Slack maths education helps Terrorgraph beat up parrot hate over logging #environment #media

Ahhh, the Terrorgraph's definition of lunacy is a solid one:

IN THE middle of the worst economic crisis since the 1930s, the Federal Government's decision to enact a law that will knowingly put 1000 people out of work in NSW is nothing but sheer lunacy.

Now no-one wants to deliberately put people's jobs at risk, but sometimes it's better to paint things black and white, isn't it? To the Daily Telegraph it's jobs before everything else, no matter what. Especially if it'll sell newspapers, too.

But does the maths stack up? Let's see, 1000 jobs. That's made up of:

A Forests NSW briefing note obtained by The Daily Telegraph warned 11 sawmills would be forced to close overnight and 800 people would lose their jobs along with the closure of an industry worth $60 million to the NSW economy.

Well 800 is close to 1,000. Small rounding error. But the Tele can do better, and it does:

The State Government is seeking an urgent meeting with Prime Minister Kevin Rudd and Mr Garrett, claiming the intervention by the Commonwealth to declare the logging illegal would cause the immediate loss of at least 500 timber jobs and 360 indirectly related jobs.

Now that's closer. 500 + 360 definitely feels like 1,000 now. So let's go with that. (Sadly there is no push here to correct the obviously ineffective teaching of mathematics to journalists.)

Whilst we're here, let's make out that the parrot at the centre of this issue is making no effort to adjust in this matter, despite the seriousness of the issue. Indeed the parrot is making out that there's a big problem when in fact it simply does not like flying over open spaces. So parrot, the Tele's advice to you is to get over it - literally.

Now I have spoken with these parrots and they are seeking professional help immediately. As a species with a fear of open spaces (and let's face it, if you were a brightly coloured small-medium parrot that was exposed to loss of life and wing by birds of prey, you'd feel a bit exposed too) they qualify for Federal Government rebates for psychological counselling. Hopefully the Tele won't squash that temporary stimulus assistance as well.

Mind you, it's not just parrots that offend the Tele. They also have it in for 'middle class' working mothers taking paid maternity leave:

The main targets are new mums earning a lot less, and who might not be able to confidently have a family without assistance. But slipping $260 million a year to women who might be among the top 10 per cent of wage earners doesn't sound like tough and rigorous Budget discipline.

The angle here is that middle-class women (whoever they are, but obviously they earn up to $150,000) don't deserve further assistance - they are well enough off already; but really it's just that the Tele's editor believes that the paper's readership can't hack the idea that working women can be successful, earn decent money and be an integral part of an Aussie family's "breadwinning" process. If they earn over the average wage then they don't deserve to be temporarily supported by the community whilst they are caring for newborns - except by their husbands, of course. Bizarre, I know, but that's the 1950s for you.

Miranda Devine argues that one opinion beats 5 on Climate Change #environment

Well that's a simplification, but you'll see what I mean in a second. Miranda is a well-known right-leaning columnist for the Sydney Morning Herald, in case you want context. She quite reasonably (in a democratic freedom-of-speech kind of way) states an opposing view to that of the reportedly vast majority of climatologists, i.e. that there is no believable evidence of humankind's involvement in the current experience of climate change. But she does it in such an unreasoning way that it's funny. Well I think she's funny - often the funniest read in the whole paper. (I'm sure she doesn't actually believe what she writes, either - and neither does this commenter (via Deltoid's blog): I used to get annoyed reading M. Devine's drivel until somebody told me that they had been told by MD herself that she doesn't really believe what she writes, she only writes to be provocative. Nowadays, it's impossible for me to take her seriously. Bravo and cheers to that.)

Anyway, getting back to last Saturday (yes, I know, I'm slow off the mark again) she rambled on a bit like this: The global warming scare campaign is reaching fever pitch. We have had one eminent Australian scientist claim this week to the senate inquiry on climate policy that global warming has already killed people in Australia.

Well there's a dramatic start, eh? This opinion piece makes it obvious that she doesn't believe it (even if she really does), but it seems obvious enough to me that if there is climate change (an assumption based on copious evidence), and things are hotting up and drying out, that people who are exposed to that increased heat and dryness will also be exposed to ever-mounting heat stress, worsening drought, increased risk of bushfire severity, frequency and longevity and so on. It seems pretty obvious to me that - sadly - some people will have died 'from climate change' already. Now you can argue the toss over it, endlessly, as we can't run some sort of parallel, controlled experiment with another identical Earth and see what would have happened without humankind's atmospheric interference. Sometimes you just have to go with a probability. (I can almost hear the shrill cries, 'but that's not science!' For goodness sake sit down and read on.)

