The Quack Hunter

The American Martin Gardner died this week, aged 95. Although he wrote many popular books and articles on mathematics, his most influential work was a 1952 book called "Fads and Fallacies in the Name of Science". In a straightforward and charming way, he explained how to tell pseudoscience from real science (for those who haven't heard of it, science is when you try something, observe the results, and then draw conclusions based on those results). He then went on to demolish more than two dozen popular fallacies. Many of those are still widespread, like homeopathy, flying saucers, and scientology. Some, like chiropractic and naturopathy, have become more scientific but still rely heavily on pseudoscience. Others, like ESP or Lawsonomy, are nearly forgotten.

This was a brave book to write in the 1950's. Even more so than today, quack science had legions of devoted supporters--not just National Enquirer readers, but senior members of the government, universities, and the private sector. When the book was written, it had only been 10 years since eugenics was the national policy of Germany, and Lysenkoism was still the national policy of the USSR. These were extreme cases, but even the most obscure quack caused harm, by convincing an ill person to rely on quack medication, by confounding real knowledge with fiction, or simply by bilking the gullible or lonely.

In the 21st century, we are still struggling with pseudoscience. For most people, modern science is indistinguishable from magic. In a world where the Library of Congress can fit in a $50 USB key, where our food, clothing, cars, almost everything we own is derived from a black sticky goo, and where doctors can see the inside of our bodies without radiation or incisions, it is easy to understand why. In some ways things are even worse than the 1950's; then, science was respected for ending World War II, curing polio, curing hunger. Today, scientists are often marginalized as prophets of doom or mad scientists, and it is Wall Street wizardry that drives the popular imagination.

I recognize the limitations of science, but it is still one of the best tools we have to understand the world we live in. Climate change, humanity's greatest threat, can never be addressed with creationism or scientology. Carbon credits, energy efficiency campaigns, and tree planting can never curb global warming unless they have a sound foundation in fact. So I urge anyone and everyone to read Martin Gardner's book and learn to tell the real McCoy from the snake oil.

For a more modern discussion of the field of pseudoscience, I invite you read Ben Goldacre's books or articles.

Buried words

Mister tolerates tar fixing, pinching
Applying to doubt pin commerce
Sound taking.
Deer chin tone tap canapé -- idyllic
Foolish casting crenel
Croaks radioimage view milligram.

350 or bust (part II)

After the failure of the Copenhagen talks, the 350.org organizers sent out a call for suggestions on the next step we should take. Here is what I wrote to them.

Hello all,
Thank you for your hard work on our behalf. It is essential to keep reminding the public and the politicians that climate change is driven by chemistry, which is non-negotiable.

What is the way forward from here? We must certainly keep pushing for an international accord--a patchwork of non-binding national strategies could conceivably lower CO2 to 350 ppm, but there is no way to be sure, and we only have one shot at this. So to rephrase the question, what would need to have been different for Copenhagen to have succeeded? In my view, the answer is to have Greens at the negotiating table not on the streets.

As a Canadian, I am deeply ashamed that my government spearheaded the "climate change skeptic" camp. If we had a more green government, our delegation could have been a force for progress instead. Several powerful governments also have an industrialist ideology, and their negotiators tried and failed to reconcile that ideology with CO2 reduction. Environmentalists traditionally avoid partisan politics--it is a demeaning, frustrating, and time-consuming sphere to work in--which has left political power in the hands of "business liberals" or "business conservatives". They will do the minimum they can get away with when it comes to decarbonizing the economy. So what I propose is that the 350.org coalition lend support to the Green Parties around the world to move their governments in a more green direction. It takes time to organize election campaigns and win seats, but at this junction I see it as the best way forward.

all the best,
Andrew Carkner
Montreal, Canada

'Fourteen days to seal history's judgment on this generation'

I can't say it any better than this...


Copenhagen climate change conference: 'Fourteen days to seal history's judgment on this generation'

This editorial calling for action from world leaders on climate change is published today by 56 newspapers around the world in 20 languages
The Guardian, Monday 7 December 2009

Today 56 newspapers in 45 countries take the unprecedented step of speaking with one voice through a common editorial. We do so because humanity faces a profound emergency.

