How to elect an opposition leader

Strangely enough, Canada and Australia both elected opposition leaders within 24 hours. Kevin Rudd was elected by a closed caucus of MHRs and senators by a vote of margin of 49 votes to 39. Stéphane Dion was elected by an open convention chosen for the purpose by party members. The election ran to four ballots, with the lowest candidate eliminated at each ballot. Dion trailed in the first ballot but gained enough votes as others dropped out to pull ahead of Michael Ignatieff and win the position. The final vote was 2,521 votes (54%) to 2,084(45%). Leadership candidates in Canadian parties run their own websites and appeal directly to party members in a way that would cause most Australian politicians considerable disquiet.

Australia's political parties, with the notable exception of the Australian Democrats are famously closed institutions with most powers exercised by the party leader or (occasionally) the caucus. Our political parties are also suffering dramatic declines in membership and participation. Opening them up with a system of primaries would do a lot to cure that problem. Canadians take the principle of party democracy so seriously that there are proposals to enshrine it in law. For instance in New Brunswick, the Commission on Legislative Democracy recommended this amendment to the province's electoral act.

2.1 All of a party’s general election candidates must be endorsed by a vote of eligible party members, in a vote that is open to all eligible party members.

2.2 To be eligible for party membership, a person must meet the same eligibility requirements to vote in a provincial election.

2.3 To be eligible to vote in a leadership or nomination contest, a person must belong to the political party at least seven days prior to the nomination contest and be a member of the party at the time of the vote.

2.4 If fixed election dates are adopted, riding associations must hold a vote of their members for the purpose of choosing their general election candidate no more than 120 days prior to the date of the general election.

2.5 Parties must advertise the date, time and location of a leadership or nomination contest at least seven days prior to the closing date for eligible membership.

2.6 Parties shall not charge a membership fee greater than $5 annually.

I have problems with both conventions and exhaustive ballots. In Australia, if we ever got this far, I suspect we'd go for a direct vote and use preferential voting. The electoral commission runs union elections. There's no obvious reason they cannot run party elections just as well.

It begins

Background Brief On The Case Against Rumsfeld, Gonzales And Others Filed In Germany On November 14, 2006 (PDF)

From Donald Rumsfeld on down, the political and military leaders in charge of ordering, allowing and implementing abusive interrogation techniques in the context of the “War on Terror” since September 11, 2001, must be investigated and held accountable. The complaint alleges that American military and civilian high-ranking officials named as defendants in the case have committed war crimes against detainees in Iraq, Afghanistan and in the U.S.-controlled Guantánamo Bay prison camp.

The complaint alleges that the defendants “ordered” war crimes, “aided or abetted” war crimes, or “failed, as civilian superiors or military commanders, to prevent their commission by subordinates, or to punish their subordinates,” actions that are explicitly criminalized by German law. The U.S. administration has treated hundreds if not thousands of detainees in a coercive manner, in accordance with “harsh interrogation techniques” ordered by Secretary Rumsfeld himself that legally constitute torture and/or cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment, in blatant violation of the provisions of the 1949
Geneva Conventions, the 1984 Convention Against Torture and the 1977 International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights – to all of which the United States is a party. Under international humanitarian treaty and customary law, and as re-stated in German law, these acts of torture and cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment constitute war crimes.

I don't seriously expect that Rumsfeld or any other member of this grisly gang will ever find themselves on trial for crimes against humanity or war crimes. I do expect they may find it advisable to drop any travel plans to a nation that recognises universal jurisdiction to punish such crimes. Strangely enough, the recent US legislation to give legal cover to torture may exacerbate the position of potential defendants. Similar immunity laws enacted by the Chilean junta were cited as reason for the House of Lords to grant extradition in the Pinochet case in

a little more celebration

The US also held elections for many state governors and legislatures. the picture there is the same as the Senate and House elections. All states except Nebraska have a state senate and assembly. (The names of the state assemblies vary from 'House of Delegates' to 'General Court') Nebraska is unicameral, like Queensland.

