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I’ve always been rather impressed by Michael Crichton.

He is rather good at hitting cultural nerve spots and has told more than a few good stories. He’s the only person to simultaneously have the best selling book, movie and tv show in America. He’s also, like myself, someone who wants to analyze himself the actual verifiable data, rather than the opinions of people who’ve talked to the people who understand data.

What then to make of Michael’s disbelief in global warming as a crisis?

As Michael tells Charlie Rose (http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-2663847011110488414&q=charlie+rose+michael+crichton&hl=en) and as you can read on Michael’s website (http://www.michaelcrichton.net/speeches/index.html), his survey of the evidence indicates that humans have had a strong influence on CO2 levels, have resulted in the temperature of the world increasing slightly, but also that the level of impact humans have had to date is fairly negligible, and that computer models are completely unreliable as tools to predict weather for the next 5 years, much less the next 100. He points out that all of the global warming crisis talk is driven by long term projections done through computer models with unverifiable assumptions modeling something that is supremely complex to begin with. Kind of like the Bush administration trying to predict what the budget deficit will be in 2030.

These are all good points, and things I’ve wondered about before. One counterargument is that sometimes it’s hard to model short term behavior, but you can model long term trends.

However, I haven’t taken the time to really dig into the evidence, or how climate models are put together, so I can’t say whether I agree or disagree with anyone on this subject definitively. What is clear to me though is that more and more people are convinced that global warming is a crisis, and even if Mr. Crichton is wrong, I’m impressed that he took the time to look at the evidence and think it through himself.

Looks like I’m going to have to do the same.

When you say the word “economics” to people today they usually think of supply, demand, and money. After teaching myself quite a bit of economics I’ve come to realize it’s actually a set of mental models, a set of tools, used to understand systems of behavior.

Adam Smith is widely credited as the father of economics, but he would not have considered himself to be an economist. He was considered in his time to be a moral philosopher. He was interested in human behavior generally, and used certain techniques to help him understand and predict behavior. Modern economists like Gary Becker and Stephen Leavitt have applied the tools of economics to areas as varied as family dynamics, or the naming of babies.

I recently stumbled upon this rather interesting podcast (see http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2006/08/the_political_e.html ), which uses a few economic tools to think about the incentive systems involved in war. One of the interesting conclusions is that dictators are far more likely to start wars than the leaders of a democracy, but once embroiled in a war dictators are far more likely to back out if things don’t go well, whereas democratically elected leaders try to double their bet and hope for the best. Understanding why this happens doesn’t require an economics degree, but an economics toolset is useful in thinking through the way the incentive systems for war work.

I read an interesting Fortune magazine article that profiles Sirtris, a startup company that is trying to develop age slowing technologies based on the recent discoveries about resveratrol.

What’s resveratrol? As the magazine article states:

Resveratrol is the ingredient in red wine that made headlines in November [2006] when scientists demonstrated that it kept overfed mice from gaining weight, turned them into the equivalent of Olympic marathoners, and seemed to slow down their aging process. Few medical discoveries have generated so much instant buzz - even Jay Leno riffed about it in his opening monologue.

Prior to this new research on resveratrol, the one known way in mammals to slow down some of the markers of aging has been caloric restriction. Caloric restriction has certainly worked in lower order mammals, but large scale human studies have yet to be completed. Even if caloric restriction was shown to work in people, it would probably be difficult for people to have the discipline to do, since it effects lifestyle pretty significantly.

The Fortune article stated something interesting about resveratrol’s relation to caloric restriction:

The mouse studies [examining the effect of resveratrol] also gave hints that resveratrol induces basic metabolic changes akin to those that [caloric restriction] does. One of the most intriguing was the production of fresh mitochondria, the key components of cells that serve as power generators; they essentially burn sugar in slow motion to release energy. But like coal-burning power plants, mitochondria also pollute. In particular, they spew highly reactive chemicals called free radicals, which damage DNA and other important molecules in cells. Over time the radicals deteriorate the mitochondria themselves, which degrades their efficiency, causing yet heavier production of free radicals. The end result is a cell-degrading snowball effect that is thought to be a major cause of aging.

Here’s the entire Fortune article:

http://money.cnn.com/2007/01/18/magazines/fortune/Live_forever.fortune/index.htm