An odd connection

Coffee, tea may stop diabetes

Researchers at The George Institute have discovered that high consumption of coffee and tea is associated with a substantially reduced risk of type 2 diabetes. Lead author, Associate Professor Rachel Huxley, The George Institute, says that people who consumed on average three to four cups of coffee a day had one-quarter lower risk of developing diabetes compared to non-coffee drinkers.

But it doesn't appear to be the caffeine:

“In those individuals drinking more than three or four cups of coffee per day, the reduction in risk of developing diabetes was even greater; up to 40 per cent in those drinking more than six cups per day compared with non-coffee drinkers. Interestingly, similar reductions in risk were also observed for tea and decaffeinated beverages suggesting that any diabetes-sparing effect is not driven primarily through caffeine as previously thought.”

Odd. I wouldn't have expected too many other similar compounds in tea and coffee. Maybe it's just drinking hot beverages that does the trick.

To know the future - consult the all-knowing Kitty

Japanese Fortune Telling: Of Cats’ Paw-pads, Penguins, Monsters, and Gundams

A very odd collection of books from Japan about unique forms of fortune telling.

Actually, I'm torn between consulting Kitty-chan or the capybara.

Geothermal blues

Double blow for 'hot rock' geothermal power - Short Sharp Science - New Scientist

In Australia, though, it's just got new funding from the Federal government.

I remain somewhat skeptical of this technology's potential.

Things that make me happy, No. 1

Hey, after a big rant a few posts back, I said I would post about reasons to be happy.

Well, I'll have to break it up into short bits of things that are at least making me happy at the moment, so here we go:

1. the birdbath outside the dining room window. Watching bird drink and bathe while you eat breakfast or lunch is much more enjoyable than I expected. My wife yesterday even bought a bird identification book (more for the kids than me), but I can't see myself being drawn too far into the somewhat peculiar world of obsessive birdwatchers. If the birds come to me, fine; but I'm not going to them.

Ocean acidification calmly explained

It's from earlier this year, but I have just got around to watching this video of a talk on ocean acidification given at the University of California by a marine chemist. It's a very straightforward but convincing explanation of the problem and the issues, and is well worth watching if you have a spare hour:

Sunspot connection questionned

Sunspots do not cause climate change, say scientists - Climate Change, Environment - The Independent

I see the (at least noteworthy) skeptic Dr Roy Spencer had a recent post looking for sun/climate connections in 2008/2009.

He suspects there might be some connection, but it by no means clear.

Meanwhile, in Iran

Iran 'building nuclear bomb trigger' | News.com.au

The interest in Copenhagen seems to be dampening media and public interest in the worsening situation regarding Iran.

I missed this report last week, for example:

...Iran accused western-backed Saudi Arabia of handing over a missing Iranian nuclear scientist to the US and claiming that Washington is holding 10 more of its officials...

Tensions between Tehran and Washington have ..been fuelled by the allegation that Saudi Arabia sent an Iranian nuclear scientist to the US. Iran said Shahram Amiri disappeared during a pilgrimage to Saudi Arabia in June and accused the US of acting like a "terrorist".

All very reminiscent of the Cold War, really, except this one probably stands a better chance of going "hot".

A useful summary

Long-term goals the big hurdle

Tim Colebatch in The Age gives a useful summary of the massive task ahead if the world is really to achieve the 2 degree target:

The only fair basis for determining long-term emission rights is population. At Copenhagen, they are negotiating on total emissions or emissions growth. Yet inescapably, the currency we will end up dealing with is emissions per head.

Ross Garnaut saw this clearly, and made it the central feature of his report's design for a global agreement. He proposed that the world adopt a goal of convergence to equal per capita emissions by 2050. With a 50 per cent cut in global emissions, that implies cutting emissions to about 2.5 tonnes per head.

That implies Australia and the US would have to cut emissions per head by 90 per cent over the next 40 years, and China by 45 per cent. But a poor country like India would be able to expand emissions by 90 per cent. And countries could trade emission rights to meet the target.

Cut emissions per head by 90 per cent? Sounds unlikely, to say the least.

Reasons to be unhappy

Here at Opinion Dominion your blogger generally likes to talk up optimism for the future. But this attempt to look at all empty-ish glasses as in fact being half full has taken a savage beating over the last few weeks, and it's hard not to disagree with Time magazine that it is looking like a dispiriting end to a particularly uninspiring decade. Cases in point:

* An outbreak of aggressive stupidity Part 1: climate change skepticism has never been known for its sense of calm, dispassionate reason, but with the release of the CRU emails, they've just gone bat-sh*t crazy, following their own echo-chamber memes over the edge of the cliff of sanity. It's remarkable how few on the blogosphere drive this: I would guess that Watts up With That, Roger Pielke Snr, Steve McIntyre and Andrew Bolt probably account for about the dispersal of about 90% of all "skeptic" memes.

Bolt in particular shows no interest in counter arguments, although as I have acknowledged before, Watts will sometimes post something that runs counter to a skeptical line. McIntyre seems to have made one half reasonable point in his skepticism career, and has continued to dwell on it for years, as if uncertainty as to accuracy of tree ring proxies really had created a crisis for the whole of climate science. His view of his own self importance seems remarkably over-inflated.

It's not the claimed "skepticism" per se of the followers of these views which is so aggravating; it's the seeing of conspiracies, the "it's always been a hoax", the outright deceptive nature of much of their sloganeering that is driving me to distraction. Any post in a blog headed sarcastically "hide the decline" shows the person is a non-serious partisan player, and makes me want to reach for my pistol. (And no doubt that last comment will be claimed by a 'skeptic' as showing that I am a violence-threatenting fascist out to gun down non-believers.)

These same people take the same shrug shoulders approach to ocean acidification, so there is no point in trying to argue with them that there is fact a matter of at least equal significance as to why CO2 should be reduced. (And my official position remains that acidification alone is enough to take urgent action. An actual drop in global temperatures over the next decade would not change that.)

* An outbreak of aggressive stupidity Part 2: The Coalition parties in Australia have been taken over by the do-nothing climate change "skeptics."

Tony Abbott, a smart enough guy who nearly everyone has liked for his forthrightness as a Minister, saw right-wing skepticism (especially amongst rural folk, who were presumably already glued onto the Nationals anyway) as an opportunity to grab a leadership that he probably figured was never going to evolve naturally towards him.

I predict he will pay for this disingenuous opportunism. I'll certainly not be voting for a party in such complete disarray on such an important issue, and for a leader who has surrounded himself with a deeply unimpressive shadow cabinet.

* The Right in America goes off the deep end: I don't agree with everything Charles Johnson says about how the Right has gone wrong in the United States, and even suspect that he may be unfairly criticising or misrepresenting some figures. But still, overall, it's hard to disagree that the Republicans have been taken over by anti-science "skeptics," have few people left who argue with reason and clarity, and it is indeed a worry that the very strange Glenn Beck is taken seriously by a significant number of people.

It's hard to see from where a plausible Republican Presidential candidate is next going to emerge.

* Even those who are "right" are wrong, Part 1: Just because I think the Republicans are in complete disarray doesn't mean I am particularly impressed with the other side of politics in America. I always thought Obama was over-hyped, as if the ability to deliver a platitudinous speech in a deep voice was all it needed to lead America out of its funk. Well, it's hard to see how I was wrong. He's likely to be unable to convince Americans of the need for serious money to be raised and spent on clean energy; I suspect he will cause NASA to flounder for another 20 years; it seems that he has been unable to get through serious health reform. (That the right wing equates access to reasonable health care for everyone as too much "socialism" is one of the sillier features of the Republicans today. You really get the feeling Republicans just need to travel more.)

