March 22, 2010

Skeptical self-criticism?


In the twilight years of my Navy service, I was an Emergency Preparedness Officer assigned as Naval Liaison Officer to the State of South Dakota. Each of the armed forces assigned one “EPLO” (Emergency Preparedness Liaison Officer) to the staff of the Adjutant General. We routinely received a publication known as the Observer from the Natural Hazards Center in Boulder, Colorado, dealing with earthquakes, tornadoes, and hurricanes. It was an interesting assignment, but global warming wasn’t on our list of concerns.

Nearly two decades later, I still receive the Observer, and climate change has skyrocketed as a hot topic item.

The March 2010 Observer offered several reviews of books about climate change. I found their review of Kerry Emanuel’s What We Know About Climate Change to be particularly interesting. Perhaps the brevity of the book was a subliminal response to its title. We may not know as much as we think, hence the brevity.

The reviewer said, “Emanuel’s book is even shorter than its advertised 85 pages, because it’s in a small format with wide margins.” In the spirit of full disclosure, I confess that I’ve not read the book, but the reviewer gives it high marks for its “unflinching look at the strengths and weaknesses of climate modeling.”

And that brings us to our motivation for this posting. Pioneer meteorologist Dr. Joanne Simpson died earlier this month (3/4/10) at the age of 86. Until I saw her obituary, I had never heard of Mrs. Simpson, but she was extremely well known in the scientific community – once described by the Associated Press as “one of the top five meteorologists in the world” – and one of the foremost hurricane experts of the 20th century. She was Chief Scientist Emeritus for Meteorology at the NASA Goddard Space Center and was a Fellow of the American Academy of the Arts and Sciences.

In February 2008, Dr. Simpson wrote about the “climate controversy” in vivid terms that – I believe – accurately describe the continuing donnybrook between believers and non-believers alike. She was a proponent for tracking data and measuring climate models against that data, a seemingly straightforward and scientific approach.

She reminded us of the frailty of climate models, and wisely observed that all we need do is watch the weather forecasts to appreciate the shortcomings of such models. Dr. Simpson bemoaned the fact that scientists on both sides in the global warming controversy “are now hurling personal epithets at each other, a very bad development in Earth sciences.”

So who to believe and what to do?

Despite her apprehensions, Dr. Simpson acknowledged that “decisions have to be made on incomplete information. In this case, we must act on the recommendation of Gore and the IPCC because if we do not reduce emissions of greenhouse gases and the climate models are right, the planet as we know it will in this century become unsustainable. But as a scientist I remain skeptical.” She observed, too, that the term “global warming” is very vague.

The media are complicit in adding fuel to the fires that rage between the increasingly radical scientists on both sides of the global warming issue.

“Few of these people seem to have any skeptical self-criticism left, although virtually all of the claims are derived from either flawed data sets or imperfect models or both,” she wrote.

With the death of Dr. Simpson, there is now one less scientist possessing those healthy scientific attributes, and we are the poorer for it.

March 19, 2010

Secrecy in government hiring

Retired journalism professor and life-long ranch guy Bill Kunerth of Belle Fourche has been following the secrecy surrounding the hiring of a new superintendent for Rapid City schools. He re-visits key points he made some 30 years ago in an op-ed piece for the Des Moines Register about secrecy in the hiring of government officials.

(1) If candidates are identified some will be lost. And, although almost all candidates would prefer not to be identified, it is the weak and/or insecure ones who are most likely to refuse to apply if identified. The strongest, most competent ones will be the most willing to be identified. If not given the choice of anonymity, the best, serious candidates will usually apply. If there is a state law, as there should be, requiring identification – at least of the finalists -- then they would have no choice.

(2) In almost all employee-employer relationships at this level, the employee looking for another job is committed to or will usually tell the boss he is applying elsewhere (If he doesn't he may suffer more than if he did). And all employers take for granted that their most competent employees are likely to be looking to move into better positions. Good employees usually improve their current status if is known they are looking elsewhere.

(3) Even if a candidate is not identified, the likelihood of keeping the application of a high-level employee secret from an employer is remote. As soon as the application is received, the prospective employer is on the phone or mailing letters to several references. The references may be sworn to secrecy but that's highly unlikely.

