Following on from my earlier post about Sukhoi's PAK-FA multirole fighter and what it may mean for the F-35, in today's The Australian there appeared an article that argued that Australia's defence establishment may need to think again and at least consider properly, (for the first time), possible alternatives to this aeroplane. It's a fantastic bit of kit in many ways, crammed full of the most amazing technology. For instance, (if they can get it to work with flesh and blood pilots), a pilot will have the ability to "see" through the plane thanks to a distributed network of sensors around the surface. So you could virtually look down and see through your legs and the bottom of the aircraft. As suggested, whether human beings can deal adequately with this is another thing. Night vision goggles will be a thing of the past. But the goal of producing a single warplane that would be all things to all roles and needs, and do so cheaply, was maybe impossibly ambitious. Can a single plane in three versions replace high performance dog fighters, bomb trucks and harriers? But the USA will still have the F-22 in the primary air-superiority role, while European countries will have enormously powerful and agile 4th Generation + fighters such as the Eurofighter Typhoon and Rafale. Australia will have a squadron of F/A-18 Super Hornets for awhile, but essentially we are going to be putting all our eggs in one basket. 
And:
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Friday, February 19, 2010
More doubts about the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter
Thursday, February 18, 2010
So, how are those droughty, heaty predictions working out for ya?
The Guardian, February, 2009:
The world’s pre-eminent climate scientists produced a blunt assessment of the impact of global warming on the US yesterday, warning of droughts that could reduce the American south-west to a wasteland and heatwaves that could make life impossible even in northern cities.
In an update on the latest science on climate change, the US Congress was told that melting snow pack could lead to severe drought from California to Oklahoma. In the midwest, diminishing rains and shrinking rivers were lowering water levels in the Great Lakes, even to the extent where it could affect shipping.
“With severe drought from California to Oklahoma, a broad swath of the south-west is basically robbed of having a sustainable lifestyle,” said Christopher Field, of the Carnegie Institution for Science. He went on to warn of scorching temperatures in an array of cities. Sacramento in California, for example, could face heatwaves for up to 100 days a year.
“We are close to a threshold in a very large number of American cities where uncomfortable heatwaves make cities uninhabitable,” Field told the Senate’s environment and public works committee.
ABC News (US), February, 2010:
In the span of just a couple years, the U.S. has gone from very high drought conditions to the lowest amount of drought in the last 10 years, [Doug LeCompte of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association] says. “It’s only a few times, really, in the last century that we’ve had this little of the country in drought. That is unusual.”
De Telegraaf, the Netherlands' largest daily newspaper: Henk Tennekes - He was right after all
De Telegraaf, the Netherlands' largest daily newspaper, has totally vindicated the country's most prominent global warming denier in a prominent article entitled "Henk Tennekes - He was right after all."
Tennekes was the director of the Netherlands Meteorological Institute, KNMI, until the early 1990s, when his skepticism of the climate science coming out of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change led to his forced resignation. A translation into English of De Telegraaf's vindication appears here.
"Japan is the most asymmetric opportunity I have ever seen. Way better than subprime."
Bass could be wrong on Japan. The island nation (and the world's second-largest economy) has defied skeptics for so long that experienced traders call betting against it "the widowmaker." But he may be right on the bigger picture. If 2008 was the year of the subprime meltdown, 2010, he thinks, will be the year entire nations start going broke. The world has issued so much debt in the past two years fighting the Great Recession that paying it all back is going to be hell--for Americans, along with everybody else. Taxes will have to rise around the globe, hobbling job growth and economic recovery. Traders like Bass could make a lot of money betting against sovereign debt the way they shorted subprime loans at the peak of the housing bubble. National governments will issue an estimated $4.5 trillion in debt this year, almost triple the average for mature economies over the preceding five years.Forbes In a somewhat similar vane from the Instapundit: VICTOR DAVIS HANSON: Where Did Our Real Wealth Go? “Greece is the canary in the mine of the impending crack-up of the modern welfare state. It is a great gift to us all, this example. A year ago, the socialists, even as they were juggling and falsifying their books, were bragging that the Wall Street meltdown was a referendum — and capitalism was doomed. Now, the entire socialist dream is exposed and even the most ardent statist knows that there is no longer enough ‘others’ to pay the tab. . . . Here in California we idle farmland, though we have the water, expertise, and soil to produce far more food than we do. We put vast swaths of both land and sea off limits to gas and oil production, though we could produce far more petroleum and natural gas than we do. We snub nuclear power, though our population steadily increases and its desire for electronic appurtenance grows, not shrinks. We like “wilderness areas” (who doesn’t?) where we build no roads, harvest no timber, and build no damns. We strangle Silicon Valley with all sorts of labor and business regulations until it fabricates and outsources abroad. In other words, we are creating no real new sources of concrete wealth as we nuance the shrinking capital we inherited.” |
Wednesday, February 17, 2010
If our stations are that shoddy, what's it like in Mongolia?
