Dispatches From
Carbon Nation (Beta)
Carbon Nation

Now, with 1/4 the carbon!

New non-fiction paperbacks
Barnes & Noble, M Street, Washington, DC
May 30, 2009, 12:20 p.m.


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How I Invented Social Marketing, part II: Correspondence

Rummaging around the basement, I found the correspondence between Pepsi and me from 1995-96, back in my younger days when I had time to send silly letters to people (back when we sent letters). See last month's post:






And Pepsi's written response:


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How I Invented Social Marketing

Desperate times call for desperate measures, so one day in the pre-Monica 90s I invented social marketing. The post-Netscape, pre-Geocities period was an odd time to drop out of life and into a PhD program in Russian 19th century thought, about as far from IPO as you can get. Grad school encourages the resourcefulness of the destitute, and that I was studying Russian history made a nice parallel experiment.

I've since lost the original business proposal I sent to the CEOs and chief marketing officers at Microsoft, Nike, and Pepsi, but it went something like this:
Dear Sir,

Annual travel through Eastern Europe and Russia has led me to some interesting conclusions about the future of advertising strategy.

For three generations, Communist governments fed preposterous lies to their citizenry on every conceivable topic, through every available medium. When the state collapsed, down with it came the organs of mendacity. Commercial messaging filled the void. By default, media adopted the Western model of advertiser-supported print and programs.

But the Russians were ready for it. Their built-in cynicism greeted commercial messaging with the same weariness that made state-owned media a danger and a cartoon. Russians proceeded with the same reliable communication apparatus that sustained them through their darkest Soviet days, trust and intimacy between individuals.

In the West, it has taken three generations of ad consumption to reach a state of cynicism that still falls short of the Russian example. But we know what advertising is. We know that salesman aren't in the business of providing impartial advice. And we know that the most trusted word is word-of-mouth.

So, in surveying new areas for corporate messaging in the U.S., I see the richest terrain as the medium that the Soviets failed to reach — trust and intimacy between individuals.

Reaching this space will require targeting with a precision previously undreamed of, and hiring a small army of small advertisers. For example, here are the services I am happy to offer, with an indication of the varying pay scale. Pitching Diet Pepsi to an overweight relative with low self-esteem wouldn't take much work, and I could foresee constructing a pitch for roughly $3500. The more valuable the targets, the tighter the intimacy and trust, the higher the free. A romantic dinner or overdue reunion with old friends might command up to $40,000 per pitch.

This model represents terrain untouched by the traditional advertising model. The best part about it, the potential consumers will never suspect that they are the targets of advertising.

Thank you for your consideration, and I look forward to speaking with you further about this matter.

Best regards,

Eric Roston
My grad school friends and I shared hee-hees and ha-has about this scheme, imagined the potential riches, and promptly forgot that I mailed the letters.

Months passed. The phone rang in the middle of the day, when I was home for some reason. The caller, a woman who spoke eagerly and with inspiration, identified herself as a marketing executive at Pepsi. She said,
I've read your letter now over and over again, and I think this is a great idea. I started writing you a note back, but I figured, here's his phone number, why don't I just call him? I would love to pursue this idea, but we do not have the budget at the moment for independent projects. So, I want to thank you for thinking of us and I hope we can work together in the future.
I remember standing there listening, jaw probably agape. I thanked her for calling and the feedback, and expressed regret that Pepsi was unable to sign me up. I didn't say that I was kidding, because, what if I wasn't?

More months passed. In the mail one day arrived a brightly colored envelope from Pepsi's legal department. It was the general counsel's office informing me that they were unable to accept the idea outlined in my proposal, because if they ever enacted something similar to it, and my letter was lying around, it might provide legal grounds for me to sue them for stealing my idea. Stapled to the lawyerly memo was the copy of my original letter sent to the marketing department.

I immediately sat down and tapped out a letter to the general counsel's office, informing them that I had sent Pepsi two letters, one to the marketing officer and another to the office of the CEO. In the most accurate legal language I could imagine as a Russian history graduate student, I threatened to take action if the other copy of my letter was not returned.

I never heard back from Pepsi, which now routinely engages in social marketing. Nike and Microsoft declined to respond.

Ah, youth.

