Public discussions of nuclear power, and a surprising number of articles in peer-reviewed journals, are increasingly based on four notions unfounded in fact or logic:
1. variable renewable sources of electricity (windpower and photovoltaics) can provide little or no reliable electricity because they are not ³baseload² the time;
2. those renewable sources require such enormous amounts of land, hundreds of times more than nuclear power does, that they¹re environmentally unacceptable;
3. all options, including nuclear power, are needed to combat climate change; and
4. nuclear power¹s economics matter little because governments must use it anyway to protect the climate.
PHI BETA IOTA EMPHASIS: On Port-au-Prince's streets Saturday, many people had not heard of Chile's quake. More than half a million are homeless, most still lack electricity and are preoccupied about trying to get enough to eat.
Low Income Housing Survived--Full Story Online
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti – The earthquake in Chile was far stronger than the one that struck Haiti last month — yet the death toll in this Caribbean nation is magnitudes higher.
The reasons are simple.
Chile is wealthier and infinitely better prepared, with strict building codes, robust emergency response and a long history of handling seismic catastrophes. No living Haitian had experienced a quake at home when the Jan. 12 disaster crumbled their poorly constructed buildings.
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Sinclair said he has architect colleagues in Chile who have built thousands of low-income housing structures to be earthquake resistant.
In Haiti, by contrast, there is no building code.
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Haiti: recovery beginning in the heart of hellIt took half a minute for last month’s earthquake to destroy Haiti – rebuilding it will take years. Sally Williams watches the Red Cross, which has supplied 600 of the 6,000 aid workers now in the country, in action.
With a population of as many as three million, Port-au-Prince was a vibrant city, its streets choked with buses and motorcycles. Today you see the legacy of the disaster everywhere: surgeons in scrubs walk the streets; dust suffuses everything, irritating the nasal passages and lungs; surfaces are cracked and fractured – nothing seems fixed or hard; government papers from the national archive blow across the street. The decorative pink stone of the Roman Catholic cathedral, built nearly a century ago, is now a scene of utter devastation. Even those buildings that are still standing (up to 50 per cent of the city was destroyed) are at oblique angles, intersecting with a disorientating effect.
Port-au-Prince seems not like a city at all now, but a waking nightmare where even the most ordinary morning walk can turn distinctly lurid. There is a car in one of the streets behind the national palace that has been flattened by falling masonry. The driver’s body is still at the wheel.
Phi Beta Iota: Red Cross collected 90% of the money, is doing 10% of the work, and has reached, at best, 20% of the needy. What's wrong with this picture? We speculate: massive corruption–both industrial (old inefficient processes) and intentional (on-going overhead and endowment padding) inherent in “the Red Cross way.”
Memorandum submitted by the Institute of Physics (CRU 39)
The disclosure of climate data from the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia
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The Institute of Physics is a scientific charity devoted to increasing the practice, understanding and application of physics. It has a worldwide membership of over 36,000 and is a leading communicator of physics-related science to all audiences, from specialists through to government and the general public. Its publishing company, IOP Publishing, is a world leader in scientific publishing and the electronic dissemination of physics.
The Institute is pleased to submit its views to inform the House of Commons Science and Technology Committee's inquiry, ‘The disclosure of climate data from the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia'.
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2. The CRU e-mails as published on the internet provide prima facieevidence of determined and co-ordinated refusals to comply with honourable scientific traditions and freedom of information law. The principle that scientists should be willing to expose their ideas and results to independent testing and replication by others, which requires the open exchange of data, procedures and materials, is vital. The lack of compliance has been confirmed by the findings of the Information Commissioner. This extends well beyond the CRU itself – most of the e-mails were exchanged with researchers in a number of other international institutions who are also involved in the formulation of the IPCC's conclusions on climate change.
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6. There is also reason for concern at the intolerance to challenge displayed in the e-mails. This impedes the process of scientific ‘self correction', which is vital to the integrity of the scientific process as a whole, and not just to the research itself. In that context, those CRU e-mails relating to the peer-review process suggest a need for a review of its adequacy and objectivity as practised in this field and its potential vulnerability to bias or manipulation.
