Science news.

1. From the BBC:

"Distant starlight gets stretched by the expansion of the Universe and shifts into the infrared region of the spectrum. We call it redshift," explains Richard Ellis, a University College London astronomer who's impatient to explore the end of the dark ages.

"The limiting factor we have with Hubble, for example... It's also not a particularly large telescope. It's been a pioneering facility, for sure. Amazing pictures. But the diameter of its mirror is only 2.4m, and the power of a telescope scales with the square of the diameter of the mirror. And that's where JWST comes in.

Why doesn't he just say "the power of a telescope scales with its surface area"? That's easy to understand and makes sense. He's trying to sound too clever for his own good.

2. Also from the BBC:

The UK is having the warmest New Year's Day on record, with new high temperatures set for the second day in a row, the Met Office says. St James's Park in central London saw temperatures of 16.3C (61.3F) on Saturday as 2022 was ushered in...

The previous New Year's Day record was set in [drumroll please...] 1916, when it reached 15.6C (60.1F) in Bude, Cornwall.

It would appear that average temperatures are going up slightly in many places, but the constant cherry picking is like the boy crying wolf, I believe it less all the time. 0.7 degrees per century doesn't strike me as too catastrophic. It would be just as easy to cherry-pick the other way and list all the places where New Year's Day was colder in 2022 than it was in some other random year like 1916.

Similarly, there have been a lot of forest and brush fires in recent years. If somewhere has a particularly big or damaging fire, then they are quick to shout about it as if it had never happened before.

But what about all the places which have had large fires in the past which didn't have any fires at all in recent years? Do they mention those? Nope. That's just what forests do - they burn down every few decades and then grow back - or else there wouldn't be any forests left. If we stopped chopping them down, there would be as many trees as there ever were.

Burning Down The House

On one level, that's a pile of wood.

But you can also see it as "stored chemical energy". If and when I burn it, I will be releasing energy from the sun that was trapped and converted to wood a century ago. By reversing the process that happened a century ago, I will be warming the atmosphere slightly.

Light energy -> chemical energy -> light energy and heat.

So the reverse must also hold. A century ago, the tree was cooling the atmosphere by converting light energy (which otherwise would have been converted to heat) into chemical energy. That's why it's cooler in woods and forests, and why allowing them to grow will cool the atmosphere, however slightly. (The fact that they also trap CO2 is a very minor issue).

Burning the sap from a cypress leylandii

Today I have been mostly...

... turning three old pallets into this. There's plenty more firewood in piles at the back (from a small tree we chopped down) but I can't be bothered schlepping it all over:

Once is circumstance, twice is happenstance, three times looks like land price speculation

From the BBC:

A huge blaze broke out overnight at Camden Lock Market in north London. Seventy firefighters and 10 fire engines were sent to the site, which is a popular tourist attraction, London Fire Brigade (LFB) said...

Major fires have hit the sprawling market area twice before in recent years, in 2008 and 2014.

From my post last time this happened:

The Stables Market, and a swathe of the surrounding area, was sold off by its owners, which included restaurant tycoon Richard Caring, to an unnamed Middle Eastern investor in March this year [2014] for £400 million.

From The Guardian, 15 November 2016:

Camden Market’s star has long been on the wane – but are plans for a radical makeover and boutique hotel, bankrolled by an Israeli billionaire, really the way to recapture its ‘young, fashionable and wild’ heyday?

Daily Mail On Top Form

From The Daily Mail:

The fire that swept through a 27-storey west London tower block in just 15 minutes after a faulty fridge exploded could be one of the worst in British history amid fears nobody on its top three floors survived.

Twelve people are known to have died after fire engulfed Grenfell Tower in White City after 1am today - but Scotland Yard expects the death toll to rise and there are claims the true number could be 'more than 50' or even higher...

Grenfell Tower is council-owned but the management of the building is down to an independent company - the Kensington and Chelsea Tenant Management Organisation (KCTMO) - whose stock consists of 6,900 rentable homes and 2,500 leasehold properties having been handed a contract in 1996...

