Unsightly Mental Blemishes

Venerable National Geographic has passed control of its media assets  (magazine, cable channels, etc) to a group controlled by Fox, run by James Murdoch, youngest son of Rupert Murdoch of News Corp.  From the National Geographic press release:

The National Geographic Society and 21st Century Fox announced on Wednesday that they are expanding their partnership in a venture that will include National Geographic’s cable channels, its 127-year-old magazine, digital and social platforms, maps, travel, and other media.

Under the $725-million deal, Fox, which currently holds a majority stake in National Geographic’s cable channels, will own 73 percent of the new media company, called National Geographic Partners. The National Geographic Society will own 27 percent.

Officials at National Geographic and Fox said the deal will bring greater financial stability to the Society’s media products and its scientific research arm, which have operated as a non-profit since National Geographic’s founding in 1888.

While the magazine is the iconic face of the Society, especially for us old timers who remember the stacks and stacks of yellow mags, I suspect NG’s real worth lies in the research arm; the magazine existed as an important funding tool, both directly and indirectly.  However, as The Washington Post notes (and in a very interesting way),

The agreement provides a financial lifeline not just for the much-honored magazine, but also for the National Geographic Society itself, the organization’s chief executive acknowledged Wednesday. Like many print publications, National Geographic has been hurt by the onset of the digital era, which has put it on a slow trajectory toward extinction.

The magazine’s domestic circulation peaked at about 12 million copies in the late 1980s; today, the publication reaches about 3.5 million subscribers in the United States and an additional 3 million subscribers abroad through non-English-language editions. Advertising has been in steady decline.

“It has become apparent that ensuring the future of the society would require something bold,” the society’s chief executive, Gary Knell, said at an all-staff meeting Wednesday. Continuing as a media organization and potentially absorbing future losses, he said, “presented enormous and real existential risks. We . . . truly believe the path we’ve chosen presents the greatest potential upside.”

It’s interesting that one print publication would be predicting the demise of another.  Can we be so sure of the loss of a magazine of such unique interest and quality?

In any case, I wish the partnership well.  National Geographic magazine was certainly one of my motivators in where my life has led, motivating that sense of wonder and interest in various fields of science, especially the bizarre ways of life led by others – and how ours must look to them.

Senor Unoball @ The Daily Kos coughs up a hairball on the news.

Katherine Martinko likes them:

Here is a good reason to plan a vacation in the near future – it will make you healthier and happier. Far too many people fail to fit vacations into their lives, and yet taking time away from work to recharge, whether it’s on an exotic trip or a relaxing ‘staycation’ at home, has wide-ranging benefits. Studies have shown that vacations are crucial for human wellbeing for many different reasons.

I just liked the post!

Following in Kim Davis’ footsteps is someone who should know better, according to Josie Duffy @ The Daily Kos:

Gay marriage has been legal in Oregon since May 2014, but [Judge Vance] Day told his staff to tell same-sex couples to find another judge.

Judging from the story, my earlier remarks apply to this clown as well.  Religious convictions do not apply when doing a government job.  If your limited intellect can’t handle the idea of a civil marriage vs a religious marriage, it’s time to settle into retirement and muttering into your beard.

The GOP leadership has not yet chosen to lead on the Iran deal, but instead begin digging into odder options.  First up, Steve Benen reports on one approach:

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), a struggling presidential candidate, has a very different approach in mind: the Republican senator wants to “strip the IAEA, a United Nations agency, of the U.S. portion of its funding.”

Steve references Politico‘s report:

The 2016 long-shot Republican presidential candidate warned Secretary of State John Kerry this week that unless the White House allows lawmakers to review the agreements forged between the International Atomic Energy Agency and Iran, he will work to strip the IAEA of U.S. funding.

Politico also reports the US provides around $88 million.  I can’t help but wonder if some other nation would step in to cover the funding if Graham were to succeed with his threat.

Meanwhile, the House GOP caucus has displayed a symptom of what happens when an overly rigid structure comes apart – the destruction is bewildering and unpredictable.  Matt Fuller @ RollCall reports on the House GOP strategy:

House Freedom Caucus members are poised to demand Wednesday that Republican leaders delay a vote on an Iran disapproval resolution until the White House has revealed all “side deals” with Iran.

And if GOP leaders don’t delay the Iran disapproval resolution, HFC members are discussing voting down the rule for the resolution on Wednesday.

Which I take to mean, breaking with the leadership.  Matt further notes,

But the larger issue for members with the Friday vote seems to be the report of “side deals” between Iran and the International Atomic Energy Agency. Rep. Peter Roskam, R-Ill., offered a privileged motion Tuesday for a vote on a resolution that states the House should not act on the Iran nuclear legislation until it receives all “side deals.”

Under the Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act, the president is obligated to send Congress “all related materials and annexes,” and until the president does that, the 60-day clock for a vote on Iran does not start.

So if the GOP House believes materials have been withheld, then the clock hasn’t started.  I suppose this has the potential to end up in court.  Matt finishes with a curious omission:

Delaying a vote now could simply subject Democrats to a prolonged campaign later to change their position on the Iran deal, or perhaps worse, a long-term GOP campaign that the deal should be nullified. If House Republican leaders want to move forward with a vote on the disapproval resolution, Democratic leaders may be inclined to let them.

A delay could also subject GOP legislators to pressure; or to restate it, present an opportunity to lead, rather than follow the rest of the sheep over the cliff.

Steve Benen also has some commentary here.

The Supreme Leader of Iran isn’t making it easy for the GOP to return to the right side of the tracks, as he once again declares for the death of Israel, as reported by many news outlets.  The Times of Israel:

Israel will not survive the next 25 years, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said Wednesday, making a series of threatening remarks published online.

In a quote posted to Twitter by Khamenei’s official account, Khamenei addresses Israel, saying, “You will not see next 25 years,” and adds that the Jewish state will be hounded until it is destroyed.

The quote comes against a backdrop of a photograph apparently showing the Iranian leader walking on an Israeli flag painted on a sidewalk.

“After negotiations, in Zionist regime they said they had no more concern about Iran for next 25 years; I’d say: Firstly, you will not see next 25 years; God willing, there will be nothing as Zionist regime by next 25 years. Secondly, until then, struggling, heroic and jihadi morale will leave no moment of serenity for Zionists,” the quote from Iran’s top leader reads in broken English.

The quote was apparently taken from a speech given earlier in the day.

I think there’s a couple of interesting facets here.

First, this is a domestic speech, given to a domestic audience which is expecting a bit of red meat.  Khamenei, as noted in this Foreign Affairs article, has been around time and his views of the USA are quite hostile, so an anti-West speech, which includes Israel, is no surprise.

Second, while he is the Supreme Leader, he is supervised by the Council of Experts, who can remove him for cause, so he must keep them happy.

Third, he is a bright guy.  He has to know that inserting a comment about the death of Israel into the world community at this point will stir the GOP up; so the question becomes, why?  What does the leader of Iran see as a gain from a stirred up GOP, United States, and Israel?

