Monday, October 20, 2008

taxis 994. Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire

Although “my undergraduate degree happens to be in engineering,” noted New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, this morning, “I was the kind of student who normally made the top half of the class possible.”

With that self-deprecating quip (and more to follow), he had the roughly 125 scientists attending the first World Science Summit laughing and paying rapt attention. And it was a sympathetic audience for what would be his take-home message: that although scientific advances are narrowing the gap between what we know and don’t know, their impacts are “dwarfed” by the “tragic lag between what we know and what we do.”

He pointed, for instance, to the fact that fully a half-century ago, scientists were already linking smoking with cancer. By the 1970s, science had also begun predicting that increased carbon-dioxide emissions from fossil-fuel burning would warm the climate “with the potentially catastrophic consequences that are playing out now, all over the world.” Yet society fought anti-smoking campaigns as vehemently as the Bush administration has fought regulations to slow climate change.

And the reason? “Far too often,” the mayor contends, “it's because of what I call ‘political science’ - the willingness [of governments] to disregard or suppress scientific findings when they don't conform to a pre-determined political agenda.”

Them's fightin’ words, mayor.

And he raised his political fists with more strong rhetoric challenging the Bush policy of mandating huge and increasing development of fuel ethanol from corn. “Our government's continued subsidies for the production of corn ethanol,” he said, amount to “moral bankruptcy.” His reasoning: In a search for a simple answer to the oil-imports problem, he pushed a policy that wasn’t based on science – but was popular with Corn Belt constituents, domestic oil companies, and automakers. Instead of pushing for conservation and higher-mileage vehicles, the president’s policies divert a cereal crop from food to fuel.http://myface.com/Louis_J_Sheehan

The resulting higher corn prices have helped propel food shortages and riots from the Philippines to Egypt, he says. Adding insult to injury, the administration is taxing ethanol made from sugar at 54 cents per gallon while subsidizing ethanol from corn to the tune of 45 cents per gallon, he notes – “even though sugar-based ethanol is cheaper and producing it generates less carbon dioxide.” Does that make sense, he asks? It certainly gives me pause.

"When such political science triumphs, both politics and science suffer, and so does our entire economy,” he contends. But politics and science don't have to be antagonists, he argues, if governments “embrace what science tells us regardless of the consequences” and ignore misguided pleadings of special interests.

He talked about how his administration looked at the smoking issue in 2002 and determined that some 10,000 New York City residents were dying prematurely each year from diseases triggered by cigarette smoke. So he got the city to pass anti-smoking laws for public buildings, ones that weren’t popular, and increased the tax on cigarettes.

Today, smoking by New Yorkers is down 20 percent, he says, and dropped even more among teens.

In another campaign – this time to combat global warming – Bloomberg had city agencies measure New York’s carbon footprint. And it was huge: some 58 million metric tons of CO2 per year – and growing. Last October, in response to the findings, he signed an executive order forcing city agencies to cut their CO2 emissions 30 percent by 2017. To make the necessary changes, he said, “we've committed 10 percent of our annual energy costs – equal to roughly $80 million a year.”

That’s putting science into politics, he says.

He’s also instructed city cabbies to convert to hybrid vehicles or similarly high-fuel-economy cars within four years. That’s a big change considering New York’s is the biggest taxi fleet in the world.

I took one of those taxis today on the way back to my hotel from the summit. Traffic was heavy so our progress was glacial. When I noticed the hacker was checking a Turkish-language newspaper, we struck up a long conversation – first on our favorite spots in Turkey, then on taxis and their gasoline bills. This guy’s vehicle logs 7,000 miles a month. But because he already drives a hybrid, when traffic slows or stops, the car runs on electricity or just stops. As a result, his gas bill for each 8-hour shift runs about $20. Fueling conventional taxis: “Oh, it costs them at least $40 a day,” he says. http://myface.com/Louis_J_Sheehan

Looks like Bloomberg won’t have much trouble with his hybrid rebellion. The oil markets are making his case for him. Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire

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Tuesday, October 7, 2008

Mount 8882.33d Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire

Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire. Seven immense boulders of coral have been found far inland on a Tongan island and may be the world’s largest tsunami debris, a new study suggests.http://Louis-J-sheehan.info

All evidence hints that the boulders, which lie inland of a three-kilometer stretch of coastline, are out of place, says Matthew J. Hornbach, a geologist at the University of Texas at Austin. First, the island is flat, so the immense boulders — each of them weighing more than 46 metric tons — didn’t roll to their current positions more than 100 meters from the beach. Second, the boulders’ composition differs significantly from the island’s volcanic soil, but matches that of the coral reef found just offshore, he notes.http://Louis-J-sheehan.info

Third, the corals in the boulders were likely alive about 122,000 years ago, but average sea level hasn’t reached the boulders present location at any time since then. Finally, some of the coral masses are oriented sideways or upside-down instead of upward, facing the sun, another testament to an exotic origin, Hornbach reported Sunday in Houston at the annual meeting of the Geological Society of America.

Surveys of the offshore shallows near the largest boulder — a three-story-tall, 1,200-metric-ton whopper — reveal a large gap in the reef where the boulder may have originated. Hornbach and his colleagues also discovered signs of a submarine landslide, but their analyses hint that the wave generated by the slumping material couldn’t have created a tsunami large enough to toss the coral pieces to their current positions. A large earthquake at the nearest subduction zone, the same type of fault that triggered the Indian Ocean tsunami in December 2004, couldn’t have spawned waves large enough to do the job, either, the researchers speculate.

However, oceanographic surveys farther out to sea have identified a possible source of a wave capable of lofting the boulders, says Hornbach. About 35 kilometers offshore sits a submarine volcano that rises to within 100 meters of the water’s surface. That peak is about twice the width of Mount St. Helens and, like that volcano, has a large, crescent-shaped portion of its flank missing — a volume of material that could have suddenly slumped during an eruption and is large enough to have caused a megatsunami that could have carried the boulders inland.

Previously, the largest known tsunami debris was a 600-metric-ton coral boulder. It was flung onshore by a 35-meter-tall wave that was triggered by the 1883 eruption and collapse of the volcano Krakatau. Hornbach says that he and his colleagues don’t yet have enough information to estimate the size of the wave that tossed the Tonga boulders ashore.Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire

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