Robert Black is the company's Chief Executive Officer and he took office in 2009 having previously worked as Executive Director of Service at Circle Anglia for five years where he was responsible for services for 45,000 homes across seven companies including asset management. He is a father of [an unspecified number of children] who lives in a £1 million house in South East London with his wife of almost 20 years.

In an unusual display of respect for the bereaved, the Mail resisted the temptation to point out that flats in the block changed hands for about £500,000 £160,000.

"Other residents in the road were evacuated for their own safety to a nearby mosque"

One of the many things I have noticed from reading far too many newspaper and online articles every day, is that when people die in house fires, they are disproportionately likely to be Pakistanis/Bangladeshis. It appears to be acceptable behaviour in their community to get revenge by burning somebody's house down.

There's no clue as to the identities of the victims in this incident, but the fact that neighbours were evacuated to a nearby mosque is a bit of a clue.

I'm sorry, but what am I missing seeing in this picture....?

Here

Glasgow School of Art Fire: Critics divided

From the BBC:

Initial reactions to the major blaze at the A-listed Glasgow School of Art, one of Scotland's most iconic buildings are sharply divided.

Eyewitnesses said the fire was very impressive to look at and some commented favourably on the originality of starting the blaze with an exploding projector in the basement of the Charles Rennie Mackintosh building just before 12:30.

The roof space of the art school is still well alight. It is expected that large parts have been destroyed, which will make it a lot easier for Christo to put wrapping paper round them.

Everyone in the building was said to have escaped safely to highlight the plight of the millions trapped in refugee camps around the world. There have been no reports of any casualties, prompting Brian Sewell to write a scathing article about the performers' lack of commitment.

Final year students were said to have been preparing their excuses for not having anything ready for their end of year degree show in the building when the blaze broke out.

Reviewers from Glasgow Police were far more negative, describing the spectacle as "simply unwatchable". Matching words with actions, police then cordoned off Renfrew Street. The fire brigade's culture spokesman described the smoke drifting across the M8 as "old hat… the IRA were doing this back in the Seventies."

Large crowds of students and onlookers gathered near the scene to engage in heated debate about the validity of the whole concept, with several people in tears as they watched the events unfold.

"I wish I'd thought of it," blubbered final year graduate Nikki Hollis, 23, "Look at this crowd! Only three people came to watch my video installation and two of those were there by mistake."

Careless, careless...

From The Evening Standard:

Traders today told of their terror after a fire swept through Camden's historic Stables Market.

More than 600 shoppers and diners were evacuated from the tourist hotspot at 7.45pm last night as thick black smoke poured into the cobbled lane and rose into a 50ft black plume visible from miles around.

More than 70 firefighters from across London spent several hours at the scene off Chalk Farm Road fighting the flames and removing high-pressure gas bottles – used by surrounding street food stalls – from the area...

The Stables Market, and a swathe of the surrounding area, was sold off by its owners, which included restaurant tycoon Richard Caring, to an unnamed Middle Eastern investor in March this year for £400 million.

The market, the site of a 19th century former stables and horse hospital and where singer Amy Winehouse was a regular shopper, is one of London's best-known tourist destinations, attracting about 40 million visitors a year to its 700 clothes, crafts and antiques stalls.

As a separate issue, that works out at £10 per visitor or £500,000 per tenant.

Another one of those fire death stories

As somebody who spends a fair amount of time scanning headlines and reading the odd article, it struck me a while back that nine times out of ten, if there's a headline about a mother and children/relatives being killed in a house fire, the story reveals them to be Muslim-Indian-Pakistani.

Sheffield fire deaths: Three generations of a family killed

For some reason, fathers/husbands are hardly ever killed in these fires, go figure.

House fires

A headline in the Daily Mail just caught my eye:

Woman who died alongside husband and mother in 'murder suicide' house fire had been STABBED to death… Mahnaz Rafie died from multiple stab wounds it has emerged

Which reminded me of something else which has struck me over the years from scanning too many news articles: if you see a headline about more than one person dying in a house fire, the chances are they are Muslim (UPDATE: Kj point out "or Sikh") women and children. The other over-represented group is the elderly.

BBC 13 September 2013

Four people die in house fire in Wood Hill, Leicester. Neighbour Soheb Ali... added... "They were a really good family. They were religious; went to the mosque."

