Quote

"Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is absurd."

-- Voltaire

How Oliver Spends His Day

How America Just Lost One Million Jobs

Airbus A320

Here's an example of how going green gets you jobs: American Airlines just announced that it will buy a majority of its new planes from Airbus, because their planes are 15% more fuel efficient than Boeing's. Glenn Hurowitz at Grist gives the details.... In an earlier article he notes that Airbus got 730 orders for new planes at the recent Paris Air Show, compared to Boeing's 142. That's $72 B vs $22 B and an estimated one million jobs Europe will be getting that America won't.

In America we can't even agree to make light bulbs more efficient. The rest of the world, meanwhile, has their eye on the future.

UPDATE: The New York Times has the story here, saying Boeing has been "chastened" by the world's response to the Airbus plane.

A Victory for Religious Freedom

In the most uplifting news I have heard all week, and maybe all year, an Austrian man fought for three years to win the right to wear a pasta strainer on his head for his driver's license photo, claiming he as a "Pastafarian" in the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster.

Niko Alm blogged about his achievement here.

The best part is that he somehow kept a straight face when the flash went off.

Quotes

"The economy is a wholly owned subsidiary of the environment, not the other way around."

"All economic activity is dependent upon that environment and its underlying resource base of forests, water, air, soil, and minerals. When the environment is finally forced to file for bankruptcy because its resource base has been polluted, degraded, dissipated, and irretrievably compromised, the economy goes into bankruptcy with it."

"We will not succeed in forging an economically and environmentally sustainable society until all key social, political, economic, and religious groups are on board. If labor, business, or any other major group is opposed to doing what is necessary to achieve sustainability, it probably will not happen."

“No one is pure. We all make compromises in different aspects of our lives where the environment is concerned, and it is self-defeating to draw rigid lines of purity when trying to build a political consensus.”

-- Gaylord Nelson, Governor, US senator (D-Wisconsin) and founder of Earth Day

Multiple Choice

Is this:

(A) an Arctic explorer, or

(B) a golfer in today's British Open?

Answer: B - Ricky Fowler

Death Threat Captured on Video

The speaker is Hans Schellnhuber, director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research and an Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change member:



(Via Climate Progress.) Here the perpetrator actually brags about his threat:



(Via Deltoid.) Schellnhuber said he expects an actual murder in the future.

Does 2011 Have What it Takes?

It was only four years ago that the world witnessed the birth of a new type of champion.

Who could forget that time, that annum, that orbit of our sun? “2007” we called her, simply, as if a mere label could possibly capture such a thing, the thrill of her being, the glory of her quiet but determined pride?

That was the year where we learned just what Arctic sea ice could achieve, and what we all might eventually be able to achieve.

All sat in awe that  year, their mouths agape, astonished at what their eyes took in. Day after day we watched 2007 Arctic sea ice extent plunge deeper and deeper, shrinking faster all the time, down into regions no year had ever been in before.

Daily the numbers rolled in. Slowly the tension built. Many kept their own spreadsheets and graphs. Small boys took flashlights to bed, staring at the charts as they huddled under blankets. Old men sat awake with a glass of whiskey, staring into the night, feeling the stir kicked up in places they had long forgotten.

Over the weeks of that memorable summer, spectators everywhere realized that 2007 was a year with pluck, with determination, with something different deep in her heart. She tore away from the pack and then kept going, getting stronger as she went, discovering something even she did not of know beforehand. When she finished the race on September 24th she had dropped to 4.25 million square kilometers, a number that had until then been simply unimaginable, a value not of this realm, not even of this wonderful and infinite universe.

Some compared her to Secretariat, some to Gehrig, yet others to Michael Jordan. For me she compared to Roberto Clemente, the hero of my youth. But many came to believe she was incomparable, one of a kind, like the Hope Diamond, like Marilyn Monroe, something no one had seen and would ever see the likes of ever again.

The boys under the blankets grew and the old men passed on. The world moved on, changing, always changing, but the magic was gone.

Or so it seemed.

There were no hints even a month ago. Sure, 2011 was good, even better than most, but it was just another year in long list of them. Its sea ice extent was low, but others before her had been low too. No one believes anymore anyway. Now everyone expects the worst. If Hope is a thing with feathers, it had flow the coop long, long ago.

But 2011 was apparently not listening. It seems to have a mind of its own, to be driven by forces of which we are only dimly aware. Every day its ice extent quietly melted, doing the hard, unseen job of reacting to the climate. The arguments of others moved on. Some even said the entire argument was over, a thing of the past, something only children still played with. But 2011 stayed true to herself, even if no one else did.

Then, about two weeks ago, the sea ice broke. 2011’s ice extent took a little jog upward, and then, from out of nowhere, veered downward. Sharply downward, with not only grace but power, with heft, with muscle, and with even a type of courage.

Something shot through the masses, like the wave off a supernova. Could it be? Could it possibly be? Could 2011 be another 2007?

No way all the cynics snickered. Cut the crazy talk said the usual bullies, threatening to give another good thumping.

“2011, I served with 2007,” a wise old year said. “I knew 2007. 2007 was a friend of mine. 2011, you’re no 2007.”

But 2011 has continued to fight. Its sea ice extent has continued to plunge, all through this month. Day-after-day it goes up against the previous champion, and day-after-day it comes back bloodied but unbowed. Its negative slope now equals anything seen in that earlier year. Its correlation is strong. The numbers don't lie.

The rumblings are beginning again, low but building. Could this be another record-setter? And so soon? Does this year have what it takes--not just the warmth, not just the high pressure systems, but the bravery, the tenacity, the something special deep, deep within?

No one knows. No one can possibly predict. Least of all me.

Yet it makes you wonder. What have we really learned? All those neat answers to all those big questions. All the rows and columns. Who really knows?

But you know what?

