30 de abril de 2008

Lâmpadas poupadoras de energia nos Açores

"Do you want to save the earth while reducing your bills? Use energy-saving light bulbs!"

Sei que a EDA vai lançar uma campanha nos Açores em favor das lâmpadas poupadoras de energia. Muito bem - vai ser a forma de ficar só com esse tipo de lâmpadas (cerca de metade das minhas lâmpadas já o são). O vídeo é a minha forma de apoiar a campanha.

James Hansen: um documento recente

James Hansen, num documento de divulgação, discute o ponto da situação da problemática do aquecimento global. O documento, em inglês e em PDF, intitula-se "Tipping Point - perspective of a climatologist" - podem acedê-lo aqui. É uma síntese clara do problema.

Aditamento

Em contraponto da leitura do documento de Hansen poderão esta nota (do futuro) em The Island of Doubt : It's the end of the world as we know it.

Emissões de CO2 (acumuladas) por país




"... this figure on “cumulative fossil fuel carbon dioxide emissions by different countries as a percent of global total”. China has a long way to go to catch up to this country — let alone the entire industrialized world — on cumulative emissions (though they are obviously trying as hard as they can)."


- ver em Climate Progress » Blog Archive » ‘Tipping Point’ — A non-technical Hansen piece

28 de abril de 2008

Tratado

Tenho de falar sobre o Tratado de Lisboa e sobre outros assuntos. Irra: é promessa antiga. Tenho atenuantes mas não tenho desculpa.

Partido Socialista (Francês)

Uma apreciação da situação actual do Partido Socialista (Francês): PS : le syndrome Maginot, na Telos. Faz uma descrição amarga da situação actual mas não é muito claro quanto ao que é que necessário fazer - aquilo que diz a esse respeito, de tão génerico, não tem aderência, não polariza, não suscita discussão. Serve, no entanto, de reflexão. Parte da descrição:
"Las, le texte présenté s’apparente plutôt à une sorte de dictionnaire des idées reçues de la pensée des années 1990-2000. Le tout écrit dans une langue dont on sent bien qu’elle a été passée au tamis des molles exigences des divers courants et sensibilités du parti durant de longues séances de sémantique socialiste. Les « idées » et les mots semblent ainsi avoir été pesés au trébuchet des différentes chapelles représentées dans les instances de direction du PS : un peu de réformisme pour plaire aux experts, une pincée de radicalisme pour satisfaire les orthodoxes et un brin de socialisme gouvernemental pour combler les anciens ministres ; sans oublier la bienséance écologiste désormais de rigueur et l’invocation des mânes républicaines sans lesquelles il n’y aurait pas de doctrine politique française digne de ce nom."

Gronelândia: o comportamento do gelo



Mais sobre o comportamento do gelo na Gronelândia. Vejam a figura acima. A figura e a informação vêm na nota Climate Feedback: Losing Greenland. Um excerto:
"...the American Geophysical Union meeting last December, ... session after session presented new data about the extent of summer melt in Greenland. Information from the GRACE satellites shows that the overall mass balance of the ice sheet is dropping steadily, and although surface melt varies quite a bit from summer to summer, two of the last three years have seen record levels of melt.
“2007 was a shocking year,” Scott Luthcke, who works with GRACE at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland, told me later. One record melt season does not spell the end of Greenland, of course, and journalists must always be wary about sounding too alarmist based on short-term records. But overall, the outlook for Greenland is simply not good: Changes in speeds of the island’s outlet glaciers show that, no matter whether they are advancing or retreating, they are far faster at changing their behavior than anyone had thought before."

Valores ou situação económica: o que mais tem peso nas decisões de voto

O que tem mais peso na decisão de votar entre a direita e a esquerda? A situação económica (fraco, médio e alto rendimento) ou valores (religiosos, questões socias polarizadoras, ...)? O artigo referenciado no Economist's View, "The Opiate of the Elites" procura responder a essa questão nos EUA e faz comparações com outros países (incluíndo Portugal que tem resultados curiosos - nem a situação económica nem os valores pesam muito na diferenciação do voto entre a direita e a esquerda, no nosso país).

A situação actual do PSD

Pedro Adão e Silva, no Diário Económico, em A síntese improvável, discute o que é o PSD. Interessante. Final do artigo:
"Há neste momento duas possibilidades: ou o PSD consegue optar por uma liderança que represente uma dupla ruptura – com o passado recente, das experiências governativas de Durão e Santana, e com a lógica auto-destrutiva de alternância entre tendências internas – ou o partido prosseguirá a actual trajectória de definhamento eleitoral combinada com antagonismo militante interno (que pode acabar em cisão). O problema é que, sem poder no horizonte, é difícil a algum candidato transformar eventuais boas intenções políticas numa estratégia consequente, que repita a síntese improvável que esteve por detrás do sucesso eleitoral do passado."

A promoção da compra de casa própria como ideologia perigosa

Recordo-me de ter discutido com alguém, não há muitos anos, sobre a bondade de promover à outrance em Portugal, a compra de cada própria, como praticamente a única resposta para o problema da habitação. Defendia ser desejável ter um mercado de habitação de renda a funcionar, de modo efectivo, o que possibilitaria alargar o leque de escolhas das famílias e evitaria uma série de problemas sérios quer na gestão e manutenção do parque imobiliário existente quer nas relações entre autarquias e construtores. A argumentação não passou e foi descartada (presumo eu) como mais uma idéia bizarra a que são atreitos os economistas . Este artigo, The homeownership ideology, no Comment is free, vai no mesmo sentido daquela argumentação, embora se aplique à realidade norte-americana. Parágrafo inicial:
"Homeownership is a concept to which every politician feels the need to pledge allegiance. It is defined as part of the American Dream. As a result, it is easy to pass programmes that throw thousands of dollars at families for buying homes. Using the same amount of money to pay for healthcare or childcare, or, worst of all, rental housing, would be viewed as prima facie evidence of communism. The fixation of homeownership could in times past be viewed as sort of quaint. After all, homeownership is often desirable. It can be a mechanism for providing good, secure housing and also for allowing moderate-income families to accumulate wealth. It is therefore reasonable to have policies like a limited mortgage interest deduction or credit that make it easier for low- and middle-income people to become homeowners. But, given the current situation, it is long past time for the blind faith in homeownership to be subjected to serious scrutiny..."

Rokia Traore

"Born into a traveling, diplomatic family, Rokia Traore absorbed her own Malian traditions into a world-ranging love of music. Playing off the griot tradition, she tweaks the traditional Bamana styles by playing her own acoustic guitar and arranging haunting backing vocals. Her smooth sound is punctuated by the heartfelt, raw tone of the n'goni lute and the harp-like kamala.

Most recently, Traore has made news for a triumphant "quasi-opera" on the final year of Mozart's life. Wati re-imagines a dying Mozart as a griot in ancient West Africa, heir to a long line of hereditary musicians. The work, commissioned by opera director Peter Sellars, has played to thrilled audiences across Europe. Her 2001 album Bowmboi included collaborations with the Kronos Quartet, further enriching her modern Malian sound."