The latest in planetary number calculations from NewScientist‘s Jacob Aron (29 August 2015, paywall):

[Peter] Behroozi [of the Space Telescope Science Institute] and his colleague Molly Peeples have combined the latest exoplanet statistics with our understanding of how galaxies form stars. The result is a formula that tracks the growth in the number of planets in the universe over time (arxiv.org/abs/1508.01202).

It suggests there are currently 10²⁰, or 100 billion billion, Earth-like planets in the universe, with an equivalent number of gas giants. “Earth-like” doesn’t mean an exact replica of our planet, but rather a rocky world that, if blanketed by a suitable atmosphere, would hold liquid water on its surface. Applied to the solar system, this definition would include Mars and Venus but not Mercury or the moon.

And that’s just the start. Only a fraction of the gas within all the galaxies in the cosmos has cooled enough to start collapsing, so stars and planets will continue forming for billions of years. That means 92 per cent of the universe’s Earth-like planets won’t exist until long after the sun has died and taken the Earth with it.

“Philosophically, if you want to know our place in the universe as a whole, then you also need to include what will happen in the future,” says Behroozi. “I didn’t expect to find the Earth had formed so early.”

And other civilizations?

Figuring out where we fit in the grand cosmic timeline also gives us an idea of how many other civilisations might be out there. Suppose intelligent life is so rare that Earth is the first planet in the universe to evolve a civilisation – an almost ludicrously conservative assumption. Then the sheer number of future Earth-like planets means that the likelihood of us being the only civilisation the universe will ever have is at most 8 per cent.

If we find just one other inhabited planet in the Milky Way, the number of other such worlds rockets up. Such a discovery, together with the unlikeliness of our galaxy being the only one to host life, would make Earth at least the 10 billionth civilisation in the universe at present.

Enough to make me blink.

Here’s the situation: the Democrats are, including the right wing of the party and those under pressure from a public unversed in foreign relations, rallying behind the Iran deal – only two Democratic Senators have registered opposition to the deal, both heavily involved with Israel.  The current GOP leadership, on the other hand, is united in opposition to the deal, the GOP presidential contenders competing to make outrageous comments in order to catch the attention and votes of the GOP base.  Alone amongst the allies of the USA, Israel stands against the deal.  While some of the Mid East allies are grumpy, even Saudi Arabia has signed on.

But now, as Steve Benen @ Maddowblog notes, the old GOP leadership is showing up for perhaps its last stand – against those who supplanted it.

Because, whether the right likes it or not, the GOP’s elder statesmen keep announcing their support for the diplomatic solution.

Former Secretary of State Colin Powell expressed support for the nuclear agreement with Iran, calling the various planks Iranian leaders accepted “remarkable” and dismissing critics’ concerns over its implementation.

“It’s a pretty good deal,” he said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

Powell, a veteran of the Bush/Cheney administration and the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs, described the provisions of the Iran deal as “remarkable” and praised the “very vigorous verification regime [that] has been put into place.”

PoliticusUSA notes:

“They had stockpiled something in the neighborhood of 12,000 kilograms of uranium. This deal will bring it down to 300 kilograms,” Powell said. “It’s a remarkable reduction. I’m amazed that they would do this this but they have done it.”Putting a finely honed knife to the back of Republican fearmongering about the Iran deal, Powell said, “These are remarkable changes. We have stopped this highway race that they were going down and I think this is very, very important.”

For the finishing blow, Powell took out the Republican argument that we just gave them everything and got nothing, “Will they comply with it? Well, they get nothing until they comply and that’s the important part of the arrangement.”

He joins Brent Snowcroft, and former Senators Richard Lugar and John Warner in supporting the deal – senior members of the GOP who have been shoved aside by the current leadership.  Of course, not all the GOP retirees are in the same boat.  From another Benen article:

Former Vice President Dick Cheney is scheduled to speak today at a D.C. think tank, delivering remarks intended to condemn the international nuclear agreement with Iran. If an ignominious exchange over the weekend was evidence of his expertise, however, Cheney might want to reschedule, brush up on the details, and rethink his approach.

The underlying challenge for the failed former V.P. is the degree to which his own Iran policy failed spectacularly. Iran didn’t have a meaningful nuclear weapons program until Tehran developed one – during the Bush/Cheney administration. At the time, in response to Iran’s nuclear program, the Bush/Cheney administration did nothing – except, of course, strengthen Iran’s regional power by invading Iraq.

Here’s the thing: this is not so much a debate any longer as a display of leadership.  Leadership quite often means grabbing the tether of a bucking horse and leading it where it should go, not where it wants to go.  In this case, the current GOP leadership and the GOP base have convinced themselves that the deal is horrid – while the Democrats do not agree, and the rest of the world, having examined the deal, and in important cases actually signed on, watches in a sort of quiet horror at the antics of the GOP.

Lugar, Snowcroft, Warner, and now Powell are showing how to be a mature political party by setting aside partisan politics at the national border and evaluating events in a proper way – that is, by putting the interests of the nation above party.  By putting honesty above party.  By not being swayed by the cries of the uninformed base, of the commercially motivated pundits with no skin in the game, of the political amateurs currently occupying national seats who fail to realize that “boots on the ground” and other such marketing phrases really mean People Will Die.

Let their be no mistake: the degree to which the GOP Members of Congress choose to support the Iran deal will be a measure of the maturity of the GOP Party.¹

¹And how long after these courageous members of Congress stand up and declare their allegiance is to their country, first, and Party, second, will the wild cries of “RINO” ring out, and soon their skins will hang from the walls of the Party faithful, who will then resume their slack-jawed, drooling wandering through the hallways of Futile Purity?

The Corpse Came C.O.D. was recorded by the Tivo in the last few days, and we watched it.  It’s an uncomfortable melding of a murder mystery and a comedy.  Such things can be done, of course, but this one does not do it well.  It is notable for the many cameos by gossip columnists, if you’re into such things.

Tangential to this thread, Steve Benen discusses the accomplishments of the Obama Administration since the last election cycle:

Indeed, as we talked about a couple of months ago, it’s worth looking back at the political climate in November 2014 – just 10 months ago – in the wake of a very successful election cycle for Republicans.

Because it was at this point that much of the political world simply assumed that the Obama presidency was effectively over. Sure, he’d still be in office, and maybe he’d make a decision or two, but the president’s ability to advance his agenda and rack up major accomplishments had passed. Obama was irrelevant, the argument went. Republicans were ascendant and it was time to start thinking about the 2016 race.Indeed, many expected this precisely because the script for “lame duck” presidents is so familiar, especially following a stinging electoral rebuke.

And yet, here we are. The 2014 midterms are a distant memory; Republicans lack direction and leadership; and the Obama administration has spent the year scoring one victory after another.

Remember, the parties had two very different explanations for what transpired in the last election cycle. For Republicans, GOP candidates won because Americans rejected progressivism. For the White House, voters were irritated with a Beltway that accomplishes nothing. Voters weren’t rejecting liberalism so much as they were expressing contempt for political paralysis.

