Jean-Pascal van Ypersele, vice-chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), said the theft of emails from the University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit (CRU) was not the work of amateur climate skeptics.
Ypersele speculates that hacked emails were done by a well-funded, sophisticated group with the aim of destroying public confidence in the science of man-made climate change.
The fact that the emails were first uploaded to a suspicious website in Russia was an indication that the people behind the controversy were paid, he said.
"It's very common for hackers in Russia to be paid for their services."
"If you look at that mass of e-mails a lot of work was done, not only to download the data but it's a carefully made selection of e-mails and documents that's not random at all. This is 13 years of data and it's not a job of amateurs." Source
December 7, 2009
"Hacked emails were planned and well-funded"
October 14, 2009
The New York High Line
August 6, 2009
A Ginormous Tragedy
- My health insurance company took away my choice of pharmacy. I usually go to Bartell, but for one particular drug I need, my insurance made me choose between two national mail order pharmacies. This is being done for excellence in service and for your convenience, the letter read. In reality I tried both companies, and one was incompetent and the other one involved a lengthy intake interview. Like they think they're my doctor. And they'll be calling me every month when I need a refill for another friendly chat. Yessss, much more excellent and convenient. With Bartell (which is located right down the street) I can call the automated refill line and be done in less than a minute.
- Of course the real reason my insurance has taken away my choice is because it saves money, i.e. it allows them to make more money (because it is one of the Blues, they put the money into their ginormous reserve and give their executives massive salaries).
- The green connection involves the way the mail order pharmacies send me my prescription: with massive amounts of styrofoam packaging. It has to be refrigerated, so what UPS drops on my porch is a massive box containing a ginormous styrofoam vault as well as gel cold packs.
- I get to throw all that packaging away. More precisely, I get to pay to throw it away, either via municipal trash pickup or by transporting it 23 miles to Ikea.
It's a clear, compelling example of The Tragedy of the Commons. My insurance company is saving money, savings physically represented by petroleum-based material that ends up in the landfill. The mail-order pharmacies don't offer styrofoam mailback.
April 22, 2009
"We are all polluters"
If not, watch it now!
February 23, 2009
Mercer will still be One-Way, in a way
This strikes me as perpetuating the "one way" that urban development has followed for decades: the car culture.
I've been going around telling people that the point of the stimulus is to spend money to get it out into the economy. Well, why Mercer Street? Won't other non-defense spending also create work? How about these items that are supposed to be city priorities:
- Pedestrian safety
- Housing and support services for the hardcore homeless
- School district funding
- Finish the sidewalk grid!
- Duwamish Superfund cleanup
- Fast, convenient and pervasive transit
And how about this need that no one ever talks about: preparing the infrastructure that will support the 1.6 million additional residents expected to move to the Puget Sound region between now and 2040. Do you think the current wastewater treatment system can handle all the additional inputs? Wouldn't our power grid benefit from rooftop solar and wind farms?
The problem for Seattle is that the federal stimulus is only going to shovel-ready projects. That is, projects that were already in advanced planning and only lacked the funding to proceed.
Obviously, Seattle didn't plan.
January 30, 2009
O Green Mayor, Where Art Thou?
Velíb (Paris)
Smartbike (Washington DC)
September 23, 2008
Green era means we should rethink traffic priorities
Am I understanding this right? The city wants to spend $201 million on this 10-block stretch so drivers can save a few minutes? That's the sole benefit traffic-wise, because there would be no congestion reduction. Let's make a ledger.Seattle is seeking possession of a popular boating-supply store along Mercer Street, even though the city remains $88 million short of the funds it needs to carry out a street reconstruction project there.
West Marine is to be condemned and torn down to make room for a 60- to 70-foot road widening along Mercer Street in an area commonly called the "Mercer Mess," according to the city's plan.
...private contributors won't commit money for the project until Seattle secures the right-of-way. Of the missing $88 million, the city is negotiating to get $36 million from nearby businesses that would benefit from the $201 million rebuild.
. . .
For two generations, commuters have complained about the Mercer Mess between Interstate 5 and Seattle Center. The city plans to add lanes for two-way travel on Mercer, which now goes eastbound to I-5. Valley Street, now an arterial, would be reduced to two lanes.
