Computers, Society, and Nature

I’m sure many of us come across the various university rankings from time to time, and read, discuss, then dismiss them. While being generally rediculous (oh no, my student life rating is only 13.7!), you sadly still hear them brought up fairly frequently in discussions about the relative merits of different universities.

Now, nearly all such rankings rely on ‘reputation’ or a similar category as being a large part of how they determine which universities are the best, generally by asking a few academics, maybe some leaders in business, and in some I’ve seen, high school guidance councillors. It all seems rather synthetic. Luckily for us, Google can rank anything we ask it to, based on ‘relevance’, for any keywords we give it. Thus, the top 5 university listings (i.e. primary entrance page for the university, or department) for various keywords:

University (from a bell canada IP address)

1. Toronto
2. McGill
3. Waterloo
4. Harvard
5. Stanford

University (from an american IP address)

1. Harvard
2. Stanford
3. Cambridge
4. Toronto
5. Yale

Computer Science (bell)

1. MIT
2. Carnegie Mellon
3. Maryland
4. Stanford
5. Washington

Computer Science (us)

1. Carnegie Mellon
2. MIT
3. Maryland
4. Stanford
5. Washington

Geography (bell)

1. Simon Fraser
2. McGill
3. UBC
4. Toronto
5. Ohio State

Geography (us)

1. Ohio State
2. Edinburgh
3. Leeds
4. Penn State
5. UCSB

Among other things, this makes me realise how heavily the Google rank of the page is affected by your location. It also makes me think that geography as a department doesn’t exist strongly at a lot of universities, as I had to go through many a results page to get those five dubious results. I didn’t list the environment results, as you have to add a few modifiers to make universities come up.

Caveats: among other things, this is obviously heavily slanted towards english universities with well formed entrance pages, in addition to being obviously heavily affected by Google’s attempt at geographic relevance.

Lawsuits, like most tools, can help if used correctly.

As mentioned a few weeks ago, and as it hit the streets last summer in a big way, anti-polluter lawsuits are sifting their way through the judicial system. Now, some conclusions have been reached.

AP reports that AEP is going to pay out for it’s public nuisance. The precedent this sets is welcome, given what other cards are on the table.

Without a glimmer of hope, President Bush has decided to cut his losses and jettison and concilliatory niceties for global warming issues. He’ll just amble through the rest of the G8 summit as best he can.

Perhaps his acknowledgement of the problem (“I recognize that the surface of the earth is warmer and that an increase in greenhouse gases caused by humans is contributing to the problem.”), combined with his distaste for the Kyoto Protocol, will vault environmentalism into a new fever pitch…? For more, refer back (yet again) to the Death of Environmentalism paper.

A highly furstrating hurdle in environmentalism is telling people what you mean by throwing around terms like ‘biodiversity’ and ‘stability’ and ‘biodiversity for stable and sustainable ecosystems’. These are loaded word, which are nestled comfortably in the ephemeral studies of chaos & order.

So when the Endangered Species Act is looked at with scrutiny, what exactly does each section, each paragraph mean? And what purpose do they hold?

Recently, the ESA is facing a montrous overhaul. The bill being put forward, in the opinion of JR Clark, Defenders of Wildlife VP, it “”takes a wrecking ball to the whole Endangered Species Act” by changing its mission, disabling enforcement tools and loosening controls on agencies like the Forest Service and the Army Corps of Engineers.””

Contesting this pessimism, and boasting some optimism, Jim Sims, of Partnership for the West, “said that the draft has a “common-sense” emphasis on incremental improvements that are achievable, rather than on long-term recovery that may take decades. “The aspirational change is necessary,” he said. “It’s more important to incrementally improve the species’ health as much as we can rather than set the bar at total and complete recovery, and nothing else.””

One should never forget that the ESA is an act for all seasons – the usefullness of it has stretched far and wide, to pulling to plugs of many environmentally un-sound projects.

I’m just going to quote the following straight from the Horse’s mouth, and comment below:

”
On the issue of what constitutes the “best available science” for making and supporting decisions under the law, the draft measure takes the unusual step of giving one scientific method preference over another. It calls for “empirical data” – which can be hard to obtain when a species’s numbers are small and scattered – to be used when possible. More common currently are studies based on statistical models of a species’s number, range and viability.

The draft legislation also sets new restrictions for mapping the territory considered essential for the recovery of an endangered species. It would limit such territory, called “critical habitat,” to areas currently occupied by the species; the law now allows for the inclusion of a larger portion of the species’s historic range. In the new proposal, expansion of the current range is possible only if that range is inadequate to prevent the species’s extinction.

“It shortchanges habitat protection,” said Ms. Clark of Defenders of Wildlife. “And habitat destruction is the primary reason for most species becoming endangered.” She added that the law “places almost overwhelming restrictions on sound science.”

