Gulf Stream and the climate

Ocean currents The Berkeley group does depart from the "orthodox" picture of climate science in its depiction of short-term variability in the global temperature. The El Nino Southern Oscillation (ENSO) is generally thought to be the main reason for inter-annual warming or cooling. But by the Berkeley team's analysis, the global temperature correlates more closely with the state of the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO) index - a measure of sea surface temperature in the north Atlantic. There are theories suggesting that the AMO index is in turn driven by fluctuations in the north Atlantic current commonly called the Gulf Stream. The team suggests it is worth investigating whether the long-term AMO cycles, which are thought to last 65-70 years, may play a part in the temperature rise, fall and rise again seen during the 20th Century. But they emphasise that anthropogenic global warming (AGW) driven by greenhouse gas emissions is very much in their picture. "Had we found no global warming, then that would have ruled out AGW," said Prof Muller. "Had we found half as much, it would have suggested that prior estimates [of AGW] were too large; if we had found more warming, it would have raised the question of whether prior estimates were too low. "But we didn't; we found that the prior rise was confirmed. That means that we do not directly affect prior estimates." The team next plans to look at ocean temperatures, in order to construct a truly global dataset. Follow Richard on Twitter

Capitalism and its critics/ The Economist

Capitalism and its critics Rage against the machine People are right to be angry. But it is also right to be worried about where populism could take politics Oct 22nd 2011 | from the print edition FROM Seattle to Sydney, protesters have taken to the streets. Whether they are inspired by the Occupy Wall Street movement in New York or by the indignados in Madrid, they burn with dissatisfaction about the state of the economy, about the unfair way that the poor are paying for the sins of rich bankers, and in some cases about capitalism itself. In the past it was easy for Western politicians and economic liberals to dismiss such outpourings of fury as a misguided fringe. In Seattle, for instance, the last big protests (against the World Trade Organisation, in 1999) looked mindless. If they had a goal, it was selfish—an attempt to impoverish the emerging world through protectionism. This time too, some things are familiar: the odd bit of violence, a lot of incoherent ranting and plenty of inconsistency (see article). The protesters have different aims in different countries. Higher taxes for the rich and a loathing of financiers is the closest thing to a common denominator, though in America polls show that popular rage against government eclipses that against Wall Street. Yet even if the protests are small and muddled, it is dangerous to dismiss the broader rage that exists across the West. There are legitimate deep-seated grievances. Young people—and not just those on the streets—are likely to face higher taxes, less generous benefits and longer working lives than their parents. More immediately, houses are expensive, credit hard to get and jobs scarce—not just in old manufacturing industries but in the ritzier services that attract increasingly debt-laden graduates. In America 17.1% of those below 25 are out of work. Across the European Union, youth unemployment averages 20.9%. In Spain it is a staggering 46.2%. Only in Germany, the Netherlands and Austria is the rate in single digits. It is not just the young who feel squeezed. The middle-aged face falling real wages and diminished pension rights. And the elderly are seeing inflation eat away the value of their savings; in Britain prices are rising by 5.2% but bank deposits yield less than 1%. In the meantime, bankers are back to huge bonuses. History, misery and protest To the man-in-the-street, all this smacks of a system that has failed. Neither of the main Western models has much political credit at the moment. European social democracy promised voters benefits that societies can no longer afford. The Anglo-Saxon model claimed that free markets would create prosperity; many voters feel instead that they got a series of debt-fuelled asset bubbles and an economy that was rigged in favour of a financial elite, who took all the proceeds in the good times and then left everybody else with no alternative other than to bail them out. To use one of the protesters’ better slogans, the 1% have gained at the expense of the 99%. If the grievances are more legitimate and broader than previous rages against the machine, then the dangers are also greater. Populist anger, especially if it has no coherent agenda, can go anywhere in times of want. The 1930s provided the most terrifying example. A more recent (and less frightening) case study is the tea party. The justified fury of America’s striving middle classes against a cumbersome state has in practice translated into a form of obstructive nihilism: nothing to do with taxes can get through Washington, including tax reform. Worryingly, politicians are already in something of a funk. The Republicans first denounced the occupiers of Wall Street, then cuddled up to them. Across Europe social democratic parties have tended to lose elections if they move too far from the centre ground, but leaders, like Ed Miliband in Britain and François Hollande in France (see article), still find the anti-banker rhetoric enticing. Why not opt for a gesture—tariffs, a supertax on the rich—that may only make matters worse? A struggling Barack Obama, who has already flirted with class warfare and business-bashing, might well consider dragging China and its currency into the fray. And it will get worse: austerity and protest have always gone together (see article). Tackle the causes, not the symptoms Braver politicians would focus on two things. The first is tackling the causes of the rage speedily. Above all that means doing more to get their economies moving again. A credible solution to the euro crisis would be a huge start. More generally, focus on policies that boost economic growth: trade less austerity in the short term for medium-term adjustments, such as a higher retirement age. Make sure the rich pay their share, but in a way that makes economic sense: you can boost the tax take from the wealthy by eliminating loopholes while simultaneously lowering marginal rates. Reform finance vigorously. “Move to Basel 3 and higher capital requirements” is not a catchy slogan, but it would do far more to shrink bonuses on Wall Street than most of the ideas echoing across from Zuccotti Park. The second is telling the truth—especially about what went wrong. The biggest danger is that legitimate criticisms of the excesses of finance risk turning into an unwarranted assault on the whole of globalisation. It is worth remembering that the epicentre of the 2008 disaster was American property, hardly a free market undistorted by government. For all the financiers’ faults (“too big to fail”, the excessive use of derivatives and the rest of it), the huge hole in most governments’ finances stems less from bank bail-outs than from politicians spending too much in the boom and making promises to do with pensions and health care they never could keep. Look behind much of the current misery—from high food prices to the lack of jobs for young Spaniards—and it has less to do with the rise of the emerging world than with state interference. Global integration has its costs. It will put ever more pressure on Westerners, skilled as well as unskilled. But by any measure the benefits enormously outweigh those costs, and virtually all the ways to create jobs come from opening up economies, not following the protesters’ instincts. Western governments have failed their citizens once; building more barriers to stop goods, ideas, capital and people crossing borders would be a far greater mistake. To the extent that the protests are the first blast in a much longer, broader battle, this newspaper is firmly on the side of openness and freedom. from the print edition | Leaders

