lower pre-tariff price to China.

• US consumers net price drops to the original pre-tariff price.

• Tariffs collected by the US remain substantial.

• China has subsidized the US government by the amount of the tariffs collected.

• US consumer prices for Chinese products have not changed.

• The US is better off and China is worse off.

Aviation Magic

Consider an aircraft flying a clockwise circle at 100 knots airspeed at a constant altitude within an air mass that has a wind speed relative to the ground of 25 knots from 270 degrees. The pilot observes, relative to the air, that nothing changes except the aircraft’s direction of travel.

An object’s kinetic energy is the product of ½ its mass and its squared speed. Kinetic energy is proportional to squared speed.

From the pilot’s perspective, the aircraft’s speed is constant at 100 knots, hence its kinetic energy does not change and is proportional to 100*100 = 10,000.

From a ground observer’s perspective, the aircraft’s speed is 125 knots when its heading is 90 degrees and 75 knots when its heading is 270 degrees. He figures the aircraft’s kinetic energy is proportional to 125*125 = 15,625 on a heading of 90 degrees and 75*75 = 5,625 on a heading of 270 degrees. According to him, the aircraft’s kinetic energy drops by (5625-15625)/15625 = 64% during the turn from 90 degrees to 270 degrees. 64% of the aircraft’s kinetic energy has vanished – where did it go? The ground observer also sees the aircraft’s kinetic energy increase by (15625-5625)/5625 = 178% during the turn from 270 degrees to 90 degrees. Where did this kinetic energy come from?

For every full circle of the aircraft from 90 degrees to 270 degrees and then from 270 degrees to 90 degrees, the ground observer sees the aircraft’s percentage kinetic energy change by -64% followed by +178%. This is an average change in the aircraft’s kinetic energy of (-64+178)/2 = +57%. This corresponds to a net gain of 57% in the aircraft’s squared speed, e.g., from 100*100 to 100*100+0.57*100*100 = 1.57*100*100 = (1.25*100)*(1.25*100), or a gain of 25% in its speed.[1] For example, from 100 knots to 125 knots on the first circle. Evidently, all it takes to achieve high ground speeds when there is a wind is a few circles before setting out on your desired heading.

[1] A gain of 57% is an increase by a factor of (1+0.57) = 1.57. The square root of 1.57 is 1.25.

How does China’s stopping imports of US farm products effect US farmers?

If you believe the media and politicians, US farmers lose a dollar of sales for every dollar less of US farm exports to China.

If China reduces its imports of US farm products, the most likely consequence will be its importing of more farm products from other countries to compensate. But that will create a new market for US farm products in the other countries to compensate for the increased exports to China.

The most likely impact, over time, of China reducing its imports of US farm products by a dollar is a loss a dollar of US farm sales to China and an increase of about a dollar of US farm sales to other countries.

If the media and politicians can't get something as simple as this right, imagine how right they are likely to be about their assessment of the implications of their economic proposals.

Prescription drug prices - not as simple as portrayed by the politicians

Here is a link to a paper by Frank, Hicks, and Berndt titled "The Price to Consumers of Generic Pharmaceuticals: https://www.nber.org/papers/w26120.pdfBeyond the Headlines".

The prices of generics declined substantially from 2008 to 2016.  This is to be expected in a competitive market.

The media and politicians focus on the increasing prices of non-generic pharmaceuticals.  Part of the reason for the high prices of new drugs include excessive Government regulation, the liability risk of greedy lawyers, and the incentives for many medical players to push new drugs vs. old ones - regardless of a clear cost benefit advantage.

If you don't like the high cost of a new drug that might benefit you, why not opt for an older drug available as a generic that may be just as good or almost as good?  Do  you really need Repatha?  why not atorvastatin?  Do you really need Lisinopril?  Why not Telmisartan?

Many "solutions" to the "high cost of drugs" proposed by the media and politicians would reduce the rate of innovation.  That will cause substantial excess deaths going forward.  On the other hand, John Cochrane's blog entries provide good ideas about how to reduce drug costs and health care costs generally.

