Commonsense returns as Japan “reviews” its 2040 nuclear abandonment plan

December 27, 2012

In spite of the seriousness of the Fukushima nuclear plant accident, it was never sufficient to justify the hysteria which ensued and the knee-jerk anti-nuclear decisions taken not only in Japan but also in Germany and other countries. The alarmist, anti-nuclear hysteria often seems to forget that it was the great Tohoku earthquake and tsunami which killed around 18,000 people (15,878 dead with 2,713 missing). The Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant incident killed no-one directly. There may well be some indirect deaths which can and will eventually be attributed to the nuclear plant accident but there were no deaths caused directly.

Nevertheless Japan and Germany announced hasty, panic-ridden plans to abandon nuclear power. Greens began to rejoice and then started to realise that there is no practical alternative to nuclear power other than large-scale hydro-power and fossil fuels. The pipe-dream of thinking that base-load nuclear power could ever be replaced by unreliable and intermittent wind or solar power began to be seen for the mirage it was.  The high electricity price which has resulted has also seriously disdvantaged industry and hit households hard. Reality has begun to sink in.

Now Japan has a new government and a new Prime Minister. The task of reversing the fear-driven decisions (invariably bad decisions) of the past has begun. A “review” has been ordered and the results are inevitable …..

BBC: The new government in Japan has announced it will review the planned nuclear power phase-out proposed by the previous administration.

Trade and Industry Minister Toshimitsu Motegi said that reactors would be restarted if considered safe by the nuclear authority. Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has promised bold measures to revive the economy. The stoppage of nuclear power use by 2040 was ordered following last year’s Fukushima disaster.

….. Veteran trade minister Toshimitsu Motegi, who is also in charge of energy policy, made it clear that the government would not allow its plans to be hampered by higher energy costs.

“We need to reconsider the previous administration’s policy that aimed to make zero nuclear power operation possible during the 2030s,” he told a news conference. ….. 

…… “A strong economy is the source of energy for Japan. Without regaining a strong economy, there is no future for Japan,” Mr Abe said after taking office.

The prime minister had also said that he would allow nuclear energy a bigger role, despite last year’s disaster. Japan, which relied on nuclear power for almost one-third of its energy supplies before the incident, shut all its 50 nuclear reactors after the leaks, but recently restarted two of them. The move has resulted in higher energy costs, and many big businesses want Japan to return to using nuclear power.

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The first 200 year old human has already been born

December 27, 2012

The journalist Henrik Lennart has a new book out  in Swedish – “Åldrandets gåta” (The Mystery of Aging), where he interviews the worlds leading researchers and demographers about aging. Our descendants will have to learn to have many careers within their lifetimes.

Science has long envisaged a limit to how long a person can live – around 120 years. But now research is catching up with our fantasies. Henrik Lennart interviews the world’s leading researchers specializing in aging. They all come to the same conclusion: We, and especially our children, will live far longer than is common today.

Why? Improved standards of living come into play but also our lifestyles. Advice from the experts can differ: eat fewer calories, stand up when you are working, fast or cut down on meat and sugar. These choices certainly affect the aging of cells, and when researchers finally find the genes that control lifespan and have learned how to control them, the question will become:

How old would we like to be?

Aftonbladet reports:

Some researchers believe that the first human who will live to be 200 years old is already living.

“According to our calculation, half of the children born in Sweden in 2012 will live to be 104 years old”, says demographer James Vaupel.  Life expectancy has increased steadily over the past hundred years. ….. Today, the average life expectancy in Sweden is 83 years for women and 79 for men.

In a new book “The Mystery of Aging” journalist Henrik Lennart has  interviewed demographers and scientists who believe that statisticians world-wide have systematically underestimated the rate of increase of life expectancy and that this has been going on for a very long time.

Statisticians have not fully considered the influence of welfare reforms, better living conditions and more efficient healthcare. To get a more accurate picture one of the world’s best-known demographers James Vaupel, along with a group of prestigious scientists have made new calculations where they have added a factor to reflect the impact of as yet unknown developments – not dramatic but which can be expected in the future.

Their calculations show that half of all the children born in Sweden this year will live to be 104 years old. “In the future, we could live to be ten times older. Why not? It will take time to get there but it is certainly not impossible. In my opinion it is quite likely that there is a rather small child already born somewhere who will live to be more than 200 years old”, says James Vaupel who is interviewed in “The Mystery of Aging.”

Svenska Dagbladet adds:

James Vaupel and Cambridge researcher Jim Oeppen have previously shown that the curve of women’s life expectancy in the Western world has increased at an even and steady pace of three months per year for 160 years. Swedish statistics extend further back than in most other countries, and this increase has been by an average of 2.5 months per year since 1751.