* Even those who are right are wrong, Part 2: To deal with a problem you have to first acknowledge it exists. Hence my anger at the skeptics/deniers. But, even if you get over the hurdle, there is still little evidence that those nations that do take climate change seriously can think of anything beyond emissions trading schemes as a "solution".

I reckon the carbon tax proponents simply left their run too late.

I actually wonder whether it's worth worrying about precise targets at all: we simply want governments to raise money for massive investment in research and deployment of clean energy and to just get on with it. It seems the simplest way of doing that is to impose a carbon tax.

Economists have a fear of governments picking favourites, and would prefer to let the market work out the best combination of solutions. But at times when serious and urgent action is needed, nations don't let that happen. It's a bit like the heads of industry telling the generals how they should run a war that it is expected to take 30 years to play out.

I strongly suspect that Bjorn Lomborg is right on this point.

Of course, the Labor Party in Australia has its head in the sand on nuclear power too, which is another reason to grind one's teeth.

* Is Copenhagen worth anything at all at the end of the day? The Wall Street Journal seems to editorially be about the only paper in the world that promotes climate change skepticism. However, they might have a point in this article, which argues that even the most optimistic agreement that seems politically possible is not going to help keep CO2 within the levels needed.
I suppose I should be skeptical of anything the WSJ runs on AGW, and I note that the article seems to be based on continued extremely high economic growth in China. Still, it seems a worry.

* It's been stiflingly hot in Brisbane. The last couple of weeks have been hot and breath-sappingly humid to a degree I am sure is unusual even for Brisbane in early December. There have also been few storms to provide evening relief. It is starting to remind me of the summer of 1998, but we will have to wait and see.

* Why can't directors I don't like fail? This has been a disappointing year for my hopes that Tarantino might have made a career ending film. Instead, we get violence with no redeeming moral context being praised as entertainment again.

Now, James Cameron, who appears to be a complete and utter real-life jerk from all reports, has apparently made a successful CGI heavy film at a time I thought just about everyone was getting sick of CGI, and starting to get leery of 3D too. (It certainly makes going to the cinema a much more expensive exercise.)

Obviously, karma has been proved again as an implausible theory.

* I didn't even like last Saturday's episode of Mythbusters. This is the one where they spent time on looking at the movie inspired myth that putting a person's head into liquid nitrogen for a short time will freeze it enough to make it shatter on a bench top. The movie in question is (apparently) Jason 10, which I presume is another example of the Hollywood slasher/horror/sadism genre which has developed in the last decade and is purely about how to raise the bar in imagining gruesome ways to die.

This was not, in my books, a "myth" worthy of attention, and was far too gruesome a topic for a show with a large following amongst smart kids. I hope they got some criticism for it.

In fact, I am starting to worry that they are running out of myths to deal with. I'll have to put my mind to suggesting some.


OK, that's it for now. For my next post, I will attempt to revert to reasons to be happy.

Returning soon

Awaaay

Space beer

Sapporo taking orders for ISS brew

Sapporo Breweries Ltd. will sell a limited volume of beer made using barley grown from seeds that were stored in outer space under a joint project with the Russian Academy of Science and Okayama University.

The brewer will receive orders for the Sapporo Space Barley beer via the Internet until Dec. 24, making 250 six-packs, holding 330-ml bottles, available at a price of ¥10,000 each, Sapporo said Thursday, adding the product will be delivered to customers in late January. Proceeds will be used for the promotion of science education.

The original barley seeds were stored for five months in the Russian module of the International Space Station.

Good to know the Russians and Japanese have their space research priorities right...

Sonic booms

I see that residents near the northern New South Wales coast were almost certainly shaken by a distant sonic boom last night. (The RAAF was doing exercises off the coast.)

This reminds me: last week's episode of Mythbusters where they were testing the effects of sonic booms on glass, cars and structures was very enjoyable. You can see some clips from it here.

It's a fantastic show, and is about the only thing on TV that is a "must see" every week in my house when new episodes are on. (The boys in the family are a bit more enthusiastic about it than the girls, though. Is that a surprise?)

Nature comes out swinging

Climatologists under pressure : Article : Nature

A pleasingly aggressive editorial in Nature on "climategate".

"Hockey sticks" without tree rings

Another excellent, succinct post from Skeptical Science. (Which, of course, "skeptics" won't read.)

Now it's serious

That Jon Stewart is not always very careful with his analysis was made very clear earlier this year when he opined that Truman was a war criminal for using atomic bombs. In particular, he suggested that it would have more appropriate to set off an A-bomb off shore as a warning first; a view that might make sense if you had certainty that the weapons would always work, had more than two at your disposal, and did not have to make such a massive effort to get even those ones made.

The right wing blogs in the US (correctly) lamblasted Stewart for such careless, off the cuff, thinking.

Now Stewart is being careless and trivialising again, but this time the Right is applauding it, because it's about "Climategate".

What's worse, this wasn't Stewart being put on the spot during an interview, it was a prepared piece. It also tried to have it both ways, claiming at the end that it doesn't prove global warming is a fraud, and trying to ridicule Senator Inhofe for his rabid climate change denial.

It would seem that Stewart, like Monbiot, is not smart enough as to realise that if you offer anything that apparently supports AGW skepticism, AGW skeptics will take it as confirmation that they have "won".

Worse, Stewart's "analysis" of the story was completely trivialising and misleading in exactly the same way AGW skeptics have dealt with it. Going on about the phrase "hide the decline" without knowing the context is completely misleading. (Even Trenberth's "the fact is we can’t account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty" comment is not the same worry that it first appears.) Stewart ended by saying that scientists shouldn't "cut corners" because it undermines the science. As far as I can tell, "climategate" suggests nothing about shortcuts at all. It does raise issues about the provision of data for scrutiny, but even then the context of the (often) harassing and time consuming use to which FOI can be put needs to be considered.

This is a worry because Stewart is (apparently) an influential source of news for his mostly young, hip audience. If even he is going to provide ill-informed or context-free discussion of the issue, he is misleading his audience in exactly the same way some of them probably first thought "hey, that's right. Why didn't we just set off an A bomb as a warning first?"

Someone (a scientist directly in the field, not just a political advocate like Gore) ought to be on the phone to The Daily Show and asking for a "right of reply" to put the emails in context. Stewart might claim "but I said I still believed in AGW", but there is no doubt in my mind that he has done harm to the promotion of good science and policy.

State of play

BBC News - Climate science, from Bali to Copenhagen

This seems like a fairly well balanced account of the current issue in climate science.

Sports Illustrated covers more than I expected

Of course I don't read Sports Illustrated, but First Things posted about what is probably the oddest paragraph ever written in that magazine:

Whether you consider him genuine or fake, Tebow, at the end of the day, is a Heisman Trophy-, SEC- and BCS-title winning quarterback who goes to class, goes to church and circumcises people less fortunate than him. More people should be so intolerable.

Made me laugh, anyway.

Anything good from Copenhagen?

Barry Brook is feeling very, very pessimistic about anything at all useful coming out of Copenhagen:

In December, we’ll see politicians from all manner of countries strutting around on the world stage saying how seriously they take the climate change issue, why delay on action is unacceptable, and why the world must move towards a low carbon economy — “blah di blah blah blah“. They’ll most certainly earnestly commit to a definite emissions reduction target for some far distant date (probably 2050), and will probably also agree to some vague notion of an in-principle x% cut by 2020 (choose whatever value you want for x — it’s meaningless). Everyone will then head home, and the world will go on cranking up the carbon, much as before.

Then, as we continue to dither and meander our way through the next 10 or so years, the squeeze will start to be felt, with the grip of increasingly severe climate impacts (most notably extreme events and some unanticipated abrupt changes), and energy insecurity, inexorably tightening. Oil and natural gas prices will rise substantially, as unavoidable production shortages begin to seriously constrain business-as-usual. Those who can pay for the oil and its derivatives, or those who have the large remaining reserves, will be set inequitably apart from the rest. Continued rising temperatures, increasingly severe short-term events, persistent rainfall shifts (each with a decent chance of sudden step changes), and so on, will make the reality of global warming starkly apparently to all but the most delusional pea brains. At some point — well within the next two decades I suspect — humanity will, under considerable duress and societal upheaval, move at last into emergency mode.

