Deafening Silence

My Next Post

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to all Deafening Silence readers!

I will be taking a few days away to visit/treasure friends and family and I hope you do the same.  Please expect my next post on or about January 5th, 2010.

In the meantime, please stroll through the Deafening Silence blogroll.

Have a happy and healthy New Year!

Classic Christmas Commercials- and the one I couldn't find

Happy Holidays!  As my gift to you, please enjoy these classic Christmas commercials from days gone by:

The Norelco Santa Ad!

Raise your hand if you ever owned one of the appliances mentioned in the ad.

Now, steel yourself for a true Seasonal Classic:

If you're old enough to remember this ad but weren't old enough to consume the merchandise it advertised at the time, you are probably just about my age.

I don't know the year of this next one, but it's so darn cute I had to include it:

Wasn't that- well- sweet?

Ok, who doesn't remember this?  It verges on legendary:

I'm including this last one for you Mad Men fans out there:

(No, I'm not old enough to remember this! Hmmph!)

And now we come to the one commercial I couldn't find.  Let me describe it:

I think it first starting airing in the 70s.  It wasn't an ad for a product; it was a "Season's Greetings" message from one of the major networks that ran about 30 seconds.  I believe the network was NBC. It's a cartoon.  There's a blank white screen, then a reindeer walks on and kneels down.  It sprouts antlers which rapidly blossom into a big, fancy design.  If memory serves, Christmas decorations appear on the antlers.  Then, when the reindeer gets up and walks away, you hear sleigh bells.

Does anyone else remember this ad?  If you do, and you know where I can find it, please leave a link in the comments section.  I don't have much to offer you in return, but if you mention your blog or your favorite blog, I promise to give that blog a big shoutout in the next Tuesday or Thursday roundup. 

I'd really like to post that ad, if it's out there.

Thanks, and Merry Christmas!!!!!

The Woodburn Redemption

"Everything comes down to a simple choice, you know.  Get busy livin' or get busy dyin'."

The Shawshank Redemption

Last Saturday, December 12, was anniversary of the Woodburn Bank Bombing.

At 10:32 a.m. on December 12, 2008, the Wells Fargo Bank in Woodburn, Oregon, received a phone call.  Get out of the building, said a voice, or you'll all die.  A bank employee called the police.  Police officers, FBI agents and members of the Oregon State Police Bomb squad responded.  A device was found, but deemed harmless.  Then it was discovered that the West Coast Bank, less than 150 feet away on one of Woodburn's busiest streets, had also received a threatening call.  Another device was found in the bushes outside the bank.  Bomb technicians x-rayed the device outside.  It too appeared harmless and they took it inside the nearly-evacuated West Coast Bank. (Two employees had not yet left the building.)

At 5:24 p.m., the second device exploded.  Police Sargeants John Mikkola and Nick Wilson heard the explosion and ran into the bank.

The lobby was dark and in shambles.  Sgt. Mikkola found Captain Tom Tennant of the Woodburn Police Department.  Capt. Tennant was already dead.  Then Sgt. Mikkola saw Senior Trooper William Hakim tangled in furniture and debris, but when Sgt. Mikkola moved Trooper Hakim's body in order to attempt CPR, he found that Trooper Hakim was also dead.

Mikkola and Wilson continued to search the bombed-out lobby for survivors.  Eventually, they found Woodburn Police Chief Scott Russell.  He was semi-conscious and severely injured.  Blood gushed from his left leg.  Sgt. Wilson removed his own belt and used it as a tourniquet on Chief Russell's leg until a medical team arrived.

Chief Russell was critically injured, but icy conditions prevented helicopter transport to the hospital.  He was loaded into an ambulance instead, accompanied by another police officer.

 

(Photo: Rick Bowmer/AP)

It was dark now.  A perimeter of yellow police tape was illuminated by the flashing lights of numerous emergency vehicles.  By morning a cascade of federal investigators and national media would begin pouring into Woodburn.

I learned of the blast while surfing the web that evening.  It seemed like a disturbing crescendo in a year filled with accelerating economic trauma.  While searching for more information, I came across a Canadian blog that declared things were now so bad, Americans had begun bombing their banks.

Woodburn is a farming community barely 5 miles square.  In 2008 over 17% of its 23,355 citizens lived below the poverty line.  It's chief economic linchpins are an outlet mall and a correctional facility.

The West Coast Bank bombing should have been the final, demoralizing blow of a bitter year.

Except it wasn't.

Welcome to Woodburn, Oregon: The Little Town that Could.

Perhaps the first hint came during the memorial procession arranged for Captain Tom Tennant on December 19th.  An unusually early winter storm had left roads covered in snow and ice, but as the solemn parade of ambulances, fire trucks and police cars made its way through town, the citizens of Woodburn lined the sidewalks.  They waved big American flags and displayed handmade signs that said: Thank You, Captain Tom.  Volunteers had tied blue ribbons around trees and signposts to honor the police.

