Adam Reiss wins a Genius Grant

I see tonight that Adam Riess of the Space Telescope Science Institute in Maryland won a MacArthur Genius grant for $500,000. Which is great for him. But it must have been a tricky decision. Saul Perlmutter ('s group) and Adam Riess ('s group) went head-to-head in discovering the acceleration of the expansion of the universe, and to date both have received nearly equal recognition of it (for example, they shared the 2007 Gruber Prize), and I think it's generally acknowledged that, if a Nobel Prize is given to this discovery (and it most probably will be), both would share it. This is one of the first asymmetries in their recognition.

PS: I wrote a profile of Saul Perlmutter that appeared in this April's Scientific American, and Robert Kischner (from Harvard, of Reiss's group) and I had an exchange of comments in the August issue of SciAm. I looked into this issue of priority a good bit, and thought that Kutner's own interpretation of "Getting it First" (Perlmutter) versus "Getting it Right" (Riess) was pretty much right, if perhaps a bit slanted towards Riess and away from Perlmutter. Though I didn't interview Riess and I admit it's a very tricky, touchy subject. Lots of fodder for future science historians.

ALF, Primates, and Ethics

I just received an email from the Animal Liberation Front (ALF):

Another UCLA Van Goes Up In Flames; ALF Takes Credit
Second UCLA Van to be Burned Recently; Three Others Stolen This Summer to Protest Primate Experiments

They write:

There is a movement throughout the nation and the world to stop primate experimentation, as well as give primates some legal rights to bodily protection. Spain passed a law giving certain primates legal rights and several European countries have outlawed using primates for medical experimentation. Though the animal rights movement calls for the abolition of all animals exploitation, much of the current focus is on giving non-human primates freedom from imprisonment, torture, agony, and finally death after using them in frivolous and repetitive experiments.

Last night I was reading Matt Ridley's book, Genome. He wrote that chimpanzees have more DNA in common with humans than with Gorillas. We have one less chromosome than them, but only because two of their's fused to make one of ours (#2). We have the same number of teeth, exactly the same lobes of the brain, and every chemical found in the human body is found in chimpanzees, and vice-versa.

Is this 2% DNA difference sufficient to justify using them as we see fit? If so, would a 1% difference be? 0.1%?

A couple of months ago I tried to get an interview with researcher's at OHSU's National Primate Research Center. I offered them complete anonymity and anything else they wanted, but they quickly turned me down. I understand the medical side of primate experiments, and it raises good questions, but so does their treatment and I just wanted to have a bare, straightforward talk about what all this means and how they make sense of it. No dice.

Bob Woodward: Bush at War

I just finished reading Bob Woodward's 2002 book Bush at War. Do not waste your time on it. It might thrill a couple of irretrievable wonks who care about a couple of arguments between Cheney and Powell and the boring, petty day-to-day power struggles about who's up and who's down, but it is largely a sycophantic book that unrealistically portrays every principal (Bush, Rumsfeld, Cheney, Rice, and Powell) as all-knowingly wise, patriotic, righteous, and democracy-minded.

Point: Woodward writes about the entire lead-up to the Iraq War and does not even once mention the word "oil."

I highly suspect that Woodward had to trade these pretty portraits for access. The Bush Administration told him only what they wanted to know, and so his claim to some kind of insider status is thoroughly unconvincing. And -- completely unlike a younger, hungry Woodward would have done -- he acquiesced in flattering portraits just so he could get a couple of hours talking with the President at Crawford or look at some memos that went through the West Wing. Even the dialog is stilted and unconvincing. A sickening kind of display that hardly seems to have the truth fore front.

I guess that's the Washington game. Too bad even Woodward had to give himself to it.

Pie Chart

Via: Dark Roasted Blend

August Temperature Anomaly

Hadley's released their August global temperature anomaly:+0.395°C. That's warmer than last August (2007), and essentially the same as last month.

NASA GISS's value for August was (for once) essentially the same: +0.39°C.

Shackleton recruiting poster

“Officers wanted for hazardous journey. Small Wages. Bitter cold. Long months of complete darkness. Constant danger. Safe return doubtful. Honour and recognition in case of success.”

-- from a recruiting poster by British explorer Ernest Shackleton for his 1914 Antarctica expedition.

"The Big Bang Machine"

I wish the press would stop referring to the LHC as the "Big Bang" machine, or say that it's recreating the Big Bang. Of course, it's doing no such thing, and it gives the impression that it will somehow tell us what the Big Bang was, and it skips over huge amounts of unknown physics that lies between the LHC and the Big Bang.

The LHC has an energy of about 10 TeV, which particles had at about 10^-11 sec after the Big Bang. The entire time before that is still largely unknown and very, very interesting, and there will need to be bigger colliders built to explore it. And even those won't "recreate" the Big Bang.

That's today's pet peeve.

Introducing QuarkSoup Radio

I'm trying something new: an Internet-based radio/podcast show, called (what else) "Quark Soup Radio", at QuarkSoup.net.

My first guest will be Michael Mann, climatologist at Penn State University and originator of the famous "hockey stick" view of 20th century global warming.

We'll spend a half-hour talking -- about his latest research, about his travails surrounding his research over the last 5 years, and also about his background, life, and motivations for becoming a scientist, and his other thoughts. And who knows what else.

I'm aiming to premier on Thursday, October 2nd. It will be a blog format, with lots of opportunity for comment and feedback.

I'm very open to suggestions for future interviews -- write me at appell@nasw.org . I'd like to cover all fields of science, and some technology, too. And perhaps some science fiction. And whoever else I (or you) find interesting.

If you're a scientist or agent with a book to promote, write me.

Initially, I'd like to do an interview every two weeks, at first, eventually moving to one per week if I can swing it financially, salary-wise. The costs of hosting the show are small -- what costs is my time for preparation of the show. I'm a self-employed freelancer, always on the edge financially (but not complaining, really -- I'm lucky to do what I do), just trying to keep up with the future, so while I'm curious to see how this might develop, I may need to ask for donations at first, if you're willing, if you find it worthwhile, to cover a day or so per week of my time for preparation and interviews. If you want to hear today's scientists talking about their current research, and about what science means to them, and what they mean to science.

I think we need to hear more about where people are coming from.

Want an example? I've profiled six scientists for Scientific American, and I interviewed author T. Coraghessan Boyle several years ago, alongside the pool at the Ritz Carleton Hotel in Phoenix, Arizona.

Stay tuned for more information soon. Thanks.

Zippy

I am not really that much into Israeli politics, except to say that doesn't Tzipi Livni have perhaps the coolest name in the history of humanity? There is nothing about it that is not excellent.

And, often times in the past I wish I were an Israeli citizen, out of respect for their sense of community, their respect for knowledge, and their inherent, proud sense of will.

She might turn out to be a lousy Prime Minister, but at least she is Tzipi Livni. Actually, a lot of Israeli names are pretty spectacular -- a prerequisite for a hardy civilization, and something America (and most countries) mostly lacks.

