Given the way the exercise was structured, there was no way of ruling out scenarios that were mutually exclusive (e.g., a decline in the European economy but an increase in European defense spending). Most importantly, there was no way to explore the ways in which any of the posited outcomes might interact synergistically to produce entirely novel and unexpected results. We cannot make accurate predictions in many key areas of life, but neither can we throw our hands up in the face of uncertainty, contingency, and unpredictability. In a complex society, individuals, organizations, and states require a high degree of confidence in the short-term future and a reasonable degree of confidence in the longer-term future to make plans and commit themselves to decisions, investments, and policies. Consider the real estate market. In the absence of some assurance about future interest rates, banks could not offer mortgages—or offer them at rates anyone could afford—houses could not be bought or sold, people could not move to accept jobs—even they could be offered—and the economy would go into a precipitous decline.

Our second strategy for coping with uncertainty is denial. We convince ourselves that the future will more or less resemble the past or deviate from it in predictable and manageable ways. We remain unreasonably confident in this belief despite the dramatic discontinuities of even the recent past—consider the end of the Cold War, the breakup of the Soviet Union, the events of 9/11, and the sharp downturn in the economy produced by synergistic interaction of the bursting of the dot.com bubble, 9/11, and corporate corruption. The so-called behavioral revolution in social science is part and parcel of this project. Its bedrock assumption is that the social environment is sufficiently ordered to be described by universal, or at least widely applicable, laws. These supposed regularities allow for some degree of prediction. Faith in this project has hardly diminished despite the inability of several generations of behavioral 'scientists' to discover such laws or make any but the most banal predictions with any degree of success. Political scientists, sociologists, and economists were largely blind-sided by all the major changes that occurred in recent years (i.e., the end of the Cold War, rise of the religious right, and the recession in the late 1990s and early 2000s). Key theories from these disciplines—especially those from international relations—have also been wrong on a series of lesser predictions.

The topic is one of the most highly politicized areas in science journalism today. It's not surprising, given that so much is at stake. Environmentalists fear for the very future of the planet, while conservative politicians and energy industry leaders dread pollution controls that could threaten the nation's prosperity. As with all controversial issues, stakeholders on both sides are quick to attack reports—and reporters—that do not promote their point of view. I have been criticized by conservative think tanks for overplaying the potential dangers of climate change and scolded by environmentalists for downplaying those same dangers. It gives me solace to think that if I am aggravating both sides, then I am being fair. Critics of climate change coverage are right to some extent. The area, in my opinion, is among the most poorly covered in science journalism. This is because politically motivated campaigns of misinformation muddy the issue and because the science of climate—both highly complex and uncertain—is difficult to convey. Much climate change coverage exaggerates potential problems or greatly oversimplifies the issues. Reports are spotty at best, coming in droves when a particularly large piece of ice breaks off of Antarctica or there is a heat wave on the East Coast, but evaporating with the cool of autumn. Events from malaria outbreaks to species declines are attributed to climate change without adequate proof. Climate change coverage too often falls through the cracks between beats. Climate is not only a science story. It is a political story, a foreign story, and a business story as well. It would be best if climate were covered from all of these myriad angles; more commonly, no one takes ownership of it. Science writers, with their technical expertise, ability to translate jargon, and patience with details, are in prime position to be on the front lines of climate coverage—perhaps with occasional forays into political and economic terrain when necessary. The topic, with its interminable feedback loops and references to past epochs, can be intimidating. But climate change—and the controversy that surrounds it—is not going anywhere for the foreseeable future. It will become even more important if and when the effects of warming become more dramatic. Here are my thoughts on the difficulties that can ensnare those who cover climate change, and how to avoid them.

