Know It or Just Shut Up

Reducing footprint on environment

From my engineering background, there is a phrase that I know it very well “Talk with data, No Data No Talk”. I think that’s really a good advice.Too many people now pretend to be expert in climate change without really know about it. What they count on is what called “hear say”. If Professor X say this, then since he is a prominent figure of the community, he must be right. Sounds familiar ? Now what happen if it turns out that Professor X was wrong, then they can put the blame to others:  “Sorry,it’s not my fault he said this and this, how do I know it’s not true?”. Again, sounds familiar?

What I am trying to say is that if you want to stand on something, know the fact first. Don’t do something because somebody say so. If you don’t know anything about it, just shut up. So, know it or just shut up.  I guess this rule should apply to all aspect of your life not only about climate change.

Science Is Not Democracy !

Since you are reading this article, from now on if you hear the argument that because majority of scientist agree on something, then it is true, straight away scream to them “SCIENCE IS NOT DEMOCRACY!!!”

In science, it doesn’t matter if 99,9999% of “scientist” say one thing, but if there is just one that say otherwise, then until proven it is absolutely wrong, then there is a chance that that 99,9999% are on the wrong. Remember our knowledge is limited and we still learning as the time passed !

If you don’t agree with my statement above, let me take you back to around 1615. Around that time 99.9999% scientist say that the earth is the center of universe and sun and other space object are circling the earth. A man called Galileo Galilei, inspired by Nicolas Copernicus’s work, say publicly that no that’s not true. Earth is not the center of universe, actually earth is circling the sun. Of course, he was ridicule by all people, ex-communicated by Catholic Church, etc. Well, guess what, he was actually the right one, not the other 99,999%.

Galileo Galilei

See the resemblance ?

So, again, science is not democracy. If just one scientist on its field say the opposite of the popular belief, then it creates a reasonable doubt that need to be investigated. Until this reasonable doubt proven to be absolutely wrong, then there is a chance the popular belief is the one not right.

Additional Tax for Global Warming

Don’t you have enough tax to pay ? Yes, the issue of climate change and global warming is now become everybody problem since all leading government will try to put up a carbon tax/polluter tax which at the end force everybody to pay more than what it is now to reduce global warming. The logic from government is like this: if you are a big polluter, you need to pay more (penalty) tax, the less you pollute the less tax need to be paid. So by then, the government hope thatthe total polution will be less as everybody try to save and not to pay the tax.

The question is will it actually reduce the global warming ? With all the money in the world is Fiat Currency and can be created from thin air, then as long as a company have the money to pay the tax, a company can keep polluting the earth without reducing it a bit. So, this carbon tax scheme is not direct effort on the problem. It is possible, that after all the hassle and everybody already have paid more tax, the effect of the effort is probably not significant.

So, shall we doing nothing, then ? No… absolutely not. We should be doing what is right. If we pollute the sky with burning coal, we should try to reduce it and change to solar energy. But not because we need to avoid paying higher tax, but because it’s just something that’s right.

Want to know my stand on global warming? Yes, global warming do exist. But, no, it doesn’t caused by human activity. Read more about this here.

Reducing our footprint in the environment

Taking easy position ? No, absolutely not. I will explain why below and once you read, I would think that most of you will agree with me. Let’s find out…

Is there Global Warming?

This is the easiest: Yes, there is. It does not need a scientist to prove this one as it is quite easy to show and experience it yourself.

Average temperature goes up, ice in sout and north pole melted, sea level drifted up, morning is not as chilled as 10 years ago, and so on.

The global warming or in more general term “climate change” does exists and real. There should not be any more debate on this one. Yes, there is global warming / climate change.

Is it caused by human?

The skeptic and the believer of global warming can do the debate endlessly and fiercely, but there will never be absolute answer.

