Disaster someday

Greg Laden has a lengthy post talking about the potential for the Yellowstone Caldera to erupt in the future.  Lots of detail, a fair bit of uncertainty, but seems it’ll happen some day.

Neat theory in big trouble?

I don't know much about supersymmetry, except that it's an idea that's been around for some time.

Nature has an article up that explains it to some degree (it's one way to explain the incomplete knowledge of the standard model of particle physics,) but more importantly, it notes that early results from the LHC runs to date indicate that the theory may be in trouble. The implications are summed up towards the end:

"Privately, a lot of people think that the situation is not good for SUSY," says Alessandro Strumia, a theorist at the University of Pisa in Italy, who recently produced a paper about the impact of the LHC's latest results on the fine-tuning problem⁴. "This is a big political issue in our field," he adds. "For some great physicists, it is the difference between getting a Nobel prize and admitting they spent their lives on the wrong track." Ellis agrees: "I've been working on it for almost 30 years now, and I can imagine that some people might get a little bit nervous."

"Plenty of things will change if we fail to discover SUSY," says Lester. Theoretical physicists will have to go back to the drawing board and find an alternative way to solve the problems with the standard model. That's not necessarily a bad thing, he adds: "For particle physics as a whole it will be really exciting."

Hollywood or Bust (actually, just Bust)

Surely to God American TV cannot employ Charlie Sheen for the next couple of years at least.

As every media outlet in the world is reporting today, Sheen does not know when to leave a job disaster alone, and instead is trying to create his own career China Syndrome (even though I don't think even the Japanese would employ him for a canned coffee commercial at the moment.)

Here are highlights of his Today show interview:

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

If you can't be bothered watching the clip:

"It's like, everybody thinks I should be begging for my job back, and I'm just going to forewarn them that it's everybody else that's going to be begging me for their job back."

"I am a man of my word, so I will finish the TV show. I'll even do Season 10, but at this point, (because of) psychological distress, oh my God, it's 3 mil an episode. Take it or leave it," he said.

"I'm tired of pretending like I'm not special," Sheen added. "You can't process me with a normal brain."

It looks even worse than it sounds on video, though.

The itch

When I saw this headline on a Physorg story a couple of weeks ago:

Tiny 'microworms' could be implanted under the skin for continuous medical monitoring

it immediately struck me as something you would not want a potential sufferer of Morgellons disease to read. But, if you did have a delusional belief that you had itchy fibres under your skin, wouldn't it be more comforting to believe they are a high tech monitoring device implanted by aliens (or time travelling doctors) rather than a mystery bug or fungus? I'd go for the high tech explanation; it would make me seem more special.

In any event, I've just noticed that Neuroskeptic has a long and interesting post about the "disease". Well worth reading, if you like strange diseases of the mind.

By the way, while I'm certainly a Morgellon's skeptic, I have had this persistent itchy spot on my left shoulder blade for years. If ever I start talking about finding fibres coming out that of it, readers are authorised to email me with strong recommendations to see a psychiatrist.

Carbon taxing

There are three opinion pieces about pricing carbon today which are of interest:

*  Henry Ergas runs the “traditional” arguments against acting unilaterally.  In The Australian (of course.)

*  Kenneth Davidson goes apocalyptic and believes the Australian scheme and targets are a pittance anyway, and arguments that people should get used to the fact that much, much more to reduce CO2 will be necessary:

A safe climate scenario requires that the present global warming of just under 1 degree not be exceeded. Globally, this requires the end of the fossil fuel industries.

According to David Spratt, co-author of Climate Code Red: the case for emergency action, ''This requires emergency action, and probably 10 per cent or more of world production will be required for a sustained period to build a new energy system and economy. This is huge but is about a third of the production countries such as Australia, the United States and Britain diverted to defence production during World War II.''

The latest scientific modelling of climate change suggests that if the globe warms by 4 degrees - the likely result if the commitments made at Copenhagen in 2009 are all that is done - the consequences would be far more serious than if the allies were defeated in WWII.

