Not coping with green energy

Energy crisis cannot be solved by renewables, oil chiefs say - Times Online

Some pessimism from the oil and energy industry:

Shell’s chief gives warning that supplies of conventional oil and gas will struggle to keep pace with rising energy demand and he calls for greater investment in energy efficiency.

Instead of a great conversion to wind power and solar power, Mr van der Veer predicts, the world will be forced into greater use of coal and much higher CO2 emissions, “possibly to levels we deem unacceptable”.

Alternative energy sources, such as renewables, will not fill the gap, says Mr van der Veer, who forecasts that even with major technological breakthroughs, renewables could account for only 30 per cent of energy supply by the middle of the century.

“Contrary to public perceptions, renewable energy is not the silver bullet that will soon solve all our problems,” he writes.

And the chief executive of Exxon agrees:

Mr Tillerson said that world energy demand would rise by 45 per cent by 2030, and fossil fuels – oil, natural gas and coal – were the only energy sources of sufficient size, adaptability and affordability to meet the world’s needs.

Might be time to start taking geo-engineering more seriously, I think.

Antony goes to Iran

The peripatetic Antony Lowenstein has turned up talking in the Guardian about a recent visit in Iran.

To paraphrase that line from Grapes of Wrath:"where ever there are peoples who hate Jews, he'll be there."

Actually, I have to begrudgingly say that most of the column is an interesting read, concentrating as it does on the difference between private views and the "official" views expressed in Iran, and the fierce form of censorship that exists there. (I found it particularly interesting that he claims that "many people" told him that they don't want America to leave Iraq yet, because of the chaos it would cause.)

However, Antony can't help himself and goes mad in the very last two sentences. They go like this:

Iranians may be the most hospitable people in the world, and yet any American or Israeli attack against the country's nuclear facilities would be met with even-greater repression at home and rallying around the conservative leadership.

Um, fair enough point. I am thinking "Antony, you have written a piece in which I can't find much to object to at all." But then, out of the blue, comes this last sentence:

For many westerners, the concept of Islam at the heart of a prosperous nation is too much to bear. It's a sad indictment of many post 9/11 mindsets.

What?? The rest of the column has said nothing about the "prosperity" of Iran. In fact, this last sentence seems to have absolutely nothing to do with what has preceded it. It's like he just can't control his fingers from typing out commentary without fitting in some criticism, no matter how off the wall, of westerners for being "anti-Islamic".

You only have to go a few posts down in the comments section to see someone who challenges his "prosperous nation" comment, which is pretty good considering this is the Guardian after all.

Congratulations Antony, your goose-dom is saved by your last sentence!

A Saturday Miscellany

* A fascinating story on what it is like to visit North Korea was on Foreign Correspondent this week. If you missed it, there's repeat at 1pm on ABC TV today, and the story should be available on broadband at the link above sometime soon.

* The SMH reprints a David Brooks piece from the NYTimes on his understanding of human nature and why it means school based sex education doesn't work. While his assessment seems plausible, it also seems to me to have fairly pessimistic implications for how you change an individual's perceptions and behaviour. It's an interesting read anyway.

* Michael Duffy has an interesting column in the SMH too, talking about why experts can be bad at forecasting. Two thoughts:

1. If correct, it's a good sign for the future of blogs, as we are all qualified to guess abut the future;

2. Does this also explain why Michael Duffy wrote a book that was half about the political future of the self -detonating Mark Latham?

* They use about 8 tonnes a year of human antibiotics on farmed Tasmanian Salmon? Does not sound like a good idea.

* Matt Price confirms that the puzzlement political journalists have always expressed about Kevin Rudd's public popularity is due to their knowing him better than you and I:

And let me let you in on an insider's secret. Most of us know, or feel we know, Rudd too well. He's a decent and intelligent fellow who has nonetheless grovelled and scraped and dissembled to get to the top, earning the wrath of colleagues and the suspicion of journalists. While the rest of Australia falls under the spell of Kevinism, his stratospheric personal ratings seem faintly surreal to those acquainted with the baby-faced Messiah, and that includes many Labor MPs.

