Early life, mistreated coral, the unhealthy rich, and the dubious figures of climate change damage

Phys.org is full of interesting stories today.  Here's one, saying that the start of life on Earth can (perhaps) be pushed back to 4.1 billion years ago. 

Given that the planet only formed at about the 4.5 billion mark, that's pretty quick.

And here's another, this one about how humans, with their use of sunscreens, may be loving some coral reefs to death. 

Then what about this - rich, urban medieval folk were arguably less healthy than those slaving away on farms, all because of lead glazing (and lead roof tiles.)

Finally:  the dubious methods of "normalising" economic damage from climate change (that is, the long running shtick of Roger Pielke Jnr) is probably a crock.   I always suspected that, and I think the lesson is: don't let economists get too involved in climate change policy - they can be a menace to good policy.

Lots of universe left to run

Most earth-like worlds have yet to be born, according to theoretical study

Earth came early to the party in the evolving universe. According to a new theoretical study,
when our solar system was born 4.6 billion years ago only eight percent of the potentially habitable planets that will ever form in the universe existed. And, the party won't be over when the sun burns out in another 6 billion years. The bulk of those planets—92 percent—have yet to be born.

The same story claims this:

The data show that the universe was making stars at a fast rate 10 billion years ago, but
the fraction of the universe's hydrogen and helium gas that was involved was very low. Today, star birth is happening at a much slower rate than long ago, but there is so much leftover gas available that the universe will keep cooking up stars and planets for a very long time to come.

"There is enough remaining material [after the big bang] to produce even more planets in the future, in the Milky Way and beyond," added co-investigator Molly Peeples of STScI.

Kepler's planet survey indicates that Earth-sized planets in a star's habitable zone, the perfect distance that could allow water to pool on the surface, are ubiquitous in our galaxy. Based on the survey, scientists predict that there should be 1 billion Earth-sized worlds in the Milky Way galaxy at present, a good portion of them presumed to be rocky. That estimate skyrockets when you include the other 100 billion galaxies in the observable universe.

This leaves plenty of opportunity for untold more Earth-sized planets in the habitable zone to arise in the future. The last star isn't expected to burn out until 100 trillion years from now. That's plenty of time for literally anything to happen on the planet landscape.

Yes, Happy Back to the Future Day

The Back to the Future trilogy serves the surprising function of providing something upon which Sinclair Davidson, long term stuck-in-the-1950's-and-he-wasn't-even-born-then uber Catholic and Catallaxy fixture CL, and I, can agree.

I have a Coen brothers style fantasy vision of meeting them in a bar, and all nodding in agreement about the worthiness of the Future trilogy (yes, even the second one); then simultaneously saying  "But, jeez you're an idiot on every other topic" and a fistfight breaks out.   Jason Soon then makes an appearance, utilizing his boxing skills to stage an intervention.

Philippa Martyr can make a late entry, doing her Julia Flyte redeemed impersonation, tending to our wounds in her volunteer nurses uniform...

He's already on the backbench, but now it's time to....

Harsh, but it's the best "m" word I could come up with in the circumstances...

Not the sort of surprise I'm keen on...

From the report Asteroid making surprise flyby at an 'unusually high' velocity (my bold):

 A newly discovered asteroid (not pictured) will make Halloween more thrilling by passing within 1.3 lunar distances (310,000 miles) of Earth. The object, which measures between 300 and 600 meters (1,000 and 2,000 feet) across, was discovered last week by the asteroid-hunting Pan-STARRS observatory in Hawaii, according to NASA. It'll streak by on October 31st at an "unusually" high encounter velocity of 35 km/s, or around 78,000 mph. By contrast, the Russian meteorite caught by vehicle cameras in 2013 was 17 meters (55 feet) across and traveled at a top speed of 19 km/s, while the one that flattened a Russian forest in 1908 measured 40 meters (130 feet).

There's no danger of a collision, but the asteroid would pack an enormous punch if it did hit the Earth, given its size and especially its velocity. It's also a bit alarming that astronomers only found it nine days ago, considering how close it already is to our planet.

Well, this would suggest that it's still quite on the cards that one day, NASA will announce that a substantial disaster will be taking place somewhere on the Earth with (perhaps) all of 10 days notice for people to head for the hills, or dig a bunker, or whatever.

All a bit of a worry....

Dealing with the big issues

When is it socially acceptable to wear black tights? | Fashion | The Guardian

One of the best things about The Guardian is that when you see an article that is surely just a bit of space filling, inconsequential fluff,  the comments thread following is full of amusingly rabid attack on just those grounds. 

