Warming the kettle

It's not very difficult to blame global warming for the natural disasters occurring every year in the world. The fact that this years seems particularly bad in terms of tornadoes and floods just adds fuel to debates on the validity and severity of climate change. The problem is, that simply looking at small scale trends in temperature changes that include only a 100 years of serious measurements can produce unreliable data, prone to statistical insignificance on the account of outliers and natural trends. To me it seems that evidence is essentially being ignored by our leaders anyway, it's always something people like to discuss, but rarely real commitments are made.

What if global warming is indeed something that humans are creating this time around. What if the consequences of it are and will be catastrophic in future years? And what it by the time real measures are taken it will be too late? Sometimes I wonder how bad things would have to get in order for our leaders to take real action in this matter. When does climate change becomes as serious of an issue as the health of the economy? 

It doesn't seem terribly unreasonable to think that a warming planet would have more thermal energy to evaporate and hold more water. Holding more water equates to higher amounts of stored potential energy which can be unleashed in violent weather events. It really isn't rocket science, so you wouldn't think ivy league types would be so unsure about the consequences of a warming Earth.

When Obama first got elected, he seemed very active in addressing climate relate issues, since the mid-term election however his actions speak louder. In march 2011 he opened new areas in Wyoming for coal mining, in April he removed restrictions in mountain top removal practices. In May his administration put on hold restrictions on pollution in industries like paper and refineries as well as speeding off permits to drilling for oil in Alaska. This showcases what the priorities really are for Obama, and not much more is done in other nations. The bottom line is, a lot of these needed changes will be politically unpopular but in the end the difficult decisions have to be made by the elected man in power. This would be a great opportunity for leaders to be remembered for making a difference, yet I believe we'll have to wait for another term see that.

New antivirus and anti-malware

After some significant frustrations with my computer in recent days I decided to looks for different ways to protect my machine. I was basically using Norton Antivirus and just whatever comes with windows in terms of firewall and stuff.

 On my desktop now I have been running Microsoft Security Essentials and I have had a good experience so far. I is only using 2.1k of memory compared to the 15k I was using with NAV.

http://download.cnet.com/Microsoft-Security-Essentials/3000-2239_4-10969260.html
http://www.microsoft.com/en-ca/security_essentials/default.aspx

I am now also using malwarebytes to get rid of unwanted malware that isn't picked up by MSE. This is a great little program, that you can use for free if you get a version without live protection. It's not a big deal to use the free version as long as you do regular scans imo.

http://www.malwarebytes.org/

Lastly, I've also been using the Microsoft Safety Scanner on a weekly/biweekly basis. It is a backup way to look for unwanted software and scripts. It helps remove viruses, spyware and other malicious software in conjunction with the AV. It works similarly to malwarebytes, where you have to do scheduled scans, but I've had quite a bit of success using it to get rid of some of those really really annoying ad-wares. Here is where you can pick up a free copy:

http://www.microsoft.com/security/scanner/en-us/default.aspx


*note that this one is updated often, and the software expires in 10 days since it will be outdated already by then. I tend to use this one twice a month or so.