Message to J Soon

Jason, took you a while to notice that Megan McArdle article, but it was discussed at several places at the time, with scientists noting that the comparison between economic models and climate models is not really  valid, and she doesn't understand climate feedbacks either.

I suggest you read ATTP's post on it, and this, and the comments following.

As he says, the "lukewarmer gambit", being the last refuge of people who don't want action taken (usually for purely ideological reasons), is a still a "rejection of evidence" position, tarted up as if it's "just being reasonable here":

This is wrong on many levels. Firstly climate models don’t assume large positive feedbacks; the level of positive feedbacks is an emergent property of the models. It’s one of the things these models are trying to determine. Secondly, climate models are not the only reason why we think that feedbacks could be positive and large. Palaeoclimate estimates of climate sensitivity are also in line with estimates from climate models.

Finally, even the energy-balance models preferred by Lukewarmers do not rule out high climate sensitivity, and this seems to be the main problem; anyone who says “warming is likely to be mild” is essentially dismissing evidence that suggests otherwise. The discussion that we should be having is what we should do if climate sensitivity is high enough that our continued emission of CO₂ could lead to substantial changes in temperature, the hydrological cycle, and extreme events. If one group has already decided that this is unlikely, and that we shouldn’t base policy on this possibility, what else is there to discuss?

As with your false equivalence attempt on the doctor who came up with his own oddball Hillary health conspiracy:  stop doing that (false equivalence).  The Right wing conspiracy stuff about Hillary's  health has been massive, relentless (and ridiculous) and given a high profile on Fox News for many months, convincing large numbers of dimwits.  They haven't been "concerned" about Hillary's health - they've been exploiting everything out of context, from a photo after a slip on stairs to a joke head movement slowed down on video with scary music to argue she has everything from dementia to Parkinson's to HIV.  It has, truly, been "tinfoil hat" material.  And as for the doctor and his poisoning tweet - he's only getting attention because he is famous for other high profile work, the article is brief, and I don't think the paper is doing much to suggest it should be taken seriously.

I would argue with you on twitter, but I'm not keen on the word limits...

Update:  another bit of blog commentary on the McArdle shrug shoulder attitude of "sure, I don't dismiss it could be a major problem, but it might not be too, and no one will go for a carbon tax; so what can you do?

Chemicals under their skin

One in five tattoo inks in Australia contain carcinogenic chemicals

Doesn't sound like a good idea to me.  But I would say that, wouldn't I...

Employment in Japan

Japan is so crazy about mascots that ‘fluffy toilet character’ is a real job - The Washington Post

Amongst the many amusing facts in this story:

The mascot industrial complex is so huge in Japan that the Finance
Ministry launched a campaign last year to cut the number of mascots to
save unnecessary spending.

There are no official figures, but
Masafumi Hagiwara, a researcher at Mitsubishi UFJ Research and
Consulting, estimates that there are about 4,000 local
­government-related mascots in Japan. The prefecture of Osaka alone had
about 92 mascots, but it gave pink slips to 20 of them during the
Finance Ministry’s campaign.

An additional 6,000 characters are probably at central government agencies, companies and other organizations, Hagiwara said.

That makes “mascot” a viable career choice in Japan. The day rate for a mascot is about $100.

Yes, I'll stop eventually...

A timing issue

Babies Take Longer To Come Out Than They Did In Grandma's Day : Shots - Health News : NPR

The typical first-time mother takes 6 1/2 hours to give birth these
days. Her counterpart 50 years ago labored for barely four hours.

That's the striking conclusion of a new federal study that compared nearly 140,000 births from two time periods.

Well I didn't know that. Possible reasons are included in the article. 

Why continue?

I hope there is someone in the media tonight who can explain why it is that the Senate couldn't just adjourn for the day (or until the afternoon) if it had no business to deal with.  It would seem that this is simply not an option, as it would be for any other organisation holding a meeting where the participants unexpectedly had nothing ready to discuss or vote on, but why is that so?

Sex and death - topics of abiding interest

A brief history of the afterlife | History Extra

This article from August summarises a new book from a Queensland academic about a topic that has been mentioned here a few times recently.  Good reading.

