Reading Science' Tea Leaves

"Free markets do not guarantee social outcomes, only economic outcomes."

This simple, obvious notion seems difficult for many. Perhaps overwhelmed by the legacy of science, we are unable to resist the desire to apply equations where they can not be affirmed. Sometimes it seems as if we are impatient with science's constraints, as if it has no heart and clearly would follow our path if it could only escape itself.

Or perhaps we are like an energetic Jane Austen character, full of confidence in how things should and must go.

Naivete can be forgiven. But dismissive arrogance is a harder blunderer. There are entire schools of economic and sociological thought out there, encountering the world and each other like armies in the night, doing untold damage as they feel their way along. They create a self-supporting structure, courts and journals, university chairs and grants. Most important, they generate new generations of believers.

The history of duodenal ulcer disease is instructive. Many of the luminaries of medicine were involved in its meticulous revelation. Complex studies, experiments, trials with surgery and medicines were undertaken by centers of medical excellence. Procedures were developed, medicines approved and epidemiological interactions highlighted high risk people as its victims. Complex relationship with acid producing glands, nerve supply to those glands, the brains connection to those nerves all combined over the years to build a stately dome of interrelated factors that physicians systematical blocked, treated and surgically removed. Decades later an Australian group tried to convince the medical community that all the work and the elegant structure it created was lovely nonsense, that the cause of ulcer disease was a bacterium. The initial response was laughter; the Australians were invited to events for comic relief. But, as things turned out, they were right. Medicine, the history and precedence created by medicine's great leaders, the consensus were all wrong.
 

Oil Imports and its Import

U.S. imports are falling rapidly. By 2014, the EIA expects the country to import just 32 percent of its oil, down from 60 percent in 2005. Some of this is recession related but the U.S. is also producing more oil and oil alternatives.

The price of oil has always been a focus point for economists as it impacts GDP, acting as a sort of tax on the economy. (Apparently we prefer our growth inhibiting taxes to be self imposed.) But there is more here than just volume of imports. Price and total costs are the real points. Money for imported oil leaves the economy like narcotics money and is unavailable for productive domestic use. So, despite our decrease in oil imports, we are still spend a lot on it, more next year than in any year between 1983 and 2003.

So beware the politician pointing to our success in domestic production; cost is the point.

Here is a graph on the relationship between oil import expenditures and GDP: (from Michael Levi)

Forest Fires and Unintended Consequences

In the  Bitterroot low-altitude Ponderosa Pine forest in Montana the historical records, plus counts of annual tree rings and datable fire scars on tree stumps, demonstrate that a Ponderosa Pine forest experiences a lightning-lit fire about once a decade under natural conditions. A program of active fire suppression began around 1910 and became effective after 1945. Under this program small fires were aggressively attacked by fire fighters in an effort to eliminate or limit forest damage. It was remarkably successful; the effect was less so. 

The mature Ponderosa trees have bark two inches thick and are relatively resistant to fire. This allows the mature trees to resist fire while the smaller, more fire-sensitive Douglas Fir seedlings that have grown up since the last fire take the brunt of the damage.. After only a decade's growth until the next fire, those seedlings are still too low for fire to spread from them into the crowns of the mature trees. Hence the fire remains confined to the ground and lower brush. As a result, many natural Ponderosa Pine forests have a park-like appearance, with low fuel loads, big trees well spaced apart, and a relatively clear "understory".

The effect of aggressive fire suppression for decades let the understory fill up with Douglas Fir saplings that would in turn become valuable when full-grown. Tree densities increased from 30 to 200 trees per acre, the forest's fuel load increased by a factor of 6, and Congress repeatedly failed to appropriate money to thin out the saplings. Sheep grazing in national forests may also have played a role by reducing understory grasses that would otherwise have fueled frequent low-intensity fires. When a fire finally does start in a sapling-choked forest, whether due to lightning or human carelessness or (regrettably often) intentional arson, the dense tall saplings may become a ladder that allows the fire to jump into the mature trees' crowns. The outcome is sometimes an unstoppable inferno in which flames shoot 400 feet into the air, leap from crown to crown across wide gaps, reach temperatures of 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit, kill the tree seed bank in the soil, and may be followed by mudslides and mass erosion.

