A TED Presentation Gone Haywire?

Or and intentional “stunt”? You be the judge.

(My money is on intentional.) For another fun take on presentations see my post about the “typical” presentation.

On Fracking, the Science is Clear

An Illustration of a Fracking Well

Unfortunately, while the science on natural gas fracking is clear, the public debate does not reflect this fact. Why? Here is a take from an op-ed piece in the NY Post by Jon Entine:

The academic face of the anti-fracking movement — Cornell marine ecologist Robert Howarth — increasingly looks like he’s willing to turn science into farce.

Last spring, the once-obscure professor became the go-to expert for anti-fracking journalists and lawmakers when he published a report claiming shale gas pollutes more than coal. The New York Times featured his study in two uncritical articles in one week, he was interviewed on dozens of talk shows — and the media echo chamber did the rest: He was a star.

Since then, other scientists have almost universally challenged his findings — but now he’s doubled down.

Last week, Howarth released another scientifically questionable study, now warning that fracking could push the world over a tipping point, sending temperatures irreversibly higher — an inflammatory and demonstrably incorrect assertion.

After some backstory, Entine turns to the science and Howarth’s motivation:

In an interview, Howarth told me his goal was to make the anti-fracking movement mainstream and fashionable. He said he met with the Ithaca-based foundation two years ago, agreeing to produce a study challenging the conventional wisdom that shale gas is comparatively clean.

The polluting impact of shale gas revolves around one key issue: how much methane gas is released during extraction. Methane has more short-term global-warming impact than any other fossil fuel. Howarth emerged from academic nowhere when he claimed shale-gas wells leak like sieves, venting methane half the time, spewing 7 percent to 8 percent of reserves into the atmosphere.

“That’s absurd,” says Michael Levi, director of the Program on Energy Security and Climate Change at the Council of Foreign Relations. “Most methane gas is either ‘delivered to sales’ with no leakage, or it’s burnt off through flaring, which diminishes its greenhouse impact.”

Renowned geologist Lawrence Cathles, also at Cornell, who published a scathing deconstruction of Howarth’s paper this month, says that he “doesn’t document venting but what the industry calls ‘capture.’”

Almost every independent researcher — at the Environmental Defense Fund, the Natural Resources Defense Council, the Energy Department and numerous independent university teams — has slammed Howarth’s conclusions. At a minimum, the evidence suggests he either acted in bad faith or is ignorant of gas technology.

The core problem: Howarth uses Environmental Protection Agency estimates dating to 2007 — ancient data, given how quickly the technology is evolving.

Crucially, he fails to account for innovation. Gas lost through leakage is money lost, literally into thin air. For that reason, new wells are now “green completed” — meaning most leaking gas is captured and sold rather than vented.

Cathles notes the latest Devon study, now being verified by the EPA, documenting that shale gas is vented in only 5 percent of wells. The Energy Department estimates only 1 percent to 2 percent of methane is now lost during production.

Bottom line, almost all nonindustry-linked researchers believe Howarth exaggerates the impact of shale-gas leakage by 10 to 20 times. “His conclusions are more a politically charged articulation than a balanced scientific assessment,” Cathles says.

Howarth hired an aggressive PR firm, the Hastings Group, to promote his politicized viewpoint. Scientists aren’t buying it, but many journalists fall for the fear-mongering.

Howarth doesn’t have to convince anyone he’s right to devastate New York’s budding shale industry and put tens of thousands of jobs into question. He wins if he muddies the waters enough to give cautious Albany bureaucrats reason to stall.

Almost every news story now frames this issue as a standoff between equally valid scientific experts. In fact, it’s really a debate between science and ideology.

You can read the rest of the piece here.

The Future of Energy?

An interesting technology that may someday soon begin to revolutionize the energy discussion. (HT: Cody Wanner)

TMQ: Where Did that Quote Come From?

Interesting thoughts from Gregg Easterbrook on the world of unnamed sources to quotes:

Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid, and Anonymous People Don’t Complain About Quotes: In an era plagued by what Stephen Colbert memorably called “truthiness,” increasingly, public speakers quote people or sources who mysteriously lack names.

In Barack Obama’s speech on the Afghan war, the president quoted at length “one soldier” who supports the White House position. In his 2011 State of the Union Address, Obama quoted a “struggling small business owner” and a “woman who said … she and her neighbors have felt the pain of recession.” Why did these people — assuming they exist — lack names?

The same happens on the other side of the aisle. In June, Rush Limbaugh brought onto his show “Jack,” who said he was a scientist who disproved global warming. No last name, just “Jack” and no hint of what, if any, his evidence might be.

Other examples on the left: In Al Gore’s Rolling Stone article about climate change, the former vice president quoted “a philosopher studying the impact of organized propaganda” and “an authoritative study by 3,000 of the very best scientific experts.” What philosopher? What study? Gore did not say. Lurking out there, the former vice president warned ominously, is a “consortium of the largest global-warming polluters.” What seems really scary is that the “consortium” and the polluters have neither names nor any identifying details.

