I've moved !
Please update your links and bookmarks...this blog will remain active as an archive, but all new posts as of October 3rd will appear at:
www.wattsupwiththat.com or wattsupwiththat.wordpress.com
My new blog location will allow me to provide better service to my readers, and richer content of postings.
Thanks !
Anthony
The Chico News and Review has gotten quite a number of letters on their 911 Truth article which gave a platform to the people whom prefer to believe that a gigantic government conspiracy was the reason behind the 911 WTC collapse, and that the towers were brought down with explosives, rather than by fire.
I wrote a short blog essay on the subject, and a letter to the editor, pointing out that the recent collapse of the I580-880 freeway interchange had a lot of similarities, illustrating that fire can indeed take town steel and concrete structures.
Predictably, the 911Truthers lobbed a couple of ticked off letters back at me, even going so far as to say I'm "spreading distortions".
While I don't intend to argue their points, since you can't usually come out winning when you argue with people whom believe conspiracy theories, I will present another view.
For those of you that prefer rational science and engineering, I present this item, a paper published in 2003 by The Journal of The Minerals, Metals & Materials Society, presents a balanced view that shows that the collapse didn't need steel melting temperatures to occur. It was written by Thomas W. Eagar, the Thomas Lord Professor of Materials Engineering and Engineering Systems, and Christopher Musso, graduate research student, at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
You can read the report in its entirety here: http://www.tms.org/pubs/journals/JOM/0112/Eagar/Eagar-0112.html
Or just skip to this conclusion:
While it was impossible for the fuel-rich, diffuse-flame fire to burn at a temperature high enough to melt the steel, its quick ignition and intense heat caused the steel to lose at least half its strength and to deform, causing buckling or crippling. This weakening and deformation caused a few floors to fall, while the weight of the stories above them crushed the floors below, initiating a domino collapse.
There's a maxim called Occam's Razor; "All things being equal, the simplest solution tends to be the right one." In other words, when multiple competing theories are equal in other respects, the theory that introduces the fewest assumptions and hypothetical entities tends to be correct. Conspiracy theories require many more assumptions, some unprovable, than a fire and materials failure does.
In my last entry I raised three questions about Compact Flourescent Light bulbs aka CFL's
1) What about regular fluorescent tubes? They have mercury too, and sometimes in greater quantity.
2) How do you dispose of these bulbs in they have mercury in them. If you put them in regular trash are you guilty of a crime?
3) Has the hazmat materials response to mercury gotten out of hand?
An astute reader pointed out that for questions 1 and 2, there indeed is a problem. Apparently CFL's are categorized "universal waste" and shouldn't be thrown away in the
regular trash under a 2004 state law.
Here's a list of things that the state doesn't want you to throw away in your regular trash:
http://www.ciwmb.ca.gov/HHW/Info/default.htm
But there is some ahem, "good" news, and that is that you can take your CFL's and flourescent tubes out to the hazwaste disposal site at the airport. Like many "household hazardous waste" materials (now including
batteries), Butte County takes bulbs at its recycling facility at the
airport, details here: http://www.recyclebutte.net/hhw.html
Given that disposing of CFL's requires special handling, I think high efficiency LED bulbs are the answer, I don't want to put my family in the position of breaking a law for accidental disposal in regular household trash
This Thursday, the Chico News and Review will be doing a story covering the pro and cons of the people that have been lobbying editor Evan Tuchinsky for more coverage of the alternate 9/11 theories that are being pushed around the country by conspiracy thinkers.
One of the central themes of the group 911Truth.org is that the World Trade Center was brought down with explosives, rather than the engineering failure reports which point to the fire caused by the jet fuel, shocked off fireproofing, and steel trusses that weakened and allowed for a domino effect implosion and collapse.
Of course some people think 911Truth.org is just part of the tinfoil hat crowd. But this past weekend the very same set of conditions that pitted fire against concrete and steel occurred at the gasoline tanker truck accident at the I880/580 interchange in Oakland creating an accidental laboratory to illustrate the proof that fire can indeed make steel and concrete structures fail.
