The Bishop and the Butterfly: Murder, Politics, and the End of the Jazz Age
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    Help Climate Modeling While You Sleep

    By Jamie Friedland on Thu, 11/18/2010 - 12:08pm |

    Want to participate in climate research while you sleep?  As of yesterday, you can.  “Crowdsourcing,” also known as “distributed computing,” has become an increasingly popular way to tackle challenges that require large volumes of complex computer modeling.  Climate modeling is one such challenge.

    Instead of using a supercomputer, researchers tap the incredible amount of unused computing power around world – in each of our personal computers while we’re not using them.  Anyone who wants to help can download a simple program that will automatically tackle tiny portions of the massive problem while their computer would otherwise be sleeping.  Real progress can be made when thousands or millions of people get involved.  And, if you’re interested, you can watch the modeling your computer does in real-time.

    This climate project is off to a great start.  Over 50,000 people (on all seven continents!) are already actively hosting these calculations on their personal computers.  They’ve already modeled nearly 92 million years of weather.  Those calculations simulate weather patterns to help predict the occurrence of extreme weather events in our changing climate.

    To get involved or learn more, check out climateprediction.net.  Download instructions are near the bottom of the page.  

     

    Comments

    UN IPCC Official Admits 'We Redistribute World's Wealth By Climate Policy'

    http://newsbusters.org/blogs/noel-sheppard/2010/11/18/breaking-un-ipcc-o...

    (NZZ AM SONNTAG): The new thing about your proposal for a Global Deal is the stress on the importance of development policy for climate policy. Until now, many think of aid when they hear development policies.

    (OTTMAR EDENHOFER, UN IPCC OFFICIAL): That will change immediately if global emission rights are distributed. If this happens, on a per capita basis, then Africa will be the big winner, and huge amounts of money will flow there. This will have enormous implications for development policy. And it will raise the question if these countries can deal responsibly with so much money at all.

    (NZZ): That does not sound anymore like the climate policy that we know.

    (EDENHOFER): Basically it's a big mistake to discuss climate policy separately from the major themes of globalization. The climate summit in Cancun at the end of the month is not a climate conference, but one of the largest economic conferences since the Second World War. Why? Because we have 11,000 gigatons of carbon in the coal reserves in the soil under our feet - and we must emit only 400 gigatons in the atmosphere if we want to keep the 2-degree target. 11 000 to 400 - there is no getting around the fact that most of the fossil reserves must remain in the soil.

    (NZZ): De facto, this means an expropriation of the countries with natural resources. This leads to a very different development from that which has been triggered by development policy.

    (EDENHOFER): First of all, developed countries have basically expropriated the atmosphere of the world community. But one must say clearly that we redistribute de facto the world's wealth by climate policy. Obviously, the owners of coal and oil will not be enthusiastic about this. One has to free oneself from the illusion that international climate policy is environmental policy. This has almost nothing to do with environmental policy anymore, with problems such as deforestation or the ozone hole.

     


    by Anonymous (not verified) on Sat, 11/20/2010 - 4:52pm