House of the rising Moonglum

In fact the first major study done on them concluded that they are a hidden tax on drivers. Study after study shows that red light cameras cause an increase in accidents. So the tax is paid out to: city governments, auto body repair shops, and insurance companies. Interestingly the only body that generated studies that believed that red light cameras did any good were funded by the insurance companies which stand to profit from them. So they do not work.

Or do they….

Tin foil theory: the government in its infinite wisdom is trying to wean us off of automobiles as early as possible in anticipation of peak oil, and red light cameras are just another way of making car ownership more prohibitive. Ok, probably not, but I like it.

The Atlantic has a great article on the background of the chevy Volt. It is a really great article and spends as much time talking about the politics and advertising behind it as it does the engineering. I really hope it does succeed and that GM is really able to back it and not wimp out like it did with the Saturn. GM and the US need this car to succeed.

Honeybees are disappearing. Watch this video to learn about how bees communicate with each other through their special dances, and how they are disappearing.

I just got back from a trip to Hawaii (pics forthcoming) and while there I had the opportunity to read some local news. In particular, given my own predilection for fear mongering, a series of articles on geothermal energy interested me. I was wondering aloud to my wife why Hawaii didn’t have more geothermal power generation, and it turns out that the locals have all sorts of concerns about the environmental damage that it would cause. (Unlike I guess the 78% of their electricity which is currently generated from oil.) Given their tidal wind solar and geothermal sources, renewables should be able to easily make up a majority of the power generation needs for the island, but it currently only provides 6%[1]. But vocal local opponents have stopped major projects from going forward to far. The series in the newspaper did a pretty good job of showing the benefits and describing more scientifically what the actual dangers are, and not just the presumed dangers.

Given that, the next piece of local fear that appeared in the newspapers is extremely humorous. There is currently an ongoing eruption on the big island. This is great for visiting, because you get to see something that doesn’t happen that often, but annoys the locals because it creates a bunch of SO₂ vapors blanketing the island with a fog like substance they call vog. People wrote into the paper complaining about it, and suggesting that “something needs to be done about the volcano.” Awesome. Some suggestions were put a dome over it and fill it with concrete. Fortunately that day a scientist responded, “the lava has been coming up through three miles of the earth’s crust, I don’t think your concrete is going to stop it.”

And now I read about another item from the Hawaiian courts. Apparently someone is suing to stop the LHC at CERN. Oh yeah, because it is going to create micro black holes and eat the planet away, all Earth style. I think the scientists who were afraid that the first nuclear explosion was going to engulf the entire planet in a chain reaction had a better argument. It also makes my fear of peak oil look like a downright sure thing.

[1] Numbers are from 2002.

I’m glad to see that the CTA is trying out serial hybrid busses. While cars are really too small to use current technology in, busses are large enough that the different drive train makes sense. A similar system has been in use by trains for years. The addition of a moderating battery and regenerative braking turns the diesel electric drive train into a true serial hybrid. The advantage of this over a standard hybrid is that you only have one drive-train and the gas powered engine can always run at optimal efficiency since it is just running a generator. This also means no more busses idling downtown for a half hour at a time.

I don’t know why, but I just went to the energy star web site to try out their “save money with a new fridge” feature. I’m always interested in eeking the most dollar value for using less energy over time (e.g. CFLs and that sort of thing, high up front cost, but lower lifetime cost) and was wondering how my fridge did. Apparently by switching to an energy star fridge I will save up to $25 over five years.

Hmm. Looking back through the energy star records, my fridge missed the rating by a smidge and then was slightly upgraded in 07 to meet the new standard. That had to have been a good deal when they bought it. Much cheaper because it wasn’t energy star, but actually has the same efficiency as an actual energy star fridge. That is pretty awesome. Sort of maximizes two of my interests: long term and short term price management.

Unless there is a major technological breakthrough airline tickets will continue to become more and more expensive until only the super rich are able to afford to fly. The problem is that while it is reasonably straightforward to build a car that runs on electricity, it is generally of lower performance and to build a jet you need maximal performance, thus you need highly refined oil. The Financial Times looks at the problem in the short term:

British Airways last week reported record profits for the year to March and the first 10 per cent operating profit margin in its history.

And yet it also warned that $125 oil could wipe away the entire operating profit this year, without further cost-saving, fare increases and cuts in capital spending.