Other examples on the right: I watched a sermon by the fundamentalist televangelist Joel Osteen. The pastor declared he had an unnamed “friend” who was doing poorly at work until given “insider information” by God; the friend then became rich. Osteen said he had another “friend” who bought some seemingly worthless land, prayed, and then “the state” decided to locate a freeway through the property, causing the “friend” to become wealthy. Beyond the fact that the first “friend” sounds like he was participating in stock fraud and the second “friend” sounds like he was involved in a common form of government corruption, not only is neither “friend” given any identifying detail, Osteen doesn’t even name the state where the second story supposedly occurred.

Sometimes in writing or speaking, there is valid reason to withhold a name. Usually, if the person would lose his or her job if identified. But that doesn’t apply to any of the examples here, or to many others creeping into contemporary discourse.

Unnamed people, unidentified scientists, nameless “studies” and “friends” are very convenient — because the anonymous cannot complain they were misquoted and nameless studies cannot be mischaracterized. Even something like “Jane, 42, a single mother of three on the north side of Chicago” contains enough information that a determined investigator could figure out if Jane actually exists. But if it’s “said one woman in Chicago,” then the entire reference may be fabricated. Politicians, preachers and pundits who want to quote people or studies should use real names and specifics. Otherwise, we should assume they are fibbing.

From Obama’s 2010 State of the Union address: “Talk to the small business in Phoenix that will triple its workforce because of the Recovery Act. Talk to the window manufacturer in Philadelphia who said he used to be skeptical about the Recovery Act, until he had to add two more work shifts just because of the business it created. Talk to the single teacher raising two kids who was told by her principal in the last week of school that because of the Recovery Act, she wouldn’t be laid off.” You can’t talk to them — they don’t have names!

Good points. Those on both sides who quote sources that are not named without any obvious need for protection is an easy way to make a made-up quote sound authentic. Is the “small business in Phoenix” hypothetical or real? There is no way to know. Does Al Gore really have the authoritative study he claims? Who knows! Does Rush’s scientist friend “Jack” really have conclusive research disproving global warming? Who knows! Real quotes should be attributed to their sources and real studies should be cited in enough detail for someone to check the details.

Thoughts from (Last Week’s) TMQ

Running a week behind again on my reading of Gregg Easterbrook’s Tuesday Morning Quarterback column on ESPN.com, so just getting to the entirety of last week’s TMQ. The football pieces are old news now, but here are my favorite non-NFL pieces (find the whole thing here):

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On Christmas Creep:

Christmas Creep: Reader Jill Andvik of Seattle reports, “In QFC on Sept. 11, 105 days before Christmas, there were snowflake-themed mugs and bowls — next to the Halloween candy, 50 days before Halloween.” Jeremy Nichols of St. Louis writes, “On Sept. 13, the Lakeside Christmas Collection finally arrived!”

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On the Chinese Navy (don’t panic):

Anchors Aweigh, My Mandarins, Anchors Aweigh: With national red ink meaning the defense budget is likely to decline, aerospace contractors, and members of Congress with aerospace contractors in their districts, dearly would love a new bogeyman. How about the Chinese? OMG, China is building ships!

“CHINA FLEXES NAVAL MUSCLE” was the Wall Street Journal banner headline last month when the unnamed Chinese aircraft carrier took a test sail. Many of the nation’s major newspapers had this menace on the front page, in stories that could have been written by the P.R. department of any defense contractor. One factor at work is that many journalists at elite media organizations have little knowledge of military affairs, and so don’t know how to put the Chinese carrier into perspective. So let’s put it into perspective.

The “Chinese” aircraft carrier is actually the Varyag, laid down in 1985 by the old Soviet Union. The Varyag languished in port for two decades, a white elephant for Moscow. A few years ago, the Russkies sold the leaky hull to Beijing. The Varyag was in such poor repair it had to be towed to Chinese waters.

Now the Chinese navy — whose delightful official name is the People’s Liberation Army Navy — has been tarting the hull up. Let’s suppose the project is successful. The Varyag does not have nuclear power, like all United States Navy carriers. It’s primary design element is a shortened “sky jump” deck, not a flat deck with catapult like all United States Navy carriers, meaning the Varyag can launch only short-range medium-performance jets, not long-range high-performance jets like all United States Navy carriers. The Varyag weighs 67,000 tons and carries about 40 aircraft; the latest United States Navy carriers weigh about 100,000 tons and carry about 100 aircraft. The Varyag is what the United States Navy would call a Kennedy-class aircraft carrier, the John F. Kennedy being the last conventionally powered carrier built by the United States. And the Kennedy was launched in 1967.

Even if all goes well for the Varyag, it brings the Chinese navy to roughly the position, regarding warship quality, that the United States Navy was in 44 years ago. Now take into account quantity. The United States Navy has 11 supercarrier assault groups — a very large nuclear supercarrier accompanied by guided-missile cruisers and destroyers, with two types of nuclear submarines unseen underneath. How many supercarriers are possessed by the rest of the world combined? None. The race to naval supremacy, a grand theme of 500 years of great-power politics, has ended with the United States besting the rest of the world combined by a final score of 11-0.

