Distressing news

Sad to say, it is the PM's living arrangements which have led to my children learning that couples are capable of having children without being married.

This all started at breakfast with the question "Does Julia Gillard have a boyfriend?" I thought it best to dignify Tim's status above that of mere "boyfriend" by explaining in a bit more detail that in some families, the man and woman never marry. My daughter took the opportunity to get in advance practice of some innate teenage-girl-rebellion-just-to-stir-her-parents genes by announcing that was good, she would not get married.

It was my son, on the other hand, who (though I thought he might have worked this out for himself already, but evidently not) piped up with "so people can have children without getting married? Wow." I was tempted to say "no, actually they can't, nor sleep in the same bed, it's illegal", but honesty is the best policy, regrettably.

So there you go - Julia and Tim need to marry, to prevent the further corruption of my children.

Not much of a surprise

Business gives cold shoulder to Coalition climate plan

As far as I know, no one of significance thinks the Coalition plan is worthy of support.

Shrugged indeed

Atlas sucks: Failing film producer vows to give up - Salon.com

Last Monday, Tim Blair noted a Hollywood Reporter item detailing what a surprisingly (by independent film standards) strong per screen box office Atlas Shrugged (part the first) seemed to have for the first weekend. Might expand to a 1000 screens!

Hollywood Reporter didn't exactly figure on the fact that all of those who saw it on the first weekend represented the sum total of Ayn Rand fanboys in the United States, and you know, despite their disproportionate noise in political circles, there probably just ain't that many of them.

Hence it expanded to more screens (four hundred and something, not the 1000 the producer speculated on) and took about half the takings the next week.

So, that's a touch over $3 million, for a $20 million film.

Those figures are bad enough for the producer to wave the white flag. You could expect Salon (and me) to take pleasure from this, and we do:

And so its producer, an exercise equipment company CEO (I mean a DYNAMIC PRIME MOVER) who spent $20 million of his own money to finally put Rand's vision on the big screen, is giving up. The film will not expand to 1,000 screens. The second part of the trilogy will not be produced. (That is the real shame, here: The second part is where hundreds of people die horrifically of asphyxiation. And the best part is that they all totally deserve it for being "looters.") (No one will miss part three, which would've just been a three-hour-long speech.)

And so John Aglialoro, the film's producer, will "go Galt" and retire to the desert, where his ability to manage a company that produces exercise equipment will allow him to create the perfect society.

Sounds to me like it may not even get a cinema release here. Sinclair won't be left in the dark by himself after all.

That sounds healthy...

Study predicts how tattoos will age

A couple of surprising things from the above article:

"Tattoos are incredibly popular worldwide with more than a third of 18-25 year olds in the US sporting at least one design," said Mr Eames.

That's a bigger proportion than I would have expected. Then there's this:

Tattoo inks are a suspension of water-insoluble particles, such as mercury, lead, cadmium and iron, which are injected under the skin using a needle.

Over time, these inks become dispersed as the cells which contain them die, divide or leave the body.

My, that sounds like a healthy past time: injecting your cells with poisonous metals. Are there ever any health consequences of that?

Hey, it seems the FDA has been looking into it since 2008. Seems they are taking their time about it, though.

What a pity. It would cause me some amusement if it turned out the FDA wanted to restrict tattooing somehow.

Ups and downs

Michael Tobis has an odd post up in which he seems overcome by another wave of pessimism about winning the battle with "pseudoscientists" over climate change, but he tempers this by the odd sort of "upside" that the future without changing course will at least not be boring. In fact, it will have a bit of science fiction-y excitement about it. (Starving masses needing factory food from the moon, perhaps?) [To be fairer, his point is probably more that people who want climate change action don't do themselves any favours by painting a "boring" picture of the future that sounds like it's windmills everywhere while everyone becomes a happy hippy artist.]

Good old Michael at least wears his heart on his sleeve, and given that I've previously speculated on the coming Carbon Wars (cruise missiles being sent to destroy Chinese coal power plants, anyone?) I kind of like it when someone who's actually doing climate science stuff makes even wilder guesses as to the future. (Frankly, I think my idea of a group of modern Captain Nemos patrolling the oceans in submarines to sink coal carrying ships is more "do-able" than food factories on the Moon. This Navy Rear Admiral is completely on side with climate science, after all.)