IQ Isn't as Fixed as Once Believed, Research Suggests / Robert Lee

A teenager's IQ can rise or fall as many as 20 points in just a few years, a brain-scanning team found in a study published Wednesday that suggests the intelligence measure isn't as fixed as once thought.

The researchers also found that shifts in IQ scores corresponded to small physical changes in brain areas related to intellectual skills, though they weren't able to show a clear cause and effect.

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University College London; Nature
"If the finding is true, it could signal environmental factors that are changing the brain and intelligence over a relatively short period," said psychologist Robert Plomin at Kings College in London, who studies the genetics of intelligence and wasn't involved in the research. "That is quite astounding."

Long at the center of debates over intelligence, an IQ score typically gauges mental capacity by measuring the relative difference between mental age and actual chronological age through standardized tests of language skill, spatial ability, arithmetic, memory and reasoning. A score of 100 is considered average. Barring injury, that intellectual capacity remains constant throughout life, most experts believe.

But the new findings by researchers at University College London, reported online in Nature, suggest that IQ, often used to predict school performance and job prospects, may be more malleable than previously believed—and more susceptible to outside influences, such as tutoring or neglect.

"A change in 20 points is a huge difference," said the team's senior researcher, Cathy Price, at the university's Wellcome Trust Centre for Neuroimaging. Indeed, it can mean the difference between being rated average and being labeled gifted—or, conversely, being categorized as sub-standard.

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Nature, University College London
Researchers found that dramatic changes in verbal IQ corresponded to changes in an area of the brain associated with speech, whereas nonverbal IQ changes were related to an area involved in hand movements.

To better understand intelligence, Dr. Price and her colleagues studied 33 healthy English teenagers whose IQ scores initially ranged from 80 to 140. They tested the volunteers on standardized intelligence exams in 2004 and again in 2008, to encompass the peak years of their adolescence, while also monitoring subtle changes in brain structure using functional magnetic resonance imaging.

By analyzing verbal and nonverbal IQ performance separately, the researchers discovered that these fundamental facets of intelligence could change markedly, even in cases when an overall composite IQ score remained relatively constant.

"One fifth of them jumped one way or the other," Dr. Price said. One teenager's verbal IQ score rose from 120 at age 13 to 138 at age 17, while her nonverbal IQ dropped from 103 to a below-average score of 85. Another's verbal IQ soared from 104 to 127 in four years, while his nonverbal performance stayed the same.

The rise or fall in verbal IQ scores appeared to be connected to changes in an area of the brain associated with speech, whereas shifts in nonverbal IQ related to an area involved in motor control and hand movements.

In recent years, scientists have determined that experience can readily alter the brain, as networks of neural synapses bloom in response to activity or wither with disuse. Expert musicians, circus jugglers and London cab drivers studying maps—even Colombian guerillas learning to read—have all shown brain changes linked to practice, several brain imaging studies have reported.

Until now, though, researchers had considered general intelligence too basic to be affected by such relatively small neural adjustments. Dr. Price and her colleagues don't know what caused the changes in both the brain and the IQ scores they documented but speculated that they could be a consequence of learning experiences.

Several brain specialists said the brain changes could just as plausibly reflect the pace of normal growth, and the shifts in IQ scores could be due to people's inconsistent performance on tests.

The varying IQ scores could also indicate the test itself is flawed. "It could be a real index of how intelligence varies or it could suggest our measures of intelligence are so variable," said neuroimaging pioneer B.J. Casey at Cornell University's Weill Medical College, who wasn't involved in the study.

Even so, the size of the new study was too small to warrant broad conclusions about adolescence and learning, a time when the brain is normally in flux, experts said. Studies seeking the genetic origins of intelligence, for example, have encompassed thousands of test subjects across decades and still been unable to conclusively identify the genes that shape intelligence, said Dr. Plomin, the Kings College psychologist.

Other experts were confident the IQ variations were evidence of the neural impact of experience, for better or worse.

"An important aspect of the results is that cognitive abilities can increase or decrease," said Oklahoma State University psychometrician Robert Sternberg, who is a past president of the American Psychological Association and wasn't part of the study. "Those who are mentally active will likely benefit," he said. "The couch potatoes among us who do not exercise themselves intellectually will pay a price."