Although in public he often used his high-profile perch for global warming cheerleading, former New York Times environmental reporter Andrew Revkin privately wrote that he was worried about the integrity of the ground stations. When still at the Times he wrote to Hansen on August 23, 2007:
"i never, till today, visited http://www.surfacestations.org and found it quite amazing. if our stations are that shoddy, what’s it like in Mongolia?"
Sadly, although Andy wrote many pieces touting as significant what we now know NASA admits as statistically meaningless temperature claims, he did not find time to write about data so “shoddy” as to reach the point of “amazing.” That is what advocacy often entails: providing only one side, and even a far less compelling side, of a story.
[Same link as the post below]
Climategate 2.0: The NASA Files
In August 2007, I submitted two Freedom of Information Act requests to NASA and its Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS), headed by long-time Gore advisor James Hansen and his right-hand man Gavin Schmidt (and RealClimate.org co-founder).
I did this because Canadian businessman Steve McIntyre — a man with professional experience investigating suspect statistical claims in the mining industry and elsewhere, including his exposure of the now-infamous “hockey stick” graph — noticed something unusual with NASA’s claims of an ever-warming first decade of this century. NASA appeared to have inflated its U.S. temperatures beginning in the year 2000. My FOIA request asked NASA about their internal discussions regarding whether and how to correct the temperature error caught by McIntyre.
NASA stonewalled my request for more than two years, until Climategate prompted me to offer notice of intent to sue if NASA did not comply immediately.
On New Year’s Eve, NASA finally provided the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) with the documents I requested in August 2007.
The emails show the hypocrisy, dishonesty, and suspect data management and integrity of NASA, wildly spinning in defense of their enterprise.
More dishonest alarmism from Oxfam
These people really have turned into total shysters. A few months ago they released a press release (picked up widely by media outlets without any checking) that claimed that West Timor was facing a disastrous decline in rainfall due to climate change, (so please send money to us). The "evidence" for this? The opinion of its employee on that half of the island, (apparently East Timor isn't suffering this grave threat to its future for some reason), based upon 13 years of rainfall records. Yup, that was the sole basis of their press release! Now it's fucking Tajikistan! The Tory Ardvaark notes that even in The Guardian there are a number of sceptical comments left by people. Plus - "One comment makes a point about the 6 figure salary directors of these aid organisations are paid, it is also worth mentioning the fleet of 7 Series BMWs and S Class Mercedes that Oxfam run for it’s directors." |
Xu Xing: Unearthing how dinosaurs became birds
Beipiaosaurus inexpectus
One of the first feathered dinosaurs ever uncovered, Beipiaosaurus was unearthed in 1997 by Xu Xing and colleagues near the city of Beipaio in Liaoning province, China. This “unexpected” find gave support to the theory that feathers were widespread in dinosaurs and that dinosaurs were the ancestors of modern birds.
Gallery: Finding feathered fossils
Xu Xing's dinosaur finds range from a pint-sized creature with four wings to the feathered ancestor of Tyrannosaurus rex. Between them, they have cemented the evolutionary link between dinosaurs and birds. He talks to Phil McKenna about his work
How did you become interested in dinosaurs?
I grew up in a remote region in Xinjiang province. I didn't even know what a dinosaur was when I was young, not even when I was in high school. I was interested in physics, but when I got into Beijing University I was assigned to study palaeontology. I was later admitted as a graduate student to the Chinese Academy of Sciences to continue studying palaeontology. I was only interested because it meant I could stay in Beijing and didn't have to go back to Xinjiang, but early in my career I got to study some very interesting fossils. Now it's hard to imagine how I could live without dinosaurs.