As of 7 a.m. MT, Democrats control both houses of the legislature in 23 states; Republicans in 15, and nine are split. Final counts aren't available yet for three chambers in two states: the Montana House and Senate and the Pennsylvania House. This adds up to 49 states because Nebraska's legislature is nonpartisan.

Before the election, Republicans controlled 20 state legislatures; Democrats 19, and 10 were split.

.

I'll round up the governorships and the referendum results some time today.

What a rum result

The first executive casualty has already fallen on his sword. Bush has announced Rumsfeld's resignation and replacement by a former CIA director. I doubt Runsfeld will be the last. I do not see George Bush as a guy with a lot of ticker.

The defence appointment takes away a Democratic nightmare, winning 51 seats out a hundred in the Senate, seeing Liebermann accept the post of secretary of defence, and then seeing the Republican governor of Connecticut (Liebermann's state) appoint a Republican to replace Liebermann in the Senate. The US has no equivalent of the rule in our constitution, Section 15, that senators must be replaced by a senator from the same party.

The US congress has he same structure as the Australian parliament. (No accident. Large slabs of our constitution run word for word with theirs) States get equal numbers of senators and proportionate-to-population numbers of representatives. The Senate is a tad strange. Half the Australian senate face election every 3 years. One third of the US senate face every 2 years, meaning that not all states vote for senator at each election.

The results are now fairly well-known, although I was surprised that their famous voting machines seem, if anything, to produce results at a much slower rate than our paper ballots. It's also strange to an Australian that there's no electoral commission to provide a neutral, uniform, professional electoral service on a nation-wide level. I guess that's another story.

The US media are still treating the Senate results in Virginia and Montana as open, although they're projecting Democratic wins and I suspect Australian election commentators would have already shut up shop and gone home for the night.

Last time I looked Webb, the Democrat was leading by more votes than there are left to count in Virginia. Montana, a very small state, is down to thousands of votes, but Tester, the Democrat has led every stage at the count and the chance for his opponent to overtake him is now vanishingly small. If both win, and I think they will, the numbers will be 51/49 in favour of the Democrats. 50/50 would be a Republican win because Cheney had a casting vote if there's a tie.

Bush will not be able to govern in the same way. He's already invited Speaker-designate Nancy Pelosi to the White House for lunch and the Rumsfeld resignation is further evidence. I think more's happened than just the Karl Rove 'revolution' coming to an end.

Rove and Bush thought they'd set up a permanent Republican majority. That prospect is now dead. A couple of fairly startling numbers. 1/3 of white evangelicals, the base of all bases to the Bush administration, voted Democrat. In a wide zone from Maine to Indiana the Republicans were defending 21 marginal seats and lost 21. In the Senate as a whole, the Republicans were defending 13 marginal states and lost 11. The Democrats have not lost a single senator, governor or representative. Democrat representatives and senators have been elected, especially in the West from places that yesterday were counted as solidly Republican. The very small and very Republican state of South Dakota threw out a restrictive abortion law in an initiative referendum. Arizona threw out a referendum to ban gay marriage. Perhaps they felt Mark Foley and Ted Haggert should have the right to marry.

The only significant Republican win of the night was Scharzenegger's re-election as governor of California and it's notable that Schwarzenegger ran on a very unBush platform. This is the kind of election it can take decades to recover from.

I think this means that one or both of Bush and Cheney will face impeachment in the next 2 years. I do not think the Democrats who now control Congress are setting out to impeach. I do think their new investigative powers are going to reveal incompetence, corruption and deception on such a massive scale that impeachment now become unavoidable.

In talking about US politics, it's been a truism for several years that the party of Abraham Lincoln, the Republicans, has become the party of Jefferson Davis, who was the confederate president during the Civil War. Nixon set up the southern strategy, a dog-whistle appeal to southern working class whites to vote Republican. Since 1968 the Solid South has gone from solidly Democratic to solidly Republican.

