Let me say it again. Look at these graphs. The data, taken from ice core studies, shows four ice-ages in the past 400k years. For each dip of the
CO2 graph
there is a similar dip in the
temperature graph
showing a high degree of correlation. The extended CO2 graph
shows an enormous increase in CO2, over the past century, well outside the range of the past 400k years. This recent rise is almost a vertical jump, indicating we may be changing the climate drastically.
It is possible that the sun has some effect in triggering these cycles but these graphs show
such a large correlation between CO2 and temperature that it is impossible not to believe
the scientists of the IPCC. Yes, human activity is causing global warming. (In the UK we experience this now as global wetting - with increased heavy rainshowers).
To me your reaction sounds just like those "smoking doesn't cause cancer" line from the 1960s. Don't kid yourself.
After posting that, I wondered if I had risen to flamebait. Now I'm beginning to think these global warming denials may actually be genuine.
For a start, why not look at the CO2 and 500,000 year temperature graphs linked to above. They show
Global temerature strongly correlates with atmospheric CO2
Atmospheric CO2 is rising fast
Can you explain this away?.
Last century we had about a 0.6 deg C rise. This century 6.0 dec C is predicted with some very serious consequences. But there is a danger of methane hydrate making it much, much worse.
How then do you explain these graphs. They show four ice-ages in the past 400k years.
Taken from ice core studies, for each dip of the
CO2 graph
there is a similar dip in the
temperature graph
[ornl.gov]. The extended CO2 graph
shows CO2 is well outside the range of the past 400k years. The rise is almost a vertical jump.
This really shows we are doing something serious. Last week Michal Meecher, the Envirionment Minister, had an article in The Independent mentioning the Methane Hydrate danger. This is where some of the billion tons of methane stored in "methane ice" comes out and really changes the atmosphere.
I don't know what the odds of this are but some of the experts think it's possibly mass extinction stuff. To me it's much more likely than an asteroid extinction - nothing we are doing now attracts asteroids. On the other hand our bit in global warming could let this time bomb off.
But in the meantime we are willing to let our activities drown and starve the poor of the world.
I would rather enjoy the self-congratualtion reading through my junk email if it made a contribution to charity. I would also be happy to make a charitable donation to ensure my emails were read. Has anyone thought of setting up such a thing?
Problems with the foam in 1995
on
Latest Columbia News
·
· Score: 2, Informative
Firstly, my sympathy to all involved.
Next. Has anyone seen the SPIE Proceedings Vol. 2455 (b=abstracts) particularly Paper #: 2455-23 Shearographic nondestructive evaluation of Space Shuttle thermal protection systems
The abstract says
It is estimated that 90% of tile TPS damage on the orbiter `belly' results from debonding SOFI during ascent.
TPS - Thermal Protection System
SOFI - spray-on foam insulation
This paper is in the proceedings of the SPIE meeting in 1995 on "Nondestructive Evaluation of Aging Aircraft, Airports, Aerospace Hardware, and Materials"
A friend in York, England was asked to pay £95 to the "Crown Data Collection Enforcement Agency". The UK Goverment's Data Protection Registry has a note on their website warning against such "individuals posing as 'collectors on behalf of data protection'".
My friend looked up their address on Google and found 46 web pages, including an adoption agency a glamour model agency and somebody selling hardcore porn videos. He emailed York's trading standards department.
He got a phone call back saying York Council policy bans Google so his complaint could not be investigated. How the f*** can they find anything out?
the "first world" has a far from perfect environmental
record but it is WAY ahead of the third world where fishing
by pouring poison or tossing dynamite in the ocean is an
accepted method, where "recycling" involves open fires to
burn the plastics off of wire and electronics, and where the
air is many times worse than in the worst US city
According to the United Nations(found
here
the global pollution from CO2 per head in 1999 was
But I really want to ask about the morality of another possibility.
I have recently heard of small to medium sized UK companies that have run into
cultural and practical difficulties associated with sending work to India, Russia etc.
On the other hand, another smaller company works very successfully with a colleague,
who used to be resident in the UK, but has moved to a poorer country.
