Some final thoughts on the UK trip
Posted by Heading Out on June 6, 2006 - 1:23pm
Topic: Miscellaneous
Tags: global warming, particle emission, rail, traffic control [list all tags]
Coming back from the UK, there are a couple of impressions that I would like to put down before they get overcome by the ongoing changes in our world that seem to be already happening.
Over the past weekend since my last post I took the train from London up to Nottingham, and then, on the following day, out to visit with friends (whom I will call, hoping they don't mind) the Sociologist and the Voice. When they drove me to the airport yesterday I left in the middle of a London rush-hour (to work). I arrived here in the middle of a US rush hour (after work). The traffic in both cases was very heavy, multi-lane, yet in the UK was moving faster and with better control. The Sociologist commented that the authorities had installed cameras and had adjustable speed limit signs along the highway that they changed to cope with the traffic. She commented that it was a system that worked and that, for example, holding traffic to 40 mph kept it moving at around that (which it did for us) while keeping a fixed speed would otherwise have brought it down to 15-20 mph (which was the US experience).
The use of speed-monitoring cameras and displays was much more pervasive that from my last trip, and I found that I took more notice, as did the rest of the traffic, so that it was perceptibly slower than it used to be, in overall speed, even on the motorways.
Oh, and just to prove that I am still a little mischievous, even after all that travel time, let me pick up just one comment from the last couple of days. The has been, apparently, a meeting held by Skeptics Magazine on Climate Change. (With my mind still not here yet, I can't remember where I got the direction-sorry). I was intrigued by Dr Greg Benford's solution to global warming, which is to do something that the power industry, particularly that based on coal, has been trying to eliminate for the past 30 years. And, because it relates to some previous thoughts, I grin and pass my thoughts on.
When there is a major volcanic eruption, such as Kragatoa the resulting clouds of dust injected into the air can affect the world temperature for some time. Krakatoa apparently, from the PR on the show, affected global temperatures for 3 years. The eruption of Mt Pinatubo had a similar effect
The resulting aerosol cloud depressed the mean global temperature by some 0.5oC.
So what Greg Benford wants to do is to seed the upper atmosphere with small particles and thus counteract some of the effects of global warming. So this is where I grin and say, um! You know the mining and power industries have been cleaning up their act since the beginning of the 60's (when apparently this current cycle may have begun after the cooling that took place from 1930 to 1960 - as shown in the graph I posted earlier. As a result a lot of the particulate matter that used to go up the smokestacks has been removed. And from the suggestion, to put particles back, one might even conclude that this might have had some impact on global warming (with the side comment that it might explain the global cooling that simple carbon dioxide modeling doesn't). So the mining and power plant folk, and thus indirectly, the environmental activists, might have caused the current cycle of global warming by taking these particles out of the air ? So now you might want to have us put them back, so that we can start the cooling process - is that what I am hearing?
Hmm! Maybe I should have another day off before returning to serious posting !
What I wonder is, could be possible to get the right type of aerosols up there in the atmosphere without otherwise harming people, plants, and wildlife? Some people have suggested we wait for this kind of solution when we have a crisis. I don't think there is a chance in hell that we will avert further and horrible global warming without some drastic technological fix like the one suggested. It is suggested, however,that such an approach may destroy the ozone layer. Nice tradeoff, as usual.
In short, that which will solve the problem is not politically feasible; that which is politically feasible wil l not solve the problem.
The sheer lack of scientific knowledge on any level in the US is staggering.
One of the major problems in the U.S. over the last generation, in my opinion, is that the scientific method of questioning, testing, using reproducible results for further questioning, has become hijacked to supporting a person's/group's beliefs.
The American debate about climate change (a much, much better term than global warming) is bizarrely skewed into opposing camps, where belief is the determining characteristic, not rigorous interpretation of facts, with various camps bickering non-stop.