Energy's Role

Everyone is talking about the current financial crisis, with banks and mortgage companies collapsing, because they wrote unwise loans allowing people to overextend themselves and take mortgages they couldn't really afford. OK.

But I have yet to hear anyone say why these people suddenly couldn't afford their mortgages, and it seems to me it's at least partly because of the steep increase in the cost of energy in the last year, especially oil, which took awhile to permeate through the markets to affect food, manufacturing, and other industries. Energy really isn't something you can go without, so they had to cutback somewhere/everywhere.

I'm not an economist so maybe this is wrong-headed. But in the last several days I haven't even heard any mention of it, when to me the run-up in oil prices is one of the most significant economic factors of the decade.

And -- if we really are at Peak Oil -- a small sign of the larger nastiness yet to come.

McCain's Life Expectancy

John McCain has a 20% chance of dying before his first term would be complete, and a 44% chance of dying before the end of his second term.

At least, that's my best calculation according to actuarial tables. I'm not an expert at these kinds of calculations. And it should certainly be acknowledged that no one individual life is is actuarially accurate -- there are too many variables relating to genes, life experiences, diet, medical care, etc. In fact, I highly suspect these variables overwhelm any error I might have made in my calculation above.

I actually asked the American Academy of Actuaries this question, but they played it safe and wouldn't answer, saying

Mortality tables are used to project the life expectancy potential of large groups of people of the same age and gender and are not meant to predict the life expectancy of one particular individual. There are hundreds of additional questions involving family history, medical history, lifestyle decisions, etc., to which we cannot possibility know all the answers. And even if we did know all of the risk factors for a particular individual, some aspects of mortality are simply random. Therefore it does not make sense for us to try to look at a table and predict one person's life expectancy.

Fair enough. But, of course, many companies do exactly this -- apply actuarial tables to individuals. Isn't that the whole point?

Catching Up

I am between apartments at the moment, though next week I'll be moving to St. Helens, OR, to a little bungalow near the Columbia River about 30 miles north of Portland.

So I've had access to a television in the last few days, and have been watching the Republican Convention. I don’t know -- I am so cynical anymore that I have a hard time taking the party Conventions seriously. I have a difficult time taking any politics seriously, and I honestly don’t understand why the Internet and the networks and the country as a whole are so taken with it. They’re just getting fooled again.

What really changes? Very. very little is going to change. Corporations will still be controlling our government after McCain’s administration, or Obama’s. The rich will get richer. We will still spend an utterly obscene amount of money on the military in the guise of defense, but, of course, it’s all about securing oil and its profits and large contracts for defense companies who have no morals except obtaining the height of their bottom line.

John McCain paints himself as a “maverick,” and he’s voted with Bush 91% of the time. And the press dutifully reports this as his reputation.

If Gore had won the presidency in ’00, would much be different? There’d be more emphasis on climate change, but I honestly doubt much there would be different. The Senate voted 97-0 against Kyoto in 1997, and that’s not reversible in a few years. The Republicans now only want to drill, drill, drill, and have not the slightest regard for greenhouse gas emissions. Future historians are going to look upon this time with astonishment.

We wouldn’t be at war in Iraq -- probably. I’m not really sure. Gore would certainly have been susceptible to the special interests that demanded this war. He would still be president of a country in a world running out of oil, with 300 million people demanding they be able to fill their gas tanks, even at $4-6/gal. In this day and age, when Exxon-Mobil comes knocking on the door, one of the most powerful corporations in the world -- if not THE most powerful corporation in the world -- it is not clear to me that you can say no, despite your campaign rhetoric.

-=-=-

And it’s all now so personality-driven. And the networks fall right into this line. That is -- literally -- all Sarah Palin talked about Wednesday night. It’s abundantly clear that she has no vision -- none whatsoever, as if they’re counting on her being a GILF is now sufficient for executive office. Keeping her secluded from the press for two weeks is the utmost of cynacism. The Republicans are all about drill, drill, drill, and there isn’t one word -- not one -- about the GHGs being added to our atmosphere. It’s like they’re trying to ignore the basic laws of gravity. And where is the discussion about health care, health insurance, the Iraq War, global warming, the increasing gap between the rich and the poor, our deficient infrastructure, our energy crisis, the corporate control of America, our national decline?

She says she will be an advocate for families with “special” children. What does that mean? Will they have taxpayer-paid health insurance? All the therapy they need? Or is this just lip service?

-=-=-

The media -- the damn media -- is so completely useless and vapid and stupid and utterly inconsequential that the McCain camp considers a few direct questions about Sarah Palin’s decision-making as commander of the Alaska National as “over the line.” On Thursday night Charles Gibson from ABC news spent ten times more effort worrying about whether all the balloons would fall onto the convention floor than anything of substance that anyone had to say.

Is the media this bad because their audience demands it, or is the audience so numbed because the media has no clue?

I especially like when they go to the network correspondents out in the state delegations, Jeff Greenfeld or someone, standing alongside the Michigan or Nevada delegation or somewhere, as if these delegates have something important to say, like this is Dan Rather in rabbit ears in 1968 or 1972, getting punched as the operatives work feverishly to convince four delegates from to work their way. The fact is these delegates do not matter in the least, and they are there just to party for five days straight -- not bad work if you can get it. Let’s stop pretending that great decisions are upon them,

Sarah Palin seems like every pretty, vapid girl you hated in high school because they knew they were prettier than everyone else, and (and this was the problem) acted like it. It was how they were elected 8th grade president. (Yes, I’m talking about you, Deborah F.)

And isn’t it interesting how Sarah Palin’s sexual life is “private” when Republicans like nothing more than to pry into the sexual lives of gays, pregnant women, and the unmarried singles. All of THOSE are discussable -- but the actual pregnancy of an unmarried high school student isn’t.

-=-=-

Just some thoughts. Looking forward to getting back to work.

Break

I will be taking a break through Labor Day.

Enjoy the rest of August....

Bigfoot was a Hoax

Bigfoot was just a hoax -- of course. A rubber suit. Some researchers turned over an undisclosed sum for the "carcass" in ice. (It'd be interesting to know the amount of money, but I'm sure it's disclosure is protected by a nondisclosure clause, and by amply protection for the Georgia charlatans that they were absolved of all liability.

If you're looking for at least a small bit of justice, here it is:

On Tuesday, Clayton County Police Chief Jeff Turner said he has not spoken to
Whitton but processed paperwork to fire him.
"Once he perpetrated a fraud, that goes into his credibility and integrity," Turner said. "He has violated the duty of a police officer."

What's really sad is that these guys could do it all again in 2 years, and I suspect they'd get just as much attention then as they got now.

Hadley July temperature anomaly

The Hadley Center is out with their July global temperature anomaly: +0.389°C. That's the fourth in a upward trend:

April: +0.272°C
May: +0.280°C
June: +0.314°C
July: +0.389°C

Bishop Hill and the Jesus paper

I don't have a lot to say about "Bishop Hill's" alleged history of the Hockey Stick Affair.

