Junk Science 2

There is another interesting link between some climate skeptics and my old friend Jack Kenney, the heroic advocate of the abiogenic petroleum theory: Both like the term "junk science". I have already written about the "junkman" Steven Milloy, who seems to think that much of the health and environmental science and especially climate change science is junk. This is pretty bold, as he takes on large areas of mainstream science that are well established and usually would seem to be examples of "sound science", the term that Milloy and others use as a counterpart to "junk science".

Kenney's definition of junk science is a bit more sophisticated: In his paper "Science and Junk-science", he lists several examples of junk science that probably most educated people would readily agree with. Examples that he mentions are alchemy, astrology, phrenology, and yes, "creation science". I fully agree so far (especially with the latest, which cannot be stressed too much these days as a creationist is aspiring for highest powers in the US...). Then Kenney adds some more controversial examples: Freudian psychology, Marxist economics, feminist gender studies, and so on. Surely Kenney leaves the realm of natural sciences here, so I dare not comment too much. Whether one likes these theories or not seems to be more of a question of political views than of scientific rigor. Anyway, this is all just a prelude to Kenney's real attack.

Other than Milloy who takes on various branches of science, Kenney attacks only one established scientific theory: That of a biological origin of petroleum, for which he invents the nice acronym "BOOP". According to him, BOOP is a dogma, held and defended by the British/American "geo-phrenologists". It should be replaced by what he likes to call the "modern Russian-Ukrainian theory of deep, abiotic petroleum origin".

Based on my direct scientific experience I feel less competent to dismiss Kenney's claims than those about climate change made by Milloy. There are many arguments against abiogenic petroleum, but the only one on which I have direct expertise is the He isotope story. Yet it seems to be a robust and strong argument against a deep origin of hydrocarbons in many (but not all) cases. Quite possibly there are indeed some abiogenic hydrocarbons out there (at least methane), but almost certainly most of the petroleum is biogenic, despite Kenney's claims that a biological origin is impossible.

Other than knowing about He isotopes (and other technical issues) and having experienced how willingly Kenney twists the most clear-cut scientific evidence, how could one figure out if Kenney is trustworthy? In his case it is not obvious that he is being paid for what he says, quite in contrast to Milloy. His debate is a conflict between petroleum geologists, both sides obviously being somehow involved in this big business. So how then can the claims be verified? One indication is that Kenney's papers aren't published in the most reputable journals, which they should be if his revolutionary theory were deemed to deserve serious attention. But of course he would say that this is just because followers of the BOOP dogma suppress any non-conformist views. Such a claim is in itself an indication for bogus science.

But I think there is yet another indication: The style in which Kenney's papers are written, which in several points violates usual scientific standards. A typical example is the way he attacks the mainstream theory ("BOOP"). One of his papers is entitled "Dismissal of the claims of a biological connection for natural petroleum". He is not satisfied with describing and supporting his own theory, he spends much time on dismissing and deriding the opposite view, often in a rather pejorative style. Opposing claims are shown to be "without merit", "insupportable", or even "intellectual fraud". Very well established methods such as carbon isotopes are called "obscure", other evidence is called "spurious", and so on. Many terms used in the literature are given only in quotes, not to indicate a quotation as I use it here, but with a pejorative connotation. Important statements are highlighted by bold face or italics and are repeated over and over again, without, however, ever providing real detailed arguments and evidence in their favor.

This style reminds me quite a bit of Khilyuk and Chilingar, and it is a sure indication of "junk science". No scientific journal in its right mind would ever allow such botch to be published. No conspiracy of BOOP-activists is needed to detect this flaw in Kenney's papers and hence prevent them from being published. If you want to be heard as a scientist, you need not only to come up with real evidence for your arguments, but also to follow certain basic rules of conduct, both of which Kenney does not. Just as a chess player refusing to shake hands risks to lose his reputation, a scientist unable to keep the debate to a factual level becomes untrustworthy.

Amazing Predictive Skill

One last post related to the financial crisis for the time being...

A question that comes up as one sees the highly praised (and paid) financial experts wrecking their ships: Could it have been avoided? Could it have been foreseen that those suprime mortgages eventually would backfire? Well, in hindsight it is easy, but was there anyone who did anticipate it?

I've heard Swiss and German bankers and politicians say (with regard to banks over here being affected by the American virus) that no one could have possibly foreseen this crisis. It came out of the blue...

Well, CNN has a page where they show eight experts who did smell that something was starting to burn, and eight others who didn't. But much more impressive to me are the predictive abilities of the American author James Howard Kunstler. In his really interesting book "The Long Emergency", which was published in 2005, he did indeed foresee that the housing bubble would not last too long. Ok, it lasted longer than the thought, but in the end he passed the reality check. Much better than many so-called financial experts, anyway. Here are a few sentences from the book:

James Howard Kunstler: The Long Emergency
Chapter six: Running on Fumes (The Hallucinated Economy)
Section: Home: The last refuge of value

By the time you read this, it is very likely that the housing bubble will have begun to come to grief. [....]

