A determined heading for disaster

There is just one info graphic that says it all.



What does it mean? It means that we have already released 1020Gt of CO2 into the earth's atmosphere, 380Gt since 2009. But the most important graphic is the black one, this is the amount of CO2 we can emit before the temperature of the earth goes up above the 2C limit set by governments and scientists as a "tipping" point, beyond which things will get rather unstable.

The details of what will happen as the temperature rises are show below.


Not so easy to read this small print, but in essence nasty things start to happen above 2C, such as

1. Sea levels rise by 1.04m

2. Amsterdam city gets drowned

3. European heat waves

4. +15% more destructive hurricanes

and so it goes on.

I guess you don't like the idea of that?

Action we need to take, boom & bust

The problem is that Oil companies and Coal companies and Gas companies list already known reserves much bigger than the CO2 we can emit before we reach 2C (745Gt). And there is a huge estimate of further reserves (2050Gt) which they believe can be found and used.

So what is the reality behind these reserves? That they are worthless, if we want to stay within 2C. The biggest bubble of all time, with severe financial consequences if these companies don't write off these reserves and stop all the billions they are pouring into finding more.

Just to confirm the bust is coming soon, at the current rate we use fossil fuels of 31Gt/year we have just 13 years remaining before total collapse, or rising above 2C with the attendant consequences.

Hard Work

Phew, that was hard work.

Yesterday I took part in the celebration of the centenary of the UK Radio Society of Great Britain, which is 100 years old this year.

For this our local amateur radio club set up a special event station under the call sign G100RSGB. The aim was to work as many stations, on as many bands, in as many modes as we could in 48 hours.

I manned our High Frequency station on 7.125MHz from about 11:00 to around 15:30, and was in practically continuous demand from other amateurs who wanted to confirm a contact with us and receive the special RSGB QSL card (confirmation of contact).

In all I guess I talked to well over 50 other amateurs in UK, and one in The Netherlands… and keeping one's head in the pile up of tens of stations calling at the same time, then sorting them out to acknowledge contact one by one, was hard work. Anyway enjoyed it immensely, especially as I am a new amateur with only 5 previous contacts!

M6KWH

Is the iPad an office?

Sadly no the iPad is not up to office applications. Why?

Because many things we do everyday involve accessing files made across different applications, but on the iPad the files for each application are "sandboxed" to that app. The exceptions to this are when an app specifically generates a file and gives it to another app - the most common application of this is Photo attaching to an email, or Pages generating a PDF and attaching to a mail.

But this is not the way people send emails, they generally write them first then decide to attach something, or many things.

Example

I generate and mail out Press Releases for various organisations. For this I use Contacts to keep the email addresses, I identify each contacts by putting a keyword in the "Company" field, then on the iMac I can create "Smartgroups" and Mail to them text and attached PDF files.

But this can't be done on the iPad for two reasons, first is that the iPad Contacts app does not sync or generate Smartgroups, so I can't mail to a group through the Mail program. Second the iPad does not let you generate an email then attach a file.

Solution

The solution is complex and mind dumbing. It uses an app called GroupMail which lets you create Smartgroups, but does not put them in your Contacts app because it can't get in the sandbox… first fail. So what we have to do is this:

1 Make a Smartgroup in Groupmail, by defining a rule to extract all people with a specific key in their card.

2 Open Pages, chose edit > chose doc (wobbles) > chose create email, chose PDF option. This creates an email in a Mail app window with the PDF attached. But it does not have the email distribution list in To or cc or Bcc. Now go to Mail, open the Draft and Select All in the email message - i.e. the PDF file attached. 4 Back in Groupmail select your group, set the To, cc & Bcc, then create email, enter subject. Paste in the PDF file attachment from 2

5 Return to Pages, open the doc, select all the text and copy

6 Go back to Groupmail and paste in the text in the email you made here, edit it and send the text and the attached PDF file… whew



Can you believe this seems to be the only way!!!

So what should happen?

Mail should have an attach button that allows you to grab any file from another app, be it Pages, Keynote or any file in Dropbox, and attach it. problem solved!

Can't they talk?

Why the hell don't the bread makers, white sliced, get together with the makers of toasters so that the bread fits in the toaster?

It always sticks out, or if you put it on its side its too wide. So you have to cut off the top and waste a bit!!!