Mr. Sims, in turn, argued that some of the law’s proponents care more about keeping land unused than ending threats of extinction. “This is the Endangered Species Act,” he said. “I would argue that a great majority of the American people believe that a focus on efforts to recover a species are more important than efforts to lock up land.”
”

Thinking back to man’s obsession with time and space, and the non-duality of duality and non-duality, some interesting social commentary materializes over the Golden Species-Area relationship. Of course, it would be foolish to pour blood, sweat, and tears into protecting the species without understanding their tenure within their habitat, how dependent they are, as well as how mobile, etc.

On a slightly different note, there is a heady cry from an anthropologist’s perspective which brings us back to the Essence of the Thing. Is it possible to protect some species if their critical numbers are so fine-tuned by herding them around as reduce them to mere statistics? That is to say, can some things fall outside the realm of mathematics? Sociologists would argue back that being able to poll people’s perceptions, happiness, and well-being would illicit exactly the statistics you need. And there are plenty more who would say that animals are a subset of human needs to begin with, so it makes perfect sense.

Unfortunately, human needs are slipping into a realm of self-sufficiency vis-a-vis artificial sustenance. For example, imagine a word in which climate change has rendered back-country hiking a health hazard, and virtual reality is unleashed from the gates to fill these niche needs in our civilization with ease.

Instead of human capital, financial capital, physical capital, etc., I’ve argued before that cultural capital shoudl play in along-side these bottom-line figures, and be blown out of proportion where necessary. I’m sure the statistics exist to give it enough Net Present Value to eclipse many petty cost-benefit analyses which put forth ideas like ‘let the markets rule the environment, instead of the ESA.”

All quotes from this NY Times article.

The former Fed Chair speaks up about unsustainable America… not so much environmental, but then again, isn’t everything hinging on the environment?

I think two quotes can summarize this follow-up to the UK wind farm controversy of late:

“It’s not that I’m against wind power – we do have to find alternative, renewable sources of energy,” Sir Chris said in an interview, gesturing toward the Whinash ridgeline from a highway coffee house near here. “But I think each site should be assessed like a balance sheet, on one side the aesthetic and environmental impact that a particular wind farm will have, set against the benefit of the amount of clean power that’s going to be generated. On that kind of audit, Whinash just doesn’t make sense.”

and…

“If we don’t get a move on in cutting our carbon dioxide emissions, our landscape is going to be damaged on a scale that is presently unimaginable,” said Tony Juniper, the head of Friends of the Earth.

both quotes from this New York Times article, aptly titled “Menacing the Land, but Promising to Rescue the Earth.”

President Bush has ruled out any hope for the USA’s involvement in a Kyoto-like deal, and disuaded the G8 from focusing on such issues, the BBC reports.

However, he concedes that our activities (us, the humans, with the oil-filled pens) are “to some extent” to blame.

Here is the best graphical global warming depiction I have ever seen.

“Too much of the debate at the moment is either nuclear or wind, when really we should be looking for a holistic approach.” spokesman for the Royal Academy of Engineers.

Authorities in the UK have approved £400 million for 209 400-ft wind turbines (try to picture that!) Falling in line with the Apollo Alliance, an enviro-labor agglomerate, this project will inject many much-needed jobs into the local area. The heart-warming article tells the whole economic storyline.

Another bout of climate-based currency speculating has hit the street. While nuclear power seems to be like the most ‘bang for your buck’, and conventional wisdom seems to be eating it up like no trans-fats, the New Economics Foundation sees many unaccounted costs tacked on to the bottom line. This dramatically increases the supposed cost per nuclear power kilowatt-hour, so says a new report, “Mirage and Oasis: Energy choices in an age of global warming”, linked to from an informative NEF article.

Once again, economists are (hopefully) reminded of the elusive objectiveness of a cost-benefit analysis, and how an “attractive bottom-line” is relative.

Those who are not so convinced are speaking out without hesitation, as a representative from the Nuclear Industry Association confidently puts it: “This report is grossly out of kilter with almost all other reports that have been done.”

So while wind power has gained the stamp of approval from mostly everyone except aviarian-protectionists, nuclear power has some sorting out to do, and carbon-free energies of a different sort are coming in from the wings. Clean-burning coal, another favorite of the Apollo Alliance for its heavy labor base, is being pushed to the production and construction phase. It’s nice to see how far we’ve come since the Wall Street Journal doubting the existence of clean coal.

And if it can’t be clean-burning, then at least it can cleanly captured before it is released – this is the principle behind Germany’s new CO2-free coal-fired power plant. An explanation of several pre- and post-combustion CO2-saving technologies, brought to you by the BBC. Another GHG-trapping-for-utilization project is unfolding in Scotland.