Previously, scientists believed that there was a ceiling for the average life expectancy of  a little over 80 years. Today this ceiling has shifted up at least a decade, and continues to rise.

“We no longer know if there is any ceiling and where it lies if it does exist”, says James Vaupel.

At this rate everybody will be living to around 200 years by 2500.

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US going over the fiscal cliff is probably best for world economy

December 26, 2012

No doubt I have a simplistic view but the best thing in the long-term for the world economy would be for the US to start reducing its budget deficit and its burgeoning  public debt. Public debt has to be set to whatever level is sustainable. An economy in transition from one level to another can permit a changing level of public debt, but the current level of deficits (7 -9% of GDP) and ever-increasing debt is not sustainable. The problem is that even if the US did not avoid the fiscal cliff the US public debt would continue to grow – if a little more slowly than as at present. The cliff may in reality be more like a hill but it is still along the way to the wrong place.

US Public Debt

US Public Debt

Budget discipline and a stable level of public debt must – I think – come first. It is public profligacy – whether in Greece or Spain or the US – which is unsustainable and rampant profligacy will not end without some short-term pain. It is probably time for the US to bite the bullet.

I see that the US press is now beginning to expect that some kind of fall – whether over a cliff or a hill – is inevitable but that perhaps the fall can be cushioned by attaching a bungee rope or by aiming for a ledge part-way down!

NY Times: Until late last week, most observers had expected the president and Congressional Republicans to come up with at least a short-term compromise before the year-end deadline. But thefailure of Speaker John A. Boehner to win support for tax increases on the wealthiest Americans from fellow House Republicans has forced many economic observers to reconsider what might happen if political leaders remain deadlocked into 2013.

MSNBC: On the Sunday news shows, no one signaled a change of position that could form the basis for a short-term fix, despite a suggestion from Obama on Friday that he would favor one. The focus was shifting instead to the days following January 1 when the lowered tax rates dating back to the George W. Bush administration will have expired, presenting Congress with a redefined and more welcome task that involves only cutting taxes, not raising them.

“I believe we are,” going over the cliff, said Republican Senator John Barrasso of Wyoming. “I think the president is eager to go over the cliff for political purposes. I think he sees a political victory at the bottom of the cliff,” Barrasso said on Fox News Sunday.

Some Republicans have said Obama would welcome the fiscal cliff’s tax increases and defense cuts, as well as the chance to blame Republicans for rejecting deal. Obama has rejected that assertion.

WSJ: Lawmakers returning to town this week will see whether they can agree on a plan to avoid the full brunt of the fiscal cliff, the combined $500 billion in tax increases and spending cuts set to begin next week. Little if any progress was made in the talks before Congress and President Barack Obama left town last Friday for Christmas. The president plans to leave his vacation in Hawaii late Wednesday night, returning to Washington on Thursday, the White House said.

CNBC: Despite the $600 billion of tax hikes and spending cuts due to come into force at the end of this month unless U.S. lawmakers reach a deal, the S&P 500 index is not displaying signs of stress, says independent chartist Daryl Guppy.

The stock index is in fact trading upwards as investors increasingly take in the possibility that the U.S. economy might fall over the “fiscal cliff,” he told CNBC Asia’s “Squawk Box” on Thursday. “The fiscal cliff is a bungee jump. It used to be exciting. Now it’s just a tourist attraction. The market is absorbing that,” he said. 

While the S&P 500 index has dipped back towards the 1,380 to 1,400 range seen in August and mostly recently in November, stocks appear to be on their way up again, he added. The index closed at about 1,419 on Wednesday.

 

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Narendra Modi could be the next Prime Minister of India

December 26, 2012
English: Image of Narendra Modi at the World E...

Narendra Modi – Wikipedia

If the Gujarat riots of 2002 had not happened, Narendra Modi would have an easy- and almost pre-ordained path – to becoming the nominated Prime Minister of the Bharatiya Janata Party. With his record in Gujarat he ought to be the “natural” choice of his party. As the only other political party having a national presence, the BJP has a very good chance of replacing the Indian Congress Party as the largest party and the party of government at the next general elections in 2014.  But the BJP lacks leaders of any stature – apart from Modi. The party President is himself badly tainted by corruption charges. The leaders of the past are approaching senility. Their Young Turks of 10 years ago come across as a whiny bunch who oppose for the sake of opposing and have no convictions of their own. Without a credible PM candidate having some national appeal the BJP may – at best –  only just get to be the largest party but would have the most horrendous task of creating a majority in Parliament. But there are still strong factions within the party who do not much like him. Not because of the “anti-Muslim” taint which hangs over Modi as the legacy of the Gujarat riots; but because he is just a little bit too efficient, too decisive and most of all, too “incorruptible”.

