dont forget the crystals

Magnesium sulfate crystals, clingin’ to a petri dish. Chillin’.

Another quick lab snap. These are some nice crystals I grew. I was washing an earlier, less photogenic crystal garden with alcohol, and catching the runoff in a petri dish. I let it evaporate and was greeted with this happy little accident! The crystals are magnesium sulfate, available as Epsom salt at most pharmacies.

Airbag Saved My Life: the Carolina Review’s Clinical Derpitude Continues

I had thought that once I graduated college, annoying student publications would quit being so… annoying. Alas, this isn’t the case. A previous article examined the quality of analysis at the Carolina Review, UNC’s ‘journal of conservative thought and opinion’; let’s see if things have approved any in the handful of years that I’ve been away.

Okay, checking their blog… mhmm… skim the headlines, clickety clicky….

… oh sweet cthulu, rise from your watery slumber and please make it stop.

The linked article describes environmentalism as factually challenged and lacking a vision of “the overall big picture”; let us categorically examine the main evidence presented in support of this thesis:

1. “global warming, or climate change, or whatever they feel like calling it now” has been grossly exaggerated.
2. Lighter cars are inherently more dangerous than gas-guzzlers.
3. Recycling is bad.
4. Fossil fuels can be greenwashed.

Ready? Let’s go.

“Why is [head of NASA’s GISS program and accomplished geophysicist Dr. James] Hanson [sic] so important?” – Carolina Review columnist Alex Thomas

I was disappointed by the coverage of climate change. I expected it to be lousy, and it was, but I didn’t expect it to be so… unsatisfying. The only evidence presented is the claim that Dr. Hansen’s 1988 congressional testimony was critically flawed, greatly overestimating the amount of temperature change to come. This is a PRATT, a Point Refuted A Thousand Times, so my treatment will be a bit superficial.  (For more detail, read this)

Some of Hansen’s scenarios gave realistic predictions, and some didn’t. The real question is why.

A climate simulation isn’t a magickal box that spits out numbers. In order to run it, you have to input certain parameters, like how bright the sun is, the greenhouse gas concentrations, and so on. For the past you might have direct measurements or proxy records; the future is not only unwritten, but contingent upon human agency. So you have to come up with plausible scenarios for what’s coming. Maybe we cut down on fossil fuel usage; maybe we ramp it up; maybe we relax clean air standards; maybe we have a nuclear war. You run the scenarios you’re interested in on climate models, and you compare, contrast, and interpret the output. One of the scenarios that Dr. Hansen used (“Scenario A”) overestimated greenhouse gas emissions – but not carbon dioxide. Scenario A assumed that we continued to emit CFCs, which are potent greenhouse gasses. Because they threatened the ozone layer, CFCs were phased out under the Montreal Protocols, which went into effect in 1989 – the year after Hansen’s testimony. Nowhere in the Carolina Review article do we hear about such confounding factors, nor the general success of government regulation in cutting down on ozone depletors. Nor is there mention that Scenarios B and C match observations well (see above), nor that Hansen’s 1981 predictions were freakinshly accurate. * Also, why is Dr. Hansen important? Because he was an adviser to Al Gore, of course!

“Usually investigators only present and discuss the risk to occupants of the car or truck in question—as if society at large has no stake in the mayhem caused by some vehicles as long as those riding in them aren’t themselves killed.” – Wenzel and Ross 2008

haxor hijinx: a DIY hotplate

I have, once again, found myself at the helm of a DIY lab, this one with a chemical wetlab focus. I’m sure this will provide lots of material in the future; right now, I want to share a protip I came up with the other night. I have been using soda can alcohol stoves for heat, but this isn’t always appropriate. You can’t heat flammable mixtures, and they leave soot on my glassware. But I don’t have a hotplate yet! What’s a gutterpunk labnerd to do?

Don’t forget the boiling chips!

It’s won’t spin a stir bar, but a clothes iron will do fine as a hotplate! You can see that I’ve secured this one to the lab bench with wood and a clamp for extra stability.