An outbreak of common sense at The Guardian? (And I get to talk about airships)

If the figures in this article in the Guardian are correct, it really does make all the European panic about flying and greenhouse gases sound rather ridiculous:

UN scientists from the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) estimate aviation's contribution to global carbon emissions to be just 2%. To put things in perspective, road traffic contributes 18% globally, while the fossil fuels used to generate heat and power contribute 35%.

"But you are growing uncontrollably," is the usual retort. Our industry is growing at between 5 and 6% per year because people want to travel. The biggest growth is in rapidly developing economies, such as China, India and eastern Europe. Their hard-earned wealth is helping them to travel the world. This is balanced by slower growth in more mature markets. And the net impact - estimated by the IPCC - is that aviation's contribution may grow to 3% by 2050.

And further down:

...I am not arguing that aviation should be left alone to pollute as it sees fit. Consume less fuel and you emit less carbon. Aeroplane manufacturers understand. Over the past 40 years - starting long before Kyoto - fuel efficiency improved 70%. And the next generation of aircraft will have a fuel efficiency of just three litres per 100 passenger kilometres. That is much better than any hybrid car on the market.

Airlines have also understood. In the past two years, fuel efficiency has improved 5%. They are doing everything from making spoons lighter, to optimising the amount of water in toilets.

Our own association's efforts to straighten routes, reduce congestion and eliminate delays slashed carbon emissions by more than 12m tonnes in 2005 - equivalent to removing 3m cars from Britain's roads.

Damn. One of the cooler things I wanted to see come out of an anti greenhouse gas campaign was a return of the large scale passenger airship. Sounds like it is hardly necessary.

Of course, airships are inherently lovely anyway, and there always seems to be some company hoping to be about to revive the giant airship. Popular Mechanics ran this article recently about "hybrid airships" which are an interesting idea:

Hybrid airships use gas to generate 30 to 80 percent of the lift they need to get off the ground, and depend on aerodynamic lift--the flow of air over wings or fuselage--for the rest. That means that when hybrids stop moving through the air, they sink. The advantage? Once on the ground, they stay put. A major problem for conventional airships is the difficulty in handling them on the ground. Large and buoyant, they're always eager to fly away on the slightest breeze. The Goodyear blimp requires 17 handlers; the zeppelins of the '20s and '30s employed hundreds.

Defence in the US had paid money (under its nicely named but defunct "Walrus" program) to investigate these heavy lift airship-ish things, but whether a large scale one will ever be built seems unclear. Companies that like to talk up airships often come up with nice graphics and concept illustrations. Aeros Corporation's is worth looking at.

The PM article, and this website, talk about hybrid airships with a load capacity of up to 500 tons. How that compare to airplanes? According to this article, a new variant of the 747 will carry 154 tons of freight. A 500 ton capacity Walrus derived airship could therefore presumably carry a lot of people. I guess you would only need build one a fraction of that size.

I would have thought that their use around Europe would have been most appropriate. The distances make for more reasonable travel times, with lots of nice scenery to look at .

An interesting snippet

From the PM's commission's report on the feasibility of nuclear power in Australia:

Compared with other non-combustion
technologies, such as solar and wind power,
nuclear power requires a much smaller footprint
for equivalent power generation. A current 900 MW
nuclear power plant, with a footprint of less than
1 km2, would produce as much electricity in a year
as 70 km2 of solar photovoltaic panels, or about
1000 wind turbines, taking into account the
efficiencies, availabilities and capacity factors.

If it's good for the goose ...

If these Imams had read my earlier post here, they would know that demonstrative praying on airplanes is just not a way to make your fellow passengers feel relaxed and comfortable. (My post in September was about a Jewish fellow who was asked to leave an airplane for praying while seated and "lurching back and forth" in the Jewish manner. By the way, is there a reason for that custom?)

The Imams style of prayer was a little more obvious:

Three of them stood and said their normal evening prayers together on the plane, as 1.7 billion Muslims around the world do every day, Shahin said. He attributed any concerns by passengers or crew to ignorance about Islam.

Well I assume those 1.7 billion don't include people like pilots on final approach to landing. There is an exemption allowed for not being in an appropriate situation to say your prayers openly, isn't there?

The 6 Imams were asked to leave:

A passenger initially raised concerns about the group through a note passed to a flight attendant, according to Andrea Rader, a spokeswoman for US Airways. She said police were called after the captain and airport security workers asked the men to leave the plane and the men refused.

Maybe, for the hard of learning, airports need to put large signs at boarding gates: "Kindly refrain from praying in an obvious manner while on board the aircraft, to ensure there are no misunderstandings, delays or arrests."

Hitchens on Baker

Hitchen's latest article in Slate hits out at the rise of James Baker and "realism" as the possible solution to the Iraq problem. On the idea of negotiating with Syria and Iran, Hitchens makes the valid enough point:

Given that these two regimes have recently succeeded in destroying the other most hopeful democratic experiment in the region—the brief emergence of a self-determined Lebanon that was free of foreign occupation—and are busily engaged in promoting their own version of sectarian mayhem there, through the trusty medium of Hezbollah, it looks as if a distinctly unsentimental process is under way.

This will present few difficulties to Baker, who supported the Syrian near-annexation of Lebanon. In order to recruit the Baathist regime of Hafez Assad to his coalition of the cynical against Saddam in the Kuwait war, Baker and Bush senior both acquiesced in the obliteration of Lebanese sovereignty. "I believe in talking to your enemies," said Baker last month—invoking what is certainly a principle of diplomacy. In this instance, however, it will surely seem to him to be more like talking to old friends—who just happen to be supplying the sinews of war to those who kill American soldiers and Iraqi civilians. Is it likely that they will stop doing this once they become convinced that an American withdrawal is only a matter of time?

It's also hard for America to deal with Iran when its nutty president (Iran's I mean!) is feeling so cock-a-hoop about appearing to have the US over a barrel with regard to its nuclear program.

UPDATE: Kind of unusual to find the New Yorker running a commentary piece that is in complete agreement with Hitchen's take on Iraq. But there it is.

Breathe deeply

Just an interesting short article in New Scientist:

Alzheimer's disease has a range of disparate risk factors, but researchers may now have found one underlying cause that links them all: a lack of oxygen.

Previous studies have shown that diabetes, stroke, clogged arteries and ageing all increase the risk of developing Alzheimer’s. Only 5% of cases appear to have been strongly influenced by genetic factors. Now evidence has emerged that lack of oxygen may be the ultimate cause.

Weihong Song at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada, and colleagues took mice engineered to develop Alzheimer’s-like plaques and put them in a hypoxia chamber, which limits the amount of available oxygen. For 16 hours per day, for one month, the mice received less than 40% of the oxygen they normally use.

Six months later, the oxygen-deprived mice had developed twice as many beta-amyloid plaques – the hallmark of Alzheimer’s disease – compared with similar mice kept in normal conditions. The hypoxic mice also performed worse on memory tests.

I guess it would account for why exercise helps prevent it too?

Reactors to think about

An interesting call in the SMH this morning for the government to think about innovative type of reactors if they are going to go nuclear. This article advocates "accelerator-driven" thorium reactors, about which I have read little. They sound promising in several respects:

The beauty of this approach is that the reaction and energy production is only sustained as long as the proton beam is on.

With this type of thorium reactor there is no possibility of fission continuing when the proton beam is off. This means that thorium reactors are sub-critical devices which cannot maintain a self-sustaining chain reaction, and hence there is no chance of Chernobyl-style meltdown.

Australia has abundant supplies of thorium. Unlike uranium, thorium doesn't need significant enriching because it is more than 500 times more abundant in nature than uranium, which should make it cheaper to extract and process.

