Category Archives: Science (not-so-real)

Ban Bread!

Posted on by

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.

Sloganeering

Posted on by

“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…

ObamaMathematics NGC 3372
sculpture prototypes

Speaking of expenditures, my son bought a “new TV and a six-pack of Sam” over the weekend.

He bought Sam Adams beer? That seems pretty extravagant.

What a Freaking Difference!

Posted on by

“I missed fucking Asbestos Dust?” Rufus said. He was amazed. The rest of us about died.

For those just whooshed, Asbestos Dust is the nom-de-Net of a writer from Texas or Arkansas or maybe Alaska. I met him at a party in Pennsylvania to which Rufus was invited but did not attend.

Word choice makes a difference. Even word position makes a difference. “I fucking missed Asbestos Dust?” has a very different meaning than what Rufus actually said.

“Substitute ‘damn’ every time you’re inclined to write ‘very’; your editor will delete it and the writing will be just as it should be,” Mark Twain wrote. Regular readers will realize that I use little profanity in real life and even less in my writings. I will not use any of the other seven dirty words here today; younger readers need not tune to a different channel.

On the other hand, I will take issue with how the anti-science crowd uses its words.

NPR’s Science Friday focused on new nuclear technologies in the episode broadcast March 5, 2010 . Guests included Earth Policy Institute founder Lester Brown, Scott Burnell, U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission public affairs officer, John Deal, CEO of Hyperion Power Generation, and Professor Richard Lester who heads the Nuclear Science and Engineering Department at MIT.

“What is the future of nuclear power,” Mr. Brown asked himself. “It’s cost cost cost.”

Waste could kill nuclear power, he said. “Imagine if the billion dollar price tag [the per plant cost of the Yucca Mountain project] had been on the table when they were being considered, most of them would never have gotten off the ground.”

A billion dollar “extra” cost per plant sounds excessive, doesn’t it? It is exceptionally expensive if all you know is that one partial factoid.

“The volume of waste produced is very, very small,” Professor Lester said. A nuclear plant produces a couple of ounces of waste per person per year; a coal plant produces about 10 tons of waste per person per year. “We can afford to spend a lot of money on safely storing this material. The impact on the cost of nuclear electricity is actually very small.”

“Our cost … is just under 10 cents per KW-hour,” Mr. Deal said later. That includes the waste.

“What we have in this country, and that’s not going to help with the image of nuclear power, is the discovery that there are now 27 older plants with underground pipes that are leaking tritium, and tritium is a carcinogen,” Mr. Brown said. “In Vermont, as I recall, with the most recent instance occurring at Vermont Yankee.”

Tritium leaks sound pretty dangerous, don’t they? They are excruciatingly dangerous if all you know is one partial factoid.

The hydrogen isotope tritium is a by-product of modern nuclear reactor operations. It combines easily with oxygen to form “tritiated water” which can be ingested by drinking or eating organic foods. It is a radiation hazard when inhaled, ingested via food, water, or absorbed through the skin but, since tritium is not much of a beta emitter, it is not dangerous when simply nearby. It has a 7 to 14 day half life in the human body. That means a single-incident ingestion is not usually dangerous and it precludes accumulating tritium from the environment in your body long-term.

“There have been 27 instances … [but] they are not all ongoing,” Mr. Burnell said. “In the case of Vermont Yankee … the contamination is not reaching any drinking water sources; it’s not reaching the nearby Connecticut River. So it is not presenting any public health issue and we, at the NRC, are closely watching how Vermont Yankee is evaluating the situation to discover where the leak is coming from. We will make sure that they do identify it properly, that they fix it properly, and that in every instance they are doing what is necessary to operate the plant safely and in accordance with our regulations.”

“I’m not a geologist or an engineer,” Mr. Brown said as he evaluated the complex dance of creating and running a nuclear power plant. Ya think?

Word choice — what we actually say — makes a difference in what listeners understand. Mr. Brown certainly knows that. This is a real example of choosing words to propagandize rather than choosing to disclose the facts.

So, did we fucking miss A.D. or did we miss fucking him?

“It’s been too long since I had a taste of the Dust,” Rufus said.

There is no hope.

Change We Can Believe In!

Posted on by

The ups and downs of the decade. We made a bunch of great closeout deals but this column has room for only a few. Here are the top nine of 2009:

The downside: We may not have changed many of the Old Guard of pols but we surely did change how they do business inside the Beltway. They no longer throw billions of We the OverTaxedPeople’s dollars at problems.
The upside: Now they throw trillions.

Hoo wee. That’s change we can believe in!

The downside: President Obama (praise be his name) stole General Motors from its rightful owners (that would be small stockholders like thee and me) and put Ed “I Came from the Phone Company So I Don’t Know Anything about Cars” Whitacre in charge.
The upside: Thanks to the soybean lobby, your new Chevy Condescension will be the first model to come with tofubags instead of the dangerous and expensive airbags as well as the new OnStar-by-AT&T. Rumors that OnStar service will also be available on your iPhone have not proven out.

