It's the one-dimensional political continuum

Back when I was researching what was meant by "left" and "right" in politics, I realised that peoples political views are highly correlated, and that the position on a one-dimensional line that you reside in determines the kind of political authorities and peers one believes and therefore debates tend to try to push a swinging voter one direction or the other along the line, ignoring all possible tangents.
This is especially true for the global warming debate, the imaginary line having alarmist, environmentally conscious, act locally kind of view on one end, and highly "skeptic", globalisation friendly, optimists on the other end. Unfortunately, the skeptic end is associated with some rather dodgy pseudo-scientific arguments that global warming is natural, cyclical and unrelated to human activity, as described in the "Great Global Warming Swindle" show I watched part of the other day. This rather annoys multi-dimensional thinkers like myself, and that is why I tend to debate along the action axis, debating which actions are sensible and which are not in terms of energy and environmental policy.

Younger Dryas - Why can't it happen again?

Apparently, the most likely theory of the cause of the younger dryas involves a comet impact. The Younger Dryas is a rapid cooling event of about 13K years ago, going against the trend of moving into the current interglacial period. The reckoning is that a comet caused a catastrophic melt event which rapidly sent fresh water into the northern polar region: This caused a severe disruption of the thermo-haline current, plunging the Northern hemisphere back into ice age temperatures. Extra snow and ice cover caused an albedo effect which somewhat affected the temperature of the whole Earth somewhat, giving a thousand year pause to the interglacial warming, which even more suddenly corrected globally to a warm temperature consistent with the interglacial.

Climate scientists are almost unanimous in stating that a similarly triggered iceage could not happen due to the ice melt in greenland etc. due to global warming. The two prongs of this argument are 1) that the melting is too slow to give enough fresh water to similarly disrupt the currents, and 2) the base climatic conditions are too different - ie. there are less chance that there would be enough snow/ice cover to affect the albedo enough.

Most of the fearmongering however is that the icemelt and northern polar warming is going to be much more than had been calculated just a few short years ago, and quicker than anything since the younger dryas. That, to me, means that if Europe has a sudden cooling event (whithin the next 40 years), climate scientists could still claim that they were correct.

No! It is nothing like New Orleans!

Re: Australian outback alcoholism, child abuse in remote communities.
The comment by the prime minister is quite irresponsible. Let's see, Sending the army and police whom know little about the regional culture, don't really know which are the worst criminals because most crimes have been done in high secrecy; The problems are not amenable to "one-off" surge of interest, intrusion and intervention. Really, the only hope of "fixing" the problem would take 35 years and billions of dollars. This is more like IRAQ than New Orleans! I guess the political technique is, move out after a few months, claim victory, then re-bury our heads in the sand.

Historical Sciences Bah...

I am not really a big fan of the historical sciences. To me it makes a mockery of the word science(*). Scientific method is about repeatable experiments, and everybody knows that... "His-tory neever repeats...". Also, one can always quip back to some asserted historical fact - "Were you there?" you know to "observe" it. Indirect observation, irrepeatable conditions = always conjecture. This especially irks me when experts in their field go to extreme lengths and expense to prove for example A) that Jesus performed miracles or
B) that a particular fossil is the common ancestor of apes and humans.

To me these factoids are primarily used to enforce one's theological convictions, and are therefore pretty useless scientifically.

Even historical ice cores for temperature & atmosphere content statistics have gone as far as is scientifically useful. Todays conditions and issues are so radically different to historical ones, that it cannot help policy decisions today, and are therefore again only useful in promoting ones views (perhaps at taxpayers' expense).

(*) - To tell you the truth, I probably just have a problem with the "SPIN" placed on historical sciences rather than the historical science itself.

Lightbulbs - It's a scam

(re Australia's phase-out of incandescent lightbulbs) Ok, So there are no apparent victims, but it is the principle that matters the most. Intelligent citizens of democracies should always regard popular policies with very high degrees of suspicion. After all things like import quotas, tarriffs etc. are popular, but intelligent people know that they are basically scams. This scam is similar to our "Water-Wise" advertising scam. In this scam, local governments advertise how everyone should be saving water through the summer. Then, about a week after a severe downpour they advertise how little water everyone's been using and claim their water-wise campaign a huge success. Similarly, the government could have said they are phasing out film-type cameras (perhaps citing the energy intensive nature of producing the silver required in them or something) in favour of less polluting digital cameras. They could then advertise how little film is being used in Australia and claim their phase-out a raging success. Similarly with CRT TV's and LCD type ones. I guess the nature of this scam will be demonstrated by the comparison of incandescent lightbulb usage in Australia compared to a country that didn't advertise a phase-out. News items that feature a popular law change should be given the same regard as emails that tell you that you have won a prize. If it sounds too good to be true, then it probably is just good politics/marketing.