The only problem with that scenario is that it does indeed appear possible that global warming might not take off again in a big way for 5 to 10 years, thereby failing to supply the crisis that Brooks thinks is necessary, and instead give the re-invigorated skeptics air to continue their campaigns.

In an ideal world, a hold in temperature increases for long enough could actually give some breathing room for the development and deployment of new technology. But, in the very real battle of science, human nature, and politics that is underway, its by no means certain how it is going to play out.

Winners(?) and losers

The Great Beyond: Climate change creates shell-size surprise

Nature reports that a new lab study of several types of sea creatures confirms that some actually grow bigger and better shells in lower pH sea water:

Ries and colleagues from Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution grew 18 different species in tanks with differing levels of carbon dioxide. They found seven species had more shell under higher carbon dioxide: crabs, lobsters, shrimp, red and green calcifying algae, limpets and temperate urchins (image top – larger animal grew under higher carbon dioxide).

Another 10 species did worse: oysters, scallops, temperate corals, tube worms, hard and soft clams, conchs, periwinkles, whelks and tropical urchins (image lower – smaller animal grew under higher carbon dioxide). Only one species was unaffected, the humble mussel, they report in Geology.

That Nature link at the top will probably stop working soon, but the press release it is based on is here. The researchers note that this study is pretty preliminary, as the didn't account for nutrient levels. Moreover, the ecological effect of one species building a bigger, stronger shell is not at all clear:

“I wouldn’t make any predictions based on these results. What these results indicate to us is that the organism response to elevated CO2 levels is complex and we now need to go back and study each organism in detail.”

Ries concurs that any possible ramifications are complex. For example, the crab exhibited improved shell-building capacity, and its prey, the clams, showed reduced calcification. “This may initially suggest that crabs could benefit from this shift in predator-pray dynamics. But without shells, clams may not be able to sustain their populations, and this could ultimately impact crabs in a negative way, as well,” Ries said.

In addition, Cohen adds, even though some organisms such as crabs and lobsters appear to benefit under elevated CO2 conditions, the energy they expend in shell building under these conditions “might divert from other important processes such as reproduction or tissue building.”

No surprise

Peru officer suspended over human fat killers 'lie'

I didn't post about this story when it broke, as it had too much of the smell of an urban myth about it. Seems my hunch was right.

Another case of "as I suspected"

Quote mining code : Deltoid

Tim Lambert has a careful look at the claim exciting Boltians and others that there was "proof" of data manipulation in some code including in the leaked CRU files.

Appears to be nothing of the sort. But will Andrew Bolt look at this? I doubt he would ever deem it worthy of his time to look at sites which present the other side of a claim made by a AGW skeptic.

The very old party base and email

Climate scorches Liberals' unity

In my arguments about the "grassroots" campaign apparently waged by Liberal Party rank and file to get Turnbull to delay the ETS, I have mentioned that the average age of the party members was pretty old, and older people are much more likely (for unclear reasons) to not believe in AGW.

Well, it seems I was certainly right about the age of party membership:

When the Victorian Liberal Party conducted a review after the Howard government's defeat, it found that the average age of its members was 60-plus. Few younger Australians are climate change sceptics, and a party that retreats to an unrepresentative base is unlikely to be elected.

The other curious thing, though, is that various Liberals have been claiming to have received "thousands" of emails from concerned constituents. Paul Sheehan writes today:

''I have never seen anything like it,'' said Senator Concetta Fierravanti-Wells when I called to ask why she publicly abandoned Turnbull's leadership on Friday. By yesterday afternoon her office had logged almost 8000 emails and calls opposing the proposed emissions trading scheme.

There is something pretty fishy about this, if you ask me. As the average age of the party member seems to be so old, surely there is a smaller proportion of them who are internet users in the first place.

Paul Sheehan explains how Alan Jones was leading this anti-CPRS campaign in Sydney. I wouldn't mind betting that there has been some young Jones acolytes behind the flood of emails, and that it significantly over-represents the size of the concern.

UPDATE: James Farrell at Club Troppo also worries about Alan Jones undue influence in national affairs. Here are the key paragraphs:

...if it’s true that Jones inspired the letter campaign, it raises two issues. One is the ability of radio ranters like him to exert influence vastly out of proportion to their knowledge and wisdom. This influence corrupts the democratic process: ideally, citizens take information from a range of sources (including the superior blogs) in the market for ideas, and weigh them up, rather than adopt fully formed opinions from one shrill source. It’s not just that these broadcasters are propaganda tools for vested interests; the type of individual whose opininated ravings rate highly also tends to be motivated by quite arbitrary personal prejudices and preoccupations.

In Jones’s case a relevant foible is that he can’t happen to stand anyone who refuses to be sycophantic. He is vindictiveness itself when not shown due deference. It was astounding to see Turnbull stand up to him in the interview last month (read Sheehan for some highlights), and I confess to having lazily thought to myself, it’s nice to see a federal leader refusing to be cowed by this demagogue. What I’d forgotten is that they grovel for a good reason, and in the last week we may have seen the chickens coming home to roost. Now, it’s possible that Jones helped destroy Turnbull at the behest wealthy and powerful interests, but — and this is my point — it may just have been because Turnbull got under his skin. And that isn’t a healthy basis for determining the course of climate policy.

I've never understood Jones' appeal as a broadcaster.

Ziggy agrees with me, at last

Over the last couple of years, I have been saying that part of the problem with converting the Australian public to use nuclear power is that large nuclear power plants usually use large amounts of cooling water, and in Australian would therefore probably be dotted around the coast. This was certainly the suggestion in Ziggy Switkowski's report on nuclear commissioned by John Howard. The image was of 25 gigantic stations taking up nice bits of coastal views (not to mention warmed water being pumped into the ocean.)

As Australians are, I think, particularly fond of a bit of unspoiled coast, planting nuclear power on them is unappealing.

But, I said, what about smaller, new types of nuclear which do not use water, and can be deployed away from the coast and more discretely? It would seem logical that they can also start making a difference faster than all the planning and building that goes into huge nuclear power plants.

Well, I am happy to report that Ziggy agrees. In his column in the Sydney Morning Herald today, he writes:

Compact reactors are expected on the market by about 2015. These reactors are appealing because they are gas cooled (and therefore do not require access to water), can be incrementally extended, are perhaps the size of two shipping containers, can be built underground, and are much less intimidating than a full-scale installation.

The introduction of nuclear power via these smaller installations may be the path which wins Australian community and political support earliest.

Well, about time you caught up with me, Ziggy.

Sounds about right

Why single-sex schools are bad for your health (if you're a boy)

This study from England will apparently show:

....that boys taught in singlesex schools are more likely to be divorced or separated from their partner than those who attended a mixed school by their early 40s.

I am not surprised. I went to a small Catholic primary school and then a State (mixed sex) high school. Many of my former primary school (male) friends went to a Catholic single sex high school. It always seemed to me that their experience gave them a peculiar, competitive and overall unpleasant attitude towards girls. It's hard to describe it exactly, but it still seemed quite distinct to me. Regular religious instruction in high school seemed to have an extremely limited influence on sexual behaviour, too.

I am not sure that it is a good idea for girls either. I was told by a woman I was dating once about how much she hated the social experience of her Catholic high school due to the incredible level of, well, bitchiness between the girls. One might have thought that, in the absence of males to directly compete about, there would be less of that, but apparently not.

