God Jul! And a Hell of a New Year!

"The winter of our discontent" (Shakespeare, Richard III) describes this holiday season pretty well, at least if you're tracking our progress in dealing with the the financial crisis, the health crisis, or the climate crisis. In my experience over the last five decades, I think this is the year that most people fervently hope next year will be better -- and have no confidence it will. I would say I am one of the least change-averse people around, but I'm finding it hard to look forward to anything I see for the next year or longer.

One way I'm seeing it is that we have been given a clear demonstration of the Golden Rule: those who have the gold make the rules. This is most obvious in the Finance game.

 A year after the scale of the financial debacle was becoming clear, after we teetered on the brink of a systemic meltdown worldwide, the players who got us to that precipice are still in charge of how the game is played. And richer than they were. And with no real changes in how they do business. 

The reality is that they've been consolidating their power for the past few decades. It took a while to get the pieces in place -- an "efficient market" meme that enthralled Republicans and Democrats, relaxed investment regs and oversight in the US, a consolidated market with little real competition, a bought-and-paid-for body of key decision makers worldwide, and WTO rules that opened up the entire world as a captive market (except for a few skeptics, like Brazil) -- but by about 2000 they were ready to roll. They had known that the US economy had reached its peak production in the late '80s and no new wealth was being created. They just needed a few bubbles to gain control of the remaining assets, and after they got housing in the early '90s and dot-com in the late '90s, housing II in the '00s was the perfect storm, from their point of view. It was a government-protected form of wealth transfer that had the beauty of really only benefitting a tiny number of people in the rarified world of finance. (Goldman Sachs average bonus, for each of 30,000+ employees, this year will be $700,000.)

As the previous bubble inflated in ways that clearly (to at least some financiers) were not going to last, the word around the trading floors was: IBGYBG -- "I'll Be Gone, You'll Be Gone. Make the trade. Sell the CDOs. And we'll meet again on St. Barts when the dust clears."

It may be that the people in the corporate and political elite were realistic enough to plan for the future by building their own fortresses of solitude: "If I can't save the planet, I can at least save my family, so why even try to save the planet?" Or maybe they were just lucky.

Looking around us now, it is clear today that Copenhagen will not lead to any fundamental change to the behaviors that are speeding climatic changes that will not just threaten people, but whole cultures, the supply and transport of food and products that don't just keep business humming, but keep people from starving.

On the home front, not only is financial regulation become a toothless joke, but healthcare reform is simply a gift to the insurance industry -- another transfer of wealth at the expense of those without the gold. And this in a country that pays more than twice as much per person for health care, and has a lower life expectancy and higher infant mortality than almost all developed countries. So why should we change it?

Today, Dennis Kucinich made it clear: "The class war is over. We lost. Working people lost. The middle class lost."

So, let's play it out in political terms. With the Democrats unable to create a political consensus that brings any real change, with Obama playing the (smart, but conventional) political game by not leading where there are no followers in-government, with Copenhagen a joke and no clear voice about the real threat of climate change, the Republicans will be be loud, and unified in their negativity, channeling Howard Beal, passion trumping facts. They pick up seats in Congress. And they've learned that, with a compliant news media, they don't even need a majority to say "no." And of course, the entire news media infrastructure is still reporting politics the same way they're reporting Tiger Woods or Sarah Palin: "he-said, she-said, and damn the substance -- it makes my brain hurt. Just tell me who's winning."

So, what we get is, at best, continued stagnation of the real economy, chronic unemployment that is much higher than the official figures, wave after wave of foreclosures, rising bankruptcies, falling industrial output, accelerated decline in quality of life (transportation, infrastructure, prices, education, health care).

Maybe we get to 2012, maybe Obama wins, and it's more of the same, a lot of people dying slow. But maybe Obama loses, and then maybe something will really happen. Maybe, after another two or four years of life under the leaders who got us here, and have no new ideas beyond "no," enough good citizens will see that it's not the Republicans, it's not the Democrats, it is what the system has become, and the system is not set up to have an honest discussion, let alone to protect their interests. Then, and only then, maybe somebody like an Al Franken or Dan Grayson will be in a place to stand up and say BAU stops here.

But then, maybe before that there'll be another bubble and everything will be back to normal. There's something to hope for.

Believing in Science

One of the comments that popped up more than once in the back and forth around the "climategate" discussion was the claim, by those who deny global warming,  that those who support the science of global climate change are like those people who, a few centuries ago, refused to believe that the earth is round or that the earth revolves around the sun.

As absurd as this claim is on its face -- that those who were guided by the science in one case would ignore it in the other -- there is an even more significant insight that comes from thinking about the relationship between that earlier debate and this one.

Most of us know that the polymath Galileo was forced to recant the results of his observations of the cosmos, which he had published in 1632 in Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems.  Galileo built a powerful case for the Copernican view of the cosmos -- that the earth, like the other planets,  orbits around the sun, and the stars exist outside those orbits -- as opposed the Ptolemaic view -- that the earth is at the center and everything else rotates around that.

Galileo was well aware that just 32 years earlier the brilliant Giordano Bruno had been burned alive at the stake by the Inquisition for making the same argument. To the church, it didn't matter that the Copernican cosmology was the only way to account for observed phenomena; to deny the earth's central, fixed position in the universe was to deny what had become a foundational element of religious belief. Just before the fire was lit, Bruno was offered the chance to recant: "I should not say that, so I will not."

In its early history, the christian church was riven by the claims of two rival schools of thought. One, following the teachings of Arius, a priest in Alexandria, held that while God existed outside of time, the Son (Jesus) was created later, as was the Holy Ghost. Representing what he knew as traditional doctrine in his church, Arius argued against Athanasius, a fellow Alexandrine churchman, who taught that God was three in one: the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost were the same, begotten before time, equally divine and eternal.

At a time when the church had become intimately entwined with the political ambitions of Rome and Byzantium, these rival views, which probably dated to the earliest days of the church, demanded resolution if the church was to act as a unified power. The Council of Nicea, in 325 endorsed Athanasius' view. After a few more decades of struggle the eternal trinity was firmly established as doctrine, and Arianism as heresy. That's why, in my Lutheran church, we recited the Nicene Creed as a kind of pledge of allegiance every Sunday:

And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son of God, begotten of the Father before all worlds (æons), Light of Light, very God of very God, begotten, not made, being of one substance with the Father ....

One of the positions implicit in the Athanasian view was that Earth, where Adam and Eve first sinned, was the one part of creation blemished by death and decay. God had placed Earth at the center of his creation as kind of petri dish of sin and redemption, but everything else was set in perfect motion at creation, and was beyond the reach of sinful mankind, and beyond change. As this view became dogma, any reports of imperfection in God's celestial creation would have to be debunked, and the reporters treated as heretics. In the official view, science had no meaning beyond what God revealed to us. If a star appeared in the East, it must be God sending some kind of message to us.