China’s obsolete carrier does nothing to alter this. The politics of the obsolete carrier are particularly silly. Commentators are suggesting that China’s work on an aircraft carrier means it plans to engage in hostilities with the United States. Yet America says its far larger and far stronger navy is strictly for defensive purposes, threatening no one. If the United States asserts that 11 advanced supercarrier strike groups can patrol the world’s seas without hostile intent, how can we simultaneously claim that China possessing a single obsolete aircraft carrier represents a provocation?

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On the fact-checking of political debates:

Sad Reality Watch: I proposed that presidential political debates enjoy real-time fact-checking from some neutral third party or possibly from Tony Reali. Reader Kristen Parry of Laurel, Md., writes, “This is a great idea, but would just be an end to debates altogether. If any sponsoring organization publicized that they would be conducting live fact-checks during a debate, not one politician would show up.”

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On planets (see my post about part of this here):

A Cosmic Thought: Not long ago, it was assumed that planets existed beyond the solar system, but owing to great distances and the fact that planets don’t shine like stars, none had been found. As of the end of last week, the count of known exoplanets was up to 683. Millions, or billions, of other worlds may exist in our Milky Way galaxy alone, and there are at least 100 billion galaxies.

One reason distant worlds are being found is that NASA launched a probe called Kepler that is customized to scan the “nearby” part of the galaxy. Previous deep-space telescopes had been optimized to inspect the farthest heavens. Kepler has been looking at “nearby” sun-like stars, ones similar to Sol, and finding their output of heat and light varies quite a bit more than predicted. This may eventually become a factor in the global warming debate. When you hear people say that solar variation causes warming — bear in mind, there is nothing we can do about solar variation, we can only control artificial greenhouse gases.

Last week Kepler researchers announced they had found a planet locked in a complex orbit with two stars. According to the standard understanding of astronomy, this should not be possible. The assumption has been that star systems form from swirling discs of gas and dust. If one large star forms at the center, then there is material remaining for planets to coalesce in the outer disc, as seems to have happened in our solar system. If a small star forms orbiting the central star, then there should be no material left for planets. Yet at Kepler-16b, both a small star and at least one planet formed around a large star.

This is just one of the many indicators that humanity knows hardly anything about the larger universe. If binary stars (more common than sun-like stars) can have planets, there may be a truly huge number of planets in existence. There may be star-forming and planet-making physics we haven’t yet guessed at. Astronomers have been startled recently to find in what was assumed to be the interstellar void “orphan” planets that seem to have formed independent of stars. Good luck explaining that.

The Kepler probe has yet to discover another world similar to Earth in size, temperature range, relationship to a sun-like star and with a Jupiter-like gas giant outer companion. (Jupiter’s gravity vacuums up most of the infalling comets that would otherwise pummel Earth.) But at this point it seems only a matter of time. An Earthlike distant world could be discovered any day. It will be the first indication we are not alone.

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On the latest sci-fi offering:

If Only We Could Time-Travel to 1966, When “Star Trek” Premiered: Fox is saying its sci-fi series “Terra Nova,” which premieres on Monday, is the most expensive television show ever made.

The premise: In the year 2149, environmental problems place humanity on the verge of extinction. No stardrive has been invented, so people can’t flee to other worlds. But time travel has become possible. A group of plucky settlers is sent 85 million years into the past to “restart civilization” as kind and good, so the extinction scenario of 2149 never happens. But — though possessed with the ultra-sophisticated knowledge necessary to build a time machine — scientists of the future forget that 85 million years ago, there were dinosaurs. The travelers emerge from the time portal to a settlement surrounded by killer dinosaurs, and the show becomes what Hollywood likes best, a succession of chase scenes.

Recently the networks have given viewers big-budget sci-fi series “V,” “Flash Forward” and “The Event.” The common elements: lots of money was sunk into production, lots of overpaid people with connections were listed as producers, and terrible writing. All three were financial fiascos. “Star Trek,” “Stargate” and “Dr. Who,” TV’s moneymaking sci-fi franchises, do have special effects, but the emphasis is on plot, story and sense of humor. The sci-fi audience is smart and seeks these things, reflecting the fact that well-written sci-fi series make money while poorly written sci-fi series lose money. But modern Hollywood hates the notion that shows should be well-written. This sets the bar too high! Modern Hollywood wants to believe the television audience is composed entirely of fools. So viewers get explosions and drek, while the networks’ shareholders don’t get ratings. Why doesn’t actual experience make it obvious to television executives that well-written sci-fi shows earn returns and poorly written shows do not?

