Ghosts of Everest

Voices in the air -- Windsor 337: a2667 -- BMJ

Here's a an interesting first hand account from the British Medical Journal of spectral assistance being provided to a an exhausted climber on Mt Everest. It's not an unusual story, apparently.

As with my recent post about bereavement "ghosts", the author of the article knows that the scientific explanation is the brain playing tricks because of the unusual stress it is under. (Indeed, the deprivation of oxygen aspect of the Everest stories can be seen as being the same explanation for death bed visions - where a person close to death starts chatting to an unseen, deceased, relative in the room. These are at their most suggestive of the supernatural when the "visitor" is of a relative who has recently died, yet the dying person had not been told.)

All very inconclusive, of course, but interesting nonetheless.

Greenhouse stuff

Paul Sheehan has a column in the SMH today about Kevin Rudd's emissions trading scheme which about right.

I would add this, being my thoughts since I wrote my initial rambling post:

* regardless of the issue of the variable target, which greatly offends many for being too soft, and about which I am still undecided, the more fundamental problem is the design of the scheme itself. If the scheme is badly flawed, the targets it aims for are not that relevant anyway;

* I remain sceptical of all ETS's, for the reasons which have been given a lot of publicity in the international press lately (see my various posts on this). However, it would seem the only hope of international sentiment moving away from using ETS as the concept would be if Obama's advisers were strongly against it, and the US started to push for carbon tax instead. Who knows if that will happen?;

* Kevin Rudd seems to have come up with the worst of all possible worlds: a target idea which keeps no one happy (well, except for some of the polluters); an ETS; and an ETS that seems to repeat the mistakes already identified in existing schemes.

* Few are saying it, but I think it confirms Malcolm Turnbull's earlier criticism about Rudd's early start up date for an ETS: it is better to get it right and have a scheme that starts a year later, than to rush into one which is fatally flawed.

In other greenhouse commentary: Andrew Bolt cited David Evans again on Saturday about the alleged absence of a "hot spot" in the atmosphere being strong evidence against greenhouse gases as the cause of global warming.

Club Troppo's Nicholas Gruen knows Evans personally, and managed to get him to agree to taking part in a debate in comments to a Troppo post.

It worked very well, and I have to say (not to my surprise) Dr Evans does not look like the winner, not by a long shot. (The comment by "Rex Ringshot" seemed particularly valuable, and showed that non-scientists can write helpful explanation.)

Did Andrew Bolt follow the argument, I wonder?

Wind farms and truth in advertising

Promoters overstated the environmental benefit of wind farms - Telegraph

The British Wind Energy Association (BWEA) has agreed to scale down its calculation for the amount of harmful carbon dioxide emission that can be eliminated by using wind turbines to generate electricity instead of burning fossil fuels such as coal or gas.

The problem was the BWEA liked to use a figure based on older, dirtier coal fired plants; but as British coal power is much cleaner now, the BWEA is being forced to revise its claims.

The most interesting part, though, is the ridiculous number of turbines needed to make big inroads into renewable targets:

Hundreds of wind farms are being planned across the country, adding to the 198 onshore and offshore farms - a total of 2,389 turbines - already in operation. Another 40 farms are currently under construction.

Experts have previously calculated that to help achieve the Government's aim of saving around 200 million tons of CO2 emissions by 2020 - through generating 15 per cent of the country's electricity from wind power - would require 50,000 wind turbines.

But the new figure for carbon displacement means that twice as many turbines would now be needed to save the same amount of CO2 emissions.

Ho ho ho..Merry Christmas (sarcasm mode)

Gaza: Hamas to end cease-fire with Israel - Los Angeles Times

A funny post

Marina Hyde: Nicole blows it with the Aborigines | Life and style | The Guardian

The wonderful Rex (the Runt)

I'm not sure if he has ever made an appearance on Australian TV before, but I've only recently discovered the very eccentric but very amusing Rex the Runt on ABC2. It's an Aardman claymation production, but much "edgier" than Wallace & Grommit.