(4) Secrecy breeds rumors and unfair publication of names--whether accurate or inaccurate. Although, my guess is that the South Dakota media are less aggressive about this than the media in most states, the common pattern is for the press to be nosing about, doing its best to uncover the names of candidates and it often goes with whatever reports it gets.

(5) Secrecy allows for a "good old boy/girl" situation in which, for personal or political rather than public interests, members of the hiring body do not consider excellent candidates. For example, a city council in a city manager form of government might be reluctant to hire a highly competent, independent manager who would clean up city departments, identify incompetent employees and root out favoritism. These candidates can be ditched without the public even knowing they applied. The same may be the case for a school board, whose main interest is in hiring a superintendent of schools whom it can manage.

(6) The most important stakeholders in the search for appointmive govermental officials are those most affected by those being hired, For example--in the search for a school superitendent, it is the teachers, students and their parents. In the hiring of a city manager or a police chief, it includes their potential employees but also the entire community. These are the parties who need as much information as possible about likely candidates before they are hired so they can provide valuable input.

(7) Only the job security of prospective appointees is considered in the discussion of identifying job candidates. Equal attention should be paid to the impact on the large number of persons who work for the candidate, especially in the case of school administrators. Many sub-administrators and teachers are likely to look for new jobs if their superintendent is doing so. And, in their cases, the appointments are often made after they sign contracts.

(8) A public agency should question whether or not it is wise to hire an individual who prefers a policy of secrecy in hiring. This is likely to be indicative of his entire philosophy about the city, county or school governance.

(10) Of course, the hiring agencies prefer confidentiality. They want as smooth a process as possible (no outside involvement) and they want as much control of the hiring process (candidates) as possible.

Bill Kunerth is a retired Professor of Journalism at Iowa State University in Ames. He lives in Belle Fourche.

March 14, 2010

More sunshine for Spearfish, too?


Beset by a myriad of problems, not the least of which was the recent attempted skewering of Councilman Sam Kookier, the Rapid City Council has made a step toward redemption.

Beginning tomorrow, according to the Rapid City Journal, a variety of council-related meetings will be streamed lived on the Internet. Importantly, these sessions of the Planning Commission, Public Works Committee, Legal & Finance Committee – as well as the regular Rapid City Council meetings themselves – will all be archived for citizens to access.

Not only will the meetings be available to watch, there’ll also be a variety of important documents ranging from meeting agendas to supporting documents previously available only to folks who actually attend meetings or specially request them.

It’s a nice step forward in civic responsibility, and the Rapid City Council – which has taken a lot of justifiable criticism of late – deserves a pat on the back for taking this most welcome and appropriate step.

The Spearfish City Council should pay attention and follow suit.

Last summer, Black Hills Monitor advocated a similar move for Spearfish, but received a cordial rebuff. City Administrator Greg Sund, who has since left his post, said “there doesn’t seem to be majority interest among the Spearfish City Council to adopt this technology,” perceiving that our interest was simply in seeing cable television coverage of council meetings.

The City of Spearfish – a few years ago – made some really bad deals regarding cable television franchises. As those franchises with MidContinent Communications and Knology are renewed down the road, the city should be tougher negotiators, enabling an open government arrangement similar to those enjoyed by Pierre citizens. Franchise fees fund their Oahe TV operation, which covers city council and school board meetings and provides comprehensive Internet archives of those sessions.

We’re not sure that the Black Hills Pioneer on-line video initiatives spearheaded by former publisher Stewart Huntington include coverage of Spearfish council meetings. We've seen his folks covering legislative crackerbarrels at Black Hills State University, and that’s a good thing.

Whether it’s done by the private sector or the Spearfish City Council, video streaming and archiving of city council and related open meetings conducted by city government should be pursued. With all the disenchantment over government – particularly at the national level – our city fathers should be in the lead to help get more citizens involved in local government.

Our Spearfish City Council would be delivering one of the most valuable of city services: open and more accessible government.

March 13, 2010

O Canada!

