Everyone Should Watch This

Pelosi Speech.

This bailout is messed up. And I'm sad to see a President fail to lead the people but instead be "disappointed."

I don't know if we should do it or not, but I do know it shouldn't be unregulated: That'd be stupid and naive.

Global Warming Petition Project

Shockingly I first heard of this today, in todays editorial section. I thought, "yea, right, I wonder how long it takes to complete the web form."

Well, it's not a web form. Over half of their respondents have been required to mail in their signature (their early signers didn't have to, I presume they could e-mail). 31,000 "scientists" have signed it! 9,000 even have PhD's! Okay, so I'm not obsessed with academic degrees, but if you don't have a PhD then what kind of scientist are you signing this? A student? Well, that's fine. Often students have some great ideas.

Well, really the breakdown looks like most of these folks aren't scientists by any normal definition. They're working folks in industry. They're not signing because of that, but they're not publishing papers either.

Still, 9,000 PhD's is quite a few. Certainly many of them are what you'd call "scientists."

If only they were terribly serious about what they signed. Scientific American, 2006:

Scientific American took a random sample of 30 of the 1,400 signatories claiming to hold a Ph.D. in a climate-related science. Of the 26 we were able to identify in various databases, 11 said they still agreed with the petition—one was an active climate researcher, two others had relevant expertise, and eight signed based on an informal evaluation. Six said they would not sign the petition today, three did not remember any such petition, one had died, and five did not answer repeated messages. Crudely extrapolating, the petition supporters include a core of about 200 climate researchers -- a respectable number, though rather a small fraction of the climatological community.

What I find interesting is that they've gotten 7,600 PhD's to sign this in two years? Hmm, I doubt that. If only there were an example of fraud. 2005, Hawaii Reporter:

In less than 10 minutes of casual scanning, I found duplicate names (Did two Joe R. Eaglemans and two David Tompkins sign the petition, or were some individuals counted twice?), single names without even an initial (Biolchini), corporate names (Graybeal & Sayre, Inc. How does a business sign a petition?), and an apparently phony single name (Redwine, Ph.D.).

Now, if you want to find out how the scientific community feels about global warming then ask its database: Published scholarly works which have been peer reviewed.

Peter Norvig's summary is my favorite due to his writing style. The important part of it is his references to the two scholarly meta studies on the subject. Norvig's is a casual and small sample size replication of theirs. Norvig is no climatoligist, so his study should be taken with a grain of salt. Oreskes and Peiser are the papers to consider.


I've listened to scientists who disagree with global warming, or at least some part of it. Some have some great points (Al Gore blew things out of proportion by showing the projected worst case scenarios). Their disagreement is hardly stunning and usually laced with implicit agreement that we are causing some change. Search you-tube for these. They're interesting.

Global warming isn't religion and it's not a you verse me political issue. It's a problem of debatable scale with debatable methods for battling it, and the debate isn't for you and I: Most of us think we can't fix our computer or car, we're far too inept to discuss something truly complex.

What is for you and me is a debate of what you and I should be doing and shouldn't be doing.

The Pickens Plan

This is on tv a lot. It doesn't entirely sound like a bad idea. The idea is to expand wind energy, massively, and use natural gas to fuel new fleet vehicles (which according to Pickens makes up 38% of our oil needs).

Here's my problem: Where's the conservation? Are we just replacing one finite resource for another in order to keep an unsustainable lifestyle going? That would just hold out death for another generation. Are we just gonna assume we'll have functional cold fusion in one hundred years?

We can't fix this thing with conservation, but we can make the fix cheaper with conservation. This doesn't mean changing everything it really means one thing:
1. Consider the energy costs of the things you do as well as the normal considerations of convenience and cost. So, convenience, cost, and conservation.

There are two things which can bring this about:
1. Patriotism.
2. The market.

You won't like the second option. It's $12 gas and $1000 utility bills. We may never see energy prices that high, but energy prices on that scale will definitely make conservation a top issue in every purchasers mind.

The first option is the real thing. It's making sacrifice for your country. It's not a lapel pin. It's not an offensive and ridiculous $2 plastic flag in the ground that you forgot to grab last night before the sun went down. It's not a flag you'll disgrace when it falls out of the car window.

