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Liverpool Blogs: Liverpool Blogger Profile

Sat, 20 Mar 2010 23:49:23 +0000

Claire of Clairedulalune

Tell us about yourself:
Hello, my name is Claire and I live with the big fella in Liverpool! I am regrettably not a true scouser as I moved here six years ago from Belfast. May I be honorary? My blog is scouse at least and so is the big fella!

What is your blog about?
It is a wee blog of capturing magic in everyday life. I run about different parts of Liverpool with my camera and transform the pictures into adventures and fairy tales. You may well recognize some of the places we have been to. I sometimes draw illustrations of the adventures also. If you would like to join us on our adventures please fly over here:
http://clairedulalune.blogspot.com/search/label/Adventures

What do you like most about Liverpool?
The people, the beautiful city, parks and history! Always something to do!

scyfilove.com (Liverpool): Doctor Who’s debt to Press Gang, Spike, Linda … and Harry Secombe?

Sat, 20 Mar 2010 23:29:44 +0000

Remembering Who showrunner Steven Moffat's fantastic first TV series

Doctor Who’s debt to Press Gang, Spike, Linda … and Harry Secombe? has just flown in from scyfilove.com - click through for the rest of the good stuff

round the merseyrail we go: Lunchtime Vignette

Sat, 20 Mar 2010 23:10:23 +0000

The train smells of beer. Cheap, nasty booze, filling the carriage. People avoid them. A man takes his son to a different seat so they're not close by.

He slumps against the window, slurring, stammering, whispering to the woman across from him. His words are thick with alcohol. He struggles to keep his head level. Sips Tizer from a can.

She cuts into him. "I've heard it all before, Dad."

He looks out the window into the tunnel, then back at her. "I do love you, you know." But his words taste of lager. She doesn't respond.

His granddaughter looks away as he slips into unconsciousness.

Low-tech Magazine: How to make everything yourself - online low-tech resources

Sat, 20 Mar 2010 20:11:30 +0000

Energy Bulletin pointed us to the website of Practical Action (previously known as the Schumacher Centre for Technology & Development), an online resource devoted to low-technology solutions for developing countries. The site hosts many manuals that can also be of interest for low-tech DIYers in the developed world. They cover energy, agriculture, food processing, construction and manufacturing, just to name some important categories.

We would like to add to this the impressive online library put together by software engineer Alex Weir. The 900 documents listed here (13 gigabytes in total) are not as well organised and presented as those of Practical Action, but there is a wealth of information that is not found anywhere else. The library is also hosted here (without search engine).

Other interesting online resources that offer manuals and instructions are Appropedia, Howtopedia and Open Source Ecology. These are all wiki's, so you can cooperate. The Centre for Alternative technologies has many interesting manuals, too, but the majority of those are not for free.

Previously: The museum of old techniques / A do-it-ourselves guide.

Low-tech Magazine: Wind powered factories: history (and future) of industrial windmills

Sat, 20 Mar 2010 20:08:48 +0000

In the 1930s and 1940s, decades after steam engines had made wind power obsolete, Dutch researchers obstinately kept improving the – already very sophisticated – traditional windmill. The results were spectacular, and there is no doubt that today an army of ecogeeks could improve them even further. Would it make sense to revive the industrial windmill and again convert kinetic energy directly into mechanical energy?

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The Netherlands had 5 times more windmills in 1850 than it has wind turbines today

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More than 900 years ago, medieval Europe became the first large civilisation not to be run by human muscle power. Thousands and thousands of windmills and waterwheels, backed up by animal power, transformed industry and society radically. It was an industrial revolution entirely powered by renewable energy – something that we can (and do) only dream of today. Wind and water powered mills were in essence the first real factories in human history. They consisted of a building, a power source, machinery and employees, and out of them came a product.

Windmills and waterwheels were not new technologies – both machines appeared already in Antiquity and the ones used in the early Middle Ages were technically no different from those. However, ancient civilisations like the Greeks and the Romans hardly used them, possibly because of religious reasons and because of a large enough reservoir of human slave labour.

Water versus wind

Water powered mills were – overall – more important and numerous than windmills. This is logical since they are a simpler and more reliable technology; the flow of a river might change according to the seasons, but generally a river always contains water. Moreover, by making use of canals and sluice gates the flow of water could be precisely controlled to provide the speed or load required by the gearwork inside the factory.

The wind, on the other hand, does not always blow. When it does, wind velocity and direction can change at any moment and windmills had no efficient method to control the strength of the wind – at least not in early medieval times. Water powered mills appeared in Europe in large amounts from the end of the 11th century onwards and only 200 years later almost all available energy in rivers and streams was put to use.

However, not all regions were suited for watermills. The reasons could be that they did not have sufficient water resources (like Spain), that they were too flat and their rivers did not have enough flow (like the Netherlands and the downlands of England) or that rivers generally froze during winter (like in Scandinavia, Russia and parts of Germany). In these countries, windmills appeared in the 13th century, possibly earlier, and spread fast. Later, also regions that had abundant water resources constructed windmills, to relieve the pressure on rivers and streams.

How many windmills?

The amount of windmills in early medieval times remains unknown, because the few inventories that could be studied do not distinguish between water and wind powered mills. For instance, we know that there were between 10,000 and 12,000 mills in the UK in 1300, but we do not know how many of them were wind powered (it must have been a minority). All we have are data on individual windmills, which start to appear at the end of the 1200s. Only in the 1700s and 1800s, when windmill technology really caught on, more accurate inventories appear.

In 1750, there were 6,000 to 8,000 windmills in the Netherlands, in 1850 there were 9,000 of them. For comparison, this is almost 5 times as much as there are wind turbines in the Netherlands today (1,974 turbines as of September 2009). In the UK there were 5,000 to 10,000 windmills in 1820. France had 8,700 windmills (and 37,000 watermills) in 1847.

Germany had 18,242 windmills in 1895 (compared to around 18,000 wind turbines today) and Finland had 20,000 windmills in 1900. Portugal, Spain, several Mediterranean islands and many Eastern European and Scandinavian countries had many windmills, too. The total amount of wind powered mills in Europe was estimated to be around 200,000 (at its peak), compared to some 500,000 waterwheels. Windmills were built in the countryside and in cities, and even on the walls of castles and fortifications in order to catch more wind.

Initially, the only applications of windmills were the grinding of grain and (to a lesser extent) the pumping of water and the draining of lowland areas (for which they were connected to a waterwheel working in reverse – the scoopwheel - or to an Archimedean screw).

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Around 1600, many new industrial applications of windmills appeared: saw mills, paper mills, mustard mills, tobacco mills, ...

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Bread and oats were the staple diet of the Middle Ages (meat, fish and vegetables were only available to the rich) and all that grain had to be crushed or ground. It took one person with a hand mill two hours a day to grind enough flour for an average family. Corn windmills were also used to make Dutch gin and other liquors.

The grinding of grain remained the most important use of windmills - as late as 1900, the entire wheat harvest of Northern Europe was ground by windmills in the Netherlands, Denmark and Germany. However, around 1600 many new applications of windmills appeared.

New applications

Windmills were used for hulling barley and rice, grinding malt, pressing olives to olive oil, and pressing coleseed, linseed, rapeseed and hempseed for cooking and lighting. There were also cocoa mills, mustard mills and pepper mills (also used for other spices), even tobacco mills and snuff mills.

Besides food production, two other major applications of windmill technology were the production of paper (using ropes and sails from ships as a raw material) and the sawing of wood.

Windmills were also crushing chalk (to make cement), grinding mortar, draining mines, ventilating mineshafts (and even a prison), polishing glass and making gunpowder.

Textiles were another industry in which wind power came to the rescue: windmills were crushing seeds from flax (to make linen), preparing hemp fibres (to produce ropes and sailcloth), fulling cloth (to create soft wool), making paint and tanning and dying animal skins.

The Zaan district

One of the most spectacular developments of industrial wind power technology occurred in the Zaan district, a region situated just above Amsterdam in the Netherlands. Although the area is surrounded by water, the potential of water power was limited because the land is as flat as it can be and so the flow of the rivers is low. The wind, on the other hand, is strong. Many of the applications of windmills described above appeared first (and sometimes only) in the Zaan district.

It is said that the region was the world’s first industrialized area. From 1600 to 1750, when the Netherlands became an important economical power, around 1,000 windmills were built and operated here (see the map on the left). Mills were given names, just like ships.

A vital element of the wind powered industry in the Zaan district was the saw mill. Wood was required to construct houses, sluices, ships and of course more windmills. Hand sawing was a very laborious task and windmills greatly reduced the time needed for the process. With hand sawing, 60 beams or trunks would take 120 working days, with wind power this only took 4 to 5 days (see picture below, more here).

The first sawmill ("Het juffertje" or "The missy") was built in the town of Zaandam by Cornelis Corneliszoon in 1596. By 1630, there were 83 sawmills north of Amsterdam, of which 53 were located in the Zaan district. The peak was reached in 1731 when there were 450 sawmills in the Netherlands, 256 of them in the Zaan district. Eventually even the crane of these mills, to haul up the timber, was driven by the sails.

Another early industrial application of wind power in the Zaan district was the production of paper – this was, after all, the era in which the printing press appeared. The first papermaking windmill ("De Gans" or "The Goose") dates from 1605 and by 1740 there were 40 of them. In the middle of the 17th century, the Dutch paper mill was substantially improved, which enabled it to make whiter paper and make it faster.

One remaining example is “De Schoolmeester” ("The Teacher"), built in 1692 (see the introductory picture and the interior below). Wind powered paper mills were rare in other countries, but water powered versions already appeared in the 11th century and became quite common – in England there were 417 of them in 1800.

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In saw mills, even the crane to haul up the timber was driven by the sails

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Other remarkable windmills in the Zaan district were snuff and tobacco mills (38 in 1795), oil mills (140 in 1731), barley hulling mills (65 in 1731), dyestuff mills (21 in 1731) and hemp mills (20 in 1731). The Dutch also built hundreds of windmills in the West Indies for crushing sugar cane. Relatively few of the 1,000 surviving windmills in the Netherlands are industrial windmills - drainage and corn mills remained economically viable much longer.

Backup power: animals

In many other European countries, similar functions were mainly performed by watermills. However, not all activities powered by waterwheels could be powered by sails. The fickleness of the wind made windmills unsuited for processes that required a very steady and reliable power output, like metal making, spinning, tool-sharpening or extracting minerals from mines.

In countries where the potential of water power was insufficient, some of these activities were powered by animals, mainly horses. Horses were also used as a backup power in long periods of calm, in order to guarantee delivery. For instance, in the Netherlands in 1850, there were 1,800 windmills for the grinding of corn, but also 1,300 horsemills for the grinding of buckwheat – a grain that required a more steady power source for grinding.

Post mills and tower mills

Early medieval windmills were simple machines, derived from waterwheels. During the following centuries, however, windmills became a very sophisticated technology. Windmills are much more complicated machines than waterwheels because wind velocity and speed change continually. Earlier windmills in Iran and Afghanistan were of the horizontal (vertical-axis) type, and thus did not have to adapt to changes in wind direction. But these machines, which were much less efficient, were never used in Europe.

Initially, medieval millwrights solved the problem of varying wind direction by positioning the whole mill on a central spindle so that it could be turned to face the wind. This was the so-called “post mill” (at right). Around the 1400s, a second type of windmill appeared, in which only the cap and sails rotated and the body of the mill remained stationary. This was the so-called “tower mill”, which was later perfected by the Dutch (see the diagram on the left).

Tower mills were also the dominant type around the Mediterranean, but these were less efficient machines with very different sails. Because it was stationary, the main body of a tower mill could be constructed from stone or brick, and thus they were more sturdily built. Both types continued to be in use, but many post mills were replaced by tower mills from the 1600s to the 1800s.

Turning the sails into the wind

These days, wind turbines are turned into the wind automatically by means of electronic equipment. When the wind becomes too strong, the electronics turn the blades out of the wind so they are not blown to smithereens. Medieval millwrights had no microchips and so they had to find another solution.

For many centuries, windmills were turned into the wind by mere muscle power. This was done by lifting a large tailpole at the back of the mill (hooked up to the tail ladder in the case of a post mill), moving it to the required position, and fixing it again at one of the twelve anchor posts sunk into the ground in a circle around the mill.

This was not an easy task, because the body of a post mill had to be turned with the weight of all the machinery inside. Some mills were equipped with a winch at the end of the tailpole, riding on a circular track, which made the task a bit easier. The cap of tower mills was turned in a similar fashion, by means of a much longer tailpole - reaching to the ground (picture above) or to the terrace in the case of a tower mill with a stage (here). Vent holes were drilled in the sides of the body of the mill – when the wind started blowing through one of these holes, the miller knew that wind direction had changed.

Adjusting the sails: a daunting task

Adapting to variations in wind velocity was even more challenging. The factory machinery inside the mill required a rather precise operating speed. For instance, corn mills worked best at 50 to 60 sail revolutions per minute. Once surpassing 80 sail revolutions per minute the grain would burn. Another risk was that when sails started turning too fast, the windmill could be destroyed.

Again, for centuries, the miller had to do this by hand. Basically, there were two ways to adjust to changing wind speeds. Minor differences in wind velocity could be absorbed inside the mill, by increasing or decreasing the load. For instance, in a corn mill, adapting to a higher wind speed could be done by widening the gap between the milling stones and adding more grain. Because the load is increased, the amount of revolutions of the sails remains more or less the same in spite of the higher wind speed.

When the changes in wind speed became too large, however, the miller had no choice but to get out of the mill and adjust the sails. Traditional windmills were not equipped with blades, but with sails – mostly a wooden framework covered with canvas (in colder climates the canvas was generally replaced by slats of wood, which were easier to handle in freezing conditions).

Reefing two or even four sails, or reducing sail area were very effective methods to adjust to higher wind speeds, but these must have been daunting tasks in high winds. At least two sails had to be brought within a vertical position and stopped so that the miller, climbing the sail, could take off the cloth. If the brake failed while the miller was in the sail, he would be in for a spectacular ride. Tying and reefing all four sails was also a standard procedure at the beginning and end of each working day.

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During the second half of the eighteenth century, several complex but effective techniques were developed that made it possible for a traditional windmill to be left mostly unattended

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During the second half of the eighteenth century, several complex but effective techniques were developed that made it possible for a traditional wind mill to be left mostly unattended, at least when it concerned changes in wind speed and direction. In 1745, the English blacksmith Edmund Lee invented the "self-regulating wind machine" or "winding", a device that automatically adapted the positioning of the windmill to the direction of the wind. It consisted of a fantail (two fantails for larger windmills) and a gearwork (illustration below).

A fantail can be described as an auxiliary windmill that is mounted behind the main sails, at a right angle to them. If the direction of the wind changes, it hits the fantail, turning the mill until the main sails are again perpendicular to the wind.

The fantail is geared down to a travelling wheel in the cap of the tower (in case of a tower mill, above) or around the building (in case of a post mill, see picture). Fantails were later used for wind-powered water pumps in the US, but because these machines were much lighter there was no need for a gearwork to turn them.

The winding not only made the handling of the mill much easier, it also augmented the power output. A substantial amount of power can get lost because of slight variations in the wind direction, but the miller did not always have the time (or the will) to turn the windmill following every minor change.

Automatic control: spring and patent sails

Around the same time as the fantail and winding were invented, mechanisms started to appear that were aimed at automatically adapting the sails to varying wind speeds. This led to the development of the so-called “spring-sail” in 1772, invented by Scottish millwright Andrew Meikle. On a spring sail, the sailcloth is replaced by dozens of shutters like those of a Venetian blind. Each shutter is controlled by a spring.

As the wind increases, it overcomes the force of the spring and the shutter will open, letting the wind through and slowing down the sails. The stronger the wind, the more the shutters will open. When the wind speed decreases, the shutters will be closed by the spring, again forming one uninterrupted surface. All of this results in having sails with a similar rotation speed at any wind velocity.

The problem with spring-sails is that the tensions of the springs (which are all connected to each other by means of a long pole) have to be adjusted beforehand depending on the expected wind speed and the power needed. Once set, it is impossible to make adjustments while the sails are turning.

This was solved in 1789 by Stephen Hooper, who introduced blinds that could be adjusted with a manual chain from the ground without stopping the mill ("roller reefing sails", picture on the right). However, the system was too complicated. The final improvement to self-reefing sails came in 1807 when William Cubit attached counterweights to the adjustment chain of spring sails, making the control of the sails fully automatic without the complexity of the roller reefing method – these were called “patent sails” (drawing above).

Berton sails

The only problem left was that patent sails had a lower efficiency than normal sails, and as a result it was common to combine two patent sails with two normal sails as a compromise between handling and efficiency. In 1848, the Frenchman Berton replaced the many small shutters by fewer longitudinal shutters operating according to the same principle, an intriguing method that gave a sturdier construction and a better aerodynamic performance ("Berton Sails", see picture below).

Moreover, the system could be adjusted by the miller from inside the cap of the mill. In 1860, Catchpole introduced air brakes, which were a very effective means to automatically slowing down the sails in a gale. Inside the mill, an automatic centrifugal governor replaced the manual adapting of the distance between the milling stones.

Of course, self-reefing sails and other automatic systems did not solve the problem of windless days - that is why the miller worked day and night when there was a good breeze. Millers were even exempt from Sunday's rest.

As was the case with the fantail, self-reefing sails did not only improve the handling of the windmill, but also the power output. Because there was no longer a need for the miller to stand on the ground to fix or unfurl the sails, the wind shaft could be installed much higher so that the mill could benefit from higher wind speeds (the Dutch had solved this issue before by constructing tower mills where the sails could be reefed from a stage at a higher level).

Power output of a windmill

Another important improvement was the introduction of cast iron for the manufacture of the gearwork. This happened in 1755, only ten years after the introduction of the winding, by John Smeaton. For centuries, all gears inside the mill were made of wood. This resulted in serious energy losses.

Measurements performed by the Dutch in the 1930s, on a drainage windmill constructed in 1648, showed that the mill generated around 40 horsepower at the windshaft but only 15.6 horsepower at the machines – an efficiency of only 39 percent. Almost two thirds of the generated power was lost in the transmission. Drainage mills had a slightly higher efficiency of around 50 percent.

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Windmills with wood gearings had an efficiency of only 39 percent

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The use of cast-iron (and later iron) did not only improve the efficiency of the gearwork, but also allowed for the construction of larger windmills. The use of wood limited the diameter of the sails to around 30 meters – already common in the 1600s.

The maximum length of a stock (more than twice the length of one sail) was around 30 metres (100 feet) because there were no larger trunks available. Only in the second half of the nineteenth century iron stocks came to be used for the sails and for the windshaft.

Innovations came too late

Unfortunately, the many important improvements of windmill technology came too late. Already at the end of the 1700s, around the same time that these innovations appeared, the first corn mill switched from wind power to steam power – and to the black smoke that came with it. Around 1850, steam powered mills became more common and the importance of windmills started to decline. To make things worse, fantails, self-reefing sails and iron stiffening were slow to catch on - in many countries and regions they were never even used.

Berton sails were only applied in France, patent sails were mainly used in England. Although iron stocks allowed for the construction of larger sails, that never happened. The highest tower mill ever constructed was made entirely out of wood. It was standing in the Netherlands and was constructed in 1899 ("De Hoop" or "The Hope" in Prinsenhagen, now the city of Breda). It stood 38 metres (125 ft) tall, with sails around 27 metres (88.5 ft) in diameter. The cap and sails were removed in 1929 but the tower is still there.

Largest windmill ever built

The two Dutch windmills with the largest sail diameter are standing in the Golden Gate Park in San Francisco, built between 1903 and 1905. The largest one, the "Murphy Windmill", stands 29 metres (95 ft) tall with sails 35 metres (114 ft) across. The stocks were cut from one single log - the US had larger trees. But its gearwork is made entirely of cast iron and that shows: the mill pumped up to 150,000 litres (40,000 gallons) of water per day to irrigate the park. The Murphy Mill was replaced by an electrical engine some years later and fell into disrepair.

The decline of the windmill was slow, especially in the Netherlands - the Dutch even preferred windmills with auxiliary steam engines over fully steam powered mills. More than 6 million wind powered waterpumps (with annular sails) would be built in the United States between the 1850s and the 1930s, but elsewhere few windmills were erected after 1900. The attention shifted to wind turbines generating electricity, and that has remained so ever since.

Impressive improvements in the 1920s and 1930s

In the 1920s and 1930s, however, when windmills had stopped working almost everywhere in Europe, the Dutch started a research program that led to the final development of the classical windmill. In 1923, the “Dutch Windmill Society” was founded, with the mission to improve the performance of windmills generating mechanical energy. Among the members were famous millwright builders like the Dekker Brothers. The results were spectacular.

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The maximum power output of a windmill was doubled from 50 to 100 horsepower at the end of the 1920s

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Through the application of aeronautical principles and the use of sheet metal (basically equipping traditional windmills with sails somewhat similar to the blades of modern wind turbines) the maximum power output of a windmill was doubled from 50 to 100 horsepower at the end of the 1920s.

More than 70 windmills were equipped with the new "Dekkerized sails" during the following decade. Moreover, improvements in the gearwork slashed energy losses and allowed for windmills to generate much more power at lower wind speeds.

Doubling energy output

Tests conducted in 1939 by the “Prinsenmolen Committee” showed that an improved windmill would start to turn with a wind speed of 3.5 to 4 m/s (7.75 to 9 mph) compared to 5 to 6 m/s (11 to 13.5 mph) for the old design. At 5.5 m/s (12.5 mph) their power was found to be equal to that of a normal mill at 8 m/s (18 mph).

This meant that while a traditional windmill could be worked for around 2,671 hours per year in the Netherlands, the new streamlined design could be operated for 4,442 hours per year – more or less doubling the annual energy output.

The improved windmill had two advantages; a greater output at a given wind speed, and longer working hours by utilizing lighter winds. The gain was especially found in lower wind speeds, because with stronger winds the sails of the improved windmill had to be reefed sooner.

More improvements during the 1930s by Chris van Bussel, Kurt Bilau, G.J. Ten Have, Van Riet, P.L. Fauël (picture right), Sabinin and Yurieff led to a windmill, installed in 1940 and demolished in 1960, with up to two and a half times the power output of windmills with traditional sails: 125 horsepower.

Next, the Second World War stopped further investigations and after the war, like the rest of the world, the Dutch shifted their attention to the generation of electricity.

Revert to traditional windmills?

Today, windmills and waterwheels that convert kinetic energy directly into mechanical energy are considered obsolete, and while some have survived, few of them have any commercial function in developed countries. Wind turbines now turn renewable energy into electricity, which might later be converted back to mechanical energy.

Of course it is impossible to operate a flat screen television or a laptop with mechanical energy, but many other processes could in principle still be driven in that old-fashioned way. Grain still has to be ground, wood still has to be sawn, seeds still have to be pressed, but now we use electricity to drive machines that perform the same processes. This electricity can be generated by means of modern wind turbines, or other renewable energy sources, and that is the future that everybody has in mind.

Embodied energy

However, there are some reasons that might make it interesting to revert to a direct conversion from kinetic to mechanical energy. Planting a few million high-tech wind turbines, covering deserts with solar plants and developing a smart grid and an elaborate electrical car infrastructure all sound attractive, but the most important question is whether there are enough material, energy and financial resources available to make those dreams ever come true.

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Traditional windmills could be improved substantially with today’s knowledge and materials

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Available data on the reserves of exotic resources required for many eco-technologies look grim, and some time ago it was heard that China (the main producer of important ecotech metals) plans to restrict the export of those metals. Windmills that convert kinetic energy directly to mechanical work could be operated without exotic materials.

High-tech traditional windmills

On a more positive note, traditional windmills could be improved substantially with today’s knowledge and fairly common materials. The gearings and sails could be made of steel or aluminum, which would seriously improve efficiency and also make windmills fireproof. Being made entirely or in large part of wood, many windmills were destroyed by fire. Of course, also the factory machinery inside the mill could be made much more efficient now.

Windmills could be built much larger and thus more powerful. To give an indication; in 2005, the Dutch built another traditional windmill, that generates electricity - the "Noletmolen" in Schiedam. It stands almost 42 metres tall with sails 30 metres across, slightly less than the Murphy Mill in San Francisco. It was built for promotional purposes by a distillery (the town hosts 5 more historical mills built to produce Dutch gin). Although the mill is not really a "mill", it is built according to a traditional design, but using high-tech materials and sails (picture above). The result is a power output of more than 200 horsepower at the windshaft. Take that, Energy Ball.

Ecotech treatment

Backup power for a traditional windmill could be delivered by an electrical motor instead of horses (or we could just work when the wind blows). There is no doubt that now, 70 years later, an army of ecotech geeks could still seriously improve the Dutch experiments from the 1930s. The results might not look as romantic as a traditional windmill, but very useful.

Of course, this is not a plea to eliminate electricity-generating wind turbines or even the electricity infrastructure altogether. But, some things might be more efficiently done with direct conversion of kinetic energy to mechanical energy.

We will dive deeper into the history of renewable energy in forthcoming articles.

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Sources (in order of importance)

"Power from Wind: A History of Windmill Technology", Richard L. Hills, 1994.
"Molens", Frederick Stokhuyzen, 1962 (English summary here).
"Research inspired by the Dutch windmills: An account of an extensive programme of research and development", The Prinsenmolen Committee, 1966 (I could not find this book but it is the source to which both books above refer to when describing the Dutch experiments in the 1930s).
"Histoire générale des techniques", Maurice Dumas, 1964
"Molendatabase" – pictures and descriptions (in Dutch) of windmills in the Netherlands.
"Natural sources of power", Robert Steele Ball (1908)
"Geschiedenis van de techniek in Nederland, de wording van een moderne samenleving 1800-1890", H.W. Lintsen, 1992
"Gevlucht", Wikipedia Dutch
"History of technology", "Energy conversion" and "Windmills", Encyclopedia Britannica.
"An Encyclopedia of the History of Technology (Routledge Companion Encyclopaedias)", Ian McNeil, 1990
"Wind, Water, Work: Ancient And Medieval Milling Technology (Technology and Change in History)", Adam Lucas, 2005
"Handbook of Fluid Dynamics", Richard W. Johnson, 1998
"The windmill as prime mover", Alfred R. Wolff, 1885
"An experimental enquiry concerning the natural powers of water and wind to turn mills", John Smeaton, 1760
"Groot Volkomen Moolenboek", 1734
"Penterbak" - pictures
"Industriemolens" - pictures of industrial windmills in the Netherlands
"Windmills in Sussex", Peter Hemming, 1936
"Windmills in Holland", K. Boonenburg, 1951 (pdf)
"Windmill sail", Wikipedia English
"Origen y expansion de los molinos de viento en Espana”, José Ignacio Rojas Sola y Juan Manual Amezcua Ogayar, Interciencia, Vol.30, 2005
"The windmill: a medieval steam engine?", John Langdon (pdf)
"The Evolution of Technology (Cambridge Studies in the History of Science )", George Basalla, 1989
"Windkraftanlagen: grundlagen, technik, einsatz, wirtschaftlichkeit", Eric Hau, 2003
"European Route of Industrial Heritages"

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Related :

Small windmills put to the test: size matters
Scale models of Dutch industrial windmills: build them yourself
Low-tech energy revolution in Africa: William Kamkwamba
A wind-powered knitting machine: a real-world use for small windmills
Guido Vigevano's wind car: high-tech from the 14th century
TimberTower: a modern wind turbine, made from wood
Build a wind membrame: the Windbelt
Windmills and wind motors: how to build and run them
Cargo ships, then and now: which one is fastest?
Bring back the horses: can real horse power save agriculture?
Mechanical computers: calculating without electricity
Pinhole cameras: low-tech photography
Water-powered cable trains: the perpetuum mobile exists
Trolleybuses and trolleytrucks: electric transport for a bargain
Life before television: 16th to 19th century optical entertainment
Email in the 18th century: the optical telegraph
How (not) to solve the energy crisis: first things first
How to make everything yourself: online low-tech resources

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Fair Say: eCampaigning in a leaderless world

Sat, 20 Mar 2010 19:49:29 +0000

Do we live in a leaderless world? Obviously not – we don't have to look far to see how the decisions of bosses and politicians shape much of our everyday lives. Are there places in our world that exist outside of a top-down form of leadership? Yes – people collectively-organise, often to great effect, in many realms of life. And though this has been the case for all of human history – whether in church groups or terror networks – we are at a moment where the fusion of this kind of self-organisation, with ever-expanding social technology, is creating spaces that no longer require the type of 'leadership' we've become so used to.

