How Science Reporting (Too Often) Works

For the entire cartoon, click here.


From: SMBC, via Boing-Boing.

Comment Spam

Sorry for all the comment spam from Asia that has been infesting this site. I've turned on comment moderation for posts older than one day. (Rejecting these spam is fun (sort of), at least for now.) Hopefully that will help. If not I'll turn on word verification, but I don't like that myself and would prefer to avoid it.

Cash for Clunkers Wrap-up

The final statistics for Cash for Clunkers are in, and Joe Romm says the program was well worth it.

I don't see it that way at all, at least from an environmental point of view. According to my calculations, the program saves 140 M gal gas/yr, worth about $530 M/yr. However, this represents only 0.14% of all gas used by Americans.

Assuming these new cars are kept for a total of 8 years (it takes 4 yrs just to pay off the carbon footprint of their manufacturing), then the program will save 1.7 Mmt/yr, what the country emits in 2.5 hours. And for that we're paying about $410/mt CO2, a huge amount ["mt" = metric ton] -- roughly 10 times the Waxman-Markey bill.

Christopher Knittel, a transportation expert at the Univ of California at Davis, calculated a value of about $500/ton, with a wide possible range.

Romm wrote:

A 9 mpg gain translates into annual savings of 3.8 million barrels of oil per year and nearly $1,000 for consumers at the pump -– not to mention that it will reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 660,000 metric tons a year. Okay, not a cost-effective emission reducer, but still, given the multiple benefits of the program, pretty darn good.

How is this good? For all of us spending $3B, a small handful of Americans get a new car and savings of about $1000 a year in gasoline. The country will now use a grand total of 0.1% less gas. The environmental consequences are very, very small, and far overpriced at that.

This was an economic stimulus bill only, for auto dealers and those in the middle class who can afford to buy a new car with a trade-in. (This is the same middle class who by-and-large bitch about the size of government and its programs.)

Climate4You

Here's a nice Web site run by physical geographer Ole Humlum that gives you all the monthly data you want on climate: Climate4You.com , with updated graphs, too.

PS: Hadley says July 2009 was the third warmest July of all time, +0.491°C above their baseline.

Bolt

This isn't a very good recording, but in any case Usain Bolt is just beyond belief: 19.19 s for the 200 m, after running 9.59 s in the 100 m a few days before. He just doesn't appear to be from this planet.

For a look at the amazing quantum leap downward in the world record (in the 100 m), look at this Wikipedia graph. It hardly even seems possible.... A similar jump would be like someone running 9.3 s in the year 2045....

He ran 200 m at a faster speed than he ran 100 m (10.428 m/s vs. 10.422 m/s -- essentially the same given the accuracy of the clock).

Another One for Deltoid

Tim Lambert, as usual, injects a few sweet facts into the discussion, and (again) makes Tim Blair look like a fool.

The Internet Strikes Again

This is pretty good: this morning the Seattle Times published a story about a man who woke up in a Seattle park and did not know who he was or how he got there, and he had only vague recollections about his past. The police, detectives, and journalists all believed he was genuine, but had gotten nowhere on the case.

Within a few hours a reader recognized the man's photograph and commented on his identity ("Edward Lightheart"), and shortly thereafter people began sending in links and other clues that pinned the man's identity down precisely. People are now sending pictures and other information from around the world.

He still doesn't know if this is really his name or how he got to Seattle or what happened to him. But this is a real coup (and also perhaps a statement that you can't really disappear in this world even if you try).

Drop in World Temperatures?

Robert S. Boyd of McClatchy newspapers writes:

Official government measurements show that the world's temperature has cooled a bit since reaching its most recent peak in 1998.

Can we mathematically prove this amazing result? Let's try.

THEOREM: The world's temperature will always cool after reaching its most recent peak.

PROOF: Let X be a series {X1, X2, ..., Xn}. Let Xmax be the largest element in X. The "peak" of the set X is defined as that Xi for which Xi > Xj for all i not equal to j. Therefore Xmax > Xi for all elements in X not equal to Xmax. Therefore Xi < Xmax for all i not equal to max, by the principle of trichotomy.
Now, Let Ti be a time series of temperatures. By the lemma above, all temperatures other then Tmax are less than the maximum tempertature, i.e. "cooler" than the maximum temptrature (the peak). Thus all temperatures are cooler than the most recent peak. Q.E.D.

EXAMPLE: Consider the set of average mean tropospheric temperature anomalies as determined by the University of Alabama: June 2009: +0.01°C July 2009: +0.42°C
Clearly, Tjuly > Tjune, so by the theorem above and the principle of trichotomy Tjune < Tjuly. That is, the world is on a warming trajectory, at a rate of 492 degrees per century.