The Politics For years, various groups espousing the view that Earth is not warming have hijacked the doctrine of fairness that journalists try to abide by. In other words, when a reporter quotes a scientist saying Earth has warmed and climate change appears to be a potential problem, she often will quote someone else who says the opposite. This 50/50 approach ignores the growing consensus among scientists (and even among politicians) on global warming. I learned a similar lesson about fairness while in Washington covering a debate over whether homosexuality could be cured—an idea put forth by some religious groups. One proponent was a psychiatrist and member of the American Psychiatric Association. Almost all of the other APA members opposed his view and believed this "cure" would do harm. The association put out a position paper saying so. It would have been irresponsible to the reader to quote the one psychiatrist who was in favor of trying to cure homosexuality and quote one who was against it. This "he said, she said" journalism fails the reader by omitting the context that the person in favor of curing homosexuality is in a slim minority among his peers. The same is true for climate change. It is important to provide the context of the larger scientific opinion. It is also key to identify the speakers on each side of the issue and, if they are speaking about science, their scientific credentials. An ecologist concerned about species decline due to climate change is not an authority on the science of greenhouse gases. An economist concerned about regulations on the coal industry is not a scientific authority, either. You can also ask people you are interviewing to identify their funding sources as a key to their motivations. Do they receive money from the energy industry? The World Wildlife Fund? The National Science Foundation? A think tank with some political leaning? It is important not to subtly malign those who hold minority viewpoints. Labeling someone a skeptic, a naysayer, or a fringe thinker marginalizes his or her point of view. And keep an open mind. Someone who is in the minority today may yet turn out to be right in the future. You don't want to be embarrassed in the future with articles that go overboard—like the slate of magazine articles in the '70s that warned of the coming Ice Age. Make sure to return to those with critical opinions for fresh viewpoints. Just as scientific thinking evolves, the response to it evolves as well. Be on guard against people who want to use or deny science to push their political agenda. This is true of the oil, coal, gas, and auto industries, which fund various outreach programs fighting limits on carbon output. The same warning holds for environmental groups, which can exaggerate the impact of climate change to stoke public interest or further fundraising. One example? Reports that polar bears could become extinct in coming decades. While the animals are stressed at the southern boundaries of their range, most polar bear experts think these predators are in no danger of immediate extinction. Another widespread report suggested that malaria outbreaks in Africa were increasing because of climate change. A different analysis pinned the outbreaks on the diversion of public health money in Africa from malaria to AIDS. Dramatic claims require careful reporting and analysis. How do you counter political manipulations? With the facts. Or in this case, where the facts aren't always so easily agreed upon, with the latest consensus. The best place to get consensus thinking is from current NAS (National Academy of Sciences) or IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) reports. While some will argue that these in themselves are political documents, I argue that they are not. These reports condense large amounts of current research from a wide range of sources. They are put together and approved by groups of scientists, including those critical of the mainstream scientific thinking on global warming.

Ukrainian Orthodox and Catholic Churches share historic, ritual, and national heritages. Popular culture incorporated many ancient pagan rituals into a folk version of Christianity. Orthodox priests still perform exorcisms by the canon of Saint Basil the Great. The Holy Virgin icon and the spring of the Pochaiv Orthodox Monastery are believed to have miraculous healing powers. Zarvanytsia in western Ukraine is a place of holy pilgrimage for Ukrainian Catholics. The grave of the founding rabbi of Hassidism, situated near Uman', is a pilgrimage site for Hasidic Jews. Ukrainians observe ancient funeral traditions very faithfully. A collective repast follows funeral services and is repeated on the ninth and fortieth days and then again at six and twelve months. An annual remembrance day called Provody on the Sunday after Easter gathers families at ancestral graves to see off once again the souls of the departed. Provody is widely observed in contemporary Ukraine. Under the Soviets it symbolized an ancient tradition. Its Christian symbolism represents Christ's victory over death. Its pre-Christian roots are attuned to the rebirth of nature in the spring and to an ancient ancestors' cult.

There are several secular official holidays in Ukraine, some left over from Soviet times. The International Women's Day, 8 March, is celebrated now in the same context as Mother's Day: men present small gifts and flowers to all women family members and work colleagues. Victory Day, 9 May, became a day of remembrance of those who died in World War II. Constitution Day is 28 June. Independence Day, 24 August, is celebrated with military parades and fireworks.