It's a small sample, I know, but it's enough for me to want to make sure my kids both go to mixed sex high schools.

Let the healing begin.....ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha

So the Liberal Party chooses a new leader, who, even before last week's meltdown, no one has ever thought electable as PM, and who has now set himself up as the puppet of the do-nothing AGW skeptics, yet has to work out what policy on the topic he can credibly bring to the next election.

Farce on a spectacular scale!

Possible good outcome: by losing by one vote, will Malcolm be convinced to wait around and have again after the next election? Would he happy leading an Opposition of about 30?

Goose

I'm typing this while watching my very own local MP Michael Johnson being interviewed on Lateline. He is a complete goose. I will enjoy not voting for him next election.

You may go back to what you were doing.

Appleyard on AGW

Global warming is real - Times Online

Bryan Appleyard explains how he came around to believing in AGW. That's a relief. He's not exactly conservative, but he is philosophically leery of much of science. If he had come out as a skeptic, I would have been disappointed.

Annabel Crabb on Malcolm's "crash or crash through" tactics

The mad splendour of King Malcolm - ABC News

What's this Annabel Crabb piece doing on the ABC site? Anyway, it's a pretty amusing, even though I still can't bring myself to criticise Turnbull for his tactics. For example:

Watching Laurie Oakes' interview with Mr Turnbull yesterday was to watch a man carefully, deliberately and coolly securing bomb belts around every inch of his person....

All year, he has seemed dull and muffled, as he struggled to placate the warring sides of his party and arrive, through a grim series of manoeuvrings and tactical dodges, to avoid the chasm that lies at the centre of this policy debate for the Liberal Party.

Now, out on his own, increasingly friendless and bristling with self-timed explosive devices, he's never seemed more alive.

Many people have said that his getting stuck into Minchin was a problem because Minchin is held in high regard by many in the party. Why?? Any goodwill people may have borne towards him should be overcome by his forcing a coup because his side lost in the party room.

When is telling the truth acceptable in politics?

I've been thinking. I am strongly of the view that the Liberal Party's current crisis was instituted by Senator Nick Minchin and his skeptic buddies, for no clear reason, telling the truth to Four Corners about their disbelief of the science of AGW. (Yes, I know, they would claim they are the ones interpreting the science correctly, but I would be willing to bet money that their main source of information is Andrew Bolt and his completely one sided, and completely irresponsible, assessment.)

But since Malcolm Turnbull went on TV yesterday and set out in exact detail what he thought of Minchin and his ilk and the disastrous course for the future of the party if they had their way, commentators are suggesting that he went too far in his truthful assessment. For example, Milne writes:

Support for Mr Turnbull was haemorrhaging even before he embarked on a damaging series of media interviews over the weekend, including with the Nine Network's Laurie Oakes, in which he lashed Nick Minchin, Tony Abbott and "cuddly" Joe Hockey.

I have to agree that the use of "cuddly" was not wise.

But every commentator and pollster in the land agrees with Turnbull's assessment of the coming disaster if Hockey takes over and does not get an ETS passed before the next election.

Everyone accepts that politicians lie in the course of leadership fights. Crises are denied, loyalties are pledged, and positions switched in extremely short order.

That's why the sudden outbreak of truth from Turnbull is something I find hard to criticise, even though I suppose it guarantees that even if did win, he'd only be able to pick a cabinet from about half of the party room.

But here is a really important point that has been poorly reported: I only understood yesterday (from watching Lenore Taylor on Insiders) that the party room numbers, when you include Cabinet members (and why shouldn't you?) did vote by a clear majority to pass the ETS (49 to 46, even including the Nationals. Exclude the Nationals and it was an even clearer win within the Liberals) That Minchin and Tuckey came out arguing that Turnbull did not have the numbers is based on a creative interpretation that you only count backbenchers when deciding party policy. How much sense does that make?

In other words, this entire leadership spill is, as Turnbull has been saying, simply about the losing side on a hard-fought policy issue refusing to accept the party room decision. As I have been saying over at Catallaxy, it seems that it's all about how they did not like the way Turnbull announced his win.

Well, if that is the calibre of the Minchin rebels, they actually deserve to be purged from the party, I reckon. If the party can't bring itself to split, I certainly hope that the electorate achieves the same result.

UPDATE: another point I forgot to make, and virtually no media commentator seems to have mentioned it either: Peter Dutton as deputy doesn't make a hell of a lot of sense when it's very unclear that he can hold onto his own seat, does it? If people thought it was a bad look for the party that Howard lost his seat last election, we now have the prospect of both a new leader and his deputy going down. It would be good for a gloat, but as even most Labor supporters would say, not having a reasonably strong opposition is usually bad for the country in the long run.

And another point: with all of this hoo-har about the (in truth, fake, right wing radio jocks led) Liberal grass roots uprising against the Party supporting the ETS, who exactly are those people going to rush to vote for in the next election anyway? The Climate Skeptics Party? (I am dying to see the quality of their candidates, and the loopy ideas they'll drag along behind them. It'll be One Nation all over again.)

UPDATE 2: Lenore Taylor in The Australian looks at the policy options the Liberals have, assuming the CPRS does not get passed after a Senate enquiry.

At some point, if they want any credibility at all, the party would have to come up with some policy that puts a price on carbon. And in whatever form you do it, you can call it a "tax on everything", as the Minchin followers are doing for the CPRS.

Given their rhetorical, the Minchin rebels have undercut the credibility of any alternative the Liberals can come up with, even if in fact it may be a better proposal than the Labor policy.

What will happen to the power stations of Victoria

Power giants crying foul? What a joke!

Kenneth Davidson reckons the panic being promoted over problems in the Victorian power industry is just a beat up. I suspect he is right.

His alternative to an ETS also has a pleasing simplicity about it:

The flawed CPRS should be replaced with a broad-based carbon tax. If it was set initially at $10 a tonne it would be hardly noticed, it would raise $5 billion a year and all the money could be spent on green infrastructure instead of the financial bubble if the CPRS goes ahead.

Let's not forget... ocean acidification

It's been a couple of weeks since I mentioned ocean acidification. You'd think that someone, even George Monbiot, might mention it in the context of "Climategate" (which I still reckon will amount to nothing in the long run) as the other big reason why rapid CO2 increase is Not a Good Idea.

So, what's new from the Ocean Acidification blog?:

a. a couple of types of plankton (two species of coccolithophore) show reduced growth under increased dissolved CO2, even when the increase is more gradual than in some of other experiments;

b. another study on 4 different strains of coccolithophore indicates that they respond differently to increased CO2, presumably on a genetic basis. This is possibly a good thing, if you assume the ones that take increased CO2 in their stride replace those that suffer decreased calcification. But it's going to be very difficult to experimentally tell if that is what will happen in the oceans, I would have thought.

c. a report from an unlikely source (iStockAnalyst!) says that the waters off Japan are showing lower pH:

A group of scientists, led by Takashi Midorikawa of the Meteorological Research Institute in Tsukuba, Ibaraki Prefecture, has checked the pH readings of surface seawater off the Kii Peninsula at 30 degrees north latitude that have been made since 1986. They have found that the pH has dropped by 0.04 during this period, a considerable change. Such ocean acidification has been observed elsewhere as well, such as off Hawaii.

It seems that this is the 3rd report of long term (20 plus years) measurements which are indeed showing that ocean acidification is happening as predicted:

a. the Hawaiian study from earlier this year;
b. the Icelandic ocean study, which has just been updated, and
c. now Japan.

While there seems to be a considerable divergence in the actual rate of acidification, water temperatures and other factors presumably have a role.

Still, it seems that the skeptic response that ocean acidification can't happen (or isn't happening,) which seemed to be the position of Ian Plimer and Bob Carter, for example, just isn't sustainable.