Somewhere, I suspect, there is a young boy stocking up on double-A batteries. Somewhere an tired, old man stands before a store shelf, comparing expensive bottles of amber Irish whiskies. They have a sense, a feeling, a spark inside. Something here is different. They wonder what it is. For they know, they know, that in the nights to come the world may yet again seen a year unlike any other, a year even unimagined, a year that brings open water to closed minds and answers to questions we never even knew to ask.

A year that shows what is possible, and what might even create belief in the impossible.

2011. Keep your eye on this one folks, because she’s a comer. She's in the final turn, and the home stretch lies ahead. She has an eye on it, a bold, unshielded eye, and most of all she knows that the test that awaits there is unknowable. Still she does not blink. The best ones never do.

Something is different. Something here doesn't add up. Even the cynics know it, and they hardly know anything.

Anthropogenic Climate Hypocrisy

Unidentified CO2 Science staff member

CO2 Science talks up a new study that claims that the Russian heat wave last year was primarily natural. The study uses model simulations. Here is CO2 Science's long list of "Model Inadequacies." Here is their summary of one of them:

...there will be no way to know the climatic significance of either past or projected increases in the air's CO2 content via the use of climate models.

So surely someone's head at CO2 Science must have exploded from the pressure of this cognitive dissonance. I wonder whose it was.

Another of their learned tomes on the subject is titled "A Fundamental Failure of Current Climate Models." And here was their summary of a paper whose expressed purpose was to distinguish between natural and manmade impacts on surface temperature:

Because of what their analysis revealed, the two researchers concluded that "climate models may therefore lack -- or incorrectly parameterize -- fundamental processes by which surface temperatures respond to radiative forcings," which is a conclusion with which all of the world's "climate skeptics" would probably agree....

Naturally Anthony Watts considered CO2 Science's latest conclusion perfectly sound and worthy of being rerun on his blog. The inside of his head is a vacuum (that comes straight from observations, with no models involved), so there was no danger of another explosion.

Bachmann's Chutzpah

You've got to be kidding me....



Via: The Awl

"Why I Love Physics"

Brian Cox on "Why I Love Physics" from the BBC series Wonders of the Solar System (which is very good):

Watts Still Denying the Death Threats

Incredibly, Anthony Watts is still denying that some climate scientists have received death threats:

...when will you be posting that list of death threats you took us to task over Appell? SO far you have not responded AFAIK and the offensive condescending holier than thou posts are still up on that little blog of yours. Man up. – Anthony

These threats and harassments have been widely acknowledged by several scientists and reported on by many journalists (see below). The Guardian, in particular, has seen them and excerpted them. One scientist had a dead animal dumped on their doorstep, according to ABC News. Some of the threats have been reported to the FBI.

These denials are pernicious, obnoxious, and dangerous. They are of a kind, and only a step from being complicit. Commenters here too have played the same game.

It's worse even than the birthers, because denying that the threats exist is itself a kind of threat.

And then, when you point this out to them and give the links below, they censor your comment because it used the word "deny" (not the word "denier," and not used as a label).

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/jul/06/hacked-climate-science-emails-sceptics-abuse
http://abcnews.go.com/WNT/video/climate-scientists-receive-death-threats-10729457
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/dec/08/hacked-climate-emails-death-threats
http://www.stormfront.org/forum/t694484/
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article7017922.ece
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/jul/05/hate-mail-climategate
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/oct/12/democrat-obama-climate-change-agenda

Americans Use Spam for Cheaper Prescription Drugs

Nice -- US customers who responded to spam email for no-prescription-necessary drugs were 4 times more likely to buy needed prescriptions (as opposed to "lifestyle" drugs like Viagra) than Canadians and Europeans.

http://www.technologyreview.com/web/38023

The study concludes "...a subset of uninsured or underinsured customers in the U.S. may view spam-advertised, no-prescription-required pharmacies as a competitive market for meeting their medical needs."

At least they're not burdening the emergency rooms!

Isn't our health system wonderful?

Planting Trees in Cities Won't Stop Climate Change

This BBC article, "Urban plants' role as carbon sinks 'underestimated,'" is about a study showing that the amount of carbon stored in the vegetation in Leicester, UK has been underestimated. OK. But then they jump into fantasy land about ways to reduce the country's carbon footprint.

Leicester, UK

The study finds that vegetation (mostly trees) in the city holds 3.16 kg Carbon/m², which is about 7 times that of Britain as a whole (the country being mostly grassland). But then the study, and the BBC article, suggests that it would be worthwhile to plant more trees in the cities as a reduce Britain's carbon footprint. (The UK has pledged to reduce its 1990 carbon emissions by 80% by 2050.)

The BBC writes,

"If just 10% of this was planted with trees, the existing carbon pool across the city could be increased by 12%"

quoting the lead author of the paper, Zoe Davies of the University of Kent. But they don't look at the actual numbers. The study says (pg 8):

"If community initiatives were put in place by policy makers to encourage tree planting, resulting in 10% of the existing 159 789 urban gardens containing one more tree, there would be 927 tonnes more carbon (assuming they grew to an average size for a garden tree) stored in above-ground vegetation across the city.

But the UK's total emissions are 685 megatonnes! (2005 est), or about 9 mt CO2 per person per year. (For urban residents it's usually a little less.) Or applying the famous 12/44 factor between carbon and carbon dioxide, about 2.5 mt C per person per year. Leicester has an urban population of about 450,000, so its total carbon emissions are roughly 1 megatonne per year.

So the study is talking about the possibility of reducing 1 kt, or 0.1% of these emissions. Even if you put one more tree in all the city's gardens, you're only reducing the city's emissions by 1%. Plus, you have to keep replanting the trees as they die. Then some idiot will come along with a leaf blower (I hate leaf blowers, especially in cities) and blow away all the leaves dropped by all these trees -- how much carbon is that going to emit?

