Watch Global Warming As It Happens

The Wilkins Ice Shelf seems about to break away from the Antarctic Peninsula -- it's been hanging on by a narrow bridge (a few km x about 100 km) for months, and the bridge itself has been collapsing in the last several months -- even during the Antarctic winter.

Now you can watch the breakup in near real-time: the European Space Agency has a Webcam on the area via satellite. The latest images are only about a day old, and it will be updated daily.

This area of Antarctica has warmed about 2.5°C in the last 50 years. The Ice Shelf is floating, so its breakup won't raise sea level.

Prof. David Vaughan of the British Antarctic Survey (BAS) said in July:

"Wilkins Ice Shelf is the most recent in a long, and growing, list of ice shelves on the Antarctic Peninsula that are responding to the rapid warming that has occurred in this area over the last fifty years.

"Current events are showing that we were being too conservative, when we made the prediction in the early 1990s that Wilkins Ice Shelf would be lost within thirty years - the truth is it is going more quickly than we guessed."

The Ice Shelf is floating, so its breakup won't raise sea level. This site from last March has a nice video of a flyover over the bridge. The BBC says the area of the Wilkins Ice Shelf is about that of the Isle of Man, or about 570 km².

ESA adds:

In the past 20 years, seven ice shelves along the Antarctic Peninsula have retreated or disintegrated, including the most spectacular break-up of the Larsen B Ice Shelf in 2002....

By the way, did you know they have seals down there wearing "hats" that provide temperature data? (If we can do that in the ocean, why can't we outfit mammals on land and do the same thing?)

--

Here's a map of where this is all taking place:

Chu as SecEn

The Obama team continues to move along like a dream -- now he has chosen Steven Chu of LBL as the Secretary of Energy.

I mean, wow. I have gotten so used to...well...hacks in high Cabinet positions that it seems unbelievable we will actually have someone who is intelligent, rational, and forward-thinking.

I mean, do you remember James Watt, Secretary of the Interior in the Reagan administration? A complete wack job. He actually said, when speaking to Congress:

"I do not know how many future generations we can count on before the Lord returns, whatever it is we have to manage with a skill to leave the resources needed for future generations."

And -- and this is, sure, exactly what you want in a high-level politician anywhere, let alone one tasked with managing your country's land:

"After the last tree is felled, Christ will come back."

People aren't weird even in the Bush Jr. administration.

After office (and after being indicted for influence peddling, he spoke in front of a group and said:

"If the troubles from environmentalists cannot be solved in the jury box or at the ballot box, perhaps the cartridge box should be used."

What a nightmare.

Or remember Spencer Abraham? Bipedal incompetency.

-=-=-

So why should we expect Chu to be any better? Because he's a physicist!

Sure, I'm biased. But I really do believe that physicists -- or, at least, some of them -- are some of the smartest people on the planet. And, more than that -- and I've know a lot of them -- probably the most educationally balanced people on the planet.

Historians or English majors can get away with not knowing much about quantum mechanics or professing their fear of algebra, but physicists are expected to know about the Shakespeare and the French Revolution and the politics of the US Civil War. It's simply part of being an educated person. And they can convert Joules to BTUs!

Sure, Chu is forward-thinking. That's great. But mostly he's very, very smart, too smart to be easily fooled or suckered by politics or bullshited to.

I'm not saying he can walk on water. But at least he knows what its index of refraction is.

Oregon Conflicts of Interest

In Oregon, Governor Ted Kulongoski's Global Warming Commission is chaired by Angus Duncan, President and CEO of the Bonneville Environmental Foundation.

Who is the BEF? Among other things, they sell carbon offsets.

This is very inappropriate. It's hardly different than an oil company executive sitting on a federal panel about climate change -- or, as happens frequently in the Bush Administration, any corporate representative serving on a study in which their industry has an interest.

I've seen no coverage of this at all in the media.

Linux

"I did it for fun."

- Linus Torvalds, NPR

Gas taxes

Today I passed a gas station charging $1.799/gallon.

That is amazingly cheap compared to what we're used to -- my maximum was $4.339/gal, on 6/17/08.

So now is the absolute best time to implement a $1/gal gas tax.

Obama should do it on Day 2.

Gasoline demand in the US is at 8.6 gal/person/week. A $1/gal tax would thus raise about $130B/yr -- and gas at the pump would still be $2.80/gal, a dream compared to last summer. Every dime of this revenue should go into R&D for alternative technologies.

Imagine what we could do with $130B. The Apollo project cost about $25B total. That's about $160B in today's dollars.

This has always been true of America: put lots of really smart people in a room, and they will figure out just about anything.

Let's get started.

Allen vs. Lomborg

Climateprediction.net -- the people who look for spare PC time around the Internet to run climate models -- has a nice debate video between Bjorn Lomborg and Myles Allen that took place in October. I learned a lot from it in a short period of time -- it's worth checking out.

• I have never heard audio or video of Lomberg before -- I am amazed at how American he sounds, with no trace whatsoever of a Danish accent.
• I like the simple way that Allen quantifies the debate -- to me it is a different perspective:

  • 0.5 TtC = 1°C warming (though I wonder if this simple rule takes into account the logarithmic dependence of temperature and CO2 level)
    
  • Let 1°C warming be defined as = 1 GWU (global warming unit)
  • (TtC = trillion tons Carbon)
    
  • total carbon burned so far = 1 GWU
    
  • reserves of conventional oil and gas = 1 GWU
    
  • reserves of coal = 5 GWU
  • unconventional reserves = 3 GWU

• Overall, I think I agree with Allen -- I think Lomborg neglects to consider what happens in 2100+, when, if we don't curtail GHGs soon, will be in serious straits. Also, Lomborg is only talking about $50B -- chump change today. Can't we contain malaria and provide clean drinking water across the world and cutback on GHGs? Don't we have to? You can't long ignore a serious problem in your life just because you have other problems. We had $700B to bail out Wall Street at the drop of a hat (literally -- I heard yesterday that the Treasury Department can't even keep track of all the money because it's heading too fast out the door). Why can't the entire world find $50B?
• Why do they introduce these speakers like it's a TV game show?

Thank You

Poznan

Tomorrow is the beginning of a 12-day meeting in Poznan, Poland on the climate -- the "14th Session of Conference to the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change."

The UN says, yet again, that this will be a "milestone on the road to success" embarked on by the Bali conference (COP 13, Dec 2007), to COP 15 (Dec, 2009) in Copenhagen, at which the negotiations are supposed to conclude.

I guess. At this point it's nearly impossible to separate out what is diplomatic preening and actual intent. Nothing serious, of course, has yet been done about climate change, yet the diplomats seem very sure they're making process -- at least, that's their story and they're sticking to it. But it strikes me as akin to the perpetual dieter who says, OK, tomorrow I'm definitely going to start my diet, and this time I really mean it. Just after I eat this pizza.

