The [next] mission will be commanded by the husband of wounded Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, Mark Kelly. His identical twin brother Scott is currently the skipper of the space station; he returns to Earth next week on a Russian Soyuz spacecraft.
....there is a new assessment of the net mass balance of Antarctica and Greenland. Rignot et al have updated results, including those from the GRACE gravity measurement satellite, to the end of 2010 and show that the downward trend in ice mass is continuing (stronger in Greenland than in Antarctica). The net rise in sea level associated with this decline is about 1.3 mm/yr, which will likely accelerate with further warming. Complementary analyses of the surface mass balance of Greenland (Tedesco et al, 2011) also show that 2010 was a record year for melt area extent.This rate of melting is more than was figured into the tabulated IPCC AR4 estimates of sea level rise, and any further acceleration will obviously make the discrepancy worse. Indeed, even in the highest forcing A1F1 scenario, the IPCC calculated only a 0.3 mm/year contribution from the ice sheets averaged over the whole 21st Century! This was clearly a gross underestimate.
Extrapolating these melt rates forward to 2050, “the cumulative loss could raise sea level by 15 cm by 2050″ for a total of 32 cm (adding in 8 cm from glacial ice caps and 9 cm from thermal expansion) – a number very close to the best estimate of Vermeer & Rahmstorf (2009), derived by linking the observed rate of sea level rise to the observed warming.
Whether or not mouse song involves learning either through auditory imitation or behavioral feedback (e.g., from the mother)... is a subject of hot debate, and the answer is proving elusive. To highlight the difficulties facing researchers, two studies published on March 9, 2011 in the open-access journal PLoS ONE have come to differing conclusions about whether mouse vocalization patterns are innate or learned.Rodents sing and they laugh. Sound like good company, really.
Wasn't there a time when the Howard government actually seemed to be achieving more (or just as much) in terms of women members of Parliament than Labor with all their Emily's List activism?Under the changes announced on Wednesday, companies with more than 100 staff will be required to report on how many workers are female and how their conditions compare to male employees.
Spot checks will also be carried out, with non-compliant businesses to be shut out of government-funded grants and industry assistance programs.
There’s a short meteorology article out talking about the hottest places on Earth. Turns out that desert temperatures can be higher than I ever realised:
But then the paper has a local surprise:The Lut Desert, located in southeast Iran has long been regarded as one of the hottest places on Earth. Numerous studies have examined the relationship between the expression of severe thermal temperature across this hyper-arid landscape and the unique natural physical characteristics of the Lut, such as the wind-sculpted mega-yardangs, and the vast areas of closely packed rock fragments known as desert pavement (Alavipanah 2007; Azizi et al. 2007). The Lut Desert was determined to be the hottest spot on Earth in two of three years previously evaluated with the Aqua/MODIS satellite LST data (Mildrexler et al. 2006). Here we found that the Lut Desert had the highest surface temperature on Earth in 2004 (68.0°C; 154.4°F), 2005 (70.7°C;159.3°F), 2006 (68.5°C; 155.3°F), 2007 (69.0°C; 156.2°F) and 2009 (68.6°C; 155.5°F), five of the seven years analyzed in this study. The Lut is the only place on Earth to have a surface temperature above 70°C (158°F) and regularly has the largest, contiguous area of surface temperatures above 65°C of anywhere on Earth (Fig. 2).
In 2003 a scorching temperature of 69.3°C (156.7°F), the second highest temperature of the seven-year dataset, was detected in the province of Queensland, Australia. Australia is the driest inhabited continent on Earth with vast arid lands where annual maximum LSTs routinely exceed 60°C.
So, Queensland has recently had a temperature just a fraction under 70 degrees. Amazing.
UPDATE: my bad. As noted in the comment, the article is not talking about air temperature, the hottest measured record of which still seems to be 58 degrees in Libya. I thought that the article was talking about desert air temperatures measured by satellite, but it is talking about "skin temperature", which can be way higher than the air temperature.
Well, that explains why the temperatures seemed extraordinarily high to me. Must not post so quickly.
Daily use of aspirin and other nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, commonly known as NSAIDs, is associated with a 22 percent increase in the risk of erectile dysfunction, Kaiser researchers found in a study of more than 80,000 men in Southern California. The results were a surprise because erectile dysfunction, commonly abbreviated ED, is thought to be caused by inflammation, and the researchers expected that use of the drugs would alleviate the problem.
...there are different kinds of premarital sex. There’s sex that’s actually pre-marital, in the sense that it involves monogamous couples on a path that might lead to matrimony one day. Then there’s sex that’s casual and promiscuous, or just premature and ill considered.One can imagine that such talk would annoy some people as sounding just far, far too much like what your well meaning parents may want to say to their daughter. And indeed, there's a (somewhat childishly) sarcastic article on Huffington Post:This distinction is crucial to understanding what’s changed in American life since the sexual revolution. Yes, in 1950 as in 2011, most people didn’t go virgins to their marriage beds. But earlier generations of Americans waited longer to have sex, took fewer sexual partners across their lifetimes, and were more likely to see sleeping together as a way station on the road to wedlock.
And they may have been happier for it. That’s the conclusion suggested by two sociologists, Mark Regnerus and Jeremy Uecker, in their recent book, “Premarital Sex in America.” Their research, which looks at sexual behavior among contemporary young adults, finds a significant correlation between sexual restraint and emotional well-being, between monogamy and happiness — and between promiscuity and depression.
