Chris Jordan’s presentation at TED is sobering. I’m not up to date in the field of contemporary art but I can’t imagine that there is a more important artist for our time. His message to try and help us understand our culture better so that we might consciously change is exactly what we need.

On a tangential note: I used to play the game Civilization II for hours. ( Civ is a simulation game where you manage the development of a civilization from huts to space ships. ) I found it fascinating to manage the growth of a civilization. Although climate, and the number of competing civilizations, were the biggest factors in how a game began they all ended the same for me. By the 1500s I would have dominated the world and from there all my time was spent building a vast, sprawling civilization that transformed every inch of the land into a city. It’s just what I did.

But the simulation is very good. Near the end all my efforts in managing the civilization were in effect to clean up the mess that I created to get to that point. In the game industrialization comes at the cost of, you guessed it, global warming. So once industrialization was well under way I had access to create solar plants and recycling centers.

By the very end of the game every city had maxed out its productivity, taxes were set to practically nothing, and there was no military. It took a huge management effort to get my civilization to that point but that’s what always happened.

Oddly enough I think that’s why I’m optimistic that we’ll reach that same state in our real civilization. But there was one major difference: I was the benevolent despot that managed single handedly. Any chance we could manage that in a global civilization with conflicting cultures and governments?

Check this out: Scientists at Sandia National Laboratories have produced the highest recorded temperature ever - 3.6 billion degrees Fahrenheit (2 billion K). This is the same lab that secretly recreated the Flux capacitor allthough publicly they still deny it.
http://www.allheadlinenews.com/articles/7002721793

When I think about these scientists working/playing with the Z-machine I think of little boys out in the back yard with a magnifying lens burning leaves, ants, ect. Now that they are older and smarter they have a much bigger magnifying lens but they are still just playing. Any one see Real Genius? You get the picture. (Tell me guys, was it like lazing a stick of dynamite?)

The guys at MIT always come up with cool stuff. I’m wondering what it would take to do this in Flash. Probably the hardest thing would be recognizing the shapes. The actual physics part is rather straight forward.

My early college career, and it was a career let me tell you, was focused mostly on mathematics, with a dash of physics and astronomy. Now as a Flash developer I’ve started getting back to my roots and enjoying Generative Art. I guess my first foray might be my Lightning project. You judge for yourself. Hopefully soon I’ll have more time to devote to this subject. Right now I think it’s 3rd or 4th on the list of projects to work on.

Here’s a few resources and examples:

once-upon-a-forest.com: work by Joshua Davis, I think.

AlgorithmicBotany.org: Lots and lots of technical papers on the subject from the University of Calgary.

Brian Cox gives a remarkably polished presentation at TED about the LHC and what it’s all about.

In today’s NASA/JPL newsletter they write about an article that will appear in the journal Science which states:

“the changes to Greenland’s glaciers in the past decade are widespread, large and sustained over time. They are progressively affecting the entire ice sheet and increasing its contribution to global sea level rise.”

That’s no big shocker. I’ve read numerous reports that all conclude the same thing. This is just another drop in the bucket - pun intended.

Lets skip the debate over the causes, or even existence of global warming, for just a moment. There is no denying that the media is paying closer attention and writing more and more about it. That influences our perceptions no matter what we think is the cause. If you believe that global warming is real and has anthropogenic roots then these stories just add fuel to the fire - gosh, is that another pun?

If you believe that this is just a temporary phase that the climate is going through or perhaps even that this is some sort of global environmentalists conspiracy, then the increase in reporting, again, enhances your preconceptions.

While in college my focus in philosophy was epistemology: the study of knowledge (read more about episemology at Wikipedia.). Of course I’m interested in what people believe but more interested in why they believe the things they do.

So what do you believe and why?

I myself believe that global warming is a real trend and caused by humans. Beyond that I hope both cases are true. Now I’m wondering - and maybe you are to - why I would hope such a thing. If global warming is really happening then it will undoubtedly cause a great deal of tumult around the world. Of course I feel that my hopes are independent of reality so my hoping will not directly affect anyone. I still do my part to conserve, not that I think it will do any good.

Bottom line is that I’ve always felt that stagnation is boring and change - the more the better - is eventually a good thing. I’m really looking forward to seeing how all this turns out.

Here’s a nicely written essay about global warming and happy people and other things.

http://www.sltrib.com/opinion/ci_3527503

Here’s a great blog posting on GW from one of the editors at ScientificAmerican.com - SciAm.com

Could Global Warming Be Worse Than You Think?

The blog is well referenced with many good ancillary links to other publications and studies.

Just when you thought Global Warming was only going to be devistating.

New scientific theory, hydrate hypothesis, suggests global warming catastrophe

This article comes from a site called “planetSave.com”. So they migth be a little biased. They certainly didn’t try to tone it down and present opposing views or anything.

I saw a show on PBS/Discovery/TLC years ago about this topic so this isn’t anything new. Since then I’ve wondered what affect the warming ocean would have on the hydrates under the ocean floor. The show had some footage from an oil platform where it looked like the ocean was boiling. It was just the methane bubbling up, and it’s certainly not hot. But if these deposits started a chain reaction of gassing? Well, that would be among the worst case scenarios that anyone could imagine for this planet.

One of the main arguing points that global warming skeptics have had on their side is the discrepancy between observed temperatures in the troposphere and what computer models predict. The computer models predict that f, in fact, the climate is warming then the troposphere should be warming as well. However, weather balloon measurements and satellite data indicate that the troposphere is not warming. Or is it…

Researchers from Yale University have found that the problem is with the data, not the models.

The Economist has a short article on the subject here: An unexplained anomaly in the climate seems to have been the result of bad data.

If you want something a little more meaty then try reading this at RealClimate.com: A Mistake with Repercussions