The next degree won't take as long

Here's a good, short post from And Then There's Physics explaining how the next degree of global average temperature increase won't take as long as the first:

Just a quick post to highlight that – according to the UK Met Office – 2015 is likely to be 1^oC above pre-industrial – well, 1^oC above the 1850 to 1900 average. If you think that we should have a target of staying below 2^oC, then this is something of a milestone; we’re halfway there. Or, are we?

Well, it depends on how you consider this. It’s taken us about 160 years to warm by about 1^oC. This is associated with emissions of about 550GtC (550 billion tonnes of carbon, or ~2000 billion tonnes of CO₂). Current emissions are around 10GtC/year. If we continue emitting as we are, we will double our cumulative emissions in about 50 years. If we continue to increase our emissions, it will be even sooner (H/T Aaron on Twitter). If we want to have a >66% chance of staying below 2^oC, then we have a carbon budget of only about 250GtC (850GtCO2) from 2015, which we could reach in only 25 years at current emissions.

So, we might be halfway to 2^oC in terms of temperature, but we’re much more than halfway there in terms of time.

The comments following are well worth reading, too.

[But, hey LDP, please continue to concentrate on how irritating it is to have to wear a bicycle helmet and not be able to vape nicotine while riding to the bar that's going to shut at the ridiculously early hour of 3 am.  We have to get our priorities right: I understand.]

The 2011 Australian floods revisited

The abstract from a paper to appear in GRL:

Extreme rainfall conditions in Australia during the 2010/11 La Niña resulted in devastating floods claiming 35 lives, causing billions of dollars in damages, and far-reaching impacts on global climate, including a significant drop in global sea-level and record terrestrial carbon uptake. Northeast Australian 2010/11 rainfall was 84% above-average, unusual even for a strong La Niña, and soil moisture conditions were unprecedented since 1950. Here we demonstrate that the warmer background state increased the likelihood of the extreme rainfall response. Using atmospheric general circulation model experiments with 2010/11 ocean conditions with and without long-term warming, we identify the mechanisms that increase the likelihood of extreme rainfall: additional ocean warming enhanced onshore moisture transport onto Australia and ascent and precipitation over the northeast. Our results highlight the role of long-term ocean warming for modifying rain-producing atmospheric circulation conditions, increasing the likelihood of extreme precipitation for Australia during future La Niña events.

Tax or not?

I see that David Leyonhjelm is again writing in praise of the Singaporean health system, which operates largely by requiring compulsory employee contributions to medical savings accounts.   (I see he was making the same argument back in 2014,  and it is also LDP official policy.)

Now this seems a bit odd to me - when it comes to arguing about whether we are a high or low taxing country, Leyonhjelm is happy to claim "the tax burden figure for Australia is artificially kept down by the exclusion of superannuation guarantee payments", which is extremely close to the Judith Sloan line that "we have a system of compulsory superannuation that must be regarded as a tax".   (Yes, the very special type of "tax" that goes into the taxpayer's own account, is largely untouched by the government, and is available for spending only by the taxpayer or their estate.)

Let's be a bit more consistent here, hey libertarians?   If you are for compulsory savings for medical care, but like to claim compulsory superannuation  should be treated as part of the "tax burden", then you're actually for a brand new tax, using your own peculiar (or opportunistic) categorisations.  On the other hand, if neither are a tax, stop pretending one of them is.

And as for comparing the health costs of the Singaporean system to that in Australia or other countries - goodness gracious me, I would bet there would health economists out there ecstatic at the idea of what they could do to stream line health services if they were doing it for one city state compared to providing coverage for an entire continent.

Update:  OK, so I guess Leyonhjelm might concede such a scheme is the same type of "tax" that compulsory superannuation is, but one which would be compensated for by the government (now with a reduced health spending burden) reducing income taxes.   Because he is, of course, fundamentally against ever increasing total taxes.  (Good luck with working out that transition with any fairness, though.  Let's face it, it ain't going to happen.)

Nonetheless, isn't it peculiar that the party that is all about personal responsibility and letting people act as grown ups actually agrees with Labor, which effectively says you can't rely on people to save for their retirement adequately and therefore compulsory super is required?

