Is California Insane?

We are all familiar with the stories of the California governor ignoring his own Covid-19 rules to dine at an exclusive upscale restaurant with friends and supporters and of the LA County Supervisor who dined outdoors at her favorite restaurant hours after voting to ban such activity as too dangerous but before the ban took effect. They go out and party, then lock down the people who elected them.

 

That’s just simple hypocrisy. That happens across the nation, although California does seem to have a talent for electing some real nutcases to various levels of government. 

 

We almost expect that kind of hypocrisy from any politician, most of whom are elected on the basis of their charm, good looks or name recognition rather than their ethics and intelligence. But that’s not why California stands out. Here are just two of many examples.

 

The Glock Company manufactures and sells guns. On their site they list the GLOCK 19, a 9 mm Luger. It’s a handgun with a magazine capacity of 15 to 33 rounds. It’s not unlike side arms carried by police. The site carries a warning, only one warning, and it has nothing to do with gun safety. It reads: “This Product can expose you to chemicals including lead [in the bullets?], which is known to the State of California to cause cancer and birth defects or other productive harm.” 

The sun can also cause skin cancer. Will they soon require that all doors that lead outside carry a similar warning? The danger of catching cancer from a gun falls far behind other, more immediate dangers.

 

Last August an estimated 3.3 million in California were “Facing [the] Largest Power Outages In Its History … Amid Record Heatwave.” On October 23 the news came:  “Due to extreme fire risk the utility is shutting off 466,000 customers between Sunday and Tuesday.” Then on December 5 the news read: “As parts of California rev up for another round of potentially fire-fueling gusty winds, Pacific Gas and Electric is warning 130,000 customers across 15 counties that they could lose power starting early Monday morning.”

 

Disregard the fact that many experts believe California added to the wildfire problem with poor forestry management. Just think about those stories in light of this headline from last September, “California Governor Signs Order Banning Sales Of New Gasoline Cars By 2035.” 

Picture hundreds of thousands of citizens stuck at home on a regular basis without electricity to charge their cars (or their phones). It’s just one more good idea – unless you can see the unintended consequences. California citizens can sit at home in the dark and applaud their governor for saving the planet. 

 

The antics of California would be funny if they weren’t completely crazy, and if the rest of the country weren’t slowly drifting in the same direction.

One Last Time: GMOs

It seems I’ve written about GMO misinformation and false beliefs about once a year including One More Time: GMOs in August 2016 and more recently, GMO Myths Persist early last year. I’ve also used GMOs as one example of how manufacturers and advertisers use labeling such as no-GMOs as a proxy for purity of their product to play on the gullibility of the grocery-buying public – even in cases where there was never a GMO alternative on the market such as tomatoes, oranges/orange juice, green beans and peanut butter. (I like some of these products, but the label is merely a scare tactic, and I feel like I am supporting a bunch of liars when I buy their products.)

I’m sure that’s why one of my loyal readers sent me a short email with a link to this story to get me fired up again.

The message is simple and straightforward, “With the quality of arable land declining and seawater encroaching on fertile cropland, researchers are trying to find a way to make crops grow in seawater.” One possible solution is to develop salt-tolerant crops through gene editing to deal with the fact that a rise in sea levels is beginning to contaminate rivers and the aquifers used to irrigate fields, “particularly those low-lying areas close to vast river deltas.” It is estimated that excess salt is causing annual crop loss around the world at the astounding level of $27 billion.

Scientists have been working for decades using traditional breeding methods to develop a viable variety of rice to grow in saltier water, but the more likely solution will involve some genetic modification. Some researchers are going so far as to try to modify crops with “the goal of soon growing them in floating farms placed in sea-flooded plains or anchored directly in the ocean” – hydroponics on an immense scale using salt water.

Growing rice or corn on the ocean seems like science fiction, but as farmland is disappearing, unless someone does something soon, people will starve.

A major roadblock to any such action is the continuing resistance to anything GMO. This website lists countries that allow GMO farming and those that ban it, but may allow the products to be imported. “Although many EU countries do not grow GMOs, Europe is one of the world’s biggest consumers of them.” It’s obvious that resistance is primarily political, from activists and those consumers that eagerly buy into their message. It is “generally driven not by science, as the independent science organizations in every major country have come out with public statements that GM products are safe.” 

It comes down to critical thinking. The disappearance of arable farmland is blamed on climate change, and people will scream about the US backing out of the Paris Accords as science denial. On the other hand, many of those same people will parrot the anti-GMO propaganda without any concern for real science. 

In the end which is the deadlier decision, the one that shows a disregard for the welfare of your fellow human beings: a.) refusing to wear a mask in public or b.) blindly supporting the anti-GMO activists whose endorsement of a false purity may lead to mass starvation? 

Facemasks and Climate Change

According to many, facemasks have become political. There is a little indication that the difference of opinion between wearing and not wearing a face covering divides along party lines, but the real similarity to politics is that most people have made up their minds and will try to badger the other side into compliance. Some suggest a federal mandate.

Today doctors state that wearing a facemask is the right thing to do, but going back only a few months expert opinion was the opposite.

Here is an explanation I read last week on the fivethirtyeight site. “The data that existed on mask effectiveness largely dealt with medical respirators and surgical masks. It wasn’t clear how protective a cloth mask would be.” 

