Where America Ranks

Thomas Friedman gives a nice little picture of where America is today:

“Here is a little dose of reality about where we actually rank today.... sixth in global innovation-based competitiveness, but 40th in rate of change over the last decade; 11th among industrialized nations in the fraction of 25- to 34-year-olds who have graduated from high school; 16th in college completion rate; 22nd in broadband Internet access; 24th in life expectancy at birth; 27th among developed nations in the proportion of college students receiving degrees in science or engineering; 48th in quality of K-12 math and science education; and 29th in the number of mobile phones per 100 people.

Personally, I think the Tea Partiers are actually concerned about stuff like this, but don't follow the details enough to even know it. So they rail against the obvious problems that get big media coverage, like the deficit, or taxes. But all they really know -- like you and I -- is that America isn't keeping up and is on the decline.

They won't say it.... If I had children, I would definitely encourage them to seek the good life in another country. Everything ever feared about the future of the US (especially corporatism) is indeed coming true....

Greenberg, Pielke Jr, Mann, Ehrlich and Rahmstorf

I guess the latest climate kerfuffle (who can keep up?) is about Daniel Greenberg's review of Roger Pielke Jr's new book in Nature magazine.

By now the pattern is obvious. Someone writes an article. A few people object. Several others object to the objection, and that gives bloggers something to chew on for a day or two as the rhetoric continuously degrades until Godwin's Law takes hold. The climate bullies blow it completely out of proportion, and the public is once again misled.

Then it's on to the next faux outrage.

In this case, Greenberg was mostly reasonable, except for this:

In pursuit of public support and government action, Pielke charges, mainstream researchers in the climate-change community have fudged the science, compromised the peer-review process and encouraged governments to pursue dubious remedies, while neglecting possibilities for averting climate-caused disasters. Unrealistic scenarios for reducing carbon emissions have been pushed by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), he argues, and the leaked e-mails from the notorious ‘Climategate’ episode have emboldened sceptics and diminished public confidence in scientific integrity.

Now, this is what Greenberg is saying that Pielke Jr wrote. But the problem is that he doesn't challenge it at all. These are extremely serious allegations. I haven't read Roger's book yet, but I certainly have not seen any evidence that any climate scientist has "fudged data" or "compromised the peer-review process" or made any "dubious recommendations."

Greenberg ought to have spent more space in his review on these incredible allegations.

Nor do I think it's problematic for Mann, Ehrlich and Rahmstorf to question Greenberg's judgement as exemplified by his background.

Nature should have pointed out to its readers that Greenberg has served as a round-table speaker and written a report (see go.nature.com/otwvz2) for the Marshall nstitute (see go.nature.com/4u9ttd).

OK, nothing wrong with speaking somewhere, so that arrow should have remained in its quiver. But I can't imagine a legitimate science journalist taking an assignment from the Marshall Institute to write a report for them. Greenberg would have known exactly what the MI wanted in such a report, and he knew (or certainly should have known) that that was not consistent with today's climate science.

So how could any legitimate writer or journalist take such an assignment? Who would possibly want a Marshall Institute report on their CV?

If I were Mann and Ehrlich and Rahmstorf or any of those guys, I would by now be very fed up with people questioning my integrity and making accusations about my honesty. Legitimate scientific debate is one thing -- scurrilous attacks are something else else entirely. The climate bullies have driven this situation completely out of hand (which was, of course, their goal all along). Scientists ought to be defending themselves.

There are no fouls here, just sharp elbows. Play on.

What happened before the Big Bang?

What happened before the Big Bang?

Science Bullies

There's a good letter in the Oregonian on school bullying:

One of the most interesting factors in our American culture is the way we adults bewail the social crime of bullying in our schools while applauding it and laughing at it on a daily basis as we watch the bullies of Fox TV and other bully pulpit programs beat up on people who have something good, factual and educational to share.