I suppose it takes a certain kind of mindset to be a diplomat, and I'm sure I don't have it. The current economic crisis has many countries saying this isn't the right time to be cutting emissions.

Yvo de Boer, head of the UN Climate Change Secretariat, predicts that participant countries will invoke all kinds of reasons to avoid making changes, citing their monetary difficulties. (Softpedia News).

Maybe everyone is just waiting until Bush leaves office. What will the excuse be then?

Atheism and Economic Calamity

What caused the current economic crisis? Atheists, secularists, and the fact that we can't say "Merry Christmas" anymore. I kid you not. This sound piece of critical thinking actually appears in the Wall Street Journal.

NOAA has a press release out this morning about the 2008 hurricane season -- it was more active than usual:

...a season that produced a record number of consecutive storms to strike the United States and ranks as one of the more active seasons in the 64 years since comprehensive records began....

The storms included [16 named storms], eight hurricanes, five of which were major hurricanes at Category 3 strength or higher. An average season has 11 named storms, six hurricanes and two major hurricanes.

“This year’s hurricane season continues the current active hurricane era and is the tenth season to produce above-normal activity in the past 14 years,” said Gerry Bell, Ph.D., lead seasonal hurricane forecaster at NOAA's Climate Prediction Center.

Bell attributes this year’s above-normal season to conditions that include:

• An ongoing multi-decadal signal. This combination of ocean and atmospheric conditions has spawned increased hurricane activity since 1995.
• Lingering La Niña effects. Although the La Niña that began in the Fall of 2007 ended in June, its influence of light wind shear lingered.
• Warmer tropical Atlantic Ocean temperatures. On average, the tropical Atlantic was about 1.0 degree Fahrenheit above normal during the peak of the season.

World's Smallest Engine

This is pretty neat, whatever it is (read the comments):

http://www.metacafe.com/watch/345290/building_the_amazing_steam_candle/

Via: Dark Roasted Blend

Involuntary Microchipping

I don't know if anyone has proposed a law that says something like "any technology that can be abused will be abused," but if there is not such a law there should be. This proposal falls into that category:

Indonesian AIDS patients face microchip monitoring

...legislator John Manangsang said by implanting small computer chips beneath the skin of "sexually aggressive" patients, authorities would be in a better position to identify, track and ultimately punish those who deliberately infect others with up to six months in jail or a $5,000 fine.

Of course, as always, they claim there is a dire need for such violations:

"The health situation is extraordinary, so we have to take extraordinary action," said another lawmaker, Weynand Watari, who envisions radio frequency identification tags like those used to track everything from cattle to luggage.

This is exactly the way these things start. Once you start looking around you can find all kinds of good reasons for chipping people -- how about fighting terrorism? Protecting children from kidnapping (until the kidnappers gouge the chip out, at least)? Infectious diseases? Then people say, look, Indonesia does it and it doesn't seem to be a big problem....

I can foresee a black market for chip extraction. Though they'll make that illegal too.

Lost Particle

Via Dark Roasted Blend.

Live Mt. St. Helens Cam

For next time.

Canadian meteorite

Did you see the video of the meteorite that streaked across western Canada the other night (5:30pm Thursday November 20th 2008) ? Pretty impressive.

Ricky Gervais Fame - Eskimo's and Global Warming

Bush Cooling?

Today's meme seems to be: the planet has cooled during George Bush's regime.

This conclusion seems based on the following graph, which has been around for a month or two now:


I first saw this graph on a post of Lorne Gunter at the National Post in Canada (who I consider and extremely biased, unreliable source on climate change news and analysis). I asked him how it was derived -- how the trend line was calculated-- but he didn't respond. Nor has anyone else I've asked since.

It looks very suspicious to me: the graph dips awfully suddenly in the last two years, while not lurching upward at all during the El Nino warm period circa 1997-99. Until I see this calculation, I simply can't believe it.

Sci Am article

I have an article in the Dec 08 issue of Scientific American: Planck Satellite Mission Set to Explore Cosmic Secrets, about the European satellite that will launch this spring and zero-in on most cosmological parameters, including distinguishing among models of inflation.

"Inflation" is the extremely fast expansion -- exponential -- of the Universe that occurred very early on -- at about 10^-35 seconds after the Big Bang.

Yes, it does seem absurd to talk about such times. But, amazingly, today's particle physics does in fact predict such an expansion, and when it's probed deep it predicts quite precise values for some very subtle and esoteric parameters, such as the "spread" of values of the fluctuations from the norm of the cosmic microwave background.

In essence, the Universe is like a big old fire, now extinguished, whose heat has all rushed out to the extreme edges of what we can detect. We can look at this heat and determine that its temperature is about 3 Kelvins: -454°F.

But, like any piece of heat, the remnants of this fire are not monothilic, but has variations in it, fluctuations, just like if you look at an ember in a firepit and see it glow in one basic color but with some variations -- a bit hotter, then a bit cooler, always in flux.

These variations have been measured by satellites already launched, and they have found that the variations are quite small. But NOT zero. They're only about 10 parts per million --a very tiny part of the average temperature -- like looking at a big group of humans and detecting variations in height of 20 microns or so. In othr words, very small.

But, amazingly, today's satellites have measured these fluctuations, and today's high-energy particle theories have predicted it. And they are in surprising agreement. People, like George Smoot of LBL, have won the Nobel Prize for precisely this. It is an immense achievement, both intellectually and practically.

But thereare still more details to be rung out of the cosmic microwave background, and this is what the Planck mission will do. This will enable theorists to distinguish among competing theories of "inflation."

It is, when you think about it, quite amazing. Measurements of extremely small features of the universe -- glowing embers in a huge fire -- will enable scientists to determine which of their cosmological models make sense. Cosmology has truly been one of the greatest boones to modern physics.

From Yesterday's Protests, in Florida

NASA Recomputes

NASA GISS has recomputed their October temperature anomaly: +0.58°C.

• That's warmer than last October (+0.53°C), so those silly people who look at short-term statistics must now conclude that the globe is warming again.
• This is the fourth warmest October since records began, all of them since 2003.
• Year-to-date, this is (so far) the 9th warmest year on record, all of the larger once being since 1998.
• I'm sure skeptics will find some statistical combination that will allow them to still claim global cooling.

UPDATE: GISS has adjusted its October number to +0.55°C. (Such adjustments take place all the time, even many months in the past.) All the above still holds.

Naval Sonar

Somehow I think this decision would have been different if there were more cetaceans on the Supreme Court.

