Geek stuff – Page 99 – a sibilant intake of breath

OxBridge and the future

The two books I am reading most actively right now both make me miss Oxford. They also make me regret the fact that I am not out traveling or working somewhere exciting.

The first book is Simon Winchester’s The Man Who Loved China: The fantastic story of the eccentric scientist who unlocked the mysteries of the Middle Kingdom. I have read several of his books before: one on the Mercator projection, and another on the genesis of the Oxford English Dictionary. While I am only halfway through this latest book, I think it is better than Mercator but worse than OED, though that probably reflects my own interests as much as anything else. In any case, the book conveys a wonderful sense of what was possible for a motivated and intelligent individual in the position of its protagonist: Noel Joseph Terence Montgomery Needham.

The second book is Oliver Morton’s Eating the Sun: How Plants Power the Planet. Evidently, it is largely a study of the nature and history of photosynthesis. The book contains a good summary of early climatic science, with engaging and informative asides on nuclear physics, biochemistry, and much else. It also includes a great many references to life in Cambridge, during the period between the early outbreak and late aftermath of the second world war. It is a period of unusual interest for climatologists, for reasons I described in my barely-remembered thesis. Personally, my impressions of Cambridge are dominated by the music video to Pink Floyd’s “High Hopes” – one of the very few music videos I have ever watched, and one of the handful I have enjoyed.

What they brought to the forefront is that it is possible to be out and doing interesting things (though certainly more challenging if you mean to do it in a low-carbon way). I would certainly be strongly tempted to strike away from Ottawa to more interesting places, once societal dues have been paid. Where or what that would involve, I cannot yet guess.

Physics and the size of creatures

A book I am reading made reference to an interesting essay from 1928 that I thought I would share. It is about the basic physics of plant and animal pyshiology, as it relates to the size of creatures. It was written by J. B. S. Haldane and is entitled: “On Being the Right Size.” Along with discussing matters like bone strength, gravity, surface tension, and breathing, it features some unusually clear and poignant imagery:

You can drop a mouse down a thousand-yard mine shaft; and, on arriving at the bottom, it gets a slight shock and walks away, provided that the ground is fairly soft. A rat is killed, a man is broken, a horse splashes.

In short, it is an interesting thing to read and contains many facts and observations that are useful to know.

Many of the issues raised in this essay re-appear in Insultingly Stupid Movie Physics explanation of scaling problems in films.

Congressional reports on Wikileaks

Wikileaks – a website that has been discussed here before – has performed a significant public service, by making nearly 7,000 reports prepared by the American Congressional Research Service publicly available. The documents are non-secret, and were paid for with a billion dollars of taxpayer money. Prior to the Wikileaks action, they were not available to the general public. The research service is meant to be a non-partisan office that provides factual information and analysis to inform political decision-making.

Topics covered in the reports include Israel’s relationship with the United States, abortion, China, weapons proliferation, and many others.

Stop-start cars

A recent Tech.view column described how stop-start engines could help increase automobile efficiency at a relatively low cost. The idea with such vehicles is that they “automatically switch off the engine when the car is slowing below 5 mph, and re-start it the instant the driver’s foot comes off the brake pedal.” Incorporating the technology into vehicles requires modifying their transmission, as well as beefing up their batteries and starter motors.

The column indicates that there are still issues to be overcome with the technology, but that it has the promise of producing significant improvements at far more modest cost than going to a hybrid vehicle. It seems like a demonstration of the fact that automakers do have low-cost options at their disposal for meeting new fuel efficiency standards. While this technology certainly isn’t transformational, it is the kind of low-cost temporary measure that can help us achieve a global peak in greenhouse gas emissions in the relatively near term, before beginning the difficult descent to carbon neutrality.

NASA’s Orbiting Carbon Observatory

Later this month, NASA will be launching the Orbiting Carbon Observatory (OCO): the first satellite designed to make precise measurements of carbon dioxide release and absorption around the world. This should provide important new information about how carbon dioxide is being emitted from human activities and degraded sources (such as decaying forests), as well as the operation of those natural sinks that continue to absorb atmospheric carbon dioxide.

The OCO will work using three parallel high-resolution spectrometers, being fed light by a common telescope. They will simultaneously measure concentrations of CO2 and molecular oxygen.

The new satellite will be placed at the front of a string of satellites in the same orbit: the Earth Observing System Afternoon Constellation, known more informally as the A-train. By having the satellites all look at the same areas in quick succession, the data from their various instruments can be assembled into a single high-quality, three-dimensional dataset. Five satellites are already in orbit, with two planned, including the OCO.

If all goes well, the OCO should be in orbit on February 24th.

[Update: 24 February 2009] It seems the launch has failed and the satellite has been destroyed. This is very disappointing: a blow to climate science, and to our chances of avoiding dangerous climate change. Hopefully, NASA will rebuild the satellite and try launching it again.

That would be a much better expenditure of resources than adding to the ISS or flying shuttles.

