Techie’s Take on Snow

White grass?

I don’t think there’s anyone out there who needs to be told that the UK ground to a halt today thanks to a freak downpour of snow. But I think some of the stuff that happened today was actually a great metaphor for the current status of technology in the UK as a predominant part of virtually everyone’s daily life, a phenomenon that I hope will flourish in the future.

Denial of Service

Slashdot and Lifehacker tend to inflict DoS attacks on websites and webapps whenever they feature them simply owing to the sheer traffic generated. This morning several sites began to have problems due to similar reasons: thousands of commuters simultaneously looked out of the window, smacked their heads and immediately tried to find a way to get to work … using TFL, subsequently causing the route planner to slow to a crawl for a few hours. The school intranet also managed to get DoS’ed from all the 900 Paulines attempting to discover whether the wonderful terrible rumours of school being snowed off were true. I suspect this reflects the current trend in general load balancing (including non-techie things: apparently electricity usage peaks just after some TV show ends in the UK owing to kettles being put on) and the clear necessity to move computing power to the so-called ‘cloud’ where it can take the strain of flash-flood traffic.

'The Lifehacker Effect' occurs when a site goes down owing to overload from traffic emanating from a Lifehacker post

Social Websites

The majority of Paulines used Facebook as their primary source of information regarding the school snow-off. Sitting there watching my Facebook feed reload every few seconds, I couldn’t help but notice that virtually every wall post, status update and note seemed to be asking and/or confirming rumours about school being snowed off. Twitter was also buzzing with activity which concluded with a jubilant remark from @the_unnameable:

No school. Yipppppeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!

Eventually intelligence was obtained from the few people who had managed to contact the apparently grumpy porters by phone (and of course sons of teachers) and information was seeded in the form of status updates on both Facebook and Twitter which spread virally and reached most people. Of course, this merely illustrates the increasing reliance on the web for up-to-date information and the power of viral marketing (well, spread of information). As a sidenote, David Smith, a teacher at the school with the foresight to see what is needed, has created a Twitter account for one-way updates from the school: @stpaulsboys.

And of course, since the school was closed for the sake of safety and preventing us from having to brave the weather, everyone was out and about, efficiently organising events through Facebook, Twitter and mobile phone.

Social Website Logos

Cameras

Of course, every such event is a photo op. There was a point when digital cameras were associated exclusively with Japanese tourists, but today during a photography outing with George, virtually every person we saw who wasn’t building a snowman was pointing a camera at something (often with flash still turned on *sigh*). In the age of twitpic and flickr, digital cameras have become day-to-day objects embedded into just about everything which are used as a means to record moments of one’s day. If this had happened just a few years ago, I don’t think anything like the number of cameras I saw today would have hit the streets, as the idea of having to record every precious last moment of one’s life on an SD card hadn’t quite caught on.

My Flickr Photostream

Personally, I ended up with a pretty cool collection of photos (including some of Doc Mayfield & co. having fun), a new way of getting school updates (@stpaulsboys), the beginnings of a raging cold, a free Sodexho school lunch and confirmation that school is off tomorrow as well.

John Colet Statue looking rather cold

Brent Roos: A Short but Amusing Story

I suppose when you create a blog you’re signing up to being exposed to the blogosphere in all its glory, including the bloggers who really don’t deserve to be heard. Unfortunately there are some of us, me included, who find some of the stuff people say irresistibly funny; I hope you share my sense of humour .

Brent's Avatar

Many of you reading this may be acquainted, at least in passing and/or by word of mouth, with the story of a certain extreme nationalist American blogger by the name of Brent Roos who has recently attempted to lay comment-waste to this blog. So I reckon he deserves a post of his own for his efforts. His online presence took the form of a curious persona who seems extremely religious (Christian), extremely right-wing (neither of the US candidates were good enough for him. Neither was my – apparently insufficient – distaste of Communism in China, for that matter) and notoriously rude. As it turns out, it all made for quite a good laugh. Perhaps I should start from the beginning…

Some time ago I wrote a blog post on global warming. I thought it would end up passing by the blogosphere with little comment. My expectations were, I thought, confirmed until fairly recently when I was in China and had just blogged about the whole experience. The first thing I noticed when I next logged on was that this apparently crazy person had written a few quite aggressive comments.

