This seems apropos to consider as world economies stumble, energy stocks dwindle, and politicians propose nothing of broad lasting value:
"We will find neither national purpose nor personal satisfaction in a mere continuation of economic progress, in an endless amassing of worldly goods. We cannot measure national spirit by the Dow Jones Average, nor national achievement by the Gross National Product. For the Gross National Product includes air pollution, and ambulances to clear our highways from carnage. It counts special locks for our doors and jails for the people who break them. The Gross National Product includes the destruction of the redwoods and the death of Lake Superior. It grows with the production of napalm and missles and nuclear warheads.... It includes... the broadcasting of television programs which glorify violence to sell goods to our children. "And if the Gross National Product includes all this, there is much that it does not comprehend. It does not allow for the health of our families, the quality of their education, or the joy of their play. It is indifferent to the decency of our factories and the safety of our streets alike. It does not include the beauty of our poetry, or the strength of our marriages, the intelligence of our public debate or the integrity of our public officials... the Gross National Product measures neither our wit nor our courage, neither our wisdom nor our learning, neither our compassion nor our devotion to our country. It measures everything, in short, except that which makes life worthwhile, and it can tell us everything about America -- except whether we are proud to be Americans." -Robert F. Kennedy
Hat tip: TheOilDrum.com
I find it hard to watch the news coverage coming out of China following the massive earthquake there on Monday. A group I support fully in their campaign to encourage B.C. government to address the well-known school seismic safety issues in our own province, Families for School Seismic Safety, issued a statement today:
Families for School Seismic Safety
May 13, 2008
Statement in response to earthquake in China
VANCOUVER — In response to the tragic news from China in the wake of the earthquake that struck the Sichaun province, Families For School Seismic Safety (FSSS) expresses its condolences to the victims and their families, and encourages
all levels of government to act swiftly to ensure similar tragedies are prevented.
According to news reports, thousands are dead and thousands more are trapped in building collapses following the powerful 7.9 magnitude quake. News agencies are reporting several school collapses that killed hundreds of children and trapped
even more.
FSSS formed after the 2002 Italian earthquake, which claimed the lives of 26 students. Parents were shocked to learn that while homes withstood the earthquake, it was the school that collapsed.
“These terrible tragedies can and must be prevented, and we know how to prevent them,” says FSSS director Nathan Lusignan. “We’d hoped we’d never hear news reports like this again — reports of children being buried in their collapsed
schools. But since then, many more schools have collapsed and many children have perished. These are preventable tragedies. They should not happen.”
In 2005, the BC government identified more than 700 BC schools as requiring seismic upgrades. Progress, however, has been very slow and few schools have been completed. Thousands of BC students continue to spend their days in schools assessed as being at high risk of significant structural damage in the event of an earthquake.
FSSS urges all levels of government to take an integrated approach to ensuring schools are upgraded in a timely way and in a manner that provides the best possible educational facilities to safely and effectively service future generations of students.
“We need concrete plans and clear timelines to ensure the work gets done as promised,” says Lusignan.
What is truly tragic about this situation - and will be when, not if, Vancouver is hit by a major seismic event - is that school populations are disproportionately represented in casualties. Think about it - 55,000 Vancouver children head off to school each morning and a majority of the facilities are so seismically unsafe that you could not open a coffee shop in one without spending tens of millions of dollars. Many are turn of the century buildings; most were built long before seismic safety even began to be recognized in our building codes.
If you are a Vancouver area parent or citizen I urge you to make your voice heard on this issue. The primary culprit in the on-going delays is the B.C. government, not local school boards.
Attached is PDF file containing Ministry of Education Seismic Safety Assessments; in older municipalities, such as Vancouver, you'll find the majority of buildings are listed as Moderate or High risk of structural failure in the event of a significant seismic event.
Washington State University researchers recently completed a study concluding that consumption patterns, and human population growth, are the principal factors underlying our species' impact on the planet's ecology. Driving the Human Ecological Footprint, by Thomas Dietz, Eugene A. Rosa, and Richard York, puts the spotlight on population growth and affluence as the principle factors driving the growth in human-caused environmental stressors.