For those of you already immersed in this world, the modern-legend that is Trafigura – the story of the PR firm that won an injunction against the reporting of Parliamentary proceedings involving its client, and then had it over-turned by a leak and a spontaneous, 12-hour online uprising in the 'Twittersphere' – is likely a familiar one by now. What the Trafigura 'campaign' represents though, is more than a 'good over evil', or 'David and Goliath' kind of victory – it represents a fundamentally different way of achieving social change, than that which most of our organisations will have had any previous experience being a part of.

What's different about Trafigura?

What's different about Trafigura, is the absence of a 'head'; a lead body – usually an organisation, but at least a charismatic individual – who can determine, broadly, the direction through which a likeminded group can move to achieve its aims. The only 'leader' of this campaign, was the idea that people have a right to know what happens in Parliament, regardless of the reputational effects that may have on the people or groups involved. And that was it – this idea exploded and very quickly became a trending topic on Twitter, feeding into a range of major blogs, mainstream news stories and, within half-a-day, the repeal of the gag order itself – a campaign victory by any traditional measure. But no single person or group could honestly claim the victory, because what happened was bigger than any of the individual parts.

What does this mean for us?

So what does all this mean for traditional campaigning organisations? Potentially, a lot, though it is still 'early days'. We can no longer assume that our knowledge, history of voice, or positioning will place us at the centre of mass collective sentiment around our issues or areas of work. On some level, the 'need' for a central organising body in a campaign seems – at least superficially – to be less relevant that it has ever been. As so many people can achieve critical mass, without being told to attend a particular event, or sign up to an organisation's platform, the potential for self-organisation is vast, and can, at times, outweigh the benefits of subscribing to an organisation's campaign actions. As institutions, it is impossible for us to move as quickly as individuals can, in response to an event or a piece of news. With the connecting power of social media, vast numbers of individual people are able to move very quickly, in roughly the same direction, without a helmsperson to steer the ship.

So are we, as campaigning organisations, on the verge of forced redundancy, in light of this shift towards decentralisation? No... or at least not necessarily.

If, in the coming months and years we are able to adapt to this changing terrain, and accept, that we won't always be able to 'lead' every campaign we want to take on, I think we will find our roles to be ever-more important, as e-campaigning becomes part of more and more peoples' social media routine. Alternatively, if we cling to the more traditional, command-and-control mechanisms of brand consistency and uniform messaging, people may very well find other ways of getting themselves heard on the issues they care about, that are less-restricting to their personal schedules or ideas of activism.

Practically speaking though, what would campaigning look like in this new environment? The ever-allusive answer is that it could look like a lot of different things, which is another reason it may be harder for some organisations to adapt effectively. It's much harder to plan for a campaign when you

don't know when it might happen
don't know exactly what it's going to be about, and
don't know what contribution you might be making to it.

What to do about it

But luckily we're not flying totally blind here and there are still things we can do to prepare! The key is in flexibility; if a Trafigura-esque (spontaneous, leaderless) 'campaign' emerges within your area of expertise:

Make sure you've already got the relevant information available online – reports, stories, interviews – so you can start to link to it and share it around, as soon as the topic appears to be taking off. If people are linking to your information repeatedly, it builds a collective sense of trust that your messages carry some authority in the given area. Trust will make your next steps that much easier.

Figure out who the others are who seem to have some authority on the issues. This may cut against some organisations' instincts, but promote what they are saying and doing as well, whether via Twitter, a blog, your website, or a Facebook page. Reciprocity is an important tenet of social media culture, and will inevitably benefit your both work and your cause, if you can demonstrate that you're involvement is bigger than just your organisation.

Lastly, (and maybe most importantly) be prepared to offer whatever makes sense to those in the 'campaign' who are most active and vocal. Maybe this means providing a meeting space for activists looking to move their online actions into 'real world'; maybe this means making an introduction to a relevant politician whom you've already built a relationship with; maybe this means setting-up a one-off campaign action for supporters to engage with... your potential types of contributions in such a situation could be endless, but your potential returns could be greater than those of many of our most successful traditional campaigns.

The potential for unprecedented numbers of people to come together to affect change has never been greater; let's make sure that, though we might not be in the middle of it all, at least we can find ourselves a place where it counts...

Liam Barrington-Bush is co-founder of Concrete Solutions C.I.C., a (currently being registered) Community Interest Company that works with large voluntary and public organisations, and small community groups, to improve understanding and working relationships between those working for community benefit, at all levels. He can be found on Twitter at @hackofalltrades.

Left Foot Forward: Combating the growing influence of climate sceptics

Sat, 20 Mar 2010 19:10:05 +0000

A fascinating new study commissioned by Oxfam and produced by digital mapping agency Profero has shed new insights into the way climate sceptics’ networks operate. The study’s conclusions, as yet unpublished but seen by Left Foot Forward, were presented to a closed meeting of campaigners on Wednesday night.

Profero’s study analysed online coverage of the “Climategate” debacle that broke last November, tracking its progress from fringe blogs to mainstream media outlets over the ensuing weeks and months.

Tracing the online paper trail back to its source, the researchers concluded that:

• The ‘Climategate’ story was first aired on climate denier blog The Air Vent, before wending its way onto more popular sceptic sites Climate Audit and Watts Up With That, and then featured by James Delingpole in his Daily Telegraph blog – whose followers propagated it further;

• From thereon in, the story was picked up by a wide range of media outlets, and went global –the culmination of a concerted effort to push it into the mainstream;

• The timing of the CRU email leak was calculated to have maximum impact on the Copenhagen negotiations, with the second wave of sceptic attacks after Christmas deliberately timed for when the environmental movement was at its weakest, exhausted from the UN talks; and

• The speed of information flow within the sceptic community, with its rapid publication of sceptical “research”, is far quicker than any scientist or NGO could hope to match – and handily unencumbered by peer review or sign-off processes.

This meant that because almost no-one from the climate movement responded to or rebutted the sceptics’ arguments, they ended up owning the story.

This allowed them to shift what political theorists call the “Overton Window”: the acceptable parameters within which a debate can be conducted. Suddenly after Climategate, it became acceptable for the mainstream media to question the fundamentals of climate science.

As cognitive linguist George Lakoff has written, if you don’t contol the way an issue is framed, you don’t control the debate. Climate progressives allowed this episode to be written on the sceptics’ terms. The result? A sizeable drop in the public’s belief in climate change (although the freezing winter may also have played a part in this).

Profero’s study then looked at the character of the online climate sceptic networks that permitted this information flow. It discovered that the sceptic community is extraordinarily well-networked and interwoven, with sites like Climate Audit and Climate Depot acting as hubs for a wide range of other individual pundits and bloggers. (And no, I’m not going to give these sites free publicity by linking to them.) Of the top five most linked-to climate commentators, four are climate sceptics.

The one exception was Guardian columnist George Monbiot, who was also the only significant voice countering the sceptics during the whole Climategate debacle. “I have seldom felt so alone,” he wrote early on in the scandal, with justification – Oxfam’s study shows that almost no-one bothered to back him up in defending the integrity of the science.

In many ways, the tactics revealed by Profero are not new. They were first tried and tested by American neo-cons in the 1970s long before the internet became a tool for campaigning. What is new is that the patterns of activity are now traceable, which means that the progressive response to climate scepticism can be more strategic – that is, if we listen to the findings.

Indeed, the reports’ insights should give pause for thought to progressives contemplating the strength of their own networks. Stuart Conway, the study’s co-author, declared simply that “there are no progressive networks” – just hubs of activity here and there, lacking interconnection. Whilst a number of blogs buck this trend – honourable mentions include Treehugger and, yes, Left Foot Forward – the pro-environmental community as a whole lacks brio and responsiveness.

It’s not that there we don’t have the numbers: it’s more than we’re not using our numbers effectively. NGOs, notably, were nowhere to be seen during the debate. Whilst there were some good reasons for this – NGOs feared they would be simply seen as “the usual suspects” in rebutting deniers – this clearly left a vacuum that needed filling by an activist community.

After presentation of the study, discussion moved onto filling that vacuum: how we can better combat sceptic networks and strengthen our own. The discussions ranged far and wide, and I’d love to tell you some of the creative ideas discussed, but you’ll have to watch this space…

For now, though, let me close with a challenge for progressive readers: one of the study’s more obvious conclusions was how effective climate sceptics are at commenting on forums, posting stock arguments, and linking back to sceptic sites. This is unsurprising for anyone who has ever trawled through comments left behind after any climate change article. By the time you read this, there will doubtless be sceptical comments posted beneath this blog, too.

So here’s what I’d like you to do:

• Read the comments, and if you notice any that cast doubt on the validity of climate science, post a response, be polite and use facts;

• You might like to make use of the handy checklist of arguments to counter deniers over at Skeptical Science;

• Link to some of the dirt dug up on sceptics’ funding by SourceWatch; or

• Refer to the discussions at RealClimate and Climate Safety.

Oh, and remember to check out James Delingpole’s column at the Telegraph. If any of it makes you angry, you might like to let him know. Did I say be polite? Scratch that.

Newspaper Club: Things Our Friends Sent Us For Printing

Sat, 20 Mar 2010 18:49:24 +0000

Last week we were in Austin, Texas to speak at SXSW Interactive. We also went to hear other talks, to meet up with friends and to investigate taking Newspaper Club to America.

We thought it would be a good idea to print a newspaper while we were there and seeing as our panel was at the end of the week we thought we would include content generated during the conference.

Things Our Friends Sent Us For Printing contained articles kindly written for us by Matt Jones, Bobbie Johnson, Clay Shirky, Warren Ellis, Dan Hill and James Bridle.

Chris Heathcote made a Buzz Word Bingo for our panel, David McCandless sent us a beautiful infographic, we included some Noticings from the week and we added a Walking Paper for Austin.

But my favourite bit was the centre spread. Foursquare and SimpleGeo very kindly gave us some anonymous checkin data from which Michal from Stamen made this gorgeous map of foursquare checkins during the conference. If you checked in on Monday, this was in the centre spread on Tuesday afternoon.

To make the newspaper we found this little nook inside the conference centre and set up a mini BRIG studio for two days.

The panel seemed to go really well. Certainly Twitter seemed to like it.

Because our panel had Spime in the title, Bruce Sterling himself turned up. Luckily Twitter seemed to think he liked it.

One of the things we spoke about was analogue friction. Problems you encounter when making stuff in the real world as opposed to just on the web. We experienced this first hand as we neared the deadline for our newspaper just as Ev Williams started his keynote.

First they nicked Michal’s chair.

Then Engineering started to feel the pressure.

Then we tried to upload the files just as all the @ev’s brought the conference wifi to a halt. Eventually we had to go outside and upload via Michal’s MiFi.

We made it just in time.

We had a great time. Thanks to everyone who helped with the paper and thanks to everyone who came along to the panel.

Mark McNulty Photography: Living the dream

Sat, 20 Mar 2010 17:43:58 +0000

This is Nashville Liverpool’s singer Mike Badger playing late night pool in a bar called La Zona Rosa, after watching a Billy Joe Shaver concert whilst drinking Lone Star Beer and Margaritas in the sun on the occasion of his 48th birthday. Happy days!

Mike Badger

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Mark McNulty Photography: The Duke Of Earl

Sat, 20 Mar 2010 17:32:53 +0000

I saw this bloke last year in just about the same place. He just sits there and sings. He doesn’t ask for money and he hasn’t got a card with his My Space address on it. When I took this he was singing Duke Of Earl.

Duke Of Earl

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Global Voices (Cuba): “Damas de Blanco:” A Week of Protest in Cuba

Sat, 20 Mar 2010 17:03:27 +0000

To the extent that the Castro brothers are, as Blog for Cuba writes, “afraid of women wearing white,” it's due to more than just the uniform color of their outfits or their weekly marches through Old Havana.

The Damas de Blanco (Ladies wearing White) protests come on the heels of a flutter of international condemnation incited by the hunger striker Orlando Zapata Tamayo's death last month. An official resolution was passed in the European Parliament, and a petition calling for the immediate release of all political prisoners that was posted to a blog less than a week ago has already been signed by Spanish director Pedro Almodovar and Peruvian writer Mario Vargas Llosa. Meanwhile, yet another hunger striker is hospitalized in Havana after refusing asylum.

Wednesday's crackdown by Cuban police was the first in two years on the political group, which is made up of the daughters, wives and mothers of imprisoned political dissidents. They're commemorating the seventh anniversary of 2003's “Black Spring,” in which 75 dissidents were arrested, by marching every day in the Cuban capital. In the most violent of the reactions to these protests, the women were reportedly attacked by a mob of pro-government Cubans and forced onto a bus by authorities.

We are protesting peacefully and we are not going to get on the bus of a government that has kept our family members in prison for seven years…

said the group leader, Laura Pollán, just before she was forced off the street and onto the bus. Repeating Islands quotes an AFP report, saying:

As police were taking the women away, Margarita Rodríguez, a housewife in a crowd of some 300 pro-government demonstrators, shouted: ‘Board them by force, it’s what they deserve. This is a provocation.'

This was the least of the slurs directed at the Ladies in White by the Castro supporters who flanked the marchers and pushed them towards the bus. In reaction to the violent antagonism among Cubans of different political viewpoints, Yoani Sanchez writes:

I shudder to imagine a Cuba where physical – and legal – attacks against people, for their political affiliation or ideological leanings, continue. What a sad country we will have if the authorities continue to consider it normal to ‘teach a good lesson' to anyone who contradicts the official viewpoint. To me, a society that passively stands by as peaceful women with gladioli in their hands are bullied, as happened yesterday, is quite sick.

At Havana Times, Yusimi Rodriguez recounts turning a corner in Old Havana and realizing that this was not your everyday “Damas” march:

Coming down the street was a group of approximately twenty women dressed in civilian clothing and chanting slogans. Around them flocked several reporters filming and taking pictures. I suppose these were mainly or entirely foreign reporters.

At first I didn’t know what was happening until somebody told me it was about the Ladies in White. But none of the women I saw were wearing white, nor could I understand the first slogans they chanted. But suddenly, at the closest spot I could reach, they began to shout, ‘Whoever doesn’t jump is a Yankee'…The women in the demonstration itself did indeed jump. One even ran forward jumping with her two feet at the same time. Finally that group went by and I was able to see —for the first time since I’d heard of them— the Ladies in White: a group of between fifteen and twenty women dressed in white. They all proceeded in silence and carried gladiola flowers. Around them were several uniformed police.

Rodriguez also notes the marked organization of the anti-government protesters:

I find it striking that these community women, who are not police or agents, have been able to become organized so well and interrupt the Ladies in White so quickly. Could it be that they all come from the same neighborhood? How did they find out about the march? Was it publicized? I was also surprised they were only women. Undoubtedly it would have looked very bad if men had faced up to the Ladies, especially if it was true that there was some pushing and shoving in the heat of moment, as someone said. Between women it’s something else, there are more equal conditions. Both sides were made up only of women: those from the community and the Ladies in White (who, by the way, are also Cuban women and therefore part of the broader Cuban community).

“One thing is clear these manifestations against the ladies in white at clearly organized by the regime,” writes Julio de la Yncera in a comment at Havana Times.

On Wednesday night, Cuban television aired a round table discussion about implicating international meddlers in the domestic unrest. In this case, the government may be more on target than it would like: as bloggers and other online activists are showing, anger over human rights abuses within (and without) the island is swelling, and more people are watching to see what will happen next.

Liverpool Culture Blog: Hansel and Gretel at the Everyman

Sat, 20 Mar 2010 16:17:27 +0000

There’s ben quite a run of more whimsical fare at the Everyman and Playhouse recently, what with the Rock’n'Roll panto; the Spike Milligan effort and wonderful The 39 Steps.

The latest is Hansel and Gretel, recently transferred from the Old Vic, where it played in the Christmas panto slot. So there’s not a huge change of tone, but there’s a slightly more knockabout quality to this new production by Kneehigh.

Kneehigh’s stuff, I would suggest, is slightly marmite in that it is very theatrical, in the truest sense of the word. At times it’s a little self-consciously wacky and the actors are never that short of mugging their way through lines, but this is essentially a production for children after all.

It works just as well for big kids, however, and I loved the Mousetrap-like (the game, not the play) mechanical tricks that are scattered through the narrative.

It’s all very silly and enjoyable, but it’s carried off by a confident and amusing cast. I particularly liked Giles King as a South American condor and Stu Barker as the wavering-voiced Hansel.

A greek chorus in the shape of two rabbits also adds another dimension, and the wonderful music reminiscent of the Eastern European folk music from which the tale derives.

All in all, great fun. A pleasingly grotesque and amusing tale, carried off with real energy and enough wit in execution to maintain the attention.

Knowing and Making (Leigh Caldwell): A bookshop economy

Sat, 20 Mar 2010 15:09:30 +0000

Today I'm in Hay-on-Wye, a small town buried miles from anywhere on the Welsh-English border, with the highest number of bookshops per inhabitant of anywhere in Britain and probably the world.

Can this possibly be an economically stable situation?

Today, a mild springtime Saturday, there are plenty of visitors - and I'm sure they will all spend some money in several shops. But is this really enough to make a living?

There are several characteristics which probably make this local economy more sustainable than one would expect:

Books, especially second-hand books, are not commodities - for most books here, there's probably just a single copy in one shop. This reduces the competition between shops and allows them to maintain greater margins.
There's an annual festival where 80,000 people come here and the bookshops - and everyone else in town - makes an absolute fortune. The existence of the bookshops the rest of the year strengthens the credibility of the festival.
People use books as a very obvious signal of their intellectual credentials - and the association of Hay with books enables people to send the same signal with their choice of vacation.
The existence of so many bookshops creates an expectation that you should buy something - in the same way as few people would visit Bordeaux without bringing some wine back.

But I suspect that few bookshop owners here make the living they could if they found a book-deprived locale somewhere else in the UK. There must be a strong "production preference" meaning that the booksellers derive utility from the actual process of engaging in the trade, not just for the earnings they can get from it. Surely a common phenomenon among pub and restaurant owners too.

So what have I bought? One of the shops did have about fourteen shelves of economics books, including an old edition of Greg Mankiw's text which I considered buying just so he wouldn't get the royalties (analyse THAT, economists); but most of them were rather old-fashioned texts proposing interventionist economic policies in 1970s and 1980s Britain. I did get hold of an interesting-looking colloquium on currency targeting edited by Paul Krugman (quite relevant now - a post on that tomorrow if I can get online) and a very lucid exposition of the elementary theory of value by Michael Allingham.

Probably both are out of print and I wouldn't have had much opportunity of finding them anywhere else. But worth the six-hour trip from London? Not on their own, no. I am not convinced that Hay-on-Wye will still be here in another thirty years.

Left Foot Forward: Calamity Grayling opposes Cameron’s unilateral bank tax

Sat, 20 Mar 2010 13:19:38 +0000

Calamity Chris Grayling has condemned the principle behind his own leader’s new banking policy.

Asked a question about financial transaction taxes, at a candidates’ debate in his Epsom and Ewell constituency, Grayling said:

“It’s a principle that no-one could oppose but the devil is always in the detail. And I think it needs a lot of work.

“First of all, the one thing there is absolutely no point on earth is any one country doing this unilaterally, because otherwise all the banking transactions will simply move to another one.”

Watch it:

Earlier today, David Cameron announced that a Conservative government would impose a unilateral tax on banks. Mr Cameron said:

“So I can announce today that a Conservative government will introduce a new bank levy to pay back taxpayers for the support they gave and to protect them in the future.

UPDATE 15.47:

For the benefit of the commenters who seem to have missed the point of this story, it is the principle behind Grayling’s remarks (hence the use of that word) which put him at odds with Cameron’s policy. Of course, a financial transaction tax and Cameron’s unilateral bank tax are separate policies but the same principle applies. If – as Grayling believes – you can’t behave unilaterally for one policy aimed at the financial sector, you can’t for the other either.

UPDATE 17.19

It seems that commenters are unable to follow our comments policy. We’ve suspended comments as a result.

On the topic in question, Chris Cook has tweeted about Philip Hammond’s reservations in January of taking unilateral action on Newsnight.

The Baseline Scenario: simonhrjohnson

Sat, 20 Mar 2010 12:48:38 +0000

By Simon Johnson

If watching the twists and turns in European politics – “should we bailout Greece?”, “should we bring in the IMF?”, “should the Greeks go directly to the IMF, cutting out the EU?”, etc - has your head spinning and reminds you of overly complicated and opaque episodes from the history books, then you have actually caught the main point. European power structures and alliances webs are being remade before your eyes.

Is this all random – just the collision of disparate national interests with no coherent plans on any side? Or are there some strong, deliberate, and very personal hands at work guiding key pieces into place?

Prince Metternich worked long and hard to manoeuvre countries and people before and after 1815, cynically and cleverly building a system of interlocking interests that suited him – and his employer, the Austrian/Habsburg Emperor. Is there a modern Metternich now at work? Most definitely: Yes.

If you’ve followed the twists and turns of the global dimensions that emerged from the financial crisis of 2008-09, you’ll know that the IMF was transformed from an organization that was being euthanized by the G7 to an important element in the G20’s back-up financing for emerging markets (with the most dramatic turn of events in the run-up to the London summit in April 2009) – and definitely part of what helped stabilize confidence around the world.

This sequence of events created a great opportunity for the IMF’s Managing Director, Dominique Strauss-Kahn (known to friends and foe alike as DSK), to relaunch his political career in France – he previously ran for the presidency but could not secure the socialist nomination, and taking the IMF job seemed to everyone (including President Sarkozy, who lined it up) as akin to being marooned on a desert island. But DSK is – like Metternich – a master of the opportunity, a man who knows when to move and when to stand still, and someone always working a network of long-cultivated European political contacts (including socialists in Greece).

DSK’s objective is to cast himself as the savior of Europe - undoubtedly this would play well with the French electorate – and of course he is greatly aided by the serious underlying problems within the eurozone in general and for Greece in particular (back story is here). As he controls the IMF absolutely and completely, he has access to the best global economic intelligence as well as the means to make large loans to countries at low interest rates. He must of course bring others with him, but this is not hard – the White House, for example, could not care less about who ends up running Europe and at what growth rate, as long as it does not blow up.

President Sarkozy’s aim at this point is naturally to keep DSK and the IMF as far from the action as possible. But Sarkozy has three problems.

The Greeks have learned fast how to play international economic diplomacy – threatening to bring in the IMF in a way that would embarass the European leadership. Without question, they are being coached by people close to DSK. Watch the masters at work.
German voters really do not want to be involved in anything that looks or feels like a bailout. A low interest rate loan to Greece would really upset them. The Germans could do something off-balance sheet (i.e., get their banks to provide cheap credit to Greece), but the German banking system is already so ridden with governance problems and hidden bailouts that this is not appealing to the elite.
If you provide financing to Greece at anything other than low interest rates, the numbers simply do not make sense (we take you through this here.) Merrill Lynch pushed back against us this week with a report arguing that if Greece can borrow again at the level of German interest rates, everything would be fine – this is, of course, a legitimate point, but a cursory look at Merrill’s relatively sanguine research reports on Greece prior to the crisis (and also at their assessments of global credit markets prior to fall 2008) does not suggest that the “don’t worry, be happy” scenario is high probability.

Sarkozy is also an expert tactician and he is not finished yet – entering the weekend, the ball is definitely in his court. Expect further “let’s do it without the IMF” options to surface now – in particular, Sarkozy will try to scare the Germans regarding how the European Central Bank (ECB) would be undermined if the IMF enters the arena. Sarkozy can also commit, behind the scenes, to support Axel Weber for the ECB presidency – something top Germans want more than they want almost anything else in the world.

And what if Strauss-Kahn prevails and the IMF makes a loan to Greece, would this save the day? Not necessarily – remember that DSK’s goal is to just to look good until he leaves the Fund to run more openly for the presidency, which is probably no more 12 months from now. His incentive would be to put in place a relatively small program of funding that does not ask Greece to do too much up front; if this explodes later (as seems likely), that would not be his problem.

Sensible program design and dealing with the core underlying issues in a reasonable manner – including confronting the looming issue of “debt restructuring” – is not likely. This is French electoral politics after all.

The Copenhagen Bicycle Culture Blog: Fewer Cars Means Fewer Traffic Fatalities

Sat, 20 Mar 2010 11:47:25 +0000

February 2010 was a banner month for traffic fatalities in Denmark. 'Only' 13 people died in traffic accidents in February. The record low for a month is 12, back in January 2006. February 2009 saw 22 deaths.

The reason is the hard winter and the countless snowstorms we've had in this country. Fewer people ventured out onto the streets in their cars, opting instead for other transport forms. And traffic moved slower because of the conditions.

This little bit of news was splashed around the media here. It's good news, absolutely.

I just continued to be fascinated that no one mentions two very simple observations.

1. Fewer cars on the roads equals fewer traffic fatalities.
2. Slower moving cars on the roads equals fewer traffic fatalities.

This logic just doesn't register in the media or the Road Safety Council. Ignoring the sacred bull in society's china shop thrives even here in Denmark.

No one is saying, "Hey! Why can't we have fewer fatalities ALL YEAR?! Now we know how!"

There is no talk of reducing speed limits and implementing 30 km/h zones in our cities, despite scores of European cities having done it or planning to do it. There are shockingly few campaigns to get people to choose other transport forms in their daily lives. Instead the 'authorities' choose the cheap bubble-wrap approach to traffic 'safety'.

The national goal is reducing the number of traffic fatalities to a magic number of 200 per year. At the moment it's around 400 on average. This will never happen unless we start selling cycling and public transport positively and start taming the bull.

But we are gripped by The Culture of Fear and we're loving it. Lapping it up.

Here's a re-post of what slow-moving traffic looks like outside my window. If only it were every day.

The Sartorialist: On the Street.....Print Scarf, Florence

Sat, 20 Mar 2010 11:43:00 +0000

Robert Peston (BBC business editor): Banks: prepare to meet thy tax

Sat, 20 Mar 2010 11:14:50 +0000

The Tories and the government are less far apart on the imposition of a new tax on banks than may appear at first glance - and perhaps the significance of this weekend's shift in both of their positions is that the big banks and other substantial financial risk-takers, including possibly hedge funds, need to brace themselves for the imposition of a substantial new levy.

Although David Cameron said today that he would impose such a tax come what may, whereas the Chancellor would want to wait for international agreement, the Tory leader only made his move because he became persuaded in the past few days that international agreement would probably be forthcoming.‬‪

So why would the Tories feel more comfortable imposing a unilateral tax?

Well it's because of the differing histories of the two main parties: the Tories want to dispel the idea that they won't stand up to their putative friends in the City; while Labour feels that even now it can't afford to be seen to be anti-capitalist.

There is also considerable similarity in the nature of the tax under consideration by Labour and Tories.

Both would go for something along the lines of what President Obama wants to impose in the US, which is a levy on money banks borrow from big lenders, or a charge on what's known as their wholesale funding.‬‪They would not opt for what many campaigners want, which is a tax on financial transactions, or a Tobin tax.‬‪

Also, Labour and the Tories are closer to each than to the LibDems, who favour a tax on banks' profits.‬‪

All three would say that their aim would be to discourage banks from taking dangerous risks.

That said, at a time when the deficits of most rich western companies are ballooning, the proceeds of a bank tax would also be quite useful.‬

Left Foot Forward: Lib Dem tax policy: Our response to your responses

Sat, 20 Mar 2010 09:00:16 +0000

Our guest writers are Tim Horton and Howard Reed, authors of ‘Think Again, Nick! Why spending £17 billion to raise tax thresholds would not help the poorest‘

As the authors of the report that kicked off the debate last weekend about the wisdom of increasing the personal allowance, we wanted to take up Will’s offer to reply to some of the comments that have been posted in response – both on Left Foot Forward and on other sites, best summarised at Next Left or Liberal Democrat Voice.

First, we wanted to say thanks to everyone who has offered comments on our analysis.

Before we reply to some of the substantive points, a quick word about our motivation. It is a shame that some have interpreted our report and subsequent commenting as somehow disrespectful to the Lib Dems. In fact, it should be taken as quite the opposite – a mark of respect. In days gone by, people would dismiss Lib Dem policies on the grounds that they would never be implemented or that the sums didn’t add up. (Indeed, most criticism to date of this Lib Dem tax cut from other parties has been based on deliverability and credibility – namely, that it is a fantasy to think that the measures proposed to raise the revenue for this tax cut would actually deliver the £17 billion claimed.) By contrast, we have taken the proposal at face value and asked: assuming the necessary revenue were available, would it be the right thing to do? Some people might not have liked our conclusions, but if we’re genuinely into three-party politics, then we should also be up for critiquing all three parties’ policies.

Now some responses to points that have been made.

