More disaster talk

Death in the deep: Volcanoes blamed for mass extinction

The suggestion is that it was massive underwater volcanism that led to the anoxic oceans and mass extinctions of 95 million years ago.

If true, I suppose it is half-way encouraging that high levels of atmospheric CO2 alone might not lead to anoxic oceans. But, this is not something I feel particularly inclined to run the risk on.

The Nature article I linked to a couple of posts back argued that the world could reach 1000 ppm pretty easily. Here's the relevant section (if you are really lazy, just read the parts I have put in bold):

The goal of climate mitigation is to avoid dangerous human-caused impacts, which science suggests would mean limiting total warming to 2 °C above preindustrial temperatures. In turn, this would require keeping atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide below 450 parts per million (p.p.m.). According to the IPCC's Fourth Assessment Report in 2007, model studies based on our current understanding of climate–carbon-cycle feedbacks suggest that to stabilize carbon dioxide levels at 450 p.p.m. could require that cumulative emissions over the twenty-first century reach only about 490 gigatonnes of carbon (GtC), which equates to less than 5 GtC per year¹.

Similarly, stabilizing atmospheric carbon dioxide levels at 1,000 p.p.m. would require cumulative emissions this century of only about 1,100 GtC. In other words, if annual emissions average 11 GtC this century, we risk the real, terrifying prospect of seeing 1,000 p.p.m. carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and a 'best estimate' warming of a staggering 5.5 °C by the end of the century.

Carbon emissions from the global consumption of fossil fuels are currently above 8 GtC per year and rising faster than the most pessimistic economic model considered by the IPCC². Yet even if the high price of energy from fossil fuels and power plants combines with regional climate initiatives to slow the current rate of growth somewhat, we will probably hit 11 gigatonnes of carbon emissions per year by 2020.

Lomborg on emissions trading

A better way than cap and trade - On Line Opinion - 17/7/2008

Doesn't sound particularly controversial, what Lomborg has to say about cap and trade schemes. (They are - relatively - politically palatable but aren't at all likely to do enough to make a significant difference.)

Lomborg suggests a much more serious commitment to R&D to get solar power costs down.

Emissions trading already too late?

Cleaning up on carbon : article : Nature Reports Climate Change

For anyone out there (if there is anyone) who thinks emissions trading schemes are likely to do enough to limit CO2 fast enough, have a read of the above detailed opinion piece that was in Nature in June 2008.

It argues:

The limits of a strategy built around carbon pricing can be seen in the European Union's Emissions Trading Scheme, the world's largest system for pricing carbon and trading permits. A full decade after signing the Kyoto Protocol, European nations finally have in place a cap-and-trade system with a significant price for allowances, namely US$40 per metric ton of carbon dioxide. Yet utilities in Italy, Great Britain, the Czech Republic and Germany are reported to still be pursuing new coal-fired plants⁴, so we must clearly go beyond pricing carbon.

The whole scenario set out in the article about how difficult it will be to achieve stabilisation at 550 ppm is pretty depressing, really. But the author argues that:

...such is the urgent need to reverse emissions trends by deploying a multitude of low-carbon technologies that we must rely on technologies that either are already commercial or will very shortly be so. Fortunately, venture capitalists and public companies have begun to inject many billions of dollars into the development and short-term commercialization of most plausible low-carbon technologies. Governments should now focus their R&D spending on a longer-term effort aimed at a new generation of technologies for the emissions reduction effort after 2040, but the notion that we need a Manhattan Project or Apollo programme for technology development is mistaken. Instead, what is urgently needed is an effort of that scale focused on the deployment of technology.

It's all interesting, and well worth reading.

This is serious, but still...

I'm on record as wanting the world to do something effective about CO2 emissions, (it's the oceans, guys,) but still, I am getting some enjoyment from seeing Andrew Bolt and most of the Larvatus Prodeo crowd singing harmonies in their negative response to Kevin Rudd's greenhouse proposals.

Descent into tabloid

I had sex with my brother but I don't feel guilty - Times Online

The Times has entered well and truly into tabloid territory by running this strange piece which paints sister/brother incest in a soft-porn, soft-focus, filtered glowing light sort of way.

Given the number of comments, many have taken offence, although quite a few have been overcome by the faux romanticism of it.

I have been meaning to write something of sex, emotion and morality, in light of the Anglicans fight over homosexuality, and this article might just prompt me to do it. Someday.

Meanwhile, I'll just take it as another sign that Great Britain is indeed in a weird downwards spiral of decay.

