#3 interstellar travel, Keillor and the Lake Wobegon Effect, poetry & political participation; numpty, a good day, climate science

            [An aside to my Florida friends:  I know that these messages are utterly trivial in light of the weather you're dealing with.  Perhaps they provide a little side relief.  I'm thinking about you daily.]

Kathy, Elliott, and I went to see "Rogue One," the latest movie in the Star Wars franchise.  Not surprisingly, we later had a (the umpteenth) discussion about whether the kind of events portrayed in the Star Wars (and Star Trek) movies could ever happen.  Underlying all of the movies is the premise that we can somehow achieve faster-than-light travel; at present, anyway, physics says that's not possible.  If not, then we'll never get far away in the galaxy, much less the universe, except on ships that can travel for thousands of years.  That limit on travel speed disappoints both Kathy and Elliott.

            So I emailed a couple of good friends in Physics at the University of Minnesota and asked if there is any thought, in any part of the physics community, that there might be a way to travel faster than light, or that someday a way to do so would be discovered.  One of them wrote back:

Can there be travel faster than light?  Why not?  Twenty years ago we didn't know dark matter and dark energy existed.

So since we don't know everything about the universe I always find it difficult to say absolutely something doesn't happen or exist.

            So perhaps there is faint hope for interstellar travel.

* * *

            In my 2013 letter I expressed surprise at learning that the "Lake Wobegon Effect" has become a widely-used phrase about exaggerating one's abilities. I thought the point of Garrison Keillor's stories of the little town were quite the opposite.  I forgot that I had written to Garrison Keillor (on the Prairie Home Companion website) to ask if my view was correct:

Dear Mr. Keillor,

In Wikipedia, "the Lake Wobegon effect" is defined as "a natural human tendency to overestimate one's capabilities, [and it] is named after the town. The characterization of the fictional location, where 'all the women are strong, all the men are good looking, and all the children are above average,' has been used to describe a real and pervasive human tendency to overestimate one's achievements and capabilities in relation to others."

But as I've listened to your stories over the years, I've come away with a different take. You speak often of how shy the residents are and how little they toot their own horns. I grew up among older Norwegians and Swedes who, rather than overestimating their capabilities, often downplay them and turn the conversation in another direction. If anything, they indulge in a little false modesty in order to avoid seeming to boast.

Have I just misunderstood at least part of the theme all these years?

Heavens.

Gary Engstrand

            I never knew until this year that Keillor had responded.  Inasmuch as his response is on a public website, I assume I may quote it provided I give him credit.

You're right about the reticence of Wobegonians in keeping with their Scandinavian heritage ("Don't think you're somebody") and their genuine modesty and their tendency to step away from any sort of praise. I share that tendency and I try to understand it because at times it seems rude of me -- if someone says "That was a good show" and I hurry to point out what was wrong with it. (And it is rude. And I've learned to say, "Thank you" and shut up.) I was brought up to be modest, though I secretly entertained delusions of grandeur, imagined being heroic, saving lives, winning games, setting world records. In a small town such as Lake Wobegon, the social fabric of the community is so important that the members are careful to avoid attracting too much attention that might turn into envy. Your life might depend on your neighbors and if you get a reputation as someone High and Mighty, people might not come to your aid as readily as they ought to, figuring that you're much too capable to need their help. Look at the rich and famous who have died in stupid accidents because people nearby didn't dare warn them. . . .

So the "Lake Wobegon effect" is a bunch of hogwash where Lake Wobegon is concerned. And the slogan about all the women and all the men and all the children is so obviously not about overestimation—when you say that all the children are above-average, you are saying that tests and grades and intellectual measurement are not, in the end, so important. If everybody is above average, then you have junked the idea of averages. That "pervasive human tendency to overestimate one's achievements" is found in New York and Los Angeles and in Wikipedia, but it doesn't have anything to do with the Little Town That Time Forgot.

            I decided to bring to the attention of Wikipedia editors my exchange with Keillor.  As a result, one of them added new language to the Lake Wobegon entry.  "Keillor himself has offered a contrarian opinion on the use of the term, observing that the effect does not actually apply in Lake Wobegon itself.  In response to a listener query on the Prairie Home website, he pointed out that, in keeping with their Scandinavian heritage, Wobegonians would prefer to downplay, rather than overestimate, their capabilities or achievements."  The entry also has a footnote with a link to the Prairie Home Companion website, which contains Mr. Keillor's message.  So there's my contribution to the advance of knowledge.

