tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-43076995148422862492023-11-16T12:45:18.701-05:00Unfrozen Caveman MDPeter Everetthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15552306792985340271noreply@blogger.comBlogger15125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4307699514842286249.post-6829651478039882622021-12-02T09:43:00.003-05:002021-12-03T09:29:37.626-05:00On Vaccine Passports<p class="p1" style="font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;">This week, NBC reported that “<a href="https://www.nbcboston.com/news/local/covid-vaccine-passport-program-could-be-coming-to-mass-soon-baker-says/2577968/" target="_blank"><span class="s1">Gov. Charlie Baker said Massachusetts may "soon" deploy a digital COVID-19 vaccine passport similar to those in use in other states</span></a>, he stressed that he remains opposed to requiring that businesses screen customers for proof of vaccination.</span><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"></p><blockquote><span style="font-size: medium;">"I've never supported or agreed to any sort of statewide vaccine mandate program," Baker said Tuesday. "We just want to make sure that people have the ability, if they've been vaccinated and want to have proof that they've been vaccinated, that they can easily download it onto their phone and use it whenever they need to."</span></blockquote><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /><span style="font-family: arial;">Vaccination has proven to be extremely effective at preventing serious illness and death from COVID-19. The data show that the mRNA vaccines in particular are among the safest and most effective vaccines in history, but that protection is limited. New variants like Delta and Omicron are able to cause illness in vaccinated people, especially those who have not received vaccines in the last 6-9 months. COVID-19 can also be transmitted through vaccinated people, though not as virulently as through the unvaccinated.</span></span><p></p><p class="p2" style="font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">The data also show that prior infection and recovery from COVID-19 is at least as effective as vaccination, although far more risky.</span></p><p class="p2" style="font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">Businesses, especially health-related ones, like hospitals, physical and massage therapists, etc., or schools, and performance or conference venues that bring large numbers of people together in a central indoor location, have a right to protect themselves and their customers with measures like a requirement of vaccination. States overstep their bounds and hurt us when they substitute their judgement for the decision making of countless people making their own individualized risk/benefit assessments, whether it be through a vaccine mandate, or through a mandate not to allow vaccine requirements.</span></p><p class="p2" style="font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">It is up to each individual and business owner to decide if vaccination and vaccination requirements are right for their goals and values.</span></p><p class="p2" style="font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">A vaccine passport system that allows people to certify their vaccination status to those who choose to require it, so long as it is voluntary, should not be considered a violation of anyone’s rights. But, that does not mean it is a good idea.</span></p><p class="p2" style="font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">The most obvious problem is that people who have recovered from a COVID-19 infection are at least as “vaccinated” as those who have had two mRNA vaccinations. A widespread vaccine passport system that makes second-class citizens of people recovered from infections is irrational and socially corrosive.</span></p><p class="p2" style="font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">The second most obvious problem is that both vaccination and prior infection have a “shelf-life” that decays over time. This is both because the immunity itself wanes, and because new variants have emerged that break through the partial immunity conferred by both vaccination and prior infection.</span></p><p class="p2" style="font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">A ham-fisted vaccine passport system that depends only on vaccine status, and doesn't fully account for both the immunity conferred by prior infection, and for waning immunity over time in the face of new variants, is likely to do more harm than good. It will both provide a false sense of security that lets new variants run rampant through waning immunity, and unfairly exclude people with recovered infections from full social participation.</span></p><p class="p2" style="font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">The lesson of masks should have taught us something. Masks work very well at preventing the spread of COVID-19 (and other respiratory viruses), but mask mandates do not. The reason for this is that mask mandates create an incentive to comply in the least effective way possible, with flimsy pieces of cloth improperly worn, rather than a properly worn surgical mask. We can expect a vaccine passport to suffer the same problem. If someone with a single J&J vaccine in February is cleared by the passport system, and an unvaccinated person who recovered from a Delta infection in October is not, then it is worthless.</span></p>Peter Everetthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15552306792985340271noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4307699514842286249.post-16106251790380495072021-09-11T10:04:00.006-04:002021-09-11T10:09:52.208-04:00Remembering 9/11/2001, twenty years later.<p>The morning of September 11, 2001 was one of those crystal clear, cool, dry, early September days that let you know Autumn in coming. It was my second day of classes in medical school at Boston University. As a 41 year old first-month medical student, it represented a new beginning for me. After 20 years as a computer programmer, engineer, and mathematician, I was starting a new career in medicine, with a rough plan to become an oncologist. The front of the main medical school entrance faces southeast, on the flight path of the planes departing from Logan Airport. They roared past, high over Albany Street, left to right. I remember regarding the weather with the term pilots sometimes use, “Severe Clear.”</p><p>September 2001 was a time of both personal and general optimism. The Cold War was over. The markets were booming, near all-time highs. I was aware of what Francis Fukuyama had called, “the end of history,” to describe the ascendancy of liberal democracy across the globe, and the waning of the ideologies and conflicts that had described much of history through the Twentieth Century. Into this unprecedented time of optimism, prosperity, and peace, I was starting a new career in medicine. Liberty, civil rights, international cooperation, and free markets, were advancing across the globe. Poverty, war, and nationalism were in rapid retreat. The internet was connecting people everywhere with a promise of unlimited access to knowledge, connection, and mutual understanding.</p><p>Nowhere was this more evident than in medicine, which has always been a very international community, with an ethos that transcended national, cultural, and linguistic borders. My new friends in medical school were from everywhere, Libya, Lebanon, Romania, Afghanistan, Jamaica, Puerto Rico, India, Taiwan, and more. My chosen field of oncology seemed poised in particular for rapid advancement. A rough draft of the complete human genome had recently been announced, and could be accessed almost instantly by researchers globally.</p><p>I was in the cafe in the basement of the medical school when the television in the corner of the room showed a live broadcast of a smoking World Trade Center in New York, after a passenger jet from Boston had hit one of the towers. Had I just watched that jet roar by earlier in the morning? A crowd had gathered in the room. There was much discussion about how such a thing could happen. We were watching the live broadcast when the second passenger jet hit the South tower. My breakfast rose in my throat, realizing I had just watched hundreds of lives instantly and horribly snuffed out in a ball of fire. This was a terrorist attack. Everything had changed. It did not seem important to go to the next class, which was Psychiatry.</p><p>When the South Tower collapsed, about an hour later, the basement of the medical school suddenly felt suffocating. I went out into the courtyard, under that cool, blue sky. I sat on a bench, covered my face, and sobbed into my hands. At that moment, I saw the end of all that optimism. I saw our opening up to the world being coming to and end, and being replaced by a new war. I saw civil rights being curtailed, and a return of all the ugliness that Fukuyama’s “history” had to offer. I sat there for a long time under that deep blue sky, thinking about how the world had just changed, and thinking about thousands of lives so violently and malevolently taken.</p><p>I would later learn that my sister's husband, a Manhattan real estate broker, had an early morning meeting in the WTC rescheduled to later in the day at the last minute. This probably saved his life. My stepsister's husband was also called away at the last minute, after organizing a conference for dozens of his colleagues in finance at the Windows on the World restaurant on top of the North Tower. None of them survived.</p><p>Now, twenty years later, I am an oncologist at Boston Medical Center, and on the faculty of BU. The scientific optimism of 2001 has proven to be justified, and continues to be, with advances in oncology coming so fast that it is a struggle to keep up. It continues to be a privilege for me to work with colleagues from a huge diversity of backgrounds.</p><p>However, we are still digging ourselves out of the cultural rubble that has given us several wars, a surveillance state, a closing of international doors, poisonous political polarization, legislative and executive branches of government both run amok, an opioid epidemic, and civil liberties in retreat. Much healing remains to be done.</p><p>It still hurts to see those pictures.</p>Peter Everetthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15552306792985340271noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4307699514842286249.post-39989284431697642662017-03-12T16:49:00.000-04:002017-03-18T12:14:00.319-04:00Murray at Middlebury, when the walls fell.Of all the stories of campus speakers being shouted down, censored, or attacked by protesters, the one that should give libertarians the most pause is the faculty and student led riot that prevented Charles Murray from speaking at Middlebury College. It is important that libertarians understand that event for what it was, because it creates an opportunity for libertarians to favorably distinguish ourselves from both the Left and Right.<br />
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6a/Charles_Murray_Speaking_at_FreedomFest.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6a/Charles_Murray_Speaking_at_FreedomFest.jpeg" width="163" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Dr. Charles Murray<br />
(photo credit: wikimedia)</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
Charles Murray is a political scientist, sociologist, and author with a doctorate from MIT in political science, and an undergraduate degree in history from Harvard. He is most widely known for three books, <i>Losing Ground (1984)</i>, <i>The Bell Curve (1994)</i>, and <i>Coming Apart (2012)</i>. In these books he critiques United States social policy, discusses the troubling segregation of the "cognitive elite" from larger society, discusses the potential heritable and environmental causes of individual and group differences in cognitive abilities, and the problem of increasing insularity of a highly educated, wealthy, and privileged minority from society in general.<br />
<br />
These are controversial and "hot button" topics. Even though we almost universally accept the variability and heritability of many qualities, with expressions like "the apple never falls far from the tree," the rigorous scientific exploration of what exactly that means raises the specter of eugenics, and "scientific racism," from darker times past. Unlike many in the field, Murray is willing to follow the data wherever it leads, even if the questions are uncomfortable. They are particularly uncomfortable for those who believe axiomatically that the only source of inequality between groups is social injustice.<br />
<br />
Murray became most identified with the libertarian movement with the publication of <i>In Pursuit of Happiness and Good Government</i> (1988), in which he described principles of government most likely to produce a happy society. Not surprisingly, these were largely, though not entirely, libertarian principles, including among other things, giving parents control over their children's education, removing all constraints on who schools can hire, radical decentralization of planning, and generally lowering the barriers faced by individuals and groups who are trying to improve their condition in life. This made him very unpopular with those who favor centrally-planned, government solutions to organizing society.<br />
<br />
One of the anti-intellectual practices of the Left is to label their opponents as being "discredited," or having been "refuted." Sometimes this is in reference to writings by someone who has denounced their opponent, with or without substantive refutation. This becomes a piously repeated shibboleth, "X has been discredited." Which leads to, "We don't have to listen to X because he is discredited," and finally, "X should not be permitted to speak because he has been discredited." When asked what, exactly X got wrong, they are helpless to answer.<br />
<br />
