Iran, Climate Change and Prediction Error

Mark Twain is famous for saying that "it is difficult to make predictions, especially about the future." My mother often predicted that I would become a bum.  She was right. As a happily retired guy I am sure that Betty would agree with my mom’s vision. 

Predicting the future is both necessary and humbling. Squirrels don’t have spreadsheets and mathematical models, but they gather nuts in anticipation of the coming winter. The playboy squirrels who don’t predict so well lose a lot of weight after winter arrives.  Clearly we learn from squirrels and we predict lots of things that improve our lives. But predicting the future is not an easy thing since the future by definition is unknowable. Those who take actions in anticipation of a specific future often make mistakes – sometimes very damaging ones.

Yet we predict and forecast. I grew up in Florida. During hurricane season we all become forecasters. Will that storm turn into a hurricane? Will that hurricane hit land? If so when will it hit? Where will it bring the most disastrous winds and lightning? Weather forecasters are almost always wrong when it comes to predicting these critical facts about hurricanes.Maybe that is an extreme example but I don’t think so. We modern folks with our math and models forecast a lot of things. It is important to do so. And we do so knowing that we are often wrong.

If you are still awake your mind might be wondering and thinking about all the ways we predict the future. My reason for writing today arises because of what I see as a very inconsistent approach by our present leaders with respect to forecasting some very important things.

The Obama administration is VERY sure that climate change is coming and that without major policy changes and a lot of investment, we and the rest of the world will be threatened. I think he said that climate change is our most important future challenge. There are some very important people and very sophisticated models supporting the urgent need to spend trillions of dollars to change and prepare for things that will happen in the distant future – some expected to arrive more than 50 years from now.

Despite the fact that the future is hard to predict and despite the huge sums of money involved, the president is laser focused on attending to these challenges immediately. In his and his supporters’ minds, this expenditure is worth the risk. His policy makes us all invested bettors on future climate.

Compare this aggressive approach to another important future challenge – nuclear weapons. The world is already in accord that countries will not produce more nuclear weapons. And that accord is for good reasons. While it seems highly irrational that any nation, even a rogue nation, would fire nuclear weapons at another country, we worry that all nations are not always rational. It is like the idea of someone yelling fire in a crowded movie theater. It seems quite irrational to yell those words – yet we have laws to prevent crazy or mean people from doing such things. The world has agreed to control nuclear weapons for similar reasons.

Yet the same administration that worries about climate change wrecking our countries is willing to predict that Iran and North Korea can be trusted to not yell fire in a crowded movie theater – or to not unload a nuclear weapon on one of the rest of us. Obama can vividly see water levels rising and shorelines being over run despite knowing that all this future information is model-driven and about the future 50 years from now. Yet the same Obama cannot imagine a religious zealot or a desperate dictator shooting a nuclear weapon. He cannot see those countries most threatened by nuclear Iran and North Korea arming themselves. He seems to minimize any real threat from a world with increasing amounts of nuclear weapons in the most unstable places. 

Kerry and Obama repeatedly say that the recent accord with Iran will prevent them from obtaining a nuclear weapon yet they also agree that within 10 years Iran will be able to manufacture such weapons freely. They publicly agree that after those 10 years it will take only one year to be ready to aim and fire. So why are we not aggressively trying to prevent that outcome? My grandson Nolan will not be 13 yet in 10 years. I am not particularly crazy about him having to worry about Iran or North Korea or some other despotic place. Clearly this is at least as important as the impacts of climate change on him. Right? 

So here is my question. In the case of global warming, President Obama is willing to forecast the absolute worst. In the case of Iran and North Korea his “models” assume the absolute best. Most economic forecasters that I know (who are not ideologically motivated) bring a “show me” attitude to forecasts. They are always skeptical about their model’s predictions. They always discount the certainty of what we think we know. They always follow their forecasts with a list of caveats longer than a drug company’s list of side-effects in a television commercial.

Why is Obama so sure about the intensity of climate change and so sure that Iran and North Korea will turn into the cutest and sweetest puppies? Why can't we apply conservative and consistent forecast approaches to policies related to climate and national defense? 

Santa, Trump, and Climate Change

That time of the year has rolled around again. Despite a mountain of evidence that Rudolph is really an ISIS spy using Santa’s sleigh to collect reams of personal information, we cut down perfectly good trees, decorate them, and go deep into debt so our children will carry on these traditions.

