On the upside

I'm a bit worried that I sounded too critical of the Catholic Church;  some may think I'm starting to endorse "progressive" Christianity of the Spong variety.

So, as a corrective to that, let me make a few comments.

The Church on social teaching in the modern era is pretty sound - in terms of its views on economics and the role of government,  it largely strikes a sensible balance in its support of capitalism, while acknowledging an important role for government intervention and even unions (as long as they're not outright supporting communism) in making for a fair society.   Libertarians views for minimal government find no significant support there, and those from the Acton Institute are pushing a marginal view with no real credibility. 

In terms of international aid, charity work, and the provision of health services in the West, too, it does great work with the only issue being the knots it ties itself in regarding women's reproduction, all due to it's view on abortion and contraception.  (The latter does deserve some revision, but let's not go there right now while I'm trying to look on the bright side.)

The Church also has taken the "right" side of science on climate change and pollution, and shames the Evangelicals of American who are foolishly prepared to go with the idea that God just won't let the Earth overheat no matter how much humans try.

As for theology and doctrine and where its future lies:  I remain completely unconvinced that the future for Christianity lies in redefining it so that the matter of the reality of God or a supernatural realm becomes unimportant, or irrelevant.  Yet this is the danger that skeptical examinations of theology and religion always face; it seems almost an inevitable path that progressive theology leads down, and it's why conservative Catholics refuse to allow the first step to be taken.  

But my point is that denial of a problem of how theology and doctrine is to take into account dramatic changes in understanding of the nature of the Universe (and human biology) is no answer either.   And the reason for my previous post was to argue that the Church's institutional response has in some key respects made the matter harder to deal with, not easier.

Lead poisoning by bullet

It does seem odd that it has taken doctors a long time to fully take into account that leaving bullet fragments in the body (something recommended a surprising amount of times, apparently) can lead to long term lead poisoning.  This article at The Atlantic explains why, though, and it makes for a good read.

Internal conflicts

An article at the Catholic Herald takes the line that the Church is now in a "full blown" doctrinal crisis.

I must admit, the article makes a pretty strong case.

There are two issues relevant here:   on the one hand, there's the matter of who can access the sacraments; but the bigger issue is that so much of that question is tied to the matters of sex and marriage.

But I tend to think this is all part and parcel of a slowly evolving crisis of Catholicism hitting modernity - the debatable point being when do we say "modernity" began.

Although it can be argued that it goes back much further, I'm inclined to think the really serious challenge starts with Darwin.  (And don't forget, the other big change in understanding humanity comes with knowledge of the true, vast extent of the universe, which only dates from about 1925.)  Catholicism, to its credit, somehow never got caught up in denying evolution, and it can even claim a hand in the idea of the Big Bang; but that doesn't mean that both don't present challenges to the concept of Original Sin.   Close on Darwin's heal, Freud may have been nuttily obsessed with some of his pet ideas, but he and Jung successfully set the groundwork for people assuming they have to dig deep into their unconscious to understand their "true" self, which is then perceived as essentially immutable.  By the end of the 20th century, the ubiquity of computers and the rise of the idea that everyone is a meat robot, with no free will but only the trick perception of free will, has become more pervasive and only exacerbates the role of the unconscious, and as such it's (of course) extremely corrosive to the idea of a Church, or God's Grace, having any significant role in life.

These forces, combined with the Church's over-reach in push back against modernity with it formalising the Pope's infallibility, followed up by using it in the mid 20th century for a doctrine that seems, to put it mildly, esoteric to the modern mind (I'm talking the Assumption of Mary); and then the rejection of contraception even if it's of a kind that prevents conception (yes, even a condom used by a married couple renders the sex "wrong"); the Church has been losing doctrinal credibility at a slow but steady pace over  about 150 years.

The Church's attempt to get cool with modernity, via Vatican 2, brought up its own logical difficulties, with the insistence on a "properly informed conscience" being paramount in assessing moral behaviour, while denying that any Catholic could reject the Church's teaching on what is moral.  And it was all undercut by the lack of compelling logic in the blanket rejection of contraception in the same decade.

