Why are Indian-Americans sweeping the US spelling bee?

May 30, 2014

I have watched the US spelling bee competition on TV a few times when visiting the US. For excitement and entertainment I would place it below the Olympics, the World Cup and a good cricket test match but above a 20/20 junket or the Eurovision song contest (which in recent times has just become ridiculous).

But there is something remarkable that is showing up. This year 6 out of the 12 championship finalists, and the top four, were of Indian origin.

The Hindu: Indian-Americans Sriram Hathwar of New York and Ansun Sujoe of Texas shared the title after a riveting final-round duel in which they nearly exhausted the 25 designated championship words. ………. The past eight winners and 13 of the past 17 have been of Indian descent, a run that began in 1999 after Nupur Lala’s victory, which was later featured in the documentary “Spellbound.”

American Bazaar:

…… although it’s an American competition open to students from all over the country, students of Indian origin have dominated the competition by a significant margin over the last several years. In fact, in both 2012 and 2013, all the top three contestants were of Indian origin.

From 2008-2013, the winner of the Scripps National Spelling Bee has been Indian American: Sameer Mishra, Kavya Shivashankar, Anamika Veeramani, Sukanya Roy, Snigdha Nandipati, and Arvind Mahankali. Since 1999, only five winners have not been of Indian descent, meaning 67% of winners over the last 15 years have been Indian.

Is the ability to spell then learned or is it genetic or both? From the manner in which Indian-Americans have swept this competition in the last few years, there is clearly some genetic component.

Spelling ability is not a measure of intelligence. But intelligence is a necessary – but not a sufficient – ingredient.  Excellent spelling ability as exhibited in the spelling bee competitions would seem to also need memory, drive, focus, education, supportive families and peers in addition. They also practice a very great deal.  A recent winner trained for 4 hours a day and a few thousand hours in total and committed some 100,000 words to memory. Spelling ability and reading skills are known to be linked but it is not too clear as to which depends upon which. Good spellers have been found in some surveys to be more organised than the “average”.

The Age: Kids who are good readers are often great spellers too, and now Australian scientists have uncovered a genetic explanation as to why. Researchers from Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane tracked 650 sets of young twins to work out how much reading and spelling abilities are controlled by genes. 

The study found that the ability to read and spell were about 50 per cent inherited, with a child’s upbringing and schooling controlling the other half. But what was most remarkable, says University of Melbourne researcher Anne Castles, was the discovery that the same genes were involved in both activities. …… 

…… The scientists also evaluated the two main skills involved in reading – the ability to sound out words aloud and the ability to recognise words by sight that don’t follow the phonic rules, like “yacht”.

They discovered that these specific skills involved two distinctly different sets of genes, which explains why kids are often competent at doing one but not the other.

Poor spellers may be subject to a neurological deficiency. Lesions in the right brain which impaired some visual activity are known to have also causes spelling difficulties – a “spelling dyslexia”. It is also thought that personality traits have some connection to the ability to spell. It is thought that spelling ability is associated with a deep interest in language, its roots, in words and how they sound. Many good spellers make and use mental, visual representations of words.

There may not be a specific spelling gene, but genetics surely have a part to play.

Learn that word:

Why is a population that makes up roughly 1% of the US population so heavily represented at the event? 

1 –  The American school system and culture has a conflicted relationship with memory-based learning. Indian culture values academic achievement highly and values memorization as well, as a building block of higher-level knowledge. This, by the way, is also the reason why Indian Americans are not only dominating the Spelling Bee, but also produce much more than their statistical share of doctors, engineers and executives. 

2 –  Indian Americans/South Asians maintain tightly knit family and social communities, and place a paramount value within their community on academic performance. Social expectations around academic performance tend to be much higher than in other demographic groups. Academic success therefor has a big social pay-off.

3 –  Last but not least, the success at Spelling Bees is fostered by various initiatives that exclusively support Indian American/South Asian students. NorthSouth Foundation and the South Asian Spelling Bee are both set up to support the Indian American/South Asian community of aspiring champions. 

