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While many scientists have some dire warnings against us trying to geoengineer our way out of the climate crisis, others don’t necessarily see it that way and are working on new methods to solve the problem. Researchers at the University of Washington’s College of the Environment Institute are studying the idea of cloud brightening, utilizing ships to shoot salt water high into the atmosphere over the oceans in order to create long-lasting cloud cover. The additional clouds reflect more sunlight back into space, resulting in a cooling effect on the planet. In order to encourage discussion amongst other climate scientists,...

What would you do if your entire digital life started evaporating before your eyes and there was virtually nothing you could do about it? This is the nightmare scenario that greeted US technology journalist Mat Honan, who had all of the contents of his iPhone, iPad and Macbook Air wiped, and lost control of his Gmail and Twitter accounts, all in the span of just over 15 minutes.

Would it be possible to privately cloud seed in order to make it rain? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloud_seeding

The China Daily is reporting that a giant mushroom cloud resembling an atomic explosion is being seen all over the capital city of Beijing on Sunday. The video of the cloud has already appeared all over YouTube (see below). There are multiple videos of the haze that have been filmed from skyscrapers and from the ground, some going back as far as June 14th. The Chinese government, in reacting to the red and green haze, is warning residents that they should stay inside according to the French Press on the scene. Due to the sheer size of the Chinese population,...

This is pretty wild... A phenomenon known as a 'roll cloud' -a very rare form of Arcus cloud- was seen in eastern Texas early this morning... it's formed when a cool outflow of air from a substantial thunderstorm jets-out ahead of the system in a rotating rope that can run 50 miles long... More at Reaganite Republican ____________________________________ KTLV-TV   Wikipedia  h/t Doug Welch

The cloud could suffer the same kind of collapses that plague the financial system, according to an analysis of the unrecognised risks of cloud computing. The cloud is essentially a metaphor for a network of computers in which computational tasks and resources can be shared. The big idea here is that users simply rent the computing power, the storage or an application for as long as they need it without having to invest in the infrastructure behind it. That makes computing cheaper, easier and more efficient. There are well known problems of course. The most obvious relates to guaranteeing the security of data...

Ever find yourself not trusting something or someone from the first moment - but not knowing why? For instance the first moment you saw a politician, instantly not trusting them but you just couldn't place why? *cough* John Edwards *cough*. Well that's what I thought the first time I heard about "cloud computing".

President Obama travels to North Carolina on Wednesday dogged by poor economic news, threats of resistance on the Hill, sagging poll numbers and Democratic losses in a pair of special House elections. If September, and more specifically the president’s jobs speech, was intended to be the start of a new phase of Obama’s presidency, there is precious little indication as of yet that anything at all has changed. -- FOR THE RECORD: Obama tour: An earlier version of this online article misstated the White House's assertions regarding any intended connection between President Obama's tour promoting his jobs package and his...

Although the CLOUD experiment carried out in CERN didn't quite drive a stake through the heart of the global-warming ideology, it came close to. Through simulating the atmosphere being bombarded by cosmic rays, the experiment produced microscopic droplets of water vapour. It established that higher levels of cosmic rays do indeed lead to more droplets in the sky, a claim denied by all global-warming models. As of yet, the droplets produced in the CERN lab aren't large enough to form clouds. So far, a solid causation has not supplemented an already-established correlation. In response to CLOUD, some global-warming supporters are...

I’ll have more on this as it develops (updated twice since the original report now), but for the short term, it appears that a non-visible light irradiance effect on Earth’s cloud seeds has been confirmed. The way it is posited to work is that the effect of cosmic rays (modulated by the sun’s magnetic variations which either allow more or deflect more cosmic rays) creates cloud condensation nuclei in the Earth’s atmosphere. With more condensation nuclei, more clouds form and vice-versa. Clouds have significant effects on TSI at the surface. Update: From the Nature article, Kirkby is a bit more...

Is your network safe? Almost all of us prefer the convenience of Wi-Fi over the hassle of a wired connection. But what does that mean for security? Our tests tell the whole story. We go from password cracking on the desktop to hacking in the cloud.We hear about security breaches with such increasing frequency that it's easy to assume the security world is losing its battle to protect our privacy. The idea that our information is safe is what enables so many online products and services; without it, life online would be so very different than it is today. And...

