Malasia

Enterprise

El Oro de los Tigres
Business

Tren Bala

 Colossians 3:4  
"When Christ, who is our life, shall appear, then shall ye also appear with him in glory."

 Business Class 

Congrats to member leomascarinas on winning first place in the Creative Challenge: In the Sky!

Chess: "Enterprise" "El Oro de los Tigres" "Bullet Train" "Malaysia" "Business Class"

 

 

Steve Schneider

Stephen Schneider, climate scientist, died on July 19th, aged 65

Jul 29th 2010 | From The Economist print edition

“MARK TWAIN had it backwards,” Steve Schneider joked, in a lecture he gave to the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) in 1972. “Nowadays, everyone is doing something about the weather, but nobody is talking about it.” The lecture was on the topic that Mr Schneider, then 27, had been working on for two years and would work on for another 38: what were humans doing to the climate? The 1960s had brought a new way of talking about the weather—a way of representing it in punched cards that could be fed into a computer. These models, limited though they were, let their creators ask questions no simply tabulated data could answer, and see processes that the details of the real world obscured. As a young physical scientist on the lookout for a new field that posed big questions, a former student politician who wanted to make a difference to the world and an inveterate show-off susceptible to the charms of a high profile, these models offered Mr Schneider what he needed. But in giving him a way to play with the world and its processes they gave him something he loved, too. As a boy growing up on Long Island he had greeted news of hurricanes by going up to the attic to sit with an anemometer, and built his own telescope in order to gasp at the planets it revealed. When computer models gave him the power to spin up winds on planets of the mind, his first big topic was a study of the net effects of smoggy pollutants in the atmosphere, which cool the planet down, and the carbon dioxide which warms it up. Other work focused on the warming and cooling effects of clouds and the climate’s sensitivity to greenhouse gases. Public interest in his work outstripped its acceptance by the academic meteorologists Mr Schneider was working with at the beginning of his career. They found computer modelling of the climate suspicious enough in itself, and Mr Schneider’s insistence that it should lead to interdisciplinary interactions with biologists interested in ecosystems—and even social scientists interested in human responses—made things worse. When he returned to his office after the AAAS talk, he found a New York Times article that quoted his Twain gag pinned up on a noticeboard with “Bullshit” stamped across it. His subsequent appearances on “The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson” probably did little to improve his reputation with conservative colleagues. Nor did his fairly rapid dismissal of his early belief that cooling caused by pollution might outstrip warming due to carbon dioxide. In later years, when he and his colleagues had pushed climate change, and in particular greenhouse warming, on to the agenda, people keen to ensure a lack of action made much of his about-face over cooling, preferring to accuse him of modish inconsistency than to see him as someone who had worked to improve his models, and as a result had changed his mind. Mr Schneider’s high profile as a proponent of action on climate change—he was the editor of an important journal, Climatic Change, and an influential member of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) more or less from its inception—would have made him a favourite target for such antagonists anyway, but he came in for particular scorn because of his willingness to discuss the inevitable tensions between advocacy and academic integrity. Critics of Mr Schneider, including this newspaper, portrayed him as giving in to this tension, and being willing to tell “necessary lies” when it suited his purposes. He countered such attacks vehemently, saying such a conclusion rested on a slanted reading of what he had said on the subject. He had no time for advocacy without truth. Far from being a voice of orthodoxy, Mr Schneider encouraged debate, and doubts, on subjects that some of his colleagues thought beyond the pale. He convened meetings on the Gaia hypothesis and its notion of a self-regulating Earth; he provided space for discussions of geoengineering schemes for cooling the planet. When his friend Carl Sagan (who had recommended him to Johnny Carson) led the charge on the climatic effects of nuclear war as a case for disarmament, Mr Schneider, whose politics were close to Sagan’s, damaged their friendship by saying publicly that the models he worked with were considerably less prone than Sagan’s to the creation of “nuclear winters”. At the IPCC, Mr Schneider’s deepest commitment was to candour about uncertainties and the role played by subjective expert judgment. He loved models for the patterns and ideas they revealed much more than he trusted them as detailed guides to action. He was more likely to criticise a piece of science for underestimating its own level of uncertainty than for coming to a conclusion he disagreed with. In his mid-50s he found his ideas about how to make weighty decisions in uncertainty tested in a more personal way. He was diagnosed with a rare lymphoma. With his wife as advocate and his doctor as expert, he tried to understand the processes involved and decide on actions accordingly. His choice of aggressive treatments helped him survive until a heart attack claimed him on an aircraft ferrying him from one climate meeting to the next.  scientific american

