Thursday, September 12, 2013
More Traditionalist concern, I expect
Archbishop Pietro Parolin says in an interview that celibacy in Roman Catholic Church is open for discussion
Archbishop Pietro Parolin said in response to an interview question with Venezuelan newspaper El Universal that “celibacy is not an institution but look, it is also true that you can discuss (it) because as you say this is not a dogma, a dogma of the church.” Parolin also noted, even though the church is not a democratic institution, it must "reflect the democratic spirit of the times and adopt a collegial way of governing."
According to the National Catholic Reporter, Parolin’s comments “are raising eyebrows today, with some wondering if they herald looming changes in Catholic teaching and practice.”
Traditionalists must be getting agitated
You don’t have to believe in God to go to heaven, Pope Francis assures sceptics
The Pope has again said conciliatory things to atheists? He must be starting to concern traditionalist Catholics of the Michael Voris, Father Z variety. The latter has not commented yet, but surely something is coming...
The Pope has again said conciliatory things to atheists? He must be starting to concern traditionalist Catholics of the Michael Voris, Father Z variety. The latter has not commented yet, but surely something is coming...
A call out to Catallaxy
Gab, and any other woman, who reads this morning's open thread and simply passes over a comment made by a new regular at 6.25, is an absolute disgrace.
The future may be panda powered
Study: Panda Poo May Be Coup for Future of Biofuels | Climate Central
Good to see innovative uses for pandas:
Good to see innovative uses for pandas:
Brown’s team has found more than 40 different microbes living in the guts of giant pandas at the Memphis Zoo that could help decompose the corn cobs and other tough plant materials so it can be more easily and efficiently processed to make ethanol.
The study is using the feces from giant pandas Ya Ya and Le Le. Pandas, which have a short digestive tract, feast on a diet of tough bamboo. Bacteria with extremely potent enzymes break down the woody bamboo efficiently and quickly.
“The time from eating to defecation is comparatively short in the panda, so their microbes have to be very efficient to get nutritional value out of the bamboo,” Brown said. “And efficiency is key when it comes to biofuel production — that’s why we focused on the microbes in the giant panda.”
Brown’s team found the specific bacteria that break down lignocellulose into simple sugars, which can be fermented into bioethanol, and they found other bacteria that can transform those sugars into oils and fats for biodiesel production.
The microbes in pandas’ guts are accessible via their feces and can easily be cultured, Brown said.
What's better than acid on your teeth? Hot acid!
Coca-cola to introduce world’s first canned hot fizzy drink in Japan - Asia - World - The Independent
I wonder if they have buffered the acidity in this drink some way; because I can't imagine that heating up soft drink does any wonders for your tooth enamel.
I wonder if they have buffered the acidity in this drink some way; because I can't imagine that heating up soft drink does any wonders for your tooth enamel.
Hormones are complicated
Middle-Aged Men Can Blame Estrogen, Too - NYTimes.com
The article starts:
The article starts:
It is the scourge of many a middle-aged man: he starts getting a pot belly, using lighter weights at the gym and somehow just doesn’t have the sexual desire of his younger years.What a complicated design is the human body, heh?
The obvious culprit is testosterone, since men gradually make less of the male sex hormone as years go by. But a surprising new answer is emerging, one that doctors say could reinvigorate the study of how men’s bodies age. Estrogen, the female sex hormone, turns out to play a much bigger role in men’s bodies than previously thought, and falling levels contribute to their expanding waistlines just as they do in women’s.
The discovery of the role of estrogen in men is “a major advance,” said Dr. Peter J. Snyder, a professor of medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, who is leading a big new research project on hormone therapy for men 65 and over. Until recently, testosterone deficiency was considered nearly the sole reason that men undergo the familiar physical complaints of midlife.
Wednesday, September 11, 2013
Is that right?
Coalition rhetoric a real confidence builder
Michael Pascoe talks about the self fulfilling prophecy of improved business confidence after the election, but ends on this note:
In any case, it's not a good sign of the Coalition swinging the axe for party political reasons.
Michael Pascoe talks about the self fulfilling prophecy of improved business confidence after the election, but ends on this note:
It is a little bemusing that the only concrete decision taken by the yet-to-be-sworn-in government is to waste money – having to pay Steve Bracks a couple of years’ wages for nothing amidst suggestions that the New York consul general’s post will instead go to a Liberal Party worthy.Is that right, the bit about the 2 years salary?
In any case, it's not a good sign of the Coalition swinging the axe for party political reasons.
More attention to reef needed
Coral will dissolve if CO2 emissions don't change
I think that, coming out as it did during an election campaign, this story about new and significant sounding research didn't attract much attention.
I did see it at the time, but forgot to come back to it. I also thought to myself that Ove Hoegh-Guldberg has long been very pessimistic on everything he says about the reef, so maybe this press release is over-stating it too, but now that I read the detail about what they did, it seems I was wrong. Here's the abstract itself:
But no, we were probably too distracted at the time it came out by the searing political story about how Kevin Rudd failed to chat to a make up artist.
I think that, coming out as it did during an election campaign, this story about new and significant sounding research didn't attract much attention.
I did see it at the time, but forgot to come back to it. I also thought to myself that Ove Hoegh-Guldberg has long been very pessimistic on everything he says about the reef, so maybe this press release is over-stating it too, but now that I read the detail about what they did, it seems I was wrong. Here's the abstract itself:
Increasing atmospheric partial pressure of CO2 (pCO2) is a major threat to coral reefs, but some argue that the threat is mitigated by factors such as the variability in the response of coral calcification to acidification, differences in bleaching susceptibility, and the potential for rapid adaptation to anthropogenic warming. However the evidence for these mitigating factors tends to involve experimental studies on corals, as opposed to coral reefs, and rarely includes the influence of multiple variables (e.g., temperature and acidification) within regimes that include diurnal and seasonal variability. Here, we demonstrate that the inclusion of all these factors results in the decalcification of patch-reefs under business-as-usual scenarios and reduced, although positive, calcification under reduced-emission scenarios. Primary productivity was found to remain constant across all scenarios, despite significant bleaching and coral mortality under both future scenarios. Daylight calcification decreased and nocturnal decalcification increased sharply from the preindustrial and control conditions to the future scenarios of low (reduced emissions) and high (business-as-usual) increases in pCO2. These changes coincided with deeply negative carbonate budgets, a shift toward smaller carbonate sediments, and an increase in the abundance of sediment microbes under the business-as-usual emission scenario. Experimental coral reefs demonstrated highest net calcification rates and lowest rates of coral mortality under preindustrial conditions, suggesting that reef processes may not have been able to keep pace with the relatively minor environmental changes that have occurred during the last century. Taken together, our results have serious implications for the future of coral reefs under business-as-usual environmental changes projected for the coming decades and century.
But no, we were probably too distracted at the time it came out by the searing political story about how Kevin Rudd failed to chat to a make up artist.
Failed to rise
If there is but one small consolation out of the election, it's that it would seem to show that, even in Queensland, there might be limits on the nuttiness that people will vote for.
I forgot to post about him before the election, but unknowispeaksense had alerted us to a candidate in Capricornia for the "Rise Up Australia" party who had a particularly paranoid streak. Quoting from a newpaper:
"Rise Up" calls for a cut in the intake of Muslims, and (obviously) thinks climate change is a UN conspiracy, so should go over a treat with many of the commentators at Catallaxy, one would expect.
But as it turns out, Paul Lewis did not do so well - he got 379 votes according to the latest count. Even for the Senate, where Rise Up did run, that's not enough. I wonder, how did people recognize him so well as the nuttiest out of a good field of nutters? Is the name "Rise Up Australia" just over some fine line that marks "obviously crazy"?
Speaking of Catallaxy, I noticed someone there yesterday in a thread claim that a policeman a couple of decades ago had told him that (this would be pre the Howard gun buy back) most murderous shootings in Australia were gay men killing other men in fights over lovers. (It's just that it's media silence that we never knew that, apparently.) This sounds a wildly implausible claim, does it not? But it came to mind when I noticed this today from Salon:
I forgot to post about him before the election, but unknowispeaksense had alerted us to a candidate in Capricornia for the "Rise Up Australia" party who had a particularly paranoid streak. Quoting from a newpaper:
CAPRICORNIA’S newest federal candidate believes the United Nations contracted a private company to cause the floods in Central Queensland in 2010 and 2011.And remember who helped launch Rise Up Australia - none other than Christopher Monckton.
Rise Up Australia Party’s Paul Lewis yesterday expressed concern his views might not get him elected....
The self-proclaimed born-again Christian said he had visited friends in the region over the past six years. During his visits in the past three years he said it was obvious “weather manipulation” technology was being used.
He said aerial tankers bought by a private company from the US defence force were sub-contracted by the UN to spray chemicals on clouds over CQ in 2010, causing high levels of rainfall.
"Rise Up" calls for a cut in the intake of Muslims, and (obviously) thinks climate change is a UN conspiracy, so should go over a treat with many of the commentators at Catallaxy, one would expect.
But as it turns out, Paul Lewis did not do so well - he got 379 votes according to the latest count. Even for the Senate, where Rise Up did run, that's not enough. I wonder, how did people recognize him so well as the nuttiest out of a good field of nutters? Is the name "Rise Up Australia" just over some fine line that marks "obviously crazy"?
Speaking of Catallaxy, I noticed someone there yesterday in a thread claim that a policeman a couple of decades ago had told him that (this would be pre the Howard gun buy back) most murderous shootings in Australia were gay men killing other men in fights over lovers. (It's just that it's media silence that we never knew that, apparently.) This sounds a wildly implausible claim, does it not? But it came to mind when I noticed this today from Salon:
Last Saturday, the hosts of the Minnesota-based radio show “The Sons of Liberty,” Bradlee Dean and Jake McMillan, claimed that homosexuals are responsible for half of all murders committed in large cities. Where they would get such a wildly inaccurate notion, nobody knows. Facts or actual information seldom interfere with the dissemination of hatred.Well, I had missed the "killer gays" meme back in the 1990's, but it good to see that it gets an airing at the ABC collective. (You remember - the Australian, Bolt, Catallaxy.)