About time I commented on this

Yes, I keep forgetting to post about the peculiar phenomena of the adult colouring in book.   The Atlantic has a story up from a recent convert, and there was an article about it in the Sydney Morning Herald back in April, and another a few weeks ago asking the question:

Adult colouring books are all the rage, but are readers mindful or mindless?

Nearly all articles err on the generous side, and so would I, given their popularity.

The key to it (as the article from The Atlantic argues) is the involvement in a pattern:  it's a chair bound way to meditatively walk a maze, and that has a certain appeal to people like me with an aversion to sweating.

But in order to cross the boundary between mindful pattern building and more analytical thought, I think I'll work on creating my own version with patterns involving certain politicians heads, or media commentators.   Watch this space...

Update:  it's a rough first attempt, but I call it "The Leyonhjelm Mandala":

For satellite watchers

Google Play suggested it for me, and it would seem that, indeed, the Heavens-Above app on a GPS enabled smart phone or tablet makes spotting and identifying satellites, the ISS, and even Iridium flares, ridiculously simple. 

I've never gone out to watch for an Iridium flare, but I will now.

Gravity and spandex

This video has been up for a few years, but was just recommended on the Open Culture site.

Now, we've all seen this type of illustration for General Relativity before on various science shows, but it is worth watching for a couple of phenomena that this teacher helps explain with his stretchy set up.  Give it a few minutes and you will see:

 

I should also note that this month marks the 100th anniversary of Einstein's lectures on his theory.  The New York Times gives a handy short history of how the theory subsequently progressed under the weight of 20th century politics.

About Kiribati

Before we drown we may die of thirst

I see that a couple of weeks back, Nature had a balanced article about climate change and its effects on the small Pacific Island nations.

Long time readers may recall that I have always backed away* from relying on the celebrity victim status (as it were) of these islands for communicating the seriousness of climate change, because it seemed to me that their continued existence, being barely above sea level anyway, was always in doubt.

I think, on the whole, this article vindicates that position.  The islands have several problems and indeed climate change will exacerbate them, but in the big picture, the seriousness of a metre or two of sea level increase on the vastly populated and developed regions of other countries is really the much more profound problem.  (As well as the regional effects on food production, handling more frequent flooding, and the possible vast changes in the ocean food chain.)

* Yes, that linked post was written back in 2006 when I was taking a "sitting on the fence" approach to climate change, before I became convinced that it (and ocean acidification) were indeed serious issues.

The paywall issue

I've never put a lot of effort into avoiding paywalls and page view limits:  I use "Google the headline" sometimes, but page view limits I've generally lived with.  Media organisations have to make money, after all.*

So given that there are some publications with page view limits I'm prepared to try to get around, and deleting history gets a bit tedious, I realised this week when I stumbled across something about the Tor network that this might be an easier way around the limit.

Turns out for those using android that there is simple Tor accessing app (Orbot) and an associated browser (Orweb.)  The browser is pretty terrible, though; but I have found a Tor version of Firefox too (Orfox), and it is much better.

Of course it won't work as fast as normal browsing, given the way Tor works.  But as far as I can tell, although you would not be wanting to trust this system on your phone or tablet to divulge state secrets, it seems to let you keep browsing past page view limits as long as you want. 

*  unless it's owned by Rupert Murdoch - but then again, I don't want to spend a lot of time wallowing in his right wing clubs anyway.  For those with fewer scruples, here's a fairly recent guide to getting around some paywall schemes, and here's another - even though I don't think incognito mode works well now.

That's quite a broken record

Adelaide's hottest October on record: Temperature 5 degrees hotter than the average, rainfall scarce - ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

Such is the worrying state of America

Egypt's pyramids for grain storage, not pharoahs' tombs, Ben Carson said in 1998 remarks - ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

The Atlantic notes that this idea is an old medieval one.   I find it remarkable that it could still be held by creationists today, since it suggests their ability to dismiss evidence extends to even being able to ignore the interior design of a building in front of their eyes.   What hope is there for convincing them they are wrong on the age of the universe, evolution, or climate change?

