March 13, 2012
Another idiot paper from a supposed Professor of Philosophy at New York University who claims that “human engineering deserves further consideration in the debate about climate change”.
He gets paid for producing this drivel.
Human Engineering and Climate Change by S. MATTHEW LIAO (NEW YORK UNIVERSITY), ANDERS SANDBERG (OXFORD), and REBECCA ROACHE (OXFORD)
The Atlantic carries a long interview with the idiot philosopher (whose ego is revelling in the publicity):
… the paper suggests that parents could make use of genetic engineering or hormone therapy in order to birth smaller, less resource-intensive children.
In your paper you suggest that some human engineering solutions may actually be liberty enhancing. How so?
Liao: That’s right. It’s been suggested that, given the seriousness of climate change, we ought to adopt something like China’s one child policy. There was a group of doctors in Britain who recently advocated a two-child maximum. But at the end of the day those are crude prescriptions—what we really care about is some kind of fixed allocation of greenhouse gas emissions per family. If that’s the case, given certain fixed allocations of greenhouse gas emissions, human engineering could give families the choice between two medium sized children, or three small sized children. From our perspective that would be more liberty enhancing than a policy that says “you can only have one or two children.” A family might want a really good basketball player, and so they could use human engineering to have one really large child.
Indeed! A family may wish to ensure that they don’t produce idiot children – large or small. Human engineering to breed out the possibility of producing idiot professors of philosophy could be more productive for the human race.
Tags: climate change, Climate eugenics, idiot philosopher, MATTHEW LIAO, New York University
Posted in Academic misconduct, Alarmism, Philosophy | 1 Comment »
March 13, 2012
Type in your street address with city & state or somewhere you used to live. Then you click on “shake”. A photo of the house appears!
I tried it 6 times with addresses of people I know & it worked every time.
( So far I have tried addresses in 4 countries- UK, US, Germany and Sweden – and I get the Google Maps or Google Street View – but faster than I could zoom in on it. Just address and town seems to be sufficient.)
Address Magic
(h/t – Nessan)
Tags: Address magic, Google Maps, Google Street View
Posted in Trivia | Comments Off on Address Magic
March 11, 2012
When can “ends” no longer justify the “means”?
At what level does “collateral damage” become unacceptable?
And even after all the blood-letting in Iraq and Afghanistan there are still those who would like to see the US and Israel launch attacks on Iran. Iran dossiers are no doubt being “sexed-up” by those who are worried that not being at war with someone is not sustainable for business.
BBC News:
‘Rogue’ US soldier kills Afghan civilians
A US soldier in Afghanistan has killed at least 16 civilians and wounded five after entering their homes in Kandahar province, senior local officials say. He left his military base in the early hours of the morning and opened fire in at least two homes; women and children were among the dead.
Nato said it was investigating the “deeply regrettable incident”.
The New York Times does cover this as its top story, but Fox News only reports – as its third story – that a US soldier has been detained for the alleged killing of civilians! It is Sunday and Huff Post and the Drudge Report – as of 1300 CET – have not even managed to report this “regrettable incident”.
UPDATE! And now Reuters reports that it wasn’t one, lone, disturbed, “rogue” soldier but “a rampage that witnesses said was carried out by American soldiers who were laughing and appeared drunk”.
Tags: Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, massacre of the innocents, rogue soldier, war
Posted in Business, Ethics, Politics, War | Comments Off on A “regrettable incident”
March 11, 2012
One year on and young hopes bloom eternal.
Young hopes bloom eternal: Illustration by Yuko Shimizu: From The Japan Times
I was in Japan during the Great Hanshin Earthquake in 1995 when over 6,000 perished in Kobe and – inevitably – I try to relate events to my own experience. But the Graeat Tohuku earthquake and tsunami were something quite different and have claimed more than 20,000 lives.
The death toll was much greater after the Aceh earthquake and tsunami but was spread over many more countries and in that sense is more “diffuse”. Perceptions sometimes get diluted compared to the intensity of the reactions one year ago. The 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami claimed over 230,000 lives in 14 countries.