- ver em TED (filmado em Junho 2007).

26 de abril de 2008

Mais notícias sobre o clima...


"The news from NOAA is that all our dawdling on climate action this decade is having real impact on the atmosphere:

  • Concentrations of CO2 jumped 2.4 ppm in 2007, taking us to 385 ppm (preindustrial levels hovered around 280 through 1850).
  • That is an increase of 0.6 percent (or 19 billion tons). If we stay at that growth rate, we'll be at 465 ppm by 2050 -- and that assumes (improbably) that the various carbon sinks don't keep saturating (see here and here).
  • Levels of methane (a far more potent greenhouse gas than CO2) rose last year for the first time since 1998, perhaps an early indication of thawing permafrost [ver gráfico acima]. "




- ver em NOAA news isn't good news Gristmill: The environmental news blog Grist.

Julia Dreyfus no Jay Leno - o que todos podemos fazer quanto ao aquecimento global

- ver em Jay Leno Earth Day videos Gristmill: The environmental news blog Grist

Sinais dos tempos (do clima)


"“He that troubleth his own house shall inherit the wind.” A Biblical proverb for our times, it turns out…. The bark beetle is devastating North American trees (see “Climate-Driven Pest Devours N. American Forests“). Global warming has created a perfect climate for these beetles — Milder winters since 1994 have reduced the winter death rate of beetle larvae in Wyoming from 80% per year to under 10%, and hotter, drier summers have made trees weaker, less able to fight off beetles. [Picture shows forests turned red by beetle.]"




Razões para o aumento do preço da alimentação

É mais informação sobre a situação actual nos mercados dos bens alimentares (ver aqui e também sob a etiqueta primário). Tem o interesse de tentar apresentar de modo exaustivo o conjunto de factores que estão a determinar o aumento dos preços da comida a nível mundial - ver em Sticker shock! Gristmill: The environmental news blog Grist. Ter em atenção, igualmente, os comentários à nota (apontam outras causas).

Pesca ao lago da África Ocidental

"Check out this 4-minute clip of Dr. Rashid Sumaila, head of the Fisheries Economics Research Unit here at the UBC Fisheries Centre (and also one of my committee members), as he discusses overfishing, subsidies, and what we can do about it. The clip is an out-take from the PBS series Strange Days on Planet Earth and Rashid also gave a nice interview for the Strange Days website..."

- ver em Shifting Baselines : Fisheries Economist Rashid Sumaila on Overfishing.

22 de abril de 2008

Eficiência energética - a solução mal-amada

Gostei, de modo particular, desta nota do blogue Beyond the Barrel, Efficiency: the Unloved Solution That Works. Frisa aquilo que já sabemos: a eficiência energética assegura retornos económicos muito significativos e a tecnologia para a concretizar existe; questiona-se sobre as razões porque não se tem feito mais nesse campo: baptiza a eficiência como a solução mal-amada.
O excerto abaixo apresenta razões para isso. Desconfio que haja algum mérito na razão invocada, mas penso - pelo menos no país e na região - que haverão outros factores a influenciar a nossa não-actuação, ou, (para ser mais cauteloso), uma actuação insuficiente e inadequada: na verdade, onde é que as questões de eficiência têm a primazia? É uma questão ideológica, é um traço histórico-cultural...? Ou, todas essas outras razões são suceptíveis de serem cobertas, de maneira genérica, por um conceito mais instrumental de ideologia, o que faria com que o professor norte-americano pudesse ter mais razão do que pareceria à primeira vista?

"This reminded me of the words of a leading energy efficiency scientist, Lee Schipper, who is now a visiting scholar working on transportation sector issues at the University of California-Berkeley. When I talked to him for my story, he said he remembers firsthand how contentious the notion of energy efficiency was in the 1970s, when he began his research.
But what disturbs him the most is that he sees the same arguments replayed today—over compact fluorescent light bulbs, over appliance standards, over auto efficiency. "To me, that's the story," he says. "We've been doing these scenarios and potentials for 35 years. The question is why are we still doing it?"
Schipper has come to believe that the battle is ideological: "There is a fundamentally deep and disturbing opposition to the notion that things can change," he says."

Deve-se mandar o "Dia da Terra" às urtigas...

Joseph Romm, num artigo na Salon, Earth Day, afirma que deveríamos mandar o "Dia da Terra" às urtigas e focar a atenção naquilo que pode (e deve) ser salvo - terra agrícola e galaciares - e na salvação de nós próprios - a subespécie homo sapiens sapiens. É um artigo oportuno e provocador. Alguns excertos:

"I don't worry about the earth. I'm pretty certain the earth will survive the worst we can do to it. I'm very certain the earth doesn't worry about us. I'm not alone. People got more riled up when scientists removed Pluto from the list of planets than they do when scientists warn that our greenhouse gas emissions are poised to turn the earth into a barely habitable planet.

"All of these phrases create the misleading perception that the cause so many of us are fighting for -- sharp cuts in greenhouse gases -- is based on the desire to preserve something inhuman or abstract or far away. But I have to say that all the environmentalists I know -- and I tend to hang out with the climate crowd -- care about stopping global warming because of its impact on humans, even if they aren't so good at articulating that perspective. I'm with them.

The reason that many environmentalists fight to save the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge or the polar bears is not because they are sure that losing those things would cause the universe to become unhinged, but because they realize that humanity isn't smart enough to know which things are linchpins for the entire ecosystem and which are not. What is the straw that breaks the camel's back? The 100th species we wipe out? The 1,000th? For many, the safest and wisest thing to do is to try to avoid the risks entirely.

This is where I part company with many environmentalists. With 6.5 billion people going to 9 billion, much of the environment is unsavable. But if we warm significantly more than 2°C from pre-industrial levels -- and especially if we warm more than 3°C, as would be all but inevitable if we keep on our current emissions path for another decade or so -- then the environment and climate that made modern human civilization possible will be ruined, probably for hundreds of years. And that means misery for many if not most of the next 10 to 20 billion people to walk the planet.

So I think the world should be more into conserving the stuff that we can't live without. In that regard I am a conservative person. Unfortunately, Conservative Day would, I think, draw the wrong crowds. The problem with Earth Day is it asks us to save too much ground. We need to focus. The two parts of the planet worth fighting to preserve are the soils and the glaciers. "

Expectativa de vida

É nos EUA. Num estudo circunscrito de municipalidades estado-unidenses constata-se que a expectativa de vida das mulheres desce pela primeira vez depois de 1918 (surto da gripe espanhola). Ver em Life Expectancy Drops for Some U.S. Women - washingtonpost.com. A questão central aqui é a de saber se este fenómeno, associado a factores comportamentais, não irá generalizar-se a nível de todos os EUA e dos países desenvolvidos - neste assunto o caso da ex-União Soviético tem sido um caso atípico; vejam o excerto:
"The trend appears to be driven by increases in death from diabetes, lung cancer, emphysema and kidney failure. It reflects the long-term consequences of smoking, a habit that women took up in large numbers decades after men did, and the slowing of the historic decline in heart disease deaths.
It may also represent the leading edge of the obesity epidemic. If so, women's life expectancy could decline broadly across the United States in coming years, ending a nearly unbroken rise that dates to the mid-1800s.
"I think this is a harbinger. This is not going to be isolated to this set of counties, is my guess," said Christopher J.L. Murray, a physician and epidemiologist at the University of Washington who led the study. It is being published in PLoS Medicine, an open-access journal of the Public Library of Science."

