Category Archives: Mathematics

The Climate Models

On the verge of failure.

It’s an interesting exercise to attempt to model climate, but the notion that we should base public policy on these toys, particularly given the incompetence of many of those doing it, is insane.

[Update a while later]

It’s worth quoting the conclusions here:

It is impossible to present reliable future projections from a collection of climate models which generally cannot simulate observed change. As a consequence, we recommend that unless/until the collection of climate models can be demonstrated to accurately capture observed characteristics of known climate changes, policymakers should avoid basing any decisions upon projections made from them. Further, those policies which have already be established using projections from these climate models should be revisited.

Assessments which suffer from the inclusion of unreliable climate model projections include those produced by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the U.S. Global Climate Change Research Program (including the draft of their most recent National Climate Assessment). Policies which are based upon such assessments include those established by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency pertaining to the regulation of greenhouse gas emissions under the Clean Air Act.

In other words, all of the president’s latest job- and wealth-destroying power grab.

[Update a few minutes later[

Failure deniers– the problem with public-sector science:

Private companies which kill products or ideas administer the pain quickly and move on. If government ever tries to end a program or operation — “ever” is the operative word, as Ronald Reagan frequently noted: ”The nearest thing to eternal life we will ever see on this earth is a government program” — they go about it slowly, in hopes that outraged politicians or constituents will come to their rescue. If total termination ever occurs, they call it “a learning experience,” which of course was carried out with other people’s money, and rarely includes any learning.

Because they can do it with other peoples’ money. Time to take their (that is, our) money away.

What To Do About Global Warming/Cooling

I see a problem with this approach, I think, unless I’m missing something:

1. Are global temperatures warming?
2. Do the negative consequences of the change outweigh the positive consequences?
3. Can we do anything that will reverse the change?
4. Do the positive consequences of the action outweigh the negative consequences of doing nothing?

Notice, the steps have nothing at all whatsoever to do with whether or not global warming is anthropogenic. The climate’s “naturalness” is actually irrelevant. If a 10 kilometer-wide asteroid were hurling toward earth at 100,000 km per hour, it would be a completely natural event. However, just because the meteor wasn’t anthropogenic doesn’t mean that we wouldn’t take actions to deflect it.

Notice also, that we could change question 1 from “warming” to “cooling” and the four-step approach still works. And quite frankly, cooling is probably a more historically problematic situation.

If the answer to any one of the above four questions is “No,” then we should do absolutely nothing about a changing climate. If the answer to all of the questions are “Yes,” then, and only then, should we take any actions.

The first problem is in step 3. It doesn’t seem to account for cost. Suppose there is something that we can do (at least in theory) to reverse the change, but it would result in the loss of (say) a quadrillion dollars in global economic growth over the next century. And that points out the problem with Step 4. Rather than comparing the positive aspects of the action to the negative consequences of doing nothing, we need to compare the positive consequences of the action to their cost. For example, Wikipedia (FWIW) says that the gross world product is about seventy trillion dollars. If we were to get a growth rate of 4 percent over a century, that would mean that in 2113, the GWP would be (1.04)**(100), or about fifty times that amount, or about 3.5 quadrillion dollars. If by arbitrarily making energy more expensive with carbon taxes or caps, we were to reduce that growth rate by a mere half a percent (which is probably a conservative estimate — many of the proposals would do much more economic damage), that would reduce the factor of growth after a hundred years to about thirty, instead of fifty. That is, the world would be 20 times seventy, or 1.4 quadrillion dollars poorer over that period of time. You can buy a lot of mitigation against climate issues with that kind of money.

This is the kind of rational analysis that Bjørn Lomberg has been doing, and it’s why we need a real regret analysis.

A Perl Mystery

I’m trying to write a script to consolidate my book index, and I’ve run into a problem that’s driving me nuts. Can anyone see what’s going on here?

Here’s the relevant code:

if ($pagenumber) { #6
$numbers = $_;
$i = 0;

foreach (@numberarray) {
$numberarray[$i] = “”;
$i = $i + 1;
} # End foreach
$i = 0;

foreach (@sorted_numbers) {
$sorted_numbers[$i] = “”;
$i = $i + 1;
} # End foreach
$i = 0;

print $DEBUG2 “\$numbers is $numbers before entering while.\n”;

while ($numbers =~ /(\d+)(.*)/) {
print $DEBUG2 “\$1 is |$1|, \$pagenumber is |$pagenumber|.\n”;
if (!($1 eq $pagenumber)) {
$numberarray[$i] = $1;
$i = $i + 1;
} # End if
print $DEBUG2 “In while loop, \$numberarray[$i] is $numberarray[$i].\n”;
$numbers = $2;
print $DEBUG2 “Point 10: \$numbers is $numbers, \$i is |$i|.\n”;
} # End while
$numberarray[$i] = $pagenumber;
print $DEBUG2 “After while loop, \$numberarray[$i] is |$numberarray[$i]|, \$sorted_numbers[$i] is |$sorted_numbers[$i]|\n”;
@sorted_numbers = sort { $a <=> $b } @numberarray;
@numberarray = @sorted_numbers;
print $DEBUG2 “After sort, \$sorted_numbers[$i] is |$sorted_numbers[$i]|.\n”;

