Boreal B[l]og

After the New Hampshire primary, a friend commented that she didn’t want her taxes to go to send other people’s children to college, a comment on Sen. Bernie Sanders’ plan for free college education.

I was surprised and a little disappointed to hear that.  Through grants, to name one example, government is involved in education.  My taxes go to many places that are irrelevant to me.  I have no children,  I don’t eat meat, and I’m not a woman.  Should I have the right not to be taxed for public education, grazing fees on my land, and Planned Parenthood?  Of course not.  Is my friend going to vote for the other side, who will defund  Planned Parenthood and require that all rape-caused pregnancy be carried to term?   I was against the Iraq War long before it started, but my taxes went for that debacle.  I will never drive on roads in Texas again, so why should my taxes go for that?

While we are at it, we could get rid of the phrase “hard earned dollars.”  Sometimes they are, sometimes not.  In any case, the phrase is worn out.

There are things that the federal government must do, because we as people living in towns, cities and states simply cannot do them ourselves with our own resources.  We can’t clean up after a devastating natural disaster without federal help.  Yet, more than 30 Senators voted against Hurricane Sandy aid, even though many were from states that FEMA has been to many times after devastating storms.  We can’t defend ourselves against major foreign powers, and we can’t pay for medical care for the elderly or infirm.  We can’t build a national system of roads, and we can’t have a national weather service, the NIH or the CDC without the federal government.  These and so many other programs are essential to our well-being.  Live in the South?  Maybe you are glad the National Hurricane Center exists.  Government shouldn’t do everything, but there are things government can do.  And should.

People ought to save for retirement.  I did.  Sure, there are many who buy toys or travel everywhere without putting anything away and then find themselves old with no money.  I am not sure what is going to happen to them, except they will have less—but not zero—money.  We ought to make it easier to save, and we have to an extent with IRAs.  We need to do more, however, because if a senior is destitute, somebody somehow has to care for them, unless we are a different country from the one I thought we were. I had good fortune and a good job.  In the 45 years of being between 20 and 65, had I developed a significant medical problem, and I hadn’t had insurance, I would have become bankrupt.  Many have.  It doesn’t matter whether or not a person was saving money or whether the problem was their fault.  They need a safety net.  We can argue about the size of the safety net or whether people like me should receive it, just because we reached a certain age.  That is fair.  But the fact our taxes go to pay for something somebody else gets doesn’t a priori make it wrong.  That’s what elections are about.  My taxes are payment for my annual bill of being an American, and frankly, it is a great bargain.

People ought to have a healthy lifestyle, too.  Why should I pay for smokers who develop emphysema or lung cancer?  Or those who eat the wrong diet and suffer the consequences?  Or motorcyclists who have accidents and weren’t wearing helmets?  The list is endless.  I could add to it the question “Why should I pay for future cases of Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy caused by football, soccer, or hockey?”  Nobody forced those people to play the game.  Many made a lot of money.  Why, I could ask, don’t they fund themselves?

What we have accomplished with our collective will and our federal government is so pervasive in our lives we don’t recognize it but take it for granted.  It isn’t; it may be removed at any time.  When FEMA was decimated under Bush, we saw what happened to New Orleans.  Bush’s response to Katrina did as much to bring down his presidency as Iraq.  Had Social Security been privatized, the recession would have bankrupted millions of people who get by on something they were never intended to get by on.  I shudder to think what will happen if Medicare is taken away.  It can be.  All it needs is a president, a Congress, and a Supreme Court willing to do it, and if one thinks that is impossible, one is unaware of reality.  I am already preparing for 2017 and 2018, when the other side is in power and the safety nets are removed.  I am counting on voters finally waking up and showing up to vote in November 2018 to take back Congress and stop the madness.  Being American voters, I may be hoping for too much.

Every time we drive on a federal highway/Interstate, we are seeing what our taxes went for.  Every time we go into a national forest or a national park, we see it. The food labels for nutrition that are so helpful are a federal law.  We ought to have point-of-origin food labels and label GMOs. The medications we take are safer, due to the FDA.  If one flies, there is the FAA, NTSB, and the TSA.  Indeed, we now have the TSA, because prior to 2001, the airlines were responsible for security, and we saw what happened.  Pilots are trained to certain standards.  Flight attendants are, too, and everything that they say was legislated.