Poorly chosen words

Christian doctrine offensive to Muslims, says Archbishop of Canterbury - Telegraph

Rowan Williams invites criticism again:

Discussing differences between the religions, Dr Williams acknowledges that Christian belief in the Trinity is "difficult, sometimes offensive, to Muslims".

More to the point is why it should be considered "offensive," by anyone.

Or alternatively, if you allow that people can be justifiably "offended" by members of other faiths believing that they are wrong, then Christians should be allowed to find Islam offensive too. But if everyone can claim offence, there is hardly any point in raising the issue.

Great moments in science

Study finds Aussies more likely to target Muslims in shootout | Herald Sun

The first line from the above report:

AUSSIES who find themselves under threat are more likely to shoot at Muslims, especially if they're in a good mood, a study claims.

Just how many people find themselves both under threat from Muslims and in a good mood, I wonder.

How helpful

Queensland’s vision splendid at Larvatus Prodeo

It's not often that I link to anything at LP with approval, but yesterday I was quoting Greenpeace, so I may as well continue my out-of-character run.

I mean, it is pretty ridiculous to be fretting about reducing our relatively tiny emissions while shipping millions of tonnes of coal to countries to burn or use in whatever manner they like.

The ALP thinks you should not sell uranium to countries that don't sign up to obligations to use it properly, yet when it comes to coal anything goes. (Has there been some talk of helping China build efficient power plants?; I can't recall. But there is certainly no legal tying of coal exports to any such efficiencies in its use.)

If you want to get top marks for idealism, and leading by example, then you would not cite the response "well if we don't sell it to them, they'll just buy it elsewhere."

UPDATE: those LP-er's are not taking the government's greenhouse plans at all well. Yep, it was a pretty good election for the Liberals to lose.

I think somewhere here before I have suggested the best answer to global warming may be for the US to wage war on China. (Well, if you must, just a limited war on their coal-burning facilities. Cruise missiles could be very handy that way. If the Chinese want to retaliate against US coal power stations, so much the better!) I work on the theory that there are very few problems in the world that can't be solved with high explosives.

Don't say I am not trying to be helpful.

Local problems with CO2 sequestration

Inside Business - 13/07/2008: Coal capture could be problematic

See the link for a short but interesting story on plans (and the initial pilot project) for CO2 sequestration in Australia.

Apparently, the current cost problem is more in the CO2 capture technology, not the storage.

I'll take their word for it, but I still assume that a major cost in the future will be getting the CO2 to the sequestration site. In this article they talk of using the Moomba area, which already has pipe in place which could be used for transporting the CO2. But for other areas, surely the transport costs are going to be huge.

I see that the trial Otway project will pump 100,000 tonnes of CO2 into the ground. Sounds quite a lot, but how much CO2 does Australian power generation generate each year? According to this BBC site: 205,000,000 tonnes. So the total Otway project (I am not sure over what period it runs) will remove about .048% of annual emissions.

See why I remain deeply sceptical about this as a concept?

UPDATE: here's a generally sceptical look at CO2 sequestration from the 7.30 Report earlier this year. (I missed it at the time.) I see that the 200 millions tonnes a year figure seems correct, but it will rise to perhaps 300 million by 2030. (!)

It just seems a hopeless task. Surely you would be better off giving high priority to decommissioning coal powered stations and replacing them with, well, virtually anything. (Natural gas as an interim, it emits much less. Then nuclear and solar.)

UPDATE 2: apparently, the government (and Martin Ferguson in particular) is a believer in sequestration. All to be revealed tomorrow, perhaps.

I also wonder how hard the government is looking at the possibility of using "algae reactors" to scrub CO2 from power stations? Here's an article from a 2006 CSIRO publication in which an American company argues that it has many advantages over sequestration.

The company is GreenFuel Technologies, and its FAQ section is worth reading. They estimate that, for an average American coal fired power station, you would need 3400 hectares of algal farms to get a 40% reduction in CO2. Sounds a hell of a lot, doesn't it? (A square kilometre is 100 hectares.) But then solar farms are not exactly small either. Maybe I would be aiming for less than 40% reduction....

Still, sequestration is not a walk in the park either, and at least algal farms have a potential product at the end which may help offset the cost. (It is also less energy intensive. You have to remember with CO2 sequestration, you have to use more energy just to get the CO2 out of the exhaust.)

UPDATE 3: Greenpeace put out a paper in May 2008 detailing why it is against sequestration. In the section on Australia, it says:

In Australia, CCS would lead, at best, to a 9% emissions reduction in 2030 and a cumulative emissions reduction from 2005 to 2030 of only 2.4%.[88] This is partly due to the lack of suitable storage locations. For example, in the Newcastle-Sydney-Wollongong area of New South Wales and at Port Augusta in South Australia, which together produce about 39% of Australia’s current net CO2 emissions from electricity generation, there are no identified storage sites within 500 km of the coal-fired power stations.[89] In comparison, a modest improvement in energy efficiency could – at zero or even negative cost – decrease emissions in 2030 by about the same amount, and cumulative emissions by twice as much.[90]

Well, they might just have a point.