A study for the Seattle Department of Transportation predicts that drivers would save minutes leaving I-5, because they would gain a straight route on Mercer westbound, instead of navigating a curve to Valley. Overall, there would be little change in congestion, the study says; but bicycling and walking conditions would improve greatly, while landscaping would make the area more pleasant.
| Benefits | Costs ($201 million) |
| Cars: Drivers save a few minutes | Congestion continues at same level |
| Non-motorized: Improved walking, biking | generally $1 million per block, including curbs and drainage |
| Other: Nice landscaping | Businesses: Loss of strong retailer; $36 million |
Anyone see anything wrong here? Try taking off your Car Culture Hat. How about now?
That's right: Although I'm mixing qualitative and quantitative, the costs for the automobile portion is the biggest, maybe $150-155 million, while returning the littlest benefit -- a few minutes per driver.
Want to reduce congestion? Want to make the transition away from the car culture? THEN STOP FACILITATING IT. Spend $10 million on non-motorized transportation on Mercer, and a few more million on landscaping and trees. Mandate Low Impact Development to protect Lake Union.
Road-diet what's there now, and maybe you'll get more people biking and taking Metro and the S.L.U.T. (and North Link whenever that's supposed to happen).
July 7, 2008
What activist judiciary?
The rule is meant to comply with the Growth Management Hearings Board policies, but my source has told me the appeals court has held the rule to be an illegal fee.
More as it develops.
Update (1518 PDT): The Post-Intelligencer has the first media report.
More at This Week in Precipitation.
June 9, 2008
Climate Change roundtable
YOUR HOUSE, YOUR CAR, OUR CLIMATE: STATE DEPT. OF TRANSPORTATION DEPUTY SECRETARY TO DISCUSS HOW LAND USE IN WASHINGTON AFFECTS CLIMATE CHANGE
WHAT: At this evening discussion roundtable, two influential state and community leaders will discuss the core issues that are key to Washington’s ability to tackle climate change: the connection between land use and transportation.
WHO: David Dye, Deputy Secretary of the Washington Department of Transportation, will discuss how the Department is responding to the challenge of reducing emissions from transportation in Washington.
Rod Brown, senior partner at Cascadia Law Group, will discuss what changes we may see based on the actions taken during the 2008 Washington legislative session relating to growth management and climate change.
WHEN: Monday, June 9, 2008, 6-8 p.m.
WHERE: REI Flagship Store, 222 Yale Avenue North, 2nd floor meeting room.
COST: Admission is free. Refreshments provided.
This event is organized by the Washington Foundation for the Environment, and co-sponsored by People For Puget Sound and CH2M Hill.
March 19, 2008
The size of the problem
The usual argument goes something like, transit ridership is up! If we just add more buses and build more light rail, we'll be able to solve our transportation problem.
In particular, the hackles tend to go up over cost -- PRT is expensive, so it will take resources away from transit. As though PRT would not be transit.
Next year will be my 20th since first learning about PRT. My motivation for supporting it then, as now, remains the same: The transportation problem is too big to continue relying solely on traditional, conventional transit technologies. The magnitude of the problem calls for real innovation, not tinkering around the edges.
A look at what is currently considered transit 'success' actually serves to give the problem its proper context.
Recently the Puget Sound region's leading transit agencies announced ridership was significantly up in 2007. Metro (King County) reported a 7% increase, while Sound Transit (a commuter-oriented agency serving parts of three counties) reported a 12.5% increase.1 The Washington Public Interest Research Group, a fundraising and policy advocacy group, released impressive statistics on how transit usage translates to fuel saved, fuel costs saved, and tons of CO2 not emitted.2
But can annual marginal increases in transit usage get to the kind of ridership we need to reduce numbers of car trips, car miles traveled, and emissions? Interestingly, the recent trumpeting of transit gains made no mention of two important, context-providing numbers: total daily motorized travel, and transit's share of that travel (called transit "mode share," or "mode split").
Oddly, these numbers are not aggregated in one location, despite transportation having been a major preoccupation of the Puget Sound region for years. However, I have what might be called glacial patience, and I have rounded up data from a number of agencies.