Vice Magazine interviewed some of the student organizers of the Middlebury protest against Dr. Murray. One of them was Aliza Cohen who said, "...[A]ll of these attacks on affirmative action are rooted in his ideas––that racism is connected with IQ, and that students of color don't belong in institutions of higher learning. So I actually think the point of shutting it down is saying, "<b>These ideas aren't what we're engaging with, they're discredited.</b>" Another student, Hana Gebremariam said, "Another part of the frustration for students is that Charles Murray is painted as a scholar, even though <b>his work has been refuted many times</b>, and we know that his work cannot stand any kind of criticism for any kind of academic standards." (emphasis added).<br />
<br />
Anyone familiar with Murray's work would conclude from this that Ms. Cohen and Ms. Gebremariam have not read any of his books, and furthermore believe that it would be wrong to do so, because he has been "discredited." Ms. Gebremariam refers to the received wisdom of Murray's refutations and lack of scholarship, which again is risible to anyone who has read his work which, because of its controversial topics, is far more carefully researched than most social science.<br />
<br />
Protesters at Middlebury also whipped up mob sentiments by shouting him down with chants of "Racist, sexist, anti-gay. Charles Murray go away!" This is nonsensical, as he has long been on record as <a href="http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/charles-murrays-gay-marriage-surprise" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">supporting gay marriage</a> and equal legal rights for all people, as one would expect of a libertarian. He also supports legal abortion, further separating himself from mainline conservatives. Middlebury protesters, including Ms. Cohen, made the over-the-top accusation that Murray was a "white nationalist," which no reading of his work could support. Having whipped themselves into a frenzy of hatred against an imagined version of Charles Murray that did not exist, events went downhill from there.<br />
<br />
When it became clear that the mob would not let the event go on in the hall, the College moved the event to a different building where it could be live-streamed on video, with questions taken via Twitter. The mob followed, tripping building fire alarms to further prevent Murray's thoughts from being presented or challenged.<br />
<br />
Prof. Allison Stanger, is a prominent liberal professor of political science who interviewed Murray with the intent to challenge some of his ideas. She was injured trying to escort Murray to safety when a rioter pulled her hair and wrenched her neck. Stanger described the event as, "The saddest day of my life." She wrote:<br />
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.middlebury.edu/media/view/207041/standard/Allison_Stanger_Faculty_Web_Picture.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://www.middlebury.edu/media/view/207041/standard/Allison_Stanger_Faculty_Web_Picture.JPG" width="212" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Prof. Allison Stanger<br />
(photo credit: Middlebury faculty web site)</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
"<i>I want you to know what it feels like to look out at a sea of students yelling obscenities at other members of my beloved community. There were students and faculty who wanted to hear the exchange but were unable to do so, either because of the screaming and chanting and chair pounding in the room, or because their seats were occupied by those who refused to listen and they were stranded outside the doors. <b>I saw some of my faculty colleagues who had publicly acknowledged that they had not read anything Dr. Murray had written join the effort to shut down the lecture.</b> All of this was deeply unsettling to me. What alarmed me most, however, was what I saw in student eyes from up on that stage. Those who wanted the event to take place made eye contact with me. Those intent on disrupting it steadfastly refused to do so. It was clear to me that they had effectively dehumanized me. They couldn’t look me in the eye, because if they had, they would have seen another human being. There is a lot to be angry about in America today, but nothing good ever comes from demonizing our brothers and sisters.</i>" (emphasis added)<br />
<br />
<br />
Prof. Stanger is correct that the protest was an exercise in demonizing others. Tribalism works in large part by uniting around a common enemy who is dehumanized. For Prof. Stanger's colleagues to protest against Murray's lecture having not read anything he had written, without forming an independent judgement of his work, makes no sense in the setting of an academic truth-seeking institution. However, from the standpoint of a ritual display of tribal loyalty, it makes perfect sense. Ignorance of Murray's work only enhances the loyalty ritual. If your participation in a ritual group bonding event is contingent on your independent judgement of its rightness, that makes you an unreliable ally. Ritual demonstration of gang loyalty is most convincing when the member does something that would be wrong in normal circumstances.<br />
<br />
Faster than anyone could have predicted, both Left and Right are regressing into warring, unreasoning tribes seeking enemies to demonize and cult leaders to follow. With the Right newly engaged in economic nationalism, and the demonization of immigrants and religious minorities, and the Left doubling down on all the regressive excesses that in part gave rise to Trump, and offering up a steady stream of local and national protests that highlight their censoriousness, over-the-top accusations, and overweening political correctness, we libertarians have an opportunity to distinguish ourselves as something much better.<br />
<br />
People are becoming increasingly disgusted with the regressive politics of both legacy parties. Libertarians are the allies of all the people, without regard to race, gender, class. We reject both violence, and its incitement. We are the only clear and consistent advocates for removing the roadblocks that prevent every person from reaching their potential. We encourage your independent judgement. We embrace reasoned debate, and free expression.<br />
<br />
I think libertarians are partly to blame for what has taken place on college campuses, by not having enough campus outreach. A larger libertarian presence among student organizations could easily have provided the missing voices of reason, tolerance, and fair play. If there ever were a call to action to improve our campus outreach, this is it.<br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">
</span> Peter Everetthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15552306792985340271noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4307699514842286249.post-72794248208588000902014-11-29T13:48:00.000-05:002014-12-01T22:22:43.202-05:00Torture of Tornado Data in the United States is Increasing<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjQwAVZDpQRLW5_FZS16o9GirXS2A4s1y-IQqLyi_clV0i5UqBy9CGcgrDDXI-aZlaeSvrePOkSaZ6NTIx-Ee8r_s0_GQK1iSa_0j1mTOAXE-6MQov1-SeNNCeEUiSFVoDbovzi11XQJgE/s1600/Brooks2014ScienceAbstract.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjQwAVZDpQRLW5_FZS16o9GirXS2A4s1y-IQqLyi_clV0i5UqBy9CGcgrDDXI-aZlaeSvrePOkSaZ6NTIx-Ee8r_s0_GQK1iSa_0j1mTOAXE-6MQov1-SeNNCeEUiSFVoDbovzi11XQJgE/s1600/Brooks2014ScienceAbstract.png" height="282" width="320" /></a></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
In the October 17, 2014 issue of
<i>Science</i>, Brooks et al publish the claim that tornadoes, while
not increasing in frequency, are increasingly “concentrated” among fewer, more intense days. [<a href="http://www.sciencemag.org/content/346/6207/349" target="_blank">Ref: H.E. Brooks, G.W. Carbin, P.T.Marsh. Science, 346, 349-352 (2014).</a>] This claim is
based on analysis of EF1 or greater tornadoes in the NOAA Severe
Weather Database files [Ref: <span style="color: navy;"><span lang="zxx"><u><a href="http://www.spc.noaa.gov/wcm/#data">http://www.spc.noaa.gov/wcm/#data</a></u></span></span>
] for the 60 years 1954 - 2013.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
It is well known that increased
population and improved doppler weather radar systems has allowed
weaker and more remote tornadoes that previously would have gone
undetected to be counted. It is also well known that strong EF3+
tornadoes have been declining over this period. So, I suspected that
this report of increasingly “concentrated” tornado days, much
like the reports of increased rainfall intensity, in the absence of
increasing precipitation overall, was an exercise in data torture and
failure to recognize biased data. As you will see, I was not
disappointed.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Let's begin with the last 60 years of
tornado data, collected by year and by intensity on the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enhanced_Fujita_scale">enhancedFujita scale of EF0-EF5</a>: </div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhq_IEagQz5b6hy2oZDyZ_SN1MNUHudn6Q5sd3hZ488mk1Knvv1cPLfl7Gv0hj5VOy2HDWOl-lS9vbUMC2h7v7sYZYfQOhiwB2-3WiR7QRy8w5_5JCwmH9n4AUOzLwkV1Hle71TwbQ0tso/s1600/BrooksResponseFig1.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhq_IEagQz5b6hy2oZDyZ_SN1MNUHudn6Q5sd3hZ488mk1Knvv1cPLfl7Gv0hj5VOy2HDWOl-lS9vbUMC2h7v7sYZYfQOhiwB2-3WiR7QRy8w5_5JCwmH9n4AUOzLwkV1Hle71TwbQ0tso/s1600/BrooksResponseFig1.png" height="232" width="400" /></a></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Figure 1: Annual count of US tornadoes
by enhanced Fujita scale classification reveals a sharp rise in the
detection of weak tornadoes after 1990.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
It is immediately evident that the
annual number of recorded US tornadoes is rising, and that this
increase appears to be driven by EF0 tornadoes, after 1990. This is
not surprising, because 1990-1997 were the years that the national
NEXRAD doppler radar network was deployed. [Ref:
<span style="color: navy;"><span lang="zxx"><u><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NEXRAD#Deployment">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NEXRAD#Deployment</a></u></span></span>]
To the eye, the EF1 and EF2 numbers do not appear to be biased by a
similar sharp increase. But, let's look a little closer. First, we
know that weaker tornadoes occur more frequently than stronger
tornadoes, but we assume that the ratio of weak to strong tornado
frequencies should not change very much over time. This is consistent with the theoretical
and observed power law, or 1/f law, governing the relative
frequencies of storms of different energies. [Ref: J B Elsner et al
2014 <i>Environ. Res. Lett.</i> 9 024018
<span style="color: navy;"><span lang="zxx"><u><a href="http://iopscience.iop.org/1748-9326/9/2/024018/article">http://iopscience.iop.org/1748-9326/9/2/024018/article</a></u></span></span>
] Therefore we can
examine how much more frequently EF0, EF1, and EF2 tornadoes are observed relative to EF3+ tornadoes. While it is very difficult to quantify
exactly how much detection bias contaminates the tornado frequency
data, we can approximate it by assuming that EF3, 4 and 5 tornadoes
are unlikely to have been missed in any of the last six decades.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiwZzaGTQobdU1rkNgB5NeFDbSLjSNo1FadiDbcFFcjVt5BEX7adObS68COTM80H_azXLpZs2tl6GaTczmroZ18na0MyBwpZbNOdK3BRo16vPAihn0jC_p1zMTb8JX3EAl1KjlCen7T9Zw/s1600/BrooksResponseFig2.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiwZzaGTQobdU1rkNgB5NeFDbSLjSNo1FadiDbcFFcjVt5BEX7adObS68COTM80H_azXLpZs2tl6GaTczmroZ18na0MyBwpZbNOdK3BRo16vPAihn0jC_p1zMTb8JX3EAl1KjlCen7T9Zw/s1600/BrooksResponseFig2.png" height="243" width="400" /></a></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Figure 2: Frequency of EF0-2 tornadoes
in the US relative to EF3+ tornadoes, 1954 – 2013.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Viewed in this way, the contamination
of both EF0 and EF1 frequency data by detection bias is clear. In the
1960s and 1970s, EF1 tornadoes were recorded 4-5 times as frequently
as EF3+ tornadoes, but since 2000, they have been detected about 8
times as frequently. There is no physical basis for this to be the
case, which violates the approximate power law behavior of tornadoes [Ref: <a href="http://iopscience.iop.org/1748-9326/9/2/024018/article">J B Elsner et al 2014 <i>Environ. Res. Lett.</i> 9 024018</a>]. It is also clear that the EF2 data is <i>not</i> similarly
biased, maintaining a flat frequency that is about 3 times that of
the EF3+ tornadoes for the last 60 years, which is consistent with value of 2.8 taken from the observations of Elsner et al.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Brooks et al produced this figure,
showing the number of days with EF1+ tornadoes, along with the number
of days with over 30 EF1+ tornadoes:</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgVTWEh8qH8XB1pUm1B9eNZA0k4CeOWOwEE0tZ7HyhLH0Hr_q5wcMzzHZkdx-aYOu_7_5GJZ0uCEboLyZ5X7JnpLVZ1Y8p8Q7POoYp0j5HVjN-X4xpDrykgbmM90kc7f9LkztqqBtAy4so/s1600/Brooks2014Fig4.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgVTWEh8qH8XB1pUm1B9eNZA0k4CeOWOwEE0tZ7HyhLH0Hr_q5wcMzzHZkdx-aYOu_7_5GJZ0uCEboLyZ5X7JnpLVZ1Y8p8Q7POoYp0j5HVjN-X4xpDrykgbmM90kc7f9LkztqqBtAy4so/s1600/Brooks2014Fig4.png" height="316" width="400" /></a></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Figure 3: (Brooks et al 2014 Fig. 4) used to claim that EF1+ tornadoes are increasingly clustered.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Using the NOAA source data and the
OpenOffice spreadsheet program, I was able to reproduce essentially
the same figure:</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhKGaE_jD13LYIz-dp3rWBzgGyfAbk-ndfMG5BmQtZ6rwEVEIsvroZMxtxuTM1b-_fpatHc-EqY4hHw0SLi2JIFBBME3FEQf5AGkFIsfFOcNVgIBJziGXof7yCQKHHfjwcPaLH1WPOQYYQ/s1600/BrooksResponseFig4.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhKGaE_jD13LYIz-dp3rWBzgGyfAbk-ndfMG5BmQtZ6rwEVEIsvroZMxtxuTM1b-_fpatHc-EqY4hHw0SLi2JIFBBME3FEQf5AGkFIsfFOcNVgIBJziGXof7yCQKHHfjwcPaLH1WPOQYYQ/s1600/BrooksResponseFig4.png" height="288" width="400" /></a></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Figure 4: The number of days with
observed EF1+ tornadoes is trending down, but the number of days per
year with more than 30 observed EF1+ tornadoes (right side scale) has
increased.
