If you use a feed reader to access this site you’ve probably missed it, but I’ve added a new feed to the sidebar — Frank Bi’s International Journal of Inactivism’s Mindless Link Propogation Section. Frank (psuedonym) is pretty much the hero of my sarcasm (such as managing to Poe the Heartland Institute!), and the MLP is… well, see for yourself. It usually has a blend of insightful commentary on communication strategies generously lathered with snarking at idiocy and with a morsel of sweet parody on top — in other words, pure glee. I’ve submitted several entries to it in the past (actually, I think I’m the source for more of those than anyone else short of Frank himself), so it’s not entirely divorced from content that would show up here — it’s just easier to keep it in an RSS feed than linkspam. By all means, check out a few, or read the International Journal of Inactivism itself, which tends to be better than anything I can manage on the subject. Well, at 2 AM, anyway.
April 25, 2009
April 23, 2009
Small, Bigger, Better
[I had this written up yesterday, but apparently clicked 'save draft' instead of 'publish'.]
Via Mike Dunford at The Questionable Authority, I see a new meme starting - Earth Day resolutions, or in a less pretentious name, “Smaller, Bigger, Better”:
I’d like you to take a minute or two to come up with three things that you can do to be more environmentally friendly. The first should be something that’s small, and easy to do. The second should be more ambitious - something you’ll try to do, but might not manage to pull off. The third should be something you can do to improve something you’re already doing.
Sounds to me like a good place to start, and if I have these in public it’ll be easier to stick to them. Here’s what I can come up with. (more…)
April 22, 2009
Carbon Pricing Primer
After a few extended discussions over the past several days, I find myself returning to the “we’re not having the debate we should be having” point — that is, while we continue to scuffle about on energy and climate issues with “should we act?”, we aren’t discussing “how should we act?”. The ultimate goal is to phase out fossil-carbon-based fuels and reduce the levels of atmospheric CO2, but the details of the numerous methods of doing so often elude folk.
Now, there’s a few idealistic, simple solutions that only really apply as utopian visions among lunatics or as straw-man arguments from opponents (even opponents who should know better). These include authoritarian all-out bans and libertarian Invisible Hand Free Market Fairy suggestions, for instance. No one that I know of in the western world is calling for a ban (it just isn’t realistic), and though several wingnuts in the US are seriously calling for deregulation, it isn’t gaining traction. The murkier mixed-market solutions are seriously being discussed (whenever our elected officials get around to it…) but are harder for lay folk to understand and thus easy prey for spin.
Consider this a very, very brief introduction to the three major mixed-market carbon pricing systems. It’s not very in-depth, nor is it referencing any particular bill — this is just an introduction. See below the fold.
April 17, 2009
April 9, 2009
Still Yet More Florida, Redux
I had an extended post written and ready to go on Monday, but it appears to have been eaten by a Grue. Very well - this’ll just be more condensed. I’m writing this one from the Tampa airport, en route to Edmonton via O’Hare (Chicago) .
A few of the things I’d like to make a note of while they’re still somewhat fresh on the mind.
- I’m almost, but not quite, done the first phil of science posting. I spent most of the time I had allocated to do it involved in an argument with libertarians. One of these fronts involved more progress than the other.
- Pinellas County in Florida converted its old railways into bike trails, essentially. This amounted to a 40-mile trail in beautiful biking weather, which of course meant I had to try it out. Ended up going only 30 miles, but my dad was with me and it’s never good form to split up on rides like this. There were numerous interesting bikes in the shop and on the trail; I got photographs of most of them and they’ll show up in an image dump post (or a Picasa album; I’ve been trying out the rest of a Google account functionality). Our own rides, EZ-1 recumbents, were a dream — no soreness at all except for a touch of sunburn, excellent speed, and better handling than I thought, though I definitely see where the reputation for poor hill performance comes from (I could manage, Dad couldn’t).
- Kennedy Space Center has improved a lot since the last time I went there. It’s still got the Rocket Garden (a garden path punctuated with actual rocket engines and reconstructions of many major launch vehicles, the largest of which is the Saturn-IB) and the reconstruction of Discovery, but they’ve also retooled large parts of it to showcase Constellation. They also added a hall showcasing all the non-manned missions throughout the solar system, which was quite interesting (though it was missing recent info from Cassini, which (prior to Kepler) was my favorite probe mission (caveat: As a roboticist, I’m forced to acknowledge Spirit and Opportunity here. Those are my favorite probes, but not the favorite mission). Something about hearing a sound recording from Titan really struck me, and I don’t know why, although I still have an MP3 of that first recording). They also extended the bus tour - we got much closer to the launch pad than I’ve ever been (Atlantis was on the pad for a scheduled May 12 launch, but the orbiter was covered by a gantry), for a start, and the ISS component assembly bay now has a public viewing deck (which means I have photos of the next piece to go up, right after the Hubble mission — it’s a Japanese science module). The real WOW moments on that stop, however, would be the Apollo bay and the Hall of Fame. In the first, they finally restored one of only three remaining Saturn V rockets, and built a building around it. That’s one holy hell of a sight to see when you come through the door. (The last time I was there, it was outside and mostly rusting.) The Hall of Fame also had several artifacts in it, including the actual Apollo 14 command module and the Mercury 3 pod, along with (as you’d expect) everything relating to the human history of the space program. I do have a few small gifts, but due to space constraints I wasn’t able to pick up the shirts some folk asked for. I do, however, have their ordering info, direct from the center itself, so at least the ones ordered will fit the recipients.
