Convergences

Dominant Information & Climate Change

Many years ago, I worked for the Program Analysis Office of the U.S. Bureau of the Budget (yes, this was before the M was added to OMB; it was just BoB).

One of the things we learned was the extreme difficulty of analyzing government programs. The variables are too many and too uncertain, and one quickly winds up following chains of abstract conjecture that have little relation to reality. So we learned to look for Dominant Information -- facts determinative of outcomes under wide varieties of assumptions -- call it DI.

For climate change, such DI is now available, and it is not good for Al Gore.

CO2 is indeed a Greenhouse Gas (GHG). It absorbs outgoing radiation on particular wave lengths, with a resultant warming effect. On this, there is no scientific dispute. The question is whether this effect matters. Looking at CO2 alone, it does not. The effect would be quite small. To get to the predictions of doom, and thus to justify the destruction of industrial civilization, requires computer models based on the assumption that the small initial effect of CO2 is somehow amplified by positive feedback mechanisms.

Some 20 climate change models exist, and every one of them assumes that such positive feedback exists, and thus that a minor uptick in CO2-induced warming will cause a major upward movement in temperature. Note the "assumes"; there is no empirical evidence of this.  If the assumption is wrong, if there is no positive feedback, then the problem becomes negligible.

(Why does every model make the same positive feedback assumption, you might ask? Probably because any model that assumes anything else would not show a problem, and that is no way to get the government to renew the builder's grant for next year.)

Recent empirical work indicates that this assumption of positive feedback is in fact wrong, that the actual feedback mechanisms are negative. See Lindzen (p.4); Carlin (pp.13-27). This means that the models of disaster not only have no empirical support, but that they are contradicted by the only empirical evidence that has been found.

This, my old BoB bosses would have said, is DI, in a pretty pure form.

As Lindzen says:

In a normal field, these results would pretty much wrap things up, but global warming/climate change has developed so much momentum that it has a life of its own – quite removed from science. One can reasonably expect that opportunism of the weak will lead to efforts to alter the data (though the results presented here have survived several alterations of the data already). Perhaps most important, these results will of necessity ‘offend the sensibilities of the of the educated classes and the entire East and West Coasts,’ and who would want to do that.

The tech world should be interested in this, because it is incredibly energy dependent. Tech as we know it cannot survive an energy drought. 

For more on the implications, see more Alan Carlin comments.

Open Government, Climate Change & Science

At The American: Opening a Can of Worms: Government and Climate Change Data, which examines the Administration's drive for Open Government in the context of the recent climate change science exposes. 

Questions are also being raised about data underlying climate change work in the U.S. See, e.g. 

Daniel Henninger has a fine column in the WSJ today making the point that the crisis is not just of climate change policy but of Science as an institution. For years, the proponents of drastic and economically painful actions have wrapped themselves in the toga of "science says," with little contradiction by the scientific community as a whole. Indeed, those scientists who have disagreed have been attacked vehemently. 

I don't think most scientists appreciate what has hit them. This isn't only about the credibility of global warming. For years, global warming and its advocates have been the public face of hard science. Most people could not name three other subjects they would associate with the work of serious scientists. This was it. The public was told repeatedly that something called "the scientific community" had affirmed the science beneath this inquiry. A Nobel Prize was bestowed (on a politician).

Global warming enlisted the collective reputation of science. Because "science" said so, all the world was about to undertake a vast reordering of human behavior at almost unimaginable financial cost.

So it appears that important data was lost, analytic methodologies corrupted, and the enterprise turned to political ends -- without a peep from all but a few members of the scientific community.

That community better push hard for the U.S. government to open everything up so it can self-correct.

The WSJ also ran a poll asking readers if they believe in human-caused climate change. The vote was 9-1 against. Granted, WSJ's readers are a conservative lot, but they are also well-informed, and that split is incredible.

 

Strange Days

The tech sector of the economy needs energy like an organism needs air, the cheaper and more reliable the better. So tech's indifference (or endorsement) of various schemes to make energy more expensive and less reliable have never made sense, especially given the growing scientific doubts about the validity of the climate change hypothesis.

To complete the upside-down quality of the debate, for truth one can now go to -- Pravda, and "The American Self-Immolation,Truly a Sight To See":

That brings us to Cap and Trade. Never in the history of humanity has a more idiotic plan been put forward and sold with bigger lies. Energy is the key stone to any and every economy, be it man power, animal power, wood or coal or nuclear. How else does one power industry that makes human life better (unless of course its making the bombs that end that human life, but that's a different topic). Never in history, with the exception of the Japanese self imposed isolation in the 1600s, did a government actively force its people away from economic activity and industry.

Even the Soviets never created such idiocy.

Open Season

A new D.C.organization has come into existence:

The mission of [Open Source for America] is to educate decision makers in the U.S. Federal government about the advantages of using free and open source software; to encourage the Federal agencies to give equal priority to procuring free and open source software in all of their procurement decisions; and generally provide an effective voice to the U.S. Federal government on behalf of the open source software community, private industry, academia, and other non-profits.

So far, so good. For companies to support Free & Open Source Software (FOSS) is a legitimate business choice, a mechanism by which they engage in cooperative efforts to commoditize the software portion of the hardware/software/service package so as to leave more profits for the other two parts, or scope to sell complementary offerings. Software-focused companies, such as Microsoft, have a mirroring strategy of commoditizing hardware and reducing the need for services so as to make the software portion of the package more valuable.

So there is no problem here as long as the advocacy is limited to touting the benefits of FOSS as a business approach -- even Microsoft hops on this bus occasionally -- and advocating a level playing field. Users, including governments, should indeed consider whether FOSS provides them with the best products at the lowest total cost of ownership.

Problems could arise, though, because FOSS has always had an ideological as well as a business side, and quite a few members of the OSA Steering Committee are from this side of the movement. So OSA could easily segue into lobbying for FOSS based on ideological rather than commercial arguments. It will be interesting to see how the "level playing field" language works out in practice.

Dana Blanklenhorn of ZDNet takes a candidly cynical view of the enterprise, with the headline "Open source actively lobbies for a piece of the federal pie," and the observation:

The key player here, however, is Sun Microsystems. People affiliated with Sun and its contracting unit, SunFederal, dominate the group. This is not obvious just looking at their board of directors, but a little Google work brings it into focus.

Can Science Rule Society?

The Obama administration has been greeted with enthusiasm by scientists who see the potential for “research-based policy.” Reason, not ideology, will govern. The New Scientist, among other zines, headlines “Let Science Rule: the Rational Way to Run Societies.” (May 28, p. 40-43) This is part of a larger theme: Behavioral economics is taking off.