Not long after the bombing, Woodburn City Administrator Scott Derickson met with the city council.  Put your pet projects aside, he told them.  It's time to heal the city.

Captain Tennant and Trooper Hakim both left behind families with teenage children, and after multiple surgeries and months in intensive care, Police Chief Russell's medical bills were escalating.  Woodburn residents began collecting donations, and to streamline the process Mayor Kathy Figley created Woodburn Proud, a 501(c)(3) charity.

It wasn't long before Woodburn Proud broadened its agenda.  They organized cleanup crews for various sites around the city.  They staged 5k Fun Runs and Woodburn Appreciation Nights.  They began selling a line of Woodburn Proud merchandise- tee-shirts, wristbands and car magnets- to raise money and promote community pride.  They participated in campaigns to combat street crime.

This spring a group of Woodburn residents- including students from the local high schools- raised money to send Captain Tennant's family to Washington D.C. to attend National Police Week.  While they were there, on May 13th, both Captain Tennant's and Trooper Hakim's names were formally added to the National Law Enforcement Memorial during a candlelight ceremony.

On May 26th, 2009, a memorial honoring Tennant, Hakim and Russell was unveiled at the West Coast Bank.  The monument was designed and constructed by Woodburn resident Don Sprague.  Those attending the unveiling were joined in spirit by passersby who slowed their cars to honk and wave.

In June, after 6 months of surgeries and therapy, Chief Russell was ready to return to part time work.  The blast had shattered his jaw, taken his right leg and crippled his left.  Woodburn held a picnic in his honor and he addressed a crowd of nearly 1200 well-wishers from his wheelchair.

By July 20 repairs to the West Coast Bank building were complete.  The bank staged a grand reopening with catered food, balloons and flowers for the public. 

At 4 p.m. on December 11th, 2009, the citizens of Woodburn gathered at the West Coast Bank memorial to reflect on the events of last year.  The lost lives can never be replaced, but residents agreed that there is a 'new normal' in Woodburn that makes them proud.

During an interview with Helen Jung of the Oregonian, Terri Hakim, widow of Trooper Hakim, said of her family:

"We can't get stuck in the where-we-were, but we have to constantly think about where we're going.  We're in on it together."

Chief Russell is now learning to walk, and said of Woodburn in a recent interview:

"We are more of a community.  There have been some other issues that have faced us this past year and I have found people more willing to step up and fix them, whether it be school or livability issues...we've seen people volunteer at the police department that we didn't have this time last year."

City Administrator Scott Derickson adds:

"That is the legacy of the bombing today.  The sacrifices have inspired us to be a better community, a more active community, a more engaged community and a community that now has ownership in itself, and those are the things that will be the lasting testament to what happened last year."

In an official message marking the anniversary of the bombing, Mayor Kathy Figley wrote:

"We can refuse to submit to hate and anger over this crime or the criminals responsible. They will receive justice, and they are otherwise undeserving of our attention. Our community and the human community have risen to this awful occurrence with courage, faith and hope. While the worst of human nature is repulsive, we have seen the impact of the best of human nature in our community. When we are at our best, we are capable of some amazing things."

After 9/11, pundits were concerned that terrorism might one day strike in smaller, rural towns. How would they cope with it?

Now we have an answer.  If they react like Woodburn, we'll do just fine.

Of course, Woodburn has set the bar pretty high....

References

Woodburn Police Chief Focuses on Future after Bombing- Phil Manzano, The Oregonian

Statement on Events of December 12- Woodburn Mayor Kathy Figley

In Memory of Our Fallen

2009 Professional Rescue Real Heroes- YouTube

Victims Rebuild Their Lives a Year after Woodburn Bank Bombing- Helen Jung, The Oregonian

Woodburn- One Year Later- Jason Horton, Woodburn Independent

It Is Time to Move on from the Bombing- editorial, Woodburn Independent

Woodburn Students Doing Great Work- 11-7 letter to editor, Woodburn Independent

Vigil Marks Woodburn Bank Bombing- Thelma Guerrero-Huston, Statesman Journal

Woodburn Proud

Bank Bombed in Oregon- Deafening Silence

Brief Bank Bombing Update- Deafening Silence

Second Suspect in Woodburn Bombing Arrested; New Details in Case- Deafening Silence

U.S. Census Bureau/Woodburn Facts

The Firebrand: Five Health Insurance Issues

About two weeks ago I linked a post by the Firebrand titled Five Health Issues.  This was a multi-part series examining five big issues she saw in the health care debate.  Here is a quick list of the five:

1) While most of us could pay for normal health care expenses ourselves, most of us need health insurance to cover serious situations.