According to Professor Kevin Anderson, director of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change in Britain, ''If you have got a population of 9 billion by 2050 and you hit 4, 5 or 6 degrees, you might have half a billion people surviving.''

Well, we all hope it's not as bad as that.

*  Phillip Coorey speculates (in a plausible way, I think) about the future politics of all this. 

Galaxies, worm holes and spoilsports

It was reported last week that a new study showed that the MOND theory (the modified gravity theory that some astrophysicists are still pursing despite it not being widely accepted) works well with yet another class of galaxy.  This got some mainstream media attention, which really annoyed physicist Sean Carroll at Cosmic Variance.    Carroll complains about the reports said this theory challenges the existence of dark matter.  Not so, said Carroll, pointing out that MOND works well at galaxy level, but everyone knows it doesn’t work at the scale of galactic clusters.   What’s more (he says) it’s not an elegant theory at all – it’s ugly, and we all know how physicists hate “ugly”.  (Except when it comes to string theory, in a large number of cases.)

So the short story is:  even with MOND, you still need dark matter to make the universe work right.

I find that’s a pity.  Big science is stuck in a bit of a rut at the moment, and it would be good to see something major which is currently widely accepted turn out to be wrong.

Of more science fiction-y interest is a new paper that talks about the possibility of wormholes existing on the insides of stars - forming connections with stars on the other side of the universe:

The scientists began investigating the idea of wormholes between stars when they were researching what kinds of astrophysical objects could serve as entrances to wormholes. According to previous models, some of these objects could look similar to stars.

This idea led the scientists to wonder if wormholes might exist in otherwise ordinary stars and neutron stars. From a distance, these stars would look very much like normal stars (and normal neutron stars), but they might have a few differences that could be detectable.

To investigate these differences, the researchers developed a model of an ordinary star with a tunnel at the star’s center, through which matter could move. Two stars that share a wormhole would have a unique connection, since they are associated with the two mouths of the wormhole. Because exotic matter in the wormhole could flow like a fluid between the stars, both stars would likely pulse in an unusual way. This pulsing could lead to the release of various kinds of energy, such as ultrahigh-energy cosmic rays.

I hope Sean Carroll stays away from this one: it's too intriguing an idea to be shot down too quickly.

In the garden today

There were lots of these type of smallish butterflies around.  I don’t know why, but Brisbane always seems to have an overabundance of black and white butterflies.  It seems rare to find one with more interesting colours. 

In any event, the photos came out pretty well, I thought:

Trouble in China

Did you realise there was a pretty severe drought going on in China? No, nor did I; I'm obviously not paying enough attention:

Gripped by its worst drought for 60 years, the world's biggest wheat producer is desperate for a downpour to avoid a crop failure that would have an impact on food prices around the world.

Update:

In other drought news, here's a discussion of a really big one in recent-ish pre-history (50,000 years ago). Lake Victoria dried up?:

The "H1 megadrought," as it's known, was one of the most severe climate trials ever faced by anatomically modern humans.

Africa's Lake Victoria, now the world's largest tropical lake, dried out, as did Lake Tana in Ethiopia, and Lake Van in Turkey.

The Nile, Congo and other major rivers shriveled, and Asian summer monsoons weakened or failed from China to the Mediterranean, meaning the monsoon season carried little or no rainwater.

The article notes that they think it had something to do with "a massive surge of icebergs and meltwater into the North Atlantic at the close of the last ice age", and as there is less water to go there now, maybe it won't happen again. We all hope so.

I also see that The Economist has an article about the difficulties of feeding an anticipated 9 billion people; drought or no drought.

Please keep liking me

The Christian Science Monitor notes that Saudi Arabia's king has become very generous suddenly:

As other leaders across the Middle East scurry to appease discontented citizens, the king introduced 19 new measures estimated to cost 135 riyals ($36 billion), according to John Sfakianakis, chief economist of Banque Sausi Fransi. The measures address inflation and housing, expand social security benefits, and ease unemployment and education costs – two areas of particular concern to Saudi youths.

The article says that King Abdullah is already reasonably popular. You can never be too sure these days, though.

As if they aren't in enough trouble already...

