My Two Favourite Scienticians

Maggie Koerth-Baker is probably the best science writer I've ever encountered.  I have not yet read her new book, but it's pretty high on my reading list.

Quirks and Quarks is CBC's weekly science program.  It is one of my regular podcasts. Every week, host Bob McDonald does a fantastic job of finding neat new science and getting scientists to talk about their work in a way that is both accessible and interesting.  When you talk to as many scientists as I do, you realize what a feat that is. He gave great a seminar at U of T while I was there and showed us how much of that is simple editing by playing a solid minute of "um"s he'd edited out of the most recent show. But a lot of it is his ability to quickly grasp the key concepts and ask the right questions in the right order.

I'm a bit behind on my podcasts so I didn't know that Maggie KB was going to be on Quirks until Bob tweeted about it afterwards. Just the interview is available (below), or you can listen to the full episode – it's got whales!

As long as good choices are tough to remember to do, and as long as
good choices are tough in that they are actually detrimental to you,
we're not going to get the kind of wide-scale changes we actually need
to have happening.

Maggie Koerth-Baker on Quirks and Quarks

No. It's not.

The Seattle Stranger's Slog asks, "Is Utopia here?"

Having read Saint Sir Thomas More's Utopia some time ago, I can tell you that an "artificial leaf" isn't going to cut it. If you haven't read it, I highly recommend it. It's a short read and has a lot of interesting things to say.

Okay, onto the meat of the post.

I would first like to object to the nomenclature being used here. This is not really photosynthesis which uses light, water and carbon dioxide to make sugar and oxygen; this is photoelectrolytic splitting of water – it uses water and light to make hydrogen and oxygen.

And this is not going to create Utopia. The idea that this will "make each home its own power station," seems... not well thought out.

First of all, there is the water. A real leaf has whole piles of systems dedicated to collecting, purifying, reserving and transporting water. I'm going to guess this system needs pure distilled water – about 6L of it for a 20 kWh system. 6L of water may not sound like much to people living in developed countries but it may turn out to be difficult to obtain in areas where a device like this could do the most good. And if you have enough sunlight to split that entire 6L, you only get 20 kWh of energy, which is approximately the average daily energy consumption for Africa in 2008 so realistically you'd probably want more in order to continue to have electricity if you have a cloudy day or two.

The second barrier to entry is of course the fuel cell. The catalyst described in the press release uses light to turn water into hydrogen and oxygen; you then need a way to turn those into electricity. I don't know a lot about buying fuel cells but the Fuel Cell Store sells a 1 kW PEM fuel cell for $4000. That doesn't exactly sound like developing world household price to me.

And finally, there is the problem of storage. Hydrogen is not very dense. If you wanted to store that hydrogen unpressurized, you'd be looking at 7 and a half cubic meters of storage space. If you want to pressurize it, that's going to cost you some energy, making the whole system less efficient. And let's not forget the other obvious problem about storing hydrogen.

All that having been said, I think this is a useful scientific discovery – a stable, inexpensive catalytic surface for photoelectrolysis. Perhaps very small systems can be made cheaply that would provide a few hours of reading light for people in the developing world. And I can see this being used in the developed world if it is cost-competitive with traditional solar PV at a system level, that is, if the cost of the electrolysis unit and fuel cell less per kW than PV cells. But if past experience with commercializing research like this is any guide, we can expect at least 5 years, probably more like 10 or 15 before that is even a question anyone has to ask.

My complaint here is not with the discovery, but rather the way it is being reported. Science can be useful without leading to an instantaneous paradise. Not every discovery is the Holy Grail of something. In the "what have you done for me lately?" world of academic funding, it's hard to be humble, but I think in the end, by providing expectations to the public which can never be met by any single scientific discover, we're only making things worse.

Update:While following up on this a bit, I discovered a news article with enough technical detail that I was able to figure out which publication was being described. It turns out that it will, in fact, run on non-pure water.

Remember Acid Rain?

A facebox friend of mine, an old coworker, asked today "remember acid rain?" As an air quality researcher, I do, in fact, remember acid rain. It comes up fairly regularly in my work and in discussions with other people at the university. But the point he was trying to make was that acid rain was a big, big deal for a long time. I remember the news and the people talking at my grade school. But now, the news never (hardly ever) talks about it anymore. My friend then asked if there was any other thing which seems to be following the same pattern. I assume he meant climate change.

Acid rain occurrence in the developed world has been greatly reduced through regulation. I think a lot of that was because people are inherently afraid of acid. It sounds dangerous. Another part is that people didn't really have to do anything. Regulations were made and cars, gas and industrial processes changed, but most people didn't have their daily routine changed.