The BJP have few other leaders who have Modi’s undoubted competence and his ability to assemble competence. They have no other leaders with his charisma. He has been one of the very few regional leaders who has had the nerve to be a leader – with some kind of vision of where he wants to go – rather than a populist follower (like Mamata Banerjee). In India, populist politicians – no matter how criminal or venal or incompetent – have usually been able to ride the wave of their vote-banks into power. But that is changing as the Indian electorate becomes more discerning and more sophisticated though still dominated by caste. So it seems likely that the BJP establishment will reluctantly – and with some fears for their own futures – unite behind Modi. They have little choice with his unprecedented success in Gujarat:

Narendra Modi will take oath a fourth time as Gujarat Chief Minister at 11 am today. …. Mr Modi began his morning by tweeting a Vivekananda quote, as he is wont to do. “To make a great future India, the whole secret lies in organization…co-ordination of wills,” he said on Twitter.

It has been conventional wisdom that Modi has been fatally tainted by the Gujarat riots. But this is the conventional wisdom of the urban, semi-liberal middle-class. But I see this view changing mainly because even the urban middle-class see – especially in comparisons with China –  that a chaotic democracy holds back economic development. Political decisiveness a la Modi is seen as something which could unlock the Indian potential which is being held stagnant by corruption and the constant interplay of opposing factional interests. There is a mood abroad in the urban, middle-classes that “a Modi” is needed to bring an end to the institutionalised corruption in the country. There is a groundswell of support for the movement started by Anna Hazare but neither he nor Kejriwal are seen as being capable of implementing the ideals of the anti-corruption movement. These two forces – unlocking economic development and the fight against corruption – will convince the liberal-left middle-class to rationalise their views of Modi. He will not be completely forgiven for his role in the Gujarat riots but the taint will fade. Just as the Congress leaders implicated in the anti-Sikh riots following the assassination of Indira Gandhi reinstated themselves with the help of supportive Sikhs, Modi is rebranding himself with the help of supportive Muslims. His former opponents are applying selective memory. Already other non-Congress regional leaders are positioning themselves to be able to support Modi  when – no longer “if” – he becomes the PM candidate for the BJP.

Internationally, Modi was condemned in many quarters. But international politics is ultimately about pragmatic self-interest. If he becomes Prime Minister, it will not take long for countries – especially in Europe to come around. After all, to be seen to be anti-Muslim is quite acceptable in Europe even if Modi would like to tone down that perception. He already has the sympathy of China and Russia who struggle with containing their own Muslim minorities. His visa to the US was revoked in 2005 and the UK avoided him like a pariah for 10 years before reinstating contact in October this year.

But it his acceptance across India which counts. If he can succeed in getting some support from the Muslims across India – and this is not implausible – and if he can gain the support of the urban middle-class – which is already happening – the regional party leaders will also back him and the rest of their sheep will fall in line. For the elections in 2014, to be seen as being incorruptible, a “fighter against corruption” and to be seen as being an efficient CEO could trump all other perceived sins.

And that could make Narendra Modi the first Prime Minister after Rajiv Gandhi having a national stature, an administrative competence and a vision of his own that could be fun to watch.

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SpaceX’s “Grasshopper” successfully tested to 40m and back

December 25, 2012

Grasshopper, SpaceX’s vertical takeoff and landing vehicle (VTVL), rose 131 feet (40 meters), hovered and landed safely on the pad using closed loop thrust vector and throttle control. The total test duration was 29 seconds.

The 12-story flight marks a significant increase over the height and length of hover of Grasshopper’s previous test flights, which took place earlier this fall. In September, Grasshopper flew to 1.8 meters (6 feet), and in November, it flew to 5.4 meters (17.7 feet/2 stories) including a brief hover.

Testing of Grasshopper will continue with successively more sophisticated flights expected over the next several months.

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Noted in passing 25.12.2012

December 25, 2012

Notre Dame de Paris prepares to celebrate 850 years since its first foundation stone was laid in 1163.

Dozens of Jews who claim to be the descendants of a lost biblical Jewish tribe emigrated to Israel on Monday from their village in northeastern India.  … The Bnei Menashe say they are descended from Jews banished from ancient Israel to India in the eighth century BC. An Israeli chief rabbi recognized them as a lost tribe in 2005, and about 1,700 moved to Israel over the next two years before the government stopped giving them visas. Israel recently reversed that policy, agreeing to let the remaining 7,200 Bnei Menashe immigrate.