Please make him stop

The only good thing about Slate going behind a 5 article a month paywall (just clear your history and start again) is that it might stop you from reading another extremely silly bit of writing from the world's most irritating gay writer J. Bryan Lowder.  This one about how much he hates spooning.

Or perhaps you should read it (or, like me, just scan it and decide how embarrassingly bad it is within a couple of paragraphs) and then skip to the amusingly derisive comments.  Such as these (each is a separate comment):

This article is seriously making me reconsider being a Slate+ member. Yes, it is literally that bad of an article...

I can't tell whether this is satire or not.

I can imagine the Slate editorial meeting this morning. "Lowder! An editorial piece on my desk in fifteen minutes or else! I don't care what you write about as long as I see a text file in my inbox fifteen minutes from now, got it?"

 Not every idea one has needs to be shared, though I understand that idea is alien to millennials. And calling something like spooning "sexist" is why people stop taking accusations of sexism seriously.

Well, that was, um... ah...

 Seriously? This was green-lighted?

I finally realized what's going on:  Lowder hates Slate and everything it stands for and is trying to destroy it from the inside out.  He is SPOONING SLATE!  BRILLIANT!

Waves discussed

My son last night had a science question on his homework that asked how a change in frequency affects the speed of a wave.  I could remember the answer, but not a good way to explain it.   I thought there must be a decent Youtube video out there showing what happens, but on stuff like this, it can be surprisingly hard to find a good video for a high school level.

The best I could come up with, and it is pretty good, is from the Khan Academy talking about the speed of sound.  (It's the second in a series, but I don't think its essential to watch the first.  It also has more detail than necessary, but in the last 60 seconds, they deal with the frequency/speed issue pretty well.)

So, for all other parents with a similar problem, here it is:


    Speed of Sound:

Strange polling

Andrew Bolt is celebrating apparent skepticism showing up in the CSIRO polling story that I noted yesterday, yet if one reads more widely on the topic (he never does), there is reason to be somewhat skeptical of the CSIRO results.

This chart from ongoing polling (with a 1,000 person sample - which sounds reasonable) from the Lowy Institute, for example, indicates attitudes that hardly seem consistent with the CSIRO poll.

Odd that about 88% on this poll think there is a problem to be addressed in some form if (according to Bolt's reading of CSIRO) more than half of Australians aren't even sure there is a problem.

On the other hand, Essential polling from 2013 indicates that the CSIRO result may not be too far off the mark, but the "climate change is real and is caused by humans" has a clearer lead.

It's all a bit confusing.

I see that the CSIRO itself has studied the question of how the phrasing of questions on this topic affects outcomes. 


It is one of the trickier areas for polling.  

Private school problem

Brisbane readers in particular are likely noting with amazement the evidence to the Royal Commission into child abuse regarding what went on at Brisbane Grammar School in the 70's and 80's, including the former deputy headmaster denying he ever had any knowledge of anything amiss.  (Not only are former students saying this is wrong, but so are parents - a fact which seems to have been under-reported on the television summaries of the commission I have noticed.  UPDATE:sorry, I've confused evidence against the late headmaster with that against this deputy - but against him there was still evidence that he had questioned a student about his inappropriate relationship with Lynch.)

It seems the evidence of some ex-students is that, amongst the boys, knowledge of what the school's counsellor was doing in his locked door (hello, common sense warning sign) sessions with boys was pretty widespread.   But, somewhat oddly, there have been snippets on the radio of some ex students saying that (at the time) they appreciated his "caring" interest in them.  (I assume the fact that they are at the enquiry means they later appreciated that it was an incredible abuse of trust and authority.)

As with what went on at Knox Grammar in Sydney, it seems to me somewhat ironic that this sort of thing went on at a school where parents were paying extraordinary sums for the best of care and education for their kids.   Given that I was at a (rather working class area) state high school in the 1970's, it's extremely difficult to imagine that the same sort of thing could have happened there - for one thing, the State system never had any money for intensive on site counselling, and for another, it's kind of hard imagining the kind of guys going to a mixed gender State school thinking that what Lynch was doing was above board.   It seems to me that going to a top private school probably gave some of these boys a more ready acceptance of authority and belief that everyone there was really acting in their best interests.