21 de abril de 2008

Astronomic Picture of the Day - 20 de Abril: (outra) Colisão de Galáxias




Spiral Galaxies in Collision


Explanation: "Billions of years from now, only one of these two galaxies will remain. Until then, spiral galaxies NGC 2207 and IC 2163 will slowly pull each other apart, creating tides of matter, sheets of shocked gas, lanes of dark dust, bursts of star formation, and streams of cast-away stars. Astronomers predict that NGC 2207, the larger galaxy on the left, will eventually incorporate IC 2163, the smaller galaxy on the right. In the most recent encounter that peaked 40 million years ago, the smaller galaxy is swinging around counter-clockwise, and is now slightly behind the larger galaxy. The space between stars is so vast that when galaxies collide, the stars in them usually do not collide."


- ver em Astronomy Picture of the Day (Archive, 20 de Abril de 2008)

Suzanne Vega: “The Queen and the Soldier”

Opinião de Paul Krugman: "In my next life I want to be a songwriter — precisely because I can’t imagine how it’s done. I’d give up the whole first page of my Google Scholar listing to have written “The Queen and the Soldier.”



Infelizmente, não consigo apanhar bem a letra da canção.
- ver em Suzanne Vega - Paul Krugman - Op-Ed Columnist - New York Times Blog.

20 de abril de 2008

A ambição

Discuto ou não a ambição? Valerá o esforço? Em economicês: haverá algum valor acrescentado? Vale a pena? Eu sei, eu sei o que diz o poeta: vale a pena quando a alma não é pequena, mas tenho reticências - no entretanto, a minha alma nunca foi pequena (tenho provas dadas, quer queiram ou não).

Assim vão passando, remansosamente, os dias, debatendo-nos com estas pequenas dúvidas.

PS: Como é bom de ver, com a nota estou, de modo deliberado, a picar-me (e acreditem, é principalmente a mim que quero picar) ...

A alternativa

A Europa deve promover, de modo activo, a democracia? Timothy Garton Ash diz que sim (concordo em absoluto), We need a benign European hydra to advance the cause of democracy Comment is free The Guardian, e discute o modo de o fazer. Um excerto:
"Now a great idea is stalking the corridors of Europe. It is that Europeans should resolve to promote a modern, liberal version of demokratia in countries beyond Europe's borders - in our own interest, and in theirs. This should become a central purpose of the European project for the next 50 years. Not imposing a single model of democracy by military means and not "exporting" democracy, but supporting it, by peaceful means. "Showing the way does not mean imposing the way," as European commission president José Manuel Barroso said earlier this week, at the launch of a new, non-governmental European Foundation for Democracy through Partnership."

Quem beneficia com o aumento do preço da alimentação?




"A recent Financial Times displayed this
staggering map of the globe: Black dots marked each of the countries were food riots have been sparked in outrage against the rising prices of food. Thirty dots in all. A recent CNN report noted that "Riots, instability spread as food prices skyrocket." These surging costs, warns World Bank President Robert Zoellick, "could mean 'seven lost years' in the fight against worldwide poverty."


"With the food crisis as front page news, I couldn't help but notice which agribusiness company has just reported an 86 percent jump in its quarterly earnings. Cargill, one of the world's largest private companies, noted that these strong earnings are being driven mainly by its commodities division, the booming demand for biofuels, as well as increasing demand in new markets, especially Asia. Last year, Cargill posted total sales topping $88 billion, and a net profit of $2.34 billion. To put that in context: $2.3 billion is the GDP of Belize."

Como estão alguns dos outros?

O título da nota poderia ser, em alternativa, experiências dos outros que convém não esquecer em todo o lado (percebidas as lições e guardadas as devidas diferenças).

  • Spanish economy In a slump Economist.com:


    "... Productivity and competitiveness remain Spain's greatest challenges. These need reforms to the labour market, the education system and Spain's research and development infrastructure that may take years to produce results."

  • Brazil An economic superpower, and now oil too Economist.com: onde se lê natural endowment, pode-se ler, quando analisando outras situações, rendas, qualquer que seja o seu tipo:

    "An oil gusher could also sharpen Brazil's already voracious appetite for the politics of the pork barrel. Lula has done much to make Brazil's democracy more genuine. But he was re-elected in 2006 despite a corruption scandal that would have felled a politician of lesser skills. Since then he has basked in popularity derived from sunny economic times and well-designed social policies. The danger is complacency. Compared with its past, Brazil is indeed doing much better. But before oil euphoria kicks in, Brazil's leaders should ask themselves why so many other countries have made bigger returns from a much smaller natural endowment."


  • "...Even against a slowing world economy, Italy stands out for its dim prospects. .... Its causes are deep-rooted and structural, so they will take years to remedy. Italy is deemed by international watchdogs to be one of the most heavily regulated of all rich countries. Trade unions and special interests have repeatedly fought off attempts at reform. Infrastructure is crumbling, the investment climate is unwelcoming, inflation is troubling and productivity growth has been low (indeed, it has recently been negative). The education and health-care systems are deteriorating. Public administration is inefficient ...."

Preço de petróleo

Mais sobre o preço do petróleo (ver aqui também): Oil numbers - Paul Krugman - Op-Ed Columnist - New York Times Blog. Transcrição:

"There are two basic facts that would seem to explain a lot about what’s happening to oil prices. First, Gross World Product growth has accelerated — from 2.9 percent in the 90s to almost 5 percent in recent years, according to the IMF. All of this is because of growth in emerging economies, largely China. Second, world oil production has stalled — after growing around 1.6% a year in the 90s, it’s been basically flat for the last three years. So we’ve got rapidly growing demand due to industrialization in Asia colliding with stagnant supply, basically because oil is getting hard to find. (The demand shock is probably even bigger than the GDP number suggests, because China’s economy is highly energy-inefficient). And the demand for oil is price-inelastic — that is, it takes big price increases to persuade people to use significantly less.
There’s probably more to the story, but that seems to be the basic thrust. And it seems to be a recipe for rising prices for a long time to come. This is what peak oil is supposed to look like — not Oh My God We’ve Just Run Out Of Oil, but steady pressure on the economy and the way we live from rising energy prices and their consequences. And it doesn’t matter much whether we’re literally at the peak, or whether production can rise by a few million more barrels a day; unless there are big sources of oil out there, we’ll be feeling peakish for the foreseeable future."
Aditamento (08.04.21)
Ver também de Krugman, sobre o mesmo assunto: Running Out of Planet to Exploit - New York Times.