There were basically three sets of responses to the report. A first set challenged the legitimacy of assessing an individual policy. A second set queried our claim that the proposal was unfair or regressive. (Some respondents mixed both: Alix Mortimer shifted rather tortuously from arguing that the allowance increase was progressive in its own right, to arguing that it was of course regressive if we didn’t also take the compensating tax rises into account. Interesting…) We offer some thoughts on each of these two complaints below.

A third set of responses (in our view, the most coherent) challenged the political significance of our findings and the value-orientation of our argument. We do not address these here, since these are matters of opinion, and everyone is entitled to their own view. We would just say this. It is perfectly coherent for people on the right to argue that inequality doesn’t matter, or that the negatives of coercive taxation outweigh the benefits. But bear in mind how far away this is from the philosophy being espoused by many progressive Liberal Democrats around the country. It is to this group that our challenge was really addressed.

1) Is it legitimate to consider the wisdom of individual policies?

One complaint was that we only sought to evaluate the impact of the personal allowance increase in isolation. This is not true – our report does try to consider the effect of the package as a whole (Section 3.1.4), and finds that taking the corresponding tax-raising measures into account does not affect our key concerns arising from an examination of the tax cut in isolation (specifically, that it is a way of using £17 billion that ignores the poorest and also that it increases socially damaging inequalities between the bottom and middle of society).

A more commonly heard complaint, however, was from those criticising the fact that we sought to isolate the impact of the personal allowance increase at all. The standard complaint here was that it is not legitimate to look at individual policies and that you can only look at policies in terms of the impact of the whole package (usually followed by denunciations that the work was therefore ‘biased’, ‘partisan’, ‘misleading’, and so on).

This is a ludicrous claim. Where individual policies are discretionary decisions, like this tax cut, then of course you can consider the wisdom of pursuing them. There is nothing about the tax rises that the Lib Dems are proposing that then compels them to increase the personal allowance to £10,000 – it is a discretionary decision.

Yes, one should also consider the impact of the combined effects of different policies – as we did. (And at no point in our report did we claim that the impact of the personal allowance increase was the impact of the entire package.)

But that does not make it illegitimate to consider individual policies on their own merits. (Imagine this argument in other contexts. It would be like saying just because the personal tax and benefit reforms Labour has pursued have, taken together, been highly progressive, that this meant you couldn’t criticise individual decisions like their 2007 cut in inheritance tax. What nonsense.)

In particular, to pretend that a collection of policies is a take-it-or-leave-it package, rules out the possibility of ever improving that package. We made it quite clear in our report that we support the Lib Dems’ proposals to ask those on very high incomes to pay more in tax, by restricting higher-rate pensions relief, closing avoidance loopholes, and so on. But we also think there are much fairer ways to use this revenue than this increase in the personal allowance, which is why we are calling on the Lib Dems to replace it with other possible alternatives.

Indeed, the Liberal Democrats themselves have in the past done just this with this particular tax policy. Between July 2007 and April 2009, the equivalent Lib Dem policy was to use the revenue-raising package of tackling tax avoidance / green taxes / etc. to fund a 4p cut in the basic rate of income tax. Then, on 20 April 2009, it was announced that this revenue would now be used to fund an increase in the personal allowance to £10,000 instead. In the words of the Guardian at the time:

“Until today the Liberal Democrats were committed to rebalancing the tax system by cutting the basic rate of income tax by 4p in the pound. Instead, in what Clegg said was a response to an ‘evolving situation’, the party wants to use the money that would have funded the 4p cut to increase the tax allowance by £3,525 instead. Clegg said that this policy was ‘even fairer’, that it would take 4 million people out of income tax altogether, and that it would be worth £705 a year to anybody earning up to £100,000, the point at which the benefit starts to taper out.”

All credit to Clegg for considering the distributional impact of the component parts of his policy package. I’m not sure why so many Lib Dem activists think this is illegitimate (such as James Graham at Social Liberal Forum).

What we are proposing is that such a process of consideration should happen again. We think, to quote Nick Clegg, the package could be made “even fairer”.

Finally, Peter Kunzmann goes a step further and argues that you can only assess fairness in terms of all of the other policies a party is planning to enact. Clearly we don’t agree with this. Among other things, it would close down the space in politics to discuss the justifiability of individual policy decisions. Peter is right that if one were claiming to produce an assessment of an entire party platform then it would be necessary to consider all these policies. But that wasn’t our objective, Peter. It was to analyse this tax measure and try to illustrate that it isn’t as great as many people think. It’s no good denouncing our work as misleading because it doesn’t conform to your separate objective.

(It would be an interesting exercise to analyse the impact of an entire party platform, though difficult this time round as no-one’s really put the details of their deficit-reduction plans on the table other than talking about the relative contribution of tax rises and spending cuts. What would taking all other Lib Dem policies into account look like? It’s a good question. We know the Libs have some good proposals in various policy areas. Would they do enough to eliminate the regressivity of this £17 billion tax cut across most of the population? We really don’t know. But, Peter, we’ll tell you this; whether or not the picture overall looked good or bad, our point to you would still be the same: it could be so much better if this ludicrous £17 billion tax cut were replaced by something fairer.)

As a footnote, it should also be said that – while credit is due to the Lib Dems for being ahead of the curve with proposals to tackle inequality at the top – other parties are also looking at similar policies on closing loopholes and pensions tax relief. (We’re told even the Tories are thinking about some of this stuff!) So we would also encourage other parties to think about the distributional impact of possible ways of using those resources, and not assume – as some respondents here seem to – that, simply because the revenue has been raised from the very wealthy, any subsequent use of the resources is impervious to criticism.

2) What does ‘regressive’ mean and is this policy regressive?

We call a tax change ‘regressive’ when it gives more on average to households higher up the income distribution as a proportion of their net household income than it does to households lower down the income distribution.

As Graph 2 in our report illustrates, this tax cut would be regressive because the gain households get from it as a percentage of their net household income tends to increase as you move up the household income distribution (though falls away again in the top decile). For example, households in the middle of the income distribution would see an increase of about 3% in their net household income from this tax cut, whereas households in the poorest fifth would see an increase of only around 1.6% (that is why it would increase inequality between the bottom and the middle).

(When you take into account the tax rises on the super-rich that you mention, those in the richest 10% are losers, certainly; but this regressive gradient would still remain across the bottom 90% of the population.)

The distributional gradient across the population reflects a variety of factors. One is that there are a lot of working-age households on only modest earned income or no income at all. Another is the fact that two-earner households (which tend to be richer) get more than single-earner or no-earner households from the tax cut. Another is that pensioners don’t gain as much from the reforms as those of working-age.

Note that analysis is done at the household level, because that is the level at which welfare is meaningfully assessed. (Think about it this way: the Duke of Westminster’s wife would not be in poverty if she had zero income. As far as I know, no party is planning to change the household basis on which the government assesses welfare and poverty.)

Specifically, the analysis has been done over ‘equivalised’ household incomes, that is, incomes adjusted to take the composition of households into account – such as number of children, pensioners etc. (So a household with a single individual earning £30,000 has a higher ‘equivalised income’ than a household with a single individual earning £30,000 with two children.) The distributional gradient therefore also reflects the pattern of characteristics like this across the population.

(Some people have asked about the analytical technique. The analysis is based on microsimulation modelling of the tax and benefit system over a representative dataset of UK households, ordered by their equivalised net disposable household income. It is a similar technique to that the Treasury and the Institute for Fiscal Studies use for modelling.)

While there was a lot of discussion about this analysis, we haven’t seen any comments that substantively challenge our figures.

Instead, the major criticism seems to have been that what we are saying is ‘obvious’ and so shouldn’t be take as a sign of a bad policy. For example:

• on the measure not benefitting the poorest, we have ‘rob tennant‘: “[your point that it] ‘does nothing to help those who don’t pay tax’ – durrrr, it’s supposed to help those who do pay tax”; or

• on the regressive nature of the policy, we have ‘Alix’: “You’re standing there shouting that households who pay more tax stand to benefit more from a tax break, and expecting it to mean something. It doesn’t, it’s just a fact.”

We have to apologise to those who think our analysis is too obvious to be worth saying (though its puzzling that many of the same individuals have been furiously posting other comments trying to argue the figures are wrong – they can’t both be wrong and obvious).

But, unlike Rob and Alix, we do think they mean something. We think they mean that the Lib Dems have the wrong priorities. We suppose we were saying them less for their analytical insight than to highlight how extraordinary it is that a party affecting to claim the mantle of ‘fairness’ is proposing to spend £17 billion (six times the cost of its ‘pupil premium’ for disadvantaged kids) on a regressive measure that also excludes the very poorest from help at all. That is appalling.

McFilter (Adrian McEwan): links for 2010-03-20

Sat, 20 Mar 2010 08:02:47 +0000

THAT WAS TOTALLY AWESOME YOU'RE AMAZING I think I need to start sending this link out to people after they've done cool stuff. (tags: fun achievement reward) Near Future Laboratory » Blog Archive » Follow Curiosity, Not Careers Interesting...

Daily interesting photos - Flickr: Interesting photos - 19 Mar 2010 - Flickr

Sat, 20 Mar 2010 07:49:36 +0000

Danny O'Brien: what i did next

Sat, 20 Mar 2010 07:38:45 +0000

For a moment, climbing out of the too-fresh sunshine and with the taste of a farewell Guinness still on my tongue, slumping into the creaky old couch in the slightly grimy, Noisebridge to write something from scratch, San Francisco felt like Edinburgh in August, a day before the Festival.

Edinburgh for me was always the randomizer, the place I hitched to every year, camped out in, and came out in some other country, six weeks later, with hungover and overdrawn, with a new skill or passion or someone sadder or more famous or just more fuddled and dumber than ever.

Today was my last day at EFF. Just before our (their? Our.) 20th birthday party in February, where I had the profoundly fannish pleasure to write and barely rehearse a 30 minute sketch starring Adam Savage, Steve Jackson, John Gilmore, me in my underpants, and Barney the Dinosaur, I callously told them I was leaving them all for another non-profit. We commiserated on Thursday, in our dorky way, by playing Settlers of Catan and Set and Hungry Hippos together. They bought me money to buy a new hat. I logged off the intranet, had a drink, and wandered off into a vacation.

In April, after a couple of weeks of … well, catching up on my TV-watching, realistically … I’ll be kickstarting a new position at the Committee to Protect Journalists as Internet Advocacy Coordinator.

I’ve known the CPJ people for a few years now, talking airily to them about the networked world as they grimly recorded the rising numbers of arrested, imprisoned, tortured, threatened and murdered Internet journalists in the world. Bloggers, online editors, uploading videographers. Jail, dead, chased into exile. As newsgathering has gone digital, it’s led to a boom in unmediated expression. But those changes have also disintermediated away the few institutional protections free speech’s front line ever had.

CPJ has incredible resources for dealing with attacks on the free press on every continent: their team assists individuals , lobbies governments at the highest levels, documents and publicizes, names and shames. They were quick to recognize and reconfigure for a digital environment (you have to admire an NGO that knew enough to snag a three letter domain in ‘95). Creating a position for tackling the tech, policy and immediate needs of online journalism was the next obvious step.

The question I had for them in my interview was the same that almost everybody I’ve spoken to about this job has asked me so far. On the Internet, how do you (they? We.) define who a journalist is?

The answer made immediate sense. While “journalism” or “newsgathering” or “reportage” as an abstract idea might seem problematic when cut from its familiar institutions, and pasted into the Internet… nonetheless, you know it when you see it. When someone is arrested or threatened or tortured for what they’ve written, if you can pull up what they said in a mailreader or a browser, it really doesn’t take long to identify whether it’s journalism or not.

What’s harder is untangling the slippery facts of the case — whether the journalist was targeted because of their work, or other reasons; whether it was the government or a criminal enterprise that did the deed; where the leverage points are to seek justice or freedom.

In those fuzzier areas, in the same way as EFF uses its legal staff to map the unclear world of the frontier into clear legal lines, CPJ uses its staff’s investigative journalist expertise to uncover what really happened, and then uses the clout of that reinforced and unassailable truth to lobby and expose.

Honestly, I’m still only beginning to map out how I might help in all this. I spent a week last month in New York where CPJ is based, listening to their regional experts talk about every continent, all the dictators, torturers, censors and thugs, all the bloggers and web publishers and whistleblowers.

I know I am starting on that ignorance rollercoaster you get when striking out into new territory. I can tell these people about proxies, AES encryption and SMS security, but I still can’t pronounce Novaya Gazeta, or remember what countries border Kenya. You surprise yourself with how much old knowledge becomes freshly useful, at the same time as you feel stupid for every dumbly obvious fact you fail to grasp.

I think part of my usefulness will come from writing more, and engaging more with the communities here I know well to explain and explore the opportunities and threats their incredible creations are creating today. At the same tie, I’m already resigned to taking a hit in my reputational IQ as I publicly demonstrate my ignorance (my friends in Africa and Russia are already facepalming, I can tell). Hope you’ll forgive me.

In the mean time, I’ll be setting up my monthly donation to EFF. I’ve said it before and I’ll bore you again, EFF are an incredible organization, made up of some of the smartest and most dedicated people I’ve ever met. I smugly joined in 2005 thinking I understood tech policy, and spent the next few years amazed at what it was like to live as the only person who didn’t have an EFF to help me understand what I was looking at and what to do about it. I guess I finally got the hang of juggling five hundred daily emails, a dozen issues refracted through dozens of cultures across the world. And I guess that’s aways the cue to switch tracks and reset to being dumb and ready to learn again.

Incidentally, EFF is looking for an IP attorney right now. I don’t know how many lawyers read this blog, but if you know a smart IP legal person who wants to randomize their life for the opportunity to become even smarter for a good cause, get them to apply. They won’t regret it, not for a minute.

Two Talk: Children being supported by FSP - SC Abomey-Calavi, Benin.…

Sat, 20 Mar 2010 07:16:48 +0000

Our new house - a new start for me and my children

John Redwood MP: Labour governments end in economic chaos

Sat, 20 Mar 2010 07:13:38 +0000

Labour governments typically devalue the currency, run out of money, and preside over industrial chaos. Welcome to the spring of discontent.

The 1945-51 government devalued the pound from $4 to $2.80. The 1960s Labour government devalued it from $2.80 to $2.40. The 1970s let a floating currency float down. This government has recently allowed a 25% devaluation in a free float, taking us down to $1.50.

Each Labour government greatly increases borrowing. The 1960s Labour government introduced an austerity budget just before it lost office to start to correct its own mistakes. The 1970s Labour government was forced into spending cuts by the IMF when they needed an international loan to keep them going. This government has announced major spending cuts for after the next election, recognising that its deficit is way too high.

The 1960s and the 1970s Labour governments both tried to reform Trade Union Law to limit industrial action, but both failed and gave up reform. It was left to the 1980s Thatcher government to push through what they had not managed to do. The 1970s government ended in the winter of discontent, when public sector unions went too far and left public services in chaos. This spring we face a travellers nightmare, with industrial action threatened on the railways and at BA.

Management needs to be fair, clear and realistic in what it expects and what it offers. Unions need to understand in the private sector that it is highly competitive out there, and that higher pay and bonuses need to reflect higher revenues and higher productivity. In the public sector we need to spread the word that all must do more with less – or less with less where the service is marginal or not needed.

Some time ago I predicted a squeeze on living standards as a result of this government’s economic policy. Labour tried briefly to spin that I wanted a fall in general living standards, or was recommending it be Conservative policy to have such a fall. Because they have clung to office they are inflicting the fall that was made inevitable on people whilst they are still Ministers. Last year the private sector saw pay rise by a mere 1% with prices now shooting up by several times that rate. Now it is the turn of Labour’s public sector, offered similarly poor fare for the year beginning this April. They have run out of money. They are not bluffing. It was inevitable given their poor management that it would come to this. You end up with bigger public spending cuts with Labour, because they lose control of the money.

Copenhagen Cycle Chic: Cape Duvet

Sat, 20 Mar 2010 05:00:00 +0000

I'm loving this quilted duvet cape. And I'm loving this shot.The Original Cycle Chic - straight...

For the full photographic glory and the rest of the text, you know where to go. The Original Cycle Chic awaits.

Climate Progress: NASA: “It is nearly certain that a new record 12-month global temperature will be set in 2010″ - Must-read draft paper: "We conclude that global temperature continued to rise rapidly in the past decade" and "that there has been no reduction in the global warming trend of 0.15-0.20°C/decade that began in the late 1970s."

Sat, 20 Mar 2010 03:10:27 +0000

[Please Digg this post by clicking here.]

NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) has released a draft paper “Current GISS Global Surface Temperature Analysis.” It is a must read for warming junkies, but, as James Hansen notes in an e-mail, “it is too long for popular use.” So Hansen offers “some of the main conclusions,” as well as a description of a rather shocking hack of the GISS website (all of which is reprinted below). The first conclusion is:

1) Contrary to popular belief, global warming has not stopped nor has the rate of warming even slowed down in the past decade (Figure 21).

The paper predicts a new record 12-month global temperature record, and says the calendar year (2010) is likely to set the global surface temperature unless “El Nino conditions deteriorate rapidly by mid 2010 into La Nina conditions” [as happened in 2007]. NASA notes:

This new record temperature will be particularly meaningful because it occurs when the recent minimum of solar irradiance (http://www.pmodwrc.ch/ pmod.php?topic=tsi/ composite/ SolarConstant) is having its maximum cooling effect.

Here are the rest of the summary conclusions of the paper, from Hansen’s email (I put in one relevant figure):

(2) 12-month running mean temperature is more revealing than the usual annual-mean graph, doing a better job of characterizing individual El Ninos, volcanoes, e.g., as well as providing an up-to-date assessment of annual mean temperature (Figures 9b and 10b).

(3) A new global temperature record (for the period of instrumental measurements) will be set within the next few months (Figure 10b and accompanying information).

(4) Urban effects on the analyzed global temperature are small (not a new conclusion) (Figure 3 and several more) – we account for it via satellite nightlight (Figure 1) identification of remote stations that are used to adjust the long-term trends of urban stations.

(5) Upside-down weather in the Northern Hemisphere this winter (Arctic warm, mid-latitudes cold) coincides with the most extreme Arctic Oscillation in the period 1950-2010. The AO fluctuations from year to year are mostly weather noise, i.e., unpredictable chaotic fluctuations. There seems no reason to anticipate frequent repeat performances – on the contrary, the slight long-term trend of the AO is toward more positive values and the (greenhouse gas driven) global warming trend has a larger effect than the AO trend on regional temperature, as well as on global temperature. Of course winter weather will always be highly variable and those places cold enough to have snow can expect greater amounts from an atmosphere containing more water vapor. The AO indices for the past three months are remarkable (Figure 15a), yet the cold temperature anomalies are relatively small compared to say the late 1970s (Figures 15b, 16, 17).

The paper will need a better summary/discussion section. Not quite sure where I can send the final version. The paper has relevance to current public discussions, but the usual scientific journals are not too accommodating for explicit discussion of that relevance. Perhaps Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics is a possibility – which has a “Discussions” of papers pre-acceptance. We used that journal for our paper “Dangerous human-made interference with climate: a GISS modelE study” – the referees there suggested that it was o.k. to include a brief section (Role of scientists in the climate debate), set off from the climate analysis, that included opinions about the public relevance.

Somehow we have to do a better job of communicating. The tricks being used by people supporting denial and business-as-usual are recognizably dirty, yet effective. We are continually burdened by sweeping FOIA (Freedom of Information Act) requests, which reduce our ability to do science and write it up (perhaps this is their main objective), a waste of tax-payer money. Our analyses are freely available on the GISS web site as is the computer program used to carry out the analysis and the data sets that go into the program.

The material that we supplied to some recent FOIA requests was promptly posted on a website, and within minutes after that posting someone found that one of the e-mails included information about how to access Makiko Sato’s password-protected research directory on the GISS website (we had not noticed this due to the volume of material). Within 90 minutes, and before anyone else who saw this password information thought it worth reporting to GISS staff, most if not all of the material in Makiko’s directory was purloined by someone using automated “web harvesting” software and re-posted elsewhere on the web. The primary material consisted of numerous drafts of webpage graphics and article figures made in recent years.

It seems that a primary objective of the FOIA requestors and the “harvesters” is discussions that they can snip and quote out of context. On the long run, these distortions of the truth will not work and the public will realize that they have been bamboozled. Unfortunately, the delay in public understanding of the situation, in combination with the way the climate system works (inertia, tipping points) could be very detrimental for our children and grandchildren. The public will need to put more pressure on policymakers, enough to overcome the pressure from special financial interests, if the actions needed to stabilize climate are to be achieved.

The paper itself is well worth reading, though not an easy slog. Note that NASA says, “Criticism and comments are welcome and should be sent to” the email address here.

NASS GISS researchers deserve the strong support from all Americans who care about our children and grandchildren and future generations around the world. They work tirelessly to provide the highest quality, peer-reviewed scientific research about the gravest preventable threat the human race faces — in the face of the most monstrous and effective disinformation campaign in human history.

Climate Progress: Bikers get the respect (and routes) they deserve — with Google’s help

Sat, 20 Mar 2010 02:00:22 +0000

In the United States, designated bike lanes and a growing bike culture have started to garner mainstream attention. And bicyclists now have a giant ally—Google, as explained in this CAP repost.

At the 10th Annual American Bike Summit in Washington, D.C. last week, Google announced their maps feature will include bike routes for 150 U.S. cities. The feature includes 15,000 miles of off-street bike trails gathered by the Rails-to-Trails Conservancy, a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit that has collected trail info for its website since 2007. [Image Source: Flickr/Hugger Industries.]

Google made the decision after receiving a petition with more than 50,000 signatures for bike routes to be added to its maps. Google Maps introduced driving directions in 2005, and in 2007 the site added transit routes. Pedestrian navigation followed a year later. Now, it’s the bikers’ turn.

Online tools for mapping bike routes have existed for years, such as RideTheCity.com, which also points out bike shops along your route. But with an organization as enormous as Google collating bike-friendly travel information, two-wheel enthusiasts hope city planners and politicians will take note and improve bicycling conditions across the United States, like Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-OR) aims to do with his proposed Active Community Transportation Act. The bill seeks to make active transportation, such as walking or biking, more accessible and safe.

Promoting bicycle travel for utilitarian purposes, in addition to recreation and exercise, has become a federal objective since Congress opened new sources of funding for bicycle facilities with the Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act, or ISTEA, in 1991. This continued over the next decade and now federal planning requirements must consider bicyclists in state and Metropolitan Planning Organization, or MPO, long-range transportation plans.

The League of American Bicyclists, who sponsored the American Bike Summit, hopes the Google feature will encourage wary would-be cyclists to get on the road, give more seasoned bikers the respect they deserve, and curb unnecessary motorist pollution by highlighting safe routes:

Dark green indicates a dedicated bike-only trail
Light green indicates a dedicated bike lane along a road
Dashed green indicates roads that are designated as preferred for bicycling but without dedicated lanes

The tool is far from perfect, however. It does not yet work for mobile devices, so bikers will have to map their routes from home or the office before setting out. And Google’s algorithm that combines input from bike lanes, topography, and traffic signals is still just an algorithm. Some New York Post writers reported being led the wrong way down one-way streets and onto off-limits sections of Central Park, and many routes in the District of Columbia are missing, such as the bike lane on 15th Street NW, the Metropolitan Branch Trail from Silver Spring to Union Station, and the Anacostia Riverwalk Trail.

Luckily, you can suggest a route change or make a correction using Google’s “report a problem” feature. Google is fielding these requests and working out the kinks in the system.

Traffic congestion and vehicle pollution is a massive problem, and many would-be bikers are put off by the lack of designated bike lanes in many U.S. cities. Hopefully, the added Google feature will get more people on bikes and force cities to designate more bike lanes. Cities with a higher level of bicycle infrastructure—paths and lanes—see higher levels of bicycle commuting, which then increases state and local spending on such infrastructure to keep those people on their bikes.

Additionally, bike infrastructure should connect to popular destinations—already marked on Google Maps—to increase pollution-free commuting. And more commuters should be educated about bicycling through individual bike ownership or shared programs such as SmartBike, which could be coupled with adequate and safe parking at work. All these steps could help give the United States a greater share of the world’s most bike-friendly cities.

scyfilove.com (Liverpool): Top five science fiction important nobodies – a celebration

Sat, 20 Mar 2010 00:39:43 +0000

Remembering the ordinary people being ignored in the same room as our favourite sci-fi heroes

Top five science fiction important nobodies – a celebration has just flown in from scyfilove.com - click through for the rest of the good stuff

Only In It For The Gold: No Amazon Rainforest “Myths” Have Been Debunked

Sat, 20 Mar 2010 00:01:00 +0000

Thanks to Eli for keeping us posted.

Nineteen prominent ecologists and surface process specialists specializing in the Amazon region tell it like it is.

Comments to Eli's romp please.

Robert Peston (BBC business editor): Cameron: 'Tories would tax the banks'

Fri, 19 Mar 2010 23:14:23 +0000

David Cameron will tomorrow pledge that a Tory government would introduce a new tax on the banks, even if other countries don't move ahead with such a tax.

That marks a difference between the Tory position on a bank tax and the government's, in that the Chancellor will confirm in the budget next week that he is in favour of such a tax, but only if there is an international agreement to levy one.

However the difference between the Tories and Labour is less wide than it may appear - for two reasons.

First, with the US and Sweden having already announced such a levy, international agreement on such a tax looks much more likely than it did.

According to a senior source, the Tories have had "conversations abroad in the past week" which have convinced the Tory leader and the shadow chancellor George Osborne that they would be in "good international company" if they were to launch such a tax.

Second, the Tories are at pains to point out that if in the end other countries were not to move ahead with a bank tax, they would reduce the burden of any tax they chose to introduce here.

Like the Government, the Conservatives would not wish to levy a tax that would drive banks from the UK to countries with a more benign tax climate.

That said, the Tory leader is planning to say in a speech on Saturday that he is determined to stand up to vested interests, and that he regards the big banks as falling into that category.

He is expected to say that "a Conservative government will introduce a new bank levy to pay back tax payers for the support they gave and to protect them in the future".

He will concede that it "won't be popular in every part of the City" but will add that it is "fair and necessary".

The Chancellor, Alistair Darling, will also announce a shift in the government's position on a bank levy.

Up to now, the Treasury has been agnostic about whether any such levy should be a straight tax whose proceeds would be available for general use by government or an explicit insurance charge whose proceeds would be used to meet the costs of any future bank bailouts.

Mr Darling will make clear that he will lobby for a worldwide tax on banks, rather than some kind of insurance premium.

He hopes that the world's biggest economies will agree to such a tax at meetings in late April under the auspices of the International Monetary Fund.

The tax would be designed so that banks that take the biggest risks would pay more - because this would be a way of discouraging them from gambling and speculation.

The levy could therefore be a percentage of banks' finance from wholesale sources, which is one possible proxy of the risks they run - and the basis for a $100bn-plus tax recently announced by President Obama.

The Obama tax model is also one that the Tories have for some week indicated they like.

The Tories believe that an Obama-style tax if introduced in Britain would raise "billions of pounds".

The Treasury is also considering whether a better gauge of risks being run by banks would be their loans and investments, weighted according to risk.

It is striking however that the Treasury has moved away from supporting a tax on financial transactions, or a so-called Tobin tax.

Some will see these initiatives by western governments to raise money from banks as a populist way of reducing the surge in the amount they've borrowed since the onset of the global recession.

That said, Treasury sources insist that Mr Darling favours such a tax rather an untouchable insurance premium not because the money would be useful in reducing debt (although it would be very useful) but because he feels that if banks felt they were explicitly insured against the consequences of their actions they could end up taking even greater risks.

The Ward Nerd: Stupid (Or, How To Lose Money Running A Speed Lab) Part 2

Fri, 19 Mar 2010 21:46:27 +0000

This is the second installment of John Dolan’s work-in-progress, “Stupid, Or How To Lose Money Running A Speedlab.” Read part one here.

If it hadn’t been for Bongoburgers there would have been no speedlab for me. Bongoburgers was my first gang, ...

The Sartorialist: From the Front Row.... Lanvin by Garance Doré Studio

Fri, 19 Mar 2010 21:44:00 +0000

PW Style: In Case You Missed It

Fri, 19 Mar 2010 21:04:06 +0000

If you didn’t spend your week obsessively refreshing PW Style, here’s what you missed:

On Monday, Ikea launched a new marketing campaign in Paris by lining subway stops with comfy, affordable couches.

On Tuesday, Amanda confessed her love of ironing and hooked us up with a tutorial.

On Wednesday, we somehow managed to hold our tongues and didn’t bitch about St. Patrick’s Day even a little. (My, how we’ve grown since last year.) Instead, Emily G got the deets on local sewing classes and we sent big ups to Roberta and Libby over at artblog for their Knight Foundation grant.