On the other hand, maybe the country, if not the party, of Lincoln remains the same. You really cannot fool all of the people all of the time.

a tale of two energies

Comparing Emerging Technologies: Techno-Economic Assessment of Power Generation Options for Australia, August 2006

Solar thermal appears to be the most promising technology for large scale, baseload electricity generation from renewable energy. The technology is unique in that efficient energy storage as heat (a cheaper option than storing electricity) reduces the cost of electricity. Australia has one of the most promising solar resources in the world for this technology

Howard comparing emerging technologies in the House of Representatives, 31 October 2006

Are we going to say to ourselves, ‘We deny our nation the opportunity of taking advantage of that?’ You will never—and I have no greater authority on this than the member for Batman—be able to replace power stations, dirty or clean, with solar, wind or wave power. It is just not possible. Baseload power can only be generated in the foreseeable future by the use of fossil fuels or nuclear power. You cannot hope to use renewables in order to do that; so, if you are going to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, you inevitably face a comparison on baseload generation between cleaner coal, which will be dearer, and nuclear power. The point at which those two cross each other is, at this stage, impossible to precisely determine. When we have Ziggy Switkowski’s report, we may have a better idea of where the two relate to each other.

Really, who are we to believe? And while we're at it, has anyone told Howard about the water usage of most nuclear reactors?

Solar thermal energy

Nuclear energy

Dinosaurs trotted like emus

from the ABC

[Breihaupt] presented the latest on emus as proxies for dinosaurs at the recent Geological Society of America in Philadelphia.

The search for a modern animal to act as a proxy for dinosaur tracks started, says Breithaupt, because he was getting a little impatient with all the speculation about the tracks.

There was too much of what he calls 'prehistoric hyperbole'.Families of dinosaurs once walked here. But no-one knows what they looked like, as there are few fossils from this era. So after passing on ostriches, which have only two toes, and rheas, which have three-toes but overly rambunctious personalities, emus were the best alternative. Plus there was an emu ranch just across the state line in Colorado.

Breithaupt and his team now think that the Red Gulch dinosaurs were probably human-sized meat eaters, or theropods, travelling along in groups.

Somehow, Jurassic Park will just never be scary again to anyone who's ever seen an emu running. Now if they'd proposed that theropods behaved like cassowaries we'd all be in deep doo doo.

A Casualty of Globalization: Death of the Unions

Der Spiegel

The following is an obituary.

The death, though, was never publicly announced -- and the tragedy is compounded by the fact that the closest relatives are keeping it a secret. But that does not alter the truth: Trade unions, as we knew them, are dead. The protector of the underdog is no more. What passes for a union today does not have the power to provide shelter.In fact, even the estate executors need protection. Unions once saw themselves as a buffer against the whims of the executives. They made sure that wages were fair. They also functioned as the political voice of society. Today, such unions are a thing of the past.

The development of a global job market, the appearance of 1.2 billion new workers and the readiness of millions more to work at any cost has robbed the job brokers of their once-powerful position.For decades, they had access to unparalleled treasures: The well-educated industrial worker was irreplaceable; the industrial robot was not yet intelligent enough; and the masses of today's competitive jobseekers were trapped behind walls and barbed wire, and sometimes simply hidden in the morass of Asian slums. These people were denied participation in Western job markets, a state of affairs which kept the price of Western labor high.

It was child's play for union negotiators to force employers to pay higher wages. The factory owner had no choice but to buy labor from the unions, because while there was a national and -- in the best case -- still a Western job market, there was no global job market that could provide the industrial skills necessary. Workers were scarce after both World Wars, and unions had a virtual monopoly on the commodity. They milked it for all it was worth.

Der Spiegel is posting these extracts from a new book War for Wealth: The Global Grab for Power and Prosperity. It's uncomfortable reading, especially in an Australia where Howard clearly believes that social democracy is about to join the Leninist state and planned economy in the trashcan of history.

