Engineering

Found in the Economist's "The World in 2010" magazine:

It’s all very well to recycle, pester your parents about fuel efficiency and aspire to holidays that need no flights. But the best thing a bright young person can do to help rid civilisation of fossil fuels is get an education in engineering.

(Emphasis by me).

You Could be Sued if You Remove Snow from Your Sidewalk

We've had a lot of snow in the UK recently. Well, a lot of snow compared to recent memory in the UK. Normally we get no snow in a winter season.

The problem is made worse because many streets and sidewalks (pavements) are not shovelled clear of snow. This makes the the snow turn to ice and chaos prevails. Yes, I know that the TV and newspapers are full of stories about how the government has failed yet again due to shortages of "grit and salt". But, I've often wondered why we don't just remove the snow instead of relying on "grit an salt".

Now I know. Apparently, if you remove snow and someone then falls on the cleared patch of sidewalk (pavement), you could be sued. Sigh.

Modelling of Lake Erie Water Levels (1870-1970)

During my university days in Civil Engineering, I was interested in hydrology and modelling. I guess this explains my current interest in the debate and science of climate change. I dug out a paper I wrote in 1973 to analyse the the "extraordinary" high-water levels of Lake Erie. My home was near Lake Erie and it was abundantly clear, because of the severe flooding along the lakeshore, that the "environment" around the late was changing. We did not blame anthropogenic global warming (AGW), of course, but as I was required to a project for my Hydrology course (CE 499P) I decided to attempt to model the historical record with the idea being it would be a basis for predictions about the future.

I'm not sure that the idea was sound; but what in retrospect seems to be sound upon re-reading the paper 37 years later:

• We gathered actual environmental data and reviewed the data for relevance
• We published the raw data
• We modeled the time series using current technology (auto correlation, frequency analysis, statistics, etc.)
• It is clear that the environment changes. That's what Nature does.
• We worked very hard to validate the model parameters by confirming that we could model "history". Our view was that unless the model "predicted" historical data, then we had no basis to accept that the model was valid.

We confirmed that we could build a model which accurately "predicts" historical data. I'm not sure now, with the passage of time, that I would feel comfortable using this model for future prediction, however. If I get time and energy I may attack the data with tools now available, e.g. Monte Carlo simulation, more hydrologic/climatic science in the model, etc.

However, I offer the original paper to anyone (especially climate change modellers) who wishes to learn from the approach or use the data.

Yemen's Economy

Yemen is in the news again. Slate's running a short article "Why is Yemen So Poor?".

Bottom line: corruption, no significant agriculture, declining oil revenues (forecast to end in 10 years) being spent on unproductive and destructive activities.

Apple Magic Mouse

I won't normally write here about computer hardware as it's not something I am normally particularly interested in. However, I will make an exception to take note of how terrific the new Apple "Magic Mouse" is. It's wireless and touch sensitive. It's the the best innovation in computer mouse ergometrics since the mouse was invented.

CIA Classified Photos of Environmental Change

The NY Times reports today that the CIA is making available to selected scientists information from spy satellites and other classified sensors.

"... the monitoring effort offered an opportunity to gather environmental data that would otherwise be impossible to obtain, and to do so with the kind of regularity that can reveal the dynamics of environmental change."

Wow. This could prove valuable, especially for measurements of change of Arctic ice.

De Vere Cameron House gouges customers

Every year my wife and two sons take time out just after New Year to treat ourselves at the close of the holiday season, and to celebrate our wedding anniversary. This year we went to the De Vere Cameron House Hotel in Scotland. It's a beautiful hotel on the shores of Loch Lomand and with this year's snow on the ground and surrounding mountains it's gorgeous.

However the Hotel is over-priced and they gouge customers. Beware.

Our rate included Dinner, Bed, and Breakfast. The inclusive dinner rate was that it included £35 for each person and anything above that was for our own account. The dinner items were not priced. Many (most?) of the entrees for dinner for "extra" (between £4 and £20) and desert cost an additional £6.95 each. With a bottle of Sancerre (expensive at £35/bottle, but it was our anniversary) and all the "extras", we ended up spending more than £120 extra for dinner for four. There was also an obligatory 10% Service Charge added on to the dinner--yet the service was extremely slow. They didn't even set the table properly (we had a pepper shaker, but had to ask for salt). More than once we had to ask them to "can we please order?", "can we please move on to the next course?", etc. The people serving the food even had to ask us who ordered what! Why didn't they just know who ordered what!

To top it all off -- at checkout when I presented my MasterCard for payment, they informed that there was a £2.50 surcharge for credit cards. Gosh. That really annoyed me. I reluctantly agreed that they use the credit card as I did not have sufficient cash nor did my debit card account have enough money to cover the bill). I also asked to speak to the manger.

