Glaciers are confusing!

Well, there's been a lot of media coverage over the IPCC mistake of referring to Himalayas glaciers "disappearing by 2035."

Perhaps the best analysis of how the error evolved is in a comment by Dan following Tim Lambert's post about the controversy. It would appear that the source of the error was in a 1999 India Environmental Port article, which changed a 1996 Russian's rough estimate of how long it would take all glaciers to melt from 2350 to 2035.

New Scientist helped perpetrate the error in a 1999 article, and now claims (wrongly, it appears) that its story was the original source of the error. NS journalist Fred Pearce also says that Indian glaciologist Hasnain had used 2035 in an interview with him. (In New Scientist he says it was an email interview; yet in The Times he is reported as saying it was a telephone interview. If he has the email, I would certainly like to see it. Pearce says Hasnain now admits it was just a rough estimate.)

Pearce's 1999 story claims that the 2035 figure appears in Hasnain's ICSI report, but it's apparently not there at all.

I would like to see directly what Hasnain says about this now. Was he responsible for the error in the Indian Environmental Portal article too? Or is it possible he's "confessing" to something he said in a interview 11 years ago of which he does not have a transcript? (He complains today that he never used 2035 in his research papers, and was never consulted by the IPCC before it used that figure. He's not denying he quoted the figure to Pearce, but I still wonder.)

Anyhow - there is no doubt at all that this is a very, very bad look for the IPCC, especially given IPCC head Pachauri's decision to come out swinging on a clearly wrong figure.

But - that was not really the point of this post. I wanted to note how confusing the whole topic of glaciers (and in particular the effects of their loss) appears to be. In particular, : just how important to Indian rivers is water from glacier melt?

This 2005 Nature report of Barnett & Ors about the dangers to water supply from melting glaciers (and less snow) is an important one. In it, we find in a section talking about the Himalaya-Hindu Kush area:

The hydrological cycle of the region is complicated by the Asian monsoon, but there is little doubt that melting glaciers provide a key source of water for the region in the summer months: as much as 70% of the summer flow in the Ganges and 50–60% of the flow in other major rivers[40,41,42]. In China, 23% of the population lives in the western regions, where glacial melt provides the principal dry season water source[43].

This figure in bold sounds very high, but is repeated in many other places, although I won't link to them now. The references supporting the claim are not available for free online, and the abstracts at least don't seem to repeat it.

On the other hand, Science has quoted a note by an American hydrologist Donald Alford, the purpose of which is:

... to present the results of a preliminary analysis of the hydrologic contribution of the 5000 -7000+ m altitudinal belt of the Nepal Himalaya to the annual streamflow volume of the major rivers of Nepal, and to assess the hydrologic role of the glaciers within this belt.

His conclusion (although it appears to be a very tentative one, pretty much a "back of the envelope" calculation I reckon) is that glacier melt only accounts for 4% of total annual streamflow of the rivers of Nepal. (I think all Nepalese rivers end up in the Ganges.)

Big difference, it seems. Is the issue that:

The Indus and Ganges Rivers currently have little outflow to the sea during the dry season

as stated in an interesting recent study that found one Himalayan glacier seems to have put on no "weight" since the 1950's, since there was no radioactive layer from the atom bomb tests at that time. (So, if the Ganges has little outflow at all in the dry season, might it be that a very small feed from glacier melt might still account for 70% of it?)

The point of this "nuclear glacier" paper is that loss of glacier volume may be occurring by "high elevation thinning", and this has not been taken into account when working out rates of glacier loss. But, then, at the same time I have to admit that the paper repeats the mistake that:

The surface area of glaciers across the TP is projected to decrease from 500,000 km2 measured in 1995 to 100,000 km2 in 2030

when it should have been (see Dan's comment above) 2350.

Furthermore, someone in comments at Real Climate has linked to some background notes used at the recent AGU conference for a press presentation which has lots of relevant information. (Be warned, it is a very big .pdf file.)

This is actually well worth reading carefully. They point out that Himalayan glaciers are behaving differently in different zones, but overall they are losing mass. Their estimate of the average rate of Himalayan glacier loss (measured by area, not volume, I think) is anywhere from .05% to .01% per annum (see page 14). If the higher rate is true (although they seem to think it unlikely) that would be 20% loss in 40 years. (Total loss in about 200 or so years, then, I guess; which isn't so far off the 350 years that we earlier mentioned.)

