Bali

The Bali climate conference has been going on for a week now -- so how's it going?

Not very well.

The United States, leading GHG emitter in the world, refuses to even play ball. Thumbing their nose at the UN, they say they and their buddies will develop their own plan. It will most likely be a voluntary plan, if we know Bush, and we know how much good that has done over the last few years.

Now the Canadians (emissions up one-third since 1990) have said that if the US won't participate, we won't either. Everyone is worried about the other guy having an advantage.

The European Union has committed to binding emissions reductions of 20 percent by 2020. Left unsaid is why they can meet that goal when they couldn't meet their (more modest) Kyoto targets.

The developing countries are saying, don't look at us!

Al Gore wants to bypass governments all together and rely on "people power," which he likens to the ban-the-bomb movement of previous decades. Yes, we all know how well that worked.

Things don't look very good, do they?

snow

It's snowing in Portland! Lightly, but it's snow.

First of the year.

Agnostics

Gail Collins in the NY Times:

"...Romney had his attention fixed on the approximately 35,000 Iowa religious conservatives who will tip the balance in the first-in-the-nation Republican caucus.

"Can I pause here briefly to point out that in New York there are approximately 35,000 people living on some blocks? If my block got to decide the first presidential caucus, I guarantee you we would be as serious about our special role as the folks in Iowa are. And right now Mitt Romney would be evoking the large number of founding fathers who were agnostics."

Swimming for Global Warming

A few students here in Portland are going to swim across the Willamette River -- muddy and contaminated as it is -- to call for a solution for global warming. That ought to do it.

William Connolley

Wow, I am late getting to this, but I see that William Connolley has announced his retirement from RealClimate and from climate science, in favor of software engineering.

...Much of the main areas of climate science have now become much clearer than when I began to be interested; the obstacles to progress are now very obviously political not scientific.

He has been a friend, if virtual, for several years, and I am sorry to see him go. I wish him the best of luck -- any field would be lucky to have him join it....

HIV+ Visitors

You know, probably, that the United States has banned HIV+ visitors since 1990. To our shame.

The proposed Bush administration policies to alleviate the situation are only going to make things worse, says the HIV Medicine Association.

In other science news, premature births in the U.S. were up again last year, and still no one really knows why. The premature birth rate (12.7%) is up 20% since 1990, and up 30% since 1981.

Deforestation

I was surprised by this statistic:

In the next 24 hours, deforestation will release as much CO2 into the atmosphere as 8 million people flying from London to New York.

-- "Deforestation: The Hidden Cause of Global Warming"
Daniel Howden, The Independent UK, May 14, 2007

Pac NW Flooding

Here's a picture of I-5, the Interstate highway between Portland and Seattle, originally covered under 10 feet of water at Chehalis, Washington (about halfway between Portland and Seattle). Now it's down to 3 to 4 feet, but still isn't expected to reopen until the weekend. Engineers say the problem is too expensive to fix.

Another Bali Footprint Calculation

The Bloomberg News Agency estimates the carbon footprint of the Bali conference to be 40,700 tons.

The total of 40,700 tons of gas created by the conference is equivalent to the annual emissions of 20,350 mid-sized cars, each traveling 12,000 kilometers....

Peter Garrett

Peter Garrett, that big, tall, bald Australian dude who was the lead singer of Midnight Oil (think 1980s....), was named Minister for Environment, Heritage, and Arts in the new Rudd government.

That's the kind of career I wish I had. Lead singer one decade, minister in another....

Pac NW Floods

It is scary how isolated you can get. We had a huge storm here the last few days, lots of rain (~4") and wind over Sunday and Monday, but today in Portland there was bright blue skies and with the clearing it almost seemed like spring.

But elsewhere in Oregon and Washington people are scrambling to get away from floods and literally running for their lives.

But, jeez, you'd never know it by me. I don't have television anymore (and never watched local news even with I did) and don't listen to the radio. I read all the national newspapers (NYT, WP, BG, LAT) on the Web, and I read the local paper (Oregonian), but it's real easy to just skim over the headlines and it doesn't really sink in in that skimming that the stories are real and people are suffering. I walked to the library today, and then to the office supply store, and earlier went to Safeway for some lunch... It was a beautiful day in the city. I read some papers and did some research and answered some email... but you can spend your entire day with your head stuck up your little life and hardly even aware of what is going on, even 20 miles away from you.

Is this a good thing, or a bad thing? It's about what you would have experienced 100 years ago, but was that a good thing or not? Of course, they didn't even know to ask the question.... I often think that the world is going mad for worrying about what is taking place a half a continent (or planet) away, about every little shooting and murder and child abduction, and that it's ruining our society, at a time when many people don't even know their neighbor's names... so I am not sure. It is confusing.

Physics

A couple of physics-related things you might find interesting:

• for a nice stroll through the problems, challenges, and possibilities of today's high-energy physics, read Michael Dine's article in the December issue of Physics Today: String theory in the era of the Large Hadron Collider.
• John Baez has a nice explanation of what Krauss and Dent really meant in their paper, as opposed to what New Scientist reported they meant.
  

  
  

Health Insurance

"Bow your heads and raise the white flags. After facing down the Third Reich, the Japanese empire, the U.S.S.R., Manuel Noriega, and Saddam Hussein, the United States has met an enemy it dares not confront--the American private health insurance industry.

"With the courageous exception of Dennis Kucinich, the Democratic candidates have all rolled out health "reform" plans that represent total, Chamberlain-like appeasement. Edwards and Obama propose universal health insurance plans that would in no way ease the death grip of Aetna, Unicare, MetLife, and the rest of the evildoers. Clinton--why are we not surprised?--has gone even further, borrowing the Republican idea of actually feeding the private insurers by making it mandatory to buy their product. Will I be arrested if I resist paying $10,000 a year for a private policy laden with killer co-pays and deductibles?"

-- Barbara Ehrenreich, "Crush This Enemy," Progressive, Nov. 2007

quote

"The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes."

-- Marcel Proust

YouTube's for Science

They're here: YouTube's for science content:

• JoVE (Journal of Visualized Experiments)
  
• SciVee
  

Here's a CNN article about them....

These could be useful for certain applications.... On the other hand, I find watching online videos to be somewhat wasteful. I almost always get more information per minute reading something in print than I do watching it on video. Of course, video is unique for visually spectacular events. But as a simply way of transferring information, it lags behind text, often significantly so. Often times you send up sitting through a five-minute video only to find you could have gleaned the same point in 30 seconds of reading. A lot of times I won't even start a video because I doubt it's really going to be a good use of my time....

First Flight

This is just too good -- 24-hour-old ducklings make their first flight out of their nest.

Oregon storm

The big Oregon storm is lashing at my windows as I write, with three inches of rain here in Portland in the last day or so. They had 120 mph winds at the coast overnight, with up to 70 foot high waves. It is the kind of day when you are very happy to be able to work at home.

More on Bali Carbon Footprint

The UK Times has their own estimate of the Bali conferences' carbon footprint, and it's more than three times mine:

“Calculations suggest flying the 15,000 politicians, civil servants, green campaigners and television crews into Indonesia will generate the equivalent of 100,000 tons of extra CO2. That is similar to the entire annual emissions of the African state of Chad.”

