It pays to go to college

So this guy Peter Thiel is starting a fellowship program that will give students $100,000 to start a new business. He thinks it will encourage more rapid innovation. The catch is that they can only do this fellowship instead of going to college for two years [NPR story]. Apparently Thiel has some contrarian tendencies, and perhaps a grudge against higher education. He's done pretty well for himself as a co-founder of PayPal and early investor in Facebook; he's worth around $1,5000,000,000 [wikipedia]. Oh, and by the way, he graduated from Stanford in philosophy in 1989, and then got his JD from Stanford in 1992. All that time at Stanford would probably make anyone hate higher education (Go Bears!). So education worked for him, but this fellowship is about stimulating and accelerating innovation, and from my reading of his Wikipedia page, it sounds like Thiel is an investor, not an innovator. He struck gold with PayPal, which has given him a chance to take risks on lots of start-ups, some of which might do well and others completely fail. He's a hedge fund manager and a venture capitalist, so his job is focused on taking risks and hoping that some of them pay off big (and implicitly this assumes that those few successes will more than make up for the many failures).

All this is fine and good, but now that Thiel is talking about education, I think he may have confused his own risk-taking lifestyle as an appropriate one for society at large. He's presenting the undergraduate degree as being overvalued, and thinks of this like a bubble (as in the dot-com bubble or the housing bubble). There is maybe a point in there somewhere, and maybe in the USA we need to think about whether everyone needs to go to college. I'll throw in the thought that "trade schools" are extremely undervalued, and that promoting real trade schools would be much more valuable to a vast number of people than getting an associates degree from a community college. That's a digression, though, and to get back on track, let me say that Andrew Kelly wrote a nice critique of the fellowship program on (unfortunately) the HuffPo [LINK].  He points out that the fellowship program is taking some of the best students from the best universities in the country, and putting them into a 2-year intensive mentoring program. This is a far cry from devaluing higher education.

For the overwhelming number of American students, going to college is a good idea. Whether it is because of an overvaluation of degrees or not, the numbers simply show that the more education one gets, the higher the salary [SEE FIGURE, SOURCE].  In the present social-economic conditions, trying to argue that fewer people need to graduate from college is damning most of those people to a lower salary tier. While Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, and Mark Zuckerberg all dropped out of college to become extraordinarily wealthy, the graphic and the data show that they are extreme outliers, and that most people who quit college are giving up almost a third of their potential salary.

Okay, my final comment for this rant... I hope the Thiel Fellowship program is wildly successful. No, really! You should go look at the list of young "innovators" [LINK]; they are extremely impressive, and if this 2-year program can get them and their ideas to the next level, that could have a tremendous impact in several emerging fields (I was especially interested in the Energy category). These are clearly very smart, highly motivated people, and allowing them to focus intensely on these ideas for two years is actually a good plan. It isn't for the average American 20-year-old, but for a few it could be really advantageous. My guess is that most of these Thiel Fellows will go back to school, and then on to graduate school, because they won't be satisfied picking things up along the way. When it comes to extremely technical fields, it actually is more efficient to work through all that fundamental material before just jumping in and cobbling together the pieces as you go along. But we will see.

African biomass burning (part 1?)

The amount of area and material that is burned each year in tropical Africa is staggering. The series of maps shown here is from NASA, showing burning across Africa during 2005 (note they aren't monthly, just 10 day composites ranging from January to August). Globally, biomass burning is estimated to consume somewhere around 8700 Tg of dry matter and release nearly 4 Tg of carbon to the atmosphere. Much of that carbon is returned to the biosphere, though, because the majority of the burning isn't to clear forest, but to clear cropland in savannah regions. People seasonally set the fires to keep harmful plants and pests out of their farmland. The chemical consequences of this huge efflux of gas and aerosol each season across the tropical belt is still only crudely understood. The global impact is poorly understood, as there are processes that are indirectly related to the burning, such as the planetary albedo, cloud and precipitation effects, and chemical effects in both the troposphere and stratosphere. See here for a little more description, especially on the chemical side. 

While not exactly analogous to other forms of anthropogenic changes to the climate system, this is an obvious and large perturbation that is mostly human induced. Understanding the consequences, both locally and remotely, may help us understand impacts of climate change globally.

