Science
I like reading, in fact, I've got a stack of books, at last count, 12 high beside my bed, 6 in the office, and countless others scattered around the house. I think it drives my wife insane!
But one of my readers, a Rosslander, Wandering Coyote, lent me a book I just had to push to the front of the queue. Cool It: The Skeptical Environmentalist's Guide to Global Warming
I’ve just started the book, and plan to read it over my week off, but I was struck with the simplicity of Bjorn Lomborg’s premise and attitude.
He says in the Preface,
The title of this book has two meanings: the first and obvious one is that we have to set our minds and resources towards the most effective way to tackle long-term global warming. But the second refers to the current nature of the debate. At present anyone who does not support the most radical solutions to global warming is deemed an outcast and is called irresponsible and is seen as possibly an evil puppet of the oil lobby.
It is my contention that this is not the best way to frame a debate on so crucial an issue. I believe that most participants in the debate have good an honourable intentions – we all want to work toward a better world. But to do so, we need to cool the rhetoric, allowing us to have a measured discussion about the best ways forward. Being smart about our future is the reason we have done so well in the past.
I agree with all but the last sentence, and believe that this paragraph could easily apply to almost any controversial issue that the world, or individual communities face today. We haven’t been smart about our future, the world is full of short-term decision-making protocols, and the ability for decisions to be made rationally has been challenged. Four months ago, I wrote a post entitled, Community Decision-Making and Independence, where I quoted another great book…
Surowiecki in "The Wisdom of Crowds" states...
The more influence a group's members exert on each other, and the more personal contact they have with each other, the less likely the group's decisions will be wise ones.
The more influence we exert on each other, the more likely it is that we believe the same things and make the same mistakes. That means that it's possible that we could become individually smarter, but collectively dumber....Can people make collectively intelligent decisions even when they are in constant, even erratic contact with each other?
Global Warming and Decision-Making, two tough topics. I’ll have more to say on the book, Cool It by Bjorn Lomborg soon.
GIS services are the latest information tool for planners and decision makers to graphically represent terrain, environmental and social data. One service I recently discovered is out of Washington State, but has many BC rivers and catchments on it as well.
Ecotrust remains committed to an open development philosophy and to democratizing access to spatial analysis technologies and platforms. In 1999, we partnered to develop the Conservation GIS Starter Kit as a stand-alone workbook of tutorials, and for years, Inforain has served as a clearinghouse for data about the region.
More recently, we have joined in utilizing and promoting open-source tools for spatial analysis. We will continue to seek open, adaptive and collaborative frameworks for building an ever greater understanding of this region’s nearshore marine areas, watersheds, and agricultural and forestlands.
WorldChanging: Resource: Watershed Locator
So what can you use this tool for? Silverman hopes that savvy types use it to inform others, and to get people thinking about their city, their neighborhood, and the natural systems that support and are affected by those developed systems. "To me, that's an intriguing way of immediately pulling people out of their mental models, and offering an alternative one," he says. "Climate change is important on a global scale, but there are nested scales, and the watershed is one regional scale that is very important."
By building up GIS data and presenting it in web-based interfaces, communities and interested groups can get easy access to the information about the creeks and streams in their region. This service still needs many gaps to be filled in, but the future of this technology is pretty transparent.
Five years ago, Robyn and I authored a paper for the Australian Federal House of Representatives Standing Committee for the Environment entitled Green Roofs for Sustainable Cities. This was our first collaborative effort and something we are still interested in with Climate Change and Peak oil more likely to impact our daily lives, environment and living spaces technologies like green roofs have the ability to offset many of the effects of increased weather variability and energy costs.
You can download the pdf of the paper below.
Almost five years ago in reference to Barriers to the adoption of technologies, I wrote... read more »
When I started some concrete and materials research work at the University of Calgary back in 2001, I was introduced to the ASTM standards. I found it slightly amusing that Canada often deferred to what I thought were US standards, particularly considering that everything was in Imperial Units. But I was pleasantly surprised at the quality of the methodology and standard tests that were available for research and quality testing purposes.
Later, I found out that ASTM is not just American, but an International Standards body... read more »
Sci-Fi to reality. Flying cars and all.
TheStar.com - News - Flying car touted for urban safety:
Rafi Yoeli has an unconventional solution to saving people from burning high-rises or rescuing soldiers trapped behind enemy lines: a flying car. Yoeli already has gotten a rudimentary vehicle off the ground - about three feet - and hopes to see a marketable version of his X-Hawk flying car by 2010....
Like a similarly sized helicopter, X-Hawk will be able to take off vertically, fly up to 155 miles an hour and as high as 12,000 feet and remain aloft about two hours, Urban Aeronautics says.
But encased fans will replace the exposed rotors that keep helicopters from maneuvering effectively in urban areas or dense natural terrain because they have to stay clear of walls, power lines and mountain ridges. And a patented system of vanes is designed to afford the vehicle greater stability. Urban Aeronautics says vehicles will be able to sidle right up to a building. read more »
The Sydney Morning Herald is in holiday mode, and so am I.
Lame popular topics, like Google Earth and articles that read like, "Oh wow, like, everyone is using it, didn't you know?" If you didn't you're almost as Google Earth naive as these scientist, so you know, take heart.
Google Earth embraced by geologists - Technology - smh.com.au
One scientist at the San Francisco conference asked whether it was possible to see the interior of the Earth - to look at the three-dimensional structure of an earthquake fault, for instance. Negative. How about looking at the sun? Nope again...And it's only as good as your computer, internet connection and ability to wield a mouse. read more »
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