Now about “Terra Nova.” Even if, in the year 2149, everyone somehow forgot that dinosaurs once existed, why would the people be sent 85 million years into the past? That’s an unimaginable span, about 17,000 times as long as the period between the present and the construction of the Great Pyramid at Giza. Supposing the plucky group did “restart civilization” that far back in the past, after 85 million years had gone by, their civilization might have vanished, or its people have evolved into a form unrecognizable to us.

If heading into the past made sense, the place to go to restart civilization would be 15,000 years ago — when the last ice age was ending and the Holocene beginning. The world of 15,000 years ago would be recognizable to people of the 22nd century, and near enough in time that any better society they created might last into the present.

Another silliness, noted by reader G L Crosslin of Biloxi, Miss.,: The “Terra Nova” expedition is going back to a point before the mass extinction that wiped out the dinosaurs, when our world was struck by an enormous comet that ended much of life on Earth. Wouldn’t you rather materialize after that nasty business concluded?

Other time travel premise problems:

• Suppose it is possible to travel into the past and change things. If so at the instant you step into the time machine, any changes you caused already happened long ago, and the present would already be transformed. The instant the first settlers stepped into the “Terra Nova” time machine, whatever impact they were going to have they’ve already had. The year 2149 would already be a result of their past impact.

• If people emerged from a time portal in the past, they wouldn’t forget how they got there. They might conclude that unless the Earth of 2149 was falling apart from pollution, the time machine would never be built, they would never be sent back, so they would cease to exist. Therefore they would have to conspire to ensure that human history unfolded in such a way as to cause calamity in 2149. Maybe the whole reason the world of 2149 needs a time machine is that a prior world of 2149 had a time machine!

These kinds of paradoxes are among the reasons time travel is almost surely impossible on a physical basis. Beyond that, the big objection to time travel is not how the time machine would function. The big objection is that even if you had a time machine, where would it travel to?

In order for your time machine to open a doorway 85 million years in the past, there must be another complete universe, with another Earth and another 100 billion galaxies, suspended forever in the moment of 85 million years earlier. If you jumped instead 84 million years into the past, there must be a third complete universe, with another 100 billion galaxies, except it’s 84 million years earlier. If you wanted to use the time machine to go back to yesterday, there must be a fourth complete universe, with yet another 100 billion galaxies, suspended forever in yesterday. Jump to last week? A fifth complete extra universe is required.

For your time machine to jump to different years in the past or future, there must be billions, even an infinite number of different universes — each with 100 billion galaxies, each suspended forever in a different instant. OK, I cannot prove there are not an infinite number of universes, each suspended forever in a slightly different moment. But unless there are, a time machine would have no destination to which to travel.

Reader Al Vyssotsky of Greenville, S.C., adds another complication: “The solar system is rotating around the galactic center at approximately 43,000 miles per hour. Thus if a person were to travel back in time, he or she would wind up many billions of miles from Earth’s position in the past. Our Milky Way galaxy is moving at 1.3 million miles per hour or about two-tenths of the speed of light, in the direction of the constellation Hydra. This suggests that even a short time-travel trip would place the traveler trillions of miles from Earth’s position in the past. Going backward 85 million years, as is depicted in “Terra Nova,” would result in being about 170,000 light years from Earth’s position at that time. That distance is roughly twice the diameter of the galaxy. So you’d need to bring along quite a starship with you through the time machine.”

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On non-Christmas creep:

Unified Field Theory of Creep: John Friedline of Roswell, Ga., reports he just received this email: “Your Lotus Notes password will expire on 6/15/2012. Please update your password.” Mark Eskridge of Chicago reports that on Labor Day weekend, he received the Thanksgiving issue of Fine Cooking magazine.

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On government waste:

Wasteful Spending on Bodyguards Watch: Tuesday Morning Quarterback has been on a high horse about government officials who surround themselves with taxpayer-funded bodyguards not for security, but in order to feel more important. Reader John Ballard of Natchez, Miss., provides a pleasant counter-example: “I recently attended an economic development event in Roswell, N.M., where Governor Susana Martinez was the keynote speaker. She entered without fanfare. She had one police officer with her, no entourage, no massive security detail. I felt refreshed by the experience. It was an example of how government officials should conduct business.”

On the flip side, subsidized security details that exist mainly to stroke someone’s ego increasingly are not confined to public officials. Reader Andrew Kilmas of Bel Air, Md., notes this account of two Baltimore police officers who were injured in a traffic accident on their way to escort NFL commissioner Roger Goodell to the Steelers at Ravens game. Goodell is a private businessman. Why should he receive a special police escort, racing through traffic lights and inconveniencing taxpayers on the roads?

The Baltimore Sun quotes a police official as saying, “The National Football League had security concerns given Goodell’s rank, the high profile football game, and the anniversary of Sept. 11.” This seems farfetched: no al-Qaida terrorist incident in the United States has targeted a specific individual.

The chance of Goodell being specifically targeted by terrorists seems about the same as the chance he will be struck by a meteorite. If the NFL had a legitimate security concern regarding Goodell, it could have hired private bodyguards at its own expense. In a follow-up story, The Baltimore Sun quotes a retired high-ranking Baltimore police official as saying the escort was really for Goodell’s “convenience,” so that he could cut through game-day traffic.