Dean, who is founder and executive director of a nonprofit Christian youth organization, You Can Run But You Cannot Hide International (wow, doesn’t that Mad Max-inspired name make Christianity seem appealing?), said he was quoting a New York City judge named John Martagh. But, after just a little digging, the Huffington Post revealed the quote came from a 1992 newspaper column by an evangelical loony who never cited his statistical source, but is still quoted from time to time in anti-gay rhetoric. So this is just one of those lies that gets repeated enough it becomes a kind of truth for the liars.
Dark energy and fat gravitons
Fat gravity particle gives clues to dark energy
As explained at the link, one possible explanation of dark energy would be if gravitons had a tiny, tiny mass.
(Is it just me, or does Nature News seem to be going a bit "New Scientist" in its reporting of some rather speculative theories? Not that there's anything wrong with that.)
As explained at the link, one possible explanation of dark energy would be if gravitons had a tiny, tiny mass.
(Is it just me, or does Nature News seem to be going a bit "New Scientist" in its reporting of some rather speculative theories? Not that there's anything wrong with that.)
Tuesday, September 10, 2013
Another from the "Only in Japan" file
Can this cuddly mascot soften Japan prison image? | GulfNews.com
How does Japan help people feel better about a prison in the neighbourhood? By making a mascot, of course:
Heh.
How does Japan help people feel better about a prison in the neighbourhood? By making a mascot, of course:
Heh.
Storing energy works for solar, not so much for wind
Scientists calculate the energy required to store wind and solar power on the grid
A bit of a complicated study looking at the issue of storing energy from renewables.
It seems that with wind power, there is not much point in trying to store its energy when there is excess available, but that's not the case for solar.
A bit of a complicated study looking at the issue of storing energy from renewables.
It seems that with wind power, there is not much point in trying to store its energy when there is excess available, but that's not the case for solar.
The real losers under an Abbott government...
...could well be the right wing schlock jocks who presumably have much less to get their dander up now that the world has been put to rights by a Coalition government. (Sarcasm, of course.)
Even worse could be the fate of Michael Smith, who entertains himself and a clutch of wingnut types by playing amateur sleuth to what Julia Gillard did in her law office 20 years ago. He'll probably spend the next 6 months trying to get the Abbott government to call a judicial enquiry into it; but if Abbott has any sense (yes, I know, a dubious proposition) he'll avoid the appearance of a vindictive witch hunt that no one sensible has reason to care about and reject the call. Then, if no police charges appear against Gillard (which is what I have always thought the likely outcome, given the shocking reputation of the main witness against her), what is Smith going to blog about?
For that matter, Andrew Bolt is going to have a harder time working himself into a frenzy, isn't he, when his favourite Labor targets are gone from the leadership and government? I think I read somewhere that Insiders thrashed Bolt Report in the ratings in the election run up, but I can't find that story now. Good to see that people know where to go for serious political coverage, anyway.
And the same general thing goes for all the radio right wing talk back. Sure, the repeal or not of the carbon tax will keep them going for a while, but not for 3 years.
Even worse could be the fate of Michael Smith, who entertains himself and a clutch of wingnut types by playing amateur sleuth to what Julia Gillard did in her law office 20 years ago. He'll probably spend the next 6 months trying to get the Abbott government to call a judicial enquiry into it; but if Abbott has any sense (yes, I know, a dubious proposition) he'll avoid the appearance of a vindictive witch hunt that no one sensible has reason to care about and reject the call. Then, if no police charges appear against Gillard (which is what I have always thought the likely outcome, given the shocking reputation of the main witness against her), what is Smith going to blog about?
For that matter, Andrew Bolt is going to have a harder time working himself into a frenzy, isn't he, when his favourite Labor targets are gone from the leadership and government? I think I read somewhere that Insiders thrashed Bolt Report in the ratings in the election run up, but I can't find that story now. Good to see that people know where to go for serious political coverage, anyway.
And the same general thing goes for all the radio right wing talk back. Sure, the repeal or not of the carbon tax will keep them going for a while, but not for 3 years.
Odd but interesting
I wish the author hadn't given it a silly title, but this explanation of new (and previous) research on testosterone, testicle size and parenting (and male behaviour generally) makes for interesting reading.
Here's the quote
Lenore Taylor referred to this last night on Q&A, but I see that Michelle Grattan had already quoted it on line:
I trust the new Labor leader will quote that back at the government frequently with respect to carbon pricing.
The other matter which will make the debate interesting will be the IPCC report due out very soon. It is expected to be strong, and should make the Labor and Green's position on carbon pricing appear more principled than ever.
If Labor had any sense, they would also be lining up economists to talk about how the "direct action" plan cannot plausibly reach its targets at the set cost Abbott has committed himself to.
I also note this from the LDP's website: after a lot of dumb skeptic talk about how AGW isn't yet proved, it ends with:
In all Abbott’s talk about the mandate he will have, it is worth noting his own view in other circumstances. He wrote after the Howard government’s 2007 defeat: “[Opposition leader Brendan] Nelson is right to resist the intellectual bullying inherent in talk of ‘mandates’. What exactly is Rudd’s mandate anyway: to be an economic conservative or an old-fashioned Christian socialist? The elected opposition is no less entitled than the elected government to exercise judgement and to try to keep its election commitments.”Thanks for explaining that to us, Tony!
I trust the new Labor leader will quote that back at the government frequently with respect to carbon pricing.
The other matter which will make the debate interesting will be the IPCC report due out very soon. It is expected to be strong, and should make the Labor and Green's position on carbon pricing appear more principled than ever.
If Labor had any sense, they would also be lining up economists to talk about how the "direct action" plan cannot plausibly reach its targets at the set cost Abbott has committed himself to.
I also note this from the LDP's website: after a lot of dumb skeptic talk about how AGW isn't yet proved, it ends with:
Should the evidence become compelling that global warming is due to human activity, that such global warming is likely to have significantly negative consequences for human existence, and that changes in human activity could realistically reverse those consequences, the LDP would favour market-based options.I doubt that a libertarian Senator will ever change on this - but if their website is to be believed, they may prefer carbon pricing to "direct action".
Monday, September 09, 2013
Nice graphic
Arctic sea ice delusions strike the Mail on Sunday and Telegraph | Dana Nuccitelli | Environment | theguardian.com
The Arctic Sea Ice extent minimum, which is only a short time off, is going to be much higher than last year's record, but as noted in the above article:
The Arctic Sea Ice extent minimum, which is only a short time off, is going to be much higher than last year's record, but as noted in the above article:
As University of Reading climate scientist Ed Hawkins noted last year,And this is nicely illustrated by this lovely gif, which I don't think I have seen before:
"Around 80% of the ~100 scientists at the Bjerknes [Arctic climate science] conference thought that there would be MORE Arctic sea-ice in 2013, compared to 2012."The reason so many climate scientists predicted more ice this year than last is quite simple. There's a principle in statistics known as "regression toward the mean," which is the phenomenon that if an extreme value of a variable is observed, the next measurement will generally be less extreme. In other words, we should not often expect to observe records in consecutive years. 2012 shattered the previous record low sea ice extent; hence 'regression towards the mean' told us that 2013 would likely have a higher minimum extent.
Uncle Rupert's election thoughts
My imagined thoughts seem likely to be accurate, given the way he tweeted recently:
Not bad, Jack
I've been looking through some of the comments at John Quiggin's blog, and note that Jack Strocchi's seems pretty reasonable. I'll extract two bits from it:
The sixth point to make is that there is a paradox at the heart of the AUS polity: the public appear to despise the Centre-Left’s psephologically whilst broadly agreeing with the Centre-Left ideologically. Thus the Centre-Left has been wiped out at both state and federal levels, yet there is no great public enthusiasm for austerity or Hewson “Fightback” program. This is demonstrated by Abbott’s Big Government me-tooism on the subjects of Gonski education, national disability and some kind of national broadband program. He is also reluctant to revisit industrial relations, a traditional favorite of the L/NP Right. ...
The tenth and final point to make is that the ALP did not really deserve to lose this election. going by the its performance, politicians and policies. Its economic administration was competent, there were no appalling ministerial scandals (apart from leadership tussles which were finally settled), its headline policies were broadly popular. At some basic level the electorate has made a bad decision – especially given that revoking the carbon and mineral taxes will empower the oligarchy. I draw this conclusion reluctantly as I am a fervent populist. I can only hope that the electorate comes to their senses in due course. In the meantime the ALP must work overtime to make themselves fit for government, as they did after the 1975-77 disasters.
Sunday, September 08, 2013
Everyone's a winner, baby*
I didn't see all of the election coverage last night: we were having a meal at an Italian restaurant where the family next to us had a few kids who probably had a combined count of 5 vomits during their stay, with the last one being particularly spectacular. (The youngest toddler would vomit, then cause the older kids to get sick in sympathy. I felt sorry for the parents, but nonetheless was happy to see them leave...)
Anyhow, I was home in time to see the Rudd "victory in defeat" speech, which did go on a bit, to put it mildly; and caused tension by making Labor sympathizing viewers wonder if he was ever going to get around to saying he wouldn't lead the party in Opposition.
The Abbott speech was pretty lame, I thought, and the optics of it most noteworthy for the way in which it seemed that election victory was finally deemed good enough reason for the jettison of his barnacle-like daughters. (And yes, one was still dressed like Sporty Spice. Odd.) From the ABC coverage, the family started heading up the stairs to the stage to join him at the end, only to find he had already descended into the crowd. Good on ya, Tone, way to keep a look out for what's going on with the family. I assume the young guy who then gatecrashed the family together on stage happened later - it didn't appear on the ABC.
