moon phases

Started this before change to "New Blogger", as backup in case of trouble with digiphoto blog "In a Small Dark Room", or rants & links blog "Hello Cruel World" . Useful - at one stage Dark Room was there, but like the astrophysical Dark Matter, we could't see it ... better now, but kept Just In Case.

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There is nothing. There is no God and no universe, there is only empty space, and in it a lost and homeless and wandering and companionless and indestructible Thought. And I am that thought. And God, and the Universe, and Time, and Life, and Death, and Joy and Sorrow and Pain only a grotesque and brutal dream, evolved from the frantic imagination of that same Thought.
Mark Twain (letter to Joseph Twichell after his wife's death)
[me, on a bad day]

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WRITER'S LINKS
Absolute Write Paypal donation button:

Absolute Write is one of the leading sites for information on writing and publishing, especially the scam versions thereof. It has a broad, deep online community with an enormous message base going back years. Now it needs help. See the details and discussion here
Preditors and Editors
Everything you wanted to know about literary agents
On the getting of agents
Writer Beware
Miss Snark
Writer's Net

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(and my Wish List)

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PZ Myers: Darwin Year begins now  
Pharyngula The Darwin year begins…NOW!:

It was on 1 July 1858, 150 years ago today, that the idea of natural selection was first presented to the public in a joint reading of Darwin's and Wallace's papers at the Linnean Society of London

Some Darwin-related Links

Darwin Today - a joint initiative of Research Councils UK aimed at educating the public about evolution
The Complete Work of Charles Darwin Online; free, includes items not in public domain
Works by Charles Darwin at Project Gutenberg; public domain
Darwin Correspondence Project: Text and notes for most of his letters
The Darwin Digital Library of Evolution
On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection: Free LibriVox Audiobook
Digitized titles by Charles Darwin in Botanicus.org
Charles Darwin at the Open Directory Project
Works by or about Charles Darwin in libraries (WorldCat catalogue)
Institut Charles Darwin International
A Pictorial Biography of Charles Darwin
Twelve different portraits of Charles Darwin, National Portrait Gallery, U.K.
Mis-portrayal of Darwin as a Racist

Labels: anniversaries, history, links, nature, science

More ... [permalink] posted by Mez at 9:54 pm

 
Boyer Lectures online  
I'm alerting y'all to the start of the 2007 Boyer Lectures. This series (the 48th) is called Restoring The Senses. It's available streaming, or as a podcast or transcript from www.abc.net.au/rn/boyerlectures (don't be put off by the short excursion into philosophy/theology near the beginning). Their summary:

"Professor Graeme Clark, creator of the bionic ear, is ABC Radio National's Boyer lecturer for 2007. In this series of six lectures … Professor Clark draws on decades of experience as a clinician, surgeon and researcher to celebrate our senses. He also tells the compelling story of how the bionic ear was created, and provides an insight into the extraordinary future of bionics."

Archives, either as transcripts or audio recordings, back as far as 1997 are also available on the ABC site.

Labels: audio, biology, health, medicine, nature, science

More ... [permalink] posted by Mez at 11:09 am

 
Science seeking Truthiness  
I am putting here Charlie Stross' post and its links on the subject, with a link to it and its numerous comments. I can barely coherently frame my thoughts on the subject.

February 4, 2007
The definition of contempt
The American Enterprise Institute, a think tank largely funded by Exxon-Mobil is offering to pay climatologists $10,000 for articles that emphasise the shortcomings of a report from the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) (www.ipcc.ch).

This is not surprising: lacking any real defense, it's only logical for them to seek men of straw to argue the case for them. The surprise is that they expect climatologists to be willing to trash their professional reputations — in a manner that will come back to haunt them whenever they subsequently apply for a job — for a mere ten thousand dollars. For a professional lobbyist that's a couple of billable hours; yet they suppose it's the measure of a working scientist's life's work.

Seldom has it been so easy to put an exact price on contempt.

Addendum: I note with interest that the American Enterprise Institute are Ayaan Hirsi Ali's current employers. More on this rather creepy body of unelected would-be architects of your future here (en.wikipedia.org/ wiki/ American_Enterprise_Institute).