Our neighbor Lorraine Collins always has an interesting perspective on a wide range of topics. Here's another that should spark some interest up and down the CAN-AM highway -- and perhaps spur a comment or two. Lorraine's commentaries appear regularly in the Black Hills Pioneer, and she kindly allows us to share it here with on-line readers.
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I was a young --well, youngish-- bride following my new husband to Canada where he was engaged in exploration for various minerals and we spent quite a bit of time in British Columbia, surrounded by spectacular scenery and few amenities. We stayed some of the time in a small, shabby motel in a tiny town some distance from anything I would have called civilization and one day someone came to our door and asked if it was true that I was an American school teacher. Well, I had briefly been a teacher in Deadwood High School, so I admitted I could be regarded as such.

This person was greatly relieved, because she needed a substitute teacher for a day at the one room elementary school house nearby and she really, really wanted me to come there. So a day or two later I walked through the woods and came to the school. As I recall, after all these years, we raised what was then the Canadian flag and sang God Save The Queen. Then I read a few verses from the King James Bible, and the class began. I have no memory whatever of what transpired in the school that day and I'm sure none of the students remembered it by time they got home.

But this was an interesting introduction to the country I came to admire and enjoy, although I haven't spent very much time there in the last 50 years. I've thought about this, watching the Olympics from Vancouver and seeing the Canadian Maple Leaf flag flying, listening to the Canadian national anthem being sung from time to time, and remembering that in those days, "O Canada!" was not the official anthem. In fact, if I ever got to a town big enough to have a movie theater, and got to go to a movie, after the film finished the lights went up and we all stood for "God Save The Queen."

We've heard a lot about Canada lately, not only because of the Olympics, but because of our interminable health care debate, with anecdotes flying fast and furious about how evil "socialized medicine" is as practiced in Canada, even though we also know that elderly Americans board buses to go to Canada to buy prescription drugs that cost a fraction of what they cost here.

I've been amused or bemused sometimes, listening to the debate about whether the U.S. government should force citizens to buy health insurance. In Canada, nobody is forced to buy health insurance from a for-profit insurance provider. They just pay taxes and everybody automatically has health insurance. So, what's wrong with that? "Single payer" doesn't mean "single provider" and everybody picks their own doctor and nobody has to hold bake sales to be able to afford an operation. But even President Obama says this simple plan won't work here, even though it works not only in Canada but in several European countries, because our society is so "complex." I think this means totally messed up.

There are many other things I like about Canada in addition to the scenery and the fact that Canadians have always been free to go anywhere they want to whereas we Americans are prohibited from going to, for instance, Cuba. We think of ourselves as being free, but in this instance we are not as free as Canadians.

I also like the fact that the Canadian national anthem, "O Canada!" can be sung in either English or French. A few years ago there was a big uproar in the United States because some people wanted to sing the Star Spangled Banner in Spanish. Somehow, this was regarded as a travesty, an abomination, the ruination of our country. But it seems to me that if someone wants to stand and hold their hand over their heart and try to sing the national anthem of the country they love, it's okay to sing their praise and gratitude for America in whatever language they want to.

We all came from somewhere else, so what are we afraid of?


Lorraine Collins is a writer who lives in Spearfish. She can be contacted at collins1@rushmore.com.

March 5, 2010

Tall tales from NASA


In the aftermath of the powerful earthquake that virtually “shook the world” last Saturday (2/27/10) the National Aeronautics and Space Administration has offered us some precise and rather interesting data.

Mother Nature inflicts an enormous toll on humanity when quakes measured at 8.8 magnitude strike populated areas. And while the estimated 800 lives lost in Chile last week pale in comparison to the devastation wreaked upon Haiti in early January, any loss of life is a sad thing.

It’s relatively easy to grasp the scale of difference between an 8.8 magnitude earthquake and one that is measured at 7.0, as was the temblor in Haiti. We can even understand the reasons behind the stark contrast in damages and loss of lives in Chile and Haiti – density of population, quality of building construction, and so on.

But NASA's precision in announcing that the length of our days will be shorter by “1.26 millionths of a second” is beyond our comprehension.

