Adapt or die

There's an interesting article in Climatic Change which looks at temperature-related mortality in England and Wales in recent decades. They use detection-and-attribution methods to look at the influence of climate change and adaptation.

Given the lengthy introduction citing numerous hyperbolic warnings about the primarily negative and potentially disastrous health effects anticipated due to climate change, it is mildly amusing (though hardly surprising to anyone familiar with the literature) that they observe that temperature-related mortality has decreased sharply over the interval studied. More interestingly, they find that a major cause of this decrease is not even the warmer winters the UK has seen, but rather better adaptation to cold weather. This of course directly refutes the "optimally adapted" meme, since if that was the case, we would expect to see a decrease rather than the observed increase in tolerance to cold extremes as the winters got warmer. But in reality, wealth and technology (eg insulation, heating and clothing) act to increase our tolerance whether or not the climate changes, although the latter may in theory act as an additional stimulus if it were sufficiently important (which it clearly is not, in the UK).

Of course they have to finish off by talking about increases in heatwaves, wondering "whether adaptation will manage to keep pace with such changes". I think it is patently obvious that it will, and would happily bet against any predictions of increasing temperature-related deaths in coming decades.

[jules' pics] iPad - an iPod for the over forties

Today I am wearing my freshly laundered black turtleneck to celebrate the fact that Steve Jobs is still not dead. And a lot more convincing than Barack Obama he was too. Nevertheless, there are many situations in which my new iPad will remain impractical. For example, this photo was taken by my iPhone just before the train got busy. James is always lucky in these situations as he stands head and iPod above the rest which allows him to breathe.

As for the state of the laundry address: there remain issues to be tackled, but I am only half way through the manual, and laundered items are already showing signs of increased cleanliness and fluffiness, and drying times are dramatically reduced. Only in the next quarter will we know whether the new regime will decrease the water usage resulting in lower water bills.***

***(not that Japan is short of water, of course - I make no pretense that the new machine improves eco-ness in any way)

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Posted By jules to jules' pics at 1/27/2010 07:46:00 PM

The new Apple iCovet

Apparently it is being unveiled overnight (Japanese time). No-one knows what it is, or what it does, but like a good fanboy, I obviously need one, even if I don't quite know why yet.

I can hardly sleep.

We're popular :-)

I would say I'm pleased to see lots of people are reading it, but of course the data only shows that they were tempted into downloading it based on the teasing title and abstract, and they may either not have read it or been thoroughly disappointed by the main text.

Geophysical Research Letters - Most Popular Articles

I suppose if I really wanted to be popular, I shouldn't have put the final draft up on my web site. But the GRL version is so much better, so you ought to all go and download it anyway :-)

And before you ask, only one of the downloads was me, a copy for my personal library, honest guv...

[jules' pics] 1/26/2010 06:36:00 PM

oranges, originally uploaded by julesberry2001.

Can you feel them doing you good by just looking at them? I almost can. Bright citrus fruits are a lovely winter feature of Japanese gardens, and this was a particularly fine tree with many large round fruits.

[Amagi Sanso, Izu Hanto]

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Posted By jules to jules' pics at 1/26/2010 06:36:00 PM

What about homeopathy then?

There has been some predictable (and entirely justified) outrage over the fake "bomb detectors" that turned out to be dowsing twigs with jargon. And the person who sold them has been arrested.

But Boots (UK pharmacist, for those who don't know) sell homeopathic "remedies" that consist of nothing more than water or sugar pills, with not a sniff of active ingredient.

Can anyone explain why they aren't also being arrested? I suppose one defence may be that Boots is relying on the frauds of others, and not pretending that these products work (in fact, they openly admit that they do not). What about the doctors who prescribe them, too?

[jules' pics] 1/25/2010 08:51:00 PM

a woman, originally uploaded by julesberry2001.

Me be woman! Not my scarfy thing of course, which belongs to another woman. The women were very loud. This is because some of them come from America which is very very big with hardly any people, meaning that you have to shout very loudly or your neighbor (sic) will not hear you. Now it is very quiet because 18 scientists are sitting 6 feet from each other just gently tapping at their keyboards. The closer the quieter.

This year's speaker, Diana Butler Bass was excellent, and not just because she belongs to my sect - the whole audience from a wide range of backgrounds remained very well engaged. I know this because, as the photographer, I got to peruse the audience a good deal.

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Posted By jules to jules' pics at 1/25/2010 08:51:00 PM

More Schwartz

I suppose I should say something about this, though I'm really rather bored by it. The sexy title "Why Hasn’t Earth Warmed as Much as Expected?" rather belies the content, which is just a simple energy balance of the earth system, with no new observational analyses or theoretical insights (contrast Murphy et al for a real job).

