If I were poetically or musically gifted, this blog would glide to the cadence of Arlo Guthrie's 'Ridin On The City of New Orleans'. But I'm not so gifted, so you're stuck with my stilted prose. 

Nonetheless my recent ride to New York City from New Haven on Amtrak's Acela summoned the same wistful, mournful tones of Guthrie's ballad, with perhaps a touch of irony borrowed from Peggy Lee's 'Is That All There Is?'.

I normally take the Metro-North commuter line into New York. Slower, but much less expensive. Today I was meeting someone from New London on the way in, so it was the Acela.

The sleek frame glided quietly to the platform at New Haven's Union Station. It's tarnished aluminum skin somewhat diminished its high-tech aura, and suggested the all-too-familiar neglect of routine maintenance that has fostered three trillion dollars of crumbling infrastructure in this country begging for deferred maintenance. Once aboard, the seats were comfortable; the ride, smooth and quiet, but slow.  This too was no surprise, as the Acela's performance in the Northeast Corridor was long recognized to be sub-par due to the fact that in many sections the tracks were not modified to support its potential. So, once again, we have the image of high tech masking a culture of managerial mediocrity.  No Japanese or French bullet trains for us.  We'll just do it on the cheap, yet again, and get by on image.

I did not get to New York much faster on the Acela, but at four times the cost.

*   *   *

Then, why is it that President Obama wants to build a system of regional express rail lines?  Certainly, it is not based on the underwhelming performance of the Northeast Corridor where the need is likely greatest. 

I suspect that this is part of the President's 'stealth energy strategy'. I call it 'stealth' because I perceive that he recognizes fully the seriousness of the constrained energy scenario we face in the next few years, and for decades to come; but he is still reluctant to face it directly, or speak to it directly to the American people. 

So he speaks of trains, and wind turbines creating green economy jobs, and smart grids freeing us from our 'dependence' on foreign oil.  But nowhere does he come right out and say: 'Folks, we're headed into an energy Armageddon, not caused by the Arabs, but by global society's collision of its infinite demands with its finite resources. We're going to have to re-tool our society and our priorities to new realities.' 

I can understand why he does not make such a statement at this time.  There's only so much bad news the public can take without tuning him out, as so many have the evening news. Still, the problem remains, and a problem ignored will ultimately set its own agenda, as the economy has so dramatically demonstrated.

Where do express trains fit into all of this?  As energy returns to $147 within the next five years, but this time for good and not as the result of momentary speculation, one could reasonably expect that the airline industry will become particularly vulnerable. It can sustain itself in the long haul routes for which there are no easy substitutes and sufficient customers to pay the ticket at some level of service.  But for the commuter and shuttle routes, substitution will kick in wherever feasible.

You can't make a rubber band big enough or a lithium battery light enough or an extension cord long enough to power a 737 medium range jet in place of fossil fuels, but you can run a bullet train on the grid.  And therein lies the Obama high speed rail strategy: not about rail, but about energy, and sustaining some level of economic normalcy through t-economic  substitution.

The problem is, he cannot sell this stealth energy agenda to a skeptical, debt weary public. He must educate the public to the real threat, its magnitude, its complexity, and its proximity in time. He must link the reality of economic calamity from a business-as-usual approach to energy and the climate to an alternative strategy of hope and challenge in building a sustainable society with true quality of life, albeit striped of the excesses we have mistakenly come to regards as wealth. Without such a recognition of reality, the best we are likely to see is serial half-hearted, under-funded, mediocre measures much like the Northeast Acela. 

*  *  *

It would be easy to despair of the future, given our society's capacity to embrace our mythology of our past deeds in preference to building a future on present accomplishments.  But a few weeks after The Ride, I happened to watch an episode of Nova about the last mission to the Hubble telescope to retrofit it for the last time. Not everyone will necessarily identify their aspirations with a high-tech telescope, but I found in the program a source of hope.  Here were a group of people, dedicated, resourceful, intelligent, courageous, committed to something greater than themselves, and succeeding under extremely high risk at something truly meaningful.

We have not lost the capacity for greatness. It is our to regain and grow, if we choose.

Onward.

The assassins are about.  They're gunning for the Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen, and their weapon of choice is a 60 megabyte down-loadable file, courtesy of Murdock's Wall Street Journal, of hacked correspondence from the server of the University of East Anglia. Correspondence goes back thirteen years. 

I have not read any of the items, nor do I intend to.  The news stories reveal little of surprise or interest. It's not news that universities have in their midst high-strung personalities whose egos too often overwhelm their intelligence and professionalism, not unlike business and government. Nor is it surprising that researcher's might be tempted to cleanse the data of those pesky little anomalies that introduce niggling little doubts about their pet hypothesis, not unlike business and government.  Nor is it surprising that Climate Change True Believers would want to exclude Deniers from the debate, much as Deniers have wanted squelch advocates.  None of this is news, and none of it required an electronic breaking and entering to reveal known and knowable flaws in the debate. But one senses the fit and feel of another Swift-boat assault on the truth by the forces of ignorance and deceit, with the Birthers, the Tea-Partiers and the Palinista's bringing up the rear.  The timing of this so close to the beginning of the UN Conference on Climate Change in Copenhagen is more than suspect.