Brent on Shanghai:

So, how’s the communism there? Funny how you mention magnificent things that put you in awe, but seem to forget to ever mention the horrific human atrocities by the communists there who have killed tens of millions of people — whose only crimes were wishing freedom.
Personally, I would never step foot in China. But then again, I loathe the communist.

Brent on global warming:

Blah, blah, blah…. 2008 is the coldest year in a decade. This is nothing more than alarmism and fear-mongering. 30 years ago it was global cooling.
As far as oil is concerned, if not for the fearmongering, we would be drilling for much more oil here in the states. We are the only country on the planet which has restricted itself from it’s own natural resources to the extent that we have.
What is taking place here is not unlike many of the other institutions that the government has seized over the last several months and years. They have seized the media, the banking/mortgage industry, now the auto industry, etc. The energy industry is more global so they cannot just simply seize that. So instead, they reinvent it, claiming that the current system IS GOING TO KILL US ALL!!!!! In other words, this is a takeover…wake up! We are becoming a socialist country right before our eyes. Granted, there are many who want this, because it is far easier to let the government take responsibility for your life, than to do it yourself. If you do it yourself, the only one you can blame when you fail is yourself, however, without failure, there comes no success.
All of the fancy words are crap when you finally get to the point. Global warming/cooling/climate change/enter fearmongering buzzword here/ is total crapola. Don’t believe the hype sheeple…

I attempted to be civilised while smiling to myself:

Brent,
I, and pretty much all scientists, still think the evidence points towards a long-term upwards trend in temperatures. The point I’m trying to press though is that the solution should no longer lie in this religious instinct of humans to make themselves suffer through deprivation and force others to do likewise. As Steven E Landsberg quite aptly put in his book The Armchair Economist, eco warriors are nothing more than irrational idiots who will do all sorts of unspeakable things just to get a few energy-saving bulbs into a house while completely ignoring the fact that the production of the wretched things is (supposedly, according to their own models of carbon dioxide and warming) far more detrimental than the gases emitted in the production of the electricity required to run the average 150W bulb. Children are growing up feeding on this propaganda, learning that electricity = oil = global warming = bad. Eco warriors are literally putting words in children’s mouths from birth, preventing them from making their own informed decisions on such hugely important matters. Fundamentally, I disagree with the eco-warrior doctrine: ‘with great power comes great responsibility’. I disagree with them. But what I disagree with even more (believe it or not) is outright cynicism. I like to think of myself as a sceptic, someone who follows the doctrine that through doubt the truth may be obtained. I don’t think much truth may be obtained from simply assuming everything the media says must be false (although I would probably be surprised if I actually tested that).
Is it a safe bet that you supported McCain? I think in that case that you and I will just have to agree to disagree on a load of things. Drill baby drill is not going to cut it. However irrelevant the oil situation is to the environment, I still believe abusing it remains a bad idea (for reasons outlined in the post).

At which point Brent became even more manic:

I’m not a Republican if that’s what you have assumed, nor am I a Democrat (Republicrat/Demlican). There were other candiates (good ones who care about America and the Constitution) you know.

It’s hilarious to me that you *think* that there is a shred of difference between Clinton/Bush/McCain/Obama despite the fact that most of their policies are identical on paper and are bought and paid for by many of the same corporate lobbyists. You have been duped!

It’s also hilarious to me that you think that you are so much smarter than I. I’m above your black vs. white mentality. I see everything through a crystal clear lens, while you observe things through the clouds of emotion. I’m really glad you feel good about what you’re doing. Unfortunately, it is a bit sad that you are totally wasting your life on bunk science.

This is a takeover, and you are on board whether you know it or not. By the way, it is completely untrue to say that ALL scientists agree. It is only the ones who like working, as the honest ones are being blacklisted by the rest of the Marxists who intend to carry out the New World Order –Clinton/Bush/McCain/Obama are all involved. Wake up!