Another interesting aspect of the African seasonal biomass burning is that it could represent an interaction between the climate system and human culture. The burning is seasonal, as I mentioned, but the extent and severity of the burning and resulting smoke depends on when and where the fires are started. That in turn depends on the previous rainy season. Where the smoke goes depends on the atmospheric circulation, and where the material ends up may determine the remote impact. For example, in some circulation patterns, the central African smoke is transported toward the Indian Ocean and is mixed into the westerlies, which will disperse the plume rather quickly. In other situations, the plume is transported over the southeast Atlantic, which is an are of large-scale sinking motion, so the smoke is contained within a layer and slowly moved over the ocean. This can affect radiation budget and the clouds in the area, which then have potential effects on other aspects of climate variability (through changes in the ocean surface temperature, for example, which may feed back on Atlantic Nino activity). These links are only tenuously understood, and are worth a good think if you have the time.

MODIS burning product, see LINK

Glory of the sea?

I recently wrote about the Glory satellite mission [LINK]. Early this morning, the rocket carrying Glory to orbit was launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base. Unfortunately Glory will only be studying the particles in the south Pacific, because the rocket was unable to attain orbit and crashed into the ocean. [LINK]. This is very similar, at least superficially, to the failure of the Orbiting Carbon Observatory, which I also blogged about [LINK]. This is supposed to be the "golden age" of satellite observations of the climate system, but it is hard to believe when we struggle to get the satellites into orbit. Glory has been over a decade in the making, and I imagine there are a lot of people around the country right now who are wondering what they are going to do in the next couple of years.

There may be hope, though. The Orbiting Carbon Observatory 2 is a go, scheduled to be put into orbit in February 2013. Except that they are planning to use yet another Taurus rocket [LINK]. So, yeah.

RealClimate also picked up this story [LINK].

George Will want(ed) high speed rail

I've said it before, and I say it again: George Will is an ass. [LINK]

Taking the conserve out of conservative

Today I heard a story on NPR that I think makes plain the GOP position on all matters environmental:

LISTEN ON NPR

They won't even concede that biodegradable plasticware is better than petrochemical-based forks. I mean, if anyone had any doubts about where these people are coming from, this should clear it up.

Horse dies, Inhofe continues beating it anyway

I can't believe that the scandal that was known as "climategate" continues to give climate change deniers some kind of special tingle. NOAA's Inspector General issued a report about the scandal at the request of Sen. Inhofe [LINK]. Guess what the report said? Yeah, that's right. And how much money and resources were devoted to putting together this report? Why does Jim Inhofe insist on wasting taxpayer dollars on these flights of fancy?

Read details at Climate Progress.

Response to House continuing resolution cuts

The House Appropriations Committee today introduced a Continuing Resolution (H.R. 1) to fund the federal government for the last seven months of the fiscal year while cutting spending by over $100 billion from the President’s fiscal year 2011 request. This CR legislation represents the largest single discretionary spending reduction in the history of Congress. [source]

I've just been browsing through the summary of the program cuts from this CR proposal, which can be viewed here.  My interpretation is that the middle column is the FY2010 budget item minus the CR budget item, and the right column is the FY2011 request (by the Administration) minus the CR budget item. I'll just consider the right column, and assume that these are generally cuts on top of cuts. Just browsing through the list looking for science research related items:

NIST:
- Technology Innovation Program: $40 million cut.
- Construction: $66.8 million cut
- Scientific & Technical Research Services: $115 million cut.

NOAA:
-Operations, Research, and Facilities: $450.3 million cut -- THAT's almost half a billion dollars!!

NASA: $578.7 million cut -- over half a billion dollars.

Office of Science and Technology Policy $500,000 cut (wonder what their budget is?)

NSF:
-Research & Related Activities: $550.9 million cut.
-Major Research Equipment & Facilities Construction:  $110.4 million cut.
-Education & Human Resources: $166.2 million cut.