Initially the experts thought “wearing masks might lead people to feel more safe than they actually were – and make choices that increased their risk of contracting or transmitting COVID-19.” The change in stance came “not because the evidence has significantly improved,” but because a sentiment spread that to wear one expressed caring about other people. The switch on mask wearing was based not on science but on a shift of the assumption about the perceived psychological effect – overconfidence vs. awareness. “Behavioral norms also matter, regardless of how much evidence backs them up.”

But once the behavioral norms machine starts moving, everything else including common courtesy and tolerance toward differing opinions go by the way side.” Most service workers where I shop wear a mask. Some don’t, but they practice social distancing; in my state/county it’s still a personal choice. A niece working in retail reports that wearing her mask all day at work gets extremely uncomfortable, but if she takes it off, customers will pull down their own masks to yell in her face how inconsiderate she is.

From the above article: “a public health and disease expert who is worried that mask effectiveness is being over-hyped, has also found himself threatened and harassed” by email and on social media for merely expressing doubt about “how effective DIY cloth masks are.” 

This passionate and aggressive defense of opinion and unwillingness to consider alternative ideas came to mind as I read the next article in Wired.

A potential solution to slowing and possibly solving climate change could be on the horizon. A couple of companies are teaming with the Department of Energy to develop an idea that has been around for a while, but was formerly too cost prohibitive, tristructural isotropic (Triso) fuel. It is made by sealing small particles of a mixture of low enriched uranium and oxygen inside a protective shell. The fuel can be used to power small nuclear reactors. “Not only will these reactors be smaller and more efficient than current nuclear power plants, but their designers claim they’ll be virtually meltdown-proof,” as the particle can withstand temperatures far above the limit beyond which the reactor will automatically shut down.

Nuclear is by far the best solution to carbon-free power generation. It is more efficient and has a much smaller ecological footprint than wind and solar. And, Forbes reminds us, “Study after study in top scientific journals find that nuclear power plants are far and away the safest way to make reliable electricity.” And with the danger of meltdown eliminated, “rather than needing to have miles of open space around a reactor, future plants running on triso fuel could be situated close to their users.” NASA is considering it for nuclear powered spacecraft. 

This could be a dream come true with houses, factories and refueling stations for electric cars powered by meltdown-proof, non-polluting reactors. But in the blink of an eye, opponents will dub it the nightmare of the future with dire warnings of radiation poisoning and other terrifying predictions, accusing proponents of putting profit above caring for others. Can we count on the American public to consider the science before flying into a panic?

Will “behavior norms” quickly develop and, like the Germans who thought it was smart to phase out their nuclear power program in favor of dependency on coal and Russian oil and gas, will Americans likely reject it, harassing defenders and voting out politicians. Based on other behavioral evidence, that’s my fear. 

Flashback - A Real Climate Solution

[In November 2013 I posted this calm look at how nuclear power could be the key to reducing carbon emissions. Last month the powers-that-be met in Madrid to agonize over climate change and again nuclear didn't make the agenda. In fact some countries are cutting back on their nuclear programs to satisfy ill-informed public opinion. I was optimistic 6 years ago, but am less so today.]

The very idea of nuclear power gives people chills of terror. For many the words nuclear and radiation elicit an automatic reaction of panic, but be aware that it’s a feeling they may have to get over very soon.

Reasons behind the fear are many and varied. This NY Times article explains how a problem as far away as Japan can seem scarier to Americans than much less remote and more dangerous threats like smoking, radon, auto accidents or natural disasters. Radiation is difficult to understand, complex and potentially deadly. It’s not only associated with bombs and war but it’s also invisible – so you can’t see it coming. Radiation is uncontrollable – how do you turn it off? – and unfamiliar, unlike burning wood or coal or turning a generator with wind or water. Finally, nuclear energy and radiation have had terrible PR. People are influenced by movies and science fiction stories to the point that in a recent survey on perceived risks for 30 activities and technologies, “students and women's group rated nuclear power No. 1. The experts ranked it No. 20.”

Since the UN came out just days ago with a report that the atmospheric CO₂ level has reached a record, even higher than expected, this automatic negative reaction will soon meet head on with a great deal of pro-nuclear effort as they look for alternatives to coal generation of electricity.

Popular alternatives, wind and solar, have serious drawbacks. They have a large geographic footprint, an ecological concern, while people who generally favor the idea, oppose it being set up next door. Renewable sources vary, only available when there is sunlight or sufficient wind. Variability creates more problems than normally expected. Not only do they require another reliable source to fill the gaps, but that source must also be very flexible. This Economist article tells how the wholesale price of electricity in Germany actually went negative one bright and windy day in June, because of the unusually high supply, which also threatened to overload the grid due to the inability to quickly and efficiently flex their coal, gas and nuclear plants. In places where utilities are required to buy the solar- and wind-generated electricity first, the variability is built into the system, utilities are losing value and profits, so the money for future investments in the delivery systems, the wires to your house, is drying up.

Given those circumstances and despite real drawbacks, like cost, spent fuel disposal and one recent atypical disaster, nuclear is beginning to look more and more attractive as a non-polluting alternative. James Hansen, a former NASA official, and one of the early voices warning of climate change, has recently endorsed it and asked key environmentalists to use their influence in favor of more nuclear plants. Others argue that, despite scary news reports, nuclear power has a very good safety record and has caused less than a dozen deaths from radiation over its entire history. They estimate that 1.8 million pollution-related deaths have been prevented by the current use of nuclear power. They minimize the threat of terrorism and argue that 21^st century technology is far superior to that used in any operating plant in the US. (Many of the latest navy ships are nuclear powered.)