Their person who did the calculation asks:

“One wonders how many people would have gone if the conference had been held in a wet October in Pittsburgh.”

Are the emissions worth it?

Achim Steiner, director of the UN Environment Programme, said such conferences could never be small. “If you want to tackle an unprecedented global challenge like climate change then people have to meet and talk. Bali remains the world’s best hope to minimise the effect of global warming.”

Of course, most people who travel, certainly for business, feel their across-the-world flights are equally essential. Could the UN have shown their concern by organizing the conference as the world's largest and most sophisticated video conference ever?

In any case, UN officials are going without suit and ties, to save on air-conditioning. So maybe this time they're really serious.

Via Dot Earth.

More on Faith

Bob Parks, in his weekly What's New column, gets to the heart of Paul Davies' essay in the NYT the other day on science and faith:

FAITH: THE WAR BETWEEN SCIENCE AND RELIGION.
It’s time we had a little talk. The New York Times on Saturday published an op-ed by Paul Davies that addresses the question: "Is embracing the laws of nature so different from religious belief?" Davies concludes that, "until science comes up with a testable theory of the laws of the universe its claim to be free of faith is manifestly bogus." Davies has confused two meanings of the word "faith." The Oxford Concise English Dictionary on my desk gives the two distinct meanings for faith as: "1) complete trust or confidence, and 2) strong belief in a religion based on spiritual conviction rather than proof." A scientist’s "faith" is built on experimental proof. The two meanings of the word "faith," therefore, are not only different, they are exact opposites. Davies, who won the 1995 Templeton Prize is not the only physicist to make that mistake. "Many people don’t realize that science basically involves faith" Charles Townes said in his 2005 Templeton statement. On laser physics I would happily defer to Townes, but this is a matter of the English language. Here we defer to the dictionaries. The judges who awarded Townes’ the 2005 Templeton Prize cited a single line from his 1966 article The Convergence of Science and Religion: "Understanding the order in the Universe and understanding the purpose of the universe are not identical, but they are also not very far apart." They are a universe apart (http://bobpark.physics.umd.edu/WN05/wn031105.html). In any case, the "purpose" of the universe is not on the science agenda. Suicide bombers no doubt believe they are part of some divine "purpose."

Speaking of this Davies' essay, there were a lot of good, on-target responses, many in this same line (as was my response), in the Letters section of the Times a few days later.

Recession?

John Whitehead, a environmental economist at Appalachian State University and a blogger at Environmental Economics, says he believes that greenhouse gas emissions are a leading economic indicator and that the US's 2006 decrease of 1.5% foretells a recession next year....

Oregon storm

Oregon is expecting a big storm this weekend -- snow in Portland on Saturday, and a "once in a decade" storm with high winds and heavy rain early next week. Winds will be hurricane strength on the coast, up to 100 miles an hour. The storm is called an "extratropical cyclone," and doesn't have the actual structure of an actual hurricane, just the winds.

Good. Portland doesn't get enough storms -- just endless gray skies and misty rain....

Correction - Bali Carbon Footprint

Yes, I made an embarrassing factor of 1000 error in my Bali footprint calculation, dividing something by 1000 when I should have divided by a million. Mea culpa. So the Bali footprint is actually about 30,000 tons of carbon dioxide, equal to 8,000 Earthling-years.

Put another way, each Bali participant will, over the course of less than two weeks, expend about what the average Earth inhabitant expends in 8 months.

Geothermal Energy

Two geologists calculate that the "accessible" geothermal energy in the United States, excluding Alaska and Hawaii, is 9 x 10^16 (90 quadrillion) kilowatt-hours, 3,000 times more than the country's total annual energy consumption.

Not only that, it's reliable. Though not necessary local.

No Science Books

As one author pointed out on a listserv I'm on, the New York Times "100 Notable Books of 2007" did not include even one science book.

Bali Carbon Footprint

The IPCC Conference on Climate Change is taking place this Dec 3-14 in Bali, Indonesia.

The conference will have about 12,000 participants from 189 countries, and since Bali is in the middle of nowhere we can assume that the average participant flies 1/4ths of the Earth's circumference to attend, or about 6,000 miles.

Passenger air travel costs 0.18 kg CO2/passenger-mile, for long-distance flights. Of course, many participants will be taking private jets, which will throw this calculation way off.

So the total carbon emissions for travel to-and-from the conference are 26 MMT CO2 (million metric tons).

The average American emitted 24.1 MT CO2 in 2006, so travel to-and-from the Bali conference is equivalent to 1.1 M American-years of carbon expenditure. Or about what the city of Portland, Oregon spends in two years.

Of course, Americans are energy pigs. Worldwide carbon expenditures in 2006 were roughly 20,000 Tg CO2 (=20,000 MMT CO2), for 6.3 B people. So

Bali carbon expenditure = 8.2 M earthling-years

This is just for travel, and does not include travel on private jets, which is likely to be large.

Per-day costs for food, lodging, etc. are assumed here to be the same, as many of these dignitaries no doubt live the high-life, just as they would in a first-class hotel in Bali.

As some people have said, I'll start thinking global warming is a crisis when the people telling me it's a crisis act like it's a crisis. You have to wonder where the Bali participants are coming from.


Note: Correction here.

More Deadline Nonsense

Atop James Hansen's claim that if we don't act on climate change within 10 years, made about 2 years ago now, comes the pronouncement by IPCC head Rajendra Pachaur that actually it's only five years, starting....NOW!

“If there’s no action before 2012, that’s too late. What we do in the next two to three years will determine our future. This is the defining moment.”

Joseph Romm, ever gullible, says

In short — time’s up! America — we better pick the right President in 2008.

Oh my god, kiddies, here it is -- the entire future of the planet revolves on the 2008 election!

-=-=-

This just keeps getting more and more absurd, and I wish Hansen, Pachaur, and Romm would just stop the nonsense. A few years this way or that isn't going to make much, if any, difference. Even a decade or so. When we get around to cutting greenhouse gases -- and you can bet it sure won't be by 2012 -- we'll start to make some difference. Until then, we won't. The problem only gets about 1% worse each year, not 10% or something like that. How much worse will the problem be if we delay action by a decade? About 0.3°C, more or less. Not really that much, in the grand scheme of things.

So please, enough with the scare tactics. The real facts are bad enough.

Berkeley GHGs

Berkeley, CA claims a 8.9% reduction in greenhouse gas emission in the last five years.

Supposedly, 75% of the world's energy is consumed in cities.

Seattle GHG emissions

Portland, Oregon is not the only city claiming significant greenhouse gas reductions. Seattle says its 2005 overall emissions are 8% below 1990 levels, down to 11.5 MT per capita. (That compares to Portland's claim of 14.4 MT/capita, and an overall United States average of 24.1 MT/capita.)

According to an email from John Fleck, Albuquerque is claiming a 6% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions from 1990 to 2005.

I don't know. It is not intuitively obvious that Seattle should have a 20% lower carbon footprint than Portland, especially when it is farther north and has noticeably cooler weather, especially in the winter. And when I hear traffic is significantly worse up there.

