Month: August 2008

Defining science

The other day, Tristan and I were trying to ‘science’ and it became evident that the term has a stack of meanings. Those at the top arguably have the most day-to-day relevance, whereas those at the bottom are arguably more fundamental to the nature of science:

  • At the highest level, science consists of the people and institutions generally considered to be undertaking scientific work. This includes today’s physicists, chemists, biologists, and so forth. In an earlier era, it would have included alchemists. It also includes universities, research centres, funding bodies, and the like.
  • At the next level, science consists of a collection of theories that explain aspects of the world. Contemporary examples include special relativity, quantum mechanics, and the germ theory of disease. Kuhn’s Structure of Scientific Revolutions is an enlightening text largely about how these emerge and change.
  • At the next level, science is a set of key beliefs. Basically, these are that the universe operates in a manner that is consistent and comprehensible. In addition, it is at least theoretically possible to come to understand its workings through observation – using the mechanism of formulating and evaluating hypotheses.

The first two are very much affected by general trends in society and thought. The third is essentially assumed in the way through which our minds access the world. While we certainly cannot always understand the causal relationships involved (and random chance may always play a role that makes complete solution impossible), our mode of thinking fundamentally requires the assumption that things cause other things according to certain rules and that in the same conditions the same rules hold. We may never be able to track the course a hurricane will follow (or the hallucination a brain will have) on the basis of what atoms were where beforehand and what laws apply to them. Even so, a basic assumption of science is that such things are theoretically knowable, within the limitations created by random chance.

When it comes to the universe as a whole. it is quite possible that the collection of governing laws exceeds the human capacity to understand and/or discover. That becomes especially plausible if we accept the possibility that ours is just one of several universes, or that it is itself embedded in something far more complex.

Previous posts about the philosophy of science:

Debating the future of energy

The Economist is holding a debate in the style of the Oxford Union debating society (which I never joined while there due to the excessive cost). The topic is: “We can solve our energy problems with existing technologies today, without the need for breakthrough innovations.” This certainly seems to be the emerging wisdom among those who have looked seriously and comprehensively at the problems of energy and climate change. That’s not to say that technological improvements in things like batteries and photovoltaic cells would be useful, it is simply to assert that ‘breakthrough’ new technologies are not required, though they may well help.

The debate should be an interesting one to observe. The opening statements are from Joseph Romm – whose book I discussed earlier – and Peter Meisen.

Climate change and the limits of Canadian sovereignty

Thesis: Canada is free to enact more stringent climate policies than the United States, but not free to enact less stringent ones.

Argument:

  1. As long as little is being done in the United States, American corporations are not concerned about being made uncompetitive with foreign firms because of climate change policies.
  2. If the United States did adopt a serious climate policy (a national cap-and-trade plan with auctioning, perhaps, or a carbon tax), those firms would suddenly be very concerned about losing business to firms not thus restrained. This is especially true in sectors with high emissions per dollar’s worth of output. This includes heavy industry, the petroleum sector, and so forth.
  3. These firms will lobby the American government to pressure its trading partners to adopt comparable policies.
  4. These firms will find many supporters in Congress who think similarly. Politicians will also be fearful of domestic job losses and the relocation of production to foreign jurisdictions with less stringent rules.
  5. In the case of Canada, legal vehicles through which this might occur include the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and the World Trade Organization (WTO). Potentially, other agreements pertaining to transboundary pollution might play a role.
  6. If taking a legal route fails or is not desired, it is always possible for the US to put enormous trade pressure on Canada. 85% of Canadian exports go to the United States and even illegal trade blocking moves by the US can be so painful as to force a surrender (as with softwood lumber).
  7. No Canadian government will be willing to sacrifice access to the American market, even if avoiding it requires a considerable loss of face.

As such, there seems to be a decent change that if a new administration in the United States adopts a relatively strong national climate change mitigation policy, some version of the events above will lead to the introduction of a comparable regime in Canada. Of course, the ability of even an Obama presidency with Gore as a climate czar to get emission regulations through Congress cannot be taken for granted, largely on account of the short-term interests of the selfsame corporations mentioned above.

Comments? Counter-arguments?

Track stolen laptops with Adeona

Those enthusiastically toting their MacBooks, MacBook Pros, and MacBook Airs to coffee shops and university libraries should take note of Adeona: a free program that helps recover laptops in the event of loss or theft.

Installation is very simple: download a file, double click an installer, and choose a password. Once the program is running, it can be forgotten entirely unless needed. It won’t give you the name and phone number of the disreputable person who made off with your lovely portable Mac, but it will give you information about any network the computer has been connected to. If your computer has a built-in camera, it can also be used to snap a picture of the perpetrator. That function probably also justifies putting it on any desktop PCs with an integral camera, such as the 20″ and 24″ iMacs.

The software isn’t exclusively for Apple products (though those who shell out the cash for Steve Jobs’ toys might need it most). Versions are also available for Linux, Windows XP, and Vista.

Climate change, deforestation, and the deep sea

A while ago, there was an excellent question posted as a comment. The Stern Review and other sources say that the world can absorb about five billion tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent per year. If emissions are above that, atmospheric concentrations rise. If they are below that, they fall. Does that mean that, in the absence of human activity, concentrations would be falling, year-on-year? Are our first five gigatonnes of emissions stabilizing?

