Black and White and Hot All Over

The NYT has an interesting article about military concerns regarding climate change. Despite the claim in the following excerpt, I'm pretty certain I read of an earlier military study four or five years ago; this may be more in-depth, more detailed, but I believe the military has been expressing concern on this issue for some time.

WASHINGTON — The changing global climate will pose profound strategic challenges to the United States in coming decades, raising the prospect of military intervention to deal with the effects of violent storms, drought, mass migration and pandemics, military and intelligence analysts say.

The conflict in southern Sudan, which has killed and displaced tens of thousands of people, is partly a result of drought in Darfur. Such climate-induced crises could topple governments, feed terrorist movements or destabilize entire regions, say the analysts, experts at the Pentagon and intelligence agencies who for the first time are taking a serious look at the national security implications of climate change.

Recent war games and intelligence studies conclude that over the next 20 to 30 years, vulnerable regions, particularly sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East and South and Southeast Asia, will face the prospect of food shortages, water crises and catastrophic flooding driven by climate change that could demand an American humanitarian relief or military response.

Another group that bought into climate change early, interestingly enough, was the insurance industry. Imagine the liabilities involved with insured property, agricultural produce, deliveries to market, lives, medical costs, and on and on. You can bet they'd rather deal with a stable, predictable climate.

So in recognition of the many, many interest groups concerned about climate change, here is yet another in the series of GraphJam Climate Change posts; there are quite a few more in the comments at the original call for submissions. To experts, climatologists, meteorolgists and so on who appear to have started linking to this blog, I AM NOT an expert. I consider myself a widely scientifically literate person, with only a BS in Geology. The recent rash of climate posts is due to my amusement with the above-linked post. I often post on climate and weather related topics, but not as often as the last few days. Do not expect to find data and commentary with much substance unfamiliar to you.

On the other hand, if you enjoy intelligent coffee shop discussions, pull up a seat, and make yourself comfortable! (Click the pic for full size)
Followup, Sun. Aug. 9: I forgot that Explorer does not automatically link the posted picture to the source; the full size graph is here.

Real or Fake?

There's a big discussion over at The Intersection as to whether this is real or faked:

I come down firmly on the side of WOW!

Insecurity Measures

A German tourist at Heathrow took umbrage at being asked to remove his shoes, but he did comply. He also removed all the rest of his clothes.

"He was hardly built like Rambo and his bits were flopping everywhere. No one
knew where to look."

He was arrested immediately... I guess security was frightened by his weapon. Still, if more people were to do this, it might put an end to some of the more asinine airport antics of the Homeland Insecurity assholes.

More Proof

Below, from an article from the LeftCoaster, are a couple of pictures of South Cascade Glacier in Washington State. In the above photo, note the small snowfield in the lower right...

And above, only 24 years later, it has grown enormously! It's almost on the verge of becoming a new glacier. Look folks, before you know it, there's going to be a boom in north side roof-top glacier control.

Just a word to the wise, you know.

Followup: A more explicit LOLZ treatment...

Some Say

I don't care who uses that phrase, it's wrong. Bush and his administration knew how to use it to convey lies and misinformation. Obama is using it to avoid offending those, like Palin, who deserve to be offended.

"As we draw close to finalizing -- and passing -- real health insurance reform,
the defenders of the status quo and political point-scorers in Washington are
growing fiercer in their opposition," Obama said, without naming names, in his
weekly radio and Internet address.

"Some have been using misleading information to defeat what they know is the best chance of reform we have ever had," Obama said, adding it was critical for Americans to have all the facts as they meet their lawmakers in home districts.

If "some have been using misleading information," like "death panels," identify them. Call them out. Call them the liars that they are. Dammit, fight for the truth rather than tip-toeing around trying to keep everyone content. No matter what you do, even if you miraculously cured every illness and injury in the country, obviating the need for health reform, there are 20 to 25% of the people in this country who are still going to hate you and oppose every single thing you try to do. Quit trying to appease them.