The result is that in a very large part of the globe,  the congregations have taken doctrine, and the use of the sacraments, into their own hands, effectively:  confession and the power it implied in the local priest has almost vanished; the concept of sexual sin has been greatly diminished;  in fact the whole definitive categorisation of the seriousness of different sins is seen as improbable now;  and people with failed marriages (especially if the fault is all their partner's) resent the idea that they cannot participate in communion if they re-partner.   (Annulments are possible, but seen as an unnecessarily complicated de facto acceptance of divorce.)   Those who are living outside of the Church's teaching on sexuality will often just partake in communion anyway - they are very unlikely to hear a condemnation of their behaviour from the pulpit, and unless they want to grandstand, the priest handing out communion is not to know what they do in the bedroom.  For those in gay relationships, there has been the startling turnaround in sympathy for them amongst the laity, and many clergy.  The Church's behaviour in the child abuse scandals in many nations, as well as its less than stellar role in confronting European fascism in the mid 20th century, have further hurt the perception of the Church's moral authority.

So yes, I think the Church is facing a very difficult future.   Intellectually, I am inclined to think that some sort of schism may be the only way of resolving it, but it's not as if the Church's assets can be easily divided up between the conservatives and the more liberal elements.    So the Henry VIII approach can't be repeated.  Which perhaps means that it is really is going to continue dragging out for years yet.

Monday bits and pieces of interest

*  Mission Impossible 6 starts filming in Paris in April.   Same director as last time, although he says it will be a very different Ethan Hunt.   Sounds a bit like a revisit to the family drama stuff in M:I3, which was OK but I don't think I've ever re-watched.   Anyway, can almost guarantee I will see it.

* A case of a brain tumour causing "hyper-religiosity" and visions of talking with the Virgin Mary.   Rather reminiscent of Joan of Arc.

* I finally see how to link to a particular Axios story - this one about how Republicans, with supreme hypocrisy and with no proper justification from the past (didn't Reagan have to increase some taxes to make up revenue short fall after his first cuts?), are now prepared to cut taxes and let the deficit grow.  Stephen Moore is for this:  Krugman derides him continually, so he'll be impressed. In fact, Krugman has already a post up explaining that for demographic and other reasons, no one should be planning on very high growth in the next few years. 

*  I watched Snowpiercer on Stan on Saturday.   As I say, it's remarkable how it seems Stan is exclusively for only B grade movies.  This one has a very silly premise, but I knew that going in.    It's worth watching for the scenery chewing performance of Tilda Swinton alone.  As I have said before, she just sucks all attention to herself (in a good way - she's really remarkable.)   

*  When even Fox News hosts start complaining that Trump is going too far in his "the media is the enemy of the people" line, you know he really is going too far.   The drumming up of fear that seems crucial to Trump's appeal to his base is increasingly ridiculous, with his and his staff's allusions to attacks that never happened, but still apparently works with his dimwitted fans.   Speaking of which, it is a wonder that Triumph the Comedy Insult Dog escaped with his life after his interactions with Trumpkins at the inauguration.  Pretty funny, though:

Churchill: friend of science

Did you know that Winston Churchill was quite interested in science and did his own bits of popular science writing in his day?   No, nor did I.

This Nature article, written because of the recent re-discovery of an essay he wrote "Are we alone in the Universe?" in 1939, is a great read.   Here are some extracts:

Winston Churchill is best known as a wartime leader, one of the most influential politicians of the twentieth century, a clear-eyed historian and an eloquent orator. He was also passionate about science and technology.

Aged 22, while stationed with the British Army in India in 1896, he read Darwin's On the Origin of Species and a primer on physics. In the 1920s and 1930s, he wrote popular-science essays on topics such as evolution and cells in newspapers and magazines. In a 1931 article in The Strand Magazine entitled 'Fifty Years Hence'¹, he described fusion power: “If the hydrogen atoms in a pound of water could be prevailed upon to combine together and form helium, they would suffice to drive a thousand-horsepower engine for a whole year.” His writing was likely to have been informed by conversations with his friend and later adviser, the physicist Frederick Lindemann.