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
If the method of Brooks et al is
applied in the same way to EF2+ tornadoes, while accounting for the
fact that EF2+ tornadoes are about one-third as frequent, and
adjusting the clustering threshold to >10 EF2+ tornadoes per day, figure 5
is obtained:</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjVZysqd3bg_g6cAwipbDNaf9C_SZfU4sYEX5GAz4R75D8nPYAESL2BC8iVm53CCgU9vz4GVbmqpxET8RDDKSYIph_eFeWougiNptsq96qA5SsY9DE881nVI-XyaUzDjXz2nIy-2K-hruo/s1600/BrooksResponseFig5.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjVZysqd3bg_g6cAwipbDNaf9C_SZfU4sYEX5GAz4R75D8nPYAESL2BC8iVm53CCgU9vz4GVbmqpxET8RDDKSYIph_eFeWougiNptsq96qA5SsY9DE881nVI-XyaUzDjXz2nIy-2K-hruo/s1600/BrooksResponseFig5.png" height="268" width="400" /></a></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Figure 5: The number of days per year
with observed EF2+ tornadoes is decreasing, but the number of those
days with more than 10 observed EF2+ tornadoes (right side scale)
remains flat at about 2.7 days per year.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Finally, if we restrict ourselves to
the most destructive tornadoes, those of EF3 or greater, it is
obvious that the frequency of EF3+ tornadoes in the United States is
decreasing, and that there is no increased “clustering” of days
with more than three:</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj-s3_YvneeKj6RINsykw91G4t5kZA22BDRyXcQZjF9QC7XhEYNe_Y-Q5ChViRDfuz3_ttq20Ko4WiCaqOlSvqYUYEUrlh0qZP1_5i1IedX1O0pj7LMxtC198twb6ljF_SizJylje5XhYI/s1600/BrooksResponseFig6.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj-s3_YvneeKj6RINsykw91G4t5kZA22BDRyXcQZjF9QC7XhEYNe_Y-Q5ChViRDfuz3_ttq20Ko4WiCaqOlSvqYUYEUrlh0qZP1_5i1IedX1O0pj7LMxtC198twb6ljF_SizJylje5XhYI/s1600/BrooksResponseFig6.png" height="282" width="400" /></a></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Figure 6: Declining frequency of EF3+
tornadoes 1954 – 2013, and number of days with more than three
(right side scale).</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
I was disappointed to see this
misleading abuse of statistics reported so uncritically in <i>Science</i>.
It is unfortunate that the <i>Science</i> reviewers were not able to
see what someone with an undergraduate understanding of statistics
should readily see. As demonstrated in the above figures, there is no reason to believe the perceived increase in days with large numbers of tornadoes claimed by Brooks et al is
anything other than another artifact of detection bias, because it
only applies to weak tornadoes that could have escaped detection in
the past, and disappears when restricted to EF2+ or EF3+ tornadoes.
This seems to be part of a trend towards credulity by reviewers, and
lack of rigor by authors of papers that support public concern about climate
change. One never sees this in the medical literature on new cancer
treatments, although 30 or 40 years ago, one did.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
I understand the frustration of global
warming activists who want to be able to claim that destructive
weather phenomena, like tornadoes, are becoming worse in some way,
when the data says the opposite. Rather than following the data
wherever it leads, Brooks et al have chosen to torture the data until
it confesses. As the Scottish poet, Andrew Lang said in 1910, "He
uses statistics in the same way that a drunk uses a lamp post, for
support rather than illumination."</div>
Peter Everetthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15552306792985340271noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4307699514842286249.post-15656983592513683632014-06-08T15:49:00.000-04:002014-06-08T16:54:26.632-04:00Anyone who calls carbon dioxide "carbon pollution" is trying to fool you. Part I.People who use the term "carbon pollution" are dishonest, and deserve your contempt, just as anyone who is trying to deceive you earns your contempt. Ordinary people know what carbon pollution is. It is soot, the black stuff in smoke, or the exhaust of an old diesel engine. It is dirty, and full of cancer-causing polyaromatic hydrocarbons. Responsible producers of energy work hard to minimize the emission of pollution. Since the passage of the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clean_Air_Act_(United_States)" target="_blank">Clean Air Act</a>, enormous progress has been made in doing so. Carbon dioxide is none of those things. It is clean, invisible, and essential for life.<br />
<br />
Carbon dioxide is the gas we exhale in exchange for oxygen. It is what all plants need to grow. Carbon dioxide is the main raw material that living things use to produce all of our food, our clothing, and even homes, if they are made of wood (cellulose) or cement (limestone). The fact that plants can breathe this trace gas, and use it to grow, despite it being only 0.03 - 0.04% of our atmosphere is nothing short of a miracle. To accomplish this miracle, plants use the energy of the sun to separate the carbon from the oxygen, and build large molecules with it, like cellulose and oils. Animals harvest this energy by recombining the carbon in these large molecules with oxygen to make carbon dioxide.<br />
<br />
Fossil fuel is the fossilized remains of plants. So, in a sense, it is fossilized solar energy. When we burn fossil fuels, we release that energy, and return the carbon dioxide to the atmosphere. If we are responsible, we do our best to minimize the dirty parts of burning fuel, like soot, and sulphates, and release mostly clean, odorless, colorless carbon dioxide.<div>
<br />You are by necessity very familiar with the feedback mechanism that keeps the right amount of carbon dioxide dissolved in your body. It is called breathing. If you breathe too slowly, or hold your breath, dissolved carbon dioxide builds up in your body. That creates the urge to breathe. Breathing blows out carbon dioxide. If you intentionally hyperventilate, then your body loses too much carbon dioxide, the pH of your blood gets too high, your urge to breathe decreases, you feel numbness and tingly around your lips, hands, and feet, lightheaded, and you might even pass out. The speed of your breathing is constantly regulating the amount of carbon dioxide in your body, through negative feedback, so that it stays close to the right amount, not too much, not too little. To stay healthy, you need about 1,400 times as much carbon dioxide dissolved in your body as there is in the same volume of air around you. Even though oxygen is the main thing we need to get from the air, it is little more than a bystander in the process of regulating our breathing under ordinary conditions.<br />
<br />
The fact that we need a fair amount of carbon dioxide in our bodies to survive is a clue that it is not pollution, any more than water is pollution. Sure, you can have too much of it, just as you can drown in too much water, but it can't be called pollution.<br />
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Yet, the political newspeak of our time has adopted the term "carbon pollution" to refer to carbon dioxide. This debasement of language is intended to muddy your understanding of carbon dioxide, and make you think of it as something dirty. As readers of George Orwell's 1984 know, it is the job of politics to debase the language. That's how the people get fooled, and harmful policies that benefit only a select few get passed. If language loses its meaning, we lose our ability to communicate and evaluate ideas. It is your job to see through that debasement, and push back.<br />
<br />
They want you to believe that a global catastrophe will result from carbon dioxide rising much beyond its current level. When you ask them why, they talk about climate models. When you ask them how well the climate models have done prospectively modeling the climate, they will tell you, not very well, but since we are very unsure of the future, we should be cautious and not raise carbon dioxide much above recent levels. The term "carbon pollution" is also a kind of social signaling among those who would like to force a reduction in the use of fossil fuels. It is one of their gang signs.</div>
<div>
Since the beginning of the industrial age, the burning of fossil fuels, and to a lesser extent the outgassing of warming seas recovering from the Little Ice Age, have caused carbon dioxide to be returned to the atmosphere faster than it is absorbed from it.</div>
<div>
<a href="http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/webdata/ccgg/trends/co2_data_mlo.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/webdata/ccgg/trends/co2_data_mlo.png" height="247" width="320" /></a><br />There are legitimate questions to be asked about the effects of rising carbon dioxide in our atmosphere. The best and most well known record of atmospheric carbon dioxide comes from the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keeling_Curve" target="_blank">observatory at Mauna Loa, called the Keeling curve</a>, after the late Prof. Charles David Keeling, of UCSD, who supervised the initial work of the observatory in 1958. In March 1958, the level was 316 ppm, and in March 2014 it was 400 ppm, a 26.6% increase. That is a significant amount, and potentially a cause for concern. People with a sincere interest in addressing this concern do not debase the meaning of words, because that undermines the clarity needed for serious investigation.<br />
<br />
(to be continued in Part II)</div>
</div>
Peter Everetthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15552306792985340271noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4307699514842286249.post-83263093295634655102014-04-05T18:39:00.000-04:002014-04-05T18:39:46.754-04:00The new Captain America movie is an allegory for our time.<a href="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/e/e8/Captain_America_The_Winter_Soldier.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/e/e8/Captain_America_The_Winter_Soldier.jpg" height="400" width="270" /></a><br />
I saw the new <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1843866/" target="_blank">Captain America movie</a> with my daughter last night. I liked it much more than I expected, in part because it explores themes that are currently in the headlines, and in my social media feed. I had feared the movie would be an exercise in jingoistic flag-waving as the super-human embodiment of American values and virtues battles evil alien forces. Instead, it is a thoughtful exploration of the eternal questions of liberty versus security, trust versus suspicion, and obedience versus resistance. Also, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scarlett_Johansson" target="_blank">Scarlett Johanssen</a> gets lots of screen time. (<i><b>Caution</b>: moderate spoilers ahead</i>.) The movie centers on a plan to impose peace and order on the world through an algorithm that analyzes a person's propensity to cause problems for society, or for the government, by processing the entirety of the world's digital traffic, public and private. Those people are then killed using a new technology that there is no need to reveal here. It is calculated that by eliminating just 20 million people, life for the remaining 7 billion will be orderly and peaceful. The phrase "final solution" might come to mind.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/0c/Scarlett_Johansson_C%C3%A9sars_2014.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/0c/Scarlett_Johansson_C%C3%A9sars_2014.jpg" height="200" width="140" /></a><br />
<div>
