Archives for the 'Science' Category
Dr Karl
Most of you won’t know who this man is, but you must try and find out. It’s Dr Karl Kruszelnicki, doctor of medicine and physics, ex-taxi driver, roadie, weatherman, car journalist and a wonderful populariser of science. I’ve been listening to the podcasts of his radio show for some time, and read a couple of his books, so was rather excited to be in Sydney at the same time as his annual free science lecture.
Aside from his encyclopaedic knowledge and ability to answer obscure questions (picture a combination of Norris McWhirter and Magnus Pike, without the associated politics), his greatest strength is a boundless enthusiasm for making science accessible for all, and particularly children. He wants kids to be inquisitive about the world around them, and encourages them to make their own investigations. We need more of this in the UK; really recommend listening to his podcast.
Who wouldn’t be charmed by a man who goes to great lengths to identify names for chemical compounds such as dickite, fucitol, cumingtonite and arsoles? (Thanks N!)
Planet Earth
Off to the RGS for the last lecture of the Autumn. And what an uplifting evening: Alastair Fothergill, the Executive Producer of Planet Earth, described how this engrossing series was made. One comes away not only with admiration for the commitment and technology involved – who would envy the two cameramen who over-wintered with an Emperor Penguin colony, or be able to emulate the skill that captured shots of Snow Leopards in close-up from a mile away – but also with a deeply satisfying appreciation of the complexity and splendour of life on Earth.
Special mention of two aspects of Fothergill’s presentation. It’s endearing to see a big chap with tears in his eyes when describing the pleasure of capturing a polar bear swimming through the ice flows; and admirable that, when challenged on the lack of a heavy climate change theme in the series, he responds that there’s still a place for documentaries with a subtle message. Don’t underestimate your audience.
It should be on telly again over Christmas, and seeing the images on the big lecture theatre screen is almost enough justification to invest in HDTV. Almost. But I promise that watching the clips left the biggest smile on my face for quite some time.
They’re out to get us
Hello again.
I’ve long admitted that plants make me nervous and would rather not touch them, thanks. Possibly a borderline botanophobic. It’s primarily the fault of these mobile alien fellas on the left, Triffids, and the threat from their blinding tentacles. The BBC’s adaptation was broadcast when I was at an impressionable age, and its message rammed home when David Attenborough introduced us to the Venus fly trap.
They’re a mean bunch, plants. They’ve got sharp leaves, hairy underbellies and hang out in parks. The hoodies of the natural world.
Today we learn my nightmare is a step closer to reality: a carniverous plant has eaten a mouse. In France. Once this lot get a taste for flesh we’re all in big trouble. Combine that with a belief in plant karma, in which I’m in considerable debt having destroyed far more green life than I’ve nurtured, and I’ll be sleeping less comfortably tonight.
Having been away a while there is more to say on other things, but excuse me whilst I deadlock the garden door.
Stubbing out smokers
It’s jazz festival time and a good day to relax in the sun soaking up the sounds and the rays. Trying to find somewhere nice to sit by the lake today, I had to wade through a sea of cigarette butts on the shoreline. Which got me thinking.
One of the pleasures of living in New Zealand is its recently introduced smoking laws. Smoking is not allowed in bars and restaurants, and there’s none of this foolish ’smokers room’ nonsense proposed for England. After a night out in Queenstown clothes still smell fresh, or at least of beer rather than fags, and passive smoking is history.
But… I wonder if things are the wrong way round. As a non-smoker – and as somebody who has trouble understanding why you’d want to start smoking when all the evidence points to its downsides, perhaps I’m just not cool enough – the places where I find smoking most annoying and intrusive are outside. Walking down the street behind a smoker and smelling their second hand smoke is foul, those who leave cigarete butts on the beach or next to the lake are dirty and socially irresponsible. (What a bloody whinger I am.)
On the other hand, I choose to go into a pub and sit in the company of smokers, and most places provide non-smoking areas if serving food. Banning smoking in pubs will probably have public health benefits but it won’t stop littering and my quickened step past that unfit smoker dawdling along the pavement.
Shouldn’t smoking be banned outside rather than in?
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Make
How could I forget to mention Make magazine? This is one for the geeeky boys (and girls). It’s a brilliant combination of Popular Science, Wired and The Economist’s Intelligent Life with a hint of Scrapheap Challenge, full of entertaining home projects for making handy stuff. Proper ‘hardware hacking’.
You can see a little part of the first issue here. Projects include a kite-mounted camera, a steadicam, your own magnetic card reader, and yak shaving. Plus reviews of really good handtools. The blog has more astonishing ideas too.
I’ve subscribed. Oh yes.
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Wind farms and global warming
George Monbiot has been doing a very good job of highlighting the stupidity of arguments made by my childhood hero David Bellamy in which he denies the existance of global warming. The bearded one has been relying on statistics that grossly misread the raw data or just make it up.
