Typical Democrats

Apart from the original race to the Moon being a Democrat initiative, it seems that since the 1970's, Democrat Presidents have only ever been about cut backs and bad news for the American space program. This tradition is, as I pretty much expected, continuing under Obama with this annoucement that the manned space program is going to yet again be stuck in low earth orbit indefinitely.

They (Democrats) seemingly have no vision about the future at all. I mean, does anyone feel that Obama actually has any daring in his approach to the energy future of the US or the world?

Bah.

Japanese economic woes

BBC News - Japan deflation hits a record pace to threaten recovery

On the up side, I guess this makes it more attractive for tourists.

(Jetstar continues to offer ridiculously cheap air fares to there from time to time. About $650 return from the Gold Coast.)

The silence of the planets

I didn't realise Frank Drake, who kicked off the idea of SETI, was still alive.

But he recently spoke at the Royal Society and explained that changes to broadcast technology is making the earth harder to hear from afar:

"The trouble is that we are making ourselves more and more difficult to be heard," said Dr Drake. "We are broadcasting in much more efficient ways today and are making our signals fainter and fainter."

In the past, TV and radio programmes were broadcast from huge ground stations that transmitted signals at thousands of watts. These could be picked up relatively easily across the depths of space, astronomers calculated.

Now, most TV and radio programmes are transmitted from satellites that typically use only 75 watts and have aerials pointing toward Earth, rather than into space.

"For good measure, in America we have switched from analogue to digital broadcasting and you are going to do the same in Britain very soon," Drake added. "When you do that, your transmissions will become four times fainter because digital uses less power."

"Very soon we will become undetectable," he said. In short, in space no one will hear us at all.

What is true for humans would probably also be true for aliens...

I have a vague recollection of Arthur C Clarke also saying that this would happen. Mind you, I am not entirely sure it is a good idea to make your presence known in the universe, so a bit of quiet from planet Earth might be a good thing.

It is complicated

Water vapour could be behind warming slowdown : Nature News

This article talks about a new suggestion that a drop in stratospheric water vapour might account for a (relative) levelling out of global temperatures in the last decade:

...a team led by researchers at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) in Boulder, Colorado, report that a mysterious 10% drop in water vapour in the stratosphere — the atmospheric layer that sits 10–50 kilometres above Earth's surface — since 2000 could have offset the expected warming due to greenhouse gases by roughly 25%. Just as intriguingly, their model suggests that an increase in stratospheric water vapour might have boosted earlier warming by about 30% in the 1980s and 1990s. The team's work is published online by Science today¹.

The effect on temperature is dominated by water vapour in the lower part of the stratosphere, which absorbs and radiates heat in much the same way as water molecules and other greenhouse gases do in the lower atmosphere. The drop in water vapour doesn't explain the entire decrease in the rate of warming, but it could contribute to it, says Susan Solomon, first author of the study

It all seems a very tentative idea though:

Other researchers see different factors at play in the recent temperature trends. A study published last year³ hones in on the solar cycle and the El Niño Southern Oscillation, an upwelling of warm surface waters in the tropical Pacific. Both have been in their negative phases for most of the decade so temperatures may rise as they move into their positive phases.

"I think it's exciting that this [transition] is happening, because we are going to learn a lot," says Judith Lean, a solar physicist at the Naval Research Laboratory in Washington DC, who co-authored last year's study³ with David Rind, a climate modeller at NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York.

The article seems to indicate that no one knows what water vapour in the stratosphere will do in the future.

Other researchers think current models account for the occasional decade long stall in increasing temperatures and it's not a good idea to worry too much about the issue anyway.

You can bet, however, that skeptics will seize on this paper, with their attitude that if something is not completely understood, you don't do anything about it. Which is, by most scientists reckoning, a good way to gamble on potential long term disaster.

Australian bees visit

It's been a while since a photo appeared here, so let's put one up.

The kids noticed these bees in the garden in December. They have unusual behaviour, clinging to a particular stick on a bush overnight, and disappearing again during the day:



It appears that they are Australian blue banded bees. They are solitary (in that they don't build hives), but like to sleep together in small groups. Apparently they are common around Brisbane, but I've not noticed them before. Nice.

All that took 60 seconds?

Well that was sort of humiliating.

I've been blogging for nearly 5 years now, but never got around to downloading a back up copy of it, just in case Google somehow forget who I was or lost all of this valuable(?) work.  (I'm not read enough to be hacked, I figure.)

