Climate 'clearly out of balance'

As reported last week by the BBC, the 50,000 member American Geophysical Union (AGU) has updated its policy position, first adopted in 2003, on Human Impacts on Climate. The policy position, "revised and reaffirmed" in December 2007 begins by stating:

The Earth's climate is now clearly out of balance and is warming. Many components of the climate system—including the temperatures of the atmosphere, land and ocean, the extent of sea ice and mountain glaciers, the sea level, the distribution of precipitation, and the length of seasons—are now changing at rates and in patterns that are not natural and are best explained by the increased atmospheric abundances of greenhouse gases and aerosols generated by human activity during the 20th century.

Here's James J. McCarthy, then president-elect of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), writing in March 2007 in a published letter to the New York Times

To the Editor:

The National Academy of Sciences, the American Geophysical Union, the American Meteorology Society and the American Association for the Advancement of Science have all issued statements stating that climate change is: a) occurring, b) largely caused by humans and c) likely to continue with large negative consequences for natural and human socioeconomic systems unless we rapidly decarbonize our global energy systems.

People who have evidence that contradicts these statements can publish their findings in scientific journals, after which the public might expect to see this work discussed in Science Times. In the meantime, if you feel obligated to publish what are simply opinions, please use the opinion pages rather than the science section.

James J. McCarthy
Cambridge, Mass.

The writer is the president-elect of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

The current AAAS position is summarized in the AAAS Board of Directors Statement on Climate Change:

The scientific evidence is clear: global climate change caused by human activities is occurring now, and is a growing threat to society. Accumulating data from across the globe reveal a wide array of effects....
The statement was approved on 9 December 2006 and released on 18 February at the AAAS Annual Meeting in San Francisco.

I was at that AAAS Annual Meeting in San Francisco, and attended the plenary lecture by Susan Soloman, Senior Scientist at NOAA and co-chair of the IPCC Working Group I which "assesses the physical scientific aspects of the climate system and climate change." At the conclusion, I recall feeling that the evidence would certainly convince any reasonably thinking person. My notes from that meeting include:

• The IPCC doesn't do science; it assesses.
  
• The review process included two reviews, and 600 reviewers; there were 30000 comments received.
  
• We must distinguish between weather and climate; climate is non-local, and deals in averages.
• Analysis of: tree rings, corals, bore holes
• Attribution: Natural forcings that hold out anthropogenic causes do not match the observed data; when anthropogenic causes are included, the models match the data.
  
• Key Conclusions:
  1. Warming of the climate system is unequivocal
  2. It is very likely (>90%) that this warming is due to greenhouse gasses
  

If you want to check out the science, I'd start with the IPCC's Working Group I report, The Physical Science Basis, in particular the Summary for Policymakers (pdf) and Technical Summary (pdf).

Michael Shermer (founder of the Skeptics Society) wrote a column in the June 2006 Scientific American titled The Flipping Point: How the evidence for anthropogenic global warming has converged to cause this environmental skeptic to make a cognitive flip.

My own view is as follows:
At this point, the debate over anthropogenic climate change appears to me to have taken on the pattern of the creation-evolution debate, which I've been following for -- has it been 30 years now?!? By that I mean, at its core, it has ceased to be much of a scientific debate, but is rather a social issue. Yes, there is (some) uncertainty, but science is a very conservative enterprise, and yet there is broad and deep scientific consensus on this issue. It strains credulity to imagine a scientific cabal of this magnitude mindlessly worshiping Al Gore.
Anti-evolutionists chip around the edges of what is at this point one of the most strongly confirmed theories of science. The anti-anthropogenic climate change (aacc?) arguments seem to me to similarly chip at the fringes where there is debate and admitted uncertainty.
And again, it's not as if the science for this grew ex nihilo from atmospheric scientists after repeated viewings of An Inconvenient Truth. The IPCC was established 20 years ago. I've got Science News articles (yes, hard copy, in a manilla folder!) related to ozone layer depletion and global warming dating back to 1992.

