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What’s a prediction worth?

A few days ago, Kevin Drum pointed to a Louis Menand review of a book called Expert Political Judgment: How Good Is It? How Can We Know? by psychologist Philip Tetlock.

I haven't read the book, but the review is fascinating, and I highly recommend you read it before (or instead of) the rambling thoughts that follow.

Tetlock's basic thesis, based on a multi-decade study, is that expert predictions are no better -- and often worse -- than random chance or the predictions of casual news consumers. Just like everyone else, experts display confirmation bias, underestimate their past mistakes, and fall for basic probability errors.

Ah, fuel for anti-elitists everywhere ...

This is not a new psychological finding -- laymen often express surprise at it, but psychologists have known for years that experts are no more reliable than anyone else. But one new insight Tetlock brings to the table relates to Isaiah Berlin's famous distinction between hedgehogs (which know a lot about one thing) and foxes (which know a little about a lot of things). From the book:

Demonstrate good times, come on!

I'm all over Treehugger today. Go figure.

Anyway, TH brings news of a massive worldwide series of demonstrations that, for reasons unfathomable, I wasn't aware of.

Apparently, on Dec. 3 -- that's this Saturday! -- to coincide with the COP MOP talks in Montreal, groups in over 30 countries around the world are demonstrating:

These demonstrations demand that the USA and Australia ratify the Kyoto Protocol immediately, and that the entire world community move as rapidly as possible to a stronger emissions reductions treaty that will be both equitable and effective in stabilising 'greenhouse' gases and preventing dangerous climate change.

I tend to think it's a mistake for enviros to focus so obsessively on Kyoto, but as a symbolic matter it's hard to argue against focusing attention on U.S. and Australian intransigence.

So go out and demonstrate on Saturday!

Expensive

Of course it isn't Treehugger's fault, but Tim Haab makes a solid but lamentable point here.

A worried mother discovers the secrets of pesticide testing

Three years ago, while my extended family was vacationing at my dad’s cranberry farm, he mentioned that one of his fields would be sprayed that evening. There were five children under 10 in the house, and I was eight months pregnant. The field was 100 feet away. I asked my dad about the pesticides, but […]

What the meaning of ‘participation’ is

Oh, this is hilarious.

You may recall that at a recent Senate hearing, oil industry execs were asked whether their companies participated in Cheney's notorious 2001 energy task force.

They said No. That was ... what's the word? ... a lie.

Or was it? Apparently there's some dispute:

Yesterday, Marnie Funk, a spokeswoman for the GOP staff of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, one of the two panels that convened the hearing, said its lawyers had reached a preliminary conclusion: Based on a court decision in which two groups unsuccessfully challenged the secrecy of the Cheney task force, Funk said the executives appeared to be telling the truth.

"What we simply determined was that the definition of 'participation' was something litigated, and what the court concluded was that attending meetings, and even making presentations, did not rise to the level of fully participating," Funk said.

Gosh, it seems like, what, only one administration ago that these kinds of carefully parsed word games were considered a dire threat to the moral fiber of our children. Guess times change.

Sierra Club gets positive

As Daily Grist readers will soon learn, the Sierra Club today released "Building Better: A Guide to America's Best New Development Projects." It's just what it sounds like: A complimentary profile of "walkable, transit accessible places to live and work."

I think John Laumer's right: This is an extremely promising development. It's practically a cliche -- particularly since the Death debate -- that the environmental movement needs to offer solutions rather than just problems, to be for something rather than against everything. It's a cliche, and yet the large and lamentably inertia-bound movement hasn't really been doing it.

Perhaps because it's more of a ground-up organization, the Sierra Club has been making some nice, high-profile moves in this direction. I hope all greens will welcome it.

A Current Despair

Waning of Atlantic currents could chill Europe Remember that movie The Day After Tomorrow? With the shifting ocean currents that cause sudden, catastrophic climate changes? Crazy stuff! Michael Moore territory! Well … funny story. Turns out the Atlantic Ocean currents that move warm tropical waters northward and cooler waters south have in fact slowed dramatically […]

Cause sometimes nature isn’t enough

Have y'all heard about this Grand Canyon Skywalk? WTF?

The Atlantic Ocean is going to kill you

Speaking of Oil Drum, they remind me to point to a new study in Nature (sorry, $30) showing that Atlantic Ocean currents are shifting -- which, if verified, could portend a climatic worst case scenario.

The ocean current that gives western Europe its relatively balmy climate is stuttering, raising fears that it might fail entirely and plunge the continent into a mini ice age.

The dramatic finding comes from a study of ocean circulation in the North Atlantic, which found a 30% reduction in the warm currents that carry water north from the Gulf Stream.

...

Harry Bryden at the Southampton Oceanography Centre in the UK, whose group carried out the analysis, says he is not yet sure if the change is temporary or signals a long-term trend. "We don't want to say the circulation will shut down," he told New Scientist. "But we are nervous about our findings. They have come as quite a surprise."

This is potentially Very Bad News. Atlantic currents carry warm water to Northern Europe. If they stop, weather there could get mighty cold -- ice-age cold.

But as Stuart Staniford ominously notes (in quite a bit of technical detail, but fascinatingly): if all that warm water isn't going north, where ... ?

Smack into the region where North Atlantic hurricanes form, that's where it's going.

As the French say, l'eek.

Things that make you go ‘hm’

A guest poster over on Oil Drum shares, among other things, an interesting factoid.

A useful, easy-to-remember aphorism is: ONE BARREL of oil is equivalent to ONE YEAR of very hard labor by a human.

Hm.