No wonder I'm confused

Backreaction: Book review: Spooky Action at a Distance by George Musser

Very careful readers of this most excellent blog (I'm craving appreciation again) may recall that I recently noted in a comment that I wasn't really sure what nonlocality in physics meant.

Seems I'm not alone, as my favourite blogging physicist Sabine H writes in this post reviewing a book on the topic:

 Locality and non-locality are topics as confusing as controversial, both
in- and outside the community, and George’s book is a great
introduction to an intriguing development in contemporary physics. It’s a
courageous book. I can only imagine how much headache writing it must
have been, after I once organized a workshop on nonlocality and realized
that no two people could agree on what they even meant with the word.

My confusion is therefore excused...

Yay! Some dissing of 1984

Goodbye to all that: Orwell's 1984 is a boot stamping on a human face no more

I've written before how much I disliked 1984 as a high school student, and yet felt compelled to write about it somewhat positively because of its near universal critical acclaim.

I think this academic's take on its mere transitory relevance as parable is just about right.  Why wasn't he around when I needed him in 1975?   

The Martian, spoiled

Went to see The Martian this evening.

Now, let me be clear: I deliberately did not want to be affected by the articles on the web with titles like "Just how accurate is the science in The Martian?"; so I didn't look at them, til now.  Nor did I read any reviews:  I just saw from Rottentomatoes and Metacritic that it had been generally well received.   So I didn't really go into it with any particular expectation as to why it was meant to be good.

And my verdict:  a mediocre, surprisingly scientifically inaccurate, film.

SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER ALERT

Look, I had my doubts about the strength of the dust storm at the start of the film, being aware that the atmosphere is incredibly thin, even though there are big, planet covering, dust storms from time to time.

But, yeah, turns out that this, a key element of the plot, is ludicrously overblown.  (Pun alert too.)  Here's long time Mar mission enthusiast Robert Zubrin's comment:

This is the only thing I noticed that was completely impossible, as opposed to improbable or sub-optimal. The Martian atmosphere is only 1% as thick as Earth’s, so a Mars wind of 100mph, which is possible although quite rare on the surface, would only have the same dynamic force as a 10mph wind on Earth. You could fly a kite in it, but it wouldn’t knock you down.

OK, but this was just a hunch on my part while watching the film.

No, the bit where the movie lost me on the science cred front was the ridiculous size of the main Ares Hermes spacecraft; and the spacious, apartment like setting of the living quarters in the rotating ring.

Come on Hollywood:  movies that are trying to be realistic about planetary missions need to be so  about the scale of spaceships likely within the next 50 years.  It perhaps wasn't as bad as the enormous spaceship out to re-light the sun (or whatever it was doing) in that horrible Sunshine movie, but that one wasn't really going for accuracy in the way The Martian was.

So why make living quarters with enormous, Star Wars battlecruiser-like windows?  It made the Jupiter bound spaceship in 2001: A Space Odyssey look hokey in comparison.  The movie never recovered for me after that.

And as for silly physics:  how have science types watching not have been upset by the "use the air in my spacesuit as a rocket" tactic at what is meant to be the dramatic climax of the film?   This was worse than anything in Gravity, if you ask me: far worse.

OK - so you get the message that the film lost me on the scientific plausibility front.

But it didn't grab me on the psychological front, either.  I don't really care for Matt Damon as an actor, but I would have thought the story should spend some time on the psychological strain of isolation on his character.  Instead, he's just relentlessly upbeat, pretty much.

In fact, people left in isolation often have hallucinations of someone (or something) unseen being present with them.  You would have thought there should be some incident of creepiness in the film, even if only in a scary dream sequence in which his fears are displayed.  But nope.   The film is too damn cheery to be effective.

I can understand why NASA scientists may like the film, for showing the organisation as comprising caring, "can-do" type people.  And the habitat on Mars setting looked pretty realistic.

But overall, it's not a great or memorable film. 

Update:  I've been reading up on Reddit some very nerd-centric comments about the film.  (They are mostly ecstatic about it, incidentally.)  But here are a few updates to my commentary in light of that:

* yes, I should have mentioned last night the use of an explosion on the Hermes to get its speed close enough to that of the just-launched Matt Damon.  Improbable, especially when the bomb is rigged up in (I think) about 30 minutes, but I'm not sure if it was in the book or not.  Certainly, the "Ironman" sequence is not:  it's apparently suggested, and rejected.  How un-wise of the film to make it happen.

* the author of the book freely admits that the opening, and critical, sandstorm is artistic licence, in that it could not topple the lander or hurl rocks and metal around.   Why use it, then?  It would be more impressive to come with a reason to abandon a crew member that was actually possible.