Unsure of what to do (whether to laugh out loud or feel vaguely offended) I sent the link to a friend who, rather to my surprise, posted a prompt riposte:

Heh, thats what I love about the internet, the sheer comedy of the right wing nutters who comment on blogs. Ok, lets give this a quick look through:
Blah, blah, blah[his riposte begins to shatter Bryant’s article from the first 3 words, giving an example of the incisive wit]…. 2008 is the coldest year in a decade. [not true, especially in the ice caps] This is nothing more than alarmism and fear-mongering.[what a ridiculous oversimplification, at least respect the majority of the world’s scientists enough to give their theorems serious consideration] 30 years ago it was global cooling. [what’s your point? You give no evidence to discredit cooling, it just shows that the earth’s temperature is very fragile and volatile, and that human’s can effect it]
As far as oil is concerned, if not for the fearmongering [that’s two words], we would be drilling for much more oil here in the states. [try telling that to Alaskan inhabitants who do everything they can to prevent it] We are the only country on the planet which has restricted itself from it’s own natural resources to the extent that we have. [Britain has huge coal and sizable oil reserves, but doesn’t use them because secondary and tertiary industries are more profitable and less destructive, America is well advised to do so also]
What is taking place here is not unlike many of the other institutions that the government has seized over the last several months and years.[is the earth’s climate an institution?] They have seized the media [the same media that is constantly attacking the Bush administration?], the banking/mortgage industry[you mean giving it 700 billion dollars to help it out? Would you rather they let it rot?], now the auto industry, etc. [that is collapsing on its own accord] The energy industry is more global so they cannot just simply seize that. So instead, they [is the US government the only body claiming that global warming is happening? Until recently they were one of the only major powers to deny it!] reinvent it, claiming that the current system IS GOING TO KILL US ALL!!!!! In other words, this is a takeover…wake up! [you are obviously not clouded by emotion...] We are becoming a socialist country right before our eyes. [mm, if everybody would just see sense and spend all their money on fuel until they become impoverished, Capitalism would flourish, right?] Granted, there are many who want this [ooh, nice move, lets blame the communists to deflect the focus on the fault of the average american], because it is far easier to let the government take responsibility for your life, than to do it yourself. [how did we get here from climate change?] If you do it yourself, the only one you can blame when you fail is yourself, [is the Government banning people from polluting? No! Is it trying hard to look at alternate energy sources? Yes, how is this an attack on liberalism?] however, without failure, there comes no success. [that’s nice...]
All of the fancy words [that you don’t understand] are crap when you finally get to the point. Global warming/cooling/climate change/enter fearmongering buzzword here/ is total crapola. [in your learned and well researched opinion that flies in the face of the 95% certainty by the UN’s IPCC that climate change is anthropogenic Where did you get your PhD again?] Don’t believe the hype sheeple[witty play on words mixing sheep with people?]…

After a torrent of e-hostility from Brent and the substantial mirth that brought me and my friends, a couple of us decided to actually visit his site and discovered he really was as crackpot as we thought. He supported Israel’s invasion of Palestine on the grounds of, of all things, religion. He classified Linux-users as Communists. He decided the world isn’t overpopulated and that anyone who thinks it is ought to be banished to Siberia (well, something to that effect). Anthony began posting sarcastic comments on his site under the alias “Bryant Dory”, to which Brent replied seemingly incognisant that they really were meant to be sarcastic:

It’s almost as if your comment is satirical … [insert accusation of being communist]

Unfortunately I can’t remember any of these comments and they are unavailable to me to [Ctrl+C] [Ctrl+V] as, seemingly after he realised how stupid he’s been, Brent finally locked down his site with a password.

I think his online existence was met with some hostility, as a Google search for his name yielded these two results on the first page of results:
# Who in the hell is Brent Roos
# Brent Roos Barked at Me and I Barked Back
Someone even called him an ‘arsehat’…

So in conclusion, seriously, if you’re reading this, thank you Brent for supplying us with such entertainment. It’s been a great laugh and I hope you regain enough courage to the internet at some point in the future. xx

Brent's locked down site

Blackle

I’ve found this slightly ridiculous site and think it’s important to point out the significance of the error the creators made.

