district 30

In order to prevent what would otherwise surely disintegrate into all-out war between naturalists and ATV fans, a protected Wildlife area may get a solution in the form of a compromise, in which the park is split, with portions dedicated to ATV’s and other motorized vehicles, with other areas set aside for more peaceful nature retreats. Similar (although not the same) as my proposal to allow privatized access to private land.

Close enough for me. It’s nice to see sensible solutions (which in my estimation is anything that prevents loud, nasty engines from tearing up all of the lands that we try to convince ourselves are being preserved.)

I find it interesting that Michael Crichton testified in front of the Senate on climate change.

Mr Crichton doesn’t believe that human actions are verifiably having a huge effect on “global warming”:

Over the next two hours, Mr. Crichton and four other witnesses offered their thoughts, Mr. Crichton hewing to his firm belief that lawmakers should examine more closely “whether the methodology of climate science is sufficiently rigorous to yield a reliable result.”

While I have been a little skeptical of the claim of a link in greenhouse gases and global warming (I think of a environmentalist book on air quality that included a graph of the Earth’s temperature over thousands of years. The shifts were pretty wild, including a mini ice age in the 16th century.) Temperature shifts have occurred without human intervention before and it’s not unreasonable to believe that they could happen again. That being said, it’s still important to err on the side of caution. Crichton argues that with current science, we can’t know for sure what effects our actions have. So he concedes that greenhouse gasescould have an effect. Given that scientists have hypothesized a mechanism for climate change with greenhouse gases and that we’re seeing things like unusual depletion of the Arctic ice caps, we should be acting now. Waiting for conclusive evidence is like putting off quitting cigarettes because they may be hazardous to your health.

I’m finding the NY Time’s most popular article list interesting. For instance, here is today’s top article, a reader-written piece on protecting National Parks . The piece itself is worth mentioning, but it’s also interesting to speculate on why it would, of all the articles published recently on the Times website, be the most emailed. One imagines people sending it to friends out of anger or frustration, to vent or to encourage action. I would also speculate that most of the people who would email this particular column are doing so because they agree with the writer rather than disagree, based on the presumptions that Times readers are typically left-leaning and that the column probably elicits a stronger response from people who agree with it.

If that’s true, it is sort of interesting…if so many people are so strongly opposed to a policy of letting snowmobilers have at the National Parks, why is such a policy even being considered? My suspicion is that a policy that concedes destruction of the National Parks would be very unpopular (but it doesn’t hurt to fight it vocally). But clearly there exists a significant segment of people who honestly believe that the most efficient allocation of this huge public resource is to open them to recreation. They will never be able to grasp the concept that something can have value without having tangible value.

We may not be able to change the fact that some people have unfailing faith in pure capitalism. But perhaps we can appeal to that faith. Wouldn’t a far better solution be to encourage private development for snowmobiling and jetskiing and such activities? Access might in fact be cheaper for the snowmobiler or jetskier (in a National Park, they would have to pay a fairly steep access fee). Republicans often propose privatization as a good thing–why not here? This allows public land to be dealt with by the public sector, as it should be and it allows the for-profit enterprises to act unencumbered. And, it continues to support the current policy of preserving certain areas. In fact, I would go a step further–allow access to the National Parks only to people who can prove they at least understand certain principles along the lines of what Leave No Trace teaches. People who pass a test earn the privilege to enjoy the parks much as people who can prove their ability to drive safely earn the privilege of driving a car. It would be cheaper and easier for the weekend dirt biker to go to the private park while the public land is less crowded and easier to preserve. And I’m sure the average snowmobiler would call LNT wimpy environmentalist bull, but that’s fine since they’d never need to pay attention to it anyway.

This NRA boycott of Conoco-Phillips is stale news but it’s been a busy week and I wanted to mention it…

I’m not altogether sure what to make of it. I highly doubt that any oil company is going to have many employees that are terribly “anti-gun,” and I’m sure that the corporate heads feel their concern is well-placed. The Oklahoma law is one of those backward laws that foolishly attempts to “legalize” something that is better left in a lower forum. Does the Oklahoma legislature think they should allow people to bring guns into the building, or are they willing to let companies write their own policy on that? Would they force private citizens to allow guns on their property? Why is there a difference?

While I think that better pre-ownership education would probably be as effective as anything in limiting handgun deaths, I still don’t see why the state needs to step in to force companies to have one policy or another. I also think the NRA is the PETA of the right. Their news release quote seems to support the idea that they’re a little off-kilter:

“If you are a corporation that is anti-gun, anti-gun owner or anti-Second Amendment, we will spare no effort or expense to work against you to protect the rights of your law-abiding employees,” said Wayne LaPierre…

Including working against people who would typically be in favor of your causes, it seems.

So, the EPA delayed the release of it’s annual fuel efficiency report. Now with a toothless Energy Bill before Congress, why would they do that?

Of course, the Times is going to connect some dots for us, but they point out some interesting tidbits. I’d like to take on a particular tidbit: Nissan’s average fuel efficiency dropped by .5 mpg between 2003 and 2004 model years. Nissan’s spokesperson states that the drop is due to Nissan’s movement, with the Titan and Pathfinder Armada, into new markets and that they are “doing it responsibly.” The Armada, with a 5.6 liter (!) V8 gets 13 mpg and the Titan, also with a 5.6 liter V8 gets 14 mpg. The Hummer H2, the car environmentalists despise the most, gets 12 mpg. (All ratings are for city driving, as posted for 2005 models at intellichoice.com.) I’m singularly unimpressed. If you can’t do better that much better than an H2, it’s hardly responsible.

Nonetheless, I have some admiration for companies like Nissan, VW and Subaru for resisting the Massive SUV/distinctly effeminate pickup truck markets for as long as they did, seeing as how the rest of the auto world has made them their bread and butter. And why not since they have terrific margins?

One thing is going to make our cars more fuel efficient and that is people who care about fuel efficiency refusing to buy piggy cars with 5.6 liter engines. (I’m suggesting here that they instead by the competitor’s piggy car with a 4.0 liter engine. I’m not a fan of huge SUV’s but hey, perhaps some people really need to move that many people around all day.) Safety has been a big concern for a long time, and we now have great tests that are forcing car makers to improve safety constantly. What can we do to give fuel efficiency the same priority?

Here are some interesting things I found while researching fusion.

First, I found a description of the mechanism as a refresher. The Deuterium-Tritium mechanism is pretty straightforward, and scientists have a basic idea where they will get the fuels and what will be emitted. It looks a lot cleaner than fission. The only problem is that the reaction requires a tremendous amount of energy to get started and it is difficult to maintain afterward. Minor details, and it will only take a few decades to solve these problems.

Apparently, a group of scientists has come up with another “cold fusion” experiment that is repeatable. It still requires too much energy at the start, though.

Even the Department of Energy is pointing out the downfalls of fission while promoting fusion research.

Finally (while searching for a source that could convince me that solar power simply wasn’t viable), I came across an article about a solar-powered ice-maker. Fascinating!

There shall be relevance (to my previous post). See this article on fusion (as opposed to fission) and this article on Senate passage of the energy bill.

I’m interested in the fusion thing especially…I may take a closer look and post more on it later.