Science – Page 26 – artdiamondblog.com

Carbon Dioxide Increased After the Globe Warmed, Not Before

The passages quoted below are from an opinion piece by retired physicist Jack Kasher who was a colleague of mine at the University of Nebraska at Omaha.

I was pleased to see that the Millard school district pulled Laurie David’s book, “The Down-to-Earth Guide to Global Warming,” due to “a major factual error” in a chart that shows rising temperatures and carbon dioxide levels dating back 650,000 years. The chart claims to show that global warming is caused by increases in carbon dioxide levels, but the facts show that this is not the case.

In May, I attended an international conference on global warming in Chicago, with 73 speakers from 23 countries. The book and its erroneous chart were discussed there. (Go online to http://www.heartland.org/events/2010Chicago/index.html and click on “proceedings” to see most of the talks and PowerPoint presentations.)
When the error is corrected, the chart will show that in every single case over this time span the Earth warmed up first, followed by a later increase in carbon dioxide. This is clear proof that in the past global warming was not caused by an increase in CO2. If anything, it is the other way around. In each instance, something other than CO2 caused the temperature increase, which then might have made the CO2 rise. This chart shows that past history actually contradicts David’s main assumption in her book — namely that man-made carbon dioxide is causing global warming.

For the full commentary, see:

Dr. Jack Kasher. “Midlands Voices: Let’s include uncertainties in global-warming lessons.” Omaha World-Herald (Wednesday June 30, 2010): ??.

Scientific Opinion Shifts to Galambos Who Was Fired for His Theory

“Robert Galambos, . . . , studied the inaudible sounds that allow bats to fly in the dark.” Source of caption and photo: online version of the NYT article quoted and cited below.

(p. 20) Dr. Robert Galambos, a neuroscientist whose work included helping to prove how bats navigate in total darkness and deciphering the codes by which nerves transmit sounds to the brain, died June 18 at his home in the La Jolla section of San Diego. He was 96.
. . .
In 1960, while on an airplane, Dr. Galambos wrote that he had an inspiring thought: that the tiny cells that make up 40 percent of the brain, called glia, are as crucial to mental functioning as neurons.
“I know how the brain works!” he exclaimed to his companion.
But his superiors at Walter Reed found the theory so radical that he was soon job-hunting. The view at the time was that glia existed mainly to support neurons, considered the structural and functional unit of the nervous system. But Dr. Galambos clung to his belief, despite the failure of three experiments he performed in the 1960s.
Since then, scientific opinion has been shifting in his direction. In 2008, Ben A. Barres of the Stanford University School of Medicine wrote glowingly in the journal Neuron about the powerful role glia are now seen to play. He concluded, “Quite possibly the most important roles of glia have yet to be imagined.”

For the full obituary, see:
DOUGLAS MARTIN. “Robert Galambos, 96, Dies; Studied Nerves and Sound.” The New York Times, First Section (Sun., July 18, 2010): 20.
(Note: the online version of the article is dated July 15, 2010 and has the title “Robert Galambos, Neuroscientist Who Showed How Bats Navigate, Dies at 96.”)
(Note: ellipses added.)

Jefferson “Was Experimental and Had a Lot of Failures”

“In the vegetable garden at Monticello, his home in Virginia, Thomas Jefferson sowed seeds from around the world and shared them with farmers. He was not afraid of failure, which happened often.” Source of caption and photo: online version of the NYT article quoted and cited below.

Steven Johnson has written an intriguing argument that the intellectual foundation of the founding fathers was based as much on experimental science as on religion. The article quoted below provides a small bit of additional evidence in support of Johnson’s argument.

(p. D1) NEW gardeners smitten with the experience of growing their own food — amazed at the miracle of harvesting figs on a Brooklyn rooftop, horrified by the flea beetles devouring the eggplants — might be both inspired and comforted by the highs and lows recorded by Thomas Jefferson from the sun-baked terraces of his two-acre kitchen garden 200 years ago.

