Posts

Showing posts from April, 2015

Australia's Bureau of Meteorology takes a low-key approach to a likely El Nino and higher world temperatures

Image
There's one thng we can say about the Australian Burreau of Meteorology these days. When it comes to anything to do with global warming thry are very cautious forecasters, This week the BOM updated its  ENSO Wrap-Up on the current state of the Pacific and Indian Oceans and noted that all eight of the surveyed international climate models indicate the central Pacific Ocean will warm further during the coming months. That's as strong a pointer as you an get that an El Niño is on the way bringing with it higher than normal world emperatures. (click to enlarge) But there was no exagerrating from the BOM - a body that is well aware of the skepticism of its political masters about such global warmng matters. Just a note that "it is too early to determine with confidence how strong this potential El Niño could be. Model outlooks spanning February to May (the traditional ENSO transition period) have lower confidence than forecasts made at other times of year." So t

In praise of Alan Jones

Political speech for most people can be expensive rather than free. Australia's defamation laws make it so. And it's not even a matter of losing a court case at the end. Even for winners the costs of lawyers along the way are crippling. The system is stacked against any person trying to expose what they consider to be impropriety. So thank goodness for public figures like broadcaster Alan Jones. Call him a shock-jock if you will but he is one of the few media commentators well paid enough to say what he thinks despite the attempts by politicians to silence him with legal actions. Some times Jones pays a high price for his outspokenness. Damages payments can be expensive. But that does not stop him from keeping on speaking out. As he did during the last Queensland state election when he relentlessly kept pursuing Liberal National Premier Campbell Newman and state Treasurer Jeff Seeney by suggesting they “prostituted” themselves in support of an LNP donor’s controversial coal m

Will Pope Francis make climate change an issue for Tony Abbott?

Image
Pope Francis Steps Up Campaign on Climate Change, to Conservatives’ Alarm   – Since his first homily in 2013, Pope Francis has preached about the need to protect the earth and all of creation as part of a broad message on the environment. It has caused little controversy so far. But now, as Francis prepares to deliver what is likely to be a highly influential encyclical this summer on environmental degradation and the effects of human-caused climate change on the poor, he is alarming some conservatives in the United States who are loath to see the Catholic Church reposition itself as a mighty voice in a cause they do not believe in. Obama Finally Gets Angry At Climate Science Deniers And It’s Hilarious  b- President Barack Obama just gave pitch-perfect delivery to one of the most brilliant pieces of writing on climate change you are ever going to see. At the annual White House Correspondents’ Association dinner Saturday night in DC, Obama used devastating humor to express rare pa

The world-wide growth in house prices

Image
Since 1900 house prices in advanced economies have increased threefole. The overwhelming hare of this increase occurred in the second half of the 20th century. No price like home: Global house prices 1870-2012  – How have house prices evolved over the long‐run? This paper presents annual house prices for 14 advanced economies since 1870. Based on extensive data collection, we show that real house prices stayed constant from the 19th to the mid‐20th century, but rose strongly during the second half of the 20th century. Land prices, not replacement costs, are the key to understanding the trajectory of house prices. Rising land prices explain about 80 percent of the global house price boom that has taken place since World War II. Higher land values have pushed up wealth‐to‐income ratios in recent decades. Nobody Said That  – Imagine yourself as a regular commentator on public affairs — maybe a paid pundit, maybe an supposed expert in some area, maybe just an opinionated billiona

PJ O’Rourke tries to make sense of the UK election

Image
"PJ O'Rourke on the UK Campaign Trail"  - In this year’s British general election the traditional two party system looks set to be blown apart with up to seven parties having a say in the result. It could be most interesting campaign in decades but it could also be the weirdest. PJ O’Rourke travels across Britain trying to work out why party politics in the UK is being shaken up. From the Tory heartlands of the South that do not seem that keen on the Tories any more to Labour’s battle for Scotland, PJ meets politicians, pundits and the voters, to find out what it takes to get elected to the mother of Parliaments in 2015. Republicans want a bumper sticker world  - The case for Mr Obama is that in seeking to deploy economic and diplomatic power, and to leverage US influence through multinational coalitions, he has recognised the complexities of this new landscape. The case against is that he has sometimes gone too far in drawing the limits of US power. What has been mis

