Monday, February 28, 2011
Not Amped Up: Electric Car Shockingly Useless Even on Gas
"When you are looking at purely dollars and cents, it doesn't really make a lot of sense. The Volt isn't particularly efficient as an electric vehicle and it's not particularly good as a gas vehicle either ...
Science Impact
Anyone who has followed recent media reports that electrical brain stimulation "sparks bright ideas" or "unshackles the genius within" could be forgiven for believing that we stand on the frontier of a brave new world. As James Gallagher of the BBC put it, "Are we entering the era of the thinking cap – a device to supercharge our brains?"Their analysis of why this happens has broad applicability. They identify an . . .
The answer, we would suggest, is a categorical no. Such speculations begin and end in the colourful realm of science fiction. But we are also in danger of entering the era of the "neuro-myth", where neuroscientists sensationalise and distort their own findings in the name of publicity.
The tendency for scientists to over-egg the cake when dealing with the media is nothing new, but recent examples are striking in their disregard for accurate reporting to the public. We believe the media and academic community share a collective responsibility to prevent pseudoscience from masquerading as neuroscience.
. . . unacceptable gulf between, on the one hand, the evidence-bound conclusions reached in peer-reviewed scientific journals, and on the other, the heavy spin applied by scientists to achieve publicity in the media. Are we as neuroscientists so unskilled at communicating with the public, or so low in our estimation of the public's intelligence, that we see no alternative but to mislead and exaggerate?Neuroscience is not the only field where the cake is over-egged.
Somewhere down the line, achieving an impact in the media seems to have become the goal in itself, rather than what it should be: a way to inform and engage the public with clarity and objectivity, without bias or prejudice.
Our obsession with impact is not one-sided. The craving of scientists for publicity is fuelled by a hurried and unquestioning media, an academic community that disproportionately rewards publication in "high impact" journals such as Nature, and by research councils that emphasise the importance of achieving "impact" while at the same time delivering funding cuts.
Academics are now pushed to attend media training courses, instructed about "pathways to impact", required to include detailed "impact summaries" when applying for grant funding, and constantly reminded about the importance of media engagement to further their careers.
Yet where in all of this strategising and careerism is it made clear why public engagement is important? Where is it emphasised that the most crucial consideration in our interactions with the media is that we are accurate, honest and open about the limitations of our research?
Bob Carter about Australian carbon tax
Julia Gillard, a sickly five-year-old girl (chronic pneumonia) whose life was probably saved when her parents relocated from the cold, cloudy, windy, and rainy Wales to Australia where she became a prime minister 8 months ago, announced her plans to introduce a carbon [sic] tax from July 1st, 2012, in order to fictitiously fight against the global warming.Bob Carter, a well-known professor or geology and one of the most well-informed experts in the field of climate change on their compact continent, wrote the following recommendation to Gillard and other politicians who were caught into the whirlpool of postmodern unscientific superstitions and distortions:
Doomed planet: shhsshh ... don’t talk about the science (Quadrant Online)Recommended.
By the way, the annual mean temperature in Adelaide where her family settled is about 17 Celsius degrees. Nice. The same figure is about 10 Celsius degrees in Barry, Wales where the family began their journey. Note that 7 °C of temperature difference was needed to make some difference in the girl's life: and it was a positive temperature change that was needed for a positive change.
A few months ago, when I was returning from Belgrade, Serbia, I was sitting next to a Serbian architect who had de facto moved to the Czech Republic. He said that his new homeland was great: the only thing that sucked were the cooler temperatures. And this pattern - that people prefer warmer temperatures if they're offered two places - is almost universal.
A decade ago, my then advisor Tom Banks half-moved from Piscataway, New Jersey (Rutgers) to Santa Cruz, California (UCSC). Guess what was the reason.
Concerning CO2 as a pollutant, it's clearly so crazy but so many people - including some otherwise sophisticated and sensible friends of mine - have been brainwashed by this meme. Do you know what's the CO2 concentration in the air we breath out? It's about 4% i.e. 40,000 ppm, one hundred times higher than it is in the atmosphere. All of us are literally chimneys. :-)
Oil Prices and Economic Growth
First, there does appear to be a sense of conventional wisdom on this subject. For instance, from last Friday's New York Times:
A sustained $10 increase in oil prices would shave about two-tenths of a percentage point off economic growth, according to Dean Maki, chief United States economist at Barclays Capital. The Federal Reserve had forecast last week that the United States economy would grow by 3.4 to 3.9 percent in 2011, up from 2.9 percent last year.Similarly, from Friday's Financial Times:
According to published information on the Federal Reserve’s economic model, a sustained $10 rise in the oil price cuts growth by 0.2 percentage points and raises unemployment by 0.1 percentage points for each of the next two years.Today's New York Times sames something very similar:
Jan Hatzius, chief US economist for Goldman Sachs in New York, comes up with similar numbers ...
Nariman Behravesh, senior economist at IHS Global Insight, said that every $10 increase in the price of a barrel of oil reduces economic growth by two-tenths of a percentage point after one year and a full percentage point over two years.And adds:
As a rule, every 1-cent increase takes more than $1 billion out of consumers’ pockets a year.Reuters offers some different numbers:
In 2004, the International Energy Agency calculated that an increase of $10 per barrel would reduce GDP growth in developed countries by 0.4 percent a year over the following two years. It would also add 0.5 percent to annual inflation. The impact was more severe in the developing world: in Asia, growth would be 0.8 percent lower and inflation 1.4 percent higher.That these numbers seem unsatisfying 9at least they do to me) should not be surprising, as economists have devoted precious little attention to understanding the role of energy in economic growth. David Stern of the Australian National University has a nice review paper titled "The Role of Energy in Economic Growth" that asserts:
But the IEA’s estimates were made when the oil price was just $25 per barrel. While a $10 price increase today is lower in percentage terms, the absolute level is much higher: at the current price, oil consumption accounts for more than 5 percent of global GDP.
The principal mainstream economic models used to explain the growth process (Aghion and Howitt, 2009) do not include energy as a factor that could constrain or enable economic growth, though significant attention is paid to the impact of oil prices on economic activity in the short run (Hamilton, 2009).James Hamilton, cited above by Stern and a professor of economics at UCSD who blogs at Econbrowser, explains the math as follows:
Americans consume about 140 billion gallons of gasoline each year. I use the rough rule of thumb that a $10/barrel increase in the price of crude oil translates into a 25 cents per gallon increase in the price consumers will eventually pay for gasoline at the pump. Thus $10 more per barrel for crude will leave consumers with about $35 billion less to spend each year on other items, consistent with a decline in consumption spending on the order of 0.2% of GDP in a $15 trillion economy.So much for that fancy Federal Reserve model, but I digress. Hamilton has a new paper out on oil shocks here in PDF.
From this cursory review, it seems that the details of the relationship of energy prices and economic outcomes remains fairly cloudy in the economic literature, with conclusions resting significantly on assumptions and the specification of relationships. Even so, the big picture is clear enough to draw some general conclusions, such as this prescient assertion put forward by Professor Hamilton in 2009 testimony before the U.S. Senate:
Even if we see significant short-run gains in global oil production capabilities, if demand from China and elsewhere returns to its previous rate of growth, it will not be too long before the same calculus that produced the oil price spike of 2007-08 will be back to haunt us again.The conclusion that is draw is that regardless of the best way to represent oil prices and GDP in economic models, we need to work harder to make energy supply more reliable, abundant, diverse and less expensive.
President Klaus on dictatorship of political correctness
Czech (nominally) right-wing prime minister, Mr Petr Nečas, has vetoed the candidacy of Mr Ladislav Bátora, a deeply conservative intellectual, who was expected to become a deputy education minister of the Czech Republic because Mr Bátora used to be a candidate of the nationalist National Party in some past elections. See Czech Press Agency.
President Klaus has identified this dismissal as another example of the dictatorship of political correctness in his today's op-ed in Právo (in Czech).
For you to understand the title: "the Hilsneriad" was a media campaign started in 1899 when Mr Leopold Hilsner, a poor Jew, was first accused of murder of a 19-year-old Czech woman, Ms Anežka Hrůzová. It was the most intense collection of anti-Semitic events that controlled the Czech society at the end of the 19th century. Prof Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk defended Hilsner and was humiliated - which hasn't prevented him from becoming the founding president of Czechoslovakia years later. I will explain other things that are unfamiliar to non-Czech readers inside square brackets within my translation of Klaus's text which starts right here:
A Little Czech Hilsneriad or another case of the dictatorship of political correctness
During the last week, several Czech journalists together with some politicians - which, shockingly for some of us, included some politicians from the right side of the political spectrum - have created the so-called BátoraGate which I find deeply troubling. I was still believing that I live in a primarily democratic society but there are growing signals that it is not the case. While our contemporary society continues to boast many attributes which allow it to be called democratic - unlike e.g. Colonel Gaddafi's regime - something completely different is gradually becoming the dominant force. Not such a long time ago, I discovered the English term "PC-Society" in an American journal. The term didn't denote a society full of personal computers. Instead, it was the name of a politically correct society. This is an amazing and enormously useful term.
Moreover, what is and what is not politically correct is being defined by one - totally self-appointed - group of people that has conquered a completely unbelievable position in the media and that tells us in a sovereign and authoritarian way what we are allowed to do and what we are not allowed to do. It is a global phenomenon, a European phenomenon, as well as a Czech phenomenon. He who dares resist it faces an avalanche of attacks leading to his discrediting in society, often a loss of job, and his personal ostracism. This exactly is happening to Mr Ladislav Bátora in our country.