Full article here
Guanlong
Guanlong or "crowned dragon" is the earliest known ancestor of the tyrant lizard king, Tyrannosaurus rex, and gets its name for the prominent nasal crest that was probably used for sexual display.
This feathered beast lived 160 million years ago in what is now the Gobi desert of Xinjiang province.
Guanlong’s existence roughly 10 million years before Archaeopteryx, the first known bird, provides evidence that feathers may have developed in dinosaurs before birds.
Tuesday, February 16, 2010
Exxon Mobil has found more oil than it produces every year for 16 years now
February 16, 2010
OIL: “Exxon Mobil (XOM) announced today that in 2009 the company’s proven reserves increased by 133% of the amount of oil produced. . . . Amazingly, Exxon, who has been accused in the past of being too conservative in terms of exploration and development, has been finding more oil than it produces for each of the last 16 years, to the dismay of peak oil proponents.”
Paul Murray on the northern Australia land use report - Dam lies and statistics
| Another excellent opinion piece from Paul Murray writing in The West Australian: The best way not to find water is not to go looking for it. Which, curiously enough, is exactly what the Rudd Government's Northern Australia Land and Water Taskforce managed to do in its 17 months of existence. The task force's final report released this week has been widely interpreted in the media as ending the dream of the north becoming an internationally important agricultural region on the rationale there just isn't enough available water. That shouldn't be the case because any close examination of the report exposes it as a sham, dripping with green and indigenous politics and with a questionable scientific basis. |
Amnesty International has lost sight of its original purpose
Christopher Hitchens reminds us of the history of Amnesty:
and what that means in the light of their work with Cage Prisoners: From Harry's Place |
Monday, February 15, 2010
The Sukhoi PAK-FA multirole fighter - is the USA making a terrible mistake?
I'm not totally convinced by this http://www.ausairpower.net/APA-2010-01.html
But it's a beautiful looking aeroplane.
However, other people would point to not the potential of this design, but rather the reality of what happens in today's Russia.
The Russian airforce has recently placed its first orders for new built planes in something like two decades!
It is chronically short of money and the central government only recently bailed local manufacturers out of the financial mess they were in yet again (after Mr Putin had told them they couldn't expect more handouts from the government).
An initial operating capability by 2015? Given the history of the still in development and non-operational Su35, surely this is hopelessly optimistic?
I don't know to what extent industry politics is involved with this and to what extent, (if any), there is some advocacy going on for the F-22 from traditional airpower supporters.
But I was taken by surprise to see a photo of this plane. I didn't think the Russians were that far ahead with the program. But still, does Russia have the money to produce aircraft as complicated and expensive as this one would be?
Here's the abstract of the piece found at the link above:
The public exposure of the Sukhoi/KnAAPO T-50/I-21/Article 701 PAK-FA or Перспективный Авиационный Комплекс Фронтовой Авиации following the 29th January, 2010, test flight has provided sufficient high resolution imagery, video camera footage, and incidental disclosures to perform an initial technical, techno-strategic, and strategic assessment of this new high performance low observable multirole fighter design.
The observed prototype design employs an interim supercruising and thrust vectoring engine, common to the production Su-35S Flanker. The configuration is intended to validate aerodynamic and systems performance, and is clearly not intended for full validation of low observables performance. A new 35 - 40 klbf class 3D TVC supercruising engine for the PAK-FA is currently being developed by NPO Saturn.
Analysis of PAK-FA prototype airframe shaping shows a design which has forward fuselage, inlet, upper fuselage, wing and tail surface airframe Very Low Observable (VLO/stealth) shaping which is highly competitive against the US F-22A Raptor and YF-23 ATF designs. Aft and centre lower fuselage, and aft fuselage and nozzle shaping is inferior to the F-22A Raptor and YF-23 ATF designs, sharing the same deficiencies as the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter. This may be an artefact of the use of the interim engines, and uncertainty about aft and beam sector observables performance will remain until later prototypes with the production engine and aft/lower fuselage shaping are available.
Analysis of PAK-FA prototype airframe aerodynamic features shows a design which is superior to all Western equivalents, providing ‘extreme agility’, superior to that of the Su-35S, through much of the flight envelope. This is accomplished by the combined use of 3D thrust vector control of the engine nozzles, all moving tail surfaces, and refined aerodynamic design with relaxed directional static stability and careful mass distribution to control inertial effects. The PAK-FA is fitted with unusually robust high sink rate undercarriage, intended for STOL operations.