During the Second World War, Churchill supported the development of radar and Britain's nuclear programme. He met regularly with scientists such as Bernard Lovell, the father of radio astronomy. An exchange about the use of statistics to fight German U-boats captures his attitude. Air Chief Marshal Arthur 'Bomber' Harris complained, “Are we fighting this war with weapons or slide rules?” Churchill replied, “Let's try the slide rule.”²

 Once again, evidence that conservatism in the modern political world (especially in America) has undergone a worrying change.

But look - the public I have conned don't want it

The continuing hide of Professor Stagflation of Catallaxy, um, continues.

Sinclair Davidson today:

One small problem: the electorate are somewhere else. It seems to me that the electorate do not want a tax, a price, a scheme, a what-ever-you-want-to-call-it that increases electricity prices. People want cheap and reliable electricity.

Yes, and why (at least in significant part) would that be?  Because you and your IPA and Catallaxy economist mates (including Rupert's national paper) have waged a PR campaign for years, based on deceptive and dishonest non-scientist charlatans (and the global handful of climate contrarian scientists) that no carbon pricing is in any way necessary, as climate change is a bunch of bollocks.

Davidson gets some credit from me for not swallowing Trumpism whole - but this line he runs is very much like the massive hypocrisy in the Trump declaration that he, once and for all, was ending the rumours that Obama was not born in the US.   

If he's going to comment on the public's reticence on carbon pricing, he should acknowledge his side's role in it.  And while he's at it, update us on the "no statistically significant global temperature increase since 1995 line" too. 

It's very hard to fathom...

....how anyone can listen to the rambling, disjointed (rather ADHD sounding, actually) self-pitying and narcissistic style of a Trump press conference and not be highly concerned about the fact that he is President of a fantastically powerful, nuclear armed nation.  I've seen 10 year olds with better and more sustained coherence when speaking.  

What's more, I reckon there's good reason to speculate that it is this very concern - about his mental suitability for the role - that is behind the leaking against him.  Can you imagine the frustration a competent intelligence adviser must feel in having to boil down a complicated, multi-party issue into one page of highlights, and even then not being sure if he's absorbed it? 

Yet Trump will still have his supporters, and it leaves the rest of us puzzling about the dire effects of everything from the use of the internet as the ultimate propaganda tool for outright liars, the corrupting effect of reality TV, and how the culture wars can overpower everything from science to the perception of reality.

I also hadn't realised how truly awful the apparently highly influential (and very young) Stephen Miller had come across in his media appearances last Sunday until I saw clips of them on Colbert last night.  He truly has the creepy, dead eyed look of an android with mental health and anger issues, and yes, Trump praised his performance.   Have a look at this, which wasn't even his worst performance:



These are very strange and disturbing times...

Update:  I liked John Cassidy's take on the Trump press conference in the New Yorker.

Spank me, doctor?

Good post title for a review of A Dangerous Method, no?

I had intended seeing it at the cinema, but never got around to it.  But it is currently on SBS on Demand, for those in Australia, at least.

For those who don't know - the movie is about the early career of Carl Jung and his interaction with Freud and a patient/lover Sabina Spielrein.  Yes, it is basically a true life story, and having read a bit of Jung in my time, there were key scenes that were recognizably drawn from Jung's memoirs.  

How did it work as a film?    I would say it's good without being great.   Its best feature was the terrific acting of Keira Knightley, yet I see she received no nominations for any award.  Michael Fassbender was OK as Jung, but I thought Viggo Mortensen was pretty forgettable as Freud, yet they got all the award nominations.  Odd.  

