March 2010 Archives

As resident ocean expert, part of KC's research involved tracking down pictures of, and info on, container ships. A few entries ago, Becca gave us a banana-flavored preview of these vessels. Now, a little more information, complete with greatly impressive and immensely beautiful pictures:

According to the Guinness World Book of Records, the Orient Overseas Container Line Shenzhen of Hong Kong is the world’s largest container ship (see above).

The Norwegian ship-building company Ulstein has redesigned their container ships to incorporate what they call a Ulstein X-BOW (above), a pointed style of bow inspired by Viking ships from over 1000 years ago.

Above, a container ship moving through Miaflores Locks of the Panama Canal.

Super Panamax ship built in Denmark. It carries 15,000 containers, requires a crew of only 13, and consumes 317,000 gallons of diesel per year as it travels back and forth across the Pacific. This is the equivalent of 3,041,400 pounds of CO2.

Emissions calculations.

“Container ship APL Panama ran aground just south of Ensenada, Mexico on Christmas Day 2005, because the captain didn’t wait for port pilot and tugs. The captain was irritated that the port pilot was 1 hour late, so he decided to steer the ship into port himself.

Tug boats after tug boats were dispatched to free her, but the ship was too heavy: first, 30,000 tons of cargo must be unloaded, using a sky crane helicopter:

Finally, 2 months later (remember, this whole thing happened because the port pilot was 1 hour late), with the help of an armada of tug boats, the APL Panama was finally freed.”

Above, a container ship in Montreal.

Like Erin and the rest of our classmates, I found myself conducting interviews with peers about climate change and then transcribing these interviews from memory, an exercise that got more fun every time. Part two of these assignments was reciting the interview as a monologue in class. I am sorry that you, dear blog readers, don’t get to experience that half of the experience, which consisted of particularly hilarious or moving interpretations of the words our friends spoke. Instead, you will have to make do with these snippets from two interviews I did.

The first came from Ivy, Japanophile and Johnny Depp fan:

I have this, like, fear of getting old. So I don’t really think into the future past when I’m fifty.

 

[…]

 

Will things be different for my children? Probably not. Will things change for my grandchildren? Probably not. Beyond that—and, I mean this sounds pretty cold, but that’s just so far removed I don’t care what happens to my DNA. I’ll be dead. My children and grandchildren will be dead, so… (shrugs) I don’t really buy that whole 2012 thing. The planet exploding isn’t something, I mean… It is hard to think of the world not being there any more. And, I mean, we can’t even get to Mars. I thought we had but we haven’t. And we lost the technology to get to the moon even.

 

Environmentalism. […]  I don’t do that. There are other things I do with my time and my studies. But, I guess everyone’s like me and that’s why it’s falling apart?

 

I guess one thing we learned from George Bush was how to say we were doing one thing and then doing another. So if we end up fighting over the Artctic or whatever we could probably get a bunch of penguin lovers to go up there and they think they’re saving the penguins but they’re actually going to war. (laughs) Or not.

Then I interviewed Janie, pre-med and shamefaced Glamour reader:

When I make decisions I look at the pros and cons, and whether it will make me happy and sometimes I talk to people like me who have made the same decision and see what they did. No, not experts. I said people like me. Making myself happy is part of the pros and cons, though. It’s all part of the pros and cons. Aren’t we supposed to be talking about energy or something?

 

I guess I heard about global warming in high school. That was still when they called it global warming, not climate change. Sometimes I still slip up and call it global warming but (points out the window at the snow) it really is climate change. And people were talking about air freshener…no. What are those…? Aerosol! Thank you! People were talking about aerosol and CFCs—chlorofluorocarbons—and the ozone and baby seals. And then we watched An Inconvenient Truth and I just remember being bored. And they showed the graphs and they didn’t even have axes! And I was just watching it like a skeptic. So, yeah, I think we had just read this really skeptical Michael Crichton book before seeing it. So I had that in my head and…

 

Axes are important. You can have a two percent increase and if you don’t label the axes that can look crazy. I’m not saying I don’t believe in climate change, but you gotta label your graphs.

 

People are going to be skeptical watching documentaries. When people are talking, talking, talking and not engaging you all you’re going to do is (sits back and points at an imaginary TV screen) “Hmm. Really? Really? I don’t know…” Doubt is people’s way of looking at the material.

 

One thing I’ve noticing about green now is that it’s really in. Ever since I started reading (uneasily) fashion magazines, I’ve noticed that being green is really cool right now. They always have that Kermit the Frog quote, “It’s not easy being green,” only they change it to “It IS Easy to Be Green,” or something and that’s a headline. So I think that’s good. If all these celebrities and people are doing something just because it’s cool then that’s good, because what they’re doing is making them good people, even if they’re just doing it because it’s in.

 

[…]

 

There’s plenty I don’t know about it. Like, I’ve heard about everyone’s carbon footprint, but I’m not quite sure what that means. Is it the same as carbon dioxide emissions? And I wonder if—when I’m older I want to live in an apartment forever and I wonder if since that’s less space it’s better for my emissions. And I plan to drive a cheap old climate-friendly Toyota, and if its brakes fail then whatever.

Earlier in the semester, I interviewed a friend of mine on the role of the humanities in addressing climate change. This is (approximately) what she had to say:

[as she speaks, waves hands emphatically as though they’re holding large, crumpled wads of paper, one seeming to represent natural science, the other social science; winds the imaginary bundles around each other as if to represent an interaction] Social science is so important, because you can’t get anything done without understanding the social system. Resilience! SES’s! Yeah, “resilience” has become one of those words I just want to shout at people sometimes. Like, this kid in our class was talking about using a farm’s resources to maximum capacity and I just wanted to scream at him. Like condoms! Sometimes I just want to shout it at people. Condoms, man! It’d solve so many problems.