In order for me to prevent speculations, I have to say that I don't know Mr Bátora in person, I have never talked to him directly (not even via phone, and I haven't exchanged mail with him), and I haven't even read any text he authored. I know that at www.euportal.cz, one may find a photograph from a rally against the Treaty of Lisbon which was organized by the D.O.S.T. movement and where I stand next to him; but I have never exactly known who he was. The only thing I know is that he is a deeply conservative, authentic right-oriented man who attends various public events to express his opposition to trends he disagrees with. Those include the European Union because he thinks - much like I do - that the European Union, especially in its current incarnation, is a flawed construct and that this opinion has to be loudly articulated. I would even dare to say that this opinion is close to the majority attitude of the Czech society (and maybe even the people on the whole European continent): this, however, runs counter to the opinion of the strategists of political correctness (and even they may disagree with the ideology they promote - which may only reflect their interests) and those who want to be on good terms with Brussels at any cost.
On Thursday, February 24th, 2011, I accidentally read short excerpts from Mr Ladislav Bátora's CV which have intrigued me immensely. I was searching for the whole text and I found out that the autobiography was written on March 8th, 2009, and published on February 21st, 2011 on the www.euportal.cz server. For you to get some idea about Mr Bátora's opinions, here is the excerpt:
Excerpt from Mr Ladislav Bátora's autobiography
Conservatism isn't an ideology but an attitude to life - as every proper conservative may confirm. Here are a few examples describing myself:
Better Confucius than Rousseau, better Franz Josef I of Austria [conservative emperor in the 19th and 20th century] than Joseph II [a progressive emperor], better Ms Jarmila Šuláková [an old lady singing folk songs] than Mr Jura Pavlica [a violinist and singer singing slightly modernized folk songs], better local than global, better mellow szegedin goulash from the "Pub of Rozvařils" [a traditional name of a rural restaurant] than yummy emulgator food from McDonald's, better Ms Božena Viková-Kunětická [a Czech writer and politician before the war] than Ms Jiřina Šiklová [an ex-communist ex-dissident sociologist who became green], better education of the basics of Greek and Latin than courses how to pull on condoms, better "with Lorenová" [with the correct Czech feminization and declination of names] than "with Loren" or "with Lorena" [adopting names and words directly from other languages], better a South Bohemian country woman than a female intellectual from Prague, better a modest Czech crown than a prettified euro, better Agnetha Fältskog than Joan Baez, better tradition than progress, better matternity leave than mandatory day euronurseries, better Mr Stanislav Sucharda [sculptor 100 years ago] than Olbram Zoubek [a contemporary, but old, sculptor], better Nixon than Bush, better Bartered Bride [by Mr Bedřich Smetana] than Leaving [by Václav Havel], better čecháček [a derogatory Czech term for (provincial?) Czechs] than světáček [a similar, less usual word to denote a cosmopolitan], better to be a creditor than to owe, better Koniáš [a jesuit priest 300 years ago who also liked to burn protestant books and became a symbol of it] than Halík [a top contemporary Catholic priest and left-wing intellectual], better wayside inn "U tří lip" [By Three Lime Trees] than Grand Hotel Bilderberg... And certainly not europeism, humanrightism, genderism, multiculturalism, feminism, antidiscriminationism, political correctness, oikophobia [fear of the home], ecumenism, positive discrimination, homosexualism, Truth and Love as ordained from Havel's unventilated moral and spiritual den, environmentalism, International Court of Justice, Mr Kaplický [a late Czech architect who proposed the "melted blob" for the National Library in Prague] and Mr Ježek's blobism [defense of this blob by Mr Vlastimil Ježek, the director of the library]...
And, more generally, all this brainwashing neosocialist dogmatics of the seigniorially distributed Well-Being instead of Freedom; dogmatics that is intentionally and maliciously beating us and it will certainly kill us at some moment! Let's try to delay this end as much as possible.
[VK:] I insist that it is legitimate to share opinions of this type and that it would be fair to conduct a serious dialogue about them, not to condemn them a priori. As far as I am concerned, Mr Bátora's opinions are close to mine in many points. I also prefer tradition over putative progress, I also prefer to listen to Jarmila Šuláková on radio rather than to the destroyer of the folk music Mr Pavlica. Even I see a threat in the seeds planted to the human society by J. J. Rousseau, even I am afraid that the slogan of the civic society is hiding lots of non-democratic ideas (and deeds). The difference between Mr Koniáš and Mr Halík is 300 years (and probably a genuine faith in the former case and just some media equilibristics in the latter). I have never used the term "čecháček" (a provincial Czech) in a derogatory sense (this term is one of the icons of the Czech version of the PC-Society) but I am afraid of our allegedly "global" giants, and so on, and so on.
That's why we should thank Mr Ladislav Bátora for having articulated those words so sharply and courageously.
P.S. The Catholic priest, Mr Tomáš "Koniáš" Halík, has praised Klaus because he's not only an expert in cinematography and climatology but also in theology. Theologian Halík himself admitted that he couldn't react to the analysis - because, as we know, he's not quite competent. However, he returned something he's good at - silly expletives. According to Mr Halík, President Klaus is converging towards the attitudes of "fascizing petit bourgeois". :-) The last two words were stated in Czech and simply represents inhabitants of medium-sized towns.
President Klaus has identified this dismissal as another example of the dictatorship of political correctness in his today's op-ed in Právo (in Czech).For you to understand the title: "the Hilsneriad" was a media campaign started in 1899 when Mr Leopold Hilsner, a poor Jew, was first accused of murder of a 19-year-old Czech woman, Ms Anežka Hrůzová. It was the most intense collection of anti-Semitic events that controlled the Czech society at the end of the 19th century. Prof Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk defended Hilsner and was humiliated - which hasn't prevented him from becoming the founding president of Czechoslovakia years later. I will explain other things that are unfamiliar to non-Czech readers inside square brackets within my translation of Klaus's text which starts right here:
A Little Czech Hilsneriad or another case of the dictatorship of political correctness
During the last week, several Czech journalists together with some politicians - which, shockingly for some of us, included some politicians from the right side of the political spectrum - have created the so-called BátoraGate which I find deeply troubling. I was still believing that I live in a primarily democratic society but there are growing signals that it is not the case. While our contemporary society continues to boast many attributes which allow it to be called democratic - unlike e.g. Colonel Gaddafi's regime - something completely different is gradually becoming the dominant force. Not such a long time ago, I discovered the English term "PC-Society" in an American journal. The term didn't denote a society full of personal computers. Instead, it was the name of a politically correct society. This is an amazing and enormously useful term.
Moreover, what is and what is not politically correct is being defined by one - totally self-appointed - group of people that has conquered a completely unbelievable position in the media and that tells us in a sovereign and authoritarian way what we are allowed to do and what we are not allowed to do. It is a global phenomenon, a European phenomenon, as well as a Czech phenomenon. He who dares resist it faces an avalanche of attacks leading to his discrediting in society, often a loss of job, and his personal ostracism. This exactly is happening to Mr Ladislav Bátora in our country.
In order for me to prevent speculations, I have to say that I don't know Mr Bátora in person, I have never talked to him directly (not even via phone, and I haven't exchanged mail with him), and I haven't even read any text he authored. I know that at www.euportal.cz, one may find a photograph from a rally against the Treaty of Lisbon which was organized by the D.O.S.T. movement and where I stand next to him; but I have never exactly known who he was. The only thing I know is that he is a deeply conservative, authentic right-oriented man who attends various public events to express his opposition to trends he disagrees with. Those include the European Union because he thinks - much like I do - that the European Union, especially in its current incarnation, is a flawed construct and that this opinion has to be loudly articulated. I would even dare to say that this opinion is close to the majority attitude of the Czech society (and maybe even the people on the whole European continent): this, however, runs counter to the opinion of the strategists of political correctness (and even they may disagree with the ideology they promote - which may only reflect their interests) and those who want to be on good terms with Brussels at any cost.
On Thursday, February 24th, 2011, I accidentally read short excerpts from Mr Ladislav Bátora's CV which have intrigued me immensely. I was searching for the whole text and I found out that the autobiography was written on March 8th, 2009, and published on February 21st, 2011 on the www.euportal.cz server. For you to get some idea about Mr Bátora's opinions, here is the excerpt:
Excerpt from Mr Ladislav Bátora's autobiographyConservatism isn't an ideology but an attitude to life - as every proper conservative may confirm. Here are a few examples describing myself:
Better Confucius than Rousseau, better Franz Josef I of Austria [conservative emperor in the 19th and 20th century] than Joseph II [a progressive emperor], better Ms Jarmila Šuláková [an old lady singing folk songs] than Mr Jura Pavlica [a violinist and singer singing slightly modernized folk songs], better local than global, better mellow szegedin goulash from the "Pub of Rozvařils" [a traditional name of a rural restaurant] than yummy emulgator food from McDonald's, better Ms Božena Viková-Kunětická [a Czech writer and politician before the war] than Ms Jiřina Šiklová [an ex-communist ex-dissident sociologist who became green], better education of the basics of Greek and Latin than courses how to pull on condoms, better "with Lorenová" [with the correct Czech feminization and declination of names] than "with Loren" or "with Lorena" [adopting names and words directly from other languages], better a South Bohemian country woman than a female intellectual from Prague, better a modest Czech crown than a prettified euro, better Agnetha Fältskog than Joan Baez, better tradition than progress, better matternity leave than mandatory day euronurseries, better Mr Stanislav Sucharda [sculptor 100 years ago] than Olbram Zoubek [a contemporary, but old, sculptor], better Nixon than Bush, better Bartered Bride [by Mr Bedřich Smetana] than Leaving [by Václav Havel], better čecháček [a derogatory Czech term for (provincial?) Czechs] than světáček [a similar, less usual word to denote a cosmopolitan], better to be a creditor than to owe, better Koniáš [a jesuit priest 300 years ago who also liked to burn protestant books and became a symbol of it] than Halík [a top contemporary Catholic priest and left-wing intellectual], better wayside inn "U tří lip" [By Three Lime Trees] than Grand Hotel Bilderberg... And certainly not europeism, humanrightism, genderism, multiculturalism, feminism, antidiscriminationism, political correctness, oikophobia [fear of the home], ecumenism, positive discrimination, homosexualism, Truth and Love as ordained from Havel's unventilated moral and spiritual den, environmentalism, International Court of Justice, Mr Kaplický [a late Czech architect who proposed the "melted blob" for the National Library in Prague] and Mr Ježek's blobism [defense of this blob by Mr Vlastimil Ježek, the director of the library]...