It’s great to win the first prize at the Scripps National Spelling Bee by competing with 10 million students for over $40,000 in prizes. There is certainly more incentive to dedicate the thousands of hours of intense study needed knowing that you can also apply these skills at the South Asian Spelling Bee, where you compete with just a few thousand other kids for a $10,000 first prize. 

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Obama retreats – “Yes, We can” has become “But, We won’t”

May 29, 2014

Barack Obama’s two terms in office will come to be remembered for high expectations and his many good intentions let down by his aversion to risk, his caution and his indecision. Yesterday at a speech at West Point he reconfirmed my perceptions when he laid out his vision of a US foreign policy which would be less brash, more focused on diplomacy, more engaged with partners and – above all – cheaper. It could be considered a return to considered prudence after the knee-jerk, costly and ineffective Bush adventures in Iraq and Afghanistan. But in this case I think this is more a reflection of cost pressure, indecision and risk aversion rather than prudence.

He still wants the US to lead – but from the back.

Katy Kay – BBC:

But Mr Obama ducks the trickiest moment of his foreign policy – the red line in Syria and the decision to go to Congress for a vote on force, which ultimately fell apart. This is unsurprising, as the American public has zero interest staying a day longer than planned in Afghanistan, much less committing to another large-scale military mission.The speech reflects the confusion of a country that is fed up with intervention but still likes the idea of being the world leader

The Washington Post report is not very enthusiastic.

Coming more than six years into a presidency devoted to winding down the wars, the speech featured a firm defense of his administration’s handling of foreign crises — including those in Nigeria, Syria and Ukraine — and a suggestion that many critics are out of step with a nation tired from 13 years of war. ….. 

“Here’s my bottom line: America must always lead,” Obama said. “If we don’t, no one else will.” …….. 

But Obama’s speech appeared to be less about changing the terms of the foreign policy debate in Washington than about appealing to a war-weary electorate, which twice chose him as president on platforms of steady withdrawal from foreign military operations. The address echoed Obama’s earlier defenses of his foreign policy — stressing such themes as multilateralism, Muslim outreach and ending torture — as a corrective response to the approach of the George W. Bush administration.

The US is tired with all the interventions George Bush led them into. In that sense Obama’s retreat from intervention as the “first step” is welcome. But the retreat is enforced and cutting cost is one of the key drivers. It appears to me that Obama is more reactive than pro-active. His driving from the back seat is very close to an abdication of leadership.

The heady days and great expectations of “Yes, We can!” have evaporated and Obama will be remembered for “But, We won’t”. 

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Peer review as the erroneous comments of anonymous experts

May 28, 2014

There is a presumed halo around peer review which is quite unjustified. And when a publish or perish attitude prevails in academia it is inevitable that political correctness – as defined by the “peers” – colours whatever gets published. And “political correctness”  in science leads to a stamp of approval for what fits with the “consensus”. Nothing revolutionary can get through. Anything which smacks of being “heretical” has little chance of passing “peer review”.

 In 1936, Albert Einstein—who was used to people like Planck making decisions about his papers without outside opinions—was incensed when the American journal Physical Review sent his submission to another physicist for evaluation. In a terse note to the editor, Einstein wrote: “I see no reason to address the—in any case erroneous—comments of your anonymous expert. On the basis of this incident I prefer to publish the paper elsewhere.”

Melinda Baldwin considers the question “Did Isaac Newton need peer review“

Peer review at scholarly journals involves recruiting experts to evaluate a paper before it is approved for publication. When a paper is submitted, the editors send it to two or three reviewers who are considered knowledgeable about the topic. The reviewers and the authors, in theory, do not know each others’ identities. If the reviewers raise objections to the methods or conclusions, the authors must revise the paper before it will be accepted for publication. If the objections are significant, the paper is rejected.

