Human dissonances

June 21, 2015

It could be that the primary distinguishing feature of humans from other species is not the control of fire or the use of tools or the level of cognition, but is our propensity for cognitive dissonance.

  • The development of the human brain (especially the prefrontal cortex and the ability to make judgements) continues well past teenage years and is not complete till about 25 years of age. Yet the age for permitting voting and other decision making, where critical judgement is crucial, is being reduced and sometimes to as low as 16 years.
  • We consider children not to be the property of their parents but only their dependants and having their own rights. Yet we permit IVF, surrogacy, adoption and abortion primarily for the “benefit” of the parents. We “grant” single parents and gay couples the “right” to have children as if they were just property.
  • Many types of unacceptable, criminal behaviour are “treated” rather than punished (or punished leniently) on the grounds that the fault with the perpetrator is genetic, yet we permit such perpetrators to reproduce these same genetic faults.
  • Capital punishment is not considered justified except for the perpetrators of the most horrific and violent crimes (and sometimes not even for them). Yet the unrestricted, on-demand, abortion of human foetuses up to about 15 weeks before birth is considered a “human right” – of the mother. (see Note 1). Assisted suicide, however, is generally not allowed (with some exceptions),
  • Race and gender are realities of genetic ancestry and and yet we treat them as “social constructs” and try to introduce laws to deny or outlaw genetic differences.
  • “To each as he deserves” is opposed “to each as he needs” and is the classical confrontation between the “right” and the “left”. “To me as I need” and “to you as I judge you deserve” is the creed of the dictator.
  • To be able to discriminate is good but to discriminate is bad, except when we discriminate to correct discrimination, for that is good.
  • We are each considered uniquely individual and different, but the differences are denied when we are also all considered “equal”. “Male” and “female” and “transgender” are taken to express the span of genetic gender differences among humans, but the differences are denied when they are all then taken to be “equal”.
  • We take what is equal to be just, but then exercise inequality to dispense justice. (i.e to dispense justice we treat the plaintiff or the guilty or the victim differently to their opponents).
  • We support and protect failed species which cannot cope with their changing environments in the name of “conservation”and then consign them to a life of imprisonment in the same conditions in which they have failed. On the other hand, we hunt down and destroy species which have successfully adapted to the changes caused by humans as being pests.

Note 1: Births per year, globally, are about 130 million after about 40 million abortions (conception is thus around 170 million per year). Deaths per year globally are about 60 million and about two-thirds of these are due to age. Thus about 40 million die purely of age related causes, 4 million die as infants under 12 months old, 1.3 million in traffic accidents and 0.6 million by violence (including wars and terrorism).

Tags:
Posted in Behaviour | Comments Off on Human dissonances

“Mad Professor” Ehrlich cries wolf again

June 20, 2015

Paul Ehrlich will probably be remembered as being the professor who has been more wrong, more often than any other.

To be proved spectacularly wrong , time after time, is apparently a prime qualification for “mad professors” to remain employed. Paul Ehrlich is the perfect example of what is wrong with the tenure system. Of course it helps if your predictions are about catastrophes to come which inevitably garner headlines – no matter how stupid the predictions are. He is at it again making doomsday predictions. This time the doom approaching is because humans have already started the 6th mass extinction which may include the disappearance of the human species. (Actually the earth has too many species and a drastic cull of species is needed).

It is worth recalling all the sensational, headline grabbing but wonderfully wrong predictions that Ehrlich has made:

  • 1968, “The battle to feed all of humanity is over. In the 1970s hundreds of millions of people will starve to death in spite of any crash programs embarked upon now. At this late date nothing can prevent a substantial increase in the world death rate …”
  • 1968, “India couldn’t possibly feed two hundred million more people by 1980.”
  • 1969, “By 1985 enough millions will have died to reduce the earth’s population to some acceptable level, like 1.5 billion people.”
  • 1969, He predicted that by the end of the century the population of the US would be under 20 million, and our life expectancy would be around 40 years – due not to starvation, but to pesticides.
  • 1970, “In ten years all important animal life in the sea will be extinct. Large areas of coastline will have to be evacuated because of the stench of dead fish.”
  • 1970, “When you reach a point where you realize further efforts will be futile, you may as well look after yourself and your friends and enjoy what little time you have left. That point for me is 1972.”
  • 1970s, “The train of events leading to the dissolution of India as a viable nation is already in motion.”  He proposed a number of radical solutions to the overpopulation crisis; dumping sterilizing agents into water supplies, allowing only selected people the privilege of reproduction, and performing mass “triage” of nations, between those who don’t need help (North America, Australia, parts of Europe), those who can be saved, and those who are beyond help – India, Sub-Saharan Africa, and much of Asia, which he predicted would be hell on earth by the 1980’s
  • 1971, “By the year 2000 the United Kingdom will be simply a small group of impoverished islands, inhabited by some 70 million hungry people. …… I would take even money that England will not exist in the year 2000.”

For 4 decades he has made predictions about catastrophes due to famine, depletion of resources, disease, poisoning by pesticides, global warming and climate disruption. Every one of his predictions about the future has been, or is being, proved wrong. Sometimes he gets his history right, but his ability to look forward, even over short times, is hopelessly flawed.

Now he is at it again about the 6th mass extinction that has “already started”. But we actually have more species today than we have probably ever had. The detritus of failed and failing species needs to be cleaned out.

Gerardo Ceballos, Paul R. Ehrlich, Anthony D. Barnosky, Andrés García, Robert M. Pringle and Todd M. Palmer. Accelerated modern human–induced species losses: Entering the sixth mass extinction. Science Advances, 2015 DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.1400253

Abstract: ...  We assess, using extremely conservative assumptions, whether human activities are causing a mass extinction. First, we use a recent estimate of a background rate of 2 mammal extinctions per 10,000 species per 100 years (that is, 2 E/MSY), which is twice as high as widely used previous estimates. We then compare this rate with the current rate of mammal and vertebrate extinctions. The latter is conservatively low because listing a species as extinct requires meeting stringent criteria. Even under our assumptions, which would tend to minimize evidence of an incipient mass extinction, the average rate of vertebrate species loss over the last century is up to 114 times higher than the background rate. Under the 2 E/MSY background rate, the number of species that have gone extinct in the last century would have taken, depending on the vertebrate taxon, between 800 and 10,000 years to disappear. These estimates reveal an exceptionally rapid loss of biodiversity over the last few centuries, indicating that a sixth mass extinction is already under way.

But there are still more species around than ever before. And a lot of them need to go extinct to make way for others that are more suited. No previous mass extinction has been any threat to life on earth though it has each time cleared the decks of species not fit or worthy to continue.

The fossil record shows that biodiversity in the world has been increasing dramatically for 200 million years and is likely to continue. The two mass extinctions in that period (at 201 million and 66 million years ago) slowed the trend only temporarily. Genera are the next taxonomic level up from species and are easier to detect in fossils. The Phanerozoic is the 540-million-year period in which animal life has proliferated. Chart created by and courtesy of University of Chicago paleontologists J. John Sepkoski, Jr. and David M. Raup.

But the one good thing about Paul Ehrlich’s predictions is that it provides a clear identification of an area not to worry too much about.

Tags: , , , ,
Posted in Alarmism, Evolution | Comments Off on “Mad Professor” Ehrlich cries wolf again

In Sweden, “white flight” is triggered with just 4% “non-whites” in a neighbourhood

June 19, 2015

The “white flight“ phenomenon has been known and studied in the US since the 1950s and also more recently in the UK. It is observed also in Australia, New Zealand, The Netherlands and in the Scandinavian countries. It is the term applied to

the large-scale migration of whites of various European ancestries from racially mixed urban regions to more racially homogeneous suburban or exurban regions.