Hydrogen Cars and GHGs

It's not clear that hydrogen cars will reduce greenhouse gas emissions at all, says the Reason Foundation. In fact, they might even rise. It depends on how you make the hydrogen gas.

Bush just talked about hydrogen for show, anyway. I mean, what have you actually heard him say about it since his initial words?

Internet brownouts?

Could there be Internet brownouts within two years?

Shark vs. Octopus

A shark versus an octopus -- who would you bet on?

Think again....

Open Range

Boss Spearman: "I ain't wastin' a good bullet to ease your pain, you son of a bitch."

-- Robert Duvall, Open Range

Full Metal Jacket

Q: How can you shoot women and children?
A: Easy--you just don't lead'em so much. Ha ha ha ha. Ain't war hell? Ha ha ha ha.....

-- Helicopter gunman, Full Metal Jacket

Ducks vs. Beavers

When I lived back in New England, I grew to be a Red Sox & Patriots fan, mostly because they were winning. (Nothing will ever replace my growing-up love of the Pittsburgh Pirates, and then the Steelers, but that was then.)(Oh yeah, and Notre Dame. Remember watching their highlights on Sunday mornings?)

Since moving to Oregon I've tried to get into local sports...but it is just not working. The only professional team in town in the Trailblazers, but I just couldn't care less about basketball and so I couldn't care less about the Trailblazers. Seattle (Mariners, Seahawks) seem far too far away, so that leaves only college football.

Which means Oregon and Oregon State. The problem is, I can't tell them apart.

One of them is the Beavers and one of them is the Ducks. They are both in small towns about a hundred miles south of Portland, but I cannot figure out which is where, and I don't care enough to really remember it all. One of them -- I think -- is very good this year, almost ranked #1, but I can't remember which one.

People in Oregon seem very attuned to this all and really in love with one of these teams. (Maybe it's the other.) I don't know. I just feel disconnected and, so, these sports and their enthusiasts just seem silly.

I miss the enthusiasm of my youth.

Science and Faith

Paul Davies' essay in the NY Times is the kind of tiresome nitpicking that scientists ignore because there's just no return in talking about it. Of course scientists have "faith" in the laws of physics -- these laws have proven themselves handily over the last X hundred years (X=3 for gravity, 1.3 for electromagnetism, 0.6 for QED, 0.3 for QCD, 0.0 for string theory). "Faith" just means they use the laws until something better is established. So what--that's a pretty meaningless definition of "faith?" The moment one of these laws shows evidence of making a false prediction, physicists abandon it like a bad memory, and work like maniacs to find a better law. This is far, far different from religious people, who will tolerate no unapproved thoughts about their "deity" and who stand by their proclaimed "god" at all costs, without any physical proof whatsoever. You can't disprove the existence of a Christian god (say), because Christians are not amenable to the ways of reason. Scientists are.

Case closed.

More on Portland GHGs

So how do Portland's transportation-sector GHGs compare to the national average?

I could only found US transportation GHGs from 1990 to 2004 -- a person can go crazy searching for the exact data -- available here. I extrapolated to 2006 -- I'm not going to go through the details -- and got 1,985.5 MMT CO2e for the US Transportation sector GHG emissions in 2006. Dividing by the 2006 population given here, we get

per capita US transportation GHG emissions, 2006 = 6.6 MT CO2

That compares to Portland's claim of 5.6 MT.

So Portland is claiming that its per-capita transportation emissions are 15% below the national average.... Is that reasonable, for a city?

What I Like

What I like: when I lean back in my desk chair and watch a video or something on the computer, I let my right hand dangle down from my shoulder towards the floor (I mouse left-handed), and my cat Eli quietly comes around and brushes into my right hand, looking to be stroked. It's always quiet and subtle and meaningful, like he likes it as much as I do.

Movies From the Library

Portland is many things, but one thing is does have it a really good library system. And now they're offering free, full-movie and TV downloads for a fair selection of movies and programs. I don't know of any other library doing that....

Big Casino

"Well there's lots of smart ideas
In books I've never read
When the girls come talk to me
I wish to hell I had."

-- Jimmy Eat World, Big Casino

Has Portland Really Cut its Greenhouse Gases?

Once again Portland, Oregon has claimed to have significantly reduced its greenhouse gas emissions, but once again the claim is subject to a lot of questions.

You might recall that this happened with its last report in 2005, when an error was found nullifying the same claim.

This past week Portland (well, technically Multnomah County, though they are nearly the same place, and I will use them interchangeably here) issued a report on its 2006 greenhouse gas emissions. (The report, titled "Portland Global Warming Overview," November 2006, is available on this page. It's a PowerPoint presentation. There is a written report, though they say it's still a draft.)

The Portland Tribune wrote a news story about the report last week.

Basically, Portland's claim is

Greenhouse-gas emissions... are down to just 0.1 percent above 1990 levels in Multnomah County, according to the city’s Office of Sustainable Development.

That decrease, city officials said, comes despite the area’s 15 percent population growth since 1990.

Here's a graph. Here are some numbers from the report, for Multnomah County:

TOTAL GHG emissions, 1990: 9.78 MMT CO2e
TOTAL GHG emissions, 2006: 9.79 MMT CO2e

(Units are million metric tons of CO2-equivalent). Per resident the numbers are:

per capita TOTAL GHG emissions, 1990: 16.8 MT CO2e
per capita TOTAL GHG emissions, 2006: 14.4 MT CO2e

So while total GHG emissions in the US are up 17% from 1990 levels, Portland has essentially stayed the same, despite a 15% increase in population over that time, and per capita emissions are down 14%.

Is this believable?

The report attributes the decrease to a variety of factors, such as increased use of public transportation (up 90% since 1990), a recycling rate of 63% ("the highest in the nation"), a quadrupling of the bicycle commuting rate to 4.4%, green buildings, planting more than 750,000 trees and shrubs since 1996, and other factors (see the draft report, p. 2).

But there are some questions.

1) diesel: Transportation accounts for about 40% of local greenhouse gas emissions, the largest sector, but Portland's numbers do not account for diesel fuel sold/consumed--that number is only available on the state level, they say. How big an error is this? At least 10%, I think.

Here's my reasoning: 130 B gallons of gasoline are sold in the US in 2006, and 50 B gallons of diesel. Gasoline emits 8.8 kg/gal CO2, while diesel emits 10.1 kg/gal. (Though diesel cars tend to get better gas mileage, so per-mile the emissions are about the same.) So total US CO2 emissions in 2006 were:

gasoline: 1214 MMT
diesel: 505 MMT

Let's assume that, per resident, Portland residents use the same amount of diesel as US residents. (This might not be exactly true, as Portland is high in hybrid car registration, but it seems to me the assumption should be approximately true.) The US population in 2006 was 299,398,484, and Multnomah County's was 681,454. Taking the ratio we get

gasoline emissions, Multnomah County, 2006: 2.8 MMT
diesel emissions, Multnomah County, 2006, 1.1 MMT

Diesel emissions are 42% of gasoline's emissions, and 11% of the claimed GHG emissions.

Including diesel fuel, Portland's emissions would be 11% higher than claimed, or 10.9 MT/resident.

