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  Henrich GreveProfessor of Entrepreneurship

Since the Iroquois Stakes was moved from late October/early November to mid-September we have seen more Kentucky Derby hopefuls, than eventual starters. Although, a few select horses such as Tapiture, Ride on Curlin and Mr. Z did get their chance to run for the roses at Churchill Downs the following spring. Their bids would fall short, but their journey from the first points race all the way to the Kentucky Derby was very unique. Today the long road begins again when the scoring resumes in the 2016 Iroquois Stakes.

At 3-1, Recruiting Ready is the morning line favorite. The son of Algorithms--Need nearly scored his first graded stakes win in his debut race at Churchill Downs on July 2. He did it by attempting to wire the eight other juveniles in the field with swift fractions of 21.76, 45.07 and 56.97 on the front end. The strategy looked to be a winner until his bid to draw clear was outmatched by Classic Empire who reeled him in the final furlong to win the Bashford Manor – G3.

Next time out the Horacio DePaz trainee looked even closer to a graded stakes win in the Saratoga Special – G2 on August 14. However, what appeared to be an easy win quickly turned into another runner up finish when Gunnevera soared home to steal the race at the wire from the heavy post time favorite. And then things got even worse when Recruiting Ready was disqualified from second and placed fourth for making contact with Tip Tap Tapizar near the three-eighths pole and knocking him off his stride.

Today, Gary Stevens will be in the saddle for the first time. The assumption is that Recruiting Ready will be back in position to get things right this time out, but he will also be stretching to out to over 1 mile for the first time in his young racing career.

The second choice on the morning line isThirstforlife. At 7-2 the son of Stay Thirsty - Promenade Girl returns to the track where he broke his maiden in his second career start. In between that effort and today was a respectable third place finish in the Best Pal – G3 at Del Mar, his graded stakes debut. In that contest Thirstforlife was in the mix throughout but he failed to fire a serious bid.

Florent Geroux returns for his second mount aboard Thirstforlife and first since he was in the irons for the colt’s career debut, a third place finish in the Kentucky Juvenile Stakes at Churchill Downs on May 5. Trainer Mark Casse will be attempting to win his second career Iroquois Stakes after notching his first in 2012 with Uncaptured.

Not This Time enters the Iroquois Stakes coming off his very first win for trainer Dale Romans. The one mile maiden victory by 10 lengths on the dirt at Ellis Park last month was his second career start. The son of Giant's Causeway – Miss Macy Sue is the co-third choice on the morning line.

Accompanying Not This Time at 4-1 isBlame Will, the son of Blame – Be My Prospect, trained by D. Wayne Lukas. This will also be his debut stakes race after a maiden win. Blame Will’s first victory came in his third career start and second at Saratoga after beginning his racing career here at Churchill Downs in June.

Lookin At Lee enters the Iroquois Stakes after winning back to back races at Ellis Park this summer. His first was in a maiden special weight race and followed by a more impressive score in the Ellis Park Juvenile Stakes. Though the stakes race was not graded and only featured five starters, the Steve Asmussen trainee by Lookin At Lucky – Langara Lass should be considered a live option for a nice price if his odds remain near his morning line mark of 6-1.

Honor Thy Father for trainer Kenny McPeek follows Lookin At Lee to the Iroquois Stakes from the Ellis Park Juvenile Stakes where he finished third. Prior to that the son of  To Honor and Serve – Hottie Dancer also broke his maiden at Ellis Park after striking out in his career debut at Churchill Downs last June. Coincidentally, Honor Thy Father finished behind Lookin At Lee in that race as well. Both horses missed the top three finishing fifth and sixth.

Just Move On moves into Churchill Downs for his first career start in the Bluegrass State after opening his career at Arlington Park earlier this summer. In two races from Chicago the Patrick Byrne trainee and son of Street Boss finished in the top three both times and won his last time out. Skinflint ships into Churchill Downs and the Kentucky racing circuit for the first time after breaking his maiden at Gulfstream Park last time out. The son of Super Saver, trained by Dane Kobiskie, was listed as the long shot on the morning line with odds of 20-1.

