Copenhagen: Trust, Transparaency and more...

UN Climate Change Conference at Copenhagen, is heating up the city both inside the Conference venue and outside with protesters clamoring for more decisive action . "Trust" between the nations, specially those who are the Top polluters, is in short supply. Senator John Kerry and the US negotiating team pressing on "Transparency " as a tool to bridge the gap but the gulf may have been widened due to historical and cultural perspectives

A fierce debate is raging around MRV: Measurable, Reportable and Verifiable actions, UN's tool to monitor and track. India is touting about its openness as a democracy to replace MRV as a mandatory tool while China is talking about going public with Climate Action Reports.

Where is Russia?

Russia has emerged as the 3rd largest CO2 emitter in the world (4rth if you take EU as a whole). Russian President spoke about 20% reduction in 1990 level by 2020. Is that enough? Why are they not in the Center of this storm?

A look at the Carbon Intensity graph above all the way from 1971 to 2007 is interesting. Isn't it?

Updated report on Virginia Tech shooting: Questions remain?

Last Friday (Dec 4) a corrected and updated report on the mass shooting at VT Campus on April 16, 2007 was released. TheReport added new information and corrected time lines of events on that day. It also included a missing report on Cho's mental health that turned up 2 years after the first Report.

While the Reports does a commendable job in incorporating missing bits of important information, it falls short in drawing the right conclusions or amending gaps in the previous ones.

The report is fairly critical of the VTPD for drawing erroneous (and deadly) early opinions that the first double murder was a "murder-suicide" and then a "domestic dispute". This deviated attention elsewhere and sowed doubts in the minds of University's Policy Group in sending out emergency alerts. The gaps in the unprofessional manner in which VTPD handled the aftermath of the initial shooting are far too glaring - e.g. updated report reads "...Cho exits the scene, leaving behind bloody footprints and shell casings..." how could then the incident be termed as a "murder-suicide" with bloody footprints leaving and no murder weapon in sight!

The updated report (like its previous version) deflected any responsibility away from the senior staff members of the University Staff for their failure to act in time.

At one point the report concludes that "...there does not seem to be a plausible scenario of university response to the double homicide that could have prevented a tragedy of considerable magnitude on April 16." The subtext of the Report is clear...no advance warning could have prevented this carnage!?

Not sure how the Panel came to this conclusion. Consider the following:

1. The updated report lists two students from WSJ Hall (scene of the first shooting) who went to the Norris Hall after the lock-down at WSJ was lifted by the authorities, and were gunned down by Cho in the second hall! Could these TWO lives been saved if the lock-down was not lifted pre-maturely? How did the report miss this obvious conclusion?
   
2. Cho managed to mow down students and faculty easily as they were trapped in 3-4 classrooms inside one building. Had a timely warning gone out, and buildings locked down, the situation would not have been so devastating (even if Cho persisted in playing out his fantasy) as victims would have had more room to save themselves. If this is a pure conjecture then so is the one drawn by the Report without any strong evidence to support that timely warning to students would not have saved lives. This is a highly irresponsible assumption to make!
3. The report is silent on why the University President's office was shut down at 8:52 AM followed by a few other offices/buildings. No general alert had been sounded by that time.
   
4. At 8:45 AM a staff of the Policy Group informed someone that a gunman was on the loose but told the person not to release the information. Maybe this staffer did not have much faith her superiors in the Policy Group to protect students!
   
5. The first notification to students went out at 9:26 AM after overcoming some "technical difficulties". No light is shed on the nature of these difficulties.
   
6. The Report noted that by 9:30 AM police had determined that they had a false lead on the "person-of-interest" and that he could not have been the shooter, NO immediate ALERT was issued as soon as this was known to the Policy Group. Actually as per the Report, Policy Group knew at 9:24 AM that the gunman was loose on foot. This information was available more than 15 minutes before Cho went on the rampage at 9:40 AM!
   

Virginia Tech is one of the country's premier Engineering schools. The Engineering discipline requires a highly analytical approach to problem solving and to solution design. An engineer's nose is lead by data and not by opinions or gut feelings.

The Policy Group handling the crisis on that day fell into this trap. VTPD offered a bunch of early opinions about the nature of the first crime and the Group passively accepted it. At that time was no evidence to support the theory of muder-suicide or a domestic dispute. The Report noted that a false alarm an year ago probably weighed on the minds of the member of the Group when they decided not to issue a notification earlier.

The Policy Group failed miserably on that fateful day on April 16 two years ago. Not only they did not take take precautionary steps in time but were also slow to act when the information became available. They were probably unaware of the concept of over engineering or fail-safe options or they simply did not remember to err on the right side.