And they could learn a thing or two from the 19th-century techniques still being used at Monticello today.
“He was experimental and had a lot of failures,” Peter Hatch, the director of gardens and grounds, said on a recent afternoon, as we stood under a scorching sun in the terraced garden that took seven slaves three years to cut into the hill. “But Jefferson always believed that ‘the failure of one thing is repaired by the success of another.’ ”
After he left the White House in 1809 and moved to Monticello, his Palladian estate here, Jefferson grew 170 varieties of fruits and 330 varieties of vegetables and herbs, until his death in 1826.
As we walked along the geometric beds — many of them planted in an ancient Roman quincunx pattern — I made notes on the beautiful crops I had never grown. Sea kale, with its great, ruffled blue-green leaves, now full of little round seed pods. Egyptian onions, whose tall green stalks bore quirky hats of tiny seeds and wavy green sprouts. A pre-Columbian tomato called Purple Calabash, whose energetic vines would soon be trained up a cedar trellis made of posts cut from the woods.
“Purple Calabash is one of my favorites,” Mr. Hatch said. “It’s an acidic, al-(p. D7)most black tomato, with a convoluted, heavily lobed shape.”
Mr. Hatch, who has directed the restoration of the gardens here since 1979, has pored over Jefferson’s garden notes and correspondence. He has distilled that knowledge in “Thomas Jefferson’s Revolutionary Garden,” to be published by Yale University Press.

For the full story, see:
ANNE RAVER. “A Revolutionary With Seeds, Too.” The New York Times (Thurs., July 1, 2010): D1 & D7.
(Note: the online version of the article is dated June 30, 2010 and has the title “In the Garden; At Monticello, Jefferson’s Methods Endure.”)

Economics Is More Like Biology than Physics

(p. A13) If economics is a science, it is more like biology than physics. Biologists try to understand the relationships in a complex system. That’s hard enough. But they can’t tell you what will happen with any precision to the population of a particular species of frog if rainfall goes up this year in a particular rain forest. They might not even be able to count the number of frogs right now with any exactness.

We have the same problems in economics. The economy is a complex system, our data are imperfect and our models inevitably fail to account for all the interactions.
The bottom line is that we should expect less of economists. Economics is a powerful tool, a lens for organizing one’s thinking about the complexity of the world around us. That should be enough. We should be honest about what we know, what we don’t know and what we may never know. Admitting that publicly is the first step toward respectability.

For the full commentary, see:

RUSS ROBERTS. “Is the Dismal Science Really a Science? Some macroeconomists say if we just study the numbers long enough we’ll be able to design better policy. That’s like the sign in the bar: Free Beer Tomorrow.” The Wall Street Journal (Thurs., FEBRUARY 26, 2010): A13.

Finding the Neanderthal in Us

“The Vindija cave in Croatia where three small Neanderthal bones were found.” Source of caption and photo: online version of the NYT article cited below.

(p. A3) The burly Ice Age hunters known as Neanderthals, a long-extinct species, survive today in the genes of almost everyone outside Africa, according to an international research team who offer the first molecular evidence that early humans mated and produced children in liaisons with Neanderthals.

In a significant advance, the researchers mapped most of the Neanderthal genome–the first time that the heredity of such an ancient human species has been reliably reconstructed. The researchers, able for the first time to compare the relatively complete genetic coding of modern and prehistoric human species, found the Neanderthal legacy accounts for up to 4% of the human genome among people in much of the world today.
By comparing the Neanderthal genetic information to the modern human genome, the scientists were able to home in on hints of subtle differences between the ancient and modern DNA affecting skin, stature, fertility and brain power that may have given Homo sapiens an edge over their predecessors.
“It is tantalizing to think that the Neanderthal is not totally extinct,” said geneticist Svante Pääbo at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, who pioneered the $3.8 million research project. “A bit of them lives on in us today.”
. . .
For their analysis, Dr. Pääbo and his colleagues extracted DNA mostly from the fossil remains of three Neanderthal women who lived and died in Croatia between 38,000 and 45,000 years ago. From thimblefuls of powdered bone, the researchers pieced together about three billion base pairs of DNA, covering about two-thirds of the Neanderthal genome. The researchers checked those samples against fragments of genetic code extracted from three other Neanderthal specimens.
“It is a tour de force to get a genome’s worth,” said genetic database expert Ewan Birney at the European Bioinformatics Institute in Cambridge, England.
In research published Thursday in Science, the researchers compared the Neanderthal DNA to the genomes drawn from five people from around the world: a San tribesman from South Africa; a Yoruba from West Africa; a Han Chinese; a West European; and a Pacific islander from Papua, New Guinea. They also checked it against the recently published genome of bio-entrepreneur Craig Venter. Traces of Neanderthal heredity turned up in all but the two African representatives.

For the full story, see:
ROBERT LEE HOTZ. “Most People Carry Neanderthal Genes; Team Finds up to 4% of Human Genome Comes From Extinct Species, the First Evidence It Mated With Homo Sapiens.” The Wall Street Journal (Fri., MAY 7, 2010): A3.
(Note: ellipsis added.)
(Note: the online version of the review is dated MAY 6, 2010.)