So naturally I was thinking about Santa when I read Bloomington's Sunday (a week ago) newspaper and came upon the column by notable left-wing columnist Eugene Robinson. The last time Robinson wrote a nice thing about a Republican candidate was when….hmm….I guess I can’t remember. Robinson, like about 2 million other nationally syndicated columnists, likes to write about Donald Trump. Articles about Trump now exceed the number of emails I receive purporting to help me enlarge my male part.

Here is what Robinson says about two-thirds through his article – “It’s not that Trump will do the impossible, it’s that he might do something.” It was this statement that got me thinking and that isn’t easy on a Sunday morning after the annual Christmas tree decorating party that included a brand new half-gallon bottle of JD. This statement by Robinson made me see the glowing connections between Santa, Trump, and Climate Change.

Let’s begin with Santa. We adults, except for Jason, all know that Santa brings no gifts with Rudolph and his sleigh.  As Robinson says, Trump won’t do the crazy stuff he yells about. But we love it when Trump reams the big guys. It’s like we all love it when IU almost beat Ohio State in football. We cheered like crazy knowing that our IU guys would not really win. We’d like to think that we might have won. That’s enough for Hoosiers. We love to tell our kids about Santa and Mrs. Santa and his workshop and shimmying down chimneys drinking milk and eating cookies. We love it because it makes us feel good. We love Trump because he say's things that most people would not say. 

That leaves us with another article that was published Sunday December 13 about climate change. President Obama was quoted in this article as saying, “The climate pact offers the best chance to save the planet we have.” I am not sure about you but the minute I saw that statement the first thing that came to mind was Supergirl. Don’t tell me I am not liberated!

There is a photo in that newspaper article with several key players of the United Nations with thumbs up and hands clapping. The title of the article is, “Historic pact to slow global warming is celebrated in Paris.” Ban Ki-Moon, not related to the infamous Reverend Moon said, “The Paris Agreement on climate change is a monumental success for the planet and its people.”

You would have thought that the representatives of 190+ countries had found a way to stop comets from intersecting with the Earth – or they had eradicated Aids or Pancreatic Cancer. Or maybe they agreed that Iran should name Christmas as an official holiday.

No, these representatives apparently did something monumental to save the plant from climate change. Already you are labeling me a climate change denier. That way you can dispense with me as just another fruitcake from the right. Never mind that. I am saying that you folks who are not climate change deniers have been duped in the usual ways by the usual people. If you care about climate change you were sold down the river by the 190+ smiling government officials.

These people punted every possible real issue. Folks there ain’t no Santa Claus and this agreement has done absolutely nothing to save the planet earth.

Your mom says "go do your homework". But she does not tell you when you have to do your homework. Nor does she tell you how much homework you have to do. Your mom says you have to self-report how much time you spent on your homework. But there are no penalties if you don’t do your homework. Maybe she will frown at you. You agree to do your homework when your friends do their homework but there is no mechanism for your friends to do their homework until they are 45 years old. Even then there are no penalties if they don’t.

No, I am not going to do the boring work of repeating all of the silly things in the agreement that are making so many people pop their corks. But here are a few examples of the silliness as expressed with the words of the contract:

By “some point” somewhere around 2050 emissions need to be reduced to low levels. I checked my calendar and Grandson Nolan will be almost 38 years old then. He is 2.5 now.

Countries are “expected” but not required to meet any targets

Since the agreed targets are insufficient, countries are asked to review them in four years to “see if they can update them.”

There are no penalties for missing targets

Richer countries “should” continue to support the poorer countries. China is “encouraged to pitch in on a voluntary basis.”

I think representatives of those 190+ countries should be asked to sign a statement that says that Santa is real and that Trump has nice hair.  We will then all feel a lot better.

Guest Blogger Harvey H. Homitz on Global Climate Change

From the desk of:  Harvey H. Homitz 

p.o. box 436 Sanibel, FL. 33957

to: Justin Gillis 

C/o. The Editor,

      New York Times, New York, NY.

Re : By Degrees.  

        New York Times, Science section, Tuesday Nov. 11th. 2014

Dear Mr. Gillis,

Congratulations! You are indeed the lead trumpeter for the NYT Green Warming Marching Band if you dig my tune.!  Nothing wrong with blowing a good trumpet,  even if it is for the NYT,  but be careful!  Remember when Joshua blew his at Jericho....the walls came tumbling down.   

We don't want that happening in New York! Right?

Let's not mince words!, for a while now  I've been following  your 'BY DEGREES' piece on Global Warming, or what they now call Climate Change.  That terminological reconfiguration was a smart move, nothing wrong with that!  Better be safe than sorry I always say, especially for you journalists when you get into the prognostication business.  

