Cores, Corals, and CO2

At the risk of being branded a heretic, there are a few things about the global warming issue that bother me. First, any scientific endeavor that is molded by preconceived notions, be they public opinion, political favor, faith, or heritage must be viewed with a suspicious eye by any respectable scientist. When I see people proudly flying the anti-creationism banner next to the global warming banner, I wonder if they really know or even care about the reasoning and science behind either.

Let’s start with the coral reefs and CO2:
Carbon dioxide dissolved in water creates carbonic acid, which dissolves the calcium carbonate bodies of coral. Cooler water can contain a higher percentage of CO2 than warmer water, which is why corals do not generally live very deeply under water. As the oceans warm (presumably from global warming), it actually creates a more favorable environment for the precipitation of calcium carbonate shells and structures. It should be noted however, that warmer waters can also cause the death of zooxanthellae (a symbiotic algae that live in corals, providing them with nutrients and color) which in turn causes the “bleaching” of coral reefs. These algae are present in many, though not all corals, and the ability of different coral species to adapt to environments that are not favorable to the algae is largely unknown.
The point: Water temperature is just one of many many factors (current, turbidity, clarity, depth, dissolved gas, etc) that affects coral growth.

Now the ice cores:
It has been published over and over that current atmospheric CO2 levels are higher than they have been in the last 400,000 years. This is based on the Vostok ice core data, available here. The aspiring scientist will notice that the most recent CO2 concentration data begins at roughly 2000 years ago. This means that there is no ice core data for last year, or the last decade, or the last hundred years. The famous hockey-stick graph uses direct atmospheric sampling data from one location to “fill in” the missing data from another location and medium and then highlights the discrepancy. This is a violation of the scientific method and just poor laboratory procedure. But hey, an orange looks enough like an apple anyhow, right? Additionally, when the data is plotted, two things become evident:
1) CO2 concentration correlates very well with changes in temperature, indicating that there is definitely a relationship between the two (though not necessarily as simple as we would like to think.)
2) There are four events in the data that clearly show a rapid rise of atmospheric CO2 and temperature followed by a more gradual decline of the same. For those not in the know, that’s the telltale sign of a negative feedback system. Said another way, long before humans started burning coal or driving cars, the Earth experienced similar episodes of global climate change, and each time it “recovered”.

The Earth System clearly includes an incredibly complex system of feedback and compensation mechanisms, and it is nothing more than an a display of hubris and arrogance for one individual or entity to claim an absolute understanding of all of the processes… or to claim that “the debate is over.”

Garmin GPS makes some “interesting” routing choices

I’ve seen this too many times for it to be a fluke with one device or even model. The Garmin mobile gps devices make some insane decisions for routing from one place to another and I can’t decide whether it’s due to poor maps or a poor routing algorithm. Our family uses the StreetPilot c550 and HVA uses the nuvi series, and I’ve seen the same issue with both.

A good example is our most recent trip to Cleveland from Milan. A reasonable person (and Google) would take US23 south to either I80/90 or I475 to get to the turnpike. Our garmin directed us to get off US23 at Summerfield, take that to Sterns, to Lewis, to I-75, to I-280, and thence to the turnpike. For those not in the know, these are all two lane back roads and while possibly more direct, it would be MUCH slower than staying on the highway.
On our first trip to Cleveland, we had to pull into a residential street to get out the laptop and look up directions online, since our Garmin kept taking us around in circles AROUND our destination, without actually taking us TO our destination.

I’ve seen the same thing happen with the nuvi series, where crews have followed the gps onto rural, 2-lane roads that end up being more direct but much slower, or have gotten stuck in the loop-around route.

I’ve triple-checked the settings in several of the units and they are all clearly set to choose the fastest route with all obstacle avoidance turned off. The weird thing is that our StreetPilot has actually tried to route us a couple ways around Toledo on several different trips to Cleveland, with the same start and end points, and all settings the same.

I am curious if I would experience the same bugs with another manufacturer (TomTom, maybe), or if it is a deficiency in a shared routing algorithm.

Health Insurance Gone Wild

Just a single example among many that provides an illustration of why our healthcare/insurance system is broken.

A dozen times a day in our county alone, HVA transports patients by ambulance from one hospital to another simply because the patient has the wrong insurance for the hospital that they were transported to initially. Not only does this waste EMS resources, it results in huge bills to the patients insurance.
If we figure that one ALS transport to a reasonable (less than 30 miles) distance costs around $600 (with BLS transports costing $300-$400), we’re talking about $7200 in insurance bills per day… roughly one county. Keeping in mind that this is one ambulance service in a single county of one state. There are 83 counties in Michigan and many of them have a much lower population density, so many of them will have fewer inter-hospital transports, so let’s make it 50 counties to even things out as a rough guess. 50 counties x 12 patients = 600 transports/day for the state of Michigan. At $600 per transport, that comes out to:
$360,000 billed to insurance companies per day in this state, simply because all hospitals do not accept all insurances. Multiply that by 50 states: $18,000,000/day.

Keep in mind two things: These numbers are GROSS estimates based on my anecdotal experience, but I would bet that they come out within an order of magnitude of the real numbers, so the sense of scale should be the same. Additionally, this is just ONE tiny example of the wastefulness of our insurance system that would be eliminated by a universal healthcare insurance.