2) Health insurance is not universally available or universally affordable through the market as it currently exists.

3) A health care system run entirely by the government is a bad idea.

4) As currently structured, all insurance - private or government, cheap or expensive, HMO or traditional, catastrophic or first-dollar - masks the true costs of treatment from those who purchase that treatment. This is bad for patients and bad for health care providers and bad for any hope of reining in health care spending through individual decision making.

5) Not only are we not willing to let people die because they’re too poor to afford or too sick to get health care and/or health insurance, we’re not willing to let people die because they’re too stupid to buy health insurance even when they could get it and could afford it. And even if we’re willing to let an adult die from such stupidity, we’re not willing to let his children die.

Today I'd like to look at issue number one and three:

1) While most of us could pay for normal health care expenses ourselves, most of us need health insurance to cover serious situations.

3) A health care system run entirely by the government is a bad idea.

Elise of the Firebrand is better equipped to handle statistics and has done more extensive research into the health care debate than I, so I will limit myself to some personal observations. 

Shortly after the public debate about health care reform began, it struck me that, realistically speaking, the government could only do one of two things:

a. Pay for routine medical visits and the treatment of minor illnesses such as sinus infections, pulled tendons and the like,

or

b. Pay for catastrophic care: cancer treatment, treatment of injuries caused by serious accidents, like auto wrecks and fires- in other words, all those terrible things that we pray/presume we will never have to endure.

Why do I say either/or, and not both?  For the simple reason that I don't think the government could ever afford to do both.  And in trying to do both, it would do neither very well.

The government does not pick money off a bush.  It uses our money, in the form of taxes on individuals and business.  I do not believe our money can be stretched far enough to cover all contingencies.

I say this because I have read numerous articles and visited many forums where existing state-run health care programs are discussed.  After much reading, a commenter on one Canadian forum summed it up nicely: Canadians who have primarily used the state-run system for life's ordinary ailments report complete satisfaction with their care.  Canadians using the state-run system for catastrophic care- particulary elder care- report great unhappiness with their care.

This opinion split seems to reappear in discussions of the British health care system as well.  Asking the state to do both ordinary and extraordinary care is asking it to do too much. 

(Some examples of discussion here, here and here.)

Even limiting the government sphere to either ordinary or extraordinary care means ceding choices to a bureaucracy.   It's simple human nature: any system charged with arranging care for whole populations will end up depending on broad generalizations in order to make policy.  Dealing with specific individuals costs more time, effort and money.

Consider these examples:

I suffer frequent sinus infections in the winter.  I know which brand-name medicines that work well for me because I've had lots of experience with them.  But suppose a government plan decides that there is a cheaper substitute?  And suppose I'm allergic to that substitute? I've had a similar experience with private insurance, but would a nonprofit government agency be as responsive?  What if their regulations already have squeezed the brand-name product out of production?

Or consider an example I've used previously: two patients with the same form of asthma.

 "Good enough" medicine tells Patient A and Patient B to use the same generic inhaler to treat their asthma.  The generic inhaler will give Patient A and B decent relief and it doesn't cost much. 

"Best outcomes" medicine recognizes that Patient A is also a competitive swimmer, and that competing athletically is an important part of Patient A's quality of life.  "Best outcomes" medicine gives Patient A affordable access to more intensive asthma treatment, which will enable Patient A to continue competing.

"Good enough" medicine treats the most common symptoms of a disease with the least expense.  "Best outcomes" medicine treats the patient, basing that treatment on the patient's unique character and quality of life.

(And before anyone decides to pick nits,plenty of famous athletes have suffered from asthma.)

If the government is placed in charge of catastrophic care, even tougher choices loom.  Do you deny a late-stage cancer patient access to an experimental treatment because it only works 2 out of 20 times?  Can you prove to them that they are not one of those lucky 2?

And if it's a choice between spending public money on developing an unproven treatment or allocating those funds for other needs, what should the government choose?

If you asked the patient's family you one get one answer.

If you asked a random taxpayer on the street, you'd get another.

I'm reminded of an old Twilight Zone episode I once saw on late-nite TV.  A mysterious man knocks on the door of a poor couple.  They are desperate for money.  He gives the wife a box with a pushbutton inside.  He tells her if she pushes the button, he will give the couple one million dollars- but somebody will die.

"Don't worry," he says.  "It won't be anyone you know."

The couple agonizes for weeks and finally one day the wife pushes the button.  At that moment the mysterious man again knocks on the door.  He gives them the money and takes the box.  The wife asks what he will do now.

He says he will give the box to another couple, with the same choice.  Push the button, get a million dollars- and kill someone.

"But don't worry," he says.  "It won't be anyone you know."

