
From: SMBC, via Boing-Boing.
A 9 mpg gain translates into annual savings of 3.8 million barrels of oil per year and nearly $1,000 for consumers at the pump -– not to mention that it will reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 660,000 metric tons a year. Okay, not a cost-effective emission reducer, but still, given the multiple benefits of the program, pretty darn good.How is this good? For all of us spending $3B, a small handful of Americans get a new car and savings of about $1000 a year in gasoline. The country will now use a grand total of 0.1% less gas. The environmental consequences are very, very small, and far overpriced at that.
Official government measurements show that the world's temperature has cooled a bit since reaching its most recent peak in 1998.Can we mathematically prove this amazing result? Let's try.
From the Washington Post:
In Defense of Britain's Health System
By Ara Darzi and Tom KibasiFear is the weapon of choice for opponents of reform who have no substantive alternative to offer. America spends five times the share of its national wealth on health as Singapore, and yet life expectancy in each country is roughly the same. Even allowing for other factors, it is undeniable that the way a health system is organized and operated makes a difference. Americans fear that countries such as Britain and Canada ration care -- and that such rationing could and should never be tolerated in the United States. Yet 47 million uninsured is quite an extreme form of rationing. So at this moment, the burden of proof falls upon those who oppose change -- for they stand in defense of fear.
But then he writes: However, while ignorance may be an iron-clad defense against plagiarism, it is a rather dicey position academically speaking. Surely Steig and co-authors would at least read the vigorous and serious discussion of their paper on Climate Audit, the Air Vent, and other blogs, even if they do not deign to participate.If Steig doesn't follow CA, he must be the only person in all of climate science.
Are you kidding me? Do McCullough and those at Climate Audit really believe that professional climate scientists check CA every day, when it has time and time again proven itself smug and/or wrong? I am sorry to have to tell CA this, but they are not a major player in the climate change scene, and really, they never have been.
Why didn't McCullough submit his comment to Nature, and not just to Steig (who says he was in Antarctica and didn't receive it?) That's what journals are for.
There is nothing wrong with constructive criticism, and pointing out errors — even fairly minor ones — is important and useful. The difference, though, between people who want to find out something about the real world and people who just want to score political points, is what is made of those errors. That is the test of constructive scientific dialog. Specious accusations of fraud, plagiarism and the like don’t pass such a test; instead they simply poison the atmosphere to everyone’s loss.Peer-reviewed journals have well-defined rules about these things, and the best one is that have open and established procedures, and histories, and you can trust them. You can go look them up in the library if you want, even papers that are decades old.
...the heat wave also knocked out most of the region’s wind turbines. As the temperatures rose, the wind simply stopped blowing hard enough to spin the turbines. We’re now getting around 4 percent of our power from wind turbines, but they weren’t doing much of anything (during the heat),” Corson says.Meanwhile, power demands were heavier than usual -- a record, in fact. Two regional coal-fired plants were off-line. (Perhaps coal is not the reliable backup for wind that skeptics claim.) The power company bought more electricity from California and such, so there were no blackouts. But this episode is making the company rethink its mix of wind- and coal-energy. The local Sierra Club says we just need more wind and solar.
“The wind is always blowing and the sun is always shining somewhere...”Speaking of wind power, here's an imaginative view from a recent contest on redesigning suburbia (via IO9):
“Climate change is very real. Global warming creates volatility. I feel it when I’m flying....-- Senator Debbie Stabenow, (D, MI)
"There's an old song that says:
'One white foot buy 'em, two white feet try 'em, three white feet be on the sly, four white feet pass 'em by.'
...But I don't hold to that."
1) Re: The Caine Mutiny: did you know that the actor Michael Caine chose his last name while in a pay phone talking to his agent. He looked up the street and saw a marquee with "The Caine Mutiny" on it. He later said that if he had looked in the other direction, he would have been known at "Michael One Hundred and One Dalmations."Still, I don't think this was that good of a movie. Worst of all, I think Humphrey Bogart was the weak link.2) True Grit: this was a great movie, and mostly not because of John Wayne, but because of Kim Darby, the 22-year old who played Mattie Ross. She's the one who shows "true grit" in the movie -- she doesn't back down from anything. Anything.In the special features an older Kim Darby talks about her role as Mattie Ross, and quietly says, "I think what makes people really strong is that they try."The one best John Wayne scene, maybe of all time, is when he's facing off with Ned Pepper (Robert Duvall) and his gang, and Pepper calls him an old fat man, and Wayne says, "Fill your hands, you son of a bitch" and charges at all four of them.And, of course, kills them all, and even his horse gets killed.What's weird is that the more John Wayne films I see, the more I think my grandfather was influenced by him. It's just subtle things -- the way he put on his coat and hat, the way he puffed when he was tired, the way he never complained about anything.Man, I really loved my grandfather. He used to have us (his grandchildren) pick up concrete parking lot barriers, put them in the back of his truck, and set them down into the parking lot of his tavern. When a plane crashed up on in the mountains near where we lived, in a bad summer storm, with four passengers aboard, and they finally found it after four days of looking, he gathered up us grandkids in the back of his pickup and drove us up to see it. We tromped down through the woods about a quarter of a mile and came across the wreckage. The state police had removed the big stuff, but there was still a lot of material strewn everywhere and the whole place smelled horrible, like rotten meat. I especially remember there was a seat hanging up in a tree, and a bra in the branches. A bra! We kids rooted around down on the ground and found a piece of scalp with hair stuck on it, and something that looked just like a knawed-on chicken wing.They never let kids near this kind of stuff anymore, which personally I think is a big mistake. You need to see these things -- dead bodies and murders and decapitations and such -- at least once. I am glad to have grown up when and where I did. (It doesn't even come up when you look for it on Google Maps.)
Producing a new car releases about 8 tons of carbon dioxide, according to the Sightline Institute. By comparison, burning through a gallon of gas releases about 20 pounds of carbon dioxide, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.Someone who drives the national average of 15,000 miles a year would generate about 1.5 fewer tons of carbon dioxide by replacing an 18 mpg clunker with a car that gets 22 mpg. That means the 8 tons of carbon dioxide imbedded in the new car would be worked off in about five years.The break-even point comes sooner if the mileage improvement is dramatic. For example, it would take less than a year to recoup the carbon cost of a 46-mpg Toyota Prius replacing a 12-mpg gas hog.
Sarah Palin says to stop making stuff up, but really, you couldn't make this stuff up if you tried.
-- Michael Feldman, NPR
Dear David,
Thanks for your e-mail and interest in this issue.
As editors of JGR Atmospheres, we do not discuss the details of the peer review process and we will also not do that in this case. We will say that despite all the hard efforts made by reviewers and editors, the peer review process is not perfect. Occasionally, papers that contain errors or controversial statements without adequate discussion do get accepted for publication. In these cases, JGR Atmospheres encourages the scientific community to submit comments and discuss these papers in the peer-reviewed literature.
Sincerely,
Joost de Gouw
Editor, JGR Atmospheres
It is official municipal policy in Copenhagen that all citizens by 2015 must be able to reach a park or beach on foot in less than 15 minutes.
-- Wikipedia