At the bottom of this History Extra page, there were links including to one article on sex, which lead to another, etc.  They make for some entertaining reading, and I learnt a few things on the way:

A brief history of sex and sexuality in ancient Greece

A brief history of sex and sexuality in Ancient Rome

(Can't say I had heard of the rumours of Julius Caesar "living as a girl" in the court of King Nicomedes when he was a young man.   There's a good, fairly detailed explanation of this rumour - which seems more just about him being the "passive" partner of the King, in a .pdf at this link.)

 Georgian Britain - sex in high places


I think I should be spending more on the History Extra site.

Joseph Stiglitz writes

Joseph Stiglitz Says Standard Economics Is Wrong. Inequality and Unearned Income Kills the Economy - Evonomics

It's pretty long, and I haven't read it all yet, but he does write clearly and sounds very reasonable.

Judith Sloan will hate it.

Despite the title, this is a good article

Is It Really Possible To Faint From Heat, As Clinton Claims?

Is it really possible that Right wing conspiracists are so dumb that they don't believe fainting from protracted standing in even mild warmth is not only possible, but not un-common to see happen in any large crowd of any age?  Obviously, they haven't witnessed many military parades or guards of honour...

I would also assume that the pneumonia diagnosis is a case of so-called "walking pneumonia".

She has enough time to rest before the first Presidential debate.   I predict Trump won't be so lucky as to have her pull out before that.

Yes, we'll take the lying, shallow, narcisstic, short attention span, draft dodging man boy who we don't trust to do anything he promises and whose man-crush on Putin we find rather disturbing because - Hillary

I think the heading fairly summaries the view of Instapundit's Glenn Harlan Reynolds, whose list of Hillary misdemeanours includes:

*  the email issue (even when it became clearer than ever last week that she did indeed have encouragement from Colin Powell to do what she did),

* the fact that contributors to the Clinton charity meant people asked for favours, yet no actual serious scandal of someone getting something they clearly shouldn't have has been shown; and

* a reference to the IRS targeting conservatives (because, argues Reynolds, the civil service is totally in the tank for the Democrats.)

That last point (and by the way, has anyone actually shown corruption in the American tax investigations?)  reminds me of Australian political conservatives complaining about how the institutions are against them - be it the public service, the ABC, or the Churches.   Funny thing is, it never seems to occur to them that facing widespread organisational opposition might be a sign of a self created problem - some examples being  denying climate change (boo hoo, the ABC doesn't feature the backyard scientists who don't believe NASA scientists); believing that cutting taxes always helps an economy (why won't Treasury just get, like, totally on board with that?); and pretending that keeping a couple of thousand people - including children - in indefinite detention in third world countries because they attempted to arrive in a boat is not a morally compromised position (Churches, stop being namby pamby wimps).  

The only explanation for this pathetic justification of Trump support is that the American Right (and its Australian fan base) has become so self deluded by its Right wing media echo chamber about the Evils of Hillary and the outrages of Obama that they would prefer to vote for anyone but her.  Yes, some of them think Trump is a hopeless, lying, changeable, windbag with worrying connections to Russia; but he's not Hillary, the woman who clearly deserves to be in jail because (despite detailed and repeat investigations that never can pin anything on her) the Right wing media just can't believe that prosecutions of her would fail.

As for the fate of the Nation under Clinton, there is nothing to really suggest that the path of American policy  would take a large detour from what it has been under Obama, who, for a President in charge of an alleged hell hole nation, has a pretty good approval rating.  Can't they face the fact that the American economy has not tanked?

Reynolds has outed himself, as has large slabs of the American Right, as having become simply unable to accept and process evidence with anything even faintly resembling objectivity.  Turn off the Fox news, read something other than the WSJ,  fellows, and get a grip after all these years.

Historical blender films

I'm only 16 years late to the party, but last night I watched the Cate Blanchett 1998 movie Elizabeth for the first time, in pleasing High Definition on SBS.

I'm always of two minds about these movies, given that you can always safely assume that to one degree or another they will not be historically accurate.   Does that really matter, particularly if it inspires viewers checking up on the true story to learn some real history; or is it a puzzling insult to veracity that so many screenwriters can't make an entertaining movie without grossly misleading, or lying to, the audience?

I guess I am more forgiving if a movie opens with "inspired by true events" as a warning to the audience; but how often does that happen?  (And, incidentally, I missed the first couple of minutes of Elizabeth, so I don't know if any such disclaimer last night.)