And, more generally, all this brainwashing neosocialist dogmatics of the seigniorially distributed Well-Being instead of Freedom; dogmatics that is intentionally and maliciously beating us and it will certainly kill us at some moment! Let's try to delay this end as much as possible.
[VK:] I insist that it is legitimate to share opinions of this type and that it would be fair to conduct a serious dialogue about them, not to condemn them a priori. As far as I am concerned, Mr Bátora's opinions are close to mine in many points. I also prefer tradition over putative progress, I also prefer to listen to Jarmila Šuláková on radio rather than to the destroyer of the folk music Mr Pavlica. Even I see a threat in the seeds planted to the human society by J. J. Rousseau, even I am afraid that the slogan of the civic society is hiding lots of non-democratic ideas (and deeds). The difference between Mr Koniáš and Mr Halík is 300 years (and probably a genuine faith in the former case and just some media equilibristics in the latter). I have never used the term "čecháček" (a provincial Czech) in a derogatory sense (this term is one of the icons of the Czech version of the PC-Society) but I am afraid of our allegedly "global" giants, and so on, and so on.
That's why we should thank Mr Ladislav Bátora for having articulated those words so sharply and courageously.
Václav Klaus, published in Právo, February 28th, 2011
(translation by L.M.)
(translation by L.M.)
P.S. The Catholic priest, Mr Tomáš "Koniáš" Halík, has praised Klaus because he's not only an expert in cinematography and climatology but also in theology. Theologian Halík himself admitted that he couldn't react to the analysis - because, as we know, he's not quite competent. However, he returned something he's good at - silly expletives. According to Mr Halík, President Klaus is converging towards the attitudes of "fascizing petit bourgeois". :-) The last two words were stated in Czech and simply represents inhabitants of medium-sized towns.
25% of medical students use Facebook for education - with mixed success
This Australian study aimed to evaluate how effectively medical students may be using Facebook for education.
Researchers surveyed 759 medical students at one Melbourne university, and explored the design and conduct of 4 Facebook study groups.
25.5% of students reported using Facebook for education-related reasons and another 50.0% said they were open to doing so.
The case studies showed conservative approaches in students' efforts to support their development of medical knowledge and mixed successes.
The study authors concluded that Facebook as part of learning and teaching is as much of a challenge for many students as it may be for most educators.
References:
Medical students' use of Facebook to support learning: Insights from four case studies. Gray K, Annabell L, Kennedy G. Med Teach. 2010;32(12):971-6.
Assistant professor uses Twitter to teach students dental anatomy at Ohio State University - 113 of 200 students signed up, 56% http://goo.gl/jvyq7
Confessions of a GP: a year of life, death & earwax by Dr. Benjamin Daniels
HarperCollins UK (2010)
Adult Nonfiction/Memoir
336 pages
Summary: A woman troubled by pornographic dreams about Tom Jones. An 80 year-old man who can't remember why he's come to see the doctor. A woman with a common cold demanding (but not receiving) antibiotics. A man with a sore knee. A young woman who has been trying to conceive for a while but now finds herself pregnant and isn't sure she wants to go through with it. A 7-year-old boy with "tummy aches" that don't really exist. These are his patients. A witty insight into the life of a family doctor, this funny and moving account will change the way you look at your doctor next time you pop in with the sniffles. - from Good Reads
This book was quite funny, interesting, sometimes gross and once, so funny I was laughing so hard I was crying, (although to be honest, that part wasn't written by the author, but was a chain mail that went around online - I even remember getting it once and I'm pretty sure I laughed that hard then too.)
I must say though that reading a book written in the UK is quite challenging as a Canadian. Yes we both speak English but here in Canada, especially so close to the US where I live, we speak a version of English that is much closer to US English. There was also some UK Spelling which in my part of Ontario at least, we use a bit of (like Colour and Neighbourhood) but some we use the US spelling of (like Tranquillizer - not Tranquilliser like it is in the book.) I knew most of the UK words as I love words but had to look up one of the medications mentioned. E.g. surgery (meaning emergency department) or stroppy (easily offended or annoyed), row (argument), trolley (streetcar) and paracetamol (mentioned often - it's acetaminophen)
There are two controversial areas of the book that I want to mention. If you are able to read about ideas you may not agree with, then this isn't a problem. But if you will dislike the whole book because of one opinion, I'd rather you know before you pick up the book.
The doctor sees a patient with measles because his mom chose not to vaccinate him. She believes she just needs to strengthen his immune system with healthy foods and such. Doc explains that's not how it works. Doc explains his frustrations with those who choose not to vaccinate. Specifically because it puts those children who are unable to vaccinate (because of allergy to vaccination or they are deathly ill) at risk too.
The other has to do with alternative practitioners. The doctor sees a patient who has a simple problem but chooses to see many different alternative practitioners first who do everything but examine the problem area. She ends up back at Doc after having spent lots of money. So Doc makes a comment (not to patient) about his dislike of alternative practitioners.
I did appreciate that all the stories are only a few pages long. It's good for a quick reads (like in the bathroom)
Links of Interest: NONE YET
Other Reviews: Naomi's Book Reviews,
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Sunday, February 27, 2011
The Flip Side of Extreme Event Attribution
If we fail to reduce the emission of greenhouse gases, deadly heat waves and droughts will become more frequent, coastal areas will flood, and economies will be disrupted. That is going to happen, unless we act.Taken literally, the sentences are not wrong. But they are misleading. Consider that the exact opposite of the sentences is also not wrong:
If we reduce the emission of greenhouse gases, deadly heat waves and droughts will become more frequent, coastal areas will flood, and economies will be disrupted. That is going to happen, if we act.The reason why both the sentence and its opposite are not wrong is that deadly and economically disruptive disasters will occur and be more frequent independent of action on greenhouse gas emissions. If the sentences are read to imply a causal relationship between action on greenhouse gases and the effects on the impacts of extreme events -- and you believe that such a direct causal relationship exists -- the sentences are still misleading, because they include no sense of time perspective. Even if you believe in such a tight coupling between emissions and extremes, the effect of emissions reductions on extreme events won't be detectable in your lifetime, and probably for much longer than that.
Why do I bring up President Clinton's 2000 State of the Union in 2011? Because I have seen this slippery and misleading formulation occur repeatedly in recent weeks as the issue of carbon dioxide and extreme events has hotted up. Consider the following examples.
First John Holdren, science advisor to President Obama:
People are seeing the impact of climate change around them in extraordinary patterns of floods and droughts, wildfires, heatwaves and powerful storms.He also says:
[T]he climate is changing and that humans are responsible for a substantial part of that - and that these changes are doing harm and will continue to do more harm unless we start to reduce our emissionsIt would easy to get the impression from such a sentence that if we "start to reduce our emissions" then climate changes will no longer be "doing harm and continue to do more harm" (or more generously, will be "doing less harm"). Such an argument is at best sloppy -- particularly for a science advisor -- but also pretty misleading
Second, Ross Garnaut, a climate change advisor to the Australian government:
[T]he systematic, intellectual work of people who've spent their lifetimes studying these things shows that a warmer climate does lead to intensification of these sorts of extreme climatic events that we've seen in Queensland, and I think that people are wishing to avoid those awful challenge in Queensland will be amongst the people supporting effective action on climate change.It would be easy to get the impression that Garnaut is suggesting to current Queensland residents that future Queensland floods and/or tropical cyclones might be avoided by supporting "effective action on climate change." If so, then the argument is highly misleading.
It is just logical that one cannot make the claim that action on climate change will influence future extreme events without first being able to claim that greenhouse gas emissions have a discernible influence on those extremes. This probably helps to explain why there is such a push to classify the attribution issue as settled. But this is just piling on one bad argument on top of another.
Even if you believe that attribution has been achieved, these are bad arguments for the simple fact that detecting the effects on the global climate system of emissions reductions would take many, many (many!) decades. For instance, for an aggressive climate policy that would stabilize carbon dioxide at 450 ppm, detecting a change in average global temperatures would necessarily occur in the second half of this century. Detection of changes in extreme events would take even longer.
To suggest that action on greenhouse gas emissions is a mechanism for modulating the impacts of extreme events remains a highly misleading argument. There are better justifications for action on carbon dioxide that do not depend on contorting the state of the science.
"[O]ur current uncontrolled and broken immigration system ...
...is silently welcomed by Islamic extremists whose mandate of Jihad via al Hijra is not overtly spoken of, but actively engaged in.