Here are some excerpts from the paper.
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Context: Generic drug prices have received a great deal of attention in the past few years.
Congressional committees, executive agencies and private organizations have all
conducted investigations into the pricing patterns for generic drugs. Price spikes for
several specific generic drugs have also been widely reported in the media.
Methods: We construct two Laspeyres chained price indexes that capture prices of
generic prescription drugs paid by consumers and private health plans. The first reflects
direct out of pocket payments made by the consumer to a pharmacy for dispensing a
generic prescription drug (“direct out-of-pocket CPI”, and the second the total price
received by the pharmacy (“total CPI”) comprised of the direct out-of-pocket payment
from the consumer plus the price paid to the dispensing pharmacy by the insurer on
behalf of the consumer. 

Findings: The chained direct out-of-pocket CPI we construct shows a roughly 50%
decline for generic prescription drugs between 2007 and 2016. In addition, between 2007
and 2016 the total CPI for generic prescription drugs fell by nearly 80%.
Conclusions: The U.S. generic prescription pharmaceutical market continues to drive
overall prices downward, although pharmacy price declines are not fully passed through
to consumers. Our evidence suggests that overall affordability is not the main problem in
the generic drug market.

The eye-catching increases in certain generic drug products have drawn attention
to generic drugs as a potential source of the most recent rapid rise in spending on
prescription drugs. Even though the 1,000% increases and more for drugs that have long
lost patent protection raise important and legitimate concerns about how various
segments of the industry are functioning, as has evidence of increasing consolidation in
the prescription pharmaceuticals market, the broader data on the overall behavior of
prices in the U.S. generic prescription pharmaceutical industry paints a different picture.

The U.S. generic prescription pharmaceutical market continues to drive overall prices
downward. Thus, our evidence suggests that overall affordability is not the main issue in
the generic drug market and that this segment of the U.S. prescription drug market is not
responsible for reported growth in prices and spending for prescription drugs overall.

Concerns have been raised about whether consumers are benefiting from the price
declines because insurers and prescription benefit managers have been offering products
that increasingly shift costs from insurers to consumers. Our evidence finds that
consumers are experiencing more burdensome cost sharing and that in fact consumers
are bearing a greater share of generic drug costs, yet on balance we find that consumers
have experienced substantial overall price declines for generic drugs.

One important question raised by the differential patterns of price declines
between overall and out-of-pocket consumer prices is how the benefits of price declines
are being shared across the larger supply chain. Our CPI analysis shows that the full
amount of the declines in generic prices is not being passed through to consumers. While
a number of “back of the envelope” estimates have been made about the degree of pass- through of price reductions to consumers,9 we believe more systematic analysis of this phenomenon is needed.10 Moreover, our results also suggest a closer look at the workings
of the entire generic drug supply chain (manufacturer, wholesaler, pharmaceutical benefit
manager, insurer, and retailer) merits attention.

Climate vs. Climate Alarm

This is the title of a 2011 talk by Richard Lindzen.

RL's conclusion is that the Climate Alarmists are wrong.

Here are some excerpts from the talk.
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The public perception of the climate problem is somewhat schizophrenic. On the one hand, the problem is perceived to be so complex that it cannot be approached without massive computer programs. On the other hand, the physics is claimed to be so basic that the dire conclusions commonly presented are considered to be self-evident.

Consistent with this situation, climate has become a field where there is a distinct separation of theory and modeling. Commonly, in fluid mechanics, theory provides useful constraints and tests when applied to modeling results. This has been notably absent in current work on climate.

In this talk, I will try to show how the greenhouse effect actually works using relatively simple basic concepts. We will see that the greenhouse effect, itself, presents little cause for alarm from increasing levels of CO2 since the effect is modest. Concern is associated with the matter of feedbacks that, in models, lead to amplified responses to CO2. Considerations of basic physics (as opposed to simply intercomparing models) suggests that current concerns are likely to be exaggerated. A variety of independent arguments all lead to the same conclusion.