Henderson and the Pope

The sorry sport of Pope bashing - Opinion - smh.com.au

Gerard Henderson's take on the current round of Catholic bashing is spot on.

Joe's pain

Admit it, you're as bored as I am | Classical and opera | guardian.co.uk Music

Joe Queenan writes a very funny column that confirms all my suspicions about what passes for modern classical music and opera. (The stuff that seems to appear once and is rarely heard of again.)

His contention: it is not popular because it is generally awful. Queenan says he has tried, really tried, to get into it, but failed:

When I was 18, I bought a record called The New Music. It featured Kontra-Punkte by Karlheinz Stockhausen and Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima by Krzysztof Penderecki. I was incredibly proud of myself for giving this music a try, even though the Stockhausen sounded like a cat running up and down the piano, and the Penderecki was that reliable old post-Schoenberg standby: belligerent bees buzzing in the basement. I did not really like these pieces, but I would put them on the turntable every few months to see if the bizarre might one day morph into the familiar. I've been doing that for 40 years now, and both compositions continue to sound harsh, unpleasant, gloomy, post-nuclear. It is not the composers' fault that they wrote uncompromising music that was a direct response to the violence and stupidity of the 20th century; but it is not my fault that I would rather listen to Bach. That's my way of responding to the violence and stupidity of the 20th century, and the 21st century as well.

Queenan writes that this year when he did see an audience respond reasonably well to a new composition, the explanation is that:

...nothing thrills a classical music crowd more than a new piece of music that doesn't make them physically ill.

Quite the wit, is Joe.

Slow down

The Urge to End It - Understanding Suicide - NYTimes.com

I missed this last weekend, and found it via the always interesting Mind Hacks blog.

It's a fascinating article on suicide, and what can be done to decrease the rate.

The key point is that anything which slows down the process by which the victim intends killing him or herself helps drive down the rate. Even putting drugs in a blister pack instead of a bottle helps, as do bridge barriers, laws requiring guns to be stored unloaded in locked cabinets, etc.

A great read.

The Pope should visit more often...

Channel Ten evicts Big Brother

It's a miracle, I say. Can the burning of the Big Brother house begin now?

Scoop

I get all my relationship advice from the Times of India. How could you not, when they quote:

...Rita Gangwani, image enhancer and personality architect...

So now we know where Kevin Rudd got his makeover advice from.

Tony Snow

Sad to see former White House press secretary Tony Snow has died. I thought he came across as very natural and likeable in his Colbert Report appearance earlier this year. (You get the feeling that Colbert genuinely likes him too, I think.)

Pebble bed updates

Pebble bed nuclear reactors have been getting a bit of attention lately:

* The Economist mentioned the South African plans for them in a favourable fashion in mid-June.

* China's version gets coverage here, and here.

* In South Africa, it seems there is some criticism about the amount of government money being put into the project, the cost of the program, and licensing delays with approval for the first demonstration reactor. It looks like they don't expect to start building until 2010 and then have it running by 2015. (Even so, I expect that around that time Australia will still be scratching around for safe places to pump CO2 into the ground at less than exorbitant expense.)

Brideshead Revised

It's hard to see why anyone would think Brideshead Revisited should be made into a film, given the great success of the TV series in the 1980's. It's hard to imagine a more faithful adaption of a novel into another medium, and the intensely Catholic themes of grace and redemption (it is a book all about religion) came through entirely intact.

If the preview is anything to go by, the forthcoming movie version looks like an absolute travesty. If you know the book or the series, go and have a look. You will see what I mean. (The whole style of the preview even seems wrong, almost laughable, for this type of movie. It seems to be hyping up the drama in what comes across as a very Hollywood way.)

Interestingly, Andrew Davies (the screenwriter) was quoted in The Independent in 2002 as saying that he wanted the movie to concentrate more on the religious tensions in the book. That was a rather odd comment, given that the series seemed to be made by tearing out the pages of the novel and having the cast read the lines.

Fast forward to 2008, and The Independent has a lengthy article about the new movie, pointing out the clear changes to the story evident from the preview, and explains that Davies is now credited as only one of the writers. I wonder if he in fact might now want to disown his involvement.

