UKERC - Carbon Capture & Storage: Sustainability in the UK energy mix

I attended this one day meeting which focused, from the UK perspective, on the possibiltiies of geological storage of carbon di-oxide (CO2). It was sponsored by the UKERC Meeting Place, held at the University of Edinburgh, and broughtt together people from industry, finance, legal, and academic worlds.

The consensus of the meething was overwhelming--that being that is possible, practical, and economic to use geological carbon storage to mitigate the risk of relesing CO2 to the atmosphere. CO2 is a greenhouse gas which could lead to global warming.

While storing CO2 surely *can* be done, what's not clear to me is if it *should* be done compared to alternatives. It seems a short term prophylactic solution. I also wonder about the unintended consequences and as yet unknown risks.

The presentation by Dr. Carol Turlye, Plymouth Marine Laboratory, was downright scary. She spoke on the observed effects on CO2 increases in the world's oceans. The oceans' acid content is measurably changes, and it's cause is reliably thought to be increased CO2 in the atmosphere. See the paper published at the above link (along with all the other papers).

Update: Just noticed this article on Scientific American's web site which clearly explains the affect of CO2 on global warming. See Scientific American: If carbon dioxide makes up only a minute portion of the atmosphere, how can global warming be traced to it? And how can such a tiny amount of change produce such large effects?

ASCII Art

Back in the dark ages of computing, when you had to keypunch your program into cards, stand in line at the input desk to hand over your creation to the bored college student who then fed them into the card reader (and you hoped he/she didn't drop your cards), and then you waited ... and waited ... and waited for your output.

In between pouring over the FORTRAN code which computed something technical for some course, a popular past-time for some was creating ASCII art. ASCII art is creative use of the text to create an image, e.g.

O
---
| | |
|
_/ \_


I didn't have the artistic ability to create it, but I did appreciate the achievement.

I've run across a site which presents the entire first episode of Star Wars as a ASCII Art Movie. Impressive creativity. Telnet to towel.blinkenlights.nl and watch.

Rogue Giants at Sea - New York Times

Rogue Giants at Sea - New York Times

I'm amused this now being "discovered". Not only have I personally observed at least "rouge" wave (amongst many very big ones), we also demonstrated the mathematics and probabilities of them in the late 1970's. Only thing is we didn't publish for some silly reason.

The wave in question was while aboard the "Shanghai Trader" in the middle of the South China Sea. I was working in the oil industry at the time and I was a young engineer leading a marine and site survey near an island where there was potential for building a marine terminal. We had to sail to a rig in the a few hundred miles away to pick up some equipment. While underway, we passed through a storm. Very uncomfortable. Every so often a "big" wave would appear. Bigger than the rest. That day cured me. To this day I avoid going on ships into the open sea.

The open ocean is composed of a mixture of waves with different fequencies and amplitudes. They add together to form the pattern of waves that one sees. You can do spectrum analysis of the wave forms to find the different components.

When the spectrum is highly "peaked", e.g. wave energy is focused at a few frequencies with high amplitude, the waves with slightly different frequencies interact to form a very long wave (low frequency) and high amplitude. Actually, it causes a "group" of ways to move this way. We called it "wave grouping". It's this wave caused by the interaction which moves along and appears to a stationary observer (e.g. on a boat) to happen less frequently than the "normal" waves. These waves are bigger than normal, and they move in "packs".

The mathematics of adding waves like this is learned in high school, I think, when one adds together in time two sine waves of slightly different freqency. A more advanced topic would be the Fast Fourier Transforms (FFT) of the wave time series to compute their spectrum, and from the spectrum synthesise a time series. Doing this synthesis for lots of waves of different amplitude frequency can simulate the actual sea surface.

I think I'll challenge my son to try to work this all out as an excercise. He's bored this summer and needs a little mental stimulation.

What is ABC News Thinking?

ABC News is asking members of the public to notice and report how their daily lives have been affected by global warming. Heck ... scientists with sophisticated instruments, expeditions, computers, and journals have a hard time agreeing on what they notice.