The meltdowns at the Fukushima nuclear plant following the Tohoku earthquake and tsunami were pretty scary but sometimes the coverage (especially in Europe) becomes alarmist and tends to take away from the earthquake and tsunami. But it is worth remembering also that the incidents at Fukushima – without trying to trivialise them – have caused no radiation related deaths.
Tags: 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami, 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami, Earthquake, Fukushima Nuclear plant, Great Hanshin earthquake, Japan, Kobe, Tsunami
Posted in Japan, Natural Disasters | Comments Off on One year on from the Great Tohoku earthquake and tsunami
March 10, 2012
A recent post by John O’Sullivan reminded me that it is time for the next solar minimum that is on its way to be named after the man who predicted it. Theodor Landscheidt (born in 1927 in Bremen, Germany, died on May 20, 2004) was an author and amateur climatologist. In 1989, Landscheidt forecast a period of sunspot minima after 1990, accompanied by increased cold, with a stronger minimum and more intense cold which should peak in 2030 which he described as the “Landscheidt Minimum”.
The sun goes through its cycles as it will and at its own pace and we continue to struggle to try and decipher the various cycles that exist, what causes them and what effects they have on the earth. Some of the cycles known or hypothesised to exist are the:
- 11 year sunspot cycle
- 22 year magnetic cycle
- 87 year Gleissberg cycle
- 166 year “unnamed” cycle
- 210 years Suess or de Vries cycle
- 2,300 years Hallstat cycle
- 6000 years Xapsos and Burke cycle
Landscheidt’s paper is here: New Little Ice Age instead of Global Warming?
Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: Dalton minimum, Landscheidt Minimum, Little Ice Age, Maunder Minimum, solar cycle, Solar variation, Theodor Landscheidt
Posted in Climate, Science, Solar science | Comments Off on Solar cycles and the Landscheidt minimum
March 9, 2012
Karoo, South Africa: image Wikipedia
The Karoo is a semi-desert natural region of South Africa with two main sub-regions – the Great Karoo in the north and the Little Karoo in the south. The region is known to contain shale-gas deposits some 4,000m below the surface but the extent of the deposits have yet to be fully investigated.
Now Econometrix has published a new report on the potential for growth that Karoo shale gas could provide. The report is supported by Shell who are planning to explore the deposits. A pdf version of the report is available from Shell here: Karoo Shale Gas Report – February 2012
To put quantitities in perspective the 485 trillion cubic feet of gas (14 trillion cubic metres) thought to be in the Karoo compares with 25 trillion cubic metres in China and about 13 trillion cubic metres in the US. (The Age of Gas: China has enough shale gas for 200 years).
IOL, South Africa reports:
Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: Karoo, Natural gas, Royal Dutch Shell, Shale gas, shale gas reserves, South Africa
Posted in Business, Energy, Environment, South Africa | Comments Off on South Africa could join the shale gas band-wagon
March 9, 2012
Two articles appear in The Hindu today.
Rahul Siddharthan has an opinion piece about the CNR Rao and SB Krupanidhi plagiarism case and brings out the issues involved and the responsibility of senior scientists. Their responsibility in determining and establishing the atmosphere in which research is carried out is obvious. But what is more disturbing is a news article where Professor Krupanidhi is quoted extensively. He continues to trivialise the acts of plagiarism and refuses to take any responsibility for the papers published under his supervision.
No science in ‘cut and paste’
More instances of plagiarism come to light
Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: CNR Rao, cut and paste, cut and paste science, India, Indian Institute of Science, Krupanidhi, Plagiarism
Posted in Academic misconduct, Ethics, India, Science, scientific misconduct | 1 Comment »
March 8, 2012
The evidence for the obvious mounts. The sun comes first and dominates and then come the oceans which provide the vehicle for distributing solar effects around the globe. The mythical effect of anthropogenic carbon dioxide on climate has yet to be supported by any direct evidence. Instead, the direct evidence observations of the last 12 years is that increasing carbon dioxide concentration in the atmosphere has been accompanied by a decline of “global” temperature.