On the other hand, if Howard really were surfing towards destiny, he might be able to tell the truth occasionally and not need to constantly scare us into wetting ourselves before we re-elect him.

Cue Saruman, despatching his fighting uruk-hai:

A new power is rising! Its victory is certain! March to Helm's Deep! Leave none alive!

War on Tuskers

An Elephant Crackup?

I'd have considered it a wise policy even at a more peaceable juncture in the course of human-elephant relations. In recent years, however, those relations have become markedly more bellicose. Just two days before I arrived, a woman was killed by an elephant in Kazinga, a fishing village nearby. Two months earlier, a man was fatally gored by a young male elephant at the northern edge of the park, near the village of Katwe. African elephants use their long tusks to forage through dense jungle brush. They've also been known to wield them, however, with the ceremonious flash and precision of gladiators, pinning down a victim with one knee in order to deliver the decisive thrust. Okello told me that a young Indian tourist was killed in this fashion two years ago in Murchison Falls National Park, north of where we were.

These were not isolated incidents. All across Africa, India and parts of Southeast Asia, from within and around whatever patches and corridors of their natural habitat remain, elephants have been striking out, destroying villages and crops, attacking and killing human beings. In fact, these attacks have become so commonplace that a new statistical category, known as Human-Elephant Conflict, or H.E.C., was created by elephant researchers in the mid-s to monitor the problem. In the Indian state of Jharkhand near the western border of Bangladesh, 300 people were killed by elephants between 2000 and 2004. In the past 12 years, elephants have killed 605 people in Assam, a state in northeastern India, 239 of them since 2001; 265 elephants have died in that same period, the majority of them as a result of retaliation by angry villagers, who have used everything from poison-tipped arrows to laced food to exact their revenge. In Africa, reports of human-elephant conflicts appear almost daily, from Zambia to Tanzania, from Uganda to Sierra Leone, where 300 villagers evacuated their homes last year because of unprovoked elephant attacks.

Still, it is not only the increasing number of these incidents that is causing alarm but also the singular perversity - for want of a less anthropocentric term - of recent elephant aggression. Since the early 1990s, for example, young male elephants in Pilanesberg National Park and the Hluhluwe-Umfolozi Game Reserve in South Africa have been raping and killing rhinoceroses; this abnormal behavior, according to a 2001 study in the journal Pachyderm, has been reported in "a number of reserves" in the region. In July of last year, officials in Pilanesberg shot three young male elephants who were responsible for the killings of 63 rhinos, as well as attacks on people in safari vehicles. In Addo Elephant National Park, also in South Africa, up to 90 percent of male elephant deaths are now attributable to other male elephants, compared with a rate of 6 percent in more stable elephant communities.

The elephants hate us, not because of what we do, but because of who we are. They want to establish an elephantocracy reaching from Capetown to Hanoi. There is only one solution...

test

Posting 1, 2, 3, ...

All hail Emperor Ming II

Once upon a time Australia slumbered happily through the 50s and 60s under the benign neglect of Sir Robert Menzies. Menzies made himself famous for eccentricities such as reciting excruciatingly bad poetry to Elizabeth II, wanting the new decimal currency called the royal and insisting his surname rhymed with 'fling'.

To my amazement the Liberal Democrats in Britain are about to elect Sir Menzies Campbell their new leader, and he exhibits the same eccentricity about how to pronounce 'Menzies.' Australia has already had a supreme ruler known as Ming the Merciless. Can the UK Liberal Democrats be far behind?

War on Christmas

When Santas go bad

A group of 40 drunken people dressed in Santa Claus outfits went on a rampage through New Zealand's largest city, Auckland, robbing stores, assaulting security guards and urinating from highway overpasses.

Auckland police are searching for men of Christmassy appearance. The Australian parliament may be recalled in a rare holiday session to ensure the Anti-Terrorism Act 2005 includes threats to the extravaganza of consumer spending.