2) Airplane emissions: The report excludes air traffic, though (according to the Tribune) CO2 emissions at Portland International Airport were 0.45 MMT in 2005. That's a additional 5% error.

Including diesel fuel and airplane traffic, Portland's emissions would be 16% higher than claimed, or 11.4 MT/resident.

3) estimation of transportation-related CO2 emissions: Total transportation emissions for Multnomah County given by the report are:

1990: 3.79 MMT CO2e
2000: 3.95 MMT CO2e
2006: 3.89 MMT CO2e

It appears that most, if not all, of the criticisms of the Cascade Policy Institute still stand: the city is using gasoline sales as a proxy for miles driven, even though the manufacturers of the emissions software program used by the city say not to do this. For full details, download the Word document in the 6th paragraph of this Cascade Policy Institute article -- the remainder of this document outlines several reasons why one should be quite skeptical of the claim that 2006 transportation emissions are only 2.6% higher than 1990 emissions, though population is up 15%.

(And if you're wondering, fuel efficiency is essentially unchanged over this time period, nationwide.)

Car registrations are up, gasoline sales in a neighboring county are up sharply since 1990, total commuters in-and-out of Multnomah County are up sharply, total miles driven in the state of Oregon are up...and more.

Has public transportation, bicycling, and compact zoning really made that much of a difference? It seems hard to believe. The Tribune reports:

Armstrong admitted that the gas numbers are not perfect, but said better fuel-efficiency has more than compensated for those increases.

But, as I noted above, fuel efficiency is not any better since 1990, nationwide. Is Portland's higher hybrid registration rate really that much of a factor?

-=-=-

Of course, you might argue that what matters is not the absolute numbers but the trend, and as long as you are consistent in your methodology (consistently excluding diesel fuel sales, for example) you can at least extract the trend from the data. That's not a very scientific or analytic argument, though, given the complexity of the situation. So I don't know. At this point I'm not sure anyone can make any conclusions about the numbers given the significant gaps in the methodology.

People like Nicholas Kristof will probably still buy the claim, though.

Australia and global warming

The anti-Kyoto Prime Minister of Australia, John Howard(*), has been defeated by the pro-Kyoto challenger John Rudd. Rudd has proclaimed global warming will be his first priority. Maybe now Australia will join the 21st century.

* Howard did make a recent, semi-conversion from being a climate skeptic. Politically motivated, no doubt.

Popping the Universe's Bubble

Oh boy. As if it's not bad enough that humans are destroying the planet, now we may be responsible for destroying the Universe, too.

Specifically, Saul Perlmutter appears to be the one to blame :-). Wait until the conservatives and anti-science people get ahold of this one.

Physicists Lawrence Krauss and James Dent have a paper out that says our (well, Perlmutter's) discovery of dark energy in 1998 may have changed the quantum state of the Universe and shortened its lifetime.

Of course, this story comes from Britain (originally from New Scientist), and my rule of thumb for any science story from Britain is to treat it essentially as a press release -- that is, assume it's hyped until someone shows that it's not.

Out of It

I have been out of it for about three weeks now, with a bad case of the flu, or some damn virus.... All I know is I feel like I've had three or four different, serious colds all on top of one another, or maybe in serial.... but all I've been able to do for most of the last several days is sleep or cough my lungs out. Apologies for the lack of blogging. I'll try to get back into it in the next day or two.

In the meantime, I recommend getting a flu shot.

Mexican floods

I really love this picture that currently appears atop the Drudge Report, about the floods in Mexico:


Is there any better illustration of the precariousness of life? One day you're going to bed, the rain hard on your roof, your beloved dog at your feet -- you, worried about the storm, he, dreaming of rats and squirrels and kibble in the morning -- and you both wake up to an unimaginable flood and suddenly you're swimming for your life, you and your dog, out there, all alone. You're half hanging on to him for support and half because you don't want to lose him, and the dog, the poor dog, is just wondering what ever happened in life that it has come to this, and he wants you to make it as much as you want him, even more than yourself, and all you and he can do it strive for the shore, together, alone.... and it all happens so fast. Today is nothing like yesterday and yet, what did you ever do to deserve this? What did he?

Life is surely no easier for a human than for a dog, but probably no less, and sometimes, in a rare moment of struggle and love and candor, all you have is one another, just you and your dog. And so you swim.

Westboro Baptist Church

A couple of years ago when I lived in Lee, New Hampshire, there was a big ceremony a few miles down the road at the arena of the University of New Hampshire, for the Rev. Gene Robinson, who was being made the Bishop of the Diocese of New Hampshire. Robinson is gay, so this was a big deal, and my friend Holly and I went down to watch the protests. There were plenty of people on the pro-gay side of the argument, all standing around in the rain, and after a good while a small delegation from the Westboro Baptist Church rolled up and took their appointed place amongst the protest ropes laid out by the police. These are the followers of the odious Fred Phelps of Kansas. They had all their "God hates Fags" signs out, and stood around in their appointed spot and tried to make a scene.

I had a notebook and an umbrella and so I pretended I was a reporter on a deadline and went up and talked to someone in their pit. I stood next to a woman who was protesting and asked her for her thoughts. She started talking but there was something really weird about her, like she was strung up on something and not really herself. She talked to me about her feelings about gays, but it was more like a rant, and more like something she had had drilled into her -- there was something robotic about her words, and nothing that seemed to convey any emotion. It seemed all very rote. The most notable thing was that she refused to look anywhere close to my eyes.... After about two minutes I stopped and since it was raining really hard I stepped aside and let them protest another 10 minutes or so, when they they marched out of the area, to jeers mostly, and got back on their bus.

All in all they seemed pretty pathetic. And completely ineffectual.

So I am surprised to see someone awarded $10.9M dollars because the Westboro Baptist Church protested at his son's funeral. His son was a fallen Marine. I am more than sure than this man grieves for his son. I think the Westboro Baptist Church are bastards who one should get their comeuppance. But I don't think that matters. I think the Westboro Baptist Church has a right to protest at this guy's funeral, and express any thoughts they want, however odious. I don't think the courts have any business fining them for expressing their First Amendment rights. This is a classic first amendment case -- that is, the only ones who really need first amendment rights are those don't seem to deserve it. They were cited for emotional distress and invasion of privacy, but come on, any judge should surely know this kind of speech is allowed under the First Amendment. This is why the First Amendment was invented. But all-in-all I think they have the right to be there.

I can't take the Westboro Baptist Church seriously, especially based on what I saw that day at UNH. I saw that there is no passion behind their words, just a form of... well, evil. Not inherent evil -- I don't believe in that. These were just poor people -- and they were mostly kids who were protesting -- who had been severely warped by their parents and grandparents. The parents and grandparents were noticeably absent. But when you looked them in the face, you saw they were just pathetic, not threatening. They won't look you in the eyes. In a way, it says all you need to know.

Bumper Sticker

Bumper sticker I saw on the way to the store:

The Emperor has no brain.

Biology animation

One of the reasons I've felt like I never have understood biology to the degree I feel I understand physics is because I can never understand how all those big macromolecules get all that cellular work done. Maybe I never will, but this neat animation seems to give a glimpse of the poetry of what might be going on.