Seattle Votes Against Plastic Bag Fee

Yesterday Seattle voters declined a proposed fee of 20 cents per plastic shopping bag, 58% to 42%.

Plastic bag manufacturers outspent ($1.4M) those advocating for the ban by 15-to-1, most of it from the American Chemical Council.

20 to 30% of Seattle's shoppers already bring their own bags to the store. But if the fee can't pass in environmentally conscious Seattle, it's hard to see it passing anywhere.

--

Reminder: The world uses about 5 trillion plastic bags per year, requiring about 500M barrels of oil, or 2% of world usage.

Speaking Truth to Idiocy

Barney Frank says what needed to be said for weeks: "On what planet do you spend most of your time?"



Perhaps progressives, liberals, Democrats, and thinking people need a new slogan:

I'm from Earth. You?

GPS unit for sale

Anybody want to buy a Magellan GPS 2000 Satellite Navigator (born 1996)?

See: http://portland.craigslist.org/mlt/ele/1330314717.html

In Defense of Britain's Health System

From the Washington Post:

In Defense of Britain's Health System
By Ara Darzi and Tom Kibasi

Fear is the weapon of choice for opponents of reform who have no substantive alternative to offer. America spends five times the share of its national wealth on health as Singapore, and yet life expectancy in each country is roughly the same. Even allowing for other factors, it is undeniable that the way a health system is organized and operated makes a difference. Americans fear that countries such as Britain and Canada ration care -- and that such rationing could and should never be tolerated in the United States. Yet 47 million uninsured is quite an extreme form of rationing. So at this moment, the burden of proof falls upon those who oppose change -- for they stand in defense of fear.

District 9

You should definitely see District 9, if you haven't already. It's even more original than Cloverfield, plus the camerawork won't make you queasy. You can parse it out on about five different levels, but I don't want to give anything away, because I only knew a little about it from the trailer and io9 now I wish I hadn't even known that.

It did well at the box office over the weekend (#1), but unfortunately I suspect its foreign flavor will keep it from being ranked among the all-time best SF movies, at least in America. For that it would have had to be set in Los Angeles (which would have totally ruined it, or course, if you're a real sci-fi fan).

See it.

Just Stuff

Stuff from the weekend:

• see El Nino form before your very eyes.
• learn how the whole economic game is rigged for the rich and connected.
• this article says Portland (OR) drivers drive 20% less than the national average.
• hundreds of thousands of hatchery fish died in Washington state during the heat wave two weeks ago, because of a parasite that thrives only in warm waters.
• if you are thinking of trying Google's Chrome browser, my advice is to definitely do it. I love it -- it's crisp and clean and fast. Plus Firefox was crashing on me too often. Chrome is the best and most efficient browser I've ever used.
• If you want to completely freak out your kitten, show her a nectarine pit. Mine spent 20 minutes treating it like a alien from outer space.

Five Times Katrina

It is amazing (and disheartening) to see how little attention Americans have paid to Typhoon Morakot.

This storm stretched from the Philippines to Taiwan.

The Taiwanese government just raised their death estimate to 500. This is in a country of 23M people. That'd be the equivalent of about 6,700 American deaths, or about 5 times Hurricane Katrina, or more than twice the 9/11 World Trade Center attack.

More than a million people have been displaced. Morakot is the wettest typhoon in recorded history -- by a large amount.

Yet Americans are too busy to notice because they're concentrating on death panels soon to be introduced by our government. Idiots. Dupes.

And Sarah Palin -- the exact kind of insipid but beautiful demogogue the devil would offer up if he is real and serious, won't even admit she was wrong. In fact, she boasts that she was right -- she fucking boasts about it!

I am seriously thinking of moving to Canada or Europe, because it's clear that there will be no significant health reforms here (and, as a self-employed person who cannot buy insurance at any price because of pre-existing conditions, I think my existence just might depend on it), and certainly not anytime soon (even Obama's plan wouldn't start until 2013).

So many Americans are just... stupid. The middle class in this country is being devastated, and deep down they all know it, but they have been so brainwashed to think that capitalism and free-markets are the solution they can't get out of their own way. Their incomes have remained flat for 30 years, while the rich keep getting richer. They know, but don't seem able to admit, that corporations control this country -- whether it's health, or defense, or financial -- and their donations and lobbyist's influence have a huge control over what Congress does.

They are losing benefits year-by-year, slowly and steadily. And they know it. They know employers are dropping health insurance because no one can possible keep up when health insurance inflation is 8x overall income inflation. They know that citizens in other countries have far fewer health worries, and pay less for better care. (They also get a lot more vacation.) But, my God, no, we can't possibly do anything like the French -- we've been taught they're nothing but wimps. (Funny, my travels in France revealed nothing but decent, charming, civilized people.) They know that American's are losing their houses and having to declare bankruptcy at huge rates. And yet they have been so brainwashed by Fox news that they do not even see it, let alone care.