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Third Time's a Charm

Just posted this short take, below, over at Carl Zimmer's The Loom, in response to George Will's third installment in the climate debate:

With this third infraction, I now wonder if there is something more fundamental tying the Post’s hands, something reflective of real or perceived political (and therefore economic) pressure on news media companies. News media are sometimes charged with being falsely even-handed in the climate discussion, presenting “both sides” even when the only side that counts is that of replicable empirical data — an interest without much of a lobby in Washington. Allowing George Will to perpetuate these falsehoods seems to me an instance of structural, cowardly even-handedness. Will is a widely syndicated thought-leader. If the Post wanted to take some kind of corrective action, called for by Joe Romm (http://tr.im/i9rp) for example, Will’s audience might forever brand the Post, at least rhetorically and grossly unfairly, as liberal-MSM central. Will would run off and find employment on a platform that would target his audience more directly and possibly win some kind of martyrdom among them. I wonder if Fred Hiatt’s problem — for his sake — is that Will’s ego is holding him, and the whole paper, hostage. Is he too influential to be fact-checked? Does the Post op-ed page need him so badly that he can skewer facts? Apparently so. It hadn’t occurred to me before, but now I’m convinced that Will is an aptonym (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aptronym).

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Free Ride for Freeman

Freeman Dyson is a legend and worthy of the consideration that the New York Times Magazine gives him this week. I enjoyed reading the piece. But if he has the dirt on why anthropogenic climate change is a good thing, I don't see it. The most curious part of the article, for me, came in back-to-back paragraphs before the jump. In the first, NASA's Jim Hansen writes Dyson off as a climate crank who hasn't done his homework on the potentially most disruptive force in human history (and one of the most in evolutionary history). The second paragraph talks about what kind of clothes Dyson likes to wear. I expect this would read fine to most people. My reading is that it trivializes the climate risk. That's not to give Hansen a free pass.

Most people don't have time or interest in climate science. There's nothing wrong with that. And rhetorically dissing future climate models is as easy as shooting fish in a barrel (Sort of: Lately it feels like most modeling is bad because it has failed to predict the rate and magnitude of change). But there's a big difference between lacking interest in "the science" — it often gets a definite article — and the risk of climate change. For an economy supposedly well versed in calculating risk, ignoring climate risk (the probability of events times their consequences) is an aberration. A central question in climate change is how to confront low-probability catastrophic events. Our current strategy is to tap our feet and periodically look at our watches.

Also weird is the Times' decision to let Dyson say unchallenged, twice, that the Earth is in a cold period and that it has been warmer with more airborne CO2 for most of its history. That's true: It's also true that none of that history coincides with the conditions that have enabled human civilization.

Carbon-eating trees would be nice. The way Dyson describes them, they are science fiction. (Never mind that wood is already a play in carbon.) I remember reading Dyson's New York Review of Books piece last year and thinking it had a nice overview of climate science and major problems within it. Then he made some wild dismissals of risk and started in with the carbon-eating trees.

Paradoxically, Dyson dismisses Gore for putting words in the mouth of Roger Revelle, saying that it wasn't fair because Revelle, deceased, has no chance to respond. Then he puts words in Revelle's mouth.

Tom Friedman has a nice piece today on what he calls "the climate Dow."

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All Roads Lead to Romm

Tom Friedman this morning gives a shout-out to Joe Romm over at ClimateProgress. Joe is a one-man wire service and wrecking machine for climate deniers and foot-draggers. How nice to see hard work, talent, and perseverance rewarded with wide recognition.


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"A Winner and a Keeper"

A lovely take on The Carbon Age from Choice, an American Library Association journal:
Roston, Eric.  The carbon age: how life's core element has become civilization's greatest threat.  Walker & Company, 2008.  309p bibl index afp ISBN 0-8027-1557-5, $26.00; ISBN 9780802715579, $26.00.
46-3803  QH344  2008-2754 CIP
 
Fresh from six years covering technology, science, and energy for Time
magazine, Roston has written his first book—a winner and a keeper. He
begins by outlining the nuclear reactions that form carbon inside large
stars. Although schoolchildren commonly understand that carbon is the
skeletal element that holds biomass together and climate change
researchers know that the Earth's carbon cycle plays a major role as a
greenhouse gas, Roston sees carbon's abundance and widespread
distribution as an important starting point that creates an opportunity
for the synthesis of organic molecules and the creation of life itself.
Roston's assertion that carbon is generated by the nuclear fusion of
three helium nuclei is strongly supported by eminent scientists such as
Fred Hoyle, who was at Caltech in the 1950s. Hoyle disproved elements
of George Gamow's big bang hypothesis in 1953 by demonstrating that the
birthplace of the element carbon is the interior of stars that reach
temperatures of 100 million K (kelvin). The nuclear fusion origin of
carbon is convincing and understandable, though later chapters
addressing evolution, cyanobacteria, photosynthesis, and organic
molecules require patience and some chemical knowledge. However, the
final chapter becomes a convincing, easy read and offers a pathway to
sustainable living. Summing Up: Highly recommended. All
levels/libraries. — R. M. Ferguson, emeritus, Eastern Connecticut State University

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My Stunning Expose of Noisy Garbagemen...