1. The first thing that jumps out at me is that Bishop Hill reconstructed his account from Climate Audit.

   It's a long tale - and the longest posting I think I've ever written and piecing it together from the individual CA postings has been a long, hard but fascinating struggle.

   Therefore it seems it must have an inherent bias. You just can't reply on a single source and expect to uncover the truth.
   
2. I'm a journalist, not a historian, so I only write first drafts. But if reporting in the swamps of climate change science has taught me anything, it's that nothing is ever quite what it seems and there are always reasons on top of reasons and questions on top of questions. I suppose that's true of any good science story, or any good story at all. I'd need to spend weeks deconstructing this to be sure, for myself, that it was all real.
   
3. There are just too many other reconstructions that give the hockey stick result.
4. How can we take this "Bishop Hill" guy seriously if he won't even sign his real name to his work?

Those were fun times, huh! But life moves on.

Bigfoot Conference

Here's a video of Friday's "bigfoot" conference in San Jose on Friday. (Not the highest quality.)

It's not very impressive, and intends, it seems, mostly to string anyone along. Most improbably is the claim that they found the body in early June -- who in their right mind would sit on a "discovery" like this for 2 months. They say they have it in a freezer. The last, least talkative guy, talked about filling the freezer up with water. That's how how you freeze something in a freezer. Tom Biscardi cuts in to correct/clarify.

What's their angle--profiteering off the documentary Biscardi says he's making?

PS: These guys have been caught in more than one lie in recent months....

Tipping Point

The Wall Arch in Utah's Arches National Park: there one day, gone the next.

Bolt

Micheal Phelps, blah blah. By far the most impressive performance in the Olympics has came from Usain Bolt in the 100 meters: 9.69 seconds, smashing the previous world record of 9.72 sec. What's really impressive is how he did it -- he was one of the last out of the blocks, and he stopped running at about 85 meters and coasted the rest of the way in, not even pumping his arms, and pounding on his chest before the finish line. He could have broken 9.6 if he'd kept running. (I thought that was the first thing trained into sprinters?)

He's only been running the hundred for a year.

Amazing

This is incredible: a religious pastor gets to spend an hour with each Presidential candidate and ask them whatever he wants, and there is not -- at least, not in any of the coverage I've read -- not one question on the Iraq war or the morality of what we're doing there or the 50,000 - 655,000 civilians deaths we've caused there, not to mention suffering that can't even begin to be quantified.

No one question.

You'd think a religious pastor would care a little bit about that. I guess not, as long as the gays don't get to marry.

CERN Rap

The physics of the 21st century is looking very different than the past:

Suspicious Graphs

This is something suspicious about this graph that Marlo Lewis gave on Planet Gore last week:



The red and orange lines are predicted by IPCC models with standard economic scenarios. The yellow line is the IPCC prediction with no further emissions, just committed warming. The blue and green lines are actual temperature data.

Except the IPCC lines are smoothed, decadal predictions (see IPCC WG1 4AR Appendix 3.A p 336). The actual temperature data appear to be yearly results, not decadally smoothed. You can't compare them at all.

I wonder how this chart would look if the actual data were decadally smoothed as well.

The Hypoxic Green Revolution

Conservatives and Libertarians delight in extolling the virtues of Norman Borlaug, the so-called "father" of the green revolution and Nobel Peace Prize recipient. (See Ron Bailey, Virginia Postrel, Glenn Reynolds, etc.) And there is little doubt that Bourland and his agronomy methods have indeed feed millions who would have other wise starved.

So where are these luminaries now that we're seeing the downside of Bourlang's experiments? exponential growth in hypoxic (oxygen-starved) zones around the world? Not as glamorous or press-worthy.

The world is far more complex than we have ever thought, and, as Jackson Browne would say, nobody rides for free. I with environmentalism could somehow be divorced by politics, but I suppose that will never happen.

Bigfoot

That Bigfoot claim -- sure, it sent a 0.07 millisecond chile up your spine, until you started to look at the actual circumstances. (1) redneck guys (2) won't shot the body (3) DNA yadda yadda (4) sent your purported DNA through the mail (6) won't say exactly where it came from (7) won't bring in legitimate scientists to examine it (8) hook-up with a Bigfoot huckster (9) dole out your "findings" at the slowest rate possible (10) claim you're receiving death threats....

I mean, could it get any more comical?

And, of course, Bigfoot isn't going to be found in the northern Georgia mountains, but somewhere here in the Pacific Northwest, Oregon or Washington.

Bicycle Power

Here's how you do it: a fitness center opening up in Portland will use its stationary bikes to generate electricity. Four bikes will be attached to generators and produce 200 to 600 watts (if someone is on them), which will be stored in a battery and used when possible. Gives a new meaning to "keeping the lights on."

Hubble's Constant

I was working with Hubble's constant last night -- 70.1 km/s/Mpc, the expansion rate of the universe, and realized it could also be written as

2.15 cm/s per light-year

which is amusing but probably useless, except it does show you how huge the universe is if a star 2 ly away is only receding 2 cm/s faster than a star one ly away.

Also, did you know the term "Big Bang" was originally intended as an insult of the model (by Fred Hoyle). It stuck on.

Ethanol vs. Food

I didn't realize ethanol was this food intensive:

The amount of corn that it takes to produce a 20 gallon tank of ethanol could feed one person for an entire year,” Reason magazine Science Correspondent Ronald Bailey says.

I suspect he means 20 gallons of straight ethanol, but of course it's blended with gasoline in a ratio of 1 to 4-10.

The ethanol problem is a good example of what's coming down the road: climate change is such a huge civilizational problem that any attempt to ameliorate it has (several) unexpected consequences.

Antarctic Webcam

The U.S. Antarctic program has a Web cam in Antarctica, at the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station. Except right now it's too cold to operate it.

In case you were wondering, the temperature there now (5 pm PDT) is -92°F, with a wind chill of -138°F.

Second-hand Smoke

I hate smoking more than anyone -- trust me -- but this kind of conclusion is completely absurd:

The presence of a bunch of adults dedicated to abstaining from alcohol and drugs might seem like an unusual source of blight -- but some Los Angeles City Council members say that it poses a real threat to the quality of life in many neighborhoods.

An influx of sober-living homes has so affected some areas, city officials say, that children can't play outside in the evening because of second-hand smoke from recovering addicts' cigarettes and the adult nature of their 12-step conversations in backyards.

Come on. This is talking about second-hand smoke in an outdoor environmen, subject to considerable wafts. But it's simple common sense that no outdoor area is going to be so inundated with 2nd-hand smoke as to render its use impossible. You don't even need meters to measure this -- it's prima facie absurd.

So why does the LA City Council get to get away with this. And why does the press let them?