On the slightly up side, given yesterday's depressing story about how China's consumer goods industry more than makes up for the carbon reductions the West has achieved, there is this story that Chinese carbon emissions might not continue rising forever:

Well before mid-century, according to a new study by Berkeley Lab's China Energy Group, that nation's energy use will level off, even as its population edges past 1.4 billion. "I think this is very good news,'' says Mark Levine, co-author of the report, "China's Energy and Carbon Emissions Outlook to 2050" and director of the group. "There's been a perception that China's rising prosperity means runaway growth in energy consumption. Our study shows this won't be the case."

But what are the assumptions here?:

The new Berkeley Lab forecast also uses the two scenarios to examine CO2 emissions anticipated through 2050. Under the more aggressive scenario, China's emissions of the greenhouse gas are predicted to peak in 2027 at 9.7 billion metric tons. From then on, they will fall significantly, to about 7 billion metric tons by 2050. Under the more conservative scenario, CO2 emissions will reach a plateau of 12 billion metric tons by 2033, and then trail down to 11 billion metric tons at mid-century.

Several assumptions about China's efforts to "decarbonize" its energy production and consumption are built into the optimistic forecasts for reductions in the growth of greenhouse gas emissions. They include:

• A dramatic reduction in coal's share of energy production, to as low as 30 percent by 2050, compared to 74 percent in 2005

• An expansion of nuclear power from 8 gigwatts in 2005 to 86 gigawatts by 2020, followed by a rise to as much as 550 gigawatts in 2050

• A switch to electric cars. The assumption is that urban private car ownership will reach 356 million vehicles by 2050. Under the "continued improvement scenario," 30 percent of these will be electric; under the "accelerated improvement scenario," 70 percent will be electric.

Well, I guess those figures are possible, but sound just a tad optimistic. Maybe China is interested in going to the Moon to set up the food factory farms just in case this all goes belly up.

Michael, pass me the bottle.

Eye Phone

After mentioning Apple yesterday, I was very amused to see a recent episode of Futurama last night which turned out to be a whole episode parodying the company and its fanboys:



It was the funniest thing I have seen for a long time.

Considering thorium

Why is no one talking about safe nuclear power?�(Science Alert)

Julian Cribb sings the praises of thorium reactors as having a lot of passive safety, as well as other attractive features (including scalability in size, and no need for large amounts of cooling water.)

I must admit, I have read little about them, and thought that, to a large extent, they were still pretty experimental.

I guess it's time to correct my knowledge deficiencies.

It's complicated, Part 2

New study links ozone hole to climate change all the way to the equator

....researchers at Columbia University's School of Engineering and Applied Science report their findings that the ozone hole, which is located over the South Pole, has affected the entire circulation of the Southern Hemisphere all the way to the equator. While previous work has shown that the ozone hole is changing the atmospheric flow in the high latitudes, the Columbia Engineering paper, "Impact of Polar Ozone Depletion on Subtropical Precipitation," demonstrates that the ozone hole is able to influence the tropical circulation and increase rainfall at low latitudes in the Southern Hemisphere. This is the first time that ozone depletion, an upper atmospheric phenomenon confined to the polar regions, has been linked to climate change from the Pole to the equator.

As the BBC version of the story notes:

The team found that overall, the ozone hole has resulted in rainfall moving south along with the winds.

But there are regional differences, particularly concerning Australia.

"In terms of the average for that zone, [the ozone hole drives] about a 10% change - but for Australia, it's about 35%," Dr Kang told BBC News.

The CSIRO will no doubt be very interested in the study.

It's complicated

Study shows developed nation's reduction in CO2, outpaced by developing country emissions

Despite the emergence of regional climate policies, growth in global CO2 emissions has remained strong. From 1990 to 2008 CO2 emissions in developed countries (defined as countries with emission-reduction commitments in the Kyoto Protocol, Annex B) have stabilized, but emissions in developing countries (non-Annex B) have doubled. Some studies suggest that the stabilization of emissions in developed countries was partially because of growing imports from developing countries. To quantify the growth in emission transfers via international trade, we developed a trade-linked global database for CO2 emissions covering 113 countries and 57 economic sectors from 1990 to 2008. We find that the emissions from the production of traded goods and services have increased from 4.3 Gt CO2 in 1990 (20% of global emissions) to 7.8 Gt CO2 in 2008 (26%). Most developed countries have increased their consumption-based emissions faster than their territorial emissions, and non–energy-intensive manufacturing had a key role in the emission transfers. The net emission transfers via international trade from developing to developed countries increased from 0.4 Gt CO2 in 1990 to 1.6 Gt CO2 in 2008, which exceeds the Kyoto Protocol emission reductions. Our results indicate that international trade is a significant factor in explaining the change in emissions in many countries, from both a production and consumption perspective. We suggest that countries monitor emission transfers via international trade, in addition to territorial emissions, to ensure progress toward stabilization of global greenhouse gas emissions.