There will be "greenwashing." There will be lazy and hyped reporting from the "Beast Without a Brain." But in the end, we should heed Richard Feynman's famous conclusion to his report on the shuttle Challenger accident: "For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled."

The IEM and the wisdom of crowds

I was going to post something about the Iowa Electronic Markets (IEM) and the presidential primaries, but this post on the Blog of the Long Now is much better than you would have gotten from me! Quoting from the blog post's introductory explanation:

The Iowa Electronic Markets (IEM) trades real money in bets on future cultural events. Prediction markets sell contracts for an easily decidable future event (someone wins an election, a commodity hits a certain price, a movie sells X number of tickets). If that contract comes true, the different between what the price of the contract was when bought and its full price will be pocketed by the winner. So if $1 contracts for Bill Clinton winning the election were selling for 35 cents when you bought them, you would have profited 75 cents [65 cents?!] after the election.

Outside of the IEM most US predictions markets trade with token money to escape uncertain gambling and investor laws, which may prohibit real money trades. But in all prediction markets the price of a contract is decided by the collective demand, or in other words, by the collective mind. Outcomes with low expectations earn a low price. If you are a contrarian you can buy low value, low-expectation contracts, and if conventional wisdom is wrong (at that time), you’ll gain.

But the odd thing is that in these markets, the conventional wisdom of the crowd is usually right.

It’s probably worth noting that the Presidential Election graph shown in the post is the “Vote Share” market (which currently quotes prices of .527 DEM and .488 REP). However, the “Winner Takes All” market has held at about 60-40 (DEM-REP) since early April 2007, though it has tightened a bit recently, to 58-42.

It fits in a manilla envelope

(Just for the record, I edit this blog on a MacBook Pro.)

George W. Bush's favorite painting

A friend alerted me to this blog post concerning George W. Bush's favorite painting. In browsing through the comments in response to that blog posting, it's interesting to me that several people defended Mr. Bush's right to interpret the painting any way he wishes -- because, after all, it's art. And on one level, of course any work of art "speaks" to us all differently. But there's that nagging reminder here of an administration of the most powerful nation on earth that actually believes "we create our own reality." Incidentally, Jay Rosen [see previous post] has written,

The only piece of political journalism ever to make me cry was Ron Suskind’s article, Without a Doubt, published in the New York Times Magazine shortly before the 2004 election. It was in that article that the famous passage appeared quoting a senior administration official on the myopia of the “reality-based community” when it came to understanding the government of George W. Bush.

Campaign news in the subjunctive isn't really news

These days, when you read anything about the next stop on the presidential primary local, as in this passage, even from a sharp observer like Michael Tomasky, you should run for the hills or head for the nearest bookie to plunk your money on a Giuliani loss: "It's also suddenly plausible that Rudy Giuliani, who I still think may be the party's strongest candidate for November, could elbow his way back into this thing. He's counting on a win in Florida, which votes on January 29."
-- Tom Engelhardt, in his TomDispatch posting of 20 January

A segue from my last post into this one, which offers a link to a Tomgram post by Jay Rosen titled The Beast Without a Brain: Why Horse Race Journalism Works for Journalists and Fails Us. Here's a teaser:

Who's-gonna-win is portable, reusable from cycle to cycle, and easily learned by newcomers to the press pack. Journalists believe it brings readers to the page and eyeballs to the screen. It "works" regardless of who the candidates are, or where the nation is in historical time. No expertise is actually needed to operate it. In that sense, it is economical. (And when everyone gets the winner wrong the "surprise" becomes a good story for a few days.) Who's going to win -- and what's their strategy -- plays well on television, because it generates an endless series of puzzles toward which journalists can gesture as they display their savviness, which is the unofficial religion of the mainstream press.

But the biggest advantage of horse-race journalism is that it permits reporters and pundits to "play up their detachment." Focusing on the race advertises the political innocence of the press because "who's gonna win?" is not an ideological question. By asking it you reaffirm that yours is not an ideological profession. This is experienced as pleasure by a lot of mainstream journalists. Ever noticed how spirits lift when the pundit roundtable turns from the Middle East or the looming recession to the horse race, and there's an opportunity for sizing up the candidates? To be manifestly agenda-less is journalistic bliss. Of course, since trying to get ahead of the voters can affect how voters view the candidates, the innocence, too, is an illusion. But a potent one.

