Climate Change Warnings: Not Urgent Enough?

Thursday, March 21, 2019


 Over the last couple of weeks, there has been intense blowback here and elsewhere from people who deny AGW (anthropogenic global warming) is real after scientists reported that the level of confidence it is real is now very high. The data now supports a so called 5 sigma level of confidence in the data showing AGW is real.

 AGW skeptics dismiss the data with arguments including "blah, blah, blah" and the scientists are liars and faked their data. One AGW skeptic attack was an assertion of an unpublished, not peer-reviewed crackpot hypothesis by a scientist with zero peer-reviewed papers in climate science arguing that climate scientists are clueless about basic aspects of science. I finally got frustrated and banned the purveyor of the crackpot's theory after being accused of dishonesty, bias and whatnot. That raises a question:

  Question: When is there enough evidence in support of something like AGW, if ever, that even trying to discuss it with people who simply reject accepted evidence and expert opinion is more socially harmful than not? I refuse to allow this channel to be used as a platform for dark free speech such as lies and quack science, and anything else that strikes me as socially more harmful than helpful. Is that unreasonably arrogant or misguided?

  Complex adaptive systems: Things could be much worse: Also attacked and rejected as false was my assertion that there is about a 98% consensus among climate science experts that AGW is real. Long story short, that led me to look at a think tank skeptic who attacked the 98% expert consensus data as flawed and not believable. That led to this article by the Fraser Institute, Putting the 'con' in consensus; Not only is there no 97 per cent consensus among climate scientists, many misunderstand core issues. The article was written by Ross McKitrick, an economics professor at the University of Guelph, Canada.

  The Fraser Institute received a high fact accuracy rating and a center-right bias by the Media Bias/Fact Check site. Given that, I read his article, which was originally published in the Financial Post. Dr. McKitrick's article includes this:

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change asserts the conclusion that most (more than 50 per cent) of the post-1950 global warming is due to human activity, chiefly greenhouse gas emissions and land use change. But it does not survey its own contributors, let alone anyone else, so we do not know how many experts agree with it. And the statement, even if true, does not imply that we face a crisis requiring massive restructuring of the worldwide economy. In fact, it is consistent with the view that the benefits of fossil fuel use greatly outweigh the climate-related costs.

One commonly cited survey asked if carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas and human activities contribute to climate change. But these are trivial statements that even many IPCC skeptics agree with. And again, both statements are consistent with the view that climate change is harmless. So there are no policy implications of such surveys, regardless of the level of agreement.

Here is what the IPCC said in its 2003 report: “In climate research and modelling, we should recognize that we are dealing with a coupled non-linear chaotic system, and therefore that the long-term prediction of future climate states is not possible.”

It made no sense to argue that (1) there are no policy implications in most experts agreeing with CO2 being a greenhouse gas and human activities contribute to climate change, and (2) long-term prediction of future climate states is not possible. If it is true that long-term prediction is impossible, which is necessarily true for a complex adaptive system like climate, then it is possible the climate situation could be much worse than what most experts now believe.

 I wrote to McKitrick as asked if it was possible that the climate situation could be worse than now believed. After an initial evasion, his answer was that it could be much worse than is now believed. There is simply no way to know. The climate situation could be much better, much worse or about what most experts now believe. This is the first time I recall any AGW skeptic acknowledging that the climate situation could be worse than it is now believed to be. Here is the email string:

Me: Dear Dr. McKitrick, Your article, Putting the con in consensus, made a couple of statements that, taken together, are unclear in their logic. The article states: "One commonly cited survey asked if carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas and human activities contribute to climate change. But these are trivial statements that even many IPCC skeptics agree with. And again, both statements are consistent with the view that climate change is harmless. So there are no policy implications of such surveys, regardless of the level of agreement." Since (1) even IPCC skeptics agree that CO2 is a greenhouse gas and human activities contribute to climate change, and (2) both statements are consistent with the view that climate change is harmless, why isn't it also possible that the statements are consistent with the view that climate change is much worse than whatever the expert consensus is? Why is it only possible that the situation could be neutral, beneficial or trivially negative, but not significantly or even catastrophically underestimated? I cannot see the logic on this point. Given the apparent ambiguity, it is arguable there are enormous policy implications of the surveys. What am I missing here? What is the flaw in the logic of arguing the situation could be modestly or even much worse than expert consensus currently holds? Thank you for your time and consideration.