This planned system of bullying, breaking into a person's response, ridiculing, telling lies about others, name-calling, harassing and making endless innuendoes about others is exactly the set of tactics used by individual and groups of bullies in our schools.

Hmm.... ridiculing, lying, name-calling, harassing (such as publishing email addresses), endless innuendos.... Remind you of anybody?

Hal Lewis Knocks Out Hal Lewis in the First Round

Hal Lewis, the physicist who two decades ago warned about the dangers of greenhouse gas warming, has become a cause celebre for now changing his mind and now coming out against the problem. Anthony Watts even somehow managed to get an op-ed published in the Christian Scientist Monitor, proclaiming Lewis as the next Martin Luther, the most hyperbolic statement I think I have ever encountered in my life.

Anyway, Lewis told Revkin something that gives away the game:

I believe I was chairing JASON in the early 1970s when Gordon MacDonald ran our first computer modeling on the subject, and the results were not all that different from what people get now using the same methods.

In other words: The science of greenhouse gases is so straightforward that 35 years of advances in computer science and climate science have hardly changed the major result. Actually, they’re now even that from what Arrhenius calculated, by hand, over a hundred years ago.

That is to say: Greenhouse gases warm planets, and more of them warm it more. That's the problem in a nutshell.

We need to know all the details, but this is the basic concern, not whether climate models predict the exact year of the last Himalyan glacier. In one sentence, Lewis succinctly states what all the hoopla is about – and he doesn’t even seem to recognize it.

PS: Indeed, Lewis wrote in his book: "The broad outline is clear."

Also, he told Revkin: 

No one knows how much humans can (your word) warm the planet — the science is complicated. It might be a degree or two (Celsius) per century, but anyone who says he knows is committing fraud.

This is a very irresponsible use of the word "fraud," because, of course, climate scientists don't say they know how much warming will occur -- the IPCC ARs give a relatively wide range for the prediction. Surely Lewis has heard of error bars?

6ft Under

Nathaniel Fisher: You hang on to your pain like it means something. Like it's worth something. Well, let me tell you - it's not worth shit. Let it go! Infinite possibilities, and all he can do is whine. 

David Fisher: Well, what am I supposed to do? 

Nathaniel Fisher: What do you think? You can do *anything*, you lucky bastard - you're alive! What's a little pain compared to that? 

David Fisher: It can't be that simple. 

Nathaniel Fisher: What if it is? 

-- "Six Feet Under, S4 E12 (2004)

Private sector job losses & gains

Here's a very interesting graph:

I trust I don't have to explain the horizontal axis to you.

Via: Youtube.

How Cold Was Last Winter?

Last winter was unusual.

Well, it was in some places. It wasn't where I live: the temperatures in Scappoose, OR were 2.1°F above baseline in the three months between 12/21/09 and 3/21/10.

But there was record-breaking snow in Washington, DC, which skewed the media coverage. It was also very cold and snowy in Europe -- as always, it's difficult to summarize how cold Europe was last winter, because Europe is a very large place. See this Wikipedia article.

But, of course, one season does not a climate make, and now a new GRL paper says it wasn't really so cold after all:

"Winter 2010 in Europe: A cold extreme in a warming climate,"
J. Cattiaux, R. Vautard, C. Cassou, P. Yiou, V. Masson‐Delmotte, and F. Codron
Geophysical Research Letters, VOL. 37, L20704, 2010.

They show that

(1) actually it wasn't that cold of a winter at all, compared to the last 6 decades, and
(2) not really that cold, when you look at the phase of the , which controls storm tracks across the north Atlantic.

Their conclusion: "The winter 2010 thus provides a consistent picture of a regional cold event mitigated by long‐term climate warming."

--
Caveat: Of course, all climate scientists are cheats, frauds, and liars and nothing they say, including the time of day, can ever be accepted (unless they are expressing doubts about past work). Also, all of their mother's were whores (not that it matters)(but they were).

Quote about Wikileaks

“Secrecy is essential to empire.”

