2009-12-24 2030: Yesterday evening and this evening, I worked the Thursday and Friday New York Times crossword puzzles. I expected these to have Christmas themes, and indeed they did.
The Thursday puzzle observed the day before Christmas by requiring the solver to put 'EVE' into certain squares. It isn't unusual for Times puzzles to require more than one letter in a square; this is known as a 'rebus' entry. The puzzle gave no hint that this would be necessary except for certain very obvious clues that didn't fit in the number of squares available. (For example, "Home of the Cavaliers," which should be CLEVELAND but for which there were only 7 squares; the solution was CL-EVE-LAND.)
I usually avoid Friday puzzles, because they tend to be too hard for me, but I thought the puzzle for Christmas day might be fun. It turned out to be relatively easy (but I made free use of the internet). The puzzle was unusual in that it had an asymmetric grid—which had a rough Christmas tree shape. The main clues revolved around A Christmas Carol. But my favorite pair of clues were for two three-letter words: 25A, "Stocking stuffer" and 48A, "Maker of 25-Across". The answers: TOY and ELF.
2009-12-24 1100: This morning, I got up early (4:00 a.m. PST) to take a friend to the airport, and heard the news on NPR of the Senate vote passing their health care reform bill. This of course was historic, both in terms of the legislation itself, and the fact that a vote has not been made by the Senate on Christmas Eve since 1895. I am glad that the health care reform has advanced this far; I would much prefer a single-payer system, but this is probably the best we can achieve at this time.
One thing that struck me about the health care debate is the disconnect between the rhetoric by its opponents and its supporters. Opponents, including those on the left as well as Republicans, claimed it's a massive giveaway or bailout to the insurance companies. But supporters—Democrats in the Senate—congratulated the Senate for standing their ground and successfully defeating the insurance companies by passing this legislation. However, it appears that the Democrats in the Senate were united in their support of the legislation because they correctly perceived that the Republicans are less interested in health care reform than they were in handing the Democrats a stinging defeat.
Concerning the legislation itself, it seems to me that its outline and features are necessary and inevitable, if we decide not to have a single-payer system. We want to require the insurance companies to provide coverage at affordable rates to those with pre-existing conditions; this cannot be done unless we require everyone to buy coverage (else, young people would not bother getting insurance until they are ill). But if we require people to purchase coverage, we must subsidize the lower middle class who cannot afford to pay the full premiums, and also extend Medicaid to a higher income level to cover the working poor. And if we subsidize those people, we must pay for this by increased taxes, on high-income families and also on "cadillac" health plans. The Senate bill includes all of these features. It also limits insurance company profits by requiring 80-85% of premiums to be used to pay for health care. Certain senators said from the floor of the Senate that they believe health insurance should be a non-profit industry.
2009-12-24 1000: Yesterday, I visited the Cascades Volcano Observatory , where I met several of the scientists. My visit to the Observatory was kindly set up by Reed College statistics professor Albyn Jones, who has worked with certain scientists there on their data. My hope is to work on algorithms or statistical tools for analysis of the large amount of data they have. This includes seismological records of four million small earthquakes produced during the slow eruption of Mt. St. Helens that began in October 2004 and continued for more than three years.
My meetings with the scientists were very interesting; I learned a lot about volcano seismology and the research problems they are working on. But Albyn and I were given a tour of the Observatory by Seth Moran (a geophysicist) that was quite fascinating. Much of the Observatory is office space, of course, but on the walls there are scientific posters and prints of many amazing photographs of volcanoes and eruptions, and there are several lava boulders and a shattered tree trunk found near Mount St. Helens after its eruption in 1980. Seth showed Albyn and I a small room with banks of LCD computer displays, as well as several drum seismographs (with pens drawing lines on paper), showing the current state of the several volcanoes being monitored. (The Observatory monitors volcanoes on the west coast from Mount Lassen in California north to Mount Baker in Washington.) He told us that that room is quiet unless a volcano shows activity, in which case people would be watching the displays continuously.