For all those whom cling to the alternate fantasy belief that the World Trade Center towers could not have been brought down by burning jet fuel creating an inferno that melted steel, but rather, it was explosives planted by some conspiracy, the collapse of the I-880/580 Interchange in Oakland Sunday from a burning tanker truck should provide clear empirical proof that fire can easily take down steel and concrete structures.
Engineers estimated that the flames at the bridge reached close to 3,000 degrees Fahrenheit. Steel is known to lose half of its rigidity at 1,000 degrees F and begins to melt at 2,750 degrees F.
People may conjecture myriads of alternate theories, but the laws of physics are absolute, unless of course you wear a tinfoil hat, then anything is possible.
Molten lava: 3,140°
Iron melts: 2,797°
Steel melts: 2,750°
Gold melts: 1,947°
Silver melts: 1,763°
Steel loses half its rigidity: 1,000°
Lead melts: 622°
Water boils: 212°
Source: "Comparisons" by the Diagram Group and San Francisco Chronicle research
How much money does it take to screw in a compact fluorescent lightbulb? About $4.28 for the bulb and labor — unless you break the bulb. Then you, like Brandy Bridges of Ellsworth, Maine, could be looking at a cost of about $2,004.28, which doesn't include the costs of frayed nerves and risks to health.
The details of this really expensive light bulb are here from Financial Post
I like CFL's, I've replaced almost every one of the conventional bulbs in my house with CFL's
This story raises three problems:
1) What about regular fluorescent tubes? They have mercury too, and sometimes in greater quantity.
2) How do you dispose of these bulbs in they have mercury in them. If you put them in regular trash are you guilty of a crime?
3) Has the hazmat materials response to mercury gotten out of hand?
I think high efficiency LED bulbs are the answer...because as much as I like CFL's, I don't want to be put in the position of dealing with the mercury (even though I don't worry about its safety, I've handled mercury before) I don't want to put my family in the position of having a hazmat response or fines for accidental disposal.
About two weeks ago I published this story about the loony idea that was proposed by some researcher in Europe about "cell phone radiation may be killing bees". I pointed out that it was garbage then, as it is now. Here's a portion of the original post I made:
There's an article on UK's The Independent website about a most unusual scientific theory: "Cell Phones kill bees."
Well today in the LA Times, it seems that UC San Francisco researchers have uncovered what they believe to be the real cause, and its not loony ideas like cell phones. Its fungus.
From the article:
A fungus that caused widespread loss of bee colonies in Europe and Asia may be playing a crucial role in the mysterious phenomenon known as Colony Collapse Disorder that is wiping out bees across the United States, UC San Francisco researchers said Wednesday.
Researchers have been struggling for months to explain the disorder, and the new findings provide the first solid evidence pointing to a potential cause.
Other researchers said Wednesday that they too had found the fungus, a single-celled parasite called Nosema ceranae, in affected hives from around the country — as well as in some hives where bees had survived. Those researchers have also found two other fungi and half a dozen viruses in the dead bees.
The researchers caution that the results are preliminary, and data sampling represents just a fraction of hives, but they are encouraged by the findings. Hopefully they'll be able to come up with a solution.
Yet it appears that the "Cell Phones kill bees" lunacy has caught on, since there's a comment today in the ER's "Tell it to the ER" that furthers that nutball idea. What a public disservice that column is.
Thanks to Lon Glazner for the tip.
A recent investigation by the Financial Times says that the new Carbon Credit Industry may already be rife with fraud. Hmmm...now where have we heard that before?
Among the findings:
■ Widespread instances of people and organisations buying worthless credits that do not yield any reductions in carbon emissions.
■ Industrial companies profiting from doing very little – or from gaining carbon credits on the basis of efficiency gains from which they have already benefited substantially.
■ Brokers providing services of questionable or no value.
■ A shortage of verification, making it difficult for buyers to assess the true value of carbon credits.
■ Companies and individuals being charged over the odds for the private purchase of European Union carbon permits that have plummeted in value because they do not result in emissions cuts.
