Natural progress towards a greener world

I have to admit that I have been somewhat baffled by the intense passion of the proponents of the global warming/climate change movement, but I think I finally have a handle on what their passion is really all about, and it is not simply about making the world a better place to live or simply about protecting the environment, but a particular worldview that they have about how change occurs in the world. Here is a catalog of the characteristics of their worldview for change that I have noticed over the years:

• Lack of faith in human nature
• Too much faith in fear as a human motivator
• Mean-spiritedness
• Desire to use heavy-handed government control to coerce people and businesses
• Lack of faith in practicality
• Lack of faith in progress - of technology, institutions, businesses, and individuals
• Lack of faith in science and a willingness to twist and distort science in the pursuit of political, social, and "moral" agendas
• Lack of comprehension of how big and complex the world is, and how evolutionary and emergent phenomena are
• Overly-simplistic view of how the atmosphere, oceans, biosphere, and geosphere interact and influence each other
• Too much faith in overly-simplified models
• Too much faith in anecdotes
• Too much faith in rhetoric
• Greater faith in anecdotes and rhetoric than science and analytic studies
• Extreme impatience and unwillingness to let the environment adjust at its own pace
• Extreme shortsightedness - thinking about climate in terms of decades and even years rather than centuries and millennia
• Patronizing attitude to everything and everyone
• Lack of optimism and generally pessimistic view of any "future" of which they are not in control
• Tremendous hubris: if the rest of us don't do exactly as they say, we're all going to have a very gloomy future
• Guilt trippers: Trying to blame perceived environmental problems on the rest of us and our parents and grandparents.
• Refusal to lead by example: What is stopping all of the people who claim that global warming and climate change is caused by man and carbon dioxide to stop driving and cut their energy use by at least 80%? Why don't these people understand that leading by example is the best way to go?
• Belief that crises are the best and only real motivators of people and their institutions
• Lack faith in the power of free will

Although I personally do not agree that the relationship between human activity and global warming and climate change is "beyond debate", I actually do agree with a lot (but not all) of the remedies being proposed. I do believe, as a matter of principle rather than because someone is holding a gun to my head, that energy and resource efficiency and a smaller environmental footprint are very good things. I believe in pursuing alternative forms of energy. I believe in renewable energy. I believe in conservation. I believe in higher fuel economy. I believe limiting deforestation and encouraging reforestation. And on and on. But, I also believe that much of these changes will occur as a result of natural human progress and that the heavy-handed "crisis" approach of the proponents of the global warming/climate change "movement" is entirely inappropriate and in fact quite inhumane. Worse, their political and social policies are unlikely to accomplish the changes that are needed or advantageous and put in place massive bureaucratic barriers that will in fact stymie changes that would have occurred naturally.

We should resolve to enhance efficiency and reduce our resource usage as expeditiously as possible, but in as sane, rational, humane, natural, and as calm a way as possible.

Whatever we do, it should make sense, and not be because some zealots brainwash innocent people into believing that we have no choice.

Our energy policies should be guided by sane science and sane economics, not forcibly twisted by narrow political or "moral" agendas.

I'm sure the natural progress towards a dramatically reduced environmental footprint will not be as rapid as the proponents of the global warming / climate change movement would like to see, but I do believe that the more natural we let that progress be, the more effective and durable it will be.

-- Jack Krupansky

Did a tanker truck really explode in Oakland?

The headline this morning seemed quite dramatic and shocking: "Tanker Explosion Causes East Bay Freeway Collapse." But wait, did a gasoline fuel tanker truck really "explode"? Actually, no.

Yes, there was an accident. Yes, there was a big fire. Yes, the heat of the fire was so intense that it caused a portion of the freeway interchange in the East Bay Area of California to collapse. But, in fact, there was no "explosion."

Even the lead paragraph of that article backs off from the graphic implication of the overly-lurid headline:

A freeway interchange that funnels traffic off the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge collapsed onto another highway ramp early Sunday after a gasoline tanker truck overturned and caught fire, authorities said.

Why would they feel that it is "okay" to call this an "explosion" when it was simply an intense fire?

And just to give you an idea of how not an explosion this incident was:

Although heat from the fire was intense enough to weaken the freeway and cause the collapse, the truck's driver walked away from the scene and called a taxi, which took him to a nearby hospital with second-degree burns, Officer Trent Cross of the California Highway Patrol said.

I'm not sure which is more disgusting, when a blogger resorts to such misleading language:

California Tanker Explosion

By Jennifer McMahon
Staff Writer-ToTheCenter.Com

Sunday morning a truck explosion rocked a bridge overpass in Oakland, California. The massive explosion caused much of the bridge to collapse onto the pavement below. A tanker truck carrying 8,600 gallons of gasoline exploded, triggering the fire and then exploded causing the bridge to burn so hot that it melted.

Or when mainstream media does the same:

Section of Bay Area freeway collapses after truck explosion

By Alexander Davis

Last Update: 11:02 AM ET Apr 29, 2007

SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) -- California highway authorities said a 250-yard section of a key Bay Area freeway interchange collapsed early Sunday after a truck hauling gasoline crashed in a fiery accident just east of San Francisco. Flames from the tanker explosion brought down the upper deck of a three-lane connector between Interstate 80 and Interstate 580, California Highway Patrol officers told KNTV-TV.

That last story suggests that maybe overly-excited law enforcement officers may have "sparked" the exaggeration.

To be sure, not all of the media restored to exaggeration. Here's what Reuters had to say:

Fiery crash collapses vital California highway

By Kimberly White

EMERYVILLE, California (Reuters) - A stretch of vital highway for San Francisco Bay area commuters collapsed on Sunday after a fuel truck crashed and ignited dramatic flames more than 200 feet high, officials said.