Disclosures indicate that the avionic suite and systems fit will be derived from the Su-35S design, with the important difference in the use of an very high power-aperture product X-band multimode primary AESA radar. Five AESA apertures are intended for production PAK-FA aircraft. The highly integrated avionic suite is intended to provide similar data fusion and networking capabilities to the F-22A Raptor.
The available evidence demonstrates at this time that a mature production PAK-FA design has the potential to compete with the F-22A Raptor in VLO performance from key aspects, and will outperform the F-22A Raptor aerodynamically and kinematically. Therefore, from a technological strategy perspective, the PAK-FA renders all legacy US fighter aircraft, and the F-35 Lightning II Joint Strike Fighter, strategically irrelevant and non-viable after the PAK-FA achieves IOC in 2015.
Detailed strategic analysis indicates that the only viable strategic survival strategy now remaining for the United States is to terminate the Joint Strike Fighter program immediately, redirect freed funding to further develop the F-22 Raptor, and employ variants of the F-22 aircraft as the primary fighter aircraft for all United States and Allied TACAIR needs.
If the United States does not fundamentally change its planning for the future of tactical air power, the advantage held for decades will be soon lost and American air power will become an artefact of history.
Wind power a bubble that bursts as soon as the taxpayers' money dries up
In early 2009 the Socialist government of Spain reduced alternative energy subsidies by 30%. Calzada continues:
"At that point the whole pyramid collapsed. They are firing thousands of people. BP closed down the two largest solar production plants in Europe. They are firing between 25,000 and 40,000 people...."
"What do we do with all this industry that we have been creating with subsidies that now is collapsing? The bubble is too big. We cannot continue pumping enough money. ...The President of the Renewable Industry in Spain (wrote a column arguing that) ...the only way is finding other countries that will give taxpayers' money away to our industry to take it and continue maintaining these jobs."
That "other country" is the United States of America.
Waxman-Markey seems dead, and Europe's southern periphery is bankrupt. But the wind-subsidy proposals being floated in Congress suggest that American political leaders have yet to understand that "green power" means generating electricity by burning dollars.
"California's wind farms -- then comprising about 80% of the world's wind generation capacity -- ceased to generate much more quickly than Kamaoa. In the best wind spots on earth, over 14,000 turbines were simply abandoned. Spinning, post-industrial junk which generates nothing but bird kills."
http://www.americanthinker.com/2010/02/wind_energys_ghosts_1.html
via http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/
Climate scientist's astounding series of U-turns
| Golly gosh, there are times when it feels like I've slipped into a parallel universe.The recent shift in the ground under our feet relating to climate change leaves one almost with that giddy and disoriented feeling you'd imagine from travelling between different universes or dimensions.Now the BBC's Roger Harrabin has put a series of questions to Professor Phil Jones, the currently suspended director of the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia.His answers are nothing short of astounding.He concedes most, if not all, of the points made by moderate climate sceptics over the years.Watts Up With That? summarises it thusly: Specifically, the Q-and-As confirm what many skeptics have long suspected:
Elsewhere at the same blog the vexed question of the trustworthiness of the surface temperature record (and how it is affected by the urban heat island effect) has now made it into The Times: A new story by Jonathan Leake in the Sunday Times puts the spotlight on surface temperature data.
Above: Rome’s airport weather station. |
Saturday, February 13, 2010
Peak chocolate?
