Category Archives: environment

Vélib Works!

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velib bike from parisSo far. I forgot to point this out a couple of weeks ago. There was a nice story in the Guardian giving a one month update on the progress of the Velib program in Paris. Recall I blogged about its launch here, and expressed hope that the expectations that it would not work were wrong (I’m such an optimist). Well, the news is that it is working! The whole article (by Angelique Chrisafis) is here. A quote:

Day and night, tourists, commuters and returning party animals cruise by on the chic new machines. People have joyfully discovered the cheap new way of exercising en route to work or getting home drunk after the metro closes, hence a rush of hires after 1am. There’s a glut of bikes deposited at stands at the bottom of hills and none left at the top, as people freewheel down from the heights of Belleville and Montmartre.

(Now I’m in the mood to get out the wonderful movie “Les Triplettes Des Belleville” (or “Belleville Rendezvous” or “The Triplets of Belleville”) for an enjoyable evening.) Further: […] Click to continue reading this post →

The Man of Tomorrow?

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[Updated with a bit of video!]

Earlier this week I went for a walk with Nick Halmagyi to chat about physics, and since he had not been down to the meadows and gardens over by the neighbouring Aspen Institute, we wandered down that way. It was just after lunchtime, and a very hot day, and as we got near the Institute, we diverted away from physics so that I could tell him briefly what the significance of the Aspen Institute is. I explained that it was an important “think tank”, host to thinkers in the humanities, sciences, and diplomats, presidents, ex-presidents, and other dignitaries, who come and think great thoughts about the problems of the world. Well, let me use their own words from their website:

The Aspen Institute, founded in 1950, is an international nonprofit organization dedicated to fostering enlightened leadership and open-minded dialogue.

As an example, I explained, it is probably the sort of place that Al Gore might have come to in order to think deeply about the environmental issues he champions. It is nice that the Aspen Institute is right next to the Aspen Center for Physics, and the two organizations, while now independent (but the Center actually grew out of the Institute, see here) sometimes work together on various matters including public outreach. The public lecture I gave here last year as part of the Heinz Pagels Memorial Lecture series (see e.g. here and here), for example, was actually over in the Paepke auditorium, one of their buildings.

We approached the main grounds of the Institute, near their residence buildings, and were greeted by a most frustrating -and ironic- sight. Their sprinkler system was fully on, spraying water unnecessarily into the air and onto the asphalted walks, with some making it onto their lawns, where even there it would mostly evaporate (in addition to aiding the hot sun in scorching the grass somewhat). For once, I did not have my camera and so cannot share this horrible sight with you. For a moment it was as though I was back in LA, but this was Aspen, where everyone talks about the environment. Then I remembered – everyone talks about the environment. At the same time, there are more and more SUVs every time I come here (rental companies even try to force SUVs on you when you try to rent a regular compact car – did you read my story of that last year?), more and more land seems to be cleared to build ever-larger houses, and so forth. On the other hand, bicycle use is very high here, there’s an excellent free bus system, an enforced reduction of individual car access to the Maroon Bells wilderness area, and I imagine several other worthy environmental efforts that I have not seen are being made. So it is a tale of two communities and mind sets. It’s complicated, as with any populate. But you’d have thought the Aspen Institute would be “fostering enlightened leadership” by not watering their lawns and (sidewalks) with vast amounts of water at the maximally worst time of day to do so in terms of effectiveness. (Frankly, given the environmental disaster most lawns are, one could go further and hope that in the spirit of leadership, they’d turn more of their expanse of lawns into other use, perhaps expanding the excellent wildflower garden they have in one corner, or letting more of the surrounding meadows repopulate the grounds. It could be rather beautiful.)

wild flower gardens at aspen institute

Anyway, we shook our heads at the irony of the sight and we wandered off toward the river, continuing our chat about matters in other dimensions (no, really). The next day I came back at that same time to check the sprinklers again (with camera), since such systems are often on timers, but had it rained very heavily the previous night and so -happily- it did not seem that the sprinklers had been used.

On Wednesday I returned once more. The sun was overhead and strong again (not as much as Monday) and the main system was not on. But once again I noticed signs of watering, and saw a smaller component of the lawn being watered by a hose-driven system. I now think that it might be that they were sprinkling (well, gushing) on Monday (and partly on Wednesday) in the mistaken belief that pouring water (and into the air, where it rapidly evaporates) on the lawn while the sun is baking it will somehow help, and they did it on an ad hoc basis, but I can’t be sure. Either way, it is a terrible waste of water resource by an organization that is committed to leadership in matters of importance, such as the environment.

Then I noticed that many people wearing name badges were heading from the Institute toward the direction of the auditorium and the Aspen Music tent. This fit with the next deliciously ironic thing: Al Gore was going to be talking! He’d been at the Aspen Institute (I’d no idea of his presence or the event until a radio announcement on Wednesday morning), and the sprinkler matter, this was remarkable. Convenient, one might say.