Most people are aware financial markets play an important role in our economy—indeed, in our society—because financial markets are reputedly the grease in our economy that keeps the wheels of enterprise turning. Yet few of us stop to consider what is actually playing out in the frenzied activity in these markets or how and why financial markets fulfill so many important roles in the economic process. Most obvious, but also most significant, financial markets are markets, where exchanges take place between two parties offering to buy or sell bits and pieces of corporate ownership, private and public debts, and derivative instruments, all of which appear in countless varieties. Each party is seeking a different objective from the other side, but the market enables the parties to settle on a price that is satisfactory to both of them. Indeed, if the two parties did not have different views, buyers could never find sellers, and vice versa. Boom and bust are what occurs when everybody agrees about what the future holds.

We instinctively think of financial markets as centers where buyers are looking for undervalued assets and sellers are shedding what they perceive as overvalued assets—in other words, where the price is seldom "right." But the search for value, or for alpha, is only a part of what goes on in financial markets, and often only a small part. Transactions in these markets can vary widely in their objectives, because financial markets are a place where owners of outstanding assets can convert those assets into cash, or where owners of cash can find longer-term uses for their money. In this role, investors who use their cash to buy assets with future cash flows are giving the sellers of those assets the option of realizing in the present the discounted value of those future cash flows. But something more profound is going on. In this kind of role, financial markets are a time machine that allows selling investors to compress the future into the present and buying investors to stretch the present into the future. Without financial markets, all assets would be buy-and-hold, and the cost of capital would be an order of magnitude higher than it is today. Some of these kinds of transactions arise because one side or the other sees an opportunity to buy a bargain or to sell an overpriced asset. Either way, the seller is compressing the future into the present by raising cash, while the buyer is stretching the present into the future by committing cash. Bringing buyers and sellers together, financial markets do more than create the time machine swapping money today for money tomorrow.

NIH also produces a monthly newsletter aimed specifically at keeping scientists informed about each other's work as well as about issues and policies bearing on the conduct of research. Annual reports, research reports, and responses to congressional inquiries are often standard responsibilities of government communications offices. Policy offices often employ science writers to write more complicated policy analysis for Congress, remarks for congressional hearings, and statements for advisory councils.

In the early days of Web development, there was a general opinion among scientists and computer experts that with the Web, one had an unlimited resource for disseminating information. The Web wasn't subject to the space limitations of publications, or to the whims of journal editors, and it was free. As the technology has matured, it has become clear that, while the Web is a wonderful resource, limitations on time and resources make it imperfect. Because information on the Web can be updated immediately, expectations are that the information will be constantly current. But this requires having a system in place that prompts subject experts to review content regularly, and enough technical support to update the site daily. Incidentally, Consumer Webwatch found that credibility wasn't based as much on surface issues, such as the quality of visual design, as on the quality of the sources. In fact, designs that were too flashy made the experts question whether the sites were more show than substance. Not surprisingly, the report found that poor grammar and typos made users question the site's authoritativeness.

Nuclear vulnerability distinguished the Soviet-American conflict from conventional conflicts of the past or present. In conventional conflicts, leaders could believe that war might benefit their country. Leaders have often gone to war with this expectation, although more often than not they have been proven wrong. The consequences of war turned out very differently than expected by leaders in Iraq in 1980, Argentina in 1982, and Israel in 1982. Fear of the consequences of nuclear war not only made it exceedingly improbable that either superpower would deliberately seek a military confrontation with the other; it made their leaders extremely reluctant to take any action that they considered would seriously raise the risk of war. Over the years they developed a much better appreciation of each other's interests. In the last years of the Soviet-American conflict, leaders on both sides acknowledged and refrained from any challenge of the other's vital interests. The ultimate irony of nuclear deterrence may be the way in which the strategy of deterrence undercut much of the political stability the reality of deterrence should have created. The arms buildups, threatening military deployments, and the confrontational rhetoric that characterized the strategy of deterrence effectively obscured deep-seated, mutual fears of war. Fear of nuclear war made leaders inwardly cautious, but their public posturing convinced their adversaries that they were aggressive, risk-prone, and even irrational.

