A great new idea for saving the planet didn't emerge last week. Instead a great idea for making lots of money by using lots of precious resources and lots of energy was presented as a breakthrough in the battle against climate change. The Carbon Dioxide Catcher being hailed as our best hope of saving the planet will be about as effective against global warming as a fart catcher but will make big bucks for its manufacturers.
Dispel from your minds at once the images of coneheads in white coats running round with butterfly nets chasing carbon dioxide molecules, this is serious stuff. The so called CO2 Scrubber is a bit like the catalytic converter in your car's exhaust. Pass air through it and it turns the carbon dioxide into solid particles and catches them. Change the humidity level and the gas is released. Scientists say the carbon dioxide can be released in greenhouses where plants will naturally separate the carbon from the dioxide through photosynthesis. Yeah right.
You can see right away the CO2 Scrubber works just like a rain forest. Except a rain forest grows itself for free and does not have a carbon footprint other than the one you might leave on the carpet of your SUV after treading in some Three Toed Sloth poo.
The other thing people need to know about the device is it is not very efficient at scrubbing CO2 but is very efficient at making money. One of the devices will extract one tonne of carbon per day from the atmosphere, the equivalent of a transatlantic airline passenger flying one-way across the pond.
Extrapolate that to all the air miles in all the skies in all the world, add on exhaust emissions from cars, trucks, those little motorised rickshaw things they have in India, factories, ships, trains, power stations and farts and that's a lorra lorra CO2 Scrubbers, sales and profits not to mention the energy and materials used in manufacture.
The leader of the team that has developed this technology, Klaus Lackner, is being described as "one of the smartest guys on the planet," by fellow scientists.
I have often said the weakness of scientists they don't think things through properly. And what Klaus and his team have not thought through is the fact that when plant tissue decays it releases carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Rain forests do this of course, but they only release what they have taken out in order to grow themselves. They do not burn vast quantities of fossil fuel in the process of capturing the CO2 released from deposits of solid matter torn out of the earth after millions of years only to release it.
Overall the logic of the CO2 Scrubber is the same as that of biofuel which burns several gallons of fossil fuel in order to create a gallon of carbon neutral fuel.
If Lackner is indeed one of the smartest guys on the planet, it just demonstrated exactly how fucked we are.
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Comments: 90
Gotta look at the big picture. (By the way, the folks that do stuff like this - not scientists in general, but engineers and they think way differently).
Why is it that some years ago when W was asked if we should be more conservative in our use of pertolium based fuels, coal powered, yadda yadda he said "No we are consumers that is what we do. " This was long before his awesome fettish.
The truth is that big oil is in his pockets so he will promote what he thinks is best for him and his "friends".
I miss the can'do American attitude.
If you and I were married (to each other) we'd have such a good time. Of course they are scientists, they refer to themselves as scientists. And anyway engineers are scientists so you're not wriggling out on that one.
What you mean is they are not physicists :-)
Having said that, I reserve my right to get cheap laughs from badly written PR stories that use therms like "scientists" when they should be more specific.
If scientists want a better image they should hire a better spin doctor. I'm available.
I don't understand people sometimes ...
There are only two options and the politicians will not face up to either. One is we must all learn to get by with less. The other, which really winds people up, is there are too many perople for the planet to support. Instead of looking at increasing population we have to find humane ways of decreasing our numbers. If we don't, nature will do it for us, and that is not going to be pleasant.
I categorically reject doing something stupid. I categorically reject doing nothing. I am therefore in favor of doing something reasonable after thinking about it for a while. Take batteries. The NiMH in my prius are now 6 years old and going strong ... blame Chevron Texxaco for not having them in more places than just Toyota hybrids.
It will take a spontaneous grass roots movement to turn things round. It is easy for the climate change deniers to say "puh, what difference can one person make by turning off the lights and not leaving the TV on standby. But if those little actions become part of a new mindset, then there is a chance.
And the alternative, bodies floating in the floodwater, be it the Irawaddy Delta or the Mississippi Delta are not something any of us want to see any more of.
Preserving the rainforest need not cost anything. It costs money to cut down trees but not cutting them down is free of cost. The difficult part is after two hundred years of living in an economy driven by growth how can we adapt quickly enough to a stagnant or shrinking world economy?
That is the message someone has to get across.