A new paper by Jan-Erik Solheim (Department of Physics and Technology, University of Tromsø), Kjell Stordahl (Telenor Norway, Fornebu), Ole Humlum (Department of Geosciences, University of Oslo; Department of Geology, University Centre in Svalbard).
The long sunspot cycle 23 predicts a significant temperature decrease in cycle 24
Preprint: Accepted for publication in Journal of Atmospheric and Solar-Terrestrial Physics February 9, 2012
Abstract. Relations between the length of a sunspot cycle and the average temperature in the same and the next cycle are calculated for a number of meteorological stations in Norway and in the North Atlantic region. No significant trend is found between the length of a cycle and the average temperature in the same cycle, but a significant negative trend is found between the length of a cycle and the temperature in the next cycle. This provides a tool to predict an average temperature decrease of at least 1.0 “C from solar cycle 23 to 24 for the stations and areas analyzed. We find for the Norwegian local stations investigated that 25-56% of the temperature increase the last 150 years may be attributed to the Sun. For 3 North Atlantic stations we get 63-72% solar contribution. This points to the Atlantic currents as reinforcing a solar signal.
Tags: Atlantic Ocean, Norway, solar, solar cycle, Solar cycle 23, Solar Cycle 24
Posted in Climate, Norway, Solar science | Comments Off on Norway: “25–56% of the temperature increase the last 150 years may be attributed to the Sun”
March 7, 2012
“Green” is also the colour of slime.
Subsidies are fundamentally corrupting.
Instead of promoting the commercialisation of a nascent technology (whether for later job creation or for pursuing policy goals), they lead more often than not to companies just maximising the subsidies they can get. And very often the vast amounts taken from tax money end up in the pockets of opportunistic individuals. It is no great secret that the “green” label has provided the path for the extraction (or is it extortion) of subsidies by developers and companies who have never had any intention other than maximising what could be extracted.
ABC News (here and here) lists a number of cases in the US where subsidies have been extracted, huge bonuses paid and then bankruptcy filings prevents any possibility of getting any recourse to the beneficiaries. They point out that “the Energy Department explicitly allows for federal funds to be used to pay out executive bonuses.” The “subsidy” industry is of course already well established in Europe with exorbitant “feed in tariffs”, carbon trading certificates and grants to solar and wind developers.
Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: Abound Solar, Beacon Power, bonuses from subsidies, Chapter 11 filing, corruption, Ener1, Green subsidies, Solyndra
Posted in Business, Corruption, Environment, Ethics | Comments Off on “Green” is also the colour of slime – when companies take their subsidies, pay their bonuses and then go bankrupt..
March 6, 2012
It seems to be becoming the standard defence for senior authors in Indian academia to blame their juniors when found guilty of plagiarism. The recent case of plagiarism by Prof. CNR Rao (Science Advisor to the Indian PM) and Prof. SB Krupanidhi of the Indian Institute of Science where they took refuge first in blaming a student and then in trying to trivialise the plagiarism is a case in point.
Now a Professor Rajanish Dass at the Indian Institute of Management in Ahmedabad has blamed his co-author, Sujoy Pal (a research associate) for the plagiarism he was found guilty of. Dass has claimed that it was due to “ignorance and not intention” and has gone to the Gujarat High Court to try and delay the inevitable. Ironically Dass claims to be working on e-governance!
Students and research associates rank very low in the hierarchy of Indian academia and are convenient scapegoats for senior scientists and professors when they try to shrug off their responsibilities for wrong-doings.
Times of India:
A Gujarat high court ruling on Monday has come as a breather for IIM-A professor Rajanish Dass, who was held guilty of plagiarism in a preliminary inquiry conducted by the institute.
Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: e-governance, IIM-A, Indian Institute of Management, Plagiarism, Rajanish Dass
Posted in Academic misconduct, India | 7 Comments »
