The Polar Bear "species" is 100% safe from global warming

Environmental "scientists", I believe have been guilty of Species Inflation with regards to polar bears. One of the things that evolutionary and genetic science has given us is a "tight" definition of a species. Ignoring the look, habitat and lifestyle and just concentrating on the genetics, polar bears are a sub-species of the brown bear. Focusing on the plight of the white bears is just racism.

Threat plus opportunity = zero net cost (approx)

Tourism in Greenland is evidence that Global Warming brings opportunity in equal measure to threat.

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.

Iran

I have had a lot to say about the middle-east with specific reference to Iran in Kraus Rohde's Blog. I may seem to be completely in the camp which believes they truly are "Axis of Evil". In some sense again I agree with Dawk-ins in that it is religion is the problem there. But as Dawkins may believe that it is the essence of the belief in God that is the root problem, I differ in that the problem to me is that the leaders of the church there are the leaders of the country. This elevates the leadership to a "God" status in themselves, at least to their subjects, and to me demonstrates the virtues of separating state powers from religious powers.

But there is one thing that apparently they are leaders in. Some time ago, they decided that citizens could buy and sell kidneys. This has resulted in almost completely eliminating waiting lists and reducing renal-related deaths. This is certainly preferable to the situation highlighted by a Dutch reality show about the agony of waiting for donors.

Thinking... Thinking.... Thunk!

As usual the my spur of the moment environment entries attract comments while my entries on cosmology and budget get completely ignored. What is it about the internet. Posts labelled under "Darwinism" have generated most of my hits lately - go figure.

Where's the figures?

This article states confidently that Australia's emissions grow at twice the rate of other rich countries but was there a link to the data? Does any bloody news service that rants about global warming ever make the data demonstrating latest trends that they mention available? Nope. Where does this place Australia in its notional Kyoto targets that we didn't sign? Until the latest (but not linked) figures we appeared on target. I am quite for the concept of exporting emmissions to exempt developing countries like Indonesia etc. This may invoke a much more rapid transfer of real wealth to the third world, as we tax our Carbon highly, and they can remain exempt gaining a competitive advantage. And the nice thing about competitive advantage is that it isn't a "freebie" like aid, grants, tarriffs or oil resources. They still have to work hard and competitively to take advantage of the advantage.

On the latest posturing of "players" in the "global warming" game, there appears little prospect of (global) emmissions reductions for at least a couple of decades. Plus the moral hazard is just too great. I reckon if (global) emmissions are at 120% of current emmissions by 2030, we will be doing well. The only thing left to guesswork is who everyone is going to blame.

Cosmology

One of the things that always bothered me about the "Big Bang" was the mathematically awkward descriptions of the setoff process. This was alleviated for me somewhat by the newish assertion that the universe quantum tunnelled itself into existence. This takes care of the issue about what there was before by answering "nothing". The problem that it created however (to me) was that A) since there is no visible "antimatter" balancing the matter, there seems a distinct breaking of fundamental rules of some kind and B) What is stopping a big bang happening within our universe at any time to wreck it?. Matter and anti-matter pairs are constantly coming and going out of existence in the vaccuum of space, as far as I know, with no discernible other effects.

My theory is that if our universe and an antimatter copy of our universe were travelling away from eachother at the speed of light, that would resolve requirements of self-consistency of laws of conservation of matter/energy. Infact, one could postulate an infinite number of universes all travelling away from eachother at the speed of light, in matter/antimatter pairs. That would account for the infinite parallel universes that yet other theoretical scientists postulate, and explain why we can't see them.

The Budget

I remember now I was going to say something about the Australian Budget. In the two extremes, the superannuation co-contribution policy built up over the last few budgets is nothing short of pure genius. I may need to explain why this is so but it is a little long-winded. On the other extreme, the resumption and expansion of solar cell subsidies is throwing good money in the bin. The amount of carbon reductions per dollar spent is pathetically small + it distorts the green economy such that private enterprise will flourish chasing the subsidy and not the underlying carbon reduction goal.

Unfortunately, the government has not specified how it will achieve desired higher unemployment for those complaining about the worker "shortage". Even the labor party has twisted the problem around by saying it is a "skill" shortage. It is not. There is just not enough of the trained unemployed like we had in the Keating era.

Got Blogger's Block

Several times I have intended to post but got stuck after reading a bit and thought the better of it. I was going to come up with a brilliant personal example of how in the modern world, one can have a detailed discussion daily with friends that left town decades ago, yet never chat to old friends that live in your suburb still, that in fact you are still friends with. One in particular I see every week because our children go to the same kindy, and had been in the same group as my wife back in Senior camp. Yet I can't demonstrate the irony I feel without divulging more about the people involved than is appropriate in this blog.