The economic wreckage is liable to be impressive. If large numbers of house owners cannot make their mortgage payments, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and by extension the federal government, would be the big losers. [...] It could easily bring on cascading failures that might jeopardize global finance. This time, the American public would feel the pain.

Does this sound strangely familiar? It was written in 2004, and although Kunstler probably did not think that it would take another four years to become reality, eventually it did. At least I am impressed by Kunstler's future-telling abilities.

Interestingly, the main topic of "The Long Emergency" is peak oil, another hotly debated issue. Many energy experts, economists for the most part, don't think that oil production might peak anytime soon (if ever). Kunstler expects otherwise, an he is not alone. His view is backed by ASPO, The Oil Drum, Matthew Simmons, and the EnergyWatchGroup, to mention just a few. Could Kunstler be right in this case as well?

Certainly, some of the opinions put forward in the peak oil debate deserve a closer look under the title of a reality check. I will come back to this topic.

Competitive Pressure

As a follow-up to my previous post, this Times article about the "fate" of some top managers of the bankrupt Lehman Brothers may be of interest. A few excerpts:

"Barclays has identified eight individuals out of the New York staff of 10,000 who are vital to make the deal succeed and a further 200 who are identified as “key”. It is thought that these eight directors will be locked into two-year contracts worth between $10m and $25m a year. [...] Barclays said there is no obligation to pay it out but analysts say the competitive pressure to keep key staff means he will have to. "

I don't accept this "competitive pressure" argument. CEOs of the biggest Swiss bank UBS also use it all the time, even after these "key" people led the bank into its biggest losses ever. If this "competitive pressure" really forces them to pay insane salaries to few while laying off many, it has to be stopped. See my last post...

The Big Bailout

So the US government is going to bail the banks out of the mess they created, and the taxpayer is going to pay. Well, maybe this is the only way to solve the current financial crisis. Obviously, the laissez-faire capitalism of the Bush-era has crashed and the bank CEOs and fund managers happily accept the help of the government, now that their risky strategies didn't work out. As long as they worked, of course, they thought the gains belong all to themselves and the state should not take anything away in the form of taxes.

I'm wondering: Will we learn something from this costly adventure? Will we just let the banks, hedge funds, stock markets, and their big-buck managers and traders continue as they did before? Or should something be changed to prevent more of these bubble - collapse cycles? And if so, what?

I think there is one basic thing that should be changed. I don't understand why anyone should earn millions, no matter how good the business goes that he or she happens to be doing. Crazy salaries let people lose their sense of reality. Those who earn that much, and even more those who think that anyone could possibly "deserve" to earn as much as hundreds of average workers are in desperate need of a reality check.

So, as in the end tax money is always going to pay the damage, why don't we make sure that we get the money from those who earn these insane salaries before the next crisis will force us all to pay for them?

My proposal: Take the salary of the US president (400,000$ per year) as a cap of what anyone can reasonably earn. There is hardly another job that carries more power and responsibility (even if the present incumbent is not quite up to the task). If things get really tough, multi-millionaire bankers are happy if a comparatively lousy paid president helps them out. So they should show a bit of humility in their pay checks.

How about taxing everything above the president's income level by 100 %? If this would be done worldwide, maybe the folly could be stopped...

Natural and Anthropogenic Climate Change

I just saw an interesting new paper by Lean and Rind in Geophysical Research Letters . These authors performed a multiple regression analysis to determine the influence of natural (solar activity, volcanoes, ENSO) and anthropogenic (greenhouse gases plus aerosols) factors on the temperature record of the past 100+ years. Looks like a good piece of work.

The "solar activity" and "natural cycles" skeptics will not like the conclusions, though. None of the natural factors comes close to explain the overall warming trend. A citation from the paper:

"None of the natural processes can account for the overall warming trend in global surface temperatures. In the 100 years from 1905 to 2005, the temperature trends produced by all three natural influences are at least an order of magnitude smaller than the observed surface temperature trend reported by IPCC [2007]. According to this analysis, solar forcing contributed negligible long-term warming in the past 25 years and 10% of the warming in the past 100years, not 69% as claimed by Scafetta and West [2008]..."

A new Chess Queen

Alexandra Kosteniuk just won the (too short) final match for the Women's World Chess Champion title against the incredible 14-year old Chinese prodigy Hou Yifan.

Congratulations to Alexandra, who may have the charm to promote women's chess quite a bit!

Sea Ice Update

Just seen on the "ill considered" blog: NSIDC and NASA have announced that the Arctic sea ice has reached its minimum extent for this year, which is the second lowest after last year's record. The announcement may be a bit early but probably it's ok. Anyway the conclusion was already clear for a while: The rapidly declining trend is confirmed.

In my opinion (though I am not really an expert on this), the decline of the Arctic sea ice is not only a visible sign of climate change but possibly the most important example of an amplifying feedback that is kicking in and may be impossible to reverse. So it's worthwile to follow the development.