This comparative analysis shows that population size and affluence are the principal drivers of anthropogenic environmental stressors, while other widely postulated drivers (e.g. urbanization, economic structure, age distribution) have little effect. Similarly, increased education and life expectancy do not increase environmental stressors, suggesting that some aspects of human well-being can be improved with minimal environmental impact. Projecting to 2015, we suggest that increases in population and affluence will likely expand human impact on the environment by over one-third. Countering these driving forces would require increases in the efficiency of resource use of about 2% per year. More >
Hat tip: EnergyBulletin.net
Eleven of the warmest years of the past one hundred and fifty seven years have occurred in the past thirteen years, reports the BBC from the Bali climate change conference. 2007 placed among the top ten years despite the an overall cooling influence this year resulting from La Nina conditions.
Warmest 10 Years
1998 0.52C
2005 0.48C
2003 0.46C
2002 0.46C
2004 0.43C
2006 0.42C
2007 0.41C*
2001 0.40C
1997 0.36C
1995 0.28C
* provisional
In related news, at the Bali international climate change conference wrapping up today our country was awarded a record number of Fossil of the Day awards, an unwanted distinction doled out to those countries most seen as obstructing progress in climate change negotiations.
What a performance for Conservative Environment Minister John Baird, the all-blather no action minister and Stephen "Hot Air" Harper.
As of Tuesday, we'll bring to an end our decades-old relationship with Telus. There'll no longer be a POTS (Plain old telephone system) line (with its defacto negative option billing) hooked up to our home and office.
Why? Simply put, there is better value, and service, elsewhere.
Wanting to look at solar irradiance against global temperature anomalies in more detail (than in my last article on climate) and over a longer time period, I prepared a chart comparing global temperatures to solar irradiance over the period of 843 to present times.
Solar radiance and temperature data going back hundreds of years is obviously reconstructed information, interpreted and extrapolated based on other factors ranging from tree-rings to sun spot observations to particle measurements in ice cores and so on. As you can see, there is a significant difference in the data sets (Bard vs Lean); the chart I prepared in a prior article contains only solar irradiance from direct observation which, while more accurate, spans only 30 some odd years. Sunspot records have been kept for much longer, and date back hundreds of years.
Click on image for full-size chart
NASA (source of the balance of these images; check link for data and discussion) analysis meets up with that from the IPCC: while there is a solar impact on temperature change, solar activity is but one of many causative factors which can not on its own explain the temperature anomalies we are experiencing.
NASA pegs the influence of the sun as approximately 1/5th that of CO2, which is more or less in line with conclusions made by both the U.S. NOAA NCDC and the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
If you've not already done so, I recommend reading the IPCC Summary for Policymakers (PDF), a readable piece published as part of its latest report, released 17 November 2007, which helps put context around the science they are relying upon to drive their policymaking agenda.
In an installment coming soon, I'll try to outline where I am going with all of this.
The attached charts represent compilation of data I gathered while doing some policy research recently. My goal was to obtain and present available data on:
- Fossil fuel production
- CO2 observations in the atmosphere
- CO2 observations from polar ice samples
- CO2 emissions
- Solar radiance observed
- Sunspot counts
- Global temperature anomalies from mean
The purpose of this review was to establish a baseline set of information which political policy discussions could refer to. I did not set out to compile these charts to prove or disprove a particular hypothesis nor to validate or invalidate a particular policy position.
Some data sets I was only able to locate for certain periods; the attached charts show a modern view from the mid 1950's to 2006, as well as an industrial age perspective from 1880 through to 2006. I also reviewed data spanning longer time periods but wanted to include in the charts data which covered similar spans of time. Links will be provided herein and in coming articles.
I examined and utilized data available from many sources and countries ranging from the leading per capita energy consumer, the United States and its Department of Energy CDIAC (Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center) to the UN IPCC (International Panel on Climate Change). Raw data is available by the bucket load, although in some cases (methane for example) the data is not nearly as plentiful as other data sets.
Click on image for full-size chart
I have a background in data analysis, primarily from a financial markets perspective. My experience has taught me the importance of recognizing trends; without introducing opinion into the discussion, it is possible to recognize the following:
CO2 in the earth's atmosphere is increasing in a well established upward trend
Fossil fuel production follows a similar trend
Fossil fuel production and CO2 observation trends do correlate with temperature anomaly increases observed over the past forty to fifty years.
Solar radiance and sunspot cycles do not strongly correlate with the increase in temperature anomalies. The U.S. NCDC further adds:
With only 20 years of reliable measurements however, it is difficult to
deduce a trend. But, from the short record we have so far, the trend in
solar irradiance is estimated at ~0.09 W/m2 compared to 0.4 W/m2
from well-mixed greenhouse gases. (Source)
Data sources: The time series depicted in the charts is annual; some data sets were provided in finer resolutions (days or months) and in those cases I consolidated the available data into a simple annual average.