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The New York Times in the Guise of our Tenuous Last Refuge Against Idiocy

A very interesting week for those (12) of us who think about science and media all day. A couple of neat and complicated things happened, things that could never have occurred without the rise of speedy media.

The John Tierney situation has a happy-ish ending, for the moment. Reader responses to his Findings column, or something, nudged him to write a follow-up Web column at TierneyLab on Friday. The piece addresses some critics' concerns. It's a fairer assessment, even if he still seems more interested in deck chairs than the Titanic, when it comes to Stephen Chu's comments about worst-case scenario water shortages in California. Computer modeling is tough to defend, but I do like to point out that when hedge funds make a billion dollars on computer-guided trading in one day, no one ever says, "They didn't really make that money because they were working with market models." He's right about the impoverished regional modeling, but less and less so. The most damning thing about modeling of late is that they have been unable to capture the speed of emissions growth, decline in carbon intensity (temporary or otherwise), and decline in carbon sinks. Tierney's new blog post identifies Sen. Vitter as John Holdren's inquisitor, which he failed to do before.

Of greater significance is George Will's aggressively ignorant columns about climate change, here and here. His behavior should either lead to his firing or assignment to daily news coverage about climate science. Here is a smattering of notable responses by

Discover and the New York Times' Carl Zimmer here, here, here, here, here, and here.

The New York Times' Andy Revkin here, here, and here.

Tom Levenson here and here; Chris Mooney at the Intersection; James Hrynyshyn at the Island of Doubt; and Joe Romm here, here, here. You get the picture.

There is enough to read on this subject, the world doesn't need my two cents (my general approach to blogging). I offer nothing more than this: Perhaps the saddest thing is Will's lack of respect for or understanding that one "fact" (assuming he based his column on one) can scuttle something as complex, dynamic, and incomplete as climate science. It reminds me of the "hockey stick" debate. Removing a study from the climate science portfolio doesn't dent the preponderance of evidence that the globe seems to be warming. And it is possible — in fact desirable — to communicate this trend as alarming without being alarmist.

The decline in demand for science writing on paper and elsewhere is an ongoing problem without obvious solution, and much more destructive than the speedy media is creative. But how remarkable to watch Tierney and Will attacked and respond in real time. Tierney and the New York Times had the dignity to respond to critics with a tone acknowledging their responsibility (I'm pleased to now disagree with Tierney's revised position and presentation, rather than think it fraudulent). In contrast, George Will has behaved like a mollycoddled adolescent who's never been told he's wrong before and refuses to admit it. The Washington Post ombudsman has now commented on it. But the best thing the Post op-ed page could do for its credibility is fire him. There are enough writers out there who understand the importance of reporting and fact-checking, even (especially) in an op-ed piece.

P.S. — For whatever it's worth, I ended up sending in the Tierney post, below, to the New York Times Public Editor, with this cover note:
Dear Sir,

Yesterday's column by John Tierney, "Politics in the Guise of Pure Science," merits your attention. I am not moved to "blog" with great frequency, but if you are interested in reading my full take, you can view it at http://CarbonNation.org.

Many educated, successful Americans have, approximately, a sixth-grade understanding of what science is. There are polls and studies that try to measure this level in various ways. I am relying at the moment on unscientific and anecdotal evidence — specifically how a recent note I received from a seventh grader in Littleton, CO, compares with some professionals in the press corps, the environmental sector, heavy industry, and elsewhere. At a time when science and engineering are a great hope for American renewal it saddens me to see such an interesting and important enterprise slashed from mass media, as many outlets other than the New York Times have been doing.

Mr. Tierney's column yesterday submits arguments lacking in rigor — and lacking in reporting — to this audience, which is unprepared to catch him in his journalistic laziness. Skepticism is a most welcome enterprise. And if Mr. Tierney were engaged in skepticism, I wouldn't be writing in. Instead, he dismissed influential people and important topics without much consideration and embraced others equally uncritically. This column is posturing and nay-saying masquerading as skeptical analysis. Knocking down serious concerns without rigor, and holding up others, equally without rigor, is not a productive exercise. Anti-dogma is still dogma. Many science journalists are now out of work or forced to pursue different careers. This sad trend heightens the responsibility on prominent writers to communicate both the fruits of science, and a sense of what science is; yesterday Mr. Tierney was goofing off rather than using his privileged stage to embrace serious issues with rigor. Thank you for your attention.


