Global Warming

There are a couple of key questions in the global warming debate. I am not a paleoclimatologist, so I am hardly qualified to speak about the mechanisms and history of the temperature of the earth. The question is, are they?

Things we need to know, and seperate from each other:
1) Is the earth warming up? This can be observed from current data. Recent years do seem warmer than previous years, but this is with no more than about a couple-hundred-year window.

2) Does this warming deviate from the long-run history of the earth? This is a crucial question. More below.

3) Is any deviation from long-term trends due to human activity? Another point suspected, and modeled, but I have heard that said models are somewhat shaky. The Earth is really frickin' complex. To claim to fully know how X affects Y when a direct result cannot be observed is something that leaves me nervous.

More on Question #2. The U.S. House of Representatives committee on Energy and Commerce recently held a couple hearings on Global Warming. At issue is a temperature reconstruction done for the UN IPCC (International Panel on Climate Change) in 2001, and for an academic paper in 1998 that shows the temperature of the earth spiking to unseen heights in the 1900's, dating back more than 1,000 years. This would be significant. The problem is that the statistical methods used to do the reconstruction appear (1) not to have been worked on with any statisticians, (2) to be fundamentaly flawed - intentionally or unintentionally - in a way that predicts the end result whether the historical data or even random data is inserted.

An independent panel was comissioned to look into this. Their results are worth looking at. A website I read regularly has put together some of the excerpts from the first hearing on the subject. The attitude of the Democratic congressmen seems to be this: "We know the truth, don't bother us with your facts. Your facts might run counter to the Truth. You are here not to address the Truth, but to satisfy a partisan agenda. You are hypocritical in your analysis of the Truth." I was shocked to read some of these statements.

I prefer the report the most. Written by a statistician who voted for Gore, I trust it to be less partisan. The key issues brought up are (1) The statistical tools were misused, (2) the academic review of the work was done with people the authors knew and collaborated with on other papers, instead of independent experts, and (3) No experts in a key field (statistics) were consulted, despite multiple authors being from schools with excellent stats departments.

Excerpts Here
Full Report Here (PDF, 1.4 MB)
Committee Page Here

Puppies

Golden
Originally uploaded by Titania1980.

I couldn't help but think of Josie and the Pussycats, when Josie in a fit of subliminal cruelty tells the most innocent girl "Puppies turn into dogs who grow old and die!"

We later see her playing with puppies at a pet store looking very distraught.

It made me sad, too. Our Golden Retriever is old, and won't last much longer. I think she'll be 14 in December.

Ed: "her" = the innocent girl, not Josie.

Reality/Talent Shows

They are everywhere. On the only channels I get to a visible degree, every one is a reality-talent show. A talent show, a dance show, a modeling show, a singing show. My other options are PBS (documentary about a sinking ship), TBN (sometimes amusing, though even it wasn't coming in well today) and the Spanish-language channel.

I suppose people that don't like talk radio feel the same way, especially on the AM band. I think the audience-participation genre on both TV and radio has a powerful draw.

The problem with the TV shows is that they are all the same. Especially the singing show - they even have an annoying British guy. Painful, it was.

Breaking Stereotypes

Not everyone on the street is a n'er-do-well, drug-addicted loser. You knew this, right? Bad things can happen to honest people. It's good to be reminded of that, lest you feel unsympathetic.

Homeless Man Returns $21,000 in Savings Bonds

Unintended Consequences

Interesting happenings in Las Vegas. Due to the number of homeless people that have crowded local parks, the city decided to make feeding them there illegal.

I can see good and bad reasons behind this. I'm curious to know what others think.

Personally, I think it's a symptom of "I don't want to see the problem, and want it to go away." Put the homeless in distant shelters, far from where I might see them.

Chick-Fil-A

I ate there for lunch last Tuesday, because if I had gone to North Carolina and not tried this mythic dining establishment, I'd have woken up one morning with a chicken head in my bed, or something similarly daunting.

It was located in the local mall's food court. I ended up getting a chicken caesar wrap. Perhaps I didn't make the best choice. It was good, but hardly mythic. But I did not sample their food time and again - that one meal was it. I might have tried again for dinner, but ended up having dinner at proper restaurants with coworkers, classmates, and the instructor.

I think I'm just hard to impress. In-N-Out is good, but I'd not drive hours out of my way to go there. Same with Krispy Kreme. If I want a good burger, I think a local place has to be the thing. Have an Awful-Awful at the Nugget in downtown Reno (not the Sparks Nugget). Eat at a stool in the diner. That is a proper fast-food meal. Get a chocolate shake, too.

I so wish I could go there for lunch right now. [cries]

Follow-Up

A joke a fellow economist told me as we rode in the taxi to the airport for our return trip:

A group of economists are stranded on a desert island. They have but one can of beans, and set out deciding what should be done with it. Economist #1 says "All right. First, assume we have a can opener..."

Economists like to state assumptions. I think everyone makes them, but we have some sick love for letting everyone know when we make them. In that vein, assume that the idea of a musical Ideal holds true - that some music by its composition comes closer to stirring up complex thoughts, images, feelings, or somehow representing seeming inherently non-musical things, like Superman. My follow-up question is this:

What songs do you know that seem to come close to capturing some Ideal? Ground rules: lyrics that make you think of things are not allowed (sorry, Kaysi!), because that would be poetic. Lyrics in languages you do not know are okay, as are pure instrumental pieces.

