HinesSight

Artificial Intelligence explained to City Club by Willamette University professor

Last Friday Calvin Deutschbein, Assistant Professor of Computer Science at Willamette University, gave a talk on Artificial Intelligence, otherwise known as AI, to the Salem City Club. Deutschbein is holding a microphone in the photo below.

He started off by talking about intelligence in general. It has something to do with (1) representing the world, (2) finding patterns, (3) predicting the future, (4) acting optimally. His example pertained to his cat. I'll adapt it to our dog.

Mooka, our Husky mix, clearly is adept at making sense of the world. After all, ever since dogs became domesticated, probably via ancestral wolves who learned how to benefit from a relationship with humans, dogs have become highly attuned to living with us. 

Mooka knows that most days I take her for a walk in the late afternoon. She's learned that when the sun begins to set (and her stomach feels empty), the pattern is that soon I'll be putting her leash on. To get her to come to the front door, I get a few small pieces of cheese from the refrigerator. As soon as I open the cheese container, Mooka appears. That's non-artificial intelligence.

An AI model doesn't have the form of general intelligence that dogs, cats, and people do. That may come in the not-too-distant future, but for now AI models like Chat GPT basically are simply predicting the likelihood of words. That's why they're called Large Language Models.

Deutschbein used Willamette _______ as an example. The blank could be Valley, Forest, University, or some other word. Given the context of where he works, Willamette University is most likely. Often the next word would be Is: Willamette University is _________. Members of the audience threw out possibilities for the next word, which his slide indicated was Located: Willamette University is located ________.

We know that "in Salem" likely would be the next words. But Deutschbein noted that for most Americans, the word following Salem would have a greater chance of being Massachusetts than Oregon, given the famous nature of the East Coast Salem and its witch trials. Yet to the City Club audience, Oregon would be the chosen word, because of the context.

A slide said, "The amount of surprise you experience depends on correlations between concepts in a context." Another slide explained what this means:

Based on my personal experience, I might believe in an equal chance of the word "cat" and the word "dog" in the following sentence: "I am a _______ person." However, if I observe more "cat" than "dog" when reading a text, I am surprised by a mathematically quantifiable amount. Computers can make reasonable predictions by minimizing this type of surprise.

This probably seems like a far cry from genuine human intelligence. Which, it is. That's why Large Language Models currently are "merely" very good at predicting the next word(s) in a statement, as shown in the slide below. (That merely downplays how powerful this capability is.)


Regarding neural networks, which attempt to mimic how the human brain works, as a long-time (unsuccessful) meditator, I liked Deutschbein's comment: "When neurons fire, I have a thought; when they don't, I'm happy."

In the Q & A part of the program he was asked about so-called alternative facts, and whether AI models could recognize such concepts. He answered that these models are not trained to be true or useful, just to predict the most likely words. 

After the talk I went up to Deutschbein and told him that I'd read an article in a science magazine about the AI model developed by researchers in China that caused quite a stir when it had many or most of the capabilities of Chat GPT, but was much more efficient, requiring way less computer power.

I said that the researchers were surprised when the model started to arrive at answers to questions put to it by using a combination of Chinese and English, something they hadn't expected. The article quoted other AI experts as being concerned that at some point AI models might leave human languages behind, either "thinking" in pure mathematics or creating their own language with concepts we wouldn't be able to recognize. 

Deutschbein didn't seem very concerned about this, which was reassuring. I told him that given how amazingly complex the human brain is, with its 80 billion or so neurons bound together by trillions of interconnections, it's a neuroscientific fact that when we have a thought or feeling, or make a decision, what produced that output is a mystery to our conscious self.

So, I said, I guess it isn't all that bothersome that AI models are similar: we can recognize their response to a question posed to them, yet have no clue about how they arrived at that response. Of course, if an AI model ever gets control of nuclear weapon launch codes, there's going to be a really good reason why this is bothersome. 

I don't believe in free will. Here's why.

Today the monthly Salon discussion group that my wife and I are part of spent quite a bit of time talking about free will.

This is one of my favorite subjects, for after pondering quite a few books about free will, or the lack thereof, I'm highly confident that free will is an illusion.

I can't recall exactly how our group started conversing about it, but for sure I spurred our conversation by saying that I've started reading Robert M. Sapolsky's terrific book, Determined: A Science of Life Without Free Will.

To give you a feel for his general view of free will, here's an eight-minute interview featuring Sapolsky, a Stanford University professor of biology, of neurology and neurological sciences, and of neurosurgery.

I was worried that my passion for this subject wouldn't be shared by other members of the discussion group. I was wrong. We had a really interesting discussion of free will in which some people agreed with me that we don't possess it, and others presented reasons why they think we do.

Since I'm writing this blog post, not them, I'm going to focus on briefly relating some of my arguments for why free will doesn't exist. These aren't original, obviously. They flow from the books I've read by people arguing that free will is an illusion.

(1) Humans are part of the natural world. We are animals. Animals with powerful brains, to be sure, but animals. If a grizzly bear attacks someone, we don't consider that the bear had the free will to do otherwise. We just say, it was doing what bears do. So what makes us think that we stand apart from the natural world by possessing some sort of free will magic in our brain?

(2) The core argument against free will is simple. Everything about us, and the rest of the world, is determined. That's why Sapolsky's book has that title, Determined. Sure, we make choices. So do bears. And sea slugs. Those choices, those intentions, don't spring out of nowhere. They arise out of the goings-on in our brain, which is amazingly complex, yet still determined by causes and effects that range from a few seconds ago, to the moment of our birth, and even beyond given cultural and genetic influences on us.

(3) Recall something you've done that you regret. That's easy for me. Probably is for you also. We all have regrets. Often, or usually, that regret is made more painful by believing that we could have acted differently. But consider this. If every atom in your brain and outside world were in exactly the same condition as it was when you acted the first time, you'd do exactly what you did again. No doubt about it. Free will assumes that we have a choice to act differently. That can't be true if nothing has changed from when we acted initially.

(4) But as Sapolsky says in the video above, change does happen. All the time. Life and our world as a whole is nothing but change. People change. Animals change. Rocks change. Plants change. Free will, since it doesn't exist, can't change anything. Yet circumstances change. Every thought we have, every feeling we have, every action we take, all that changes us. So there's no fatalism involved in giving up a belief in free will. In fact, not believing in free will opens us to the reality that change can occur for countless reasons. Life is a never-ending series of surprises caused by determinism.

(5) Believing in free will fosters judgmentalism. We see someone in an unfortunate situation and think, "It's their fault." Giving up a belief in free will leads to a realization that, as strange as this may sound, no one is deserving of praise or blame. They're just doing what was determined that they do. So are we. Everybody is. Sure, society is justified in imprisoning dangerous people. But not to punish them. To protect others. And to change the prisoner for the better, if this is possible.

(6) There's no reason to think that people would go wild and crazy if they didn't believe in free will. Animals don't believe in free will, yet a wolf pack, herd of deer, school of fish, or flock of birds do just fine without such a belief. Us human animals have a strong sense of community and social cohesion. We generally want to get along with our fellow humans, notwithstanding our political, religious, and other sorts of divisions. Morality flows from a much deeper source than free will. It is embedded in our being thanks to evolution.

(7) Lastly, here's an excerpt from a post I wrote for my Church of the Churchless blog about Sapolsky's book. I loved this quotation from Determined. 

Finally, any contemporary view of determinism must accommodate a profoundly important point, one that dominates the second half of the book -- despite the world being deterministic, things can change. Brains change, behaviors change. We change. And that doesn't counter this being a deterministic world without free will. In fact, the science of change strengthens this conclusion; this will come in chapter 12.

With those issues in mind, time to see the version of determinism that this book builds on. 

Imagine a university graduation ceremony. Almost always moving, despite the platitudes, the boilerplate, the kitsch. The happiness, the pride. The families whose sacrifices now all seem worth it. The graduates who were the first in their family to finish high school. The ones whose immigrant parents sit there glowing, their saris, dashikis, barongs broadcasting that their pride in the present isn't at the cost of pride in their past.

And then you notice someone. Amid the family clusters post ceremony, the new graduates posing for pictures with Grandma in her wheelchair, the bursts of hugs and laughter, you see the person way in the back, the person who is part of the grounds crew, collecting the garbage from the cans on the perimeter of the event.

Randomly pick any of the graduates. Do some magic so that this garbage collector started life with the graduate's genes. Likewise for getting the womb in which nine months were spent and the lifelong epigenetic consequences of that.

Get the graduate's childhood as well -- one filled with, say, piano lessons and family game nights, instead of, say, threats of going to bed hungry, becoming homeless, or being deported for lack of papers. Let's go all the way so that, in addition to the garbage collector having gotten all that of the graduate's past, the graduate would have gotten the garbage collector's past.

Trade every factor over which they had no control, and you will switch who would be in the graduation robe and who would be hauling garbage cans. This is what I mean by determinism. 

AND WHY DOES THIS MATTER?

Because we all know that the graduate and the garbage collector would switch places. And because, nevertheless, we rarely reflect on that sort of fact; we congratulate the graduate on all she's accomplished and move out of the way of the garbage guy without glancing at him.

 

Science says first humans had black skin and tightly curled hair

Racism is ridiculous for lots of reasons.

A big reason is that science finds no basis for concluding that physical differences between some members of our species, Homo sapiens, make those members inherently superior to other people.

In fact, there's no such thing as race, according to science.

More than 100 years ago, American sociologist W.E.B. Du Bois was concerned that race was being used as a biological explanation for what he understood to be social and cultural differences between different populations of people. He spoke out against the idea of "white" and "black" as discrete groups, claiming that these distinctions ignored the scope of human diversity.

Science would favor Du Bois. Today, the mainstream belief among scientists is that race is a social construct without biological meaning. And yet, you might still open a study on genetics in a major scientific journal and find categories like "white" and "black" being used as biological variables.

Unfortunately, racists who wrongly view White as being superior to Black rarely pay much attention to science. Too bad. Because an article in the February 18, 2023 issue of New Scientist would give them a lot to think about.

Here's excerpts from "Curly hair may have evolved to protect early humans from the sun." You can read the entire article via this PDF file if the New Scientist link doesn't work for you.
Download Curly hair may have evolved to protect early humans from the sun | New Scientist

Hair that is tightly coiled offers the best protection against the sun’s potentially damaging rays, which could explain why this trait evolved in early humans in Africa and straighter hair emerged as some humans moved into cooler areas.

It has long been suggested that the reason our body hair became so fine that it is sometimes barely visible, while our scalp hair remained thick, is to prevent our heads from overheating in the sun. In our bipedal ancestors, the beneficial shading effect of head hair may have outweighed its insulating effect.

Tina Lasisi at Penn State University wondered if the type of hair on a person’s head also makes a difference.

To learn more, Lasisi and her colleagues put three different wigs on a thermal manikin – a model of the human body with heaters and sensors that is used to measure the thermal effects of clothes.

All the wigs were made of human hair from people of Chinese descent. One wig was straight, one had moderate curls and one had tight curls. Lasisi says the tightly coiled wig was within the range of curl found in people of recent African ancestry.

In tests in a climate-controlled wind tunnel, the team found that the hair’s type made a big difference to how much heat the head of the manikin gained from simulated sunshine at 30°C (86°F).

The head with a straight wig gained less than half as much heat as a control head with no wig. The head wearing the moderately curled wig gained around a quarter as much heat and the head with the tightly curled wig gained less than a tenth as much as the no-wig control.

The researchers think that curls reduce how much heat reaches the skin by increasing the gap between it and the hair surface. Making straight hair longer doesn’t achieve this because it flops over and lies flat, says Lasisi.

What’s more, curlier hair appears to maximise the shielding effect from the sun while minimising an unwanted insulating effect. “It has this incredible way of bypassing this trade-off,” says Lasisi.

...“Any mechanism that could help cool the body, and at the same time save precious water, would definitely have been acted on strongly by natural selection,” says Joseph Graves at North Carolina Agricultural & Technical State University.

When some humans left Africa and moved into cooler climes, the selective pressure for tightly coiled hair would have been lost, says Lasisi, allowing variations to emerge from generation to generation by random chance, but the trait may have re-evolved in some peoples.

The study’s findings are important because they could help change some people’s prejudiced views, says Graves, who is the co-author of Racism, Not Race. Research into the physical traits of the first humans can help to erode racist ideas, he says.

The first humans would have had black skin and tightly curled hair, says Graves. It was only relatively recently that other skin colours and hair types appeared, he says. Biologists have begun to study the evolution of skin colour, but this is the first study to look at hair type in an evolutionary context.

Every school child should be taught the persuasive hypothesis expressed by Joseph Graves, which almost certainly is true: The first humans would have had black skin and tightly curled hair.

Of course, this doesn't mean that African-Americans are superior to people in the United States with lighter skin and straight hair. Evolution simply selected for certain physical characteristics as our species left Africa for other parts of the world.

But I do think it'd be wonderful if everybody in our country realized that when early humans were living in Africa, they looked like many African-Americans do today, because those physical features helped them to survive.

This means that racists should be thankful to Blacks, because without black skin and tightly curled hair, our species might have died out early on in the history of Homo sapiens.

If you frequently think about sex, you're likely to be a man

Seemingly the title of this blog post is a good candidate for top honors in the "Well, duh, that's obvious" pantheon of trite statements.

But, hey, I learned about this unsurprising finding in the June 2022 issue of Scientific American, so it's decidedly science'y. 

The article is called "Men Aren't from Mars, nor are Women from Venus." This, of course, is a mirror image of John Gray's 1992 book, "Men Are from Mars, Women are from Venus." It's based on a study of studies involving the personality traits of more than 15,000 people.

Cisgender people. Which means people whose gender identity corresponds to their sex assigned at birth, as contrasted with transgender people. Since 98 percent of the study participants identified themselves as cisgender, the article's authors don't draw any conclusions about the 2 percent.

They found in the data 18 specific self-reported traits that varied between the men and women in the study. An algorithm they built was able to predict a person's gender based on the scores they self-reported on the traits 78 percent of the time.

That seems pretty high to me, but it means that 22 percent of the time gender couldn't be predicted from a person's personality. 

What's sort of surprising is that just one trait out of the 18 could predict a person's gender 69 percent of the time, while apparently the other 17 just added another 9 percent to the predictability, bringing it to the aforementioned 78 percent.

That trait was... a focus on sex. Here's an excerpt from the Scientific American article. 

The most sizable of these differences [between men and women] was the degree to which cisgender people thought about sex, assessed by asking people to rate how much they agreed with the statement "I often have sexual thoughts when I meet an attractive-looking person" and disagreed with the statement "I do not frequently think about sex."

(This "sex-focused" characteristic, while not linked to major personality traits commonly studied in psychology, nonetheless fits the conception of a personality trait as a pattern in thought, emotion, or behavior. It also relates to a concept called sexual preoccupation.)

We found that gender could explain about 18 percent of the variation in the extent to which people are sex-focused. Men had a higher average score on this trait than women. There were still plenty of women who had a higher score than most men, however. In other words, individual men and women were highly varied, even though at the group level, men tended to differ from women.

On every trait, there was a substantial overlap between men and women. Yet at the tail ends -- where people either strongly agreed or strongly disagreed with the questions we asked them -- larger differences emerged.

For example, very low compassion was rare in both men and women, but the few people who identified as very uncompassionate were much more likely to be men. This result is consistent with the finding that antisocial personality disorder, which often involves a lack of remorse or empathy, is more common among men than women.

So my admittedly non-scientific summary of this research is that us men are more likely than women to be sex-crazed jerks who don't care much about other people.

Hard to argue with that assessment. But just today I was able to release a childproof bottle cap that my wife couldn't open. So men are good for something!

Brown Oregon grass in October -- climate change is very real

Yesterday I learned of a dire climate change report issued by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Today I spread organic lawn fertilizer on parts of our rural yard where the grass is almost always greened up after fall rains.

Not this year. And that's really weird. 

I'm a creature of habit when it comes to fertilizing our yard. Twice a year, spring and fall, I spread organic fertilizer that I buy at Lowe's on both our shrubs/trees and our lawn.

Some of the grass around our house is watered with a sprinkler system. Some isn't. We've lived on our ten acres in rural South Salem for 28 years. I can't recall a year when the non-watered grass was as barren and brown at this time in October as it was today. 

This is an area outside our front door that has always, so far as I can remember, been green this time of year. But not now, not in 2018. I held off until today on spreading the lawn fertilizer, which I usually do in September, because there's been almost no rain, and the fertilizer needs to be watered in to do any good, obviously. 

Almost all of Oregon (86%) is in either severe or extreme drought as of October 2. And there's been little rain in the last week. Now, I realize that most people who live in cities aren't as directly aware of this as those of us who live in the country, and have wells. 

But as I was spreading lawn fertilizer on parts of our yard that were super-dry (another usually grassy area by our driveway is shown above), I couldn't help thinking about the IPCC report that I'd read about in the New York Times. 

A landmark report from the United Nations’ scientific panel on climate change paints a far more dire picture of the immediate consequences of climate change than previously thought and says that avoiding the damage requires transforming the world economy at a speed and scale that has “no documented historic precedent.”

The report, issued on Monday by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a group of scientists convened by the United Nations to guide world leaders, describes a world of worsening food shortages and wildfires, and a mass die-off of coral reefs as soon as 2040 — a period well within the lifetime of much of the global population.

Well, I'm alive right now, and I can say that Oregon's climate has changed a lot during the 47 years I've lived in my much-beloved state. The summers are drier and hotter. The winters are milder and warmer. I recall it raining for weeks on end in the fall and winter. That's rare now.

What irks me is that even if everybody accepted the science of climate change, it still would be tough to prevent the disastrous effects on human civilization that global warming is producing. But climate change deniers are everywhere, even here in green, liberal Oregon.

There are several climate change deniers on a "Stakeholder Advisory Committee" charged with helping guide an update to Salem's Comprehensive Plan which describes how our city will develop -- notably Sam Brentano, a Marion County commissioner. 

I hope that if Brentano or other climate change deniers start to raise doubts about the need for Salem to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions, most members of the committee will say, "Stop! Just stop! You're wrong, and we're not going to put up with scientific ignorance, especially if it is willful ignorance."

Our yard is a microcosm of the global warming macrocosm. The bottom of this  photo shows a part of our lawn that doesn't get irrigated by a sprinkler. It's dry as a bone, though as noted before, usually by this time of year the grass is green. Another part of our lawn gets watered, so it looks fine -- no problem. 

But that "no problem" masks the reality of Oregon's drought. When I raised my iPhone's camera to another viewpoint, our yard looks wonderfully normal -- green and beautiful.

That's what so worrisome about global warming deniers. Because climate change is a slow-moving train wreck, not an instant dramatic disaster, it is possible to avert our eyes from the danger signs of a steadily warming world. 

Today I couldn't do that, as I spread lawn fertilizer on parts of our yard that were much drier than usual. I just hope many more people have their eyes opened to the reality of climate change before it is too late.

Here's a link to the actual IPCC report. And here's FAQs for those who don't want to read the whole report.

Trump's transgender policy is unscientific and unfair

A few days ago President Trump unleashed another ridiculous Twitter storm, this time about transgender people serving in the military.

On Wednesday morning, Trump wrote on Twitter that “after consultation with my Generals and military experts, please be advised that the United States government will not accept or allow transgender individuals to serve in any capacity in the U.S. Military."

"Our military must be focused on decisive and overwhelming victory and cannot be burdened with the tremendous medical costs and disruption that transgender in the military would entail,” Trump added. “Thank you."

Not surprisingly, these short sentences are filled with lies. 

There's no evidence that Trump consulted military experts about the transgender issue. His Defense Secretary was caught off guard by the Twitter announcement, saying he was "appalled." 

Trump's intention to ban transgender people from serving in the armed forces appears to have been made for purely political reasons. 

Mr. Trump elected to announce the ban in order to resolve a quietly brewing fight on Capitol Hill over whether taxpayer money should pay for gender transition and hormone therapy for transgender service members. The dispute had threatened to kill a $790 billion defense and security spending package scheduled for a vote this week.

But rather than addressing that narrow issue, Mr. Trump opted to upend the entire policy on transgender service members.

Given that there aren't many transgender individuals in the military, their gender-transition related health care costs -- between $2.4 million and $8.4 million annually -- are a minuscule fraction of overall defense spending. And Trump's frequent Mar-a-Lago trips cost much more than transgender military health care.

Lots of things bug me about Trump. One of the many irritations is how Trump cares very little about understanding policies, choosing to focus almost entirely on politics.

(Yet he isn't very good at political machinations, leaving aside his slim presidential victory, having just crashed and burned on his pledge to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act, and having no other significant legislative accomplishments so far.)

The same day Trump announced his intention to ban transgender people from serving in the military, I read a chapter in D.F. Swaab's book, "We Are Our Brains: A Neurobiography of the Brain, from the Womb to Alzheimer's." Swaab, says the book jacket, "is an internationally renowned researcher in neuroscience and a professor of neurobiology at the University of Amsterdam."

In his Sexual Differentiation of the Brain in the Womb chapter, Swaab talks about some basic transgender facts that Trump should have learned before he issued his banned-from-the-military tweets. 