Temperature Data

I have been out of it for awhile.... but I see that NASA GISS posted a large temperature anomaly of +0.78°C for the month of October, only to take it back a day later when several people pointed out that the October data for many stations in Russia were the same as those of September.... (As posted, it would have been the 4th warmest month of all time.)

Which is, frankly, a good catch. Props to the collective journalistic effort of the blogosphere. We need more of that (including when temperatures are reported as very low; but this is probably unlikely, just due to basic human nature).

Of course, correcting data is as old as science itself. It is a fundamental part of science, and won't ever, ever go away. Science doesn't proclaim the truth -- it zeros in on it.

Still, though, suspicious things are going on. Anthony Watts at Watt's Up With That says that the NASA GISS data set is no longer reliable:

But, of course (and you know what's coming next) it was reliable enough a mere nine months ago when he used it to show "global cooling":

The GISS ΔT was -.75°C, which is larger than the satellite data from UAH ∆T of -.588°C and the RSS RSS ∆T of -.629°C

GISS January Land-Sea Anomaly
click for larger image

The ΔT of -.75°C from January 2007 to January 2008 appears to be the largest single year to year January drop for the entire GISS data set.

This is yet one more indication of the intensity of planet-wide cooler temperatures seen in January 2008, particularly in the Northern Hemisphere, which has seen record amounts of snow coverage extent as well as new record low surface temperatures in many places.

This is just one more example of what can only be considered intellectual dishonesty by some of the skeptics, which we have seen before.

Letter to the Editor

This letter to the NY Times sums it all up very neatly:

To the Editor:

That day has dawned, the day dreamed of by the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., when a man is judged by the content of his character rather than by the color of his skin....

(Rev.) Connell J. Maguire
Riviera Beach, Fla., Nov. 4, 2008

Inhofe

Inhofe is reelected to the Senate. Just to keep things interesting.

Obama Wins

It's 10:03 pm EST, and ABC News says Obama has 207 electoral votes. He needs 270 to win, and is bound to win California (55), Oregon (7), and Washington (11). That will give him a minimum of 280 EVs.

It's over. Obama has won.

-=-=-

I am relieved. Earlier in the evening it looked closer than I expected, in Virginia, and in Indiana.

I am happy to see Shaheen win in NH, and, as a godless atheist scumbag, Dole lose in NC.

-=-=-

Simply put, I thought that if McCain were elected this country would be effectively had the fork stuck in its ass -- further down the dark path, hopelessly far right-wing, hopelessly militaristic, nationalistic, reactionary, anti-intellectual, anti-science, soon to be bankrupt, corporations controlling absolutely everything, privacy at serious risk, perhaps even religious diversity, the Constitution even more of a ripped mess that it is after these last horrible eight years.

Obama at least represents hope. Some hope. I'm enormously proud that my country elected an African-American to the presidency. Frankly, I never thought I'd see it. A page has definitely turned.

But the US is a big ship and does not turn around easily. I thought Clinton & Gore represented hope in 1992, but they turned out to be a big disappointment and in may ways just more of the same -- run by corporations and their donations and their influence, overtly political at any cost, and self-indulgent to the point of self-destruction.

Every four years everyone thinks things are going to change big-time -- and yet things hardly change that much. A little forward, a little back. Why should this be any different?

I don't think the vast right-wing conspiracy (of course, it exists) will work any less hard during an Obama presidency. Can he hold all that off? He has the dignity and coolness to possibly do it. It won't be easy. It's not like we're out of any woods.

But Obama is clearly unique, like, I imagine, JFK was. Some things about him still worry me. His opposition to same-sex marriage, which surely he knows is an unjust position, is, I hope, based on political survival and thus reversible when the time is right. I'm disappointed at the extent to which he injects religion into his own attitude about governing, but perhaps that is only political survival too.

On health care, which is by far the most important issue to me, I think he is disappointing. I can't see him overcoming the huge corporate medical block. The number of uninsured will probably decrease under his presidency, but even he admits that not everyone will be covered. Single, childless, self-employed, pre-existing conditions, I fully expect to be one of them, and that angers me deeply.

Some of the things I saw in the election certainly make me worry about mankind, but I suppose all elections have been like this.

Anyway, I guess this is a start. Finally.

Has Global Warming Stopped?

Christopher Monckton has a little item out titled "Global Warming Has Stopped." It's the usual chart, starting at 2002:


Here's why I think this is just simply wrong. If you plot the globally average temperature (I'm using the NASA GISS data series) since, say, 1990, you get:

Red bars are monthly temperatures in Celsius; the yellow line is the 5-year moving average.

If you think global warming has stopped in recent years, just because the yellow line is flat for the last couple of years, then why wouldn't you have drawn the same conclusion in 1997, 2002, and 2005 (especially 1997)?

You would have. But obviously you would have wrong each time, as global temperatures resumed moving upward after each period.

So what is unique about this latest pause? Nothing. So you can't say "global warming has stopped."


NOTE: This is essentially the same argument made by Bill Chameides. Monckton accuses him of being "dishonest" and accusing him of tampering with the data.

Springsteen Reloaded

I'm sorry, but this is funny:

See more Pete Hulne videos at Funny or Die

The EAS Has Landed

I called NASA, and they said the ISS's EAS (ammonia tank) came down last night and landed in the ocean between Australia and New Zealand.

Heads Up

Last year the International Space Station threw some junk overboard -- a 635 kg, refrigerator-size ammonia tank -- and last night it came back to Earth. Somewhere. No news yet that I can find of where it landed.

NASA predicted it could have come down in as many as 15 pieces (the largest being 18 kg), impacting the Earth at about 100 mi/hr.

If you find something strange in your front yard, first take a picture, second send it to me, and third call NASA.

PS: Much, much larger things have fallen out of orbit.

Sunspots Again

After some months of puzzling quiescence, the first sunspots of Solar Cycle 24 are beginning to appear -- four in the past month. Spaceweather.com says:

In a year of almost no sunspots, four is significant. It means that the sun is beginning a slow ascent out of solar minimum to a more active phase of the sunspot cycle. Solar minimum is not a permanent condition!

You can't keep a good Sun down.

How I Voted

President: Barack Oback (D)
US Senator: Jeff Merkley (D)
US Represenative: David Wu (D)

There are other races, but these are the most important.

High School Dropouts

I find this absolutely flabbergasting:

The U.S. is the only industrialized country where youths are less likely than their parents to earn a diploma, the report says, citing data compiled by the international Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development....

One in 4 kids is dropping out of school, a rate that hasn't budged for at least five years. Among minorities, more than 1 in 3 drop out.

Sometimes it seems the United States is coming apart at the seams. And honestly, I am not so sure even a Obama presidency can reverse this.