So the well intentioned--and successfully performed--fire suppression of early fires ironically results in bigger and more destructive fires and forest damage.

Body Snatchers: A Short Review

I watched "The Body Snatchers" recently, the one with Donald Sutherland and Brooke Adams. It is a remake of "Invasion of the Body Snatchers," a 1956 American science fiction film directed by Don Siegel and starring Kevin McCarthy and Dana Wynter. It has been a popular theme and there have been several remakes, one with Meg Tilly. The original story is the 1955 science fiction novel by Jack Finney, which describes the fictional town of Santa Mira, California being invaded by seeds that have drifted through space to Earth. The seeds replace nearby sleeping people with perfect physical duplicates grown from plantlike pods, while their human victims wither to dust. (The biology of all this should not be thought on too hard.) The original book had an ecological bent with the invaders being intergalactic scolds; the films have all been just really scary. All eventfully have a few perceptive and very human empathetic individuals alone in a city filled with emotionless copies of men, without ambition, anger or love, plodding zombie-like through the day doing their routine as routine alone. Their only real devotion seems to be expanding their influence through replacement.They have a mild philosophy: The very thing that makes humans unique is painful and fatal. The new copies have no emotion and live without emotion's pain and danger. The humans, on the other hand, struggle to maintain their humanity and the risk that entails.

Unanswered in all versions is the question, how does a society of individuals who are just going through the motions advance? Or even survive?

So, if this were a political allegory, which group would be the citizen and which the body snatcher? Ambition aside, of course.

Cab Thoughts 1/26/13

"I have no child for whom I could wish to make a provision-no family to build in greatness upon my Country's ruins." --Washington

The S&P 500 was up 16% and hit a five-year high. The Dow was up 7.3%. Most money managers didn't do as well: 65% of large-cap managers underperformed the S&P 500 as did 80% of large-value investors; 67% of small-cap managers didn't beat the Russell 2000 index.

U.S. household debts peaked five years ago at an astonishing $13.8 trillion. Since then it has declined to $12.9 trillion. Loan write-offs, at $585 billion, account for 60% of that decline; in the last five years Americans have walked away from $3 in debt for every $2 they’ve paid off.


For the paranoid among us: Vermont Transportation Secretary Brian Searles said, “….. calculating how much of a...(transportation).. tax is owed would be done through the global positioning system devices that are expected to be standard equipment [capable of tracking location, time] in cars later this decade.”

There are 1200 proposed new coal plants. China and India account for 76 percent of proposed capacity. Turkey and Russia also have big plans. And a growing number of coal plants are being proposed for developing countries such as Cambodia, Guatemala and Uzbekistan, nations that are looking to cut-rate sources of energy to fuel economic growth. Global demand for coal is expected to grow to 8.9 billion tons by 2016 from 7.9 billion tons this year. China is expected to add about 160 new coal-fired plants to the 620 operating now, within four years. During that period, India will add more than 46 plants. I wonder if the environmentalists will become active in these two, clearly dominant, countries contributing to fossil fuel use.

The Bundesbank has decided to move 300 tons of German gold from the Federal Reserve in New York back to Frankfurt. What could be the motive there, if any?

The DOE is setting up the Rare Earth Metals lab at the land grant University in Ames, Iowa, at Iowa State University. The former Govenor of Iowa, Tom Vilsack, is the current Secretary of Agriculture.

From the Seattle Times on grounding the Dreamliner: At Boeing, pushback on 787 grounding. "Gordon Bethune, the former Boeing executive who left to run Continental Airlines -- and who in that position bought the grounded Dreamliners now owned by United -- is emphatic that the government overreached. He criticized the decision to ground the plane, which was made by Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood and FAA chief Michael Huerta. "Neither of those two guys know the front end from the back of an airplane," Bethune said. "They jumped the gun, but that's the product of a cover-your-ass administration," he fumed. "It's heavy-handed, draconian and way, way beyond what needs to be done to protect the public." "Obviously, (Boeing's leaders) are disappointed in this overreaction," Bethune said. "But it doesn't help them to bitch, so they will never say anything publicly that could be disparaging to the government.""Don't think they are making light of this," Bethune added. "I'm sure they are chagrined as hell. But they are going to fix it.""