Mt. Washington Hotel, Carroll, NH

Mt. Washington Hotel, Carroll, NH:

Global Cooling is Over

NEWSFLASH: Global cooling has come to an end* -- NASA GISS says last month was the 5th warmest July in their recorded history: +0.51°C above the long-term average (1951 - 1980).

* "Skeptic logic" applied.

Free Software

Microsoft is giving away free software -- and the programs are useful:

• MS Visual Basic 2008 Express Edition
• MS Visual Web Developer 2008 Express Edition
• MS Visual C# 2008 Express Edition
• MS Visual C++ 2008 Express Edition

You can download them here:

http://www.microsoft.com/Express/Download/ 

Prepare for 4 C

The UK's Chief Scientist for their Department for Environment, Food, and Rural Affairs (DEFRA), Tom Watson, says EU goals are probably unrealistic and we need to prepare for a 4°C increase in world temperatures. That's an incredible 7°F.

The UK's former chief scientific advisor, David King, says

"My own feeling is that if we get to a 4 degree rise it is quite possible that we would begin to see a runaway increase."

John Edwards

Sometime around 2003 I saw John Edwards in a deli in Portsmouth, New Hamphire. He was, like famous people often are, shorter than you expected, and there was a kind of inaudible buzz that surrounded him and his people that extended through the building. He didn't quite seem real.

I liked him for President then, and I liked him more this year. He seemed one of the few people talking about the increase in inequality in this country and the people who are being left behind. Maybe it was all just campaign shtick, I don't know. Who ever knows about politics.

I'm not terribly disappointed that he had an extramarital affair, except to the extent that it probably rules him out as a member of an Obama Administration or a candidate for any future election. Yes, he told bald-faced lies. Who hasn't, especially when it comes to intimate matters? Yes, what he did was immoral. Something like 50% of all American adults have had affairs, and that's probably on the low side because many won't admit it. So who are we to judge?

I don't think someone has to have a pristine personal life in order to make decisions about our country and its policies. In fact, an unmessy life might well lack the foibles, mistakes, and vicissitudes that lead to reflection and wisdom. They shouldn't be liars, of course. But they all are, whether about sex or religion or any number of things people in power must deal with. But we all tell lies, of one degree or another, at one time or another.

I blame the American court of public opinion as much as Edwards, and especially the salacious media. Who probably just reflect society at large. Let he who is without sin cast the first stone, and all that. Why insist our politicians be morally perfect? Hypocrites like Larry Craig, who publically oppose what they do in private, are something else, especially when what they oppose is needed for the public good and they claim their position comes from some kind of inherent righteousness. But anything Edwards did is between him and his family and his mistress.

This and tire gauges and $400 runway haircuts are just a way for the media to get eyeballs without having to do real work and investigative journalism and ask tough questions. It is the same old shit. It is discouraging when, after some years, you realize it is never going to change.

Beijing smog

Here's a look at the smog in Beijing today:


The Chinese's own air pollution index is at 95, a somewhat high value, especially for recent days. (I don't think anyone thinks the Chinese are accurately reporting their air quality anyway.) On the Chinese scale, this is a "Blue Sky day." (The U.S. would rank it "unhealthy for everyone.")

Chinese authorities prefer to call this "fog."

International Olympic Committee president Jacques Rogge was a master of obfuscation today:

“The fog you see is based on the basis of humidity and heat. It does not mean to say that this fog is the same as pollution. It can be pollution, but the fog doesn’t mean necessarily that it is pollution. Of course, we prefer clean skies, but the most important thing is the health of the athletes being protected.”

Baghad Bob could not have done better.

UK Kingsworth protest

Saturday, August 9th is the big day of civil disobedience in the UK -- the Climate Camp gathered there is going to try and take over the Kingsnorth coal fired power station for the day. (It's about an hour north of London.)


The organizers say there will be thousands there, but I think that remains to be seen. Their dispatches say the local police have been giving them a pretty difficult time, sweeping the camp and taking even basic things like water purifiers and flashlights.

Should be interesting. I respect them for at least doing...something.

Cascade Snowpack and AGW

A new paper from the University of Washington is getting some attention here in the Pacific Northwest:

A New Look at Snowpack Trends in the Cascade Mountains
Mark T. Stoelinga1, Mark D. Albright, and Clifford F. Mass

Basically it finds that the snowpack in the Cascade Mountains is influenced more by the northern Pacific Ocean than by greenhouse gas warming (and that the Pacific NW as a region is more influenced by its proximity to the Pacific Ocean and will not warm as much as the global average).

Key results are that the linear trend in the April 1 Cascade Mountain snowpack during the period 1930‐2007 was found to be ‐23%, although this trend does not quite meet a statistical significance threshold because of large interannual and interdecadal variability. The trend during the period 1950‐1997 (used by previous investigators) was found to be a statistically significant ‐48%. However, this trend is reduced to a statistically insignificant ‐14% when the part of the snowpack time series that correlates with an index of natural decadal variability of the north Pacific Ocean is removed. The observed Cascade snowpack actually shows a slight positive trend during the most recent 3 decades of rapid global warming, though this result does not achieve statistical significance due to the large annual variability in snowpack.

The paper is not yet peer-reviewed, but submitted to the Journal of Climate. Of course, it is already being politicized, with right wingers claiming (again) this is a disproof of anthropogenic global warming. It is not, as the authors make clear in their paper (p. 25).

Olympics

Nice.

Inflation

McCain boldly comes out for car rim protection:

"I agree with the American Automobile Association. We should all inflate our tires."

Next up: should the government recommend you wear shoes when walking on broken glass?

Happiness

According to the latest issue of the Journal of Happiness Studies (yes, there really is a journal with that name):

"Happiness does not heal, but happiness protects against falling ill. As a result, happy people live longer. The size of the effect on longevity is comparable to that of smoking or not. This is concluded from an analysis of 30 follow-up studies published in the latest issue of the Journal of Happiness Studies (September 2008)."

The journal is peer-reviewed. I suppose the reviewers must be pre-screened as happy.

Other findings in this issue:

• Serene isolation no ticket to happiness today
• Confucianist advice more apt than Buddhist
• Do not follow Schopenhauer’s advice to forego marriage
  

Not surprisingly, this journal gets a lot of press coverage.

SpaceX launch

Here's an interesting video of the pre-launch, launch, and post-launch of the SpaceX Falcon 1 rocket this past Saturday -- Elon Musk's company (he founded PayPal, and sold it for $1.5B.) The rocket stages failed to separate and the space craft was lost about 3 minutes after launch. It was carrying the cremated remains of 207 people, including Star Trek's "Scotty" (James Doohan). I guess he above all would realize that there was nothing certain about the launch.

Elephants headed toward extinction?

The African elephant population today is estimated at 470,000, down from one million in the 1980s. Their death rate from poaching is estimated at 8% a year, for their ivory. The extinction date of wild herds is estimated to be 2020 -- all that will remain are elephants in enclosed spaces with sufficient security.