* If you have missed it from Boing Boing, you really should spend the 5 seconds it takes to watch the dramatic chipmunk (even though it's a prairie dog):

On aboriginal issues

Well, the media and blogs in Australia are running hot today on John Howard's sudden announcement of drastic measures to help stop child abuse in the Northern Territory remote communities.

This seems as good a time as any, then, to express some thoughts on some of the problems with aboriginal housing and culture generally.

1. Second hand experience. I have close relatives who have lived in one of the big Cape York communities, and still live in the area and recently went back to do more work on the community. Although the tavern there has been greatly restricted in its operation (shut completely on welfare payday, I think,) I am told that the atmosphere at the community has still become worse in the last year or so. My relative, for example, recently had to get police help to remove a stone throwing group who were attacking the Council offices because they were upset that their dog had been put down by the vet. (Mangy, decrepit and uncared for dogs are a problem in the community, and they paid for a vet to come and put down the worst ones.)

Alcohol entry into the community is tightly policed.

It seems that alcohol restrictions do not always mean a immediate improvement in general atmosphere of a community. Presumably, there is some improvement in terms of assaults and property destruction, but it's not a magic bullet for making residents feel happier in themselves.

This particular community has recently started a tourist venture (but a very expensive one for anyone to experience.) I am told that it is getting bookings, but having seen it on television, I doubt that it has long term prospects. The local area is simply not particularly attractive.

2. Housing. I think it is well known that for some (or most, or all?) remote aboriginal communities, the problem with housing is exacerbated by their spiritual/religious belief that a house in which a person has died has to be left vacant for some months before it can be re-occupied again, and then only after a ceremony to make sure the spirit is really gone, or happy.

When it is already hard enough to get a barely adequate number of houses built in remote localities, I would like to know how much of a problem this really is. Given high aboriginal mortality, does it mean that, say, you ideally would have an extra pool of (I am guessing) 20% vacant houses if you want death affected families to have a temporary house once every few years?

It sounds as if it could be a really significant reason why housing is always crowded.

Some years ago when discussing this with a (left leaning) brother, I half seriously suggested that perhaps the real solution is to have moveable housing; a sophisticated tent, perhaps. He was horrified that I would suggest condemning aboriginals to such accommodation.

But really, I still think I have a valid case for this. As to the cultural appropriateness of housing, people see Mongolians living in yurts, or Bedouins in tents, and find it sort of romantic. Aborigines living rough in the Northern Territory will live in a humpy, making a modern canvas and wood construction a palace by comparison. Yet there is still the perception that suggesting anything less than a house of bricks is insulting.

You wouldn't make every building in a community like this: they have to be able to get shelter from cyclones and such. But I like to imagine that for (at a guess) maybe $30,000 you could come up with a "super tent" and platform floor combination that is just moored on a bit of land and moved as necessary.

There has been a lot of talk over the years of making appropriately designed, very solid, low maintenance houses for these communities. My suggestion is to go in the other direction: make it virtually disposable, making maintenance as irrelevant as possible.

They can have a new one every couple of years, maybe a new one if they believe they still need to vacate it if a death occurs, and still be ahead of the permanent brick and mortar style housing costs.

Just thinking outside the box, folks.

Electric jet engine of the future?

For Low-Emission Planes, Try Superconductivity: Scientific American

A very cool idea. (There's a pun in there, if you know anything about superconductivity.)

China takes the lead

China tops CO2 emissions - Developing nation overtakes America, and is set to rise.

The news@nature links never work for long, but here is the crucial part:

But how fast are Chinese emissions rising?

Fast, because the standard of living is rising too. The country is building about 2 power stations a week. Its emissions from fossil fuels went up 8% from 2005 to 2006, contributing heavily to the overall global rise of 2.6%.