This seems like starting a new exercise program and insisting that you keep track of the two steps on and off your porch. OK, but what's really matters is how many times you walk around the block.

I like trees, but we cannot stop climate change by planting more of them in cities. The focus needs to stay on the big picture and the big possible picture-changers.

So the conclusion is: leaf-blowers are indeed the work of the Devil.

US Temperature Records Tool

Here's a neat tool I just learned of: NOAA's US Records lookup tool:

http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/extremes/records/

I'm not about to get into the game of "it's really hot today in Pittsburgh so global warming must be here," or its inverse (which is really only about manufacturing doubt, anyway). It's just a fun tool, OK?

It's hard for me to imagine that much of the country is so hot lately, because here in Oregon it's been an unseasonably cool summer. I think we've only had one day above 80 and no days above 90, and it feels like summer hasn't yet arrived. Today it even rained, which hardly ever happens here in the summer. Right now it's 62 F, and it's been too cold to sleep with the windows open.

Republicans Fail to Annul New Light Bulb Law

Their preference for energy inefficiency is defeated:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/13/business/energy-environment/republicans-fail-to-annul-new-light-bulb-law.html

Neptune Was Discovered One "Year" Ago

It's now been one year exactly -- one of Neptune's years -- since it was discovered in 1846.

Actually Galileo first observed Neptune in 1612, but he thought it was a star because he happened to see it exactly when it was turning retrograde (changing its apparent direction when seen from Earth). How's that for bad luck?

It was finally discovered after a couple of smart people did some impressive number crunching of Uranus's orbit and found that it was doing something wonky. They guessed that another planet was perturbing its orbit, and told people exactly where to look, but couldn't get any astronomers interested. It took three more years before Neptune was spotted, just about where it was predicted to be. The British and French then fought over who had the rightful claim to the discovered.

This is akin to how they find exoplanets -- planets circling other stars -- today, although they look for wobbles in a star's position, not another planet's. The perturbation predictions don't always pan out -- a planet named "Vulcan" was proposed to exist between the Sun and Mercury in order to account for the unexplained piece of Mercury's orbit, whose ellipse "precesses," or rotates, by 574 arcseconds per century. Astronomers could account for all but 43 of those arcseconds, but never did find Vulcan. Instead Einstein found the missing amount exactly from his theory of general relativity, showing it was due to the slight curvature of spacetime through which Mercury travels. Einstein experienced heart palpitations when he finished his arithmetic and got 43 arcseconds/century, and was "for several days beside myself with joyous excitement."

Is Gott Wrong?

Is Gott wrong with his longevity predictions? Is his entire method wrong?

After my previous post John Fleck wrote to tell me about a physicist at the University of New Mexico, Carl Caves, who says Gott is wrong. Here are two papers he wrote about it, and here's an article John wrote about Caves and his claims for the Albuquerque Journal.

I don't have time to read Cave's articles now, and probably won't for a few days, but I'll come back to this.

Are Humans Finished in Space?

The Space Shuttle is in orbit right now, on its last flight. The United States has no plan to replace it or build upon it, and isn't even talking about what's next. The Apollo program seems like ancient history. Other nations aren't making much progress either, despite their talk.

Is this the end of our space-faring days?

Every time I wonder this I think about a quirky 1993 paper by J.Richard Gott III of Princeton. Titled "Implications of the Copernican Principle for Our Future Prospects," it draws sweeping conclusions from seemingly nothing. In particular he predicted then that, to within 95%, the lifetime of the human spaceflight program (then 32 years old) was greater than 10 months but less than 1248 years. In 2006 he updated his prediction, stating that there is a 50% chance that the human spaceflight program will not last another 45 years.

Gott might be right. He's been right on some other interesting predictions.

All Gott did was apply the Temporal Copernican Principle -- there is nothing special about the time we live in -- and the obvious fact that there is a 95% chance that a random number in [0,1] lies between 0.025 and 0.975. That's it.

This method predicts, with 95% certainty, that humans have a future longevity of 5,100 - 7.8 million years. In 1993 he predicted that Canada would last between 3 and 4,914 years. (You update that using the latest figures -- that is, only that Canada still exists -- to predict, with 95% certainty, that Canada will  last another 4 to 5,616 years.)  He predicted the closure of many Broadway plays and musicals. Etc.

In 2006 he wrote:

If we fail to establish a self-supporting colony on Mars in the next 45 years while we have the chance, it would be a tragedy. The dimensions of that tragedy may not be apparent to us until such a time, perhaps many thousands of years from now, when we find ourselves trapped on earth with no space program and our extinction as a species looms near. If we spend on the human spaceflight program over the next 45 years as much money in real terms (and send as much weight into low earth orbit) as in the last 45 years and still fail to establish a self-supporting Mars colony, it would be a double tragedy. I do not say this would be easy, but it is what we should be doing. No project we could attempt in the next 45 years would be likely to be as challenging or as important for the future history and survival prospects of our species. Because the human spaceflight program is not very old relative to our species and because our species is not very old relative to the universe, and because our habitat is tiny relative to the universe, we should be colonizing off the earth as soon as possible, while we still can.

I can never figure out if Gott says these with tongue-in-cheek or if he's serious. Or both. Or something entirely else. In any case, he's quite interesting.

High Melt Rate of US Working Class

Which is melting away fastest: Arctic sea ice or the American working class?

Since 1990:

• US corporate profits: +200%
• corporate employee compensation: +20%
• median family income: +2%

Since 2000:

• US corporate profits: +80%
• corporate employee compensation: +8%
• median family income: -5%

(All figures are inflation-adjusted.)

Source: Sacramento Bee

Slapping Back

A bold tell-it-like-it-is letter in the Oregonian:

In his July 2 letter, Karl Rohde opines that "to give gays unions and to call them 'marriages' is a slap in the face to billions of religious people around the world."