 

 

 

 

ClimateGate 101: Testing the Equation vs. Hiding the Decline

"It is wrong to think that the task of physics is to find out how nature is.  Physics concerns what we can say about nature."

Niels Bohr

Modern climatology has much in common with the study of physics at the turn of the 20th century:

1. Both disciplines centered on understanding the structure of a complex system;
2. Both disciplines can only look for clues by observing the natural world;
3. Any structure proposed by both disciplines must both predict and conform to known phenomena.

 One of the Great Questions of physics in the early 20th century was the structure of the atom.  Scientists had long agreed that atoms existed, but their exact architecture was unknown. Like today's climatologists, early physicists could only study known phenomena in the natural world and from these try to cobble together a working model of the atom.

J.J. Thomson of Cambridge University proposed the "plum pudding" model of the atom- a cloud of positive charge studded with negatively charged electrons, like raisins in a pudding. Unfortunately, Thomson's model could not accurately predict the behavior of atomic particles in other physicist's experiments.  This discrepancy led Ernest Rutherford to propose a new model of the atom in 1911.  Rutherford's atom had a central nucleus orbited by electrons. 

This new model was intriguing, but it violated accepted principles of early 20th century physics.  Physics in this era was dominated by classical mechanics, and classical mechanics dictated that such a model would either fly apart, flinging electrons away from the nucleus, or collapse in a death spiral.

Thomson's plum pudding could not survive contact with the real world and Rutherford's model could not survive classical mechanics.  Was there a model that could both explain natural phenomena and satisfy theoretical mechanics?

A young Danish physicist named Niels Bohr thought there might be.  To test his idea he selected a data set from the natural world and developed an equation that should- if it was correct- predict that data set.

Paleoclimatologists use data sets derived from tree rings, lake bed samples and ice samples.  For his data set, Bohr chose the emission spectrum.

Scientists had been studying the emission spectrum of chemical elements and compounds since the 18th century.  In early experiments, chemical salts were soaked in alcohol and set afire.  The light produced was put through a prism and broken into colored bands, like this:

Each chemical produced different patterns of color.  By 1912 the study of these patterns had a name- spectroscopy- and was a highly developed science.  The unique 'line spectrum' of most elements had been measured and recorded.

(Pictured above: the emission spectrum of iron)

Scientists had learned to identify elements by their spectrum, but did not know what caused the spectrum itself.  After reading a paper by mathematician J. W. Nicholson, Bohr suspected that the force producing the spectrum was connected to the structure of the atom.

(It's worth noting that Bohr had actually met Nicholson and thought him a fool, but he did not let his personal distaste for the man blind him to the value of an idea.)

Bohr theorized that the electrons orbiting the nucleus in Rutherford's model would change their orbit if energy was added or subtracted.  Adding energy- by setting an element on fire, for example- would cause an electron to jump to a higher orbit.  Losing that energy would cause it to jump back to a lower orbit and in so doing release a photon, thus creating a spectral line.

If his theory was correct, Bohr would be able to construct an equation that would predict the spectrum, and the spectrum in turn would confirm his equation.

It worked.  Bohr's concept of shifting electrons emitting photons produced the expected spectrum. 

In other words: his model of the atom predicted and conformed to known phenomena.

Bohr's paper, "On the Constitution of Atoms and Molecules," gave science an atomic model that was plausible and survived real-world experiments, but that model came at a price.

It questioned classical mechanics. Bohr's model required quantum mechanics in order to function.

In his book The Making the the Atomic Bomb, Richard Rhodes describes the stranglehold classical mechanics had on physics during Bohr's era:

"Bohr was happy to force this confrontation between the old physics and the new.  He felt that it would be fruitful for physics.  Because original work is inherently rebellious, his paper was not only an examination of the physical world but also a political document.  It proposed, in a sense, to begin a reform movement in physics: to limit claims and clear up epistemological fallacies.  Mechanistic physics had become authoritarian.  It had outreached itself to claim universal application, to claim that the universe and everything in it is rigidly governed by mechanistic cause and effect."

The reaction of Bohr's colleagues to his rebellious paper is instructive.  They could have screamed "The science is settled!"

They did not.

They could have tried to block publication of his paper by threatening scientific journals and their editors with an embargo.

They did not.

They could have ridiculed his theories as a "disinformation campaign" and "crap science."

They did not.

They could have sneered and called Bohr the "Mad Dane."

They did not.

Instead, J.J. Thomson, Ernest Rutherford and numerous physicists were professional enough to admit that science as they had imagined it could not adequately explain nature.  They had gotten stuck trying to say what nature is; Bohr had freed them by looking only for what he could say about nature.

In 1922 Niels Bohr was awarded the Nobel Prize in physics.