Can anything be done about that?

China unveiled its first national plan on climate change earlier this month. The scheme outlines the country's aim to reduce 'energy intensity' — the amount of energy needed per unit of GDP — by 20% by 2010. But the Chinese economy is, today, growing at 10% a year. If it were to keep that up, then in 2020 its economy would be 3.5 times larger than it is today. That would mean far greater carbon dioxide emissions even if the energy intensity goals were met.

China also aims to increase renewable energy sources and re-forest the countryside. But what it really needs to keep emissions in check are clean coal technologies. "It can't do much about cement except use less in its construction," says Olivier.

Egypt and Gaza

Analysis: Calling Egypt's bluff on Gaza | Jerusalem Post

I noted a few posts ago the suggestion that getting Egypt into Gaza to sought out the mess would be an ideal solution, as far as the West is concerned. But I speculated that such involvement would probably risk the stability of the Egyptian government.

This seems to have been a good guess. From the Jerusalem Post, the article above discusses why Egypt does not do enough to stop the flow of smuggled arms into Gaza:

The Mubarak administration has its own delicate balancing act to maintain between the calls for democracy and the ambitions of the Muslim Brotherhood to overthrow the secular government. The last thing it needs is to get sucked into the fighting between Israel and the Palestinians and between Fatah and Hamas.

Egypt faces an Islamist terrorist threat, with bombings usually targeted at the tourism industry on the southern Red Sea coast of Sinai. So far, North Sinai, which is also close to Cairo and the Nile Delta, has been quiet and that is something they want to maintain at all costs. Allowing Hamas to smuggle arms in to Gaza through their territory is a reasonable price as long as none of it remains behind in Egypt and the Palestinians go about it with discretion...

The policy remains not to risk even one Egyptian for the Palestinians' sake. If the US and Israel are to realize their hopes of a greater Egyptian involvement in dealing with the Hamas mini-state that has sprung up overnight in Gaza, it will only be achieved by a considerable package of incentives, or a serious threat to other interests of the Mubarak regime.

One for the "enjoyable bad reviews" folder

Lord of the Rings doomed to epic defeat | Uk News | News | Telegraph

Charles Spencer did not like the West End musical version of LoR:

I took my 14-year-old son along, who enjoyed Peter Jackson's epic Lord of the Rings films and is, I would guess, exactly the age and sex this show needs to attract in order to survive.

Unfortunately he hated it even more than I did, sitting with his head in his hands in those moments when he wasn't tittering at the ponderous inanities of the script and the triteness of the lyrics....

Warchus's claim that the show is a cross between Shakespeare and Cirque du Soleil is risible. The language is flat, portentous or twee, and there is barely a moment that makes you gasp.

Indeed most of the special effects seem highly derivative, from old-hat bungee jumping to the Louise Bourgeois inspired giant spider. Nor does this story of epic battles run to a single decent sword-fight, a truly astonishing omission....

Repeatedly during this show you feel its creators have more money than either sense or imagination.

Kid's problems

Comment is free: Searching for the antidote

This commentary from The Guardian makes some sensible points about concern for modern children:

Is there a danger that the glow of a mythical golden yesteryear is making this the most scrutinised younger generation ever, while leading only to a partial and highly selective understanding of what's really happening? Cause and effect; nurture and nature are notoriously difficult to disentangle. ....

.....adults have wrongly taught (some) children that what they feel is much more important than what they achieve. "Self-control or the ability to persevere and keep going is a much better predictor of life outcomes than self-esteem. Research tells us that children high in self-control make better grades and finish more years of education ... Self-control predicts all of those things researchers had hoped self-esteem would [deliver] but hasn't."