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On disclaimers:

Disclaimer of the Week: Reader Chris Collins of Pittsburgh writes, “I work at a university. When training our staff to enforce policy, we burn a pellet that makes simulated marijuana odor. On the packet these pellets come in is printed, ‘For educational purposes only.’ I’m not sure what other purpose there would be, considering they are not intoxicating and would make lousy potpourri.”

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On the politics of tax cuts:

News You Won’t Want to Hear: This story by Lori Montgomery of the Washington Post could be the most important article on American politics this year. Even if you think taxes should be raised on the well-off , as I do,Montgomery shows that the bulk of federal income tax favors go not to the rich but to the middle class, especially to typical homeowners.It’s easy and appealing for Americans to say, “Let’s blame the rich for the national debt.” And the rich do need to pony up. But there are far more middle-class Americans than rich Americans — meaning tax favors to the middle class are what is driving deficit growth. Politicians love to campaign by wagging their fingers about the rich. None wants to deliver bad news to average voters. But with tax cuts under George W. Bush and Barack Obama having led to 49 percent of Americans paying no federal income taxes at all, if the debt is to be addressed, the middle class must pick up part of the tab.

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Read the football parts, and other miscellany, here.

Pop Medicine versus Real Science

Dr. Oz: Expert or Quack?

Trevor Butterworth hits another topic on target, this time on Forbes.com. He tackles the recent hub-bub over Dr. Oz’s dire warnings about apple juice and arsenic. Here is the intro:

If the reaction in the news media to Dr. Oz’s absurd claims about the dangers of arsenic in apple juice has been enormously heartening (essentially the media’s collective “Dr. Oz says this, but the FDA says that” narrative leaves the celebrity cardiothoracic surgeon looking like an unscrupulous and unethical quack), the disheartening part is that too many people will still choose to believe a television doctor who doesn’t know his ass from his elbow in terms of chemistry, over the massed ranks of PhD’s and toxicologists at the Food and Drug Administration.

This abysmal state of affairs was summed up by some fool on The View mouthing off about how we all should be grateful that Dr. Oz is looking out for our kids – as if the hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars spent on a vast array of regulatory agencies simply didn’t occur.

After attending, and presenting, at an FDA conference, Butterworth was struck by the attention to detail among the scientists. He also liked the FDA response. Here is his take, as a statistician:

As I listened to presentation after presentation from scientists who spend their working days trying to protect the public from contamination in food, I was struck by the fact that the real story about what the FDA does is almost impossible to convey to the public. Certainly, in all the years I’ve been reporting on risk, I have never seen any story in the mainstream media that articulates the complexity of the science. And if you don’t grasp that complexity, you just cannot understand how serious and scrupulous these scientists are when it comes to trying to protect the public.

This is why Dr. Oz, in refusing to acknowledge the simple, objective errors the FDA pointed out in the way his show measured arsenic, betrayed science. And when you betray science, it doesn’t matter how much you protest that you are only looking to protect America’s children. No one is protected by getting the science wrong.

But how do you communicate that betrayal to a public which simply doesn’t understand chemistry (and probably shudders at the mere mention of the subject thanks to high school), doesn’t think scientifically (i.e., mentally tests propositions for the ways in which they might be falsifiable), but reacts on a deep emotional level to the idea that the kids are in mortal danger?

What was notable – and praiseworthy – about the FDA’s response was that it added a much more personalized message to it’s straightforward scientific criticism of Dr. Oz’s claims.  Donald Zink, Ph.D, senior science advisor at FDA’s Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition (CFSAN), said what often goes unsaid in these media controversies. “As a parent and grandparent myself, I understand the concern over recent reports that arsenic has been found in apple juice,” he said, before adding that years of testing at the FDA – and, more importantly, the way the FDA did its tests, left him without any cause for concern.

Now think about it: Dr. Zink is a microbiologist and biochemist specializing in food; how much microbiology and biochemistry do you really think Dr. Oz, a heart surgeon, knows?

More to the point, do you really think that the hundreds of parents at the FDA with academic qualifications every bit as impressive as Dr. Oz’s are somehow less reliable and less concerned about food safety than someone who has chosen to practice medicine on a daily television show? And finally, what is the likelihood that, in our age of massive food regulation, it just didn’t cross anyone’s mind to examine – and keep examining – apple juice?

The philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer warned that drama was as fundamental to journalism as it was to theater – and that journalists were like lap dogs, barking hysterically at everything that moved. It’s time to see Dr. Oz as having crossed the canine rubicon – and having abandoned science for a barking role in the theater of the absurd.