This correlation is much stronger for women than for men. Female emotional well-being seems to be tightly bound to sexual stability — which may help explain why overall female happiness has actually drifted downward since the sexual revolution.
Douthat teaches us that sexual restraint leads to "emotional well-being." Restraint is another word for: happiness! Not knowing too much is the biggest happiness of all. Little girls crave security, that's what you have to understand. Bunnies. Baa-Baa. Binkies! Mommmmy!I see Andrew Sullivan has also weighed in, but without any venom. Someone at a Slate blog wrote:
I have yet to read a Douthat column without feeling deep embarrassment for the author. He has a completely disorganized mind and seems unable of self-reflection. I read that ... "thing" he wrote yesterday and chanted facepalm, facepalm, facepalm as a calming mantra.Yes, talking about restraint in sex really upsets some people.
The idea that space-time might not be higher-dimensional on short distances but instead be lower-dimensional has been around for some while, inspired by results from causal dynamical triangulation. In a paper last year, Anchordoqui et al proposed to examine the possibility of lower dimensionality at small distances for its phenomenology in their paperVanishing Dimensions and Planar Events at the LHC
Luis Anchordoqui, De Chang Dai, Malcolm Fairbairn, Greg Landsberg, Dejan Stojkovic
arXiv:1003.5914v2 [hep-ph]
Greg Landsberg gave a talk about this work on our last year's workshop on Experimental Search for Quantum Gravity (recording of the talk here). The basic idea is that the dimensionality of space changes with distance in such a way that it is 3-dimensional on scales we have tested it, lower dimensional on distances shorter than we have probed yet (about 1/1000 of a femtometer) and possibly higher-dimensional on distances larger than we can observe. The picture suggested is that of a (one-dimensional) string being knitted, and the knitted sheet (2-dimensional) being crumpled to a ball (3-dimensional). The authors dubbed this "evolving dimensionality." The merit of having a smaller number of space-like dimensions at small distances or high energies is that it improves the renormalizability of quantum field theories and esp. that of quantum gravity. (In contrast to additional dimensions which actually make the problem worse.)
Japanese researchers have been immersing iron-based compounds in hot alcoholic beverages such as red wine, sake and shochu to induce superconductivity.But as it appears in the journal Superconductor Science and Technology, published on 7 March, it appears not to be a joke.
Scientists from the National Institute for Materials Science, Japan, found that immersing pellets of an iron-based compound in heated alcoholic beverages for 24 hours greatly increase their superconducting ability.
In the 2002 NSFG survey, 22 percent of men and women between the ages of 15 and 24 said they had never had sexual contact with another person. But in the latest NSFG survey, taken from 2006 to 2008, that number increased to 27 percent of men and 29 percent of women (Table 7, Page 38). In the broader age pool, the trend is diluted but still shows up: Among people ages 15-44, the percentage reporting zero lifetime opposite sex partners increased by two points among men (Table 4, Page 35) and three points among women (Table 3, Page 34). (In case you're wondering, no, there was no shift in reported homosexuality that would account for this increase.) The percentage of men ages 15-44 who reported only one lifetime female partner also increased by two to three points. So if you thought sexual mores were moving inexorably in the direction of more, earlier, and kinkier activity, think again. Virginity can return, and apparently, it has.Pro abstinence sex education groups in America claim that this vindicates their position:
Valerie Huber of the National Abstinence Education Association that these numbers are a positive change from 2002 when only 46% of boys and 49% of girls reported no sexual contact and she says the report challenges the wisdom of the recent federal funding cuts to abstinence education.But, as I've noted before, the wildly detailed and open type of sex education in Holland seems to lead to low teenage pregnancy rates and delayed start of sexual activity very effectively too. And America has a huge issue with single motherhood at any age, which is perhaps the much bigger issue to focus on in the long run.“One hundred sixty-nine abstinence education programs lost funding and over 1 million students lost access to the very programs that can support and encourage the positive trends represented by this data,” she told LifeNews.com. “If we are serious about decreasing teen sexual activity, we need to use the data to instruct public policy.”
Researchers have found the female hormone estrogen can be an effective treatment for men suffering schizophrenia.I see from Googling around that a report last year said that estrogen had already been found to be effective for some women with schizophrenia (in fact, Professor Kulkarni did that study at Monash as well.)The Alfred Hospital's Psychiatry Research Centre in Melbourne tested the hormone treatment, usually reserved for women, and found positive results for men with the mental disorder.
The centre found low doses of estrogen given during a two-week trial reduced depression and anxiety symptoms.
But Professor Jayashri Kulkarni says using estrogen is controversial because it creates female traits such as breasts.
"In terms of sexual strategy, we found that men and women will use voice pitch as a warning sign of future betrayal. So the more attractive the voice—a higher pitch for women and lower pitch for men—the more likely the chances he or she will cheat," says Jillian O'Connor, a graduate student in the Department of Psychology, Neuroscience & Behaviour at McMaster University and lead author of the study.
"Infidelity is costly with the emotional impact, financial costs and potential loss of the family unit. But this suggests that through the evolutionary process, we have learned ways to avoid partners who may be unfaithful as a protection mechanism," she says.
Participants in the study were asked to listen to two versions of recorded clips from a male voice and a female voice, which were electronically manipulated to be both higher and lower in pitch. They were then asked which one, from each pair, was more likely to cheat sexually on their romantic partner.