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• Not This Time (9-5) leaves the field behind in the Grade 3 Iroquois.
• On Leave (3-5) runs away with the Grade 2 Sands Point.
• The Pizza Man (5-1) gets back to the winner's circle in the Grade 1 Northern Dancer.
• Rainha Da Bateria (9-2) holds off stablemate Dacita (1-1) in the Grade 2 Canadian.
• No catching Sarah Sis (10-1) in the Presque Isle Downs Masters.
• Victory to Victory  7-1) pulls clear in the Grade 1 Natalma Stakes.
• Good Samaritan (3-1) rolls to a Breeders' Cup birth with a Summer Stakes win.
• Daddys Lil Darling (7-2) runs up to take the Grade 2 Pocahontas.
• Tepin (2-5) gets her eighth consecutive win in the Grade 1 Woodbine Mile.
• Fioretti (14-1) digs in to take the Open Mind.

American Cleopatra, Full Sis to American Pharoah, Wins Del Mar Debut

Despite the recent climate agreement in Paris (COP21), where 195 countries adopted the first legally binding treaty to curb climate change, the debate about whether climate change exists or whether it’s the fault of human beings still rages on.

Climate deniers, typically extreme libertarians and anti-government free market advocates, characterise themselves as “underfunded” advocates of “free speech” and “reason”. They characterise the views of most climate scientists and environmental groups, such as the Sierra Club and Greenpeace, as “alarmist” and “left-wing dogma”.

The libertarian sceptics and deniers do no original research, but they constantly criticise the “politicisation” of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). They claim that the evidence of “anthropogenic causation” is extremely weak, and that any climate warming taking place must therefore be of natural origin, or otherwise unexplained.

What can’t be disputed

In the interest of academic rigour, it would be useful to analyse the facts and how the deniers see them. First of all, CO2 levels are undeniably rising. The increase, which many sceptics don’t deny, accelerated after World War II, mainly because of industrialisation of developing countries, increased consumption of electricity, and increased use of private cars and substitution of automotive (and air) transportation for rail-based transport.

But this is the extent of the consensus between climate scientists and deniers.Despite a broad scientific consensus on the importance of CO2 as a driver of climate change, some climate sceptics, and a few outright “deniers” (including the Republican members of the U.S. Congress) still question whether carbon dioxide is actually harmful, on balance. Some argue that carbon dioxide is the “food” for all plants. Plants capture and “fix” that carbon to create the carbohydrate-based food for animals. The natural process (which produces oxygen as a byproduct) is calledphotosynthesis. Without photosynthesis we (and all the other animals) would starve (in fact, we could never have evolved in the first place). Carbon dioxide is the basis of the Earth’s food chain. It is also the source of all the carbon embodied in the fossil fuels our industrial economy depends on.

Not only that, the photosynthesis process is also the source of the oxygen in the air. We humans (and almost all animals) require oxygen to metabolise, and without oxygen we would suffocate. In fact, as the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere increases, the rate of production of carbon-fixation in organic matter also increases. This is the well-known “carbon fertilisation effect”, and it is exploited commercially in Dutch (and other) greenhouses. It is said that crop production could increase by up to 15 percent in a more carbon-intensive world.

Furthermore (the argument continues), the ozone layer in the stratosphere protects us (and all terrestrial species) from the harmful effects of ultra-violet (UV) radiation. Ozone is a reactive form of oxygen (O3) that is created in the stratosphere by that same UV radiation from the sun. The ozone layer exists because of the oxygen in the atmosphere, which exists because of photosynthesis. Clearly, atmospheric carbon dioxide plays an essential role in the natural world. We could not live without it.

However, most of the climate sceptics and deniers don’t argue on the basis of carbon dioxide and photosynthesis. The majority argue that the science is flawed and the true effect of carbon dioxide concentration in the atmosphere is unproven. There have been vicious attacks on individuals as well as institutions researching climate change. For instance, Lord Christopher Monckton of Brenchley calls it a “climate scam”, adding that the scientific endeavour and policymaking on climate change is “the biggest transfer of wealth in human history from the poor to the rich, from the little guy to the big guy, from the governed to those who profit by governing them.”

