Submitted for your consideration, as day-before-the-holiday bemusement...

Ah, the last eight years!  How did we ever get through them?  A time filled with immortal observations like the following instant classic from Donald Rumsfeld:

"There are known knowns. There are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say, there are things that we now know we don't know. But there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we do not know we don't know."

But it seems that Rumsfeld may even have been wrong here, for defense contractor Northup-Grumman is patenting a system that claims to detect "unknown unknowns!"

As reported in New Scientist:

Grumman's patent is every bit as baffling [as Rumsfeld's observation]. Software fed a long chunk of text on a certain subject will somehow use mysteriously powerful "inferencing algorithms" to work on the facts and extract the unknown unknowns.

The patent is online here, and I can't make much out of it either.

Looking back over American history, obviously some elections were more important than others.  Here is your chance to play soothsayer:  How important will this election be seen to have been by historians 500 years from now?  Take the poll, and feel free to leave a comment explaining your position.  

Note:  "Important" doesn't mean that you agree with everything a given president did, just how much influence they had on the nation's history.  Thus the appearance of Reagan and Nixon on the poll...

And again, the question isn't how you feel today; it's how you think historians will remember this election in 2508...  and the comments are your chance to explain why.

OK, we've got several weeks to go until the Pennsylvania primary, so to keep from going stark raving mad with all Obama-Clinton, all the time, here's some food for thought in the meantime:

The problem:  Developing nations, most prominently China and India, have issues with the Kyoto protocol, but due to their sheer immensity and rapid industrialization, they have a large and rapidly growing impact on the levels of greenhouse gases (GHG) in the atmosphere.  There is both a need and a desire to get them on board with some post-Kyoto treaty to control GHG, but they are unwilling to accept proposals that would cap emissions and limit their opportunity for modernization.  After all, goes the argument, if the Europeans and Americans were entitled to pollute for progress, then so are we.

And we need to get America on board - which all three presidential candidates at least seem to recognize, and have addressed in their proposals to varying degrees.  So that is at least some progress post-Bush.

But how do we get past the obstacles in the way of an effective climate change agreement?  This is what we're going to collectively brainstorm today:  What suggestions / recommendations would you give the next president for how to get the process moving in the right direction?

Any solution (it seems to me) must meet the following (by no means exhaustive) criteria:

1. It must put all nations on a path to reduced GHG emissions (although the "glide path" for reductions on the part of nations like China and India - and the rest of the "developing world," for that matter - may be adjustable to allow for their right to develop and their specific national circumstances).

2. It must have sufficient "carrots" in it to get developing nations to agree to it.  It must be worth their while to get on board, and not just "to save humanity."  That argument hasn't gotten US on board, so how can we expect it to fly for folks in more dire circumstances?  Realistically, nations are not going to buy into a return to the 18th century.  We need to offer a vision of progress, but sustainable progress.  Which likely means it's going to look more like this than this, no matter what our personal thoughts on the matter, if we're to avoid this and this.

3. It must have a fair system of "sticks" for everyone.  Even signatory nations, while paying lip service to Kyoto, are failing to meet their agreements under the existing treaty (for example, Canada).  We're not going to get the job done at this rate:  the science increasingly shows that the scenarios presented by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (co-winners of the Nobel Prize with Al Gore) are too optimistic - we need deeper cuts, sooner, if we're to avoid catastrophic climate tipping points.  I won't detail those here, to keep the discussion on the post-Kyoto treaty; you can check out the links in this sentence for more details.

Some possible pieces of the puzzle:  These may or may not be part of the next-generation treaty we develop - I'm throwing them out for group consideration to get the discussion going:

Do we want to consider a global carbon tax?  To be politically realistic in the US, it probably would have to be administered at the national level, with funds going into a "World Carbon Bank" (WCB) whose mission is to reduce GHG levels by apportioning a scientifically-determined and annually-shrinking pool of carbon emission credits between nations.  

The WCB may also work with organizations like the World Bank to fund carbon sequestration projects and take actions to promote energy-generating technologies that do not release GHG.  Do we give nations credits against their carbon taxes for implementing clean energy technologies?  How?

