Poets make pretty crook scientists

Clive James is apparently a wiz at languages, and his intellectual life has always been in the humanities.

His lengthy piece decrying climate change "alarmists", run in The Australian today with much prominence, is plainly, to anyone who has read widely on the subject, as worthless and utterly unreliable and out of date as a poet's analysis of the current state of a field of science could possibly be.  (It really feels like it was written 8 or 9 years ago, at the height of the question of the what the "pause" meant - not that serious scientists ever thought it meant that rising global temperatures had magically stopped.) 

There's a reason we don't rely on poets to instruct us on whether vaccines are good public policy, or what form of cancer treatment to take, or if Einstein could really be right because his ideas don't make much intuitive sense.   Fortunately, most know their limits. 

I don't wish James ill - he's been a very funny man in his day - but it is true that such ill formed views are literally dying out.

Rich vampires already exist

Vanity Fair notes:

Jesse Karmazin agrees. His start-up, Ambrosia, is charging about $8,000 a pop for blood transfusions from people under 25, Karmazin said at Code Conference on Wednesday. Ambrosia, which buys its blood from blood banks, now has about 100 paying customers. Some are Silicon Valley technologists, like Thiel, though Karmazin stressed that tech types aren’t Ambrosia’s only clients, and that anyone over 35 is eligible for its transfusions.

Karmazin was inspired to found Ambrosia after seeing studies researchers had done involving sewing mice together with their veins conjoined. Some aspects of aging, one 2013 study found, could be reversed when older mice get blood from younger ones, but other researchers haven’t been able to replicate these results, and the benefits of parabiosis in humans remains unclear. “I think the animal and retrospective data is compelling, and I want this treatment to be available to people,” Karmazin told the MIT Technology Review

According to the article, Ambrosia says that Thiel is not one of their customers, but there are rumours that he has his own source of young blood.

So, how's Prof Davidson's Catallaxy blog taking the Paris Accord news?

Of course, they are popping champagne corks, but the nuttiness and offensiveness of some - who view accepting the reality of climate change as somehow affecting their masculinity - is on full display.

Stand tall, Professor Davidson.  

Update:  In examining the Paris decision,  David Roberts at Vox re-visits his tribalist/cosmopolitan dichotomy explanation for Trump, and at the end of this section, the "masculinity  must dominate again" aspect gets a mention:

Trump is a tribalist

The hallmark of tribalism (a term I prefer to “nationalism,” as it gets at the deeper roots) is that it views the world in zero-sum terms — if one tribe benefits, it is at another tribe’s expense. As has been much remarked (see my post on Trump’s mindset), this describes Trump to a tee. He views all interactions, both personal and international, in terms of dominance and submission.

Tribalism has also entirely subsumed the US conservative movement. The intellectual core has all but rotted; what remains are older, rural and suburban white men and their wives, angry that their tribe is being demoted from its hegemonic position. At a barely beneath-the-surface level, Trumpism is about restoring old hierarchies: the powerful over the powerless, whites over minorities, men over women.

 Clearly, you can see how this is so true, when you read the many examples at Catallaxy.

Rain on the move?

From Climate Central:

A new study ....suggests that Earth’s rain belts could be pushed northward as the Northern Hemisphere heats up faster than the Southern Hemisphere. That shift would happen in concert with the longstanding expectation for already wet areas to see more rain and for dry ones to become more arid.

The study, detailed Wednesday in the journal Science Advances, “adds to the large body of evidence that climate change is going to mess with the large-scale motions of air and water in the atmosphere. And this matters, because those patterns largely determine where it's rainy or arid, broadly speaking,” NASA climate scientist Kate Marvel, who wasn’t involved with the study, said in an email.

These changes in rain distribution could have implications for future water resources, particularly in areas where water supplies are already stressed, such as the western U.S. and parts of Africa.

...which regions are wet and dry are also determined by the locations of the Earth’s main rain belts. The positions of those rain belts, in turn, are tied to that of the so-called thermal equator (the ring around the planet’s middle where surface temperatures are highest). And the location of that equator is impacted by the balance of temperatures between the Northern and Southern hemispheres.

Because the Northern Hemisphere has more landmass, it is heating up faster than the Southern Hemisphere, and, as some climate models have suggested, this could push the thermal equator northward, and along with it those key rain belts.

Makes some sense, and intuitively, one of the most serious potential consequences of climate change.
 

Look at my tatts

Good grief - given my aversion to tattooing, especially when on prominent display on women - I am less than pleased to see a tattoo promoting article on The Conversation by a female academic at RMIT.   (What an academy...)  

Even though she writes:

My interest in tattooing stems from my upbringing. Living in Aotearoa, from roughly the ages of eight to 28, meant that I was exposed to Maori and Pacific Islands tattooing attitudes.

I don't think she has a tribal reason herself for getting tattooed - and the tattoos of her own that she puts in the article are not of a tribal design.   She further gives the "high brow" justification for the practice:

If I see my tattoos as permanent records of rites of passage and power over adversity, ancient women and their societies may have been doing the same - but with a more restricted range of motif options. The limited range of motifs would have been due to both social conventions, the skill of the tattooist, and the tools used to create the tattoo.