But there is no alternative non-anthropogenic theory to explain rising temperatures and therefore melting glaciers, sea level rises and ocean acidification. To invoke “natural variation” is not a theory about causes.

The “pause”

Another recent dispute has focused on the so-called “pause” in climate warming after 1998. If one cherry picks the data, then it seems that there was a slowdown in the rate of temperature increase in recent years.

Figure 1 below shows a graph that was widely circulated in the media (by nay-sayers) allegedly proving that the global temperature did not actually increase for a long period of time. The yellow-shaded area represents the range of 1990 IPCC projections, as contrasted with actual temperature measurements.

Figure 1. IPCC over-prediction from 1990 Report

Part of the discrepancy suggested by this graph turns out to have been based on an erroneous temperature database based on satellite data measurements that had not been correctly “converted” to surface temperatures.

The climate sceptics who stress the discrepancy have made several mistakes. First, they got hold of a (leaked) draft of the fourth IPCC Assessment Report (AR) that was visually misleading because of an erroneous misalignment of observations with trends in the year 1990. A number of nay-sayers published this misleading graph on the web and claimed that it proved that there was no climate warming from 1998 to 2012. The error was corrected in the final AR4, but the naysayers did not retract their claims.

Their next mistake was to confuse the average of all model projections with the actual warming trend. The model projections reflect a wide variety of assumptions about natural variability as well as human activity. But these assumptions show the range of possibilities, not the most likely temperature trajectory.

Third, the nay-sayers who prepared Figure 1 engaged in blatant “cherry-picking” of the start and end dates of the period for which they claim there was no warming. The next graph (Figure 2) shows how different choices of start and end dates for 15-year periods can distort the results. The temperature data are from NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies.

Figure 2. NASA GISS

Note that the long-term trend (1951-2012 black dotted line), shows a consistent temperature increase over the 61-year period, whereas the period 1998-2012 (blue line) shows very little increase (50 percent less than the long-term rate) because of the very warm starting year (a very strong El Nino), while the period 1992-2006 (the red line) shows a 50 percent greater increase, because of the very mild starting year (due to the eruption of the volcano Pinatubo). Note also that 2015-16 (beyond the range of the chart) is another very strong El Nino year that will make the rate of temperature increase look greater again.

Notwithstanding the points made above, it is true that the surface warming trend from 1998 through 2014 was slower than the model predictions from 1990, or even later ones. In other words, there has been a “pause” although not outside the range of recent model projections. This point has been acknowledged in the IPCC AR5 report. The key point is that the models are not (yet) capable of making accurate forecasts of short-term (10-15 year) climate changes. However, the models, tested by backcasting, appear to be reasonably accurate over longer periods.

In the interests of fairness, we can entertain the deniers to an extent on their claim that the IPCC has consistently overestimated its temperature projections. We now know that the original forecasts were considerably off. The forecasts were based on “General Circulation Models” – mathematical models measuring temperature variations in the circulation of the air, ocean and land – were fairly crude in 1990. For instance, there was little information about the temperature of the ocean so scientists relied on data from ships at sea to report on ocean temperatures at particular times in particular places. But since then, the Argo Programme has been launched, which consists of 4,000 bathythermographs (torpedo-shaped probes, floating in the ocean) measuring temperatures as far down as 2,000 meters. Placed in temperate oceans, these probes have drastically improved our coverage of ocean temperatures and therefore the quality of data in the models, improving model forecasting capability significantly.

This is particularly important to building an accurate understanding of the climate, which is a difficult job in the absence of key data. The IPCC has to take into account not just ocean temperatures but air and land temperatures as well. Cloud dynamics and the sea-land and ocean-air interfaces are especially critical.

Despite the IPCC’s acknowledged model weaknesses, the long-term trend is not in doubt. The climate is heating up. The evidence suggests CO2 emissions are the cause and an evidence-based alternative theory is something deniers lack. Another line of debate involves “climate sensitivity”, i.e. by how much the temperature actually rises with CO2 levels. But I will save that for my next piece.