The president saw no reason to temper his ambitions because as far as Obama’s concerned, he’s delivering on what people want: progress and constructive, effective policymaking.

The mystifying unknown of dark matter, used to explain the movement of faraway galaxies, has begun to annoy some physicists.  NewScientist (22 August 2015, paywall) publishes an article by Sabine Hossenfelder and Naomi Lubick on the matter:

But quarks are quirky. They never float around freely thanks to a peculiar property of the strong nuclear force that binds them. When the distance between quarks is small, the force is weak. But as that distance increases, it gets stronger and the quarks are pulled back together. Another strange quality of the strong force is that it is weaker at high energies, such as those produced in collisions at the LHC. Physicists can calculate how quarks interact at these energies but not at lower ones, where the force keeping quarks together strengthens. As a result, physicists still struggle to explain how quarks form mesons and baryons, a process which occurs at lower energies.

This uncertainty has led to proposals that other forms of matter might exist. As early as the 1980s, Edward Witten, a mathematical physicist at Princeton University, suggested that light quarks could combine with their heavier cousins, such as strange quarks, in unusual ways.

Unlike in ordinary matter, these combinations of quarks would not form atomic nuclei. Instead they would develop into large amorphous blobs, gathering ever more particles in a small space. Witten called them “quark nuggets”. Bryan Lynn, a theoretical physicist at University College London, and others later expanded this to more examples such as “strange baryon matter” and “chiral liquid drops”.

Such exotic clumps of familiar elementary particles would not contain the enormous spaces between atomic nuclei that we see in normal matter. This would make them as dense as neutron stars, a teaspoon of which weighs as much as a mountain. So even though they might be extremely heavy, they could also be tiny. Some researchers have dubbed them “macros” – a reference to the need to measure their masses in kilograms and tonnes rather than the vanishingly small units usually employed for particles.

And because macros are entirely made up of nuclear matter, without any circulating electrons or empty spaces, they would not be capable of sustaining fusion and therefore could not shine. The high density of the clumps would also make them less likely to interact with incoming light. In short, macros would be diminutive, massive and extremely hard to spot, if not entirely invisible.

While it’s not unheard of to theorize about some particle and have it discovered years later, such as the neutrino, dark matter has been somewhat unsatisfying without any signal beyond gravity to show for it, so this alternative has a certain attraction to it – just quarks in some new configurations.  No sign these actually exist, yet, but new tests are being devised and they have not yet been ruled out.

The paradigm of a low-fat, high carb diet is becoming quite wobbly.  Last June, Katherine Martinko @ Treehugger.com reviewed Nina Teicholz’s new book, The Big Fat Surprise: Why Butter, Meat & Cheese Belong in a Healthy Diet:

Over the ten years she spent researching her book, Teicholz interviewed top nutrition experts in the country, as well as many of the scientists who conducted the studies that remain the cornerstone of mainstream nutritional advice in the United States. She spent years reading the studies in their entirety, not just the abstracts. This effort paid off; she came across many inconsistencies, questionable methods, skewed data, and misleading conclusions. She interviewed people in the nutrition field who have been shunned for not “toeing the official line,” for daring to question whether minimizing saturated fat intake is really the best thing for human bodies.

The Big Fat Surprise reveals a world that is fraught with poor science, loads of industry money, political clout, and bloated egos pushing for specific results that always feature the demonization of fat, particularly saturated. It makes you realize quickly that the food pyramid, as we know it, has very little to do with what’s actually optimal for human health and far more to do with politics.

Now NewScientist (22 August 2015, paywall) carries an opinion piece to much the same effect, if somewhat more moderate.  It’s by Dariush Mozaffarian, dean of the Friedman School of Nutrition Science & Policy, Tufts University, and David Ludwig, director of the New Balance Foundation Obesity Prevention Center:

… by 2000, growing research showed benefits from healthy fats, and harms in low-fat diets high in processed carbohydrates. So in 2005, US guidelines raised the upper fat limit to 35 per cent and, for the first time, set a lower limit of 20 per cent. Few people noticed, and the low-fat craze continued.

Through continued advances in nutrition science, it is now clear that an emphasis on reducing total fat is not only unhelpful, but can be harmful. Whether for weight loss or preventing long-term weight gain, diabetes, cardiovascular disease or cancer, evidence shows that it brings no clear health gain.

In contrast, meaningful health benefits are documented with high plant fat, Mediterranean-style diets supplemented with extra-virgin olive oil or nuts, in which total fat intake makes up more than 40 per cent of calories.

Based on these findings, the US Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee omitted a total fat limit in recommendations, ahead of final benchmarks this year.

The US, UK and others should take note. Existing advice is driving consumers and industry towards low-fat products high in refined carbs, sugars and salt; and away from healthy higher-fat foods such as nuts, vegetable oils and whole-fat dairy products.

Note the divergence – Teicholz recommends animal fats, while Mozaffarian and Ludwig still recommend plant-derived fats.  Martinko, the reviewer of Teicholz’s book, notes that

She [Teicholz] goes on to say that, if we returned to eating tallow and lard once again, it could free up much of the agricultural land currently dedicated to growing soybean, rapeseed, cottonseed, safflower, and corn oils.

Which sounds good at first.  I do not know the current fate of tallow and lard – is it treated as waste, or used in another form?  If the former, then maybe some agricultural land could be retired or repurposed; if it’s used in other applications, then I fear that more cattle would need to be raised for slaughter, which would utilize at least the repurposed land, and probably more.

Historically, concerns about saturated fat started with Dr. Ancel Keys, a Mayo and University of Minnesota researcher.  From Wikipedia:

His interest in diet and cardio-vascular disease (CVD) was prompted, in part, by seemingly counter-intuitive data: American business executives, presumably among the best-fed persons, had high rates of heart disease, while in post-war Europe CVD rates had decreased sharply in the wake of reduced food supplies. Keys postulated a correlation between cholesterol levels and CVD and initiated a study of Minnesota businessmen (the first prospective study of CVD).^[25] At a 1955 expert meeting at the World Health Organization in Geneva, Keys presented his diet-lipid-heart disease hypothesis with “his usual confidence and bluntness”.^[26][27]

After observing in southern Italy the highest concentration of centenarians in the world, Keys hypothesized that a Mediterranean-style diet low in animal fat protected against heart disease and that a diet high in animal fats led to heart disease. The results of what later became known as the Seven Countries Study appeared to show that serum cholesterol was strongly related to coronary heart disease mortality both at the population and at the individual level.^[28][29] As a result, in 1956 representatives of the American Heart Association appeared on television to inform people that a diet which included large amounts of butter, lard, eggs, and beef would lead to coronary heart disease. This resulted in the American government recommending that people adopt a low-fat diet in order to prevent heart disease.

I know that recently he was accused of cherry-picking his data.  Dr. McDougall of the newsletter It’s The Food provides a defense of Keys here.