Via: Dark Roasted Blend

response to "The End of Science"

Lubos Motl has a pretty good response to John Horgan's continued insistence that science is coming to an end. There have been very significant findings since Horgan's book came out about 10 years ago, in physics, and especially in biology/genetics. Every day my Inbox overflows with new discoveries -- every day, it seems, literally, a new human gene is discovered.... and in any case I don't know what Horgan expects. It seems to me that science is progressing at least at the average rate it has over the last 400 years, and probably a lot faster. I don't buy Horgan's argument.

Romans

Wikipedia:

"...60 percent of Roman citizens died, from all causes, before age 20...."

Universities and Colleges

I see that some conservative organization named Family Security Matters has named the Ten Most Dangerous Organizations in America. They list "Universities and Colleges" at #2.

OK, let's take them at their word. I'm sure, therefore, if they think Universities and Colleges are so dangerous, that they will be more than willing to forego the discoveries and benefits which have come from these institutions. Let's construct a partial list:

1) x-rays, discovered in 1895 by Wilhelm Rontgen at the University of Wurzburg. When they break a bone, Family Security Matters members can decline an x-ray and just let their doctors feel around for a bone break, guessing as to its extent.

2) nuclear fission, finally demonstrated by Enrico Fermi at the University of Chicago. Family Security Matters members will, I'm sure, be more than willing to do without the Gigawatt-hrs of electricity produced in this manner around the world.

3) Giant magnetoresistance, discovered at a university in Paris. Family Security Matters members can do without hard drives or anything of the sort which make a modern computer useful.

Do we really have to go on? You can fill in the rest as well as I can. FSM can decline to take many of today's pharmaceuticals. I'm sure they won't mind exiting themselves from anything having to do with gravity or astronomical research, discovered and perfected by Newton, Einstein, and others all at universities. Are they willing to live with polio? In 1950 William Hammon at the University of Pittsburgh isolated a serum from the blood of polio survivors.

Would FSM members like to benefit from solar energy? Fuel cells? Nanowires?

Do we really have to go on?

The fact is, the liberal traditions of free speech and open inquiry are exactly what have brought us these advances over the decades. FSM can put their conservative ideas out in the intellectual marketplace for approval and advancement -- the truth is, over the last several decades, these ideas have mostly been found to be wanting and deficient. It has almost always been open, liberal ideas that lead to advancements of our society, not closed, regressive, conservative ideas.

FSM can criticize these ideas if they want. If they do, they should be forced to live without them.

Morning

This is not far from my typical morning:

Your Phone Number

Via David Brooks in the NYT:

I read in a piece by Clive Thompson in Wired that a third of the people under 30 can’t remember their own phone number.

Wow, is this really true? Is there anybody out there who really doesn't know their own phone number?

David Reinhard wrong... again

The other day David Reinhard,the conservative opinion-monger for the Oregonian, thought he could get away with disparaging the parents of Graham Frost, implying that that they were so well off financially that they could afford private tuition for their children, and that, thus, they didn't deserve government-sponsored health insurance (SCHIP).

Mr. Reinhard is, in fact, quite wrong, and I don't understand why he won't admit it.

As reported in the Baltimore Sun on Oct. 10, and in Time magazine on the same day, the Frosts received financial aid (a scholarship) in order to privately school their children.

Mr. Reinhard is unwilling to accept this error. He needs to be called out until acknowledges the truth. Isn't that what journalism is supposed to be about?

Bridge article

I have an article in the November issue of Scientific American, just out:

"Repairs without Rivets:

Carbon-fiber composites could lead to quick fixes for old bridges"

Haka

The problem with my profession: no haka.

Carbon Intensity

I am really astonished at yesterday's announcement that the world's carbon intensity has been increasing since about the year 2000. Carbon intensity had been decreasing for a hundred years and I thought it was akin to a law of nature that carbon intensity always and forever decreases, because people are always and forever naturally striving to use energy more efficiently.

Up until 2000, carbon intensity had, over the last 30 years, been decreasing by about 1.3% per year. Since 2000 it has been increasing by about 0.3% per year.

This is huge, it seems to me. I still do not really understand it and am still studying this paper to figure out what's going on.

Dot Earth

Andrew Revkin of the NY Times now has a blog:

Dot Earth
http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/

Oil Production Peaks

Oil production peaked last year, says an energy group in Germany, much sooner than experts predicted. (The International Energy Association isn't worried.) Production will now be decreasing 7% a year, they say.

"The world soon will not be able to produce all the oil it needs as demand is rising while supply is falling. This is a huge problem for the world economy...."

Current supplies are good only for about 30 more years, they predict.

May you live in interesting times.

Conscious machines

A British Telecom futurologist, Ian Pearson, predicts that there will be conscious machines by 2015-2020 (whatever that means--in fact, he predicts that we won't really understand it) and that one will win the Nobel Prize by 2020. (Imagine the conservative snipping about that.)

Oceans taking up less carbon

This is not encouraging: in the last 10 years the oceans have been taking up significantly less carbon dioxide than they once did: 50% less in the North Atlantic, since measurements began about 10 years ago.

The researchers who did the study admit they can't attribute this to human-caused climate change -- they simply have no baseline against which to compare, and it's possible there are significant natural fluctuations in the ocean's ability to absorb carbon dioxide. Definitely something to keep an eye on. If the ocean sink saturates climate change is going to happen even that much faster.

Lucinda Williams - Drunken Angel

In memory, supposedly, of Blaze Foley:

NYT Letter to the Editor

Mitchell Turker, here of Portland, has a letter in today's New York Times that perfectly encapsulates my feelings after seven years of the Bush administration:

As an American citizen, I am tired of being disgusted with my government. We deserve better.

How to Save the World

This is a pretty screwed up world, there's no doubt about it. Answers seem few and far between, and it's hard to believe we are not doomed in 50 years, if we will even make it that long. But some people refuse to accept this fate, and they speak out, with answers that are simple but aren't easy to admit:

Marburger and 2 C

Wow, I am amazed to read this: John Marburger, the President's science adviser, yesterday refused to acknowledge that climate change ought to be limited to +2°C.

2°C is 3.6°F. That is a huge amount of warming. It is absurd for Marburger to claim that that amount of increase "is not actually linked to regional events that affect people's lives." Simply absurd. It is one of the most unscientific statements I have read in a long time.

In its April report, the IPCC outlined a range of environmental impacts that could transpire if temperatures rise 1.8 to 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit above 1980 levels. These include placing between 20 and 30 percent of all species "at increasing risk of extinction" damaging most coral reefs; and "increased morbidity and mortality from heat waves, floods and droughts."

Marburger said, "you could have emerging disasters long before you get to two degrees. . . . There is no scientific criterion for establishing numbers like that."

There is no scientific criterion for establishing any number -- such establishment is a question of values, not of science. Marburger looks foolish for even implying otherwise.

In 50 years, the world is going to look back on the climate criminals of the turn of the century. Marburger just established himself as one.

Oregon & Storms

The thing I miss the most about living here in Oregon compared to New England is...the lack of storms.

It just doesn't storm here. It was supposed to be a big, stormy day here today, wind and rain, but in the end it was all just a little breeze and some pissy rain. Nothing at all. Certainly nothing like a nor'easter. Nothing at all.