Thorium reactors produce lower volumes of shorter-lived waste products than conventional reactors. Accelerator-driven thorium reactors do not produce significant quantities of plutonium-239 or U-235 either, so the technology could be supplied to countries such as North Korea and Iran in the knowledge that it could not be used to produce nuclear weapons.

A pretty detailed article from Cosmos magazine gives some more information. It all sounds promising, although I wonder about the reliability of the accelerators that would be needed. If it breaks down, you have no power by the sounds.

Maybe I have to switch allegiance to this type of reactor instead of the Pebble Bed. (Mind you, it sounds to me like Pebble Bed reactors are a lot closer to real testing and commercial application.)

I do think that if nuclear power stations are to be built in Australia, they really ought to go with the most modern concepts, and not simply build an existing model.

Hard to know what title to use for this one...

From the Jerusalem Post, a story on the big difference between infant mortality rates between Jews and Muslim Arabs in Israel:

The gap in infant mortality rates between the Jewish and Arab sector declined last year compared to 2004, with deaths in Jewish infants remaining the same at 3.2 per 1,000 live births and a drop from 8.9 to 8.0 among Muslim Arabs.

The death rate among Christian Arabs is only slightly higher than the Jewish rate.

The reason, stated in a matter-of-fact way that indicates there might not be any medical controversy about this, is given as follows:

The significantly higher infant mortality rate among Muslim infants is largely due to consanguinity (inbreeding or marriage of first cousins) that causes congenital defects and metabolic disorders. The lower socio-economic level of Muslim Israelis also explains the excess of infant deaths compared to Jewish babies.

Arabs giving birth in Israel, however, enjoy much better odds than their brethren in neighboring Middle East countries. In Syria the infant mortality rate stands at 28.61 deaths per 1,000 births; in Jordan 16.76; in Iran 40.3; in Egypt 31.33; in Iraq 48.64 and in Lebanon 23.72.

The ministry report said the figures require primary prevention of infant mortality among the whole population, with a focus on the Muslim population, especially Beduins in the south. More intensive efforts should be made to discourage consanguinity), improving genetic counseling and prenatal diagnosis and boosting the use of folic acid in women of childbearing age, the report said.

One would have thought that this would be taken more seriously as a reason against marrying cousins in Muslim countries.

Tidying up for the Second Coming

According to one report in the English press, Jesus and Mary are making appearances to the devout in a church in Cannes (of all places). This is not the type of apparition that sounds worth having:

Church-goer Rita Gomez, who helps run the prayer group, said: "The visions usually begin with the whole building trembling in the middle of a prayer meeting.

"Then various worshippers will fall off their seats shaking violently or being sick. When they come round a few minutes later, they say Christ or the Holy Virgin has appeared and spoken to them."

One 14-year-old girl had fits and began smashing windows, then began bleeding 'pinkish-yellow' blood, Miss Gomez said.

She added: "This might sound like the work of the devil rather than God, but everyone who experiences a vision says it was Jesus and Mary that appeared to them."

I am not sure that there is any biblical basis for believing that divine apparitions would make you feel sick. Epilepsy, on the other hand...

Anyway, what are the messages that some say they are getting?:

Worshipper Emmanuel Duchamp, 38, said he saw Christ 'standing before him' in the church.

He added: "I wasn't ill, but I was overcome with a very warm feeling. Then Jesus started talking and I began writing down everything he told me. It was about cleaning my house and cleaning the homes of others to prepare for the coming of the Lord."

This would have to be one of most mundane messages ever received from an apparition.

(Reminds me too of the part in Pratchett and Gaiman's "Good Omens" about how a character's ability to see into the future was like looking down a long narrow tube, with snippets of information being picked up without context, and accordingly hard to interpret. For example, one message from the 1970's had been "don't buy Betamax". I hope I am remembering this correctly.)

Why I don't invest in properties with ocean views

(Well, apart from the fact that I have no spare money, that is.)

This article missed my attention last week, but it's a good one from the New York Times, about research into the question of whether ocean hitting asteroids have caused gigantic tsunamis within very recent times (the last 10,000 years.) The story opens:

At the southern end of Madagascar lie four enormous wedge-shaped sediment deposits, called chevrons, that are composed of material from the ocean floor. Each covers twice the area of Manhattan with sediment as deep as the Chrysler Building is high.

On close inspection, the chevron deposits contain deep ocean microfossils that are fused with a medley of metals typically formed by cosmic impacts. And all of them point in the same direction — toward the middle of the Indian Ocean where a newly discovered crater, 18 miles in diameter, lies 12,500 feet below the surface.

The explanation is obvious to some scientists. A large asteroid or comet, the kind that could kill a quarter of the world’s population, smashed into the Indian Ocean 4,800 years ago, producing a tsunami at least 600 feet high, about 13 times as big as the one that inundated Indonesia nearly two years ago. The wave carried the huge deposits of sediment to land.

For those who like thinking about global disasters, there are lots of links about tsunamis generally, including asteroid generated ones, here. For example, there is a link to an article abstract about evidence for 3 tsunamis in the last 10,000 years in the Shetland Islands in Scotland:

Coastal fen- and lake deposits enclose sand layers that record at least three Holocene tsunamis at the Shetland Islands. The oldest is the well-known Storegga tsunami (ca 8100 cal yr BP), which at the Shetlands invaded coastal lakes and ran up peaty hillsides where it deposited sand layers up to 9.2 m above present high tide level. Because sea level at ca 8100 cal yr BP was at least 10–15 m below present day sea level, the runup exceeded 20 m. In two lakes, we also found deposits from a younger tsunami dated to ca 5500 cal yr BP. The sediment facies are similar to those of the Storegga tsunami—rip-up clasts, sand layers, re-deposited material and marine diatoms. Runup was probably more than 10 m. Yet another sand layer in peat outcrops dates to ca 1500 cal yr BP. This sand layer thins and fines inland and was found at two sites 40 km apart and traced to ca 5–6 m above present high tide. The oldest tsunami was generated by the Storegga slide on the Norwegian continental slope. We do not know what triggered the two younger events.

My personal contingency plan if an asteroid hits the Pacific is to get to Toowoomba. It's less than an hour from where I live (at high speed), assuming of course that thousands of cars are not jammed on the 4 lane highway with the same idea.

(By the way: Firefox got stuck while I was typing this and had to be shut down. But I am happy to find that the "restore session" feature of Firefox 2 means my half finished entry had also been saved. Great!)

Target Iran

The Los Angeles Times runs an opinion piece on why Bush should bomb Iranian nuclear facilities, and in the near future.

I would have thought that the alternative scenario set out in Commentary (and mentioned before here) makes more sense, with the only downside being that a long quarantine type campaign of that type allows lots of time for diplomacy to rally against it. As to my idea of use of non-nuclear E bombs, it seems I may have forgotten to link to this site before, which explains the idea in some detail. (One problem - it seems unclear the extent to which such weapons have been tested.) Still, as far as I can tell, their effects on structures may be fairly minimal.

Hard to believe..

From The Australian today:

Israel is using nanotechnology to create a robot no bigger than a hornet that would be able to chase, photograph and kill its targets.

The flying robot, nicknamed the "bionic hornet", would be able to navigate its way down narrow alleyways to target otherwise unreachable enemies, the Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper reported yesterday.

I'll believe it when I see it.

Mystery disease

Labor leader Kim Beazley's latest example of befuddlement again raises the question as to whether he has suffered neurologically as a result of his illness in 2004.

This was widely reported as being Schaltenbrand's syndrome. What is most surprising about this condition is how infrequently it appears in a Google or any other search I have tried. I can't be the only person who has tried to find medical stuff on this condition, but as it attracts only 3 pages on Google, and most of those links are to storied on Kim Beazley, it must be an extremely rare condition. Either that or it is generally called something else.