Beware the echizen kurage, my son

Giant jellies attack Japan

They are 6ft wide and weigh 450lb (200kg), with countless poisonous tentacles, they have drifted across the void to terrorise the people of Japan. Vast armadas of the slimy horrors have cut off the country's food supply. As soon as one is killed more appear to take its place.

Finally, the quarrelsome governments of the region are banding together to unite against the enemy.

I'm just waiting for the shots of masses of people running across bridges while sirens sound in the background.

Buffy fans invade Kuiper Belt

'Buffy' challenges solar system theories

Buffy is the temporary name given by the team for the object, whose official designation by the Paris-based International Astronomical Union (IAU) is 2004 XR 190.

Its orbit is in a relatively narrow range of between 52 and and 62 astronomical units (AU) from the sun.

An AU is a standard measurement, being that of the distance between the Earth and the Sun, of approximately 150 million kilometres.

By comparison, another 'extended scattered disk' member called Sedna swings out to as far as 900 AU before coming as close to the sun as 76 AU.

I've seen from fairly explosive exchanges between Buffy fans and Xena fans. Is it responsible to give these tribes rival territorial claims in the outer solar system?

Cronulla

I hated seeing the Australian flag being waved by a violent mob.

Sadly enough, this week's Background Briefing (no transcript yet, although they do have audio) carries any number of thoughtful voices from Muslim youth in Australia. Sunday's riot is obviously indefensible as is the conduct which allegedly provoked it. That should not mean it's open season in the blogosphere for anyone of 'Southern Beaches' or 'Middle Eastern' appearance.

Flashmobs are not all that rational, and if you wait until the mob has formed (and got itself drunk on a hot day) you've already lost the plot. A week of inflammatory nonsense from talk-back should have rung alarm bells. There really was not all that much work left for the usual white supremacist trash. Carlyle said nothing was as unexpected or as predictable as the French Revolution.

Now we're seeing revenge attacks across the southern beaches and rumours are getting texted across the city faster than they can be answered. People were hurt tonight and there's an unconfirmed rumour of a fatal shooting. There are some signs of hope, like the meeting between Keyser Trad and Koby Abberton. Hopefully, next Sunday the pubs will be shut and perhaps Cronulla's mobile phone transmitters should be shut down for the day.

I was amazed by the Man of Steel's statement, that this is not a racist event, was absurd. The straight line being drawn by people on radio between terrorism and the Lebanese community says the government has a way to go in making its terror campaigning more responsible. The Man of Steel might like to look at the mote in his own eye before he does too much more preaching.

torturing the truth

Condi's trail of lies

'As a matter of U.S. policy, the United States' obligations under the CAT [U.N. Convention Against Torture], which prohibits cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment -- those obligations extend to U.S. personnel wherever they are, whether they are in the United States or outside of the United States,' Rice said at a press conference with Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko.

The press should stop asking if the US tortures prisoners. The US will always say no, but they will be using their own tortured definition.

The press should ask if the US waterboards. prisoners.

Equally there is no point asking about extraordinary renditions.

The press should ask if the US holds prisoners without charge or trial.

There is no point asking such questions in Australia. Holding prisoners without charge or trial is the law here, a law passed with Labor's support.

Apophilypse Now

It's called Apophis. It's 390m wide. And it could hit Earth in 31 years time

In Egyptian myth, Apophis was the ancient spirit of evil and destruction, a demon that was determined to plunge the world into eternal darkness.A fitting name, astronomers reasoned, for a menace now hurtling towards Earth from outerspace. Scientists are monitoring the progress of a 390-metre wide asteroid discovered last year that is potentially on a collision course with the planet, and are imploring governments to decide on a strategy for dealing with it.

Nasa has estimated that an impact from Apophis, which has an outside chance of hitting the Earth in 2036, would release more than 100,000 times the energy released in the nuclear blast over Hiroshima. Thousands of square kilometres would be directly affected by the blast but the whole of the Earth would see the effects of the dust released into the atmosphere.