Japan has strange ideas at times as to how to help the environment, such as "we love whales so much that we need to kill a hundred or two each year in the name of science just to make sure they're still getting on OK. Now pass me the whale bacon."

Along the same lines:

Sakana-kun, the fish expert and TV figure well-known for his blowfish-shaped cap, is about to become Japan's "osakana taishi" (fish ambassador) to promote fish consumption and boost the declining industry.... The farm ministry expects Sakana-kun to "send out information" about fish, the fishing industry and related government policies, it said in a statement. Fish has been declining as a staple amid a shift to more Western diets.

I don't think the fish feel they need such an ambassador.

Bridge to nowhere

Judith Curry, the climate scientist who started a blog with the stated aim of building bridges between climate scientists and climate skeptics, has revealed that she never intended including those scientists who blog at Real Climate.

This all comes out in the post she finally decided to run on “hide the decline” and the use of tree ring proxies.  Gavin Schmidt from Real Climate turned up in comments, and a good slanging match evolved from there.

But I can’t see how anyone can read Curry and think she is genuinely open minded.  Her initial post indicates that she is not widely read on the topic, but that she is sceptical that work to date has any value.    She ends with (my emphasis):

If there is a problem, lets get to the bottom of it and fix it.

But when Schmidt turns up and complains that, as she’s saying that she agrees with the never-fail- to-bore windbag McIntyre , she’s accusing the scientists concerned of being outright dishonest, rather than having a mere difference of opinion as to how to display information, she responds with:

If you don’t like dishonest, try misguided and pseudoscience.

Gavin further down:

your method of argument in the top post and the conclusions you draw can be argued and drawn for any subjective decision about pretty much any presentation of complex data. Once you do it based on your prior prejudices against one set of researchers, the flood gates are open to apply it to anyone. We therefore end up with a situation where any difference of opinion is put down to dishonesty, and the process of objective scientific analysis has been tossed to the wolves.

You see your stance as brave, while in fact it is just lazy. I’m sure your students are proud.

And further down, when Curry starts making the big sweeping statements that her initial post indicated were only hunches, Gavin writes:

You betray complete ignorance of any of this literature. “Statistical models that make no sense in terms of calculating hemispheric or global average temperature anomalies” – got a cite for that?

• curryja | February 22, 2011 at 8:52 pm | Reply

  Another zinger, I’m dying here.

And yes, as is her habit, she excuses sweeping statements by telling us her detailed criticisms are coming in a later post. 

Her real attitude to Real Climate is shown towards the end of the thread we get this from Curry:

I find it of primary importance to build bridges with the broader community of scientists (including skeptics), the public, and policy makers. I stopped bothering with the RC crowd in summer 2007, when i received an unpleasant email from Mike Mann chastising me over congratulating Steve McIntyre on winning the 2008 Science Webblog Award. It was at that point that I stopped having anything to do with RC (other than my driveby comments about Montford’s book last summer). So I have built a bridge in the form of a platform for dialogue, they can meet me half way or not (pretty much not, the prefer the circling wagons strategy). But that is not the bridge that I am particularly interested in.

But the best summary of Curry’s disingenuous approach in her blog is from dhogaza:

Judith Curry … you’ve used this “my eyes glaze over”, and “it’s outside the arena of my personal expertise” argument before.

Yet … whenever you do, you come down on the side of the denialists.

Your personal philosophy seems to be…

“If I don’t understand it, the anti-science people are probably right”.

Ponder what this means to your personal reputation (whatever is left of it).

Absolutely spot on.

Christchurch remembered

It’s so very sad to see the devastation and loss of life in Christchurch. This is from my family’s visit there nearly one year ago.

James on the moon

If it had been on TV before, I must have missed it. But I very much enjoyed James May on the Moon on SBS tonight. His struggle to find words to explain his feelings while at the height of his U2 flight was sort of touching.

It's showing on line at SBS for now, at least.

Expansion noted

Readers in this corner of the multiverse who have not yet realised that I have greatly expanded my rambling post from yesterday about whether or not they are free to kill at  will today are hereby referred to my previous post.

