Author Archives: JohnM

About JohnM

Academy Founder

Are climate skeptics anti-science?

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No is the short answer. Many highly regarded scientists are skeptics – from Stephen Koonin to Freeman Dyson to Richard Lindzen. The myth that no serious scientists are skeptics is simply false. This does not mean skeptics are right.

Many other serious scientists express serious dismay at the inability to have a serious conversation about climate change because it has become so politicized.

What should every citizen know about climate change? Some thoughts follow.

It is important to remember that disagreement over the odds of climate catastrophe does not preclude agreement on what is to be done about it. Whether  you think the odds are 50% or 30%, or 10%  you still might think it is a very good idea to investment heavily in nuclear energy as well as alternative energy just in case. You might also be equally passionate in your support of a carbon tax.

Also, even if the consensus is correct, the question of the relative urgency of climate change relative to other global challenges is not a given. Many of the world’s leading economists think global warming ranks rather low on the list of most important and urgent problems facing humanity.

A further fact worth remembering is that while the IPCC headlines of the last decade have become increasingly alarmist, in the footnotes the IPCC has lowered its sensitivity assumptions as the actual warming has fallen short of prior forecasts.

An important paradox to remember is that our current reliance on fossil fuel is in no small measure the result of the over-reaction of the environmental movement to the Three Mile Island nuclear accident in 1979..

The term “climate change” is a rhetorical trick. It is utterly unfalsifiable. The climate has always and will always change. It is interesting that 20 years ago the term “global warming” was much more in use. The new term “climate change” was the result of less severe warming than expected. The real test of the scientific nature of a theory is its falsifiability.

The long term (100 MMs of years) climate trend is cooling driven by platetectonic factors. The medium term trend (1000s of years) is cooling driven by Milankovich cycles. The shorter term Cycles (10s of years) are driven by solar cycles (eg. sun spots) and deep oceanic current cycles (eg. Pacific duodecal oscillations). These can overwhelm the effects of human CO2 emissions. Historically, relatively warm periods have been Good for humanity and relatively cool periods bad. The greatest short term climate risk is volcanic eruption (a cooling event). A full accounting of the positive and negative impacts of the fossil fuel industry on human well being nets a tremendous positive – bringing warmth where there was cold, light where dark. Human resourcefulness should not be underestimated. A thousand years ago the Dutch with picks, shovels, and a few windmills turned an arm of the Atlantic ocean into some of the most fertile land on earth.

What are strongest cases on both sides of the Israel-Palestine conflict?

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The Palestinian Case:

  • Palestinians have an exclusive right to Palestine – Palestinians are analogous to Native Americans.
  • The state of Israel is the creation of imperialist Western powers – Secretary of State George Marshall was right and Truman and Clifford were wrong. (Marshall opposed US recognition of Israel in 1947/8)
  • Palestine is sacred to Muslims and once a land is Muslim it will always be Muslim. The Al-Aqsa Mosque in Old Jerusalem is the third holiest place in Islam. From there Muhammed ascended into heaven.
  • Palestinians are treated as second class citizens by the Israelis – with the perfect symbols of apartheid being the West Bank Wall, the ID system, and the Palestinian exclaves.
  • There have been many massacres of Palestinians by Jews: Safsaf (1948), Deir Yassin (1948) , Kafr Kasim (1956),  Sabra and Shatila (performed by the Lebanaese Phalange with the complicity of the IDF),  war crimes in Gaza in 2014 including airstrikes killing 1472 one third of which were children, confirmed by UN Human Rights Commission.

The Israeli Case:

  • If any people on the earth has a well documented claim to any land, it is the Jewish people to the land of Israel. It’s even in the Koran, Chapter 7, verse 137.
  • The Jewish people were homeless for almost 2000 years and the most persecuted minority on the planet, culminating in the Holocaust.
  • Jerusalem is to Judaism as Mecca is to Islam and while the Jews have but one country Arabs have 22, and Muslims 50.
  • Jews came to Israel in the 19th and early 20th centuries not as invading army but as settlers and refugees who turned a desert into a garden and built a state where Muslims (especially women) have more rights than they do in most Muslim lands.
  • Israeli territorial expansion and any restrictions on Palestinian life after 1945 was in response to threats to its national security by the coordinated invasion by surrounding Arab countries (1948), (1974) or by the planned invasion whose success was prevented by a preemptive air strike (1967) or by vicious terrorist attacks or bombings from Gaza.

Statistical Literacy

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    #1                                #2                                #3

Descriptive
Statistics:Pictures are worth a thousand numbers as well as a thousand words.		 Why a histogram is better than a mean or median or even a five number summary of a set of data. Why a scatter plot is better than an Rsquared or a

Regression

Equation in summarizing the relationship between two sets of data.

 Judgment is key to adjusting the axes of the histograms and scatter plots to maximize the quality of information
The average American has one testicle and one ovary. Gathered data is not always good data Correlations are not causation Most important may be ignored by the analyst
Has the data been massaged? Are the outliers there? The most important facts may not be quantifiable. Problem sets should be prioritized by civic or personal relevance. Failure to do so is a recipe for amnesia, boredom, and poor performance.
Inferential Statistics:

 

All about randomness, probability, and sample size

 

 Randomness is key to getting a good sample The bigger the sample size the closer and more confident you can be in generalizing. Roughly: a random sample of 100: 95% confident, plus or minus 10%.