Any decisions like this will have a political component. The push in favor is building, but advocates with the opposite agenda will be working hard to influence public opinion. Times like this call for strong critical thinking. Oppose nuclear power, if you are so inclined, based on facts from reliable sources and not on emotion, gut reaction or pseudo-scientific warnings. It’s critical that we get it right.

Words Matter

I don’t watch many ads on TV, but I happened to see this one near the end of a football game last week. It was one of those public relations ads from Exxon Mobile telling what a wonderful job they were doing developing biofuel from algae. Someday this fuel will be used to power planes, ships and trucks “and cut their emissions in half.”

Wait a minute; something is not right here! Biofuels are carbon-based. When they burn, they emit mostly carbon dioxide. The only way to cut emissions in half is for the same amount of fuel to produce twice the energy as traditional diesel or jet fuel. That involves a factor called energy density.

Now biofuel is generally good. It comes from plants that extract CO₂ from the atmosphere. When biofuel burns it releases the same CO₂ back into the atmosphere, so it is considered to be carbon neutral. 

The downside is that first generation biofuels, such as ethanol, are produced from edible crops. They require a lot of space to grow and a lot of energy to plant, harvest and transport.

Biofuels processed from algae are a second-generation biofuel, similar to fuel made from the inedible and discarded part of a food crop, such as cornhusks or switch grass. The advantage is that food and fuel do not compete with each other, as when ethanol is made from corn.  And the production consumes “small amounts of energy while producing considerable fuel output.”

Other advantages are that algae production is efficient, in that, it can be grown “in almost any climate thanks to the open- or closed-tank approaches that are available today. As long as we can provide this natural product with enough sunlight to create photosynthesis, then it has the capability to grow quickly.” It is a renewable energy source that can be refined into a variety of products, and it can yield almost five times more fuel per acre than sugar cane or corn.

Two major disadvantages according to the same source are that it currently requires about 20% more energy to grow than it yields and production cost is still higher than the alternatives.

Exxon Mobile confronts the skeptics by citing partnerships with several major universities and a private firm to use gene technology and other research to build on the advantages and overcome many of the disadvantages. It looks promising, but they still “face some significant technical hurdles before biofuels production from algae will be possible at a significant commercial scale.”

The question remains about the claim of half the emissions. All fuel from wood and manure to jet fuel has a characteristic called energy density. “Energy density is the amount of energy stored in a given system or region of space per unit volume or mass.”  Gasoline has an energy density of about 45 megajoules per kilogram (MJ/kg). “Ethanol produces 30 megajoules/kilogram.” For that reason, a car will go farther on a gallon of pure gasoline than it will on a gallon of ethanol or any mix of ethanol and gasoline. Adding ethanol at the pump reduces MPG.

This 2011 paper from Stanford gives the energy density of algae-based biofuel at 20-25 MJ/kg, about half that of gasoline. Even if the research at Exxon Mobile’s partners could double it to equal that of gasoline or diesel, it would still be far short of their claim of cutting the emission of planes, ships and trucks in half. 

Deeper reading at the Exxon Mobile site gives the answer: “If key research hurdles are overcome, algal biofuels will have about 50 percent lower life cycle greenhouse gas emissions than petroleum-derived fuel.” The saving is not in emissions but in the energy expended during the entire production and delivery process.

The claim in the ad is inconsistent with that explanation thus is really inaccurate. Perhaps the advertising firm misunderstood, or the company just dumbed it down for football fans. In either case, I love it when I’m right!

Behavior and Consequences

An article in one of my news feeds caught my eye recently. The title was “How To Predict Your Future.” It was based somewhat on the same premise as this blog, except that it concerns itself with predicting individual futures, whereas I have generalized it to apply to the future of society as a whole. Past behavior predicts future behavior, and those behaviors almost always dictate how satisfactory the results will be.

About individual results he says, “It’s not about what you want — it’s about what you do.” Look at your habits and decide whether they are the ones needed to reach goals. Don’t just set goals and assume the good intentions will see you through. The same can be said of societies. 

Just because a couple of us agree doesn’t convince me, so I dug deeper. 

This Psychology Today article claims the maxim is too simplistic and depends on a lot of factors:

•        High-frequency, habitual behaviors are more predictive than infrequent behaviors.
•        Predictions work best over short time intervals. 
•        The anticipated situation must be essentially the same as the past situation that activated the behavior.
•        The behavior must not have been extinguished by corrective or negative feedback.  
•        The person must remain essentially unchanged. 
•        The person must be fairly consistent in his or her behaviors. 

These are reasonable objections. Of course if a person is not exposed to the same situations or if he has gone through a  change brought about by a personal realization or outside intervention, the same actions will not repeat. People can quit smoking, give up drugs or turn away from a criminal lifestyle.

But these arguments apply more to an outside authority or counselor using records to judge whether someone needs professional help (or incarceration). In daily life though, there are people who almost always drive too fast regardless of the number of tickets issued and people who don't pass up the snack food aisle or the corner coffee shop. It's not the big things that catch up to people in the long run; it's the accumulation of small habits with unnoticeable consequences the lead to obesity, retirement insecurity and car crashes.

An example comes from the medical field.  A study to determine which was a better predictor of statin patients’ adherence to their prescriptions found that attitudes about taking medicine as directed were not as strong as past medication-refill behavior. The conclusion was “that past prescription-refill behavior is a better predictor of medication adherence,” which is fortunate since the refills can be tracked electronically.