Blackle is, in short, a black version of google.com. With the amount of traffic Google receives, the amount of energy used displaying its search results is phenomenal and according to research done by the creators of Blackle, by displaying a black instead of a white background on Google, the world could save 750 MWh/year (=86KW). So, let’s take a closer look at this idea.

The underlying assumption is that black screens use less energy than white ones. I agree fully that this may have been true in the retro days of CRT screens: fewer electrons will need to be fired at the front of the screen so less electricity will be required. Unfortunately CRTs are somewhat backward and our world is very much a flat panel place nowadays. There are two types of flat panel: LCD and plasma displays. LCD stands for Liquid Crystal Display and the principle is actually really quite beautiful.

A liquid crystal can be seen as a polarising tube: when light is shone down one end it gets polarised. However this tube is composed of several layers like a lot of very flat cylinders concatenated end-to-end, each with a polarising slit. In its natural state the crystal (tube) is twisted so that each layer is slightly out of line with the adjacent ones. Imagine looking at a slinky end-on then twisting it. When light is shone on one end of this twisted liquid crystal, the first layer polarises it. The second layer then blocks some of this light because it is polarised in a slightly different orientation and allows some through, re-polarising it. This is repeated for all the layers of the crystal and eventually some light gets through. The last layer’s polarisation is orthogonal to that of the first layer.

When electricity is passed through this crystal however, it straightens out and becomes an untwisted polarising cylinder which just polarises light like a normal polarising sheet.

To construct an LCD screen, a sheet containing an array of cells made of these crystals is placed in front of a sheet of normal polarising material. A backlight is placed behind both these sheets. An electronic grid allows electricity to be passed through any cell independently of all the others. In the un-electrified state, all the liquid crystals are arranged so that the polarisation of the back face (next to the polarising sheet) is in line with that of the polarising sheet (say, vertically) and of course the crystal is twisted 90 degrees so the front is polarised horizontally. This way, light from the backlight can get through both sheets since the back of the crystal is aligned with the sheet and light can get from the back to the front of the crystal. However the front of the crystal is fixed in orientation so when the sheet is electrified and all the crystals untwist, the back of the crystals end up horizontal. Now the crystal acts like a second polarising sheet but in an orthogonal direction to the first sheet. No light gets through and the screen is black.

So, what does that mean? No electricity needs to pass through the crystal to display a white screen but every single cell (pixel) needs current passing through it to display a black screen. The assumption was false for LCD monitors, which in 2006 accounted for 80% of all computer monitors.

The other flatscreen technology is plasma displays which physically illuminate each pixel with a separate light source (some sort of LED I’d imagine). These I think do conserve energy when displaying a black screen.

So the website, at the user end of things, actually does the opposite of the stated intention for 80% of computer monitors. To make things worse, the functionality of this site is much lower than Google. Since it’s a Google custom search, the site only has the Google features available to Google affiliates and lacks things like Google cache, translator, webapps etc.

Enough about the frontend – now for the backend. The site must receive tens of thousands of hits every day, and must therefore need some quite meaty servers to deal with the traffic. Let’s say it requires a server that draws 500W (including cooling), an average power consumption for a server. According to the internet archives, Blackle has been around since the beginning of 2007. Over 2 years this server would have burnt through 8.8MWh. The site advertises it has saved a total of about 1MWh. Blackle has in fact caused the world to use an extra US household’s year’s supply of energy. Oops. In fact, even if the server drew 60W (ridiculously low), it would still have used 1.05MWh to date, and the creators would have actually increased world energy consumption by 50KWh.

So yet again someone with good intentions has done the wrong thing. Far from solving the world’s energy crisis, the creators of Blackle have created something which is inconvenient to use and actually does the opposite of what it was originally supposed to do. It is, I wholeheartedly agree, a brilliant and novel idea, but sadly one which doesn’t work at all.

Surviving Black Ice on Bike

I present you with my new God Hypothesis: if and only if God exists, he is far from benevolent. It would appear the legendary Pure Mathematician Godfrey Harold Hardy agrees: “Another example of [Hardy] trying to fool God was when he went to cricket matches he would take what he called his “anti-God battery”. This consisted of thick sweaters, an umbrella, mathematical papers to referee, student examination scripts etc. His theory was that God would think that he expected rain to come so that he could then get on with his work. Since Hardy thought that God would then have the sun shine all day to spite him, he would be able to enjoy the cricket in perfect sunshine” (Toller made me aware of this; quotation taken from here). God, in order to spite me, over the last two weeks has strategically placed black ice in exactly the same spot of road causing me to fall spectacularly on both occasions causing grievous (= light) damage to my elbow followed by my face, as some sort of obscene joke.