The danger of Arianism to the Church was that it suggested that the divine order was itself changeable, not eternal and unchangeable:

But those who say: 'There was a time when he was not;' and 'He was not before he was made;' and 'He was made out of nothing,' or 'He is of another substance' or 'essence,' or 'The Son of God is created,' or 'changeable,' or 'alterable'—they are condemned by the holy catholic and apostolic Church.

By choosing the Athanasian path, the Church was committed to the dogma of an unchanging, unchangeable God, and the Church's role as protector of an absolute moral order and authority, which included an earth-centric universe and perfectly circular orbits for the planets and the celestial dome, now and always.

While the earliest observers of the heavens knew that things were not that tidy, they were forced to keep their views to themselves, or to find other ways to rationalize them, or risk being condemned as heretics. With the establishment of universities and the general sharing of knowledge that accompanied the Renaissance it became harder for the church to keep the lid on. Of course, by then the Church had the Reformation to worry about, as well.

As the growth of the middle class meant that learning in all areas was not solely the property of a small elite, the Church responded to this challenge to old rigid moral orders and authorities by trying to deny the emerging reality. Enter the Inquisition. It is illuminating that the Roman Inquisition dates to 1542, the year before Copernicus book on the cosmos, On the Revolutions of the Celestial Spheres, was published.

In a rational world, the revanchist forces protecting an irrelevant, inaccurate version of the moral order would have been replaced, suddenly or gradually, by the demonstrable realities being unveiled by scientists from every culture. So why hasn't it worked like that?

The obvious answer is that the ruthless application of power works. An organization like the Church, founded on belief and submission, and willing to use a tool like the Inquisition,  can keep enough of its flock in line to hold on at least some of its position. And the Church has altered some areas of doctrine to align itself with new realities, although the pragmatists have now been largely supplanted by the dogmatists.

However, I think there is something else operating here, something that goes beyond the Church to all social life. In its simplest form, I see it as a dialectic of human psychology, with human beings demonstrating either one of two competing ways to comprehend and interact with reality.

On the one hand, the individual sees him- or her-self locked in an adversarial relationship with a world that can, at any moment, overwhelm them. For most, it becomes clear that there are certain hierarchies and authorities that must be recognized and leveraged for survival. You make alliances with the powers that you think can protect the existing order and your precarious place in it. And the ultimate power is supernatural, including the Church. There is a certain paranoid quality to this -- assuming that others are out to get you is the smart move. In terms of communication, this viewpoint is most comfortable with appeals to authority and belief.

On the other hand, some individuals see existence as enhanced by collaboration and teamwork rather than combat: we're all in this together. These individuals are a little more comfortable with change and heuristic logic, knowing that the future can't be entirely known and is constantly being altered by the choices we make in the present. Individual skepticism and curiosity are good things. This viewpoint aligns with a humanist emphasis on the scientific method and rational processes.

In every culture, even at the height of the Inquisition, there were humanists. By the same token, during every period of enlightenment there have been those who rely on faith and authority, and reject human reason. It may very well be that there's some kind of hardwiring at play, synaptical networks and brain chemistry interactions that dispose one to faith or to reason.

The downside of all this may be that there is little to be gained by talking through our issues. If that is true, climate deniers will never be swayed by scientific evidence, and rationalists are not going to be persuaded by appeals to faith. Nonetheless, almost all of us now agree we live in a world that is not at the center of the universe. And that's a start.

Uncertainty and Connection

Thirty-some years ago I read "The Tao of Physics" by Fritjof Capra, a young Austrian high-energy physicist. I don't remember what brought me to the book, but it seemed at the time that it presented a world-view that made perfect sense to me.

I had studied physics only briefly, and had then followed my interests into heroic literature and mystic poets. In those areas I encountered, occasionally, visions of the world that perfectly described both the specific, momentary, personal, real-life experience and the universal, god-view of myth. The macro and the micro. They weren't my myths; they were larger, more encompassing than that. But they also put me inside the skin of a person who was not-me and gave me the words to make connection across those distances. These masterless, wandering bards and god-crazed poets saw beyond any king or church, and they were trying to explain to us what the world is really like.

During that time I was also interested in aspects of science that combined the macro and micro views. I knew something of the history of physics after the General Theory of Relativity and the development of Quantum Physics. I also knew that there was still no Unified Theory to account for the four types of forces or interactions (strong, weak, electromagnetic and gravitational). For me, the easiest way to talk about that world was in terms of Heisenberg's Principle of Uncertainty. Briefly and loosely it is:

In the realm of quantum (sub-atomic) interactions it is impossible, on one hand, to determine both the location and the speed of a particle. On another hand, it is impossible to observe a particle without also affecting it. And on another hand, it's not even there to be observed until (and unless) you observe it.

The inescapable conclusion is that matter is not a thing, it is a probability. What we think of as reality is ... something else ...  when seen in the quantum or relativistic realm. A conundrum, at the very least, but I'm OK with puzzles and vague answers: Borges, Pynchon, Vonnegut, Barth, Castaneda -- writers who were slippery, disruptive, playful.

"The Tao of Physics" struck me because Capra was able to talk about physics and eastern spirituality with the same playful but serious attitude, questioning traditional thinking and language while connecting to a consistent organizing vision about the world as it really is. Along with the wealth of facts and insights, I took away one concept that stands at the very center of this world view:

It's all connected.

It's an example of a meme: a unique concept that also contains a number of other concepts (each one also a meme). This one concept, for example, comfortably contains (in Capra's view) Shiva's dance and a Feynman diagram -- they are each a metaphor and a concrete manifestation of connection. Knowing that it's all connected doesn't make me a physicist, but it does add to the pleasure when I contemplate the world they describe for us.

Everything I've experienced in my life has only reinforced that understanding, but it has taken me a while to fully appreciate it. At the same time, I can't say that it wasn't somehow inborn -- it seems a part of me from my earliest memories. I think that is why I was always an eager reader, content to be lost in a book when there wasn't a game to play with others. And it has been key to my love of travel: there is little I'm threatened by; every-thing and -one I meet has a lesson for me.

The other thing I've learned is that not everyone I've met shares this view, especially when applied to political issues. So the question gets to be whether we can even talk about it. Does this appreciation of interconnectedness need to be inborn? Or is it learned -- as a result of specific experiences or insights? Some get it earlier, some later, some not at all -- but anyone could get it, so can we keep talking?

I'm really not convinced that it is a learnable trait, especially after a certain age. We are learning enough about brain function to appreciate that different brains are structured differently and deal with the world differently. Different types of synapses process signals differently; the brain learns to connect some synapses, not others. But we also know that the brain is much more resilient than thought -- able to recover from serious trauma and "rewire" itself, rebuilding functions using other synapses. We are even seeing evidence that disciplines like meditation restructure the brain.