'Space tractor' to avert asteroid ArmageddonOnline

No need to send Bruce Willis into space with a nuclear bomb: The best way to deal with a killer asteroid hurtling towards Earth could be a 'gravity tractor'.

Two NASA astronauts, gently mocking the solution offered in the Hollywood blockbuster Armageddon have come up with a deceptively simple plan to pull asteroids off course.

Dr Edward Lu and Dr Stanley Love propose in today's issue of the journal Nature that a rocket be launched into space, effectively to act as a giant magnet.

Landing on an asteroid, which is no more than a spinning pile of rubble, is very difficult to achieve.

Instead, the gravity tractor would hover alongside the asteroid, with its thrusters pointing outwards so the exhaust does not affect the surface.

The tractor would then gradually pull the asteroid off course, using nothing more than the gravitational pull between the two bodies.

'This saves you from having to land on the asteroid and then trying to stabilise yourself on a flying pile of rock and debris which is spinning all the time,' Dr Love said.

In Armageddon, a doomsday asteroid is on a collision course with Earth and the only way to knock it off course is to drill into its surface and detonate a nuclear bomb.

Instead, the scientists calculate that, with sufficient warning, a 20-tonne gravity tractor could safely deflect an asteroid 200 metres across in about a year of towing.

I doubt the Guardian's derivation of the name. There is more than one Apophis around and about the time of an unofficial push to name 2003 UB313, the putative tenth planet and its moon Xena and Gabrielle the discoverers named the asteroid formerly known as 99942 after an Apophis, apocryphal or not.

Still, demon of the ancient world or Goauld system lord, it's a relief we won't need Bruce Willis to save us.

Brokeback Mountain

The New Yorker has a free download of Annie Proulx' short story, but only for a week. Lot's better than the Penguin price of a single short story for $16.95.

Update
Bookslut has An Interview with Annie Proulx on the short story and the movie. The New West Network calls it Best Contemporary Realistic Western Ever?

march of the Phytoplankton

About 34 million years ago, the Earth's climate transitioned from a 'greenhouse climate' to the 'icehouse climate' of today, forming a massive ice sheet on the Antarctic continent. A new study by Linda Anderson, an ocean sciences researcher at the University of California, Santa Cruz, suggests that oceanographic features in the Southern Ocean--the intensity of current flow and the amount of stratification (the formation of distinct layers at different depths)--may have played a key role in the transition.

Anderson will present her findings this week at the Fall Meeting of the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco.

Anderson analyzed the chemical properties of seafloor sediments laid down millions of years ago to piece together a picture of how Southern Ocean circulation may have looked deep in the past. The periods covered in her study include the transition from the Eocene to the Oligocene epochs about 33 million years ago and a similar transition between the Oligocene and Miocene epochs about 23 million years ago. These transitions coincided with a configuration of Earth's orbit around the Sun that facilitated ice growth. Some additional factor on Earth, however, amplified the climate response during these transitions.

The geological record suggests that this additional factor was a reduction of greenhouse warming due to a decrease in atmospheric carbon dioxide. The Southern Ocean may have played a role in the drawdown of atmospheric carbon dioxide through its influence on the global carbon cycle, Anderson said.

Her study suggests that, unlike today, the mixing of the Southern Ocean around the time of the climate shift was neither as intense nor as deep as it is now. As a result, the ocean was more stratified and regional characteristics of deep and intermediate waters were maintained. This layered structure may have had important consequences for global carbon cycling, setting the stage for the transition from greenhouse to icehouse.

Phytoplankton--tiny plants growing in the surface waters--use carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and transform it into organic carbon. When the plants (or animals that feed on them) die and decompose, most of the organic carbon is recycled but a small amount is buried within the deep ocean. In a layered ocean, dead organisms can drift into the deeper layers before they decompose, effectively burying the organic carbon in the depths.