All the data indicates that gender problems arise in the womb. Tiny variations in genes associated with the effect of hormones on brain development have been found to increase the likelihood of transsexuality. It can also be increased by abnormal fetal hormone levels or by medication taken during pregnancy that inhibits the breakdown of sex hormones. 

The differentiation of our sex organs takes place in the first months of pregnancy, while the sexual differentiation of the brain occurs in the second half of pregnancy. Since these two processes take place at different times, the theory is that in the case of transsexuality, they have been influenced independently of one another. 

Thus a transsexual comes to feel that he/she is inhabiting a body that doesn't match with his/her mind. 

In 2007 V.S. Ramachandran published an interesting hypothesis and provisional research finding on transsexuality. He believes that the neural body map of MtF [male to female] transsexuals lacks a penis, while that of FtM [female to male] transsexuals lacks breasts, due to these not being programmed into the map during development. As a result, they don't recognize these organs as their own and want to get rid of them.

Regardless of the exact biological cause of transsexuality, it seems clear that transgender individuals don't choose to transition to the other gender like someone chooses to dye one's hair or get a tattoo. Almost certainly, transsexuality isn't a choice. Neither is homosexuality.

Virtually all of the evidence points to the fact that when it comes to sexual identification as male, female, something in-between, or something else, people are, in Lady Gaga's words, "born this way." 

I realize that Trump doesn't like to read much. But maybe he'd watch a video.

Some of the lyrics:

Don't be a drag, just be a queen
Whether you're broke or evergreen
You're black, white, beige, chola descent
You're Lebanese, you're orient
Whether life's disabilities
Left you outcast, bullied, or teased
Rejoice and love yourself today
'cause baby you were born this way

No matter gay, straight, or bi,
Lesbian, transgendered life,
I'm on the right track baby,
I was born to survive.
No matter black, white or beige
Chola or orient made,
I'm on the right track baby,
I was born to be brave.

Some thoughts are like a rainbow, but others are more grounded

After about three months, I'm continuing to enjoy my daily morning Headspace guided meditations. (I've blogged about Headspace before, here, here, and here.)

Today I heard Andy Puddicombe -- the Headspace founder who does the guiding -- talk about how thoughts are like a rainbow. Meaning, they are insubstantial, coming and going, while the "blue sky" of the mind is the ever-present backdrop to thoughts and feelings.

In We Are Not What We Do, Puddicombe says:

Sure, we have responsibility as to whether we choose to engage the thought and take it to the level of speech or action, but a thought is just a thought. It is like a rainbow in the sky... bright, colorful, amazing, inspiring, full of potential and yet, ultimately, there is nothing tangible there at all.

OK. I get his point.

A thought is just electro-chemical reactions. These are tangible. However, given the present state of neuroscience and brain imaging, it usually isn't possible for someone else to delve past the curtain of an individual's subjectivity and comprehend a thought.

(I said "usually," because intriguing research has begun to lift the veil on the general sorts of thoughts that are in a person's mind.)

However, when I pondered what Puddicombe said about thoughts being like a rainbow, I wanted to qualify that blanket statement. In truth, some thoughts are a lot more grounded than others.

Meaning, they point to something actually existent. I think about our dog, Zu Zu. The thought is admittedly intangible. But our dog is very substantial. Here she is, with my wife on a hike in central Oregon.

So a rainbow and our dog both can be seen. Both also can be thought about. But our dog exists whether or not someone is seeing her or thinking about her. A rainbow doesn't. There is nothing substantial at the end of a rainbow, where it seems to touch the ground. 

By contrast, where our dog seems to touch the ground, she actually is. 

Thus this is why I want to modify Puddicombe's rainbow metaphor. Some thoughts point to objectively existent realities. Other thoughts don't. While all thoughts are insubstantial, some are about tangible truths, and others aren't. 

If we don't accept this distinction, we're left in a murky Alice in Wonderland world where "subjectivity" and "objectivity" lose all meaning. 

Which brings me out of the realm of meditation and philosophy into politics and policy-making. 

A few days ago, after another mass murder by a heavily-armed gunman, this time right here in Oregon, I wrote "More guns, more people killed by guns. It's obvious!" In part I said:

Facts are wonderful things. They can save lives. But this country keeps on ignoring facts about the relationship between gun ownership and gun deaths.

More guns, more deaths. That's a fact. Guns kill people. The more guns there are, the more people are killed. 

Today Vox put up an informative piece, "Gun violence in America, in 17 maps and charts." Here's some of the disturbing key facts.

This led to some interactions with commenters on my blog post and associated Facebook post. It didn't come as a surprise to me that right-wing Tea Party types were dismissive of the facts that I shared. 

Understand: they weren't my facts. They didn't reflect my personal thoughts.

They came from respected authorities who make it their business to keep track of statistics about gun ownership and gun deaths in various countries around the world, and various states in this country. 

Yes, in a way every statement of a fact can be viewed as an insubstantial thought. This seems to be how those aforementioned conservative gun lovers saw my blog post: as an evanescent rainbow, intangible, insubstantial, inconclusive.

One local right-winger told me that he and I could talk forever about whose facts were right. I told him, no, you're wrong. We could honestly and openly examine those various facts. Then, some facts would turn out to be true and some wouldn't. 

This reflected my proud liberal/progressive view that, as the saying goes...

Such seems unarguable to me. But, man, arguing with right-wing Tea Party types about gun violence sure leads me to believe that they would argue with the seemingly clear distinction between opinion and fact.

Which is a rainbow sort of worldview. Everybody has a different perspective on reality. What seems to exist from one standpoint doesn't exist from another standpoint. There is no way to decide which is more true:  "More guns means more gun deaths" or "More guns means fewer gun deaths."

Yet actually, there is a way to arrive at the truth. This is the promise of science and the scientific method.

We aren't doomed to live in a world of truthiness, rather than truth. Thoughts may be mostly intangible, but reality isn't. Some thoughts are more true than others.  

Why being critical and contentious is a must for citizen activists

I've been called a "bomb thrower" by City officials and other members of the Powers-That-Be here in Salem, Oregon. 

As I said in a blog post last year, I don't see this as an insult. Quite the reverse, in fact.

I've been called a bomb-thrower by folks at City Hall. I guess this is supposed to be an insult. I consider it a compliment.

I'm proud to speak out loud and powerfully when I see stuff going on in Salem that shouldn't be. My goal is to throw truth-bombs that open up minds and demolish barriers to seeing what is happening behind closed doors.

Today I came across some passages in Jerry Coyne's new book, "Faith vs. Fact: Why Science and Religion are Incompatible," that explained why my style of citizen activism is entirely in line with a scientific approach (broadly speaking) to addressing social problems.

Coyne is an evolutionary biologist. He views science as the only way of understanding what is true about the cosmos. Science, of course, isn't practiced only by professional scientists. Here's how he defines it:

What is "known" may sometimes change, so science isn't really a fixed body of knowledge. What remains is what I really see as "science," which is simply a method for understanding how the universe (matter, our bodies and behavior, the cosmos, and so on) actually works. Science is a set of tools, refined over hundreds of years, for getting answers about nature.

...My view of science as a toolkit is what Michael Sheerer meant when he defined science as a collection of methods that produce "a testable body of knowledge open to rejection or confirmation." That's as good a definition of science as any, but the best rationale for using those methods came from the renowned and colorful physicist Richard Feynman:

The first principle is that you must not fool yourself -- and you are the easiest person to fool. So you have to be very careful about that.

Like everyone, scientists can suffer from confirmation bias, our tendency to pay attention to data that confirm our a priori beliefs and wishes, and to ignore data we don't like. But, like all rational people, we must admit the truth of what Voltaire noted in 1763: "The interest I have in believing in something is not a proof that the something exists."

The doubt and criticality of science are there precisely for the reason Feynman emphasized: to prevent us from believing what we'd like to be true.

I really liked how Coyne described his being thrown into the world of science when he started work on a Ph.D. in evolutionary genetics at Harvard. 

It's a rough and tumble world. The goal is to learn what is true, not to make people feel comfortable.

Being scientifically minded (I'm a Ph.D. dropout in Systems Science; completed the coursework, but not the other requirements), what Coyne says below is how I think citizen activism should be carried out.

Public officials, civic leaders, and legislators should engage with concerned citizens in much the same way scientific inquiry is conducted. After all, the goal is the same: to base action and understanding on what is true about the world.

Coyne writes (emphasis added in bold):

Shy and reserved, I felt as if I'd been hurled into a pit of unrelenting negativity. In research seminars, the audience seemed determined to dismantle the credibility of the speaker. Sometimes they wouldn't even wait until the question period after the talk, but would rudely shout out critical questions and comments during the talk itself.

When I thought I had a good idea and tentatively described it to my fellow graduate students, it was picked apart like a flounder on a plate. And when we all discussed science around the big rectangular table in our commons room, the atmosphere was heated and contentious.

Every piece of work, published or otherwise, was scrutinized for problems -- problems that we almost alway found... Eventually, fearful of being criticized, I simply kept my mouth shut and listened. That went on for two years.

But in the end, that listening was my education in science, for I learned that the pervasive doubt and criticality weren't intended as personal attacks, but were actually the essential ingredients in science, used as a form of quality control to uncover the researcher's misconceptions and mistakes.

Like Michelangelo's sculpturing, which he saw as eliminating marble to reveal the statue within, the critical scrutiny of scientific ideas and experiments is designed, by eliminating error, to find the core of truth in an idea. Once I'd learned this, and developed a skin thick enough to engage in the inevitable to-and-fro, I began to enjoy science.

For if you can tolerate the criticality and doubt -- and they're not for everyone -- the process of science yields a joy that no other job confers: the chance to be the first person to find out something new about the universe.

A secular Easter thought: "spiritual" isn't supernatural or religious

My wife and I had a pleasant Easter Sunday. We didn't celebrate it. Being non-religious, this was just another day for us. We simply lived it.

I got several yard chores done. Spread bark and organic fertilizer. Laurel sprayed poison oak, then walked dogs at the Humane Society. Meaningful stuff. Pleasingly real. 

Many other people spent part of their day worshipping a God, and Jesus, we don't believe in.

A good share of those Christians consider that folks like us are missing out on the most important part of being human: believing in a divine other-worldly side to reality. Well, we heartily disagree. 

We take issue with religious believers who view being "spiritual" as requiring a belief in the supernatural and religious dogma. 

So though we didn't go to church today, Laurel and I did enjoy a sermon of sorts: Tim Urban's entertaining and thoughtful post, "How Religion Got in the Way." 

Well worth reading. Here's some excerpts.

There’s almost no word ickier than spirituality. It’s vague, amorphous, somehow very annoying, and it manages to turn off both the religious and the non-religious. And if you gather five people who all say they’re actually fond of spirituality, they’ll be defining the term in five different ways.

So what exactly is spirituality, as we’re using the word today, and what do we need from it?

Ever since the human species began opening its eyes into consciousness, it has been an aggressively curious child, hungry to figure it all out. What was this world it was living in, and what did it all mean?

The first part of that question—What was this world?—became the job of science. The second part—What does it all mean?—is the job of spirituality.

Science is what we know, and spirituality is how we coexist philosophically, psychologically and emotionally with that knowledge. Science gives us the information; spirituality helps us wrap our heads around it.

The two lead us as a tag team, each taking care of their critical halves of the “figuring it all out” puzzle—when science tells us something shocking, like “The Earth is revolving around the sun and not vice versa!” we turn, wide-eyed, to spirituality and ask, “How does that change things? How does that transform the way we should think about ourselves, about the world, and about life?”

Under this definition, spirituality is a secular concept, and the idea that spirituality and science are diametrically opposed to each other is incorrect—they’re two halves of the same quest. As usual, Carl Sagan says it best:

“Spirit” comes from the Latin word “to breathe.” What we breathe is air, which is certainly matter, however thin. Despite usage to the contrary, there is no necessary implication in the word “spiritual” that we are talking of anything other than matter (including the matter of which the brain is made), or anything outside the realm of science.

…Science is not only compatible with spirituality; it is a profound source of spirituality. When we recognize our place in an immensity of light years and in the passage of ages, when we grasp the intricacy, beauty and subtlety of life, then that soaring feeling, that sense of elation and humility combined, is surely spiritual…The notion that science and spirituality are somehow mutually exclusive does a disservice to both.

Exactly. 

In another post, "A Religion for the Non-Religious," Urban does a great job describing a state of unfogged awareness that my wife and I also aspire to, and even experience from time to time. Is this spiritual? For sure.

I like Urban's notion of the big purple blog -- Everything We Don't Know -- which is vastly larger than Everything We Know. He writes:

The fact is, any discussion of our full reality—of the truth of the universe or our existence—is a complete delusion without acknowledging that big purple blob that makes up almost all of that reality.

But you know humans—they don’t like that purple blob one bit. Never have. The blob frightens and humiliates humans, and we have a rich history of denying its existence entirely, which is like living on the beach and pretending the ocean isn’t there.

Instead, we just stamp our foot and claim that now we’ve finally figured it all out.

On the religious side, we invent myths and proclaim them as truth—and even a devout religious believer reading this who stands by the truth of their particular book would agree with me about the fabrication of the other few thousand books out there. On the science front, we’ve managed to be consistently gullible in believing that “realizing you’ve been horribly wrong about reality” is a phenomenon only of the past.

So spirituality, for him, is simply seeking truth. 

Yes, I’m an atheist, but atheism isn’t a growth model any more than “I don’t like rollerblading” is a workout strategy.

So I’m making up a term for what I am—I’m a Truthist. In my framework, truth is what I’m always looking for, truth is what I worship, and learning to see truth more easily and more often is what leads to growth.

In Truthism, the goal is to grow wiser over time, and wisdom falls into your lap whenever you’re conscious enough to see the truth about people, situations, the world, or the universe. The fog is what stands in your way, making you unconscious, delusional, and small-minded, so the key day-to-day growth strategy is staying cognizant of the fog and training your mind to try to see the full truth in any situation.

Over time, you want your [Time on Step 2] / [Time on Step 1] ratio to go up a little bit each year, and you want to get better and better at inducing Step 3 Whoa moments and reminding yourself of the Step 4 purple blob. If you do those things, I think you’re evolving in the best possible way, and it will have profound effects on all aspects of your life.

That’s it. That’s Truthism.

(Via the Great God Google, I found this image from Urban's web site, Wait But Why. Here the purple blob is black, and round rather than blob'ish, but the point is the same: a big part of understanding the truth about reality is realizing how little we know, compared to what remains to be known.)

There's a better message than the "Christmas story"

Before getting into the main part of this post, let's warm up with some compelling tweets today from astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson. I love them!

QUESTION: ThIs year, what do all the world's Muslims and Jews call December 25th? ANSWER: Thursday
[Comment: Tyson failed to mention atheists, agnostics, Buddhists, Hindus, Sikhs, Daoists, and so many others who don't believe in the Christ part of Christmas. But he only had 140 characters to work with.]

On this day long ago, a child was born who, by age 30, would transform the world. Happy Birthday Isaac Newton b. Dec 25, 1642

Merry Christmas to all. A Pagan holiday (BC) becomes a Religious holiday (AD). Which then becomes a Shopping holiday (USA).

Tyson points out that of all the ways to view life, this world, and reality as a whole, Christianity is only one way. And in my secular scientific atheist opinion, nowhere near the best of them.

But this is just my subjective opinion. Just as the faith of every religious believer is: subjective.

As I have been saying on my Church of the Churchless blog for over ten years, there's no problem, none at all, of having personal beliefs that can't be backed up by objective facts and demonstrable evidence.

However, if someone claims that a subjective belief should be accepted as something objectively true for everyone, then we do indeed have a problem. 

Which is why I decided to post a comment to the lead editorial in today's Salem Statesman Journal newspaper, "Message of Christmas still rings true in 2014." 
Download Message of Christmas still rings true in 2014 (if above link no longer works)

The editorial starts off this way:

The Christmas story is one of joy, of celebration, of hope. Its message of peace on Earth and salvation for humankind is as powerful, as relevant and as needed today as it was on that silent, starlit night some 2,000 years ago.

Well, some people feel this way. Lots don't.

Those words, salvation for mankind, are utterly meaningless to billions of humans. And isn't that the central message of Christmas: "Christmas is all about the message of God and the coming of our Savior."

OK. For Christians, it is. Those of us who don't believe in God or the need for salvation look upon Christmas very differently. This likely includes tens of thousands in the Salem area, the Statesman Journal readership base.

We consider that religions divide more than they unite. We favor a more universal, inclusive, and scientifically defensible message, not a mythical, divisive, supernatural story limited to Christianity. 

So I left this comment on the editorial:

Nice sentiments. But there's some confusing paradoxes in this editorial. 

Hmmmm. 

We are supposed to go beyond religion and find the common humanity beneath our differences. But the way to do this is through the unbelievable virgin birth story of one particular religion, Christianity?

Unbelievable, that is, to the billions of people in the world, like me, who either don't believe in any God/divine being, or believe in a different one than Christians worship.

So I disagree that embracing the "Christmas story" is the way to go if we want to solve the many pressing problems that continue to afflict humankind. 

Rather, the path forward is to recognize the difference between subjective, personal, faith-based stories and the objective, universal, fact-founded realities in today's world. 

What brings us truly together is truth. 

Yes, part of that truth is our individual moral, ethical, religious, and other preferences. But more important is the common ground on which we all stand: shared knowledge, values, and understandings.

In this vein, I urge the Statesman Journal to consider how well it is furthering the formation of this common ground in its reporting and editorial policies.

As Salem's one and only general circulation community newspaper, how well are you digging into the most pressing issues facing this town? 

For example, how competently are you serving as a watchdog over City of Salem policies which further the sort of inequality and discord this editorial decries?

Where are the in-depth, balanced, investigative stories about the efforts of City officials to take a billion dollars out of citizens' pocketbooks to pay for an unneeded Third Bridge while so many other pressing community needs go unfunded, or about the horrible state of Salem's mass transit and alternative transportation systems which doom those without a car to face great difficulties in getting to a job or pursuing usual activities of daily life?

The Statesman Journal should be a force that brings Salemians together to address Big Issues. Instead, it has devolved into a frothy USA Today clone dedicated to furthering special interests. 

The paper has become part of the Salem power structure that seeks to keep money and power flowing to the already rich and powerful, not an independent crusader for truth and justice.

So while I resonate with many of the sentiments in this editorial, I challenge the executives at the Statesman Journal to back up your empty talk with solid journalistic action.

THAT truly would be a present all of us in Salem would enjoy receiving in 2015.

Now, I readily admit that I veered into critiquing the Statesman Journal, one of my favorite activities, from questioning the value of dogmatic one-sided religious belief. But as I wrote the comment, it made sense to do that veering.

Words are cheap. Actions require an expenditure of time, commitment, and energy. 

Publishing an editorial about "choosing to act with caring and compassion and justice and understanding" is one thing. Carrying out journalistic policies that, as the saying goes, "afflict the comfortable and comfort the afflicted," that's another thing.

There's essentially zero evidence that the Statesman Journal is willing to dig into the truth of how money and power are wielded in this town to keep Salem's version of the "1%" comfortable, while making the "99%" pay most of the bill for this largesse.

Not surprisingly, editorial page editor Dick Hughes left a pithy reply to my comment:

I am sorry for your negativity, Brian.

Equally unsurprisingly, I felt duty-bound to leave a response.

Dick Hughes, actually, I am a very positive and optimistic person. I believe we humans are inherently prone to act positively and kindly toward each other.

However, whenever we divide ourselves into "clans," such as Christian and those without faith (in the Christmas story or whatever), this makes it more difficult to find the common ground beneath our differences.

This editorial could have talked about how every religion, spiritual path, and philosophy has its own inspiring stories, myths, and metaphors -- each of which is equally valid as a guide to living, if someone resonates with them.

But this opinion piece failed to understand how meaningless the "Christmas story" is to anyone except devout Christians. And like I said, those Christians are more devoted to platitudes about how we should treat each other, than to concrete actions.

I'll probably explain myself more in a blog post tonight. I realize that Christianity is the dominant cultural influence in this country, so Christians expect that everyone should resonate with the Christian message.

However, this is a lot like white people not understanding how people of color experience daily life, including their interactions with police and other authority figures. 

To fail to understand how minorities experience life (and yes, us atheists are a distinct minority), is understandable given the privileged world view of Christians. But I enjoy trying to convey what it is like to be a non-believer in a mostly believing world.

See, for example, one of my many Church of the Churchless posts on this subject, Why atheists are more "spiritual" than religious believers. 

Global warming is real, David Titley tells Salem City Club

If there were any global warming deniers in the room at today's Salem City Club meeting, I don't see how they could have listened to Rear Admiral (Retired) David Titley and not been persuaded that climate change is happening; it poses a huge threat to humanity; and we need to combat it.

Titley was crisp, organized, humorous, entertaining, and thoroughly believable. The guy's credentials are impressive. 

David W. Titley is a professor of meteorology at Pennsylvania State University and the founding director of their Center for Solutions to Weather and Climate Risk. He is also NOAA's chief operating officer. Before assuming these positions, he was formerly a rear admiral in, and the chief oceanographer of, the U.S. Navy, in which he served for 32 years. He also initiated the Navy's Task Force on Climate Change, and serves on the CNA Corporation's Military Advisory Board.