Odd science and medicine

* In the New Scientist blog recently there was mention of the surprising long term memories of ... pigeons. Apparently they can memorise around 1,000 pictures. Who'd have thought? Sounds like pretty tedious research to do for the lab technician, though.

* From Slate, a short piece on the increasing need for plastic surgery to make "deflated" obese people look half decent again by removing all the baggy skin and flattened breasts left over after large weight loss. If you really want to see how bad some of the deflated look, you can go here. But not during breakfast, perhaps.

* I've recently been recommending Scott Adam's Dilbert blog. Apart from the humour, it's been interesting to read that he recently re-gained his normal voice, after losing it about 18 months ago. The condition he suffered, Spasmodic Dysphonia, first affected his hand years ago. When he suddenly lost his voice, and several doctors could not diagnose the reason, Adams used Google to find that it was related to the same neurological condition. The story is told by Adams in two posts here and here. This Washington Post story from 2005 talks about the problem in his hand, and has a picture of Adams too. It's a very interesting story, well worth reading.

Recommended reading from the New Yorker

This week's New Yorker has an Anthony Lane review of the new James Bond. Lane seems to have become the most consistently witty and amusing reviewer. For example, writing of star Daniel Craig:

I cannot prove it, but I suspect that God may have designed Craig during a slightly ham-fisted attempt at woodworking. His head is a rough cube, sawed and sanded, with the blue eyes hammered in like nail heads. He could beat a man’s brains out with his brow. That suits the Bond of “Casino Royale,” who has only lately acquired his license to kill, and, like a kid who’s just passed his driving test, is eager to step on the gas. He will slay anyone, if he so wishes, and the news is that he does so wish, and that he worries about the wishing—not enough to stop the killing, although at one point he tenders his resignation to M (Judi Dench), but enough to make him wonder if he’s fit for anything else.

(I like Mark Steyn's reviews too, but his actual taste in movies is perhaps a little different to mine.)

The book review/essay deals with Descartes. Interestingly, one of the author's claims that Descartes is quite misunderstood, and his idea of the dualism of mind and body is not as emphatic as it seemed. (Another explains how Pope John Paul II rather unfairly blames Descartes for starting philosophy's movement away from God.)

Descartes certainly appears to have had an odd and fairly unsettled life. He fathered one daughter to a maid, but she died at 5 of scarlet fever.

[As an aside, it interests me, reading such accounts, to understand how people coped with the death of a loved child in centuries past when child mortality was so high. In the modern world, the death of a child is often seen as one of the biggest challenges to faith for the religious. Certainly, from the a couple of examples I know of - Lincoln's wife (who plunged into depression after a favourite son died) and Darwin (whose loss of faith was apparently more to do with the death of a daughter) - by the 19th century such deaths could come as a big shock. But going back further, did high child mortality lead to low expectations of survival into adulthood, and therefore less trauma for many parents if at least one or two of their kids died? I have heard before that the Victorian era in England sort of romanticised childhood in a way it hadn't been before, and maybe that had some effect too? Or is it just one of those cases where it is hard to find much in the way of detailed records of bereavement feelings the further back you go?]

Anyway, Descartes died at 53 and then his body suffered this fate:

He was buried in Sweden under a simple wooden monument that was allowed to rot. Seventeen years later, his remains were exhumed and taken on a six-month journey to France, except for his right forefinger, which the French Ambassador to Sweden was allowed to keep, and his head, which was removed by a captain in the Swedish guards. In France, his body was exhumed and reburied three more times before coming to rest in a former Benedictine monastery in Saint-Germain-des-Près. The Musée de l’Homme, in the Palais de Chaillot, near the Eiffel Tower, claims to have Descartes’s skull, but the claim is weak. It seems that the great dualist’s head is still missing.

Fascinating.

Borat over exposed

Am I the only person in the world who is puzzled by the incredible over-exposure Sacha Baron Cohen's comedy attracts? For God's sake, even Christopher Hitchens devotes a column to him in Slate (although admittedly for the worthy point of correcting lefties who take the Borat movie as some sort of genuine indictment of American culture.)

I have just never found him all that funny.

Humour time

Now for some light relief. Scott Adams continues to amuse me over at the Dilbert blog.

For example, talking about the recent US elections:

I read that President Bush’s approval rating is less than 1 in 3. Nancy Pelosi, the incoming majority leader for the opposition party is in the same range. In other words, two-thirds of the citizens of the United States believe our leadership could improve if Bush drove his Segway into the majority leader and then over a cliff, assuming Cheney saw it happen and died of a heart attack.

And from his post about intelligence:

After college, I got my first job as a bank teller in the San Francisco financial district. My typical customers were titans of industry. They seemed pretty smart. I wondered how smart I was compared to them. Sure, I earned excellent grades in my tiny high school and small college, but how would I stack up in the real world? Was I smart enough to become a titan of industry?

I decided to take an I.Q. test administered by Mensa, the organization of geniuses. If you score in the top 2% of people who take that same test, you get to call yourself a “genius” and optionally join the group. I squeaked in and immediately joined so I could hang out with the other geniuses and do genius things. I even volunteered to host some meetings at my apartment.

Then, the horror.

It turns out that the people who join Mensa and attend meetings are, on average, not successful titans of industry. They are instead – and I say this with great affection – huge losers. I was making $735 per month and I was like frickin’ Goldfinger in this crowd. We had a guy who was some sort of poet who hoped to one day start “writing some of them down.” We had people who were literally too smart to hold a job. The rest of the group dressed too much like street people to ever get past security for a job interview. And everyone was always available for meetings on weekend nights.

Now I'm a believer

I’m officially ceasing my sitting on the fence about greenhouse gases, but want to make a few things clear.

It is right to worry about greenhouse gases, and to worry quite a lot. For me, the most convincing reason for this is actually not directly the issue of global warming, which still carries uncertainty about its likely extent and its full consequences, but rather ocean acidification.

The recent Scientific American article I posted about here gives good reason to worry about the global situation if CO2 levels ever reach 1000 ppm. (Short explanation: if oceans or seas become sufficiently lacking in oxygen and warm enough, hydrogen sulphide producing bacteria might make enough gas to cause enormous deadly gas bubbles that could wipe out life on nearby land.) The problem is, as noted in my recent post here, the world could get up to 700 ppm by the end of this century, and despite what the Scientific American article says, it would seem it need not take another century beyond that to crack 1,000ppm.

Going back and looking at other articles on ocean acidification, it seems to me that the environmental effects of that are relatively easy to test and accurately predict. (It doesn’t take much to set up a large tank and change the Ph and see what it does to plankton or coral shells.)
As plankton plays a significant role as a CO2 sink in the deep oceans, surface acidification to an extent that would cause a decrease in plankton would also seem to be a major worry for accelerating the rate of increase of atmospheric CO2.

The other issue that gives me concern is that letting CO2 levels get close to 1000 ppm may make it extremely easy for some uncontrollable event to lead to a sudden disastrous global increase. (For example, a supervolcano system suddenly springing to life, or an asteroid hit or two. If I understand it correctly, anything that kicks up a lot of dust would initially cool the earth, but the greater greenhouse gases would eventually kick in.)

That’s my reasoning for deciding that there is not much point in nitpicking over the arguments about how much hotter increased CO2 levels may make the world. Seriously bad effects on the oceans seem certain with sufficiently high CO2 levels anyway.

Of course, Phillip Adams and his ilk are in full gloating “told you so” mode about the fact that politicians on the the Right are starting to sound more serious about the issue. (It seems to me that Adams is wanting to take far more credit for early recognition of the issue than his published columns indicate he deserves.) My impression is that ocean acidification issue has really only started attracting a lot of attention in the last couple of years anyway.

