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Y2K rears its head again...
http://www.dailytech.com/Blogger+finds+Y2K+bug+in+NASA+Climate+Data/article8383.htm
Summary: The NASA study that had 1998 as the warmest year on record, and a sharp upturn in US temps in '99/'00? Bad software doing the analysis. At fault? A Y2K bug. Ouch.
Authors of study have conceded the bug, and released new results.
Warmest year was actually 1934, and 5 of the 10 warmest years are now *before WWII*.
I would hope that this would get the same sort of mainstream coverage as the original study, since it's a valid correction by the original authors, but my bet is that those sites that *do* cover it are screamed into submission as oil industry apologists. Fox News is going to be all over this like white on rice, of course, which isn't going to help any sort of rational discourse.
Regardless of one's position in the climate change sectarian violence of words, bad data is bad data is bad data. Trend is still upwards, but I'll be shocked to see if "1998 warmest year on record" stops getting used in the mainstream press as gospel. No one wants to admit they were wrong - kudos to the study authors on fessing up and modifying their results. That's good science in action. Too bad the general public gestalt can't work a bit more like that. :P
Summary: The NASA study that had 1998 as the warmest year on record, and a sharp upturn in US temps in '99/'00? Bad software doing the analysis. At fault? A Y2K bug. Ouch.
Authors of study have conceded the bug, and released new results.
Warmest year was actually 1934, and 5 of the 10 warmest years are now *before WWII*.
I would hope that this would get the same sort of mainstream coverage as the original study, since it's a valid correction by the original authors, but my bet is that those sites that *do* cover it are screamed into submission as oil industry apologists. Fox News is going to be all over this like white on rice, of course, which isn't going to help any sort of rational discourse.
Regardless of one's position in the climate change sectarian violence of words, bad data is bad data is bad data. Trend is still upwards, but I'll be shocked to see if "1998 warmest year on record" stops getting used in the mainstream press as gospel. No one wants to admit they were wrong - kudos to the study authors on fessing up and modifying their results. That's good science in action. Too bad the general public gestalt can't work a bit more like that. :P
no subject
Demand for food is pretty inelastic; supply tends to be very elastic. What that means is that you don't need a very big disruption in production in order to get significant effects on prices, which will push even more people below the poverty line and into the risk of starvation.
no subject
I submit that you're grossly incorrect about the elasticity of food demand. Maybe *you've* never chosen whether to eat or pay bills, but lots of people have, and the vast majority of people in the 1st world eat about twice their subsistence level, which at the very least demonstrates a lot of potential for elasticity--there's just never been a *reason* for the first world to ramp back food consumption, since this is where it's easy to distribute. (When the Soviet Union imported grain from the US in the 1970s and 1980s it was exclusively an infrastructure problem. They have enough arable land in Russia to feed pretty much the whole world.)
Beyond that, do you have any actual evidence that there will be a significant net loss of arability due to global climate change? There's a lot of fairly fertile soil that's trapped in permafrost right now, as opposed to the farmland that's been subjected to "modern methods" for 100 years or so, which tend to leave it relatively unsuitable and require lots of extra fertilization, because the government penalizes you for rotating crops.
no subject
Having seen butter prices double over a couple of weeks a couple of years ago with a relatively small decrease in the supply of butterfat, and having seen the effects of a late, hard frost in California on produce prices this spring, I don't think I *am* particularly incorrect about the elasticity of food demand. I will grant that the experience in America is likely different than that in the third world, but I am primarily concerned with the reaction in the States to the climate change problem, for a couple of reasons. First, because I live here and I selfishly don't want to have to pay significantly more for my dinner. Second, because the third world doesn't really have the resources to *do* anything about the problem right now, and the US does. That makes us morally responsible, in my opinion, to be developing solutions. And yes, I am aware of the stupidity of expecting anything like moral responsibility out of our government.
Also, it's not the average person in the States who will be particularly affected by significant price increases--it's the folks on the cusp of poverty, the ones who didn't used to have to choose between food and rent, but might have to in the event.
The problem of production is not exclusively one of the raw acreage of arable land--one also needs the people and equipment in place to farm it, and as you point out, the infrastructure to extract and distribute the produce. Land in permafrost doesn't have any of those things today, and given the way politics work in the world today, I don't see any reason to think that the transition period between the emergence of the need and the development of the infrastructure (and then the relocation of the people) will be swift.
no subject
For what it's worth, I don't think you can measure demand elasticity very well for overall food consumption in the US by store prices because there are so many artificial price supports and crap going on, but it may be the best of a set of lousy metrics. Which, I suppose, is what the original post was about in the first place :)
no subject
Yeah, quoting butter prices was only half an argument. It didn't seem like butter was moving off the shelves any slower, but that's an impression, not evidence. Could just as easily be explained by lower inventories rather than sustained demand. Hell, could even be explained by my shopping patterns over that period.
It's always struck me as kind of funny that so many people in this country are so dead-set against government "interference" in their businesses, when their businesses only exist because they're in large part propped up by the government in the first place. OK, maybe "funny" isn't the word I'm looking for.
no subject
http://www.defra.gov.uk/foodrin/milk/pdf/agraceasreport.pdf
It lists demand elasticities for dairy products in various countries, broken down by income range. I know dairy isn't anything like the whole picture, but it calls out an interesting data point: The US is by a huge margin an outlier, with a price elasticity of demand for dairy products of -0.095, where most high-income countries range from about -0.25 to -0.45. The poorer countries top out at around -0.75.
no subject
no subject
But adequate substitutes would make the demand elasticity of dairy greater than that of food overall, not less. Which means that -0.095 has to be the result of significant market manipulation, as you point out.
Yeah, I plan to spend some more time poking around the DEFRA site--it's crazy what my brain decides is shiny at any particular moment.