4. Here's an interesting report on current work underway with coring coral in the Caribbean to see if growth rates can be correlated to decreasing pH. It will very interesting if they replicate the findings of a study on Australian coral.

5. Cuttlefish (and other cephalopod?) eggs are affected by decreased pH, but it seems unclear whether in a good way or a bad way. (They absorb less cadmium, but more silver.) All kind of complicated, isn't it?

Bad for my health

I am officially too depressed about the state of Liberal politics in Australia today to post. Combined with a lack of sleep from a series of early wake ups from the local bird life this last week, I suspect that political idiocy has raised my blood pressure.

I've been commenting at other places, but it's taking up all my time. Must...stop...doing...that.

Tell me, Tony

Malcolm Turnbull is 100% right. It is electoral disaster looming for the Coalition not just for the nest election, but probably for the next few electoral cycles.

I've been arguing all day at Catallaxy about the hopeless, politically inept, rabble of climate skeptics in the Liberals who think that a rush to the phones by the Liberal party members (what, average age probably 55, and avid readers of such sound sources of climate science like Andrew Bolt?) means that they should renege on an approach (good faith negotiations with Labor) they only agreed to a few week ago.

And my question: Tony Abbott, how are you going to deal with an ETS when you are leader? See what happens at Copenhagen? You think you are ever going to get Minchin et al to agree to any action at all on CO2? You are going to lead the Party to the next election as the Party dominated by do nothing skeptics, regardless of whether that election be a double dissolution or later. You think that's a winning strategy?

Absolutely hopeless (if, like me, you are normally inclined towards Coalition policies.) It's the 1980's all over again - Labor with no end in sight.

What's realistic and what's not

Climate experts debate strategies for reducing atmospheric carbon and future warming

There's some discussion by some Cornell guys as to whether CO2 at 350, 450 or 500 ppm is "realistic."

Given that we're already well above 350ppm, that figure isn't coming back anytime soon:

Even if all CO2 emissions were to stop today, the gas already in the atmosphere would stay there for another century or two, maintaining warmth. But activists need to set firm goals.

"It's the best political strategy," Wolfe said of the 350 ppm goal. "If we allow slack, it will never happen."

Seems a silly suggestion, really. But is the planet already committed to a 2 degree rise?:

Part of the problem are delayed effects that have already committed the planet to warming on the order of 2.4 degrees Celsius (4.3 degrees Fahrenheit) by the end of the century, regardless of reductions in greenhouse gas emissions from today's levels. For example, as the ocean warms, it stores the heat and very slowly releases it to the atmosphere, creating a lag time in temperature equilibrium between the atmosphere and the ocean. Furthermore, due the ocean's great mass and heat capacity, it will take 1,000 years to reverse this century's warming and gradually reduce the heat already building up in the ocean, said Greene. Also, as pollution abatement strategies kick in this century, aerosols that now cool the atmosphere will decline, adding to warmth.

But, Greene added, the goal of 350 ppm can be reached and a calamitous warming halted if governments finance geo-engineering strategies that pull CO2 from the air and store it in the Earth.

For example, Greene and others advocate research to try to scale up simple machines already devised that draw CO2 from the atmosphere and then find ways to pump the gas into underground geological formations.

This (mechanically extracting enough CO2 from the atmosphere) sounds an extremely improbable solution to me.

Quick - someone slap George in the face

Pretending the climate email leak isn't a crisis won't make it go away | George Monbiot | Environment | guardian.co.uk

I can't believe George Monbiot cannot see the harm he is doing in his columns about "climategate". Someone slap him in the face and tell him to pull himself together.

Again today he has a column in which he complains that it is a major crisis damaging not the truth of climate science, but the appearance of climate science.

Yet by doing that, he provides for fodder for selectively quoting skeptics (like Andrew Bolt) to support their claim that it is a crisis of the truth of the science.

George, yes it may be a bit of a PR problem, but you're not helping by continuing to write in ways that let skeptics feed off you. Stop running around shouting "Panic!...Don't panic!...Panic!...Don't panic"

Some light relief

“2012” review : The New Yorker

Anthony Lane reviewed 2012, and while not as funny as some of his reviews, it's somewhat amusing:

“2012” is so long, and its special effects are at once so outrageous and so thunderously predictable, that by the time I lurched from the theatre I felt that three years had actually passed and that the apocalypse was due any second. Emmerich’s main achievement is to take a bunch of excellent actors, including Danny Glover, Thandie Newton, Chiwetel Ejiofor, and Woody Harrelson, and to prevent all of them—with the exception of Oliver Platt and a pair of giraffes—from giving a decent performance. As for the statement issued by the governor of California, in response to the catastrophe, just block your ears. Obviously, the producers couldn’t hire the genuine article, so instead they looked around and found the world’s worst Schwarzenegger impersonator, thus adding to the general sense of gruesome make-believe.

Fair comment

Observations: Climate change cover-up? You better believe it

This take on the CRU email controversy seems about right. I note this in particular:

You can judge the emails for yourself at this wonderful searchable database. While the revelations about pressuring the peer review process and apparent slowness in responding to an avalanche of requests for information unveil something below impressive scientific and personal behavior, they can also be seen as the frustrated responses of people working on complex data under deadline while being harassed by political opponents.

Note the adjective there. Political, not scientific, opponents. Because the opposition here is not grounded in any robust scientific theory or alternative hypotheses (all of those, in their time, have been shot down and nothing new has been offered in years) but a hysterical reaction to the possibly of what? One-world government? The return of communism? If that's the fear, perhaps someone can explain why the preferred solution to climate change offered by former proponents of inaction is nuclear power. Has there ever been a nuclear reactor built anywhere in the world that didn't rely on government to get it done? Sounds like socialism, doesn't it? Hello France? USSR? USA?....

There is, in fact, a climate conspiracy. It just happens to be one launched by the fossil fuel industry to obscure the truth about climate change and delay any action. And this release of emails right before the Copenhagen conference is just another salvo—and a highly effective one—in that public relations battle, redolent with the scent of the same flaks and hacks who brought you "smoking isn't dangerous."

Someone have a private word with them

Why on earth would Kevin Andrews think he has any chance at all of being a convincing leader of the Liberals? He has never seemed to be the sort of person who ever want more than a Ministerial role.

And Tony Abbott: has always been too blunt, and too Catholic (although I think he has been working on watering that down) to be appealing to the broader Australian electorate.

If the party room replaces Turnbull for either of these, it will show their appalling judgement. Wilson Tuckey, don't you have a pub to retire to?

Using the world's fish more sensibly

Alternative animal feed part of global fisheries crisis fix

"Thirty million tons -- or 36 per cent -- of the world's total fisheries catch each year is currently ground up into fishmeal and oil to feed farmed fish, chickens and pigs," says UBC fisheries researcher Daniel Pauly...

"Globally, pigs and chickens alone consume six times the amount of seafood as US consumers and twice that of Japan," says lead author Jennifer Jacquet, a post-doctoral fellow at UBC's Fisheries Centre. "Ultimately these farm animals have a greater impact on our seafood supplies than the most successful seafood certification program."

Kind of surprising.

More on cat germs and schizophrenia

Scientists Find Unusual Immune System Activity in Brains of Schizophrenics

....researchers in Sweden and Germany found that recent-onset schizophrenics-- those first showing symptoms, usually young adults-- had elevated amounts of interleukin-1beta in their spinal fluid. In normal controls, IL-1beta levels were nearly undetectable.

The researchers looked at around 10 common cytokines, proteins used by the body's defenses to communicate with immune cells, but only IL-1beta was unusually expressed in the mentally ill patients. ...

As early as the 1970s, some scientists have suggested that schizophrenia, which afflicts about 1 percent of the U.S. population, could be triggered by an infection.

