Getting things in proportion

Taken from “Information is beautiful” – a website which puts information into visual form – always intriguing, often beautiful, sometimes scary.
I leave it to your judgement to decide which this graphic is. Each figure e.g. “$227 African debt” is billions of dollars.   In case you miss it, the beige bit at the bottom is the colossal cost of the worldwide financial crisis dwarfing everything else – and how! It’s probably worth clicking on the image to see it at its original size, if the text is too small or it overlaps anything else.

And the dumb shall inherit the Earth (what’s left of it)

A couple of days ago the JEP did an editorial about the “falling” standard of election candidates and the already existing elected members of the States.

Here’s a flavour:

“After years of steady decline, Jersey is on the brink of a crisis in the overall quality of the States. The sad fact is that too few current Members have consistently displayed the combination of intellect, integrity and good will required to represent Islanders effectively in what, for a whole complex range of reasons, are extraordinarily challenging times.”

Basically, they wrote that things are bad and getting worse. At the Durrell sustainability breakfast the other day (separate blog post to follow) I heard a new term – industrialised individualism – which refers to what I have loosely referred to as the “yuppie” zeitgeist, that has been cultured and promoted since the “greed is good” days of the late 70’s to 80’s. I am not going to go too deeply into this at the moment but I believe an awful lot of the roots of our current problems gain their sustenance from the “ideas” of that social development. More to follow on this.

As we increasingly see so many leaders, aided and abetted by their expensive advisers, speaking from positions of wilful ignorance, and getting (and staying) elected there must clearly be a democratic demand for it. As is often the case, it has fallen to the Americans to take the next step and finally come up with the ideal candidate who’s proud to admit his qualities and is not ashamed to trumpet that he is completely free of rationality, intelligence, knowledge, ethics, consequential analysis, morals or any of the rest of that Age of Enlightenment malarkey, that seems to be thought of by too many as sooo last millennium.

Laugh at this comedy clip whilst uncomfortably feeling the hairs go up on the back of your neck at the underlying reality.

 

 

Original here: http://www.babelgum.com/6003213/elect-the-willfully-ignorant.html

 

Scooping the mainstream media

• In a Press release today (October 14th), from the Energy Efficiency Service  of the Planning and Environment department, Sir Nigel Broomfield, Chair of the Jersey Energy Trust  announced a proposal for an aerial thermal imaging map of the Island, in partnership with the Jersey Climate Action Network (J-CAN) to provide a visual assessment of how well heat is retained by business premises and domestic houses. This will be a very valuable tool that, should the initial hope to put the results online be realised, will let anyone see how well insulated their property is with a few mouse clicks. Not only will it be beneficial for the environment by showing just how much heat is escaping, hopefully encouraging people to insulate and draught strip, but it will also help people to stop wasting money too if their house proves to be, heating wise, as leaky as a sieve.

 

Here’s an excerpt from the Press Release:

“The Jersey Energy Trust will be discussing the details of their future plans at their Autumn Reception taking place on the 14th October. The event is kindly being hosted by Ogier at their new premises Ogier House at 44 The Esplanade”

The Ogier building is the first in the Channel Islands to achieve a BREEAM “very good” rating for general environmental friendliness. Apparently there were certain peculiarities of the local situation that meant they couldn’t go for the “excellent” rating for new build offices.”

