Sep 30, 2012

Should conservatives embrace Obamacare?

J.D. Kleinke, a resident fellow at the conservative American Enterprise Institute and former health care executive, argues in a New York Times article that Obamacare represents reform in a traditional conservative, free-market mold, not a liberal/socialistic one. 

I have to extend a heartfelt slow-clap to Kleinke for expressing so eloquently what I have been (clumsily) arguing about Obamacare for a long time now.

What say you, conservatives and liberals?

Sep 25, 2012

Grad student life in the natural sciences

Here are two laugh-out-loud funny videos on what it's like being a lab rat.  The first video is a parody of the Lady Gaga song "Bad Romance".  Bravo, Zheng lab!


The second video is a parody of of the movie Downfall, in which "Herr Professor has his latest manuscript reviews back, and he's not thrilled with the editorial decision".  Hilarious!

Sep 22, 2012

The GOP platform on climate change

Can you guess where the following quotes come from?
"Human economic activity ... has also increased the amount of carbon in the atmosphere."  
"As part of a global climate change strategy, [we] support technology-driven, market-based solutions that will decrease emissions, reduce excess greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, increase energy efficiency ... " 
Why, those quotes are straight from the GOP Party 2008 platform.  Reading these quotes in context you will see what is proposed is a conservative approach to tackling climate change--but what is noteworthy here is that it does at least address climate change.  And can you guess who said the following?
"We stand warned by serious and credible scientists across the world that time is short and the dangers are great ... I will not shirk the mantle of leadership that the United States bears.  I will not permit eight long years to pass without serious action on serious challenges. ... A cap-and-trade policy will send a signal that will be heard and welcomed all across the American economy.  And the highest rewards will go to those who make the smartest, safest, most responsible choices. ...  We have many advantages in the fight against global warming, but time is not one of them.  Instead of idly debating the precise extent of global warming, or the precise timeline of global warming, we need to deal with the central facts of rising temperatures, rising waters and all the endless troubles that global warming will bring." 
I'll give you a hint:  it was a 2008 presidential candidate.  Can you guess now?  No, it wasn't Barack Obama.  No, it wasn't Hillary Clinton, either.  In fact, the speaker in the above quote was John McCain, the 2008 Republican presidential candidate.

However, no concern about climate change is found in the GOP 2012 platform, or in Mitt Romney's energy plan.  And I mean literally zero discussion of climate change.  Nada.  Zilch.  Zippo.  As the amount of greenhouse gas in our atmosphere increased in the last four years, the Republican Party's concern about it decreased.  The Washington Post covers this shift towards extreme climate change denial in more detail.  In 2008, the party was at least taking part in some kind of rational debate about how to solve the problem.  But this year, the Washington Post concludes, "not so much".

Sep 14, 2012

Are unusually hot summers caused by global warming?

Is it hot in here, or is it just me?  Extreme weather events, such as the blazing summer of 2011 in the Midwestern U.S. and Mexico, used to be a once-in-a-millennium chance occurrence.  But over the past three decades such extremes have occurred more and more frequently, and the public may be starting to notice it.

That's according to a recent study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.  The NASA scientists who authored the study summarize their findings:
Should the public be able to recognize that climate is changing, despite the notorious variability of weather and climate from day to day and year to year? We investigate how the probability of unusually warm seasons has changed in recent decades, with emphasis on summer, when changes are likely to have the greatest practical effects. We show that the odds of an unusually warm season have increased markedly over the past three decades. Also the shape of the temperature anomaly distribution, describing the frequency of occurrence of local temperature anomalies, has broadened, making extreme hot summers much more likely.
Now, if you are familiar with a statistical distribution, you know that when the average of something (say, global temperature) increases, so does the frequency of hitherto rare events (say, an extremely hot summer).  But skeptics will be wary of the human tendency to misinterpret a coincidence (say, two closely-spaced shark attacks) as some new trend (stay out of the water, this is The Summer of the Shark!)

