Monday, May 16, 2011 by Dick.

The Earth is in trouble and our carbon dioxide output is obviously to blame. I know this because Al Gore told me so.

We can fix the Earth and lose weight at the same time.

One of the oldest prepared foods and long called the “staff of life,” bread has been baked around the world for at least 30,000 years. Starch residue on rocks used for pounding plants some 30 millennia ago in Europe shows that prehistoric man ate flatbreads with no worries about carbon dioxide output.

CO2?

Yeast devours sugar, then releases carbon dioxide bubbles and small amounts of ethyl alcohol. When the kneaded dough is baked, the heat from the oven forces the yeast into overdrive, which quintuples the rate at which carbon dioxide is produced.

The released carbon dioxide is responsible for bread rising.

Former Vice President Al Gore and Live Earth founder Kevin Wall have called for a 90% reduction in carbon dioxide emissions worldwide by mid-century. “Nations all over the world are making progress in tackling the climate crisis. But too many proposals fall short of the strong, decisive action that’s needed,” Mr. Gore said in 2007.

Victor Preedy, Ronald Ross Watson, Vinood Patel report in Flour and Breads and Their Fortification in Health and Disease Prevention that “Worldwide, bread is one of the most consumed foodstuffs.”

After extensive, even exhaustive 10 minutes of Internet research, I discovered very little statistical data on worldwide bread consumption where “very little” is actually a vanishingly small number approaching, well, zero. I did the next best thing. I asked answers.yahoo.com and found that eating “a TON of bread each day” is the best answer — chosen by voters!

That seemed an order of magnitude or two over the top so I did the next best thing. I asked former North Puffin car dealer and Democratic party official, Mr. Paul “Buster” Door for his take. As a card-carrying member of the Far Green, Buster is always willing to chase assumptions around and around in his head until he comes up with an answer that sounds right.

“Well you see, Dick, it’s like this,” Buster said. “Man can live by bread alone but only the strongest do so. It is well known that prehistoric man ate flatbreads but it wasn’t until Bastet — she was that famed Egyptian foodie — invented yeast that bread sales really puffed up. The market expansion of bread swelled pretty much unencumbered for centuries but it suddenly plummeted in 18th Century Europe, particularly in France. The good news is that worldwide growth of yeast breads has risen back to a high of more than a pound per person per day now world-wide. And that’s why Frenchmen are 2.4 inches taller than they were in 1789.”

“Don’t forget,” Rufus added, “a pounder of beer is the equivalent of a pound of bread!”

The total population of humans is currently estimated to be 6.92 billion. “That’s on planet Earth,” Buster confirmed.

Earthlings release some 25 billion tons of carbon dioxide annually. Plants like rice, wheat, and corn eat some of it but there is plenty left for free floating hyperbole in the atmosphere. That works out to about 6.9 million tons per day.

“A pound of bread is mostly hot air,” Al Gore who should know said. Fresh bread is baked daily in every nation, in every state, in every city, in every hamlet in the world. The production of that 3.46 million tons of daily bread releases something slightly less than 1 million tons of carbon dioxide each and every day.

And that doesn’t take into account the energy required for the great bakery ovens nor the fuel burned to truck the bread from bakery to store.

Mr. Gore and Mr. Wall have called for bakeries to buy carbon credits until engineers can develop commercial methods to eliminate the emission of this dangerous greenhouse gas from bread production.

“We’re looking at salt breads using salts recovered from water desalination plants in Qatar right now,” Mr. Wall said. “The technology is very promising.”

It is worth noting that each and every person in Qatar releases 44.8348 tons of carbon dioxide annually, more than twice the per capita output of Americans. We need to eat more bread to catch up!

Except we can’t.

The new Gore-Wall diet embraces a balanced intake from all the food groups but bans bread.

That’s it. Don’t eat bread. Save the planet. It’s only good science.

