Day 1095: Damn You, Gustav! [Updated]
August 26, 2008 - Filed Under WTF, new orleans, weather
August 29th, 2008 - finally a day off from work where I travel nowhere and can spend time by myself in quiet contemplation. Now, I have to take pictures of all of our stuff and gather the important items in Rubbermaid containers that fit in the back of the truck. All Just In Case We Have To Evacuate For Hurricane Gustav. This time, our tentative plan is to head straight up to Wisconsin, in order to avoid long waits in westbound traffic.
What a pain.
Dad thinks the storm will head to the Yucatan while Mom utilized her divine powers of prognostication to deem that it will come nowhere near us. This would make me feel better if we hadn’t used up all of our Storm Repulsion Karma over the course of the last two seasons.
All of you out there may be listening to Mahler, but we’re currently rocking Holst at VatulBlog World HQ. Here’s Jupiter - The Bringer of Jollity from The Planets suite. Jollity, indeed, because this five-day storm track is nothing if not jolly. Oh, rapture!
Update: You know what, I’m really stressed out right now while slowly preparing for a possible evacuation and do not need negative Twitterheads, people like Will Bunch and vile commenters at Daily Kos making my mood fouler. Democratic bloggers who think that the hurricane, if it comes here, will be “a potential nightmare for the Republican Party” are, to quote Adrastos, “the left wing equivalent of those wingnuts who want another big terrorist attack because it will help the ‘daddy’ party and hurt the ‘mommy’ party.” Listen up, stupid self-centered faux progressives, we are voters, citizens and humans, not your political lab rats! More from HumidCity.
Day 1083: Our Not-So-August August Hobby
August 14, 2008 - Filed Under weather
Storm tracking, that is. Here’s a glossary of National Hurricane Center terminology so you can play along at home. Here we go again. Say hello to 2008’s Invest 92.
Day 1063: The More We Modernize
July 25, 2008 - Filed Under books, culture-society-history, energy
The more we inherently stay the same.
Re-reading Daniel Yergin’s The Prize, with some added experience and urgency, I’ve come across several gems like this description of energy consumers in the 1850s, before the advent of kerosene and petroleum. Sound reminiscent of people today?
… For those who had money, oil from the sperm whale had for hundreds of years set the standard for high-quality illumination; but even as demand was growing, the whale schools of the Atlantic had been decimated … For the whalers, it was the golden age, as prices were rising, but it was not the golden age for their consumers, who did not want to pay $2.50 a gallon - a price that seemed sure to go even higher. Cheaper lighting fluids had been developed. Alas, all of them were inferior.
Did Yergin mean $2.50 in 1850s money or the money of 1993, when the book was published? In any case, what cost $2.50 in 1850 would have cost $43.44 in 1993 and around $65 today.
Day 1061: Slick Missy
July 23, 2008 - Filed Under energy, environment, new orleans
No snanas or smoking by the riverside for any of you this week.
The stink outside is 419,000 gallons of No. 6 fuel oil in the Mississippi River as a result of a tanker ramming into an American Commercial Lines Inc. oil barge near the Crescent City Connection at 1:30AM today. From the T-P:
… State Department of Environmental Quality officials warned the unrefined, tar-like # 6 fuel oil is so thick that it could sink, complicating the cleanup efforts. Therefore, the fuel oil won’t simply evaporate off the surface, which means workers will try to remove it before it starts to sink.
“This is not our first rodeo; we’ve seen spills before,” said Roland Guidry of the Oil Spill Coordinator’s Office.
CNN reports on the spill:
However, the spill is much smaller than the ones that followed Hurricane Katrina in 2005, when the Coast Guard estimated that more than 7 million gallons of oil were dumped into the Mississippi and nearby waterways.
But, Bobby Jindal claims Katrina caused no oil spills. I’m confused.
Day 1054: Charlie Rose Interview With RMI’s Amory Lovins
July 16, 2008 - Filed Under culture-society-history, energy, government, science & technology
Charlie Rose talks with co-founder and chief scientist of the Rocky Mountain Institute, Amory Lovins, about renewable energy and energy policy. I don’t completely buy Lovins’s arguments against nuclear energy (topic for a separate post after more thought), but urge you to pay attention to Rose’s on-point questions and Lovins’s eloquent and far-sighted answers. We cannot afford to be under-informed on this critical aspect of our future.