Could this be a pattern? Skilled tekkies could move to poorer countries to take
advantage of the lower cost of living (and possibly with lower salaries?). But only
after they have formed close working relationships with their employers?
Building a better empire with global corporations?
on
Giant Sucking Noise
·
· Score: 1
This is an idea that I have thought about for some time but not dared to mention.
Refugees are economic drivers when they reach destination nations
Global corporations are usurping the power of nations.
Nations are rejecting refugees and their economic power
So could global corporations recruit refugees and say "Send me your tired, your poor and your hungry"?
Could there be a special legal structure for "refugee corporations"? - an equivalent of the GNU General Public License? If it could work why stop at refugees?
Imagine there's no countries, it isn't hard to do, nothing to kill or die for, and no religion too
This was a full page article, with a picture of Stallman on the front page. It covered so much more than I have read in any UK broadsheet. But the article was written for readers of the FT not for/. nerds. (How many are both?).
The article was as much in favour of Linux and OSS as it could be without losing touch with its readers. Quoting an IBM spokesperson was just right the right touch: "[Linux] is no longer guys with tie-dyed T-shirts and mad scientists in their basements". Many of us nerds may feel slighted. But if it's in a good cause, I can cope.
Something occurred to me when I read the blurb (as the article is dead).
Me too.
Recently I have had my bicycle stolen - replacement cost £700 (over $1000). As
it was not locked, I probably won't get the insurance - even if I can be bothered
to fill the form in!
I am a lazy and impatient person but I live in a bike-friendly town where bikes
often have precedence over cars. I could ride it in most places
and push it to most of the others. I could stop right outside any shop in the pedestrian
streets, pull it pack onto its stand, walk into the shop and come out and throw
all my purchases into the very large basket. (For those of you in the UK, it was
just like the bike in the Hovis advert.)
My bike kept me sane and it also kept me fit - I gave rides in the basket to
anyone under 14 stones (about 200 pounds) who was brave enough.
Before I buy another bicycle like my lost love (a Pashley Delibike. See it
here),
I want
a locking system that is very easy to use (I hate getting everything
out of my pockets to find the keys)
an alarm that will tell me when its being moved (eg ring me on my mobile?)
some way of tracking it (eg. a GPS that will text me on my mobile)
On second thoughts, I will order it tomorrow in case they are slashdotted and
run out of stock
I remember when in a previous company we had 12 IT professionals,
six with "Computer Science" degrees - you know what I mean
NpComplete/Knuth/Z stuff. The computer scientists were mostly
people with good or very good first degrees and some with masters
and PhDs.
The technical management, myself included, had mostly science
or engineering degrees of varying quality. After a turbulent time, and
some job losses, which we managed humanely, we took stock. We
concluded that most of our technical problems were down to the
computer scientists. We never really managed to explain why. The
computer scientists were undoubtedly clever, hard working and
pleasant people.
I know other people have found the same problem - one with a
spooky similarity to our own. I have tried lots of explanations but
most of them do not quite fit. Has anybody got any?
Was it us or was it them? Or a clash of cultures?
Are Eric Raymond's comments relevant?
"I can't give complete instructions on how to learn to program here --
it's a complex skill. But I can tell you that books and courses won't
do it (many, maybe most of the best [open programmers] are self-taught)."
( How To Become A Hacker)
Universities do lots of research. But can they be trusted to look into
the value of their own products? I am beginning to hear the term
"Evidence Based Education" more often but believe that there
are few academics that are willing to bite the hands that feed them.
Ronald Dore was one but who heard of his brilliant book "The
Diploma Disease". References to his work can be found
on www.faxfn.org here.
. I love the comment from Alison Wolf on the National Vocational
Qualifications (NVQs)
The reforms slid into something reminiscent of the 'Cargo Cults' of
Polynesia. Just as worshipping replicas of planes was thought, by cult
adherents, to bring the showering of gifts from the sky, so it became
an article of faith that awarding enough vocational certificates would
somehow transform the nature of the UK economy.
Some of us wonder if the current UK target of 50% of school leavers
going into higher education (as it exists today) is equally barmy.
Golden rule for IT managers: Never hire the graduate
It seems there is some dissatisfaction with the products of UK
universities.