Posted in Global Warming, Science (not-so-real), Science (real), Politics & News, Random Access | 4 Comments »

Monday, April 11, 2011 by Dick.

“Women’s health issues” is not a specific organism; it is a marketing slogan.

“Women’s health issues” is Beltway new-speak for abortion rights because liberals are afraid they might offend their three anti-choice voters.

(As an aside, it’s worth noting that every liberal Congress Critter is anti-choice and every conservative Congress Critter is pro-choice. The trouble is, the only choice We the OverTaxed people get is the choice the Congress Critters say we can have.)

Last week “Clean Energy” (new-speak for “we-have-to-burn-coal-in-our-Prius-even-if-we-don’t-mean-it”) was the buzzword. Clean energy is not a specific means to generate power; it is the marketing slogan for those who would harness the political might of the “acceptable” kind of taxation.

Week before, “Climate Chaos” (new-new-speak for “global warming”) was the buzzword. Climate chaos is not a specific science; it is the marketing slogan for those who would harness the political might of the carbocalypse.

Rather than having real discussions about the cost of government, energy and energy policy, or actual science, politicians give us slogan after slogan after slogan.

“With the right slogans I could even sell the ShamWOW™,” pitchman Billy Mays might have said. And politicians.

Nero’s cohort in Congress blinked on Friday. Every last one of them. Their behavior this year had already shown us they have no brains. Now we know they also have no balls.

Down around South Puffin, everybody’s chewing on Key Colony Beach Mayor Ron Sutton. He didn’t blink, see.

Key Colony Beach is a tiny city (population 744) and the heart of the Florida Keys. It is not smallest city in the Florida Keys or the nation; the first honor belongs to Layton with its total population of 186. Lost Springs, a town found in Converse County, Wyoming, had a population of one as of 2000 but the City of Greenhorn, Oregon, population 0, has real trouble financing a bucket truck. According to factfinder.census.gov, the population count for Greenhorn City, Oregon, is currently unavailable.

About 50 miles from Key West and twice that from the United States, Key Colony Beach is one of the few spots where the Gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic Ocean shake hands right outside your door.

Back on April Fool’s Day (my anniversary, in case anyone forgot) the KCB commissioners decided to replace the city bucket truck. They budgeted, as municipalities often do, “up to $24,400.” (The city has equipment reserves of $24,482 for trucks plus $9,685 for road equipment).

Mayor Sutton went to an auction in Riviera Beach, found a great truck, and bought it for $30,800 including the 10% buyer’s fee.

I priced a new Ford Ranger as a Key limes to lemons comparison. The base price was $18,050 but as shown, a wee bit more at $26,780. Most of the “as shown” items were fairly necessary. At least I usually consider seats and an engine necessary. And it didn’t have a bucket. Bucket seats don’t count.

Mayor Sutton decided this truck was a better buy for the city than a new Ranger. If the commission did not approve, he said, he would make up the extra expense out of his own pocket.

That’s putting your money where your mouth is. No slogans required.

That truck seems to have cost each resident $41.39. Sounds like a deal to me.

Say, Ron? Can I borrow the truck tomorrow? I need to get up on my roof to hoist this sculpture in the direction of Washington…

sculpture prototypes

Monday, February 7, 2011 by Dick.

I figure I can drive anything with wheels. The fleet right now includes a pickup and an 18′ flatbed trailer, the (topless) (white) car, a more traditional sedan, and a John Deere 2210 diesel tractor with a front end loader, mid-mount mower deck, and a 3-point snowblower. The bucket, mower, and blower are all 54″ which is a convenient width. I also have a five-foot brush hog and a five-foot swivel blade, but that’s another story. We’ve sold the race cars but in years past, I have manhandled a twin-stick Mack, lugged barrels and boats with a twin-boom fork, and shepherded race cars with and without fenders. Rufus is annoyed that I can tuck a trailer into a blind alley with 6 inches of clearance.

