Y2K rears its head again...

[kickaha]

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

Comments

[georgmi.livejournal.com]

Most people I talk economics with don't know what elasticity means, and it's more conducive to the understanding of my points to preemptively provide sufficient context than to answer questions afterward. If it came off as condescending, it wasn't meant to, and I apologize. I will in return assume that your suggestion that I don't know what it's like to go hungry was also not intended to come off that way, and we'll call it a draw, okay?

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.

[ssandv.livejournal.com]

Most of which I think makes my original point, regardless of who's correct about demand elasticity--the only way to get those people out of that position is to improve their standard of living, and if we concentrate on avoiding pollution at the expense of industrializing the developing world, they're going to be stuck in poverty long enough that it'll be at best their children's children who start to see the benefits of industrialization.

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 :)

[georgmi.livejournal.com]

That also plays well into my point that instead of arguing about the existence and cause of climate change, we should be figuring out how to deal with it.

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.