Regulations exist to ensure there is a certain baseline of information that is given to the public.  Regulations in food safety exist because without them, we have no guarantee that each food service facility will do the right thing.  Regulations exist, because every year we see what happens without proper regulation.

Here’s my plan for who pays for college:  I would bring back the Civilian Conservation Corps and the GI Bill, make young people serve their country and then give them the education they want.  College for young people is a better investment than the Iraq War was. My downpayment for being an American was serving my country.  The annual payment is called taxes.  I get a say in what happens.  That’s my social contract.

Let’s bring it back.  It will help bring us together.

Chris Christie was in the news again, stating that the climate has always changed, and he saw no crisis.  He wasn’t quoting any scientists about this, but he had a “feeling” that it wasn’t.  ISIS, on the other hand is a crisis.

What is ironic is that the existence of ISIS has a lot to do with climate change.  Syria is a dry country; from 1900 to 2005, six droughts occurred, and all lasted one season, with about a third of the normal rainfall.  From 2006-2010, four seasons of extensive drought occurred, which was unprecedented, leading to the displacement of 1.5 million people.  If I heard that, I must have forgotten it, but Syria was in the midst of a major upheaval in its economy before the recession which then led to the current situation.  Irrigation had not been completed, and addressing water shortages was poorly done.

The long range water outlook is not good for either Syria or the Middle East.  Had it not been for a change in the climate, that Governor Christie says is “the climate is always changing,” we might not have ISIS to deal with at all. Trust me, the US Defense Department believes in climate change and is actively trying to deal with a new reality when the Arctic is ice-free, and there are wars fought over fresh water.

Mind you, addressing climate change adequately is not going to happen.  That’s clear.  We have many vocal deniers, and I do fault the Associated Press for saying the proper term is “skeptics.”  No, a true skeptic will demand evidence and change his or her mind in the face of convincing evidence.  I will and have changed my mind in the face of convincing evidence.  The climate deniers I have known will not.  Ask for a margin of error or confidence, they will give either no answer or “100% confident,” which is impossible given the complexity of the atmosphere and one’s ability to understand all the factors.  What has been particularly pernicious has been the sowing of enough uncertainty that the average busy American thinks that the issue really isn’t settled and we shouldn’t change our lifestyles at all.  Gas mileage for cars should now average 60 mph, which I get on a 2003 Civic; instead, fuel economy languishes a bit over a third of that.

My computers have run 55.73 quadrillion points (that is 5, with 16 zeros after it) of climate models, as part of climatenetwork.net.  I am running Australia-New Zealand models that showed the Earth every 5 or 15 minutes for a few year period of interest. It’s something I can do right now to help the situation.  From these models, we know that the record October temperatures in Australia were 6 times as likely to have occurred because of global warming.  I know how complex these models are, which require up to 390 hours of computational time for each change a researcher does.  There are hundreds of these, changing variables of interest, in case emissions of CO2 decrease or methane increase, for example.  By doing this, we can make probabilistic statements about climate change vs. natural variability.  We know that up to a quarter of the severity of California’s drought is from climate change, and the least is still about 7%.  Notice the range of estimates, for uncertainty quantification is a big part of science.  Syria’s drought is less uncertain and almost clearly a result from climate change.  One drought on average every 17 years and then four straight years of drought is highly significant, meaning it is not a chance occurrence.  Something caused it with high probability, and we can quantitate that probability.

It is ironic that Hurricane Sandy, which devastated New Jersey, Christie’s home state, is part of  the new normal—storms that look the same as always but are not the same.   One of the things we have learned about global warming is that the ocean’s temperature has increased well below the surface, far further below than we thought.  That limits the atmospheric warming increase, but we have no idea what a deep warming of the ocean portends.  It may have been the reason Hurricane Patricia was so strong, because hurricanes require warm water, and the deeper the warm water goes in the ocean, the more the fuel for the hurricane.  We also don’t know what warmer oceans will do to the atmosphere over them.  The climate deniers don’t think there is a problem.  I think there is a problem; I just don’t know how it will manifest itself.  If I had a child or a grandchild, I would be very worried about their lives in a world whose climate is going to take a direction we have never seen as a species.  Put another way, if one has children and denies what is extremely likely, one is being unfair at best and cruel at worst to their progeny.

