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An Ode to the Hummer? – Worst Column Ever

Byoliveridley

GM desperately needs an obnoxious, attention-grabbing brand to keep from turning into a dreary shadow of its former self. And America needs the Hummer to remind us of what has always made our automobiles stand out, from the tailfin 1950s to the muscle car 1960s and ’70s: swagger. Americans don’t just drive their cars — they proclaim something about themselves by driving them.It takes a certain kind of man — it’s almost always the owner of a Y chromosome — to take a gander at the Hummer, in all its broad, burly, paramilitary gas-guzzling glory, and see himself behind the wheel, striking fear and loathing in the hearts of ecologically sensitive motorists

Matthew DeBord – Hummer, How We Need Thee – washingtonpost.com

Yes, and we men need to beat our women and keep them pregnant all the time to avoid turning us men into dreary shadows of our former self.

Seriously, this is the Washington Post, the newspaper of record of the capital city of the great United States, and this is not a satire. Way to paint the entire American male population as masculinity obsessed rageholics whose only aim is to strike fear in the heart of others while dressed in military fatigues. This man must possess an unhealthy degree of self-hatred to conclude  that disdain of a poorly designed, horrendously inefficient vehicle is somehow hippie and communist.This man is a disgrace to all mankind.

This, on the other hand is satire…

Ever since we changed our name from British Petroleum to BP (Beyond Petroleum) in 2000, we’ve led the way in developing progressive, environmentally friendly alternatives to gasoline. These last few years of pouring money into biofuels and renewable energy sources have been so great that I can’t for the life of me remember why we used to drill for dirty old oil in the first place! What’s that? You mean we’re still pumping that stuff from hundreds of refineries all over the world?

Yes, when the Onion is better than the Washington Post, you know your country’s going to the dogs.

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  • On writing

    Byoliveridley

    Sometimes, you have to read what you’ve written in order to keep writing. I have not felt like writing at all, except in 140 character snippets. There are lots of people saying lots of things all the time, so who really cares, right? But I came back and read a post or two I had written on this blog, they weren’t half bad.

    Consider myself a little more encouraged, I shall write more, soon, no pressure 🙂

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    The oceans cannot absorb infinite amounts of CO2

    Byoliveridley

    While North Carolina and most of the South of the US reels under drought like conditions and the local newspaper is filled with all kinds of stories about water shortages, this one sentence, steeped in science-speak has caught the attention of climate scientists and general climate change worriers.

    The third process is indicated by increasing evidence (P =0.89) for a long-term (50-year) increase in the airborne fraction (AF) of CO2 emissions, implying a decline in the efficiency of CO2 sinks on land and oceans in absorbing anthropogenic emissions.

    Huh? What they’re saying is that while increasing CO2 emissions are rightfully blamed for the bulk of global warming, a not insignificant (18% to be precise) percentage can be linked to the fact that the oceans just are not absorbing CO2 at the rate that they used to. The reasons are yet unclear, but the trend can definitely be seen.

    OceanUptake.jpg

    The noise in the data is clear indication that there are many natural factors that greatly influence this uptake. But recent observational studies (not a free paper, look up reference 2, so I won’t link to it) in the North Atlantic are backing up this trend.

    The reasons could be as simple as decreasing solubility with increasing temperature, or with increasing ocean acidity, who knows. But it points in the general direction of our climate models being in danger of underestimating climate change effects.

    What does this mean for climate research? Well, there was a really interesting paper out in Science today (Reference 3, not free!) talking about the uncertainties in climate change estimates. The best guess (95% confidence interval) is between 2 and 4.5 degrees Celsius rise in temperature with doubling of CO2 levels in the atmosphere. But the probability graph around this estimate is not symmetrical, it has a long tail towards the right (>4.5 degrees). The paper discusses why this uncertainty is not related to model limitations, but is an inherent feature of the way climate change processes work, through non-linear feedbacks and multiplying processes.

    What these observations tell us is that uncertainty in climate estimates is not a bug, it’s a feature and will never go away. Also, all the uncertainty is on the wrong side, meaning we’re always in danger of underestimating climate change. There goes one more excuse for not tackling climate change with all the urgency it deserves.

    We will never predict how bad it will be, we only know it will be pretty bad, possibly worse.