Modern climatology desperately needs a Niels Bohr.  Bohr would not view gaps in tree ring data and fluctuating temperature records as an occaision to homogenize data, but as an opportunity. 

"How wonderful that we have met with a paradox," Bohr once said.  "Now we have some hope of making progress."

I wonder if the ghost of Niels Bohr is watching ClimateGate.

I wonder what he thinks.

 

Additional Reference

Rhodes, Richard. The Making of the Atomic Bomb.  New York, US, 1988. pps. 63-77.

Searchable database of East Anglia emails

Quote of the Week

"To me it seems the atomic scientists from the late 19th century to the start of the Manhattan Project knew they were looking for the truths of atomic principles and they knew they couldn't get it right unless everyone had all of the information."

My sweetheart, remarking on the revelations of ClimateGate

Today is Pearl Harbor Day...

...please take a moment to remember the trauma and shared sacrifice that in the end helped shape not only this country, but the world.

I include the video below for the sake of the statistics it reports (starting at about 7:00):

Destruction of the Pacific fleet- battleships, cruisers, planes

Nearly 3,000 Americans killed in a sneak attack lasting about 110 minutes. (Sound familiar, younger folks?)

The video below remarks on the public reaction to the attack (about 1:04): united in will to victory. 

In the immediate aftermath, the armed forces and the public struggled organize emergency medical care, relief and rescue operations for those trapped in the ruins of the attack:

PealHarborDay.org carries this description of the attack:

The Air Force was not a separate service, but part of the Army at this time. The Japanese lost 28 planes and a total of 64 men in the raid. The staggering loss of life to US forces was over 2,400 with more than 2,000 others wounded. Indeed the largest total killed in one day/one engagement with an enemy force until the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. The Japanese had inflicted the worst defeat in American military history upon our forces. Hawaii was a US territory at the time and not yet a state. Another big difference from 9/11 to note is that most of these casualties were members of the armed services and not civilians.

Were we somehow transported back to that day 68 years ago, we would probably have eerily familiar experiences: stunned civilians fumbling for ways to help the survivors; wild rumors of yet more destruction to come; a hovering awareness that U.S. soil was not automatically exempt from violent conflicts taking place abroad.

We are rapidly losing the generation that witnessed Pearl Harbor.  It's worth pondering what they might have to say to the generation that witnessed 911.

The day after Pearl Harbor, legendary folkorist Alan Lomax began travelling the U.S., conducting "man-on-the-street" interviews to capture the public's immediate reaction.  Those interviews are described in the video below:

 

Some of those Lomax interviews can be heard here, or read as a transcript.

"Never Forget": the dates may change from one generation to the next, but the lessons of courage and sacrifice are eternal.

Current Climategate Forecast: Cloudy, with Light Precipitation

The fallout from Climategate has begun.  Below is a brief roundup of related news:

Megan McCardle is regretting her initial downplaying of the Climategate emails:

Over the weekend, I came in for some probably deserved criticism from Clive Crook over my initial, somewhat airy, reaction to Climategate.  In my defense, he quotes my first post on the topic, not the follow up.  That was early innings, and my initial estimation of the emails that got the most press at the beginning--particularly the "trick" email--hasn't changed all that much.  Sexing up a graph is a bad thing.  But the world is not going to plunge off a cliff because of one overdone graph.  I've become considerably more concerned at items that have subsequently gotten more attention. 

She outlines her new concerns, and they include the possibility of missing data:

Assembling a data set from many disparate sources is a massive process.  You have to normalize the data so that the records are equivalent, which often means tossing out some records.  In the case of climate records, you also have to apply substantial corrections to the raw temperature records, to account for various factors--as I understand it, this means things like equipment malfunction and changes in the surrounding area, as well as normalizing the data so that it looks more like a grid. It is not adequate to say that people can go get the raw data elsewhere, because first of all, that effort is enormous, and second of all, that still wouldn't tell them how you standardized the data, which is the controversial bit they want to look into.

Bad enough that they won't share, but some of the dumped documents, and this story from the Times, imply that they can't. The now-infamous "Harry_README" file seems to chronicle the efforts of a programmer to figure out how one of the earlier data sets was assembled from the raw data. He eventually gives up in despair, because they seem to have exercised extraordinarily poor source control.
When trillions of dollars worth of global economic growth are riding on models that are built using your data, it seems sort of elementary to keep a copy of the raw data, and a record of what you did to it. I don't want to sound like some naive pundit holding scientists to an impossible standard of perfection--certainly, real world data sets all have their flaws.  But the less record we have of how a particular data set was created, the less reliable we consider that data to be.  If it is true that they cannot reproduce their own data set from scratch, then I think they have been claiming an inappropriately high degree of reliability, as have any models or analyses constructed around these figures.