Anyhow, I remember at the time the movie came out there were many articles talking about its inaccuracies, and having refreshed my memory about them now, the movie really is like an experiment to see what happens if you put into a blender a list of historical true characters, a separate list of their ages,  some notes about events over an entire life (even if you're only supposed to be covering the first half), some soft erotica, and a few kilometers of fine fabrics.  Hit the button and see how it all tumbles out.

At the end of the day, we can all agree it looked fantasitc, and with her features and good acting, it was the role Blanchett was born to play.   But even on its own terms as a movie story, it was a bit of a mess; and when you read up on the true facts, I think the historical liberties were just too extreme to forgive.   (I , mean, seriously:  the young transvestite French suitor never even made it to England, let alone being interrupted mid-orgy by the queen.  The major dramatic revelation - that her lover was already married - is also pure invention, given that the real Liz was at his wedding.)

A few links about the inaccuracies, for anyone who cares:   here, here, here and here.

I can't stop Prisma-ing

 

 

The American floods and climate change

Flooding, Extreme Weather, and Record Temperatures: How Global Warming Puts it All Together - The Equation
I haven't posted anything about the recent American floods and climate change, even though I saw the occasional report referring to that question.  This article, though, does confirm that the rainfall intensity that lead to them was exceptionally intense, and a climate change link seems obvious.
Unless, of course, you're a Right wing, science and evidence rejecting twit from America, or Australia, who can write things like this (Hinderaker, from Powerline blog):

Is the debate over catastrophic anthropogenic global warming over? In one sense, it is. One thing we know for sure is that the models that are the sole support for alarmism are wrong. The substantial heating they projected has failed to materialize. Having been falsified by observation, we know that they are no good. The alarmists will have to come up with something better than these discredited models if they want to convince the rest of us.

Yet, again, this is the chart he is evidently unaware of (or refuses to believe over what climate non-scientist Anthony Watt and his man-shed "scientists" publish): 

Sad that the Right has become so self deluded on this matter.

It's a (ultra-Orthodox) man's life

The ultra-Orthodox Jews combining tech and the Torah - BBC News

I didn't know that this was how some Orthodox Jewish life worked (or "didn't work"):

Like many of his friends, Slaven grew up expecting a life of quiet
learning. Haredi men are expected to spend most of their time studying
the Torah and Talmud, Judaism's sacred texts, leaving their wives to go
out and work. About half of Israel's Haredi men live this way.

But while the cost of living has risen in recent years, child benefit has
been cut - bad news for Haredi families, which often have eight-to-10
children and rely on benefits to make ends meet.

In other suicide news...

Is Pokemon Go helping prevent deaths at one of Japan’s most notorious suicide spots?

Guns and suicide

When a Smaller Military Means Fewer Suicides - The Atlantic

Some strong evidence given here that if you decrease access to guns, you decrease the suicide rate.  A nice, clear, article.

More Friday Physics

Backreaction: Sorry, the universe wasn’t made for you

Here's a post by Bee H about the anthropic principle, and objecting to the idea that the universe was "fine tuned" for life.  

Lots of false equivalence noted

The media’s coverage of NBC’s Trump-Clinton forum was a disaster.


Donald Trump's proud ignorance reveals his contempt for the presidency


Fear of a female president


Last night, Clinton got 6 questions on her emails. Trump got zero on his Iraq lies.

A look at an obvious Trump feature

Donald Trump’s Shortest Attribute Isn’t His Fingers - POLITICO Magazine

Lots of evidence provided from lots of people that Trump has always had a very, very short attention span. Given that there have been many examples from the campaign where can barely articulate a thought in a full sentence before going onto some other thought, this is far from surprising.

I also see that Snopes has already called out as false the conspiracy  theory (promoted on twitter by actor James Woods, of all people) that Clinton was wearing an ear piece yesterday.

She may be reluctant to give them the attention they crave, but I don't think it would hurt Clinton to go in, boots and all, in calling out a substantial slab of Trump's supporters as being reality challenged, very gullible people who need to get a grip.

How about playing the tape to him at the Presidential debate?

Donald Trump just lied about opposing the Iraq War before it started. Here’s proof. - Vox

The article notes that there is a recording of Trump saying in 2002 (without much enthusiasm, but still) that he supported the Iraq War.

The rest of the article bemoans how the media knows that a serial repeat liar who continues repeating a lie, will more or less get away with it.

But really, why should this be:  why cannot a reporter play the audio to his face and say "why have been repeatedly lying about this?"  Why not do it as part of the Presidential debate - just play the tape, and see how he tried to deal with it?