A related article, the online version of which is the source for the caption and photo above, is:
NICHOLAS WADE. “Analysis of Neanderthal Genome Points to Interbreeding with Modern Humans.” The New York Times (Fri., May 7, 2010): A9.
(Note: the online version of the review is dated May 6, 2010 and has the title “Signs of Neanderthals Mating With Humans.”)

“A close-up of the bone Vindija 33.16 from Vindija cave, Croatia.” Source of caption and photo: online version of the WSJ article quoted and cited above.

Genetically Modified Crops Provide Benefits, Scientists Say

“A Missouri corn and soybean farmer with a sample of BioTech seed corn.” Source of caption and photo: online version of the NYT article quoted and cited below.

(p. B3) The report is described as the first comprehensive assessment of the impact of genetically modified crops on American farmers, who have rapidly adopted them since their introduction in 1996. The study was issued by the National Research Council, which is affiliated with the National Academy of Sciences and provides advice to the nation under a Congressional charter.

The report found that the crops allowed farmers to either reduce chemical spraying or to use less harmful chemicals. The crops also had lower production costs, higher output or extra convenience, benefits that generally outweighed the higher costs of the engineered seeds.
“That’s a long and impressive list of benefits these crops can provide, and have provided to adopting farmers,” David E. Ervin, the chairman of the committee that wrote the report, said on Tuesday during a webcast news conference from Washington.

For the full story, see:

ANDREW POLLACK. “Study Finds Benefits of Genetically Modified Crops But Warns of Overuse.” The New York Times (Thurs., April 14, 2010): B3.
(Note: the online version of the article was dated April 13, 2010 and has the very different title “Study Says Overuse Threatens Gains From Modified Crops.”)

Highly Reputed Academic Science Journal Found Similar Error Rates in Britannica and Wikipedia

(p. 208) Wikipedia was already highly regarded, anecdotally, but it got a glowing evaluation from the prestigious Nature magazine in December 2005, when it concluded that Wikipedia “comes close” to Britannica in the quality of its science articles. “Our reviewers identified an average of four errors in each Wikipedia article, and three in each Britannica article.”

The news came as a bit of a surprise. Many folks felt Wikipedia did better than they’d have thought, and Britannica did, well, worse than they expected. The result of the study was hotly debated between Nature and Britannica, but to most Wikipedians it was a vindication. They knew that Wikipedia was a minefield of errors, but to be in such close proximity in quality to a traditionally edited encyclopedia, while using such a grassroots process, was the external validation they had been waiting for.
Britannica wasn’t pleased with the methodology, and posted a rebuttal with this criticism: “Almost everything about the journal’s investigation, from the criteria for identifying inaccuracies to the discrepancy between the article text and its headline, was wrong and misleading.” Nature and Britannica exchanged barbs and rebuttals, but in the end, the overall result seemed clear.
“The Nature (sic) article showed that we are on the right track with our current methods. We just need better ways to prevent the display of obvious vandalism at any time,” wrote longtime Wikipedian Daniel Mayer on the mailing list.

Source:
Lih, Andrew. The Wikipedia Revolution: How a Bunch of Nobodies Created the World’s Greatest Encyclopedia. New York: Hyperion, 2009.
(Note: italics in original.)

“Expert Scholarship” Versus “People of Dubious Background”

(p. 71) The acknowledgment, by name, of volunteers in the preface sections of the OED is akin to Wikipedia’s edit history, where one can inspect who contributed to each article. Some Oxford contributors were professors, some royalty, but most were ordinary folks who answered the call. Winchester, in The Professor and the Madman: A Tale of Murder, Insanity, and the Making of the Oxford English Dictionary, tells the story of the “madman” William Chester Minor, a U.S. Civil War survivor whose “strange and erratic behavior” resulted in him shooting an “innocent working man” to death in the street in Lambeth. He was sent to Broadmoor asylum for criminal lunatics. He discovered the OED as a project around 1881, when he saw the “Appeal for Readers” in the library, and worked for the next twenty-one years contributing to the project, receiving notoriety as a contributor “second only to the contributions of Dr. Fitzedward Hall in enhancing our illustration of the literary history of individual words, phrases and constructions.” Minor did something unusual in not just sending submissions, but having his own cataloging system such that the dictionary editors could send a postcard and “out the details flowed, in abundance and always with unerring accuracy.” Until Minor and Murray met in January 1891, no one working with (p. 72) the OED knew their prolific contributor was a madman and murderer housed at Broadmoor.

As we will see in later chapters, a common question of the wiki method is whether one can trust information created by strangers and people of dubious background. But the example of the OED shows that using contributors rather than original expert scholarship is not a new phenomenon, and that projects built as a compendium of primary sources are well suited for harnessing the power of distributed volunteers.

