2009-03-30
Is this the ultimate greenwash?
A recent study finds that manufacturing processes used to make a lot of stuff, apparently especially tech stuff, is incredibly inefficient when it comes to energy consumption. [LINK] A particularly painful example is the manufacture of solar panels, which is so inefficient that it diminishes the long-term payoff of using renewable energy.
2009-03-27
Earth Hour coming tomorrow
Well, Earth Hour is coming up tomorrow, (28 March, 8:30PM). It's an hour when people voluntarily turn out the lights to mark awareness of the link between energy generation/use and climate change. Last year, Google joined in the fun by making their front page black (I don't remember if it was just for an hour or a whole day). The event is organized through an official web site at earthhour.org.
An article on Yahoo! news cover the "event." Toward the end, they quote Bjorn Lomborg (infamously of the skeptical environmentalist), saying Even if a billion people turn off their lights this Saturday the entire event will be equivalent to switching off China's emissions for six short seconds." This followed a sentence saying, "Critics said the initiative was little more than empty symbolism."
Um, yeah.
The whole point is to make a gesture. It's like wearing an AIDS ribbon (back in the days before it lost all meaning). The ribbon doesn't cure AIDS, and turning out your lights doesn't change global warming. But if the Las Vegas strip is dark for an hour (as planned) and the Sydney Harbour is dark for an hour, and now even China is joining in, that is a meaningful gesture. It shows how far we are coming (despite my previous post) in educating the public about the dangers of climate change.
Plus it reduces light pollution, which is a good cause unto itself.
An article on Yahoo! news cover the "event." Toward the end, they quote Bjorn Lomborg (infamously of the skeptical environmentalist), saying Even if a billion people turn off their lights this Saturday the entire event will be equivalent to switching off China's emissions for six short seconds." This followed a sentence saying, "Critics said the initiative was little more than empty symbolism."
Um, yeah.
The whole point is to make a gesture. It's like wearing an AIDS ribbon (back in the days before it lost all meaning). The ribbon doesn't cure AIDS, and turning out your lights doesn't change global warming. But if the Las Vegas strip is dark for an hour (as planned) and the Sydney Harbour is dark for an hour, and now even China is joining in, that is a meaningful gesture. It shows how far we are coming (despite my previous post) in educating the public about the dangers of climate change.
Plus it reduces light pollution, which is a good cause unto itself.
2009-03-16
Americans still don't want to believe
Gallup has a new poll out, conducted using 1,012 Americans over the phone over three days early in March 2009. The results?
First the positive:
Just as a reminder, the symptoms of global warming have been diagnosed from observations (and observations"), and this has been true for many years. Also, the impacts of global warming are also being felt already. Examples include the extinction of some species (notably the golden toad), the steady decline of artic sea-ice (which endangers the polar bear and other arctic species), melting permafrost, changing migration patterns, etc.
What else does the poll say?
I'd like to insert a big sigh here.
Well, here's a prediction, then. There won't be significant political action to tax carbon emissions in the United States until a majority of Americans think global warming does pose a serious risk to their way of life. When this happens (and it will happen), it will be far too late to stop dangerous climate change from occurring. That is, unless the mainstream media starts covering the issue in a truly unbiased way (i.e., no longer presenting the big issue as controversial). That might convince the majority of Americans that they need to be concerned.
UPDATE:This just goes to show why some Americans still don't get it:
"We are cooling. We are not warming. The warming you see out there, the supposed warming, and I use my fingers as quotation marks, is part of the cooling process."
-- Republican National Committee chair Michael Steele, filling in for radio host William Bennett
First the positive:
- 60% of Americans are personally worrying about global warming a "great deal" or a "fair amount."
- 53% of Americans believe the effects of global warming have already started.
Just as a reminder, the symptoms of global warming have been diagnosed from observations (and observations"), and this has been true for many years. Also, the impacts of global warming are also being felt already. Examples include the extinction of some species (notably the golden toad), the steady decline of artic sea-ice (which endangers the polar bear and other arctic species), melting permafrost, changing migration patterns, etc.
What else does the poll say?
- 60% of Americans don't think global warming will pose a serious threat to themselves or their way of life.
- 41% of Americans think the seriousness of global warming is exaggerated by the media.
- Global warming ranks 8th out of 8 environmental issues Gallup asked about in terms of how much people are worried, including 40% of people who worry "not at all" or "only a little" about global warming.
- Trends for all these show that people are worried less about global warming and think the seriousness is exaggerated than in previous years. All age groups except the 18-29 year olds show the trend in thinking the threat is exaggerated.
I'd like to insert a big sigh here.
Well, here's a prediction, then. There won't be significant political action to tax carbon emissions in the United States until a majority of Americans think global warming does pose a serious risk to their way of life. When this happens (and it will happen), it will be far too late to stop dangerous climate change from occurring. That is, unless the mainstream media starts covering the issue in a truly unbiased way (i.e., no longer presenting the big issue as controversial). That might convince the majority of Americans that they need to be concerned.
UPDATE:This just goes to show why some Americans still don't get it:
"We are cooling. We are not warming. The warming you see out there, the supposed warming, and I use my fingers as quotation marks, is part of the cooling process."
-- Republican National Committee chair Michael Steele, filling in for radio host William Bennett
2009-02-24
OCO crashes and burns
Well, about 6 hours ago (as of writing time), a Taurus XL rocket built by Orbital Sciences Corporation of Virginia ignited and launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base. It was carrying the Orbiting Carbon Observatory on board, which was a new NASA satellite designed to very accurately (and sensitively) detect carbon dioxide. The goal was to better describe the sources and sinks of atmospheric carbon dioxide. However, that mission will now fall more heavily on the similar Japanese satellite called Ibuki than planned because a few minutes after launching, the Taurus XL's second stage didn't fully complete, leaving a part of the rocket attached to the 3rd and 4th stages, weight that could not be accommodated. The rocket crashed into the Southern Ocean, currently a large sink for atmospheric carbon dioxide A few more details at NYTimes.com [LINK]
2009-02-21
2009-02-20
Code development in the cloud
Well, perhaps this diversion into the world of cloud-computing and "Web 2.0" and emerging technology is more than just a diversion. Maybe it is a full-fledged series. Today, I have just learned about a Mozilla Labs project called Bespin, which fits so neatly into my overall picture of how computational science should be done that I felt compelled to throw it up here to make a record of it.
First of all, Bespin is a Star Wars reference. It's the moon where Cloud City is, which you can see in Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back. Remember? Lando is in charge of Cloud City. Anyway....
The software Bespin is a code editing environment implemented in java and within a modern web browser. The idea is that you open your browser, presumably from any computer you are sitting in front of, and navigate to your code. I'm not sure of the details of where the code resides, if you have a Bespin-related repository, or if you have to provide your own storage that is web-accessible (I'll check), but in any case, you have some code somewhere in the cloud. Bespin provides a unified front end to access and edit the code, including a file browser that they are calling a dashboard. Select your file, and it opens within the Bespin environment, and you have an actual text editor, where you can modify or write code and save. They're also working on collaboration tools, wherein you'd be editing a file and your friend could be editing the same file and you can see what each other are doing. Combined with Skype or other chat client, this could be a really useful way for people to work on code together without constant e-mails and attachments, or the possibility of getting divergent forks in a small project.