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The New York Times in the Guise of Pure Laziness

John Tierney writes a weekly science column in the New York Times and, natch, blogs at TierneyLab. He has the reputation of an accomplished reporter among people who don't know about his science column or read it very closely. His blog, TierneyLab, operates under this premise:
The Lab's work is guided by two founding principles:
   1. Just because an idea appeals to a lot of people doesn't mean it's wrong.
   2. But that's a good working theory.
This is a clever take, as long as the writer doesn't abdicate his own analytical skills to shill for whomever seems to be bucking whatever seems to be an "appealing" trend. Tierney has done just this. Today's column is laziness and fraud masquerading as edginess (as best I can tell). He attacks Harvard's John Holdren, nominated to lead the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, for passing off his political views as incontrovertible scientific truths. This is a worthy topic, and certainly the New York Times has someone on staff honest enough to report on it. (It's not clear that Tierney did any reporting for the piece: How much money does he make when so many of talented science journalists are switching fields?) Certainly Holdren is poised to assume an office that invites criticism on a regular basis.

Tierney asks in his lede: "Why, since President Obama promised to 'restore science to its rightful place' in Washington, do some things feel not quite right?" (NB: Every science journalist in America, present company included, is now required by law to begin an article at some point with this line from Obama's inaugural address. See "Afterword" to The Carbon Age paperback later this year.)

Here is a simple answer that Tierney goes to length to obscure, if he's even aware that he's doing it: Some things do not feel quite right to him because Tierney has chosen to shill for Sen. David Vitter of Louisiana, a conservative Republican who has delivered $100,000 in earmarks to a creationist group. (Vitter is best known for his involvement in prostitution scandals.) Perhaps, according to TierneyLab's "two founding principles," Vitter's bane — evolution — might be wrong simply because it's a theory that appeals to a lot of people. I don't know what he thinks. But certainly, if you are a science columnist for the New York Times, you should be aware that, ideally, "appeal" has nothing to do with anything in science, unless by appeal, you mean "suggested by logic and physical evidence, and independently verified." In his headline and article, Tierney accuses Holdren of playing politics with science, raising himself above the fray. As it turns out, Tierney is using his professional-sounding column to play politics with journalism. There must be a technical term for this, other than odious hypocricy, but I can't think of one. At least be honest that that's what you're doing. This is the kind of column for which Dante saved a spot in the eighth circle of hell (minor fraud/crimes against reason), a place where there is no warming to fret about.

The column makes no mention of Sen. Vitter or analysis of how Vitter understands or misunderstands the scientific enterprise. However, the latter is free for all to consider in Tierney's source documents. By chance, and in circumstances not worth going into, this afternoon I happened to read the transcript of John Holdren and Jane Lubchenco's joint nomination hearing before the Senate Commerce Committee Feb. 12. Holdren is President Obama's nominee to lead the Office of Science and Technology Policy; Lubchenco is expected to be confirmed as the administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

Washington is living through a strange political atmosphere in which even Mitch McConnell and John Boehner's Republicans have to bend over backwards to thwart rhetorical bipartisan overtures of a president with a 70 percent approval rating. And in a setting as collegial as a nomination hearing, even generally ideological Republicans tipped their hats to Holdren's and Lubchenco's credentials. No one should get a free pass, but you get the point. And if someone takes a pass, it should be founded in rigor, not childishness. Ranking Member Kay Bailey Hutchison emphasized the bipartisan nature of the committee, acknowledged Democratic Sen. Bill Nelson in a question about NASA and also the National Academy of Sciences' 2005 sky-is-falling report, Rising Above the Gathering Storm. That report produced a pulsing bipartisan fever in Washington at a time of peak partisan rancor. Sen. Jonny Isakson (R-GA) had swell things to say about both nominees. I could go on. Democrats and Republicans alike trip over each other to see who can be more patriotic about science and technology policy. Tierney makes no mention of how well Democrats and non-Vitter Republicans play together when it comes to this arena.

Instead, he rips from the transcript Vitter's questioning of John Holdren, a mean-spirited aberration in an otherwise perfectly bipartisan and boring hearing. Vitter's approach was to scan Holdren's lifetime of writings on science policy — going back to a 1971 article with Paul Ehrlich that has aged poorly — and press him on statements that Vitter was barely old enough to read when they were originally published. The quotation Tierney cites is one example of these past statements.

Cribbing Sen. Vitter would be bad enough. But in his eagerness to out Obama's scientists as dishonest political hacks, Tierney cuts off his own higher reasoning functions. Here's a line from earlier in the column:
First there was Steven Chu, the physicist and new energy secretary, warning The Los Angeles Times that climate change could make water so scarce by century's end that 'there's no more agriculture in California' and no way to keep the stat's cities going either.
Tierney condescendingly dismisses Chu's remark without evaluating it, which is too bad, because Chu is right — even if it is an idea that might not have wide
, uh, appeal. It is a statement that goes to the heart of climate change, what we know about it, and what we can do about it. As one person close to the Bush administration framed the question for me once: "How do you respond to a single-digit probability that in 100 years most things will be destroyed?" We are actually in a situation where by century's end there could be no more agriculture in California. There may not be a high probability of California agriculture ending, but it is a serious enough low probability that we should encourage national leaders to consider avoidance behavior. And if you're just making fun of this low-probability event because it sounds ludicrous or lacking in appeal, then why are you writing a science column in the New York Times?

