Land
How To Blow Up A Transmission Mast
Back in Issue 14, we looked at the rather troubled Bilsdale transmission tower, which suffered a rather unfortunate fire at its base. There was some speculation as to what it would take to fix, given it was about 100 stories tall.
Well, it turns out that the fix was to blow it up. Without any fanfare or prior announcement - presumably to spectators away from the danger zone - it was felled in a controlled demolition. The video of it falling perfectly down onto itself is a credit to the demoilition team, I have to say - it's very tidy.
As to what will replace it - well, that's more uncertain. They're going to put up a temporary tower near the site, but it'll be less than a third of the height. Of course, given the decreasing relevance of broadcast television, it's possible they'll never rebuild one that tall again.
We Really Don't Need More Collapse
It's unfortunately not great news from the supply chain side of things - several industry groups are now warning that things are going to get even more dire, as after almost two years of strain, labour shortages in critical transport industries are getting worse.
Part of it is COVID restrictions making a once-tolerable transport-oriented job more dire and depressing, with a lack of being able to see the places you visit, or an inordinate amount of paperwork and checks required to cross borders. The other part would seem to be the traditionally poor quality of life in some of these industries to start with - people were already close to the edge before all this began.
Personally, it seems we are overdue a shift from trying to run supply lines at 100% efficiency and stressing out the people who run them, to improving working conditions and slack - sure, it may eat into profits a little, but better that than it collapsing. In some good news, though, US-China cargo prices are dropping a little - but they're still quite high.
Earth, Satellite, and Fire
In a sign that maybe climate change is becoming real far faster than anyone really wants, Google Maps has added a new "Fire" layer to their existing stable (Road, Satellite, Traffic, etc.). It'll include fire boundaries and information for any ongoing wildfires, as well as contact and evacuation information.
In slighly nicer news they also added a tree canopy tool, trying to encourage cities to add more trees to combat the urban heat island effect, which is also particularly important in a heating world. Trees cool cities and help take carbon dioxide out of the air, so it's a win-win situation.
While the wildfire tool being added is a sad reflection on reality, it's also going to prove very useful as they threaten increasing number of people. I just hope there's a future, one day, where we no longer need it.
It's Not Just The Fire That's The Problem
Talking of wildfires, when you think of the damage they do, your mind mostly turns - for obvious reasons - to the everything-is-on-fire part. Burned houses, charred forests, roads and infrastructure damaged.
Well, there's unfortunately problems that persist after the fire as well. The burn scars that these fires leave are nowhere near as stable or clean as the forests that once stood there, and as well as causing nasty mudslides - which can take out roads for months - they can also dump a lot of very fine sediment into the rivers downstream.
Drinking water supply systems are designed to deal with filtering out small amounts of sediment from the water sources they use - not a filter-clogging swell of burn scar sediment and debris. Ironically, California's drought means that the lack of rain has made this much less of a problem there, though I'd argue no water is even worse than sediment-filled water.
Seaweed, Apparently
In the latest setback for Puerto Rico, a place that has really had a bad run recently, the relatively new (private) power grid operator has been repeatedly turning off the power, and blaming the outages on seaweed.
Residents are, quite rightly, outraged - it's not like that power is cheap, either - but seaweed is a real problem on Puerto Rico. Sargassum, a particuarly prevalent seaweed that absolutely stinks as it decomposes, is choking the beaches of Puerto Rico, and there doesn't seem to be a good plan to manage it.
The power utility company, LUMA, is definitely not without blame here, though - there's also been a series of maintenance problems and issues with the plants rebuilt after Hurricane Maria. Locals are turning to solar power to help - which seems like it might be a good idea on an island-wide level, if they can find the space.
Sea
Playing Pipeline Detective
There was a nasty oil pipeline spill off the coast of Los Angeles last week. But what's interesting is that they don't think the main damage to the pipeline necessarily occurred at the same time.
The last inspection of the pipeline was in October, so investigators are looking at nearly a year's worth of traffic records to see if there's any large ships that may have anchor-dragged the pipeline and damaged it in the past, enough that one or two small further impacts (from smaller boats or even geological events) finally caused it to break.
Doesn't seem like an easy one, but good luck to those involved in working it out - I have no idea how honest a captain might be if they think they've hit a pipeline, but my guess from the posture the investigation is taking that it's something people might well just cover up.
Silicon
It's Time For Some Drama
You may not hear much about the timezone database, IANA's project to catalogue and track all the various time zones and their daylight-savings shifts around the world, but it's an incredibly important project that silently keeps all clocks and times on computers saying the Right Thing.
Now, however, there's some trouble brewing over there. Timezones are traditionally indicated by a "region/city" pair - for example, Europe/Oslo - and there is a proposal to delete a lot of these in a backwards-incompatible way (rather than the nicer way, of aliasing them to the new name).
As he writes, Stephen has tried to stem the tide of these changes, but seems to be losing that particular battle. Hopefully a good outcome can be found, since it's kind of important that time keeps on ticking.
Nature
A Perfectly Spherical Cow (Stomach)
Good news from the University of Michigan, who are hard at work trying to figure out how to convert that thing we generate way too much of - waste - into useable energy.
With a cow-inspired biodigester, they're looking at converting a wide array of organic waste to energy - from food waste that might normally go to compost heaps to, well, the stuff that we built sewers to handle. Existing biodigesters aren't great at doing wide-spectrum; they're more very narrow, specific things, so this could be a significant improvement.
And if they get it right? Lots of methane, which can be burnt for all manner of useful things (just don't let it out into the atmosphere, as it's a particularly potent greenhouse gas). I look forward to sewage becoming just a little more useful.
Dry Ice Is Apparently The Cure For Leaves
Railways have many natural enemies - cars, trespassers, and overly-ambitious timetables to name just a few. One of the biggest, however, especially in the UK, is leaves.
See, during autumn, loads of leaves come off the trees and then pile up on the tracks. The repeated action of passing trains compacts them down into a super-slippery layer that adheres to the tracks and impacts braking quite significantly, leading to plentiful delays.
Now, though, they're trying tiny dry-ice cannons shot at the rails to try and dislodge the leaves - and cruicially, this could be something fitted to normal passenger trains (rather than the big, beefy engineering trains that already have some rather impressive leaf-removal water jets. Might help keep everything running well - at least until snow turns up, anyway.
And Finally
The Built-In Toilet Detector
Ever been sitting on a plane, desperate to visit the onboard conveniences, but not sure when one will be free? Don't want to queue up in the aisles and get in people's way? Well, here's One Neat Trick you may not have known about.
See, the toilets on aircraft are vacuum-based; they suck in air when they're flushed. And while you may not realise it, your phone has an impressively sensitive barometer that can detect those changes in air pressure.
So, open up a pressure-monitoring app on your phone, as this person did, and you can see whenever a toilet flushes on the plane in real-time. Not sure how useful this is in general life, but hey, it's fun!