A Fractal Future

Humans spend much of the present pondering the future. Christians have a branch of theology for the subject (eschatology, the "doctrine of the last things"). As a general rule, our beliefs about the future influence our choices in the present, and, conversely, our choices in the present contribute to the outcomes in the future.

Our instinctive understanding of time tempts the average human to try to "figure out the future." Some people lean towards fatalism ("I guess I'm destined to fail") while others try to outwit fate ("I won't meet Death in the marketplace!"). Either way, they react to some particular picture of the future.

Einstein's conception of time made him reject ancient Judaism and much of twentieth century science. Einstein believed the universe was governed by iron laws that determined every outcome from the beginning, and therefore rejected the notion of a personal God who judged men for their choices. He famously disagreed with Niels Bohr over quantum physics, insisting that "God does not play dice with the universe." It was his second great blunder (the other was his admitted "fudging" his own calculations to eliminate the evidence for an expanding universe well before Edwin Hubbell discovered that galaxies are flying away from each other).

Einstein thought of time as a fixed line out of an infinite past into an infinite future. Aristotle had a different idea--he did not believe in "the future," as such. He discussed the truth value of the statement, "There will be a sea-battle tomorrow" and concluded that a statement about the future has no truth value. Today's "Open Theists" enlarge upon Aristotle's position--they say that God knows everything that is, but does not know the future, because "the future" does not exist.

David Deutsch goes to the opposite extreme: in The Fabric of Reality, he argues that every possible future exists. Einstein's time is a one-dimensional line, Deutsch sees time expanding into a two-dimensional plane of possibilities. (Deutsch might argue that all time's branches form a multidimensional hypersolid.)

I'd like to suggest another option--a fractal future. In this model, some but not all futures become actual. I'll try to explain the implications of this in a later post.

What Rough Beast Slouches Towards Bethlehem?

In the darkening dawn of the 20th century, William Butler Yeats wrote, "Things fall apart, the center cannot hold." Yeats' Second Coming glimpsed a nightmarish "rough beast, its hour come round at last" slouching towards Bethlehem to be born. As we move into the 21st century, my fear is that the "center" is getting too strong--there seems to be no limit to what technology and government can do.

Computers can only get so fast, but quantum computing harnesses parallel timelines to do things that just aren't possible in a Newtonian universe. A fully-functioning quantum computer should break the barriers between relativity and quantum physics, and should also be able to bioengineer proteins from scratch. Given today's pace of progress, I expect decent quantum computers to be operational by 2025, yielding a whole new generation of technology by 2045.

Technology isn't the only thing that changes. There's a pace of progress in human relationships, too. I'm not aware of any "Moore's Law" for human interconnectedness, but we've gone from writing to printing to telegraph to radio to television to internet to blogs to Facebook to Twitter over time. Communications move further and faster. The news cycle has gone from monthly magazines to weekly papers to the nightly newscast to 24/7 cable to a constant feed to the Blackberry.

Yeats heard the winds of chaos scattering the ashes of Europe after World War I. Today an invisible web is twining its tentacles around a shrinking world. Who knows what the future holds?

Who's Who in ClimaTALKogy

PaleoCLAMatology

There’s some hot new actual SCIENCE that can tell us a lot about temperature over the last millenium.

I’m talking about what I can't resist calling “paleoCLAMatology," a lovely new method of detecting not just the climate, but the WEATHER over the last two thousand years. Clams live in shallow water and build their shells using the minerals and other elements that are in the water. One of the elements that goes into a clamshell is oxygen, and the ratio of oxygen isotopes dissolved in water varies linearly with the temperature of the water. Heavy oxygen (O-18) is more prevalent in colder water.

By slicing ancient clamshells with a microtome and sending those slices through a mass spectrometer, scientists can read the O-18 concentrations down to week-by-week precision. Preliminary results using clams from a bay in Iceland show clear evidence of both the “Medieval Warming Period” (MWP) and a “Roman Warm Period” (RWP).