On Thursday, we told you about sales at Grasshopper and Oma and Amanda drooled over menswear. Again.

And today we brought you the usual weekend picks along with a big old rant about vibrators.

See you next week!

Robert Peston (BBC business editor): Clashing views on pay at the top of Barclays

Fri, 19 Mar 2010 19:11:09 +0000

There's a fascinating insight into the differing attitudes to pay of the chaps who run Barclays within the pages of its annual report published today.

The president of the bank, Bob Diamond, who made a none-too-shabby £27m from last year's sale of Barclays BGI business, is taking part in a long-term incentive scheme that is equivalent in value to £6m of remuneration this year - and could yield him shares worth £18m in 2013 if Barclays hits its targets over the coming three years.

It's worth noting that this is a chap who has pocketed several tens of millions of pounds in pay and assorted awards over the past few years.

By contrast, his boss, John Varley, Barclays chief executive, chose not to participate in this incentive scheme. Barclays annual report says that "John Varley advised the board that he wishes to decline any award".

Now Varley isn't short of a bob or three. His annual salary is £1.1m.

But, to paraphrase Harry Enfield, Diamond is worth considerably more than Varley - and yet Diamond felt it appropriate, in this climate of some scepticism about the social purpose of bankers and banking, to load up with more performance-related remuneration.

Varley led from the front. Diamond chose not to follow.

I bet that led to an interesting discussion on Barclays' remuneration committee.

The remuneration disparity raises questions about whether there really is a seamless unified culture in this huge bank, with its substantial retail and investment banking operations.

For the record, I should note that both Varley and Diamond declined to take bonuses this year. And that Barclays finance director, took part in the long term incentive scheme to the tune of £1m of present value.

Climate Progress: Scientists: “There are multiple, consistent lines of evidence from ground-based studies published in the peer-reviewed literature that Amazon forests are, indeed, very susceptible to drought stress.” - Major amplifying carbon-cycle feedback is not a "myth"

Fri, 19 Mar 2010 18:38:44 +0000

Up to 40% of the Amazonian forests could react drastically to even a slight reduction in precipitation; this means that the tropical vegetation, hydrology and climate system in South America could change very rapidly to another steady state, not necessarily producing gradual changes between the current and the future situation.

This statement in the 2007 IPCC is “basically correct but poorly written, and bizarrely referenced,” as tropical forest researcher Simon Lewis told the BBC in January.

That didn’t stop the anti-science blogosphere from spinning this into another phony “gate,” as ClimateSafety explained in an excellent post, “AmazonGate: how the denial lobby and a dishonest journalist created a fake scandal.”

Recently, the anti-science crowd, from FoxNews to Anthony Watts, has been crowing about a new study that supposedly shows the IPCC paragraph was wrong. But a major statement by 19 top U.S., U.K., and Brazilian scientists who “conduct research on Amazon forests, climate, and/or fire,” thoroughly debunks that notion:

[Citations for original sources can be found here.]

Scientists’ statement on recent press release on Amazon susceptibility to reductions in rainfall: no Amazon rainforest “myths” have been debunked.

The press release from Boston University describing a recent article in the journal Geophysical Research Letters by BU researchers on the response of Amazon forests to the 2005 drought is misleading and inaccurate. It claims that the study “debunks myths about Amazon rainforests”, which is simply not true. First, there is no myth. Rather, there are multiple, consistent lines of evidence from ground-‐based studies published in the peer-‐reviewed literature that Amazon forests are, indeed, very susceptible to drought stress. Second, nothing is debunked by the new study. The new study contributes to our understanding of interpretations of data retrieved from satellites, but it does not prove or disprove anything about what is really happening on the ground. The BU press release also claims that the new BU paper demonstrates that the IPCC statement about the sensitivity of Amazon forests to small reductions in rainfall is inaccurate, which is also not true. While the IPCC statement could be criticized for citing a review paper rather than original research papers, the main conclusion of the IPCC statement – that Amazonian forests are very susceptible to reductions in rainfall – remains our best understanding of the data available at the time of the IPCC report and also today.

The article published by the BU group (in contrast to the BU press release) makes a scientific contribution to our knowledge of Amazon forests. It presents new analyses of the forest canopy conducted using satellite data from the MODIS sensor. The article challenges the findings of a previous analysis of forest response to the 2005 drought using similar data from the MODIS sensor. This earlier study, published in Science in 2007, concluded that southwestern Amazon forests fared well during the severe drought of 2005, reporting that these forests were greener in 2005, not browner as would be expected if the forests were stressed by drought. The new study found that the forests fared neither better nor worse, as indicated by the color of the canopy as seen from satellite images during the 2005 drought. Scientists are likely to continue to debate the differences in their analyses of the satellite imagery, and the articles in question illustrate the scientific learning process as we explore the potential and the limitations of satellite-‐based measurements to give us information about forest response to drought in the Amazon region.

Forest tree measurements made under the forest canopy following the 2005 drought provide a very different picture of the sensitivity of Amazon rainforests to drought. In tree inventories conducted in 55 long‐term forest plots scattered across the Amazon forest, the drought of 2005 was associated with a large surge in tree mortality and no gains in growth. These findings, published in the journal Science in 2009, are consistent with the results of two large-scale experiments, in which large canopy trees began to die after three years of experimentally reduced rainfall. The forest plot results are also consistent with studies of historical rainfall and soil water storage capacity and with simulation model analyses. These studies, published in some of the best peer-reviewed science journals, provide several consistent lines of evidence that the forests of the Amazon Basin are susceptible to small reductions in rainfall. We do not know why the drought stress and tree mortality documented in the field studies published in the 2009 Science article and predicted based upon rainfall patterns were not detected in the analyses of satellite images by the Saleska- and Samanta-led teams. It could be that tree deaths, which affect only a portion of the tree canopy, are hard to see in satellite images, especially if this tree death is accompanied by the growth of vines and plants on the forest floor. It could also be that the tree mortality induced by drought was sufficiently delayed to be invisible in the imagery of 2005. This should be the topic of further research.

Reductions in rainfall can affect Amazon forests by increasing tree mortality, but also by increasing their susceptibility to fire. The initial fire kills trees, increasing the likelihood of subsequent fires for years afterwards in a vicious positive feedback loop. In 2005, more than 2000 km2 of forest caught fire in the tiny state of Acre alone. During the severe drought of 1998, approximately 40,000 km2 of forest caught fire. These are indisputable facts. It is important to remember that these droughts are part of the current Amazon climate regime. If climate change increases the frequency, severity or duration of these episodic droughts, then increased forest fire and tree mortality and reduced river flow are the likely results.

The IPCC must be held accountable for the best scientific information that is available in the peer-review literature at the time of its writing. The passage in the IPCC that refers to the susceptibility of the Amazon forest to drought cites a World Wildlife Fund review report which, in turn, cites an article in the journal Nature. Ideally, the IPCC should have cited the Nature article as well as several other existing articles in support of its statement, and not a WWF report. The point is, however, that the statement made by the IPCC about the sensitivity of Amazon forests drought was consistent with our knowledge at that time, and has been reinforced by new studies.

You can find the signatories here.

You can read a shorter statement by Dr. Lewis on RealClimate. There is an interesting back and forth between him and Dr. Samanta on RC (here) :

Folks,

The press release accompanying the GRL article disputed the following IPCC AR4 (2007) claim –

“Up to 40% of the Amazonian forests could react drastically to even a slight reduction in precipitation; this means that the tropical vegetation, hydrology and climate system in South America could change very rapidly to another steady state, not necessarily producing gradual changes between the current and the future situation (Rowell and Moore, 2000). It is more probable that forests will be replaced by ecosystems that have more resistance to multiple stresses caused by temperature increase, droughts and fires, such as tropical savannas.”

for two reasons: (1) this is presented as the consensus view by quoting Rowell and Moore, 2000. (2) There was more than a slight reduction in precipitation during the third quarter of 2005 and, most of the drought-impacted forest area for which we have uncorrupted satellite greenness data showed no enhanced or reduced greenness levels (third quarter average EVI values) as compared to non-drought years (between 2000 and 2008).

It is only in this context that the material in the press release and the GRL must be understood. We do not dispute any other results related to this theme in these two documents.

Respectfully,
Arindam Samanta (on behalf of the authors of the GRL papers).

Dr. Lewis replied as follows:

Dear Arindam,Thanks for the response.

On the IPCC statement, as I have said it is not as well-worded as it ought to be. Strictly, perhaps it can be taken as having one of two different meanings,

1. That the IPCC mean that small reductions in precipitation at any given time cause a drastic response (of which your paper ably shows that for satellite-monitored ‘greenness’ there is no such drastic response, and is an important paper I will certainly cite), or

2. They mean responses of vegetation to mean climate regimes with differing precipitation (of which your paper says little).

It seems clear to me that the sentence is about responses to a shift from one climate regime, the recent past and present day, to another, with less precipitation, in the future (it is the IPCC climate change impacts report after all, and they do say ‘… not necessarily producing gradual changes between the current and the future situation’).

If meaning two of the sentence is taken, then what the IPCC say is reasonable, defensible, basic science: warm lower-rainfall environments tend to be dominated by savanna, while warm higher-rainfall environments tend to be dominated by rainforest, with a threshold amount of rainfall separating which vegetation type one finds. If substantial areas of the Amazon are in a climate regime close to the savanna-rainfall threshold, which diverse evidence suggests they are, then there may be a vegetation shift if rainfall consistently decreases in the future due to climate change.

Your response implies you think meaning one is correct, which is mistaken (logically it can’t hold as a proposition). Had your paper cited the IPCC chapter and the sentence you object to and why — which it doesn’t — the misunderstanding could have likely been addressed at the review stage.

Details aside, it’s the ‘debunking Amazon myths’ headlines, and quotes about putting right ‘muddled understanding’, and, “The way that the WWF report calculated this 40% was totally wrong, while [the new] calculations are by far more reliable and correct,” that are problematic and have unnecessarily confused people. There are no calculations in the WWF report (it’s a review), nor are there any new calculated updates on the IPCC ‘up to 40%’ statement in the Samanta paper, and the ‘muddled understanding’ quote highlights the ‘twin pressures’ facing the Amazon, as logging and climate change, when outright deforestation is certainly the number one current pressure in the context of the quote.

I know the media regularly run out of control (its happened to me several times), but in my view it is critical to try and put things right. Most journalists and bloggers will help put things right once they know there is a problem, but you have to tell them.

With best wishes,

Simon

Well, some journalists and bloggers will help put things right. That’s why I’m posting all of this here.

Let me also quote from Dr. Lewis at RC:

Here is a recent paper that is consistent with the IPCC statement: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2374898/

This provides a way into lots of the literature. Also, see Lewis, S.L. (2006) Tropical forests and the changing earth system. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London Series B-Biological Sciences, 361, 195-210. Available from this page: http://www.geog.leeds.ac.uk/ people/ slewis/ publications.html

The first paper Lewis sites is a “Towards quantifying uncertainty in predictions of Amazon ‘dieback’,” by Huntingford et al. which concludes:

Simulations with the Hadley Centre general circulation model (HadCM3), including carbon cycle model and forced by a ‘business-as-usual’ emissions scenario, predict a rapid loss of Amazonian rainforest from the middle of this century onwards….

We find that the loss of Amazonian rainforest is robust across the climate uncertainty explored by perturbed physics simulations covering a wide range of global climate sensitivity.

The “Amazon dieback” paper notes:

Besides acting as a positive feedback on climate, whereby additional carbon dioxide is released back into the atmosphere, the loss of the rainforest in itself would clearly be a significant environmental matter.

Precisely.

I’ll write about the meaning of that feedback in another post, but for now, let me repeat what I wrote in “Science stunner: Vast East Siberian Arctic Shelf methane stores destabilizing and venting“:

It is increasingly clear that if the world strays significantly above 450 ppm atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide for any length of time, we will find it unimaginably difficult to stop short of 800 to 1000 ppm.

Mark McNulty Photography: Lake Travis

Fri, 19 Mar 2010 18:28:43 +0000

You’re going to be seeing quite a few photographs of this lot as the main reason I’m here in Austin is to do some film work with them and they are the Nashville Liverpool Underground Medicine Show. They met here in Austin at SXSW last year and are comprised of Mike Badger (ex The La’s and The Onset) who’s a Liverpool musician and artist and Emily Grace and Matt Gardner who are musicians form Nashville. They’re also backed by 3 more Liverpool musicians (Chris, Barry and Ian) who back home are Tramp Attack and The Loose Moose String Band. They’ve already played gigs in Liverpool and are now back in Austin to do a string of dates and country picking parties between here and Atlanta and maybe even on to Nashville. God knows as all I know is that I’m here for another week and I’ll be leaving out of New Orleans.

On our first day here we were driven out of Austin up into hill country where we got taken out by a great storyteller called Gerard and his family who not only took us out on the lake but also took us to a waterside restaurant and bought us our first of many Mexican dinners! I think it’s what they call Southern hospitality. And what did they get in return? Songs! Meet the band!

Out on Lake Travis

Out on Lake TravisOut on Lake Travis

Out on Lake Travis

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BLDGBLOD: California City Expedition Update!

Fri, 19 Mar 2010 18:27:00 +0000

For those of you who have signed up for the BLDGBLOG/Atlas Obscura "expedition to the geoglyphs of nowhere" trip tomorrow afternoon, March 20, part of the first annual international Obscura Day, I wanted to touch base briefly about what will actually occur out there.

First of all, I'm excited—I think this will be a lot of fun, and I look forward to meeting lots of you and exploring the abandoned geometry of a city that was never fully built in the first place (and about which you can read a bit more here). Even CNN is excited, writing that nearly "200 people have committed to a trip to California City, California, a planned city in the middle of the Mojave Desert that was never finished. It is now home to about 15,000 people, many of whom live within a surrounding network of crumbling roads, the vestiges of the abandoned city plan."

Second, it looks like at least 182 people have signed up for this, which I assume translates into roughly 75 cars making the journey—that's a substantial caravan. That being the case, our initial meet-up in the parking lot of the California City Rite Aid—as the current plan now stands—will actually be quite hard, if not impossible, to manage.

So I think we need to activate Plan B: we will still arrive via that Rite Aid (9482 California City Boulevard) at 1pm tomorrow, and you should still use it as a place to get something to drink or whatever else you might need (and there's a fast food place next door if you need a bathroom break), but if you do not actually speak to me, or to anyone else, for that matter—perhaps because you are a misanthrope attracted to abandoned cities in the desert—don't worry: just head out of the city, going northeast along Randsburg Mojave Road, onto 20 Mule Team Parkway. Here's a link to the most basic map of that road.

At that point, to be honest, you can just do whatever you're going out there to do: make films, take photographs, record sounds, write blog posts, Tweet things, interview people, do cartwheels, read Ballard and meet your future best friends. Fly remote-control airplanes with small nose-mounted cameras over the failed glyphs of a forgotten real estate dream. Build kites. Assemble simulated Iron Age tumuli in the dirt and gravel and dedicate them all to Anselm Kiefer. Establish a makeshift geothermal drilling operation and cause an earthquake. Call your mother.

This is not a guided tour, and we are not experts. This is a kind of documentarian flash mob, and together we'll produce the largest archive of contemporary California City photographs that exists anywhere in the world. We can start by filling out this Flickr group—but, again, feel absolutely free to do your own thing and save your own photographs wherever you choose to do so.

Finally, a brief bit of legalese—sorry, but I need to cover this stuff, too:

Obscura Day

So bring sunscreen, fill up your gas tank, wear comfortable shoes, don't forget some water, and I will see you out there in the middle of nowhere.

Left Foot Forward: Look Left – The Week in Fast Forward

Fri, 19 Mar 2010 18:25:00 +0000

The Week in Politics

• The Lord Ashcroft scandal hit the headlines again following the release of confidential papers showing the Tory deputy chairman was only awarded a peerage “in the clear belief that he would sign a crucial Inland Revenue form, IR DOM1 (Domicile)”.

The news heaps yet more pressure on William Hague to come clean about exactly what he knew of Ashcroft’s intentions to avoid paying tax and when – and boils down to the crucial point of whether Hague willfully misled Tony Blair when promising Ashcroft would pay “tens of millions a year in tax” if ennobled.

As Sunder Katwala on Next Left, in a piece headlined “Hague lied”, explains: “We have reached the point in the clumsy and damaging Ashcroft cover-up where the Shadow Foreign Secretary may as well now change his name by deed poll to ‘the beleagured William Hague’. The newspapers note how his attempt to close down the Ashcroft cover-up have surely raised more questions than they answer.

“What now seems crystal clear that William Hague either lied or misled (if you prefer the more parliamentary language) in his interview on the Today programme yesterday morning … We still do not have the full story. But the beleagured William Hague’s new account stretches all credulity, as many of his own colleagues will admit.”

• The British Airways cabin crew strike will go ahead tomorrow after last ditch talks at the TUC failed to bring a halt to the dispute, with both sides as far apart as ever. BA boss Willie Walsh described claims he wanted to break the striking unions as “absolute nonsense”, adding the strike was “deeply regrettable”, while Unite joint general secretary Tony Woodley insisted that the airline “ultimately wants to go to war with this union”.

The dispute had turned political earlier in the week, with David Cameron, Tory bloggers and right-wing newspapers using the stand-off to launch a well coordinated attack on the prime minister, the Labour party and the trade union movement, described by Unite’s political director Charlie Whelan as a “witch hunt” against the trade unions. In an exclusive interview with Left Foot Forward, Whelan said:

“What’s really frightening is firstly the Tories don’t want to resolve this dispute but also there is almost a witch-hunt of being a trade unionist. It’s not illegal to be a trade unionist. I’m proud to be a trade unionist. In fact, in countries where you don’t have trade unions you don’t have democracy. Is that what Eric Pickles is saying when he writes to the Prime Minister and demands to know which Labour MPs are trade unionists? I think it’s frightening.”

• The big news on the economy this week was the release of the latest unemployment figures, which showed an unexpected fall, down 33,000 on the quarter to January and down 32,000 in the last month – the largest monthly fall in the claimant count since November 1997. The figure now stands at 2.45 million or 7.8 per cent.

Youth unemployment also fell, by 34,000 on the last quarter and also on the JSA count, while vacancies were up by 39,000, evidence of the economy moving in a good direction, or at the very least not going backwards.

Progressive of the week

Chair of the Financial Services Authority Adair Turner, who, reports Thursday’s Times, provided a boost for the Robin Hood Tax campaign, saying: “We should certainly not exclude the potential role for financial transaction taxes which might, in [the economist] James Tobin’s words, ‘throw some sand in the wheels’ of speculative activity.”

Regressive of the week

Shadow business secretary Ken Clarke, who on Tuesday called for £30 billion in additional cuts, telling the BBC: “A new Government is required to start cutting spending now, get rid of wasteful spending, and to continue to get onto the perfectly sensible target of 3% of GDP for a deficit which was the rule I had when I was Chancellor.”

As Left Foot Forward explained, the Treasury’s projections in the pre-Budget report show that the Government is set to reduce the “Treaty deficit” – the preferred EU measure – to 4.6 per cent by 2014-15. Given projected nominal GDP of £1,841 billion in 2014-15 (Table B1), the implied reduction of 1.6 per cent of GDP is equivalent to £29.5 billion.

Evidence of the week

The revelations, on the front page of yesterday’s Independent, that the further education budget would be slashed by £573 million, resulting in “funding cuts imposed on 99 of England’s 130 universities” – leading to a possible 220,000 young people being left without a place.

The news came on top of stories about rising student debt, the student loans system in chaos, 50,000 students with good good grades being denied places and calls both for the cap on fees to be lifted and for universities to be privatised, rounded-up by Left Foot Forward earlier today.

Conor Pope’s Blog The Week

This week, the Blog The Week team goes house hunting in Hyndburn, explains to the Tories the complex idea that a party founded by trade unions may, y’know, stand up for trade unions, and offers saucy Lib Dem PPC Anna Arrowsmith some tips on how to make a politico-graphic video…

What’s trending on Twitter

According to our friends at Tweetminster, here is a list of the week’s top political stories:

• The debate over Unite’s funding to Labour;

• The Digital Economy Bill;

• The Liberal Democrat spring conference and its impact on the polls;

• The debate around Sure Start;

• The Lord #CAshcroft scandal; and

• Gordon Brown’s remarks at the Iraq Inquiry on defence spending.

Gordon Brown Iraq

Here is a selection of Tweets on that last story:

@Ericrosoman: #bbcqt If Gordon Brown is not stupid enough to deliberately deceive the Iraq Inquiry then he is obviously incompetent for doing it.

@bbcquestiontime: “I can’t imagine that anyone thinks that… Gordon Brown [misled the Iraq Inquiry] deliberately” – Margaret Beckett #bbcqt

@craignicol: Did Gordon Brown mislead the Iraq enquiry or was he just living up to his quote that he’s rubbish at maths? #bbcqt

@Broadcast_News: Paper Round (18 March) – a look at the day’s newspapers: LONDON – Gordon Brown’s retreat over Iraq-funding clai.. http://bit.ly/aBkFvb

@bbcvideo: Gordon Brown is to clarify his evidence to the Iraq inquiry after accepting defence spending had not risen in .. http://bit.ly/9kjkYt

Mark McNulty Photography: We Sell Boxes

Fri, 19 Mar 2010 18:06:01 +0000

Well you never know when you might need one!

We Sell Boxes

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Left Foot Forward: The whole country benefits from Union Learning Fund

Fri, 19 Mar 2010 17:53:54 +0000

Our guest writer is Tom Wilson, director of unionlearn, which aims to help unions encourage lifelong learning among members

Today’s Daily Telegraph carried criticism of the Union Learning Fund (ULF) as part of its ongoing campaign against Unite, including an absurd quote from Francis Maude suggesting that the fund was a form of “money laundering”. It tries to paint the ULF as a vehicle for the Government to give taxpayers’ money to the unions without any return or monitoring of the consequences.

The reality is that the ULF has been a genuine success, for trades unions, businesses and the workforce combined. Over the last 12 years there’s been huge investment into the workplace bringing vital skills that business needs to remain competitive.

Three quarters of a million employees have benefited from training, bringing new skills to workers. Access is available to all levels of education from advanced skills and degrees as well as basic literacy, numeracy and IT skills to workers who have previously never had access to training or education.

Over 2,000 learning agreements have been signed between unions and businesses to agree to provide time off for staff to train and more than 23,000 learning reps trained to promote learning in the workplace. Companies involved cover the whole spectrum of the economy from such iconic British brands as Boots, Rolls-Royce and BAE Systems to the public sector such as the Fire Brigade, Prison Service and Royal Mail.

Contracts agreed with the unions have clearly defined targets and outcomes and the work is overseen by the Department for Business Innovation and Skills and the Learning and Skills Council, as well as being independently audited.

We have had wide support from the business community including the CBI, British Chambers of Commerce and Business in the Community. It is unlikely these bodies, nor the FTSE 100 companies working with unions, would be supporting the ULF and unionlearn if they didn’t see value for British companies and understand the need for a well-trained and motivated workforce. Studies have shown that firms that invest in training are more than twice as likely to succeed in an economic downturn.

The work funded by the ULF has been delivered in colleges and in a network of over 400 learning centres based in the community and in workplaces. The range of locations for these centres is vast from bus garages to the Olympic park and prisons to a Sikh temple!

What has been lost in the Telegraph’s article is the understanding that if we are to have a competitive economy we need a well-educated, well trained workforce. Improving the skills of people is good for their employer but also vital and transformative for the employee. It improves options on employment, leads to new careers path that were unavailable before and transforms life chances.

Hearing stories of workers with new job opportunities after being trained to use a computer, the woman in her 50s now able to read bedtime stories to her grandchildren for the first time or the 60 year old bus driver crying with joy after receiving his first ever qualification is truly uplifting.

The case and the benefits for union-led workplace learning is clear; the unions support it, the employers support it and the workforce supports it. We intend to get on with delivering it.

Climate Progress: 20 environmental and climate groups applaud progress on Senate climate and clean energy jobs bill, will work to shape details

Fri, 19 Mar 2010 17:31:29 +0000

The details of the bipartisan climate and clean energy bill are starting to leak out (see here).

Twenty environmental, climate and progressive groups — including the one I work for — have issued a statement “in reaction to a late Thursday meeting with Senator John Kerry”:

“We are encouraged by the progress being made by Senators John Kerry, Lindsey Graham and Joe Lieberman to craft comprehensive climate and energy legislation to bring to the Senate floor later this year.

“Their stated goal and commitment to a 17% reduction in carbon pollution by 2020 and an 80% reduction by 2050 represents the leadership needed by the US Senate to create jobs, increase energy security, reduce carbon pollution and protect public health. Legislative details are important, and are not settled yet, and we will be working closely with the senators, their staffs and others to make sure these details achieve the goals.”

I would add that if you don’t think Sen. Kerry is working as hard as possible to put together the strongest possible bill that could get the necessary votes, then you don’t know the Senator and his remarkable quarter-century record of championing clean energy and environmental issues.

The 20 groups issuing this statement are: The Alliance for Climate Protection, Environment America, Sierra Club, League of Conservation Voters, Environmental Defense Fund, National Wildlife Federation, Blue Green Alliance, Natural Resources Defense Council, Center for American Progress Action Fund, Union of Concerned Scientists, National Tribal Environmental Council, ENE (Environment Northeast), National Audubon Society, Interfaith Power and Light, Conservation International, Defenders of Wildlife, Clean Water Action, The Wilderness Society, Climate Solutions, Environmental Law and Policy Center.

Sigurd Rinde: Organisational Effectiveness vs. Personal Efficiency

Fri, 19 Mar 2010 17:06:03 +0000

Wherever you turn you'll find that Enterprise Software is on a never ending quest to increase your personal efficiency.

It says so on the vendor's site, it seeps through in discussion about User Interfaces, one is constantly reminded how good that is for your company.

Sure, except...

Ask those who have had the fortune of becoming more efficient. Ask those who have all their tools in an easy-to-navigate interface. Ask those who have learned to read and skim reports faster. Are they under less stress now? Did that help to increase the company profit?

Not much of that is what I hear from within large organisations.

You do your job faster, then sit and wait for something else or get to dig into the slushpile.

Your rowing stroke gets stronger and faster, but so what unless the whole crew falls into same pace?

Here's the thing:

It's all about organisational effectiveness. How fast, efficient and correct all information is disseminated, how effective hand-overs in the workflow happens, how visible and easy to understand the process is, how effective the capture and subsequent dissemination of knowledge is and how little time you spend on making the flow happen.

That counts. That means better profits. That means more time for the kids and less stress.

And where is Enterprise Software in this? Where are the process engines and effective frameworks that can make the organisation more effective? Huh?

[Said same thing last summer, but as I meet this issue more and more often I felt it was upon time to rehash it a bit. Too important to be forgotten.]

Left Foot Forward: Budget 2010: Defence procurement cuts needed

Fri, 19 Mar 2010 17:03:48 +0000

The Budget should make clear all major defence procurement efforts will be subject to a full and frank reconsideration as part of the Strategic Defence Review. To the extent possible, the budget should look at suspending spending on or slowing contract negotiations on all major areas for defence procurement spending that should be subject to the Strategic Defence Review.

In real terms, this should lead to a willingness to cancel any to all of the following:

The “Super Carrier” project: The planned 65,000 tonne carriers are already £5bn over the original £1bn budget and according to the ippr’s influential “Opportunities in an age of austerity” report should be “firmly in the frame for cuts”.

The Joint Strike Fighter (F-35): The Ministry of Defence currently has on order 140 JSFs at a total current estimated price of £8.68bn. The JSF has seen its individual per fighter price tag increase from £37m to £62m in the last four years alone. Given that the last time the Royal Air Force was engaged in a dogfight was the Falklands war the need for major spending on the next generation of air superiority fighter is questionable at best.

The Future Rapid Effects System (FRES): The House of Commons defence select committee has repeatedly criticised delays and cost increases in the planned £16bn new military vehicle procurement programme. Such a move would emulate the Obama Administration’s cancellation of FRES’ US counterpart, the Future Combat System.

Trident: Cancelling the successor to Britain’s existing nuclear deterrent would allow Britain to retain its nuclear power status for at least another 20-30 years and could save the taxpayer anything from a remarkably conservative Ministry of Defence estimate of £20bn to Greenpeace’s estimated £97bn over the course of the decades to come.

Alternatives to a full scale independent nuclear deterrent range from accepting an end to British nuclear weapons power status from the 2040s onwards to a scaled down nuclear weapons platform to be delivered via the existing Astute-class submarine to President Sarkozy’s idea of joint UK-French nuclear patrols allowing each country to cut back the size of its nuclear submaine force.