Meanwhile, in the headlines, we read the ongoing revelations from <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Snowden" target="_blank">Edward Snowden's whistleblowing of the NSA</a>, the <a href="http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/jul/17/irs-officials-washington-ordered-special-scrutiny-/?page=all" target="_blank">utilization of the IRS to target politically unfavored groups for "special scrutiny"</a>, the latest <a href="http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/13pdf/12-536_e1pf.pdf" target="_blank">Supreme Court decision (McCutcheon v FEC)</a> overturning the aggregate limits on contributions to multiple campaigns, and most recently, <a href="http://dish.andrewsullivan.com/2014/04/03/the-hounding-of-brendan-eich/" target="_blank">the forcing out of Mozilla's CEO</a>.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-politics/files/2014/04/Mozilla_CEO-0e569_image_982w-286x300.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-politics/files/2014/04/Mozilla_CEO-0e569_image_982w-286x300.jpg" height="200" width="190" /></a>Brendan Eich, the Mozilla co-founder, and inventor of Javascript, was forced out of his recent CEO appointment because of a $1,000 contribution he made on behalf of California's 2008 Proposition 8, opposing same-sex marriage. As far as we know, Mr. Eich did not say or do anything in any of his roles at Mozilla, including CEO, that could be construed as anti-gay. He affirmed his support of Mozilla's very liberal health benefits for same-sex partners, and expressed no interest in treating LGBT people any differently with respect to hiring, promotions, or benefits. Outside of this one campaign donation in 2008, he seemed the very model of a modern liberal CEO.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
(Ironically, in 2008, presidential candidate Senator Barack Obama, gave far more support to California's Proposition 8 than did Mr. Eich, directly by making his opposition to same-sex marriage part of his presidential campaign, and indirectly by organizing a very effective get-out-the-vote campaign in communities that were far more hostile to gay marriage than was the average Californian. I have yet to see an organized campaign from the opponents of Proposition 8 to hound him out of office for it.)</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Furthermore, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Proposition_8_%282008%29" target="_blank">Proposition 8</a> was dead, and rightfully so. After winning in California's election booths in 2008 by 52% to 48%, the law was ruled unconstitutional in a California court in 2010, and the United States Supreme Court chose to let that ruling stand in 2013. Nevertheless, somebody saw fit to comb the records of that now dead campaign, discover Brendan Eich's contribution there, and target him to be purged. In light of this, the campaign to oust Eich seems much more like a vindictive exercise of power than a defense of civil rights too long denied.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
In Captain America: The Winter Soldier, one of the villians attempts to stop Natasha Romanov by asking her if she is prepared to have her dark past exposed on the Internet.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
This new algorithm for analyzing the digital record, using it to identify "problem people", and targeting them to be purged from their jobs, their careers, their schools, or their homes, should have us all concerned. You will increasingly be judged by your life's worst moments, or the moments that can be cast in the most negative light. Everyone is now subject to career-ending character assassination at all times. Even if the accusations are false, it does not matter. <a href="http://simple.wikiquote.org/wiki/Mark_Twain" target="_blank">Mark Twain's lie</a> that once got halfway around the world while the truth was pulling on its shoes, now goes around the world thousands of times, spawns memes, reaction vlog videos, and outraged articles in the <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/" target="_blank">Huffington Post</a>, in the same time.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
At the same time that our lives are increasingly exposed to digital inspection, the explosion of the regulatory state means that we are all guilty of some violation, or as <a href="http://harveysilverglate.com/Home.aspx" target="_blank">Harvey Silverglate</a> writes, we commit on average <a href="http://www.threefeloniesaday.com/Youtoo/tabid/86/Default.aspx" target="_blank">"Three Felonies a Day."</a> The job of law enforcement is less one of bringing justice to those who break the law, and more one of selecting whom to prosecute. Those with unpopular opinions, or unpopular occupations, of course. The prosecutions that will get you elected mayor, or governor. Right, Mr. Guliani? Right, Mr. Spitzer?</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
In reference to the Mozilla affair, a friend of mine who immigrated to the US from the Soviet Union recently observed, "There is no freedom of speech, except for those with nothing to lose." If that is true, then free, democratic society is doomed. It is the precise opposite of the principle of <a href="http://nassimtaleb.org/category/skin-in-the-game/" target="_blank">"skin in the game," advocated by Nassim Nicholas Taleb</a> as a guiding ethical heuristic to reduce catastrophic outcomes. If the only voices we empower are the ones who pay no price for being wrong, we are sure to go wrong very quickly.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
What will life be like under this new constant threat of being purged? Should we accept it as the new normal? Will there be a mechanism to purchase indulgences that protect you from being targeted? Can the American values that worked in the pre-digital age survive <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Total_Information_Awareness" target="_blank">Total Information Awareness</a>?</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
A free, tolerant, pluralistic, democratic republic can only survive if we can live and work side-by-side with people who have very different ideas than we do about how to live. Live and let live is the rule of a civil society. People who fancy themselves as champions of "diversity" might imagine that a generalization of draconian campus speech codes to society at large will promote harmony. However, it is becoming more plain that what it promotes is witch hunts.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Our culture is changing. People have so much choice in their sources of information, entertainment, and recreation that they consciously or unconsciously silo themselves in comfortable echo chambers of like-minded people. It does not help that the recent economic downturn also makes people feel squeezed and insecure. Opinions are hardened and people more socially retrenched. Decreasingly able or willing to engage with challenging views, we become more tribal. Our gang signs are the things we "like", the words we use.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
In this new culture, the first approach to disagreement is to silence the opposing view. Social media facilitates this, while at the same time being a gain medium for comforting lies and half-truths that are shared at internet speed, and that serve to further polarize opinion. Why try to understand why someone seems to harbor such horrible opinions when it is easier to "unfriend" them?</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
It will take an ever-increasing amount of effort to find and engage people of divergent views with humility and respect, but it might be the most import social activity there is. <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Coming-Apart-State-America-1960-2010/dp/030745343X" target="_blank">Charles Murray, in "Coming Apart"</a>, has written eloquently about how small minority of people who make the major political, economic, and cultural decisions in our society are becoming more and more isolated from the vast majority of people who have to live with the consequence of those decisions. They have less and less "skin in the game". This is a trend that can only end in catastrophe.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
The theme of the Avengers movies is that each super hero has their own special abilities, but also bears the physical and psychological scars of their past. None of us are perfect, and all of us are a little broken. The guy that invented Javascript also voted against marriage equality. If we judge each other by our worst moments, we will never get the good stuff.</div>
Peter Everetthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15552306792985340271noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4307699514842286249.post-47031606311429267592013-09-15T17:42:00.000-04:002013-09-27T08:10:50.283-04:00Climate Alarmist Bingo<script type="text/javascript">
var words=["Denier / Denialist","Consensus","Polar Bears","Unprecedented",
"Carbon Pollution","Tipping Point","Extreme Weather","Climate Crisis",
"Ice Free Arctic","Fracking","Tar Sands","Keystone","Runaway Warming",
"Koch Brothers","Katrina","Sandy","Carbon Tax","Big Oil","Ocean Acidification",
"97%","Cap and Trade","Put a Price on Carbon","Species Extinction",
"Superstorm(s)","Tornadoes","Accelerating Sea Level Rise", "Peer Reviewed",
"Model Projections","Hidden Heat","Climate Refugees",
"Dirty Weather", "Put a Price on Denial","Fires","Floods"];
var wordcount=words.length;
function mMark(obj)
{
var bgcol = obj.style.backgroundColor;
if ( bgcol != "#FFAAAA" && bgcol != "rgb(255, 170, 170)" )
{
obj.style.backgroundColor="#FFAAAA";
}
else
{
obj.style.backgroundColor="#F0F0FF";
}
}
function shuffle(words)
{
var nn = words.length;
var tempword;
for ( var ii=nn;ii>0;ii-- )
{
randii=Math.floor(Math.random()*ii);
tempword = words[randii];
words[randii] = words[ii-1];
words[ii-1] = tempword;
}
}
shuffle(words);
</script>
<body>
<h1 align="center">
Climate Alarmist Bingo</h1>
<table border="3" cellpadding="3">
<tr style="height:100px;">
<td onclick="mMark(this)" style="background-color:#F0F0FF;width:100px;text-align:center;vertical-align:middle;">
<script>document.write(words[0]);</script>
</td>
<td onclick="mMark(this)" style="background-color:#F0F0FF;width:100px;text-align:center;vertical-align:middle;">
<script>document.write(words[1]);</script>
</td>
<td onclick="mMark(this)" style="background-color:#F0F0FF;width:100px;text-align:center;vertical-align:middle;">
<script>document.write(words[2]);</script>
</td>
<td onclick="mMark(this)" style="background-color:#F0F0FF;width:100px;text-align:center;vertical-align:middle;">
<script>document.write(words[3]);</script>
</td>
<td onclick="mMark(this)" style="background-color:#F0F0FF;width:100px;text-align:center;vertical-align:middle;">
<script>document.write(words[4]);</script>
</td>
</tr>
<tr style="height:100px;">
<td onclick="mMark(this)" style="background-color:#F0F0FF;width:100px;text-align:center;vertical-align:middle;">
<script>document.write(words[5]);</script>
</td>
<td onclick="mMark(this)" style="background-color:#F0F0FF;width:100px;text-align:center;vertical-align:middle;">
<script>document.write(words[6]);</script>
</td>
<td onclick="mMark(this)" style="background-color:#F0F0FF;width:100px;text-align:center;vertical-align:middle;">
<script>document.write(words[7]);</script>
</td>
<td onclick="mMark(this)" style="background-color:#F0F0FF;width:100px;text-align:center;vertical-align:middle;">
<script>document.write(words[8]);</script>
</td>
<td onclick="mMark(this)" style="background-color:#F0F0FF;width:100px;text-align:center;vertical-align:middle;">
<script>document.write(words[9]);</script>
</td>
</tr>
<tr style="height:100px;">