Unless we combine to take decisive action, climate change will ravage our planet, and with it our prosperity and security. The dangers have been becoming apparent for a generation. Now the facts have started to speak: 11 of the past 14 years have been the warmest on record, the Arctic ice-cap is melting and last year's inflamed oil and food prices provide a foretaste of future havoc. In scientific journals the question is no longer whether humans are to blame, but how little time we have got left to limit the damage. Yet so far the world's response has been feeble and half-hearted.

Climate change has been caused over centuries, has consequences that will endure for all time and our prospects of taming it will be determined in the next 14 days. We call on the representatives of the 192 countries gathered in Copenhagen not to hesitate, not to fall into dispute, not to blame each other but to seize opportunity from the greatest modern failure of politics. This should not be a fight between the rich world and the poor world, or between east and west. Climate change affects everyone, and must be solved by everyone.

The science is complex but the facts are clear. The world needs to take steps to limit temperature rises to 2C, an aim that will require global emissions to peak and begin falling within the next 5-10 years. A bigger rise of 3-4C — the smallest increase we can prudently expect to follow inaction — would parch continents, turning farmland into desert. Half of all species could become extinct, untold millions of people would be displaced, whole nations drowned by the sea. The controversy over emails by British researchers that suggest they tried to suppress inconvenient data has muddied the waters but failed to dent the mass of evidence on which these predictions are based.

Few believe that Copenhagen can any longer produce a fully polished treaty; real progress towards one could only begin with the arrival of President Obama in the White House and the reversal of years of US obstructionism. Even now the world finds itself at the mercy of American domestic politics, for the president cannot fully commit to the action required until the US Congress has done so.

But the politicians in Copenhagen can and must agree the essential elements of a fair and effective deal and, crucially, a firm timetable for turning it into a treaty. Next June's UN climate meeting in Bonn should be their deadline. As one negotiator put it: "We can go into extra time but we can't afford a replay."

At the deal's heart must be a settlement between the rich world and the developing world covering how the burden of fighting climate change will be divided — and how we will share a newly precious resource: the trillion or so tonnes of carbon that we can emit before the mercury rises to dangerous levels.

Rich nations like to point to the arithmetic truth that there can be no solution until developing giants such as China take more radical steps than they have so far. But the rich world is responsible for most of the accumulated carbon in the atmosphere – three-quarters of all carbon dioxide emitted since 1850. It must now take a lead, and every developed country must commit to deep cuts which will reduce their emissions within a decade to very substantially less than their 1990 level.

Developing countries can point out they did not cause the bulk of the problem, and also that the poorest regions of the world will be hardest hit. But they will increasingly contribute to warming, and must thus pledge meaningful and quantifiable action of their own. Though both fell short of what some had hoped for, the recent commitments to emissions targets by the world's biggest polluters, the United States and China, were important steps in the right direction.

Social justice demands that the industrialised world digs deep into its pockets and pledges cash to help poorer countries adapt to climate change, and clean technologies to enable them to grow economically without growing their emissions. The architecture of a future treaty must also be pinned down – with rigorous multilateral monitoring, fair rewards for protecting forests, and the credible assessment of "exported emissions" so that the burden can eventually be more equitably shared between those who produce polluting products and those who consume them. And fairness requires that the burden placed on individual developed countries should take into account their ability to bear it; for instance newer EU members, often much poorer than "old Europe", must not suffer more than their richer partners.

The transformation will be costly, but many times less than the bill for bailing out global finance — and far less costly than the consequences of doing nothing.

Many of us, particularly in the developed world, will have to change our lifestyles. The era of flights that cost less than the taxi ride to the airport is drawing to a close. We will have to shop, eat and travel more intelligently. We will have to pay more for our energy, and use less of it.

But the shift to a low-carbon society holds out the prospect of more opportunity than sacrifice. Already some countries have recognized that embracing the transformation can bring growth, jobs and better quality lives. The flow of capital tells its own story: last year for the first time more was invested in renewable forms of energy than producing electricity from fossil fuels.