Public vs Private - MILITARY

It is surprising that in all my years, I haven't seen an Economist article debating whether defence forces should be privatised and to what extent. Klaus Rohde touches an aspect in Private wars. In my own experience the first time I really thought about was after reading "Green Mars" (Kim Stanley Robertson) a future history novel in which the security arms of multinational companies became huge private armies. Two questions I ask myself are
- What examples of private armies in the world have been shown to be more effective than the standard sort? and
- Should we presume that privatised armies will allocate resources more efficiently, and therefore be more cost effective, or even decisive in situations where resources are subject to extensive competition?

The standard analogical analysis by the Economist leads one to believe that it is more efficient to list those things which shouldn't be privatised because it is a very short list.

As an answer to my first question, a small army of terrorists (these are almost exclusively privately run but funded by sponsoring Governments) can often "defeat" (ie. send packing to go home) a much larger, modern conventional army. I would expect that private "security" companies may have greater success at sticking out a long protracted conflict, and at a much smaller cost in say Iraq.

As an answer to my second question, there is extensive competition for human resources in a conflict situation. These are allocated much more efficiently in a terrorist organisation than in conventional armies. Western world organisations don't seem to be in the market for humans who will readily give up their life to kill for political reasons, but perhaps private security organisations from those countries are recruiting from the same pool of "brave fanatics".

Vote Labor???

We need a higher unemployment rate. It's not just that I like Kevin Rudd somewhat, and that the economic action is concentrated in water trading (and carbon trading). I am being selfish in this instance because a higher unemployment rate is good for small business owners. Ok, so it's not so good for the country as a whole, nor for the newly unemployed, but quite frankly, that's their problem. Kevin Rudd's IR policies are not laid down in stone, but the noises are in the direction of winding back selected workchoice legislation. What would be typical in Australian election campaigns is that the wind back is "minimalised" by the policy wonks. This is a strategy to maximise votes. Why advertise a complete windback when any windback more than the Liberals are promising will achieve the vote of the interested individual.
The "Labour supply shortfall" is an illusion based on the "lump of labour" fallacy. Low unemployment rates have the tendency to give that illusion. The difficulty in finding employees is real, and scaring (all the other) employers away from hiring is the only realistic avenue to making it easier. The unfair dismissal legislation is the obvious choice for a minimalist windback. This will scare the bejeepers out of most small businesses from employing (or even to dismissing while it is still legal) while my own analysis shows these fears to be somewhat overplayed or irrational. This is why on balance it would play in my individual favour.

Blah Blah Game Theory Blah Blah

I am probably not saying anything original by feeling that "Stable democracies" are an artifact of the "political game" establishing a "Nash equilibrium", ie. one where the "players" are each following optimal strategies. (I am asserting that) The resulting policies, economic growth, employment etc. that arise are a result of where that equilibrium is for that particular country. (I am asserting that) The "rules of the game" that determines where the country reaches equilibrium are the governing constitutions of the countries. Therefore, things like voting rules (first past the post, electoral college etc.), enshrined laws (right to bear arms, religious freedom), legal structure (relationship between law making, law enforcement and judgements) all affect where the equilibrium ends up. This is in contrast to the laws that are actually changed under that legal structure. Stuff like taxation law, immigration law etc. will tend not to be able to affect the equilibrium. War and constitutional challenges will potentially affect the equilibrium.
This is the reason voters become increasingly cynical in stable democracies. Voting seems increasingly to be an empty affair, devoid of real options.