CO2, on the other hand, is not something that most people would think of as bad. It's plant food, right? Everyone makes it, therefore it can't be bad. And global warming, well, I mean, who wouldn't want things a bit warmer? And the solutions require major, major changes in the way the developed world runs. Instead of saying you have to improve the catalytic converter on your car, you need an electric car, or a hydrogen car, or no car at all. Instead of scrubbing the effluent from industrial processes, it's an end to industrial farming. On top of that, it's a very slow process. It's basically a recipe for people to avoid dealing with it:



So, while acid went away in the media, it was in large part because regulations have helped decrease it to a point where other stuff is more important / interesting. We can only hope that climate change goes away from the media for the same reasons.

Required Listening

Last week was the 35th Anniversary of Quirks and Quarks, Canada's national science radio program. While I would recommend you listen to it every week, I am going to specifically charge you with listening to a clip from the 35th anniversary special. If you are not feeling inclined to listen to the whole thing (which I strongly recommend), you can download part 2 and skip to the interview with Dr Mark Federman which begins at 20:12. Dr. Federman does a remarkable job of framing the challenges facing our species today in a way which is accessible to anyone living in the developed world but doesn't lose any of its urgency. He manages to sound concerned without sounding alarmist. This interview is an excellent example of how Quirks and Quarks is able to frame important questions about scientific subject matter in a way that all Canadians can understand. Bob McDonald, the host, is a national treasure. Also, I want his job.

Synthetically Delicious

Two days ago scientists from the J. Craig Venter Institute reported in ScienceXpress that they have managed to create a viable cell whose genetic material was entirely produced by humans. The AP has posted an interview with the namesake of the Institute (and the final author of the 24 on the paper) to their youtube channel.

I especially like all the Science going on in the background. People swirling flasks of brightly coloured liquid make me feel so much better about the whole thing.

Venter expresses some concern about potential uses for this technology. To that end, Longo's has released their very first synthetic life-form for solving the world hunger problem. I give you the pizzacherry tree:

With "Friends" Like This...

I have never been more disappointed in my species than at this moment, or at least my country.

The Globe and Mail has brought to my attention a non-profit organization called the Friends of Science. I don't have time to go over the entire website, nor to provide a comprehensive overview of the current state of knowledge of the Earth's climate and the effects of anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases, but I happen to have some background in the subject, so I would like to take this time to discuss the "6 Things Everyone Should Know About Climate Change"

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1. The Earth Is Cooling
Go look at their graph. Their own graph. Then tell me that you can see a cooling trend there. I can't even imagine how long it took them to cherry pick their regression line to get a negative slope. Only for two brief periods during the past decade does the average global temperature anomaly drop into the negative. And at this exact moment, according to their graph, we are on one of the sharpest temperature increases since the '70s.

2. The Sun Causes Climate Change
Well, I can't actually refute this one because I don't even know what it is they are trying to prove. Any kind of scientific reference would be nice, here.

Solar irradiance typically means sunlight at the surface of the Earth. So, I mean, yeah, the amount of sunlight that reaches the surface of the Earth is going to have a huge effect on the surface temperature. The question of why more or less solar energy reaches the surface of the Earth is a pretty big one and still under active debate.

3. Al Gore Was Wrong About Carbon Dioxide
So, this graph actually has a reference. Unfortunately, it is not from a scientist. I checked her out in Web of Science; there are four entries under Nova J and none of them are about climate or even geophysics.

This graph appears to be another case of cherry picking data. Does it seem strange to anyone else that the picked the period from 100,000 to 150,000 years ago to present? When in fact, there is 400,000 years worth of Vostok core data and 800,000 years worth of combined ice core data.

Now does it seem so cut and dried? The fact of the matter is that yes, the ocean is less able to take up CO2 when its temperature increases, so CO2 levels will increase at a greater rate as temperature increases. And since we're talking about basic science, the greenhouse effect of CO2 (and CH4 and H2O and various and sundry other trace gases) is something you can test in a lab. You, personally, can buy some equipment (or devise it yourself if you feel so inclined) and generate those exact curves. The amount of CO2 in the atmosphere affects the Earth's radiation balance. The real question is: what positive and negative feedback mechanism exist?

4. Violent Weather Isn't Getting Worse
"Climate alarmists claim the[sic] global warming may increase severe weather events."
May. May. May increase severe weather events. Boy, that sure sounds alarmist to me. I haven't personally heard a single scientist use this in an alarmist manner and I suspect I won't until there is more evidence one way or the other.