Kicking our carbon habit within a few short decades will require a feat of engineering and innovation to match anything in our history. But whereas putting a man on the moon or splitting the atom were born of conflict and competition, the coming carbon race must be driven by a collaborative effort to achieve collective salvation.

Overcoming climate change will take a triumph of optimism over pessimism, of vision over short-sightedness, of what Abraham Lincoln called "the better angels of our nature".

It is in that spirit that 56 newspapers from around the world have united behind this editorial. If we, with such different national and political perspectives, can agree on what must be done then surely our leaders can too.

The politicians in Copenhagen have the power to shape history's judgment on this generation: one that saw a challenge and rose to it, or one so stupid that we saw calamity coming but did nothing to avert it. We implore them to make the right choice.

This editorial will be published tomorrow by 56 newspapers around the world in 20 languages including Chinese, Arabic and Russian. The text was drafted by a Guardian team during more than a month of consultations with editors from more than 20 of the papers involved. Like the Guardian most of the newspapers have taken the unusual step of featuring the editorial on their front page.

This editorial is free to reproduce under Creative Commons

Woven and stratified delite

One of the things I love about the English language is how adaptable it is. Despite the stern prescriptions of high school English teachers, its punctuation, spelling, and syntax can be stretched and spun to convey a broad array of moods and meanings. English also absorbs foreign words (ie, foreign concepts) freely. In this post, I’ll present for your reading pleasure a few samples.

Menace
West of Arkham the hills rise wild, and there are valleys with deep woods that no axe has ever cut. There are dark narrow glens where the trees slope fantastically, and where thin brooklets trickle without ever having caught the glint of sunlight. On the gentle slopes there are farms, ancient and rocky, with squat, moss-coated cottages brooding eternally over old New England secrets in the lee of great ledges; but these are all vacant now, the wide chimneys crumbling and the shingled sides bulging perilously beneath low gambrel roofs. The old folk have gone away, and foreigners do not like to live there. French-Canadians have tried it, Italians have tried it, and the Poles have come and departed. It is not because of anything that can be seen or heard or handled, but because of something that is imagined. The place is not good for imagination, and does not bring restful dreams at night.
-20th-century horror novel (from The Color out of Space by H.P. Lovecraft)

Saga
“In the begynnyng of Arthure, aftir he was chosyn Kynge by adventure and by grace—for the moste party of the barowns knew nat he was Uther Pendragon son but as Merlyon made hit openly knowyn, but yet many kyngis and lordis hylde hym grete werre for that cause—
But well Arthur overcom hem all. The moste party dayes of hys lyff he was ruled by the counceile of Merlyon; so hit felle on a tyme Kyng Arthur seyde unto Merlion, “My barownes woll let me have no reste but nedis I must take a wyff—and I wolde none take but by thy counceile and advice.”
-start of a 16th-century tale (from Le Morte Darthur by Sir Thomas Malory)

Dogfaces
“I tol’im iffie tried to fuck me over, I was gonna kick ‘is fuckin’ ass, iddnot right?”
“Fuckin’ A.”
“Soey kep’on fuckin’ me over and I kicked ‘is fuckin’ ass in fo’im, iddnot right?”
“Fuckin’ A.”
“An so now they tellin’ me they gon’ th’ow my fuckin’ ass inna fuckin’ stoc-kade! You know what? They some kind fuckin’ me over!”
“Fuckin’ A well tol’, Bubba.”
-World War II “army creole” (from Wartime by Paul Fussell)

Piety
“O Untouchable, and forever blessed, singular and incomparable virgin Mary Mother of God, most grateful temple of God, the sacristy of the Holy Ghost, the gate of the kingdom of heaven, by whom next unto God the whole world liveth, incline O Mother of Mercy the ears of thy pity unto my unworthy supplications, and be pitiful to me a most wretched sinner, and be unto me a merciful helper in all things.”
-medieval prayer (from The Book of Hours, 1559 edition)

Description
Our civilization, pace Chesterton, is founded on coal, more completely than one realizes until one stops to think about it. The machines that keep us alive, and the machines that make machines, are all directly or indirectly dependent upon coal. In the metabolism of the Western world the coal-miner is second in importance only to the man who ploughs the soil. He is a sort of caryatid upon whose shoulders nearly everything that is not grimy is supported. For this reason the actual process by which coal is extracted is well worth watching, if you get the chance and are willing to take the trouble.