Among the 'Professional' Climate Change community, there appear to be four distinct groups.

There are the True Believers who will find Climate Change in every manifestation of climate variance.

There are the Adherents who believe that accelerating Climate Change induced by human action is a plausible and compelling, if not yet conclusive, scenario; but who are also willing to consider flaws in their theories and process as a part of the scientific process of inquiry and independent verification.

There are the Skeptics who do not accept the premise of human induced climate change as a significant factor but keep an open mind, pending attainment of a compelling threshold of evidence.

And there are the Deniers who close their ears to any discussion of the issue; who seize the least little anomaly that runs counter to the theory and then use it as a club to beat the issue to death.

It might come as a shock to the Swifties that Climate Change was not manufactured by Al Gore. A physical chemist named Svante Arrhenius cobbled together the theory of the greenhouse effect and its likely impact on Climate back in 1908, roughly sixty years after the birth of the oil industry, and over 100 years after the beginning of the industrial revolution.  Integrating the work of other scientists, but lacking satellites, ocean buoy monitors and a couple of main-frames, he calculated the probable relationship between CO2 emissions and atmospheric temperature.  His projections turned out to be in error based on refinement of new techniques and a broadened based of information.  But that's what science is about.

Interestingly, when one reads Arrhenius' biography, one can imagine him being the target of the Swifties for the very kind of professional behavior that they deplore in their opponents but which too many of them exhibit themselves: autocratic, vindictive, biased.  Not exactly the traits of objectivity and independence that we like to assume of all professional scientists. 

Equally interestingly, Arrhenius, the father of the Greenhouse Effect, anticipated that it would be a boon to humankind, partly because he grossly underestimated the progression of carbon emissions, population increase and temperature rise. In today's climate this would put him at least in the Skeptics camp if not the Deniers.

That leaves us with the 60 megabytes of stolen correspondence.  I would not try to defend the apparent pettiness and arrogance that is purported, except to note that it is abundant at both ends of the political spectrum of this scientific issue. But the concerns expressed by some regarding the ability of their data to support a climate change hypothesis deserves some perspective.  It must be incredibly difficult for serious scientists to perceive an issue which has a trajectory in time that will impact before we have the tools, the information, and the political consensus to act on it. That is the situation that confronts serious climate scientists of all persuasions.  In the earlier days of the purloined correspondence, I imagine that Climate Change advocates thought they might be much closer to a silver bullet of definitive proof than they are now.  Ironically, that's progress.  They now better understand the true complexity of their challenge, and the inadequacy of their tools and base of information.  This does not refute Climate Change; it merely establishes the remaining gap between hypothesis and proof: a gap for which time is not an ally.

The challenge to earth and environmental scientists in Climate Change was brought home to me in Sir Nicholas Stern's defense of his work on the economic impacts of Climate Change before a panel of economists at Yale in 2007, February 6. First, let it be said that Sir Nicholas' work was a heroic first effort to bring top-down perspective to tremendously complex topic.  But it was precisely the complexity of the subject that was the Achilles Heal of his effort.  As the panel of economists credibly argued, the study rested on tools of such inherent limitations, and assumptions and judgments of insufficient reliability to the conclusion as to jeopardize the structural soundness of the conclusion.  A failure?  Hardly. A vital first step in what must be an iterative process.  I only hope that in a philosophical moment sometime after he descended the stage, Sir Nicholas had the opportunity to take satisfaction that he dared to put himself on the line to take that first step, and that in itself was a worthy accomplishment.

Business executives love plenty of data too.  And  nifty charts and graphs in Power Point presentations to make it all clear, so that they too can point at the pictures on the wall of their well appointed corporate caves, and grunt at the pictures, and take comfort in an often unfounded sense that they understand their world.  But business executives, unlike scientists, are often confronted with the need to make decisions and take action based on partial or unreliable information and economic models; models, I might add, of systems that we have created and should therefore understand intimately, except we don't. (Capitalist True Believers such as Larry Kudlow should reference the financial meltdown of 2008-09 for illustrative examples. Capitalist True Believers such as Alan Greenspan have recently recanted in the face of irrefutable evidence that has been gathered at the price of near-economic disaster.  An analogy, anyone?).

*   *   * 

Too often decision makers and scientists take comfort in the precision of their data and the sophistication of their tools rather than the relevance and reliability of both. In auditing, especially in complex situations where one can readily lose the forest for the trees, or where there is no neat precedent for comparison, we often default to what we call a "reasonableness" test (sometimes referred to as the 'sniff test').  When all is said and done, when you take everything you think you know and shake it up and down, does it hang together, or are there still nagging doubts. 

When I became chairman of a land use planning committee of shoreline community of Guilford, Connecticut in 2004, I convened a workshop for municipal officials on the impacts of Climate Change on land use policy in the shoreline.  At that time I was open to the issue, but neutral.  My motivation came from my experience on the Town's Planning and Zoning Commission in which some aggressive developers would seek to skirt environmental regulations whenever possible, and some of the more militant environmental activists would deliberately misrepresent facts to advance their particular environmental policy agenda.  I didn't want our particular study to be captive of either faction.  Therefore we convened, quite surprisingly, a panel of internationally known experts in a variety of fields to provide reasonable scenarios for Climate Change, and how they might relate to our particular 48 square miles of real estate in Guilford, and the Connecticut shoreline in general.

