Category Archives: Science (not-so-real)

Better Living through Chemistry™

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Rufus likes to remind folks that I am pugnaciously parsimonious. He’s right; in fact, I coined the term and live it daily. I even considered pitching a magazine column with that name but didn’t. See, there are simply too many other skinflints out there writing about it.

Still, cheap bahstidry is a valuable trait but there is thrift and there is cheap.

I mentioned to Liz Arden that I would have to break down and buy some real Febreze™ this morning as I was cleaning my shower. Washcloths take on a life of their own here on my subtropical island. Oh we have a lovely breeze coming through the house but [things] grow when the temperature is 81° and the dew point is 82°.

I need something to take the stink out of the washcloths. The unbranded stuff just doesn’t stand up to whatever comes in on that breeze.

“Dollar Store stuff is mostly snake oil,” Ms. Arden replied.

There’s some truth to that.

Still, Kay Ace swears by “Awesome Bowl Cleaner,” I love “Ovenbaked” brand chocolate-covered graham crackers, and we know that several name-brand manufacturers are now packaging for the dollar market.

The Super Strength Dollar Store de-stinkifier bottle lists water, odor neutralizers, quality control agents, and perfume on its label. I’m down with water as the principle ingredient. After all, gasoline is a lot more expensive and harder to transport. Perfume is another goodie and if they used gasoline instead of water they’d need a lot more perfume which would seriously annoy my nose.

The real questions are what do they think are odor neutralizers and how did they shrink the SCUBA gear down so small that the quality control agents can swim in the spray bottle?

As a corollary, do I have to feed them when the bottle is empty?

skunkOdor neutralizing is the right approach.

In 1993, Paul Krebaum published a recipe in Chemical and Engineering News for a mixture that neutralizes the sweet smell of skunk. Mr. Krebaum, a chemist at Molex, used his extensive experience with thiols (the chemicals that make eau de skunk and rotting fish smell so wonderful to dogs) to discover that an easy way to neutralize the thiols is to induce them to combine with oxygen.

Mr. Krebaum’s skunk remedy works. On skunk smells. It doesn’t work on mildew. And neither do the “odor neutralizers” in the Dollar Store goop.

“Febreze™ is [another] cauldron of chemicals,” according to the Environmental Working Group website.

“Febreze Air Effects™ is showcased as the ultimate odor eliminator, with magical fairy powers. In fact, it’s represented as the one product in all of existence that will get you to breathe happily, as if it were happy pills in aerosol form … as if it were health food in a spray … even an organic cleaning product that works like a magic wand.”

I like magical fairy powers. One of the Interweb writers I admire called himself the Good Fairy in the Gay Nineties. His words had the power to make us laugh, to make us cry. I don’t know if he could get the smell out of my washcloths, though.

The snake oil doesn’t work and Febreze™ costs more than new washcloths, so the tightfisted among us will look to Google for substitutes. The frugal sites all have variations of this FakeFebreze recipe:

1/4 cup of fabric softener
2 tablespoons of baking soda
2 cups of warm tap water

Oh, swell. I’ll have very soft, flammable, musty washcloths. See, the alkaline sodium bicarbonate (baking soda) can absorb and neutralize some acid but mildew can survive within a pH range of 4.0-9.0. Straight baking soda has a pH of 9. It just gets friendlier to mildews as it gets wetter and the fabric softener makes them smell good. Probably tastes good, too.

Back to the (real) Febreze™. The important issue I see is that the active ingredient is Hydroxypropyl beta-cyclodextrin or HPßCD. P&G claims that these molecules bind the hydrocarbons, retaining malodorous molecules like putting them in handcuffs, which “reduces” their release into the air and thus the perception of their scent. It’s better than the perfume that merely masks the odor but the odor is still there. Waiting. With the handcuff key out.

That’s still like painting a skunked dog with expensive tomato juice. I want some inexpensive chemistry that actually eliminates the odor.

The Real Global Weirding

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It is 104° in Phoenix today. It is 84° in the Keys today. Heck, it could be 64° in North Puffin today.

Paleoanthropologist Richard Leakey’s comments in a much delayed podcast of NPR’s Science Friday just gave me an aha moment.

Mentioning NPR cost me the conservative vote. Rufus may never speak to me again.

Professor Leakey helped me realize exactly why Al Gore has led us down the wrong primrose path.

Mentioning Mr. Gore cost me the liberal vote. Paul “Buster” Door may never speak to me again.

We aren’t facing a question of Global Warming. We aren’t facing a question of Global Cooling. We aren’t even facing a question of Global Climate Change.

The problem isn’t Global Weirding.

Of course the globe is warming. Or cooling.

The problem is people. People who would leverage the fact that you don’t know the science to coerce you do something bad for you.

Hubris.

Hurricane AndrewSee, Mr. Gore and his cohort don’t care as much about Global Weirding as they care about what steps we take to control Global Weirding. They think the solution is the Big Government answer to control people because obviously people cause Global Weirding.