All attempts to estimate how the climate responds to increasing CO2 depend on how the climate greenhouse actually works. Despite the concerns with the greenhouse effect that have dominated environmental thinking for almost a quarter of a century, the understanding of the effect is far from widespread. Part of the reason is that the popular depiction of the effect as resulting from an infrared ‘blanket’ is seriously misleading, and, as a result, much of the opposition that focuses purely on the radiation is similarly incorrect. The following description is, itself, somewhat oversimplified; however, it is probably adequate for understanding the underlying physics.

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As we have seen, the simple existence of the greenhouse effect is neither new nor a cause for alarm. The critical issue is one of feedbacks. This is not a technical detail; it is central, and there is ample reason (as we have already seen) to think that current models are substantially exaggerating the feedbacks.

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I hope that what has been shown demonstrates that increasing CO2 and greenhouse warming are not at all indicative of alarm, and that there is ample evidence that the system is not particularly sensitive. Moreover, the high sensitivity of some current models would render the stability of the earth over 4.5 billion years dubious. Engineers have long recognized this and generally avoid feedback factors greater than about 0.1.

The Climate Alarmists’ view that CO2 changes cause temperature changes may be wrong

Here is Nir Shaviv's blog article "The inconvenient truth about the Ice core Carbon Dioxide Temperature Correlations.
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One of the "scientific" highlights in Al Gore's movie is the discussion about the clear correlation between CO2 and temperature, as is obtained in ice cores. To quote, he says the following when discussing the ice-core data (about 40 mins after the beginning for the film):

“The relationship is actually very complicated but there is one relationship that is far more powerful than all the others and it is this. When there is more carbon dioxide, the temperature gets warmer, because it traps more heat from the sun inside.”

Any laymen will understand from this statement that the ice-cores demonstrate a causal link, that higher amounts of CO2 give rise to higher temperatures. Of course, this could indeed be the case, and to some extent, it necessarily is. However, can this conclusion really be drawn from this graph? Can one actually say anything at all about how much CO2 affects the global temperature?

To the dismay of Al Gore, the answer is that this graph doesn't prove at all that CO2 has any effect on the global temperature. All it says is that there is some equilibrium between dissolved CO2 and atmospheric CO2, an equilibrium which depends on the temperature. Of course, the temperature itself can depend on a dozen different factors, including CO2, but just the CO2 / temperature correlation by itself doesn't tell you the strength of the CO2→ΔT link. It doesn't even tell you the sign.

Al Gore uses pyrotechnics to lead his audience to the wrong conclusion. If CO2 affects the temperature, as this graph supposedly demonstrates, then the 20th century CO2 rise should cause a temperature rise larger than the rise seen from the last ice-age to today's interglacial. This is of course wrong. All it says is that we offsetted the dissolution balance of CO2 in the oceans. If we were to stop burning fossil fuels (which is a good thing in general, but totally irrelevant here), then the large CO2 increase would turn into a CO2 decrease, returning back to the pre-industrial level over a century or so. Think for example on a closed coke bottle. It has coke with dissolved CO2 and it has air with gaseous CO2. Just like Earth, most of the CO2 is in the dissolved form. If you warm the coke bottle, the coke cannot hold as much CO2, so it releases a little amount and increases the partial pressure of the gaseous CO2, enough to force the rest of the dissolved CO2 to stay dissolved. Since there is much more dissolved CO2 than gaseous CO2, the amount released from the coke is relatively small.

Of course, the comparison can go only so far. The mechanisms governing CO2 in the oceans are much more complicated such that the equilibrium depends on the amount of biological activity, on the complicated chemical reactions in the oceans, and many more interactions I am probably not aware of. For example, a lower temperature can increase the amount of dust reaching the oceans. This will bring more fertilizing iron which will increase the biological activity (since large parts of the ocean's photosynthesis is nutrient limited) and with it affect the CO2 dissolution balance. The bottom line is that the equilibrium is quite complicated to calculate.