However, she concludes:

That said, there are a bunch of things I don't think.  I don't think that this proves that AGW is all bosh--there are other data sets that generate roughly similar results, though I believe CRU's is the most comprehensive.  I do not think that we are seeing evidence of a conspiracy to fabricate data.  I see little that has direct bearing on the various disputes over the "hockey stick" and other graphs.  Rather, I see an indirect problem, which is that these scientists allowed themselves to become politicized and hostile to outsiders in a way that may have compromised the quality of their work. 

Popular Mechanics is running an article titled: What East Anglia's E-Mails Really Tell Us About Climate Change, and while it's worth reading in full, here are a few excerpts:

In the context of the stolen CRU e-mails, one can infer that some key scientists were uncomfortable with providing basic data to their critics, partly because they did not wish to explain and defend various filtering techniques. I am sure that in many specific instances involving politically motivated critics who are determined to magnify every discrepancy in order to knock down what they deem a house of cards, explaining these techniques is indeed a waste of time.

More generally, scientists may judge that the public can't understand all the complexities of the data, so they provide a filtered version that they view as truthful, and limit "amateur" access to "confusing" data that might be "misleading." The idea is that if careful climate scientists provide elaborate explanations of a complex scenario, while their critics paint a simple picture, the climate scientists will lose the debate. I think this is false; this sort of cure is worse than the disease, as we can see in the aftermath of the email theft. Going forward, one danger is that a group of expert climate scientists will ostracize a few pariahs, and then go back to their self-appointed role as the sole arbiters of the correct interpretation of data. It should be clear by now why this is problematic.

Nevertheless, the author of this article, Peter Kelemen, insists that independent data still supports the theory of man-made global warming.

And here is where I would like to say something.  Defenders of global warming theory have circled the wagons around CRU in part by claiming that the leaked data does not disprove global warming theory.

Perhaps not.  But in my view, this remains to be seen.

The question is straightforward and comes in two simple parts:

1. How much truly independent data exists? 

If all CRU data is excised from global warming research, what is left?  Is the remainder truly independent, or just a subset somehow derived from CRU figures?  This is a crucial question.  There should be a full and public reckoning of the influence of CRU data on other studies.

2. How badly botched is existing CRU data? 

 There are conflicting reports about raw data being discarded and buggy software massaging numbers.  Once again, there should be a full and public reckoning of the damage or distortions in CRU data.

I believe that any further steps taken to adress global warming- Cap and Trade legislation, the Copenhagen meeting, all of it- should be shelved until these two questions are fully answered.  Whole nations are preparing to undertake massive economic, social and legal restructuring based on global warming theory.  Steps this important cannot be founded on shaky data.

Or, as they say in carpentry: Measure twice, cut once.

Apparently, lots of Australians share this view:

The Rudd government’s emissions trading scheme has been defeated in the Senate. Hilariously, Labor is now trying to frame opposition to the ETS as a scare campaign; this would be the same mob that insists our children, grandchildren, coastlines, cities, wildlife, health and economy are all at risk from climate change.

And some officials at East Anglia also seem to be slowing down for a second look:

Prof. Phil Jones has today announced that he will stand aside as director of the Climatic Research Unit until the completion of an independent review resulting from allegations following the hacking and publication of e-mails from the unit.

....................................

Vice Chancellor Prof. Edward Acton said: “I have accepted Professor Jones’s offer to stand aside during this period. It is an important step to ensure that CRU can continue to operate normally and the independent review can conduct its work into the allegations. We will announce details of the independent review, including its terms of reference, timescale and the chair, within days. I am delighted that Prof. Peter Liss, F.R.S., C.B.E., will become acting director.”

Penn State seems to be doing something similar:

Professor Michael Mann is a highly regarded member of the Penn State faculty conducting research on climate change. Professor Mann’s research papers have been published in well respected peer-reviewed scientific journals.

................................. 

In recent days a lengthy file of emails has been made public. Some of the questions raised through those emails may have been addressed already by the NAS investigation but others may not have been considered. The University is looking into this matter further, following a well defined policy used in such cases. No public discussion of the matter will occur while the University is reviewing the concerns that have been raised.

(Hat tip for all the above: Instapundit)

And while the academic institutions investigate their own, some outside the academy are now calling for inquiries. Lord Christopher Monckton, former science advisor to Margaret Thatcher and longtime global warming skeptic, is calling for an investigation:

 

Finally and poignantly, an editorial written by climate scientist Eduardo Zorita appeared last week:

Why I think that Michael Mann, Phil Jones and Stefan Rahmstorf should be barred from the IPCC process
Eduardo Zorita, November 2009 .........................................  