Posted by Charlie Stross at 12:36 PM

(Guardian article linked at beginning: www.guardian.co.uk/ international/ story/ 0,,2004230,00.html

From the comments:
Regarding the economics of AGW, there's an interesting discussion at (www.realclimate.org/index.php/ archives/ 2007/ 01/ stern-science). I particularly like this comment:

"Question: If we could save the world from a 100% certain total destruction of the whole infrastructure in 2057 in a way that would cost 10% of its total value, would it be profitable to do the investment and save the world?
If we use a moderate 5% interest rate in our calculation, the answer is clearly no! We should not save the world infrastructure 0f 2057, it costs too much today. The present day discounted value of the world infrastucture in 2057 (when I am 100 years old and probably in my grave), is only 8.72% of its total value in 2057 and less than the calculated 10% (of the total value) required investment today. So we decide not to save the world infrastructure.
If the doom was about in 2107, using the same calculations, it would not be "profitable" to use even 1% of the total value of the future infrastructure to save it today. I hope you check my calculations, discounting is relatively easy and fundamental to profitability analysis the economists regularly use to give their expert opinions."

The ensuing discussion shows that the arguments can be more complicated than that (as one would expect). But this does give an insight into what sort of questions we should be asking if someone says that dealing with climate change now would be "too expensive".

Posted by: Dave Berry

Labels: climate, politics, science

More ... [permalink] posted by Mez at 2:35 pm

 
 
smh.com.au/articles/2004/03/10/1078594434768.html
Chilling end to global warming forecast
By Richard Macey
March 11, 2004
Global warming could disrupt the world's sea currents, sending Europe into a chill within 100 years and devastating tropical ocean life, a CSIRO scientist says.

Richard Matear, a Hobart-based marine researcher, said the oxygen content of deep ocean water between Australia and Antarctica had fallen 3 per cent since 1968.

If new research confirmed the decline was happening throughout the world's southern oceans, it would be a strong sign global warming was interfering with sea currents.

According to NASA "the thawing of sea ice covering the Arctic could disturb or even halt large currents in the Atlantic Ocean.

"Without the vast heat these currents deliver - comparable to the power generation of a million nuclear power plants - Europe's average temperature would likely drop 5 to 10 degrees."

While North America would not be as severely hit, the space agency said "such a dip in temperature would be similar to global average temperatures toward the end of the last ice age roughly 20,000 years ago"...

On May 18th, 2003 a post started out:

I think calling it 'global warming' is a mistake, people in cooler climates just think, 'hey, that'd be nice'. It's increasing the energy put into the system:
the Highs get higher,
the Lows get lower,
the Drys get drier,
the Winds get blowier,
and whole systems that are balanced get tipped, and who knows which way they'll go?

Sudden Climate Change?
"When 'climate change' is referred to in the press, it normally means greenhouse warming, which, it is predicted, will cause flooding, severe windstorms, and killer heat waves. But warming could also lead, paradoxically, to abrupt and drastic cooling:
home.earthlink.net/~brucensara/NonlinearChange.html

The New Scientist
Global Environment Report: All you ever wanted to know about climate change:
www.newscientist.com/hottopics/climate/climatefaq.jsp

Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute
Ocean & Climate Change Institute: Abrupt Climate Change
Most of the studies and debates on potential climate change have focused on the ongoing buildup of industrial greenhouse gases in the atmosphere and a gradual increase in global temperatures. But recent and rapidly advancing evidence demonstrates that Earth’s climate repeatedly has shifted dramatically and in time spans as short as a decade. And abrupt climate change may be more likely in the future.

www.whoi.edu/institutes/occi/currenttopics/ct_abruptclimate.htm
(This lists links to articles of interest, including a FAQ: Common Misconceptions about Abrupt Climate Change.)

PNAS* Online Special Features
PNAS is offering a series of free online special issues that highlight cutting edge research in the physical and social sciences, mathematics, and biology. The special issues feature a cluster of related Perspective articles and peer-reviewed research articles.
Rapid Climate Change - February 15, 2000
www.pnas.org/misc/special.shtml#climate
Editorial
Steven M. Stanley The past climate change heats up
PNAS 2000 97: 1319. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]

Perspective articles
Richard B. Alley Ice-core evidence of abrupt climate changes
PNAS 2000 97: 1331-1334. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]

Jonathan Overpeck and Robert Webb Nonglacial rapid climate events: Past and future
PNAS 2000 97: 1335-1338. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF] (and 6 more)

Rapid climate change research in the same issue
Dennis L. Hartmann, John M. Wallace, Varavut Limpasuvan, David W. J. Thompson, and James R. Holton Can ozone depletion and global warming interact to produce rapid climate change?
PNAS 2000 97: 1412-1417. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF] (and 5 more)