* a more minor but related point:  after Damon rigs up a plastic cover for the blown airlock, there's one scene where he is inside at night with the sounds of another fierce, pebble hurling, sandstorm outside.  Would the plastic really be capable of withstanding that?

* Yes, the explanation of the gravity assist slingshot to get the Hermes back to Mars was really poorly handled in the film.  Instead of treating the head of NASA as a dumbo who would never have heard of a gravity slingshot before, why not have it shown by him explaining to the a dumbo media person how it would work?

*  a very detailed and informed look at the trajectories used in the book and film are at this link.  Apparently, the book is based on a 2035 mission, making the size and sophistication of the Hermes spacecraft in the movie even more ridiculous!   And as someone in comments following it says:

However, forgiving all of those previous errors, the ones that I find utterly unforgivable are in the climax (spoilers!) where Watley is shot into space to rendezvous with the Hermes (slowed down by a jury-rigged explosion!???, oh please!!!) in a stripped down capsule with no windows and ultimately no steerable spacecraft, then using a self-made hole in the glove of his spacesuit to propel himself towards the awaiting MMU of his rescuers! Rendezvous is very, very, very, very, very, very difficult! It's not just hard, it's really, really, really hard. The relative velocities, the trajectories, the math! You don't just point two guns at each other and pull the triggers! Hollywood has a penchant for such shenanigans (Gravity, Mission to Mars, now The Martian).

Don't get me wrong, I did enjoy the movie, but the rescue process in the 2nd half nearly ruined it. Just once, I'd like to see a scifi movie where they get the science right all the way through!

 Quite right, although I didn't exactly enjoy the movie the way that person did...

Update 2:   I can't stop thinking of things in the movie that didn't quite make sense.   Here's another:   Watney is a botanist?   Why take a botanist to Mars?   There's no sign of a plant anywhere on the spaceship or habitat.  Apparently, in the book he is an engineer (although perhaps also a botanist?)  In any event, noting him as having engineering qualifications of some sort in the movie would have helped understand his abilities at constructing stuff.

Two articles for weekend worrying

The AGU website, which I should probably visit more often, has two climate change articles of concern:

1.  Diatoms are not doing well:

The world’s oceans have seen significant declines in certain types of microscopic plant-life at the base of the marine food chain, according to a new study. The research, accepted for publication in Global Biogeochemical Cycles, a journal of the American Geophysical Union, is the first to look at global, long-term phytoplankton community trends based on a model driven by NASA satellite data.

Diatoms, the largest type of phytoplankton algae, have declined more than 1 percent per year from 1998 to 2012 globally, with significant losses occurring in the North Pacific, North Indian and Equatorial Indian oceans. The reduction in population may reduce the amount of carbon dioxide drawn out of the atmosphere and transferred to the deep ocean for long-term storage.

2. Methane blooms off the coast of Washington and Oregon seem to be related to warming waters:

Warming ocean temperatures a third of a mile below the surface, in a dark ocean in areas with little marine life, might attract scant attention. But this is precisely the depth where frozen pockets of methane ‘ice’ transition from a dormant solid to a powerful greenhouse gas.  New research suggests that subsurface warming could be causing more methane gas to bubble up off the Washington and Oregon coast.

The study shows that of 168 bubble plumes observed within the past decade, a disproportionate number were seen at a critical depth for the stability of methane hydrates. The study has been accepted for publication in Geochemistry, Geophysics, Geosystems, a journal of the American Geophysical Union

Most of this methane is not making the surface, but it's increasing the acidity of the oceans anyway:

 If methane bubbles rise all the way to the surface, they enter the atmosphere and act as a powerful greenhouse gas. But most of the deep-sea methane seems to get consumed during the journey up. Marine microbes convert the methane into carbon dioxide, producing lower-oxygen, more-acidic conditions in the deeper offshore water, which eventually wells up along the coast and surges into coastal waterways.

Not very encouraging...

Climate whiplash

Why Winning the War on Climate Change Will Require a Technocratic Revolution - The Atlantic

If you ask me, there is a bit of a problem going on with "climate whiplash" at the moment.

On the one hand, you have a series of relatively optimist papers and reports about the rapid drop in price of renewables and the great potential for affordable battery storage to make it even more attractive; on the other hand you have stories like this one about how really, really hard the problem of a rapid reduction in global CO2 is.

Apart from the story linked above, here's Kevin Anderson being a pessimist, too:

The world’s top climate scientists are deliberately downplaying the challenge of avoiding warming above the 2C danger zone because of pressure from funders and politicians.