Only data can distinguish a genuine trend from an unlikely coincidence.  Show me the data!
An important change is the emergence of a subset of the hot category, extremely hot outliers, defined as anomalies exceeding +3σ. The frequency of these extreme anomalies is about 0.13% in the normal distribution, and thus a typical summer in the base period climate would have only about 0.1–0.2% of the globe covered by such hot extremes. We show that during the past several years the portion of global land area covered by summer temperature anomalies exceeding +3σ has averaged about 10%, an increase by more than an order of magnitude compared to the base period. Recent examples of summer temperature anomalies exceeding +3σ include the heat wave and drought in Oklahoma, Texas, and Mexico in 2011 ...  
Wait -- is that actual data, or was it simulated on a computer using some fancy climate model?
Our analysis is an empirical approach that avoids use of global climate models, instead using only real world data.
Oh.  Well alright then.

In many ways, from a scientific perspective, the conclusion of this study is a straightforward consequence of the temperature record, and ought to elicit a big "Duh".  However, the value of this study becomes clear when we consider the public understanding of science and the portrayal of climate change in the media.  Contrary to the accusations of some, if the media is indeed biased, it is biased against attributing extreme weather to climate change.  And I'll prove it to you.

Consider how the news media responds, for example, when a a typical number of shark sightings occur during peak beach season.  At the very least, there will be a discussion:  are shark attacks increasing?  If so, why?  How can humans mitigate the risk of an attack?  And this is how the media responds in 2012, over a decade after the embarrassment of 2001.  It was during 2001 that the infamous media circus called "The Summer of the Shark" occurred, although there were in fact 13 fewer shark attacks reported than in the previous year.  It took the events of Sept. 11 to get the media to stop talking about a nonexistent spike in shark attacks.

Fast-forward to the summer of 2011.  Unlike the Summer of the Shark, something real actually happened:  a historic heat wave and drought covering a huge area of the U.S. and Mexico -- not to mention historic floods on the East Coast.  In Texas, the temperature exceeded 100 degrees F for more than a month of consecutive days.  In Houston it was the driest season on record -- and the records go back 100 years.  This wreaked havoc on crops and cost the state over $5 billion, including a record high of $100 million in wildfire damages to homes.  And yet, unlike the Summer of the Shark, the news media was unreasonably hesitant to mention these sensational events could be symptomatic of an underlying trend.

For example, in Houston, a liberal city with a gay mayor, what did the ABC local news say about climate change in its article about the heat wave?  Nothing.  The Houston Chronicle also published an article which said nothing.  What about in Austin, that hipster, college kid city known for its indie music scene?  Austin's Your News Now said nothing.  The San Francisco Chronicle -- not exactly a conservative bastion -- said nothing.  The Huffington Post said nothing.  CNN said nothing.  These are some of the first articles that showed up in a Google search for "2011 drought".  In fact, of the 7 news articles I found on the topic, only one mentions climate change or global warming at all:  a Your Houston News article which quotes one meteorologist who says flatly, "Global warming has little or nothing to do with this".

Don't get me wrong -- I'm sure those news outlets mention in some article, somewhere, that global warming might have something to do with hotter summers (I repeat the scientific response:  "Duh").  But at the very least, there is simply no evidence to support the accusation that the news media is biased in favor of attributing extreme weather to climate change.  

How is it possible that the same sensationalist media responsible for the Summer of the Shark hoopla repeatedly avoided making a connection, or even mentioning the possibility of a connection, between an actual historic event and an actual historical trend?  One possibility is that news media have reflexively adopted an anti-climate change bias in response to loud and incessant accusations of pro-climate change bias.  Basketball coaches are well aware that complaining about bias can actually cause a person to be biased in the opposite direction, which is why coaches "work the refs" from the sidelines.  And that's exactly why scientists at NASA should publish the kind of article cited above:  to reassure the public that no, it's not just you.  It really is getting hot in here.