Global Warming: Follow the Money

A short comment on global warming. In any controversy, an important aspect of analyzing the arguments when you yourself can't evaluate all the pros and cons of the arguments, is to follow the money.

Who benefits?

There is global warming side: the scientists declaring that there is global warming.
There isn't global warming side: the politicians and business leaders declaring there isn't global warming.

Note: there aren't that many "scientists" on the anti-global warming side. There are a few. But then, you can find someone on any side of most arguments. There aren't that many of those experts on the anti-side. And you can find plenty of politicians on the yes-global warming side.

How do the business leaders benefit? The benefits are short term and financial. It would cost more to install anti-pollution devices and otherwise control emissions. So in the short term, they benefit with increased profits. This is where the money is.

How do politicians benefit? Those business leaders support the politicians' reelection efforts.

How do the scientists benefit? I really can't think of anything clear cut. I'm sure you'll hear vague analyses saying that scientists have to think all like each other or they won't get promoted or some such, or they're all liberal or some such. But that really isn't how things work in academia and in science. The argument won't stand up to much inspection: plus it's indirect and unclear.

Lets raises tuition because we like to raise tuition

University of California (UC) regents raised undergraduate fees today by 32% for next year. They are trying to squeeze in a current year raise as well, not sure if that will hold up in court. The regents periodically try to pull a fast one on people, get sued, and lose in court. I can think of twice they've lost court cases, one on delayed compensation and one on tuition that was increased without sufficient warning.

The tuition increases were protested loudly by students to the point that UCL A police and highway patrol (if I can believe my memory of what the radio announced) were called to escort regents off campus.

I'm fully in sympathy with the protesters.

I'm also fully in sympathy with the regents.

The way UC is run and organized is based on standard expectations on what funds the state will supply. Long term contracts are signed, particularly with tenured faculty. Students are admitted with the presumption that they'll be allowed to stay long enough to get a degree. Competent staff are prized and kept. At a state university, students staff and faculty represent expenses. In particular, students do not pay the full price of their education, which is heavily subsidized by the state.

When the state makes massive cuts in its payments to UC, UC must respond immediately to balance its budget. Either cuts in spending or increases in revenue are required. UC has severely restricted hiring, particularly of new faculty. UCLA says it will hire perhaps 25 instead of the more usual 100 faculty each year with an implied loss of 75 faculty this year. Each loss of 75 faculty will cut the budget by a substantial amount, perhaps as much as 10 million dollars each year in salary and benefits. However one can only lose faculty at some rate, one cannot force out extra faculty. The amount of shortfall just at UCLA is 100 million dollars. Where else can UC get the money to pay salaries?

Spending cuts are difficult and painful. If you eliminate a professor, that is a number of students who cannot be taught. As you eliminate more and more professors, fewer and fewer students can be educated. A lot of professors can not be fired due to the tenure system. Each year a few retire and a few relocate to other universities. The retirees are senior faculty, the relocators are usually top faculty who can manage to land jobs at other institutions. A few faculty who leave probably didn't get tenure in the first place, but those are rarer, at least at UC. If you don't replace leavers and retirees, the faculty size will shrink and fewer students can be educated. By not replacing these generally senior faculty, the remaining faculty will tend to be a little worse. Retirees are presumably average professors, on average. But leavers are usually substantially above average and can't easily be replaced. My argument is that when new faculty are not hired, the average quality of the faculty declines. And the total quality -- the sum over all faculty declines substantially, as there are fewer faculty to do research and teach classes.

A further problem with eliminating faculty: some faculty actually turn a pretty hefty profit for the university. Through grant getting, faculty bring in extra money. The university essentially taxes these moneys (taxes are built in to many grants, and are called overhead), gaining money that can be spent on the business of educating students and running a university. Thus the 10million savings must be partially offset by an unknown and substantial amount of income that the university forgoes by not having another professor on staff.

The state has directly forced UC to increase tuition and fees. Especially so because UC can not reduce expenditures rapidly. In the longer run, fewer students can be educated, fewer faculty will be maintained on payroll.

Where can UC find the additional money needed to pay faculty and staff salaries? Revenue enhancement is key. Hence fee increases.

Why should the state subsidize the education of its residents? The reasons are several and revolve around the direct benefit to the state and to all of us when one of us is educated. I directly benefit when your kid is educated. That's why we have a free public education system. Think about all your neighbors. How would you like living in your neighborhood if none of the neighbor kids had the slightest bit of education, hadn't even gone to kindergarten. Couldn't read or write or do math. How good a neighborhood would you think you had? Would you leave as soon as you could afford to? What would those uneducated kids do? Gardening services? Gas pump operator. Wait, that job went away. They couldn't teach grade school. No large business would hire them, for example to answer phones or to be secretaries. Much less to invent new products. What would the crime rate be if there were large numbers of uneducated Americans running around (or is that already happening?).

Having educated neighbors makes my neighbor a better place and a more interesting place as well. And that benefit extends right up through to a college education. I benefit by the presence of silicon valley in California. Jobs, high tech, high quality jobs are created when a google or Hewlett Packard is started. HP and google aren't going to hire uneducated folks to work at their companies. No education, no entree to Silicon Valley. Those jobs are created initially by a few people, then more and more jobs if the original company does something very useful for society and is successful.

It's obvious to me that undergraduate fees will continue to rise in Fall 2010 as well. I predict another 32% raise. Its unfortunate when a state backtracks from educating its young. We will see the consequences of disinvestment in education for decades to come.

Sadly the students are protesting the wrong people. Too little to late. The governor of the state of California and the California legislature are directly responsible for the rise in fees at UC. The governor and legislators are the people the students should be protesting, not the regents.

