[massive whirlpool] scientists have it all pegged - not

Photo: CSIRO

A mysterious whirlpool 200 kilometres across and 1000 metres deep has developed off the coast of NSW, dragging down the sea surface by almost a metre, diverting the ocean current and chilling Sydney beachgoers. The centre is 100 kilometres from the coast and could stay there for several months.

CSIRO satellite oceanographer Dr David Griffin said that, while cold-water eddies regularly appeared off Sydney, scientists knew very little about what causes them or the influence they have in the Tasman Sea ecosystem.

Just thought you might like to know that the scientists have it all under control, as they have with climate change - not.

[as a dodo] what a fabulous site

I swiped their pic, holus-bolus

On the passing of childhood:

Parents - urged on by a society eager to turn anyone capable of holding a coin into a consumer, a media eager to push pictures of semi-naked women at tweenies and an internet leaping over itself to insert images of donkey-sex into the minds of anybody it could find - rushed to thrust adulthood upon their offspring just as soon as they could find an ear-piercing salon willing to carry out its work in utero.

Savage, accurate, topical and well written, with sympathy and humour. What more do you demand of a blog?

[climate change] blogosphere misinformed

The closer you get to snow areas such as I live in, the more visible is the climate change, which has been progressively getting worse for the last eight years or so. Consequences will flow.

At the same time, powerful lobbies have seized the phenomenon and are indulging in ludicrous and ultimately pointless debate, which the blogosphere also seizes on, as it fits in with the libertarian, anti-globalist stance so beloved of the average blogger [I shan't link to my colleagues here].

I think they've got the argument a-se end round here. The phenomenon most certainly is happening, humans are responsible and not just any humans. Then there's a factor almost no one talks about - check out the links near the end of this post.

Don't forget the old issue of the rainforests either, or the North American emissions. But why stop there? How about Europe, including Britain, one of the worst offenders?

Into all this comes money: “Now that money enters the picture with carbon trading, so does fraud. The incentive will be to under-report emissions”, which brings us back to the problem this post began with - misinformation.

It was always going to be so when powerful lobbies are pitted against one another, there are huge profits to be made and a blogosphere to dazzle.

UPDATE: Ellee Seymour has invited a guest blogger, William Connelly, who thoroughly debunks Channel 4's criminal inaccuracy:

"Channel 4 clearly have no interest in whether they broadcast truth or not; and the number of people prepared to fall for this tripe."

[rogue wave] car washed into the sea

A resident in Eyrarbakki, south Iceland, was washed into the ocean when a tidal wave hit his car at the pier in the neighboring town of Stokkseyri Friday. A firefighter rescued him ashore. Halldór Jónsson, an electrician, was helping a friend bringing a boat to land, which was tied to the pier, when the incident occurred, Fréttabladid reports.

Jónsson parked his car on the pier with a trailer attached to it and was about to drag the boat onto the trailer when a huge wave swept him out to sea. Jónsson managed to crawl out of the window on the roof of his car. “It felt like I was stranded on a desert island,” he said. A firefighter arrived at the scene and tossed a rope to Jónsson. He tied the rope to his trailer and managed to save himself and his equipment.

This would probably seem weird were it not a well known phenomenon with sailors, termed 'rogue waves'. They're every sailor's fear and many explanations have been proferred for them. Put simply, waves generally follow patterns, as you've seen from your own experience and even those breaking on the shore are only following the physics of a 'shallowing shelf', leading to the beach.

The problem is sometimes when waves come from different directions, backed by hundreds of kilometres of similar waves and the result can be like the inside of a washing machine, such as in Drake Passage. And yet this still doesn't explain the huge rogue wave. Currents and bad weather could certainly be factors but, as one expert put it, ""We know some of the reasons for the rogue waves, but we do not know them all."

For the sailor, it's often not the shocking weather - a well-found sailboat will weather almost anything, provided it has enough sea room to work in; it's designed to do so. No, it's the rogue wave that's the problem and these have been known to sink ships, sometimes even travelling against the prevailing current. Therein lies the problem.

Having said all that, for a rogue wave to actually come in to the shore and take a car away is still pretty weird.

[blogfocus tuesday] beauty and the beast

It was going to be on Wednesday but it got itself ready by Tuesday after all. It's the return of the heavyweights this evening, interspersed with some really neat little blogs and that's real beauty and the beast stuff. Hope you enjoy it.

1 Iain Dale said about him: "Thoughtful rather than ranting" and Guido said of his blog: "I don't read it." Do you need any more reasons to make this one of your daily ports of call? Dizzy gives an annotated, point form list of the green government's suggestions for you to be personally less wasteful. Here's the final point:

Idling is wasting fuel - Stop wasting fuel in traffic jams. Turn the engine off. What do you mean you're stereo isn't rigged directly to your battery and requires the ignition to be on to listen too? The planet is more important than you're desire to listen to Kylie.