To answer this, you need to remember that there are two big kinds of carbon sinks out there. The first is embodied in forests, but consists of all biomass. A world where all the forests of North America and Europe were intact would have less carbon dioxide in the air because more would be in wood, leaves, etc. That being said, for any level of forest cover and atmospheric greenhouse gas, the biosphere will eventually reach an equilibrium point where it emits as much carbon dioxide (from decaying plants, etc) as it absorbs from the air. The biosphere is thus more like a cushion than like an eternal allowance.

The other kind of sink consists primarily of the deep sea. It’s like a great big sponge that absorbs carbon dioxide. At present, it can absorb about five billion tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent per year (the source of the Stern number). Like a sponge, however, it can only carry on absorbing for some time. As the deep sea becomes saturated with carbon dioxide, a higher and higher proportion of what we emit will remain in the atmosphere causing climate change.

In the long run, then, we don’t have a perpetual allowance of five gigatonnes per year. We have some big sinks that can absorb about that much at present. We need to rapidly cut human emissions below this level. Then, over a longer period of time, we will need to phase them down to virtually nothing. Otherwise, we will always have to contend with rising atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gasses and the environmental consequences thereof.

Quantity of solar energy

Advocates of renewable energy often cite the enormous amount of energy passing from the sun to the earth as evidence that their preferred electricity sources can serve all human needs. While feasibility remains an issue, the general claim is unassailable. Indeed, it can be derived from first principles:

  1. We have been merrily burning coal, oil, and natural gas for hundreds of years.
  2. This has produced both heat (which does work and eventually dissipates into the atmosphere) and greenhouse gasses.
  3. The latter increase the share of solar energy that remains trapped in the atmosphere, thus significantly heating the planet.
  4. While local heating can arise from the direct heat of fossil fuel burning, this is not a significant planetary phenomenon.
  5. Thus, the extra solar energy being retained by the planet because of greenhouse gasses is much greater than the amount of energy being added to the planet by the burning of fossil fuels and the fission of uranium.
  6. As such, the total energy incoming from the sun must be much greater than the total energy being produced through fossil fuel burning.

Of course, the energy in fossil fuels also came from the sun in the first place – back before the organic matter that comprises them got buried underground and chemically altered through heat and pressure.

To make things a bit numerical, consider this. The total amount of incoming solar energy at any point in time is about 174 petawatts (10^15 watts). That is 1.524 zettawatt (10^21 watt)-hours per year of energy. In comparison, global electricity production from thermal sources is about 11.4 petawatt-hours. That is 130,000 times less than the quantity of solar energy, despite the fact that we are burning far more fossil fuels each year than are formed during that span of time.

Enforcing open source licenses

An American court has ruled in favour of Robert Jacobsen – a man who wrote software for model trains and released it under an open source license. Ignoring the requirement in the license that derivative work credit the original and provide the original code, a commercial company made a product using the code. Under this court decision, the violation of the open source license means that the company’s behaviour consitutes copyright infringement.

I personally see a lot of value to the ‘some rights reserved’ approach of Creative Commons and others. By not requiring payment for non-commercial usage, such licenses can avoid blocking the experimentation of hobbyists. By reserving rights over later commercial usage, they prevent the abuse of materials created for general public usage. Such licenses provide the flexibility to share, along with the assurance that others will share in return.

Seeing the legal integrity of such contracts upheld is thus especially gratifying. For information on the Creative Commons license applied to my blog posts and photographs, see this page.

Editing video using still photos

Recently, there was controversy about a doctored photograph showing four Iranian missiles launching, whereas the original apparently showed three and one on the ground. Errol Morris discussed the images on the website of the New York Times.

Photo and video editing are nothing new, but some new software seeks to make the former much easier. It combines video data with that from still photographs in order to accomplish many possible aims. For instance, it could be used to improve the resolution of a whole scene or elements within it. It could also correct for over- and under-exposed regions. Of course, it could also facilitate video manipulation. The skills and software required to edit still images are increasingly available. Combine that with this software and you could empower a slew of new video fraudsters.

It will be interesting to see what kind of countermeasures emerge from organizations concerned about data integrity. One route is forensic – identifying markers of manipulation and tools for uncovering them. Another relies on requiring technologies and techniques for those capturing and submitting video. That could involve the expectation of multiple independent photos and videos produced from different angles using different equipment, or perhaps the widespread deployment of timestamps and cryptographic hashing to strengthen data integrity.

Online climate calculators

Here are two neat online climate-related calculation systems:

The first is provided by the American Environmental Protection Agency and allows for various kinds of conversions. You can work out what a volume of one greenhouse gas would be equivalent to in another gas; you can also look at a set quantity of carbon dioxide emissions as being equivalent to certain number of barrels of oil, homes heated for a year, etc.

The second site – RoofRay – lets you draw solar panels on top of buildings using the satellite photos in Google Maps. It then tells you how much it would cost to cover that area with panels, how much energy it would produce, and how long the system would take to pay off its own costs.