- UN IPCC
- U.S. CDIAC
- U.S. NOAA NCDC (National Climatic Data Center)
- U.S. NOAA NGDC Solar Irradiance Data
- U.S. EPA Methane Information site
- GreenHouse Gas Online: CO2, Methane, Nitrous Oxide 1000AD-Current
The attached image is a screen shot of a web browser running on a Nokia N800, a
Linux-based internet tablet. Weighing only ounces, the wireless device is a
great platform for Python developers as the language has more or less become
the default dynamic language for the device and, it would seem, for Nokia. GUI developers commonly employ pygtk/glade for Maemo applications; I'm not aware of much web development being done on the N series tablets as yet.
Pictured is the output of a highly Pythonic web framework and object database combination, QP and Durus - the app is merely a template provided by running mkqpapp.py.
I wanted to see what QP and this little tablet, underpowered by
laptop or server standards, could do - here is a benchmark between a fairly fast Unix desktop, across a fairly slow wireless link, generating 10 concurrent request streams to the device
frog# /home/mw% siege -b -c10 -t10s http://n800:8000/
Transactions: 164 hits
Availability: 100.00 %
Elapsed time: 9.85 secs
Data transferred: 0.06 MB
Response time: 0.58 secs
Transaction rate: 16.65 trans/sec
Throughput: 0.01 MB/sec
Concurrency: 9.71
Successful transactions: 164
Failed transactions: 0
Longest transaction: 3.66
Shortest transaction: 0.19
Not bad, considering its a full stack web framework and object database running on a little machine weighing only ounces that also is running what amounts to be a Gnome environment, browser, mail and other apps, all powered by a lowly TI 320MHz Armel architecture CPU.
Out of curiosity I added a hit counter to exercise the object database and the transaction rate was a respectable 12.36/second.
Worlds smallest portable web application demo machine!
Once I figure out how to make Debian packages for the armel architecture I'll post a deb link for a one click install of Durus, QP, QPY and Dulcinea.
Incidentally, while sqlite is in common use on Nokia tablets, there's clearly no reason why Durus could not be used. N-series Python developers might find that to be an ideal persistence pairing to go along with their web or GTK apps.
Floor-crosser charged under Elections Act
Over at ElectWajidKhan.ca you'll find a few links pointing to the latest dirt on former Liberal turned Harper's special advisor on the Middle East turned Conservative MP, who is now charged with violating Canada's Elections Act:
Tory MP charged with violating elections act (CBC): The charges [against Wajid Khan] stem from the 2004 election campaign, when Khan ran as a Liberal.
His former riding president and his car dealership, Dufferin Mazda, are also charged with paying for campaign expenses they weren't supposed to cover.
"Some people treat the election financing rules [as] voluntary guidelines," said NDP MP Pat Martin, who filed a complaint last January when he heard there were questions about how Khan financed his election campaign.
"They're not. They're hard fast laws and there should be consequences. If not, it's not fair to any of us."
Khan is scheduled to appear in court in early January.
At the start of the month I mused whether Emerson would be too chicken to run. Last week The Province ran a short piece quoting Emerson as saying that if he ran, he would run in Vancouver-Kingsway.
My letter to the editor in response was published in Sunday's paper and reads as follows:
Re "Emerson won't switch riding" (Thursday November 8), you quote party-switching MP David Emerson as saying "I will either run in Kingsway or I won't run".
Its long past time for Mr. Emerson to buck up and commit without reservation to face the voters in this riding in the very next election.
Speaking on behalf of the Campaign to De-Elect David Emerson, I wish to remind Mr. Emerson that our sole objective has always been to see him resign and run again, in order to give voters the opportunity - finally - to pass their judgement.
Over the course of the past year and a half our non-partisan campaigners heard one clear theme emerge out of the angry din: people feel their votes were devalued, their franchise robbed, and our electoral system has been cast in disrepute.
46,168 citizens in Vancouver-Kingsway voted in the 2006 election, and not a single one got what they voted for. What will electors here contemplate when they next look at a ballot?
I am quite certain that the electorate here will respond vigorously to ensure Emerson is not re-elected, should he be so foolish as to misread the public and run again.
But... I hope Emerson does let ego get in the way of common sense as his easy defeat will be an amusing and fitting end to his political career and a strong rebuke to Stephen Harper.
Upcoming: commentary on the various declared and potential candidates for all parties likely to run someone here.