In Sweden the term “native-born” usually designates whites and the term “non-European birth” is the euphemism usually applied to non-whites. (It is politically incorrect to refer to “whites” and “non-whites” or “coloured” or “black”). A new study from Linnaeus University (Emma Neuman – “Essays on Segregation, Gender Economics, and Self-employment”) looks at the ethnic segregation in where people live and in the work place and the differences between the 1990s and the 2000s.

Press Release: The results show that the native-born tend to move away from or avoid moving into residential areas when those of non-European birth reach a certain trigger level in an area. Thus the behaviour of the native-born is a major factor behind the rise of ethnic segregation in Sweden. Furthermore Neuman argues that ethnic segregation during childhood can have an impact on economic outcomes in adulthood.

Segregation and “ghettoism” is often blamed on immigrant populations but this study suggests that it may, to a great extent, be due to whites moving away. And then of course, the immigrant population is powerless to avoid this segregation by exclusion. Integration of immigrants is a two-way street. There may be many who don’t wish to integrate. But it would seem that the native-born also do not wish to be integrated into and actively avoid integration.

Hem&Hyra:

Economist Emma Neuman at Linnaeus University in Växjö has studied migration patterns in residential areas during the 1990 and 2000s to see how ethnic segregation has changed. Statistics show that the native-born begin to move away from or avoid moving to a residential area when it has reached a certain proportion of residents born outside Europe.

The breakpoints vary a little between different cities, but on average it stands at around four percent. “The process can take a long time, but it is around there somewhere we see that it starts – the native-born begin to move out or avoid moving in”, says Emma Neuman.

The trigger point may seem low, but still has increased from the 90s to the 00s. “One can see clearly that the breakpoint is higher in the second period than in the first. It can be interpreted that the native-born have become more tolerant”.

If the trigger for the Swedish white population to begin moving out of an area is just 4 non-whites in 100, I would have described the behaviour as being highly intolerant. Four percent seems incredibly low as the trigger point for resentments against non-whites to be expressed. If toleration of 3 non-whites in the 90s has now increased to 4 in a 100 a decade later, it is still a picture of overwhelming intolerance. In fact, the intolerance level is so high that I would suggest that it is an indicator of an irrational fear of non-whites. Perhaps the low level of integration of non-white immigrants in Sweden is not just because they don’t want to, but because they are not allowed to.

Tags: , , ,
Posted in Behaviour, Sweden | Comments Off on In Sweden, “white flight” is triggered with just 4% “non-whites” in a neighbourhood

It’s not about the guns, it’s all about the parenting

June 19, 2015

Another day, another mass shooting in the US. Add Charleston to the list. Another public lamentation from Barack Obama. Blame the NRA. Blame “gun culture”. Blame the politicians. Blame the political system. Blame the guns.

I am not a social psychologist busy faking data for my next paper and my next television appearance. But I do consider myself a student of human behaviour. One thing that is certain and common about these mass killers, whether in the US or in the Middle East or in Mexico, is that all the killers have been behaviourally “primed”. The priming can be called corruption or radicalisation or perversion or brain-washing or imprinting, but it is always the creation of a state of mind which leads to a particular behaviour.

It is not (primarily) about the killers’ genetic make-ups. It is not about the guns. It is about behaviour. And the behaviour is (primarily) a consequence of nurture not nature. It is about the bringing-up of children and young people who do not reach mental maturity till they are 25. It is about the behaviour of young humans whose critical abilities and ability to make judgements continues to develop long after their teenage years. It is about parenting in the main. It is about societies which allow parents to abandon their responsibilities (and their liabilities) before the pre-frontal cortex of their children and their consequent ability to exercise judgement has been fully developed.

So when I hear about radicalised teenagers running off to ISIS or a 21 year-old massacring people in a church in Charleston, I don’t blame the guns. I blame the parents who leave vacuums to be filled by radical preachers. I blame parents who have inculcated in their children the view that killing some particular group of people is not just acceptable, but desirable.