Interestingly enough, Keys was known for following his own advice (or, to reuse a more memorable phrase, eating his own dog food) and made it to the age of 100; his wife to the age of 97.

So, in our minimal discussion (here and here) of the categorization of human (or, at least, American) society, we mentioned and gave a slight definiton of the Educational Sector.  This then lets us read this bit from University of Wisconsin–Madison Chancellor Rebecca Blank (from Minnesota Magazine) with perhaps a trifle more clarity:

The top of my list of challenges is trying to figure out how to create financial stability for an institution where our long-term model has included substantial subsidies from the state, and that model is being eroded year after year. The state at the same time wants to continue to demand that we provide the same subsidy to our students, even though they aren’t providing it to us. They want the same low tuition rates for the citizens of the state because that’s good politics and good for the state. Trying to figure out how you make an institution work in the midst of those financial challenges when state dollars have fallen rapidly for the last 15 to 20 years is, to me, the biggest challenge of the big publics. If we could solve that, everything else is pretty minor in comparison.

The unfortunate requirement that education function in the language of the private sector tends to deform its mission, making it more subject to the whims of both the private and public sectors.  This brings up the notion of command and support sectors, where the public and private sectors may be in the former category, while the education and health sectors would reside in the latter.  The basis of compartmentalization would be the degree to which other sectors influence and deform the operationality of the sectors.

The extent of deformation is probably inversely correlated with the efficiency of the sector in accomplishing its purpose.  An example might be the educational system in North Carolina, where, under the banner,

“We’re capitalists, and we have to look at what the demand is, and we have to respond to the demand.”

the higher educational system is suffering major cuts.  While cutting funding is a traumatic event for most concerned, the real problem is that the cuts are under the guidance of representatives of the private and public sectors, not the educational sector.  Their motivations are very different from those of the educational sector, and the chance of a disaster occurring must certainly rise as those motivations are permitted to run rampant in a sector whose goals are not identical to their own; that is, the educational sector is educating the next generation, not attempting to profit from their operations.  Moving such a purpose into the private sector has not been promising, and while we may point at private colleges and universities, these subsist more on alumnae donations, foundations, endowments, as much or more as they do on tuition from students.  These sources are peculiar to the educational sector as they do not fit into the modes of any other sector, with some crossover to the (undefined) health sector.

(I also have to shake my head at the thought that demand is important; this is the thought process of a private sector CEO, not an educator who is thinking of the future of the students, who, for the most part, are young and inexperienced, even if the law now sees them as ‘adults’ – if adults without drinking privileges.  They may demand basket-weaving; they should take classes in foreign languages.  Who should win this discussion?  Strawman, you say?  How about classes in Business vs classes in Ethics?)

So what?  Well, how should education be funded?  Perhaps the private colleges and universities are doing OK, but the public schools are under a lot of stress.  The University of Wisconsin is not alone; from the same article, University of Minnesota President Eric Kaler states,

The clear cause is disinvestment in the University of Minnesota by the state. Our state appropriation was cut dramatically and those dollars were replaced with increased tuition dollars. At the same time, the institution became increasingly efficient. To illustrate, look back 10 years or so and do the following exercise: add together the state appropriation per student and the tuition paid by the student to get a total that is a very rough measure of what it costs to educate a student. That total is 11 percent lower today after accounting for inflation, showing a pretty remarkable improvement in efficiency. But the total state appropriation per student is lower today than it was at the beginning of the century. So what has changed dramatically is who pays the cost. It used to be mostly the state, and now it’s predominantly the student and her family.

It is not unreasonable to suggest that a well-educated citizenry is an asset to the State, to the public sector.  Using that reasonable statement, it’s not difficult to argue that the public sector should fund the educational sector, at least in those institutions we call public universities, as a way of paying for the service of providing a well-educated citizenry.

It would be very good to find a dedicated source.  The gas tax is often guaranteed to be used for upkeep of the road system; something similar, beyond political gimickry, should be developed for the Educational sector.  This would permit the support status of education, which makes it a victim, to be isolated from the undue influence of the private and public sectors.  However, the exact source seems to be beyond me.

Science is a perfect ideal surrounded by imperfect servants, by whom I mean the scientists: poor sensory organs, poor tools, and the occasional dishonest creature makes up the corp.  The results are studies with results defying known science, anomalous results, and the occasional out and out fraud.  These problems are not particularly easy to manage, due to various factors, which I take to include both poor logistical tools as well as egotism and narcissism, and, in the commercial realm, a desire for corporate secrecy.

The advent of computers and then the Internet, however, present an opportunity to emplace procedures ameliorating the imperfections of the servants of science.  But first, an example of the problem, courtesy an anonymous psychologist and The Atlantic:

In the last few years, psychologists have become increasingly aware of, and unsettled by, these problems. Some have created an informal movement to draw attention to the “reproducibility crisis” that threatens the credibility of their field. Others have argued that no such crisis exists, and accused critics of being second-stringers and bullies, and of favoring joyless grousing over important science. In the midst of this often acrimonious debate, [Brian] Nosek has always been a level-headed figure, who gained the respect of both sides. As such, the results of the Reproducibility Project, published today in Science, have been hotly anticipated.

They make for grim reading. Although 97 percent of the 100 studies originally reported statistically significant results, just 36 percent of the replications did.

The original publication in Science is here.  Lisa Feldman Barrett, in the New York Times, disagrees with the perception that there may be a crisis occurring:

But the failure to replicate is not a cause for alarm; in fact, it is a normal part of how science works.

Suppose you have two well-designed, carefully run studies, A and B, that investigate the same phenomenon. They perform what appear to be identical experiments, and yet they reach opposite conclusions. Study A produces the predicted phenomenon, whereas Study B does not. We have a failure to replicate.

Does this mean that the phenomenon in question is necessarily illusory? Absolutely not. If the studies were well designed and executed, it is more likely that the phenomenon from Study A is true only under certain conditions. The scientist’s job now is to figure out what those conditions are, in order to form new and better hypotheses to test. …

Psychologists are usually well attuned to the importance of context. In our experiments, we take great pains to avoid any irregularities or distractions that might affect the results. But when it comes to replication, psychologists and their critics often seem to forget the powerful and subtle effects of context. They ask simply, “Did the experiment work or not?” rather than considering a failure to replicate as a valuable scientific clue.

(h/t Richard Soulen)  And, of course, this can be absolutely true for some fields, and false in others.  However, the point is to detect those studies with flaws in design and execution, and to detect them early.  To this goal, Dr. Nosek is now running the Reproducibility Project.  From the Atlantic article:

… would be the first big systematic attempt to answer questions that have been vexing psychologists for years, if not decades. What proportion of results in their field are reliable?