Despite the changed political climate that makes it almost inconceivable that either Russia or the United States would initiate nuclear war, there are still influential people in Washington, and possibly in Moscow, who believe that new weapons are necessary to reinforce deterrence. Deeply embedded beliefs are extraordinarily resistant to change. The final claim made for nuclear deterrence is that it helped to end the Cold War. As impeccable a liberal as New York Times columnist Tom Wicker reluctantly conceded that Star Wars and the massive military buildup in the Reagan administration had forced the Soviet Union to reorient its foreign and domestic policies. The conventional wisdom has two components. American military capability and resolve allegedly convinced Soviet leaders that aggression anywhere would meet unyielding opposition. Forty years of arms competition also brought the Soviet economy to the edge of collapse. The Reagan buildup and Star Wars, the argument goes, were the straws that broke the Soviet camel's back. Moscow could not match the increased level of American defense spending and accordingly chose to end the Cold War.

Air pollution has been a significant concern throughout history, with its impacts becoming more pronounced during the Industrial Revolution. Before this period, air pollution was primarily a local issue, with sources such as wood burning and small-scale industries. However, the Industrial Revolution marked a turning point, as the use of coal and the rise of factories led to increased emissions and widespread air quality problems. The twentieth century saw further industrialization and urbanization, exacerbating air pollution issues. By the 1980s and 1990s, awareness of air pollution's health and environmental impacts had grown, leading to regulatory efforts and technological advancements aimed at reducing emissions. Looking to the future, continued efforts are necessary to address the challenges posed by air pollution, including the development of cleaner technologies and more effective policies.

Air pollution can occur on different scales, ranging from local to global. Local air pollution problems are often associated with specific sources, such as factories or vehicles, and can have immediate impacts on nearby communities. Urban air pollution is a more widespread issue, affecting large cities and metropolitan areas. Regional air pollution problems can cross political boundaries, impacting entire regions or countries. Continental air pollution issues, such as acid rain, can affect large areas across multiple countries. Finally, global air pollution problems, such as climate change and ozone depletion, have far-reaching impacts on the entire planet. Addressing air pollution requires a comprehensive understanding of these different scales and the development of appropriate strategies to manage and reduce emissions.

These families may consist of unmarried couples or single parents, gay couples and their children, or gay families without children. Infant care varies by class. In New York City, it is common to see women of Dominican and West Indian descent caring for white children. Wealthy people often employ nannies to care for infants. Nannies, who often have children of their own, may have to rely on family members or their older children to watch over their infants. Wealthy or poor, the majority of mothers work outside the home. This, coupled with the fact that many people cannot rely on their extended families to help care for their newborns, makes infant care a challenge. Some employers offer short maternity leaves for mothers and increasingly, paternity leaves for fathers who are primary caregivers.

The level of educational achievement is high. Most Americans complete high school, and almost half receive at least some college education. Almost one-quarter of the population has completed four or more years of college. Rates of graduation from high school and college attendance are significantly lower for African-Americans and Hispanics than for whites. The quality and availability of colleges and universities are excellent, but a university education is not funded by the state as it is in many Western industrialized nations. The cost of higher education has soared and ranges from a few thousand dollars annually at public institutions to more than ten thousand dollars a year at private institutions. In elite private colleges, the cost of tuition exceeds $20,000 a year. Among the middle classes, paying for college is a source of anxiety for parents from the moment their children are born. Students from middle-income and low-income families often pay for college with student loans, and the size of these debts is on the increase.

