| Monday
August 13, 2007
Subject: Letter from England
This is actually a letter from Virginia--I'll write
about some of the differences I'm observing. I own a condo in Fairfax
County, where a couple of my kids live and where I'm currently staying.
Remember that Fairfax is upper middle-class, while Sunderland is
working-class.
. More cars on the road than in Sunderland. Some major
roads are always congested. More new cars in Fairfax. . The UK drivers are
much more expert and polite, despite driving much faster. (To drive in the
UK, you have to pass a hard driving test, and it shows.) On the other hand,
Fairfax drivers are more considerate of pedestrians and bicyclists--drivers
habitually violate pedestrian and bicyclist rights of way is a problem in
the UK. . Gasolene costs half what it does in the UK. . You can't walk much
of anywhere in Fairfax. The roads are much wider, too. . More bicyclists in
Fairfax, but this is a class difference. Working class adults don't ride
bicycles in the UK. . Prices in Fairfax are up more from six years ago than
they are in Sunderland. . Meal portions in Fairfax are much larger than they
were six years ago or in the UK now. Tasteless, so you're paying for the
quantity. . Credit cards handled differently in Fairfax--signatures instead
of chip and pin. . People are politer in Fairfax.
Not everyone needs to go to university... <http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/6929689.stm>
East German spies in Sweden. <http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/6938763.stm>
ID card contract put out to tender. <http://www.guardian.co.uk/
idcards/story/0,,2145485,00.html> <http://tinyurl.com/2vk5cw>
Home information packs mishandled. <http://money.guardian.co.uk/news_/
story/0,,2145258,00.html> <http://tinyurl.com/3xr3jz>
Problems with computer tracking of parolees.
<http://
politics.guardian.co.uk/homeaffairs/story/02144640,00.html>
<http:// tinyurl.com/3x3d8b>
Restrictions on treatment for blindness to be
rethought.
<http://
www.guardian.co.uk/medicine/story/02144684,00.html> <http://
tinyurl.com/382x5k> <http://www.guardian.co.uk/leaders/story/0,,2146517,00.html>
<http://tinyurl.com/2rz45e> <http://society.guardian.co.uk/health/story/0,,2146621,00.html>
<http:// tinyurl.com/35g6qe>
Anti-terror laws are *so* convenient. <http://politics.guardian.co.uk/
terrorism/story/0,,2146692,00.html> <http://tinyurl.com/yq6jjv>
A monument to Hadrian. <http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/this_britain/
article2853816.ece> <http://tinyurl.com/ys6e6f>
-- Harry Erwin, PhD, Program Leader, MSc Information
Systems Security, University of Sunderland.
<http://scat-he-g4.sunderland.ac.uk/~harryerw> Weblog at:
<http://scat-he-g4.sunderland.ac.uk/~harryerw/blog/index.php>
===========
Seitz Temperature of the
Earth
Dear Jerry ; Given your interest in the MWP Proxy
Wars, I think you may find the current issue of Nature interesting.
And cautionary-- It notes that the latest proxy record
study, on marine sediment cores from south of Australia and north of the
Antarctic shore show no isotopic evidence for the abrupt warming of the
Younger Dryas in the Southern Hemisphere some 13,000 years ago.
I took a look at the Milloy DYI Temperature Of the
Earth site, and was at once underwhelmed by the spotty data and charmed by
the (anonymous) author's candor as to the semi-silliness of the endeavor.
When the whole bloody American Meteorological Society,
driven by serious commodity trading money and corporate heavy hitters like
ADM, who bet billion on beans and bellies regardless of the state of the
ideological Climate Wars , can't get a third decimal place handle on the
mean temperature of a half billion square kilometer ball of wax like Earth,
Wikipedia Weathermen left and right don't stand much of a chance. In both
cases , the data gets gathered because the data gatherers get paid .
-- Russell Seitz
Heh.
=============
r.e. Clark's theory about industrialization
Dear Jerry,
>>the how of the transition was largely driven by the
invention of several critical pieces of technology, the first of which was
the steam engine. Even with lots of appropriate cultural values, the
creation of high energy civilization wasn't going to occur until a technical
means to create energy intensive industries had been invented.<<
The question is why didn't it all happen much earlier
at the Library of Alexandria? Heron had a working steam 'engine' in the form
of his aeolipile before 70 A.D. The differences in situations are striking.
