Two-Part Special Issue of Ergonomics in Design Highlights Climate Change
Tuesday, April 29, 2014
Human factors/ergonomics (HF/E) experts, like professionals in many other scientific domains, have joined the fight against global warming and climate change. Their research and practice focus on finding ways to combat or minimize its serious effects.
A special two-part issue of Ergonomics in Design examines how HF/E professionals can continue working to mitigate this worldwide phenomenon.
Part 1 of the special issue, guest edited by Ken Nemire, is now available online and may be found at http://erg.sagepub.com/.
“With recent research indicating we stay close to a maximum global warming of 1°C (now at 0.8°C) to prevent the most disastrous consequences of global warming, the articles in this special issue point the way to immediate changes to research, standards, and regulations that may involve HF/E practitioners,” said Nemire.
The following is a sampling of articles from researchers in Canada, South Africa, and the United States that are included in Part 1 of the special issue:
• “Green Ergonomics and Green Buildings”
• “Feedback Design Heuristics for Energy Conservation: New Opportunities for the Human Factors Practitioner”
• “A Transdisciplinary Perspective on Hedonomic Sustainability”
• “Bicycle Promotion as a Response to Climate Change”
“Substantially more research and effort is needed to redesign our behavior, our products, and our cities to prevent the most disastrous consequences of global warming,” said Nemire. “It is clear that much more effort at corporate and governmental levels, such as stricter regulations and standards as well as greater funding for research and development of new technologies, is needed now to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.”
Looks like the Human factors/ergonomics (HF/E) experts have finally realized how to grease their palms with research funding by the rest of us.
Welcome to A Brave New World
Oh, great, now the design people have caught the virus. Can’t anybody just do their own job/research anymore without having to slobber all over the global warming nonsense? Personally, I immediately dismiss any study or paper or news report that drags in “climate change” or “carbon footprint” in the lead paragraph. Saves me from wasting my time.
Only took 6 seconds to find the “greater funding” reference.
Everyone knows that as the Earth (or World, if you will) warms, that object will expand. You need to take the expansion of desks, tables, chairs, saddles, fine braided leather whips, manacles, gimp masks, todger clamps, & other things that people commonly use into account when designing those items.
This comment was awarded the Mosher Seal of Good Physics™.
If you live long enough you begin to wonder why you lived long enough to have lived long enough.
That’s about all I can say about this. That’s about all I want to say about this. Except for one more thing: Aghfvdgfjngjuxxiiogfoficijccj
[The mods note that the writer has a typo in the third to the last i after the second j from the beginning. Mod]
Some may have seen posts of mine where I joke that these days psychologists, sociologists, butchers, bakers and candlestick makers are all making their contributions to the CAGW science. I was only joking but it seems that is what is actually happening. Wasn’t this predicted by post-normal destructor of science Ravetz?
“Serious effects…” “Worldwide phenomenon…” Impressive words for something that cannot be decerned and certainly isn’t happening at the moment. Perhaps they would better spend their time discussing the ergonomics and transdisciplinary perspective on hedonomic sustainability of unicorns. At least that would be a fantasy with a point!
“Bicycle Promotion as a Response to Climate Change”
—
I’ll pay attention to someone promoting bicycles when I see Al Gore commuting by bicycle instead of by private jet.
“Bicycle Promotion as a Response to Climate Change”
But won’t using a bicycle in a hotter environment lead to greater heat stress. harder breathing, greater CO2 emissions?
Or are they talking about promoting bicycles over scientists? Very cluey some of these bicycles.
I still feel ‘sorry for’ all those activists that are working to save the world. They have this dower look at the world and in 20 years, provided they have half a brain, should feel a great sense of regret for all the time they have wasted to achieve nothing. Every thing is terrible and getting worse, they are all are using their advocacy and article writing to feel better and garner grants. But the stream of their crude is starting to weigh my view on the world down.
