Boreal B[l]og

One of the interesting experiences about learning is a new language is the new world that opens up to one who can read books written in that new language and listening to videos narrated by speakers of that language.  Translations are important, but there really is a difference when one reads a book written in the original language.

Reading several German books has nearly doubled my vocabulary in the past six months, for while I can understand the meaning of a book, it is essential to look up specific words I do not know.  This flies in the face of some advice, to learn words in context, but when I took my PSAT exam years ago, my contextual definitions were often wrong.  From that day forward, if I am uncertain what a word means, I look it up.  I have multiple different lists, and I memorize….daily.

I am not going to use all those words, but if I am to understand German–.and now Spanish, too, for I am learning that — I need to know what those other words mean, for while I may not say them, others will.  I am continually amazed by words I thought I would never need to know that were said a few days later.  I learned “die Libelle,” dragonfly, and wondered when I would ever to use it.  A week later, on German radio, there was a description of research done about die Libelle, and I immediately thought “wow, something is going on about dragonflies”.  The something was how they caught die Stubenfliege, fly.  Every word that I can understand gives me more pieces of the puzzle that is called conversation.

My experience with German is one person’s.  I am mostly self-taught, because there have been few with whom I have been able to speak or write on a regular basis.  Good grammar books are not common.

German videos have shown me all parts of the world.  Many are from Germany itself, so I have seen the large cities and the northern coast–North and East Seas–separated by the Danish peninsula.  I have seen parts of Bayern–Bavaria–that I did not have time to see when I was in München.

Still other videos have shown me, narrated in German, apricot harvests in Turkey;  nomads in the high arctic of Russia, dealing with the “gas rush”; salt mining in Bolivia; tree houses for research in Costa Rica; research on the Andean Condor in the Argentinian Patagonia; a women’s co-op in Yemen and water filtration in Peru.  One was about Portland, Oregon, describing the lifestyle.  Another in the US showed homeless eking out a living in the California desert, living in conjunction with snowbirds.  A third showed Detroit beginning to turn into a farming city, using empty neighborhoods to grow crops.  I miss some meaning, but I don’t miss much.  A lot of the translations are slow, and I know enough Spanish and French to know when there is not a full translation into German.  That is a lot of fun to recognize.

A recent video was about harvesting pearls in the Philippines, off the coast of Palawan, the long island at the western end of the Archipelago.  I never saw Palawan, but I have spent a lot of time in the Philippines.  I was struck by not only the way pearls were harvested, but the science being used to run genetic crossing of the mussels, trying to produce the most valuable golden pearls.

There are other problems, too, that I hear about.  Virtually every video that discusses the environment comments on climate change, viewed from the local perspective. On these videos, I have not heard one word saying that climate change is a hoax.  Perhaps the videos are biased; perhaps not.  Coral reefs are bleaching, which is not news.  The northern end of Palawan is too warm (32 C., or nearly 90 F.) for growing mussels.  The oceans are getting warmer.  This is a fact, not fiction, not a hoax.  They are also growing more acidic, which is also a fact, due to carbon dioxide.  For those who say that man is not changing the environment, ocean acidification is the smoking gun that says we are.  This has made the news in the last several months; I knew about acidification in 2006.

Water vapor is, of course, the most prevalent greenhouse gas.  As air warms, there can be more water vapor present, because warming makes gas molecules move faster, keeping them from condensing.  Air at 31 C, all else equal, may contain 2 grams more water per cubic meter than air at 30 C.  The amount of air over the tropical ocean would best be measured in millions of cubic kilometers.  Does it prove anything?  Perhaps not, but there is a lot of circumstantial and non-circumstantial evidence to suggest we have a problem.  Water expands with heat, with a coefficient of expansion of about 0.0002/degree C.  Warm water 1 degree C. and the worldwide 110 million square kilometers of ocean surface plus a significant depth expand a lot, when multiplied by 0.0002/C.  Add glacial melt, and we get ocean rise, which is well documented to the tenth of a millimeter per year.  This rise will be at least 70 cm this century, but some think maybe a meter, and can easily flood a coastline where there is a shallow angle from sea to land.  In addition, salt can easily contaminate the water table.   If you live in Kansas, that is no big deal, unless we prove that the drought of 2012 was due to climate change.  It may not be.  Or, it may be.  The question goes back to Clint Eastwood in “Dirty Harry”:  “How lucky do you feel?”