Exams, Competencies and Psychometrics
has some interesting contributions on examinations
IQ did not contribute to GCSE [exam] performance
You can teach a turkey to climb a tree, but it's easier to hire a squirrel
The suggestion is that writing speed and style unfairly affects exam results.
If we paper the UK with degree certificates, will jobs from
heaven decend on us. Or will they decend instead on the call centres
and software houses of Hyderabad.
I recently heard John Selwyn Gummer, a right of centre politican, and a minister in the last Conservative Government in the UK. We used to dislike him but now he's become bit of a green guru.
He said his children were keen environmentalists. But could he get them to turn the lights off? Of course not.
But if you live in a family or shared house, it's really difficult to remember for the last one to turn the lights out. My household has lights on most of the night.
What I would like to see is individual charging for energy use - a bit like what is possible for a phone bill. Have slashdotters any good ideas: eg. technology that charges you when you are in a warmed room or in a lit space.
I don't want to appear too anti-capitalist but it would be good if we could manage to contol its excesses. One of the uncontrolled excesses is pollution. We are being given the wrong signals by the system - by advertising and by price - so our everydayday actions screw up the world.
Energy use, in particular, should be very much more expensive in order to cut our consumption. Our energy excesses are damaging the environment of the planet and have set the scene for the dangers current security situation.
In Europe we don't quite reach US levels of pollution mostly because we are not as wealthy - but we obviously would like to catch you up.
I believe energy use is our primary ethical issue. We must change the rules of world trade so that the "hidden hand of the market" does not choke us all. A good example would be a global agreement to tax air travel for its pollution.
BTW. I saw a protest plackard on TV saying Americans are over 100 times more polluting to the world than the inhabitants of Bangladesh. I know Londoners are pretty bad (See CityLimits) but surely you can't be that much ahead of us.
The atmosphere is very shallow compared to the size of the earth: It is less than one hundredth of the diameter of the earth. In proportion it is more akin to the skin of an apple than to the peel of an orange. The atmosphere thins with height and there is little atmosphere above 100 kilometres.
If all the atmosphere could all be kept at Standard Temperature and Pressure (ie at normal atmospheric pressure and at room temperature) it would be about 7700 metres in depth - little less than 8 kilometres. The main gasses would have depths of:
In 2002, CO2 is the equivalent of a layer 2.85 metres thick. In 1790 this layer would have been 2.16 metres thick. It has thus risen 0.69 metres since then.
By the year 2100 the lowest increase predicted by the scientists of the IPCC would give a rise of 2.00 metres and the highest a rise of 5.32 metres. The average prediction is for more than a doubling of CO2 from 1790 to 2100.
This is not business as usual for the Earth's atmosphere. And we are making the difference.
The Earth has a radius of some 6300 kilometres and a surface area of 510 million square kilometres. The population of the Earth has recently exceeded 6 billion people. This means there are on average 12 people for each square kilometre of the Earth's surface.
The surface of the Earth is 71% sea and 29% land, with 3% covered in ice and snow.
So for each person on Earth there are 2.5 hectares of land, the area of a square 158 metres by 158 metres. There are also 6 hectares of sea. That is the area of a square 245 metres by 245 metres.
3 feet is, approximately, one metre. If you are allowing a one metre square for each person, 6 billion square metes are required. That is just less area than a square of side 80,000 metres or 80 km(80,000*80,000 = 6,400,000). This is a square of side approximately 50 miles.
The Club of Rome may have been premature saying our cars would run out of gas. But we might to pay a high price. Last week, the UK minister, Peter Hain, thanked the US taxpayer for protecting the West's oil supplies at a cost of $15 per barrel.)
Today's Club of Rome worry about global warming and they may be right this time see this CO2 rise.
If the whole world lived like the affluent then to achieve sutainability in CO2 (with enough plant growth to reabsorb our pollution and stabilise the climate) we would need the area of several earth's to live on. Calculations of this "ecological footprint" have been done for York and London. The citizen's of York and London are living as though there were three Earths.
Slashdot Mirror
.. of this correlation so we can tell how it compares with the one referred to in "Don't kid yourself" above?