In the end, the only reality that I experience first-hand tells me that I can learn, so learning is always a possibility, and I'm willing to continue the conversation with anyone who's interested, and to STFU with people who aren't. (Granted, in some cases that might mean it's up to you to stop reading in order to stop the "conversation".) But then, even if you're not listening, the conversation continues because no matter what, my words and actions are still connected to you, even if remotely, just as they're connected to everything.

What I take from that logic is that what I say and do matters. It's my choice, and my responsibility, to make the world as good a place for me to live as possible. In the most real sense, I don't make it better for myself by making it worse for someone else. And not paying attention doesn't mean the connections, or the responsibilities, aren't there. It is also not about guilt -- it is simply about the way things are, the world as it really is.

One of the themes in my blog posts has been the challenge to see the world as it really is. Implicit in that is the idea that we aren't equipped to see it as it REALLY is, especially once we've had to grapple with how it "looks" on the quantum level. We have to accept that our senses are too limited, our physical bodies are not equipped to see it all, macro and micro, not like we observe that part of the electromagnetic spectrum we call the world.

So, "seeing the world as it really is" is a practice, an attitude, a refusal to get lost in what the world appears to be, and the will to keep pushing to get further inside, further outside, deeper into the mystery.

The uncomfortable conclusion is that some humans, even ones close to us, may reject any conversation that questions their perception of the world. One of my first lessons from travel (in books and in person) was that every individual lives in an individual reality. Cultures try to reduce turmoil by creating a reality of conventional wisdoms. In some cultures, any attempt to question those wisdoms, to recognize one's individual reality, results in harsh penalties. Inquisition, anyone? (Or Tea Parties?)

Whether I can help it or not, I choose to stand on the side of more conversations, more allowance for individual realities as part of a dynamic whole, responsibility (but not guilt) for our actions and our words. I have no idea if the arc of history bends in any direction, but I see no real alternative but to act with compassion and joy and hope that it bends to transcendence. And meanwhile, to keep looking.


From Stephen Mitchell's translation of the Tao Te Ching:
("Tao means "way" --"Tao" is, in my reading, another word for the world as it really is)

32

The Tao can't be perceived.
Smaller than an electron,
it contains uncountable galaxies.

If powerful men and women
could remain centered in the Tao,
all things would be in harmony.
The world would become a paradise.
All people would be at peace,
and the law would be written in their hearts.

When you have names and forms,
know that they are provisional.
When you have institutions,
know where their functions should end.
Knowing when to stop,
you can avoid any danger.

All things end in the Tao
as rivers flow into the sea.

Ends and Means

I grew up in the midst of the cold war, which for many of us was a clash between "godless communism" and democratic political systems organized around the judeo-christian tradition. The fact that such a division left out huge parts of the planet did not much concern us.

At the time I was taught (and learned) that the difference between them and us was they believed the end justifies the means. You could explain both fascists and commies by saying they were willing to do evil things if they believed in the importance of the ends achieved. Which is why we were better: we knew that the evil is evil, and no outcome excuses evil deeds.

So excuse me if, over the years, I've been a bit confused at the actions of some of those who define themselves, outspokenly, as christians. The so-called pro-life movement is one example: "violence against clinics, and against doctors, etc., is okay because: ..." --  you know the argument. Let me be clear, I do not say that all christians accept this reasoning. I do say that too many christians, especially those in positions of political influence and power (e.g., Randall Terry), do not make it clear that such logic is immoral and counter to their principles.

At the same time, I don't really think it should be only christians that reject the ends-justify-means formulation. From a humanist point of view, one big problem is that the ends are a promise; the means are the actions taking place in the present. If I'm being asked to trust in a promise I'm being asked to trust intentions, and I have no way to judge intentions. It's all about faith in another mortal. And mortals are inherently unknowable and therefor untrustworthy. So it's more realistic to judge actions on their own terms and leave intentions to individual meditation.

For instance, Dick Cheney et al. may have believed, even knew, that there really were WMDs in Iraq, no matter what the intelligence was saying. So invading Iraq, and incurring more than 4000 US dead, and many (200?) times that number of Iraqui dead, was OK because their intentions were good. Because intentions are as good as ends.

I have come to believe that the most important reason to deny ends-justifies-means is because it explicitly says that a superior moral position allows one to force acceptance by others. "I know what's best for you, so just do what I say." Which, while not only despots might say, is what despots always do say.

One of the other key lessons from growing up as a devout protestant (Lutheran) was that what differentiated christians from Old Testament believers (and other faiths) was the operation of choice. What made christianity meaningful, divine, a clear break from the past, is that it gives us the freedom and responsibility to choose belief. If one is coerced into righteous action, it is no different from sin. The ends are justified by the means.

When Christ commanded his followers to spread the Word, he did not say the evangelist's responsibility was to get everyone to believe. The charge to the faithful was to give a true accounting of the gospel, so that others could make the choice, the commitment, to follow. It is a way to make a believer consider his whole life an example of the power of the Word. Success would be measured by what happens on the inside, not the outside.

I have no doubt that my early upbringing in faith led me to be profoundly skeptical of organized christianity and any other belief expressed as a creed. I find almost all of them have been seduced by the desire to tell other people how to live. Religion becomes just another arena in which humans play out their lust for power. We give lip service to the idea that morality can't be legislated, and then we go try to do just that. And the US ends with up the highest total documented prison population in the world.

My early learnings have left me with the conviction, now tested by decades of experience in many different social settings, that freedom is better than coercion for forming constructive citizens, and building cultures (life, liberty, pursuit of happiness, etc.). My travels have also left me with the clear understanding that American culture does not (yet?) have the experience or vocabulary to fully deal with individual and cultural freedom. If it is a learning curve, we are ahead of many, but lag behind others.

There is also the very real possibility that human beings, as a group, will always swing between the dark sureties of faith, putting me squarely at the the center of the universe, and the unsettling brilliance of science, illuminating my insignificance in (and interconnectedness with) the vastness of the universe.

I suppose that sense of interconnectedness may be the most important thing I took away from my early experiences of faith. And it may the  thing I see the least of in most people who seem to connect to traditional belief. Are we all part of this universe (which I have come to think of as god), or are we each separate, vulnerable, estranged? Whichever reality I see, you have to find your own. That's what Jesus would do.

Politics: The End of Hope - in the Era of Truthiness

Yesterday's post left me unsatisfied, still debating in my mind what it all means, or something. But then today a couple of things came to mind as I thought about how we will know when/if things really have changed. It came from a review I was reading in the Nation on three books dealing with the collapse of Soviet hegemony in Eastern Europe, and from my memory of what the samizdat-era intellectuals in Poland or Czechoslovakia would say about how they pulled off their defiance of the state: "Live and act as if you are, in fact, free." So, what would the political discussion be like if real change were possible, if politicians felt they could tell the truth?