Reuters at least knows how to appropriately use dramatic language without exaggerating.

-- Jack Krupansky

Virginia Tech murder-suicide

I'm still sorting through the fragmentary details of the murder-suicide at Virginia Tech last Monday, April 16, 2007, and still not ready to make much in the way of strong statements about the incident, but there are a few things that seem rather clear at this stage. I am not the kind of person to offer knee-jerk reactions to unfolding events, preferring to wait for the media-inspired frenzy dust to settle and for the true facts to get accurately reported.

My initial reaction was simply: So, what's different about this "school shooting" incident, what's new, or is this simply "another Columbine" and the fact that the number of deaths was higher was the only "real" news? Was it the raw number of casualties, or are there other factors that are different enough to be worthy of nationwide, if not international attention?

As I said, I am still not ready to draw strong conclusions, but here are the factors to be considered:

1. Is there a rising trend of "school shootings"?
2. Are more kids now willing to consider murder-suicide as an "option"?
3. Would the incident have gotten as much attention if only a couple of kids had gotten shot?
4. Was it the sheer number of deaths, the fact that it was a new "record"?
5. Would there be as much attention if he had killed only, say, four or six or eight?
6. Was it because the killer was "foreign-born"?
7. Was there a terrorism angle?
8. Is the incident being blown up for partisan political advantage?
9. Would reasonably stricter gun control laws, policies, and practices really have prevented the killer from acquiring the gun and the large amount of ammunition?
10. Is "mental illness" to blame?
11. Should staff or even students have been responsible for reporting his off-the-deep-end behavior and mental state?
12. Should some institution (the university, local law enforcement, some mental health or social service agency, the federal government, et al) have had clear responsibility to remove the soon-to-be killer from the community when he was judged to be a danger to himself and others?
13. Are any new laws needed?
14. Are changes to how existing laws are used needed?
15. Is the family, the social community, society overall responsible for in fact treating the killer as an outcast and effectively "shunning" him by focusing on his unwillingness or lack of ability to "relate" as they judged that he should?
16. Did well-meaning individuals make matters worse by essentially leading the killer to feel guilty and culpable for his lack of empathy and social alienation?
17. Since none of the efforts to "help" the killer succeeded, what should family, friends, teachers, et al have really done to short-circuit the killer's fall into oblivion?
18. Were his "warning signs" overlooked simply because he was performing reasonably well in school? Did academic "success" and some semblance of social "compliance" effectively give him a free pass to be destructively anti-social?
19. Was it really "rage" that drove him to kill? If so, isn't it odd that he had no verbal or non-verbal expressions of "rage" during the shootings, remaining otherwise dispassionate through the whole event? He seemed more of a "hunter", on a "mission", calmly searching for prey, calmly aiming, calmly pulling the trigger, and calmly moving on. Something must have been driving him more than simply blind rage.

I have no immediate answers to any of these questions, and there are likely to be even more questions.

Here is about as far out on a limb as I am willing to go at this point in time, based on the limited information available:

1. Fitting in socially the way his family, peers, and teachers expected was simply not a viable option for him. His "disorder", if that is the proper term, was simply too profound to rationally expect that he would be able to "adjust." That expectation simply increased the probability that a blow-up such as this would eventually occur.
2. Neither his family nor his schools did him any service by acting as if nothing was wrong.
3. There were clearly at least several points in time where he should clearly have been separated from either his family or school, but something prevented responsible authorities from taking prompt and definitive action, even long ago.
4. Why did no one attempt to explain to him that he can in fact live at some distance from the social "norms" of behavior, but only provided that he simultaneously respects the rights of others to not completely relate to his difference from their norms? Some significant minority of people do in fact learn to live with both their inner sense of being "very different", while accepting that this does not make anyone else an enemy. Rather than trying to force him into a straitjacket of "normalcy", why couldn't family, acquaintances, teachers, et al welcome the fact that he was different rather than trying to squash his different-ness like a bug (or so it might have appeared to him)?
5. Although there are plenty of people who may be even more different from the norm than this guy, the fact that he turned into a killer should not be any surprise. The only surprise is that more people don't "go postal" on a more frequent basis. Maybe this simply means that our "system" actually is quite effective, but that expecting perfection from the system is simply too great a demand.

Even as more facts come in, they might not change the overall picture from what I have described above.

Will it happen again, or even worse? I hate to pre-judge the future, so I would simply say that it is possible, but it shouldn't be a surprise whether such events do or don't happen again.

-- Jack Krupansky

Silicon Valley or bust

Although Silicon Valley tends to be the (apparent) center of activity for so much that goes on in the tech sector, it amuses me that I never managed to work there. I've only had reason to visit there a very small number of times (three?), and only once gave serious thought to moving there, but occasionally, like this morning, I consider the fact that if only for the sake of "completeness", a sense of "been there, done that", I should actually make an effort to spend some time there, eventually, someday.

I'm in no rush to get there, but since my past interest in eventually getting there never went anywhere, maybe this time I need to put a plan or at least a meta-plan in place so that I will eventually get there.

My current expectation is that I will stay with my current overall work situation for at least five years. There is nothing magical about that number, but it seemed like a more robust level of commitment than two or three years and not as confining as ten years. That was my original "plan" a year ago, and now I have been in this new job almost a year (three weeks to go), so the end of my initial five-year planning horizon is now only four years away.

So, this raises the question of what I might be wanting to do in five years, what venue in Silicon Valley might support such activity, and how to prepare myself over the next four years to be in a position to be a top candidate for such a position.

Who knows, maybe I might position myself to be an entrepreneur in that timeframe. Or, maybe as a service provider to other entrepreneurs. Actually, I've always had an interest in venture capital, so maybe the question is how to prepare myself to shift into the venture capital sector in that timeframe. Or, maybe as simply an independent individual contributor (again). And, of course there is the potential that there might be a position in Silicon Valley with my current employer (The Evil Empire.)

