Random Thoughts

Care to debate that?

I've recently learned that apparently P.Z. Myers has a "thing" about Ray Kurzweil. Specifically, in a Newsweek hatchet piece, Myers is apparently quoted as saying:

"I am completely baffled by Kurzweil's popularity, and in particular the respect he gets in some circles, since his claims simply do not hold up to even casually critical examination," writes Myers. He says Kurzweil's Singularity theories are closer to a deluded religious movement than they are to science. "It's a New Age spiritualism—that's all it is," Myers says. "Even geeks want to find God somewhere, and Kurzweil provides it for them."

My one-word reply: "Poppycock."

Ray Kurzweil is respected in futurist circles because he is one of the world's preeminent scholars regarding technological trends, particularly in his field of artificial intelligence.

And his research is completely legitimate science. (Which is obviously not to say that he is never wrong!)

If P.Z. Myers wishes to debate the matter, I'd be happy to do it here, or on his blog, or anywhere.

Postcard from The Twilight Zone

Regular readers of this blog will know that I've posted several times on economic growth in the 21st century. My last several posts unrelated to economic growth have had comments by a fellow who goes by "GK," asking me (and not politely either) when I was going to update my predictions for economic growth in the 21st century.

I forget what led me there, but I came upon a post at a blog called The Futurist that dealt with economic growth in the 21st century. Eventually, I realized that the blog was run by "that guy"..."GK."

Well, to make a long story short, apparently I've been banned from ever commenting on The Futurist again...apparently for "excessive disagreement." Not that any of my comments were offensive...just that they did not agree with The Futurist or include any comments on how brilliant he is. Before I'd realized I'd been banned, I'd composed a comment. I hate to waste writing, so here it is. The quotes are of GK:

"The big assumption here is that these 'human brain equivalents' will function in the same economic way as present humans. There is no basis to support this assumption."

Actually, there is a firm basis to support the idea that a computer human brain equivalent will actually have a bigger impact on economic growth than a human brain. Computers never sleep. They never are addicted to alcohol or drugs. They never go to work distracted by their marital/relationship problem. Etc.

 "Aha! But you cannot ignore software."

OK, so don't ignore software. Provide your estimates for when 1 million, 1 billion, and 1 trillion HBEs will be added, including software. (And also not including software, since that is the only way to give an apples-to-apples comparison with my estimates.)

 "Again, I am generally in agreement with your December 2003 numbers, so whatever you thought until then has more corroboration that what you think now."

Corroboration, schmorroboration. The accuracy of predictions isn't a function of how many people agree with the prediction. The vast majority of economists agree that economic growth in the 21st century won't be substantially higher than economic growth in the 20th century. This includes Nobel-prize-winning economists such as Robert Lucas Jr. The future will show they are wrong (or else computers will take over the world, and then all bets are off.

 If you do your own analysis of the number of human brain equivalents (excluding or including software) added each year up to your predicted time of the singularity in 2060-2065, I think you'll see that the number of HBEs added each year are not compatible with the low rates of economic growth you're predicting.

 Or another way of looking at it: If computers are 50% of the economy at the time of the singularity, and computers are increasing in capability by 78% per year at that time, how is it that the overall economy is only growing by 6.5% per year?  

How to reduce deaths and property loss from wildfires

The bushfires in Australia have gotten me very interested in ways to reduce deaths and property loss from wildfires.

If there are any folks from Australia or the U.S. with experience or interest in this subject, please leave a comment.

Thanks,

Mark

Julian Simon's message

On Roger Pielke's Prometheus blog, Jonathan Gilligan had some comments about Julian Simon's message with which I disagreed. But that wasn't really relevant to the Prometheus post, so I'm putting responses here.

“When I read The Ultimate Resource II, Simon seems clearly to be saying that we don’t need to worry about running out of oil or any other natural resource because human ingenuity will provide cheap alternative energy sources to replace them, fairly painlessly.”

I mostly agreed with you up to the “fairly painlessly” part. I think Julian Simon’s argument was not that the transitions would be “fairly painless,” but that after the transitions occurred, people would actually be better off. (That there was never going to be a permanent step downward in well-being, due to a permanent lack of a resource.)

“The whole argument of Ultimate Resource II is that scarcity does not exist because resources are not finite.”

No, that can’t possibly be the “whole argument of Ultimate Resource II,” because Julian Simon was an economist, and that argument completely defies the entire premise of economics.

