loPEZ Dispenser

It is no secret that I am a lover of video games. When it comes to games, the only difference between 12 year old Steve and current Steve is that I now have more money (but less time) to spend on my favorite hobby. Because of those time constraints I currently have a backlog of games that I already own, but haven’t really been able to play. I do spend plenty of time playing games, but lately (since November) my 360 spends the majority of its cycles spinning the Rock Band DVD while I am wailing away on the drums. My enjoyment of this game starves the time that I would have otherwise spent on Crysis, Mass Effect, Burnout Paradise and Lego Star Wars.

I have always been one to try to beat all of my games; not doing so is like reading half a book or stopping a movie partway through. I do occasionally turn off a movie if it is terrible (which usually means that my wife selected it), but it has to really, really suck. Since Christmas I have played through Call of Duty 4, Super Mario Galaxy (both are console classics) and Lost: Via Domus (crappy, but its Lost, so I had to play it). I have also completed about half of Assassin’s Creed, and put a few hours into Burnout Paradise. The problem is that I keep gravitating back to Rock Band. I completed all that I ever will in that game a while ago, so I basically just play in freeplay mode or online. I have a great time doing this, but never really “accomplish” anything, since there is no progression towards some goal. I don’t exactly understand why this bothers me, but it does.

The reason that I mentioned all of that is because Grand Theft Auto 4 will be released next Tuesday (April 29), and I will almost certainly buy it within the first week. I don’t know whether it’s the hype or some subconscious desire that makes me do this, but I have decided to concede any attempt at willpower in this area. At least I’m not buying drugs, though I may have to sell them in the game! I will probably not play it until I get through more of Burnout Paradise and play the drums to Boston’s “Peace of Mind” for the hundredth time. But, when I do get the urge my copy of GTA4 will be ready and waiting in my entertainment center.

Now that I think about it I do the same thing with books and movies/TV. I just ordered four or five new books on Buy.com the other day, and I still have about 500 pages left in Dark Tower #7 and at least one other unread book on my shelf. I have DVDs of Veronica Mars, Firefly and Planet Earth (in HD) where I have at most watched a couple of episodes.  I don’t see this as a case of “keeping up with the Jones’ ” since no one knew about most of these things prior to the publishing of this article. I think once I hit critical mass, which will occur when my wife says so, I will impose a moratorium on myself related to games, books and movies. On second thought that wouldn’t be very fun.

While Dan is the one who regularly writes about global warming I had to take a minute to post this gem that I found yesterday. Someone at ABC news noticed that a scene in Al Gore’s magnum opus “An Inconvenient Truth” looked strikingly similar to one in the 2004 movie “The Day After Tomorrow.” Those similarities are caused by the fact that “An Inconvenient Truth” used the exact same (computer generated) footage. While Gore’s narration is saying something or other about the impending doom of our planet, there are striking scenes of Antarctic ice shelves, as viewed from a flying plane or helicopter. The narration would lead one to believe that the images (which are certainly beautiful) are of real ice shelves, in the real continent of Antarctica. The reality is that they were probably created by a cluster of Linux machines somewhere in Southern California.

I realize that this was probably done in order to save on production costs, but you would think that they could of at least found some stock footage that was really taken in Antarctica.

See the ABC News video here.

Ok, so living in Pennsylvania we usually don’t have much say in the presidential primaries since we are one of the last states to hold elections. Well tomorrow is the big day for the democratic primary. I swear, in the last 3 days we have received 30 calls from the different campaigns asking us to vote for them.

Stop calling ME!

*NOTE: All links below are clickable and lead to my sources.

My final grad school class is about Systems Thinking. I wouldn’t normally take a class like this but for some reason I was drawn to the topic. Systems Thinking is about unlearning linear thought (such as A causes B) and seeing the world and situations as one entire interconnected structure. At it’s core is the adage that “the whole is greater than the sum of the parts” which somewhat introduces the idea of emergent properties. It may sound hokey or like one of those things you learn in college with no real world application. I beg to differ.

I was first introduced to Systems Thinking (though not by name) when I read the book Freakonomics by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner. I highly recommend this read (I’ll even loan it to you). In Freakonomics the authors go on to explore counterintuitive relationships between seemingly unrelated variables. I won’t go into the details here but go read this book.