 

The humanities’ role in sustainability . . . hmm. . . [she puts on a comically thoughtful expression and taps her finger against her jaw] I have such a hard time with the humanities. I didn’t used to. They just seem so . . . [she weighs imaginary things in her hands, purses lips, looks up and away] wishy-washy. But I mean . . . communication is important, so you can tell people clearly the best way to do something. For cultural discourse, the humanities are important. I think the impartiality, the statistics, correlations in science – they make it kind of antiseptic. But if you can add colorful language and images, you can appeal to people’s emotional . . . uh . . . you can appeal to people’s emotions. There we go.

 

I really like framing things in terms of going to the moon in the 60’s, because I love it – I love President Kennedy and doing things not because they are easy but because they are hard. Anyway. You had this enthusiasm, we went to the moon, and it was stupid, but it was awesome, and everyone wanted to go to the moon. Or maybe a better comparison is with the war – World War II, and getting everyone to save and send in bottle caps. [long pause] But we were beating someone then. We’re not beating anyone with climate change. World War II, we’re beating Nazis! Cold War, we’re beating Russians! Climate change, we’re beating . . . Nature? . . . ah, no, we’re trying to save nature, eeeh . . . we’re beating . . . no one? . . . no . . . we’re beating . . . ourselves? I’ve thought a lot about it, really – who are we beating? People are naturally competitive. We could be beating our neighbor – if you’re the most energy-efficient in your neighborhood for an entire year, you win . . . a boat! ‘Cause that’d be cool, right? . . . or a cash prize, or something, you know.

 

Or we could be beating China. I think the country Americans fear most right now is China – no offense [to Shanghainese friend in the room]. Fear works. Fear is a great motivator. Science can say what is, you know, present the facts, and the humanities can tell you how you should feel about it – or maybe push you in that direction. And, I mean . . . as little as I like to manipulate people . . . [smiles, shrugs back and forth, shoulder to shoulder, for a few seconds] Sometimes you have to manipulate people. [pause] For the greater good. That’s dangerous. Slippery slope. I hate that phrase.

KC is back again, this time with a glimpse into popular (depending on who you are talking to) views of ways the world could end. She writes:

This one is from Fox News' finest scientists and cites spontaneous black holes, expanding sun, and super-volcanoes as being more deadly to Earth's future than global warming... even though it seems to be implied that Earth can handle more than the human species can.

[On cracked.com] there is also a slightly more colloquial version of the story that describes a super-volcanoe as posessing such "incredible force that it launches gigantic rocks into f***ing space."

However, the good news is that Fox News also reports that scientists ARE working on the sun problem:

"Is there any way our future descendants can save themselves? Why, yes, explains Smith.

"He cites a recent study emanating from the University of California, Santa Cruz. It proposes taming an asteroid to swing by the Earth every few thousand years, slowly nudging the Earth into higher solar orbit, enough to outpace the sun's own outward growth.

"'This sounds like science fiction,' says Smith. 'But it seems that the energy requirements are just about possible and the technology could be developed over the next few centuries.'"

Our very own Becca Scharfstein took these photos during her visit to Panama.

The first gives me the opportunity to sing some Gwen Stefani to myself as I type B-A-N-A-N-A-S. Chiquita bananas, to be exact, carried on a passing container ship:

Next came a visit to Monkey Island off the Panama Canal:

Container ships figure prominently in The Great Immensity; the play takes its name from one such vessel. White-faced monkeys are less integral to the plot. Still, if we have established one thing over the course of our readings this semester it is that no one can resist charismatic megafauna.

Our flowcharts from a few weeks back, save one involving an enormous Canadian ice storm, have mysteriously vanished from the shelf labeled "The Great Immensity" in the back room of our workshop. We blame the people responsible for the hats. (Well, I blame the people responsible for the hats, anyway.)

Fortunately for posterity (or something), I was so full of pride at the completion of the flowchart on drought in Somalia - a collaboration between Mademoiselle Hedeman and myself - that I took loads of pictures of it before its disappearance. This chart, also known as "deathbox," is gone, but not forgotten.

I wonder who actually took or tossed our beautiful charts? Maybe we could make a chart to figure it out, although how exactly we would make such a chart is up in the air. Suggestions for onstage flowchart dynamics include projectors with layered, multicolored transparencies and possibly ribbon falling off of the projector and intruding into three dimensions, a gigantic mobile, a crime scene corkboard that outgrows its space, schematic labels stuck unwittingly onto actors, dominoes, and more!

Also from Carolyn come these links to a variety of TED Talks. TED, in case you're wondering, stands for "Technology, Entertainment, Design." Their website lists their mission statement:

We believe passionately in the power of ideas to change attitudes, lives and ultimately, the world. So we're building here a clearinghouse that offers free knowledge and inspiration from the world's most inspired thinkers, and also a community of curious souls to engage with ideas and each other.

I think we can all agree with that.

Carolyn's selection of TED clips:

1) "Climate science in 4 minutes."

2) A "volcanic eruption solution to climate change."

3) "Jane Goodall on (what else?) chimps, conservation, environmentalism, and integrating it all in African livelihoods."

Courtesy of Andrea Grody, this clip of throat singing. (If you're sitting in public, making sure your computer is not at full volume is recommended.)

Andrea writes, "Throat singing, otherwise known as katajjaq.  In Inuit tribes, this is less a musical form than a game between two women, who sync up their sounds (this clip is presumably two people) and keep going until someone laughs or otherwise breaks, leaving the other woman as the winner. "

A classic xkcd comic, brought to our attention by Carolyn Edelstein.

And KC Wade found this one pretty hilarious: a cartoon by Mike Luckovich using one massive problem facing us as a metaphor for...another massive problem facing us.