I’ve heard some people say they don’t understand how people can hold the view that climate change is not anthropogenic yet claim that climate change can be countered cheaply using geo-engineering, e.g., by injecting sulfur ((Why, IUPAC, why?)) into the atmosphere. The reason for their concern is that they think it’s logically inconsistent since the effects of geo-engineering techniques and anthropogenic climate change are predicted by the same computer models. However, (anthropogenic) climate change deniers are being perfectly reasonable as far as thinking about temperature goes. Let me explain.
Ultrabook fad
As someone that placed an order for a MacBook Air within 24 hours of its announcement, I obviously have some bias when I say that Stan Shih, founder of Acer, is misguided in saying tablets and “ultrabooks”, laptops under 0.8 inches thick with longer battery lives, are just “short-term phenomena”. Ceteris paribus, most people would probably choose a thinner, lighter laptop with longer battery life over a bulkier one with a shorter battery life. One of the selling points of laptops is their portability; ultrabooks are a natural evolution towards increasing portability.
Deputation Day and Night
I ended up going to City Hall yesterday, but decided not to make a fuss. There were 344 people signed up to do just that. Instead, I went to listen and (by being a body in a seat) show that people of Toronto do care about what happens to it. The main action began at 9:30 yesterday in Council Chamber 1 (CC1) but, owing to being at the Hot Yam! and running into/chatting with several people I hadn’t seen in ages on my walk over to City Hall (there was an accident, preventing streetcars from going along Spadina), I started observing municipal politics at about 4:20pm via projector in Council Chamber 2 (CC2), the overflow room. I kept some notes and posted them, mostly unedited, after the jump. Please bear with the lack of sleep.
Stop filibustering yourself!
This Thursday, I’ll be heading down to City Hall to make myself heard over proposed cuts to city services. If you care about this city and have some time, you might want to come, too; the mayor has invited us! The way I see it, if no one shows up, the mayor has carte blanche over cuts because he can claim whatever he wants. But if even a handful of citizens show up, not only will city council hear us, but all of Toronto. Why? Well, let’s do the math (because someone has to): If just a hundred people show up ((that’s less than the number of people that come to the Hot Yam! in a week and a small fraction of the cyclists that showed up to city hall recently)), that’s a whole working day’s worth of citizens addressing Toronto City Council. If this drags on for a few days, you can be the media will pick up on this and if our voices fall on deaf ears, well, an election can’t come soon enough.
I’ll be trying to prepare a detailed speech, to be broken down into five minute segments; I’ve already got a structure in mind. If you would like to help contribute a section or more to this speech or would like to read one of these five minute segments (maybe because you lack the time to write one in advance), drop me a line!
Death of a camera: Part VI
Death of a camera: Part V
The fifth in a series of blog posts about my nearly-dead camera. Included in this series will be images that I haven’t posted to flickr. Don’t get all excited; they’re worse than my other shots. That’s why they didn’t even make the flickr cut.
Continue reading “Death of a camera: Part V”
Geo-engineering Biosphere 1
Is it just me or does every mention of geo-engineering bring to mind of our failures with Biosphere 2?