So, once again, many are quick to believe that a celebrity heart doctor who we really don’t know that much about (besides the endorsement of Oprah, apparently). I have no doubts about his credentials as a heart surgeon or as a teacher in his discipline, but he cannot be an expert on everything. Meanwhile, the experts with more appropriate credentials to comment on the issue toil anonymously and so many are willing to doubt their motives and results. Trust me, the hard-working scientists and statisticians at the FDA are much more likely to be doing real, unbiased science than Dr. Oz. America seems to be in a phase of not trusting real experts, and instead taking our cues from celebrities such as Dr. Oz and others.

Dr. Oz would certainly question a podiatrist giving medical advice on a heart healthy diet, maybe soon he’ll realize he should stop commenting on things outside his expertise. I know that the cult of personality and all of the approval can be intoxicating, but he must be smarter than this. Here’s to hoping that this trend reverses quickly and the celebrity doctor/”expert” phase ends before anyone is hurt by their quackery.

Climate Change Consensus?

From FoxNews.com yesterday comes a story about a Nobel Prize winning physicist withdrawing from his professional organization over the politics of climate change. Dr.Ivar Giaever resigned due to the American Physical Society‘s official statement of policy on the subject.

Giaever was cooled to the statement on warming theory by a line claiming that “the evidence is incontrovertible.”

“In the APS it is ok to discuss whether the mass of the proton changes over time and how a multi-universe behaves, but the evidence of global warming is incontrovertible?” he wrote in an email to Kate Kirby, executive officer of the physics society.

“The claim … is that the temperature has changed from ~288.0 to ~288.8 degree Kelvin in about 150 years, which (if true) means to me is that the temperature has been amazingly stable, and both human health and happiness have definitely improved in this ‘warming’ period,” his email message said.

A spokesman for the APS confirmed to FoxNews.com that the Nobel Laureate had declined to pay his annual dues in the society and had resigned. He also noted that the society had no plans to revise its statement.

The use of the word “incontrovertible” had already caused debate within the group, so much so that an addendum was added to the statement discussing its use in April, 2010.

“The word ‘incontrovertible’ … is rarely used in science because by its very nature, science questions prevailing ideas. The observational data indicate a global surface warming of 0.74 °C (+/- 0.18 °C) since the late 19th century.”

Read more here. My interest is in the discussion of certainty. Can anything in science be incontrovertible? My reaction to my friend Josh Wood when he posted this link on Facebook, and asked if I knew anything about Giaever was:

Never heard of him, as far as I can remember, but I think that he does raise interesting points from a statistical perspective. The very idea of “proof” with data is one that is often misunderstood, and I think that Giaever is correct in pointing that out. If they are saying that the observed average temperature is higher, then I can understand “incontrovertible”, but the why/how and the implications of that are certainly up for debate. It is possible that humans contribute, but I’m not even sure how someone could prove such a thing.

As the article states, there is no disagreement about whether the average temperature today has changed, at least in the raw number. The issue is the interpretation. Noting a change, and granting that point, is not the same thing as agreeing that the change is proof of a trend or pattern, let alone saying anything about the cause, if the pattern even exists. It is certainly reasonable to argue, as some do, that we don’t have data back far enough to rule out the change being part of a cyclic pattern that we have not affected and changed. It is also possible to claim, as others do, that the warming trend is just the beginning of an accelerating warming pattern completely caused by humans. There are certainly a variety of viewpoints in between, but the point is that we simply don’t have temperature data back far enough to decide one way or another on these claims.

This means that the decision, if one is to be made, must be based on studies that attempt to measure the effect of various changes on the atmosphere. Such things have been tried, but are, of course subject to debate as to the methods and the extent of the conclusions that can be drawn. Suffice it to say, if the APS is claiming that there is incontrovertible evidence that the average temperature of earth has generally gone up over the last century, I could live with that claim. I can’t go further since I haven’t personally looked over the data. If they are claiming that there is incontrovertible evidence that the earth is in a unique period of warming, and especially if they claim incontrovertible evidence that this is caused by humans, I cannot agree that this statement is anything by laughable. Even if they are making the much more modest claim, I can understand Giaever’s symbolic protest, based on the unclear nature of the statement and a desire to make clear that a broader interpretation is clearly incorrect. Science is (or at least should be) about a search for truth in the world around us. As a Christian, I feel that this search should bring us closer to our Creator by revealing the way that He created His world. The attempt to stifle the search by pre-defining what types of results are acceptable is a clear attempt to hinder the search for truth, and thus the search for God. (see Romans 1.20-22)

Who Needs Science?