Sample of 1200” 95% confident

Plus or minus 3%
 

Beware the file drawer problem!

 

Beware Type 1 and Type 2 Errors

 Probability is the key to statistical experiments.

 

Has the experiment been reproduced?

How many times?

 Perfect analogy is to the jury system. As the jury should assume innocent, so the statistician assumes no effect

(null hypothesis)

 Then calculates odds of getting actual result from chance alone. If extremely rare then, rejects the null hypothesis
 

Data omission and factor omission are likely when issue has a partisan dimension.

 

  

P values are arbitrary.

P values should be stated a priori.

P values should be thought about.

  

Chi square calculations can be completely misleading.

 

  

Simpson’s Paradox is a warning to make sure all the data has been disclosed.

 
Finding Right Metric key Best hitter: is batting average the right number?

Is Z-score better than absolute?

 Finance: absolute or relative performance? risk-adjusted or not,

But how? Sharpe?

 Justice: do women make $.77 on the dollar? What does this mean? Are you sure?

 

Statistical Literacy -2

 

 

 

Level One

 The uncertain can often be predicted with amazing certainty. The laws of chance lead often to extremely counter-intuitive results. Data can be misleading and decisions based on them false.
Quantification can lead to the double illusion of importance and objectivity, The most important factors may not be quantifiable. Most complex problems require non-quantitive judgment.
Statistical wizardry is no substitute for substantive knowledge. Experiments should be reproduced multiple times. The bigger the sample the lower the standard deviation.
Level Two 1111 is a good sample size –

which is not a function of the population – the tasting soup analogy

 P values are arbitrary but should be decided on before experiments are conducted. For what is a p value of 5% a good decision rule? Guilt or innocence?
The inevitability of Type 1 and Type 2 errors Studies should be based on random samples.

 

 Experiments should be double blind and controlled.
Regression to the man, the Placebo effect, and the Hawthorne effect can be big Adjusting data is often necessary but can be extremely misleading. CPI adjustment is critical but fails to account for quality improvement.
Extrapolation is almost irresistible: budgets, stocks,

Climate.

 Partisan bias can distort data collection, experimental design. Only 40% of social science experiments are ever repeated.

Is this science?

Congratulations!

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If you have made it this far and followed the instructions, you have a file divided into 23 subfiles.

 

Within each file you have your written response to each of the 23 questions.

 

If you have done so, you have created a gift of almost infinite value to anyone who loves you – your parents,  your children, grandchildren, close friends or yourself in later life. In short, to anyone who loves you.

 

I hope you have decided to share these responses with others hungry for a fuller life of regular probing of the most important issues facing the world today.

 

If your files are not complete, please go back and try again.

 

If you have not shared your files with fellow truth-seekers, please do so now.

 

If you have not set up a thematic calendar for the future in which you return on a periodic basis to the topics you think most important, please do so now.

 

Once you have tried your best to do all of the above, please click on one of the following buttons and, if you are willing, explain your decision.

 

 

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What are the lessons of the history of the Jews?

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Why have the Jews  been the most persecuted minority in human history? Why has Israel, of all the countries in the world, been singled out for a  boycott by the American Studies Association? Why are there more Talmuds in South Korea than in Israel? Why are children in China taught to “be like the Jews”?

One of the greatest paradoxes of human history is that the ethnic minority that has contributed most to humanity is also the most persecuted. Remember first of all that both Christianity and Islam grew out of Judaism. They are in effect Jewish offshoots. You might even call them Jewish sects. And then there is the scientific contribution. Jews have won an absolutely astonishing 21% of Nobel Prizes while only representing .2% of the world’s population.  The key to the paradox is simple: envy. The Jews are hated because they are so successful. But why are they have they been so ridiculously productive?

The South Koreans think the Talmud has something to do with it. That’s why Seoul has more Talmuds than Tel Aviv. After World War II, South Korea was a devastated impoverished land with pathetic prospects. But the South Koreans wanted to pull themselves up and looked around the world for models. They saw the success of the Jews and decided to emulate them. So they started buying Talmuds.

As a Catholic boy growing up in Washington DC in a parish made up of mostly Irish and Italian families, I had met all of one Jew before heading off to Harvard in 1971. There I was utterly astounded at the concentration of Jews in the student body and even more on the faculty. After forty years of puzzling over this enigma, I have come up with what I call the Jewish Triad theory.The three parts of the Jewish triad are the Talmud, the Bar Mitzvah, and Chavruta. Compare the Talmud page to the Catholic catechism that I had to memorize as a child. The catechism consists of a list of questions with one and only one answer for each. By contrast The Talmud page consists of one key passage of sacred text at the center with multiple different interpretations radiating out from the center. The student is to consider all the opinions and come up with his own. At the Bar Mitzvah the young man publicly presents his interpretation to an assembled congregation. This after a daily trial by Chavruta – the practice of being paired up with a peer (Chaver) whose job is to destroy your arguments as yours is to destroy his. By age 13 in this tradition every boy has the analytical equivalent of a Harvard Law degree. In stark contrast was my experience – memorizing the one official answer to every question and my coming of age ceremony consisting of standing silently in a cathedral with 700 other boys and girls and being blessed by a Cardinal 300 feet away and barely visible.

The Jewish triad is cultural gem. The most successful minorities should not be envied and hated but emulated and celebrated. The South Koreans and the Chinese have chosen the right path in this regard. And the results speak volumes.