I Agree With You Because You Agree With Me: A Technical Report on Concentrating Solar Thermal Power

‘Sustainable Energy Project’ is a research subject that contributes 1/32nd of a Bachelors degree in Engineering (Electrical and Sustainable Energy). It involved me undertaking research in to an energy system of my choice, eventually producing a fully fledged technical report. I chose to study concentrating solar thermal power, specifically solar power towers, an exercise I found interesting and horizon-expanding. With my report’s final draft newly completed, I am partly writing this to share my report with the clean energy aficionados and engineering-inclined people amongst my facebook friends (and garner feedback), but I am also going to make a few general observations about the whole business and myself.

Observation 1: Confirmation bias gets us all. I think that solar power towers are great. Intuitively then, a source that conveys their greatness I am likely to consider a better source than one that highlights their shortcomings. This is intuitive and sensible. But it’s so clearly flawed! In the course of this report I found myself looking for material that supported conclusions that I already had in mind, and I had to make a constant effort to avoid prematurely deciding what point I wanted to make. I tried to let my research speak for itself.

Observation 2: Writing a technical report takes longer than writing an argumentative essay. I often found that I would spend maybe an hour at the computer and end up having written a paragraph. This was partly due to boingboing, but was also due to the fact that every paragraph I had to fact-check, reference and get various sources, in addition to structuring and maintaining fluency. Such an effort! Writing a piece on characterisation in ‘On The Road’ was much more fun.

Observation 3: Solar Power Towers kick arse! Read the report for more. Although I recommend this article for a more concise, more comprehensible bit of ‘fo.

Basically, I am chuffed that I have completed my final draft and found the whole experience interesting. It’s not too late for me to make edits, so I would welcome any comment on the content from my engineeringly inclined friends, and any comment on the flow and expression from my friends in the Literati. Or whatever. I am doing an oral presentation of the report around October 25th, and you should come because it’ll be like a Large Hadron Collider mating with Beethoven’s entire ‘discopgraphy’. I’ll update this with the deets.

Climate Dance-Off

It was a still afternoon in the Wild West of Adelaide’s Rundle Mall. Mallgoers were going about their days, shopping, chatting, listening to buskers, little aware of the gang war about to break out on their doorstep.

Suddenly, two groups strode into a clearing from opposite sides. Dressed in blue, wearing capes, the popular movement – the millions of people worldwide who deserve a safe climate future – was represented. Facing off against them, we had the vested interests opposing action to reduce pollution

A single guitarist plugged in.

As a crowd gathered, watching, the tension thickened the air. The stand-off endured. The two sides were alien to each other, and it seemed unlikely they could come to terms.

Then it began.

“Ooh, it’s hot in here.” The climate heroes moved as one. “There’s too much carbon in the at-mos-phere.” They froze. Other than the inevitable murmur of a busy commercial district, you could have heard a pin drop.

“STAND UP!” they yelled. “Take action, take action, and get some satisfaction.”

People stood. People stared. Mysteriously, the AYCC election scorecard appeared in their hands.

The polluters were a little fazed. But they weren’t to be outdone. As the popular movement continued, encouraging people to stand up and take action, the polluters moved in, chanting over them:

“We don’t care, it’s not that hot, coal will fund my third yacht.”

As one of the climate heroes, I was aghast. Could these people really think that a third yacht was more important than addressing the climate crisis? According to their chant…yes.

But we weren’t to be outdone. Just when they thought they had us we burst out yes, A SECOND DANCE NUMBER. Jai ho! We did arm rolls, arm clouds, and span, and made teapot shapes. It seemed that we would win. We had the upper hand.

But the fossil fuel lobby had another ace up their sleeve. The Thriller dance! It being Friday the 13th, they took no prisoners, busting out creepy hands, eerie heads, and freaky bodies.

The people were cowed. It seemed that the very resilience, determination and hope that have characterised the international youth climate movement were under siege.

The heroes gathered. Then, together, they summoned an avatar of the most powerful variety:

“EARTH, WIND, FIRE, WATER, HEART”

CLIMATE ELEPHANT BOOM!!!