Let me say it again. Look at these graphs. The data, taken from ice core studies, shows four ice-ages in the past 400k years. For each dip of the CO2 graph there is a similar dip in the temperature graph showing a high degree of correlation. The extended CO2 graph shows an enormous increase in CO2, over the past century, well outside the range of the past 400k years. This recent rise is almost a vertical jump, indicating we may be changing the climate drastically.
It is possible that the sun has some effect in triggering these cycles but these graphs show such a large correlation between CO2 and temperature that it is impossible not to believe the scientists of the IPCC. Yes, human activity is causing global warming. (In the UK we experience this now as global wetting - with increased heavy rainshowers).
To me your reaction sounds just like those "smoking doesn't cause cancer" line from the 1960s. Don't kid yourself.
see "Myth!! Then explain this." above
After posting that, I wondered if I had risen to flamebait. Now I'm beginning to think these global warming denials may actually be genuine.
For a start, why not look at the CO2 and 500,000 year temperature graphs linked to above. They show
Can you explain this away?.
Last century we had about a 0.6 deg C rise. This century 6.0 dec C is predicted with some very serious consequences. But there is a danger of methane hydrate making it much, much worse.
some of this is from an earlier post
How then do you explain these graphs. They show four ice-ages in the past 400k years. Taken from ice core studies, for each dip of the CO2 graph there is a similar dip in the temperature graph [ornl.gov]. The extended CO2 graph shows CO2 is well outside the range of the past 400k years. The rise is almost a vertical jump.
This really shows we are doing something serious. Last week Michal Meecher, the Envirionment Minister, had an article in The Independent mentioning the Methane Hydrate danger. This is where some of the billion tons of methane stored in "methane ice" comes out and really changes the atmosphere.
I don't know what the odds of this are but some of the experts think it's possibly mass extinction stuff. To me it's much more likely than an asteroid extinction - nothing we are doing now attracts asteroids. On the other hand our bit in global warming could let this time bomb off.
But in the meantime we are willing to let our activities drown and starve the poor of the world.
I would rather enjoy the self-congratualtion reading through my junk email if it made a contribution to charity. I would also be happy to make a charitable donation to ensure my emails were read. Has anyone thought of setting up such a thing?
Firstly, my sympathy to all involved.
Next. Has anyone seen the SPIE Proceedings Vol. 2455 (b=abstracts) particularly Paper #: 2455-23 Shearographic nondestructive evaluation of Space Shuttle thermal protection systems
The abstract says
TPS - Thermal Protection SystemSOFI - spray-on foam insulation
This paper is in the proceedings of the SPIE meeting in 1995 on "Nondestructive Evaluation of Aging Aircraft, Airports, Aerospace Hardware, and Materials"
A friend in York, England was asked to pay £95 to the "Crown Data Collection Enforcement Agency". The UK Goverment's Data Protection Registry has a note on their website warning against such "individuals posing as 'collectors on behalf of data protection'".
My friend looked up their address on Google and found 46 web pages, including an adoption agency a glamour model agency and somebody selling hardcore porn videos. He emailed York's trading standards department.
He got a phone call back saying York Council policy bans Google so his complaint could not be investigated. How the f*** can they find anything out?
the "first world" has a far from perfect environmental record but it is WAY ahead of the third world where fishing by pouring poison or tossing dynamite in the ocean is an accepted method, where "recycling" involves open fires to burn the plastics off of wire and electronics, and where the air is many times worse than in the worst US city
According to the United Nations(found here the global pollution from CO2 per head in 1999 was
But I really want to ask about the morality of another possibility.
I have recently heard of small to medium sized UK companies that have run into cultural and practical difficulties associated with sending work to India, Russia etc. On the other hand, another smaller company works very successfully with a colleague, who used to be resident in the UK, but has moved to a poorer country.
Could this be a pattern? Skilled tekkies could move to poorer countries to take advantage of the lower cost of living (and possibly with lower salaries?). But only after they have formed close working relationships with their employers?
This is an idea that I have thought about for some time but not dared to mention.
So could global corporations recruit refugees and say "Send me your tired, your poor and your hungry"?