...
CHP Canada is calling for a moratorium on immigration from countries governed by Sharia law. We invite everyone to become completely informed on this matter: see our CHP Media release here and here, as well as our full immigration policy here.
I am not a member of the CHP or totally aware of all their policies, however the above article excerpt/link is worth a read and some thought. The current Federal Immigration Policy is not going to do anything to enhance our democracy. Read more on that policy here. (ed.)
Polygamy is related read at Blogwrath
...
CHP Canada is calling for a moratorium on immigration from countries governed by Sharia law. We invite everyone to become completely informed on this matter: see our CHP Media release here and here, as well as our full immigration policy here.
Polygamy is related read at Blogwrath
Climate Science Turf Wars and Carbon Dioxide Myopia
Shindell's comment focuses on the impacts of action to mitigate the effects of black carbon, tropospheric ozone and other non-carbon dioxide human climate forcings, and comes from his perspective as lead author of an excellent UNEP report on the subject that is just out (here in PDF and the Economist has an excellent article here). (Shindell's comment was apparently in response to an earlier Dot Earth comment by Raymond Pierrehumbert.)
In contrast, Caldeira invokes long-term climate change to defend the importance of focusing on carbon dioxide:
If carbon dioxide and other long-lived greenhouse gases were not building up in the atmosphere, we would not be particularly worried about the climate effect from the short-lived gases and aerosols. We are concerned about the effect of methane and black carbon primarily because they are exacerbating the threats posed by carbon dioxide.Presumably by "climate effect" Caldeira means the long-term consequences of human actions on the global climate system -- that is, climate change. Going unmentioned by Caldeira is the fact that there are also short-term climate effects, and among those, the direct health effects of non-carbon dioxide emissions on human health and agriculture. For instance, the UNEP report estimates that:
If we eliminated emissions of methane and black carbon, but did nothing about carbon dioxide we would have delayed but not significantly reduce long-term threats posed by climate change. In contrast, if we eliminated carbon dioxide emissions but did nothing about methane and black carbon emissions, threats posed by long-term climate change would be markedly reduced.
[F]ull implementation of the measures identified in the Assessment would substantially improve air quality and reduce premature deaths globally due to significant reductions in indoor and outdoor air pollution. The reductions in PM2.5 concentrations resulting from the BC measures would, by 2030, avoid an estimated 0.7–4.6 million annual premature deaths due to outdoor air pollution.There are a host of reasons to worry about the climatic effects of non-CO2 forcings beyond long-term climate change. Shindell explains this point:
There is also a value judgement inherent in any suggestion that CO2 is the only real forcer that matters or that steps to reduce soot and ozone are ‘almost meaningless’. Based on CO2’s long residence time in the atmosphere, it dominates long-term committed forcing. However, climate changes are already happening and those alive today are feeling the effects now and will continue to feel them during the next few decades, but they will not be around in the 22nd century. These climate changes have significant impacts. When rainfall patterns shift, livelihoods in developing countries can be especially hard hit. I suspect that virtually all farmers in Africa and Asia are more concerned with climate change over the next 40 years than with those after 2050. Of course they worry about the future of their children and their children’s children, but providing for their families now is a higher priority. . .The UNEP report notes that action on carbon dioxide is not going to have a discernible influence on the climate system until perhaps mid-century (see the figure at the top of this post). Consequently, action on non-carbon dioxide forcings is very much independent of action on carbon dioxide -- they address climatic causes and consequences on very different timescales, and thus probably should not even be conflated to begin with. UNEP writes:
However, saying CO2 is the only thing that matters implies that the near-term climate impacts I’ve just outlined have no value at all, which I don’t agree with. What’s really meant in a comment like “if one’s goal is to limit climate change, one would always be better off spending the money on immediate reduction of CO2 emissions’ is ‘if one’s goal is limiting LONG-TERM climate change”. That’s a worthwhile goal, but not the only goal.
In essence, the near-term CH4 and BC measures examined in this Assessment are effectively decoupled from the CO2 measures both in that they target different source sectors and in that their impacts on climate change take place over different timescales.Advocates for action on carbon dioxide are quick to frame discussions narrowly in terms of long-term climate change and the primary role of carbon dioxide. Indeed, accumulating carbon dioxide is a very important issue (consider that my focus in The Climate Fix is carbon dioxide, but I also emphasize that the carbon dioxide issue is not the same thing as climate change), but it is not the only issue.
In the end, perhaps the difference in opinions on this subject expressed by Shindell and Caldeira is nothing more than an academic turf battle over what it means for policy makers to focus on "climate" -- with one wanting the term (and justifications for action invoking that term) to be reserved for long-term climate issues centered on carbon dioxide and the other focused on a broader definition of climate and its impacts. If so, then it is important to realize that such turf battles have practical consequences.
Shindell's breath of fresh air gets the last word with his explanation why it is that we must consider long- and short- term climate impacts at the same time, and how we balance them will reflect a host of non-scientific considerations:
So rather than set one against the other, I’d view this as analogous to research on childhood leukemia versus Alzheimer’s. If you’re an advocate for child’s health, you may care more about the former, and if you’re a retiree you might care more about the latter. One could argue about which is most worthy based on number of cases, years of life lost, etc., but in the end it’s clear that both diseases are worth combating and any ranking of one over the other is a value judgement. Similarly, there is no scientific basis on which to decide which impacts of climate change are most important, and we can only conclude that both controls are worthwhile. The UNEP/WMO Assessment provides clear information on the benefits of short-lived forcer reductions so that decision-makers, and society at large, can decide how best to use limited resources.
MOND isn't beating dark matter
The BBC application on my iPod Touch led me to the following article:
When I looked at the graphs that are claimed to contain all the support, I was terribly unimpressed. It's just some slope in a noisy graph that MOND is argued to predict pretty well - a linear curve. There are many other things, to be enumerated below, where MOND doesn't work and they contain many more details than a slope of a would-be linear function for a subclass of galaxies.
I think it's obvious that the author has been cherry-picking in order to support a particular viewpoint. And there's no real evidence against the standard model of cosmology in the paper - except for the observation that this model doesn't offer a trivial way to calculate some power law relating the masses of stars and gas in a galaxy.
So I fully subscribe to every sentence written by Sean Carroll. It's not a paper that can revolutionize cosmology and the journalists didn't do a good job in reporting it.
Carroll enumerates a couple of huge reasons why MOND is not a good explanation of the data that are otherwise explained by dark matter:
Dark matter theory challenged by gassy galaxies resultThis stuff is based on a preprint by McCaugh. This paper chooses some "gassy galaxies" which are consistent with MOND - Modified Newtonian Dynamics - while requiring a smaller number of parameters than the standard cosmological model with dark matter.
When I looked at the graphs that are claimed to contain all the support, I was terribly unimpressed. It's just some slope in a noisy graph that MOND is argued to predict pretty well - a linear curve. There are many other things, to be enumerated below, where MOND doesn't work and they contain many more details than a slope of a would-be linear function for a subclass of galaxies.
I think it's obvious that the author has been cherry-picking in order to support a particular viewpoint. And there's no real evidence against the standard model of cosmology in the paper - except for the observation that this model doesn't offer a trivial way to calculate some power law relating the masses of stars and gas in a galaxy.
So I fully subscribe to every sentence written by Sean Carroll. It's not a paper that can revolutionize cosmology and the journalists didn't do a good job in reporting it.
Carroll enumerates a couple of huge reasons why MOND is not a good explanation of the data that are otherwise explained by dark matter:
- MOND predicts a very bad WMAP spectral curve of the microwave background; the agreement of the dark matter model is spectacular, and includes many perfectly reproduced "bumps" which clearly carry much more information than the noisy graphs in McCaugh's paper; with MOND, the agreement becomes very weak
- dark matter and visible matter don't always share the center; the Bullet Cluster shows that these two chunks of mass may get totally separated; at least all the prevailing versions of MOND make such a separation of "body and soul" impossible, so they're really falsified by this and similar observations
- MOND doesn't fit clusters; the scaling laws are OK for most galaxies but at a different distance scales, the relationship just fails; most MOND proponents accept that dark matter is needed to explain the motion of clusters - which makes MOND's importance highly questionable because dark matter may explain the galaxies' behavior, too
- even galaxies may fail; certain small and hard-to-observe galaxies, "dwarf spheroidals", are predicted incorrectly
- MOND realizations are given by unnatural equations; the addition of vectors and scalar fields, and their bizarre non-polynomial interactions, surely looks awkward. From the particle physics perspectives, the interactions are totally unnatural, and the very fact that one needs to add new field content whose only goal is to modify gravity is very contrived or "man-made"
I would add one more point, and that is the criticism of the MOND proponents' main motivation:
- it is not natural to assume that all forms of matter and energy must be visible by our eyes, or by electromagnetic waves that we learned to love
The MOND proponents primarily build on the basic philosophy that there's something wrong with a theory that contains elements that are invisible by electromagnetic waves - the main gadget we got used to when observing the real world. I think that this basic philosophical notion - which is the true driving force behind all their model building - is just deeply flawed.
God or Nature didn't guarantee that our eyes He or She created have to be omni-potent. Quite on the contrary, they're almost certainly not. There is no reason - no theorem and no logical argument - that would imply that everything must be visible by the waves we like to use when watching things on the Earth.
After all, our eyes only see a very small interval of possible frequencies of the electromagnetic waves. But even if we add additional frequencies that may be observed by our telescopes, there's no reason why we should see "everything". We only see the objects that emit the light, and there's absolutely no reason to think that all objects should emit light, or even the same amount of light.