Arab analysis

Just a note here that the column by David Hirst in The Age this morning seems a pretty reasonable bit of analysis of the current remarkable goings on in the Arab world.

I’m of many minds about this…

I’ve been meaning to refer to a new round of multiverse talk on the internet that arose a few weeks ago, mainly due to a new book by string theory promoter Brian Greene. (The book is getting good reviews.) Somewhere, out there in the multiverse, I guess I already have.

This was all kicked off for me by a post by Peter Woit at Not Even Wrong. He noted that had recently seen Lee Smolin give a talk at a New York museum in which (from what Woit could remember):

….he said that discussions of a multiverse containing infinite numbers of copies of ourselves behaving slightly differently made him uneasy for moral reasons. The worry is that one might be led to stop caring that much about the implications of one’s actions. After all, whatever mistake you make, in some other infinite number of universes, you didn’t do it.

Now, before I get to talking about that issue, I should mention that Woit (who certainly hates the string theory version of the multiverse for its untestability, but seems more open minded about other theories that lead to them) also links to a sceptical review of Greene’s book (“The Hidden Reality.”) This review is one of the best short summaries of the problem of string theory, and how those problems evolved, I have read. It’s well worth a visit.

And, again, before I get onto the multiverse and morality, Peter Woit’s post has a very good series of comments in which there is some discussion of whether the widely accepted theory of early universe inflation leads to enough multiple universes as a possibility anyway. In fact, one of the whole issues in Woit’s thread is that he complains how physicists do mix up the different theories that lead to multiple universes and act as if there is some connection between them all.

This is a good point. I would have thought that the type of multiverse with the real moral issue is the one arising from Everett’s many worlds interpretation of quantum theory. But string theory allows for so many universes that it seems you can get to multiple versions of yourself that way too (in fact, I’m not sure of this, but with more versions of yourself than Everett’s version alone?)

So, back to morality:

I’ve run out of time. Will continue later.

Continued:

Meanwhile, more detail of the issue of the multiverse and morality came up at Cosmic Variance, where physicist Sean Carroll noted a post at Huffington Post by Clay Naff (who I am unfamiliar with.) Naff argues that the multiverse violates the "Moral Principle" which he explains as follows:

It states that we should resist accepting any proposition that tends to disable moral reasoning, unless and until the scientifically interpreted evidence compels us.

I honed this principle in the context of my critique of religion, but it applies, for example, to the secular idea of the philosopher's zombie. The Moral Principle prevents us from accepting the idea that anyone else is a zombie who appears to be just like any other person, except that there's no real consciousness inside. If we were to accept that idea, there would be no moral barrier to torturing or murdering "zombies." In fact, it would be much like Hitler's dehumanization of the Jews.

Now, Naff doesn't actually spend any time explaining how the multiverse would corrupt moral reasoning, but Sean Carroll has a go at what his argument seems to be:

What he seems to be concerned about — although he never quite comes out and says it, so a bit of interpretation is required, and I could always be misreading — is the possibility that our moral intuitions could be undermined by the idea that there are an infinite number of copies of ourselves out there in the multiverse, some of them exactly like us and many of them slightly different, e.g. worlds where Hitler was victorious, etc. In such a setup, should we be concerned that morality is pointless, because every good thing and every bad thing eventually occurs elsewhere in the cosmos?

That seemed a fair guess. But Naff then turns up in comments and disagrees. His example of why the idea is dangerous is:

suppose that you truly believe that there are infinite copies of yourself “out there,” including every possible variation of your life history. Now, suppose I offer you a million dollars to play Russian Roulette with a gun that has five of six chambers loaded. Would it not be rational to take the bet? And so, would it not be rational to abandon “this” life at every frustration or mistake?

Carroll, before Naff's comment, argued that this should have no effect on morality at all:

The job of morality is to figure out what we think we human beings should be doing, which, as we’ve been discussing, does not reduce to looking at what actually happens in the universe....