The editor is supposed to be very flexible. What this means in reality is yet to be seen. I'm not sure if you can just click a button to use Emacs encodings versus Vi, say, or if you are stuck learning a new editor and figuring out how to customize it. This could be the downfall of Bespin. People are so hung up on their editors (yes, I use emacs and don't want to learn another set of keyboard commands) that they will forego a new useful tool in favor of their comfortable, customized, "efficient" (really, probably not) system. But we shall see.
How does this fit into my vision of science? Well, first let's establish that in several branches of science there are very large computational projects that are used and modified by a fairly large number of people. Let's also put out there now that, at least in atmospheric science, these projects are climate models or the components thereof, and that the people modifying the code are usually NOT developers. At least in the sense that they don't have backgrounds in computer science, they don't keep up with trends in software development, and they don't necessarily know a lot about proper coding. They are, instead, scientists who want the model to do something differently than some other scientist designed it to do. Some equation is changed, or a new process is introduced, or some grad student just wants to run a sensitivity study by changing some parameter. So, each of these uses is going to be working with their own collection of the code, with their modifications. Maybe a group at some university wants to take an established model, and tinker with it collectively, so they'd want their own centralized repository of code that they can all access, but isn't accessible to the general community working with that model. There are lots of permutations and combinations that need to be transparently established by something like Bespin. And more importantly, these people (and I'm definitely throwing myself into this group) need to be able to get into Bespin and forget that they are using it. They need to log in, find their code and start working, with minimal investment in modifying and customizing and tweaking and generally fiddling. It needs to "just work."
Now, back to the point. It would be terrific to have the code accessible from anywhere for all users (or a subset of users, or your own code just for you). This could be especially useful for code that is going to be run on powerful remote computers (just downstairs maybe, but maybe in another state, or across the globe) because it would reduce the overhead of just getting to the code. Many of us have a multistep process to log in to these computers, and then we are stuck with the environment that is set up on the computer (which varies from computer to computer even within the same institution). Having a secure log-in to a website, where all our files would be sitting immediately, always in the same format with the same permissions and color scheme and shortcuts/aliases/keyboard macros/etc would increase productivity overnight. The possibility that one could use a computer in San Diego or Illinois or Virginia and the only difference be the URL that you navigate to would blow people's minds. Sure, there are some technical details I'm glazing over, like how do you compile and run the code from Bespin (that's not what it does, as far as I know), but just getting things set up in the code from a uniform environment would be life altering.
The impediments to this vision are several-fold. The first is inertia. We've had thirty years of using nearly the same simple environment, and for half that time almost exactly the same methods (from an end-user perspective) for accessing computers, setting up our user accounts, customizing our editors and other software tools, and learning how to move things around and get code to run. Change comes slowly to people set in their ways. Second, I think this needs to be adopted by large institutions, such as the supercomputing centers, and promoted very strongly as the "right way" to edit files on those machines. Similarly, the big science codes, like the community climate system model, should adopt this as a preferred method of modifying code within the development process, and that will spread to the research community. Third, these centers/projects/etc have to address security concerns in a reasonable way, with users in mind. This might be a separate thread from promoting a more efficient way of editing and sharing code, but there needs to be some sensical security procedures for getting into the big computers without a bevy of passwords and a pocket full of devices for accessing different computers.
Note that in the impediments, I never use the word Bespin, because it does not have to be Bespin. The scientific community is in need of new tools, that are powerful, flexible, and easy to use. It does not matter what they are, as long as they can be used across platforms and computing environments. Walls need to be broken down, code needs to be cleaned up, and resources need to be better used. Something like Bespin might provide one more piece of the puzzle to getting some of these things done.
For more about Bespin, check out their web site, and/or watch this screencast:
Introducing Bespin from Dion Almaer on Vimeo.
First of all, Bespin is a Star Wars reference. It's the moon where Cloud City is, which you can see in Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back. Remember? Lando is in charge of Cloud City. Anyway....
The software Bespin is a code editing environment implemented in java and within a modern web browser. The idea is that you open your browser, presumably from any computer you are sitting in front of, and navigate to your code. I'm not sure of the details of where the code resides, if you have a Bespin-related repository, or if you have to provide your own storage that is web-accessible (I'll check), but in any case, you have some code somewhere in the cloud. Bespin provides a unified front end to access and edit the code, including a file browser that they are calling a dashboard. Select your file, and it opens within the Bespin environment, and you have an actual text editor, where you can modify or write code and save. They're also working on collaboration tools, wherein you'd be editing a file and your friend could be editing the same file and you can see what each other are doing. Combined with Skype or other chat client, this could be a really useful way for people to work on code together without constant e-mails and attachments, or the possibility of getting divergent forks in a small project.
The editor is supposed to be very flexible. What this means in reality is yet to be seen. I'm not sure if you can just click a button to use Emacs encodings versus Vi, say, or if you are stuck learning a new editor and figuring out how to customize it. This could be the downfall of Bespin. People are so hung up on their editors (yes, I use emacs and don't want to learn another set of keyboard commands) that they will forego a new useful tool in favor of their comfortable, customized, "efficient" (really, probably not) system. But we shall see.
How does this fit into my vision of science? Well, first let's establish that in several branches of science there are very large computational projects that are used and modified by a fairly large number of people. Let's also put out there now that, at least in atmospheric science, these projects are climate models or the components thereof, and that the people modifying the code are usually NOT developers. At least in the sense that they don't have backgrounds in computer science, they don't keep up with trends in software development, and they don't necessarily know a lot about proper coding. They are, instead, scientists who want the model to do something differently than some other scientist designed it to do. Some equation is changed, or a new process is introduced, or some grad student just wants to run a sensitivity study by changing some parameter. So, each of these uses is going to be working with their own collection of the code, with their modifications. Maybe a group at some university wants to take an established model, and tinker with it collectively, so they'd want their own centralized repository of code that they can all access, but isn't accessible to the general community working with that model. There are lots of permutations and combinations that need to be transparently established by something like Bespin. And more importantly, these people (and I'm definitely throwing myself into this group) need to be able to get into Bespin and forget that they are using it. They need to log in, find their code and start working, with minimal investment in modifying and customizing and tweaking and generally fiddling. It needs to "just work."
Now, back to the point. It would be terrific to have the code accessible from anywhere for all users (or a subset of users, or your own code just for you). This could be especially useful for code that is going to be run on powerful remote computers (just downstairs maybe, but maybe in another state, or across the globe) because it would reduce the overhead of just getting to the code. Many of us have a multistep process to log in to these computers, and then we are stuck with the environment that is set up on the computer (which varies from computer to computer even within the same institution). Having a secure log-in to a website, where all our files would be sitting immediately, always in the same format with the same permissions and color scheme and shortcuts/aliases/keyboard macros/etc would increase productivity overnight. The possibility that one could use a computer in San Diego or Illinois or Virginia and the only difference be the URL that you navigate to would blow people's minds. Sure, there are some technical details I'm glazing over, like how do you compile and run the code from Bespin (that's not what it does, as far as I know), but just getting things set up in the code from a uniform environment would be life altering.