The sacrifices don't have to be tough, now. There's a lot of little things.
* This site has some, although it's California so it takes water conservation very seriously.
* Want to save gas without spending any money: A less ridiculous form of hypermiling can help. Basically drive defensively and patiently. The game is to put yourself into situations where you will use the brakes less. Don't just "try not to brake." That's dangerous. "Try not to need to brake." The difference is looking ahead and having a plan and if you're not doing it already with respect to safety then you're a bad driver.
* Walk. It's the best form of transit and it's effective for distances up to 1.5 miles. Just remember that it takes 20 minute to walk a mile (slightly less actually).
* Bicycle. It's the second best form of transit and it's effective for distances up to 8 miles, although the distance expands with more experience (you get faster).
* Buy the model with the smallest available engine. Anything larger is a rip off: They're selling you aluminum at a high price and it's only going to cost you money. (This doesn't apply to folks buying trucks, this is concerned with passenger vehicles).
* Just park in the back, the walk will be good for you and the search for a great spot only wastes time and gas. I know it's hard to resist, I do it too sometimes. Plus, by parking in the back you're reducing your parking lot driving which is accident riddled.
* More square feet means more cost not just "more." Just buy the space you'll need when you buy a house. You might get a house that's a bit too big, don't sweat it. But so many houses going up today are simply gigantic. And it's expensive. It's expensive to heat and cool and the price tag on the house is huge. Do you really want to pay your mortgage for 30 years? Wouldn't you rather retire a little early with the money you save on interest?
* Buy quality stuff and take care of it. Keep in mind that it's not always a cost issue to find quality, but it usually is. You won't find much quality here. They're all about price and volume, and you can increase volume with lower quality.
* Cook.

Most of this stuff isn't even sacrifice. Much of it is actually just being a smart consumer.

David Feherty: You Rule

The Man Got Hit By a Truck.

And he's livin' on to say awesome stuff like this:

In an 11-day period in June, eight cyclists were struck by Dallas-area motorists. Three of the riders were killed, and one did time in intensive care. The others had “minor injuries” like mine. Ha! Lucky them! Later that month, I witnessed one of Dallas’ finest writing up the cyclist in front of me for going through a three-way stop at a walking pace, an act of gross stupidity by the Police Department that, given the events of earlier that month, further highlighted the astonishingly arrogant and erroneous thinking of city and state officials.

I think that when you get hit by a truck you instantly become right about a lot of things people would have previously ignored. Especially about things which concern traffic safety.

It could just be me, but I doubt it.

Cadillac

Cadillac apparently thinks its customers are rodents. They'll run to flashy, shiny objects and do anything for sex.

Utility and valuable helpful luxury be damned. The people want big motors and pretty colors.

Achieving a grand 20/21 mpg the escalade hybrid is truly, well, a joke. Not as bad as this one though. The Lexus gets better mileage (slightly), but it's a Sedan. My Buick is competitive. My 1996 Buick. At least the escalade seats 8. Not that folks who can afford an $80,000 car will ever have 6 children or 6 friends willing to accept a ride. Sorry, was that a nasty generalization?

Max Rider Capacity:
Honda Odyssey 7 * 21MPG = 147MPG (per rider)
Escalade Hybrid: 8 * 20.5MPG = 164MPG (per rider)
Chevy Express: 15 * 14MPG = 210MPG (per rider)
Prius: 5 * 46MPG = 230MPG (per rider)

Why aren't they shipping hybrid minivans and passenger vans? Am I just not noticing these hitting the market? Like this one? (Japan). 40MPG out of a minivan. That's 280MPG per rider.


Hybrid timeline.

Death Threats from a Kid

So I'm coming out of Hy-Vee. I come to my bike to unlock it (I had it locked to a cart holder, it's the best and most out of the way spot at this Hy-Vee, plus my u-lock works on it). I set my bags down and behind me I hear:

"Hey Patty, remember when you hit that guy on a bike? You should hit another guy on a bike."

It continued on along the same lines. The mother (I presume based on the number of kids and the use of a minivan and ability to ignore stupidity) said nothing.

The girl must have been 7 or 8. Maybe a bit older. I don't think she was joking.

I would never listen to death threats from my kid. This sounded like childhood aggression out of control. Unlike more emotionally healthy kids she doesn't hit, spit, run, or fight. She instead tries to tear people down from the inside.

New Urbanism for the non-green

What's new urbanism? Basically it's a movement to build neighborhoods the way we used to:
1. Apartments
2. Condos and other shared wall structures
3. Small lots (you may have no yard)
4. Bad parking

Why would you ever want this? The medium (large actually) lot single family home with a two car garage is American right? It's like Apple pie and a cheeseburger. Well, yes, it is. It's bad for you.

