NC-20’s stunningly-ignorant climate change memo

I was drawn to the memo from the NC-20 group pushing the state to ignore climate change research and, quite frankly, I’m stupefied that otherwise-rational people would take this stance. The memo was helpfully provided by Laura Leslie at WRAL [PDF] as part of her story on the group’s science advisor, Mr. John Droz, who apparently knows as much about climatology as I do.

The whole thing reminds me of the mayor in the movie Jaws, who knows the killer shark is out there but refuses to tell the tourists because it would scare them away. I’ve highlighted some of the more outrageous statements in it below.

I swear it seems like North Carolina Republicans have declared a war on science itself.

MEMO: NC 20 Members
FROM: Tom Thompson, Chairman
DATE: December 2, 2011
SUBJ: Sea level Rise Negotiations

As all of you know, the State has been pushing hard to declare a 39” (1 meter) Sea Level Rise (SLR) by 2100 a fact. The CRC came within 24 hours of mandating it for NC 20 counties Land Use Plans. Larry Baldwin and I met with Bob Emory, CRC Chair, the night before the key meeting and persuaded him to retract the mandate. To his credit and our relief, he did.
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Don’t Mean To Be Alarmist, But The TV Business May Be Starting To Collapse

This is right on the money. Business Insider is proving what I’ve been saying for years about the television business: it must change or die.

Today’s “cord cutters” might be considered the “early adopters” (if there is such a thing when people skip a service) but soon the masses will begin eschewing traditional television and then TV as we know it will collapse.

We still consume some TV content, but we consume it when and where we want it, and we consume it deliberately: In other words, we don’t settle down in front of the TV and watch “what’s on.” And, again with the exception of live sports, we’ve gotten so used to watching shows and series without ads that ads now seem extraordinarily intrusive and annoying. Our kids see TV ads so rarely that they’re actually curious about and confused by them: “What is that? A commercial?”

via Don’t Mean To Be Alarmist, But The TV Business May Be Starting To Collapse – Business Insider.

NC Considers Making Sea Level Rise Illegal

My friend Scott Huler takes down the attempt by coastal developers and the Republican leadership in North Carolina General Assembly to pretend climate change doesn’t exist.

According to North Carolina law, I am a billionaire. I have a full-time nanny for my children, I have won the Pulitzer Prize, and I get to spend the entire year taking guitar lessons from Mark Knopfler. Oh, my avatar? I haven’t got around to changing it, but by law, I now look like George Clooney. There’s also a supermodel clause, but discussing the details would be boasting.

You think I’m kidding, but listen to me: I’m from North Carolina, and that’s how we roll. We take what we want to be reality, and we just make it law. So I’m having my state senator introduce legislation writing into law all the stuff I mentioned above. This is North Carolina, state motto: “Because that’s how I WANT it to be.”

via NC Considers Making Sea Level Rise Illegal | Plugged In, Scientific American Blog Network.

Coastal N.C. counties fighting sea-level rise prediction

While there’s still enough sand left on our coast to do so, state lawmakers and coastal county officials intend to bury their heads in it.

State lawmakers are considering a measure that would limit how North Carolina prepares for sea-level rise, which many scientists consider one of the surest results of climate change.

Federal authorities say the North Carolina coast is vulnerable because of its low, flat land and thin fringe of barrier islands. A state-appointed science panel has reported that a 1-meter rise in sea level is likely by 2100.

The calculation, prepared for the N.C. Coastal Resources Commission, was intended to help the state plan for rising water that could threaten 2,000 square miles. Critics say it could thwart economic development on just as large a scale.

A coastal economic development group called NC-20 attacked the report, insisting the scientific research it cited is flawed. The science panel last month confirmed its findings, recommending that they be reassessed every five years.

via Coastal N.C. counties fighting sea-level rise prediction – Local/State – NewsObserver.com.

Duke professor, billionaire debate higher education’s value

One day about a dozen years ago, I interviewed with a bored-looking Vivek Wadhwa for a sysadmin position with Relativity Technologies. I didn’t get the job, perhaps because I don’t have a college degree. In hindsight I am glad I wasn’t hired because Relativity soon tanked, finally being bought by Micro Focus (which also bought my former employer, Intersolv). Perhaps the company would’ve been more successful with a few more creative, independent thinkers like me.

Wadhwa is now making a case against forgoing college. For some professions that make sense, but for others like IT one does not need a degree to be successful. Sure, a degree is fine if one wants to work for someone else, but for many entrepreneurs that time is better spent making things happen.

The best thing college gives you is connections. If those connections can be gained through other means, like hackathons, user groups, or the like then one wonders if loading oneself up on massive student debt is as wise a move as it once was.