McKitrick: The point is that you can't say 97% think AGW is dangerous, as Obama and others assert. When 97% agreement is found, leaving aside the sampling problems, it is only on relatively trivial statements that are consistent with a wide range of views about the level of harm. I don't argue that 97% think AGW is not a problem, nor can we argue based on the surveys that 97% think the problem is worse than the IPCC states. Either statement goes well beyond what the surveys show, either because the questions weren't asked or if they were asked, the split was nothing like 97-3.

Me: Thanks for getting back. I appreciate it. Just so I understand you, it is possible that things could be very serious or at least significantly worse than is now often believed to be the case. That is consistent with a complex non-linear system being unpredictable.

McKitrick: Yes, that's in the range of what's possible.

Me: Thank you.

 My prior AGW post argued we are playing Russian roulette with the climate, civilization and maybe even the human species. If the unpredictability of climate as a complex adaptive system is correct, and there's no obvious reason to think otherwise, McKitrick is incorrect to claim that the survey data has no policy implications. We could be in a far worse climate situation than what most experts now believe.

 Based all the science, including the unpredictability problem, it is reasonable to believe that AGW skepticism is not defensible and is based on factors such as political ideology, personal bias, tribe identity and/or economic self-interest. One can also argue it is immoral. Is that logic and conclusion of immorality reasonable?

B&B orig: 3/6/19

Religious Logic: Trump is Cyrus

Thursday, March 21, 2019

 A 6 minute segment, Bully Idol, by Bill Maher explains the logic behind the belief by many Evangelical Christians that President Trump is a modern day Cyrus and was put in office by God. Maher's recitation of the facts and logic enlightens the basis for the gulf in perceptions of reality that is tearing America apart. Despite the comedy, the underlying facts and logic Maher describes are basically sound.

 https://youtu.be/rQBIBjbpzoQ

 B&B orig: 3/9/19

Free Will: Do We Have It Or Not?

Thursday, March 21, 2019

 The TED Radio Hour program that NPR aired yesterday, Hardwired, examines the matter of free will and factors that affect both behavior and health. The broadcast was in four 10-13 minute segments, which are here: https://www.npr.org/programs/ted-radio-hour/?showDate=2019-03-08

 In the first segment neuroscientist Robert Sapolsky argues that there is no such thing as human free will. He argues that that appears to be acts of free will are simply manifestations of biology we do not understand. Everything is predetermined and we simply live our lives according to factors and forces we cannot control and may never be able to fully understand. Sapolsky pointed to a famous experiment where judges set punishment for convicts. In that experiment, which I think has been questioned at least once, showed that punishments were most strongly correlated with how hungry the judges were, which correlated with lower blood sugar levels.

 In the 2nd segment, geneticist Moshe Szyf points to our genes as hardware that is mutable over time. He cites a situation where pregnant women were in a period of unusual stress for a period of time. This capacity of DNA to be chemically altered by experience amounts to an experiential identity. That identity arises from personal experiences that chemically changes the DNA of developing fetuses ('epigenetic' changes). Over the next 50 years, the babies subjected to stress developed more autoimmune diseases, metabolic diseases and autism than babies that were not subject to the same source of stress. As the stress level increased, so did the level of later disease.

 Referring to this and other research, Szyf argues that DNA is dynamic due to epigenetic changes from life experiences over time. He sees that at least some human free will can arise from the interactions between individuals and external influences such as family, language, culture and so forth. In his view, epigenetic DNA phenomena is a source of some free will. He points to lower levels of stress in modern life compared to life thousands of years ago as a major factor.