The whole argument of Ultimate Resource II was that the world would not run out of any resources, because resources are not finite…in any ***”useful economic definition”*** of the word:

Julian Simon on why resources aren't (economically) finite

Note that Julian Simon recognized that, for example, there are a finite number of copper atoms on earth at the present time. (That’s the mathematical definition of “finite.”) But he argued that the number of copper atoms on earth wasn’t meaningful in a “useful economic definition of the word.” A fine example of why this is so has come after his death, with the explosion of wireless communications. And in fact, wireless movement of electrical power is even being developed:

Wireless Energy Transfer

But Julian Simon never said that nothing was “scarce.” No sane economist would ever say that! He said resources were not “finite;” he didn’t say they weren’t “scarce.”  Just because something isn’t “finite” doesn’t mean it isn’t “scarce.” For example, we can recycle electronics to recover the copper in them. But that doesn’t mean that the recycling is effortless (costless). If something takes time or money, it is time or money that could be spent on something else. So everything is “scarce,” although the degree of scarcity ranges tremendously (e.g. from paper to diamonds).

P.S.  Note his conclusion to the article to which I linked:

" I continue to stand on the ground of non-finiteness, because I have found that leaving this ground causes more bad arguments than standing on it does. While I doubt that many people's judgment will be affected by what I write on this issue, there is little temptation to trim my sails to this wind.

There is little temptation to do that which is offensive to me - "admit" something that I do not believe is so."

Well written! He'll be missed.

The U.S. should build a hurricane storm surge barrier

This is the first in a series of posts that will describe a portable hurricane storm surge barrier that I think could--and should--be built.  The barrier would be capable of being deployed to protect approximately 100 miles along the U.S. Gulf Coast or East Coast in a matter of days.  I will eventually outline one possible design for such a system.  My point in outlining one possible design is not to suggest that such a design is the best design, but simply to illustrate that such a system is in no way some science-fiction fantasy that could never be built and deployed.

Why build such a barrier?  In a word, "Katrina."  Or simply, "New Orleans."  But also, "Miami."  "Fort Lauderdale."  "Tampa/St. Petersburg."  "Jacksonville."  "Galveston."  "Virginia Beach."  "Washington DC."  "New York City."

The simple fact is that a major hurricane could strike anywhere along the Gulf Coast (1600 miles) or East Coast north to approximately Boston (another approximately 1600 miles).  Currently, measures are being designed or envisioned that can partially protect single cities (e.g. levees and flood gates for New Orleans, flood gates for New York City).  However, it would make more sense from an economic and engineering standpoint to design something that could protect approximately 100 miles of coastline days before a storm hits, rather than to protect individual cities by designing something that may not be challenged for many decades (during which time better systems could be built).

The damage from hurricane Katrina was virtually all caused by storm surge (rather than wind damage or inland flooding due to rain).  Wikipedia currently estimates that the total economic damage to Louisiana and Mississippi may exceed $150 billion.  That's just a single hurricane, and a single city.  Moving to New York City, it's been estimated that there is an approximately 1-in-4 chance that a Category 3 or hurricane will hit New York City/Long Island in the next 50 years.  Here are storm surge maps calculated by the SLOSH computer model, for various hurricanes hitting New York City and Long Island 

Hurricane Storm Surge maps for NYC, calculated by SLOSH

Roger Pielke Jr. and others have estimated that if the Great Miami hurricane were to hit Miami in 2020, damages would be approximately $500 billion.  (That's half a TRILLION dollars!)

Preview of AGU presentation: The $500 billion hurricane

Clearly, the risk of such economic consequences alone warrants significant thought about how to design and deploy such a hurricane storm surge protection system.

Six reasons why hydrogen-boron fusion would be the ultimate solution to global warming

1) The pollution from hydrogen-boron fusion is essentially zero. Per unit of electricity generated, the life cycle pollution impacts from hydrogen boron fusion are less than natural gas, or even wind or photovoltaics (solar cells). (Let alone nuclear fission, oil, or coal.) Even life cycle carbon dioxide emissions from hydrogen-boron fusion are less than for photovoltaics or wind, because the amount of material needed to build a hydrogen-boron plant of a given electrical size is a tiny fraction of the material needed for a similar size plant.

2) The energy is extremely high density (extremely compact). When combined with reason #1, this means that hydrogen-boron fusion plants can be located even in the middle of densely populated cities. A hundred hydrogen-boron fusion plants could be located in the basements of buildings in downtown Manhattan, and could supply all the electricity needed by NYC.