In academics a 2018 article states, “Your behavior in high school could predict your income.” The study began in 1960 with 345,000 American high school students, following up with “about 80,000 of them 11 years later and another [follow up] for nearly 2,000 of them 50 years later.” Those who performed well “were all associated with career prestige at the 11-year mark and higher income at the 50-year mark.”

Of course past behavior is not a perfect predictor of future behavior (and the consequent future outcomes), but we don’t usually need to be perfect when dealing with individuals or groups. General trends are enough to predict whether America will continue to head in what most consider to be the wrong direction. Several times in the past eight years I have written about predicting outcomes months in advance. Here is just one called "How to Predict the Future." 

In another case I criticized the panic resulting from an investigative report dubbing lean beef trimmings as pink slime. Anyone with a trace of critical thinking would have passed it off as ridiculous; but people did react, and a few years later ABC News settled a defamation case with the meat processor for $177 million.

Last spring I argued that constantly telling children scary lies is a form of abuse. One example I used was the story about the dwindling polar bear population. This week news broke with the headline: Canadian “University dumps professor who found polar bears thriving despite climate change.” (The university apparently favors such abuse.)

Likewise, I wrote in early 2015 that we must deal with our own problems by choosing healthier behavior and not “wait for the next election” to solve everything.  How right I was!

There are far too many examples bearing out the behavior/consequences link for it to be ignored or dismissed.

Climate Change and Real Science

I’ve written recently how promoters of the man-made climate change concern tend to dismiss those who want to continue the debate as being unscientific and deniers. But some of the real impediments to dealing with greenhouse gases don’t come from a lack of science. The solutions are based in science but find stumbling blocks in popular trends and fear mongering.

Two or three current articles lead to this conclusion. 

The latest idea to come out of the UN to reduce our carbon footprint is to eat less meat. If everyone adopted a vegan lifestyle, putting all the cows, pigs, chickens and sheep out of work, they claim we could effect a significant change. But this Reason Magazine article crunches the numbers and the results are disappointing. “In their 2017 Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences study, agronomists Robin White and Mary Beth Hall reached a similar conclusion [to several others], calculating that the total elimination of animal husbandry would reduce U.S. emissions by 2.6 percent.” 

In other words, nagging the public to reduce or even completely stop eating meat pursues a negligible effect on climate change. Of course, the facts should not stand in the way of the popular feel-good trend, where the burger giants are playing to the crowd by offering Impossible Whoppers and McVegans. A big pain yields little gain.

On another front, strong arguments in favor of nuclear power as a means of producing electricity without releasing carbon dioxide into the air fall on deaf ears. Increasing the number of nuclear reactors would be the ideal solution to climate change. In addition to the lack of pollution, they have a much smaller physical footprint than other sources such as wind and solar. 

But say the word nuclear and people panic. They start talking about Chernobyl, Fukushima, and Three Mile Island as if they were typical rather than extreme outliers. “These are the only major accidents to have occurred in over 17,000 cumulative reactor-years of commercial nuclear power operation in 33 countries.” The World Nuclear Association summarizes the safety by saying, “The evidence over six decades shows that nuclear power is a safe means of generating electricity. The risk of accidents in nuclear power plants is low and declining. The consequences of an accident or terrorist attack are minimal compared with other commonly accepted risks. Radiological effects on people of any radioactive releases can be avoided.”

To counter these facts the uniformed cite the problem of nuclear waste. The truth is that “all the used fuel ever produced by the commercial nuclear industry since the late 1950s would cover a football field to a depth of less than 10 yards.” That’s one single football field for the entire world. Furthermore, much of it can be processed for reuse as they do in France and “after 7,000 shipments total of used fuel by the worldwide nuclear industry since 1970, there have been no leaks of radioactive material or personal injuries.”

The biggest truth is that people refuse to consider it as an alternative due to unfounded fear. In Germany the anti-nuclear movement kicked into high gear with mass protests after Fukushima promoting a phase out of nuclear energy by 2022 while still moving off fossil fuel-based energy generation. Should America follow this wanting-my-cake-and-eating-it too philosophy?

The final piece came from an interview published at foreignpolicy.com featuring research to growing better vegetation. 

Plants naturally draw CO₂ from the atmosphere. “Every year, humanity emits 37 gigatons of carbon dioxide; photosynthetic life can process and capture nearly half of that amount.” The theory is that plants can be made a little more productive. Since the amount of carbon dioxide released naturally is so much greater, plants operating at only a 2% or 3% increase in efficiency could pick up the other half of human emissions.

One problem is that the effort to “come up with a cost-effective and efficient way of actually pulling carbon dioxide down from the atmosphere and sequestering it down into the soil—where it should be” requires genetic engineering to create this “Ideal Plant.” If breeding could do it, it would take much longer. Many people and governments would have to overcome their irrational fear of GMOs, but that should be much easier than the alternative, the standard of living hardships that would result from severe reductions in energy availability.

The answers to fighting climate change likely come from real science, not a pick and choose kind of science that follows the fear mongering and fashions of the day.

Climate Change: Overlooking the Details

You can’t really call it a lie, but when people who should know better spread misinformation, it feels like the same thing. The latest example came a few days ago on the national news when a reporter said the Paris Climate Accords “set global standards” for emissions. This is clearly incorrect. The agreement consists of a compilation of NDCs, Nationally Determined Contributions. They are not a global standard but targets set by each individual country, i.e., nationally determined, with no enforcement mechanism for those who fall short and no authority to reject a proposal as inadequate. (Follow this link to access all of the individual NDCs. See this link for a Washington Post article praising the “few countries” that are meeting the standards they set for themselves.)

