Continuing my vehicular series . . .
the flying car from the MIT-grown geniuses at Terrafugia . . .
Maybe the deeper meaning here is that I want to get away from it all?
Technorati Tags: flying car, drivable airplane, Terrafugia
reality has a well known depressing bent just now.
Via the BBC, I noticed this article in Nature Geoscience by Zeebe & Caldeira.
They’ve absolutely nailed down a carbon cycle some mouthbreathers were hoping didn’t explain much. Volcanoes spew vast quantities of greenhouse gases into the air, so their thinking — the mouthbreathers’ thinking, not the volcanoes — was that greenhouse gases are natural and couldn’t possibly be a problem. Mother Nature would take care of everything. Thus it ever was. Thus it ever shall be. (No, I’m not being fair to the scientists, as opposed to the politicians, who held the contrarian point of view. It’s way more complicated than that. But it’s still just as wrong.)
The evidence pointed toward a cycle in which the atmospheric carbon is eventually fixated into rocks. Corals, for instance, fix CO2 when they form calcium carbonate which makes limestone. Sedimentary rocks trap carbonates as they pile up. (That’s what the BBC means when they write that carbon is “removed from the air by rock weathering,” which, as written, doesn’t make any sense.) Then, by the processes of tectonic movement, the rock containing all that carbon moves toward subduction zones and is eventually forced down under the crust. The volatiles in those rocks, including some containing carbon, rise and force their way up through the volcanoes that run with the subduction zones.
If you’re sitting there thinking, “But, my God, that’s got to take nonillions of years!” that’s exactly the point. It takes over a hundred million years for the whole cycle, and during all that time the carbon is not in the atmosphere and not greenhousing.
So far, so good. We’ve known about this (well, some of us have known about this) for decades. The shocking thing to me about their research was the data on how much long term variation in atmospheric carbon there has been. This is data from ice cores. This is not a guess, or a pessimistic estimate, or a liberal fantasy to make the Republicans look bad. This is data.
The mean long term variation in atmospheric carbon has been 22 parts per million. Individual measurements have varied more than that, but overall, for the last 610,000 years, that’s been the variation.
Except for the last 200 years. We’ve already upped the concentration by 100 ppm. We’re going to increase it by another couple of hundred before we have any chance of stopping it. The big argument is whether we need to bother stopping it then, or whether another few hundred on top of that will really make any difference. Why ding the GDP a percentage point or two when there’s no need?
The mind boggles.
Twenty two parts per million has been the extent of the real variation for longer than modern humans have existed. But some of us can’t figure out that shoveling on way, way more than that will have any impact.
I hereby rename our species Homo stupidens.
Technorati Tags: global warming, climate change
Your Blogscientist is depressed. It may be necessary to take what I say with some salt, or sugar, or something. What brought this on is a longish article I read on zfacts.com, Peak Oil or Liquid Coal?
I was always under the general impression that oil ruled because, with all the subsidies it gets, it’s the cheapest and most convenient fuel around. Numbers periodically floated out saying that solar would be competitive at $70 per barrel oil, or $100, or some astronomical sum. Well, we’re there. Any day now, I figured, people would wake up from their mass hypnosis and realize that everybody except Big Oil wins when we start moving to solar and conservation.
Then I saw this on zfacts:
[Coal gasification] could produce gasoline for the equivalent of about $55 per barrel of oil. This has not yet happened because investors are afraid the price of oil will fall back below $55 as soon as they build a coal-to-gasoline plant.
Fifty-five dollars? Sure, that means current subsidies have to stay in place, but how much do you want to bet they will if it gives people a chance at $55 barrel oil? Also, Big Oil wins, which is way more important than everybody winning.
So now I’m convinced that too many people will race to hell down a path made of coal gas. They’ll do it as soon as the reality of peak oil penetrates through their ivory skulls and into that air space they use for brains. Once coal-to-gas infrastructure starts being built, we’ll have another whole wall of vested interests blocking off a real solution. And who cares if the planet fries? That’s tomorrow. … Until it’s today. And then we’ll have disasters to worry about. Namby-pamby hippy stuff like solar energy won’t even be on the map.
When has a crowd of people ever done anything different when they could do the same old thing at the same–or less–cost?
So I say we’re doomed.
Barbara Kingsolver in Pigs in Heaven tells a Mayan story about hell and heaven that summarizes what bothers me about the talk of racism and sexism running through this political season.
