Milan – Page 681 – a sibilant intake of breath

Law and science

Another intersection between science and policy is embodied in a recent report (PDF) from the Science Select Committee of the British Parliament on the relative harmfulness of different legal and illegal drugs. Notably, the survey ranks alcohol and tobacco as being more harmful than illegal drugs including cannabis, LSD, and ecstasy.

Setting aside methodological issues, the survey does reveal some ways in which our response to scientific information is conditioned by pre-existing understandings and practices. Why society feels that it should permit an adult to drink or smoke as much as they choose to (though not in public or before driving) but that it must actively forbid the use of some other substances has no clear logical basis. Any argument that can be used to justify legal tobacco (free individual choice, etc) could be just as easily applied to other substances on the select committee’s list. While scientific and ethical arguments can be made to bolster various positions, it seems that sheer momentum is the main determinant of policy.

I would be willing to guess that some prescription drugs – especially the anti-depressants given ever-more-readily to children and teenagers – would rank quite unfavourably, if subjected to the same type of analysis.

Climate change feedback effects

Starting with an index card full of items to include, I tried to make a map of basic feedbacks relating to climate change. I got this far, then decided that it probably cannot be done in two dimensions, except perhaps on a really massive sheet of paper:

Note: a chemical formula in [square brackets] indicates the concentration of that substance.

Consider, for instance, a single pathway of effects. Agriculture uses fossil fuels, which produce CO2. The CO2 raises global temperature, affecting global cloud cover in an uncertain way. The cloud cover affects temperature, by reflecting more or less solar radiation back into space. It also affects the rate of forest and plankton growth (as does the original increase in CO2).

All told, you need to account for phenomena in the following domains: atmosphere (gas concentrations, cloud effects), hydrosphere (ocean density, temperature, currents), cryosphere (ice and glacier levels, permafrost), and biosphere (plant growth, forest fires). Add to that feedbacks within human behaviours (agriculture and forest burning, for instance) and feedbacks between anthropogenic and non-anthropogenic sources of climate change, such as volcanic eruptions (lithosphere) and changes in orbits and solar output. Doubtless, I have overlooked and forgotten many relevant effects, also.

My hat goes off to the producers of general climate models (GCMs) that have started to incorporate the most important of the linkages shown above. These complex dynamic systems are tricky things, not easily dealt with through the general tendency in science to break questiond down and understand them bit-by-bit.

Serial numbers and used goods

One of the great things about the internet is the ability to deal with information that is far too diffuse and voluminous to be processed in other ways. Indeed, that is the principal way in which modern computing qualitatively changes that we are able to do, as opposed to altering the rate at which we can complete a particular task.

Given those characteristics, it surprises me that nobody has come up with a site that catalogs serial numbers for all the kinds of products that include them: from bicycles to cameras to mobile phones. Such a site would allow users to enter that information when they purchased a product. It would then be on hand for warranty claims and in the event of loss or theft. People purchasing such items online, or in used good shops, could check the database to ensure that the products they are buying are not listed as stolen. Like eBay, it is much more efficient to have all these numbers sorted in a single place than to have numerous separate databases. The chances of a person trawling through many sites are low, but one well organized one could get masses of traffic. (See: network effect)

You could even imagine a system where online retailers like eBay are integrated with such a site. The listing for a camera would thus include a serial number linked to an entry in the database. If you bought the item, then received one with a different serial number from the one listed, you would be entitled to lodge a complaint and the seller would get flagged as a potential fraudster. I have personally avoided buying photographic equipment from eBay because I fear that a lot of it may be stolen. Having some simple protections like these in place would make me feel a lot better about it.

PS. For an example of an existing but limited serial number listing, see the stolen equipment registry over at Photo.net. It is unlikely that someone buying a cheap digital camera online will look at that (I knew it existed and it took me some searching around to find the URL), but perhaps someone buying an expensive tilt-shift lens for a medium format camera system will.

Thirty days until thesis submission

With my departure for the reading week in Dorset a mere nine days away, the pressure is on to submit as complete a thesis draft as possible, so there will be at least some opportunity for discussion before then. As such, my aim is to complete my consensus chapter by Sunday evening, at which point I mean to have it physically delivered.

The prospect of moving beyond the thesis is quite an alluring one. For months, the project has been dominating my attention – though often more on account of the anxiety it induces than in terms of workable ideas being generated and put on paper. The efficiency with which a project is completed basically seems to be inversely proportional to the total size. Dealing with a single email, one can use almost 100% of the time devoted to action actually working. For a research paper, it seems unlikely to be much above 50%. For a thesis, I would be surprised if 30% efficiency was being achieved.

Une deuxième langue

With the intention of stemming the rate at which I am forgetting my French, I am thinking of taking a refresher course at the Oxford Language Centre next term. Specifically, I was thinking about the intermediate-level LASR course (two hours a week). The LASR courses are less intensive than the OPAL ones and do not yield a formal certificate. That doesn’t matter to me, however, since I would be doing this simply to retain my own ability to work in the language.

Has anyone done a language course there? Did you find it useful? Any tips for getting accepted into one of the courses, as I am told they don’t always have enough spaces?

Oceanic microorganisms

One of the most interesting points repeatedly discussed in Bill Bryson’s A Short History of Nearly Everything is the astonishing variety of microbial life that exists on earth. Regardless of how you arrange your taxonomy, there is far more variety in single-celled life than in the more familiar multicellular variety. What’s more, it seems that single-celled creatures may be more diverse in the ways they carry out essential biological tasks like energy collection, movement, and communication.

