The Mad Sailor

Ok … so I’m not going to win the Virgin Earth Challenge. Bummer! I guess I should just tell you all what I think will work and let you run with it. So here goes…

What is this Global Warming (now in caps) all about. Is it the CO2, is it the sun, is it cosmic rays? No! it’s HEAT!! It doesn’t matter how the heat got here, we just need to lose it. How do we do that, you might ask? Well how about painting all the roads and all the parking lots in the world white? Instead of black top soaking up the sun’s light and converting it to heat we just send the light back into space. It’s simple to test. It’s simple to do.

There are other benefits too. It would reduce urban heating, a known problem. And if cities aren’t quite as hot on quite as many days, there would be fewer summer trips to the mountains and shores. Hmmmm, saving gas, that’s a good thing. White streets would be easier to light. We could dial down the city lighting. Save some electricity. City buildings would be a touch easier to cool, more savings! Walking around town on cooler streets would even mean less wear on our shoes. It just works so many ways and all we have to do is come up with an infrared transparent white coating for our streets and parking lots. We already have white coatings that we use all over that might work as is. Of course we’ll have to change the white road lines to something else. How about green? I like green. You know it might be easier to see a green line on a white background under an inch or two of snow. Yellow lines can stay yellow. That should be alright.

What do you think?

Green green it’s green they say …. hmm hmm hmm … Oh, Hello! Welcome aboard! I was just thinking about all this environmental religion slash global warming stuff. It seems like our elected officials at all levels of government are once again running off in all directions, blaming everyone else and just being ineffective as usual.

Do you know what I’d like to see? I’d like to see congress do something useful for a change. Instead of blaming global warming on SUV’s and setting impossible fuel milage for the manufactures try something different. How about fixing the traffic lights? Did you ever notice that your gas milage is worst in the city than it is on the highway? All that starting and stoping, idling at redlights, and traffic jams … uses up a lot of fuel. So isn’t it about time the government stepped forward and upgraded the lights. That technology hasn’t changed since World War II. To be fair they did try timing the lights with some success, but even that was never universally deployed. That’s ok, it wouldn’t work anyway. The traffic light system can be improved … alot! Don’t know how to do it? Give me … oh … 3 or 4 engineers and about a year. I know how to do it. I’ll give you a hint, think internet

And another thing! How about telecommuting? There’s an idea that just never got off the starting line. Why? Why should it? Where’s the incentive? Well, how about a tax break for companies that promote telecommuting? I don’t know, something like $20 a day for every employee every day that they work from home. That should help warm corporate america to the idea. Of course, it will never get through congress because they would lose money from corporate taxes and gas taxes. We just can’t have that.

Oh well, just a thought Green green, it’s green they say on the far side of the hill … la la la …

Is global warming real? I don’t know! And neither does anyone else. I’ve listened to the arguments from both sides and neither has proven their case. The believers point to the “Hockey Stick” graph as proof of global warming. The non believers say they got the math wrong. Now as it turns out I know a bit about signal processing so I took a look at the problem. The raw data for the hockey stick came from temperature measurements, tree rings and ice cores. All of this data is dirty, suspect to say the least. So I created a dataset of pure temperature readings. I put in 100 years of “readings” with 20 degrees per day plus 20 degrees per year plus 2 degrees every 22 years (for sunspots) and .2 degrees over the entire 100 years for global warming. Guess what? I can’t make an instrument that can demodulate the .2 degree global warming data. It’s 40db below the “noise”. Now I’m not saying it can’t be done, just that I don’t know how to do it. This was from “clean” data. trying to do it from dirty data is an exercise in silliness. So I’m sceptical to say the least. Still, Greenland, Kilimanjaro, rising sea level …. something is happening.

Is global warming a problem? I don’t know! The believers say it’s the warmest it has been in 1000 years. So what! Has it ever been warmer? Nobody is saying. Why not? OK, I get it, some places will have a problem. If you are going to buy waterfront property, it better float. My heating bill should go down, but my air conditioning bill should go up. Good farmland will turn to desert, deserts will turn to oceans and new farmland will appear … somewhere. These are big changes, but don’t panic!

If it’s real and a problem, can I fix it? Nope! Not a snowball’s prayer in Hell! Here’s why. In the US there are now 300 million folks of the 6 billion folks world wide. Everyone, EVERYONE!, in this world wants to live the American dream and they are doing their best to do it. And if you don’t let them … forget about it. That means the world needs to find and burn 5 to 6 times the energy we are currently using. That won’t happen, will it? OK, then we have to become 5 to 6 times as efficient as we are now. Oops! That won’t happen either, will it? You know what’s left? We fight over what resources we have. I’m starting to feel better about not having kids.

And then! We are listening to the same folks that wrote the programs that predict next week’s weather. Last Sunday they said this Sunday will be 40 degrees. Today, Wednesday, it’s up to 54 degrees. And they’re not even trying to predict the wind. The media, just this week, apologized (in the weather guy’s name) for predicting a brutal hurricane season in 2006 that didn’t even happen. No one apologized for not predicting the 2005 season.

A final thought! Even if the believers are right about the temperature rising, are they right about carbon dioxide being the problem? I don’t know! That’s another one of those computer program thingys.