I’m still getting the hang of filling the tractor bucket, though. Dumping it is easy peasy but filling it while leaving nothing on the ground is still a trick.

I’ve had a chance to practice this past week.

Schools across the county had all cancelled Wednesday’s sessions before the 6 p.m. newscasts Tuesday evening as the biggest snowstorm of the season rollicked across Southern Vermont on its way to North Puffin. I had cleaned up all the open spaces just before dark so the drive was as ready as it could be. In fact, I even opened a new path to the woodshed as well.

I don’t have brine so I have to plow the old fashioned way: out in the elements, sitting high on my tractor, pushing and sometimes lifting the snow with the front end loader bucket.

Did I mention that I haz a tractor?

“Plowing” with a bucket means pushing the snow ahead of the tractor with the bucket until you either (a) fill the bucket or (b) get to the end of the driveway. In either case, the technique at the end of the run is to lift the overflowing bucket of snow high onto a mountain of snow somewhere out of the way and deposit same. Lather. Rinse. Repeat.

Did you remember my tractor has a snowblower?

Unfortunately, that snowblower is buried at the very back of the garage, behind all the materials for the new porch construction that were supposed to be out of the way (meaning back where they belong) by Fall.

I figured then it would be OK. After all, we don’t get many big snow falls and I didn’t blow any snow at all last year. Right? Right.

Ten inches of snow by the time I plowed the third time around 5 p.m on Wednesday. I measured another three inches at bedtime and it was still snowing lightly, small, sparkly flakes. The land is really quite pretty. Weather radar shows the majority of the storm had passed us by then.

SIXTEEN INCHES.

Lordy Lordy™

And it could have been worse.

My running total, with the Wednesday night-Thursday morning’s four inches, was just 14 inches total but the undisturbed, undrifted roof of the Mercedes told the real story on the yardstick. 16 inches. Shoveled the walk. Dragged a shovel’s width out from the south door of the porch portico so that door can open if need be. I have plowed and plowed and plowed and plowed. I moved all the new snow out of the driveway and then cleaned up the edges. I also opened up the walkway we use to get to the woodshed but still needed to plow up to the barn.

On Friday, I plowed the new snow, neatened up everywhere, opened up the woodshed again and the dooryard and made a path to the barn. Even ran the Camaro for a while to circulate the juices and charge the battery. On Saturday, I made another little path so we could get to the pile of locust since that particular wood was running low in the woodshed. I like it for overnight burns.

And then it started snowing again. Overnight.

Recall that plowing really means pushing and lifting. That’s easy when the snow is two or three inches deep because it takes most of the driveway to fill the bucket. Plow down, lift, dump. Plow back, lift, dump. Much more than that couple-three inches, though, and the lifting/dumping cycle happens with greater frequency.

I plowed Sunday in sunshine. And plowed. And plowed. Eleven inches of fairly heavy, wet snow. I had to move a lot of it by the bucket full. The lift/dump cycle for eleven inches of fairly heavy, wet snow turns out to be every ten feet or so of driveway.

27 inches of snow is more than enough. And it looks like it’s about to start. Again.

I have absolutely used up every convenient place to put snow but one and that one, at the head of the driveway, is convenient only for the circle at the head of the driveway. It’s tough to bring snow all the way there from anywhere else.

And that was kind of the point.

I can drive anything with wheels but Anne has never had much reason to. Oh, she drives pickup trucks and station wagons and garden tractors but she isn’t very good at backing up a trailer and had no “heavy equipment” experience at all.

It did snow in December and January while I was out of state. I came back here to neat piles of snow where there should be piles and no snow where there shouldn’t. The sight lines at the road were clear. And there was plenty of room for the next storm and the next. She had mastered the plow/lift/dump cycle beautifully and she did it on her own.

I wonder …

Posted in Global Warming, Seasonal, Random Access | 6 Comments »

Monday, March 22, 2010 by Dick.