Energy & Water Development (I assume this is DOE mostly):
Energy Efficiency & Renewable Energy: $899.3 million cut. What? Seriously?
Fossil Energy Research & Development (for comparison): $30.6 million cut. I see a pattern.
Clean Coal Technology (for comparison): $18 million cut. Hmm.
Science: $1,110,900,000 cut... yes, OVER A BILLION DOLLARS CUT FROM DOE'S OFFICE OF SCIENCE!
ARPA-E (energy innovation grants): $250 million cut. Do you see what is happening here?
Weapons Activities: $312.4 million cut... maybe it isn't all bad?
Nuclear Nonproliferation: $647.5 million cut... oh, I see.

Science is not the only target. Scanning down though, you'll find a category called "Interior and Environment," which must be mostly Department of Interior and the EPA: it starts midway through page 8 and goes until the top of page 11. These are mostly smaller cuts, focused on USGS, EPA, BLM, NPS, and a handful of other programs. There are some nice highlights though.

• EPA State and local air quality management: GHG permitting: $25 million cut. It isn't listed as termination, but I'd have to guess this is about all the money they could get for this new program.
• Fish & Wildlife Service Grants $160.7 million cut.
• State & Tribal Wildlife Grants: $90 million cut.
• EPA Great Lakes Initiative: $75 million cut.
• EPA Clean Water SRF: $1,310,000,000 cut. Yep, 1.3 Billion cut. 
• EPA Drinking Water SRF: $457 million cut. 
• EPA Rescission: $290 million cut.
• EPA Categorical Grants: $220.2 million cut.

There are big cuts also for FEMA, NIH, CDC, Department of Labor, OSHA, Head Start (2 BILLION DOLLARS CUT FROM HEAD START!), a billion dollars cut from Social Security Administration, and even cuts in the defense budget.

What I'd like to see is another column stating the proposed budget by the CR for each item, to put in perspective how big these cuts are compared to the programs. I'm guessing that the are huge for these science programs, but I'd like to see the numbers.

And in the end, these cuts could be devastating for science research in the USA, but they only reduce the deficit from $1.5 Trillion to $1.4 Trillion. I think that we need to reevaluate how the government is spending money, not just in these relatively small discretionary items, but for the whole enchilada.

Fickle conspiracy theorists

Richard Linklater's 1991 film "Slacker" touches on a number of persistent conspiracy theories. Many of them, such as moon landing hoaxes and JFK assassination plots, are still bandied about today, especially on late-night talk shows like Coast to Coast AM. If you watch this clip, you'll see an example, but there's a part about global warming, too. Today the conspiracy nuts think that global warming is the hoax, that  somehow scientists are pulling the wool over the eyes of the public. This clip shows that around 1990, the conspiracy needle was really pointing the other way, with the government covering up global warming. "Greenhouse effect... by the way, they discovered that in the '40s."

Dansgaard Dies

Just saw the LA Times obituary for the Danish paleoclimatologist Willi Dansgaard [LINK]. Dansgaard was a physicist by training, with a specialty in spectroscopy. He figured out the connection between temperature and oxygen isotope ratio in precipitation which became one of the foundations of paleoclimatatology. He also discovered abrupt climate change when he analyzed early ice cores. 


Dansgaard's death comes just after Tamino wrote about glacial cycles in a couple of posts that are worth reading: PART0 PART1 PART1b PART2

un-story

WalesOnline.co.uk has the most unremarkable story on climate change that I have every seen [LINK]. The byline says it is by Chris Kelsey, but the end of the article makes it seem to be connected to Kevin Anderson, a professor at University of Manchester. Either way, I wasn't sure what the point of the article was, since it could well have been written in the 1970s, until I read the lame reader comments that follow it. In case you see them, I can assure you that climate models do include the effects of water vapor, and they have since the 1970s. Where do these people come up with this stuff?

The Hindu: "Expert wants cosmic rays' impact on global warming assessed"

The Hindu : Sci-Tech / Energy & Environment : Expert wants cosmic rays' impact on global warming assessed

Sigh.

More on this at some point soon. Why don't any of these old tropes die?

Rolling back the job-destroying (greenhouse gas) regulations

A McClatchy Newspapers article [LINK] suggests that the House republicans are going to move on to the Clean Air Act now that they've "repealed" the health care act. It's actually a really nice article, so I recommend taking a look. The idea is that the republicans don't like that the EPA is going to try to regulate carbon dioxide emissions, so they want to re-write the Clean Air Act to make sure that is not in the EPA's purview.