And who, I would ask Rohde, is more deserving of a resounding, global slap in the face than the billions of religious people around the world whose belief systems are the very cause of the intolerance, hatred and human rights abuses heaped upon gays (among many others they disapprove of) since their beginnings? America endured a bloody civil war to end biblically sanctioned human slavery. 

It seems to me a slap in the face to end marriage inequality is the least we can do.

BURL ROSS
Lake Oswego

An Astonishing Arctic Warming Rate

UAH published their value for the global June temperature anomaly: +0.314°C, which is rather warm for the end of a La Nina. This keeps the rate of warming for their entire record, going back to 1979, at 0.14 ± 0.1 °C/decade.

The really amazing number is the rate of warming at the North Pole, which they also measure. It comes out to 0.42 ± 0.03 °C/decade since 1979. (r² = 0.28, but it is statistically significant.) That's one degree Fahrenheit every 13 years, though these temperatures too have been basically flat for the last several years.

Here is a nice paper that explains how to calculate slope uncertainties and statistical significance: "Statistical significance of trends and trend differences in layer-average atmospheric temperature time series," B. D. Santer et al, Journal of Geophysical Research (2000) v 105 n D6 pp 7337-7356. [PDF] You can accomplish it in Excel with the LINEST function.

The YikeBike

The YikeBike, made in New Zealand, is touted as a Segway Killer. But to me it looks too undignified to ride -- and maybe a bit too wobbly -- for such ambitions....

A Very Curious Statement By Roy Spencer

"I view my job a little like a legislator, 

supported by the taxpayer, to protect the 

interests of the taxpayer and to minimize 

the role of government."

-- Roy Spencer

This is what Roy Spencer wrote in a reply to a comment on his blog. Note what Spencer--a climatologist and Principal Research Scientist at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, keeper of one of the world's four major temperature datasets, and a noted climate skeptic--did not say: that his job is to provide the best science he can for the taxpayers who pay his salary.

Spencer's scientific research is, ironically, supported solely by government. But it seems his motivation is something more than just science.

Arctic Ice is at a Record Low

PIOMASS has an updated figure for Arctic ice volume (from a new model version), and it continues to shrink rapidly:



Here's another way to look at it, which shows that even though ice extent is currently about the same as 2010 and the record-setting year 2007, ice volume is noticeably lower now:



The new model has a slightly lower anomaly trend: -2.9 ± 1.0 Kkm³/decade, although 2011 started the year about 2.3 Kkm³ lower than 2007 and has maintained that difference. At that rate, and using 7.0 Kkm³ for the 2007 minimum, the Arctic would be ice-free (at its lowest point in the yearly cycle) in just 12 years.

And it looks like the downward trend is accelerating in the last decade, so it could be ice-free before that.

Atheists Up Above

The group American Atheists is flying banners behind airplanes this holiday weekend (as if that's going to convince anyone). I don't understand how atheism is, or is not, patriotic per se, or how belief in a supreme being is patriotic either. Anyway, they had trouble just to find a pilot to fly the plane in conservative states:

Blair Scott, the group's communications director, tells Seattle Weekly that in larger cities and more liberal areas, he had no trouble finding pilots to take the banners to the sky. But in Southern states like Georgia, South Carolina, Arkansas and other conservative states like Montana, Kansas, and Utah, there apparently wasn't a single pilot to be found who would fly a banner promoting atheism.

This strikes me as being more about annoying people than presenting an classy and intelligent image of the subject. But I guess that wouldn't have fit on an airplane banner.

One Angelic Dog

The best part is the sigh about 35 seconds in:

Hilarious

Timothy Egan in the New York Times:

When pressed this week on her unique view of American origins — that “the very same founders that wrote those documents worked tirelessly until slavery was no more” — Bachmann doubled-down, citing as her only proof the abolitionist John Quincy Adams. Given that Adams was just 8 years old when the Declaration of Independence was approved by the Continental Congress, 10-year-old Sasha Obama should be remembered for killing the world’s top terrorist.

All of the above only fortifies Bachmann’s position with a Republican base that would eat dog food for breakfast if the government said you should not.

The rest, on Bachmann's shameless hypocrisy, is good too.

The Dangers of Wind Power

From, of course, The Onion:


In The Know: Coal Lobby Warns Wind Farms May Blow Earth Off Orbit

My favorite is the old guy on the right.

Did NOAA Exaggerate?

I think Steve Goddard did (sort of) catch NOAA in a mistake or (?) exaggeration on sea level, though it seems to have come from their Communications department and not the actual report. In their press release on the just-released 2010 State of the Climate report they write "...sea level continued to rise," and that's what made it into the Washington Post. (Though the Post reporter should have questioned that; if his beat is climate science, he should have been aware that sea-level has been flat, at best, for the last few years.) But nothing in the report or the media briefing says that, at least that I've found. On the contrary, the report contains this graph (Figure 3.29, pg S100), which clearly shows that overall sea level (mass + steric) has not risen for about three years:

As usual, though, people like Goddard allow no room for simple mistakes, immediately calling them "clowns or criminals?" Sometimes people just make mistakes (and if it is found to be more than that it'd be troubling) but this is a bad one because, as media people should know, one mistake like this can distract from the message of the big picture. I've written them to ask.

PS: "steric" sea-level rise is that due to thermal expansion of water; the mass component, called "eustatic," is from an increase in ocean mass from glacier and (nonfloating) ice melt, dam releases, etc.

Excel Bleg

In MS Excel, if you enter a formula like =A1/1e9 into a cell, Excel displays it in the formula bar as =A1/1000000000 . Is there a way to force Excel to keep the scientific notation in the formula bar? I haven't been able to find one, and the large amount of zeros make such things difficult to proofread. Thanks.