I blame the killers first. But then I blame their parents who brought them up, and third, the societies which encourage these parents to cease parenting early. I blame “children’s rights” movements which argue for allowing greater autonomy and giving more “power” to children whose judgement and critical abilities are very far from fully developed. Where inculcating discipline in children is considered oppressive, where parents are given the right to brainwash their children into any religion they choose but have no duty to develop any sense of morals or ethics. Where parents abrogate their responsibilities to teachers or the State and where teachers are hamstrung by regulations.

It’s not about the guns. It’s all about behaviour. It’s all about the parenting. Even if there is a small genetic component, it is still about the parents.

Tags: , ,
Posted in Behaviour | Comments Off on It’s not about the guns, it’s all about the parenting

Midsommar’s Eve tomorrow and back to paganism

June 18, 2015

The summer solstice (June solstice) in the Northern Hemisphere, based on the actual movement of the Earth around the Sun falls this year on Sunday, 21 June 2015, 18:39 CEST.

Where we live the Sun will rise at 0346 and set at 2211 and the forecast is for an overcast, but dry, day and a maximum expected temperature of 17ºC. (Not exactly high summer weather).

Christianity did not like these “natural” feasts and festivals which had no connection to Divine happenings. All “pagan” and other natural feast days were gradually hijacked by the Church, and mid-summer was taken over by the Church to be the 24th of June as being the nativity (birthday) of John the Baptist. This was close enough to the pagan celebrations (in mid-June in medieval times) for the start of summer, for the feast to be appropriated by the Church. (Just as Christmas was used as the vehicle to hijack the birthday of the Sun). The text in Luke 1:36 – 56,57, puts this day 6 months before Christmas. But counting backwards from Christmas in the Roman way brings us to 24th June rather than the 25th.

Christmas was “the eighth day before the Kalends of January” (Octavo Kalendas Januarii). Consequently, Saint John’s Nativity was put on the “eighth day before the Kalends of July.” However, since June has only thirty days the feast falls on June 24.

Sweden reverts to paganism for Midsommarsafton (Mid-summer’s Eve) and for Midsommar (Mid-summer). But modern pragmatism and the need to have a national holiday has led to Midsommar always being celebrated on the Saturday lying between 20th and 26th June and this allows the preceding Friday to be the extra holiday for Midsommarsafton. This year Saturday is the 20th and tomorrow, Friday 19th, is the Midsommarsafton holiday.

However the solstice does not actually arrive till Sunday.

Midsommar is strawberries, flowers, spiced schnapps, pickled herring, boiled potatoes, cold beer and much carousing.  (I’ll take the strawberries and the cream and the schnapps but the herrings and the potatoes leave me cold). It used to be in Sweden that births peaked clearly in March following the midsommar festivities and drunken goings-on. But nowadays there is a sustained plateau which lasts from March till September with hospitals under pressure in July. (But the July pressure is mainly because everybody is on semester and much of Sweden is closed). That suggests that carousing begins in Spring and carries on till the end of the semester month.

I observe that if there is any national religion left in modern Sweden, it is no longer the Swedish Church, but is a return to pagan traditions and the worship of Midsommar followed by the month of semester. In fact the national religion is as close to Sun worship as any ancient civilisation may have had. And since I don’t have the appropriate cold-weather genes, my firm belief in Sol Invictus is reawakened every spring.

Tags: ,
Posted in Behaviour, Sweden | Comments Off on Midsommar’s Eve tomorrow and back to paganism

If a Grexit is coming, ordinary Greek savers need to “go to the mattresses”

June 17, 2015

I was talking to a “middle-class” Greek acquaintance, and I don’t envy him the lack of options he has. He didn’t vote for Syriza and is resigned but a little bitter. Tsipras is caught in the double quagmire of trying to end “austerity” without ending it and of leaving the Eurozone without being blamed for it. What he will not tell his supporters is that a “majority vote” does not change reality. The only way left seems to be for a Grexit so that Greece can default, force the write-down of its debts, return to its own drachma, introduce exchange controls, spend as much as it wants to, and where the drachma will take its own value.

