A Change in the Wind

What's not to "like" about widgets (from the WSJ)

Or at least, what's not to trust. It's why I don't link this site to fb, though it hurts my popularity: 

The charticle is easier to understand than the article, but they're both worth a minute or two. 

NASA drops another climate satellite in the ocean

Two years ago I observed the launch of a NASA satellite, called the Orbiting Carbon Observatory, intended to help scientists understand the wide variation in uptake of carbon from the atmosphere by the earth. I wrote about it for the Santa Barbara Independent.

At an impromptu press conference held after the OCO crashed into the Southern Pacific ocean, launch director Chuck Dovale vowed on NASA TV that the agency would not rest until they had found the cause of the failure, and would not send up another satellite until they knew they had found the solution. 

Well, this weekend NASA launched another climate satellite, Glory, designed to measure aerosols in the atmosphere. The mission was powered by the same kind of Taurux XL rocket as before, and the satellite built by the same corporation, Orbital Services. Once again the launch failed, and once again the failure was traced to explosive bolts designed to open a clamshell snout and release the satellite into orbit.

Veteran journalist Seth Borenstein reported on the "contingency," as the engineers say, once again for the AP, as he did on the last failed launch. 

The Taurus XL rocket carrying NASA's Glory satellite lifted from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California and plummeted to the southern Pacific several minutes later. The same thing happened to another climate-monitoring probe in 2009 with the same type of rocket, and engineers thought they had fixed the problem.

"It's more than embarrassing," said Syracuse University public policy professor Henry Lambright. "Something was missed in the first investigation and the work that went on afterward."

The cost? $424 million. 

Borenstein adds:

Scientists are trying to move climate change forecasts from ones that are heavily based on computer models to those that rely on more detailed, real-time satellite-based observations like those that Glory was supposed to make. The satellite's failure makes that harder.

Epic bad luck? Or incompetence at NASA and Orbital?  

The best line on "The Social Network"

From a review on The Millions by Sonja Chung:

 I came away from the film wanting to send Mr. Zuckerberg a Facebook message saying, “Don’t worry, kid.  Just relax and try to enjoy your life” but never wanting to meet the guy – in other words, wanting to be “friends,” but not friends.

But Chung is too kind. I came away from the movie hating myself for even touching Facebook.

Here's its hero/villain in what his one-time best friend accurately describes as his "fuck you flip-flops":

 

The unheard-of and suddenly indispensable Smartpen

Take it from veteran journalist and computer writer James Fallows, of the Atlantic:

For my own workaday purposes, the most useful recent invention has been the Livescribe Pulse pen, which I bought just after its introduction early last year and now can hardly be without. It looks like a somewhat bulky, cigar-shaped metallic writing instrument. Inside it contains a high-end audio recording system and assorted computer circuitry. When you turn it on, it starts recording what you are hearing—and also matches what is being said, instant by instant (in fact, using photos it takes 72 times per second), with notes or drawings that you’re making in a special Livescribe notebook. The result is a kind of indexing system for an audio stream. If a professor is explaining a complex equation during a lecture, you write “equation,” or anything else—and later when you click on that term, either in the original notebook or on images of the pages transferred to your computer screen, it plays back that exact part of the discussion. (Works on both Macs and PCs.) For me this means instant access to the three interesting sentences—I just write “interesting!” in the notebook or put a star—in the typical hour-long journalistic interview. The battery lasts for several full days’ use between recharges, and the pen can hold dozens of hours of recordings.  

Or take it from me, an average joe journalist... this device is freaking amazing, for anyone who does any kind of interviewing or listening with attention. It passes my tech test: it works straight out of the box, no need to crack open the manual. Even for people with bad penmanship. Unbelievable. 

 

Why DeSalination Is Not the Answer

A water manager for United Water Conservation District named Steve Bachman explains succinctly why desalination is not the answer, in a story I wrote in today's Ventura County Star (here):

“People ask all the time about desalination,” he said. “And yes, we can do that, if you’re willing to pay two times or more what you’re paying now for water.”

In a phone conversation, he explained further. Water districts can buy water from Metropolitan -- when it is available -- for $600 an acre-foot. "Desal" today costs in the range of $1100.

So there you go. Of course we haven't mentioned the huge carbon footprint, the infrastructure problems, the salts disposal...but do we need to?

Geek Love: Past and Present in Rechargeable Batteries

I can keep it short because Jeff Atwood gives you a decade's worth of experience with rechargeable batteries in a post of a mere thousand words or so, called Adventuries in Rechargeable Batteries.

Bottom line: fast-charge battery chargers can ruin rechargeable batteries.

Atwood tells you to spend a little more -- forty bucks on a battery charger -- and take advantage of the fact that modern batteries, if handled carefully, can handle hundreds of charges.