Freakonomics analysis of Swimming sportsmen

The book analysed extensively the level of corruption in Sumo-wrestling, a high profile Japanese sport. So why not a high profile Australian sport. I shall resist naming names, but there are times when I am suspicious given the incentives.

1) Selection trials often get in the way of "tapering" the training regime. ie, faster times would be more likely at big meets, if one could avoid having to swim hard to qualify, rather than sticking to a training regime.

2) This is more of a problem in longer races eg. 550m or 1320 meter races, for instance, and not so much for the 90m and 180m type distances.

3) The general public doesn't really know the qualifying rules, while top swimmers would know if there was a way to get into an event without swimming in the qualifying final.

4) A casual, pre-race gentleman's agreement between swimmers is unlikely if they are coached by different coaches.

5) In certain races, it is very easy to predict the places each swimmer will get, in advance, if there is considerable difference between them.

6) It is quite easy to fake a false start.

7) If you are going to false start, better it be in the first heat, rather than the final, so that you didn't waste that energy qualifying for the final for nothing.

8) How does a swimmer get a jaw injury that requires surgery, and how come his mouth can open so wide afterwards.

If you're not a "skeptic" you're not a scientist

The hijacking of the word "Skeptic" by the environmental community to mean someone who doesn't believe the scientists was unthoughtful and will backfire. Scientific skepticism is an extremely important concept and cannot be discredited ad hoc like it is. If an experiment gives reproducible results then it is considered science. Essentially, skepticism is an important distinction between science and religion. Any Climate scientist labelling others "climate skeptics" are showing their hand that they are "believers" in the way one believes in God - ie. without further need for "experiment". The Earth is running the experiment for us, so arguing the toss is less important than patiently analysing which predictions become reality and which ones don't. Importantly, some classes of prediction like whether an El Nino will form, are being more accurately predicted outside of the mainstream climate science bodies. This leads me to believe that most climate scientists are putting "faith" in models which accurately predict the past and glossing over discrepancies, and concentrating on subliminal pushing of their ideologies. I will combat this label hijacking by referring to any "scientist" using the label "Skeptic" in vain as "Believers" or "preachers" or some such religious label fitting the dogma.

The Answer - Smaller "NIMBY" footprint!!!

AHA. So what was the question? Why would a green-ly inclined Premier build a desalination plant in Sydney? The alternative of another dam involves incalculable number of "Not In My Back Yard" ers. The other answer is how the "culled" trees get treated. For general expansion of Sydney all trees are killed humanely (ie. chopped down quickly) and the animals which relied on those native trees could move on (a bit like the early settlers thought about aboriginals). With a dam being built, the imagination is that basically everything gets drowned - a slow and painful death.

This is also why Hydro-electric schemes get fought tooth and nail by environmentalists, despite the incredible number of carbon credits over a number of centuries of likely operation. Meanwhile, fossil fuel powered schemes just find an existing industrial complex to attach themselves to WITHOUT A SINGLE PROTESTER!
ACT LOCALLY - yeah right, as long as no big ugly dam, wind turbine, solar generation stack, farm etc. doesn't end up in my back yard!

When I lost Faith in all environmental activists

It was in third year University, at the refectory, watching a debate about a hydro-electric dam proposal somewhere in North Queensland. My primary interest was that because it was the World's most popular and effective type of renewable energy, we may turn the corner and have a bias towards these type of projects and away from coal and gas powered stations. I was sadly mistaken. The local environmental speakers pointed out that we should be reducing demand by using less electricity in the home by turning off lights etc. etc. and not building new power stations (oh yeah, and not needing them anyway). The scheme was shelved - Not one single hydro power project has been built in NQ. Several gas power stations have been built. Coal fired stations that had been out of commission for years were re-started. Meanwhile, electricity demand has increased steadily by about 8% per year. Since that time I would estimate our (NQ) CO2 emmissions have doubled. Meanwhile at the university, virgin wilderness surrounding it has been built on for new accommodation and general expansion. Surely the environmental activist movement could have picked a different project to pick their fight on. Environmental activists are still aiding fights against wind farms, tidal energy projects and the list goes on. Any project that is "big" and "new" is automatically seen as bad and fought tooth and nail - but the gradual but certain expansion of existing facilities is completely ignored.