"The reason voice pitch influences perceptions of cheating is likely due to the relationship between pitch, hormones and infidelity," explains David Feinberg, an assistant professor in the Department of Psychology, Neuroscience & Behaviour and advisor on the study. "Men with higher testosterone levels have lower pitched voices, and women with higher estrogen levels have higher pitched voices. High levels of these hormones are associated with adulterous behaviour and our findings indicate individuals are somewhat aware of the link and may use this in their search for a romantic partner."
It is obviously therefore important for parents to keep emphasising to their teenage children the importance of keeping very well hydrated as they leave to go to a party with any half disreputable boyfriend/girlfriend.In one experiment, participants either drank five cups of water (about 750 milliliters), or took small sips of water from five separate cups. Then, after about 40 minutes—the amount of time it takes for water to reach the bladder—the researchers assessed participants' self-control. Participants were asked to make eight choices; each was between receiving a small, but immediate, reward and a larger, but delayed, reward. For example, they could choose to receive either $16 tomorrow or $30 in 35 days.
The researchers found that the people with full bladders were better at holding out for the larger reward later. Other experiments reinforced this link; for example, in one, just thinking about words related to urination triggered the same effect.
I noted with interest last week how Pope Benedict’s new book re-declares the Catholic teaching since the 1960’s that the Jews are definitely not collectively responsible for the death of Christ. As the Los Angeles Times and other media outlets noted, this seemed particularly good timing given that it was also only last week that some weird looking fashion figure, with whom I was previously unfamiliar, turned up on video spouting anti-semitic lines (and praise for Hitler) that is hard to credit as still existing post Holocaust.
But I thought I would mention it here more because of the Tablet’s explanation of Benedict’s analysis:
Benedict follows the scholarly consensus that “the Jews” mentioned in St John’s gospel as calling for Jesus to be executed cannot possibly refer to the whole population of Israel at the time, but refers to the Jerusalem Temple authorities alone; and not even all of those. But the greater problem is presented by Matthew’s account, which refers to the demand of “the whole people” for Jesus to be crucified and which – alone of the four gospels – has them cry out, “His blood be on us and on our children!” This verse kept Christian anti-Semitism alive for many centuries, and was the basis of the charge of deicide or “Christ-killing” laid against all Jews, alive or dead.
Benedict simply rejects Matthew’s historical accuracy, preferring the account in John and Mark. Matthew had gone “beyond” historical considerations and “is certainly not recounting historical fact here”. Matthew is attempting a “theological etiology”, he suggests, with which to account for the fate of the Jewish people in the forthcoming Jewish-Roman war. Furthermore, seen through the eyes of Christian faith, Jesus’ blood has the purifying power of redemption, so the words attributed to the crowd are not a curse but rather “redemption, salvation”. Why that matters, if the words were never uttered, Benedict does not explain.
How interesting. Catholics don’t take a fundamentalist approach to Scripture, and of course has no problem with understanding Genesis and other parts of the Old Testament as not being written as literal history.
The New Testament, though, comes in for a lot less Catholic doubt as to its relationship with fact, and it’s interesting to see we have it from the top, so to speak, that the Gospels are not always historically accurate.
There’ll be some Protestant churches decrying this is why you can’t trust the Catholic Church. Mind you, few will go as far as the website www.popebenedictantichrist.com. (Don’t bother going there, it’s only one page, but it has obviously picked a good name given how high it came up on my Google search results when looking for sources for this post.) I like this line from the said site, though:
Can't say I've noticed the Hitler resemblance myself.Could it be that Pope Benedict XVI will one day become the Antichrist? Look closely at the coldness of his eyes in above photo. Can you really trust this man? Do his eyes remind you of Adolph Hitler's eyes?
Of course, the problem once you do allow for historical revision of the truth of Gospel statements, it can be a tricky issue as to knowing where to stop. Still, it keeps life interesting.
I only indirectly referred to a recent Australian study that said cannabis use in teenagers was associated with earlier onset of psychosis, and that alcohol use wasn’t. I see now that it was in fact a meta-analysis of other studies.
The most surprising thing I saw the authors say appeared in the ABC report:
"The risks for older people is about double, so instead of having a 1 per cent chance of developing schizophrenia you are probably likely to have about a 2 per cent chance," he said.
"But for young people who smoke cannabis regularly, instead of having around a 1 per cent chance of developing schizophrenia during their life, they will end up with something like a 5 per cent chance of developing schizophrenia."
I was a bit puzzled, with such a high increase in risk for teenager smokers of developing schizophrenia, that the authors were still hedging their bets on whether you could say cannabis caused their illness.
Anyway, here’s another just published study relevant to causation, and this one followed real people to see what happened:
Interesting. Of course, as I mentioned in my previous post, nothing annoys cannabis smokers more than the studies that keep indicating the connection between their habit and a debilitating disease, especially for those who start smoking young. See the comments following that Physorg at the above link for some examples. It’s such a shame how the evidence keeps piling up against them, though. (Ha.)The study took place in Germany and involved a random sample of 1,923 adolescents and young adults aged 14 to 24 years.
The researchers excluded anyone who reported cannabis use or pre-existing psychotic symptoms at the start of the study so that they could examine the relation between new (incident) cannabis use and psychotic symptoms.
The remaining participants were then assessed for cannabis use and psychotic symptoms at three time points over the study period (on average four years apart).