Let me give you a quick example: scientists, even in this country, universally use SI units. Engineers in this country use "English" units (yes, I know you don't even use them any more). Here's the problem. Guess what the International Space Station and most of the US hardware is built in? Guess what most of the instruments and detectors use? And this mishmash will only continue.
Of course, that makes it easy to tell engineers from scientists in this country. In yours, of coursed, you're stuck taking them at their words. You see, engineers don't realize they aren't scientists. But that doesn't make it so. So :P
As for green, I find it provocative that so much of the current green trends are backward ass stupid. Why use corn for biofuels when it takes more energy to use it than it provides? When other materials are readily available that can do the job efficiently? Sounds like someone, I don't know, wanted to perpetuate the notion that green technologies were ill-conceived by knowingly going down a dumb path (as if they couldn't do the math beforehand). This device you're mentioning seems like more of the same.
My point is (as a scientist would know): the goal isn't bad, but you have to pick a path that actually leads to it. And that's how you determine someone is one of the "smartest guys on the planet" - not by creating a machine that, no matter how cleverly, doesn't solve the problem.
NiMH batteries are great, my wife has a little radio, she has been using the same two sets of rechargable batteries in it for around ten years.
I read recently one of my old clients, Xerox, have a team at Palo Alto working on developing low cost photovoltaic cells that can be bought on a roll and so installed very quickly and cheaply.
Unfortunately, though Xerox are more an ideas company than an office equipment company these days, they seem to have lost their markerting skills way back and so ideas, like the 6085 documenter which had a commercially viable windows type desktop 7 years before the Mac and ten years before Microsoft driven PCs, is now just a line in technology history books.
For the record the 6085 with 256K RAM and a 4mHZ CPU did everything a Pentum 2 800mHZ PC with 64 Megabytes RAM would do. And the 6085 had decent security.
When Steph in the top comment differentiated between scientists and engineers she should perhaps have talked of long term thinking and short term thinking. Those engineers and scientists paid by Corporations that only look at the bottom line and demand a quick return in investmen tend to come up with bad ideas. Get a team of quality people together and give them the time and the support they need to step back, look at the big picture and come up with a long term solution rather than a band aid solution and we start to get somewhere.
aul
Leave it to nature. Natural disasters wipe out far more peope than wars.
But if you haven't made your mind up who to vote for, having watched the election campaigns unfold here's the one piece of advice I can give you:
MOVE TO CANADA!
Unless it's a joke and then it's just depressing.
You rocket scientists use ENGLISH UNITS? Oh shit, don't send up any more astronauts if your specification reads anything like this.
Ye Rockette be bee one chayne two powles and fouer cubits of height and weigheth three thousand and sixe hunderedd bushels. Within ye capsoule be commodious acommoddatione fore ye twain asthronorgts and ye pantry provisionned with adequayte victuals for their seige. The vessel hath for rockets of thuindourous might and two extra whizzbangs of great fortitude that it mayest attain eskape velocitie.
(Note sixteenth century spelling)
We stopped using English units in the seventeenth century, Imperial units have been in use singe then. Yards, feet, inched, pounds, ounces etc.
As for SI units, well this is where "scientists" lose all their credibility. Why SI units as if you are talking about something special when there are only a couple that are not simply metric units?
There's a big battle going on in European academic circles to have engineering recognised as a science. Everyone says it ought to happen except scientists. What are they afraid of? Finding out the engineers are smarter?
But seriously, engineering uses maths, physics, chemistry in a way and logic. How is it not an apllied science?
Have you ever seen the Red Dwarf series. Get the best and brightest in a space colony and in a few thousand years you have two morons, a hologram and a humanoid cat.
In Pauls scenario the people needed are not the smartest but the survivors. I know how to snare rabbits and birds, make fire without matches, I've a good idea what plants are edible, I can build shelters and serviceable rafts.
If the neocons are going for global destruction I want Helena Bonham-Carter brought to me here now!
I don't understand your bit above beginning with "As for SI units..."
The big difference between engineering and science is the methodology. A scientist looks at the known body of work, and says "Where will it take me?" using the scientific method. An engineer doesn't use the scientific method at all.
At worst, an engineer is a formula filler, trying to optimize systems by putting different values into formulas generally developed by (a) scientists (including applied science scientists) or (b) talented amateurs. At best, they have a modicum of understanding of the science that backs those formulas, knows how to do testing/experimenting to find new variables and has some understanding of implications in fields outside his own expertise. But they build on what's already been.