Most observers regard non-peer-reviewed results as, at best, preliminary. Instinctively, this makes sense. When a paper is printed in a scientific journal, it acquires the “imprimatur of scientific authenticity” (to quote the physicist John Ziman) and many observers consider its findings to be established scientific facts. It seems like a good idea to subject a paper to expert scrutiny before granting it that sort of status.

But it turns out that peer review is only the scientific community’s most recent method of providing this scrutiny—and it’s worth asking if science is, in fact, “real” only if it’s been approved by anonymous referees.

…. Nature published some papers without peer review up until 1973. In fact, many of the most influential texts in the history of science were never put through the peer review process, including Isaac Newton’s 1687 Principia Mathematica, Albert Einstein’s 1905 paper on relativity, and James Watson and Francis Crick’s 1953 Nature paper on the structure of DNA. ….

……… Peer review’s history is of particular interest now because there is an increasing sense in the scientific community that all is not well with the peer review process. In recent years, high-profile papers have passed peer review only to be heavily criticized after publication (such as the 2011 “arsenic DNA” paper in Science that claimed a particular bacterium could incorporate arsenic into its DNA—a finding most biologists have since rejected). Others have been retracted amid allegations of fraud (consider the now-infamous 1998 Lancet paper claiming a link between vaccines and autism). Many scientists worry that requiring approval from colleagues makes it less likely that new or controversial ideas will be published. Nature’s former editor John Maddox was fond of saying that the groundbreaking 1953 DNA paper would never have made it past modern peer review because it was too speculative. ….

“Peers” – and especially since they have to be knowledgeable in the field – always have some vested interest. It could be to defend their own work, or to publicise their own work, or to gain support for their own funding, to help young researchers get published, or to hinder others. Careers can be enhanced or destroyed by aiding or preventing publication. Anonymity also means that there is no accountability for the consequences of the reviewer’s views. Inevitably nothing revolutionary that may be attacked by an influential reviewer can even be submitted for publication. And therein lies the problem with “politically correct” science.

Now with the ease of on-line publication increasing, pre-publication, anonymous peer review is obsolete and has to give way to post-publication, attributable review.

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Natural Climate Change is Good but Man-made Climate Change is Bad

May 28, 2014

Man is the culprit. Development is Evil.

Humanity is doomed if we don’t stop burning fossil fuels.

How so?

We are emitting so much carbon dioxide by burning coal and oil and gas that the CO2 in our atmosphere is increasing. CO2 is a “greenhouse gas” and this is causing the earth to heat up by about 0.8ºC in the last 100 years and – according to our computer models – by between 2-5ºC by 2100. The ice at the poles will melt and sea level will rise and the billions will drown. There will be more wars in all that heat and millions more will die. There will be wars over water and more millions will die. Displaced people will crowd into ever smaller areas and there will be more conflict and more will die. Humanity is doomed!

Oh! But you know the greatest temperature difference I experience is almost 50ºC between summer and winter and that is surely due to the earth’s tilt and the sun. The greatest temperature difference I experience in a day of around 10- 20ºC is between day and night and that is due to the earth’s daily spin. The greatest temperature difference I experience during daytime is around 10ºC and due to clouds. So how do you know that this 0.8ºC rise in the last 100 years has been caused primarily by the CO2 in the atmosphere?

Well we don’t – not for sure. But what else could it be? Our computer models have taken all parameters into account and it has to be CO2. There is nothing else.  Physics tells us that CO2’s greenhouse properties are real. It blocks outgoing radiation from the earth. 97% of my friends agree with me. Al Gore agrees with me. Barack Obama agrees with me.

But what about clouds then? They block both incoming and outgoing radiation. Aren’t they the controlling factor?

True but in our models it is the CO2 which also drives the clouds (though we don’t know if the net effect of clouds is warming or cooling). Anyway, CO2 causes a change in clouds such that its own warming effect is amplified. The forcing causes Global Warming.

