(olive tree photo by CorinthianGulf on Flickr)

Joseph Holsten (Charter Member #637) sends in this interesting yet troubling piece from the Wall St Journal on the market for very old trees:

Nick Lloyd, who edits the online Spanish environmental journal iberianature.com, says the market in ancient olive trees is growing, despite the naturally limited supply of the commodity and mounting opposition from conservation groups. “Ten years ago the starting price was €2,000 for a thousand-year-old tree,” Mr. Lloyd says. “Now it’s €18,000.” (continue to the article)

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Roger Kennedy brought this story to my attention about a spruce that was nearly 10,000 years old on the mountainous border between Sweden and Norway. As it turns out the trees themselves only last several centuries, but their root systems live on. It is postulated that the root system of the one pictured above basically started at the end of the last ice age, and has lived on in the harsh and isolated landscape ever since. As the Bristlecone adage goes “adversity breeds longevity”.

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Former intern Jason Li sent in this brilliant “maps through time” site that shows growth in urban centers over time. Of particular interest is the Seattle mapset that shows the spike in homes built in Seattle as people moved from San Francisco after the 01906 Earthquake.

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Forbes.com has an excellent special on and about time… They were even nice enough to publish one of my answers to their “What is Time” question in the article by Elizabeth Evans.

Time is a Dimension

Time’s Sleight Of Hand By Brian GreeneWhatever it is, time doesn’t behave the way you would think.

A Brief History Of Time Machines By David ToomeyThe truth may be stranger than fiction.

Time is Money

The Price Of Time By Paul MaidmentTime is a strange economic good, difficult to price and easy to waste.

The Money Meter By David M. Ewalt & Blair EllisThey say time is money. How much is yours worth?

Time is Flying

A Cure For Chronocentrism By Tim PowersTo a leap day baby, time is more like an unfenced landscape than the clicking of an odometer.

Peace Time By David A. AndelmanBack in the simpler days of 1919, at the Paris peace talks, the whole world was redrawn under different rules of time and space.

Time is Measured

The World’s Oldest Working Clock By Parmy OlsonSalisbury’s cathedral’s clock is still ticking after more than 600 years.

Collections: Vintage Rolexes By Nicola RuizEvan Zimmermann has a lucrative passion for old watches.

• In Pictures: The World’s Most Expensive Watches

Time Is Perception

What Is Time? By Elisabeth EavesIt speeds up, slows down, and stands still.

Is Time Just A Trick Of The Mind? By Lionel LaurentNotions of past, present and future may be our way of filling in the blanks.

Time is Up

The End By Steve AlmondAll significant data now point to the same unwelcome conclusion.

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California is more than 99% likely to face an earthquake of magnitude 6.7 or greater over the next thirty years, according to a new model which this week produced the first ever statewide forecast.

Associated Press reports:

New calculations reveal there is a 99.7 percent chance a magnitude 6.7 quake or larger will strike in the next 30 years. The odds of such an event are higher in Southern California than Northern California, 97 percent versus 93 percent.

The last time a jolt this size rattled California was the 1994 Northridge disaster, which killed 72 people, injured more than 9,000 and caused $25 billion in damage.
[…]
The analysis is the first comprehensive effort by the USGS [United States Geological Survey], Southern California Earthquake Center and California Geological Survey to calculate earthquake probabilities for the entire state using newly available data. Previous quake probabilities focused on specific regions and used various methodologies that made it difficult to compare.

~Alicia Chang, “Big Quake to Rock Calif. by 2037“, Discovery News, 14 April 02008.

Adds a USGS press release:

The official earthquake forecasts, known as the “Uniform California Earthquake Rupture Forecast (UCERF),” were developed by a multidisciplinary group of scientists and engineers, known as the Working Group on California Earthquake Probabilities. Building on previous studies, the Working Group updated and developed the first-ever statewide, comprehensive model of California.
[…]
The probability of a magnitude 6.7 or larger earthquake over the next 30 years striking the greater Los Angeles area is 67%, and in the San Francisco Bay Area it is 63%, similar to previous Bay Area estimates. For the entire California region, the fault with the highest probability of generating at least one magnitude 6.7 quake or larger is the southern San Andreas (59% in the next 30 years).
[…]
The new model does not estimate the likelihood of shaking (seismic hazard) that would be caused by quakes. Even areas in the state with a low probability of fault rupture could experience shaking and damage from distant, powerful quakes. The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) is incorporating the UCERF into its official estimate of California’s seismic hazard, which in turn will be used to update building codes. Other subsequent studies will add information on the vulnerability of manmade structures to estimate expected losses, which is called “seismic risk.” In these ways, the UCERF will help to increase public safety and community resilience to earthquake hazards.

~U.S. Geological Survey, “New Study Shows Odds High for Big California Quakes“, 14 April 02008.

An important challenge lies in figuring out what individuals can or should do, if anything, with this kind of probabilistic overview. Connecting the insights of a long view to the decisions of everyday life is really quite difficult (compared to many things that government agencies do, thirty years is decidedly long-term).

We were impressed by last year’s Bay Area Red Cross campaign for earthquake preparedness, which included the temporary installation of a stunning billboard showing San Francisco’s Market Street in ruins. This is one way of mediating risk in an accessible, experiential form, that may have a real impact on what people think about.