The people who dislike "dark things" seem to think that they're returning us to the era of angels, ghosts, and superstitions. But they don't. Dark matter and dark energy are standard parts of physics because they do have observable consequences. The word "observable" doesn't have to be associated with light or electromagnetic waves.
During its cosmological evolution, Nature just chose what is the right percentage of the things that will be observable 13.7 billion years after the Big Bang. And the answer is that only the gay 4% visible matter is observable. You don't like that the heterosexual 96% majority of the mass in the Universe prefers to hide its intimate places from the lights of your camera? Well, move into another, less puritan Universe. ;-)
Saturday, February 26, 2011
Florida University hires Police to Protect Imam & Tries to Keep Media Out
New Related: Radicalisation at UK Universities
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Free speech under threat again as the Taxpayer funded Islam Awareness Month at USF proceeds with speech by Islamist brought in by Muslim Students Association.
KnightNews:
Imam Package 2 from Knight News on Vimeo.
Imam Questions from Knight News on Vimeo.
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Free speech under threat again as the Taxpayer funded Islam Awareness Month at USF proceeds with speech by Islamist brought in by Muslim Students Association.
KnightNews:
UCF leaders had dispatched its police force — funded by the taxpayers — to protect the First Amendment rights of the Muslim Imam Siraj Wahhaj, who was named by a US Attorney as an unindicted co-conspirator in the 1993 World Trade Center terrorist attacks.But when it came time for local media to exercise its First Amendment rights to go inside to cover the imam’s speech in the state university, UCF administrators had its police force ready to enforce UCF’s initial decision to ban cameras from recording the speech, paid for with public money. Initially, UCF administrators said no cameras would be allowed because the imam didn’t want any.
... However, they forced the independent media to set up video cameras in the back of the room, while allowing a state-funded media camera owned by UCF’s public relations department to enjoy closer access.
Imam Questions from Knight News on Vimeo.
Bringing it Home
An official shift may just have occurred not only in news coverage of climate change, but the way that careful scientists talk about it. Till now blaming specific storms on climate change has been frowned upon. And it still is, if one is speaking of an isolated event. But something very much like blaming global warming for what is happening today, right now, outside the window has just gotten endorsement on the cover of Nature. Its photo of a flooded European village has splashed across it, “THE HUMAN FACTOR.” Extreme rains in many regions, it tells the scientific community, is not merely consistent with what to expect from global warming, but herald its arrival.We recently published a paper showing that the media overall has done an excellent job on its reporting of scientific projections of sea level rise. I suspect that a similar analysis of the issue of disasters and climate change would not result in such favorable results. Of course, looking at the cover of Nature above, it might be understandable why this would be the case.
This is a good deal more immediate than saying, as people have for some time, that glaciers are shrinking and seas are rising due to the effects of greenhouse gases. This brings it home.
Freeman Dyson ultimately redirects a pushy AGW interviewer into spam folder
I took this picture at Harvard...At the end, I decided to read the whole interview with Freeman Dyson because Sarah Kavassalis has tweeted that it was far more dramatic than she expected. ;-) I recommend you to do the same thing:
Letters to a heretic: An email conversation with climate change sceptic Professor Freeman Dyson (The Independent)The name of the brainwashed alarmist journalist who was "interviewing" Freeman Dyson is Steve Connor (different verbs could be more accurate and some of these better verbs will be mentioned). If I put it very politely, Connor is a pushy as$höle, indeed.
At the beginning, Connor asks seven general questions of the type "what you believe about the AGW orthodoxy" to Dyson. Dyson answers and explains all of them.
Needless to say, Connor is not satisfied.
So he tries to overwhelm Dyson with references to deluded political organizations of scientists, comments that heretics have to be wrong, and he tries to press him to endorse the "scientific consensus". While doing so, Connor writes the word sceptics in quotation marks all the time.
Despite this massive bullying, Dyson obviously doesn't surrender (if he were controlled by others, he wouldn't be a Free_man) and he insists that the answers to the questions are uncertain and the questions themselves are unimportant - or at least vastly less important than the wide range of questions that Dyson is interested in. Dyson acknowledges that Connor couldn't possibly change his opinion - something that Connor declares pretty openly - but Dyson at least expects Connor... to listen. What a sin!
Needless to say, Connor doesn't listen and doesn't change his priorities, either, so he continues in his attempts to intimidate Dyson and indefinitely repeats the Gore-like idiotic AGW propaganda mixed with ad hominem attacks against skeptics and skepticism as a principle. He also incredibly claims that Wegener didn't have convincing arguments for continental drift when he proposed it - which is just a historical lie invented by the stupid would-be geologists who failed to understand - sometimes for decades - how essential and indisputable Wegener's insights were and who decided that they were so numerous that they could rewrite the history.
In reality, Wegener knew and clearly stated almost all the main currently known arguments that de facto settle the question whether the continents were arranged differently in the past. By the way, Dyson mentions that he was taught as early as in the 1930s that Wegener's theory was a fact - an educational episode that helps to show that the "consensus" against Wegener only existed within a particular clique or a particular "hockey team" of the 1930s.
Connor asks Dyson where the trapped heat has gone. Dyson answers that he disagrees with the assumption that there was a trapped heat in the first place so he can't say any additional stories about this non-existent heat. It's a perfect answer but Connor is "sorry that Dyson feels this way." Holy crap, how can an interviewer feel sorry if Dyson is just answering his question?
Much like your humble correspondent, Dyson prefers to reply e-mail immediately whenever possible - an attitude that is unsustainable in such remote interviews, as Dyson figures out. So he answers and promises a 3-day break. During the break, Connor floods Dyson with another repetition of all this moronic propaganda about the "consensus" and AGW-driven disasters. It really looks like Connor's brain is incapable of absorbing more than this kilobyte of stinky rubbish; he's just completely full of this $hit.
Needless to say, Dyson ultimately responds in the same way as every sensible person has to respond when his mailbox - or website - is being unstoppably flooded by fěces produced by an obsessed stupid brainwashed biased troll: he discontinues the discussion and politely explains to Connor that he is an obsessed stupid brainwashed biased troll.
Dyson's friendly summary is that he hopes that Connor will once join the skeptics because skepticism is important both for science and for journalism. Is skepticism important? Well, Connor replies that he is sorry that Dyson feels this way - no kidding.
I guess that Freeman Dyson has to face many more complete and fanatical idiots who want to "debate" him - in particular, bully him - than what would make Dyson feel comfortable. I know such things, too. When whole websites designed to synchronize complete idiots decide that they (and their sockpuppets) will try and go to spam both comment threads on this blog by totally idiotic rubbish that has been debunked in quite some detail hundreds of times in the past, combined with personal attacks against me and other skeptics, it is obvious that the only way to prevent this blog from becoming a cesspool or another Real Climate is to ban all those pushy idiots.
It's just amazing what those alarmist cranks must be thinking about themselves. It would be logical if Dyson were asked to give a lecture to Connor or something of this sort. But Connor doesn't see it this way. Instead, Connor is convinced that he can teach Dyson. Why? Because there are tens of thousands of mental cripples of Connor's type which is a consensus and a consensus means that they're intellectually superior relatively to Freeman Dyson. You know, I am not among those who would repeat clichés about Dyson's being another Einstein - but it's just a fact that Dyson has no peers in the field of climate science.
I just can't stand these arrogant limited jerks. Steve Connor, John Cook, Dana1991 are not the real deal, can you please understand it? You're just a bunch of brainwashed crackpots, Gentlemen. You can't expect to debate Freeman Dyson as a peer. You're idiots who think that the Earth doesn't thermally radiate during daytime. You're idiots who think that the tropical troposphere has to be warming by 5 degrees per century because of some silly quasi-argument about water even though the experiments clearly show that it's warming at least 1 order of magnitude more slowly.
How can we explain to those idiots that they should be listening and they should be humble because they know nothing about science? This is really the main meta-message in this whole issue.
Four reasons why I like string theory (guest blog)
Guest blog by Phil Gibbs
It is exactly one year since I started this blog, so to celebrate I will give my four top reasons for liking string theory.
This is partly a response to a recent survey on Cosmic Variance which included a question about what likelihood people gave to string theory being correct. With about 170 people responding, about half of them gave string theory 10% or less, many said 1% or even 0%. Now, science isn’t settled by democratic votes especially by a random sample of commenters on one particular blog. Nevertheless it is a revealing outcome and there are plenty of other physicists who think the same. The reasons people gave were roughly along the lines of “It has not had any experimental success after a long time” or “it is unfalsifiable”. I dont agree that these are real issues but instead of talking about that I want to review why I think it is still a theory worthy of being excited about.
(1) My top reason for thinking that string theory is a correct approach to unifying physics is that it provides a consistent perturbative description of particle physics with the inclusion of gravitons, and there is no known alternative. Gravity is a very weak force and spacetime is nearly flat on small scales. There must be some perturbative description of the quantized interaction of particles with gravity as a series of approximations. A direct quantisation of GR cannot do this, but string theory can.
Furthermore it achieves this in a way that did not have to work, but it does because of surprising cancellations. There are five consistent string theories in 10 dimensions which are all related by non-perturbative dualities. The reductions to 4 spacetime dimensions is a consistent process which is now reasonably well understood, except we dont know the correct compactification manifold. The only alternative way to get a consistent perturbative theory is possibly from supergravity, but by now we understand that supergravity too is just another limiting case of string theory. Some physicists have suggested that there may be a chance of finding other non-perturbative solutions to the quantum gravity problem, but no complete solution of that type has been found yet. Until it has, this reason alone is a very strong indication that string theory is on the right path.