Also, to be clear about my position, there are several things related to global warming of which I remain either dismissive or at least very sceptical:

1. the Kyoto Treaty;

2. wind power;

3. Carbon offset schemes which involve growing trees, especially if they are in areas where bushfires are a distinct possibility. (It is my suspicion that many companies promoting carbon offset schemes are selling snake oil when it comes to their long term effect.)

4. Environmentalists and politicians who claim Pacific Islands are already disappearing from increasing sea levels caused by global warming. (In another 30 years or so, maybe. But hey, just how viable is any 2 metre high island nation built in the middle of the ocean anyway.)

5. Politicians who resist nuclear power on principle.

6. Dismissal of the sun’s role as being possibly significant for temperatures over the next century.

7. Believing that the current Australian drought is necessarily related to global warming.

8. Arguing that current short bouts of surprising cooler weather are a sign that global warming is not true, and that greenhouse gases are not worth worrying about. (Sorry Tim Blair, they are funny, but I think no serious climate scientist is concerned about them disproving the theory.)

9. “The Day after Tomorrow” scenarios to do with the sudden “switching off” of the Atlantic ocean conveyor current. (Real Climate recently chided The Guardian for getting reporting of recent research on this completely wrong.)

10. The more excitable predictions about the number of birds, frogs, spiders, polar bears etc likely to be lost as a result of global warming.

The fact that Rupert Murdoch and me have suddenly reached the same conclusion is, of course, simply a sign that great minds think alike. He's a sharp old codger, isn't he?

Planning for the year 12,000 and beyond

This article, from a publication of the National Academy of Sciences in the US, talks about the fairly silly sounding lengths that the US is forced to go to in its planning for the safe storage of spent nuclear fuel. The Yucca Mountain waste depository is forced by the EPA to met certain standards of exposure in 10,000 years time! And the report even suggested that there was no reason to stick to a nominal period, and "recommended that assessment be performed out to the time of peak risk to a maximally exposed individual, which may be several hundred thousand years in the future." !!

I would like to think that humans will still be around in recognizable form in 10,000 years time, but isn't there a fair chance they will be half robot hybrids who would like to sip on a radioactive spritzer instead of a vodka cocktail? Also, even if the entire planet is one big nuclear waste dump, won't there be somewhere else to live by then?

CO2 on the up and up

Recently I have had a few posts about CO2 levels, and how bad the situation looked for anyone interested in seeing that atmospheric concentrations level out.

Here's a story from Nature that confirms this. (As News@Nature articles tend not to be accessible for long, here's a New Scientist version, but it is not as good.)

From the Nature story:

Global carbon emissions are now growing by 3.2% a year, according to results presented at an Earth science conference in Beijing on 9 November. That's four times higher than the average annual growth of 0.8% from 1990-99.

"We are not on any of the stabilization paths," says Michael Raupach, a carbon-cycle scientist with Australia's Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO) in Canberra, who presented the Global Carbon Project results. ...

"What's really striking is the rate of growth in places like China," says Raupach. According to Chinese figures, China currently contributes some 16% to global emissions, but accounts for 40% of the growth in world emissions.

China's vice premier Hui Liangyu yesterday told the meeting that China, like all countries, suffers from severe weather events that are in part a result of global warming. "The Chinese government attaches great important to global environmental change and actively copes with the related problems," he wrote in a letter to the meeting delegates.

China plans to reduce the amount of its 'energy intensity', defined as the emissions per person per unit of GDP, by 20% by 2010, although it has no official emissions targets.

Sea-level rise is also at the upper end of IPCC projections, adds John Church, who works at CSIRO Marine and Atmospheric Research in Hobart, Tasmania. Analyses published in 2006 have shown that sea level is currently rising at 1.5-2 mm per year, which is in the upper half of the IPCC value of 1-2 mm per year. The rate of the rise is accelerating.

This is expected to lead to an 88 cm rise in sea level by 2100. "We have to start acting soon — it's urgent," says Church. Raupach's results, he says, are "really striking". ...

Armstrong and the Prophet, again

"Muhammad: a prophet for our time" is the second Karen Armstrong biographical book on the founder of Islam. (Does she actually like wearing big "kick me" signs taped on her back?) It's been out for a couple of months but seems to have attracted little in the way of reviews.

This weekend, a review in The Tablet starts off seemingly well, but it doesn't last:

In her elegantly composed and absorbingly narrated story of Muhammad's life and achievements, Karen Armstrong aims at doing just this and even more. She sees Muhammad not only as "a moral exemplar" but also as no less than "Prophet [and not only a prophet] for our time". Her account is based partly on a straightforward and uncritical reading of the work of Muhammad's earliest biographers, taking the Qur'an as her main source of information.

....Armstrong arrives at what seems a contrived interpretation of Muhammad's life: "Muhammad literally sweated with the effort to bring peace to war-torn Arabia, and we need people who are prepared to do this today. His life is a tireless campaign against greed, injustice, and arrogance ... he wore himself out in the effort to evolve an entirely new solution."

For Armstrong, the violent phase in the career of Muhammad must not be taken as its climax: Muhammad "eventually abjured warfare and adopted a non-violent policy". This statement is bizarre and corresponds to no Muslim account. It is highly questionable also in the light of all the bloodshed during the early history of Islam, starting with the Medinan period of Muhammad's career. Is it really historically convincing to claim that the battles of Muhammad and his immediate successors "had no religious significance"? Or that the first four caliphs, the "rightly guided ones", "in expanding the Arab Islamic empire by diplomatic and military means", were "responding to a political opportunity ... rather than a Qur'anic imperative"? The Qur'an clearly indicates that Muhammad's first great victory, at Badr, was to be understood as an act of divine intervention, vindicating Muhammad in his struggle against the enemies.

Other anti-Armstrong reviews:

From a University of London academic Efraim Karsh (this was noted in LGF in September):

Ms. Armstrong goes out of her way to whitewash Muhammad's extermination of the Jewish presence in Medina, especially the beheading of the entire 600 to 800 male population of the Qurayzah tribe. "[T]he Qurayzah were not killed on religious or racial ground," she claims, adding that "Muhammad had no ideological quarrel with the Jewish people." This is of course a travesty of the truth. Muhammad might have had no ideological quarrel with "the Jewish people," but he was seething with anger at the Medina Jews, who had not only spurned his attempts to woo them into his incipient religion (for example, by adopting a number of religious Jewish practices and rituals) but had also become his fiercest critics. Reflecting this outrage, both the Qur'an and later biographical traditions of the prophet abound with negative depictions of Jews. In these works they are portrayed as a deceitful, evil, and treacherous people who in their insatiable urge for domination would readily betray an ally and swindle a non-Jew.

And from the Boston Globe:

Readers will find her style stilted: At her best, she makes use of her intellectual skills to explore the tension between the personal and the historical, presenting Muhammad as an average individual doubting his choices, a visionary testing the limitations of his epoch; at her worst, she's didactic, frequently making sermonizing comments about thinking critically about jihad that are a mere rhetorical device. For Armstrong isn't a savvy, inquisitive thinker: She tells rather than shows, assumes rather than explains.

Vague cause for optimism

While not arguing with Israel's right to take steps to stop the never ending random rocket attacks on its territory, shouldn't they be reconsidering the use of shelling (with its inherent risk of error) as an appropriate method? Sure, missile attacks from helicopters and drones kill passersby too, but their explosive force is usually must more limited than a shell coming through the roof of a house (or hitting a beach.)

That said, I continue to wonder why the Palestinians think their rocket attacks are worthwhile when they are (in comparison) causing few deaths but, as a terror tactic, make it impossible for any Israeli government to say to its citizens that they should just ignore it.