<td onclick="mMark(this)" style="background-color:#F0F0FF;width:100px;text-align:center;vertical-align:middle;">
<script>document.write(words[10]);</script>
</td>
<td onclick="mMark(this)" style="background-color:#F0F0FF;width:100px;text-align:center;vertical-align:middle;">
<script>document.write(words[11]);</script>
</td>
<td onclick="mMark(this)" style="background-color:#F0F0FF;width:100px;text-align:center;vertical-align:middle;">
<script>document.write(words[12]);</script>
</td>
<td onclick="mMark(this)" style="background-color:#F0F0FF;width:100px;text-align:center;vertical-align:middle;">
<script>document.write(words[13]);</script>
</td>
<td onclick="mMark(this)" style="background-color:#F0F0FF;width:100px;text-align:center;vertical-align:middle;">
<script>document.write(words[14]);</script>
</td>
</tr>
<tr style="height:100px;">
<td onclick="mMark(this)" style="background-color:#F0F0FF;width:100px;text-align:center;vertical-align:middle;">
<script>document.write(words[15]);</script>
</td>
<td onclick="mMark(this)" style="background-color:#F0F0FF;width:100px;text-align:center;vertical-align:middle;">
<script>document.write(words[16]);</script>
</td>
<td onclick="mMark(this)" style="background-color:#F0F0FF;width:100px;text-align:center;vertical-align:middle;">
<script>document.write(words[17]);</script>
</td>
<td onclick="mMark(this)" style="background-color:#F0F0FF;width:100px;text-align:center;vertical-align:middle;">
<script>document.write(words[18]);</script>
</td>
<td onclick="mMark(this)" style="background-color:#F0F0FF;width:100px;text-align:center;vertical-align:middle;">
<script>document.write(words[19]);</script>
</td>
</tr>
<tr style="height:100px;">
<td onclick="mMark(this)" style="background-color:#F0F0FF;width:100px;text-align:center;vertical-align:middle;">
<script>document.write(words[20]);</script>
</td>
<td onclick="mMark(this)" style="background-color:#F0F0FF;width:100px;text-align:center;vertical-align:middle;">
<script>document.write(words[21]);</script>
</td>
<td onclick="mMark(this)" style="background-color:#F0F0FF;width:100px;text-align:center;vertical-align:middle;">
<script>document.write(words[22]);</script>
</td>
<td onclick="mMark(this)" style="background-color:#F0F0FF;width:100px;text-align:center;vertical-align:middle;">
<script>document.write(words[23]);</script>
</td>
<td onclick="mMark(this)" style="background-color:#F0F0FF;width:100px;text-align:center;vertical-align:middle;">
<script>document.write(words[24]);</script>
</td>
</tr>
</table>
<br />
<b>How to play:</b> If you are ever caught in a room where a climatist is droning on
about the doom that is sure to come if we don't stop burning fossil fuels,
take out this handy bingo card.
<b>Climate Alarmist Bingo (TM)</b> turns an otherwise tedious
situation into fun for you and your friends. Check off each square as it
is mentioned. Shout "BINGO!" the moment a vertical, horizontal,
or diagonal row of 5 is completed. If you want to shout a different
two-syllable B word, well, who am I to tell you what to do?<br><br>
<i><b>It randomly regenerates with each reload of the page.
There are 11,420,609,241,913,781,691,285,504,000,000 different cards!</b></i>
</body>Peter Everetthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15552306792985340271noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4307699514842286249.post-80686937646585839552013-05-08T14:03:00.000-04:002013-05-08T14:20:29.641-04:00Wait! Wait! Looks like we're coming in to some more turbulence!<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj-ZthTUXRXX8xg-wa34WDdgIWbcICqtWqaV6X2K6-ZvtE2hIaFL2ks7FnF7XJyXyFssXS9Bu318Y7s-JSrLNIumOAKwwxK9uvL6o2idYhxFv6p0sFK8dIn-BLq4VTAh7varjtKpb712Qo/s1600/20938.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj-ZthTUXRXX8xg-wa34WDdgIWbcICqtWqaV6X2K6-ZvtE2hIaFL2ks7FnF7XJyXyFssXS9Bu318Y7s-JSrLNIumOAKwwxK9uvL6o2idYhxFv6p0sFK8dIn-BLq4VTAh7varjtKpb712Qo/s320/20938.jpg" width="228" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Credit: Gary Larson, "The Far Side"</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Fasten your seat belts. If your peanuts scatter and your coffee spills and heavy baggage threatens to burst from the overhead compartment while you jet across "the pond" between the US and Britain, you now have permission to blame anthropogenic climate change. According to simulations of a doubled carbon dioxide concentration carried out by Paul D. Williams and Manoj M. Joshi, of the Universities of Reading and East Anglia, respectively, and published in the April 8, 2013 issue of <i><a href="http://www.nature.com/nclimate/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nclimate1866.html" target="_blank">Nature Climate Change</a></i>, average turbulence along transatlantic is projected to increase 10 - 40 percent, and the incidence of moderate to severe turbulence 40 - 170 percent. They write, "<i>Our results suggest that climate change will lead to bumpier transatlantic flights by the middle of this century. Journey times may lengthen and fuel consumption and emissions may increase.</i>"</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Unlike the turbulence associated with storms, landforms, and aircraft wakes, clear air turbulence (CAT) is notoriously difficult to detect in advance, offering little in the way of a radar signature, and little warning for pilots. Injuries are rare, and affect almost exclusively unbuckled passengers and crew.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Over the North Atlantic, the conditions that favor clear air turbulence are the eddies that form along the edges of a the jet stream. Williams and Joshi predict that the jet stream will become stronger, and move northward to affect more of the transatlantic air traffic. Their predictions are entirely model-based. Some historical measurements of the conditions that favor turbulence over the North Atlantic since 1980, during which time carbon dioxide has increased about 15%, have increased over the North Atlantic, but decreased over the Pacific. Historical conditions that favor turbulence do not correlate as well with carbon dioxide as with the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Atlantic_oscillation" target="_blank">North Atlantic Oscillation</a>, according to a <a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2006JD008189/abstract" target="_blank">2007 study by Jaeger and Sprenger in JGR</a>. They concluded, "<i>The interannual variability of CAT is significant as indicated by the CAT indicators and can be correlated with the two phases of the North Atlantic Oscillation as well as with the Pacific/North American flow pattern. The interannual variations of the TI and PV patterns are consistent with the variation of the jet position associated with the NAO, whereas the Ri and, especially, the N2 patterns are not markedly influenced by the jet stream position. During positive phases of the NAO, generally larger turbulence frequencies occur, which might be due to stronger jets, and associated with that, more frequent instabilities.</i>"</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Williams and Joshi make no mention of the North Atlantic Oscillation in their report. It is a part of our climate, but not a part of their model simulation. Perhaps the rise in carbon dioxide will cause more turbulence for flight simulators than for actual flights. It is all part of the rush to supply the IPCC AR5 with alarmist fodder prior to the March 15, 2013 publication acceptance deadline. Expect many more reports of the hazards of carbon dioxide in the coming months.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
Peter Everetthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15552306792985340271noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4307699514842286249.post-1092928386477982262013-04-17T09:43:00.000-04:002015-03-29T16:30:08.491-04:00Reflections on the 2013 Boston MarathonI was raised in Lexington, MA, where Patriots Day got its start, and went with my father to the Unitarian Universalist church there. In my home town, Patriots Day was the biggest holiday, with the reenactment and the parade. In my father's personal humanist religion, the Boston Marathon was the holiest day, and handing water to the runners, along with providing abundant encouragement, was its sacrament. I grew up going down to the course every year with my father to give water to the runners. In the days before Gatorade and Poland Spring, crowd support meant the difference between finishing and not finishing. He did it to celebrate the spirit of overcoming great obstacles - physically, mentally and spiritually.<br />
<div style="min-height: 14px;">
<br /></div>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj905UWSuztJSM4uW_WCqZrQEvW013cFABsE3RJUK31lzgr8DaIx2EpiS2i9oexaXo8ea5XlSpQ35UwPCanvIws8pAtcfzQ5wWxx0_Ig2x5QJgd8x9FdXX9VBS_pPSHTozYwTvf82EnGt0/s1600/DadMarathon2002sm.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><span style="color: black;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj905UWSuztJSM4uW_WCqZrQEvW013cFABsE3RJUK31lzgr8DaIx2EpiS2i9oexaXo8ea5XlSpQ35UwPCanvIws8pAtcfzQ5wWxx0_Ig2x5QJgd8x9FdXX9VBS_pPSHTozYwTvf82EnGt0/s320/DadMarathon2002sm.jpg" height="320" width="292" /></span></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><div style="text-align: left;">
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit; font-size: x-small;">My father, Henry C. Everett, and stepmother,</span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="background-color: white; font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Beverly, </span><span style="font-family: inherit;">clap and </span><span style="font-family: inherit;">cheer for </span><span style="font-family: inherit;">the </span><span style="font-family: inherit;">"pluggers" at</span></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="background-color: white; font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">mile 21 </span><span style="font-family: inherit;">after running </span><span style="font-family: inherit;">out of </span><span style="font-family: inherit;">water cups </span><span style="font-family: inherit;">in 2002,</span></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="background-color: white; font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">our last </span><span style="font-family: inherit;">marathon </span><span style="font-family: inherit;">together.</span></span></div>
</div>
</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
He told me about being in the Army stationed in Korea in 1947, when a Korean won the Boston Marathon. At that time Koreans were struggling to recover their national pride and identity, and the jubilation was enormous. My father delighted in celebrating along with his Korean friends. He ran cross country in college, and although he never trained for the marathon distance, he knew what it meant to run 26.2 miles. I think the marathon has a particular cultural resonance in Korea, where their art of Tae Kwon Do is organized around five tenets, two of which are Perseverance, and Indomitable Spirit. I have since practiced Tae Kwon Do for most of my life.<br />
<div style="min-height: 14px;">
<br /></div>
My father became a psychiatrist who helped people overcome mental obstacles. He taught me that the people who benefit most from the water and from the encouragement are not the elite runners who are racing against each other, but the "pluggers", as he called them, that great mass of runners for whom finishing is winning, taking 4-6 hours. It was against these runners, their families, and their supporters, that yesterday's murderous attack was directed.<br />
<div style="min-height: 14px;">
<br /></div>