That Independent article also presents an amusing vignette of Waugh at the time he wrote it. As most readers who have made it this far into this post probably know, he was, to put it mildly, a man with many character flaws, despite his religiosity and renown as an author with a very dry wit. Pretty fascinating all the same:

For most of 1943, Waugh was sunk in gloom. He was fed up with army life. After serving in Crete with the Special Services Brigade, he had spent a year waiting to be given a company to command. None was forthcoming. It was agreed among the senior officers that the author-turned-soldier was spectacularly ill-equipped to command ordinary soldiers, because of his "total incapacity for establishing any sort of human relations with his men". He was, all agreed, a 24-carat, card-carrying shit. His rudeness, his dislike of the working classes, his fondness for bullying and horror of social contact with strangers made him, in the words of his commanding officer, Lord Lovat, "a total misfit".

For a year, he'd hung out in a London office,drinking gallons of wine with friends. In July, his father Arthur died. Evelyn's wife and children remained in Combe Florey, Somerset and rarely contacted him. "I should like to feel," he wrote to his wife Laura, "that, once or twice a week, you felt enough interest in me to write and say so... If by any chance the children should die, do come to London. I miss you."

Then he received the final kiss-off. He was advised to resign from the Commandos "for the Brigade's good". It wasn't just rejection and bereavement that brought him low; it was the condition of England at this point of the war, and the predictions of its aftermath. "Everyone I meet is despondent about the future," he confided to his diary. Wherever he looked, life was grotty, grey, sloppy, utterly lacking in style, grace and chic. By the year's end his nerve had broken. He asked the army for leave, and travelled to Chagford in Devon. In that frame of mind , at the beginning of February 1944, he began to write Brideshead.

Listen to the Church, Kevin

Health levy plan to 'hurt poorest': Catholic Church | The Australian

Well, they took their own sweet time coming out to criticise it, but the Catholic Church's health wing finally makes a detailed criticism of Labor's ideological attack on health insurance. Good.

International notes

* A good essay about how American films have given up portraying realistic heroes. (The writer doesn't count superheroes, which is fair enough.) Much of what he says makes sense. It's a reflection of the Western Zeitgeist, I suppose, but you also have to worry a bit about whether Hollywood leads as much as it reflects.

* Everyone knows it is coming, and the early signs are already there. It's the question of what to do with the huge number of Chinese males who are going to be left single with a lot of aggression left to burn. Some extracts:

In the 2020s, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences researcher Zheng Zhenzhen, estimates in a People's Daily interview that 10 percent of Chinese men will be unable to find wives, which could have a huge impact on Chinese society....

Over the past decade, as the boys hit adolescence, the country's youth crime rate more than doubled. In December, Chinese Society of Juvenile Delinquency Research Deputy Secretary General Liu Guiming told a Beijing seminar that today's teens were committing crimes "without specific motives, often without forethought."...

Chinese authorities did not show much subtlety in its posters for the one child policy, apparently:

....the government is adopting a softer tone in its propaganda. The red characters painted on village walls throughout the countryside have evolved from the 1980s slogan YOU BEAT IT OUT! YOU CAN MAKE IT FALL OUT! YOU CAN ABORT IT! BUT YOU CANNOT GIVE BIRTH TO IT! Now they read: IMPLEMENT FAMILY PLANNING FOR THE GOOD OF ALL CITIZENS. And, recently, the government added BOYS AND GIRLS ARE BOTH TREASURES. In 2003, it unveiled the Care For Girls program, which gives stipends to parents of girls in some provinces.

* Over in India, skin whitening products for women are big business, but a recent soap-opera style advertisement is annoying people. You can watch and read about it at The Independent.

* Still at The Independent, this article makes beavers sound so endearing I think we should try introducing them to Australia. (I guess they don't like the taste of eucalyptus trees, though.)

* Israeli schools are trying out the Bible in comic version, to encourage students who find the old Hebrew a bit of a problem. The example in the article looks a little in the style of Tintin to me.

* And finally, in Las Vegas, Michael Jackson looks even more pathetic on a shopping trip, if that's possible.

Good Germans

My current burst of off-blog activity will soon be at an end. Here's another recommendation to fill in the time.

Last Friday, I saw an episode of a German documentary series The Wehrmacht, entitled "The Resistance". It was a quick history of the resistance within the German army in WWII, and was pretty fascinating viewing.

The episode is up on Youtube in several parts, and it's well worth watching if (like me) you are only vaguely aware of the conspiracies to kill Hitler . (There are stories of smaller acts of heroism too, which are always encouraging to hear.)

The last episode in the series, which is about the German's disasterous decision to continue fighting a losing battle, is on SBS TV tomorrow night (Friday) at 8.30.