The movie looks good and the subject matter was always interesting, but being (largely - see below) based on real life that wasn't bent too far out of shape, the story doesn't really have a dramatic structure that's very satisfying.   I felt the movie particularly failed to explain the origin of Jung's interest in the occult and paranormal.  The famous scene (if you know anything about them) in which Jung argues with Freud that there should be more to psychoanalysis than sex, and feels vindicated by sudden bangs coming from the bookcase, seems to come out of nowhere.   But anyone who had read much about him knows better:   I think I have on the bookshelf a (largely unread) copy  of Jung's 1903 doctoral dissertation "On the Psychology and Pathology of So-Called Occult Phenomena":  he had been interested in the subject for a long time, and it seems to me the movie might somehow have shown evidence of that before he started to complain to Freud.

Apart from that complaint, here's where I get to mull over the matter of where lines should be drawn in purportedly historical movies that invent key scenes for dramatic purposes.  I am surprised to read that there is considerable dispute over whether Jung and Sabina ever actually became physical lovers - let alone the kinky, spanky kind of lovers featured as the most memorably odd thing about their relationship in the film.

Sure, they had a romantic relationship of some kind (well known from their letters and diaries) but their exchanges never amount to a 100% clear evidence of sex.  Here's an article in Psychology Today discussing this:

However, much of the film turns around the dramatic invention that Jung and Sabina had a sexual affair, characterized by bondage and sadomasochistic practices. These lurid scenes are likely to be the ones that most people who see the film will take away with them. There is no concrete evidence of their having had an affair, let alone the sadomasochistic elements so vividly portrayed in the movie.

A Huffington Post interviewer confronts Cronenberg directly on this point, to which he replies: "An invention with justification. I was taken to task by a young woman who had seen the trailer. She was trying to convince me that Sabina and Jung never had sex. In her letters Sabina wrote about Jung in poetic terms, this woman claimed. You could have sexual poetry, I wanted to point out to her. But in her diary and letters to Freud, Sabina wrote, ‘I gave Jung my maidenhood, my innocence.' In the Victorian era that could only mean one thing. They had a sexual affair. We coupled that with how she talked about her father and being beaten, how that turned her on sexually..."

I think it may be a stretch when he says, Sabina's written statement that she gave Jung her "maidenhood," her "innocence," could only mean one thing. After all, so much of their discourse had to do with symbols and it's possible that she was speaking metaphorically. At the same time, I think it's quite well-established that Jung later had a long-term mistress, Toni Wolff. So, I'm not trying to whitewash his character. In fact, the Wikipedia entry on Sabina Spielrein reports, "The historian and psychoanalyst Peter Loewenberg argues that this was a sexual relationship, in breach of professional ethics, and that it ‘jeopardized his [Jung's] position at the Burghölzli and led to his rupture with Bleuler and his departure from the University of Zurich.'" In an interview about the film, Jungian analyst, Dr. Thomas Kirsch says, "I have no idea whether Jung had a sexual affair with Sabina Spielrein. This is a subject which has been written about extensively. Zvi Lothane, a psychoanalyst and historian, wrote of his conviction that they had a sexual affair in his earlier papers. In a later paper he reversed his opinion..."

 I think it fair to say from this that the movie could entirely justify portraying them as lovers.  What's far less justifiable is the sadomasochism as a key element in their sexual relationship.

As the writer of the Psychology Article says, Jungian professionals tended to like the film, but at the same recognised that it could harm the public's regard for Jungian analysis.  Oh well.

So, my feeling on whether this breached the line of acceptable invention:  yes, but I guess I don't feel too worked up about it.  It was only an incrementally crossed line - and it was not really dramatically unforgiveable.   (Unlike, say, the ridiculous inventions in Elizabeth that I complained about last year.) 

One final bit of trivia:  I was interested in this comment by the director in the Psychology Today article (my bold):

In an interview, Cronenberg says: "What's in the movie is perfectly accurate because it was from a letter-writing period. At that time in Vienna, there were between five and eight mail deliveries per day. If you wrote a letter in the morning, you expected to get an answer by the afternoon. It was their internet. So there were many, many letters. These people were very obsessive about detail and the minutiae of their lives (what their dreams were and what they ate) and what that signifies. We had lots of info. I can back up almost every line of dialogue with quotes from letters."