Shifting continents have gradually changed the Southern Ocean over the past 30 million years so that water now whips around Antarctica in a strong current known as the Antarctic Circumpolar Current. The strength of the current blocks the influx of nutrient-poor surface water and, as this current squeezes through the narrow passage between South America and Antarctica, it mixes the water from top to bottom. As a result, most of the organic carbon formed within the Southern Ocean today is oxidized before it can be buried.

The impact of organic carbon burial on the atmospheric carbon dioxide depends on the relative burial of organic carbon to total carbon. The types of organisms that fix organic carbon are important, because some form shells of inorganic carbon in a process that releases carbon dioxide. Regional characteristics of the water affect which organisms are favored ecologically by controlling the nutrient content of the surface ocean. The integral relationship between biology (the organisms that fix the organic carbon) and the physical structure of the ocean (both the delivery of nutrients and removal of organic carbon for burial) ultimately control the atmospheric carbon dioxide, Anderson said.

Currents in Climate Change

But that doesn't mean that climate change isn't happening--ice core data stretching back 650,000 years show that current greenhouse gas levels of 380 parts per million (ppm) are about 80 ppm higher than any other level in that period, and still rising. And it doesn't mean that the results of such a weakening in currents couldn't have a profound impact. Between 12,800 and 11,500 years ago, the Earth experienced a temporary setback in its warming up after the last ice age. The creation of the St. Lawrence Seaway filled the North Atlantic with an excess of cold, fresh water, preventing North Atlantic salt water from achieving the density needed to sink. As a result, the conveyor belt shut down and Western Europe and North America became colder and drier. We may need that dramatic sweater mission after all.

All this just makes the international effort unfolding in Montreal this week even more important. In that freezing cold, Francophone city, diplomats from 157 countries continue to discuss climate change and what to do about it. Already last week, they ratified the Kyoto Protocol--our first, timid attempt to cut the greenhouse gas emissions associated with global warming--despite the best efforts of the U.S. and its allies to derail the global treaty. Next up for consideration is what to do after Kyoto runs out in 2012. After all we've got 80 ppm or more to shed from the atmosphere, a process that would take hundreds of years if we stopped all emissions today. The U.S. and others are adamant that such effort is not needed--or, at best, misguided, something I shall address in more detail in a future post. Indeed, some of our illustrious leaders have called climate change the 'greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people.'

Climate change is not a hoax, nor is it a conspiracy. It is a giant scientific experiment human beings are running on the only planet we currently have: What will happen when we bring greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere to prehistoric levels and beyond? Perhaps nothing, perhaps inundation of low-lying parts of the world, perhaps a flood of environmental refugees, perhaps an increase in disease, or perhaps the loss of oceanic currents that help regulate the present conditions of our world. Maybe all of the above and more. We can't control the outcome of this experiment. We can, however, choose not to run it.

Scary thought that the likes of Bush and the Man of Steel are experimenters-in-chief.

the morrow after today

Alarm over dramatic weakening of Gulf Stream

The powerful ocean current that bathes Britain and northern Europe in warm waters from the tropics has weakened dramatically in recent years, a consequence of global warming that could trigger more severe winters and cooler summers across the region, scientists warn today.Researchers on a scientific expedition in the Atlantic Ocean measured the strength of the current between Africa and the east coast of America and found that the circulation has slowed by 30% since a previous expedition 12 years ago.

The current, which drives the Gulf Stream, delivers the equivalent of 1m power stations-worth of energy to northern Europe, propping up temperatures by 10C in some regions. The researchers found that the circulation has weakened by 6m tonnes of water a second. Previous expeditions to check the current flow in 1957, 1981 and 1992 found only minor changes in its strength, although a slowing was picked up in a further expedition in 1998. The decline prompted the scientists to set up a 4.8m network of moored instruments in the Atlantic to monitor changes in the current continuously.