I was sure I had made similar comments about abuse allegations at Knox, but can't find that post now.  In any event, it sort of goes to show an upside to State schools not being able to afford to pay staff to have too much time with students...

Update:  found my Knox post from earlier this year - only by scrolling through my blog.  Proof again that for some mysterious reason, Google is really bad at searching for keywords through its own hosted blogs.  (I had tried advanced search, and all...)

Update 2:   just noticed at the lunchtime news:  more terrible evidence at the royal commission, with the former deputy headmaster giving exactly the wrong response to an invitation to apologise to the former students.    Also, another student gave evidence that a teacher who is still at the school utterly rejected his approach for help when he was dazed and confused about getting abused by the counsellor for help with bullying and homesickness.   What spectacularly poor PR for the school.  

Sardines noted, again

As I wrote earlier this year, after a long break, I've started eating canned sardines again.   (Dieter's tip:  a whole can is surprisingly modest in calories, too.   A can on a couple of those corn or rice disk things can come in at about 200 calories - or one meal if you are doing the 5/2 diet and spread your 600 calories evenly over 3 meals.)

But I am upset with Aldi.   After languishing in the cupboard for many months, last week I found a can of "sardine sprats" from Germany via Aldi, and they were smoked and extremely delicious.  (Unlike your more routine sardines in oil, or tomato sauce.  Actually today I had a can from Portugal in a chilli sauce which was quite nice.  I generally don't care for the tomato sauce versions, though.) 

But, as with their smoked mussels from Germany, Aldi no longer stocks these sprats.   In fact, there are no German produced canned seafood there at all.  The nearest I found was something from Poland.  (Herring, I think.)  But most of their stuff is now either Thailand or from the extremely dubious food processing standards of China.  (I refuse to buy such Chinese products.)

I don't know where I could find smoked sprats like the German ones again.   Perhaps I need to visit a few more Mediterranean delis around South Brisbane/West End.    Perhaps a reader from Melbourne might locate some, and could arrange a parcel to Brisbane?  

Update:  hey, someone has already written "The Sardine Diet".  Dang.

Some surprising figures

According to the CSIRO, there are actually more Liberal voters who think climate change is natural than National Party voters:

That's odd - I would have guessed the percentages between those two parties would be reversed.  Maybe being on the land does help convince people climate change is real?   Or maybe not - I see that 18% of Nationals think it isn't happening at all, compared to 13% of Liberals.

But I'm not sure this should be taken too much to heart.  First, the weather people experience affects how they think about climate change, so level of concern fluctuates all the time.  And as the report notes, people's responses don't always make sense:

The CSIRO survey found some confusion among respondents. For instance, even those who thought global warming was not happening still attributed just over a third of climate change to human activity.
Those who thought there was no climate change counted friends and family as their most trusted source of information on the issue. University scientists were the most trusted source of respondents saying humans are to blame for global warming.
"Politicians were also rarely nominated as a basis for opinions, despite the strong associations that opinions had with voting behaviour," the report noted. "This aligns with recent research suggesting politicians and political parties might be more influential than [people] think."

Still, there's no doubt about it:  on the major scientific and political issue of the century, Green voters are by far the most sensible in recognizing the problem, followed by Labor.  And it would seem about half of the Liberals and Nationals are caught up in the culture/ideology war that prevents them making sensible judgement about this.  Sad.

Illicit drug history

I've long been skeptical of the simplified version of how and why some drugs became illegal that is given by some pro-drug reform advocates, especially when it comes from a libertarian perspective that broader society really has no right or interest in trying to modify private behaviour.   So it is with interest that I have stumbled across Points:  The Blog of the Alcohol and Drugs History Society.

I haven't gotten too far into it, so I am not sure whether I will end up skeptical of some of its writers' positions too, but it at least seems to indicate that they deal with the problem as a complex one.   Here is a brief extract from one post:

Ironically, when one digs into the history of marijuana and its connection to the jazz world in the early 20th century, it appears white men were primarily responsible for introducing black musicians and Harlemites to weed (or in the parlance of their day, gage, tea, muggles or reefer, among many other names). Italian-American Leon Roppolo, the clarinetist for the New Orleans Rhythm Kings, was said to have introduced marijuana to the Chicago jazz scene, in particular to Jewish saxophonist Mezz Mezzrow, who later became weed dealer to Louis Armstrong and much of Harlem. “Mezz” became another nickname for pot, according to the saxophonist, who also considered himself an “honorary Negro.”