I have to say that I had quite an input into this thermal mapping scheme happening. It might not have happened if it wasn’t for me catalysing it. Back at the beginning of the year, I noticed that  G-CAN (Guernsey Climate Action Network/Sustainable Guernsey) had done some research into getting a thermal imaging map of their island so that people could easily compare and contrast the relative heat losses of their buildings compared with similar ones or the surroundings. Their investigation had stalled somewhat but I saw the extremely useful information that could come out of something like this if the whole Channel Islands were to do it, so I contacted G-CAN. To cut a long story short, I introduced the concept of getting the aerial survey people to do Jersey as well to J-CAN (Jersey Climate Action Network) who picked up the baton. Negotiations have been taking place ever since with the Planning and Environment department and its offshoots. Guernsey’s efforts are still little further forward but, too late, G-CAN/Sustainable Guernsey were offered a joint quote for both Channel Islands, which may have ended up being a little cheaper (not necessarily better though – quality information is much more effective). This is annoying as Jersey had been through the tedious tendering process and the deal was done and dusted so the Donkeys missed out. Jersey 1 Guernsey 0! It was indeed the prospect that the two islands could  have worked togther on this project to potentially achieve savings that initially motivated me to push the whole idea… The States, every now and again, comes up with a wish list which includes working with Guernsey to achieve savings.

My Guernsey G-CAN contact (Richard Lord) told me tonight (Wednesday 13th) that he is “still looking at sponsorship in Guernsey to see if we can go ahead and do a thermal image of Guernsey this winter.  There is some interest from Guernsey businesses but it is too early to say if they will offer funds.” When Jersey has its digital online thermal image information up and running before the Donkeys are even out of the starting gate, we here can all look North West and pity them.

I did actually blog about this initiative back in mid August but inadvertently broke the “confidentiality” that often seems to surround things like this and had to cancel my blog post sharpish.  However, with computers and the Internet, it's very difficult to completely eradicate something so I dredged up the old post and used it as the basis for this one.

Contacts:

Lisette Jones Tel: 01534 441663

Programme Manager, Energy Efficiency Service

Sir Nigel Broomfield Tel: 01534 869219

Chair, Jersey Energy Trust

Nick Palmer Media spokesman for J-CAN

Tel 01534 863972

Sustainable Guernsey

Tel: 01481 700688

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Here’s my previous post:

Jersey Climate Action Network, in association with Guernsey Climate Action Network, have been brokering a thermographic map of the major Islands so that people can easily assess how energy efficient their houses, offices or commercial premises are. This information will be extremely useful to our governments as well.

How it works is that a plane flies over the islands in the depths of winter taking infra-red photographs of the land below which gives an image showing which buildings are hotter and which are cooler; this image is married to a digital map of the islands so that a user of the system can type in the address of a building and will see precisely how well (or otherwise) they are doing, compared to the neighbours, at keeping expensive heating energy inside the building rather than letting it escape outside because of poor insulation or such strange practices such as opening the windows in winter because it's too hot rather than turning down the thermostat!

Here's a link to a video about the system which has been widely used in Belgium.

World Environment News - Infrared Maps Highlight Energy Use - Planet Ark

 

Here is the sort of result this method comes up with

 

 

Image taken from http://www.thermal-imaging-survey.co.uk/index.htm

Flying in Jersey

Well, this video is not particularly exciting and there is no radical stuff in it but… it is us flying in Jersey at La Pulente on quite a good day. On my second flight (after the other two hang gliders had landed on the beach) I was flying with up to 6 paragliders. My glider is the green fluorescent one - not the blue and yellowish green one which is John from Oz, who is a jet pilot in his day job. My first take off of the day is at 1.20.

Warning. There is a slightly rude bit near the end when one of the young paragliders (also called Nick) waters the rabbits.

 

 

 

Lies, damn lies and statistics

Of course, I am not suggesting that statistics are lies or damn lies but the way they can be, and frequently are, used to fool people is deceitful. Perhaps the best exponents of the art of pulling the wool over peoples’ eyes are those who themselves do not properly understand what the statistics mean – they draw false conclusions and confidently fool themselves - there’s nothing more convincing or reassuring than the person who blindly believes something and quotes what seems like hard maths to prove their point. Most people do not have a deep appreciation of statistics, maths, physics, chemistry or biology or general reality to spot the flaws that should ring bells loudly.

Here is a great cartoon which illustrates the problem.