What continues to interest me is how nearly every place these videos are shot has an environmental overtone.  Water in Peru is a problem because of the receding glaciers.    Drought in Yemen is the cause of decreasing biodiversity, which is important both for the planet, and for humans, because many of our ideas for new medications or molecules come from natural compounds.  There are just too many of us, and the planet is showing signs of big signs of wear.  I haven’t heard much about this in English, but I sure am hearing about it in German.

On a recent science podcast, climate models were being discussed, one conclusion of which was that droughts like the 2011 one in Texas were 20 times more likely to occur today then they were 50 years ago, and that this was due to climate change.  However, floods that devastated Bangkok recently were felt not to be due to climate change, but rather a cyclical issue that was worsened by the way Bangkok had built since the last such flood.

There was a call from a listener, and as soon as I heard the tone of voice, I said to myself, “Uh oh.”  Some listeners call in with questions, some give speeches.  This one did both.  He wanted to know if the models were so good, what the temperature was going to be in a certain city in the Midwest next July 4 and for the following 3 July 4ths.

He had a very angry, challenging tone of voice.

Climate models are not the same as weather prediction.  We cannot predict the weather accurately more than a few days in the future.  Does that make the GFS, ECWMF, NAM, AVN and other models wrong?  Yes….and No.  As a statistician, I learned the following:  “All models are bad.  Some are useful.”  Weather forecasts are based on atmospheric models, which differ according to initial conditions and the relative weight of the known variables.  I remember 50 years ago, when weather forecasting was done by a non-meteorologist on television, and the forecasts were not very good.  We have gotten a lot better; short-term forecasts, in the 24 hour range, are exceptionally good; I use the GFS 9 day model as a rough idea of what to expect in the coming days, but I know matters will change.

Climate forecasting is another science altogether, taking into account different long range variables.  From 40 years ago, when climate scientists, unaware of key variables, thought there might be cooling, to now, where virtually all believe warming is highly confident (95% being considered highly confident), there has been much research and ability to get information about the past.  The fact that a confidence interval is used means that statistical techniques have been taken into account, and while the conclusion may be wrong, it is highly unlikely that it is.

Let me explain a confidence interval:  it is NOT a probability, or it would be called such.  It is a range, based on the evidence, of where the parameter (the true measurement) is expected to be.  The parameter is unknown and unknowable, so that the interval either contains or does not contain the parameter.  This makes no sense with probability, so we call it confidence.  If we are able to repeat the experiment 100 times, we would expect 95% of the intervals generated to contain the parameter.  We would not know, of course, which 95 would.  The fact that models are not perfect is taken by far too many to allow them to take the other view, that they are wrong.  One may, of course, choose to do so, but it behooves those who disagree to come up with their own margin of error, p-value, and confidence interval, so the data can be appropriately discussed.  To say,”models are wrong,” is inappropriate for a scientific discussion.  Of course they are.  Statistics as a predictor is wrong, but good statistics state the likelihood an error of a defined amount will occur.

Probability is forecasting the future.  There is almost nothing complex in our world that we can forecast perfectly.  There must be some error.  Every responsible scientist quantifies that error in some manner; to do otherwise is to say that one can predict with absolute certainty what the future will bring.  We don’t do this with temperatures in Iowa on July 4th, where the next hurricane will form, or even its 10 day path.  Nor do we say, with absolute certainty, that the Earth is warming.  But the range that the models are giving us does not include zero or a negative number with high confidence, and that means the conclusion is, based on the current data, that the Earth is warming.

While correlation does not equal causation, there may be factors that make such causal.  Because we know that one greenhouse gas has increased (carbon dioxide), that another, in the face of warming, has increased (water vapor), a third and fourth (nitrogen oxide and methane) are increasing, we have reason to believe that the conclusions are not in error, and that there is a causal factor.