I think immedate 'need', practical application and an ability to publish far
more widely are the reasons. Heron's laboratory was a state supported
scientific institution which also put much effort into cutting edge military
R&D (i.e. catapults). Heron was a genius and, judging from the range of his
scientific works, probably had a much higher IQ than either Newcomen or
Watts.
Nor was Heron's effort the last until Newcomen's.
Steam power was dabbled with on multiple occasions in between Heron and
Newcomen. The ultimate spur of immediate economic need was always lacking.
Heron's society and economy - the Roman Empire - was explicity founded on
the principle of the cheapest possible labor. This was slavery. Cheap labor
economies such as the Roman Empire, the Antebellum South and the 21st
Century U.S.A. seem to inevitably favor low technology solutions and
illiterate muscle power over mechanization. The existence of individual
engineering like Heron, and even their subsidy with large amounts of state
funds, has no effect on such regimes.
Newcomen's steam engine for pumping water out of coal
mines was part of solving an existing fuel and energy 'crisis'. Firewood and
charcoal were becoming expensive in England in the 17th Century as the trees
ran out. Coal and coal coke were therefore being used as substitute fuels
for general heating and metallurgy. This created an immediate industrial
demand for coal mining appliances like pumps and for ways to power them. And
since slavery ( a form of unlimited labor immigration) was 'unknown to the
laws of England', the prevailing wage rates were higher.
Best Wishes,
Mark
I will shortly review a book that has an alternate
theory of why it became steam engine time...
=============
Teacher Unions
Dr. Pournelle,
<http://www.cbs46.com/news/13866712/detail.html>
The headline for this is "Ex-Teacher Accused of Rape
Gets Raises". It would appear that in Alabama, not even raping a student is
enough to get you off the payroll. At least he was removed from class…
And some people wonder why my kids are home schooled.
V/R
Is any comment needed?
=========
Subject: NASA's Y2K Bug
Dr. Pournelle,
For whatever it's worth, Gavin Schmidt denies that the
temperature discrepancy was a Y2K bug. Rather, it was an error correlating
two data sources that just happened to switch off in January 2000.
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2007/08/1934-and-all-that/
There may be other similar errors hiding in the graph,
but the real point is twofold: 1.) McIntyre should not have had to
reverse-engineer the process to check the results, and 2.) we need to be
skeptical of closed-source science precisely because it can't be thoroughly
vetted. In this, good science resembles cryptography.
-Max
Actually, closed-source science isn't science at
all. It may or may not be magic.
==========
Subject: Whole-word reading v. Phonics
Dr Pournelle
Velma Hampson gave her opinion on the value of the
'eclectic' method of teaching language. You have referenced Robeta
Pournelle's success with phonic methods.
There is one historical illutstration of the
difference between whole-word reading and phonics: Korea.
Chinese characters are ideographs. China and Japan
both teach reading by the whole-word method because they do not have a
choice. It takes years for Chinese and Japanese students to develop an 8,000
word written vocabulary. (That's not so much, I hear the educators say;
that's more than 3 new words a day, every day, no time off for weekends or
holidays.) For those who are not aware, neither Chinese nor Japanese
conjugate verbs. No 'am-are-is-are-are-are' to worry with.
For more than a thousand years, educated Koreans wrote
Chinese. Chinese was to Koreans what Latin was to Europeans.
King Sejong the Great changed that. In the 15th
century (C.E.), King Sejong commissioned a group of scholars to develop a
new writing system for the masses using the Korean language. (The Koreans
say his motive was 'love for the common people', but I was trained as an
historian -- among other things -- and I can read around the myths. His love
for the common people was sufficiently demonstrated in his agricultural and
scientific programs and in his tax reform. By reforming the language, he
hoped to weaken the oligarchs who dominated the bureaucracy.)
The scholars developed the Hangul, a phonetic alphabet
of 11 vowels and 17 consonants. King Sejong published the Hangul across
Korea in 1446.
Before publication of the Hangul, the literacy rate in
Korea was five percent (5%); after, ninety-five percent (95%). So say the
historical records.
Respectfully h lynn keith
The educationist bureaucracy in the US with their
"whole word" and "whole language" approaches seek to reverse that. Their
motive should be obvious. Qui bono?