Are you sure it is man-made CO2 which is increasing the CO2 in the atmosphere? After all man-made CO2 only accounts for about 4% of all CO2 emissions.

Well everything else was in equilibrium. And about 40% of man-made CO2 – we think – goes to increasing the atmospheric content of CO2.

For the last 20 years CO2 has been increasing but global temperature has not. So CO2 in the atmosphere cannot possibly be driving temperature?

Twenty years is too short a time to draw that conclusion. The Earth is still warming but the heat is hidden in the oceans.

But the oceans have not warmed either?

The heat is hiding in the deep ocean where we cannot make measurements. It is waiting for a sudden and catastrophic release.

So, at least for twenty years Global Warming has stopped even though CO2 has been increasing. Why then reduce fossil fuel combustion?

In any case Global Warming is not really the problem – Climate Change is. And CO2 is causing Climate Change. Even if the Global warming is invisible. More storms, more ice melting more All manner of Bad things. Death. Man is Evil.

All the weather we have observed in the industrial age has been observed before?  What is unusual? Lately even storms have decreased. 

The Frequency of Bad Weather is increasing. And it will get worrse. It’s all due to man-made CO2.

The Climate Change we have seen in the last 100 years has varied from warming to cooling roughly every 30 – 40 years. Maybe all that we see is just Natural Climate Change.What if the climate is now cooling? 

That too is obviously due to CO2. We can make our mathematical models to show that as well. It just requires different forcings to be applied. In any case Cooling is also Climate Change. And Climate Change is Bad. And it is caused by burning fossil fuels.

So man should strive to keep Climate unchanging?

Of course not. Man should strive to reduce his impact and let Climate Change be Natural.

So, Natural Climate Change is Good but Man-made Climate Change is Bad

Of course.

But do you know what causes Natural Climate Change?

It’s the Sun stupid.

So a Natural drought with starvation or the destruction by a Natural Hurricane is a Good thing?

It will happen more often if man interferes.

What when the Sun – as the prime source of Energy – causes a new Ice Age? When the next Ice Age comes, shouldn’t we try to influence the climate? To create some Global Warming?

Man is Evil and Man-made Climate Change is Evil and You are Evil. My peer-reviewed, IPCC endorsed mathematical model proves it conclusively.

Thank You.

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Rules of killing need to be modified to cover drones and robots

May 27, 2014

Should a civilian operator of a killing drone be considered an armed or an unarmed combatant? Can such an operator be targeted in accordance with the Rules of War? Is the US targeting and killing of a US citizen by a drone attack lawful? Can a robot drone ethically be programmed to defend itself, automatically and without any human control, if such defence would require harm to other humans. Asimov’s 3 laws of robotics come to mind.

First Law: A robot may not injure a human being, or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm, unless this would violate a higher order law.
Second Law: A robot must obey orders given it by human beings, except where such orders would conflict with a higher order law.
Third Law: A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with a higher order law.

The ethics of killing now need to be revisited.

According to the New America Foundation:

  • The CIA drone campaign began in Yemen in 2002 and in Pakistan in 2004.
  • Drone strikes in Pakistan rose steadily under President Barack Obama in 2009, to their peak of 122 in 2010.
  • Starting in 2011, strikes in Pakistan began to decline, while they spiked in Yemen, particularly as the Obama administration began using drones to support the Yemeni government’s battles against al-Qaeda-linked militants in 2012.
  • The civilian and “unknown” casualty rate from drone strikes has fallen steadily over the life of the program.
  • The casualty rate in Pakistan for civilians and “unknowns” — those who are not identified in news reports definitively as either militants or civilians — was around 40% under President George W. Bush. It has come down to about 7% under President Obama.
  • Only 58 known militant leaders have been killed in drone strikes in Pakistan, representing just 2% of the total deaths.
  • In 2012, 2% of the drones’ victims were characterized as civilians in news reports and 9% were described in a manner that made it ambiguous whether they were militants or civilians.
  • In 2013, civilian casualties are at their lowest ever. That is partly the result of a sharply reduced number of drone strikes in Pakistan — 26 so far in 2013, compared with a record 122 in 2010 — and also more precise targeting.
US Drone killings in Pakistan (New America Foundation)