The illegal ivory trade is being carried out mostly by large crime syndicates, Wasser believes, and is being driven by growing markets in China and Japan, where ivory is in demand for carvings and signature stamps called hankos.

In addition, in the last few years demand has risen sharply in the United States, where much of the ivory is used to make knife handles and gun grips. In fact, a May report from the Care for the Wild International, a not-for-profit British natural protection organization, ranks the U.S. second behind China as a marketplace for illegal ivory.

There is something about an extinction of elephants that seems like a watershed event. Yes, I know we are in an age of anthropogenic extinction, and species are dying out every day. But elephants...that seems a little different somehow. They're not like some shy vole or uncommon butterfly. They're elephants. We love seeing them. They're beautiful and fascinating and obviously social and smart, and yet we can't even seem to find it among ourselves to halt and reverse their extinction. And if we can't do it for elephants, what would we possibly do it for?

Alive in Joberg by Neill Blomkamp

Since seeing this short film I've thought more about it than practically any full-length movie I've seen in months:

Via: The Portland Mercury

Moon Landing

The July 20, 1969 anniversary of our landing on the Moon came and went with nary a mention by the media -- or anyone else as far as I can tell. I guess it's old news, compared to John McCain's use of Britney Spears in his racist ads complaining that Barack Obama is too popular. A little sad.

Phobos

On July 23rd, the ESA's Mars Express took an amazing photograph of Mars' moon Phobos:



Here the spacecraft is only 100 km from the center of the moon. (Phobos is only about 25 km in diameter.)

The resolution of this photograph is about 3.7 m/pixel.

--

The Russian Phobos-Grunt mission, to be launched next year, plans to land on Phobos and return a soil sample to Earth.

Mars is getting to be a very crowded place.

NEJM Image Challenge

Sometimes it's scary how many things can go wrong with the human organism -- and I suspect any nondoctor probably doesn't even know the half of it. On the other hand, there is something I find morbidly fascinating by pictures of pathologies, too. The New England Journal of Medicine has a weekly feature called Image Challenge, which is worth perusing if this is also your guilty fascination.

Oobleck

I have played around with corn starch and water, but this is one of the weirdest natural phenomena I have ever seen. I'm not sure I will believe it until I try it for myself....

Via: Dark Roasted Blend

David Evans on GHGs

David Evans, a former carbon accountant, wrote a recent op-ed in The Australian that got some attention, "No smoking hot spot" (July 18th). Tim Lambert thoroughly critiques it here.

The first thing Evans wrote was

1. The greenhouse signature is missing. We have been looking and measuring for years, and cannot find it.

I thought this was one of the primary signatures of anthropogenic global warming...

IPCC 4th Assessment Report, WG1, Ch 9, FAQ 9.2, Fig 1, p. 703
(bottom three graphs)
http://tinyurl.com/27ocvp

so I asked him about it. He replied that he thought the climate models just got "lucky."

Comparing a model to observations doesn't prove the model works. It's encouraging to the model builders, but it's not proof. For instance, the model could just be lucky. (And I'm a model builder!)

I don't know how else you could prove a model works, but anyway. He went on:

The GCM models omit cloud complexities. They simply assume relative humidity is constant (observations in the last few decades shows in fact it drops steadily as the temp went up), so as temp rises there are more high clouds....

Also, the GCM models totally omit solar magnetic effects [ie. Svensmark]

Given their omissions, my guess is that the GCMs got "lucky" to get the Fig 9.2 results. For instance, I can make a model of plant growth predict global temperatures if you wish (obviously absurd), with sufficient tuning and funding :)

--

DeSmog blog notes that Evans has never published a single peer-reviewed paper in climate science, and that he earlier claimed "I am not a climate modeler." He has a Ph.D. in electrical engineering.

Mangos

Since moving to Oregon I have fallen for the mango. I guess they're sold back east as well, but I never tried on until I moved here. Now I can't get enough of them...except that peeling them and eating them is always a big mess. This guy shows how to do it right:

Fans

Why are fan switches usually configured

LOW - MED - HIGH - OFF

and not the more logical

OFF - LOW - MED - HIGH

I'm just wondering. It seems silly to have to go through higher speeds to turn it off.

Plastic Bag Totalitarianism

Are people willing to make even small sacrifices for the sake of the environment? Some are. Some, not so much. Because, you know, it's all just a big plot to take control of their lives:

Mayor-elect Sam Adams accurately states, of The Great Paper/Plastic/Cloth Use Debate: "It's a simple behavioral change that we have to ingrain in ourselves."

And in a free society we do, indeed, ingrain behavioral changes in ourselves, freely, as we, individually, perceive the necessity to do so.

In a totalitarian society, however, behavioral changes are ingrained in the citizens by the government, for ends perceived by the state to be beneficial, or, in this case, by some Little Caesar in City Hall.

-- LOUIS SARGENT Northwest Portland, letter to the editor, Oregonian, 7/28/08

Sometimes I think people forget what real totalitarianism looks like.

DailyKos on Dire Predictions

DailyKos gives Mann and Kump's Dire Predictions a nice review.

By the way, you can browse the book here.

Largest Wind Farm

Oregon is planning to build the largest wind farm in the world, 303 turbines that will produce 909 MW -- double the current wind capacity in the state. It will be on the northern side of the state near the Columbia River, out past the Dalles -- Gilliam and Morrow counties.

Oregon's total electricity consumption in 2006 was 6100 MW, or about 1640 W/person. (Per capita = 14,400 kW-hr/yr.) So this wind power would represent a decent chunk of that.

Paying for Roads

Gas taxes pay only a small fraction of the cost of roads, at least in Texas. And that's according to the Texas highway department. The rest comes from general revenue.

Here in Portland, every time the state or city decides to spend a few thousand dollars on improvements for bikes, the righty car owners whine and complain that bikes aren't paying their fair share of the roadway. It looks like, in fact, they aren't either -- or rather, that we all are.

Not Your Rain

In Washington state, at least, the rain that falls on your roof isn't yours. It belongs to the state and is considered public water. The state looks the other way for people who collect a few hundred gallons a year for their own use, but now some people want to collect more and they're on unsure legal ground.

Water is a big deal in the west, even in Seattle.

Quote

"...one must conclude that no mistake is too dumb for someone, somewhere to make if they think they can spin it into supporting their anti-science agenda. For them complexity is something to be abused rather than a challenge to be understood, underlining quite clearly (again) the difference between science and propaganda."

-- Gavin Schmidt, Realclimate.org, July 12, 2008

Poll on Plastic

A (nonscientific) Internet poll on whether plastic bags should be banned is running on the Oregonian's site today. Results at the moment:

BAN: 273 votes (48%)
No BAN : 292 votes (52%)

NH

Things I miss about New Hampshire: summer rain storms. Summers are pretty much perfect here in Portland (well, July-Sept) -- not too hot, zero rain, no wind -- but a little too perfect.