From the article:
Some companies are benefiting by asking “green” consumers to pay them for cleaning up their own pollution. For instance, DuPont, the chemicals company, invites consumers to pay $4 to eliminate a ton of carbon dioxide from its plant in Kentucky that produces a potent greenhouse gas called HFC-23. But the equipment required to reduce such gases is relatively cheap. DuPont refused to comment and declined to specify its earnings from the project, saying it was at too early a stage to discuss.
The burgeoning regulated market for carbon credits is expected to more than double in size to about $68.2bn by 2010, with the unregulated voluntary sector rising to $4bn in the same period.
Seems like the "green" here is not about Gaia...but all about Benjamins.
There's no mention of how much these companies pay gamers to have virtual trees planted in video games.
From the "you've GOT to be freaking kidding me" department:
Dell's Virtual Plant a Tree for Me program into the computer game Second Life has many tech savvy people wondering if this represents a new low in Earth Day marketing tie-ins. It looks like in the rush to pander to green-ness, some Dell executives maybe didn't think beyond the boardroom door.
You may wonder, too, after reading Dell's invitation to its Earth Day Party at Dell Island in the Second Life game where they say proudly "get your own tree sapling to plant in Second Life!".
Yes that's' right, you can plant a virtual tree in a video game for Earth Day. And, Dell is only too happy to take a couple bucks from you in the process as well for their real tree planting program designed to assuage your guilt at using a computer that uses electricity.
You have to wonder just how hypocritically lazy some people might be to take this offer seriously, though with 5.7 million "residents" in the Second Life game, I suppose its hard to deny that this offer would have an impact.
Just how much electricity is used by PC's in pursuing this pointless exploit in "green-ness"? And with Dell soliciting and online Earth Day Party, that will tie up PC's, routers, and Servers nationwide, using even more electricity. There's no mention in Dell's press release of the expected carbon footprint on this bogus promotion. Maybe Gore will fly in on his private jet to make a "virtual appearance" to preach to the faithful.
But since some people nowadays seem incapable of disconnecting themselves from the virtual world of gaming, it stands to reason that a virtual eco-delusional activity might very well appear valid to them.
Maybe next the researchers at Berkeley can tap into the seti@home background processing idea and instead of searching for intelligent life in radio-telescope signals, we could program our wasted CPU cycles to grow virtual trees on a screen-saver. It could boast onscreen counts of virtual carbon sequestered, and virtual O2 produced. I can smell the virtual fresh air already!
We're doomed.
Recently I received this email from Delta Airlines with the offer that now I could pay extra money for my airline ticket so that Delta could contribute to global warming "offsets" by planting trees. This allows frequent or not so frequent flyers to assuage their guilt over flying in an airplane propelled by earth killing petroleum based fuel.
Only one problem: Delta apparently never read the recent press release from Lawrence Livermore Labs on the link between too many trees at certain latitudes and increased global warming. Such a conundrum.
Support Delta's Force for Global Good Take part in the first-ever U.S. airline program to plant trees to help offset carbon emissions.
Hello Mr. Watts,
In a partnership with The Conservation Fund, we are the first U.S. airline to implement a voluntary carbon offset program — and we'd love to have you "onboard."
It's simple. Beginning
We'll disburse 100 percent of your donation to
The Conservation Fund program to plant trees and to support the organization's education and outreach efforts. Additionally, we'll make a donation to The Conservation Fund for every customer flying on a Delta mainline jet worldwide on Earth Day (April 22).
It's just part of our Force for Global Good initiative that strives to benefit the world we fly everyday. So go ahead and take a flight, and join us in uniting our customers and employees in support of environmental stewardship.
There's an article on UK's The Independent website about a most unusual scientific theory.
"Cell Phones kill bees."
From the article: Some scientists suggest that our love of the mobile phone could cause massive food shortages, as the world's harvests fail. They are putting forward the theory that radiation given off by mobile phones and other hi-tech gadgets is a possible answer to one of the more bizarre mysteries ever to happen in the natural world — the abrupt disappearance of the bees that pollinate crops. They say the cell phone emissions cause the bees internal navigation systems to go haywire and they can't find their way back to the hive.
Ok, just two problems; Bees navigate by the sun. You can watch a video of how this works here. And, we've had cell phones since the late 80's, microwave radiation of all kinds since the 40's, and worldwide radio emissions of all sorts and frequencies since about 1920. So why is this "problem" showing up just now?
