iMatt :: The Blog of Matt Clare

Last Saturday I was at a bar in downtown Toronto, indulging a friend in the semi-heated smoking section of the bar – and it wasn’t just the smoke I had to indulge. It seems my friend, who works for a car dealership, is trying to get the message out that global warming is just a hoax cooked up by scientists and lefties to fund their causes.

My friend sighted the fact that the earth’s temperature always goes up and down over decades, it seems colder outside than it used to, and the other standard right-wing counter arguments. I refuted these points with the well established fact that the earth’s temperature has never changed this quickly before and global warming affects weather patterns a lot more than it affects the average temperature in your back yard.

My friend, who ironically had a lot more to drink than me because I was driving that night, said ‘How do we know that it’s never changed this much?’ and went on to point out that we haven’t always had thermometers. I gave the simple answer: Ice core samples.

This is when he brought out the big guns, to beat this scientific argument with science: If cars produce carbon, and the atmosphere has CO2 in it, wouldn’t more carbon be good for it?

I tried to keep in my laughter and point out that carbon actually molecularly breaks down the ozone by breaking down the molecules by bonding with them, stealing their oxygen atoms, and then leaving more unbalanced molecules to cannibalize other stable ozone molecule’s oxygen atoms. With the ozone letting all this new UV in the extra carbon in the air helps to trap that extra sunlight in. Raising the amount of energey the earth reatins from the sun.

Now I’ll admit, that was the best I could do at the bar, and I’ve since confirmed my comments via Wikipedia – though this is one of the topics that is constantly being reworked for political means on Wikipedia.

This is all just spurious pseudo-science. A case of using 1+1 = 2 logic when it’s really CH4 + OH –> CH3 + H2O
Here’s a good example of pseudo-science: www.co2science.org

Contrast this with a profile I saw on 60 minutes last Sunday. The segment was about the state of Kansas’ plans to no longer teach eveolution as the explanation of human origins.

Some of the pro-creationists pointed to ‘The evidence of a young earth’ – a term used to disprove any science that suggests humans or the earth existed any longer than what the Bible describes. Here’s an example: www.tim-thompson.com/young-earth.html. The best quote from the segment was “They’re arguing a theory, the theory of evolution. We’re talking about a fact. The bible is a fact”.

Now, don’t confuse these Conservative Christians with my friend – that’s certainly not his view! I bring them up to demonstrate the power of simple answers that people want to hear. The answers to questions that people don’t really ask, they tell.

You can see how someone like George Bush can pull out of the Kyoto treaty, or change clean air laws to remove punishments and accountability for spewing toxins into the air and instead encourage trying to not be as bad as possible. When you think the world’s only been around for a few thousand years it’s easy to dismiss the common facts used to demonstrate global warming. I can’t even begin to determine if it’s belief or denial.

I do predict some progress in the future. René Descartes published Discourse on Method in 1637. The book is what modern natural science is based on, it said to be skeptical of everything and to start your line of reasoning by doubting everything, so as to assess the world from a fresh perspective, clear of any preconceived notions. When Descartes died in 1667, the Roman Catholic Church placed his works on the Index of Prohibited Books. I think the afterlife debate society is about to get a lot more interesting.

Looks like the EU actually approved of Paul Wolfowitz as head of the world bank. That’s like putting a loan shark in charge of unemployment insurance.

If anyone is not familiar with the SETI@Home project you must not be too familiar with the internet. SETI@Home is the Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence using distributed computing. Thousands, if not millions, of computers are currently using there spare time to crunch packets of telescope information sent to them from the SETI at home servers. When a computer is done it sends the information back and the lets the SETI team know if that part of the sky is worth taking a closer look into.

Most Windows machines use a screen saver to make sure that the work is done while the computer is idle. Mac OSX and Linux machines allow you to run a process in ‘nice’ mode, as in play nice with others. This tells a process/program to wait for everything else to be processed then jump in line for the CPU. I run setiathome on my home server 24/7 at nice 19, the highest level of playing nice. My home server needs to always be on for others to grab files & music from it, or check web pages. It also houses all my backups and lets me get at my files from anyplace with internet access. So it’s always on, but as penitence for using that power it’s always crunching SETI information, work that need to be done anyway.

My laptop runs the screen saver and my father’s PC in Markham does too. A few of my work Mac’s run SETI overnight (because I want all my applications open when I get into work the next day). Again, I figure as long as they are on they might as well be doing something.

As for the stress on these computers: There’s some concern that all this 100% CPU usage might ware down the front-side bus, but otherwise a CPU is not like a car – it either works or doesn’t (1 or 0), there is no degradation. For the record though, hard drives to degrade.

Do I think I’ll find artificial intelligence? Me? No. But there is an outside chance that SETI might find something some day, and this model of computing has already proven that it can assemble the world’s largest super computer – so that’s something. Like most of science, this is a search that is worth doing, regardless of the outcome.

Here’s my SETI@Home stats as of right now — the latest info can be found here :

The Saturn has a proper mirror again!

I had the morning off because I’m helping out with a class this evening. I spent it visiting some local junk yards and was able to get the mirror for $60.00 (before taxes). So that’s not so bad.

I started to put the mirror on and lost my 10mm socket to the inside of the door. I then drive off to Canadian Tire expecting to hear the rattle of the socket but luckily (I think) it’s stuck to the back of the speaker. Even if it was loose in there you’d never hear it over the other rattling interior parts of any Saturn.

With my new socket I attached the new mirror in the Canadian Tire parking lot, with some bonus insulation, in about 10 minutes.

What can be learned from all of this? There’s a definite advantage to non-colour cued mirrors on cars. All the Saturn SL mirrors are black. Also, sports cars with the small mirrors on long stems have those for a reason – mirrors have a large affect on the flow of wind over your car. Shealyn always thought it was funny that in F1 they mandate the size of the rearview mirrors on the cars, otherwise they’d just take them off. Lastly: whenever you can, don’t park your car on the road! (or on the outside of corners, parking lot entrances……..)

Poor Saturn. 🙁

Saturday Lindz and I went out for dinner, a little mini-putt (for the record, she won) and then watched a movie at her parent’s place. The car must have been parked for just over two hours. When I parked it I let Lindsay out at her driveway so that I could pull the car forwards and up on to the snowbank — apparently that wasn’t over far enough.

So we cleaned up the mirror’s remnants from the road so no one would get a flat. There was a noticeable absence of another mirror, but very good distance on my shards, making me think the hit came from a light truck.

UnfortunatelyStandard Auto Wreckers junkyard is closed Sundays during the winter. (Standard is a great place, good selection and they have a good record of environmental concerns and community involvement – they also have my first car.) So I taped over the hole left from removing the mirror’s assembly and foam and rigged up a new mirror with a replacement convex mirror I bought.

This Migivered mirror worked pretty well for the drive back to St. Catharines, and I swear I got better fuel economy. I hope to make it to a yard down here in St. Catharines this week. The good news is the part doesn’t appear to be too expensive.