But engineers generally don't make breakthroughs. They are only good working systems they know. RF issues, to a mechanical engineer, is so much magic or, more likely, someone else's problem. Big picture is almost impossible under those circumstances.
Most of the "engineers" that really made breakthroughs act and work more like applied scientists (and are often educated in a more scientific field) than engineers. An inventor who doesn't truly understand physics or chemistry or whatever's behind his invention is either (a) mind-bogglingly lucky or (b) a failure. If he is neither, chances are he's an engineer doing an insignificant tweak to someone else's breakthrough.
Now, don't get me wrong, engineers are very useful. Truth is, even the greatest breakthrough will need to be tweaked and messed with to make them even slightly useful. In the best of circumstances, they optimize, tweak and even bring two or three different breakthroughs together to make something else useful. Look at all the equipment successfully put into space the past 30 years. But no one's designed a truly different rocket since Von Braun.
Scientists are also imperfect. They are often poorly equipped to deal with the public or so separated from the useful applications of their research to be less than helpful. Hence the need for both. Just don't think they're interchangeable.
You write: "Hmmm, so maybe we should vote for McCain so he can start more wars and help solve some of that overcrowding."
The really frightening thing about failing to radically change our attitudes about consumption is that your prognosis could easily be remedy of choice. Not if, but when resources become scarce wars for food and water could become reality unless we wake up from this dream and get busy.
I suppose it could slow things down a hair, but the looming problem(s) will still roll on.
Solar is the only real solution, water power could certainly help, but wind is too impractical and dangerous.
Technology is now brining us electric paper and electric cloth. Those technologies should lead us quickly to cloth and paper solar collectors.
If only Big Oil had been smart enough to R & D solar, then the winning company would have been able put all their competitors out of business and/or under their thumb; and isn't that what corporat-crats love to do to each other?
There's so much power in the sunlight and the falling rain, yet we tap it so little.
For some reason, we seem bent on killing ourselves, when there's a free ride right there.
Every yahoo with a misguided plan doesn't represent every educated person (assuming he is - did he say he was educated or just "smart"?)
Isn't it that already ?
I don't know the solution to our political system, but I'm absolutely agree that it's flawed probably beyond merit. Just the primary system was up to it's eyeballs in petty BS and stupid chicanery, throwing money willy nilly for what? People to vote or caucus in 70 gillion splintered ways and play us vs. them inside and outside parties. WTH? All the fingerpointing and "at least I'm not as bad as so-an-so" is not acceptable on a gradeschool playground but Americans accept it as just part of the system here. I can't even begin to tell you how asinine I find that.
I suspect the two party system is part of it, always having a scapegoat. Big business pays, the government follows the money and people, the ones whose taxes fuel the whole thing, are left holding the bag with nowhere to turn for relief. It's a nightmare.
Sometimes I worry about you, I really do.
Did you hear about the engineer who stared at an orange juice carton for half an hour because it said "concentrate"? Course you did, its a scientists joke. But engineer and scientist are words now so overused they have been stripped of all meaning. When we talk of an engineer we usually mean a mechanic, fitter or repair man. The TV engineer is not an engineer at all, but a repair man. The medical researcher who recently was roughed up on my UK blog for suggesting that a lot of very bright, funny people were not capable of commenting on a "scientific" topic because we were not trained in "science" is in fact a laboratory technician.
AND the person who invented the wheel was an engineer.
But you did not get my point about SI units which is; why is a gramme a metric unit when I weigh flour but an SI unit when a scientist weighs a meterorite. Why is a millimeter a metric unit of length when I measure a piece of wood for a shelf but an SI unit when a scientist measures the distance between peaks in a radio wave.
In Britain the government's chief scientific adviser, who liked to be called The Chief Scientist which tells us about his mindset, did a lot of harm to the scientific community when he said people who are not scientists are not intellectually equipped to talk about anything "scientific".
Since then, for comedians and pundits commentig on anything to do with any science, it has been like the first day of the hunting season. Scientists are their own worst enemies.
Excellent point. There have not yet been any water wars but there have been skirmishes. And a couple of weeks ago the first food riots happened in Egypt.
Nuclear power is easily available and it is rumoured nuclear weapons can be bought on the internet from former soviet republics.
But far more devastating to populations are gas and biological weapons. And it is not beyond the capabilities of any third world nation to knock these out in a very basic laboratory.