I don’t think we should be concerned about that (even if it’s true, which it may very well be). An idea like this doesn’t “disable our moral reasoning” — in fact, it might be extremely helpful to our moral reasoning. If your version of morality depends on the assumption that what happens here on Earth is unique in the universe, then it’s time to update your morality, not to put your hands over your ears when people start talking about the multiverse.

Naff has to point out something important to his view in another comment:

The argument I am making has everything to do with the premature adoption of a conjecture as scientific fact in the popular consciousness. Can this do harm? History demonstrates it. Leave aside “Social Darwinism.” I presume that none of you would deliberately torture a sick child. Yet, early in the 20th century, the premature adoption of the scientific hypothesis that *starvation* could cure juvenile diabetes led to horrific maltreatment of already suffering children. You may scoff at the notion that MW as a worldview (rather than as a scientific hypothesis) can have terrible consequences, but I can only say that it shows a poor understanding of history, moral reasoning and/or the social impact of ideas.

What to make of all this? Some points:

First: it's surprising that in all of the threads, no one has mentioned that Everett himself believed that many-worlds theory implied a type of personal immortality, and it is possible that this even influenced his daughter who committed suicide.

It seems to me to be a little hard to argue against belief in the multiverse having no implications on morality, even though they are ambiguous. Score one for Naff.

Two: We've already heard some of the possible negative implications, but you can try and spin it in a positive sense. As someone says in the Cosmic Variance thread:

I for one, if given the option, would prefer to live in the most moral of all multiverses, and will make my choices to promote that end result… It’s like saying that because there are bad neighborhoods, everyone should stop trying to build good ones.

Also, as I noted here some time ago, Christian physicist Don Page is un-fazed by a multiverse, but in his paper "Does God so Love the Multiverse" (I still like that title) it seems he does not address the type of multiverse which sees multiple versions of the same person and what that implies for moral decision making.

Here's another idea: the idea of re-incarnation has some intuitive appeal if it is seen as a learning cycle, leading ultimately to the soul being incorporated (or re-incorporated) into the Divine. How does a multiverse tie in with that idea? Like parallel computing, does it mean a faster process of God becoming God?

But getting back to the negative: as someone else notes in the Cosmic Variance thread:

What I decide now will irrevocably select a branch for this universe from now on. Which branch would I like to be on?

How is that not a workable basis for a workable morality, albeit an openly selfish one?

This leads to my next point.

Three: When talking about morality and the effect of scientific and religious beliefs, there is an important distinction to be made between the general and personal. The thing about systems of morality or ethics that has always interested me is the motivation to personally act in accordance with the rules that everyone can agree theoretically should be followed.

A religion that believes in an afterlife with real consequences for how you have acted in life does provide a motivation to act morally, whether or not you can "get away" with it during life.

Similarly, belief in a multiverse may be unlikely to affect how everyone agrees we should ideally behave towards each other, but it is conceivable that it may (as in the last quote above) provide an incentive to act in accordance with whatever you can get away with now; or it may (as with Everett's daughter, or the Russian roulette example of Naff) make you careless as to whether or not you continue to live in this world.

On the other hand, does this really change anything from the moral reasoning that can already exist in an non-theistic vision of a single universe? It seems on reflection that a non-theistic multiverse or single universe both really contain the same lack of motivation for not getting away with what you can. The multiverse, may, however, have an additional incentive for the suicidally inclined (let's end this pained, hopeless version of me, and let the happy ones continue.)

Four: It always has to be remembered that over-certainty of anything, both scientific or metaphysical, can be the enemy of good moral decisions.

We would all agree that the world would be (or would have been) a better place if there were some less certainty of things like a heavenly reward in the minds of suicidal terrorists; or that witches with Satanic powers can wreck havoc in tribal community; or that the eradication of Jews was eugenically in the long term interests of humanity.

Yet, given that most versions of the multiverse are not really expected to be experimentally verifiable, this should be one belief on which it is easy to convince people to not bet even a small amount of money.