US Drone killings in Pakistan (New America Foundation)

According to a UN survey, civilians have been killed in 33 separate drone attacks around the world. In Pakistan, an estimated 2,200 to 3,300 people have been killed by drone attacks since 2004, 400 of whom were civilians. According to the latest figures from the Pakistani Ministry of Defense, 67 civilians have been killed in drone attacks in the country since 2008.

Of course the Rules of War are notoriously flexible and tend to follow the actions of the strong. They are not much in evidence in Syria. They were largely ignored in the invasion of Iraq. We have heard today about air attacks by the Ukrainian government on armed “rebels” who wish to secede in Donetsk.

KTH Press Release: In her recent thesis on the ethics of automation in war, Linda Johansson, a researcher in robot ethics at Sweden’s KTH Royal Institute of Technology, suggests that it is necessary to reconsider the international laws of war, and to begin examining whether advanced robots should be held accountable for their actions. ….

She also questions the ethics of assigning drone operators the task of tracking a targeted person from a safe distance for days, perhaps even a week, before striking. “This is different from ordinary combat soldiers who face their opponents directly,” she says. “The post-traumatic stress syndrome that affects an operator may be just as severe as for a regular soldier.”

Currently drones are still operated remotely by a human being, but technological advancement is so rapid that full automation is more than just a grim science fiction fantasy.

Johansson sketches out a scenario to show how reaching that point presents other ethical questions:

“Soon we may be facing a situation where an operator controls two drones instead of one, on account of cost reasons,” Johansson says. “Add to that the human tendency to rely on technology. Now imagine a situation where very quick decisions must be made. It becomes easy to step out of the decision loop and hand over control to the robot or computer.

“Man becomes the weakest link.”

It could also be argued that robots are not entitled to defend themselves, since under the rules of war they are not in danger of losing their lives. “Does it mean that they have lost the right to kill human soldiers?” she asks.

Robots, especially drones, can also facilitate the conduct of “secret war”, with low transparency and minimal involvement of troops.

Linda Johansson’s research has resulted in a compilation of seven articles. In addition to autonomous systems in the war, she studied other aspects of robots. One of the articles is about care-giver robots and the ethics around them. Two of her articles focus on the so-called “agent landscape” – or if and when advanced robots can be held responsible for their actions.

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Universe may be getting more massive rather than expanding

May 25, 2014

Not being Sheldon Cooper I have difficulty with the theory of an Expanding Universe. A finite Universe expanding into an infinite nothingness would be bad enough. But an infinite. ever-expanding Universe becomes incomprehensible. This expansion apparently consists of the scale of space itself expanding, such that galaxies are moving away from each other but where – for some other incomprehensible reasons – this does not apply at less than galactic scale (and certainly not at the scale of the puny earth or our human bodies)!

Skyserver: …. other physicists and mathematicians working on Einstein’s theory of gravity discovered the equations had some solutions that described an expanding universe. In these solutions, the light coming from distant objects would be redshifted as it traveled through the expanding universe. The redshift would increase with increasing distance to the object. ……. 

When he (Hubble) plotted redshift against relative distance, he found that the redshift of distant galaxies increased as a linear function of their distance. The only explanation for this observation is that the universe was expanding.

Once scientists understood that the universe was expanding, they immediately realized that it would have been smaller in the past. At some point in the past, the entire universe would have been a single point. This point, later called the big bang, was the beginning of the universe as we understand it today.

But now a new paper suggests that the red shift may be due to the Universe increasing in mass rather than expanding.  The Big Bang singularity – says the paper – turns out to be a consequence of choosing “a singular set of field coordinates”. But the paper has still to run the gauntlet of peer review.

