Bleak Predictions in the ODNI Global Trends for 2025 Report

This was recently released by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence:

News Release No. 19-08
November 20, 2008

ODNI Releases Global Trends Projections

By 2025, the accelerating pace of globalization and the emergence of new powers will produce a world order vastly different from the system in place for most of the post-World War II era, according to a projection by the federal government’s top intelligence analysts.

The projection, prepared by the National Intelligence Council of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, was made public by the ODNI today.

The ODNI report, “Global Trends 2025 – A Transformed World” projects a still-preeminent U.S. joined by fast developing powers, notably India and China, atop a multipolar international system. The world of the near future will be subject to an increased likelihood of conflict over scarce resources, including food and water, and will be haunted by the persistence of rogue states and terrorist groups with greater access to nuclear weapons, the report says. Widening gaps in birth rates and wealth-to-poverty ratios, and the uneven impact of climate change, could further exacerbate tensions, “Global Trends 2025” concludes.

The report extrapolates from current and projected trends. It is not a prediction, and the authors stress that “bad outcomes are not inevitable.”

“International leadership and cooperation will be necessary to solve the global challenges and to understand the complexities surrounding them,” the report concludes.

“By laying out some of the alternative possibilities we hope to help policymakers steer us toward more positive solutions.” Other projections in “Global Trends 2025”: include:

• Russia’s emergence as a world power is clouded by lagging investment in its energy sector and the
• persistence of crime and government corruption.
• Muslim states outside the Arab core – Turkey, Indonesia, even a post-clerical Iran – could take on
• expanded roles in the new international order.
• A government in Eastern or Central Europe could be effectively taken over and run by organized crime.
• In parts of Africa and South Asia, some states might wither away as governments fail to provide security
• and other basic needs.
• A worldwide shift to a new technology that replaces oil will be under way or accomplished by 2025.
• Multiple financial centers will serve as ’shock absorbers’ in the world financial system. The U.S. dollar’s
• role will shrink to ‘first among equals’ in a basket of key world currencies.
• The likelihood that nuclear weapons will be used will increase with expanded access to technology and a
• widening range of options for limited strikes.
• The impact of climate change will be uneven, with some Northern economies, notably Russia and
• Canada, profiting from longer growing seasons and improved access to resource reserves.

The Global Trends series examines geopolitical trends and analyzes their likely outcomes, in an attempt to prompt public discussion of possible responses. The projections have covered five-year intervals, beginningwith Global Trends 2010 issued in November 1997.

A full copy of the report is available online at: http://www.dni.gov/nic/NIC_2025_project.html

# # #
The Director of National Intelligence oversees 16 federal organizations that make up the U.S. intelligence community. The DNI also manages the implementation of the National Intelligence Program. Additionally, the DNI serves as the principal adviser to the president, the National Security Council and the Homeland Security Council on intelligence issues related to national security.

Tags: Global Trends, public policy, public policy analysis

What Are the Indicators of the Financial Crisis?

It would be nice to have a concrete way to know if the financial crisis is getting better or worse. Or course the indicators would probably include the housing market, asset-backed securities, commercial paper, interest rates, GDPs, and the availability of credit.

I couldn’t come up with a complete picture, but here’s what’s out there as of today,

1. Banks are lending. According to Jon Hilsenrath at The Wall Street Journal,

Banks actually are lending at record levels. Their commercial and industrial loans, at $1.6 trillion in early November, were up 15% from a year earlier and grew at a 25% annual rate during the past three months, according to weekly Federal Reserve data. Home-equity loans, at $578 billion, were up 21% from a year ago and grew at a 48% annual rate in three months.

2. Bank depost interest rates are going. Up as a result of the demand for bank loans, banks are waging a rate war for deposits. This could be good news for small investors or other people with cash.