Now on to my point. All of you should know by now that I think Global Warming is a crock of &#^$! Now answer me this. What is the link between global warming and global food shortages? I’ll tell you…ETHANOL! Unless you’ve been in a cave for the last year or have other people buying your groceries you’ve no doubt noticed the significant increase in food prices. Dairy, eggs, any wheat product, rice and many other core food groups have nearly doubled in price. Why? Ethanol!

Ok, so lets frame the system. We’ll look at two sets on unintended consequences of this biofuels craze driven by global warming alarmism. The first set we’ll look at how this is driving up food costs and increasing world starvation. I call this “Kill Me Now”. Then we’ll look at how the process of creating Ethanol! actually creates more carbon dioxide than it saves. I call this “Kill Me Later”. Get the title now?

Kill Me Now
We are faced with “global warming”. Global warming is caused by carbon dioxide accumulation (so they say). Some brilliant scientist says, ok, well lets add ethanol to our gasoline to make it pollute less. BAM! Instant carbon reduction. Politicians get on board and all of a sudden we have committed to us using 45% ethanol by 2015! This year alone it took nearly 20% of our grain to help meet that target (according to this article). This is a number that will only grow. Since much of the ethanol produced is made from corn, farmers are opting to convert their wheat and other crops to corn fields which drives up the cost of wheat. Additionally, this diversion of corn to biofuels has driven up the cost of meat and dairy products since much of livestock is corn fed. This new drive for Ethanol! has heavily contributed to a global spike in food costs. Americans are feeling the pinch and for most of us this is just an inconvenience, however, those less fortunate than us have it much worse. Many are facing starvation (especially in countries who are net importers of food) and have to spend nearly 75% of their wages on food. The UN is crying foul and some have predicted that this setback has cost us 7 years of progress in the global hunger fight.

President Bush recently released $200 million dollars in food aid to help but things are getting messy. When people are hungry rational though goes out the window. There is unrest in many of the poorer countries. It is not intuitive that in our fight to curb so called global warming we caused world hunger and unrest.

Kill Me Later
Now lets start again with global warming as our main variable. Again, global warming drives an increased use in ethanol. Well ethanol doesn’t grow on trees. The organic matter has to be processed. Not only does the machinery used to process the ethanol emit CO2 into the atmosphere, the process itself emits CO2. The US Departments of Agriculture and Energy sponsored a report on this and this is what they said (on page 19):

The fermentation of corn starch into ethanol generates CO2, which has a low economic
value and is expensive to move. Most ethanol producers vent CO2 to the atmosphere,
although a few ethanol producers are able to sell it.

So to get ethanol to lower CO2 we have to create CO2. Does that make sense to you? This would further drive up the levels of CO2 in the atmosphere thereby worsening global warming. In Systems thinking this is called a “Fix that Fails” archetype.

It gets worse though. Ethanol has become a profitable industry. As stated above, many farmers are converting their land to grow corn instead of wheat. Additionally, TIME Magazine reported a disturbing trend in South America and other places where the rainforests are being razed to create new farmland. This is a double whammy for carbon levels. Not only are you removing trees that absorb CO2 naturally, you are then turning around and burning them which releases even more CO2!

Causality

One tenet of Systems Thinking is the generation of Causal Loop Diagrams. These are pictures that represent the relationship between variables in a system. It can help one see the counterintuitive loops that drive system behavior. Below is a CLD I created for Ethanol! production.

Click to Enlarge

I won’t go into the details but here is a rundown. The arrow causally link the two variables. If there is a “+” sign at the end on an arrow is means that an increase in one drives an increase in the other (same direction). A “-” indicates that an increase in one drives a decrease in the other (opposite direction). Talking through my diagram starting with “Carbon Dioxide Levels” would go like this:

An increase in CO2 drives an increase in global warming which drives an increase in the use of biofuels which loops back and reduces the CO2 levels. The increase in biofuels also drives an increase in the conversion of organic matter which, as discussed above, further increases CO2. Likewise, an increase in biofuels leads to more demand for farming land which leads to more razing of forests which further increases CO2. Finally, an increase in biofuels decreases the crops for food which increases the cost which drives hunger and unrest.