The impediments to this vision are several-fold. The first is inertia. We've had thirty years of using nearly the same simple environment, and for half that time almost exactly the same methods (from an end-user perspective) for accessing computers, setting up our user accounts, customizing our editors and other software tools, and learning how to move things around and get code to run. Change comes slowly to people set in their ways. Second, I think this needs to be adopted by large institutions, such as the supercomputing centers, and promoted very strongly as the "right way" to edit files on those machines. Similarly, the big science codes, like the community climate system model, should adopt this as a preferred method of modifying code within the development process, and that will spread to the research community. Third, these centers/projects/etc have to address security concerns in a reasonable way, with users in mind. This might be a separate thread from promoting a more efficient way of editing and sharing code, but there needs to be some sensical security procedures for getting into the big computers without a bevy of passwords and a pocket full of devices for accessing different computers.
Note that in the impediments, I never use the word Bespin, because it does not have to be Bespin. The scientific community is in need of new tools, that are powerful, flexible, and easy to use. It does not matter what they are, as long as they can be used across platforms and computing environments. Walls need to be broken down, code needs to be cleaned up, and resources need to be better used. Something like Bespin might provide one more piece of the puzzle to getting some of these things done.
For more about Bespin, check out their web site, and/or watch this screencast:
Introducing Bespin from Dion Almaer on Vimeo.
2009-02-12
Files flying around the cloud
Related to my previous post about cloud computing and such, I've been trolling the interwebs and trying to learn something. In doing so, I have come across various "Web 2.0" technologies, some of which seem neat, others not so much. No, I haven't made any progress toward finding the massive storage and high-performance, massively-parallel computing solutions that I want for climate science purposes, but I'd like to share two (and a half) software+service technologies that I'm now using daily.
First and foremost, I have adopted full-hearted the use of Dropbox (getdropbox.com), which is a simple, elegant, and multifaceted tool for syncing files across multiple computers. The idea is that you install a little software package, which makes a folder called Dropbox in some obvious place (your home directory in OS X). Now whatever file you put into that folder gets silently sent to the dropbox servers -- out in the cloud. That alone, plus a simple (maybe too simple) web interface on the dropbox site, provides a very useful form of backup/archiving for these files. But for me the most amazing, wonderful, life-changing thing about dropbox is that when I go to another computer (with dropbox similarly installed), those files are there in the dropbox folder. They aren't available for download from the dropbox site, they are local copies of the files, right there in a folder. This provides another backup for the files, as they now exist on the first computer, the dropbox servers, and the second computer. It also allows me to simply navigate to that folder to continue working on whatever I put there, and when I press "save" the file is then sent back to the dropbox server, and sent on to the first computer. Amazing. For those who don't move files around between computers, it might seem silly, but it is so, SO much better than e-mail files to myself, or putting files on some server, or using (s)ftp to move the files around, or carrying a thumb drive around, etc. For those who are intrigued, go check out the screencast. Oh, and it's 2 GB of storage for free, $99 for 50GB for a year, and I think they will introduce a more flexible pricing system in the future. And yes, you can share a folder between users! Amazing.
Second, and less new and impressive, is simply delicious.com, which we used to know as del.icio.us. It's a "social bookmarking" system. For me this just means that when I want to bookmark something at work, like a paper I want to read later, I do it using a different browser button, and then I can add a description and/or tags to the bookmark. Then I go somewhere else, home or anywhere else with an internet connnection, and I can go to my delicious home page and find the link to that paper. The social part is that you can share bookmarks and whatnot. It is not as life-altering as dropbox, but it is actually quite convenient. You've probably seen on blogs and news sites little delicious symbols (there might be one right below this post). That provides a way to promote a blog or web page using your delicious account, essentially advertising it to other delicious users, and possibly making a list of things you've been reading for your friends. The firefox plugin for delicious is great, and I hope they bring such a simple interface to Safari.
Similarly, Digg.com is a bookmarking tool. I use this to try to promote news stories that I've read and like. I am not in love with digg, but I have kept using it for months. My main complaint is that when I hit a digg button from a page, like NYTimes.com or LATimes.com, it then makes me log in, looks for that article, suggests it might be a duplicate, asks me to write a summary and pick a category if no one else has dugg it, etc. It can be an ordeal. I want to digg something and not have to interact with the digg machine at all, and that hasn't happened very often.
First and foremost, I have adopted full-hearted the use of Dropbox (getdropbox.com), which is a simple, elegant, and multifaceted tool for syncing files across multiple computers. The idea is that you install a little software package, which makes a folder called Dropbox in some obvious place (your home directory in OS X). Now whatever file you put into that folder gets silently sent to the dropbox servers -- out in the cloud. That alone, plus a simple (maybe too simple) web interface on the dropbox site, provides a very useful form of backup/archiving for these files. But for me the most amazing, wonderful, life-changing thing about dropbox is that when I go to another computer (with dropbox similarly installed), those files are there in the dropbox folder. They aren't available for download from the dropbox site, they are local copies of the files, right there in a folder. This provides another backup for the files, as they now exist on the first computer, the dropbox servers, and the second computer. It also allows me to simply navigate to that folder to continue working on whatever I put there, and when I press "save" the file is then sent back to the dropbox server, and sent on to the first computer. Amazing. For those who don't move files around between computers, it might seem silly, but it is so, SO much better than e-mail files to myself, or putting files on some server, or using (s)ftp to move the files around, or carrying a thumb drive around, etc. For those who are intrigued, go check out the screencast. Oh, and it's 2 GB of storage for free, $99 for 50GB for a year, and I think they will introduce a more flexible pricing system in the future. And yes, you can share a folder between users! Amazing.
Second, and less new and impressive, is simply delicious.com, which we used to know as del.icio.us. It's a "social bookmarking" system. For me this just means that when I want to bookmark something at work, like a paper I want to read later, I do it using a different browser button, and then I can add a description and/or tags to the bookmark. Then I go somewhere else, home or anywhere else with an internet connnection, and I can go to my delicious home page and find the link to that paper. The social part is that you can share bookmarks and whatnot. It is not as life-altering as dropbox, but it is actually quite convenient. You've probably seen on blogs and news sites little delicious symbols (there might be one right below this post). That provides a way to promote a blog or web page using your delicious account, essentially advertising it to other delicious users, and possibly making a list of things you've been reading for your friends. The firefox plugin for delicious is great, and I hope they bring such a simple interface to Safari.
Similarly, Digg.com is a bookmarking tool. I use this to try to promote news stories that I've read and like. I am not in love with digg, but I have kept using it for months. My main complaint is that when I hit a digg button from a page, like NYTimes.com or LATimes.com, it then makes me log in, looks for that article, suggests it might be a duplicate, asks me to write a summary and pick a category if no one else has dugg it, etc. It can be an ordeal. I want to digg something and not have to interact with the digg machine at all, and that hasn't happened very often.
2009-01-23
Cloud computing and computing clouds
More and more I'm frustrated with the cyber-infrastructure of climate science. It seems to be on the verge of crisis, in a Kuhnian sense. Everyone has individual solutions for how to do large computations, manage very large data sets, and collaborate between institutions. For example, due to limited resources, I just had to move some simulation output from a remote server to a local, external hard drive. One simulation (not a big one) generated some 50GB of output that I don't really want to throw away. Retrieving this data took hours, and then several more hours to send it from the remote site to my desk. It's crazy, inefficient, and isolating.