Many, if not all, episodes are on Youtube, or you can find them via the official website. Here's a sample for your consideration:



It makes me happy, but why didn't I know about this show before??

In case you hadn't noticed...

... the meeting of the American Geophysical Union is on at the moment, and this Nature blog: In The Field: American Geophysical Union Archives has heaps of interesting posts about the various talks and papers being presented.

There appears to be nothing substantial in the way of global warming scepticism there (sorry my band of conservative greenhouse skeptic readers). But here are some of the more interesting posts:

* the main protagonists in the "hockey stick" controversy were together still disagreeing. (I personally am of the view that it was not that important an issue anyway.)

* here's another confirmation that Arctic ice is not just melting more in recent summers, it's getting thinner too.

* what are the odds of really abrupt climate changes? There's some relatively good news in there (Atlantic ocean circulation that keep England warm isn't expected to stop this century, and massive amounts of methane from underground may also stay in place for that long.) But, they now think ocean level rises will be faster and higher than IPCC last reported.

Even so, I don't tend to get too worked up about this (rising sea levels) as an issue, although I suppose I should if a metre in a century is possible. Certainly, it hasn't started yet, and engineering at least has a chance of addressing it in many areas. It's not as if the large rises be detected as soon as they start happening, and they will take many years to be fully realised.

My hunch is also to not be so sure on the methane issue. It seems poorly understood.

* here's a novel suggestion for climate geo-engineering that sounds much more "do-able" than most other ideas. (It's about getting rid of high altitude clouds.)

British character cycles

Paul Johnson writes about what he observed of people's stoic behaviour during the great depression in England, and it ties in well with this recent essay by Theodore Dalrymple concerning the modern change in British character.

Dalrymple describes it this way:

Gradually, but overwhelmingly, the culture and character of British restraint have changed into the exact opposite. Extravagance of gesture, vehemence of expression, vainglorious boastfulness, self-exposure, and absence of inhibition are what we tend to admire now—and the old modesty is scorned. It is as if the population became convinced of Blake’s fatuous dictum that it is better to strangle a baby in the cradle than to let a desire remain unacted upon.

Certainly, many Britons under the age of 30 or even 40 now embrace a kind of sub-psychotherapeutic theory that desires, if not unleashed, will fester within and eventually manifest themselves in dangerous ways. To control oneself for the sake of the social order, let alone for dignity or decorum (a word that would either mean nothing to the British these days, or provoke peals of laughter), is thus both personally and socially harmful.

While he doesn't really examine in detail the reasons behind this change of national character, he does make the interesting claim that the British have acted that way before:

Before the English and British became known for self-restraint and an ironic detachment from life, they had a reputation for high emotionalism and an inability to control their passions. The German poet Heinrich Heine, among others, detested them as violent and vulgar. It was only during the reign of William IV—“Silly Billy,” the king before Victoria—that they transformed into something approaching the restrained people whom I encountered as a child and sometimes as a doctor.

As always, he is an interesting, if rather gloomy, writer.

Just a naughty "manager"

Russia rewriting Josef Stalin's legacy -- chicagotribune.com

Good grief. I knew Stalin was still considered a folk hero by many older Russians who miss the days of communism, but I didn't realise his image was being rehabilitated with the help of the State. According to the story:

In Russian classrooms, history teachers are guided by a new, government-approved textbook, Alexander Filippov's "Modern History of Russia: 1945-2006," which hails Stalin as an efficient manager who had to resort to extreme measures to modernize the lumbering Soviet agrarian economy.

There were, writes Filippov, "rational reasons behind the use of violence in order to ensure maximum efficiency."

A museum commemorating Stalin as a national hero opened in 2006 in the southern city of Volgograd. The following year, a 40-episode television drama broadcast on a state-controlled network whitewashed Stalin's crimes and portrayed him as Russia's savior.

Putin apparently told history teachers "We can't allow anyone to impose a sense of guilt on us."

What a dangerous ideologue he is.

Something to look out for

Intimate Persuasion: Television: The New Yorker

William Shatner has a half hour chat show on US cable TV at the moment. The link is to a short review of it, and this is the key line:

....as it happens, Shatner’s intense weirdness makes things compelling.