Just because women got it done 2000 years ago in Greece or Egypt, I see no particular reason why this should encourage women to get kitchy art permanently fixed to their body now.  (And I maintain - the great majority of tattooing done in the West is kitch art.)

Anyway, each to their own, as they say;  just that I'll keep complaining about it, too, until fashions change.   (I still suspect it will, someday, somehow....) 

Psychological issues

The thing that immediately struck me, on listening to extracts of Trump's "we're leaving the Paris Accord" speech this morning, were the references to other countries "laughing at" the US because they knew the US was being hurt by the deal.  (And he threw in a snide reference to Germany, or Europe, in particular.)     

I was going to say that this is a case of psychological projection - but it's not quite that, I suppose.   It's whatever the term is for psychological deflection - mistaking laughter at him personally, for all of his obvious personal and intellectual shortcomings, as being directed at the country as a whole.  

And as such, it is example of what makes him so unsuited to making decisions on diplomatic and military matters (yes, including the nuclear codes) - you can imagine him mistaking a slight meant to be directed to him as deserving response on behalf of the whole country (because he will think that the country is the intended victim, not him personally.)

Given that Bannon is seem as a key person behind the Paris decision, you can well imagine him having some similar psychological issues too.   (He has been married and divorced 3 times - a bit of an obvious warning sign regarding personality.  He's also looks remarkably old and unwell, for his physical age.  Is he sensitive on that front?)

Apart from the intrigue of what drives the tiny mind of the President,  everyone will be making the obvious point in response to his claimed reasons for withdrawing.  As the Washington Post puts it:

“As of today, the United States will cease all implementation of the nonbinding Paris accord and the draconian financial and economic burdens the agreement imposes on our country,” Trump said — a phrase seeming to contain a logical contradiction. If the agreement is nonbinding, then what burdens can it impose?

And that contradiction gets to the heart of why Trump seemed, on Thursday, not to be arguing against the Paris agreement itself, but rather, against the Obama administration’s pledge under that agreement, in which the United States would cut by the year 2020 its emissions by 26 to 28 percent below their 2005 levels.

But the agreement does not require a particular level of emissions cuts for a particular country; rather, the United States and any other nation can choose its own level of emissions reductions.

“It seems very unnecessary to have to withdraw from the Paris agreement if the concern is focused on the U.S. emissions target and financial contributions,” said Sue Biniaz, who served at the State Department as the United States’ lead climate change lawyer from 1989 until earlier this year. “The U.S. can unilaterally change its emissions target under the agreement — it doesn’t have to ‘renegotiate’ it — and financial contributions are voluntary.”

 As I expected, the attempted explanation of Trump is in part meant to placate his daughter - he didn't take the chance to deny climate change, and he leaves open the possibility of "renegotiation" - of a deal that doesn't bind the country to a particular target anyway.  

It's all nonsense, and the world will laugh - or grimace - again at the President.

Old news, but I like the sarcasm

While wandering the interwebs, just found this pleasantly sarcastic note at Crikey, from February this year:

“Some exciting Friday afternoon news,” IPA long-term inmate and senior fellow Chris Berg writes. The passionate free-marketeer and advocate of low taxes and small government will be taking up a postdoctoral position at … RMIT, the publicly funded university. Your low taxes at work. The old workingmen’s college is a hotbed of free-marketeers, with Catallaxy-blog aficionadi Sinclair Davidson and Steven Kates both having spent years there. How selfless of these men to deny themselves the bracing challenges of the free market, and teach the evils of government funding in an institution that receives about $550 million of its billion-dollar budget from government sources. How interesting it would be to see them offer their sevices in the market, and see how many would pay. Don’t worry, no chance of that. You’ll be working to support free-market advocacy for many years to come. Exciting Monday morning news! — Guy Rundle

 

Update on unemployment

I did note a week or so ago that Adam Creighton seems determined to be a contrarian (and of the kind who would appeal to dumb populist politicians) when it comes to matter of unemployment figures; even when a fellow "small government" traveller like Judith Sloan has long been dismissive of the argument.

Well, for more detail as to why Adam's argument is (largely) crap, Greg Jericho has done a sterling job of explaining it all here. 

Long term lead

Interesting to see that glaciologists looking at lead levels in the European environment, at least, have now realised that lead mining and smelting has been polluting the place above natural levels for a very long time:

When the Black Death swept across Europe in the 14th century, it not only killed millions, it also brought lead smelting, among many other commercial activities, to a halt. That cessation is reflected in a new analysis of historical and ice core data, which researchers say provides evidence that the natural level of lead in the air is essentially zero, contrary to common assumptions.
"These new data show that human activity has polluted European air almost uninterruptedly for the last [about] 2,000 years," the study's authors say. "Only a devastating collapse in population and economic activity caused by pandemic disease reduced atmospheric pollution to what can now more accurately be termed background or natural levels."

