Human rights are bad for health

No, it's not the results of some new sociological research, just the latest foot-in-mouth episode from this gaffe-prone government. They seem to be running at more than a clanger per day, actually, but I'm certainly not going to blog all of them...

This latest one was from the Education Minister (who inter alia is trying to force "patriotism lessons" on all pupils, to the understandable nervousness of all the neighbouring countries who remember what happened last time...):

"Human rights are important, but if we respect them too much, Japanese society will end up having human rights metabolic syndrome."

Well, there's not much risk of that with people like him in charge.

It may be significant that the Japanese word "人権 (jinken)" is commonly translated as both the fundamental "human rights" and the rather more conditional "civil liberties". Similarly, "権利 (kenri)" is translated as both "right" and "priviledge". I'm not sure how well differentiated these ideas are among the population at large, if at all.

Interesting...

The EGU sessions are up. I've got a couple of posters in CL20 (probabilistic climate prediction), and was interested to note the following:

From Chris Forest's abstract:

"The estimated 90% range of climate sensitivity is 1.9 to 5.0 K (including expert prior)."

From the abstract of his GRL paper on the same topic, published last year:

"The estimated 90% range of climate sensitivity is 2.1 to 8.9 K."

That was based on a uniform prior, which as little as 12 months ago was such an automatic choice that it literally went without saying. In fact the GRL paper contained results with both uniform and expert priors, but it was only the former that featured in the abstract.

Looks like a step in the right direction to me...

NewScientist slams "misleading" IPCC

I've only just read this, and I'm surprised there hasn't been more made of it in the blogosphere. This is from the editorial of NS on the 10th Feb, a few days after the IPCC released its SPM:

There is, though, a thin line between being conservative and being misleading, and on occasions the summary crosses that line.

There is a further feature in the magazine (Fred Pearce, natch) which describes their complaint in more detail. They have several grumbles, the bit that I know most about is the hypothetical shut-down of the overturning circulation in the North Atlantic:

Researchers at the UK's National Oceanography Centre, Southampton, will also feel overlooked. In 2005, they reported that the Gulf Stream slowed by about 30 per cent between 1957 and 2004. The Gulf Stream is a key feature of the world ocean circulation system, and any failure could have huge and unpredictable repercussions for world climate. But the IPCC summary insists that "there is insufficient evidence to determine whether trends exist".

That's a reference to the paper I blogged about here. I think it is fair to say that no-one, including the authors of the paper itself, actually believed it right from the moment it was published, and I think that more recent analysis has in fact debunked it fairly clearly. What the IPCC says is that a gradual weakening of the circulation is expected, which would offset some (but not all) of the warming that would otherwise occur in that region. The literature is very clear about this, and I don't see how they could possibly have said anything else.

On sea level rise, Pearce says there should have been more made of the hypothesis of rapid ice sheet loss, which is something I don't know much about. His other complaint is about carbon cycle feedback, and on this I think he is wrong (but I'm not 100% sure) - the IPCC projections actually include what work has been done in this area. It's not a huge effect in addition to the existing uncertainties, in any case.

It's not clear to me why Fred Pearce thinks he knows more about climate science than the several hundred working scientists who compiled the report. RealClimate were quick to jump on the Fraser Institute and Wall Street Journal for their unfounded post-IPCC criticisms. What odds an article about this NewScientist slur?

The solution to conference travel guilt

Cheatneutral.com

It's what climate scientists the world over have been waiting for :-)

(Hat tip: Kevin Vranes)

A bright idea

One of the interesting ideas that Stephen Schneider proposed was that new efficient technologies should be imposed via legislation if they were sufficiently superior to existing ones. The threshold at which he claims this is justified is a 7% return on investment and/or an 11 year payback time - I'm not sure how those numbers add up, but never mind! My first instinct was to think that there should be no need for such rules, as the new technology would surely be rapidly adopted, but I suppose the real world doesn't work that way.