-- Daniel Ellsberg, NY Times, Oct 23, 2010

Speaking Out for Liu Xiaobo

The New York Times essay by Thorbjorn Jagland, chairman of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, is especially elegant and worth reading. It's essential message: nothing is more important than individual rights.

We happen to live in a time when nation-states are extremely powerful, and (all of them) usurping more rights all the time, and they are so powerful that they can routinely commit the most heinous forms of barbarism, murder, and other moral failures, and get away with it all. I, for one, hope this period of history ends soon, but it will no doubt be a few more centuries.

The authorities assert that no one has the right to interfere in China’s internal affairs. But they are wrong: international human rights law and standards are above the nation-state, and the world community has a duty to ensure they are respected.

...The idea of sovereignty changed again during the last century, as the world moved from nationalism to internationalism. The United Nations, founded in the wake of two disastrous world wars, committed member states to resolve disputes by peaceful means and defined the fundamental rights of all people in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The nation-state, the declaration said, would no longer have ultimate, unlimited power.

Today, universal human rights provide a check on arbitrary majorities around the world, whether they are democracies or not. A majority in a parliament cannot decide to harm the rights of a minority, nor vote for laws that undermine human rights. And even though China is not a constitutional democracy, it is a member of the United Nations, and it has amended its Constitution to comply with the Declaration of Human Rights.

However, Mr. Liu’s imprisonment is clear proof that China’s criminal law is not in line with its Constitution. He was convicted of “spreading rumors or slander or any other means to subvert the state power or overthrow the socialist system.” But in a world community based on universal human rights, it is not a government’s task to stamp out opinions and rumors. Governments are obliged to ensure the right to free expression — even if the speaker advocates a different social system.

Good News on Health Care

NYT: "Health insurance premiums are expected to rise an average of 8.8 percent, according to data compiled by the benefits consulting firm Aon Hewitt. Employees’out-of-pocket expenses are expected to increase 12.5 percent from 2010, in the form of higher premiums, higher deductibles, higher co-pays and co-insurance, or all of these, said Sara Taylor, health and welfare solutions leader at Aon Hewitt.

This is fantastic news. Really. Only when the average American has been bled dry by our current system and sees 12% increases a year when their paycheck goes up 3% a year will we ever see any real reform in this country, and they see that quality health care cannot be provided in a "free market" environment, and they will begin to realize what the rest of us are going through.

I actually thought this breaking point had occurred in the 2008 election. But apparently not. So bring it on. A 12% increase each year will so quickly overwhelm a 3% increase a year that it shouldn't take but one, or at most two, more presidential cycles.

Of course, the insurance companies will fight to the end -- and I do mean the end -- before they give up their extremely profitable monopoly. And Americans don't have anything near like the balls of the French, who stop fuel shipments just because someone wants to raise their retirement age. Who says the French don't have courage?

Solar-powered animals

io9 writes about photomedicine, but here's what I've been wondering about lately: why have no animals ever evolved that directly convert sunlight into cellular energy?

In other words, why don't we all have large flat heads lined with natural solar cells? Why go through this ugly process of having to eat the plants (or, worse, eat the animals that eat the plants) that gather solar energy for us?

Are we just too small? I don't think so. Humans need about 3000 kcal/day to survive. (What nutritionists call a "calorie" is actually, in the language of physics, a kilocalorie.)

The Sun shines on the top of our atmosphere with about 1360 W/m2, but averaged over the planet that is, at most, about 300 W/m2.

If I've done the math correctly, that means you'd only need a "solar-cell" area of about 0.5 m2 atop you to power the human body, or about something the size of a chessboard.

That's not unimaginable, is it? So where are these animals?

Who Knew?

"American scientific companies are cross-breeding humans and animals and coming up with mice with fully functioning human brains." 

-- Christine O'Donnell, Republican candidate for Senator of Delaware, 2007

Quote

“I shall tell you a great secret my friend. Do not wait for the last judgement--it takes place every day.”