More likely this has to do with the fact that domesticated honeybees, the kind we have in California are quite inbred compared to wild bees. Domesticated bees are being raised to survive a shorter off-season, to be ready to pollinate once the almond bloom begins in February. That has most likely lowered their immunity to disease and parasites. This can happen in any kind of biological population that is artificially isolated from natural selection, which allows the strong to survive and propagate. In the case of domesticated bees, they are packed together in boxed clusters, which makes disease and parasites spread very quickly. In nature, hives are well separated.
In fact, there are two types of parasitic mites, introduced into the USA in the 1980's which are believed to be responsible for this epidemic. Here's a letter to Congress from May R. Berenbaum, Head of the Department of Entomology, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign that describes the problem in-depth and concludes: "That honey bees are experiencing losses on an unprecedented scale, however, was essentially predicted by the report—over-reliance on one managed non-native species is inherently unstable."
In insects, which have short generation lifespans measured in days or weeks, dilution of strong traits to disease and parasite resistance can happen fairly quickly. What's needed is some new breeding programs and better isolation methods, not cell phone panic.
The offspring of the bees that survive this epidemic will do far better.
This seems reminiscent of the artificial worry about a cell phone tower at the Hooker Oak park. Some people just have to paint technology they don't understand as the boogieman. I can visualize some panic driven loony legislation about cell phones and bees to hit our state legislature soon.
But to point out just how silly this is, I work at radio station KPAY-AM 1290 which has its offices on Cramer Lane. Right next door, no more that 500 feet from the powerful 5000 watts radio transmitter is a man who keeps bees. Bee hives are scattered all over his property. I'd think that if there was a radio energy to bee death link, this fellow would have been pounding on our doors long ago.
The "research" that cell phones kill bees is just junk science. Next I expect we'll hear about cell phones and talk radio stations being linked to global warming for "heating up the atmosphere".
Thanks to my lovely wife Stacey, for helping me out with this article.
UPDATE: The national website www.junkscience.com has referenced this blog entry.
From the waaaayyyy over the top department:
The Weather Channel's climatologist, Dr. Heidi Cullen who hosts the program "The Climate Code", is advocating that broadcast meteorologists be denied certification (or re-certification) if they express skepticism about predictions of manmade global warming. She posted this revelation in the blog she runs on the Weather Channel website and you can read it here: http://climate.weather.com/blog/9_11396.html
She writes: "If a meteorologist has an AMS Seal of Approval, which is used to confer legitimacy to TV meteorologists, then meteorologists have a responsibility to truly educate themselves on the science of global warming." "Meteorologists are among the few people trained in the sciences who are permitted regular access to our living rooms. And in that sense, they owe it to their audience to distinguish between solid, peer-reviewed science and junk political controversy." "If a meteorologist can't speak to the fundamental science of climate change, then maybe the AMS shouldn't give them a Seal of Approval."
Them's scientific fightin' words lady.
So, apparently any free speech, scientific debate, and public dialog that doesn't agree with the peer reviewed popular scientific opinion is grounds for denying an AMS Broadcast certification?
I have that AMS Broadcast certification, and though I was once a strong believer in the CO2-global warming theory, I'm now a skeptic that global warming is man made. I don't deny that the earth has seen increases in temperature, but I see far more supporting evidence that the sun and its various mechanisms which transport heat, light, particles, and magnetism to earth is a far bigger player than humans could ever hope to be. See my essay on the subject here: http://www.globalwarmingindex.org/gwi_essay1.htm
This reminds me of Galileo and his fight with the Roman Catholic Church in 1632. Galileo wanted to publish a book Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems which totally revised the earth centric view of the universe favored by scientists, scholars, and clergy of the time and built on the work of the earlier astronomer Copernicus. Galilieo was tried and imprisoned for daring to speak out against the "consensus" of the time for what he saw as a scientific truth.
I think we would all do well to follow this maxim: "People who live in greenhouses shouldn't throw stones".
Continue reading "Weather Channel Issues Ultimate Professional Insult" »