He talked quite a bit about how climate change threatens national security, the theme of his 2014 op-ed in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. 

Climate change is an accelerating threat to national security. That’s the finding of a recent report by the CNA Corporation’s Military Advisory Board, a panel I serve on along with some of our country’s most senior retired military leaders.

Each of us is a hard-nosed leader with decades of experience evaluating national security risks. We have been keeping an eye on climate change for years, first reporting on it as a potential national security threat in 2007.

Since then, we have seen the scientific consensus continue to develop and solidify, while signatures of a warming world — from global temperature trends to severe weather events — strongly suggest that our climate is already changing. And we are increasingly worried about the lack of comprehensive action by the United States and the global community.

Sitting in the back of the room, scribbling away in a notebook as Titley spoke, I was left with these personal most-important takeaways from his talk -- which I'll express a bit more bluntly than Titley did.

(1) Global warming is just about as proven as gravity. The science supporting climate change is solid. We know that the Earth is warming, and why: greenhouse gases emitted by human activity. Anyone who doesn't accept this either hasn't educated themselves, or has a self-centered reason to deny the scientific reality of global warming.

(2) Local officials need to be pressured on global warming. Titley urged action on all fronts to combat climate change: global, national, state, local, individual. Seeing that at least one Salem city councilor was present (Warren Bednarz), I welcomed Tiley's call for citizens to keep asking local officials, "What are you doing to stabilize the climate?" (Check out my Salem Weekly column, "Do global warming deniers run City Hall?")

(3) Civilization is at risk if we don't act. Modern humans, Homo sapiens, have been around for about 100,000 years with essentially the same brain capabilities as we have today. So why did civilization take off around 8,000 years ago? Because, Titley said, we entered an era of climate stability that allowed humans to spend less time and energy on simply surviving. Now human actions are making the Earth's climate unstable -- not good, not at all.

(4) The climate always has changed, but over much longer time periods. Titley showed a graph of how temperature (or carbon dioxide level) has gone up and down over geological time scales, tens or hundreds of thousands of years. Zeroing in on the recent past, he showed how rapidly human-caused climate change is happening. Very unnatural; very dangerous. 

(5) The oceans are sucking up most of the increased heat. I got to ask the last audience question of Titley: "Skeptics say global warming has ceased during the past ten years or so. But isn't it true that the oceans are taking up a disproportionate share of the warming, not the atmosphere?" Yes, that's true, I was told. Eight percent of the increased heat is going into the atmosphere; 92% into the oceans. That's why it is called global warming. Eventually that ocean heat will be emitted into the atmosphere.

(6) Rising oceans threaten military bases and ordinary people. Titley showed a slide of how ocean flooding in a Virginia neighborhood has become much more common the past few decades. The Navy (obviously) has its bases at sea level. Thus both military planners and insurance-reinsurance companies are much concerned about rising sea levels. As should we all be.

(7) Republicans are being idiotic about global warming. OK, Titley didn't say "idiotic." That's my word. But what else could you call the GOP-backed House bill that requires the military to ignore climate change? 

The House passed an amendment to the National Defense Authorization bill on Thursday that would bar the Department of Defense from using funds to assess climate change and its implications for national security.

Titley gave other examples of how military planners such as himself have to avoid using scientically correct terms like "global warming" in reports and funding requests that are read by Congressional Republicans. It's crazy that science committees in both the House and Senate are now run by legislators who are clueless about scientific realities.

(8) The battle against global warming can be won. On the positive side, Titley ended his talk on an optimistic note. He believes that the tide is turning in favor of the truth about what humans are doing to our one and only planet.

I agree. Truth has a way of winning out over lies and falsehoods. It just takes a while.

He alluded to the rapidity of social/cultural change when a tipping point is reached. Though Titley didn't give any examples, I thought "gay marriage." Who would have thought that this nation would have come so far, so fast, on the issue of equal rights for homosexuals?

Optimistic me sees the same thing happening with global warming.

Before too long head-in-the-sand'ers like today's GOP leadership will be laughed at if they persist with their "I'm not a scientist..." bullshit. Hey, you guys aren't gynecologists either, but you sure claim to be experts in what women should do with their bodies. 

As Titley said today, gravity is real no matter if someone claims "Gravity is made up."

Likewise, global warmng is real. It is beginning to bite humanity in the butt. When the pain gets undeniable, even climate change deniers will be forced to acknowledge it.

Lastly... Titley said he met with the Salem Statesman Journal editorial board. I hope they took as many notes as I did. And then will decide to join other newspapers who refuse to publish letters to the editor from global warming deniers. 

The Statesman Journal does this a lot -- publish anti-scientific rants that have zero credibility. Would the SJ print letters claiming the Earth is flat or gravity doesn't exist? I doubt it. So it shouldn't give global warming deniers a forum to express their craziness. 

Republican denial of global warming makes me hate the GOP

Progressive Democratic me actually is a pretty moderate guy.

I was raised by a very conservative mother. I grew up reading Bill Buckley and National Review. I have right-leaning friends. As a long-time Oregonian I fondly recall our state's Governor Tom McCall, along with Senators Mark Hatfield and Bob Packwood -- Republicans.

I can forgive today's GOP for taking misguided stands on the Affordable Care Act, immigration reform, and other domestic issues. I can accept their hawkishness on Iran, the Palestinian issue, and other foreign policy matters.

But there is one thing that makes me freaking angry when I hear Republicans spout off about it: denial of the scientific consensus that global warming is happening; humans are responsible for climate change; and the consequences of doing nothing will be catastrophic.

The GOP cannot be allowed to wreck this planet for future generations. It's that simple: CANNOT. 

I'm fine with political game-playing, horse-trading, and other forms of the usual Washington D.C. bullshit. I've got a high tolerance for politicans throwing their weight around after an election victory like the GOP enjoyed in the 2014 midterms. 

However...

I'm infuriated by "Republicans Vow to Fight E.P.A. and Approve Keystone Pipeline." 

The new Republican Congress is headed for a clash with the White House over two ambitious Environmental Protection Agency regulations that are the heart of President Obama’s climate change agenda.

Senator Mitch McConnell, the next majority leader, has already vowed to fight the rules, which could curb planet-warming carbon pollution but ultimately shut down coal-fired power plants in his native Kentucky. Mr. McConnell and other Republicans are, in the meantime, stepping up their demands that the president approve construction of the Keystone XL pipeline to carry petroleum from Canadian oil sands to refineries on the Gulf Coast.

I'm outraged by "China Tries to Save Earth; Republicans Furious." 

In a surprise announcement, the United States and China, which combine to produce nearly half of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions, struck a deal to reduce their emissions. The U.S., which has already pledged to reduce its emissions by 17 percent below 2005 levels by 2020, now promises to reduce them by 26 to 28 percent by 2025. China promises to cap its emissions by no later than 2030 and to produce one- fifth of its energy from zero-emissions sources by then.

...It would be nice to think that evidence like today’s pact would at least soften the GOP’s unyielding certainty about the absolute impossibility of a global climate accord. The near-total refusal of the right to reconsider its denial of the theory of anthropogenic global warming sadly suggests otherwise. James Inhofe, the incoming chairman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee and a fervent climate science skeptic, has quickly dismissed the deal as a “hollow and not believable" and a “non-binding charade.”

Political and religious craziness is one thing. Anti-scientific craziness that threatens the ability of humans to live safe, happy, and prosperous lives, not only now but for many, many generations to come -- that cannot be tolerated.

I am an extremist when it comes to standing up against this sort of Republican insanity. Take all the money you want from the Koch Brothers and BIg Oil. But GOP, you can't be allowed to drag this country, and indeed our entire planet, into an environmental hell hole. 

I'm confident that a majority of Americans would agree with me that keeping the Earth habitable for humanity is Job #1.

If the GOP doesn't realize this, their 2014 election victory is going to backfire on them big time.

A variety of polls show that a majority of American voters now believe that climate change is occurring, are worried about it, and support candidates who back policies to stop it. In particular, polls show that majorities of Hispanics, young people and unmarried women — the voters who were central to Mr. Obama’s victories in 2008 and 2012 — support candidates who back climate change policy.

Coffee and naps. Blend them, says science.

This is amazingly wonderful news. I love to drink coffee. I love to take naps. I'd always thought the two were incompatible. But they aren't! 

"Scientists agree: Coffee naps are better than coffee or naps alone."

Sweet.

Climate change is the big job-killer, not EPA carbon regulations

It was an interesting juxtaposition of truth-telling and fear-mongering.

Sunday night my wife and I watched the most recent Cosmos episode, which was about global climate change. Scary scientific conclusions, as recapped by the LA Times.

Here's the thing: Nature doesn't care about your politics, or what you want to be true. It just does its thing according to the well-established rules described by science. We ignore reality at our peril.

The sharp rise since the late 19th century means that the average global temperature is rising, with some pretty devastating consequences for our environment. Melting ice caps, rising sea levels, heat waves, record droughts, severe storms, mass extinctions — this is the legacy we're leaving to future generations, unless we find the collective will to do something about it and become better stewards of our planetary home.

Then on Monday the Environmental Protection Agency announced new regulations on existing power plants to curb the carbon pollution that is causing global warming. They're market-friendly and required by law.  

But climate change deniers freaked out, predictably, saying the regulations would lead to the loss of many jobs. They ignored the fact that the coal industry has been losing jobs for a long time -- down more than half since 1985.

Plus, renewable energy is a growth industry. Coal is on its way out. It's an outmoded way of producing electricity. It's good for both the planet and the American economy to wean ourselves off of coal as soon as possible.

Fortunately quite a few corporations aren't buying the U.S. Chamber of Commerce bullshit. 

Days before President Obama’s EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy announced sweeping new rules to limit the amount of carbon pollution that existing power plants can dump into the atmosphere, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce released a report blasting the then-unreleased regulations as certain to raise electricity prices, kill jobs, and slow the economy.

But leading climate-friendly members of [the] Chamber don’t want to be associated with its anti-climate report. Several member companies, contacted by ThinkProgress, declined to endorse the Chamber’s efforts against the administration’s move to address a direct cause of climate change.

Good for them. This is a sound decision, from both a scientific and business standpoint. Voters strongly support the new carbon pollution standards. Just as with gay marriage, it isn't smart for a company to be on the wrong side of history.

Reality can't be argued with in the long-term. Eventually truth triumphs over fiction. Global warming is real. Anyone who watched Neil deGrasse Tyson explain the science of it in the last Cosmos episode should understand this. 

Like I said before, scary stuff. Tyson said:

We just can't seem to stop burning up all those buried trees from way back in the carboniferous age, in the form of coal, and the remains of ancient plankton, in the form of oil and gas. If we could, we'd be home free climate wise.

Instead, we're dumping carbon dioxide into the atmosphere at a rate the Earth hasn't seen since the great climate catastrophes of the past, the ones that led to mass extinctions. We just can't seem to break our addiction to the kinds of fuel that will bring back a climate last seen by the dinosaurs, a climate that will drown our coastal cities and wreak havoc on the environment and our ability to feed ourselves.

All the while, the glorious sun pours immaculate free energy down upon us, more than we will ever need. Why can't we summon the ingenuity and courage of the generations that came before us? The dinosaurs never saw that asteroid coming. What's our excuse?

Well, greed. Ignorance. Religious fundamentalism. Selfishness. 

These aren't good excuses. Future generations will look back at the early 21st century and wonder how so many people could have been so blind to the reality of impending climate doom. 

Hopefully we will avert catastrophe. The EPA's power plant regulations are a step in the right direction. But we need to do more. A lot more.

Brian Greene makes physics Wow! at Willamette U talk

Hugely encouraging, given how scientifically illiterate so many of our nation's citizens are (I'm talking about you, global warming skeptics, evolution deniers, and anti-vaccine fanatics)...

Smith Auditorium was almost completely filled for Brian Greene's talk at Willamette University tonight.

Greene is one of the most gifted popularizers of science, today's Carl Sagan in many ways. He also is a highly respected scientist in his own right, being a theoretical physicist and string theorist.

My wife and I had seen him on television numerous times. I've read all of his books. But seeing him in person made us realize what a Wow! guy he is. Energetic. Humorous. Entertaining. Personable.

Greene is a great salesman for science.

He makes science sound wonderfully exciting, a never-ending adventure into the unknown. I loved how he began his talk by giving examples of how scientists just go for it, dare to dream new ideas, explore fresh territory.

I already was familiar with much of what he talked about, science-wise.

Newton's laws of motion that modeled how gravity works. Einstein's relativity theory that modeled both how and why gravity works. Discoveries of a universe that not only is expanding, but accelerating. Black holes. Big bang inflationary expansion. Multiverse theories of continual big bangs fashioning countless other universes.

But Greene explained this stuff so clearly, it was like hearing about it for the first time. And when the Q&A session came, how Greene handled questions from students young and older was even more impressive.

I had some questions of my own. I was sitting in an aisle seat.

However, I could see that everybody lined up at the microphone near the stage on my side of the auditorium was about half my height and 1/6 my age. The math didn't look good for me. I feared that I'd look like an old man taking question-line space that could have been filled by the cute science-literate elementary school girls who wanted to ask Greene something.

So I sat in my seat and listened. Good choice. Because several of the girls got Greene to talk about issues that were close to what I was wondering.

Like...

If the universe is accelerating, with galaxies moving farther and farther apart at greater than the speed of light (expanding space can do this), which means that billions of years from now scientists of the future will only be aware of a few "island" galaxies near them, missing the reality of the thickly populated universe we know about, why should we feel that how we see things now isn't also a misguided cosmic viewpoint -- slanted by a similar time-bound perspective?

Greene's answer, basically, was that we can't be sure we are seeing reality clearly. All we can do is seek the truth as forcefully as possible. His optimism was palpable. I have no doubt that he deeply inspired the aspiring scientists in the auditorium.

Yet my wife and I, along with two friends who also came to the lecture, stood on the State Street sidewalk after his talk and came up with some skeptical questions that we dearly wished it had been possible to ask of Greene.

For example...

We wondered whether the laws of physics are truly as objectively real as Greene implied. Meaning, he gave example after example of how mathematical formulas are able to mirror observations of the universe. Einstein's relativity theory precisely predicted how light bends around a massive object, the sun.

But the mathematics and the observations are both products of the human brain/mind. So even though most mathematicians view the equations that describe laws of nature to exist in some sort of objective Platonic realm of reality, I wondered how beings (like space aliens) with a very different form of consciousness would look upon the cosmos.

Here we get into quasi-Matrix notions.

What if the amazing match between sensory observations of the cosmos, and mathematical descriptions of it, is partly (or completely) caused by both the observations and mathematical descriptions being the product of human brains/minds?

I admit this sounds weird.

Yet Greene encouraged us to think outside the box. My philosophical problem with modern-day, or any-day, science doesn't concern its ability to discern truths about reality. It is whether these truths exist objectively "out there" in the universe, or reflect the "in here" of human consciousness.

Probably there is no way to tell -- until we can communicate either with an advanced alien civilization, or a super-smart artificial intelligence. Would these other forms of consciousness, who had their own understanding of reality, agree with our scientific truths, our descriptions of the laws of nature?

This question doesn't really bear upon the validity of modern science, which is far superior to other ways of trying to comprehend reality, such as religion. But I love the fact that it can be asked. Nothing is sacred in science. Not even the scientific method. Or the most widely accepted scientific knowledge.

Which is why Brian Greene's talk was so inspiring. He urged us to pursue a truth-seeking journey, not a destination. A fluid ever-questioning process, not answers set in illusory stone.  

Human-caused global warming continues as predicted

Thankfully, the influence of global warming deniers appears to be shrinking steadily. Reality has a way of weeding out those who fail to respect it.

Even though this can take a while, truthful facts win out in the end.

But fossil fuel industry-funded deniers, aided and abetted by anti-science media outlets like Fox News, continue to distort the disturbing truth of how humans are warming the Earth's climate much more rapidly than nature has ever done it on her/its own.

For example, when I briefly channel surf onto right-wing talk radio, fairly frequently I hear that "global warming has stopped."

That's bullshit, of course. Yet lies often have a modicum of truth sprinkled over the top of them to make the falsehood easier to swallow.

Climate Progress has a great graph that shows how the B.S. is promulgated in the post, "As Scientists Predicted, Global Warming Continues." (You'll probably need to click on the image below to see the animation; or click on the link and scroll down to the graph.)

Here's the explanation of how the "skeptics" are twisting the truth as known by reputable climate scientists. 

One often hears the statement in the media that global warming stopped in 1998, or that there has been no global warming for the past 16 years. Why pick 16 years? Why not some nice round number like 20 years? Or better yet, 30 years, since the climate is generally defined as the average weather experienced over a period of 30 years or longer?

Temperatures at Earth’s surface undergo natural, decades-long warming and cooling trends, related to the La Niña/El Niño cycle and the 11-year sunspot cycle. The reason one often hears the year 1998 used as a base year to measure global temperature trends is that this is a cherry-picked year.

An extraordinarily powerful El Niño event that was the strongest on record brought about a temporary increase in surface ocean temperatures over a vast area of the tropical Pacific that year, helping boost global surface temperatures to the highest levels on record (global temperatures were warmer in both 2005 and 2010, but not by much.) But in the years from 2005 – 2012, La Niña events have been present for at least a portion of every single year, helping keep Earth’s surface relatively cool.

Thus, if one draws a straight-line fit of global surface temperatures from 1998 to 2012, a climate trend showing little global warming results. If one picks any year prior to 1998, or almost any year after 1998, a global warming trend does result. The choice of 1998 is a deliberate abuse of statistics in an attempt to manipulate people into drawing a false conclusion on global temperature trends. One of my favorite examples of this manipulation of statistics is shown an animated graph called “The Escalator”, created by skepticalscience.com (Figure 1).

There's another highly informative bit of truth-telling in this post: a short video that shows clearly how human-caused global warming continues on unabated, once the transitory effects of volcanic activity and El Nino are taken out of the long term temperature trend.

 

Oregonian story downplays global warming science

Yesterday I emailed a reporter for the Portland Oregonian that writing a story about global warming and including a mention about how some are skeptical the planet is getting hotter is akin to ending a story about a fossil discovery with "but some scientists doubt evolution is real."

That would be absurd. Evolution is a scientific truth. So is global warming. There's no doubt among the vast majority of reputable researchers in either field about these facts. 

So it bothered me when the reporter, Scott Learn, tossed in this sentence near the end of a story about how a national assessment shows the Pacific Northwest will be adversely affected by global warming.

Global warming skeptics note that temperatures in the nation and in the Northwest have remained fairly flat since 1998, a hot year, despite increased greenhouse gas emissions.

Well, creationist crazies also doubt that transitional fossils exist, but they do.

Global warming crazies are equally deluded when they seize on some irrelevant aspect of the vast corpus of scientific evidence supporting human-caused climate change and claim this proves their otherwise unprovable point.

In my email I told Learn:

There simply is no place for "balanced" reporting in this area. As a reporter, you aren't reporting the truth if you imply that there is some scientific debate over the reality of global warming. 

l appreciated the reporter's prompt reply, where he acknowledged that my point about the limitations of short-term data is a good one. For sure.

That's why I can't understand why Learn mentioned the 1998-2012 time span at all, especially since this is the new battleline global warming skeptics have retreated to in their fight against the facts -- which keep on winning.

Last month Phil Slait, the Bad Astronomy blogger, wrote a great piece for Slate: "Doubling Down on Climate Change Denial." It starts off with:

Oh, those wacky professional climate change deniers! Once again, they’ve banded together a passel of people, 90 percent of whom aren’t even climatologists, and had them sign a nearly fact-free opinion piece in the Financial Post, claiming global warming isn’t real. It’s an astonishing example of nonsense so ridiculous I would run out of synonyms for “bilge” before adequately describing it.

The Op-Ed is directed to U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon, who has recently, and thankfully, been vocal about the looming environmental catastrophe of global warming. The deniers’ letter takes him to task for this, but doesn’t come within a glancing blow of reality.

The letter itself is based on a single claim. So let’s be clear: If that claim is wrong, so is the rest of the letter.

Guess what? That claim is wrong. So blatantly wrong, in fact, it’s hard to imagine anyone could write it with a straight face. It says:

“The U.K. Met Office recently released data showing that there has been no statistically significant global warming for almost 16 years.”

This is simply, completely, and utterly false.

Let's absorb that scientific saying again: "simply, completely, and utterly false." Yet that falsehood was repeated in the Oregonian's story about how global warming will affect the Northwest. It shouldn't have been.

Here's how the United Kingdom's official climate researchers responded to the false claim of no statistically significant global warming for almost 16 years.

The linear trend from August 1997 (in the middle of an exceptionally strong El Nino) to August 2012 (coming at the tail end of a double-dip La Nina) is about 0.03°C/decade, amounting to a temperature increase of 0.05°C over that period, but equally we could calculate the linear trend from 1999, during the subsequent La Nina, and show a more substantial warming.

As we’ve stressed before, choosing a starting or end point on short-term scales can be very misleading. Climate change can only be detected from multi-decadal timescales due to the inherent variability in the climate system. If you use a longer period from HadCRUT4 the trend looks very different. For example, 1979 to 2011 shows 0.16°C/decade (or 0.15°C/decade in the NCDC dataset, 0.16°C/decade in GISS). Looking at successive decades over this period, each decade was warmer than the previous – so the 1990s were warmer than the 1980s, and the 2000s were warmer than both. Eight of the top ten warmest years have occurred in the last decade.