-- BSP

Darwin Fish are Not Demonstrating Identity

Jonah Goldberg (linked in the title, registration required) in the Los Angeles Times today April 1, 2008 says

As Christopher Caldwell once observed in the Weekly Standard, Darwin fish flout the agreed-on etiquette of identity politics. "Namely: It's acceptable to assert identity and abhorrent to attack it.

Goldberg is quoting Caldwell, but presumably is supporting the statement. There is a lot here to rebut and discuss. First, in two-way communication through symbols and symbology: the person displaying the symbol gets to decide what the displayer means by the symbol. And there is the reverse: the viewer gets to decide what the viewer thinks of the symbol.

Now, asking someone what their symbol means does not necessarily get you what they really mean. We've all heard "its just a joke" and "my comments were taken out of context" ad nauseam as excuses for stupid and offense comments, from politicians and from our neighbor's children, not necessarily respectively.

People who display the Christian fish symbol as a statement about their religion, separately from their belief about biology I would not mind if I knew that to be the case. But to me (how about to you?) the Christian fish symbol is used to indicate a disbelief in science and specifically biology. This takes the fish statement away from the realm of religion and into the realm of science.

To scientists - religious or not - and to scientifically literate people of any stripe, denying evolution is a bit like denying that you have freckles or a cleft chin. Evolution is a statement of fact, not of belief. Evolution can be checked. It is not up to you to believe it or not believe it. Scientists 'believe' evolution because it describes the world that we see around us. If evolution and the various detailed descriptions of our world did not describe the world, if evolution did not make predictions which are shown to be true, then scientists wouldn't 'believe' in evolution.

Believe is the wrong word, but I'm having trouble thinking of a better word. Other possibilities: 'Follow', or 'act as if it is true', or 'act as if it is true until something better comes along' are competitors. Definitely the word believe for the religious person and for the scientist are not the same activities.

Consider two parallel hypothetical experiments. Suppose that all knowledge about evolution and biology were wiped away. Would humans reinvent the concept of evolution? The answer is almost certainly yes. Now consider a second hypothetical experiment. Suppose that all knowledge of Christianity were wiped away. Would humans reinvent it? The answer is almost certainly no. We haven't tried the first experiment, but science does attempt to operate that way: there are a lot of brownie points in science for someone who can disprove a widely held belief and replace it with a new set of facts. We have essentially done the second experiment. Christianity spreads by people having babies and by teaching others about it. It doesn't get reinvented from scratch. Humans have invented lots of other sorts of religions when given the chance, but not Christianity.

In science there is no controversy about whether evolution is true or not. Evolution happens. There are a lot of details to evolution: evolution isn't a simple little mathematical result like e equals m times c-squared. These details need to be worked out, and we do not know all the details. There is a lot going on, and scientists are very busy working out details and elaborating how evolution works. There is much work to be done in elucidating how much evolution goes on, how evolution proceeds, whether there is a better word to describe what we observe in nature, can we use evolution to our own ends to make better drugs or chemicals or products, who should get credit for what discoveries, and so on, the business of science is quite extensive.

Displaying the Darwin fish symbol may indeed be a statement about me, but for Darwin fish displayers, the Darwin fish is more importantly a statement about the world. And it is a checkable statement.

working for a living

Why does Biostatprof do what biostatprof does? Because:

1. I need to eat
1. My family needs to eat
2. The dog needs to eat
3. The bird could get along without me
   
2. Its fun.
   
1. Really.
3. I'm interested in what I do.
   
1. Usually
4. I'm good at it.
   
1. When I do it
   
5. People tell me I'm great.
   
1. Not really, I made that up.
   
6. I like working with students, i.e. mentoring
1. I've been mentored so much in my life, its time to give some back.
   
2. Besides, working with students is fun.
   
3. Even when it hurts.
   
7. I like teaching.
   
1. At least the courses I'm good at.
   
2. And teaching the material I know something about.
   
3. The ones I've taught a long time, I actually get a good overview of what the material is, and I can recast it in a coherent framework.
   
1. You read that entire bullet point?
4. I wish students would rate me higher at the end.
   
8. There is bureaucratic stuff to deal with as well.
   
1. That isn't as fun.
2. Committees.
3. Faculty meetings.
4. Committee meetings.
1. In my committees, we never meet.
   
2. What for?
3. We can do it quicker if we don't meet, and we don't discuss it.
   
4. And occasionally I can do it by myself.
   
5. Though I'd rather have someone else do it.
6. Natch.
9. The U publishes over a dozen glossy and newsprint magazines and papers for me to read.
   
1. I counted once.
   
2. Between my school, the university, the fundraising, the advertising, the boasting, the news reporting, and the worrying, there is a lot to read.
   
3. I toss as much as possible.
   
4. I could waste days each month reading everything they publish.
   
5. And then my alma mater sends me stuff too.
   
10. Having good colleagues helps a lot.
    
1. Good colleagues are where you find them.
   
2. With email, you are not restricted to your local neighborhood colleague.
   
3. Though its easier if they are not more than a few time zones away.
   
11. Having a pleasing physical work environment really helps.
    
1. I wish.
2. Tear this building down, Mr. Gorbachev.
   
3. And build me a new one.
   
4. Current building is really ugly. Especially on the inside.
   
5. Why can't academia buildings look nice?
6. Are we required to be ascetic, just because we're academia?
   
12. About research:
1. Its gotten easier over time.
   
2. Dealing with paper and grant referees is still hard.
   
3. And painful.
4. I have a plan.
   
1. Seems to work for most any problem.
2. I teach it to my students.
   
3. They have a plan, too.
   
5. Research should have gone much higher up than here
   
6. At the bottom.
   
7. but I forgot.
   
13. Niiiccceeee!