- SCUBA diving, FINALLY. We had to go all the way to West Palm Beach to get a good charter. (~300 miles from Largo, including the stop at Kennedy. Fortunatly, we’d rented a Prius: That took all of $16 in gas, roughly half a tank, and the ride was extremely comfy, quiet, and smooth.) Once there, though, it was definitely worth it. It was my first drift dive, which basically means diving deep early on and letting the current carry you over miles of reefs. The wildlife, however, was the ultimate high point: a 3′ barracuda, several giant pacific lobster, a massive goliath grouper, about eight small squid (species unknown, I mistook them for cuttlefish at first), and a full-grown Moray eel come to mind. I really need to invest in an underwater camera.
- There is no point 5. Budget cuts and all that.
I’ll be back on campus Tuesday. Thank you, Steve, for reminding me what normal humans do on Good Friday and Easter Monday, i.e. not show up for work and wonder why the doors are locked.
Onward and upward!
April 1, 2009
Yet More Florida, Redux
Due to a combination of a storm front coming in (no rain, but lots of turbulence and fog so dense we couldn’t see the shore, let alone the horizon), any SCUBA plans for the day are off, and are likely to remain off until the weekend. The local SCUBA shops — down to the individual boat captains (Yes, I’m that thorough) — are all booked solid on the weekend, and on Monday the rest of the family’s heading home. Looks like any plans will need to be suspended until next week. I may end up diving around Cape Canaveral itself. Awesome as it would be, there are no shuttle launches scheduled for the time I’m down here. The first time I visited Florida, in 1995, we were in Canaveral when Endeavor was scheduled to launch, but due to weather it was delayed and we missed it.
On the upside, I did find a 40-mile bike trail nearby, and a shop that not only rents, but rents recumbents as well. I already convinced my dad to join me on that in the next couple of days (no idea when, except “not tomorrow”; he’s heading to Disneyworld with my cousins, giving me time to catch up on work and write), and I may be able to get the others on ‘bents as well. No tadpole trikes, unfortunately (plenty of retrofitted delta cruisers, which are popular with the older folk here), but they still have an order of magnitude more recumbents than any dealer in Edmonton.
Wildlife note: I was wandering earlier today and saw two separate pods of dolphins. One was probably one of the two I saw on the last couple of days (roughly the same size), but the second definitely was new: it had a calf, which is something I’ve never seen in person before (captive or wild). Didn’t get a very good look, and didn’t have my camera (damn you, Murphy), and they were rather languid (to be expected in a densely populated harbour), so it wouldn’t have been very exciting to most folk. Unlike, say, the pod of commons I encountered in the Bahamas in 2001, which were racing the boat we were on and leaping from the water.
On an administrative note, I’ve updated the About page with something worth reading. The blog lags it a bit (naturally), but will catch up.
On a metacommentary note, there was a lot of April Fool’s gold flying around today. Ian’s submission about a hostile takeover at Fermilab was a winner, as was Kirk Cameron taking over the Atheist Experience or AIG merging with AIG to form AIG (which was probably the one that caused the most laughter around here). Several of the climate-related ones were rounded up by Mike Kaulbars at Greenfyre’s, although he missed Michael Tobis’ epic (which is particularly cutting after you hear about what happened in Texas…), and in my opinion the reigning champ in that department is either the 2007 RealClimate “sheep albedo” paper or Atmoz’ “social experiment” of 2008 (read the post he linked). However, I would like to single out Mike Dunford here as one worthy of personal attention — see how well you do (I got 5/6, although the machete-juggling abstinence clown had already crossed my desk). Personally, I convinced my cousins that there was a hurricane going to make landfall in Florida sometime tomorrow and their Disney trip was going to be cancelled. (This was a lot less funny after the turbulence kicked up and the fog rolled in…).
Hopefully I’ll have something more substantive — and outside the damn Travelouge category — to put up tomorrow. Once I get some work done, I’ll sit down on the balcony and write something less self-indulgent.
DeSmog, the BC carbon tax, and biases
So my friend Ian at Terahertz has some choice words aimed at DeSmogBlog over political bias. For what it’s worth, if you know me personally, then you probably know I share many of Ian’s viewpoints; he’s just much more outspoken than I am (not to mention less shy), and usually ends up speaking for me. However, since I’ve had a history with DeSmog, I’m weighing in.
This started out as a comment on that post, but it grew overlong and overlinked, so it migrated here. Check below the fold for background info and details. (more…)