The argument seems to be that (a) the Congress should pass regulatory legislation, (b) carbon dioxide shouldn't be considered a "pollutant," (c) regulating carbon dioxide will "kill" jobs. Who is making this argument? Well, it seems like Rep. Fred Upton (R-Mich.) is fully on board, but Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) is the one who introduced the so-called Free Industry Act and she has 96 co-sponsors who are all Republicans except Rep. Dan Boren (D-OK).

In terms of the points above, I think there are some obvious problems. (a) There is no legislation that is going to regulate emissions that is going to get through congress. That ship sailed last year, even before that commercial in which Joe Manchin literally shot the bill [YOUTUBE]. So the republican position seems to be, "let's do nothing." (b) The EPA went to court to determine whether CO2 is a pollutant, and it is. Case closed, literally. [WIKIPEDIA] (c) Just asserting that reducing carbon pollution will "kill" jobs does not make it true. One of the reasons that Barack Obama was so overwhelmingly elected was because he championed the idea of reducing our dependence on foreign oil by moving toward a renewable energy infrastructure, creating thousands of "green jobs." There are a number of arguments for moving in this direction to create jobs and move the USA into a leadership position in green technology that can be used (read: sold) to other countries [LINK]. I think this point is one where there could be actual debate, but there are so many reasons to move away from fossil fuels that they overshadow possible short-term economic implications. In the long-term, I think everyone agrees that fossil fuels are bad for everyone.

One last point. Just like in the case of health care, there is not enough support to move any of this legislation through the Senate, much less through the White House. It is an exercise in futility, a symbol of the frustration that the Republicans feel and the animosity they have toward environmental regulation. It is also a waste of time in Congress and a waste of taxpayer money. It will make headlines, though, and confuse the American public, who I'm pretty sure now believe that the healthcare bill has really been repealed.

Glory Be.

Well, it might be, depends how the launch goes. Glory is the new NASA "A-Train" satellite that is supposed to be launched on 23 February [LINK]. The launch vehicle is a Taurus XL 3110; I know what you're thinking, but no this is not a Ford model. It is, however, a similar rocket to the one that delivered the Orbiting Carbon Observatory to the bottom of the ocean [LINK]. So let's hope for a little better luck with this one.

The satellite is really going to be doing two things once it is functional. First, it is going to measure the solar output. Put another way, it is going to measure how much sunshine reaches the top of the atmosphere. Second, it is going to use the Aerosol Polarimetry Sensor (APS) to measure properties of suspended particles in the atmosphere (aerosol). According the the overview, "this instrument will measure the size, quantity, refractive index, and shape of aerosols."[NASA]. This isn't the first time aerosol will be observed from space, but it is the first time that detailed properties will be retrieved (as opposed to bulk or geometric properties, as from CALIPSO).

If you are thinking, but isn't the A-Train lifetime actually nearly over? Well, yes, it sure is getting there. Because of the lack of funded missions on the horizon, I have heard our present period referred to as the golden age of satellite observations. The A-Train has been up for a while, except that everything has been delayed. Glory was scheduled to launch in 2008, and here we are years later. The OCO did launch, but crashed; there is an OCO2 planned, but it will be some time before they can build, test, and launch the replacement. The French companion to the A-Train, PARASOL, is heading toward end of life (probably this year), and has had to leave the train because it doesn't have enough fuel to maintain synchronous observations. I think it is safe to say that the original picture of the A-Train never came to fruition, but there has been a lot of overlap which is providing a better view from space than ever could have been achieved with a single satellite.

An interesting aspect of this mission is that the APS is measuring parameters that I don't think have ever been measured from space. It is a passive instrument, which just means that it looks at the light coming up from Earth, and then analyzes that light. Often satellites just measure the brightness (intensity) of the light, and might do that for several frequencies. Glory will measure the other "Stokes parameters" to get information about the polarization of the light, and will do it in 9 different spectral bands. It is quite an impressive piece of optical equipment, even more so when you think it is in a box 705 km above the earth traveling at 24,000 kph or so. Basically a small section of the Earth is seen by the satellite, and the light goes through a refractive telescope and then something called a Wollaston prism before reaching the detectors. The prism separates two orthogonal linearly polarized beams, each beam then impacts a detector. The instrument also contains a motor that rotates the mirrors and allows views of the scene at multiple angles. My knowledge of optics to too rusty to be able to say anything useful about this, but it amazes me that such a complex, delicate instrument can be put into orbit.