For now, I'll simply leave this matter as an open question to ponder in an open-ended manner for the next year or two.

The biggest issue that I expect to be facing is that the average age of the "work force" that I will be working with will be another five years younger than it is today, leaving me yet another five years out of touch with the world view of those fresh out of school or even three or four years out of school who might be potential supervisors that I would be working for. Yikes! I'm sure this will be the greatest challenge facing me in five years.

Of course, all of this begs the question of the validity of the thesis that in The Age of the Internet, it is not supposed to matter where you live or where your employer is. To me, the question is how to exploit the people networking potential of physically being in Silicon Valley (or the Bay Area). Once again, The Internet and A Flat World are supposed to eliminate such geography and locality distinctions, but it does appear that we are not there yet. Who knows, maybe we'll get there right about the time that I get to Silicon Valley. Irony is an important fact of life.

-- Jack Krupansky

I'm so optimistic that...

I've finally gotten around to feeling that I have enough spare time to finally dig into reading the responses to John Brockman's Edge question for 2007: What are you optimistic about? I initially figured that I would spend maybe ten to twenty hours reading the material and would be too focused to have time to blog about it. That may still turn out to be the case, but the very first phrase of the first sentence of the first paragraph of the first response was simply too... too... "out there" to not blog about it. That first response is by Professor Daniel Dennett, reknowned atheist who of course rants again about religion in his response entitled "The Evaporation of the Powerful Mystique of Religion", who opens his response with the words "I'm so optimistic that I expect..." The words that follow are not as relevant, since the issue is the nature of optimism itself.

Is optimism really on a sliding scale spectrum or is it a binary, all or nothing state of mind?

My contention is that pessimism and skepticism are on a sliding scale spectrum, but that optimism by its very nature is the complete absence of pessimism and skepticism, or the willingness to sent aside and look beyond all concerns and issues, to try to see what is beyond it all, to sense a vision of where you can go, regardless of what obstacles may lie along the way. Optimism is a focus on the end of the journey, not the journey itself.

Now, whether the Edge respondents share my interpretation of optimism remains to be seen, but I'll read the Edge Question responses from the perspective of my model of optimism.

I would suggest that in the context of optimism, "so" is redundant, kind of like saying that you are 110% optimistic. As a matter of sensible style, and to avoid being characterized as more enamored of rhetoric than meaning, I would suggest that the phrase "I'm so optimistic that I expect..." be replaced with "As an optimistic, I expect..."

The whole point of this post is really about the role of blogging and reading, or about blogging as a medium for criticism of written material. Can one truly read without criticizing? Can one criticize without blogging about it? Is blogging an effective aid to understanding what we read?

-- Jack Krupansky

Life in the year 2059

I was checking out Fidelity's retirement planner and was once again confronted with the question of what I expected for my life expectancy. They suggested 92. I responded with 105. That seems to be a lifetime that feels "right" for me. It is nominally just more than twice my current age. I suspect what I will do is up it by two years every year so that I can always at least imagine that I still have half of my life in front of me.

Anyway... if I live until I am 105, that means I will be alive in the year 2059, 52 years from now. That raises the obvious question of what life will be like in the year 2059. I have no immediate answers, but it is at least an interesting thought experiment. It begs the question of what events might have transpired between now and then, but mostly I'm focusing on what the world will be like when I finally "leave the scene." On the other hand, maybe I should back off and look at the year 2049 or 2050 so that I can contemplate a time when I still have a whole ten years to live. That seems to make more sense. Besides, 2050 is a nice round number.

So, what will life be like in the year 2050? Some categories of thought:

• Health, health care
• Nutrition, food
• Work
• Play, recreation, entertainment
• Housing, living spaces, living arrangements
• Transportation, travel
• Air quality
• Water quality
• Climate
• Politics
• Religion
• Sex
• Sports
• Culture
• Social relations
• Marriage
• Childrearing
• School, education
• Cultures
• Crime, violence
• Law
• Philosophy
• Economics
• Foreign Relations
• Nations
• Conflicts, wars
• Weapons
• Materials
• Buildings
• Communications, computer networks
• Tools and technologies
• What can computers do?
• What can computers still not do?
• Biology, genetics
• Space travel, space life
• Global, national, regional, and local financial systems
• Shopping
• Insurance
• What will money look like?
• What will the term wealth mean?

Will life be radically different from today in a revolutionary sense, or more or an incremental evolutionary sense?

From a finance and retirement planning perspective, how much of this might we have to make sense of to adequately prepare ourselves for a "comfortable" retirement?

Will retirement planning be inherently a "moving target", with radical redeployment every five years?

-- Jack Krupansky

Is concern over global warming primarily a political issue rather than a matter of science?

There is an interesting chart on the Framing Science blog by Matthew C. Nisbet, Ph.D in a post entitled "The Two Americas of Global Warming Perceptions: Concern Among Dems Rises While Republicans Remain Unmoved" which essentially shows that anxiety over global warming is rising among Democrats, but declining among Republicans. To me, this strongly suggests that so-called "global warming" has largely become primarily a partisan political issue rather than a matter of science.

The comments on the post are interesting as well.

I only ran across this post today, but it does confirm my belief that global warming/climate change has morphed from being an area of scientific research to a hard-core social and political movement that is now almost wholly divorced from the underlying science.

-- Jack Krupansky

Edge question for 2007: What are you optimistic about?

I've been so busy and distracted these past few months that I completed forgot to dig into John Brockman's Edge question for 2007: What are you optimistic about?

Edge puts out a new question at the beginning of every year. This one came out on January 1, 2007.