Over the last 140 years global surface temperatures have risen by about 0.8ºC. However, within this record there have been several periods lasting a decade or more during which temperatures have risen very slowly or cooled. The current period of reduced warming is not unprecedented and 15 year long periods are not unusual.

Now, I realize that newspaper reporters are overworked and underpaid.

But it only takes a few minutes a day to follow the latest science on global warming through Climate Progress and other reputable scientific sources. If I can do that, Scott Learn and other reporters who write about this subject can also do it.

Knowing the difference between responsible scientific difference of opinion and climate change denying bullshit is key for anyone reporting on global warming. It's highly irresponsible to pretend there's a genuine controversy among climatologists about whether the planet is warming because of humans.

There isn't. The Earth is getting hotter. Because of greenhouse gases. End of story.

Yet Learn sent me a link to an earlier piece he'd written in April 2012, "Global warming hiatus in recent years spurs skepticism."

Now, 2012 turned out to be the hottest year in United States history. Even Oregon, which along with Washington missed most of the heat that scorched almost all of the other states, had its 13th hottest year in the last 118 years.

The skeptics quoted by Learn in his stories are simply wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong. They shouldn't be given any print space in Oregon's largest newspaper. Or any newspaper, except on the opinon and comics pages. 

Chuck Wiese, for example, is utterly unqualified to opine on global warming. He's a meteorologist with a B.A. degree. He's an accomplice of right-wing radio's Lars Larson, as I wrote about in "Lars Larson's lies about global warming."

I survived ten minutes or so of Larson a few days ago, but just barely. The combined scientific ignorance of Lars and a global warming-denying sidekick he had on, Chuck Wiese, was astounding.

And intensely disturbing.

Three years ago I criticized Larson for joking about how global warming is going to be good for Oregon. He's still up to his head-in-the-sand tricks. Now his brain-dead theory is that the Earth is cooling rapidly, so if big bad government limits our nation's carbon footprint, people are going to freeze to death when their furnace fuel is rationed.

Or something like that.

It was hard to follow the logic of Larson and Wiese, since they didn't use any in their blathering about how climate change/global warming science is a fraud.

I'll close with some opinionating which, unlike Wiese and other global warming skeptics, I'll admit rests only on my own subjective impression.

The Oregonian seems to have changed, both editorially and journalistically. I'm a long-time daily reader of the Oregonian. I used to view the newspaper as a highly credible news source, with a moderately liberal-leaning editorial stance.

Now the opinion pages have gotten much more conservative after the arrival of editor Erik Lukens, whose previous job was with the way-right Bend Bulletin. And I sense a similar change of tone in the news section. Perhaps not to the same degree as in the Oregonian editorials, but noticeable nonetheless.

My "conspiracy theory," which, again, I'll admit as such, is that the Oregonian (like most newspapers) is having a tough time making money in this increasingly digital age. It seems reasonable that Oregonian executives would conclude that expanding readership is necessary. 

Which means looking beyond fact-based liberals/progressives, and feeding right-wingers some unscientific, evidence-free red meat on both the editorial and news pages of the sort that excites Fox News viewers. 

Hey, I could be wrong. I just keep reading stuff in Oregonian stories and opinion pieces that make me think, "Wow, that doesn't make any sense." 

Like, there's a possibility global warming has stopped because of recent temperature data. Huh? Recently the U.K.'s "Guardian" newspaper editorialized, "Now no one can deny the world is getting warmer."

Except for a few crazies, who shouldn't be quoted in the Portland Oregonian. I wish Scott Learn and other reporters would take this excerpt from the Guardian editorial to heart:

From this perspective, it might be tempting to sneer at the US over its response to the challenge of climate change. Britain has little to be smug about, however, a point that was demonstrated last week by media coverage of the Met Office's updated forecast of likely global warming over the next five years.

In revising downwards, albeit slightly, its previous expectation for temperature rises from now until 2017, the Met Office found itself at the midst of a PR shambles. In their dozens, climate change sceptics charged forwards to claim this data showed that global warming has stopped, a completely misleading suggestion that was not properly challenged by journalists.

"New Scientist" says Obama will win. I love science.

Ah, I love science. Especially when it supports my political leanings. 

This week's issue of New Scientist (September 29, 2012) has an opinion piece by Jim Giles, a consultant for the magazine. It's title and subtitle:

No contest. Don't believe the US presidential opinion polls. Barring a political earthquake, Barack Obama will be re-elected at a canter, says Jim Giles.

Hey, makes sense to me. Here's some excerpts:

FROM tabloids and broadsheets to left-leaning blogs and conservative talk shows, the US media has been united on one point in recent months: the presidential election is too tight to call. 

...But it takes just a few clicks to go from that last article to one that tells a very different story - one much more in keeping with what science tells us about the election. The New York Times hosts FiveThirtyEight, a blog by statistician Nate Silver dedicated to crunching electoral numbers. It gives the Republican challenger Mitt Romney a 1-in-4 chance of victory. Over at PredictWise, another source of political forecasts, Romney's odds are only a shade better. The race isn't close or razor-thin or dependent on advertising. It is President Obama's to lose - something that readers are rarely told.

Why the discrepancy? To answer that question, think about what polls actually are. They are often taken as an indication of who will win the election. But polls only provide a snapshot, often with a large margin of error, of who would win if the election took place today. That's very different from what we really care about, which is the candidate most likely to win the real thing in November. That's a forecast. It's what FiveThirtyEight and PredictWise provide, and it's a more complex beast than a poll.

...If the models are robust, and their predictions strongly in favour of Obama, why are we being told that the race is a dead heat? I think it is partly a cultural issue.

...The hurly-burly of day-to-day politics is filled with dramatic events, like the recent leaked video of Romney talking in unvarnished terms about voters he cannot hope to win over. These events make the race feel like a roller-coaster ride.

The truth, as revealed by the science, is much more prosaic. Obama is way ahead and has been for ages. The meat and drink of daily political reporting - party conventions, gaffes, attack ads - have a limited and often passing impact. That's not to say that an unforeseen event couldn't put Romney in the White House. But it would have to be something huge, because studies of previous elections show outcomes depend far more on fundamental factors such as employment rates.

...The race is not tight, and the only honest approach is to say so.

Not a big surprise: women are more moral than men

Roger Steare, a "corporate philosopher," has gotten 60,000 people across 200 countries to take a Moral DNA Test. 

One conclusion: women are more moral than men. Which to me, is just about as surprising as a researcher concluding that wolves are more dangerous than kittens.

Still, science is to be respected, even when what it tells us agrees with common sense.

The study, which measured responses to questions about honesty and competency, showed females are more likely to make decisions based on how they impact on others.

It also suggest the moral compass of both men and women alters with age, become less obedient but more able to use reason, until they reach a "peak of our intellectual and moral powers" in early 60s, according to a leading philosopher.

Ah, I especially agree with that peak part, being in my early sixties myself.

I wasn't aware that I was at the peak of my intellectual and moral powers, perhaps because my mind doesn't work so well these days and I don't really give a shit about lots of stuff anymore, including the status of my moral compass.

For a more entertaining analysis of the research than The Telegraph provided, check out Jezebel's "Science Proves Women Over Thirty are Better Than Everybody."

A survey involving 60,000 volunteers from 200 countries has found that overall, women tend to be more moral creatures than men, and that morality starts to tick upward once women hit 30. So, women in your thirties and older, feel free to take a break from feeling pressured to marry and reproduce and be perfect at your job and have a perfect 22 year old body and a face so youthful that it looks like it was grafted from baby ass skin and give yourselves a pat on the back. You win. Battle of the sexes, over.

...Steare also found that men tend to be bigger jerks than women, as men make decisions based on their own immediate best interests and women tend to consider other people's feelings before acting. So, while a woman might feel hesitant to eat the last of the ice cream, a man might have no qualms about polishing off half a pint of Haagen Dazs or, better yet, leaving one spoonful left and just putting the nearly-empty container back in the freezer so he doesn't have to walk all the way over to the garbage can and throw it away. Who run the world? Boys. Because they're willing to be mean.

l basically agree.

I took the Moral DNA Test and was surprised that it didn't come up with a report saying simply, "Brian, you're a jerk." I tried to be as honest as I could. Much of the time I found myself answering questions in a way that made me think, "Geez, I'm really not a very nice guy." 

But then, who is? And would I really want to be much more moral? If I was much different from who I am now, I wouldn't really be me. (Assuming there is a "me" at all; neuroscience and Buddhism suggest not.)

I turned out to be an Enforcer. 

Enforcers are the people we rely on to make sure that everyone obeys the rules. They help to stop crooks and cheats, and of course ourselves from doing the wrong thing. They'll look up rule 3, sub-section 7 to tell us what's right. If the rules don't tell us what's right, then they'll think of the principle or spirit behind it. Finally, they might remember that everyone is human and fallible and if you're lucky, might let you off with a warning not to do it again. About 15% of adults are Enforcers.

Well, that doesn't sound right to me. Maybe the Moral DNA Test reveals more about myself than I'm aware of, though. 

Heartland Institute compares global warming believers to "murderers"

As if we needed more proof that anti-science global warming deniers are wackos, here it is:

Well, when facts, reality, and 98% of the world's leading climate scientists aren't on your side, it looks like the global warming deniers are reduced to disgusting fearmongering and personal insults. Here's what part of the Heartland Institute's press release announcing the billboard campaign said:

May 3, 2012 – Billboards in Chicago paid for by The Heartland Institute point out that some of the world’s most notorious criminals say they “still believe in global warming” – and ask viewers if they do, too.

Heartland’s first digital billboard – along the inbound Eisenhower Expressway (I-290) in Maywood – is the latest effort by the free-market think tank to inform the public about what it views as the collapsing scientific, political, and public support for the theory of man-made global warming. It is also reminding viewers of the questionable ethics of global warming’s most prominent proponents.

“The most prominent advocates of global warming aren’t scientists,” said Heartland’s president, Joseph Bast. “They are Charles Manson, a mass murderer; Fidel Castro, a tyrant; and Ted Kaczynski, the Unabomber. Global warming alarmists include Osama bin Laden and James J. Lee (who took hostages inside the headquarters of the Discovery Channel in 2010).

Huh? Charles Manson, Fidel Castro, and Osama Bin Laden are/were "global warming's most prominent proponents"? What planet are you spreading your lies on, Heartland Institute?

Al Gore. Barack Obama. The Dalai Lama. Pope Benedict XVI. Desmond Tutu. The Heartland Institute is associating these men, who all accept the truth of human-caused global warming, with the "world's most notorious criminals." 

Andrew Sullivan tells it like it is:

In some ways, this is an almost perfect illustration of what has happened to the "right." A refusal to acknowledge scientific reality; and a brutalist style of public propaganda that focuses entirely on guilt by the most extreme association. 

...Mann and Ornstein are correct. Large sections of the American right are now close to insane as well as depraved. 

The Guardian's Environment Blog says:

The Heartland Institute, a Chicago-based rightwing thinktank notorious for promoting climate scepticism, has launched quite possibly one of the most ill-judged poster campaigns in the history of ill-judged poster campaigns.

And Climate Progress writes:

The Heartland Institute has launched one of the most offensive billboard campaigns in U.S. history. The Chicago-based anti-science think tank is comparing all those who accept climate science — and the journalists who report on it accurately — to Charles Manson, the Unabomber, and Osama Bin Laden.

Arctic warming could be cause of NW cool spell

It's been freakin' cold this spring of 2012 in the Great Pacific Northwest. Also, rainy. March saw the most rainfall ever in Portland. I think here in Salem we had the third rainiest March on record.

Today I went for an afternoon dog walk in 45 degree weather. Driving home from my Tai Chi class tonight, my car thermometer "dinged" with a 37 degrees nearing-freezing alert. 

Global warming deniers seize upon any unusual cold spell as evidence that Al Gore is wrong; global warming is a fraud perpetrated by the United Nations One World Order and complicit climatologists; weird record-breaking weather is just doing what the weather does -- be changeable.

Here's the scientific truth: "Arctic Warming Favors Extreme Prolonged Weather Events 'Such as Drought, Flooding, Cold Spells, and Heat Waves." 

By showing that Arctic climate change is no longer just a problem for the polar bear, a new study may finally dispel the view that what happens in the Arctic, stays in the Arctic.

The study, by Jennifer Francis of Rutgers University and Stephen Vavrus of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, ties rapid Arctic climate change to high-impact, extreme weather events in the U.S. and Europe.

The study shows that by changing the temperature balance between the Arctic and mid-latitudes, rapid Arctic warming is altering the course of the jet stream, which steers weather systems from west to east around the hemisphere. The Arctic has been warming about twice as fast as the rest of the Northern Hemisphere, due to a combination of human emissions of greenhouse gases and unique feedbacks built into the Arctic climate system.

The jet stream, the study says, is becoming “wavier,” with steeper troughs and higher ridges. Weather systems are progressing more slowly, raising the chances for long-duration extreme events, like droughts, floods, and heat waves.

...In addition, the study also mentions jet stream configurations that led to heavy snows in the Northeast and Europe during recent winters. Such events are also “consistent” with the study’s findings, according to the paper.

A map included with the blog post shows why our relatives in the mid-West have been gloating about marvelous warm weather this spring (close to 80 degrees, or even above, I believe), while we've been telling them "it's still cold and rainy Oregon."

Surface temperature departures from average during the March heat wave. Credit: NOAA/ESRL.

Blue colors are colder than average in March 2012. Darker the blue, the more from the long-term average. Red, orange, yellow, and green show March temperatures warmer than average, with red, orange, and yellow being the warmest.

So most of the United States has been basking while the West Coast states have been "enjoying" (if that's the right word, which to me, it isn't) cooler than normal temperatures. Note that western Oregon and Washington had the largest deviation in the cool direction of anywhere in the U.S.

Lucky us. But the weather will change. That's what weather does.

However, with global warming becoming steadily stronger, this study says that as the Arctic warms faster than the world as a whole, changes in the jet stream are going to cause even weirder weather in the future. 

The study contains a stark warning about future weather patterns, given projections showing that Arctic climate change is likely to accelerate in coming years. “As the Arctic sea ice cover continues to disappear and the snow cover melts ever earlier over vast regions of Eurasia and North America, it is expected that large-scale circulation patterns throughout the northern hemisphere will become increasingly influenced by Arctic amplification,” the study reports.

In other words, rapid Arctic warming is expected to exert a growing influence on the weather far beyond the Arctic Circle, for many years to come.

Cool real-time wind map of United States

Thanks to Climate Progress, I was turned on to what's described as the "coolest wind map ever."

Well, since I've only seen one wind map in my life -- the one they're talking about -- I'll have to take the scientists' word on that.

Indeed, it's intriguing to see a countrywide flowing view of what the wind is doing today.

The map creators advise using the Chrome browser to view the map, which I use, but even so I discovered that after that web page was open for a few minutes, my MacBook's fan went noisily on. Checking the Mac activity monitor, Chrome was sucking up a lot of processor juice. 

So if your computer slows down after viewing the map, close that browser tab.

Eugene girls sue Kitzhaber over climate change inaction

Here's four big Green Thumbs-Up from my wife and me to Eugene residents Olivia Chernaik, 11, and Kelsey Juliana, 15. The Register Guard reports:

...with the help of their mothers, Lisa Chernaik and Catia Juliana, [the girls] filed a lawsuit against the state of Oregon and Gov. John Kitzhaber, accusing them of violating their duties to uphold the public trust and to protect the state’s atmosphere, water, land, fishery and wildlife resources from the impacts of climate change.

Excellent! The lawsuit is being brought under the aegis of iMatter, a group that encourages kids to get involved in the fight to preserve their future from the very real threat of global warming.

 

Pretty darn simple. Too bad so many adults don't grasp these truths.

Like a good share of the membership of the Oregon chapter of the American Meteorological Society, who, bizarrely, have their heads firmly in the sand of global warming denial. The genuine scientists in this bunch must be hugely embarrassed by the antics of their anti-scientific colleagues. 

Earth to the Oregon Chapter: your parent group, the American Meteorological Society, strongly affirms the reality of human-caused global warming, as does every reputable scientific organization in the world. 

Despite the uncertainties noted above, there is adequate evidence from observations and interpretations of climate simulations to conclude that the atmosphere, ocean, and land surface are warming; that humans have significantly contributed to this change; and that further climate change will continue to have important impacts on human societies, on economies, on ecosystems, and on wildlife through the 21st century and beyond.

Focusing on the next 30 years, convergence among emission scenarios and model results suggest strongly that increasing air temperatures will reduce snowpack, shift snowmelt timing, reduce crop production and rangeland fertility, and cause continued melting of the ice caps and sea level rise.

It's embarassing to Oregon that we have so many adults, including professional meteorologists, who don't understand the science of global warming. Hopefully they'll learn from the children and grow up, scientifically.

Science supports a progressive political agenda

Nice! 

The voice that speaks inside my head couldn't do anything but agree with Alex Rosenberg's conclusion near the end of his book, "The Atheist's Guide to Reality:" modern science leads to a left-wing ideology.

Like a lot else that Rosenberg says in his provocative book, this statement was jarring. Usually the scientific method is considered to be above politics. Scientists deal with objective facts about the world, while politicians mess around with subjective values.

Yet Rosenberg perusasively backed up his words. This pleased me, given that I'm both a progressive and an admirer of science. I've always figured there were good reasons for liberal political positions. Learning how they are based in reality helps explain why Republicans have become so anti-science.

The core fact that connects science with progressive politics is determinism.

Now, lots of people don't accept that almost everything in existence is under the sway of natural causes and effects. They either believe some supernatural force steps in from time to time to make stuff happen (miracles, divine grace), or that we humans have free will to do what we want, even if other entities don't.

However, there's no demonstrable evidence of either the supernatural or free will, which leads Rosenberg to say this ("scientism" is how he speaks of a scientific world view):

The key to scientism's radical political agenda is its commitment to determinism. Above the level of the smallest numbers of fermions and bosons, the universe is almost totally deterministic. That means that everything we do is just the consequence of the laws of nature and events in the distant past.

It's not up to us what went on before we were born, and we have no choice about what the laws of nature are. Therefore, none of the present and future consequences of the ways the laws worked with the past to bring about the present are up to us. That includes all of our actions and everyone else's too. So no free will anywhere.

This means that rich people -- the 1%, in today's parlance -- don't have a moral justification for refusing to share their wealth with the other 99%. They didn't earn or deserve their riches, because nothing in life ever is earned or deserved.

Admittedly, this way of looking at the world takes some getting used to.

It flies in the face of our intuitive feeling, "I can do what I want." Yet I started off this post by saying I couldn't help but agree with Rosenberg: given the laws of nature and the experiences that have shaped my brain, how I reacted to his statements about science and left-wing ideology was fully determined.

As is how you react to what you're reading in this blog post. As is how a billionaire came to have the net worth that he or she enjoys. As is how a poor person ended up without enough money to live on.

Humans appear to be hard-wired to prefer fairness, equity, and cooperation over unfairness, inequity, and conflict. Rosenberg describes how natural selection led Homo sapiens to become such a species. Given that our ancestors couldn't compete physically with larger, tougher animals on the plains of Africa, working together cooperatively was key to our evolving into the dominant mammals we are now.

So combine determinism and a core morality that values fairness, equity, and cooperation, and you get a science-based progressive political agenda.

Inequalities, even large ones, between people are morally permissible, perhaps even morally required, when these inequalities are earned. It's because you earned your rewards in life that you deserve them. That's why you have a right to them and why taking them away is wrong. It is this part of core morality that Ayn Rand objectivists, libertarians, and other right-wingers tap into when they insist that taxation is slavery.

The trouble with such arguments is that nothing is earned, nothing is deserved. Even if there really were moral rights to the fruit of our freely exercised abilities and talents, these talents and abilities are never freely acquired or exercised. Just as your innate and acquired intelligence and abilities are unearned, so also are your ambitions, along with the discipline, the willingness to train, and other traits that have to be combined with our talents and abilities to produce anything worthwhile at all.

...So, scientism plus core morality turn out to be redistributionist and egalitarian, even when combined with free-market economics. No wonder Republicans in the United States have such a hard time with science.

In a popular You Tube video, Elizabeth Warren (who is running for Senator in Massachusetts against Scott Brown) made a similar argument. At about the one minute mark she says, "There is nobody in this country who got rich on his own, nobody."

 

Very true. Scientifically true.

(My previous posts about Rosenberg's book, on my other blog, are here and here.)

Republicans are seeking an unscientific America

Oh, yeah! Right on! That's what my mind screamed when I opened the mailbox a few days ago and saw the headline on the cover of New Scientist: "Unscientific America -- A dangerous retreat from reason."

So true.

It's mostly Republicans who are trying to lead us back to the Dark Ages of irrationality, even though a New Scientist editorial on this subject tries (semi-successfully) to spread the anti-science blame.

Even today, as China and India flex their muscles, the world still looks to the US for leadership.