The manager informed me that it was a recent corporate policy by De Vere to charge for credit cards. This policy was recently put in place because "the banks charge us [De Vere] for credit card transactions." I pointed out that the hotel didn't charge me a line item for electricity, property tax, salaries, heating, etc. and I was more than disappointed that the hotel has audacity to feel it is appropriate to pass on costs like this.

They told me they were going to refund the the £2.50 fee. I told them I would write about this experience on my blog. So here it is.

Scratch De Vere hotels from my future business travel plans.

Y2K Bug a Decade Late?

It's taken a decade, but I finally experienced the affect of a bug related to date changes on a computer. I recall with fond memories working in a global coordination role on the so-called Y2K bug which after a few months of work in 1998 we concluded it was pretty much a non-isssue. This forecast was proved right that without doing much nothing really happened in our world-wide corporation that was highly dependant on automated control and information systems.

Well, today my home-based spam detection system failed. Starting yesterday (unknown to me) SpamAssassin, running on our home server, started tagging all incoming mail as "spam". Apparently there is a test in SpamAssassin to check for dates "grossly in the future" and the year 2010 is one of those dates.

As most things are, information on this bug is now available on the internet. My family now happy since the were missing a lot of "happy new year" emails!

Denialism

What a great book: "Denialism" by Michael Specter. The subtitle is "How irrational thinking hinders scientific progress, harms the planet, and threatens our lives."

He focuses on the mistrust of science held by many around the world. For centuries, the general view has been that science was neither good nor bad as it just supplied information and understanding. Now science is viewed by many as a special interest group that doesn't always serve our best interest. He covers, as examples the Vioxx incident, vaccines, organic food fetish, and other topics.

Recommended.

A Beautiful Presentation of the AGW Debate

Just published at "Information is Beautiful". This is absolutely the clearest, cleanest, and simplest explanation of the debate on anthropogenic global warming I have ever seen. It's also beautiful. Recommended.

Tom Friedman Starting to Shift

I enjoy Tom Friedman's articles and books but I don't always agree with his assertions and conclusions. Today, writing in the aftermath of the recent Copenhagen conference, he's starting to re-think reasons why the world needs to move on.

Even if the world never warms another degree, population is projected to rise from 6.7 billion to 9 billion between now and 2050, and more and more of those people will want to live like Americans. In this world, demand for clean power and energy efficient cars and buildings will go through the roof.

We need more, not less, energy.

Scottish Oil Club in the Blogsphere

While I would hardly characterise the membership of the Scottish Oil Club (of which I am the Executive Secretary) as "oil men", we do appreciate the mention on Andrew Montford's Bishop Hill Web Site.

"Breaking the Law of Averages"

I'm doing some reading to remind myself how probability and statistics works. The last time I did this in earnest was in graduate school where I took an awful course on "Probability" which was full of equations I frankly never got my head around. I barely got through the experience.

Therefore, it was with serendipity that via my readings on climate change number crunching I came across the book "Breaking the Laws of Averages" by Dr. William M. Briggs. The subtitle is "Real-Life Probability and Statistics in Plain English". Indeed it is. Recommended.

"Madness of Crowds"

Martin Cohen provides a fascinating perspective (bold marks are mine):

Is belief in global-warming science another example of the "madness of crowds"? That strange but powerful social phenomenon, first described by Charles Mackay in 1841, turns a widely shared prejudice into an irresistible "authority". Could it indeed represent the final triumph of irrationality? After all, how rational is it to pass laws banning one kind of light bulb (and insisting on their replacement by ones filled with poisonous mercury vapour) in order to "save electricity", while ploughing money into schemes to run cars on ... electricity? How rational is it to pay the Russians once for fossil fuels, and a second time for permission (via carbon credits) to burn them (see box page 36)? And how rational is it to suppose that the effects of increased CO2 in the atmosphere take between 200 and 1,000 years to be felt, but that solutions can take effect almost instantaneously?

We live in interesting times with so many non-thinking people.

Hard to Discern the Truth

Last evening's BBC News had a long report on the melting glaciers in Bolivia and how people there were going thirsty due to the greedy people, like us, who pump carbon into the air. Their message was clearly that "it is all our fault and unless we make Copenhagen succeed, Bolivians and the world is doomed".

We all know that it takes temperatures in excess of freezing to melt glaciers. So I went Googling for temperature data for the Chacaltaya Glacier in Bolivia--finding http://www.made-in-southamerica.org/ in the blog posting "Chacaltaya Melting". Here temperature data shows that there is no warming--in fact, there is cooling.

The author, Lykee Anderson, concludes that the evidence (receding glaciers, decreasing temperatures) are fully consistent with Svensmark's cosmic ray theory--a theory rejected by the "consensus-orientated scientists" since there is no anthropogenic component to sunspot variation and its affect on our climate.

Typical of the BBC to ignore the evidence, except to spin it for their own purposes.