Could there be a special legal structure for "refugee corporations"? - an equivalent of the GNU General Public License? If it could work why stop at refugees?
Imagine there's no countries, it isn't hard to do, nothing to kill or die for, and no religion too
This was a full page article, with a picture of Stallman on the front page. It covered so much more than I have read in any UK broadsheet. But the article was written for readers of the FT not for /. nerds. (How many are both?).
The article was as much in favour of Linux and OSS as it could be without losing touch with its readers. Quoting an IBM spokesperson was just right the right touch: "[Linux] is no longer guys with tie-dyed T-shirts and mad scientists in their basements". Many of us nerds may feel slighted. But if it's in a good cause, I can cope.
Something occurred to me when I read the blurb (as the article is dead).
Me too.
Recently I have had my bicycle stolen - replacement cost £700 (over $1000). As it was not locked, I probably won't get the insurance - even if I can be bothered to fill the form in!
I am a lazy and impatient person but I live in a bike-friendly town where bikes often have precedence over cars. I could ride it in most places and push it to most of the others. I could stop right outside any shop in the pedestrian streets, pull it pack onto its stand, walk into the shop and come out and throw all my purchases into the very large basket. (For those of you in the UK, it was just like the bike in the Hovis advert.)
My bike kept me sane and it also kept me fit - I gave rides in the basket to anyone under 14 stones (about 200 pounds) who was brave enough.
Before I buy another bicycle like my lost love (a Pashley Delibike. See it here), I want
On second thoughts, I will order it tomorrow in case they are slashdotted and run out of stock
I've seen more than a few academics crank out very elegant, very intricate designs...
Does this mean they tend to design everything first and code later? So they can't use any of the "lightweight" methodologies.
I have not had anyone ask me anything about higher education for the last 8 years.
It would be an interesting academic research project to follow up this sort of thing. But the academic turkeys won't vote for Christmas.
So anecdotes is all we have
I remember when in a previous company we had 12 IT professionals, six with "Computer Science" degrees - you know what I mean NpComplete/Knuth/Z stuff. The computer scientists were mostly people with good or very good first degrees and some with masters and PhDs.
The technical management, myself included, had mostly science or engineering degrees of varying quality. After a turbulent time, and some job losses, which we managed humanely, we took stock. We concluded that most of our technical problems were down to the computer scientists. We never really managed to explain why. The computer scientists were undoubtedly clever, hard working and pleasant people.
I know other people have found the same problem - one with a spooky similarity to our own. I have tried lots of explanations but most of them do not quite fit. Has anybody got any?
Was it us or was it them? Or a clash of cultures?
Are Eric Raymond's comments relevant?
Universities do lots of research. But can they be trusted to look into the value of their own products? I am beginning to hear the term "Evidence Based Education" more often but believe that there are few academics that are willing to bite the hands that feed them.
Ronald Dore was one but who heard of his brilliant book "The Diploma Disease". References to his work can be found on www.faxfn.org here.
. I love the comment from Alison Wolf on the National Vocational Qualifications (NVQs) Some of us wonder if the current UK target of 50% of school leavers going into higher education (as it exists today) is equally barmy.But other criticisms of the (UK) education industry on Faxfn includes : Are Graduates up to the Job?
- Educated to manage the dole office
- Graduates with the social skills of a caterpillar
- The English Disease - Senior Engineer
- Too posh to do a proper job?
- Golden rule for IT managers: Never hire the graduate
It seems there is some dissatisfaction with the products of UK universities. Exams, Competencies and Psychometrics has some interesting contributions on examinations- IQ did not contribute to GCSE [exam] performance
- You can teach a turkey to climb a tree, but it's easier to hire a squirrel
- They learn then forget
- My Degree: 3 weeks work, 87 weeks drunk
Exams and Handwriting raises some other interesting questions- Handwriting style affects exam results
- Three fast writers, with first class degrees
The suggestion is that writing speed and style unfairly affects exam results.If we paper the UK with degree certificates, will jobs from heaven decend on us. Or will they decend instead on the call centres and software houses of Hyderabad.
Do climate records exist that date back far enough so that an accurate comparison of carbon levels and the resulting effects may be made?