But as to the effect on water supply of Indian generally, the conclusion (see page 42) is:

As we have calculated, melting glaciers (specifically, negative mass balance components of the melt) contribute an estimated 1.2% (perhaps factor of 2 uncertain) of total runoff of three of the most important drainages, the Indus, Ganges, and Brahmaputra combined. The seasonal flow regulation influences and the negative mass balance is more important in local drainages close to the glacier sources, where glaciers can dominate the hydrology in arid regions, but on the scale of the subcontinent, glaciers are secondary players in looming hydrologic problems, which stem more from population growth and inefficiency of water resource distribution and application.

So, there are some mighty confusing figures being flung around as to how important or unimportant glacier melt is to Indian water supply.

Is it possible that the very high figure of 70% of the summer flow of the Ganges (as mentioned in the Barnett Nature paper) is actually including basin snow melt and not just glacier melt? That could explain a lot. If climate change reduces snow in those areas, it may well be much more important issue than glacier melt, at least further downstream. And the title of the Barnett article is, after all: Potential impacts of a warming climate on water availability in snow-dominated regions.

Besides which, even without worrying about snow and glaciers, at least one study (and I am sure there are more) suggests climate change:

could influence monsoon dynamics and cause less summer precipitation, a delay in the start of monsoon season and longer breaks between the rainy periods.

The reliance of India on the monsoon is pretty remarkable:

The summer monsoons are responsible for approximately 75% of the total annual rainfall in major parts of the region and produce almost 90% of India's water supply, he said.

Anyhow, despite all this reading, I still remain quite confused on the issue. Glaciologists and hydrologists seem to have done a pretty bad job at dealing with the issue without confusing themselves, as well as the public.

As expected

BBC News - Venezuela's economy in further slide

A good summary of the Chavez led crumbling economy (and infra-structure) of Venezuela.

What you suspected about gridiron was right

I Was Watching a Commercial and a Football Game Broke Out

This post quotes from the WSJ:

According to a Wall Street Journal study of four recent broadcasts, and similar estimates by researchers, the average amount of time the ball is in play on the field during an NFL game is about 11 minutes.

In other words, if you tally up everything that happens between the time the ball is snapped and the play is whistled dead by the officials, there’s barely enough time to prepare a hard-boiled egg. In fact, the average telecast devotes 56% more time to showing replays.

So what do the networks do with the other 174 minutes in a typical broadcast? Not surprisingly, commercials take up about an hour. As many as 75 minutes, or about 60% of the total air time, excluding commercials, is spent on shots of players huddling, standing at the line of scrimmage or just generally milling about between snaps.

I've never tried to watch a game on TV, but certainly you get the impression watching movies about it that nothing much happens on the field, and it turns out that impression is true. It seems to be more about large groups of people gathering together to amuse themselves with anything but what is going on in the field of play - as Australians do during tedious games of cricket. (At least gridiron has the good grace to be finished in one afternoon.)

Irony

Islamic Solidarity Games cancelled over Gulf dispute

The Islamic Solidarity Games, due to be held in Iran in April, have been called off because of a dispute with Arab countries over what to call the Gulf.

The games federation in Saudi Arabia said the Iranian organisers had failed to address its concerns, particularly about the planned logo and medals.

These bear the words "Persian Gulf", but Arab countries, who call it the Arabian Gulf, reject the term.

That's handy

Iran has put up its very own pro-nuclear website, which (as Nature says) sets about "extolling the virtues of its nuclear program."

Included is a map of "Iranian nuclear facilities". Handy for the Israeli Air Force, although who would be surprised if there weren't some slight misinformation in that.

Typical (and Opinion Dominion's simple guide to happy marriages)

Susan Sarandon: sexy, single and 63 | The Observer

This is a long and sympathetic interview with Susan Sarandon, and I find it remarkable for the number of boxes it ticks for what you would expect of a typical Lefty Hollywood star of the modern era:

* at least (I think) 3 long term partners (married or otherwise) mentioned, as well as an affair. It is rumoured that, now 63 and having split with younger partner Tim Robbins, she may be now dating her 32 year old "business partner", but it seems yet to be confirmed;

* happy to do "herbal" drugs - including mushrooms, which I always thought were very much on the hit or miss side of danger - and a very liberal attitude to experimenting with them generally;

* now on a health regime of dubious merit ("dehydrated fruits and vegetables")

It's not mentioned, but I wonder what the chances are of her being sympathetic to Buddhism?