Incident cannabis use almost doubled the risk of later incident psychotic symptoms, even after accounting for factors such as age, sex, socioeconomic status, use of other drugs, and other psychiatric diagnoses. Furthermore, in those with cannabis use at the start of the study, continued use of cannabis over the study period increased the risk of persistent psychotic symptoms
There was no evidence for self medication effects as psychotic symptoms did not predict later cannabis use.
According to the study, those people who reported using Benzedrine or Dexedrine were nearly 60 percent more likely to develop Parkinson's than those people who didn't take the drugs.As the article notes, amphetamines plays around with dopamine in the brain, so it doesn't seem a stretch to see a connection.
Unexpected results from a Scripps Research Institute and ModGene, LLC study could completely alter scientists' ideas about Alzheimer's disease -- pointing to the liver instead of the brain as the source of the "amyloid" that deposits as brain plaques associated with this devastating condition. The findings could offer a relatively simple approach for Alzheimer's prevention and treatment.
At the risk of sounding like an Apple fanboy convert, the new iPad2 does sound very good. The basic iPad I got for free (well, as part of an office equipment deal) is often the subject of evening competition for its use.
For the record, the most popular applications on mine are:
* Mercury browser: abandon Safari, and use a browser that actually looks and feels like a Windows tabbed browser. It’s fantastic, and cost all of $1.19.
* Sketchpad Pro: a very good sketch program that even my daughter has worked out how to use now, and enjoy. I think it cost under $10.
* For games, the kids have spent a ridiculous amount of time on hunting dinosaurs in Carnivore, the free version of hangman known as Doodlehang is fun for adults and kids, and my wife spents an inordinate amount of time on sudoku with Sudoku Joy. I don’t actually use it for any games for any length of time.
* I try to read downloaded (free books) on it using GoodReader, but I usually get too easily distracted and back to the internet instead.
Oh, I hate them, hate them, hate them. Every time one of their narrow-minded, classist letters makes it on the air, I contemplate burning my tote bag in protest. The problem, for me, isn't just that some people don't like some things NPR covers. It's that these reflexively snobby pseudo-intellectuals see NPR as their own—a refuge from the mad world outside, a "safe," high-minded palace that should never be sullied by anything more outré than James Taylor (whom, of course, they love).I understand where he is coming from, although I have to say, they sound quite a bit worse than Radio National listeners in Australia.
Greg Laden has a lengthy post talking about the potential for the Yellowstone Caldera to erupt in the future. Lots of detail, a fair bit of uncertainty, but seems it’ll happen some day.
"Privately, a lot of people think that the situation is not good for SUSY," says Alessandro Strumia, a theorist at the University of Pisa in Italy, who recently produced a paper about the impact of the LHC's latest results on the fine-tuning problem4. "This is a big political issue in our field," he adds. "For some great physicists, it is the difference between getting a Nobel prize and admitting they spent their lives on the wrong track." Ellis agrees: "I've been working on it for almost 30 years now, and I can imagine that some people might get a little bit nervous."
"Plenty of things will change if we fail to discover SUSY," says Lester. Theoretical physicists will have to go back to the drawing board and find an alternative way to solve the problems with the standard model. That's not necessarily a bad thing, he adds: "For particle physics as a whole it will be really exciting."
Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy
"I'm tired of pretending like I'm not special," Sheen added. "You can't process me with a normal brain."
It looks even worse than it sounds on video, though.There are three opinion pieces about pricing carbon today which are of interest:
* Henry Ergas runs the “traditional” arguments against acting unilaterally. In The Australian (of course.)
* Kenneth Davidson goes apocalyptic and believes the Australian scheme and targets are a pittance anyway, and arguments that people should get used to the fact that much, much more to reduce CO2 will be necessary:
A safe climate scenario requires that the present global warming of just under 1 degree not be exceeded. Globally, this requires the end of the fossil fuel industries.
According to David Spratt, co-author of Climate Code Red: the case for emergency action, ''This requires emergency action, and probably 10 per cent or more of world production will be required for a sustained period to build a new energy system and economy. This is huge but is about a third of the production countries such as Australia, the United States and Britain diverted to defence production during World War II.''
The latest scientific modelling of climate change suggests that if the globe warms by 4 degrees - the likely result if the commitments made at Copenhagen in 2009 are all that is done - the consequences would be far more serious than if the allies were defeated in WWII.
According to Professor Kevin Anderson, director of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change in Britain, ''If you have got a population of 9 billion by 2050 and you hit 4, 5 or 6 degrees, you might have half a billion people surviving.''
Well, we all hope it's not as bad as that.
* Phillip Coorey speculates (in a plausible way, I think) about the future politics of all this.
It was reported last week that a new study showed that the MOND theory (the modified gravity theory that some astrophysicists are still pursing despite it not being widely accepted) works well with yet another class of galaxy. This got some mainstream media attention, which really annoyed physicist Sean Carroll at Cosmic Variance. Carroll complains about the reports said this theory challenges the existence of dark matter. Not so, said Carroll, pointing out that MOND works well at galaxy level, but everyone knows it doesn’t work at the scale of galactic clusters. What’s more (he says) it’s not an elegant theory at all – it’s ugly, and we all know how physicists hate “ugly”. (Except when it comes to string theory, in a large number of cases.)
So the short story is: even with MOND, you still need dark matter to make the universe work right.