As Professor Barrett points out, this could be an opportunity to discover new information and follow leads to new discoveries.  But replication of results remains an important facet of science, so this project is important in its own right, not only for psychology, but science in general.  And replication can be used as a criticism, as in this article from NewScientist (22 August 2015, paywall), “Suicidal behaviour predicted by blood test showing gene changes,” which claims tentative evidence that suicide can be predicted from a blood test.  Here’s the criticism:

While mortality linked to physiological conditions like cardiac disease has fallen, suicide rates are at an all-time high across all age groups in the US. In the UK, rates have been rising steadily since 2007, and similar trends are seen in other countries. The desire to have psychiatry benefit from biological advances in the same way as the rest of medicine is why the NIMH has changed its approach. But the shift towards detecting biomarkers by neuroimaging or monitoring gene expression has drawn criticism.

“The NIMH is funding biomarker porn,” says James Coyne of University Medical Center in Groningen, the Netherlands. “It’s airbrushed, heavily edited, and you can’t replicate it at home.”

Coyne’s view is shaped by the small sample sizes used in early mental health biomarker research – something that can be problematic for rare conditions.

An allied problem is publication bias, wherein journals preferentially publish papers which fail to falsify their hypothesis, which means we lose access to knowledge about falsified hypotheses.  This has particularly been a problem in the area of drug development, wherein we have not kept good track of what drugs are not applicable to what conditions – arguably more sheer data than what drug does have an effect on what condition.  Towards resolving this is ClinicalTrials.gov, which enables the registration of studies as well as their results.

Then we can talk about fraud.  Scientific American has a review of a book, On Fact and Fraud: Cautionary Tales from the Front Lines of Science (Princeton University Press, 2010), by David Goodstein, containing this fascinating observation:

Knowing that scientists are highly motivated by status and rewards, that they are no more objective than professionals in other fields, that they can dogmatically defend an idea no less vehemently than ideologues and that they can fall sway to the pull of authority allows us to understand that, in Goodstein’s assessment, “injecting falsehoods into the body of science is rarely, if ever, the purpose of those who perpetrate fraud. They almost always believe that they are injecting a truth into the scientific record.” Goodstein should know because his job as the vice provost of Caltech was to investigate allegations of scientific misconduct. From his investigations Goodstein found three risk factors present in nearly all cases of scientific fraud. The perpetrators, he writes, “1. Were under career pressure; 2. Knew, or thought they knew, what the answer to the problem they were considering would turn out to be if they went to all the trouble of doing the work properly; and 3. Were working in a field where individual experiments are not expected to be precisely reproducible.”

And while scientific fraud is a serious matter, I must cite one that makes me laugh, the Columbia University ‘Miracle’ Study of 2004.  From, appropriately enough, Skeptical Inquirer:

On October 2, 2001, the New York Times reported that researchers at prestigious Columbia University Medical Center in New York had discovered something quite extraordinary (1). Using virtually foolproof scientific methods the researchers had demonstrated that infertile women who were prayed for by Christian prayer groups became pregnant twice as often as those who did not have people praying for them. The study was published in the Journal of Reproductive Medicine (2). Even the researchers were shocked. The study’s results could only be described as miraculous. This was welcome and wonderful news for a shaken nation.

The upshot?  Bad procedures.  Two authors who backed away and refused to answer questions.  A third who ended up in jail.  Again.

So what?  Don’t we already have “peer-reviewed” journals?  Certainly, but they can only do so much.  From Charles Seife at the L. A. Times:

[Science Magazine] Editor in Chief Marcia McNutt said the magazine was essentially helpless against the depredations of a clever hoaxer: “No peer review process is perfect, and in fact it is very difficult for peer reviewers to detect artful fraud.”

This is, unfortunately, accurate. In a scientific collaboration, a smart grad student can pull the wool over his advisor’s eyes — or vice versa. And if close collaborators aren’t going to catch the problem, it’s no surprise that outside reviewers dragooned into critiquing the research for a journal won’t catch it either. A modern science article rests on a foundation of trust.

So some scientists have feet of clay.  Projects such as the Replication Project function as a way to splash more light onto studies, and whether it’s disinterested scientists performing their duties, or scientists with vendettas, when the subject is out in the light for viewing, it’s just like the encryption community – everything improves.  Using technology to gather up studies in all their details, from data to collection methods to analysis methods to results will certainly help to improve the quality of the studies, IF other scientists are willing to take that information seriously and use it for their own replication attempts.

After all, scientists don’t reinvent the wheel; they stand on the shoulders of those who already did.

Given how the news has crawled all over Kim Davis, the elected county clerk in KY who refuses to issue marriage licenses to gay couples, it seems like there’s nothing more to add to the furor. Still, I can’t help wondering if the following line of questioning has been pursued. I imagine her responses as that of a reasonable person who perhaps hasn’t quite followed through the reasoning …

Questioner: Mz. Davis, do you see your elective position as religious; that is, are you a religious official due to having been elected to the position of county clerk?

Mz. Davis: Why, no. The United States, while a Christian country, does not permit religion in government.

Questioner: So, Mz. Davis, when you issue a marriage license to a loving couple, are you blessing, or calling forth the blessing of a divinity, upon this marriage?

Mz. Davis: Of course not.

Questioner: Is it your duty, then, to ascertain that the couples presenting themselves have passed certain legal requirements, such as age, and upon satisfying yourself as to those requirements, to present a State sanctioned civil license of marriage to them?

Mz. Davis: Well, yes, but –

Questioner: So, as we have agreed, there is no presence of divinity, blessing, or any other religious association with this civil matter.

Mz. Davis: Yes, but –

Questioner: Mz. Davis, does religious marriage have a contingency on obtaining a civil license?

Mz. Davis: No!

Questioner: Nor does civil marriage have such a contingency on a religious marriage sanction; they are, in fact, separate and unrelated institutions. Mz. Davis, given the complete lack of religious association with your duties, how can you continue to refuse to issue civil licenses to gay couples?

This line of logical reasoning, illuminating certain facts, should be enough to quiet the storm. Still, I suspect Presidential candidates such as Huckabee will disagree. Western Journalism, provider of the Huckabee link, appears to be somewhat confused (as does the candidate) about how the law works, when they ask,

But more particularly Huckabee wants to know under exactly what law Davis is being commanded to issue marriage licenses to gay couples?

The main question is this: just what “law” did the Supreme Court make with its gay marriage decision? What statute was passed? What law written?

The answer is none.

The answer, of course, is that none is required.  Absent any law denying the application, and assuming all applicable requirements are met (again, age, etc), the application must be granted – the clerk does not have personal discretion in the matter.  Huckabee’s yapping about enabling legislation is just that.

To his credit, fellow GOP Presidential candidate Lindsey Graham has taken the opposite end of the spectrum, courtesy Towleroad:

Sen. Graham issued his comments on Hugh Hewitt’s conservative radio program this Tuesday saying that while he agrees with Davis’ ideals on marriage, she still has to comply with the law of the land:

“The rule of law is the rule of law. We are a rule of law nation.

“I appreciate her conviction, I support traditional marriage, but she’s accepted a job in which she has to apply the law to everyone.”

Sen. Graham ended his statement saying that if Davis doesn’t comply with the law then she needs to resign from her position.