Nevertheless, the equilibrium can be empirically determined by simply reading it straight off the ice-core CO2/temperature graph. The global temperature variations between ice-ages and interglacials is about 4°C. The change in the amount of atmospheric CO2 is about 80 ppm. This gives 20 ppm of oceanic out-gassing per °C.

The main evidence proving that CO2 does not control the climate, but at most can play a second fiddle by just amplifying the variations already present, is that of lags. In all cases where there is a good enough resolution, one finds that the CO2 lags behind the temperature by typically several hundred to a thousand years. Namely, the basic climate driver which controls the temperature cannot be that of CO2. That driver, whatever it is, affects the climate equilibrium, and the temperature changes accordingly. Once the oceans adjust (on time scale of decades to centuries), the CO2 equilibrium changes as well. The changed CO2 can further affect the temperature, but the CO2 / temperature correlation cannot be used to say almost anything about the strength of this link. Note that I write "almost anything", because it turns out that the CO2 temperature correlation can be used to say at least one thing about the temperature sensitivity to CO2 variations, as can be seen in the box below.

It is interesting to note that the IPCC scientific report (e.g., the AR4) avoids this question of lag. Instead of pointing it out, they write that in some cases (e.g., when comparing Antarctic CO2 to temperature data) it is hard to say anything definitive since the data sets come from different cores. This is of course chaff to cover the fact that when CO2 and temperature are measured with the same cores, or when carefully comparing different cores, a lag of typically several hundred years is found to be present, if the quality and resolution permit. Such an example is found in the figure below.

Analysis of ice core data from Antarctica by Indermühle et al. (GRL, vol. 27, p. 735, 2000), who find that CO2 lags behind the temperature by 1200±700 years. There are many examples of studies finding lags, a few examples include:

• Indermühle et al. (GRL, vol. 27, p. 735, 2000), who find that CO2 lags behind the temperature by 1200±700 years, using Antarctic ice-cores between 60 and 20 kyr before present (see figure). 

• Fischer et al. (Science, vol 283, p. 1712, 1999) reported a time lag 600±400 yr during early de-glacial changes in the last 3 glacial–interglacial transitions. 

• Siegenthaler et al. (Science, vol. 310, p. 1313, 2005) find a best lag of 1900 years in the Antarctic data. 

• Monnin et al. (Science vol 291, 112, 2001) find that the start of the CO2 increase in the beginning of the last interglacial lagged the start of the temperature increase by 800 years.

Clearly, the correlation and lags unequivocally demonstrate that the temperature drives changes in the atmospheric CO2 content. The same correlations, however cannot be used to say anything about the temperature's sensitivity to variations in the CO2. I am sure there is some effect in that direction, but to empirically demonstrate it, one needs a correlation between the temperature and CO2 variations, which do not originate from temperature variations. 

The only temperature independent CO2 variations I know of are those of anthropogenic sources, i.e., the 20th century increase, and CO2 variations over geological time scales.

Since the increase of CO2 over the 20th is monotonic, and other climate drivers (e.g., the sun) increased as well, a correlation with temperature is mostly meaningless. This leaves the geological variations in CO2 as the only variations which could be used to empirically estimate the effect of the CO2→ΔT link.

The reason that over geological time scales, the variations do not depend on the temperature is because over these long durations, the total CO2 in the ecosystem varies from a net imbalance between volcanic out-gassing and sedimentation/subduction. This "random walk" in the amount of CO2 is the reason why there were periods with 3 or even 10 times as much CO2 than present, over the past billion years.

Unfortunately, there is no clear correlation between CO2 and temperature over geological time scales. This lack of correlation should have translated into an upper limit on the CO2→ΔT link. However, because the geochemical temperature data is actually biased by the amount of CO2, this lack of correlation result translates into a CO2 doubling sensitivity which is about ΔTx2 ~ 1.0±0.5°C. More about it in this paper.