Anybody who follows hurricane forecasts is familiar with the cone of uncertainty, and the fact that the cone changes with time.  We saw this with Irene last year, and we saw the gradual westward shift of Isaac this year, as the initial forecasts showed Isaac to strike Tampa.  With time, the models showed a westerly drift of the hurricane’s expected path, and for it to ultimately strike New Orleans.  The models were constantly updated, and the gradual change was noted.  What did not happen was that the hurricane dissipated, it curved into the western Atlantic, or it went south into the Caribbean.  The models were good.  They were not perfect, but they were very good, and three days before Isaac made landfall, it was predicted to hit very close to where it eventually did.

Nate Silver says that the cone of uncertainty for hurricanes was 700 miles in diameter 25 years ago and 200 miles in diameter today.  He is studying models to understand why some work and others do not.  But the poster child for good models is weather and climate science.

Models to some have become the new “Bad Boy” of climate science.  Every responsible scientist develops models, if it is all possible.  Indeed, the dawn of simulation was about 15 years ago, and I remember running simulations in graduate school in 1998.  We are now able to do this so much better than we once did.  Debate should be over what models are used, their initial factors, the variables, and the conclusions, not whether or not we should use them.

“When god created the horse, he said to the magnificent creature: I have made thee as no other. All the treasures of the earth lie between thy eyes. Thy shalt carry my friends upon thy back. Thy saddle shall be the seat of prayers to me. And thou shalt fly without wings, and conquer without sword; oh horse.” 

— the Qu’ran

And Ruth said, Intreat me not to leave thee, or to return from following after thee:  for whither thou goest, I will go, and where thou lodgest, I will lodge: thy people shall be my people, and they God my God.

–Ruth 1:16.

What is wealth? Being happy with what you have.

—The Torah

September 1963.  I begin 10th grade in a new school in Wilmington, Delaware, a southern leaning state.  Before class starts, we have the Pledge of Allegiance to the Flag.  We sit down.  Then, the homeroom teacher opens a Bible and begins to read.

I was stunned.  Bible Reading?  This isn’t upstate New York, any more, Mike.  You are in the South.  She read a few verses, then we all stood and recited the Lord’s Prayer.  Well (n-1) did, because having been raised Unitarian, I never learned it.  Within a week, I knew it cold.  Good thing, too, for the Supreme Court banned Bible reading after that.

Prayers in the school, before events were common.  Frequently, I would hear “let each of us in our own way, pray.”  I like that.  What I didn’t like was the leader ending it “in Jesus’ name”. when a good share of the school was Jewish, or me, a Unitarian, where it was said the only time the word “God” was spoken was when the janitor fell down the back stairs.

On Memorial Day, 2012, one of the Arizona legislators gave a speech, honoring “Christian veterans.”  I was appalled.  I was also angered.  I am a veteran who happens not to be Christian.  Did that make my service somehow less valuable?  What did being Christian have to do with military service?

Two months earlier, two Jehovah’s Witnesses came to my front door.  I listened politely, then told them that I did not foster my religious beliefs on others, and I did not appreciate their trying to convert me.  I asked them, using “Please”, to leave.  They did.  My late mother had a different approach, when the Witnesses said, “Don’t you want to live forever?”  My late mother, a Unitarian, said, “Certainly not.  I can’t imagine anything worse.”  The Witnesses were tongue tied.  That might have been a first.  My late father was fond of saying, “My prayers were answered, and the answer was ‘NO’.”

On a language Web site, a Muslim from Algeria looked at my profile, saw that I didn’t put a religion, only that “We are stewards of the Earth.”  He wrote me, saying while I had a good profile, it was a shame that I would be going to hell.  I seethed but stayed silent.  I knew I would never change his opinion, so why waste his time?  Not responding is one of the best ways to stop a conversation.

On this same Website, religion seems to keep appearing as a topic.  I was teaching English to a Russian woman from southwest  Russia, near the Caspian Sea.  One Saturday, I asked her what she was doing that day.  The answer was “Not much. I’m Muslim.”   She quickly followed with, “does that bother you?”