I seem to live with a lot of deluded, savior complete individuals who
are rather ‘holy than thou’. See if I can find a beer.
Aghfvdgfjngjuxxieogfoficijccj
– Fixed
“A Transdisciplinary Perspective on Hedonomic Sustainability”
WTF
First thing I did was look at their reference links to see who’s work they build from:
IPCC.ch
earthSave.org
globalchange.gov
No need to waste time looking any further.
ergonomics for mass transportation devices: designing comfortable seats that simultaneously capture and sequester methane emissions. Even can ebank the carbon credits with a proper metering device and gluteus implanted RFID chip, in return for some level of discomfort,
“Bicycle Promotion as a Response to Climate Change”
This is a gang of bourgeois reactionaries trying to seduce the masses with wasteful capitalist excess. Monocycles can transport platoons of factory workers, peasants and guards just as efficiently.
re: “A Transdisciplinary Perspective on Hedonomic Sustainability”
I googled “Hedonomic”. It appears to be purely academic word. I was surprised to find it has a meaning:
“One way to increase happiness is to increase the objective levels of external outcomes; another is to improve the presentation and choices among external outcomes without increasing their objective levels. Economists focus on the first method. We advocate the second, which we call hedonomics.”
A worldwide replacement for economics? Supply & Demand replaced by smoke & mirrors?
Maybe I have got it wrong but “billions are going be poorer, we need to be able to con them so they don’t notice”?
So we are now doing what I did when I finished mechanical engineering at university 39 years ago – trying to improve energy efficiency in buildings. We’re getting somewhere now (sarc). Perhaps they should hand the whole problem, including the feasibility studies into all the possible solutions (not just the feel good touchy feely ones) over to engineers, and keep the rest of the rent seekers out of it; instead of precluding engineers from the debate. And while I am venting, how many climate scientists would have received the same in depth training in thermodynamics, heat and mass transfer and air/water vapor systems as your chemical and mechanical engineering graduates? Rant finished.
Filed in the “Now Beyond A Joke” department
“… to redesign our behavior, ”
It is possible to carefully open the ends of shotgun shells and replace the pellets with coarse salt. Applied with gusto to the posterior of an HF/E expert, this will redesign her/his behavior for several days to a couple of weeks.
As a corollary the “bicycle promotion” campaign may be delayed indefinitely.
Well I am seriously disappointed. I clicked on the article with eager anticipation, looking forward to a rollicking good read. With illustrations of course. But I was only going to read the article, I wasn’t going to look at the pictures.
Hmmmf. Hedonomics. Nothing to do with hedonism at all.
Maybe the AGW meme is like a stock market – when it seems everyone is jumping into a bull market, it’s a sure sign the the bull is getting weak in the knees and will soon become food for the bear. Can this HF/E special issue be a signal that AGW alarmism is coming to an end?
MSM’s fave today:
30 April: Bloomberg: Obama Power-Plant Pollution Rule Upheld by Top U.S. Court
By Greg Stohr and Mark Drajem
President Barack Obama garnered his second legal victory this month in his effort to clean up coal-fired power plants, as the U.S. Supreme Court upheld a rule designed to cut pollutants that cause smog and acid rain.
The justices, voting 6-2 to overturn a lower court, backed an Environmental Protection Agency rule targeting air pollution that crosses state lines. Advocates for utilities and coal producers argued that the EPA’s approach was too intrusive and would force plants to clean up more pollution than necessary to deliver clean air in downwind states…
The ruling may prompt utilities such as Southern Co. (SO), Energy Future Holdings Corp.’s Luminant and American Electric Power Co. (AEP) to shutter coal-fired power plants or invest billions of dollars in new pollution-control systems.
The Obama administration says the rule will prevent as many as 34,000 premature deaths a year…
***While the decision upholds the rule by the EPA, its practical implications are uncertain. That’s because the high court left open the ability of states to individually challenge whether they should still be part of the program, and if the mandated reductions are justified given improvements in air quality in downwind states.