This year there were 160 responses from a wide range of scientists, intellectuals, and other thought leaders.

I've only skimmed a few of the responses and have yet to sit down and do some serious reading of them.

Here's the short response from computer scientist David Gelernter:

The Future of Software

I am optimistic about the future of software, because more and more people are coming out of the closet every month — admitting in public that they hate their computers.

Within the last month I've heard three people shouting (or muttering) curses at their machines. One was a bona fide software virtuoso! These particular three were ticked off about (1) an airline website that was so badly designed it was useless, (2) a commercial web-site-building tool (bought for real money) that made it nearly impossible to build simple structures and (3) a home PC that, despite reasonably sophisticated software counter-measures, was so junked-up with viruses that starting a word processor took five minutes.

The file systems and desktop and spreadsheets, the word processors and mailers and database programs we rely on are vintage 1984 or older. They're as obsolete as a 1984 PC. When I first described the "empty computer" model in the early '90s, people thought I was crazy. Many still do—but fewer each year (and I guess that's progress). There was a larger jump in admitted cases of computer- and software-hatred in '06 than in any previous year I remember.

Technologists who blandly assume that hardware will (somehow) keep getting better while software stays frozen in time are looking wronger every month. In the empty-computer world of the near future, your information assets have all been bundled-up, encrypted and launched into geosynchronous orbit in the Cybersphere; computers are interchangeable devices for tuning in information. (If computers are so cheap, why does everyone need to carry one around with him? We don't make you carry a desk and chairs around with you; we can afford to provide chairs and flat surfaces wherever you need them.)

In the empty computer world it will take five minutes to upgrade to a new machine (throw the old one out, plug the new one in—your information stays in orbit where it's always been); comfortable large-screen public computers will be available all over the place. And instead of expanding into a higher-and-higher-entropy mess, the Web will implode into a "blue hole": a single high-energy information beam that holds all the world's digital assets.

Gelernter's Law: the computer industry revolutionizes itself at least once a decade. We're nearly due for the next revolution.

Actually, now that I read what he wrote, he seems to be describing something similar to what I wrote up as Distributed Virtual Personal Data Storage (DVPDS). I'm certainly optimistic about this concept, but I don't expect it any time soon. Besides, the computer won't actually look or feel "empty" to the user. It's just that the contents can be reproduced at will for little cost.

In any case, there is plenty of good reading and fodder for blogging in the responses to the Edge question.

-- Jack Krupansky

Kurt Vonnegut is still alive

Kurt Vonnegut may have physically died, but he does live on in a very real sense in his books and other writings.

When most people die, their "legacy" can usually be categorized primarily as simply "memories" and events and activities associated with the past, but Vonnegut's works have such a timeless quality that even the word "legacy" seems inappropriate.

So many books can aspire no further than a moment of glory when they spike up to being a "best seller", before plummeting into relative obscurity. Vonnegut's works have (present tense) the quality of simultaneously rarely spiking up to "bestseller" territory, but also never losing their hard-core popular appeal.

He literally was able to transcend the limitations of being merely a flawed human being, and became something much more through his writings. He gave us the ability to not only see what and who we are as a society, but also what and who we are as individuals.

I never knew or met him personally, so I can't say that I'll miss him in that sense. But I can say that he wrote enough that simply re-reading and re-reading his works for the next 50 years would not leave me feeling hungry for anything "new." So, in a very real sense, I won't miss him at all.

Sure, in some real sense it is sad to hear that he is "gone", but simply hearing his name is always enough to cheer up even the gloomiest of moments.

He may be physically dead, but his works are still as alive and relevant as they ever were.

One of the ironic peculiarities of his writing is that as pessimistic as he may be, at least in me he has always inspired optimism. Simply the way he approaches pessimism in his writing style takes the wind out of the sails of that pessimism.

So it goes.

-- Jack Krupansky

Behind the scenes for the latest IPCC climate change report

There is an interesting Associated Press article by Seth Borenstein with the somewhat misleading title of Last word on climate is ours, scientists say which does in fact clue us in as to some of the behind the scenes give and take that went on to produce the latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the Working Group II Contribution to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Fourth Assessment Report, Climate Change 2007: Climate Change Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability, Summary for Policymakers.

In fact, he lets the cat out of the bag and tells us that a detailed, uncensored 79-page "technical summary" will eventually be released to the public and will not be edited "by diplomats" and will contain "the real facts." This is what he means by suggesting that scientists will have the last word.

Great. In other words the summary which was just released and touted as having very high confidence, has been so heavily edited as to be next to worthless. In fact, the version on the IPCC web site still says "This version has yet to be copy-edited."

The beginning of the AP article tells us that "An inside look at the last few hours of tense negotiations at the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) meeting reveals how diplomats won at the end, thanks to persistence and deadlines", but later tells us that the scientists "won" since that uncensored 79-page report will come out. Sorry guys, but other than a few people like me, very few people, especially policymakers will read that 79 pages of fine print. As far as the media goes, it will be "yesterday's news." So, the reality is that the foot-dragging, hardball bureaucrats "won."

