Tracking down New York Times Climate link

As can be seen by the frequency of my posts, I am not often motivated to write. But this morning I happened to be reading a New York Times article about a new science minister in Brazil. This sentence caught my eye:

But emissions jumped 7.8 percent in 2013, according to the Climate Observatory, a network of environmental organizations.

The link sent me to a Reuter's article which had a deeper discussion but no links. After some searching, I found Mongabay's reference to the Observatório do Clima (Climate Observatory). Long ago, I had "liked" Mongabay on Facebook and was happy to find the useful reference. The New York Times article was disappointing.

The document with the 7.8% increase in Brazilian emissions can be found at SEEG (13 january 2015). The link to the pdf document is called Climate Observatory Perspective at COP 20 and the filename is Presentation_SEEG_2.0_-_COP20_Side_Event.pdf. The 7.8% is located on slide 16 of the presentation.

Google Translate is very useful to navigate through the Portugese language of the Brazilian website. There are some nice interactive graphics to explore SEEG.

Sunglint on Titan

Sunglint on Titan

Waves on Titan

My thesis research was on the observation of how sunlight reflection from earth's ocean affected the albedo measurements from a satellite. During my studies, I had a discussion with Caitlin, another graduate student from the Earth and Space Sciences Department. I described to her the geometry conditions of the satellite scanner and the sun that were necessary to observe specular reflection from a liquid surface. She was interested in Titan. This article is not written by Caitlin but I was happy to read that these observations were made.

Waves on Titan

Morning perusal of Climate Etc.

It all started with Causes and implications of the pause, at Judith Curry's blog.

Some of the letter writers had interesting links which I followed, as best I could.

I found that I could sign up to read some of Nature's articles without paying. Thank you, Nature. I read  Reconciling warming trends by Gavin A. Schmidt,Drew T. Shindell, and Kostas Tsigaridis,
where this line in their conclusion reflects what I was thinking: "it is inherently unsatisfying to find model–data agreement only with the benefit of hindsight."
I have an interest in cloud properties and tried to find the link to the paper discussing Mt. Pinatubo's affects. I remember reading a paper by Rossow describing the affect on cloud reflection. I wonder if the conclusions of the paper have been changed. 

Some other links which I want to save:

• Mediating Change Workshop 
• TSI and ACRIM satellite measurements 
• Ceres 
• High variability of global albedo video 
• El Nino here 

Using Freemind to learn Openlayers 2

freemind_openlayers_screenshot, a photo by RMD Observations on Flickr.

I have a bad memory and must always consult software manuals for information. Most manuals are page by page. The structure of OpenLayers software is more web-like in my opinion.

Via Flickr:
FreeMind mapping of OpenLayers Software.

Zilver Reiger

Flickr

This is a test post from , a fancy photo sharing thing.

Fsck gggggrub2 and LVM

Linux Ubuntu. I had some kernel problems about 2 months ago which I repaired by replacing the memory. Before I replaced the memory, however, I tried very hard to find the problem. I installed old versions of Linux which I had on hand. I even tried to install the old Windows XP which came with the computer 8 years ago. Nothing worked until the second time I did a memory test (first test worked fine) and I encountered the errors.

While trying to find this problem, I ended up with some corrupted filesystems. One of them had an LVM on it. Unfortunately, grub2 kept trying to clean it up every time I tried to boot. Keep in mind that I did not know that this was the reason for which I was having difficulty booting. I had to repair the disk that had the unsuccessful Windows XP install. I could never be sure whether the booting was failing because I had updated the kernel or for some other reason. I pursued the idea that the SATA disks were at fault because the boot-repair software asked me about them while repairing the boot.

I tried Linux Mint 12.10, Lubuntu 10.10, Ubuntu Studio 12.04 and my main OS Ubuntu 12.04. I did not connect the boot problems with my mounting the LVMs. I started poring over the system error logs.

The solution was provided by NetFibre Unix Administrator. The key was that the LVMs had to be activated (vgchange -ay) but the partitions should not be mounted. I was able to to the cleanup (e2fsck -f /dev/mapper...) because the LVMs were on their own partitions and I did not have to mount them.

Willeskop

20121027_114132, a photo by RMD Observations on Flickr.

Birds on lake.

Via Flickr:
Willeskop Natuur Gebied

Equisetum - Scouring Rush Is The Oldest Extant Genus Of Land Plant?

This plant is a weed in my garden. 


Equisetum - Scouring Rush Is The Oldest Extant Genus Of Land Plant?

Return to Ubuntu

I have switched back to Ubuntu with Unity 2. It is a larger distribution and I am getting accustomed to the left menu system.

SolusOS in place of Ubuntu

Alas, I could not get used to Ubuntu 12.04 Unity and did not want to go backwards to an old gnome Desktop. Therefore I have installed SolusOS on my old Windows 7 partition. Yes, you heard that right. I removed the Windows 7 OS completely from my computer. All that is left is an NTFS partition containing data which I shared between the 2 OS's.

SolusOS is also a Debian-type Linux OS. It installed nicely. I  put its boot record on the root partition rather than the MBR.  Up to now, I have replaced the Cardapio menu with Mintmenu. Someone on the Facebook Linux group suggested it. Mintmenu is also a bit slow and I might go back to the Gnome menu. I was quite surprised that I was able to do this.

The real problem with Unity, for my machine, was the use of icons on the Desktop. It slowed things down and was not organized in  a way in which I work.

Ubuntu 12 Install (Part 2)

I have lost count of how many times I have re-installed Ubuntu 12 (well, about 4). The problem with my machine is that I have 2 hard disks that are SATA. openSUSE, with grub-legacy, was able to create a boot screen for itself, Windows 7 and Ubuntu 12. The Ubuntu 12choice did not work and gave me the error 15 (and then 13 at some point, and then 17 when I started randomly changing things at the grub command line).