There needs to be a better way. We need to harness the power inherent in "cloud computing" and the latest technology for using simple, intuitive web interfaces for accessing remote data (e.g., MobileMe, Google applications, etc.) and apply them to scientific computation, data storage, and data analysis.
We have seen small steps in these directions from projects like SETI@home and climateprediction.net, among others. I have also just read an article from Nature [LINK] saying that Amazon (see update below) and Google have both started down these roads, as has the NSF with something called DataNet. However, as the article notes, there are serious challenges, not just in terms of technology but also dealing with access, cost, and fairness. These can be touchy issues, especially in fields where the rate of work can vary greatly among different research groups.
I'll also just complain that even besides dealing with sharing and storing data, the ever-growing size of data sets in Earth Sciences, and particularly in the climate sciences, demands new tools for analyzing and visualizing the data. I've seen some projects that seek to deal with the emerging issues, but the progress of these new tools seems to be lagging significantly behind the growing data sets. As a concrete example, take the analysis of output from the NICAM, a global cloud-system resolving model. This is a model that has points every 7km over the entire surface of the earth. A good deal of variable are on vertical levels, say about 50 of them. It is conceivable that you'd be interested in examining global fields every hour for several years. On a typical desktop, loading a single 3-dimensional field for ONE hour would require all (or more) of the available memory, making operating on the field pretty slow, and doing serious number crunching is basically impossible. This isn't going to be a special case for long, either. A new generation of cutting-edge models will have similar resolution, and as they start producing actual simulations (i.e., ones from which scientific results are desired), analysis tools need to be available to do the job. Right now, I don't have any such tools. Those that do exist need to be made available and useable, and soon.
UPDATE:
I have been looking into these vague notions a bit more. Amazon has a side company called Amazon Web Services that sells cloud computing (computation, storage, database query, etc). The service seems to leverage the fact that Amazon has a ton of computational power and storage just sitting around, so they try to sell their downtime to companies that need more cyberinfrastructure than they can afford. It's a pay as you go system, and you only pay for the compute power/time that you actually use. It seems very interesting. Of course, the problem is transferring this kind of system to a more science community system. It would be nice, for example, if the same kind of system were available from an NSF computing center, and you could access data interactively using a web browser, or submit large simulations from a web browser that then run in the cloud with results going to the online storage facility. Of course, the problem is that "science" doesn't have a giant existing distributed computing environment with plenty of downtime, and there's not a lot of incentive to set one up (i.e., the NSF isn't that altruistic). These are just thoughts to chew on.
There needs to be a better way. We need to harness the power inherent in "cloud computing" and the latest technology for using simple, intuitive web interfaces for accessing remote data (e.g., MobileMe, Google applications, etc.) and apply them to scientific computation, data storage, and data analysis.
We have seen small steps in these directions from projects like SETI@home and climateprediction.net, among others. I have also just read an article from Nature [LINK] saying that Amazon (see update below) and Google have both started down these roads, as has the NSF with something called DataNet. However, as the article notes, there are serious challenges, not just in terms of technology but also dealing with access, cost, and fairness. These can be touchy issues, especially in fields where the rate of work can vary greatly among different research groups.
I'll also just complain that even besides dealing with sharing and storing data, the ever-growing size of data sets in Earth Sciences, and particularly in the climate sciences, demands new tools for analyzing and visualizing the data. I've seen some projects that seek to deal with the emerging issues, but the progress of these new tools seems to be lagging significantly behind the growing data sets. As a concrete example, take the analysis of output from the NICAM, a global cloud-system resolving model. This is a model that has points every 7km over the entire surface of the earth. A good deal of variable are on vertical levels, say about 50 of them. It is conceivable that you'd be interested in examining global fields every hour for several years. On a typical desktop, loading a single 3-dimensional field for ONE hour would require all (or more) of the available memory, making operating on the field pretty slow, and doing serious number crunching is basically impossible. This isn't going to be a special case for long, either. A new generation of cutting-edge models will have similar resolution, and as they start producing actual simulations (i.e., ones from which scientific results are desired), analysis tools need to be available to do the job. Right now, I don't have any such tools. Those that do exist need to be made available and useable, and soon.
UPDATE:
I have been looking into these vague notions a bit more. Amazon has a side company called Amazon Web Services that sells cloud computing (computation, storage, database query, etc). The service seems to leverage the fact that Amazon has a ton of computational power and storage just sitting around, so they try to sell their downtime to companies that need more cyberinfrastructure than they can afford. It's a pay as you go system, and you only pay for the compute power/time that you actually use. It seems very interesting. Of course, the problem is transferring this kind of system to a more science community system. It would be nice, for example, if the same kind of system were available from an NSF computing center, and you could access data interactively using a web browser, or submit large simulations from a web browser that then run in the cloud with results going to the online storage facility. Of course, the problem is that "science" doesn't have a giant existing distributed computing environment with plenty of downtime, and there's not a lot of incentive to set one up (i.e., the NSF isn't that altruistic). These are just thoughts to chew on.
2009-01-19
Climate blog smackdown
So for those who follow the climate blogs (by which I mean the blogs in which climate change deniers' arguments are routinely dismantled with high school math and physics), Tamino has just posted one of the best smackdowns to a denier analysis I've seen in a while. Tamino writes the "Open Mind" blog, and the entry is from 19 January [LINK]. Basically, a denier says that the increase in atmospheric CO2 is not anthropogenic, but natural, and presents a time series analysis of the Mauna Loa CO2 data using carbon isotopes. It probably sounds good if you aren't being critical about it, but in about three lines of algebra, Tamino proves that the analysis is exactly wrong, and the "result" is dictated by the terrible way the analysis was done. Smack. Fail. Totally worth reading.
2008-10-12
A geoengineering teaser
So, just read the "News and Views" piece in Nature Geoscience (Vol.1, (644), 2008; doi:10.1038/ngeo326) called "Climate change: Cool spray" by Heike Langenberg. I can't spend the time to really get into it, but I certainly will in the short term. The article simply reports some ideas presented by John Latham in two papers in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society (Phil. Trans. R. Soc. A doi:10.1098/rsta.2008.0137; 2008, and Phil. Trans. R. Soc. A doi:10.1098/rsta.2008.0136; 2008). According to Langenberg, Latham proposes as a low-cost geoengineering fix to anthropogenic global warming the injection of sea salt into the marine boundary layer. This takes advantage of the Twomey effect, whereby additional condensation sites lead to smaller cloud droplets which reflect a higher fraction of incident light (a cooling effect).
Okay, well, I haven't read the papers yet, but I will. And since this is one of those areas where I know something, I should be able to address some of the issues that this plan raises. As has been pointed out regarding other geoengineering ideas, this one is fundamentally a shortwave effect, while the global warming is a longwave one. That means that the crux of the plan relies on reducing the total energy in the climate system, probably by using thin ribbons of clouds over subtropical oceans. Meanwhile, outside of those regions, the same sunshine comes in, and the same CO2 is sitting in the atmosphere, and presumably there's still enhanced water vapor. The effect of those clouds is to change the surface temperature beneath them, creating temperature gradients in the surface air temperature and sea surface temperature. This perturbs the low-level circulation. The low level circulation moves some energy around, but the majority of the north-south energy transport in the climate system is accomplished through storms grabbing energy from the low latitudes and moving it northward. So depending on the placement and extent of this cloud shield, the effects on both the low-level wind field and the indirect effect on the storm tracks will significantly alter the naive expectation that reflecting more light back to space will offset human-induced warming.