I see from this BBC report that at least some Palestinians seem to share this view:

An old man called Muhammad Hussein broke down as he talked of the deaths of his sister and other relatives.

"They were all killed - pieces!" he shouted as he wept. "Thrown in pieces. I saw them! I put them in a sack! Eighteen people - they were killed."

But he said there should be no retaliatory suicide bombings.

"I don't like it," he said. "I myself don't like it. I am more than 70 years old. I want to live in peace!"

A much younger man called Nasser Hamad agreed.

"Palestinians should think carefully," he said.

"Palestinians should go to the peace process. We should not stop negotiating with the Israelis because they are pressuring us to lose our control and do unjustified actions against them."

He described suicide bombings as an ineffective tool.

They are talking about suicide bombings, but I presume that they would not agree with the rocket attacks either. It's a start, although I imagine it is a little hard for grass roots peace movements to get going within Gaza.

The yearning Tracee

Tracee Hutchison's column in The Age today is easy to ridicule in part:

A COUPLE of weeks ago, Silverchair's lead singer Daniel Johns made a bold political statement with a spray can at the annual ARIA awards. Having paid homage to ARIA Hall of Fame inductees Midnight Oil with a powerful rendition of the Oils' 1981 anthem I Don't Wanna Be the One, 27-year-old Johns spray-painted "PG 4 PM" on a strategically placed piece of plasterboard.

It was a fascinating moment.

Maybe for those who pay attention to the political opinions of an overly sensitive, arty musician who was far too successful far too early for the good of his own mental health. (Well, you go read the transcript of the Enough Rope interview he gave. It made me feel very uncomfortable watching it.)

Talking about Midnight Oil, Hutchison writes:

In truth, there are probably more bands making political statements in their lyrics now than there were when the Oils were in their prime. It's just that the Oils were an extraordinary rock'n'roll band first and foremost and their powerfully persuasive lyrics came wrapped in wonderful melodies, so their message reached more people than most.

I may be a musical ignoramus, but I am very surprised at the suggestion that Midnight Oil were big on melody.

But I shouldn't be too tough on this Hutchison column, because she does express cynicism about the relevance of things like this:

Now, more than ever, young, and not so young, people are looking for something, someone, to show them the way.

How else can you explain U2 lead singer Bono's ability to persuade 50,000 fans at U2's Brisbane concert to send a text message to the Make Poverty History organisation while pointing their mobile phones at the moon?

Exactly how 50,000 texts to the ether helps anyone but the shareholders of the phone companies is a mystery...

Quite true. But Hutchison's only source of inspiration in politics today? :

Activist-turned-Greens leader Bob Brown aside, the absence of inspired political leadership in Australia has never been starker. And the need to give people something to believe has never been more crucial. As a twentysomething, Peter Garrett sang about not wanting to be the One. Maybe so. But we need more Garretts, Browns and Stott Despojas engaged in the political process and we need them being heard.

I don't know. It seems to me a large part of the problem is this: teenagers, as a general rule, have always thought they know more than their hopeless parents who are running the world. Nowadays, psychological teenage-hood often extends into the early 30's, and so the class of disaffected "youth" had accordingly increased. (And, if they are all convinced of coming global catastrophe, they will probably have fewer children and avoid the life lessons that child rearing often entails.)

There are issues with how Western youth and society as a whole now chose to find meaning in life. But just complaining that oldies don't listen to and don't know how to lead the disaffected youth is not exactly a helpful contribution.

Bush and a carbon tax?

While it seems to be based on pretty slim evidence, Timothy Noah in Slate speculates that maybe Bush will become a carbon tax convert. It would be some surprise...

The baby flap

I haven't posted anything about Japan for a while, but this article in the Japan Times caught my eye:

KUMAMOTO (Kyodo) A hospital here plans to create a drop box where parents can anonymously leave unwanted babies, hospital officials said Thursday.

Jikei Hospital said it will begin the work to create the drop box as soon as it obtains permission from local public health authorities. The hospital wants to set it up by the end of the year.

Drop boxes for abandoned babies have been introduced in Germany, where they are known as a "babyklappe" (baby flap) or "babyfenster" (baby window) in German. In Italy, they are called "culle per la vita" (cradle for life).

A Jikei Hospital official visited Germany, where they are usually set up at hospitals or social centers, in 2004.

Jikei Hospital said its baby drop box, called "konotori no yurikago" (cradle of storks), will be a boxlike chamber similar to an incubator, accessible from outside the hospital by opening a window. When a baby is dropped off, an alarm will alert nurses.

I had heard of this idea before, but did not know it was already well established in Europe.

It's a peculiar idea in some respects; and I find it odd that giving up a baby this way doesn't cause all sort of problems for the mother in explaining to neighbours and relatives what happened to the baby.

Further down in the article, the depressing figure of the number of abortions in Japan is mentioned:

According to the Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry, in fiscal 2004, the number of abortions in the prefecture stood at 5,619, while the nationwide figure came to 301,673. No figures were available on abandoned babies in Japan, which is struggling to find ways to stem a falling birthrate.

Just how big a difference to the population problem in Japan would a reduction in abortions mean? According to the BBC in August 2006:

Almost 550,000 births were registered in the six months from January to June, up by more than 11,600 from the same period last year.

So, that means (if this increase holds up), about 1,100,000 births a year. The number of deaths in 2005: about 1,077,000. (More people died in 2005 than were born.)

The point is, if they are going to insist on very low migration as a source of population growth, then halving the current abortion rate would stop the population slide by a substantial number.

UPDATE: by coincidence, I see that there is a recent Japundit post about the birth rate, and the strange attitude of Japanese to immigration.

Good news/bad news on greenhouse gases

Good news on the greenhouse gas front is rare to find (and not exactly over-reported.) But it turns out that atmospheric levels of methane, an important greenhouse gas due to it having a larger effect than CO2, has stopped increasing. From American Scientist:

This happy development wasn't entirely unanticipated, given that the rate of increase has been slowing for at least a quarter-century. Yet the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has predicated many of its conclusions on scenarios in which methane concentrations would continue growing for decades to come. Thus the recent stabilization of methane levels is something that some scientists are trying very hard to explain.

Edward J. Dlugokencky, an atmospheric chemist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), has tracked atmospheric methane for many years. He says that "even as the reduction was happening, people doing emission scenarios weren't accounting for it." Dlugokencky maintains that the evolution of methane levels in the atmosphere mostly just reflects the attainment of a chemical equilibrium, such that methane production is balanced by its destruction. In sum, he says, atmospheric methane "looks like a system approaching steady state."

But now for the bad news. Over at Real Climate, there is a recent post about how much additional CO2 in the atmosphere might be "safe".

As usual with their site, they don't believe in over-simplifying their explanations for easy understanding, but the figures suggested, although appearing fairly "back of the envelope" look pretty bad:

This is a bit of a guessing game, but 2°C has been proposed as a reasonable danger limit. This would be decidedly warmer than the Earth has been in millions of years, and warm enough to eventually raise sea level by tens of meters. A warming of 2° C could be accomplished by raising CO₂ to 450 ppm and waiting a century or so, assuming a climate sensitivity of 3 °C for doubling CO₂, a typical value from models and diagnosed from paleo-data. Of the 450 ppm, 170 ppm would be from fossil fuels (given an original natural pCO2 of 280 ppm). 170 ppm equals 340 Gton C, which divided by the peak airborne fraction of 60% yields a total emission slug of about 570 Gton C.

