Blessed by the Potato

It’s been a long time since I’ve had to deal with rush-hour, weekday Toronto traffic, so when I faced that grim spectre yesterday I wasn’t really prepared for it. Of course, it was a particularly bad day, with several accidents on the 401, and an accident in the TTC shutting down the subway. Plus the nice spring weather meant construction popped up everywhere.

Nonetheless, I was really amazed at some of the crazy driving I saw. In particular, on Sheppard right at Doris a car was abandoned in the left lane (westbound), and that caused a major blockage all the way back to Bayview. Who just abandons a car like that, especially right at an intersection. It couldn’t have at least been pushed onto the less busy side street?

Then, a bit further on, there was a police car trying to make it through an intersection behind me. It took him about 10 seconds to clear the intersection because people just weren’t stopping or pulling over. I pulled over as soon as I saw the lights in my rear-view mirror (just over a block from the intersection — a few seconds of driving if he finally got a chance to get up to speed) and 3 cars passed me for it (this was on a single-lane, too)!

I wrote a short rant not too long about about the ban of indandescents in Nunavut. I think that reducing the use of incandescents would be a step in the right direction, and taxing incandescents (or subsidizing CFLs) so that it becomes easier for consumers to choose the “right” one without having to do a long-term cost-benefit analysis is a good thing. Banning them, though, is not such a bright idea, since there are a small number of situations where fluorescents are not ideal (see previous rant or below for details).

After writing that rant up, I rewrote it as a letter to my MPP, kicking myself after I sent it since there was no way Ontario would actually follow Nunavut’s lead and ban incandescent lighting…

Whoops.

I was happy at least to see this paragraph in the CBC report (the other news sources I skimmed didn’t have it — the Toronto Star even said that Ontario was “the first… jurisdiction in North America to commit to such a ban” — perhaps technically true, since the legislation hasn’t passed in Nunavut yet, but a somewhat disingenuous statement):

The ban, part of a wider energy conservation program, would allow for exceptions, such as the use of incandescent bulbs in fields like medicine.

This is the letter I sent my MPP last month. I never got a response (at least the last time I went crazy-go-nuts on my MPP, she sent me an acknowledgement!).

Dr. Matthews, I recently saw the news that Nunavut was planning on banning the sale of incandescent light bulbs in the territory to save power and reduce emissions. (story: http://www.cbc.ca/consumer/story/2007/03/22/nu-lightbulb.html)

I am writing you to encourage the province of Ontario to not follow Nunavut’s lead in this matter — a ban on incandescents is not the way to go.

Taxing them however is, in my opinion, an excellent idea: make some money for the government, and make the initial purchase price of an incandescent the same as a fluorescent — even those with a short-term focus can then make better decisions about which to get, rather than having to try to weigh the initial costs against the long-term energy savings. That should help dramatically shift the usage away from the incandescents. Compact fluorescents are a good thing, and I’ve been putting them in nearly every room in the house here. However, they do have a few short-comings, and for these reasons it’s important to have incandescents as an option:

* CFLs can not be used in completely enclosed light fixtures, such as some pot lights.
* Many CFLs can not be put on dimmer switches (though some specific models can be).
* Some types of CFLs (I do not know if this applies to all of them) do not handle extremes in temperature well, and may not be suited to use in stoves, range hoods, or outdoor lighting.
* Almost all CFLs have a delay between turning on the switch and lighting up. There is a further delay between the first spark and full brightness. While this is not a problem for most applications, it is slightly less than ideal for some uses such as motion-detector-triggered security lights (compounded by further delays in cold environments).
* A small minority of people find that the flicker from fluorescent lighting (though CFLs don’t seem quite as bad) gives them headaches.
* CFLs have less-than-perfect colour fidelity. While it’s good enough for almost all uses, some specialized cases (certain science experiments, artists) may find that they prefer to use incandescents for their broad-spectrum output.
* Some sensitive electronics can experience interference from some types of CFLs (I believe the kind with magnetic ballast) due to proximity or being on the same circuit.

For the majority of cases, CFLs are great ways to save tonnes of energy, but for these situations, we should aim to have incandescents as an option (even if it is an expensive one).

Now, it looks like while you won’t be able to buy an incandescent in Ontario under the current plan, you could go to the States or Quebec and bring one over without any trouble, if you had to (so they’ll be unavailable, but not illegal).

Canada should be a world leader when it comes to issues of the environment, if for no other reason than because we have so much of it. Our record on Kyoto and greenhouse gas emissions has been rather shameful, though we do have a succession of uncaring minority governments to partially blame for that, as well as a relatively uncaring public (until quite recently, that is). It is long time past to fix that, though, and I’m surprised that while the election-hungry neocons have identified the environment as a key issue, they haven’t yet actually done a whole lot about it (the funding announcements of the last few days notwithstanding). Mostly, they’re throwing around as much rhetoric and mud as they can, hoping to survive the issue in the next election (which they’re desperately trying to bring for the summer, by all accounts). So the Europeans really showed us when they recently announced plans to go above and beyond their Kyoto commitments.