3) Due to reasons #1 and #2, hydrogen-boron fusion completely eliminates the need for a nationwide electrical grid. No more high-tension lines, brownouts or blackouts.

4) Due to reasons #1, #2, and #3, electricity from hydrogen-boron fusion can be delivered to sites hit by disasters long before electricity from conventional sources. After major hurricanes, electrical power is often out in some areas for weeks, or even months. With hydrogen-boron fusion, a tractor-trailer trucks containing hydrogen-boron electrical generating plants could be used to repower a city like New Orleans in less than a week.

5) Hydrogen-boron fusion is continuous, not intermittent. Unlike solar cells and wind, hydrogen-boron can produce as much power as needed, any time needed. An electrical grid powered significantly by photovoltaics or wind would have a horrendous problem trying to match the intermittent supply of those energies with the demand for electricity.

6) Hydrogen-boron fusion can be used to power virtually ANY device. For example, airplanes use petroleum, because it has such high energy density (per unit volume and per unit mass). And the space shuttle’s external fuel tanks contain hydrogen and oxygen. But fusion is roughly a million times more powerful per unit mass than chemical reactions. So the amount of hydrogen required to fly from NY to LAX could literally be found in the bottled water brought on board for passengers to drink. And the space shuttle’s external tanks could be literally replaced by fuel weighing less than the astronauts themselves.

One way we screwed up in Iraq (but might still recover)

Obviously, Iraq in June 2007 is a bloody mess.  If you had told me in March 2003 that Saddam’s government would be vanquished by the U.S. military in less than a month, but that the situation inside the country would actually be worse four years later, I wouldn’t have believed you. 

The number of U.S. screw-ups in Iraq is so large, that one blog post couldn’t possibly cover all of them in any detail.  I’m going to focus on one:  the U.S. treatment of the defeated Iraqi military.  Maybe at the time, it was not possible to see that the U.S. treatment of the Iraqi military would lead to a terrible result, but it certainly is possible now.  So even if the lesson is to be learned for future wars, it would be valuable.  But there may even be to recover somewhat even in Iraq.

The primary U.S. screw-up regarding the U.S. military versus the Iraqi military is that we never demanded a formal unconditional surrender by the Iraqi military. Iraqi military was allowed to simply melt back into the populace, with no formal acknowledgement of defeat, and no effort by the U.S. to provide assistance to a large number of armed and trained men who suddenly had no jobs.

Here is something we could have done in April of 2004.  However, it seems to me it is something we STILL COULD DO in June of 2007:

1)  Identify, to the extent possible, the entire make-up of Saddam Hussein’s military.  Branch of service, division, battalion, platoon.  Everything.  Who were the generals?  The colonels?  Majors? Captains? Sargents? Privates?

2)  Once they have been identified, invite them to sign a binding contract.  The contract would require them to give something, and for giving something, they would get something. 

3)  They would acknowledge that the military of Iraq had been defeated in 2003, and would give their oath on the Quran (or Bible, or other religious text) that they would not participate in any way in any attack on a U.S. soldier for the next 2 years.  In fact, they would also be required to inform the U.S. of any knowledge they have of anyone else who had planned or participated in an attack on U.S. troops.

4)  They would also give their oath by voice, which would be recorded in a manner that would allow later voice analysis.  They would sign their names to the binding contract.  They would give a full set of 10 fingerprints.  They would give blood that would allow DNA analysis.  They would get retinal scans.  They would be photographed from all angles.  In fact—this would be very controversial—they might even be required to wear ankle bracelets so that the U.S. military could track their movements at all times.

5)  In compensation for items 3 and 4, they would get full pay (i.e., what they got under Saddam) for the next 2 years by the U.S. This pay would be obtained directly from the U.S. military.  They would also be given the option of either being a member of the new Iraqi military, or any other job of their choosing.  If they choose to be a member of the military, they could collect whatever they collect from the Iraqi government.  If they chose some other employment, they’d get whatever they could from that employer.

6)  At the time the U.S. military paid the members of the Iraqi military, they could be questioned about any recent attacks on U.S. or Iraqi troops.  Also, it might be useful to offer bonuses of up to several weeks’ pay for information that ended up leading to the arrest and conviction of perpetrators of attacks.  If any Iraqi military member was found to be guilty of an attack on U.S. troops, he would forfeit all remaining pay, and could be prosecuted by the U.S. military, and held for up to two years in a U.S. military prison within Iraq.