But don't forget that Glory is also measuring the Total Solar Irradiance. This is a critical parameter as it represents the energy source for the climate system. There have been continuous space-based measurements of the sunshine for about 30 years. The good news is that the measurements show the variability in solar output and are consistent with theory about what the solar constant should be. The bad news is that different instruments have shown slightly different values (ranging from 360-370 W/m2). That doesn't sound too bad, but 10W/m2 of incoming sunlight makes a substantial difference in the global energy budget. Glory will hopefully provide the accuracy and stability needed to better constrain the average solar output.

Details of Glory can be found in an overview paper from BAMS [LINK], but keep in mind that this was written by the scientists. Despite being for the general atmospheric science community, they don't do a great job of explaining things in simple non-jargony language.

Keeping perspective

MySpace is firing about half its employees, about 500 people, as it struggles to stay relevant [LINK]. Contrast with Wikipedia, which has about 50 employees total and has existed successfully for 10 years and is now one of the "most relevant" sites on the internet [LINK].

UN not putting mirrors in space

An article in the Telegraph by Louise Gray carries the headline, "Cancun climate change summit: UN considers putting mirrors in space" [LINK]. That is a misleading headline, to put it mildly. What is really happening is that there's another "climate summit" happening now in Cancun, just like last year at Copenhagen. The difference with Cancun is that there aren't any expectations; for some reason people had high hopes for a deal at Copenhagen despite all the indications that it would not happen. This article, however, isn't really about the summit, it seems to be about the talk that Rajendra Pachauri (head of IPCC) gave at the summit. I haven't double checked, but it sounds like he gave an overview of the current IPCC endeavor, gearing up for the Fifth Assessment Report (AR5), which will be released in 2014-ish. What's with the mirrors, though? Well, the AR5 is going to change structure a little bit, just like all the other reports have done. New chapters are going to be added, for example dealing with clouds and aerosols (coverage of clouds and aerosols has been spread across several chapters in the past). The mirrors are a geoengineering idea, and for the first time geoengineering is going to be dealt with explicitly in the IPCC assessment. There won't be a separate report about it, nor even a separate chapter. Like other topics that have emerged in previous reports, geoengineering will be sprinkled throughout the AR5. Specifically, there are sections in the carbon/biogeochemistry chapter (Ch. 6), cloud/aerosol chapter (Ch. 7), the near-term climate change chapter (Ch. 11) in Working Group 1 (physical science basis), plus part of Ch. 5 in WG3's report. This was all laid out already by the IPCC and is available on their web site [LINK].

This was all just to criticize the coverage by the Telegraph. The "UN" isn't considering geoengineering implementation, as the story might lead you to believe. The fact is that research, serious research, is now being done to understand the consequences of geoengineering ideas. Since the AR5 is assessment of climate change science, it is natural to include these geoengineering results. The IPCC is not going to recommend putting mirrors in space.

Yet.

Invitations to contribute chapters

Yesterday I opened my email and found an invitation to contribute a chapter to a book on climate change. Huh? Yeah, reading through, it wasn't obviously random, they knew my name and my work, and they were asking my to write something related. Here's the email, with some info removed:

My name is MSc Iva Lipovic and I am contacting you regarding a new InTech book project under the working title "Climate Change", ISBN: 978-953-307-419-1.


This book will be published by InTech - an Open Access publisher covering the fields of Science, Technology and Medicine.


You are invited to participate in this book project based on your paper "XXXXX", your publishing history and the quality of your research. However, we are not asking you to republish your work, but we would like you to prepare a new paper on one of the topics this book project covers.


Publication of the book is scheduled for 26 July, 2011. It will be abstracted and indexed in major online repositories and search engines. The book will also be available online and you will receive a hard copy via express delivery service.