Specifically, as applied to these players in this environment, it would be okay for Obama (for instance) to discuss the political aspect of his thinking and decisions. He would be able to stipulate that there are members of the political establishment (in government, in the media) who take their positions based on simple calculations of power (them vs. us, Democrats vs. Republicans, etc.). It has nothing do with what's right, or patriotic, it's simply about winning or losing. As it is now, we're all acting like we're in a game that is all about politics, but if you say the word "politics" you lose. Why else would all our chattering class so assiduously avoid that discussion (along the lines of the point I made in yesterday's blog)?

I actually think it would humanize a lot of these figures to just admit that they are political animals. To hear John Boehner or Mitch McConnell parse the power struggle in political, rather than personal-slash-moral, terms make actually make them less creepy and off-putting. I suspect the same might be said about Nancy Pelosi or Harry Reed. There would still be room to get to moral issues, but always with the thought that some reporter is actually going to take it back to a political level and see how it all matches up.

If we all just agreed that politics is by definition a morality-free zone, maybe we wouldn't see so many public figures twisting themselves like pretzels, trying to make their statements about values and morality align with their public statements on topics like capital punishment and the highest incarceration rate in the civilized world, the rewards of corporate malfeasance, high unemployment and rising output efficiency, the moral hazard of universal health care, public education for those who can afford it, and tax cuts for the wealthy.

And we could hear Obama tell the cadets at West Point that this country is perfectly willing to accept the fact some of them will not be coming back from Afghanistan -- "no offense, it's just politics. I'd just as soon not take this step, but let's get real, I wouldn't be able to eat lunch in this town if I tried to do that."

On the other hand, the pundits would hate it. Their whole schtick is based on applying their own personal political filter to whatever happens. They're the ones who get to tell us what any statement or action means in terms of who has got the juice, who's winning, who's losing, play by play, minute by minute. Having the politicians themselves lay that out would only add to the unemployment rolls. That would be a shame, wouldn't it?

I mean, who am I kidding? The chance of politicians talking like that is like the chance of David Vitter telling us he really feels about wearing diapers. Sorry. But you get the point. Politics is not about telling any kind of truth. Inside the beltway, it's like if you do tell the truth you lose respect, you show weakness and invite the other alphas to go for blood, your blood.

The real irony is that some of your power in the beltway environment is also derived from how you appear outside the beltway, where truth telling, or the appearance of truth telling, has value. In fact, if there is one characteristic that typifies the really successful politicians (in terms of getting elected against better-known political brands) of the last 40-plus TV years -- JFK, Carter, Reagan, Clinton, Bush II, and Obama -- it is the singular, and rare, quality of "Truthiness."

Do we have to forget about the truth? I don't know. You tell me. But in the meantime, we (you and I) could at least act like the truth is important. And wait for the next Wall to come down.

Politics: The End of Hope

As if we needed reminding, every day we see new examples of the gap between expectations and actions in the political world. The President's speech justifying a US presence in Afghanistan is just one more lesson that political reality has little, if anything, to do with moral reality. Shame on us for thinking it could ever be otherwise.

 In the political reality that dates to our seizing the mantle of empire following World War II, it is impossible for any president, particularly a Democrat, to appear "soft on defense." This was the political reality that pushed Kennedy into Southeast Asai and then and made it impossible for Johnson to leave Viet Nam without giving up his power, all of it.

 The only politician who could pull it off would be one who would willing to be a sacrifice his entire agenda for this moment of moral clarity. And politics, as we should know post-Rove/Bush/Cheney, has nothing to do with moral clarity (although it may at times have everything to do with moralizing).

There may be many on the left who though a vote for Obama meant a vote for that level of moral clarity, a clear break with the devious and unprincipled political machinations of the Bush administration. Such it is with a new face in the political arena, you can project whatever you want on them (positive or negative).

In Obama's case, he had been around long enough to suggest he was fully integrated into the dominant political reality. If anything, he had scrupulously avoided making grand gestures. He knew where the support was and he wasn't going to be far from it. He showed himself clearly to be a real politician, in terms of working for incremental change, rather than grandstanding for a cause that would lead only to defeat. He might try to get his team ahead, but he wasn't going to try to change the rules of the game.

Too bad, perhaps, but it would be well for us to remember the game isn't over yet.

We are in Afghanistan, and we will be there for a while. In political reality, there were few choices available to him. Especially if we pay attention to the key political reality: All politics is local. The real effect of what he does in Asia will be felt here, with US voters and in the Senate and House. A couple of years in Afghanistan (and $30 billion plus  some hundreds of soldier fatalities) is the price for some kind of health care reform and a chance to climb out of our economic swamp.

Thinking back to LBJ, he was trying to make the same deal in order to pull off the huge Great Society vision, civil rights and an effective social safety net, by talking about a victory in Viet Nam that he already knew was unlikely. As someone who participated in the anti-war protest movement, I can only say that no matter how important our moral anti-war position was, it would have been more meaningful in the longer run to have completed LBJ's social program.

It may very well be that there was no alternative for Johnson. And it may be that there is no alternative for Obama. In fact, it may be exactly the same political battle, now forty years on, between those who want to roll our society back -- before Roe v Wade,  before civil rights, before the New Deal and Social Security, before income tax, hell, before the 14th and 19th amendments -- and those who see this as an interconnected social democracy rather than a robber baron oligarchy.

The iconic image of the last campaign was Shepard Fairey's "Hope" poster, but it's worth remembering that Obama's campaign word was "Change." Hope may have propelled him on his life's journey, but I think that Obama is well aware that "hope" is an attitude, not an action or a promise.  If we project hope on Obama, that is more our problem than his responsibility. As to change, which is inescapable and implacable, we'll have to see how the game plays out and whether Obama will be the changer or the changed.

As to us, it's time for us to move beyond our hopes, whatever they are, and get to work. If you see the folly of trying to "save" Afghanistan, then it will be up to you (us) to reframe the political reality so we can have that conversation. Ultimately it will be that conversation, rather than force of arms or moral aggrandizement, that will bring real, lasting change.

In the Cave

I've been tracking some of the online discussions concerning the hacked emails between various scientists associated with the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia (UK). This group is one of a large number of groups that are contributing data and  statistical analyses to climate studies, including the IPCC (the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change), which has acted as a centralized source for climate science. The  emails released by the hackers stretch from 1999 to this month and concern a number of issues. The hackers apparently thought they had the smoking gun that would prove climate change (or man-made-global-warming theory as they like to call it) is all a hoax. The RealClimate site has a good summary of the issue. George Monbiot's blog entry has links to the emails as well as a droll take on the thinking behind the climate change deniers.