“There are a lot of legal challenges for this rule that lay ahead,” said William Bumpers, a lawyer at Baker Botts LLP in Washington…
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-04-29/obama-power-plant-pollution-rule-upheld-by-u-s-supreme-court.html
***will this bit be given prominence?
read all:
30 April: Bloomberg: Eric Roston: George Will Knocks Out Another Instant Climate Classic
The “whole point of global warming” is not, as Will would have it, to execute a liberal headlock on the American people. If global warming has a “whole point” of any kind, it is, it appears, to warm the globe, perhaps intolerably. That’s what progressives and conservatives of good will and common sense are seeking to stop.
No one has yet described any physical laws linking atmospheric heat retention with American liberal activism or right-wing special-interest media buys. Let’s worry about that one when it’s peer-reviewed and published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Climate Change and Encroaching Progressive Czarism.
Watch the full interview. Some of his comments are standard, if scientifically questionable, policy considerations. However, they are devalued by his tendency to do things like conjure and attack anti-science straw men and then source his scientific thinking to newsmagazine stories published in the 1970s…
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-04-29/george-will-knocks-out-another-instant-climate-classic.html
26 April: UK Daily Mail: Jon Rees: Britain STILL depends on coal for 40% of its electricity – but now it is making a Russian mine owner hugely rich, not us
Thirty years after Arthur Scargill led the miners out on strike – to be followed by the wholesale closure of the British coal industry – it is not a union leader from Yorkshire but a billionaire from Russia who has his finger on Britain’s light switch.
Britain now imports four times as much coal as it produces, and Russia, which is subject to international sanctions over Ukraine, is our biggest supplier, providing close to half of all the coal we bring in.
And the company responsible for the bulk of that is the Siberian Coal Energy Co, whose chairman and majority owner is Andrey Igorevich Melnichenko.
Our dependence on Russian coal has been thrown into sharp relief both by the rising tension between the West and Russia over Ukraine and by last week’s vote by miners to agree to the closure of two of Britain’s remaining three deep pit mines.
‘If the Prime Minister says he does not like what Russia’s doing in Ukraine, Putin can always turn round and say he’ll be sending Russian coal east not west this year,’ said Chris Kitchen, general secretary of the National Union of Mineworkers…
Now, two of Britain’s last three deep mine pits will close within 18 months after the admission by UK Coal, Britain’s biggest coal producer, that it could no longer go on…
However, Britain missed out on a share of his riches. Kitchen said: ‘Selby was producing coal which was selling for £1.05 per gigajoule, which was only just break-even. Two years later, coal was selling for £2 a gigajoule, so if it was open now it would be making money.
‘The point is that the Government should have an energy policy for the long term, to smooth the peaks and troughs, and we do not have that now. If we did, Drax power station in North Yorkshire would still be using 70 per cent British coal….
***A spokesman for the Department of Energy and Climate Change said: ‘Coal is available from many regions, including America and Australia, so not just Russia. There is currently an abundant supply of coal on world markets.’
Kitchen said: ‘We are not climate change sceptics. But surely you just have to look at the National Grid website to see how little power was generated by wind last Friday to realise how much we still need coal?’ …
http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/news/article-2613948/Britain-STILL-depends-coal-40-electricity.html
30 April: Bloomberg: Biggest LBO Ends in Bankruptcy as Energy Future Files; Ranks With Enron’s Collapse
By Steven Church, Tiffany Kary and Linda Sandler
Energy Future Holdings Corp., the Texas power company that plans to leave bankruptcy in less than a year, can’t reduce its $50 billion in debt without fighting junior creditors who face losing their investment…
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-04-29/energy-future-files-for-bankruptcy-protection-in-delaware.html
I understand that the Chinese are very enthusiastic about bicycle use but their CO2 emissions aren’t quite what the doctors ordered.