========
Subject: Teacher Unions
The headline for this is "Ex-Teacher Accused of Rape
Gets Raises". . .
Is any comment needed?
Yes, I guess there is. The headline reads "Accused" -
that means the teacher in question hasn't had a trial and is still innocent
in the eyes of the law. I know nothing beyond what the article stated aboout
this case, but should he lose his job and income just because a student
claims an assault? Due process argues differently. It is easy to make a
claim - look at the Duke lacrosse team foolishness.
Jim Bunnell
There is certainly a difference between indictment
and conviction. I don't know enough about the present case to have a view of
what is going on.
On the one hand, criminal penalties should never be
applied before conviction. On the other, prudence demands that indictment on
certain matters should have consequences. Removing this person from
classrooms seems prudent.
Unions do face dilemmas, and often find themselves
required defend people who do not bring much credit to the union.
Thank you for pointing this out. We do, all of us
including me, have a tendency to mind other people's business. We don't know
what is happening in Alabama. At the same time, we do have a national
problem with teachers unions. Nationalizing of education has been a
disaster.
AND SEE BELOW
==========
Global Warming, The Little
Ice Age, and the Maunder Minimum
A dialogue:
How do you know that the earth was warmer in 1900 than
in 1776, or for that matter in 2000 than in 1900? I'm not being funny. I
really want to know.
You've just said that we haven't even defined what we
mean by "warmer", so I really don't understand how you can assert global
warming as a fact. You often use the example of rivers freezing over during
the American Revolution, but surely that's evidence only of local warming,
if that. Perhaps during that same time the Sahara Desert and Gobi Desert and
Antarctica were a lot warmer than they are now. Do we know? I don't think
so. I know a lot of assumptions are made, but as you have said, one can
prove anything by choosing the data, let alone by arbitrarily adjusting it,
which seems to be the norm among the global warming "scientists".
You also frequently suggest spending more on gathering
data. I'm in favor of gathering data, but I don't understand what good it
will do us in the short term. We can gather all the data we want, but we'll
still not have reliable data from even 100 years ago, let alone 1,000. For
that matter, how do we compare data from 1957 with data from 2007? I don't
doubt that 1957 data were quite accurate, but as Crichton and many others
have pointed out, the environments surrounding the collection points have
changed (and in some cases the collection points themselves have been
relocated.) If the mean temperature at a particular collection point is 1C
higher in 2007 than it was in 1957, but that collection point was formerly
in the midst of a forest and is now in the midst of a suburban development,
might not that increase in mean temperature actually reflect a reduction in
mean temperature? So how can we compare data from 50 years ago with data
from yesterday?
Furthermore, it seems to me that if we really have no
idea what effect humans are having on climate, which it's pretty clear we
don't, we should err on the side of caution by encouraging behaviors that
lead to the preferred outcome. As far as I can see, we're now overdue for an
ice age. Although I suspect not, perhaps anthropogenic global warming is in
fact occuring. If so, might it be the only thing that's holding off an ice
age? In the absence of real data, might we not be better off encouraging
production of greenhouse gases and otherwise doing everything possible to
keep the planet as warm as possible?
After all, a warmer Earth might actually be better for
all of us. Sure, the grain belts in the American midwest might shift north
to Canada, and the American south might become so warm that agricultural
production drops, but then Siberia might also become a grainbowl. On the
other hand, the only sure thing about an ice age is that it will kill half
or more the human population. So why should we risk the horrible catastrophe
of an ice age when we can all do our part to encourage global warming?
-- Robert Bruce Thompson
thompson@ttgnet.com
=
I answered, rather hurriedly:
Vineyards in England, longer growing seasons, a
whole bunch of records show it was warmer in 800 - 1200
Rivers frozen longer, ice skating on the Zuyder
Zee, frozen rivers in the US.
There are a lot of records, but almanacs with dates
for planting are some of the best.
And if you have enough energy you can accomplish
almost anything, which argues for nuclear and space solar power
=
Sure, I know all that. I suspect the Medieval Warm
Period was global, but we don't really know that for a fact. Scattered
records that are mostly European don't really tell us what conditions were
like elsewhere during this period. The southern hemisphere might have been
cooler during this period. We have no reliable records of what temperatures
were in Africa, South America, or most of North America at that time,
either. Could not most or all of the warming observations during that time
have been caused by a shift in the Gulf Stream, including the farms in
Greenland?