Newsshopper 20 June 2013

TRIBUTES from community leaders have poured in for a mother-of-five who died in a house fire in Plumstead on Tuesday (June 18). Caroline Kaur and her 23-year-old daughter Hayleigh were killed in the flames that destroyed their family home in Purrett Road.

Daily Mirror 23 May 2013

A teenager has been arrested on suspicion of murder following a house fire which killed a mother and her five children.

Sabah Usmani, 44, died in a horrific house blaze alongside her daughter Hira, 12, and sons Muneeb, nine, and Rayyan, six. Son Sohaib, 11, and daughter Maheen, three, sadly died of their injuries at Princess Alexandra Hospital in Harlow.

Coventry Telegraph 21 May 2013

Tributes paid to 'lovely lady' who died in Nuneaton house fire… The victim has not yet been formally identified but was named locally as Mona Soundh, a 57-year-old Asian mother of two sons and two daughters and a grandmother, who had lived in the large semi-detached villa for 20 years.

And so on. How many of these are arson I do not know, I would suspect most of them.

"Witch mistaken for domestic abuse victim by council"

From the BBC:

A centuries-old witch-burning celebration was left with no victim after a council mistook the red-haired woman for a victim of domestic abuse and offered her a place in a refuge.

Villagers in Lower Hartshay in Derbyshire said they were surprised and disappointed to find "crime scene" tape at the carefully prepared pyre.

Amber Valley Borough Council said it responded to the woman's screams for help and put up a warning sign first. They also said organisers should have applied for a temporary events licence.

Residents said they were not aware that the practice had been made illegal in 1735 and villager David Crowley said they had never needed a licence before.

"I've been involved for the last 290 years, as long as I've lived in the village, so it has been a longstanding event," he said.

"I'm sure the council have been aware it happens every year, so we feel it would have been better had they approached one of us, rather than take her away."

The woman was later arrested on suspicion of phone hacking.

Makes you proud to be human

From the BBC:

Barely half an hour after they were jolted by a major earthquake on Tuesday, people of the Pakistani coastal town of Gwadar had another shock when they saw a new island emerge in the sea, just over a kilometre from the shore.

A local journalist, Bahram Baloch, received the news via a text message from a friend.... Mr Baloch and some friends landed on the island on Wednesday morning to check it out and to take pictures...

"There were dead fish on the surface. And on one side we could hear the hissing sound of the escaping gas," Mr Baloch said...

So what did our intrepid explorers do next?

Although they couldn't smell gas, they did put a match to the fissures from where it was oozing, and set it on fire.

"We put the fire out in the end, but it was quite a hassle. Not even the water could kill it, unless one poured buckets over it."

A series of very unfortunate coincidences...

Huffington Post, August 2012:

New Zealand's Olympics hospitality house during London 2012 has caught on fire - after an outdoor barbecue exploded on Wednesday evening.

The fire broke out as guests were watching a game of hockey and up to 300 were evacuated. No one was hurt but Kiwi House is now closed until further notice.

Daily Mail, November 2012:

A £2.8million mansion in London's most exclusive street nicknamed 'Billionaires' Row' has been destroyed by a fire that ripped through the property in the early hours of this morning.

The wealthy Russian owners of the six-bedroom detached property on The Bishops Avenue, in Hampstead, escaped unharmed but the house, which was still smouldering this afternoon, was almost completely destroyed with much of the roof collapsed.

London Loves Business, January 2013:

Russian oligarch, Omar Murtuzaliev, flew to London today to restore his dream £23m London home after it burnt down.

The Bayswater mansion burnt down just months before Murtuzaliev was due to move into the six-storey property. The fire started in the basement and burnt through the rest of the house, visibly charring the outside of the house.

Evening Standard, July 2013:

A £4 million west London house was destroyed by fire early this morning.

Dozens of firefighters fought the blaze which engulfed the three-storey house in Campden Grove, Kensington, at about 6am. The house was under renovation with work underway to build to basement extension.

So who do we believe here..?

From the BBC:

A massive fire at a recycling plant in the West Midlands is thought to have been started by Chinese lanterns. As well as fire risk they're associated with other problems. Fire chiefs called for an "urgent review" into the use of Chinese lanterns after more than 200 firefighters were called to the fire in the town of Smethwick.