But more on the details in a future post.
Okay, well, I haven't read the papers yet, but I will. And since this is one of those areas where I know something, I should be able to address some of the issues that this plan raises. As has been pointed out regarding other geoengineering ideas, this one is fundamentally a shortwave effect, while the global warming is a longwave one. That means that the crux of the plan relies on reducing the total energy in the climate system, probably by using thin ribbons of clouds over subtropical oceans. Meanwhile, outside of those regions, the same sunshine comes in, and the same CO2 is sitting in the atmosphere, and presumably there's still enhanced water vapor. The effect of those clouds is to change the surface temperature beneath them, creating temperature gradients in the surface air temperature and sea surface temperature. This perturbs the low-level circulation. The low level circulation moves some energy around, but the majority of the north-south energy transport in the climate system is accomplished through storms grabbing energy from the low latitudes and moving it northward. So depending on the placement and extent of this cloud shield, the effects on both the low-level wind field and the indirect effect on the storm tracks will significantly alter the naive expectation that reflecting more light back to space will offset human-induced warming.
But more on the details in a future post.
2008-09-26
Great animation about climate change
Wake Up, Freak Out - then Get a Grip from Leo Murray.
Wake Up, Freak Out - then Get a Grip from Leo Murray on Vimeo.
I saw this posted on Grist, and thought it was pretty cool.
I'm not a fan of the "tipping point" argument, actually. Not that I don't believe there are tipping points, but just because I don't know how to really quantify the risk they pose. We don't know where the tipping points are, but we do know about the mechanisms of adverse amplifying feedbacks in the climate system that could introduce these tipping points. I'm interested in the physical processes, and trying to quantitatively understand their impact on the climate system.
Wake Up, Freak Out - then Get a Grip from Leo Murray on Vimeo.
I saw this posted on Grist, and thought it was pretty cool.
I'm not a fan of the "tipping point" argument, actually. Not that I don't believe there are tipping points, but just because I don't know how to really quantify the risk they pose. We don't know where the tipping points are, but we do know about the mechanisms of adverse amplifying feedbacks in the climate system that could introduce these tipping points. I'm interested in the physical processes, and trying to quantitatively understand their impact on the climate system.
2008-08-26
Turbulent times at the science-public interface
I read a fair number of climate-related blogs. One of these days I'll try to get some kind of "blog roll" going on the side of the page. In the meantime, there's a small box over there that has items I'd like to share, not always science related, but things I found interesting. Anyway, I sometimes get frustrated with these blogs because it seems like most of their effort is to address/attack/debunk/explain the climate change skeptics/sceptics/deniers/inactivists. This seems less and less useful to me, for a couple of reasons. First, there just aren't that many of those deniers out there that can make waves in the media with anything close to a reasoned argument. Second, just going point by point through their "arguments" to show why they are wrong appears to me to be a weak form or rhetoric. Actually, this is a major problem with the democratic party, too, as they seem to just respond to the outlandish attacks of the republicans.
I think this topic has been addressed in excruciating detail in the climate-blogosphere recently... I should have links to Mooney and other here, but I'm just riffing today. There were a lot of posts about whether or not to directly address the deniers, or whether it was counterproductive. Today I think it is largely counterproductive.
Not to say that these idiotic arguments shouldn't be ripped apart, they should, but we don't need 50 blogs all ripping apart one obscure denialist's claims, as it really just gives them much more "credibility." For example, this weird person that as far as I've seen is only working in the blogosphere and only goes by the name "lucia." She's making all kinds of noise, and because places as high profile as realclimate and deltoid spend time on her, I think she's attracted quite a following. This despite the fact that she is unable to present a reasoned argument that actually answers a question (a recent post by Grumbine demonstrated this).
This is just a bit of a rant, I guess. My point is that I'm now feeling more strongly that refutations of these arguments should simply be compiled in some climate science wiki, where all the people who feel compelled to add their take on a denialist claim should be allowed to add their part. The blogs themselves would be much more interesting if they would start explaining the science of climate change (or impacts of climate change) without the obligatory strawman provided by denialist claims.
From the point of view of marketing climate science and the general findings of the field (e.g. the IPCC report), there need to be stronger statements of the things we know, worded without our normal scientific, passive, conservative language. I've recently seen more of this, even in the recent report on severe weather and climate change, but communication to the public needs to be better. Yes, it probably has to be dumbed down, meaning less nuance and fewer caveats, which as scientists we don't like. However, the public is bombarded with too much information, and the average American is undereducated in basic science, so we have to develop a language to communicate that we are certain that humans are causing climate change, and there are severe risks involved in doing so. And this has to be done without being condescending. Again, this is exactly what the democrats need to do. We need those lists of talking points that the conservative think tanks cook up and distribute. It's sad, and I don't like it, but is there any other way to do it? The ideal way would be to ground all Americans firmly with rational thought and basic science, but that is long-term and probably unrealistic. *Sigh*
Haven't other fields gone through all this? What about AIDS research? Tobacco causing cancer? Evolution, obviously. Stem-cell research... Why can't we start talking amongst ourselves about dealing with the public and the press, without getting bogged down in the details of our own fields? Climate science needs to look to these examples, get the people who have experience, and ask for advice.
[UPDATE: A related post today from Grumbine, discussion versus debate.]
I think this topic has been addressed in excruciating detail in the climate-blogosphere recently... I should have links to Mooney and other here, but I'm just riffing today. There were a lot of posts about whether or not to directly address the deniers, or whether it was counterproductive. Today I think it is largely counterproductive.
Not to say that these idiotic arguments shouldn't be ripped apart, they should, but we don't need 50 blogs all ripping apart one obscure denialist's claims, as it really just gives them much more "credibility." For example, this weird person that as far as I've seen is only working in the blogosphere and only goes by the name "lucia." She's making all kinds of noise, and because places as high profile as realclimate and deltoid spend time on her, I think she's attracted quite a following. This despite the fact that she is unable to present a reasoned argument that actually answers a question (a recent post by Grumbine demonstrated this).
This is just a bit of a rant, I guess. My point is that I'm now feeling more strongly that refutations of these arguments should simply be compiled in some climate science wiki, where all the people who feel compelled to add their take on a denialist claim should be allowed to add their part. The blogs themselves would be much more interesting if they would start explaining the science of climate change (or impacts of climate change) without the obligatory strawman provided by denialist claims.