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEimyN7WJ-XPt8JGrr1uDiz3kDKV4vkq68wb-PgPhH5GDcVlkKNKFLYrAIu-LfrdRVFwK7VlxyuJmL6Eo13ArwJkbLBzOIZ8WeRKkDX0maPz6vyyFVN8qiXJDKN6GFnRn4sSdlnlSSjHUEo/s1600/BoylstonSt2010.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEimyN7WJ-XPt8JGrr1uDiz3kDKV4vkq68wb-PgPhH5GDcVlkKNKFLYrAIu-LfrdRVFwK7VlxyuJmL6Eo13ArwJkbLBzOIZ8WeRKkDX0maPz6vyyFVN8qiXJDKN6GFnRn4sSdlnlSSjHUEo/s200/BoylstonSt2010.jpg" height="200" width="132" /></a>I finally got to see the Boston Marathon from the other side, as one of those pluggers, in 2008, and again in 2010. The crowd support in Boston is legendary, and to experience it is transcendent. I must have high-fived 100 kids between Hopkinton and Wellesley in 2008. In 2010 I was running for the Boston Medical Center team where I was in fellowship for hematology and oncology. My right knee had started giving me trouble in Natick, and by the time I was in Newton I was seriously doubting if I could finish. A woman standing on the grassy median of Commonwealth Avenue saw my shirt and screamed "Team BMC! Go Team BMC!!!" Then she jumped up and down and pointed to the older woman sitting in a lawn chair next to her, "You saved this woman's life!!! Go BMC!!!!" And go I did. Even now my colleagues at BMC, and all the big hospitals of Boston, are saving lives torn apart by yesterday's bombs.<br />
<div style="min-height: 14px;">
<br /></div>
The violence done to the people yesterday at the Boston Marathon would have broken my father's heart. He died in 2004. Although I very much wish that he had lived long enough to hand me a cup of water at our traditional 21st mile spot, I caught myself being glad that he was spared the knowledge of yesterday's horror. And yet, I find myself feeling doubly heartbroken, outraged, and upset, once for myself, and once on his behalf. For me, this was an attack on the memory of my father's spirit.<br />
<div style="min-height: 14px;">
<br /></div>
This was also an attack on our city and our people at their very, very best, and we met it with our best as well. By all accounts, the world-class medical presence that saturated the finish line, along with alert and capable athletes and bystanders, some of them veterans with IED experience, saved many lives and made a horrible situation not nearly as horrible as it could have been. It will take some time to grieve and absorb the loss of life and limb. I am grateful that my four friends and their families who ran yesterday got home safely, but painfully aware that many others did not. If Marathon Monday means anything, it means that we celebrate and practice the indomitable spirit. It can not be taken from us. I am still trying to figure out for myself how to best respond to this act of terror. The feelings are still too fresh. The best response is always to refuse to be terrorized. For me, I think that might mean running Boston again.<br />
<br />Peter Everetthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15552306792985340271noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4307699514842286249.post-58717279996725348972010-11-22T19:42:00.005-05:002010-11-22T21:02:16.008-05:00Don't grope me, bro!<span style="font-style: italic;">The recent implementation of backscatter x-ray body scanners and intrusive body searches by the TSA has been the source of countless critiques in print, broadcast and internet media, from <a href="http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/opedcolumnists/groping_for_new_american_freedom_i1SuG4FQDZbezBsOLfjtaJ">George F. Will</a> to </span><a style="font-style: italic;" href="http://blogs.herald.com/dave_barrys_blog/2010/11/groin-update.html">Dave Barry</a><span style="font-style: italic;"> to </span><a style="font-style: italic;" href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/11/18/AR2010111804494.html">Charles Krauthammer</a><span style="font-style: italic;"> to <a href="http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/opedcolumnists/forget_the_porn_machines_NQAJ5DOzf187gdRQnLURlO">Michael J. Totten</a>, and literally hundreds of others. My friends, after some conversation on the subject, urged me to share my thoughts.</span><br /><br />American TSA "security theater" is rooted in the primitive notion, inherited from the Middle Ages, that evil is contained in objects, not people. It is this animistic thought process that gives us gun control, drug prohibition, and civil asset forfeiture laws. Many people have pointed out the stark contrast between American air travel security and that of Israel, arguably the most effective air travel security program in the world.<br /><br />The Israelis screen for dangerous people, and make sure they have no dangerous objects. The TSA screens for dangerous objects, and assumes that will identify the dangerous people. I've been profiled twice by Israeli airport security, both in New York and in Tel Aviv. They are good at what they do, and always professional. (BTW, TSA, that small Swiss Army knife you took from me was a non-issue for the Israelis. After their last, semi-aggressive interview of me, they probably figured the more weapons I had, the safer the flight would be.)<br /><br />Our leaders are like trembling, superstitious primitives, with no idea of what security is. Like a "cargo cult" they erect flimsy barriers against whatever object last frightened them. To these simpleton policy makers, it wasn't a radicalized, religious extremist man in his 20s on a suicide mission that almost blew up a plane over Detroit; it was a bomb in someones underwear.Peter Everetthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15552306792985340271noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4307699514842286249.post-30551809816712925162010-02-19T12:07:00.012-05:002010-02-20T16:36:00.343-05:00Trends in Northern Hemisphere Snow Cover<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhc0mQAr-EWNhrhuw2p0pioQaKQibVdptq4vK8dZ0kbJdeVqaPDafRdFnZAt3rfKWqf6mRuceSDXtGLvA5niq5tQAJDpQGaL3BHiTV55eBDNxxVNKBu4AiSFHRTkYZTG9YNz9GiaC7i_Mc/s1600-h/SOUS.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 240px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhc0mQAr-EWNhrhuw2p0pioQaKQibVdptq4vK8dZ0kbJdeVqaPDafRdFnZAt3rfKWqf6mRuceSDXtGLvA5niq5tQAJDpQGaL3BHiTV55eBDNxxVNKBu4AiSFHRTkYZTG9YNz9GiaC7i_Mc/s320/SOUS.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5440126169563455554" border="0" /></a>Having recently returned from three days of skiing in New Hampshire, I was interested to learn that according to the <a href="http://climate.rutgers.edu/snowcover/chart_daily.php?ui_year=2010&ui_day=44&ui_set=">Rutgers University Global Snow Lab</a>, last week marked the largest Northern Hemisphere snow extent since 1978 (a year that left an <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northeastern_United_States_blizzard_of_1978">indelible mark</a> on the memory of residents of the Boston area like me). On the day we returned home, my kids and I built an 11' Snowman Of Unusual Size (SOUS) from the wet snow that fell the night before we returned.<br /><br />The excellent climate science blog of Anthony Watts, <a href="http://wattsupwiththat.com/">http://wattsupwiththat.com</a>, recently had a guest post by Steven Goddard calling attention to the trends in Northern Hemisphere snow cover, as recorded by scientists at Rutgers University. I taught myself enough advanced Microsoft Excel skills to make these charts from the Rutgers data:<br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEihNUuBV3B3_CRs5Mr7K43aBLK8pQkdHBVAxRI9-z6cd_McFwJ19cc9_J6Kcxk7WF_U1z3SaFxIMtl0MrfkY3J_R-5ioccvjfqrKja6H7p7Z_MIpRrMERO0LtGw-ZGau9AA8Aw0oGinUak/s1600-h/NHSnowCover2.png"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 218px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEihNUuBV3B3_CRs5Mr7K43aBLK8pQkdHBVAxRI9-z6cd_McFwJ19cc9_J6Kcxk7WF_U1z3SaFxIMtl0MrfkY3J_R-5ioccvjfqrKja6H7p7Z_MIpRrMERO0LtGw-ZGau9AA8Aw0oGinUak/s320/NHSnowCover2.png" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5440439640684051986" border="0" /></a><br />The first chart shows that since 1965 the Winter extent of northern snow cover varies widely around a fairly steady average of about 45 million square kilometers, while the Summer extent varies less, and has been decreasing by an average of 41 thousand square kilometers per year, which is about 1% per year.<br /><br />The second chart shows how 2009-10 compares with the<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhRFBXlN7rkjTbfBkSJfpGgpaqx0A5o9eGSOlu64ADyLkUPLr1xzMiOUrsXk6TwYffQsPS6KkF6cV3svg9ZmPQp-29wz4HmiXdOLMFYfsFzwGfJLnkTWrxOJP3WAK3qzfPp4i6-tGQaGSI/s1600-h/NHWeeklySnowCover2.png"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 218px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhRFBXlN7rkjTbfBkSJfpGgpaqx0A5o9eGSOlu64ADyLkUPLr1xzMiOUrsXk6TwYffQsPS6KkF6cV3svg9ZmPQp-29wz4HmiXdOLMFYfsFzwGfJLnkTWrxOJP3WAK3qzfPp4i6-tGQaGSI/s320/NHWeeklySnowCover2.png" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5440327834766379570" border="0" /></a> weekly average snow cover plus or minus 2 standard deviations, or a 95% confidence interval. Note that of the last 59 weeks of data, only the last point, week #7 of 2010, is "unusual" in the sense of falling outside the 2-sigma channel.<br /><br />Mr. Goddard makes the excellent point that climate models used by the purveyors of the anthropogenic global warming (AGW) theory predicted that Winter snow extents would be decreasing for the past 20 years, rather than holding steady, and perhaps slightly increasing. I don't agree with Mr. Goddard that the recent apparent increases in Winter snow cover represent a significant trend, but there certainly is no suggestion of a decrease.<br /><br />The Rutgers snow data supports the theory that the Northern Hemisphere is getting as much if not more snow than ever on average, but that it is dirtier due to anthropogenic soot which darkens the snow and is very potent at making it melt faster when exposed to the sun. If true, this would remove any need to invoke a warming climate explanation for the downward trend in Summer snow extent. However, the leading AGW proponent at NASA, <a href="http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2003/12/031223062725.htm">James Hansen, with his coauthor advanced the claim in 2003 that sooty snow could itself contribute to AGW</a> by decreasing the albedo of snow. It seems to me that the albedo of snow, given its high latitude, is far less important than the albedo of the tropical oceans, which is very sensitive to changes in cloud cover, and may be <a href="http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2009/2009GL038429.shtml">modulated by the interaction of the solar magnetosphere with cosmic rays</a>.Peter Everetthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15552306792985340271noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4307699514842286249.post-72824640653225221952009-10-03T08:59:00.003-04:002014-11-29T18:40:30.724-05:00My New PhilosophyThe 1999 Broadway revival of Clark Gesner's <span style="font-style: italic;">You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown</span> contained two additional songs by Andrew Lippa, one of which is <span style="font-style: italic;">My New Philosophy</span>, sung to great effect by the amazing Kristin Chenoweth, in the character of Sally.<br />
<br />
<object height="344" width="425"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/tRa7WNmRakY&hl=en&fs=1&"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/tRa7WNmRakY&hl=en&fs=1&" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" height="344" width="425"></embed></object><br />
It is great fun, and captures the spirit of an actively evolving sense of self.