3. Home inventories are decreasing. This is one of the big indicators of how the economy is doing: whether home prices continue to fall or have reached a low point and are going up. Lately, I have seen both anecdotal evidence (some of my relatives bought first homes) and some other articles (one about increased buying in central California) suggesting that buying is beginning to happen. However, as the referenced article points out, the backlog is still huge. So prices may not move yet.

4. Some key interest rates have returned to their pre-crisis state. In particular, the 3-month LIBOR that had risen sharply to 4.7% or so has fallen back to the range of 2.8 to 3.1%. Similarly, commercial paper rates for top-tier corporations have fallen below their pre-crisis levels. So the Federal Reserves’ actions in that market appear to have thawed the ice for now.

According to David Goldman at CNN Money,

The credit environment has been slowly improving. Borrowing rates are retreating from historical highs, the commercial paper market is expanding and market gauges are showing a return of confidence.

5. Central banks around the world have lowered interest rates. This should make credit easier for at least somebody.

6. Money is flowing back into money markets. One of the precipitating factors of the great panic was when the Reserve Primary Fund “broke the buck.” The outflow of money from the money market funds that are critical to financing business operations threatened to bring the economy to a halt. While the net inflow helps, it doesn’t mean all their problems are solved.

7. Alan Greenspan says the best indicator is the LIBOR-OIS spread. Again from CNN Money,

Alan Greenspan, the former Fed chief, has said that we will know the credit markets have returned to normal when the Libor-OIS spread returns to just a hair above the anticipated Fed funds rate. That will show that banks are confident about the market conditions and have resumed normal lending practices. Libor-OIS was less than 0.8 percentage points before Lehman collapsed. It reached a record high of 3.64 on Oct. 10, and sits at 1.74 today. So according to Greenspan, we’re only about half-way to recovery.

The good news for the little investor is that it could be argued that many investments are now cheap. See the article. But you’ll have to make your own call on whether to “buy” it.

Tags: financial crisis, global financial crisis, indicators of the financial cris, U.S. Financial Crisis

Post-Election Crazy Talk

Now that the election is over, I’ve been seeing a lot of crazy talk in the news. At least its not all coming from the McCain campaign.

Bush's Brain

Some is though. At least a few of McCain’s team are ripping on Governor Sarah Palin, calling her essentially an ignorant hillbilly. Now, I was not a Palin fan, but didn’t these guys select her as their candidate without really knowing anything about her? And now they are surprised and angry? This scorched-earth style is just so reminiscent of Schmidt and Wallace’s mentor, Karl Rove. If you don’t believe me, read Bush’s Brain: How Karl Rove Made George W. Bush Presidential.

Then there are people who are criticizing whatever name is floated for the Obama administration. Critics want him to get moving immediately and produce results. But, they also want him to do that without using anybody who has been in government before, especially from the Clinton or Bush administrations. (Those people are not change, they are “more of the same.”) Further, the critics also don’t want him to use the people who helped him get elected.

Now, let’s take a step back. How do you move fast? To move fast, you have to quickly find and bring in qualified and experienced people. Otherwise, there is going to be a long learning curve. But, since there has been a Bush or a Clinton in the White House for the last 20 years, the pickings are kind of small. And Obama has already said seances are out.

On top of that, how do you find people fast if you ignore the people you know well and trust? Searching for and vetting people is a time consuming process. This would take months even for a handful of people. Picking people without that kind of a process can be disaster, as the McCain apparently found out the hard way.

Why Great Leaders Don't Take Yes for an Answer

So realistically speaking, there are going to be a lot of Democrats and people who helped him get elected or who know people who helped him get elected in his administration. This is not cronyism, its just the way it has to be done. What he needs to do to create change though is bring together a mix of experienced people who have different perspectives and orientations, as well as a deep knowledge of government and world affairs. A great book recommendation for him is Why Great Leaders Don’t Take Yes for an Answer: Managing for Conflict and Consensus. In the book, Professor Roberto discusses how leaders should organize the decision-making process for best results. While the book is geared toward corporate leaders, the principles still make sense for political leaders. In fact, the author recounts in detail how President Kennedy revamped the decision making in the White House after the Bay of Pigs disaster. So the debate here is not whether President-elect Obama will be tapping Democrats and people he knows, but whether he will tap ones that bring a diversity of perspectives and a wealth of current and profound knowledge.