And all this above commentary only relates to the first several sentences of the piece. The rest of the article Tierney signs over, like a good stenographer, to Roger Pielke Jr of the University of Colorado. Perhaps Pielke's ideas don't have enough appeal that they need to be treated with the derision that Tierney directs to ideas that he thinks have appeal. It's kind of a paradox: If Tierney thinks your idea has appeal, then he will heap derision on it. If he doesn't think your idea has appeal, then you get a sloppy wet kiss. Question for Roger Pielke (whose work I haven't had time to embed myself in enough to comment on; concerned here only with Tierney (But my good friends Tom Levenson and Joe Romm have thought a lot about Pielke's writing): Is it better to have an appealing idea attacked or an idea given a free pass by someone who finds it lacking in appeal?

It's late, a lot happened today that I'll write about later in the week (maybe — I still don't understand how people have time to blog every day, or more than once every two months). I don't have time to go into the uncritical pablum-slash-wet kiss Tierney offers as commentary on Pielke — and by extension, Bjorn Lomborg. (His commentary on Lomborg is terrific, because he appears to impugn Holdren for a headline written by Scientific American.) Today's Tierney column is really remarkable proof for how anti-dogma is still dogma.

Vitter's colleague, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal gave the rebuttal to Obama's State of the Union tonight. Without getting into a discussion about hurricanes and global warming, their state is something of a poster child for what happens when civilization gets in the way of geophysics, which begs the question, What's the matter with Louisiana?

John Tierney: clever New York Times columnist and anti-science shill for a retrograde senator.

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A Good Story, Rendered in Rough Draft

In the early stages of researching The Carbon Age, I came across a story that, for my purposes, was just too good to be true. It still is. I've given talks about it.

LifeGem is a small, suburban Chicago company, run by two sets of brothers, that manufactures diamonds from the cremated remains of clients' loved ones. For someone looking for way to make something as mundane as "carbon" a good story, I was pleased that the vanden Biesens and Herros had done so much work for me already. They spent a number of afternoons with me, pitching me stories and explaining how LifeGem works. But the book evolved in a manner different from the initial conception, and this tale fell out of it.

So, apropos of nothing, and against my better judgment, here is a .pdf of the last draft of the LifeGem chapter, "The Light Crystal," that I worked on. It's fact-checked but unedited. Before a half hour ago, I hadn't looked at it since 2006. (Just this week, I am beginning to clean carbon out of the basement):
The Light Crystal
"You will not believe me even when tell you, so it is fairly safe to tell you. And it will be a comfort to tell someone. I really have a big business in hand, a very big business. But there are troubles just now. The fact is... I make diamonds." — Stranger, "The Diamond Maker," by H.G. Wells

Ever since gold first brought kings to their knees and gems induced men to kill or die, enterprising individuals have sought cheap ways to create or fake them. Making valueless things expensive is the dream of any businessman. Minting precious metals or stones is the apotheosis of that dream. Many have shared it. Among the most famous is Jabir ibn-Hayyan, the medieval Egyptian alchemist who concocted instructions for turning lead into gold. Sadly, ibn-Hayyan's theories never panned out. Worse, he himself quite possibly never existed... [more (.pdf)]

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A Carbon Price -- the Path to Clean Tech

We have no more influential tool than a carbon price to signal that the nation is serious about developing clean tech. That's pretty much the whole point of it: By insuring the market takes into account the social cost of burning carbon, the higher price encourages people to seek cheaper, cleaner alternatives. So why don't we have one? The media has a role to play in this drama, in its coverage — or lack of it — on the risks of climate change. Eric Pooley is a highly decorated former colleague — editor of Fortune, chief political correspondent of TIME — and writing a book about climate politics and policy. He recently wrote a forceful analysis of media shortcomings in the these debates. Pdf of the study is here. Here's a summary:

Eric Pooley discussion paper

In How Much Would You Pay to Save the Planet? The American Press and the Economics of Climate Change, a discussion paper researched and written during the Shorenstein Center's fall 2008 semester, Fellow Eric Pooley looked at coverage of the climate-change issue by the American press, focusing on the run-up to the vote on the Lieberman-Warner Climate Security Act.

Pooley concluded that the press misrepresented the economic debate over carbon cap and trade, failed to perform the basic service of making climate policy and its economic impact understandable to the reader, and allowed opponents of climate action to set the terms of the cost debate. He also concluded that editors had failed to devote sufficient resources to the climate story, shoving it into the "environment" pigeonhole.