The climate elephant entered the arena. The crowd went wild. It seemed that the day was saved. But then up stepped the most dirty of the polluters, the most oily of the lobbyists, the most vested of the interests.

It was a dance to the death (of sorts). Many a blow was struck, and at times it seemed as if dear old Nelly may have been slain. But Nelly endured. And then, in a moment the beauty of which will never leave me – he extended an arm to his opponent, welcoming her, as if to say, “Join us – together we can solve the climate crisis.”

At this point, the climate heroes pressed forwards, sharing hard hats and capes with their hitherto opponents. It was as if everyone had finally realised that the climate crisis was an opportunity to create hundreds of thousands of clean energy jobs, to improve public health, and to protect clean air and water for our children and generations to come.

Together, they sang one final song:

“Leave coal and oil for yesterday
solar and wind will power the way
future generations will adore us,
and they’ll sing in grateful chorus
Well done!
Well done!
Well done! Climate action now!”

And it was done.

Tony Abbott Visits the Doctor: A Joke

Tony Abbott noticed that his mother was sick so he took her to the doctor. The doctor gave Mrs. Abbott an examination, and then called Tony in to his office for a private discussion.

“Tony,” the doctor began, “I’m afraid your mother is suffering from a heroin addiction. This drug is harming her significantly, and she will likely die if she keeps using heroin. Now, do you know how she is getting the stuff?”

“Of course,” the leader of the opposition responded, “I’m selling it to her.”

The doctor was astonished.

“Why don’t you stop?”

“Well, other people are selling her heroin in higher quantities, so it doesn’t really matter if I stop.”

This seemed rather questionable to the doctor, but he decided to go along with it.

“Have you tried asking them to stop?”

“Yes, but apparently they need the money from drug-dealing to feed their families. They say I should stop because I was the one who got her addicted to heroin, and because I don’t actually need the income.”

“So why haven’t you?”

The potential Prime Minister paused and looked at the doctor as if he were stupid before answering,

“Because they are selling her more heroin than me.”

(Note that the real joke is the refusal by the two major parties to take action on climate change to reduce carbon pollution, protect our future, create hundreds of thousands of clean energy jobs, and create more livable and sustainable cities)

‘Kiss’

Edvard Munch's 'Kiss'

I first saw this painting by Edvard Munch when I was in Vienna, in the Leopold Museum. I had wanted to see ‘The Scream’, which I knew was a great example of expressionism, which communicates human emotion with great intensity. ‘The Scream’, despite featuring on the promotional material, did not feature in the exhibition. ‘Kiss’ did. I was swept away. It has soared to the top of my charts. It is my desktop background.

What do I love about this painting?

Firstly, there is no colour. This is completely sensible, because colour doesn’t feature in kissing. Kissing is not an ocular activity, but an oscular one. Although humans predominantly sense by sight, during a kiss, sensation comes from the other senses. The external world, which typically impresses itself upon us by the processing of light, is cut-off in kissing – one’s world is one’s own world, in direct contact and immediate.

That said, one’s world is not only one’s own world. There is also another’s world in to which one is entering. For me, humans can be strangely alien. ‘Cogito, ergo sum’ gives me some certainty of my own existence, but the inner lives of others remain a mystery. It’s clichéd yet axiomatic that there is no reason to presume that the world I inhabit is the same inhabited by other – it is possible that my thought process and life experience is not only idiosyncratic but utterly unique, unrelatable. However, the kissers are shown here undivided: almost no delineation exists where the lovers’ mouths meet. Munch portrays them as flowing in to one another, as essences in the act of joining, two world’s in the act of becoming one. This is very reassuring. Not only is one joined to the other, one joins the other. They bring their worlds together and something is affirmed for each of them – their commonality, their shared humanity. Their kiss, in creating a forum to feel and embrace what it means to be human, establishes something universal with which each person, regardless of their idiosyncrasies or obliviousness, is endowed.