From the point of view of marketing climate science and the general findings of the field (e.g. the IPCC report), there need to be stronger statements of the things we know, worded without our normal scientific, passive, conservative language. I've recently seen more of this, even in the recent report on severe weather and climate change, but communication to the public needs to be better. Yes, it probably has to be dumbed down, meaning less nuance and fewer caveats, which as scientists we don't like. However, the public is bombarded with too much information, and the average American is undereducated in basic science, so we have to develop a language to communicate that we are certain that humans are causing climate change, and there are severe risks involved in doing so. And this has to be done without being condescending. Again, this is exactly what the democrats need to do. We need those lists of talking points that the conservative think tanks cook up and distribute. It's sad, and I don't like it, but is there any other way to do it? The ideal way would be to ground all Americans firmly with rational thought and basic science, but that is long-term and probably unrealistic. *Sigh*
Haven't other fields gone through all this? What about AIDS research? Tobacco causing cancer? Evolution, obviously. Stem-cell research... Why can't we start talking amongst ourselves about dealing with the public and the press, without getting bogged down in the details of our own fields? Climate science needs to look to these examples, get the people who have experience, and ask for advice.
[UPDATE: A related post today from Grumbine, discussion versus debate.]
2008-08-13
Endangered Species Act to be undermined by new rules
This is outrageous. The Bush administration is trying to introduce some kind of executive rule that would allow federal agencies to conveniently ignore the impact of projects on endangered species. Not only that, but the new rule would apparently ban federal agencies from assessing the greenhouse gas emissions from projects. You need to go read the story, there's one at Yahoo!. There are some additional reactions at gristmill.
I suppose that some might believe this argument that the current system is bloated and that federal agencies really can do their own assessments. However, the idea of independent review is so fundamental to science, and is so successful, that to just throw it aside for an intrinsically flawed self-evaluation system seems ludicrous to me.
We'll see how this plays out. Whether my paranoid, leftist brain is overpowering my rational, pragmatic one will come clear in the coming weeks and months.
I suppose that some might believe this argument that the current system is bloated and that federal agencies really can do their own assessments. However, the idea of independent review is so fundamental to science, and is so successful, that to just throw it aside for an intrinsically flawed self-evaluation system seems ludicrous to me.
We'll see how this plays out. Whether my paranoid, leftist brain is overpowering my rational, pragmatic one will come clear in the coming weeks and months.
2008-08-08
Newsflash? No. (again)
Well, in place of posting some hasty response to a story or new paper, I thought I'd point out that there's way more climate-related press these days than even a year ago. It's too much to ingest, much less to respond to it all. The press is saturated with climate, global warming, deniers/skeptics/inactivists, and all manner of good and bad reporting. Nothing new for some fields, though I think the climate science community is still learning to deal with so much attention. Maybe that is a good topic for a post in the near future... why do climate scientists STILL get abused by both the mainstream press and alternative press (on both sides of the issue)?
Anyway, here's a couple of recent stories.
First, the US government might believe in human-caused global climate change. LINK Didn't this happen years ago? Geez.
Apparently the army isn't waiting to see what the higher-ups say, because they're going green. LINK This is actually a pretty big story, as the army is a gigantic consumer of energy.
And a little good news, there's a lot more gorillas in the world than previously believed. LINK
A late addition, I just saw this news story about Plattner et al. who find that the "pipeline" or the "committed climate change" might be much longer than had been thought. LINK
Anyway, here's a couple of recent stories.
First, the US government might believe in human-caused global climate change. LINK Didn't this happen years ago? Geez.
Apparently the army isn't waiting to see what the higher-ups say, because they're going green. LINK This is actually a pretty big story, as the army is a gigantic consumer of energy.
And a little good news, there's a lot more gorillas in the world than previously believed. LINK
A late addition, I just saw this news story about Plattner et al. who find that the "pipeline" or the "committed climate change" might be much longer than had been thought. LINK
2008-06-19
Amplification of Cretaceous Warmth by Biological Cloud Feedbacks -- Kump and Pollard 320 (5873): 195 -- Science
A correction, I have read the Kump & Pollard paper [Amplification of Cretaceous Warmth by Biological Cloud Feedbacks -- Kump and Pollard 320 (5873): 195 -- Science], which I discussed a little yesterday.
I looked at it again briefly, and the main things to add are (1) their experiment is what I thought, which is that they artificially change the effective droplet radius. This is fine, as it is artificially prescribed anyway. And (2) they provide a reference for the assertion that DMS is the primary non-anthropogenic CCN. That reference is actually a perspective in Science by Andreae(DOI: 10.1126/science.1136529). I've just read that piece, which is interesting, but I feel is deeply flawed. Rather than pick it apart, let me just say that my primary concern is that it does not seem to give a broad overview of the current measurements, but cherry picks a few studies that may or may not be designed well enough to get at the points being made. In the end, the firm conclusion is that pre-human aerosol distributions, specifically CCN-sized aerosol, is very poorly understood, and that no good way to guess the concentrations has been devised yet. Good points, and that is all I have to say of that article.
More on CCN later though, as this is a good area to explore!
I looked at it again briefly, and the main things to add are (1) their experiment is what I thought, which is that they artificially change the effective droplet radius. This is fine, as it is artificially prescribed anyway. And (2) they provide a reference for the assertion that DMS is the primary non-anthropogenic CCN. That reference is actually a perspective in Science by Andreae(DOI: 10.1126/science.1136529). I've just read that piece, which is interesting, but I feel is deeply flawed. Rather than pick it apart, let me just say that my primary concern is that it does not seem to give a broad overview of the current measurements, but cherry picks a few studies that may or may not be designed well enough to get at the points being made. In the end, the firm conclusion is that pre-human aerosol distributions, specifically CCN-sized aerosol, is very poorly understood, and that no good way to guess the concentrations has been devised yet. Good points, and that is all I have to say of that article.
More on CCN later though, as this is a good area to explore!
2008-06-18
biology in climate models
Just read a quick blurb in Nature [link] that kind of rankled me. The writer, David Beerling, worries about the fidelity of biological processes in climate models. Fair enough. He cites interesting work by Kump & Pollard that suggest a deficiency in climate modeling of the Cretaceous period might be (partly) due to lower numbers of cloud condensation nuclei because phytoplankton are more stressed and produce less dimethylsuphide, producing more cloud cover but thinner clouds.
In the last paragraph, Beerling writes that the results are unsatisfying because "the effects of heat on biological aerosol emissions need to be better described in their model for it to generate really solid conclusions."
I hardly know where to start. I think the comment is fair to an extent, but perhaps misguided.
Starting from the Kump & Pollard paper, which I admit I haven't read yet, I am not convinced that there's much evidence for this biological effect. If they've artificially changed the aerosol concentration or the CCN concentration, then it's almost a foregone conclusion that there'll be big effects in the simulation. That's one of those parameters which, in most large-scale models, is not well constrained and is set to help make a reasonable current climate. That probably means that it could be adjusted to make a "reasonable" past climate, too, but knowing what that means is a different story. The second issue is whether DMS is really such an important source of CCN. I know it is a source, but does stressing phytoplankton really have so much influence on the mean cloud field?
For that matter, this affect would mostly influence regions of low, stratiform cloud. Other regions are probably not that influenced by modest changes in CCN concentration, as the low clouds are mostly convective anyway (and I'm guessing salt would be their main source of CCN -- I could be wrong). So the result is dependent on the way these clouds are parameterized as well as the assumptions about the biological processes influencing CCN. Sounds shaky. I'll look at that paper and post an update. If I can find anything, I'll also post something about the source for CCN, and whether DMS is really that important.