This is a common misunderstanding of the agreement that leads to unnecessary handwringing over the fact that the United States is no longer a signatory. Despite that withdrawal, according to the EPA the green house gas emissions by the US are decreasing and are lower today than they were in 1996.

Meanwhile, while everyone is worrying about carbon dioxide, criticizing all the SUVs on the roads, a far more powerful greenhouse gas is flying under the radar of public interest. The BBC warns, “It's the most powerful greenhouse gas known to humanity, and emissions have risen rapidly in recent years.” Sulfur hexafluoride (SF6) is a gas used by the electrical industry in the switching equipment in power stations, wind turbines and sub-stations to prevent short circuits, fires and other accidents. “In terms of warming potential, SF6 is 23,500 [times] more powerful than CO₂."

It is intended by design to remain contained within the insulator, but problems arise when leaks occur and evidence shows that they are occurring regularly as the global use of the gas “is expected to grow by 75% by 2030.” BBC puts the amount of leaking in the UK alone at the equivalent of an “extra 1.3 million cars on the road.” And the reason for the growth is a need for more of the switching equipment driven by the increase in sustainable power, such as wind and solar.

Here in the US, the EPA is aware of the problem, and Pacific Power & Gas is one of the utilities with plans to solve it. Fixing a single SF6 leak has an average cost of $25,000, so they are looking for alternatives and expect to have the problem solved in their business region by 2030.

Make no mistake; with so many more sources, carbon dioxide is still a far larger problem than SF6. But where is the balance? Why do we hear about the benefits of wind and solar while the drawbacks are ignored? Why do we hear the “dangers” of nuclear power while its remarkably  safe history is glossed over? Why are we urged to panic over unsigned Climate Accords when the truth is far more nuanced? 

Essential Oils and Climate Change

To try to win an informal debate, I remember hearing a woman once say, “I don’t care what the scientists say; I just feel better when I eat gluten free.” I also happened to know that this same person took the opposite view on climate change. She was convinced that climate change was a real, impending disaster based on information that the vast majority of climate scientists agreed on the premise.

Furthermore anyone who held a different view on climate change would be condemned, labeled a “denier,” someone whose opinion on that or any other subject should be disregarded because they were stupid. But it was not enough to ignore them. Anyone who disagrees in the least must be branded, cast out, unfriended or otherwise ostracized for the good of the world.

Using the opposite arguments in defense of two strongly held points of view did not faze her or the people she associated with at all. On one hand, science was good; on the other, science was too skeptical of the ancient wisdom or the latest fad.

Speaking of the latest fad, one that has been going strong for the last few years is a belief in the power of essential oils.

Although the name might imply it, there is nothing particularly essential about an essential oil, in the sense of it being necessary for life. The name comes from the fact that the oils extracted, usually by fermentation, contain the essence of a plant’s fragrance.

As this article written by a scientist, professor at McGill University with a PhD in Chemistry, explains, most of the claims about the powers of essential oils are unproven, untrue, misrepresented or exaggerated. For example, promoters claim that “either sniffing the right essential oil or rubbing it on the skin can support the immune system, enhance mood, promote sleep, cleanse the body’s organs, boost the libido, ease breathing, foster alertness, treat kidney stones, oxygenate the blood, relieve pain, reduce anger, prevent constipation and, of course, eliminate toxins, … readjust chakras, harmonize bio-electrical frequencies, cleanse negative energies, drive out evil spirits and promote sexual stimulation.”

He explains that a few of these are backed by evidence, such as using lavender aroma as a sleep aid. Many of the other claims have resulted in warnings to companies by the FDA, but that can’t control all the outrageous claims. “Sales of essential oils are dominated by multi-level marketing (MLM) companies,” who sell to independent distributors relying on commissions. No one can monitor what every one of these sellers promises in private conversations. 

Once again it is so easy to ignore the science, or simply not ask what studies have confirmed the seemingly magical powers. Take it on faith.

Interesting how, in one particular realm, scientific consensus is considered a strong argument in favor, with any minor expression of doubt leading to the accusation of being a denier. Meanwhile, in so many others areas, from psychic powers to performance bracelets to the healing power of magnets to detox cleanses to super foods to essential oils, taking the opposite stance is the favored response. No deniers there! No critical thinking either.

Can’t Stand the Heat?

Early last week the Energy Star program people released recommendations on home heating and cooling. The reaction was swift and negative.

I could not find a date on this posting, but I know that for many years the recommended residential temperature setting has been the same as presented there. “The U.S. Department of Energy recommends that home temperature be set to 68 degrees Fahrenheit in the winter and 78 degrees Fahrenheit in the summer. When no one is home, adjust temperatures to cooler settings in the winter and warmer settings in the summer.” For a long time it was no big deal. Many utilities have been subsidizing the cost of a programmable thermostat to facilitate meeting this pattern of adjustment.

But for some reason when Energy Star, a program of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Department of Energy, last week came out with the idea of setting the summer temperature at 78 degrees to save energy during the spring and summer, ABC news said it “surprised” the Internet. They went on to post numerous tweets protesting 78 degrees as too hot.

MSN expanded on the story. “The Energy Star program recommends that people increase their air conditioning by seven degrees when they are not at home and by four degrees when they are sleeping, depending on what temperature makes them comfortable.” That translates to 85 degrees when you are out and 82 degrees when you are sleeping, or trying to sleep. The story explains how it went “viral,” in a negative way, and included another set of Twitter examples.