ABC News wants to hear from you. We're currently producing a report on the increasing changes in our physical environment, and are looking for interesting examples of people coping with the differences in their daily lives. Has your life been directly affected by global warming?

We want to hear your stories. Have you seen changes in your own backyard or hometown? The differences can be large or small — altered blooming schedules, unusual animals that have arrived in your community, higher water levels encroaching on your property.

Please fill out the form below. We hope to hear from you. Thank you.

I'll give ABC News benefit of the doubt and call this "wisdom of the crowds" or something. Will be interesting to see where this goes.

BREITBART.COM - China Builds 51 Dams to Slow Toxic Spill

BREITBART.COM - China Builds 51 Dams to Slow Toxic Spill

Chinese authorities tried to slow the spread of a toxic spill by building 51 makeshift dams along the tainted river and using fire trucks to pump out polluted water before it reaches a reservoir serving a city of 10 million people, state media said Friday.

Poor design by incompetent designers and company executives?

BBC NEWS | | Urbanisation

BBC NEWS | | Urbanisation

What a terrific data visualisation! Shows the growth of "super cities" (urban areas) from 1955 through forcast 2015. If one were looking for causes of global warming and other environmental issues, one wouldn't be too far the root cause than seeing the evidence here.

Bill Gates

The whole world by now has heard that Bill Gates is stepping down, essentially now. He will be focusing his energy now on doing good things for the world with his money. The world will be much better for this. I do hope he is more successful in changing the world in his new way, than his success in changing the world with his technology.

I spoke with Bill Gates at Microsoft one time, in early 1983. I can only assume it was *the* Bill Gates. I was phoning them from UK for help with their CPM board for the Apple II we were using do to project planning. dBase was the software. Notes on those support calls are written in the DayTimer notes from that error that I still have on my bookshelves, for some strang reason.

flashflood.swf (application/x-shockwave-flash Object)

flashflood.swf (application/x-shockwave-flash Object)

This is a graphic view of the timeline of the flooding of New Orleans caused by Hurricane Katrina in 2005. It demonstrates the inevitablility of flooding caused intially by the pile-up of water in the "funnel" to the east of the city, followed by the "filling" of Lake Pontchartrain with sea water which then needed to flow back to the sea via the city of New Orleans.

Linux.com | A parent's guide to Linux Web filtering

Linux.com | A parent's guide to Linux Web filtering

Excellent summary of how to configure safe internet browsing for the home based on Linux server, DansGuardian, and Squid.

pink_adicolor_large.mov (video/quicktime Object)

pink_adicolor_large.mov (video/quicktime Object)

My son found this "confusing". I found it amazing and creative. And try to get that song out of your head.

Ethanol: Myths and Realities

Ethanol: Myths and Realities

What Business Week fails to mention is the high energy cost of making the fertilizer required to produce the corn. THe fertilizer comes primarily from natural gas, which of course is a non-renewable energy source. Further, too much nitrogen is being used. It runs off and kills streams, rivers, lakes, and the ocean ...

This is a Saudi textbook. (After the intolerance was removed.)

This is a Saudi textbook. (After the intolerance was removed.)

Saudi Arabia must change.

The Edinburgh Festivals are on their way � The Edinburgh Blog

The Edinburgh Festivals are on their way � The Edinburgh Blog

Nice summary of upcoming events in Edinburgh. A great reminder why Edinburgh is such a great city to call home.

Excel User Tip: Creating a database table from a summary table

Excel User Tip: Creating a database table from a summary table

When Microsoft first included Pivot Tables in Microsoft Excel (early 1990's as I recall), it took me a little bit of time to get my head around what they were and what they were good for. Once in head, I recognised how powerful they are.

The next step was to be able to do "reverse Pivot Tables" on data presented in summary Pivot Table format. That seemed impossible without doing coding in VBA or something.

This web site explains how to do it from with Excel without coding. First time I ever saw this. Perhaps this capabilty included in Excel when Pivot Tables entered into Excel. I don't know. But this is good stuff.

Foreign Policy: The List: The Five Top Global Choke Points

Foreign Policy: The List: The Five Top Global Choke Points

I like thinking about world-class risk analysis and management processes. It doesn't get any more world-class than considering these.