Actually, one position on which she is mildly surprising is on gay marriage: she won't campaign for it because she is against marriage generally.

More generally, why is it that Hollywood seems to make long term relationships next to impossible? I suspect it may in significant part be due to the long absences from each other when movies need to be made on location. (Careers such as the military suffer the same problem.)

No doubt, being successful in almost any field is a powerful attractant generally to the opposite sex, and places an inordinate amount of temptation in the path of the famous and even moderately powerful. How else can you explain the puzzling sexual escapades of many, many physically unappealing politicians.

Yes, for long lasting marriages no one should be too successful in their work (that is, too rich or too famous), or travel separately too often. They should not do illicit drugs. But they should have children, although that's just my hunch; I can't say for sure whether statistics back that up. (I bet someone has done the research). And they should not sleep with other people.

All pretty simple, really.

An unusual life story

Calm reflections on a turbulent life | The Japan Times Online

I would say his memoirs would be well worth reading.

Wanted for my backyard

Deep Discount on Space Shuttles - NYTimes.com

Only $28.8 million will get you a used space shuttle (plus shipping to Australia, I suppose.)

No one wanted them at an original asking price of $42 million. What is wrong with people these days? And has anyone suggested to NASA to try using E-bay?

You can also get a used shuttle engine for free, if you pay for shipping and handling. Maybe at least that will fit in my backyard.

A good weekend in Brisbane

In January, a good weekend in Brisbane can consist of the following:

* viewing Fantastic Mr Fox at the South Bank cinemas: this is a very enjoyable film, which I see to my surprise, seems to have made little money in the US. (This is becoming a disturbing theme in my assessment of animated films: I was very keen on The Tale of Despereaux and Astroboy, and both were box office duds.)

The Fox is quirky, and a lot of reviewers suspect adults will enjoy it more than children, but I can tell you my kids both found it laugh out loud funny, and "got" the quirk. It's interesting that it continues George Clooney's fondness for playing characters that aren't as smart as they think they are.

Go see it, with or without children.

* going to the Lifeline Bookfest at the Convention Centre. This has become a bit of an institution in Brisbane, now running for 8 days with well over a million second hand books for sale. You can spend a long, long time there, but even with visits limited by the lower attention span of children, I always manage to find something. (This year, I got the Graham Greene novels I recently said I wanted to read.)

One other observation: the Brisbane Convention Centre seems to me to be a particularly nice place, as far as convention centres go. Good location, lots of parking, lots of toilets, lots of headroom. I enjoy just about anything there.

* On Sunday, down to the Gold Coast for a swim followed by chicken and champagne* lunch.

Ocean water at the Gold Coast at the moment is at a very typical and comfortable summer temperature of 24 degrees. It was the subject of much discussion yesterday, with my Gold Coast residing relatives, how you only have to go about 40 km further south and the ocean water always seems distinctly colder, and much harder to enjoy getting into.

I am told it is all about the point at which a northern and southern ocean current meet, and a nephew suggested that it might also have something to do with Cape Byron being further east and trapping the north moving current nearer the shore. Certainly, the water at Ballina a few weeks ago felt very cold indeed.

For years I have been meaning to do some internet snooping to confirm this often observed sudden drop in temperatures off the Australian East coast, and one day I'll get around to it.

Meanwhile, I'll just take it as some sort of proof that God just especially loves Southern Queensland. (Except for those bits of Toowoomba, where He hasn't let it rain much for about 10 years.)

* Well, by "champagne", I mean $7 a bottle Jacob's Creek sparkling. My wife and I still think that it is the best of the sub $10 Australian champagne styles, and at that price in summer we tend to drink it a couple of times a week.

The odd allure of whiter skin

Creams Offering Lighter Skin May Also Bring Health Risks - NYTimes.com

It was only in the last couple of years, I think, that I read somewhere about the popularity of skin lightening creams in India.

The article above talks about the popularity of the creams amongst Hispanic and black folk in America, and how they are often causing serious skin problems:

... it is not as if dark-skinned women are imagining a bias, said Dr. Glenn, who is president of the American Sociological Association. “Sociological studies have shown among African-Americans and also Latinos, there’s a clear connection between skin color and socioeconomic status. It’s not some fantasy. There is prejudice against dark-skinned people, especially women in the so-called marriage market.”..

Users are not necessarily immigrants, said Dr. Eliot F. Battle Jr., who has a dermatology practice in Washington, where he treats side effects from lightening creams “not only containing corticosteroids, but mercury,” a poison that can damage the nervous system.

