There is something disturbing about electric heating, especially if the electricity used is generated by thermodynamic processes, such as burning coal or natural gas. Lots of heat is sacrificed at the power plant to be able to turn a fraction of the input energy into this superb high-quality electricity that can do mechanical work. Then at the other end, an electric heater just turns it right back into waste heat without doing anything else useful.

But something useful can be done. Instead of straight heating elements, I suggest a server farm. Maybe box it up like an electric heater, sell the CPU cycles back while still getting the same heat out.

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Came across this the other day.

Climate engineering may happen but it seems like the energies available to control the weather/climate is not nearly enough (not even the same magnitude) to make this a stable plant. Frankly it seems like a bad idea at this stage of technological development. On the other hand, it is a valid point to say that the climate is already being engineered anyway (more and more) just by the very fact that we take input and commit output to the system. It doesn’t much matter that we still don’t know what we’ve been doing.

In this sense, I think the entire argument about whether global warming is happening or not or is the model believable or not or is it actually global cooling is beside the point. The actual effect doesn’t matter as much as the fact that we’re engineering any system beyond our capability to understand it, much less to control it. One day there may be a way to engineer the climate in a controllable, stable fashion. Before that, it is prudent to be paranoid about the inputs driving the system unless there is proof that said inputs do not drive one of the unstable modes of the system.

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The titan arum “flower.” Among its properties:

• It’s big – up to 3 meters. The plant itself can be even larger.
• It rarely flowers. Its root takes years to store up enough energy, apparently.
• It attracts flies, so it smells like rotten meat. (It’s not carnivorous.)
• Its real name is Amorphophallus titanum (I’m not making this up.)

So this thing has been on display at the Australian Royal Botanic Gardens, and one just flowered today, I guess. The one in the middle is what I am referring to. The one on the left is about to flower. The one in the back with leaves is in “growth” mode. I put “flower” in quotes because it’s not really one flower. The stalk and wrap are just appendages. The actual multiple flowers are all on the stalk, and there are two kinds, male and female, which mature at different times to prevent self-pollination.

An Australian paper had this to say:

A native of central Sumatra’s rainforests, the rarely seen flower is said to be the world’s largest flower, standing more than a metre tall.

On the few occasions one does bloom, it produces the stench of rotting flesh, giving rise to its other common name, the carcass flower.

The plant’s powerful pong is matched by its equally unappealing scientific name. Amorphophallus titanum, explained Steve Bartlett, a senior horticulturist at the gardens, “means huge deformed —

— Okay, Steve, let’s cut you off there,

The last time a titan arum flowered in the gardens, in October 2004, 16,000 people queued for a look. It was only the second time one had opened in Australia, and one of the few times in the world, outside Indonesia.

That plant was grown from seed collected in Sumatra in the early 1990s. Sydney horticulturalists later took cuttings, successfully producing two new plants

“It was originally thought they couldn’t be grown from cuttings,” said Mr Bartlett, also responsible for plant propagation at the gardens. To his delight, both new plants produced buds.

It turns out one reason people grow these (besides the novelty) is because they are endangered. And they are endangered because, well let’s see, they waste their time growing a huge root so they can occasionally grow a huge stalk; they try to get insects to pollinate them by deceit instead of mutual benefit; a decade may pass without flowering, and then, when they do flower, they don’t self-pollinate, so they may not ever produce seeds for a new plant unless there are several of them nearby. Clearly, these things are badly evolved. Just like panda bears. Terrible.

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