Hurricane!

Installation artist Spencer Tunick and Greenpeace Switzerland present a living sculpture: hundreds of naked people symbolise the vulnerability of the glaciers under climate change.

However, China is preparing for climate change induced disasters and plans 24 hour response with food and water for any emergency. Too bad the US isn’t doing the same.

Wyse announced its EarthSmart Computing Initiative, promoting thin clients as a way of reducing environmental impact. Every 10 PCs replaced by thin clients and appropriate server infrastructure can reduce CO2 emissions by one ton per year.

The thing certainly looks scary.

Hurricane Dean appears to be headed for the Yucatan Peninsula. Call us crazy (go ahead… you won’t be the first) but we would take a hurricane any day over an earthquake.

Last Friday there was a typhoon warning in Hong Kong and it was rated at an 8 out of 10 so it was pretty serious. I was a bit oblivious to what was going on around me because I decided to have the day off from working and went into town to pamper myself (get a haircut).

I'll be updatiung this later on but it looks to me like this is Rita 2 - the sequal. I have a bad feeling about this storm. The gulf waters are hot (90 - 95F) so Dean should strengthen once it enters the gulf. Additionally, the high pressure that brought us the 100 degree weather in Houston early this week has move east. The clockwise convection around the high will create winds out of the south on in the TX/LA area.

The sun is rising over the eastern Caribbean Sea to a potential developing monster of a storm later this weekend. It won’t take long for Hurricane Dean to move through the lesser Antilles today and move into the very warm waters of the Caribbean, especially the central and northwestern Caribbean Sea. Models still paint a large and dangerous hurricane near the island of Jamaica in a day or so, and near the Cayman Islands.

Smart Car, a car that offers maximum comfort, agility, safety, ecology and driving fun. A pioneering vehicle concept that is one of the best with its low CO2 emission figures.

And so it goes with Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW). Let me suggest a moderately long article by Freeman Dyson as an intro to the kind of thinking that I once thought of as typical of the scientific mind engaging in speculation but which–alas!–is little seen in such areas as a discussion of AGW.

When I think about fondue, one memory always emerges first; not a particularly happy one, but intense and meaningful. The year was 2004. Hurricane Ivan was devastating Grand Cayman. I sat in a little Chamonix restaurant overlooking the river Arve and with sublime Mont Blanc towering right above me.

You can survive a while without food, but take away your water and you’re hurting - fast. This is, of course, especially the case in desert conditions. A major headache for our military is getting fresh water to troops who are in arid places. It’s also an issue in situations like hurricane Katrina, where fresh water is no where to found. But transporting water to disparate locations is very costly. Aqua Sciences has come up with a way to cut out transportation by literally grabbing the water out of the air.

Something to ponder tonight - driving a car might be better for the planet in regards to “Global Warming” than walking. From the Times of London.

Some strong words have been exchanged by Greg Holland (UCAR) and Chris Landsea (NOAA) on the recent paper by Holland/Webster in the Philosophical Transactions of The Royal Society (hereafter, HW2007). Greg Holland inserted himself into the debate over greenhouse gas emissions, by predicting that hurricanes will increase without such reductions: