Weeks, years, go by and I read and listen to the radio, and many, many big problems get presented and looked at from dozens of points of view, but there is one problem, the REAL problem, the one that's at the root of all other problems, and it never gets touched!
The REAL problem is there are too many people living on planet earth. There are already too many, and the numbers are still increasing at an exponential rate. This is a prescription for disaster, and anyone who doesn't believe it can come to Utah, visit me, and we'll go look at the 17-year, boom and bust cycle that has been going on with jackrabbits in Utah's west desert for a long time.
Mother nature has recently been showing us who's really boss on a small scale (think Katrina, last winter in New York, Haiti, Pakistan right now...). These disasters in themselves are only disasters because of huge human populations in the area, but with our help, nature is going to show us someday what a real disaster is like.
Friday, August 27, 2010
Thursday, August 12, 2010
Cyclist's Dilemma at the 4-way Stop
Question... When is sweet politeness not helpful at all?
One situation where politeness isn't helpful at all is when you are driving a car, you've just arrived at a 4-way stop, and there's a bicycle arriving on your left at the intersection just a little after you. Politeness says, bicycles are at a disadvantage, let him go first, but there's a problem with this. The Rules of the Road say whoever arrives at the intersection first has right of way, and in the case of a tie (two vehicles arrive at the intersection at the same time), the vehicle that's on the right has right of way. This is a real rule, and there's a reason for it. It exists to promote the smooth, efficient flow of traffic.
Let's look at how this plays out from the cyclist's point of view. The cyclist, if he has any experience at all, will know that it's dangerous to pull out in front of a car, even if you have right of way. The people in cars often don't see bicyclists, and a fair number behave as if bicycles have no right to be on the road. The bicyclist has no way of knowing what kind of person he is dealing with in that car to his right, but they do have right of way, and that means the car may take off at any moment. It should be obvious to everyone, if it comes to a collision between a car and a bicycle, the car is going to win every single time.
So the bicyclist, if he has any experience and common sense, will put his foot down (to show he is definitely stopped!), and prepare to wait out the driver of the car on the right, wait until they exercise their rights and go. This wait can take an agonizingly long time, minutes. One factor at work here, as the standoff continues, the bicyclist knows with each passing second it grows more likely that the car will move the instant he starts into the intersection (This is the difficulty the Rule of the Road is intended to cure!).
At a busy intersection the pressure can go way up. Often another car will arrive on the bicyclist's left, opposite the first car that is refusing to move. This driver will usually know the bicycle to his right has right of way, and may begin to wait for the bicycle to go, not knowing the bike is waiting for the car facing him. Now the pressure is on the bicyclist, he has two drivers waiting for him, one legitimately and probably wondering why in the hell he doesn't go, and the other wrongly and probably still thinking they are doing him a favor.
Now, given fate and the way things go, the bicyclist will finally succumb to the first driver's "politeness". He'll start peddling just as the driver on his left runs out of patience, and stands on it. This situation is even more dangerous than peddling in front of the unpredictable "polite" driver. Before a bicyclist has gone five feet he will be in front of that driver on his left, whereas, gambling on the continued "politeness" of a driver on the right, it would take 20 feet or more to get in front of the car. So the finale usually has the bicyclist doing whatever he has to, to get stopped (This often involves some awkward gymnastics involving hitting the brakes hard, sticking one foot on the ground as far forward as he can, and maybe still falling down.). The second driver tears through the intersection in a mild rage, and maybe now, finally, the first car moves through the intersection.
The point of this all is: If you arrive at an intersection and there's a bicycle there, first of all know the Right of Way Rules, and know whether you or the bicycle have right of way. Then if you have right of way, use it. You aren't doing anybody any favors in trying to give a bicyclist right of way when you can't communicate with him.
One situation where politeness isn't helpful at all is when you are driving a car, you've just arrived at a 4-way stop, and there's a bicycle arriving on your left at the intersection just a little after you. Politeness says, bicycles are at a disadvantage, let him go first, but there's a problem with this. The Rules of the Road say whoever arrives at the intersection first has right of way, and in the case of a tie (two vehicles arrive at the intersection at the same time), the vehicle that's on the right has right of way. This is a real rule, and there's a reason for it. It exists to promote the smooth, efficient flow of traffic.
Let's look at how this plays out from the cyclist's point of view. The cyclist, if he has any experience at all, will know that it's dangerous to pull out in front of a car, even if you have right of way. The people in cars often don't see bicyclists, and a fair number behave as if bicycles have no right to be on the road. The bicyclist has no way of knowing what kind of person he is dealing with in that car to his right, but they do have right of way, and that means the car may take off at any moment. It should be obvious to everyone, if it comes to a collision between a car and a bicycle, the car is going to win every single time.