RightWingWatch‘s coverage of the matter is here.

The University of Minnesota is continuing in the tradition of Norman Borlaug in the enhancement of farming output as noted in this report from BTN (Big Ten Network):

[Professor Ian] MacRae and his team are employing unmanned aerial drones to scrutinize vast farm fields in order to find pockets of insect pests. Once they’re detected, insecticides can be deployed in a targeted fashion instead of sprayed indiscriminately. …

“Within five to 10 years, we should be able to associate particular wavelengths of light with insect populations, with weed populations and with disease populations,” MacRae explained. “We’re going to see precision agriculture greatly assisted in a very, very short period of time.”

So farms will be beset by buzzing, big drones, possibly even carrying payloads of poison?  Well, actually not so much buzzing, as reported by NewScientist (10 June 2015, paywall):

The GL-10 is the latest in a series of prototypes from NASA’s Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia. It is made from carbon fibre and has a wingspan of 3 metres. But its most unusual feature is the large number of engines, with eight on the wings and another two on the tail. One aim of this is to generate efficient electric propulsion, but the project also solves the problem of aircraft noise: several small motors are quieter than a few large ones.

The GL-10 also boasts novel Leading Edge Asynchronous Propeller (LEAP) technology, which prevents the sound from the propellers combining into one loud noise or harmonic.

“Since we have many propellers, we can operate every motor at slightly different rpm [revolutions per minute],” says project controller Mark Moore. “We have a whole bunch of smaller harmonics and can spread them out across the frequencies. We call this frequency-spectrum spreading, and it’s only possible because we have many propellers and very precise digital control of them.”

This spectrum spreading means that the GL-10 is inaudible when it flies overhead at 30 metres. It can take off vertically, making it ideal as an urban parcel courier for payloads of 5 kilograms or less.

A light-weight report such as this doesn’t have time to dwell on the downside of this research, i.e., unforeseen consequences, so I’m left to wonder what ripple impact will work like this have on the ecology as the pests suffer population losses, their predators find food wanting, etc… and unforeseen positive impacts as well.

CNN is reporting the announcement by Democratic Sen. Barbara Mikulski of Maryland that she supports the Iran deal means a Presidential veto of legislation rejecting the deal can be sustained:

While majorities of both the GOP-controlled House and Senate are poised to vote against the agreement, supporters of the multinational accord that aims to curb Iran’s nuclear weapons program are also hoping to get the 41 votes needed to filibuster the bill and prevent it from even getting to a final vote in the Senate.

Secretary of State John Kerry said the administration will continue to try and push support for the deal past the 34 votes they now have “until the last moment.”

I wonder if they’re now hoping some Republican members of Congress will decide to sign on to this possibly historic agreement, rather than end up on the wrong side for pure partisan politics.

Meanwhile, the Saudis, having reluctantly decided to accept the agreement as a done deal, are preparing to make the best of it, according to Julian Pecquet at AL Monitor:

King Salman bin Abdul-Aziz Al Saud’s three-day visit, strategically scheduled just days before Congress votes on the agreement, offers the Saudi leader a powerful platform to insist that the United States help combat Iranian “mischief.” The king is seeking assurances in the fight against Iran’s proxies across the region, as well as with elements of the nuclear deal itself. …

“The agreement must include a specific, strict and sustainable inspection regime of all Iranian sites, including military sites, as well as a mechanism to swiftly re-impose effective sanctions in the event that Iran violates the agreement,” the Saudi Embassy in Washington said after the deal was announced.

Most of the discussion is expected to center on non-nuclear issues, however.

Salman and President Barack Obama, who will meet Sept. 4 at the White House, are expected to further flesh out Washington’s promise of increased military support for the Gulf Cooperation Council countries — including a potential missile defense shield — as discussed during the US-GCC Camp David summit in May. That meeting, which was skipped by four of the top six regional leaders — including Salman — aimed to reassure the Gulf nations of America’s commitment to their security amid the perceived rapprochement with Iran. …

Much of the conversation is expected to focus on military hardware: The Saudis are seeking upgrades to their F-15s along with other advanced weaponry, but Israel is said to have raised concerns during Defense Secretary Ashton Carter’s recent visit to the region. Congress may object to such sales if lawmakers deem that they would undermine Israel’s so-called qualitative military edge.

An upgraded military capability cannot make Israel happy.  Perhaps a recognition of Israel’s right to exist and diplomatic ties might be part of the price for a better military?  Excuse me while I indulge in a bit of schadenfreude at the GOP’s expense … the eye bulging would be priceless; but I fear neither Obama nor Secretary of State Kerry is that much of a magician.

Oman is pleased with itself, according to The Maghreb and Orient Courier:

The sultanate’s role in the “historic” agreement signed between great powers (P5+1) and Tehran is possibly the crowning achievement in Oman’s diplomatic record thus far, and grows its reputation as a state that can help resolve the region’s thorniest issues. Omanis are justifiably proud of their government’s successes on the international stage. Newspapers in Muscat carried the headlines: “Oman’s crucial role in Iran deal hailed by US”, “Iran praises Oman’s role in landmark nuclear deal”, and “Oman hopes Iran deal will lead to peace, stability.” But does this deal really improve Oman’s and the region’s security and stability? …

For Oman there is a lot at stake in their efforts to balance regional rivalries. The country’s long term strategy hinges on converting its oil exporting economy into a fully diversified hub of trade, tourism and logistics at the core of the Indian Ocean-Gulf littoral. The success of this plan will depend on whether it can continue to straddle the increasing perilous ground between Saudi-led Arab states, and Iran and its regional allies. The growing polarization in the region is causing many in the Gulf States to begin accusing Oman of siding with the Iranian ‘enemy’. It seems that a George W. Bush-like ‘you’re either with us or against us’ mentality is growing, which makes holding the middle ground increasingly difficult. On the plus side, Oman’s economic and security relations with the West remain exceptionally strong – particularly the US and the UK. But while Oman has consolidated its already good relations with Iran – plans for a trans-Gulf ferry service were quickly pushed forward since the landmark nuclear deal – more work is required to convince its GCC partners of its good intentions and the reasoning behind its neutral stances.

Foreign Policy Journal also gives a bit of history on Oman’s role.

Kuwait appears to be unhappy, according to this report in Middle East Briefing:

The US strategy towards Iran prior to the nuclear deal was that of containment. No one tells us now what will replace this strategy. We only hear this barrage of simplification and flat arguments defending the deal and accusing its critics of war mongering and repeated parroting from the deal supporters of the “blockbuster” question: What is the alternative?

Fine. Time now to ask: What is the alternative to the containment policy with Iran? The expected answer in the current politicized debate is: We are placing Iran in the watch list. There are many problems with this answer. First, Iran exists in a region that has a very rapid crisis tempo. Iran is not Gabon or Liberia. This tempo requires swift responses and clearer categorization. Second, being in the so-called “watch list” is not a strategy. It is the polished name of lacking one. Third, for are all the cheap shots directed towards the critics of the nuclear deal, no official effort to explain the position of the new relations with Iran within a clear regional strategy was ever provided.