In Scandinavia, concern is also growing about a parenting style known as "curling", after the sport that became a surprise Olympic hit. Professional middle-class parents, both working long hours, insist on sweeping away all difficulties for their child: interfering with teachers and friends; spoiling them rotten and expecting nothing - neither good manners, nor chores, nor endeavour - in return. Again, on contact with adversity, the child instead of learning from failure and a modicum of stress, mentally collapses.

The analysis of why some children are so highly distressed needs to include both ends of the spectrum - those who have too little and those who appear to have too much. While somewhere in this whole process, against the grain of consumption and celebrity and success as defined by the workplace, we could somehow try to restore the value of ordinariness and the pleasures it can bring.

Typical

Taipei Times - archives

Of course it would be an engineer who wants to do this:

A robot will be master of ceremonies for a South Korean wedding this weekend in what its creators yesterday claimed as a world first.

Hanool Robotics said Tiro the robot will assist at the civil wedding ceremony of Seok Gyeong-jae, one of the engineers who designed it, and his bride tomorrow in Daejeon, 130km south of Seoul.

As the bride and groom leave the ceremony, the guests will throw little nuts and bolts at them, I suppose.

Don't forget the paella pans

Australia to buy Spanish warships - National - smh.com.au

Now, if you shut your eyes and count to 20, when you open them, there will be new commentary somewhere on the 'net criticising this decision. I could be exaggerating, but not by much.

You see, it is a rule of Australian defence acquisitions decisions, no matter how long they are pondered over, sent to another inter-departmental committee, analysed via 56 different matrices, etc, etc, will always be the subject of criticism by armchair experts, real experts, retired admirals, generals & air vice marshals, and assorted others.

For all the criticism it generates, I really wonder why Defence just doesn't save money and time by narrowing the choices down to three vaguely credible ones, and then throwing darts at a board to pick the winner.

Living in a can for science

Wanted: Space pioneers (or agoraphobes) for 520-day Mars experiment

From the article:

The European Space Agency (ESA) on Tuesday called for applications for one of the most demanding human experiments in space history: a simulated trip to Mars in which six "astronauts" will spend 17 months in an isolation tank on Earth.

Their spaceship will comprise a series of interlocked modules in an research institute in Moscow, and once the doors are closed tight, the volunteers will be cut off from all contact with the outside world except by a delayed radio link.

They will face simulated emergencies, daily work routines and experiments, as well as boredom and, no doubt, personal friction from confinement in just 550 cubic metres (19,250 cubic feet), the equivalent of nine truck containers.

Communications with the simulated mission control and loved-ones will take up to 40 minutes, the time that a radio signal takes to cross the void between Earth and a spaceship on Mars. Food will comprise mainly the packaged stuff of the kind eaten aboard the International Space Station (ISS).

The goal is to gain experience about the psychological challenges that a crew will face on a trip to Mars. ...

Viktor Baranov of Russia's Institute of Biomedical Problems, where the experiment will take place, said his organisation had received about 150 applications, only 19 of which came from women.

"The problem is that it is very difficult to find healthy people for this kind of experiment," he said.

Well, that's understandable! Apart from the interest in the physical environmental of such sealed tank experiments, especially if recycling systems are involved, I remain a little skeptical that there is much more to be learned from them from a psychological perspective.

I mean, the fundamental difference is that the participants in the can know it is only an experiment. They don't have the consolation of a forthcoming walk on a new world to help them endure the isolation. Wouldn't that make all the difference in the real life trip to Mars?

The first trip to Mars is going to have take a vat full of antidepressants and other medication with them to deal with the distinct possibility of one of the astronauts breaking down. But surely that has happened on a nuclear submarine before. Can't they just extrapolate from that?

Gaza mess, continued

Comment is free: Nothing in moderation

A very bleak assessment of the future for the Palestinian movement and Israel in this column in the Guardian.

Meanwhile, I note that Antony Lowenstein's blog appears to be a particularly inactive place for comments at the moment, when one would have thought it might have been the place for some "interesting" contributions about the Gaza crisis. Looks like he's a bit of a dud as a blogger.