These words do not mean that I think anthropogenic climate change is a hoax. On the contrary, it is a question which we have to be very well aware of. But I am also aware that in this thick atmosphere -and I am not speaking of greenhouse gases now- editors, reviewers and authors of alternative studies, analysis, interpretations,even based on the same data we have at our disposal, have been bullied and subtly blackmailed. In this atmosphere, Ph D students are often tempted to tweak their data so as to fit the 'politically correct picture'. Some, or many issues, about climate change are still not well known. Policy makers should be aware of the attempts to hide these uncertainties under a unified picture. I had the 'pleasure' to experience all this in my area of research.

Then why didn't you say anything at the time, Mr. Zorita?  Why?

 

The Firebrand Discusses Catastrophic Care

About ten years ago, the 21-year-old daughter of a coworker of mine was abruptly diagnosed with a late-stage, rare cancer.  Theirs was a middle-class family with two working parents and a small house.  Before the diagnosis they had been worrying about putting their other two children through college.  After the diagnosis it became clear that college money would now run a distant second to medical expenses.  They had insurance, but it was unclear how much catastrophic care the policy would underwrite and when they would simply be cut off for 'maxing out.'

I happened to run into an acquaintance of mine during this time and bemoaned their situation to him.  He had graduated with honors from a respected university and had been recruited, even before getting his diploma, by an employer willing to pay top dollar and provide luxuriant benefits.  He exited college and immediately entered the upper class, and has never occuppied any lesser status since.  He listened to their tale and simply shrugged.

"They should have saved," he sniffed.

Saved what? I asked.  They had always saved, but who anticipates a disaster like this?

"They should have looked ahead," he snapped, increasingly irritated.

Looked ahead to what?  I said.  Should they have pointed at their 3 children, said "Eeny, meenie, miney, mo," and then designated a special Cancer Care fund, on the extreme off chance that one day, one of them might get a rare cancer?

By now his face was beet red.  He had no answer for this, and was forced to say again, nearly spitting the words this time:

"They should have been prepared!"

Elise at the Firebrand has been considered just this issue and has divided her ideas into five posts.  As usual, the whole thing is well worth a read.  Each post represents a single idea:

1) While most of us could pay for normal health care expenses ourselves, most of us need health insurance to cover serious situations.

2) Health insurance is not universally available or universally affordable through the market as it currently exists.

3) A health care system run entirely by the government is a bad idea.

4) As currently structured, all insurance - private or government, cheap or expensive, HMO or traditional, catastrophic or first-dollar - masks the true costs of treatment from those who purchase that treatment. This is bad for patients and bad for health care providers and bad for any hope of reining in health care spending through individual decision making.

5) Not only are we not willing to let people die because they’re too poor to afford or too sick to get health care and/or health insurance, we’re not willing to let people die because they’re too stupid to buy health insurance even when they could get it and could afford it. And even if we’re willing to let an adult die from such stupidity, we’re not willing to let his children die.

In her conclusions, she offers this puzzle for readers to consider:

"A free market will not make insurance affordable or obtainable for everyone; it will continue to mask the true costs of treatment; and it will do nothing to address the problem of free riders - which in a totally free-market system means we’d have to let them and their children die. If someone can describe to me a free-market plan that doesn’t have those effects, I’m all ears. Bonus points is you can describe a system that will guarantee that someone like me, who has cost her insurance company vast sums of money and more pre-existing conditions than you can shake a stick at, will be able to retain my health insurance in a free-market system at a cost I can reasonably expect to afford. Extra bonus points if you can figure out how I could change health insurance companies if I wanted to."

You can read her final comments on the issue here and here.

The Firebrand is one of those rare blogs that is worth reading even when you disagree with it.  It doesn't try to draw traffic by playing to one crowd or another.  It doesn't shriek over all the latest political fads.

If blogs were people, there would be some you'd want to go out and really tie one on with, some you hoped didn't move in next door, and some you'd like to sit down and chew over the issues with in a friendly, interested way.

Pull up a chair and the Firebrand this week and find out what she thinks about health care.  She's interesting.

 

Climategate 101

If you have been websurfing this week you have probably encountered the word 'climategate.'  On Thursday, November 19, 2009, over 1,000 emails and 2,000 documents were lifted from the files of the Climate Research Unit at East Anglia University in the U.K.  The emails and documents were then posted on a Russian file server which appears to be a kind of Swiss bank account for hackers- it apparently didn't require much in the way of identification from posters, while making the information available to all comers.  After the information was posted, anonymous tips were left at various blogs devoted to questioning global warming research.  At least one tip was worded this way:

"We feel that climate science is, in the current situation, too important to be kept under wraps. We hereby release a random selection of correspondence, code and documents. Hopefully it will give some insight into the science and the people behind it."