* * *

            Because even reading the news, late in 2016 and early 2017, made me figuratively ill, I will have little to say in this letter about public affairs.  Although for years I've been a regular reader of the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the more lefty Salon and Slate, I could not bring myself to read much of them in early 2017.  So I paid more attention to Scientific American, the Smithsonian, the Atlantic, Aeon, and the Browser.

At the beginning of 2017, my attitude about the incoming administration was neatly summed up in a Salon article by Sophia A. McClennen, who cited the poet James Russell Lowell.  In 1876 Lowell inquired whether the government is "of the people, by the people, for the people or a kakistocracy rather, for the benefit of knaves at the cost of fools?"  McClennen contended that "we are indeed on the verge of a government for the benefit of knaves at the cost of fools."  (A kakistocracy is "government by the worst persons; a form of government in which the worst persons are in power"; "coined on analogy of its opposite, aristocracy, from Greek kakistos 'worst,' superlative of kakos 'bad.'")

            I thank my friend Tim Harrington for bringing the following lines to my attention, which I think about when I grow weary of the news:

How small, of all that human hearts endure,
That part which laws or kings can cause or cure.

Attributed to Samuel Johnson but probably by Oliver Goldsmith, from his poem The Traveller (1764).  The poem was written about why nations are happy or unhappy.  The full verse is actually worth reading.

Vain, very vain, my weary search to find        

That bliss which only centres in the mind:     

Why have I stray’d from pleasure and repose,                      425

To seek a good each government bestows? 

In every government, though terrors reign,  

Though tyrant kings, or tyrant laws restrain,

How small, of all that human hearts endure,

That part which laws or kings can cause or cure!                 430

Still to ourselves in every place consign’d,    

Our own felicity we make or find:        

With secret course, which no loud storms annoy,  

Glides the smooth current of domestic joy.  

The lifted axe, the agonising wheel,                                         435

Luke’s iron crown, and Damien’s bed of steel,         

To men remote from power but rarely known,       

Leave reason, faith, and conscience, all our own.

I confess I had a little trouble understanding the last four lines, so I asked a good friend who's a poet himself if he could translate for me.  He provided his interpretation, which is good enough for me:

[A]pparently the iron crown was a torture device of some kind, and likewise presumably the axe, wheel and Damien’s steel bed.  So I guess that he’s saying that those who are able to steer clear from the political struggles of the day ("men remote from power") are then spared at least the worst-case sorts of consequences of political defeat, and so are left instead in the enviable position of being able to work out on their own questions and practices of "reason, faith and conscience" within their day-to-day life.  In other words, my interpretation is that he’s pointing out the value of keeping a low profile in times of political strife.

            There was a coincidental confluence of circumstances here.  One could say that for many of us, the interpretation is startlingly apropos of the nation after the 2016 elections, "times of political strife."  We just want to retreat from the baleful political news.  My poet friend, however, in his annual Christmas letter, had written that "when every news story seems painful, I find myself needing to turn it all off and putter in the garage, play the guitar, read about Mexico, feed the birds.  One's personal forms of refuge are necessary, right?  But I also know that if too many of us stay there too long, we'll further strengthen the ignorance and hate that seem fully unleashed now in our public life."

            My friend and I discovered early in the year that our thoughts ran on parallel lines.  We may get involved in political matters for a time, but "then withdraw, not out of fear of oppressive consequences but just because it’s not an arena that I enjoy very much."  When I have dipped my toes in political activity, I find that people (on both ends of the political spectrum, at least at the local level) tend to be true believers who think everyone on the "other side" is wrong.  As someone who lived his entire professional life in an academic community that is committed to debate and discussion, I just can't look at the world that way.  So I don't enjoy it, either.

We're also similarly situated with respect to the need to be involved; we're white (an advantage in this society, all the baloney on the right notwithstanding) and have reasonable incomes and can afford to stay away from politics whenever we wish.  That situation is one about which I sometimes feel somewhat guilty, having the privilege of being able to withdraw and suffer no consequences.  As Elliott observed in a chat, when we were reviewing 2016, we can't complain too much when we have a decent house, reasonably appointed; our families, whatever their problems, are intact and affectionate; we have an income that permits us discretion in many activities; and we have little worry about our safety and security.

Finally, my friend and I had both been toying with the idea of writing pieces for publication (we hoped) somewhere (e.g., newspapers, other media) but at least I haven't done anything. 

* * *

            A Scottish friend alerted me to a marvelous word:  numpty.  An article in the Guardian explained it.  According to a recent poll, "Scotland's favourite

word . . . is numpty.  Derived from "numps", an obsolete word for a stupid

person, . . . the term implies general idiocy, often in my experience accompanied by windbaggery.  Which explains why you will most often find it used in connection with members of the Scottish Parliament."