Optimism / pessimism survey

If you were given the following options, which would you choose:

An absolute guarantee that the Canadian material standard of living in 2200 will be identical to what it was in 2009 – that is to say, the same number of computers, lightbulbs, sandwiches, appendectomies and everything will be consumed.
For the material standard of living in 2200 to be determined by the economic and technological development that occurs between now and then?

For those who believe that long-term growth in wealth can be maintained, the level of prosperity in 2200 can be expected to be much higher. For those who are fearful or either stagnation or catastrophe, the certainty of present levels is more appealing.

Note that I am not saying anything about the distribution of the material standard of living. For the purposes of this survey, please ignore the question of whether the top 10% of the population end up consuming 10%, 30%, or 50% of the material goods and services consumed.

Studio experimentation III

This weekend, I took my flash gear on location to shoot some baby photos for a friend of mine. Overall, I am quite happy with them. For the most part, they were taken using a shoot-through umbrella for diffusion, as well as manual flash power and aperture. A few use ceiling-bounced TTL flash, and others just natural light and a reflector.

As with the previous shots of my brother and tabletop objects, the linked image files have not been digitally manipulated.

At some point soon, I mean to experiment with shooting some backlit glass.

Building standards and climate change

When it comes to planning, we really need to be thinking about the lifespan of what we are building, and the changes likely to occur during the course of it. For vehicles, that means thinking about efficiency standards and probable future developments in fuel types, prices, and availability. For buildings, it means thinking about efficiency and the payback time for different low-energy technologies. For all areas, it means thinking about what successful climate change mitigation and adaptation will involve.

New building construction is one of the areas where this can be most easily accomplished. Many different governments have levers through which they can influence private decisions. Governments build and renovate their own properties and, to a considerable extent, set the terms under which private actors do so. That power can be used to build a society that is both more economically and ecologically sustainable.

Federal, provincial, and municipal governments should be thinking about mechanisms like the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) standards and the effect they can have on the economic and environmental sustainability of future built environments. In a climate like that of Canada, there are a huge number of situations in which high building efficiency standards are rapidly repaid in the form of decreased energy use. At the societal level, they are repaid even more richly, since the externalities associated with that energy production are also eliminated. Simple initiatives like painting roofs white can reduce the urban heat island effect and reduce energy use associated with cooling in summer: achieving mitigation and adaptation simultaneously.

On the adaptation side, planning is similarly crucial. While many of the downscaled effects of climate change remain uncertain, there are a few we can already be pretty clear about. We are, for instance, going to see smaller glaciers and less winter snowpack. That affects how cities should be doing their water planning. Smart governments should be thinking about how communities can be grouped, in terms of the probable climate impacts they will face. Along with the insurance industry, governments can then encourage cost-effective preemptive adaptation measures.

There are those who argue that taking these kinds of action is inappropriate or counterproductive: that governments should just introduce carbon pricing and let the market respond. There are several reasons for which that is not an appropriate attitude. For one thing, these kinds of standards help address other non-climatic externalities. For builders, there is an incentive to build shoddy, poorly insulated homes. The societal welfare arising from durable, well-insulated homes is significantly greater. Setting standards can help close the divide. Also, there is no real prospect of an appropriate carbon price emerging in the next few years. There is, by contrast, hope for one that will escalate to a sensible level. By starting to build today the kind of buildings that will be sensible in that environment, we can both get ahead in the process of building a low-carbon society and preemptively address accusations that carbon prices places an unacceptable burden on ordinary people.

The ongoing financial crisis, which is so deeply connected to building construction and financing, provides governments with even more levels through which to push sensible standards. Doing so judiciously is one way through which a victory can be gleaned out of this catastrophe.

Oceans added to Google Earth

Google’s decision to add seabed data to Google Earth is welcome. It is now conventional wisdom to argue that humanity knows less about the open oceans than we do about many of the stellar bodies in the solar system. That being said, given the level of pressure humanity is placing upon the oceans, coupled with the vital role they play in the planet’s biological functioning, gaining an appreciation for the nature and importance of the oceans is a critical medium-term undertaking for humanity.

One decidedly welcome thing about my new computer is that it has the processing and graphics power to make the Google Earth flight simulator smooth and visually compelling. It is neat to do something similar with the Mariana Trench.

Ice and solar power

Indirectly, Ottawa winters provide a good demonstration of just how immense a quantity of solar energy there really is on this planet. Consider the fact that the Earth’s axial tilt produces thirty degree weather here in the summer and negative thirty degree weather here in the winter. Walk out onto the frozen surface of Dow’s Lake and think about how the only reason the lake is ever liquid is because of the massive amount of solar energy striking it in the spring and summer. Then, recall that all the lakes and seas everywhere on Earth would freeze solid without the constant solar influx. This is well illustrated by the frozen moons in the outer portion of our solar system.

Burning all the world’s fossil fuels wouldn’t let us keep oceans liquid, in the absence of solar assistance. Moving to an energy system that relies directly (solar photovoltaic and concentrating solar) or indirectly (wind, hydroelectricity, biomass) on the sun is an overwhelmingly important part of creating a sustainable society. The amount of energy available to harness vastly exceeds the amount we can drill or dig up out of the ground.