The paper, published in January 2009, prompted a response from Washington Post energy reporter Steven Mufson, one of the journalists whose work Pooley analyzed. To see Mufson's letter and Pooley's response, click here.





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In the Pink

This pink iguana (species) is so old that it evolved before the Galapagos Islands reached their current extent. And yet nobody recorded seeing them until 1986 — not even the islands' most famous visitor (Hint: Not Richard Dawkins on his trip last year with the Center for Inquiry). PNAS lifted its embargo early this afternoon, after President-Elect Obama appointed a pink iguana to lead the Department of Commerce (Oh! What? Sorry, apparently Richardson stepped down.)

Photo courtesy Flickr

My brother recently inquired with Ask A Scientist about the potential existence of pink mice, which is at least as interesting as the determination of the pink iguana's genetic remoteness. Check this:

Joel, thank you for submitting the following question to the
Howard Hughes Medical Institute's Ask a Scientist website:


I watched Sean [B.] Carroll's lecture which discussed the selection of different shades of mouse fur which corresponded to environmental factors. My question is in two parts: 1. If we were to cover the area of the black or tan mice's habitat with, say, the color hot pink, while not-altering the specific topography of the region (and we were able to assure that the mice would not migrate away from the area), would the mice turn hot pink? Specifically, is there possibly or probably a gene in mice that can turn them hot pink or is the spectrum limited for certain species. Given that they would be extremely more vulnerable to their natural predators, it seems unlikely that they would find the time, yes? That brings us to: 2. If we were to perform the same experiment, but instead of immediately re-coloring the environment, we altered it very, very slowly over a long period of time — say over a thousand generations of mice — would it then be more likely that mice would turn hot pink?

Here is a response provided by one of our volunteer scientists:

Some animal groups contain species that have evolved a dizzying array of bright colors that include hot pink, notably beetles, butterflies, and birds. Indeed, some of our neighbors have tacky lawn ornaments that celebrate this fact! Mammals tend to favor more drab colors. One possibility is that the growth of fur might impose some "developmental constraints" (also known as "genetic constraints"), whereas scales and feathers may lack these constraints. Whatever the underlying cause, no mammal, to my knowledge, has ever had mutation in a single gene that turned it hot pink, although Dumbo's pink elephants may disagree. We can be reasonably certain that scientists would have discovered such a conspicuous change because of the enormous numbers of mice raised in laboratories over the years. So do these developmental constraints mean "game over" for our lovable mice? It depends. If we imagine a predator so effective and voracious that it will always catch and eat mice that are not a true hot pink, then the mice may very well become extinct in this area. This scenario is probably unlikely because it requires that the predator have other stable food sources because predator/prey populations tend to oscillate around a dynamic equilibrium level if the predator prefers a particular species of prey. Otherwise, as the mouse population declines, it will be more difficult for the predator to find food, leading to the starvation of predators and a rebound in the mouse population. If the mice are not driven extinct, any genetic variation in their abilities to outrun predators or to hide under rocks or in crevices may give them some chance to adapt and out-compete their slower or less clever brethren. How might the outcome differ if the color of the ground was altered gradually? It could matter a great deal. It is well established that organisms can become resistant to high levels of toxins or antibiotics after gradually increasing the dose, sometimes well beyond the levels of resistance attained by lucky single-gene mutants. Evolution by "cumulative selection" is a critical concept in evolutionary biology and helps explain how dramatic changes can occur over geological time. (Incidentally, cumulative selection is routinely ignored by creationists when they make calculations showing particular feats of selection are "impossible.") Moreover, predator/prey relationships can naturally impose a gradual curve to the selection process. As we discussed above, a decline in prey population can lead to a decline in predators. There is a common saying that you don't need to outrun the tiger, you just need to outrun your neighbor. In the case of our mice, being somew hat pink may be better than nothing. It even seems likely that tan is already slightly less conspicuous than black on a hot pink background. One mutation that would certainly be possible is the loss of fur, which would reveal the pale pinkish skin underneath. Not exactly hot pink, but it might be just enough for a hungry predator to notice a mouse's neighbor first and buy time for an escape. Most mammals have fur for good reasons (warmth, for example), but losing these benefits may be better than being eaten. Subsequent mutations affecting the placement of capillaries and oxygenation of blood, for example, might refine the color of our hairless mice to something even pinker. Although probably not enough to inspire lawn ornaments or children's movies, several such cumulative changes would probably cause the mice to evolve into a color we would recognize as pink and enough to provide some reasonable protection. All the genetic changes I have suggested so far are definitely reasonable possibilities, although the specific outcome would depend on many genetic and ecological variables that are poorly understood. I doubt the above changes could evolve a truly hot pink mouse, but we might speculate that there could be a gene in the mouse that encodes an enzyme that detoxifies a chemical that happens to be hot pink. Given enough time, could such a gene eventually be co-opted for an evolved role in pigmentation? Perhaps the enzyme could evolve to make the chemical instead of breaking it down, and the chemical could be sequestered in pigment cells near the skin's surface. Maybe, but I suspect that this part of the experiment would take longer than one or several scientists' careers.