One good thing about this election result is that I don't think anyone can plausibly claim to be puzzled by it - there really should be a lot less of this journalistic guff about Party X having lost its way and having to have a 12 month period of navel gazing to work out what went wrong (which happens now whenever Party X loses an election.) We all know exactly what went wrong - basically, Kevin Rudd and the fractious internal politics of the last 4 years.
At about 34% of the primary vote, this is low for Labor, but who doesn't just mentally tack on the Greens to get a true picture of combined Left leaning vote? At 8.5%, the Greens are no doubt suffering from the replacement of the cheerful Bob Brown with a woman who naturally looks and sounds perpetually unhappy. But the combined 42.2% is not that far from the combined Coalition vote which looks like 45.3%. (As to where to position the Palmer vote - God knows. I suspect it is just a generic protest vote against politics, and neither side can take much comfort from it.)
It was therefore hard to be depressed with the result, because there was the feeling that everyone could claim to be a winner, in one way or another:
# There were enough seats in Western Sydney and Queensland saved for Rudd to plausibly argue he had helped the party after all.
# Julia Gillard was gracious in the off stage support for Labor, and her "captain's pick" of Nova Peris worked out after all.
# The Labor Party won by Kevin giving up the leadership.
# Mad Clive gets to create what will probably be some wildly unpredictable and theatrical political stories for the next couple of years at least before he has some physical or mental breakdown.
And of course, Tony Abbott gets to hesitate his way on national TV as PM instead of mere Opposition Leader. For the reasons I have been outlining for years, I don't expect he will do well, and he and his Party have faked their way into government. We now get to see if my Peter Principle diagnosis of him gets to be confirmed from the loftier position of PM. (Regardless of what the public thinks, it's already been confirmed to my satisfaction.)
As for my feeling on the Labor leadership - Bill Shorten performed well on his television appearances during the campaign, I thought. Before that, over the last year or two, I felt he has often seemed too stressed and grumpy, but his professional and personal life has been unusually difficult over the same period. I still think he is the most appealing of the possible candidates.
* families, particularly those on low income receiving top up superannuation and assistance with school expenses excepted, of course. As well as those who rely on penalty rates, public servants in Canberra, companies that wanted to decide on long term electricity investments within the next 12 months, car manufacturers and their employees, genuine refugees hoping for family reunion, environmentalists, etc. Apart from those, the future's looking fine and dandy.
Anyhow, I was home in time to see the Rudd "victory in defeat" speech, which did go on a bit, to put it mildly; and caused tension by making Labor sympathizing viewers wonder if he was ever going to get around to saying he wouldn't lead the party in Opposition.
The Abbott speech was pretty lame, I thought, and the optics of it most noteworthy for the way in which it seemed that election victory was finally deemed good enough reason for the jettison of his barnacle-like daughters. (And yes, one was still dressed like Sporty Spice. Odd.) From the ABC coverage, the family started heading up the stairs to the stage to join him at the end, only to find he had already descended into the crowd. Good on ya, Tone, way to keep a look out for what's going on with the family. I assume the young guy who then gatecrashed the family together on stage happened later - it didn't appear on the ABC.
One good thing about this election result is that I don't think anyone can plausibly claim to be puzzled by it - there really should be a lot less of this journalistic guff about Party X having lost its way and having to have a 12 month period of navel gazing to work out what went wrong (which happens now whenever Party X loses an election.) We all know exactly what went wrong - basically, Kevin Rudd and the fractious internal politics of the last 4 years.
At about 34% of the primary vote, this is low for Labor, but who doesn't just mentally tack on the Greens to get a true picture of combined Left leaning vote? At 8.5%, the Greens are no doubt suffering from the replacement of the cheerful Bob Brown with a woman who naturally looks and sounds perpetually unhappy. But the combined 42.2% is not that far from the combined Coalition vote which looks like 45.3%. (As to where to position the Palmer vote - God knows. I suspect it is just a generic protest vote against politics, and neither side can take much comfort from it.)
It was therefore hard to be depressed with the result, because there was the feeling that everyone could claim to be a winner, in one way or another:
# There were enough seats in Western Sydney and Queensland saved for Rudd to plausibly argue he had helped the party after all.
# Julia Gillard was gracious in the off stage support for Labor, and her "captain's pick" of Nova Peris worked out after all.
# The Labor Party won by Kevin giving up the leadership.
# Mad Clive gets to create what will probably be some wildly unpredictable and theatrical political stories for the next couple of years at least before he has some physical or mental breakdown.
And of course, Tony Abbott gets to hesitate his way on national TV as PM instead of mere Opposition Leader. For the reasons I have been outlining for years, I don't expect he will do well, and he and his Party have faked their way into government. We now get to see if my Peter Principle diagnosis of him gets to be confirmed from the loftier position of PM. (Regardless of what the public thinks, it's already been confirmed to my satisfaction.)
As for my feeling on the Labor leadership - Bill Shorten performed well on his television appearances during the campaign, I thought. Before that, over the last year or two, I felt he has often seemed too stressed and grumpy, but his professional and personal life has been unusually difficult over the same period. I still think he is the most appealing of the possible candidates.
* families, particularly those on low income receiving top up superannuation and assistance with school expenses excepted, of course. As well as those who rely on penalty rates, public servants in Canberra, companies that wanted to decide on long term electricity investments within the next 12 months, car manufacturers and their employees, genuine refugees hoping for family reunion, environmentalists, etc. Apart from those, the future's looking fine and dandy.
Saturday, September 07, 2013
Pre-election post election commentary
The polls certainly look bad for Labor. Or should I say, for Kevin Rudd, given the almost presidential style of this campaign.
On the up side: the broader Australian public have finally joined me in disdain for Rudd as a politician. Took them long enough: I was there in 2006.
On the downside: seems a fair few people over 35 have started to sort of like Tony Abbott. I refer to the age factor in this because it seems there is hardly an under 30 year old in the land who he doesn't creep out. As with Rudd, I predict his popularity, even with the dag demographic, will be but a fleeting thing. There is every reason to believe he will not keep spending promises, will have some trouble on the international stage (I don't expect him to go over a treat in Indonesia especially), and even (I've been reading around) have some early ministerial scandals. Some people have said we may be looking at something like the Fraser government after Whitlam, and there might be something in that, but I expect Abbott to be worse.
There is much speculation going on about how the Senate might pan out. The arcane system there seems to make it impossible to predict these days. Last night on the ABC there was talk that the balance of power might be with three odd bods: the creepy Victorian SenatorJohn Lithgow John Madigan; Bob Katter mate, country and western singer James Blundell, and Nick Xenophon. (I don't really know what to make of Xenophon - he certainly came across as an unsually lonely character on his appearance on Kitchen Cabinet earlier this year.)
What a worry.
I'm going to be voting below the line to try to ensure as limited accidental preferences as I can.
On the up side: the broader Australian public have finally joined me in disdain for Rudd as a politician. Took them long enough: I was there in 2006.
On the downside: seems a fair few people over 35 have started to sort of like Tony Abbott. I refer to the age factor in this because it seems there is hardly an under 30 year old in the land who he doesn't creep out. As with Rudd, I predict his popularity, even with the dag demographic, will be but a fleeting thing. There is every reason to believe he will not keep spending promises, will have some trouble on the international stage (I don't expect him to go over a treat in Indonesia especially), and even (I've been reading around) have some early ministerial scandals. Some people have said we may be looking at something like the Fraser government after Whitlam, and there might be something in that, but I expect Abbott to be worse.
There is much speculation going on about how the Senate might pan out. The arcane system there seems to make it impossible to predict these days. Last night on the ABC there was talk that the balance of power might be with three odd bods: the creepy Victorian Senator
What a worry.
I'm going to be voting below the line to try to ensure as limited accidental preferences as I can.
Friday, September 06, 2013
For those who want to go prepared
senate.io — Australian senate below the line ballot paper tool
This looks like a handy tool. Instead of pondering for 20 minutes in the local school hall (if it's a nice one, it was probably built by Labor, by the way) whether to put the Legalise Marijuana Party above or below the Climate Idiots Party, you can work it all out at home and print out your personal "how to vote under the line" card.
Neat.
This looks like a handy tool. Instead of pondering for 20 minutes in the local school hall (if it's a nice one, it was probably built by Labor, by the way) whether to put the Legalise Marijuana Party above or below the Climate Idiots Party, you can work it all out at home and print out your personal "how to vote under the line" card.
Neat.
Waste of cyberspace
My. What a home for aging, bloviating, wannabe culture war warriors Catallaxy has become.
(Have a look at this comment by someone about foreign aid cutbacks, too. I won't even link to the comment about all males over 12 in Syria should be killed.)
Keeps all the wingnuts in one location, though, so it serves a purpose, I guess.
(Have a look at this comment by someone about foreign aid cutbacks, too. I won't even link to the comment about all males over 12 in Syria should be killed.)
Keeps all the wingnuts in one location, though, so it serves a purpose, I guess.
The Coalition and research
Futile research or stealthy censorship?
Ian Musgrave puts the boot into the Coalition's populist stab at research funding yesterday:
Ian Musgrave puts the boot into the Coalition's populist stab at research funding yesterday:
Yes, that’s a good idea. We could set up a committee of experts to examine all grants in detail, and get them checked by external experts as well, before deciding on who to give money to.But this part is most telling:
Oh wait a second, we do that already, it’s called the Australian Research Council.
Now, I’ve been both an applicant and a reviewer of ARC grants, so I can tell you personally that the grant process is no cake run. The competition is fierce and the amount of grant money available is limited. The review process is exhaustive and more than a little harrowing. Only around 20% of all grants get funded, and you have to be exceptionally good for your grant to get up.
