Dave’s Archives

I was hearing vague snippets of the disaster that was the Virgin Blue computer system, but my JetStar flight had its own problems. Everyone was seated (that is, except for the restless and very, very sensitive toddler standing on the opposite window seat, who burst into tears whenever mum dared suggest he sit down and put his seat belt on), but there seemed to be a delay.

It was getting quite stuffy, actually. A couple of people took to fanning themselves with the A320-232 safety instruction cards. It emerged that there were "maintenance issues", which sounded a little dubious. Shortly thereafter, the captain (or someone) informed us that the problem was indeed related to the air-con. He could fix it in 2 seconds, but he would need to switch the plane off.

Had they, on the spur of the moment, installed a new air-conditioning software update? At least this was happening before takeoff, I thought to myself. (For instance, they didn't say this: "Sorry, ladies and gentlemen - we will shortly begin a rapid descent towards to ocean while we install this critical software patch and restart the aircraft. Not sure how long we'll be - let's just hope it works this time.")

So, for about a minute, the cabin lights were replaced by blue-tinted torch light, the engines died down and there was eery quiet (that is, except for the gentle snorting of the person next to me and the squeals from across the isle). It was also a reprieve from the terrible, cheesy music that had been playing over the speakers to pass the time; cheesy to an extent that can surely only be achieved with premeditated malice.

Then, with our air-con software apparently working as advertised, all hands reached for the vents above our seats and we were off.

Tony Abbott has tried his hand at modelling the economic costs of carbon emissions reduction. The results are a little disturbing. Unless Abbott was being deliberately, deceptively simplistic in order to appeal to the burn-the-elitists demographic of Australian society, he truly doesn't have a clue what he's talking about:

He says given a 5 per cent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions will cost Australian taxpayers $120 billion, the cost of the emissions trading scheme's 10-year aim of a 25 per cent reduction will be much greater.

"The Federal Government has never released the modelling," Mr Abbott said.

"Now if there is modelling that shows the costs of a 15 per cent and a 25 per cent emissions reduction, let's see the modelling, let's release the figures.

"I think it's reasonable to assume in the absence of other plausible evidence that five times that reduction, a 25 per cent reduction in emissions, might cost five times the price - half a trillion dollars, 50 per cent of Australia's annual GDP."

I'm no economist, but I suspect the experts might shy away from confidently predicting that 5 times the reduction implies 5 times the cost. We're talking about billions of dollars flowing through all the intricate structures that make up the economy. There are feedback mechanisms, economies of scale, and the little fact that a "5%" reduction in CO2 is relative to 2000 levels but the projected cost is based on 2020 levels (because that's when it's happening). Even a "0%" change from 2000 levels represents a substantial cut in what our 2020 CO2 emissions would have been, but according to Abbott's model this scenario would cost nothing.

Why even have economists if a constant factor is all it takes to convert a percentage CO2 reduction into a dollar amount? If Tony, our alternative Prime Minister, thinks it's "reasonable to assume" such things, perhaps we can get him to try out this approach to economic modelling in a controlled environment where he can't hurt anyone else. Say, in a padded cell with Monopoly money.

Deltoid takes a look at a piece of code taken from the Climate Research Unit (CRU) that apparently has the denialists salivating. Buried therein is the following comment: "Apply a VERY ARTIFICAL [sic] correction for decline!!" Are you convinced yet of the global leftist socialist global warming alarmist conspiracy?! I certainly am.

I'd also like to apply for membership. You see, trawling through my own code for handling experimental data (from September 2008), I've re-discovered my own comment: "Artificially extends a data set by a given amount". Indeed, I appear to have written two entire functions to concoct artificial data*, clearly in nefarious support of the communist agenda. I therefore submit myself as a candidate for the conspiracy. The PhD is only a ruse, after all. Being a member of the Conspiracy is the only qualification that really counts in academia.

* I'm not making this up - I really do have such functions. However, lest you become concerned about the quality of my research, this artificial data was merely used to test the behaviour of the rest of my code. It was certainly not used to generate actual results. I can sympathise with the researcher(s) who leave such untidy snippets of  code lying around, and I'm a software engineer who should know better!