Why should you participate?
- "Climate Change" covers your area of research
- Free online availability increases your paper's impact
- Each InTech book chapter is downloaded approximately 1000 times per month
- More citations of your work (research findings indicate that papers published under the Open Access model are likely to enjoy increased citation rates)
- You keep the copyright to your work


NEXT STEP: For further details about this book project please visit


http://www.intechweb.org/XXXXXXXX


On this page you can find a detailed description of the book project, its scope and topics, details of the publishing process and a registration form.


For further details about InTech and Open Access please visit:
- About InTech: http://www.intechweb.org/XXXXXXXX
- About Open Access: http://www.intechweb.org/XXXXXXXX


If you need more information about this book project, InTech or Open Access, please don't hesitate to contact me.


On behalf of InTech President, Dr. Aleksandar Lazinica,


MSc Iva Lipovic
Publishing Process Manager
---
InTech
Open Access Publisher
e-mail: lipovic@intechweb.org
Web: http://www.intechweb.org/
Phone: +385 (51) 686 165
Fax: +385 (51) 686 166


Vienna Office
Corporate Address
Zieglergasse 14
1070 Vienna
Austria, European Union


Rijeka Office
Publishing, Marketing and Finance
Janeza Trdine 9
51000 Rijeka
Croatia
Visit us in our Operations Centre in Rijeka!

I've never heard of InTech or InTechWeb before, and I don't know Iva Lipovic, and I've never seen someone use MSc as a title before, so many red flags were waving. So to the interwebs! First stop is the website they sent me to, to check out this book, which seems to exist, and the web site is nice. I start to look at the InTech website, which is also nice. What doesn't look very good are the books themselves. I looked through the books on topics that I might know something about, in particular Climate Change and Variability [LINK]. I think I know one author in the entire book. The topics seems disjointed.  The publisher does not appear to be InTech or InTechWeb, but Sciyo. Each chapter does seem to be like a real paper, but from some browsing, some of them seem to be low quality. There's a lack of editorial cohesion, in the sense that there are differences in formatting and style across the chapters. Something doesn't seem right. So now I start the Google search process.

The most useful information I've seen so far comes from an interview with Sciyo CEO
Aleksandar Lazinica by Richard Poynder [LINK]. From all appearances, this is a business model that takes advantage of the Open Access process, wherein research results are "open" to the public online, and authors pay a modest fee to the journal/publisher to cover costs. Open access is a legitimate publishing model, as evidenced by relatively high profile journals like PLoS One and ACP, but the future of this model is certainly far from settled. InTech, now called Sciyo, seems to be a mutation of the general Open Access publishing model. Instead of trying to attract high quality and high impact papers to specialized journals, they publish books for free online using "InTech" as the online publisher (there's no clear distinction between what is InTech and what is Sciyo, so I will use them interchangeably for the remainder of the post.) The catch is that they company appears to be centered on the idea of soliciting chapters from authors and charging them for publishing the chapters. The fee is not outrageous compared to standard journal fees, but this all starts to feel like a vanity press. This feeling seems confirmed by the description of the publication process on the InTech website, for example:

In comparison with scientific journals, the book format is different in scope as well as in length. Furthermore, the book publishing process has to follow strict publishing deadlines. In order to accommodate these differences, we have developed a strict review process without compromising the quality of our publications.
The Subject Editor’s screening and the Editor’s review are the conditions of acceptance for publication. Subject Editors are permanent members of our Editorial Board and, given their scientific expertise in a specific field of research, they are responsible for sorting abstracts by scope and topics. Book Editors review the abstracts ans select resourceful research papers with a bearing on developments in the field. They have overall responsibility for the content of the publication, therefore they pay particular attention to originality, research methods, key results, and language.
Only abstracts that meet all scientific requirements are accepted. However, definitive acceptance is based on the final chapter review. Following the submission of full chapters, the Book Editor is in charge of the final quality check and every effort is made to ensure that manuscripts are reviewed efficiently and to a high quality.

This is all just saying that the book editor is the only "review" of the content of the book, there is no external review of the science, and it is apparent that there is little or no copy editing. I can only conclude that Sciyo/InTech, in this current form, is a scam designed to publish as much as possible and collect publication fees along with whatever advertising revenue they can generate. Maybe this is recourse for those struggling to get a mediocre paper published without going through the hard work of making it acceptable to a mainstream journal? Isn't that what ArXiv.org is for?