Cessna was forced to replace lithium-ion batteries on its CJ4 business jet with nickel-cadmium after a battery fire on the plane in 2011.

Already at a record, the Cushing Storage hub in Oklahoma added another 1.8 million barrels to storage sending total Cushing stocks to 51.9 million barrels of oil in storage facilities at the energy hub.
There has been 6.3 million barrels of oil added to Cushing during the last 6 weeks. To put these numbers into perspective, Cushing oil inventories stood at 28.3 million barrels for this time a year ago.
There is more oil being produced than used. U.S. refineries are maxed out. This oil is going international. What are the Saudis to do?

Who was Solomon Shereshevsky?

Common Core is a federal program created to make the American educational system more competitive internationally. The mathematics plan is quite specific, grade to grade, and, as it is linked to federal grants, will probably become the norm for starter education programs. Stanford University professor James Milgram, the only mathematician on the validation panel, states that the Common Core math scheme would place American students two years behind their peers in other high-achieving countries. In protest, Milgram refused to sign off on the standards.

A recent study shows that life expectancy of white males and females has fallen in the U.S. by 3 and 5 years respectively in people without a high school diploma. The steepest declines were for white women without a high school diploma, who lost five years of life between 1990 and 2008, said S. Jay Olshansky, a public health professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago and the lead investigator on the study, published in Health Affairs. By 2008, life expectancy for black women without a high school diploma had surpassed that of white women of the same education level, the study found. This is third world stuff.

There is some evidence that those strange "savant" characters who remember weird or astonishing things or can do unexpected tasks may have a connection to left brain injury with right brain compensation or relief. Some are connected to childhood trauma which leaves a child impaired in some way but extraordinarily able in another. But there is one provocative study involving the notorious "nine-dots problem" where nine points must be connected together by a pencil line without lifting the pencil off the paper. 5% of the population can do this but, if you stimulate the left brain with a low electrical charge and depress it, 39% did it.

Sheen and Asner want to boycott--with awards as well--the film "Zero Dark Thirty." This is a very strange thing. Kathryn Bigelow's defense in an L.A. editorial is simple and obvious: Her defense is that depicting torture does not condone it. So what is the problem? Ugly and immoral violence? Quentin Torentino won a scriptwriting award! As torture is excessive in the minds of most civilized people it is hard to say if the scenes are excessive but the problem remains: What are the objectors objecting to? Not that it happened. Not that it was a component of the story. Not that we have "rendition" sites where we outsource torture we are not willing to do ourselves. Could it be that torture stains the achievement of the current administration in killing bin Ladin and that the entertainment industry, led by their most vociferous and outspoken representatives, will not tolerate that? Even if it means criticizing speech? The speech of their own art?

The National Climate Assessment states that temperatures in the USA are already up 1.5 degrees from the average temperature during 1900 to 1960. Sea levels are already up 8 inches since that time too. The length of the frost free season has grown by up to 21 days, This is a government group. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)--another governmental group--estimates that the earth’s average temperature will increase somewhere between 1.1°C and 6.4°C over the 21^st century. How much of the IPCC’s projected 1.1°C to 6.4°C of warming will the U.S. be responsible for in the next century? The answer is about 0.08°C of the low end estimate and about 0.35°C of the high end estimate. Using the IPCC’s mid-range scenario, carbon dioxide emissions from the U.S. contribute about 0.19°C of the total 2.96°C global temperature rise. So, are we going to get tough with the biggest environmental offender, China? That could be dangerous but do not worry; the people who are concerned about this warming are not just picking soft targets. They are willing to suffer anything for their beliefs. Right?

To make up for lost revenue, Washington state will be charging residents who own fuel-efficient vehicles an annual tax of $100. The state has decided that electric car owners need to "contribute their fair share to the upkeep of our roads," says Washington State Senator Mary Margaret Haugen who sponsored the bill.

