Wednesday, July 13, 2005

vanishing plankton

The San Francisco Chronicle is reporting that oceanic plankton have largely disappeared off the San Francisco coast, Oregon, and parts of Canada, due to the lack of the usual cold upwelling. The effect is rippling through the food web.

The larger fish and baleen whales eat mostly krill: free-floating, shrimp- like crustaceans ranging from one to two inches, the upper size limit of the zooplankton realm.
. . .
In perhaps the most ominous development, seabird nesting has dropped significantly on the Farallon Islands off San Francisco, the largest Pacific Coast seabird rookery south of Alaska.
. . .
Peterson said a major die-off of double-crested cormorants recently occurred in Oregon, and juvenile salmon numbers have dropped precipitously. Both events, he said, are likely due to the warm water.
Related to global warming? Possibly so:
A recent study indicated the phenomenon may be long term, and linked to global warming.

Last week, Fisheries and Oceans Canada -- the federal agency dealing with Canada's marine and inland waters -- released a report saying 2004's spring and summer ocean surface temperatures in the Gulf of Alaska and off British Columbia were the warmest in 50 years.

The study concluded the record high temperatures were caused by abnormally warm weather in Alaska and western Canada, as well as "general warming of global lands and oceans."
If so, we may owe a big ol' thank-you to Mr. Cooney and his buddies.

Tuesday, July 12, 2005

feds fear broadband terror

Smartmobs has picked up a Wired story about federal security agencies worrying about broadband systems on aircraft. Their concern is apparantely that terrorists could use them to communicate with other terrorists on the same or other aircraft, or to remotely detonate a bomb.

I guess I'm missing something, but I don't understand how airborn broadband technology will give terrorists an ability they don't have today.

To communicate with others in the same or different aircraft, can't a terrorist just use a cell phone? If they don't want to talk out loud, it seems like they could still use a cell modem plugged into their laptop and instant messaging software. (Or if they're on the same plane, middle-school tricks like passing notes or Morse code "absent-mindedly" tapped out with a pencil might even work.)

To remotely detonate an explosive, what's to stop a plain old direct radio link? Something along the lines of a garage door opener with beefed-up transmission power?

Again, maybe I'm missing something central here, but it doesn't seem like the agencies involved have carefully considered the threat model. Rather than concentrating security on only one possible communication channel, it seems like it would be more productive to put the effort into detecting the explosives, putting sky marshals on the plane, and/or maybe modifying cargo holds to have blow-out panels.

Sunday, July 10, 2005

we're not afraid

After the London bombing, a friend and I were talking about the fact that CNN spent a ton of time breathlessly reporting about the deployment of bomb-sniffing dogs on New York and DC subways. My take was that they felt compelled to talk about the London bombing but there just wasn't much new info coming out of London, so they had to stretch. She was less charitable: she thought they were so arrogant as to think that people in the U.S. would rather hear about non-news in this country than real news overseas.

In either case, and in sharp contrast to the major networks' news coverage, I offer this link to We're Not Afraid, courtesy of Smart Mobs. Their favorite submissions page is definitely worth a look.