Plus, this charger can charge not just the usual "A" and "AA" batteries, but also the much bigger "C" and "D" batteries. And you can see the charge flowing into the battery, and track its progress.

While I'm employed, will try this, and report results in a month or so.

(H/t: Lifehacker)

Ex Exxonian Still Doubts Climate Change

Lee Raymond ran ExxonMobil back in the days not so long ago when it was raking $25 billion a year and, purely by coincidence, adamantly denying the reality of climate change. Now Raymond has taken his $400 million retirement and moved on. Interesting, even Raymond doesn't believe in "clean coal."

Discussing a new study by the National Petroleum Council, he adds that the "Holy Grail" of "clean coal," the idea of sequestering the carbon emissions and injecting them deep into the earth, is impractical.

On this point he's quite convincing, I think, and vividly descriptive:

But what is viewed of course as kind of the Holy Grail on coal-fired power plants is carbon sequestration. And people are correct in the sense that the oil industry, for a long time, has been carrying on a form of a carbon sequestration project because we've been injecting CO2 as a secondary recovery technique in oil reservoirs for a long time. But to go from that, quickly, to massive carbon sequestration for a power plant is a whole different animal. The technology, I think most of the people who worked on it would conclude that the technology is probably there to do it, but it has never been demonstrated at scale.

Secondly, if you think about that very long it will require a regulatory framework that does not exist today. And how that could be put together in this country given that you're going to get into state jurisdictions and all the other issues that we get into in this country, in a short period of time, is very, very unlikely. Now, even if you do that, if you think about it very long, A, one gigawatt coal-fired power plant, to get rid of all the CO2, I think is it 50,000 barrels a day, 150,000 barrels a day of supercritical CO2 will have to be injected into the ground. To get to your point, if you tried to inject all the supercritical CO2 that came from all the coal-fired power plants you end up moving more and liquids than the oil and gas industry moves today, just for CO2. So it is a huge, huge undertaking. And, again, people -- this gets into a lot of the infrastructure issues, people just assume that that can happen. You can't assume that's going to happen. And the cost is going to be very, very significant.

Hmmm -- "clean coal" even in the description of an ally appears to be another one of those Bush administration fantasy, like WMDs, "asperational" emission limits, and Harriet Myers, Supreme Court judge.

However, Raymond damages his credibility by continuing to scoff at the scientific consensus on climate change. False Wall Streeet prophet Jim Glassman, co-author of the classically wrong-headed  "Dow 36,000" from seven years ago asked him:

Jim Glassman: Let me interject a question, I think Exxon Mobil has probably spent more money on studying climate change than any other company. Have you changed your mind about climate change over the last five years?

Lee Raymond: Well, I don't work for them any more, so I don't know what they're saying. But my own personal view is I guess the way I would describe it Jim, and Jim's just baiting me here, the only thing I would say is the only consensus I know of is that there's not a consensus.

Note the assumption: research from outside the corporation is meaningless...

Coal: The Addiction and the Hope

An excellent news story by Alan Zarembo in the Los Angeles Times begins with the problem:

Coal, the dirtiest fossil fuel, is the crack cocaine of the developing world.

But along the way, it also mentions the hope -- not the promise, but the hope -- for a solution.

Another possibility is a process known as integrated gasification, which converts coal into a cleaner-burning gas, capturing emissions in the process.

Coal plants in China and India could eventually be retrofitted with such systems.

"We need a bolt-on solution for those existing plants," said Stanford's [Michael] Wara. "It's going to be very difficult to tell those people to shut down those plants."

File it under topics for further research...

7th Grade Dropout Reinvents Car Engine

It's this kind of story that gives me faith in America -- again. An innovative mechanic in Kansas named Jonathan Goodwin is inventing new ways to get double, triple, or quadruple the mileage that big cars (such as Hummers) can get out of fuels, using innovative methods but basic parts, usually made by GM.

He is a virtuoso of fuel economy. He takes the hugest American cars on the road and rejiggers them to get up to quadruple their normal mileage and burn low-emission renewable fuels grown on U.S. soil--all while doubling their horsepower. The result thrills eco-evangelists and red-meat Americans alike: a vehicle that's simultaneously green and mean. And word's getting out. In the corner of his office sits Arnold Schwarzenegger's 1987 Jeep Wagoneer, which Goodwin is converting to biodiesel; soon, Neil Young will be shipping him a 1960 Lincoln Continental to transform into a biodiesel--electric hybrid.

His target for Young's car? One hundred miles per gallon.

(h/t: Tyler Suchman)

Dept. of Holy Cow! How Do They Do That?

A gigapan from Burning Man. Worth a look, I guarantee. Both artistically and technically.