Trivia time

Guinness: Miyazaki man is oldest male | The Japan Times Online

He's 111. Born in 1895, and looks pretty good for his age if the photo is anything to go by.

Japan also has the oldest woman in the world - at 114!

Unusual

BBC NEWS | Health | Coffee 'could prevent eye tremor'

While reading this story my left eyelid twitched a couple of times. Really.

Talking to the cultural luvvies

End the culture wars and make way for a renaissance - Opinion - smh.com.au

Julia Gillard gave an address to someone last night (the SMH doesn't say who,) but the edited version of it reported above certainly indicates it was a vacuous effort at reminding the cultural luvvies (as if they needed it) that Labor is the one who really loves and supports them. Some extracts:

We need to get a real conversation going between our cultural producers and the public. This isn't just about elites; it involves all of us. It's time to end the culture wars.

Within TV what examples does she give? Not exactly hard to guess:

Another good start would be for our TV networks to take seriously their commitment to providing quality Australian content. Recent dramas such as Curtin and Bastard Boys show what can be achieved...

Presumably, it's the Whitlam career, the Hawke ascendency and a TV version of Keating: The Musical that she is hanging out for. (Personally, I would prefer to see a musical interpretation of the Latham Diaries, but I am not sure even Julia wants to see that.)

More pap follows:

This great Australian cultural renaissance could be one of the most important national investments we could make, because Australian culture is ideally suited to the challenges of today.

Kissy kissy arts/cultural community. We will give you more money; remember Keating?

Now to cover the aboriginal cultural lobby:

We should never forget Australia's indigenous culture is one of the longest-surviving cultures in the world and we should never forget to be proud of that fact. We can also learn from it. Climate change is giving us an urgent interest in doing so.

We need to develop a new respect for the reality of our harsh physical environment and adapt to its changes. Aborigines were never passive occupiers of the land. As we have, they moulded the land as it moulded them. But we're leaving far too big an ecological footprint and have much to learn from indigenous land management and ecological knowledge.

We should be proud, Kimosabe? Seems a bit of unwarranted cultural appropriation going on here.

As for what we can learn from Aboriginal land management, the lesson I take is: yes go ahead and mold the land, it's there to be turned from forest into grassland by regular CO2 producing burning, but if that is what you need to survive comfortably, then go ahead.

It's a feature of her side of politics that soft-headed thinking attempts to give moral credit to a pre-industrial society for only modifying the landscape to the extent that they could without bulldozers and dynamite. Oh, and for making it "sustainable" for 40,000 years. I trust that the extinct megafauna probably don't see it the same way as Julia.

Of course, some local Aboriginal knowledge may be ecologically useful, just like the knowledge of any non aboriginal who has had a family living in an area for, say, 100 years. It's just the suggestion that indigenous land management is "special" or more moral than what modern society does that irritates.

Julian ends by talking about the movie Happy Feet:

You might think I'm pulling a long bow in drawing conclusions from an animated film about a dancing penguin named Mumble. But Mumble is a man - or should I say, a penguin - for our times. He won't conform. Instead of singing like everyone else, he dances. And along the way he uncovers some important truths about the need to change our ways.

Australians are a bit like Mumble. In terms of world culture, we're unique: young, unusual, at times exotic and usually undermining authority. We can choose our path. We shouldn't feel we have to sing along in harmony with the rest of the world to have a positive effect on it. But we can dance like no one else. The last thing we need is culture warriors trying to force us to conform.

How exactly have the "cultural warriors" been trying to force conformity?? By suggesting the arts community should be more self sustaining and able to produce products that the public wants to see and read ? By pointing out that the bureaucratic systems for funding arts have in fact been producing material that conforms to a soft left view of the world ever since the cultural revival of the 1970's? By noting that historians who are directly relevant to things like High Court cases have made (at best) careless claims in some of their arguments?

Julia doesn't really dislike cultural conformity; she just wants it to conform to her view of the world.