It turned out that it was not taking place in the Paepke auditorium, as I thought it […] Click to continue reading this post →

Twenty Thousand Bikes

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velib bike from parisSo, has anyone who reads the blog used the new Velib system in Paris yet? A new layer of public transport has been rolled out (yes, I know) onto the streets of Paris, as of last Sunday (July 15th). The Bicycle. A publicly funded scheme (familiar to some from elsewhere, such as Lyon and Amsterdam (?), if memory serves) called “Velib” where there are special bike racks all over the city. One of the (charmingly European-looking) bikes is pictured on the right. From a BBC story by Emma-Jane Kirby:

The local authority in Paris has deposited 20,000 heavy-duty bicycles in 750 or so special racks around the city and anyone who wants one simply swipes his or her ordinary travel card and pedals off wherever they want to go.

The bike does not have to be returned to the same pick-up point – you can take a bike from a rack near the Eiffel Tower, cycle to the Pantheon and leave it in the nearest Velib stand there.

This sounds great, from my point of view, you’ll not be surprised to learn! I’m finding it hard to see a downside here at all. A bit more:

The Velib scheme is aimed at people who are making short journeys.

The first half hour of pedalling time is absolutely free but, if you fail to return the bike after 30 minutes, you get charged an extra euro and the penalties go up the later you are.

(So European… penalties. They could not find another, more positive word?)

The Velib website is here. And of course it is only in French. What did you expect? (Actually, it is rather entertaining to read, all the same, since it is mostly easy-to-guess French, and knowing the context helps.)

I can’t see what’s stopping such a system from being introduced in cities in America. I think that we should start with….. Los Angeles, of course! It is one of the cities that […] Click to continue reading this post →

Purple not Pants

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Or becoming less “pants” every day. Fantastic! On Wednesday, the House appropriations committee repealed the ridiculous and trumped-up 1986 Congressional ban on tunneling to complete the Wilshire subway line project. This was pushed through by Congressman Waxman, the same person who misguidedly got the ban instated in the first place. Funny how nimby-ness (and, arguably, fear of people who don’t look like you getting access to your neighbourhood) about public transportation projects crumbles when you finally realize that your SUV is at a standstill in traffic more often than not…. and all you were doing was driving five blocks to get a pint of milk from Whole Foods. (Found a bit more here on LAist.)

System Map LACMTAThe Purple line right now is either two stops long, or several stops long depending upon how you count. (Click on map to right to see what I mean.) It’s effectively two, since all the other stops are Red line stops – it just runs two stops more to the West stopping a few long block away at Wilshire/Western. Hence the post title, expressing the hope that it will be several stops long, all the way out to the Pacific. It would be just great to go all the way to Santa Monica from downtown on a train. Why is that not obviously a super-wonderful thing to be able to do? Dinner and drinks on the Santa Monica pier at Sunset followed by a concert in the Disney Hall. No faffing about with traffic and over-priced parking. Is that not a dream worth running toward with open arms?

Next step, finding a ridiculous amount of money to build the thing because an […] Click to continue reading this post →

Fluored

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Dan Flavin

Dan FlavinFrom a shockingly* effective retrospective exhibit of the fluorescent light works of Dan Flavin, now on at LACMA. (The image on the right with a person next to a similarly-sized piece is to give you a sense of scale.)

Here’s a little bit about how fluorescent lamps work, from Wikipedia. The old-style big fluorescent lights you recall from a while back (with that more industrial or corporate feel) are very different than the modern compact fluorescent lights many people would like to see used more in your homes (and elsewhere). This produces a lot of […] Click to continue reading this post →

Rapid Changes in Los Angeles

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Good News, Everyone!

Well, you know (if you’ve stumbled upon one of the posts in my long series of attempts -see end of this post- to remind one or two people that they should not believe all the myths about LA not having any public transportation) that I’m continually excited about the steady stream of improvements that are being made by Metro in response to the increased pressure of usage put on the system by the general public.

local long busWell, in addition to adding more and more of the red “Metro Rapid” bus routes, which are faster than the locals (which -ridiculously at times- stop every block) because they stop mostly only at major intersections, and in addition to adding more of the nice and roomy double buses (“bendy buses”) they’ve done something just great (which I’d been hoping for for years) – introduced true express routes! It makes sense to have three levels of granularity on the bus service here since it matches the three levels of granularity on the road system! […] Click to continue reading this post →

NASA’s Wrong Stuff?

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Have a listen to Greg Easterbrook (of Wired) in conversation with NPR’s Steve Inskeep on Morning Edition. The issue is whether NASA’s focus on setting up a manned base on the moon, and then heading for Mars, is really the right focus for a huge (multiple billions of dollars) expenditure, given other scientific priorities. The link is here. See also his Wired piece here, entitled “How NASA Screwed Up (And Four Ways to Fix It)”.

That was yesterday. Today, also on NPR’s Morning Edition, I heard NASA’s chief administrator Michael Griffin attempts to defend the policy. There’s a link to audio here, and be sure to listen to the audio (the transcript offered there is only partial, for a start). I find it revealing. He seemed to have a great deal of difficulty answering certain key questions, such as “Do you think it is the best use of money or not?”. “Are there priorities that you have had to cut…?” His answers on climate change and global […] Click to continue reading this post →

The Meddler, I

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I don’t like getting angry. I don’t like losing my temper. In the first place, it makes me feel like I failed, and in the second place, I’m a little too good at being angry. I’m really scary. So I let it happen very little.