It sounds to me like it's those who aren't qualified to call themselves scientists giving scientists a bad name. I happen to know a number of scientists and they'll happily talk science with anyone. Myself included.
Or did you think I was a lab technician (although, actually, I was one over the summer in high school)?
For us guys its always been about having big weapons ;-)
Nukes are hardly necessary.
Which is why women so often roll their eyes.
Tides are a reliable source of power but we need a new method of generator as tidal currents are too slow. There is a company that has developed a generating technology that uses contacts placed on the rim rather than the axle. On paper is look viable to me and though I'm not an electrical engineer I built computer netwoks in the power industry for several years so I picked up the basics. As yet it is not developed enough to attract commercial investment and public investment is a dirty word in the global economy. So we are wasting years when we should be finding out if this idea and several others waiting to get research funding are going to be viable in commercial production bor not.
As a Druid I know exactly what you mean. James Lovelock's Gaia theory is a pretty accurate take on the reality of how shaky our tenure in the scheme of things is.
Every yahoo with a misguided plan doesn't represent every educated person (assuming he is - did he say he was educated or just "smart"?)
I think the guy I wrote of who is being hailed as one of the smartest guys on the planet is boith educated and smart. What he is not is intelligent. His invention may see misguided to us but let's look at it from another perspective. Say his intention was not to save the planet but to get very rich very quick?
A little subtlety is called for. Powerful elites will always try to cling to power but if the middle and low income groups combine we soon demonstrate they need us more than we need them. This happened in the first half of the twentieth century but then the newly affluent allowed themselves to be bought off with consumer goods. The Who sang "We Won't Get Fooled Again," but we did.
This time those of us who are "edu-ma-cated" must get the message acrodd loud and clear. Everything is finite. We have to learn to stand still. That will need new political solutions, the end of the nation state maybe.
In Britain we have a two party system not dissimilar to the one in the U.S. This has allowed government to be usurped by vested interests. The British constitution (yes we do have one and it is written down; it is just not all one one piece of paper) provides for a Parliament of members who are elected to represent the interests of ALL heir constituents, not just those who voted for them.
What happens in fact is elected members represent the interests of their party first and their donors second. The electorate are a poor third.
The Lab technician I referred to has a PhD in biophysics. He is working as a Lab Technician because he has attitude problems which seem to stem from a belief that he is a "scientist" and any one who is not is dogshit on his shoe.
Similarly the former Chief Scientist is a senior academic who had done a lot of theoretical work. Both are short on life experience and social skills and give the impression they are a tad autistic.
On the Pacific coast of the US there are usually very powerful waves called ground swells that lift and toss even gigantic ships around like toys ... surely there could be a system developed that would employ those never ending repetitious powers into some form of focused control that would leverage it into power generation ... free and non polluting and an endless supply ... ???
I wish I could stop the latter trend, but, as a grunt myself, I don't have the power. But I am articulate enough to try to remind people they exist.
Oh, and by the way, I didn't say the yahoo was uneducated - just that he didn't have to be to be billed "smart" or an "expert". The education, however, doesn't keep him from being a yahoo or giving the rest of us a bad name.
As I understand it, the problem with wave energy is the ocean wave is a circular rather than up and down motion (the term "rollers" is perhaps more accurate than the people who first used it knew. We see surf near the shore because as the seabed shelves the kinetic energy in the wave pushes the water into a peak. When that peak reaches a certain height it collapses. That's from my time as an IT consultant in the generation business plus my experience as a windsurfer so probably broasdly right but short on detail.
I did read a Scottish engineer had developed a prototype wave power gennerator, a long, floating tank partially filled with water ballast which rocks with the wave motion. It is anchored to a submarine engine by pistons at both ends so there is constant rotation. Again that's from memory so don't look for accurate detail from me.
I think the method has worked in trials but is a long way from being commercially viable. I'll try and dig up some more information.
What I am always trying to get over to you is its the use of the word scientist that gives scientists a bad name. Saying "I'm a scientist" is like someone saying "I'm a Christian," the word is non specific. It is "scientists" who are trying to create the thinking computer. Computer pros like myself know it can only happen when life can be created in the laboratory. And that, despite the hyperbolic claims of "scientists" is as far away as it ever was. It is "scientists" who pushed biofuel as a solution, if they'd had a non scientist project manager they projects would have been abandoned as not economically viable.