Sounds reasonable to me...

Let's Buy Pakistan's Nukes - WSJ.com

Made me laugh

Thought Experiments : The Blog: The Confession of Supremely Wisegood

This post at Bryan The Orchard Farmer's blog made me laugh.

While you're there, you can read his much more serious post on torture in America, and the good set of comments which follow. (Oddly, Bryan seems to quite like American political columnists who are into "bi scenes" and have fixations on political pregnancy conspiracies.)

The mongrel holiday

It’s a Narnia Christmas - NYTimes.com

This blog has been decidedly un-cheery lately, so here's a nice essay about Narnia and what it shares with the modern feast of Christmas.

OK, back to gloom soon...

The Economist talks China

Asia's wounded giants | Suddenly vulnerable | The Economist

This is from last week, but worth noting:

Yet in China, too, the present downturn is jangling nerves. The country is a statistical haze, but the trade figures for last month—with exports 2% lower than in November 2007 and imports 18% down—were shocking. Power generation, generally a reliable number, fell by 7%. Even though the World Bank and other forecasters still expect China’s GDP to grow by 7.5% in 2009, that is below the 8% level regarded, almost superstitiously, as essential if huge social dislocation is to be avoided. Just this month a senior party researcher gave warning of what he called, in party-speak, “a reactive situation of mass-scale social turmoil”. Indeed, demonstrations and protests, always common in China, are proliferating, as laid-off factory-workers join dispossessed farmers, environmental campaigners and victims of police harassment in taking to the streets.

Well, I guess the "glass half full" way of looking at massive social disruption in China is that at least they should stop burning so much coal. (Of course, burning towns and villages might counter that somewhat.)

Things, I fear, are going to get very ugly in 2009.

A suggestion for St Mary's

Those with an interest in church affairs will have heard of St Mary's South Brisbane Catholic parish, which is (one suspects) the most liberal Catholic parish in Australia. As it happens, I've had a couple of relatives who have gone there for a number of years. (It was probably a decade or so ago that I was told "it's not your usual style of Catholic church", with the warning that there was a lot of hand holding, circle forming, and generally warm gushy stuff that said relative knew was probably not my "thing".)

The parish would occasionally get a bit of publicity for its far-from-traditional Catholic use of its church and hall: maintaining a home for the Gay and Lesbian Choir, for example. But there was occasional word leaking out about how they ran the parish in other very odd ways. (I was told, for example, that occasionally a Sunday "mass" would be led by a dancing, tambourine rattling nun, who used to strain the patience of even the most liberal parishioners.)

The parish likes to portray itself as very active and lively. In truth, however, it maintained church attendances of a moderate level (3 services each Sunday) by attracting liberal Catholics from all over Brisbane. Almost certainly, it was at the same time scaring away local potential parishioners who didn't want to be harangued about social justice and the Howard government at regular intervals.

Finally, earlier this year the Archbishop put the church on notice that the parish's novel forms of liturgy, and refusal to follow church teaching in various areas, meant that it was going to be told that it had ex-communicated itself from the Catholic Church unless it started genuinely following some Church teaching.

The parish responded with a letter which (as expected) quoted a lot of Vatican II words, and basically indicated that, in most respects, they were just going to keep on doing their stuff. (I've read it, but can't find a link to it on the web.)

Father Peter Kennedy, the nominal parish priest, has recently continued his wacky ways by holding a church ceremony with some aborigines in which a "sacred treaty" was entered into by the parish.

If you want to read an air-headed account of how important such a "treaty" is to the locals aborigines, have a read of this interview from the Religion Report, featuring Peter Kennedy himself and a couple of aboriginal activists including Sam Watson. Watson has been around Brisbane forever. I don't know if he achieves much apart from organising rallies and getting his face in the media at least once a year, but he has always struck me as a noisy belligerent advocate of the particularly irritating kind.

Of course, no function would be complete at St Mary's without the Gay and Lesbian Choir singing, so they were there for the signing of the "treaty".