C. Wetterich, A Universe without expansion, arXiv:1303.6878  arxiv.org/abs/1303.6878/

Abstract
We discuss a cosmological model where the universe shrinks rather than expands during the radiation and matter dominated periods. Instead, the Planck mass and all particle masses grow exponentially, with the size of atoms shrinking correspondingly. Only dimensionless ratios as the distance between galaxies divided by the atom radius are observable. Then the cosmological increase of this ratio can also be attributed to shrinking atoms. We present a simple model where the masses of particles arise from a scalar “cosmon” field, similar to the Higgs scalar. The potential of the cosmon is responsible for inflation and the present dark energy. Our model is compatible with all present observations. While the value of the cosmon field increases, the curvature scalar is almost constant during all cosmological epochs. Cosmology has no big bang singularity. There exist other, equivalent choices of field variables for which the universe shows the usual expansion or is static during the radiation or matter dominated epochs. For those “field coordinates“ the big bang is singular. Thus the big bang singularity turns out to be related to a singular choice of field coordinates.

Just as an expanding Universe -in reverse – leads to a Big Bang where some pre-existing mass “explodes” from a zero size, a Universe getting more massive – in reverse – must lead to a an initial mass-less state. Just about as incomprehensible as the Expanding Universe.

Nature: 

But, as Wetterich points out, the characteristic light emitted by atoms is also governed by the masses of the atoms’ elementary particles, and in particular of their electrons. If an atom were to grow in mass, the photons it emits would become more energetic. Because higher energies correspond to higher frequencies, the emission and absorption frequencies would move towards the blue part of the spectrum. Conversely, if the particles were to become lighter, the frequencies would become redshifted.

Because the speed of light is finite, when we look at distant galaxies we are looking backwards in time — seeing them as they would have been when they emitted the light that we observe. If all masses were once lower, and had been constantly increasing, the colours of old galaxies would look redshifted in comparison to current frequencies, and the amount of redshift would be proportionate to their distances from Earth. Thus, the redshift would make galaxies seem to be receding even if they were not.

Work through the maths in this alternative interpretation of redshift, and all of cosmology looks very different. The Universe still expands rapidly during a short-lived period known as inflation. But prior to inflation, according to Wetterich, the Big Bang no longer contains a ‘singularity’ where the density of the Universe would be infinite. Instead, the Big Bang stretches out in the past over an essentially infinite period of time. And the current cosmos could be static, or even beginning to contract.

Cosmology uses real mathematics and is – of course – much more respected than astrology. However the modern invocation of dark energy and dark matter by physicists and cosmologists is quite as magical as the invocation of the aether or of various elixirs by alchemists. In fact even gravity – though calculable and predictable – is just another “magical” term with no proper explanation.

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Death to homosexuals, adulterers and apostates!

May 25, 2014

I have difficulty to reconcile the bigotry and bloodshed that organised religions have always given rise to  – and still give rise to – with the highs of music and art and science that they have also clearly inspired. Could it be that the characteristics of a religion which inspire creativity and the creation of things of great beauty by some people on the one hand are the same characteristics which drive others to bigotry and barbarism on the other? Or perhaps it is the other way around. Any religion which claims to be “The True Faith” automatically and necessarily requires bigotry against those not of the true faith. Are creativity and inspiration and great beauty the obverse – and the saving grace – of the bigotry necessary to a “true faith”?

I have just been listening to a voluble spokesman of the Islamic Education and Research Academy (iERA) on BBC Radio 4 advocating that – after due process of course – the execution of homosexuals, adulterers and apostates is called for by the Koran and quite justified. He clearly didn’t realise quite how idiotic he sounded. He babbled articulately – but it was still babble. I’m not quite sure why the BBC felt it necessary to give the spokesman so much time. Perhaps it was to let him make a fool of himself. And that he did.