But the burning question for all those with their savings in Greek stocks, real estate or as cash in banks is how they can protect the value of what they do have? Their options are limited. Holding on to non-performing, and now almost unsellable real estate in Greece is virtually forced. The value of that real estate will be whatever it will be. Its value as security will be even further impaired in the event of a Grexit. Staying in stocks is now highly risky Even to stay in stocks of companies which are mainly export driven offers no great safety. To convert as much real estate, bonds and stocks to cash (pre-Grexit Euros) as possible and before the real rush starts, is probably the only way forward for the ordinary “middle-class” saver.

Even for funds held at institutions, the window to do anything is very short. There is talk of exchange controls being introduced as early as the coming week-end. Shifting funds to non-Greek banks in the Eurozone is one way but that almost requires that they already have an account they can shift to. Opening a new bank account in say Germany or France will not be managed very quickly. Of course many Greeks (including my acquaintance) already have such accounts and the Greek banks could see (are seeing?) a flight of funds to Euro accounts outside the country. To move to another currency at a “safe” institution abroad (Dollars, Pounds, Kronor or Yen for example) is a lot safer than just staying in the Euro which will surely lose value with a Grexit. But this is not so easy for the ordinary Greek saver. He could convert to gold and maybe even some Bitcoins.

But so far as my acquaintance was concerned, the one thing he did not want to do was to hold “virtual” Euros in a Greek institution. He owed little on his house but he couldn’t sell it. He was quite resigned to the reduced value it has reached and after all, that value did not impact his daily life. He was not, at his age, moving out of Greece. He had sold off all stocks that he had which had increased or had not lost more than 10% of their purchase value. Paradoxically, he felt that companies which had already lost much greater value might come out best from the storm.  He had purchased US Dollars and GB Pounds (as physical banknotes) as much as he could. He was planning to buy some gold but was too wary to risk buying Bitcoins. As much of the rest of his savings as possible would be converted to Euro banknotes before this weekend. But he was worried that the banknotes would run out. He had invested in a very solid safe.

He was  planning, he said to, “go to the mattresses”. Literally.

I can only wish him luck.

 

Tags:
Posted in Behaviour, Economy, European Union, Greece | Comments Off on If a Grexit is coming, ordinary Greek savers need to “go to the mattresses”

A feudal culture of sexual harassment at Greenpeace India

June 16, 2015

I take NGO’s with a very large bushel of salt. Many start with good intentions and are then corrupted, become family enterprises or are hijacked by the hard left who were rendered homeless by the end of the Cold War and the demise of state communism. The World Wildlife Fund, Greenpeace and the Friends of the Earth are examples of hijacking by the homeless hard left. The Ford Foundation has for long been corrupted by the CIA and part of the foundation’s function is to serve as a covert arm for implementing US policy. In India many of the NGO’s have become expert at milking funds from local and foreign sources but the main beneficiaries are those who own or run the NGO. Many of the NGO’s in India operate as feudal fiefdoms with little external oversight over financial or behavioural processes.

UPDATE! Greenpeace India says it has sacked the two employees accused of rape and sexual harassment but have not said anything about correcting the prevailing culture.

I was not surprised when Greenpeace India was put on the government’s watch list. I am not much surprised either by the reports of an ingrained culture of sexual harassment and rape at Greenpeace India. I can well imagine that Greenpeace India operates in quite a feudal manner and that senior managers believe they have the right of droit de seigneur. Their “do-gooding” is supposed to absolve them of their sexual peccadillos. It is the same culture which led to the assumed privileges and the resulting sexual predations of Rajendra Pachauri as the head of TERI and Chairman of the IPCC. Possibly this culture is something local and not representative of Greenpeace everywhere, but similar allegations have been made against other local Greenpeace organisations (Indonesia for example).