This is especially true in science. A nation founded on the Enlightenment has melded massive investment in research, an open door to the world's best minds and unparalleled entrepreneurism to become a powerhouse of innovation. Leaf through a typical issue of New Scientist, and you will witness American ingenuity on almost every page.

This is why the tone and content of some recent political debate in the US is so disquieting. When candidates for the highest office in the land appear to spurn reason, embrace anecdote over scientific evidence, and even portray scientists as the perpetrators of a massive hoax, there is reason to worry. Fortunately, there is no reason to panic.

On issues including climate change, evolution and public health, it may seem as if the forces of anti-science are in the ascendancy. If you look through the lens of history or apply a scientific approach, however, logical explanations for these apparently perverse positions emerge (see "Science in America: Decline and fall" and "Science in America: Selling the truth").

What also becomes clear is that no political party has a monopoly on unscientific thinking. While the most alarming statements may be coming from Republican quarters today, don't forget that it was a three-time Democratic presidential candidate who led the attack on evolution at the 1925 Scopes Monkey Trial.

Well, when the best example of Democratic unscientific thinking dates from 86 years ago, this shows how modern attacks on science are almost universally from the Republican side of the political spectrum.

It's deeply bizarre, how every G.O.P. presidential candidate other than Jon Huntsman (who has been punished in the polls for his defense of science) is unwilling to embrace the reality of global warming, evolution, and other scientific truths.

The first article in the New Scientist special report on Unscientific America is by Shawn Lawrence Otto.
Download Science in America - Decline and fall 

It's depressing reading, especially since we're faced with the near certainty of Republicans nominating an anti-science presidential candidate and, sadly, a decent chance of having this worshipper at the altar of irrationality elected.

The big thing we are working on now is the global warming hoax. It's all voodoo, nonsense, hokum, a hoax." So said Michele Bachmann, a candidate for the Republican nomination for president, in 2008. Bachmann also thinks that the human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine can cause mental retardation and that science classes should include creationism. "What I support is putting all science on the table and then letting students decide. I don't think it's a good idea for government to come down on one side of a scientific issue or another, when there is reasonable doubt on both sides."

Bachmann's rival, Texas governor Rick Perry, advocates biblically based abstinence-only sex education. He argues that evolution is "a theory that is out there - and it's got some gaps in it". On climate change, Perry says "the science is not settled... just because you have a group of scientists that have stood up and said here is the fact... Galileo got outvoted for a spell".

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich tells voters that embryonic stem cell research is "killing children in order to have research materials". Rising Republican star Herman Cain claims there is no scientific evidence that homosexuality is anything other than a personal choice.

Republicans diverge from anti-science politics at their peril. When leading candidate Mitt Romney said: "I believe based on what I read that the world is getting warmer... humans contribute to that", conservative radio commentator Rush Limbaugh responded with "Bye bye, nomination". Romney back-pedalled, saying, "I don't know if it's mostly caused by humans."

Former Utah governor Jon Huntsman argued that "the minute that the Republican party becomes the anti-science party, we have a huge problem". Huntsman has since been marginalised by Republican pundits.

Otto lays out reasons for the decline and fall of our once unquestioned leadership in science, then says:

These factors have combined to create an assault on science that is unprecedented in American history. Cut loose from objective truth, America's public dialogue has become one of warring opinions and policy paralysis.

In another article about how to "sell the truth," Peter Aldhous cheered me up somewhat by explaining how supporters of science can beat reality-deniers at their own game.
Download Science in America 

For example, he says that the most ardent global warming skeptics are Tea Party types. So it makes sense to have people with whom they resonate explain the climatological facts to them.

For these [Tea Party] voters, the cultural filter seems to be the idea that taking action to limit climate change means "big government" intervention in the US economy, anathema to staunch conservatives.

Hammering another nail into the coffin of the deficit [of knowledge] model, Kahan's latest survey of more than 1500 US adults indicates that far from overcoming our cultural biases, education actually strengthens them. Among those with greater numeracy and scientific literacy, opinions on climate change polarised even more strongly.

Kahan's explanation is that we have a strong interest in mirroring the views of our own cultural group. The more educated we become, he argues, the better we get at making the necessary triangulation to adopt the "correct" opinions. On issues like climate change, for most people these cultural calculations trump any attempt to make an objective assessment of the evidence.

...So who might do a better job of carrying the climate message to conservative ears? Perhaps the US military, which is worried about the security implications of climate change, or senior figures within the insurance industry, who are factoring the risk of more frequent severe weather events into their calculations.

Good ideas, but every science-admiring person in the United States has to defend objective truth against those who are attempting to substitute for it their own fantasies, opinions, and self-serving falsehoods.

Subjectivity is a big part of being human. "I like..." and "I believe..." are eminently proper attitudes which everybody is entitled to. But NOT when it comes to objective reality. That belongs to everybody. It is the common ground of humanity. No one is entitled to hijack it for their own ends.

I understand that many people want to believe that fossil fuels can be freely used with no adverse consequences. I realize that Al Gore irritates conservatives who suspect that he is making up global warming myths so a One World government can control everything and everybody. If these private irrationalities remained in individual psyches, I'd say "enjoy your fantasies."

However, reality is too important to waste. Neither the United States, nor the rest of the world, can afford to have political discourse dominated by heads-in-the-sand anti-science zealots who refuse to acknowledge facts. 

It's time to fight back. Truth has to be defended. On the back cover of Carl Sagan's book, "The Demon Haunted World," are these words. They're as true now as they were back in 1995, when the book was published.

We've arranged a global civilization in which most crucial elements profoundly depend on science and technology. We have also arranged things so that almost no one understands science and technology. This is a prescription for disaster. We might get away with it for a while, but sooner or later this combustible mixture of ignorance and power is going to blow up in our faces...

I worry that, especially as the Millenium edges nearer, pseudo-science and superstition will seem year by year more tempting, the siren song of unreason more sonorous and attractive. Where have we heard it before?

Whenever our ethnic or national prejudices are aroused, in times of scarcity, during challenges to national self-esteem or nerve, when we agonize about our diminished cosmic place and purpose, or when fanaticism is bubbling up around us -- then, habits of thought familiar from ages past reach for the controls.

The candle flame gutters. It's little pool of light trembles. Darkness gathers. The demons begin to stir.

Krauthammer is wrong about relativity being proven wrong

Whenever I watch Charles Krauthammer expressing his conservatism on Fox News, or read his right-wing newspaper columns, almost always I strongly disagree with him.

Seeing that his most recent column was about a possible discovery of faster-than-light neutrinos, which I blogged about here, I thought that maybe Charles and I would find some agreement on the common ground of science.

But no, I got as irritated with his "Gone in 60 nanoseconds" as with his overtly political pieces. Because what Krauthammer wants to say goodbye to is trust in modern science. 

Scientists at CERN, the European high-energy physics consortium, have announced the discovery of a particle that can travel faster than light.

...The implications of such a discovery are so mind-boggling, however, that these same scientists immediately requested that other labs around the world try to replicate the experiment. Something must have been wrong — some faulty measurement, some overlooked contaminant — to account for a result that, if we know anything about the universe, is impossible.

And that’s the problem. It has to be impossible because, if not, if that did happen on this Orient Express hurtling between Switzerland and Italy, then everything we know about the universe is wrong.

...But if quantum mechanics was a challenge to human sensibilities, this pesky Swiss-Italian neutrino is their undoing. It means that Einstein’s relativity — a theory of uncommon beauty upon which all of physics has been built for 100 years — is wrong. Not just inaccurate. Not just flawed. But deeply, fundamentally, indescribably wrong.

That's ridiculously, well, wrong. 

Relativity theory didn't disprove Newton's laws of motion. Those laws are as true as ever in most everyday circumstances. Einstein simply showed that relativity theory more accurately reflects how reality behaves in other circumstances.

Likewise, relativity theory hasn't been proven wrong even if the faster-than-light neutrino observation is confirmed to be true (which so far, it hasn't been). As noted in my previous blog post, a leading explanation for the superluminal neutrinos is the existence of another spatial dimension.

This is from a New Scientist story:

In 2006, Pakvasa, Päs and Weiler came up with a model that allows certain particles to break the cosmic speed limit while leaving special relativity intact. "One can, if not rescue Einstein, at least leave him valid," Weiler says.

The trick is to send neutrinos on a shortcut through a fourth, thus-far-unobserved dimension of space, reducing the distance they have to travel. Then the neutrinos wouldn't have to outstrip light to reach their destination in the observed time.

Special and general relativity have been strongly confirmed by many tests. So it's absurd for Krauthammer to say that relativity "is wrong. Not just inaccurate. Not just flawed. But deeply, fundamentally, indescribably wrong."

Again, what's wrong is Krauthammer's claim, not relativity theory. Pretty clearly, Krauthammer's conservative political agenda is driving his anti-science attitude. Climate Progress blogger Joe Romm shows us what's going on in an instructive post.

Krauthammer and other right-wingers seek to undermine climatologists who present powerful evidence that human-caused global warming is happening, and to kiss up to religious fundamentalists who comprise a large share of the Republican base by challenging the scientific method which, gasp!, finds that evolution is a much explanation for life on Earth than creationism is.

Here's Joe Romm:  

As a physicist, my favorite denier talking point is the implication that “scientists are flip floppers, constantly changing their theories.”  That was what Bryce was suggesting by “If serious scientists can question Einstein’s theory of relativity.”  It’s what Krauthammer meant by “If Newton’s laws of motion could, after 200 years of unfailing experimental and experiential confirmation, be overthrown.”  We scientists just can’t make up our minds, and thus we can’t be trust[ed].  That’s why they keep pushing the myth that all the climate scientists in the 1970s were predicting global cooling.

Back to Newton’s supposedly overthrown laws.  As NASA writes: “The motion of an aircraft through the air can be explained and described by physical principals discovered over 300 years ago by Sir Isaac Newton.”

But Professor Krauthammer says 200 years of experiments and observations were “overthrown.”  What gives? Why aren’t all our planes falling out of the sky?

Newton’s laws are “excellent approximations at the scales and speeds of everyday life” that, along with his law of gravitation and calculus techniques, “provided for the first time a unified quantitative explanation for a wide range of physical phenomena.”

They fail in very special cases — speeds close to the speed of light (where you need Einstein’s special theory of relativity), near large gravitational fields (where you need Einstein’s general theory of relativity) or at very, very small scales (where you need quantum mechanics). Interestingly, many of the laws of those three theories are written in the same form as Newton’s and they revert to Newton’s equations for everyday life (see below).

BRYCE AND KRAUTHAMMER ARE NO EINSTEINs

If Einstein’s special theory of relativity did not revert to Newton’s laws for everyday situations, and thus validate 200 years of observations and experiments, nobody would have paid even one minute of attention to it.

Well, that's what anti-science conservatives wish they could do, because to them relativity theory is a club liberals use to bash those who don't embrace a relativistic view of the world. (Of course, factually relativity theory has nothing to do with relativism, but facts don't mean much to conservatives these days).

So saith Conservapedia:

The theory of relativity is a mathematical system that allows no exceptions. It is heavily promoted by liberals who like its encouragement of relativism and its tendency to mislead people in how they view the world.

Thus Charles Krauthammer, per usual, was toeing the conservative party line in his science's sky is falling column. He wants people to believe that if a neutrino can travel faster than light, a fact unaccounted for by Einstein's theory of relativity, then global warming and evolution must be wrong also.

Not true. Not at all. Reality is one thing; conservative fantasies are a whole other thing. 

Richard Dawkins calls Rick Perry an "uneducated ignoramus"

I wonder if Rick Perry, Republican presidential candidate and Texas governor, knows what "ignoramus" means. Probably not.

I'll help Perry out in case he stumbles across this blog. Here's the definition, Rick:

Utterly ignorant person.

Such is how noted evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins describes not only Rick Perry but also the entire leadership of today's Republican party. He's right on.

Anyone who doesn't believe in evolution or other unarguable scientific facts indeed is an ignoramus. How is it that they even could be considered for high public office, especially the presidency of the United States?

Here's how Dawkins starts off his response to a question posed to him:

This week's Washington Post question to the On Faith panel:
Texas governor and GOP candidate Rick Perry, at a campaign event this week, told a boy that evolution is ”just a theory” with “gaps” and that in Texas they teach “both creationism and evolution.” Perry later added “God is how we got here.”

According to a 2009 Gallup study , only 38 percent of Americans say they believe in evolution. If a majority of Americans are skeptical or unsure about evolution, should schools teach it as a mere “theory”? Why is evolution so threatening to religion?

Richard's response:

There is nothing unusual about Governor Rick Perry. Uneducated fools can be found in every country and every period of history, and they are not unknown in high office.

What is unusual about today’s Republican party (I disavow the ridiculous ‘GOP’ nickname, because the party of Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt has lately forfeited all claim to be considered ‘grand’) is this: In any other party and in any other country, an individual may occasionally rise to the top in spite of being an uneducated ignoramus.

In today’s Republican Party ‘in spite of’ is not the phrase we need. Ignorance and lack of education are positive qualifications, bordering on obligatory. Intellect, knowledge and linguistic mastery are mistrusted by Republican voters, who, when choosing a president, would apparently prefer someone like themselves over someone actually qualified for the job.

Dawkins goes on to say, entirely accurately:

Evolution is a fact, as securely established as any in science, and he who denies it betrays woeful ignorance and lack of education, which likely extends to other fields as well. Evolution is not some recondite backwater of science, ignorance of which would be pardonable.

It is the stunningly simple but elegant explanation of our very existence and the existence of every living creature on the planet. Thanks to Darwin, we now understand why we are here and why we are the way we are. You cannot be ignorant of evolution and be a cultivated and adequate citizen of today.

For sure. Yet there Perry is, leading the polls among Republican voters.

That's scary, because of what it says about a good chunk of our electorate. Even scarier: the thought that an ignoramus could become our next president.

Republican presidential candidates disrespect reality

Whenever the current crop of Republican presidential candidates make a public utterance, I think, Reality is a terrible thing to waste.

WIth a single exception, Jon Huntsman, they don't care whether what they're saying is fact-based, scientifically-defensible, or otherwise firmly rooted in demonstrable consensual reality.

They just spout off about whatever is politically expedient. If Republican primary voters demand crazy talk from a candidate, that's what they're given.

This is dangerous.

What if one of these reality-deniers somehow becomes President of the United States? Who wants the leader of our country to be out of touch with what is really happening in the world? How could this person make sound decisions if he or she capable of understanding the difference between truth and illusion?

Recently one of the leading candidates, Texas governor Rick Perry, opined that evolution is "a theory that's out there." Yeah, just like there's a theory out there that the Earth wasn't created fully formed by God ten thousand years ago. And that our planet isn't flat, but round.

Perry also doesn't believe in global warming, another sign of his reality deficiency. This caused his rival, Jon Huntsman, to warn about the consequences of the Republican Party becoming ridiculously anti-science.

Texas Gov. Rick Perry’s denial of global warming poses a “serious problem” for Republicans trying to take back the White House in 2012, presidential rival Jon Huntsman says.

“The minute that the Republican Party becomes the party – the anti-science party, we have a huge problem. We lose a whole lot of people who would otherwise allow us to win the election in 2012,” the former Utah governor said in an interview that aired Sunday on ABC’s “This Week.”

“When we take a position that isn't willing to embrace evolution, when we take a position that basically runs counter to what 98 of 100 climate scientists have said, what the National Academy of Sciences has said about what is causing climate change and man's contribution to it,” he said, “I think we find ourselves on the wrong side of science, and, therefore, in a losing position.”

Perry's talking points on global warming are, simply put, lies. He said, “I think there are a substantial number of scientists who have manipulated data so that they will have dollars rolling into their — to their projects.”

Not true. Every investigation of climate scientists has cleared them of charges that data has been manipulated in some nefarious fashion. Here's the truth:

While the anti-science extremists who rule the Tea Party and the right-wing bunkosphere keep shouting lies about the Hockey Stick and Mann — and urging their followers to “shout down” science-based commenters on independent websites — the vindications of the science and the man are reported as quietly as if they came from the Whos of Whoville.

And so after countless investigations — 3 in the U.K., 2 by Penn State, the EPA, the NOAA IG — that have all unanimously found the allegations against climate scientists and their research conclusions based on the hacked “ClimateGate” emails to be wholly unsubstantiated, a top GOP presidential candidate backed by the fossil fuel industry still gives voice to the Texas-sized lie (see “Denier Rick Perry Takes $11 Million from Big Oil, Then Claims Climate Scientists ‘Manipulated Data’ For Money“).

We reality-lovers have to keep fighting back.

I don't want my four year old granddaughter to grow up in a country led by politicians who ignore the truth about what is happening in the world. If I got on a bus and saw that the driver was blind, I'd change my mind about trusting that means of transportation.

Hopefully voters will realize that the Republican Party is similarly deficient in the clear vision needed to guide the path of the United States. When leading politicans aren't willing to look reality in the face, citizens should ignore them in the voting booth.

A neuroscientific view of Anthony Weiner's Twitter scandal

I'm tired of all the media attention that's been given to Rep. Anthony Weiner's semi-scandalous Twitter escapades with young women who caught his cyberspace eye.

But I find his story interesting in a scientific sense, having just finished reading David Eagleman's "Incognito: The Secret Lives of the Brain." Eagleman is a neuroscientist. He also is a terrific writer. His earlier book, "Sum: Forty Tales from the Afterlives" is wonderfully creative.

(I've blogged about Eagleman's ideas here, here, here, here, and here.)

A central theme of "Incognito" is that conscious awareness is a tiny part of what's going on in the human brain. Most of the work goes on behind the scenes. It's sort of like a child turning the wheel of a carnival ride boat.

The kid pretends that he or she is controlling the motion of the boat. Except, the wheel isn't connected to anything. How the boat moves is determined by a bunch of machinery that the child isn't aware of or focusing on.

Likewise, Eagleman persusasively argues that there's no neuroscientific evidence for free will. This doesn't mean that free will is an illusion, just that current scientific understanding can't find any room for free will to operate in the brain.

People assume that Weiner freely chose to do what he did, Twitter-wise, and that he should be blamed for his actions. Also, punished by being forced to resign his Congressional seat. This doesn't make sense.

Here's an Eagleman quote that shows how wrong almost all of the talk about Anthony Weiner is.

The crux of the question is whether all of your actions are fundamentally on autopilot or whether there is some little bit that is "free" to choose, independent of the rules of biology. This has always been the sticking point for both philosophers and scientists.

As far as we can tell, all activity in the brain is driven by other activity in the brain, in a vastly complex, interconnected network. For better or worse, this seems to leave no room for anything other than neural activity -- that is, no room for a ghost in the machine.

To consider this from the other direction, if free will is to have any effect on the actions of the body, it needs to influence the ongoing brain activity. And to do that, it needs to be physically connected to at least some of the neurons.

But we don't find any spot in the brain that is not itself driven by other parts of the network. Instead, every part of the brain is densely interconnected with -- and driven by -- other brain parts. And that suggests that no part is independent and therefore "free."

So in our current understanding of science, we can't find the physical gap in which to slip free will -- the uncaused causer -- because there seems to be no part of the machinery that does not follow in a causal relationship from the other parts.

Thus Anthony Weiner simply did what his brain directed him to do. More accurately, we should scratch the words "his" and "him" in the preceding sentence. A more correct neuroscientific statement would be:

The brain in the body known as "Anthony Weiner" acted as the brain had to do given all of the genetic, environmental, and experiential influences upon it.

Understand, this doesn't change the wrongness or undesirability of what Weiner did (most commentators seem to feel that his biggest offense was initially trying to cover up his "Twitter affairs").

Similarly, Eagleman says that society has a right to protect itself from violent criminals.

However, in a "Why Blameworthiness is the Wrong Question" chapter he argues that "a forward-thinking legal system will parlay biological understanding into customized rehabilitation, viewing criminal behavior the way we understand other such medical conditions as epilepsy, schizophrenia, and depression -- conditions that now allow the seeing and giving of help."

This is what Anthony Weiner is doing: getting help to modify his future behavior. Eagleman writes:

The concept and word to replace blameworthiness is modifiability, a forward-looking term that asks, What can we do from here? Is rehabilitation available?

Here's another pertinent neuroscientific fact about Weiner, and indeed every human being. Pink Floyd was correct: "There's someone in my head, but it's not me." There's several ways to look at this lyric. Either there's no self apart from the brain, and/or there are many "me's" inside the cranium of each member of Homo sapiens.

Eagleman calls the brain "a team of rivals."

You are made up of an entire parliament of pieces and parts and subsystems. Beyond a collection of local expert systems, we are collections of overlapping, ceaselessly reinvented mechanisms, a group of competing factions.

The conscious mind fabricates stories to explain the sometimes inexplicable dynamics of the subsystems inside the brain. It can be disquieting to consider the extent to which all of our actions are driven by hardwired systems, doing what they do best, while we overlay stories about our choices.

Thus it doesn't make sense to search for the "real me." Or the real Anthony Weiner. There's no such entity. Each of us is a collection of multitudes.

Note that the population of the mental society does not always vote exactly the same way each time. This recognition is often missing from discussions of consciousness, which typically assumes that what it is like to be you is the same from day to day, moment to moment.

...So who's the real you? As the French essayist Michel de Montaigne put it, "There is as much difference between us and ourselves as there is between us and others."