    1) Contributions to accelerating atmospheric CO2 growth from economic activity, carbon intensity, and efficiency of natural sinks — Canadell et al., 10.1073/pnas.0702737104 — Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

    2) Schuster, U., and A. J. Watson (2007), A variable and decreasing sink for atmospheric CO2 in the North Atlantic, J. Geophys. Res., doi:10.1029/2006JC003941, in press.

    3) Gerard H. Roe and Marcia B. Baker (26 October 2007) Why Is Climate Sensitivity So Unpredictable?Science 318 (5850), 629. [DOI: 10.1126/science.1144735]

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    India's Environmental Portal

    Byoliveridley

    Home | India Environment Portal

    This is a very useful undertaking by the Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) to gather up a lot of technical information about India’s environmental research and activism.

    They have a small multimedia section as well and I found this movie, appropriately titled Faecal Attraction to be an informative watch…

    [youtube=’http://in.youtube.com/watch?v=bUlkOLLa31s’]

  • Gapminder -Visualize Global Development Data

    Byoliveridley

    I must have been living in a cave somewhere to not have heard of this before today.

    The Gapminder World 2006, beta

    Gapminder is a non-profit venture that develops information technology for provision of free statistics in new visual and animated ways. In short, it enables you to make sense of the world by having fun with statistics. Our method is to turn boring data into enjoyable interactive animations using Flash technology. Gapminder is a Foundation in Stockholm, Sweden. Funding has been mainly by grants from Swedish International Development co-operation Agency, Sida. In collaboration with United Nations Statistic Division we promote free access to searchable public data and our animations of different types of data are freely available at www.gapminder.org.

    The Pros
    You have to take it for a test drive to see how cool it is, especially the animations to see how parameters like life expectancy, population, etc. change over time. You can pick countries to compare, or just scatter plot everyone. Look at Botswana’s life expectancy, for instance, see it peak in 1987 at 65 years and start a steep  plummet to 35 years in 2004 as its AIDS mass murder (epidemic is a word that does do this one justice) took hold. To watch the dot for life expectancy drop that quickly as you animate it is pretty powerful, as powerful as a statistic can be. Each parameter you change also changes the URL, so you can send links easily.

    The Cons
    You have to plot something against something else. Not everything is a scatter plot between two variables, you use it long enough, and you start seeing correlations (=causations!) where none exist. There’s no way to extract plots to use for later, though I guess you can do a screen capture.

    Regardless, very cool, and nothing beats free access to large amounts of data that previously needed specialists to visualize and make sense of.

  • New Device could make internal combustion 15-20% more efficient

    Byoliveridley

    Improving engine efficiency and reducing pollutant emissions are extremely important. Here, we report our fuel injection technology based on the new physics principle that proper application of electrorheology can reduce the viscosity of petroleum fuels. A small device is thus introduced just before the fuel injection for the engine, producing a strong electric field to reduce the fuel viscosity, resulting in much smaller fuel droplets in atomization. Because combustion starts at the droplet surface, smaller droplets lead to cleaner and more efficient combustion. Both laboratory tests and road tests confirm our theory and indicate that such a device improves fuel mileage significantly. The technology is expected to have broad applications, applicable to current internal combustion engines and future engines as well.

    Electrorheology Leads to Efficient Combustion.

    According to the press release, this is a very simple device. It has one small advantage over the usual snake oil, it is academic research and has been peer reviewed.

    Good stuff, hope this is an easy after market addition to any vehicle with fuel injection. However, the press release also notes that the prototype is being developed for diesel engines only, and that the research was based mainly on diesel, wonder why…

  • Tar Sands a Risky Bet for Investors

    Byoliveridley

    Long-term, the story is the same, if not worse, for investors. A new report released by Innovest Strategic Value Advisors says that even with a recovery in oil prices, tar sands projects will not be economically viable. It's an analysis that has left investors surprised and perplexed, according to Yulia Reuter, author of the report, who presented it last week at the annual Riskmetrics Canadian Proxy Season Briefing in Toronto.

    Solve Climate

    The idiocy of burning large amounts of clean natural gas to make large amounts of dirty oil in a way that leads to terrible water pollution, air pollution and habitat destruction simply blows the mind.