I've been trying to follow up my initial searches, but with limited success. There's a little entry on an Economist blog [LINK], and some of those comments are interesting. I think there's a fair comparison between the Sciyo publishing model and both Who's Who and those poetry "contests" that have been around forever. As far as the scientific enterprise goes, the Sciyo models is problematic. Since it does not provide reasonable peer review, the reader is left to determine the quality of the research (with no baseline, as opposed to traditionally reviewed papers where there is at least some credibility to start with). Another blog has a similar story to tell [LINK], and again several interesting comments from people invited to contribute chapters and even people who have done it. Still, the only thing left to conclude is that this is a pay-to-publish model with no peer-review and no evidence of any actual benefit from having these non-reviewed publications on one's CV.

On the plus side though, this could be an interesting model for people who want to publish a book, but want to dispense with some of the overhead. An industrious editor or two could conceivably use the Sciyo system as a platform to get a collection of papers into book-form for a modest price. The downside of being non-reviewed would remain, but could be overcome by having some big names in a given field attached (and by the editor weeding out the sub-par contributions from the "invited" contributions). The result could be a useful resource for some small field, since the books really are free to download. I imagine a group of specialists getting together to basically write a free online textbook for grad students, for example, giving an overview of recent results. This is just daydreaming though, until Sciyo or some other OA publisher decides to get serious about such projects; the current model would probably demand many more papers in any given volume in order to collect more publication fees.

Mass Extinction #6

One of these days I should go back and take a look at the details of the first 5 mass extinctions. The last one was 65 million years ago, and the evidence for it being caused by a large impactor is pretty solid. The other ones are less clear, as far as I know. The sixth one is currently underway, and the cause is pretty clear. Joe Romm has a nice post about it [LINK]. Whenever reading Romm, one must remember that he's always presenting the worst case scenario (and as if it is inevitable), but even when one scales his arguments by 50% or so, it's not a pleasant picture. If anyone wants to skip the commentary and read the source material, it is a special issue of Phil. Trans. [LINK].

Coherence

Just saw a post from a month ago on Skeptical Science [LINK] that makes an important point about so-called climate skeptics (aka climate change deniers). That post makes the point that the "skeptical" arguments, when taken together, are incoherent. There are arguments that the globe is not warming, that there is warming but it is natural, that there is warming that is anthropogenic but isn't harmful, that there is anthropogenic and it could be harmful but it's too expensive to deal with it, etc etc. Worse yet, is that for every one of those arguments, there are numerous versions of it, especially in terms of whether there is warming or not and whether it is natural (if there is warming). If one were to sit down and write a book about the skeptical arguments, it would be very difficult because to be coherent, most of the arguments would have to be thrown out in favor of others. Many of them are mutually exclusive.

On the other hand, the science behind climate change is quite coherent. The basic science has hardly changed in decades, but over that time the observational and computational evidence has bolstered the basic ideas of climate science. Nuances have been found and explored, but the primary narrative thread of "global warming" is and has been consistent and coherent. This is the basis of the "consensus" counter-argument that thousands of peer-reviewed papers can't be wrong. Maybe using this coherence version is a more refined response to the various skeptical arguments. Making this point conveys the consensus idea without sounding like an argument from authority, and it weakens the skeptical side by pointing out their lack of agreement even among themselves.

The Whale Pump

It's this kind of shit that makes oceanography so hard... whale shit, literally. A new study suggests (and does not prove) [LINK][PLoS], that whale poop might pump nitrogen up to the surface in some areas of the oceans, acting as a boost to biological productivity (and consequently fish population). If this "whale pump" were eventually shown to be important in the global nitrogen cycle, how would climate models cope with that information? Who's going to code the whale_poop.F90 module? Geez.

Coffee forests threatened by climate change impacts

This is serious. At least superficially similar to the pine beetles infecting forests in the Rockies, there's a pest called the coffee berry borer beetle that is infecting coffee plants around the world [LINK]. As the climate is changing, these beetles have started to become common pests in regions where they have historically been virtually unknown, such as Ethiopia. This insect problem just makes the impacts on coffee production worse, as there are already some issues with temperature sensitivity in growing coffee. Frankly, this story completely freaks me out, as I rely on coffee for survival.