How we avoid Titanic-like disasters now?

What does Kate Winslet have to do with climate change?

What a simple but awesome image, eh!  (source, via)

Speaking of global warming and icebergs, William Nordhaus continues to be annoyed, for all the right reasons, at the group that penned the WSJ op-ed and are now critiquing his comments.  Nordhaus writes:

Climate scientists have moved way beyond global mean temperature in looking for evidence of human-caused climate change. Scientists have found several indicators that point to human-caused warming, including melting of glaciers and ice sheets, ocean heat content, rainfall patterns, atmospheric moisture, river runoff, stratospheric cooling, and the extent of Arctic sea ice. Those who look only at global temperature trends are like investigators using only eyewitness reports and ignoring fingerprints and DNA-based evidence.

Nordhaus is clearly pissed, right?  He makes a wonderful point about how rational people ought to think about uncertainties:

We sometimes hear that we cannot act because scientists are not really 100 percent sure that global warming will occur. But a good scientist is never 100 percent sure of any empirical phenomenon. This point was captured by the following comment on scientific uncertainty by the distinguished physicist Richard Feynman:

Some years ago I had a conversation with a layman about flying saucers…. I said, “I don’t think there are flying saucers.” So my antagonist said, “Is it impossible that there are flying saucers? Can you prove that it’s impossible?”

“No,” I said, “I can’t prove it’s impossible. It’s just very unlikely.” At that he said, “You are very unscientific. If you can’t prove it impossible, then how can you say that it’s unlikely?” But that is the way that is scientific. It is scientific only to say what is more likely and what less likely, and not to be proving all the time the possible and impossible.^j

This story is a reminder about how good science proceeds. It is possible that the world will not warm over the coming years. It is possible that the impacts will be small. It is possible that a miraculous technology will be invented that can suck CO2 out of the atmosphere at low cost. But in view of the evidence we now have, it would be foolish to bet on these outcomes just because they are possible.

Oh well ...

My heart will go on, but not government spending. Or, will it?

The Economist has a special feature on the "state" and explores a set of questions that is not unfamiliar territory in this blog.  The following chart, borrowed from there, immediately gives a sense of how much governments all across the planet have grown.

The reason I have "or, will it?" in the title:

A lot of economic theorists have predicted an ever larger state since Adolph Wagner linked its growth to industrialisation in the 19th century. The Baumol cost effect is often cited. In the 1960s William Baumol and William Bowen used the example of classical music to show that some activities are not susceptible to improvements in labour productivity. You still need the same number of musicians to play a Beethoven symphony as you did in the 19th century, even though real wages for musicians have risen since then. Larry Summers, Mr Obama’s main economic adviser till the end of 2010, argues that the goods governments buy, especially health care and education, have proved much more resistant to productivity enhancements than the rest of the economy. Since the 1970s real wages in America have risen tenfold if you measure them against the cost of televisions; set against the cost of health care, they have gone down.

It is too darn difficult to resist the temptation to characterize the state as the Titanic heading towards the twin icebergs of  health care and education--it does not look like how we can successfully negotiate these two without major damages. 

The Reader on Revolutionary Road

Kate Winslet has been nominated for an Oscar, but for the wrong movie.

Winslet was simply fantastic in The Revolutionary Road. She made sure that the character came across as real--that no viewer would ever think that the character she played could not have been possible in the 1950s. In fact, thanks to her performance, viewers would think that Winslet's character was indeed the norm, than otherwise.


I don't mean to suggest that Winslet was not good in The Reader. She was awesome. I agree with reviewers and critics who have opined that Winslet is such a terrific actor that she even in the nude scenes she is so real. However, she suffers from the story line and conversations that some times seemed rather stilted.


I suppose it is to Weinstein's credit that Winslet ended up being nominated for The Reader, and not for Revolutionar Road. I am not sure whether he did her a favor there; I think the category would have been a slam dunk for Winslet had she been nominated for the other role she played.

I have watched Winslet in so many movies that I am no longer suprised with her remarkable ease in performing the roles. What I really like about her is that she does not have the clinical/sterile approach that Meryl Streep presents. A long time ago, soon after the Titanic, Kate Winslet appeared in a movie, Hideous Kinky, that was set in Morocco. It was an impressive performance for a young actor--she was only 22 when that movie was made. In Little Children, she played the role of a restless and unhappy housewife with perfection. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind was another gem.

After all the movies that she has made, she is only 33!

Well, I hope Kate Winslet is awarded the Oscar this year--even if for the wrong movie.