However, this new report suggests how a long-term orientation entails taking account of risks that may or may not be germane, or helpful, on a day-to-day basis. (Should the near certainty of a 6.7 California quake by 02037 be taken as an urgent cue to skedaddle? Perhaps not.) Whereas for institutions with systematic responsibilities, and leverage, such as those that respond to emergencies, or those that set and enforce building codes, this may be news they can use. The fostering of long-term responsibility implies different types of engagement for different audiences.

• The full UCERF report
• A summary fact sheet
• Bay Area Red Cross earthquake preparedness campaign

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I just got this great note in from our friend Davide Bocelli in Italy…

Dear Alexander,

I was thinking about “Long Now” and “housing” and I found a page on wikipedia on the very ancient town of Matera with her multimillenial heart. In Italian we call this place “Sassi di Matera” (the Stones of Matera). For the last 9000 years people lived in this area. Objects nfrom the Paleolitic age was found in the caves that form the core of the town. And thousands of these caves have been converted into houses and used and re-used for centuries and centuries. The place has known periods of abandon and repopulation following the ups and downs of demography and local economy, but there is still people that, quoting the English Fodor’s Guide, “can boast to be still living in the same houses of their ancestors of 9,000 years ago”. The local authorities with UNESCO and foreign partners are working to revive the area. There are many things to learn from this site: it is so interesting to see, in this poor and simple multimillenial neighborhood, how they managed water or they oriented of the main door of the house to take advantage of the sunlight.

Some links:
Sassi di Matera (in English)
http://www.sassidimatera.it/
Wikipedia (in English)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sassi_di_Matera
Pictures of the Sassi (in Italian)
http://gbmaragno.interfree.it/

(Image above: A view on Matera - bottom, the rocks; center, the ancient houses that are partly made of cave or dug into the rocks; on the horizon, some  contemporary constructions, far away. )

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Image credit: Christopher Sharp

Could the paucity of long-term thinking in the United States be due to a want of engineers in high places?

So suggests a report in EE Times, a long-running electronics industry newspaper, published earlier in the month. It argues that that engineers bring a valuable future-orientation and tendency to think long-term to the political process in a number of other countries, but that this pattern is not reproduced in the U.S.

Here’s an extract:

Engineers elsewhere apply their talents to the political sphere, but those in the United States, unfortunately, don’t–and there are no signs the situation will change anytime soon. The overwhelming majority of American engineers choose industry and business, not government or policy, as their rightful place, even as their counterparts around the globe see no conflict between politics and their profession.
[…]
Engineers in China are acknowledged as key players in the country’s rapid economic rise. They’re overrepresented in the Chinese Politburo and among government ministers, said William Wulf, president emeritus of the National Academy of Engineering and a professor at the University of Virginia.

Their role on the political stage is a reason for the country’s success. “That’s a real part of why China is doing so well,” Wulf said. Lawyers predominate in American government, and while their solutions often address the immediate problems, they don’t give much thought to future implications, he said.

The engineering mindset tends to focus on the long term. When you build a bridge that will be there for 100 years, you have to think about its impact, and its ability to absorb future traffic growth and adapt to new kinds of transport. “A lot of what we’re seeing in China’s astounding growth is that sort of long-term thinking,” Wulf said.
[…]
“In Islamic or developing countries, people usually study engineering simply because they think it offers them a better future,” [says professor of chemical engineering and materials science at the University of Southern California, Muhammad] Sahimi, who is also the National Iranian Oil Co. chair in petroleum engineering at USC.

Their analytical ability leads many engineers and engineering students to political activism in those settings, he said. In Iran, for example, the majority of those in government leadership positions have engineering backgrounds, said Sahimi, who is Iranian-American.

~Sheila Riley, “Engineering ‘mindset’ doesn’t include politics“, EE Times, 2 April 02008

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Stewart Brand sent in this spiffy UCLA project that uses historical interactive maps of Berlin through time. This is part of a larger trend I have seen from many governments and municipalities to use modern geographical information systems (GIS) to not only create maps of what is there, but to add the time element to create a much deeper now.

• Historical Maps in Google Earth
• Virtual Berlin
• Westport Ireland
• China
• Philadelphia

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Since purchasing property in Eastern Nevada for the Clock site, Long Now has been paying close attention to water issues.  The valley that makes up much of “view shed” from our potential Clock site has become of great interest to the Southern Nevada Water Authority who has recently bought all the private land in the southern half of this immense valley (with the exception of Long Now’s property).   What this has also brought to light however is the larger issue of access to water world wide, and how changing climate is affecting it.  It is not always easy to find long and in depth pieces on this issue that cover the history, scale, and angles well.  One such piece was just sent to me by Stewart Brand and was published in NRDC’s OnEarth.

[In Colorado at over 10,000ft] …we’re probably witnessing the effects of global warming on one of the highest, coldest parts of the country. Climate scientists predict that for every 1.8 degree Fahrenheit increase in temperature, mountain snow cover will retreat upward by 500 feet. The West’s total snowpack could be reduced by as much as 40 percent in the next half century.

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 Nice animated time line of human migration sent to me by Paul Saffo (via Jim Warren).  The coolest thing I learned was the very exciting day about 80,000 years ago when a massive volcanic eruption caused a 6 year darkening of the skies!

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