That doesn't resolve the debate about the MWP--proponents of the man-made global warming theory don't pretend it never happened. They just believe it was a localized phenomenon that affected northern Europe but not the planet as a whole. Clams from Iceland can’t rebut that argument–but “clamatology” can be used on shells from anywhere. We finally have a methodology that gives us fine-grained information about the temperature of shallow waters anywhere we’d like to look–there are LOTS of clams out there!

Note: shallow-water temperature measurements are NOT the same as surface temperature measurements, so we’ll have to do some new modeling to see how air temperature relates to shallow seas. I think it’s promising work in its own right–a huge amount of heat is stored in the top layer of the ocean, and it’s hard to model planetary climate just by looking at proxies of inland air temperature.

So–is there ANYBODY here who isn’t happy to get a new scientific tool that gives us more information about reality? If so, speak out–I’d like to know who can be unhappy about ancient clamshells!

Answering George Monbiot

George Monbiot asks, in today's Telegraph, "What would it take to persuade you" that humans are causing global warming? He assumes that the answer for most skeptics is nothing. That assumption certainly misses the mark for me. I think I could be convinced that humans are causing global warming if people would address my growing list of concerns.

The thing that would MOST convince me that humans are causing global warming would be to see the "green" movement advocate nuclear power. Nukes are the most obvious solution to CO2 emissions, yet the people who CLAIM to be most passionate about "saving the planet" refuse to take nuclear power seriously. Without that evidence of their good faith, I have to evaluate the science on my own.

My amateur exploration of the science has produced more questions than answers. Here's what it would take to convince ME:

(1) A clear acknowledgment of the diminishing impact of increasing CO2. Putting more paint on a window that has been painted over doesn't decrease the amount of light that gets through it. Doubling the CO2 in an atmosphere that already absorbs most of the spectra that CO2 affects doesn't double the amount of energy that gets trapped.

(2) A clear list of the SECONDARY effects that are supposed to amplify the CO2 effects. I've heard how water vapor and methane are supposed to rise as the planet warms, resulting in a second round of forcing. What other gases are we talking about?

(3) A clear acknowledgment of the impact of solar variability on weather cycles. I don't trust any model that can't explain why ice caps on Mars are retreating.

(4) A clear list of testable predictions made by any climate model--and an equally clear list of anomalies. I don't expect any model to be perfect. I do expect its flaws to be clearly identified!

(5) A clear recognition of the man-made impact on surface temperatures which is unrelated to CO2. Matched-pairs analysis of neighboring measurement stations shows that even a low human population density has a positive impact on temperature--an effect that CANNOT be caused by CO2, since neighboring stations are breathing the same air. This confounding variable MUST be addressed before any temperature dataset can be deemed reliable.

This may seem like a lot to ask, but it's our planet that's at stake.

How to Get Enough Computing Power for Climate Modeling

The Bishop Hill blog posted notes from Professor Tim Palmer, who recently gave a lecture on the computational challenges of weather and/or climate modeling. He asks:

How much resolution is needed to capture climate change details? For example, convective instabilities (~km scale) aren't included in climate models; should they be? Does higher resolution reduce uncertainty? There’s no good theory for estimating how well climate simulations converge with increasing resolution. Even worse, the equations themselves change with finer resolution as new features have to be included...

He answers his own question with an obvious truth: "We need bigger computers." But that raises a new question: where do we get them?

The answer, I suggest, is right in front of our noses--quite literally. We already have enough computing power on our desks or in our laptops. Climate modeling is probably the perfect application for a worldwide network of personal computers.

It's not like can't be done--it already has been! Oxford University networked 3.5 personal million computers back in 2002 to find a cure for anthrax. Dr. Graham Richards' Screensaver Lifesaver" project was a huge success, and it seems like it could be replicated.

