Trendy
“The Earth’s temperature has climbed to levels not seen in thousands of years, warming that has begun to affect plants and animals, researchers report in today’s issue of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The Earth has been warming at a rate of 0.2 degrees Celsius per decade for the last 30 years, according to the research team led by James Hansen of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York. That brings the overall temperature to the warmest in the current interglacial period, which began about 12,000 years ago.”
I’ll say it again. “It is a TREND”, not a calamity.
The earth has been warming for the past eleven or twelve thousand years. The earth up Hudson’s Bay is still rebounding from the weight of a two-mile thick layer of ice that once rested upon it. The Ohio river is enjoying its new course, that turns South at a point about twenty miles north-west of Pittsburgh, PA.
Eleven thousand years ago, Earth began a warming trend that saw a two-mile thick layer of ice begin to melt. That process continued the day before I was the born, the day I was born, and the day after I was born. It continues today, as you read these words. It will continue, this trend, the day before I die, the day I die, and the day after I die.
It is a trend. One day may be warmer than the next. The seasons of the 365-day year influence this greatly. One year may, on average, be cooler, or warmer, than the rest. But over a decent period – at least as long as human memory, if not longer, say, one hundred years, this 11,000 year trend can be expected to continue.
It is natural and it is to be tolerated and it is not a calamity. Plants and animals have adapted to changes forever. That is why we plants and animals are here – we are all survivors of change, survivors through adaptation.
But don’t link man’s activities with this trend. This trend to higher temperatures will occur whether or not someone turns the key in the ignition of a car.
If we cut the birthrate, lowered our use of automobiles, consumed less energy, and led less frivolous lives, the world would be a better place; I believe that. But I have to believe, too, that if every last one of the 7,874,654,384 of us was wiped off the face of the earth today, the planet would continue to warm up, and would do so until the start of the next ice age, at which time it would adopt a downward trend in temperature, then, perhaps hundreds of thousands of years later, it would start another upward trend.
For what it is worth, there has been an overall trend towards cooling since about four billion years ago. I don’’t see anyone screaming about THAT!
Probability
(Black says he’s ‘a freedom fighter’ Toronto Star Saturday, Sep. 23, 2006. 11:30 AM) “The chances of my committing a crime are less than zero and it is a horrible nightmare scenario for someone who is a law-abiding person … to be attacked as violently as I have, not only with these charges but with the ancillary efforts to restrict my ability to defend myself,” he says.
Last time I looked, probability was measured on a scale of zero to one.
The chance of any probability being less than zero is, of course, zero.
So for “The chances of my committing a crime are less than zero” I’d say he’s not telling the truth.
If nothing else he is breaking the laws of logic and mathematics in an effort to portray himself as a law-abiding person.
He needs a better script-writer.
I’ll stand by that.
Woman killed by bouncing tire on QEW
A 41-year-old Oakville woman is dead after her car was hit by a tire on the Queen Elizabeth Way near Oakville last night. The woman was traveling westbound near the Third Line when her Mercedes was struck shortly after 9 p.m. The tires had come off the back of an eastbound tractor-trailer unit and bounced across the median, said Ontario Provincial Police Const. Dave Woodford.
Another random death, right?
Wrong!
Strictly speaking, this is a collision “any event that finds any part of the vehicle other than the tread of the tyres, in contact with anything other than the defined driving area of the roadway”. In this case the windscreen of the car came in contact with a tyre.
You think it is an accident ?
Wrong!
An accident is “An event that is without apparent cause, or is unexpected”.
This will turn out to be human error, although not the human who died.
This will turn out to be a defective (or non-existent) act of maintenance, or something as banal as a bad batch of steel.
It may not be the truck-driver’s fault at all. Large trucking firms have maintenance staff who are supposed to make sure everything is safe; the truck driver’s job is to drive safely.
It may be a cheap tyre whose casing worked loose, in which case a budgeting clerk will be the cause.
It may be that the tyre was jarred loose after running over debris on the roadway, in which case the cause can be traced back to another vehicle shedding its load.
I feel sorry for the friends and family of the woman who died. She was on her way home, or setting off to work, and was expected to return home to family and friends.
Not her fault.
Could have happened to any one of us.
But it was not an accident.
I’ll stand by that.
Garbage Economics
“Private-sector waste experts agree that any waste-diversion program is more costly than throwing garbage into a hole. Rob Cook, president of the Ontario Waste Management Association, says dumping, including transport costs and tipping fees, costs anywhere from $55 to $80 a tonne. Incinerating costs about $170 a tonne, while recycling can cost up to $200 a tonne.”
I can not accept this statement, except that it is an attention-grabbing statement in a local newspaper.
I can’t accept any figure on the dollar cost of an operation unless the statement is qualified with the basis or boundaries of the cost.
Maybe Rob Cook has been mis-quoted; there is a possibility that an editor cut out the qualification for economy of space (read: “to fit more advertising into a finite space”).
None the less the public is being fed the idea that dumping is cheap.
I don’t believe that.
Dumping means putting into a hole in the ground something that has cost us money. That is putting Canada’s gold into the ground, but not like Fort Knox USA whence it can be withdrawn at any time. Each toaster, shaped piece of wood and so on represents money that was earned and spent. That’s gold. It is a nation’s gold.
Boundaries: If a municipality asks a haulage contractor how much is to be paid per ton, the contractor may well reply “Eighty Dollars”, and that is what we see here. Note that the contractor’s business is carting stuff today, not shaping the future.
If we can not build on that garbage site, we have to build further out (perpetual commuter costs) or further up (perpetual crowding downtown).
If we have to dig it all up in twenty years, there’s a cost to our children.
If we have to build another toaster or shape another piece of wood, there’s a manufacturing cost to replace the original labor that now sits in a hole in the ground.
But the contractor is not asked to include these cost; these costs are outside the boundary of the question asked by the municipality.
I will bet that the cost of incineration includes a capital cost amortized over the life of the plant.
The cost of incineration ought to be little more than one paper match, if you want an extremely narrow boundary.
Bad Thoughts
“As a result, you continue to end up with an increasing volume of older vehicles on the road,” he said. He rejected arguments that motorists are keeping their vehicles longer because they can’t afford new models, because statistics indicate real prices have dropped in recent years.
Nonsense.
It matters little that “real prices” might have dropped if real incomes have dropped even more.
Not being able to afford a car, even if it is effectively cheaper than ever, matters little if rent, food, clothing and other essential items have risen dramatically, or work is harder to find.
Show me a $10 car and I’ll show you someone with only $5 in their pocket.
Today.
Heavy Rains And Slick Roads Being Blamed
Four people were killed in motor-vehicle accidents across Ontario on the Labor Day weekend, with heavy rains and slick roads being blamed for numerous other crashes.
… a Honda Civic … crossed over the centre line and collided with a Chevy pickup truck ….
… a Dodge Avenger on Highway 401 near Napanee left the road and hit a rock cut …
Rain and slick roads caused at least 130 crashes over a 24-hour period between Saturday and Sunday …
Here’s a suggestion that might reduce the death toll on the roads: Get rid of rain, Honda Civics and Dodge Avengers.
Unless, of course, the real cause lies somewhere else.