(2) Supersymmetry! There are many ways that string theory can reduce to low energy particle physics and not all of them would result in observable supersymmetry. On the other hand, supersymmetry is a natural byproduct of string theory and if it does exist in nature at scales currently being probed by the LHC then it can explain several mysteries. These include the hierarchy problem, dark matter, a light Higgs and the convergence of the running coupling constants at the GUT scale where SUSY says they all have a value of around 1/24. In the last few weeks we have seen the exclusion limits for SUSY greatly extended by CMS and ATLAS. They say that if you throw a frog into hot water it will quickly jump out, but if you put it in cold water and gradually heat the water up it will stay there until it is boiled to death. You should not try this experiment at home but it seems like nature is trying it on physicists who like supersymmetry. In the 1980s we thought that supersymmetric partners would have light masses to avoid fine tuning. If this was right they would have been seen at LEP or the Tevatron. Now the LHC has pushed the minimum masses to uncomfortably high values implying quite a lot of fine tuning. The water is heating up but we will stay put because we now know that the multiverse allows for such fine tuning provided it is in the best interests of our existence. Perhaps the higher masses were needed to allow dark matter to form galaxies or some such.
(3) My third best reason for supporting string theory is that it provides a solution to the black hole information paradox via the holographic principle. This is a much more theoretical argument but it is still quite convincing, I find. Although there may never be any evidence for Hawking radiation from black holes, we know theoretically that it has to be there. Some reasoning using semiclassical quantum gravity tells us the laws of entropy for a black hole, and this should remain correct for any complete theory of quantum gravity such as string theory. Further arguments also tell us that the rules of thermodynamics must obey a holographic principle to avoid the paradox of thermodynamic information being lost inside a black hole. Again, any theory of quantum gravity worth its salt has to comply. It is therefore a triumph for string theory that the AdS/CFT correspondence shows that string theory does (or can) realize the holographic principle. It is another indication that string theory is on the right track.
(4) My final reason for liking string theory is that it comes with a multiverse. For some people this is the favourite reason for not liking string theory and my reasoning for thinking otherwise is partly philosophical, so only people with similar philosophical leanings will agree with me. Ten years ago I did not favour anthropic reasoning. That was because the anthropic principle requires a range of theories that the universe can choose from so that one customised for intelligent life can be selected. I am comfortable with the platonic view that all mathematically consistent universes exist and we just inhabit some part of that realm, but in order to explain the symmetries that govern the laws of physics I think you need to invoke a further principle. For me that principle is universality in the sense of universal behavior seen in complex dynamical systems such as those seen in critical phenomena. I think there is a universal behavior of some type in the realm of complex mathematical systems which overwealms all other possible laws of physics so that only one unique possibility complete with all its beautiful symmetries can be what we experience. You can see that this does not fit well with the anthropic principle. However, there are good indications that the laws of physics are somehow selected to promote intelligent life in a way that would not be consistent with a single unique set of physical laws, contradiction! Luckily the multiverse comes to the rescue in the form of the string landscape. It turns out that string theory does indeed follow from some unique over-arching M-theory, but it can be realized in many forms in lower dimensions by a choice of vacuum determined by the compactification manifold. A wide range of these vacua are stable and there could be as many as 10^500 of them, plenty enough to account for anthropic reasoning. In my view it is the perfect outcome.
So those are my four best reasons for liking string theory. This does not mean that I don’t value other approaches to quantum gravity. We still need to find its complete non-perturbative formulation andIi am sure that such a thing must exist even if string theory has nothing to do with the laws of physics. Other theories such as Loop Quantum Gravity, Non-Cummutative Geometry or Group Field Theory lead to rich mathematical concepts. I see this as a sign that they are telling us something about our world, but I think you have to look for what it says about possibilities for non-perturbative string theory. For example, Loop Quantum Gravity tells us that knot polynomials and spin networks should be important. I like the fact that recently Witten has explored implications of high dimensional generalisation of the knot polynomials (Khovanov homology) to branes from M-theory. This is the kind of outcome I expect from alternative approaches.
So what of the problems people say are issues for string theory? I see the multiverse landscape as an asset, not a problem. It means that string theory cannot tell us much about low energy physics so we will have to look for Planck scale effects instead. Such predicted effects may not be known until the non-perturbative side of string theory is understood, and after that it may be a long time before technology allows us to test them. That I am afraid is the nature of the game. We have no automatic right to expect nature to be kind to us and provide an easy test of any theory of quantum gravity. We are suddenly in a position where almost anything we can observe seems to be covered by the standard model + general relativity so it should be no surprise that testing string theory is very difficult. Any other theory of quantum gravity is likely to have the same problem.
It is exactly one year since I started this blog, so to celebrate I will give my four top reasons for liking string theory.
This is partly a response to a recent survey on Cosmic Variance which included a question about what likelihood people gave to string theory being correct. With about 170 people responding, about half of them gave string theory 10% or less, many said 1% or even 0%. Now, science isn’t settled by democratic votes especially by a random sample of commenters on one particular blog. Nevertheless it is a revealing outcome and there are plenty of other physicists who think the same. The reasons people gave were roughly along the lines of “It has not had any experimental success after a long time” or “it is unfalsifiable”. I dont agree that these are real issues but instead of talking about that I want to review why I think it is still a theory worthy of being excited about.(1) My top reason for thinking that string theory is a correct approach to unifying physics is that it provides a consistent perturbative description of particle physics with the inclusion of gravitons, and there is no known alternative. Gravity is a very weak force and spacetime is nearly flat on small scales. There must be some perturbative description of the quantized interaction of particles with gravity as a series of approximations. A direct quantisation of GR cannot do this, but string theory can.
Furthermore it achieves this in a way that did not have to work, but it does because of surprising cancellations. There are five consistent string theories in 10 dimensions which are all related by non-perturbative dualities. The reductions to 4 spacetime dimensions is a consistent process which is now reasonably well understood, except we dont know the correct compactification manifold. The only alternative way to get a consistent perturbative theory is possibly from supergravity, but by now we understand that supergravity too is just another limiting case of string theory. Some physicists have suggested that there may be a chance of finding other non-perturbative solutions to the quantum gravity problem, but no complete solution of that type has been found yet. Until it has, this reason alone is a very strong indication that string theory is on the right path.(2) Supersymmetry! There are many ways that string theory can reduce to low energy particle physics and not all of them would result in observable supersymmetry. On the other hand, supersymmetry is a natural byproduct of string theory and if it does exist in nature at scales currently being probed by the LHC then it can explain several mysteries. These include the hierarchy problem, dark matter, a light Higgs and the convergence of the running coupling constants at the GUT scale where SUSY says they all have a value of around 1/24. In the last few weeks we have seen the exclusion limits for SUSY greatly extended by CMS and ATLAS. They say that if you throw a frog into hot water it will quickly jump out, but if you put it in cold water and gradually heat the water up it will stay there until it is boiled to death. You should not try this experiment at home but it seems like nature is trying it on physicists who like supersymmetry. In the 1980s we thought that supersymmetric partners would have light masses to avoid fine tuning. If this was right they would have been seen at LEP or the Tevatron. Now the LHC has pushed the minimum masses to uncomfortably high values implying quite a lot of fine tuning. The water is heating up but we will stay put because we now know that the multiverse allows for such fine tuning provided it is in the best interests of our existence. Perhaps the higher masses were needed to allow dark matter to form galaxies or some such.(3) My third best reason for supporting string theory is that it provides a solution to the black hole information paradox via the holographic principle. This is a much more theoretical argument but it is still quite convincing, I find. Although there may never be any evidence for Hawking radiation from black holes, we know theoretically that it has to be there. Some reasoning using semiclassical quantum gravity tells us the laws of entropy for a black hole, and this should remain correct for any complete theory of quantum gravity such as string theory. Further arguments also tell us that the rules of thermodynamics must obey a holographic principle to avoid the paradox of thermodynamic information being lost inside a black hole. Again, any theory of quantum gravity worth its salt has to comply. It is therefore a triumph for string theory that the AdS/CFT correspondence shows that string theory does (or can) realize the holographic principle. It is another indication that string theory is on the right track.(4) My final reason for liking string theory is that it comes with a multiverse. For some people this is the favourite reason for not liking string theory and my reasoning for thinking otherwise is partly philosophical, so only people with similar philosophical leanings will agree with me. Ten years ago I did not favour anthropic reasoning. That was because the anthropic principle requires a range of theories that the universe can choose from so that one customised for intelligent life can be selected. I am comfortable with the platonic view that all mathematically consistent universes exist and we just inhabit some part of that realm, but in order to explain the symmetries that govern the laws of physics I think you need to invoke a further principle. For me that principle is universality in the sense of universal behavior seen in complex dynamical systems such as those seen in critical phenomena. I think there is a universal behavior of some type in the realm of complex mathematical systems which overwealms all other possible laws of physics so that only one unique possibility complete with all its beautiful symmetries can be what we experience. You can see that this does not fit well with the anthropic principle. However, there are good indications that the laws of physics are somehow selected to promote intelligent life in a way that would not be consistent with a single unique set of physical laws, contradiction! Luckily the multiverse comes to the rescue in the form of the string landscape. It turns out that string theory does indeed follow from some unique over-arching M-theory, but it can be realized in many forms in lower dimensions by a choice of vacuum determined by the compactification manifold. A wide range of these vacua are stable and there could be as many as 10^500 of them, plenty enough to account for anthropic reasoning. In my view it is the perfect outcome.So those are my four best reasons for liking string theory. This does not mean that I don’t value other approaches to quantum gravity. We still need to find its complete non-perturbative formulation andIi am sure that such a thing must exist even if string theory has nothing to do with the laws of physics. Other theories such as Loop Quantum Gravity, Non-Cummutative Geometry or Group Field Theory lead to rich mathematical concepts. I see this as a sign that they are telling us something about our world, but I think you have to look for what it says about possibilities for non-perturbative string theory. For example, Loop Quantum Gravity tells us that knot polynomials and spin networks should be important. I like the fact that recently Witten has explored implications of high dimensional generalisation of the knot polynomials (Khovanov homology) to branes from M-theory. This is the kind of outcome I expect from alternative approaches.