Evolução e fundamentalismo

Uma vez, num almoço, referi que a ciência, nunca como agora, era atacada por motivos religiosos ("fundamentalistas") nos EUA. A minha afirmação foi recebida com incredulidade - o que não me agradou nada, já que não se tratava de uma questão de opinião, mas de facto. Enfim... Vejam, por exemplo, este artigo do Herald Tribune, publicado no RichardDawkins.net, 'Evolution fray attracts top scientist'. Excerto:

"His mess of white hair rising with the wind, Nobel laureate Harold Kroto delivered what has become his standard speech on evolution: Humans and fruit flies share the same genes. "You may not like that but it's not my fault," Kroto, 68, said in front of the state Capitol on Monday. "It's the way it actually is."
Florida lawmakers are frustrating the winner of the 1996 Nobel Prize for chemistry. They want to change the way evolution is taught so that teachers are allowed to challenge Darwin's theory. It is the most absurd thing Kroto has heard since moving to Florida in 2004 to teach at Florida State University. His friends back home in England, where he was a professor in Sussex, have been sending him e-mails asking why he stays, he said. "We're the laughingstock of the enlightened world," Kroto said.

For months, he has been writing newspaper articles explaining the basic tenets of Darwin's theory, hoping to change minds. He sits on round-table discussions and hands out booklets on evolution from the National Academy of Sciences. He races to the Capitol between lectures to give the fruit fly talk. To Kroto, and mainstream scientists like him, the idea that humans evolved from the world's earliest life forms is as obvious as the laws of gravity. "The bedrock of all biology," Kroto calls it. "It's beautiful."

But Florida lawmakers and a national movement of mostly religious-based groups believe evolution is less absolute. State proposals this year would undo a recent decision by the state Board of Education and allow teachers to "present scientific information relevant to the full range of views on biological and chemical evolution." Kroto and other scientists surmise such legislation would allow teachers to present as credible theories of creationism and intelligent design, basically beliefs that God or a higher being created humans.

Proponents say it allows teachers "academic freedom" to explore a theory, and that laws clearly ban the teaching of religious theories. The proposals would also protect from punishment students who refuse to accept Darwin's evolution. The bill's Senate sponsor, Ronda Storms, R-Valrico, says teachers and students feel too frightened to even discuss intelligent design. Senate Majority Leader Dan Webster, R-Winter Garden, said the theory of evolution "had flaws." Republicans have voted for the plan to the point where it will be considered by the full Senate, and has only one more committee to pass in the House..."

Carne


"Meat production, particularly beef, is responsible for a large proportion of the world's greenhouse gas emissions due to the energy required to grow animal feed, the clearing of land for feed crops, N2O emissions from fertilizer application and both N2O and CH4 emissions from the animals themselves.
The graph at right shows the consistent rise in per capita consumption in the Americas and Asia over the past 45 years. Meat production and consumption is expected to continue to rise due to rising demand in China and other parts of Asia.The demand for animal feed, coupled the demand for biofuels, is being felt most of all in the Amazon, the one large area of "unused" and potentially productive farmland left on the planet.
The rate of Amazonian deforestation increased in the last few months, and may increase further in the rainy months to come, when most illegal cutting usually occurs."



- ver maribo: Greenhouse gases, meat consumption and the Amazon; ver também aqui.

O que é ser conservador em Portugal nos dias que correm?

João Cardoso Rosas tem um artigo curioso sobre o que é ser conservador em Portugal nos dias que correm, face às alterações sucedidas no entretanto. Ver no DiarioEconomico.com, em Conservar ou afrontar?. O final da coluna:

"Em suma: a evolução do mundo em geral e da sociedade portuguesa em particular fez com que a causa conservadora perdesse o seu sentido. Por isso o programa conservador é hoje tão bizarro. Ele pretende conservar aquilo que está definitivamente perdido. Mas como isso é uma impossibilidade lógica, o conservadorismo acaba por afrontar a sociedade, mais do que conservá-la. Daí a agressividade do conservadorismo actual. Os conservadores são hoje politicamente tão radicais como a geração de 68 na Europa, ou a de 74 em Portugal."

O lapso de Obama

Obama teve um comentário sobre o modo como as populações empobrecidas, com pouca educação, das pequenas povoações, atingidas pelas reestruturações económicas, reagiam. O comentário foi acerbamente criticado. O problema, segundo o NYT, mais do que um lapso de uma análise políticamente incorrecta, é o de uma análise errada. O que é curioso para mim é que este debate ecoa a discussão sobre as razões sociológicas que levam jovens a tornarem-se terroristas - há mais aqui do que parece à primeira vista. Ver em Who’s Bitter Now? - New York Times: um excerto:
"This is a remarkably detailed and vivid account of the political sociology of the American electorate. What is even more remarkable is that it is wrong on virtually every count. Small-town people of modest means and limited education are not fixated on cultural issues. Rather, it is affluent, college-educated people living in cities and suburbs who are most exercised by guns and religion. In contemporary American politics, social issues are the opiate of the elites."
Paul Krurgman opina também sobre a análise de Obama em Clinging to a Stereotype , no New York Times, e remete para o seu blogue a informação estatística que suporta a sua posição: krugman.blogs.nytimes.com.

Crise alimentar a nível mundial



Tenho aqui um conjunto de artigos sobre a crise alimentar a nível mundial. O problema tem causas próximas (uma é retratada no gráfico acima - ver em Econbrowser: Food prices ) e outras, que o não são tanto, já que se prendem com o enquadramento político, e a evolução económica tecnológica, do sector agrícola nos últimos 15 a 20 anos. Uma questão que se coloca é a rapidez com que esta crise será resolvida e o que terá de ser tido em linha de conta na transformação da actividade nos próximos anos - e.g., subsidiação da agricultura, comércio internacional de produtos alimentares, produtos agrícolas geneticamente modificados... Isto tudo servindo de alerta à necessidade de se estar atento às consequências das alterações climáticas na actividade agrícola - por exemplo, uma das modificações previstas como decorrendo daquelas será o aumento, em quantidade e em intensidade, dos surtos de seca...


  • Econbrowser: Food prices: Comentário à política de subsidiação da produção de etanol a partir do milho:
    "As a result of ethanol subsidies and mandates, the dollar value of what we ourselves throw away in order to produce fuel in this fashion could be 50% greater than the value of the fuel itself. In other words, we could have more food for the Haitians, more fuel for us, and still have something left over for your other favorite cause, if we were simply to use our existing resources more wisely. We have adopted this policy not because we want to drive our cars, but because our elected officials perceive a greater reward from generating a windfall for American farmers. But the food price increases are now biting ordinary Americans as well."
  • Geoorge Monbiot: Credit crunch? The real crisis is global hunger. And if you care, eat less meat Comment is free The Guardian:

    "Never mind the economic crisis. Focus for a moment on a more urgent threat: the great food recession that is sweeping the world faster than the credit crunch. You have probably seen the figures by now: the price of rice has risen by three-quarters over the past year, that of wheat by 130%. There are food crises in 37 countries. One hundred million people, according to the World Bank, could be pushed into deeper poverty by the high prices. But I bet that you have missed the most telling statistic. At 2.1bn tonnes, the global grain harvest broke all records last year - it beat the previous year's by almost 5%. The crisis, in other words, has begun before world food supplies are hit by climate change. If hunger can strike now, what will happen if harvests decline? There is plenty of food. It is just not reaching human stomachs. Of the 2.13bn tonnes likely to be consumed this year, only 1.01bn, according to the United Nation's Food and Agriculture Organisation, will feed people."

  • FT.com / Comment & analysis / FT Columnists - A modest proposal for preventing world famine:
    "...Manila has not been able to buy enough rice abroad to secure food for its people, because no one has wanted to sell. ...The price of rice has more than doubled in a year. ... Riots over food prices have erupted across Africa .... It is tempting to assume that the problem is purely one of supply and can be fixed by genetically modified plants or investment in a new “green revolution” to boost crop yields.
    The three most productive solutions, however, are all matters of policy.
    First, there is an urgent need for a sustained liberalisation of agricultural trade. The immediate cause of this crisis is not – perhaps surprisingly – a shortage of food. The problem is the sudden reluctance of traditional exporters to sell their surpluses. ... Trust in the efficiency and liquidity of the market has collapsed. Farm protectionism is not new and international markets are grotesquely distorted by tariffs and subsidies. The main producers – particularly the European Union and the US – have jealously protected their farm sectors from foreign competition, partly on food security grounds. International farm trade has nevertheless managed satisfactorily for decades to redistribute surpluses of staple foods. The current seizures in the markets are therefore a cause for general alarm. ...
    The second level at which policies need to change is national. Like international trade, domestic trade in farm produce is often highly distorted. While developed nations tend to support their farmers at the expense of consumers, developing countries typically subsidise city-dwellers at the expense of rural smallholders, who receive low prices and have no incentive to increase their output.
    Third and last, governments need to examine their population policies and limit population growth. Although there is enough grain to go round at the moment, you do not need to be a neo-Malthusian to worry about the demand implications of a global population rising by about 80m people a year or to notice that countries with fast-growing populations... are especially vulnerable to disruptions in the world’s food trade. Perhaps we should not worry too much that global rice stocks are expected to fall this year to the lowest level in 25 years. Some of the changes recommended above for international and domestic food trade regimes could reverse the decline, probably within a few years.
    A more disturbing thought is that we may in the longer term be approaching the limits of our ability to exploit the natural resources required for food production – crude oil, cultivable land, soil fertility and available fresh water, to name a few. Strains on one resource, furthermore, quickly lead to additional strains on another. To make fresh water, more cities are burning fuel to desalinate seawater, but that helps push up the price of oil. To make substitutes for crude oil, farmers are being encouraged to switch to biofuel production, but that uses almost as much fuel as it produces and contributes in its turn to shortages of food."
  • "The collapse of Australia’s rice production is one of several factors contributing to a doubling of rice prices in the last three months — increases that have led the world’s largest exporters to restrict exports severely, spurred panicked hoarding in Hong Kong and the Philippines, and set off violent protests in countries including Cameroon, Egypt, Ethiopia, Haiti, Indonesia, Italy, Ivory Coast, Mauritania, the Philippines, Thailand, Uzbekistan and Yemen."
  • Food The silent tsunami Economist.com:
    "Agriculture is now in limbo. The world of cheap food has gone. With luck and good policy, there will be a new equilibrium. The transition from one to the other is proving more costly and painful than anyone had expected. But the change is desirable, and governments should be seeking to ease the pain of transition, not to stop the process itself."
  • Food and the poor The new face of hunger Economist.com:
    "But the food scare of 2008, severe as it is, is only a symptom of a broader problem. The surge in food prices has ended 30 years in which food was cheap, farming was subsidised in rich countries and international food markets were wildly distorted. Eventually, no doubt, farmers will respond to higher prices by growing more and a new equilibrium will be established. If all goes well, food will be affordable again without the subsidies, dumping and distortions of the earlier period. But at the moment, agriculture has been caught in limbo. The era of cheap food is over. The transition to a new equilibrium is proving costlier, more prolonged and much more painful than anyone had expected."

Aditamento (08.04.21)

A-propósito ver também Les biocarburants sont-ils coupables ? Telos.

Fotos de Marte



"The HiRISE camera onboard Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter keeps churning out incredible images of Mars. This one is very cool, but it’s not obvious why at a glance:..."


- ver a continuação em Bad Astronomy Blog » More gorgeous HiRISE pictures

19 de abril de 2008

2100 - nível médio das águas mais alto em 1,5 metros

"Svetlana Jevrejeva of the Proudman Oceanographic Laboratory, UK, says a new, more accurate reconstruction of sea levels over the past 2000 years suggests that the prediction of a an 18-59 centimetre rise by 2100 made by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is wildly inaccurate. Meeting at European Geosciences Union conference in Vienna, Austria, this week, researchers including Jevrejeva said in a statement that the pace at which sea levels are rising is accelerating. They predict they will be 0.8-1.5 metres higher by next century."

"I managed to find this wonderful Google Map Hack that allows you to observe sea level increases. Surf around and take a look at Thailand and Amsterdam under 2m of water. Feel free to post links to other extremely flooded areas below. ... Only one thing left to do: sing!"

E apresenta o vídeo que se apresenta acima.


- ver Deep Sea News : 1.5m Sea Level Rise by 2100.

Temperatura de Março



"March 2008 missed the record for the warmest March (2002) by a whopping 0.07°F. March 2008 was the warmest March over land in the record, beating the previous record by nearly 0.3°F. And it was the warmest March over land and sea in the northern hemisphere on record by 0.2°F . "


- ver em Climate Progress » Blog Archive » NOAA: The second warmest March on record, e também aqui.

Capa da Time Magazine


18 de abril de 2008

Hinos de uns cantados por outros

"Leading film-makers are seeking to change the way we think about other countries. This is one of a powerful series of films to be shown on Pangea Day, May 10, "the day the world comes together through film". See all four anthems. Then visit http://www.pangeaday.org/ and register your screening for May 10. It's time to imagine a different world. Here the Japanese troupe performs the Turkish national anthem."

