rajan’s Recent Comments

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  science is not a popularity contest. most of the population (including yourself, it appears) does not understand the basic rudimentary tenets of the scientific method. this is why when i submit data to be published, there isn't a referendum on how people feel about it. next time you post some data here, try to make it from something other than a sociology study.

  On EPA ‘suppression’ story grows, despite shoddy science in report posted 4 months, 3 weeks ago 6 Responses

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  one of the top journals in the world put out this story on its blog page:

  http://blogs.nature.com/news/thegreatbeyond/2009/06/hot_air_and_politics_at_the_ep.html

  it says basically everything above, but in a more concise way (and with much more credibility behind its name). i'm not sure if having a blog makes it a worse journal though....

  On EPA ‘suppression’ story grows, despite shoddy science in report posted 4 months, 3 weeks ago 6 Responses

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  mercury free?

  edarnold said it already. how "mercury free" is the rest of our food? and seriously, "traces" of mercury being found in food? why don't you actually give the numbers? are they more than we'd get in a glass of water? a purposely incomplete article is called propaganda.On The FDA sat on evidence of mercury-tainted high-fructose corn syrup posted 9 months, 4 weeks ago 13 Responses

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  software --> hardware

  Good point, Bart. If companies like microsoft weren't insisting on hardware manufacturers to make everything bigger and more energy intensive, people wouldn't have such energy intensive hardware! as a linux user, i'm prone to blame microsoft for more than it's fair share, but I think this is fair.

  also, while google probably has lots of reasons to inflate the efficiency numbers of their servers, it also has a big rea$on why those servers should actually be efficient. so those numbers will certainly come down in the future. On The energy impact of web searches is very low posted 10 months ago 5 Responses

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  Hydrogen Economy

  Scientists generally don't like to get into the political fray, lest we offend someone who may be funding us in the future. That being said, at a conference of (a lot of) the leading solar energy scientists, it was fairly clear that the hydrogen economy is the necessary way forward. Again, nobody said it in so many words, but it wasn't really ambiguous.

  There's only so much energy that we can store in Li atoms and ions, and chemical storage really makes a lot of sense. We do need to get the hydrogen gas from a renewable resource, but thinking far-sighted, after that renewable energy is available, how will we transport the energy? Right now petroleum is a really nice store of energy -- easily transported, fairly dense (energy/unit mass), not extraordinarily flammable (like H2). Replacing petroleum with electric cars is not feasible because people don't want to pull over after 150 miles and wait for 3 hours. They want to pull over, take the kids to McDonalds, and fill up on something that they don't care where it comes from.

  Hydrogen is the most promising way to keep our economy going (whether you like it or not).  On Big drop in U.S. electricity consumption confounds utilities posted 12 months ago 14 Responses