It didn’t….until later.  I am reading the Qu’ran, and I have found many Muslims on this language site who have taught me a great deal about their religion.  Unfortunately, this woman then said, “I hope you will convert.”  That bothered me, because I don’t ask people if they will convert to my way of thinking about religion.  I said, that I couldn’t believe in Allah, although I liked many other aspects of Islam.  She replied, “You’re wrong,”  two of the most charged words in the English language, almost guaranteed to make somebody angry.  I just said, “Whoa…..stop this right now.  This is your opinion and not mine.”  She did.  I wrote her later, and told her that a lot of Americans would have immediately ended the conversation permanently.  Little did I know I would be one of them.  I mentioned in my letter that 9/11 was devastating to how many Americans felt about Islam, to which she countered: “The US government caused 9/11 for oil.”

That was the final straw.  I had not brought up religion.  She had.  And in the space of 18 hours had managed to want me converted, said I was wrong, and espoused a conspiracy theory.  I told her that if she did not admit the possibility of being wrong, she would not hear from me again.  I got back, “You just don’t want to hear the truth.”

And so ended my teaching experience with her.

All religions offer solace to their believers.  The most beautiful writing from three of the world’s great religions is at the top of the page.  Those who live their faith are fine people.  Those of us who believe how we live our life defines us as human beings can also be fine people.

I have noted throughout history that was once God’s will is now understandable. People used to die from infected hangnails, or mild gunshot wounds, like President Garfield.  Now, we can treat these problems.  Rheumatic Fever and death from diphtheria or acute lymhoblastic leukemia were “God’s will,”  until the advent of penicillin and chemotherapy. Hemoptysis from bronchiectasis was God’s will until we discovered it was M. aviae complex, and treatable with triple therapy.  Untreatable cleft palates were God’s will, until plastic surgery.  We don’t see these problems much any more.

I believe in good science, which self corrects and moves forward, each generation standing on the shoulders of the previous generation and looking further.  I also believe there is a great deal that is unknown and to date inexplicable, There are many ways people deal with the unknown.  I am curious about it and want to know why.  Others use faith.  If I liked their way better, I would take it.  I don’t.  And I don’t ask them to take my way.  It is impolite, it is not going to happen, and it will make them angry.

To the legislator who honored Christian Veterans, I have these comments:  Jews, Muslims, Mormons, Buddhists, Wikkans, Atheists, Agnostics and others like me make up this country and have served honorably.  Honor those who serve.  Keep religion out of the discussion.

Faith, or lack of, is deeply personal.  Honor others’ views, unless or until they cross a line that you find you cannot tolerate.  Then walk away, sadly and quietly.

For more than 10 years, I cleaned a two mile (3 km) stretch of Highway 83 north of Sonoita, Arizona, alone, in the high grasslands.  I hauled out a huge bag of garbage for every 0.4 mile (0.6 km), on one side, counting over 100 cigarette butts in that distance, too.  Considering the fire danger there, small wonder “government” made it illegal to throw cigarette butts.  We could have just made it voluntary, but even with regulation, every week thousands of people threw cigarette butts out the window along that 25 mile (40 km) road.

People don’t regulate themselves when it comes to littering.  That is a fact, and I saw it in the Boundary Waters in the 400 campsites I cleaned, too.  I don’t think we have laws against throwing soda bottles at those who pick up litter, so I guess it was acceptable to be hit while trying to “keep America beautiful.”  It was hot, dirty work, with rattlesnakes, fast cars nearby, and sharp sticking plants that had plastic bags impaled on them.

By cleaning those two miles, I saved having the government doing it and therefore made government smaller.  All government had to do was haul away the trash every week.

A while back, This American Life had a show called “What Kind of a Country Do We Want?”  The discussion was about size of government, using Colorado Springs as an example.

TAL is a good show.  They interviewed people on both sides of the issue, and even had an interview with Grover Norquist, who runs Americans for Tax Reform, and has been quoted as wanting government so small it can be drowned in a bathtub.  In his New Yorker article and later, he said, “We’re winning.”  I think he’s right.

And that scares me.  The other thing at the end of the show that scared me was a guy who said he was anti-taxes, even when it cost him more money to turn on the street lights, because “people should take care of themselves.”  Wow.  That’s a great idea.  Until your life caves in.  You lose your job, and you’re are my age.  Good luck in finding another.  You get deathly ill, and each CT scan rings up a few thousand dollars you don’t have.  Or you are a woman who gets breast cancer, and have to have chemotherapy and miss work.  Oh yes, you are a single mother, too.  I haven’t mentioned things that don’t always kill, like meningitis, M. aviae complex (MAC disease), but cost a great deal of money.  Nor did I mention a woman I know, who does vigorous outdoor work for a living, who needed surgery for spondylolisthesis, which gave her disabling back pain.  Without the surgery, covered by insurance, she’d be bedridden and her family destitute.

