Jeff Rubin, former economist at CIBC, has in the past few years, turned into a modern Malthus, proclaiming the end of the world as we know it. However, his writings are lacking in the breadth of analysis truly required to understand the problems we face, and he underestimates the ingenuity of humanity to solve problems. …
Category Archive: Engineering
May 10
A response to eco-hypocrites
Robert over at smalldeadanimals sent an excellent letter to Charles Adler this week. I recommend it to all. I too work in one of the industries the eco-nuts hate – I have spent my nearly 20 year career designing facilities that either extract petroleum from the earth, refine it into the fuels we use, or …
Oct 24
R.I.P. John McCarthy
Yesterday, John McCarthy, one of the fathers of modern computer programming passed away. John McCarthy may not have received as much notoriety among tech people as Steve Jobs did, but he was perhaps more influential. McCarthy developed LISP in 1959, based on Alonzo Church’s lambda calculus, for use in artificial intelligence research. My contact with …
Aug 07
Mark Cuban on Patent Law
Mark Cuban has a very good post recommending improvements to the patent law system. While his reference is clearly the US patent system, this applies to most of the patent laws around the world, including here in Canada. I would add one more thing to Mr. Cuban’s short list of fixes. While he focuses on …
Jun 07
On Computer Simulations and Reality
Today, I was directed to a very good article, But It Worked in the Computer Model, on why complex computer models, of any subject, will usually contain errors and not provide a good analogue to reality without a lot of real world experimentation. It also explains, tangentially, why many students coming out of universities with …
Apr 28
The problem with “Alternative Fuels”
I will admit that I am employed in a field that is heavily tied to the energy sector, which may bias me towards it, although I hope not as much as some might think. I am not against alternative energy sources. However, I am against massive government subsidies to force convert us, because the track …
Mar 21
On Novel Methods of Oil Sands Extraction
In the papers recently, there has been story about research at Penn State University about the possibility of using an “ionic liquid”, as a solvent, instead of water, to separate the bitumen in oil sands from the sand. This is an interesting idea, and the news articles made me search out the original source information. …
Mar 20
On Fukushima, Part 2
I had another thought on the Fukushima incident that I think is interesting. A number of years ago, I read an interesting book called “To Engineer Is Human: The Role of Failure in Successful Design“. While a short book with only a few detailed case studies, it does lay out how failures are a …
Mar 18
On Fukushima
The Fukushima incident raises a number of questions about the design and operation of nuclear facilities. Most notably: How is it that no one had considered the possibility of a subduction earthquake followed by tsunami in that location? Why were the emergency generators located in the “wash zone”? However, as bad as this incident is, …
Mar 17
On Earth Hour
Everyone should read Earth Hour: A Dissent, by Ross McKitrick. He makes some very good points. The greatest is right at the beginning and closing: I abhor Earth Hour. Abundant, cheap electricity has been the greatest source of human liberation in the 20th century. Every material social advance in the 20th century depended on the …