That’s the view of Kevin Anderson, professor of climate change at University of Manchester, in an article published in the journal Nature Geoscience on Wednesday.

He argues the rapid level of greenhouse gas cuts required to ensure the world does not blow what the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) termed a “carbon budget” would mean a radical shift in consumption and energy use in rich countries.

“Delivering on such a 2C emission pathway cannot be reconciled with the repeated and
high-level claims that in transitioning to a low-carbon energy system global economic growth would not be strongly affected,” he says.

But instead of warning governments that they need to implement an energy revolution, Anderson argues many influential scientists continue to suggest warming above 2C can be avoided through a steady transition away from fossil fuels.

“We simply are not prepared to accept the revolutionary implications of our own findings, and even when we do we are reluctant to voice such thoughts openly,” he writes.

While Anderson may have a point to a degree, the real problem with too much pessimism is that it encourages the fools who have never wanted to do anything anyway, and may increase the political power they already richly do not deserve.

And I also suspect that the pessimists underestimate the power of  markets to make rapid changes if they have the right combination of market signals and regulation.   By being too pessimistic, they are not encouraging  the badly needed price signal.

Glueballs?

A particle purely made of nuclear force

For decades,scientists have been looking for so-called "glueballs". Now it seems
they have been found at last. A glueball is an exotic particle, made up
entirely of gluons – the "sticky" particles that keep nuclear particles
together. Glueballs are unstable and can only be detected indirectly, by
analysing their decay. This decay process, however, is not yet fully
understood.

Professor Anton Rebhan and Frederic Brünner from TU Wien (Vienna)
have now employed a new theoretical approach to calculate glueball
decay. Their results agree extremely well with data from particle
accelerator experiments. This is strong evidence that a resonance called
"f0(1710)", which has been found in various experiments, is in fact the
long-sought glueball. Further experimental results are to be expected
in the next few months.

The Standard Model is very messy....

What a difference

I was just watching a bit of Question Time of Federal Parliament under new PM Turnbull and Speaker Tony Smith.

What an incredible contrast it is to the embarrassment that it was under Bronwyn Bishop and failed PM Tony Abbott.   It's like its had an infusion of maturity that makes the former version look like a kindergarten. 

It's funny how Abbott's departure from the top job has made just about everyone in the Coalition look better (well, with the exception of the irredeemable Peter Dutton.)   They just seem all happier and more competent than before.   Perhaps it's having the yoke of Peta lifted from their shoulders that is helping, too.  Given Christopher Pyne's recent pointed comments about Turnbull being the kind of PM who actually considers questions and tries to answer them in detail (and how "refreshing" that is), I'm even feeling more kindly towards him!

And what about Hockey?  It's like people have forgotten he was ever there already.  Kind of humiliating, especially for a politician with famously thin skin.  (As for Abbott, I suspect he is too dumb to understand the depth of his own humiliation, although I was amused to read that he apparently is upset that John Howard wasn't supportive enough after his dumping.)

Of course, the public torment of Andrew Bolt* continues, as well as that of just about everyone at Catallaxy save for Sinclair Davidson.   I can't credit the Prof's judgement about Abbott needing to go too much, though; he was also the only commentator on the continent who thought Bronwyn was doing a  good job as speaker.  (Well, maybe ratbag Rowan Dean agreed.)  Anyway, seems Turnbull is reluctant to do any fiddling with s18C RDA, so we'll see how long the goodwill towards him continues. ...

*  Speaking of Bolt and his 3000 words a day of Muslim-ania since the teenage shooting a fortnight ago;  I think by far the best media coverage about the problem of youthful radicalisation in Australia has been on the ABC's 7.30.   Does Bolt give them credit for that?  I don't think so.  

Troublemaking cows

Why the humble cow is India's most polarising animal - BBC News

Gee.  I hadn't realised the trouble cow reverence causes in modern India:

More seriously, most states forbid cow slaughter, and the ban on beef has been criticised by many because the meat is cheaper than chicken and fish and is a staple for the poorer Muslim,
tribal and dalit (formerly untouchable) communities.

Last month, a 50-year-old man in northern Uttar Pradesh was killed in a mob lynching over rumours that his family had been storing and consuming beef at home. Even as Prime Minister Narendra Modi broke his silence over the killing nearly two weeks later, members of his party thrashed an independent lawmaker in Kashmir for hosting a beef party.

Earlier this month, Hindus and Muslims clashed over rumours, again, of cow slaughter in Uttar Pradesh. A row over banning beef is threatening to stoke religious tensions in restive Kashmir..

There are worrying reports that supporters of the BJP and right-wing Hindu nationalist Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh in the state have launched a virulent campaign against
cow slaughter and beef.