We humans love to moralize. Especially about others. We have an exaggerated sense both of how righteous we are, and how morally deficient this or that bozo is compared to us.

Over and over in his book, David Eagleman points out how our intuitions about personality, selfhood, conscious awareness, free will, and the like are at odds with what neuroscience is learning about how the brain functions.

The brouhaha over Anthony Weiner's Twittergate is off the scientific mark, along with so much else in our political and gossip discourse. Hopefully eventually 21st century understanding of the human brain will replace our essentially medieval view of morality, freedom of choice, and sinfulness.

Until then, let's give Anthony Weiner a break. There's many more important problems this country needs to deal with than a congressman's Twitter tweets.

(Here's another perspective that makes some good points: "Everything Said About Anthony Weiner is Wrong.")

Ann Coulter and Lars Larson are idiots about "good" radiation

As unoriginal as the title would be, I toyed with the idea of calling this post "Lars Larson is a big fat idiot." But since I wanted Ann Coulter to share in the idiocy, and she's a lot closer to anorexic than fat, I had to give up that notion.

Which leaves Coulter and Larson being plain idiots for claiming that low levels of radiation are good for you.I heard Portland, Oregon right-wing talk show host Lars Larson say this last week, citing the rarely-reputable Ann Coulter as the source of this amazing bit of scientific misinformation.

Of course, it isn't true. And it's astoundingly irresponsible for Coulter and Larson to say this given the scientific consensus.

In 2005 the National Academy of Sciences released a report which concluded that "even low doses of ionizing radiation, such as gamma rays and X-rays, are likely to pose some risk of adverse health effects."

The report's focus is low-dose, low-LET -- "linear energy transfer" -- ionizing radiation that is energetic enough to break biomolecular bonds. In living organisms, such radiation can cause DNA damage that eventually leads to cancers. However, more research is needed to determine whether low doses of radiation may also cause other health problems, such as heart disease and stroke, which are now seen with high doses of low-LET radiation.

The study committee defined low doses as those ranging from nearly zero to about 100 millisievert (mSv) -- units that measure radiation energy deposited in living tissue. The radiation dose from a chest X-ray is about 0.1 mSv. In the United States, people are exposed on average to about 3 mSv of natural "background" radiation annually.

The committee's report develops the most up-to-date and comprehensive risk estimates for cancer and other health effects from exposure to low-level ionizing radiation. In general, the report supports previously reported risk estimates for solid cancer and leukemia, but the availability of new and more extensive data have strengthened confidence in these estimates.

As a Climate Progress post said, who are you going to believe, citizens of Japan and people living near United States nuclear reactors? Ann Coulter (and Lars Larson), or the National Research Council’s Committee to Assess Health Risks from Exposure to Low Levels of Ionizing Radiation?

Coulter made her bizarre claim in "A Glowing Report on Radiation." She selectively cited some quotes about hormesis in a 2001 New York Times story, "For Radiation, How Much is Too Much?"

Hormesis is the unproven notion that a toxin can be beneficial in small doses, while harmful if more is ingested. The New York TImes story is decidedly more skeptical about radiation-related hormesis than Coulter let on.

Now, some scientists even say low radiation doses may be beneficial. They theorize that these doses protect against cancer by activating cells' natural defense mechanisms. As evidence, they cite studies, like one in Canada of tuberculosis patients who had multiple chest X-rays and one of nuclear workers in the United States. The tuberculosis patients, some analyses said, had fewer cases of breast cancer than would be expected and the nuclear workers had a lower mortality rate than would be expected.

Dr. Boice said these studies were flawed by statistical pitfalls, and when a committee of the National Council on Radiation Protection and Measurement evaluated this and other studies on beneficial effects, it was not convinced. The group, headed by Dr. Upton of New Jersey, wrote that the data ''do not exclude'' the hypothesis. But, it added, ''the prevailing evidence has generally been interpreted as insufficient to support this view.''

Well, if that was true in 2001, it is much more true now -- given the above-mentioned 2005 review of the scientific literature which concluded that there is no safe dose of radiation.

Specifically, the committee's thorough review of available biological and biophysical data supports a "linear, no-threshold" (LNT) risk model, which says that the smallest dose of low-level ionizing radiation has the potential to cause an increase in health risks to humans. In the past, some researchers have argued that the LNT model exaggerates adverse health effects, while others have said that it underestimates the harm. The preponderance of evidence supports the LNT model, this new report says.

So even though it should be obvious, don't take health advice from Ann Coulter or Lars Larson.

Why? Because they're idiots when it comes to making rational conclusions from widely recognized facts.

I couldn't agree more with Comment #14 on the Climate Progress post:

These things are great! People like Coulter are becoming more and more blatantly idiotic. I think they’re setting the stage for their own demise.

In the meantime, let’s throw a “radiation party” for Coulter, Beck and Limbaugh to help them [live] a long and healthy life. Special invited guests: Inhofe, Morano, Monckton… and the whole cavalcade of conservative clowns.

Global warming is causing disasters -- Republicans ignore reality

With one exception, I'm not particularly worried about the damage Republicans can do in the new Congress, now that they're about to take over control of the House. A Democratic Senate and President will prevent them from enacting any batshit crazy laws.

What's the exception? Acting on much-needed global warming and energy policy legislation.

This is a policy area that can't wait for voters to come to their senses in 2012 and kick the do-nothings out of office. Obama is doing what he can administratively, but it'd be a heck of a lot better for the United States and the world if a majority in both houses of Congress were in touch with climate change reality.

Since Christmas I've been collecting stories about weather disasters and global warming on an ever-expanding series of browser tabs. The truth is there to see, but unfortunately almost all Republicans are members of the Head in the Sand club.

On December 25, Judah Cohen explained in "Bundle Up, It's Global Warming" how nastier blizzards and global warming can go hand-in-hand.

The earth continues to get warmer, yet it’s feeling a lot colder outside. Over the past few weeks, subzero temperatures in Poland claimed 66 lives; snow arrived in Seattle well before the winter solstice, and fell heavily enough in Minneapolis to make the roof of the Metrodome collapse; and last week blizzards closed Europe’s busiest airports in London and Frankfurt for days, stranding holiday travelers. The snow and record cold have invaded the Eastern United States, with more bad weather predicted.

All of this cold was met with perfect comic timing by the release of a World Meteorological Organization report showing that 2010 will probably be among the three warmest years on record, and 2001 through 2010 the warmest decade on record.

How can we reconcile this? The not-so-obvious short answer is that the overall warming of the atmosphere is actually creating cold-weather extremes. Last winter, too, was exceptionally snowy and cold across the Eastern United States and Eurasia, as were seven of the previous nine winters.

On December 28, it was noted that snow storms in the Northeast were heavier than any seen in over half a century.

New York commuters and travelers face further disruptions today as winds hinder efforts to clear roads and runways following the heaviest December snows in six decades...The snowfall was the fifth-largest on record for the city, Sanitation Commissioner John Doherty said on Dec. 26.

On December 30, Climate Progress presented "The 2010 Climate B.S.* of the Year Award" (*Bad Science, and also what the initials usually mean). Here's the finalists, with an excerpt from the description of the winner.

Fifth Place. Climate B.S. and misrepresentations presented by Fox “News.”
Fourth Place. Misleading or false testimony to Congress and policymakers about climate change.
Third Place. The false claim that a single weather event, such as a huge snowstorm in Washington, D.C., proves there is no global warming.
Second Place. The claim that the “Climategate” emails meant that global warming was a hoax, or was criminal, as Senator Inhofe tried to argue. In fact, it was none of these things (though the British police are still investigating the illegal hacking of a British university’s computer system and the theft of the emails).

First Place goes to the following set of B.S.: “There has been no warming since 1998” [or 2000, or…], “the earth is cooling,” “global warming is natural,” and “humans are too insignificant to affect the climate.” Such statements are all nonsense and important for the general public to understand properly.

The reality is that the Earth’s climate is changing significantly, changing fast, and changing due to human factors. The reality of climatic change can no longer be disputed on scientific grounds – the U.S. National Academy of Sciences calls the human-induced warming of the Earth a “settled fact.” The evidence for a “warming” planet includes not just rising temperatures, but also rising sea levels, melting Arctic sea ice, disappearing glaciers, increasing intense rainfalls, and many other changes that matter to society and the environment. The recent and ongoing warming of the Earth is unprecedented in magnitude, speed, and cause.

Also on December 30, the New York Times had a story, "E.P.A. Limit on Gases to Pose Risk to Obama and Congress," that talked about how Republicans are determined to reward their oil industry contributors with efforts to derail policies aimed at preventing further disastrous climate change.

Representative Fred Upton, the Michigan Republican who is set to become chairman of the powerful House Energy and Commerce Committee, said he was not convinced that greenhouse gases needed to be controlled or that the E.P.A. had the authority to do so.

“This move represents an unconstitutional power grab that will kill millions of jobs — unless Congress steps in,” Mr. Upton wrote this week in a Wall Street Journal opinion essay.

His co-author was Tim Phillips, president of Americans for Prosperity, a conservative group financed by Koch Industries and other oil companies that has spread skepticism about global warming and supported many of the Tea Party candidates who will join the new Congress.

On January 1, the Guardian reported that "Australia faces 'Biblical' floods," the worst in 100 years.

Army helicopters dropped supplies to stranded towns, police patrolled in boats looking for looters, and families were warned of the risk from giant saltwater crocodiles and poisonous snakes being washed into urban areas.

An estimated 200,000 people have been affected by the floods, the worst in a century in some parts of the north-eastern state.

The cost in damage to infrastructure is expected to run into billions of pounds.

“In many ways, it is a disaster of biblical proportions,” Andrew Fraser, the Queensland Treasurer, said in the flooded city of Bundaberg on Saturday.

And today, January 2, Climate Progress explained why we can expect to see more disastrous snowstorms and flooding as human-caused global warming bites the civilizations that have caused it.

One of the most basic predictions of climate science is that global warming will cause more intense precipitation.  As Dr. Kevin Trenberth, head of the Climate Analysis Section at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, explained it, “there is a systematic influence on all of these weather events now-a-days because of the fact that there is this extra water vapor lurking around in the atmosphere than there used to be say 30 years ago. It’s about a 4% extra amount, it invigorates the storms, it provides plenty of moisture for these storms and it’s unfortunate that the public is not associating these with the fact that this is one manifestation of climate change. And the prospects are that these kinds of things will only get bigger and worse in the future.”

Last year appears to have been the hottest year on record — and it saw an astonishing amount of intense rainfall from Nashville’s ‘Katrina’ to the great Pakistani deluge.” And so it should be no surprise that the year ends with another unprecedented deluge of “biblical proportion.” 

Since most Congressional Republicans consider themselves to be all godly and Christian'y, hopefully some of them will start paying attention to the commandment that is being communicated through nature:

Thou shalt take steps to combat global warming, or humanity -- thou art screwed.

Yay! Sun has started to set later.

Great news from nature for us late afternoon dog walkers: a few days ago the sun started to set later, even though the days are still getting shorter.

Here's why.

You may wonder how days can still be getting shorter through the winter solstice, which occurs on Dec. 21 this year, if the sun is starting to set later in the day.

That is because the sun also rises later in the mornings through the winter solstice, and the rate at which sunrise times are becoming later is higher than the rate at which sunset times are becoming later.

The Portland Oregonian weather page shows the sun setting at 4:27 pm on Tuesday, 4:28 pm on Wednesday, 4:28 pm on Thursday, 4:28 pm on Friday, and 4:29 pm on Saturday.

That's two more minutes of "sunshine" (broadly speaking, given typical December weather in western Oregon) in four days. Keep it up, tilt of the Earth!

There's more snow storms in warmer years

Here's another arrow that's been lost from the unscientific quiver of climate change deniers: It's snowing hard! Global warming isn't happening!

Untrue.

The anti-science crowd has been doing a killer job pushing the myth that the big recent snowstorms somehow undercut our understanding of human-caused global warming.  But aside from the fact the precipitation isn’t temperature, it turns out that the “common wisdom” the disinformers are preying on — lots of snow means we must be in a cold season — isn’t even true.

Let’s look at the results of an actual, detailed study of “the relationships of the storm frequencies to seasonal temperature and precipitation conditions” for the years “1901–2000 using data from 1222 stations across the United States.”  The 2006 study, “Temporal and Spatial Characteristics of Snowstorms in the Contiguous United States“  (Changnon, Changnon, and Karl [of National Climatic Data Center], 2006) found we are seeing more northern snow storms and that we get more snow storms in warmer years.

This is a quote from the cited study itself:
Download Snow study

Thus, these comparative results reveal that a future with wetter and warmer winters, which is one outcome expected (National Assessment Synthesis Team 2001), will bring more snowstorms than in 1901–2000. Agee (1991) found that long-term warming trends in the United States were associated with increasing cyclonic activity in North America, further indicating that a warmer future climate will generate more winter storms.

When mind wanders, happiness departs

I used to work with a highly creative and socially conscious guy who told me once that he was always thinking about something.

Driving his car, brushing his teeth, eating his dinner -- most of the time his mind was occupied in pondering how to make the world better while his body was doing something else.

This probably made him more productive, but not more happy. Such is the conclusion of research I came across today in the New York Times: "When the Mind Wanders, Happiness Also Strays."

Whatever people were doing, whether it was having sex or reading or shopping, they tended to be happier if they focused on the activity instead of thinking about something else. In fact, whether and where their minds wandered was a better predictor of happiness than what they were doing.

Well, this is pretty much what the Buddha taught several thousand years ago, along with countless other more modern yogis, sages, gurus, and meditation teachers. Indeed, a Boston reporter says her yoga instructor was right on top of this research, mentioning it in class.

If you want to be part of this ongoing study, and have an iPhone, head over to TrackYourHappiness.org and sign up to get an email or text message at random moments that asks you to report your happiness at the moment.

The NY Times story says:

When asked to rate their feelings on a scale of 0 to 100, with 100 being “very good,” the people having sex gave an average rating of 90. That was a good 15 points higher than the next-best activity, exercising, which was followed closely by conversation, listening to music, taking a walk, eating, praying and meditating, cooking, shopping, taking care of one’s children and reading. Near the bottom of the list were personal grooming, commuting and working.

I suspect, though, that one of the activities wasn't "being bothered by my iPhone when I'm having sex or otherwise happily engaged." But hey, advancing science comes with some costs.

Like most people, my mind is notoriously prone to wandering. I suppose it shouldn't, since I've meditated almost every day since I was twenty years old (I'm now much older and not much wiser at sixty-two).

I do find that concentrating on a mantra or my breath for 20-30 minutes starts off my morning in a focused manner. I enjoy not thinking much, or at all, about other stuff while I'm doing a single thing.

When I get going on my other activities of the day, I often backslide into what is called "monkey mind," internal chattering from lots of psychological tree tops that isn't related to what I'm actually doing.

This afternoon, though, inspired by the wandering mind = less happy research, I did better while grocery shopping. I consciously focused on each step I took from the parking lot into the south Salem Fred Meyer store.

Then I had a sense of slowing down, selecting one item at a time, being mindful of the details of choosing bananas, checking the expiration date on organic lettuce mix, finding an unfamiliar brand of hair conditioner that my wife had put on the list.

I really did feel happier shopping in this fashion. It struck me that external reality is considerably more interesting, by and large, than my thoughts -- which tend to be repetitive.

After loading the groceries into the back of our Hybrid Highlander and starting to drive off to the next shopping stop, I got another lesson in the value of mindfulness.

Still engaged in focusing on external reality, rather than my own mind, I saw a gorgeous young woman -- willowy, shapely, graceful -- walking through the parking lot. If I'd been zeroed in on what my psyche was chattering about, instead of what was sensuously present in the outside world, I could have missed her.

The research findings seem pretty obvious. But often we miss the obvious in our searching for happiness.

"Unlike other animals, human beings spend a lot of time thinking about what is not going on around them, contemplating events that happened in the past, might happen in the future, or will never happen at all," the authors of the study, Harvard doctoral student Matthew Killingsworth and psychology professor Daniel Gilbert, write in the new paper. And that unique ability, they found, does not make for a happier species.

A few years ago I wrote a blog post with one of my favorite titles: "Chipmunk stalking, Kentucky TV, and Benzedrine." The theme was focus -- whether canine, fire-watching, or drug-aided. I ended with some thoughts that are echoed by the recent research.

Focus. Concentration. Being in the moment, no matter how much or how little is happening.

Why is this so easy for dogs and chipmunks? And for people in altered states of consciousness, like when they're sitting around a fire on a warm summer night? Or hosing cannery pulp into drains under the influence of a post-midnight Benzedrine?

Those little white amphetamine-filled pills were what got me through an otherwise shitty job at a San Jose cannery during one of my college summers.

My night shift was cleanly divided into two halves: unhappy and happy, the demarcation being when, after a "lunch" break at 3 am or so, I'd pop a bennie into my mouth.

Ah, what a difference some amphetamine would make! Sometimes my job would be to put on a rain suit, stand under the conveyor belts on which fruit pulp was dripping, and use a high pressure hose to direct the pulp into drains.

I hated the job pre-Benzedrine. Afterwards, I loved it. It was endlessly fascinating to train the water just so, artfully directing the spray to maximum pulp-washing effect. (Others, like W.H. Auden, have applied Benzedrine toward more creative pursuits.)

I'd also use Benzedrine as a study aid for sleep-inducing classes like Statistics. I remember preparing for a test where I could have read about T-tests all night, the normal curve and levels of significance being so astoundingly interesting.

Just like inching your way toward a chipmunk for almost an hour and a half can be, if you're a prey-obsessed canine. Or like watching an outdoor fire can be, if you're with pleasant company (which can be only yourself), the air is warm, and the stars are bright.

Simple pleasures, drug aided or not, often are the most satisfying. Frequently we forget this in our quest for the next exciting thing, as we're multi-entertaining our way through the day and night.

Climate scientists challenge global warming deniers

Great news: climate scientists have decided they no longer will tolerate truth-besmirching, anti-science, fossil fuel industry-supported global warming deniers.

Unfortunately, the campaign to bring more facts and less irrationality into policy debates isn't quite as aggressive as the LA Times story said (which was reprinted in the Portland Oregonian, where I read it this morning).

Faced with rising political attacks, hundreds of climate scientists are joining a broad campaign to push back against congressional conservatives who have threatened prominent researchers with investigations and vowed to kill regulations to rein in man-made greenhouse gas emissions.

The still-evolving efforts reveal a shift among climate scientists, many of whom have traditionally stayed out of politics and avoided the news media. Many now say they are willing to go toe-to-toe with their critics, some of whom gained new power after the Republicans won control of the House in Tuesday's election.

On Monday, the American Geophysical Union, the country's largest association of climate scientists, plans to announce that 700 climate scientists have agreed to speak out as experts on questions about global warming and the role of man-made air pollution.

My wife and I thought that sounded great. And I'm confident that the reporter who wrote the story actually did talk with scientists who are eager to go toe-to-toe with the many crazies in Congress who ignore solid research in favor of their own right-wing dogmatism.

However, the American Geophysical Union issued a press release saying that they aren't campaigning against climate change skeptics or congressional conservatives. They just want to provide accurate answers to questions from journalists about climate science.

Well, that's better than nothing. More encouraging, because more aggressive, is a separate effort by John Abraham that's also mentioned in the LA Times story.

John Abraham of St. Thomas University in Minnesota, who last May wrote a widely disseminated response to climate change skeptics, is also pulling together a "climate rapid response team," which includes scientists prepared to go before what they consider potentially hostile audiences on conservative talk radio and television shows.

"This group feels strongly that science and politics can't be divorced and that we need to take bold measures to not only communicate science but also to aggressively engage the denialists and politicians who attack climate science and its scientists," said Scott Mandia, professor of physical sciences at Suffolk CountyCommunity College in New York.

"We are taking the fight to them because we are … tired of taking the hits. The notion that truth will prevail is not working. The truth has been out there for the past two decades, and nothing has changed."

Absolutely true.

A distressingly large percentage of so-called conservatives in the United States aren't interested in conserving. Nor, in reality. This is exceedingly dangerous to the nation's health, along with the world's.

It's an only in America thing.

Conservatives in Britain recognize the serious threat global warming poses. For some reason -- likely our excess of fundamentalist religiosity -- lots of people in the United States are afraid of truths revealed by science.

This morning I read a chapter in Bruce Hood's "Supersense: Why We Believe in the Unbelievable" called Who Created Creationism? Hood says:

The problem is that the majority of U.S. adults believe that a supreme being, namely God, guided the origin and diversity of life on earth. They believe that in the beginning God created earth and all its life forms and that there has been no significant change since that day.

...The reason this is a problem is that it highlights a paradox of modern America. The United States is one of the most scientifically and technologically advanced nations on the planet.

...Yet less than half of the U.S. population accepts a comprehensive scientific theory that explains the origins and diversity of life on earth. When it comes to the general public's acceptance of Darwin's theory of natural selection, the United States is second from the bottom of the list of the top thirty-four industrialized nations.

This helps explain why facts about global climate change are met with a similar head-in-the-sand attitude by a large proportion of both the American citizeny and their elected officials.