The AP article has some eyebrow-raising revelations:

• "The language in the report had to be approved unanimously by governments." - so much for science.
• "In the past, scientists at these meetings believed that their warnings were conveyed, albeit slightly edited down. But several left Friday with the sense that they had lost control of their document." - science loses again.
• "'There was no split in the science; they were all mad,' said John Coequyt, who observed the closed-door negotiations for the environmental group Greenpeace." - I think he means the bureaucrats, but even if that is the case, the whole process does not inspire any great confidence.
• "If it stayed the way scientists originally wrote it, some countries would not accept nor be bound by the science in the document." - That's great. In truth, the so-called "science" is now irrelevant since the whole thing has a social and political life of its own, independent of the science.
• "those involved agree that the science is accurate and that global warming is changing the planet and projected to worsen significantly" - That only raises my level of skepticism. Global warming is now at the level of a rhetorical popularity contest. "Accuracy" is a very poor description of this form of "science", and so-called "projections" are probably worth less than the paper they are printed on.
• "Interpreters had been sent home at 2 a.m. Friday due to financial issues. Some pages had not been discussed, and some of the most critical issues were not solved as small-group negotiations stalled." - Why such difficulty if the science is supposedly "settled" and "beyond challenge"?
• "Panel co-chairman Martin Parry of the United Kingdom acknowledged that some parts of the document were eliminated 'because there was not enough time to work it through as well.'" - Again, it sounds as if the "science" is not as settled as Parry and others keep claiming it is.
• "With such deadline problems, some countries — especially China, Saudi Arabia and at times Russia and the United States — were able to play hardball. China and Saudi Arabia wanted to lower the level of scientific confidence (from more than 90 to 80 percent) that the report had in a statement about current global-warming effects, and it looked as if they would win because they wouldn't accept the original wording. That's when Rosenzweig walked. But a U.S.-based compromise avoided mention of scientific confidence." - These so-called confidence levels appear to be 100% artificial, rhetorical artifacts than based on hard science. In fact, we would probably all be better off if all of the confidence level characterizations were dropped until there is a general consensus as to what the time-tested data and analytical studies really show. In other words, lets see where we are five and ten years from now.

• "A comparison of the original document, written by scientists, and the finished paper showed major reductions in forecasts for hunger and flooding victims. Instead of 'hundreds of millions' of potential flood victims, the report said 'many millions.'" - If the scientists had hard data to back up their claims, why did they cave? I suspect that they didn't have hard data at all and that these "projections" were more in the way of "rhetorical flourishes."

Some of the points that are supposedly in the unreleased 79-page technical summary include:

• "More than one-sixth of the world population live in glacier- or snowmelt-fed river basins and will be affected by decrease of water volume." And depending on how much fossil fuels are burned in the future, "262-983 million people are likely to move into the water-stressed category" by 2050.
• Global warming could increase the number of hungry in 2080 by between 140 million and 1 billion, depending on how much greenhouse gas is emitted in coming decades.
• "Overall, a two- to three-fold increase of population to be flooded is expected by 2080."
• Malaria, diarrheal diseases, dengue fever, tick-borne diseases, heat-related deaths will all rise with global warming. But in the United Kingdom, the drop in cold-related deaths will be bigger than the increase in heatstroke-related deaths.
• In eastern North America, depending on fossil-fuel emissions, smog will increase and there would be a 4.5 percent increase in smog-related deaths.
• Because global warming will hurt the poor more, there will be more "social-equity" concerns and pressure for governments to do more.

Net net, reading this article only reduced my own level of confidence in the science of global warming and climate change.

My conclusion is that we need to give the scientists another five years to get their act together before we put too much faith in their "science." That extra five years of data will provide either a rock-solid confirmation of their forecasts, or tell us that the whole affair is a lot shakier than it even appears to be.

Trust me, five years will not make that big a difference.

-- Jack Krupansky

My own hotel chain of "haven" lodges?

I was thinking a bit more about retirement planning and in particular what form of housing would make sense for me. I truly do not need or want a full house or even much of a condo or even a multi-bedroom apartment. In fact, a studio apartment is more than enough for my tastes.

That got me thinking back to an idea I had a number of years ago for a nationwide chain of hotel lodges. I originally got the idea while visiting Ecola State Park near Cannon Beach on the coast of Oregon. I thought it would be really cool to have a moderately big hotel-like lodge that offered comfortable rooms and scenic public spaces. Not a big, bland chain like Marriott, but with impressive public spaces as the first priority, coupled with very comfortable rooms. The idea is not to put all of the effort into the rooms themselves, but to go overboard on the public spaces so that each guest can find a nook somewhere where they can feel like they have a little semi-privacy without being completely off on your own. You should be able to find a quite corner and sit down or lie down on a sofa and take a nap. Each lodge would  have a wide range of rooms, all the way from high-end suites, down to rather small rooms or even Japanese-style sleeping chambers that emphasize spending more time in the public spaces than in individual rooms. One idea is that the savings from smaller guest rooms can be leveraged to provide much higher value in the public spaces for an overall lower per-night cost than a major hotel such as Hyatt or Westin.

Some of my lodges would be in semi-remote locations like Cannon Beach or Lake Tahoe or Jackson Hole, but some would be right in major cities with an emphasis on providing havens within the hustle and bustle of urban settings. In fact, the design should be such that people living in the city might simply stay at their local lodge to "get away from it all." I can envision having a dozen in Manhattan alone.

The DisneyWorld Wildeness Lodge conveys at least a slight sense of what one of my lodges might be like, but is still on too large an industrial scale to give the feel of a "haven" from the world. Although I imagine that some of my lodges would have this "rustic" feel, I also imagine that some might be the opposite and have a 'futuristic" feel. And, the focus would be on a vast maze of public spaces that people could lose themselves in, rather than expecting that people would retreat to their rooms. My lodge and the average room would be significantly smaller than the Disney Lodge, but there would be much more in the way of public spaces. As an example, bunk beds or a loft bed would dramatically decrease the floor space needed to accommodate a given number of guests.

I also imagine a variant of time-share where you could buy anywhere from one week to the full year and use that "pass" at any of the lodges. Thinking ahead here, I personally would have a 46-week pass that would let me live in my lodges all year except for six weeks of travel to places that didn't yet have my lodges.