Click for original image

In fairness I shouldn’t be blaming some being who was invented a long time ago and exists solely in books. The real reason is that my bike’s tyres were worn almost smooth by regular trips to Richmond Park over the Summer and Autumn. But as Winter is setting on, a relatively high tyre pressure (pumped up in the hope of improved speeds) and non-grippy road (rather than mountain-biking) tyres are hardly ideal for the conditions. So I decided to do some research on how not to die at the hands of Winter, squashed between a bus and a centimetre of ice. I’ve organised my incoherent thoughts into a list of tips for anyone who is, like me, foolish enough to attempt to overcome whatever God throws at him, including icy road conditions. Since my expertise with ice cycling is evidently somewhat lacking, I’ve nicked half of these from different sources.

Technique

Keep upright and turn slowly

Both times I fell it was because P was too great; too great to be resisted by friction (F). To minimise this you want to minimise the torque created by N and W, i.e. minimise the angle theta: keep as vertical as possible as increased torque increases the effect of P. You also need to slow down (as Dr Zetie has just taught us, centripetal acceleration v^2/r where r is the curve radius and in this case it is provided by friction – if friction isn’t enough to resist the centrifugal force created by high-speed turns, God wins and you fall). I’ll shut up about Physics now.

Brake gently

This might seem obvious but it’s actually even worse than you might think. Friction with the ice when braking melts some of it creating water, which on ice is amazingly ‘fail’ at friction. Bad.

Brake with rear wheel

When you brake, torque makes the bike lean on its front wheels, so if that front wheel locks you’re screwed. Don’t brake with it. Braking with the rear wheel is also great for skidding down icy hills (apparently).

Let the bike get it

If it does come to it and you’re about to crash, a friend of mine advises you just throw the bike at whatever you’re going to hit and either land on it or hit the ground at a much reduced velocity. Not sure how good this advice is, but it’s probably a good idea on the personal safety front. Maybe not for other road users or indeed the bike…

It’s also better to get scrapes than go head-first into a solid object – I’m no expert but I’m pretty sure grazes heal faster than fractures.

Ride the gravel

There tends to be a load of crap at the side of roads, especially gravel which is great for cyclists when the rest of the road resembles an ice-rink. Snow is also better than ice.

Kit out your bike

Use studded tyres

These are the best tyres for grip in icy conditions. Also consider chaining your tyres.

Click for original image

Lifehacker also did a post on it.

Also, slightly underinflating car tyres helps for low-grip surfaces. Presumably the same applies for bikes, especially for wide tyres.

Dress for the Arctic

Wear an anti-God outfit complete with crash-helmet so you’ll just bounce if you hit the road.

- -

Hopefully when I try (most of) this next week I won’t die in the process. And don’t blame me if you do attempt it all and still get hit by a bendy-bus after skidding into the middle of a road.

Most of these ideas and images came from here.

Click for original image

My Stance on Global Warming

I’ve just chanced upon Will’s ‘vlog’ post (it was a video embedded into a blog post – what else am I to call it?). It’s a bit old – I take time to chance upon things. So, the world is coming to an end because we are selfish and excessive in our use of energy. Apparently.

Officially, I like to refer to myself as a sceptic and positivist – I follow the doctrine that speculation on ultimate causes or origins is futile and believe in the system of obtaining knowledge through systematic doubt and continual testing. Thus my stance on global warming is neither that of the maniac eco-warrior nor that of the inexorable cynic. However whatever the case it’s always important to take a multifaceted analysis of any situation and think outside the box (to use the old cliché), instead of dogmatically pursuing a mere single thread which exists as a relatively insignificant decoration on a thick quilt of intrinsically interwoven issues.