Tags: Obama, Palin, Presidential Leadership, Public Discourse

How The Press Manufactures Drama in the Polls

Today in the Wall Street Journal we have the headline “Gap Narrows in Florida and Ohio, Not Pennsylvania.” The article has a lot of graphs and looks pretty impressive. But taking a wider view shows that this is a red herring. I don’t know if the writer knows this or just didn’t bother to look past one poll, but let’s look at how the false drama works. According to the WSJ,

Sen. McCain now is within striking distance in Florida, where Sen. Barack Obama leads 47% to 45%, a new poll by the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute finds. Less than a week ago, Sen. Obama led by five percentage points there.

One is led to think that Senator McCain has closed the gap by 5% points. But, take a look below at this screen cap from WSJ’s own superb “At the Polls” interactive graph. The green line shows the trajectory of the Quinnipiac poll.

WSJ Graph of all Florida Polls

You can easily see that the Quinnipiac Poll, which used to show the most extreme Obama lead, has switched to now barely show the narrowest Obama lead. But the average of polls hasn’t really changed. In other words, there is no reason for Obama to be worried.

So, what about Ohio? The situation is even more–that is , less–dramatic. The WSJ article says,

In Ohio, considered a Republican must-win, Sen. Obama still has a comfortable lead of 51% to 42%, Quinnipiac found. The good news for Sen. McCain is he appears to be closing the gap there; last week, Sen. Obama led by 14 points.And here is the chart of all polls:

And here is the graphic of other polls. The green line shows the trajectory of the Quinnipiac poll:

WSJ Compilation of Polls for Ohio

Clearly, the Qinnipiac poll has only gone from being way extreme to mildly extreme. This is hardly a gain for McCain in the polls.

McCain’s “Dangerous” Rhetoric Creates Real Danger

Senator McCain was forced to drop his attempts to associate Senator Obama to domestic terrorist Bill Ayers. In the end, McCain himself had to defend Obama as a “decent man.” The problem, of course, was that calling Obama a terrorist was inciting people to feel physical action, such as killing a prospective future President of the United States, would be justified. Yet, McCain doesn’t seem to have learned the danger of peddling fear.

He’s now calling Sen. Obama, Speaker of the House Pelosi, and Sen. Harry Reid “dangerous.” To this, Ms. Pelosi responded,

“It’s interesting to hear Senator McCain talking about the dangerous Obama, Reid, Pelosi. Dangerous is not really a word that should be a part of a national debate as we go into a presidential race.”

While this may seem a small thing, and perhaps part of the rough-and-tumble of modern politics, citizens who want a well functioning democracy should view these kinds of comments harshly. Just like the Ayers problem, labeling senators, congresspeople, and other political figures as “dangerous” incites violence. The word “dangerous” implies something untoward, life threatening, and illegal. Uniformed people will begin to think that there is a real physical threat, and that they are then compelled and justified to take dramatic action. Hence the people at Gov. Palin’s rallies who were shouting to “kill” Sen. Obama. This is unprofessional and should not be tolerated in political discourse.

Tags: McCain, Obama, Pelosi

C02 Lags Temperature and Human Causes of Global Warming

As I was researching some of the comments on a previous post, here are some interesting items that I found:

1. C02 has historically lagged temperature, a fact that is often cited by global warming skeptics.

Temperature and CO2 are difficult to measure and compare. The time resolution is low, and while C02 is an atmospheric gas with a more global nature, temperature is always relatively local. Tom Rees explains this and gives links to data that you can review.

RealClimate explains that while it is true that CO2 lags temperature, this does not affect the global warming theory. The CO2 amplifies the temperature rise. So the concern is not that the increased CO2 we are creating today caused the rise, but that it will continue to amplify it.