Anyway, she gets better. "It seems that when it comes to convincing the Government to take drastic, jobs-killing, economy-crushing and ultimately futile unilateral action on climate change, the ends justify the means." Well that's an emotionally-charged overstatement of the situation, as what the Rudd government has proposed is no more economy-crushing that introducing, say, a 10% GST on the basis of an ideological whim. (Oh sorry, that was labelled "tax reform". Much, much more important than cutting back on carbon emissions.) Indeed if we do have a choice between frying the planet or not, I'd vote to take a bit of pain for a significant (probable) gain.

Miranda of course "believes" it's all futile, so why waste our time, money and effort? She says that "since Australia accounts for just 1.4 per cent of global emissions, even if we shut down all industry and move into caves, how would any theoretical effect on climate be more than negligible?" Well there's a 1.4% improvement right away, if we took Miranda's sage advice. Now you could view it as a start, or as an indication of global commitment (albeit a ludicrous commitment at that - I'm not moving into a cave anytime soon). Or you could just say that 1.4% is too small to worry about and just give up. It's a glass half full vs glass half empty sort of thing, isn't it?

That aside, Ms Devine doesn't quite understand what pollution is, so I will attempt to help her out (not that she doesn't actually know this already). She states that the whole debate is over "so-called 'carbon pollution'". Well it's broader than that as it's really about greenhouse gas emissions (first point worth making) and these emissions are called 'pollution' because we (ie humankind) are deliberately exhausting these gases into the atmosphere in an uncontrolled and up to recently unmonitored way. Nature hasn't decided to do this, we have. Be it oil, coal or whatever, point is that we are choosing to burn the stuff in vast quantities and simply allowing the exhaust to vent, no questions asked. Now we may not be able to see it, but I think we all can agree it's being added to the atmosphere, and dissolving into our oceans. Even if we don't believe it's a problem, it's still pollution. As it happens plenty of people actually believe that it is causing a problem, and others simply believe that it's a waste of resources and a potential risk into the future. So hey, why not slow down or even plan to stop this pollution? Seems reasonable risk management to me.

Of course it's not just this so-called "carbon pollution" that's thought to be causing our climate change problem, it's land-clearing as well. Thought I'd mention that.

I'm getting to the point now. Miranda has discovered a geologist with an opinion that she likes: University of Adelaide geologist, Dr Ian Plimer, writes in his new book, Heaven And Earth, Global Warming: The Missing Science, scientists are usually "anarchic, bow to no authority and construct conclusions based on evidence … Science is not dogmatic and the science of any phenomenon is never settled." Well yeah, evidence.. tick. Prepared to keep reviewing the data.. check. I think we are all on the same page (although I sense that Miranda and Ian Plimer may disagree). Attempting to stir up controversy in effort to publicise book... check. Ooops, sorry.

Note that we have a respected geologist here, not a climatologist. So it's someone who understands that the Earth's processes work over a very, very long period of time. Not just 10 years, or even a hundred. To quote: "From the geologist's perspective he says our climate has always changed in cycles, affected by such variables as the orbit of the planet and our distance from the sun, which itself produces variable amounts of radiation." Well, yes, I think we have copied that already and dealt with it. But there's more: "One of the lessons of 500 million years of history, he says, is that there is no relationship between carbon dioxide and temperature." Here we go, focusing on carbon dioxide again (admittedly it is the main player, and we do have some pre-exisiting dispute over the issue). Indeed it's not as simple as emitting a gas and finding it simply stays there.. in fact it gets absorbed by plants, takes part in various chemical reactions and gets dissolved in the oceans - another unfortunate side-effect of this man-made pollution of the planet. There's even a notable lag between historical emissions and temperature change, such that it looks like temperature is the driver of change, rather than carbon dioxide. But the explanations are sound and well aired: in short the issue has been addressed and rebutted many times. There is nothing new here, so why pretend that it's somehow a revelation?

Ah yes, selling newspapers and books. (To be fair, Plimer may add some revelation to the discussion, but Devine has opted not to disclose it. Secret knowledge.)

More interestingly, Plimer, as a geologist familiar with long cycles of slow geological change, reportedly makes a stunningly naive comment: "Governments are planning to structurally change their nations' economies where most people will suffer from increased taxes and costs … based on the opinion of the fabulous five whose computer models have not been able to accurately predict the cooling that has occurred since 1998". Whoa, I thought we were talking hundreds of thousands, if not millions of years? Now, suddenly, just 10 or so years matters! This is a geologist talking?