A popular candidate has been the protozoan Toxoplasma gondii, transmitted from cat feces or uncooked meats. Engberg says infection from the toxoplasma parasite more than doubles one's risk for schizophrenia. "Toxoplasma gondii appears to be one of several micro-organisms that can trigger [the] brain immune system," he says.

Andrew Bolt: smear merchant

I like the way Andrew Bolt posts about a Watts Up With That item which quotes some programmer's comments found amongst code that skeptics thinks sounds like more "tricks".

Andrew quotes with approval Watts saying that they (the climate scientists) can't "spin" this, yet at the end of this long post, Bolt says:

This is not proof of malpractice or anything untoward. But it does require explanation.

Oh I see then.

And in fact, quite a large number of software people in comments at WUWT are saying that it means precisely nothing. Gavin Schmidt says it is completely uncontroversial. But conspiracy skeptics will seize on anything, whether they understand it or not, and crap on about "conspiracy proved".

It's Watts and Bolt who are engaging in spin, in fact the only word for their posts is smear.

The more I read the way skeptics are crowing that they have proved a global conspiracy as a result of these emails, the more I understand why climate scientists on the AGW side simply can't stand the time wasting, muddy-the-water, fingers-in-the-ear tactics of the great bulk of skeptics.

And Bolt has no common sense when it comes to seeing how his own promotion of skepticism has virtually made it politically impossible for Turnbull to credibly delay the Coalition dealing with the government's ETS legislation. (If Turnbull wants to position the Liberals as not being dominated by do-nothing conspiracy mongers, he has to force a decision now.)

UPDATE: Andrew Bolt and his minions are now all very excited about a George Monbiott column which, I have to admit, is pretty strange.

Monbiott, who showed some smarts in setting rules before he would debate Ian Plimer, seems to have throw all PR knowledge to the wind by writing a column that both involves wringing of hands about how "bad" the CRU emails are, and insisting that this goes absolutely no where near disproving global warming.

Surely he realised that conspiracy-skeptics would dance around the first two paragraphs, claim victory and ignore the bulk of his column?

"Miracles," "anti-miracles," the LHC and underpants

Holger Nielsen of the Neils Bohr Institute, whose idea that the future may prevent the LHC from ever working properly was noted on this blog last year (way ahead of the world's media noticing, by the way) has been busy writing more articles about his surprising theories. Now he uses the terms "miracle", "anti-miracle" and even "miraculocity", so naturally I am interested.

This article from October seemingly argues that letting the decision to start up the LHC (or restrict its power) according to a card drawing/random number process is still a good idea, as if it works, it will prove backwards causation. If the random draw says everything is OK to proceed, then nothing has been lost. (Look, I think that is what he is saying, but this is not so easy to follow.)

As CERN is not about to let its multi billion dollar investment be held up by bad luck in a card draw, I guess we aren't going to see this experiment happen.

However, Nielsen is not giving up. In another article out last week, he talks about the black hole information loss problem, and how one particular solution for this can be fitted in with their "imaginary action model" and provide further reason why the LHC may never operate properly because the universe just might never let it happen. (Yes, it has just got a beam going again, but I think it is many months away from building up to high energy collisions beyond those other accelerators have already achieved.)

Nielsen's article is also, incidentally, almost certainly the only physics paper to ever refer to both high energy physics and champignon growing.

Here's what the abstract says:

This model naturally begins effectively to set up boundaries - whether it be in future or past! - especially strongly whenever we reach to high energy physics regimes, such as near the black hole singularity, or in Higgs producing machines as LHC or SSC. In such cases one can say our model predicts miracles. The point is that you may say that the information loss problem, unless you solve it in other ways, call for such a violation of time causality as in our imaginary action model!

And from the paper's conclusion, tortured English and all:

For phenomenological reasons it is of course needed that under “normal” conditions the amount of backward causation - or as we also refered to cases of backward causation, miracles or anti miracles - should be seldom. This is indeed the case both by thinking of Hartle Hawking no-boundary (mainly showing up in black holes, which are phenomenologically badly known) and in our “imaginary part of action model”, in which it is though needed a somewhat speculative argumentation to argue that the cases of backward causation get so seldom as needed for agreement with dayly life experience. We think, however, that there is a good chanse that the restriction from the history of the universe having to obey the (classical) equations of motion (at least approximately) could impose so strong restrictions on the amount of backward causation or miracles or anti miracles that it would not disagree with present knowledge. In this way we want to claim that our model is viable so far.

He does not address the issue of whether or not the baguette that nearly caused a problem recently was a "miracle". I suppose it was a pretty ineffective one, which perhaps makes it self disqualifying as a miracle anyway. A bit like Jesus curing an ingrown toenail for a day.

Ever since the baguette episode, I have been thinking about what it would take (in terms of unusual objects turning up within the LHC) to count as a miracle, and not just an unusual event. I think Tim Train's missing underpants being found as a blockage in the coolant system would count. In fact, nearly any Australian non-physicist's pair of underpants appearing up in a sensitive spot in the LHC tunnel might count. But we have to be able to identify where they came from.

For this reason, I propose that all Australians who have never been to Europe should immediately start writing their name and the date of purchase in large indelible marker pen on their underpants, in the interests of science. Men, your wives and girlfriends will understand: just refer them to this blog. Women: well, I somehow doubt you will follow my underwear writing directions anyway. Speculative physics is probably more of a male interest, after all.

A pair of Bonds briefs that appear within the LHC bearing a future date would be particularly convincing.

I joke, but I shouldn't. I would quite like backwards causation to be proved. It would give me hope of receiving Lotto numbers from the future one day.

Dubious prescriptions

Medical Marijuana - No Longer Just for Adults - NYTimes.com

The New York Times reports that:

Several Bay Area doctors who recommend medical marijuana for their patients said in recent interviews that their client base had expanded to include teenagers with psychiatric conditions including attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder.

I like this response:

“How many ways can one say ‘one of the worst ideas of all time?’ ” asked Stephen Hinshaw, the chairman of the psychology department at the University of California, Berkeley. He cited studies showing that tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC, the active ingredient in cannabis, disrupts attention, memory and concentration — functions already compromised in people with the attention-deficit disorder.

The problem is that only California allows medical marijuana not only for cancer and AIDS, but “for any other illness for which marijuana provides relief.”

In the weird world of marijuana promoting doctors, we get comments like this:

Marijuana is “a godsend” for some people with A.D.H.D., said Dr. Edward M. Hallowell, a psychiatrist who has written several books on the disorder. However, Dr. Hallowell said he discourages his patients from using it, both because it is — mostly — illegal, and because his observations show that “it can lead to a syndrome in which all the person wants to do all day is get stoned, and they do nothing else.”

What I don't understand is why, if a government is convinced that THC might work for some illnesses, can't they insist that the it be delivered in a more reliably measured way other than by smoking it. Can't it be taken in carefully measured dose via a medicine to be swallowed, for example?

Anti-CPRS from the left side

This ETS-lite deserves to be rejected

Kenneth Davidson has been reading the Friends of the Earth anti ETS report I mentioned here recently.

This part I hadn't heard before:

Offsets are an imaginary commodity created by deducing what you hope happens from what you guess would have happened.

It should be self-evident: a ton of carbon in wood is not going to be ''sequestered'' from the atmosphere as safely, or as long, as a ton of carbon in an unmined underground coal deposit.

But Australia tried to introduce a refinement to make rorting of the scheme even easier. According to Spash, during negotiations in Bonn before the 2009 Copenhagen summit on new Kyoto targets, Australia argued for excluding natural disasters, which basically means if, say, forests planted as offsets burnt down they would be treated as still existing.

So, that was it

I finally caught up with the much acclaimed (by everyone other than Tim Train) film Samson & Delilah on TV tonight.