Of course, our leaders are always faced with tough choices. Global warming looks to be a very real threat, and could be potentially very devastating. However, it’s also a long-term, global problem, so it’s very difficult to face with our local, short-term perspective. After all, there’s tax cuts to be had, health care to bolster, and all manner of other problems to ignore, everything from homelessness to defense, space exploration to public transportation, basic research to primary education.

Something not a lot of people are talking about is that a lot of these initiatives are needed for another problem all together: peak oil. Thanks to advances in new technology, we aren’t going to run out of oil for a long time to come. Which is a good thing, because alternatives (hydrogen, biofuels, electricity, etc) are still uncomfortably far off into the future. However, we’re already starting to see evidence of tightening supply. The thing with something that is in such high demand, such as oil, is that even modest declines in supply can lead to huge swings in price, since demand is so very inelastic (and I may be abusing my economic terminology, so forgive me here). We saw this quite clearly recently in Ontario: a fire at an Imperial Oil refinery caused fairly widespread shortages, station closures, and an increase of roughly 20-25% in price. And this was at a time when demand was relatively low due to the bad weather keeping many drivers off the road. The thing is, that refinery was nowhere near responsible for 20+% of our refining ability (one report says it was just 6% of Imperial’s capacity, just one of several major companies operating in Ontario). So a relatively minor drop in supply lead to a relatively large increase in price. Imagine that sort of situation even just 10 years from now if world oil extraction drops just a bit… But if we have developed technologies at this point in time to battle greenhouse emissions and use less oil, then we will simultaneously tackle that problem.

It’s a lot like hybrid cars in that regard: the combination of electric and gasoline power make hybrids more efficient in their use of oil, especially for stop-and-go city driving. Some people have slammed them as not solving the root problem of oil dependence, since they do still run on gas, however they are actually very good bridge technologies. Not only are they effective at saving gas right now, they also serve to develop the electric motors and batteries (and underlying manufacturing base) that will likely be needed for any future technology car.

I was glad to see the hybrid car rebate included in the federal budget, and the increased gas guzzler tax. One person recently was hailing the Cons for this move, saying that they’re clearly a pro-environmental party, and that this was a very pro-environment budget. To that I just have to say that this is, as many commentators are saying, a pre-election budget. It’s a pro-everything budget. The Cons have been very reticient to make any of these moves, and have only done so because currently these issues are at the forefront of Canadians’ minds. I have no doubt that if public focus shifts (as it does quite often), the Cons will stop all further progress. They haven’t lead us to these measures, they’ve been driven to them. A release today in the CBC has some good rhetoric, and it’s a lot further along than they were a year ago… but they’re still using this double-talk of a “balanced approach” and continuing to think that anything that’s good for the environment must be bad for our way of life.

Another environmental intiative making the rounds lately is the idea of banning outright the sale of incandescent bulbs. This is one move I can’t get behind. Taxing them is, in my opinion, an excellent idea: make some money for the government, and make the initial purchase price of an incandescent the same as a fluorescent — even short-term thinkers can then make better decisions about which to get, rather than having to try to weigh the costs against the long-term energy savings. That should help dramatically shift the usage away from the incandescents. Compact fluorescents are a good thing, and I’ve been putting them in a lot of rooms in the house here. However, they do have a few short-comings, and for these reasons it’s important to have incandescents as an option (though perhaps we should stop using them as our main source of home lighting):

• Compact fluorescent lights (CFL) are more costly overall if they do not manage to live out their whole life-cycle. They also contain trace amounts of mercury. Combined, these two issues mean that CFLs should not be used in areas where lights are more likely to be smashed than wear out from old age (places like batting cages, say, or where small children throw rocks at them).
• CFLs can not be used in enclosed light fixtures, such as some pot lights or other recessed/indirect lighting conditions.
• Many CFLs can not be put on dimmer switches (be sure to check the package before putting yours on one!).
• Some types of CFLs (I do not know if this applies to all of them) do not handle extremes in temperature well, and may not be suited to use in fridges, stoves, range hoods, or outdoor lighting.
• Almost all CFLs have a delay between turning on the switch and lighting up. There is a further delay between the first spark and full brightness. While this is not a problem for most applications, it is slightly less than ideal for some applications such as motion-detector-triggered security lights (compounded by further delays in cold environments), and lightswitch raves.
• A small minority of people find that the flicker from fluorescent lighting (including CFLs, though they don’t seem quite as bad) gives them headaches.
• CFLs have less-than-perfect colour fidelity. While it’s good enough for almost all uses, some specialized cases (certain science experiments, artists) may find that they prefer to use incandescents for their broad-spectrum output.
• Some sensitive electronics can experience interference from some types of CFLs (I believe the kind with magnetic ballast) due to proximity or being on the same circuit.

For the majority of cases, they are great ways to save tonnes of energy, but for these situations, we should aim to have incandescents as an option (even if it is an expensive one).

