a sibilant intake of breath – Page 730 – climate change activist and science communicator; photographer; mapmaker — advocate for a stable global climate, reduced nuclear weapon risks, and safe human-AI interaction

The Khazzoom-Brookes Postulate

Reading through George Monbiot’s Heat, I encountered the idea of the Khazzoom-Brookes Postulate for the first time. The postulate relates to the effect of increasing energy efficiency on total energy usage and holds thas as the energy efficiency of industrial processes increases, total energy use actually rises as well. While initially counter-intuitive, the idea does seem to have some validity. If the energy cost of producing one tonne of aluminum falls from $5000 to $4000, you would expect aluminum companies to produce more. After all, their profit margin will have widened, all else being the same. The Celsias blog cites another example: if Boeing’s new 787 Dreamliner is 20% more fuel efficient, that just means that ticket prices will fall and more people will fly. Greenhouse gas emissions will stay the same or rise.

As Monbiot acknowledges, the postulate is controversial. It is certainly decidedly inconvenient for all the people who trot out ‘increased energy efficiency’ as the first (painless) means to combat climate change. Increased energy efficiency may be great for various reasons of convenience and enjoyment, but the postulate and accompanying logic does give one reason to doubt whether it can have a positive effect on reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

One late end to the Oxford era

Having finally got round to uploading the last of my Oxford pictures to photo.net, I am struck by how long ago the events portrayed seem to have happened. They seem no more immediate to me than photos taken two years ago or more.

Photos from British Columbia – as well as the first Ottawa shots worthy of Photo.net – will emerge in due time. So too will some from Morocco.

PS. Anyone confused about my overall system for sorting photos online should have a peek at this page.

[Update: 12 August 2007] The Morocco photos have been added to Photo.net.

Coping with sodium chloride

The other day, my enthusiasm for black bean sauce produced a stir fry so salty and flavourful as to be difficult (and certainly not enjoyable) to eat. Thankfully, I devised a solution – mixing it at about one part to ten with unflavoured cous cous. As a consequence, it became three tasty meals rather than one failed one.

Sustainability and the Prius

One way or another, the Toyota Prius. is a symbolic vehicle. For some, it symbolizes how saving the planet can be relatively painless, enjoyable, and hip. You still get the same basic thing (the ability to zip around in a car) but without the guilt and with the important ability to lord it over the less environmentally responsible. Alternatively, the Prius is a symbol for the superficiality of the environmental commitments most people are willing to make. Seen in this way, it reveals how environmentalism is mere tokenism in many cases.

There are two arguments here which frequently become confounded. One is a first-order question about the ultimate sustainability of different energy systems. Is it sustainable to run internal combustion cars using cellulistic ethanol? What about plug-in hybrids charged using big nuclear fission plants? The answers to these questions are ultimately knowable to a high degree of specificity. For any given level of technology, answering them is simply a matter of applying chemistry and physics. The uncertainty therefore lies in estimations about what will be technologically possible at X or Y time.

The second-level argument is much more heuristic and intractable. There is the fundamentally liberal belief that environmental problems can be tackled fairly painlessly through a bit of cleverness and some new hardware. This is a view that takes the Prius as a positive symbol. At the other extreme is the conviction that only massive sacrifice can generate sustainability. The vision in Fight Club of people in rags pounding strips of leather on an abandoned superhighway captures this, and adherents would surely dismiss the Prius as a pathetic fig-leaf.

The latter argument seems to generate a lot more heated discussion, largely because the real meat of analysis on the former question lies in territory where most people cannot hold their own (who reading this could really calculate the efficiency of an energy grid based on photovoltaics, or of an industrial process for ethanol production from cellulose?). The latter debate requires only a will to participate, though it may not do much to leave us with an understanding of which view of the Prius is justified.

Morocco photos, part five

By climbing the slippery canyon walls, you could get a good view of the middle section of the cascade.

I had to spent a very long and uncomfortable day traveling to see them, so readers should be willing to tolerate a large number of pictures of the falls.

Pool at the base of the falls

It took an hour of waiting in the sun to get five other people together for a taxi from Ouzoud to Azilal.

In the hot sun, this watermelon truck had a lot of appeal. Unfortunately, they refused to sell me anything less than an entire melon.

Decline and fall of an iBook

After more than two years of faithful service, my laptop is now having serious problems. It takes upwards of ten minutes to boot, frequently forgets important preferences (like to ask for a password before letting you log in), and has distinct trouble connecting to wireless networks. In general, performance has become spotty and unreliable. Things have reached the point where I would ordinarily suspect that a virus has been generating minor havoc, though scans have not supported that hypothesis.

I am tempted to make a full backup, format my hard drive, and start from a clean install. That said, I think the inevitable physical breakdown of hardware is reasonably likely to be the cause of my woe. The constant ambient heat here – enough to keep the fan running constantly, which almost never started in Oxford – will certainly contribute to breakdown. The machine is still subject to the AppleCare plan I purchased, so perhaps it is worthwhile to send it on a potentially refreshing trip to the Apple store before such a lobotomy is carried out.

Once the IKEA bills have been paid off and some sort of a bike has been acquired, it may be time to start thinking about a new Mac.

Morocco photos, part four

Sorry to have been so slow in posting these. Life has involved a lot of disruption, moving from Oxford to Vancouver to Ottawa.

Crowd at the Gnawa Festival beach stage.

Marakkesh street at night

The Kasbah Mosque, in the southern part of the city.

Cascades d’Ouzoud

This donkey had the unenviable task of carrying empty bottles from the restaurants near the falls to the top of the valley.

Thou shalt not stir a foot to seek a pho

One truly great thing about where I live: Pho Bo Ga (A-12 Lebreton Street). Two blocks from my front door is a Pho restaurant that is open until 4:00am. That means tasty, spicy Vietnamese soup at crazy times of night. You can get a huge bowl of tofu Pho for $6.25 and ridiculously huge bowls for a dollar or two more.

Of course, this would be more in keeping with my lifestyle if I were still a student – feeling good about myself if I was up before 10:00am. Even given my new salarydom, it is a valuable bit of local knowledge.

Reading about ten hours a day

In addition to all the reading I have been doing for my first big project at work, I am finding myself well-immersed in interesting personal reading. Aside from the stack of fiction that has been oscillating in size for about a year, I am reading George Monbiot’s Heat: How to Stop the Planet from Burning and Harold Coward and Andrew J. Weaver’s book Hard Choices: Climate Change in Canada. Simon Singh’s The Code Book is catering to a less immediately work-related interest, as is the Simon Blackburn book Antonia gave me.

It can be tough to maintain an appetite for the written word that exceeds the immediate requirements of work and the secondary need to keep up to date on current events. Of course, it is essential in order to become and remain an informed member of society.

Unrelated: Emily introduced me to a new web comic: The Perry Bible Fellowship. It is pretty random, but also quite funny at times.

Lonely Evening competition

My brother Mica is in yet another music video competition. The ‘Lonely Evening’ video is his first based on original music. It was mentioned here previously. Voting continues until August 10th. If he wins this grand final, it will be his fifth victory in a row.

You can see all of his previous films on his website: papaflyfilms.com.