Tim, I'm pretty much with you on this one. It reminded me of European films I have watched on SBS from the (perhaps less popular now than it used to be) "social-realism-at-the-expense-of-a- story-arc-or-dramatic-interest" school of film making. This involves competently filmed and acted movies about people leading hopeless and depressing lives at both the start and end of the film, regardless of what has happened in a more or less plausible way in the middle, thereby raising the question "what exactly was the point of that?"

But I have some specific, slightly narky, comments too:

1. While I don't have first hand experience to draw on, my impression was that "Samson" did not seem zonked out enough after sniffing petrol. Also, his whole body looked unrealistically healthy for someone who seemed to not have eaten properly for years.

2. "Delilah's" hair looked unusually good in the township after cutting it herself with a knife. Who knew hairdressing was so easy?

3. Andrew Bolt liked it because it showed a remote aboriginal community as a terrible, hopeless place to live full of social problems. (It even showed the old style "someone must be blamed for a death" thinking.) And indeed, I thought while watching the first 45 minutes that it was a wonder that the left wing world of movie critics didn't feel a bit insulted on behalf of aborigines for their being painted in such a hopeless light.

But, when the kids hit town, all of this is righted when the story threads go on to include white people engaging in aboriginal economic exploitation, rape and battery, and callous disregard even by the church. (Although by the end there seemed to some partial acknowledgement that the church helps some aborigines, occasionally.)

Ah, I thought, this is why it was OK for white movie critics to like it after all.

That and the fact that by the end of the film the suggested answer to the social isolation, boredom and poverty of our heroes was to move to a place where they were even more isolated, poor, and (at least for Samson) bored. But giving Samson a bath and putting a clean shirt on him was meant to make us feel they had a future. Presumably, the idea was that the girl would make a living by her painting.

Of course, David Strattan saw this as an wildly optimistic finish. Probably because of the dubious idea that they were now connecting more with their land and everything would naturally then be much better. Not very likely, in my books. It also seems odd that a film which seemingly carries the message (with apologies to Sartre) "Hell is other aborigines" is cast as optimistic.

4. Big, big spoiler warning: I have a confession to make. Things were going so badly for this pair when they were in town that I was expecting some disaster: perhaps spontaneous human combustion by Samson after sniffing so much petrol, or the bridge collapsing on them. So when Delilah suddenly got hit by a car, in a pretty convincing looking fashion too, I might add, I laughed. (A laugh at both my foresight and surprise, I suppose.) Good thing I didn't do that in a cinema.

All about those emails

What do I think about those leaked CRU emails? Take a shower, a very cold one, excitable skeptics.

This summary of the emails (from skeptical site Watts Up With That, so you can trust it) indicates that most of them are about fighting skeptical views in various ways, but very few are even suggestive of doing it by actually manipulating data or how it is presented.

As I am sure everyone reading this knows, the most "famous" email (referencing a "trick" to "hide the decline") is said by Real Climate to not actually hide anything. It would seem that McIntyre disagrees, but honestly, his obsession with hockey stick graphs gets into so much detail I cannot follow most of his arguments. I doubt that 90% of skeptics who follow him understand much of his statistics talk either.

I should add, as that email is about the hockey stick controversy, that I still don't really understand why skeptics seemingly think this is "be all and end all" of AGW science. I have never taken that big an interest in the graph, because I always suspected that the hockey stick shape might be a little too dramatic to be true. But, as we also have actual thermometers to tell the temperature over the last century or so, I assumed the graph was not actually critical to proving AGW anyway.

My hunch appears basically correct. Bob Ward summarises the hockey stick controversy this way:

The attacks on the hockey stick graph led the United States National Academy of Sciences to carry out an investigation, concluding in 2006 that although there had been no improper conduct by the researchers, they may have expressed higher levels of confidence in their main conclusions than was warranted by the evidence.

The 'sceptics' believe they have been vindicated and have presented the hockey stick graph as proof that global warming is not occurring. In doing so, they have ignored the academy's other conclusion that "surface temperature reconstructions for periods prior to the industrial era are only one of multiple lines of evidence supporting the conclusion that climatic warming is occurring in response to human activities, and they are not the primary evidence".

And Skeptical Science writes:

In the skeptic blogosphere, there is a disproportionate preoccupation with one small aspect of climate science - proxy record reconstructions of past climate (or even worse, ad hominem attacks on the scientists who perform these proxy reconstructions). This serves to distract from the physical realities currently being observed...

When you read through the many global warming skeptic arguments, a pattern emerges. Each skeptic argument misleads by focusing on one small piece of the puzzle while ignoring the broader picture. To focus on a few suggestive emails while ignoring the wealth of empirical evidence for manmade global warming is yet another repeat of this tactic.

The emails do suggest that at least one scientist is very concerned about explaining the plateau-ing of global temperatures in the last 10 years, but this tells us nothing as to how many really think like him.

As many have said, the emails show that scientists are human and really resent being accused of dishonesty, fraud and being part of a nefarious global conspiracy. They also think it is important that people (and governments) believe them.

Ideally science should not get so personal. But it does, and skeptics can hardly claim the high moral ground when it comes to accusations, name calling and spiteful comments about the other side.

I would bet money that these emails make next to no difference in the short or long run.

I would also like to point out that they do not comment at all on ocean acidification, the other reason CO2 needs to be curbed quickly.

Cool sub

Britain's got a new type of attack nuclear submarine, and the best video of it is available via The Independent, but I can't see a way to link directly to the video or to embed it. (The link is currently in the "Latest News" column on the front page.)

The BBC video is much shorter, and barely shows the submarine, but it is notable for the odd way the Admiral says at the end that being a submariner "is about having fun"(!). (I also note that, as a continuing sympton of my advancing age, even Admirals and Rear Admirals are starting to look just too young for the job.)

There must be video from somewhere I can embed. Nope, I can't, just yet.

Anyway, The Telegraph explains what this new class of new attack submarine is supposedly capable of doing:

The Astute, the first attack submarine to be built in Britain almost two decades, has a listening system that can detect the QE2 cruise liner leaving New York harbour from the Channel.

(I find that hard to believe, but it is matter just slightly out of my field of knowledge.)

The submarine will be able to sit off coasts undetected listening in to mobile phone conversations and has the ability to insert Special Forces by mini submersibles into enemy territory where they can direct the boat's Tomahawk cruise missiles with a range of 1,400 miles.

Sounds very James Bond. I like this bit:

The Astute is the first submarine not to have a conventional periscope. Instead a fibre optic tube - equipped with infra red and thermal imaging - pops above the surface for three seconds, does one rotation and then feeds an image in colour that can be studied at leisure. The nuclear power plant has is the size of a family car.

Don't let her breed

Meet Hobbie-J, the smartest rat in the world - Science, News - The Independent

I can see a new rat horror film in the making:

A rat is impressing American scientists with her extraordinary intellect.

Hobbie-J has been dubbed the smartest rat in the world after its NR2B gene, which controls memory, was boosted as an embryo. The rodent can remember objects three times as long as its smartest peers and can better solve complicated puzzles like mazes.

Andrew's (and other skeptic's) problem

Poor old Nick Minchin, and any other skeptical mates from South Australia.

It is, shall we say, not a good look to be jumping up and down about the "craziness" of any type of global warming action when your own State is undergoing a record breaking heat wave in a season not previously recognized as usually being exceptionally hot at all. Minchin has shot himself in the foot in the most spectacular way possible. His criticism yesterday seemed to be against any CPRS legislation going through before Copenhagen, which of itself is not an unreasonable point. But he can't expect to be taken seriously on any point about global warming now due to his self-outing as one who believes it's all a socialist conspiracy. (That and the fact his State is melting in spring, let alone summer.)

And poor old Andrew Bolt. He's getting upset that the Liberals like Tony Abbott, who seems to want to be a skeptic but can't quite bring himself up to the level of Minchin paranoia, just aren't studying his column enough to be able to use dubious skeptical arguments against Tony Jones.