So what of the problems people say are issues for string theory? I see the multiverse landscape as an asset, not a problem. It means that string theory cannot tell us much about low energy physics so we will have to look for Planck scale effects instead. Such predicted effects may not be known until the non-perturbative side of string theory is understood, and after that it may be a long time before technology allows us to test them. That I am afraid is the nature of the game. We have no automatic right to expect nature to be kind to us and provide an easy test of any theory of quantum gravity. We are suddenly in a position where almost anything we can observe seems to be covered by the standard model + general relativity so it should be no surprise that testing string theory is very difficult. Any other theory of quantum gravity is likely to have the same problem.
Friday, February 25, 2011
Saving Women's Hearts by Martha Gulati (Tour + Giveaway!)
Wiley Publishing (2011)
Adult Nonfiction: Health/Heart Disease
272 pages
Summary: Mention the term "heart disease" and most people picture an overweight, middle-aged man. Yet the reality is that heart disease is the number one killer of women in North America, accounting for a third of all deaths in women and far surpassing the prevalence of breast cancer. Cardiologist Dr. Martha Gulati and holistic pharmacist Sherry Torkos separate the facts from the many myths surrounding heart disease and offer the latest information on both the conventional medical approach and the role of natural medicine in understanding this illness. Saving Women's Hearts examines the unique gender differences for women and provides valuable insight into the screening procedures, diagnosis, treatment options, and most importantly, prevention of heart disease.- from amazon.com
Intro
February is almost over but February is Heart Health Month. When it comes to Heart Disease, most people think of older men. However the scary fact for women like me is that Heart Disease is the number one killer of women.
No one has to tell me this. My MIL died of a heart attack in my house, on my living room floor in 2006. She was 43 and it was her second heart attack (at least.) According to this book, Heart Disease happens early when it's before age 65 in women. So what do they consider 45 and under? Her first heart attack was around age 35.
Do you ever think about your own risk? Perhaps you should. The odds are currently 1 in 3 to have some form of heart disease in your life and it's getting worse. Pretty soon, the average North American woman will have a 50/50 chance of developing heart disease.
Reviewing the Book
As for the book, I think in general, it's a great idea and a much needed book. I've read up on Heart Disease before but I still learned some new things and most importantly, I got some much needed advice on which foods to eat and which to avoid.
However I think the book is not organized the best way. After some basic information (facts, determining your risk etc.) and a little quiz, we go right into tests used for screening for heart disease, heart medications, treatments, natural medicine and then FINALLY we go to eating right, exercising, stress, sleep and how they can help PREVENT heart disease. Shouldn't we learn how to prevent it FIRST and then about how they test for it and treat it?
I think what part of the book you find the most helpful will depend on if you currently have heart disease or not. If not, you would like the prevention chapters better as reading about ALL the medications and treatments will make you overwhelmed.
However if you already have heart disease you will probably find the treatment section more helpful although of course the prevention section is good too as taking care of your health, even when you already have heart disease, will lower your risk of a repeat problem.
I definitely think women need to read this, or something else to become more knowledgeable about their risk and how to recognize the signs (heart attacks present differently in women than they do in men!)
Links of Interest: Saving Women's Hearts at Wiley (see table of contents, index and sample chapters),
Other Reviews: A Motherhood Experience, Multi-Testing Mommy, A Mom After God's Own Heart, Rants and Rascals,
Buy Saving Women's Hearts
at amazon.com and support SMS Book ReviewsGIVEAWAY CLOSED
Disclosure - I am participating in the Saving Women’s Hearts program by Mom Central on behalf of Wiley Publishing. I received a copy of the book to review and gift card as a thank you for my participation. The opinions on this blog are my own.
Has Obama got his "Civilian National Security Force"?
Welcome Blazing Cat Fur Readers.
Sure is a lot of Union trouble going on, mostly by union trouble makers. Take a look and listen to the disgusting display by Wi. Democrats - then listen to O'Bummer talk about the need for a civilian security force - outside the military- that he proposed in 2008. Just think about the convergence of government radicals and union thugs and White House czars and computer exec's at places like, well, Google.
Part 2 is here.
Blazing Cat Fur: Because it's Friday...and It's French PostCards!
Scaramouche!: Money Corrupts
Sure is a lot of Union trouble going on, mostly by union trouble makers. Take a look and listen to the disgusting display by Wi. Democrats - then listen to O'Bummer talk about the need for a civilian security force - outside the military- that he proposed in 2008. Just think about the convergence of government radicals and union thugs and White House czars and computer exec's at places like, well, Google.
Part 2 is here.
Blazing Cat Fur: Because it's Friday...and It's French PostCards!
Scaramouche!: Money Corrupts
More multicultural food choices coming to a store near you
Okay, not entirely a bad thing but will they at least put a label on the products that are Halal?
“Immigration to Canada is driving long-term growth over the next 20 years and will have a defining impact on retail grocery,” Mr. Leighton said in identifying the ethnic market as a “huge” opportunity. “Our objective is to be the No. 1 ethnic player in Canada.”
Full Comments to the Guardian
Here are my full comments to the reporter for the Guardian, who was following up on Gavin's reference to comments I had made a while back about my experiences with E&E:
Here are some thoughts in response to your query ...
In 2000, we published a really excellent paper (in my opinion) in E&E in that has stood the test of time:
Pielke, Jr., R. A., R. Klein, and D. Sarewitz (2000), Turning the big knob: An evaluation of the use of energy policy to modulate future climate impacts. Energy and Environment 2:255-276.
http://sciencepolicy.colorado.edu/admin/publication_files/ resource-250-2000.07.pdf
You'll see that paper was in only the second year of the journal, and we were obviously invited to submit a year or so before that. It was our expectation at the time that the journal would soon be ISI listed and it would become like any other academic journal. So why not publish in E&E?
That paper, like a lot of research, required a lot of effort. So it was very disappointing to E&E in the years that followed identify itself as an outlet for alternative perspectives on the climate issue. It has published a number of low-quality papers and a high number of opinion pieces, and as far as I know it never did get ISI listed.
Boehmer-Christiansen's quote about following her political agenda in running the journal is one that I also have cited on numerous occasions as an example of the pathological politicization of science. In this case the editor's political agenda has clearly undermined the legitimacy of the outlet. So if I had a time machine I'd go back and submit our paper elsewhere!
A consequence of the politicization of E&E is that any paper published there is subsequently ignored by the broader scientific community. In some cases perhaps that is justified, but I would argue that it provided a convenient excuse to ignore our paper on that basis alone, and not on the merits of its analysis. So the politicization of E&E enables a like response from its critics, which many have taken full advantage of. For outside observers of climate science this action and response together give the impression that scientific studies can be evaluated simply according to non-scientific criteria, which ironically undermines all of science, not just E&E. The politicization of the peer review process is problematic regardless of who is doing the politicization because it more readily allows for political judgments to substitute for judgments of the scientific merit of specific arguments. An irony here of course is that the East Anglia emails revealed a desire to (and some would say success in) politicize the peer review process, which I discuss in The Climate Fix.
For my part, in 2007 I published a follow on paper to the 2000 E&E paper that applied and extended a similar methodology. This paper passed peer review in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society:
Pielke, Jr., R. A. (2007), Future economic damage from tropical cyclones: sensitivities to societal and climate changes. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A 365 (1860) 2717-2729
http://sciencepolicy.colorado.edu/admin/publication_files/ resource-2517-2007.14.pdf
So, in my case alls well that ends well. Over the long run I am confident that good ideas will win out over bad ideas, but without care to the legitimacy of our science institutions -- including journals and peer review -- that long run will be a little longer.
Please follow up if anything is unclear or if you have other questions ...
NASA: small nuclear war reverts years of global warming
Farsi translation here...According to National Geographic,
Small Nuclear War Could Reverse Global Warming for YearsSee also New Design World and many other echoes via Google News.
NASA GISS' computer modelers (Luke Oman et al.) were trying to solve the "global warming crisis" and they found a solution: a regional nuclear war, for example between India and Pakistan, would reduce floods and cool the Earth by 1.25 °C - some places by 3-4 °C. After a decade, the temperature would still be 0.9 °C lower than before the war.
The predictions are a humble version of the nuclear winter scenario.
You see, nuking Iran and a few other thug states away will also revert decades or a century of "global warming" at the same moment. It has not yet been reported whether John Holdren has already asked Barack Obama to press buttons.
More seriously, it's kind of amazing what kind of research is being funded. If there were a nuclear war between similar countries, a cooling by a degree Celsius would clearly be one of the least significant consequences. We had minus 14 Celsius degrees in the morning, fine, so we would have minus 15 Celsius degrees. And irradiated, dying relatives across the world, too.