They don't trust science because it is viewed as threatening their religious beliefs. I can sort of understand this fear when it comes to evolution (though God could have used natural selection as His means of creating us Homo sapiens).

But it's difficult to see how climate change research undermines anyone's faith-based beliefs. Apparently a mistrust of science is so pervasive among fundamentalist folks, it carries over to scientific facts that have nothing to do with God.

Whatever the reason, the rest of us reality-loving citizens have to take a stand against global warming deniers.

Like Abraham said, it isn't enough to present factual truths. When someone has his or her head in the sand, they can't hear what you're saying if you speak normally. You've got to raise the volume, matching their obtuseness with your assertiveness.

Abraham recognizes that scientists have a duty to stand up for our children, grandchildren, and irreplaceable planet.

On the other hand, the general public and members of government are split on this issue. Half are concerned about global warming, half are not. Why is that? A major reason is that there is a great deal of bad information which typically germinates in the blogosphere and is created by people with little or no real expertise.

We know that solving this problem will require real effort. We are on a path to cause real destruction to our planet and even if we were only interested in self-preservation we should take action.

We are also not naive in recognising that there is a political aspect to this. It is well known, at least in the United States, that conservatives tend to be much more sceptical about climate change than liberals. We need to move beyond partisanship toward co-operation. Conservatives care about the environment too and there have been many who have made comments about the need to act on climate change. History will look unkindly on those who have stood in the way of saving the planet, which will be an enormous political liability – although by then it will be too late to fix things.

The timing of these campaigns was not linked to the recent elections in the US. The American Geophysical Union's effort coincides with the Cancún climate conference, a timing that is primarily motivated by a recognition that scientists have an obligation to defend the science and engage with the public.

We are both scientists and human beings. As scientists, we need to find ways to communicate accurate scientific information to a wider audience in a way that is policy-neutral. As humans, we are concerned not only for ourselves, but also for our children and for people in the world who don't have the necessary resources to adapt to the coming change. As a human, I have an obligation to speak up for them.

It is a shame that scientists have to take personal and professional risks in order to be good citizens of the planet. It doesn't have to be this way.

Here's an extensive slide presentation by Abraham where he debunks a presentation by Christopher Monckton, a noted global warming denier who screws up the science big time.

And the link below leads to a report where Abraham and others respond to Monckton's erroneous testimony this year before a congressional committee dealing with climate change.
Download Response to Monckton

Excerpt:

Briefly, Mr. Monckton makes a number of scientific assertions about (1) the efficacy of warming from CO2, (2) the benefits of elevated CO2, (3) the relationship between CO2 and ocean acidification, (4) recent global temperature trends, (5) and the sensitivity of the climate to CO2. He has also claimed that (6) there is no need to take quick action to address the changing climate. In all cases, Mr. Monckton’s assertions are shown to be without merit – they are based on a thorough misunderstanding of the science of climate change.

We believe the responses contained here strongly refute the statements made by Mr. Monckton. It is our hope that this document will be of use to members of Congress and their staffs as further hearings and debates on climate change and energy policy take place. We would be pleased to respond to any inquiries and offer necessary clarifications.

Letter to editor shows ignorance of global warming deniers

Marcia Turnquist of Northwest Portland, you should send me a cyberspace gift basket. I was this close to titling my blog post, "Marcia Turnquist is a scientific freaking fool."

But I thought that sounded just a tad impolite for a headline, so I demoted that sentiment to the body of this post -- though I still dearly hope Google manages to connect "Marcia Turnquist" and "freaking fool" for as long as the Holy Search Engine does its thing.

As I guess is obvious, I'm losing my patience with global warming deniers.

Also, with media outlets that treat their scientific illiteracy with any sort of respect. Given how many letters to the editor are received by the Oregonian, but not published, it baffles me why the newspaper would choose to waste paper and ink on Turnquist's inane babbling.

Which I'll quote in its nonsensical entirety:

Hot or cold?
The climate bill of energy taxes is dead and, contrary to what most people have been led to believe, it's cause for celebration, not reason to hold a wake for the planet. In his column "Warming the globe: A long, hot summer is boiling a short, hot planet" (July 23), David Sarasohn repeats the latest alarmist claim that 2010 is the warmest year on record. Really? With our icy winter and record snows across Europe and Asia? Did I mention that South America recently experienced unusual cold and snow? But how can this be?

Well, here's one possibility: "adjusted" temperatures. For example, a Goddard Institute for Space Studies U.S. temperature graph once showed the 1930s warmer than recent years. But funny how the modern versions of the same graph were "adjusted," lowering the 1930s temperatures and raising those of late. Voila! Hottest year ever.

Skeptics of global warming are often accused of ignoring science. No, what we ignore is dishonest, doctored science that thirsts after grant money. What we need is an overhaul of a dysfunctional system.

In the meantime, let's all go out and celebrate the death of energy taxes that surely would have spelled death to our economy.

MARCIA TURNQUIST
Northwest Portland 

Marcia, a search of Oregon Live (the Oregonian's web site) showed me that you are a frequent letter writer. I couldn't bear to read any more of your missives, but noticed that your special focus is on climate change/global warming.

Here's a suggestion for you: try spending less time watching Fox News and reading right-wing blogs, and put more energy into learning about reality.

Fact: the first six months of 2010 indeed are the warmest on record. 

The NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies now reports that the first six months of 2010 are the warmest on record, both in terms of atmospheric data and in combined atmospheric/ocean readings.

In some cases the atmospheric readings for some of the first six months of the year are between 1.8 and 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit above what they were in previous years.

And on top of that, last week Arctic sea ice extent hit the lowest level ever for June.

"The 2010 temperature data is evidence that the planet is continuing to warm," said Rafe Pomerance, a senior fellow at Clean Air Cool Planet. "The absolute numbers indicate that the earth's climate is moving into uncharted territory, as reflected by the massive retreat of Arctic sea ice."

Fact: 2009 was the second warmest full year on record.

2009 was tied for the second warmest year in the modern record, a new NASA analysis of global surface temperature shows. The analysis, conducted by the Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) in New York City, also shows that in the Southern Hemisphere, 2009 was the warmest year since modern records began in 1880.

Although 2008 was the coolest year of the decade, due to strong cooling of the tropical Pacific Ocean, 2009 saw a return to near-record global temperatures. The past year was only a fraction of a degree cooler than 2005, the warmest year on record, and tied with a cluster of other years — 1998, 2002, 2003, 2006 and 2007 — as the second warmest year since recordkeeping began.

Fact: the last decade was the warmest on record.

January 2000 to December 2009 was the warmest decade on record. Throughout the last three decades, the GISS surface temperature record shows an upward trend of about 0.2°C (0.36°F) per decade. Since 1880, the year that modern scientific instrumentation became available to monitor temperatures precisely, a clear warming trend is present, though there was a leveling off between the 1940s and 1970s.

The near-record temperatures of 2009 occurred despite an unseasonably cool December in much of North America. High air pressures in the Arctic decreased the east-west flow of the jet stream, while also increasing its tendency to blow from north to south and draw cold air southward from the Arctic. This resulted in an unusual effect that caused frigid air from the Arctic to rush into North America and warmer mid-latitude air to shift toward the north.

"Of course, the contiguous 48 states cover only 1.5 percent of the world area, so the U.S. temperature does not affect the global temperature much,' said Hansen.

Obviously.

Marcia, you need to take a look at a globe. For one thing, maybe you believe the Earth is flat, since you're a global warming denier who doesn't pay any attention to science.

For another, you'll find that our planet consists of much more than just a few countries. Global warming has gotten that name for a reason: it's global. 

Well, I hope you find this blog post, or maybe someone else will point it out to you. I'm a big fan of the opinion pages in newspapers and magazines, but opinions really should have a foundation on facts.

I have a three year old granddaughter. I don't want people like you spreading lies about global climate change, because she is going to have to live on this planet long after you and I are gone.

You've got a right to your crazy political views, Marcia. But you don't have a right to twist scientific facts to suit your fancy.

Before you write your next rant letter to the editor, you should spend a few hours browsing through the Climate Progress and Skeptical Science web sites. Reality is a terrible thing to waste.

Lars Larson's lies about global warming

Even though I got satellite radio to avoid the right-wing talk shows that dominate the Portland, Oregon airwaves, occasionally I tune into Lars Larson (KXL) or Victoria Taft (KPAM) to check on the strength of my cranium -- since almost always what I hear makes me feel like my brain is going to explode.

I survived ten minutes or so of Larson a few days ago, but just barely. The combined scientific ignorance of Lars and a global warming-denying sidekick he had on, Chuck Wiese, was astounding.

And intensely disturbing.

Three years ago I criticized Larson for joking about how global warming is going to be good for Oregon. He's still up to his head-in-the-sand tricks. Now his brain-dead theory is that the Earth is cooling rapidly, so if big bad government limits our nation's carbon footprint, people are going to freeze to death when their furnace fuel is rationed.

Or something like that.

It was hard to follow the logic of Larson and Wiese, since they didn't use any in their blathering about how climate change/global warming science is a fraud.

Larson doesn't have any scientific qualifications, so far as I know. Wiese calls himself a meteorologist, but he only has a B.A. in Atmospheric Science. He says he's done weather forecasting for twenty-five years.

Well, obviously he never learned that short term changes in the weather are different from long term changes in the climate, because he and Larson kept saying that because Oregon has had an unusually cool spring, this shows that global warming isn't happening.

If idiocy spewed over the public airwaves could be taxed, our national debt would be wiped out by Lars Larson quickly. But, hey, I'm an optimist. People can change.

I wish Larson would read "What's the Worst That Could Happen?" by Greg Craven, an Oregon high school teacher who subtitles his terrific book a rational response to the climate change debate. He calmly and logically leads the reader through an analysis of climate change -- focusing on how to decide what to do, not the scientific facts.

Craven is a believer, as am I, in finding the most reliable sources of scientific information, and trusting them.

I don't have a particle accelerator in my house, nor the ability to conduct experiments in subatomic physics, so I trust the conclusions of experts in this field. Likewise, Craven lists the key organizations who agree with the scientific consensus: global warming is for real, humans are the main cause of it, and it poses a huge threat to human civilization. 

The U.S. National Academy of Sciences, American Association for the Advancement of Science, and National Research Council, for example. Along with the 2008 National Intelligence Assessment by all 16 U.S. intelligence agencies, among many other reliable sources.

But a right-wing talk show host and a guy with a B.A. in Atmospheric Science disagree, saying that efforts to reduce carbon emissions are some sort of Obama plot to turn the United States into a socialist state.

Or something like that. Again, it's hard to follow crackpot craziness.

Larson and Wiese were angry at those who want this country to take serious actions to stop, or at least slow down, global warming. Well, I'm angry too: at them, and anyone else who refuses to face the facts -- which are pointing toward a future for my granddaughter that will be much worse than what we're enjoying now.

It's utterly immoral and unethical to allow future generations to inherit a virtually uninhabitable world from us. As Craven demonstrates, the costs of doing nothing about climate change are vastly higher than the expense of acting to reduce carbon emissions.

Conservatives have a valid point when they criticize the rapidly rising national debt that will be passed on to our children and grandchildren, if nothing is done about it. They should be equally concerned about the environmental debacle that will be passed on if the Earth continues to warm as rapidly as it is.

In a recent issue of TIME magazine, William Antholis and Strobe Talbott wrote "Leaving a Good Legacy: Why the ethical case for combating climate change is one that should appeal to conservatives."

It should be another piece of required reading for Lars Larson. The article ends with:

Our concept of intergenerational equity holds that assets do not belong exclusively to those who have accrued them; rather, those resources should, to the extent possible, be administered and preserved for those who will inherit them and will, partly as a consequence of their inheritance, live somewhat better lives than those who came before. We come into this world in debt to our ancestors, and we leave it an incrementally better place, believing our descendants will come up with means of fending off or coping with whatever their age throws at them.

Down through the years, that has been the narrative of the human family. But global warming alters it in a basic way. We cannot leave those who come after us to their own devices. If we do not get the process of mitigating climate change started right now, our descendants, however skilled, will not be able to cope with the consequences. If we do nothing, we will likely bequeath to them a less habitable — perhaps even uninhabitable — planet, the most negative legacy imaginable. That is why there is no time to lose.

Sensuous climate science: most beautiful curves on the planet

The Earth has gone through big climatic changes in its multi-billion year history. Global warming deniers point to these and say, "See, nature continually warms and cools the Earth, so there's no need to worry about what people are doing to the climate."

That's ignorance talking, as I learned in reading more of James Hansen's fascinating book, "Storms of My Grandchildren: The Truth About the Coming Climate Catastrophe and Our Last Chance to Save Humanity."

If that subtitle sounds dramatic to you, be assured that it isn't.

About four years ago TIME magazine, a genuinely fair and balanced news source, had a cover story about global warming titled "Be Worried. Be Very Worried." I wrote about it in "Global warming is real. Debate over."

Unfortunately, this guy graphically shows why global warming can't be a conspiracy, but denial can.

People are gullible and prone to believing bullshit rather than facts. A few errors in the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) are utterly insignificant in light of the fact, according to the New York Times, that the 2007 IPCC report cites 10,000 scientific papers and is more than 3,000 pages long.

Few people are going to take the time to become familiar with that vast body of research. That's why popularizers like James Hansen (director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies) are so important.

They show us the most important information we need to know about how natural global climate change has operated in the past, which gives us great clues about how man made global warming will change Earth in the future.

Hansen introduces the figure below with:

Even the most hardened antiscience zealot, once he understands figure 18, will have to admit that it is one of the most beautiful curves on the planet (I'm referring to scientific curves). It contains an enormous amount of interesting information about Earth's history. There are remarkable stories in both the broad sweep of climate over the 65 million years and in the rapid climate fluctuations.

 

FIGURE 18. Deep ocean temperature during the Cenozoic era. (See text. Original data from Zachos et al., "Trends, Rhythms, and Aberation in Global Climate 65 Ma to Present. "See sources.)

The "PETM" on the figure stands for Paleocene-Eocene thermal maximum. Fifty million years ago, Hansen says, Alaska had tropical-like vegetation and crocodiles. But during recent ice ages, which occurred on the right side of the long-term cooling trend shown in blue, ice sheets reached as far south as Kansas.

So what caused the global warming that peaked 50 million years ago?

Hansen describes how the sun's brightness has increased .4% over the past 65 million years, while Earth has actually cooled, so the sun can't be the cause of the climate changes shown in the figure.

He also says that changes in the location of continents (more about this below) has just been a minor influence on global climate.

However, carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has varied from 170 ppm (parts per million) in recent ice ages to 1,000 to 2,000 ppm in the early Cenozoic -- when those crocodiles were cruising around Alaska.

So carbon dioxide changes in the Cenozoic caused a forcing of about 12 watts [per square meter, averaged over the planet] -- at least ten times greater than the climate forcing due to either the sun or Earth's surface. It follows that changing carbon dioxide is the immediate cause of the large climate swings over the last 65 million years.

Since people weren't around, burning fossil fuels, during almost all of that period, where did the carbon dioxide come from that caused the massive global warming 50 million years ago?

Hansen points to this figure as the answer:

 
FIGURE 19. Continental locations 65 million years ago and today. The Cretaceous era ended and the Cenozoic began 65 million years ago. (Data from Hansen et al., "Target Atmospheric CO2," (see sources) based on original data from Ron Blakey at Northern Arizona University.)

As the continents move, Hansen says, they can ride over ocean crust -- which has massive amounts of calcium carbonate and organic sediments. That heat and pressure produces carbon dioxide and methane.

Note how modern-day India cruised through the Indian Ocean until it reached Asia. This was an area where major rivers had deposited carbon sediments for a long time.

Undoubtedly, the carbon-rich sediments on that ocean floor were subducted beneath the Indian continental plate. Then, 50 million years ago, India crashed into Asia, with the Indian plate sliding under the Asian plate... With India's sojourn across the carbon-rich ocean completed, the carbon dioxide emissions declined and the planet began a long-term cooling trend.

If you want a much more detailed explanation, here's the paper Hansen cites in his book:
Download TargetCO2

Now, seemingly it's reasonable to think, "OK. So what? India isn't going to repeat its crash-into-Asia thing. Why should we care about this today?"

A couple of reasons. Great reasons.

First, Hansen says that the methane hydrate reservoir that the ancient carbon dioxide emissions came from is fully charged again. It's possible that human-caused global warming could start to melt the methane on continental shelves, leading to runaway further global warming.

Which wouldn't be good, given that when ice sheets melted, sea level 13,000 to 14,000 years ago rose 10 to 17 feet per century for several centuries. It was only when sea level stabilized that human civilization really took off.

Second, the long-term paleoclimate data shows us what happens when carbon dioxide levels rise or fall to certain levels. This is what really did happen on Earth, not what computer models predict might happen.

Read this, and weep. For your grandchildren and future generations, if you're as old as Hansen (68) and I (61) are.

A striking conclusion from this analysis is the value of carbon dioxide -- only 450 ppm, with estimated uncertainty of 100 ppm -- at which the transition occurs from no large ice sheet to a glaciated Antarctica.

This has a clear, strong implication for what constitutes a dangerous level of atmospheric carbon dioxide. If humanity burns most of the fossil fuels, doubling or tripling the preindustrial carbon dioxide level, Earth will surely head toward the ice-free condition, with sea level 75 meters (250 feet) higher than today.

It is difficult to say how long it will take the melting to be complete, but once ice sheet disintegration gets well under way, it will be impossible to stop.

With carbon dioxide the dominant climate forcing, as it is today, it obviously would be exceedingly foolish and dangerous to allow carbon dioxide to approach 450 ppm.

We're now at 387 ppm. Over the last 800,000 years, the fastest increase in carbon dioxide concentrations by natural means was 30 ppm over about 1,000 years. That's .03 ppm per year.

Hansen says that humans now are increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide by 2 ppm per year, by burning fossil fuels -- 67 times more rapid than the fastest fairly recent natural change.

Scary.

What took nature thousands of years to accomplish, humans are going to do much, much, quicker. Unless we wake up and recognize the danger we're in.

More reasons to nap (as if I needed any)

Being a fervent, when I'm awake, proponent of napping -- see here, here, and here -- a new study gets a big yawn's-up from me.

Researchers found that a nap reboots the brain, improving learning and memory. Of course, expert nappers like myself reject the notion that napping needs a purpose.

My 4th Commandment of Napping says:

(4) Don't over-analyze. As noted in my "The Tao of napping," researchers have found proven health benefits to taking a nap. But a nap doesn't need justifying. It is what it is.

Cold weather and global warming: perfectly compatible

Last month I heard a conservative radio talk show host proclaim, "Hah! It's snowing in Arizona. Guess this will make John McCain change his mind about global warming."

Idiocy must be contagious, because yesterday I heard something similar (on CNN, I believe). The weather person was saying that it was unusually cold in the central and eastern parts of the United States.

The anchor responded with something like "Well, that's interesting, since the Copenhagen conference on global warming happened not long ago." Before he could expand upon this illogical train of thought, the weather expert interrupted to save him from further embarrassment.

"When it's colder than normal in one area, it's usually warmer than normal somewhere else. Currently the jet stream is sending cold air from the arctic down into the heart of the country. But in Juneau, Alaska, it's warmer than in Chicago right now."

Like this Climate Progress blog post says, Duh! A cold snap doesn't disprove global warming. Obviously.

Problem is, our not-always-so-great United States is filled with people who either (1) don't know much about science, (2) don't care much about science, or (3) pretend to not know or not care much about science in at an attempt to score political points.

Regardless of the reason, it's hard for me to accept that someone could be so dense as to believe that just because it's really cold and snowy some place where it usually isn't, this shows that global warming isn't happening.

Here's an example from Europe of why this is a misconception. The United Kingdom's National Weather Service asks and answers the question, "What's Causing the Cold Weather?" 

In most winters, and certainly those in the last 20 years or so, our winds normally come from the south-west. This means air travels over the relatively warm Atlantic and we get mild conditions in the UK. However, over the past three weeks the Atlantic air has been ‘blocked’ and cold air has been flowing down from the Arctic or the cold winter landmass of Europe.

...The current cold weather in the UK is part of the normal regional variations that take place in the winter season. It doesn’t tell us anything about climate change, which has to be looked at in a global context and over longer periods of time.

Even though during the past few weeks it's been colder than normal in parts of the United States and Europe, it's been warmer than normal in other areas of the world. (Bluish areas are colder, reddish areas are warmer.)

Nonetheless, facts don't stand in the way of anti-scientific global warming deniers. Media Matters addresses this subject in "Are You Smarter Than a Fifth Grader?: Climate Change Edition."

Answer: not if you're on Fox News.

Cold weather has come to almost inevitably yield reflexively mindless right-wing media attacks on the scientific consensus about global climate change. Yes, when it's chilly outside, particularly if it happens to snow, media conservatives go into hysterical fits -- declaring the idea that global climate change actually exists and is at least in part caused by humans a complete farce.

Actually, what's farcical is someone saying Ooh, it's cold! That disproves global warming!

I don't feel oppressed by technology

I love gadgets. They make me happy. Amazon just sent me a snazzier Garmin Nuvi. Trying it out while driving around yesterday, I had a great time. Really.

I'm a believer that money spent on technological innovations actually can buy happiness, especially if what I've bought is made by Apple. 