My old friend “Swampy” has been visiting for a couple of weeks. Don Swamtek loves Spring skiing and, despite the above average temperatures here the past 45 days (we annihilated the record high, bumping it by 6̊  to 66̊ on Friday), there is 3 inches of new snow in the mountains. Jay Peak has a 26 - 40 inch base and Stowe has 32 - 56 inches.

“I really like this Global Weirding stuff,” he said after a run at Jay last week. He was wearing lederhosen at the time, although he also had on heavy wool socks.

In real life, Swampy is a nuclear engineer with one of the few remaining Fortune 500 manufacturers. He spends his days dreaming about building a new plant in his own country and his nights star gazing. I don’t know why so many of my friends are hooked on the night sky, but they all surely do like it dark.

“We haven’t built a new nuclear plant in the U.S. in more than 30 years,” Swampy said, “but nuclear power still creates almost a fifth of the electricity we use.” Output was 809 billion kWh in 2008. “It may provide only 20 percent of our nation’s electricity but that is 70 percent — more than two-thirds — of our carbon-free, pollution-free electricity.”

GE Hitachi Nuclear Energy and Polish power company Polska Grupa Energetyczna will collaborate to build Poland’s two new next-generation commercial nuclear power plants. Poland currently relies heavily on coal-fired production. That country needs the nukes to help diversify its energy production, especially since plants like the ones they plan would avoid annual emissions equivalent to approximately 1.3 million cars. Poland is surrounded by at least 26 nuclear reactors operating in its neighboring lands.

Meanwhile, South Korea has won contracts to design and build a nuclear research reactor in Jordan as well as at least four nuclear power plants in the United Arab Emirates. The South Korean team beat off France and an American-Japanese power consortium in the bidding competition.

Swampy surprises a lot of people because he is an environmentalist. He cools his house with natural convection and fans instead of air conditioning. He heats it with wood. He hangs some of his clothes to dry and uses an Energy*Star appliance for the rest. He has a solar water heater. He and I designed an electric car in the 70s. More important, he haunts garage sales (on his bike) rather than buying new. He repairs and reuses everything, although he refuses to wash out and reuse freezer bags (yes, I do that).

On the other hand, he is improbably cheerful about his environmental message. “I’m not doom-and-gloom enough to get people to make me their Messiah.” That doesn’t stop him from reminding us of the truth.

“Doesn’t matter if you believe people cause global warming or even if there is global warming,” he said. “That argument is sort of irrelevant.

“Oil was $150 per barrel just last year and there’s no reason to think this administration — or the Far Green — will do anything but try to jack the price even more. Even if affordability doesn’t bother you, we’re not making any more dinosaurs. Making electricity we can afford to use right now. That has to be the focus for alternate energy policy. Everything else you say is a distraction.

“If we don’t fix this, we’re gonna turn out our lights. For good.”

So, I have to wonder. With all that brainpower, with all that education, with all that belief in conservation, why can’t I get him to turn out the lights when he leaves a room?

Posted in Global Warming, Society, Science (real), Politics & News, Random Access | 4 Comments »

Wednesday, February 24, 2010 by Dick.

I wholeheartedly accept the scientific basis
behind Anthropogenic Global Weirding.

Posted in Global Warming, Quickies, PC, Big Thoughts | 2 Comments »

Monday, February 15, 2010 by Dick.

I have a phrenology bust.

German physician and research scientist Franz Joseph Gall theorized that the brain is the source of all mental activity. He was the first to measure shape of the skull scientifically to determine how its bumps indicate character.

Enos Barnard, a learned man, inventor, dairy farmer, and my great-grandfather, was widely read and very forward thinking. He insisted that my great-grandmother attend Swarthmore College before they married. He developed a cooling system for cream separation. And he believed as Gall showed that, through careful observation and extensive experimentation, the high spots at specific areas on the skull tied to the locations of faculties in the brain. The popular phrenology busts were topographical maps of the skull used to measure character scientifically.

It is an interesting curiosity; I collect curiosities.

