God, Keynes, and Clean Energy

Columbia University

Columbia University

NY. Jan. 25. Mark Fulton, “Climate Change Strategist” Deutsche BankAsset Management, spoke at Cary Krosinsky’s class in Sustainable Investing at the CERC, the Center for Environmental Research and Conservation, Earth Institute, Columbia University.

Krosinsky, Vice President of Trucost, recently co-edited and wrote the book Sustainable Investing: The Art of Long Term Performance with Nick Robins of HSBC. He is an Advisory Board member of the Association of Climate Change Officers (ACCO) and founder director of InvestorWatch. Trucost has built and maintains the world’s largest database of carbon emissions and other environmental impacts as generated by the world’s largest public and private companies. Their data and expertise is used by leading global fund managers and asset owners to manage carbon risk. Continue reading →

Nuclear Fusion: Cleaner Energy – Tomorrow

The Levitated Dipole Experiment (LDX) reactor is housed inside a 16-foot-diameter steel structure in a building on the MIT campus that also houses MIT’s other fusion reactor, a tokamak called Alcator C-mod.

The Levitated Dipole Experiment (LDX) reactor, Photo courtesy of the LDX team

A team of scientists led by Jay Kesner at the MIT Plasma Science and Fusion Center and Michael Mauel at the Columbia University Fu Foundation School of Engineering and Applied Science announced the “first significant results” from the Levitated Dipole Experiment, LDX. (Click here for the MIT news release). Continue reading →

BBC investigation demonstrates that Iraq purchased fraudulent bomb detection devices

Via BBC News:

The BBC has conducted an investigation which demonstrated that Iraq purchased bomb detection devices in which the component purported to detect trace amounts of TNT was, in fact, “nothing but the type of anti-theft tag used to prevent stealing in high street stores.” Iraqi Interior ministry still backing ‘bomb detector’

According to the BBC,

Some Iraqi officials are insisting that a controversial bomb detection device works, despite a BBC inquiry in which experts said the item was useless.

Britain has banned exports of the ADE-651 and the director of the company selling them was arrested and bailed.(emphasis supplied)

But the device is still being used at checkpoints all over Baghdad. Continue reading →

New Mission for Guantanamo – Aid to Haiti

Pallets of Bottled Water bound for Haiti

Pallets of Bottled Water bound for Haiti

As covered in The Guardian, UK, and by WAVY-10, Virginia Beach, the  disaster in Haiti as a result of the recent earthquake is giving the American base at Guantanamo Bay two new missions: supplying aid and potentially detaining thousands of Haitian migrants.

The U.S. has designated Guantanamoas the hub of the aid operation. Dozens of helicopters and planes take off daily to ferry supplies and personnel to the stricken country or to American ships off the coast.

This makes sense as Guantanamo is a US Base so we have control over it, and it is about 200 miles from Haiti, so proximate to the disaster.

In a related story, the Sydney Morning Herald reports that the World Bank says it plans to extend an additional $US 100 million in emergency aid to Haiti to help recovery and reconstruction from the devastating earthquake.

El Nino Batters Southern California

Evidence of Climate Change?

Floods in Los Angeles, California, Jan. 2010.

Over 300 residents of Los Angeles were ordered to evacuate because of the threat of mudslides from the rains. These rains are related El Niño, a warm ocean current from the South Pacific, according to CNN meteorologist Chad Myers  (click here). The effects of El Nino and the Southern Oscillation are amplified by the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and the oceans, which has increased from approximately 250 parts per million to 390 ppm in the last 150 years, due primarily to burning coal, oil, and other fossil fuels.

Clouds and Rain over Los Angeles, California
Clouds and Rain over Los Angeles, California

City and county officials warned Tuesday that significant rainfall on already saturated soil could cause mudslides and debris flows, especially below the steep slopes that burned last year.