Anyhow, doing an export of the blog to a hard drive from Blogger is now very easy, but it saves it in a .xml format which doesn't (I think) save photos and just leaves the bones of the blog to be recreated later if necessary.  (I think.)

So I decided I would also download a mirror copy of the site onto my hard drive, using the very handy WinHTTrack Website Copier.  (I haven't used it before, but it worked fine.)  That way it looks exactly the same on my hard drive as it does on the web.

I assumed that this program going back through Blogger and downloading every post and photo would take, I dunno, at least 10 minutes.   Five years of writing and effort should not be able to be downloaded too quickly.

Well, I swear it took less than 60 seconds to finish.  I'm feeling slightly depressed now.

A novel suggestion

The Moon may have formed in a nuclear explosion:

The hypothesis (credited to Charles Darwin’s son George in 1879) is that the Earth and Moon began as a mass of molten rock spinning rapidly enough that gravity was just barely greater than the centrifugal forces. Even a slight kick could dislodge part of the mass into orbit, where it would become the Moon. The hypothesis has been around for 130 years, but was rejected because no one could explain a source of the energy required to kick a moon-sized blob of molten rock into orbit.

Dutch scientists Rob de Meijer (University of the Western Cape) and Wim van Westrenen (Amsterdam’s VU University) think they know the answer. Their hypothesis is that the centrifugal forces would have concentrated heavy elements like thorium and uranium on the equatorial plane and at the Earth core-mantle boundary. If the concentrations of these radioactive elements were high enough, this could have led to a nuclear chain reaction that became supercritical, causing a nuclear explosion.

Would have been good to watch.

A reasonable fear of lightning

People who know me well know that I am, to say the least, a touch on the sensitive side when it comes to storms and the danger of lightning. A brother says I am completely unreasonable about this; I argue that it is completely justified, and based on my broader than average reading of the strange ways lightning has killed or injured people.

For example, I know that is not a good idea to be near open windows during lightning storms. Yet people complain when I immediately start shutting windows as soon as I judge the storm is close enough. (Sometimes I can justify it because of the rain, but often I am shutting them before it starts.) The fact is that lightning has been known to come inside houses via open windows. For example, in New South Wales today, lightning through open windows struck not once but twice:

The Ambulance Service of NSW said a 37-year-old man was hit by lightning while doing the washing up near a window at a YMCA camp in Yarramundi at about 7.30pm (AEDT) on Thursday.

Paramedics were treating the man, who was suffering neck and shoulder pain, and planned to take him to hospital.

Emergency services were also called to a house on Macquarie Road, in Springwood, in the NSW Blue Mountains, after it was struck by lightning at about 5pm.

"It's come through the window, it hit the curtains and ignited them," a firefighter at the scene told media at the scene.

Two people, including a man suffering smoke inhalation, were taken to Blue Mountains Hospital.

Basically, I know from first hand experience, (there are two separate stories I can tell) that otherwise intelligent people are, as a rule, still pretty much completely ignorant of, or too silly to take reasonable precautions against, the danger of lightning, even when they are in situations where the danger is absolutely as high as it could possibly be. (Well, short of doing a Benjamin Franklin and flying a kite up into it.)

But as I say, those stories are for another day.

Money and influence

How Davos makes incredibly rich people seem smarter than they actually are. - Slate Magazine

Daniel Gross notes:

It struck me that the difference between banality and profundity is generally a few billion dollars: The real alchemy of finance is to endow those skilled at finance to wield authority in adjacent or even unrelated areas. That's the general theory of Davos, bankers sharing their theories about nonbanking subjects. Stick around and you'll hear a lot of conventional wisdom on globalization, climate change, poverty reduction, financial crisis, but it somehow sounds deeper and more weighty because it's delivered by an extraordinarily wealthy CEO, a private equity executive, or hedge fund manager rather than by a journalist.

Some observations about Monckton down under

I have seen bits of Monckton on Sunrise, heard him on Alan Jones, read about his having lunch with Miranda Devine, and heard a bit of him on Radio National breakfast this morning. There are several points I want to make:

1. He is being given far too easy a ride even by those journalists who do not trust him. On Sunrise, where there was a young scientist in opposition, he was allowed to get away with the broad statement that there are many (hundreds?) of peer reviewed papers showing that climate sensitivity is low. (That is, increasing CO2 will not lead to much of an increase in temperatures.) He has continually repeated his discredited maths in his letter to Kevin Rudd. There was no real response to this alone the simple lines "the climate scientists who hold this view are in a very, very minority. There is no doubt at all that the overwhelming majority of climate scientists believe in levels of climate sensitivity which are of great concern to them and which should be acted upon now." How hard is it to say that?