 Huh.   Five to eight deliveries a day?   Postmen must have been busy...

Get a grip, fools

There's a bit of problem here with the Wingnut reaction to Flynn's resignation:  if their hero Trump was to meet their expectations, he could have tried to ride it out.  He could have taken their line that this was "the Deep State" trying to interfere with legitimate government elected by a landslide and he wasn't going to fall for it.

But he didn't.

So what can Wingnuts do about that?  Nothing.

Except get a grip and take a look in the mirror at the paranoid, conspiracy believing nutters they've become.

Update:  speaking of nutty, conspiracy believing Rightwingers on the Australian front:  just how proud is Sinclair Davidson that the blog he runs hosts his paranoid and gullible co-worker Steve Kates, who fears the US is having a "potential" constitutional crisis because Obama is behind the Flynn resignation?  "Police state" mutterings are in his posts too.

To what level of paranoia and Trump love does Kates have to rise before SD says "mate, enough:  you can't run your paranoid theories here any more." 

Go Colbert

I'm pleasantly surprised to read that Colbert's late show is actually rating well, now that Trump is President.

But I think the Slate article explaining this is pretty wrong when it says " He doesn’t convey anger so much as he does bemusement..."    To the contrary, I've already commented here a few times about how genuinely upset, and angry, he's appeared to be since the Trump win.  I think the audience is coming back because he is so passionately appalled by the Trump presidency.  

He is not above the cheap, but very funny joke, though.   You have to watch this clip right to end to see what I mean:

I trust it's labelled as "Extra Short" size...

Noted from AP:

SHANGHAI (AP) -- There's a Trump toilet, a Trump condom, a Trump pacemaker and even a Trump International Hotel among hundreds of trademarks in China that don't belong to Donald Trump. But after a decade of grinding battle in China's courts, the president was expected to get an unlikely win this week: the rights to his own name.

One White House loony gone, probably only 30 or so more to go...

So, Trump knows that all the leaking is a problem, tweeting:

The real story here is why are there so many illegal leaks coming out of Washington?

What's the bet that he thinks leaking per se is the problem, not the vast conflicts within the White House and Republicans which is its root cause, and that with many of the latter thinking that Trump himself is a mentally unstable danger, it's going to be really hard to stop.

Vox has an interesting article about the warring camps within the White House.

Update:  another Vox article, explaining how Flynn was all Trump's fault - for hiring him in the first place.  But Trump loves sycophants - it's his narcissism at play.

Not for Valentine's Day

Mob Kills Eloped Lovers After Storming Afghan Police Station 

In a horror romance story out of Afghanistan:

The authorities said there were only 30 police officers at the station facing a mob of 250 to 300 heavily armed men. “If police had fired bullets at the people, a massacre could have happened,” said Hafiz Abdul Qayoom, the governor of Nuristan, claiming the police had no option but to surrender the couple to the mob, especially after three officers had suffered gunshot wounds from the angry crowd.

Enayatullah, the district governor in Wama, who like many Afghans uses only one name, said the couple were apparently killed soon after they had been taken out of the police station.

“We asked for additional police, but the road to the district was closed due to snow,” he said. “If the police had resisted more, a disaster would have taken place.”

Salam Khan, 22, a witness from Fatiha’s village, Sar-i-Pul, said he saw what had happened to the couple after the police surrendered them. “Some of Fatiha’s relatives, her cousins, were beating her with their fists and saying, ‘Why did you do this?’ Then her older brother got angry and shot her with a hunting rifle and her younger brother shot her with an AK-47. I don’t know how many bullets they fired,” Mr. Khan said, speaking by telephone from the remote village.

For Valentine's Day

Penis shrinkage, a side effect of prostate cancer surgery, is temporary, study finds

Xenu preserved

Here's a good and entertaining read about L Ron Hubbard's life and works - perhaps a tad more sympathetic than what most non Scientologists would write.   I hadn't heard this before:

At a remote compound in Trementina, New Mexico, plans have been made to preserve his writings forever, in an underground vault designed to withstand a nuclear blast. Written on steel and encased in titanium capsules filled with argon gas, they might conceivably outlast most of the other works that our civilization has produced. Future generations may well read Hubbard, assuming that he is all that survives. But they might be the only ones who will.