Evacuations in La Canada Flintridge, La Crescenta and parts of Glendale were scheduled to begin Wednesday, Jan. 20, 2010. Officials hope to have everyone out of danger by the time the third storm in as many days hits Southern California.

For details on El Nino and the Southern Oscillation on the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, NOAA web-site click here . For an overview on Popular Logistics, click here and here . Refer also to William James Burroughs’ reference text, Climate Change, A Multidisciplinary Approach, 2nd Edition, 2007, Cambridge University Press, 2007, ISBN 978-0-521-87015-3 or 978-0-521-69033-1.

California Brown Pelicans in an IBRRC shelter. Photo courtesy IBRRCThe rains are also stressing the California brown pelican. Bird rescue experts at the International Bird Rescue Research Center, IBRRC, are fighting to save over 100 cold, wet California Brown Pelicans, as more hypothermic birds keep coming. Their Waterproof feathers usually allow pelicans to float and stay insulated from weather changes, the current massive runoff from storms has brought even more grease, car oil sheen, fish oils and other forms of surface pollution into the coastal areas where these birds feed.  “Many brown pelicans have been found soaking wet and in a critical condition,” says IBRRC Director Jay Holcomb, “and since the storms kept coming, one after another, the wet birds did not have time to dry off and feed, and are becoming weak and hypothermic.

Evidence of Climate Change?

Is the drought of the last few years, followed by this years heavy rain and flood a shift in the weather or a change in the climate?

On The Media: do reporters disrupt disaster response logistics?

In Danger In Numbers, On the Media Host Bob Garfield interviews Noam Schreiber of The New Republic (transcript here).

Are large numbers of journalists displacing rescue workers and supplies, in part by competing for scarce resources on the ground? This is an excellent discussion, and typical for OTM, an outstanding weekly effort to provide feedbacks to inform and correct journalism.

To answer this with regards to Earthquake Relief efforts in Haiti we need to know:

  1. How many journalists and support staff went to Haiti?
  2. How they got there? Did they displace transportation resources, or generate new ones?
  3. What did they bring in terms of supplies and money?
  4. What they consume, in terms of supplies and other resources?
  5. How much information are the able to get out of the country? Did they increase outbound bandwidth? This information isn’t used just by the “public” – it is, and should be, integrated into the intelligence stream. This is an extreme example of open-source intelligence – because it’s essentially a non-military, non-adversarial incident.
  6. Did the journalists facilitate or develop enhanced outbound transportation facilities? Did they make medevac space available, albeit inadvertently?

To answer this question, originally posted by OTM listeners, we need a census of journalists and their logistical operations.

It’s true that Haiti needs a lot right now – starting with an airlift of ham radio operators, historically volunteer can-do communications personnel in big emergencies. (We believe that Haiti likely has insufficient local ham operators, but we haven’t been able to fact-check that). The organizations whose members have been doing this for decades are

Finally, there’s Brian Steckler of the Naval Postgraduate School and its exemplary  Hastily Formed Networks Research Group.Professor Steckler, his students, and others were able to restore telephone service in Mississippi during Katrina within hours of arrival.

Their after-action reports, (critical documents here) indicate that they were substantially delayed by “celebrity” fly-overs – forcing them to drive

equipment from the West Coast to the East. They still got it done.

Having studied these issues for several years – if I find myself in a disaster with one outbound message, I’m calling Professor Steckler.

We hope to follow this post with additional coverage of communications and logistics issues relating to the current crisis in Haiti.

Google v China, and Baidu v Iran

Google announced that it believes that China is responsible for cyber attacks on Google China. Google is now unwilling to censor search results in China (The Guardian).