 

cartoon credit – the excellent XKCD site

The confident statistics stickman in the cartoon has jumped to a false conclusion from the figures. The essence of his mistake is that the statistic he quotes relates to all Americans doing their normal activities for one year. Of these, 45 will get struck by lightning and die. He divides this number into the population of America and comes up with an extremely small chance of being struck by lightning in one year and then applies it to his current circumstances and confidently believes that the risk of “going on” is very small. This is incorrect.  The statistic he should have used is the one which defines how many people who walk around outside in violent thunderstorms get struck and killed. The cartoonist, for poetic licence reasons, quotes 1 in 6 to be the numbers he should have considered. Much more dangerous.

People do not seem to realise how easily they can be fooled by a skilled rhetorician, in a forum or debate, who may quote accurate figures but project IMHO entirely false or misleading ideas by using them. Examples of this type include Viscount Monkton of Brenchley, Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck not to mention a huge number of politicians. Do these people realise when they are being misleading? Are they fools or are they liars or…?

 

Five years - if we’re lucky

Don’t even bother planning for what you’ll do “when the recession ends” - or totting up the temporary green shoots. The time is later than you think.


When the world wakes up to the peaking and decline of oil, gigantic economic and social forces will be unleashed.
A stunning two part interview with
Robert L. Hirsch on Peak Oil – brace yourselves for 2-5 years tops 
Part 1
Part 2

This "future news" is not from just one credible source either. There are many. Here’s a selection: a pdf from Lloyds of London about future energy security issues and also a Der Spiegel article about a report from a German military think tank - this particular study is a product of the Future Analysis department of the Bundeswehr Transformation Center, a think tank tasked with fixing a direction for the German military.

And yet few "leaders" are mentioning this in public. Why?  Maybe their personal reality filters have tuned out this inconvenient truth from their perceptions. Maybe they are scared by it. Maybe they think the public will be scared by it and lose what little confidence in the economy we have left. This fragile "green shoots" pseudo-recovery would falter and fail if people knew what was coming yet what we need to do to avoid the worst and re-engineer civilisation to cope with sustainability issues is so all encompassing that the sooner we start, the better.

If you like stretched metaphors, we could dredge up the Titanic once again. Our leaders lack of acknowledgement of the peak oil issues could be seen as like captains on a Titanic. Letting the passengers know about the possibility of danger from icebergs would send the wrong message to their well-heeled clients who would lose faith in the White Star line - the "unsinkability"of the ship - the navigation of the crew etc. Some captains, unconvinced of the iceberg reports, or overconfident in the ability of their ship to survive anything unscathed, would turn a blind eye, or a deaf ear, to the dangers because they would consider alarmism to be commercially damaging - far better for the company to let the passengers continue planning the valuable business they would be doing when they reached New York...

Underwater base jumping and ultra vertigo –the alternative Branchage

This film, although an edited together compilation of several dives, is stunning. Semi-fictional it may be but some of the shots are just incredible. The whole thing cannot be done in reality but most of the parts that were filmed to make it are also astonishing. Worth clicking through on the image to watch in full HD at Youtube 

 

FREE FALL: World champion freediver Guillaume Nery - a special dive at Dean's Blue Hole, the deepest blue hole in the world filmed entirely on breath hold by the french champion Julie Gautier. This video is a FICTION and an ARTISTIC PROJECT. Edited by BLUENERY (c). Music: ARCHIVE - you make me feel.

Dean's Blue Hole plunges 202 metres (663 ft) in a bay west of Clarence Town on Long Island, Bahamas.

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The next film below is Vertige (probably best seen in glorious HD at Vimeo’s site) taken around, or more accurately above, the Chamonix valley. Close up flying to some of the most dramatic mountain scenery in Europe. I can do the type of flying these guys are doing but there’s one bit of the film, about 2 minutes in, which made the hairs on my neck go up. It’s before they take off when there is a shot of the protagonist’s boots walking along a very narrow ridge with a huge drop off a couple of feet either side. Ultra Vertigo. It’s bigger than the Coupée in Sark and without handrails...

VERTIGE from Stéphane Boulenger on Vimeo.