Finally, another recent story said that because conservation efforts have started working so well, Toronto Hydro is losing money, and wants to hike electricity rates. I don’t know what to say to that. On the one hand, more expensive electricity encourages people to conserve, and brings it closer to the true cost to produce. But I don’t want to see peoples’ bills go up because they were conserving (the net bill will go down, but you know many people won’t see it that way). I’m also not so sure Toronto Hydro is really too hard up if they’ve got the cash to spare to get into the telecom business…

Last year we had to deal with BEMs selecting a hurricane-devastated area of Mexico to hold the conference. We had deep fears all along that the hotel would not be ready (2 weeks of margin-of-error for their opening was not a lot of time for repairs that stretched out over 8 months) — and indeed, it wasn’t. We had to go with the hotel next door at the last minute, which over-charged us, and was suffering from some residual damage itself (periodic hot water and air conditioning outages, and the internet never worked in the rooms).

This year, we’re going to an undamaged part of Japan, so there shouldn’t be any of this nonsense. However, we’re still having issues being confident that this meeting will actually take place, so we haven’t booked flights or anything yet. For one thing, the deadline to apply for student travel support was last friday. As part of the application, they wanted your paid conference registration and a copy of your airline ticket (so they could estimate how much money they needed to find from sponsors for the travel awards). There was no registration form yet, so we couldn’t do that. And since there was no registration form, we hadn’t booked our tickets yet — they said that was fine, nobody had yet. Instead, they just wanted us to send in the page of the application with our contact information so that they could get an idea of how many students there would be.

I find this a little troubling, but even more troubling is that they haven’t yet picked a hotel to host the event. I don’t know about Japan, but in many other cities where we try to have conferences, you can’t leave booking out 150 rooms to the last minute. At least, not if you want a decent rate and/or to be close to where the conference will be. And not having any hotel information makes us cautious about booking flights. Despite not having anything done yet, we’re pretty sure the conference organizers will eventually book rooms for the conference itself, but what about the days before and after? Many of us from Canada are planning on arriving a day or two early to get over the jet lag before the conference begins. Many people are planning on staying afterwards for a bit of vacation, but if it turns out the rooms are a few hundred dollars a night, those plans might have to change, so we can’t very well book flights until we know how many days we can afford to stay in-country.

Two solid days of travel (24 hours in a plane or train, each way!) for 5 long days of work. I don’t know why I didn’t just outright refuse to go long ago. I don’t need the stress of worrying about this nonsense for two months in advance… not to mention the flying halfway around the world to be bored to tears by smelly, unwashed scientists. Though a really good suggestion was to try to get Febreeze to sponsor the conference, and we could mist everyone down as they entered…

There’s this house on my walk to work that’s always seemed to have… issues… with their garbage collection. Usually, there’s a lot of left-over, odd pieces of trash on their lawn, and it looks like the raccoons quite often get a chance to pick through their garbage. Today, there’s a ripped-open bag in the middle of their lawn that’s been there for almost a week now. A few days ago, I had the opportunity to see why, exactly, they do so poorly with a task so simple as putting your trash out for someone else to take away. As I was walking up the street, I saw a girl come out of the ground floor unit, put her trash on the curb, and go inside. Just a few seconds after she got in, the guy in the second floor unit came out and hurled a bag of trash off of his balcony out in the general direction of the street (it landed on the lawn before the sidewalk, and remains there today). This was in the morning too, which gave the animals lots of time to pick through it before collection the next day.

Now that the snow has melted, that block is just disgusting. There’s a vast swath of debris stretching half a block now laid bare by the thaw. That block is made worse today because sometime last night somebody had an egg fight or something: two dozen eggs are thrown all up and down the street and lawns along that block.

I just don’t really understand people’s weird garbage issues. Like we’ve had all kinds of weird crap thrown into our parking lot. Beer bottles, of course. Tonnes of beer bottles. I mean, I still don’t really understand beer bottles: they’re reusable/recyclable, you can get money for them, and they’re dangerous when broken, so why go around throwing them like idiots? Of course, drinking the beer in the bottles makes people idiots, so they throw them anyway. I don’t understand it, but at least it’s not hugely unexpected or weird. No, we’ve also had all kinds of weird things in our parking lot: a pumpkin smashed… in December. Food, and not take-out food from people just walking through, either. Like dip or something from one of our neighbours’ kitchens. A while ago, there was a smashed inkjet printer there, which is just kind of wrong. The other stuff I could maybe see a really stupid/negligent neighbour maybe out on their balcony with a bottle of beer and a bowl of dip, and then deciding to chuck the dip over the fence when they’re half done just because they’re too lazy to bring it inside to throw out. But a printer? There is no possible scenario where someone is hurling a printer over a fence to save any effort. That’s just malicious, spiteful littering. Since it was over the fence, they couldn’t have even really seen it smash into little bits, which is about all the entertainment value in throwing a printer that I can see. Today, there were socks. Wayfare decided that enough was enough: we had been good-natured about some of the weird ass shit showing up in our lot, but chucking socks is just too strange: they’re not gross enough to be spiteful, but not hard enough to throw away properly to be lazy. It’s just retarded. So she threw them back over the fence. By lunchtime, another, different sock had materialized on the deck.

I really hope these kids go home to live with their parents for the summer.