The rest of the article reads like a very biased book review by a worshipping fan, although it's also worth noting that a point is made that the "crucial section 5" of the IPCC report is "based on the opinions of just five independent scientists".. Well maybe so, but it's been reviewed and signed off by many, many more. In any case, should we discard the opinion of these 5 independent scientists on the basis of the opinion of just one (admittedly heroic) geologist?

Phew, I finally got to the point. Independence. And without even hinting that a geologist - not any particular geologist, mind, but any geologist speaking out on climate change in particular - needs to clearly enunciate any vested or conflicting interests they may have in regard to work done for, say, mining companies, or in relation to any interest in ongoing mining exploration. (It seems likely that geologists may have a genuine interest in continuing the status quo, and that should be made clear.) Not that it need inhibit them from stating their case and advancing an opinion, but we all look at things through the filters of our lives and it helps to keep an open mind on such things. Like Miranda does.

'Undersized' car boom in Germany? We can only hope #autos #language

Apparently there's a bonus on offer in Germany to junk your old car and update to a new one - and it's favouring small cars over larger ones. (We can only hope this is a continuing downsizing trend, not a flash in the pan. German cars may be well engineered but tend to the porky rather than trim side).

Interesting use of the language here: A sharp fall in demand from overseas is compounding premium carmakers' problem as makers of undersized vehicles rejoice.. Apparently small cars are 'undersized', rather than right-sized or appropriate. Does that mean that large cars are by definition over-sized?

EVs 'no better than current polluters' yet 'far better' - confused? #environment

The journos - if that's what they are - at Fairfax's Drive.com continue to pollute the Internet with their confusion. The headline reads Plug-in cars no better for the environment and they go on to explain that in Victoria, where 85 per cent of electricity comes from power stations burning more highly polluting brown coal, the figures show an electric vehicle will produce the equivalent of about 130 grams of carbon dioxide a kilometre - about the same as small-engined petrol hatchback. No problem, except that they then completely and utterly expose their own headline as misleading.

How do they do this? By turning the story on its head: But recharge the same electric car in Tasmania, where almost all the electricity is generated using more environmentally friendly hydroelectric power plants, and the equivalent carbon dioxide output falls to about 13 grams. This is far better than any car on our roads today - including petrol-electric hybrids - and lower even than the next wave of ultra-efficient vehicles slated for Australia.

Bizarre. Why write a headline like that - except to get people to read it I guess. And of course its all true - if utterly self-evident. Of course hydro-power is going to be cleaner than brown - or even black coal. Same with wind or solar powered grids. It's a no-brainer. Or is it?

They could have engaged their brains further and mentioned that hydro-power floods an entire valley, wiping out (in Tasmania's case) substantial forest ecosystems and replacing it with cold, 'dead' water. Apart from the environmental vandalism, there has to be a carbon cost to building a dam in the first place. Now it could be that hydro in the right place makes great sense, but we need to do a comparison with the carbon cost of building an equivalent scale of solar cell or wind farms, or building tidal generators. Such a comparison would include actual carbon emitted in construction and maintenance, the expected replacement life-cycle (ie when do we need to build another one?) and the extra cost of building the connection to the grid (which could be a very long wire indeed). And then do a comparo with current black and brown coal (or even nuclear power) power plants.

Until we do that analysis we are just making stuff up and generating misleading statements.

It's not simple, is it?

Modelling the complexities of nature is not a simple task, nor a certain one. We keep finding new, surprising things to factor in to our calculations... The big blue ocean is getting noisier. Sound can now travel further than it did a century ago, thanks to carbon emissions that have made the oceans more acidic.

OTOH, this is not a reason to throw our hands in the air and say, "too hard". Rather it should egg us on to further discovery and understanding. And quickly, before our planet says "enough".

Hope you are OK in the quake zone

We know where the fault lines, the volcanoes and the most-storm prevalent locations are, but do we avoid them? No way. We build on 'em. California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger said the region had been lucky to avoid a major disaster. "Thank Gd that there have not been any reports of serious injuries or damage to properties," Mr Schwarzenegger said. "This reminds us once again that in California we have to be prepared for anything and everything."

Hope LA citizens survived this warning - never forget the risk you take just living near the San Andreas fault. It may be a once in 100-year thing, or maybe once in 500 years - but when it comes it will be big. I guess plenty of people are thinking 'it can't happen to me'.

Which is a little bit like ignoring pollution and global warming, de-forestation and loss of biological diversity - we think about ourselves and our short lives and rarely look at the consequences in the longer term. If we can do OK in our 70 years that's great. If it all falls apart when we are gone, well that's not our problem.

And a note to Mr Schwarzenegger, or maybe to the proofreaders at News.com: just who is the "Gd" thanked here?