Great, now we have a bunch of auditors telling researchers what their priorities should be, that’s going to work out just fine. Not to mention the cost of having this team doing the re-prioritising. Anyone willing to bet that the amount of money saved by shuffling around grants with funny names that politicians don’t understand will be more than gobbled up by the Commission of Audit team?It reminds me of the Howard government's poor judgement in stopping small funding for Australian contribution to dangerous asteroid hunting.
Oh, and the funds clawed back from these “wasteful” projects to will be put into “new medical research programs for dementia, diabetes and tropical disease”. Yeah, except that isn’t the ARC’s role at all, that’s a completely different funding body, the National Health and Medical Research Council or the NH&MRC.
I suppose it would be too much to expect that the Coalition would actually understand how research is funded in Australia.
This is hard to see as anything other a cynical attempt to defund topics the Coalition doesn’t like.
I am curious (yellow)
What scientists can see in your pee
Quite a lot, as it turns out, and it's all on line now:
Quite a lot, as it turns out, and it's all on line now:
"Urine is an incredibly complex biofluid. We had no idea there could be so many different compounds going into our toilets," noted David Wishart, the senior scientist on the project.
Wishart's research team used state-of-the-art analytical chemistry techniques including nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy, gas chromatography, mass spectrometry and liquid chromatography to systematically identify and quantify hundreds of compounds from a wide range of human urine samples.
To help supplement their experimental results, they also used computer-based data mining techniques to scour more than 100 years of published scientific literature about human urine. This chemical inventory—which includes chemical names, synonyms, descriptions, structures, concentrations and disease associations for thousands of urinary metabolites—is housed in a freely available database called the Urine Metabolome Database, or UMDB. The UMDB is a worldwide reference resource to facilitate clinical, drug and environmental urinalysis. The UMDB is maintained by The Metabolomics Innovation Centre, Canada's national metabolomics core facility.
Looking back at the history of improving health
Life expectancy history: Public health and medical advances that lead to long lives. - Slate Magazine
It looks like this is the start of a series of posts about this fascinating topic. Some of the things mentioned you would have heard before, but it's always interested to see snippets of information showing how the popular imagination about something is really quite inaccurate. Like this:
It looks like this is the start of a series of posts about this fascinating topic. Some of the things mentioned you would have heard before, but it's always interested to see snippets of information showing how the popular imagination about something is really quite inaccurate. Like this:
One of the best tours of how people died in the past is The Deadly Truth: A History of Disease in America by Gerald Grob. It’s a great antidote to all the heroic pioneer narratives you learned in elementary school history class, and it makes the Little House on the Prairie books seem delusional in retrospect. Pioneers traveling west in wagon trains had barely enough food, and much of it spoiled; their water came from stagnant, larvae-infested ponds. They died in droves of dysentery. Did you ever play with Lincoln logs or dream about living in a log cabin? What a fun fort for grown-ups, right? Wrong. The poorly sealed, damp, unventilated houses were teeming with mosquitoes and vermin. Because of settlement patterns along waterways and the way people cleared the land, some of the most notorious places for malaria in the mid-1800s were Ohio and Michigan. Everybody in the Midwest had the ague!
Jericho as with Pascoe
Coalition costings: we finally get them and they're just political fluff | Business | theguardian.com
Greg Jericho makes a very similar assessment to Michael Pascoe's about the Coalition's costings:
It's all pretty ludicrous.
Update: by the way, surely the re-assigning of rail money to road construction indicates a pretty ad hoc approach to working out which infrastructure project is most beneficial? I have complained about this a few times recently - everyone's saying it's important to put money into the "right" form of infrastructure, but making a trip to work, say, 15 minutes faster would seem something pretty hard to assess for its economic consequences.
Update 2: John Quiggin sounds the warning about the "commission of audit".
Greg Jericho makes a very similar assessment to Michael Pascoe's about the Coalition's costings:
Six billion dollars over four years. Or, given the total revenue over that time will be about $1,657bn, that’s about 0.36% of the budget over those years. Not a lot of room for error.
But they were about attacking waste. There was oodles of it, don’t you know. So how did they end up $6bn better off?
Well, today Joe Hockey and Andrew Robb, in a laughable 22-minute press conference, announced they will be cutting the growth of the foreign aid budget by $4.5bn, rephasing the water buyback scheme from over four years to over six years (a saving of $650m over four years) and a further 0.25% efficiency dividend for the public service to get $428m.
Those three measures account for 92% of the improvement of the Liberal party’s budget bottom line.
Talk about taking the tough choices. Cutting the growth in foreign aid. Who knew that was the biggest waste in government spending!As Jericho then points out, the ridiculous thing is that Abbott is also trying to straddle the fence of whether or not the "commission of audit" will mean further cuts.
It's all pretty ludicrous.
Update: by the way, surely the re-assigning of rail money to road construction indicates a pretty ad hoc approach to working out which infrastructure project is most beneficial? I have complained about this a few times recently - everyone's saying it's important to put money into the "right" form of infrastructure, but making a trip to work, say, 15 minutes faster would seem something pretty hard to assess for its economic consequences.
Update 2: John Quiggin sounds the warning about the "commission of audit".
Pretty accurate, Waleed
Abbott's adoptive strategy on policy
Waleed Aly goes through the remarkable list of Labor policies and initiatives which the Coalition has come to endorse. He concludes:
Waleed Aly goes through the remarkable list of Labor policies and initiatives which the Coalition has come to endorse. He concludes:
All this is a testament to the brutal efficiency of Abbott's opposition. He's quite prepared to bludgeon the government with an argument he later rejects. It's shameless, but it works because he does it with confidence and a straight face.
Thursday, September 05, 2013
Kevin's turn
Kevin Rudd with Annabel Crabb tonight was clearly more relaxed and comfortable than "Hah.Hah.Hah" Abbott, especially in the first half of the show. There's no doubt that, despite his terrible reputation for being a difficult boss, he is close to his family, and there is no reason to question his assessment that he considers them his closest friends. His daughter seemed, quite frankly, smarter than the Abbott daughters. (For one thing, she doesn't dress like Sporty Spice all the time, like one of Tony's daughter does, where ever she is.*) And he has a nice dog: seeing him interact with it was definitely a humanising touch.
But in the "one on one" with Crabb, there were plenty of flashes of the old fakery and over calculation in answers, and there is every reason to suspect he would still be a boss capable of making people very, very nervous. It strains credulity to believe that he is felt worse about losing his 1996 campaign to become an MP than he did about the 2010 loss of leadership. (Then again, maybe he was spectacularly emotionally immature in 1996, and had improved in that regard by 2010. Who knows - he's a very hard man to judge on his self-reportage of his emotional state.)
I think he is obviously significantly smarter than Abbott, and can judge better who to take advice from. On the other hand, it would seem his problem has always been over confidence in his own abilities, and it is very difficult to know how much more carefully he would listen to advice before making decisions if he were to be PM again. He certainly failed to give a good impression of change in the way he came up with what appeared to be (even if they weren't) ad hoc ideas in the course of the campaign. I really think it was the way he announced these, without any explanation of how they had been decided upon, which started his leakage in the polls.
But tonight, overall, he came out better than I expected. I particularly liked his daughter's story about there being a good chance he would be sitting up reading a book at 4 am she arrived home as a teenager: it confirmed his nerdiness, but also made him seem a bit more human. I think he probably would be a better PM this time around (in the unlikely event he wins government) as a result of his time on the backbench. Keeping in check the old urge to make decisions quickly on the assumption that he is the smartest person in the room may be his burden for the rest of his life, though.
* Too bitchy? :)
But in the "one on one" with Crabb, there were plenty of flashes of the old fakery and over calculation in answers, and there is every reason to suspect he would still be a boss capable of making people very, very nervous. It strains credulity to believe that he is felt worse about losing his 1996 campaign to become an MP than he did about the 2010 loss of leadership. (Then again, maybe he was spectacularly emotionally immature in 1996, and had improved in that regard by 2010. Who knows - he's a very hard man to judge on his self-reportage of his emotional state.)
I think he is obviously significantly smarter than Abbott, and can judge better who to take advice from. On the other hand, it would seem his problem has always been over confidence in his own abilities, and it is very difficult to know how much more carefully he would listen to advice before making decisions if he were to be PM again. He certainly failed to give a good impression of change in the way he came up with what appeared to be (even if they weren't) ad hoc ideas in the course of the campaign. I really think it was the way he announced these, without any explanation of how they had been decided upon, which started his leakage in the polls.
But tonight, overall, he came out better than I expected. I particularly liked his daughter's story about there being a good chance he would be sitting up reading a book at 4 am she arrived home as a teenager: it confirmed his nerdiness, but also made him seem a bit more human. I think he probably would be a better PM this time around (in the unlikely event he wins government) as a result of his time on the backbench. Keeping in check the old urge to make decisions quickly on the assumption that he is the smartest person in the room may be his burden for the rest of his life, though.
* Too bitchy? :)
The Joke
A pretty devastating assessment by Michael Pascoe of "Hockeynomics":
Remember all the times shadow treasurer Joe Hockey furrowed his brow, shook his jowls and growled that Australia had a budget crisis? Turns out he was only joking.
Either that or his “costings” disclosure is a joke. Or both.
After all the huffing and puffing, Hockeynomics is only proposing a $6 billion improvement in the budget’s cash bottom line over four years. In light of the past four years of hyperbolic fiscal posturing, this is genuinely astounding.
Even if you take year three and four budget projections seriously (and you really can’t, as everyone should now know), that works out to be an average improvement of $1.5 billion a year on a $400 billion budget – all of 0.375 per cent. It’s not even a rounding error. A half-decent Queensland storm can blow that away in half an hour.
By way of comparison, Tony Abbott is blowing $1.8 billion on reviving the novated lease/FBT tax lurk enjoyed by a minority of new car buyers, let alone an even smaller minority of voters. Consider the massive percentage increase in the Coalition’s budget improvement goal that could be obtained by implementing just this one tax policy based on principle and equity instead of subsidising a few salary packaging firms. Hey Joe, do the math.