So the bicyclist, if he has any experience and common sense, will put his foot down (to show he is definitely stopped!), and prepare to wait out the driver of the car on the right, wait until they exercise their rights and go. This wait can take an agonizingly long time, minutes. One factor at work here, as the standoff continues, the bicyclist knows with each passing second it grows more likely that the car will move the instant he starts into the intersection (This is the difficulty the Rule of the Road is intended to cure!).
At a busy intersection the pressure can go way up. Often another car will arrive on the bicyclist's left, opposite the first car that is refusing to move. This driver will usually know the bicycle to his right has right of way, and may begin to wait for the bicycle to go, not knowing the bike is waiting for the car facing him. Now the pressure is on the bicyclist, he has two drivers waiting for him, one legitimately and probably wondering why in the hell he doesn't go, and the other wrongly and probably still thinking they are doing him a favor.
Now, given fate and the way things go, the bicyclist will finally succumb to the first driver's "politeness". He'll start peddling just as the driver on his left runs out of patience, and stands on it. This situation is even more dangerous than peddling in front of the unpredictable "polite" driver. Before a bicyclist has gone five feet he will be in front of that driver on his left, whereas, gambling on the continued "politeness" of a driver on the right, it would take 20 feet or more to get in front of the car. So the finale usually has the bicyclist doing whatever he has to, to get stopped (This often involves some awkward gymnastics involving hitting the brakes hard, sticking one foot on the ground as far forward as he can, and maybe still falling down.). The second driver tears through the intersection in a mild rage, and maybe now, finally, the first car moves through the intersection.
The point of this all is: If you arrive at an intersection and there's a bicycle there, first of all know the Right of Way Rules, and know whether you or the bicycle have right of way. Then if you have right of way, use it. You aren't doing anybody any favors in trying to give a bicyclist right of way when you can't communicate with him.
Friday, July 23, 2010
Sunday, December 14, 2008
Help fight global warming, stop shoveling snow
It snowed last night. There was a lovely, six-inch blanket of white on the ground this morning. By 08:00, I had succumbed to spousal, and cultural, pressure, and was out working a shovel, trying to clear the lovely white stuff off the drive and sidewalks. Just like it was something undesirable that had to be got rid of.
I have one strong personal reason not to like cleanly shoveled sidewalks. I walk a lot, usually including an hour after dark in the wintertime, and I know that the really dangerous, slippery sections of sidewalk are those that have been shoveled clean. They may even be mostly dry, but just often enough, there are places where snow on the sides was melting during the day, and water was running across the sidewalk, and after dark this water turned into a sheet of black ice. Those are the slippery places that will surprise you, and put you down on your back.
This morning, however, I was thinking about the way the concrete warms up, once it has been shoveled and the sun gets to it. When the snow covers the ground, nearly all of the light from the sun that hits it is reflected. All that energy (about one kilowatt for every square meter of earth surface) gets turned around without warming anything up, and is headed back towards space, where it came from. The surface of the earth is cold beneath the snow, and it can't get warm because most of the energy that would warm it is being lost into space. That blanket of snow is causing a local episode of global cooling.
However, we have this strong cultural mandate to shovel that snow off the walk. If we don't, our walks sit out there for all the world to see, evidence of our shameful laziness. In many cities there are even laws that require people to shovel their walks. These laws have outlived their usefulness. They should be repealed, and people should be encouraged to leave that snow on their walks. As long as that snow is there, it's better than unplugging a standard electric space heater for every two square meters of concrete you have outside.
I have one strong personal reason not to like cleanly shoveled sidewalks. I walk a lot, usually including an hour after dark in the wintertime, and I know that the really dangerous, slippery sections of sidewalk are those that have been shoveled clean. They may even be mostly dry, but just often enough, there are places where snow on the sides was melting during the day, and water was running across the sidewalk, and after dark this water turned into a sheet of black ice. Those are the slippery places that will surprise you, and put you down on your back.
This morning, however, I was thinking about the way the concrete warms up, once it has been shoveled and the sun gets to it. When the snow covers the ground, nearly all of the light from the sun that hits it is reflected. All that energy (about one kilowatt for every square meter of earth surface) gets turned around without warming anything up, and is headed back towards space, where it came from. The surface of the earth is cold beneath the snow, and it can't get warm because most of the energy that would warm it is being lost into space. That blanket of snow is causing a local episode of global cooling.
However, we have this strong cultural mandate to shovel that snow off the walk. If we don't, our walks sit out there for all the world to see, evidence of our shameful laziness. In many cities there are even laws that require people to shovel their walks. These laws have outlived their usefulness. They should be repealed, and people should be encouraged to leave that snow on their walks. As long as that snow is there, it's better than unplugging a standard electric space heater for every two square meters of concrete you have outside.