17 de abril de 2008

Regulação dos mercados financeiros

Martin Wolf, no Financial Times, em Why financial regulation is both difficult and essential, discute, de maneira instrutiva, a bondade de códigos de conduta voluntários que a comunidade bancária tem vindo a propor como modo de evitar uma maior amplitude de intervenção das entidades reguladoras. Não está convencido disso, embora, por outro lado, também não acredite na infabilidade da regulação - excertos do artigo:

"... First, in such a fiercely competitive business, a voluntary code is almost certainly not worth the paper it is written on. When they can get away with behaving irresponsibly, some will do so. This puts strong pressure on others. That is what Chuck Prince, former chief executive officer of Citigroup, meant when he told the FT that “as long as the music is playing, you’ve got to get up and dance”. So, as Willem Buiter of the London School of Economics remarks: “Self-regulation stands in relation to regulation the way self-importance stands in relation to importance.”
Second, the industry has form. The IIF itself was founded in 1983 in response to the developing country debt crisis. At that time, big parts of the west’s banking system were in effect bankrupt. Now, many upsets later, we have reached the “subprime crisis”. The IIF was created not only to represent the industry, but to improve its performance. It is clear that this has not worked...
...But competition does not work well in finance. The “product” of the financial industry is promises for an uncertain future, marketed as dreams that can readily become nightmares. Customers are readily swept away by exaggerated promises, irrational beliefs, misplaced trust and sheer skulduggery. So, too, are practitioners: basing risk management on limited data and inadequate models is a good example. Emotions count wherever uncertainties loom.
Boeing would not survive if the aircraft it built fell out of the sky. Yet in the financial industry, huge blunders are also almost always made in common. If everybody is in the dance nobody is to blame and, in any case, governments, horrified by the consequences of a collapsing financial system, will come to the rescue...

...Yet I am not that optimistic about regulation either. Regulators are doomed to close the stable doors behind financial institutions that always find new and more exciting ways of losing money. It is, for this reason, crucial that the institutions, and unsecured creditors, feel some pain: the burned child fears the fire; singeing is less effective. Yet the fire must never burn too far, since that might destroy the entire economy.
If regulation is to be effective, it must cover all relevant institutions and the entire balance sheet, in all significant countries; it must focus on capital, liquidity and transparency; and, not least, it must make finance less pro-cyclical. Will it ever work perfectly? Certainly not. It is impossible and probably even undesirable to create a crisis-free financial system. Crises will always be with us. But we can surely do far better than we have been doing. In any case, we are doomed to try."

Jon Stewart v. George W. Bush

- Jon Stewart entrevista George W. Bush: ver em Slate V - Did You See This?

15 de abril de 2008

Lido no Diário Económico de hoje

A qualidade dos colunistas do Diário Económico é muito boa - quem acompanha este blogue já se apercebeu dessa minha opinião que, estou certo disso, aceitam. Há dias onde as colunas com interesse abundam - é o caso hoje. Por isso não faço o que, habitualmente, faço - transcrevê-las: indico as ligações e apresento os excertos que, de uma maneira ou outra, melhor caracterizam, a meu ver, cada uma das opiniões. Aí vai:







  • A nossa dor de André Macedo: sobre a actuação da Ministra da Saúde - preocupante. De acordo com muita coisa do que é dito. O excerto é o final da coluna:

    "Sobra, portanto, só um ponto, que deveria refrear o entusiasmo da ministra: ao dizer o que disse, ficou a impressão de que será mais tolerante com os gastos, menos dura com o desperdício, desde que se tenha “o cidadão em consideração”. Ora, é por ter “o cidadão em consideração” que é fundamental consolidar os métodos de gestão privada e dar espaço aos privados para desenvolverem os seus negócios, desde que fiscalizados por um regulador eficaz. Sem estes dois elementos – boa gestão e concorrência –, o SNS voltará à má vida anterior. Nessa altura, o problema já não será de Ana Jorge. Será do país."

  • Grande política de Bruno Maçães: sobre o impacto da revolução bio-tecnológica e como isso obriga o regresso da "grande política":
    "A revolução biotecnológica começou ontem. Começa a grande política.Eis o que quero dizer com esta expressão. Durante dois ou três séculos foi muito mais fácil manipular o mundo exterior do que a natureza humana. Também tentámos manipular a segunda, claro, com recurso à propaganda e à educação, à psicanálise ou à cirurgia plástica, mas os resultados foram decepcionantes. A consequência foi a perda de importância da política, que não é senão a tentativa de transformar os homens."

  • Brechas no consenso de Miguel Castro Coelho. A desigualdade (e o enfraquecimento das redes de segurança social nalguns países, e.g., caso dos EUA) induz reacções que poderão por em causa a globalização e o comércio internacional:

    "O aumento da disparidade na distribuição de rendimentos nos países desenvolvidos é uma tendência marcante do processo de globalização que não pode continuar a ser ignorada. A integração internacional dos mercados assenta num equilíbrio de consensos políticos que se tem vindo a tornar cada vez mais precário. ...

    ...Mais recentemente nuvens muito negras começaram a pairar sobre o papel do sector financeiro nesta história. Primeiro, por aquilo que a actual crise financeira colocou a nu: a capacidade de o sistema gerar rendimentos elevados para os ‘insiders’ enquanto uma espiral de alavancagem artificial perdura, e transferir os custos para a generalidade dos contribuintes quando a realidade bate à porta. Segundo, e como consequência do ponto anterior, pelos sinais cada vez mais fortes de uma desconexão grave entre o valor acrescentado pelo sistema financeiro e a parcela do produto de que se apropria. Terceiro, pela eficácia dos seus ‘insiders’ para evitar a malha fiscal – há alguns meses atrás Nicholas Ferguson (’chairman’ da SVG Capital) mostrou-se indignado por ser tributado a uma taxa efectiva inferior à da sua empregada de limpeza (situação que Paul Krugman, noutro contexto, apelidou de ‘Robin Hood in reverse’). Quarto, pela influência que o sector financeiro tem desempenhado no estímulo à criação de bolhas imobiliárias (e.g. EUA, e agora em Inglaterra) e, por inerência, no estímulo ao endividamento excessivo, à fraca poupança líquida nacional e ao desequilíbrio externo."

Recessão nos EUA: que consequências?

Tem já uma semana esta apreciação, The world economy -The great American slowdown, do The Economist, sobre a conjuntura económica norte-americana, e o seu provável impacto na economia mundial, mas continua a ser uma boa síntese do que se passa - a tese do artigo é que a recessão poderá não ser tão grave como se receia, mas a recuperação será lenta, o que trará os seus próprios perigos.

A importância da arquitectura política

Este artigo, Israel at 60 The dysfunctional Jewish state , do The Economist, chama a atenção para a importância do modo como está estruturada a vida política israelita na explicação da dificuldade de obter resultados na pacificação do próximo oriente. É um caso paradigmático da
importância da forma versus conteúdo. O excerto (conclusão do artigo):

"Israel has achieved some remarkable things during its 60 years. But for the sake of its security and domestic well-being, it now needs a system that makes politicians answerable to voters, not to other politicians. What shape it should take—whether a mixture of proportional representation with electoral districts, higher thresholds to keep small parties out of the parliament, or just rules to make it harder to topple governments—is up to Israelis. Unfortunately, since their politicians will design and vote on it, it is unlikely to be optimal; but almost anything would be better than what there is now."