From Wiki:

When lit, the flame heats the air inside the lantern, thus lowering its density and causing the lantern to rise into the air. The sky lantern is only airborne for as long as the flame stays alight, after which the lantern sinks back to the ground.

So who do we believe here: the fire chiefs who say that burning Chinese lanterns can fall to the ground or basic physics which says they only fall to the ground after the flame (i.e. glorified candle) has gone out?

I suppose if the paper lantern catches fire up there, that would cause it to crash, we can safely assume that the paper would turn to ash long before it lands, but wouldn't the glorified candle be snuffed out as if plummets to earth?

"Norway goat cheese fire closes tunnel"

From the BBC, although worthy of The Daily Mash:

About 27 tonnes of caramelised brown goat cheese - a delicacy known as Brunost - caught light as it was being driven through the Brattli Tunnel at Tysfjord, northern Norway, last week.

The fire raged for five days and smouldering toxic gases were slowing the recovery operation, officials said. The tunnel - which is said to be badly damaged - is likely to remain closed for several weeks, they added.

"We can't go in until it's safe," geologist Viggo Aronsen told Norwegian broadcaster NRK. Police officer Viggo Berg said the high concentration of fat and sugar in the cheese made it burn "almost like petrol if it gets hot enough".

The lorry driver had noticed the fire in his trailer and abandoned it about 300m (1,000ft) from the southern entrance. No-one was hurt.

Kjell Bjoern Vinje, of the Norwegian Public Roads Administration, said it was the first time he could remember cheese catching fire on Norwegian roads.

"I didn't know that brown cheese burns so well," he said.

All I can say is "God appetitt!"

Yeah, but they were about to declare him "fit and able to work"...

Spotted by Bob E in The Independent:

A disabled man was trapped in a centre run by Atos, which assesses fitness for work, when the fire alarm went off and staff evacuated the building, leaving him behind in his wheelchair.

Geoff Meeghan, 32, who has early-onset Parkinson’s and is unable to walk more than three metres without support, was being assessed on the second floor of a building in Neasden, north-west London.

Disabled people arriving for appointments are supposed to be asked if they can exit the building without assistance, but Mr Meeghan, pictured, was not...
---------------------------------
However, it turns out that he was not completely abandoned as the headline suggests:

Disabled people arriving for appointments are supposed to be asked if they can exit the building without assistance, but Mr Meeghan, pictured, was not. He waited with his support worker Nick Ephgrave, from the charity Parkinson’s UK, and his sister, who acts as one of his carers, before being called in for his assessment. A few minutes in, the alarm sounded and the doctor present said they needed to evacuate.

... which sort of ruins the punchline.

Burned to a crisp

From the BBC:

Nightshift workers at a factory near Caerphilly that makes potato crisps have been evacuated as fire crews tackle a large blaze.

Firefighters say 75% of the Real Crisps plant on the Penyfan industrial estate at Crumlin was alight as crews arrived just after 03:30 BST on Thursday. More than 50 firefighters and eight engines are at the scene as they try to stop the flames spreading.

Nearby residents are being advised to keep doors and windows closed.

"Spanish wildfire reaches Belgium"

From the BBC:

A huge wildfire started by a carelessly discarded cigarette in the wealthy resort of Marbella on Spain's Costa del Sol on Wednesday finally crossed the Pyreness last night, devouring Andorra in fifteen minutes flat. It has spent the day ripping through western France, where the authorities have evacuated millions of people.

Flames reached the town Bouillon on the Belgian-French border earlier this afternoon. Evacuations were ordered from Granada, Madrid, Saragossa and Pamplona in Spain and Toulouse, Limoghes, Orleans, Paris and Reims in France.

Some 300,000 British expats were among the evacuees, but the UK said they had now left evacuation centres. The British Consulates in Madrid and Paris said they had either been relocated with friends or had gone back to their smouldering ruins in Spain or France.

The fate of Portugal is as yet unknown as telephone contact has been lost. Dutch authorities are undecided whether to breach their own flood defences or not and said they would keep the situation under review.