2. The best explanations so far regarding why global warming is human caused:

RealClimate gives an explanation based on the measurement of carbon isotopes.

Ecobridge describes outputs of human activity that cause carbon dioxide and greenhouse gas.

Here’s what NASA has to say,

Climatologists (scientists who study climate) have analyzed the global warming that has occurred since the late 1800’s. A majority of climatologists have concluded that human activities are responsible for most of the warming. Human activities contribute to global warming by enhancing Earth’s natural greenhouse effect. The greenhouse effect warms Earth’s surface through a complex process involving sunlight, gases, and particles in the atmosphere. Gases that trap heat in the atmosphere are known as greenhouse gases.

The main human activities that contribute to global warming are the burning of fossil fuels (coal, oil, and natural gas) and the clearing of land. Most of the burning occurs in automobiles, in factories, and in electric power plants that provide energy for houses and office buildings. The burning of fossil fuels creates carbon dioxide, whose chemical formula is CO2. CO2 is a greenhouse gas that slows the escape of heat into space. Trees and other plants remove CO2 from the air during photosynthesis, the process they use to produce food. The clearing of land contributes to the buildup of CO2 by reducing the rate at which the gas is removed from the atmosphere or by the decomposition of dead vegetation.

A small number of scientists argue that the increase in greenhouse gases has not made a measurable difference in the temperature. They say that natural processes could have caused global warming. Those processes include increases in the energy emitted (given off) by the sun. But the vast majority of climatologists believe that increases in the sun’s energy have contributed only slightly to recent warming.

Finally, see the “Causes of Change” in the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report, as well as these global warming and climate change policy research sites:

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

NASA

Tags: climate change, environmental, Global Warming, greenhouse effect, policy research, political issues, public policy, public policy analysis, social issues

Global Temperature Regains 20 Years of Lost Movement

While perusing the arguments on global warming, I happened across an article by Lorne Gunter that claims that “30 years of warmer temperatures go poof.” The article asserts that because recent global temperature anomalies went down to around the 0 mark, the temperature rise claimed by global warming researchers has been erased and all the global warming concerns have been much ado about nothing. To support this claim, Mr. Gunter uses this graph of this data from UAH:

Global Temperature with Incorrect Trend Line

The graph shows a “Global trend line” through the data, but this trend line is incorrectly drawn. See the graph below, made from the same data set:

Global Temperature with 100-Month Moving Average

In this second graph, a couple of things are clear. First, a correctly drawn trend line (in this case a 100-month moving average) shows a flattening but no significant decline. Second, the data in the second graph goes a few months further into 2008, where the temperature anomaly as risen, thus “regaining” about 20 years of the supposed 30 that were lost. The fallacy of the claim is thus clear: The temperature anomalies move in fairly wide swings. What is important is the rising mean temperature anomaly, not what the level is at any given month.

Mr. Gunter, unfortunately, is widely known for his outlandish claims. For a wonderfully detailed and well-linked analysis of other errors in the aforementioned Gunter article, see this greenfyre post.

Tags: climate change, environmental, Global Warming, greenhouse effect, policy research, political issues, public policy, public policy analysis, social issues

The Foundational Case for Global Warming

Despite what seems to be an ironclad case for global warming and the assumption that it is human caused , there is still considerable debate in the media. If we are going to create appropriate public policy to deal with climate change, then we have to keep from being diverted by the fallacious arguments. Unfortunately, there is a lot of phooey out there perpetuated by people who cite scientists and who claim to be scientists. I’m not sure if these people are just misinformed or working on behalf of a hidden agenda, but we can filter them out by keeping aware of the essential situation.

The fundamental proposition goes like this:

1. For about the last 100 years, the Co2 level has been rising at an unprecedented rate. According to the Woods Hole Research Center,

Suddenly in the 1800s, as the Industrial Revolution takes off, atmospheric CO₂ concentrations begin an unprecedented upward climb, rising rapidly from 280 ppmv (parts per million by volume) in the early 1800s to a current level of 376 ppmv, 77 ppmv above the highest concentrations previously attained in the course of the preceding 400 thousand years.