Concerning the impacts, well, it's very likely that there would be some cooling that would depend on the magnitude of the explosions and that would last for years. It isn't terribly useful to calculate the exact impact because the total size of the hypothetical nuclear war would remain uncertain until its peak - or until its end. Nuclear wars may differ by many orders of magnitude.
Hiroshima and Nagasaki haven't experienced much of a climate impact so one has to speak about much larger conflicts - about 100+ times larger. They would probably have to kill tens of millions of people. Do those people really think that a degree of temporary cooling or warming would be more important than those lives and other political impacts of the war?
I am surely among the top 10% of the Hawks who would use nuclear weapons e.g. against Iran under certain circumstances. (To be sure, I know that this article is mostly read by Persians - so I don't really mean you or your friends haha, as a person who respects the Persian heritage and contributions as as an ex-colleague of two Persian-origin top physicists, Cumrun Vafa and Nima Arkani-Hamed.) But I don't mean carpet bombing without any good reason; what I mean are surgical operations meant to cripple their offensive military. A temperature change by a degree can't be the reason to start the bombing.
By the way, the cooling effects of a nuclear detonation have been vastly exaggerated in the past - see Michael Crichton's comments about "nuclear winter" in his famous speech, Aliens Cause Global Warming.
Bonus
When we talk about regional nuclear wars, my Persian readers across the world will surely forgive your humble correspondent that he has recorded the song "The [Iranian] Bomb" by Latma TV:
I think that many Iranian folks should try to appreciate things like this Jewish humor. You know, folks, I am as un-Jewish as you are, but it's just fun, and Latma TV is often right on the money when it comes to Iran and other topics.
I wonder whether the Iranians who are abroad can understand that the people like those in this pro-Israeli Internet TV are essentially friendly towards Iran etc. and whether someone has some compassion with the fate of the Jews who are still not treated as fairly as others.
You know, in my hometown of Pilsen, Czech Republic, we used to have thousands of Jews before the war and all of them died. My visit to the local holocaust museum - which I have only saw because my American friend visited me and wanted to see itt - has been a heartbreaking experience and many contemporary attitudes seem way too similar to the developments in Germany of the 1930s (and Czechia in the late 1930s)...
Be Careful What You Wish For
We believe it would be irresponsible for the Committee to ignore the mounting scientific evidence linking strange and dangerous weather to rising carbon levels in the atmosphere.Waxman and Rush explain what they think is implicated by the Nature papers:
The potential implications of these results are illustrated by multiple recent weather disasters. In the United States, severe flooding in Arkansas, Kentucky, Mississippi, and Tennessee killed dozens and caused widespread property damage last year. Some scientists see evidence that the bitterly cold storms that gripped our nation this winter could be tied to climate changes3 Internationally, unprecedented floods in Pakistan last year submerged one-fifth of the country, killing thousands, and devastating livelihoods.4 Similarly, floods following heavy rains displaced hundreds of thousands of people in northeastern Australia and damaged the agricultural and mining sectors5 In Russia, yields of wheat and barley in 20 I 0 fell by 30% following a summer of record-breaking heat and drought6 This month, the United Nations warned that the worst drought in decades threatens the wheat crop in China7.The over-hyping of this issue has left Waxman and Rush exposed out on a thin, weak limb. If they are lucky, their call for a hearing will be ignored.
The Hodge-minimal Calabi-Yau three-fold
Today, I recommend you this preprint by Herr Volker Braun of Dublin:
Click to zoom in.
This diagram shows all the known Calabi-Yau spaces with small Hodge numbers, h^{1,1}+h^{1,2} < 25. The colors indicate how those spaces were constructed. Note that both of these numbers have to be positive. The world's catalog of known Calabi-Yau spaces indicates that h^{1,1}+h^{1,2} < 503 for all Calabi-Yau shapes.
The left-right symmetry of the graph above is nothing else than the mirror symmetry: it exchanges h^{1,1} and h^{1,2} which means that it preserves their sum (y coordinate on the graph) but changes the sign of their difference (x coordinate).
The new entries, showed as purple disks or pieces of disks on my version of the graph above, were constructed by Braun as free quotients of the 24-cell hypersurface; this hypersurface is a "Platonic 24-hedron" in 4 spatial dimensions, analogous to the regular Platonic polyhedra in 3 dimensions. (There are six such polytopes in 4 dimensions.) Its boundary is composed out of 24 mundane octahedra.
The 24-cell polytope. Click to see Wikipedia.
If you look, the minimum entry with the values h^{1,1} = h^{1,2} = 1 was missing so far. Now the hole is filled. Note that the anthropic people wouldn't be interested in such manifolds because they're too constrained; there are not too many cycles that may carry a large number of fluxes. The misanthropic people such as myself think that these "minimal" surfaces are the most important ones - and arguably the most relevant ones physically and cosmologically - because they are very constrained. ;-)
The singer, Jonathan Mann, wants to understand string theory and maths. He wants to hang up with Edward Witten, too. :-) Thanks to Sarah Kavassalis.
The 24-Cell and Calabi-Yau Threefolds with Hodge Numbers (1,1)He constructs the "simplest" six-dimensional Calabi-Yau manifold we know.
Click to zoom in.
This diagram shows all the known Calabi-Yau spaces with small Hodge numbers, h^{1,1}+h^{1,2} < 25. The colors indicate how those spaces were constructed. Note that both of these numbers have to be positive. The world's catalog of known Calabi-Yau spaces indicates that h^{1,1}+h^{1,2} < 503 for all Calabi-Yau shapes.
The left-right symmetry of the graph above is nothing else than the mirror symmetry: it exchanges h^{1,1} and h^{1,2} which means that it preserves their sum (y coordinate on the graph) but changes the sign of their difference (x coordinate).
The new entries, showed as purple disks or pieces of disks on my version of the graph above, were constructed by Braun as free quotients of the 24-cell hypersurface; this hypersurface is a "Platonic 24-hedron" in 4 spatial dimensions, analogous to the regular Platonic polyhedra in 3 dimensions. (There are six such polytopes in 4 dimensions.) Its boundary is composed out of 24 mundane octahedra.
The 24-cell polytope. Click to see Wikipedia.
If you look, the minimum entry with the values h^{1,1} = h^{1,2} = 1 was missing so far. Now the hole is filled. Note that the anthropic people wouldn't be interested in such manifolds because they're too constrained; there are not too many cycles that may carry a large number of fluxes. The misanthropic people such as myself think that these "minimal" surfaces are the most important ones - and arguably the most relevant ones physically and cosmologically - because they are very constrained. ;-)
The singer, Jonathan Mann, wants to understand string theory and maths. He wants to hang up with Edward Witten, too. :-) Thanks to Sarah Kavassalis.
Thursday, February 24, 2011
Victorious February 1948: an anniversary
This video, created by an 18-year-old man, actually celebrates the communist coup. It's amazing what the youth is still ready to advocate.
On February 25th, 1948, the Czechoslovak communist boss Klement Gottwald came to the Wenceslas Square where he, barely able to speak due to his limited intelligence, told his brainwashed supporters:
I am just ... returning ... from the Castle. In the morning ... I gave the president ... my proposal ... to accept the resignation ... of the ministers ... who resigned ... on February ... 20th. At the same moment ... I gave him a list of persons ... who should replace the resigned ones ... in the reconstructed government. ... I may inform you ... that Mr President ... has accepted all my proposals ... exactly as I wanted.The second and temporarily the last democratic president of Czechoslovakia, Prof PhDr et JUDr Edvard Beneš, had the same bad luck with the Nazis. In both cases, 1938-39 and 1948, the democratic forces were just overwhelmed by the emerging totalitarian powers. Pro-democratic ministers tried to protest against the growing arrogance of the communists by resigning in a protest act; however, this has only helped to speed up the communist's convergence towards complete power over the country.
The mostly uneducated masses of people happily screamed and began to ruin my homeland by a totalitarian regime that ultimately lasted for more than 40 years.
Note how those people are suitably dressed in the video above. That was still the time when Czechoslovakia would belong among the 10-15 most civilized countries in the world, a fact that wasn't changed even by the cruel Nazi rule during the war. Things were very different in 1989 when the communists were finally chased away.
Back to 1948.
In the United States, the public was totally shocked by the "Prague crisis" even though some well-informed people had known that Central and Eastern Europe would soon become a Soviet satellite. The opposition to the Marshall Plan de facto instantly evaporated. The insufficiency of the atomic weapons was emphasized. Truman made a speech and things were ready for a massive growth of the military budget.
Czechoslovak communists and Gaddafi
In June 1978, Muammar Gaddafi is receiving the Order of White Lion with a Chain, the highest order in Czechoslovakia and the Czech Republic, from the last communist president Gustáv Husák. Libya and Czechoslovakia were extremely close friends. Just in the 1970s, Libya got Czechoslovak weapons for 4 billion crowns - $200 million or so. See a video about the 1978 visit.
Muammar Gaddafi is drinking with his friend, Czechoslovak communist prime minister Lubomír (a variation of Luboš) Štrougal.
Well, I exaggerate how good friends they were. It's not hard to look at the independent fashionable Maverick inside Gaddafi and the boring communist pig faces of our comrades to see that they were not "real" friends. Moreover, Gaddafi shocked our comrades in various ways - for example, he wanted to build a mosque in Czechoslovakia.
However, the trade with our weapons was important for both sides - even though our side also preferred much more silence about the deal. And "we" had common enemies while Gaddafi has also brought some camels to the Prague zoological garden haha so everyone was satisfied. ;-)
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