In ‘Kiss’, we also have our couple positioned in front of a closed window with open curtains. Brilliant, Munch. Thank you. This indicates to me the external world, the daily affairs that occupy so much of our time that could be better spent kissing. Kissing, the subjects are oblivious to that which is external. Sooner or later they may have to put clothes back on, and maybe she will have to make a sales pitch while he teaches nine year olds their times tables, but for now they have put the world on hold and each exists only for the another. They are escaping. In a dream, they could stay in their hostel room for an eternity, wrapped up in bodies, secure, complete. The kissing will inevitably end, but for this relatively infinitesimal time, it may as well go on forever. The world can wait. In this sense, the kiss is an allegory for every social transaction. Everything is transient, everything fades, but everything is worth experiencing nonetheless. No kiss goes on forever, nor does any ‘Chameleon’ jam, nor any relationship unchanged, but a kiss is, if not beautiful, unique, and can last forever in memory.

Munch, with ‘Kiss’, offers us a snapshot – a man and woman ensconced, merged. While, no prospects are suggested either for the couple’s future or the kiss’ past, light is shone upon the act of kissing itself, presenting it variously as: an intensely sensory experience, albeit one forgoing the use of vision; an intimate act of joining, bringing two separated worlds together; and an ephemeral, magical escape from drudgery. For me, who is quite a fan of kissing, who has been fortunate enough to enjoy some rather spectacular kisses and kissers, this is nothing short of extraordinary.

Inaction on Climate Change is Riddikulus!

As this video makes overwhelmingly clear.

Looks like a great time to register for Power Shift 2010 Adelaide!

Scientists Erred on Climate

Alarming measurements a ‘parallax error’

MAUNA LOA, HAWAII – The scientific world was rocked yesterday by revelations that the theory of anthropogenic global warming, commonly known as ‘climate change’, was founded on an inaccurate measurement made by a work-experience student early in the 1980s.

According to sources within the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the device used to measure atmospheric concentrations

Fig 1: Parallax error

of carbon dioxide – the gas until recently considered a prime culprit for the purported warming of the Earth’s atmosphere – was housed on a low shelf. As a result, readings taken from this device suffered from what is known as ‘parallax error’, whereby the viewer’s point of reference is skewed [Fig.1]. This gave rise to systematic error, making concentrations of carbon dioxide seem higher than they were.

The ‘Keeling curve’, which shows annual carbon dioxide concentrations since 1958, was thus revealed to be utterly inaccurate. As one atmospheric physicist conceded anonymously, “I guess the combustion in oxygen of billions of tonnes of organic carbon didn’t actually result in carbon dioxide going in to the atmosphere after all.”

In a series of startling admissions that followed the initial declaration, it came to light that almost all data supporting the theory that the atmosphere was warming and that humans were responsible were affected by similar errors.

As news of the errors came to light, prominent climatologists the world offered their resignations, many suffering public ridicule. Glaciologists, who had gone out on a limb in suggesting that the accelerated melting of glaciers could impact the water supply of billions of the world’s people, acknowledged that, in fact, they could probably just buy some Evian or something. Apologising profusely, a number of oceanographers who had once been concerned about ocean acidification, noted that the outlet of a sulfuric acid factory was probably not a great place to measure these things.

Although many conservative pundits and right-wing commentators immediately jumped upon the admission as evidence of a deep-seated conspiracy, scientists were forthcoming in owning up to what NASA’s Professor James Hansen called “an unfortunate raft of genuine mistakes.”

“In hindsight,” he continued, “we probably should have used satellites or something to measure surface temperatures, not just popped outside and guessed.”

The now de-bunked 'Keeling Curve'

Climate sceptics the world over pronounced themselves vindicated. In a joint statement, putatively backed by up to 33,000 scientists, at least 5 of whom are still alive, familiar with climatology, and still publishing, they declared “The beginning of a golden future time for humanity.”

“This is a a great day. Clearly, if the globe is not warming, then there is no reason to discontinue our resource-intensive, unhealthy and wasteful lifestyle. We, and fellow sceptics the world over, look forward to many millenia more of fossil-fuel usage, deforestation, and land-degradation.”