Back east, when it storms, you know you've been rained upon. It clouds up and either rains all day or, in the summer, it gathers in the afternoon, and builds up to some unsustainable level of humidity where it lets loose and rains a good half-inch in 20 minutes, absolutely pounds the ground and trees and scatters twigs all around.

Nothing like that here. Here it rains a little and a few leaves come down, but then it stops and you can walk out and stay dry. The sodden leaves are scattered all along the roads and sidewalks, and they get plenty slippery, but it's not the same. No one takes the storms seriously. They just wait it out. It is anticlimactic, and it is somewhat disappointing.

There are plenty of beautiful things about Oregon, but its storms aren't one of them.....

"Choctaw Bingo"

"Choctaw Bingo"
James McMurtry:

Strap them kids in
Give'em a lil bit of vodka
in a cherry coke
we're goin' to oklahoma
to the family reunion
for the first time in years
it's up at Uncle Slaton's
cuz he's gettin' on in years
no longer travels but he's
still pretty spry
he's not much on talk
he's too mean to die

Giuliani and Alien Attacks

Could you write a more preposterous account if you even tried?

Giuliani, campaigning in New Hampshire, was asked how the U.S. would respond in case of an alien attack. Without even pausing to think, he replied,

"Of all the things that can happen in this world, we'll be prepared for that, yes we will. We'll be prepared for anything that happens," said Giuliani, who spent the day campaigning in the key early voting state.

That's right, folks, we'll be prepared to confront beings who have the means to travel hundreds of light-years across the galaxy and who are most likely millions, if not billions, of years more technologically advanced than we are, because, well, damn it, because we're the United States of fucking America.

More than likely, the aliens will land here and step out of their massive spaceship, saying, like Kid Rock, "You've never met a motherfucker quite like me."

-=-=-

And we're supposed to take these politicians seriously.

Tim Ball's comments

The other day I challenged Tim Ball's assertion that "the world is cooling." I showed temperatures plots for the last several years, and of course it depends on how you want to define "climate" -- do you consider it the last one year of temperatures, the last five years, the last ten years, etc.? Of course, none is inherently correct -- there is no fundamental definition -- but all are meaningful to consider.

As I noted, all moving overages over the last 25 years are increasing, though there is perhaps a small flattening in the last few months of the 5-yr moving average, which frankly doesn't seem all that important.

I wrote Tim Ball and challenged him on these facts, and got back some answers that frankly don't make a lot of sense to me. First he accused me of being with NASA (when really my email address is from NASW), as if that matters to the facts, but then he responded:

Your use of moving averages is misleading.

This didn't make much sense to me, since what is a climate time series except moving averages? So I wrote him back. He responded:

Moving averages have considerable limitations, not the least of which is leaving out data and smoothing a curve to obliterate information. There is also the problem of the loss of data at the beginning and end of a curve depending upon the period chosen for the moving average. Both these points are evident in your curves. You concede the curve is flat "for the last year or so" a vague comment maybe because of the limitations of moving averages, but it requires explanation. It certainly doesn't fit with the CO2 trend.

Of course, I included several different moving averages in my analysis precisely to overcome the problems he tries to imply. You have to have endpoints to your data somewhere. Then he writes:

I am in agreement with Sherwood and Craig Idso that there is no warming evident in the record since 1930. The problem with global temperatures as reported by NASA GISS are well documented at Climateaudit (http://www.climateaudit.org/) including the problems of not adjusting for the Urban Heat Island Effect (UHIE) adequately and the condition of the recording stations.

This strikes me as absurd. The NASA GISS temperature series is corrected for the urban heat island effect, and the "problems" cited at ClimateAudit are neither systematic (as Eli Rabbett has shown) or peer-reviewed. They're just some amateurs trying to poke holes here there, without much success as far as I can ascertain.

I've asked Ball for the data which he thinks does show no temperture increase since 1930.

Oil

Oil is now about $86/barrel, about 45% higher than it was a year ago. Are we really supposed to believe that the Consumer Price Index is only 2% above a year ago? I just don't believe it.

Oil and heating and transportation costs permeate our economy. I just don't believe that a 45% yearly increase in such a basic commodity leads to only 2% inflation. I have some idea how they calculate the CPI, and although I don't know every detail I don't for a minute think that the cost of living is increasing only at 2% a year and yes, I am even prepared to believe there is collusion among economic officials to keep the stated CPI down. I have no evidence for this, and I'm sure one couldn't get it without a 6-month investigative study, and I hope someone is doing this, but something here seriously does not make sense....

Colbert

"...winning the Nobel Prize does not automatically qualify you to be commander in chief. I think George Bush has proved definitively that to be president, you don’t need to care about science, literature or peace."

-- Stephen Colbert

Gay rights in Oregon

Gay-rights opponents fail to get second referendum on ballot.

As a result, on Jan. 1 Oregon will have a law prohibiting discrimination based on sexual orientation and a law allowing domestic partnerships for same-sex couples.

Hunting

Here in Portland this week the newspaper has been overwhelmed with letters about this hunting story, where 10-year old Vanessa Smith was introduced to grouse hunting via her grandpa Al Thomas. People seemed especially upset about Al's gleeful countenance during the shoot, wondering how he could be such a bloodthirsty bastard:

Tuesday, October 09, 2007

"A-Hunting She Will Go" (Oct. 7) was a shocker! It turned my stomach. The picture of grandfather Al Thomas's face registering such ecstasy because his granddaughter had killed the grouse was sickening. Why are they so happy when they kill something? Fortunately hunting is becoming an anachronism -- no longer needed. We can achieve conservation without the blood sport.

CLIFF GOLDMAN Northeast Portland

OK, I'm on-board with that. I don't enjoy hunting and there is an element of barbarism to it. I grew up in rural Pennsylvania, where everyone hunted, and we even had the first day of deer season off from school. My dad took me hunting when I was 12, and mostly it struck me as a good way to walk around with a heavy gun in your hand, trying to stay warm. My mom gave me some chocolate bars beforehand.... out in the field, my dad stationed me at a trail intersection and told me to keep my eyes open while he tried to drive some game down my way. 20 minutes later he crept up on me as I was opening a Hershey bar, and I think it was about then that he decided I just wasn't going to cut it as a hunter and we walked straight home. We never went hunting again, to his great disappointment. I was always more interested in algebra.

Anyway, the Portland urbanites have been making their displeasure known about hunting and hunting stories, but someone today finally hit the nail on the head:

Friday, October 12, 2007

If I were a prey animal, I would rather pit my natural wits against a hunter in the wild than be caged in a factory farm -- something to consider for all you nonhunting meat eaters out there.