In fact, one clear demonstration that the real world doesn't work that way is the widespread continuing use of incandescent light bulbs, despite low-energy ones being far more efficient and cheaper overall. So I was interested to see that Australia is intending to phase out incandescents completely over the next 3 years. I've been buying low-energy bulbs gradually to replace existing bulbs when they blow in our house - with electricity at ¥25 per kWh, a 40W bulb will cost ¥1 per hour which adds up to ¥1000 per year at 3h use per day. An efficient bulb would only cost ¥200 to run over this time, saving its full ¥800 cost in the first year. Even in countries with less astonishing electricity prices, the payback will be acceptably rapid for well-used lighting. The bulbs themselves last longer too.

Actually I'm mildly sceptical about the magnitude of these savings, especially in colder climates when the "waste" energy is actually turning into useful heat. But in Japan in the summer it's not merely wasted but even adds to the airconditioning load.

Gary Bellamy on global warming

There was an unusually good program on global warming on Radio 4 last week. Better than their usual stuff anyway. Catch it quick as I think it might not be available in couple of days.

SPM overload

Last week was unusually lectureful. First, Thomas Stocker - who I suppose one could call a big cheese from Switzerland (and who was a Coordinating Lead Author for Chapter 10 of the AR4) - was visiting Tokyo University to give a series of lectures on climate science (I think he was funded by this program which supports a lot of visits from abroad). He is an unusually good lecturer - this skill is rarely explicitly taken into account in terms of career development, so it is a nice bonus when a good scientist is also a good speaker. The first lecture covered oceanography and contained a very nice presentation of lots of stuff I should have known but have pretty much forgotten. My sideways path into climate science means I don't really have quite the background in geophysical fluid dynamics that most colleagues seem to.

After lunch, several researchers also had an opportunity to present some of their research in front of the assorted graduate students and researchers who attended. I gave a slightly revised version of my "Can we believe in high climate sensitivity" talk. Note that the statement I describe as "blatantly false" (p19 on that pdf) is directly lifted from Chapter 9 of the AR4 (2nd draft), but it will be another few months before I find out if it has survived into the final version. Whether or not it is edited out, the real problem is of course that it underlies so much of the research (in fact I spotted essentially the same sentence in another paper just last week, which had been co-authored by one of the Ch 9 authors).

On Friday morning Thomas gave an outline of the processes behind and science contained in the recently-released IPCC AR4 SPM. He brought up one or two interesting points that I hadn't noticed - for example, I'm surprised that the hockey stick stuff hasn't attracted more attention, as the new statement "the warmth of the last half century is unusual in at least the previous 1300 years" seems a weakening of what has gone before and deliberately avoids using the calibrated IPCC probabilistic language. We'd already talked enough about climate sensitivity so that didn't come up again, but it was interesting to hear about the debates that had taken place over the precise details of the wording in various other places. I do like the way the IPCC present temperature ranges for each scenario this time, rather than lumping them together into an overall range - this emphasises much more clearly the extent to which these futures are a matter of choice versus chance.

Straight after this talk, we rushed across Tokyo to another presentation, this time by Stephen Schneider. And he started with...pictures from the IPCC SPM! However it wasn't just about climate science but rather a "what should/can we do" sort of thing aimed at a general audience. To be honest I thought parts of it were a bit parochial - the internal politics of California are of limited interest and relevance over here, and boasting about his "more efficient" car in front of an audience of whom probably 95% arrived by train (and many don't own a car at all) seems rather misjudged. But still, he had some nice anecdotes and his message was predominantly up-beat and enthusiastic. He also didn't dwell much at all on the "catastrophe" angle, in fact explicitly said the truth was well to the centre of what both the alarmists and sceptics were saying.