Five: As Bee Hossenfelder notes in the Cosmic Variance thread, there is one other scientific viewpoint that is here already, and which (in my view) is a much greater problem:

The “moral argument” would forbid you to accept any fundamental theory with fully deterministic evolution. If you have no free will, you’re arguably not responsible for your actions in any meaningful sense. Instead, it’s the initial conditions of the universe that are responsible. (Or the final conditions for that matter.) So. What now? Cut funding for everybody who dares to believe time evolution is fundamentally deterministic because the philosophical implications are sociologically difficult?

Good point, and I think there is little doubt that, apart from fundamental physics which implies no free will, the neuroscience and popular science articles that argue that we are not really in control of our decisions is deathly harmful to moral reasoning.

What's more, I have long thought, from various examples too numerous to list now, that the absence of free will is an idea that, although counter-intuitive enough to not think about consciously most of the time, has already seeped far into the collective unconscious of society, and for many people is affecting everything from half-conscious rationalisation of immoral behaviour, to depression.

I think this is the far more important issue regarding science and morality, and should be better addressed in education and popular philosophy.

The multiverse,meanwhile, remains a mere speculation, but one which allows for wild speculation which, I have to admit, I've always enjoyed.

The wisdom of the Bieber

A very amusing sarcastic column in the Guardian ridiculing a magazine profile of one J Bieber. I like this part:

...interest was piqued to levels of feverish enthusiasm, nay fanaticism, by a quote from Bieber's mother, who is apparently convinced she and her son were personally selected by God "to bring light and inspiration to the world". This may seem to amount to a certain scaling-down of ambition on the part of God, who previously opted to bring light and inspiration to the world by sending His only son to minister among us, heal lepers, walk on water, raise the dead etc, rather than, say, performing tepid R&B-influenced pop and having a "trademark haircut", but you've got to move with the times: it's Cowell's world now! You start bringing everybody down with the whole leprosy thing, you're asking to get buzzed off. And besides, Bieber has an array of miraculous powers entirely of his own, enthusiastically detailed by the writer: "He can break dance and do 'the Dougie' . . . he can solve a Rubik's Cube in less than two minutes . . . this is not your typical teen idol." The Dougie and the Rubik's Cube, you say? It's a sign! A sign! Stitch that, Dawkins! No wonder they call them Beliebers! Count Lost in Showbiz in!

But then, there's also this:

But he saves his greatest wisdom for the subject of politics. "I'm not sure about parties, but whatever they have in Korea, that's bad," he offers, coming down at a stroke against both a Stalinist totalitarian dictatorship and a fully functioning democracy. Perhaps he's a Chomskyan anarcho-syndicalist, which would certainly explain his hit single One Less Lonely Girl Under a Federated, Decentralised System of Free Associations Incorporating Economic as Well as Other Socialist Institutions.

More about the rain

Further to the post below about a couple of Nature papers on the connection between an increase in Northern Hemisphere precipitation and global warming, I can't say that I have seen any substantial Australian media reporting on this yet. (OK, there are short reports, but they certainly haven't been front and centre on websites.) I would have thought they would have attracted more attention here, given our wet, wet summer. (Darwin has just posted a record 24 hour rainfall, which seems pretty remarkable for such a famously wet place.)

But I also see that Andy Revkin is complaining that the Nature abstract, and media reporting, is overselling the papers and overlooking the caveats that appear in the studies themselves. Revkin's post contains much by way of explanation from climate scientists, though, as to how this happens. Real Climate's post on the topic certainly does not oversell it.

Roger Pielke Jnr, meanwhile, continues his "nothing to see here until I say you can see it - in about 30 years time" routine on climate change, by emphasising that, just because it rains more under a warmer climate, it doesn't mean you can say this is connected to worse flooding. As someone in comments notes:

Also I think it will eventually strike many observers as, well, hairsplitting, to argue that a trend of increasing intensity of rainfall events cannot be connected to human well-being unless and until we can show that flood damage unquestionably rises even controlling for all other contributing factors. All analogies are flawed at some level, but its a bit like seeing sparks from a distant fire settle onto one's rooftop, and not worry about them because, watch as you may, they just keep going out. Rain events and major snowmelt events cause floods when they get intense enough, this is like saying a driver who has many close calls is likely to have a serious accident eventually. Even though other things (previously saturated soil for example) certainly help set the stage.

