I know a few things about the oil industry and about offshore engineering - enough to have a vague understanding of the technicalities of what is happening in the Gulf of Mexico with the current oil spill. But what I understand very well is that the people trying to fix the problem have a really difficult job on their hands. What they are trying to do is a bit like stopping the flow out of an industrial pressure washer by shooting sand into the nozzle, except that it's about a hundred times the size, they can't switch it off, and the "hose" is all inaccessible in rock under the sea bed, and the stuff coming out is toxic, and it's hot (200 degrees C), and at an unbelievable pressure of 700 times atmospheric pressure, and all this on the ocean floor some 1.5 km below the ships from which they control their robots to do all the work. The whole world is watching what they do, and is justly horrified at the amount of crude belching out of the ground. Thousands, perhaps millions have expressed their anger that not enough is being done. The press, the lawyers and the politicians are circling like vultures, waiting for that exclusive, that tidbit of juicy news, that case that will allow early retirement. And under these conditions, the best people in the industry must certainly feel the pressure to stop the leak.
The world has been fortunate in recent years that there have not been other gushers like this one. Unfortunately this means that there are no "experts" to turn to, simply because nobody's ever had to do this before. The engineers and technicians involved had better be the best that BP can find (Red Adair famously said "If you think it's expensive to hire a professional to do the job, wait until you hire an amateur") so if they are finding it difficult to plug the leak, then it must be really hard to do. To these engineers working under such media pressure with such an engineering challenge and such disaster potential, I have one word:
Respect!
Saturday, 29 May 2010
Sunday, 24 January 2010
Meditation
Do we take enough time out to enjoy the amazing things around us ...
http://vimeo.com/5471619
... and to watch whilst amazing things happen around us ?
http://vimeo.com/5471619
... and to watch whilst amazing things happen around us ?
Monday, 21 December 2009
Climate Change - where is the truth?
There is a huge amount of noise going on surrounding climate change, global warming and the politics of COP15. I've been trying to make sense of it, from my scientific engineering background. I've done quite a lot of reading, but I can't give you the answer. Here's why:
EITHER the world is getting hotter, OR it isn't. I've tried to read the science myself, and the result seems to be "we don't know". Some studies suggest the world is getting hotter, other studies suggest it isn't. The amount of "noise" makes it hard to measure (for example we are trying to measure a 2 deg C global rise against seasonal variation of 25 degrees between winter and summer - it's like measuring the depth of water in a bathtub whilst your child is splashing the water about). Faced with the variance in results, the newspapers, politicians and activists read this whichever way they want. The general public remain confused.
IF the world is getting hotter, it is EITHER caused by mankind, OR it isn't. Again, my reading of the data is unclear. "We don't know". Soot from the 1980s seems to have mitigated the situation. What about pollutants from the industrial revolution? Nobody's mentioned the Ozone Hole recently... Are the changes in climate due to our actions in the last 5 years, the last 50 years, or the last 500 years? Do we know? The answers are confused because the studies show different results. Again, dry matchwood for fueling the fiery debate. The arrogant absolve responsibility of anything, blaming everyone else. The general public remain confused ... and feel guilty.
We don't know if the world is getting hotter, or who caused it. There are some pretty significant signs that the world IS getting hotter, and we can logically argue that the heat and rubbish we've generated over the last 250 years has been pretty irresponsible. However we may not be able to say conclusively why these things happen until a lot more data has been collected and analysed ... by which time it may well be too late. The general public will still be confused, will still feel guilty, and will probably be dying out.
Regardless of the answers to these questions, we DO have a responsibility to do something. Our wasteful society is running out of oil, possibly running out of drinking water, probably going to run out of land, will eventually run out of coal.... We cannot continue our society forever in this way. In fact we probably can't continue our society for 10 years in this way. As natural resources become scarce, people will adapt to new ways of doing things, but history also tells us that there will be conflicts: do we want a Second American Civil War over drinking water? Do we desire to resolve the land crisis that will result from global flooding through the loss of a billion lives? The alternative, unfortunately, is what Al Gore calls "an inconvenient truth" because it means inconveniently buying things that aren't made in China, inconveniently having to go without a second - or even a first - car, inconveniently not being able to hop over to Prague for a night at the opera.
Copenhagen has showed us that Politicians can't give us the answers: the Nanny State that we trusted in to provide for all our needs looks like the Emperor in his new clothes. Are there things that the general public can do? Things that will REALLY make a difference. Not just changing lightbulbs and stopping coal-trains, but radically changing our way of life? Somebody? Anybody?
EITHER the world is getting hotter, OR it isn't. I've tried to read the science myself, and the result seems to be "we don't know". Some studies suggest the world is getting hotter, other studies suggest it isn't. The amount of "noise" makes it hard to measure (for example we are trying to measure a 2 deg C global rise against seasonal variation of 25 degrees between winter and summer - it's like measuring the depth of water in a bathtub whilst your child is splashing the water about). Faced with the variance in results, the newspapers, politicians and activists read this whichever way they want. The general public remain confused.
IF the world is getting hotter, it is EITHER caused by mankind, OR it isn't. Again, my reading of the data is unclear. "We don't know". Soot from the 1980s seems to have mitigated the situation. What about pollutants from the industrial revolution? Nobody's mentioned the Ozone Hole recently... Are the changes in climate due to our actions in the last 5 years, the last 50 years, or the last 500 years? Do we know? The answers are confused because the studies show different results. Again, dry matchwood for fueling the fiery debate. The arrogant absolve responsibility of anything, blaming everyone else. The general public remain confused ... and feel guilty.
We don't know if the world is getting hotter, or who caused it. There are some pretty significant signs that the world IS getting hotter, and we can logically argue that the heat and rubbish we've generated over the last 250 years has been pretty irresponsible. However we may not be able to say conclusively why these things happen until a lot more data has been collected and analysed ... by which time it may well be too late. The general public will still be confused, will still feel guilty, and will probably be dying out.
Regardless of the answers to these questions, we DO have a responsibility to do something. Our wasteful society is running out of oil, possibly running out of drinking water, probably going to run out of land, will eventually run out of coal.... We cannot continue our society forever in this way. In fact we probably can't continue our society for 10 years in this way. As natural resources become scarce, people will adapt to new ways of doing things, but history also tells us that there will be conflicts: do we want a Second American Civil War over drinking water? Do we desire to resolve the land crisis that will result from global flooding through the loss of a billion lives? The alternative, unfortunately, is what Al Gore calls "an inconvenient truth" because it means inconveniently buying things that aren't made in China, inconveniently having to go without a second - or even a first - car, inconveniently not being able to hop over to Prague for a night at the opera.
Copenhagen has showed us that Politicians can't give us the answers: the Nanny State that we trusted in to provide for all our needs looks like the Emperor in his new clothes. Are there things that the general public can do? Things that will REALLY make a difference. Not just changing lightbulbs and stopping coal-trains, but radically changing our way of life? Somebody? Anybody?
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