So I found quite a bit to disagree with in a recent New Scientist article by Yair Amichai-Hamburger, "Free yourself from oppression by technology." (Yes, that's a real name; he's director of an Internet Psychology research center in Israel.)

Such as...

The other factor is relatedness: our need to feel close to other people. Technology is a threat to this. Devices like the iPod can be used to create a bubble that disconnects us from normal human interactions, and while some virtual relationships may be truly meaningful, in many cases they come at the expense of real-world connections. Psychologists have found that the pivotal difference between happy and unhappy people is the presence or absence of rich and satisfying social relationships. Spending meaningful time with friends, family and partners is necessary for happiness.

Admittedly, he has a point.

Some people get obsessed with Facebook, gaming, online pornography, or other cyberspace enticements. But people also get obsessed with solitary fly-fishing, reading romance novels, and crossword puzzles.

Probably when writing started to become common, some of our ancestors decried the impersonal nature of communicating via papyrus or clay slates. "Why aren't we talking to each other face-to-face so much any more?!"

Ditto when the telephone came along. Yet now getting a letter in the mail or a phone call, rather than an email or text message, is viewed as a marvelous bit of old-fashioned personal outreach.

Culture changes. Society changes. Technology changes. Communication changes. Where's the problem in that?

I spend quite a bit of time on my computer. Maintaining two blogs, with a daily post on one or the other, keeps me staring at a MacBook screen for an hour or two each afternoon or evening, not to mention all the other stuff I do online.

Reading and replying to emails. Keeping up on my favorite web sites. Handling our finances. Etc. Etc.

I don't feel at all oppressed by this. Nor do I feel depersonalized. I keep in touch with lots of people who I would otherwise have no interactions with. I've "met" countless commenters on my blogs who live all around the world.

Yes, getting together with our fellow humans physically is nice. But so is getting together mentally. When I communicate with someone online, I consider that I'm doing so "in person."

I've gone to a lot of social gatherings where the normal mode of interacting is shallow chit-chat. I can take it for a while, but eventually my head feels like it's going to explode if I talk for another minute about the weather, or grandchildren, or how good the snacks are.

I have lots of meaningful interactions with people face-to-face. I also have lots of meaningful interactions with people technology-to-technology, which often are deeper and more honest.

The print version of the New Scientist article has this title and tagline:

Shiny, unhappy people
That new phone or laptop may be giving you a warm glow, but beware a stealth attack on your happiness, warns Yair Amichai-Hamburger

OK, maybe this is a fair warning for some people.

As for me, I'm going to continue enjoying the warm glow of happiness I get when I flip open my laptop, browse my iPhone applications, and check out the tricks my Garmin Nuvi 285W can do.

Or write a blog post all by myself. Ah, the bliss of pushing the "publish" button. Here comes a burst of joy...

Climate scientist emails show no fraud

Yes, I was right! Three weeks ago I said that the climate research email hack shows global warming is real, because the furor over the stolen messages was a big ado about nothing.

Now AP reporters have read every email repeatedly. They discussed what the emails mean with experts in climate science and scientific methodology.

The AP found that the emails show pettiness, not fraud. Scientists are human, just like the rest of us. They get irked at global warming deniers who try to play fast and loose with facts.

Otherwise, the emails show that climate change science is solid. No big shock: Sarah Palin is wrong. From the AP story:

E-mails stolen from climate scientists show they stonewalled skeptics and discussed hiding data — but the messages don't support claims that the science of global warming was faked, according to an exhaustive review by The Associated Press.

The 1,073 e-mails examined by the AP show that scientists harbored private doubts, however slight and fleeting, even as they told the world they were certain about climate change. However, the exchanges don't undercut the vast body of evidence showing the world is warming because of man-made greenhouse gas emissions.

Live longer by slowing time down

Time keeps marching on. When I wrote my previous blog post, "How to make time slow down," I was 59. Now, I'm 61.

Obviously I haven't been able to stop chronological time. Every year, on my birthday, my age meter advances a click. But we all know how time seems to fly sometimes, and drag at other times.

None of us wants life to be a drag.

However, the older I get, the more I want time to slow down. Perceived time, that is, because I know I can't do anything about those damn birthdays coming around every 365 days.

Previously I quoted Steve Taylor, who argues persuasively that mindfulness is one of the best ways to slow time down. 

A second way in which we can slow down time is by making a conscious effort to be 'mindful' of our experience… Poets and artists often have this kind of 'child-like' vision – in fact it's this that usually provides the inspiration for their work. They often have a sense of strangeness and wonder about things which most of us take for granted, and feel a need to capture and frame their more intense perceptions.

An article in the October 24-30, 2009 issue of New Scientist, "The Time Machine Inside Your Head," provides some explanations for why mindfulness succeeds in slowing down time for us.

Researchers wondered why we feel that some experiences (such as a frightening one) last longer than others. People who survive a serious car accident, for example, often say "I felt like everything was happening in slow motion." According to the article:

[David] Eagleman now attributes the apparent slowing of time to a trick of memory. An intense experience, with heightened fear or excitement, rivets our attention and evokes the firing of many neurons across the brain, he says, causing us to soak up more sensory details.

Richer memories seem to last longer, he says, because you assume you would have needed more time to record so many details.

...That could explain many other temporal illusions too, such as the "oddball effect." When people see the same thing over and over (a picture of a dog flashed on a computer screen, say) and then suddenly see something different (Margaret Thatcher), the new thing seems to last longer, even if all the pictures are actually shown for the same duration.

So if we see familiar things as if for the first time, this should slow down time for us. The years we have left to live will seem like they take longer to pass.

As Steve Taylor says:

Mindfulness means stopping thinking and starting to be aware, to live in the here and now of your experience instead of the 'there and then' of your thoughts. It stretches time in exactly the same way that new experience does: because we give more attention to our experience, we take in more information from it.

In other words, to some extent we can control time. It doesn't have to speed up as [we] get older. Some of us try to extend our lives by keeping fit and eating healthy food, which is completely sensible. But it's also possible for us to expand time from the inside, by changing the way we experience the moment to moment reality of our lives. We can live for longer not just in terms of years, but also in terms of perception.

Craziness of creationists shown by 47-million-year-old fossil

Oh, Ida, it's so nice to meet a relative -- albeit a distant one. Really distant. As in 47 million years ago.

Scientists hailed Tuesday a 47-million-year-old fossil of an ancient "small cat"-sized primate as a possible common ancestor of monkeys, primates and humans.

Scientists say the fossil, dubbed "Ida," is a transitional species, living around the time the primate lineage split into two groups: A line that would eventually produce humans, primates and monkeys, and another that would give rise to lemurs and other primates.

I love the idea, better termed "reality," that my ancestors include all sorts of other creatures. Which, of course, isn't a strange idea at all, since humans obviously are animals. And animalistic.

There is, however, some controversy about whether Ida is part of the Homo sapiens family tree. Some scientists say the fossil is like an aunt from several generations ago. Others, that it is more like a third cousin twice removed.

Whatever. Ida still is a relative, and I'm glad she came to visit after so long. Forty-seven million years! Time for some inter-species togetherness.

Reality is so much better than fantasy, by and large.

Science is dedicated to learning how things really are. Religion casts its lot with imagining how things might be. Eternal life. A god who created the universe just for us. Heavenly delights offered in exchange for blind faith.

None of that makes sense.

So Christian religious fundamentalists fear reason, evidence, facts. Evolution threatens their irrational world view, where God created everything all at once -- or at least managed the design of creation with his divine will.

Over on one of my favorite blogs, Pharyngula, biologist PZ Myers has been punching holes in a creationist's arguments. I like the title of yesterdays' post: "I'll be condescending when condescension is deserved." 

Who should be intellectually condescending here? I think the side that presents the evidence, actually seeks out new knowledge to test their conclusions, and actually demonstrates some knowledge and scholarship deserves to be a little uppity and arrogant. It's the people like Peter Heck, who are utterly ignorant of the science, mangle what little they know, and actively mislead people about the evidence who might deserve a little condescension. My only reservation about that is that I tend to favor treating ignorant, lying twerps with open contempt instead.

Nicely said.

Today Myers ripped into Heck again, demolishing his ridiculous claim that there is no evidence for macroevolution (the emergence of new species) -- only microevolution (such as when a virus evolves into a new form, like swine flu).

When creationists argue that they believe in microevolution, but that macroevolution is dubious, they've got it backwards. Large scale historical change was confirmed and thoroughly documented in the 19th century! Darwin was a bridge, who explained how small scale, natural processes could produce the known variation between species, and the triumph of 20th century biology was to confirm and expand upon our understanding of how those changes occurred. Neither macro nor micro evolution are speculative. Neither one is lacking in evidence.

For sure.

Ida, who could well be my distant ancestor (yours too) is more proof of evolution. Now, we can only hope that believers in creationism and intelligent design will evolve into human beings who aren't stuck in the Dark Ages of anti-scientific fundamentalist beliefs.

Dancing cockatoo shows that birds can boogie

Browsing through some news web sites this morning, it was nice to come across a story that made me smile rather than frown (as swine flu and economic headlines do).

For the first time, apparently, scientists have proven that an animal can dance to music. Snowball, a cockatoo, performs to various tunes. This video of him grooving to the Backstreet Boys was the first one I watched.

Loved it!

I wish our dog could do half (heck, a tenth) as well. And that I could put a video of her on You Tube that would get over 2,150,000 views.

Unfortunately for our family pet's fame, researchers analyzed more than 5,000 You Tube videos of "dancing" animals.

In the end, only 33 videos really seemed to show creatures moving with a beat. There were 14 different species of parrots and one elephant species.

It seems that only species capable of imitating sound can keep a beat. Dolphins are going to be studied to see if they can aqua-dance, since they're capable of learning vocalizations.

I don't think they'd be as engaging as Snowball, though. Here's another video of him dancing, this time to Huey Lewis. I love how he throws his head around.

Non-shock: men see bikini-clad women as objects

Sometimes science reveals the obvious.

New research shows that, in men, the brain areas associated with handling tools and the intention to perform actions light up when viewing images of women in bikinis.

...Although consistent with conventional wisdom, the way that men may depersonalize sexual images of women is not entirely something they control. In fact, it's a byproduct of human evolution, experts say. The first male humans had an incentive to seek fertile women as the means of spreading their genes.

Guys, we can't fight evolution. So, embrace it.

Caution: universe may be much vaster than it appears

It's good to keep things in perspective. Sure, the economic times are tough. Most of us feel like we're being painfully squeezed by circumstances not of our own making.

We do our best to keep balanced, hoping to maintain the equilibrium of the little corner of the cosmos that each of us calls "me."

Well, there's truth in the conception that the world can be found in a grain of sand. Or, a single psyche.

But it's also wise to keep in mind how small each of us is when compared to the unimaginable vastness of the universe.

Which, according to a recent New Scientist article ("Another universe comes calling") may be much vaster than suspected.
Download Another universe comes calling

Clusters of galaxies have been clocked at 1000 kilometers a second, racing toward a certain patch of sky at a unexplainably high speed. Here's an image from the article that explains what may be going on. (click to enlarge)
Note the relatively small circle in the middle of the cosmic landscape. That's the observable universe, with a radius, I believe, of some 13.7 billion light years (the age of the universe).

Much further out is the cosmic horizon, 45 billion light years from an observer. This is how far away the most distant object we could see today is. It's well over 13.7 billion light years because the universe has been expanding much faster than light since the big bang.

So (I think I've got this right)...by the time light from a hugely distant galaxy reaches us, the galaxy has zoomed much further away. It seems considerably closer than it really is.

On the other hand -- and this is the mind-blowing part of the article for me -- there may be vast expanses of the universe beyond the cosmic horizon that are having an effect of what lies within the horizon.

These expanses are indicated by the "mountain" range of dense space-time shown on the right side of the image. Some scientists suspect that an entity outside of the observable universe is pulling on the galaxy clusters, causing them to flow in that direction.

Such is far from being proven.

Still, I love the notion that so much of the cosmos is over the cosmic horizon, forever beyond our knowledge (unless we could travel faster than light) yet impacting our corner of the universe nonetheless.

Back when I was working in the health policy arena, I gave a talk to medical school students on death with dignity issues. As an icebreaker (somehow I managed to fit this into my presentation) I started off by asking them, "Who knows about how many galaxies there are in the universe?"

Nobody even hazarded a guess. And these were science students, in medical school! How much less, I'm sure, do regular people know about our place in the cosmos.

Answer: likely at least 125 billion galaxies; probably many more. And an average galaxy has around 100 million stars.

So we're very, very small in the big scheme of things. And that scheme is much bigger than we'll ever know if the New Scientist article is correct -- as it likely is to some degree.

I don't know if this knowledge helps when our car won't start, or our back aches.

But I enjoy pondering how insignificant my worries are in light of the ever-expanding and ultimately unknowable cosmos.

Lars Larson thinks global warming is an Oregon joke. That isn’t funny.

Oh, Lars, you're so funny. But only in your own right-wing mind. Today I heard Oregon's contribution to uninformed talk radio (Lars Larson has both a national and local show) praising global warming and today's record breaking heat wave.

"Oh, sure, global warming is going to turn southern California into a dust bowl," I recall Lars saying. "But it's going to be great for Oregon. Just look at the terrific weather we're having. Global warming, bring it on."

First of all, Lars, my daughter and her family live in Hollywood. Real people live down there, like they do elsewhere in the southwest. And all the other parts of the world that are facing long-term drought largely because of global warming.

Lars, you live in the city. You turn on a tap and water comes out. Spend some time in the country. People like us rely on a well for our water. Drought is no joke to country folk. And farmers. There's plenty of both in Oregon, Lars. You need to get out more.

Then there's Victoria Taft on Portland's KPAM, another conservative talk show host who is spectacularly ignorant about global warming. And the status of Oregon State's weird and wacky weather guy, George Taylor. It's a fact: he isn't the official state climatologist.

But recently I heard Victoria say that he was, before Gov. Kulongoski stripped him of his position. Wrong. He never had it, because no such beast as "Oregon state climatologist" exists.

She also believes that humans have nothing to do with global warming, a spectacularly wrong conception that Taylor shares. Along with extremely few reputable scientists.

Taft and Taylor are prone to spouting climate myths. I doubt that they're open-minded enough to expose themselves to the facts about these myths, but they're readily available on the New Scientist web site.

I just read one of those articles, "The 7 biggest myths about climate change." See, I'm a subscriber to several science magazines. I've got this strange (to Lars and Victoria) notion that truth is better than falsehood, and facing reality is preferable to blind faith in political or religious dogma.

Truth. Reality. Some paragraphs from New Scientist:

Our planet's climate is anything but simple. It depends on the interplay of many factors, from massive events in the sun to microscopic creatures in the oceans.

Yet a clear picture has emerged, supported by an overwhelming amount of evidence: the world is warming, this warming is due to increasing levels of greenhouse gases caused by human activity, and if emissions continue unabated the warming will too, with ever more serious consequences.

True, there are big uncertainties in some predictions, but these swing both ways: the response of clouds might slow warming or could speed it up instead, for instance.

With so much at stake, the last thing we need is for the real issues to be obscured by discredited arguments and wild theories. We must act now to avoid the worse effects. So for those who are not sure what to believe, here's our guide to climate myths and misconceptions.

Decide for yourself.

Lars and Victoria, you're being spoken to. Could you stop talking and start listening? The truth is out there. It just takes opening your mind's eye and removing those right-wing blinders.

Global warming doubters deserve to be scorned

Al Gore did a lot for me last night when "An Inconvenient Truth" won an Oscar for best documentary. We'd just finished watching the movie on DVD. He'd already inspired me to do more to fight global warming.

But my passion was still on simmer. Hearing Gore repeat nine words from the movie raised the heat of my activism:

"It's not a political issue. It's a moral issue."

Driving home from the Academy Awards party where I won the trophy for picking the most winners (including documentary feature and original song, thanks to "An Inconvenient Truth"), I turned on the radio and heard Matt Drudge opining on the Oscars and global warming.

A caller suggested that he should pay more attention to the science of global climate change, rather than base his skeptical view solely on his conservative political beliefs. Drudge replied:

I trust my common sense and conscience rather than the science.

Gore has changed my attitude to ridiculous statements like that. I used to think, "that's so wrong." Now my reaction is, "that's absolute bullshit."

In short, I've become scornful of anyone who refuses to look at the scientific facts. Today's Prickly City comic tells it like I am.

Like I said in my letter to the editor about George Taylor, O.S.U.'s global warming head-in-the-sand climatologist, there's a big difference between skepticism and ignorance.

Skepticism is an integral aspect of the scientific method. Ignorance isn't. If Taylor, or anyone else, doubts the consensus of the world's leading climate researchers that (1) global warming is occurring and (2) humans are largely responsible for it, they need to show why the science is wrong.

If they can't, then they should shut up. What we need is more light on the subject of global climate change, not more people saying, "Put on blinders! Don't look at the facts!"

The science of global warming is akin to the science of evolution. There isn't any significant scientific debate about the basic facts in either area. Yet uninformed doubters love to scream, "Teach the controversy!"

Problem is, there's no controversy. So, nothing to teach.

Greg Hoke has put up a transcript of "An Inconvenient Truth." (a terrific resource; thanks, Greg) For me, one of the most memorable segments in the movie was Gore's bursting of three misconception bubbles. The first is that there's disagreement among scientists about whether the problem of global warming is real or not.

There isn't. Not a bit. Gore says:

Isn't there a disagreement among scientists about whether the problem is real or not? Actually, not really. There was a massive study of every scientific article in a peer reviewed article written on global warming in the last ten years.

They took a big sample of 10 percent, 928 articles. And you know the number of those that disagreed with the scientific consensus that we're causing global warming and that is a serious problem out of the 928: Zero.

The misconception that there is disagreement about the science has been deliberately created by a relatively small number of people. One of their internal memos leaked and here is what it said according to the press. Their objective is to reposition global warming as a theory rather than fact. This has happened before. after the Surgeon General's report [on smoking and lung cancer].

One of their memos leaked 4 years ago. They said, "Doubt is our product, since it is the best means of creating a controversy in the public's mind."

But have they succeeded? You'll remember that there were 928 peer reviewed articles. Zero percent disagreed with the consensus. There was another study of all the articles in the popular press. Over the last fourteen years they listed a sample of 636. More than half of them said, "Well, we are not sure. It could be a problem, may not be a problem." So no wonder people are confused.

Well, I'm determined not to let this blog contribute to the confusion. Regularly I get comments on my George Taylor and global warming posts from people who mouth the right-wing party line: "The science isn't certain."

Open-minded blogger that I am, I typically respond to their uninformed views with a fact-based comment of my own. And I'll probably continue to do that.

But from now on I'm going to do something else. If the global warming skeptic hasn't referenced a peer-reviewed scientific article that supports his or her position, that comment is going to be branded with a reader warning:

Caution: no peer-reviewed scientific evidence is cited here. So be highly doubtful that what is said is anything more than a personal opinion.

There's a lot of room for subjective opinion in the blogosphere. However, when it comes to global climate change, the world can't afford to be distracted by political posturing that masquerades as serious skepticism.

If you believe there's another side to the consensus scientific view of global warming, show it to me. Cite the peer-reviewed journal in which the alternative conclusion appears. Then we can have an informed discussion.

If you can't do that, then you have a choice: either keep your personal opinion to yourself, or accept that your comment on my blog is going to be accompanied with a Caution statement.

You've got a right to express your unscientific beliefs. And I've got a right to be scornful of them.

(Global warming skeptics: a good place to start your re-education is this Scientific American piece, "Are You a Global Warming Skeptic? Part IV." It'll probably tax your brain to read facts rather than politically-inspired blather, but consider this an exercise for your grey matter).

George Taylor is a loser, not a winner

I couldn't agree more with a beautifully written and thoughtfully argued letter in today's Salem Statesman Journal, "Climate theory not a winner."

The fact that I wrote it just adds self-centered luster to this shining rebuttal of the newspaper's ill-considered awarding of a Weekly Winner prize to an OSU climatologist, George Taylor.

In my first three sentences, I establish the foundation for demolishing this editorial travesty:

On Friday, Feb. 9, George Taylor was a Statesman Journal "winner" for challenging the conventional science about global warming. I assume the editorial board will next applaud those who still believe the Earth is flat. There's a big difference between skepticism and ignorance.

In my next three, the wrecking ball smashes:

Taylor, who uses the title of state climatologist (even though this position doesn't officially exist anymore), says that it is unsure whether carbon dioxide causes atmospheric warming. When I heard him say this on a right-wing radio talk show, I e-mailed a respected scientist at Oregon State University's College of Oceanic and Atmospheric Sciences. Professor Jim Coakley told me, "George's assertion that we can't prove whether CO2 causes warming or cooling, is, of course, nonsense."

Finally, Taylor's credibility crumbles in a logical coup de grâce

The scientific evidence is clear: Human-caused global warming is occurring due to emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases. Taylor doesn't contribute to genuine scientific debate in this area. He doesn't publish in peer-reviewed journals. He simply uses his soapbox of head of the Oregon Climate Service to echo the party line of global-warming deniers: "The science isn't in."

But it is. George Taylor is misinformed, not a skeptic. That makes him a loser, not a winner.