I like to use this analogy: go to local beach, taste the water. It’s salty, right? How about we try to make sea water sweet. (Yes, I know – saltiness has nothing to do with sweetness, I don’t want to make it less salty, just to make it sweet) – Let say I will put 100kg sugar on my beach. Will the water become sweet? Is there any impact of the environment ? Well, right after I put 100kg of sugar, surely the water near the location will be sweet, but a few seconds later, the amount of sweetness will not even can be tasted anymore. The sugar is the polutant that correspondent to the polutant human cause to the earth. The sea is compared to the earth itself.

My answer of this question will be: no. I don’t think the global warming is caused by human. Yes, there will be some impact due to human activity,  as there will be impact when I pour 100kg of sugar to the sea, but since it’s too tiny compare to the sea itself, the impact is very minute if not neglectable.

Our earth not to tell our solar system or universe, is significantly too big for human race. Any impact of human activity will be too little to be significant.

On the other side of coin, even if we do something about it, how do we know the impact is significant enough to affect something real? Remember at this moment, human race with all of its knowledge and tools, still not be able to conquer a storm or hurricane. Storm or hurricane is notably local or maybe regional, but certainly not global. What make we so confident that something that human do will affect the global condition of the earth, while we can even do anything that is in much smaller scale?

Two (2) other significant factors that also cannot be ignored:

1. Other planet, such Mars, also showing increase in global temperature. Well, there is no human there ….
2. Don’t forget Ice Age.  A few millions year ago there was a time where ice is everywhere. Obviously all those ice is melted due to some increase temperature isn’t it ? But there was not really too many human at that time? Why it still had the “global warming”?

So, should we do nothing?

Absolutely not. The same thing like that 100kg sugar into the sea. We know it will not impact the sea in general, but can we just randomly throw 100kg of sugar from time to time? No, of course – it’s not right.

The key is: just do what’s right and common sense will prevail.

In more technical term: try to reduce or minimize your footprint in the environment. That’s it.

We know that aerosol is not natural to be in the atmosphere, so if our air conditioner can use something else that’s not poluting the air (regardless of the effect) – that’s  common sense and something that right.

The same logic apply to all other measure: plant a tree for every car sold , use alternative cleaner energy rather than just burn that filthy black coal, use more efficient car to reduce pollution, etc.

Then, what’s the boundary?

In my opinion, the boundary is the limit of goodwill of human nature. As long as something that we do still give you warm fuzzy feeling that you are doing the right thing, keep on going. But if we move to some drastic measure that make everybody suffers, then probably just forget it. Easy example: if reducing 20% carbon pollution by 2020 is consider big thing that need some serious sacrifice and many people will suffer, then forget it. Maybe 10% reduction is already much better than nothing.

At the end, what written above is just my opinion. Who really care about my opinion? Maybe, no one.. but those above said and done, I hope you enjoy the rest of your day.

Why? Because speeding basically may cause crash (single vehicle accident or multiple vehicles) and/or injury. Crash requires repair from minor repair to major repair or even write off. Regardless who pays the repair, it costs a lot of money.

The same things with injury. From minor injury to major injury or even fatality, all require money as expense: emergency service, medication, doctor, etc. Not to mention the precious opportunity cost of the time wasted to deal with any speeding incident.

Hence, I would propose for community in general to take the responsibility to minimize – if not eliminate speeding problem as describe below.

Introducing Speeding Officer Society / S.O.S

All healthy member of society may sign-up themselves as “Speeding Officer” who will be equipped with portable or car mounted speed gun. Speeding Officer is authorized to report speeding driver with its speed gun. Once convicted, Speeding Officer will have some percentage of the speeding fine as their “commission” or “reward” to make community a better place.

The Equipment

a speed gun

The speed gun is basically digital camera, GPS and speed radar in one device. Such device will cost less than $200. It comes with 2 versions:

• Fully portable / hand-held
• Car-mounted. The car mounted comes with 2 variations: rear mounted and front mounted

So the Speeding Officer can do their action off the street or inside their car.

The detail of speeding can be reported directly to docking station in police station or RTA station or can be uploaded via internet.