When you and others talk of "scientific methodology" what you describe is simply logical thinking of the type any problem solver uses to approach a task. What do I know? What can I assume? Where do I need to get to? And then idiots would work very hard through a process of trial and error to get from where they are to where they need to be wheras enlightened types like me (the chosen one's) would go for a walk, read some poetry, listen to some music, have a drink, chill out, get a good night's sleep and in the morning say Eureaka! spitting a mouthful of cornflakes across the table (Crunchy nut cornflakes in my case, I always had expensive tastes.)
Science is by definition what we know. And what we know is available to anybody who cares to learn. The way you and others use the word brings it closer to alchemy and other dark arts. I could explain alchemy to you but its a two bottle conversation and as you don't drink that means I'd be incoherent by the time we got to the important stuff.
One of the problems of managing people who call themselves "scientists" I know from experience is confining them to the topic in hand. Being a tad obsessive they are very good at concentrating, but being dickbrains they are not so good at remembering what they ought to be concentrationg on. "Yes, it is very interesting scientifially I'm sure, but it is eff all to do with this project, now can you get some work done" is a phrase I used many times.
Stick to saying you are a physicist and you will get a better recation. I referred in an earlier comment to an English "scientist," I'll do a post about him and show you just how warped the thinking of he and his buddies is. Then maybe you will realise the importance of not being a "scientist."
I love ya. Either "scientists" on your side of the pond are whacked or we are not talking about the same thing. You are entitled to think what you will and I'm entitled to object when people paint us all with the same brush. I take pride in thinking of myself a scientist just as my father was (even though he was a plant physiologist). And I know far more of my type (in many different fields rather than just physics) than I know of your type.
Just sayin'
Now in this case, I'm reminded of a conversation I had with Stephanie about the practicality of manned flight and, correct me if I'm wrong, I was told something to the effect that serendipitious discoveries and their unexpected applications made these efforts worthwhile. Wouldn't the same hold true for this discovery? This may be a starter and applications and modifications might well contribute to . . . umm . . . anything, right?
"...is boith educated and smart. What he is not is intelligent."
And people think of me as a litigator . . . Perhaps you missed your calling Ian!
Regards,
Doyle I <~~~~~
i mentioned somewhere having spent time in the power generation industry. During that time I visited a coal fired power station where a carbon capture device was in use that was very similar in operation to the one in the "discovery." I'm not aware of any spinoff from that although the by product of the process, a very fine black dust like photocopier toner so it may have had some commercial application. I did read later of a power station worker losing his life when he fell in the storage tank.
But what I try to get over to Steph is that no matter how lovely and cuddly and normal she is, and may other "knowledge workers" like her, there are a lot of "scientists" out there working their little arses off to convince us all that science is the realm of geeky coneheads in white coats. To defend the breed in the face of this is futile.
I used to be written off as a nerd because I worked in computers (although I never was actually a programmer) I would just shrug it off, after all I was the one who drove a classic sports car, was a member of a synicate that owned five racehorses, could afford to eat in top restaurants and had the enviable lifestyle.
All of which made it easy to laugh at jokes about nerdy computers guys with body odour problems.
If a perception is wrong, you can't make it right by extolling the inaccurate stereotype. That's Christian thinking, buddy. Snap out of it.
What "they" all NEED is some prerequisite "philosophy". :-) IMnsHO.
As to the "wave action" ... as I understand it, the "circular" effect comes mostly into play when the shallowing shoreline rises with a "resistance" in front of the lower part of the moving wave energy, causing the "peaks" to rise and break over the slower lower aspect, it also resisted by the gravity return feed (flow) of the previous wave(s).
But all of "that" aside, in much of our oceans there are very large waves "rolling" across the surface of the waters, "swells" that at their surface have minimal (zero) pressure, but which pressure increases dramatically in pounds per square inch (on "this side" of the ocean anyway, non-"English" metrically) ... the point being that a buoyant object such as a giant float, such as a ship hull would be, aligned with the troughs of such waves, would have massive forces rising and falling in unison with such wave action were it to be tethered with cables to pulleys on the stationary bottom of the sea bed, such as the "difference" between two wave heights, the peak and the trough, could be "harnessed" (alternating timed "ratchet action" ?) energy wise ...
I also have had years of experience in the electric industry, dispatching bulk power, most of which was generated by Hydro action (I retired as a Generation Dispatcher remotely regulating Dams), along with Steam plants, both coal and natural gas fired, as well as nuclear.
