Interesting Links for 16-12-2015

[andrewducker]

• Lettuce is ‘three times worse than bacon' for global warming emissions
  • globalwarming diet vegetables bacon
• Voight-Kampff Empathy Test 2015
  • comics culture geeks bladerunner satire comic
• Inflammation: Medicine’s Burning Question
  • inflammation immune_system
• Solar energy farms above the clouds. An interesting idea, but I'll need more to be convinced.

Comments

[andrewducker]

http://www.vegan.com/debunking-claims-that-lettuce-is-3-times-worse-than-bacon/

Via elfy

[drdoug]

Aha! Makes my point better than I did.

[nancylebov]

Also, lettuce may be one of the least efficient veggies. Broccoli would presumably be a better choice per calorie.

Lettuce is ‘three times worse than bacon'

[drdoug]

Paul Fischbeck, study co-author and CMU’s professor of social and decisions sciences, said: "Lots of common vegetables require more resources per calorie than you would think." “Eggplant, celery and cucumbers look particularly bad when compared to pork or chicken.”

Aaaaaaaaah! That is a really stupid comparison. As is lettuce versus bacon. I think you would have to eat something like a kilo of lettuce to get the same calories of as a couple of rashers of bacon. (Estimated 150 calories in two cooked rashers; lettuce is something like 15 calories per 100 grams.) None of those vegetables have calories worth noting.

There might well be a sensible point somewhere in the actual study but this nonsense has completely overshadowed it.

[alitheapipkin]

That top link is also a classic case of being utterly meaningless without a discussion of the methodology. Even leaving aside the stupidity of suggesting the two are comparable in terms of sustenance, salad veg grown in the UK in poly-tunnels and salad veg grown in Africa*, artificially irrigated and imported by air are two completely different things.

*Yes, I noticed the study is American. Suggesting all agricultural systems around the world are equal is another of my huge bugbears.

[danieldwilliam]

On the solar PV balloons.

That's a very long cable to have swinging all over the place.

[andrewducker]

Also, a heavy one, I'd have thought.

[danieldwilliam]

Yes - you're not just tethering the balloon, you also have to have a cable to carry the power down, and I'm not sure you can use the power cable as a load bearing tether - so two cables, one made of metal.

As a rough estimate assume that the maximum heel of the tethered balloon is 45 degrees. With a tether of at least 20 km. My trig is not what it ought to be but I'm making that quite a large cone you have to keep clear. Particularly relative to the surface area of the balloon you can put up there.

Probably easier and cheaper to put solar panels on every roof in Europe, a bunch of wind turbines on and off shore and insulate our houses better.

--

[andrewducker]

You can possibly do something with having one tether cable attached to a forest of solar collectors.

Possibly.

The other thing I thought of is that they want to put a hydrogen fuel recharger in it, so that it can provide constant power. But that makes _no_ sense to me. Just chuck the power back to the ground, and then use a converter there, where it's more centralised and thus almost certainly more efficient.

[alitheapipkin]

That Harrison Ford interview is great, it's not often you read an interview with such seemingly ordinary questions that nevertheless really reveals someone's true character.

[andrewducker]

Yeah, he's taking it seriously and responding maturely. You get a really good feel for the way he approaches things.

[snarlish]

it's a great interview... more than what I'd expect from Rolling Stone.

Had the opportunity to meet him about 25 years ago (girlfriend at the time was a bartender at a hotel most film crews in town stayed at) and all I could do was gabble about how great he was in Blade Runner and Frantic before scarpering. He did say thanks in that 'movie stars are always gracious to fans' way.