Eye on Springfield, 23/01/2007

Not What You'd Think: Dinosaur May Have Resembled the Biplane

Microraptor [gui] was described by Xing Xu of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in 2003 as having aerodynamic feathers on both its arms and legs. Xu suggested at the time that it glided, extending its legs backward so its wings were arranged one behind the other, like a dragonfly.

But that would be aerodynamically inefficient for a feathered creature, [Sankar] Chatterjee concluded, noting that the feathers on the legs would not face forward.

Instead, he suggested, the legs of the two-pound creature could have been held below the body in flight, creating two staggered wing sections, the upper one slightly ahead of the lower one.

One other flying dinosaur, Pedopenna, also had feathers on its legs, Chatterjee said, and modern raptors such as falcons have short feathers on their upper legs which reduce air resistance as they fly.

That is, "like a biplane" mainly in the sense that makes catchy headlines. OK, granted, multi-wing aircraft often had staggered wings, like the Sopwith Camel or even the Fokker triplane. (Look here for more.) But they also had (have? Some are still around) vertical and horizontal stabilizers. And, if you look at the linked images, you will see that the wings were only staggered in level flight (and likewise, in level flight the wings were always staggered); on the ground, the wings were stacked.

By contrast, M. gui – if Chatterjee is correct – had to angle its body below the horizontal in order to obtain the staggered effect: as if a biplane's wings were staggered, not stacked, when parked on the ground. In level flight, M. gui would not have looked like a biplane; it would have looked as though it had two wings in the same horizontal plane, like no designer has ever given an aircraft because the turbulence from the leading wing would ruin the trailing wing's effectiveness.



Open Note to Senator James Inhofe, R-Oklahoma: Shut Your Damn Pie-Hole

[I keep wanting to say he's from Kansas. That's what Kansas gets for being in the vanguard of scientific revisionism.]

Like all good governmental tools of industry, Sen. Inhofe (R-Petroleum) knows that "Facts are useless. You can use facts to prove anything that's even remotely true." So when the facts are agin' you, you dissemble. You emphasize controversy and denigrate consensus. You make doubt your product. Because, if you repeat a lie often enough, it can become "conventional wisdom."

Unless, of course, the facts are agin' you.

Sen. Inhofe will get his hypertensive exercise again soon when the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change releases...well, something; I'm not entirely sure what:

The first phase of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is being released in Paris next week. This segment, written by more than 600 scientists and reviewed by another 600 experts and edited by bureaucrats from 154 countries, includes "a significantly expanded discussion of observation on the climate," said co-chair Susan Solomon, a senior scientist for the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. She and other scientists held a telephone briefing on the report Monday.

...

Solomon and others wouldn't go into specifics about what the report says. They said that the 12-page summary for policymakers will be edited in secret word-by-word by governments officials for several days next week and released to the public on Feb. 2. The rest of that first report from scientists will come out months later.

The full report will be issued in four phases over the year, as was the case with the last IPCC report, issued in 2001.

(Full story here until Yahoo! takes it down.)

(What "government officials" are going to be editing the policymaking summary, what will said editing entail, and why is it being done in secret? Isn't there the potential here for the officials to turn the IPCC summary into a validation of current policies?)

So,

claiming uncertainties related to climate science and the adverse impact that mandatory emissions reductions would have on the U.S. economy, [Sen. Inhofe] voted on June 22, 2005[,] to reject an amendment to an energy bill that would have forced reductions in emissions of greenhouse gases and created a mandatory emissions trading scheme.

(Wikipedia)

Which surely made the energy industry pleased. Only, they might not agree:

CEOs Plead for Mandatory Emissions Caps

By H. JOSEF HEBERT, Associated Press Writer Mon Jan 22, 8:30 PM ET

WASHINGTON - Chief executives of 10 major corporations urged Congress on Monday to require limits on greenhouse gases this year, contending voluntary efforts to combat climate change are inadequate.

...

The executives, representing major utilities, aluminum and chemical companies and financial institutions, said the cornerstone of climate policy should be an economy-wide emissions cap-and-trade system.

Members of the group include chief executives of Alcoa Inc., BP America Inc., DuPont Co., Caterpillar Inc., General Electric Co., and Duke Energy Corp.

At a news conference, the executives said that mandatory reductions of heat-trapping emissions can be imposed without economic harm and would lead to economic opportunities if done across the economy and with provisions to mitigate costs.

These companies evidently have been engaging in voluntary emissions control. But they also must remain profitable. Their point is that voluntary self-regulation will only be adopted by companies large enough to cushion the costs, and only to the extent that the costs can be cushioned: no company will voluntarily self-regulate itself into a competitive disadvantage. They're in a vicious cycle that can only be broken if all of them take the necessary actions, but, being competitors, they haven't enough mutual trust to do so.

(I couldn't work this in, but it's still noteworthy: reading his quotations, one gets the impression that Sen. Inhofe views journalists, environmentalists, and climatologists as the same people; his monolithical lumping also endows them with average lifespans pushing a century.)