I also spent 6 years in the Navy on large ships and aboard submarines traveling the the Pacific, many seasons prior to that commercial fishing on smaller boats off the west coast ... I have also lived along side of mighty rivers (the Columbia) and countless smaller rivers and streams, always thinking of ways to harness the flows and transform the energy into electrical power. As far as I know, large paddle wheels attached to anchored barges would also serve to convert such energy and no one has pursued that even, that I am aware of ...
But with Oil rising in "value" as it has (not "cost" to the producer, just "profit" to them) maybe it is time to dust off some of these "old" ideas ???
Perhaps it is the difference in the level of engineering studies - one who studies the basics of engineering perhaps deals with the existing formulas and their improvement in application only. this is not true at the graduate/post-grad research levels. If that were true, there would have been no advancement in anything after Newton.
I liked the comment above that was made about being wise about saving the rain forests we have right now, since they work efficiently and correctly. Why destroy a complex system that took millions of years to develop, only to come up with something as lame as this?
I listened to a talk on "nutritionism" the other day by Michael Pollan, author of "In Defense of Food" and "The Omnivore's Dilemma". He made a simple, yet elegant point. In nutritionism's quest to extricate the essential vitamins and minerals of basic, whole foods (such as the carrot) in order to press them into costly pills and additives, they have essentially ripped apart complex systems developed over millions of years, and, in the end, not achieved anything. His example of the "simple" carrot was superb - the beta-carotine that was extracted and meant to be a anti-cancer ingredient, thus being added to all sorts of other foods and pills, turned out to actually encourage some cancers when administered in isolation. We, in fact, do NOT know what makes the carrot so wonderful - it may be a complex mixture of many carotenes, it may be something in the carrot that we have no idea exists. Lesson is, stop listening to the nutritionists and just buy and eat the perfectly evolved carrot.
On the other hand, where I work, advanced degrees for Engineering are few and far between (and most likely seen on astronauts). I have probably met less than fifty engineers with advanced degrees in engineering (and most of them work in California for my own company and - yes, they're so damn good I was lumping them with scientists). Even when I went to college, even the Engineering professors rarely had advanced degrees where there were no teachers, other than grad students without Ph.D. in the Science Dept. So, yes, I'd say that might indeed be the difference. Glad to know they're doing something good in Engineering grad school.
Your last bit reminded me of a bit of excellent engineering lore: if it ain't broke, don't fix it.
Ha! Exactly right, Jerry. After I heard Pollan's lecture, I ordered his book from Amazon. His point is exactly the one you make.....the "science" of nutrition , what he calls "nutritionism" is in its infancy, if it should be considered a science at all. And one must separate the true scientists after actual nutritional knowledge, from the marketing/sales schiesters who take spotty data from research in its infancy and automatically apply it to making bigger profits in the marketplace.
Pollan's advice was wonderful:
1) Never buy any food that your grandmother or great-grandmother would not recognize as food she bought;
2) Always buy food from the outside perimeters of the grocery store - never the inner isles;
3) Never buy anything pre-made - buy whole food and learn to cook.
4) Avoid anything that portrays itself as "healthy" - with additives of vitamins and minerals screaming on the package;
5) Never buy anything that has been made with more than 4 ingredients;
6) Never buy anything that contains something you would not find on a pantry shelf at home or in a fine restaurant (i.e., high fructose corn syrup).
I just love it when people talk common sense. As STephanie reminds us, "if it ain't broke, don't fix it." I would add to that, "don't buy it", too.
My younger brother started his work experience as a sanitary engineer, loading garbage into the backs of trucks, somebody has to do it. My wife was a domestic engineer for much of here life, raising a husband and 3 kids, when she was not working outside the house full time as a secretary to engineers and the like.
I was a naval and tug boat power plant maintenance and operating engineer for much of my early life, eventually actually operating all kinds of systems hands on that all kinds of engineers had concocted and designed for us peons to operate and maintain ... but then in "that" greater scheme of "things," we at the "bottom" have little real value I guess ... surely not recognition and honour in the world ... actually most often just "trickled down" from famous peers "worshipped" by everyone who desires to be famous and can only do it by "name dropping" associations ... I feel so bad, so deficient, all I have is an association with God ... what a loser kook, some would say. :-(
You mean like mangoes, papayas, pineapples, macadamias, chirimoyas, snow peas, chayotes, garbanzo beans... the list is rather long, even without adding sushi, dim sum, or tamales....