Notably, Mezzrow’s autobiography, Really the Blues – which is so peppered with terminology from jazz and African American cultures that it includes a lengthy glossary – exemplifies Becker’s theory of how one becomes a marijuana user (or in 1930s slang, a viper). Becker argues that one must learn “how to be high” and is usually coached into weed usage through friends who are already active users. The first time Mezzrow smoked, he didn’t feel a thing, and was reprimanded. “You ain’t even smokin’ it right,” he was told. “You got to hold that muggle so that it barely touches your lips, see, then draw in air around it. Say tfff, tfff, only breathe in when you say it. Then don’t blow it out right away, you got to give the stuff a chance.”
After receiving this instruction and finishing his first joint correctly, Mezzrow returned to his bandstand. He recalled that “the first thing I noticed was I began to hear my saxophone as though it was inside my head…then I began to feel the vibrations of the reed much more pronounced against my lip, and my head buzzed like a loudspeaker…I felt I could go on playing for years without running out of ideas and energy…The people were going crazy over the subtle changes in our playing.” Mezz argued that “tea puts a musician in a real masterly sphere, and that’s why so many jazzmen have used it.”

Despite Mezz’s positive experiences with the drug, 1930s critics increasingly associated weed with black musical subcultures and pathological behavior.

Pteropods in the news, again

Abrupt onset and prolongation of aragonite undersaturation events in the Southern Ocean : Nature Climate Change : Nature Publishing Group: Ocean acidification may lead to seasonal aragonite undersaturation in surface waters of the Southern Ocean as early as 2030 (ref. 1). These conditions are harmful to key organisms such as pteropods, which contribute significantly to the pelagic foodweb and carbon export fluxes in this region. Although the severity of ocean acidification impacts is mainly determined by the duration, intensity and spatial extent of aragonite undersaturation events, little is known about the nature of these events, their evolving attributes and the timing of their onset in the Southern Ocean. Using an ensemble of ten Earth system models, we show that starting around 2030, aragonite undersaturation events will spread rapidly, affecting ~30% of Southern Ocean surface waters by 2060 and & greater than 70% by 2100, including the Patagonian Shelf. On their onset, the duration of these events will increase abruptly from 1 month to 6 months per year in less than 20 years in & greater than 75% of the area affected by end-of-century aragonite undersaturation. This is likely to decrease the ability of organisms to adapt to a quickly evolving environment. The rapid equatorward progression of surface aragonite undersaturation can be explained by the uptake of anthropogenic CO2, whereas climate-driven physical or biological changes will play a minor role.

 The Sydney Morning Herald report on this notes:

"What surprised us was really the abruptness at which this
under-saturation [of calcium carbonate-based aragonite] occurs in large
areas of the Southern Ocean," Axel Timmermann​, a co-author of the study
and oceanography professor at the University of Hawaii told Fairfax
Media. "It's actually quite scary."

Since the Southern Ocean is already close to the threshold for shell-formation, relatively
small changes in acidity levels will likely show up there first, Professor Timmermann said: "The background state is already very close to corrosiveness."

And of course, the "let's burn coal to make poor people rich and airconditioned into safety" crowd never address the point that their tactic will only accelerate potential food chain collapse in the oceans.

Sounds pretty reasonable, even if next to impossible given the nutty American political climate

Joseph Stiglitz on Fixing Economic Inequality - The Atlantic

Yeti tales from Bhutan

Why don't people see the yeti any more? - BBC News

I see that belief in the yeti is given as an explanation for low doorways into houses.  (Yeti can't bend down to get in, apparently.)

As always, I'm most fascinated by the foul smell said to be associated with all yeti/bigfoot creatures, especially as I knew a guy who got frightened by loud bush trampling sounds and a foul smell when he was camping once in state forest north of Brisbane.