How much is 570 Gton C? We have already released about 300 Gton C, and the business-as-usual scenario projects 1600 Gton C total release by the year 2100. Avoiding dangerous climate change requires very deep cuts in CO₂ emissions in the long term, something like 85% of business-as-usual averaged over the coming century. Put it this way and it sounds impossible. Another way to look at it, which doesn't seem quite as intractable, is to say that the 200 Gton C that can still be "safely" emitted is roughly equivalent to the remaining traditional reserves of oil and natural gas. We could burn those until they're gone, but declare an immediate moratorium on coal, and that would be OK, according to our defined danger limit of 2°C. A third perspective is that if we could limit emissions to 5 Gton C per year starting now, we could continue doing that for 250/5 = 50 years.

According to a chart that was part of my last post on CO2, the atmospheric level of CO2, on a "business as usual" basis, would be reached by about 2040. (We're already at about 380ppm.)

These figures are not good. However, the argument goes on in the comments section about whether Kyoto is a help or hinderance. Post number 105 comes up with some fairly imaginative ideas about reducing CO2 with self replicating robots and such like, and ends on this note, which neatly summarises conservative's concerns about Kyoto:

..many of the problems associated with CO2 is best solved with wealth. Indeed technology induced wealth solves both CO2-related problems AND all other sorts of nasty problems unrelated to CO2 such as poverty, disease, hunger, misery and disasters. By insisting on strangling economic growth, not only are you robbing the world of the best way to cope with climate change -- technology -- but also robbing the poor of the world the opportunity to cope with just about anything.

I haven't read the Stern report, or many of the articles criticising it yet, so I can't comment helpfully yet. But the main point of this post is just how bad the figures look for how hard it will be to keep that much carbon out of the atmophere.

Uncommon medical advice

I like stories about doctors who have gone mad, assuming no harm is done in the process:

A doctor at a family planning clinic told a patient that she needed an exorcism because there was something sinister moving around inside her stomach, a medical tribunal was told yesterday.

Joyce Pratt, 44, allegedly told the patient, who was seeking contraceptive advice, that she might be possessed by an evil spirit and needed religious rather than medical help.

She gave the woman crosses and trinkets to ward off black magic, allegedly told her that her mother was a witch, that she and her husband were trying to kill her, and suggested that she visit a Roman Catholic priest at Westminster Cathedral in London.

During the consultation at the Westside Contraceptive Clinic in Central London the doctor was said to have told the patient that she had black magic powers that could help to alleviate the problem.

I am sure Queensland Health could find a place for her in any event.

On the US elections

Complicated system, this having a separate executive from the legislature.

As far as Iraq is concerned, it's hard to see how a Democrat controlled house is going to help come up any time soon with a concrete change of plan in Iraq. The Guardian helpfully points out that important Democrat figures are all over the place:

....suggestions that Democrats have the answers on Iraq appear sadly misplaced. In the first place, they lack decisive power. Mr Bush remains arbiter-in-chief of America's foreign and security policy. More to the point, they have no coherent, collective view - and are scared of being accused of betraying frontline troops.

Hillary Clinton, the 2008 presidential hopeful, opposes an Iraq withdrawal timetable. John Kerry, beaten by Mr Bush in 2004, wants a firm deadline. John Murtha, who will control the House committee that appropriates cash for the Iraq war, has demanded an immediate pullout. Joe Biden, the senior Democrat on the Senate foreign relations committee, is advocating a tripartite division of Iraq. And there are many other points of view. All that unifies them is criticism of Mr Bush's performance.

The paper also points out how new House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has previously spoken of the President:

While the two have appeared together at some social functions, their relationship has been marked by mutual disdain.

"He is an incompetent leader. In fact, he is not a leader," she said in a 2004 interview. "He's a person who has no judgment, no experience and no knowledge of the subjects that he has to decide on." Bush, for his part, has painted Pelosi has a tax-loving Democrat, although during the midterm campaign he left the mud-slinging to party operatives who depicted her in political adverts as a stereotypical San Francisco liberal.

I have not paid attention to the nature of the Republican attacks, but I see that some say Fox News spent a lot of time on her.

Interesting times ahead.

A realistic military option with Iran?

This article makes a very plausible argument for a type of military option for dealing with Iran if the need arises.

(My idea of using electromagnetic pulse weapons does not get a mention, but maybe someone in the Pentagon reads my blog. Or perhaps I have to type in the words "Praise Allah, here are the plans for nuclear weapon" to be sure that will happen.)

An interesting take on Stern report

This short article from TCS daily argues that cost of fighting global warming, as suggested in the recent Stern report, is much higher than it first appears. (Roughly $400 billion annually.) The writer suggests that if this is the sort of money involved, then maybe some global engineering solution (of the mirrors in space variety, for example) is not so out of the question after all.

Speaking of which, here's another suggestion for such a solution:

Angel and colleagues propose launching a constellation of trillions of small free-flying spacecraft a million miles above Earth into an orbit aligned with the Sun, called the L-1 orbit. The spacecraft would form a long, cylindrical cloud with a diameter about half that of Earth, and about 10 times longer.

Some 10 per cent of the sunlight passing through the 97,000 kilometre length of the cloud - pointing lengthwise between the Earth and the Sun - would be diverted away from our planet. The effect would be to uniformly reduce sunlight by about 2 per cent over the entire planet, enough to balance the heating caused by a doubling of atmospheric carbon dioxide.

But the trick is how to get them there:

According to Angel and colleagues, the sunshade could be deployed by a total 20 electromagnetic launchers launching a stack of 1 million flyers every 5 minutes for 10 years.

Oh. Suddenly sounds less than plausible. Do it from the moon instead would seem a much better bet!

This idea also made me wonder whether anyone has suggested nanotechnology as a possible shielding solution. I quite liked Michael Crichton's novel "Prey", about swarms of nano gnats that start eating people. Of course, that such devices will ever exist seems farfetched, but if something like them could be made on an industrial scale, and launched to live high in the atmosphere, could the swarm form a controllable high altitude dusty sunshade? Just thinking outside of the circle, folks...

About Saddam's verdict

You can always trust Huffington Post to run some Hollywood star, comedian, or ex-journalist with the most anti-Bush take possible on current events. (OK, occasionally they have someone with an opinion I can agree with.) But today, Joan Z Shore (apparently an aging former journalist) makes this ridiculous comparison on Saddam's guilty verdict:

How can anyone in a civilized world justify or condone what has
happened? Invading (preemptively) a sovereign nation, occupying it,
capturing its leader, setting up a kangaroo court, and sentencing him to
hang for crimes against his own people.....

Did we dare do this with Idi Amin, with Joseph Stalin, with Chou
En-lai, with Pol Pot?

Of course not. Maybe those nations were too big too tackle, or too
far away, or maybe there were no economic interests (e.g., oil) hanging in
the balance. Or maybe our leaders then simply had a commendable sense of
caution, before waging a unilateral attack on a foreign dictator.

Emphasis mine.

So, George W is meant to suffer by comparison with the "caution" of past presidents who failed to invade Communist Russia and China? Joan: if, as you virtually concede, it is bleeding obvious that they is no comparison, why make the comparison?

As for the fairness of the trial, despite the chaos surrounding it, Radio National this morning spoke to Mark Ellis, the executive director of the International Bar Association, and he did not seem to have major issues about that. I felt that Fran Kelly had a twinge of disappointment that Ellis did not get on a high horse about how procedurally unfair it had been. Instead, he made it clear that the evidence was there and it was a compelling case.

Christopher Hitchens has turned up on Lateline tonight (transcript should be available soon) making it clear that while he doesn't support capital punishment, he can see that the execution will at least serve the practical purpose of ending the substantial fear in many Iraqis that he will some day return to rule again. This argument is surely persuasive when you consider the amount of insurgency still going on in the country. I don't support capital punishment for your run of the mill murderer or criminal either, but the difference between them and former charismatic but murderous national leaders is the potential for more deaths caused by the latter's supporters.