Google China

Google China. by Phillipe Lopez/AFP/Getty Images.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, about to begin a tour of Asia, said “We have been briefed by Google on these allegations, which raise very serious concerns and questions. We look to the Chinese government for an explanation.” (The Guardian / NY Times).On their blog (here), in a post entitled “A New Approach to China” Google said:

“In mid-December, we detected a highly sophisticated and targeted attack on our corporate infrastructure originating from China that resulted in the theft of intellectual property from Google.” Continue reading →

Obama and The People Fight Terrorism

President Barack Obama

In response to the Christmas Day attempted terror attack, President Obama’s actions and former Vice President Cheney’s comments highlight the differences between the two administrations: The Bush Administration was famous for not being “Reality Based” (NY Times). The Obama Administration investigates first, thinks, and ACTS(Reuters), while accepting responsibility for any failures.  “Ultimately, the buck stops with me,” Obama said. “As president, I have a solemn responsibility to protect our nation and our people.” (CS Monitor)

On 12/29/9, President Obama said it was a systemic failure (Christian Science Monitor). On 1/3/10, he said the attack was planned in Yemen (NY Times). We also know he approved US counter-terror strikes in Yemen, which occurred on 12/24/09 (NPR /  NYTimes) and which killed Al Queda Terrorists. Continue reading →

Nuclear Power Development Costs Skyrocket

This is not exactly “news.” Nuclear power plant  construction is synonymous with cost overruns.

(This is a “systems problem.” Anytime you have a 10 to 15 year project in the $Billion range you will find several reinforcing feedback mechanisms that increase the cost and few, if any, balancing feedback mechanisms that keep the costs at a steady state. A brief delay or a minor increase in inflation will cost $Millions.)

Radioactive SymbolCosts of the proposed nuclear plants in San Antonio, TX, have skyrocketed, even tho construction has not yet begun. Originally forecast at $2 Billion per gigawatt (gw) of capacity, roughly the cost of wind power, it is now clear that they will cost between $4.5 Billion and $6.5 Billion per gw of capacity – $12.1 billion to $17.5 billion for the reactors. Continue reading →

Copenhagen, India, China, the US, and GAIA

I’m beginning to think that Copenhagen was what it had to be, what it could only be. It fulfilled its Buddha-nature. Thus, I don’t consider it a failure. Nor do I consider it a success. It was what it was, what it could have been, what it had to be:

A gathering of emissaries from the 64 corners of the earth.

Courtesy of NASA

Earth From Space, Copyright NASA

Isaac Asimov observed in Foundation (ISBN: 978-0553293357) that “diplomacy, is the art of speaking for a long time without saying anything.” Most of the diplomats in Copenhagen had multiple agendas. Unfortunately for billions of the world’s poorest, the public agendas of sustainability and the abstract “Gaia Hypothesis” were distant fourth and fifth behind the private agendas of power, money, and influence.

The inconvenient truth is that much of Bangla Desh, California, Louisiana, Southern Florida will disappear, submerged, like the mythical Atlantis. China will continue to build 2 coal plants per week. And people will die.

But disregarding this notion, a Chinese diplomat Continue reading →

UPI Reports Levinson family in Iran

According to United Press International:

Christine Levinson (L), wife of an ex-FBI agent Robert Levinson who disappeared in Iran in March 2007, her son Daniel (C), and her sister Susan are seen after arriving at Imam Khomeini International Airport in Tehran, Iran on December 18, 2007. Robert Levinson went missing while on a business trip to Iran’s southern island of Kish and the Iranian government claims they have no information on his whereabouts.

Wife of missing ex-FBI agent arrives in Iran

UPI photo dated December 18th, 2009:

Photo by United Press International dated 18 December 2009

Photo by United Press International dated 18 December 2009


Marking 1,000th day of disappearance, White House and Sec'ty Clinton repeat demand for information on Levinson whereabouts

From the Miami Herald:

U.S. steps up pressure on Iran over missing ex-FBI agent, by Lesley Clark of the McClatchy Newspapers:

WASHINGTON — The White House and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton upped the pressure Thursday on Iran to divulge any information it has about Robert Levinson, a retired FBI agent who went missing from a Persian Gulf island in March 2007.