Writing a review of the book entitled not exactly for the Wall Street Journal, Andrew Stark suggests that its author, Kees van Deemter, seemed to see a virtue of sorts in vagueness – that all words have “fuzzy” boundaries. What is "tall"? What is "short"? But there’s even disparagement of scientific measurements, like the platinum bar that has been used as the definitive length for a “meter.” Apparently, it was mismeasured by “about 0.00005 millimeters.”

Admittedly, the focus on van Deemter’s book about “vagueness” appears oriented more toward social interaction and politics than science or economics.

But it was the quote attributed to former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan that really caused us to ponder the precision of NASA’s statement regarding a shift in earth’s axis, caused by the Chilean earthquake.

If I seem unduly clear to you,” Greenspan once remarked, “you must have misunderstood what I said.”

NASA, which has been beleaguered by budgetary and political woes in recent years, should employ Greenspan as a spokesman.

Perhaps he’d have allowed that our days will be shorter by “just a tad.”

March 2, 2010

Winning a food fight

Our neighbor Lorraine Collins always has an interesting perspective on a wide range of topics. Here's another that should catch your interest -- and perhaps spur a comment or two. Her commentaries appear regularly in the Black Hills Pioneer, and this gives new meaning to the old term "food fight." Lorraine graciously allows us to share it with on-line readers here.

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A few weeks ago when I was in a supermarket browsing through the frozen food section, I saw a box labeled "chicken fried rice" so I thought I'd try that. Usually I make fried rice myself, but I thought this would save me some trouble. I checked the sodium content and it didn't seem too bad, so I happily purchased it. After I got home I took time to read the whole label, and was chagrined to discover the small print that said, "contains shell fish." I am extremely allergic to shell fish and didn't dare eat what I'd bought, so I gave it to a neighbor.

Why would something labeled chicken fried rice contain shell fish? Maybe it was just some fragments left over from some other kind of fried rice, but no matter how miniscule the bits may be, they're poisonous to me.

I was trained some years ago to check food labels for trans fats, sodium and the like, after my husband had a heart attack and the cardiologist sent me to a nutrition class. I have been so dedicated to serving low sodium dishes for a decade that last summer the cardiologist finally got alarmed about the guy having too low a sodium count and told him to go eat a piece of watermelon and put salt on it.

In Arizona I knew a woman who was so allergic to monosodium glutamate that she became deathly ill after eating green bean casserole because it was made with soup containing MSG. I had not realized that MSG is used so ubiquitously in canned soups and other products, until I began seeing signs on some packaged and canned foods bragging that they don't have any of it in them.

Labeling the contents of frozen, packaged, canned food is very important to our health and safety, but at the same time consumers have to take the time to read labels and know whether high fructose corn syrup is really something their kids should be ingesting. When food is prepared at home, we know what's in it, but when it has been prepared in a factory, it often contains substances from fat to salt to food coloring to flavor enhancers in order to make it look good and taste appetizing, regardless of what this process does to nutritional value.

And the fact seems to be that the more our food is processed for us, the fatter and less healthy we become. In 1960, when the "TV dinner" had been marketed for just half a dozen years and fast food restaurants were not on every corner, according to a Center of Disease Control study, the average American man weighed just over 166 pounds. By 2004, he weighed 191. Women in 1960 averaged 140 pounds but by 2004 this had increased to over 164.

First Lady Michelle Obama recently announced she will be devoting time and energy trying to combat childhood obesity and this is a very timely cause to espouse. CDC statistics indicate that childhood obesity in America has tripled in the last 30 years. Just 6.5% of children were regarded as obese 30 years ago and now that number is 19%. Adolescent obesity has grown from 5% to 18%. No doubt many lifestyle changes contribute to these statistics including children being less physically active, but certainly the American diet of processed and "fast" foods must be part of the problem.

Now some frozen food purveyors are providing more healthful entrees and some alternatives are provided for children's meals picked up at the drive through window including fruit and milk instead of fries and soda. But it's hard to say how much of this is window dressing to counter negative publicity and how much is an earnest effort to improve nutrition.

There is a lot of resistance to change in this country, whether in energy policy, health care, financial reform and other issues. I can only assume that there will be forces aligned against food reform, too. But winning the food fight is important for our kids.


Lorraine Collins is a writer who lives in Spearfish. She can be reached at collins1@rushmore.com.