I stick to my belief that Bolt has boxed himself in on this issue years ago, finding a contrarian approach successful in terms of drawing ardent followers to his blog, but now to admit he might be wrong would just cause too much loss of face.

It has long been hard to believe that he genuinely thinks that some of the graphs he posts again and again (most notably, the UAH monthly temperature anomaly graph since 1979) convinces your average punter that there isn't a long term trend to be seen. (Even ignoring 1998, run a line across the peaks over that period.)

His favourite skeptic blog - Watts up With That - does (occasionally) run posts which indicate AGW modelling is right, or indicating a skeptical argument might be wrong, but Andrew rarely (never?) mentions those posts. But he will mention posts such as the one about the degree of skepticism amongst TV weather presenters, as if it matters. Or posts claiming to cite hundreds of "skeptical" peer reviewed papers, when many of them are not skeptical at all, and a large chunk are from a publication (Energy and Environment) that no one with science credibility takes seriously.

No, if this summer goes as bad as this spring is indicating, Andrew will just start have to consider admitting that he might just be wrong, loss of face or not.

UPDATE: this appears to confirm my strong suspicion that for the Coalition to follow Bolt's urgings and embrace AGW skepticism would be electoral suicide.

Again, that's not to say that they could not have made out a good case for not passing the CPRS at the moment, but they can't credibly do it when they have a divided house over the grounds upon which they may wish to do it.

Thus, by gee-ing on the AGW skeptics, Andrew Bolt has inadvertently hurt his own cause.

But to be fair - by convincing some that the CPRS will actually work anywhere near fast enough, and by their evident complete lack of interest in taking nuclear power for Australia seriously, there is a strong argument that Kevin Rudd and the Labor Party is the more dangerous enemy of effective CO2 action.

It's a case of virtually everyone being wrong, for a kaleidoscope of reasons.

Don't forget to "celebrate"...

World Toilet Day | November 19, 2009

(Sounds funny, but actually quite a worthy subject. I kind of wish that their big demonstration was something other than "The Big Squat" though.)

Darwinian thoughts

Charles Darwin and the children of the evolution - Times Online

This article is a pretty interesting discussion of the use/abuse of Darwinian ideas by people like teenage psychopaths, eugenics advocates and others. (Did you know know that the Columbine school murderers thought they were engaged in the Darwinian process of natural selection, as did a Finnish teenage killer and some wannabe killers? No, nor did I.)

The writer also notes that Darwin himself wrote in terms that would, today, be seen (at least) as politically incorrect:

Darwin looked forward to a time when Europeans and Americans would exterminate those he termed “savages”. Many of the anthropomorphous apes would also be wiped out, he predicted, and the break between man and beast would then occur “between man in a more civilized state, as we may hope, even than the Caucasian, and some ape as low as a baboon; instead of as now between the Negro or Australian and the gorilla”. He took a sanguine view of genocide, believing it to be imminent and inevitable. “Looking to the world at no very distant date,” he wrote to a friend in 1881, “what an endless number of the lower races will have been eliminated by the higher civilized races throughout the world.”

All very interesting, and (I assume) kind of annoying to Richard Dawkins.

Pebble bed reactors not dead yet

Idaho National Lab Achieves 19% Burn for Nuclear Pebbles

This post talks about the work on nuclear fuel pebbles which would be used in pebble bed reactors. China is ploughing ahead with the development of modular pebble bed reactors, apparently. (I wonder if South Africa will miss out on the market if they can't get their act together.)

Of course, I have been arguing for ages that this is exactly the type of technology that it would seem needs direct, Western government support to develop, and monies raised by a carbon tax would seem an ideal way to do that. Instead, we'll stuff around paying other countries for dubious offsets, establish a new way for suits to make money by trading mere bits of paper, and set targets regardless of lack of plausible ways to reach them without heavy government investment in new technology.

Hmph.

If the New York Times reads it this way

Under Friendly Veneer, China Pushes Back on Obama

then it's probably true.

McKee reviewed

Jason Zinoman on Robert Mckee | vanityfair.com

Jason Zinoman, who has a particular interest in horror films, reports on his attendance at a screenwriters seminar held by the famous screenwriting teacher Robert McKee.

McKee comes across as a bit of a jerk who wings it on browbeating self-confidence. Here's Jason's summary of how to replicate McKee's technique:

Rule One: Drop names shamelessly. McKee tells us that he once received a doctor recommendation from his friend John Cleese, bummed a cigarette from Toni Morrison, and corrected his pal Paul Haggis when he confused two genres over lunch. But my favorite is his anecdote about telling Stephen Hawking (whom he calls “Hawkings”) that he has never read a book by the scientist but is fascinated by the Big Bang. I imagine Hawking rolling quickly away.

Rule Two: Never express a scintilla of doubt. McKee is insightful about some things, especially with regard to structure, but his relative knowledge or ignorance of a subject in no way affects the manner in which he discusses it. He holds forth on politics (“Terrorism is a police problem and that’s all it is”) and the theater (“there is very little crime drama onstage”) as confidently as he does on the Incitement Incident.

Rule Three: Start in a rage and end with poetry. In Adaptation, a wildly imaginative movie that first sends up, then celebrates, and ultimately condescends to McKee, the teacher advises the screenwriter that any flawed movie can be saved with a “big finish.”

I wonder if McKee can explain the relative dearth of good movie ideas coming out of Hollywood for the last 5 to 10 years.

The calming light

More Tokyo train stations start using lights to stem suicides

This sounds very improbable:

Alarmed by a rise in people jumping to their deaths in front of trains, some Japanese railway operators are installing special blue lights above station platforms they hope will have a soothing effect and reduce suicides.

As of November, East Japan Railway Co has put blue light-emitting diode, or LED, lights in all 29 stations on Tokyo’s central train loop, the Yamanote Line, used by 8 million passengers each day.

There’s no scientific proof that the lights actually reduce suicides, and some experts are skeptical it will have any effect. But others say blue does have a calming effect on people.

Sadly, suicide is still a popular response to difficult times in Japan, although I bet everyone wishes people would choose a less public method:

Suicide rates in Japan have risen this year amid economic woes, and could surpass the record 34,427 deaths in 2003.

Last year, nearly 2,000 people committed suicide in Japan by jumping in front of a train, about 6 percent of such deaths nationwide.

Watching the sun

It was the Sun wot done it. Or was it? | Stuart Clark - Times Online

This reads as a reasonable summary on the controversy over the possible role of the sun on earth's temperature (via cosmic rays and the sun's magnetic cycle.)

The last paragraphs are important:

The smart money is on the level of solar contribution being somewhere between the two extremes. In other words, both solar activity and industrial gases play a role. There is credible scientific work that ascribes up to a third of current warming to solar influence. Studies show that the Earth’s temperature mirrored solar activity until the 1980s. Then the number of sunspots stabilised but the temperature continued to rise. In other words, something overtook the Sun as the primary driver of the Earth’s temperature. That is generally thought to be industrial gases.

Now the test can be made. It is time for all sides to put away the rivalry and begin to work together. Observations must be made, experiments performed and all data must be published, not cherry-picked. This golden opportunity to reach consensus must not be squandered.

Above all, we must not let any downturn in temperatures be used as an excuse by reluctant nations to wriggle out of pollution controls. Just as certainly as the solar activity has gone away, so it will return. If we have done nothing in the interim to curb man-made global warming, we will be in worse trouble than ever.

Conan's vampire

Conan O'Brien's emo teenage vampire segments are pretty funny:

Having already read all my usual sources of news and science, I hereby declare myself Officially Uninspired to post today.

Plastics and masculinity

Pilot study relates phthalate exposure to less-masculine play by boys | Eureka! Science News