Met Office forecasts a supercomputer embarrassment

A new £33m machine purchased to calculate how climate change will affect Britain, has a giant carbon footprint of its own

For the Met Office the forecast is considerable embarrassment. It has spent £33m on a new supercomputer to calculate how climate change will affect Britain – only to find the new machine has a giant carbon footprint of its own.

“The new supercomputer, which will become operational later this year, will emit 14,400 tonnes of CO2 a year,” said Dave Britton, the Met Office's chief press officer. This is equivalent to the CO2 emitted by 2,400 homes – generating an average of six tonnes each a year.

The Met Office recently published some of its most drastic predictions for future climate change. It warned: “If no action is taken to curb global warming temperatures are likely to rise by 5.5ºC and could rise as much as 7ºC above pre-industrial levels by 2100. Early and rapid reductions in CO2 emissions are required to avoid significant impacts of climate change.”

However, when it came to buying a new supercomputer, the Met Office decided not to heed its own warnings. The ironic problem was that it needed the extra computing power to improve the accuracy of its own climate predictions as well as its short-term weather forecasting. The machine will also improve its ability to predict extreme events such as fierce localised storms, cloudbursts and so on.

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The real speech of George W Bush

"...to the State of the Union Address. Presedent Bush is delivering his annual keynote address to congress. Source: my archives. ( Edited speech Voice-Over by UK Comedian Chris Morris. )..."


[ thanks George for this! ]

Musical Innerlube: Grand Funk Railroad - 'Inside Looking Out'

Grand Funk Railroad performing Inside Looking Out live from 1969. This clip was shot at "The Show" WITF-TV in Hershey, Pa. November 1969. Mark & Don were 20 & Mel 18 years old.


Closer To Home - Shea Stadium 1971

"...This is a clip from the legendary Shea Stadium Concert that broke The Beatles ticket sales record. A record that still stands today (37 years later). I'm proud to say this video is in the permanent archives of Shea Stadium & The N.Y. Mets. Yes, this is the real deal, the Grand Funk Railroad we all love at the peak of their great career. Grand Funk Railroad is America's Band. This is a historic concert that folks still rave about. If you were there, feel lucky, because you were a part of history. This is considered by many to be one of the greatest concerts in the short history of "Hard Rock/Metal". Grand Funk Railroad was truly a "Performance Vehicle". It is amazing that this record has stood this long, a testament to how great & influincial this band was in the early 1970's. Check out the link below to see what Mark Farner has to say today about this historic performance. Grand Funk Railroad ruled the world from '69-'76 becoming the first band to earn 10 consecutive platinum albums! Some call it "Industrial Rock". You'll see no lazers or pyro here, just some of the greatest music ever performed live. Shea Stadium suffered structural damage after this show. In fact, the concert was almost stopped because Shea Stadium was oscillating from the excited crowd..."

The single greatest fear - An open letter to President Obama

From Information Clearing House:

To many the perception is clear: nearly every facet of our political, government, and legislative bodies in our country are seemingly corrupted, or serve as little more than commercial representatives prioritizing the needs of their underlying contributors. Many politicians have furthermore been hand placed, not due to their work ethic, or objective capability for cooperative advancement of a random goal, but for their specific known field of vision and reliability to move in an expressed direction on a relative topic.

Our government still very much resembles a throw back to the days of frontier discovery, whereby land tycoons and development groups would groom, finance and place their selected “Yes Man” on the basis of a singular vote or lobbying movement. All these years later, and the best we can still seem to do is pave the way for rampant fraud, criminal corporate activities, deregulation for profiteering, and some of the largest wealth transfer schemes perpetuated in the history of our globe.

It would be nice if the next phase of our country's transition could embrace a higher ideology than just capital contribution rates. Our new foundation should read: any public servant, by nature of the importance and significance of their action and activities, and the dire consequences that can befall a great number of people through abuse of these privileges, will subject themselves to be held to a higher level of accountability.

It seems very clear that our leaders, expressed generally as politicians, can cause fairly significant damage when using their influence and legislative powers to pave the way for change that opens doorways to deceit and decadence. To be further compensated for it – openly or otherwise - only makes it worse. We can only hope that one day history looks back and laughs kindly at the irony of government officials in modern age initiating and voting on platforms that actually prevent their open disclosure requirements on corporate contributions and the platforms for which they serve.

Maybe anyone that continues to serve in public office past 2009 can take a new oath?

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Charles Bukowski : Ordinary madness, poetry & drawings

From the latest issue of Winners Within Us:

“I can hear you typing at night,” says
my neighbor.

“oh, I'm sorry…”

“no,” he says, “it's a pleasant sound…”

he's right, it is.
and when I don't cause that sound for
two or three days
I become fitful
my face gets an unhealthy sag, and –
you must believe me –
I have visions of the way that
I will die.

when typing I'm
immortal.

well, maybe not immortal.
but habitually
this old typewriter and
this old man
live well together.

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