Category Archives: Environment

In This Corner…

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Climate Skeptics v. Climate Deniers

Excellent discussion of the difference between a global warming skeptic and a denier. I don’t think the author misses anything.

Alas, a much larger number use the term “skeptic” as a re-labeling trick, while wallowing in the standard narratives of distraction and delay, exhibiting patterns described in Michael Shermer’s Why People Believe Weird Things and Carl Sagan’s The Demon-Haunted World. Only now, as more recently related in Chris Mooney’s The Republican War on Science and in Denialism, by Michael Specter, the trend toward dismissal of science has gone into overdrive, propelled by forces that are intensely political.

So here is the problem: What discrete characteristics distinguish a rational, pro-science “climate skeptic” who has honest questions about the AGW consensus from members of a Denialist Movement that portrays all members of a scientific community as either fools or conspirators?

And if you want to know a few of the shadowy ones behind the deniers, there’s a story in the New Yorker: Covert Operations

Tripping Down the Streets of the City

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New “Wind Lens” Turbine Magnifies Wind For Increased Power, Reduced Noise

There are a number of stories about this, and for most of them the technical explanation starts and ends with “The structure works similarly to a magnifying glass that intensifies light from the sun — except in this case, the lens intensifies wind flow” or something similar. Which is really frustrating. This story doesn’t, and even provides a link to the university web site, so perhaps we can glean additional information from that.

OK, it looks like this “lens” is a venturi of sorts. I’m neither a fluid mechanic nor an aeronautical engineer; I imagine the compressibility of the air makes this a little different for air than for water. But when you restrict the area of flow, the speed increases. Put another way, by funneling/focusing you increase the energy density of the air, so more energy is present within the area of the turbine and you can extract more energy without making the blades bigger. That much I get. I’m not sure if this accounts for all of the increased efficiency or if there are other effects as well, like improved efficiency by generally having higher speeds. It certainly doesn’t look like you are tripling the capture area from the pictures.

The stories tout this as being great, but I notice that the turbines are ~1 kW, as opposed to commercial turbines which are MW-ish beasts, and the researchers do not say how far this effect will scale up, and in fact caution that it will not. The bits about how these might be less objectionable on aesthetic grounds don’t sway me — there’s no justification that these will look pretty to those who disapprove of regular turbines. So I’m not seeing these as “farms” and >100 m diameters would seem to exclude them as being put up in your yard.

Cranking Up the Blamethrower

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LEDs not neccesarily eco-friendly

If, by “LED” one means “people.”

While the potential for cheaper energy could increase the quality of life for billions around the globe, it also could mean an increase in energy usage. Tsao says that since the 16th century, with each revolution in lighting technology humans have used more light, instead of using the same amount of light for cheaper.

“Over the past three centuries… the world has spent about 0.72 percent of the world’s per capita gross domestic product on artificial lighting,” said Tsao. “This is so for England in 1700, in the underdeveloped world not on the grid and in the developed world using the most advanced lighting technologies. There may be little reason to expect a different future response from our species.”

So let’s blame the LEDs for human nature and the law of supply and demand.

Aaaayyyy! Fonzie Weighs in on Global Warming

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Installing cool roofs.

Global Model Confirms: Cool Roofs Can Offset Carbon Dioxide Emissions and Mitigate Global Warming

Because white roofs reflect far more of the sun’s heat than black ones, buildings with white roofs will stay cooler. If the building is air conditioned, less air conditioning will be required, thus saving energy. Even if there is no air conditioning, the heat absorbed by a black roof both heats the space below, making the space less comfortable, and is also carried into the city air by wind—raising the ambient temperature in what is known as the urban heat island effect. Additionally, there’s a third, less familiar way in which a black roof heats the world: it radiates energy directly into the atmosphere, which is then absorbed by the nearest clouds and ends up trapped by the greenhouse effect, contributing to global warming.

Potato Chips vs Clean Energy Technology

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Gates, venture capitalist Doerr issue warning about America’s future

Of the top 30 new energy technology companies worldwide that produce batteries, solar technologies and advanced wind energy, only four are headquartered in the United States, Doerr said.

“It’s very sad that Americans spend more on potato chips than we do on investment in clean energy R&D,” said Doerr.

Gates said more federal research spending is needed to spur investment in clean technologies. “The incentives aren’t there to make it happen,” said Gates.

Who's Got the Juice?

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Compare the population density of the world, with the nighttime image, which should be some kind of proxy of electric power availability.

In most places, there is a reasonable correlation with high population density giving you bright lights. In some places, like the US, even low population density is noticeably lit up. Now take a peek at Nepal and Bangladesh, just above India. That’s scary to me; all those people living in close proximity without access to modern “conveniences.” Scary in a different way is central China, because one might suspect that electrification is going to be expanding there soon, with all the implications to carbon being dumped into the atmosphere.