MARTIN J. CLAXTON Southwest Portland

And I think Martin Claxton has hit it right on the head, as much as I hate to admit it. It's easy to dismiss hunters as bloodthirsty barbarians, but almost all of us are eating meat and the way it's raised and slaughtered in this country is a moral tragedy. Factory farming is about the worst genocide you can imagine. Each and every one of those lives matter no less than do a deer in the wild. But I'm eating chicken and beef and (although I try and avoid it) pork, and I feel extremely morally culpable about it. I have tried to be a vegetarian, and it works for 3-4 months and then I start to feel weird, and seriously start to crave meat. I am, let's face it, an omnivore. Perhaps I should suck it up morally and stick to vegetarianism, cravings be damned. But so far I have not been able to do that. I hate thinking about the tens of millions of pitable chickens and cows and pigs who are suffering here and around the world for the sake of our diet. They lead horrible, horrible lives. I try to buy free-range chicken when I can afford it (not always). I would prefer stickers on my meat about the conditions under which it was raised, but so far Safeway won't comply.

Deer in the wild certainly lead better lives than do the factory farmed animals that all of us eat, and in that sense it's better they be shot in the wild than herded in a slaughterhouse. It's easy to categorize hunters as murderers, but they are only being honest about the situation. Too many people are forgetting that.

It has come to the point where I hate thinking about my diet, and I hate that I hate thinking about it. Frankly I'd like to live on a little farm and raise a few chickens and a pig and a cow, beings I could pamper until it came time to quickly slit their throat. Sometimes I hate the compromises of the modern age.

Flying to Oslo

You knew this was coming:

John Tierney:

I don’t want to dampen the celebration over Al Gore’s Nobel Peace Prize, but I wonder if this is, as they say, a “teachable moment.” Should he skip the trip to Oslo, Norway, on a fuel-burning jet and instead accept the award by teleconference?

Tierney quotes Gore on flying, and Gore would not doubt reply something like that he has been buying carbon offsets all along. Whatever. It'd be nice if Gore flew a little less, but let's be honest, global warming is not going to be solved by returning our standard of living to the 18th century. Or even by eating kangaroo meat instead of beef. We are still going to drive and fly and explore the world, not matter what. We will heat our homes by cheapest means possible -- that's human nature.

What will make a difference is if it becomes cheaper and easier to buy electric or even hydrogen cars. If solar technology makes it amenable to heat our homes most of the time via the sun. If wind and tidal technologies become so well understood that we use them the rest of the time. Despite what Joseph Romm says, we are not going to tax coal plants out of existence, as long as they are what is cheapest. It is going to be new technology that makes the difference.

So ultimately Gore will be flying to Oslo via some low-carbon-emitting airplane. And the rest of us will still be vacationing in Venice or London or Cancun. That's the future we need.

2006 Heat

Most of the anomalous heat in the US in 2006 was due to human influences, conclude scientists:

Martin Hoerling, et. al., Geophysical Research Letters: "...over half of the anomalous warmth in 2006 is attributed to greenhouse gas forcing, whose strength now exceeds the standard deviation of natural fluctuations. We conclude that the record warmth was primarily due to human influences."

Gore's Money

SF Chronicle:

Gore, 59, said he planned to donate his half of the $1.5 million prize to the Alliance for Climate Protection....

Classy.

IPCC

"About 2,000 scientists from more than 100 countries have participated in the IPCC since 1988."

Science & Morality

I really like how NYT's Andrew Revkin captures the essence of today's Peace Prize: how appropriate it was that both the IPCC and Gore received the prize -- the IPCC representing the cold, logical, scientific side of this huge equation, and Gore representing the ethical, moral, emotional part of the story. Both are absolutely necessary, as in any big story. Some people understand or prefer to listen to one side of the story; others respond to the other side. But the latter is not cut-and-dried -- it is as big any value-laden issue, and global warming is as value-laden as it gets. Gore might not always get every iota and detail correct -- his critics don't either -- but there is still a lot of uncertainty about all this and someone has to say, look, this can get really serious. Recently we've seen that predictions made 7 or 10 years ago underpredict today's reality -- the situation does indeed appear to be on the serious side of things. In a very real way Gore has done more good for the world than had he been elected President in 2000.

Portland's Toxicity

Closer to home, Portland, Oregon, widely vaunted as a center of green environmentalism, is ranked the third most toxic city in the United States. Lovely.

Nobel Peace Prize

I guess the Nobel committee is not as tight-lipped as I thought.

I like that they gave the prize both to Gore and to the IPCC. The latter certainly deserves it as much as Gore, probably more, and it's an acknowledgment of a lot of work done by a lot of scientists over the years. It's too bad they all can't get a little medal out of this.

I am skeptical that this will mean much change, though. It will give Gore some moral authority, but only among the choir. The right long-ago dismissed the Nobel institution, and their attitudes about global warming aren't going to suddenly change this morning. People aren't going to suddenly drive less or fly less or even, I think, be more willing to pay something like a carbon tax. The corporations that fund and control the reins of power in this country are not going to stop digging in their heals -- the stakes are far, far higher than that. The Chinese will not suddenly agree to dial down their 8% rates of growth. And, of course, this prize won't mean one iota to the current administration.

Gore will gain even more rock star status among the converted, and if anything, this award is a personal victory for him, especially after all he's been though the 2000 election. He could have gone back to Tennessee and walked around with his head down, but he reinvented himself and kept going.

One hundred years from now the Iraq War and "war on terrorism" will look as meaningless and inconsequential as does the Spanish-American war today. Instead, the world will be wondering how in the hell we knew the facts and consequences of greenhouse gases and yet still didn't act on it. This will at least tell them that some people were trying.

Gore's Nobel Prize?

It doesn't make sense to me that Al Gore's cancellation of a Thursday appointment means he's been tipped off about winning the Nobel Prize. Prize recipients do not need to be in Sweden when they receive word of their winning -- indeed, Americans are usually rousted out of bed for a phone call. Secondly, I have never heard of a Nobel Prize being tipped off (it may happen, but I've never heard of it), and I think the prize officials are about as secretive as they come....

We'll see soon.

2nd Warmest September

Last month was (tied for) the second warmest September in recorded history, +0.71°C above the long-term average.

Year-to-date, 2007 is tied with 2005 as the warmest year on record, +0.76°C above the long-term record.

Pregnant Moose

This makes sense, although I wouldn't have guessed it: pregnant moose in Yellowstone move closer to human roads and infrastructure as they're about to give birth, for protection from predators who customarily avoid those areas.

More Climate Hypocrisy

Thomas Friedman of the NY Times tells us that he spent last week flying and driving around the country -- Alabama to Mississippi to Chicago to Massachusetts -- and then acts angry when his daughter asks him why the Arctic ice is melting.

It's melting because you won't stay home, Thomas. But he thinks it's up to the presidential candidates to propose a climate change mitigation plan, and I guess he is just along to observe.

Nobel Prizes

Yesterday when Americans won 2/3rds of the Nobel Prize in medicine, the NY Times had it has a headlined story on their top screen. Today when two Europeans win the physics prize, it's a one-line headline tucked away under "More News." A little American bias there, I think.

Sons and Mothers

A really interesting study from Finland, discussed in the October issue of Scientific American, shows that:

• sons reduce a mother's life span by an average of 34 weeks.
• girls from mix-gender twin pairs are 25% less likely to have children, had at least two fewer children, and were about 15% less likely to marry than those born with a sister.
• mothers of opposite-sex twins end up with 19% fewer grandchildren than moms of same-sex twins.
• 100 to 150 years ago, 40% of babies died before they reached adulthood.