Thoughts of a politician on the paleo diet

Image
From the daily email news summary of  The New York Times :

Thoughts on the UK election and links to other interesting news and views

UK election: Who will run Britain?  – The polls have been static for weeks, with the Conservative and Labour parties stuck on roughly 34 per cent each. So the real drama is likely to take place after 10pm on polling day, as David Cameron, the Tory prime minister, and Ed Miliband, his Labour rival, try to claw their way to power. The bookmakers name Mr Cameron favourite to win most seats in the House of Commons, but expect him to fall short of an outright majority. They reckon Mr Miliband is most likely to be Britain’s next prime minister. Politics and the Australian language  – Sexism, plain talking (when it suits them) and obfuscating euphemism: politicians down under abuse language, too Republicans want a bumper sticker world  – The case for Mr Obama is that in seeking to deploy economic and diplomatic power, and to leverage US influence through multinational coalitions, he has recognised the complexities of this new landscape. The case against is that he has sometimes gone too fa

Dealing with picky eaters in the French way

Image
Eat Up. You’ll Be Happier. - NYTimes.com : "Our increasingly choosy food habits are the subject of a French collection of academic essays, “Selective Eating: The Rise, Meaning and Sense of Personal Dietary Requirements,” which will be published in English next week. The editor, Claude Fischler, a social anthropologist, chose the topic after discovering that even anthropologists aren’t exempt: An Australian colleague said she had asked her Aboriginal subjects to accommodate her gluten-free diet, followed by choice, not by medical necessity. Having lived in America and France, I’ve been on both sides of the picky-eating divide. I know it’s tiresome to hear about the paradoxically fabulous French eating habits. But it’s no accident that Unesco made the French gastronomic meal part of the “Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity.” It’s worth looking at how they cope with picky eaters." 'via Blog this'

Death penalty to follow departure of world leaders

Image
The ending of a Jakarta conference attended by the leaders of 22 countries apparently removes the last major obstacle to the death by firing squad of Australians Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran. In a front page story today The Jakarta Post  reports Indonesian Attorney General M. Prasetyo said on Wednesday that all preparations for the executions were in place. “We are prepared, so we can decide on a date any time,” he told the House of Representatives.

Murdoch loses his cool because The Sun not attacking Labour vigorously enough

Image
Rupert Murdoch, fearing company’s future, told Sun journalists to get ‘act together’ on Labour coverage  - The News Corp chairman –  who owns The Sun, The Times and The Sunday Times – visited London at the end of February, and reportedly warned journalists on his tabloid newspaper of the threat a Labour government would have on the company. Last week, in its manifesto, Labour pledged to ensure that no “one media owner should be able to exert undue influence on public opinion and policy makers”. It said: “No media company should have so much power that those who run it believe themselves above the rule of law.” This appears to be a reference to the News UK (the UK’s biggest national newspaper publisher) and the hacking scandal. The Independent reports this morning that the News Corp boss, who has made no secret of his dislike of the Labour leader, told the editor of The Sun, David Dinsmore, that he expected the paper to be much sharper in its attacks on Labour. A hint of his frust

March 2015 Easily Set The Record For Hottest March Ever Recorded

Image
Click to enlarge New Report: March 2015 Easily Set The Record For Hottest March Ever Recorded  - This was easily the hottest March — and hottest January-to-March — on record, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. NOAA’slatest monthly report ... : March 2015 was not only the hottest March in their 135-year of keeping records, it beat “the previous record of 2010 by 0.09°F (0.05°C).” January-to-March was not only the hottest start to any year on record, it also beat “the previous record of 2002 by 0.09°F.” March was so warm that only two other months ever had a higher “departure from average” (i.e. temperature above the norm), February 1998 and January 2007, and they only beat March by “just 0.01°C (0.02°F).” Arctic sea ice hit its smallest March extent since records began in 1979. Last week, NASA also reported this was the hottest three-month start of any year on record. In NASA’s database, though, this was the third warmest March on record. It w

Why are politicians still referring to marijuana as a gateway drug?