They also claim to have foiled an instance of Iranian-backed terrorism:

It appeared as well that the ring was well organized and financed. The sources of finance were Hezbollah, the IRGC and local economic activities (particularly currency exchange and construction businesses owned by members). The targets were designated, researched, photographed, and some dry runs were done. A group of sympathizers and facilitators were organized, some of them in high and sensitive positions. …

Internationally, arresting the terrorist ring comes as a huge embarrassment to Iran just on the heel of signing the nuclear deal. The ring raises doubts about the authenticity of Tehran commitment to fight terrorism or to improve its ties with the GCC. Who can guarantee now that Tehran will not use terrorism internationally as it used to?

A similar claim comes from Saudi Arabia, as reported by AL Monitor:

Intelligence officials were waiting for Ahmed Ibrahim al-Mughassil, the man authorities blame for the 1996 bombing of US military barracks in Khobar, Saudi Arabia, near the Dhahran air base. The blast killed 19 US Air Force personnel and wounded 372. Mughassil is said to be the head of Saudi Hezbollah, also called Hezbollah al-Hejaz, a group that Saudi authorities accuse of being an Iranian arm in the country.  …

“Mughassil’s arrest is a major under-the-belt hit by the Saudis to Iran; now we are waiting to see the response, if there will be any.”

The Iran deal doesn’t signal the end of aggressive moves on either side.  Speaking of persistence, the GOP is now asking the individual States to implement sanctions and otherwise interfere with commerce with Iran, as reported by AL Monitor:

With hawkish Democrats Bob Casey and Chris Coons all but ensuring opponents won’t have a veto-proof majority in the US Senate, the states are coming under pressure to pass their own sanctions. The Republican attorneys general of Oklahoma and Michigan, Scott Pruitt and Bill Schuette, wrote a letter to their counterparts Sept. 1 urging them to do just that.

“The states certainly have numerous moral and reputational reasons to prohibit investment of public assets into companies doing business with Iran and other countries that sponsor terrorism,” they wrote. “Even if it is true that Iran has relinquished its ambitions for a nuclear weapon and that its deal with President [Barack] Obama will prevent such an acquisition — both of which are highly questionable — Iran engages in a range of other reprehensible activities.”

The letter was accompanied by proposed draft legislation that the states that haven’t yet passed such sanctions are invited to use as a template. States have two main avenues for sanctioning Iran: restricting investments by state retirement plans, and barring state agencies from buying goods and services from blacklisted individuals and entities.

Whether this is infringing on Federal privileges with regard to foreign relations is not entire clear.

The most fragile of species, the California Condor, until recently had been losing significant numbers to electrocution.  NewScientist (22 August 2015, paywall) reports on how conservationists combat this:

Electrical cables and lead poisoning have been killing them off too early. “As they go in to land at a carcass, or to roost for the night, they just don’t see the power lines,” says Bruce Rideout of San Diego Zoo. Their wings can bridge the gap between cables, resulting in electrocution if they touch two lines at once.

So conservationists have come up with a shocking solution. The condors are caught several times a year for monitoring and health screening, when they also receive cable aversion training. Artificial utility poles, placed in large training pens, teach the birds to stay clear of cables by giving them a painful electric shock. Before the training was introduced, 66 per cent of released birds died of electrocution. This has now dropped to 18 per cent (Biological Conservation, doi.org/6tb).

Just a note on this project to say the refactoring has gone smoothly, and while it’s not been tested, I can at least rest easy that it compiles.  In Mythryl, once you have something compiling, you can feel a lot more confident that everything will work out than in, say, C.

Rep. Pete Sessions (R-TX) recently caused a stir when he blamed gun violence on heterogeneity while being interviewed on WBAP’s Chris Salcedo Show.  This is courtesy Scott Keyes @ ThinkProgress:

“It has a lot to do with distrust of people. Chris, I have been in lots of societies, we could say like Japan, where they have a homogeneous society, where people are more alike,” Sessions said. He went on to discuss “this thought process that we have to have diversity in America.

Neither Scott nor my original lead on this incident, Hunter @ The Daily Kos, seemed to really zero in on the problem with Rep. Sessions statement.  To my mind, Rep. Sessions has completely forgotten the original purpose of the United States of America: to successfully live cheek to jowl with other people who have differing viewpoints.  This is perhaps the most critical mission of the United States in the minds of the Founders, but Sessions basically appears to have rejected it in favor of having more people that, well, think like he does.

That’s the unstated point of the First Amendment.

I remember when Firefox was a stable little browser.

Now it crashes multiple times a day.

Aggravating.  If I want to move on to Vivaldi, I’ll have to upgrade my Linux box.  I’ve been avoiding that for … YEARS … because the X11 drivers didn’t recognize the graphics cards.  But it may be time.

</vent>

The Guardian is reporting that a new study indicates neonicotinoids may be even more dangerous than previously thought:

Three pesticides banned in Europe for their potential to damage bee populations could pose an even greater threat than was thought, according to a new assessment by the European Food Safety Authority (Efsa).

Already proscribed for seed treatments and soil applications, the Efsa analysis says that clothianidin, imidacloprid and thiamethoxam also pose a ‘high risk’ to bees when sprayed on leaves.

The UK is currently facing a legal challenge to an emergency exemption it granted, allowing use of two of the substances, after protests by the National Farmers Union.

But far from supporting the British case, the advisory expert assessment will add to pressure for an extension of the ban to apply to fruit orchards after blooming, and crops gown in greenhouses, Greenpeace says.

Big Ag is not happy:

But industry groups deny any link between the disappearing bees and pesticide use. Syngenta, which manufactures one of the banned substances even threatened to sue Efsa officials involved in the original risk assessment.

Which is unfortunate.  They should be challenging the study on scientific grounds, because we’re talking about the relatively simple arena of science, not the horribly complex area of politics.

(h/t Michael Graham Richard @ Treehugger.com)

The events at Lake Nyos, in Cameroon, Africa, in 1986 are terrifying, as the sudden release of tons of carbon dioxide asphyxiated the local population.  Some died in their sleep, others as they investigated the noise of the gaseous eruption and resultant cloud.  They simply collapsed.

But on the evening of Aug. 21, 1986, farmers living near the lake heard rumbling. At the same time, a frothy spray shot hundreds of feet out of the lake, and a white cloud collected over the water. From the gro­und, the cloud grew to 328 feet (100 meters) tall and flowed across the land. When farmers near the lake left their houses to investigate the noise, they lost consciousness.

The heavy cloud sunk into a valley, which channeled it into settlements. People in the affected areas collapsed in their tracks — at home, on roads or in the field — losing consciousness or dying in a few breaths. In Nyos an­d Kam, the first villages hit by the cloud, everyone but four inhabitants on high ground died.

And a similar situation may exist at Lake Kivu, threatening millions, as reported by The Observer.