* Proceedigs of the National Academy of Sciences (USAA)

www.undoit.org/ (Petition/Action site)

Labels: climate, links, science

More ... [permalink] posted by Mez at 2:31 am

 
 
Whoo-hoo! Looks like The Ascent of Man DVD is on its way
(Here is a reminder of why I want it.)
An earlier post of this in Hello Cruel World

The Danger of Knowing for Sure

A special joint edition of The Millenium Project and Quintessence of the Loon
September 12, 2001



I can remember the first time I saw the image at the right of the screen. It comes from the television series The Ascent of Man and the particular episode was called "Knowledge and Certainty". It shows Jacob Bronowski reaching into a pool of black mud, black because it contains the ashes of people murdered as the result of an insane belief system. In the middle of the 20th century civilisation was threatened as an entire country seemed to go mad, and millions of people died as a result. A new word was invented [OK, no - he may mean "genocide".], "holocaust", to describe something which even today almost defies belief - that someone could propose, and execute, a plan to destroy a large part of the world's population simply because they had the wrong genealogy - their parents and ancestors were the wrong sort of human.

Some people thought that Bronowski was making a play on the words in the series title and showing that, as well as an ascent of humankind towards civilisation, there was always the possibility of a descent back into primitivism and savagery. This point was certainly being made, but the main idea was contained in the title of the episode - "Knowledge and Certainty". Bronowski was making a distinction between science and non-science - between knowing something with confidence and knowing something with certainty. The Nazis knew with certainty that they were right. Science, and its handmaiden skepticism, is based on the principle that knowledge is testable and that ideas and beliefs can be rejected and replaced if they can be demonstrated to be wrong or outdated. It is a process of continuous learning. Yes, science can have bad outcomes, but those bad things can be challenged and changed if necessary. When ideas cannot be challenged then learning, improvement and the correction of mistakes are impossible. There is no way back.

On 11 September, 2001, civilisation was again attacked when hijacked aircraft were flown into the two towers of the World Trade Center in New York City and the Pentagon, and again we were presented with indelible images that will stay in our minds forever. At the time of writing, the people behind this atrocity are unknown, although there are suspicions and clues. For my purpose, however, it does not matter who did this or whether the motivation was political protest, religious bigotry, racism, extortion, whatever. What is important is that the people who did this were absolutely certain that they were right. The hijackers entered the planes in the certain knowledge that not only were they going to die themselves, but that they were going to kill an unknown number of strangers, people who had never harmed them in any way. It must take a special kind of madness to train for months for a suicide mission, to be so absolutely certain about your belief that there is nothing that could change that belief, regardless of the consequences to you or anyone else.

You might say that I am talking about extremes here, just as it would be extreme to use the examples of human behaviour that we have seen over the years in Cambodia, Rwanda, Ireland or the collection of tribes that used to be called Yugoslavia. Yes, they are extremes, but they are all examples of the failure of rational thought. It is not just civil wars, however, that exemplify the problem. Agricultural production was damaged for decades in the Soviet Union because ideology decreed that the science of genetics be rejected, and the same country held on to an inefficient economic system long after its faults and weaknesses had been demonstrated. People are campaigning against the development of an AIDS vaccine because they think the loss of millions of lives is irrelevant when placed against their belief that all vaccines are evil. Others hang on to ancient superstitions and medical systems with no proven effectiveness and proudly state that these things must work because they have not changed for centuries. Countries with enormous natural and human resources are held back by religious traditions which may have been appropriate when armies fought with spears. People have their savings stolen daily by liars who pretend to contact their dead loved ones or who promise miracle cures for incurable diseases.

Skepticism is sometimes confused with cynicism. Skeptics are seen as people who don't want to believe anything. This is incorrect - skeptics, like scientists, are people who just want to be confident that what they believe and know is the most likely thing that accords with reality. Put another way, a skeptic is someone who likes his facts to be correct. It is difficult to change long-held beliefs and it can be distressing to find out that you have an emotional investment in something which is wrong. Sometimes, however, it is just necessary to put away childish things, because there can be real danger in knowing things that just ain't so.

Peter Bowditch
September 2001

It ain't so much the things we know that get us into trouble. It's the things we know that just ain't so.
Some people know that Artemus Ward said this; some people know that Josh Billings said it;
some people know that Mark Twain said it; some people know that Will Rogers said it;
before I looked it up, I knew that Ralph Waldo Emerson said it.

