Cisco, NASA Plan 'Planetary Skin' For Monitoring Earth Climate

Slatterz writes "Cisco has inked a deal with NASA to build a new global system for tracking climate change. Dubbed 'Planetary Skin,' the network platform will connect a number of sensor and recording units throughout the planet in an effort to gather data for monitoring and tracking changes to the global climate. The company plans to begin building the system next year with a program called 'Rainforest Skin' which will track both climate change and deforestation in rainforest environments. Eventually, the company plans to take the system throughout the planet and create a global network of data-collecting systems for the project. A podcast and a video explain the project in further detail."

Comments

Rare metals scattered everywhere

[BadAnalogyGuy]

These sensors use trace amounts of rare metals which may be harmful to the environment in which they are used. Sensors, in the volumes given in the article, will bring large amounts of these metals with them when considered in aggregate.

You can't measure the environment without also impacting it in some way. Nature has its own "wave function" which is collapsed when we start trying to measure it in any statistically significant manner.

Satellite tracking is a much better idea, but one that won't make any money for Cisco.

Re:Rare metals scattered everywhere

[Anonymous Coward]

These sensors use trace amounts of rare metals which may be harmful to the environment in which they are used. Sensors, in the volumes given in the article, will bring large amounts of these metals with them when considered in aggregate.

Relax, there is nothing more safe and secure in the middle of a police free rain forest where illegal logging occurs than expensive and unattended solar panels. Who'd take such a useless and expensive device to sell or use for electricity? Certainly not the loggers or itinerant farmers...

Just throw up some more satellites already. Take a thermo-graphic picture, let the earth spin for 12 hours, and repeat. There you go, a global temperature sample. Repeat for a year, there's your global annual average temperature sample. Compare them for ten years and you have an unambiguous trend.

Re:Rare metals scattered everywhere

[Anonymous Coward]

Good god, man, stop trying to drag quantum physics where it isn't supposed to go. I mean, appealing to the Heisenberg uncertainty principle is one thing; it's plenty silly, since small quantities of rare metal from when the (nicely ruggedized) devices finally rot away will affect the environment in a nonzero manner, but it is not likely to affect the environment in any way that they are going to be measuring.

The "wave function" bit is totally bogus, however. Nature doesn't actually exist in multiple conflicting states which then collapse into one when "observed": as a macroscopic system, the kind of particle interactions which lead to observation and collapse are already happening all the darned time.

Re-calibrate?

[zwede]

So once this system is online and does not find any signs of warming, what then? Will it have provisions to be "re-calibrated" so the results match the "scientific consensus"?

Re:Re-calibrate?

[Anonymous Coward]

Better yet, what if the new system provides conclusive evidence that the earth is only 6000 years old? What will those know-it-all scientists do then?

Re:Re-calibrate?

[Anonymous Coward]

Most of Slashdot must be still hung over from last night. Not only are there less than 100 posts, you were modded insightful.

Re:Re-calibrate?

[Janeshat]

They will just use the same old argument they already use. "while the data is not complete, we cannot wait until it is complete or it will be too late to act."

Imperfect does not mean useless.

NO, imperfect does not mean useless, but imperfect can mean inaccurate. In science, accuracy is a big deal. Otherwise we are just following a hunch, and that is fine in the beginning, but to base political and social policy on a hunch is too much to ask.

Re:Re-calibrate?

[Janeshat]

I have no hard evidence that god doesn't exist, but that does not mean he does.

I did mean evidence when I said facts, since facts are derived from evidence. I will concede on that point as evidence is a better term to use when being precise.

I also agree that the grant motivated agendas is a red hearing since both sides do it.

But that doesn't make it any more ethical does it?

Is there no way to eliminate this ethical dilemma of monetary motivators in science?

Should we not work to eliminate it?

I think we are both interested in seeking the best evidence available. I am just more skeptical of mankind. I see skeptics as well as scientists with real opposing theories as a good thing in any type of science.

I just fear that this science is getting used by political agendas and has accumulated an almost religious following of zealots.

I also distrust statistical data and computer models that are based on such data, especially when the data is retrieved from questionable sources.

I am not going to bring a bunch of names and opposing evidence into this argument. We both know there is real science on both sides of the issue. Sure there is a majority of one type of scientist that believes your theories and they might be right, but the other side might be right as well at this point.

My argument is mainly that the "skeptics" as you call them (I prefer to call them scientists with opposing theories) are not getting the funding and that this is anti-scientific.

Re:Point being?

[foobsr]

How will that help fix the underlying problems,

These days, you need a lot of scientific research as well as expert advice to get a grip of simple concepts like "Don't shit where you eat". Secondly, it is much more convinient to fence off oneself from presumably necessary actions that will reduce the likelihood of being re-elected by 'fence-research'.

CC.