I also note that designers and especially architects are very very PC and the green revolution is all the rage in their part of the world. Too bad that the recent studies are showing that LEED certified buildings actually use more energy than those that are non-certified. Another boondoggle. How many extra dollars have we spent on LEED certified public buildings in the last 10-15 years? It is probably even more money than we have spent on Global Warming research.
“Substantially more research and effort is needed to redesign our behavior, our products, and our cities to prevent the most disastrous consequences of global warming,” said Nemire. “
Some things never change…
http://news.bbc.co.uk/nol/shared/spl/hi/programmes/analysis/transcripts/25_01_10.txt
TOWNSEND: I was making a speech to nearly 200 really hard core, deep environmentalists and I played a little thought game on them. I said imagine I am the carbon fairy and I wave a magic wand. We can get rid of all the carbon in the atmosphere, take it down to two hundred fifty parts per million and I will ensure with my little magic wand that we do not go above two degrees of global warming. However, by waving my magic wand I will be interfering with the laws of physics not with people – they will be as selfish, they will be as desiring of status. The cars will get bigger, the houses will get bigger, the planes will fly all over the place but there will be no climate change. And I asked them, would you ask the fairy to wave its magic wand? And about 2 people of the 200 raised their hands.
ROWLATT: That is quite shocking. I bet you were shocked, weren’t you?
TOWNSEND: I was angry. I wasn’t shocked. I was angry because it really showed that they wanted more. They didn’t just want to prevent climate change. They wanted to somehow change people, or at very least for people to know that they had to change.
And so it goes… I wonder if they realize what an ugly world it would be at 250PPM of CO2…
Just askin’
I’m rusty on the reference, but had read at one point that riding a bicycle a mile expended more CO2 than if using a car. Not sure if the clever person stating this was using the agriculture cost for fuel (food) or other parameter to compare energy and emission. But in any event it’s the kind of response — presuming if true — that drives a warmest crazy as it’s so counter-intuitive to belief systems. (Not dissimilar to showing the lack of CO2 reduction with wind farms.)
WillR – re your Townsend piece : I would suggest that they don’t want more, because it never was about climate in the first place. They want what they think they can achieve using climate “science” as the lever. Of course they wouldn’t want you to remove their lever.
As a long time product designer I can reveal that the mainstream industrial design world has moved on from oppressive green activism to ridiculously flamboyant computer design due to rather sudden massive upgrades in 3D design software called parametric programming. They use graphical flow chart programming platforms with a somewhat high initial learning curve but no in depth programming being needed for most of the day to day design work. Grasshopper run within the Rhino program is one of the most popular. This allows wild custom organic forms to be quickly tweaked, generated from a collection of mathematical routines built into each graphical language box. Design schools are now teaching this funky expressionism like mad since its a real technical skill that earns them lots of tuition money from a wide variety of those formerly bored with design. It’s relatively open source so serious programmers can release their own mathematical modules so that the software is constantly making large advances in features. Architecture schools have adopted it too. It overlaps with 3D printing since the result is so organic instead of blocky but also with custom Tinker Toy construction methods. To some extent it could lead to more efficient use of materials but more often its pure show off and aesthetic futurism. This is a serious paradigm change from all the recycled tires made into carpets and stinky composting bins in every kitchen. Such is fashion!
A typical example:
http://stat2.architizer-cdn.com/mediadata/projects/082013/r990x990/792acd76.jpg
How a generative “program” looks:
http://blog.nikolas.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/surface-checkerboarder.png
Maybe office buildings’ outer walls could be retrofitted with sprinkler-type hoses that would snake down and run horizontally above each floor and that would be turned on during hot days and evenings, to keep them moist. These hoses have tiny holes that each let out tiny streams of water, so they wouldn’t drip much on passersby.