Rape protests in India claim their own victim. A 47-year-old Delhi Police Constable, who suffered serious injuries during violent protests at India Gate on Sunday, died on Tuesday after battling for life in a city hospital.

Piers Morgan – he of telephone hacking fame – is for once on the right side of the argument but has angered the NRA and other gun-lovers.

While more than 600 people have died in the European freeze, the Bayern region is basking in warm weather and the city of Munich enjoyed over 20°C on Christmas Eve.

Since language is merely a tool for communication and develops and evolves entirely in response to the need to communicate, most attempts to invent new languages for human use fail because they cannot accurately predict or define the required  needs. This is in contrast to the invention of machine languages where the needs can be much better defined. But this fascinating  story of Ithkuil – an invented language – shows what a dedicated individual acan achieve even without formal academic credentials. And this piece about New York as the graveyard of languages which misses the point that languages die simply when they no longer fulfill the need for communication or are superceded by another which does.

“How is it that elves can see further than humans? Are hobbits evolutionarily related to humans? And so on. My mind raced ahead of the inquiries, so that I found myself asking (and answering) such questions as – how could dragons breathe fire? What would life be like for a walking tree? How do all those elves live beautiful, healthy lives without any obvious means of support?” On the science of Middle Earth.

Mobile phones on aircraft have no impact on aircraft operation. “The truth is that the FCC never was concerned about the possibility of electronic interference when, in 1991, it banned the use of mobile phones on board aircraft. All it was really worried about was their impact on cellular networks on the ground”.

Svante Paabo’s work on the Neanderthal genome is to be covered in a documentary.

British People Problems and 10 Reasons British Comedy Is Better Than American Comedy

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One day the Sun will die, but till then – Dies Natalis Solis Invicti MMXII

December 24, 2012

Here at a latitude of 58.7057° N, the Sun is eagerly awaited every day and is sorely missed if it is obscured by clouds during our short days at this time of year.

Sol Invictus is not a matter of faith or belief. It is a daily reality.

The 21st of December was the shortest day of the year with sunrise at 0848 and sunset at 1503. But it has come and gone and the days are getting longer again. I can start my countdown to summer.

The renewal begins.

It is not difficult to imagine how worship of the Sun must have started at least 20,000 years ago and perhaps as early as 100,000 years ago. In fact it seems obvious that our understanding of periodicity and the very concept of time must have started with what we observed of the Sun. The counting of days and the inevitability of the seasons and the development of a calendar all originate with the unfailing appearance of the Sun every day. Perhaps the periodicity of the daily Sun even accounts for humans developing the very notion of counting and numbers. And it is more than mere speculation to assume that even the great expansion of humanity from Africarabia around 100,000 years ago was to no little extent guided into directions defined relative to the rising or the setting of the Sun.

One day – some 5 billion years hence – the Sun will have consumed all its hydrogen, will become a red giant and will swallow the earth. The earth will truly and inevitably die then.  Over the following one billion years or so the Sun will be consuming its helium and become a white dwarf.  And then the exhausted Sun – will cool and perhaps in 1000 billion years will be at the same temperature as that of surrounding space and will become a black dwarf  –  well and truly dead.

Long before then, perhaps in about one billion years from now, the energy output of the Sun will rise by about 10% and there will be no water left in our atmosphere. As the Sun’s energy output increases further, our rivers and lakes and oceans will all boil dry and the earth will be finally devoid of water. If humanity is still present on earth when free water disappears then it too – with all other species on earth – will die. But humanity – along with many other Earthly species – may well have moved elsewhere by then.

But for at least the next 0ne billion years we can continue to revel and bask in our invincible Sun.

In Vedic terms “Surya is the eye of Mitra, Varuna and Agni” where Surya, the Sun, is the “all-powerful life-giving force” with Mitra representing “all that happens with openness in the daylight” while Varuna lords “over the powers of the dark when Surya is not visible”. Agni (ignis in Latin) is of course fire and is the earthly manifestation of the Sun

So, in celebration of the annual renewal to come I send my greetings to all in the name of the invincible Sun.

(The picture this year is a blow-up of the banner for this blog and is of a sunrise, looking East, on a December morning in 2010).

sol invictus 2012

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If Santa Claus had an internal toilet he never would have found Rudolph

December 23, 2012

How the first reindeer was domesticated

Humans and reindeer have been interacting for some 60,000 years and reindeer-herds have been followed by nomadic humans for some 10-20,000 years but true domestication is much more recent. Genetic studies indicate that many domestication events probably took place but starting no more than 2-3,000 years ago. But how was the first reindeer domesticated?