What has been really interesting, to me, is the heat generated in the blogosphere, especially when a news story or recent study pops up about climate change. The first comments come from individuals commenting on the science and then new voices start to emerge heaping scorn on anyone who does not see that the hacked emails change everything (whether the emails have anything to do with the topic or not). Their arguments are interesting on their own, quite apart from the questions of what the hacked emails do or do not prove.


Most obvious, to me, is the assertion that the climate change "hoax" is driven by the huge amounts of money these scientists are making. If you really think that money is ipso facto the corrupting influence, it should be clear (a "no-brainer"?) where the money is, and it ain't with the academics. The largest corporate players on the planet all depend on business as usual (BAU), especially in regards to their control and continued market for fossil fuels, the main source of CO2 emissions. We know what kinds of profits are at stake for Exxon, Shell, BP, Chevron, et al., let alone Monsanto or GE or Boeing. We know what they've been spending on directed research, PR efforts, lobbying in every government that matter.  So, please, don't insult our intelligence with references to fat-cat scientists.


Perhaps not so obvious, but more telling, is the deniers' emphasis on temperature data and whether or not they  show "warming." For one thing, most of the denier-bloggers show a deep distrust of the statistics without much attempt to  illuminate what the numbers do tell us. Nor do they answer the solid statistical evidence from other sources. 

But then, the proof for climate change argument does not rest on temperatures alone. Atmospheric and sea temperatures were only meant to be indicators of coming changes. The models that have been developed over the last 40 years were meant to give us a warning, to be indicators that would tell us we need to change before the really big, planet-wide systems, lagging some years behind observed temperatures, swing to a new balance point.


At this point, the proof is now distressingly clear -- rising sea levels, thinning ice at both poles, melting glaciers at all lattitudes, disappearing permafrost throughout the far north: Alaska, Canada, Siberia. We can debate the temperature data and models all we want, but the planet-level swing has already happened. The game has changed. And though we could see it, we didn't see it. Why not?

This is where the image of Plato's Cave came to mind. Plato developed this allegory to make a point about the unreliability of sense-derived information, and the need to pursue the truth of the forms that lie behind what we see or hear.

To summarize, Plato (in the character of Socrates) painted a picture of a group of people who have grown up in a cave, restrained so they can only see a wall a little ways in front of them. Behind them, out of their sight, is a big fire. And in between the fire and the watchers there is a constant stream of people, moving and talking, thought the watchers can only hear the echos that bounced off the wall and could only see the shadows they cast on the wall. Plato's point was that the two-dimensional world of the shadows on the wall is, for the watchers, the sum total of reality. If by some chance one of the watchers could escape his restraints and turn to see the three-dimensional world behind him, and then return to tell the others what he had learned, he would be ridiculed, if not ostracized or killed.

I sometimes think that the world we think we live in is actually a highly edited version of the real world, for the simple reason that we can't really process all the information out there (it's chaos!) so we are necessarily selective. Humans need to break a huge amount of input into the signals that really matter, ignoring the static. But the more we learn about the world, the more we learn that it is all signal. Because chaos is not random. But chaos is too much to comprehend, so we watch the shadow that chaos projects on our walls and try to cope the best we can.

"Chaos" (Wiki) describes a dynamic (changing) system that is sensitive to initial conditions -- systems where a tiny change in an input can result in a huge systemic change. The textbook real-world example is the weather. Humans have been gathering weather data for decades. We have powerful computers. But the horizon for accurate forecasting is still hours, not weeks, let alone months. The complexity of the system makes it unlikely we can ever capture and input the right information, even if we had the computational power to crunch it. That's the challenge that comes from trying to predict the local effects of systemic processes by looking at individual inputs. Chaos -- the world --  just doesn't work like that.

Perhaps we are left with the realization that some people will deny a complex truth in favor of a simple answer that doesn't require close, sustained analysis. Change, sometimes inconvenient, is built into the system. We just have to figure out if change, especially when it's not convenient, is built into us.

The Efficiency Con

Some part of my income the past couple of decades has been driven by the demand, on the part of large corporations, to train its staff in the principles of effective staff management. It has been my good fortune in the past seven or eight years to do this for a company whose history has been built on a foundation that in key ways differs from what many professionals accept as proven management principles. To understand the difference it helps to look at the careers of two key players in building the structure of scientific managment: Frederick Winslow Taylor (Wiki) and W. Edwards Deming (Wiki).

Born in 1853, Taylor was a mechanical engineer who saw an opportunity, in the rapidly expanding industrial world, to improve efficiency by close studies of how work was actually done. He was the original "efficiency expert," armed with a stopwatch and a clipboard.  He became famous as the inventor of "scientific management." His basic approach was built on four principles:

1. Replace rule-of-thumb work methods with methods based on a scientific study of the tasks.
2. Scientifically select, train, and develop each employee rather than passively leaving them to train themselves.
3. Provide "Detailed instruction and supervision of each worker in the performance of that worker's discrete task" (Montgomery 1997: 250).
4. Divide work nearly equally between managers and workers, so that the managers apply scientific management principles to planning the work and the workers actually perform the tasks.

However, as indicated in a recent New Yorker article, in practice it worked rather differently. For one thing, there was a wide gap between workers and management, based largely on the understanding (or prejudice) that workers were incapable of understanding the scientific principles that would yield greater productivity. In general, this approach also exalted the role of managers. making them kind of priests in the quest for efficiency and profits. This approach reflects a militaristic attitude that was common at the turn of the 20th century: it was the job of the superior classes to command (and control) the inferior ones.

Another key aspect of Taylor's approach is that it was his business. Even though it was presented as an academic approach, he was selling scientific management to clients where the only meaningful evidence of success was a contract for his services. When confronted with deadlines and payrolls he often ended up using the same "rule of thumb" measurements he was supposed to be replacing. And there were times he didn't get paid.

Scientific management, or "Taylorism" as it was often called, has been impressively influential. It is reasonably accurate to say that the American industrial colossus was built on the principles of efficiency Taylor espoused. And it worked just fine until the American industrial model, rich in resources and markets, was challenged by an approach developed in a war-ravaged society with scarce, expensive raw materials and huge barriers to success, using an approach developed by an American whose ideas differed in fundamental ways from Taylor.

W. Edwards Deming was born in 1900.  His career was largely academic (PhD from Yale in math and physics) and then in government, specializing in statistical measurements of quality. The Second World War gave him an opportunity to test different approaches to industrial efficiency and quality control. In the immediate post-war period he worked in Japan in the occupation government to rebuild the industrial sector. The Japanese, fully aware that they needed to exploit any competitive advantage possible, worked to integrate Deming's teachings in various industries. From my point of view, the culmination of his work was his collaboration with the Toyota Motor Company in the 50s and 60s.