I'm not convinced that the planet has warmed at all
since, say, 1700. We simply don't have sufficient reliable data for even
1900, let alone 1700.
RBT
=
Once again I was in a hurry:
I think there are records from South America
for those times. And I would expect there are records of growing seasons in
South Africa. Probably in Japan as well.
And I'm pretty sure it was colder in the Ice
Ages. Not as comfortable, for sure.
=
Sure, but all I'm really doing is reinforcing your
point about the difficulty of coming up with one number for planetary
temperature. For example, when Europe was in its Little Ice Age, including
the peak you mention around 1770, it's far from established that the rest of
the world was also in a cool period.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Ice_Age>
"The Little Ice Age (LIA) was a period of
cooling occurring after a warmer era known as the Medieval climate
optimum. Climatologists and historians find it difficult to agree on
either the start or end dates of this period. Some confine the Little
Ice Age to approximately the 16th to the mid-19th centuries. It is
generally agreed that there were three minima, beginning about 1650,
about 1770, and 1850, each separated by slight warming intervals. [1]
It was initially believed that the LIA was
a global phenomenon; it is now less clear if this is true. The
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), based on Bradley and
Jones, 1993; Hughes and Diaz, 1994; Crowley and Lowery, 2000 describes
the LIA as "a modest cooling of the Northern Hemisphere during this
period of less than 1°C," and says, "current evidence does not support
globally synchronous periods of anomalous cold or warmth over this
timeframe, and the conventional terms of 'Little Ice Age' and Medieval
Warm Period appear to have limited utility in describing trends in
hemispheric or global mean temperature changes in past centuries."[2]
There is evidence, however, that the Little Ice Age did affect the
Southern Hemisphere."
As to the last sentence, it was apparently added by a
Global Warming supporter. It certainly doesn't detail any such evidence.
RBT
I still don't have a lot of time, but perhaps this
is worth dealing with.
The Little Ice Age corresponds to the Maunder
Minimum
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maunder_minimum, a period of essentially no
sun spots and thus -- presumably -- lower solar output. There are other
effects of lower sunspot activities including their effects on cosmic ray
bombardment.
The Manmade Global Warming religion basically
rejects the notion that the Sun has variable output large enough to render
human activity relatively minor to insignificant as a cause of global
temperature. (There are variants on this, including the
Flynn-Niven-Pournelle hypothesis (expressed in the novel
Fallen Angels) that human activities have been significant in staving
off the return of the Ice Ages).
If the cause of the Little Ice Age was due, or
largely due, to the Maunder Minimum causing a reduction in the Solar
constant, then the obvious hypothesis is that it affected the entire Earth,
and not just the Northern Hemisphere in general and Europe/North America in
particular. The modern Global Warming Religion thus seeks to show that there
was no universal Little Ice Age.
This, I would think, is a scientific question that
can be determined through experiments, namely searches for data. There were
settlements around the World from 1492 onward, and presumably there would be
agricultural records from many places including Portuguese America. There
may be Almanacs indicating planting and harvest seasons. In addition, there
will be the more usual temperature records from ice cores and lake
sediments, but we have seen that these are open to conflicting
interpretations.
I had actually thought it was pretty well settled
that the Little Ice Age was global; that certainly seemed to be the
assumption at AAAS meetings back in the days when the consensus was that we
were threatened by a New Ice Age (resumption of the typical Ice Age patterns
of the last few hundred thousand years); I haven't made much of a study of
evidence putting that in doubt.
Clearly if the Little Ice Age was universal and
corresponded with the Maunder Minimum we have a good starting point for
predicting the coming solar system climate.
I would think, too, that there are probably some
climate records from the Inca Empire although how much of that has been
preserved is problematical. But surely the South American settlers from 1600
- 1850 kept records of growing seasons and crop yields?
I will leave this to others. It is an interesting
question.
And see below.
========
Carbon Sequestration
Dyson makes the excellent point that expanding our top
soils can single handedly eliminate the CO2 we are dumping into the
atmosphere. I started out with the premise that a combination of good soil
management and the long term financing of rural woodlands could solve this
problem handily. I then learned about Terra Preta soils which I believe will
revolutionize global agriculture and completely solve the whole carbon
sequestration problem. I cannot help but be enthused.