Thanks for the "so late it's useless" fact checks, Peter
Is Tony Abbott's $350 carbon claim hot air?
It's worth reading anyway. (And watching the video on "can the GST be increased without the States consent". Short answer: yes.)
It's worth reading anyway. (And watching the video on "can the GST be increased without the States consent". Short answer: yes.)
Local intelligence
I cannot explain how, but entirely by accident, in the course of work this morning, I learnt which street, and pretty much which house, in Brisbane barking mad billionaire wannabe politician Clive Palmer lives, and it's only a suburb or so away from me.
Should I drive by his house on election night? Is he having a party I can gatecrash? Does he have a child easily kidnapped? (A joke, a joke, Federal Police! Mind you, he does remind me a bit of the mad furniture shop owner in Raising Arizona, who was willing to forgive on the return of the babies. [Still a joke! Seriously!])
Quite a surprise anyway.
Update: I see by Googling that the street he lives in has been noted in the Courier Mail more than once. My intelligence was less of a coup than I realised.
Should I drive by his house on election night? Is he having a party I can gatecrash? Does he have a child easily kidnapped? (A joke, a joke, Federal Police! Mind you, he does remind me a bit of the mad furniture shop owner in Raising Arizona, who was willing to forgive on the return of the babies. [Still a joke! Seriously!])
Quite a surprise anyway.
Update: I see by Googling that the street he lives in has been noted in the Courier Mail more than once. My intelligence was less of a coup than I realised.
Jericho on costings
Policy costings about more than the final figures - The Drum (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)
A good explanation from Greg Jericho here of the games being played with "costings".
A good explanation from Greg Jericho here of the games being played with "costings".
We need to know the final number, and it's great to know that it is accurate, but we still need to know how they arrived at that number.His explanation of the difference the Parliamentary Budget Office has made is important too, but I won't reproduce that here.
The problem is many editors and news directors have focussed on the number and not the assumptions and parameters that determined the result. The ALP also fell for this old way of thinking when last week they announced that the Liberal Party had a $10 billion black hole.
In reality what the ALP had demonstrated was not that there was a black hole, but that if you used the assumptions and parameters previously announced by the Liberal Party the savings amounted to only $21 billion as opposed to the Liberals' announced $31 billion.
Both numbers are right. But we have no idea why they are different, because we have no idea how the Liberal Party arrived at its final number.
To use the running analogy, at best we know the vague distance they ran, but little else.
The ALP over-egged their case, but when the Treasury and the PBO released statements pointing out that the costings released by the ALP were not the actual costings of the Liberal Party policies, the media for the most part took that as meaning the ALP's $21 billion figure was wrong.
The Treasury and PBO had said no such thing. They had merely announced that the costings depend on assumptions and parameters. Do we know the assumptions or parameters of the Liberal Party's policies?
Nope.
The quiet economists
I have been rather annoyed with the general silence of economists on the issue of the Coalition approach to climate change in the lead up to the election.
As far as I can tell, there is virtually no economist who thinks "direct action" is a better longer term plan for achieving its stated goal than pricing carbon. The evidence is strongly suggestive that the carbon pricing is having an effect already on reducing electricity consumption. The Coalition's Greg Hunt used to champion carbon pricing, until he was told he had to come up and sell with an alternative simply so that Abbott could have a different from policy from Labor. Government seeded clean energy financing has been underway in other countries - I have not heard any economist talk about whether that has been considered successful or not.
As I have argued recently, there is plenty of room to be skeptical of long term economic modelling of the effects of climate change; but shorter scale economics modelling of how to be push society in a cleaner energy direction can be expected to make sense.
So why are the great majority of economists who support carbon pricing sitting on their hands on the topic during the election?
As far as I can tell, there is virtually no economist who thinks "direct action" is a better longer term plan for achieving its stated goal than pricing carbon. The evidence is strongly suggestive that the carbon pricing is having an effect already on reducing electricity consumption. The Coalition's Greg Hunt used to champion carbon pricing, until he was told he had to come up and sell with an alternative simply so that Abbott could have a different from policy from Labor. Government seeded clean energy financing has been underway in other countries - I have not heard any economist talk about whether that has been considered successful or not.
As I have argued recently, there is plenty of room to be skeptical of long term economic modelling of the effects of climate change; but shorter scale economics modelling of how to be push society in a cleaner energy direction can be expected to make sense.
So why are the great majority of economists who support carbon pricing sitting on their hands on the topic during the election?
Wednesday, September 04, 2013
Still don't like him
Tony Abbott, and his daughters, were on Kitchen Confidential tonight.
I'm thoroughly sick of the PR use of his daughters throughout this campaign. Transparent as a tactic, I hope this is the last we see of such persistent manipulative use of children in politics.
As for Abbott himself: sad to say, but his psychological make up only came out of the interview as being shallower than expected. He's quite open about not being able to be open any more, confirming my oft stated assessment that he was more likeable as a somewhat contrarian Minister, than as the the um-ing and ah-ing, self censoring, constipated looking Leader that he is now. [And that awkward "hah.hah.hah' laugh - maybe it's natural, but sounds very self aware to me.]
Left the seminary because a mate of his from Uni was getting to travel overseas and sign up really big contracts? I thought souls were meant to be more important than money, but there you go. (Actually, isn't it said that he did not fit into what he considered virtually a "gay" seminary culture, but I suppose it is too much to expect him to be too open about that on national TV.) He made mention of feeling his education (making a specific mention of his Rhodes scholarship) was being wasted. Actually, he has had a career in which his economics qualifications have made little contribution, and his colleagues have said he has no natural interest in the topic. Turns out it was wasted after all...
He re-confirmed his upset at Gillard's misogyny speech, yet once again, he gives not the slightest indication that he recognizes his own provocative echoing of "died of shame", or years of not-so-subtle references to Gillard's childless status. He accepts that he sees more "shades of grey" now than when he was a university conservative hard man. Yet his political message over the last three years has been built around exaggeration and confrontation.
The funny thing about him is that he appears to be an introspective man, yet the explanations that he come up with about himself seem to fall well short of reality.
I hope he loses the election due to his policies, and the interview confirms that there is no particular character reason for the public to regret such loss.
I'm thoroughly sick of the PR use of his daughters throughout this campaign. Transparent as a tactic, I hope this is the last we see of such persistent manipulative use of children in politics.
As for Abbott himself: sad to say, but his psychological make up only came out of the interview as being shallower than expected. He's quite open about not being able to be open any more, confirming my oft stated assessment that he was more likeable as a somewhat contrarian Minister, than as the the um-ing and ah-ing, self censoring, constipated looking Leader that he is now. [And that awkward "hah.hah.hah' laugh - maybe it's natural, but sounds very self aware to me.]
Left the seminary because a mate of his from Uni was getting to travel overseas and sign up really big contracts? I thought souls were meant to be more important than money, but there you go. (Actually, isn't it said that he did not fit into what he considered virtually a "gay" seminary culture, but I suppose it is too much to expect him to be too open about that on national TV.) He made mention of feeling his education (making a specific mention of his Rhodes scholarship) was being wasted. Actually, he has had a career in which his economics qualifications have made little contribution, and his colleagues have said he has no natural interest in the topic. Turns out it was wasted after all...
He re-confirmed his upset at Gillard's misogyny speech, yet once again, he gives not the slightest indication that he recognizes his own provocative echoing of "died of shame", or years of not-so-subtle references to Gillard's childless status. He accepts that he sees more "shades of grey" now than when he was a university conservative hard man. Yet his political message over the last three years has been built around exaggeration and confrontation.
The funny thing about him is that he appears to be an introspective man, yet the explanations that he come up with about himself seem to fall well short of reality.
I hope he loses the election due to his policies, and the interview confirms that there is no particular character reason for the public to regret such loss.
Who's that successful and visionary business leader again?
I had to remind myself about Roger Corbett, who is getting a lot of attention for having criticised Rudd and Labor (and praising Tony Abbott) on Lateline last night.
Oh that's right: he would be the Chairman of Fairfax who in 2004, as Eric Beecher told us last year, was confident the company would be the media "envy of the world":
Update: the fact that Corbett worries about the ABC "crowds out" Fairfax, and thinks Workplace laws are holding up the economy, does make him more likely a Coalition sympathiser. At least he does acknowledge a need for greater tax revenue, though. But my real annoyance with him is the inappropriateness of expressing his highly partisan views as member of the Reserve Bank Board in a crucial part of the election campaign cycle.
Update 2: so, he's actually a member of the Liberal Party, but it wasn't mentioned last night? And the story ran this morning without that being mentioned? Great job, media.
Update 3: Actually, it occurs to me that it was also an obvious failing on Kevin Rudd's (or his team's) part too. When asked about it yesterday morning, the first thing Rudd should have said "well he's a member of the Liberal Party, what do you expect him to say about me?"
Oh that's right: he would be the Chairman of Fairfax who in 2004, as Eric Beecher told us last year, was confident the company would be the media "envy of the world":
After listening to my prognosis that the company faced a potential collapse of its traditional business model — I sketched out what I described as a “catastrophe scenario” under which The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age would lose much of their classified advertising in coming years — the Fairfax board studiously ignored my plea to implement overlapping strategies as “insurance” against that possibility.Gina Rinehart.doesn't like him either. How easily I forget these things. I wonder how she feels about him today after last night's performance?
One director, in particular, became quite agitated about what I was saying. “I don’t ever want anyone coming into this boardroom again,” he told his colleagues as he held up a copy of one of Fairfax’s hefty Saturday papers, “and telling us that people will buy houses or cars, or look for jobs, without this”. He then dropped the lump of newsprint onto the boardroom table with a thud.