I do hope that Monbiot is right about the facts he uses to back up his own arguments, because if true they are extraordinary. Wind power is a Good Idea, harnessing ‘free’ energy and reducing our reliance on fossil fuels. There’s a broad consensus that we should build more windfarms (unless you’re the RSPB or living next to a potential windfarm site). The UK government has plans to build a significant number of offshore farms in the next few years.
Interesting, then, to consider the impact of one new development under consideration.
The Whinash project, by replacing energy generation from power stations burning fossil fuel, will reduce carbon dioxide emission by 178,000 tonnes a year. This is impressive, until you discover that a single jumbo jet, flying from London to Miami and back every day, releases the climate-change equivalent of 520,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide a year. One daily connection between Britain and Florida costs three giant wind farms.
Astonishing.
What we should be doing is reducing our demand for power as well as provide alternative, cleaner sources. Imagine if, instead of building a new nuclear power station at the cost of several billion pounds, we spent that money on fitting every light socket in the country with an energy efficient lightbulb. The drop in demand would probably negate the need for the increase in supply.
Just an idea.
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A question of degree
This month’s Wired carries an article supporting the growth of nuclear energy as a preferred solution to global warming. Pragmatically there is a lot to be said in favour of this and much of its critique of renewable energy sources is valid. But it is undermined by the dismissive approach to improving energy efficiency; worsened by the implication that the US is no worse than other countries in the developed world.
The average American sends nearly half a ton of carbon spewing into the atmosphere every month. Europe and Japan are a little more economical, but even the most remote forest-burning peasants happily do their part
Hold on! This really gets my goat. Little in my first year at university sticks in my mind apart from the fact that the US alone used one-quarter of the world’s oil in the 1980s. Roughly 6% of the earth’s population consuming more than 25% of its energy resources.
But the world has moved on in the past twenty years, in particular Asia has boomed, new sources of energy have been introduced. Is America still the world’s number one or are my prejudices misplaced? Let’s look at the data. The World Resources Institute has some very useful independent data that enables international comparisons.
A naive glance at the data may support Wired’s argument. CDIAC reports that in 1998 ‘North America’ produced 5,915m metric tonnes of CO2 compared with ‘Europe’ at 5,829m. Pretty close, huh?
However, let’s look at CO2 emissions per capita (source International Energy Agency, metric tonnes pc, 2001; these figures are closely paralled by other sources):
» North America 19.4; Europe 8.3; Asia 2.1
That puts North America at more than double Europe and more than nine times Asia. To be fair, these regions can be mask large differences, so perhaps better to look at individual countries:
» USA 19.8; Germany 10.5; UK 9.4; Japan 9.3; France 6.3; Switzerland 6.3; China 2.4
Clear cut evidence that the US leads Europe and Japan on pollution, it seems. (Australia is the closest non-oil producing country to the US, at 18.1mtpc, followed by Canada at 16.5).
If we look at CO2 emissions relative to $GDP PPP there is less difference between countries, but this does not detract from the developed world’s dirty dominance. Yes, Europeans generate far more atmospheric pollution than the developing world (and as a car driver and international jet traveller I’m worse than most). Yet look at gasoline pricing, relentless devlopment of air conditioned bubbles in inhospitable climates, energy inefficiency and a notably careless attitude towards the environment: the USA is the world’s biggest polluter and it’s wrong of a respectable publication to fuel the myth that Americans are no worse than the rest of us.
And if we really have to build new nuclear power plants, let’s stick more of them in Australia. It’s one of the biggest polluters and acres of open space.
Cows and global warming
I’m getting a little obsessed with global warming news stories, especially with last week’s climate change conference in Exeter which warned that risks are “more serious than previously thought”. (How can that be?)
Timely, then, to see a report has been published about the pollution caused by Californian cows. Although it’s about atmospheric pollution rather than global warming per se, there are links to climate change.
California’s San Joaquin Valley has some of the worst air pollution in the country, according to the EPA. The Air Resources Board believes that has as much to do with the region’s 1.7 million dairy cows as it does with its 26 million registered vehicles.
An argument for state-sponsored vegetarianism?
Global dimming
Interesting story on the BBC website suggesting that increasing pollution has moderated the effect of CO2 emmissions in recent decades, in turn reducing the impact of global warming, but that this ‘control’ will weaken as pollution decreases and the heating of the atmosphere increases. Bear in mind that it’s trailing a science documentary, though, and therefore might be prone to exaggeration.
Two items on my bookshelf to be read before I finally make a comment on the global warming phenomenon: The Skeptical Environmentalist and Jared Diamond’s obscenely publicised new book Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fall or Survive. Although I’m in no doubt it’s happening, is it the biggest threat to the world?
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Sleep yourself thin
Reports suggesting a tentative link between sleeping and obesity: those with a ‘healthy’ Body Mass Index tend to sleep 1.8 hours a week more than overweight people. (Not that plenty of sleeping is making much difference to me!)
No cause and effect is being suggested yet, but I can think of a couple of links. Maybe overweight people sleep less as they’re staying up late and snacking whilst watching late night TV. And it must be hard to get a good night’s sleep when you’ve got five stones of lard resting on your internal organs.
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