I guess that, in a somewhat bizarre twist, Obama's election might give encouragement to black Americans to aim high, but do nothing to help decrease prejudice against the darker skinned amongst them.

Some insight into Kubrick

Stanley Kubrick - A dream movie revisited

Last year, I saw the doco "Stanley Kubrick's Boxes" which gave a good account of the directors obsessively detailed movie preparations.

Now, you can buy an extremely expensive book that sets out all of the incredibly detailed preparation Stanley Kubrick made for his never funded film about Napoleon. In the article about it, the author makes some comments which I think are pretty interesting:

"At a deeper level, his never-ending interest in observing human folly was the wellspring for nearly all his films," writes Harlan in the book. "Napoleon was the ideal study subject. One of Stanley's often repeated notions was that, since we are all driven by our emotions, our belief that we might be governed by rational thought is a vain illusion." Kubrick's widow, Christiane, believes he struggled to understand how such a capable man as Napoleon could be so manipulated by the philandering Josephine, or have so hopelessly miscalculated the Russian campaign that defeated him. "When Stanley was young, he played chess for money for a while in New York," she says at the book's launch party later that evening. "[He believed] Napoleon might have learned to control himself better had he played chess. Stanley thought if you are too emotional, you lose."

I presume it was this distrust of emotion which led to Kubrick's pretty consistent inability to convincingly have emotion shown in his movies.

Proof of an afterlife

Johnny Cash releasing another posthumous album

The second biggest pair of undies I've ever seen

Governments’ Go-To Vendors Get it Done

Go to the link to see the photo.

Tell him he's dreaming

Abbott makes play for Greens preferences

I've made the point elsewhere, but I'll repeat it here: Abbott is not showing a firm grip on reality if he thinks he can credibly convince Green supporters to preference the Coalition when he:

a. showed all the policy conviction of a windsock on the issue of climate change over the last 6 months;
b. called climate change "crap" only a couple of months ago;
c. gave arch skeptic Minchin Resources and Energy, and put Joyce on the front bench.

It doesn't matter how big his Green Army will be, if you aren't convincing on climate change, you aren't going to get a Green vote within coo-ee of you.

Yet another possible early test

Seeing a diagnosis: How an eye test could aid Alzheimer's detection

It's about how spotting the death of cells on the retina may be able to used as an early Alzheimer's test. This quote at the end is of particular interest:

"Few people realise that the retina is a direct, albeit thin, extension of the brain. It is entirely possible that in the future a visit to a high-street optician to check on your eyesight will also be a check on the state of your brain."

Innovative uses for radioactivity in the 19th century

What Were They Drinking? Researchers Investigate Radioactive Crock Pots

The article is about a particular water jar, but the introduction is generally of interest:

Radioactive toothpaste, suppositories, makeup: Would-be inventors seeking to capitalize on the discovery of radioactivity in the late 19th century produced a plethora of questionable medical devices and treatments. Among the most famous of these was the Revigator, an earthenware vessel that, according to an advertisement, would infuse drinking water with "the lost element of original freshness -- radioactivity."

Radioactive suppositories? For that inner glow of health, I suppose. Here's more detail from an article at MSNBC:

And a truly amazing advertisement sells Vita Radium Suppositories (High Strength): radioactive suppositories intended for daily use that “are absorbed by the walls of the colon” so that “every tissue, every organ of the body is bombarded by its health-giving electric atoms.”

Ah, I knew it would be on the net somewhere. Here's a link to an original advertisement for them. I see that they are recommended for "sexually weak men" and are "also splendid for piles and rectal sores".

So concerns about sexual performance led to men using radioactive suppositories. Maybe someone accidentally cured their prostate cancer that way.

Handy to know

Blood pressure drugs can halve risk of dementia, say researchers | Society | The Guardian

Apart from the good news at the start of this article, I hadn't heard this before:

...the loss of ability to smell could be an early warning sign of Alzheimer's and prompt earlier diagnosis, separate research suggests. It is known that Alzheimer's can lead to the loss of a sense of smell, although why that happens is unclear. A study in the Journal of Neuroscience, by American scientists working on mice, links the failing ability to smell to the buildup of amyloid, a toxic protein that is an indicator of the disease. Experts said the findings suggested loss of smell could be used as an early indicator of the condition and thus ultimately improve medical care.