The key difference between Taylor's scientific management and Deming's approach, in my view, is who owns the work. As opposed to Taylor, Deming taught that every worker owns the work he (or she) does and has full responsibility for its quality. This includes not just doing the job right, but taking responsibility for the best way to do the job. At the core of this is a fundamental re-ordering of the role of manager.

Instead of "management by command and control," Deming set the standard for "management by objective." In working with Toyota, he was working with a production system that has already made huge strides in the same direction. Where Taylor looked at individual production steps and sought to streamline each one, driven by efficiency, Toyota had already come to understand the value of looking at the entire system, focused on minimizing waste (starting with overproduction).

The Toyota Production System (TPS) benefited from committed, consistent leadership that lived the principles they preached. Specifically, managers understood that their role was to give the workers the tools and support they need, not only to do their jobs, but to improve them. In some ways, it's the workers who tell the managers how to do the job. Deming provided an overall structure, and statistical evidence, that allowed Toyota to compete with the big boys.

Toyota was clearly successful. Virtually every other automaker has tried to adopt their approach, which has been a great boon for management consultants. And though they may be trying to replicate the results generated by Deming, these conusltants seem to be channeling Taylor and scientific management.

To me, the key thing is that the culture of management by command and control is deeply ingrained in virtually every corporate culture in the world. That is the default position: "to justify the title and salary of a manager it's my job to know more than they do and to show it by telling them what to do and how to do it." And because that's the expectation going in, the average management consultant is going to have to align with that if he (or she) wants to keep working. Or get into talking about "tools" or "best practices" or "targets": all anathema to someone immersed in Deming and TPS.

As the New Yorker article points out, even the acolytes of Taylor came to realize it could not deliver what it promised. But something about the dream of "efficiency" continues to keep Taylorism alive and well. And not just in corporate culture.

Why Free Enterprise Isn't

After thinking about Nick Hanauer's TED presentation the last few days I went back to some of my older blog posts. The following was first posted in October of 2009. It looks at the idea that successful entrepreneurs leverage a system that rewards them for driving prices down by subsidizing the cost of the goods and services they sell to us -- MacDonalds is able to sell to cheap burgers because of farm and tax subsidies, in an over-simplified but meaningful summary.


In other words -- no free lunch. MacDonalds, of course doesn't need a strong middle class, at least until falling revenues make it impossible to keep giving out the subsidies.


Among the inescapable lessons drawn (by me) from the current economic tsunami are:

1.  Globalization is absolutely necessary: if we want to keep every ambitious or desperate third-worlder from coming to where the jobs are (here), we have to send at least some of the jobs to where they are. 
2. Globalization means that the American working middle class is history: it was their jobs that got sent wherever.

This is not happenstance. There is a key human, behavioral imperative in operation. It is a trait, an instinct perhaps, which has allowed us to compete so successfully with the other species in our environment. We (you and me) would not be here without it. And it could easily be  the imperative that cause the collapse of our global society.

In virtually every human culture we know about, humans demonstrate competitive behaviors, played out in the acquisition of money and/or power. Not every individual is driven by this, certainly, but most cultures reward that minority of individuals who are the most competitive personalities large amounts of control over everyone else. You can argue that ethnic and political cultures gained strength to the degree that they formalized the ascent to power (to prevent endless battles) and balanced the interests of the power elite (who may be less competitive than their founders) with the interests of the plebes (some of whom may be more).

If that balance is lost, the natural urge to dominate is by definition more unbridled, even manic.  The American economy has gone through several cycles of this excited, almost pathological activity in its history. We have been shrugging it off as a necessary aspect of an efficient free market. Sounds good. But the definition of "free" is what is at the center of this.

It was a blog posted by Robert Singer on disinfo.com that got me thinking about what free market really means (at least in this version of capitalist democracy) with the statement:

"You don’t eat the hamburger at McDonalds because it’s a dollar: It’s a dollar to get you to eat it."

 Singer's point is that Ray Croc could sell a hamburger cheap because the grain (which made the bun and fed the cattle ground into the patty) was subsidized -- farmers could sell it for less than it cost to grow. That was because somebody -- taxpayers -- paid them a subsidy that made up the difference.

Now, Ray Kroc could have sold the burger for a higher price and have gotten rich that way. But the genius of Ray Kroc is that the burger he sold bought him both your dollar and a powerful piece of the market. This was about Ray versus everybody else slingin' burgers. Which was mostly diners and cafes run by moms and pops and small entrepreneurs -- gone. The dollars he got from us let him buy a lot of real estate  -- the asset value of McDonalds is primarily in the land the stores sit on, not the number of burgers served. The burgers pay the mortgage. Or perhaps we all do.

Singer sees this an example of the "downward manipulation of prices," a deliberate strategy supported by the Federal Reserve and big finance from its inception:

"Butler’s investigation has identified JP Morgan Chase, one of the founding members of the Federal Reserve, as the prime suspect, in the “ongoing intentional, not accidental” great crime of keeping the price of commodities low so the middle class can afford the American dream, a nightmare for the planet."

It's the same strategy employed by Standard Oil (and all its offspring) and the agribus monoliths, in terms of domestic policy and building reliance on chemical fertilizers and engineered seed. And it's the same strategy, but now leveraging global IMF inequities, that WalMart employs to use low-paid, off-shore labor to supply the goods that will purchase our domestic dollars.  A subsidy here, a controlled wage there, every little wrinkle lets me buy more customers.

But for now, we should know that every piece of food, virtually every consumer item, is paid for in unseen ways -- by manipulated commodity pricing, and by the use of virtual slave labor to work our farms and factories.

The lesson: if you want to win, you've got to own the market, and one way to do that is to decouple everything from value, make it only about price. It's anything but a "free market," unless you mean that by becoming the dominant player you are now free of pesky rivals, other than those that play by your rules. And the players are now global, concentrating huge capital wealth among a tiny fraction of the world's population. Local communities, national societies and cultural ties mean virtually nothing to them. If you buy the competitive thing, at that level it may only be about dueling with the other big players, mano a mano.

Along the way, in our particular culture, we have undervalued skill and knowledge, and have created a glutted workforce that will take slave wages rather than no work at all. And Wall Street continues to reward those companies that add to the unemployment role, because workers are simply costs, and costs must always be cut.

There was a time when slash-and-burn agriculture was probably key to human survival. It provided sunlight for earth that was rich with the ash of the burned plants. But after a year or two the fertilizer was consumed. It took decades for the biomass on that patch to build to the same level of nutrients. Not a big problem in a big forest with few people.

As the forest fills up with hungry people, slash and burn is probably not a good strategy, except it's always worked before. We know how to do it. It's someone else's problem.