In each of these instances the government will have to consider whether more cost-effective alternatives can be found if Britain wishes to retain its capabilities in these areas or if they should be discontinued in their entirety. As such, the Strategic Defence Review should consider the implications for strategy, procurment priorities, spending and indeed sovereignty that these dramatic options entail.

The government’s existing insistence however that major items like Trident and the Carriers are “off-limits” in the budget and the Review risks undermining both the very utility and credibility of the Budget and the Review.

The Sartorialist: On the Street.....After Chanel, Paris

Fri, 19 Mar 2010 17:00:00 +0000

onlineSpin: How To Create Customer Trust, Loyalty And A Great Brand Reputation

Fri, 19 Mar 2010 16:30:12 +0000

I recently wrote about the growing hype in marketing circles around customer satisfaction and the Net Promoter methodology. The point of that post was to underscore that customer satisfaction and loyalty scoring is worthless if a company is not going to act on the intelligence. That column prompted a thoughtful reply from my friend Bruce Ertmann, a marketing veteran in the automotive industry: satisfaction scores are great, but what matters most is delivering on the promise.

PW Style: Your Friday Afternoon Style Reading Is About To Be Interrupted …

Fri, 19 Mar 2010 16:08:30 +0000

… by these cute pups.

I’ve been remiss in mentioning it, but while PW music editor Brian McManus is makin’ major moves at SXSW, his doggies Paulie (left) and Annie have taken up residence in my living room. I’ve never owned an animal that could be taken outside before and with the weather forecast looking so damn gorgeous this weekend, help a girl out. Where should I take these adorable pups?

Futurismic: Cash for crime: monetizing anonymous street-art

Fri, 19 Mar 2010 16:00:30 +0000

Pity poor Banksy for a moment. There can surely be no better icon of the noughties Zeitgeist in urban art… but how to convert that incredible reputation and kudos into decimal places that will pay the rent? Banksy and his street-art contemporaries are trapped by their medium, because it’s hard to sell off your work when it happens to adorn a fundamental structural component of a building that belongs to someone else. And harder still when any random guy with a sci-fi webzine can freely republish a CC-licensed photograph taken by someone else that just happens to feature your work… oh, Monsieur Derrida, what have we done? [photo by unusualimage, art by Banksy, wall by uncredited building contractor]

If you’re thinking “well, I’m not sure money was Banksy’s motive”, then bravo – and I’m inclined to agree, given how hard he’s worked to stay anonymous (and how easy it would be for him to coast to fame on a brief cash-in and flee once the tide turned). But not so, perhaps, for the hordes of his imitators, and the other career street-artists who first rose to visibility and pseudo-respectability in the wake of the mainstreaming of hip-hop culture, and other creators whose work inhabits the interstices of law; whatever you may think of their methods, motives and legal transgressions, these are real artists doing real work… and they want to make a buck from it, too.

They face a similar problem to that of musicians in the internet age, in that they can’t control the distribution of their actual creation (albeit for very different reasons – musicians suffer from the economics of superabundance, while street artists are at the mercy of a type of scarcity), and so similar business models apply – you sell emphemera and scarce goods connected to the work rather than the work itself. For a street artist, that’s posters and prints, maybe clothing… whatever you can come up with, really.

Seems obvious enough… but unlike musicians, street artists (or at least the ones with any common sense) are obliged to remain anonymous lest they be prosecuted for vandalism. So putting up a URL to your webstore is a bit of a no-no… if the council are willing to email concert promoters who flypost in order to serve notices of prosecution (and believe me, they are), the anti-graff office will be all over your WHOIS records and server logs like a rash once you’ve got a profile big enough for people to want to buy your stuff. What you need is a middle-man who’ll collect your takings and pass them on, but who won’t blow your cover to The Suits.

There’s an old dawn-times saw about the internet that says it has a tendency to destroy middlemen, but if anything, the opposite seems to be true – the internet enables at least as many new middlemen business models as it destroys. Sure, it gives everyone with access to it an unprecedented ability to communicate directly with most of the world, but who has the time to do that if they’re busy writing novels, recording albums, weaving anatomically-correct crochet models of mammalian brainstems, or sleeping late so they can prowl the city streets at 4am with some stencils, a balaclava and a carry-all full of Krylon? You’re too busy creating your work to market it, so you let someone else handle that side of things for you, and give them a cut of the take for the privilege.

What other forms of work – more legal, or less – could benefit from this sort of anonymous clearing house/stock exchange system? Or are middlemen only flourishing temporarily in this frontier-esque era because the tools to accomplish the necessary tasks aren’t easy for newcomers to get to grips with?

Project Wonderful - Your ad here, right now, for as low as $0.00

Cash for crime: monetizing anonymous street-art

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Climate Progress: Energy and Global Warming News for March 19th: Alcoa works to cut concentrated solar costs 20%; Largest efficiency overhaul in public housing history; U.S. researchers flock to China

Fri, 19 Mar 2010 15:53:57 +0000

Aluminum Maker Eyes Solar Industry

Alcoa, the aluminum giant, is testing a new type of solar technology that the company said it believed will lower the cost of renewable energy.

The company has replaced the glass in parabolic troughs with reflective aluminum and integrated the mirror into a single structure.

Parabolic troughs focus sunlight on liquid-filled receivers suspended over the mirrors to create steam that drives an electricity-generating turbine. Parabolic trough technology has been in modern use in solar power plants since the early 1980s, but Alcoa executives said they saw an opportunity to refine the technology and get a foothold in the rapidly expanding renewable energy market.

“If you go out and look behind large parabolic troughs, you’ll find an elaborate truss structure,” said Rick Winter, a technology executive with Alcoa. “From our understanding of aerospace structures, we said if we can modify the wing box design used in aircraft and integrate a parabolic reflector, it would give us a light and stiff structure that would fundamentally affect the cost equation.”

An airplane’s wing box is a unit that integrates support structures and anchors a wing.

“Using aluminum and a wing box design we’re able to create the parabolic curve that we want in the structure itself,” said Scott Kerns, a vice president and general manager at Alcoa. “We can make the skin conform more or less to the way we want to concentrate the light.”

Current solar troughs use glass mirrors that are formed in the shape of a parabola and then attached to a support structure made of aluminum or steel. The executives said they estimate that the all-aluminum Alcoa parabolic trough, which is being tested at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Colorado, will cut the price of a solar field by 20 percent due to lower installation costs.

Boston public housing to get $63M retrofit

Boston Mayor Thomas Menino is set to introduce today the largest energy efficiency overhaul in the nation’s public housing history.

The $63 million project will renovate 4,300 apartments in 13 Boston Housing Authority developments to save electricity, water and millions of dollars. Toilets will be replaced with low-flow models, lights will be replaced with LEDs and compact fluorescents, and boilers will be upgraded to cut down on heating costs, among other improvements.

“It’s the nation’s largest public housing energy performance contract, right here in Boston,” Menino said. “I think it’s a win-win for everyone in the fact that it is energy efficient, and there is no cost to taxpayers because it is paid for with savings generated by improvements.”

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development will continue to pay the same amount for utility costs for the Boston housing units. The local housing authority is borrowing funds for the retrofits against the future payments. Ameresco, which is being contracted for the renovations, says the improvements will save taxpayers $7 million a year over the next 20 years.

The initiative will also focus on teaching residents of the housing units, who do not pay utility bills, how to save on energy. Officials hope that giving residents the authority to regulate heat in their own apartments will help cut down on costs. Previously, the heat was the same throughout the building, and some apartments simply left the windows open to cool down.

The upgrades are part of a larger, $238 million initiative to revamp public housing in the city.

Approps panel worries about R&D redundancies at DOE’s Office of Science, ARPA-E

House appropriators yesterday raised concerns about potential research redundancies within the Obama administration’s hefty $5.1 billion funding request for the Energy Department’s Office of Science and the $300 million request for the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy, or ARPA-E.

Lawmakers on the Energy and Water Development Subcommittee yesterday quizzed administration officials about the overlapping priorities among ARPA-E, the energy “innovation hubs” and the Energy Frontier Research Centers within the Office of Science.

“We don’t want redundancy, and we’re following the president’s lead in times of fiscal constraint,” said subcommittee Chairman Ed Pastor (D-Ariz.). “We want to make sure these programs are well-invested and meet the needs of the country at the same time as helping America keep its edge in science.”

Pattern reverses as U.S. researchers flock to China

Though Chinese researchers have historically moved to the United States to develop clean and renewable energy, more U.S. companies are now starting research operations in China, where the government’s focus on green technology has made the business climate more friendly to foreign high-tech firms.

Santa Clara, Calif.-based semiconductor firm Applied Materials Inc. recently built the company’s largest research labs in Xi’an, a city in northern China, and held its annual shareholders’ meeting there last week. The company’s products are used in solar panels, and the Chinese market is too big to ignore, said Mark Pinto, the company’s chief technology officer.

“We’re obviously not giving up on the U.S.,” Pinto said. “China needs more electricity. It’s as simple as that.”

Incoming green-technology firms are also attracted by substantial financial incentives and the glut of qualified engineers willing to work for a fraction of the salary sought by their U.S. counterparts. The Xi’an city government gave Applied Materials a 75-year land lease at a discount and offered to pay roughly 25 percent of the lab’s costs for five years, said Gang Zou, general manager of the site.

“Most of the graduate students in China are chasing this area,” said Xie Lina, a 26-year-old Applied Materials engineer, when asked whether China would play a significant role in the development of clean energy technology. “Of course, China will lead everything”

California gets stimulus for solar power

A northern California community said it was taking the unique step to use U.S. economic stimulus funds to build a 1-megawatt solar power facility.

Yolo County in northern California said it teamed with solar power company SunPower Corp. and Bank of America to work on the design and construction of a 1-megawatt solar power system.

The partners are financing the project in part through clean energy renewable energy bonds and energy conservation bonds available through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009.

Ray Groom, the Yolo County general services director, said his community has no out-of-pocket expenses for the facility. The project would save the community an estimated $8.8 million in energy costs over the next 25 years, he added.

The system uses plans developed by SunPower that lets solar panels track the movement of the sun, increasing the amount of sunlight captured by 25 percent over conventional panels.

Yolo County said the amount of harmful greenhouse gas emissions removed by the project is equal to removing more than 5,700 cars from California roads over the 30-year life cycle of the solar project.

U.S. wind power growing fast but still lags

Wind-generated electricity is growing rapidly in the United States but the pace still lags far behind that in China, the organizer of an industry conference in North Carolina said.

“With the right policies in place, we can see explosive growth … It’s a global footrace,” said Jeff Anthony, business development director of the American Wind Energy Association.

Although the United States has the largest amount of installed wind power capacity in the world, the wind power industry is “fighting to get on a level playing field” with other government-subsidized power-providers, Anthony told a conference of parts manufacturers, suppliers, wind project developers and economic development officers from around the southeastern United States.

“What the wind industry looks like in the U.S. in 10 years depends a lot on what comes out of Washington … Policy does drive the industry,” he told the conference in Greensboro, North Carolina.

A little more than 1.5 percent of power supplied in the United States is generated by wind, Anthony said.

“It’s an important part of how we generate electricity in the U.S. today. It’s still relatively small in terms of percentages, but it’s growing rapidly … Only in the last seven or eight years has the cost come down … The price of electricity from wind projects has stabilized.”

Last year, 10,000 megawatts of wind capacity were added to the grid, bringing the country’s total wind power capacity to 35,000 megawatts, Anthony said. Industry growth in 2009 was 39 percent, he said.

“China is currently growing at 100 percent. They are doubling the amount of wind power capacity in their country every year,” Anthony said.

To reach a goal set by the U.S. Department of Energy for 20 percent of the nation’s electricity to be generated by wind by 2030, “we will need 300,000 megawatts of power generated by wind turbines,” Anthony said. “So we’re one-tenth of the way there.”

Gov. Chris Christie to use cap-and-trade funds to balance state budget

Gov. Chris Christie has said he is taking $65 million from the state’s model cap-and-trade program to balance the state’s $29.3 billion budget, but he is getting pushback from Democrats in the state Legislature.

The money comes from quarterly carbon permit auctions held by the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, an alliance of 10 Eastern states from Maine to Maryland. The governor said he also is planning on taking all of the proceeds from the next three quarterly auctions in 2010.

“Next year, we plan on getting back to RGGI,” Christie said in a meeting at The Star-Ledger.

Bob Smith, chairman of the Legislature’s environment and energy committee, and a member of the appropriations committee, has vowed to fight the governor over the RGGI funds and the Clean Energy Fund, which the governor appropriated last month.

“The question that will come back to me and the other policymakers will be how can we justify raiding this fund when there are much better alternatives. We should continue for at least another year with higher income taxes on our wealthier residents,” said Smith, who is a vocal advocate for economic stimulus through green jobs.

The RGGI funds, like the $158 million in the Clean Energy Fund, were earmarked for use in a variety of energy efficiency and renewable-energy programs. In 2009, New Jersey’s RGGI proceeds were $67 million; of that, $22 million has been spent or committed for consumer-oriented programs.

In the absence of federal regulation governing greenhouse gas emissions, and the anticipation that rules are likely to be developed, many utilities and corporations around the country have adopted voluntary carbon credit schemes.

RGGI is the first mandatory regulatory program that requires power plant operators to buy permits for the carbon dioxide they emit. Groups of states in the Midwest and West are using RGGI as a model for developing similar auction systems, according to the Climate Registry, a nonprofit trade group.

RGGI has raised $582 million since it was launched in 2008. Most of the RGGI states have invested the majority of their auction proceeds into energy efficiency programs, except for New York.

“We had a blip, and $90 million sitting in a bank account was borrowed by the state for the budget last year,” Alexander Grannis, commissioner of the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation, said at a climate conference in New York City on Monday.

Chu: Bill Key To Besting China In Clean Energy

Passing a comprehensive climate and energy bill is crucial to ensuring that the United States doesn’t continue to lag behind China in the renewable energy race, Energy Secretary Steven Chu said today.

“The leadership in China has made it very clear that they see incredible opportunity for them,” Chu said. “The United States should sit up and take notice because we do have the best innovation to guide the investment and the thinking. That’s why it’s so important we get comprehensive energy and climate legislation.”

His comments, made in a conference call with reporters this afternoon, come on the heels of news that China has surpassed the United States as the biggest investor in renewable energy for the first time in at least five years, according to Bloomberg’s industry analyst group New Energy Finance.

Still, Chu insisted that regardless of the climate bill’s progress, his agency would continue to push for clean energy investments. “The idea is that, regardless of what happens, we are going to go forward using small businesses as one of the key cornerstones to getting our economy going again.”

Chu and Karen Mills of the Small Business Administration joined the call today with the heads of two small businesses in the renewable energy sector to announce a DOE report highlighting the clean energy investments that small businesses have been able to make because of the stimulus package.

Harrison Dillon, president and chief technology officer of Solazyme, a biofuels startup based in California, highlighted the fact that his company’s initiatives were not dependent on any climate bill incentives. “We built our economic model to show that we can make these fuels economically without a carbon tax,” Dillon said. “We felt that was important to show investors that our technology can stand alone without that.” He went on to say, though, that “some carbon pricing would accelerate a lot of things,” including the investment by large stakeholders in the utilities industry.

Udall seeks tax credits for ‘community solar’ projects

Sen. Mark Udall (D-Colo.) wants to help homeowners pool their resources to buy solar energy systems that serve the multiple households.

He floated a bill Wednesday that would make jointly-owned projects – which are built on separate plots of neighborhood land – eligible for tax credits that are currently available for rooftop projects on individual households.

Under his plan, homeowners that help finance these “community solar” projects may claim the 30 percent tax credit on their share of the investment.

Cambodia Calling: Cambodia bans - again!- marriage to South Koreans

Fri, 19 Mar 2010 15:50:04 +0000

In today's news. "Cambodian bars women from marrying South Koreans, citing human trafficking fears" by the Associated Press:

PHNOM PENH, CAMBODIA — Cambodia has temporarily barred its citizens from marrying South Korean men after two dozen women were sold into marriage by matchmakers — the second time the government has imposed such a ban....

"The South Korean news agency Yonhap reported Friday that nearly 60 percent of marriages to foreigners in Cambodia involve Korean nationals, and most of them are arranged through brokers....

Cambodia has banned the marriage brokerage business since 2008. Despite the ban, the number of Cambodian women marrying Korean men more than doubled from 551 in 2008 to 1,372 last year, [South Korean news agency] Yonhap said.

Also from Yonhap, "North Korean technocrat executed for bungled currency reform":

SEOUL, March 18 (Yonhap) -- North Korea executed a former top finance official last week, holding him responsible for the country's currency reform fiasco that has caused massive inflation, worsened food shortages and dented leader Kim Jong-il's efforts to transfer power to a son, sources said Thursday....

Pak, a 77-year-old technocrat, was charged with "deliberately ruining the national economy" as a "son of a big landowner," the sources said....

Pak's execution is the latest in a series of punishments the North has reportedly meted out to its elite for failed economic reforms.

Anyone else reminded of Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge?

Cambodia Calling: Don't be an idiot. Stop eating shark fins.

Fri, 19 Mar 2010 15:50:04 +0000

Just watched a documentary on Animal Planet on the illegal shark fin trade. Sharkwater is an award-winning Canadian documentary by Rob Stewart who exposes the exploitation and corruption of the shark-hunting industry in the marine reserves of Cocos Island, Costa Rica and the Galapagos Islands, Ecuador. He shows how the voracious shark-hunting industry is driving sharks to extinction.

The demand for shark fins in Asia is fuelling this demand. Sadly this practice of eating shark fins has been transported to Cambodia where you can order shark fin soup at some Chinese restaurants in Phnom Penh.

Calling all Cambodians and others - stop ordering the soup! Your demand is feeding an illegal and immoral industry. Sharks are caught and their one and only dorsal fin sliced off and the sharks themselves are thrown back, alive and breathing, into the sea. Without the dorsal fin, the shark sinks to the bottom of the ocean where it dies a slow death by drowning.

Why do the fishermen not keep the whole shark? The reason is simple - money.

It is expensive to provide storage space for the giant sharks on fishing boats and financially more profitable for the fishermen to just take the fins. It's an incredible wastage. And for what?

1) Shark's Fin is tasteless. (Most people just like the taste of the crabmeat and the seasoning they put into the soup)

2) Shark's Fin has ZERO nutritional value.

3) It is ridiculously expensive at US$100 in some places for a bowl of the soupy stuff and up to US$1300 for a shark fin - why would you want to help these people get rich? The fishermen, middle men and restaurant owners are all laughing at you - how easy it is to make money out of stupid, unthinking, people.

4) You can even get mercury poisoning as a Taiwanese woman found out.

“Mercury will not dissolve in cooking,” WildAid Asia consultant Rebecca Chen Chih-hsiao warned. “It is harmful to the brain and nervous system. Pregnant women should definitely avoid eating shark fin as it can damage the mobility and slow down the development of babies.” Chen said shark fin has more bad than good nutritional value, yet the demand for it has grown over the past 10 years as the delicacy became a status symbol.

As usual these stupid people who chase after "status symbols" do not ask questions, simply following fashion trends (I call them sheep-people because they are just like sheep, following the herd).

Eating shark fin soup is another one of these trends. The dish was just a regional delicacy in Canton, south China, until the late 1980s. I learnt this after joining the Facebook group "Do not serve Shark's Fin at YOUR wedding dinner!" started by a Singaporean Chinese woman (as I am). In Singapore, the dish is typically offered at weddings so hotels can charge you an arm an a leg and some couples imagine the dish makes them look rich since they pay so much for it. It's pathetic, really.

In Singapore, the younger, educated, Chinese population is making a stance against this disgusting "tradition" - I put inverted commas because as Singaporean Chinese, it is clearly not our tradition, since the practice was imported from Canton (contrast this with yusheng for instance). Not that tradition should mean much - why keep superstitious and irrational traditional practices? My favourite no-brainer example here is Sati, the custom of burning a widow upon her husband's death in parts of India. That practice was banned in 1829 by the British but one woman was reported to have committed Sati even as late as 2008.

In April last year a rally was held in Singapore to raise awareness against the consumption of shark fins. A large banner bearing the slogan "when sharks die, the oceans die" was displayed at a nearby park close to Singapore's business district. The organisers said more than 3,800 sharks were caught every 20 minutes to meet global demand for shark fin, pushing many shark species towards extinction. A Reuters report in March 2009 Shark fin out of vogue for young Asians summed up how younger people view the practice.

Despite the efforts, Singapore, along with Taiwan and Spain are the biggest suppliers. Hong Kong is on another level on its own - responsible for handling 50-80% of the world's trade in shark fins. A third of all fins imported to Hong Kong come from Europe, with Spain being the largest supplier by far. Other European countries involved include Norway, Britain, France, Portugal and Italy. Fins have also been found to originate from the coastlines of the US, Belize, Panama, Brazil (and Costa Rica as revealed by Sharkwater.) [More information and photo below on gardenofeaden].

So it was unsurprising to read a report released just 2 days ago by Oceana.org: "Surging demand for shark fin soup among Asia's booming middle classes is driving many species of these big fish to the brink of extinction." Up to 73 million sharks are killed each year, primarily for their fins.

"As a result, some populations have plummeted by as much as 83 percent, prompting the 175-nation Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) to consider proposals at its two-week meeting in Doha to regulate the shark trade.

At least eight shark species, including the scalloped hammerhead and the oceanic whitetip, are being considered for CITES listing which would put some controls on their export.

"The global shark fin trade is driving the oceans to collapse," Courtney Sakai, a senior campaign director at Oceana, said in a statement. "Trade measures are the most direct way to ensure that the powerful economic incentives to catch sharks do not lead to their extinction."

You can read the full report here on oceanleadership.org.

Left Foot Forward: Lifting the lid on “progressive conservatism”

Fri, 19 Mar 2010 15:29:08 +0000

On Wednesday Left Foot Forward attended the official launch of Bright Blue, a new organization campaigning for “progressive Conservative” polices with support from the Joseph Rowntree Reform Trust. Their aims are a celebration of the left’s success over the last 13 years but doubts remain over whether their ideas have any traction within the Conservative party.

Speaking at the launch, Jonty Olliff-Cooper – part of the ‘executive team’ and head of Demos’ Progressive Conservatism project – told Left Foot Forward:

“we are partly here to hold the [Conservative] Party to account for what we think are progressive policies and we’re partly here to be a powerful voice pushing on the very burning and exciting issues such as aging, climate change, the use of the web, and resuscitating democracy.”

As David Miliband set out in a speech at Demos last month, it is flattering to the Labour government of the last 13 years that this agenda continues to dominate important parts of political life:

“After all, one reason the Conservative leadership are currently tied in policy knots – backing away from health reform, back to front on government’s role in sponsoring marriage, facing both ways on economic policy – is that they have felt it necessary to assert that they too seek progressive ends, contrary to the history of conservatism.”

Mr Olliff-Cooper insists that “people always trying to paint a war between us progressive Conservatives and the, I don’t know, ‘regressive’ Conservatives, it just isn’t like that”. But there remain serious doubts about whether the Conservatives would retain their commitment to progressive policies if they form the next government or whether, as one guest at the Bright Blue launch who did not wish to be named said, “Cameron is just setting out his cake stall”.

In the Spring 2010 edition of the Bright Blue magazine, ‘The Progressive Conscience‘, Fiona Melville and David Skelton of Platform 10, admit that:

“There are still too many MPs and members who refuse to understand that there is no alternative to making sure that the Party reflects the country it seeks to govern. There are still too many observers, commentators and political participants who want to continue to carry out old politics rather than the new approach that is required.”

All of which seems to confirm Julian Glover’s assessment in Prospect magazine that, “in pessimistic moments, the small group around the leader wonder if they will be able to make their modern Conservatism a reality.”

Neither have Conservative policies been particularly progressive thus far. Jonty Olliff-Cooper has written on this blog that, “The Conservatives cannot credibly claim to be progressive while supporting a cut in inheritance tax.” Their alliances in Europe with sexist and Islamophobic parties cast doubts over their progressive credentials while their international development policy has been slammed by no less an authority than the director of Unesco’s Global Monitoring Report on education, Kevin Watkins.

Indeed, Bright Blue’s own progressive credentials are undermined by the Conservative policy of tax breaks for married couples, which would benefit only six percent of all married couples. Bright Blue’s own spokesperson, Ryan Shorthouse, understands the policy well having been an adviser to the Shadow Family Secretary Maria Miller.

The Big Picture (Boston Globe): Record setters

Fri, 19 Mar 2010 15:28:25 +0000

Earlier this week, the world's shortest man, He Pingping, age 21, died after developing chest pains while filming a television show in Italy. Pingping suffered from primordial dwarfism, a condition which kept him from ever growing taller than 73 cm (2 feet 5 inches) tall. Pingping was recognized by the Guinness World Records organization, who also held a "World Records Day" last November, encouraging people all over the world to set their own records. Collected here are a group of superlatives, recent photos of world records and record attempts around the world. (31 photos total)

He Pingping of China smiles as Sultan Kosen of Turkey rests his hands on He's shoulders during a promotional event in Istanbul, Turkey on January 14, 2010. He, with a height of 73 cm (2 feet 5 inch), and Kosen, with a height of 246.5 cm (8 feet 1 inch), have been listed in the Guinness World Records as the world's shortest man and tallest man respectively. (REUTERS/Osman Orsal)

Climate Progress: The 5 characteristics of scientific denialism

Fri, 19 Mar 2010 15:14:53 +0000

One of the best climate websites is SkepticalScience.com run by physicist John Cook.

The goal of SkepticalScience is to “explain what peer reviewed science has to say about global warming” and answer the most common questions and objections raised both by the well-meaning doubters and the not-well-meaning disinformers.

Fortunately for us, Cook is blogging more now, which means I’ll be quoting him more (see “How we know global warming is happening — Skeptical Science explains: It’s the oceans!“). Cook has a good discussion of a recent paper, “Denialism: what is it and how should scientists respond?” that I excerpt below:

While the [paper's] focus is on public health issues, it nevertheless establishes some useful general principles on the phenomenon of scientific denialism. A vivid example is the President of South Africa, Thabo Mbeki, who argued against the scientific consensus that HIV caused AIDS. This led to policies preventing thousands of HIV positive mothers in South Africa from receiving anti-retrovirals. It’s estimated these policies led to the loss of more than 330,000 lives (Chigwedere 2008). Clearly the consequences of denying science can be dire, even fatal.

The authors define denialism as “the employment of rhetorical arguments to give the appearance of legitimate debate where there is none, an approach that has the ultimate goal of rejecting a proposition on which a scientific consensus exists”. They go on to identify 5 characteristics common to most forms of denialism:

Conspiracy theories
When the overwhelming body of scientific opinion believes something is true, the denialist won’t admit scientists have independently studied the evidence to reach the same conclusion. Instead, they claim scientists are engaged in a complex and secretive conspiracy. The South African government of Thabo Mbeki was heavily influenced by conspiracy theorists claiming that HIV was not the cause of AIDS. When such fringe groups gain the ear of policy makers who cease to base their decisions on science-based evidence, the human impact can be disastrous.
Fake experts
These are individuals purporting to be experts but whose views are inconsistent with established knowledge. Fake experts have been used extensively by the tobacco industry who developed a strategy to recruit scientists who would counteract the growing evidence on the harmful effects of second-hand smoke. This tactic is often complemented by denigration of established experts, seeking to discredit their work. Tobacco denialists have frequently attacked Stanton Glantz, professor of medicine at the University of California, for his exposure of tobacco industry tactics, labelling his research ‘junk science’.
Cherry picking
This involves selectively drawing on isolated papers that challenge the consensus to the neglect of the broader body of research. An example is a paper describing intestinal abnormalities in 12 children with autism, which suggested a possible link with immunization. This has been used extensively by campaigners against immunization, even though 10 of the paper’s 13 authors subsequently retracted the suggestion of an association.
Impossible expectations of what research can deliver
The tobacco company Philip Morris tried to promote a new standard for the conduct of epidemiological studies. These stricter guidelines would have invalidated in one sweep a large body of research on the health effects of cigarettes.
Misrepresentation and logical fallacies
Logical fallacies include the use of straw men, where the opposing argument is misrepresented, making it easier to refute. For example, the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) determined in 1992 that environmental tobacco smoke was carcinogenic. This was attacked as nothing less than a ‘threat to the very core of democratic values and democratic public policy’.

Why is it important to define the tactics of denialism? Good faith discussion requires consideration of the full body of scientific evidence. This is difficult when confronted with rhetorical techniques which are designed to distort and distract. Identifying and publicly exposing these tactics are the first step in redirecting discussion back to a focus on the science.