She'd eat bread with lard and salt every day though.
You write: "Hmmm, so maybe we should vote for McCain so he can start more wars and help solve some of that overcrowding." I have some thoughts on this topic. Hopefully, Gary Gentry and I will sort them out and publish something soon.
MOVE TO CANADA!
Ian, if the Canadian government continues under Stephen Harper it won't be much longer before Canada is a carbonm copy of the U.S.... besides which I can tell you from personal experience (spent my first 30 years in Winnipeg aka Winterpeg and Toronto) that for at least six months a year Canada's Too Damn Cold!!
I'll let you and Stephanie duke it out over the scientist vs engineer deal... my over simplified definition is that Scientists think up the ideas, Engineers make the ideas work in the "real" world.
I know nothing about it's "Carbon footprint" but isn't Hydroelectric power fairly efficient as a renewable energy source?
By the way I loved your "English Text for Scientists" comment...
Ironically it is scientists who are guilty of adopting religious thinking as in "you must not criticise our God, Science."
As a non scientists recently reminded us, scientists are often in error, never in doubts. So here's a little challenge, explain to us the science that enables a Bumble Bee to fly and I'll concede the argument.
Or, here's a really simple one. Explain electricity; not how we generate or store of distribute or measure it, but how it works, where it comes from and what have magnets to do with the process. When asked "how does electricity work" he replied "it works" but surely over a century later we have come up with something that more fully describes electricity than "it works"?
Until these things and several other obvious examples can be adequately explained scientifically those of us who write comedy blogs will feel free to ridicule all examples of stating the absobloodylutely obvious and similar half-wittery from people who call themselves scientists just as if they were ordinary mortals.
You're a physicist, be happy we that. We all know and respect what physicists do.
I love you, not only have you defined the different levels of engineering, from development engineer to maintenance engineer but you describe beautifully one of the great failings of science which is that scientists often blind themselves with science and cannot see the obvious futility of what they are doing.
I listened to a talk on "nutritionism" the other day by Michael Pollan, author of "In Defense of Food" and "The Omnivore's Dilemma". He made a simple, yet elegant point. In nutritionism's quest to extricate the essential vitamins and minerals of basic, whole foods (such as the carrot) in order to press them into costly pills and additives, they have essentially ripped apart complex systems developed over millions of years, and, in the end, not achieved anything.
BTW its The Cornonation Cup horserace today, I have a small bet on Red Socks
Never buy any food that your grandmother or great-grandmother would not recognize as food she bought;
You mean like mangoes, papayas, pineapples, macadamias, chirimoyas, snow peas, chayotes, garbanzo beans...
Well my gran was from India so she would recognise the first two at least :-)
Did I write that? I thought it was someone else. Been busy editing a book this week so my heart is not really in what I'm doing here.
Look forward to reading your stuff on McCain.
There are a lot of potential power sources that are not beng explored because they are free and therefore have little profit potential. Just this morning it was reported in the UK press that Portugal is to build the world's largest and most advanced solar power plant.
With neither coal, or or gas and being a relatively poor country that cannot afford the investment needed for nuclear, Portugal's advance in this field has been driven by the importance of not being dependent for energy needs on bigger, more powerful neighbours.
Necessity is the mother of invention.
My dangerously subversive European socialist view is that electricity is now like water in that it is too important to be left in the hands of private enterprise.
Portugal builds world's biggest solar energy farm
Portugal's renewable energy boom
Thanks for that. Both scientist and engineeer are devalued words, like manager.
I think one of my colleagues on my final project summed up job tit;e inflation very well. When an executive on the client's staff asked him, "Why do we pay so much money for you consultants, what do you do that our managers cannot do? my colleague replied, "We make desicions."
It was true. Before the consultancy was asked to put a project team in the client, France Telecom International, had faffed about for a year and not got off the ground.
Not a biologist, so I can't help with your bumblebee question. On the other hand, what I've heard from physcists and biologists alike is "We don't know." I think that kind of argues against your position on scientists.
As for electricity, it works kind of like osmosis. If I have a difference in charge (i.e. more electrons at one place than another) and a conductive path in between (and a conductor has a free electron. Materials without free electrons tend to be insulators), the electrons will move in the direction of evening it out. Hence electricity.