Apparently, this describes well the view of some lobbyists and lawmakers in our culture. Who needs to check science, or trust experts when we have already made up our minds from a few badly run studies that have since been refuted by many bigger, better run studies.? They’ve made up their minds, and want to shout loud enough that we don’t take time to check on the latest evidence available on the topic. The latest evidence of this comes from this article from the website The Atlantic. It concerns the debate about the chemical BPA. Early, informal studies seemed to indicate a possible risk from BPA. Quickly, this was picked up by environmentalists, who lobbied for laws banning the use of BPA in products of all kinds. The problem: the scientific community decided that this alarming result was worthy of further study. These further studies, much better run than their forerunners, and much larger and more careful in scale, have all agreed that there is no cause for alarm, and probably no need to even have much concern. The levels of the chemical found in the blood stream of patients who voluntarily exposed themselves to huge amounts of the chemical were so small as to be of no concern. Why then do the lobbyists continue to push for public outcry and legislative intervention? Good question. Here is the introduction of the article:

Well-meaning laws sometimes backfire. That’s especially true when they are passed in reaction to media frenzies driven by ideology rather than science. And that’s what’s happening in the United States and Europe, where advocacy groups are raising new alarms about bisphenol A (aka BPA), a controversial plastic component used to prevent spoilage in myriad products, including containers, dental sealants, and epoxy linings.

On Tuesday, the California State Senate approved a ban on baby bottles and sippy cups that contain BPA, with the measure now going to the Assembly for a final vote. Set to take effect next July, the ban was approved despite the fact that no governmental science-based advisory board in the world has concluded that BPA is harmful.

But political systems often operate with limited information and short time horizons, while much of science is complex and evolving. Bowing to relentless campaigns, restrictions on BPA used in baby bottles have been imposed politically in 11 states and in a few countries, such as France and Canada.

In a sidestep around the science, activists are aggressively turning up the heat on legislators around the world. The latest uproar involves the presence of miniscule amounts of BPA on thermal paper receipts printed at supermarkets or ATMs, and on the money that comes in contact with them. The brouhaha has touched off a swirl of recent media coverage, much of it just plain wrong.

Thermal paper has a chemical coating, usually made in part with BPA, which colors when heated during the development process. Greenpeace Germany just released an analysis of receipts collected from eight European supermarket chains—that’s right, just eight. There was not even a façade of scientific controls. Seven had traces of BPA or a related chemical, bisphenol S (BPS). The European press exploded with stories of the alleged harm faced by consumers, and a prominent French legislator called on stores to abandon paper containing either chemical, or face a legislative ban.

Greenpeace was copying a media stunt run last year by the Washington-based Environmental Working Group, which co-sponsored the California legislation. EWG tested 36 registers from around the United States, finding BPA on 29 of them. There was no pretense that this was a scientific study, but the survey generated more than a thousand news stories. That’s because conventional wisdom among many journalists is that BPA should be banned. Just last week, the Portland Oregonian declared, “BPA represents a health risk,” trashed “industry lobbyists” for scuttling a state bill that would have partially banned the chemical, and called for new restrictions.

In June, Connecticut became the first governmental body to ban thermal paper containing BPA. The ban is set to take effect in two years, assuming the Environmental Protection Agency identifies a safe, commercially available alternative, or in four years even if it doesn’t.

Are these votes based on good science? Why are politicians imposing bans on BPA, when regulators and scientific institutions around the world have carefully reviewed the entire body of evidence about the chemical and have opposed calls for bans?

You can read the details that follow here, including lots of links to the studies they site. This disrespect for real expertise is becoming pervasive. What pastor needs seminary training when anyone can read the Scriptures and jump to conclusions? Who needs a real doctor when I can look up my own symptoms and guess at which disease best matches my perceived symptoms? Who needs scientists and statisticians to check shoddy results we like, when I can get attention with them?

This is why I have a passion to teach here at Messiah College. I want to help my students, especially those from other majors, to learn to value statistics and the role they play in learning about the truth of God’s world. Sure, not everything we can know about truth can be learned through statistics, but God has given us the ability to learn about His world in this way as well, and I think it is dishonoring to Him to diminish the importance of anyone using their God-given abilities to learn about His Truth and the Truth of His world. I try to impress upon my students that it is much more valuable to have a small, but well run, study than a large, but poorly designed, study. In this case, we have the ideal! The larger studies are also more carefully run, and there are more of them. Still, all we hear is the loud lobbying about the studies that have been proven faulty. I hope that consumers will hear the truth about this, and demand that they not be forced to deal with the costs of more expensive manufacturing, or worse, companies replacing BPA with something even more dangerous (a real risk, according to the article). When it is better for PR for a company to replace a safe process with a questionable one, due to lack of research on that process, we are in a dangerous place.

The Research Monopoly

There is an interesting feature of life in academia. Research is often funded with public funds via grants from the NIH, NSF, and other sources. The results often make headlines in the popular press. The press cites a scholarly journal in which the full results are published, and offers a take (often neglecting numerous provisos and conditions in the original paper). When/if you try to go and track down the actual paper, you are blocked by a paywall from being able to access the article. Yep, you must pay a fee (often a costly one) to access the paper about the study your tax dollars helped to pay for. This wouldn’t be too big a deal if it was cheap, or if libraries available to you could afford to stock the particular journal you wanted. This is often not the case. Here is a taste of an article decrying the greed that seems to be at work here:

Who are the most ruthless capitalists in the western world? Whose monopolistic practices make Walmart look like a corner shop and Rupert Murdoch a socialist? You won’t guess the answer in a month of Sundays. While there are plenty of candidates, my vote goes not to the banks, the oil companies or the health insurers, but – wait for it – to academic publishers. Theirs might sound like a fusty and insignificant sector. It is anything but. Of all corporate scams, the racket they run is most urgently in need of referral to the competition authorities.