So! We've got the outcome thing covered but all this headlong charge into Wind and Solar has been bothering me for a while  and I'm relieved that finally you got it ..  Justin Time eh!  

Oops ! I forgot; Justin Gillis.

Well done! You hit the Danes on the Jutland with that one!    What are those 5.6 million Danes going to do when the wind stops blowing and the Norwegians won't give back the electricity  they owe from pumping up their hydro electric dams when there was too much wind? And Danish wind to boot.  More to the point what are they going to do when 45 million Brits., who shut down their Nukes and dirty old coal plants, are begging for a few tera-watts  to save them from freezing in the dark? Eh?

Well I don't mind sharing this one with you; the Brits will do OK without Danish Wind. They've got Lord Browne Fracker!  You know,  the chap who changed British Petroleum to Beyond Petroleum,  jumped out of the closet, quit BP and started fracking all over North England.  

Now you seem to be a bright sort of fellow, very literate if not so numerate.  After all, apart from a few recent exceptions, there's  not many Dodos on the NYT payroll, so you may have guessed by now that I am packed in the sardine section of an Airbus, at Mach .75 , 35k ft. and reading your piece in the Times.  Incidentally, when you say "BY DEGREES" are we talking about Fahrenheit, Uncalibrated, Celsius or Kelvin? Perhaps you should put that little circle with F, U, C or K after 'degrees' so that any real scientists reading it would know what the f*** you're on about.

Now Articles like yours  tend to make one think.   So it occurred to me as I sipped an inferior wine while nibbling fruits and nuts, (appropriately  since I was departing California which is well endowed with both), how lucky I was to be propelled by kerosene and not Danish wind.  Further, with the aid of a slide-rule, (which need not be switched off in flight),  I calculated that it would require 70,000 horses or 350,000 galley slaves at max exertion, to get this Airbus off the ground. Suddenly the sardine section seemed less crowded!

Well, not to worry, you're on the right track now, and being an expert in these matters myself, I don't mind helping you avoid the obvious pitfalls while sweeping on with the grand fallacy.

As luck would have it I'm available.  Let me know when we can start.

Yours from the Last Bastion of Independent and Unfunded Natural Scientists,

Harvey H. Homitz

Purveyor of Sensible Science to Innumerate Literati.

Defense and Climate Change: The Value of Waiting

Economists have models and explanations for anything and everything. Relevant to today’s top issues is the value of waiting. I am sure that many women wish they didn’t have to wait nine months to deliver but they know that trying to have a baby at the end of the third month would not have acceptable results. An economist would say something stupid like – the marginal costs of waiting one less month is greater than the marginal benefit and therefore waiting has value. In the case of pregnancy, most of us wait about nine months. Of course we wouldn’t want to wait 18 months because we know the marginal costs of waiting more would outweigh the benefits.

Maybe you don’t love my example, but we face the costs/benefits of waiting all the time. Should I wait at this red traffic signal for another minute? The young guy with slicked back hair wonders how many more songs to sit through before he asks the babe in the pink hot pants to dance. If our wait is too short, we may experience the costs of a hasty decision. Wait too long and the opportunity escapes.

This issue of waiting came to mind as I was playing with my new Nespresso machine and thinking about climate change and national defense. ( I can't drink JD all the time!) With respect to climate change we have one group of people who deem it urgent. These people advocate full speed ahead when it comes to ending reliance on coal and investing in new non-renewable sources of energy. To the climate change advocates, waiting is not a luxury we can afford. With respect to very recent changes in global terrorism and American security there are some people who also think that waiting is not a viable option. To them terrorism is on our global doorstep and needs to be addressed firmly and immediately.

The value of waiting is being evaluated seriously by climatologists and defense planners. Sadly much of the resolution to these waiting issues is ideological. Many of those who would put climate change in a speedboat are the same folks who would see no rush to deal aggressively with terrorism.  And, of course, vice versa many who favor a rapid response by the US military are those who would drag their feet on climate change. This ideological approach needs to be replaced by something more sensible.

The value of waiting is affected by the expected costs and benefits of waiting. I say “expected” because these impacts are not known and will play themselves out in the future. That means several things. First, except for your spouse, no one knows the future with certainty. Second, that means we have to use models or somehow guess about the future. Third, it means we will have plenty to argue about since no one knows the future. Fourth, the less ideology and emotions play into this valuable exercise, the better off we will be.