All I hope for in my own work and that of others is an effort to refine purely news-driven instincts, to try to understand—and convey—the tentative nature of scientific knowledge, to retain at least some shades of gray in all that black and white. The Environment The Great Divide There is one way that journalists dealing with the environment can start working on building reflexes that improve that balance of heat and light, boost the ability to convey the complex without putting readers (or editors) to sleep, and otherwise attempt to break the barriers to effective communication with the public. This is to communicate more with scientists. By getting a better feel for the breakthrough–setback rhythms of research, a reporter is less likely to forget that the state of knowledge about endocrine disruptors or PCBs or climate is in flux. This requires using those rare quiet moments between breaking-news days—sure, there aren't many—to talk to ecologists or toxicologists who aren't on the spot because their university has just issued a press release. The more scientists and journalists talk outside the pressures of a daily news deadline, the more likely it is that the public—through the media—will appreciate what science can and cannot offer to the debate over difficult questions about how to invest scarce resources or change personal behaviors. There is another reason to do this. Just as the public has become cynical about the value of news, many scientists have become cynical, and fearful, about journalism. Some of this is their fault, too. I was at a meeting in Irvine, California, on building better bridges between science and the public, and one researcher stood up to recount her personal "horror story" about how a reporter totally misrepresented her statements and got everything wrong. I asked her if she had called the reporter or newspaper to begin a dialogue not only on fixing those errors, but preventing future ones. She had not. She had never even considered it. Until the atmosphere has changed to the point where that scientist can make that call, and the reporter respond to it, everyone has a lot of work to do.

I say this only to separate nature writing from "environmental reporting," which tends at once to be less preoccupied with metaphysics and more with chronicling the endless tug of war in politics, economics, and environmental advocacy. The fields overlap; they both, for example, rely substantially on field research. But where environmental reporters might use this research to bolster a particular argument, a nature writer might use it as a prompt for meditation. The prospect of a manned mission to Mars provides ample opportunities for both. So does an ocean made barren by overfishing, or a plan to reintroduce the wolf. Science, in other words, can be used as an end, as an advance in an ongoing story, or it can be used as a means, to open our eyes to see larger and larger contexts. Since so much of nature writing concerns itself with the nonhuman world, one of the struggles is to figure out how to describe and muse about things to which humans have limited access. To my mind, a nature writer has the challenge of the poet: With lofty, often abstract imaginative aspirations, he or she must find the most vivid details with which to express them. Aldo Leopold, watching the "fierce green fire" drain from the eyes of a wolf he has just killed, realizes he must stop thinking like a man and start thinking like a mountain. Rachel Carson, remembering trucks driving through mid-century suburban neighborhoods spraying lawns with DDT, makes us see not just the hazards of pesticides but the hubris of technology itself. DDT is a subject for environmental reporting. Hubris is a subject for nature writing. Teaching this idea to my students, I often draw a diagram of a small circle with an arrow pointing to a large circle. The larger circle is the abstract idea: species extinction, global warming, the biology of death, the mind of a wolf. The smaller circle is the detail, the observation, the interview, the expedition, that gives the reader access to the larger idea. In some ways, filling the smaller circle is as hard as filling the first. Given an impulse to explore abstract ideas, how do we devise a narrative strategy to get the ideas across? How can we concoct the teaspoon of sugar to help the medicine go down? Bookshelves are full of excellent examples, any one of which can be read as models of structure and tone. The one thing most have in common, like any good piece of nonfiction writing, is a narrative arc: tales of expeditions, natural disaster, spiritual pilgrimage, ethnography, or scientific exploration that serve as a frame on which to stretch larger philosophical questions. David Quammen says this nicely in his essay "Synecdoche and the Trout" in Wild Thoughts from Wild Places: A trout is both a fish and an idea, a representation of something larger, in this case an entire ecosystem. The trick for the nature writer is to remember both the trout and the watershed. Write statistically about the numbers of trout living in a single stream and you miss both larger ecological implications and the metaphysics of a creature whose essence you can only approximate. Write abstractly about the health of the northern Rockies and you miss the poetic specificity of the fish. Good writing needs both.