The Tyranny of Oil

This looks like it could be a good book:

The Tyranny of Oil: The World's Most Powerful Industry--And What We Must Do to Stop It

by Antonia Juhasz

Antonia Juhasz, a leading industry critic and expert on corporations and globalization, gives us the hardest-hitting expose of the oil industry in decades. In The Tyranny of Oil she investigates the true state of the U.S. oil industry — uncovering its virtually unparalleled global power, influence over our elected officials, and lack of regulatory oversight, as well as the truth behind $150-a-barrel oil, $4.50-a-gallon gasoline, and the highest profit in corporate history. Exposing an industry that thrives on secrecy, Juhasz shows how Big Oil manages to hide its business dealings from policy makers, legislators, and, most of all, consumers. She reveals exactly how Big Oil gets what it wants — through money, influence, and lies.

Sinéad

Kris Kristofferson: "Don't let the bastards get you down."

Sinéad O'Conner: "I'm not down."

]

Transatlanticism

I understand a few things -- calculus, how to make your way up a steep mountain with a heavy pack on your back, one-loop QED calculations, how to make animals feel at home -- but I don't understand music at all. I know that I like it. But I don't know how to make it, or read it.

And I've always thought I'm missing something for that.... I'd just like, for once, to be part of something like this DCFC's experience here onstage from about 5:00 to the end.... I'd like to know what that is like....

My Rule About Voting

I will not vote for any candidate who does not have a Web site -- I don't care if they're running for dog catcher or sidewalk gum scrapper.

If you don't understand that the Web is the greatest innovation since the printing press and the absolute best way to communicate with your potential supporters, and to let them know who you are and what you stand for, then you do not deserve to be part of any government in the 21st century.

Example: Steve W. Blanchard, running for City Council Position #2, St Helens, OR. Sorry dude.

More NF3 Nonsense

Here's a piece of giant misunderstanding about the NF3 news announced last week, from the Hindu Times:

'NF3 contributes more to global warming than CO2'

New York (PTI): Carbon dioxide (CO2) is not the most potent gas responsible for global warming.

They do correct themselves (or, at least, provide the right answer) later in the article. But the headline is seriously misleading.

Monday stuff

Just some things that have crossed my path:

• is bisphenol-A safe? It's a chemical used in the manufacture of plastics, and has been in the news a lot lately.... The FDA released a recent report on it, claiming that it is safe. Guess who wrote the report? Yes, that's right: the plastics industry.
• Bisphenol-A sales in 2007: $6 billion.
• The Heartland Institute is holding another climate change conference in New York next year. The theme is: "Global Warming Crisis: Cancelled."

  "All of the event's expenses are being covered by individual and foundation donors to Heartland," said Dan Miller, executive vice president of the institute. "No corporate dollars earmarked for the event were solicited or accepted."

  They don't say which foundations.
• The IEA says not nearly enough money is being spent on researching Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS). "To date, only four full-scale CCS projects exist in the world; none of these projects captures carbon dioxide (CO2) from a coal-fired power plant."
• Richard Dawkins' book The God Delusion has sold 1.5 million copies. Still, Dawkins thinks science is losing the battle against religion.

The Nitrogen Trifluoride Scare

Thinkprogress again fails to deliver a trustworthy picture on climate change. Today they write:

In an upcoming issue of the journal Geophysical Research Letters, NASA reports that “new research indicates a powerful greenhouse gas might be at least four times more prevalent than has been thought.” The level of nitrogen trifluoride — which “is thousands of times more effective at warming the Earth’s atmosphere than an equal mass of carbon dioxide” — has increased by a rate of 11 percent per year. Previously, “emissions of nitrogen trifluoride were thought to be so low the gas has not been considered a significant potential contributor to global warming.”

These are all true facts, and makes NF3 sound very scary. But what they don't tell you is that current NF3 emissions contribute only 0.15% of the total global warming effect of current manmade CO2 emissions.

UPDATE: The AGU issued a correction overnight. The correct figure for NF3's contribution is 0.04%.

Gore quote

"When I hear of a new outrage, I have to download some old outrage to make room for it."

-- Al Gore, Harvard, Oct 22, 2008

Exponential Growth

Here's a very interesting graph from New Scientist:


Of course, most of these parameters were much larger during the Medieval Warm Period.

Southwestern Pennsylvania

Yesterday on Hannity and Colmes, Karl Rover said this about southwestern Pennsylvania:

ROVE: But it’s a conservative part of the state, and then if you take the far southwestern corner over there near Pittsburgh and the suburbs, that’s coal country, and that’s the kind of people who really do cling to their guns and their faith, and took a lot of — you know that was part of the state where Obama might be expected to do well.

I grew up in southwestern Pennsylvania, in a little place up in the mountains too rural to even be considered a village, and Rove is simply incorrect. People there have guns, sure, for hunting, but they are by no means fanatical about it. Yes, my dad took me to shoot rats at the dump, and a few times we had to pull over so he could shoot a groundhog or two in a field. I wasn't ever much interested, personally. Faith? Hardly. Growing up I never heard anybody in my family or extended family talk about faith or religion. We went to church for awhile and then gave it up. I went to Bible summer school one year and mostly remember it for the girls there. No one in my family goes to church. No one in the community or nearby communities talks about religion, if at all. There is no evangelicalism. Religion was not discussed in schools or anywhere else. The churches are modest and not ostentatious. The biggest religion there is the Pittsburgh Steelers.

In my visits back there I don't see that it's changed much back there.

Hadley's September Anomaly

Hadley has September at +0.371°C above the long-term mean, their coldest September since 2000. That compares to NASA GISS's +0.49°C.

Program Alert

Tomorrow night: Heat, on PBS's Frontline, about climate change:

For the past 18 months, veteran FRONTLINE correspondent Martin Smith and his production team have tracked this complex story around the world. Now, in a wide-ranging, two-hour special edition, they report on what they've seen, and it isn't pretty. From the First World to the Third, the demand for energy continues to grow, driven by the needs of emerging giants like India and China, where environmental concerns take a way backseat in the headlong rush to development. Smith and his colleagues spent weeks in these two countries....

Preview here.

You can watch the full program here (after tomorrow).

A quote from the program:

"The western model of growth is inherently toxic."
-- Sunita Narain, Centre for Science and the Environment, India

McCain Concedes

In any great endeavor--and we've all had a couple, whether it was in athletics, or finishing college, or perhaps your true love, or something else -- there comes a point where -- and we've all been there -- you have failed. You have previously keep going, kept plugging away, been inspired by some motive or image or person or dream, but at some point, it suddenly sinks into your soul that you're not going to make it. The goal is too high, or the pain is too much, or you just don't have what it takes. Your shoulders slump. Your trick knee acts up. After that you keep at it, but it's just going through the motions, and deep, deep down you know it. You just have to let it work its way out. And it does and you feel a great disappointment and some part of you, at least, moves on.

