Month: October 2008

Gladwell on genius

Malcolm Gladwell has a new piece in The New Yorker, arguing that there are two kinds of artistic geniuses: those who do their best work as young prodigies and those that take decades to make their talent manifest.

He uses Picasso as an example of the former kind and Cézanne as an example of the latter. The piece may provide a bit of comfort to those young people who have not yet seen their achievements match their aspirations, though it also makes very clear that a lot of hard work and luck is required to foster a slow-developing genius.

Climate change – rhetoric and urgency

Joseph Romm has written an interesting post on science, rhetoric, and why those who deny the reality of climate change are so effective at spreading their message. Basically, he argues that they are more sophisticated in terms of argumentation styles, and that they are able to engage people on terms they can intuitively appreciate.

Right now, it actually seems more as though the biggest gap is between accepting that humans are causing climate change and accepting what the consequences of that really are. Even organizations that claim to accept the conclusions of the IPCC are nonetheless perpetuating a society emitting grossly unacceptable amounts of greenhouse gasses. How, for instance, can you accept the science of climate change, then deny that it has a major impact on the applicability of a political philosophy based on unending economic growth?

With bluntness very unusual for a scientist, Andrew Weaver summarized the situation we are in:

[U]nless we reach a point where we stop emitting greenhouse gases entirely, 80 per cent of the world’s species will become extinct, and human civilization as we know it will be destroyed, by the end of this century.

We don’t actually need to completely eliminate emissions by the end of the century, but we certainly need to begin cutting them deeply and rapidly. That remains a reality that no government anywhere seems to have fully accepted. Right now, we are like a gambling addict losing $1,000 an hour. If we can get it down to a dramatically lower level, we can keep gambling for longer without going completely bust. Achieving that will require a lot of politically difficult work.

ICCAAT derided, tuna stocks denuded

The International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas (ICCAT) has generally shown itself to be ineffective in its mandate. Indeed, some have suggested with a fait bit of validity that the acronym more accurately expands to “International Conspiracy to Catch All Tuna.” A panel including experts from Canada, Japan, and Australia has now published a report with similar conclusions, saying that the organization is “”widely regarded as an international disgrace” and that there have been widespread failures in reducing illegal fishing, providing accurate catch data, and maintaining proper monitoring arrangements. When it appears that even Japan might be willing to back a moratorium on bluefin tuna fishing, you can be sure the situation is dire.

Unfortunately, the global record on fisheries management overall is dismal. Even the Alaskan pollock fishery – considered by many to be one of the most sustainable in the world – has seen a population drop of 50% since last year. The problem is simple to explain and very challenging to solve. There are too many people fishing with gear that is too good. Not enough parts of the sea are set off as safe havens for marine life. Pollution and climate change are also having an impact. Politicians are too spineless to stand up to the fishing lobby, not even in order to defend the public good, but to stop that very industry from destroying itself in our lifetimes. The industry needs to be much smaller and much more tightly regulated; the most destructive gear needs to be banned; monitoring needs to be improved; and states must prove themselves willing to enforce the law.

The chances of all that happening are fairly slim. All told, global fisheries provide one of the most acute examples of where human beings are weighing so heavily on the planet’s physical and biological systems that collapse is rapidly approaching.

Prior related posts:

The Shifting Baselines blog is also an excellent source of fishery-related news.

US and Canadian electoral predictions

As of today, fivethirtyeight.com is projecting a 93.8% chance that Obama will win the American election, with a projected 351 electoral college votes compared to McCain’s 187. They are giving Obama an 84% chance of winning Florida, which would basically decide the election by itself, giving Obama a lead McCain couldn’t counter with other swing states. They are also projecting 56 Democratic senators.

The UBC election stock market is putting the odds of a Conservative majority in Canada at around 10%. The Tories are projected to gain seven seats (ending up with 131 total), while the Liberals are projected to lose eighteen seats (ending up with 85). The big winner is expected to be the NDP: gaining fourteen seats (for a total of 43) while the Bloc loses four and ends up with a total of 47. Two seats are projected to go to Greens or independents.

Covert way to collect samples

A clever way to learn who in a town is making bombs: start a laundromat, send coupons to every house that are marked to identify each, then test the clothes and bedding for residue from explosives or explosive precursors. You can start with coupons specific to each street, then move to another set numbered for each house once the proper streets are identified.

Apparently, the British used this tactic against the IRA.

As with many security-related things, I learned about it from Bruce Schneier’s blog.

La Ronde and my return to rez

The weekend in Montreal has been going well. Largely, it has been and interesting opportunity to re-visit undergraduate residence life – at least, the kind that exists when classes are not in session and most people have headed home to be with family. I appreciate the late night gatherings that turn into extended conversations, the excellent views of the city from dorm rooms on one side of the building, and the 3:00am to 11:00am expected sleeping time.

Yesterday, we visited La Ronde: Montreal’s amusement park, on l’Ile St. Helene. I had only been there once previously, when I was living in Montreal in the summer of 2003. Since they were only $2 more than single passes, my brother and I got passes that are good until the end of October, though only on Saturdays and Sundays. If someone would like to borrow one or both (they don’t have named associated with them), you can send a message for me to pass along.

Tonight, we are attending a Thanksgiving dinner with friends of my brother living in the Plateau area. As such, we must head off to find some kind of food and/or drink offering that does not require cooking facilities to prepare.

I hope everyone has a good Thanksgiving.

Keeping track of discussion threads

One of the major reasons for which I keep writing here is because of how it forces me to engage with and clarify my own thinking on important issues. One of the most important mechanisms through which that occurs is the discussions that often accompany posts.

I realize that it is awkward to keep re-visiting the same post over and over, looking to see if anyone has responded to your comment. To make it easier, there are two alternative options for seeing new comments:

  1. You can subscribe to an RSS feed of the comments. If you don’t know what that means, this guide provides an introduction.
  2. You can sign up to receive the comments daily by email.

Either way, you can keep track of discussions (as well as links to news items relating to posts) more easily.

Appetite for climate policy in Europe

In many ways, the European Union leads the world on climate change policy. In most states, there is broad political support for carbon regulation. They have also undertaken the largest experiment in carbon pricing. While the Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) certainly has a large number of problems, it will hopefully develop towards greater effectiveness and prove a model for others. The EU also has some ambitious targets and, in many cases, reasonable mechanisms for working towards them.

Of course, it becomes more difficult to sell strong climate policies to voters when the economy heads south. Poland is suddenly extremely anxious about the carbon intensity of its coal-fired power plants, while other states are worried about the global competitiveness of their industries.

This is part of the reason for which it is so critical to get a strong new global agreement by the time of the Copenhagen meeting of the UNFCCC. Once emissions-intensive sectors are regulated in most of the states where they are important, states will be less anxious about losing competitiveness.