As we shall see, Merton, Shiller, and Lo are all finding new ways to use and even invent institutions to cushion risks and improve outcomes in a wide variety of areas. Merton is the son of the great sociologist, Robert K. Merton, who had a profound intellectual influence on him and on his approaches to understanding problems. Merton Senior's sociological sense has inspired Merton Junior's fascination with the essential role of institutions, because the functions of institutions can actually change the form of the whole investment process. Institutions perform functions for individual investors that individuals could never perform for themselves. This view does not mean institutions are immune from behavioral features. Group decisions of the members of the investment committees of foundations, endowments, pension funds, and mutual funds have their own systematic behavioral quirks. While we would hope their individual behavior among a group of professionals would be more coolly analytical than untrained individual investors operating on their own, that may be too much to ask. The issue is not just that these members of committees are human beings like everyone else. Many of the mispricings and anomalies arising from group decisions will be different from the anomalies created by individuals acting alone. Agency problems are inescapable. Investment committees are always sensitive to peer pressures from other funds, especially those outperforming them. Committees have to face the judgments of the management of the company sponsoring the fund, whether it is a pension fund, an endowment, or a foundation. No committee member is likely to stay on the board for the life of the fund, because nobody is likely to live that long, but the relative brevity of their tenure naturally biases their views toward outcomes shorter in term than the expected life of the fund. Yet Merton is sanguine about the long-run impact of institutions on the functioning of the capital markets. He is convinced that innovations developed by profit-seeking institutions, like mutual funds and insurance companies, can mitigate and even overcome the behavioral anomalies and market inefficiencies created by individual investors in the real world. In economics, it is the lowest-cost producers that determine market prices. Institutional innovation and competition are forces for the reduction of transactions costs and the allocational effects of behavioral dysfunctions. As these forces come increasingly into play, 'The prediction of the neoclassical model [Capital Ideas] will be approximately valid for asset prices and resource allocation.' Merton has written extensively about this vision. A paper he coauthored in 2005 with Zvi Bodie of Boston University sums up many of his ideas and proposals for bringing together the neoclassical, the institutional, and the behavioral perspectives on finance. Merton and Bodie call their goal of synthesizing these three perspectives Functional and Structural Finance. In their view, 'This analysis has direct implications for the process of investment management and for prospective evolution of the asset management industry.'

The power of innovative institutions to change markets is clear from just a few examples, which Merton and Bodie place under the heading of 'the financial innovation spiral.' Money market funds now compete with banks and thrifts for household savings. Securitization of auto loans and credit card receivables has intensified competition among financial institutions as sources for these purposes. High-yield bonds have liberated many companies from the icy grip of their commercial bankers. In national mortgage markets, many institutions have developed into major alternatives to thrifts as a source for residential mortgages. These institutional innovations have improved the lot of consumers and business firms by reducing the costs of the services they require. Merton is convinced that the most fruitful source for continuing the spiral of financial innovation will develop primarily from the valuation of options, or, more precisely, of contingent claims—the contribution to the theory of finance for which he earned the Nobel Prize. Merton had joined up with Fischer Black and Myron Scholes in their search for the valuation of options in the spring of 1970, because he doubted they were on the right track in their conviction that the Capital Asset Pricing Model would produce the right answer. He unlocked the puzzle they were trying to solve by offering them the concept of a replicating portfolio—a portfolio combining the underlying asset with cash or borrowing. The replicating portfolio's holding of the underlying asset would vary depending upon the movement of the asset's price above and below the strike price of the option. Although designed to mimic changes in the valuation of the option, the replicating portfolio would perform this function with precision only when the dynamic trading it involves can be executed in a world without frictions—instant responses, no brokerage commissions, no spreads between bid and ask, no closing times for the markets, no taxes. Under those conditions, choosing between the option or the replicating portfolio would be a matter of indifference. In fact, if this frictionless environment were available to all investors, the option would be redundant. Just two assets could create any kind of contingent contract, providing for all kinds of payoffs. The real world is something else again. Transactions costs get in the way, because the replicating portfolio is continuously trading into and out of the underlying asset, such as stocks and cash. As a result, the replicating portfolio cannot precisely mimic the value of the option as conditions change in the real world. An effort to construct a practical application of the replicating portfolio took place in the mid-1980s, when two academics introduced a strategy they called portfolio insurance. The goal of portfolio insurance was to have the portfolio perform as though the owner had bought a put option on the S&P 500. Under this strategy, the client's portfolio moved systematically from stocks to cash when the market was falling and from cash to stocks when the market was rising.