Banning Plastic Bags

Los Angeles recently banned plastic bags, effective July 2010. (Shoppers will have to either bring their own bags or pay 25 cents for a paper or biodegradable bag.) San Francisco banned them in 2007, and Seattle is probably going to ban them soon. (China is banning them too -- 3 billion a day.) Portland looks likely to as well.

A city commissioner here, Sam Adams (to become mayor in Jan 2009) is proposing banning them (he floated the idea several months ago), which I think is a good idea. I used to oppose it, for no better reason than that I use those bags for cat litter, but a month ago I bought a clothe sack from Safeway for $0.99 and I have to admit I love it. It's bigger and sturdier, plus you feel you're doing a little good for this crappy world. You just have to get in the habit of taking it with you when you plan to go to the store.

Adams wants to charge 5 to 20 cents per bag if you don't have a reusable sack and use a plastic or paper bag from the grocery. I hope it's 20 cents -- 5 cents isn't enough incentive.

Only 52 percent of the paper and 5 percent of plastic grocery bags given out in the United States are recycled, said Stephanie Barger, executive director of the Earth Resources Foundation in Costa Mesa, Calif.

I don't know what I'll do with cat poop once my (humongous) supply of plastic bags is gone. Probably have to buy other plastic bags just for that purpose. That defeats the purpose of the ban somewhat, but at least the bags won't end up in the oceans.

--

It takes 16 cc of oil to produce one plastic bag; 430,000 gallons to produce a hundred million of them. About 5 trillion plastic bags are used annually, requiring 500 million barrels a year, about 2% of all oil use.

SLAC No More

In another sign that the world is going to hell, Stanford University is making the Stanford Linear Accelerator (SLAC) change their name because it has the word "Stanford" in it. It's all about intellectual rights to the acronym SLAC and the word "Stanford," and pretty silly it seems to me, because each is a first-class place and you'd think either would be very happy to be associated with the other. But what do I know about the workings of the modern world?

A few years ago my old graduate school officemate Tobias took me and another grad school friend Joe on a tour of SLAC, where he was working at the time. It was a Sunday in the summer and the place was deserted. We got to poke all around and if you ever get the chance to do that in an accelerator (or anywhere, really), be sure to take advantage of it.

Dire Predictions

Got a copy of Mann and Kump's Dire Predictions yesterday, and spent the evening reading most of it. It's done in an interesting way--not your typical prose book, but an "illustrated guide" with lots of graphs and colorful pictures on glossy paper. And it's structured so that you can pretty much pick it up and look anywhere within and find something interesting to read. You can learn something no matter at what level you already understand climate change, but it would be especially suited for people who are not scientifically-oriented but want a nontrivial introduction to the topic -- below a Scientific American level. Or for kids -- I would have eaten this book up when I was in 7th or 8th grade.

Installed Solar Capacity

Source: Earth Policy Institute.

Parting Advice

"Make yourself useful and beware of easy women."

-- parting advice of the father of Clyde Tombaugh, discoverer of the planet Pluto

Cohen on Tattoos

Richard Cohen, columnist at the Washington Post, doesn't like tattoos. But he thought he should at least try to understand them, so he went and talked to. . . a college professor.

Do you really need to say any more about the pundit class?

US Oil Production

Here's an interesting chart from ASPO-USA, showing US domestic oil production, historically and forecast into the future assuming we drill in ANWR and offshore and in your Aunt Molly's backyard:



(Click to enlarge.)

This is the best case scenario if the US, as currently configured, were to try and be oil independent.

"The U.S. Department of Energy estimates that drilling in ANWR would only reduce the price of gasoline by less than four pennies per gallon—20 years from now!"
-- ASPO-USA Media Guide

The LA Times has a front-page piece on Peak Oil today, but it doesn't really say anything new -- maybe we're there, maybe not, probably screwed in any case.

Mann and Kump

Michael Mann has a book coming out with Lee Kump (and also from Penn State University):

Dire Predictions: Understanding Global Warming

I know some people I hope read it.

On Blogginheads.tv

Two guys at blogginheads.tv found my "rant" interesting enough to talk about for seven minutes. I don't think they really got my point.

First of all, I don't live in the southwest (but in Oregon) and I don't cover the southwestern water beat (I generalize among the physical and environmental sciences).

Anyway, I agree that there are some valuable blog posts out there, covering things that would otherwise be ignored by the MSM. I just don't see them coming from fishbowl blogs like Matthew Yglesias or Andrew Sullivan or Instapundit or anyone who feels compelled to post 35 times a day. They're so worried about the next post and bringing traffic to their sites that they hardly focus on their current post.

These posts too often lack depth, and they go into my brain and immediately bounce back out like a light beam off a mirror. It's like spending all day watching Good Morning America -- sure, once in a while they point to an interesting thing or two, but overall it's a big waste of time.

If, as Frank Lloyd Wright said, television is chewing gum for the eyes, then the blogosphere is increasingly chewing gum for the brain. Which is too bad.

With nothing learned or enjoyed, it's just a waste of time, and they're all little wastes of time but they add up to minutes and hours. They could easily add up to your whole day if you let it--you know exactly what I mean. Is this what 21st century life is going to be -- pinging back and forth between blogs, gossiping about every belch that comes out of John McCain's sixth-in-line advisor, checking the headlines 8 times a day, dissembling what Chris Matthews said this morning or enraged at something stupid Jonah Goldberg wrote on The Corner? This isn't healthy, physically or intellectually, or individuals or for society. Is this really how I should spend my latest half-hour, or should I read a paper from Science, polish the latest draft of a manuscript, or take a walk along the Williamette?

The world has never been more complicated and we've never needed to understand so many issues in so much depth. This medium is the answer. And yet more and more of the Web, and especially the blogosphere, seems to take us away from that depth and offers us tidbit for the microsecond. Yes, there are always a few good posts out there amidst the billions, some by smart and thoughtful writers with unique talents, many by educated specialists who want to share their work and their field, things that might even change the patina of your day. I'm going to focus on what I can learn there, and stop caring what Matthew Yglesias thinks of OpenLeft's latest quip about Instapundit's "heh" placed after today's 16-word anecdote disproving anthropogenic global warming.

No longer a Consensus?

A small subsection of the American Physical Society newsletter published a newsletter that presented a debate on scientific case behind global warming, and it was bound to be taken out of context, so shallow, sharp, and ideological is the current debate about global warming.

Steve Milloy at JunkScience.com does the task here. His minions propagate it forward.

But put the report in context:

• The newsletter is calling for a review and debate, and is hardly a declaration. And in any case, it comes only from the editors of Physics & Society, which is only one newsletter among many at the APS and comes from only one forum of the APS and not the APS itself. I've been following the physics community for years, and until yesterday never even heard of this newsletter.
  
• In fact, on its front-page today the APS says:

APS Climate Change Statement

APS Position Remains Unchanged

The American Physical Society reaffirms the following position on climate change, adopted by its governing body, the APS Council, on November 18, 2007:

"Emissions of greenhouse gases from human activities are changing the atmosphere in ways that affect the Earth's climate."