Misleading Math about the Earth

Science defends itself against The Skeptical Environmentalist

Critical thinking and hard data are cornerstones of all good science. Because environmental sciences are so keenly important to both our biological and economic survival--causes that are often seen to be in conflict--they deserve full scrutiny. With that in mind, the book The Skeptical Environmentalist (Cambridge University Press), by Bj¿rn Lomborg, a statistician and political scientist at the University of Aarhus in Denmark, should be a welcome audit. And yet it isn't. As the book's subtitle--Measuring the Real State of the World--indicates, Lomborg's intention was to reanalyze environmental data so that the public might make policy decisions based on the truest understanding of what science has determined. His conclusion, which he writes surprised even him, was that contrary to the gloomy predictions of degradation he calls "the litany," everything is getting better. Not that all is rosy, but the future for the environment is less dire than is supposed. Instead Lomborg accuses a pessimistic and dishonest cabal of environmental groups, institutions and the media of distorting scientists' actual findings. (A copy of the book's first chapter can be found at www.lomborg.org) The problem with Lomborg's conclusion is that the scientists themselves disavow it. Many spoke to us at Scientific American about their frustration at what they described as Lomborg's misrepresentation of their fields. His seemingly dispassionate outsider's view, they told us, is often marred by an incomplete use of the data or a misunderstanding of the underlying science. Even where his statistical analyses are valid, his interpretations are frequently off the mark--literally not seeing the state of the forests for the number of the trees, for example. And it is hard not to be struck by Lomborg's presumption that he has seen into the heart of the science more faithfully than have investigators who have devoted their lives to it; it is equally curious that he finds the same contrarian good news lurking in every diverse area of environmental science. We asked four leading experts to critique Lomborg's treatments of their areas--global warming, energy, population and biodiversity--so readers could understand why the book provokes so much disagreement. Lomborg's assessment that conditions on earth are generally improving for human welfare may hold some truth. The errors described here, however, show that in its purpose of describing the real state of the world, the book is a failure. John Rennie, editor in chief     EL ORO DE LOS TIGRES  JORGE LUIS BORGES  PROLOGO De un hombre que ha cumplido los setenta años que nos aconseja David poco podemos esperar, salvo el manejo consabido de unas destrezas, una que otra ligera variación y hartas repeticiones. Para eludir o para siquiera atenuar esa monotonía, opté por aceptar, con tal vez temeraria hospitalidad, los misceláneos temas que se ofrecieron a mi rutina de escribir. La parábola sucede a la confidencia, el verso libre o blanco al soneto. En el principio de los tiempos, tan dócil a la vaga especulación y a las inapelables cosmogonías, no habrá habido cosas poéticas o prosaicas. Todo sería un poco mágico. Thor no era dios del trueno; era el trueno y el dios. Para un verdadero poeta, cada momento de la vida, cada hecho, debería ser poético, ya que profundamente lo es. Que yo sepa, nadie ha alcanzado hasta hoy esa alta vigilia. Browning y Blake se acercaron más que otro alguno; Whitman, se la propuso, pero sus deliberadas enumeraciones no siempre pasan de catálogos insensibles. Descreo de las escuelas literarias, que juzgo simulacros para simplificar lo que enseñan, pero si me obligaran a declarar de donde proceden mis versos, diría que del modernismo, esa gran libertad que renovó muchas literaturas cuyo instrumento común es el castellano y que llegó, por cierto. hasta España. He conversado más de una vez con Leopoldo Lugones, hombre solitario y soberbio; éste solía desviar el curso del diálogo para hablar de “mi amigo Rubén Darío”. (Creo, por lo demás, que debemos recalcar las afinidades de nuestro idioma, no sus regionalismos.) Mi lector notará en algunas páginas la preocupación filosófica. Fue mía desde niño, cuando mi padre me reveló, con ayuda del tablero de ajedrez (que era, lo recuerdo, de cedro) la carrera de Aquiles y la tortuga. En cuanto a las influencias que se advertirán en este volumen… En primer término, los escritores que prefiero –he nombrado ya a Robert Browning-; luego, los que he leído y repito; luego, los que nunca he leído pero que están en mí. Un idioma es una tradición, un modo de sentir la realidad, no un arbitrario repertorio de símbolos. Buenos Aires, 1972. J.L.B

ESPADAS Gram, Durendal, Joyeuse, Excalibur.  Sus viejas guerras andan por el verso,  que es la única memoria.  El universo las siembra por el Norte y por el Sur.  En la espada persiste la porfía  de la diestra viril, hoy polvo y nada;  en el hierro o el bronce, la estocada que  fue sangre de Adán un primer día.  Gestas he enumerado de lejanas espadas  cuyos hombres dieron muerte a reyes y a serpientes.  Otra suerte de espadas hay, murales y cercanas.  Déjame, espada, usar contigo el arte;   yo, que no he merecido manejarte

A UN CÉSAR   En la noche propicia a los lemures  Y a las larvas que hostigan a los muertos,  Han cuartelado en vano los abiertos  Ámbitos de los astros tus augures.  Del toro yugulado en la penumbra  Las vísceras en vano han indagado;  En vano el sol de esta mañana alumbra  La espada fiel del pretoriano armado.  En el palacio tu garganta espera  Temblorosa el puñal. Ya los confines  Del imperio que rigen tus clarines  Presienten las plegarias y la hoguera.  De tus montañas el horror sagrado  El tigre de oro y sombra ha profanado.