Here's my half stupid suggestion: can we agree that Apple products are as good as they need to be for the next 20 years? In fact, now that I think of it, all computers are as good as they need be for the next ten to 20 years.

I'm pretty happy with TV technology as it is too. Does anyone need a better audio system than those available at the moment?

If you stop making things brighter and shinier, maybe people will stop buying new ones. Then China can shut down several factories in a few years time, people in the West won't buy so much stuff, and we can all feel better about importing less CO2.

Just call me Clive 2.

Couple of videos about ocean acidification

There hasn't been much noted about ocean acidification here for a long time, but I thought these two videos were worth a look.

The first makes me feel cold just watching it. Mind you, I am not sure of the significance of the phytoplankton polymer production that he is researching, but still it's interesting to see the efforts scientists go to:



The next is about ocean acidification generally, and the effect on larvae of some shellfish in particular. Seems a sensible man:

Back on board–kinda

So, what did I miss while touring Australia’s South Island (a.k.a. Tasmania.  Photo post to come.)

Labor in more than a spot of bother with refugees; Labor and Gillard’s popularity still down.  Ho hum: there is obviously not going to be any change for Labor until they have some sort of circuit breakers of success; we all know the government is going to look ineffectual until something starts to appear to be a decent policy well implemented.    Could Gillard be the opposite of Rudd:  too reliant on her Ministers working out the details when the country really wants to know what they are?  Time will tell, I guess.

The PM’s de facto having a chat with the Empress of Japan:  I bet he never saw this future role for himself 5 years ago.   I do wish they would marry – Tim and Julia, I mean, not Tim and the Empress.  While some would bemoan this as a cynical move to reverse the popularity slide, all conservatives should rightly welcome it as a good example for the institution of marriage, and visited Asian royalty and leaders would no doubt be much relieved.   But while ever they continue to do things like attend a royal wedding, they keep inadvertently bolstering the image of opportunism if they were to marry soon afterwards.   Who cares – just do it, I say.

Andrew Bolt still banging on about Fukushima not being such a bad thing because no one has (yet) died of radiation.  Meanwhile, in Japan, where the 80,000 odd people who had to leave the 20 km evacuation zone have been given 5 hours to collect stuff from home before the enforced exclusion from the zone, and people in the band of higher contamination to the north west well outside of the evacuation zone have been told to leave their towns within the month, they might feel somewhat less sanguine about nuclear power.

(OK, let’s assume the Japanese government is being overly cautious.  Yet they are acting on scientific advice, and hey, would Andrew Bolt or Gavin Atkins move back into the area with his own children if that was the advice being given?   Look – Atkins is right to bemoan anti nuclear drama students that even want to shut down the small, medical isotope providing facility at Lucas Heights; but fair’s fair.   Stop acting as if the indefinite abandonment of huge swathes of land and townships – a 20 km radius is a lot of area, and there are towns 30 or more km away about to be largely abandoned too – is just worth a shrug of the shoulders.   Your much proclaimed low number of radiation deaths comes at a very, very high human and economic price – in both Chernobyl and now Fukushima.) 

As for other areas of the world which might have some major human issues if there is a nuclear accident – Nature ran an interesting article pointing out that many plants are much closer to large population areas:

An analysis carried out by Nature and Columbia University, New York, shows that two-thirds of the world's 211 power plants have more people living within a 30-kilometre radius than the 172,000 people living within 30 kilometres of the Fukushima Daiichi plant, who have been forced or advised to leave. Some 21 plants have populations larger than 1 million within that radius, and six have populations larger than 3 million.

Yet working out the risk position of such areas is complicated, as the rest of the article argues.  Well worth a read.  I would say it largely supports my hunch:  smaller nuclear is better; passive safety should now be the over-riding feature of future design.  (And keep them away from large population centres anyway.)

Speaking of Andrew Bolt – remember him pooh-poohing the European flight bans last years during the Icelandic volcanic eruptions?  Because computer modelling was used to try to track the ash?   (As someone else already noted, this was a ridiculous comparison of climate models with computer forecasts for a few day’s of wind; but Andrew is very opportunistic with his anti-modelling line.)   Well, a couple of scientists have published a paper begging to differ.   The ash stayed dangerous for a long time.  (And I am betting there was no easy way to track its precise path in the sky.)  