An aspect of the entire oil and global warming debate which is often overlooked or perhaps deliberately ignored is the economic and political aspect of it. If you think about it, nowadays oil is equivalent to power. This is very much an economic phenomenon projected onto the plane of political power in which Middle-eastern countries and Russia are at liberty to exploit their massive amounts of black gold, an unfortunate precedent which can be and in fact is unashamedly translated into a disproportionate amount of undeserved political influence. I’m sure I’m not alone in my (personal, biased and subjective) dislike of the idea of all this scarcity power being in the hands of the countries which happen to have all this oil and gas; I’d hate to see America and Britain on their knees begging Putin (we all know he’s still wearing the trousers over there) or some militant religious extremist group for a few barrels of oil. In other words this political leverage is all about the scarcity power of oil. This constitutes my primary reason for supporting a long-term move to abandon oil and other fossil fuels as a source of energy: oil is a commodity on which the world is increasingly reliant and whose natural residence is apparently countries which unnervingly frequently end up in political turmoil (I think it’s fair to say) so my personal opinion is that it seems after a little consideration a fairly bad idea to build the world up around it. I’m therefore a great fan of alternative, particularly renewable ways of producing power which don’t involve the use of such a messily obtained substance.

original image

Returning to the argument considered by most eco-warriors, I think Will is in part absolutely right (please ignore my seemingly nonsensical juxtaposition of words) about the warming aspect of, global, err, warming – whether it be us or pixies or cosmological factors who/which are at fault, there exists quite unequivocally a problem and it undeniably requires attention. However, personally undecided about the verity of the claims about the anthropogenity (neologism I believe, but a good one) of global warming, I’d argue an engineering solution rather than a human / social / lifestyle one is needed here – a protective rather than preventative solution. The Earth’s atmosphere is simply so complex that few people can claim to understand its workings in any great detail, let alone work towards an accurate model of cause and effect; by my logic it follows intuitively that any attempt to tackle a perceived cause may well be in vain if not deleterious (for example the questionable proposal of filling the atmosphere with sulphur dioxide) – far more propitious a solution would be simply to be pragmatic and do what we know we can do: consider methods of protection against predicted conditions which can themselves be more reliably extrapolated than an attempt of analysis on dubious and often erroneous data.

In fact, even if it were true that humans were the cause of the earth’s positive temperature gradient (against time), I’d be willing to bet that any attempt to reverse the trend would be futile, be it too little, too late, or both. A single word sums up the impossibility of the task of reducing Carbon emissions: China. As some may know, I blame China for many things, including milk, red tape and Communism; in this case though I feel it would be unjustified to blame her, even if her factories were indeed the cause of such future strife and suffering. Allow me to elucidate my uncharacteristically sympathetic attitude towards the developing world. I’m one of those cynics who believe the world, or at least the majority of it – certainly the influential parts of it – are driven by two main wants: money and power. In addition, everyone knows that just about everything runs off electricty. No business could function without it: transport, computers, buildings and manufacturing all slurp up vast quantities of electricity. So if money is everything and everything is electricity, there’s a lot to be said for electricity in money terms. China was blessed with unfair amounts of coal naturally available to the country, making coal a cheap source of energy. Chinese businesses (probably with the help of the government) merely exploited this by building coal power stations en masse, something the West would undoubtedly have done in the past, and which it would probably still do today. We got damn close with ‘drill baby drill’. China’s population situation is also geared towards high energy consumption: it doesn’t take a great leap of faith to conclude that 1.3 billion people squashed into 9.6 million square kilometres will require more than a few wind farms to power, and at the time China began developing at its unprecedented and scarily rapid rate (around when I was born) nuclear power was still very much an experiment and the world was still reeling from Chernobyl; the only way to supply power affordably to such a large population with so little space was to use cheap and cheerful methods: fossil fuels. So is it fair to blame China for making use of her natural resources partially out of necessity? I certainly don’t think so.

original image

So returning to the problem of global warming, it seems unlikely that China will wilfully do anything about her carbon emissions. Meanwhile, even if both the UK and US manage the 2050 target (I’m sure it used to be 2012…), the effect will be minimal, to say the least, even if it is true that global warming is our fault. My argument about protection rather than prevention seems to make sense.