DNA: Already mired in controversy, Greenpeace India on Monday tendered an unconditional apology for the way it handled an alleged sexual harassment case of one of its ex-employees and said it is investigating the matter.

The statement comes after one of its ex-employees wrote an article which was published on a web forum last week alleging sexual harassment and also rape by colleagues at Greenpeace India.

Unmid.com: In an article published on a web forum last week, an ex-employee (name withheld) of Greenpeace alleged that she had to leave her job in 2013 after being sexually harassed and raped by her colleagues. Narrating her ordeal, she said that it started a year after she had joined the NGO at their Bengaluru office. The first incident happened during an official trip in October 2012.

“I got a call from a senior colleague at 11 pm, asking me to vacate my room and insisting that I sleep in his suite. In another incident, he approached me physically despite my discomfort, insisted on force-feeding me birthday cake,” she told IANS.

Though she registered a written complaint with the HR manager, she did not receive any verbal or written communication from the Internal Complaints Committee (ICC) of the organisation, which looks into sexual harassment cases. To her shock, she learnt that the person was a serial offender and no action had been taken against him despite his misbehaviour with two other female employees.

However, she said, she was blamed for registering the complaint. “Once in an official meeting, in my absence, two senior employees indulged in character assassination against me. Even some female colleagues, part of the ICC, made me feel that I was at fault, that I didn’t know how to ‘set boundaries’,” she said.

However, matters came to a head in 2013. “It was after a party, when a male colleague whom I knew quite well found me unconscious and raped me. You cannot imagine the pain and fear I went through. I was terrified to speak and I knew even if I had, no one in this organisation would come to my aid. I did not have the strength to report my rape, neither to the police, nor to my employers. How could I, when the processes had failed me once already?” she asked. Traumatised, she left the NGO after a few months. She said it took her long to overcome the incident, and finally, she decided to tell her story through a Facebook post in February this year.

Immediately after her post, Greenpeace issued an apology on their website and promised her to re-investigate the case in an adequate manner.
Admitting the lax attitude in dealing with the case in 2012, the statement said, “The victim deserves both an apology and a meticulous examination of what happened.”

Tags: , , , ,
Posted in Behaviour, Ethics | Comments Off on A feudal culture of sexual harassment at Greenpeace India

Pope’s fatwa presents a cosmic teapot and passes the buck on global warming

June 16, 2015

A draft of the Pope’s 192 page fatwa, due on Thursday, was leaked in an Italian magazine over the weekend. The Vatican protests that it is not the final version.

If the leak is correct, the Pope does not claim that he believes in the man-made global warming fantasy. He does not claim that he has received some Divine Revelation. He stops short of declaring jihad. Instead he takes a populist position but in a rush of cowardice he passes the buck to “numerous scientific studies”. For those (such as The Guardian and Huff Po) expecting authoritative support from the Catholic God, through the Pope as his infallible mouthpiece, this fatwa may be as explosive as a wet christmas cracker.

“though other factors may be involved, numerous scientific studies indicate that the majority of the global warming in recent decades is due to the large concentration of greenhouse gases… emitted above all due to human activity,”

He blames the developed world for the lack of development in the third world. He forgets that the developing world desperately needs to use fossil fuels to continue their development. He makes the fundamental mistake of thinking that the development of one part of the world is at the expense of other parts. He forgets, in his ignorance, that the poor are not poor because the rich are rich. This following section is from a translation at Bishop Hill

For poor countries, the priority should be the eradication of poverty and social development of their inhabitants; at the same time the scandalous level of consumption of certain privileged sectors of their population must be considered and better counter corruption. Of course, they must also develop less polluting forms energy production, but for this they have need to rely on help from countries that are grown much at the expense of pollution today the planet. The direct exploitation of abundant solar energy requires that you establish mechanisms and subsidies so that developing countries can have access to technology transfer, for technical assistance and financial resources, but always paying attention to concrete conditions, since the compatibility of the systems with the context for which they are proposed is not always properly assessed. The costs would be low when compared to risk of climate change. In any case, it is above all an ethical choice, based on solidarity of all peoples.