McCain has reached this point. He's lost. There's nothing more he can do.

On Sunday, Fox News host Chris Wallace asked John McCain how he would feel if he lost the presidential race to Barack Obama:

"Oh, sure,'' Mr. McCain said. " I mean, I don't dwell on it. But, look, I've a wonderful life. I have to go back and live in Arizona, be in the United States Senate representing them, a wonderful family, daughters and sons that I'm so proud of and a life that's been blessed. I'm the luckiest guy you have ever interviewed and will ever interview. I'm the most fortunate man on earth and I thank God for it every single day.''

"So if the world turns an unfortunate way on November 4th, don't feel sorry for John McCain?" Mr. Wallace asked.

"Don't feel sorry for John McCain and John McCain will be concentrating on not feeling sorry for himself,'' Mr. McCain said.

Mr. Wallace said, "And you might just be president."

"You never know,'' Mr. McCain said.

You don't talk this way if you're winning, or if you're thinking you're winning, or if it's close and you know you really need to dig in and find out what kind of man you are, or even if it looks kinda bad but you know life takes strange twists and turns and you still hope of winning. You don't even concede the question.

You talk this way when you know you know you've lost.

And his side knows it. Read The Corner -- the coming loss drips off nearly every post they write.

If you're a progressive, or a liberal, or a Democrat, or if you see America as perched on the edge of a cliff -- i.e., if you're not "pro-American"-- enjoy the next two weeks. They're as good as it's ever going to get.

Marc Morano

Marc Morano: disputes the validity of climate models, except when they're in his favor.

Volz noted that the IPCC does not even call the climate models "predictions" and instead refers to them as "projections" or "story lines." Volz said the projections might be more aptly termed "fairy tales." (CNSNews.com, 5/14/02)

vs.

Also in September, American Craig Loehle, a scientist who conducts computer modelling on global climate change, confirmed his earlier findings that the so-called Medieval Warm Period (MWP) of about 1,000 years ago did in fact exist and was even warmer than 20th-century temperatures. (via Planet Gore, 10/20/08)

Palin on SNL

Perhaps the only thing worse than a vice-presidential candidate who won't give a press conference is one who goes on television and mocks the country about it.

Investing in the Economy

In their endorsement of Obama, the LA Times writes:

On paper, McCain presents the type of economic program The Times has repeatedly backed: One that would ease the tax burden on business and other high earners most likely to invest in the economy and hire new workers.

I never understand this. Why is it that only rich people's money creates jobs and investment? Money is fungible. If you're middle-class -- or, frankly, any-class -- and you get a tax break, you're going to either (1) spend the money on, say, soap, which will increase soap demand and create jobs in the soap industry, (2) put it in savings, which will funnel though your bank into investment firms that invest in small and large businesses, or (3) pay off debt, which again puts more money in the hands of banks and credit bureaus, enabling them to either invest the money or loan it back out again to people starting companies, etc.

Am I missing something?

Oil Prices and all that

Roger Lowenstein, today's NY Times:

Well, gas still costs $3.50 a gallon, and the price of a barrel of oil, last week close to $80, still is four times what it was all of six years ago. If that doesn’t sound like a big deal, consider that in the half-dozen years of the housing boom, residential home prices rose only 125 percent, whereas oil prices, even now, are 300 percent higher than they were six years ago. So the energy issue is still here. Remember the winter after Katrina, when home-heating-fuel prices caused an uproar? This winter they are likely to be much higher.

When the new president takes office, high energy costs will be — as they are already — a drag on the economy, one that is becoming conflated with the credit crisis. Last month, the U.S. auto industry sold fewer than one million cars — its slowest sales rate in 15 years. Tight credit and high gas prices each contributed to that. There is no way to completely unravel the two, but here is one fact: In the early part of this decade, when oil was cheap, Americans spent only 2 percent of their income on gasoline. Recently they have been spending about 4.5 percent — more than twice as much. And you can bet that the percentage is higher among families with lower incomes.

Cp here.

Linear Correlations - A Love Story

When I was a dumb undergraduate, a sophomore I think, I decided I wanted to take a one-on-one course with a professor and do something experimental. He didn't really care what and sent me off on my own. I decided to try and measure the change of the index of refraction of glass with temperature.

One afternoon a week I went to a little room with a bunch of old equipment, including an oven and a spectrometer. I found some glass slides and a lamp and a thermometer and started to make measurements, heating up the glass, watching diffraction fringes change, etc. etc.

At the end I plotted my results, and they were all over the place. I mean, simply scattershot. I took out my trusted HP calculator (remember Reverse Polish Notation?) and plugged away and came up with a best-line fit. And when I took it to my professor (Bryon Dieterle), he pretty much laughed right in my face and told me you can't just draw a stupid line between a seemingly random set of results, and anyway, I hadn't considered the uncertainties of my data (or my result) and that was actually most of experimental science. I felt pretty humiliated -- I could go back and show you the exact spot in the hallway he told me all this, almost like it was the Kennedy assassination. Then he explained uncertainties in terms of partial derivatives and it started to make sense. I think he gave me an A-.

I was always a lousy experimentalist -- I still panic at having to change a flat tire -- but in fact that humiliation taught me a great deal about what data analysis was all about and insisting on good data and precise data and not being stupid about it and all that. Anyway.

So when I see something like this


from the blog Stochastic Democracy, more or less endorsed by Matthew Yglesias here, I have to laugh. You can't just take a scatterhot of points and draw a line through it because that's what your calculator (now Excel) tells you. Sure, you can, but it's meaningless -- it's a blob! -- and it's more important to understand that it's meaningless than going through the nitty gritty details of calculation slopes and intercepts and Pearson coefficients.

I don't know the moral of this story, except that you can do a lot of stupid things with the linear correlation function on your spreadsheet. Be sure to think first.

Voting By Mail

Oregon has Vote-by-mail, and it seems more and more states are heading in that direction, such as Colorado (as reported in the NY Times article today).

With Election Day less than three weeks away, the number of people voting by mail has exploded in Colorado, a pivotal battleground state up for grabs in November. Nearly half of the state’s registered voters have requested ballots by mail, compelling the Obama and McCain campaigns to kick-start their get-out-the-vote efforts — and devise new and imaginative ones.

I appreciate the convenience, but I do not like this trend. I much preferred, in New Hampshire, going to my community's polling station -- it made me feel like a citizen in a community. Sure, it was usually a cold snowy mess, and I hardly ever knew anyone there, and I'm not that social to begin with, but for that day, at least, I felt part of something. I saw people with placards. I got to see people voting. There was something about that.

It helps a little bit that in NH, during primary season, as soon as you come out of the building a couple of pollsters descend on you (I always declined to answer them). You feel a little special.