We welcome feedback from you about this answer to your question and
appreciate your interest in Ask a Scientist.


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Disclaimer:

The Howard Hughes Medical Institute's Ask a Scientist website provides a forum for teachers, students, and others to discuss biomedical topics with scientists. Participating scientists answer questions to the best of their knowledge. The information they provide is intended for educational purposes only. The Howard Hughes Medical Institute assumes no responsibility for the scientific accuracy of Ask a Scientist responses or for the content of references and Web links that may be provided in responses. Views expressed in Ask a Scientist responses are not necessarily those of HHMI.

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"Challenging but possible"

Surprisingly few organizations have sketched out soup-to-nuts plans for addressing global warming, even at this late stage. McKinsey is one of them. I am re-reading their June 2008 report, The carbon productivity challenge: Curbing climate change and sustaining economic growth, a joint paper by the McKinsey Global Institute and the McKinsey Climate Change Special Initiative. They define "carbon producivity" as analogous to worker or energy productivity: the level of gross domestic product (GDP) output per unit of CO2e emitted. The researchers report that the current global carbon productivity is about $740 per ton of CO2e. To maintain economic growth and reach ~450-500 ppm atmospheric CO2, by 2050 that figure must reach $7,300 per ton — about a 20 gigaton per year drop. This paragraph summarizes what that means on an individual level:
If we do not reach such a level of carbon productivity, the consequences will be stark. Meeting the 20 gigatons per year target implies a per-person carbon budget of 6 kg of CO2e per day. If one had to live on such a crabon budget with today's low levels of carbon productivity, one would be forced to choose between a 40 kilometer car ride, a day of air conditioning, buying two new T-shirts (without driving to the shop), or eating two meals. In short, without a major boost in carbon productivity, stabilizing GHG emissions would require a major drop in lifestyle for developed countries and the loss of hope in developing economics for greater prosperity through economic growth.
The technologies already exist, the paper explains, lacking are incentives to deploy them. Solving the climate-economics problem, they conclude, is "challenging but possible."

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The End of Orthodoxies?

Several months ago I joined Monitor Talent, a bullpen of trend-spotters and thought leaders from various fields. The group has a weekly column up at Harvard Business Online, called Now, New, Next. This piece of mine went up recently:

THE END OF ORTHODOXIES?

There are two kinds of people in the world, the saying goes, people who divide everything into two, and everyone else.

Binary divisions everywhere shape our perception of the world. For several years they have crippled our civic life. We are used to partisans uniformly labeling events and ideas "good" or "bad," without thoroughgoing analysis. Knee-jerk opinion-making has prevented our two political parties, both the "good" one and the "bad" one (however defined) from wrestling big problems to the mat before they grow large enough to potentially harm us: the economic crisis; the "quiet crisis" fueled by low investment in human capital; and the climate crisis, to name just three. From Pennsylvania Avenue to Madison Avenue, K Street to Main Street, civic and private leaders still offer us "The Pepsi Challenge." But that may be changing.

Voters first heralded and then lampooned George W. Bush for his us-v.-them approach to foreign and domestic affairs. Barack Obama appears more comfortable seeking ambiguity, which is apt, since it is the only guidance that crisis offers. In a way, it might be the best thing for us; "good" and "bad" are of limited use in a complex world with few apparent right answers. Zero-sum games are now a luxury that we can not afford.

We are entering an age of messiness and redefinition.
The new upside of the expression, "You can't make an omelet without breaking eggs" is that the eggs are already broken. The stakes are high enough on so many issues, that perhaps (perhaps) evidence and reasoned argument, with attendant ponderousness and severity, will supplant talking-point politics and our habits of complacency.

We saw it this fall, before the election, in the frenzied international rescue of the banking system, where a Republican Treasury has become a Wall Street investor. We saw it in energy policy, where a Democratic Congress lifted its 27-year-old moratorium on offshore oil drilling, first pressed for and maintained ever since by environmental interests. A transformation of our energy system — as daunting a civic task as any undertaken — has encountered impenetrable obstacles for many years now. The speed with which the U.S. partially nationalized its banks should give us hope, not only that a government hobbled by division can act boldly, but that it can repackage its own ideological anathema into confident international policy in a week's time. The energy and climate conundrums could benefit from this leadership (and, alas, the dollar-sums committed to financial rescue).