One says: “WHO CAN STAND 80+ DEGREES WHEN THEY'RE SLEEPING I WOULD MELT TO DEATH.” Another is concerned about the dog’s comfort if the temperature is set up during the day. One example on both sites asks, “You know how hot 78 degrees is?” 

Well, the answer is yes, I do know how hot 78 is – and so do many other people. It was not that long ago that home air conditioning was not all that common. The number of houses with central air conditioning rose from 19% in 1973 to 72% in 2009. I could not find numbers for the 1960s, but a reasonable guess would be about 10% or less. According to Consumer Reports, today “more than 75 percent of U.S. homes use air conditioning, and 90 percent of new homes are equipped with central air.” 

Most of the complainers are not old enough to remember the days of no air conditioning when city folks sat out on the fire escapes at night, and others set up mattresses in the cooler basements, when breaks from the summer heat consisted of opening a fire hydrant or going to the pool or to one of the few air conditioned buildings in town, the movie theater. 

That was reality only a couple of generations ago! Somehow the majority of people struggled through. No one melted to death. Dogs weren’t dying at home while everyone was at school or work. If it was hot at night, too bad. It’s true that 82 degrees is not nearly the ideal temperature for sleeping, but having to sleep at that temperature or higher in the past, because there was no other choice, did not result in mass extinction!

Several news outlets that released the Energy Star guidelines mentioned also that July was the hottest month ever recorded on Earth. This links the renewed recommendation with climate change efforts, where everyone is expected to do their share – except they don’t want to. It’s the Al Gore philosophy – express a ton of concern about the planet, then go about business as usual.

This entire episode shows why perspective is so important. Without it, gratitude is lost. Technology is moving ahead so fast that everyday life of a few generations ago seems like ancient history. Minor inconveniences become major hardships. People don’t stop to think how lucky we are to have air conditioning almost everywhere. Instead they fly to Twitter to rail on about the injustice of it all.

How Can You Believe Those Numbers?

Politicians and other entities trying to raise awareness to one or another kind of problem or injustice love to toss out surprising numbers to gain support for their cause. In many cases these are not real numbers. They could be based on data collected by the program itself with no effort to be unbiased, in fact, the more shocking the better. They may have been based on a single survey that made no effort to confirm results, or they may be in conflict with the results of similar surveys. Like the unverified number of discarded plastic straws based on a small survey for a grade-school project that led to such an uproar, the numbers are often repeated so many times by so many people that everyone assumes they are correct. 

With so many examples, how can we tell what to believe?

Everyone knows that ten thousand steps per day is the recommended amount to stay healthy and to boost longevity – or do they? This NPR piece tells us “the idea of walking at least 10,000 steps a day for health goes back decades to a marketing campaign launched in Japan to promote a pedometer” and is not some kind of magic number. In a recent study published in JAMA, older women who averaged 4,400 steps per day were better off than those taking only 2,700, with little or no benefit over about 7,500 steps. This finding was confirmed elsewhere.

The myth of 10,000 daily steps is akin to the 8 glasses of water daily. There is no basis. Someone made it up. The best advice, to drink when you are thirsty, continues to be drowned out by the “hydration parrots.”

Other examples include the unacceptably high number of school shootings. The Campus Safety Magazine puts the number for 2018 at 82, “the highest there have ever been since 1970.” They mention that the second highest was 59 in 2006, so it can hardly be called a trend, perhaps more of a blip. They then state that the majority didn’t happen on school property – indicating a rather loose definition of school shooting. Compare that to the Wikipedia list of each occurrence by location with a total of only 36 for the entire year.

A Time article calls into question the widely circulated number of one in five women in the US having been raped. They call that number misleading noting “the striking disparity between CDC figures and the Justice Department’s crime statistics based on the National Crime Victimization Survey (which includes crimes unreported to the police).” This article provides much detail and there is room for doubt (as I pointed out earlier), yet we continue to hear the same number.

Of course everyone also knows that crime and teen pregnancy are worse than ever – not so fast! “Violent crime in the U.S. has fallen sharply over the past quarter century.” Here is a link to that Pew survey from earlier this year showing several graphs on violent and property crimes all heading in the right direction, although you’d never know it from the news coverage. That explains why the public perception is the opposite. Likewise a site called the Seeker reports  “the fact is that teen pregnancy is low and has been dropping.”

Can the recent increase in tornados be attributed to Climate Change? This article from a Carbon Brief posting calls it highly uncertain – with references to the data. “What is clear is that there is no observable increase in the number of strong tornadoes in the US over the past few decades,” adding: “Any role for climate change in affecting the conditions for tornado formation is still very much an open question and the subject of ongoing research by the scientific community.”

Finally, are there more black men in prison in the US than in colleges and universities? It’s a handy throwaway line for a speech emphasizing victimhood, but I picked that one apart very nicely about 5 years ago.

We can’t rely on the orators, advocates, media and advertisers to get it right. Use critical thinking. Question everything.

Child Abuse Awareness

April is National Child Abuse Prevention Month. One objective is to raise awareness of child abuse issues. Certainly this includes instilling fear in children to promote one’s ego or enforce one’s authority. But doesn’t instilling fear in a child to promote one’s political agenda have the same detrimental effect?

Take for example the incident a few weeks ago when a number of young children were driven to Dianne Feinstein office to persuade her to vote in favor of the Green New Deal. Most of the media attention was on the Senator trying to dodge the questions with little notice to the state of the children. They were afraid and panicky – and they didn’t get that way on their own. It likely came from parents more concerned about the environment than children’s immediate mental health and wellbeing.