A more recent twist to my lodge idea is to offer nutrition services so that someone could check in for a few days to focus on improving their nutritional habits. That would include counseling, group discussions, cooking lessons, and dining itself.

Anyway, my ideal retirement living arrangement would be to own this chain of lodges and simply spend my time traveling between them. I personally do not need a lot of personal junk in my living space, so spending every night in a different room would be fine for me.

Is this a crazy idea? Yeah, sure it is. On the other hand, crazier ideas have worked out.

I don't intend to seriously pursue this idea, but on the other hand it is a great "thought project" to occupy my idle moments.

Who knows, maybe someday I'll meet someone who has expertise in the hotel business and can actually work with me to turn this idea into a reality. You never know.

So, I've gone from not wanting a house to retire to, but wanting a nationwide lodging chain. Sometimes, this is the way things work out.

Did I say nationwide? Why limit it? It seems like the concept would apply globally. Not that I would need to own the entire worldwide chain, since a quality standard-oriented franchise concept such as McDonalds would permit travelers to get the same level of quality around the world.

Or maybe, I'll just end up working part-time in hotels to pay for my retirement. As I said, you never know.

-- Jack Krupansky

$41 steak - for free

Just over a month ago I ranted about not being able to afford getting a decent steak in a top-quality steakhouse on a regular basis anymore. Just this past week I got a certificate in the mail from the Palm Restaurant 837 frequent-dining club that entitles me to a free entree, including either one of those infamous but delicious $41 steaks or even a 3-pound lobster, sometime over the next 120 days.

I've been a member of the Palm 837 frequent-dining club for many years, although not a very frequent diner over the past few years. I did go to the Palm Too in NYC for a steak over the Christmas holidays, which was apparently enough to put me in good enough graces to merit the normal once a year "birthday" lobster certificate.

Now, all I have to do is arrange to travel within the next three months to a city which has a Palm restaurant. Neither Seattle, Portland, nor San Francisco has a Palm. I was thinking about going to New York or Washington, D.C. in May or June anyway. Now I have a good excuse.

Alas, the economics are such that unless I do have a good reason to visit a city that has a Palm restaurant, I'll have little choice but to let this free entree certificate expire. Sigh. That's life. The new life of steak beyond our means.

-- Jack Krupansky

Why no mention of complex adaptive systems in the climate change reports?

One aspect of the recent climate change reports that stands out like a sore thumb is the complete and total lack of any acknowledgement that our environment and climate is a complex adaptive system. I searched through the latest report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the Working Group II Contribution to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Fourth Assessment Report, Climate Change 2007: Climate Change Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability, Summary for Policymakers, but found not even a hint that the report authors acknowledge that our environment, the atmossphere, the hydrosphere, the biosphere, and the geosphere are each in their own right complex adaptive systems, let alone that together they are an even more complex adaptive system. This shouldn't be too big a surprise, since the extreme levels of confidence about forecasting the future of the climate and its impacts on the envirnment are indicative of a failure to comprehend the basic, unpredictable nature of complex adaptive systems.

The hallmark of a complex adaptive system are the twin concepts of emergent phenomena and evolution. Nothing that the IPCC has put out this year so far has acknowledged the relevance of emergent phenomena and the inherent unpredictability of evolutionary systems.

This has to make you wonder how the IPCC is modeling climate change, especially many decades into the future. Complex adaptive systems are notoriously difficult to model for any time scale. Yet, somehow, scientists are claiming to have modeled our environment to a level of confidence which in theory should not even be possible. This leaves me deeply suspicious.

-- Jack Krupansky

What is climate change?

[I reposted this to correct a number of formatting issues.]

The latest report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the Working Group II Contribution to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Fourth Assessment Report, Climate Change 2007: Climate Change Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability, Summary for Policymakers, has this curious note near the end of the report:

Climate change in IPCC usage refers to any change in climate over time, whether due to natural variability or as a result of human activity. This usage differs from that in the Framework Convention on Climate Change, where climate change refers to a change of climate that is attributed directly or indirectly to human activity that alters the composition of the global atmosphere and that is in addition to natural climate variability observed over comparable time periods.

That is a profound change and distinction. The change actually occurred in the Working Group I report back in February, but nobody noticed or noted it.

For reference, here is the definition of climate change from the Framework Convention on Climate Change:

"Climate change" means a change of climate which is attributed directly or indirectly to human activity that alters the composition of the global atmosphere and which is in addition to natural climate variability observed over comparable time periods.

The fact that the older definition refers to "attributed directly or indirectly to human activity", whereas the newer definition refers to "whether due to natural variability or as a result of human activity" is rather significant.

The effect of this change is that the overall thrust of the IPCC reports rests less on a finding of effects from strictly human activity than the old framework convention. The effects of human activity are still there in the new reports, but categorized as "anthropogenic warming."

Even the February science report from IPCC noted a somewhat weaker overall linkage between warming and human activity than for the overall warming effect.

The language used in the latest report is that "it is likely that anthropogenic warming has had a discernible influence on many physical and biological systems." That falls far short of attributing all or even the dominant share of the blame to human activity. The strongest statement the report makes is that "most of the observed increase in the globally averaged temperature since the mid-20th century is very likely due to the observed increase in anthropogenic greenhouse gas concentrations", but the report offers no definition for "most", leaving it to the reader to guess that it may mean simply greater than 50% of the observed increase. In short, even these reports don't suggest that global warming would be nonexistent if all human activity were removed from the equation.

In fact, the latest report explicitly states that "Limitations and gaps prevent more complete attribution of the causes of observed system responses to anthropogenic warming."

In short, the scientists are claiming greater than 66% certainty that human activity can be blamed for the effects and 90% certainty that human activity can be blamed for global warming, but they actually aren't offering a number for what fraction of global warming is due to human activity, telling us only that the effect is "discernible."