Basic assumptions, Geopolitics

How do we sensibly (or even semi-scientifically) discuss the geopolitical issues amongst varying opinions? In Klaus Rhode's entry:Iraq war casualties and Iran, he takes a court-case type of paradigm for analysis. There is an apportionment of blame for, say deaths in Iraq since the war, proven crimes formerly by Iraq, current suspected and proven crimes by Iran and Iranians. This is then taken as a basis for what actions various countries should take, including the US, and whether these actions would be legal, and the likely consequences of taking action or not. My greatest objection to this paradigm is that it doesn't come close to reflecting reality. There is no world court to speak of, laws of nations are still competing with the law of the gun, misdeeds related to war-like actions cannot be brought to justice 999 times out of 1000. Apportionment of blame is realistic in situations (within borders of countries) that have good separation of powers, lots of resources for justice compared to the number of crimes, and little motivation for state-sponsored crime. These three things are not anywhere near happening in the middle east or geopolitically in general, making the paradigm nearly useless as a tool for discussion and analysis.
An example in point I can make for clarity is the use of human shields in Serbia during the war in Kosovo. If civilians are placed in strategic locations that are known to be bomb targets; is the country that dropped the bombs or the country that put them in harms way to blame if they die? Discussions quickly turn from who is to blame to how successful the strategy is. I am the kind of person that can think at the same time that an action is wrong and immoral, and also that if I was placed in that position, that it would be the best move to make. When leaders make decisions based solely on strategy rather than because international laws tell them to, a court case analogy loses all its predictive power and therefore its relevance. When strategy is the main motivating factor for discretionary decisions, game theory gives the best predictive qualities. This is why I can seem to be a game theory ideologue. To take the Iran (potential for the US to make bomb strikes on them) issue: To say that it would cause mass deaths, and would be illegal under international law misses the point entirely. Whether the powers that be decide to go down that path also depends on what Iran does (or "their move"). That Iran would continue toward a nuclear threshold even though they realise that there is an invisible line over which if they cross, the risk of war continues to rise, even if they don't quite know where that line lies, means that they are not afraid of war. The future of their citizens (and in the long term themselves), is also partly in their hands and the provocations they make. The Iraq example should demonstrate that the US is not that afraid of casualties, nor of a protracted conflict. Even if it doesn't deter Iran, it would probably deter others.

Queensland Brass Band Championships 2007

Townsville Brass made pretty much a clean sweep of the B grade events winning the Hymn, Test Piece, Stage March and light music concert divisions as well as the aggregate trophy. We came a close second in the own choice and in the middle of the pack in the street march.

Some reflections: The Townsville bands broke new ground a few years ago by wearing polo shirt uniforms for some events, rather than full suits with jackets. This year for instance we wore them for the street march and the concert. Our D grade band, called Brolga Brass wore them for all their events. I just believe that the suits that just about all other bands were wearing made them look stuffy and overly formal, as well as being completely inappropriate for warm weather.

Playing good music is incredibly therapeutic. Winning competitons even more so.

Bundaberg, Easter

I am going Down to Bundaberg for easter for the Qld Brass band Championships. Is anybody reading this going to be in Bundaberg at that time? Townsville is going to win the B-Grade championships, I am sure. There'll be a good march past as well.

Larry one year on

I still can't get over the fact that *Not one person lost their life* with such a severe storm. Banana prices suddenly increased again in commemoration, however:)

Thought Experiment - Geopolitics vs acting locally

I'd like to contrast Nuclear proliferation (NP) and Anthropogenic global warming(AGW). For the sake of argument, I am going to assume that AGW (and NP) are bad and they are problems in which one has to think globally. How far can we really get by relying on individual good-will and diplomacy. Like with property crime within a country, it certainly helps if strong religious values exist which reduces theft and that people are well educated on the negative results of crime. However, where moral hazard exists, a system of deterrence is also required to prevent cheating. With both NP and AGW, surely it is not education that is the weakness. The NP Treaty is an excellent tool for reducing NP, but surely the weakness is a lack of a Global system to deter the cheaters. Pretty much any treaty done under the UN has this weakness. Talking about global emmissions targets is like talking about nuclear weapons targets. Without a robust global system of deterrence, we are putting the cart before the horse. Honest countries will be held hostage by cheating ones with nuclear weapons, and selfless carbon misers will mean more resources to exploit for the cheaters. What is happening in Iran is way more urgent than Global Warming :- If we can't keep countries to their promises with Nuclear weapons, what hope do we have for carbon emmission targets.

South East Qld level 5 hah..

I just couldn't help snickering to myself as the level 5 water restrictions were announced recently. Move to North East Qld, I thought. I hope there's such a huge exodus of businesses and people, that their land valuations go down....
It was always a little bit hurtful during Townsville's droughts that we were nicknamed "Brownsville". Maybe Brisbane should be nicknamed Brisbrown?

Environmentally friendly power cable fault??!!

It took three months for me to discover a serious intermittent fault on a cable supplying power to our Linux mail server. The really strange thing was that it never once was off when we opened on a weekday morning, never turned off during a work day, but turned off (without exception again) every single night, and most sundays during the day! The first inkling was when somebody noted that emails weren't working when they came in on a Sunday. When I checked the log graphs of the server it became clear that it was turning off most nights and during the weekend. The "inexact" nature of the timing, and the "it turning off when nobody was expected to need it" factors seemed to point to human interference. Not so. Power fluctuations seemed to trigger on/off switching of the cable supplying the UPS. During the day, there was more on than off and the UPS remained charged. At low activity times it was more off than on, and when the UPS ran out of charge it turned off the server. Every morning (6:30) some kind of activity triggered the power back on and the server would reboot and stay on.

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.