As for adding biology to climate models, I'm very hesitant about the issue. There are potentially important climatic feedbacks. And if we could construct models for the biological interactions, that would help with long-term climate simulations, especially for future climate change and paleoclimate simulations. It'd be great. We're at the very nascent stages though. Current generation climate models incorporate some kind of land model that has simple biology, and usually isn't interactive (meaning the plants don't respond to changing climatic conditions). The ocean usually has no biological model, but there are some marine ecosystem models that exist and are being tested for the next generation of climate models. The complexity ranges dramatically from very simple to quite complex, but there is still much debate about the results from models incorporating these ecosystem components. This is a slippery slope though. Adding ecosystem models seems like a great idea, but if they are true models with prognostic equations, it usually means more expensive simulations (more computer time, more storage, and more human time to analyze the output). And where do we draw the line? Phytoplankton respond not just to temperature and salinity, which are the state variables in ocean models, but also to light availability (varies with depth) and micro- and macronutrients like nitrogen and phosphorous. Should we have include nutrient models, or prescribe the nutrient distributions. Well, if we try to prescribe them, then there will be biologists who (rightfully) will say that the models are missing the feedback between changes in nutrients and biology, which propagates upstream to the rest of the climate model. If we do somehow include nutrient models (perhaps by making the biological production simple diagnostics from available nutrients), then geologists and geographers and social scientists will argue that the processes that are the natural and anthropogenic sources and sinks of nutrients are not properly represented. For example, factories and power plants emit a lot of sulphur, but there's a lot of variability among factories and power plants, as well as seasonal and daily cycles in their emissions. Do we need to simulate these cycles to properly represent the emissions to the atmosphere? If so, that would mean that for climate change simulations, we'll have to model the changing energy needs of populations, since that will impact the amount of emissions from the powerplants. Meanwhile, current climate models to not properly represent processes like wave breaking at the ocean surface which is probably one of the main sources of CCN over the ocean; when will we get to add this? For that matter, different kinds of aerosol have totally different properties as CCN, and what happens chemically to these things in cloud droplets can have an influence on future cloud evolution, so should our microphysical models incorporate the chemistry of individual chemical species within cloud droplets? How do we do that?
My point is not that we should not add more complexity to climate models, only that we don't know how to do it. Even if we stick to the ocean, ice, atmosphere, and land surface, we know we're missing huge chunks of well understood physics. To venture into the chemical and biological world, much less the anthropological, seem hasty at this point. I think we'll do it; I mean, it is being done, but we have to remember that climate models are tools for understanding the natural world. They won't be able to provide solid answers to questions without much thought; climate models can not be run as black boxes with the results taken as truth, no matter how much we add to them.
In the last paragraph, Beerling writes that the results are unsatisfying because "the effects of heat on biological aerosol emissions need to be better described in their model for it to generate really solid conclusions."
I hardly know where to start. I think the comment is fair to an extent, but perhaps misguided.
Starting from the Kump & Pollard paper, which I admit I haven't read yet, I am not convinced that there's much evidence for this biological effect. If they've artificially changed the aerosol concentration or the CCN concentration, then it's almost a foregone conclusion that there'll be big effects in the simulation. That's one of those parameters which, in most large-scale models, is not well constrained and is set to help make a reasonable current climate. That probably means that it could be adjusted to make a "reasonable" past climate, too, but knowing what that means is a different story. The second issue is whether DMS is really such an important source of CCN. I know it is a source, but does stressing phytoplankton really have so much influence on the mean cloud field?
For that matter, this affect would mostly influence regions of low, stratiform cloud. Other regions are probably not that influenced by modest changes in CCN concentration, as the low clouds are mostly convective anyway (and I'm guessing salt would be their main source of CCN -- I could be wrong). So the result is dependent on the way these clouds are parameterized as well as the assumptions about the biological processes influencing CCN. Sounds shaky. I'll look at that paper and post an update. If I can find anything, I'll also post something about the source for CCN, and whether DMS is really that important.
As for adding biology to climate models, I'm very hesitant about the issue. There are potentially important climatic feedbacks. And if we could construct models for the biological interactions, that would help with long-term climate simulations, especially for future climate change and paleoclimate simulations. It'd be great. We're at the very nascent stages though. Current generation climate models incorporate some kind of land model that has simple biology, and usually isn't interactive (meaning the plants don't respond to changing climatic conditions). The ocean usually has no biological model, but there are some marine ecosystem models that exist and are being tested for the next generation of climate models. The complexity ranges dramatically from very simple to quite complex, but there is still much debate about the results from models incorporating these ecosystem components. This is a slippery slope though. Adding ecosystem models seems like a great idea, but if they are true models with prognostic equations, it usually means more expensive simulations (more computer time, more storage, and more human time to analyze the output). And where do we draw the line? Phytoplankton respond not just to temperature and salinity, which are the state variables in ocean models, but also to light availability (varies with depth) and micro- and macronutrients like nitrogen and phosphorous. Should we have include nutrient models, or prescribe the nutrient distributions. Well, if we try to prescribe them, then there will be biologists who (rightfully) will say that the models are missing the feedback between changes in nutrients and biology, which propagates upstream to the rest of the climate model. If we do somehow include nutrient models (perhaps by making the biological production simple diagnostics from available nutrients), then geologists and geographers and social scientists will argue that the processes that are the natural and anthropogenic sources and sinks of nutrients are not properly represented. For example, factories and power plants emit a lot of sulphur, but there's a lot of variability among factories and power plants, as well as seasonal and daily cycles in their emissions. Do we need to simulate these cycles to properly represent the emissions to the atmosphere? If so, that would mean that for climate change simulations, we'll have to model the changing energy needs of populations, since that will impact the amount of emissions from the powerplants. Meanwhile, current climate models to not properly represent processes like wave breaking at the ocean surface which is probably one of the main sources of CCN over the ocean; when will we get to add this? For that matter, different kinds of aerosol have totally different properties as CCN, and what happens chemically to these things in cloud droplets can have an influence on future cloud evolution, so should our microphysical models incorporate the chemistry of individual chemical species within cloud droplets? How do we do that?
My point is not that we should not add more complexity to climate models, only that we don't know how to do it. Even if we stick to the ocean, ice, atmosphere, and land surface, we know we're missing huge chunks of well understood physics. To venture into the chemical and biological world, much less the anthropological, seem hasty at this point. I think we'll do it; I mean, it is being done, but we have to remember that climate models are tools for understanding the natural world. They won't be able to provide solid answers to questions without much thought; climate models can not be run as black boxes with the results taken as truth, no matter how much we add to them.