But I think the breakdown in community is ruining our country, and so I hate to see anything that contributes to its decline. No doubt we will all, in 8 or so years, be voting via the Internet, making it even worse. Voting rates may go up -- that doesn't necessarily mean it's a better system.

Obama to Classify CO2

Obama would classify CO2 as a dangerous pollutant, his energy adviser said today, possibly immediately upon taking office.

You can expect a slew of jokes about Obama outlawing our ability to breathe, live, "We call it Life" and all that. (Here's a giveaway: Bill Clinton might have been the president who didn't inhale, but Obama will be the first one unable to exhale.)

Tonight's Debate

I'm not going to live-blog tonight's presidential debate.

I'm not going to try and listen and watch and type and read blogs all at the same time. I'm not going to jump to conclusions or imply that my instantaneous, brief reactions are of any value to the rest of the world.

Instead, I'm going to sit quietly and listen carefully. I'm going to watch how a candidate responds (or doesn't) to the questions, and how his opponent responds to that. I'm not going to go write something and thereby miss the next minute of the debate. I won't jump around and look to see what ThinkProgress or Kevin Drum or Andrew Sullivan had to say in the last 45 seconds, as if the world depends on it, and when the debate is over I will turn off the computer, read a little Matt Ridley, and let my brain sleep on what I have just heard.

McCain and Honor

From Willamette Week, a biting but spot-on comment:

As for John McCain, what five-plus years in a POW camp couldn’t do—make McCain forfeit his honor—the hunger to be president has.

Fixing FFFD boxes in Firefox

Perhaps you're experiencing strange little boxes with "FF FD" in them when using Firefox 3.0. Here's the fix that worked for me:

View >> Character Encoding >> Auto-detect >> Universal

More in the Firefox Support Forum.

Smashing Bugs

Once when I was an undergraduate I was in a backyard sitting at a picnic table reading Messiah's book on quantum mechanics. A bug landed on the page and I instinctively swiped him off, killing him completely, leaving nothing but a thin red smear across the page.

Suddenly I realized: my God, what had I just done? I had obliterated a life without hardly even thinking about it. I had reduced it to essentially nothing.

I still think about that when I find a bug where I'd rather he not be. (I still have Messiah's book, too.) Sure, I kill my share, but often I'll simply coax them onto a piece of paper and take them outside. (And yet, I have not committed to vegetarianism.)

So there is something becoming in this video of Obama brushing a spider off his shirt:



In my book this speaks highly of his as a person.

World's First Nuclear Accident, in Idaho

It's often said that there have been no fatalities from nuclear accidents in the US, including Three Mile Island, but I was doing some research today on another subject I was surprised to come across this:

On January 3, 1961, the first and only fatal nuclear reactor accident in the United States occurred at the NRTS ["National Reactor Testing Station," near Idaho Falls, Idaho]. An experimental reactor called SL-1 (Stationary Low-Power Plant Number 1) was destroyed when a problem control rod was removed incorrectly leading to core meltdown and explosion. All three military personnel working in the reactor were killed. Due to the extensive radioactive isotope contamination, all three had to be buried in lead coffins. The events are the subject of a book published in 2003, Idaho Falls: The untold story of America's first nuclear accident.

By the way, Idaho National Laboratory's budget is about $800M/yr. Who knew?

Peak Oil and all the Crap

In retrospect, a lot of people who blamed the recent oil peak on Peak Oil seem to be quite wrong, including myself. Oil is now 43% below it's peak, and down 6% year-to-year. It seems a lot of people saw in the market what they were predisposed to see (including, again, me).

That's not to say that Peak Oil will not be a factor in the long run. It will be (if it's true that we're running out oil.) I think the lessons, though, are that

1. few people really know what's going on when markets are in turmoil, and
   
2. few people really know what's going on otherwise, and
3. people tend to find what they're looking for.

Sure, we may be running out of oil, i.e. oil production may be peaking. But it's a long process and you can't expect the world to turn around on a dime. And you can look very stupid in the process.

Krugman on Interstellar Trade

Paul Krugman's Nobel Prize in Economics is richly deserved, from everything I've ever heard about him, though naturally the right will call it politically motivated, etc. (What isn't considered politically motivated these days?)

Here's something he wrote tongue-in-check in 1978: The Theory of Interstellar Trade.

Einstein letters

A new batch of letters from Einstein have come up for sale. There are several highlights:

• Einstein brands religious beliefs as "childish superstitions" and the "product of human weaknesses." (Of course, he also said "Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind," so maybe he wasn't completely clear in his own thinking.) In it he writes: "The word god is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weaknesses, the Bible a collection of honourable, but still primitive legends which are nevertheless pretty childish. No interpretation no matter how subtle can (for me) change this."
• Of the Jewish people, he wrote: "For me the Jewish religion like all others is an incarnation of the most childish superstitions. And the Jewish people to whom I gladly belong and with whose mentality I have a deep affinity have no different quality for me than all other people. As far as my experience goes, they are no better than other human groups, although they are protected from the worst cancers by a lack of power. Otherwise I cannot see anything 'chosen' about them."
• He absolutely rejected that his theories implied any kind of "moral relativism": "Unfortunately, I cannot recommend your manuscript for printing, because it doesn't reflect the essentials of the theory. This topic has nothing to do with the superficial statement that 'everything is relative' ... This is, by the way, not a philosophical theory, but purely physical."
• He doesn't seem to like journalists much either: He also chides journalists for failing to understand one of his greatest scientific achievements. "The twaddle that the theory is extremely difficult to understand, is complete nonsense, spread out by superficial journalists."

(I don't think he's right on this last point. Maybe it was obvious to him, 35 years after the fact, but if it was that easy to understand there wouldn't be advanced undergraduate and graduate physics classes in special relativity.)

Sad Guys

There's at least one funny thing to come out of this financial crisis: Sad Guys on Trading Floors.

Bush

Has a US president ever appeared to be so weak, so useless, so unneeded, and so uninterested in a crisis as Bush does right now? I can't recall one.

--

I still think my theory of the impact of rising oil prices is a good one. What popped the housing bubble? It was a bubble, sure, but it was popped by the oil bubble. From that came all the decline and lock-up of the credit markets, etc. The fundamentals of just living became significantly more expensive, and energy is the one place you can't cut back on -- you have to have so much gas a week, and so much food, and so much heat or A/C. You can't live without these. And so the difference came out of mortgage payments.

At least, it's worth mentioning.