I emerged from the 5 hour workshop no longer neutral on the subject.  I believed it to be a credible issue of sufficient magnitude to demand immediate attention. As a former auditor, my reasonableness test was based on the following information:

1.    In the course of 150 years, we have consumed approximately one trillion barrels of conventional crude oil (roughly 1/3 of assumed reserves); half of that in the past fifty years.  We have, in essence, released in a nano-second of geological time one third of projected conventional crude that has taken millions of years to sequester and create. A credible argument for human forcing of a system that has achieved its current stasis over thousands of years, with a few violent interruptions.

2.    In the course of 100 years, we have pushed a planet beyond the 1.5 to 2 billion of sustainable population during the bulk of human history to 6.5 billion today, and 9 billion in 2050, adding the equivalent of another Ch-India, when we haven't figured out how to handle the two we have.

3.    We know the chemistry of burning carbon based fuels. We know the physics of the Greenhouse Effect.  There's no mystery to where past trends projected outward will take us in gross terms.

4.    From a management perspective, there is no precedent to suggest that at this time we have either the information basis to effectively manage a global issue of this magnitude, complexity, and impact. Therefore, we can safely assume that there are greater probabilities of us dithering toward the more severe implications of the issue than of us taking timely and proactive action.

5.    Whether humanity causes or exacerbates this phenomenon is secondary to its reality.  When sea level rise consumes your shore-front Mc-Mansion, cause will take second place to effect for the owner and the community at large. Humanity's role, whether in causative or reactive mode, is secondary to the primary premise that the global 'ball' is in fact in play in a very different game.

*  *  * 

Another important test for auditors is 'ground truth'.  We are often provided financial representations of various kinds to opine on. An important test is to corroborate the information, the symbolic representation of truth, if you will, with verifiable facts on the ground: examination of inventory and physical plant for existence and condition; corroboration of valuations and balances with independent third parties, and so on.

In the case of Climate Change, my corroboration began three weeks after the workshop when a seasonal high tide of approximately one foot over annual average showed me graphically what my little piece of the planet could look like in 20 to 50 years.  Once I saw the reality in proxy form, it was much easier to infer the implications, to project time-lines and possible impacts, to imagine the kinds of responsive action that my community might have to take, and its likely inclination to do so.

I believe in the compelling credibility of Climate Change. But as a former auditor, I also maintain a certain operational skepticism that constantly tests my assumptions for validity in the light of the ever constant flow of new information.  Unlike the True Believers who would squelch the voice of the deniers, I often seek out the opinion of Deniers.  Their point of view continues to reinforce my belief in the credibility of Climate Change, because their arguments are often so narrow and so weak.  This is why I am continually amazed that the True Believers are so adamant in silencing the Deniers.  You can't knock them out if you don't let them in the ring for the fight. And if you won't let them in the ring, does it not cast doubt on your own capability?

*  *  *

So here we are with a classic Swiftboat ad-hominem attack on the Climate Change scientific process by way of exploding the human foibles of a relative handful of participants into a damnation of all and the process they are associated with. 

To be sure, the process could use much improvement.  Among the changes I would decree if I were king would be the following:

1.    The IPCC's periodic reports should separate the scientific assessment from the political assessment. Let the science speak for itself. Let the politicians translate it into achievable public policy.  Let's not confuse the two.

2.    The reports should report both consensus views and dissenting views.  Only in this way can the general public begin to gauge what we truly know, and what remains to be known. 

3.    We need a more unified and directed approach to research which begins with up-front agreement between skeptics (not Deniers) and Advocates (not True Believers) regarding the priorities and methodology of studies and criteria of assessing results. Only in this manner can we begin to accelerate consensus and begin to focus on what needs to be done.

4.    Much of what has been done in research appears to be 30,000 foot views of global processes. This is necessary, but it has limitations as Sir Nicholas' study demonstrated.  We need more studies at the micro level that can build credibility from the ground up and demonstrate relevance of the issue to the average person through ground truths that they can more readily relate to.  This has been my case in Guilford in the five years since the Climate Change Workshop.  I believe it has value, although I must confess that many of our local officials have an incredible capacity for denial, even in the face of the obvious.

*  *  *

Much has been made of the alleged 'evidence' obtained through the electronic break-in.  But apparently little attention has been given to the perps.  Who are they?  Who do they represent?  What's their real motive?  Where will they strike next? How much of the alleged evidence have they doctored, assuming the mere volume will minimize risk of detection; and does true evidence give undeserved credibility to the intermingled untrue 'evidence'? 

The assassins of truth are about.   Their crime is greater than the one they purport to expose.  They too must be exposed.  Or they will attack again. Until they are exposed, much less credence should be given to the credibility or relative importance of their 'information'. We cannot afford the luxury of being distracted from the Climate Change issue and its cousin, Constrained Energy.

Onward.