Note added 7/18/12: I have found a partial solution, as I explain here.

Communicating With the Demented

I posted my concerns about the comments and WUWT, and here is one of the responses:

hunter said on Bizarre: NYT follows AAAS lead on "FOIA requests equate to death threats"
June 30, 2011 at 4:21 am

David Appell,
What death threats?
Show us any actual death threats.
Your side is lying about this like everything else.

How can a person possibly communicate with such a person, let alone reason with them? How can one even try to imagine where such a person is coming from?

The discussion surrounding this subject is passing into absurdity.

The Climate Science Rap

I missed this when it came out, but it's pretty good (and it would have been easy to do this poorly). Kudos.

Where are the Condemnations of the Death Threats?

WUWT has a post about today's AAAS Board of Directors statement on harassment and death threats against climate scientists.... What's stunning is to read the post, and especially the comments, and see essentially no condemnation of the death threats. Instead there are excuses and accusations (always anonymous, of course) that they are "political stunts" or that scientists are "playing the victim." I have yet to see even one comment concerned about them.

Needless to say, regardless of your position on climate science or FOIAs or anything else, threats against individuals are never, ever acceptable. Imagine receiving just one such email, let alone several or on a regular basis. I hope those found to be making such threats are prosecuted to the fullest extent before something deeply tragic happens, which is the path all of this is on. If skeptics are to retain any legitimacy whatsoever, such tactics need to be clearly and loudly denounced, and that's not happening.

The Rape of James Delingpole

In Peter Sinclair's latest video, James Delingpole is left speechless when asked a simple question about expert opinion, then tries to change the subject -- then later actually claims he was "intellectually raped." I wouldn't even call it a dirty look.... Such a sensitive boy:

The Paper Known as "Aad, et al"

If you're going to be an experimental high-energy physicist, you couldn't pick a much better name than "Aad."

Willie Soon received $1m from oil companies

Climate skeptic Willie Soon has received a million dollars from oil companies in the last decade!

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/jun/28/climate-change-sceptic-willie-soon

For Gays But Against Gay Marriage?

Can you be for gays but against same-sex marriage? Here's what New York Archbishop Timothy M Dolan, who strongly opposed the same-sex marriage legislation just passed in New York, said today:

I tell the gay community I love you very much, and every single morning when I say my morning prayers, I pray for the health of all New Yorkers and they are part of that.

This strikes me as disingenuous, because it's been known viscerally for forever (and proven scientifically) that a good marriage is quite advantageous to good health. You can't be for someone, let alone claim to "love them very much," while being against the very things that are most likely to bring them love, more happiness and better health.

Dolan is badly fooling himself. I'm glad a majority of New York state decided not to be fooled with him.

Here's the most amazing thing I've read regarding this issue: This year 58% of residents of New York were found to support same-sex marriage. Four years ago the number was 43%.

Who's Who on U.S. Debt

Some numbers to put the US debt in perspective, if you're going to hold presidents solely accountable for it:

If you assume that a president isn't responsible for the first year of debt under his administration, but is responsible for the first year following his administration, then total debt under Bush was up 108%. For Obama, so far, up 16%. Or,

For Bush, up 14 percentage points per year.
For Obama, up 11 percentage points per year.

Finally: Increase in total debt in the last 3 months: only $135B.

Numbers from US Dept of Treasury.

The Trifid Nebula

The Trifid Nebula, 7000 light-years from Earth in the constellation Sagittarius, formed from the collision of two dust and gas clouds about one million years ago:



Via: Science magazine

Capitalism Compels Us to Be Greedy

Eugene McCarraher in The Nation:

"However lissome its face or benign its manner, capitalism compels us to be greedy, callous and petty. It takes what the Greeks called pleonexia--an endless hunger for more and more--and transforms it from a tawdry and dangerous vice into the central virtue of the system. The sanctity of “growth” in capitalist culture stems from this moral alchemy, as does the elevation of market competition into a model of human affairs.

"The truth is that people matter more than money. While most everyone would agree with that statement, few of us direct our lives guided by the principle.

"Conscripting us into an economic war, capitalism turns us into soldiers of fortune, steeled against casualties and collateral damage, ransacking the earth to fill the shelves and banks with plunder. Capitalism stands condemned most profoundly not by its maldistribution of wealth or its ecological despoliation but by its systematic cultivation of people inclined toward injustice and predation. And I think we on the left need to start dismissing as utterly irrelevant the standard apologetic riposte: the material prosperity and technological achievement generated by capitalist enterprise. No amount of goods can compensate for the damage wrought on human nature by the deliberate nurturance of our vilest qualities. The desecration of the values we claim to hold most dear is the primary reason we should want to abolish, not reinvent, capitalism."

On Expanded Freedom in NY State

A commenter to NRO's Kathrine Lopez's hyperventilation on last night's vote in NY state legalizing same-sex marriage:

In fact, like people in the other 5 states where there's marriage equality, there will no change whatsoever for heterosexuals who wish to marry or are already married. Unless of course your own marriage is so precarious that it's altered by what people who have nothing to do with you choose to do. Straight people will be just as able to abandon cancer stricken wives for younger women like Newt Gingrich, hire prostitutes and write for NRO like David Vitter or exchange questionable tweets like Anthony Weiner.

Happy 20th Anniversary to Gold Systems

Me, Terry, Jim, and Kevin Obenchain

Twenty years ago I was the third employee and part-owner in a startup company named Gold Systems, in Boulder, Colorado. Terry Gold, who I worked with when I was a project manager at AT&T, and Jim Fudge founded it, and some months later I moved to Boulder to join them. It was just three of us in three rooms trying to figure out how to generate income, and we had a lot of fun too. I spent most of the year designing and writing the software for a voice mail system, with a timeout many afternoons for juggling sessions on the grass outside the office, hoping for the phone to ring. Then I went to Arkansas to install the hardware and get the system running. I learned I wasn't very good with hardware, and also found my interest in writing growing. I left the company after a year, and started on a very crooked path to becoming a science writer. But I still have some shares in the company and remember my time there fondly.