Annual transit ridership for 2007
These numbers are mostly available from transit agencies or news sources.
| Agency | Annual riders | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Sound Transit | 13,500,000 | based on 1.5 million being a 12.5% increase |
| Metro Transit | 110,000,0003 | |
| Community Transit (Snohomish County) | 10,400,000 | Based on a midyear report that ridership was trending 5.4% higher than 9.9 million trips in 2006.4 |
| Pierce Transit | 16,900,0005 | |
| Skagit Transit | 450,000 | |
| Intercity Transit (Olympia) | 4,300,000 | |
| Kitsap Transit | 4,000,000 | I had to estimate this as one-third of Sound Transit's ridership. The only good data on KT is that they serve 15,000 per weekday, a little more than a third of Sound Transit's 44,000 per weekday.6 |
| TOTAL | 158,050,000 | This is about 433,000 a day on average |
Annual total trips
For all modes (cars, trucks, transit, etc.) this is about 10 million a day, or 3.7 billion per year.7 I've also read recent claims of 12 million a day, growing to 16 million a day by 2030, but I'll be statistically conservative and keep it at 10.
The size of the problem
Transit's annual mode split in the region is therefore about 4.3%.8 The percentage would of course be lower if a higher number is used for total trips .
It is useful to keep two other things in mind. 1) The length of the average person's "journey to work" varies 10-14 miles depending on household income.9 2) Washington's new law on climate change, recently signed by Governor Gregoire, includes goals to reduce annual vehicle miles traveled 18% by 2020, 30% by 2035, and 50% by 2050. The starting point is 75 billion annual miles, so you can do the math.
These numbers impart a sense of scale. How do you impact that many people, traveling that many times, for that many miles?
In short, 12.5% annual increases are hardly going to make a dent in the problem. Even if we were able to increase daily transit ridership to 1 million (a 230% increase) with more trains and buses, that is a transit mode split of only 9.9%.
Why not innovate?
No one is saying transit is going to do it alone. There is going to be travel demand management (e.g. tolls, congestion pricing), as well as individual lifestyle changes. But the latter is an aggregate of the millions (probably billions) of microeconomic decisions each of us makes about housing, work, shopping, school, recreation, etc. Those are millions/billions of things that have to go mostly right in order to make this dream called Sustainability come true. There are going to be a lot of innovations along the way.
In the face of these challenges, WHY NOT innovate transit too? Current versions of Personal Rapid Transit, an automated peoplemover concept that combines the speed of a train with the flexibility of a bus, convenience of a taxi, and greenness of an electric car, have been researched in Europe during the past decade.10 PRT is basically the 'horizontal elevator' idea you might have heard about in years past.
Potential niches include getting people quickly to and from train stations without driving, circulation transit, and rapid transit service to districts where large footprint rail technology can't fit or isn't economically justified.
The first one is being built now at Heathrow Airport; physical tests have demonstrated greater capacity than any light rail system operating in the UK.11 We should be telling our transit agencies to start planning PRT networks now.
-----------------
1. Pulkkinen, L., "Sound Transit ridership rose 12.5% in 2007." Seattle P-I, Mar. 10, 2008
2. Lange, L., "Transit benefits: new study, new campaign." Seattle P-I, Mar. 6, 2008
3. Lindblom, M. and Gilmore, S., "Riders pack buses in record numbers." Seattle Times, Jan. 24, 2008
4. Community Transit, "Community Transit News." June 28, 2007
5. Austin, A., "Ridership up regionally, a tipping point for transit?" Morning News Tribune, Jan. 31, 2008
6. Sound Transit, "Dump the Pump Day June 21." June 12, 2007
7. Sound Transit, "2005 RTPO Plan Review." April 2005
8. 158,050,000 ÷ 3.7 bil
9. Puget Sound Regional Council, "Regional View Newsletter." Dec. 2007
10. Ironically, based on groundbreaking work done by the old Urban Mass Transit Administration in the 1970s
11. Virginia Dept. of Rail and Public Transportation, House Document 11: "Viability of PRT in Virginia." Jan. 11, 2008, Sec. IV(C)
January 25, 2008
Bruce Babbitt to give Seattle talk
It's a pre-work breakfast time event, which means EARLY. It's also a fundraiser. But Babbitt is, as noted, hilarious, so it's well worth the money and rising at the crack of dawn.
Contact Nancy at (206)382-7007 for details.
December 13, 2007
"Extraordinary attempt by the Bush administration to kill off the fight against climate change"
"If they get this text through, then it will give a free pass to any nation that wants to keep polluting."