Lingering Problems

Chrome is still not working right for me, and I'm still doing a lot of my browsing in Explorer, and all of my blogging. On the plus side, I've learned a lot about the structure of the internet and how these attacks work... I certainly take bots a lot more seriously. I ran Spybot Search and Destroy twice yesterday. The first time, it had been several weeks since I last ran it, and it turned up about 50 malware pieces. The second time it had only been 3 or 4 hours, and it turned up 17, despite the fact that I had "immunized" on the first run.

Perhaps this computer was involved, perhaps it wasn't; I don't know how to be certain. However, the alert I was getting from google wasn't accusing this computer, it was accusing the server. When I asked someone else on a different computer to check my blog, he got the same alert and denial. So maybe someone else using the wi-fi in my favorite coffee shop was involved. I think, in the end, it doesn't matter, but I'm still irritable about not being able to use my preferred browser, and being forced to use one I seriously dislike. I may download Firefox today, which seems to be a pretty polarizing browser... people seem to either love it or hate it.

At any rate, I'm continuing to follow the story, not so much because I care about its effects and the personal nuisance it appears to have caused me, but because I find my dependence on the internet's software and hardware infrastructure fascinating, and because I want to understand it better.

Receding Recession?

Despite the "less bad" jobs report yesterday, I remain dubious that we are actually witnessing the end of this mess. Yes, banks and the rest of the financial sector are doing better... "better at what?" should be the question. Better at doing what they did to initiate the great recession in the first place? It's not clear whether the number of unemployed actually went down, or whether the discouraged- those who no longer even look for work- increased enough to offset the newly unemployed. However, when the most pessimistic economist alive starts saying positive things, I do need to keep an open mind.

...even Nouriel Roubini, the prophetically pessimistic economist who saw the
crisis coming (and doesn’t think the recession has yet ended), is now praising
policy makers. He recently urged that Mr. Bernanke be reappointed as Federal
Reserve chairman, saying he helped avert a “near depression that seemed highly
likely after the financial collapse last fall.”

You Can Count On Sarah

...to run out to the very edge of crazy town, then forge right out into the wilderness. And her shrieks from that wilderness send shivers of fear down the spines of all who hear, though my fears are quite different from those who want to hear her. The Alaskan socialist and her followers are terrified of socialism, brown people, teh gayz, fascism, other people having sex. I'm just worried about fascism. (Hat tip to EB Misfit and Brilliant at Breakfast)

Followup: I had set this aside for later, and later came around. On the same theme as Sarah's "Death Panel," "Republicans Propagating Falsehoods in Attacks on Health-Care Reform."

Why Does This Not Surprise Me?

Autopsy: Cocaine Had Role in Billy Mays’ Death.

Golly, who'da thunk that an obnoxious, loud, hyperactive, wildly gesticulating, absurdly over-enthusiastic madman might have been using cocaine?

Update

For the time being, I'm back working in Explorer, which feels clunky and slow compared to Chrome. But for whatever reason(s), Chrome can't/won't open many pages, the composer is completely messed up, and basically has become useless for many of the purposes I use it for.

So here I am back in Explorer, home of the thrice-daily crashes.

Below is a post I had up earlier this morning... all of my problems started soon after I posted it, and I copied the HTML over to a WordPad file, then deleted it, thinking perhaps there was someting in the piece that caused problems. Now I think that's unlikely.

Houston, Ve Haff Livtov!
Berlin's TV Tower heads into the wild black yonder.

From Der Spiegel; fun story. Also in Spiegel this morning, a European perspective on the US CO2 cap and trade efforts, and lessons learned from the European efforts toward that end.

Test Post

http://www.traileraddict.com/trailer/imginarium-of-parnassus/international-trailer

Not So Great, How 'Bout You?

Are others having problems with Google, Blogger, Chrome, or the net generally today? I'm a little frustrated and irritated...

Well This is Odd

Google is telling me my computer "may" be sending out automated messages. I've run spybot search and destroy, and there were some resident bots... but it still won't let me onto my blog. However, it is letting me into my "compose" window. Let's see if it lets me publish...