Gold Systems just celebrated their 20th Anniversary. They now have several dozen employees building voice and text communications systems. Terry Gold, their CEO, is a great guy who wanted to make a company that did things the right way, and that truly respected its employees and its customers. And he has. I'm very glad his dream came true--he's worked really hard for it--and hope they continue on their successful path. While having more fun along the way.

Bruins' Bar Bill: $156,000

Here's the tab for the Boston Bruins weekend fling after they won the Stanley Cup. They thoughtfully included a 19% tip:

Robert Reich on What's Wrong With Our Economy

In 2.25 minutes:



Via: Huffington Post

Why Eddington Refused to Fight

The British astronomer Arthur Eddington was a Quaker, and he refused to fight in World War I. This is from his application for exemption from military service:

My objection to war is based on religious grounds. I cannot believe that God is calling me to go out to slaughter men, many of whom are animated by the same motives of patriotism and supposed religious duty that have sent my countrymen into the field. To assert that it is our religious duty to cast off the moral progress of centuries and take part in the passions and barbarity of war is to contradict my whole conception of what the Christian religion means. Even if the abstention of conscientious objectors were to make the difference between victory and defeat, we cannot truly benefit the nation by wilful disobedience to the divine will.

From The Life of Arthur Stanley Eddington by A. Vibert Douglas (1956), p. 93.

The 196 Problem

Here's a weird but interesting problem I just learned about: the 196 problem.

Its about what are called "Lychrel numbers" -- numbers which do not form palindromes when their digits are added iteratively.

It's easiest to show some examples. Consider the number 23. Reverse its digits (to get 32) and add these two numbers: 23 + 32 = 55. "55" is palindromic -- it reads back-to-front the same as front-to-back -- so 23 is not a Lychrel number.

How about 431? 431 + 134 = 565, a palindrome.

Or 59: 59 + 95 = 154. 154 + 451 = 605. 605 + 506 = 1111, a palindrome (after 3 iterations).

10,911 reaches the palindrome 4668731596684224866951378664 after 55 steps.

Question: What numbers are Lychrel numbers?

Answer: No one knows. 196 is suspected to be the lowest possible Lychrel number, but there is no proof.

196 has been iterated to a number with 300 million digits without reaching a palindrome.

But here's an even stranger thing about 196: it's been proven to be a Lychrel number in all bases between 2 and 18 (inclusive) except base 10. Weird. Why would 10 be special?

--
UPDATE: 196 is not a Lychrel number in base 19: 196 base 19 = A6; A6+6A base 19 = GG, a palindrome.

Or in base 20: 196 base 20 = 9G; 9G+G9 base 20 = 44, a palindrome.

(Sigh)

James Carroll in the Boston Globe:

In recent months, catastrophic weather events have dominated headlines as rarely before — earthquakes and tsunami in Asia; volcanic cloud in Europe; massive ice melts at the poles; tornadoes, floods, and fires in America. “Records are not just broken,” an atmospheric scientist said last week, “they are smashed.” Without getting into questions of causality, and without anthropomorphizing nature, we can still take these events as nature’s cri de coeur — as the degraded environment’s grabbing of human lapels to say, “Pay attention!”

I guess these kinds of statements are well meaning, but they really don't help.

Warming Since 1995 Now Significant

The other day Phil Jones said that, based on the most recent data, warming since 1995 is now statistically significant.

Of course, Jones' earlier remark was always misinterpreted by skeptics, and the Daily Mail completely botched it (probably on purpose) with this headline. Jones never said there was no global warming since 1995 -- he said there was no statistically significant warming since 1995 if you take 95% as the measure of statistical significance. There's nothing magical about 95%, and the warming trend was significant at the 90% level. That's high enough that I doubt anyone would place a bet against it. In any case 15 or 16 years is too short of a time scale to be making conclusions about climate anyway.

Hopefully this will now be put to rest (though I doubt it).

Quote of the Week

“Do you really need a sermon on why settling questions about the fundamental laws of nature are worth pursuing?”

-- Steven Weinberg, when asked about the importance of studying the acceleration of the expansion of the Universe in a time of (as the reporter later wrote) "high unemployment, crazy gas prices and water shortages."

The Latest IPCC Kerfuffle

So what is the big deal if someone from Greenpeace was a Lead Author on the IPCC report on renewable energy?

Experts can be found in many organizations. As a Greenpeace spokesperson points out, the report also includes an author who is from Chevron as well as researcher from Exxon.

I highly suspect that Mark Lynas is wrong to write that Greenpeace "dictated" the report. I've heard many people talk about their experience working on an IPCC report and no one seems to dictate anything -- every sentence is gone over with a fine-tooth comb and endlessly hashed out. Unless someone has some good evidence that Sven Teske had some special influence in constructing the report (and nothing Lynas offers indicates that), this is once again a vastly overblown issue.

This is hardly the equivalent of a Dick Cheney-like situation huddling with oil industry representatives to divide up the Iraqi oil fields.

As Andrew Revkin writes, the IPCC should have been more transparent in their press release. But they should take expertise where they find it, and nothing says Greenpeace or any NGO can't have that. In fact, I've met more than one person from NGOs who knew as much about an issue and had done as much detailed research into it than so-called experts.

We Will Not Be Entering Another Little Ice Age

All the skeptics are atwitter at the news that the Sun may (may) be entering another grand minimum, such as the Maunder Minimum which spawned the "Little Ice Age." They can barely contain their glee.

Don't worry--we will not be entering another LIA. Greenhouse gas warming easily swamps any expected decrease in total solar intensity.