The Age: national, world, business, entertainment, sport and technology news from Melbourne's leading newspaper.

Some people are worried and thinking about solutions. Desperate ones at that.

"Cutting emissions was not enough. Mankind now had to take greenhouse gases out of the air.

'The current burden of greenhouse gas in the atmosphere is in fact more than sufficient to cause catastrophic climate change," Professor Flannery said.

'Everything's going in the wrong direction at the moment; timelines are getting shorter, the amount of pollution in the atmosphere is growing. It's extremely urgent.'"

The Age: national, world, business, entertainment, sport and technology news from Melbourne's leading newspaper.

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Ban new freeways: transport group - National - theage.com.au

We have a little climate problem of our own making happening here, and even if you dispute that we did it, it's happening. So do we start acting like we need to do something, or do we continue to do what we are doing (ie continue to waste our resources out of short-sighted greed) and hope for the best?

It's blindingly obvious but anyway, for those who still do not get it:

"AUSTRALIA must halt construction of freeways if drastic cuts in emissions from vehicles are to be achieved, a submission to the Garnaut Climate Change Review has said."

Ban new freeways: transport group - National - theage.com.au

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Cars cars cars cars

Goddamn road improvement programs. When I'm cruising the highways wanting to get somewhere I want fast, smooth safe roads, uncongested with few or no distractions like intersections or stop-dead, turn-hard corners. A "freeway" for example. Other times I want to have fun and some twists and turns mean uncongested, safe but twisty, testing roads are what I want. But really, does it matter what I want? Why not just slow down, drive carefully and concentrate on getting there safely, in one piece.

But life's not like that. We come from all directions on what we want from our roads. The first premise in most "road improvement" arguments is that we need wider roads and less congestion, coupled with fewer obstacles for people to hit; of course this encourages cars (or drivers, rather) to go faster, which is not necessarily so good - going slower in cities may be safer and create a more pleasant community environment for example.

Now someone has suggested developing an intelligent - and safer - roadway, and sure that's laudable; but I'd be concerned about the huge energy expense in replacing or adapting current road infrastructure with an active road system. As we need to think sustainably across the whole planet is this complexity justifiable? What is saved or created here?

Such rapid transit automation ideas as the "smart road" may be more applicable to mass transit systems, rather than personal ones. In terms of embedded intelligence in our personal transport (if we assume this is actually sustainable) could we not continue to integrate such things as GPS, motion and avoidance detection within our cars and provide a higher degree of automation and governance of the car itself? I'm thinking that the car would sense it's in a suburban street and reduce emissions, reduce sound impact and reduce its speed and acceleration potential to match the local environment. It could then sense when the vehicle is on a less restricted highway, for example, and provide greater performance whilst still automatically adjusting to traffic density. You could embed RFIDs or use some other wireless method to indicate changing road types whilst retaining a measure of human control. Coupled with GPS you'd cover most road possibilities (including poor roads in developing nations) without enormous expense. Mind you we still have to determine if sophisticated personal transport is actually compatible with our environmental, social and health needs. Where and when do we get our exercise when we are zooming around in our smart cars on smart roads? Do we need smart bicycles instead?

In terms of innovating and developing product then we could look at technologies that will sustainably support future development, both in personal transport and rapid mass transit - in all countries of the world. So systems of control and governance of energy expenditure, and systems that adapt the vehicle to the environment in which its travelling would be saleable commodities. Reducing infrastructure cost and "footprint" at the same time would be an important goal. Simpler is better.

I would agree that people have varying degrees of emotional attachment with their cars, but cars have only been around for a little more than 100 years and only in widespread use for maybe 60 years. People used to use mass transit, bicycles and their legs quite happily until fairly recently after all. In some countries they (cars) are still not 'essential' items. On the other hand clothes have a more pervasive practical necessity about them that goes back thousands of years.

It won't be an easy transition for many people but maybe cars and the massive infrastructure they require are just not sustainable in the longer term? It's a question that has to be asked. The energy and associated climate "crunch" is our opportunity to rethink our personal transport solution. Let's not forget also that cars (and roads) consume energy in their manufacture, maintenance and distribution as well - it's not just a "fuel" issue, it's a total 'it's been fun but can we afford this' question. Maybe the answer is very different from our perception of a "car".

The charter of the Pedestrian Council of Australia

For the record, I thoroughly and utterly support the charter of the Pedestrian Council of Australia. I love cars, especially Italian sports cars starting with the letter A, but the damage being done by our over-indulgence in motorised transport is plainly ridiculous. We are destroying our society and our planet whilst somehow managing to justify subsidising the destruction at the same time. Where's the sense?