From The Associated Press:

LONDON – The vivid sunsets painted by J.M.W. Turner are revered for their use of color and light and for their influence on the Impressionists. But could they also help global warming experts track climate change?

A group of scientists has studied the colors in more than 500 paintings of sunsets, including many of Turner’s 19th-century watercolors and oils, in hopes of gaining insights into the cooling effects caused by major volcanic eruptions.

Wonder what they learned from Van Gogh’s Cypresses?

Hat Tip: James Taranto.

“America’s Business with Mike Hambrick” this week spotlights some issues of paramount importance to U.S. manufacturers – energy costs and environmental regulations.

There is energy legislation moving through Congress that could put a dent in American pocketbooks and threaten millions of jobs. David Montgomery, vice president of CRA International, will join Mike to talk about his group’s recent survey of the legislation’s economic impact.

“By 2030 we estimate that the change in the standard of living of the average U.S family due to this legislation would be the equivalent of a loss of about $1,700 in income,” Montgomery said.

American skies are bluer than they’ve been in decades under current EPA ozone regulations. EPA is ignoring this fact. The agency is proposing a more stringent ozone rule that will punish manufacturers who have already worked hard to cut emissions to meet the current standard, which is working quite well.

H. Sterling Burnett from the National Center for Policy Analysis will tell Mike why the EPA anti-smog proposal doesn’t make sense.

Other guests on “America’s Business with Mike Hambrick” include Bill Downey, president and chief executive officer of Kansas City Power & Light Co. and James Knott Sr., president of Riverdale Mills Corp. in Massachusetts.

Downey will talk about how his company reached a deal with environmentalists to build a new coal-fired electricity plant. And Knott will discuss how the falling value of the U.S. dollar isn’t necessarily a bad thing – it’s helped his wire mesh product company and other manufacturers boost exports.

Think all that Maine produces is lobsters? Todd French, chairman of Maine Built Boats, will tell Mike what his group is doing to promote the Pine Tree State’s centuries-old boat manufacturing industry.

In our regular segments, Renee Giachino of America Justice Partnership gives us the heroes and villains of tort reform battles and the NAM’s Hank Cox recalls the “The Way It Was.”

And the National Association of Manufacturers President John Engler gives us the last word when he talks about Peru and other recent trade pacts.

For more about “America’s Business with Mike Hambrick” and to listen to the program online, please click here. And for video highlights and more, check out www.americasbusiness.org.

The NAM’s news release with President John Engler’s comments is now up on our website.

A good and balanced piece in The New York Times, “China Agrees to Remove Certain Export Subsidies.”

Forbes, out of Hong Kong: “China Bends To U.S. On Trade Subsidies.”

An analyis by Reuters economics editor, Alan Wheatley, “Scrapping China subsidies may ease pressure on yuan.” Here’s the thesis:

By agreeing at U.S. behest to scrap a dozen tax breaks and other subsidies, China is increasing exporters’ cost of production to force prices higher; as such the yuan’s real, or inflation-adjusted, exchange rate will rise, which should eventually trim China’s trade surplus and hence the need for faster appreciation of the yuan’s nominal rate.

Li Xiangyang, vice-head of the Institute of World Economics and Politics at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS), the government’s top think-tank, said settling the row was a very smart move by Beijing.

“On the nominal exchange rate, China might face less pressure from the U.S. as a result of the subsidy withdrawal,” he told a forum in Beijing on Friday.

The economics arguments exceed our knowledge. Politically, the claim that pressure will ease on exchange rates seems far-fetched; the EU is even more exercised about the Euro than is the United States is about the yuan-dollar rate.

Hackneyed, lazy, overused…

“An early Christmas present…” As in, “X got an early Christmas present Tuesday when Y did Z.”

And they start so early. Here’s The Boston Herald on October 30th: “The developer of a new Hub tower complex yesterday gave beleaguered Downtown Crossing an early Christmas present, saying he will delay demolition of part of the landmark Filene’s retail complex until after the holiday shopping season.”