Now a slow motion version of a similar problem involving currently sequestered carbon may be present in eastern Siberia.  NewScientist‘s Eli Kintisch reports (15 August 2015, paywall):

The trees at Hellhole – the moniker sticks – were burned a decade ago and could provide an important clue in the debate over the impact of Arctic fire (see diagram). There is no question that warmer temperatures, drier conditions and, possibly, an uptick in lightning are catalysing a rise in blazes across the Arctic. This summer over 9 million hectares of forest in Alaska and Canada have burnt – a record – drawing thousands of firefighters to help.

Fires devour the organic layer of leaf litter and shrubs on the floor of boreal forests and tundra alike. As this layer offers insulation during the summer, burned sites could see an increase in the depth of the soil that thaws in summer, before refreezing in winter. More thawed soil could mean more microbial respiration of ancient Arctic carbon into the atmosphere, eventually turning the boreal forest from a carbon sink into a source.

Not the immediate deaths of millions, as at the lakes – but a large potential addition to the climate change crisis.  But will it happen?

McKenzie Kuhn, a recent college graduate, checks one of a series of funnel-shaped bubble traps she set in the [Siberian] pools days ago. In the anoxic conditions found in the soil beneath the ponds, microbes can create methane, a potent greenhouse gas. The team is now trying to measure emissions from the ponds and determine if they come from the carbon locked in the permafrost.

Back in Cherskiy, preliminary lab tests of the gases emitted by the soils below Hellhole’s ponds show surprisingly high amounts of methane. So by destabilising the soil and creating microponds, the scientists hypothesise, fire may be creating a new fuse on the Arctic carbon bomb.

A great deal of methane, another component of climate change, is currently sequestered in the form of methane hydrates, methane frozen inside of ice.  As the globe warms, there are concerns that these could melt, adding to our woes.  They are found in the depths of the oceans as well as in permafrost.  CommonDreams contributes this report:

Warning that a dramatic “burp” or “pulse” of methane from beneath the fragile permafrost of the Arctic caused by continued global warming would set off a “climate catastrophe,” a new study says that the continued melting is also an economic “time bomb” that could cost the global economy $60 trillion.

Billions upon billions of tons of methane remain stored in the permafrost throughout the Arctic regions, but specific concern has been placed on the enormous reserves that sit locked beneath the East Siberian Arctic Shelf. Scientists have repeatedly warned that if these deposits—many frozen in the form of methane hydrates—were released, they would trigger massive feedback loops and dramatically increase the rate of global warming.

The new study confirms these established fears, but also looks at the potential social and economic costs that would follow.

On this thread a reader writes,

Chew on this for awhile, Hue: http://s-f-walker.org.uk/…/Julian_Jaynes_The_Origin_of…

I’ve heard of this but never read it.  Another writes:

Dennett proposed consciousness occurred after everything else years before they “proposed” this. And he was building on experiments from the 80s and earlier. Grumble grumble damn scientists get off my cognitive lawn

Or, Something’s Taken a Chomp Out Of My Tree!

NewScientist (15 August 2015, paywall) notes complaints that Australia is backing off its climate change commitments:

Prime minister Tony Abbott said on Tuesday that Australia would aim to cut emissions by 26 to 28 per cent below 2005 levels by 2030. This is much less than is recommended by the country’s Climate Change Authority.

“This is a responsible and achievable target,” Abbott said. “It is comparable to the targets of other developed countries and allows our economy and jobs to grow strongly.”

But using the same baseline year of 2005, the US aims to cut emissions by 41 per cent by 2030 and the UK by 48 per cent.

The Climate Institute takes note:

“The initial target offer ahead of the Paris climate negotiations in December is a core test of the government’s climate and economic credibility,” said John Connor, CEO of The Climate Institute. “This target fails tests both of scientific credibility and economic responsibility in a world increasingly focused on modernising and cleaning up energy as well as economic systems.”

“This target is bad for the climate and bad for our international competitiveness.” …

“If other countries took the same approach as the government announced today, the world would warm by 3-4°C.”

“The government’s weak target is also bad for the economy. As many other nations continue to step up actions to limit emissions and modernise their economies through clean energy and other investments, this target implies that Australia will be the most pollution intensive developed economy by 2030.”

“This target also means we would still be the highest per capita polluter among developed economies in 2030.”

A lovely bit of public shaming, that.  The official Australian Dept of the Environment page is here.  Earlier in the year, the Department of the Prime Minister and the Cabinet released this report:

Australia’s climate will continue to have high variability. Nevertheless, a verage temperature s are projected to continue to increase and extreme rain events are projected to become more intense. A verage rain fall in southern Australia is projected to decrease.

Australia is taking strong action on climate change. Between 1990 and 2014 the economy nearly doubled in size and our population grew strongly, while greenhouse gas emissions remained broadly the same. Australia’s emissions per capita have reduced by 28 per cent since 1990 and by 20 per cent since 2000 and emissions per unit of gross domestic product have fallen by 52 per cent since 1990 and by 35 per cent since 2000.

The Australian Government is committed to achieving a five per cent reduction on 2000 emissions levels by 2020. This target is equivalent to a reduction of 13 per cent below 2005 emissions levels and a 19 per cent reduction from projected business as usual emissions.

Strong action?  Not everyone agrees.

Climate Action Tracker has a current evaluation of Australia, including a really nice chart, which is not embeddable.  The same page also includes a summation of the world by country, divided into categories.  The USA is rated at the bottom end of Sufficient (to my surprise); Australia is at the top end of Inadequate.  Only one country, Bhutan, is listed as above Sufficient; and certainly not all the countries of the world are listed.

Peter Hartcher of the Syndey Morning Herald has a cynical view of the Australian government:

If the carbon emissions target that the federal government is about to announce is connected to climate science, it’s by coincidence.  …

… this government doesn’t make its big decisions based on science, economics, markets, or any value other than politics. So let’s set aside the pretence that this is really about climate change.

As we know, Tony Abbott once described himself as a “weather vane” on climate change; the winds that blow him about are political.

Otherwise why would he classify coal as good and wind farms as bad? Do rocks and wind turbines have moral qualities?

This is not about an open minded examination of energy markets. Like all of this government’s big decisions, it’s about ideology and politics.

If you want to understand the frenetic claim and counter-claim you’re going to hear on this subject, you’ll find this simple, two-point guide indispensable. The political rubric is:

1. If the argument is decided mainly on climate or environment considerations, Labor wins.

2. If it’s decided mainly on electricity prices, the Coalition wins.

[etc…]

The Prime Minister is of the Coalition, of course.  A quick look at his history certainly seems to show he’s a political creature, through and through, which is hardly what you want to see in government if you see a non-political problem needing resolution by the government.  While he’s made gestures towards science, one must wonder about his sincerity.

It does occur to me that, if we do manage to achieve the goal of < 2° C rise in temperature, and thus nothing too horrible happens, then we’ll be faced with the cries of the deniers that, indeed, nothing has been proven and they were right all along.