Why I am not too worried

As much as I want there to be serious, proper and appropriate government policy directed to urgently work towards reducing greenhouse gases, I am tending towards the sanguine on the matter of Trump (possibly) saying the US will pull out of the Paris Accord, for the following reasons:

a.   while there are those who are ecstatic at the prospect of Trump confirming withdrawal,  it has been clear for years now that you either have to be dumb, old or a libertarian (or a combination of all three) to not believe the science and that political policy addressing climate change is appropriate and necessary.   Thus, they may celebrate it as a great victory, but quite frankly, they don't have the smarts to see the writing on the wall that the war is already lost.

b.   It's not just me who can see that - it's the rest of the world.   Thus, I am feeling reasonably confident that there is insufficient political support in any other important country to pull out, just because the most obviously intellectually challenged US President we have seen in decades and his coterie of ageing fundamentalist supporters (either in religion or ideology) have decided they can pretend the problem doesn't exist.   I suspect they will wait out the passing of this presidency and old guard Republican leadership.

c.   Trump has personal reasons for hedging on this decision - he wants to keep Ivanka and her husband on side.  (And there are other advisers around him who would just as soon stay in anyway.)   Thus, the suspicion already is that if he confirms withdrawal, he will do so in such a way as to not offend his daughter and those other advisers - more than likely, I would guess, by claiming that he is happy to see CO2 reductions, but he just doesn't believe the Paris accord is relevant to achieving that.  And, as we know with the example of Texas, where the Republican leadership would make you suspect it would be a bad place for renewable energy, yet wind power has done very well, sometimes the outcomes in clean energy don't match the political rhetorical in the way you might expect.  In other words, it's not out of the question that actions by corporations  and State governments in the US will continue to make reasonable progress towards green energy regardless of the Federal government saying "we don't care".

d.   There are some (well, at least one!) suggesting that it's actually better for the world for the US to pull out of the agreement rather than stay in and pretend it is following it.  See the argument put up by Luke Kemp, which appeared at The Conversation, and also got noted at the Washington Post.

Anyway, we shall see...

Update:  it's worth looking at the graph in this piece by David Roberts, showing that the US had a tough road to meet its commitments anyway.  The uncertainty is, I guess,  the degree to which Trumpian loosening of regulations (happening even without leaving Paris) will be taken advantage of by industry to maintain current emissions (or increase them).

No news from Laika :(

I'm a bit worried about Laika Studios, as there is still no announcement of its next release.

Kubo and the Two Strings badly underperformed for them at the box office despite (the somewhat too ecstatic) reviews.  (I blame using Matthew McConaughey for a voice.  He can ruin anything.)  But just as it was opened, company owner Travis Knight announced that it was the last of their "kids" films anyway.  He said the next film was going to be very different, still intended for families, but tonally a break from their first four films.  

Well, that makes me very curious, but despite his saying that they would probably announce it last year, a visit to the company website is still silent on the matter.

I still think that Paranorman, closely followed by Coraline, were the studio's best films.   But the artwork and craftmanship in all of them is something to behold.

No, doctors weren't amazed

I suspected as much:

Why This Viral Video of a Newborn Baby 'Walking' Is Totally Normal

Roger Moore's ghost

No, no:  I've had no spectral visitors offering Bondian double entendres.  But I just noticed this story, apparently told by Moore a long time ago, about a ghost he had visit him twice when staying at a hotel early in his career.

The story is interesting (if not a tall tale) for a couple of reasons.  First, it initially sounds like it might be a case of sleep paralysis, which often does involve the perception of a phantom figure in the room, sometimes near or on the bed, causing the paralysis.  But then he says he was sitting "bolt upright" in bed - and I don't think that's consistent with your normal "woke up and couldn't move" case of sleep paralysis.

Secondly, it is surely pretty rare to see the same apparition twice.

So, I wonder if it was true...

(And, by the way, isn't that a terribly designed website the story is on.)

Blockchain, cryptocurrency and unintended consequences

Yes, I think I count as an intuitive skeptic of Bitcoin and blockchain generally.  (If something's beloved of techno libertarians, it should be automatically suspect, in my books.)

But here's the sort of article that puts some justification into my intuition:

Cryptocurrency Might be a Path to Authoritarianism

Extreme libertarians built blockchain to decentralize government and corporate power. It could consolidate their control instead.

Of personal interest

I've been noticing certain unwanted age related changes to my skin in the last couple of years:  I'm getting small lumps and brownish patches that never used to be there and would just as soon do without.  So, who knows, a good all purpose aged skin repairing chemical might tempt me to use it:

New work from the University of Maryland suggests that a common, inexpensive and safe chemical could slow the aging of human skin. The researchers found evidence that the chemical—an antioxidant called methylene blue—could slow or reverse several well-known signs of aging when tested in cultured human skin cells and simulated skin tissue.

The study was published online in the journal Scientific Reports on May 30, 2017. "Our work suggests that methylene blue could be a powerful antioxidant for use in skin care products," said Kan Cao, senior author on the study and an associate professor of cell biology and molecular genetics at UMD. "The effects we are seeing are not temporary. Methylene blue appears to make fundamental, long-term changes to skin cells."