As usual the Pope – just like idiot Muftis promoting jihad – operates in the Space of Ignorance and as his “authority”, he presents the views of others operating in the Space of Ignorance.

The man made global warming “theory” is based on untestable hypotheses.  Climate “science” is not science it is advocacy.

Human emissions of carbon dioxide are less than 5% of all carbon dioxide emissions.

Carbon dioxide emission sources (GT CO2/year)

  • Transpiration 440
  • Release from oceans 330
  • Fossil fuel combustion 26
  • Changing land use 6
  • Volcanoes and weathering 1

Carbon dioxide is accumulating in the atmosphere by about 15 GT CO2/ year. The accuracy of the amounts of carbon dioxide emitted by transpiration and by the oceans is no better than about 2 – 3% and that error band (+/- 20GT/year)  is itself almost as large as the total amount of emissions from fossil fuels. ….. 

Bertrand Russel with his “cosmic teapot” pointed out that the burden of proof lies upon those making scientifically untestable claims rather than shifting the burden of proof to sceptics. To paraphrase what he wrote

Many orthodox global warmists speak as though it were the business of sceptics to disprove received dogmas rather than of dogmatists to prove them. This is, of course, a mistake. If I were to suggest that between the Earth and Mars there is a china teapot revolving about the sun in an elliptical orbit, nobody would be able to disprove my assertion provided I were careful to add that the teapot is too small to be revealed even by our most powerful telescopes. But if I were to go on to say that, since my assertion cannot be disproved, it is intolerable presumption on the part of human reason to doubt it, I should rightly be thought to be talking nonsense. If, however, the existence of such a teapot were affirmed in political IPCC  reports, taught as the sacred truth every Sunday, and instilled into the minds of children at school, hesitation to believe in its existence would become a mark of eccentricity and entitle the doubter to the attentions of the psychiatrist in an enlightened age or of the Inquisitor in an earlier time.

Or as he elaborates

To take another illustration: nobody can prove that there is not between the Earth and Mars a china teapot revolving in an elliptical orbit, but nobody thinks this sufficiently likely to be taken into account in practice. I think man made global warming just as unlikely.

O ignorant priest! O cowardly priest!

And not specifically for this Pope but for all “priests” everywhere and including the “high priests of false science” and the high priests of jihad : O who will rid us of these troublesome priests.

Tags: , , , ,
Posted in Alarmism, Behaviour, Religion | Comments Off on Pope’s fatwa presents a cosmic teapot and passes the buck on global warming

Mt. Sinabung lava dome now at 3.3 million cubic metres and still growing

June 15, 2015

Mt. Sinabung started erupting on 27th August 2010 after being dormant for 400 years. It has caused evacuations a number of times and has then quietened down only to start again a few weeks later. Lava flows have reached some 5 km from the summit on a number of occasions. 16 people were killed in early 2014. Mt. Sinabung gives the impression of building up for what could be the next VEI5+ volcanic eruption. One visual indicator is the size of the lava dome building up though it cannot be predicted as to how large a lava dome can get before it collapses. Multiple small collapses are much preferable to a single large collapse. But this lava dome has now grown to about 3.3 million cubic metres.

The shape and size of lava domes varies greatly, but they are typically steep-sided and thick. The thickness can range anywhere from a few meters to nearly one kilometer in height. The diameter or length of these domes can range from a few meters to many kilometers. The form that the dome takes is a function of many factors including strength and viscosity of the lava, as well as the slope of the land they are erupted onto.

On June 6th the lava dome at Mt. Sinabung was assessed to have reached 3.1 million cubic metres having grown around 100,000 cubic metres from the day before. Further assessment since then has been masked by cloud and smoke from the simmering and ongoing eruption. Yesterday “Sinabung spewed hot clouds reaching 3,500 meters to the south and 2,500 meters to the southeast.”