            Numpty may be used in conjunction with kakistocracy.

* * *

            I don't know if you ever do this.  I hadn't before.  One Saturday evening early in the year, while Kathy and I were having a late meal, I reflected that it had been a good day. 

We had had a delightful breakfast with our friends Andy & Carolyn Collins and then went to a movie theater for a simulcast of the Met Opera's Nabucco by Verdi.  None of us had ever seen it before and we all liked it—and we were impressed that Placido Domingo at age 75 still delivers an amazing performance.  I just hope to be ambulatory, traveling, and reading and writing at age 75. 

After the opera we went to the hospital to visit Krystin.  She'd had the major surgery earlier in the week; the surgery left an 8" incision on her torso.  I'd received reports from one of the staff at her residence and from Pat that Krystin, post-op, was confused and could not respond to questions coherently.  The physicians were puzzled because the EEG was normal; they speculated she'd had some kind of seizure, perhaps during the surgery.  By the time we finally got to the hospital to see her, any difficulties with lucidity had vanished and we had a perfectly normal conversation with her.  She was still extremely fatigued from the surgery but she was clearly in possession of her faculties.  (So this part of the day was relatively good—not good that Krystin was in the hospital but good that she appeared to be on the mend and lucid.)

That evening over cocktails we had a pleasant conversation with Elliott about getting a job.  Home from college, he faced that aversive task of finding employment.  I was fortunate enough to only have to do that once in my life—and I didn't enjoy it.  In all the rest of my career, I pretty much transitioned smoothly from one position to another.  Elliott wasn’t exactly moving swiftly on the job front, so it took some prodding to get him going.  He was too comfortable living at home with Kathy and me, although he said all along that he wanted to move out as much as we wanted him to move out.  (We didn't necessarily need him to move out; he's reasonably neat outside of his own room and a good raconteur and helped some with cooking—but at age 26 it was long past time for him to get out of daddy's house.)

So all in all it was a good day.  I would be pleased to be able to go through the rest of my life with days like that.  Some with more pleasurable excitement would be welcome, such as those that come with travel, but interspersed with "good days," life is well worth living.  The trick is to avoid the days that have excitement that's not positive.  Unfortunately, sometimes we have no control over when or if those days occur.

* * *

            A few months back a friend of mine sent me a clipping from the Wall Street Journal by a faculty member at the University of Colorado, Roger Pielke, Jr.  Professor Pielke is a political scientist who's focused on climate change; his father is climate scientist.  In the op-ed piece, Professor Pielke was bemoaning the treatment he'd received at the hands of climate scientists and publishing organizations because of his contrarian views on some topics in the climate science debate.  (For example, Nate Silver's FiveThirtyEight had shown Pielke the door because of his climate-change opinions.)  The friend who sent me the clipping wondered if Pielke's complaint wasn't "indicative of the tenor of the times:  there's no truth but 'my' truth.  If your truth isn't my truth, then you are obviously wrong and need to go away." 

            Pielke's op-ed piece led me to do a little web searching about him; I could not figure out what was going on.  He's not a climate-change denier but he has been contentious about a few points.  The reaction of the climate-science community has been to attack him vigorously.  It seemed to me to be overreaction and that Pielke had, at the least, asked interesting questions.  I responded to my friend that there perhaps were things going on of which we were unaware, and that also, perhaps, the climate scientists responded so vehemently because they've been under attack from quarters they consider illegitimate.

            The puzzlement led me to write to a meteorologist friend and faculty member with close links to the climate science field.  He explained what he saw as the context.

I used to have my students follow both Pielkes, and I spent several years following in earnest the most vocal and high-profile elements of the "climate debate."  Roger Sr. is an actual climate scientist, and Roger Jr. is a political scientist who crossed over to do climate related work.  They both enjoyed stirring things up.  In general, Roger Jr. raised some good points, and I respected much of his work.  He did, in my opinion, suffer from the common problem in academia of overstating the importance of his conclusions and not being patient enough with the process to let scientists find the right place for his work within the discipline.  Aside from the scientific points he made reasonably well, his battle cries were along the lines of "why isn't everyone listening to me, following my every argument to the letter, and doing all the things I say they should be doing?"  He loved arguing, had to be right, and really seemed to get off on painting himself as a victim.  His father has done very much the same thing; both seem to want everyone to drop everything and Listen To Them, and it is some sort of an atrocity if their points are not given primacy in every relevant debate.