People like John Quiggin argue that engaging with skeptics on science in a debate forum is often counterproductive, and I understand the point. But what is happening now is just as bad.

Sure, people who read widely on the topic know the answers to Monckton's claims already; but the average audience member who is neutral or disinterested in the topic are being done a disservice by what seems to be a non-response to Monckton's direct claims.

If scientists want the science out there, they have to get more aggressive in answering the likes of Monckton.

I haven't had time yet to watch the embedded video interview by Ben Cubby that heads the Miranda Devine article: I hope it's better, but we need more than journalists challenging him.

2. As for those who do already sympathise with him; well what do you expect. I would be interested to know, however, on what basis (according to Devine) Monckton is said to be a mathematician.

Yes I know, he came up with a puzzle that presumably shows he has an interest in mathematics. But why doesn't anyone point out that the last time he took this gamble on his expertise, he lost. (His puzzle was solved within a year, not his estimate of three.)

3. Why does anyone keep calling him "Lord", or even "Viscount" Monckton?. As David Koch noted, Monckton had invited him to call him Christopher, yet people keep insisting on referring to his completely irrelevant title. Did Jeffrey Archer keep getting this from Australian and American interviewers? Not to the same degree, as far as I can recall. I can understand why grovellers to his views like Alan Jones will use the title over and over, but those who don't believe his message, just drop it.


In short, this is no time to be taking a back step in the PR wars over AGW. Scientists need to step up to the plate in defending their work, clearly point out the errors in Monckton's claims, and the reasons he should not be believed.

UPDATE: I've now watched the Ben Cubby interview of Monckton, and it wasn't too bad. Cubby manages to get Monckton annoyed by pressing him on the meaning of "peer reviewed", and Monckton waffles on and on in his pathetically self serving way. It's like that old Keating crack about Bronwyn Bishop: he's a mile wide but an inch deep.

Oh yes, this makes me feel good about the modern world

World's Second Pregnant Man Ready to Give Birth - latimes.com

Have a look at the photo.

Something new for the home based mad scientist

The Radiation Boom - As Technology Surges, Radiation Safeguards Lag - Series - NYTimes.com

A somewhat worrying report about cases of mistakes when hospitals use new cancer treating radiation machines in the States.

According to the article, they are sold with little in the way of regulation:

In this largely unregulated marketplace, manufacturers compete by offering the latest in technology, with only a cursory review by the government, and hospitals buy the equipment to lure patients and treat them more quickly. Radiation-generating machines are so ubiquitous that used ones are even sold on eBay.

“Vendors are selling to anyone,” said Eric E. Klein, a medical physicist and professor of radiation oncology at Washington University in St. Louis. “New technologies were coming into the clinics without people thinking through from Step 1 to Step 112 to make sure everything is going to be done right.”

Surprising.

That's the second biggest book etc..

Largest book in the world goes on show for the first time

It would take quite a while to read on a Kindle.

Podding in the garden

OfficePOD. Changing the way people work. Welcome to the next generation of workplace

Hmm. Don't be put off by the fact that it looks like it would be hotter than hell sitting inside one of these in your garden in Brisbane if there was any part of it in the sun.

Instead, just think of the pleasure you could get from saying to your wife: "I'll be in my pod, dear."

Yes, I'll take one thanks. (Found by the always witty Red Ferret Journal.)

The pants police

Hundreds dressed down by sharia officers during raid on clothing | The Jakarta Post

I mentioned recently that the Sharia police in Aceh in Indonesia seemed to be quite unpopular (since the little matter of an alleged rape by 3 of them). Yet they are still keen on not taking a backwards step:

Hundreds of residents considered to be wearing unacceptable clothing according to sharia regulations, were temporarily detained during an operation at the busy Mesra Darussalam traffic crossing in Banda Aceh, Aceh Nanggroe Darussalam, on Tuesday afternoon.

The residents, including around 100 women wearing pants and tight shirts and a number of men wearing shorts, were pulled aside, lectured and then released by sharia (Wilayatul Hisbah) officers, who had been standing by in the area, which is a main thoroughfare for university students.

The women targeted by the officers were allegedly wearing un-Islamic clothing and several of them did not wear headscarves, now compulsory in Aceh.

The operation, aimed at upholding sharia law, was led by Banda Aceh Law and Order Agency and Wilayatul Hisbah chairman Iskandar, with support from the Military Police and members of the local Indonesian Muslim Student Action Union.

And here you thought the Australian university Student Unions were annoying.