Image
Miriam Boeri ,  Bentley University With states legalizing marijuana by popular vote, some politicians, including Boston mayor  Marty Walsh  and New Jersey governor  Chris Christie , are still calling marijuana a gateway drug. The gateway theory argues that because heroin, cocaine and methamphetamine users often used marijuana before graduating to harder drugs, it must be a “gateway” to harder drug use. The theory implies that there is a casual mechanism that  biologically sensitizes  drug users, making them more willing to try – and more desirous of – harder drugs. Yet the gateway hypothesis doesn’t make sense to those who use marijuana or have used in the past. Research shows that the vast majority of marijuana users  do not go on to use hard drugs . Most stop using after entering the adult social world of family and work. So why is it still part of the rhetoric and controversy surrounding the drug? A closer look reveals the historical roots – and vested interests – that are

Assaults on Jews rose in 2014

Image
Examples of Caricatures Published in Various Newspapers during 2014 Tel Aviv University says violent anti-Semitic attacks spiked in 2014  – An annual report from Tel Aviv University researchers reveals that anti-Semitic incidents rose dramatically worldwide in 2014, with violent attacks on Jews ranging from armed assaults to vandalism against synagogues, schools, and cemeteries. The Terror Strategist: Secret Files Reveal the Structure of Islamic State  – An Iraqi officer planned Islamic State’s takeover in Syria and SPIEGEL has been given exclusive access to his papers. They portray an organization that, while seemingly driven by religious fanaticism, is actually coldly calculating. Greece Flashes Warning Signals About Its Debt  – That Athens might still be exploring ways to restructure its debt underscores how close the country is to defaulting. Greece short-term bond yields hit another high KFC’s new ad sees the peddler of peppered poultry sink to new lows  – Few would have

Global military spending decline, a note on Crowding In and the Paradox of Thrift and other interesting bits and pieces

Image
Snapshots of Global Military Spending  – Since the Great Recession hit, global military spending has dropped a bit (as measured in inflation-adjusted dollars). Crowding In and the Paradox of Thrift  – From Paul Krugman’s blog: … these days you can pretty much count on the semiannual World Economic Outlook to offer some dramatic new insight into how the world works. And the latest edition is no exception. The big intellectual news here is Chapter 4, on business investment. As the report notes, weak business investment has been a major reason for global economic weakness. But why is business investment weak? … it manages in passing both to refute a very widely held but false belief about deficits and to confirm a highly controversial Keynesian proposition. The false belief is that government deficits necessarily “crowd out” investment, so that reducing deficits should free up funds that lead to higher investment. Not so, says the IMF: when governments introduce deficit-reduction meas

A renewable energy nightmare

Image
American Companies Are Shipping Millions Of Trees To Europe, And It’s A Renewable Energy Nightmare  – With climate change already contributing to the frequency and intensity of forest fires and associated loss of forest, the addition of a profitable, extensive, and poorly overseen biomass industry could push the forests further into disrepair. Renewable energy – Not a toy – Plummeting prices are boosting renewables, even as subsidies fall Abbott government’s energy white paper fails to face reality  – By failing to take global warming seriously, the white paper discourages solar power, encourages doomed coal investment, hobbles the RET, and misses the chance to raise petrol taxes. Bali tourist areas exempt from beer ban  – The Trade Ministry’s new regulation on alcoholic beverages, scheduled to take full effect on Thursday, will not be enforced on Bali as the ministry has decided that tourism areas would be exempted from the ban.On Thursday minimarkets, small vendors and beachside