Margin of Error

I've started investigating the predictions made by GW believers, and in particular how the predictions have changed over the years. It turns out that the predictions, as I expected, are all over the map: the climate will get hotter in the next 100 years, but who knows by how much, and who can say what'll happen? This isn't of course how it's pitched. But it's what the numbers are telling us. Allow me to explain.

The IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) predicted a rise of mean global temp by 9 to 12 degrees Celsius in 1990, then .8 to 3.5 degrees Celsius in 1996, then 1.4 to 5.8 Celsius in 2001. There are a couple of points here. One, the absolute differences between the three predictions are huge, a fact that ought to worry anyone who's invested much of their intellectual energies into believing that we know what we're saying. Two, the relative differences (the low to high predictions for each year) are huge, as well. In the 2001 predictions, converting to Fahrenheit gives us a range of 2 to 10 degrees. What the heck? This effectively says nothing; even simpleton GW skeptics like me can see that an eight degree range allows for vastly different weather scenarios.

We might forgive the blatant variations in these predictions by noting that they all point to some warming trend (although, after my unscientific survey of this debate, I'm inclined to believe that the climate will be cooling, not warming, in the next 100 years-- but who knows?). True. But I wouldn't plan your picnic around these numbers, because if you look at them, they tell a clear story: who knows?

Source: http://weathersavvy.com/Q-Climate_Global_PredictionsAccurate.html

Ms. Buttu Says All

This Hamas Israel thing. On CNN Rich Sanchez interviewed first the Israel ambassador to the UN, then former PLO legal advisor Diana Buttu, to get both sides, you know. American above-the-fray media. Wow. These folks know how to bicker. Screw the facts. Ms. Buttu, in response to Sanchez's question "But don't the Israelis have a right to defend themselves?", makes a couple of interesting points, that I'll take the time to dissect.

One, the rocket attacks from Hamas didn't have "explosive heads", unlike the Israeli rockets.

Oh, yes, Ms. Buttu, you went to law school to say that? Nice. As if Hamas was mindful of Israeli lives, pulling off the war heads from the rockets before lobbing them willy-nilly into civilian neighborhoods, soccer fields, etc. Wouldn't want to unduly injure anyone. Is she serious? I'm pretty sure if Hamas had a Number 2 pencil with a nuclear tip they'd figure out a way to smuggle it into an Israeli grade school in hopes of exterminating some Jewish children. Give me a break.

The reality is, Hamas is literally throwing missiles into civilian areas of Israel in hopes of killing anyone. And Ms. Buttu, you know it. Shame on you. I'll be nice and merely give you the dumb ass comment of the year award.

Two, this lobbing of missiles into civilian neighborhoods is justified, because Israel has been waging a Nazi-like war against Palestinians, with military missions into Gaza, having the effect of cruelly denying Palestinians their freedom (how does that work?) Man, it sounds bad. But let me sum it up for those uninitiated into the perpetual Palestinian-Israel conflict: the Jews intend to live here! And they have a military! And they use it when we try to slaughter them! Damn Israel! Damn them when they strike back!

Great. So the best I can tell from Ms. Buttu's comments is that, after her barrage of legalistic, emotive words, the reality is that Israel is actually trying to be a sovereign nation in the Middle East, and it patrols the borders of the Gaza Strip, and actually intends not to perish but to try to insure the security of its citizens.

This conflict, if an alien were to come down and hear both sides of it dispassionately, would so far skew in favor of Israel's targeted strikes in reaction to the mayhem-intending Hamas actions that "hearing both sides" would become a joke. There's no equivalence, and the world knows it. Hamas hates the Jews. And how dare the Jews try to live near Hamas (or in the Middle East generally). Sanchez did his best to hear both sides; in the end, what I've said here is just exactly what both sides said. Sans perhaps the legaleeze.

Saltless in Seattle

Seattle and in general the Pacific Northwest has been deluged this year with snow. The enviro wizards in Sea-town managed to dump tons of sand all over the streets to create traction for hapless motorists, a questionable tactic motivated largely by the desire to avoid using salt. Too bad sand is worse for the environment than salt (but, doesn't it seem that salt should be, well, worse than sand?). The experts have proclaimed that salt "degrades marine life", while not offering details. In the meantime, the six thousand tons of sand dumped over Seattle roadways are choking out the insect populations, negatively affecting local streams. Damn.

2008, Bummer for GW Believers

The planet cooled this year, compared with the last eight (which makes it accurate to proclaim "it's the coolest year in the 21st century!"). This is fine for a punch line. But what's the deal? The Guardian article cites a team of researchers from Kiev University that predicted, back in March, "...that natural variation would mask the 0.3C warming predicted by the Intergovernment Panel on Climate Change over the next decade. They said that global temperatures would remain constant until 2015 but would then begin to accelerate."

Great, but problem is, I've been Googling around and finding lots of cock-sure predictions by GW believers that the warming is already accelerating, not going into a flat period before it unleashes its fury sometime later (type in "global warming accelerating" for about a thousand assurances from the GW "experts" that we're screwed). So, are we leveled off until 2015, after which we'll begin our Warming Acceleration? Or are we accelerating right now, and 2008 is some weird anomaly, to be replaced by a warmer 2009, and an even warmer 2010, and so on? What the heck's going on? I'm sure the experts can explain.

The reality is, Global Warming is B.S. (oh, I mean IMHO it's B.S.), and the point will be made clear enough in the years that follow by nature itself. My guess is that we're headed for cooler temperatures this century. I could be wrong (of course), and given that I'm trying to maintain some degree of epistemic humility, I'll hold off, for now, launching a Web site dedicated to shaming everyone into investing in technologies that warm our planet and shield us from the new Ice Age to come...