One of the more interesting bits of research being done right now is the work of Craig Venter through the Global Ocean Sampling Expedition. Using samples taken from seawater from around the world and ‘scattershot’ techniques of genetic sequencing, some new information about that variety has been uncovered. This one program has tripled the number of genes that have been sequenced by humanity (from three to nine million). For instance, the project discovered a great deal about a class of messenger molecules called kinases. Previously, they were believed to consist of a single family of proteins, used by plants and animals. Now, nineteen new families have been discovered, all in bacteria.

In every age, there is a certain temptation to think we have most of the basic knowledge about how the world works mapped out. Projects like this help to reveal just how much there is left to come to grips with.

PS. Those curious about some of the ongoing debates in biology should have a look at two Wikipedia entries: Kingdom and Taxonomy. Some of that Kingdom-Phylum-Class-Order-Family-Genus-Species stuff we all learned in high school is coming under challenge, at the same time as there is a big schism between those seeking to categorize organisms by similarity in structure and those intent to do so on the basis of tracking genetic progressions.

Coal and climate change

Few government policies have longer lead-times than those dealing with infrastructure development. This is demonstrated through the 17-year time-frame from design to deployment for Britain’s replacement Trident subs and it pertains directly to climate change issues. Despite Nicholas Stern’s espousal of a fossil fuel free society by mid-century, fossil fuel based plants are still in construction around the world. Right now, coal power plants account for about 1/4 of all human caused greenhouse gas emissions. About 150 new plants are slated for construction in the United States alone: 56% of them coal fired. By the time they have been completed, operate, and reach the end of their operational lives, we will be getting pretty close to 2050. All told, the International Energy Agency predicts that global coal use will rise by 71% by 2030, raising greenhouse gas emissions with it.

Even if we cannot go straight to infrastructure based entirely around renewables, we can make some modest investments now that could save us a lot of trouble in the long term. One example is building coal plants that can be easily converted to “Oxy-fuel” systems. In these, coal gets burned in nearly pure oxygen. The products of that reaction are mostly pure carbon dioxide, which can then (theoretically) be sequestered underground. By eliminating the need to separate CO2 from other gases, before sequestration, such plants could save a lot of money. Of course, they do require a system to extract oxygen from air to feed the reaction, though this is apparently easier to pull off.

Such transition technologies might be the trickiest part of the entire move away from fossil fuels. Renewables seem as though they will eventually mature, allowing some mix of solar, hydro, and related systems to power the grid. Transition technologies are critical for two other reasons, as well: both China and the United States are concerned about energy security and have masses of native coal, and fast-growing developing countries are unlikely to be able to make the kind of costly commitments to low-carbon energy that developed countries will. Managing interim emissions, and trying to stay below the 550ppm level that the Stern report has highlighted as highly dangerous, will be a considerable challenge.

Climate change and the Amazon

Tonight, I saw a public lecture associated with the Oriel College conference: Climate change and the fate of the Amazon. Notes on Thomas Lovejoy’s presentation have been posted on my wiki. Most of it was stuff that I had heard or read before in multiple places, but it will be useful to have another source to cite on a few issues, for the thesis.

The issue of biodiversity also really drives home the instrumentalist v. inherent value perspectives on nature. If golden toads provide no concrete benefit to human beings, should we be concerned about them going extinct. If we are, what level of resources is it sensible to devote, given the myriad other problems that exist?

Compressed air for mobile energy storage

All of a sudden, the air car concept is popping up everywhere. I hadn’t head of it before someone left a comment yesterday. Now, it is on Metafilter, Slashdot, and YouTube.

I must admit that the prospect of a $7,500 car that can run for 200-300km on $3 worth of compressed air sounds pretty amazing. Of course, the compressed air would just be a storage mechanism for energy generated in other ways. The advantage over hydrogen and fuel cell systems of biodiesel could lie in lower infrastructure costs. Installing compressors in homes and service stations already connected to the electrical grid is a lot cheaper than developing a whole new hydrogen infrastructure, leaving more money to direct towards genuinely renewable sources of energy. The compressors could also be powered directly by wind or water turbines, as well as solar power systems. As for biodiesel, once you factor in the energy required to grow the crops and process them, as well as the inefficiency of internal combustion engines and the continued reality of toxic emissions, it doesn’t seem like a hugely alluring prospect to anyone but corn farmers.

While it is unlikely that one technology will allow us to overcome fossil fuel dependence, it does seem sensible to think that something like this could be part of the mix. Especially if the energy being used to compress the air is coming from a renewable, non-greenhouse-gas-emitting source, these cars could make a big difference in the developing world. They could also help tackle urban air pollution, such as the kind plaguing Beijing.

PS. I got today’s photo of the day in Oriel College, as part of my initiative to photograph each college at least once. While there, I discovered a sizable conference on climate change ongoing, about which I had heard nothing. This goes to show just how many people are working on the issue, both here at Oxford and more generally.

IPCC summaries

Pretty much everyone has read news coverage on climate change, but it seems that relatively few people have read anything the IPCC has actually written. I recommend looking over the 21 pages of the Summary for Policymakers for the Fourth Assessment Report (PDF). It addresses a number of topics covered in the media, from global dimming to variations in solar output.

While few people who read it are personally qualified to gauge its accuracy, and even those who could would need the information from the full report text, it is nonetheless worthwhile to look at the source, rather than the versions processed by the BBC or the New York Times.

For those wanting to track what has changed over the last six years, within the IPCC’s conclusions, have a look at the surprisingly brightly coloured Summary for Policymakers from the Third Assessment Report. Note that, unlike the full reports, the summaries are vetted line-by-line by representatives from member governments.