For example, trying to determine how much climate change is due to human action is in one sense a dead-end, until the entire process of understanding climate change is fairly well-developed (and no, the part about not burning fossil fuels is not what I mean - adding CO2 to the atmosphere, bringing it to levels last seen in the distant past is essentially not a scientific question in the sense of 'what if?' - the past tends to be a fairly good guide to the future, especially when dealing with physical processes, and if you understand the majority of variables/interactions - if solar radiation were to increase or decrease in the used time frame is a very critical aspect of climate science, as is the amount of volcanic eruptions).
A very concrete example - will Europe be colder, warmer, or about the same in the next 20, 50, 100, 500 years? 10 or 20 years ago, the consensus, based on the then best current science, would have been warmer. The current consensus (at least in Germany), is about the same (drier however, and more extreme - hotter summers and more powerful storms, for example). A certain developing framework actually suggests colder, though this certainly could be incorrect. And if you look at the past 2000 years or so, the swings are quite extreme, without any human interaction in the sense of burning fossil fuels, creating huge heat islands, aircraft, etc.
Americans seem to base positions on faith, then use science, however defined, to defend them. This is not a mark of understanding how science works. Climate science tends to reduce human actions to at best a fairly minor factor in a vast, complex system (solar radiation variations are so many magnitudes greater that it is a reminder how truly miniscule humans are on a planetary scale - not that size is definitive; a virus is truly tiny on a human scale).
Undoubtedly our models are not nearly good enough to tell us what is in store on a global, let alone a regional scale, even if we knew the future course of our emissions. But every new bit of evidence coming in suggests the changes will be more catastrophic than previously feared, not less.
But the point about increasing CO2 levels last seen in the very distant past covers the point of what seems to be a fairly clear cause and effect chain - more CO2 seems quite related to higher global average temperatures - using the past as a guide. Burning fossil fuels is stupid in this context.
But notice that my objection to fossil fuel burning is based very concretely on past observations, and a firm faith in cause and effect and physical processes being consistent (though Hume does do an elegant job destroying that faith that the past is a guide to the future using logic).
I don't really understand much of the American debate at this point - I suggest that attempting to use facts as the basis for theories to be tested is scientific, and suddenly this becomes proof that my position is somehow not compatible with what certain people believe about global warming?
I don't have too many beliefs - the facts are more than hard enough to deal with.
The current consensus (at least in Germany), is about the same (drier however, and more extreme - hotter summers and more powerful storms, for example). A certain developing framework actually suggests colder, though this certainly could be incorrect.
You follow this with a statement about historical change on a time frame of 1000's of years. We are seeing changes measurable now in less than a decade.
The climate models I am familiar with, developed more than 20 years ago, say that as the average temperature increases the variability around that mean also increases. The key here is average and knowing if you are talking about a monthly mean, annual mean, and means of a specific location, region, or global temperature.
It is completely consistent with global warming models to have hotter summers and colder winters when the average yearly temperature is on an upward trend line. As long as the departure from the mean in summer is greater than the departure in winter the average temperature goes up year after year, indicating a global warming effect.
This is a hard concept for people to grasp in climate change. Increasing the global temperature by 0.5 degrees C doesn't mean that everybody has a slightly warmer enviroment with the same magnitude of fluctuaction around that mean. What many globally warming models predict is that there will be much more energy (heat) in the global system causing much greater variation around the mean. This means by definition the system is much less predictable.
Climate change (or really more accurately Global Warming) will cause most locations to experience weather phenomenon far away from the mean the majority of the time. This means that in June rather than having many days between 20-32 C the range might expand to 14-38 with rapid swings between the extremes. Ditto for rainfall where the old pattern was 2.5 cm per week, each week, for a month replaced with one week of 10 cm followed by 0 cm for the next 3 weeks. The averages don't change much but the consequences for plant and animal life, including humans, are severe.
well, somewhat like the Gulf Stream shutting down was not really a scenario 20 years ago (and all the knock on effects still not even being clearly formulated), there is a certain strand of research suggesting that we could tip suddenly into an ice age - and even then, the levels of CO2 may mean a higher mean temperature average measured over hundreds of thousands or millions of years.