It would appear that the treaty recognises the "sovereignty" of aboriginals over the Church land, or some such. This means, according to Sam, that they'll be rushing to defend St Marys if the Archbishop shuts it down. At least he seems to not be advocating violence:

Of course I'm not talking about picking up guns et cetera, that sort of thing, not talking about defending it that way, but we will be there, we're a part of St Mary's family, part of the St Mary's community.

Just more noise and agitation, although I have no idea how many followers Sam may be able to muster to defend the barricades at St Mary's. (Peter Kennedy says people may take to sleeping inside to stop the church re-possessing it. Why does a parish that talks up true authority as being within the non-material "community of faith" worry so much about having a particular building in which to meet in a few times a week?) I hope the Archbishop closes the church, if only for the entertainment value.

The Church keeps running the line that it is only catholic traditionalists of the somewhat eccentric kind who have dobbing in St Marys to the Archbishop and (when he was slow to act) Rome. They may be right, but the character and beliefs of Richard Stokes are hardly relevant if his reports of what St Marys does in liturgy are true. (And St Mary's never denies that they are.)

When discussing this over at Currency Lad's blog a few months ago, I suggested that there is already a Liberal Catholic Church in Brisbane; surely St Mary's should just merge with them and be done with. It was pointed out that that church is a bit of an oddball one, with historic ties to the Theosophical movement. (They allow for re-incarnation, for example. But then again, St Mary's had a Buddhist meditation group using the church too.)

Well, now I've found the movement for St Mary's. The Reformed Catholic Church, (Trade Mark) which is a recent innovation from Columbus, Ohio, which seems (like St Mary's) to be primarily motivated by "inclusiveness" (meaning, welcoming all gay and lesbian couples, female priests, the remarried, etc. Gay and lesbian couples are able to be "blessed", naturally.) It would not be surprising if many of its clergy were gay and lesbian too.

Oddly, it claims a significant number of clergy in Africa, a continent not particularly well known for its cultural tolerance of homosexuality. (Update: I see the reason here: it is OK with polygamy, and lets priests marry their "long time girlfriends". Still, I wonder what those African priests think of gay weddings in America?)

It seems that this reformed church shares all the values of St Mary's: a fondness for some (but only some) of the trappings of Catholics Church, while at the same time being able to make up their own doctrine based on what I would call modern perceptions of "niceness", rather than scripture and centuries of tradition.

So, parishioners and priests of St Mary's, I have found your future for you! Go, be Reformed, be happy. Leave the rest of us billion or so Catholics alone, and while we're at it, go find your own building to worship in. Sam Watson probably has a tent you can use. If you are the future of the Church, you should flourish no matter where you meet.

Methane blues

Land ice melting fast, NASA satellite data show

Well, I'm more interested in the last paragraphs, about a couple of papers which I assume will be getting more publicity soon:

Two other studies presented at the conference assess how Arctic thawing is releasing methane - a potent greenhouse gas. One study shows that the loss of sea ice warms the water, which warms the permafrost on nearby land in Alaska, thus producing methane, Stroeve said.

A second study suggests even larger amounts of frozen methane are trapped in lake beds and sea bottoms around Siberia and they are starting to bubble to the surface in some spots in alarming amounts, said Igor Semiletov, a professor at the University of Alaska in Fairbanks. Late last summer, Semiletov found methane bubbling up from parts of the East Siberian Sea and the Laptev Sea at levels 10 times higher than those of the mid-1990s, he said.

The amounts of methane in the region could dramatically increase global warming if they get released, he said. That, Semiletov said, "should alarm people."

Merry Christmas, Paris

Explosives found at Paris department store - International Herald Tribune

A previously unknown group calling itself the Afghan Revolutionary Front said in a warning mailed to Agence France-Presse that it had planted the explosives in the store. It demanded the withdrawal of French troops from Afghanistan and warned that it would strike again if President Nicolas Sarkozy did not bring the troops home by the end of February.

Fabricator to fabricate some more

James Frey to write 'third book of the Bible' | Books | guardian.co.uk

James Frey is moving on from his drugs and booze-soaked memoirs to write the third book of the Bible, in which his version of Jesus will perform gay marriages.

