Emergency Banana Productions

I’ve recently done something most, ahem, environmentalists probably did ages ago – bought a copy of The Weather Makers by Tim Flannery. I am currently in the process of reading it (or pretending to), but before doing a proper book review I decided to point out a logical flaw I’ve spotted (at least, I is thinking it a logical flaw is) in its argument.

On page 28, Tim tells us that “CO2 acts as a trigger for that potent greenhouse gas, water vapour. It does this by heating the atmosphere just a little, allowing it to take up and retain more moisture, which then warms the atmosphere further. So a positive feedback loop is created, forcing our planet’s temperature to ever-higher levels.”

The problem is, I don’t quite understand what precisely Tim means by this. He may mean that “CO2 increases temperature, which increases water vapour, which increases temperature, which increases water vapour, etc.”; that is,  the positive feedback is between the temperature and amount of water vapour. If this were so, then there wouldn’t be any need for CO2 – the water vapour present in the atmosphere could carry out the doomsday climate scenario all by itself, through the aforementioned feedback loop. Seeing as this has still not happened, something would seem to be amiss (a limiting factor, perchance).

If Tim means to say “CO2 increases water vapour, which increases CO2, etc.”; then this simply doesn’t make sense. How does H2O increase CO2?

If, however, he means, “Humans produce CO2, which causes warming, which increases H2O, which causes some more warming; humans produce some more CO2, etc.” then this isn’t really a positive feedback loop – more like a chain thingy.

Ah well, I guess it does pay to use ambiguous but scientific-sounding wording when you are trying to win over the opinion of a layman (or laywoman or layhermaphrodite or layzombie…).

By the way, there is a reference at the end of that paragraph, to a book called The Discovery of Global Warming: New Histories of Science, Technology and Medicine by S. R. Weart (Harvard University Press). I reckon I should look that up.

azarov98

P.S. Await also my upcoming extremely long rant about what’s wrong with modern-day environmentalism.

I’ve noticed that I left out a very important point in my post concerning the Black Saturday fires – AAARRRSON. So I’ve added the following points to the article (I also put them here, so you can see them without having to go back to the original article if you don’t want to). Anyway, here goes:

6. Finally, Arson. There are so many reasons people can find for themselves for lighting a fire that I can’t be bothered going through them all (e.g. having fun, offsetting an inferiority complex, not caring what happens if they throw a cigarette out the car window…). One thing I will say, though, is that young, impressionable minds would be less impressed with the concept of creating a blazing inferno if they weren’t exposed so much to this phenomenon in popular action films. Censorship on my part? Maybe.

7. An interesting note on the last thing, though. In urban bushland remnants, fires lit by arsonists are often the only possibility for the ecosystem to regenerate the way it’s meant to (or approximately so); for example, if prescription burns are deemed too hazardous for nearby suburbs. So arson can be a bit of a two-sided sword.

Sincineratingly yours,

azarov98.

Well, it looks like the glorious nation of Iceland, pressured by financial difficulties, is going to jettison its McDonalds restaurants. All three of them.

Good riddance, I say.

Read the Age article now.

P.S. The Age article makes the incredibly stupid mistake of referring to Icelandic people by their (parental) surnames. This you do not do. It is customary in Iceland to call people by their first names. Silly Age. (Age of Silliness?)

Well, there we are. I, the Most Ninetyeightious Azarov98, have finished my exams for my first year at Melbourne uni. Now I have to select my subjects for next year (and look sharp about it too, because re-enrolment’s due on the 20/11/09 and I still haven’t looked up many options, lazy bastard), and then me and God of the Pie can focus entirely on bringing Jeff’s Pie Shop back from the domains of the somewhat dead.

Here is how it all, approximately, went:

1. Chemistry 2, Tuesday 10th November This was probably my best exam, because I had several days beforehand to revise our materials. Our topics were Organic Chemistry, Quantum Mechanics, Reaction Rates and Transition Metal Chemistry. I actually managed to get to the end of the paper, and I don’t think I stuffed up badly anywhere. I generally regard Chemistry as good fun, especially organics (as can be clearly seen in the latest cartoon). Mind you, the practicals can be a bit of a drag…
2. Genetics and Evolution of Life, Wednesday 11th November Now that I’ve scared off all the faint-hearted creationists, we can continue. In this subject we got told all about exciting stuff such as genetics, protists, plants, animals and the evolution of mankind. (Now I’ve scared off all the remaining creationists, as well as a couple of pedantic lovers of politically correct language.) The exam itself was all right, all though I did have to make a few stabs in the dark and I don’t think my essay answers were all that great… Luckily, there wasn’t too much on hominids. But the protists really got me down.
3. Physics 2: Advanced, Thursday 12th November Dammit, what sort of stupid nincompoops stick three exams in a row? No time to relax a bit or anything. Anyways, in Physics, that most hard and boring of all subjects (which is the reason I did it), we were taught all sorts of fancy stuff about floating things, squishing and heating up gases and what it leads to, electric and magnetic fields, and quantum mechanics. (To all you layman brains out there – yes, quantum mechanics involves a lot more than a possibly dead moggy locked up in a box.) The exam itself I didn’t do too greatly at, spending way too much time on complicated questions in the middle and so missing out on completing the end question. Most shamefully, I couldn’t figure out the first two questions on fluids, both of which I had done before in the semester! The only entire question I did properly was the one on Ampère’s law, which is to do with magnetics. Ah, well, at least I’m sure I passed…
4. Linear Algebra, today, Tuesday 17th November This one has to do with matrices, vectors, vector spaces, eigenvalues, MATLAB and me being among the Front Seat Bandits at the lectures. As for the exam – seriously, there was so much to write: row reductions, inner product proofs, Gram-Schmidt orthogonalisation, and, when you get sick of it all, lots and lots of swearwords (joke). My hand got really sore. Once again, I reckon I spent way too much time on the stuff in the middle that I couldn’t do, so I didn’t have time to get to the end. But I guess that’s all right, since I had no clue how to do the last question anyway… about 70%, I reckon.

Looking on the bright side – at least they didn’t stick all four exams in a row, like last semester…

BTW, God of Pie has also finished his exams (the HSC ones, i.e. what high school kids do in New South Wales before they go on a drunken rampage). A while ago. He should really do a post about it too…