A group of people sits around a large bowl of soup, but they can’t eat it. The only spoons they can use are magical ones with immensely long handles that can’t be touched anywhere except at the very end. The people try every possible contortion to empty the soup into their mouths, but the handles are just too long. All they accomplish is to spill soup everywhere and slowly starve to death, tantalized by the aroma.
There is also another group of people with the same bowl and the same spoons. But these people are well fed and happy. They’re not even trying to feed themselves. They use the long-handled spoons to feed each other.
Barack doesn’t need to address racism, first and foremost. He’s not a racist, and he’s not the one who needs to change to cure the condition. In this election, whites (of any sex) are the ones who need to understand racism. Hillary shouldn’t be the one addressing sexism. She’s not a sexist, and she’s not the one causing the problem. Men (of any color) are the ones who should be worrying about sexism.
Instead, we’re fighting for ourselves instead of each other. The sad thing is we don’t have any alternative. Once one person starts, everyone else can either settle for being a second priority, or make the mess worse by also fighting for themselves. Once it starts, there are no good choices. That’s got to be the essence of hell.
Technorati Tags: Obama, Clinton, election, racism, sexism, politics, current events
I am not big on chores. You could say I’m microscopic on them. So when I see something like this
my attitude is pretty much to find something else to look at. I mean, actually cleaning out the gutters just because there’s whole plants growing in them …. I wouldn’t want to do anything overhasty. But life goes on, even in Southern California where it never rains, and sooner or later something happens.
So one day when I’m sitting in the garden, looking at other things besides the gutter, I hear a whirring noise above my head.
It’s nesting season for the hummingbirds, and suddenly as far as I’m concerned sow’s thistles can grow wherever they want.
Which brings me to the moral of this story. Don’t do your chores. Avoiding them works much better.
I’m off to Anza Borrego for the weekend to gawp at wildflowers.
Technorati Tags: hummingbirds, nesting
I’ve decided Joel Stein said something interesting. No, wait, hear me out. The LA Times’ so-called standup comedian in print may have so little depth that you wouldn’t get your feet wet if you walked through his soul in flipflops, but as a card-carrying jerk he can give us a chance to understand the mindset.
At first I just laughed. It didn’t seem blogworthy. But it continues to make me chuckle quietly to myself, so I thought I’d share it with you.
On March 14th, Mr. J. commented on the Spitzer fiasco. He did this by calling a high-end LA escort to find out what goes on. The very first thing he points out in the article is that he, Mr. J., doesn’t need to buy it.
The roughly $1,000 an hour that Spitzer paid for … was not … to guarantee secrecy. … And the exorbitant rate wasn’t a premium for weird or talented sex. … What Spitzer was really buying, she said, was [that] Emperors’ Club VIP … makes you feel very emperor-y.“It’s like a five-star hotel,” she said. “If you call someone from the Yellow Pages, it’s very businesslike. It’s not a ‘girlfriend experience.’ ”
Men, she explained, don’t just want sex. They want a girlfriend experience. Or at least the part of the girlfriend experience in which she pretends to be fascinated while you talk about yourself. So more like a first-date experience.
The thing that’s funny is if they were talking about women they’d say, “Women want love.” Can’t say that about men, though. Not allowed. It has to be about sex. And, obviously, if you can’t even admit what you want, there’s no way to get it.
That’s the other thing that struck me as funny: That Joel Stein should be the one providing proof of what Portly Dyke) and I) and others have been saying forever: men are damaged by sexism at least as much as women.
I have a hard time even writing about the news from Tibet. To many people in the US it’s some faraway place which is the pet project of a few effete actors. It is way more than that. It is unique in the world, but not because it’s beautiful. Most of the planet is beautiful. It’s culturally extraordinary, but that’s not unique either. Tibet has become a test for the world because of who the rest of the world is.
I’ll begin at the beginning. My own interest in Tibet began years ago. I majored in ethnobotany as an undergrad. (Yes, I know. Weird. It was known as a “Special Concentration.”) My senior thesis was on the Tibetan pharmacopoeia, and I chose that country because it’s medicines and practitioners had a legendary reputation in Asia. That’s saying something, considering that the competition is China and Indian Ayurveda. And yet, unlike its huge neighbors, very little was known about which plants were actually used. I set off to identify as many as I could. Read more »
I’m glad Mustang Bobby reads Bloody Woolly Kristol so I don’t have to. But I can just feel a progressive meme building, and that bothers me.
It goes like this. “Some wingnut thinks A. Therefore A is not true.”
The logic nerd hat envelops me like the Sorting Hat at Hogwarts. Just because a wingnut — Rove for instance — says something does not make it true. The opposite also holds. Just because some wingnut — Kristol for instance — says something does not make it false.