I find that’s a pity. Big science is stuck in a bit of a rut at the moment, and it would be good to see something major which is currently widely accepted turn out to be wrong.
Of more science fiction-y interest is a new paper that talks about the possibility of wormholes existing on the insides of stars - forming connections with stars on the other side of the universe:
I hope Sean Carroll stays away from this one: it's too intriguing an idea to be shot down too quickly.The scientists began investigating the idea of wormholes between stars when they were researching what kinds of astrophysical objects could serve as entrances to wormholes. According to previous models, some of these objects could look similar to stars.
This idea led the scientists to wonder if wormholes might exist in otherwise ordinary stars and neutron stars. From a distance, these stars would look very much like normal stars (and normal neutron stars), but they might have a few differences that could be detectable.
To investigate these differences, the researchers developed a model of an ordinary star with a tunnel at the star’s center, through which matter could move. Two stars that share a wormhole would have a unique connection, since they are associated with the two mouths of the wormhole. Because exotic matter in the wormhole could flow like a fluid between the stars, both stars would likely pulse in an unusual way. This pulsing could lead to the release of various kinds of energy, such as ultrahigh-energy cosmic rays.
There were lots of these type of smallish butterflies around. I don’t know why, but Brisbane always seems to have an overabundance of black and white butterflies. It seems rare to find one with more interesting colours.
In any event, the photos came out pretty well, I thought:
Did you realise there was a pretty severe drought going on in China? No, nor did I; I'm obviously not paying enough attention:
Update:Gripped by its worst drought for 60 years, the world's biggest wheat producer is desperate for a downpour to avoid a crop failure that would have an impact on food prices around the world.
The "H1 megadrought," as it's known, was one of the most severe climate trials ever faced by anatomically modern humans.
Africa's Lake Victoria, now the world's largest tropical lake, dried out, as did Lake Tana in Ethiopia, and Lake Van in Turkey.
The Nile, Congo and other major rivers shriveled, and Asian summer monsoons weakened or failed from China to the Mediterranean, meaning the monsoon season carried little or no rainwater.
As other leaders across the Middle East scurry to appease discontented citizens, the king introduced 19 new measures estimated to cost 135 riyals ($36 billion), according to John Sfakianakis, chief economist of Banque Sausi Fransi. The measures address inflation and housing, expand social security benefits, and ease unemployment and education costs – two areas of particular concern to Saudi youths.The article says that King Abdullah is already reasonably popular. You can never be too sure these days, though.
Sakana-kun, the fish expert and TV figure well-known for his blowfish-shaped cap, is about to become Japan's "osakana taishi" (fish ambassador) to promote fish consumption and boost the declining industry.... The farm ministry expects Sakana-kun to "send out information" about fish, the fishing industry and related government policies, it said in a statement. Fish has been declining as a staple amid a shift to more Western diets.I don't think the fish feel they need such an ambassador.
Judith Curry, the climate scientist who started a blog with the stated aim of building bridges between climate scientists and climate skeptics, has revealed that she never intended including those scientists who blog at Real Climate.
This all comes out in the post she finally decided to run on “hide the decline” and the use of tree ring proxies. Gavin Schmidt from Real Climate turned up in comments, and a good slanging match evolved from there.
But I can’t see how anyone can read Curry and think she is genuinely open minded. Her initial post indicates that she is not widely read on the topic, but that she is sceptical that work to date has any value. She ends with (my emphasis):
If there is a problem, lets get to the bottom of it and fix it.
But when Schmidt turns up and complains that, as she’s saying that she agrees with the never-fail- to-bore windbag McIntyre , she’s accusing the scientists concerned of being outright dishonest, rather than having a mere difference of opinion as to how to display information, she responds with:
If you don’t like dishonest, try misguided and pseudoscience.
Gavin further down:
your method of argument in the top post and the conclusions you draw can be argued and drawn for any subjective decision about pretty much any presentation of complex data. Once you do it based on your prior prejudices against one set of researchers, the flood gates are open to apply it to anyone. We therefore end up with a situation where any difference of opinion is put down to dishonesty, and the process of objective scientific analysis has been tossed to the wolves.
You see your stance as brave, while in fact it is just lazy. I’m sure your students are proud.
And further down, when Curry starts making the big sweeping statements that her initial post indicated were only hunches, Gavin writes:
You betray complete ignorance of any of this literature. “Statistical models that make no sense in terms of calculating hemispheric or global average temperature anomalies” – got a cite for that?
curryja | February 22, 2011 at 8:52 pm | Reply
Another zinger, I’m dying here.
And yes, as is her habit, she excuses sweeping statements by telling us her detailed criticisms are coming in a later post.
Her real attitude to Real Climate is shown towards the end of the thread we get this from Curry:
I find it of primary importance to build bridges with the broader community of scientists (including skeptics), the public, and policy makers. I stopped bothering with the RC crowd in summer 2007, when i received an unpleasant email from Mike Mann chastising me over congratulating Steve McIntyre on winning the 2008 Science Webblog Award. It was at that point that I stopped having anything to do with RC (other than my driveby comments about Montford’s book last summer). So I have built a bridge in the form of a platform for dialogue, they can meet me half way or not (pretty much not, the prefer the circling wagons strategy). But that is not the bridge that I am particularly interested in.