print $DEBUG2 “After sort \@numberarray is @numberarray, \$numberarray[$i] is $numberarray[$i].\n”;
$i = 0;
print $DEBUG2 “About to enter foreach (\@sorted_numbers).\n”;
$next = $i + 1; #Just for diagnostics
print $DEBUG2 “Before foreach, \$totalname is |$totalname|, \$numberarray[$i] is |$numberarray[$next]|, \$numberarray[$next] is |$numberarray[$i+1]|.\n”;
foreach (@numberarray) {
print $DEBUG2 “Got inside the loop.\n”;
print $DEBUG2 “**\$totalname is $totalname for \$i = $i.\n”;
$totalname = $totalname . ” ” . “$numberarray[$i],”;
$i = $i + 1;
}
print $DEBUG2 “Before chop condition, \$totalname is $totalname.\n”;
if ($totalname =~ /.*\,$/) {chop $totalname}
print $DEBUG2 “After chop condition, \$totalname is $totalname.\n”;

And here’s the debug output, for two different cases. One works, the other doesn’t and I can’t figure out what’s happening, but whatever it is, it seems to be happening in the sort. They should both give similar output — the name and a single page number, but as you can see, they don’t.

CASE 1

$numbers is Michael Adams 19, before entering while.
$1 is |19|, $pagenumber is |19|.
In while loop, $numberarray[0] is .
Point 10: $numbers is ,, $i is |0|.
After while loop, $numberarray[0] is |19|, $sorted_numbers[0] is ||
$sorted_numbers[0] is |19|.
after exiting @numberarray is 19, $numberarray[0] is 19.
About to enter foreach (@sorted_numbers).
Before foreach, $totalname is |Adams, Michael|, $numberarray[0] is ||, $numberarray[1] is ||.
Got inside the loop.
**$totalname is Adams, Michael for $i = 0.
Before chop condition, $totalname is Adams, Michael 19,.
After chop condition, $totalname is Adams, Michael 19.

CASE 2

$numbers is Bill Anders 26, before entering while.
$1 is |26|, $pagenumber is |26|.
In while loop, $numberarray[0] is .
Point 10: $numbers is ,, $i is |0|.
After while loop, $numberarray[0] is |26|, $sorted_numbers[0] is ||
$sorted_numbers[0] is ||.
after exiting @numberarray is 26, $numberarray[0] is .
About to enter foreach (@sorted_numbers).
Before foreach, $totalname is |Anders, Bill|, $numberarray[0] is ||, $numberarray[1] is ||.
Got inside the loop.
**$totalname is Anders, Bill for $i = 0.
Got inside the loop.
**$totalname is Anders, Bill , for $i = 1.
Got inside the loop.
**$totalname is Anders, Bill , , for $i = 2.
Before chop condition, $totalname is Anders, Bill , , 26,.
After chop condition, $totalname is Anders, Bill , , 26.

The Climate Models

…are getting worse than we thought:

The author hypothesizes the reasons for this are that attempts in the latest generation of models to reproduce observed changes in Arctic sea ice are causing “significant and widening discrepancy between the modeled and observed warming rates outside of the Arctic,” i.e. they have improved Arctic simulation at the expense of poorly simulating the rest of the globe.

It continues to amaze me that so many supposedly smart people take this junk science seriously. You know what this stuff looks more and more like to me? Epicycles.

Fifty To One

A new climate education project:

50 to 1 cuts across all the noise and fury surrounding the ‘climate debate’ and gets right to the point: Even if the IPCC is right, and even if climate change IS happening and it IS caused by man, we are STILL better off adapting to it as it happens than we are trying to ‘stop’ it. ‘Action’ is 50 times more expensive than ‘adaptation’, and that’s a conclusion which is derived directly from the IPCC’s own predictions and formulae!

Here’s a link to the Indiegogo site.

Being Normal

Thoughts from Sarah Hoyt:

You see, the human desire to mimic and fit in is one of our strongest instincts. We are social apes. And we take our cues from stories, whether those stories unroll before our eyes, are in a sacred book, are passed down in the culture, or are poured at us in books and TV.

Now, here’s the thing – the Marxists understand this all too well. A few of you, before, when I called them a religion (there is no such thing as a secular religion, btw. Believing in afterlife is not needed for a religion. If I’m informed correctly some older forms of Judaism are at least mum on the subject. Communism is a mystery religion, relying on “something happens” to make their paradise come about right here on Earth. To their credit they work towards the ‘something” that is to transform man. To their lack of credit, both their goal and their methods are repugnant.) But they are. They have created their fantastical past paradise – the supposedly communitarian past/female dominant option not included, though they let the feminists run with it – their fall from grace – the introduction of private property – their sin – “greed”, meaning wish for personal improvement in circumstances – and their hope of paradise – the emergence of the homo Sovieticus, though I suppose they don’t call it that now. After that, of course, it would be the return to the communitarian paradise.

(They fail to understand that their communitarian paradise is actually a h*ll of individuals being treated as things, and that, because the collective can’t ever decide things as a collective, an individual ends up taking control. Which takes us right back to feudalism. But let that pass. And having told a commenter not to trust enemies of a religion as information on it, I’m bound to say I’m not. I was taught by true believers. It just didn’t take.)

I’ve always found normality to be highly overrated, myself. It’s not normal, for instance, to be much smarter than average, by definition. I’m always amused when people complain about gays wanting to “normalize” their behavior (which is clearly abnormal), as though there is a moral component to statistics.