A personal philosophy becomes a lens for viewing the world, and a framework for thinking about and responding to events. Also, the true value of a philosophy is found less in the answers it provides than in the questions it asks. Sally's first "new philosophy" is "<span style="font-style: italic;">Why</span> are you telling <span style="font-style: italic;">me</span>?" I like it.<br />
<br />
In the spirit of Sally, I've decided that my new philosophy is "<span style="font-weight: bold;">Compared to </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;">what</span><span style="font-weight: bold;">?</span>" It is a question that is asked far too infrequently. We are faced constantly with assertions by family, friends, neighbors, pundits, politicians, etc. that X is good or Y is bad, or you should do A and shouldn't do B, and so forth.
To all of these I reply, "Compared to <span style="font-style: italic;">what?</span>"
The proposed new federal controls over health care are good? Compared to <span style="font-style: italic;">what</span>?
It is bad to allow large financial institutions to collapse from their mistakes? Compared to <span style="font-style: italic;">what</span>?
Surgery is the best treatment for your cancer? Compared to <span style="font-style: italic;">what</span>?
I am sure that Winston Churchill felt the "Compared to <span style="font-style: italic;">what</span>?" philosophy in his bones when he famously said, <a href="http://www.bartleby.com/73/417.html">"Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time."</a> (House of Commons speech, Nov 11, 1947).
Once the "compared to <span style="font-style: italic;">what</span>?" philosophy becomes yours, you become empowered to make better choices in life.<br />
<br />
But beware. People who want to influence you to choose their interests over yours, have developed a countermeasure to the powerful "compared to<span style="font-style: italic;"> what</span>?" philosophy. It is the <span style="font-weight: bold;">false dichotomy</span>, or <span style="font-weight: bold;">false choice</span>, or <span style="font-weight: bold;">straw-man argument</span>. They will say that their proposal is good, and then defend it by comparing it to an obviously bad alternative, as if that alternative were the only option, or by selectively excluding the benefits of an alternative and focusing only on the harms.
If you don't judge for yourself what the alternatives are, and let others do it for you, the "compared to <span style="font-style: italic;">what?</span>" philosophy is robbed of its power.
"Cheap tires imported from China harm the American tire industry. We should tax them." But if tires are cheaper, fewer people will be tempted to drive on over-worn tires and rear-end your family in a rainstorm. Furthermore, the money saved by millions of consumers will be spent in innumerable other American industries and make them stronger. <a href="http://www.econlib.org/library/Bastiat/basEss1.html">(credit to Frédéric Bastiat's famous 1848 essay, <span style="font-style: italic;">What is Seen and What is Not Seen</span>.)</a>
"We must pass this health care bill, because to do nothing is unacceptable." Who said doing nothing is the only alternative? <a href="http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204251404574342170072865070.html">Whole Foods CEO, John Mackey wrote about eight steps in the right direction</a>, none of which are part of the current proposals before Congress.
"Surgery is the only cure for your cancer. You should get an operation." But if the surgery will leave you physically impaired, and cancer is the kind that grows so slowly that it probably will not cause any problems for 10 years and you are already 75 years old, what's the rush? And aren't there medicines that will treat the problems that come up? And might there not be even better medicines in 10 years?<br />
<br />
Sometimes people become paralyzed in their decision-making process because they are consciously or subconsciously comparing their choices to some unreasonable ideal. This is the vice of perfectionism and utopianism. It is what the French philosopher, Voltaire, was thinking about in 1772 when he wrote <a href="http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Voltaire"><i style="font-style: italic;">"Le mieux est l'ennemi du bien,"</i></a> usually translated as "The perfect is the enemy of the good." Have you ever spent hours writing and re-writing a letter, e-mail, or yes, even a blog post, trying to say something in just the right way, only to delete it, and miss the opportunity to say something that mattered to you, and maybe to someone else too? Voltaire has your number, and mine. Guilty as charged.
So today I am re-energizing myself with the spirit of Sally Brown, and my new philosophy, "<span style="font-weight: bold;">compared to </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;">what</span><span style="font-weight: bold;">?</span>"Peter Everetthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15552306792985340271noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4307699514842286249.post-56210454816892896732009-05-06T16:32:00.010-04:002009-05-09T18:49:33.466-04:00Global Warming is NOT People!Sometimes I feel like Charlton Heston at the end of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soylent_Green">Soylent Green</a>, but instead of declaring "Soylent Green is People!", I'm saying "Global Warming is NOT People!"<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjo1nA3YIfFP30W4aEGBN_SfzTxOAcH-i0yuZvYItGtIcDWe_J0m-cqme-SmEMuJXP3MviBMIpCB02qON8taxzPFAIEGvfKSkNPePZkyfyWOoQKRpWz9UOw3sLYBhxhswKJsYfGbSpgLF4/s1600-h/SoonWWH2005_Fig1.gif"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 232px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjo1nA3YIfFP30W4aEGBN_SfzTxOAcH-i0yuZvYItGtIcDWe_J0m-cqme-SmEMuJXP3MviBMIpCB02qON8taxzPFAIEGvfKSkNPePZkyfyWOoQKRpWz9UOw3sLYBhxhswKJsYfGbSpgLF4/s320/SoonWWH2005_Fig1.gif" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5332821710621302962" /></a>For the past year or so I have been following the science and politics of Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW), which is now supposed to be called "Climate Change," because those who seek political and economic power based on the control of carbon dioxide, in order to "Save the World", do not want to be impeded by the observation that the world has gotten cooler in recent years. In the process of following this science, I have accumulated and digested and enormous library of literature, some of which I hope to eventually post here.<br /><br />A competing theory of why the Earth has, on average, warmed over the past century is based in variations in the Sun's activity. Solar-driven climate change has a great deal of evidence and theory behind it, and many well-qualified scientific proponents. I am convinced that it is the far better theory and have been sharing my conclusions with anyone who will listen.<br /><br />Scientific arguments for the reality of AGW do exist, as exemplified by the <a href="http://www.ipcc.ch/ipccreports/assessments-reports.htm">IPCC's Fourth Assessment Report</a>. However, most of what passes for argument against carbon dioxide emission in the public sphere is much more a religious or political stand than an assertion of science, especially when Albert Gore, and others, proclaim that the science is "settled," debate should stop, and bold action needs to be taken. This is to be expected, as Mr. Gore comes from the political world where debate is decided by voting, and the purpose of voting is to silence debate. Scientific debate is never decided by voting. It is decided by demonstrating that your theory succeeds where others fail. Even then the debate is not silenced. It is only a provisional truth, susceptible to revision or replacement by something better. Scientists, or anyone with a duty to the truth, do not defend their theories by condemning those who raise questions as counter-revolutionaries.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/21/Adam_and_Eve,_Sistine_Chapel.jpg"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 321px; height: 149px;" src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/21/Adam_and_Eve,_Sistine_Chapel.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a>For many passionate anti-carbon dioxide activists, anthropogenic global warming is nothing less than the theology of original sin, with a church that regards the breath of human life itself as a taint on a fallen Eden, and a theocracy that would sell indulgences in the form of carbon credits, and tax all production.<br /><br />The debate has taken on a new significance and urgency, because just as the governments of the world seem to be on the verge of capitulating to the global anti-carbon jihad, the world is cooling and the Sun is going through a lull in sunspot activity that is unprecedented in modern times. The current solar cycle's long slide to an ever-lower minimum resembles nothing more than the end of Solar Cycle 4, which led into the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dalton_minimum">Dalton Minimum</a>, a period of cooler temperatures punctuated by the disastrous <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Year_Without_Summer"> "Year Without Summer"</a> in 1816, following the eruption of Tambora. Several blogs have taken up the discussion of the controversy. I highly recommend <a href="http://www.sciencebits.com/scienceblog">ScienceBits</a> by Israeli physicist, Nir J. Shaviv.<br /><br />The popular science press <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8008473.stm">has noted the recent drop in sunspot activity</a>, and occasionally connected it to past solar minima and the associated cooling periods. Some have even raised the question of whether the decrease in the sun's activity will "offset" global warming, as if the overall increase in solar activity from 1850 to 2001 were a completely separate phenomenon.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhRohs8yWkedZGQP517-tV6z6-d2x5CbvqN8U0N59YEzaWZgdWa6r9A1xm9gShbj-wSUdvOd4oR_cniLmmLxNbFVx7-eELwzpvcP_2jDHTMaUSNitjnXqTnLd8O3zCKAw3RBDPI8T-jtos/s1600-h/Sharma2002Fig4.png"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 297px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhRohs8yWkedZGQP517-tV6z6-d2x5CbvqN8U0N59YEzaWZgdWa6r9A1xm9gShbj-wSUdvOd4oR_cniLmmLxNbFVx7-eELwzpvcP_2jDHTMaUSNitjnXqTnLd8O3zCKAw3RBDPI8T-jtos/s320/Sharma2002Fig4.png" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5332824969782738066" /></a>The central controversy, in broad terms, is over how sensitive the climate is to small changes in heat flux. Increased greenhouse gases that trap solar heat contribute a positive heat flux. Increased clouds that reflect light contribute a negative heat flux. Variation in CO2 by itself, at relevant concentrations, traps far too little heat to account for the change that IPCC attributes to it. It requires a "multiplier" and water vapor is offered as the principal multiplier. <a href="http://www.ipcc.ch/ipccreports/ar4-wg1.htm">Working Group 1</a> of the <a href="http://www.ipcc.ch/ipccreports/assessments-reports.htm">IPCC's Fourth Assessment Report</a> adopts a model with high sensitivity, based on the fact that the most significant greenhouse gas is not CO2, but rather H2O, and that warmer air contains more moisture, providing a source of positive feedback. Variation in CO2 by itself, at relevant concentrations, traps far too little heat directly to account for the change that IPCC attributes to it.<br /><br />One criticism of the IPCC's model it that it is unstable, being so sensitive to fluctuations in temperature that past CO2 fluctuations would have "run away" in a positive feedback loop many thousands of years ago, which is obviously not seen in the record. Another criticism is one that the IPCC itself calls the largest uncertainty in their model, which is the potential negative feedback effects of low clouds.