Let’s not forget our responsibility as activists: e the people’s new petition begs for clean coal development.

Another one of society’s dualities is broken, or at least stretched so some of us can remember the buddhist non-duality of duality and non-duality (think it through…)

Artists and Scientists share knowledge and build wisdom together at MIT. Neat ^_^

My main research involves the use of geographic information systems for social change. Here are two excellent examples of the application of Flash to Internet mapping.

• This effective yet simple application shows, over time, the geographic distribution of soldier fatalities in Iraq. Note that you can click on the layers to the right to compare, for example, US fatalities to all other coalition partners.
• This application shows hundreds of front pages of newspapers from approximately 40 countries (I wonder who’s doing the scanning every day). To see a front pages, click on a region of the world and then surf over the country/state/provincial polygons. Be patient as some pages take time to load.

  One of the intended consequences of the site is that you can conduct an armchair ethnography of how regions of the world, but especially the US, perceive a particular event.

  The application is from the Newseum, “the world’s first interactive museum of news”, that opened in Arlington, Va., in 1997. Its mission is simple: to help the public and the news media understand one another better.”

Is it possible that the mythical power of cold fusion could be the source of carbon-free energy we’ve always dreamed of? Today, France was selected for the ITER site, an experimental fusion reactor. This is one step short of a real deal, dubbed the DEMO, but since the EU is paying half the bill, and since France already has more nuclear reactors than mostly anybody else out there, perhaps this will give rise to new interest in fusion. Nature, reporting here. The BBC reports as well, while sporting a fun, interactive fusion graphic slideshow.

Environmentalists, as often is the case when being cited in articles, appear as luddite pariahs. Ironically, this could be the very best thing to happen to climate change environmentalism. It doesn’t hurt to have precautions, but it does hurt your reputation if that’s all you can offer. Here, they are worried about an earthquake faultline residing under the proposed location for this facility.

Greenpeace offers its fireback, saying that the astronomical expense could purchase 10,000 megawatts windfarms. The unprofessionalism really comes out in this quote:

“Governments should not waste our money on a dangerous toy which will never deliver any useful energy. Instead, they should invest in renewable energy which is abundantly available, not in 2080 but today.”

Jan Vande Putte, quoted by BBC

My intuition tells me that environmentalists are not well received in the scientific community, though this insight comes largely from what media tribulations I’ve come across.

If you have some ideas in politics, or economics, or engineering or who knows what, and have a scant idea of how they relate to the climate, you can read this Climate 101 introduction to all-things climate. It’s a healthy dose, 12 minutes at best.

This just in from slashdot (actually, it was a couple of days ago but I didn’t post it as the site was “slashdotted”), how to convert an old tube radar PPI display into a state of the art mini-ITX based PC driven weather radar. According to the site, a PPI or Plan Position Indicator is “a round TV like tube that displays a circular sweeping point & vector format rather than a raster format like square TV tubes”. The hobbyist was inspired by an April Fools joke and decided to drive a traditional radar monitor off a PC using a lot of scrounged hardware and some personal radar software.

To top it off, the device is Wi-Fi.

To the organization, Association for Progressive Communications (APC):

APC is an international network of civil society organisations dedicated to empowering and supporting groups and individuals working for peace, human rights, development and protection of the environment, through the strategic use of information and communication technologies (ICTs), including the Internet.

There are some things that money can’t buy. And for everything else, there’s a market for it. There are fundamental problem with relying on markets for salvation from environmental indifference. While my aged uncle, among many others, insists that nothing moves likes like the markets, and never before has environmental interest been so “on fire.”

This, other tell me as well, is true. In environmentalism-versus-time graphs, things are on a hockey stick.

But, not to get side-tracked, the point: while the markets may encourage interest, it does not breed interest. When the stimulus for interest is woven into the business economy, it comes across as little of a person-by-person change of heart. This is why when something achieves a ‘less attractive’ or ‘sub-optimal’ ‘bottom line’ (or, my favorite, ‘triple bottom line: society, economy, environment’), the thing is dismissed. As with many other areas of market economics, what’s fashionable is what”s sold. Perhaps there is a lot of gray area between Aldo Leopold and Kerouac’s Dharma Bums and simply devoting your disposable income to Mountain Equipment Coo, organic, vacuum-sealed trail mix and fair trade coffee.

As eloquently as Green Biz can say it, Sustainability Reporting is Not Sustainable.The fanciful fanfare is not a substantive benchmarking process, and even the top dog, GRI, whose name is everywhere and whose manifesto on reporting is a standard, is not powerful in its own right or prevalent enough ini the reporting world to drive markets home.

Who will decide if the market is the problem or the solution?