I envision "screensaver" software that runs on an all-volunteer network of PCs in their idle time. Assign every station a point on the global grid and give it access to "live" meteorological measurements from as many observation stations as possible. Then, using a set of competing climate models (more on that later!), have each station generate the data each climate model would predict for the area around its unique grid point. As more people volunteer their computers for the project, make the grid increasingly fine.

The primary point of this network would be test competing climate models. To that end, any person would be invited to turn their theory about the weather into an algorithm that could run on this system. The network could test out any number of theoretical models, so I would make the "model building" component an essentially "open source" system, with just enough editorial control to keep hackers from implanting malware in the system.

It would seem appropriate to require every climate modeler to disclose his or her algorithm (but not the source code). An "open source" system of this sort should make the results of every model accessible to all researchers at all times. That would allow the maximum number of researchers to learn from other people's successes--and failures.

How to Tell a Fake Scientist

I love these graphics from JoNova:

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Real Scientist

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Fake Scientist

Adding Paint to a Windowpane

I used to think I understood global warming. CO2 is a "greenhouse gas" because it is transparent to visible but absorbs infrared. Light passes through the atmosphere and hits the ground, where it re-radiates as infrared. CO2 in the atmosphere keeps it from radiating back out into space, and--voila!--the Earth gets warmer.

That's true as far as it goes--but does that mean that more CO2 means more warmth? The graph above shows why that is a very important question. Adding more CO2 to the atmosphere is like putting more paint on a windowpane--once you've absorbed the infrared radiation coming up from the ground, you can't absorb much more of it.

The claims that increasing CO2 will lead to increasing temperatures are based on hypothetical "feedback" effects, such as "warmer air evaporates more water, which is also a greenhouse gas." But that argument would seem to work for any kind of warming--solar flares, volcanic eruptions, and so forth.

Testing New Comments

Housekeeping here... I've installed "IntenseDebate" for the comment section.

(Wishful thinking, I know--but it looks like a nice feature.)

No Taxation with Radiation Act of 2010

Everybody complains about the weather, but nobody does anything about it. Here's a modest proposal for change.



Executive Overview: fast-track nuclear power plant construction by

1. giving the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission exclusive regulatory power over plants that choose to operate under the provisions of this act,
   
2. giving a single "rocket docket" court exclusive original jurisdiction over all nuclear claims,
   
3. creating a ten-mile tax-free zone around all operational nuclear power plants and a tax-free zone in each county that agrees to and is approved to accept nuclear waste, and
   
4. providing for tax-free nuclear bonds and a $10,000 guarantee for individual investors.

I. The name of this Act is the "No Taxation with Radiation Act of 2010."

II. All current and proposed nuclear power plants in the United States may elect whether to operate under the provisions of this Act [hereafter, "Federal Plants"]. Plants that choose not to operate under the Act shall be subject to all relevant state and local laws but shall be exempt from all requirements of this Act other than national security regulations promulgated by the Department of Defense. Federal Plants are hereby exempt from all state and local environmental, labor, and public utility laws and regulations.

III. The United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission [hereafter, "NRC"] shall promulgate comprehensive and exclusive regulations for the construction, operation, and decommission of Federal Plants. The DOE shall issue all necessary permits for the construction, operation, and decommissioning of Federal plants.

IV. The United States Department of Defense [hereafter, "DOD"] shall promulgate national security regulations to ensure the safety of all nuclear power plants, nuclear materials, and nuclear waste, whether or not the nuclear power plant elects to operate under the provisions of this Act.

V. One new federal district court shall be established at [Kansas City, Missouri] with exclusive original jurisdiction over all challenges to the construction, operation, or decommissioning of a Federal Plant. This court shall be provided with enough judges and staff to decide the average case within one month or less. Appeals shall be made to the D.C. Court of Appeals.

VI. Federal Plants are hereby authorized to sell tax-free construction bonds. The United States Treasury shall guarantee each individual investor the first $10,000 of investments in such bonds for any given Federal Plant. Corporate investors, including money market funds, shall not receive guarantees.