One young girl says, “We have come to a point where our earth is dying!” Isn’t planting an idea like that in a child’s mind and encouraging it to grow also a form of abuse?

 A similar situation arises from pictures of polar bears. The Weather Channel headline reads: “Heartbreaking Photos Show Stranded Polar Bears Floating on Ice.” A quote from an Italian photographer (not a scientist) follows: “I believe the survival of this species on high arctic islands is strictly related to sea ice," although he “actually found more bears than he expected.”

The fact is that polar bears are at home in and around water. “Polar bears are pretty strong swimmers – probably the strongest of all the land-based predators. They will spend much of their time in swimming and thus they are sometimes referred to as marine mammals.” Most such pictures show them on one of many ice floes looking stranded, but they are able to swim 60 to 70 miles in open water. “The longest distance covered by any polar bear in swimming is about 427 miles…. She swam for up to 9 days continuously through the Beaufort Sea...” Stranded, indeed!

Another source questions the fuss about them being endangered when the “polar bear populations have been increasing overall since the 1970s.” The fuss, of course, is that polar bears are an example of charismatic macro-fauna. They look sweet and cuddly (from a distance) and, like orphan children in those charity solicitations, easily tug at our hearts, encouraging us to turn off our critical thinking. This effect is strong on children who can put pressure on their parents to support various causes. Isn’t such manipulation also abuse?

Finally, school shootings are a terrible blight on the country, but does that justify the number of children who are scared to go to school? The LA Times refers to the “prevalence of school shootings,” as schools lock doors, arm teachers, conduct drills and come up with all kinds of countermeasures to what is really a fairly rare event – despite anxious news coverage. Meanwhile politicians play on the fear to renew calls for additional gun restrictions.

There are over 132,000 schools in the US with about 55 million students.

The average number of school shootings per year since 2000 (including last year, a statistical anomaly) has been 36.6 resulting in about 20.2 deaths per year (not all students) according to the CDC. They add that among youth aged 5-18, “between 1% and 2% of [homicide] deaths happen on school grounds or on the way to or from school.”

The full CDC report (Table 6: Number of deaths from selected causes, by age: United States, 2016) gives more information. The age breaks in the table are different, stopping at 14 rather than 18, but it allows for a reasonable estimate of deaths from other causes to compare to the 20.2 shown above: Flu, 356; Motor Vehicle Accidents, 1455; Accidental discharge of firearms, 74; Accidental drowning and submersion, 708.

The chance of a child being killed in any other situation is 50 to 100 times greater than by a firearm in school, at a school activity or traveling to or from school. Many other threats are also greater. Yet this is what we scare our kids about. Maybe it’s time to start ignoring the theatrics of the news media and teach our children to exercise some critical thinking and perspective.

Maybe also it’s time to extend the definition of child abuse to include terrifying children, intentionally or unintentionally, with unreasonable fear in order to push political agendas.

Robots and Climate Change

There is something about adapting to a bad situation that makes a lot of sense.

This occurred to me when I ran across this article about robots coming to steal everyone’s job. It tells how a couple of economists are worried about the ability to adapt to the relentless march of automation. Their point is: “Too much time discussing whether robots can take your job; not enough time discussing what happens next.

A popular solution has been to “try to stall or reverse the trend of automation,” a kind of resistance movement to make it more difficult. Such measures include extra taxes on robot-produced goods or taxes on the robots themselves, which I wrote about in March of last year. Some propose new government regulations to make automation more difficult. The economists expect this approach to fail because consumers will naturally gravitate toward “cheaper goods or services” made possible by automation. (You don’t see anyone wanting to pay more for phone service to allow telephone operators to keep their jobs.)

Another proposed strategy is to “reduce the cost of human labor, by driving down wages or cutting benefits” making hiring workers preferable to buying robots. No one could seriously endorse this.

The other class of solutions they call “coping strategies.” These include teaching workers whose jobs are threatened new skills, skills less likely to be taken away by automation. Or the government could provide a guarantee to displaced workers, like a universal basic income (UBI). Both are iffy for various reasons: what skills fall into that category, how trainable are workers in mid-career, and how can any country, especially a poor one, support a UBI plan?

There is a need for more creativity around coping strategies, but at this point most of the energy goes toward ways to slow progress, a futile strategy when automation looks inevitable.

Is there a parallel here with climate change? At present all the efforts seem to be directed toward convincing everyone that climate change is real, inevitable and driven largely by human activity. There are a lot of good arguments to back this up. The intention is to promote individual and governmental action to reduce the release of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere – a stalling, not a coping, strategy.

People put their hopes on things like the Paris Agreement to make this happen and many despair at the thought of America bowing out. But how familiar are most Americans with the agreement? It is voluntary. Each country gets to pick its own goals known as its Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC).

China, for example, commits “To achieve the peaking of carbon dioxide emissions around 2030 and making best efforts to peak early.” Peaking in 2030 means continuing to increase between now and then. India is no better: “India’s INDC do not bind it to any sector specific mitigation obligation or action.” They commit to decrease “emissions intensity” by 33% to 35% in an  economy where the demand for electricity expected to increase by more than 3 times – in other words, they plan meet much more energy need slightly more efficiently. In another instance, Norway commits to “a target of an at least 40% reduction of greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 compared to 1990 levels.” They get to pick the target and the comparison and when serious development will start, but there is no penalty for missing. (See all countries here.)