Researchers at Microsoft have built a virtual vault that could work on medical data without ever decrypting it. Imagine getting a friend's advice on a personal problem and being safe in the knowledge that it would be impossible for your friend to divulge the question, or even his own reply. Researchers at Microsoft have taken a step toward making something similar possible for cloud computing, so that data sent to an Internet server can be used without ever being revealed. Their prototype can perform statistical analyses on encrypted data despite never decrypting it. The results worked out by the software...

n another sign of the Internet's ability to streamline business processes and make others irrelevant, cloud computing is poised to have a serious impact on a segment of the workforce that never expected to see job cuts or a weakening in demand for its services: traditional information-technology workers. An unintended consequence of Google, Apple, Facebook and other major tech companies building data centers in North Carolina's "Data Center Corridor" may be the accelerated obsolescence of traditional IT jobs as cloud computing and related technologies gain momentum. Cloud computing lets businesses outsource data storage, applications, even their entire data centers to...

Cloud computing is all the rage today, with everyone from the U.S. Federal government to Apple herding us into a brave new world of remotely hosted data and services.  There are, of course, many advantages to the cloud concept.  But as usual, this new IT architecture has some inherent and serious risks that cloud proponents hope potential customers will not dwell on. There's nothing new about that, of course - except for the stakes.  Innovation usually outruns caution and comprehensive consideration of concerns like safety and unintended consequences.  But if we want to put all of our computing resources and...

Computer hackers in China broke into the Gmail accounts of several hundred people, including senior U.S. government officials, military personnel and political activists, Google Inc. said Wednesday. The attacks aren't believed to be tied to a more sophisticated assault originating from China in late 2009 and early last year. That intrusion targeted the Google's own security systems and triggered a high-profile battle with China's Communist government over online censorship, which has made it more difficult for the company to do business in the world's most populous country. The latest duplicity appeared to rely on so-called "phishing" scams and other underhanded...

Isn't it great? You no longer have to buy your software. Why, it's on the "cloud". Maybe even Cloud 9. Like beer, which you never buy, you rent it. It won't take up valuable space on you 1,024 gigabyte hard disk, no updates to worry about, no fees for updating the damn thing. But wait, something ain't right! Let's say you are using Google Docs (and let's not get into the discussion of Google being Communists, as they all supposedly are according to some here. If they support the RATS it's only because we've allowed the RATS to control the...

If you've got a working Gmail account, you might want to back it up every so often -- as many as 500,000 Gmail users lost access to their inboxes this morn, and some of them are reporting (via Twitter and support forums) that years worth of messages, attachments and Google Chat logs had vanished by the time they were finally able to log on.

US computer chip giant Intel posted its best earnings ever in 2010 as businesses beefed up data centers to handle services increasingly shifting to the Internet "cloud." Intel said it took in a net profit of $11.7 billion for the year on revenue of $43.6 billion, a 167 percent jump from the profit it posted in 2009. "2010 was the best year in Intel's history," the California-based company's chief executive Paul Otellini said in comments released with the earnings report. "We believe that 2011 will be even better." Intel's net profit for the final quarter was $3.4 billion, a 48...

I've always considered my wife a little paranoid about her privacy.  Although she has never done anything illegal or immoral, she sometimes acts as though the world is out to get her.  To avoid leaving an electronic trail, she pays for everything in cash as much as possible and has, until recently, refrained from conducting any online financial transactions.  I, on the other hand, have been somewhat cavalier about protecting my privacy, believing there is safety in numbers.  After all, out of some three hundred million folks in this country, what are the odds that I would be a...

Chrome OS draws near. Last night brought perhaps the more surefire sign yet: Google is openly talking to The New York Times about it. Perhaps that is in response to rumors that it was being delayed into next year. While details are still scant, NYT reports that before the end of the year, Google will release a lightweight netbook running Chrome OS. It will likely be branded as a Google product, but built by a third-party, similar to what the search giant did with their Nexus One phone, says the report. This is in line with what we’ve heard and...