The moral of this story is that when you are shown data such as the graph by Al Gore, ask yourself what does it really mean. You might be surprised from the answer.

A Climate Denier's CV

Here is a link to Nir Shaviv's CV.

Climate Alarmists would consider NS a Climate Denier.

NS's CV provides some indication that those who are fond of calling others Climate Deniers may be the ones in denial.

Al Sharpton and his Worshipers

Here is Seth Mandel in the JewishWorld Review.

SM is on target.
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President Donald Trump has perfected the art of the undorsement, the ability to get his opponents to beatify whoever and whatever he denigrates. Whether a first-term congresswoman, a quarterback or the city of Baltimore, #resistance to his targeting is futile.

Unfortunately, "the enemy of my enemy is my infallible hero" is a terrible approach to politics, aptly demonstrated this week when Trump turned his sights on the public figures who stepped in to defend Baltimore's honor.

Al Sharpton - who should still be seen as a notorious hate figure but has somehow escaped that fate - practically tripped over himself trying to get Trump's attention. It worked. "Al is a con man, a troublemaker, always looking for a score," Trump tweeted. "Just doing his thing. Must have intimidated Comcast/NBC. Hates Whites & Cops!"

Then ensued one of the more depressing news cycles of the year, as major Democratic presidential candidates praised Sharpton to the heavens.

Sharpton "has spent his life fighting for what's right and working to improve our nation, even in the face of hate. It's shameful, yet unsurprising that Trump would continue to attack those who have done so much for our country," tweeted Sen. Kamala D. Harris of California.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts insisted that Sharpton "has dedicated his life to the fight for justice for all. No amount of racist tweets from the man in the White House will erase that - and we must not let them divide us. I stand with my friend Al Sharpton in calling out these ongoing attacks on people of color."

New York Mayor Bill de Blasio boasted of his decades-long relationship with Sharpton, thanks to which he could attest that "Trump's characterization is not only disrespectful, it's untrue."

Then former Vice President Joe Biden, that great moderate hope, added his voice to the chorus, calling Sharpton "a champion in the fight for civil rights."

Say it ain't so, Joe.

Sharpton is unworthy of such praise, so much so that the decision to back him reflexively is a massive moral demerit. Calling Sharpton a lifelong fighter for "justice" ignores his history of race-baiting and deadly anti-Semitic incitement.

In August 1991, after City College professor Leonard Jeffries ranted that "everyone knows rich Jews helped finance the slave trade" and that "Russian Jewry had a particular control over the movies, and their financial partners, the Mafia, put together a financial system of destruction of black people," Sharpton rushed to his defense, threatening, "If the Jews want to get it on, tell them to pin their yarmulkes back and come over to my house." Days later, a Jewish driver accidentally struck and killed a black 7-year-old named Gavin Cato in Crown Heights, Brooklyn. That set off three days of rioting, in the first hours of which a group of African Americans chanting "Kill the Jew" did just that, beating and stabbing an Orthodox Jew named Yankel Rosenbaum, who died of his injuries.

But Sharpton was only warming up. He led crowds in shouting for "justice" - pay attention here, Sen. Warren - as rioters wantonly beat Jews in the streets to chants of "Heil Hitler." At Cato's funeral, Sharpton poured out every last drop of gasoline he had left: "Talk about how Oppenheimer in South Africa sends diamonds straight to Tel Aviv and deals with the diamond merchants right here in Crown Heights. The issue is not anti-Semitism; the issue is apartheid. . . . All we want to say is what Jesus said: If you offend one of these little ones, you got to pay for it. No compromise, no meetings, no kaffeeklatsch, no skinnin' and grinnin'."

