MarcusAnderson.Info

Nothing happened this month. Or in March for that matter.

No. Just kidding. Really something did happen somewhere I’m sure, its just that I havent had time to post anything for April.

I’ll catch up later.

BTW, if you used Contact Me to post a comment, the mailer doesnt seem to be working. Looking into it….

When I was doing my Engineering degree, I met an Engineering student from another University while visiting a local church. We had a lot in common and quickly became good friends.

When the “Intelligent Design vs Darwin” debate appeared in the media, I casually made a comment that made my position clear in that issue, assuming it would be greeted with the usual affirmation of two educated minds in agreement. I mention this of course because much to my horror, my friend fired up with passionate disbelief that I could possibly hold that view. And that day, the friendship ended.

The Climate Change debate is the same. It has the power to end relationships.

I am always keen to hear the opinions of others, whether or not I agree. Even if I don’t agree, I’m keen to hear their reasoning. Many times I have changed or modified my own views because of the insight others have given me. Occasionally, I’ve had the pleasure of correcting someone’s false assumptions leading to their strongly held but erroneous belief.

If I did not respect the right of others to their contrary opinion, I would also be denying myself the opportunity, however slight, to change that opinion or alternatively, to change my own. To me, that is counter productive to the discovery of the ultimate truths.

But no, I’m not going to quote Voltaire.

I’m just going to say that in my professional capacity as an Engineer, I confess that there has never been a day when I have heard one argument about Anthropological (man made) Climate Change or Anthropological Global Warming that either stacked up with the fundamental logistical science, or my own ballpark calculations on the question.

Now dont misunderstand me. I dont dispute there is Global Climate Change. I only dispute that humans are to blame, or that we can do much to offset it.

Today (2012), we know that Climate Change is a naturally reccurring phenomenon, and current rates of change are extremely mild compared with similar oscillations experienced in the last 2000 years alone, such as the Mediaeval Warm Period shown in red (left) when the Vikings entered Greenland. To me, it is Climate Change denial to ignore the overwhelming natural component involved.

Global temperatures will no doubt continue to go up and down like a yoyo, as it has done for millions of years. A more compelling case for anthropogenic Global Warning can be made against burning trees due to overpopulation, not burning fossil fuels, and its not because of the CO2 but due to the loss of leafy surface area soaking up solar radiation. The catastrophe the world certainly is facing from Global Warming is exponential resource depletion due to overpopulation, not exponential Global Warming, but I don’t notice too many people getting overly concerned about that!

Yet overpopulation is the very reason the effects of Climate Change will be “catastrophic”. Mankind has established population densities that are not sustainable and which has only been possible because of the milder weather of the last 500 years. As the weather systems become more hostile, the consequential crop failures, infrastructure destruction, associated wholesale loss of life, and global economic inflation, the effects on humanity may well appear as if they were catastrophic. Yet if the global population was a sustainable size (eg half its current size), then these events would have much less impact due to the capacity of natural resources to regenerate.

And little is said either by the Climate Change prophets of doom about the other side of the coin - the positive benefits of Global Warming. For instance, Lake Eyre (largest lake in Australia) sits in the middle of 4 major Australian deserts including the notorious Simpson Desert and is completely dry about 75% of the time. For the last 4 years, since 2009, it has been flooding each year. This unprecedented change is hardly catastrophic. On the contrary, the wildlife around Lake Eyre and the surrounding deserts has been going ganbusters, thanks to Global Warming and Climate Change.

I could go on.

The point is that man made Global Warming remains a theory, not a fact. Just as Darwin’s theory of evolution is a theory even 150 years after it was proposed, not a fact. The evidence for Darwin’s theory is compelling, but it will never be uncontestable. That said, my view is that “Intelligent Design” has as much credibility as man made Climate Change (ie. none). But I am not so blind as to therefore alienate anyone who happens to disagree with me.

On the contrary, I strongly believe the interests of truth are best served by a diversity of opinion, however whacky they may seem.

Kites have more manoeuvrability in the water than surfboards, and the rules of surfing are often inappropriate for kitesurfing. Follow these kitesurfing safety tips to increase your quality of kitesurfing (and/or life expectancy).

1. Thou shalt ride thy kite like a motorcycle.

The onus for safety is upon you and you alone, not other parties, at all times. Constant vigilance, avoid all hazards, and never assume the other guy knows “the rules” or can even see you. If you have never ridden a motorcycle, then you should learn that before you get into kitesurfing. Kitesurfing is more dangerous than riding a motorcycle. Its no good blaming others when you’re dead. This safety onus extends to public or private discussions about kitesurfing.