This exact subject was studied by Feulner and Rahmstorf in 2009 and Song et al in 2010. Temperatures would decline, at most, by 0.3°C by 2100 from what they are projected to be otherwise (2-4.5°C higher than today).

And before you say "they're just models," note that both papers reproduce the cooling seen during the actual LIA.

(SkepticalScience.com has a nice review.)

Besides, as Andrew Revkin reports, there is a lot of scientific skepticism about the claim of an upcoming grand minimum.

Life Expectancy Actually Falling in Parts of the U.S.

These are absolutely stunning charts--life expectancies are now actually falling in some parts of America:



(Via Andrew Sullivan and Kevin Drum.)

Nationwide, life expectancy continues to rise, but whoever thought it would ever fall anywhere in the U.S.?

Our Terrifying Far-Future in a Carbon-rich World

If and when atmospheric carbon dioxide levels reach 75,000 ppm, we are in big, big trouble!

Inhalation of 7.5% CO2 increases anxiety and autonomic arousal in humans, and elicits fear behavior in animals. However, it is not known whether CO2 challenge in humans induces dysfunction in neurocognitive processes that characterize generalized anxiety, notably selective attention to environmental threat. Healthy volunteers completed an emotional antisaccade task in which they looked toward or away from (inhibited) negative and neutral stimuli during inhalation of 7.5% CO2 and air. CO2 inhalation increased anxiety, autonomic arousal, and erroneous eye movements toward threat on antisaccade trials. Autonomic response to CO2 correlated with hypervigilance to threat (speed to initiate prosaccades) and reduced threat inhibition (increased orienting toward and slower orienting away from threat on antisaccade trials) independent of change in mood. Findings extend evidence that CO2 triggers fear behavior in animals via direct innervation of a distributed fear network that mobilizes the detection of and allocation of processing resources toward environmental threat in humans.

-- M. Garner et al, Neuropsychopharmacology (2011) 36, 1557–1562

Don't worry--at current rates of emission increases (~0.7%/yr) this won't happen until the 28th century...but just imagine how good it will be for the plants!

Futuristic Airbus

How cool would this be?



Via: der Spiegel

Quote

"I don't say that we ought all to misbehave, but we ought to look as if we could."

-- Orson Welles

"I

Humans Versus the Volcanoes

Because it comes up all the time, the AGU put out a press release clarifying (yet again) that humans emit far more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere than do volcanoes:

On average, human activities put out in just three to five days the equivalent amount of carbon dioxide that volcanoes produce globally each year.

In fact, we emit like a super volcanic eruption:

Gerlach's calculations suggest present-day annual anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions may exceed the carbon dioxide output of one or more supereruptions. As he notes in the Eos article, "Supereruptions are extremely rare, with recurrence intervals of 100,000-200,000 years; none have occurred historically, the most recent examples being the Toba eruption 74,000 years ago in Indonesia and the Yellowstone caldera eruption in the United States 2 million years ago."

Disturbing Charts on US Health Care

Some recent charts on US health care that I've come across.... Increasingly our health care system looks like a large, creaking edifice made of wood, cracking and splitting all over the place, with the people inside working harder than ever nailing up boards everywhere they can, while politicians argue about the shape of the building and if we even need a building. Everyone knows the whole thing can't go much higher, and yet it seems that nothing notable will be done until the whole thing comes crashing down.

Oh, yeah: and one-sixth of the people aren't even allowed to go into the building.

Premiums doubled in the last ten years, to $13,375 for a family. Does anyone expect them to not double again in the next ten years? Can any employer afford $27,000/yr to insure a family of four?

Via Andrew Sullivan:



Via Andrew Sullivan:



Via Andrew Sullivan:



Via Ezra Klein:



Next two from the Kaiser Family Foundation:

Palin Emails and Privacy

Someone from the Heritage Foundations says everyone needs the ability to have private communications.

How about Some Ground Rules for the Palin E-mails? - By Jason Richwine - The Corner - National Review Online

That would include climate scientists too, right?

No Gore Effect, Skeptics Silent

Mojo's Kate Sheppard, yesterday, on Twitter:

Listening to Al Gore speak, in DC, and it's really f-ing hot. Funny, haven't heard skeptics mentioning "the Gore effect" today.
15 hours ago

Iris

Palin Emails

The Internet is gearing up like never before to mass-analyze the Palin emails being released tomorrow:

http://is.gd/5DmbL5
#PalinEmails on Twitter

A commenter on the NYT calls this an "E-Lynch Mob."

This may be a very interesting precedent. (I was going to add "regrettable," but the Internet is already beyond that.)

Mt Rainier is Melting

In the last four decades Washington state's Mt Rainier has lost 14% of its ice and snow--enough to cover Rhode Island with 20 cm. All of its glaciers and snowfields have gotten smaller, except the two that have been insulated by falling rocks.

Wikipedia says "Between the height of the Little Ice Age and 1950, Mount Rainier's glaciers lost about one-quarter of their length. Beginning in 1950 and continuing through the early 1980s, however, many of the major glaciers advanced in response to relatively cooler temperatures of the mid-century."

In more important news, some politician sent some naughty pictures to some woman.

An Outbreak of Reality in the Republican Party?

Apparently Mitt Romney was so cowed by Marc "The Science Bully" Morano's job on Newt Gingrich that he...went right ahead and acknowledged scientific reality--the planet is warming, humans are mostly responsible, and we should do something about it. Naturally, this is called a "blunder" by the extreme right.

Perhaps Morano isn't the Kingmaker on this issue he clearly aspires to be.

Romney's statement seems important, because this early in the primary season candidates usually battle for the edge of their party, then move towards the center once they've secured the nomination. Romney must have looked at that edge and decided he's not going over with them.