-- Albert Camus

Oregon and Vote-by-Mail

Here in Oregon we vote by the US postal system. They send you a Voter's Guide, and a few days later a ballot, and you fill it out and sent it back. I sent mine back this morning.

Sounds easy and wonderful. But I don't like it.

Maybe I'm old-fashioned, but I like going to the polling booths. It makes you feel like a citizen.

OK, it was especially fun in New Hampshire where, during a presidential-election year, all the polling places are plastered by activists and media and you have to wade through them to get to the booths. You feel like your vote really mattered.

But beyond that, I liked having to go to a community center someplace and showing my face. Not that anyone especially knew me, or that I knew them (though many people did know their neighbors). But you got a sense of community that is missing with vote-by-mail.

With VBM you feel very much on your own. You feel completely alone. And that's just not how a democracy should feel. We have far too little sense of community these days anyhow. VBM just makes it worse, not better.

Obama on Mythbusters

President Obama is going to appear on Mythbusters as they once again try to verify Archimedes' claim that the Greeks set fire to an invading Roman fleet by reflecting the sun's rays off mirrors.

OK.... It should be fun to watch Obama in any kind of activity like that. But Mythbusters has already "busted" this myth (which, I think, agrees with common sense). Isn't there something better out there to try?

Of course, MB will do whatever Obama wants....

I watched Mythbusters for their first season or two.... I recently had a chance to watch in on some current episodes (Season 8 or something like that), and I could hardly stand it. The success of the show has totally gone to the heads of the participants, especially the three assistants (Tory, Grant, and (esp) Kari -- the latter having completely sold-out to the role of a comely slut for the geeks)). The way they play to the camera is silly and literally embarrassing to watch.

Jamie and Adam at least have retained some dignity. But I think the show needs to acknowledge its success and, like a 38-yr old career .300 hitter, go out while their heads can still be held up high.

The Future

"...the future isn't the present on steroids. The future is a mutated bacteria that you never saw coming."

-- Annalee Newitz, io9.com

The Hold Steady w/ Elizabeth Elmore: "Chillout Tent"

Pachauri is Making a Mistake

Rajendra Pachauri is going to stay as chair of the IPCC, and I think that’s a mistake.

It’s not that he’s been a particularly bad chair. He hasn’t. But neither has he been a particularly good chair. He’s just….been. Besides the 4AR, the IPCC hasn’t achieved much special under his watch, and right now it needs dynamic leadership. He didn’t provide it, and he won’t in the next few years.

It’s time for him to move on. The world cannot afford mediocre leadership on this most important of issues.

--

This isn’t about the failure to prevent the claim that Himalyan glaciers will melt by 2035. That’s just one mistake in a very large, dense set of science, and it says nothing about the fundamental case for climate change.

It’s like claiming a 90-year old smoker is going to die of lung cancer, when in fact he might well die from lung cancer, esaphogal cancer, cancer of the throat or COPD. Or he might even get hit by a bus.

This was a third-order mistake and such mistakes always crop up. You can be sure climate change deniers will find one in the Nth AR, where N ~10 or even ~100.

That hardly undercuts the very real and very fundamental case for climate change – CO2=GHG=a warmer planet -- and Pachuari, if he can be faulted for anything, hasn’t made that clear enough. I don’t think he’s been enough of a spokesman, or enough of a leader.

I’ve talked to scientists who’ve worked on the individual assessment reports, and it takes a very solid, multi-year effort on their part. They do it voluntarily, and they work hard at it. Then they pass it on to the next generation.

Like them, Pachauri should admit that he’s done his best, and that it’s time to hand it over to someone else. In a field this important, and this contentious, that’s important for everyone.

GISS: Warmest year-to-date

GISS recorded September as +0.56°C above their baseline. With the year three-quarters over, 2010 is, year-to-date (Jan-Sept), the warmest in their records.