The cooling from evaporation would cut down considerably on the expense of air conditioning, and the CO2 produced by the electricity supplier. it would be worth a test, even if the pilot site looked awkward from the jury-rigged hoses. This seems like something that could actually work without costing a lot.
There always seems to be enough energy to allow for another locomotive to pull more carriages on the CAGW research gravy train. Perhaps, if they they get rid of the locos and make them all use pedal generators, there would be fewer passengers.
Excellent notion. We can all go to hell in a beautifully ergonomically-designed, high-efficiency handcart.
There is a clear need for further research into Worldwide Stupidity and Worldwide Gullibility and Worldwide wastes of money into completely insane and crank-pot ideas. Funding for all other matters like Climate research into Global Warming should be immediately suspended in order to pay for this new initiative.
Ergonomics – yes. If I design my office set up just right it will be easier to let all that hot air out of my backside, without having to stand up!
TobiasN says:
April 29, 2014 at 9:23 pm
The old adage about polishing a turd comes to mind, yes.
What do you do with that thing? Sit on it?
/Mr Lynn
In my short life I have discovered that, whereas it is believed that fecal matter (also described in a short word that begins with ‘s’) exits the human body strictly through the posterior, in reality much more fecal matter exits the fingertips (but only whilst typing), and in gushers out the mouth.
Therefore, I propose the design of a new ergonomic toilet paper.
And, so as to combat age discrimination in salaries and grants I propose the funding (to develop this ergonomic toilet paper) be strictly awarded to 5 and 6 year olds who, I have little doubt, can complete this project far more sensibly than adults with PhDs.
The last paragraph reads like politically-correct-programmed bot.
Back around 1980, the company I worked for opened a new building. This was the time of recurrent energy crises and energy conservation was something that was stressed. As a result great emphasis was placed on sealing buildings to prevent leakage of heated or cooled air to the outside and thus conserving the funds need to purchase energy. The amount of air exchanged with the outside was drastically reduced over the previous practice.
Complaints about “bad air” began immediately after the building was occupied. This was common for new buildings in that era. There wee numerous reasons put forth for this both at my company and generally. These ranged from hysteria to the type of lighting. All I knew was that I was constantly taking antihistamines in order to breathe. Finally some in authority twigged that allowing cigarette and pipe smoking in a sealed air building was not a good idea. Smoking was banned in the building. People could breathe again. And the complaints stopped.
So I do not think it is inappropriate for ergonomic people to look at the implications of applying green technology standards. People on this blog may be dubious about CAGW but others are not and new standards and preferences are emerging. I lived through years of breathing stale cigarette smoke in a fancy new building. i hope that similar problems could be avoided in the future
TBear says: April 29, 2014 at 8:47 pm
“A Transdisciplinary Perspective on Hedonomic Sustainability”
WTF
I wondered if they misspelled ‘Hedonistic’.
rogerknights says:
April 30, 2014 at 12:18 am
wayne says:
October 10, 2012 at 8:23 am
Philip Bradley, ditto.
Maybe office buildings’ outer walls could be retrofitted with sprinkler-type hoses that would snake down and run horizontally above each floor and that would be turned on during hot days and evenings, to keep them moist. These hoses have tiny holes that each let out tiny streams of water, so they wouldn’t drip much on passersby.
***
The problem is that evaporative cooling only works where the water evaporates readily, ie; dry climates. And unfortunately dry climates tend to have issues with water availability and tend to frown on such applications over drinking and other more important usages. In areas with more water, the climate tends to be more, well, moist already. And that higher humidity significantly reduces the benefit of evaporative cooling. Further, it can produce mold and mildew which is a whole new level of issue. And unless treated the evaporated water will leave behind deposits increasing the need for additional building/window maintenance.
A variant of your idea has been used in dry climates where water is used to increase cooling on the condenser coils of large air conditioning units. It is a merging of the swamp-cooler technology with modern AC and has been used for decades in places like Phoenix and the US Southwest. I once made a sprayer for my home AC condenser and the power consumed droped by ~10% when a water mist was in the airstream going into the coil. Due to the deposits it would have left on the coil, I did not make it a permananent feature.