The odd thing is, when I changed the boot order in the BIOS, Ubuntu loaded. So, I decided this morning to install the boot loader in the first hard disk and not the one on which Ubuntu 12 was located.  This created a functioning boot menu! I believe that the openSUSE boot menu is still on the second disk, but it is not being reached once the first boot order is found.

Now, I want to make it look pretty.

Ubuntu 12 Install

Installed Ubuntu 12 today. I spent all last week cleaning up 12 years of backups to make space on my backup drive. After the install and reboot, I got the dreaded Error 15 File not Found. So, I rebooted and tried the openSUSE OS. That failed also because it was trying to fsck the new Ubuntu partition (with a new, as yet unknown to opensuse uuid number). I get frustrated when the software can't just skip over these little snags and let me into the workspace where I am better able to deal with it.

So, after some searching led me to the old grub vs. grub2 problem, I decided to just re-install openSUSE and let it find the UBUNTU partition. It did not find the partition and I had to use YAST to look for it. Note that when adding Ubuntu to the list, it asks me if I want to run the file checker. I did not. I checked the menu.lst afterwards and rebooted. After being sent to an ugly text screen (old grub-like menu) I was able to enter the new Ubuntu desktop.

Well, maybe I should try and understand grub2 again, but I cannot find anything about booting the system in the System Settings. I would like a nice screen and not have to go through two menus.

$ grub-install -v
 grub-install (GRUB) 1.99-21ubuntu3
 

$sudo update-grub

Generating grub.cfg ...
Found linux image: /boot/vmlinuz-3.2.0-23-generic-pae
Found initrd image: /boot/initrd.img-3.2.0-23-generic-pae
Found memtest86+ image: /boot/memtest86+.bin
Found Windows 7 (loader) on /dev/sda1
Found openSUSE 11.4 (x86_64) on /dev/sdb8
done

Ubuntu 12 VM

I have been using Ubuntu 10.10 for a long time but they have stopped providing updates for it.

I am installing Ubuntu 12 on VirtualBox. Spent some time finding the CD I had made a few days ago but then realized that VirtualBox can install the .iso from a folder. Using all the default settings, my first problem was the message "this kernel requires the following features not present on the cpu pae". I found that I just had to enable this "pae" and all would be fine. But at the stage of the install, the settings button was grayed out. I powered off the virtual machine and then was able to access the settings button. It was in one of the tabs.

I do not want it to install updates because this is just a test. VirtualBox makes me nervous when it says "Erase disk and install Ubuntu". I have to be confident that they mean the virtual disk. I would prefer that this was written explicitly. The drive is called SCSI1 (0,0,0)(sda) 8.6 ATA VBOX HARDDISK.

Well, I proceeded, having confidence in the logic, and after an hour or so, I have Ubuntu 12 on virtual drive. Love the colors.

IVN Natuur Cursis

I am taking an intensive nature course with the Dutch organization,  IVN (in Dutch). Institute for Nature and Sustainability.The aquarium contains small creatures caught in a net.

One of the larger creatures started eating the smaller.The largest one caught was a beetle about 3 cm long.

Government & ICT

Overheid and ICT 24-26 April 2012
I attended this conference on the first day only.

I attended two meetings. One was about Linux training (LPI) and the other was about saving money (ODINFO). The latter was rather dry but one thing I heard was that license costs are a sizeable factor (20 percent if I heard right) in the overall costs of institutions. Apparently they use over 100 different applications.  Things to keep under control are life cycle of computers and software. 10 years is a good number.  

The LPI talk was more relevent to me because they seemed to imply that they were starting a new certification for Linux that was not necessarily focused on becoming a system administrator. Linux Essentials Program.

I spoke with one other person from Open Geo Groep. I found out that I am falling behind on my Open Sorce Geo software. Through them I found OSGEO and this Geospatial World Forum Conference which is taking place at this moment.

The Trials of Steve McIntyre

I admire Mr. McIntyre's persistence. He tells his experiences with data access at this link: Climate Audit Entry on Neukom and Steig

Ever since I stumbled upon his blog many years ago, I liked the idea of someone outside the climate science field "auditing" the statistical methods. I have a weak background in statistics and enjoyed his entries, especially since he posted his code and data for me to try out and learn.

When I worked with NASA's ERBE data as a graduate student, the NASA rule was that the active developers of the project had one year of data analysis before releasing the data into the public domain. This gave them a chance to publish a few papers before everyone else. It always seemed pretty fair to me, as they had done a lot of work and their papers would provide a good knowledge base upon which other scientists could perform their own research.

The proxy and instrument data have been treated differently, it seems. Steve McIntyre has been trying to reproduce Mann's hockey stick plot, which showed temperatures increasing at an alarming rate in the 20th century. Although the name of his blog, "Audit"  implies an impartial testing of the results, he was treated the same as a lot of other people whose goal was to discredit Mann's analysis. I feel that he was treated wrongly.

Steve McIntyre is not considered a professional scientist because he is not an employee of an Institute or University. Therefore, somehow he is not qualified to have access to this data. Since I am an unemployed scientist, I am also affected by this attitude. I hope to write more about this.

Where is West Antarctica?

Found myself asking the question "where is West Antarctica" because...well, since it is at the pole, the concept of west and east is a little vague. North, of course, is away from the center. So, I made this map for reference whenever I forget. I used Marble, an open source application. West is roughly to the left of the image, where the peninsula reaches towards the tip of South America.

LVM

Logical volume management. Nice concept and just came in handy. It worries me though. Since I cannot see on which disk the volume has been physically strored, I forgot on which disk it was physically stored. Turns out I gave it a lot of space which I did not know that I had. Nice.