Experience is, and always will be, the best teacher.

Vivek Wadhwa, a former high-tech entrepreneur in the Triangle who now teaches at Duke and Stanford universities, is matched against billionaire Peter Thiel Sunday night in a CBS “60 Minutes” segment exploring the value of a college degree.

Thiel is paying 20 young people $100,000 a year to drop out or not go to college in order to pursue new business ideas.

Wadhwa says Thiel is sending the wrong message.

via Duke professor, billionaire debate higher education’s value on ’60 Minutes’ :: WRAL Tech Wire.

Cheap thoughts: the nose knows

Photo by David Selby

While watching my pooch sniff his way around the neighborhood this week, I pondered how he always seemed to know when a storm is coming – often much sooner than we do. Is it the vibration of the thunder? The sound of thunder? Could it be that he is more sensitive to the electrical charges, being that he wears more fur than we do?

Then I remembered the NOVA program on dogs and how a dog’s senses are inferior or equal to humans in all aspects except one: the sense of smell. A dog’s sense of smell is its meal ticket and is a bazillion times more powerful than a human’s. What if a dog can smell an approaching storm? Of course, rain has a distinctive smell and definitely changes the way the environment smells.

But what if it went further than that? What if dogs can smell lightning? Lightning and other high-energy electric discharges ionize air, creating ozone. What if dogs can smell this ozone?

And … if my dog is at his most compliant in the midst of a storm (or the threat of a storm), could a small ozone generator attached to his collar make him safely and painlessly stop in his tracks should he decide to escape on an unauthorized jaunt through the neighborhood?

Tidal wave of cool

I’ve been considering all of the cool little projects that are going on in Raleigh: Artsplosure, Hopscotch, CityCamp, SparkCon, First Friday, Kirby Derby, the Benelux Cafe Cycling Club, TriangleWiki, 1304 Bikes, Music on the Porch, Little Raleigh Radio, Oak City Cycling Project, greenways, a future whitewater park, a skate park, and many, many others. Each of these is a decent project on its own. Each creates its own little ripple. In Raleigh right now, these little ripples are coming together with other ripples to create little waves. Those little waves will combine with other little waves to make big waves, and soon those big waves will come together to create one gigantic wave that can’t be ignored.

Few might be paying attention now, but the waves are building that will soon wash over Raleigh in a tidal wave of cool.

Cheap thoughts: medical care reverse auction

Joseph Ness’s recent series on profits in supposedly non-profit hospitals in the News and Observer is some great reporting. I was glad to see my neighborhood hospital, WakeMed, was holding its costs down, comparatively speaking.

On my morning walk the other day, I was still steaming about my last doctor’s visit, where my doctor basically sleepwalked through our appointment. Why does it take a medical degree to write a prescription to whatever high-priced drug-du-jour the pharmaceutical companies are pushing? Where’s the curiosity into what might really be going on? If I’m going to pay $150 to see my doctor for all of 15 minutes, what does it take to get his full attention during that time?
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Why Young Americans Are Driving So Much Less Than Their Parents

More about the shift away from driving.

“Unfortunately for car companies,” Jordan Weissmann noted at TheAtlantic.com a couple weeks back, “today’s teens and twenty-somethings don’t seem all that interested in buying a set of wheels. They’re not even particularly keen on driving.”

Now a major new report from Benjamin Davis and Tony Dutzik at the Frontier Group and Phineas Baxandall, at the U.S. PIRG Education Fund, documents this unprecedented trend across a wide variety of indicators.

Their two big findings about young people and driving:

The average annual number of vehicle miles traveled by young people (16 to 34-year-olds) in the U.S. decreased by 23 percent between 2001 and 2009, falling from 10,300 miles per capita to just 7,900 miles per capita in 2009.

The share of 14 to 34-year-olds without a driver’s license increased by 5 percentage points, rising from 21 percent in 2000 to 26 percent in 2010, according to the Federal Highway Administration.

via Why Young Americans Are Driving So Much Less Than Their Parents – Commute – The Atlantic Cities.

Lucid dream tracking with my Zeo

Lucid dream tracked by my Zeo

What you see above is a graph supplied by my Zeo sleep headset showing how I slept last night. The green bars indicate dream sleep while the orange bars indicate wake events. My Zeo does a fantastic job of tracking my sleep but there are moments when it gets confused. For instance, the two orange bars to the left don’t indicate when I was physically awake, they show when I was experiencing lucidity in my dream. You see, my mind was fully awake and aware in my dream. I became aware that I was dreaming while I was dreaming!
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