It seems it doesn’t matter what safety issue it is – radiation, volcano ash, climate change – the right of politics has taken such an ideological position against AGW that it distorts their attitude to all other issues of public safety too.  

Conservative politics hasn’t always been like this – they used to like and trust science, I think.  One day it will swing back that way, but it seems a long, long way off in the future.

Heading off for a while

See you soon. Don't forget to come back...

Good points, Tim

Clubs Launch Pokies Campaign Against Restrictions

Tim Costello makes many good, sensible points on the issue of regulation of poker machines.

Polling today indicates quite strong support from the public for tightening their regulation. Support seems stronger from lower income people. So much for one argument from one participant at the blog noted next that regulating pokies was a form of class warfare to punish the working class for enjoying their preferred form of gambling.

Libertarian types at that certain blog continue to show themselves as whiny, hysterical types who exaggerate and use straw man arguments to disavow any government proposal to tighten regulation in virtually any field, no matter what evidence is provided. In fact, their ideological blinkers means that most of them don't need to consider evidence at all - just look at the typical libertarian attitude to climate change.

Libertarians are the mirror image of left wing ideologues who put their ideology ahead of what comprises good government from the view of common sense pragmatism. Both are to be avoided.

Not built like they used to be?

HMAS Adelaide: history made as Navy ship sinks

Is it just me, or does it seem to anyone else that Navy ships just don't seem to used for very long anymore before they're decommissioned and then, nearly as a matter of routine, sunk for an artificial reef? It just seems to happen so often now, and for ships I have a vague recollection of hearing about when they were in service; seemingly not so long ago.

Or is this just a sign of my advancing decrepitude?

Yuri's ghost

Yuri Gagarin and the superstitions of space | Open thread | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk

The Guardian has a brief piece on the superstitions of astronauts, particularly Russian ones relating to Yuri Gagarin:

They leave a red carnation at his memorial wall, visit his old office and ask permission from his ghost before launch. More bizarre is the tradition of male cosmonauts urinating on the right rear wheel of the bus used to transfer them to the launch site (women have the option of dashing a cup of their own urine on the wheel too).

Well, I suppose that rules out men with a "shy bladder" ever being an astronaut in Russia, then.

Here's the link to an story with a lot more detail of such superstitions, and it's a fun read.

Where's the Beano?

We went to a French restaurant last night, and very nice it was. Good French eating is still not that common in Brisbane, so it seems. The menu was far from innovative: in fact, it was like a list of the top 8 "classics" from a Margaret Fulton's 1970's cook book, but both the bouillabaisse and cassoulet were very good and of generous size. (Last year we tried a French restaurant at another part of Brisbane and the portion size was stunningly small, as it reputedly was when nouvelle cuisine was all the rage.)

Anyway, I was the one who chose the cassoulet (the hearty bean dish with sausage, duck and pork belly in it), bravely knowing the likely later consequences, which did in fact arrive, but not until about 4 am.

Which got me thinking: whatever happened to Beano. I remember reading about this in Discover magazine in (I think) the 1980's. They used to have a humourous columnist, a woman whose name I forget now, but I remember her column about a forthcoming enzyme based product which (if I recall correctly) was to be sprayed on your beans to reduce later gaseous consequences.

But Beano has never appeared in Australia, and I have never gone looking for it on the internet.

And here it is: you can get it in the US, but to take as a tablet, not put on your bean-y meal. (That was probably never a goer, but I'm sure I remember that being suggested as the way it would be used.)

I am pleased to see that the anti-flatulence product does not take itself too seriously. The videos at the University of Gas are done with an appropriate level of humour.

Maybe you can buy it online in Australia, but I have never noticed it in a pharmacy or supermarket. If it works, this is a product that deserves better marketing here.

Understood up to a point...

How much free will do we have? (Science Alert)

I always start to eventually get lost in the detail when reading about Bell inequality, free will and determinism, but this story about it was not a bad explanation for the most part.

They only want you to think they did

FBI destroyed thousands of UFO reports, 1949 memo reveals | World news | The Guardian

We all know they actually ended up in cardboard boxes in Mulder's basement office. How naive do they think we are?

Living in a hole

What a fun bit of speculation that must be worth a science fiction novel, or ten: Planets Could Orbit Singularities Inside Black Holes.

It doesn't exactly look like Star Wars, but still...

BBC News - Laser gun fired from US navy ship