Horse Puckey.

Of course there is Global Warming. Of course there is Global Cooling. Of course there is Global Climate Change. Of course there is Global Weirding. Or Global transitioning. This little blue marble is always warming or cooling or in transition.

It’s the Sun, stupid!

Convincing new evidence demonstrates that Al Gore, the IPCC, and other global warming doomsayers screwed us while they were having on with the pooch. The landmark CLOUD findings at CERN show that cosmic rays and the sun (not human activities) are the dominant controller of climate on Earth.

Professor Leakey reminded me of the historical record. Forget who caused it, he said. Let’s look at the prehistoric record and recognize that climate change has happened before and because it’s happened before we know the scale of possibilities and the change we’re looking at is not unlike changes we’ve had before. The difference is we’re now eight billion people. Before there were less than a million. This is going to impact. Rising sea levels today will be very different than rising sea levels 500,000 years ago.

That brings us to three most important facets of this discussion:

  • Al Gore is a fraud. He may have created the political science of Global Warming but he apparently knows less about the fact-based science than my friend Scott, a cartoonist in Alaska.
  • Rush Limbaugh is a fraud. He is so caught up in his disbelief in science (because scientists push the evolution of Man) that he cannot accept any scientific statements about Global Climate Change.
  • NASA is a fraud. Between James Hansen driving Global Warming at Goddard and Charles F. Bolden, Jr, driving Global Warming at Congressional budget talks, NASA has shown they don’t care about the science. They care only about the money.

The lowest temps in the last dozen years occurred in 2007 and 2011. Last year was globally cool despite what it felt like here in North Puffin. On the other hand, 2004 and 2010 were the hottest. So what?

Hubris. Do you really trust a politician who can’t predict tomorrow’s weather can forecast the climate a decade from now? Or a century? Do you really believe a politician who can’t bring democracy to a few square miles of desert can terraform an entire planet?

Follow the money.

It doesn’t much matter what you think of which politician usurping the science. It doesn’t even matter whether you think the science says it’s going to get hotter or the science says it’s going to get colder. We know Earth will get hotter. We know Earth will get colder. Sooner or later.

The only question left to resolve is simple: If the seas are really going to rise 5′ in the next 50 years, Why the heck are you spending all my money assessing blame instead of building a bloody dike?

This editorial is the reason Al Gore invented the Internet.

11.11.11

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End times?

The New Tork Times reported today that scientists have begun to take concerns about an anthropogenically-caused Andromeda-Milky Way collision more seriously.

The Andromeda-Milky Way collision is a predicted galaxy collision that could take place in the measurable future between the Milky Way and the Andromeda Galaxy. The Milky Way is a smallish, barred, spiral galaxy that contains the Solar System along with about 400 billion stars. Andromeda is a “nearby” galactic neighbor with about twice as many stars. The Milky Way and the Andromeda galaxy are approaching each other at a speed of 300,000 miles per hour.

These simulations of the impeding Milky Way and Andromeda Galaxy collision, one a simulation of the University of Toronto, have scientists wondering if mankind will survive this collision.

“Just as greenhouse gases are the steroids of weather, the wobble in the Earth’s rotation caused by the increasing heat is having an effect on the systems around us,” Dr. William Hogarth, a senior Fluidics Professor of Biological Oceanography, said at a briefing held by the National Center for Deep Space Research. “We need to start not only reducing the spin, but the data is showing that perhaps we’ll even need to change our orbit.”

The discipline called geoengineering was originally dismissed as science fiction or even fantasy but geoengineers have shown that they can defeat global climate change by cooling the planet with sun-blocking particles or shades, by adding reflectivity to clouds to make them return more solar radiation to space, and by constructing a 26-mile diameter carbon nanotube to remove vast quantities of carbon from the atmosphere and “duct” it into space.

“We now have definitive computer models that show just how rapidly the collision is approaching,” Dr. Hogarth said.

Still, skeptics are still concerned about the possible unintended consequences of tinkering on a large scale with planetary and galactic orbits.

“We do need to act now,” Dr. Hogarth said.

“Without intervention, today, by the time that the two galaxies collide, the surface of the Earth may have become far too hot for liquid water to exist. That would end all terrestrial life as we know it even as the luminosity of the Sun increases.”

Remember, you heard it here first, 11/11/11.

Liberals, The Dumbest Creatures On The Planet

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This is too too good not to share.

“My favorite bit is the one where Chris Matthews, who I believe takes himself seriously as a journalist, declares: ‘“I hate that even-handed, so-called objective journalism. You know, you can’’t say something isn’t true if it’’s true…’.”

James Delingpole makes the point that The science is settled: US liberals really are the dumbest creatures on the planet. He also something this writer has said time and time again: there is real science and there is political science. Our liberal friends don’t know the difference.

As Mark Twain taught us more than a century ago,

“It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble.
“It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.”