British media were the first to cover the story, with reports in the Guardian and on the BBC, and U.K. journalists posting excerpts from the emails online.  By the following Sunday, officials at East Anglia had confirmed that at documents and emails had been taken from their files and that many appeared to be genuine.

Since last week nearly every big blog has done a post on climategate.  But most of these posts assume the reader is already familiar with many issues, names and places key to 'climategate.'  As a reader not familiar with many of these issues, names and places, I thought I would take a moment to look up and post some resources for others new to this scandal.

Let's start with the emails.  I've read many excerpts from and summations of the 1,000+ emails since November 19th, and here's a list of some key points:

• Many emails appear to describe scientists 'fudging' data- that is, altering statistics and measurements to promote their theory of global warming.
• Some emails display a rather vicious, juvenile attitude toward critics of global warming. One calls the death of a global warming doubter "cheering news"; and in another a scientist describes himself as "very tempted" to beat up a particular global warming doubter the next time he sees him.
• Some emails appear to show scientists at East Anglia colluding to intimidate journals and editors who publish papers throwing doubt on global warming theory. In some cases, scientists appear to be arranging a kind of embargo of journals who publish contrarian work, in an effort to discredit those journals.
• When Great Britain enacted its own Freedom of Information act, emails indicate that scientists at East Anglia may have colluded to delete data and hide behind possibly phoney 'confidentiality' agreements in order to avoid complying with legitimate FOI requests. If true, some of their actions might actually have been illegal.
• Many emails seem to instruct researchers about the best way to hide grant money from the tax man- perhaps even stashing it in personal accounts.
• Other emails seem to express frustration that actual climate measurements don't follow the numbers predicted by global warming computer models- and some emails appear to discuss ways of forcing real world data to mirror model predictions.

Officials with the CRU (short for Climate Research Unit) have responded by saying:

• If you look at 13 year's worth of email from any organization, you are likely to see some unpleasant stuff
• The real issue is that the CRU computers were hacked, and the information stolen
• The emails and documents have been pulled out of context
• Some phoney emails may have been inserted

Critics have responded:

• Because the servers raided were part of a public institution, whether the emails and docs were actually 'privileged' or 'private' is an open question
• Some mails may reveal that researchers at the CRU actually broke the law by subverting FOI requests
• Emails appear to show scientists altering data to produce desirable results
• Taken as a whole, the emails paint the CRU researchers as bullying, narrow-minded people unsuited to objective scientific research
• Whole nations are now considering major revisions to existing law based on global warming research. It is vital that politicians and the public have access to a transparent scientific process and have confidence in its conclusions

The easiest way to address all these arguments is to look at the documents and decide for yourself.  So here they are:

Bishop Hill has an excellent summation of the emails.  It's in the form of a list, with each email given a brief descriptive line and a number.  Clicking the number takes you to the actual email.

This link is a searchable database of the all the documents.

As you read the documents, certain names will come into play.  Here are a few of the people and entities you may encounter:

IPCC- The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.  This is an intergovernmental body charged with evaluating the risk of human-caused climate change.  It was created in 1988 by the World Meteorological Organization and the United Nations Environment Programme.  The IPCC does not do original research.  Instead it relies on scientists like those at the CRU to supply them with reliable, peer-reviewed work.

CRU- The Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia.  One of the leading institutions studying global warming.  It has about 30 researchers and claims to be in posession of numerous data sets regarding climate change, but has been criticized for refusing to release much of this data.

Stephen McIntyre- Mr. McIntyre is a global warming skeptic who runs the blog Climate Audit.  He has a degree in mathematics from the University of Toronto and worked for decades in the mineral exploration business.  He has cowritten papers critical of global warming data with Ross McKitrick.
(Due to increased traffic from climategate, ClimateAudit.org is currently difficult to access.)

Philip D. Jones- Mr. Jones is a climatologist at the CRU.  He has done notable work in global warming research, much of it published in IPCC papers.  He has published a temperature record of the past 1000 years which has been questioned by Mr. McIntyre.

Michael E. Mann- Mr. Mann is an American climatologist who has published more that 80 papers.  He is currently an Associate Professor in the Department of Meteorology and Earth and Environmental Systems institute at Pennsylvania State University, and director of their Earth System Science Center.  Previously, he taught at the University of Virginia.

John L. Daly- Mr. Daly died in 2004.  He was a global warming skeptic and Australian teacher.  He wrote a book titled The Greenhouse Trap: Why the Greenhouse Effect Will Not End Life on Earth.  He also maintained a website called Still Waiting for Greenhouse.

This is by no means everything one needs to know in order to follow this controversy, but it will help will sorting out some of the key players and understanding some of the emails.  I wanted to present this information as a primer for anyone, like me, who is interested in this story but not well-versed in global warming personalities and issues.

I will post more on this story as I look into it myself.