These are just ideas of what could be done.  But the main aspects are:

1)  Every member of the Iraqi military acknowledges defeat, and swears on a religious text not to attack U.S. soldiers,

2)  All members of the Iraqi military are identified by multiple methods, such that if they participate in an attack, it may be possible to later identify them.  Further, the structure/membership of the Iraqi military is known, right down to platoon/squad level.

3)  All members of the Iraqi military are given two years full pay…even if they decide to pursue other careers.

3)  The U.S. government does the payments (not the Iraqi government).

4)  Because the U.S. government does the payments, it can also question all former military members about any attacks that occur.

Does anyone have any thoughts about this?  Does anyone know how to slip this suggestion into President’s or Vice President’s daily reading?  ;-)

U.S. patents cause global weather-related disasters!

Roger Pielke Jr. found a figure in the latest IPCC report that he calls"just embarrassing."

However, I've found an even more remarkable IPCC figure:  it's Figure S&M-XXX (it's really buried, so you'll have to really dig down to find it).

It compares normalized global weather-related losses with U.S. patents issued.  There is a clear correlation.  It's obvious that increasing the number of U.S. patents issued causes normalized global weather-related losses to increase.  When will the U.S. Patent Office start behaving responsibly, and stop issuing patents???!  (Will it only be when G.W. Bush leaves the Whitehouse?)

 

A method for achieving honest climate predictions

I’ve written (repeatedly) that the “projections” in the IPCC’s Third Assessment Report are pseudoscientific nonsense.  I haven’t seen the Fourth Assessment Report, but I’m so confident (or would that be depressed?) that they will be nonsense too, that I propose a better way.

The fundamental problem is that the IPCC has no incentive to tell the truth in its projections.  But they do have an incentive to lie...to exaggerate the amount of warming that’s likely to occur.  So that’s what they do...they lie.  I propose the following solution:

The U.S. government should set up a prize fund totaling $400 million, payable in 2031.  The prize fund would be open to any U.S. university with accredited science or engineering programs.  The fund would be awarded as $200 million for first place, $100 million for second, $50 million for third, $25 million for fourth, $12 million for fifth, $6 million for sixth, $3 million for seventh…and $1 million until we run out of money.

Prizes would be awarded for most closely predicting the following parameters:

1)    globally averaged surface temperature anomaly for 2029-2031, relative to 1990;
2)    globally averaged lower tropospheric temperature anomaly for 2029-2031, relative to 1990;
3)    Atlantic hurricane basin sea surface temperature anomaly for 2029-2031, relative to 1990;
4)    average insured U.S. hurricane losses for 2029-2031,
5)    global sea level rise for 2029-2031, relative to 1990;
6)    CO2 atmospheric concentration;
7)    anthropogenic (industrial) CO2 emissions;
8)    methane atmospheric concentration,
9)    anthropogenic methane emissions,
10)  anthropogenic black carbon emissions,

The ten parameters listed above would be weighted such that the first 5 parameters are twice as important as the bottom 5.  Let’s say 100 universities enter the contest, with #1 given to the best prediction for each parameter, and #100 given to the worst prediction for each parameter. 

Let’s take hypothetical University X (not Xavier!).:  Suppose its rankings on the first 5 predictions are:  #3, #4, #10, #20, #60.  Since all those are multiplied by 2, its score would be:  (3+4+10+20+60)*2 = 194.  Suppose its rankings for the bottom 5 predictions are #20, #6, #70, #10, #8.  Its score on the second 5 would be 114.  So the total score would be 194 + 114 = 308.  The university with the LOWEST score would get the $200 million first prize, the university with the next lowest score would get $100 million, and so on.

For a total investment of $400 million, the U.S. government would get far better predictions than it currently gets from the IPCC.  (In fact, it’s not possible to get poorer predictions than from the IPCC…but that’s another story.)

In fact, Exxon-Mobil (to choose just one company at random ;-)) could get a similarly good deal by offering a prize fund of only $4 million (i.e. the proposed U.S. government prize to universities, divided by 100).  But this would be payable to INDIVIDUALS (or their heirs).  Exxon could restrict the prize fund to 100 scientists of its choosing.  The top prize of $2 million in 2031 would certainly be enough incentive to make truthful predictions!

Responses to Dr Wigley's comments

Dr. Tom Wigley apparently made some comments about my comments on the Gristmill blog:

Dr. Tom Wigley's comments, and my responses

These were my responses to his comments.  (I want to have my responses on my blog, in addition to the Gristmill blog.)