How distressing to think that future visiting aliens (long after humans have left the scene) might think this convincing evidence or a real, all pervasive, religion.

Nuclear revival not coming

In other news from The Japan Times, have a read of this story of the financial trouble and difficulties Toshiba is in over some new American nuclear plants it said could be built quickly and on budget:

On Tuesday, Toshiba is expected to announce a massive write-down, perhaps as big as $6.1 billion, to cover cost overruns at Westinghouse, which now owns most of Shaw’s assets. The loss may actually eclipse the $5.4 billion that Toshiba paid for Westinghouse in 2006 and has forced the Japanese industrial conglomerate to put up for sale a significant stake in its prized flash-memory business. Toshiba had to sell off other assets last year following a 2015 accounting scandal.

Toshiba made a big bet on a nuclear renaissance that never materialized, in part because it couldn’t build reactors within the timelines and budgets it had promised. The company had anticipated that Westinghouse’s next-generation AP1000 modular reactor design would be easier and faster to execute — just the opposite of what happened. Now Toshiba may exit the nuclear reactor construction business altogether and focus exclusively on design and maintenance.

“There’s billions and billions of dollars at stake here,” says Gregory Jaczko, former head of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC). “This could take down Toshiba and it certainly means the end of new nuclear construction in the U.S.”

It really seems that intense skepticism over the revival of nuclear as an answer to global warming is justified.   (John Quiggin is vindicated, in short.)

It's a cultural thing

Wow.  Japanese litigation sounds as ambulance chasing as anything you see in America:

Twenty-eight girls and women suffering what they say are side effects from a cervical cancer vaccine that was recommended by the government demanded compensation from the state and drugmakers Monday as their trial opened at the Tokyo District Court.
The plaintiffs, ranging in age from 15 to 22, said they have experienced a wide range of health problems, including pain all over their bodies and impaired mobility, after receiving the human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccines between 2010 and 2013.
Each is demanding ¥15 million in damages.
Erina Sonoda, a 20-year-old college student, said she started to suffer strong menstrual pain after receiving the second of three recommended shots of the Cervarix vaccine, and the pain spread to other parts of her body after the third vaccination.
Due to agonizing pain, Sonoda said she has difficulty walking without a cane and often must use a wheelchair.

Have a look at the PR photo at the link, too.

I suspect that there is a strong cultural element to this.   The Japanese, for reasons not entirely clear, are extremely cautious about anything "unnatural" to do with women's reproductive health.  The prime evidence for this:  the contraceptive pill was only legalised in 1999, and its use is still startling small:

In 1999, Japan became the last industrialized country to legalize oral contraceptives (OCs). Have contraceptive use patterns changed as a result?

An analysis of national survey data indicates that, as of 2014, prevalence of condom use and OC use was 83% and 3%, respectively, among all Japanese women aged 16 to 49. According to the UN, among married women in 2011, the proportions using OCs were 1% (Japan), 16% (U.S.), 21% (Canada), 28% (U.K.), 37% (Germany), and 41% (France). Prevalence of OC use in Japan did not significantly change following government approval.

So with this background, hysterical reaction to an injection that affects something to do with female reproduction was probably foreseeable.

Where is the pressure to embrace coal coming from?

Alan Kohler gets stuck into the Coalition (and Turnbull) for their silly coal embrace:

It’s true that wind and solar are intermittent, since the wind doesn’t blow all the time and the sun doesn’t shine all the time. But instead of helping the states to deal with this problem sensibly, Coalition politicians including the Federal Minister for Energy Josh Frydenberg, are just trying to score points and embed the hoax.

It raises a broader issue: why is politics the only part of society doing this?