2008-05-06
Impact of warming on insects and other ectotherms
There has been quite a lot of press coverage of a new paper in PNAS (doi:10.1073/pnas.0709472105) by Deutsch et al. about how global warming might affect land-based invertebrates. The paper is very short, and easy to understand, so I recommend it. It's actually a simple idea, based on empirically derived "fitness curves" for different organisms. As I read it, the story comes down to the fact that tropical temperatures don't vary much during the course of the annual cycle, while at higher latitudes it does. This has affected the organisms that live in these different climate regimes; tropical organisms have come to "expect" a small temperature variance, and don't do well when the temperature changes more than normal. Organisms from places with distinct seasons are more amenable to temperature swings. This has been derived empirically as these fitness curves, which are broad for extra-tropical organisms and narrow for tropical ones. An interesting characteristic is that the maximum fitness level comes at a temperature optimum, followed by a precipitous decline. So Deutsch and co-authors followed up on this, defining a "warming tolerance" and a "thermal safety margin," which just measure how close an organism lives to its maximum temperature tolerance and to it's optimal temperature, respectively. Then they apply a warming scenario to see what happens, and it turns out that tropical insects (the data they used), get pushed really hard compared with midlatitude insects. This is somewhat surprising, since the tropics don't warm as much as higher latitudes, but because the tropical organisms live so close to their maximum temperature already, they are heavily stressed by the more moderate warming. They extrapolate to a global scale of impact on insects, and then three extra classes (lizards, frogs, turtles). This part of the paper does not seem surprising after the initial analysis, though the extension to lizards, frogs, and turtles helps deliver the message.
We often hear about the impact of climate change on biology, ecosystems, etc., but we don't often see such a concise and simple, yet far-reaching and quantitative analysis of "impact." This paper stands out to me because of these traits, and gives an excellent example to use when discussing the importance of climate change beyond temperature, precipitation, etc.
We often hear about the impact of climate change on biology, ecosystems, etc., but we don't often see such a concise and simple, yet far-reaching and quantitative analysis of "impact." This paper stands out to me because of these traits, and gives an excellent example to use when discussing the importance of climate change beyond temperature, precipitation, etc.
2008-04-22
Another example of what should have been done already
Today I read an article posted on Science Daily (Aerodynamic Truck Trailer Cuts Fuel And Emissions By Up To 15 Percent) that made me kind of upset. The story is about a new, more aerodynamic sideskirt design for truck trailers. The design reduces drag, and increases fuel efficiency by about 10%. That is great, right, so why am I so mad about it? Well, because this very small improvement could have been made years ago with little effort, but corporate inertia has kept this kind of innovation from being properly implemented. EVEN MORE EGREGIOUS though, is that there have been radically different designs for trucks for decades that could improve fuel efficiency by 25% WITHOUT CHANGING THE ENGINE. The design that I'm aware of is by Luigi Colani, who I've only become aware of recently by watching "Future Car" on the Discovery Channel. In the 1970s, Colani came up with a radically more aerodynamic truck design, which apparently sat on his shelf unimplemented for a couple decads. In 2001, he introduced a new design, this one 50% more efficient than conventional trucks, but still no one is building it or even stealing some of his ideas. Why? It doesn't make sense.
While I was trying to remember Colani's name, I found two examples of a "more efficient truck." First was just from a couple months ago. Navistar has introduced a new model called LoneStar, which is supposed to be 5-15% more fuel efficient than traditional trucks. The second was from 1995, when the US DOT gave an award to Kenworth for their T600A, which had been produced since 1985. The award was described by Barry Langridge, Kenworth's general manager, "It literally changed the face of the trucking industry forever by creating a new generation of fuel efficient trucks which have saved billions of gallons of fuel. The 70,000 T600s built since '85, when compared to non-aerodynamic conventional models, will save an estimated 1.25 billion gallons during their useful lives." As far as I can tell, these trucks still are getting 6-8 miles per gallon.
Also read a similar post at the "Our Futrure" blog, which sent me to the Colani site and echoes my lack of enthusiasm for current truck design.
While I was trying to remember Colani's name, I found two examples of a "more efficient truck." First was just from a couple months ago. Navistar has introduced a new model called LoneStar, which is supposed to be 5-15% more fuel efficient than traditional trucks. The second was from 1995, when the US DOT gave an award to Kenworth for their T600A, which had been produced since 1985. The award was described by Barry Langridge, Kenworth's general manager, "It literally changed the face of the trucking industry forever by creating a new generation of fuel efficient trucks which have saved billions of gallons of fuel. The 70,000 T600s built since '85, when compared to non-aerodynamic conventional models, will save an estimated 1.25 billion gallons during their useful lives." As far as I can tell, these trucks still are getting 6-8 miles per gallon.
Also read a similar post at the "Our Futrure" blog, which sent me to the Colani site and echoes my lack of enthusiasm for current truck design.
2008-04-21
recent deaths
I just wanted to note a rash of recent deaths of prominent scientists.
Arthur C. Clarke, writer and futurist, died at 90 years old on 19 March 2008. NYTimes Wikipedia
John A. Wheeler, physicist, died at 96 years old on 13 April 2008. NYTimes Wikipedia
Edward N. Lorenz, meteorologist and "discoverer" of chaos, died at 90 years old on 16 April 2008.
NYTimes
Wikipedia
A couple of other notable deaths include:
David Gale, UC Berkeley mathematician, died at 87 on 7 March 2008. Frederick Seitz, physicist, died at 96 on 2 March 2008. Astronaut G. David Low died at 52 on 15 March 2008.
Two very different actors also recently died: Charlton Heston and Paul Scofield.
Arthur C. Clarke, writer and futurist, died at 90 years old on 19 March 2008. NYTimes Wikipedia
John A. Wheeler, physicist, died at 96 years old on 13 April 2008. NYTimes Wikipedia
Edward N. Lorenz, meteorologist and "discoverer" of chaos, died at 90 years old on 16 April 2008.
NYTimes
Wikipedia
A couple of other notable deaths include:
David Gale, UC Berkeley mathematician, died at 87 on 7 March 2008. Frederick Seitz, physicist, died at 96 on 2 March 2008. Astronaut G. David Low died at 52 on 15 March 2008.
Two very different actors also recently died: Charlton Heston and Paul Scofield.
2008-04-15
Science Debate 2008 - May in Oregon!?!
Obama has backed out of the debate scheduled for next week, and McCain and Clinton were non-committal. So organizers are trying to schedule the Science Debate for May in Oregon. [LINK].
Please visit the official Science Debate 2008 web site and find a way to support this important cause. Basic research funding, ethical stands on scientific/technological issues, and policy decisions that should be informed by scientific findings all need to be discussed in an open and fair forum, and the candidates must be expected to be knowledgeable, thoughtful, and articulate about how they will deal with science and technology in the next 4-8 years.
update: If you happen to be reading this and have any doubt that we need a president who cares deeply about science and technology, go read ScienceNOW's April Fool's day joke: Bush to Science: "Let's be friends". This is an official website under the American Association for the Advancement of Science! Can you imagine this kind of attitude from the mainstream scientific organizations with ANY OTHER ADMINISTRATION?
Please visit the official Science Debate 2008 web site and find a way to support this important cause. Basic research funding, ethical stands on scientific/technological issues, and policy decisions that should be informed by scientific findings all need to be discussed in an open and fair forum, and the candidates must be expected to be knowledgeable, thoughtful, and articulate about how they will deal with science and technology in the next 4-8 years.
update: If you happen to be reading this and have any doubt that we need a president who cares deeply about science and technology, go read ScienceNOW's April Fool's day joke: Bush to Science: "Let's be friends". This is an official website under the American Association for the Advancement of Science! Can you imagine this kind of attitude from the mainstream scientific organizations with ANY OTHER ADMINISTRATION?
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