Nor was that an isolated incident. In 1995, Sharpton and his National Action Network colleague Morris Powell agitated against Fred Harari, a Jewish shop owner in Harlem. "We are not going to stand idly by and let a Jewish person come in black Harlem and methodically drive black people out of business up and down 125th Street," Powell said. Sharpton added, "We will not stand by and allow them to move this brother so that some white interloper can expand his business on 125th Street." A few months later, a gunman entered the store and set it ablaze, killing seven and then shooting himself. When the shop reopened, Powell was back at it, warning, "Freddy's not dead."

Sharpton, meanwhile, is free of shame or apology. "You only repent when you mean it, and I have done nothing wrong," he insisted years later. In 2011, he wrote a gobsmacking piece of revisionist history for the New York Daily News, claiming his remarks were being manipulated by "extremist Jews," though he conceded that some of the marchers' rhetoric "played to the extremists rather than raising the issue of the value of this young man whom we were so concerned about." Sharpton then pronounced: "It is not enough to be right. We had our marches, and they were all peaceful." That is, Sharpton doesn't think he's getting enough credit for his behavior.

So how did someone with this record become a figure who could be praised unequivocally by leading presidential candidates and no one bats an eye? The answer is, he won a game of chicken. Sharpton's smartest move was to run for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2004. It put his rivals in a bind: Attacking him on his record risked alienating black voters. But ignoring his record would sanitize it by legitimizing his candidacy and rendering future criticism vulnerable to an effective counter: Why didn't you say it to my face?

Sharpton, much like Trump himself, also made use of the opportunities afforded him by pop culture. During the campaign, in December 2003, Sharpton hosted "Saturday Night Live." Over the years he appeared as himself in shows such as "Boston Legal," "Law & Order: Special Victims Unit" and "Girlfriends," as well as the 2002 Adam Sandler comedy "Mr. Deeds." In 2011, MSNBC gave him his own show, which he hosts to this day, in addition to his participation in live campaign coverage. During the 2008 campaign, Barack Obama leaned on Sharpton to help fend off criticism from other black leaders, and Sharpton visited Obama's White House more than 100 times. Sharpton helped de Blasio's mayoral run in 2013 and was rewarded with unprecedented access.

And that's the most galling part of the mainstreaming of Al Sharpton. He never sought absolution. He simply got away with it.

So at Wednesday night's Democratic presidential debate, no one asked Warren about Sharpton's record or the message she might be sending with such fulsome praise. Nor was South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg - who has struck up a very public alliance with Sharpton in an attempt to burnish his standing with black voters - prodded about the hypocrisy on display. Republicans, Buttigieg lectured, "are supporting naked racism in the White House, or at best silent about it. And if you are watching this at home and you are a Republican member of Congress, consider the fact that, when the sun sets on your career and they are writing your story, of all the good and bad things you did in your life, the thing you will be remembered for is whether, in this moment, with this president, you found the courage to stand up to him or you continued to put party over country."

What would Buttigieg say about his own support of a public figure with a long history of bigotry? We don't know, because no one thought to ask him at the debate. (I have repeatedly asked his campaign for comment, to no avail.)

We are routinely told that harsh criticism of minority members of Congress amounts to incitement to violence. What of Sharpton, who initially made his career out of explicit incitement to violence? This is no idle concern. "The increase in the number of physical assaults against Orthodox Jews in New York City is a matter of empirical fact," reports Armin Rosen at Tablet. "Anti-Semitic hate crimes against persons, which describes nearly everything involving physical contact, jumped from 17 in 2017 to 33 in 2018, with the number for the first half of 2019 standing at 19, according to the NYPD's hate crime unit. . . . And yet, many believe the attacks are even more widespread than has been reported." De Blasio claims anti-Semitism is a right-wing phenomenon, but in New York, Rosen writes, "the perpetrators who have been recorded on CCTV cameras are overwhelmingly black and Hispanic."

You can believe that Jewish lives matter, or you can pepper your public career with slavish fan fiction about Al Sharpton. When the sun sets on the careers of this crop of Democrats and their stories are written, what will the record show about the choice they made?