But the best summary of Curry’s disingenuous approach in her blog is from dhogaza:
Absolutely spot on.Judith Curry … you’ve used this “my eyes glaze over”, and “it’s outside the arena of my personal expertise” argument before.
Yet … whenever you do, you come down on the side of the denialists.
Your personal philosophy seems to be…
“If I don’t understand it, the anti-science people are probably right”.
Ponder what this means to your personal reputation (whatever is left of it).
It’s so very sad to see the devastation and loss of life in Christchurch. This is from my family’s visit there nearly one year ago.
Readers in this corner of the multiverse who have not yet realised that I have greatly expanded my rambling post from yesterday about whether or not they are free to kill at will today are hereby referred to my previous post.
Just a note here that the column by David Hirst in The Age this morning seems a pretty reasonable bit of analysis of the current remarkable goings on in the Arab world.
I’ve been meaning to refer to a new round of multiverse talk on the internet that arose a few weeks ago, mainly due to a new book by string theory promoter Brian Greene. (The book is getting good reviews.) Somewhere, out there in the multiverse, I guess I already have.
This was all kicked off for me by a post by Peter Woit at Not Even Wrong. He noted that had recently seen Lee Smolin give a talk at a New York museum in which (from what Woit could remember):
….he said that discussions of a multiverse containing infinite numbers of copies of ourselves behaving slightly differently made him uneasy for moral reasons. The worry is that one might be led to stop caring that much about the implications of one’s actions. After all, whatever mistake you make, in some other infinite number of universes, you didn’t do it.
Now, before I get to talking about that issue, I should mention that Woit (who certainly hates the string theory version of the multiverse for its untestability, but seems more open minded about other theories that lead to them) also links to a sceptical review of Greene’s book (“The Hidden Reality.”) This review is one of the best short summaries of the problem of string theory, and how those problems evolved, I have read. It’s well worth a visit.
And, again, before I get onto the multiverse and morality, Peter Woit’s post has a very good series of comments in which there is some discussion of whether the widely accepted theory of early universe inflation leads to enough multiple universes as a possibility anyway. In fact, one of the whole issues in Woit’s thread is that he complains how physicists do mix up the different theories that lead to multiple universes and act as if there is some connection between them all.
This is a good point. I would have thought that the type of multiverse with the real moral issue is the one arising from Everett’s many worlds interpretation of quantum theory. But string theory allows for so many universes that it seems you can get to multiple versions of yourself that way too (in fact, I’m not sure of this, but with more versions of yourself than Everett’s version alone?)
So, back to morality:
I’ve run out of time. Will continue later.
Continued:
Meanwhile, more detail of the issue of the multiverse and morality came up at Cosmic Variance, where physicist Sean Carroll noted a post at Huffington Post by Clay Naff (who I am unfamiliar with.) Naff argues that the multiverse violates the "Moral Principle" which he explains as follows:
Now, Naff doesn't actually spend any time explaining how the multiverse would corrupt moral reasoning, but Sean Carroll has a go at what his argument seems to be:It states that we should resist accepting any proposition that tends to disable moral reasoning, unless and until the scientifically interpreted evidence compels us.
I honed this principle in the context of my critique of religion, but it applies, for example, to the secular idea of the philosopher's zombie. The Moral Principle prevents us from accepting the idea that anyone else is a zombie who appears to be just like any other person, except that there's no real consciousness inside. If we were to accept that idea, there would be no moral barrier to torturing or murdering "zombies." In fact, it would be much like Hitler's dehumanization of the Jews.
What he seems to be concerned about — although he never quite comes out and says it, so a bit of interpretation is required, and I could always be misreading — is the possibility that our moral intuitions could be undermined by the idea that there are an infinite number of copies of ourselves out there in the multiverse, some of them exactly like us and many of them slightly different, e.g. worlds where Hitler was victorious, etc. In such a setup, should we be concerned that morality is pointless, because every good thing and every bad thing eventually occurs elsewhere in the cosmos?That seemed a fair guess. But Naff then turns up in comments and disagrees. His example of why the idea is dangerous is:
suppose that you truly believe that there are infinite copies of yourself “out there,” including every possible variation of your life history. Now, suppose I offer you a million dollars to play Russian Roulette with a gun that has five of six chambers loaded. Would it not be rational to take the bet? And so, would it not be rational to abandon “this” life at every frustration or mistake?Carroll, before Naff's comment, argued that this should have no effect on morality at all:
The job of morality is to figure out what we think we human beings should be doing, which, as we’ve been discussing, does not reduce to looking at what actually happens in the universe....
I don’t think we should be concerned about that (even if it’s true, which it may very well be). An idea like this doesn’t “disable our moral reasoning” — in fact, it might be extremely helpful to our moral reasoning. If your version of morality depends on the assumption that what happens here on Earth is unique in the universe, then it’s time to update your morality, not to put your hands over your ears when people start talking about the multiverse.Naff has to point out something important to his view in another comment:
The argument I am making has everything to do with the premature adoption of a conjecture as scientific fact in the popular consciousness. Can this do harm? History demonstrates it. Leave aside “Social Darwinism.” I presume that none of you would deliberately torture a sick child. Yet, early in the 20th century, the premature adoption of the scientific hypothesis that *starvation* could cure juvenile diabetes led to horrific maltreatment of already suffering children. You may scoff at the notion that MW as a worldview (rather than as a scientific hypothesis) can have terrible consequences, but I can only say that it shows a poor understanding of history, moral reasoning and/or the social impact of ideas.