The iERA would like to be seen as “moderate” Islam. But on the basis of this radio broadcast, the iERA could/ should well join Boko Haram, Al Shabab, the Taliban, Al Qaida, and others on the long list of terrorist organisations. The existence of “moderate” Islam is hardly supported by the sheer number of organisations claiming to be Islamic and which dominate the terror list. Or by babbling idiots such as this particular iERA spokesmen.

If moderate Hindus or Buddhists or Catholics don’t keep their extremists in check, the religions themselves will be tainted and will – post facto – be extremist. The BJP as it assumes government in India, for example,  needs to keep the RSS and the VHP in check if it is not itself to be labelled extremist. The Pope needs to keep predatory pedophiles in check if his whole organisation is not be tainted.

Unless “moderate” Islam – assuming it exists – keeps its many bigots and barbarians in check, it will be difficult to avoid the conclusion that “Islam”  – post facto – at best condones barbarism and at worst  is itself barbaric. Right now it does seem as if Islam is being overrun or hijacked by the bigots and the barbarians. And the heady days of great Islamic literature and art and poetry and science have long since gone.

 

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Superhydrophobic and oleophobic

May 25, 2014

Nice video,


But,

From the coating distributor:

Ultra-Ever Dry is a superhydrophobic (water) and oleophobic (hydrocarbons) coating that will completely repel almost any liquid. Ultra-Ever Dry uses proprietary nanotechnology to coat an object and create a barrier of air on its surface. This barrier repels water, oil and other liquids unlike any coating seen before. The other breakthrough associated with Ultra-Ever Dry is the superior coating adherence and abrasion resistance allowing it to be used in all kinds of applications where durability is required.

See Wetting.

Wetting of different fluids. A shows a fluid with very little wetting, while C shows a fluid with more wetting. A has a large contact angle, and C has a small contact angle. – Wikimedia

However, detergents, soaps, Solvents or high pressure water must be kept away from the surfaces or the coating will fail. And it should not be touched with your bare hands  — to protect the coating and/or your hands?

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Huge shale deposits confirmed in the South of England

May 23, 2014
Map of the Weald Basin

Shale deposits in South of England and Wales (BBC)

The British Geological Survey (BGS) has now confirmed the huge deposits of oil bearing shale in the South of England . Ironically this comes just days after the BBC also reported on the idiot report by the self-styled Global Sustainability Institute that the UK would run out of oil, coal and gas in 5 years!!!

BBC (23rd May): The BBC’s John Moylan said that although the BGS study will say that there are several billion barrels of oil in place, is not clear how much would be economically recoverable. ….. By way of comparison, the equivalent of around 45 billion barrels of oil has been extracted from the North Sea over the past 40 years.

Last year, a BGS study of the North of England suggested there could be as much as 1,300 trillion cubic feet of gas contained in shale rocks. ….

Andrew Austin, chief executive of the onshore energy IGAS, said it had long been known that southern England had extensive resources.

He told the BBC: “We’ve known that there’s a big potential for oil and gas explorations across the country but particularly in terms of oil in the Weald Basin which is the area that stretches roughly from Winchester across towards Gatwick, up to the M25 and down to the coast at Chichester.

“There’s been a long history of oil and gas exploration in this area. We as a company produce oil and gas from around 20 sites across that area. Around 40 million barrels have been recovered from that area to date.”

In the US, fracking for oil and gas has created an energy boom and led to speculation that the country could overtake Saudi Arabia as the world’s biggest producer by 2020, or even sooner.

Gas prices in the US have fallen sharply as a result, and other countries are now hoping that shale oil and gas could also lead to lower domestic energy prices.

And just a few days ago the BBC chose to present this nonsense.

BBC (16th May): In just over five years Britain will have run out of oil, coal and gas, researchers have warned. …… There should be a “Europe-wide drive” towards wind, tidal, solar and other sources of renewable power, the institute’s Prof Victor Anderson said. ….

……. Professor Anderson said: “Coal, oil and gas resources in Europe are running down and we need alternatives.

“The UK urgently needs to be part of a Europe-wide drive to expand renewable energy sources such as wave, wind, tidal, and solar power.”