Everyone claims to agree that people should be encouraged to understand science and other academic research. Without current knowledge, we cannot make coherent democratic decisions. But the publishers have slapped a padlock and a “keep out” sign on the gates.

Read the rest here, but I had an interesting experience with this just in the last couple of days. My friend Josh Wood posted a link to this intriguing article about a recent European study that they claim proved that global warming is caused by cosmic rays that enter the earth’s atmosphere and cause cloud formation. The rays are more prevalent during times, like now, that the sun’s magnetic field is not as strong. The claim is that the clouds then trap heat and are causing the rise in temperatures that we have observed. The claim of the article is that the news has been repressed because of the liberal/environmentalist wing who profit from blaming human activity for global warming.

This all sounds relatively believable, I suppose, but as a statistician, I naturally wondered what the basis for this was. What did the study actually say? Were the conditions perfectly like earth, or just “sorta close”? I never like to believe something based on one writers take of a paper, and in this case it seemed to be one writer’s take on other writers’ takes of the original paper (the original paper was not directly cited or linked).  The paper appeared in the journal Nature at some point recently, so I started digging around and trying to find it. I finally found this “news release” type article that describes the paper and its findings. They are much more muted in their assessment of what has been accomplished in this study. They didn’t use cosmic rays, but created something that should act like them. No clouds were created, but things did change, and something that could be the precursor of clouds was created. Could that lead to the development of clouds? Even the author (physicist Jasper Kirby) seems to hedge on this.

Early results seem to indicate that cosmic rays do cause a change. The high-energy protons seemed to enhance the production of nanometre-sized particles from the gaseous atmosphere by more than a factor of ten. But, Kirkby adds, those particles are far too small to serve as seeds for clouds. “At the moment, it actually says nothing about a possible cosmic-ray effect on clouds and climate, but it’s a very important first step,” he says.

The blurb says that both sides claim it supports their claims, and concludes:

Kirkby hopes that the experiment will eventually answer the cosmic-ray question. In the coming years, he says, his group is planning experiments with larger particles in the chamber, and they hope eventually to generate artificial clouds for study. “There is a series of measurements that we will have to do that will take at least five years,” he says. “But at the end of it, we want to settle it one way or the other.”

Hm, that seems underwhelming. Where are the grandiose claims of the first writer coming from? He told me the sun causes global warming, not humans. Maybe there is something in the original article that is undersold for some reason in the main news blurb about it. (Read the whole piece, it isn’t long, but is remarkably vague about what we really can tell from the study.)

At the end of the news piece, they provide a link to the article! Finally, I would get to the bottom of this. You can check out what I found here. You get a dense and somewhat technical description of the process in the abstract. You can also click to view some pretty graphs that have cryptic captions. Then a paywall. Want to read the article? Fine, as long as you don’t mind paying $32. Yep. The paper may or may not say much of anything useful, but it will cost you $32 to find out. For one article. This doesn’t even buy you access to the whole issue of this journal, just one article.

Yep, this is the way academic journals work. Libraries and individuals cannot afford collections. Most of my journals that come with professional memberships are online. It costs me extra each year to get the “included” editions of my journals. And the statistics journals I get are the cheap ones, comparatively. Where will this end?

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Note: The NIH does mandate that those receiving grants from them must make at least the data publicly available on its website within a certain period of the end of the grant. I’m not sure if resulting journal articles must also be posted, but if not, interested readers would have to know how to recreate the entire statistical analysis to verify conclusions.

Hurricane Data

Found this article from the Technology Review blog very interesting for those in computer science, applied mathematics, and statistics. (HT: Gene Rohrbaugh, CS prof. here at Messiah College) The predictions of the track of Hurricane Irene were remarkably good. Days ahead of time, forecasters had the track nailed down closely. They knew where it would make landfall, and the track up the coast that it would take. However, they thought the storm would be much stronger than it turned out to be. Here is a taste of the article:

While path prediction has steadily improved over the decades, forecasting the intensity of storms still proves tricky. Irene’s expected monster intensity—much to the nation’s relief—was far less as she weakened a day or so after reaching land. “What made Irene especially difficult for the forecasting models was that she had three landfalls and followed the coastline,” says Heymsfield. “We need a lot more research to understand how to better model this land interaction.”

Others point to the unusual way Irene’s “eye wall”—the inner core of storms surrounding the hurricane’s eye—behaved.

Note the solution to the problem. They need more research. In other words, they need more data, and better statistical modeling. I noticed that sites like weather.com and others included error bars on their track prediction. They had a “most likely” line and then bars on either side to indicate the margin for error. Sounds like statistical modeling to me! Check out the rest of the post for details about the type of data needed to better model storms like Irene.