14% of Mercury in Great Lakes Comes from China

Golden Oldie: http://steeleydock.blogspot.com/2012/07/greatest-inequity.html

The U.S. will surpass Russia and Saudi Arabia this year to become the largest producer of liquid fuels, BP Plc said. Liquids output, which includes oil, natural gas liquids and bio-fuels, will be boosted in the U.S. by tight oil extracted by the same technology that sparked a boom in shale gas. The IEA said the U.S. will become the world's biggest oil producer for about five years starting in 2020.

The "fiscal cliff" legislation sends about 165 million dollars to railways. And short line and regional railroads are allowed to claim a tax credit for 50 percent of the cost of infrastructure improvements, up to $3,500 per mile. Wow, Buffett really got lucky there.

New coal capacity built in 2012 rose 135%, jumping from 1,932 megawatts in 2011 to 4,510 in 2012. While existing coal plants lost market share in 2012, coal had a relatively good year in the new generation market and accounted for about 17% of all new power plant capacity built in the USA last year. Their capacity is up and they are losing market share.

The former chief of the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency says a representative of Lance Armstrong's offered the agency a donation in the range of $200,000 to $250,000 in 2004. Armstrong denies it. Hypocrisy or lying? Does it really matter? If the government wanted to create something the nation really needs it should be a Bureau of Heroes.

AAAAANNNNNNDDDddddddd.......a chart:

Politician vs. the Dreaded Numbers Villian

The Guardian website has an upbeat quote from Norman Baker, Liberal Democrat Under-Secretary of State for Transport, about the future of the government's Electric Vehicle subsidy plan. ‘I know electric vehicles have a bright future in this country’ he says, citing new models due this year, including the relatively inexpensive Renault Zoe and the Sunderland-built Nissan Leaf.

However the Guardian website's figures for the numbers of new cars registered under the British Government’s ‘Plug-in’ Car Grant plan are not as optimistic. This program gives buyers 25 percent off (up to a maximum of £5000) the price of a rechargeable electric vehicle such as a Chevy Volt, Toyota Prius plug-in or Renault Fluence. The program is now two years old. According to the Department for Transport figures, 1419 cars were registered under the plan in the first nine months of the 2012 up from 786 in 2011. So it looks as if all of 2012 will see around 1900 rechargeable cars bought, out of the two million news cars that left UK showrooms.

Fun with Numbers

 

 

 

In 1981 a report, commissioned by President Carter to assess gun violence, was published in several

volumes titled, strangely, "Under the Gun" which concluded that there was no connection between

gun control laws and gun crime. The landmark federal Gun Control Act of 1968, banning most

interstate gun  sales, had no discernible impact on the criminal acquisition of guns from other states,

Detroit’s law providing mandatory sentences for felonies committed with a gun was found to have no

effect on gun-crime patterns, and Washington, D.C.’s 1977 ban on the ownership of handguns

(except those already registered in the District) was not linked to reduction in gun crime in the

nation’s capital.

In 2004, the U.S. National Academy of Sciences released its assessment of over 400 journal articles, books government publications and some original research. The conclusion was there was no evidence that any gun control reduced violent crime, suicide, or gun accidents.

The results of a 2003 study by the Center for Disease Control was the same.

So now comes Mr. Obama with his 23 "executive actions" which include: “Issue a Presidential Memorandum directing the Centers for Disease Control to research the causes and prevention of gun violence.” This new study will do what? Break new ground? Turn over new rocks? Reassess old ones? Perhaps avoid uncomfortable real conclusions?

This is a metaphor for the culture. We have an undeniable problem. The factors involved are not clear. Some of the popular and obvious factors have been shown not to be significant. But we allow our prejudice--a word meaning "pre-judge"--to trump our need for accuracy and we follow our prejudgment to some conclusion. This allows us to feel righteous and accomplished. It also allows us to diminish those who prefer more accuracy.

Years ago I sat in a serious business meeting with some serious analysts looking at the question of information and input. Debate raged over the significance of our gathering method when the chair of the meeting stopped the debate. He shouted, "Bad data is better than no data at all!" He then adopted the disputed data. The table fell silent and remained so. Everybody in the room knew the chairman, who eventually became president of the corporation, was either over his head or insincere.