However, Jim Skea, Research Councils fellow in UK Energy Strategy. cast doubt on the findings of the report.

He told BBC News: “This sounds very unlikely. What’s more, it’s irrelevant – the UK has a stable supply of imported energy, even if it is a good idea to increase our own supplies.”

The government recently announced it was cutting subsidies for large-scale solar energy and the Conservatives have said there will be no funding for new onshore wind farms if they win the next election.

Ministers are hoping that enough shale gas – extracted by fracking – will be obtained to make a difference, the BBC’s environment analyst Roger Harrabin says.

Professor Victor Anderson is an alarmist economist who used to work for the World Wildlife Fund. But to develop a catastrophe theory and predict that the UK will run out coal, oil and gas in 5 years is just stupidity.

Prior to taking up his current position Professor Anderson had worked as Senior Policy Officer for One Planet Economy at WWF-UK, a Lecturer at Goldsmith’s College, London University, an Economist at the Sustainable Development Commission, a Senior Parliamentary Researcher at Plaid Cymru Group of MPs, Board Member at London Development Agency and an elected Assembly Member at the Greater London Authority. He is also currently a Member of the Planetary Boundaries Initiative Advisory Group.

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Carbon Cycle: Emissions from forest clearance underestimated, land absorption underestimated

May 23, 2014

Two new papers just published show that the carbon cycle is far from being certain. We still have large uncertainties regarding the sources of carbon dioxide emissions and their magnitude and the sinks where, and mechanisms by which, carbon dioxide is absorbed. One in Global Change Biology. shows that emissions due to forest clearance have been underestimated by some 40% while the second in Nature suggests that there are large land sinks for carbon dioxide in the Southern Hemisphere (paywalled but reported here) which have largely been ignored by climate models.

  1. The amount of carbon lost from tropical forests is being significantly underestimated, a new study reports. In addition to loss of trees, the degradation of tropical forests by selective logging and fires causes large amounts of “hidden” emissions. 
  2. they find that land sinks for CO2 are keeping up with the increase in CO2 emissions, thus modeled projections of exponential increases of CO2 in the future are likely exaggerated. 

The “settled science of climate” is a an edifice tottering on two unproven hypotheses:

  1. That carbon dioxide concentration in the atmosphere is a key driver of global temperature, and
  2. That man-made emissions of carbon dioxide (primarily fossil fuel combustion) are the key contributor to concentration in the atmosphere.

If either of these two assumptions are incorrect, the entire edifice of climate science and climate policy comes tumbling down.

The first now looks decidedly weak. For almost 20 years now global temperatures have stagnated (and show a slight negative trend) while carbon dioxide emissions from combustion have increased sharply. Carbon dioxide concentration has also continued to increase but at a much lower rate than the rate of man-made emissions. No doubt carbon concentration has some impact but it is clearly far from being a key driver of global temperature.

The second assumes that “natural emissions” and absorption are roughly in balance and therefore it must be fossil fuel combustion which is responsible for the increase of carbon dioxide concentration. But the Carbon balance of the earth is far from certain. Volcanic de-gassng of CO2 has been grossly underestimated. The mass of CO2 absorbing bio-mass in the oceans has also been underestimated and remains still highly uncertain.

The error bands surrounding “natural” emissions are of the same magnitude as man-made emissions. Absorption of Carbon dioxide by the oceans and the biological life (algae) in the oceans are, at best, relatively uncertain estimations.

ktwop: Even though the combustion of fossil fuels only contributes less than 4% of total carbon dioxide production (about 26Gt/year of 800+GT/year), it is usually assumed that the sinks available balance the natural sources and that the carbon dioxide concentration – without the effects of man – would be largely in equilibrium. 

…… 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. ….. 

The demonisation of fossil fuel combustion is based on belief and not on evidence. The carbon dioxide assumptions which are the foundations of the climate orthodoxy are unsound.

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