VII. Federal Plants may elect to opt out of this program if their State (or tribe, if the plant is located on a Native American reservation) enacts a specific procedure for doing so.

VIII. All individuals with a primary residence within ten miles of an operational nuclear power plant that was constructed as a Federal Plant shall be exempt from personal federal income tax, whether or not the plant opts out of the federal program at a later date. All individuals with a primary residence in a county that agrees to and is approved to accept nuclear waste shall be exempt from personal federal income tax.

Post-Normal Science

I've just discovered "Post-Normal Science" [hereafter, "PNS'], thanks to this essay by Jerome Ravetz at WattsUpWithThat. On the one hand, it's a lovely discovery--I finally have the categories I need to describe the politico-scientific maelstrom of Global Warming. Wikipedia defines it thus:

Post-Normal Science is a concept developed by Silvio Funtowicz and Jerome Ravetz, attempting to characterise a methodology of inquiry that is appropriate for cases where "facts are uncertain, values in dispute, stakes high and decisions urgent". It is primarily seen in the context of the debate over global warming and other similar, long-term issues where we possess less information than we would like.

On the one hand, we desperately need a well-thought out, mutually agreed-upon approach to such cases. On the other hand, Ravetz seems to be working hard to justify action in the absence of certainty--and since his primary example of post-normal science is the global warming debate, it's hard to tell whether PNS is a real step forward in the sociology of science or just another skirmish in the global warming wars.

Ravetz makes one suggestion that seems very useful--he calls for an "extended peer review system" that includes all "stakeholders" in the process, whether or not they share the dominant scientific paradigm. This is a timely suggestion, given the growing power of the "blogosphere." A mob of "bloggers in pajamas" exposed forged political documents in 2004 and quickly picked apart the mass of "Climategate" emails. This "Army of Davids" (to use Glenn Reynolds' phrase) is here to stay. We may as well build them into any future plans for science and public policy!

No Taxation with Radiation Act of 2010

Everybody complains about the weather, but nobody does anything about it. Here's a modest proposal for change.



Executive Overview: fast-track nuclear power plant construction by

1. giving the US Department of Energy exclusive regulatory power over plants that choose to operate under the provisions of this act,
   
2. giving a single "rocket docket" court exclusive original jurisdiction over all nuclear claims,
   
3. creating a ten-mile tax-free zone around all operational nuclear power plants and a tax-free zone in each county that agrees to and is approved to accept nuclear waste, and
   
4. providing for tax-free nuclear bonds and a $10,000 guarantee for individual investors.

I. The name of this Act is the "Climate Change Security Act of 2010."

II. All current and proposed nuclear power plants in the United States may elect whether to operate under the provisions of this Act [hereafter, "CCSA Plants"]. Plants that choose not to operate under the Act shall be subject to all relevant state and local laws but shall be exempt from all requirements of this Act other than the national security regulations promulgated by the Department of Defense. CCSA Plants are hereby exempt from all state and local environmental, labor, and public utility laws and regulations.

III. The United States Department of Energy [hereafter, "DOE"] shall promulgate comprehensive regulations for the construction, operation, and decommission of CCSA Plants. The DOE shall issue all necessary permits for the construction, operation, and decommissioning of CCSA plants.

IV. The United States Department of Defense [hereafter, "DOD"] shall promulgate national security regulations to ensure the safety of all nuclear power plants, nuclear materials, and nuclear waste, whether or not the nuclear power plant elects to operate under the provisions of this Act.

V. One new federal district court shall be established at [Kansas City, Missouri] with exclusive original jurisdiction over all challenges to the construction, operation, or decommissioning of a CCSA Plant. This CCSA Court shall be provided with enough judges and staff to decide the average case within one month or less. Appeals from the CCSA Court shall be made to the D.C. Court of Appeals.