Here's the one solid reason why you want this sort of neighborhood: America gave you 4 wheels and a freeway, then it charged you $5,000 a year to pay for it (actually more, but the extra costs - mostly parking - are hard to pin down). God gave you two legs. Then he built you to use them. Seriously, he built you to use them.

The main advantage of new urbanism is the ability to walk most places.

Now, there's one obvious problem: Work. Every other destination can be transplanted (even family, which moves for reasons outside your control). But your job if your life right? This is in a way the sacrifice of our intellectual working society: Your sort of stuck in your career path because you know so much about it and you can't just work anywhere.

Well, that's a problem that's up to you to solve. This isn't an argument that new urbanism can solve all of our travel woes or that everyone should live in these neighborhoods. This is an appeal to explain why you should desire to live in this style of neighborhood. An explanation of why it is attractive.
The solution part should fall into place as a majority of us stop taking up so much space in our large single family dwellings. How many houses do you pass on your way to work? Now, how many driveways? How many gigantic (mostly empty) free parking lots? People don't live in driveways, expensive ($5,000 or so annually) cars do.


The video is a bit more, um, eco-centered.
Video.

I'm thinking one major problem is a total lack of availability. There just aren't hardly any of these neighborhoods. And they're expensive. Not because of the cost of supply but because of the level of, largely ignored, demand. I'd love to live in one of these places if, well, Lincoln had much to offer. Mostly they just have crummy apartments near downtown and a few houses near downtown (on medium, actually large, lots).

It really should save you a fortune to live in this style of neighborhood. Maybe when it's done being a hoity toity fad it'll become a utilitarian feature again.

Debunking Debunking Portland, Part 3

Linkie.

This is actually a well written article. I only have one problem. The source he's using is only showing $2 billion dollars of federal expenditure on roads. There's no way that's even close.

According to this link (same source): They're spending about $16 billion on roads.

You'll also notice from that link that lots of our fuel taxes don't go to road funding. And, other taxes do go to road funding. I think it's odd too.

Debunking Debunking Portland, Part 2

Linkie.

This article is all about how unsafe light rail is. I'll sum it up for you: People get hit by trains.

The article is misleading because it presents deaths per passenger miles. This leads the reader to believe it's the likelihood of dieing from riding the train.

All of their 19 deaths were people hit by the train, none were riding the train at the time. Some weren't even at the train station.

In the US, about 4,000 pedestrians are killed each year. About 600 cyclists as well. A larger city, like Sacramento, can expect to have over 100 pedestrian fatalities.


They should look a little harder. Trains do crash, but I'd bet you're less likely to die in a train crash (per mile) than in a car crash.

Debunking Debunking Portland, Part 1

Linkie.

First I'd like to say this is an interesting site. It's well researched, they've found some sources of info I was previously unaware of. Now, onto the debunking.

Basically this page is trying to prove that it's inefficient to ride the bus or take the train. I'm just going to talk about the bus (we have buses here, we don't have trains).

They present a few vehicles:
1. The Honda Insight, as a hybrid example. Unfortunately, this car wasn't made anymore when the article came out (2006 was the last model year, so 2005 was the last production year). Also, unfortunately, there's no hybrid that's so efficient today. The Honda contains 1.57 people.
1. A bus, with 9 people on it.
1. A normal small car, with 1.57 people.

They point out that for the last 30 years buses have gotten far less efficient and cars have become far more efficient. That's almost true. Look at table 2.11: Buses have gotten slightly less efficient (Actually, they probably seat more. I've been in buses from almost every decade and the modern ones are roomy). Yet their per person energy has grown far less efficient. Simple division tells us that the average bus is transporting 9 passengers. I've been on a few buses in my life, and a normal size bus is meant to carry 80 people. It seats around 25 people (which is about how many it takes to be as efficient as the Insight).

I must agree with their conclusion though: If people drove smaller cars it would probably do more to reduce energy use than bus riding. And the reason is simple: People won't ride buses. I think there are a host of reasons:
1. The stigma.
2. The chicken and the egg problem.
3. Buses are run by cities, which is painfully stupid. The city of Lincoln actually cut its routes back due to high fuel costs.


So, ride the bus. It'll run the same route anyway. And, if you were the person who tipped the scales to add another bus to the route then it's safe to assume they have a decent passenger ratio on your route. Buses, as your head is telling you, are pretty efficient if people ride them.

Voting Present

Obama's "Present" Voting Record.

Interesting article. The main takeaway is this: Obama voted "present" 130 times over 8 years within the Illinois legislature. He voted about 4,000 times in that office.

So, the "present" votes issue is not an issue. It's spin.