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgYf9MTbQ0YgGtHMp-3pG8I0QhKdieZ_xMhcGxIeQJ1-x_1z46S1erHe4vQ2svMNGXHZJsZFHL_e1AdZ3odoyMIj1ZwVIOpKcmEk8RgC6UIDv-VUhg0HjF1gMT1MAjngfdxlyP6FKuOf68/s1600-h/Svensmark2007Fig3.gif"><img style="float:right; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 227px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgYf9MTbQ0YgGtHMp-3pG8I0QhKdieZ_xMhcGxIeQJ1-x_1z46S1erHe4vQ2svMNGXHZJsZFHL_e1AdZ3odoyMIj1ZwVIOpKcmEk8RgC6UIDv-VUhg0HjF1gMT1MAjngfdxlyP6FKuOf68/s320/Svensmark2007Fig3.gif" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5332817751788029282" /></a>Since 1997, <a href="http://www.dsri.dk/~hsv/">Henrik Svensmark</a> has been arguing that most of the historical climate record, both ancient and recent, is explainable in terms of the modulating effects of the solar cycle on cosmic ray flux in the atmosphere. (See <a href="http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/full/10.1111/j.1468-4004.2007.48118.x">Svensmark H. Cosmoclimatology: a new theory emerges. Astronomy & Geophysics 48 (1): 1.18–1.24.</a> A number of scientists, including <a href="http://www.marshall.org/experts.php?id=44">Willie Soon</a> of the Harvard-Smithsonian center for astrophysics, have produced research that confirms the solar cycle, particularly as it is recorded in proxies for cosmic ray flux, like Beryllium-10 and Carbon-14, is statistically a far better explanation for global temperature changes than is carbon dioxide.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhhLF7JBquETP1aIyORf9B4B8UffuJkCMPQqwwYHfwW404jLl9E_Rz8JmUDQw32vt7TzDzQBhROS4d4TjtPyMhjgP6g2mXR0Pw1S7L6cKtQL5ZkY8pqOHfsFUQFmRbnJGw-x5tqaCmVldI/s1600-h/Solanski2002Fig11.gif"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 248px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhhLF7JBquETP1aIyORf9B4B8UffuJkCMPQqwwYHfwW404jLl9E_Rz8JmUDQw32vt7TzDzQBhROS4d4TjtPyMhjgP6g2mXR0Pw1S7L6cKtQL5ZkY8pqOHfsFUQFmRbnJGw-x5tqaCmVldI/s320/Solanski2002Fig11.gif" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5332818592049814706" /></a>As with carbon dioxide, the variation in the total solar irradiance by itself is far too small to directly explain the observed temperature changes. It too needs a "multiplier", which according to Svensmark comes in the form of the portion of the sun's output that deflects cosmic rays away from Earth. This varies by much more than the 0.1% of total solar irradiance. The part of the atmosphere that would be most sensitive to cloud formation due to increased cosmic ray ionization of the air is exactly the part to which the IPCC uses to amplify the small effects of man-made carbon dioxide, namely the moisture-laden air over warm tropical oceans. But for lack of nucleii for droplet formation, clouds would readily form. Ions produced by cosmic rays are said to form these nuclei.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.dur.ac.uk/physics/staff/profiles/?id=1822">Arnold Wolfendale</a> of Durham University was recently quoted under the headline <a href="http://environmentalresearchweb.org/cws/article/research/38751">"Natural causes" not responsible for global warming</a>, as stating that solar variation could not be responsible for more than 14% of the warming seen <span style="font-style:italic;">since 1956.</span> As can bee seen in some of the attached figures, there is mischief in the choice of 1956 as the baseline, which was one year before the modern solar maximum's crescendo. 1956, 1957, 1958, and 1959 were the 12th, 1st, 2nd and 3rd most active solar years in <a href="http://solarscience.msfc.nasa.gov/greenwch/spot_num.txt">the last 260 years of records</a>. It is a little like saying that New Orleans is not sinking, because the average water level has not risen when compared to the peak of Hurricane Katrina.<br /><br />The view of the man-made global warming skeptics, which appears sensible, is that the climate is less sensitive, and more stable than the IPCC models, and that this stability is manifest in the historical record, which includes periods that are both much warmer and much colder, and with much more CO2 than today. However, this relative stability can still be powerfully influenced by solar modulation of cosmic-ray seeded cloud formation.<br /><br />The cruel joke that Nature appears to have played on climate scientists is that the Sun has been in a period of very high activity that rose from the Dalton minimum in the 1800s to a great crescendo in 1957, and has only recently started to subside. That this rising solar activity almost exactly parallels the Industrial Revolution and the increasing burning of fossil fuels has probably led many people astray in ascribing cause and effect. It is looking more and more like the sun is the driver, carbon dioxide is mostly just an effect of warming oceans (as warm soda goes flat), and anthropogenic global warming will join cold fusion and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lysenkoism">Lysenkoism</a> on the ash heap of scientific history.<br /><br />Now that we are in a period of very unusual solar quiet, the solar wind is at its lowest recorded level, and cosmic ray flux is at its highest. This not only has significance for climate, but also space exploration, as manned missions outside the Earth's protective magnetic field will be exposed to radiation from galactic cosmic rays at an all-time high, as will electronic components which can not be effectively shielded from these super-high energy particles.<br /><br />I expect the coming decade will sort out who is right about climate, especially if the Sun persists in its current quiet ways. I hope our politicians don't cripple the global economy further in the name of reducing the output carbon dioxide, which is not a pollutant, and only weakly influential on climate. Although it is less than 0.05% of the atmosphere, carbon dioxide is a most precious resource. Every bit of carbon in our bodies was once CO2 in the atmosphere which nourished a plant, and then eventually us.Peter Everetthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15552306792985340271noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4307699514842286249.post-11997012222090572042009-04-06T16:52:00.000-04:002009-04-06T19:14:43.573-04:00Why "Unfrozen Caveman?"I've long been a fan of the late comedian <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phil_Hartman">Phil Hartman</a>, and in particular his character <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unfrozen_Caveman_Lawyer">Cirroc, the Unfrozen Caveman Lawyer</a>, which was written by <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Handey">Jack Handey</a>. So I've adopted this nickname partly as a tribute to the comic genius of these very funny men, but it is more that that.<br /><br />Before becoming a physician specializing in oncology, I was a teenage "computer wiz", who got an education in applied physics, played at being an <a href="http://wvbr.com/">FM rock DJ and broadcast engineer</a> in college, and a had 20 year career in computer-aided design software. Along the way I also practiced and taught martial arts, which gave me a kind of informal education in first aid, anatomy and exercise physiology (partly from my own minor injuries).<br /><br />Most of my medical school classmates were 20 years younger than I was, and while we got along great there was this generation gap. The news of John Lennon's murder, which I saw during a late-night bull session in the basement TV lounge of a Cornell dorm, was still a vivid and painful memory for me that coincided for many of them with the year they were born. When I jokingly described my heavy five-o-clock shadow at the end of a very long day as <a href="http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2007/08/13/science/sweat_395.1.jpg">"Nixonian,"</a> I got these blank looks. When I first took chemistry, a slide rule was <span style="font-style: italic;">required</span>. For them, the 1960's and 70's were abstractions, whereas I had lived them. I also had the life experience of having three children, and a wife with type-1 diabetes, so when it came to obstetrics, pediatrics and endocrinology, I had a huge head start, mostly in simple comfort level, but in both formal and informal knowledge as well.<br /><br />I think that part of the reason I came to medicine so late is that I became involved with computer programming so early, and so intensely. The other facets of my nature became "frozen" while that early adventure ran its course. Eventually I thawed myself out to become a little more well-rounded, and to discover my true calling.<br /><br />So I called myself Unfrozen Caveman Medical Student, like Cirroc, a sort of noble savage from another time with an uncanny folk wisdom that I could bring to bear to solve the problem. Eventually, I became Unfrozen Caveman Intern, then Unfrozen Caveman Resident, etc.<br /><br />Now, as Unfrozen Caveman MD, I find I still bring an "out of the box" perspective to problem-solving, which I hope will continue to be valuable resource on behalf of patients both in the lab and in the clinic.Peter Everetthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15552306792985340271noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4307699514842286249.post-4108476020512331432009-04-06T10:07:00.000-04:002009-04-06T10:46:45.445-04:00Conflicts of Interest in Science and Medicine<span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51); line-height: 15px; font-size: 11px; font-weight: normal;">There has been a small uproar in the medical community over how the editors of JAMA responded to a criticism of one of their articles. (For details see the <a href="http://blogs.wsj.com/health/2009/03/13/jama-editor-calls-critic-a-nobody-and-a-nothing/">WSJ Health Blog from 13-Mar-09</a> ).<br /><br />The JAMA editors behaved shamefully when Dr. Jonathan Leo revealed in a letter to the BMJ not only the analytical weaknesses of a Lexapro study, but that these weaknesses were in the context of the author's undisclosed conflict of interest. Incredibly, rather than using the incident to improve their editorial process, <a href="http://blogs.wsj.com/health/2009/03/23/jama-sets-new-policy-in-wake-of-disclosure-flap/">the JAMA editors are seeking as a matter of policy to silence those who would publicly reveal their lapses.</a><br /><br />They feel justified because they are mistakenly applying the model of the Protected Forum which facilitates discovery, and whereby physicians and hospitals seek causes and remedies for medical errors. However, an international, weekly publication is the opposite of a protected forum. Suppose a reporter publicized a story that a local hospital had removed the wrong kidney from a patient, and that witnesses believed the surgeon to be impaired. Should the hospital respond by telling the reporter that his family can no longer get care there? Should the hospital administrator call the publisher and ask that the reporter be disciplined or fired? No, the hospital should call the paper first, explain that there has been an incident, explain their internal procedures, and inform the public that the surgeon's privileges are suspended pending a complete review to determine where their patient safety procedures failed and how to improve them. There should be an apology to those harmed. They also have a duty to explain how hospitals that are transparent about their quality measures make patients safer. These actions by the JAMA editors are an affront to all of us in the truth-telling professions, physicians and journalists in particular.<br /><br />However, I think people become confused when they elevate the absence of conflicts of interest to the status of a "purity test" that substitutes for the genuine scientific quality of a work. In scientific circles, legitimate disagreement over the merits of one treatment over another should not devolve into <span style="font-style: italic;">ad hominem</span> attacks in the form of an accusation of some real or perceived conflict of interest. Plenty of good science is done with integrity by people with financial, academic, or emotional stakes in the outcome, and patients are harmed if this work is dismissed thoughtlessly. Conversely, plenty of bad science is done by people with little to gain or lose.<br /><br />In some quarters there is an obsessive concern over conflicts of interest, however defined, that can become distorted into a cult of scientific asceticism. The truth is that in all fields of human creativity, money, power and sex have proven to be great motivators, both for good and ill. We should be open about this. I want the people who make major medical advances to accrue wealth, authority and emotional satisfaction. They've earned it. We should sleep much less soundly if those with the ability to improve our lives somehow had these motivations taken away.<br /><br /></span>Peter Everetthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15552306792985340271noreply@blogger.com0