At some point, we may change our short-term tactics to match long-term imperatives. Or the winners will just keep fighting over the remaining forest. For that kind of social disconnect, think London in 1870: toffs in the clubs, corpses in the East End.  I've seen articles/ads on Newsmax.com promising to give you the secret to being a "Robber Baron" in this financial crisis. Something to think about.

To get the shot, or not

Anyone with young children in their extended family has probably come up against the childhood vaccination question, and the debate about causes of autism. And we are all, parents or not, hearing the cases for and against the H1Ni vaccines (and flu vaccines in general).


Flying back this week from New York, and a visit with my grandson who is recovering from flu (assumed by health professionals involve to be H1N1 though no tests were made), I read Amy Wallace's article in Wired. Her strongly worded defense of the science behind childhood vaccinations for mumps, measles, rubella, pertussis, etc. was already known to me from a Twitter storm involving various sides in the debate.


The next day I read an article in The Atlantic that called into doubt the efficacy of flu vaccines, for both seasonal flu and H1N1. The article focused on a few serious scientists who are questioning widely accepted claims for vaccines, at the risk of the approbation of other health professionals.


So, who are we supposed to trust? And, most importantly, what are we supposed to do if we want to improve our odds in a world that seems to threaten our fragile health on so many levels? 


Looking at the questions raised by the Wired articles, it seems important to me that the anti-childhood-vaccination proponents often get lost in personal attacks on one or another of the scientists arguing in favor of vaccinations. Such ad hominem attacks are often used by people who may be so convinced of their position that they can overlook the facts in favor of finding a villain to blame. In this case there may indeed be a certifiable villain in the mix: big pharma.


It's a bit like OJ. The LA cops from the time of Bill Parker had so thoroughly lost the trust of black Angelenos that there was no way a jury of peers was going to believe anybody representing LA, let alone a nut case like Mark Fuhrman, who were out to get a black man, any black man. By the same kind of reasoning, because vaccines come from big pharma, who are one of the least credible institutions in the US, there's no way I would believe anything they claim.


Except. Sometimes the bad guys are not the story. For one thing, big pharma doesn't really make much from vaccines. Only a few hundred million bucks a year. What they're focused on is the big payoffs, the one-or-two-a-day-for-the-rest-of-your-life drugs like Lipitor or Cialis. The others, like childhood vaccines, are just chump change.


The most incendiary charge against the childhood vaccines is the issue of autism. And this could easily be a case of post hoc ergo propter hoc, the term for a classical logical fallacy: just because thing A happens and then thing B happens does not prove A causes B. Autism has become our syndrome de jour, a diagnosis that seems to be growing more common. Like many, I think it may be just a case of different diagnostics applied to a wide range of human behaviors, especially a range of behaviors that is understood to be a continuum anyway.


But the post hoc argument also calls into question most statistical analyses, which only point to correlation, not causation. It was Benjamin Disraeli (and later Mark Twain) who said "there are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics." Statistics can certainly be slanted, but a close examination should be able to discover the bias. And that is the case with flu vaccines.


The argument for getting an annual flu vaccination, it seems, may be based on a conflation of   proximity (like post hoc) and causation. The statistical evidence says that people who get vaccinated are half as likely to die. However, a closer look also says that people who get vaccinated are more likely, for a number of socio-economic reasons, to be healthier in the first place. Where statistics indicate a correlation, scientific testing should support or question it. However the case for the efficacy of flu vaccines has never been actually tested, with controls and placebos and the whole scientific method.


I believe our challenge is to see the world as it really is, not just as conventional wisdom tells us the world should be. Which also means that we should not be overly trusting of "experts." Add to that the deep distrust (or misunderstanding) of science and the scientific method that seems to be a part of our culture, and we are naturally set up to distrust those who claim any kind of truth that doesn't align with our beliefs.


My point is that our beliefs must be continuously tested -- and the scientific method is the best model for a way to discern the world as it really is by rigorous examination. It is highly unlikely that any truth is THE truth. But a single isolated truth can be more significant than a passionate belief. 


It's all about the testing, and the willing suspension of belief.

Climate for Twitterers

In the past few weeks I've been using Twitter (Im a tweeter!!) in an attempt to get a feel for "social media marketing." I won't say I was a skeptic when I started, but I don't think I had any expectations other than being a researcher, not directly involved. I'm now rather more involved.


If you are on Twitter you can choose people to "follow." In fact when you first register, you'll be given a list of people you can follow. You can go to their profiles and determine if their interests and their past tweets are interesting to you. Every time they post a comment, you will receive it in your "NewsFeed." And your comments must be less than 140 characters.


If you want people to hear what you've got to say, you've got to have followers who will receive your tweets when you post them. Or you can search by topic or key word, and respond (retweet) to those messages, which will be received by the person you're responding to and whoever is following him/her.


I think I am most proud that Timothy Leary (@DrLeary) is a follower of my mine (from his location "On the outside looking in"). I'm pretty sure if you ask to follow him he'll follow you, too. If you want to follow me, I'm @WillBurd (as you'll see below).


The primary way I've used Twitter is to follow news aggregators, with particular reference to eco issues and insights into human behavior. When I find something interesting I retweet it (I now have three accounts with a total of 60 or so followers).


A few days ago I received a retweet that referenced an article from BBC News titled "What Happened to Global Warming?" that deals with temperature measurements and the fact that none of the the last 10 years reports higher temps that 1998, a marked El Nino year, which was indeed the hottest year in modern records. My tweet is below, and was meant to suggest that global temp measurements are selective at best, and there are other indicators, like ice caps and glaciers, that might tell an important part of the story. (My inter-tweet notes are notes in [brackets].)

WillBurd
8:25pm, Oct 14 from Tweetie

Melting glaciers & poles don't matter? RT@arthurtaubo: RT @eachus (Interesting article about global warming) http://twurl.nl/rh717o

A bit later I noticed that I had received a string of tweets (that 140 character limit) in response:

eachus
9:06pm, Oct 14 from TweetDeck

@WillBurd That's not the issue. 2 things here: (1) the globe has NOT been warmer since 1998. Yet... glaciers are melting. And yet again...

9:07pm, Oct 14 from TweetDeck

@WillBurd (2) The volume of ice of Antarctica is higher, even given meltings around the edges. What does this all mean? Frankly, who knows?

9:09pm, Oct 14 from TweetDeck

@WillBurd The question is not whether the earth is warming... despite peaks and valleys it has been trending warmer for at least 6000 yrs.

[About the same time human population and culture has been expanding exponentially. Ironic, no?]

9:11pm, Oct 14 from TweetDeck

@WillBurd The question is: is man (and in particular CO2) causing any warming? If so, you would expect it to be evident in recent years.

[As in the hottest decades of the last many centuries?]

9:12pm, Oct 14 from TweetDeck

@WillBurd But it HASN'T BEEN. Again: Antarctic deposits have been heavier than usual, so that despite edge melting, it has MORE ice.