On Wednesday of last week, I almost completely lost my temper at work (bad enough), and in front of a guest (even worse, in my opinion), Bee, and in front of two of my students (setting a bad example). I apologized to them all, several times, later. Luckily (maybe because I was not wearing any purple pants?), I did not lose it entirely but my internal temperature was really very high indeed by the end of the incident.

travel coffee mugWhat was the matter? You’re possibly going to think that this is an insignificant matter, but I don’t agree. We all went for coffee to one the (usually excellent, with usually very good staff) cafes on campus, and as usual I brought along my own coffee cup. I do that a lot, primarily since it means that I do not use any paper cups as a result, and secondarily because it keeps the coffee warmer for longer, is close to spill-proof, and is much nicer to drink from. I’ve been doing this for years. The routine is usually this: I ask for a small coffee, they hand me a small coffee cup, I smile and say I already have a cup and hand it back, I pay for the coffee, and I pour myself a small coffee and leave. It’s not always in that order, but it is close enough.

This time, I asked for a small coffee, and indicated that I’d have it in my cup, as usual. […] Click to continue reading this post →

The Future is Orange

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I don’t know if you’ve already heard about it, but the first commercial solar energy plant, (located near Seville, Spain) was inaugurated a while ago (30th March). It is an 11 Megawatt plant, called PS10 and:

solar tower…the project produces electricity with 624 large movable mirrors called heliostats.

Each of the mirrors has a surface measuring 120 square meters (1,290 square feet) that concentrates the Sun’s rays to the top of a 115 meter (377 foot) high tower where a solar receiver and a steam turbine are located. The turbine drives a generator, producing electricity.

I got that quote from an excellent article here. You can read a lot more there about some of the future plans of the EU for solar power there. Go directly to the website of the company that built it, Solucar, for more information and images of the plant.

solar mirrors

The 625 mirrors with the central tower, all glowing from the reflected sunlight, is quite […] Click to continue reading this post →

Carbon

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carbonNPR’s Robert Krulwich does it again. As part of a long special series that NPR has begun about carbon and climate change, he starts out with a really really good piece (with his usual level of humour and sound effects – and graphics on their website) on carbon. What is it with carbon that makes it such a special element to us, our biology, our planet? What is it about carbon that makes it so happy to stably bond into chains (storing energy), and so stably that we get huge reserves of energy stored underground in the form of fossil fuels (oil, etc). […] Click to continue reading this post →

Light Seen Down Under?

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compact fluorescent bulbincandescent bulbI’ve been meaning to post about this for a few days*. It has since made it to rather high visibility in the news, I’m pleased to see, generating a lot of interesting discussion. The Australians (another nation not part of the original Kyoto agreement, notably) have pushed ahead on the issue of trying to legislatively encourage (shall we say) the use of compact fluorescent light bulbs over the more wasteful traditional incandescent bulbs.

You’ll recall my posting about this idea not long ago, in the context of proposed California legislation (so yes, I used the same images in the same way). Now, I’ll admit that I was thinking of that as a test case, and when things are ironed out into a workable legislation there one would imagine the model being rolled out to the rest of the world to adopt in their own fashion. I did not expect an entire country to adopt it so soon and at such a rate (they propose to stop sales of incandescents by 2010!).

We had a lot of discussion in that earlier thread about the pros and cons of this. Commenter IrrationalPoint (IP), for example, seems convinced that this represents a serious access problem for people who respond less favourably to the new lights. Such legislation is therefore discriminatory. My response to that was in several parts. The first is that I was not convinced that the cited flicker problems were really problems that referred to the new bulbs. They don’t work like the old nasty fluorescents we remember from years back, or that are still to be found in a lot of public spaces. Their flicker rate is up at tens of KHz, not the 60 Hz of old. IP (and one or two others) then suggested that the issues were with the spectrum. My response there was that the spectrum is quite a bit different from a lot fo the old lights, and where some discomfort might arise with the new ones, this is possibly only a problem for some if direct lighting from the light bulb is used. (I personally find direct light from incandescents pretty disturbing in a lot of cases too.) Why not use the bulbs in conjunction with a simple filter or other decorative fixture that can modify the light to your tastes?

But I am keeping an open mind on this. Perhaps I’m just wrong, and the whole idea of banning incandescents is unworkable and insensitive, but I am not convinced that work cannot be done to make sure that it works well for all concerned.

One of the biggest problems with the discussion is that nobody could point to good […] Click to continue reading this post →

Fresh Air From Gore

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al gore by eric leeAs you may know, Al Gore’s movie “An Inconvenient Truth” has been nominated for an Oscar. If you want to hear more from the man himself (see also his remarks in the previous post), here’s an interview with him on NPR’s Fresh Air. It first aired last year, but it is very current. It’s so good to hear a politician speak so intelligently on these matters

You know, the last few weeks […] Click to continue reading this post →