 In the 3rd segment, pediatrician Nadine Burke discusses how stress in children manifest as various problems including asthma, ADHD, skin rashes, autoimmune diseases, and so forth. She found a high correlation between traumatic stress (domestic violence, drug abuse, divorce, parental mental illness, etc.) and child health. Stress exerts influences after birth including susceptibility to diseases and risky behavior. That is consistent with life experiences exerting influence on behavior and health.

 In the 4th segment psychologist Brian Little argues that we are born with traits that constrain our free will. He sees behavior and free will arising from our genes (biogenic authenticity), social forces that constrain behavior (sociogenic authenticity), and what we make of ourselves over our lifetimes (idiogenic authenticity). The latter influence can be at odds with the one or both of the former and the confluence of the three make us unique, which he implies is a course of free will.

 On balance, the information presented here makes it sound like humans have, at most, little free will and what there is, is constrained. That is not a comforting conclusion. But is it correct? Is it too early to draw that conclusion, or is the science settled enough? If it is correct, what are the implications for politics?

 B&B orig: 3/10/19

The Biology Of Nationalism

Thursday, March 21, 2019


In an article in Foreign Policy magazine, This Is Your Brain on Nationalism: The Biology of Us and Them, neuroscientist Robert Sapolsky describes the cognitive biology of nationalism. A three minute interview by Fareed Zakaria with Sapolsky about this article and nationalism is here: https://www.facebook.com/fareedzakaria/videos/what-neuroscience-has-to-do-with-nationalism/1172179109608632/

 Humans have a strong impulse to sort people into us and them groups. Sorting happens unconsciously. It is fast, taking about one-tenth of a second, and occurs before we are aware of any assessment. A portion of the brain that regulates fear and aggression reacts quickly, and a few seconds later the region of the brain that is crucial for impulse control and emotional regulation (prefrontal cortex) activates and normally suppresses the initial negative impulse. The unconscious brain reaction to images of faces of people of another race are different than images of same-race faces.

 Sapolsky argues this is driven by evolution, which shaped how our brains perceive and think about sensory inputs from the world. He asserts that nationalism is a critically important phenomenon:

To understand the dynamics of human group identity, including the resurgence of nationalism—that potentially most destructive form of in-group bias—requires grasping the biological and cognitive underpinnings that shape them.

Such an analysis offers little grounds for optimism. Our brains distinguish between in-group members and outsiders in a fraction of a second, and they encourage us to be kind to the former but hostile to the latter. These biases are automatic and unconscious and emerge at astonishingly young ages. . . . . Humans can rein in their instincts and build societies that divert group competition to arenas less destructive than warfare, yet the psychological bases for tribalism persist, even when people understand that their loyalty to their nation, skin color, god, or sports team is as random as the toss of a coin. At the level of the human mind, little prevents new teammates from once again becoming tomorrow’s enemies.

One aspect of our cognitive biology is that biases against out-groups is often learned, although some are completely innate or nearly so. Infants pick up on cues from parents and caregivers about who is in-group and who is out-group, and race is a key marker the brain picks up on. Sapolsky comments:

Put simply, neurobiology, endocrinology, and developmental psychology all paint a grim picture of our lives as social beings. When it comes to group belonging, humans don’t seem too far from the families of chimps killing each other in the forests of Uganda: people’s most fundamental allegiance is to the familiar. Anything or anyone else is likely to be met, at least initially, with a measure of skepticism, fear, or hostility. In practice, humans can second-guess and tame their aggressive tendencies toward the Other. Yet doing so is usually a secondary, corrective step.

For all this pessimism, there is a crucial difference between humans and those warring chimps. The human tendency toward in-group bias runs deep, but it is relatively value-neutral. Although human biology makes the rapid, implicit formation of us-them dichotomies virtually inevitable, who counts as an outsider is not fixed. In fact, it can change in an instant.