Longer lived mini black holes

Production of tidal-charged black holes at the Large Hadron Collider

I see from the above paper that physicists are still looking at certain theorised types of black holes that the LHC might produce, and which might "live" long enough to leave the detector. (I presume instead of instantaneously turning into a spray of decay particles.)

This guy reckons that they are unlikely to be produced in the lifetime of the LHC. (I see that he mentions Plaga's paper - predicting one possible form of black hole disaster - in his footnotes too, even though he makes no comment on it.)

I should be encouraged by the result, but I am still struck by how little they know about what may really happen there.

Reading ramble

The news and my favourite websites are strangely un-engaging at the moment, so I'll talk about what I've read over the last 6 months or so. It's not much, and few are probably interested, but what the hey.

* Graham Greene: I have mentioned here before that I was starting to get into Graham Greene. Since then, I have finished "A Burnt Out Case" (a fairly late novel in his career) and liked it quite a lot. It's sort of dark, well and truly within what I understand to be "Greeneland," but with a tragic redemption at the end, which I think reflects Greene's own complicated views on life and religion. I can recommend it, especially for people with a Catholic background.

But then, I read his early popular novel, "Brighton Rock". It has a great opening, but later I thought some of it was really tortured and outright bad writing. For me, it doesn't really ring psychologically true at all, and I am very puzzled as to why it apparently made his name as a novelist. He clearly developed his prose into a cleaner, more direct and psychologically subtle style later in his career, and I would strongly advise anyone interested in him not to start with this book.

I think I will go on to read some of his most famous novels, such as The End of the Affair, and The Heart of the Matter. But there is no doubt he is a bit of a depressing read overall, and it's not like I want to spend all that much time getting to know his world.

* Young adult time. Australian writer John Marsden is famous for his "Tomorrow" novels, featuring Australian teenage protagonists responding to a (very improbable) Asian invasion of the country. I therefore tried the first one in the series (Tomorrow, When the War Began) when I found it in a second hand book shop. (I saw from the name written inside that it probably was a prescribed read for a grade 9 student.)

I don't have any problem with reading "young adult" books; my natural inclination to be bothered/uninterested in lots of swearing and sex in fiction actually makes it something I should incline towards. (And I'll take Heinlein's "juveniles" over Stranger in a Strange Land any day.) But I doubt that much of it now is written as outright entertainment.

Anyway, as for this book: it's not bad, but I did find it peculiar that Marsden should chose to write from the perspective of a teenage girl, even if she is a pragmatic and strong character. There were some sections involving relationship talk which, while I imagine were probably realistic for a modern teen, I could still imagine teenage boys being completely bored with. This relationship stuff seemed to me to be too clearly didactic, in that they seemed an attempt to get teenage boys to understand things from the female perspective.

I was not impressed enough to be bothered continuing with the series, but it wasn't a complete loss.

* Will I ever find an active science fiction writer I like? I gave modern science fiction another go with John Scalzi's "Old Man's War". The reviews (and the man in the bookshop who recommended it to me) noted that it is similar in style to Robert Heinlein; and it's true, especially in the first third or so where there is a lot of wise-cracking, lively character exchanges, and I was initially impressed.

It has an excellent sequence in which our main character gets his mind swapped into a new, cloned, tweaked and improved version of his body.

Yet, by half way through, the improbability of the setup was starting to bother me, as was the idea that in two hundred years time, military training would still use exactly the same psychological approach that has been in the 20th century.

Then back to a good point: the inter-stellar drive was clever in concept.

Then back to the bad: it sort of peters out a bit, and ultimately left me uninterested in reading the sequel.

The extremely patchy appeal of the novel reminded me of my reaction to Peter Hamilton's "The Reality Dysfunction". I really liked some of its passages, found some other parts a bit slow and irrelevant, and in the last substantial section it seemed to change tone completely to a visceral fight which was very unappealing. Basically, he badly needs more severe editing.

Why do I find it impossible to find a current science fiction writer whose novel I like from start to end??

* More Truman Capote: I'm currently reading "In Cold Blood", after earlier enjoying "Breakfast at Tiffanys." I really like his writing style, and am quite enjoying it, despite knowing that it may not be the most accurate account of the event possible. (I haven't seen the popular "Capote" movie about the process of his writing it yet, and I'll save that until I have finished the book.)

Capote himself certainly did not lead the happiest of lives. I like to use the fact that I have had a relatively happy and stable life as the reason why I will probably always be incapable of creating great art!

Make your own bad pun for this one

Astronauts' urine clogs space station water recycler - Telegraph