---
I'm back from North Carolina. I left my hotel yesterday at 1 EDT. I arrived home at 2am EDT (11:00 PDT). That was long, and I hear some such trips are even longer. A globe-trotter I am not. I am now cruelly and strangely awake (though at a time I'd normally be at work) though I am almost unable to stand for exhaustion.

I saw a Blue Ridge Road, I am not sure if it was the aforementioned Blue Ridge Parkway. It ran right by Crabtree Mall, which was where we took all our meals, being a short walk (doable,, but only in the evening) from the hotel. More stories are probably forthcoming, but I'm putting pictures up on Flickr (the few that I took). http://www.flickr.com/photos/renowiggum

Musical Ideal

I have heard that Plato advanced the idea that there exists an objective Ideal of things, that everything in the natural world is more or less like. An Ideal chair, and Ideal triangle, etc. To the extent that things are more like that Ideal, they are more accurate.

I was wondering today, as I listened to the Superman theme song on my stereo: is it possible that there is an Ideal musical representations for inherently non-musical things? Like, is there an Ideal Superman song that somehow perfectly captures the essence of Superman? That any musical theme related to this subject is judged by, approved of, to the extent that it matches the Ideal?

A weird thought. But maybe it's not as crazy as it sounds. Music stirs responses in people - certain types of music are designed to provoke certain responses. Given that music is thus related to a non-musical emotion, thought, or feeling is it not possible that the Ideal representation of a person or character combines those themes in a way that captures their essence?
-----
In other news, I'm going to be in North Carolina for a week, learning new and interesting words to curse the humidity with. But I plan to take my camera, not that a class for learning how to better interpret labor market data is expected to provide many scenic opportunities.

Happiness

I hate to see people condemned by their environment to a life of famine, poverty, disease and death. I believe that the best way to change this in the long run is not through charity, but through the creation of systems that tend to reduce those effects.

I have heard, and would tend to agree that the best global predictor of health is a first-world economy, by leaps and bounds. And yet through the structure of our aid programs we propogate the poverty we claim to be working to eliminate.

A question was posed, after a fashion, based on the concept that pooer, even destitue groups of people seem happier than we in the great ol' US seem to be. That even seems to make sense. My first response would have been "you mean, those who live past the age of five seem generally happier" but that would have been both harsh and a distraction from the matter at hand. But, also true.

Happiness is a funny thing. Economists labor under the idea that more stuff makes people happier - allocating goods and services in a way that maximises individual "utility" is what economics is founded on. But it is an important principle that utility is not comparable between people. You can't simply sum up a population's utilities, because there isn't an accurate measure of such things. This is how having more things in the US may not make us happier than people in poor nations: we have lots of stuff, but that simply forms the background of our lives - and additional happiness-inducing things sufffer from diminishing marginal returns.

Expectations are crucial - the same event, with different expectations, produces all sorts of different emotional responses. At a wedding, the bride and groom and those who expect much happiness for the two of them rejoice. A man going through a bitter divorce may feel pity for the expected misery these two are headed for; I am sad because I am reminded of something I desire but don't expect for myself. Joy, pity, sorrow. One event. Is any of these feelings inaccurate?

For people in Kenya, poverty, disease and death are likely expectations for many people. Those things that are not poverty, disease and death are therefore welcome events, and all the better because of the gulf between those expectations and reality. For Americans, health, wealth and success are the expectations, and those things which fall short of those expectations are all the worse by comparison. And so a can of cold soda for a Kenyan may be an unbelievable joy while it is something the American consumes without thinking.

Should we, therefore, decide that in order to make people happy we will impoverish the world? Throw ourselves in front of the bullet of wealth? Is it better that a healthy child is an expectation, or that a healthy child seems to be a miracle, it is so rare an event?

In the best of both worlds, we receive the former (many healthy births, and other good things) without ceasing to be grateful for them. It is with this attitude that I would love to see the world changed: abundance with gratitude, not to the benevolent US or Gates Foundation, but to the giver of all good gifts.

Credit where...

Being thankful, in big things or small things, is important. Looking past blessings to focus on trials makes one bitter, angry, and unwilling to relate to God. In that vein:

It was a small thing I asked. I even said that it was, but in light of recent events, I quite literally asked God to just cut me a break. I changed out my spark plugs, and wanted to give my car one last chance to pass smog, before I took it into the shop for a warranty service they couldn't perform because the car's error code had been erased by a previous diagnostic check. By taking the car to the shop today, I would commit myself to letting my registration lapse and having to pay it, plus shop fees closer to $1000 than to $500, at at time when money's tight and I'd have to be out of town.

I drove around, waiting for the car to cycle through it's onboard diagnostic checks, to re-trigger the Check Engine light. To Carson and back for work, to Claim Jumper, Barnes & Noble and back last night, and to Wal-Mart, Best Buy, and back today. No Check Engine light, but that probably just means that the engine hasn't cycled.

I decided to take it and get it smogged, because just driving around all day seemed futile. I took it in, got it smogged... and it passed!

This is very happy for me. The engine had not cycled through the diagnostics yet, but that did not (contrary to my assumption) mean an automatic fail. My car is now registered for another year, leaving me free to pursue the other maintenance as I have the finances to do so.

This is quite a weight of my shoulders, and for that I am glad. Thanks, God.

P.S. If all is well when you read this, Abby and/orTim, Congratulations!