The "as Much as Expected" in the title is interpreted as the equilibrium response for GHG forcings alone, given an assumed sensitivity of 3C per CO2 doubling. The obvious answer is that (a) of course the system isn't in equilibrium, and (b) there are other forcings too, notably (but not solely) tropospheric aerosols. In fact, current GCMs which account for these factors do an excellent job of reproducing the observed warming, but the more honest and straightforward title of "Why Has Earth Warmed Just as We Expect" would not have been so catchy.


That picture is from Wikipedia (click for page with caption), based on data from the PCM ("Parallel Climate Model" of NCAR and collaborators, equilibrium sensitivity 2.1C). Just to show that this simulation does not indicate the IPCC's 3C sensitivity estimate is too high, here is HadCM3 (sensitivity 3.4C) doing the same thing 10 years ago in the IPCC TAR (again, click for the captioned version):

I've seen equivalent figures for MIROC3.2 (sensitivity 4.0C) too but don't have them to hand. Although one might argue that the models are over-tuned to the past, and thus this agreement doesn't prove anything, blah blah, one can hardly pretend that there is a puzzling discrepancy between the energy balance of the planet (which of course these models simulate) and the observed warming. So the premise of the paper is a big fat straw man at the outset.

The calculations presented are rather trivial zero-dimensional energy balance estimates. Reasonable enough for a blog post I suppose, I'm surprised that they alone are adequate content for publication in JClim. And anyway, when these two big missing factors are included (and set to reasonable values), the paper's conclusion is that the observed warming is entirely compatible with the simple energy balance theory:

Thus countervailing aerosol forcing could account for much or all of the discrepancy between the expected and observed increase in GMST over the industrial period.

There is no useful uncertainty analysis, just a repetition of the well-known observation that these data on 20th century warming do not tightly pin down the equilibrium sensitivity, and overall, it doesn't seem to me that this paper adds much to the debate. Climate scientists have been well aware of such simple energy balance calculations (and their limitations) for some decades now. So despite the misleading title which has predictably resulted in an equally misleading press release and coverage, there is really nothing for anyone (not even the sceptics!) to get excited about.

Bad PR

I mentioned some time ago that I was optimistically applying for a permanent residence visa. I got the rejection today, a few days inside their 6 month guideline, which consisted of the single sentence "あなたのこれまでの在留実績からみて，永住を許可するに足りる相当の理由が認められません。" or "Your achievements to date are not reasonable grounds to grant permanent residence".

Perhaps it's a useful reminder that after nearly 9 trouble-free years here the bureaucracy still views me as just a visitor to be tolerated for the time being, rather than the sort of person that they might like to settle here in the long term. And perhaps not entirely surprising, since my employer views me in much the same way. But based on the list of successful and unsuccessful applicants, it seems to me they have been unduly harsh (eg see Case #27 on that list, also #38).

There is talk of some reformation of the immigration process, but I am not holding my breath. The revolving-door approach towards foreigners (by all means come here for a few years, but make sure you don't stay too long) pervades not just immigration, but employment contracts too, so it will take more than changes to the immigration system to change things significantly.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch...

Jules used to be an astronomer. Thankfully, no more. Not just because of the horror stories of being driven up and down the mountain (where the telescope was sited) in the dark on a narrow twisting road by a drunk old lecher who had just downed a bottle of wine and who kept on pestering her to let him eat breakfast off her stomach...

But more importantly (perhaps) because The Powers That Be have just decided to abandon every telescope in the northern hemisphere that UK scientists used to have access to (see Physics Today, Science):

For astronomers, the discouraging headline is that STFC will withdraw U.K. support from a number of international projects in 2012, including the Gemini Telescopes, the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope, the Isaac Newton Group of Telescopes, the Auger Cosmic Ray Observatory, and the U.K. Infra-red Telescope. After that date, U.K. astronomers will no longer have access to a major observatory in the northern hemisphere.

Presumably they have run out of 54-year-olds to give early retirement to.

Funny how when the bankers (collective noun: wunch) throw billions down a black hole, they are immediately bailed out despite supposedly being in the private sector, but when some bureaucrats at the head of a research council mislay a few million, the result is the closure of whole fields of science. As good old Flash Gordon said, "the downturn is no time to slow down our investment in science but to build more vigorously for the future." Err...hang on...

Oh well, I suppose digital cameras are pretty good these days, the scientists can just get long lenses. Nuclear physics and satellite missions are also slashed though, and may be harder to replace with off-the-shelf consumer goods. STFC is forthwith to be known as the "Shut The Facilities Council".