Hitchens

Christopher Hitchens, Vanity Fair, Oct. 2008:

And before we leave the theme of falls and collapses, I hope you read the findings of the Department of Transportation and the Federal Highway Administration that followed the plunge of Interstate 35W in Minneapolis into the Mississippi River last August. Sixteen states, after inspecting their own bridges, were compelled to close some, lower the weight limits of others, and make emergency repairs. Of the nation’s 600,000 bridges, 12 percent were found to be structurally deficient. This is an almost perfect metaphor for Third World conditions: a money class fleeces the banking system while the very trunk of the national tree is permitted to rot and crash.

Chalfie

Martin Chalfie, Nobel Prize winner in Chemistry (today):

Dr. Chalfie never received the phone call from Sweden. “I slept through it,” he acknowledged at a news conference at Columbia. He said he had inadvertently turned down the ringer on his telephone a couple of days ago. He woke up at 6:10 in the morning and thought the soft ring was coming from a neighboring apartment.

“I was a little bit annoyed that they weren’t answering their phone,” he said. “I then realized because it was after 6, that they must have announced the Nobel Prize in chemistry. I decided to find out who the schnook was that won it this year. So I opened up my laptop and found out I was the schnook.”

Nobels

US Nobel Prizes (pct), by decade:

Tonight's Debate

I am seriously starting to worry about my country.

Getting older, I suppose part of that is my responsibility, or my right, or perhaps just custom. I'm sure other periods in our history have looked just as dire, and other candidates as doppy. Maybe this isn't a unique time.

But maybe it is. I listened to tonight's presidential debate and I heard nothing -- nothing -- that gave me an indication that either candidate has an idea about how to solve our enormous problems -- let alone the leadership and charisma with which to do it.

I heard platitudes. I heard generalities. If I hear "My friends" again I just might jump off the roof. I am not McCain's friend and I never will be.

But I don't hear any answers out of Obama either. He's on the 35-yard line with 8 minutes left in the 4th quarter, up by a touchdown, and just wants to run out the clock.

Tom Brokaw, supposed to be some kind of heralded superstar journalist, didn't ask anything of the slightest significance. He has neither the balls for it or the understanding, living in some $5M penthouse in New York City. His knowledge of the world is so abstract it's useless and embarrassing.

Who does not think that the US is headed downhill? I don't need to be Number 1...but I'd like us to at least show some competence. Our financial system is collapsing. We are stuck in a war no one cares the least about and no one cares to win. We cannot provide adequate health care for many our citizens. The Europeans, better cared for, are routinely growing taller than we are. Our government and our politicians are completely bought off by corporations and us idiots don't even seem to notice or care, even though they just took $700 billion from us in the course of 2 weeks. There is no help for the ordinary person -- no health care, no retirement benefits, little unemployment benefits, nothing at all -- and yet we hardly even complain about it, let alone revolt. And the planet is going to hell -- climate change rearing up to decimate the future, half of all mammals in danger, the ocean's acidifying -- who really cares? NASA can't keep shuttles in the sky after 2010, and so must rely on the Russians for lifts. How utterly humiliating. Americans can't even seem to win any Nobel Prizes anymore. And all we get are puppet candidates like Bush and Palin who serve at the behest of some tiny group of men hiding in a hollowed-out mountain in Switzerland (my theory).

Where do I get off?

Climate change illustrated

Here's an interesting illustration of climate change in New York City:

This first picture, from the 9/22/08 NY Times, is of the Cubs-Giants playoff game on Oct. 8, 1908 at the Polo Grounds (north Manhattan).


Notice how the trees are bare.

Now compare this to a Webcam picture I just captured today, of Pier A in Hoboken, NJ (just across the river, to the west, of NYC):



The trees are still green and don't even appear to be changing color yet.

This last one isn't the best picture and perhaps you have a better one -- if so, please let me know.

Polar Bears, Noise, and Stress

Greg Pollowitz at NRO's The Corner is making fun of a recent study that shows polar bears are sensitive to excessive noise in their environment. Ha ha.

Just to show you how sensitive animals can be, a black rhino being transported from the Kansas City zoo to the Oregon zoo in Portland apparently died on Monday simply from the stress of being moved. Imagine.

Moving stresses me out. It really stresses my cat Eli -- he spent a week hiding under the bathroom sink, and hardly ate at all. But to actually die from stress -- it really makes you think. (Unless you're Greg Pollowitz.)

Conservation of Calamities, Take 2

Perhaps there is a kind of conservation of economic calamities:

Atmospheric scientist Paul J Crutzen, who has in the past floated the possibility of blitzing the stratosphere with sulfur particles to cool the earth, said clouds gathering over the world economy could ease the earth's environmental burden.

Of course, it won't nearly, nearly be enough, and it's the wrong kind of CO2 cutback--that from reduced economic activity, not changes in energy technology.

"It's a cruel thing to say ... but if we are looking at a slowdown in the economy, there will be less fossil fuels burning, so for the climate it could be an advantage," Crutzen told Reuters in an interview.

"We could have a much slower increase of CO2 emissions in the atmosphere ... people will start saving (on energy use) ... but things may get worse if there is less money available for research and that would be serious."

September Temperature Anomaly

NASA GISS's September temperature anomaly is in: +0.49°F above the long-term average.

Significantly, last month's anomaly was revised from +0.39°F upward to +0.50°F.

Year-to-date, though, this year is still the coldest since 2000.

Kashkari

Neel Kashkari is Paulson's choice to run the $700B financial bailout program. According to the radio item I heard about this, his last name is pronounced "Cash Carry." Really.

Conservation of Calamities

This year's arctic ice loss may not have been as steep as 2007, but this year's ozone hole over Antarctica was larger than last year's. Perhaps there is a conservation of calamity principle we are only now discovering. (Obviously it doesn't apply to the economic realm.)

Maskawa's response

Maskawa had the best response this morning:

"There is a pattern to how the Nobel prize is awarded. I did not think I would get the award up until last year, but I predicted it pretty much this year," he was quoted as saying by Kyodo news agency.

"I am very happy that Professor Yoichiro Nambu was awarded. I myself am not that happy. It's a noisy celebration for society."

Nobel background

If you're looking for a good background and explanation of today's Nobel Physics prize, try the one from the Nobel committee itself. It has enough detail that you can understand a few things, a few equations, and a nice history.

Rilke

“Be patient toward all that is unresolved in your heart
and try to love the questions themselves.
Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be
given you because you would not be able
to live them now. And the point is to live everything.
Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then
gradually, without noticing it, live along some
distant day into the answers.”

-- Rainer Maria Rilke, Letter to a Young Poet

Nobel Prize schedule

Three Europeans won the Nobel Prize in medicine today for their discoveries of the Human Pappolima Virus and HIV (Although some people think the US's Robert Gallo was seriously overlooked.)