7. Fundamentally, we consider it should be inappropriate for the verification of the integrity of the scientific process to depend on appeals to Freedom of Information legislation. Nevertheless, the right to such appeals has been shown to be necessary. The e-mails illustrate the possibility of networks of like-minded researchers effectively excluding newcomers. Requiring data to be electronically accessible to all, at the time of publication, would remove this possibility.
Phi Beta Iota: The most significant recommendation, toward the end, bears on scientific journals establishing new forms of transparency that demand that prior to publication of their claimed work, authors make available online all relevant reports and research.
There is no reason why Latin America and the Caribbean should not have their own body of political consensus
Boys on the Beach
Speech by General of the Army Raúl Castro Ruz, president of the Councils of State and Ministers, at the plenary session of the Summit of Latin America and Caribbean Unity, February 23, 2010
The decision that we have just adopted to create the Community pf Latin American and Caribbean States is of great historical significance.
Cuba considers that the conditions are present to rapidly advance toward the constitution of a purely Latin American and Caribbean regional organization, comprising and representing the 33 independent nations of Latin America and the Caribbean.
MONTPELIER, Vt. — In an unusual state foray into nuclear regulation, the Vermont Senate voted 26 to 4 Wednesday to block a license extension for the Vermont Yankee nuclear plant, citing radioactive leaks, misstatements in testimony by plant officials and other problems.
Phi Beta Iota: America is fed up with an inept and corrupt federal government that can no longer be trusted to uphold the public interest; and with corporations that lie to the public and constantly manipulate ownership entities to avoid responsibility and liability. Vermont is the canary in the coal mine–it is the most likely to nullify federal laws and it is the most like to announce its secession from the United STATES of America absent a radical resurrection of the integrity of the electoral process and the three branches of government. “Home Rule” is a meme that is spreading fast across America, with corporations learning that they must legally give up their ill-gotten personality status to do business in particular counties; this is complemented by the “move money home” movement and the “buy local” movement.
By ERIC SCHMITT and THOM SHANKER, The New York Times (Syndicated)
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WASHINGTON — The nation's main counterterrorism center, created in response to the intelligence failures in the years before Sept. 11, is struggling because of flawed staffing and internal cultural clashes, according to a new study financed by Congress.
The result, the study concludes, is a lack of coordination and communication among the agencies that are supposed to take the lead in planning the fight against terrorism, including the C.I.A. and the State Department.
Twitter Teams with Haiti Telco To Provide Free Text Tweets
WIRED 22 February 2010
Text messages have already raised $32 million for Haiti relief. Now Twitter is partnering with the devastated nation’s dominant telco to provide free text Tweets to Haitians so they can better keep in touch with each other and the outside world.
“Kevin Thau and our mobile team have recently arranged free SMS tweets for Digicel Haiti customers,” Twitter co-founder Biz Stone writes on the company’s blog. “To activate the service, mobile phone users in Haiti can text follow @oxfam to 40404. Accounts are created on the fly and any account can be followed this way.”
The move is much more than a gesture, as it might seem in place where limitless text plans abound and the standard of living is much higher. Under Digicel’s pre-paid plan Haitians pay $0.08 to text locally, $0.15 to text internationally and $0.23 to send an MMS. But considering that the country’s per capita income is about $1,300, that would be the equivalent of $2.46, $4.62 and a whopping $7.07 in the U.S. (which had a 2008 per capita income of about $40,000).
As has become almost routine now, the initial flood of information and pictures to emerge from the disaster zone reached the world via Twitter, and the use of texting is an especially crucial lifeline in the underdeveloped world.
Phi Beta Iota: BRAVO TWITTER! Who would have thought Haiti would be the silver lining for the poor. At one stroke Twitter hass connected scharitable giving from the 80% that do not normally give, with the bottom-up needs of the poor articulated via Twitter for free. Now if Twitter can team with others such as Nokia, Microsoft, and IMB to offer free cell phones to the five billion poor, with back office harvesting of the data and a global grid of volunteer translator educators in 183 languages, we save the world quick time.