Top 50 Dystopian Movies

Dark Roasted Blend, an absolutely great blog, has a nice list of the top 50 dystopian movies of all time. I love dystopian movies, I'm afraid. The sad thing about my life, I think, is that over these last few decades, it has not become clear which direction the future of humanity will take -- utopian, or dystopian. We had our chance. But frankly, at this point I can see it going either way, but as I get older and older and shit like this keeps cropping up, the dystopian branch seems more and more likely. Technology is not a clear good, and the forces of darkness crop up all around, even here, even in the last seven years. You cannot count on anyone with a good word and a smile. I worry -- frankly I am not so sure I'd want to be alive in the year 2100....

the Nobel Peace Prize

It is Nobel Prize season, and I'd like to suggest that the Noble Prize committee track down this man and give him the Peace Prize -- name me one person who was more courageous in the last 50 years, who demonstrated what it is all about:



The older I get, the more I realize how fragile democracy is, how easily it is escaping us, and how brave a few people can be. This man deserves a medal if anyone ever did.

Tim Ball is Wrong

Via Deltoid I see that Tim Ball is back with his assertion that global temperatures have been flat since 1998.

"The world is cooling. Global temperatures have declined since 1998...."

This is simply wrong. Just plot the NASA GISS global temperature data:



Blue = 1-year moving averge
Orange = 5-year moving average
Yellow = 10-year moving average
Pink = 25-year moving average

Not one of these is declining. Ball's claim is false.

Gay Rights in Oregon

I am certainly happy to see this: efforts to roll back gay rights in Oregon are failing. Maybe this will be the end of it and the troglodytes will start to realize that the point of freedom is to move it forward, not backwards.

How Far We've Come

My God, Matchbox 20 actually has a cool song out, a really cool song: "How Far We've Come," which rocks to the first order:

Nobel Prizes

Wow, it is already October. I feel like I have barely even enjoyed the summer, and I'm certainly not prepared for autumn. Here in Portland the weather has quickly turned from the endless sunny days of summer to the cloudy, pissy days of autumn. But what can you do? -- life churns ahead and there's nothing you can do about it.

October means Nobel Prizes, is how I've always thought about it. I have no idea who will win the Physics prizes -- I never do, it always seems to be people I've never heard of in subjects I've only vaguely guessed were important -- though Wilcek's prize in 2004 was a notable exception, because QCD is sometime I know a little bit about, even if it's 20 years old.... -- but I would be really happy to see Al Gore win the Peace Prize for his work on global warming. I'm not really sure he deserves it -- he made a film and has had a lot to say, but the world hasn't exactly come around to his point of view, and I don't think he's defended his position particularly well -- but, frankly, the world's governments don't seem to give a shit about global warming -- not the US, not China, not India, not Australia, not any of the European states that matter. Who does -- Norway? Big deal..... So you can give it to Gore, but I'm not sure it will matter.... the world already knows his message, and although he has done yoeman's work in advancing it, it has not mattered down on the ground.

PNW energy generation

Though it has just 3.5% of the nation's population, the Pacific Northwest (Washington and Oregon) accounts for 24% of all renewable power in the U.S.

That's exclusive of hydropower. Most of this comes from wind.

That's pretty good.

Nike Football Ad Music

I'm still hoping someone can tell me what music is playing along this Nike Football ad.... I feel like I have to know.... C'mon, one of you must be able to tell me....

UPDATE: After some Web searching, I've determined that the song is "Promontory" by Trevor Jones, from the movie version of The Last of the Mohicans. A great movie, perhaps the quintessential movie about the northeastern United States -- I knew I loved that song from somewhere. Here's an MP3.

Missing TV during the Baseball Playoffs

I got rid of my cable TV about three months ago. I was watching a little too much of it, and it costs $50/month, but it was all the same old crap again and again -- I'd seen every episode of Star Trek:TNG about three times, and every episode of Seinfeld at least five times, and I felt I was starting to seriously waste my time. I haven't really missed it until the last few days when the days are becoming noticeably short and the baseball playoffs are on. The MLB playoffs are usually about the most exciting sports drama around, in my opinion, and I definitely miss not being able to tune in and be part of the story for three weeks or so. I have great memories of watching the Red Sox win the World Series in 2004. It definitely mattered that I was in New Hampshire then and there was a real feeling of team identity and even of history--at least for those who grew up soaked in the story of baseball. I remember the crisp, cool nights back there and the feeling that baseball mattered. That was reason enough to watch.

Here in Portland there is basically no team identity whatsoever, not for the city, and not for the entire state. A few people cheer for the Seahawks, but really they're pretty far away, and usually losers besides. And I'm sorry, but I just can not care less about the Trailblazers, or anything to do with basketball for that matter. It is a game for mutants, not the average person. It is meant to be a winter game, when the gym is warm and the security guards struggle to keep the doors closed again the cold and the locker room smells like used-up socks. Here in Portland we get none of that, just pissy rainy that sadly passes for a season. It is not really fair that Portland lives without an ML baseball team, and I hope that someday it gets one. Even if they are perennial losers like I'm sure they will be, like my boyhood Pirates. There is just something noble about baseball, that other sports lack.

Great Commercial

This commercial from Nike is pretty good (although they could use a better server).

Does anyone know what music accompanies it?

Water Bridge

Some results in science aren't earth-shattering, just really cool, like this water bridge.

When you place a high voltage on the water in the two beakers, the water climbs out of each beaker to meet in mid-air. The diameter of the bridge is about 2 mm, and remains if the beakers are less than 25 mm apart.

Another Global Warming Poll

There's another global warming poll out, and this one has some information on how much people are willing to sacrifice.

• 38% are "completely convinced" global warming is happening, and 34% are "strongly convinced. 57% think is is mostly caused by humans.
  
• Surprisingly, though (and someone of a victory for skeptics, I think), 40% think there is "a lot of disagreement" among scientists that global warming is happening.
  
• 68% support cutting GHG emissions 90% by 2050.
• 85% support requiring automakers to increase the fuel efficiency of cars, trucks and SUVs to 35 miles per gallon, even if it meant a new car would cost up to $500 more; and 82% support requiring electric utilities to produce at least 20% of their electricity from renewable energy sources, even if it cost the average household an extra $100/year.
  
• Over 2/3rds oppose carbon taxes on gas or electricity.

So better technology good; carbon taxes bad.

40% say that a presidential candidate's position on global warming is it at least "very important." I guess I'll believe that when I see it -- I don't see much discussion of global warming on the campaign trail, which seems to be dominated by Iraq and then next by health care. Personally, I'd rather see the next president solve the health care crisis than the global warming crisis, if I had to pick one over the other.

The Speed of Evolution

This is very interesting: no more than 6 mutations per genome per generation, or a species has a strong risk of becoming extinct.

Giuliani Visits Portland

Rudy Giuliani briefly alighted in Portland on Saturday, and in his short time here he was taken not to any local landmarks to meet local people and experience local diversity, but to a "New York-style" deli so he would feel "at home." Yes, why would he want anything like a local experience to see what the people he wants to represent are all about? Let's show him whatever makes him comfortable....

Tainted Toothpaste

Why it pays to know a little science: you might have to tell your national regulators how to do their jobs.