[Proof, or citation?].

9:14pm, Oct 14 from TweetDeck

@WillBurd Some glacier melting, like around Kilimanjaro (a favorite anecdote of "warmers"), is known to be actually caused by other factors.

[I'm not sure I've ever heard this suggested as proof. Cause for concern, yes.]

9:15pm, Oct 14 from TweetDeck

@WillBurd (Kilimanjaro melting was shown, years ago, to be due to deforestation at lower altitudes.)

[I think that IS human action, along with the burning of the wood releasing CO2.]

9:16pm, Oct 14 from TweetDeck

@WillBurd The upshot of it all is... nobody knows. The "greenhouse warming" theory has lots of BIG holes in it. Yet something is happening.

[I'm sorry, but this sounds a bit like Ed Grimley.]

9:16pm, Oct 14 from TweetDeck

@WillBurd But whether that something is overall warming is anything but clear.

I made the conscious decision to engage in this conversation because I sensed that eachus is open to arguments of fact and logic, and because I was willing to test my approach against a different one, even in a format not designed for nuanced discussion.

Limited by the format, I retweeted, focusing on the assertion that Antarctic ice mass was actually growing. I did a quick Google and retweeted the results, and a few minutes later another tweet that focused on what I think are the key issue--much of the anti-change argument focuses on responsibility, as in guilt of humans (see my earlier Blog), and climate is a chaotically complex, interconnected system that goes beyond any isolated indicator. 

WillBurd
12:24pm, Oct 15 from TweetDeck

@eachus Googled Antarctic Ice Mass, got this study in "Science" that suggests losshttp://bit.ly/oOYqM

12:28pm, Oct 15 from TweetDeck

@eachus Less about the "cause" of climate change than observed fact - on a systemic basis. Greenhouse gases one key variable.

eachus

2:42pm, Oct 15 from TweetDeck

@WillBurd Perhaps. But there have been others that claim overall Antarctic gain. I am not surprised that there are conflicting claims.

[No evidence cited.]

2:44pm, Oct 15 from TweetDeck

@WillBurd No... it *IS* about cause. We know there is a trend upward anyway. If WE are causing some, then why isn't it getting warmer?

2:44pm, Oct 15 from TweetDeck

@WillBurd ... because it actually hasn't been, overall, for the last 10 years.

[Again no evidence cited, and a search of "global tempartatures 1998 - 2008" yields at best inconsistent evidence and disputes about appropriate statistical models.]

2:45pm, Oct 15 from TweetDeck

@WillBurd Regardless of ice melts, and so on... the world, on average, was cooler last year than the year before.

2:46pm, Oct 15 from TweetDeck

@WillBurd Which is a puzzle, but there it is. The greenhouse model still has some holes in it, too. Evidence for it is actually pretty thin.

2:47pm, Oct 15 from TweetDeck

@WillBurd When it comes to CO2, that is. We know that CFCs and so on eat ozone. Which has been healing nicely, by the way.

[Of course, CFCs have nothing to do with greenhouse gases, but do prove quite nicely that human activities affect global-scale phenomena, in both directions.]

2:48pm, Oct 15 from TweetDeck

@WillBurd I am not denying... just pointing out that it is not cut-and-dried. There are big questions. Even the basic ones aren't answered.

[Which ones?]

2:49pm, Oct 15 from TweetDeck

@WillBurd Personally I would love it to be a bit warmer. Our last two winters here were a bit harsh.

2:51pm, Oct 15 from TweetDeck

@WillBurd Record cold and snowfalls. I do understand that regional differences mean little. But still, some heat would be nice.
My next response tried to suggest, again, that complex systems are inherently non-linear and that if our planet is becoming less hospitable, for whatever reason, shouldn't we try to do something about it?

WillBurd

5:20pm, Oct 15 from TweetDeck

@eachus Wiki on chaos: http://bit.ly/9ziZr - climate is complex, temp measurements limited -- systemic change undeniable - now what?

eachus

5:29pm, Oct 15 from TweetDeck

 @WillBurd I understand what you mean except: to what systemic changes do you refer? Known anthropocentric warming is not one of them. 
[Anthropogenic (eachus corrected it, below) warming is a possible input, not a systemic change.]

5:30pm, Oct 15 from TweetDeck

@WillBurd Yes, we are seeing strange behavior in the weather. But neither do the changes match greenhouse warming theory, or any other.

[Even the article that started this whole chain doesn't claim that the general trend does not align with the model predictions.]

5:33pm, Oct 15 from TweetDeck

@WillBurd I am very familiar with chaotic systems, and I know how... well... chaotic they can be. But a theory must be proven...

[A misunderstanding, I think, of what a "theory" is in the scientific method, and perhaps a misunderstanding of a key aspect of chaotic systems -- complex interconnectedness.]

5:34pm, Oct 15 from TweetDeck

@WillBurd ... it is not enough to say, "Look! Lots of unpredicted things are happening, plus a bare few predicted things, therefore ..."

5:37pm, Oct 15 from TweetDeck

@WillBurd Greenhouse warming today is on a par with "string theory": there are other hypotheses that explain observations equally as well. 
[A rhetorical metaphor, but climate change studies are dealing with observable phenomena, testable every day.]

5:39pm, Oct 15 from TweetDeck

@WillBurd Both are the "popular" theories (actually hypotheses). Those with other ideas tend to be ostracized, which is anti-science...[Again, science is about testing explanations--and discarding those that don't work to describe phenomena (and humans scientists can be as locked into their own world views as well as any one else--for the short term).]

5:43pm, Oct 15 from TweetDeck

@WillBurd I wrote "anthropocentric" rather than "anthropogenic". Haha. Well, it could be either... :0)

The upshot of all this is that as frustrating as this dialogue was in its form, it still was an opportunity to engage with someone outside my normal circle, someone who was paying some attention to what I was saying, even if in disagreement.

To the extent that eachus' s view of climate change represents the more rational-sounding of the critics, I gained an understanding of the need for us, all of us, to be absolutely clear about where we get our data. If we can build the discussion around that then we all have a chance to arrive at the optimal outcome (or at least the optimal process).

Where I've gotten to is that I am comfortable with the idea that I do not understand all the key issues or facts. It's all open to questioning and reappraisal (which is also key to the scientific method, when practiced). Certainty is not a part of this world view. Nor is lack of certainty, in itself, reason to discard a given view of the world, if the viewer is truly committed to SEEING THE WORLD AS IT REALLY IS.

At the same time, my reading of the data suggests that our limited understanding of these hugely complex forces, and our fascination with our own immediate comfort, may have already put in place a systematic change that will substantially reduce the "comfort zone" for the human race. As realist and cynic Kurt Vonnegut, said, "So it goes." And, perhaps, so will we go.