The Rules

In order to secure a conviction the following rule must be followed:

• The speed gun need to be calibrated for every 4 weeks to be a “valid” speed gun
• At least 2 Speeding Officer required to report the same vehicle with 2 different valid speed gun within 15 minutes. That is, if a Speeding Officer clocked a vehicle, there must be another Speeding Officer around the vicinity that report the same vehicle of speeding within 15 minutes.
• If there is only 1 Speeding Officer, then the incident cannot received conviction, but the record will be maintain as warning for future incident
• The speeding need to be reported within 48 hours. (Speeding Officer need to upload the data within 48 hours)
• The driver may challenge the speed gun for a fee. If the speed gun is being challenged, the Speeding Officer need to submit the speed gun for calibration check. If it is still well calibrated, the report stays. But if the speed gun is out of calibration during the check, or cannot be checked, then that particular speed gun’s report will be forfeited.

The Speeding Officer

Anybody willing to become speeding officer need to fulfill some criteria below:

• Healthy mentally and physically, but cannot be blind.
• Citizen or Permanent Resident who eligible for working in Australia
• Have no criminal report
• Undergoing compulsory training
• Put some security deposit of the speed gun or buy it outright
• Pay for annual license fee. Active Speeding Officer with more than 25 convictions have their annual fee waived.
• Need to have internet access and mobile phone as communication will be email and SMS
• Speeding Officer is not employed by anybody, they are independent contractor for society
• Speeding Officer is not authorized to stop any vehicle. They are basically just like moving speed camera. If the speeding is considered dangerous, dial 000 and report to Police

The Renumeration / Reward

For every conviction, the reward or renumeration need to follow several condition below:

• 30% of total fine paid is available as pool
• If there are more than 2 Speeding Officer who eligible for the report, the pool will be equally divided among them
• The reward money is payable monthly once threshold of $100 has been reached
• The reward money need to be considered as income for tax purposes

The Positive Side

• This system is self funded when Speeding Officer will “buy” their own equipment and system maintenance can be funded from Speeding Officer’s license fee. Only initial money to buy the initial equipment and the infrastructure (website and database) are required
• The system virtually can provide enormous number of people who will watch out our street from speeding driver: the S.O.S (Speeding Officer Society).
• Easy to implement. Speeding Officer does not require to fill any paper work. Just shoot and upload.
• Police can be assigned to more critical task than pinging speeding driver
• The existence of Speeding Officer cannot be predicted, hence the negative effect of Fixed Speed Camera is eliminated (Most people – except morons – will slow down in known location of speed camera but some speed up afterward)
• One can make the reward money of Speeding Officer as additional income or some people perhaps will make it as Full Time Jobs.

The Negative Side

• If the detail of Speeding Officer can be somehow obtained by the convicted driver, then there is revenge factor to deal with. But as long as the database remains secure there will be no such problem
• If there is too many Speeding Officer, the reward money will be less significant and less attractive.

The Cons

I can see straightaway some people who will oppose such system in 2 broad category:

1. The one who speed.
   If these people thinks that they are allowed to speed if there is nobody around or no speed camera around, then most likely these kind of people is the one who cannot think at all. Remember even nothing happen (no accident whatsoever), these people are already disgrace for community for using the precious petrol recklessly and make inflation pressure (Less money spent, means less inflation doesn’t matter whose money it is)
2. Some silly civil liberty activist.
   Any person who against such system in the name of civil liberty need to be question whether they really understand what is civil liberty. If civil liberty is “I can do speeding anytime I want if nobody around” then I would prefer don’t have civil liberty. (Really, I pity the obligation for goverment to put warning if there is speed camera ahead in the name of civil liberty. Speed camera should be unannounced to get it’s maximum impact). Or probably the real reason is these people are in category 1 above.

Conclusion

A system to minimize if not eliminate speeding problem is suggested above. Please note that as for now, the system described above is only suggestion and not yet implemented. It’s up to the authority to adopt such system.

Feel free to adopt, modify , enhance or even ridicule my suggestion above. It’s not patented or trade marked. I did the system as concerned citizen who wants to contribute to community. I believe that the system will work and speeding problem will be minimized if not eliminated once the system being implemented generally.