This is not to say all global warming skeptic arguments employ denialist tactics. And it’s certainly not advocating attacking peoples’ motives. On the contrary, in most cases, focus on motives rather than methods is counterproductive. Here are some of the methods using denialist tactics in the climate debate:

Conspiracy theories
Conspiracy theories have been growing in strength in recent months as personal attacks on climate scientists have intensified. In particular, there has been accusations of manipulation of temperature data with the result that “the surface temperature record is unreliable” has been the most popular argument over the last month. This is distracting people from the physical realities of global warming manifesting themselves all over the world. Arctic sea-ice loss is accelerating. Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets are losing ice mass at an accelerating rate. Spring is coming earlier each year. Animal breeding and migration are changing in response. Distribution of plants are shifting to higher elevations. Global sea level is rising. When one steps back to take in the full body of evidence, it overwhelmingly points to global warming.
Fake experts
A number of surveys and petitions have been published online, presenting lengthy numbers of scientists who reject man-made global warming. Close inspection of these lists show very few qualifications in climate science. On the contrary, a survey of climate scientists who actively publish climate research found that over 97% agree that human activity is significantly changing global temperature.
Cherry picking
This usually involves a focus on a single paper to the neglect of the rest of peer-review research. A recent example is the Lindzen-Choi paper that finds low climate sensitivity (around 0.5°C for doubled CO2). This neglects all the research using independent techniques studying different time periods that find our climate has high sensitivity (around 3°C for doubled CO2). This includes research using a similar approach to Lindzen-Choi but with more global coverage.
Impossible expectations
The uncertainties of climate models are often used as an excuse to reject any understanding that can come from climate models. Or worse, the uncertainty of climate models are used to reject all evidence of man-made global warming. This neglects the fact that there are multiple lines of empirical evidence that humans are causing global warming .
Logical fallacies
Strawmen arguments abound in the climate debate. Often have I heard skeptics argue “CO2 is not the only driver of climate” which every climate scientist in the world would wholeheartedly agree with. A consideration of all the evidence tells us there are a number of factors that drive climate but currently, CO2 is the dominant forcing and also the fastest rising. Logical fallacies such as “climate has changed before therefore current climate change must be natural” are the equivalent of arguing that lightning has started bushfires in the past, therefore no modern bushfire is ever started by arsonists.

PW Style: This Weekend: Mighty Healthy Pop-Up Shop at the Piazza

Fri, 19 Mar 2010 14:46:20 +0000

This jawn came in too late for Emily F.’s weekly roundup of weekend fun.

From the release: “Mighty Healthy is a fresh, modern incarnation of a classic young men’s apparel brand. Good, bad and unapologetic, it embraces the tried and true spirit of Progressive Street. Taking a modern, optimistic approach to basic fabrics and silhouettes, Mighty Healthy t-shirts, jeans, sweatshirts and jackets are outstanding pieces for everyday wear. In an age of “look-alikes” and music-video-inspired uniforms, today’s young man seeks distinction. Mighty Healthy is the answer.”

Left Foot Forward: Budget 2010: We need a new strategic investment fund

Fri, 19 Mar 2010 14:31:59 +0000

Our guest writer is Tim Page, senior policy officer at the TUC

With a Mandelsonian flourish, last year’s publication of “New Industry, New Jobs” changed the UK’s economic landscape. Many column inches have since been filled with discussion of the detail of NINJ, so sectors such as composites and industries such as plastics electronics are now part of the industrial lexicon.

What is more important, for the purposes of this discussion, is that it is no longer off-limits to talk about the role of government in identifying and supporting strategic industrial sectors. The Thatcherite philosophy of “market is king” has gone. In the forthcoming Budget, the TUC would like the Government to go to the next stage. Having made its commitment to less financial engineering and more real engineering, we would like to see it introduce NINJ phase two.

Specifically, we have called for a new strategic investment fund, borrowing from the French model, where an independent public sector body takes long-term minority stakes in strategic companies, with a view to supporting their development into world class players, building the British economy, reducing our balance of payments deficit and providing high skill, high value jobs.

We also wish to see the wider question of government support for industrial investment tackled head on. The problem has been well rehearsed. Some companies need to make investments that a risk-averse banking sector will not support. If those investments are in sectors such as green technology, where the outcomes are not proven, it is often understandable that regular banks will not take such a risk.

In such obvious cases of market failure, rival economies have industrial investment structures supported by government. This means that entrepreneurs with good ideas in strategic sectors with high start up costs take those ideas abroad – and other governments reap the economic benefits. The TUC has called for a Green Investment Bank to support the growth of a world class green sector, bolstering our industrial base and helping to protect our environment both at the same time.

Furthermore, Britain’s infrastructure urgently needs investment; government cannot possibly fund all of it, yet the public good derived from such investment is obvious. So there is a role for government as conduit or guarantor of private sector investment.

Let us be clear. Care must be taken to avoid government taking on functions that are best served by private sector banks. Government must certainly not hand out taxpayers’ money to every company that steps forward with a wish list. But at long last, the government has recognised that it has an interest in the types of company that thrive in the UK.

Post economic downturn, in the age of globalisation, there is a specific role for British industry. We must continue to do what we do well, so our aerospace and automotive sectors, and our pharmaceutical industries must continue to succeed. But consumers will demand that the planes in which they fly and the cars they drive are greener and more efficient.

Where our scientists, our technicians and our engineers have the know-how to make that happen, but the banking sector is not forthcoming with support, the role for government is obvious. As we branch into new, exciting areas such as wind, wave and tidal power, that role is even more obvious.

Next week’s Budget is the Government’s last real chance to set the industrial agenda. It should grab that chance with both hands.

Official Google Blog: Let the Sunshine in

Fri, 19 Mar 2010 14:27:55 +0000

Cross-posted on the Google Public Policy Blog.

Public=Online is the the rallying cry during this year’s Sunshine Week, an annual event to highlight the importance of open government and the freedom of information. The week is sponsored by the American Society of News Editors, and many editorial boards have echoed the thoughts of the Cleveland Plain Dealer:

“...government information ought to be made available to the public as quickly as possible, with a minimum of rigmarole and in the easiest, most accessible way possible--which these days means via the Internet.”

We agree--and what better way to celebrate Sunshine Week than with leading thinkers on government, media and citizen engagement on all sides of the political spectrum who feel the same? Yesterday at our Google D.C. office, the Sunlight Foundation announced its Public=Online campaign.

It’s exciting to see growing support for transparency and to see the progress that’s been made in the last year alone. Every day, through sites like Data.gov and projects like Open Congress, OMB Watch and our Public Data Explorer, more data is available online.

But there’s still a gap between having access to government data and easily understanding what it means. To help fill this gap, Google has partnered with the Sunlight Foundation in its Design for America contest to make government data more comprehensible to the public.

You can learn more and get started on the contest homepage. There’s room for all kinds of folks to participate, and we can’t think of a more fun way to keep the spirit of Sunshine Week going.

Posted by Ginny Hunt, Head of Google Public Sector Lab

Futurismic: Was Lamarck right along? Why evolution doesn’t work like we thought it did

Fri, 19 Mar 2010 14:16:36 +0000

I expect most Futurismic regulars, much like myself, think they understand the basics of Darwin’s theory of evolution: random mutations occur in each generation, natural selection culls the poor adaptations, repeat and rinse ad infinitum, and the life a creature lives doesn’t affects its genetic legacy.

Well, here’s the thing: it turns out that the last point there – one which I’ll freely admit to having pedantically called people out on for years – may well not be true at all [via Kate Feld]:

… we’ve come to understand that the awesome power of natural selection – frequently referred to as the best idea in the history of science – lies in the sheer elegance of the way such simple principles have generated the unbelievable complexities of life. From two elementary notions – random mutation, and the filtering power of the environment – have emerged, over millennia, such marvels as eyes, the wings of birds and the human brain.Yet epigenetics suggests this isn’t the whole story. If what happens to you during your lifetime – living in a stress-inducing henhouse, say, or overeating in northern Sweden – can affect how your genes express themselves in future generations, the absolutely simple version of natural selection begins to look questionable. Rather than genes simply “offering up” a random smorgasbord of traits in each new generation, which then either prove suited or unsuited to the environment, it seems that the environment plays a role in creating those traits in future generations, if only in a short-term and reversible way.

[...]

Epigenetics is the most vivid reason why the popular understanding of evolution might need revising, but it’s not the only one. We’ve learned that huge proportions of the human genome consist of viruses, or virus-like materials, raising the notion that they got there through infection – meaning that natural selection acts not just on random mutations, but on new stuff that’s introduced from elsewhere. Relatedly, there is growing evidence, at the level of microbes, of genes being transferred not just vertically, from ancestors to parents to offspring, but also horizontally, between organisms.

[...]

Among the arsenal of studies at Shenk’s disposal is one published last year in the Journal of Neuroscience, involving mice bred to possess genetically inherited memory problems. As small recompense for having been bred to be scatterbrained, they were kept in an environment full of stimulating mouse fun: plenty of toys, exercise and attention. Key aspects of their memory skills were shown to improve, and crucially so did those of their offspring, even though the offspring had never experienced the stimulating environment, even as foetuses.

“If a geneticist had suggested as recently as the 1990s that a 12-year-old kid could improve the intellectual nimbleness of his or her future children by studying harder now,” writes Shenk, “that scientist would have been laughed right out of the hall.” Not so now.

And cue selective quote-mining by adherents of Creationism and other theologically-compromised pseudosciences in three, two, one…

Project Wonderful - Your ad here, right now, for as low as $0.00

Was Lamarck right along? Why evolution doesn’t work like we thought it did

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Nat Friedman (Gnome): Humans Only

Fri, 19 Mar 2010 14:10:34 +0000

Alex and I just released the fourth episode of Hacker Medley, called Humans Only.

It’s about CAPTCHA and it’s our first try at integrating interviews into the podcast. It’s also our first long podcast – weighing in at a hefty 50 minutes of documentary-style goodness.

Our format is inspired most heavily by shows like Planet Money and This American Life. From Planet Money we took the style of weaving the interview clips into the narrative, and opening the show with a clip. From This American Life we took the musical transitions that break up the show into little set-pieces.

Let us know what you think!

Global Voices (Cuba): Cuba: Peace Prize Nominee

Fri, 19 Mar 2010 13:48:32 +0000

Uncommon Sense confirms that Cuban dissident leader Oswaldo Payá has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize, saying, “There should be little doubt that if he were to be named this year's recipient, it would elevate his status and that of the entire dissident movement on the island. And it would be a big win for the cause of Cuban freedom.”

Knowing and Making (Leigh Caldwell): Barter and echoes of money

Fri, 19 Mar 2010 13:38:31 +0000

I went to a very interesting speech by Frances Dickens of Astus on Wednesday. She runs a company which acts as a barter exchange between other firms.

She started out describing the business model (eliding a few intriguing things which we were obviously meant to know already - such as the fact that the barter is always backed by spare media space, usually TV inventory).

By the end I felt like I'd been listening to a monetary economist talking about the founding of a new central bank.

So many of the issues confronting them are exactly like the issues faced by a currency issuer (which, after all, they are, kind of):

Is the currency backed by anything? Previous barter companies have failed because they issued promises with no capital behind them, and the promises were quickly devalued
Network effects - now that they are the market leader and the majority of companies use their "currency" by default, they have a hugely defensible position
Reputation and credibility - the backing of the currency becomes less important as the reputation of the issuer grows
Intermediation and fungibility - currently Astus stands in the middle of all transactions and nearly everything is exchanged for media space. But presumably people can now start to trade other services for the currency or for each other, without going via Astus. I didn't get to ask her this question
Regulation and balance sheets - they disclose two balance sheets and two profit and loss accounts - one based on standard accounting practices (GAAP) and the other based on their own estimate of the real numbers - including the non-cash component which is excluded by GAAP

What next? Presumably, if this market continues to grow, they will start to face some of the other issues that monetary theorists run into:

Inflation
Exchange rates with other barter exchanges (or cash)
Creating sufficient money supply to enable business to take place at the optimal rate - managing the tradeoff between credibility of the currency, and the liquidity requirements of businesses
Seigniorage and interest rates...I suspect that participants currently don't earn interest on their credit balances, but I could imagine them wanting to

Would Scott Sumner recommend that this company sets an NGDP level target? What an interesting experiment that would be...

p.s. I will be away for a few days - if possible I'll queue up some posts to publish automatically while I'm gone. If I can't, normal service will resume on Monday.

The Baseline Scenario: jamesykwak

Fri, 19 Mar 2010 13:29:38 +0000

By James Kwak

I’ll be traveling and probably not blogging (hopefully not using a computer at all) until next weekend (March 27 or 28). Simon will be around, though. Bye.

The Sartorialist: On the Street.....The Charmer, Paris

Fri, 19 Mar 2010 13:05:00 +0000

PW Style: KOP Mall will not be selling vibrators, thank YOU

Fri, 19 Mar 2010 13:00:43 +0000

Jill McDevitt, who owns the West Chester female-friendly sex-toy shop Feminique, was looking to open a spinoff boutique in the King of Prussia Mall, but she posts on her blog how the conversation as she was checking out storefronts with the leasing manager turned sour when she mentioned that her store would, in fact, sell vibrators:

Her: Oh no you can’t sell that. This is an upscale, family mall.

Me: Well you have a Spencer’s. They sell vibrators.

Again with the cringing and ear covering at the “v” word.

Her: Yes, and we in the mall management business don’t like them either but they have millions of dollars.

Me: Meaning they have the resources to sue you for discrimination and I don’t?

Her: This is not a democracy. This is private property and we can rent to whoever we want. But we are a high-end shopping destination. We have a Neiman Marcus. We have a reputation to uphold.

So, firstly, “We have a Neiman Marcus! We have a reputation to uphold!” is now my go-to response for things along the lines of “Do you want to watch a spinoff of Flava of Love?” or “It’s cool, I totally remember how to make a pipe out of an apple,” or “McGlinchey’s is too crowded, wanna try Tops?”

Secondly, this is ridiculous. I actually remember when I was a teenager, getting a vibrator was super intimidating. Not only was there the horrifying idea of one of my parents accidentally finding it (which would have resulted in some very earnest, nonjudgmental birds-and-bees talk possibly involving the word “flower” or “special,” or, for that matter, “special flower” and would have ended in my ritual suicide), but the ONLY places that sold them were Spencer’s and the creepy windowless cinderblock building in the corner of the strip mall that might as well have had a blinking RAPES ‘R’ US sign out front.

Fact was, when I was a teenager, there was no place that a girl could purchase her very first vibrator that did not involve walking past a litany of lady-friendly messages along the lines of “This isn’t gonna suck itself!!” and “This job requires hand and mouth coordination!!” and of course who can forget the women’s shirts proclaiming the wearer a bitch, princess, porn star or Playboy bunny. Furthermore, there was at least a 75% chance of having my purchase witnesssed by at least one person wearing an Insane Clown Posse T-shirt, probably the wink-y guy behind the register. Spencer’s communicates over all that sex is something tacky, awkward, embarrassing and full of scary/sad power dynamics (don’t even get me started on I have the pussy, I make the rules!!); even though I was a fairly unembarrassed youngun, I definitely got the message that as a girl, doing something that publicly admits you have sexual feelings will make you feel embarrassed and bad.

I wouldn’t really make a deal out of it now if there were anywhere else to buy the stupid things, but there generally aren’t lady-friendly sex stores outside of big cities, and McDevitt’s experience with KOP pretty much explains why. And with the (large) exception that you can just order a hitachi magic wand off amazon now as long as you intercept the package, it’s still tough to go buy a vibrator as a non-city kid without making a pilgrimage to the temple of barely veiled misogyny.

And you know what, even if the reasoning is somehow benign, like they think female-friendly sex toy store is too much of a niche market, or that it’s unlikely that women are going to buy sex toys at a giant hideous mall when the anonymity of the internet exists, that place has like five different stores that sell only candles. It’s a recession. They should have at least given it a shot.

So yeah, there’s a petition. Go sign it, because internet petitions definitely have bearing on real life. May our daughters j/o without fear or shame, or something.

P.S.:I’m fairly certain there’s some readers right now that are all like, “Ugh, TMI with the History of Vag, already. First the IUD, and now vibrators?” But… I mean, when’s the last time you heard a dude on the internet mention or joke about his dick or masturbation?

Wooster Collective: Fresh Stuff From Vhils in Bogota

Fri, 19 Mar 2010 12:52:08 +0000

You can see more photos from Bogota Stencil Festival here.

Wooster Collective: Wendell Mc Shine - An Introduction

Fri, 19 Mar 2010 12:52:08 +0000

BEHIND THE BLUE DOOR from wendell mc shine on Vimeo.

Wooster Collective: Nick Walker's "Coran Can"

Fri, 19 Mar 2010 12:46:19 +0000

The piece above was done yesterday morning on Quai de Valmy in Central Paris by Nick Walker. It's in response to Sarkozy's decision to ban the burkha. From Nick:

"It's particularly tense in Paris. They are in between elections and the reaction is expected to be quite strong. The police discovered the piece 30 minutes after it was completed and we don't expect it to stay up long. After months of wrangling,The government are believed to be only days away from ratifying the ban."

Wooster Collective: Fresh Stuff From BEST EVER

Fri, 19 Mar 2010 12:40:39 +0000

Climate Progress: Report: Mississippi, Montana, Louisiana and Oklahoma most vulnerable to oil spikes

Fri, 19 Mar 2010 12:03:08 +0000

A new report finds that comprehensive climate and clean energy legislation is needed to protect Americans from oil shock. Brad Johnson has the details in this repost.

America’s exposure to oil spikes acts as a crippling do-nothing energy tax. In a white paper prepared for the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), David Gardiner and Associates explore the vulnerability of the United States to price spikes in the oil market, such as the one in 2008 that drove the average cost of gasoline above four dollars, if it happened now, in the midst of a recession. The report finds that Mississippi, Montana, Louisiana, and Oklahoma residents are most vulnerable to a new price shock, as about 10 percent of the average driver’s income would be spent on gasoline:

If prices spiked again, Connecticut and New York drivers’ spending on gasoline would go up moderately, to around 4.3 percent; Mississippi drivers, on the other hand, could see their spending on gasoline skyrocket to more than 11 percent.

MAP OF U.S. OIL VULNERABILITY IF PRICES SPIKED AGAIN

Unfortunately for their citizens, these most vulnerable states are largely represented by senators with deep ties to the oil industry who dismiss the threat of global warming: Republicans Jim Inhofe and Tom Coburn of Oklahoma, Republicans Thad Cochran and Roger Wicker of Mississippi, and Democrat Mary Landrieu and Republican David Vitter of Louisiana. Even the Democratic senators of Montana, Max Baucus and Jon Tester, have merely indicated openness to capping our dependence on oil and confronting the climate threat.

A bright spot comes for the residents of the fifth most vulnerable state, South Carolina, where Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) is working on comprehensive climate legislation with Sen. John Kerry (D-MA). Graham’s work in building the green economy is earning praise from the Christian Coalition and local veterans, both of whom recognize the dangers of oil addiction to our nation.

“America’s dependence on oil is problematic in several ways,” the authors write:

The United States has less than 2 percent of the world’s oil supplies but is responsible for about a quarter of the world’s oil consumption. We currently import almost two-thirds of our crude oil supply from foreign countries, and more and more of the world’s future supply will come from regions that are either politically unstable or unfriendly to U.S. interests.
Our dependence on unstable oil supplies threatens our national economy, particularly since about 96 percent of our transportation system is reliant on oil.
Oil consumption is a leading contributor to the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions that cause global warming. In the United States, the oil-based transportation system is responsible for roughly one-third of our global warming pollution.

To respond to these combined threats from oil vulnerability, the report concludes that Congress must:

Pass comprehensive climate and energy legislation that limits carbon dioxide emissions, helps us break our oil addiction, and invests in creating millions of clean energy jobs here in the United States.
Fundamentally reform federal transportation policy to support smart, public transportation-oriented development; assist states and regions in saving oil; and provide ample funding for energy-efficient transportation alternatives including rail and bus lines, bike paths, sidewalks, and other alternatives to driving.

The Do-Nothing Energy Tax: $3 Gasoline Dead Ahead

Copenhagen Cycle Chic: Copenhagen's Seasonal Early Warning System

Fri, 19 Mar 2010 11:30:00 +0000

Wooly stocking combinations, begone. The seasonal transitions bring all manner of clothing-related...

For the full photographic glory and the rest of the text, you know where to go. The Original Cycle Chic awaits.

FOI News: Do the numbers make anything clearer?

Fri, 19 Mar 2010 10:25:48 +0000

Mr Graham: The age old debate of quality v quantity

Since Christopher Graham took over the hot seat at the Information Commissioner’s Office there has appeared to outsiders to be a somewhat unseemly haste to get down the number of outstanding FoI appeals.

We all know that the geological timeframe it was taking to get Decision Notices out of the ICO was causing frustration on all sides and was one of the things Mr Graham said he would aim to improve.

Well nobody can complain that he hasn’t been a man of his word. The number of Decision Notices issued has increased, yet the grumbling from both applicants and respondents has not gone away.

Why? Because some people feel that there has been a clear trade off between quality and quantity, and while the number of Decision Notices issued has clearly increased the quality of those decisions has been on the decline.

It is a very difficult thing to prove. But I have made an effort to have a look at the trees rather than the wood by getting some figures from the ICO’s office about the number of Decision Notices it has dealt with.

What is clear from the figures is that Mr Graham’s vow to get to grips with the backlog of complaints has been followed through. When he took over in June 2009 the FoI caseload stood at 1,508 and by February this year that had been reduced to 1,057.

This is in some ways explained by a huge increase in the number of Decision Notices issued. In the 2008/09 financial year there were a total of 295 DNs. In the first eleven months of this financial year – Mr Graham started in the third month of the financial year – there have already been 538, and November 2009 saw a record number of 102 DNs issued.

Some might say that part of this increase was due to the crystallisation of the BBC’s derogation, where the High Court’s ruling effectively pulled the rug from under a great number of appeals.

But what is probably more significant is the movement away from issuing DNs and an increasing reliance on informal resolution. The comparable figures for disputes resolved informally is 1,490 in 2008/09 rising to 2,038 in the first 11 months of this financial year.

So we have a situation where with still a month to go this year we have had an extra 243 DNs issued and an additional 548 resolved informally.

Critics suggest that the increasing reliance on informal resolution is short-sighted as the system needs fully reasoned DNs so that people can use these as guidance for the future. Others state that some of the informal resolutions have been the complete opposite of DNs that have already been posted and as such ought to have been made public.

But how can we assess if this undoubted increase in quantity has been matched by a reduction in quality? Not an easy task, but one way might be to look at the number of appeals lodged at the Tribunal, where one party clearly believes the Information Commissioner has made an error in assessing the case.

The number of appeals lodged at the Tribunal has increased from 87 last year to 145 in the first eleven months of this year.

So we have a situation where the number of DN’s has increased 82% and the number going to Tribunal has increased by 67%. This would seem to suggest that there has not been a disproportionate drop in the quality of the DNs.

However, I think we need more time to get a clearer picture of the situation and my own feelings are that the quality of DNs is falling. What really annoys me is that, if this is true, it is such a short-term approach to the problem. Because what will happen is that more people will appeal and more resources in the ICO’s office will be taken up defending poor decisions leaving fewer people to deal with complaints and the whole vicious spiral will start up all over again.

But for now Mr Graham must be feeling quite pleased with himself. So much so that perhaps he might get a bonus at the end of the year. I wonder if getting the caseload down was one of his targets? Perhaps that’s a question I should be asking.

For those of you interested I have posted the ICO’s figures Decision numbers and here Decision numbers 2. You can see a full history of this request on WhatDoTheyKnow here.

DJ Drive's LJ (Georgia): Loud Tweets

Fri, 19 Mar 2010 10:01:38 +0000

15:30 Sync your files online and across computers with @Dropbox. 2GB account is free! tinyurl.com/yllmv47 #
10:37 A claim for equality of material position can be met only be a government with totalitarian powers. - F.A. Hayek #

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Robert Peston (BBC business editor): Lloyds: Back to black

Fri, 19 Mar 2010 08:50:44 +0000

Hold the front page: big bank says it's going to make a profit.

Yes, it has come to this.

A few years ago, there was widespread concern that banks were making excessive profits. Then the worst banking crisis since the 1930s meant we worried whether the likes of Royal Bank of Scotland and Lloyds would ever make a profit again.

And today - let's declare it a national holiday - Lloyds has said it will make a profit in 2010, which is the first time it has said it expects to be in the black since its troubles arrived by the trainload in wagons marked "HBOS".

What will be the scale of the turnaround?

Well its accounts have become very confusing because of the impact of its controversial takeover of HBOS and assorted one-off factors.

But it says that on a "combined" (Lloyds plus HBOS) basis, pre-tax losses were £6.7bn in 2008 and £6.3bn last year.

So a profit in 2010 would be an improvement of many billions of pounds. I would imagine that analysts will shoot for something of the order of £1bn or so of profit for 2010.

Which sounds like a lot of money. But that is many billions less than it will end up generating, as and when the losses it incurs on the loans it has made fall to more normal levels.

So what's driving the recovery?

Well most important is that losses on those reckless loans it provided to companies and households during the bubble years are falling quite significantly.

In its results announced at the end of February, it disclosed a charge of £24bn for loans going bad.

This was a mindboggling sum to lose as a consequence of borrowers being unable to keep up the payments.

But the rate of loss was at least falling as 2009 progressed. In the first half of 2009, the so-called impairment charge was £13.4bn; in the second six months, it was £10.6bn.

What Lloyds said in those last results is that it expected the impairment-charge improvement rate of just over 20% every six months to be sustained into 2010 (forgive that horrid construction). But it now believes that losses on bad debts will shrink faster.

Phew.

There are two other contributors to Lloyds return to the oh-so-attractive black.

First, and as Lloyds staff anxious about losing their jobs know only too well, the bank is proving adept at generating cost reductions from its takeover of HBOS.

It had expected cost savings on an annual basis to be £1.5bn by 2011. Lloyds now expects those annual cost reductions to be £2bn (although Lloyds is paying more than expected in reorganisation charges to secure those efficiency improvements).

And then there's what it can squeeze from customers. It has been able to push up the interest rate on mortgages and other loans a bit. So its margin is expected to widen fairly significantly this year, from 1.77% to 2%.

If you are a borrower from Lloyds, you probably therefore won't take the view that its recovery is good news for everyone.

That said, a successful economy requires banks that make profits.

However we also need banks that can finance themselves from commercial sources, rather than borrowing from taxpayers. And £157bn of Lloyds' funding comes in various ways from taxpayer supported schemes, both in the UK and elsewhere.

It has a plan to wean itself off that public-sector drip by reducing the loans and investments on its books.

Whether it can shrink enough without damaging the British economy (by depriving households and businesses of valuable loans) is the big unanswered question.

Two Talk: Girl drinking a cup of milk in the kitchen, SOS…

Fri, 19 Mar 2010 07:58:47 +0000

Once again, children came together to call for peace and participated in the Global Peace Games organised by SOS Children's Villages Cape Verde.

Daily interesting photos - Flickr: Interesting photos - 18 Mar 2010 - Flickr

Fri, 19 Mar 2010 07:50:04 +0000

anecdote - putting stories to work: Death, Sex and Children at Risk

Fri, 19 Mar 2010 06:33:52 +0000

I've just found Garr Reynold's recent post on stories and experience. He makes the good point that people remember stories because they convey emotions, which is very true. We remember what we feel. In this post I would like to briefly explore another reason why we remember stories and touch on the types of stories which are most memorable. Let's take the last point first.

Garr tells us that he visited Haleakala National Park in Japan The park has beautiful but dangerous water falls and sign-posts warn visitors to be careful. Garr noticed that one of the sign-posts seemed more effective that the others because it included actual news clippings of people who had lost their lives. These tragic incidents were told as stories.

Apart from the obvious emotion these stories generated what else might be drawing our attention to these stories? One possibility comes from taking a human evolution and natural selection perspective. Over the 10,000s of years our species has been evolving we've been preoccupied by our own survival (avoiding death), the survival of our children (continuing the species) and sex (creating the next generation). Consequently we care deeply about death, sex and the safety of our children. Any story that feature these topics gains our attention. It helps explain the proliferation of hospital and police dramas on our TVs. So stories of death are hard for us to resist and warning signs that contain these types of stories are attention magnets.

It's true that we remember what we feel but we also remember what we conjure for ourselves. To illustrate this point would you please read this story. I have some questions at the end.

After 21 years of marriage, my wife wanted me to take another woman out to dinner and a movie. She said, 'I love you, but I know this other woman loves you and would Love to spend some time with you.'