Love and Symbiosis

The other night I saw Béla Fleck perform on the banjo. Having begun learning the instrument when 15, this musician is now 52, and magnificent. What most impressed me as I watched this man play his instrument was the natural ease with which the instrument and he collaboratively existed. While, in music, a fatal separation always exists between the player and the played, I could still behold an intimate understanding and empathy that Fleck had for his banjo. I enviously imagined the comfort with which he would tune it and take care of it, and appreciated how it, in turn, enabled him to express himself so powerfully in his music.

While a banjo is on the mindless end of the sentience spectrum, a horse is not, so I feel that a similar situation to what I’ve described can take place with a natural horse rider, yet even more so. While I can’t relate to this, I was given an insight to it in the story Centaur of Anne Manne’s, ‘So This Is Life’, where Manne, describing the way she attuned herself to the first horse she owned in her childhood, comes to say, “I felt we were not divided and separated by being a different species, but united in creatureliness….” In this case, the horse rider – who has always enjoyed the attentiveness and complaisance of her animal consort – reciprocates, forging an equal and indomitable bond based around mutual understanding, an ability, as it were, to communicate beyond mere language. This creates an environment in which “being with” becomes a repose, an experience by which one is enriched and fulfilled.

So we have the human-instrument relationships, and we have the human-animal ones. Then there are the human-human ones. The same closeness, when it exists between persons, is something even more awesome and inspirational, but seems to me to be that much harder to realise, perhaps because we are looking at a case where ‘giving back’ isn’t something a person can undertake solely out of appreciation for what has been shared with them, but also is demanded by a need existing in the other. A need that, suffice to say, isn’t quite so pronounced in a banjo.

This is why I think that love is, necessarily, not a gift, but an exchange. Love isn’t something that you feel for someone, nor something that you offer someone, but a shared emotional perfume from the censer of understanding and connection. It isn’t born of a person, but of a juxtaposition of persons. For example, much as I admire Christine Milne, her policy and our shared views regarding happiness, I do not love her, I cannot, because I mean nothing to her. While only I can feel as I do for her, she is who she is regardless of who I am, and that which she gives to me she gives to everyone. On the other hand, a truer picture of love is revealed by Roy Croft, in his poem ‘Love’, which I am a little disappointed to find may be known to others than me:

“I love you not only for what you are, but for what I am when I am with you. I love you not only for what you have made of yourself, but for what you are making of me. I love you for the part of me that you bring out.”

This love is an exchange. It is a constant back-and-forth between two, a tacit dialogue based around feeling and cherishing both another’s influence upon oneself, and oneself’s influence upon another. It is self-creation, where the self being created is a self of two, a shared self – as is the self doing the creating.

I think the most sincere seed for the love I’m talking about is being able to communicate fluently. This is immensely difficult between ordinary people. We each struggle to express an inarticulable range of emotions, desires and needs in pedestrian mere words. To speak of love, particularly, is like trying to play the piano while wearing boxing gloves: the nuance and individual cadence of emotion simply cannot be conveyed through words which are in everybody’s employ. To understand another’s expressions is also hideously difficult. In ‘The Unbearable Lightness of Being’, Milan Kundera compares life to a musical composition, suggesting that, there are times when people can go about writing it together and exchanging motifs, but also that there comes a point when ones composition is “more or less complete, and every motif, every object, every word means something different to them.” That is, different lives spawn different worlds, and another person’s, entrenched around them, can be that much more impenetrable.

I feel this difficulty acutely, and I’m often frustrated by having to spell things out to people. I can’t take what is inside of me and put it such that the other person can hear it and put it inside of them. This is frustrating enough when we are discussing mere ideas or perspectives. It’s painful when discussing experiences or emotions. So I feel unparalleled joy – love – when this isn’t necessary. When a companion uses words as I do, understands words as I do, and my unique experience of humanhood – my isolated and singular memories, values, hopes, and fears – can briefly be shared, intimately and delicately, with another, and I can share in that person’s own unique experience. For a time, our respective essences, the individual “I” that makes each us ourself, can conjoin, and there is not a “you and I”, but a collective “we”. I can both feel understanding and feel understood, and feeling understood is a profound experience that gives validity to my life and my person. In Tolstoy’s ‘Anna Karenina’, Levin experiences this with his beloved: “She had fully divined and expressed his poorly expressed thought”, treasuring “this laconic and clear, almost wordless, communication of the most complex thoughts.”