I for one, if given the option, would prefer to live in the most moral of all multiverses, and will make my choices to promote that end result… It’s like saying that because there are bad neighborhoods, everyone should stop trying to build good ones.Also, as I noted here some time ago, Christian physicist Don Page is un-fazed by a multiverse, but in his paper "Does God so Love the Multiverse" (I still like that title) it seems he does not address the type of multiverse which sees multiple versions of the same person and what that implies for moral decision making.
What I decide now will irrevocably select a branch for this universe from now on. Which branch would I like to be on?This leads to my next point.How is that not a workable basis for a workable morality, albeit an openly selfish one?
The “moral argument” would forbid you to accept any fundamental theory with fully deterministic evolution. If you have no free will, you’re arguably not responsible for your actions in any meaningful sense. Instead, it’s the initial conditions of the universe that are responsible. (Or the final conditions for that matter.) So. What now? Cut funding for everybody who dares to believe time evolution is fundamentally deterministic because the philosophical implications are sociologically difficult?Good point, and I think there is little doubt that, apart from fundamental physics which implies no free will, the neuroscience and popular science articles that argue that we are not really in control of our decisions is deathly harmful to moral reasoning.
...interest was piqued to levels of feverish enthusiasm, nay fanaticism, by a quote from Bieber's mother, who is apparently convinced she and her son were personally selected by God "to bring light and inspiration to the world". This may seem to amount to a certain scaling-down of ambition on the part of God, who previously opted to bring light and inspiration to the world by sending His only son to minister among us, heal lepers, walk on water, raise the dead etc, rather than, say, performing tepid R&B-influenced pop and having a "trademark haircut", but you've got to move with the times: it's Cowell's world now! You start bringing everybody down with the whole leprosy thing, you're asking to get buzzed off. And besides, Bieber has an array of miraculous powers entirely of his own, enthusiastically detailed by the writer: "He can break dance and do 'the Dougie' . . . he can solve a Rubik's Cube in less than two minutes . . . this is not your typical teen idol." The Dougie and the Rubik's Cube, you say? It's a sign! A sign! Stitch that, Dawkins! No wonder they call them Beliebers! Count Lost in Showbiz in!But then, there's also this:
But he saves his greatest wisdom for the subject of politics. "I'm not sure about parties, but whatever they have in Korea, that's bad," he offers, coming down at a stroke against both a Stalinist totalitarian dictatorship and a fully functioning democracy. Perhaps he's a Chomskyan anarcho-syndicalist, which would certainly explain his hit single One Less Lonely Girl Under a Federated, Decentralised System of Free Associations Incorporating Economic as Well as Other Socialist Institutions.
Also I think it will eventually strike many observers as, well, hairsplitting, to argue that a trend of increasing intensity of rainfall events cannot be connected to human well-being unless and until we can show that flood damage unquestionably rises even controlling for all other contributing factors. All analogies are flawed at some level, but its a bit like seeing sparks from a distant fire settle onto one's rooftop, and not worry about them because, watch as you may, they just keep going out. Rain events and major snowmelt events cause floods when they get intense enough, this is like saying a driver who has many close calls is likely to have a serious accident eventually. Even though other things (previously saturated soil for example) certainly help set the stage.Well, the last point about deer kills in snow is an example too far, but I agree generally.
And why just focus on flood? What about the other harms almost surely associated with intense precipitation (rain or snow) events, like traffic fatalities during the events themselves? And for intense rain specifically (but also large snow melt events), how about soil erosion on hill sides (even gently sloping), and sewage overflows into harbors and streams, and leaching of nutrients from lawns and farm fields, and deer kills in deep snow?
An odd report at Physorg about prairie dogs – a species so cute it’s always a toss up in my mind as to whether it’s them or meerkats I would rather see illegally released into Australia:
Researchers in the US studying the behavior of black-tailed prairie dogs at a local zoo have discovered they behave differently, kissing and cuddling each other more when people are watching than when they are unobserved.
As I link to Physorg all the time, I’m sure they won’t mind my copying the photo that accompanies the article:
More from the report:
Just don't teach them how to use video cameras, OK?Dr Eltorai said their study showed that like humans, the prairie dogs often behaved differently when they were being watched, and many seemed to enjoy the attention, becoming more relaxed and spending less time watching for potential dangers as the numbers of visitors increased.
Global warming made the floods that devastated England and Wales in the autumn of 2000, costing £3.5bn, between two and three times more likely to happen, new research has found. This is the first time scientists have quantified the role of human-induced climate change in increasing the risk of a serious flood and represents a major development in climate science.
"It shows climate change is acting here and now to load the dice towards more extreme weather," said Myles Allen of Oxford University, who led the work, which he started after his own home was nearly flooded in 2000. It will also have wider consequences, say experts, by making lawsuits for compensation against energy companies more likely to succeed.
Well, I don't know about that last point, given that it is, in theory, possible for everyone to stop using electricity from coal burning power stations and burn candles instead, but it suits us to continue using their dirty power.
The Guardian article points us to a more general Nature paper about precipitation. From the abstract:
Here we show that human-induced increases in greenhouse gases have contributed to the observed intensification of heavy precipitation events found over approximately two-thirds of data-covered parts of Northern Hemisphere land areas. These results are based on a comparison of observed and multi-model simulated changes in extreme precipitation over the latter half of the twentieth century analysed with an optimal fingerprinting technique. Changes in extreme precipitation projected by models, and thus the impacts of future changes in extreme precipitation, may be underestimated because models seem to underestimate the observed increase in heavy precipitation with warming.Well, that's encouraging, isn't it.