“Alice Roberts: Rudolph and our early ancestors – a love story” has a plausible narrative:

I first visited the icy north of Siberia five years ago while making a BBC documentary about ancient human migrations. We were filming with indigenous Siberians of the Evenki tribe, and staying in a remote reindeer-herders camp – living in tents that were kept warm with larch stoves while it was a bone-chilling -40°C outside. (The stoves went out overnight and in the morning I would wake up to find my eyelashes stuck together with ice.)

There were reindeer all around us in the snowy, sparse larch forest. At night, they came in, walking cautiously around our tents, the thick fur behind their large hooves muffling their footsteps. One morning I wandered off into the forest to answer a call of nature. A single pure-white reindeer followed me. I wandered further and further with the reindeer following me a few paces behind. It felt as though I had made some kind of connection with this beautiful, ethereal creature. After I had done what I’d come for, I started to make my way back to camp, and wondered if the reindeer would follow me back. He didn’t. Instead, he started tucking into the yellow snow I’d created. The mystical moment was shattered. He wanted nothing more than a few salts from my urine. Later I discovered that this apparently common behaviour was enshrined in a Siberian myth about the domestication of the first reindeer: a woman who went for a wee managed to catch and tame a reindeer who, like mine, had been after the yellow snow.

I suppose that if Santa Claus had an internal toilet and was not forced outdoors to relieve himself  he never would have met up with Rudolph!!

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The sun at solstice 12.12 CET on 21.12.2012

December 22, 2012

The shortest day of the year has come and gone and the countdown to summer (in the Northern Hemisphere) has begun. From a day length of 6 hours 15 minutes yesterday the next 183 days will see the length of the day – at this latitude – increasing by an average of over 3 minutes every day reaching a day length of almost 17 hours at the summer solstice.

From Discovery News:

At 11:12 UT (6:12 a.m. EST), the world didn’t end (as far as I can tell), but it was a significant time none-the-less. That was the exact minute of the Winter Solstice in the Northern Hemisphere (or the Summer Solstice in the Southern Hemisphere) — when the daylight hours are shortest and the sun reaches its most southern position in the sky at noon.

Sun-solstice

The sun at solstice 12:12 CET on 21.12.2012: image NASA

NASA Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) captured the time of solstice from orbit. Although the SDO is always imaging the sun through a multitude of filters, this is a great excuse to showcase the fantastic beauty of our nearest star, while putting all the doomsday nonsense behind us.

The sun didn’t unleash a killer solar flare or devastating coronal mass ejection, but it is undergoing a fascinating period in its solar cycle.

As can be seen from the SDO image above, the solar magnetic field is twisted and warped, channeling million-degree plasma high into the sun’s atmosphere in the form of beautiful coronal loops. This is all because the sun is fast approaching “solar maximum” — an exciting time when the sun’s magnetic field is most stressed.

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NRA – “The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun” !

December 21, 2012

The NRA certainly does not lack nerve.

That it has been rather pleased by the boost in gun sales following the Sandy Hook massacre is no secret. But the NRA and the gun manufacturers are clearly concerned about any long-term reduction in gun sales that might result from the bipartisan backlash which seems to be forming. They will now be pulling out all the stops to prevent any restrictions on the sale of guns and the campaign has begun. And Rule No.1 is never to be on the defensive.

But the NRA does seem to be rather short on common sense. To put forward a solution for school killings – in the wake of the Sandy Hook killings – as being more guns (of course, in the hands of good guys) is bordering, I think, on the foolhardy.

Reuters: 

The powerful U.S. gun rights lobby went on the offensive on Friday, arguing that schools should have armed guards, on a day that Americans remembered the victims of the Connecticut school massacre with a moment of silence.

National Rifle Association Chief Executive Wayne LaPierre argued that attempts to keep guns out of schools were ineffective and made schools more vulnerable than airports, banks and other public buildings patrolled by armed guards.

“The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun,” LaPierre told a news briefing, calling on lawmakers to station armed police officers in all schools by the time children return from the Christmas break in January. ….

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg accused the NRA of “a shameful evasion of the crisis facing our country.”

“They offered a paranoid, dystopian vision of a more dangerous and violent America where everyone is armed and no place is safe,” he said. ……..

Another mass shooting occurred on Friday when a gunman killed three people and wounded three police officers before taking his own life in Frankstown Township, Pennsylvania, the Altoona Mirror reported, citing the county prosecutor.

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