Ocean acidification and iron: bad for phytoplankton

Acidifying Ocean May Stifle Phytoplankton - Science News

Some people argue that increased CO2 will result in more phytoplankton blooms, which will help sink more CO2 to the bottom of the sea.

One study that appeared a couple of weeks ago in Science suggests that this may not happen due to the lower water pH that the increased CO2 is definitely already causing:

Research by oceanographer Dalin Shi and his colleagues at Princeton University hints that rising CO₂, instead of providing extra nutrients for phytoplankton, may actually curb the growth of these organisms, which form the base of the ocean’s food chain. The team reports these findings online January 14 and in an upcoming Science.

In their tests, the researchers studied how acidification, a decline in ocean pH, affects the ability of phytoplankton to take up dissolved iron, another nutrient required for growth. The scientists measured growth rates of four species of the marine microorganisms — including two that Shi described as “the lab rats of phytoplankton” — in ocean water with pH values that ranged from 8.8 to 7.7. On average, the pH of ocean surface waters today is about 8.08, says Shi.

Across large swaths of the ocean, phytoplankton are already starved for iron, Shi says. And the team’s research suggests that acidification will make things worse: If ocean pH drops by about 0.3 units over the next century — the acidification expected if CO₂ emission trends continue — iron uptake by phytoplankton could drop by between 10 and 20 percent, the data suggest. Ironically, even though more-acidic waters are able to hold increased amounts of dissolved iron, a larger percentage of that nutrient would be chemically bound to organic matter dissolved in the water and therefore unavailable to nourish phytoplankton, Shi says.

Earth defence underfunded

Detecting and countering near-Earth objects that could threaten Earth underfunded, according to report

We need a nice, smallish asteroid hit somewhere relatively harmless and leave a gigantic smoldering hole in the ground to focus the minds of government into properly funding this useful activity.

Sensible one day, idiot the next

Wanted: Tony Blair for war crimes. Arrest him and claim your reward | George Monbiot

George Monbiot provides a spectacular example of how you never trust a pundit on absolutely everything.

He's been reasonably impressive on climate change, and came across on the Lateline "debate" last year with Ian Plimer as rational and calm.  Yet when it comes to the Iraq War, he's idiotic enough to do this:

So today I am launching a website – www.arrestblair.org – whose purpose is to raise money as a reward for people attempting a peaceful citizen's arrest of the former prime minister. I have put up the first £100, and I encourage you to match it. Anyone meeting the rules I've laid down will be entitled to one quarter of the total pot: the bounties will remain available until Blair faces a court of law. The higher the ­reward, the greater the number of ­people who are likely to try.

At this stage the arrests will be largely symbolic, though they are likely to have great political resonance. But I hope that as pressure builds up and the crime of aggression is adopted by the courts, these attempts will help to press ­governments to prosecute. There must be no hiding place for those who have committed crimes against peace. No ­civilised country can allow mass ­murderers to move on.

Increasing global temperatures must be affecting his judgement.

Garnaut on "where to now"?

Better an imperfect scheme than delay

In a very long speech, Ross Garnaut talks about the options available for an ETS or carbon tax.

If you skip the irrelevant cricket analogy, it's quite interesting.

He still supports an ETS, but it would seem he has warmed more towards a carbon tax.

The first Australians: bad environmentalists

Early humans wiped out Australia's giants : Nature News

Heh heh heh. According to Nature, the evidence that the first humans here killed off Australian mega fauna (either by huntingg, or by changing the environment by burning, or both) has been getting stronger over the last decade:

Richard Roberts, a geochronologist at the University of Wollongong, Australia, and biologist Barry Brook, of the University of Adelaide, Australia, say in a commentary⁴ in Science that "human impact was likely the decisive factor", possibly through hunting of young megafauna. Increased aridity during the last Ice Age might have reinforced this effect, but Australian megafauna were well adapted to dry conditions because they had survived repeated droughts in the past, they say.

Chris Johnson, an ecologist at James Cook University in Townsville, Australia, says the direct dates from Cuddie Springs mean the site now "falls in line with a mass of other evidence" for the rapid extinction of the Australian megafauna between 50,000 and 40,000 years ago.

I also note that Nature also uses this term:

Some have proposed that the ancestors of Australian Aborigines, who reached the continent between 60,000 and 45,000 years ago, rapidly hunted the animals to extinction.

Will modern day aborigines use this to distinguish themselves from those who did the killing 40,000 years ago? It would be interesting if they did, given that they like to claim a culture going back that far, when it suits them.