That board member was Roger Corbett, now the chairman of Fairfax. He spent 40 years as a retailer, never worked in media or journalism, holds a handful of shares in Fairfax, and was paid $412,000 last year by the company. On the day he was appointed Fairfax chairman in 2009, Corbett presented a glowing picture of the way his company was handling its task. “The decisions taken in the last few years by management and the board have, I believe, put Fairfax in a position which is envied by media companies around the world,” he said.
Update: the fact that Corbett worries about the ABC "crowds out" Fairfax, and thinks Workplace laws are holding up the economy, does make him more likely a Coalition sympathiser. At least he does acknowledge a need for greater tax revenue, though. But my real annoyance with him is the inappropriateness of expressing his highly partisan views as member of the Reserve Bank Board in a crucial part of the election campaign cycle.
Update 2: so, he's actually a member of the Liberal Party, but it wasn't mentioned last night? And the story ran this morning without that being mentioned? Great job, media.
Update 3: Actually, it occurs to me that it was also an obvious failing on Kevin Rudd's (or his team's) part too. When asked about it yesterday morning, the first thing Rudd should have said "well he's a member of the Liberal Party, what do you expect him to say about me?"
Hopping to church in Luxembourg
Here's a charming story from the BBC about a centuries old hopping parade in Luxembourg. Watch the video too.
Speculative physics in Nature
Theoretical physics: The origins of space and time : Nature News
Haven't had time to read this yet, but looks interesting...
Haven't had time to read this yet, but looks interesting...
A fair summary from John Quiggin
John Quiggin's take on the Coalition and Tony Abbott in this election campaign is pretty accurate, I think:
The case put forward by the LNP is based entirely on lies and myths. These include the claims that
* Labor has mismanaged the economy and piled up unnecessary debt and deficits
* Australian families are ‘doing it tough’ because of a soaring cost of living
* The carbon tax/price is a ‘wrecking ball’, destroying economic activity
* The arrival of refugees represents a ‘national emergency’
None of these claims stands up to even momentary scrutiny.
Then there’s Abbott himself. After 20 years in politics, I can’t point to any substantial accomplishments on his part, or even any coherent political philosophy. For example, I’m not as critical of his parental leave scheme as some, but it’s totally inconsistent with his general political line, a fact that his supporters in business have been keen to point out. On climate change, he’s held every position possible and is now promising, in effect, to do nothing. His refusal to reveal policy costings until the second-last day of the campaign debases an already appalling process. He treated budget surplus as a holy grail until it became inconvenient, and has now become carefully vague on the topic.
Tuesday, September 03, 2013
Economic failure and climate change
As an antidote to Tony Abbott talking about claimed long term economic benefits of removing carbon pricing to justify its removal, I would suggest people read this post by Michael Tobis and the comments that follow, particularly as to how they relate to economic modelling and climate change.
Tobis has been banging on about this for some time, but it seems to me that not many people pay attention.
I find him quite convincing. Just as I would not expect an economist working in 1913 to have a good set of predictions about the global economy in 2000, even if there was no great intervening issue like climate change, I just do not see how it is plausible to trust modelling that is trying to anticipate economic costs of a 100 year change to climate that will have greatly varying local effects around the globe.
Now, its true: environmentalists use modelling to justify carbon pricing. So how fair is it to criticise the likes of Abbott when he uses economic arguments against carbon pricing?
It is fair, for a couple of reasons: climate change will have much longer term effects than a mere century. Some of those effects that are very plausible/ likely in the longer term are simply obviously disastrous - work out what 2 or 3 m of sea level rise around your favourite global cities is going to do to them, for a start. But on the shorter scale as well, changes to the hydrological cycle are likely to have some very serious effects, and soon, and common sense suggests that they are not readily capable of effective adaptation. The effect will also hit the poorer countries hardest. Have you noticed the flooding in India and China this year? You can only build so many useful dams in a country, even if it is rich. Is there anywhere in Western Queensland you can build a decent drought fighting dam that won't evaporate at a furious rate?
[And even if the unlikely assumption that climate sensitivity is only 1.5 degree for a doubling of CO2, you still have the concern about what ocean acidification is going to do to the food chain in the oceans, with recent work indicating that krill in Antarctica may collapse, and a very uncertain future for pteropods as well. There is no good way to really guess the knock on consequences of the failure of very large elements of ocean food chain like that, I reckon, although scientists are trying.]
Criticisms of economic modelling to show that other economic modelling is flawed therefore misses this whole point. It misses the common sense of the situation.
So ridiculous exercises by small government/libertarian poster boy Topher, for example, are not just a waste of time; they are a dangerous waste of time. At least Greenies who use economics poorly to get to the right political response anyway can't be accused of that.
Tobis has been banging on about this for some time, but it seems to me that not many people pay attention.
I find him quite convincing. Just as I would not expect an economist working in 1913 to have a good set of predictions about the global economy in 2000, even if there was no great intervening issue like climate change, I just do not see how it is plausible to trust modelling that is trying to anticipate economic costs of a 100 year change to climate that will have greatly varying local effects around the globe.
Now, its true: environmentalists use modelling to justify carbon pricing. So how fair is it to criticise the likes of Abbott when he uses economic arguments against carbon pricing?
It is fair, for a couple of reasons: climate change will have much longer term effects than a mere century. Some of those effects that are very plausible/ likely in the longer term are simply obviously disastrous - work out what 2 or 3 m of sea level rise around your favourite global cities is going to do to them, for a start. But on the shorter scale as well, changes to the hydrological cycle are likely to have some very serious effects, and soon, and common sense suggests that they are not readily capable of effective adaptation. The effect will also hit the poorer countries hardest. Have you noticed the flooding in India and China this year? You can only build so many useful dams in a country, even if it is rich. Is there anywhere in Western Queensland you can build a decent drought fighting dam that won't evaporate at a furious rate?
[And even if the unlikely assumption that climate sensitivity is only 1.5 degree for a doubling of CO2, you still have the concern about what ocean acidification is going to do to the food chain in the oceans, with recent work indicating that krill in Antarctica may collapse, and a very uncertain future for pteropods as well. There is no good way to really guess the knock on consequences of the failure of very large elements of ocean food chain like that, I reckon, although scientists are trying.]
Criticisms of economic modelling to show that other economic modelling is flawed therefore misses this whole point. It misses the common sense of the situation.
So ridiculous exercises by small government/libertarian poster boy Topher, for example, are not just a waste of time; they are a dangerous waste of time. At least Greenies who use economics poorly to get to the right political response anyway can't be accused of that.
The future of taxes
Why taxes would rise under Abbott
Ross Gittens does some useful number crunching about why the tax take has to increase somewhat if either side wins the election.
Should Labor or the Coalition wear the most blame for not being up front about this? This gets confusing. Labor has run a scare campaign on Abbott and the GST. Abbott & Hockey deny emphatically that it is at risk. But then, Abbott and Hockey have run, of course, a 5 year scare campaign on the deficit and their ability to get back to surplus faster than Labor. Yet they do not face up to the fundamentals.
I think the best outcome may be that either Abbott or Rudd gets replaced in the next term, and the new leader gets realistic on this.
Ross Gittens does some useful number crunching about why the tax take has to increase somewhat if either side wins the election.
Should Labor or the Coalition wear the most blame for not being up front about this? This gets confusing. Labor has run a scare campaign on Abbott and the GST. Abbott & Hockey deny emphatically that it is at risk. But then, Abbott and Hockey have run, of course, a 5 year scare campaign on the deficit and their ability to get back to surplus faster than Labor. Yet they do not face up to the fundamentals.
I think the best outcome may be that either Abbott or Rudd gets replaced in the next term, and the new leader gets realistic on this.
Folks are dumb where I come from....
Rudd fails to rally voters in his home state
Well, how harsh should I be? It's not as if I supported a return of Kevin Rudd, and I have puzzled many, many times over why he was ever popular in Queensland. The State is not exactly renowned for supporting urban quasi-intellectuals. Did they think his "folkiness" was genuine?
Anyhow, after first encouraging Labor's party machine that Kevin was going to do well in Queensland, people polled here have decided they don't like him much after all.
What's more, they are apparently looking at voting in fairly significant numbers for Clive Palmer's nutty rich man act, and he seems to have taken over the "Eccentric Politician We'll Vote For Because We Don't Like Politicians" role from Bob Katter.
If they collectively have 15% of the vote, their preferences are going to be pretty important, and the article claims that more of those voters claim they will preference Labor. Especially those voting for Clive Palmer.
This is all very peculiar. But the State that continued voting for Joh endlessly has always been a bit of a political mystery.
Well, how harsh should I be? It's not as if I supported a return of Kevin Rudd, and I have puzzled many, many times over why he was ever popular in Queensland. The State is not exactly renowned for supporting urban quasi-intellectuals. Did they think his "folkiness" was genuine?
Anyhow, after first encouraging Labor's party machine that Kevin was going to do well in Queensland, people polled here have decided they don't like him much after all.
What's more, they are apparently looking at voting in fairly significant numbers for Clive Palmer's nutty rich man act, and he seems to have taken over the "Eccentric Politician We'll Vote For Because We Don't Like Politicians" role from Bob Katter.
If they collectively have 15% of the vote, their preferences are going to be pretty important, and the article claims that more of those voters claim they will preference Labor. Especially those voting for Clive Palmer.
This is all very peculiar. But the State that continued voting for Joh endlessly has always been a bit of a political mystery.
Barry's depressed, with justification
Barry Jones: the 2013 election and the death of rationality
The article is taken from a lecture, and so wanders a bit, but his end take on Joe Hockey seems particularly accurate:
The article is taken from a lecture, and so wanders a bit, but his end take on Joe Hockey seems particularly accurate:
I have watched, with some pain, election telecasts being given by the shadow treasurer, Joe Hockey, somebody who I have always had some regard for, balanced, recognisably human, and not a fanatic, with touches of self-mockery.