Many NDC commitments, when read in detail seem timid at best. Paris doesn’t look like the real solution, just a strategy to postpone the inevitable.

Where are the people talking about dikes and levees around the major coastal cities or better drainage systems for Houston? Why is the government still subsidizing flood insurance for new construction too close to oceans, rivers and streams? So many creative possibilities, adjustments and adaptations for coping are being ignored or overlooked.

In both cases, it makes sense to think critically about how to allocate our resources, putting up roadblocks or planning ahead.

Not Enough Babies!

Oh, no!  We're running out of people!

The Washington Post, along with several other news outlets reported a few weeks ago that the birth rate in the US is down. It fell 1% from 2015 to 2016. Why is this news? Is it a problem?

 Apparently it is. The article says we are “in the midst of what some worry is a baby crisis.” The birth rate has been declining for years and is now at a historic low according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Some predict it will result in “economic and cultural turmoil” and that “there's a danger that we wouldn't be able to replace the aging workforce and have enough tax revenue to keep the economy stable.”

The workforce issue could be a worry if the birthrate falls and stays below the replacement level, unless robots fill some of those jobs that the aging workforce leaves. Of course, the idea of robots taking jobs is another of the worries that the news media presents as a potential crisis! But maybe it would be a good thing.

With robots doing the work, there would not be enough human workers to pay into the Social Security fund that the retirees draw from. But that is already a problem, a flaw in the design of the program rather than a crisis brought about by not enough babies. It is compounded by the inadequate savings of many older Americans, but fewer children would cost parents less and with a little more discipline the may be averted.

Then there is the fact that as economies strengthen and the standard of living improves it is natural for parents to have fewer children. Populations migrate from farm to city, and the childhood survival rate improves as healthcare improves. It happens in every country, not just here. According to the article countries that already have low birthrates are fighting this trend by putting “pro-family policies into place to try to encourage couples to have babies.” 

That smacks of yet another government attempt to sway individual decisions – there is already a tax break for having children and assistance payments are calculated on a per child basis.  Now should programs like mandatory parent leave be added? Do we have people in Washington (or anywhere) capable of fine-tuning the birthrate by turning on and off programs and regulations? Even if we did, is it politically realistic to expect that such benefits could easily be turned off? 

At the same time we have a distress call every summer that children are out of school and will be going hungry because they no longer get free breakfasts and lunches. Charitable organizations are putting together programs to address this problem.  Would more babies compound this problem?  

Finally, since everyone is worried about climate change, isn’t having fewer people burning fossil fuel, otherwise adding to greenhouse gases by eating meat and generally using up the earth’s resources a good thing? Technically, your children and grandchildren are part of your carbon footprint. Maybe this is another case of wanting to clean up the planet by letting someone else do it.

The news media are always eager to pick up on the worries of certain experts even if they seem to conflict with the worries of other experts.  This sounds like another crisis where the experts have already made up their minds about the problem and course of action without looking at the many trade offs and contradictions – puzzling.

The Upside of Climate Change

Is the climate changing?  Of course the climate is changing.  It has been changing for the last six billion years.

Is it getting warmer?  The temperature trend seems to be in that direction, so there is no reason to doubt that it is also getting warmer.

The problem is that all the news reports seem to stress that a changing climate is a bad thing, that warmer is a bad thing, and that it’s entirely our fault.  Humans had the nerve to act in a way that’s destroying the earth and should feel guilty about it.  We are destroying the planet for our children and grandchildren.  Every additional temperature reading becomes breaking news.  And the President not signing a piece of paper in Paris somehow has an immediate negative effect. 

The argument continues that the changed climate will result in extremes – more cold days, more hot days, more storms and bigger storms.  Unfortunately, the data do not bear this out.   A graph in Wikipedia of the number of hurricanes affecting the US by decade clearly shows variability, not an upward trend.  Annual reported tornadoes compiled by NOAA from 1954 to 2014 shows the same.

Yet every time part of the US, especially the East Coast, experiences some weather extreme, an analyst, reporter or expert is sure to cite climate change.  This is a lazy argument.  Too hot weather proves climate change; too cold weather proves climate change; too windy weather shows the same, all the time implying that it’s a terrible thing, not just for those who built houses too close to the beach, but for everyone.  Critical thinkers should demand better evidence.

We are led to the conclusion that the climate we have is the best of all possible climates and that it’s down hill from here no matter what.  Isn’t there anything positive to be said about climate change?  As it turns out, there are at least a couple of potential benefits.

“Cold weather kills 20 times as many people as hot weather, according to an international study analyzing over 74 million deaths in 384 locations across 13 countries. The findings also reveal that deaths due to moderately hot or cold weather substantially exceed those resulting from extreme heat waves or cold spells.” (Source:  Lancet)

 Chris D. Thomas is a professor of conservation at University of York and “one of the world’s most influential ecologists” according to the biography at the end of his book Inheritors of the Earth.  On page 6 of that book he says, “More species like it hot than cold, and so the overall consequence of a warmer climate is to raise biological diversity in many parts of the world.”

So the possibility of fewer people dying because of the weather is a good thing.  Biological diversity is also considered a good thing.  Maybe the experts and the media should take some time out from their constant catastrophizing and handwringing to take a look at the bright side.  The climate has been changing for millions of years; humans have been adapting for tens of thousands of years.   Maybe it's not going to be as bad as the purveyors of doom-and-gloom predict.