Global Warming!

I have a puzzle about Global Warming! (I'm now including the exclamation to further capture the added drama that typically attends the phrase). It's the observation that C02 levels have, in times past, been high, yet the climate then was actually cooling. In other words, the temp graph was trending down as the carbon dioxide levels were trending up. The GW folks have some ready made explanations for this, mostly centered on the catch-all "it's complicated" dismissal (translation: you stupid skeptics, you're either not scientific or just plain crazy!), with perhaps some additional whiz-bang sciency sounding stuff about how A, B, C, and sometimes D can vary with levels of This, That, and The Other. Don't worry about all of this, however. Just remember that it's complicated. And butt out. (Of course, it's complicated should stick to the GW believers as much as to the skeptics. It's complicated is double-edged, after all.)

This debate, whenever I've had enough of the Dark Knight (will this movie ever end?) and I'm thinking about something that fires everyone up, but that smells like a three day old fish, I always end up back at Global Warming! And when the discussion ping pongs back and forth long enough to exhaust the easy points and counter points, we inevitably end up back at "But what are the costs of inaction?" (no, this isn't the runup to the Iraq War all over again). As if we'll all be for coal plants and China and pollution and Hummers unless we believe that we can predict the future of the weather.

I will end me post with this however: if anyone can tell me what the weather will be like in a few decades, I'd like to discuss the stock market. You might just be my best friend.

The Harley Dudes

I was driving on 183 a couple of days ago, and this gaggle of Harley bikers rumbled past me, leather jackets and babes on the back. I was doing maybe 70 in a 65 zone, and so the bikers must have had their hogs up to 75 or 80. It occurred to me, with the vibrations of their engines pulsating through the door of my Toyota and the Bon Jovi or whatever anthem rock I'd cranked up temporarily drowned out, that I never see these guys get pulled over for speeding. When has anyone ever seen a bunch of Harley dudes parked to the side of the highway, doing that give-me-my-ticket-so-I-can-leave shame thing? What's the deal? My theory is that they're too damn harley, to make the noun an adjective for present purposes; it's not in the fabric of things to have these guys getting written up by un-cool Johny Law. They're only popped if things escalate, like a knife fight in Vegas. Or if something goes down in Sturgis.

But I love these guys anyway. I just wish they wouldn't drown out my anthem rock when I'm pulling gears in my 6 cylinder Tacoma. We all need those harly moments.

The Neanderthal Project

The NYT recently reported that DNA sequencing of the Wooly Mammoth genome is now possible, using two fossilized hair samples, recovered from mammoths that died 20,000 and 60,000 years ago. NYT reports that scientists are now discussing how to modify DNA in the mammoth's closest living relative, the African elephant, so that it resembles the wooly mammoth. The elephant genome, according to Stephan C. Schuster and Webb Miller at Penn State, will need to be modified at about 400,000 places to make it resemble its hairer cousin. As the thinking goes, once modified at these locations, the elephant genome will be, effectively, a woolly mammoth genome, which can then be brought to term in a female elephant. The elephant would have a wooly mammoth. This clever technique makes moot the prior thinking that a mammoth genome would need to be synthesized in the laboratory. No need to do this (and we can't anyway), because we've got the elephant's cell, and with the mapping of the mammoths DNA, we can translate the one to the other.

So far so good, but there's (or was) a hitch: 400,000 changes are a lot of changes, and the process will likely be arduous to the point of not feasible. Enter the "454 machines", which automate a revolutionary new sequencing technique, that, in effect, let biologists do the genomic modifications in batches. According to George Church, genome technologist at Harvard Medical School, about 50,000 "corrective DNA sequences" can be injected into the cell at one time. In this case, with only a few iterations the machines could inject the entire set of necessary modifications, making the science-fiction like scenario a reality.

The cost estimate for the wooly mammoth project is about $10,000,000, which, while not chump change, is a figure that gaurantees that someone with deep pockets and an interest in our archaelogical past will see things through.

As if this isn't zany enough, there are efforts underway to regenerate the Neanderthals, a hominid race closely related to homo sapiens (us) that lived approximately 200,000 to 45,000 years ago, inhabiting Europe, and possibly coexisting with our direct Cro Magnon descendents. No one knows, conclusively, why the athletic, possibly dim-witted, Neanderthals died out those thousands of years ago. We don't know whether they could talk, or to what extent they created a culture similar to early humans (there is evidence that they drew paintings, suggesting an ability to communicate abstractly). What is certain is that, if the sequencing techniques work on the wooly mammoths, there will be no scientific reason that they can't likewise be applied to generating Neanderthals, if (or when) the extinct species' full genome is recovered.

Work on The Neanderthal Project is well-underway. Svante Paabo of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, for instance, has been diligently reconstructing the DNA of Neanderthals using bone fragments discovered in Eastern Europe. With the help of the new "454" sequencing machines, he -- along with a similar project at Lawrence Berkely National Laboratory -- expects to get a complete Neanderthal genetic blueprint. In this case, just as with the use of elephants to birth mammoths, a Neanderthal could be delivered from a human female, or (perhaps less ethically questionable), a Chimpanzee.

As evolutionary biologist Hendrik Poinar notes, “The reality is it will happen,” ... “Twenty to 30 years is the span people are talking about.”

And what then? When a creature so like us -- but so different -- walked again among us, what then? Dartmouth College ethicist Ronald M. Green's comment is as creepy as it is probing:

“This was a species we competed with,” ... “We would not want to recreate a situation of two competing advanced hominid species.”

We may just find out.