The downside: Democrats were appalled when President Obama nominated Senator Judd Gregg, R-NH, as his Secretary of Commerce. The U.S. Department of Commerce fosters, promotes, and develops business and industry. Democrats called Senator Gregg “too pro-business.”
The upside: Caroline Cartwright of Great Britain was arrested for noise levels that ranged between 30 and 40 decibels, with some squeaks “being 47 decibels” during sex. Bird calls are generally 44 dB.

The downside: Congress passed without reading a $787 billion “stimulus package” that, instead of stimulating We the OverTaxedPeople who provided the money, all went for swine flu shots to bankers. Vermont had a looming two hundred million dollar budget deficit so the Democratically controlled legislature there decided to spend three hundred million dollars of its portion of that G.R.A.F.T. Act windfall to “stabilize” its budget. Since that wasn’t enough, the Democratically controlled legislature also raised taxes by $24 million dollars in order to make up for the revenue shortfall.
The upside: The Nobel Committee awarded the Peace Prize posthumously to Michael Jackson.

The downside: The Environmental Protection Agency ruled that political science trumps actual science as a danger to human health and to the environment.
The upside: Millions of people flocked to Al Gore’s house in the Belle Meade neighborhood of Nashville where his Christmas decorationsand the upturned smiling faces were photographed from the International Space Station.

The downside: Just two years ago, world leaders of 193 countries pledged to reverse the course of climate change in Denmark this year. When the hot air cleared in Copenhagen this month, there were two inches of snow on the ground, two pounds of faked “global warming” emails, and $200 billion dollars in a Global Relief fund. Guess who they want to pick up the tab?
The upside: Each world leader flew to Denmark in one or more private airliners thus reducing the worldwide surplus of Jet A and Jet A-1 petroleum-based fuels.

The downside: In a strange coincidence, the International Olympic Committee also meeting in Copenhagen voted not to award the 2016 Summer Olympics to Chicago for fear that a fire in former Governor Rod Blagojevich’s hair might undermine the new “pay to play” Olympic game category.
The upside: The one billion dollar Cash for Clunkers program which cost three billion dollars left an estimated 643,000 1974 Ford Pintos on Illinois and Michigan highways as entry level vehicles for migrant farmers and high school students.

The downside: The Environmental Protection Agency said it will increase the percentage of ethanol in gasoline to 15% by next June. Ethanol producers and most newspapers say the higher blends will increase fuel economy, create more jobs in the industry, and increase government payments to ethanol producers by $787 billion.
The upside: The Social Security Administration announced that since Congress will lock fuel prices at $4.599 per gallon through 2012, the Cost of Living Adjustment (COLA) can remain fixed at 0% for the same period.

The downside: The U.S. economy has shed 15.4 million or more jobs including those once held by Rufus, Biff, and my wife, Anne.
The upside: The $787 billion “stimulus package” has created an estimated 643,000 brand new jobs (roughly identical to the number of saved 1974 Ford Pintos). All the new employees are dedicated to maintaining the White House website that tracks new jobs.

We have, as a nation, spent the entire decade unwilling to learn from our mistakes. Change We Can Believe In! certainly changed all of that and we are this >||< close to ObamaCare to prove it.

You can’t make this stuff up. Happy New Decade, everyone!

Cost of Green

Posted on by

Let us, on this holiest of Earth Days, pause to consider.

“The nation that leads the world in creating new sources of clean energy will be the nation that leads the 21st century global economy,” President Obama told an Earth Day celebration in Iowa. Meanwhile the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency classified carbon dioxide as dangerous to public health.

Carbon dioxide?

That would be the stuff we breathe out. Oddly, that would also be the stuff we breathe into drowning victims when we perform mouth-to-mouth resuscitation.

What the President said today is good economics and good science. What the administration did today is bad economics based on bad science.

Global Warming is a good example of the politics of the Far Green overwhelming the truth of science. The popular press and the Congress would have us believe that all scientists agree on the causes and outcomes of Global Warming. And yet. And yet the National Climatic Data Center reports that global temperatures in 2006 were the third coldest on record. And yet 32,000 thousand scientists say “Hey, global warming doesn’t happen the way the politicians say it does.” In fact, as Weather Channel founder John Coleman wrote, “the climate of Earth is changing. It has always changed. But mankind’s activities have not overwhelmed or significantly modified the natural forces.”

Thanks to the EPA ruling, synthetic trees that suck carbon dioxide out of the air could suck a trillion dollars per year out of the economy. That’s more than the Administration has sunk into Wall Street “banks.” A lot more.

Last month the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York ordered the FDA to allow 17-year olds to buy the “Morning After Pill.” The ruling took the FDA to task for allowing ideology to trump the scientific evidence. The Agency had ignored its own scientists in creating the overturned regulations.

The court’s decision is the second major case this year that forces the government to put science ahead of politics.

I don’t like using a judicial decision to determine science but that does seem to be all the Administration understands. It is time for a court to tell the Administration what more than 30,000 scientists already know. It is time for science to trump ideology.

Or we could all hold our breath.