2. Thou shalt not assert thy “Rights” on the water.

The bottom line here is that kitesurfers must avoid each other. There are no “rights” in kitesurfing except in the sense you have the right (well, duty really) to kite safely. Its all very nice when others observe their set of rules and you do likewise, but these rules can set up dangerous situations for youself and other kitesurfers (eg tourists) who don’t know or follow the local rules, or who follow a different set of rules. For example, you have no legal right to the unfortunately named “Right of Way”. “Right of Way” is a courtesy extended under some surfing code of etiquette that someone dreamt up long before kitesurfing, and which stared life under the traffic code. The misnomer “Right of Way” is inappropriately transferred to kitesurfing, particularly on waves, because kitesurfers’ access to waves is far superior to that of surfers. There is no need for an enshrined “Right of Way” rule. Moreover, kites are governed by the wind, not by the waves, so before this Right could have any merit at all (it doesn’t anyhow) then it should be that upwind kites have priority over downwind kites, regardless of who is closest to the break. Unless it’s a prescribed legal requirement of a kitesurfing license (no such thing as yet), “Right of Way” is a courtesy, not a right. More importantly, there are a plethora of reasons why a person will fail to observe your “Right of Way” - most infamously - the “I didn’t see the guy” reason that marks the tombstone of many a dead motorcyclist. Why would you bet your life that the other guy is going to see you, let alone observe your “Right of Way” ?

3. Thou shalt not go out on the water if thou art, or thou becomest, angry.

If you are a party to a kitesurfing rage incident in the water you are extremely vulnerable to serious and life threatening injury to yourself or others. If you are angry for any reason, get out of the water immediately. Focus on safely landing and securing your equipment as your number 1 priority, which might include locking your kite in your car, or even leaving the area. Then get rid of your anger before you even think about going out again. If you are a victim, don’t add any more energy to the situation, except to leave it.

It’s amazing the genius some people have for screwing up the simplest things.

Case in point: I recently had cause to unsubscribe from an e-newsletter. Pretty simple request you’d think.

I had initially provided my personal email address to a community group to receive a back copy of a single document. Well I got it ok, but I didn’t expect to be subscribed to the community’s email based newsgroup. You know the sort - where your email address is added to a BCC list in someone’s email client.

Well most of us in the IT Business know the perils of doing this, but in the world of some computer neophytes, they figure this is the best thing since sliced spam. Some of them even discover how much cooler it would be to send using CC, or even (shudder), TO. This, they realise, in a inspred flash, will allow everyone to join in the discussions! They create their own little TO/CC/BCC based newsgroup, and are very proud of it.

I will acknowledge that a big part of the problem is the technology that facilitates this sort of thing in the first place. However, in business contexts TO/CC/BCC are an absolute necessity and work well if only because such recipients are usually always members of the same tightly controlled email domain (ie internal emails). In public contexts the opposite is the case.

Now for the benefit of those who don’t know what is wrong with TO/CC/BCC in public mailouts, here’s a few pointers:

* the right to publish or disclose a person’s email address to others is not granted by them simply giving it to you;
* it only needs one recipient to have an email harvesting virus for all the addresses to siphoned out to spammers;
* it only needs two recipients to start flaming each other to create a toxic thread that no one can unsubscribe from;
* if you start promoting third party sales you are yourself now a spammer.

And if you think that using BCC is ok, think again. The BCC field is hidden in most personal email clients, and it’s just too easy to paste your list of addresses into the TO field. Make this mistake just once and you too can count yourself in the ranks of the world’s most hated people.

The community group I had recently joined made this blunder (using CC instead of BCC) twice in as many weeks. On each occasion one or two others then replied to the entire CC list, compounding the offence. I needed to protect this particular email address from spam, so I politely emailed the unwitting spammer to be unsubscribed (there was no unsubscribe facility).

The newsletter author replied promising to email everyone again, this time demanding they immediately delete my email address (provided in full) and every reference to me (provided in full). At this point I’ll have to let you just imagine my fury at this person. Why, I replied, would anyone now publish my email address AND full name in an unnecessary circular when I’d just asked them not to?

Unbelievably, (assuming BCC was used) my email address would also be the only one to be published without consent in this new email to everyone else. Suffice to say, after I told the person to do no such thing I escalated the issue up the ranks. And from there I will simply say the incompetence increased in a disappointing display of the Inverse Peter Principle**.

Moral of the story: It’s like driving on the roads isn’t it. It’s a fact that regardless of our own due diligence and care, the lawlessness/ignorance/negligence of others remains a constant threat.

**Inverse Peter Principle:

If you’re really good at something, eventually things will change around you and (if you don’t change) you won’t be good at it anymore

Its the story that matters, the imagery is secondary…. http://bunyip.photoblog.com