Environment
illconsidered | June 13, 2011 Logging the Onset of The Bottleneck Years
This weekly posting is brought to you courtesy of H. E. Taylor. Happy reading, I hope you enjoy this week's Global Warming news roundup
skip to bottom Another week of Climate Disruption News Information is not Knowledge...Knowledge is notWisdomJune 12, 2011 Chuckles, Bonn, Fukushima News, Nuclear Policy, Fukushima Talk Equinox Summit, C40, Threats, SRoWE, GFI, Thermodynamics, Cook Melting Arctic, Geopolitics Food Crisis, Agro-Corps, Food Prices, Hunger, Land Grabs, GMOs, Food Production Hurricanes, GHGs, Carbon Cycle,…
hrynyshyn | June 9, 2011The flaws with Wednesday's anti-renewables op-ed in the New York Times begin with the headline and continue through just about every paragraph. On second thought, perhaps the problems begin with the decision of the New York Times to run "The Gas Is Greener" in the first place. But let's start with the headline.
"The Gas is Greener" may seem like a clever double entendre, referring as it does to wishful thinking and the alleged merits of natural gas as a relatively clean source of energy. But it fails on both counts. First, the entire essay is predicated on the notion that environmentalists…
gregladen | June 8, 2011In terms of radiation fallout Fukushima is said to be approaching Chernobyl by at least certain measures, and the potential for Fukushima to be worse in terms of total radioactive material released is very real. However, the two disasters really can't be compared sensibly because the circumstances of release, and the potential effects, are very different. It has become increasingly clear that the authorities involved in the initial construction of the plant should have considered the Tsunami risk as a serious factor, and this is not just because the Tsunami actually happened. The…
oracknows | June 7, 2011More than a week has passed, and I thought that this cup had passed from me, and I was glad. After all, if I analyzed every crap study done by anti-vaccine zealots to try to demonstrate that vaccines cause autism, I would have time for little else in terms of other kinds of that Insolence you all know and love. This particular study was released in late May and, at the time, I wasn't really in the mood to take it on; so I ignored it. But then wouldn't you know that the Autism Action Network would have to go and send out a press release yesterday entitled New Study Links Vaccines and Autism:…
drorzel | June 7, 2011I have to admit, I'm writing this one up partly because it lets me use the title reference. It's a cool little paper, though, demonstrating the lengths that physicists will go to in pursuit of precision measurements.
I'm just going to pretend I didn't see that dorky post title, and ask what this is about. Well, it's about the trapping and laser cooling of thorium ions. They managed to load thorium ions into an ion trap, and use lasers to lower their temperature into the millikelvin range. At such low temperatures, the ions in the trap "crystallize."
So, they've demonstrated that if you get…
mikethemadbiologist | June 6, 2011It would be nice if educational 'reformers' took a break from busting teachers unions to deal with the infiltration of pseudo-scientific falsehoods into the science curriculum:
...the most brazen example is buried in the middle of the story: a coal-industry produced propaganda film for kids selling the lie that the atmosphere needs more greenhouse gas:
...the Coal Education Development and Resources foundation, known as CEDAR, offers small grants to teachers whose lessons dovetail with its industry-driven mission...
...CEDAR also offers a video to teachers called "The Greening of Planet Earth…
illconsidered | June 6, 2011 Logging the Onset of The Bottleneck Years
This weekly posting is brought to you courtesy of H. E. Taylor. Happy reading, I hope you enjoy this week's Global Warming news roundup
skip to bottom Another week of Climate Disruption News Information Overloadis Pattern RecognitionJune 5, 2011 Chuckles, COP17+, Fukushima News, Nuclear Policy, Fukushima Talk C40, Death Threats, Cate Debate, FOI Weapon, Thermodynamics, Cook Melting Arctic, Penguins, Geopolitics, Antarctica Food Crisis, Agro-Corps, Food Prices, CCAFS, Land Grabs, GMOs, Food Production Hurricanes, Monsoon, GHGs,…
oracknows | June 5, 2011How many times have I read or heard from believers in "alternative" medicine that some disease or other is caused by "toxins"? I honestly can't remember, but in alt-world, no matter what the disease or condition under discussion is, there's a good chance that sooner or later it will be linked to "toxins." It doesn't matter if it's cancer, autism, heart disease, diabetes, hypertension, or that general malaise that comes over people who, as British comedians Mitchell and Webb put it, have more money than sense; somehow, some way, someone will invoke "toxins."
I was reminded of this obsession…
oracknows | June 1, 2011Even though I was only in junior high and high school back in the 1970s, because I was already turning into a science geek I remember Senator William Proxmire (D-WI). In particular, I remember his Golden Fleece awards. These were "awards" designed to highlight what he saw as wasteful government spending, targeting, for instance, the use of taxpayer funds to fly over 1,000 officers to a reunion of the Tailhook Association or financing the construction of an 800- foot limestone replica of the Great Wall of China in Bedford, Indiana. Others, although they sounded on the surface to be wasteful,…
gregladen | June 1, 2011Even as the situation at the troubled Fukushima Nuclear Reactors ... well, remains troubled ... the post-game analysis of what went wrong and what could have been done better develops. It is becoming clear that the plant had no real plan for the event of a tsunami even though it was built at an elevation within that affected by historically known and documented tsunami waves, and there is post-hoc confusion and denial related to early screw ups in trying to avoid a meltdown in the reactors (which ended up occurring), for instance.