Dr. Wigley apparently writes, "markbahner said that the probability of warming less than 1.4C was 50% and the probability of warming greater than 5C was zero."

That's close, but my exact words were, "The simple fact is that there is approximately a 50/50 chance that the warming will be less than 1.4 deg C...and there is virtually no chance (far less than 1 percent) that the warming will be over 5 deg C."

Dr. Wigley continues, regarding the "projections" in the IPCC Third Assessment Report (TAR), "IPCC did not assign a probability to the 1.4-5.8C range. It was recognized that to so may have been useful, but it was beyond the state of the science (insofar as IPCC can only review the science, not do new science)."

That extraordinary comment provides compelling evidence of the deep scientific pathology of the current state of climate "science."  I've personally developed two sets of my own probabilistic predictions for methane atmospheric concentrations, CO2 emissions and atmospheric concentrations, and resultant lower tropospheric temperature increases. The second set is here:

My predictions

My own probabilistic predictions were developed in my spare time, almost certainly with less than 100 hours of research, thought, and calculations, and only a pocket calculator. By 2001, when the IPCC published the TAR, there had obviously been two previous assessment reports, with more than a full decade having passed since the first assessment report was published in 1990. In that time, hundreds, if not thousands, of people were working full time on climate research.  Dr. Wigley is stating that the entire climate change community was unable to come up with probabilistic predictions in over a decade of research, including countless conferences (in some very nice locales) and a great many powerful computers running climate simulations.  I'm sorry, but if a simple set of probabilistic predictions for methane atmspheric concentrations, CO2 emissions and atmospheric concentrations, and resultant lower tropospheric temperature increases was beyond the IPCC and the climate change community after more than a full decade of research by hundreds or thousands of people, it's simply because the IPCC and climate change community aren't very interested in doing science.

Dr. Wigley continues, "So Sarah Raper and I did the appropriate probabilistic calculations...We found that there was a non-zero probability of warming less than 1.4C and a non-zero (but smaller) probability of warming above 5.8C. You can estimate the probabilities from the above-cited paper. We found the 90% C.I. to be 1.68C to 4.87C."

I commend Drs. Wigley and Raper (WR) for injecting a modest amount of science into the IPCC process for developing "projections" based on "scenarios." As he reports, the WR paper calculated a 5% probability of warming less than 1.68C, a 50% probability of warming less than 3.06C, and a 95% probability of warming less than 4.87C. Therefore, WR and I agree that the probabililty of warming of 5 deg C or more is very remote (with WR estimating the odds at more than 20 to 1, and me at more than 100 to 1).

The differences between their predictions and mine regard the probability of warming near 1.4 deg C and 3.1 deg C.  They estimate less than 5 percent chance of warming less than 1.4 deg C, whereas I estimate approximately a 50 percent chance of warming less than 1.4 deg C.  Also, they estimate approximately a 50 percent chance of warming more than 3.1 deg C, whereas I estimate the probability of warming more than 3.1 deg C at less than 5 percent.

How do these differences in predictions arise?  Well, the main reason for the differences is that Wigley and Raper assumed that all IPCC TAR scenarios had equal probability of occurrence, whereas I estimated that the most probable climate forcing for the 21st century would be somewhat less than the B1 scenario:

IPCC TAR scenarios and resultant temperature increases

So WR assume equal probability for all IPCC TAR scenarios.  Is this a scientifically valid assumption?  No, it is not.  This is not a close call.  Even a layperson can see that the assumption of equal probability is scientifically invalid.  James Hansen's Keeling Lecture compared various IPCC scenarios with actual increases in CO2 and methane:

James Hansen's Keeling Lecture, see pages 42-44

Increases since 1990 of both methane and CO2 have been at the very bottom of all IPCC TAR scenarios.  The WR assumption of equal probability for all scenarios is like assuming a straight-A student has equal probability of getting an A, B, C, D, or F in the next class he or she takes.

To summarize:  The IPCC TAR scenarios are completely invalid, as a matter of science.  The fact that the TAR had no probabilistic estimates is clear evidence of the pathology of the current state of climate "science."  The Wigley and Raper paper is a significant improvement on the IPCC TAR.  However, the WR assumption of equal probabilities for all scenarios is scientifically invalid.  If WR had used a "50 percent probability" forcing near or less than the B1 scenario, as would be appropriate, their calculated probability of warming of more than 3.1 deg C would be well below 50 percent, and their calculated probability of warming less than 1.4 deg C would be much higher than 5 percent.  Their calculations would produce results near mine, in fact.