Wrath of Sinabung:: Burning lava streams from the peak of Mount Sinabung in Karo, North Sumatra, Thursday night. The volcano has been spewing lava 100 times a day since the alert was raised to the highest level on June 2, monitors say. (Antara/Zabur Karuru)

Burning lava streams from the peak of Mount Sinabung in Karo, North Sumatra, Thursday night. The volcano has been spewing lava 100 times a day since the alert was raised to the highest level on June 2nd. (Antara/Zabur Karuru) – Jakarta Post

Jakarta Post:

“In today’s eruption, Sinabung’s hot clouds simultaneously moved to the south and southeast. The hot cloud releases to the south reached 3,500 meters, or farther than the ones in the southeast, which reached 2,500 meters. This is because the lava dome is in the southern side of Mt. Sinabung,” Deri told The Jakarta Post on Sunday.

He said Mt. Sinabung still had a huge potential to erupt as the volume of its lava dome was still quite large.

“From the latest data, the volume of Mt. Sinabung’s lava dome has reached 3.3 million cubic meters. Eruptions previously occurred have not yet fully abolished its lava dome; thus, there is still a potential for massive eruptions,” said Deri.

Pyroclastic flows are caused by collapse of parts of the lava dome. On 14th June around ten flows were observed descending to the south-east and through the east-North-east channel.

Tags: , , ,
Posted in Indonesia, Natural Disasters, Natural Phenomena, Volcanos | Comments Off on Mt. Sinabung lava dome now at 3.3 million cubic metres and still growing

Greek negotiating tactics are vacillating between “playing chicken” and bad faith

June 15, 2015

Another negotiating session ended in failure yesterday – after just 45 minutes. The Greek delegation were the visitors in Brussels. In any negotiation, the home side always has the “time” advantage in that that they can go as slow as they like. To neutralise this home advantage, a visiting side in a negotiation always needs to show more patience and always give the impression that they can sit there for ever. For a negotiating session to end in just 45 minutes would need the “visiting” delegation to actually walk away. And if the Greeks did walk away then it would seem that they are either playing a dangerous game of chicken or else that they are negotiating in “bad faith” with no intention of reaching a settlement. If the latter then they are just waiting for an opportune time – for domestic consumption – to bring this to an end and initiate a Grexit. If the former then they are waiting for a Grexit to appear inevitable such that they get some “final” concessions.

My own view is that any settlement now with Greece will only be a temporary fix – and the sins of past Greek profligacy will not have been fundamentally atoned for. The pension system that the Greeks awarded themselves are unsustainable even with the cuts implemented so far. A Greece forced to continue within the Eurozone will remain under debt pressure for a decade. Tourism will be constrained. No Icelandic type of recovery would be possible. Far better to bite the bullet now, allow a Grexit and begin to limit and later shrink the Eurozone. Both Greece and the Eurozone will eventually benefit.

Bloomberg:

Greece enters what could be a defining week after last-ditch negotiations between representatives of the Greek government and its creditors collapsed on Sunday.

The euro dropped as the European Commission said the talks in Brussels had broken up after just 45 minutes with the divide between what creditors asked of Greece and what its government was prepared to do unbridged. The focus now shifts to a June 18 meeting in Luxembourg of euro-area finance ministers, known collectively as the Eurogroup, that may become a make-or-break session deciding Greece’s ability to avert default and its continued membership in the 19-nation euro area. …..

……. “The shadow of a Greek exit from the euro zone is becoming increasingly perceptible,” German Vice Chancellor and Economy Minister Sigmar Gabriel wrote in an op-ed to be published in Bild on Monday. “Greece’s game theorists are gambling the future of their country. And Europe’s too.”

Tags: ,
Posted in Behaviour, Economy, European Union, Greece | Comments Off on Greek negotiating tactics are vacillating between “playing chicken” and bad faith

« Older Entries
Newer Entries »