One particularly interesting thing Seth showed us were instrument packages designed to be lowered by helicopter onto a volcano. These were metal boxes, several feet long, attached to aluminum frames that serve as feet for the packages. These are called spiders, and there were half a dozen sitting in the lot behind the Observatory, waiting for a crisis that would require their placement on a volcano. The spiders allow collecting of data in a manner that puts humans at minimum risk: it only takes five minutes for a helicopter to place them. This was underscored by the wreckage of a spider—its frame twisted and the instrument package broken open with contents charred—that was destroyed by an explosion on the dome of Mount St. Helens.
In the lobby of the Observatory is a very poignant oil painting, a portrait of David A. Johnston, shown as a slender young man with reddish hair and beard, standing on rocks somewhere in the mountains. He is the geologist who perished while on his post monitoring Mount St. Helens when it erupted in May of 1980. This reminded me of the importance of the work done at the Observatory, and the importance of science in general.
2009-12-15 1000: On the airplane yesterday, I read the new book Storms of Our Grandchildren: The Truth About the Coming Climate Catastrophe and Our Last Chance to Save Humanity , by prominent climate scientist James Hansen. This turned out to be credible and interesting. He tells a personal story of his involvement in climate science: early encouragement as an undergraduate from James van Allen, his decision to go public with his deepening concerns about the climate, and his resulting battles as a NASA employee with NASA adminstrators. He also describes how and why he and other climate researchers reached the conclusion that anthropogenic warming is real and of grave danger. The writing was not intended as a direct rebuttal to climate change skeptics, although he does mention and discuss certain skeptical claims; but his description of the science clarified the underlying issues and made it clear why certain skeptical arguments are inadequate or irrelevant. In particular, he describes how much of the research into paleoclimates was not intended to determine if the current warming is unprecedented—the current warming isn't—but instead it was indended to determine how the climate responded to changes in forcings (solar or carbon dioxide). (Previous warm or cold epochs were of course natural in origin, but their causes have been identified and quantified.) This increases the scientists' confidence that the current change in the forcing due to greenhouse gasses will indeed lead to increased warming as the century progresses. Hansen emphasizes that computer models are useful but they are not the reason the scientists expect increased greenhouse gasses to produce the expected amount of warming (contrary to many skeptics who liken climate forecasting to weather forecasting).
There are some particularly interesting and telling details in his book. One is the story he relates about Richard Lindzen, a prominent scientist who is skeptical of anthropogenic global warming. Hansen asked him in person if he doubts that cigarettes cause the diseases they are linked to (Lindzen had decades earlier testified on behalf of tobacco companies on this matter). Hansen reports, based on his answer, that he apparently still believes this.
At one point, Hansen gives a simple explanation as to the current stall in the warming: a La Niña. As this cycles to the El Niño now beginning, Hansen expects record temperatures to return. But he says the unusually low solar minimum we are now experiencing may keep temperatures at near record levels instead of record levels.
Hansen concludes the book with a compelling discussion as to how he reached the conclusion that we must limit the carbon in the atmosphere to 350 parts per million to avoid disaster, and what we must do to prevent this. The salient point is that we are already at 387 ppm. He advocates that we must quickly eliminate all use of coal, and we must not exploit tar sands or similar unconventional fossil fuels (development of which has now begun). He argues based on experience with the Kyoto treaty that "cap-and-trade" will not reduce carbon emissions, and he advocates "fee-and-dividend" (a carbon tax offset by rebates to consumers). He says cap-and-trade is favored by Wall Street because it would create a new market for speculators. The most interesting recommendation he makes: we must use nuclear power, specifically "fourth generation" nuclear power. These would be "breeder" or fast neutron reactors, which instead of only using 1% of the possible energy in nuclear fuel, would use 99% of the possible energy. Hansen says, contrary to claims by anti-nuclear activists that we are running out of uranium, we have enough uranium (in the form of nuclear waste from the present generation of reactors, and uranium hexafluoride) to meet our needs for a thousand years—if we use fourth generation reactors. Hansen has some unkind words for certain environmentalist groups for their opposition to this technology; he argues that increased efficiency and renewable energy will not by themselves enable us to abandon coal.