Sierra Vista, AZ, would have burned down last year, had it not been for the National Interagency Fire Center, a wonderful melding of 8 governmental agencies, to save duplication, that prioritizes fires and sends trained people to put them out.  No, I didn’t hear anybody in Cochise County complain about big government as government workers put their lives on the line to save the town.

Nor did I hear Iron Range residents in Minnesota, who threw out one of the best Congressman in the House, easily the most bicycle friendly one, because they wanted an anti-government person representing them.  When the Pagami Creek Fire jumped the lines and ran 12 miles in one day in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area, I heard not one voice speak out against the firefighters, who held the fire to 92,000 acres and kept it from running 60 miles further to Lake Superior.

An acquaintance of mine, who hates big government, is on government assisted medical care, and is not old enough for Medicare, a government program, although 40% of its and SSI recipients aren’t aware of that. I never called him out on how he can hate big government and yet take health saving benefits from the government.  I thought such a question rude.  I am usually called out on my contradictions immediately.  I haven’t asked this man if he gets Social Security.   “Keep the government out of my Medicare” was a remarkable line during the insurance reform debate.

Government is big, it is expensive, it has some inane rules, and at best it is often the butt of jokes.  How big should government be?  And that is an important national discussion we need to have.

For me, the answer is big enough to do those things for people that they just cannot do for themselves, like defend the country, take care of those who have catastrophic needs, ensure safety in public places–highways, the sky, put out huge wildfires–and in short, be the arbiter when two individuals or groups claim right of way, and something has to give.

In other words, we need government, because we cannot regulate ourselves properly, because it is impossible, or we choose not to do it.  Some examples:

1. Airline security.  That was run by the airlines until… 9/11.  Now it is run by the government, and it was a Republican government who created the cabinet position.
2. If you watch “Coast Guard Alaska,” there are a lot of independent folks up in “The Great Land” who have been saved by the Coast Guard.  For them, that part of big government works, although as a group, Alaskans probably don’t think much of big government….until water pours into the engine room of a fishing boat on a windy night 100 miles off the coast in 40 degree (4 C.) weather.  That’s OK.  It’s a contradiction, but that is the basic problem.  We all want things, but we don’t want to pay for them.  Congress is just people, who want everything, and want to cut the national debt.  It can’t happen, any more than you can lose weight by eating more and not exercising.
3. JCAHO, which has accredited hospitals.  As a neurologist, medical director of a hospital, and former member of the executive committees of both my county and state medical associations, I can assure you that doctors don’t regulate until they are forced to do so.  Then the regulations are a real pain, like lab safety (CLIA), JCAHO itself, and patient privacy protection (HIPAA).
4. The Interstate Highway system, begun under a Republican administration.  This was a federally funded system that revolutionized transportation in the US.
5. The Federal Aviation Administration, which has rules as to who takes off and flies what route and when.  I can’t imagine a free for all in the skies.  I sure wouldn’t fly.  Read on to see what happened when there was a free for all.
6. The National Park Service, which keeps areas like the Grand Canyon available to the public.  Sure, we could allow building and development all along the Rim, and down in, but at what cost?  It was the 26th president, a Republican named Roosevelt, who said “you cannot improve upon it.”  The NPS didn’t regulate flights over the Grand Canyon, which created a lot of unsavory noise, until a helicopter and a fixed wing collided on 18 June 1986, killing about 20 Dutch tourists and a few others near Tuna Creek, probably burned to death before they hit the ground.  Yes.  That happened.  Now, flights go elsewhere, and the Canyon is safer….and a lot more quiet.
7. Lack of regulation of Medivac helicopter flights, which led to two helicopters colliding near a Flagstaff, AZ hospital, killing 7, all of whom, including those being transported, would have survived without flying.  I think we need regulation of Medivac helicopter flights, because in many instances they are not urgent and life-saving.  Two people from the hospital I worked at died in the Pinaleño Mountains near Safford, AZ in 1992, when a helicopter collided with a mountain at night.  The person they came for could have been transported by ground and indeed was.
8. The Department of Defense, because somehow a bunch of 40 year-old men in Idaho aren’t going to be able to build and operate aircraft carriers and B-1 bombers.
9. The funding that allows every doctor to go to medical school, and allows others to graduate from college.  The funding that allows research to be done and put in the public domain, where others can view it, a critical distinction from private research.