The roads in my state were first laid out in the 18th century – for horses and carts. They are far too narrow for two-way automobile traffic to share with bicycles. Every year we have bicyclists turn into hood ornaments.
Promoting bicycles will only work with a complete redesign of the state’s highways – not a very ‘green’ proposition.
Bicycles are wonderful means of personal transportation — if only we lived in a completely different world.
Sure, most of us can really use the extra exercise. But how many people can commute, buy groceries, go shopping, to the movies, etc., etc., using a bicycle? Here’s another green/socialist Utopian answer to a non-existing transportation/climate problem.
“rogerknights says:
April 30, 2014 at 12:18 am
wayne says:
October 10, 2012 at 8:23 am
Philip Bradley, ditto.”
Wow, that reminds me of the “ancient” pre-airconditioner airconditioners used on cars back in the
1950s and early 1960s… (the ones that hung out the window, with a wet towel or something inside), or just the poor-man’s approach, a wet towel put up against the window such that the air
would pass through and cool….
I guess our elders weren’t that foolish after all…. (saying that with a bit of remorse….)
Do these people ever stop with the lunacy? I always pull out my Kindle Fire
whenever debating a low information types who believe this tripe. I call up
an image of 10,000 pennies I stacked into 20 rows by 20 columns by 25
high. 3-1/2 pennies are missing from this pile and arrayed in the foreground.
I then ask them how 3-1/2 parts in 10,000 (Or 350 PPM) could possibly
influence global climate. “I read the Times and watch MSNBC” is the usual
answer. I then tell them that of that 96 percent of that 3-1/2 is produced
by nature.
Well, I left it at 350 PPM and The editor of Soylent Refuge added an editorial
aside, which explained that man was only responsible for 14 PPM of CO2.
350 used to be called Trace levels.”
After spending weeks stacking pennies and covering them with an overturned
dresser drawer to prevent the horny un-neutered feral Tom cat I rescued from
a paper mill as a kitten from destroying the array, the following is my contribution:
I do not care care who takes credit for this. I invite people to distribute this
in the public domain.
http://soylentrefuge.blogspot.com/2014/04/not-quite-30-pieces-of-silver.html
You are free to distribute and copy this link. PS, the little shit is sleeping
next to my PC sub-woofer. Never rescue a feral cat! He will shred your
furniture and leave you with scars on your hands and arms. He will piss
all over the place, but he will always love you!
kenw says:
April 30, 2014 at 7:59 am
The problem is that evaporative cooling only works where the water evaporates readily, ie; dry climates. And unfortunately dry climates tend to have issues with water availability and tend to frown on such applications over drinking and other more important usages. In areas with more water, the climate tends to be more, well, moist already. And that higher humidity significantly reduces the benefit of evaporative cooling. Further, it can produce mold and mildew which is a whole new level of issue. And unless treated the evaporated water will leave behind deposits increasing the need for additional building/window maintenance.
My suggestion may be infeasible, but I would like some specialist to run the numbers to prove it. Here are what I hope he would find:
The amount of water consumed would be modest enough that some dry climates could afford to use it – especially if the additional consumption were offset by reduced electrical consumption.
The amount of evaporative cooling in moist climates would be sufficient to justify installing the process. And, in NYC, as I can recall, there were many days that were hot without being terribly humid, so even in moist climates there might be enough dry days to to justify the system.
Maybe deposits could be reduced by recycling the water that comes out of air conditioning units—it’s as “soft” as can be. (But probably there wouldn’t be enough to be a full replacement for tap water.) In that case the tap water should be run through a filter such as are commonly used in hard-water areas.
I don’t see why misting the windows during the hot parts of the day would promote mold more than rainfall would. If necessary, a mild, organic fungicide could be added during the water softening process.