China yesterday announced they intend to keep their one-child policy in place, and explicitly pointed out that by not giving birth to an additional 300,000,000 people, they have cut their GHG emissions by 1,300,000,000 tons of carbon dioxide a year from what they would have been.  Since the environmental issue that dare not speak its name (although it once could) is the link between population growth and rising GHG emissions (absent technical innovations), is it reasonable to somehow reward this behavior in terms of their national carbon tax debt?  How?  How to keep this from causing a massive reaction against the treaty, torpedoing it? (Not just US Republicans, but also the Roman Catholic Church, Islamic conservatives, those who see it as a secret genocide policy against non-Caucasian races, etc.)  The policy isn't popular in China - do we offer this as a temporary option for credits until a nation gets through its developmental and demographic transition?

And how do you deal fairly with nations that are already relatively energy efficient but are concerned that under a new regime they're not going to get credit for good works already accomplished - like Japan?

Anyway, that's enough on the table to get the discussion going.  I look forward to reading your thoughts.

The NY Times is reporting that AG AG will announce his resignation later this morning.  Thought you'd want to start your day with the news...

"The Democrats seem to be basically nicer people, but they have demonstrated time and again that they have the management skills of celery."

Humorist Dave Barry

We've been on a war economy since the '50s. If that thing begins to collapse, the system starts to panic.

-- Ken Kesey

"The test of our progress is not whether we add to the abundance of those who have much. It is whether we provide enough to those who have little."

-- F.D.R.

Prediction is very difficult, especially of the future.

-- Niels Bohr

"True terror is to wake up one morning and discover that your high school class is running the country."

-- Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

Be still when you have nothing to say; when genuine passion moves you, say what you've got to say, and say it hot.

-- D. H. Lawrence

Promoted by Steven D. This is a very important issue (if somewhat under the radar) because its impact will have direct effects on anyone who lives within the United States. Public health, food and drug quality, environmental assessments, etc. will be affected (for the worse) if the OMB is allow to "dumb down" its risk assessment process. Kudos to Knoxville Progressive for spotting this story. I suggest you send the link to your representatives in Congress or phone them directly. I doubt many of them are even aware that this revision of the federal government's risk assessment process is taking place.

Because trust me, the battle is not over. OMB will still try to get revised risk assessment rules passed, and we need Congressional members to send the OMB a few letters letting them know they disapprove of what the OMB is trying to pull. Links for contact info are here, here, (Senators) or call the central number of the House of Representatives at (202) 224-3121 and they will put you through to your Representative's office directly. I just called that number myself, spoke to a staffer for my Congressman (a Republican in my case, but don't let that stop you), and was thanked for reporting this story.

OMB Slapped Down by Scientific Review Board

The Office of Management and Budget has had its proposed revisions to the processes by which the government conducts risk assessments given a failing grade, and returned for a total rewrite, not just revisions to address comments.  In unusually blunt language for scientists, the National Research Council called the plan "fundamentally flawed."  The OMB had proposed the revisions in order to "to enhance the technical quality and objectivity of risk assessments prepared by federal agencies by establishing uniform, minimum standards."

The juicy details are below the fold...

Laws alone can not secure freedom of expression; in order that every man present his views without penalty there must be spirit of tolerance in the entire population.

-- Albert Einstein

The belief in a supernatural source of evil is not necessary; men alone are quite capable of every wickedness.

- Joseph Conrad

If you read my "Science Headlines" postings in the "Daily News Bucket" diaries regularly, you've noticed that I talk a lot about global warming, and most of the news isn't good.  If you've been preoccupied with the war, scandals in Washington, getting Democrats elected, and so forth - all necessary, justifiable things - you might have missed how the pieces are all falling together day by day.  So here is a summary of the pattern that's forming, courtesy of Steve Connor at The independent (UK):  the story that you won't hear on the evening news or in the MSM, at least in the US.  The bottom line is, based on what we discovered in 2006, our situation looks like it's more precarious than we thought:

You could be forgiven for thinking that you've heard it all before. You may think it's time to turn the page and read something else. But you'd be wrong. 2006 will be remembered by climatologists as the year in which the potential scale of global warming came into focus. And the problem can be summarized in one word: feedback.

[snip]

Feedbacks can either make things better, or they can make things worse. The trouble is, everywhere scientists looked in 2006, they encountered feedbacks that will make things worse - a lot worse.