So why don’t I join environment committee? In fact, there are several reasons, but the main problem for me is that the committee stands for something which I don’t: working off the assumption that global warming is by definition anthropogenic, it seems to work primarily to reduce Carbon emissions, a measure which I consider ineffective at best, and simply wrong at worst, and the fact that some of its aims happen to coincide with my personal ambitions for the world, e.g. renewable power, isn’t enough to convince me to join. Regardless, I still wish them luck in whatever they do; I’m good friends with one of the main figures in the society and am confident that he has good intentions and indirectly or otherwise yearns for a future unreliant on oil, and therefore also on the Middle East.

Causation and anthropogenic global warming

This article reminds me of the tenuous assumptions of causation that many, particularly pseudo-environment-scientists, seem to make. For example, I’m confident everyone reading this is familiar with Al Gore’s signature graph of temperature against carbon dioxide levels, and that most are perfectly happy to assume what he would like them to: that causation can only possibly be one-way; that temperature is influenced by CO2 levels. “How can it possibly not mean this?” they automatically exclaim as a result of an Al Gore-style indoctrination, “Just look at the data”. Few however are willing to probe further into this case, but those initiated individuals who are have by now discovered this causation has in fact been widely contested and that it has been shown that the CO2 level curve actually follows the temperature one, lagging by a few centuries (or was it decades?).

Another example of false assumptions and associations being drawn is the warming of the earth after the industrial revolution which is widely believed to have been consistent with pollution levels. Again graphs look convincing, but evidence now points to rising temperatures on other planets in our solar system around the same period; I hope for their own sake that environmentalists do not claim pollution has now got so bad that we’re warming Pluto as well!

Of course these counter-evidence examples have been disproven, re-proven and then repeatedly contested, and one will have to come to one’s own conclusions on them after a rigorous scientific study of the data and articles written thereupon before having any real authority and credibility when commenting on this subject; but my point still holds: that it is highly dangerous just to take data and make assumptions whose verity is dubious. In my opinion, great rhetoric can never make up for incorrect and biased assumptions when put up against thorough scientific research, and I just wish this attitude were adopted by a greater proportion of the world.

An aspect of the irrationality of eco-warriors

Eco-warriors are interesting creatures. They are portrayed by the media as the saviours of our planet and get sympathetic treatment all-round because they ‘mean well’; yet many of them haven’t a clue what they really stand for and know nothing about the underlying scientific arguments behind the perceived problem. Though a sceptic myself about anthropogenic global warming, I still respect true scientists who have devoted time to research the issue and decided, independently of peer pressure and media attention, that they believe humans are having a damaging effect on the environment. However I just cannot bring myself to respect the one-sided eco-warrior who has never, and owing to obstinacy never will, hear the other side of the argument, and who, when asked about what evidence there is, flies into a rage and accuses the inquirer of being a sceptic who wants to see the world burn in hell.

The thing about eco-warriors is, as Theo pointed out in a comment to my post on Transport in London, that there is a certain level of idealism involved. It’s interesting that many of them believe electric cars are the solution. OK I admit it’s not true they’re ‘slow and pointless’ – in fact there was a fairly sleek one at the motor show at ExCel recently which had similar specs to a normal fast car in terms of speed, acceleration etc. (fine, about 3 times the price but still…). However the practical aspects are horrifically complicated yet hugely overlooked and few people seem to understand what will happen at about 5pm when all the electric cars recharge at once. England’s electricity infrastructure is crumbly enough as it is, and with a growing energy demand it has been predicted that the recent brown outs will be a regular occurrence in the future. And to be honest I don’t think British Energy is focussed enough on increasing Britain’s electricity production which merely exacerbates the problem; I suspect the company was simply too busy selling out to EDF (and now possibly Centrica) to bother about long-term plans and development, particularly in the area of nuclear energy, which was what EDF was originally supposed to bring.

So in short, the point I’m really making here is that the media and the green community simply do not understand the issue and as a result of their naïveté seem to have blown the perceived problem of man-made global warming so out of proportion that desperate proposed solutions have become positively nonsensical, and that those very nonsensical solutions are getting an uncomfortably wide audience which I fear may result in the future in a disaster which would have been so easily evitable.