Thursday, July 27, 2006

Exclusive! How to reach Climax!!

Climax, CO is at -106.183W, 39.368N. Just head towards Breckenridge and ask for directions. The more old-fashioned of you might like to go via Loveland, but I prefer to reach Climax by Mount Crested Butte.

If anyone would like help reaching Climax, I am free this weekend.

Thursday, July 20, 2006

Judge rules that climbing Everest is dangerous

Without wishing to speak ill of the dead, Micheal Matthews is just the latest in a string of unfortunates with more money than sense who thought that $40,000 was an adequate substitute for skill, experience and judgement. There's nothing new about it, over-wealthy FHM readers have been carking-it on Everest for years, but because these people don't bother to find out what they're getting into there's always plenty of fresh avalanche fodder. There's probably a few out at base camp now, having the 'ultimate adventure' supplied (for a small recompense, of course) by X-Treme Fanny-Magnet Adventures, Ltd. I have very little sympathy for them. I do however note that nobody throws their hands in the air in horror and starts threatening court action every time a Sherpa with a wife and five kids to feed gets killed by his client's ambition and incompetence. The whole farce hearkens back to the Victorian era of mountaineering, when first ascents were always accredited to 'gentlemen' (i.e. rich British toff being dragged up on a rope) as opposed to 'professionals' (i.e. competent local doing the dragging).

Some will accuse me of insensitivity - but hey, that's mountaineering for you. If you choose to stick your dick in a bee's nest that's your prerogative, but don't sue the beekeeper when you get stung.

I don't know why these people bother to climb Everest anyway, it's not as if there's much actual 'climbing' on the South Col route. You could get the same experience at a fraction of the cost by going into an airtight, refrigerated meat-locker and spending thirty six hours on a stairmaster.

Monday, July 17, 2006

'A challenging work environment...'

I was asked over the weekend what is the most challenging aspect of being a climate scientist. It sounds like a bit of an interview question, I know, but at least it's a bit more original than being asked what the weather's going to be like tomorrow or in fifty years time. I gave the question some thought, and realised that the biggest challenge is dealing with a chaotic and ill-constrained system. A system that is barely predictable. A system that despite being essentially inert is changing all the time. A system in which the slightest anomaly can result in the most catastrophic consequences.

I refer, of course, to the UCLA payroll department.

Thursday, July 13, 2006

Don't give decent data to hippies

The happiest place on Earth is Vanuata, some South Pacific backwater that considers Prince Phillip as some sort of minor deity - a bit like Virginia Water. The study that presents these results is clearly flawed, the researchers fail to address how a country could possibly be happy without access to commodities like coffee machines, or automatic toilets, or Toyota 4Runners. No sane person would smile in a land without such things. Columbia comes in second, but I suppose having an ample supply of Coca leaves could make up for living in a violent, bloody hellhole.

The United Kingdom didn't do terribly well, so far down the 'Happy Rankings' that I couldn't be bothered to count the position. In all fairness, whilst we are a nation of miserable bastards, I still think we're more cheerful than the Bosnian-Herzegovinians who come in a few places above. They're monumentally dour, more so even than Scottish people, even when they're not burning, raping and pillaging their neighbours (the Bosnians, that is, not the Scots). The most mendacious lie of all though is the USA's ranking, right down the bottom of the list drawing level with the Cote d'Ivoire. The Cote d'Ivoire is a country crippled by a long-running and bloody civil war, whilst the USA has possibly more coffee makers and automatic toilets than almost anywhere else in the world.

Further investigation revealed that the index is based on various psychological parameters and life expectancy, but then divided by the 'ecological footprint'. Basically, they're suggesting that if I were living in a hole in the ground in Lithuania, then although my life would be solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short I would still be happy in the knowledge that I wasn't using up too much of the planet's resources. They have clearly underestimated my aversion to Lithuanian holes in the ground.

This is what happens when you allow a bunch of bunny-hugging wastrels like the New Economics Foundation access to hard data and computers - they try to use it. Data and computers should be restricted to fully-trained, hard-headed research professionals like myself, working in isolated cubicles protected from the public by security passes and unanswerable rhetoric.

Update!

Being a low-lying Pacific island, the mere existence of Vanuata is threatened by rising sea-levels due to climate change. Ha, that should wipe the smiles off their 'ecologically friendly' faces!

Wednesday, July 12, 2006

Though onerous, I would rather flush my stool the old-fashioned way

The toilets in my research institute flush automatically. They have a motion sensor that presumably is supposed to detect when one is leaving the pedestal. In fact, they just trigger a flush at the slightest body movement, which plays havoc with both my peace of mind and my hemorrhoids. Frankly I'd rather return to the days when I retained some control of my own feaces, and to be honest I never found the task of flushing the khazi that onerous.

I'm not sure why we need an automatic flush. This is a scientific institute, so one would presume that the majority of personnel are sufficiently educated to know how to use a toilet. Admittedly, the librarian's level of intelligence is a matter of some concern to me, but I'll give her the benefit of the doubt. Perhaps the building managers think that we're so intellectually distracted by the atmospheric water-vapour modeling problem that we might forget to flush, and cause an outbreak of cholera amongst the nation's finest meteorological minds? Or maybe they think that by flushing immediately we won't be tempted to waste our working day by examining our stools?