$135? How about $150? Or $200? British Airways is one of the most financially sound airlines around. The US airlines have all be scrimping on upgrades for years and thus have less fuel efficient jets. Expect US airline travel to become more unpleasant as oil prices continue to rise. I’ve already gotten an email from my airline this summer, letting me know that they changed my flight because they canceled the one I was on. I just hope they are still around long enough for me to make all my flights this summer.

I’ve always thought gas was underpriced in this country (making it harder for public transportation projects to fight for funding, etc.). I’ve also found the “we’ll it’s cheaper than starbucks!” argument pretty lacking as well though. Value can’t be compared on a straight gallon by gallon basis. But as gas gets more and more expensive I suppose we will see more and more of those comparisons. I like this one a bit more I think because it really shows a range of consumer products, from the necessary (milk @ $3/gal) to the useful (paint @$25/gal) to the luxury (nail polish @ $5760/gal). I’m not sure what it says about how we value things in society, but it does give some perspective.

Saw the movie, then read the book. They were both very good, although I like the book better. Main differences: the movie portrays the family as the reason the boy ran off, but the book places the blame squarely on his shoulders. The book was actually very careful to present a number of possibilities of what was going through his head, but to steer clear of judging him. It actually breaks the fourth wall regularly, describing the author discussing the boy’s motivations and reasoning. Another difference is that the movie says that he mistook a poisonous plant for an edible one. Krakauer suggests however that the seeds of an edible plant were in fact poisonous, though not described as such in any current books. (He even went so far as to collect some and send them off to a lab for spectra-analysis, which showed that they were alkaloids.) All in all I came away from the book thinking that the kid was less ill prepared than I thought initially. Having said that, the book did drive home the fact that no matter how separated we may feel from those around us, we are always connected.

Another thing I got from the book is that living off the land is REALLY hard. At one point some Alaskans are saying that the boy would have had to be stupid to die in the woods given that the Inuit have lived off the land there for years. The author then points out that Inuit have also been known to starve to death over the years. Paraphrased: “The life of a hunter is a hard one, always on the move, always afraid that the next encounter will be missed and the food supply will dwindle.” Given my obsession with Peak Oil however I do now have the urge to go hunting and get good at it, before I have to be good at it. (Turns out the killing part is the easy part, turning the dead animal into meat that will last until you can eat it is much harder. Takes practice among other things, and is location dependent. Smoking is good in the south in the summer, and simply slicing into thin strips and drying is better in more alpine climes.)

And finally, I have a friend who likes to say if he doesn’t know what something is he puts it in his mouth to find out. Turns out this is not always the best idea.

Oh yeah, and always carry a map. The irony of the whole story is that he wanted to go “off the edge of the map” but he was never more than 6 miles from a cabin that possibly had supplies he could have used, and 16 miles from a road. There is no more off the map.

From the ground to your car has a number of steps. Drilling, shipping (or flowing through pipelines), and refining. The drilling and shipping is normally done by the big oil companies who are making a pretty good profit right about now. Prices go up profit margins go up and all that. Of course as oil gets harder to get out of the ground, the price of drilling goes up, but over all the oil companies are doing ok. I am always trying to figure out why gas is so cheap though. If $20/barrel oil = $1/gal gas, you would think that $100/barrel would be $5 gas (modulo additives and sunk costs, like the refineries themselves).

Turns out the refineries are sort of taking some of that cost. I assume this is a what the market will bear situation, but it is interesting to note that independent refineries in the US are tanking in the stock market. Turns out their profit margin is way down. They rely on a heavy difference between the cost of oil and the cost of gasoline (the “crack” price) in order to maintain good cash flow to do maintenance and general operations on existing refineries. Not only that, but they also rely on that extra cash to make efficiency improvements. Unfortunately that crack price has dropped to record lows. One of the reasons that gas prices aren’t $5 yet is that the independent refineries are taking it on the chin. Unfortunately this also means that newer more modern and efficient refineries are not being built. As we learn to wean ourselves from oil we also need to be learning how to use what remains with the utmost efficiency. Right now it looks like the refining process may be one of the bottlenecks there.

On the plus side, they finally finished sequencing Trichoderma reesei and most Americans think that the world is running out of oil. Wow. I really didn’t expect that result at all.