What good are models?  Indeed, I had one individual tell me to argue my case without using climate models.  What should I use?  Mr. Christie’s “feelings” that he knows he’s right?  Let’s look at feelings a little more.  Nate Silver runs fivethirtyeight.com, which predicts many events, including the elections.  In 2012, there were people who “had a feeling” how certain states would vote,  whereas Mr. Silver used weighting of polls based on past performance to make probabilistic determinations of how states would vote.  He wouldn’t say that North Carolina would be won by Romney; he said there was an 85% probability that it would be.  It was.  Silver got all the major contested states right; he got all the states right.  It wasn’t a feeling, it was statistics.  The others were dead wrong.  The “political sense” that Pennsylvania would go to Romney was completely erroneous.  Silver not only predicted it, his prediction of the popular vote percentage was almost completely accurate.

With weather models, we have extraordinarily high probabilities of knowing what is going to happen in the next 48-72 hours.  I don’t think we should be timing rainfall’s starting to the nearest minute or should give the probability of rain to the nearest per cent, but the idea of a major storm or heat wave can be seen by looking at the models.  Climate models aren’t perfect, but they are the best knowledge we have, and over decades, they are far more predictive than the weather forecasts.  All of the models are pointing towards a warmer Earth with consequences that are known and others that are not known.

I don’t know what is scarier to me, what will happen to the climate or the fact that the three major branches of government of the most powerful country on Earth will likely be controlled by those who believe that there is no problem at all.  They are wrong, they are foolish, they are arrogant, and they will be the cause of first the downfall of the country and then the species.

I’m sure I’ll be blamed, but I won’t be around to hear it.  The first steps of that have already occurred.

There is a mouse problem at the barn where my wife spends a week or two every month with her horses.  Much as she loves animals, she does not want mice eating the feed, and there are too few cats there for too many mice.

When she went to the local feed store, looking for a certain poison, the clerk told her it was no longer present.  “The government won’t let you have it any more,” the man said,

“We are the government,” my wife replied.

The reason for not selling the poison is that we discovered that mice killed by it became food for raptors, which died after eating the carrion.  We banned DDT in 1972, because it concentrated in the fat of eagles, made their eggshells thinner, breaking before hatching.  After we stopped using DDT, the population recovered.  You didn’t think manufacturers of DDT were going to voluntarily stop selling it, did you?  That’s Ayn Rand’s world, not mine.  We took lead out of paint in 1978 because it is a neurotoxin, especially in children.  We used to have leaded gasoline.  Cars back then ran better with tetraethyl lead, but they run better now with unleaded gas.  California banned lead in gasoline in 1992, the rest of the country in 1996.  The percent of children with high lead levels has decreased from 7.6% to 0.5% since 1997.  That’s not due to the oil or auto industry demanding the removal of lead from gasoline. That is we the government, we the people, telling them to do so, improving public health.

Oh, Robert Kehoe, medical head of the Ethyl Corporation, helped keep lead in gasoline for 40 years.  In 1943, when research showed that children with elevated blood lead levels had behavioral disorders, the powerful corporation threatened to sue and the research stopped.  Kehoe argued lead occurs naturally, the body could deal with it, and thresholds for lead toxicity were far above what body levels were. That sounds a lot like arguments I hear against global warming.  In fact, Kehoe’s upper limits for lead toxicity were 80 micrograms/100ml, when current upper limits survived Reagan’s anti-regulation policy and are 10 micrograms/100ml.   We have smarter kids and maybe less crime, since there is a remarkable correlation between per cent with high lead levels and crime rates.

In 1937, S.E. Massengill Company marketed Elixir Sulfanilamide without alcohol.  Their chemist dissolved the product in diethylene glycol (DEG) (similar to antifreeze) and added raspberry flavoring.  DEG causes kidney failure, but in 1937, few, including the chemist, knew that. One hundred seven died, many of them children, and the outcry caused Congress to pass the Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act, which required companies to perform animal safety tests on proposed new drugs and submit the data to the FDA before being allowed to market the products.  Massengill said, “We have been supplying a legitimate professional demand and not once could have foreseen the unlooked-for results. I do not feel that there was any responsibility on our part.” The chemist felt differently.  He committed suicide before trial.

