For those looking for a
refresher on exponology, a casual field of study I created for my
upcoming book Hyperhighway to Hell devoted to political and
mathematical exponents, check here and href="http://www.morphizm.com/observations/thill/thill_exponology2.html">here for the goods. But know that, at its heart,
exponology is interested in examining the ways (and means) situations
can accelerate in a hurry, sometimes catastrophically. Speaking of,
here's another entry fit for the source list.
According to href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/6610125.stm">a recent study published in the journal Geophysical
Research, the intense, dense IPCC report cataloguing the myriad
ways in which climate change will turn Earth into Children of Men and
other disaster dystopias was off. By a lot, but not surprisingly for
those who know of the IPCC's relatively conservative makeup.
Conservative in the scientific sense, that is, rather than the
political sense, which is the point.
How exactly can you tell the difference between the two data sets? For
example, on the mathematical front, the IPCC's report failed to chart
the significant rates of acceleration in the loss of sea ice.
Crunching numbers from 1956-2006 gave them a rate of 7.8 percent
shrinkage per decade. That's enough ice on the face of the problem to
wake up to it, except that it was modest. When calculating the same
rate from 1979-2006, the number grew to 9.1 percent ice loss per
decade.
It gets worse. The IPCC's conservative mathematical estimates were
further problematized by the publication of recent scientific research
suggesting that sea levels could rise, not by the IPCC's sobering
amount of 28-43 centimeters, but rather the researcher's more
ass-crazy amount of 50-140 centimeters. It doesn't take a math geek to
figure out that the difference between the two is roughly around 90
to, oh, say 300 percent! I'm sorry to italicize but the coincidence
kills me.
Which brings us to the political dimension of exponology, in which
conservatism takes on a whole new meaning. The fact that the IPCC is a
conservative organization is as much a matter of rigor as it is a
matter of public policy: Uniting so many scientists on so much data is
certain to sift out the excesses of both sides. But given its
political interaction with the legislative and corporate bodies of its
time -- in other words, the gun-crazy Bush administration and the
fossil fuel and hedge-fund industries that empower them -- the IPCC
cannot help but be influenced by the sociopolitical climate of its
time as much as it is by the climate science it studies.
From target="blank">muzzling scientists to withholding data to avoiding
treaties, the Bush administration has shown that it has a
significant political and mathematical investment in cutting and
running from climate change, from its resource wars in Iraq to its
bonanza paydays for oil and brokers. And if you think politics and
math have no kinship, then you might want to let the hedge-fund
managers, who are all mostly math and economy profs who employ
proprietary algorithms to manufacture mad paydays for their clients,
know about your wild theory.
Like exponology, it may just bear real-time fruit. But unlike
exponology, it won't take time into account. Including what little
time we have left before the conservative science of the IPCC and its
own political climate leave us days late, dollars short.