Now, if you want the nuts and bolts, I'll have to dust off schoolbooks because I hated electricity and magnetism and have erased everything I didn't need to know on the subject.
I maintain, though, that you are looking at the wrong scientists when you say what you say. Your implication is that scientists "all" do what you're saying they do. I say that my experience is different (note the difference, by the way, between a sweeping statement: it is, vs. what I've seen is - one of the hallmarks of a true scientist). When I was in college, I audited a single English class because I was depressed about my poor showing in, ironically enough, an Electrical Engineering course. They were discussing a Longfellow poem I hadn't read before but was reading as they spoke. The teacher asked, "What did this passage mean?" The kids raised their hands with different interpretations and the teacher kept saying "No, no, no, that wasn't it." I "guessed" right, but I was struck with the conviction the teacher used to negate their interpretations, as if he had a blueprint of Longfellow's mind in front of him. And, even if he were Longfellow himself, would he have the right to tell the kids that their interpretation was wrong.
Later that week, I confronted my quantum physics professor about the speed of light, telling him I wasn't convinced it was a hard limit and asking him why so many scientists were convinced it was. He said "Well, we've never seen anything go faster than the speed of light." I said, "Well, you wouldn't, would you?" He smiled and said, "You're right."
That's when I reached the conviction that the less one really knew about something, the more adverse you were to being questioned and the more hotly you defended your answers.
That is how I tell scientists from nonscientists, whatever they call themselves. I submit, the people who do as you say they do are not scientists and you'll never convince me that they are. On the other hand, you also won't convince me that there are any number of the kinds that I do call scientists, whether they have Ph.Ds or time in their garage. That doesn't mean you're wrong, just that I don't agree with you.
Maybe I'm just the wrong person for this thread.
Which all goes to prove that any group (i.e., scientists) can geometrically intersect with and share members from any other group - in this case, the Group Asshole.
: - )
And, Sheryl, I understood, although there are many who think I'm a science asshole because I refuse to pencil whip things into "acceptance" - but that's a whole other discussion.
I second that - back tomorrow, got a gig to go to.
Valiant try on electricity, we know what it does and understand some of the ways it is generated but nobody really understands what it IS. A form of energy? Well yeah, but what is energy, where does it come from? The laws of physics say there must be a net input of energy yet energy itself does not have a net input. If CERN or MIT succeed in proving Peter Higgs theory of a sub atomic particle that is responsible for giving mass to matter we may know much more. Conversely we may end up knowing much less?
No chocolate Hob Nobs for you though my girl, your answer on the Bee was a typical scientists evasion :)~ Biologists may study Bees but its an ability to defy the laws of physics that enables the Bumble Bee to fly.
And I will show you that I'm right on "scientists." It s the actions of the many that have made the word a joke and the few who are doing a good job out there should avoid it for the sake of their own credibility.
An example came in the British Parliament during the debate on stem cell research. One person arguing in favour of the creation of hybrid embryos did so with this proviso: "but the proces must be policed stringently because we are dealing with scientists and no matter how many times we are assured there is no intention of cloning human beings there is nothing more certain than that within a few years the scienctific community will be demanding that they be permitted to creat a human foetus and let it develop to maturity "in the interests of science."
Red Socks came fifth out of sixteen, no return for me but it was a fun bet on a long priced outsider.
Can't win 'em all.
The scientists I write about in my humourous articles are the type who cannot entertain anything that is not "scientific."
One of the favourite hobbyhorses of the UK branch is homeopathy. The National Health Service has started to use it among other alternative therapies and the science brigade are up in arms about that. "There is no scientific evidence it works," they scream.
"But what about the evidence of the people who swear it cured them," say the defenders of homeopathy.
"They must not be listened to, they are not scientists," scream the scientists.
Now I have no position on homeopathy, I know the technique seems far fetched but I also know people who swear it has worked for them. I would not be tempted to try it. I know two more relevant things though, 1) the placebo is the most potent drug known to modern medicine 2) from personal experience I know the power of belief - in my case self belief but what we believe in is not important, - can be the driving force behind remarkable recoveries that turn all the medical science upside down.
But I was researching ADHD a while ago and came across a brilliant line from a parent who was part of a support group. "The problems scientists have with ADHD and other diseases of modern life is these conditions are so unscientific."
And that sums up so much of life, it is just unscientific, an equation in which there are no constants only variables.