As we say in academia, fossor regens indoles

Monday, July 10, 2006

The rodeo was good, but it wasn't great

A rodeo was televised on one of the local sports stations over the weekend. (Well, this is Colorado). I'm a newcomer to such contests, but it didn't take too long to get the gist. A bull or horse is held in steel cage, a redneck climbs on, and then holds on for dear life when they open the cage. Hats also seemed to play a big part in the proceedings.

The experience was a little like watching Zidane's headbutt - enjoyable, but ultimately unsatisfying. It all lacked a certain edge. If Zidane had butted that greasy little wop in the face and broken his nose, obviously that would have been a different matter.

I'm informed that in order to make the rodeo broncos 'buck', an elastic band is placed around their gonads. I think the sport would be improved by placing an elastic band around a cowboy's plums, and getting him to buck a 1 tonne bull. I for one would willingly pay to see such a spectacle.

Friday, July 07, 2006

Let's all talk about death

As a rule, I don't make serious posts. It's my genuine belief that almost nothing is sacred and immune from humour, even of the blackest kind. Anything that does become reverend needs to be tested and challenged, the alternative being the far too easy sell of trite statements such as you're either for us or against us made by the American administration, or Israeli accusations of anti-semitism at anyone who criticizes their policy in Gaza. Today though I am particularly pissed off, and for once I don't intend to make a flippant gag or employ some black sarcasm over it.

Today is the anniversary of the 7th July London bombings, a terrible act in which 52 people were murdered. The entire nation has, it seems, been 'united in mourning', with remembrance services in the capital and a nationwide two minutes silence (the 50 million or so who died in the two world wars only get one minute, in the few workplaces in Britain that still observes the Armistice). To be honest, the terrorists must have been pretty incompetent to have only killed 52 - judging by the number of people who claim to have barely missed death because of a bike puncture/lie-in/nail appointment etc they could have practically decimated London. This all seems incredibly, and inappropriately, histrionic.

My aim is not to question the tragedy of last summer's events nor to belittle the loss of those who were genuinely bereaved. I would just question whether or not this enormous media grief-fest is not at best self-indulgent, and at worst merely showing terrorists that they really were successful in scaring the living shit out of Londoners. British people are very proud of their stoic courage through times of crisis, the Blitz is the classic and oft-quoted example, but the very same courage seems to have eluded my generation.

Let's consider another anniversary. At 2157 BST on July 6th 1988, not knowing that a vital safety valve had not been reinstalled after maintenance, the on-duty custodian of the Piper Alpha switched on a compressor to maintain production. In the ensuing fireball, 167 men lost their lives. Death did not come easy for most of those men - they were burnt alive waiting for a rescue that could not reach them. The distinction that most people would draw is that Piper Alpha was an industrial accident, whereas the London bombings were a deliberate act of violence. Were the operators of Piper Alpha (Occidental) any less culpable though?

The platform itself was flawed in design, since modifications for it to extract gas as well as oil (it's original purpose) had cheaply sidestepped the original features. The basic concept of keeping personnel areas from dangerous operational areas was broken. Most significantly, the control room, the only place from which an evacuation could be organised, had been placed next to the gas compression, and so was one of the first modules to be destroyed. Additionally, working practices were sloppy, to say the least, as they were on all such installations. The most horrific example of the oil industry's paradigm of 'barrels first, costs second, lives third' occured in the aftermath of the initial explosion. Theoretically, the fire should have burnt itself out, and have been sufficiently reduced in size to allow rescue of most of the crew. However, the Piper Alpha platform was connected to two other pumping units. The Offshore Installation Managers (OIMs) of these platforms were so indoctrinated by the concept that they refused to shut down pumping (which would incur enormous cost) without authorisation from the shore, authorisation that could not be obtained at that time of night. Despite radio silence from Piper Alpha and a visible fire where the installation was supposed to be, they kept on supplying the burning platform with oil and gas in order to save their jobs. That decision made rescue impossible, and resulted in a fireball that was visible over one hundred kilometres away.

Both terrible anniversaries, no question about that, but which do you think the nation is going to remember most? Evil terrorists, or evil industrialists? Well, if one was in government and had a controversial and possibly unconstitutional bill to push through, for the sake of argument we'll say, oh, I don't know, let's say extending the period of detention without charge for terrorism suspects to 90 days, then it might be argued that there's a certain amount of political capital to be gained from remembering actions of those evil terrorists. On the other hand, one could remember the tragic evidence of the energy industry's greedy disregard for life. An industry that is so powerful that it has a direct line to the White House. An industry that is so powerful that national economies are reliant on the price of it's product. An industry that is so powerful that senators have tried to discredit an entire scientific discipline, because it produces overwhelming evidence that carbon emissions are significantly and detrimentally changing our planet.

If we are to use this day as a sobering reminder of the forces of evil, as a reminder that at times we need to find the courage to face powerful and hateful enemies, then I believe we also must remember that terrorists are not the only, or even the most powerful, enemy we face in this world. Every time we baulk at the cost of climate change mitigation, every time we demand lower fuel prices and the right to run a vehicle, no matter how large, we are defending the profits of an industry whose managers are trained to keep pumping gas onto burning platforms on which their own workmates are trapped.

Postscript
Things did change of course in the aftermath of Piper Alpha. Regulations were tightened and the industry accepted most of the Cullen Enquiry's recommendations. Apparently they didn't change that much though.