An article at odds with this statement recently appeared in an online newsletter of the APS Forum on Physics and Society, one of 39 units of APS. The header of this newsletter carries the statement that "Opinions expressed are those of the authors alone and do not necessarily reflect the views of the APS or of the Forum." This newsletter is not a journal of the APS and it is not peer reviewed.

• If you actually read the newsletter, you'd see that in actuality what they're presenting are two papers, only one of which disagrees with the consensus. The other paper is in agreement with the consensus. So why focus on one or the other? Both papers are mathematical and unlikely to be understood by anyone without a science degree. Therefore people are going to pick the one that backs their ideology.
  

• I think Monckton cherry-picks his data to show a cooling trend from 2002-2008. I plotted my NASA GISS data and did get a negative slope for the linear regression over this interval. However, if I choose, say, 1998-2008, I get a positive slope.
• One 8-page paper by one scientist hardly undoes the work of hundreds of scientists putting together the evidence for AGW in a thousand-page report.
• CO2 is still a greenhouse gas, still responsible for about 30% of our earth's natural greenhouse effect (33 deg C), and it's basic common sense that more of it in the atmosphere is going to cause higher temperatures.

Sigh. People never look at the details before they jump to conclusions, especially when the conclusion fits their pre-conceived notion.

Of course, that's exactly what Milloy is paid to do, let's not forget.

Hadley June temperature

Hadley is out with their June 2008 global temperature anomaly: +0.316°C.

That's the coldest June since 2000, but the warmest month in three months. It's a little above what NASA GISS has been reporting.

Einstein on E = mc**2

Here's an recording of Einstein reciting his famous equation:



I wonder how much of his appeal to the media and public was that he sounded almost childlike. At least when he spoke in English. I wonder if it was the same when he spoke German.

Via: Dark Roasted Blend

On My Rant

I was thinking more about my rant the other day against the blogosphere, which got a lot more attention than I ever expected. The Guardian asked if they could reprint it, and it should be there in a few days.

It's certainly not that I think Matthew Yglesias is vapid or unintelligent or Andrew Sullivan or any of them. They're obviously all very smart guys with things to say, though perhaps limited by the need to post 25 times a day.

I guess I am just disgusted with the superficiality in our society, which has now taken over much of the blogosphere, especially the political blogosphere, which seems to have rapidly sunk into that hole. Maybe you care if Obama's third-to-main advisor has a pastor who once had dinner with a former Black Panther who once quoted Nietzsche when he was a 19-year old sophomore wearing dredlocks -- maybe that's all campaigns revolve around now -- but if so it is an utter fucking waste and I have absolutely no interest in it and I mourn for the death of my country. Paying attention to it all gets me nowhere, and why else to tune in to Yglesias or Sullivan 5 times a day except to find out the latest gossip. Is that what the blogosphere is about now -- gossip? Maybe.

I just don't see that they have much original to say, and so why am I spending my time there and not reading great books by Robert Pirsig and Charles Dickens and Chellis Glendinning and Edward Abbey and Thomas Kuhn and Warren Siegel and Stanislaw Ulam and Updike and Rick Bass and John Irving and Henry Roth and people who are writing for the ages and not for the current 15 minutes?

Yes, there are gems in the blogosphere, issues not discussed anywhere else (and certainly not on cable TV or even mainstream newspapers). But they are farther and farther apart and I can't spend time trying to dig them out.

And Obama, who once seemed like he might be an answer for those ready to give up, is clearly not that at all, but just another one of them. A product of the system, spit out at the top.

Some responses to my rant said that blogging is a conversation, and maybe I'm just not a good conversationalist. I live too much in my head.

Anymore most blogs just feel like things that get in the way of me living my life, really living it, instead of sitting in front of the damn computer for 12 hours a day trying to stay abreast of it all. Fuck it. It's disturbing my life and, I suspect, the lives of lots of other people. All this crap is not life. Instead I'm going to go out for a walk or up to the library or meet a friend for lunch or go sleep in a tent up in the mountains for a few days and get rained on, and then I'm going to focus on what little I can understand and can write about and communicate, in a manner and depth that matters.

I gave up TV a year ago and maybe the blogosphere is next. Who knows, maybe I'm on my way to living off the grid in a small cabin in the Cascade Mountains, a heartbroken hermit, but I just hate wasting my time on gossip and trivialities and every stupid thing they try to divert you with.

There are so many huge issues in our society and it seems clear to me that we are on a precipice and our future really hangs in the balance. Our economy is taking, we are at Peak Oil, 1/6th of the fucking country has no serious access to the health care system except for pitiful clinics at Wal-Mart, we are clearly not going to even begin to address climate change, our youth are wasting their lives in the Middle East securing oil profits, politicians lie rampantly and the media are pussies and those with power are clearly bought and sold by international corporations. We spends hundreds of billions on war, enriching the oil companies and the defense companies, and can't even pay Medicare doctors the minimum of what they're worth. And... I don't know, Americans don't even seem to care. They just go to work and go out to eat afterward, and polls show them to be happier and happier. So why am I getting angrier and angrier?

Global sea level

Like global temperature, global mean sea level has been showing some signs of slacking of in the last year or two:


(Click graph to enlarge.)

Hansen quote

This isn't the Hansen paragraph I was thinking of yesterday, but it is equally good:

"A major fight is brewing – it may be called war. On the one side, we find the short-term financial interests of the fossil fuel industry. On the other side: young people and other beings who will inherit the planet. It seems to be an uneven fight. The fossil fuel industry is launching a disinformation campaign and they have powerful influence in capitals around the world. Young people seem pretty puny in comparison to industry moguls. Animals are not much help (don’t talk, don’t vote). The battle may start with local and regional skirmishes, one coal plant or other issue at a time, but it will need to build rapidly – we are running out of time."

-- James Hansen, Yankee Ticket Prices and Fossil Fuels, 10 April 2008

Invading Power Plants

British protesters say that next month they're going to invade and occupy the first coal-fired power plant built in Britain in 33 years. The "day of mass action" is August 9 at the Kingsnorth power station in Kent (2,000 MW). Should be interesting, though I doubt the protesters will actually be able to get into the building with all the sure-to-be massive security.

But you have to salute them for trying. Climate change is clearly the most serious threat the future has ever faced, besides maybe worldwide nuclear war (and who worries about that anymore?), and it is now clear that the powers-that-be will take no action at all that would threaten the profits of the world's corporations -- or, if they do take any action, it will be so weak and timid as to hardly address the problem at all. It really is a sort of war, and what else can you do except sit back and take it? Protest. James Hansen has called for uprisings from the younger generation whose future is being threatened and perhaps ruined -- it will be interesting to see what he has to say about this.

Mario Savio said, during the Berkeley free speech protest in 1964:

There is a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you can't take part; you can't even passively take part, and you've got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus, and you've got to make it stop. And you've got to indicate to the people who run it, to the people who own it, that unless you're free, the machine will be prevented from working at all!