As an example of bringing "new knowledge into the system," Rosen cites Charlie Savage and the Boston Globe in this December 2007 article. (You can examine a particular issue across candidates, or a particular candidate across issues.)

Rudy, Primaries, and Pander Points

On the eve of the Florida's Republican presidential primary, it would appear that Rudolph Giuliani's campaign has collapsed into self-parody. Last Wednesday, Timothy Egan wrote Giuliani's political obituary in a post titled Goodbye Rudy, Tuesday.

More broadly, you can summarize Giuliani’s problems in the line he no longer uses. When the World Trade Center towers came down, he turned to his loyal sidekick Bernie Kerik, and said he was glad George Bush was president.

Now, that line is a triple loser. Kerik, his police commissioner, is under federal indictment, in a sea of troubles. Bush is despised by two-thirds of Americans, and even a majority of Republicans want to go in a different direction. As for the big scare, give Senator Joe Biden credit for writing what may be Giuliani’s obit: “There are only three things he mentions in a sentence: a noun, a verb and 9/11.”

---

In today's New York Times, Eleanor Randolph (Editorial Observer) writes

One of the strong contenders for the Republican nomination, Mitt Romney, oozes enthusiasm for the sun, the joy of Florida. The former mayor goes for New Yorkers' souls. He tells them that they must never, ever forget to worry.

Mr. Giuliani is not without the support of at least some transplanted New Yorkers, such as the 25-year-old librarian who said "I'm voting for him because he's a Yankees fan."

---

Gail Collins (Heeere's Rudy!) is rougher on the candidate, noting that

Many commentator have pointed out -- really very unkindly -- that the longer Giuliani stayed in Florida, the lower his standing in the state polls.

And recounting the latest variation on his theme of a noun, a verb and 9/11 she writes that

Giuliani has turned hurricanes into nature's way of saying Al Qaeda. ("All of us are subject to the impact of natural disasters ... and of course acts of terrorism, which I remember living through.")
...
Before the terrorist attack, after all, Rudy Giuliani was just a lame-duck mayor with abysmal approval ratings, a tabloidy personal life and uncertain job prospects. What 9/11 has given, 1/29 could taketh away.

Finally, I don't know if Collins gets credit for coining the term, but this was the first time I have seen the term pander-point, as in

Rudy was thrown off his game by the public's shift from worrying about terrorism to worrying about the economy, and a dwindling interest in hearing him talk about where he was when the terrorists attacked New York. He's tried to rebound by vigorously promoting a national catastrophe fund to reduce the cost of home insurance in hurricane-prone Florida. This is not in general, an idea that fiscal conservatives cotton to. It's so dicey, in fact, that even Mitt Romney has been hesitant about adopting it as a pander-point.

Google to buy New York Times?

Last Thursday's Daily Buzz included a segment titled If Google Bought the NYT, based on this article in realclearmarkets.com. The essence of it is that the Sulzberger family needs a shooter (like Google) if the Times is to survive against the Rupert Murdoch-owned Wall Street Journal.

Bobby Fischer

Bobby Fischer died last week. The NYTimes obit contains a link to a nice interactive graphic of Fischer-Spassky, 1972, Game 6. The New York Times Chess Viewer seems kind of cool; clicking the Game List button lists three games, all Fischer's, available for viewing.

Shut it down! [First Post]

Here we go.... To begin, I'll be posting some recent items; in the near future I should be more or less contemporary.
The shut-it-down of my URL is a reference to the film Dark City and the command given each midnight before the city's population is put to sleep and given new memories to begin the next day. (See Roger Ebert's review, and the Wikipedia entry.) Incidentally, I think the physical alteration of the city performed each night by The Visitors is "kuning" (not "tuning"). There is apparently at least one other source that agrees with me.
"I am a sick man" is, of course, the opening of Dostoevsky's Notes from Underground. (Did you know that there is film version?)