Still, hackneys aside, what a wonderful early Christmas present for satirists and Schadenfreude-ists is today’s story in The Washington Post. The American Association for Justice, formerly the Association of Trial Laywers of America, is suing a new group, The American Trial Lawyers Association, or TheATLA.

The name defines who we are and what we do,” said J. Keith Givens, TheATLA’s main founder and a senior partner in the national law firm founded by the late Johnnie Cochran, of O.J. Simpson fame. Givens, a well-known Alabama plaintiff’s lawyer, asserted that AAJ abandoned the name ATLA last year, freeing up its use. Besides, he said, his group is TheATLA, which is different.

AAJ disagrees. Two weeks ago, it filed suit in federal court in Minneapolis to force TheATLA to drop the name, contending it was confusing AAJ members and infringing a trademark AAJ has held since 1976 on the acronym ATLA. In typical trial lawyer fashion, the suit also demands that AAJ get any profits that TheATLA collects, as well as damages, “trebled where permissible,” and attorneys’ fees.

A separate organization, the Irvine, Calif.-based American College of Trial Lawyers, also went to federal court this month in Montgomery, Ala., to prevent the Givens group from calling itself the American Trial Lawyers Association, a name, it says, is too close to its own.

Actually, we tend to side with those who claim the new group is infringing on their trademark, established after years of hard work and spending millions of dollars of other people’s money.

Except…doggone it, ATLA really wanted to shed its “trial lawyer” title because the term carries a bad connotation. If you want to be an American Association for Justice, why, by God, then go be the American Association for Justice.

In any case, ho, ho, ho.

Time for this year’s advent of the Christmas-season follies, musical and video tributes to holiday spirit. We return, yet again, to a Jonathan Coulton song, the very festive, “Chiron Beta Prime.”

This year has been a little crazy for the Andersons.
You may recall we had some trouble last year.
The robot council had us banished to an asteroid.
That hasn’t undermined our holiday cheer.
And we know it’s almost Christmas from the marks we make on the wall.
And that’s our favorite time of year.

Merry Christmas from Chiron Beta Prime,
where we’re working in a mine for our robot overlords.
Did I say overlords? I meant protectors.
Merry Christmas from Chiron Beta Prime.

The animated video illustrating the song is the work of Tom Ellsworth, a professional illustrator who took advantage of Creative Commons licensing of the Jonathan Coulton project to put together the piece. Good job!

And nice synthesizer solo, Jonathan.

Karl Rove tells a Corpus Christi audience that Texas is a model for state tax reforms.

Former White House deputy chief of staff Karl Rove championed Texas lawsuit reform as a national success story and lauded local grassroots efforts to curb what he called junk lawsuits.

“We have shared common battles,” he observed, to thunderous applause from the crowd of business and community leaders gathered for the sold-out Bay Area Citizens Against Lawsuit Abuse luncheon Wednesday at the Solomon P. Ortiz International Center. “I came down here to talk about our common foe — personal injury trial lawyers.”

The success of Texas’ malpractice reforms in attracting doctors back to the state has received the news coverage recently, but the laws have also improved the overall business climate.

Several contractors at the luncheon, including anti-lawsuit group board member Mike Scott, co-owner of H&S Constructors Inc., said the reforms have been good for business.

“We spend more time doing our job rather than defending frivolous lawsuits,” Scott said. “Our insurance rates have gone down.”

Rove said fewer lawsuits make Texas more attractive to business, growth and economic development.

“The legal reforms in Texas are a national success story,” Rove said.

That BOOM! you hear is the sound of plaintiff’s lawyers’ heads exploding.

And we wonder if Rove had anything to say about Dickie Scruggs’ indictment and the endemic corruption being revealed among the litigation abusers.

The Wall Street Journal editorializes on the high-flying tort lawyers, crashing into the swamp of corruption:

The barons of the tort bar must have thought 2007 would be a very good year: Some of their biggest cases (Katrina, Enron) were set to pay out, and a Democratic Congress meant no more worries about legal reform. Talk about reversal of fortune: As the year ends, we are witnessing nothing short of the dismantling of what are alleged to be major tort criminal enterprises.