Where Are They Now?

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I know that weather is not climate, so the recent record-breaking highs around northern Virginia are not evidence of warming, but that is of little consolation. My apartment hasn’t been below 80 ºF since Monday or Tuesday and since I am thermodynamically efficient due to size, shape and r-value (though those are not all orthogonal variables), I don’t deal with the heat particularly well. I welcome the front that’s scheduled to move in shortly (Thursday night).

However, I can’t help but notice that all those folks who were proclaiming the death of global warming just two months ago, because we got some snow (in February!), have been silent on the whole matter now that it’s swelteringly hot out there. Just sayin’.

Taking the Wrong Root

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The root of the climate email fiasco

When I read that, I was struck by the gulf between our worlds. To those of us who clamoured for freedom of information laws in Britain, FoI requests are almost sacred. The passing of these laws was a rare democratic victory; they’re among the few means we possess of ensuring that politicians and public servants are answerable to the public. What scientists might regard as trivial and annoying, journalists and democracy campaigners see as central and irreducible. We speak in different tongues and inhabit different worlds.

I know how it happens. Like most people with a science degree, I left university with a store of recondite knowledge that I could share with almost no one. Ill-equipped to understand any subject but my own, I felt cut off from the rest of the planet. The temptation to retreat into a safe place was almost irresistible. Only the extreme specialisation demanded by a PhD, which would have walled me in like an anchorite, dissuaded me.

I have to disagree with this. I don’t think that scientists see sharing of information as trivial and annoying. I think scientists see bureaucracy as trivial and annoying. Anything that stands in the way of doing science is usually seen as trivial and annoying. Training seminars, miscellaneous paperwork, silly and ineffectual rules imposed by the administration, IT, procurement, etc. are seen as trivial and annoying. The fun part of a scientist’s job is the science. We put up with crap, which can comprise the majority of our time, for the benefit of the time spent doing the science. Sharing data with a collaborator? Sure. Sharing data with someone will sift through it in an effort to cherry-pick some bit so that they can come to the opposite conclusion of what the data really say? IOW, somebody not doing science? I fully appreciate the resentment on the imposition of time and effort one might feel. I don’t condone efforts to break the law, but running it by the administration to see if it can be excluded as invalid, or any other loophole? I understand that tactic.

I also disagree with the sentiment that a science degree (and an undergraduate one at that) leaves one “Ill-equipped to understand any subject but my own.” If a science- or technology-related degree leaves you ill-equipped to understand a different science discipline, dear god, where does that leave someone who majors in the humanities or social sciences? I just don’t see that as being the case. What I do see is that some people are ignorant of science and proud of it, and others who want to be spoon-fed the science and aren’t willing to put forth any effort to learn the basics, so that we have a common ground for discussion.

Monbiot discusses the closed world of science, and how “There are no rewards for agreeing with your colleagues, tremendous incentives to prove them wrong.” This is absolutely true, and yet anyone familiar with political controversy over scientific issues knows that this is a message not getting out to the masses, so I’m not sure what the point is. Conspiracy and groupthink accusations abound in the global warming arena, and in almost all areas of science where there is dissent. Since there are basically no areas of science free of dissenters, dissent is not evidence of error. Consensus is the norm, unlike what the anti-AGW camp would have you believe.

Where I do agree with Monbiot is that getting the word out could see improvement; scientists could do a better job of engaging and explaining things to the public. This might be a tough sell, because it’s time away from doing science, and most scientists aren’t trained to do it. Gee, if only we had people who were trained in communication skills who could take the baton. But many journalists aren’t up to the task, because they lack the science skill set the scientists have, often don’t check to see that they are correct, or they want to present “both sides” of a story that doesn’t really have two sides; they end up giving credibility to positions that lack scientific merit.

Then comes the shot at higher education. It’s the schools’ fault. There may be some merit to that, when schools teach facts at the expense of the process of thinking. Given the title of the piece, I thought there would be more discussion on this.

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Even if we could fix these problems, the cynic in me (he was delicious) asks, “to what end?” The reason I know that better communication and education of the public isn’t really the holy grail is that we have examples of this already. People have known for decades that smoking is bad for you, and yet people still smoke. Ditto for eating junk food. There are behaviors that are driven by something other than the logic of one’s well-being a few decades off in the future. I want a smoke or some cheese fries. Doctors — eh, what do they know? Statistics about what might happen later on are too much of an abstraction. Driving cars and cranking up the air conditioning on a hot day are what we want now, so it’s too easy to justify a dismissal of science, if one is offered to us. Even if it’s a lie or a rationalization. Most of the opponents of scientific endeavors aren’t going to be swayed by information — the facts. You can’t use logic and reason to dissuade someone who arrived at their position via emotional or ideological means.