A young researcher, Frances Kelsey, was involved in the DEG studies.  Dr. Kelsey later stopped the use of thalidomide in the US, saving untold numbers of American children from being born with phocomelia, or no limbs.  Government meddling again. Just let the pharmaceutical company put whatever they want on the market.  People will make the right choice.  Right, Ayn?

What would happen, pray tell, if we trashed all the “onerous regulations” that we have in place, removing second hand smoke, stop marketing cigarettes to children, mandating child seats, seat belts and air bags, vaccinations, dangerous toys.   Do people really want to do away with government regulation?  Do we want people to die from something preventable?

In 1979, failure of companies to have an adequate amount of chloride in new soy-based infant formulae led to 130 infants developing chloride deficiency.  The new product was faulty, despite company claims. How many have to die, be made ill, miserable, hospitalized at great cost, before we get things right?

In 1989, the number of new foods introduced annually was so large that there was concern people had no way to decide the safety, cost, and nutritional value of what they bought.  One may say, “the market” will decide, but “the market” requires people to decide based upon facts, not ads, and honest numbers, rather than slick commercials.  The change did not come from “voluntary action,” for it never does.  In 1990, after the Nutritional Labeling and Education Act, we started seeing all those numbers on food we buy at the store, and now even at places like Starbucks, where the other day, I had a cup of coffee in one of those red “Satan sippers.”

I wanted something nice with my coffee, but everything that looked good under the glass had 300+ calories, and even if I jogged home, I might burn a third of that.  I ended up buying Vanilla Bean Scones, 300 calories for 3 of them, figuring 100 calories a day extra for 3 days I could handle.  Everything under the glass looked great, for 400-600 calories.

What else did the Nutritional Labeling Act do for me?  Ten years ago, when I suddenly found my profile not to my liking, I stopped peanut butter, which I love, and olive oil, diminishing my intake 600 calories a day.  I read the labels. The change was slow, but over six months, I lost nearly 4 kg or 9 pounds.  On a trip to Oregon, preparing for the move, I ate at a coffee shop every morning, enjoying a Marionberry muffin, which must have been 500 calories extra.  A little of this, a little of that, and the weight came back.

For the past year, nothing changed, despite a lot of hiking and running, remaining 5 pounds heavier than I wanted.  Obviously, I was eating as many calories as I was burning.  That’s thermodynamics.  I then took a hard look at my grocery shopping.  It turned out to be an easy look:  I found two items of note: yogurt I bought was 60 calories more than a comparable amount, which tasted the same.  That isn’t much, but the fancy vegetarian hot dogs I had two days a week were another story.

I was stunned.  Each was 280 calories a pop, 1120 total when I had them for dinner twice a week. By going back to the traditional type, I saved 720 calories alone every week.  Added to the yogurt I was eating, I could eat essentially the same for 1140 fewer calories a week.  Within six weeks, I had lost 1.5 kg, more than 3 pounds.  I couldn’t have done it without the Nutritional Labeling Act.

For every “onerous” regulation, there were a large group of people who once said, “somebody ought to pass a law”.  That’s what politics should be, doing good for people.  I’m not out to trash capitalism, but I’m damned if companies should get away with….murder.  Their fiduciary responsibility is to their stockholders.  We the government have a fiduciary responsibility to we the people, not we the stockholders.

The converted boat on the Alsea River, upstream from Waldport, Oregon, looked like an ideal place to dine.  The Alsea is wide there, tidewater country, and my widowed father, the man he was sharing a beach rental with, and I had decided to try the place.

It took 20 minutes to get seated, and the place was empty.  That was a bad start.  The time from ordering to being served made me wonder whether the owners had called over to Waldport, got the dinner there and brought it back.  The vegetables were cold, most of the entree had to be sent back, and when they asked if we wanted dessert it was oh no thank you give us the check please we are leaving sooooo quickly.  Even so, I would have left a tip.  My father did not, saying it was only the second time in his life he hadn’t tipped.

He was 89.  I didn’t think it wise to ask him about the other time.

Fast forward a decade to a Denny’s in Bakersfield, right by Cal 99, where getting seated was slow, in part because some guy had to break a $100 bill to pay for his dinner, and the manager needed to be called.  Another guy didn’t speak much English, and after laboriously going through the entire bill, he was asked about a tip.

“Zero”, he said.  I cringed.  Not even a quarter.