In my opinion, neither presidential candidate or leading political party really appreciates what a sound American energy policy entails. Therefore, among other great insights, this is the single most important exchange in the interview:
Charlie Rose: “What would you like to see the next president say in his inaugural address and what would you like to see him do in his first 100 days?”
Amory Lovins: “… I would like to see the president do something very trans-ideological, cutting across party lines and perceptions in both political camps of what ought to be done. I don’t think very many progressive politicians understand that what we most need in energy policy is a dose of conservative economic principles, that is we ought to let always to save or produce energy, compete fairly at honest prices regardless of which kind they are - savings or supply, what technology they use, where they are, how big they are or who owns them. Let’s see who’s not in favor of that. Who’s not in favor of that will be all the free marketeers in outward appearance, but actually they are corporate socialists in free-marketeers’ clothing. It is very curious to me that many who profess to be political conservatives are the biggest subsidizers of their favorite technologies and the most opposed to real competition. Conversely, many liberals try to subsidize their favorite technologies as much as the other technologies are getting subsidized. Why are we paying so much of our energy bill through our tax bill? Let’s pay it at the pump or at the meter so we know how much it costs. Then we’ll know how much is enough.”
Day 1053: My Cousin, The NYTimes Science Columnist
July 15, 2008 - Filed Under family & friends, media, science & technology
This blog is only one expression of my family’s long-held desire to write. Having “perfected the art of bullshit,” as my brother puts it, we long to inflict it on others. I kid, I kid. Serious writing in my immediate family includes that of my mother’s, with her amassing tomes on Vedanta and Hinduism, and my brother’s long history of medical journal articles. Given a LARGE family and, by extension, my relationship to half of South India, let’s not forget the Sci Ref and Lexis Nexis searches that land on numerous scholarly articles penned by relatives.
We’re doctors, scientists, bankers, engineers, lawyers, businesspeople and computer geeks who have the ability to communicate well in print, but not one of us has been a real journalist. Until now. With great pride, I present the work of my little cousin who recently took up a job as science columnist at the New York Times. Here are some of Bina’s articles to date:
- * Microbes Eating Away at Pieces of History
- * Bioterrorism and the Food Supply
- * Countries Make Push to Increase Eye Donors
- * Farms In The Sky (quoted today by CenLamar)
Science and journalism! You couldn’t have done better, kid. This makes me want to go to J-school so bad, and while I ponder it, allow me to radiate proud glee.
Day 1052: Offshore US Drilling Moratorium Lifted [Updated]
July 14, 2008 - Filed Under energy, global, government
Bloomberg: Bush Lifts Ban on U.S. Offshore Oil, Gas Drilling
About 17.8 billion barrels and 76 trillion cubic feet of gas are off-limits to drilling as a result of congressional and presidential moratoria, according to the Minerals Management Service, an agency of the U.S. Interior Department.
The oil available would amount to just over two years of U.S. consumption. Bush today said the potential reserve from the restricted areas would last almost 10 years.
Making generously broad assumptions that all 17.8 billion barrels of oil are used in the production of motor gasoline, we extract all of it at once and all of it gets to the pump in less than half a decade, the estimates of two and ten years sound dubious to me. My calculation yields a number that lies somewhere in between. Given that current EIA data has US motor gasoline consumption at 9,253,000 barrels/day (388.6 million gallons/day), you do the math and report back with results. Note that the cubic feet of gas number is immaterial to this exercise since this country doesn’t use LPG/LNG to power its cars.
Two years, five years, ten years, whatever. And then what? Are we going back to godawful OPEC with our empty gas tanks out? When do we start to think ahead?
Update: One would think that the smart course of action is leaving the reserve for more dire situations than imagined in our current myopia and beginning to conserve now. Don’t expect conservation to be backed by any flavor of American government, however, because it would net more oil but the government wants tax revenue now.
Day 1051: Have You Ever Had Breakfast With A Geologist?
July 13, 2008 - Filed Under funny, geology, movies/tv
Thanks, Julie!
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