Interesting, although this still sounds to me likely a surprisingly uncertain area of knowledge.Amber Wise, Kacie O'Brien and Tracey Woodruff note ongoing concern about possible links between chronic exposure to estrogens in the water supply and fertility problems and other adverse human health effects. Almost 12 million women of reproductive age in the United States take the pill, and their urine contains the hormone. Hence, the belief that oral contraceptives are the major source of estrogen in lakes, rivers, and streams. Knowing that sewage treatment plants remove virtually all of the main estrogen -- 17 alpha-ethinylestradiol (EE2) -- in oral contraceptives, the scientists decided to pin down the main sources of estrogens in water supplies.
Their analysis found that EE2 has a lower predicted concentration in U.S. drinking water than natural estrogens from soy and dairy products and animal waste used untreated as a farm fertilizer....
Some research cited in the report suggests that animal manure accounts for 90 percent of estrogens in the environment. Other research estimates that if just 1 percent of the estrogens in livestock waste reached waterways, it would comprise 15 percent of the estrogens in the world's water supply.
Nouriel Roubini writes about why the world seems to be so lacking in leadership in key areas at the moment (including global warming). The whole article seems a pretty good summary of the international power vacuum that, I suppose, shows no sign of ending any time soon. His last paragraph:
In short, for the first time since the end of World War II, there is no nation—or strong alliance of nations—with the political will and economic leverage to secure its goals on the global stage. As in previous historical periods, this vacuum may favor the ambitious and the aggressive as they seek their own advantage. In such a world, the absence of a high-level agreement on creating a new collective-security system—focused on economics rather than military power—is not merely irresponsible, but dangerous. A G-Zero world without leadership and multilateral cooperation is an unstable equilibrium for global economic prosperity and security.
Chris Middendorp, who has some experience has a community worker, writes how he is not surprised about the recent large study that confirmed (again) the relationship between marijuana use, particularly by teenagers, and psychosis:
I've said before that, my (much more limited observations) have also led me to the same suspicion. Yet, as Middenthorp says in the rest of his article, casual marijuana users who have no history of mental illness are loathe to admit that such studies are right. They will argue about other things too:I've always assumed this connection to be credible. Working for community agencies, I have seen again and again cannabis users develop paranoia, antisocial behaviour and psychosis. In many instances, the symptoms and behaviour cease when the cannabis use stops.
I also think it is revealing that among my circle of friends, of the five who were heavy cannabis users in the 1990s, four developed psychotic illnesses. Years later they are all still regularly hospitalised for psychiatric treatment.
I won't argue that cannabis causes schizophrenia or any other mental disorder, but it seems fairly apparent that cannabis can let the psychotic genie, as it were, out of the bottle.
At a friend's party last month, I fell into conversation with Peter, a 30-year-old man who vociferously complained about Victoria Police's random saliva testing of drivers. It was futile to catch cannabis users, Peter said. "Cannabis doesn't affect your driving," he explained emphatically. I spent 30 minutes listening to Peter and two women discussing the benefits of daily pot smoking and deriding the police as "fascists" for spoiling the good times. These were tertiary educated, employed, middle-class adults.
They were daily pot smokers?
Here's another thing about illicit drug users: they like to claim that they are normal functioning members of society and are harming no one. This is, I bet, wrong in 90% of cases. At the very least, such frequent marijuana users are known technically as crashing bores: like those who spend half an hour arguing that marijuana doesn't affect driving, or disputing the fact that a significant number of young users will end up with a crippling mental illness.
The Independent notes that future astronauts to Mars, or their kids, may well end up with fertility problems at the end:
According to a review by three scientists looking into the feasibility of colonising Mars, astronauts would be well advised to avoid getting pregnant along the way because of the high levels of radiation that would bombard their bodies as they travelled through space.
Without effective shielding on spaceships, high-energy proton particles would probably sterilise any female foetus conceived in deep space and could have a profound effect on male fertility. "The present shielding capabilities would probably preclude having a pregnancy transited to Mars," said radiation biophysicist Tore Straume of Nasa's Ames Research Center in an essay for the Journal of Cosmology.
The DNA which guides the development of all the cells in the body is easily damaged by the kind of radiation that would assail astronauts as they journeyed through space. Studies on non-human primates have shown that exposure to ionising radiation kills egg cells in a female foetus during the second half of pregnancy. "One would have to be very protective of those cells during gestation, during pregnancy, to make sure that the female didn't become sterile so they could continue the colony," Dr Straume said.
Looking at both digital memory and analog devices, the researchers calculate that humankind is able to store at least 295 exabytes of information. (Yes, that's a number with 20 zeroes in it.)and:Put another way, if a single star is a bit of information, that's a galaxy of information for every person in the world. That's 315 times the number of grains of sand in the world. But it's still less than one percent of the information that is stored in all the DNA molecules of a human being.
"These numbers are impressive, but still miniscule compared to the order of magnitude at which nature handles information" Hilbert said. "Compared to nature, we are but humble apprentices. However, while the natural world is mind-boggling in its size, it remains fairly constant. In contrast, the world's technological information processing capacities are growing at exponential rates."
