Tag: Environmental engineering

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A corrupted source

Viewers, be aware!
YouTube: a corrupted source
for climate info.

How do you find out about scientific advances? The news? Internet sites? Social media? YouTube? Where you gather information from can have a huge impact on your opinions and the way you act.

Whilst there’s a broad scientific consensus around anthropogenic climate change and the need to address this global challenge, public opinion remains divided. Yet politicians and companies will only act in response to climate change if public consensus makes it in their best interests. And, of course, public opinion depends on what information is available…

Published research in scientific journals is rarely accessible and comes couched in technical language – a barrier to anyone without specific training in the relevant field. Instead most people rely on the news media and, increasingly, on the internet. Yet where traditional news media outlets have checks in place to ensure that the information they present is accurate, online it’s a whole other story.

Which makes research by Joachim Allgaier (2019) at Aachen University in Germany especially worrying. Using key climate search terms he analysed 200 videos about climate and climate modification. Only 89 of the videos supported the scientific consensus, whilst 4 were videos of climate scientists discussing climate topics with deniers. The remaining 107 videos contained views that opposed scientific consensus: 16 denying anthropogenic climate change and 91 videos propagating climate conspiracy theories.

More worryingly still, many of these videos use genuine scientific terms (such as geoengineering) to bolster the credibility of their output, whilst twisting the meaning and usage of those terms to meet the arguments being made. It’s a strategy to help the output avoid being considered as conspiracy theories but it further confuses the issue and can hoodwink the unwary. Viewers beware!

Original research: http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fcomm.2019.00036

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Dynamic toll

Dynamic toll roads.

Prices fluctuate with load,

save time, money, health.

 

Traffic congestion damages health, the environment and the economy. Whilst more roads might seem like the answer, history shows that additional roads don’t reduce traffic jams. Now Cramton et al (2018) suggest that smart toll roads – roads that track usage and charge accordingly – could be the solution.

By increasing prices in real time on roads that are busy, the authors suggest that road users would look to alternative routes and modes of transport or choose to travel at a different time. It would also reduce the financial burden on those individuals that rarely use road travel but still pay taxes to maintain road links.

Original source: http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/d41586-018-05836-0

 

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Rivers cut corners by John Norwood

Rivers cut corners

Reducing the meander

Over centuries

This poem is one of several that were inspired looking out of an airplane window. I was looking at an oxbow lake and thinking about how the river took a short cut. It is a simple reflection on what may seem static is decidedly not so with a shift of time frame. Incidentally, someone called me on this, claiming that rivers actually meander more over time. Turns out both cases can be true, but the meaning of the poem is the same either way.

Oxbow lakes are formed from curves in rivers as the water erodes the banks of bends, pinching off a loop of river that becomes an oxbow lake as it’s isolated from the main body of the river. Many rivers were channelized during the 19th century to be used as water ways, forming artificial oxbow lakes which may since have silted up or dried out. A study by Seidel et al (2017) suggests that reconnecting such oxbow lakes to the main channels might be an important measure for native species conservation and river restoration.

The name oxbow comes from the U-shaped collar that used to be used as a harness around the neck of oxen as they pulled ploughs. Other terms for oxbow lakes are loop lakes, cutoff lakes and horseshoe lakes.

Original Research: http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/clen.201600211

John Norwood is a Mechanical Engineer working with Carbon, Inc. to revolutionize how things are made. His interests include old houses, yoga, baking, cryptography, and bluegrass music. You can follow him on Twitter under the handle @pryoga

Enjoyed this sciku? Check out some of John’s other work: Universal truth, The answer is none, God may be defined, With enough data, and Squeamish ossifrage.