And why just focus on flood? What about the other harms almost surely associated with intense precipitation (rain or snow) events, like traffic fatalities during the events themselves? And for intense rain specifically (but also large snow melt events), how about soil erosion on hill sides (even gently sloping), and sewage overflows into harbors and streams, and leaching of nutrients from lawns and farm fields, and deer kills in deep snow?

Well, the last point about deer kills in snow is an example too far, but I agree generally.

Furry exhibitionists

An odd report at Physorg about prairie dogs – a species so cute it’s always a toss up in my mind as to whether it’s them or meerkats I would rather see illegally released into Australia:

Researchers in the US studying the behavior of black-tailed prairie dogs at a local zoo have discovered they behave differently, kissing and cuddling each other more when people are watching than when they are unobserved.

As I link to Physorg all the time, I’m sure they won’t mind my copying the photo that accompanies the article:

More from the report:

Dr Eltorai said their study showed that like humans, the prairie dogs often behaved differently when they were being watched, and many seemed to enjoy the attention, becoming more relaxed and spending less time watching for potential dangers as the numbers of visitors increased.

Just don't teach them how to use video cameras, OK?

Nature articles on floods, snow and global warming

Well, that's good timing. The Guardian points me towards two Nature articles that argue for the connection between floods in the last decade or so and global warming.

First, to England:

Global warming made the floods that devastated England and Wales in the autumn of 2000, costing £3.5bn, between two and three times more likely to happen, new research has found. This is the first time scientists have quantified the role of human-induced climate change in increasing the risk of a serious flood and represents a major development in climate science.

"It shows climate change is acting here and now to load the dice towards more extreme weather," said Myles Allen of Oxford University, who led the work, which he started after his own home was nearly flooded in 2000. It will also have wider consequences, say experts, by making lawsuits for compensation against energy companies more likely to succeed.

Well, I don't know about that last point, given that it is, in theory, possible for everyone to stop using electricity from coal burning power stations and burn candles instead, but it suits us to continue using their dirty power.

The Guardian article points us to a more general Nature paper about precipitation. From the abstract:

Here we show that human-induced increases in greenhouse gases have contributed to the observed intensification of heavy precipitation events found over approximately two-thirds of data-covered parts of Northern Hemisphere land areas. These results are based on a comparison of observed and multi-model simulated changes in extreme precipitation over the latter half of the twentieth century analysed with an optimal fingerprinting technique. Changes in extreme precipitation projected by models, and thus the impacts of future changes in extreme precipitation, may be underestimated because models seem to underestimate the observed increase in heavy precipitation with warming.

Well, that's encouraging, isn't it.

I know one of one regular reader here who, at another blog where climate science goes to die, or at least be beaten up and sent to the corner so it doesn't interfere with the vital goal of never, ever increasing taxes, likes to argue that if global warming means some people have to move, well, so be it. He suspects the more directly concerning effect of CO2 production will be ocean acidification leading to less sushi-mi available at reasonable prices.

Yet, surely if these studies are right, the effect of major floods over large areas in Queensland this summer show that the "just move"argument is badly flawed, even in Australia. As I have said before, the area flooded enormous, and major towns and cities such as Rockhampton, Bundaberg and Brisbane that can more-or- less live with major floods (say) every 50 - 100 years are not going to economically cope so well with huge floods (say) every 20 years. Not to mention the vast length of connecting roads, bridges and other infrastructure that need to be repaired and rebuilt after every flood.

People (quite rightly) talk about massive disruption if poor, low lying countries like Bangladesh have more major flooding under global warming.

But from where I'm standing, and especially if furthers studies like the two mentioned here are coming, it seems to me Australians should be very worried about more frequent flooding of the scale we just had in Queensland (and Victoria for that matter.)

And on a political note: the use of a levy to raise money to repair flood damage is probably a good idea from the point of view of reminding people that there is a specific cost to events that are linked to climate change.

UPDATE: Climate Progress has a long post on the topic, which includes a list of previous studies which did indeed predict greater extremes in precipitation under global warming. It's not a new suggestion.