Here's the schedule for the remaining Nobel Prizes:

• Physics - Tuesday, October 7, 11:45 a.m. CET (5:45 am EDT) at the earliest
• Chemistry - Wednesday, October 8, 11:45 a.m. CET (5:45 am EDT) at the earliest
• Literature - Thursday, October 9, 1:00 p.m. CET (7:00 am EDT) at the earliest
• Peace - Friday, October 10, 11:00 a.m. CET (5:00 am EDT)
  
• Economics - Monday, October 13, 1:00 p.m. CET (7:00 am EDT) at the earliest

(CET is Central European Time, UTC + 1 hour.)

Darwin at Home

Here's a really interesting video about the possible evolution of pure mathematical objects. (I can't get it to embed.)

I think the saddest thing about the anti-evolution movement is that evolution by natural selection is probably the most beautiful idea every discovered by anyone -- elegant, explanatory, simple, sharp, refined. It's probably the best scientific idea ever found.

Amazing But True

The wheat genome is five times longer than the human genome, and contains three copies of each chromosome.

And you thought you were complex.

Palin on Climate Change

Sarah Palin doesn't seem to have a clue about what's causing climate change -- though she seems to lean towards natural causes -- but she supports anyway capping GHG emissions. Arghhh.

-$1T

The stock market lost over $1 trillion in value today -- almost $3400 for every person in the country.

Private launch into Orbit

I know the world is going to hell and all -- well, at least the US -- but did you know that yesterday saw the first privately developed rocket to reach earth orbit? It came from SpaceX's Falcon 1 Flight 4:

Here's the press release. It carried a dummy payload of 165 kg. The launch vehicle cost $7.9M.

The space shuttle will be shut down in 2010.... Are we reaching a point where only private companies can now do what the mighty US government was once capable of?

LHC Webcams

LHC Webcams... or, at least they were.

Quotes

"Capitalists can buy themselves out of any crisis, so long as they make the workers pay."

-- Lenin

"Who would have dreamed that when socialism finally came to the U.S.A. it would be brought not by Bolsheviks in blue jeans but Wall Street bankers in Gucci loafers?"

-- Maureen Dowd, NY Times, 9/27/08

Pharaoh's serpent

The burning of mercury thiocyanide -- very weird:



This is known as Pharaoh's serpent, and used to be used in fireworks. Except the reaction products are highly toxic.

Via: Dark Roasted Blend

Debate LiveBlogging

I am listening to the presidential debate via the NY Times site (C-SPAN's site is completely hosed). And I've been looking periodically at Kevin Drum's MoJo site which is liveblogging the debate.

I have never tried to follow any "live-blogging" before. It seems completely useless.

I have no read one comment by Kevin that has added anything to this debate. It's hard enough to listen to the debate, carefully, and understand and follow what McCain and Obama are trying to say. Listening to it with one ear and looking at these other blogs for snarky comments just breaks up my concentration and detracts from the experience. It certainly does not add to the experience.

All this liveblogging, twittering, and such is going to ruin us, I'm afraid. I'm perfectly willing to listen to the debate now, and then read the analyses later. I don't need both at once. I can't use both at once.

Kevin: listen to the debate. Decide what you want to say. Then give us your valued perspective. I don't believe you can multitask the debate (listening + blogging) anymore than I can (listening + reading).

Let's try to value thought over immediacy.

Bear DNA

In the debate, McCain just complained (again) about a $3M study of the DNA of bears in Montana. This is the problem?? Not, perhaps, hundreds of billions of dollars of spending or hundreds of billions of dollars in corporate welfare?

I'll bet that what we learn from the bear genome will, in the long run, be worth far more than 3 cruise missiles. The future of medicine and this entire century is DNA -- everywhere. The more we know about DNA the more diseases we're going to solve, from diagnosis to (someday) genetic engineering.

PS: Sarah Palin requested $3.2M to study harbor seal DNA.

The Coming Coal War

Al Gore is suggesting that young people commit civil disobedience in the name of stopping coal plants:

"If you're a young person looking at the future of this planet and looking at what is being done right now, and not done, I believe we have reached the stage where it is time for civil disobedience to prevent the construction of new coal plants that do not have carbon capture and sequestration," Gore told the Clinton Global Initiative gathering to loud applause.

Well, OK, maybe. But such a call would have much more heft if Gore himself were willing to take part in this civil disobedience, even to lead it. Martin Luther King Jr. wouldn't have gotten very far if he'd only called for revolt and not lead it. Gore is someone who could truly gather large numbers of protesters willing to go over the line, if he were willing to take the same risk he's asking of others. Without that, it comes across as somewhat of an empty, easy gesture.

New Dollar Bill

This morning the US Treasury announced a new design for the dollar bill:

Winooski's Dome

Several years ago I lived in Winooski, Vermont for awhile, a nice little town just across the Winooski River from Burlington.


It was a charming little town, and cold. Perhaps it was because we couldn't afford much heat that winter. Anyway, today I was reading the 2009 Old Farmer's Almanac, and saw a reference to a proposed dome over Winooski.

It turns out that in the last '70s the town was seriously considering placing a 200 ft high dome over 850 city acres. They obtained some preliminary grants, and did a lot of planning, but then the Reagan administration came along and put an end to all of that.

It was probably a dumb idea, but visionary. In fact, it was a dumb idea. Half the charm of Vermont is its deep winter cold. If you're not up for that, you're probably not up for Vermont.

McCain and the Internet

McCain has famously admitted he does not use a computer, and some of his backers have suggested this is because his hands are damaged from his 5.5 yrs in captivity. And perhaps they are right -- I don't really know.

So why has that kept him from exploring and understanding the Internet and Web, the most important technological innovation of the last 300 years? Many people are, unfortunately, in his position, paralyzed or without complete motor control. They've adapted to the Internet by learning about voice recognition and other such technologies.

So why didn't McCain?

That's the kind of intellectual curiosity I'd like to see in my President. He's had 20 years to figure this out. And now he dares to brag about his technological prowess, because 40 years ago he flew jet fighters....

This Election and the MSM

One of the most disturbing aspects of this electoral session is the strict control being placed over the candidates and their unavailability to the press. And I mean on both sides, though mostly on the R side. And mostly with Palin. An absolutely untested person who could be President in a few months, and they won't even let anyone ask her a question about more than moose burgers.

Charles Gibson and Sean Hannity don't count, of course.

In fact, that's what's so incredibly sad and disturbing about all this. Just one legitimate journalistic organization has had access to Palin, and beyond a little squeamy trap on the "Bush doctrine," nothing came of it at all.

So we, sadly, have to rely on our daytime talk shows to ask the tough questions:



So sadly, this seems to be the future of our democracy.

"Either/Or"

Oh have you ever just stood there
And let the wind kiss your hair?
And put your head in a lion's mouth
But you didn't feel scared?

-- Wild Sweet Orange, "Either/Or"

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.