| By Professor Helen HughesA rapidly developing palm oil shortage is sneaking up on chocolate eaters.Neither China nor India, with their teeming billions, ate much chocolate in the past. Few people could afford it. In the tropics, and in the hot summers of northern China and India, there was no refrigeration to keep chocolate from melting.Leading chocolate multinationals are now seizing on these potential markets by introducing small chocolate bars into China and India. They are greatly helped by growing numbers of refrigerators in small shops and cafes. Chinese and Indian masses are taking to chocolate just like Europeans, Americans and Australians have. Sales are through the roof. The producers cannot keep up with the demand. Research on chocolate with a high melting point is in train. Rising living standards are being translated into booming chocolate sales.The key ingredients of chocolate are sugar, cocoa and fats. Thanks to lunatic sugar subsidies in Europe and the United States, there is no shortage of sugar, but it takes years for cocoa trees to bear, and increases in palm oil supply are seriously threatened. Although palm oil plantations have roughly the same carbon sink properties as forests, and although the trans-fat content of palm oil is far lower than of equivalent ghee, coconut and sesame oil it replaces, a new green ideology is dead set against increases in palm oil production. This is likely to become a critical bottleneck in the production of chocolate.So enjoy the chocolate Easter egg displays coming into the shops. Prices are going to escalate. Within a few years, a chocolate Easter egg, let alone a box of Lindt Assorted Pralines, is likely to be an unaffordable luxury. The above is part of a press release from the Centre for Independent Studies, dated February 12. Enquiries to cis@cis.org.au. Snail mail: PO Box 92, St Leonards, NSW, Australia 1590. From Greenie Watch |
Friday, February 12, 2010
Her Majesty the Queen of Australia puts an upstart in her place
| Good thing too. Irrespective of what you may think about our current constitution, it has always been understood that governors-general are vice-royalty. Hence terms like vice-regal to describe their role and function. They deputise for the real royalty.From this morning's The Australian:FOLLOWING the triumphant tour of Australia by its potential future king, Prince William, the Queen has reasserted her claim on the title "head of state" of Australia by using it in the announcement of her address to the UN in July.Despite the Governor-General, Quentin Bryce, being dispatched to Africa by the Rudd government last year under the description "Australia's head of state", yesterday a spokesman for Kevin Rudd avowed that the Queen held that position.The title fight -- pitting the two female leaders, the sovereign and her representative, head to head -- revives a debate that raged around the republic referendum more than a decade ago.The trigger for the confusion is the announcement by Buckingham Palace that Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II will be addressing the UN General Assembly in July as Australia's "head of state", a statement that has taken Canberra's diplomats, officials and constitutional combatants by surprise.In recent years, particularly after the debate and referendum on a republic in 1999, the local convention has been to recognise that the Governor-General is Australia's head of state and that Elizabeth II is our sovereign.Full article here |
Thursday, February 11, 2010
Anthony Watts teaches Tim Lambert a thing or two about civility and manners
I did get a chuckle though from a response posted by another blog honored on the list.
Deltoid
by Tim Lambert
Stimulating musings on the environment and the social implications of science, though Lambert’s background is actually in computing.
He wrote of his own blog’s inclusion:
If they are going to include my blog on their list of the top 30 science blogs, I can’t help but link to them. There are some good blogs on their list which is only marred by the inclusion of Anthony Watts’ anti-science blog.
Heh. I’ll simply offer my congratulations to Mr. Lambert, and to the other blogs on the list. I’ll also wish Mr. Lambert well in his upcoming debate with Lord Monckton. That should be interesting and fun to watch, no matter what side of consensus you live on.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/02/11/wuwt-named-to-top-30-science-blogs-by-the-times/#more-16332
Great moments in 'alternative' medicine
A civil servant suffered cancer and kidney failure after taking pills containing a banned substance sold by a Chinese herbal shop to clear up spots on her face, a court heard today. Patricia Booth took the medicine bought at a shop in Chelmsford, Essex, for five and a half years, a jury was told. The Chinese Herbal Medical Centre advertised its products as ‘safe and natural and without side effects’, the Old Bailey heard.
But Mrs Booth was taken ill just months after she stopped taking the pills, which were found to contain the banned substance aristolochic acid, the court was told. Mrs Booth's health deteriorated to such an extent that her kidneys ‘were destroyed’, she developed cancer, and suffered a heart attack. She now visits hospital three times a week for dialysis and was be unable to attend court, instead giving evidence via videolink, jurors heard. Ying ‘Susan’ Wu, 48, of Holland-on-Sea, Essex, denies a series of charges relating to the sale of the medicine to Mrs Booth. She and shop owner Thin ‘Patrick’ Wong, 47, of Southend, deny further counts of possession of medicines without authorisation. Full article here http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1249980/Patricia-Booth-suffered-cancer-kidney-failure-taking-Chinese-herbal-acne-pills.htmlGISS fiddles Australian surface temperature record (again)
This issue was also recently covered on the Climategate blog here
Introduction
Despite its assurances, GISS has adjusted the temperature records of two sites at Mackay to reverse a cooling trend in one and increase a warming trend in another. This study presents evidence that this is not supportable and is in fact an instance of manipulation of data.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/02/11/giss-adjustments-in-australia/
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