Change is confusing binary categories far from Washington, too. A decade after eBay made us all both shoppers and shopkeepers, global businesses tie back-end operations to each other so closely that suppliers now look like partners. Perhaps the success of Apple's adversarial Mac v. PC advertisements should surprise us more than it does; after all, most people plug their iPods and iPhones into PCs.

The Obama presidency begins in rough waters - not just because the new president won't be allowed to read or send e-mail on either a PC or Mac. At least for a time, overlapping crises may restore our civic life to adulthood, with all its responsibilities, experienced judgment and hard-decisions made under pressure. In the novel Norwegian Wood, author Haruki Murakami puts these words into a young man's mouth:

"Life doesn't require ideals. It requires standards of action."

Here's to an age governed not by orthodoxies, but by standards of action, in both public and private sectors. If nothing else, these standards might be defined as the professional codes of conduct that inform wise judgment. Sober-mindedness prevails within healthy institutions of civil society — from home assessors to market analysts to journalists, teachers and beyond.

Climbing out of the messiness will take hard work — "good" hard work.

Eric Roston is a Senior Associate at The Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions at Duke University. While at TIME Magazine Roston's beat evolved from business to politics to technology. He is author of THE CARBON AGE: How Life's Core Element Has Become Civilization's Greatest Threat.

Learn more about Eric at Monitor Talent.


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I Should Be Sleeping Like a Log

Last week a colleague's cell phone rang where we stood outside a meeting, an event that in the past has never once caused irrepressible glee. But this time was different, for my colleague had sampled the first chord to "A Hard Day's Night" — "the chord that saved rock and roll" — and turned it into a ring tone. I was envious and vowed immediately to do the same, which I did with the same alacrity with which I blog every day.

Flash to today, when my brother randomly pointed me to this wonderful article. Don't miss the pdf of the actual study at the end.

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What a Night to Be Alive.


Grant Park, Chicago, 11:24 p.m. (Image copyright Reuters)

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Election Day: Two sentences

Tomorrow I'm going to help elect a man to the presidency who 1/3 of the nation believes is a fanatical Islamist terrorist eager to change the American flag and national anthem. If you have any ideas about how to explain anthropogenic radiative forcing to them, please leave a message in the comments section (moderated to prevent spam).


(Image courtesy Wikimedia Commons)

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New Plan

A common theme of this blog is the general of absence of blogging on it. In another attempt to address this problem, I'm going to write at least one sentence every day. Stay tuned for more sentences. I swear. And thank you for your patience.


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Six things I have never told anyone.

This game just in from the memery. First rules, then game-time:

1. Link to the person who tagged you. [h/t: Tom]

2. Post the rules on your blog… [Task completed.]

3. Write six random things about yourself… [See below.]

4. Tag six people at the end of your post and link to them…[See below "below."]

5. Let each person know they’ve been tagged and leave a comment on their blog…

6. Let the tagger know when your entry is up…


Six things about me:

1. I was temporarily paralyzed by confusion before typing "1." because I couldn't decide if I should list my six things numerically or alphabetically or with bullets, so as not to repeat the same classification as above. This conundrum displaced indecision over whether the six things had to be true, and my further paralysis at the notion of randomizing six factoids (How does someone shuffle his or her own mental deck five times?)

2. I regret not practicing, from childhood, how to do a pratfall holding a waiter's tray crowded with filled glasses of water, without spilling a drop.*

3. Books currently on my nightstand, bottom to top: Six Degrees, by Duncan Watts; Six Degrees, by Mark Lynas; Upheaval From the Abyss, by David Lawrence; Tales of the Unexpected, by Roald Dahl; Hot, Flat, and Crowded, by Thomas Friedman; The Stuff of Thought, by Steven Pinker; The World Without Us, by Alan Weisman; Free Your Breath, Free Your Life, by Dennis Lewis; Infinite Jest, by David Foster Wallace.

4. Bob Beamon's 1969 world record long jump of 29'-2.5" is a favorite inspiring demonstration of human potential.

Bob Beamon - Mexico 1968 - Metro
El salto mas increible de la historia de los juegos

5. This sentence always stuck with me: Глокая куздра штеко будланула бокра и курдячит бокренка.

6. I shot a man in Reno just to watch him die.

*Headline notwithstanding, I have mentioned this before.

And now, to pass the torch.

First torch goes to... Neil Gussman! A friend and inspiration for his enthusiasm and selflessness.

Second torch goes to... Kay Bailey! Wishing her a smooth few months. 

Third to... Colin Beavan (aka No Impact Man)! Wishing him luck finishing his book.

Fourth to... David Sirota! Because he posted the last update I just saw on Facebook.

Fifth to... John McCain, by proxy

And number six... Eh, it's too late (2 am). Everybody's asleep but me (finally).

More soon!


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