Source:
Lih, Andrew. The Wikipedia Revolution: How a Bunch of Nobodies Created the World’s Greatest Encyclopedia. New York: Hyperion, 2009.
(Note: italics in original.)

Briffa’s Tree Ring Evidence Undermines “Hockey Stick” Global Warming Graph

(p. A12) The problem: Using Mr. Briffa’s tree-ring techniques, researchers in the ’90s built charts suggesting temperatures in the late 20th century were the highest in a millennium. The charts were dubbed “hockey sticks” because they showed temperatures relatively flat for centuries, then angling higher recently.

But Mr. Briffa fretted about a potential issue. Thermometers show temperatures have risen since the ’60s, but tree-ring data don’t move in tandem, and sometimes show the opposite. (Average annual temperatures reached the highest on record in 2005, according to U.S. government data. They fell the next three years, and rose in 2009. All those years remain among the warmest on record.)
In his same 1999 email, Mr. Briffa said tree-ring data overall did show “unusually warm” conditions in recent decades. But, he added, “I believe that the recent warmth was probably matched about 1,000 years ago.”
In other words, maybe the chart shouldn’t resemble a hockey stick.
The data were the subject of heated back-and-forth before the IPCC’s 2001 report. John Christy, one of the section’s lead authors, said at the time that he tried in vain to make sure the report reflected the uncertainty.
Mr. Christy said in an interview that some of the pressure to downplay the uncertainty came from Michael Mann, a fellow lead author of that chapter, a scientist at Pennsylvania State University, and a developer of the original hockey-stick chart.
The “very prominent” use of the hockey-stick chart “overrules what tentativeness some of us actually intended,” Mr. Christy wrote to the National Research Council in the U.S. a month after the report was published. Mr. Christy, a climate scientist at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, provided that email.
“I was suspicious of the hockey stick,” Mr. Christy said in an interview. Had Mr. Briffa’s concerns been more widely known, “The story coming out of the [report] may have been different in tone and confidence.”

For the full story, see:

JEFFREY BALL And KEITH JOHNSON. “Push to Oversimplify at Climate Panel.” The Wall Street Journal (Fri., February 26, 2010): A1 & A12.

Hockey stick graph is on top; more accurate, but much less publicized graph, is on bottom. Source of graphs: online version of the WSJ article quoted and cited above.

Doubts on Sainthood for U.N.’s Global Warming Nobel Prize Winning Pachauri

“Rajendra K. Pachauri, right, the United Nations climate panel’s leader, at a Nobel Peace Prize ceremony with Al Gore in 2007.” Source of caption and photo: online version of the NYT article quoted and cited below.

(p. A1) Just over two years ago, Rajendra K. Pachauri seemed destined for a scientist’s version of sainthood: A vegetarian economist-engineer who leads the United Nations’ climate change panel, he accepted the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize on behalf of the panel, sharing the honor with former Vice President Al Gore.

Critics, writing in Britain’s Sunday Telegraph and elsewhere, have accused Dr. Pachauri of profiting from his work as an adviser to businesses, including Deutsche Bank and Pegasus Capital Advisors, a New York investment firm — a claim he denies.
They have also unearthed and publicized problems with the intergovernmental panel’s landmark 2007 report on climate change, which concluded that the planet was warming and that humans were likely to blame.
The report, they contend, misrepresents the state of scientific knowledge about diverse topics — including the rate of melting of Himalayan glaciers and the rise in severe storms — in a way that exaggerates the evidence for climate change.
But Dr. Pachauri and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change are now under intense scrutiny, facing accusations of scientific sloppiness and potential financial conflicts of interest from climate skeptics, right-leaning politicians and even some mainstream scientists. Senator John Barrasso, a Wyoming Republican, called for Dr. Pachauri’s resignation last week.
Critics, writing in Britain’s Sunday Telegraph and elsewhere, have accused Dr. Pachauri of profiting from his work as an adviser to businesses, including Deutsche Bank and Pegasus Capital Advisors, a New York investment firm — a claim he denies.
They have also unearthed and publicized problems with the intergovernmental panel’s landmark 2007 report on climate change, which concluded that the planet was warming and that humans were likely to blame.
The report, they contend, misrepresents the state of scientific knowledge about diverse topics — including the rate of melting of Himalayan glaciers and the rise in severe storms — in a way that exaggerates the evidence for climate change.

For the full story, see:
ELISABETH ROSENTHAL. “U.N. Climate Panel and Its Chief Face a Siege on Their Credibility.” The New York Times (Tues., February 9, 2010): A1 & A9.
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: The online version of the article is dated February 8, 2010, and has the title “Skeptics Find Fault With U.N. Climate Panel.”)