But we are a long way from that situation. My bearded long-hair friends say that America has suffered enough. We have no stomach left for a fight. As in the recently cited report by former Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson, these groovy dudes are sure that the costs of global warming are ever-present, immediate, and catastrophic. That’s it. Story over. For every person with those beliefs there is one who thinks that if we wait too long to weaken a growing terrorist threat, we will surely be overrun by vicious enemies who will show us no mercy. These khacki-wearing, button-downed,  crew-cuts see the immediate employment and growth impacts of vigorous environmental policies as swamping any possible future benefits.

Okay my depictions of extreme lefties and righties are pretty stupid but the point is not. We are getting nowhere and perhaps risking our future because we are letting extreme views prevent us from hard-headed analysis about our most important policies. Consider that we have four possible SOLUTIONS, two of which hardly ever get considered:

·        Conservative  Defense Fast; Environment Slow

·        Liberal           Defense Slow; Environment Fast

·        Expensive      Defense Fast; Environment Fast

·     Cataclysmic    Defense Slow; Environment Slow

To decide on one of these or perhaps some combination of these solutions means we have to do the work. We might not know the future but perhaps we can throw away the knives and swords and make use of our best experts. What do we need to know?

·        If we wait on defense, what can we expect from terrorism? What is the most likely outcome? What is the very worst that can happen? How likely is that?

·        If we wait on climate change policy, what can we expect in the way of negative impacts? What is the most likely outcome? How likely is that? 

·        If we move quickly on defense, how much will that cost? What benefits will be gained? Can these policies really accomplish their goals? If the US acts alone, can these policies really accomplish their goals?

·        If we move quickly on climate change, how much will that cost? What benefits will be gained? Can these policies really accomplish their goals? If the US acts alone, can these policies really accomplish their goals?

I know that I am unrealistic to think that our present government representatives can shed their blue and red uniforms to do something sensible for the good of the country. But without a real assessment of these questions I don’t trust either party to do the right things. As in my last post about poverty, I come off sounding naïve in the real world for suggesting that real problems have real solutions. Isn’t everything simply political and ideological? Maybe that’s true. But if people don’t demand better processes and outcomes, then it seems to me there is no way to ever get them. So I continue to spout off even if it amounts to urinating into the wind. 

Climate Change: Where Did All the Cranky Scientists Go?

I wrote about wage gaps recently and now I want to write about climate change. Apparently I am going through the change. These are not macro issues per se. But they are as important as the Indiana Pacer’s playoff chances and therefore I am sticking my head out with full realization that my health is in jeopardy.

Before we get started let’s make something clear. I am not challenging climate change. I think it is real. I am not challenging all those climate change scientists. They know a lot more about climate change than I will ever know – and there are a lot of them.

But I am wondering out loud about their choice of information distribution. Their choices about how to communicate this information cast suspicions on the policy implications of their work. Recall that we used to think the earth was flat. I wonder if there were a few “scientists” around at that time who challenged the prevailing view? What did reporters at CNN say about those guys? I also remember when Hwang Woo-Suk reported that he had cloned a dog he named Snuppy.  A highly regarded professor at Seoul National University, his work was published in the best journals as state of the art stem cell research. It was not until one of his colleagues discovered some funny business that we found out the truth. He had really cloned Nancy Pelosi. Ha ha. Just kidding.  Remember all the buzz about cold fusion? It was going to save us all from electricity costs. Hmmm – maybe not, at least not for a couple hundred years.

Two points. 1. Science doesn’t always have it right even though a lot of highly regarded scientists agree. 2. Science is ongoing and it is skeptical. If you have been sentenced to any college courses about science they will always tell you that everything we know and learn derives from using the scientific method. No not the rhythm method Charlie – the scientific method. There is a lot of common sense in that statement. It basically says that you “don’t know nuttin” until you subject your ideas to the data. If your idea passes the empirical test – then scientists say – you failed to reject your hypothesis. Notice the wording – it DOES NOT say that you proved your point. It does say that you didn’t reject your idea this time and you get to pretend like it is true – at least until the next test of it comes around. That’s my dear friends is science.

Notice the conservative or skeptical approach to knowledge taken by scientists. The data confirms you this time fella – but we are not going to really trust this idea until we test it again. And again. And again. Even Einstein’s theories changed over time as scientists found that previous versions could not pass new tests. When I was a youthful maco-scientist and sent my path breaking articles to the academic journals, I knew that I would get an earful back. As other economists pored over my results they found weaknesses and they were quite clear and vocal about them.

