Stiglitz on Fukushima and risk

One egg; one basket - you weigh the risk

Well, I bet this'll annoy them over at Catallaxy. Joseph Stiglitz draws comparisons between over-confidence in both the nuclear and finance industries, and ends as follows:

For the planet, there is one more risk, which, like the other two, is almost a certainty: global warming. If there were other planets to which we could move at low cost in the event of the almost certain outcome predicted by scientists, one could argue that this is a risk worth taking. But there aren't, so it isn't.

The costs of reducing emissions pale in comparison with the possible risks the world faces. And that is true even if we rule out the nuclear option (the costs of which were always underestimated). To be sure, coal and oil companies would suffer, and big polluting countries - like the US - would obviously pay a higher price than those with a less profligate lifestyle.

In the end, those gambling in Las Vegas lose more than they gain. As a society, we are gambling - with our big banks, with our nuclear power facilities, with our planet. As in Las Vegas, the lucky few - the bankers that put our economy at risk and the owners of energy companies that put our planet at risk - may walk off with a mint. But on average and almost certainly, we as a society, like all gamblers, will lose.

That is a lesson of Japan's disaster that we continue to ignore at our peril.

This is, I might point out, very close to the argument I have been running lately. The climate change skeptics, safe in their beds thousands of kilometres away, have been very aggressively downplaying the seriousness of the Fukushima accident; but really, they are the last people who should be pretending to be able to make reliable calls on the question of risk.

Of course, I have criticised the likes of Barry Brooks too, and many scientists with connections to the nuclear industry, for leaping in too fast with claims of "no need to worry, it's all under control." By doing so, they have also hurt the image of their reliability to assess risk.

The appropriate response, is, as it happens, mine. (Who'd have guessed?):

1. the Fukushima accident is very serious: any accident that requires long term abandonment of land scores of kilometres from the scene is serious, regardless of how many deaths or cancers it is ultimately believed to cause. (Even the shorter term evacuation of about 170,000 people is just being ignored, or treated as a mere inconvenience, by some commentators.)

2. It has shown the lack of adequate foresight in the nuclear industry, and highlighted several issues that need urgent addressing, such as the danger of the current international practice of leaving large amounts of spent fuel at the reactor sites for long periods.

3. the accident shows the importance of maximising passive safety in future design, even if such safety increases the cost somewhat.

4. future reactors should not be closely sited together due to the domino effect of disasters.

These issues are not actually all that hard to work out with common sense. I mean, everyone can tell that it's risky having lots of reactors and spent fuel rods in pools in a high risk earthquake area, such as (unfortunately) all of Japan. (Well, we didn't know how dangerous spent fuel rods still were until this accident, did we? Now that we do know, the question is "what are the industry and government regulators thinking, just leaving huge amounts of this stuff in pools - which must always remain full - for decades?)

I still think there can be an important future for nuclear, but there has to be more common sense applied to some of the very basics here, and I am not sure that this should even increase costs unduly. For example, one of the arguments for pebble bed style reactors is that they may need less rigorous containment due to an inability to melt down. Also, is it really cheaper to store spent fuel rods for years in pools than move them off site into the (obviously needed) permanent geological storage facility? And what about the "mini reactors" that are being developed: although I am not entirely sure how "passively safe" they will be, at least if one goes wrong, the amount of material released is going to smaller and more localised.

The nuclear industry needs a good dose of common sense questioning and change, and downplaying Fukushima is not going to achieve that.

Not unexpected around here

Long-term users of ecstasy risk structural brain damage

The MRI scans showed that hippocampal volume in this group was 10.5% smaller than that of their peers, and the overall proportion of grey matter was on average 4.6% lower, after adjusting for total brain volume.

This indicates that the effects of ecstasy may not be restricted to the hippocampus alone, say the authors

"Taken together, these data provide preliminary evidence suggesting that ecstasy users may be prone to incurring hippocampal damage, following chronic use of this drug," they write.

