Category: Earth Intelligence

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Journal: ClimateGate Update 13 February 2010

Earth Intelligence
ClimateGate Rolling Update

World may not be warming, say scientists

We concluded, with overwhelming statistical significance, that the IPCC’s climate data are contaminated with surface effects from industrialisation and data quality problems. These add up to a large warming bias,” he said.

The Uncertain Fate of the IPCC

Opponents of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change tried strangling the IPCC in its cradle when the body was formed twenty-one years ago. Only hard-core climate change deniers are now sounding the death knell of their nemesis (as they have many times before), but support for the IPCC appears to ebbing, for a variety of reasons, and the future of the foremost science-based organization on climate change is in question.

‘Snowmaggedon' in Washington spurs climate change doubters

To be sure, the IPCC has been forced to acknowledge errors and unsubstantiated statements in one of its landmark 2007 reports. The irregularities had to do with predictions of the expected effects of warming. None of them, however, undermined the report's consensus that the planet has warmed and that man's activities have contributed to the warming.

Is global warming real? Do snowstorms offer eco-lessons?

“It's going to keep snowing in DC until Al Gore cries “uncle,””  Sen. Jim DeMint, R-S.C., wrote Wednesday on Twitter.

Phi Beta Iota: The media is not doing its homework.  The IPCC represents the worst of UN corruption and ineptitude, while the High Level Panel and its report represents the UN at its best.  In the latter, Environmental Degradation is threat #3 after Poverty and Infectious Disease.  Climate Change is less than 10% of Environmental Degradation, and within Climate Change, carbon emissions are much, much less than 10% and far outweighed by sulfer and mercury.  The media and the UN both gloss over the many acts of man, such as paving over the Mississippi wetlands and plowing deep roots into oblivion–the increasing frequency and severity of storms is most certainly man-made but NOT caused by exclusively global warning or carbon emissions.  See also Strategic Analytic Model.  It's all connected.

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Journal: ClimateGate–How Settled the Science?

Earth Intelligence, Searches
Chuck Spinney

Answer … it depends …

Attached is a very revealing BBC interview with Phil Jones, the head of the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia.  It should be read carefully with an eye to what is said and not said.

Note that Jones acknowledges that the time for debate over climate science is NOT over, particularly in the area of paleoclimate studies — which implies uncertainties in the calibration of the climate models used to predict the future, a item he addressed but did not discuss.

One item I found to be of particular interest is Jones' weak rationalization [see underlined text] for saying recent tree ring data (post 1960), which is used to deduce temperature in paeleoclimatology, is not reliable (because it showed a cooling trend while) but that earlier tree ring data is reliable … Jones is using this argument to justify splicing instrumental measurements of temperature to deduced measurements from tree rings (aka temperature proxies) after 1960.  As a general matter, this kind of mixing apples and oranges violates every method of empirical calibration that I was taught in engineering school  At the very least it requires a detailed explanation, yet Jones says nothing about the reasons he had for arguing the tree ring data before 1960, reaching back over 900 years, was reliable, but that the same data after 1960 was not “valid” [his word], and therefore, it was more appropriate to substitute direct instrumental measurements of temperature after 1960.  But if temperature measurements between 1960 and 1999 don't match the deduction from proxies made from tree rings, what evidence is there that they do correlate for the preceding 900 years to be valid?

Note also, the total absence of any discussion of the 10,000 year history of ice cores, where recent, more precise methods of analysis suggest the periods of CO2 increase in atmosphere correlate with temperature increases but with a time lag of around 800 years, which seems at variance with the GW hypothesis that CO2 increases cause temperature increases.  It is a question the interviewer should have asked, but was not, particularly given the uncertainties in paleoclimate research that were discussed,  Chuck

Q & A: Professor Phil Jones (BBC News)

Phil Jones is director of the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia (UEA), which has been at the centre of the row over hacked e-mails.

The BBC's environment analyst Roger Harrabin put questions to Professor Jones, including several gathered from climate sceptics. The questions were put to Professor Jones with the co-operation of UEA's press office.

Reference: ClimateGate Rolling Update

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Journal: Pentagon Using Bacteria to Clean Water

12 Water, Earth Intelligence, Peace Intelligence
Full Story Online

Pure Water for Haiti, Afghanistan:

Just Add Bacteria

WIRED

Katie Drummond

10 February 2010

Scientists at Sam Houston State University (SHSU) have successfully designed portable, efficient, bacteria-based water treatment units. Two of the devices are on their way to Army bases in Afghanistan, and the research team is in talks with the Pentagon about sending a working prototype to help relief efforts in Haiti.

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Journal: Earth-Homes and Trash for Building

Earth Intelligence

Full Story Online

Rammed Earth Construction (Using Tires)

In the tire method, a row of used automobile tires is simply laid atop the concrete footing, perhaps centered around steel reinforcing bars that extend out of the footing. The tires are then filled with soil. About 1,000 tires are used to build the walls of a 2,000 sq ft 1609.6 sq m) house.

the prepared soil into these molds, which are removed after the walls are completed. The rammed-earth tire method is a commonly used alternative.

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Journal: Is There an Ecological Unconscious?

Cultural Intelligence, Earth Intelligence
Full Story Online

“There’s a scholar who talks about ‘heart’s ease,’ ” Albrecht told me as we sat in his car on a cliff above the Newcastle shore, overlooking the Pacific. In the distance, just before the earth curved out of sight, 40 coal tankers were lined up single file. “People have heart’s ease when they’re on their own country. If you force them off that country, if you take them away from their land, they feel the loss of heart’s ease as a kind of vertigo, a disintegration of their whole life.” Australian aborigines, Navajos and any number of indigenous peoples have reported this sense of mournful disorientation after being displaced from their land. What Albrecht realized during his trip to the Upper Valley was that this “place pathology,” as one philosopher has called it, wasn’t limited to natives. Albrecht’s petitioners were anxious, unsettled, despairing, depressed — just as if they had been forcibly removed from the valley. Only they hadn’t; the valley changed around them.

