The end of the war in Iraq... Really?

We have seen those pictures in 2003 and the speech from Bush. Mission accomplish!

Quite an accomplishment! See for yourself the number of civilian death since the mission accomplish! source

Year - Civilian deaths
2003 - 12,080
2004 - 10,797
2005 - 14,974
2006 - 27,767
2007 - 24,599
2008 - 9,221
2009 - 4,645
2010 - 1,989

And now.. More of the same from Obama:
Obama Admin Claims End to Combat Operations in Iraq, But Iraqis See Same War Under a Different Name
See this report from Democracy now.


From wikipedia, we see that there maybe over 100 thousand private military contractors in Iraq.

Currently in Iraq there are thought to be at least 100,000 contractors working directly for the United States Department of Defense which is a tenfold increase in the use of private contractors for military operations since the Persian Gulf War, just over a decade earlier.^[16] The prevalence of PMCs has led to the foundation of trade group the Private Security Company Association of Iraq. In Iraq, the issue of accountability, especially in the case of contractors carrying weapons is a sensitive one. Iraqi laws do not hold over contractors. Just before leaving office as head of theCoalition Provisional Authority, Paul Bremer signed Coalition Provisional Authority Order 17 where it is stated that:

Contractors shall not be subject to Iraqi laws or regulations in matters relating to the terms and conditions of their Contracts, including licensing and registering employees, businesses and corporations; provided, however, that Contractors shall comply with such applicable licensing and registration laws and regulations if engaging in business or transactions in Iraq other than Contracts. Notwithstanding any provisions in this Order, Private Security Companies and their employees operating in Iraq must comply with all CPA Orders, Regulations, Memoranda, and any implementing instructions or regulations governing the existence and activities of Private Security Companies in Iraq, including registration and licensing of weapons and firearms.^[17]

PMCs supply support to U.S. military bases throughout the Persian Gulf, from operating mess halls to providing security. They supply armed guards at a U.S. Army base in Qatar, and they use live ammunition to train soldiers at Camp Doha in Kuwait. They maintain an array of weapons systems vital to an invasion of Iraq. They also provide bodyguards for VIPs, guard installations, and escort supply convoys from Kuwait. All these resources are called upon constantly due to the war in Iraq.^[5]

Photos des Jeux Du Québec 2010 - Triathlon - Laurentides

Some news about the climate

Fire in Russia, is it global warming, climate change or something else?



Snow in Brazil.

Extracts:

For a second day running it snowed Wednesday in Southern Brazil and in twelve of Argentina’s 24 provinces including parts of Buenos Aires as a consequence of the polar front covering most of the continent’s southern cone with zero and below zero temperatures.

Kola Temperature Reconstruction Shows Solar Correlation – Refutes The Hockey Stick
Source

Russian-German temperature reconstruction from 1600 to 2000 derived from tree rings from the Kola Peninsula in northwest Russia . The paper appeared in the journal Arctic, Antarctic, and Alpine Research, Vol. 41, No. 4, 2009, pp. 460–468, by Kononov, Friedrich and Boettger. 

The broad similarity between this temperature construction and solar radiation indicates that solar activity is an important driver of centennial to multi-decadal trends in summer temperatures of the Kola Peninsula. 

DMI polar data shows cooler Arctic temperature since 1958

Source

Are we sure, CO2 plays that big of a role in the "heating" of the planet?

Interesting read at WUWT.  Here's the conclusions:

Conclusion and caveats

The main point is that every time you hear or read that “CO2 heats the atmosphere” , that “energy is trapped by CO2” , that “energy is stored by green house gases” and similar statements , you may be sure that this source is not to be trusted for information about radiation questions .

Caveat 1

The statement we proved cannot be interpreted as “CO2 has no impact on the dynamics of the Earth-atmosphere system” . What we have proven is that the CO2 cannot heat the atmosphere in the bulk but the whole system cannot be reduced to the bulk of the atmosphere . Indeed there are 2 interfaces – the void on one side and the surface of the Earth on the other side . Neither the former nor the latter is in LTE and the arguments we used are not valid . The dynamics of the system are governed by the lapse rate which is “anchored” to the ground and whose variations are dependent not only on convection , latent heat changes and conduction but also radiative transfer . The concentrations of CO2 (and H2O) play a role in this dynamics but it is not the purpose of this post to examine these much more complex and not well understood aspects .

Caveat 2

You will sometimes read or hear that “the CO2 has not the time to emit IR because the relaxation time is much longer than the mean time between collisions .” We know now that this conclusion is clearly wrong but looks like common sense if one accepts the premises which are true . Where is the problem ?

Well as the collisions are dominating , the CO2 will indeed often relax by a collision process . But with the same token it will also often excite by a collision process . And both processes will happen with an equal rate in LTE as we have seen . As for the emission , we are talking typically about 10ⁿ molecules with n of the order of 20 . Even if the average emission time is longer than the time between collisions , there is still a huge number of excited molecules who had not the opportunity to relax collisionally and who will emit . Not surprisingly this is also what experience shows .