Followup 1:44 PM- This is very strange. My compose mode is messy, and I can enter plain text, but nothing else. A minute ago, I got to my blog for the first time in 2 or 3 hours; my video clips and most pictures are gone. I'm suspicious that this is a continuation of the denial of service attacks yesterday. Articles:

http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/08/07/attack-on-twitter-came-in-two-waves/?8au&emc=au

http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Search-Engines/How-Google-Was-Impacted-By-The-TwitterFacebook-Denial-of-Service-Attacks-508087/

and a funny picture:

https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgzV7QbDADP9OTG7Z0nryF7brI6810p_JT_r3gORooUtbNouLqUdwVMfcW0RzGF1aoV_tzNXhUKGLFU3jGA6S5UYbTMEQAFmEVtKdjnlb_3M3coH51YJwsixvZCKBTlGFq2Uk6tpvP8Trg/s1600-h/flying+saucer.jpg

Progress

Following up on the previous post...Funny how the same data set, with some shifts, flips, and re-coloring can represent so many different things.

Graph Climate Jam Change Mashup

Tamino at Open Mind has started a Graph Jam climate change meme; I've pointed out a couple of relevant posts here in this blog, but here's one I just put together specially for that meme...Click for glorious full-size, and hop over to the first link to see the example posted there.

Disputes Sensible and Otherwise

Sean at Cosmic Variance, in the context of discussing a "debate" between young-earth creationist and scientists, introduced what he calls "The Grid of Disputation."

This thought has led me to introduce what I hope is a helpful graphical device, which I call the Grid of Disputation. It’s just a reminder that, when it comes to other people’s views on controversial issues, they should be classified within a two-dimensional parameter space, not just on a single line of “agree/disagree.” The other dimension is the all-important “sensible/crazy” axis.

I felt the the "crackpots" field needed to be renamed.

Also Sprach Zarathustra

The Monolith......is on Mars. But don't worry, there is a reasonable, natural explanation.

More Bird Brains

Yesterday I posted a video clip of a crow creating a tool to retrieve a bucket containing food. Today, the NYT has an article about rooks figuring out how to add stones to a container of water to raise the water level, bringing a floating food reward within reach.

This group of birds, the corvids, includes crows, rooks, ravens, jays and a number of other genera and species. As a group, they are incredible problem solvers. Here in western Oregon we have two species of jays: the scrub jay, which is quite similar to the eastern blue jay, but not as colorful and with no crest, and the Stellar's jay, which is similar in form, but with a crest and almost black with an irridescent sheen. Scrub jays dominate the valley floor, and the Stellar's tend to higher elevations. There were several summers I watched a scrub jay hang out on a oak branch extended over a street here on the OSU campus with a hazelnut in its beak. When a car approached, it would drop the nut just before the car passed under the branch. If the tires crushed the nut, it would fly down and eat. Otherwise it would fly down, grab the nut, fly back to the branch and wait for the next car. The closest hazelnut tree was a couple blocks away, but this particular street was the busiest one nearby.

While I dislike the noise that jays make, they are fascinating to watch.

Followup: Elephants are pretty amazing too.

Pointless But Cool Short Vidclip of the Day

Actually, I'll bet there are many people who study fluid dynamics who would argue vehemently that this is not pointless. OK, I'll grant that. To me, the coolness factor alone is enough to make it not pointless. I'm still not changing the title. So sue me. But watch the clip first.

(From TYWKIWBI)

Sunrise, Sunset

A real-time illustration of our planet's illumination and weather systems. Click for full-size, or rectangular projection here. I have this hot-linked to the source, and I'm curious to see if it changes here in the blog. You can only just see it in the images above, but electrified regions show night lights as well. The sun here in my little burg is just heading toward the horizon... soon western Oregon will have its lights on too.

Note this is not a real-time photo; it's a pastiche of a whole lot of satellite imagery overlaid on a model globe with other data (night illumination, e.g.) added on. There seem to be a number of e-mail-type memes that go viral (as did the mercator map of illumination sources on the earth at night) that start with "This amazing photo was taken by shuttle astronauts on a very clear night..." This is not a photo, it's a spectacular simulation.