They add that their findings echo those of other researchers who have reported acute swelling and subsequent atrophy of hippocampal tissue in long term ecstasy users....

Other research has suggested that people who use ecstasy develop significant memory problems, so the Dutch researchers wanted to find out if there was any clinical evidence of structural changes in the brain to back this up.

"Did you bring me a gift?"

Sexual transmission of insect-borne virus

It's about yet another virus you can catch in Africa, the Zika virus, and it sounds nasty:

within five days of their return became ill. They experienced symptoms of rash, fatigue, headaches, and swollen joints. Foy also experienced painful urination and blood in his semen.

The uncertain remedy

BBC News - Climate 'technical fix' may yield warming, not cooling

Interesting discussion of one of the simpler proposed methods of turning down the planet's heat if it keeps going up: ships spraying seawater in the air to encourage more clouds to reflect away heat.

Seems, though, if you didn't get it right, it could have the opposite effect.

All very unclear, and given that it seems a much less dangerous thing to try than, say, shooting sulphur into the stratosphere, it's probably not a bad thing to start trialling now.

Just can't stop the cultural slide

Big Brother returns with celebrity special after move to Channel 5

Yes, Big Brother will again be running in Britain for another couple of seasons, after being dropped by Channel 4. The onwer of Channel 5 apparently has all the worst qualifications to run the show:

Certainly, the factors that led the original British broadcaster to cancel the commission – a tiring franchise that was becoming increasingly sexualised and verbally violent – seem unlikely to bother Desmond, whose media portfolio includes the adult entertainment channels Television X and Red Hot TV.

Critics who felt that the first British version of the format had already lowered broadcasting standards, with scenes of racial bullying and sexual congress with a bottle, will fear that such moments may come to seem highbrow peaks in comparison with Desmond's version.

Top marks...

...for the most annoying and pretentious newspaper blogger/writer head shot ever devised:



Yes, for some reason, I recently made the click from the Sydney Morning Herald to have a look at what long time irritant, but puzzlingly popular, writer Sam de Brito was talking about now*, and once again grimaced at this photo, which seems to have been there for so many years I wouldn't be surprised if he has less hair now.

Maybe it wasn't his idea. Maybe it was his girlfriend at the time. But truly, how can it not grate?

I have posted before about how distasteful I find his all too public disclosure of his private life; but I think I have overlooked mentioning that Sam noticed the last time I talked about him here, and bagged me in his column! He refused to link to me, though, which is fair enough, but enough of his readers promptly Googled to find the source of complaint that I realised something was up via my Sitemeter.

So, what is he up to now? As far as I can gather, Sam is in a custody dispute over his young child, the mother of whom broke up with him when the baby was either very young, or (perhaps) not even born.

This is not funny for anyone, I'll grant you: particularly for a male with an unseemly urge to write about absolutely every intimate detail of his life, body and self perceived character.

As someone in comments at his blog made mention to Sam that perhaps he should not talk about his custody fight on Twitter, I went looking for it. Of course, if ever there was a type of person Twitter was designed for, it's de Brito. Hence, we get gems like these (keep in mind, this is a man - with a big media profile - having custody issues over his one year old):

Do you really need to wash all baby clothes before you put them on the kid?

Ok. Finally seem to have got rolling on the second half of this novel. The words are flowing. About time. Feel like having sex now.

I had no idea how heavily the law weighs in women's favour when it comes to child custody: never put yourself or your child through it.

Precursor chemicals for meth? Hypophosphorous acid, iodine, pseudo, benzene, metho, toluene ... since I asked, I shall inform as well.

Damn these kids next door and their basketball. I'm gonna leave some ice in the letter box. And a pipe.

Damn, just sucked my little finger and forgot I'd had it in my earhole ten minutes earlier. Nasty.