He could have taken a more subtle, nuanced approach in his pitch, saying, perhaps, “while it is true that Australia has had some outstanding successes, such as the AAA rating and 21 unbroken years of growth, nevertheless there are some worrying indications that…”, and go on from there.
Instead, he plays the catastrophist card, that the past six years had left the Australian economy as a smoking ruin, and the rest of the world is looking to see when Australia will turn the lights back on. Catastrophic? Disaster? Tsunami? The clear suggestion is that practically every nation, with the possible exception of Somalia, is performing better economically than Australia.
Does Joe Hockey really believe what he is saying? I hope not.
Uncertainty Queen's failure
Well, there you go. Tamino has a good post about that "ENSO masks global warming paper" paper, and points out that Judith Curry has mis-read it spectacularly.
I predicted that she would soon be shot down, remember.
I predicted that she would soon be shot down, remember.
Monday, September 02, 2013
The biggest mistake Julia Gillard made
...was in not promoting hard the argument that a fixed price for carbon permits for an introductory period is not a carbon tax.
Listening to Rudd agree with journalists that this was a mistake only confirms this. He gets no traction from saying that - people who have been brainwashed into thinking its the worst thing ever done by a government are not interested in his half baked apology for it.
Labor would doubtlessly have been better off by arguing it is not a tax, and not a broken promise.
Listening to Rudd agree with journalists that this was a mistake only confirms this. He gets no traction from saying that - people who have been brainwashed into thinking its the worst thing ever done by a government are not interested in his half baked apology for it.
Labor would doubtlessly have been better off by arguing it is not a tax, and not a broken promise.
Let them eat oysters
To Live, the Oyster Must Die
I had read before that oysters used to be the food of the poor in England, but I didn't realise it was quite to this extent:
I had read before that oysters used to be the food of the poor in England, but I didn't realise it was quite to this extent:
As the population of London boomed, doubling again and again from the 16th century onwards, these little nuggets of protein became an irresistible way for the fishermen of anywhere within reach of the capital to make a living....
The oyster boom expanded as industrialisation accelerated, with oysters fuelling industrial Britain’s industrious workers. Modern machinery made them easier to catch, store and transport, and oysters became the signature food of Victorian Britain.
“The poorer a place is, the greater call there seems to be for oysters. Look here, sir; here’s a oyster stall to every half dozen houses. The streets lined with ‘em. Blessed if I don’t think that ven a man’s wery poor, he rushes out of his lodgings and eats oysters in reg’lar desperation,” remarks Sam Weller in Charles Dickens’ The Pickwick Papers.
That was published in 1836, and Londoners were only just getting going. In 1864, they consumed 700 million oysters. That’s five oysters a week, every week, for each man, woman and child in the city.
The same was true elsewhere in Britain, with predictable results. Oyster fishing began to collapse in Scottish waters in the 1870s, and had all but ceased there by 1920. In the 19th century, fishermen discovered a 200 by 70 mile oyster bed on the seabed between England and Germany, and had cleaned it out within decades.
And we have still not learned from our mistakes. In the 1970s, fishermen found oysters in the Solent, the channel between the Isle of Wight and the South Coast, giving hope that the industry could be reborn sustainably, but we ate them all instead.
Of course...
Tony Abbott willing to break emissions pledge over funding hole
Malcolm Turnbull on, I think, The Drum last week, called Abbott an "intelligent skeptic" on climate change.
No: Abbott is not smart enough to take sensible policies to reduce CO2 seriously. He is the triumph of political opportunism and shallowness over making a genuine attempt to deal with an important issue in a sensible way.
Turnbull should be appalled at this, but there is a possibility, I suppose, that he could still be leader if Abbott implodes. His keeping quiet might therefore be good in the long run. At least, I hope so.
Update: I had forgotten how outspoken Turnbull used to be on this issue. From 2009:
Malcolm Turnbull on, I think, The Drum last week, called Abbott an "intelligent skeptic" on climate change.
No: Abbott is not smart enough to take sensible policies to reduce CO2 seriously. He is the triumph of political opportunism and shallowness over making a genuine attempt to deal with an important issue in a sensible way.
Turnbull should be appalled at this, but there is a possibility, I suppose, that he could still be leader if Abbott implodes. His keeping quiet might therefore be good in the long run. At least, I hope so.
Update: I had forgotten how outspoken Turnbull used to be on this issue. From 2009:
....the fact is that Tony and the people who put him in his job do not want to do anything about climate change. They do not believe in human caused global warming. As Tony observed on one occasion "climate change is crap" or if you consider his mentor, Senator Minchin, the world is not warming, its cooling and the climate change issue is part of a vast left wing conspiracy to deindustrialise the world.Yes, that's the pathetic political calibre of the man about to be PM, apparently.
Now politics is about conviction and a commitment to carry out those convictions. The Liberal Party is currently led by people whose conviction on climate change is that it is "crap" and you don't need to do anything about it. Any policy that is announced will simply be a con, an environmental figleaf to cover a determination to do nothing. After all, as Nick Minchin observed, in his view the majority of the Party Room do not believe in human caused global warming at all. I disagree with that assessment, but many people in the community will be excused for thinking the leadership ballot proved him right.
Remember Nick Minchin's defense of the Howard Government's ETS was that the Government was panicked by the polls and therefore didn't really mean it.
Tony himself has in just four or five months publicly advocated the blocking of the ETS, the passing of the ETS, the amending of the ETS and if the amendments were satisfactory passing it, and now the blocking of it.
His only redeeming virtue in this remarkable lack of conviction is that every time he announced a new position to me he would preface it with "Mate, mate, I know I am a bit of a weather vane on this, but....."
Politics and singing noted
It seems that Rudd got good reviews for his campaign launch speech, but with Newspoll doing another leap, this time in the wrong direction, no one can envisage the possibility that Labor will win.
But I did think the Abbott attack ads I saw while watching X Factor last night with my daughter were pretty good. Even on a very soft interview on Insiders yesterday, Abbott still hesitates and ums and ahs like there is no tomorrow whenever a journalist asks an even mildly difficult question. This makes for pretty good ads, for Labor.
Speaking of X Factor: it's a very good show for parents to watch with pre-teen daughters, I reckon. It leads to easy conversation about the inappropriate dress, make up and song choice of teenage contestants, and the silliness of raunchy choreography. This year is better than last year: there are far fewer tattoos on display in the judging panel, and on stage, and there are fewer contestants about whom I cannot comprehend why they are still there.
I have only seen a bit of The Voice - I thought it was pretty awful in comparison. The X Factor has more likeable judges (it's not even clear this year that they have one in the role of "contrary and hard to please" judge), and (I think) less of an intrusive concentration on the personal lives of the contestants. Now if only the show could fire the person who applies eye make on all of the females with a trowel, it would be perfect.
This year, the star is no doubt Dami Im, whose amazingly powerful voice seems so incongruous coming out of a modestly proportioned Asian body. And she's just married, Christian (I think - she has made brief reference to singing in Church), almost certainly free of tattoos, and appears a very genuinely nice person with a very happy husband. What's not to like?
My wife said she has seen on TV that she has had lots of publicity in Korea now too, due to her performances here. Barring a nervous breakdown, or a vocal cord catastrophe, they may as well hand her the recording contract now and finish the show early. But the producers probably have an entire store room full of short female skirts, and eye make up in 44 gallon drums, that has to be used up, so it won't happen.
But I did think the Abbott attack ads I saw while watching X Factor last night with my daughter were pretty good. Even on a very soft interview on Insiders yesterday, Abbott still hesitates and ums and ahs like there is no tomorrow whenever a journalist asks an even mildly difficult question. This makes for pretty good ads, for Labor.
Speaking of X Factor: it's a very good show for parents to watch with pre-teen daughters, I reckon. It leads to easy conversation about the inappropriate dress, make up and song choice of teenage contestants, and the silliness of raunchy choreography. This year is better than last year: there are far fewer tattoos on display in the judging panel, and on stage, and there are fewer contestants about whom I cannot comprehend why they are still there.
I have only seen a bit of The Voice - I thought it was pretty awful in comparison. The X Factor has more likeable judges (it's not even clear this year that they have one in the role of "contrary and hard to please" judge), and (I think) less of an intrusive concentration on the personal lives of the contestants. Now if only the show could fire the person who applies eye make on all of the females with a trowel, it would be perfect.
This year, the star is no doubt Dami Im, whose amazingly powerful voice seems so incongruous coming out of a modestly proportioned Asian body. And she's just married, Christian (I think - she has made brief reference to singing in Church), almost certainly free of tattoos, and appears a very genuinely nice person with a very happy husband. What's not to like?
My wife said she has seen on TV that she has had lots of publicity in Korea now too, due to her performances here. Barring a nervous breakdown, or a vocal cord catastrophe, they may as well hand her the recording contract now and finish the show early. But the producers probably have an entire store room full of short female skirts, and eye make up in 44 gallon drums, that has to be used up, so it won't happen.
Physics of interest
I wonder how many readers are actually interested in my posts pointing towards odd physics papers that I usually don't fully understand myself. Who knows, but here's some examples of recent physics stories I liked for their novelty:
* Great title here: Can the Higgs Boson Save Us From the Menace of the Boltzmann Brains?
I can't be the only person who thinks of the Futurama episodes with giant floating brains whenever I hear "Boltzmann Brains", can I?
In any event, the paper notes that one of the simplest present explanations for the universe carries with it a serious "Boltzmann Brain" issue, and asks whether there is a way around it. The answer seems to be: maybe. Here's co-author Sean Carroll giving an easier to read explanation of the paper. I should have read that first.