Huntsman, Gingrich, Christie, Romney... the smartest people in the Republican party are realizing how abysmally silly it is to deny the findings of science. Could admitting economic reality be next?

Trailer for "Rise of the Planet of the Apes"

This looks like it will be good:



2nd Trailer:

No, the Rich Don't Pay All the Taxes

For those people (like commenter CharlesH) who think the rich pay all the taxes in the U.S.--well, it's simply not true. The affluent and rich may pay most of the income taxes, but of course there are lots of other taxes too. When you look at the total, the share of taxes paid is about the same as income earned all across the income spectrum. In other worse, the U.S. tax system is just barely progressive.

Source: Citizens for Tax Justice

More on Corporations and Taxes

Yesterday's post on the decline in federal revenue from corporations received some standard conservative talking points in the comments section, which we should clean up.

• "The U.S. has the world's highest corporate tax rate."

Actually it's only the second highest, after Japan. But anyway, this is the nominal rate, at 39.2% (for the highest earners). Of course, no corporation pays the nominal rate. The effective rate averages 27.7% (LA Times, 6/3/11), lower than many other OECD nations. And, of course, some of the largest corporations pay no US taxes at all.

• "What effect do you think this has on our job creation rate?"

Corporations are sitting on records amount of cash--about $2 trillion. Yet they're not now creating jobs. How, then, will giving them even more cash create jobs? It won't, because the problem with the economy is one of demand, not supply. People don't have money to spend, after the debt crisis, after the high unemployment, and after decades of stagnant wages.

• "Corporations don't pay taxes, shareholders and employees do" [or pass them on to customers]

What's wrong with that? Shareholders should pay taxes. By incorporating, individuals get something very valuable: limited liability. (Not to mention all the valuable services they get from government, unless they'd prefer to set up their own hoses when their office building catches on fire). That's worth something, and so they should pay something.

There are many things a company can do other than pass increased taxes onto consumers. Foremost would be to reduce their massive cash positions, which many oil companies are currently using to buy back their stock, thus raising their stock price and so benefiting (among others) large stock holders like those in executive and director positions.

Likewise they can reduce their dividend payments, which also go primarily to the affluent and wealthy.

They can reduce executive compensation, reduce employee salaries and benefits, work harder with less, and eliminate waste, fraud and abuse.

Companies that do all these things will not have to pass increased costs onto consumers, and will be rewarded by having lower prices that in turn attract more customers. That's capitalism, right?

How the Federal Debt Was Created

How did the U.S. federal debt come about? Here's a plot of debt (left-hand scale) versus the percentage of federal revenue that comes from individuals and from corporations (right-hand scale):

US federal debt (red) vs. percentage of federal revenue from individuals (green) and from corporations (blue)

(Click chart to enlarge.)

The revenue percentage from individuals has stayed level for decades, while that from corporations has dropped to only 1/4th what it was in the 1950s.

Sources:
GPO: Budget of the United States Government: Historical Tables Fiscal Year 2012
US Treasury Dept: Historical Debt Outstanding – Annual (via Wikipedia)

Amazing Video of Massachusetts Tornado

Did you see this amazing video of the tornado that hit western Massachusetts the other day? Watch how it gathers up water from the Connecticut River:



I''ve never seen anything like this before.

Via Huffington Post

Emissions: Tracking the Worst of the IPCC Scenarios

Here's a very interesting graph from Brad Plumer, who got it from John Cook at Skeptical Science. It compares the world's history of carbon dioxide emissions to the scenarios considered by the IPCC in their Third Assessment Report of 2001. We're at the upper end, with (so far, at least) no room for optimism:



Here is roughly what how the scenarios are defined:

• A1FI assumes high global economic growth and continued heavy reliance on fossil fuels for the remainder of the century.
• B1 assumes a major move away from fossil fuels toward alternative and renewable energy as the century progresses.
• A2, is a middling scenario, with less even economic growth and some adoption of alternative and renewable energy sources as the century unfolds.

In short, while the worldwide recession cut into emissions, we're now emitting at an even higher rate than before the recession. It looks like we'll be back on the A1FI line any year now.

World's Highest Standard of Living

Via: First Draft (and Paul Krugman).

Free Books from National Academy of Sciences

This is great: all books from the National Academy Press (publishers for the National Academy of Sciences) are now freely downloadable as PDFs. They have tons of great titles, and the reports I've read are always packed with good information. Consider it ammunition.

Another Cartoon

Another cartoon, this one from NIST's William Phillips in a talk last year at KITP:

By the way, KITP has lots of good lectures online.

Cartoon

From Russell Seitz (thanks):

Facile Denialism

I feel like I'm seeing more hardcore denial regarding climate change -- not just people who believe that man has no influence on today's climate, but who deny even that there has been any warming, that atmospheric carbon dioxide has a greenhouse effect, or even (as I saw in a blog comment the other day) that the Stefan-Boltzmann law describes blackbodies.

For example, Alan Caruba, a climate writer for the conservative organization Accuracy in Media, writes:

Plainly stated, CO2 emissions have zero effect on the weather or the climate.

Just for fun I wrote to him and asked how he explains the discrepancy between the Earth's surface temperature (about 14°C) and its blackbody temperature as observed by satellites (240 W/m2, or -19°C), and all he wrote back was "Global Warming was and is a hoax. Trying to dazzle me with your CO2 BS won't work. I have read and heard to much CO2 crap at this point to care. It has zero affect on the climate and you know it."

I don't think he even understood the question, let alone had an answer. And this is the person some organization pays to write about their position on climate change? Do they honestly think they're convincing anyone, anyone at all?

I think it was Andrew Revkin who said this, but it does seems that the more such crude, facile denials appear the more you can be sure that not only is manmade climate change a huge [probably unsolvable] problem, but the more even the denialists know it too. It seems they can't even go to the trouble any more of even trying to make an argument.