When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things.
1 Corinthians 13:11

Prove all things; hold fast that which is good.
1 Thessalonians 5:21

I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, think it possible you may be mistaken.
Oliver Cromwell, 3 August, 1650

www.ratbags.com/skepticism
Text copyright © 2001 Peter Bowditch


www.ronrecord.com/Quotes/bronowski.html
Jacob Bronowski Quote From the "Knowledge or Certainty" episode from the 1973 BBC series "The Ascent of Man", transcribed by Evan Hunt (extracted)

... It is said that science will dehumanize people and turn them into numbers. That is false: tragically false. Look for yourself. This is the concentration camp and crematorium at Auschwitz. *This* is where people were turned into numbers ... And that was not done by gas. It was done by arrogance. It was done by dogma. It was done by ignorance. When people believe that they have absolute knowledge, with no test in reality--this is how they behave. This is what men do when they aspire to the knowledge of gods.

Science is a very human form of knowledge. We are always at the brink of the known; we always feel forward for what is to be hoped. Every judgment in science stands on the edge or error, and is personal. Science is a tribute to what we *can* know although we are fallible ...

Labels: bronowski, history, science, tv

More ... [permalink] posted by Mez at 6:52 pm

 
Changing Climate FAQ  
UPDATE: Link changed with time.

Global Warming Myths and Facts ( www.environmentaldefense.org/ page.cfm?tagID=1011)
PDF 'More Myths and Facts' (www.environmentaldefense.org/ documents/ 4418_MythsvFacts_05.pdf)

www.environmentaldefense.org/campaign/gw/article.cfm?article=gwmythvsfact

I've heard people say that 'climate change' is being used as a euphemism (an euphemism?) for 'global warming' because it's more generalised and anodyne. They say that global warming sounds scarier.

I disagree. For a start, when there's floods and blizzards and record low temperatures, you hear people say that that disproves the idea of global warming, when it may be evidence for it.

Another common problem is that people in cooler climates often think, 'hey, that'd be nice'.

It's increasing the energy put into the system:
the Highs get higher,
the Lows get lower,
the Drys get drier,
the Winds get blowier,
and whole systems that are balanced get tipped, and who knows which way they'll go?

Some other studies and links to information:
Sudden Climate Change?
"When 'climate change' is referred to in the press, it normally means greenhouse warming, which, it is predicted, will cause flooding, severe windstorms, and killer heat waves. But warming could also lead, paradoxically, to abrupt and drastic cooling:
home.earthlink.net/~brucensara/NonlinearChange.html

The New Scientist
Global Environment Report: All you ever wanted to know about climate change:
www.newscientist.com/hottopics/climate/climatefaq.jsp

Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute
Ocean & Climate Change Institute: Abrupt Climate Change
Most of the studies and debates on potential climate change have focused on the ongoing buildup of industrial greenhouse gases in the atmosphere and a gradual increase in global temperatures. But recent and rapidly advancing evidence demonstrates that Earth’s climate repeatedly has shifted dramatically and in time spans as short as a decade. And abrupt climate change may be more likely in the future.

www.whoi.edu/institutes/occi/currenttopics/ct_abruptclimate.htm
(This lists links to articles of interest, including a FAQ: Common Misconceptions about Abrupt Climate Change.)

PNAS* Online Special Features
PNAS is offering a series of free online special issues that highlight cutting edge research in the physical and social sciences, mathematics, and biology. The special issues feature a cluster of related Perspective articles and peer-reviewed research articles.
Rapid Climate Change - February 15, 2000
www.pnas.org/misc/special.shtml#climate
Editorial
Steven M. Stanley The past climate change heats up
PNAS 2000 97: 1319. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]

Perspective articles
Richard B. Alley Ice-core evidence of abrupt climate changes
PNAS 2000 97: 1331-1334. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]

Jonathan Overpeck and Robert Webb Nonglacial rapid climate events: Past and future
PNAS 2000 97: 1335-1338. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF] (and 6 more)

Rapid climate change research in the same issue
Dennis L. Hartmann, John M. Wallace, Varavut Limpasuvan, David W. J. Thompson, and James R. Holton Can ozone depletion and global warming interact to produce rapid climate change?
PNAS 2000 97: 1412-1417. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF] (and 5 more)

* Proceedigs of the National Academy of Sciences (USAA)

www.undoit.org/ (Petition/Action site)

Labels: climate, links, science

More ... [permalink] posted by Mez at 1:31 pm