Bill Lerach, the king of class actions, stands disgraced as an admitted felon. His former partners at Milberg Weiss face trial for being part of the same kickback scheme as Lerach. Federal prosecutors continue to pursue a criminal probe into asbestos and silicosis litigation fraud. And now comes the indictment of Mississippi tort legend Richard “Dickie” Scruggs, who is trying to soak insurance companies the way he once did Big Tobacco.

These new bribery charges read like a John Grisham novel — Scruggs and Grisham both being Oxford, MS, denizens — says the Jackson Clarion-Ledger.

An entire industry, institutionally undermined by criminality, wrecking the economy while protecting itself through political influence achieved through campaign contributions. And like a John Grisham novel? What an ugly yet media-friendly phenomenon — the perfect state of affairs for congressional investigatory hearings.

2008: The year Congress finally investigated the trial bar.

Yeah.

A statement from National Association of Manufacturers President John Engler on the announcement that China will be eliminating trade-distorting subsidies:

This shows clearly that the WTO system works. The announcement today by U.S. Trade Representative Susan Schwab of an agreement signed by the United States and China settles a case that was filed in the WTO in February of this year. The case claimed that China was maintaining a number of subsidy programs across a wide range of industrial goods in violation of its WTO obligations.

The NAM has been the lead organization calling for an end to two of China’s most trade-distorting practices – undervaluing its currency and subsidizing its industries. These WTO-illegal subsidies favored Chinese goods over imports in the domestic market and resulted in export prices that were lower than market value. We strongly supported the Administration’s filing this WTO case earlier this year.

The settlement of this case is great news. China is to be commended for recognizing that these subsidies were illegal and for acting responsibly to eliminate them without going through prolonged litigation. We hope this is a harbinger of things to come.

The Administration has been on the forefront of negotiations to end unfair trade practices by U.S. trading partners, among them China. We support their policy of engagement first and use of legal action within the global rules-based system when necessary. Resolution of this case helps respond to widespread concern that trade is unfair and shows that the system does work.

We congratulate Ambassador Schwab and her team at USTR for their tireless efforts to achieve this settlement with China. It is a victory for the global trading system.

Progress.

WASHINGTON: Bowing to American pressure on the eve of high-level talks to reduce economic tensions, China agreed Thursday to terminate a dozen different subsidies that promote exports and discourage imports of steel, wood products, information technology equipment and other manufactured goods.

The Chinese actions affect exports by companies that have foreign investments or are joint ventures with foreign companies. Nearly 60 percent of Chinese exports are produced by these businesses.

U.S. Trade Representative Susan Schwab’s statement is here.

This outcome represents a victory for U.S. manufacturers, producers and their workers. It is significant in three respects. First, it eliminates a set of widely- available subsidies that create significant disadvantages for U.S. products across many manufacturing sectors. Second, it shows that Chinese policymakers understand the need to respect the strict WTO prohibitions on these kinds of subsidies in the future. It also demonstrates that our two nations can work together to resolve major differences. Third, it shows that President Bush’s approach to resolving trade disputes with China – dialogue if possible, legal action when necessary, and working within the rules-based system – gets real results.

Yes, yes and yes.

From the promo for the hourlong news magazine, “Talk of the Nation,” broadcast Wednesday:

Talk of the Nation, November 28, 2007 · Francis Wheen, biographer of Karl Marx, argues that as long as capitalism endures, Marx’s masterwork, Das Kapital, will be required reading.

First published in 1867, Marx’s influential critique of capitalism laid the groundwork for thinkers and revolutionaries to follow.

In his “biography” of Marx’s treatise — the latest in the Grove/Atlantic Books That Changed the World series — Wheen writes that Marx describes “a world in which humans are enslaved by the monstrous power of inanimate capital and commodities.”

The biography sheds light on Marx’s childhood, his experience of alienation, and his 20-year struggle to complete his unfinished masterpiece.

Especially liked this: “Marx’s influential critique of capitalism laid the groundwork for thinkers and revolutionaries to follow.”

Yes, and it also laid the groundwork for the 100 million dead that followed. Guess the book was influential, at that.

As long as Marx endures, the Black Book of Communism will be required reading, one would hope.