Silly Julia.

Paint your way to a cooler planet

White Is the New Green - Science - RedOrbit

I think I may have seen this mentioned somewhere else; I am not sure. In any event, this article claims that, due to the cost of solar panels, you can do substantially more for global warming in the short term by painting your roof white. Here's the key paragraphs:

If, instead of a black solar panel absorbing light and producing electricity, you simply painted that square meter white, it would reflect back into outer space perhaps 50 of the 300 watts incident from the sun. So it would take about 25 days for the solar panel to catch up with the more efficient reflection of sunlight that the white-painted panel would provide in a single day.

This seems counterintuitive, of course, as solar panels are net-positive in reducing global warming. And, in many cases, you could install the black solar panel on an existing black building roof, so you wouldn't be "adding" yet another black, heat-absorbing surface [another "albedo-decreaser"] to the earth.

Except for the small issue of money. A 20%-efficient, 1-square-meter solar panel costs about $1,000. For $1,000, you can buy 40 cans of good quality white paint. Each can covers 2,000 square meters with a nice bright reflecting film. So for the same $1,000 investment you could buy one square meter of photovoltaic cells, or cover 2,000 square meters with white paint. It would take more than 2,000 times 25 days, or about a century, for the CO mitigation from $1,000 of solar panels to catch up with the albedo increase of a large painted roof!

So what's a conscientious environmentalist to do? Unquestionably, we need solar panels for electricity. You can't run a washing machine on white paint. But, for every dollar spent on solar panels, we should spend at least a dime on white paint for every roof, parking lot, and road in the country.

There is a mistake in the sentence between the highlighted ones. (The total area that can be covered with $1000 worth of paint is surely 2,000 m2, not 2,000 m2 per can.)

However, it is an interesting argument, to say the least.

There is almost certainly a Satanist amongst them too

The Corner on National Review Online

A very bizarre and amusing story via Mark Steyn at the link above. (Short version: an Episcopalian priest - female by the way - claims she is now a Muslim and a Christian. It appears not to be satire.)

This reminds me of a Not the Nine O'Clock News sketch which had its young, groovy, very non-judgemental vicar talking about how the church shouldn't have a "get behind me" attitude to Satanists, but more of a "come in old mate, let's sit down for a cup of tea and chat" approach. (I wonder how well I am remembering this after 25 years. Sadly, I can't find it on Youtube or elsewhere on the net.)

Kevin Rudd in death spiral

Heh heh heh. Just wanted to see someone write that headline, even if it's only a John Howard tragic like me.

But seriously folks, I have always thought Newspoll had the greatest credibility. I also seem to recall it has been said over the years that a major party has to be looking at getting over 40% of primary vote to have any chance of winning an election.

On this basis, Newspoll's results from earlier this year showing the Coalition at 35% primary vote were bad, as even allowing for a margin of error meant they would still be well below the magical 40%.

As today's results are back to 39%, and the effects of the budget are still kicking in, there is reason for guarded optimism about the coalition's prospects. Headed in the right direction again, at least.

I am also finding it a little amusing to hear Labor complaining when Howard adopts the essence of some of their policies. It's happening today with the broadband issue.

This is one of the neat things about democracy; everyone is allowed to take policy ideas and run with them. The public will let you know if it is good idea of not. No use complaining that the government is only adopting a policy for electoral benefit, or some such. That's what all parties do, and let's face it, it's better than a government refusing to adopt a good idea just because someone else thought of it.

Cereal humour

An amusing post from Bryan Appleyard about breakfast cereal.

For those readers with an intense interest in the details of my private life (hello, anyone there?) I have been perfectly happy with Uncle Toby's Sports Plus for a number of years now. Strangely enough, the Uncle Toby's website seems to be just one page with an email address, probably related to the business being taken over by Nestle last year. (That explains the change in packaging, I guess.)

I am sure you all feel better for knowing this.