A situação económica da Europa

Dois artigos: um do Finantial Times e outro do The Economist, sobre a situação económica europeia - o primeiro, avaliando de modo positivo o contributo do Euro para a relativa (até agora) boa situação económica europeia; o segundo prometendo mau tempo para a zona Euro. Transcrevo o primeiro e dou a ligação para o segundo (o excerto que acompanha a ligação é o período final do artigo).
Será curioso ver, ao longo deste ano, quem terá mais razão - a tese do primeiro não invalida, no entanto, a possibilidade de ocorrer a tempestade prevista pelo segundo, mas o que diz o artigo do FT sobre o Euro prova, a contrário, a qualidade de algumas apreciações feitas sobre os "custos" para a condução da política económica portuguesa decorrentes da nossa pertença à zona Euro.
Qualquer dos artigos é instrutivo e merece ser lido - há mais sobre estes assuntos sob as etiquetas conjuntura económica e europa.











  • FT.com / Columnists / Wolfgang Munchau - Pessimism about the eurozone is misplaced:
    "I am puzzled by the International Monetary Fund’s latest growth projections for the eurozone. The forecasts in the World Economic Outlook show a mild recession for the US, with a positive annual growth rate of 0.5 per cent this year and a huge contraction in growth for the eurozone from 2.6 per cent in 2007 to 1.4 per cent.
    This is puzzling to me for two reasons. First, what drives the US downturn is an immense property recession in combination with a credit crunch. That is, by and large, not the case in the eurozone despite a number of regional downturns, for example in Spain. Second, the economic news from the eurozone has been persistently better than expected so far and there may be a dynamism at work that is not yet fully understood.
    One possibility is that some of the economic shock transmitters, especially the exchange rate, may work a little slower than they used to. Companies can hedge against short-term exchange rate fluctuation. The euro has also improved its status as an invoicing currency, which may offer eurozone companies some protection. Eventually, of course, the eurozone may run of luck, but it would have to run out of luck fairly soon for the IMF’s forecast of a sharp growth slowdown to prove correct for this year. Now that might still happen, especially if the US were to fall into a black hole. But I just cannot see how the IMF’s pessimism on the eurozone can be consistent with its relative optimism about the US.
    Another possibility is that the eurozone economy may have become a touch more resilient. To be clear: I am no advocate of “decoupling”. It is a meaningless metaphor since no region in a globalised economy can be truly decoupled. But even if there can be no decoupling, there remains the perfectly legitimate question whether the relationship between the US economy and the rest of the world in general, and the eurozone in particular, may have changed over the years. I suspect it has. One of the main economic arguments in favour of the euro was a lower cyclical dependence on the US. While that goal has clearly not been reached in full, it may have been reached in part. For example, Germany, which accounts for more than a quarter of the eurozone’s economic output, has coped better with a rising currency than it did in similar episodes of the past. And in one limited respect, we can even talk about “decoupling”: European monetary policy is far more independent of the US today than it used to be. The European Central Bank’s dogged pursuit of price stability continues to surprise even seasoned central bank watchers, who could not have imagined that the ECB would be able to leave interest rates unchanged during a period in which the Federal Reserve has cut by 300 basis points. To see how much has changed over the past 10 years, just imagine what would have happened if there had been no euro. The European financial markets would have remained fragmented. Italy would have devalued its lira a long time ago. Spain would probably have announced a devaluation of the peseta right after the recent elections as the depth of its housing crisis became more and more apparent. Portugal and Greece would have devalued three or four times by now. President Nicholas Sarkozy of France might have been tempted to devalue the franc against the D-Mark shortly after his election. Today, the German, Benelux and Austrian economies would have been crippled by a super-hard D-Mark, guilder and shilling, which would have risen not only against the dollar, but also against the franc, the peseta and the lira. The US downturn would have brought havoc to the European economy – as it used to in the past. You remember that other tired old metaphor about the US sneezing and the Europeans catching a cold.
    Maybe we are now living in a world where the US is catching a cold and the Europeans are sneezing. This does not mean that all is well with the eurozone. On the contrary, regular readers of this column will probably recall my almost obsessive pessimism about Germany’s economy and the country’s inability to create a dynamic services and financial sector. But there can be no doubt that Germany is more robust relative to past performance.
    This is in my view not an economic reform story, but the result of macroeconomic regime change. The euro created a large and stabilising internal market, almost as large as the US itself. Of course, the eurozone remains relatively more open than the US. It continues to depend on outside influences more than the US. But my point is that the eurozone is much less sensitive today than its constituent economies were 10 or 15 years ago. Economic forecasters should beware that not all past relationships can be safely extrapolated into the future.
    Obviously, there may come a point when a US recession and a persistently weak dollar will affect the eurozone as well. There are several channels through which US economic weakness is transmitted to the rest of the world – bank profits, the stock market, falling exports among others. But these channels take time to work through the system. I would broadly concur with the IMF’s 2009 forecast for the eurozone – a growth rate of 1.2 per cent. But for growth to slow down to 1.4 per cent already this year, something dramatic would have to happen that I am not seeing elsewhere in the IMF’s forecasts."




  • Charlemagne Danger ahead for the mighty euro Economist.com:
    "In truth, as the euro approaches its tenth birthday celebrations, it is facing the biggest test of its short life. If Europe follows America into recession, which is quite possible, the pain will be a lot greater in the Mediterranean countries than in Germany and northern Europe. Not surprisingly, the political response from the two regions will also be quite different. Even as it prepares to expand once more to take in Slovakia and later other countries from eastern Europe, the euro is about to show the world that it is not yet an optimal currency area—and the demonstration may not be a pretty one."

14 de abril de 2008

Porquê a crise de confiança nos EUA?

É mais um artigo de Paul Krugman, no New York Times, sobre a situação da economia norte-americana: Crisis of Confidence. O artigo começa da seguinte forma:

"The Survey Research Center of the University of Michigan has been tracking American economic perceptions since the 1950s. On Friday the center released its latest estimate of the consumer sentiment index — and it was a stunner. Americans are more pessimistic about their situation than they have been for more than a quarter century.

Meanwhile, a recent Pew report found that the percentage of Americans saying that they’re better off than they were five years ago is at its lowest level in 44 years of polling. What’s striking about this bleak mood is that by the usual measures the economy isn’t doing that badly — at least not yet. In particular, the official unemployment rate of 5.1 percent, though rising, is still fairly low by historical standards. Yet economic attitudes are worse now than they were in 1992, when the average unemployment rate was 7.5 percent.

Why are we feeling so down?"
Krugman explica e termina com mais um recado sobre o perfil desejado do novo Presidente.

Cabaz de compras mais caros: razões

É um artigo da Telos sobre o comportamento do nível de preços dos bens de consumo em França: Consommateurs, les ententes vous spolient. Apesar de relativo ao caso francês, tem óbvias lições para percebermos o que se poderá estar a passar em Portugal (e na região) - há razões para pensar que a situação portuguesa é pior. É mais um artigo pedagógico...