VI. CCSA Plants are hereby authorized to sell tax-free construction bonds [herefter, "CCSA Bonds"]. The United States Treasury shall guarantee individual investors the first $10,000 of investments in CCSA Bonds.

VII. All individuals with a primary residence within ten miles of an operational nuclear power plant that was constructed under the CCSA shall be exempt from personal federal income tax. All individuals with a primary residence in a county that agrees to and is approved to accept nuclear waste shall be exempt from personal federal income tax.

VIII. CCSA Plants may elect to opt out of the CCSA if their State enacts a specific procedure for doing so. Opting out of the CCSA shall not affect the federal income tax liability of persons within a ten miles radius.

Global Warming and Global Politics

China Daily, the offical English language paper of the People's Republic of China, has published an article that urges scientists to critically review the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Given that China Daily is pretty much a house organ for the Communist Party, I take this as a major development. India has already dumped the IPCC and is setting up its own alternative. With populations of 1,284M and 1,045M respectively, China and India account for 34% of all humans. The IPCC has lost the confidence of one third of the planet.

Russia is a major oil producing nation with a history of "not playing nicely with the other children." A number of skeptics have drawn attention to the questionable data from Siberia. At least one Moscow-based think tank argues that the Climate Research Unit (CRU) in East Anglia has skewed the Siberian data. Given Russia's past, pride, and petroleum, it may well follow India's lead in the near future.

Global warming is not a hot topic in the United States right now. With 41 Republican Senators ready to block any unpopular proposals from the Obama administration, the prospect for environmental "change we can believe in" is low. While we can expect plenty of official pronouncements from the US over the next ten months, there is close to zero chance of the kind of action that "warmists" have been urging.

The British media has finally caught on to the "Climategate" scandal and major papers are switching from "warmist" to "skeptical" positions overnight. Polls show that British belief in global warming has plummeted over the last few months.

Based on these facts and current trends, I think the prospects for meaningful international limits on CO2 emissions are fast dropping to zero. I never thought a command-and-control approach to greenhouse gases would really work, but now I think it won't even be tried.

That doesn't mean that "warmists" must sit by while a planet full of morons cooks itself to death. It just means that people who truly believe in man-made global warming must adjust their approach. The free market drives human behavior at least as much as governmental control does. It's time for a free market solution.

The fast track to carbon neutrality is nuclear power. We've had the basic technology since 1942. Prudent capitalists are not investing in nuclear power in the US at present because our legal system allows environmental activists to prevent new plants from getting the permits they need to operate. Those laws would have to change to make a new generation of nuclear plants feasible--but "warmists" should be willing to change those laws to save the planet, while most "skeptics" have been eager to change them all along.

A State of Uncertainty: My Current Thoughts on Climate

We live in interesting times. Global warming has become an issue that appears to demand action--but it's an issue that dramatically depends on a very complex kind of science that very few people can master. To make things worse, some of the people who claim to understand the issue disagree about it in the most fundamental ways. That leaves the average 21st century person in a position a little like the average 16th century European, trying to choose between Catholicism and Protestantism with their eternal soul at stake.

I've judged a number of formal debates, and I like to analyze this problem in debate terms. The four "stock issues" of a formal debate are:

1. Topicality
2. Significance
3. Inherency
4. Solvency

Topicality is the definition of terms. The global warming debate involves some surprisingly slippery terminology. I've noticed a shift from "global warming" to "climate change" without any explanation. I'm going to define the term under debate as "catastrophic increase in atmospheric heat produced by human activities."

Significance: I define "global warming" as "catastropic increase in atmospheric heat" to nail down the second stock issue in debate. Anything less than a "catastrophic" increase is not a significant harm. "Lukewarmists" believe that human activity affects the climate, but not enough to worry about.

Inherency: In formal debate, the party advocating change must show that the significant harm can't be solved without adopting the kind of change that they propose. They have to show that the "harm" is "inherent" to the status quo--until we change the way things are, we can't escape the problem.