The academic, scientific, corporate, not-for-profit sectors have long ago accepted that the problem is real and are working towards a more sustainable future; the only ones not showing leadership are the nation’s leaders.

The line I highlighted is the one that most interests me.  Where is the pressure coming from on the Coalition to aggressively promote coal?

Is it just generically from the Minerals Council?  It has the feeling of something more specific...

Hot hot hot

I can't remember the last time it was 40 (or 41?) degrees in the part of the Brisbane where I live.  But yesterday it was hot, still, and the temperature dropped to 27 degrees overnight, making for a very unpleasant weekend.  I don't know how the people of Western Sydney, who have had a much worse run of heatwave weather than Brisbane, have been able to put up with it.  It certainly makes one disinclined to go out, at least if the airconditioning is working at home...

And heat is in the news globally.   Last week it was in the news that the Arctic has had 3 bursts of sudden winter temperature rises this northern winter, and the Washington Post analysed it this way:

Scientists believe that a number of different factors are feeding into these warming events, including the steady march of climate change and interactions between the air and Arctic sea ice, which global warming is melting a little more each year. And a good low-pressure system, like the one that barreled through this week, can help to jump-start these kinds of sudden warming events by carrying a large amount of warm air up to the North Pole all at once.

The presence of the storm itself isn’t exactly unusual, according to atmospheric physics expert Kent Moore of the University of Toronto. Each year, there are some storms that roll through the northern Atlantic. What’s uncommon is just how far north some of them have been making it lately.

“There’s these extratropical cyclones that appear to be tracking farther north than they usually do, and these low-pressure systems are bringing the heat up into the polar region,” he said. It’s unclear why this happens, he added. But when it does, temperatures can vault up above zero degrees, or in extreme cases, sometimes even above freezing.

In a recent paper published in December, Moore notes that these types of anomalous warming events have been recorded since the 1950s — but they usually only occur once or twice a decade. Scientists believe that factors related to climate change may now be making it easier for weather systems like this week’s storm to carry warm air into the Arctic.

Changes in Arctic sea ice extent are one major issue. As a result of global warming, temperatures in the Arctic are rising at about twice the global average rate, and one of the consequences is a reduction in Arctic sea ice. These changes are most obvious in the warm summer months, when sea ice is at a minimum anyway — but lately, scientists have been observing record lows for the frozen winter months as well, a time of year when the ice is actually expanding. But where it is missing, those parts of the ocean become warmer.
“As that sea ice moves northward, there’s a huge reservoir of heat over the north Atlantic,” Moore said. “As we lose the sea ice, it allows essentially this reservoir of warmth to move closer to the pole.”

I think it's fair to say that it seems that the energy from global warming is acting to stir up the atmosphere so that warm air and cold air masses are being distributed to places they normally wouldn't be.  Or wouldn't be so often...

Low score for consistency

Look, Judith Sloan - no one in their right mind treats you or Alan Moran seriously when you talk energy and renewables, because you both deny climate change is real and therefore think there is absolutely no reason a nation should be considering clean energy at all, let alone try to develop policies to encourage its growth.   All of your commentary is therefore tainted unavoidably.

But can you at least try to be a bit more consistent.  And stop with the bold shouting, while you're at it.

Today at Catallaxy (my italics, her bold):

And here’s a point that the greenies fed Barrie: there have been more peaks in wholesale electricity prices in Queensland than SA this year – therefore nothing to do with renewables.  Of course, this is just spin.

The peaks generally last a very short time and the key is average electricity prices.  Here are the figures for 2017:

But in the Australian, 19 July 2016:

It is unusual for any story related to South Australia to appear on the front page of this newspaper. But when wholesale electricity prices in that state reached more than 30 times the prices recorded in the eastern states last week, the broader interest in the issue is obvious.

To give you a feel for the figures, last Thursday at 1.45pm, the wholesale power price in South Australia was recorded at $1001 per megawatt hour, compared with prices of between $30/MWh and $32/MWh for the eastern states. At one point, the maximum price in the state hit $1400/MWh.

Not a lot of mention about average electricity prices detectable there.