Yikes. I'll just have to shut my eyes really tightly, clench my fists and incant: 'Global warming has no economic impact" six times quickly.

somebody tell the Man of Steel and the shadow attorney-general

Constitutional Court of South Africa

The exclusion of same-sex couples from the benefits and responsibilities of marriage was not a small and tangential inconvenience resulting from a few surviving relics of societal prejudice destined to evaporate like the morning dew. It represented a harsh if oblique statement by the law that same-sex couples are outsiders, and that their need for affirmation and protection of their intimate relations as human beings is somehow less than that of heterosexual couples. It signifies that their capacity for love, commitment and accepting responsibility is by definition less worthy of regard than that of heterosexual couples. The intangible damage to same-sex couples is as severe as the material deprivation. They are not entitled to celebrate their commitment to each other in a joyous public event recognised by the law. They are obliged to live in a state of legal blankness in which their unions remain unmarked by the showering of presents and the commemoration of anniversaries so celebrated in our culture.

If heterosexual couples have the option of deciding whether to marry or not, the judgment continued, so should same-sex couples have the choice as to whether to seek to achieve a status and a set of entitlements and responsibilities on a par with those enjoyed by heterosexual couples. By both drawing on and reinforcing discriminatory social practices, the law has failed to secure for same-sex coupes the dignity, status, benefits and responsibilities that it accords to heterosexual couples. Although considerable progress has been made in specific cases through constitutional interpretation and by means of legislative intervention, the default position of gays and lesbians is still one of exclusion and marginalisation.
Sachs J stated that Judges would be placed in an intolerable situation if they were called upon to construe religious texts and take sides on issues which have caused deep schisms within religious bodies. In the open and democratic society contemplated by the Constitution there must be mutually respectful co-existence between the secular and the sacred. The function of the Court is to recognise the sphere which each inhabits, not to force the one into the sphere of the other. The objective of the Constitution is to allow different concepts about the nature of human existence to inhabit the same public realm, and to do so in a manner that is not mutually destructive and that at the same time enables government to function in a way that shows equal concern and respect for all.

Acknowledgement by the state of the right of same-sex couples to enjoy the same status, entitlements and responsibilities as marriage law accords to heterosexual couples, is in no way inconsistent with the rights of religious organisations to continue to refuse to celebrate same-sex marriages. The two sets of interests involved do not collide, they co-exist in a constitutional realm based on accommodation of diversity. Granting access to same-sex couples would in no way attenuate the capacity of heterosexual couples to marry in the form they wished and according to the tenets of their religion.

The silent obliteration of same-sex couples from the reach of the law, together with the utilisation of gender-specific language in the marriage vow, presupposes that only heterosexual couples were contemplated. The common law and section 30(1) of the Marriage Act are accordingly inconsistent with sections 9(1) and 9(3) [equality] and 10 [dignity] of the Constitution to the extent that they make no provision for same-sex couples to enjoy the status, entitlements and responsibilities they accord to heterosexual couples.

The full judgment (large PDF) is available as well. The sections of the South African Bill of Rights the Court speaks about are:

Equality

9. (1) Everyone is equal before the law and has the right to equal protection and benefit of the law.

(2) Equality includes the full and equal enjoyment of all rights and freedoms. To promote the achievement of equality, legislative and other measures designed to protect or advance persons, or categories of persons, disadvantaged by unfair discrimination may be taken.

(3) The state may not unfairly discriminate directly or indirectly against anyone on one or more grounds, including race, gender, sex, pregnancy, marital status, ethnic or social origin, colour, sexual orientation, age, disability, religion, conscience, belief, culture, language and birth.

(4) No person may unfairly discriminate directly or indirectly against anyone on one or more grounds in terms of subsection (3). National legislation must be enacted to prevent or prohibit unfair discrimination.

(5) Discrimination on one or more of the grounds listed in subsection (3) is unfair unless it is established that the discrimination is fair.

Human dignity

10. Everyone has inherent dignity and the right to have their dignity respected and protected.

It's obviously a dangerous business, putting equality and dignity into the law.