Very probably. See here for a graph of past CO2 concentrations, ice ages etc.
It also has links to the US Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center, which show CO2 and surface temperature data.
I recently heard John Selwyn Gummer, a right of centre politican, and a minister in the last Conservative Government in the UK. We used to dislike him but now he's become bit of a green guru.
He said his children were keen environmentalists. But could he get them to turn the lights off? Of course not.
But if you live in a family or shared house, it's really difficult to remember for the last one to turn the lights out. My household has lights on most of the night.
What I would like to see is individual charging for energy use - a bit like what is possible for a phone bill. Have slashdotters any good ideas: eg. technology that charges you when you are in a warmed room or in a lit space.
I don't want to appear too anti-capitalist but it would be good if we could manage to contol its excesses. One of the uncontrolled excesses is pollution. We are being given the wrong signals by the system - by advertising and by price - so our everydayday actions screw up the world.
Energy use, in particular, should be very much more expensive in order to cut our consumption. Our energy excesses are damaging the environment of the planet and have set the scene for the dangers current security situation.
In Europe we don't quite reach US levels of pollution mostly because we are not as wealthy - but we obviously would like to catch you up.
I believe energy use is our primary ethical issue. We must change the rules of world trade so that the "hidden hand of the market" does not choke us all. A good example would be a global agreement to tax air travel for its pollution.
BTW. I saw a protest plackard on TV saying Americans are over 100 times more polluting to the world than the inhabitants of Bangladesh. I know Londoners are pretty bad (See CityLimits) but surely you can't be that much ahead of us.
But I've downloaded it now. It was 4MB.
I get "Connection Refused" from the link to the article.
The atmosphere is very shallow compared to the size of the earth: It is less than one hundredth of the diameter of the earth. In proportion it is more akin to the skin of an apple than to the peel of an orange. The atmosphere thins with height and there is little atmosphere above 100 kilometres.
If all the atmosphere could all be kept at Standard Temperature and Pressure (ie at normal atmospheric pressure and at room temperature) it would be about 7700 metres in depth - little less than 8 kilometres. The main gasses would have depths of:
In 2002, CO2 is the equivalent of a layer 2.85 metres thick. In 1790 this layer would have been 2.16 metres thick. It has thus risen 0.69 metres since then.
By the year 2100 the lowest increase predicted by the scientists of the IPCC would give a rise of 2.00 metres and the highest a rise of 5.32 metres. The average prediction is for more than a doubling of CO2 from 1790 to 2100.
This is not business as usual for the Earth's atmosphere. And we are making the difference.
The Earth has a radius of some 6300 kilometres and a surface area of 510 million square kilometres. The population of the Earth has recently exceeded 6 billion people. This means there are on average 12 people for each square kilometre of the Earth's surface.
The surface of the Earth is 71% sea and 29% land, with 3% covered in ice and snow.
So for each person on Earth there are 2.5 hectares of land, the area of a square 158 metres by 158 metres. There are also 6 hectares of sea. That is the area of a square 245 metres by 245 metres.
3 feet is, approximately, one metre. If you are allowing a one metre square for each person, 6 billion square metes are required. That is just less area than a square of side 80,000 metres or 80 km(80,000*80,000 = 6,400,000). This is a square of side approximately 50 miles.
The Club of Rome may have been premature saying our cars would run out of gas. But we might to pay a high price. Last week, the UK minister, Peter Hain, thanked the US taxpayer for protecting the West's oil supplies at a cost of $15 per barrel.)
Today's Club of Rome worry about global warming and they may be right this time see this CO2 rise.
If the whole world lived like the affluent then to achieve sutainability in CO2 (with enough plant growth to reabsorb our pollution and stabilise the climate) we would need the area of several earth's to live on. Calculations of this "ecological footprint" have been done for York and London. The citizen's of York and London are living as though there were three Earths.
Remember, the woolf did eventually come!We will ex-ter-min-ate.
We will ex-ter-min-ate.
We will ex-ter-min-ate.
Or at least not to the point. See my earlier posting and ice core temperatures.
The important variations are every 100,000 years.
And we have certainly broken out of the ice-age/interglacial CO2 cycle.