Well, it seems wrong to kick a man when he's down (although it seems he is having the kid sleep over now, so maybe he's not that down, and he can afford a $850 a week two bedroom apartment), but hasn't his lawyer told him something like this: "For God's sake Sam, no good ever comes of running a Twitter feed on every silly thought that comes into that inky faced head of yours when you're having custody fight with your ex! Just stop it. The world will get by without knowing you just tasted ear wax, or the age at which you grew your pubic hair!"

And Sam, if you're reading: it's just a bit of friendly advice to someone who seriously needs it.

* given that he's previously shared with us his the varieties of venereal bugs and infections he's picked up, as well as what an idiot he was when he last took cocaine, I was hardly surprised to see a recent column was all about he was relatively late in developing pubic hair.

Fox appears late

Here's trivial information for you: it would appear from the Japan Times that Fantastic Mr Fox - one of the most eccentric and enjoyable animated films of the last couple of years - has just been released in Japan. The world of movie distribution is indeed mysterious.

Speaking of animated films - I saw Rango last weekend. It is quite possibly even more eccentric a film than Fox, with a remarkable, slightly creepy, visual style; a plot that actually seems to forget to resolve a couple of key mysteries; but also the amazing vocal humour of Johnny Depp. Depp always grabs eccentric comedic roles by the throat and does them spectacularly well. (I'm not sure if I have mentioned it before, but his version of Willy Wonka in Charlie and Chocolate Factory is much more amusing than Gene Wilder's attempt.)

Rango is not perfect, but very enjoyable.

One anomaly solved, a new one arrives?

In physics news, it seems that the Pioneer anomaly may have been resolved without modifying gravity.  That seems a pity:  I would like gravity to be modified, especially at the local level.

But there may be a new big physics finding on the way:  Fermilab is about to formally announce they think they’ve  found evidence of either a new particle, or a new force.  Or, as the New York Times says:  “it could be there is something they do not understand about so-called regular physics”, which doesn’t quite have the same ring of excitement to it.

I see that the Cosmic Variance blog is taking a fairly cautious tone about this, so maybe it’ll come to naught.  But let’s hope not.   It seems something unexpected has to be found in physics in order to kick it out of its decades long rut. 

Rodent news

Rat plague bears down on Alice Springs

That's not quite as bad as it sounds - it's a native rat making a a reappearance, in a big enough way to be called "an eruption":

The long-haired rat normally lives on isolated black soil plains in the Barkly Tableland of the Northern Territory and in western Queensland.

But it is taking advantage of high rainfall across the region to migrate en masse.

The rats have been sighted in Alice Springs for the first time in 25 years, and has also been seen in the remote community of Aputula, 250 kilometres further south.

"It really is a huge event and is pretty much down to that run of consecutive good, high rainfall seasons," said Peter McDonald, acting scientist with Northern Territory Biodiversity Conservation.

Mr McDonald says the rat migration is a unique event.

"It is unusual in the rodent world but Rattus villosissimus are unique in that way and they are pretty famous for their eruptions," he said.

"Probably the only similar expansion by a rodent is seen in the lemmings in the northern hemisphere with their eruptions.

Meanwhile, on the domestic front, there seems to be no doubt that at least one rat has taken up residence in the floor space between the downstairs living area and the upstairs level. I can hear it scurrying around while I blog late at night.

I guess it got there via the roof, where rats are an annual problem, and down through the walls. Maybe it moves between the roof and the floorspace daily: that would at least give me a chance of baiting it via the roof.

I just realised tonight that I can probably access the floorspace for baiting purposes by removing one of the kitchen downlights, and I did hear it scurrying a bit close to that area tonight. But if it dies in the floorspace, I'll have no hope of removing the dead body, and we know from experience that dead rat smell permeates ceiling plasterboard quite well.

I think we need a reliable rodent repellent that can be sprayed in ceiling spaces. That might be the only hope of keeping them away.

Ayn causes pain

Hey, another bit of anti-Randian material comes my way. (Must be the movie coming out soon that's prompting this?) Bit of a sad story, really, of a father who becomes a self absorbed objectivist (is there any other type?), and a pain to his daughter in the process. I like this anecdote:

One time, at dinner, I complained that my brother was hogging all the food.