Solvency: The affirmative team in any debate has to persuade the audience that their proposed solution will actually solve the problem--without creating more problems that are even worse.

Scoring this debate

In any formal debate, the party advocating change bears the burden of proving all four stock issues. I've defined the terms to my own satisfaction, so I'll give the "warmists" the topicality issue. I have yet to be persuaded on any of the remaining three issues.

So far, I'm not persuaded that there is a significant harm. I've heard a lot of horror stories about how bad things could be, but some of those claims aren't well supported by the evidence. At present, I'd call myself a "lukewarmist." I think that human activity is causing some increase in atmospheric heat, but I am not persuaded that the rise in CO2 is more likely than not to cause a catastrophe.

I'm completely unpersuaded by the inherency arguments. The "warmists" seem to be arguing that humans must immediately apply governmental caps to CO2 emissions. Why not argue for a crash program to construct nuclear power plants? I think that putting massive amounts of cheap, clean, green, safe energy on the grid would reduce CO2 emissions more quickly and more reliably than any amount of coercive control.

I fundamentally disagree with the solvency arguments. The proposals on the table are pathetic! How can we save the planet from runaway CO2-induced heating unless we deal with the vast amounts of CO2 being released by the teeming billions of the developing world? The most advanced societies could cut their carbon emissions to zero but the levels of CO2 would continue to rise for generations under every current plan. To make matters worse, the most likely results of cap-and-tax type regimes would be a global recession and/or depression, resulting in even-deeper poverty in the developing and underdeveloped nations. That means more soot, more smoke, more deforestation around the word. Poverty is a cause of CO2 emissions, not a cure.

My own position

I would agree that we have a "global warming crisis," but I see it is a human crisis of collective decision-making--a political crisis, at the moment, not an environmental crisis. The human race has been presented with a problem that it must solve, one way or another, just as Europe was presented with the problem of Protestantism in 1517. How are we going to handle it?

I believe that "warmists" and "skeptics" can and should agree on an immediate course of action to reduce CO2 emissions. A crash course in nuclear power is the best solution to this political crisis. Warmists can sleep at night, knowing that we are finally DOING something that could eliminate the need for fossil fuels altogether. Skeptics would enjoy the benefits of cheap, clean, plentiful energy that doesn't depend on foreign (and often hostile) governments. The planet would be a safer and more peaceful place, whether or not the weather is warming.

I'd love to know if there's something I'm missing here. Feel free to straighten out my thinking in the comments!

Death of a Dream

I have long daydreamed about building a electro-magnetic catapault in the Ecuadorian Andes. Went off to do the math this morning and realized that it would need to accelerate its payload to Mach 34 to achieve escape velocity. I can't think of ANY way to break the sound barrier 34 times over on rail system--which pretty much kills the concept.

(Maybe if the railway were airless and a REALLY BIG laser blasted the atmosphere out of the way at the upper end?)

No. I think the giant slingshot approach is dead.

Genetic Improbabilities in Genesis

I'm open to the possibility that the chromosomes of Jesus mattered. This is not a current topic in science or theology, since most Christian theologians since the early 1900s have either embraced science and ignored Scripture (the "modernists") or embraced Scripture and ignored science (the "fundamentalists").

IF the genes of Jesus matter, then the stories of the patriarchs in Genesis are a series of improbable events with clear genetic consequences.

Noah's Flood and Ancient DNA

This breakthrough may allow us to see whether Europe was colonized by refugees from a Black Sea flood.

Freedom of Speech and Religion

The man who drew this survived an attack by an axe-wielding terrorist today. He and his five-year-old granddaughter hid in the house until Danish police arrived and shot their Somali attacker in the leg.

This blog is primarily devoted to science and the truths beyond science. Our ability to discover more about reality depends on our ability to share the information we have. There is exactly one ultimate reality out there, and we aren't going to discover it by attacking cartoonists with axes.

It is better to light one candle than to curse the darkness, so I'm lighting my candle with this image of freedom, today.