Tuesday, November 25, 2008
Gases Opaque to Infrared "Light"
An important piece of the Greenhouse Effect puzzle is the fact that not all gases pass all frequencies of light equally well. All colors (frequencies) of visible light travel very well through the gases in our everyday world (nitrogen, oxygen, water vapor, carbon dioxide...), so we aren't familiar with any particular color of light not getting through a gas. Actually there is one big exception to this: blue light doesn't get through our atmosphere as easily as red light.
more to come
more to come
Monday, November 10, 2008
Greenhouse Effect Explained
It seems in spite of millions of people using the expression, "Greenhouse Effect", on a daily basis, very few people actually know how it works. Add to that, occasionally we find someone questioning whether, or not, they should "believe in" the Greenhouse Effect, which is just a little bit crazy. After all, we are talking about physical facts here. Does anyone talk about "believing in" the law of gravity?
So it seems there should be available on the web, an easily understood explanation, preferably with appended detail sections, so anyone that's interested can find out how the Greenhouse Effect works. A couple searches have turned up nothing that fits this description, so I want to write one. In doing so, I really want feedback from knowledgeable people, ultimately to come up with something that's easy to understand, simplifying perhaps, the underlying physics, but not twisting it.
So, starting with a bare sketch. All physical objects radiate energy in the form of electromagnetic waves, and the frequency of the radiation is dependent on the surface temperature of the object. Hotter objects radiate at higher frequencies.
Light is a form of electromagnetic waves, and it happens that objects that are as warm as the Earth radiate in the frequency range of infrared light. Objects that are as hot as the sun radiate in the range of blue, violet and ultra-violet. This is one of the important facts involved in the Greenhouse Effect.
Another important fact is different gases don't all allow all frequencies of light to pass equally well. This fact is a little hard to accept because we don't routinely see the effect (except for one effect, the blue sky). An important example is the fact that carbon dioxide is quite transparent to visible light, and ultra-violet light, but much less transparent to infrared light.
These two facts come together to explain the Greenhouse Effect as follows: Energy is radiated from the sun and passes rather easily through the Earth's atmosphere, and is absorbed by the Earth, which warms the Earth. The Earth, in it's turn, according to its surface temperature, radiates some of the energy back, but now the frequency of the radiation has been changed to infrared. This lower-frequency radiation runs into gases like carbon dioxide in our atmosphere, and it is scattered, or reflected back. It doesn't get away, so the surface of the Earth, and the atmosphere become slightly warmer.
This is the Greenhouse Effect. The more carbon dioxide, and other "greenhouse gases", there are in the atmosphere, the better insulated the Earth becomes. There have always been greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, and the Earth has always been insulated by them, but more greenhouse gases mean more insulation, and a warmer Earth.
So it seems there should be available on the web, an easily understood explanation, preferably with appended detail sections, so anyone that's interested can find out how the Greenhouse Effect works. A couple searches have turned up nothing that fits this description, so I want to write one. In doing so, I really want feedback from knowledgeable people, ultimately to come up with something that's easy to understand, simplifying perhaps, the underlying physics, but not twisting it.
So, starting with a bare sketch. All physical objects radiate energy in the form of electromagnetic waves, and the frequency of the radiation is dependent on the surface temperature of the object. Hotter objects radiate at higher frequencies.
Light is a form of electromagnetic waves, and it happens that objects that are as warm as the Earth radiate in the frequency range of infrared light. Objects that are as hot as the sun radiate in the range of blue, violet and ultra-violet. This is one of the important facts involved in the Greenhouse Effect.
Another important fact is different gases don't all allow all frequencies of light to pass equally well. This fact is a little hard to accept because we don't routinely see the effect (except for one effect, the blue sky). An important example is the fact that carbon dioxide is quite transparent to visible light, and ultra-violet light, but much less transparent to infrared light.
These two facts come together to explain the Greenhouse Effect as follows: Energy is radiated from the sun and passes rather easily through the Earth's atmosphere, and is absorbed by the Earth, which warms the Earth. The Earth, in it's turn, according to its surface temperature, radiates some of the energy back, but now the frequency of the radiation has been changed to infrared. This lower-frequency radiation runs into gases like carbon dioxide in our atmosphere, and it is scattered, or reflected back. It doesn't get away, so the surface of the Earth, and the atmosphere become slightly warmer.
This is the Greenhouse Effect. The more carbon dioxide, and other "greenhouse gases", there are in the atmosphere, the better insulated the Earth becomes. There have always been greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, and the Earth has always been insulated by them, but more greenhouse gases mean more insulation, and a warmer Earth.