Do have a look at the rest of the site. I imagine it cost a small fortune to set up and will receive very little traffic. I bet they don't think twice about the power consumption of their servers though.

2 Still on the environment, Bel writes of the 'envirofascist'. Of course no serious scientist argues today that it's not happening but the way the EFs have hijacked the agenda, they have created an enormous backlash. Though Bel and I would differ on the former, we're at one on the latter:

A commenter on my previous post took issue with my use of the term ‘envirofascist’. I have been thinking, and while unrepentant, I have decided that, in future, I will no longer use this term when discussing our hypocritical politicians. I will instead call them ‘pharisees’. Why? Because they prescribe how we should live our lives, while they merrily carry on doing whatever they please. Someone once condemned pharisees thus: “They tie up heavy burdens and lay them on men’s shoulders, but they themselves are unwilling to move them with so much as a finger.”

3 And yet again on the environment, Mr Eugenides mentions the laudable objective of the Mayans in dispersing the bad energy of, say, a George Bush visit:

His arrival brings him to the fourth nation in a five-state tour of the Latin American region. But Maya leaders said they will have to perform a special cleansing ceremony to clear bad energy left by his visit. The Maya, you will recall, cut the hearts out of their human sacrifices [often children] before throwing them from the top of their temples. I wonder if our definitions of "bad energy" are quite the same.

Nine more bloggers here.

[blog regulation] backdoor way the vipers are trying

UKDP has a poll in his sidebar and I suggest you get over there and vote if you haven't already done so.

One of the sickest aspects of the issue - regulating the blogosphere - is the backdoor way the regulators operate. Offer up someone respected such as Iain Dale or Laban Tall and a certain loyalty to them can be used against the bloggers in turn. They'll never regulate me - they'll have to block me first.

Here is UKDP's poll so far [early days yet]: Which bloggers would you least like to see on the PCC regulatory panel for blogs?

Iain Dale 6 votes
Tim Ireland 7 votes
Stephen Tall 2 votes
Tim Montgomery 0 votes
Lynne Featherstone 2 votes
Daniel Finkelstein 3 votes
Alex Hilton 6 votes
I refuse to recognise the blog kitemark and oppose censorship of any sort. 25 votes

35 voters all up so far - pollcode.com free polls

[canada] do you want more of them

Here's an interesting poll in the Globe & Mail:

Do you think there are enough people in Canada now?

Yes [8%] 1216 votes
No [92%] 13299 votes

Total votes: 14515

Wonder what the thinking was behind that nifty poll idea? Could it be this?

[buddhism] vacuuming ants better than squashing them

They certainly do things differently over there in the modern temple:

Buddhist monks are grappling with how to rid a Malaysian temple of an infestation of ants whose sting is so bad one worshipper has been admitted to hospital. The monks have tried using a vacuum cleaner to gather up the ants before freeing them in a nearby forest, but to no avail.

[france] dishing the dirt on segie and sarko

It's been a long time since this blog got into muck-raking, gutter-press, sensationalist journalism so here goes. First, the dirt on Sarko:

Nicolas Sarkozy urged the colonialist Arno Klarsfeld to think of colonization.

Doesn't move you? All right, how about this:

The satirical French newspaper Canard Enchaine is running a story which claims that in 1997, Sarkozy was sold an apartment in Neuilly for 300,000 euros (nearly $400,000) below the market rate. The catch: the same company that sold him the apartment had been granted city contracts, which was then being governed by Sarkozy.

Trouble is, he got out of that one. OK, the gloves are off now:

Nicolas Sarkozy’s second marriage nearly went on the rocks after his wife left him for 6 months [no, not to live in seclusion in some kind of monastery…] While separated from his wife, Mr. Sarkozy took a mistress [the Minister and his wife are now living together again].

Not very interesting really, is it? Let's try Segie instead:

Segolene Royal has now been living unmarried with the father of her 4 children for over 20 years.

Wicked woman! And here's something even worse, from Atlas Shrugs:

Her little jackets! They get on my nerves. I can recite her entire wardrobe from memory. The jackets rotate like a school canteen menu.

I know, I know. All right, this one's really, really bad - she's still gaffe prone. Would you believe she still looks good in a bikini?

My final play:

I've interviewed Segolene in pyjamas.

Let's see you get out of that one, Segie!

[old poll down] new poll up

The "Maniac" poll is finished and results were quite decisive:

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad 86%

Hugo Chavez 4%

Kim Jong-il 8%

Another maniac 2%

50 votes total

The new poll in the sidebar is the Segie and Sarko question - who'll be Prez? Please vote if you can spare a few moments.