Although the government's own animal census shows that the cow and buffalo population has grown - a 6.75% increase between 2007 and 2012 - and cow slaughter is banned in most states, there is hysteria being whipped up that the bovine is under threat.

Vigilante cow protection groups have mushroomed. They claim to have a strong network of informers and say they "feel empowered" because of the ruling Hindu nationalist BJP
government in Delhi. One of these groups actually managed to get a court order against a beef and pork festival at a Delhi university in 2012.

That's not all. The BJP-ruled state of Rajasthan has a cow minister. There are campaigns going on demanding that the cow should replace the tiger as the national animal - a minister in Haryana, also ruled by the BJP, promptly began an online poll.

All of this makes me wonder about what they serve in Indian McDonalds.  The BBC handily has a story from 2014 on that very topic.

Not too late, apparently

Antarctic ice sheets face catastrophic collapse without deep emissions cuts | Environment | The Guardian

Studies like this, which suggest that the Antarctic ice sheets will start to melt (unless deep cuts to CO2 start very quickly) but take centuries to do so can't really take into account possible geo-engineering approaches that may develop in the intervening period.  Still, seems that it's a lot "safer" to do the achievable - reduce CO2 - than bet on unproven techniques with unclear consequences.

Nasty virus

Ebola lingers in semen for nine months - BBC News

All quite unexpected, too, it seems.   Does any other virus do something similar?

Update:  just to make readers uncomfortable, here's an article about all the various types of virus that can be in semen, and the list is longer than I expected.   I was more interested, though, in the ones which it seems the body has defeated, but they linger on.

Yet more El Nino discussion

El Nino could soon rank as the strongest event since 1950

It seems to summarise things pretty well.

Yes, sometimes they do impress

If you believe the account of her contact with a medium given in this really fascinating first person article in Elle, you will understand why mediums sometimes can still make deep impressions that are hard to explain away.

And Ross Douthat, inspired by the article, writes interestingly on ghosts in the secular age.

Higher sensitivity still quite possible

Most of the talk over the last couple of years has been about observational studies indicating that climate sensitivity to CO2 was perhaps on the lower side, rather than the high side.  Yet I see that in a paper that has just come out, some NASA based researchers give reason to think the high side is more likely:   

The large spread of model equilibrium climate sensitivity (ECS) is mainly caused by the differences in the simulated marine boundary layer cloud (MBLC) radiative feedback. We examine the variations of MBLC fraction in response to the changes of sea surface temperature (SST) at seasonal and centennial timescales for 27 climate models that participated in the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 3 and Phase 5. We find that the inter-model spread in the seasonal variation of MBLC fraction with SST is strongly correlated with the inter-model spread in the centennial MBLC fraction change per degree of SST warming and that both are well correlated with ECS. Seven models that are consistent with the observed seasonal variation of MBLC fraction with SST at a rate −1.28±0.56 %/K all have ECS higher than the multi-model mean of 3.3 K yielding an ensemble-mean ECS of 3.9 K and a standard deviation of 0.45 K.

That seems important...

Birth order and consequences

This very long review of a couple of new books about the history of the Castrato contains a lot of information.  Here are a couple of paragraphs, noting which boys got to draw the short straw, so to speak:

It began, it seems, because women were not allowed to sing in church,
and, in the Papal States, were banned from singing at all. ‘It is
important to bear in mind,’ Feldman writes, ‘that castrations for
singing, beginning well before 1600, took place only in Italy,
geographic heartland of the one, holy, catholic and apostolic church.’
While London warmed to castrati, and paid them fortunes, the English did
not castrate their own. One contemporary of Handel’s commented on this:
‘You Englishmen complain that castrati are too costly, so that too much
money ends up in Italian lands, but if you want to make all this use of
them and [still] make savings, it’s amazing that for such a profit you
still can’t castrate there.’

Castrati, for Feldman, can be understood as the second sons of Italian families who, instead of goinginto the military or the church, took up singing, and in order to excel
had to make a sacrifice. She notes that castration arose at a time in
Italy when the eldest son got most or all of the inheritance. For one of
the others, getting castrated was a way to deal with the problem of
making a living. She writes rather well about this notion of sacrifice,
quoting Henri Hubert and Marcel Mauss, two late 19th-century writers on
the general subject of sacrifice. They wrote, according to Feldman, that
the victim ‘somehow has to be ravaged in a solemn but devastating way …
The end goal is to sanction the victim so as to authorise him for a
special purpose, removing him … from ordinary life … by radical
alteration that leads to a kind of rebirth. Thereafter the victim, now
improved, mediates between sacred and profane worlds.’