A lesson in risk management

The first part of this video bugged me — it sounded like Pascal’s Wager for global warming warriors — but hang in there. He admits that treating the alternatives as equal in probability is bogus, and what you need to do is rational risk assessment, and it makes a lot more sense.

A green Christmas

My university is making a big push for the environment, with an environmental studies curriculum being added, an ongoing effort for energy independence with wind and biomass power, and conservation in the construction of a new green dorm, so this holiday project for everyone is particularly appropriate: apply sustainable building design practices to a gingerbread house. Get to work, you’ve got until 31 December to submit photos.

I’m thinking we need to take all that sugar and convert it to alcohol…

The whaling lie

Well, the Japanese whaling fleet has left port to go slaughter some whales. This is bad policy for several reasons.

  • Killing endangered animals is always a bad idea, and the Japanese don’t even do it humanely. This is bloody slaughter for the sake of bloody slaughter, and it’s going to harm large species that are easily tipped over the brink into extinction.

  • It’s basically done as a subsidy for the whalers. This is not really a profitable business. I get irritated by the local farmers who are raising corn for ethanol, an exercise in inefficiency and waste that gets them government money…but getting money for killing large rare animals is more vividly worse.

  • The biggest reason I despise Japanese whaling is a bit selfish and narrow, I have to confess. It’s because of this:

    Japan kills more than 1000 whales a year in the Antarctic and also the Pacific Ocean using a loophole in an international moratorium that allows catching whales for research.

    That is such a lie. It demeans science. Japan is not throwing money into their whaling fleet as a research tool; I know what marine biological research looks like, and it rarely involves harpoons, flensing knives, and a cannery. Give university marine mammalogists the money to equip boats to pursue whales, and they won’t look like this:

    i-84ee34f6b14dbdb3ef3a5181f9f0e9ae-whalingboat.jpg

    Note the big “RESEARCH” stenciled across the hull. It’s a lie. It ought to say “BUTCHERY”. The research done by whalers is miniscule, and could be better done without the associated killing.

New boss same as the old boss

Kentucky, you’re on notice.

The chairman of the joint Agricultural and Natural Resources Committee is holding hearings to promote ignorance and denialism. This is appalling.

Chairman Jim Gooch, D-Providence, a longtime ally of the coal industry, said he purposefully did not invite anyone who believes in global warming to testify.

“You can only hear that the sky is falling so many times,” said Gooch, whose post makes him the House Democrats’ chief environmental strategist. “We hear it every day from the news media, from the colleges, from Hollywood.”

Neither of Gooch’s invited panelists was a scientist.

What he is saying is idiotic enough, but look at the letter after his name: “D”. Isn’t it nice that we now have bipartisan inanity? How do these mouth-breathing ninnyhammers get elected into positions of power, anyway?

Tasmanian devils need your help

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We had a seminar from Marco Restani of St Cloud State University yesterday — he’s a wildlife biologist who talked about Tasmanian Devils. Just a little tip: don’t ever invite wildlife biologists or conservation ecologists to give talks. They are the most depressing people in the world, and they really make it hard to hide away from the ugly realities. This talk was no exception: the Tasmanian Devil is in big trouble, and is facing at least two major threats, each of which may be sufficient to wipe them out. And just looke at that guy! He’s adorable! How can you let them go extinct?

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