Finally, a string anti American and British comments can be found on the BBC's comments section. My favourite so far (from "Julie in Stourbridge") is this:

Okay, i feel like the little boy in the emporers new clothes for saying this but how on earth do we know this is the real Saddam and not just an actor or a double.
Saddam was known to have many doubles and his wife did say many months ago that this was not her husband on trial.

Is the whole thing just a stage show for the benefet of the public while the real Saddam is playing Golf with George Bush?

That's worthy of Daily Kos, that one.

UPDATE: Ever since the turmoil in Iraq has increased, there have been a few voices from some the anti war, anti-death penalty Left who have actually suggested that Saddam should be re-instated. The fact that such voices exist at all only further strengthens my argument that it is too dangerous for him to left alive, as the Sunni insurgents would always have the hope of his return as an incentive to keep creating enough chaos.

I note that the Guardian has published what appears to be a serious "tribute" to Saddam, although there appears to be some suggestion that it might be satire. Satire should be clearly recognisable as such in order to work, though, shouldn't it? Certainly, some of the argument is so egregious as to be truly breathtaking. As one of the comments following says:

What next. Joseph Stalin: a Tribute. "Yes Uncle Joe murdered millions of people and was a despotic tyrant, but at least he got tractor production up in the urals and made the Moscow metro run on time". You are mad

What is worrying is that a lot of comments are semi-supportive, or at least along the lines of "if he hangs, so should Bush and Blair". As Jim Nolan argues today, such comments are:

"...confirming yet again, if confirmation were needed, that new depths of moral obtuseness not seen since the Hitler-Stalin pact are resurgent."

Go John Kerry

On a lighter note, some of the commentary on the disastrous John Kerry "joke" is pretty funny. Gerard Barker writes :

IN John Frankenheimer's electrifying 1962 thriller The Manchurian Candidate, an American soldier is captured by communists during the Korean War, brainwashed and programmed to return to the US and, years later, to assassinate a presidential candidate.

There is compelling evidence now that John Kerry is a kind of Manchurian Candidate of Democratic politics.

Read it all.

Conan O'Brien's segment on Late Night (shown on Comedy Channel here last night) was also very funny. Unfortunately, no clip of it is available on his website yet, but maybe one will become turn up later. Before Google came into the picture, I would have expected to find it on You Tube, but much of the posting of TV clips has sadly come to an end.

More war with Lebanon?

A pessimistic assessment from John Keegan in the Telegraph about Israel having to go to war again soon. Within a year, he reckons.

In Gaza, killing continues, and women who heed the call to act as human shields get killed.

As if there weren't enough problems in Israel already, a fight is going on about a planned gay pride parade in Jerusalem next week. The police think it is more trouble than it is worth, and want it stopped. If it goes ahead, at least Conservative Jews and Muslims will be meeting on the street with a common aim, for a change. Somehow, I don't think that is the point the march organisers want to achieve.

This Jerusalem Post article about the whole issue is interesting. Apparently, many areas of Jerusalem are being abandoned by secularist and left to the religious conservatives. (Incidentally, the parade is planned to be through the secular commercial areas.) But what is life like in Jerusalem for gays? I was a little surprised to read that it's not so bad:

The leaders of Jerusalem's gay community are obviously pleased at the enormous amount of publicity their parade has been receiving. But they are aiming for a Pyrrhic victory. Jerusalem is not the most difficult Israeli city for gays to live in. The capital has a vibrant gay scene, with a number of bars operating peacefully, while the Open House social center is funded (under a Supreme Court order) by City Hall, where there is an openly homosexual City Council member. Of course, there is some degree of homophobia, and a number of cases of harassment - but no more, and probably much less, than can be found in many other places around the country.

And the need for a march therefore is....?

Fiddling with life for the benefit of Chad

The LA Times certainly brings attention to the culture wars with a series it has run this week about what 2 gay men did to get a baby:

...they had decided to have a child through a gestational surrogacy arrangement. They would pay one woman to provide her eggs and then, after fertilizing them in vitro with their sperm, pay another woman to carry the resulting embryos to term.

Section one is here. (To avoid having to register in to see following pages, click on the "one page" choice at the bottom.)

By and large, the article strives for a very non judgment tone, with lines like this:

It was a quest that would take them to the frontiers of medicine, bioethics, technology and the law, as well as to the front lines of the culture wars.

And:

Rather than creating a life in the privacy of a bedroom, Chad and David would plot this conception in law offices, doctors' suites and Internet chat rooms. It would take a village to manufacture their child.

Why did they chose this method of getting a baby:

They had considered adoption, but Chad, 33, and David, 35, wanted to participate more fully in the process of bringing a child into the world. They longed to see the first ultrasonic images of a tiny pumping heart and even to provide coaching in the maternity ward, just like straight fathers.

Why did they decide on such a complicated procedure (rather, say, than impregnating a volunteer mother)? Because this method reduces the chances of the mother making claim to any parental rights (the child is not genetically hers). So, take the riskiest path possible for this manufactured child, hey boys?

Despite the writer's efforts, some creepiness gets through:

For weeks, they had evaluated virtually any woman who entered their field of view. One night, when David met friends at a Georgetown bar, a striking woman with olive skin and dark eyes asked him to dance. When he later told Chad how flattering it had been, Chad could only ask: "Do you think she would be our egg donor?"....

They didn't want to consider appearance at the exclusion of all else, but they couldn't deny, in the privacy of that room, that it mattered.

"You can't ignore it," David said. "I mean, who wants an ugly child?"

"David, some people would be happy with that," Chad scolded.

Did I say the article was non-judgement? This description of the young David, and the perfect nature of their relationship, goes beyong that:

David's materialism made friends roll their eyes. But beneath the Neiman Marcus veneer they found a razor intellect, a generous heart, an optimistic spirit, and an almost effortless charm. By the time David came to grips with his sexuality, a lacerating tongue had mellowed into a quick and often wickedly entertaining wit.

From the outset, Chad and David seemed perfect complements. David grounded Chad, and made him more secure. Chad softened David, and made him more sensitive.

(Look, even if it was a straight couple, you would have to question this in anything resembling journalism.) It wasn't even as if both of them had life long desires to be fathers:

It wasn't until Chad and David went to couples counseling in 2001 that David revealed he had serious reservations about being a parent. He liked their life as it was, he said, and he wasn't convinced he was the nurturing kind.

This section here just about sums up neatly the zenith of the commodification of reproduction that this story represents:

Now that the technology existed, they asked themselves, why shouldn't gay men have the same right as straight people to produce a genetic heir? All they lacked were eggs and a womb. As it turned out, they could buy the first and lease the second.

Chad gets his way. They don't have much luck:

It was their fifth attempt in 15 months to create a pregnancy through a gestational surrogacy arrangement. To get to this point, they had gone through two egg retrievals, 58 eggs, 43 embryos, two embryo freezes, three frozen embryo thaws, four failed embryo transfers, two surrogates and more than $100,000.

Part 2 of the story is here.

Long story short: Chad's sister ends up being the surrogate (how perfectly liberal this family must be). What's more, it's twins.

Happy ending? No way. Babies born at 24 weeks. Chad and David rush to hospital. Of course, they are the perfect grieving parents:

It didn't take long for the hospital staff to conclude that Chad and David were more devoted than many parents who passed through the unit.

Both babies die. Teary scenes by everyone, because, you know, they are just such a loving couple.

Chad and David are trying again. Through double implantation again. Did I mention that they are both Christians?

I find this story just appalling on so many levels it is hard to know where to begin. I don't think I will even try.