* The Economist, of all places, notes a paper that argues that dark energy, causing an acceleration in the expansion of the universe, does not exist at all. Instead, the universe is just getting heavier:
* Someone from CERN complains that the LHC has not come up with any significant surprises for the Standard Model of physics, which is very annoying for physicists. Here's the abstract:
* Someone (I have no idea who) from Hungary seems to think he has found a way that you can get Einstein's results without Einstein-ian physics. The paper has a charming title: A simple minded question: Do we live in the four-dimensional spacetime? and starts in a very modest fashion:
* If you are interested in the "fine tuning of the universe" issue, Catalyst on the ABC had a pretty good 30 minute summary last week, which features some short interviews from some of the big names in physics. There are the more extended interviews with them here, I think, although I haven't watched them yet.
I saw from the show that Paul Davies, who moved from Adelaide University to Arizonia State University (he seems to showing greater affinity for "dry and remote" as he ages) finds a sort of backwards causation causation appealing, although I don't really understand the mechanism he thinks might work. As Frank Tipler's similar idea, that the future God causes the past, seems to have sunk under the experimental finding of the mass of the Higgs boson, I should look up what Davies is saying on the topic.
* Great title here: Can the Higgs Boson Save Us From the Menace of the Boltzmann Brains?
I can't be the only person who thinks of the Futurama episodes with giant floating brains whenever I hear "Boltzmann Brains", can I?
In any event, the paper notes that one of the simplest present explanations for the universe carries with it a serious "Boltzmann Brain" issue, and asks whether there is a way around it. The answer seems to be: maybe. Here's co-author Sean Carroll giving an easier to read explanation of the paper. I should have read that first.
* The Economist, of all places, notes a paper that argues that dark energy, causing an acceleration in the expansion of the universe, does not exist at all. Instead, the universe is just getting heavier:
In Dr Wetterich’s picture of the cosmos the redshift others attribute to expansion is, rather, the result of the universe putting on weight. If atoms weighed less in the past, he reasons, the light they emitted then would, in keeping with the laws of quantum mechanics, have been less energetic than the light they emit now. Since less energetic light has a longer wavelength, astronomers looking at it today would perceive it to be redshifted.I like to think that God has given us a direct clue to this, by ensuring that from middle age, a mass increase takes place in nearly all human bodies for no obvious reason. So goes the universe too, possibly.
At first blush this sounds nuts. The idea that mass is constant is drilled into every budding high-school physicist. Abandoning it would hurt. But in exchange, Dr Wetterich’s proposal deals neatly with a big niggle in the Big Bang theory, namely coping with the point of infinite density at the beginning, called a singularity, which orthodox theories cannot explain.
Dr Wetterich’s model does not—yet—explain the shifts in the shapes of galactic clusters that the Dark Energy Camera, SuMIRe and ACTPol are seeking to clarify. But perhaps, one day, it could. Dr Wetterich is a well-respected physicist and his maths are not obviously wrong. Moreover, his theory does allow for a short period of rapid expansion, known as inflation, whose traces have already been seen in the CMB. Dr Wetterich, however, thinks this inflation did not happen just after the beginning of the universe (the consensus view), for he believes the universe had no beginning. Instead, a small static universe which had always existed turned into a large static one that always will exist—getting heavier and heavier as it does so. There was thus no singularity.
Probably, this theory is wrong. As Cliff Burgess of Perimeter Institute, a Canadian theoretical-physics centre, puts it, “The dark energy business very easily degenerates into something like a crowd of people who are each claiming to be Napoleon while asserting that all the other pretenders are clearly nutty.”
* Someone from CERN complains that the LHC has not come up with any significant surprises for the Standard Model of physics, which is very annoying for physicists. Here's the abstract:
The first three years of the LHC experiments at CERN have ended with "the nightmare scenario": all tests, confirm the Standard Model of Particles so well that theorists must search for new physics without any experimental guidance. The supersymmetric theories, a privileged candidate for new physics are nearly excluded. As a potential escape from the crisis, we propose thinking about a series of astonishing relations suggesting fundamental interconnections between the quantum world and the large scale Universe. It seems reasonable that, for instance, the equation relating a quark-antiquark pair with the fundamental physical constants and cosmological parameters must be a sign of new physics. One of the intriguing possibilities is interpreting our relations as a signature of the quantum vacuum containing the virtual gravitational dipoles.As with many papers on arXiv, you should read the introduction, which paints a comprehensible summary of the problem before venturing into scores of equations and terminology which are hard to follow.
* Someone (I have no idea who) from Hungary seems to think he has found a way that you can get Einstein's results without Einstein-ian physics. The paper has a charming title: A simple minded question: Do we live in the four-dimensional spacetime? and starts in a very modest fashion:
The author of the present paper is not sure that the following ideas are worth for publication or they are more similar to a somewhat lunatic conception.I don't really follow the argument at all, but have only looked at the paper quickly. Still, if this is ground breaking new physics, you read it here first.
* If you are interested in the "fine tuning of the universe" issue, Catalyst on the ABC had a pretty good 30 minute summary last week, which features some short interviews from some of the big names in physics. There are the more extended interviews with them here, I think, although I haven't watched them yet.
I saw from the show that Paul Davies, who moved from Adelaide University to Arizonia State University (he seems to showing greater affinity for "dry and remote" as he ages) finds a sort of backwards causation causation appealing, although I don't really understand the mechanism he thinks might work. As Frank Tipler's similar idea, that the future God causes the past, seems to have sunk under the experimental finding of the mass of the Higgs boson, I should look up what Davies is saying on the topic.
Sunday, September 01, 2013
That was un-necessary
I liked a couple of recent articles about the [lack of] merit in much modern writing.
The first, in the Fairfax Good Weekend magazine (get your digital subscription now, and be hip and fight the Murdoch hegemony, like me) is about a spate of 20-something "hyperconfessional" women writing autobiographies, sometimes making much money in the process. The question is - should any 25 year old who has done nothing extraordinary really think they should be writing autobiography? The obvious answer is "no":
The first, in the Fairfax Good Weekend magazine (get your digital subscription now, and be hip and fight the Murdoch hegemony, like me) is about a spate of 20-something "hyperconfessional" women writing autobiographies, sometimes making much money in the process. The question is - should any 25 year old who has done nothing extraordinary really think they should be writing autobiography? The obvious answer is "no":
Summerlandish reads like an engaging blog; the prose is restless and flecked with Gen-Y pop-culture references, as if Carrie Bradshaw wrote it after a night in with a bottle of Prosecco and The O.C. box set. She has the "cute girl with the dirty mouth" routine down pat. A certain audience will love it. But good or bad, the question remains: is Summerlandish necessary? Are any of these 20-something memoirs necessary? If acclaimed British singer Adele, 25, could turn down a seven-figure book deal because she felt she was too young to say much of anything, what do these Oscar-less, Grammy-less writers think they can offer the world?
Disagreement with the Uncertainty Queen
Learning From the Hiatus | Climate Abyss | a Chron.com blog
Judith Curry's "blown mind"about the recent paper on the East Pacific being behind the hiatus in global surface temperatures has been criticised as in error by conservative climatologist John Neilsen-Gammon. His post above contains a detailed look at the issue, and is not all easily understood, but his strong belief that Curry is wrong is clear.
I still expect others to weigh in on this.
Judith Curry's "blown mind"about the recent paper on the East Pacific being behind the hiatus in global surface temperatures has been criticised as in error by conservative climatologist John Neilsen-Gammon. His post above contains a detailed look at the issue, and is not all easily understood, but his strong belief that Curry is wrong is clear.
I still expect others to weigh in on this.
Saturday, August 31, 2013
But it's a dis-aster
Life is much better under Labor after all, says study
From the above article:
Politicians of both persuasions will always, during election campaigns, claim that they know "families are doing it tough". But that's just politics. John Quiggin had a column recently about the false perceptions that flourish and why, and ended with this:
Amazingly, too, I note how little attention there has been in the media (and how unsuccessful Labor has been in talking about) the reductions in government family support the Coalition is committed to (such as ending the School Kids bonus) while at the same time promising that families will be $500 a year better off because of the carbon tax going.
Families, do your maths!
From the above article:
Politicians of both persuasions will always, during election campaigns, claim that they know "families are doing it tough". But that's just politics. John Quiggin had a column recently about the false perceptions that flourish and why, and ended with this:
Another possible explanation of the ‘doing it tough’ perception arises from inconsistent responses to price variation. Despite sustained low inflation and falling interest rates, many Australians perceive themselves as facing ‘cost of living’ pressures. Over the past decade some highly salient prices such as the retail price of electricity have risen sharply, but consumption continued to grow until recently, driven largely by the increased use of airconditioning. By contrast the cost of telecommunications services has fallen , but households have responded to lower prices and the availability of new products by increasing their total expenditure. It is easy enough, though misleading, to see this as a story of ever-increasing bills for everything.
Despite all of these partial explanations, it is hard to escape the conclusion that the ‘doing it tough’ perception is nothing more than a manifestation of some of our less appealing human propensities: envy and chronic dissatisfaction. This can be seen all the way up the income scale, to the point of British bankers who complain that they can’t live on a million pounds (roughly 2 million dollars) a year.
News media have an obvious commercial interest in telling stories that make their audiences feel victimised, and politicians have made the judgement that telling voters the truth is too costly. At current rates of growth, incomes will double by 2050, but we will doubtless still be living on Struggle Street.
Amazingly, too, I note how little attention there has been in the media (and how unsuccessful Labor has been in talking about) the reductions in government family support the Coalition is committed to (such as ending the School Kids bonus) while at the same time promising that families will be $500 a year better off because of the carbon tax going.
Families, do your maths!
Introduced last year, the bonus provides eligible families with $410 a year for each child in primary school and $820 for each in high school.If you intend voting Coalition, you probably think you are "doing it tough" and that your electricity bill is a dis-aster. Yet if you have kids at school, this one item alone shows, what the Coalition "gives" is going to be more than taken away.
Friday, August 30, 2013
Good news
Remember the awesome trailer for Gravity? The movie has opened in Venice, to pretty much ecstatic reviews.
It's a must see for me....
It's a must see for me....
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