To me, the overwhelming conclusion should be that we need a lot more research and a much better understanding of the current climate and climate processes before we make too many bold pronouncements about what effects human activity has in fact had or may have had, let alone forecast what effects are likely to be seen in the future.

The report offers these thresholds for characterizing likelihood of an outcome:

• Virtually certain - Greater than 99% probability of occurrence
• Extremely likely - Greater than 95%
• Very likely - Greater than 90%
• Likely - Greater than 66%
• More likely than not - Greater than 50%
• Very unlikely - Less than 10%
• Extremely unlikely - Less than 5%

And it offers these terms for expressing confidence in a statement:

• Very high confidence - At least a 9 out of 10 chance of being correct
• High confidence - About an 8 out of 10 chance
• Medium confidence - About a 5 out of 10 chance
• Low confidence - About a 2 out of 10 chance
• Very low confidence - Less than a 1 out of 10 chance

-- Jack Krupansky

Pricing an Apple notebook computer versus Toshiba, Dell, and Lenovo

Most people know instinctively that an Apple notebook computer is going to be more expensive than a Windows-based notebook PC, but occasionally I hear anecdotes about some Mac configuration being less than Dell or Sony, so this morning I decided to do a price comparison.

Comparing Mac and PC prices is much easier now that Apple is using Intel x86 chips. Previously, it was pure guesswork to try to figure out how to compare x86 and PowerPC.

For the sake of this experiment, I presume that I would be upgrading from my own mid-range Toshiba notebook computer. I don't have the exact specs, but I think it is around 1.6 GHz, 512 MB, 100 GB disk, and 14-inch wide, bright screen.

I visited the Apple online store and see that the MacBook is the only machine in my price range (under $1,500). The MacBook Pro looks interesting, but starting at $1,999 is way too steep for me. I'm a mid-range kind of guy, not an unlimited budget, high-end type.

Unfortunately, I immediately run into a comparison problem: screen size. I like my current 14-inch, but that is no longer offered. Toshiba shifted to 15-inch, and Apple focused the MacBook on 13-inch. Apple also offers the MacBook Pro at 15 and 17-inches. The Pro does offer the higher resolution of 1440 x 900, which I would prefer, but the Toshiba doesn't offer that option for the budget-conscious Satellite.

Personally, 13-inches is too small a screen for my eyes, but I might be willing to tolerate it in exchange for the smaller form factor.

I priced the Toshiba with the $40 extra option for TruBrite.

I priced the Toshiba with Windows Vista Ultimate, which added $150 over Vista Home Basic. I could save $130 by going with Vista Home Premium, but Ultimate has some of the nice UI features that make it more "Mac-like."

My current machine has a 100 GB drive, so upgrading to 120 GB is the sensible thing to do.

I'll use 2.00 GHz as the baseline processor. I do note that the MacBook Pro has a modestly faster 2.16 GHz chip.

I'll use 1 GB as the baseline memory.

The PC prices are all after "rebates."

So, here are the comparisons for a mid-range notebook computer better than my current machine.

• Apple MacBook 13-inch 120 GB (Black): $1,499
• Apple MacBook Pro 15-inch 120 GB 2.16 GHz: $1,999
• Toshiba Satellite A130-ST-1312 15-inch 120 GB Vista Ultimate: $1,308
• Toshiba Satellite A130 120 GB Vista Home Premium: $1,212

So, assuming I went with Vista Ultimate, I would save $191 over the MacBook.

If I went with Vista Home Premium, I would save $287 over the MacBook.

If I were willing to drop back to an 80 GB drive, which is feasible since I don't do any video today, here is the comparison:

• Apple MacBook 80 GB (White): $1,299
• Toshiba Satellite A130 80 GB Vista Ultimate: $1,248
• Toshiba Satellite A130 80 GB Vista Home Premium: $1,152
• Toshiba Satellite A130 80 GB Vista Home Basic: $1,128

So, even with Vista Ultimate, I would save $51 over the MacBook.

With Vista Home Premium, the savings would be $147 over the MacBook.

I also quickly checked out Lenovo and Dell:

• Lenovo 15-inch WSXGA+ (1680x1050!) 120 GB Vista Home Premium: $1,249
  (No Vista Ultimate offered for that Lenovo.)
• Dell E1505 15-inch WXGA+ (1440x900) 120 GB Vista Home Premium: $1,123
• Dell E1505 15-inch WXGA+ (1440x900) 120 GB Vista Ultimate: $1,293

In summary, the Toshiba at $1,308, the Lenovo at $1,249 (without Vista Ultimate), or the Dell at $1,293 all seem quite attractively priced compared to the MacBook with the small screen at $1,499 or the MacBook Pro at $1,999.

Personally, I'd probably stick with Toshiba since reliability is a concern and I have had no significant problems with my three Toshibas over the past ten years.

I'm sure that Apple and its supporters honestly believe that the Mac is somehow "worth" the price premium, but the idea that the Mac is somehow price-competitive in the mid-range simply remains untrue, at least for the class of machine that interests me.

-- Jack Krupansky

Too much uncertainty in the IPCC Climate Change Reports

The promoters of the global warming and climate change movement keep telling us how certain and unequivocal the science is. Their certainty has always aroused my suspicions, but not enough to spend any time seriously thinking about it. The release of Al Gore's "documentary" An Inconvenient Truth was the straw that broke this camel's back. Previously, I was always willing to give these people the benefit of the doubt and never really questioned global warming and climate change, but the overall level of unbelievability of Al's movie absolutely convinced me to give up that pretense and challenge the so-called "science" publicly. The crazy thing is that I actually do approve of a good portion of the approaches to mitigate global warming, but the slick, political-social "packaging" of the whole global warming/climate change "movement" feels so non-credible.