Sofismas sobre a ciência: razões e forças


Retirei este artigo, 'The Art of Creating Controversy Where None Existed', do RichardDawkins.net. É da Science Progress. É pedagógico e cruza com coisas já referidas neste blogue (ver, por exemplo, aqui e também aqui).




O artigo:








"With all the sophisticated sophistry besieging mass audiences today, there is a need for the study of rhetoric now more than ever before. This is especially the case when it comes to the contemporary assault on science known as manufactured controversy: when significant disagreement doesn't exist inside the scientific community, but is successfully invented for a public audience to achieve specific political ends.

Three recent examples of manufactured controversy are global warming skepticism, AIDS dissent in South Africa, and the intelligent design movement's "teach the controversy" campaign.

The first of these has been called an "epistemological filibuster" because it magnifies the uncertainty surrounding a scientific truth claim in order to delay the adoption of a policy that is warranted by that science. Languaging expert Frank Luntz admitted as much in his now infamous talking points memo on the environment, leaked to the public in 2002, where he confessed that the window for claiming controversy about global warming was closing, but he nonetheless urged Republican congressional and executive leaders "to continue to make the lack of scientific certainty a primary issue in the debate." ExxonMobil was doing this when it published its "Unsettled Science" advertisement about climate science on the editorial pages of the New York Times in March 2000. A more recent guest editorial by a reader made the same claim in the pages of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer in January 2008.

All three seemed to be following the playbook of the tobacco industry when scientists discovered that their products cause cancer; when a threat to their interests arises from the scientific community, they declare "there are always two sides to a case" and then call for more study of the matter before action is taken. South African President Thabo Mbeki's support for AIDS dissent eight years ago is a similar case. Like global warming skepticism, this assault on the science of HIV/AIDS research ingeniously turned the scientific community's values against it by drawing on the importance of rational open debate, a skeptical attitude, and the need for continued research. Mbeki alleged that the mainstream scientific community branded scientists who questioned the causal link between HIV and AIDS as "'dangerous and discredited' with whom nobody, including ourselves, should communicate or interact." Claiming the successful dissident's authority in post-apartheid South Africa, Mbeki condemned the mainstream scientific community for occupying "the frontline in the campaign of intellectual intimidation and terrorism which argues that the only freedom we have is to agree with what they decree to be established scientific truths."

A parallel case is being made by the intelligent design movement in conjunction with its "teach the controversy" campaign against evolutionary biology. Ben Stein's new movie, Expelled, portrays scientists as participating in a vast conspiracy to silence anyone who questions the Darwinian orthodoxy. This movie promises to be the most extreme application yet of the intelligent design movement's "wedge" strategy to break the supremacy of evolutionary theory in contemporary science. Just as a wedge can be set into a chink in a solid structure and, with the careful application of some concentrated force, will split that structure to pieces, so too do the producers of this movie hope that it can break the scientific community and allow for a change in how science is taught in America. Of course, any claim by biologists that there is no scientific controversy to teach merely feeds the conspiracy theory.

In light of this difficulty, some have suggested that the best response to manufactured controversy is no response at all. They say that countering such nonsense merely gives these modern-day sophists publicity and enables their continued efforts to reopen debate on settled science.

I understand this impulse to remain silent in the face of foolishness, but as a professor of rhetoric, I think it's shortsighted to cede the public stage to the anti-science forces in the naive hope that no one will pay attention to them. Ever since the field of rhetoric was born, there have been those who misuse the power of persuasion to mislead public audiences, and it has been only through vigilant counter-persuasion that such deception has been overcome.

The ancient sophists, or "wise men" (wise guys?) who taught the new art of rhetoric to those who would pay their fee in the 5th century BCE, included Gorgias, who was said to have boasted that he could persuade the multitude to ignore the expert and listen to him instead, and Protagoras, who claimed that there are always two sides to a case and it's the sophist's job to make the worse case appear the stronger.

It was to oppose this kind of deception that Aristotle codified the art of Rhetoric in his treatise by that title. He recognized that before lay audiences "not even the possession of the exactest knowledge" ensures that a speaker will be persuasive, so Aristotle promoted the study of rhetoric so that experts could confute those who try to mislead public audiences. As a scholar of rhetoric, I have studied some modern cases of manufactured controversy to discover how to best confute these contemporary sophists, and I have come up with some preliminary hypotheses about what makes their arguments so persuasive to a public audience.

First, they skillfully invoke values that are shared by the scientific community and the American public alike, like free speech, skeptical inquiry, and the revolutionary force of new ideas against a repressive orthodoxy. It is difficult to argue against someone who invokes these values without seeming unscientific or un-American.

Second, they exploit a tension between the technical and public spheres in postmodern American life; highly specialized scientific experts can't spare the time to engage in careful public communication, and are then surprised when the public distrusts, fears, or opposes them.

Third, today's sophists exploit a public misconception about what science is, portraying it as a structure of complete consensus built from the steady accumulation of unassailable data; any dissent by any scientist is then seen as evidence that there's no consensus, and thus truth must not have been discovered yet.

A more accurate portrayal of science sees it as a process of debate among a community of experts in which one side outweighs the other in the balance of the argument, and that side is declared the winner; a few skeptics might remain, but they're vastly outnumbered by the rest, and the democratic process of science moves forward with the collective weight of the majority of expert opinion. Scientists buy into this democratic process when they enter the profession, so that a call for the winning side to share power in the science classroom with the losers, or to continue debating an issue that has already been settled for the vast majority of scientists so that policy makers can delay taking action on their findings, seems particularly undemocratic to most of them.

Aristotle believed that things that are true "have a natural tendency to prevail over their opposites," but that it takes a good rhetor to ensure that this happens when sophisticated sophistry is on the loose. I concur; only by exposing manufactured controversy for what it is, recognizing its rhetorical power and countering those who are skilled at getting the multitude to ignore the experts while imagining a scientific debate where none exists, can scientists and their allies use my field to achieve what Aristotle envisioned for it—a study that helps the argument that is in reality stronger also appear stronger before an audience of nonexperts."

A linha mais "sensata"...



O fim da idade do gelo!



A acompanhar: Climate Progress » Blog Archive » Breaking News: The Great Ice Age of 2008 is finally over — next stop Venus!: "A top NASA scientist just emailed me the breaking news: “The ice age expired!” Even more shocking — the rate of warming this year has been just about unprecedented in the historical record — even faster than Climate Progress had predicted just last month based on the NASA data from February (see here)."







Como o óbvio há muito de sarcasmo nesta nota - apesar de serem reais (e preocupantes) os factos referidos - e esse tom é a réplica a muito do anda a ser dito, mais recentemente, pelos denegacionistas do aquecimento global: fim do aquecimento global, etc., etc. (ver aqui). Como é óbvio, também, não será o que está a suceder nestes dois últimos meses, em termos de temperatura, só por si, que irá determinar uma inflexão (negativa) da tendência do longo prazo do aquecimento global.
PS: Não consigo identificar donde tirei o "cartoon". As minhas desculpas ao autor.