5. It's Been Hotter Than This
I can't find any data that looks like this cartoonish graph. I can't find the Schönwiese paper online. I'd like to promise I'll go dig it out of the stacks, but I can't, so if anybody can send me that, I'll gladly add it to the post.

6. Climate Computer Models Are Proven Wrong
These are, presumably, the same climate computer models which this very website was using in all the above points (except 4, I think it was solely from observation).

I like the first graph. It looks very sciency. Unfortunately, I can't find that graph in any peer reviewed journals. Lindzen's website lists 2 submitted publications and 1 in preparation with Choi on the author list. It's possible that the graph is exactly what they say it is, but it seems more likely to me that they're taking it completely out of context.

If we move down to the second set of graphs, we can see that the difference we're talking about here is around 0.5ºC. I am also very curious about where these sondes were taken and whether the model averages were taken at those locations or not. They are a little sparse on methodology.

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So, I hope I've shed some light on the "skeptics" arguments. I don't know what it is they're playing at. I can only guess that someone is giving them a lot of money to run a bad science propaganda machine, but who knows. I encourage you to go through the rest of the site, particularly their Climate Change Science Essay, and see what else you can find.

The point I'm trying to make here is that it's not nearly so cut-and-dried as the "Friends of Science" would have you believe. The atmosphere is a big, complicated place. I study it every day. I have seen mountains of data on all sorts of things. And the truth is, we don't know much about how it all works. But one thing I can say for sure is that our industrial society has now put the atmosphere into a state which hasn't been seen since before the advent of agriculture. Where we go from here is anybody's guess, but I don't think it's going to be status quo.

Shooting the Moon

A lot of my computer gaming came, unfortunately, before there were very many cool computer games and before I could afford the few cool computer games that existed. As a result of this, as a teenager, I played a lot of hearts in Windows 98.

Hearts is scored like golf: lower is better. Each heart you hold at the end of a hand is a point against you. The goal of the game is to wind up with as few hearts in your pile as possible. Except there's this thing called "shooting the moon," whereby you collect all the hearts in a hand and instead of adding 26 points to your score, you subtract 26 points from your score. Obviously this is quite a risky move, since, if you miss a single heart you are screwed.

I sort of feel this way about the idea of using technology to "fix" the environment. This planet has had a few billion years to work out the kinks. Humans, on the other hand, have had a scant few hundred thousand years to get themselves together and an even shorter time to figure out all this science and technology stuff.

Don't get me wrong: all this science and technology stuff is fabulous. I have been studying both quite hard for quite some time now and I still find them fascinating. I think using science and technology as a way to improve human life is a great boon to the generations surrounding mine. But technology is rarely without its consequences, frequently unintended, sometimes harmful to the environment.

The idea of piling one technology on top of the other in an attempt to curb these deleterious effects while maintaining our own comfort brings me back to the game of hearts: if we are successful in chaining all those technologies together to cancel out their negative side effects, if we succeed at shooting the moon, then everybody wins. But if we miss just one link in the chain, we risk making the world very uncomfortable or even uninhabitable for humans.

Deus Ex Radioactiva

When you get down to a very small level, sometimes refered to as the quantum level, the universe becomes a strange place, at least to our human sized preconcieved notions of How Things Work. Radioactive decay is an example of this sort of weirdness: we can never tell when a particular atom is going to decay, but if we have a big pile of them, we can say how long it will take for half of them to have undergone decay with pretty good certainty.

Let's assume for a moment that the Christians are right: God exists and He's a vicious tyrant bent on forcing His creations to live in eternal pain, but who has nonetheless managed to convince a handful of those creations that He is loving and kind and just, mainly so that they will go out and visit unspeakable horrors on His other creations.

It would not be unthinkable that a creature that clever would be able to set up the universe in such a way that His own presence would be undetectable. How might He go about doing that? Why, with quantum mechanics, of course! You see, He would make everything run according to some probabilistic law: the outcome of any particular event would be completely unpredictable, but the pattern of those outcomes would become quite apparent given a large enough sample set. In this way, He could intervene by changing the outcome of a single event without violating His own laws.

The result of this would be a completely undetectable God who was able to alter the universe in large and detectable ways. In fact, given the current body of evidence, this is about the only way God could exist. So there you have it, Christians: your God is the ultimate jerk who uses only your belief in Him to determine where you spend all enternity while covering His tracks and making it completely impossible to detect Him until Judgement Day. And to me, that sounds a lot like "He beats me because He loves me."