A site on Terra Preta is been maintained at:
http://terrapreta.bioenergylists.org
I went on to describe a likely mechanism for
manufacturing these soils, not only by the primitive stick farmers and also
with methods available to farmers today.
My key post is:
http://globalwarming-arclein.blogspot.com/2007/07/carbonizing-corn-in-field.html
and can also be found on the Terra Preta site.
I describe the method by which a family can produce
biochar from primarily corn stover.
The fertile amazonian soils (an oxymoron to date)
produced by Terra Preta held a very high level of charcoal (30% +) and are
very deep representing thousands of years of agricultural usage.
Regards
Arclein
===========
Ghengis and Nuke.
http://www.ocnus.net/artman2/publish/
Defence_Arms_13/
The_Plane_That_Would_Bomb_Iran.shtml
-- Roland Dobbins
=========
Steam
Dear Jerry,
Steam couldn't be practical until there was a
civilization north of the Mediteranean due to lack of fuel. A steam powered
society needed wood and/or coal in quantity to become established.
GeorgeH
There was wood for ship building, and extensive
forest.
==========
Subject: Whole-word reading v.
Phonics in Japanese
If Japanese students had to learn to read
ideographically, their results might be as poor as ours. However, despite
having a mainly ideographic written language, children (and hapless gaijin
learning Japanese) are first taught using phonetic alphabets that represent
anything you can write using kanji. Learning how to read any word so written
is quick and easy, especially since Japanese is somewhat phonetically
limited. Once that is done, the ideograms are introduced slowly, and then at
first with helpful phonetic characters printed above them called furigana so
you know how to pronounce the kanji. As the difficulty of the text
increases, more kanji are used, and the commoner ones drop the furigana.
By the time one graduates high school, one is expected
to know the 1,945 general use kanji, but this corresponds to a written
vocabulary of over 10,000 words. The use of ideograms persists despite the
obvious difficulties because you can read so much more quickly once you know
them, it is like the difference between nineteen hundred and eighty-four and
1984. The progression toward more ideograms at higher levels seems
reasonable, since you can teach most everyone to read using phonics, but as
the ability of the person increases, more reading will be done
ideographically.
-- Benjamin I. Espen
Of course that is the way it works in English, too.
A young reader encountering the word Washington for the first time will have
to sound it out; but it won't be long (assuming the word is encountered
often) before it is read ideographically. This happens with most words. The
value of the ability to read phonetically is that once that skill -- and it
is a skill, learned by drills and repetition just as the addition and
multiplication tables are learned -- once that skill is acquired, one never
encounters a word that can't be read. (The exceptional words in English tend
to be common, related, and are best learned as part of the phonetic skill
set, as they are in Roberta's reading program.) Once all words can be read,
then the act of reading automatically converts phonetic reading to
ideographic reading.
The difficulty comes when you leave out the
phonetic skill set; you must then have "controlled vocabulary readers" (See
Spot Run! Run Spot, run!) which aren't very interesting or informative and
other such things all of which are expensive and don't help a lot in
education. With the phonetic skill set one can read a geography book and
still be learning to read.
=========
And on that score
Subject: Roberta's reading
program
Jerry,
Just a quick update. It's working!
On the program being clunky: My daughter giggles every
time she makes it to one of the little animations. It's good enough for her.
Simple is much better than complex.
Phil
Yep. It works for adults, too. The little
animations and music merely mark the fact that you've done the lesson and
thus learned something new. The real reward comes with acquiring a new skill
a little bit at a time.
===========
Subject: Little Ice Age in
China
Found this summary of scientific studies of the
Chinese Little Ice Age (and preceding warm period)
http://ff.org/centers/csspp/library/co2weekly/20051027/ice.htm
Michael Flynn
Aha! I was sure there would be such records.
Thanks!
From the conclusion:
In light of
these several observations, it is clear that the Little Ice Age was
manifest in China as a cold node of the millennial-scale oscillation of
climate that brought this vast region, as well as most of the rest of
the world, the Roman Warm Period, the Dark Ages Cold Period, the
Medieval Warm Period and the Modern Warm Period, which suggests there is
nothing unusual about the planet's current state of warmth and,
therefore, that there is no need to invoke the historical increase in
the air's CO2 content as its cause.
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