The other woman that my wife wanted me to visit was my Mother, who has been a widow for 19 years, but the demands of my work and my three children had made it possible to visit her only occasionally.

That night I called to invite her to go out for dinner and a movie. 'What's wrong, are you well,' she asked?

My mother is the type of woman who suspects that a late night call or a surprise invitation is a sign of bad news. 'I thought that it would be pleasant to spend some time with you,' I responded 'just the two of us.' She thought about it for a moment, and then said,'I would like that very much.'That Friday after work, as I drove over to pick her up I was a bit nervous. When I arrived at her house, I noticed that she, too, seemed to be nervous about our date. She waited in the door with her coat on.

She had curled her hair and was wearing the dress that she had worn to celebrate her last wedding anniversary. She smiled from a face that was as radiant as an angel's.

'I told my friends that I was going to go out with my son, and they were impressed,' she said, as she got into the car.. 'They can't wait to hear about our meeting.' We went to a restaurant that, although not elegant, was very nice and cozy. My mother took my arm as if she were the First Lady. After we sat down, I had to read the menu.

Her eyes could only read large print. Half-way through the entrees, I lifted my eyes and saw Mother sitting there staring at me. A nostalgic smile was on her lips..'

It was I who used to have to read the menu when you were small,' she said. 'Then it's time that you relax and let me return the favor,' I responded. During the dinner , we had an agreeable conversation nothing extraordinary but catching up on recent events of each other's life. We talked so much that we missed the movie. As we arrived at her house later, she said, 'I'll go out with you again, but only if you let me invite you.' I agreed.

'How was your dinner date?' asked my wife when I got home. 'Very nice, much more so than I could have imagined,' I answered.

A few days later, my mother died of a massive heart attack. It happened so suddenly that I didn't have a chance to do anything for her. Sometime later, I received an envelope with a copy of a restaurant receipt from the same place Mother and I had dined.

An attached note said: 'I paid this bill in advance. I wasn't sure that I could be there; but, nevertheless, I paid for two plates - one for you and the other for your wife. You will never know what that night meant for me.

'I love you, son'

OK, as you were reading this story what could you see in your mind's eye? Could you see the mother and son having dinner? Did you see them walking arm in arm? Did you see him ring his mother? Did you see the envelop and the receipt it contained?

People see stories. We literally re-experience the story with the person telling it and this act of re-creation make the story our own. We remember what we can see and experience.

OK, what about this.

Stories are memorable because they evoke emotion.
We remember stories because we visualise what's happening and create our own personal version of the story
Three of the most memorable types of stories feature death, sex and the safety of children.

What did you see? If you are like me you didn't see a thing. Dots points and opinions don't create imagery and therefore don't conjure emotions and are mostly forgettable.

The story was posted to PassionHR list 16/3/10 by Mannish Aggarwal

Hat tip to David Zinger's post 23 Employee Engagement Eclectic Resource Zingers (No. 13) for the link to Garr's post.

John Redwood MP: Obama, Neo Cons and the Middle East

Fri, 19 Mar 2010 06:13:41 +0000

I do not regard myself as a Neo Con. As readers will know, I have been sceptical of the wisdom of being in Afghanistan, and a critic of the way Iraq was handled.

However, the Neo Cons do have at least one good point. If the President is going to remain engaged in the Middle East, as he seems to want to do, he needs to show resolve and strength. Dithering, alternating between more diplomacy and more military intervention, whilst wavering over alliances, is not the best way to handle a very volatile situation.

Recently the Vice President went on a visit which passed off relatively well. On return Washington became very critical in public of Israel. Shortly afterwards Mrs Clinton had to issue a statement stressing the closeness of the Israeli relationship to the USA. It was a bad wobble, leaving most people more on edge and dubious about the US position.

The Neo Cons say rightly that any US President, Democrat or Republican, Clinton, Bush or Obama, is going to remain engaged in the Middle East. Each successive President is heir to what his predecessors did, whether he likes it or not. In practise all recent Presidents have followed a similar general policy. This has been broadly supportive of Israel and the moderate Arab states, has sought to export democracy to certain troubled states, and has fought a war against people the US characterises as radical and armed insurgents. From time to time a peace process is offered.

When President Obama came into office, he implied that it would be different. He seemed to want to offer the hand of friendship to people the USA had seen as enemies before. This was popular with many around the world, and with the liberal wing of US politics. One year or more on, and it all looks very different.

After long deliberation, he has intensified the military involvement in Afghanistan. After flirting with a friendlier approach to China, he has agreed to contact with the Dali Lama, inflammatory to the Chinese, and agreed to send weapons to Taiwan, even more inflammatory to them.

The new fulcrum of the Middle east conflicts is the issue of Iran. Is Iran arming herself with nuclear weapons? Should Israel take pre-emptive action? Would the US allow her to do so by standing aside, would the US support her, or try to bring pressure to bear against it? If the US is not going to condone military action or undertake it itself, what is Plan B if diplomacy fails to prevent a nuclear armed Iran emerging?

The President is going to discover that diplomacy works better if difficult countries and forces think there could be resolve and military intervention. If diplomacy fails and leads to military intervention that often proves difficult to guide and to end successfully. It is especially difficult if the President’s heart is not in a military solution, whilst sending troops into action. He who would commit his country’s troops has to give them full backing, and plenty of time and resource to do what he wants them to do. Each expedition has to have realistic aims and enough force to make victory likely. The danger of intervention in the Middle East is that it has too many diverse aims, and is a backdrop to some fluctuating diplomacy.

Copenhagen Cycle Chic: The Family Zoo

Fri, 19 Mar 2010 05:00:00 +0000

At long last, the weather is improving. Goethe's last words were allegedly "Mehr licht..." or "more...

For the full photographic glory and the rest of the text, you know where to go. The Original Cycle Chic awaits.

Myron Ebell Climate: Myron keeps boiling the oil

Fri, 19 Mar 2010 04:56:34 +0000

Myron Ebell is spreading himself thin between Freedom Action Network work where he is pitching in against US healthcare reform (he likes it just the way it is), and wrecking any potential action to save us from the most life threatening effects climate change.

While it is morally acceptable (though sad) for the seriously defunct United States political system to self-inflict unnecessary pain and suffering on its own people through gross medical and financial maladministration, causing irreparable harm to the global environment is another matter.

Myron's expertise with the minutae of Congressional procedures exposes his pleasure in a system that consistently comes out with the wrong answer on easy questions.

Back to his CEI work, where Myron has decided to don his Cambridge University, England tie again:

This is the same one he wore to the Select Committe on Energy Independence in December 2007, as you can see from this picture:

(Although that was shortly after abandoning his tie for the CEI website that September in a picture he now uses for F.A.N.)

So, what has Myron been boiling the oil about this time?

Climategate: Alarmist Scientists Plan a Snow Job

According to recently disclosed e-mails from a National Academies of Science listserv, prominent climate scientists affiliated with the U.S. National Academies of Science have been planning a public campaign to paper over the damaged reputation of global warming alarmism. Their scheme would involve officials at the National Academies and other professional associations producing studies to endorse the researchers’ pre-existing assumptions and create confusion about the revelations of the rapidly expanding "Climategate" scandal...

In my view, the response of these alarmist scientists to the Climategate scientific fraud scandal has little to do with their responsibilities as scientists and everything to do with saving their political position. The e-mails reveal a group of scientists plotting a political strategy to minimize the effects of Climategate in the public debate on global warming.

As we well know, Myron's view is, as always, fossil-fuel-company-serving, and wrong. When he goes out and aggressively kicks someone, he pretends that it is wrong to kick back in any way.

These scientists are not cold-hearted calculating machines, they are human beings who -- as humans -- would quite like the human species to live at least beyond the end of the century.

Myron Ebell, on the other hand, doesn't care how many people he causes to die, if that is what he is paid to facilitate.

Myron has scoured the
">
">
">list-serve email messages for damaging content and hints of a conspiracy.

For a group of people who have been participating in a world-wide conspiracy to take over the energy supply, they do seem to lack any money or PR industry help as they pathetically consider raising money to buy an ad in the New York Times:

I would like to invite all members of the NAS (Ralph - please send this to all sections) - to sign a declaration that there is clear scientific evidence that burning of fossil fuels by humans will will alter the climate. I want that to be on the back page of the NYT and other newspapers in the US, sponsored by the NAS- without any outside contributions - unless they sign a contract making it clear that the NAS will not endorse any private companies. For this - I offer $1000.00 of my personal funds- but I will only donate these funds if 50 members of the NAS come with matching funds.

I mean, this is hopeless. This is disorganized, uncoordinated, unfunded, useless and unproductive.

As Myron knows, from his work on the Exxon and Chevron funded Action Plan in 1998 to train bogus scientists and systematically insert lies into the political system, you need professionals.

The kind of professionals who know about evil, like Bonner&Associates who send false letters in the name of citizens groups purporting to be in favour of corporate policies.

There's no point in paying for New York Times ads, folks. Just get out of your office, find Myron Ebell, and film yourself asking him a few questions about, say, his involvement in that 1998 Exxon conspiracy. Take along the documents. Does he admit he was there? Can he kindly explain to the viewers what he was trying to achieve? What were the names of the five bogus scientists they obtained the budget to hire and train?

We want answers to these very serious questions. Get out and get them.

Cosmic Variance: Highest energy ever

Fri, 19 Mar 2010 04:10:06 +0000

At this very moment the LHC is busy trying to set a new world record. The goal is to achieve beams circulating at 3.5 TeV, bringing collisions between protons to 3.5+3.5=7 TeV center-of-mass energy. This would be the highest particle energy ever accomplished by humans (nature somehow routinely manages to produce cosmic rays at energies 8 orders of magnitude higher!). This news is hot off the press: we had a talk today by Lyn Evans, and he gave us the latest update. He should know what’s going on, since he’s project leader of the LHC. Evans shared some entertaining anecdotes from the last few years of commissioning, including:

They use superfluid helium to cool the superconducting magnets. One of the many weird properties of this stuff is that it has zero viscosity. Which means that, if there’s any sort of hairline fracture anywhere in the 27 kilometer long tunnel, the stuff comes spewing out, and very, very bad things happen. Every component, every joint, every one of the tens of thousands of tiny connections has to be perfect. It is this sort of failure which brought the machine to its knees shortly after commissioning, over a year ago.

The magnets are kept very, very cold; the superfluid helium is at 1.9 Kelvin (-271 Celsius), or a couple of degrees above absolute zero. We’re not talking a little vial in a laboratory being kept at this temperature. We’re talking many thousands of tonnes of magnets, kept just above absolute zero (using 96 tonnes of liquid helium). As things cool down, they naturally contract. The decks on bridges do the same thing, hence those serrated grills at the ends of bridges to absorb the expansion and contraction due to weather (if you’ve ever motorcycled across a bridge, you know exactly what I’m talking about). There are equivalent serrated joints in the LHC beam pipe to ensure that it doesn’t contract and rip open upon cooling (which, needless to say, would be bad). But upon reheating a section of the LHC, it turned out some of these devices left little fibers in the beam tube. Not good. How to find them, without ripping open the entire collider (costing millions of dollars and setting the project back precious months)? They ended up blowing a ping pong ball (with electronics embedded) down the tube, and tracking where it would get stuck. A simple, elegant, cheap solution to fix a multi-billion dollar enterprise.

For a while during the construction they ended up with roughly a billion dollars worth of superconducting magnets being stored in a parking lot at CERN. For reference, this is comparable to the entire GDP of many small countries (Bhutan, Guyana, Burundi, etc.), sitting out in the rain and snow. Big science.

Hopefully sometime in the next few days they’ll be running at 3.5 TeV. Apparently it’s been slow going because the system to prevent catastrophic quenching of the magnets (which is what “broke” the machine previously) is on a hair-trigger, setting off all sorts of false alarms (and when it goes off it quenches the magnets [in a controlled manner]). You can keep track of the progress on the LHC webpage (clicking on the image of the ring gives real-time data on the temperature of the magnets). Although this would be the highest energy ever achieved, it still doesn’t significantly surpass the science reach of Fermilab’s Tevatron, since the latter has run for many years (albeit at a lower energy of 1 TeV+1TeV). Both energy and (integrated) luminosity matter in this game, and the Tevatron has gotten more than 8 inverse fb (femtobarns; one of the best units in all of science [think "there's no way to miss it, it's as big as a barn"]). The LHC is shooting for 1 inverse fb. All being well, in a few months they’ll bump the energy up to 5 Tev on 5 TeV. This should significantly open up the scientific discovery space, and could conceivably kick off the next revolution in particle physics. Exciting times!

xkcd: Time Machine

Fri, 19 Mar 2010 04:00:00 +0000

PW Style: What To Do This Weekend

Fri, 19 Mar 2010 02:49:45 +0000

Hallelujah! Take off your wool socks and turn on the kettle—Spring has sprung and mother nature is just begging you to show your gams. Plenty of crafty things to get you out and roaming the city this weekend…enjoy!

Starting today and lasting all weekend is the Sugarloaf Craft Festival out in Oaks, PA. (The trek is really only a half hour on 76). Over 300 artists making everything from hair swizzle sticks to light switch covers, plus plenty of demonstrations to keep you occupied. Because watching someone spin a pottery wheel will always be interesting. Check out the show venue and artist list here.

Also tonight is the opening of Trick Go’s newest show, Paper Blog, feauturing works from artist Bradford Haubrich. From 6-10pm, roam the store that’s raffling Keds and offering free drinks while you browse Haubrich’s custom t-shirts.

Grasshopper is also hosting their Spring Fever sale on Saturday. As mentioned earlier on the Style blog, the entire store will be 25% off. Additionally, the boutique will be showing off the new lines they’re carrying for Spring, like Numph, a Danish import, and Mink Pink. Also, it’s hosted by ShmittenKitten, so if you’re angsty about your new (or old) boyfriend…

Our friends over at uwishunu spotlighted an event coming up on Saturday at JimmyStyle, where attendees can make their own terraniums with gardener Julie Henderson. The classy little glass gardens will be $20 to make, including all parts.

Lastly, Yelp.com, your (presumably) favorite “Where do I eat?” website, is hosting a Homegrown Philly party at CitySpace starting at 8pm. In an effort to make Philadelphians familiar with their local businesses, retailers across will set up shop, offering attendees (to the FREE event) the chance eat at Supper and Elevation Burger, shop and Sugarcube and Art in the Age, and grab a Victory Beer along the way.

Have a good weekend everyone!

Alistair Campbell: With Hague disabled, Labour team v Tory team even more important

Fri, 19 Mar 2010 02:43:25 +0000

Not had time to read any of the papers, not heard any of the news, but the debate that has suddenly kicked off on my Facebook page re William Hague and Lord Ashcroft tells me that one has some way to run yet. Labour supporters scenting blood, Tories kicking out in all sorts of different directions.

The debate was around my tweet on the subject of a headline in The Guardian - 'Tories rally round beleaguered Hague' - which I suggested it was not exactly the kind of headline you wanted for a key campaigner just before a key campaign.

Before going out to the Leukaemia and Lymphoma Research dinner last night, where I shared the bill with Jeffrey Archer - one of the auction prizes was tea with the two of us at The Wolseley btw and someone paid several thousand for this dubious honour - I saw William Hague on the news talking about his role in the Ashcroft murk.

Hague's straight-forwardness and straight talking is one of his strengths but he looked distinctly uncomfortable. He managed to get away with a clip for the news, but the look on his face suggested to me he would not fancy ten rounds with Jeremy Paxman or a select committee on the subject. The tough questions are not going to go away on this.

It brings me to a different point though. Every campaign has a list of key campaigners and of course Hague, as a former leader and de facto deputy leader of the Tory Party, is one such. The Ashcroft murk could force him to be less active and engaged than has been planned. Cameron is of course THE key campaigner. With the economy central to the campaign, George Osborne is another, and is not very popular with the public or the City. Kenneth Clarke is popular but, as shown by his mis-speak on tax policy in debate with Peter Mandelson yesterday, marginalised. Tory HQ has decided Michael Gove is a secret weapon, but I have yet to decide in which direction he is being targeted. All in all, it is a thin list.

It is why Labour as a team has to be a central part of the election campaign. Alistair Darling has seen his authority and reputation enhanced. The Miliband brothers are both clever and attractive politicians. Alan Johnson has the kind of popular touch DC's public school toffs' party would give half of their inheritance tax cut for. Harriet Harman, Yvette Cooper and Tessa Jowell belie the claim there are no women at GB's top table. Ed Balls, Andy Burnham, Liam Byrne, Jim Murphy, Peter Hain, Jack Straw ... Bob Ainsworth is far more popular with the military than the press pretend. Shaun Woodward understands strategy and understands how to attack the Tories. Peter Mandelson and Douglas Alexander are class acts on the campaigns front.

Of course these elections are about electing individual MPs. But they are also about electing governments and the lack of strength in depth on the Tory side is a real problem for them. Here we are, a few weeks away, and the vast bulk of the team that could soon be running our country could walk down most of its streets without a soul knowing who the hell they are.

They banked on Cameron the one-man-band being enough. They were wrong.

* Buy The Blair Years online and raise cash for Labour http://www.alastaircampbell.org/bookshop.php.

Global Voices (India): Global: Furs And Fashion

Thu, 18 Mar 2010 23:58:43 +0000

If you thought that wearing fur was outdated - what with all those green movements and animal rights activists who put this cruel sense of fashion in its right place with the likes of Cruella de Vil - fashionista's say, think again.

Last month the fashion world went literally “wild” in New York, Paris and Milan during the unveiling of their fall collection. They had models strutting the catwalk in so much fur, it was scary enough to make animal rights activists and environmentalists jump out of their skins.

In this era of global warming and dwindling animal species, one would think that we humans would come to our senses and rethink our actions. Not so, it seems, as there is a whole other world out there - the fashion industry of the west - whose endorsement and use of fur and exotic animal products simply encourages the mass slaughter of many endangered species.

A dealer's bounty at the Quartzite annual show for art and crafts. Image by Flickr user cobalt123. Used under a Creative Commons License

To name a few, the Chiru or Tibetan antelope, whose underbelly fur is used to make “Shatoosh” the world's most expensive shawls, also known as “shawls of death”. It takes 3 dead antelopes, to make one shawl, so fine it can fit through a finger ring, and each one can cost between $5000 to $20,000 in the international market. Even babies, and mother's who have just delivered, are not spared.

According to WWF, the population of this species has declined by over 50 percent in the last 20 years and the Tibetan Plateau Project says that it was the fashion-driven demand for Shatoosh in the U.S that resulted in as many as 20,000 antelopes being slaughtered. It is alarming to know that the animal could become extinct in the next three years at this rate.

In a blog run by Uma and Hurree called Animal Rights India, they argue how farming of Chiru's - like Eider ducks in Iceland for eider, will not make a difference to the dwindling numbers.

But hello: Eider ducks are now a protected species, and farmers in iceland use a technique of collecting the down without harming the bird. And no, it is not possible to obtain the shahtoosh wool without killing the chiru.

They go on to say:

It's impossible to justify killing three beautiful wild animals every time you want to push a length of shawl through a ring, blah blah. And to farm them just to kill them for shawls?

Raja Basu, another blogger said:

The Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) – which controls the trade in endangered species products – has completely banned international trade in Tibetan antelope products (including Shahtoosh). It is illegal to import Shahtoosh into many countries, including the USA (ironically, Shahtoosh products are so popular in the US fashion industry). Unfortunately, despite such laws being in place, the Shahtoosh trade is going on in full swing. This is because it is not enough to have laws. There must also be a strong public protest across the board against every person who is by any means related to the Shahtoosh trade. There should be a widespread public sensitization campaign to educate the common people.

Bloggers in the west, however, were giving this some thought and debated:

Rachel Menashy wrote on her blog:

1. People eat rabbits at restaurants. These rabbits have been killed to provide ‘dinner' for people like us (I would like to point out that I have never eaten rabbit and by ‘us' I mean people who eat in restaurants). Why is it right that rabbits can feature on a menu in a restaurant but wrong to wear a fur coat? These rabbits inevitably are skinned in preparation to be cooked - what else should we do with the fur?

2. Is it more acceptable if the coat is Vintage? Why?

3. Is rabbit fur better/worse than Mink? Some argue that rabbit fur is not as bad because rabbits are not in danger of becoming extinct, unlike mink which is. Then again, people keep rabbits as pets so is it more cruel to wear rabbit than mink?

4. If a fur coat is hanging on a rail at a store and one customer refuses to buy it, somebody else will…

5. Should role models such as Kate Moss be seen wearing fur? Kate's style is copied by millions of girls (and women) - is she giving a bad impression?

To which Denise replied:

1. I would personally be more likely to wear rather than eat rabbit. The eating of it seems less acceptable somehow.
2.Vintage coats have been around for a while and should be recycled - which I'm definitely into.
3. Mink are feral creatures and even though their fur is more desirable, mink are not aiming for extinction, so why not wear it?
4. Agreed.
5. I don't mind fur being worn by anyone, and Kate Moss is just showing that this is acceptable. Too many people are on the “fur is bad” bandwagon. I bet most of these people eat meat and wear leather, so what's the difference?

But there is a difference as Barry Williams responded to a thread: Wearing Fur is not immoral on www.helium.com

If we go around killing cattle for leather, alligators for shoes, deer for chamois and see nothing morally wrong in that , why it is immoral to wear fur. What I see as immoral is the killing of animals simply for the fur alone. It really is such a waste, isn't it? Apart from the leather we obtain from cattle not much of the animal is wasted. Beef cattle supply our meat.

There are a multitude of arguments out there, but in the meantime the Humane Society for the United States, says that Canada will slaughter 388, 200 harp, grey and hooded seals this year, an increase of 50,000 from 2009. This, because of the overall demand for fur. The site of the Fur Council of Canada shows styles and celebrities modelling various furs in what it describes as a fashion trend of 2010.

And unfortunately in the U.S, and much of the west where Global Fashion trends are set, laws don't seem to be enough to curb their greed. According to the International Fur Trade Federation Blog:

..the shift in the attitude towards fur can be attributed to “changes within the fur trade, such as the introduction of the new Origin Assured initiative, which guarantees that fur bearing the label comes from a country with animal welfare regulations”. This shows that the fur trade efforts and initiatives to challenge the outdated ideas of our industry have been noticed. We are a transparent and well-regulated industry that supports high animal welfare standards and we welcome the confidence and support shown by the fashion designers as well as the European Commission, who recently recognised the importance of the Origin Assured label.

Fashion designers who have been courted by Furriers say they are “confident using fur after examining the chain of production and finding it humane.” But could this confidence be based on a lack of investigation or knowledge? According to an endangered species handbook :

The New York luxury department store, Bergdorf Goodman, advertised shahtoosh in 1995 as a “royal and rare” fabric, making incorrect statements about the wool having been obtained from the Mountain Ibex goat of Tibet which “sheds its down undercoat by scratching itself against low trees and bushes” from where it is gathered by local shepherds (Schaller 1998)

And if the clubbing of baby seals and mass slaughtering of Chiras, mothers and babies, is “humane” then its sad to think of what “humane” means anymore, and what we are willing to condone in the name of “Fashion”.

HI: elevation.

Thu, 18 Mar 2010 22:38:56 +0000

elevation for the house.

The Sartorialist: On the Street.....Before Lanvin, Paris

Thu, 18 Mar 2010 22:38:00 +0000

Global Voices (India): India: Masters, Not Representatives

Thu, 18 Mar 2010 22:34:25 +0000

Amit Verma at India Uncut comments on the news that garlands of thousand-rupee notes were presented to a political leader in India: “this kind of behaviour demonstrates, yet again, how our politicians believe that they are our rulers, and not our servants.”

HI: glow robe.

Thu, 18 Mar 2010 22:31:40 +0000

(after j. dine).

Climate Progress: One more reason that recent U.S. polling on global warming is down slightly

Thu, 18 Mar 2010 21:56:07 +0000

A large majority of Americans continue to understand that global warming is real. In fact, warming of the climate system in recent decades is “unequivocal,” according to comprehensive analysis of observations around the globe by the world’s leading climate scientists.

Most of the decline in understanding seen in recent polls comes from conservatives and conservative-leaning independents, who are incessantly hammered with the myth of “global cooling” in the conservative and mainstream media.

And, in a rather unfortunate coincidence, we’ve seen below average temperatures in parts of the United States over the last two years. That’s particularly true during this uber-warm winter.

Accuweather’s Joe Bastardi admitted earlier this month: “Earth continues warmest winter since satellite measurements started.” NASA’s recently released data confirms that December through February was the second warmest globally (after winter 2006/2007) since records began in 1880. NASA also released a figure showing where it was warm and where it was cold around the globe. Guess where it was cold:

Yes, during a blistering Dec-Feb planet-wide, it just happened to be relatively cool once again in the country with the biggest cumulative greenhouse gas emissions and with a political system unable to overcome a do-nothing minority of anti-science ideologues. Uber-meteorologist Jeff Masters goes through the data in his recent post, “An upside-down winter: coldest in 25 years in U.S., warmest on record in Canada.”

Stanford communications expert Jon Krosnick notes that “One factor that can influence opinion is the perception of local changes in the weather.” And since “June-August 2009 summer temperature for the contiguous United States was below average – the 34th coolest on record“:

As a result, when the November 2009 survey asked if average world temperatures were higher or lower in the last three years than in previous years, only 43 percent said higher, compared to 58 percent in the 2008 survey, which was conducted in the summertime.

As for the local weather’s impact on even more recent polling, consider that, as Nick Sundt blogged recently:

Winter 2009-2010 was only the second time in 16 years (since the cold winter of 1993-4) that the U.S. has had a winter colder than the long-term mean. The only other colder than normal winter during the 16 year period was the winter of 2000-2001. The trend in the U.S. is towards warmer winters, with temperatures increasing an average of 0.17oF per decade between 1880 and 2010.

It’s unfortunate that public opinion on this crucial issue in the most recalcitrant country is significantly influenced by the temperature over about only 2% of the planet. Now it is very likely to get very hot here on our current path of unrestricted emissions (see “Our hellish future: Definitive NOAA-led report on U.S. climate impacts warns of scorching 9 to 11°F warming over most of inland U.S. by 2090 with Kansas above 90°F some 120 days a year — and that isn’t the worst case, it’s business as usual!“).

But obviously the annual and seasonal temperature trends of the contiguous United States are far more erratic than that of the planet as a whole, and that makes public opinion here — which is already subjected to the world’s most intense disinformation campaign and generally poor media coverage — far more hard to predict. The only good news is that in spite of the trendline on understanding of global warming, every major recent poll shows the public still strongly favors the transition to clean energy.

The Copenhagen Bicycle Culture Blog: Sit Up Straight, Sydney

Thu, 18 Mar 2010 21:53:57 +0000

Here's a cartoon that accompanied an article in the Sydney Morning Herald:

"Sydney will never be a bicycle-friendly city until it develops a ''second cycling culture'' which encourages relaxed European-style riding without the compulsory use of helmets, experts have warned."

John Pucher does most of the talking in the interview but renowned documentarist turned cycling blogger Mike Rubbo is quoted as well.

It's an interesting angle in the article. Mr Rubbo has gotten hold of the upright bike angle in order to differentiate what I call Citizen Cyclists from sports enthusiasts. Indeed, his blog is named Sit-Up Cycle.

In every city on the planet where cycling is mainstream transport, the majority of the people you see resemble the chap on the right, and on bikes like that. Hilly cities, flat cities, cold cities, hot cities, established bicycle-friendly cities and developing bicycle-friendly cities.

Using this bicycle design angle is fresh. It is, after all, the most popular bicycle design on the planet. Should we guess by 10 to 1? It's worked for more than a century in every country and across every topography.

The sports bike manufacturers have had free reign regarding marketing for a few decades in many countries. They may have encouraged a few people to join cycling clubs, take up recreational cycling on the weekends and maybe even inspired some cycle sport stars who we love to watch in Le Tour or the Giro. Great but hardly mainstream. Hardly re-democratizing the bicycle and re-establishing it as transport in any great numbers.

So why not focus on bicycle design in order to sell urban cycling to the masses? Upright bikes may be exotic to many in countries like Australia now, but they used to be a main feature on the urban landscape. Maybe it's time to let the 'other' bike brands have a go. The Batavus', Velorbis', Pashley's, et al. Let a whole new demographic realise that they don't have to invest in space age bicycles and all the gear. Tell them, "Um... you don't actually have to look like a 'cyclist' to ride a bike..." And pssst... it's safer sitting upright...

They couldn't do worse for selling cycling than decades of sports branding. I'll bet they'll get a lot further, a lot quicker. The results will be brilliant for society. The sports industry won't give up without a fight, of course, but a little competition never hurt. We're talking about a 'second cycling culture' after all, not a replacement cycling culture.