The statement from the White House came as the Coral Springs, Fla., man’s family marked the 1,000th day of his disappearance with meetings at the State Department and the FBI. National Security Adviser James Jones also met with the family “to reassure them that Bob’s case remains a priority for the United States,” the White House said.

The FBI and the State Department called for cooperation, with the FBI — the lead agency that investigates the disappearances of Americans overseas — saying that it has “not received any information from Iranian authorities to date.”

Clinton echoed Gibbs’ remarks and said that although Iranian authorities had promised the family that they’d share information about the investigation, “that promise has yet to be fulfilled.”

Further:

Family of missing former FBI agent marks 1,000th day of his disappearance

U.S. calls on Iran to help find missing Broward man

We feign no neutrality in this matter: the Administration’s efforts are appreciated, and Bob Levinson is my dear friend, generous colleague, mentor, and as good a person as I have ever known. We urge the Administration to continue to pursue the matter, and Iranian government to do the right thing, and take whatever steps are necessary to locate him and return him to his family and friends.



Kaiser Family Foundation: side-by-side comparison of health insurance proposals

The Kaiser Family Foundation has created a web page which permits side-by-side comparisons of every health-care proposal currently on the table, including that by U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders (D-VT via

Brooklyn, New York) and that of the Republican Study Group. I note those because I’m taking a guess that those represent the poles of the debate – but that may not be the case. There are fourteen bills compared, not including President Obama’s proposal as a candidate, which KFF thoughtfully provides.

We are reluctant to reach a conclusion, not having read the bill yet – but concerned that the net effect of the bill may amount to a step backwards. That said, if the bill passes or fails to pass in its current form, we suggest that – among other steps – it may be time to revisit the insurance industry’s exemption(s) from United States antitrust laws.


Zero Geography: GPS Real-World Gaming in Hybrid Space

Zero Geography reports on a real-time game using GPS devices which has – for our purposes, interesting applications for coordinating SAR or other response efforts. From Zero Geography: GPS Real-World Gaming in Hybrid Space.

A real-time, multiplayer, GPS game for mobiles is being played out in the real-world. The game, played by groups of four or five people, uses a one kilometer radius around any point on Earth to delineate spatial extents in which three or four chasers try to capture one runner. Each one of the players is tracked via a GPS phone and their coordinates are mashed onto a map that they can all see. The only twist that that the runner is always allowed to view the map, whilst the chasers only have access to the map every six minutes. The game is a fascinating way to roll elements of the physical and virtual together into an adrenaline-pumped experience.

Zero Geography is a brilliant blog about matters geographic by a person, persons, or entity named Mark Graham, who is otherwise reticent about identity or contact information. Check it out.


RuggedNotebooks.com: MILSPEC 810F data devices

We’ve come across RuggedNotebooks.com, a supplier of laptop computers and PDAs to public and private users of data devices whose equipment must survive drops, immersion, humidity, sand, and extreme heat.  (MILSPEC 810F, effective, January 1, 2000).  ((We note that the standard is not classified,

although the data which may be stored on them is; if that were not the case, we would not discuss it in this forum. Because the MILSPEC standards are – for the most part – not classified – using the military’s procurement standards can be useful for non-military purchasers, in and out of government. There are soldiers whose job it is to throw expensive equipment off the roofs of buildings, into water tanks, and otherwise abuse them. We’re fairly sure, from reader feedback, that we’ve got at least a few readers, to whom this sounds like fun. We’re still happy to have them as readers, notwithstanding their unusual ideas of entertainment)). RuggedNotebooks makes  three models of rugged PDA – and for anyone who’s counting, that’s 50% more models of PDA than Hewlett-Packard makes (only two which are PDAs without phones) and three more than Palm (no non-phone PDAs).

In addition, RuggedNotebooks makes nine laptops and tablets to the same standard, and another line of “semi-rugged” devices. We’ll try to update with price and images later.