Forward another year, to the PDX Park and Fly driver, taking me over to the airport.  I was alone, but then a group of seven lightly dressed people, young, beautiful, and probably rich, heavily loaded with bags, going some place nice, got on, with a lot of heavy lifting done by the driver.  They got dropped off first, with the driver’s lifting everything again, and nobody left a tip.

As we went to the next concourse, the driver was so angry he drove right by it and we had to loop around.  I had to hear him rant for another 5 minutes and had less time to catch my plane.  Had he a gun, given the current climate, he might have been on national news.  But I understood his anger.  I didn’t know what kind of day he had.  He might have been a bad diabetic, he might have lost a job and found this one, told that “the tips are good, so we won’t be paying you much per hour.”  I don’t know.  I had crappy service, and I hauled my own bag, but I still tipped him.

Because you do that, unless you yourself are pretty badly off.

Several years ago, which these days is the number I think plus 8, Dear Prudence had a column about tipping.  A lawyer from DC commented that he tipped on the basis of service; if the service were bad, he didn’t leave a tip.

Prudence let him have it with both barrels blazing, using terms like “Buster,” “arrogant,” and “little boy,” telling him in no uncertain terms that tips are what allow a lot of people to “sort of get by,” rather than to be on the street.  “Sort of get by” means living in a car, a big step up.  With tax breaks for real estate, oil, new companies to relocate, agriculture, the IRS makes sure it cracks down on tips, bringing a whole new meaning to “regressive taxation.”

Dear Prudence changed my behavior.  I’ve seen my share of bad service over the years, and while a lot of it is the employee, I bet more of it is system flaws and short staffing, for which upper management is responsible.  You know, “Your call is important to us” becoming visual, rather than auditory.  Many employees are single parents, on their feet for hours, most of them probably don’t feel well, which affects mood.  Don’t believe me? Imagine how well you would deal with the public if you had hypertension, diabetes, chronic back pain, or a major medical bill on a kid.  I bet their personal life is a lot worse and more complicated than the stuff I whine about.

After that Dear Prudence column, I became a better tipper.  There is a little bit of an art to it, because too much can be construed as arrogant, although these days “too much” has a high bar.  I’ve tried to learn along the way who should be tipped, like guides, which for years incredibly I didn’t tip.  I learned when a guide borrowed (permanently) my Steri-Pen and another client said “take it out of his tip.”  Big oops moment. I’ve been good since 2009.

The people I try to tip well are the drivers, the waiters and waitresses, and people at kiosks selling food.  These people are minimum wage. In Anchorage, the waiter had just moved there from LA.  He had a girl friend, so he was likely to stay.  Life is good in early August, but in three months, business won’t be.  The tourists will be gone, and it’s dark.  He was personable the service good, and I tipped him well.  The next night there, we again got good service from him.  That might be the best tip of all, coming back.

I carry a lot of singles with me when I travel.  I either leave one or two on the driver’s seat when he is lifting my stuff off or I just give it to him. Whatever works.  He will find it.  If I can’t afford this, I shouldn’t be traveling.

I’ve gone to a straight 20% at restaurants, rather than 20% for good service, 10% for bad.  People need to live.  I am trying to leave cash separately and pay for dinner with a credit card, because card charges and employers both may deduct something.  These people need the money: some are refugees trying to get a break, others students, trying to survive, and the guy at Sea-Tac, my age, who was dealing with bagels as professionally as I dealt with patients deserved a couple of bucks left in the jar, where they all are split up. Got extra change?  Dump it.  If you can afford an organic chemistry experiment on your coffee, you can afford a fair tip.

The guy who drove the boat at the bear viewing deserved a good tip.  True, the viewing was terrible, but it wasn’t his fault that bears don’t like to come to a lake on days when jerks are buzzing around in high powered john boats.  He was doing his job, he knew how to drive the boat, and he was pleasant.  I couldn’t have asked for more.

Know what?  If after a trip you can’t count what the tips cost, it was a good trip.

I have my limits.  I guide at Rowe Sanctuary in Nebraska every spring.  At least once, somebody tries to slip me a $20 after a tour.  Mind you, the tour itself is $25, and some of the tours are worth 50 times that for what we get to see in the morning or evening.

I tell him thanks but please put it in the big tower collector in the Visitor’s Center.  A $20 that is visible is a good reminder to others.