Talking to online magazine The Rumpus.net, Frey said he had just finished an outline for the book, and was about to start writing it. "It's the third book of the Bible, called The Final Testament of the Holy Bible," he told interviewer and fellow author Stephen Elliott. "My idea of what the Messiah would be like if he were walking the streets of New York today. What would he believe? What would he preach? How would he live? With who?"

Do books of this kind ever sell well? They are just so obviously fantasy works of current pop morality, who can see any inherent value to them?

Take this, for example:

Frey said his version would see Jesus living with a prostitute. "It doesn't matter how or who you love. I don't believe the messiah would condemn gay men and women," he said. Judas, meanwhile, would be the "same as he was two thousand years ago", a "selfish man who thinks of himself before the good of humanity, who values money more than love".

This has "remainder bin" written all over it.

ETS lessons not learnt

Crikey - Rudd's talking out of his mandate

More on Labor's emissions trading scheme from Bernard Keane:

This scheme is so badly designed there’s a real question as to whether it is worth establishing. This is one issue on which greenhouse sceptics and ardent greenies can be in furious agreement: the Government’s ETS is profoundly flawed. Two groups previously excluded from free permits -- the coal-fired power industry and industries between 1000-1500t per million dollars revenue, will now have access to them (the coal industry will get $3.9b worth of free permits over five years -- not $3.9b in cash, as a lot of us thought yesterday). Throw in that a change to the formula to enable firms to use value added instead of revenue in determining eligibility will mean more firms will qualify for 90% free permits, and the scheme will commence with minimal incentive for our biggest polluters to cut back.

It starts off thus flawed and gets worse. Under the Green Paper, the proportion of free permits was capped at 30%, which at least constrained our most polluting industries to find more efficient and less carbon-intensive ways of operating if they wanted to expand. Under the White Paper, the supply of free permits simply increases as our heaviest polluters expand. As Martin Parkinson, head of the Climate Change department said yesterday, this has potentially serious consequences for scheme revenue. It also means that there’s a real danger that at some point in a few years’ time, more permits will be given away to heavy polluters than auctioned for use by those with low emissions.

Well done, Mr Rudd -- you’ve invented a scheme that actually punishes low emitters and rewards heavy emitters.

Yes, it is remarkable that both Jennifer Marohasy and the Greens are going to be criticising the scheme's design.

Even more remarkable that the well publicised problems with the European scheme do not seem to be being properly addressed.

I must say, however, that is more typical of the Left to not care about results so much, as long as the intentions are "good" (ie ideologically sound, or politically correct if you will). Aboriginal welfare is a typical example of that, but also the way Labor supporters considered it a virtual crime that Australia hadn't signed the ineffective Kyoto Treaty, even though it was meeting its targets as if it had. The attitude is not entirely gone: there are commenting on blogs "oh well, better than nothing."

In fact, it is worse than nothing if it takes away the realisation that nothing effective is being achieved.

For Andrew Bolt to ponder

Arctic melt passes the point of no return - Climate Change, Environment - The Independent

Andrew Bolt likes to spend time looking at satellite images of the winter Arctic ice cover lately, all the more to pooh-pooh global warming with.

He doesn't seem to often consider the issue of the depth of renewed winter cover, which common sense would suggest is just as important for the future of the cover as how much area it extends to each winter.

And he ought to read this article which seems consistent with the recent post here about satellite evidence that warmer temperatures are unduly weighted to the North of the planet:

Scientists have found the first unequivocal evidence that the Arctic region is warming at a faster rate than the rest of the world at least a decade before it was predicted to happen.

Climate-change researchers have found that air temperatures in the region are higher than would be normally expected during the autumn because the increased melting of the summer Arctic sea ice is accumulating heat in the ocean. The phenomenon, known as Arctic amplification, was not expected to be seen for at least another 10 or 15 years and the findings will further raise concerns that the Arctic has already passed the climatic tipping-point towards ice-free summers, beyond which it may not recover.