If the so-called "science" is really so certain as the promoters claim, why would the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) need an entire document devoted exclusively to providing "guidance" on "addressing uncertainties"?

What uncertainties???

Haven't Al, et al, assured us that this "science" is absolutely certain and absolutely "beyond challenge"?

Or, have Al, et al, deeply misled us?

The uncertainty document, entitled "Guidance Notes for Lead Authors of the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report on Addressing Uncertainties" may only be four pages long, but requires eight formal "references".

One reference is listed as "IPCC Workshop on Describing Scientific Uncertainties in Climate Change to Support Analysis of Risk and of Options." Workshop? They needed to hold an entire workshop? Why, if the science for global warming and climate change is "beyond challenge"?

Another reference is listed as "Representing and Communicating Deep Uncertainty in Climate Change Assessments." What? Deep Uncertainty?? You have to be kidding me. Why on earth would "deep uncertainty" be even remotely relevant to a field where the "science" is so "certain" that it is "beyond challenge"?

Another reference is listed as "Measuring the vague meanings of probability terms." What vague meanings? Why should anything in a discussion of the "science" underlying global warming and climate change have a "vague meaning"?

The final reference is listed as "Communicating uncertainty: lessons learned and suggestions for climate change assessment." Duh!!! What uncertainty needs to be communicated if the "science" underlying global warming and climate change is so "certain" and "beyond challenge"?

Don't get me wrong. I am well aware that all science is filled with uncertainties. And I fully recognize that any scientific study of any aspect of climate is going to be chock full of uncertainty. And I absolutely recognize that forecasts about the future, especially decades from now, of any system, especially one as complex as our environment is almost all uncertainty. But, the fact remains that the promoters of the global warming and climate change movement have intentionally distorted whatever scientific basis there might be and persist in making wild and unjustified claims of achieving levels of certainty that are "beyond challenge" so as to make a mockery of any actual science mis-used to justify the claims of their political and social movement.

By all means, let us all reduce our "carbon footprint", but let's do it because it makes simple, economic sense, not because of a trumped-up so-called "crisis."

-- Jack Krupansky

Where is the actual Climate Change Impact Report?

I eagerly awaited the latest report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the Working Group II Contribution to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Fourth Assessment Report, Climate Change 2007: Climate Change Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability, Summary for Policymakers, but was sorely disappointed that only a "Summary for Policymakers" was issued, not the actual report. The chapters outline for the report is also available, but no sign of an actual, detailed report. I presume that the full, detailed report will be issued after the final section is completed in November, but it disturbs me greatly that a "summary for policymakers" would be negotiated and issued long before the full report is finalized.

-- Jack Krupansky

What is climate change?

The latest report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the Working Group II Contribution to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Fourth Assessment Report, Climate Change 2007: Climate Change Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability, Summary for Policymakers, has this curious note near the end of the report:

Climate change in IPCC usage refers to any change in climate over time, whether due to natural variability or as a result of human activity. This usage differs from that in the Framework Convention on Climate Change, where climate change refers to a change of climate that is attributed directly or indirectly to human activity that alters the composition of the global atmosphere and that is in addition to natural climate variability observed over comparable time periods.

That is a profound change and distinction. The change actually occurred in the Working Group I report back in February, but nobody noticed or noted it.

For reference, here is the definition of climate change from the Framework Convention on Climate Change:

"Climate change" means a change of climate which is attributed directly or indirectly to human activity that alters the composition of the global atmosphere and which is in addition to natural climate variability observed over comparable time periods.

The fact that the older definition refers to "attributed directly or indirectly to human activity", whereas the newer definition refers to "whether due to natural variability or as a result of human activity" is rather significant.

The effect of this change is that the overall thrust of the IPCC reports rests less on a finding of effects from strictly human activity than the old framework convention. The effects of human activity are still there in the new reports, but categorized as "anthropogenic warming."

Even the February science report from IPCC noted a somewhat weaker overall linkage between warming and human activity than for the overall warming effect.

The language used in the latest report is that "it is likely that anthropogenic warming has had a discernible influence on many physical and biological systems." That falls far short of attributing all or even the dominant share of the blame to human activity. The strongest statement the report makes is that "most of the observed increase in the globally averaged temperature since the mid-20th century is very likely due to the observed increase in anthropogenic greenhouse gas concentrations", but the report offers no definition for "most", leaving it to the reader to guess that it may mean simply greater than 50% of the observed increase. In short, even these reports don't suggest that global warming would be nonexistent if all human activity were removed from the equation.

In fact, the latest report explicitly states that "Limitations and gaps prevent more complete attribution of the causes of observed system responses to anthropogenic warming."

In short, the scientists are claiming greater than 66% certainty that human activity can be blamed for the effects and 90% certainty that human activity can be blamed for global warming, but they actually aren't offering a number for what fraction of global warming is due to human activity, telling us only that the effect is "discernible."

To me, the overwhelming conclusion should be that we need a lot more research and a much better understanding of the current climate and climate processes before we make too many bold pronouncements about what effects human activity has in fact had or may have had, let alone forecast what effects are likely to be seen in the future.

The report offers these thresholds for characterizing likelihood of an outcome:

• Virtually certain > 99% probability of occurrence
• Extremely likely > 95%
• Very likely > 90%
• Likely > 66%
• More likely than not > 50%
• Very unlikely < 10%
• Extremely unlikely < 5%.

And it offers these terms for expressing confidence in a statement:

• Very high confidence At least a 9 out of 10 chance of being correct
• High confidence About an 8 out of 10 chance
• Medium confidence About a 5 out of 10 chance
• Low confidence About a 2 out of 10 chance
• Very low confidence Less than a 1 out of 10 chance

-- Jack Krupansky