Saturday, November 1, 2008
Voting Against Ourselves
Let's imagine you have a political party that wants to succeed in democratic elections, where the rule is "one person, rich or poor, one vote". Then imagine further that a very important item on this party's agenda is to further the interests of corporations and very rich people. Won't this party have a very difficult time getting people elected? Corporations can't vote at all, and almost by definition, there are very few very rich people.
How to increase the influence? How to get a large percentage of the not-rich people out there to vote for this party's candidates? This is a very real problem for this party: without the not-rich people's votes, there is no hope of getting anyone elected in a free, democratic election, and not-rich people can't be expected to vote for candidates who announce that they intend to make it easier for rich people to get richer, and make it easier for corporations to make bigger profits, by whatever means.
One way out of this dilemma would be relative silence about the important goal of helping rich people, and at the same time be rather vocal about smaller issues, that many not-rich people care strongly about. These smaller issues can be chosen not to interfere with, and may even assist, the important agenda. They don't have to have any particular cost attached, and there need be no particular urgency to produce any results with respect to these side issues. Examples of these kinds of issues are gun control, abortion, gay rights, and religiosity. Any issue will do, in which some not-rich people may have some expectation that the opposing party will not act the way they want. The more emotional an issue it is, the better.
After choosing one of these issues, our rich people's party simply has to take an opposing stand, one that the related segment of the not-rich population will be relieved to hear. Beyond that, all that is required is to talk about it. Talk about it to exclusion of any other topic, especially the important goal of helping rich people. No other action is required, ever. It would probably detract from the effectiveness of the side issue if one were to go back one's word, and for example, put some restrictive gun controls in place, but no positive results are required.
A complete lack of any real progress in easing gun controls in eight years is easily forgotten and forgiven. The anti-gun-control people will vote for you as long as you say you are opposed to gun control. The anti-abortion people will vote for you as long as you appear to resist abortion. The anti-gay people will vote for you even though there has been no rollback of gay rights in eight long years. And, most amazing of all, Christians will vote for you, even though you have started two wars that have killed many tens of thousands of people, and refused to help a population in Africa that has been the victim of relentless genocide. So you get all these people, who are passionately interested in these issues, to vote for you, and the only thing it costs is the time you spend talking about your concern over these issues.
This seems to be quite a reasonable scheme to acquire a lot of voting support for a party that really only acts in the interests of large corporations and rich people. If there is something going on in the real world of legislative activity that contradicts the way this scheme works, I am interested in hearing about it.
How to increase the influence? How to get a large percentage of the not-rich people out there to vote for this party's candidates? This is a very real problem for this party: without the not-rich people's votes, there is no hope of getting anyone elected in a free, democratic election, and not-rich people can't be expected to vote for candidates who announce that they intend to make it easier for rich people to get richer, and make it easier for corporations to make bigger profits, by whatever means.
One way out of this dilemma would be relative silence about the important goal of helping rich people, and at the same time be rather vocal about smaller issues, that many not-rich people care strongly about. These smaller issues can be chosen not to interfere with, and may even assist, the important agenda. They don't have to have any particular cost attached, and there need be no particular urgency to produce any results with respect to these side issues. Examples of these kinds of issues are gun control, abortion, gay rights, and religiosity. Any issue will do, in which some not-rich people may have some expectation that the opposing party will not act the way they want. The more emotional an issue it is, the better.
After choosing one of these issues, our rich people's party simply has to take an opposing stand, one that the related segment of the not-rich population will be relieved to hear. Beyond that, all that is required is to talk about it. Talk about it to exclusion of any other topic, especially the important goal of helping rich people. No other action is required, ever. It would probably detract from the effectiveness of the side issue if one were to go back one's word, and for example, put some restrictive gun controls in place, but no positive results are required.
A complete lack of any real progress in easing gun controls in eight years is easily forgotten and forgiven. The anti-gun-control people will vote for you as long as you say you are opposed to gun control. The anti-abortion people will vote for you as long as you appear to resist abortion. The anti-gay people will vote for you even though there has been no rollback of gay rights in eight long years. And, most amazing of all, Christians will vote for you, even though you have started two wars that have killed many tens of thousands of people, and refused to help a population in Africa that has been the victim of relentless genocide. So you get all these people, who are passionately interested in these issues, to vote for you, and the only thing it costs is the time you spend talking about your concern over these issues.
This seems to be quite a reasonable scheme to acquire a lot of voting support for a party that really only acts in the interests of large corporations and rich people. If there is something going on in the real world of legislative activity that contradicts the way this scheme works, I am interested in hearing about it.
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