Nationalism: The sorting trait applies to nationalism and globalism:

At its best, nationalism and patriotism can prompt people to pay their taxes and care for their nation’s have-nots, including unrelated people they have never met and will never meet. But because this solidarity has historically been built on strong cultural markers of pseudo-kinship, it is easily destabilized, particularly by the forces of globalization, which can make people who were once the archetypes of their culture feel irrelevant and bring them into contact with very different sorts of neighbors than their grand-parents had. Confronted with such a disruption, tax-paying civic nationalism can quickly devolve into something much darker: a dehumanizing hatred that turns Jews into “vermin,” Tutsis into “cockroaches,” or Muslims into “terrorists.” Today, this toxic brand of nationalism is making a comeback across the globe, spurred on by political leaders eager to exploit it for electoral advantage.

In the face of this resurgence, the temptation is strong to appeal to people’s sense of reason. Surely, if people were to understand how arbitrary nationalism is, the concept would appear ludicrous. Nationalism is a product of human cognition, so cognition should be able to dismantle it, too.

Yet this is wishful thinking. In reality, knowing that our various social bonds are essentially random does little to weaken them. . . . . The pull of us-versus-them thinking is strong even when the arbitrariness of social boundaries is utterly transparent, to say nothing of when it is woven into a complex narrative about loyalty to the fatherland. You can’t reason people out of a stance they weren’t reasoned into in the first place.

 Sapolsky argues that we could try to harness nationalist dynamics and not fight or condemn them. That would mean leaders need to avoid jingoism and xenophobia, and appeal to people’s innate in-group tendencies to socialize or incentivize cooperation and accountability. In this political scenario, nationalist pride is rooted in a country’s ability to do social good such as care for the elderly, teaching children empathy, and ensuring increased social mobility.

 Is America capable of trying to harness nationalism in some way akin to Sapolsky's suggestion?

B&B orig: 3/11/19

The Conservative Agenda Comes Out of the Dark

Thursday, March 21, 2019

The Washington Post has looked at what President Trump proposed in his 2020 budget. This is it:

 Domestic spending collapses and defense spending explodes. The budget proposes cutting (1) Medicare by $84.5 billion/year over 10 years, (2) Medicaid by $24.1 billion/year over 10 years, and (3) by $22 billion/year over 10 years Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (food stamps). It adds more than $33 billion to Defense, which totals $718 billion for 2020. At that level, defense spending amounts to 57% of the proposed federal discretionary budget.

 The conservative vision of governance could not be clearer. Trump's budget is not going to pass congress and that is not what it is intended to do. Instead, conservatism has finally grown a pair. It now has the balls to be brutally honest about how that ideology sees the federal government and spending priorities.

 That Trump promised not to touch Medicare and Medicaid in the 2016 election is not relevant or important to Trump, conservatives or pro-Trump populists. Conservatism apparently feels that now is the time to make an open run at the vision of America it has been working toward for at least the last 30 years. People will get a chance to approve or disapprove by their votes in the 2020 elections.

B&B orig: 3/12/19

The Rule of Law: Not Nearly as Objective as People Think

Thursday, March 21, 2019


A New York Times article, Old Rape Kits Finally Got Tested. 64 Attackers Were Convicted., reports that a push to test old rape kits is leading to convictions of attackers and rapists.

Ms. Sudbeck’s [rape] case is one of thousands that have gotten a second look from investigators since the Manhattan district attorney, Cyrus R. Vance Jr., committed $38 million in forfeiture money to help other jurisdictions test rape kits. Since the grants began being distributed in 2015, the evidence kits have led to 165 prosecutions in cases that were all but forgotten. So far, 64 of those have resulted in convictions.

Rarely have public dollars from a local prosecutor’s office been so directly tied to results with such national implications. The initiative has paid to get about 55,000 rape kits tested in 32 law enforcement agencies in 20 states, among them the police departments in Las Vegas, Philadelphia, Miami, Memphis, Austin, Tex., and Kansas City, Mo. Nearly half produced DNA matches strong enough to be added to the F.B.I.’s nationwide database of genetic profiles. About 9,200 of those matched with DNA profiles in the system, providing new leads and potential evidence.