How many Medicare-receiving idiots must stand up at a Congressional town hall and tell the government to keep its hands entirely out of health care?

This will surely be one of the most significant chapters in the upcoming book, "The Rise and Fall of the American Empire."

Frankly, I think the real rage being displayed at these town halls is that American's know they have lost their country to corporations, and that "government of the people and by the people" is a now-comical acronysm in a time when the typical Representative represents over 700,000 people.

That is to say, your Congressman doesn't care what you say. You Senator doesn't care what you say or think. Your contribution of $100 doesn't matter at all. You can't be in their face all the time in Washington, like a corporate lobbyist.

Americans know they have lost their country and that the American experiment is over -- and has failed. Sure, we're not nearly as bad as the early experiments in Russian Bolshevism or Marxism. But neither are we any longer thriving. A few of us are. Many, many are not. Too many/most are just on the edge of keeping it together -- with respect to housing, health care, education, leisure, etc. They see the Europeans getting six weeks of vacation a year and wonder why they can't get the same, and so their only alternative, besides admitting their country is failing, is to pretend that the Europeans are wimps, hopeless socialists, unfree citizens whose governments come along and tell them when to die.

It is all so depressing.

More from McCulloch

Hu McCulloch accepts Steig's lack of plagarism of his blog post... sort of.

But then he writes: However, while ignorance may be an iron-clad defense against plagiarism, it is a rather dicey position academically speaking. Surely Steig and co-authors would at least read the vigorous and serious discussion of their paper on Climate Audit, the Air Vent, and other blogs, even if they do not deign to participate.

If Steig doesn't follow CA, he must be the only person in all of climate science.

Are you kidding me? Do McCullough and those at Climate Audit really believe that professional climate scientists check CA every day, when it has time and time again proven itself smug and/or wrong? I am sorry to have to tell CA this, but they are not a major player in the climate change scene, and really, they never have been.

Why didn't McCullough submit his comment to Nature, and not just to Steig (who says he was in Antarctica and didn't receive it?) That's what journals are for.

Best Tattoo Ever?

This might be the best tattoo ever:




via: Oddee

Beautiful Crater on Mars

Here's a wonderful view of Victoria Crater on Mars, taken by NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. One of the Mars rovers spent about two years prowling around the edge of this crater.

I love how its structure is so much like that of a drop of water:

I have sometimes wondered if anyone could ever predict the existence (and number) of these crown points at the top of the recoil.

Blogs Aren't Science

Realclimate makes such a good point today that it's worth reproducing and putting alongside every blog out there:

There is nothing wrong with constructive criticism, and pointing out errors — even fairly minor ones — is important and useful. The difference, though, between people who want to find out something about the real world and people who just want to score political points, is what is made of those errors. That is the test of constructive scientific dialog. Specious accusations of fraud, plagiarism and the like don’t pass such a test; instead they simply poison the atmosphere to everyone’s loss.

Peer-reviewed journals have well-defined rules about these things, and the best one is that have open and established procedures, and histories, and you can trust them. You can go look them up in the library if you want, even papers that are decades old.

Blog posts, on the other hand, can be modified without notice, or disappear, or make accusations outside the scientific process that get linked around the world and which are too often inflammatory, like McIntyre's smug "I gotcha again" posting of the definition of plagarism, when, as Realclimate explains, it certainly wasn't.

That's a big part of the climate change scene nowadays -- it's about scoring political points instead of "understanding the real world." It reduces it to a level the public can understand, but unfortunately it reduces it to a level the public can understand.

Wind Power

This is interesting: wind power usually supplies about 4% of the Portland region's power. But during the big heat wave here two weeks ago, it failed for lack of wind.

...the heat wave also knocked out most of the region’s wind turbines. As the temperatures rose, the wind simply stopped blowing hard enough to spin the turbines. We’re now getting around 4 percent of our power from wind turbines, but they weren’t doing much of anything (during the heat),” Corson says.

Meanwhile, power demands were heavier than usual -- a record, in fact. Two regional coal-fired plants were off-line. (Perhaps coal is not the reliable backup for wind that skeptics claim.) The power company bought more electricity from California and such, so there were no blackouts. But this episode is making the company rethink its mix of wind- and coal-energy. The local Sierra Club says we just need more wind and solar.

“The wind is always blowing and the sun is always shining somewhere...”

Speaking of wind power, here's an imaginative view from a recent contest on redesigning suburbia (via IO9):