Although judging by many of the comments under the article, there is an uphill battle. Then again, it's the City That Hates Bikes...

round the merseyrail we go: Map!: The Undiscovered Country

Thu, 18 Mar 2010 21:14:17 +0000

A couple of people have got in touch with me via Twitter to alert me to a brand new permutation of the Merseyrail map: a line diagram above the windows in the trains. For years now, the trains have featured poster sized representations of the network on the wall. I'm guessing that someone at Rail House twigged that if you got rid of them, you'd have a few extra spots for advertising, and the line diagram was born.

It should, of course, be noted that the line diagram is nothing new or innovative. London Transport - and indeed most metros across the world - have been doing them for years. They're at their best when you have a line like the Jubilee or Victoria, one straight line without any branches. Once you start getting variation, it gets complex, and indeed the Tube completely cops out of trying to show the whole of the District Line on one diagram, and splits the Wimbleware branch off onto a diagram of its own.

Merseyrail has an additional problem, in that the trains used are not exclusively favouring one line or the other. They may tend towards the Northern or the Wirral, but there tends to be a lot of interworking, so a line diagram will by necessity have to show both of them.

As is usual with this sort of thing, my apologies for only being able to offer you photos snapped in the flesh. Just click the smaller version for a bigger one and then squint a bit.

At first glance, they've done an excellent job in just fitting the whole thing in. Given the wide geographic spread of the network - think of the difference between Southport in the north and Chester in the south, or West Kirby in the east to Hunts Cross in the west - the fact that they managed to squeeze it into a horizontal stripe should be applauded. Though it feels counter-intuitive to have Chester and West Kirby lined up at the edge beside one another, it somehow works. And the use of the Mersey in the centre as a dividing line is a great visual marker.

But of course, I have to criticise. I'm sorry. My biggest bugbear is the incorporation of the City Line. As the key itself notes, only selected stations are shown. The question must therefore be asked - what's the point? The City Line makes an uncomfortable fit on the map, with a really unnecessary curve between Lime Street and Edge Hill so that it can slot in next to the Northern Line, and a very nasty split at South Parkway. A simple red marker indicating that interchange with the City Line was available would have been better. The choice of stations seems off, too - the points where the lines split, fair enough, and St Helens Central earns its place as a major destination, but Garswood? Hough Green over, say, Widnes? And Warrington and Wigan are both represented by one station, which isn't true.

That odd little curve after Meols Cop annoys me too.

Crossing to the Wirral side, and things are a bit better. I really like the way that Chester has been lined up with Shotton and the Borderlands Line - that's a nifty bit of design. My main gripe here is that the Wirral itself isn't shown. If you follow this map, you have no idea that West Kirby or New Brighton are by the sea. Personally I'd have sent the West Kirby up towards the sea at the end, like New Brighton, and placed a blue border top and bottom so that the Wirral Peninsula was marked out clearly. It would just be a pleasing visual (though admittedly there's no indication that Southport's near the coast, either). And why are all the stations on the Borderlands Line shown, when some (Hawarden Bridge) are barely served, and others (Upton, Heswall) are request stops? This wouldn't be an issue if, say, the Kirkby-Wigan line wasn't shown as having only one station, or the zero intermediate stops between Preston and Ormskirk. Is this a way of conditioning us to see the Borderlands as a branch of the Wirral Line?

General notes: they still haven't found a way to show the Merseytravel/TrioPlus area properly. It still has a raggedy, rough area, and the colour difference between the Ormskirk/Chester/Ellesmere Port branches and the rest is too stark for me. It's still a FUCKING SQUARE in the city centre, and I will go to my grave cursing that.

The biggest change is of course the addition of tourist attractions, shopping centres and transport interchanges in Birkenhead and Liverpool. I have to admit I'm a purist when it comes to this sort of thing. I hate the New York subway's purely geographic map, and I think that the Madrid Metro map, while a thing of beauty in the way it lays out the different lines, would be a lot better if they didn't show the different parks. Imagine if the London Underground map suddenly featured the various Royal Parks - squeezing Regent's Park, at least, into the map would result in a horrible distortion.

The Merseyrail diagrams haven't gone that far (they've resisted the urge to mark Birkenhead or Sefton Parks) but there are blobs in the Liverpool city centre. My issue with these is the somewhat haphazard placing: for example, positioning the Met Quarter and Cavern Walks closer to Central than Moorfields, or Chinatown closer to Lime Street. I'd have preferred a boxout, telling you to where to alight for each attraction, perhaps in the same way that the Underground line diagrams show airport and National Rail connections. It would also help with crowd management - the drivers on Wirral Line trains already suggest alighting at James Street for Liverpool ONE, but its positioning within the "Loop" on the diagram means that it looks miles away. Removing its "physical" position on the map, and simply showing it as accessible from James Street would make people use that station a lot more than Central.

Bus stations and ferry termini are a good, logical addition, though I'd question just marking the Beatles Story at the Pier Head and not the frigging Liver Building. I mean, come on. I'd have marked the triangular ferry route in the river (which would have sneakily enabled you to shove Wallasey and Spaceport in there, too). The Soccerbus at Sandhills is marked, but not at Birkenhead Central (poor Tranmere). And it's great marking the MtoGos, but how about keeping it up to date - Liverpool Central's has been open since November, and Hooton's just got one, but neither is marked on the diagram.

It's first generation stuff, so I'm willing to forgive it. If it were a bit tighter, a bit more consistent, and the tourist/transport features weren't so clumsy, I'd like it a lot more. It's certainly a valuable addition to the family of maps, and, as I said, it frees up all that space for more adverts. Which is of course great.

scyfilove.com (Liverpool): New Doctor Who series press launch in Cardiff

Thu, 18 Mar 2010 21:03:15 +0000

Two BBC video interviews and a sneaky pic at The Eleventh Hour. Hurry up April 3!

New Doctor Who series press launch in Cardiff has just flown in from scyfilove.com - click through for the rest of the good stuff

PW Style: Oma Vintage Spring Sale

Thu, 18 Mar 2010 20:49:23 +0000

Here’s the deal, kittens. You already know this, but: It’s fucking be-yoo-tiful outside right now and it’s staying this way through the weekend.

But come Tuesday, it’s going to be chilly-willy again.

If you can’t bear the thought of wearing your winter coat one more day this year, why not splurge and invest in something new for next winter? Sure, it’s a little early, but every smart shopper knows now is the time to stock up cheaply.

NoLibs boutique Oma Vintage is knocking 20 percent off the price of all coats and heavy sweaters to make way for lightweight wearables. Stop by soon and be prepared for Mother Nature’s spring cockblock.

Climate Progress: Monbiot: There is no simple way to battle public hostility to climate research. As the psychologists show, facts barely sway us anyway.

Thu, 18 Mar 2010 20:45:22 +0000

There is one question that no one who denies manmade climate change wants to answer: what would it take to persuade you? In most cases the answer seems to be nothing. No level of evidence can shake the growing belief that climate science is a giant conspiracy codded up by boffins and governments to tax and control us.

That’s UK Guardian columnist George Monbiot. I don’t agree with everything he says — and I don’t think the primary goal should be to persuade the unpersuadable.

But I am trying to bring you a variety of views on this central problem of climate science messaging, and this is a pretty good piece, which I excerpt below:

The new study by the Met Office, which paints an even grimmer picture than the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, will do nothing to change this view.

The attack on climate scientists is now widening to an all-out war on science. Writing recently for the Telegraph, the columnist Gerald Warner dismissed scientists as “white-coated prima donnas and narcissists … pointy-heads in lab coats [who] have reassumed the role of mad cranks … The public is no longer in awe of scientists. Like squabbling evangelical churches in the 19th century, they can form as many schismatic sects as they like, nobody is listening to them any more.”

Views like this can be explained partly as the revenge of the humanities students. There is scarcely an editor or executive in any major media company – and precious few journalists – with a science degree, yet everyone knows that the anoraks are taking over the world. But the problem is compounded by complexity. Arthur C Clarke remarked that “any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic”. He might have added that any sufficiently advanced expertise is indistinguishable from gobbledegook. Scientific specialisation is now so extreme that even people studying neighbouring subjects within the same discipline can no longer understand each other. The detail of modern science is incomprehensible to almost everyone, which means that we have to take what scientists say on trust. Yet science tells us to trust nothing, to believe only what can be demonstrated. This contradiction is fatal to public confidence.

Yes, this conundrum lies at the heart of much of the messaging problem.

Distrust has been multiplied by the publishers of scientific journals, whose monopolistic practices make the supermarkets look like angels, and which are long overdue for a referral to the Competition Commission. They pay nothing for most of the material they publish, yet, unless you are attached to an academic institute, they’ll charge you £20 or more for access to a single article. In some cases they charge libraries tens of thousands for an annual subscription. If scientists want people at least to try to understand their work, they should raise a full-scale revolt against the journals that publish them. It is no longer acceptable for the guardians of knowledge to behave like 19th-century gamekeepers, chasing the proles out of the grand estates.

But there’s a deeper suspicion here as well. Popular mythology – from Faust through Frankenstein to Dr No – casts scientists as sinister schemers, harnessing the dark arts to further their diabolical powers. Sometimes this isn’t far from the truth. Some use their genius to weaponise anthrax for the US and Russian governments. Some isolate terminator genes for biotech companies, to prevent farmers from saving their own seed. Some lend their names to articles ghostwritten by pharmaceutical companies, which mislead doctors about the drugs they sell. Until there is a global code of practice or a Hippocratic oath binding scientists to do no harm, the reputation of science will be dragged through the dirt by researchers who devise new means of hurting us.

Yesterday in the Guardian Peter Preston called for a prophet to lead us out of the wilderness. “We need one passionate, persuasive scientist who can connect and convince … We need to be taught to believe by a true believer.” Would it work? No. Look at the hatred and derision the passionate and persuasive Al Gore attracts. The problem is not only that most climate scientists can speak no recognisable human language, but also the expectation that people are amenable to persuasion.

Well, actually people are amenable to persuasion. But there’s no possibility of a “prophet” because one of the major strategies of the anti-science ideologues is to attack the credibility of anyone who is any good at articulating the science: Hansen, Santer, Mann, Schneider, and on and on.

In 2008 the Washington Post summarised recent psychological research on misinformation. This shows that in some cases debunking a false story can increase the number of people who believe it. In one study, 34% of conservatives who were told about the Bush government’s claims that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction were inclined to believe them. But among those who were shown that the government’s claims were later comprehensively refuted by the Duelfer report, 64% ended up believing that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction.

Fundamentally, people negatives are weak (”Don’t think of an elephant”), so one has to be very careful in messaging not to repeat the misinformation or at least to replace it with something more memorable.

There’s a possible explanation in an article published by Nature in January. It shows that people tend to “take their cue about what they should feel, and hence believe, from the cheers and boos of the home crowd”. Those who see themselves as individualists and those who respect authority, for instance, “tend to dismiss evidence of environmental risks, because the widespread acceptance of such evidence would lead to restrictions on commerce and industry, activities they admire”. Those with more egalitarian values are “more inclined to believe that such activities pose unacceptable risks and should be restricted”.

These divisions, researchers have found, are better at explaining different responses to information than any other factor. Our ideological filters encourage us to interpret new evidence in ways that reinforce our beliefs. “As a result, groups with opposing values often become more polarised, not less, when exposed to scientifically sound information.” The conservatives in the Iraq experiment might have reacted against something they associated with the Duelfer report, rather than the information it contained.

That’s why it will be impossible to move conservatives until conservative political and intellectual leaders and conservative media outlets stop repeating disinformation endlessly.

That said, I don’t think one should spend a lot of time trying to persuade the unpersuadable — I certainly try to minimize the amount of time I waste on that here.

Perhaps we have to accept that there is no simple solution to public disbelief in science. The battle over climate change suggests that the more clearly you spell the problem out, the more you turn people away. If they don’t want to know, nothing and no one will reach them. There goes my life’s work.

The highlighted statement is a commonly held view but has no basis in fact. Ironically, much of the environmental and progressive political community started downplaying any talk of global warming just as the disinformers ramped it up.

People want to know the essential facts, but the main intermediary in disseminating information to public, the media, simply isn’t distinguishing between what’s essential and what’s nonessential, what’s information and what disinformation.

onlineSpin: The Power of 'No'

Thu, 18 Mar 2010 20:30:34 +0000

Simple words can be very powerful. One of the most important tools a worker in the media and marketing world has is the power to say "no." Learning how and when to use the word is a vital lesson. This is true whether you are in sales, client service or product development. It's particularly true in start-up companies, where resources are scarce, historical guidance is short, and making too many promises is devastatingly more dangerous than making too few.

The Baseline Scenario: jamesykwak

Thu, 18 Mar 2010 20:12:37 +0000

By James Kwak

So, we have a book that goes on sale a week from Tuesday (although you can pre-order it now). We created another blog for book-specific news, in order to avoid cluttering this blog with too much book stuff. But we are going to provide occasional updates (like this one) here with a few highlights.

In the last week, we got a friendly review by Arnold Kling, we learned that the books do actually exist, and we put up a page with some in-person events in case you’re wondering if we look like our photos. We also put up our first factual correction, having to do with the 10 percent cap on deposits. Note that we are interested in correcting errors of fact — we put a lot of effort into getting the facts right, including hiring our own professional fact-checkers (that’s another blog post for another time). If you think we made an error of interpretation (or an error of theory) . . . well, we’re happy to think about it, but don’t expect a correction.

Rosie Niven: Share/Bookmark

Thu, 18 Mar 2010 19:06:52 +0000

The Scottish Saltire with the Northumbrian flag at Carter Bar Originally uploaded by neonwilderness. Yesterday, revellers without even the most tenuous Irish connection packed into pubs across Britain to toast Ireland’s patron saint. The popularity of St Patrick’s day celebrations (which from what I hear only really took off in Dublin after Irish visitors to [...]

Climate Progress: Exclusive: Chief sponsor of landmark climate manipulation conference maintains close financial ties to controversial geo-engineering company - Goodell: "Is this conference about advancing the science and governance of geoengineering or about advancing and raising the profile of the Climate Response Fund?"

Thu, 18 Mar 2010 18:48:24 +0000

I am not comfortable with the the idea that a meeting set up to create guidelines governing geoengineering field tests might be used to help raise funds for geoengineering field tests, without the informed consent of meeting participants. I am also concerned with possible conflicts of interest related to the profit motive.

That’s from an e-mail that climatologist and geo-engineering expert Ken Caldeira sent me this week.

I had heard last week that Caldeira was not going to the star-studded “Asilomar International Conference on Climate Intervention Technologies” — the “Woodstock” of geo-engineering. I asked him why. I reprint his full email below, along with concerns raised to me by geo-engineering expert David Keith.

Frankly, I think all of the conference attendees (and they include some of the biggest names in climate, full list here) need to ask themselves whether they are helping to legitimize — and thereby ultimately helping to raise funds for — a nonprofit that will not unequivocally forswear funding geo-engineering experiments, a nonprofit that is closely tied to the financing efforts of a for-profit company that has already started pursuing dubious geo-engineering schemes.

This Asilomar conference, which begins next week, proclaims its lofty goal “to develop norms and guidelines for controlled experimentation on climate engineering or intervention techniques.” That’s one reason why, as journalist Jeff Goodell put it to me, it “needs to be purer than pure.”

My Monday post pointed out that it appeared to fail that test because its Sole “Strategic Partner” is Australia’s “dirty coal” state of Victoria. Goodell, author of the forthcoming book, How to Cool the Planet, said of that sponsorship, “I think it looks awful.”

But a far bigger issue, according to many leading experts I spoke to, is that the “developer” of the entire conference is the Climate Response Fund, which has close ties to a very controversial geo-engineering firm, Climos. As Science magazine’s Eli Kintisch reported in November:

Critics of the Response Fund and its conference worry about its ties to Climos, a geoengineering startup company started in 2005 by entrepreneur Dan Whaley, Leinen’s son. With Leinen as its chief scientific officer, Climos sought to perform ocean iron fertilization experiments and sell carbon credits it could show it earned.

Facing international opposition to the idea of selling credits for the controversial technique, the firm decided last year to morph into an ocean logistics company, with scientists doing the ocean experiments funded by charity, presumably through Leinen’s nonprofit, or other means. Whaley said he helped conceive of and launch the nonprofit, introducing Leinen to its fundraiser, Danielle Guttman. “Since then I’ve had no role,” he said of the Response Fund. Leinen said she no longer had “any financial interest” in the company, and Whaley agreed.

The situation is a tad more complicated than that. Climos and the Climate Response Fund still have a very close financial relationship, as we will see. Also, if Climos is no longer pursuing research into ocean fertilization, you’d never know that from its FAQ or the rest of its website, for that matter. The Science story continues:

Since geoengineering involves techniques that could have global repercussions, say experts, it’s particularly important that any discussions about regulating the new technologies avoid the appearance of possible commercial interests or conflicts. These issues are particularly acute with commercial ocean fertilization.

“It would be better for people with less of an appearance of a conflict of interest [to] play this role,” said Ken Caldeira of the Carnegie Institution for Science in Stanford, California, when discussing the Response Fund’s role. “There’s a perception that you’ve got a fox in the henhouse—for-profit companies or their nonprofit surrogates looking at governance of geoengineering.” Physicist David Keith of the University of Calgary in Canada “welcomes” the effort but called Leinen’s nonprofit “nontransparent and appears to be closely tied to Climos, which was conceived to do ocean fertilization for profit.

Goodell told me that he thinks the meeting could be an important turning point in thrashing out key issues of governance. But Goodell posed to me the key question: “Is this conference about advancing the science and governance of geoengineering or about advancing and raising the profile of the Climate Response Fund? That’s what a lot of the scientists I talked to are worried about.”

Goodell who interviewed many of the leading geo-engineering players for his book told me that Caldeira and Keith “have thought about the ethical issues of geo-engineering longer than most,” so their concerns “have to be taken seriously.” I have new comments from both of them below, but first let’s look closer at Climos.

One of the few remaining non-aerosol strategies still taken seriously by some is ocean fertilization, yet a recent Nature article argued that strategy for geoengineering “should be abandoned.”

The idea of selling carbon credits — i.e. offsets — to fund such projects was truly dreadful, as I discussed by in 2007 (see “Rule Three of Offsets: No Geo-engineering“). It was such a dubious idea that 18 leading experts from 13 countries, who comprise the Scientific Steering Committee of the Surface Ocean–Lower Atmosphere Study (SOLAS)–a leadin group studying the ocean-atmosphere system–went to the trouble of issuing a “Position Statement on Large-Scale Ocean Fertilisation”:

Given our present lack of knowledge, the judgement of the SOLAS SSC is that ocean fertilisation will be ineffective and potentially deleterious, and should not be used as a strategy for offsetting CO2 emissions.

Ouch.

Indeed, a press release from the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences about a brand new study notes:

A design scheme to engineer microalgae blooms in the world’s oceans to reduce atmospheric CO2 levels could contaminate the oceans with a neurotoxin, according to a study. Charles Trick and colleagues report that fertilizing the ocean with iron, a strategy proposed to boost the number of CO2-consuming organisms living in the ocean’s surface waters, would likely favor the growth of Pseudo nitzschia, a genus of phytoplankton that produces a component of the neurotoxin that causes Amnesic Shellfish Poisoning. The naturally occurring toxin could potentially cause human health risks if fish that feed on the algae, such as anchovies and sardines, were consumed, and may harm marine mammals and seabirds that feed on these fishes.

This I suspect we’ll be the kind of thing will be reading more about — the unanticipated negative consequences of geo-engineering schemes. Indeed, it’s easy to like geo-engineering when you don’t know anything about it. Then it’s just a magic panacea.

Certainly no company should have been proposing to do large-scale iron fertilization experiments funded by selling carbon offsets before there was far more data about the safety of such an approach and before their were established norms and guidelines. As Dr. Keith put it in an email to me:

“Driving iron fertilization by the carbon offset market combines two marginal ideas that are both subject to gaming, its among worst ways one could imagine to govern geoengineering.”

So having Climos set up and bankroll the Climate Response Fund, which in turn has set up and helped bankroll this landmark geo-engineering conference on governance is just a bad idea. Keith emailed me:

Given the diversity of views around geoengineering, such as the sense that links to experimentation and commercialization with solar radiation management technologies set a very dangerous precedent, it’s important that the meeting set the right precedent by being as divorced from commercial interests as possible. As the sole sponsor for the meeting (as I understand it) I would like to see the Climate Response Fund make a formal and unequivocal statement that they will not fund experiments nor will they fund any for-profit organization with a substantial interest in geoengineering technologies.

I haven’t been able to get such an unequivocal statement. But first, let me reprint Caldeira’s full email in response to my question about why he wasn’t going to this historic conference:

I have learned that the Asilomar geoengineering meeting is expected to play an important role in legitimizing and helping raise funds for Margaret Leinen’s Climate Response Fund.

I have not seen any statement from Margaret Leinen or her Fund saying that the Fund will not support geoengineering field tests nor have I seen a statement saying that the Fund would not directly or indirectly transfer resources to for-profit companies like Climos.

I am not comfortable with the the idea that a meeting set up to create guidelines governing geoengineering field tests might be used to help raise funds for geoengineering field tests, without the informed consent of meeting participants. I am also concerned with possible conflicts of interest related to the profit motive.

Guidelines governing such tests should be developed as a product of an ongoing process involving established professional societies and organizations, established major non-profit institutions, intergovernmental institutions, or others who do not have an apparent stake in specific outcomes.

Margaret Leinen can obviate my concerns by stating clearly (1) that the Fund will not support geoengineering field tests and (2) that the Fund would not directly or indirectly transfer resources to for-profit geoengineering companies like Climos (or other for-profit companies with significant financial participation by members of Margaret Leinen’s family).

Without such statements, I cannot be confident that I am not being used without my consent for purposes of which I do not approve. Thus, I cannot attend the meeting.

I am also busy and have plenty of other things I need to do.

1. Funds made available by Bill Gates support several post-doctoral researchers in my lab, as well as access to computational facilities. Some, but far from all, of this research was geoengineering-related. (I attach the most recent paper supported by these funds, showing that about 1/4 of Chinese CO2 emissions support consumption, primarily in the developed world.)

2. David Keith and I have used some of these funds to support meetings at which geoengineering was discussed. The flow of money was uniformly out and not in. All of the participants at these meetings were fully informed of their nature. No funds were ever raised in activities surrounding these meeting.

3. I am listed as an inventor on patents related to vertically pumping water in the ocean and related to storing carbon dioxide in the ocean by dissolving carbonate minerals. I have publicly stated that if any of these patents are used for climate modification purposes, I will donate my share of the proceeds to non-profit charities and NGOs.

When some of these concerns were first brought to my attention late last week, I emailed Dr. Leinen. Based on my interviews, there is some disagreement about whether a dinner immediately after the conference was ever going to be used for fundraising or not. But Leinen assures me in an email that it “is not, nor was it ever intended to be a fundraising dinner.”

I also asked her the question that Caldeira had raised with me, “Will the Climate Response Fund assert that it will not fund geoengineering field tests?“ At the time, the CRF had basically a one-page website, but Sunday night they put in place a comprehensive website. Dr. Leinen directed me to the “About Us” tab, which lists all of their goals and ends:

CRF is dedicated to this work and has no plans for funding field experiments.

As someone who lives in Washington DC and follows politics closely, the phrase “no plans” leaped out at me. For instance, FoxNews reported in May 2002, “The United States has no plans to invade Iraq or any other country, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said Friday.” Doh!

Since CRF is based in Alexandria, VA (i.e. inside the DC beltway), I asked Dr. Leinen:

Many people have stressed to me the need to separate issues of governance from support/funding for actual tests. The optics issue is, according to some, especially significant for CRF given your personal connection to Climos.

The phrase on the website: CRF “has no plans for funding field experiments” is not a very definitive statement, at least in Washington DC, where politicians are constantly asserting they have “no plans” to do things that they in fact end up doing.

Q: Will the Climate Response Fund simply assert without hedges that it will not fund geoengineering field tests now or in the future?

Her full reply:

Dear Dr. Romm,

None of us has a crystal ball for the future. But I think I understand the thrust of your question and want to respond fairly and not with wording that you would interpret as a “DC statement”. This requires thinking about whether there were any future conditions under which CRF would consider changing out plans.

Geoengineering field experiments are not in our current strategic plan. Our focus is on the norms and guidelines for research. Others are also focused on governance and see the norms and guidelines as an element of that
governance. If in the future norms, guidelines and national/international governance were in place that made geoengineering field research acceptable and the scientific research community called on CRF to serve as a research funding entity, we might consider changing our plans.

Margaret Leinen

That is obviously not an unequivocal statement and disappointing to those who wanted a very bright line

Just yesterday, I was sent information that will be even more disappointing to those who wanted a bright line between nonprofit work to establish norms and guidelines for geo-engineering governance and for-profit work into geo-engineering strategies. The November Science article leaves the distinct impression that there is no financial connection between CRF (run by Leinen) and Climos (founded by Leinen’s son, Dan Whaley, with Leinen as its chief scientific officer):

Whaley said he helped conceive of and launch the nonprofit, introducing Leinen to its fundraiser, Danielle Guttman. “Since then I’ve had no role,” he said of the Response Fund. Leinen said she no longer had “any financial interest” in the company, and Whaley agreed.

But yesterday I was sent the “Conference Attendee Biographies” list and who is on the list under “CLIMATE RESPONSE FUND and CLIMATE INSTITUTE STAFF”:

Bill Kohrs
VP. Finance and Administration
Bio: Financial advisor to Climate Response Fund

Who is Bill Kohrs?

You’ll find his bio on the Climos website:

Bill Kohrs holds the position of VP Finance and Administration and Head of Operations for Climos, Inc.

So the VP for Finance at Climos is The financial advisor to CRF. Again, here is what Climos does, according to its website:

We are in active collaboration on the scientific, technical and regulatory steps necessary to bring a next generation Ocean Iron Fertilization (OIF) project to realization. Our focus is providing services to enable these larger more complex field trials to be conducted, including legal, regulatory, environmental impact work, communications, iron distribution and overall project management and logistics.

It’s bad enough that the “Asilomar International Conference on Climate Intervention Technologies” has as its sole “Strategic Partner” Australia’s “dirty coal” state of Victoria.

But I think it is just absurd that the landmark conference whose goal is “to develop norms and guidelines for controlled experimentation on climate engineering or intervention techniques” is so closely tied to a company that clearly wants regulatory freedom to pursue an extremely dubious geo-engineering scheme for profit.

I think CRF needs to make an unequivocal statement that they will not support geo-engineering field experiments — in order to remain a credible nonprofit in the arena of developing norms and guidelines for geo-engineering experiments.

I think all of the conference attendees need to ask themselves whether they are helping to legitimize — and thereby ultimately helping to raise funds for — a nonprofit that will not clearly forswear funding geo-engineering experiments, a nonprofit that is closely tied to the financing efforts of Climos, a for-profit company that has already started pursuing dubious geo-engineering schemes.

UPDATE: The CRF board has issued a statement of new policy here that addresses many issues raised here. Sometimes blog posts do have an impact.

BLDGBLOD: Two L.A. Evenings

Thu, 18 Mar 2010 18:17:00 +0000

This is just a quick reminder to anyone in Los Angeles that Architizer's official L.A. launch party is tonight down at the A+D Museum's new location on Wilshire Boulevard. Stop by Architizer for more details—but it should be a beautiful evening to be out and about, and things kick off at 6:30pm.

This is a further reminder, as well, that Peter Cook of Archigram and Crab Studio will be throwing open the doors for a new exhibition over at SCI-Arc tomorrow night: London Eight features work by professors and their "proteges" from the Bartlett School of Architecture in London. Tomorrow night—Friday, March 19—also includes a group discussion, moderated by Peter Cook, with Yousef Al-Mehdari, Pascal Bronner, Johan Hybschmann, CJ Lim, marcosandmarjan, and Mark Smout and Laura Allen of Smout Allen. That's at 6pm. Hope to see you at both events!

Liverpool Blogs: Emergency: Liverpool Twestival seeks venue

Thu, 18 Mar 2010 18:07:08 +0000

The Liverpool Twestival is happening next Thursday 25th but as was announced earlier on their twitter feed, the venue (who shall remain nameless) has dropped out.

If you are a venue that has a window next Thursday night and you think you can accommodate about a hundred Tweeters, a band, a raffle and other fun and games, please contact the Twestival organisers via their website.

Or their twitter feed. Or email me feelinglistless@btopenworld.com and I'll pass you on to the organisers. Thanks.