In Albrecht’s view, the residents of the Upper Hunter were suffering not just from the strain of living in difficult conditions but also from something more fundamental: a hitherto unrecognized psychological condition. In a 2004 essay, he coined a term to describe it: “solastalgia,” a combination of the Latin word solacium (comfort) and the Greek root –algia (pain), which he defined as “the pain experienced when there is recognition that the place where one resides and that one loves is under immediate assault . . . a form of homesickness one gets when one is still at ‘home.’ ” A neologism wasn’t destined to stop the mines; they continued to spread. But so did Albrecht’s idea. In the past five years, the word “solastalgia” has appeared in media outlets as disparate as Wired, The Daily News in Sri Lanka and Andrew Sullivan’s popular political blog, The Daily Dish. In September, the British trip-hop duo Zero 7 released an instrumental track titled “Solastalgia,” and in 2008 Jukeen, a Slovenian recording artist, used the word as an album title. “Solastalgia” has been used to describe the experiences of Canadian Inuit communities coping with the effects of rising temperatures; Ghanaian subsistence farmers faced with changes in rainfall patterns; and refugees returning to New Orleans after Katrina.

Phi Beta Iota: Seriously good stuff that comes at the same time that human feelings and emotions are being recognizes as co-intelligence to the science and humanities and (more or less moribund) social sciences.  It's about the Whole.

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Journal: Experimental Cultural Geography

Cultural Intelligence, Earth Intelligence, Geospatial, Geospatial, IO Mapping, Multinational Plus
Full Story Online

Exhibition at Carnegie Mellon gives geography a new meaning

“Experimental Geography” is both the title of a mind-expanding exhibition and a term coined by contemporary artist/geographer/activist Trevor Paglen, who will speak tomorrow at Carnegie Mellon University.

If a geographer informs us about the land that we move within, or study from afar, an experimental geographer considers that land from the creative vantage point of an artist.

“In a manner that deploys aesthetics, ambiguity, poetry and a dash of empiricism,” the exhibition text explains.

“Mappa Mundi,” a digital print by New York artist Lize Mogel, is part of a series exploring public space and cultural geography.

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Journal: Haiti Update 26 January 2010 PM

08 Wild Cards, Collective Intelligence, Cultural Intelligence, Earth Intelligence, Gift Intelligence, Peace Intelligence

Shame on America Especially!

Crowds seeking aid in Haiti met with pepper spray and rubber bullets

Desperate crowds have overwhelmed peacekeepers trying to deliver aid. The World Food Programme says that Port-au-Prince represents the greatest logistical challenge it has ever faced

“They’re not violent, just desperate. They just want to eat,” Fernando Soares, a Brazilian army colonel, said. “The problem is, there is not enough food for everyone.”

Phi Beta Iota: We are furious at both the lack of decision-support (reliable broad information illuminating the breadth and urgency of the problem) and the lack of decision-makers with gravitas.  Someone needs to reach the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (C/JCS) and tell him to pay attention.  Roll the C-130's and carpet bomb the place with water, food, tents, etc.   The National Guard C-130 pilots and crew chiefs know how to do “touch and go” drive-by load delivery without landing–why is our anemic military using just two of the six commercial capable airports and just one of the six commercial capable ports and NONE of the helicopter landing zones across the country?   We agree with William McNulty who has had EYES ON–we need to hold both commanders and their intelligence officers responsible for this massive failure to Observe, Orient, Decide, and Act (OODA).  We also recommend the observations by Dr. Zbigniew Brzezinski and the Italian leaderMr Bertolaso on the pathetic inadequacy of American assistance.  Uninformed, insufficient, a disgrace.

Meteorological Forecast: Rain and Diarrheal Illness

Forecasts for PAP calling for 20-30% chance of rain in the coming days.  Concerned about influence on transmission of gastroenteritis and diarrheal illness.  Monitoring closely.

Diarrheal disease was assessed to be the top priority in the immediate term following the earthquake.  We are now seeing indications of diarrheal disease increasing in the camps, particularly among the children.  We are very concerned about these reports.

Haiti Catastrophe Raises Biosecurity Concerns

As the slow process of recovery begins, re-establishing some normalcy of life will be critical and animals play a role in the lives of people in Haiti as they do around the world. One of the key issues will be focusing on Haiti's livestock and large population of stray animals.

On the Street

The response to these issues raises potential concerns for the U.S. livestock industries, says AASV. There are a number of reportable trans-border diseases endemic or suspected on the island of Hispaniola which, if introduced into the U.S. livestock herd, would have devastating effects on animal agriculture…

Haiti's children on their own on shattered streets

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — The children with no names lay mute in a corner of the General Hospital grounds Tuesday, three among thousands of boys and girls set adrift in the wake of Haiti's earthquake.

FullStory Online

Clinton: Critics of US Haiti relief misguided

WASHINGTON — Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said Tuesday she resents criticism of the U.S. effort to help stricken Haiti and pledged to redouble efforts to help survivors of the Jan. 12 earthquake.

“I deeply resent those who attack our country, the generosity of our people and the leadership of our president in trying to respond to historically disastrous conditions after the earthquake,” Clinton said.

Continue reading “Journal: Haiti Update 26 January 2010 PM”