How good is CO2 for plant life and everything else related to it on earth?


Source

Where can I find more of those articles?

Here's a list of web sites I consults from time to time on those subjects.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/
http://antigreen.blogspot.com/
http://www.co2science.org/
http://climateaudit.org/
http://www.biomind.de/realCO2/realCO2-1.htm
http://joannenova.com.au/

Did you enjoy this recap of latest news?  Let me know with a comment.

Being quiet for a month, what's up dude?

It's been almost a month since my last post.. What happening to me?

Changing job!
Well for starters I changed job from a system admin north of Montréal at Infosilem to a System specialist in the engineering department at Bell Mobility in Dorval.  Leaving a post after 10 years of service always stirs up emotions inside.  I started at Infosilem when they where a small group of 12 in a small office in Ste-Adèle with only 2 small servers and a couple of PC's to take care of.  After 10 years, now located in Blainville, they grew to a strong team of +30 people, with a dozen or more servers, and more than a hundred Virtual Machines for testing and development.  Lots of energy went into this growth and I will feel attached for quite a while.

The funny thing is that I am coming back to Bell actually. Before moving up north in Ste-Adèle for Infosilem, I left the same engineering group I am back to.  I worked for around 1 year at Bell Mobility before Infosilem in the engineering group and around 5 years in the operations group in l'Acadie.  So going back to my "old" job is fun and I find myself rediscovering lots of people I knew back then.

When I left Bell 10 years ago, I recommended a friend of mine to join the team and now this friend is the one who brought me back in. Wow how much can change in 10 years! The group I am back in grew a  lot, probably doubled in size, two managers now, one of which I participated in hiring 10 years ago!  I am quite busy learning all the new stuff and taking care of a platform that interfaces the "users/vendors" of mobility services and all internal services inside Bell Mobility.  Things like SMS - Short message services, MMS - MultiMedia services, LBS - Location base services... This thing is called Parlay-X and we are now implementing the new OneAPI (Flash demos and video) platform for Aepona.

Training!
While all this is going on, I kept training, even if I am in a "break" from my intense triathlon season.  Need to keep a fit body to be able to have a fit mind!  What's the saying again... A Fit Body Means a Fit Mind? Well to be honest, I think I am now addicted to the endorphins that keep me sane and stress free... Well almost ;-)

Last weekend I was in Magog, Québec, doing my second half-Ironman. Actually they called it half long distance.  The swim was 2350M, 90K bike and 21k run.  So 450M more on the swim side.  The Magog triathlon is a hard one for the long distance course. We had some waves, long and small in the lake, lots of up-hills on the bike and run.  I started my triathlon with a bad left shoulder that I manage to control on the swim, but got stiffer on the bike, being on my tri-bars for 90km (3 hours). So when came time to run, my shoulder cramped between 5km and 15km and forced my to walk and stretched more than I wanted to.  But overall, I manage to do a similar time compared to my first half-Ironman.

This is me (second left) with some of my Tribal friends a few minutes before the start.

Electrical storm killed my machines!
Yep, We had an lighting strike near the house 10 days ago, that fried the network cards of the xbox 360, a PC, a port on my router and my Ubuntu server.  In addition, I have a couple of electronic thermostats that fried and the charger for my electric mower.  So I am now working hard to recover my server, I found some old parts on Ebay for my old Dell 600SC server.  So hopefully I can recover my Raid5 drive with all my stuff on it.  I now need to setup a lighting rod and better surge protection around my equipments.  The only thing that was not on UPS was the xbox. I think that was the weak link that started the mess.

Vacation!
It's always good to have some vacation, time to cool down, relax, change of pace.  This year my two weeks started with my half-Iroman in Magog, followed with a week in Québec city where my son went skying... Right skying in the summer, actually this is what he did...



While this was going on, the rest of the family went visit and have fun at those places.Québec Aquarium, Village Valcartier, Canyon Ste-Anne for some Ferratas, aerial bridges and Zip Lines.  Then some relaxing time in the old Québec, studying the history of my ancestors.

Next week will be in Gatineau, near Ottawa for the Jeux du Québec (Québec Games). Where my daughter will be participating in the triathlon games for the first time.

Movies and books!
Vacation also means reading and going to the movies with friends.  In the last month I finished the quadrilogy "Ender's games" by Orson Scott Card, started earlier in the year, this is one of the best and deep science-fiction series I read.  Now I am almost done with the Navigator by Clive Cussler with Paul Kemprecos. This is more light reading compared to Ender's game, but the historical references are quite interesting.

On the movie side, I was not disappointed by Salt with Angelina Jolie.  The plot about the kids trained by some Russian to become sleeping agents in the USA to start a war was quite interesting.  Yes, lots of violence and shooting, but good actions. The other movie I saw was the true story of Robert Piché, the pilot who safely landed a plane with no fuel and saved 300 people. Very touching movie about the complicated life of the man and what gave him the nerves of steel that saved the plan and everyone in it.