The weather in Denver is so fickle! 20°C on weekend, -10°C the next. Makes for interesting wardrobe choices. Either way though, the Denver bike paths are fricking awesome!
Monthly Archive for January, 2009
Two carloads worth of us headed up to Boreas Pass outside of Breckenridge, CO on New Years Day, for a mellow ski/snowshoe in to the Section House hut, about 6 miles in on an old mining railroad grade. Along for the ride were Kamile Dilmurat, Trevor Stone, Stephen Hill, Michelle Selvans, Zane Selvans, Mike Stempel, Susan Stempel, Paul Stempel, and Megan Fluckiger. We had some ominous but ultimately calm weather on the way in, and a gorgeous sunny day on the way out, with blustery wind all night long. Kamile didn’t really sleep the night before, and had never been on such a trip, so she was pretty zonked. Michelle was still getting over her winter break bug, whatever it was, and got kind of sick on the way out. But other than that, I think everyone had a good time. I’d definitely like to do more hut trips… with more snow, and a working knowledge of skiing!
The photos in the slideshow are a compilation from the cameras of Stephen, Trevor, and Zane, blatantly pirated for display here.
Career Goals. Why work at NREL?
Why do you want to work at NREL? Why do you want to work in Commercial Buildings in particular? How does this job fit into your longer term career goals? Please take a look at this website for more information about the work done here at NREL in the commercial buildings area.
I believe that in the coming decades providing the plentiful energy which is currently synonymous with a high standard of living is likely to be a serious problem for humanity, and more generally for the terrestrial biosphere. Today our energy is derived overwhelmingly from fossil fuels which are polluting, finite, unevenly distributed, and whose combustion is substantially altering the composition and optical properties of the Earth’s atmosphere. Any one of those characteristics would be enough to cause grave concern. Together they make significant change in our global energy systems imperative. I want to be a part of that change.
I pinged Norris Minnick and the Buyer Brokers of Boulder last week. Curious to know whether what we’re thinking of exists, and whether it’s economically possible. And to get the desires written down. I don’t know how far in advance one ought to start looking, but I suspect it’s like getting a job and getting pregnant: don’t start trying unless you want it now.
Boulder has so far been able to avoid most of the recent boom, and most of the recent bust. The enforced geographic constraints on development and the relative affluence and desirability of the area probably help. This makes me suspect that getting a low interest rate is probably more important than trying to let the market “bottom”… who knows what it’s going to do. Modest living seems like the best insurance.
Dear Denver RTD,
I had the pleasure yesterday of riding my bike 19 miles from Lakewood to downtown Denver almost exclusively on cycling paths, all the way to Union Station, where I intended to catch a BX up to Boulder. I understand you are in the process of re-developing the old rail station to be a major multi-modal transit hub for the city, with a great deal of high density mixed use transit oriented development in the vicinity. So far, it looks absolutely great, and I applaud you for working with the city and developers to continue central Denver’s urbanization in an intelligent way, and make long term investments in non-automotive transportation infrastructure for the region. I am considering re-locating to the Denver area from Southern California when I finish my PhD, to work at the National Renewable Energy Lab in Golden, and the region’s excellent transit system is one of the reasons. I prefer not to own a car or drive, for economic, fitness, and environmental reasons, and having high density mixed use developments and effective multi-modal transit options makes living without a car much more pleasant and convenient.
Continue reading ‘Denver RTD: ditch Amtrak people at Union Station’
Associate Dean Stevenson,
I am a PhD candidate in the Department of Geological Sciences, researching two methods for inferring the temporal variability of tidally induced tectonic activity on the icy satellites of the outer solar system. I am petitioning for permission to register for an additional semester beyond the elapsed time limit of 6 years between matriculation and graduation which is imposed by the CU graduate school on PhD students. There are several reasons for my tardiness. Some were within my control, and others outside of it.
From the Edge, and their annual “World Question Center” for 2009.
What will change everything? What game changing scientific ideas and developments do you expect to live to see?
Many thoughtful answers, including a particularly good one about climate, likening potential abrupt state changes to unpredictably soundly sleeping giants that we do not want to awaken:
Unfortunately, we are discovering more giants that are probably lighter sleepers than the thermohaline circulation (THC). Seven others — all of them potential game-changers — are now under scrutiny: (1) the disappearance of summer sea-ice over the Arctic Ocean, (2) increased melting and glacier flow of the Greenland ice sheet, (3) “unsticking” of the frozen West Antarctic Ice Sheet from its bed, (4) rapid die-back of Amazon forests, (5) disruption of the Indian Monsoon, (6) release of methane, an even more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide, from thawing frozen soils, and (7) a shift to a permanent El Niño-like state. Like the THC, should any of these occur there would be profound ramifications — like our food production, the extinction and expansion of species, and the inundation of coastal cities.
We’re wallowing in the fat tails.
A relatively thoughtful piece from The New York Times Magazine on the risk metrics used by Wall Street, especially the now notorious Value at Risk (VaR). However, it still seems like neither the author nor the risk managers they interviewed really get what Taleb is saying. Or possibly they’re just not willing to admit the implications of what he’s saying: that market outcomes, especially when investing is focused on the short term, are dominated by so-called “rare” events. And that the consequence (as one of the managers even says outright), is that a lot of the investment banks don’t really have a business model.
Except, of course, for the fact that they can count on the public coffers if they all arrange to go bankrupt simultaneously. Better, in this case, to fail in a conventional way along with everyone else, and be bailed out, than to play your own game for the long term, like Warren Buffet, and either succeed unconventionally, or have to take responsibility for your own failures, which are then likely not to take place at the same time industry wide.
We’re playing the same game of fat-tails chicken with Earth’s climate, and that story will eventually have the same ending if we are unable to generalize the lessons of this relatively innocuous financial disaster.
To plan long term we need time lapse eyes. We need to sense the world on geologic and evolutionary timescales. This is outside of our visceral experience. Astronomers and biologists and geologists get some sense of deep time, but it’s still not an experience. We need to build these eyes for ourselves.