Past failure to vindicate the rule of law by not testing rape kits is just one kind of subjectivity that suffuses the rule of law. It is a moral outrage and fairly common. Recently House Speaker Nancy Pelosi stated that it is not worth impeaching President Trump unless there is overwhelming evidence that could convince even congressional republicans. It is very likely that whatever evidence is available will not lead congressional republicans to vote to impeach Trump. Another congressional democrat commented that impeaching Trump can't be done unless there is a major public opinion shift to support impeachment. It is very likely that whatever evidence is available will not lead Trump supporters to want to see him impeached.

All of that makes impeachment a subjective exercise in partisan politics, not something based on the rule of law, evidence or logic. Convicted felon Paul Manafort received a 37-month sentence for 8 major felonies. Federal sentencing guidelines posited a 19-24 year sentence for what Manafort did. The federal judge in Manafort’s case was openly biased against and hostile to special counsel Mueller's prosecution of Manafort. In imposing the light sentence, the judge said that Manafort's life was “mostly blameless.” Since Manafort is a long term criminal, the judge’s sentence spared Manafort out of anger at Mueller, not based on the gravity of Manafort’s crimes. In this instance, the rule of law was almost purely subjective. It was heavily rigged in favor of white, white collar criminals.

  Some political philosophy on the Rule of Law concept: In a paper, Is The Rule Of Law An Essentially ContestedConcept (In Florida)?, a researcher analyzed how the 2000 election was treated by the courts. The paper comments:

For legal and political philosophers, one item of particular interest was the constant reference in public appeals of almost all the participants to the venerable ideal we call “the rule of law.” The references were legion, and often at odds with one another. This was true of every phase of the debacle. “One thing, however, is certain. Although we may never know with complete certainty the identity of the winner of this year's Presidential election, the identity of the loser is perfectly clear. It is the Nation's confidence in the rule of law.” (dissent in the Supreme Court 2000 decision in Bush v. Gore Vice President Gore took the high line that public criticism of the courts was precluded by the Rule of Law. Yet plainly, many on his side thought that in the circumstances they could do nothing better for the Rule of Law than to condemn the majority's decision as shameful.

The paper’s author, Jeremy Waldron, points out that even before the Bush v. Gore decision, theorists were inching toward the conclusion that the rule of law concept was meaningless. Quoting one theorist, Judith Shklar:

It would not be very difficult to show that the phrase “the Rule of Law” has become meaningless thanks to ideological abuse and general over-use. It may well have become just another one of those self-congratulatory rhetorical devices that grace the public utterances of Anglo-American politicians. No intellectual effort therefore need be wasted on this bit of ruling-class chatter.

Waldron goes on to write that on Shklar's view, invoking the Rule of Law as an authority is “incapable of driving one's argument very much further forward than the argument could have driven on its own. . . . . at the end of the day, many will have formed the impression that the utterance of those magic words meant precious little more than "Hooray for our side!” Despite Shklar’s harsh assessment, Waldron points out that there might be real value in trying to rationalize the rule of law concept. The urgent, important problem that Waldron describes is how to make the law rule instead of having men rule using the law as an excuse to get what they want. Waldron's paper is complex, but it boils down to trying to find a solution to the problem of rule by men instead of by law. I think there are avenues to at least try that, but outcomes are not knowable without the necessary experimentation. That is for a different discussion focused on that issue.

 For this discussion it is sufficient to assert that the Rule of Law related to political matters is often, maybe usually, as or more subjective (ideological or in-group vs out-group) than objective. That is a significant source of political and social polarization in American society, e.g., the 2015 Obergefell Supreme Court decision that legalized same-sex marriage. In turn, that polarization can arguably constitute an existential threat to liberal democracy and possibly modern civilization, and maybe even the fate of the human species. Fixing the Rule of Law to at least some non-trivial extent seems to be a critically important task on the road to trying to rationalize politics relative to what it is now. That assumes partial rationalization is possible. Political rationalization really has its work cut out for it.

B&B orig: 3/13/19