The legitimate climate science community has a bit of a clique mentality, which might be an outgrowth of the coordinated and persistent attacks on them over the past two decades.  There isn't a lot of trust, and it's easy to be an outsider.  Even though they appear to be scientifically correct (and are much closer to correct than their attackers in any case), they have not responded or behaved all that well.  I think science historians will look back on this period in climate science as a pretty ugly one, brimming with stridency and not particularly constructive.

No matter how he spins it now, Roger Pielke Jr. relished his role in the various debates.  He had a climate and policy blog called "Prometheus" (which he has since decommissioned) in which he would routinely bait other scientists into arguing on his terms.  In the marketplace of ideas, he was a pushy and hard salesman of his own—which is not to say they were necessarily bad.  But he wanted everyone to know about and use them.

           

            What should come as a surprise to no one is the demonstration that scientists are also human beings who share with the rest of us all the foibles of human beings.  In this case, however, there's no legitimate scientific dispute about the fundamental fact of human-caused climate change; as with any living science, the arguments are about the details.

            We are all aware that there are people, including at the highest levels of American government, who deny or doubt that humans are causing climate change.  One of the faculty members at the University of Minnesota who studies climate change, Paul Bolstad, was quoted recently as saying that "Almost all of the ‘eminently qualified scientists’ oft cited as denying climate change can safely be characterized as quacks or paid shills, sometimes both. They are neither eminent nor scientists."

            I more recently discovered an article in the journal Theoretical and Applied Climatology by scientists from the U.S., Norway, Australia, and the Netherlands that looked at the articles that reject the proposition that climate change is caused by human activity (anthropogenic global warming, or AGW).  In the field, 97-98% of research reported supports AGW, but a small percentage of articles do not.  These people looked at those papers and sought to replicate the results reported. 

Our replication reveals a number of methodological flaws, and a pattern of common mistakes emerges that is not visible when looking at single isolated cases. . . .  A common denominator seems to be missing contextual information or ignoring information that does not fit the conclusions, be it other relevant work or related geophysical data.  In many cases, shortcomings are due to insufficient model evaluation, leading to results that are not universally valid but rather are an artifact of a particular experimental setup.  Other typical weaknesses include false dichotomies, inappropriate statistical methods, or basing conclusions on misconceived or incomplete physics.

            This kind of debate goes on in all of the sciences all the time, although I think a broadside against an entire subset of articles in a field is unusual.  If they're junk, however, I'm glad to know.

            What worries me more about climate science research is the possibility that the scientists have downplayed the effects of climate change because of fear of even greater opposition and fear of scaring the population out of its wits.  As I watch the climate data accumulate, I wonder if the worst estimates of temperature increases aren't going to be on the low end.  If my hypothesis is correct, then I think they should be scaring us out of our wits.  I asked my meteorologist friend about my hypothesis.  He told me I wasn't quite right.

Some of the general circulation models can be fed some pretty dire and unrealistic human scenarios, and those models give us the higher estimates for warming at mid and late-century.  We are already off their pace, meaning the warming they would have predicted by now is greater than what we have observed.  Some of the government scientists have to mind what they say and how they say it, but I have seen plenty of instances of people taking risks and being honest/bold.  And fortunately, as a great failsafe, many of the best scientists work for universities and are not beholden to any part of the state or federal government.  These scientists have been emboldened by the current administration's stances of contemporary science.

I think the much greater threat than having underestimated the magnitude of warming, is underestimating its impacts on weather, climate, and natural earth systems, while also overestimating the human race's actual concern and ability to act accordingly.  In fact, I see very little evidence that society wants to do anything--not just to prevent further warming, but also to make necessary adjustments to prepare for what we have already ordered up.  It's much easier for us to be outraged at Exxon, or Trump, or Scott Pruitt, than it is for us to make serious changes ourselves. Plenty of individual changes are available to all of us in terms of energy consumption, eating choices, transportation, where we put our dollars, yet everyone seems to be waiting for something in order to make those choices.  We don't need Trump's approval or agreement to make our own choices now.

            I also asked my friend what I told him I knew was probably a really dumb question, but thought I'd ask anyway.  As I was reading about the Mexico earthquake, I wondered if global climate change (that is, warming) could affect earthquake frequency.  I know, that sounded pretty far-fetched, but would it be possible that increasing heat, or warmer oceans, could conceivably have an effect on tectonic plates?

            Playing the role of a good teacher who believes there aren't dumb questions, he said "no."  "I am no geophysicist, but I know of no connections between seismic events like earthquakes and the atmosphere.  Tectonic motions involve enormous quantities of internal energy in a system that is, as far as we know, closed off from the atmosphere.  If there is a connection wherein the atmosphere forces geological processes in some way, that connection is currently beyond the frontiers of science."