I believe the climate has always changed, but ten years is a time scale for weather - centuries is essentially the shortest time frame for climate.
Humans are interested in weather, not climate. The problem is, our actions are having an impact on the climate.
They really fail applicants!!!! It can take years to get a license!!!!!!
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"Science" is not something we have shunned by any measure. We have completely embraced it.
Does penultimate have a different meaning in the mother land, or do we get to hear even more about your trip after this post?
I wonder, however, how much the UK's vast use of roundabouts impacts traffic flow and thus energy consumption.
There's a lot of information available about them here: http://www.tfhrc.gov/safety/00068.htm and some links to their impact on energy efficiency here: http://www.iihs.org/research/qanda/roundabouts.html#5
(spot the ex-pat brit living in Michigan! personally I think we should be replacing as many 4 way stops and lights as possible with these things :-)
We are. They are the hot new trend in road design.
The main problem is that Americans don't know how to use them. The first one built in this area actually had the traffic going backwards on it for awhile. The contractor didn't put the signs up before opening it to traffic. o_O
They really fail applicants!!!! It can take years to get a license!!!!!!
I was driving along today and an SUV was in the lane to the left of me at a stop light, OK, they were in the left-turn lane, right? Well, when the light changed, the SUV went right on ahead and once through the intersection, was driving along in wrong side of the road! I thought, that can't last, I'd better get out of their way so I squirted ahead, and sure enough, the SUV moved right over where I was, they probably had no idea I was there.
The book "High And Mighty" about SUVs says a lot about SUV drivers, but has some interesting insights on US drivers in general I think. Let's just say they don't seem to be able to think other than in the here and now, and literally don't seem to be able to plan for a situation developing 100 yards ahead on the road.
However, there are two stop lights on the circle to allow the streetcars to cross the traffic in the outer lane and enter and exit the circle.
A "modification" from "modern" traffic engineers. :-(
Here in Massachusetts, "rotaries" are alive and well, although I don't know of any traditional intersections that have been replaced with rotaries.
Rotaries don't work and are being phased out. Roundabouts do work, but only if they are properly designed. And designing them properly is not easy. A slight change in the angle of an on-ramp can mean the difference between smooth flow and a three-mile backup. Often, they use trial and error to get the right angle. Lay it out with traffic cones, and adjust until traffic flows smoothly.
From Wiki:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roundabout
Also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traffic_circle
Slowing traffic down paradoxically lets you move more cars through the intersection faster.
That is one reason for the sudden popularity of roundabouts. Not only can they increase capacity, they can be used for "traffic calming," which is another hot trend in road design.
Answering my own question, no. Deflection makes the entry paths into the roundabout non-tangential, encouraging drivers to slow down instead of accelerate into the roundabout.
A quick Google search will turn up lots of interesting informatin (as usual). Here's something from the U.S. Federal Highway Administration, Roundabout Safety Comes to America.
You can go clockwise around the outside, anticlockwise around the inside and spin around any of the small circles. Always giving priority to the right.
I wonder each time I go around it what it must be like for an American visitor driving on the 'wrong' side of the road, using a manual gear change because there are not many automatics over here and not knowing how a normal roundabout works.
Roundabouts with lots of traffic and large ammounts of bicyclists on crossing bicycle roads is not a good combination. There is a large risk that drivers dont see fast moving bicyclists while looking for other cars and too many bicyclists tend to take chances. One of the busiest roundabouts in my home town will soon be rebuilt with tunnels for bicyclists and pedestrians.
The very long term goal is to have 50/70 km/h main
roads tending to be mostly 70 km/h with no crossing pedestrians or bicyclists and a complete parallell pedestrian and bicycle lane network. 50/30 km/h streets tending to be 30 km/h where people live or where there are manny pedestrians. The odd problem here is probably the busses, they need to both go fast and have a pedestrian road crossing next to each bus stop. Efficiency and cost versus security, I guess the tradeoffs will go back and forth for manny years.