Global Temperature

2. The rise in atmospheric CO₂ seems to correspond to–and likely be causing–rapidly rising global temperatures, as show in the graph at right from NASA. The graph shows temperature anomalies relative to the mean temperature of the years 1951 to 1980.

Debate about the temperature rise concerns how the temperature is measured. There is no one thermometer for the planet, so a single temperature is computed by taking measurements from various points around the globe or from satellites. Experts dispute the appropriate ways to do this; however, the general conclusion seems to be that the temperature is rising abnormally.

3. Suspicions are high that the phenomena has been a side effect of industrialization. According to the Washington Post,

An international panel of climate scientists said yesterday that there is an overwhelming probability that human activities are warming the planet at a dangerous rate, with consequences that could soon take decades or centuries to reverse.

Any argument against global warming would have to directly refute this data. We are faced with many pressing social issues, and they can become hopelessly complex unless we have some grounding in the data and use a combination of data and commonsense to weed out spurious arguments. In future posts, I’ll take a look at some of the counterarguments and see if any can overturn this.

Tags: climate change, environmental, Global Warming, greenhouse effect, policy research, political issues, public policy, public policy analysis, social issues

Who Won the 3rd Presidential Debate? Poll Roundup

Its the last debate, so I’m keeping up the tradition of the quick poll round up. Here’s what I’ve got so that you can check the latest yourself (or vote). See the links. I’ll be updating periodically.

UDPATE: This morning (Oct 16), a regular poll

Fifty-eight percent of debate watchers questioned in a CNN/Opinion Research Corp. poll said Democratic candidate Obama did the best job in the debate, with 31 percent saying Republican Sen. John McCain performed best.

The poll also suggests that debate watchers’ favorable opinion of Obama rose slightly during the debate, from 63 percent at the start to 66 percent at the end. The poll indicates that McCain’s favorables dropped slightly, from 51 percent to 49 percent.

NOTE: see my other posts on previous polls and their comments for notes about poll accuracy, bias, perhaps even deceit.

Tags: Debate, Election 2008, McCain, Obama, winner

Does Negative Campaigning Work? Findings from Recent Research

Personal attacks have become increasingly sharp in the U. S. presidential election. The McCain campaign has even reportedly decided to make character attacks on Senator Obama a primary strategy. Just recently, Telegraph reported,

A former McCain strategist familiar with the senator’s tactical discussions told The Sunday Telegraph that he would pursue the “nuclear option” targeting Mr Obama personally in the final month leading up to November’s vote.

This strategic turn has resulted in Governor Sarah Palin making a big fuss about Senator Obama’s casual encounters with former domestic terrorist Bill Ayers. In response, Senator Obama’s campaign has been reminding Americans about Senator McCain’s participation in the Keating Five scandal. Certainly, the punch-counterpunch will continue as we approach the election, but does negative campaigning like this work?

It depends. Sometimes, negative campaigning works effectively, particularly when the allegations are largely true. But other times, the attacks can make the attacker seem petty and weak. For example, during last night’s second presidential debate, voter’s reactions to both candidates dipped when the candidate made an attack.

Nearly every time one candidate threw a jab at the other, the voter reaction dipped measurably.

The dips were minor for small digs but slipped further if a candidate continued criticizing his opponent.

SenseUs, a firm that does polling about emotional reactions, recently did study of two anti-Obama ads and two anti-McCain ads. They found that,

Of the four negative ads (two Anti-McCain and two Anti-Obama) examined, the only one to significantly better the standing of the sponsor was an Obama ad which challenged and disproved McCain’s assessment that the country is better off than it was eight years ago.

Tags: Bill Ayers, Election 2008, Keating Five, McCain, negative campaigning, Obama, Sara Palin