Science is ALWAYS skeptical. And this gets me back to climate change. I spent the day finding and then pouring over the latest report: IPCC Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change at http://www.climatechange2013.org/images/report/WG1AR5_SPM_FINAL.pdf

This shows you how boring my life is that I would take a perfectly good sunny afternoon and sit in my office and read this long and tedious report. Okay I did sip a little JD. The full report is not available and won’t be until later in the year. What I looked at was the Summary for Policymakers (33 pages of very small print). But give me a little credit for going through the report. I doubt that any of our policymakers or anyone in the press did that. And I am guessing even fewer people will actually read the full report when it comes out. Why? Because those scientists published a special version of the report in a press release that was two pages in length and had no real scientific terminology. It did have words like

A new report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) shows

that global emissions of greenhouse gases have risen to unprecedented levels despite a growing number of policies to reduce climate change. Emissions grew more quickly between 2000 and 2010 than in each of the three previous decades.

According to the Working Group III contribution to the IPCC’s Fifth Assessment Report, it would be possible, using a wide array of technological measures and changes in behaviour, to limit the increase in global mean temperature to two degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. However, only major institutional and technological change will give a better than even chance that global warming will not exceed this threshold.

These words are not science-skeptical and they give very little clue about disagreements of any kind in the analysis. They did explain that 31 teams from across the globe worked on the report. In fact, this press release is nothing but ringing an alarm bell and endorsing public policy. I am not sure what these scientists know about public policy but they didn’t explain that either. Clearly most of the press didn’t care. They were ready to spread the religion.

What is missing in the 2 page press release, sadly, is also missing in the longer report for policy makers. The longer report does have a lot of scientific jargon. But it doesn’t have a scientific attitude. It is skeptical about nothing. I would love to get some of the round-earth-ers together – people who thought some results of the flat-earth consensus were weaker than others. There must be some scientists inside this IPCC group who agreed with some general principles and conclusions but who saw some weaknesses in the models.

Some of these caveats come out but they are dispensed with as soon as they are mentioned. The recent 15 year hiatus in global warming is attributed to deep water or some such thing. I was a kid 15 years ago. That’s a lot of time to dismiss because it flies in the face of other facts. Real scientists love it when things fly in the face of their assumptions. Sherlock Holmes would find the smallest clue and that would take him to the killer. These were the same clues missed by other detectives. It is also interesting that many global climate change models work for the world – but somehow don’t explain specific regions.  If I had an economic model that explained Indiana’s spending but the model could not explain spending of Hooisers who live in Indianapolis, you might wonder about that model. Climate change scientists admit this but then move on as if it were an afterthought. They sweep it under the rug.  In economics we would call that an aggregation problem. It clearly bears further investigation. What would Sherlock do with that? 

And speaking about models, the real test of models is how they predict the future.  It is nice if a model can explain the past but the future is the real litmus test. This report admits that previous forecasts using similar models that were used to predict the last 15 years are totally off – we got cooling instead of warming. So we are supposed to believe the predictions of the newer models for the next 15 years. If I predicted stocks wrong for the last 15 years – few of you would let me invest your money today.

Of course, the easiest test of models is to see how they “predict” the past. These are trial runs. How did our model do? Scientists look at model errors to ascertain how much to trust its results or validity. Students who take statistics courses learn about model errors, and t tests and R squares,and such things which help us be very quantitative about the accuracy and validity of models. But in all 33 pages of this Summary for Policymakers there are no such statistics. Are policymakers devoid of statistical understanding? Instead these learned scientists use terms like “high, medium, or low confidence”  to give credence to their long string of individual results. Two footnotes on page 3 explain the meaning of these terms and I can tell you that the assigned meanings have more to do with camaraderie of scientists than statistics. To be a “likely” outcome of the model, the assessed probability of occurrence would be between 66-100%. 66% is likely? Is 66% enough to support major changes in the way we live?

I am not a climate change scientist. But I do know good scientific principles. The press release says that it will take “substantial investments” to mitigate the worst of climate change. They estimate a reduction of world output of about .06% -- a very small number. Then they conclude this “the underlying estimates do not take into account economic benefits of reduced climate change.” I wonder where they got those figures?And I wonder where the scientists are who take a more Sherlock Holmes approach to the finding of this august body.  

If policymakers are to know how to deal with climate change – they need more precision about the nature, degree, and timing of climate change. What they get in this report is only half the story. Where are the scientists who are brave enough to tell the full story and reveal the weaknesses in these models? Where are the caveats? Where are the probabilities that the model makes errors? Where is the real science? Perhaps they are right about urgency. A more scientific communication might sway some of us in that direction. Until then we will wonder what the full story is.