When I ride my bike, feel it respond to my weight, feel the pedals turn under my feet, I have a subtle, inimitable familiarity with what it needs me to do, and I can tell when something is wrong. With people, this is a fair bit harder, except where those people are bikes, which is rarely the case. It’s so much harder to know another person, to feel as they feel, to know when they are troubled, or moved, inspired, encouraged, or heartbroken – but it is that much more rewarding. To find a kindred spirit in this world is to live not just through oneself, but to reap also the successes and failures of another -­ a separate person, with whom one can, through an exceptional understanding, live collaboratively.

manifesto

let my life be dots and dashes,
cacophony punctuated. by silence.
not a single unbroken line
a clashingclangingshifting bedrock.

let me rise and fall, soar and plummet:
fail, be chewed, ground and crushed
or triumph, and see my dreams come true,
as long as I’m altered, and nothing is still.

I want to tear myself pushing my body too far
to feel blood in my lungs and a soul alive,
to hold the hand inside you in a sun-setting dark
while leaves decayly droop and slowly cascade.

may I be destroyed and remade a thousand times
erased and redrawn to my artistic pleasure
to be mercurial, uncharted, constantly inconstant -
let none ever presume to have my measure.

let me rise and soar!, fail and plummet
fall, be crushed and ground and chewed
or triumph, and see my truths become dreams,
as long as I’m altered, and. nothing is still.

Abbott Says Jesus His Source for Temperature Statistics

Canberra, ACT – An embattled Tony Abbott struck back at scientists and journalists today, saying there is only one definitive source of information on historical temperatures, and that it is Jesus.

The controversial figure has been criticised for telling Primary School Children at a South Australian school it was warmer at the time of Jesus, but stands by his comments.

“You have these scientists taking ice-core measurements and reconstructing temperatures based upon tree-ring data,” said the Opposition leader, “But have they considered that the Son himself was alive at that time, and can tell us all about how hot it was?”

According to Abbott, his concern about global warming alarmism led him to question Jesus’ experience of temperature during a recent prayer session.

Abbott said that Jesus was apparently at first evasive, saying that, as humanity’s saviour, he was more concerned with redeeming humankind from the taint of original sin than noting average surface temperatures. Pressed, however, Jesus went on to reveal that during his three-year ministry several days were “scorchers”.

“At that wedding in Cana”, Jesus is reported as saying, “it was sweltering. People were drinking water like it were wine, it was that hot.”

Based upon this revelation, Abbott has flagged an intention to slash funding to what he calls a “paganistic” CSIRO, instead diverting it to the “divinely insightful” Australian Christian Lobby.

It remains to be seen whether Australians want a political leader who, in making policy decisions that will affect humanity for next thousand years, discounts the research of thousands of published scientists in favour of unsubstantiated and unverified anecdotal data.

Like The First Day

morning, father rises to swim
makes a splash, makes a wave, does laps then shaves
a bristle-whisker man is now made clean.
Mikhaila next goes walking,
there is no place she’s going to
but she always visits it: who? what?
a local, or a locale du jour?

A PC blinks and beeps into life
with a just-awake boy at the helm.
The ferret has been put outside -
the bus – it won’t come yet.

A few others wait, slumber satisfied
’til morning mood infects them:
-chickens birking around the lawn
-a corridor ajoy with song
-clanging pots that echo long
The sun has risen,
now the middle son rises

To muesli, the only steadfast solution
to all of life’s problems, its constancy endures
the frustrions of a missing folder
the wearisome trial of getting older
The angry mindslap of work not done.

And soon the morning twister sucks all
into its eyeless storm.
ECH badges are placed, shoes are found
lunches are packed and bags are filled
like stockings by a school teacher santa.

Then, one-by-one, they’ve come now they go
through locked gate in to the world beyond.
Ollie wonders, daily, lonely:
whither do they abscond?