Progressives have been falling into the second fallacy a lot. Wingers make a big deal out of the Middle Eastern mistreatment of women, so it must not be a real problem. (The truthful take would be to agree regarding mistreatment, but to point out that their racist hypocrisy bulges out because that’s the only sexism they ever worry about.) Progressives ridiculed worries about the SPP. As far as I can tell by following Chet Scoville’s links, the SPP had to be okay because the anti-immigrant hysterics didn’t like it. (Again, the truthful take would be to point out the real problems with both the SPP and the anti-immigrant hysteria.) Now it could be Obama’s turn. There must not be anything wrong with him because Kristol says there is.
Yes, Kristol is a whiny little wannabe. But the evidence about Obama is not good. He makes beautiful stirring speeches, and motivating people is an important function of leadership. But what he’s done is work with the coal industry for liquefied coal fuel subsidies, help the insurance industry gut Illinois’ universal health care attempt, used one vote out of dozens to pretend there is a big difference between him and Clinton on Iraq, and so on through a near-endless list. (Actually, maybe there is a big difference between him and Clinton on wars of aggression. I’ve never heard her making off-the-cuff remarks about bombing Pakistan.)
So, sadly, there’s an element of truth to Kristol’s nonsense. Obama is making a lot more out of himself than he should. That’s like saying he’s a politician. The only real thing Kristol punctures is the desire to believe that seems to motivate many Obama fans. No, Obama is not a big change. Yes, he’s a right-of-center Illinois pol. So what? If you feel he’s a better choice than the other pols, then you vote for him. But he is a pol. We’re supposed to be the reality-based community, so let’s face that.
Crossposted to Shakesville, where commentary is accumulating….
SurveyUSA poll of Mar 6: Clinton wins against McCain, 276 electoral college votes to 262. (Map below modified from NYTimes report on 2004 election results. Clinton: blues. McCain: reds.) Survey-USA has the best track record this election season of predicting primary results.
One thing that struck me about this is that Obama did well in a number of states which are unlikely to vote Democratic in the general election. Clinton did well in states that have the electoral college votes to win the election. She also has some chance of putting Texas in the Dem column, although I’d consider that a long shot.
But by far the biggest thing that struck me about it is that Clinton and Obama are both more or less even with McCain. It’s mindboggling that so many still want to vote for the anti-people party, but that’s not my point right now. Nor is currently significant whether they’re ten electoral college votes ahead or behind. What’s important is that Obama is in that position after kid gloves treatment in the media. It’s been so over the top, it even made it to Saturday Night Live. Clinton is still beating McCain after a hate-fest.
The BS about how “Hillary can’t win” could have come straight from Rove’s playbook. Attack people on their strengths, and destroy your biggest opponent first. (Notice that they started with Edwards.)
(Click here for larger image. Opens in new window)
—————————————————————————————————
teal: over 10% difference in favor of Clinton, Dem primaries in these states won by Clinton
turquoise: up to 10% difference in favor of Clinton
turquoise: primary won by Clinton (except PA)
bluish: primary won by Obama
PA primary not held yet, polls C:55% O: 36%, in Dem column in survey
WV primary not held yet, in Dem column in survey.
—————————————————————————————————
dark red: over 10% difference in favor of McCain
dark purple: Dem primaries won by Obama
only AZ in this category won by Clinton
lighter red: up to 10% difference in favor of McCain
purplish: Dem primaries won by Obama
grayish red with turquoise square: Dem primaries won by Clinton
grayish red (MT, NE, SD, IN, NC, KY, OR): primaries not held yet
—————————————————————————————————-
ochre: states perfectly tied in the poll. Dem primaries in these states won by Clinton.
—————————————————————————————————-
Crossposted to Shakesville, where there was much commentary….
This is one of those feel-good stories that just lights up my day. (It’s night here, but you know what I mean.)
NZ dolphin rescues beached whales.
… The pygmy sperm whales had repeatedly beached, and both they and the humans were tired and set to give up, he said.
But then the dolphin appeared, communicated with the whales, and led them to safety.
The bottlenose dolphin, called Moko by local residents, is well known for playing with swimmers off Mahia beach on the east coast of the North Island. …
Technorati Tags: dolphins, whales, interspecies, communication
The Second Law, that is. This should not be possible unless you add energy to the system. For instance, if there were a giant fan in Los Angeles, blowing their so-called air out to sea.
But there is no giant fan.