Do I really need to go on?

I don’t know where government should stop.  As soon as people self-regulate and do things that might not be in their economic interest, then we might not need government to do it.  Had the medical community adopted my voluntary reporting of medical errors to a neutral body, we wouldn’t need to look at federal regulation.  I contacted more than 5 dozen heads of medical groups and got zero support.  We don’t know how many such errors occur every year, because we don’t count them, something else I offered to do for free in Arizona, but got no support.  This is a fact.  Indeed, more House members backed my measures in Arizona than doctors.  The Hospital Association killed the legislation.

Nor do we have regulation as to how much radiation people should get for medical procedures.  Approximately one-third of ED patients get a high radiation imaging procedure, and 1/3 of all children get one.  We are performing an uncontrolled experiment on the people in this country when it comes to radiation.  There is no excuse for whole body scans, when a good physical examination can guide the imaging procedure.  It is costly, dangerous, and unnecessary.  Having been sued, which is usually the excuse given for doing these procedures, I will still say many are unnecessary, and I will predict an increase in certain cancers and in birth defects beginning around 2020.  I really hope I am wrong.  But my strong statements need some way to prove or disprove them.

But I come back to “we just have to take care of ourselves.”  I remember Katrina, when we saw the homeless outside the Superdome, because we had decimated FEMA.  Every city has tens or hundreds of thousands of those who cannot pay for a major illness, cannot insure themselves against a host of things, cannot afford to retire, but can no longer work.  It’s a great idea to let people take care of themselves, until they just can’t.  Then what?

Do we privatize things?  I don’t know.  In theory, it is a good idea.  Private companies have to compete, and they will provide better quality for less money.  Maybe.  Private companies also have to make a profit, and the experience with privatization in Iraq wasn’t great, with shoddy workmanship, which led to electrocutions in showers, and substandard body and vehicle armor.  Can privatization work?  Yes.  I’d like to see my wireless bill drop and my successful calls increase, instead of the reverse.  How big?  How much?  I don’t know.

What kind of country do we want?  Ideally, one that works and doesn’t cost a lot.   We have to have a government run court system to adjudicate matters.  That is clear.  We have to have a group to pass laws, because we need laws to govern a society.  That is also clear.  And we need an executive body to set the tone of the country and to negotiate with other world leaders.

Like many things in the world, there are no easy answers.  Both Republicans and Democrats have increased the national debt.  Both have raised taxes.  Both have started unfunded wars.  It is not really a partisan issue.  Before we offer solutions, let’s ask good questions:

1. What is America about?
2. What should the government do and not do?
3. What should people do and not do?
4. At what point does a person’s freedom to do something (like not wear a helmet or get obese) conflict with another person’s freedom not to have to be taxed to pay for it?

There are other questions we probably need to ask, too.  Let’s ask all the right questions and then start working on figuring out what the best answers are.  Those answers won’t be right, but they will be a start.  I know one thing for sure:  sound bites are no solution.  This is a huge gray area, and we are doing too much arguing from the black and white sides.

It’s time to take a hard look at where the country should go.

This was written before the big fires that hit Colorado, including Colorado Springs.  One of the requests for President Obama was to be for “cash”.  It is ironic, although not surprising, that Colorado Springs, where a man said, “People should take care of themselves,”  must depend upon the resources of the federal government in order to survive.   Most of the time, we should want to be able to take care of ourselves.  Sometimes, however, we just can’t.  And that’s where we need the government.  Life just isn’t as simple as we’d like it to be.  My taxes should go to help the National Interagency Fire Center help Colorado Springs, even if I never plan to visit that city again.  I should be taxed for this.  Voting against one’s economic self-interest is something I should do.