Digestion
I know this is a lot of information to take in and this certainly doesn’t nearly capture the entire picture of what drives the system. This is just one glaring example of how global warming alarmism has made my pretzels cost more and others to starve to death. This is no stretch. Watch the news. Connect the dots. Maybe you will see that my cynicism and skepticism on global warming and what is being done about this supposed problem is well founded. I’d encourage you, my five loyal readers, to try and think systemically. I digress.

So which would you prefer, Kill Me Now by starving me to death or Kill Me Later as we are slowly cooked to death by rising global temperatures? All of a sudden I am hungry. Do you smell chicken? Oh, its Bob next door…

I was reading an article today about how Assemblyman Mike Feuer, a Los Angeles Democrat, is introducing a bill that will in essence create a “Global Warming” tax. This is an opinion piece and the author definitely comes from the perspective of one who has not fallen for the hype and alarmism. Obviously, at a time when gas prices are at record highs, who wants an additional 3% tax levied on top of it?

That is not my point here. I read the comments section of this article and found one particular response that I loved so much I had to post it:

This is pure madness. Science has yet to decide on the issue of global warming, if it really is an issue and whom, if anyone, is at fault.

Yes, we see some very slight warming. This warming is during a very small period of time. Natural weather changes would indicate this.

Man’s contribution to the greenhouse gases is so small we couldn’t change the climate if we tried. To quote some of my friends in science, this will be a joke five years from now just as global cooling was a joke. Maybe you remember the cooling scare, I was working on my masters at that point. Many of us laughed … but science was convinced it was a real problem. No, the media was convinced and some of us in science, who wanted the ride the money train, got on board.

This is all a combination of misinterpreted and misguided science and much media hype all for the sake of socialist politics. (At least that is what I think is the reason for all of this)

Water vapor is responsible for 95 per cent of the greenhouse effect, an effect which is vital to keep the world warm. Without the greenhouse effect the planet would be at minus 18 deg C but because we do have the greenhouse effect it is plus 15 deg C, all the time.

The other greenhouse gases: carbon dioxide, methane, nitrogen dioxide, and various others including CFC’s, contributed only five per cent of the effect, carbon dioxide being by far the greatest contributor at 3.6 per cent.

However, carbon dioxide as a result of man’s activities is only 3.2 per cent of that, hence only 0.12 per cent of the greenhouse gases in total. Human-related methane, nitrogen dioxide and CFC’s etc made similarly minuscule contributions to the effect: 0.066, 0.047 and 0.046 per cent respectively.

This ought to be the end of the argument.

You add the ever changing warming and cooling of the sun and ever changing weather patterns and that should end all this hype.

Nature as more to do with warming as is changes in temperatures on this planet have occurred throughout millions of years. Example, the Great Lakes were formed from melting glaciers. Not too many SUV’s at that time!

One big source of CO2 that rivals industrial input are forest fires. But isn’t that primarily CO2 that the trees initially took out of the atmosphere to grow? As opposed, that is, to CO2 from carbon that’s been sequestered underground for millions of years.

Yes, Which is the same reason why BioFuels are considered CO2 neutral.On the other hand, the release of HUGE quantities of sequestered CO2 from raging forest fires can’t be ignored either. While OVER TIME, the forests will regrow and that CO2 will be removed, that is a LONG time period. Further, keep in mind that each year the EARTH outgasses significant quantities of CO2 (far greater than man) and significant quantities are sequestered (some permanently, some semi-permanently, some temporarily) We ONLY guess at the CO2 cycle of the planet, where it all comes from and where it all goes is BEYOND our ability to measure.

One thing we all need to remember, nature has far greater power then man and that power has yet to even be close to be measured by man.

To think we, as human beings, can have the impact that is being suggested by some is naive.

Sure, we do have some impact. Our impact, however, is small. In addition, the last time I checked … man is part of nature.

No matter what power of nature we talk about, forest fires, solar activity, etc, this power by nature is huge and our ability to control is nil.

Best Wishes,

Dr. Robert Weed
PhD, Atmospheric Sciences
MS, Meteorology
MS, Geology

I do not know Dr. Weed or what his actual qualifications are, but beyond that the content of his comment is spot on. It is everything I’ve been saying for months but in a slightly more clear but abbreviated form. Bravo Dr. Weed!