Scott Adams' humour

I was aware some time ago that Dilbert writer Scott Adams had a blog. Unfortunately, I keep forgetting to read it. Must add him to blogroll.

His recent entries on the Sheik Hilali ruckus, and the Slate story I mentioned about the internet and rape, are both funny. (The Sheik has sure made an international name for himself, hasn't he?)

As used by Chris Masters and Phillip Adams

From Japundit, a Japanese English label.

Tim Dunlop goes professional

I am pretty surprised by this. Tim Dunlop is turning into a professional blogger for News Limited.

I know that in the past, Tim has been on friendly enough terms with Tim Blair, and makes the occasional comment that is sort of respectful to opposing opinion on going into the Iraq war. However, it has seemed to me that he has become increasingly nasty and afflicted by Howard (and Bush) Derrangement Syndrome over the last 18 months or so that I have read him. Those who regularly comment on his site are worse. It is an unpleasant place to raise dissent.

I therefore have no idea why News Limited finds him a good bet for hosting a blog, although it is clear that puts a lot of time into his own.

I am also very curious as to what such a job pays.

Sunlight good for at least one cancer

An interesting suggestion from this study:

Using newly available data on worldwide cancer incidence, researchers at the Moores Cancer Center at UCSD have shown a clear association between deficiency in exposure to sunlight, specifically ultraviolet B (UVB), and ovarian cancer.

It's all to do with vitamin D.

On drinking for health

I like this post by Bryan Appleyard, especially the last line.

Religion and women

Some good points are made in this opinion piece in the Times:

It is the asymmetry that I object to in Muslim thought, the fact that men can wear what they like while women cannot. Are women supposed to be more evolved than men, more in control of their passions? In that case it seems odd that they are not even allowed to enter many mosques, let alone preach in them.

No, Muslim men seem to want to have it both ways. They want complete leadership of their community, with women’s voices seldom heard, but then they are happy to reduce themselves to the status of animals — feral cats in the Mufti’s sermon — when it comes to sex, unable to resist the charms of a woman with an uncovered head.

The issue ranges beyond the Muslim community. For it’s not much fun for the rest of womankind, dressed perfectly modestly in their own eyes, to know that, because their heads are bare or their calves exposed, many Muslim men will see them as tarts.

What is more, Western women are prepared to cover right up if they visit a strict Muslim country where local people would be offended by skimpy shirts or shorts. Yet there are still many Muslim women living in liberal Britain who continue to wear the full veil, hiding their face, whatever offence or alienation it might cause here.

The Anglican Archbishop of Perth, however, uses the debate about Islamis views on women to criticise the conservatives in his own church who are against the ordination of women:

The thought forms that treat women as second-class human beings have foundational elements that are similar in many repressive religious traditions.

One of the leading academics from Moore College, Dr Mark Thomson, made it clear that there was nothing to discuss regarding women in ministry as "God has not left us alone to guess what any part of Scripture is saying. God is a very good communicator — we have been convinced that the teaching of Scripture is authoritative — we rejoice in the word God has given us".

Hilali in his logic reiterates that Allah is forgiving and merciful yet wise and all powerful, so the word that is given must be for the good of humanity. Women just fall into this divine pattern of submission — it is the way things are — and it is good.

The divinely sanctioned world view authenticated by the selective use of Scripture by these Islamic and Christian scholars keeps women in subjection and gives a clear passport to heaven for the chosen. Those who see the Scriptures differently will find their destiny in the fires of hell.

Is this really a fair or correct representation of what the Anglican opponents to women's ordination say?

The Archbishop goes onto say:

In Christianity, as I am sure in Islam and in other faith and non-faith systems, there are other texts and a humbler interpretation given by many other scholars that gives rise to a different, equally divinely sanctioned world view. All humanity and the whole created order are loved into a dignity that invites all to move from slavery to freedom.

Yes, the Bible is funny like that, can be interpretted to support a wide variety of propositions. That Catholics and Anglicans are not fundamentalists in the generic sense is therefore a good thing. The use of reason is good.

But the pro-women's Ordination argument that it is all about overcoming ancient prejudice against women I find very tiresome. It assumes an inherent unreasonableness on the part of their opposition for refusing to recognise their own prejudice.

I don't think it is helpful if the conservatives really do claim that their opponents are destined for hell if they ordain women. But I equally find it unacceptable for pro-ordination forces to claim that the opposition is inherently unreasonable, as I think they are inclined to do.

The fundamental problems of faith in the modern world are not, in my view, really to do with issues about rights and social justice anyway. Those churches that concentrate on those matters at the expense of emphasising their, um, supernatural or metaphysical (I am not sure of the right way to characterise this) role in the life of their individual church members are losing ground in popularity anyway, because those churches have dealt themselves out of having any special value or purpose anyway.

In this way, concentration on an issue such as women's ordination is a side issue and hurts churches, but in exactly the opposite way to which most liberal churches think.

Charts and stuff on CO2 levels

Hearing figures and statistics on CO2 levels and the Kyoto protocol can make it hard to process the information. I therefore had a look around the web for some charts and graphs that would make it easier for me to understand. Here's a few that I think help:

First, here's the "per capita" chart for greenhouse gases that pro-Kyoto people like to refer to:


Yes, yes, Australia looks bad on a per capita basis. However, the next chart shows some total figures:

Where does Australia fit in? It's kind of confusing because of the different ways different charts are counting carbon, but the Australian National Greenhouse Gas Inventory says:

Australia’s net greenhouse gas emissions across all sectors totalled 564.7 million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent (Mt CO₂-e) in 2004 under the accounting provisions applying to Australia’s 108% emissions target.

That figure sounds about right, according to the next chart too. Anyway, the USA and Europe are pretty much on top. However, here's the really worrying thing (assuming you think CO2 is a worry):

Just look at that growth curb for China. It hits US levels in a little over 10 years time, and then keeps climbing. I am not sure if this is on a "do nothing" basis or not. However, even on current "do something" ideas, I doubt it's going to have much effect within 10 years.

China is, of course, amongst the many countries which Kyoto doesn't currently cover, as shown clearly shown here:




Finally, projections for CO2 increase over the next 100 years or so (on a "business as usual" basis):


Kind of a steep curve, hey.

The lesson I take from this is: the really, really serious issue is preventing China's huge climb, as well as reducing the US. As the US is already economically advanced, I guess there is greater grounds for optimism that it can develop and afford the technological fixes which may help. But there will be a huge need to get those technologies into China fast. How the international community can help China in this process is not a topic I can say I have heard a lot about.

More about Islam and women

While I am talking about the Imam Hilali uproar, fierce Islam critic Robert Spencer's Frontpage article about this is worth reading. While most people probably know of the difficulty that rape victims in strict Sharia law countries have in getting the rapist convicted (most rapes not occurring within sight of 4 male witnesses), the extent of the related problem of the complainant being at risk of going to jail for adultery surprised me:

What’s more, in traditional Islamic law rape cannot be established except by the testimony of four male witnesses who saw the act, as stipulated by Qur’an 24:4 and 24:13. Consequently, it is even today virtually impossible to prove rape in lands that follow the dictates of the Sharia. Unscrupulous men can commit rape with impunity: as long as they deny the charge and there are no witnesses, they get off scot-free, because the victim’s account is inadmissible. Even worse, if a woman accuses a man of rape, she may end up incriminating herself. If the required male witnesses can’t be found, the victim’s charge of rape becomes an admission of adultery. That accounts for the grim fact that as many as seventy-five percent of the women in prison in Pakistan are, in fact, behind bars for the crime of being a victim of rape.^[i] Several high-profile cases in Nigeria recently have also revolved around rape accusations being turned around by Islamic authorities into charges of fornication, resulting in death sentences that were only modified after international pressure.^[ii]