The proposed US text uses phrases such as "as appropriate", "depending" and "may" in reference to emissions cuts, which would effectively make any agreement reached voluntary. Last night it was understood that the US move was being supported by Canada, but fiercely opposed by the EU and Britain.
More
September 18, 2007
Dreamliner's skin in the news
Fired engineer calls 787's plastic fuselage unsafe
A former senior aerospace engineer at Boeing's Phantom Works research unit, fired last year under disputed circumstances, is going public with concerns that the new 787 Dreamliner is unsafe.
Forty-six-year veteran Vince Weldon contends that in a crash landing that would be survivable in a metal airplane, the new jet's innovative composite plastic materials will shatter too easily and burn with toxic fumes. More
May 17, 2007
Is this 'limitless' energy?
The basic idea: build huge satellites in Earth orbit to gather sunlight, convert it to electricity, and beam the energy to Earth using microwaves. We know we can do it, most satellites are powered by solar energy today and microwave beaming of energy has been demonstrated with very high efficiency. We're talking about SSP - solar satellite power.
SSP is environmentally friendly in the extreme. The microwave beams will heat the atmosphere slightly and the frequency must be chosen to avoid cooking birds, but SSP has no emissions of any kind...
More
May 3, 2007
New baby Orca confirmed
April 23, 2007
Bi-Uh-Oh-Diesel
Ethanol cars may not be healthier
Ethanol vehicles may have worse effects on human health than conventional petrol, US scientists have warned.A computer model set up to simulate air quality in 2020 found that in some areas ozone levels would increase if all cars were run on bioethanol.
Deaths from respiratory problems and asthma attacks would increase with such levels, the researchers reported in Environmental Science and Technology.The EU has agreed that biofuels should be used in 10% of transport by 2020.
Mark Jacobson, an atmospheric scientist at Stanford University in California, used a computer model which took into account factors such as temperatures, sunlight, clouds and rain to simulate air quality in 2020 for two different scenarios.
In one simulation all vehicles were fuelled by petrol and in the other all vehicles were fuelled by E85 - a mix of 85% ethanol and 15% petrol.
If all cars were run on E85, he found that in some parts of the US there were significant increases in ozone - a pollutant with harmful effects on the human respiratory system - compared with petrol cars.
In the study, the increase in smog translated to an extra 200 deaths per year in the whole of the US, with 120 occurring in Los Angeles alone.
Increases in ozone in some areas of the US would be offset by decreases in other areas but overall there would be 770 additional visits to accident and emergency and 990 additional hospitalisations for asthma and other respiratory problems, the results showed.
Although ethanol was found to reduce levels of two atmospheric carcinogens, levels of others increased so associated cancers would be the same as with pollution caused by petrol fumes, the study showed.
Damage
"We found that using E85 will cause at least as much health damage as gasoline, which already causes about 10,000 premature deaths annually from ozone and particulate matter," said Jacobson.
"The question is, if we're not getting any health benefits, then why continue to promote ethanol and other biofuels."
He added: "By comparison, converting all vehicles to battery-electric, where the electricity is from wind energy would eliminate 10,000 air pollution deaths per year and 98% of carbon emissions from vehicles."
In principle, biofuels - ethanol and diesel, made from crops including corn, sugarcane and rapeseed - are a way of reducing greenhouse gas emissions compared to conventional transport fuels.
Although they produce carbon dioxide, growing the plants absorbs a comparable amount of the gas from the atmosphere.
A government report said that biofuels could reduce emissions by 50-60% compared to fossil fuels.
Stuart Shales, senior lecturer in environmental biotechnology at the University of the West England, said there were companies in the UK producing biofuel but that the UK was lagging behind other countries.
He added that it would not be feasible for all cars to run on ethanol because too much land would be needed to grow the crops.
"What people are looking at are second generation fuels which will be produced from whole biomass, like wood, which can be broken down to fermentable sugars."
"This is the first time I've seen any research about ozone.
"The question I would ask is, has there been any respiratory problems in Brazil where ethanol has been used since the early 1970s."
Upshot -- building, using and innovating mass transit, and nonmotorized transport, are not diminished in importance.
March 18, 2007
Cough
But have you ever thought about what happens to the carbon fiber in a catastrophic plane crash? According to a Boeing engineer I spoke with last year who seemed quite eager to expound on the subject, the carbon fiber explodes into a cloud of dust.
Something to think about.