Highly radioactive water continues to leak out of at least…
illconsidered | May 30, 2011 Logging the Onset of The Bottleneck Years
This weekly posting is brought to you courtesy of H. E. Taylor. Happy reading, I hope you enjoy this week's Global Warming news roundup
skip to bottom Another week of Climate Disruption News Sipping from the Internet Firehose...May 29, 2011 Chuckles, Songda & Fukushima, Fukushima News, Nuclear Policy, Fukushima Talk The Question, Attribution, G8, Critical Decade, FOI Harassment Bottom Line, GFI, Norway, Thermodynamics, Psyche, Cook Melting Arctic, Reindeer, Geopolitics, Antarctica Food Crisis, Food Prices, Food vs. Biofuel,…
aardvarchaeology | May 27, 2011I've criticised Western museums for buying or accepting as gifts looted Chinese antiquities. This practice, in my opinion, stems from an outdated and irresponsible fine arts perspective where the exact provenance of a museum piece is not very important. When you're dealing with anonymous prehistoric or early historic art, you can't attribute it to any named artist, and so an art curator will quite happily settle for "Han dynasty, probably the Yellow River area" as a date and a provenance.
As an archaeologist, I do not accept the category "fine art", and I claim precedence for the…
gregladen | May 26, 2011It is possible that the bottom will fall out of the Fukushima Reactor 4 spent fuel tank. Efforts are being made to shore up the concrete structure. There is no longer any doubt that those mysterious holes hypothesized, seen or not see, in some of the reactor vessels are for real. It is now established that three of the reactors at Fukushima melted down within hours of the earthquake and tsunami. TEPCO is going back and forth on whether or not any of the main reactor machinery was damaged in the quake. It may be that the hydrogen explosions were preventable had standard procedures been…
illconsidered | May 23, 2011 Logging the Onset of The Bottleneck Years
This weekly posting is brought to you courtesy of H. E. Taylor. Happy reading, I hope you enjoy this week's Global Warming news roundup
skip to bottom Another week of Climate Disruption News Logging the Onset of The Bottleneck YearsMay 22, 2011 Chuckles, IDB, Fukushima News, Nuclear Policy, Fukushima Talk, Socolow, Flooding Slave Lake, UK Carbon Plan, Stockholm Memorandum, Bottom Line, Prelude, Cook Melting Arctic, Geopolitics, Antarctica Food Crisis, Agro-Corps, Food Prices, Food vs. Biofuel, GMOs, Food Production Hurricanes,…
gregladen | May 20, 2011The worker's death was probably unrelated to the nuclear disaster, but it can't help moral much at the crippled site. Fission and cooling still remain issues at the Fukushima plant. Although fission is not happening to any large degree, or possibly at all, there has been fission more recently than many expected, and there is still concern that the reaction could restart. Various attempts at introducing long term cooling solutions at the site have been less than successful. It is clear that at least two of the reactors will have to be covered by a protective overarching structure.
The…
krandall | May 19, 2011By Dr. Janice Bishop; Carl Sagan Center for the Study of Life in the Universe, SETI Institute, and Gail Jacobs
Dr. Janice Bishop is a chemist and planetary scientist who explores the planet Mars using spectroscopy. Her investigations of CRISM data of Mars are revealing clays and sulfates in the ancient rocks that provide information about the geochemical environment at that time. Dr. Bishop studies the spectral fingerprints of minerals and rocks in the lab in order to generate a spectral library for identification of these in the Martian data. Her research also involves collecting and…
lborkowski | May 18, 2011By Kim Krisberg
Climate change is one of the greatest challenges of our time. Climate change will affect, in profoundly adverse ways, some of the most fundamental determinants of health: food, air, water. In the face of this challenge, we need champions throughout the world who will work to put protecting human health at the centre of the climate change agenda.
-- Margaret Chan, MD, MPH, director-general, World Health Organization, 2008
Human health may not be the first image that pops to mind when it comes to climate change. People often envision melting icebergs or desperate polar bears…
sastyk | May 17, 2011A recent email I received was pretty typical - I won't quote it here because the person meant well, but the sum up was this - they laud my decision to adopt, argue that I should have done it earlier, and point out that adoption is the solution to the population crisis. People who want children should just adopt, rather than giving birth. In the spirit of my discussion of the new suggestion that the world will hit 10 billion, I thought this was a good subject to take up.
Now as usual, I'm not going to recite my discussion of why I have four biological kids - and I'm not going to argue that…
lborkowski | May 16, 2011by Elizabeth Grossman
Two industrial accidents - one fatal - that occurred on May 11 within 40 miles of each other are a reminder what a fine line there can be between workplace safety and acute danger.
One incident occurred at the Stimson sawmill and hardwood facility in Gaston, Oregon, (about 35 miles west of Portland) where workers were removing the cap from a hydraulic accumulator - a routine operation on a piece of equipment used to power mill machinery - in preparation for moving it from one location to another. Described as a metal cylinder about 5 feet long and 10 inches in diameter…
sastyk | May 16, 2011There's a really good debate going on in the combox of my Khaki Markets Post on an issue that I've been meaning to write about for a while - to what extent is it possible for people who are seeking the same social ends to work together when they use different political means. In the comboxes the discussion is mostly over whether Progressives and Libertarians can work together on local food systems, but this strikes me as a larger - and deeply critical question.
It isn't just the libertarians and the progressives who have common ground on food systems, after all. The socialists and the…