When you go down a coal-mine it is important to try and get to the coal face when the 'fillers' are at work. This is not easy, because when the mine is working visitors are a nuisance and are not encouraged, but if you go at any other time, it is possible to come away with a totally wrong impression. On a Sunday, for instance, a mine seems almost peaceful. The time to go there is when the machines are roaring and the air is black with coal dust, and when you can actually see what the miners have to do. At those times the place is like hell, or at any rate like my own mental picture of hell. Most of the things one imagines in hell are if there--heat, noise, confusion, darkness, foul air, and, above all, unbearably cramped space. Everything except the fire, for there is no fire down there except the feeble beams of Davy lamps and electric torches which scarcely penetrate the clouds of coal dust.
-20th-century journalism (from The Road to Wigan Pier by George Orwell)

Rant
Fuck the South. Fuck 'em. We should have let them go when they wanted to leave. But no, we had to kill half a million people so they'd stay part of our special Union. Fighting for the right to keep slaves - yeah, those are states we want to keep.

And now what do we get? We're the fucking Arrogant Northeast Liberal Elite? How about this for arrogant: the South is the Real America? The Authentic America. Really?

Cause we fucking founded this country, assholes. Those Founding Fathers you keep going on and on about? All that bullshit about what you think they meant by the Second Amendment giving you the right to keep your assault weapons in the glove compartment because you didn't bother to read the first half of the fucking sentence? Who do you think those wig-wearing lacy-shirt sporting revolutionaries were? They were fucking blue-staters, dickhead. Boston? Philadelphia? New York? Hello? Think there might be a reason all the fucking monuments are up here in our backyard?
No, No. Get the fuck out. We're not letting you visit the Liberty Bell and fucking Plymouth Rock anymore until you get over your real American selves and start respecting those other nine amendments. Who do you think those fucking stripes on the flag are for? Nine are for fucking blue states. And it would be 10 if those Vermonters had gotten their fucking Subarus together and broken off from New York a little earlier. Get it? We started this shit, so don't get all uppity about how real you are you Johnny-come-lately "Oooooh I've been a state for almost a hundred years" dickheads. Fuck off.
-21st-century anonymous website (from "Fuck the South" by Annotated Rant)

Emotion
i go to this window

just as day dissolves
when it is twilight(and
looking up in fear

i see the new moon
thinner than a hair)

making me feel
how myself has been coarse and dull
compared with you, silently who are
and cling
to my mind always

But now she sharpens and becomes crisper
until i smile with knowing
-and all about
herself

the sprouting largest final air

plunges
inward with hurled
downward thousands of enormous dreams
-20th-century poem (“i go to this window” by e. e. cummings)

Correspondence

-20th-century letter (from The Father Christmas Letters by J.R.R. Tolkien)

Decadence
“I'm Catherine, Myrtle's sister.”
“Oh.”
“People say we look like twins, but I don't think so.”
“I'm Nick. Won't you sit down? I told that boy about the ice.”
“These servants! You really have to keep after them all the time. You live down on Long Island, too?”
“Yes, in West Egg.”
“Really? I was down at a party in West Egg about a month ago, at a man named Gatsby's. Do you know him?”
“I live next door to him. He's German.
“Really?”
“Really. The cousin or nephew or something of Kaiser Wilhelm. That's where all his money comes from.”
“I'm scared of him.”
“Why?”
“I'd hate him to get anything on me.”
“Oh.”
-20th-century aristocrats (from The Great Gatsby by F.Scott Fitzgerald)

Uptight
"You know, I don't think I could take a mellow evening because I - I don't respond well to mellow. You know what I mean? I have a tendency to - if I get too mellow, I - I ripen and then rot, you know."
-20th-century Woody Allen (from Annie Hall)