"He's being selfish!" I whined to my father.

"Being selfish is a good thing," he said. "To be selfless is to deny one's self. To be selfish is to embrace the self, and accept your wants and needs."

It was my dad's classic response -- a grandiose philosophical answer to a simple real-world problem. But who cared about logic? All I wanted was another serving of mashed potatoes.

Woops, forgot the baby

The Economist notes that "White America" (sounds to me like there might have been a better way of putting it) is showing a dramatic drop in birth rate, while minority groups are growing strongly.

Not quite sure why this would be.

Recommended again

This short example of a Bryan Appleyard post (including comments following) shows why I am really pleased to have him blogging again.

Sounds important

The 'molecular octopus': A little brother of 'Schroedinger's cat'

Kind of a bad explanation of what they did here, but still the result sounds significant - a large organic molecule of about 430 atoms was shown to be in a state of "superposition", like the presumed state of Schroedinger's Cat.

I wonder if this leads us any closer to a theoretical understanding of what a quantum superposition means?

For those interested in this topic only

The topic being: how stupid is Catallaxy. (The rest of you should look away.)

I see that yesterday, a few of the regulars (CL, d-d and IT) decided that Tony Abbott really wasn't performing well at the moment. Policy cut through wasn't happening, with IT noting something like "he's too busy riding his bicycle for that".

What, I wonder, has changed in the last six months to lead to these conclusions? The answer: absolutely nothing, in fact. There is nothing in their present criticisms that wasn't true of Abbott in the immediate period after he became leader, and which I had been saying since then; including the fact that his enthusiasm for exercise makes him look not entirely devoted to thinking about policy.

Yet when yours truly made these comments, it was all derision and ridiculous psycho-sexual analysis of why I have an issue with a politician who seems to spend just as much time in the media in lycra as in suits.

Speaking of psycho-sexual analysis: it's an ironic sign of his lack of insight that CL routinely answers criticism of his views and conduct in debate(at least if it is made by a perceived enemy) by claiming that his critic must be psychologically disturbed. No, he can't ever be wrong, or admit overstepping a line: instead, the explanation must be that it's the critic who is psychologically troubled. We saw this again in his counter-attack on HC last night, who pretty much followed my line in attacking Fisk and CL's ridiculous support for more Koran burning: because, you know, there just haven't been enough deaths of UN workers and police shooting into rioters to satisfy them yet. (Harry, you missed my point, though, that the most offensive thing in their rants was Fisk's use of "worthless sub-human animals" for the people of Afghanistan.)

Anyway, the weirdly tribal inner circle of Catallaxy has spoken - Abbott is a bit of a dud and a lightweight after all.

What a bunch of maroons.

Deathbed visions surveyed

Going into the light - The Irish Times - Tue, Mar 22, 2011

There's an interesting report here on a study from Ireland that asked members of the Irish Association of Palliative Care to report their experiences of deathbed visions.

It appears to confirm that deathbed visions of relatives, a white light in the room, or even the smell of roses, are well known events in palliative care circles. A sudden emergence from a coma, with an ability to recognise the people in the room, before then dying peacefully, seems also relatively common.

The drug or fever induced hallucination as an explanation is not widely believed:

One common sense explanation may be that the visions are drug- or fever-induced hallucinations. But 68 per cent of respondents agreed, or strongly agreed, that DBE have different qualities from such hallucinations.

MacConville says there appears to be a difference in the quality of the visions: they appear with greater clarity, and they are experienced as meaningful, with significant associations, rather than random, as they would be in drug-induced cases.

An earlier study also indicated that patients experiencing deathbed phenomena are usually calm and composed. In contrast, drug- or fever-induced hallucinations can be disturbing and frightening, with other symptoms of drug-induced toxicity and high temperature present as well.

All very fascinating.