After the lecture there was very limited opportunity for audience questions, and then the remaining time was given over to a "panel discussion". This seems a rather Japanese concept, and consists of a few hand-picked invitees giving pre-prepared statements and answers to pre-prepared questions. This time they were chosen to be "young" (and repeatedly and patronisingly reminded of that fact, despite their ages ranging up to almost 40), presumably so as to represent the future. It was notable that when asked what they were doing themselves to reduce GHG emissions, only one of them actually spoke in terms of personal life (switching off lights and computers, riding a bicycle more) and the others put it all in terms of their research. These glitzy presentations in rather opulent surroundings (no fewer than 3 screens and projectors) with guests flying around the world always seem a bit hypocritical to me, but I still go...as I go to foreign meetings - my journey matters!

"The topic of foreigner crime is taboo in Japan"

This really is a story that just won't go away.

The publisher of the "Gaijin Hanzai" book has now given an interview on Japantoday, perhaps the most risible statement of which is the title of this post. Sure, it's such a "taboo" that official figures are released each year and make headline news throughout the press.

Such a "taboo" that "cracking down on foreign crime" is a centrepiece of every politician's manifesto here, and they are about to introduce RFID-chipped identity cards for us so we can be remotely tracked wherever we go.

It's such a "taboo" that some town councils are willing to make rules which forbid universities from accepting foreign students for fear of the crime they would bring (OK, that was just the once and it was quickly overturned - but it still happened only a few months ago, in the 21st century, in a developed country).

Such a strong "taboo" that the Governor of Tokyo made a speech to the Self Defence Force telling them they had to be prepared to round up illegal foreigners in the event of an earthquake, because they will surely riot (for some context, after the 1923 earthquake here, military death squads colluded in the murder of thousands of Koreans).

The only taboo seems to be a direct comparison with the Japanese crime rate, which shows that in fact the "foreign crime" rate is entirely unremarkable in comparison to that of the Japanese (indeed if you want to break it down by nationality, British residents have a crime rate roughly 15 times lower - yes 15 times lower - than the natives).

I'd welcome any attempt to break down this last great taboo concerning foreign crimes. I don't think that showing pictures of (consensual) inter-racial couples on the streets of Japan together with racist abuse is really an most constructive or honest way of approaching it though. If you want to discuss predatory and abusive sexual behaviour, the introduction of "women only" carriages on the Tokyo underground is not because of foreigners.

As always, Debito has a more complete take-down. Maybe, just maybe, he'll get a column in the Japan Times about it.

Japanese Govt condemns scurrilous publication

Just when you thought the Gaijin Hanzai thing had died down, the Japanese Govt has written letters to the author and publisher, demanding an apology for the "groundless claims" and "disrespectful descriptions" contained therein.

Oh no, actually that letter was in relation to a scandalous book which dared to state the obvious about poor "birth-giving machine" Princess Masako. There's still been no peep about the racist magazine in the Japanese press.

Funnily enough, another old humdrum story of everyday ignorance and racism got a new airing recently. This concerns an advertisement for English teachers in some out-of the-way place, with the job requirement: "Blonde hair blue or green eyes and brightly character". Well that rules out old baldy here (on two counts). As someone pointed out, most schools don't actually want English language instruction, they want a stereotypical gaijin so that the kids learn to not be scared - it's an acting job, not a teaching job. Anyway the advert came and went ages ago, there was a fuss on the whinging gaijin mailing lists (can you tell I'm a member?) but just now some journalist decided to write about it for some reason. The minor back-story is that the Bureau of Human Rights in Japan basically blew off the complaints that were made at the time but suddenly decided to get all investigative on the very day that a journalist started poking around several months later...that's your taxes working for you, folks (the resident-in-Japan ones).

Cherry blossom in Kamakura

Spotted at the bus stop:

It is "Kawazuzakura" (Kawazu Cherry), which seems to come from Kawazu, down the road in Shizuoka (in fact it has its own kawazuzakura festival). The much more common Yoshino cherry are still a long way from flowering though.

Meanwhile, this year sees the latest first snowfall in Tokyo since records began in 1876. Not that there's been any snow yet (and indeed no sign of it coming), but in 1960 the first snowfall was on the 10th Feb. There were actually a few flakes in some areas 3 weeks ago - including here, only 50km away from central Tokyo - but apparently not in the crucial place where they measure these things.