Rooted originally in Ancient Egypt, alchemy is the system of transmuting metals. Alchemists invented distillation, made glass, mortar, paint, and cosmetics, and then decided they could turn base metals into gold. This science — well supported by empirical evidence of materials changed by the alchemists — was universally accepted into the Middle Ages. Believers had faith in alchemy.

Geocentricity was all the rage in the scientific establishment until Pope Urban VIII (the last pope to expand the papal territory by force of arms) jailed Galileo in the 17th Century for debunking the scientific theory that the earth is the center of the Universe and that all other objects move around it. The view — well supported by empirical evidence that the sun, stars, and planets appear to revolve around Earth — was universally accepted in ancient Greece and in ancient China. (Belief in a flat earth was gone by the third century BC, despite claims by the modern Flat Earth Society). Believers had faith in geocentricity.

30 years after Galileo died, German physicist Johann Joachim Becher theorized the existence of Phlogiston. The view — well supported by empirical evidence — showed that a fire died out when the phlogiston saturated the air. This is the earliest known example of anthropogenic effects on the atmosphere. Believers had faith in the existence of the classical elements.

The Bible (and other historical records) show that God made man from dust. Science embraced Spontaneous Generation as well supported by empirical evidence of the elemental nature of the universe. Anaximander wrote that the first humans had been born spontaneously from the soil as adults. Aristotle wrote that some animals grow spontaneously rather than from other animals. Jan Baptist van Helmont wrote a recipe for making a mouse from wheat and soiled cloth. Believers had faith in equivocal generation. Louis Pasteur’s discovery of biogenesis debunked spontaneous generation in 1859.

University of Vermont professor of zoology Henry F. Perkins began teaching eugenics in his heredity course in 1921. His “Vermont Eugenics Survey” of 1925 His view — well supported by his empirical evidence of heredity in human affairs — led directly to the Vermont sterilization law of 1931. The 253 sterilizations performed on poor, rural Vermonters as well as Abenaki Indians, French-Canadians and others deemed unfit to have children in Vermont ranked this small state 25th in the nation. Believers had faith in eugenics. Earlier this month, the Vermont Assembly took testimony on a non-binding resolution to express regret about the eugenics movement.

The science of Astrology has shown through extensive experimentation that the positions of celestial bodies influences, divines, or predicts personality, human activities, and other terrestrial matters. That view — well supported by empirical evidence linking human action to star location — has spawned traditions and applications from the third millennium BC to the present. Believers have faith in astrology. Although the scientific community has demonstrated that astrological predictions have no statistical significance, millions of Americans trust it.

Early climatologists theorized that human settlement caused a permanent increase in rainfall (”Rain follows the Plow”). In the 19th century Americans settled the Great American Desert (now called the High Plains), the Southwestern Desert (now called Arizona), and parts of South Australia (now called South Australia). Modern climatologists theorized that human settlement caused a permanent increase in global temperature they called Global Warming. Believers have faith in man-made Global Warming. Although the scientific community has demonstrated that the predictions of human change driving atmospheric change made by this political science are flawed, millions of Americans still trust it.

Once upon a time all the evidence showed each was a universal truth. Believers had faith. That’s a problem when laymen come to science to find universal truth. Science gives us a way to compare what we think (our hypotheses) to what we know (the results of our experiments). A real scientist develops a theory from what he thinks and what he sees. That theory will change as new data comes to light. True scientists understand this need for change but it is hard for laymen to give up their hopes.

My great-grandfather may have given up the busted religion of phrenology but he kept the bust.

Biologist Ludwik Fleck warned us that witnesses see what they expect to see, notwithstanding facts that contradict them nor what impartial observers measure. As Thomas Cardinal Wolsey wrote, “Be very, very careful what you put into that head, because you will never, ever get it out.”

Now that’s still true.

Posted in Global Warming, Sociology, Science (real), Big Thoughts, Random Access | 2 Comments »