I saw this while hiking northwest of LA, and it’s not the first time I’ve seen it. This is what the plume of LA pollution normally does. It’s not a matter of ground and upper level winds either. The pollution is near ground level and so was I, going from sea level to about a thousand feet up a coastal mountain.
How does dirty air move out into the ocean against the wind? How? This is really bothering me. If anyone knows how this happens, tell me!
Update: a commenter on this post at Shakesville suggests what I think may be the answer:
OK, maybe…
The polluted air is denser and lies along the ground. Ground drag doesn’t allow it to move as readily as the cleaner, eastbound air above, which thus moves across the top of the smog bank and, being cooler, sinks, displacing the polluted air, which moves west because it is blocked by the coastal mountain range to the east.
cory | 03.11.08
Technorati Tags: pollution, inversion, convection, Los Angeles
I can’t say I’m surprised. I’m mainly wondering why it took 17 years….
From the BBC:
There is evidence linking chronic health problems suffered by Gulf War veterans to exposure to pesticides and nerve agents, US research has found. …These were an anti-nerve gas agent given to troops, pesticides used to control sand-flies, and the nerve-gas sarin that troops may have been exposed to during the demolition of a weapons depot.
“Convergent evidence now strongly links a class of chemicals - acetyl cholinesterase inhibitors - to illness in Gulf War veterans,” Dr [Beatrice] Golomb [the committee’s chief scientist] told Reuters. [Published in my favorite journal: PNAS, but no link yet.]
The real kicker is, of course, “unlike the most recent conflict in Iraq, the ground conflict during the 1991 Gulf War lasted only a few days, she added.” And in those few days, one third, one third, of the soldiers acquired lifelong conditions.
George’s Folly has lasted how long now?
Technorati Tags: gulf war syndrome, chemicals, acetylcholinesterase
There’s so much we don’t know about this third planet from the Sun that living on it is a good practice run for when we find other new worlds.
This just blew me away: (Science via Ars Technica)
[A] team of scientists has taken a closer look at the particulates that cause snow to form, and it seems that most of them are… alive.Ice formation in the troposphere doesn’t tend to happen on its own if the temperatures are higher than -40˚C (coincidentally -40˚F), but biological particulates can catalyze ice formation at higher temperatures by acting as a nucleus.
forming rain or snow [may be] part of the bacterial life cycle; “We think if (the bacteria) couldn’t cause ice to form, they couldn’t get back down to the ground,” Sands said. “As long as it rains, the bacteria grow.”
Sands suggests that changing bacterial populations may affect rainfall; for example, overgrazing during a summer could reduce the bacterial population, resulting in lower raindrop formation.
I’m looking up at the sky, full of unseen clouds of tiny life that I didn’t even know existed. It floats around higher than jets fly just to boldly go where no Pseudomonas has gone before, and changes our climate while it’s at it without us suspecting a thing.
(Did I mention that I’m boggled?)
Technorati Tags: climate change, bacteria, Pseudomonas, ice, nucleation
What’s not to love?
(Via Wired.com)
(Well, to be absolutely honest, I’d still rather have an Aptera….
)
You’ve noticed how the media take out the Democratic candidates, one by one? First Edwards. (Gawd! He gets his hair cut? Who ever heard of such a thing?) Now Clinton. (Such an unfeeling crybaby.) Then Obama. (We really haven’t been fair, have we? We need some balance on Obama. We should really look at his shockingly radical background, shouldn’t we?) Check back in late October, to see whether that last was right.
So I’m depressed. I can’t tell whether I’m seeing the future, or just fearing it. Either way I see McCain, which isn’t easy since the man’s so crooked he can hide behind spiral staircases. (Not my own. Wodehouse.)
Meanwhile, every minute of every day the evidence for getting rid of the rancid Republican greaseballs gets more crushing.
In spring, an old coot’s fancy turns to taxes, so I’ve started looking around for information. And the first thing that clobbers me over the skull is this:
I’m sure making it harder for underpaid teachers to buy school supplies for their underfunded schools will solve the nation’s fiscal problems.
I didn’t even notice when they slipped in these extra cuts, to join the thousands of others.
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Biologist, lifelong denizen of academe, science fiction writer, world-class procrastinator, and proudly lazy.
"What is the difference between a realist and a dreamer? The realist thinks that someday a UFO will come down and hover over the UN building, and that the aliens will come out of the UFO and offer to share their technology and solve all our world's problems.
The dreamer thinks maybe we can get our act together and do it ourselves."
Russian joke [It's a joke?] cited in William K. Hartmann, A Traveler's Guide to Mars.