I do think people have given the world's governments enough time to have taken a significant chunk out of this problem -- 20 years now -- and hardly nothing has been done whatsoever.

UPDATE: Here's a video clip of Savio's speech.

Update on the Riemann Hypothesis "proof"

Li's proof of the Riemann Hypothesis that got so much attention last week? It has been withdrawn.

Arctic Sea Ice

It's looking more and more like 2008 is not going to have an ice free Arctic or even set a record for a minimum in Arctic sea ice. Here's a day-by-day plot of 2008 sea-ice as a percentage of 2007's.


Data source: http://www.ijis.iarc.uaf.edu
(International Arctic Research, Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency)

Climate Change Daily Deceit?

This is curious: The Web site Climate Debate Daily, which purports to offer a balanced presentation of the climate change debate, lists as a "Dissenting Voice" this Newsweek essay from Robert J. Samuelson titled "Don't Hold Your Breath: Global Warming Promises To Become A Large And Gushing Source Of National Hypocrisy." Climate Debate Daily links to the printable version, which looks like it came out this past January. Newsweek says it was updated on January 22, 2008. What the page curiously doesn't say is that this essay originally came out in 1997, and the Richard Kerr Science article it highlights, about the limitations of climate models, came out in May 1997.

I suspect the science of climate modeling has changed a little in the last 11 years.

Why is Climate Change Daily pointing towards 11-year old articles as evidence against global warming? I haven't been very impressed with this site since its inception last year -- I'm not sure I can ever trust it now.

Limitations of Biofuels

Some interesting facts from an op-ed in today's Oregonian on biofuels:

What about biofuels as a way to reduce our dependence on fossil fuels? Biofuel production, especially corn ethanol, is energy intensive. Even if we used the entire U.S. corn crop of 12 billion bushels to make ethanol, the net contribution would amount to just over one-half of 1 percent of our fossil fuel energy consumption. And even that number is highly optimistic.

What about cost effectiveness? The cost of using the nation's entire corn crop for ethanol would be about $7.6 billion. By comparison, studies estimate that raising the gas tax or tightening fuel economy standards could achieve 10 times as much in fossil fuel reductions for the same cost.

-- William Jaeger and Thorsten Egelkraut, Oregon State University

June Temperature Anomaly

NASA GISS says the June global temperature anomaly was 0.26°C, which is relatively low. (The average monthly anomaly over the last 10 years is 0.49°C, with a standard deviation of 0.14°C.)

Here's a graph:

The blue line is the 5-year moving average.

Cuts by 2050

NY Times:

G-8 Leaders Pledge Emissions Cuts by 2050

Pledging to “move toward a low-carbon society,” leaders of the world’s richest nations endorsed Tuesday the idea of cutting greenhouse gas emissions in half by 2050, but did not specify whether the starting point would be current levels or 1990 levels, and refused to set a short-term target for reducing the gases that scientists agree are warming the planet.

Is it possible for a civilization to commit suicide? We shall see.

War Photos

Zoriah Miller, a photographer embedded in Iraq, took pictures of the June 26th suicide bombing in Anbar Province. They are graphic, and include photographs of both dead Iraqis and dead American soldiers. They show what war is really like, which in America our government only allows us to see if its fictionalized and sanitized in a movie.

credit: Zoriah Miller, www.zoriah.com.

Naturally the military kicked Miller out of Iraq. But you should view his pictures to see what they don't want you to see.

Via Think Progress.

Susskind Lectures

One of the greatest failures of the 20th century, along with the holocaust, the killing of about 100 million civilians in various world wars, and the commercial decline of Beech Nut gum, was the utterly unrealized potential of television. Here was a unique medium that could spread unprecedented amounts of information to people all around the planet, but instead of lectures and presentations and seminars and speeches, it became contaminated with Gilligan's Island, the Love Boat, and the Jenny Jones show.

(OK, maybe the Love Boat wasn't that bad, in a kitschy kind of way, except in large quantities.)

Lenny Susskind's lectures are the kind of thing that television should have been all along. Thank god for the Web. You can watch and almost feel that you're in the audience. An hour's investment gives you a definite return, unlike so much of television today. And it reminds you why you like learning in the first place. Check them out.

Proof of Riemann Hypothesis?

The last few days have been an exciting one in mathematics, as a claimed proof of the Riemann Hypothesis was posted on the arXiv.

The Riemann Hypothesis, now 149 years old, is probably the most famous unsolved problem in mathematics, since Fermat's Last Theorem has been proven. (Had the RH appeared on a roll of toilet paper or something, with a flippant remark or a curse word beside it, it might well have eclipsed FLT in fame.)

The author is Xian-Jin Li of Brigham Young University, a mathematician amidst a group of people who have been making a serious push to solve the RH for several years. Li posted his proof on Tuesday at 12:43 pm MDT. Peter Woit blogged about it yesterday, and yesterday evening at 7:28 pm MDT Terry Tao of UCLA claimed to have found a problem in the proof.

But a new version of the proof (v3) was posted by Li last night at 8:44 pm MDT, so perhaps the story is not yet finished.

Li's proof is not long and does not look overly complex (of course, I'm not an expert in analytic number theory) -- you'd almost think you could understand it. There are even some integrals, which I did not realize were still allowed in modern mathematics.

Yang said there are two kinds of mathematical papers, the kind you can't understand past the first page and the kind you can't understand past the first sentence. Wouldn't it be amazing if the proof of the RH was the former!

PS: There is no shortage of purported proofs of the RH....

Health Care inflation

Wow: Oregon's largest health insurer, Regence BlueCross BlueShield of Oregon, raised rates yesterday by 26% for individual insurance plans due for annual renewal and by 16% for small group plans (small businesses with less than 50 employees).

What a disincentive towards entrepreneuralism.

The whole system is literally breaking down before our very eyes. It is amazing to me how passive politicians (at all levels) are about this. My own state representatives to whom I've written could hardly seem to care less.

Free Talking Dictionary

Now this is truly wonderful: HowjSay, a (free) talking dictionary.

All of the pronunciation features of online dictionaries I've seen to-date have required purchase of a subscription.

Happiest Countries

The 20 "happiest" countries in the world, according to a recent World Values Survey:

1. Denmark
   
2. Puerto Rico
   
3. Colombia
   
4. Iceland
   
5. N Ireland
   
6. Ireland
   
7. Switzerland
   
8. Netherlands
   
9. Canada
   
10. Austria
    
11. El Salvador
    
12. Malta
    
13. Luxemburg
    
14. Sweden
    
15. New Zealand
    
16. U.S.A.
    
17. Guatemala
    
18. Mexico
    
19. Norway
    
20. Belgium

In possibly related news: A survey of 17 countries has found that despite its punitive drug policies the United States has the highest levels of illegal cocaine and cannabis use.

A Dinosaur in NYC

Very impressive:



Via Dark Roasted Blend.