Environment
illconsidered | May 16, 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 Instability News Information is not Knowledge...Knowledge is notWisdomMay 15, 2011 Chuckles, COP17+, Fukushima News, Nuclear Policy, Fukushima Talk, Flooding Arctic Council, SRREN, Wikileaks, UNGCF, Fossils vs Biofuels, Thermodynamics, Cook Melting Arctic, Geopolitics, Antarctica Food Crisis, Food Prices, Land Grabs, Food Production Hurricanes, Temperatures,…
gregladen | May 14, 2011There is a lot happening in Japan, and the situation at Fukushima remains pretty much out of human control. There is a nuclear incident at a reactor site other than Fukushima. There is still quite a bit of radioactive material leaking into the sea. The radiation levels in the crippled Fukushima plants is still high or even rising. There is information coming out now about radiation levels and exposure that was apparently kept secret earlier for fear of causing panic. And so on. Check out Ana's feed (below) for numerous details and links.
One of the most important things to have come to…
sastyk | May 9, 2011What do you get when you cross Green, as in Green Markets - those emergent farmer's and craftspeople's markets that have given life to local food - with Black or Grey Markets - ie, illegal sales? Khaki is the color you get, and you get what I call "Khaki Markets" - the growing trend towards producing food, toiletries and other regulated substances outside of regulation. It is a hugely growing trend, from unlicensed sale of everything from produce to herbs to illegal raw milk sales to gourmet restaurants operating out of old school buses and people's apartments. Indeed, there are whole "…
illconsidered | May 9, 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 Instability News Information Overloadis Pattern RecognitionMay 8, 2011 Chuckles, Fukushima News, Nuclear Policy, Fukushima Talk, Flooding, Timoney & Lee Attributions, Nisbet, Lenton, Bottom Line, UNGCF, Cook, Post CRU, Chambergate Melting Arctic, Frauenfelder, Methane, Geopolitics Food Crisis, Lobell, Food Prices, Land Grabs, GMOs, Food Production…
oracknows | May 9, 2011One theme that I keep revisiting again and again is not so much a question of the science behind medical therapies (although certainly I do discuss that issue arguably more than any other) but rather a question of why. Why is it that so many people cling so tenaciously to pseudoscience, quackery, and, frequently, conspiracy theories used by believers to justify why various pseudoscience and quackery are rejected by mainstream science and medicine? Certainly, I've touched on this issue before on several occasions, for example, with respect to the anti-vaccine movement, the claim that abortion…
illconsidered | May 2, 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 Instability News Sipping from the Internet Firehose...May 1, 2011 -- Happy May Day! Chuckles, COP17+, Fukushima News, Nuclear Policy, Fukushima Talk, Chernobyl Tuscaloosa, Attribution, Nisbet, MEF, Williams, Boyce, UNGCF Bolivia, US CoC Hack, Thermodynamics, Cook, Post CRU Melting Arctic, Methane, Antarctica Food Crisis, Agro-Corps, Food Prices, Food Riots…
gregladen | May 2, 2011Worker exposure to high levels of nuclera radiation and the distribution of radioactive materials about the landscape and in possibly unexpected places are the stories of the week at Fukushima. Also, officials are wondering, how have the potential effects of a tsunami at Fukushima (and, apparently, it is possible to have a tsunami here) changed given that the reactor is now a series of large pools of highly contaminated water?
The power being supplied to cooling pumps at Units 1,2 and 3 had been switched back to emergency generators because the connections established several days ago need…
sastyk | April 26, 2011About a month ago I had the privilege of spending an hour talking (on stage, in front of an audience) to my congressman, Paul Tonko, about energy issues and preparedness. What emerged from this discussion was that *EVEN THOUGH* Tonko is one of the best congresspeople out there on energy and environmental issues, even though he's a tremendously smart guy, even though he actually has had some real education on peak oil issues, the two of us were talking past each other in many ways. It was fascinating - I know that Tonko grasps the basic idea, but the narrative in which efficiency,…
illconsidered | April 26, 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 YearsApril 24, 2011 Chuckles, COP17+, Fukushima Heroes, F. News, Nuclear Policy, F. Talk Chernobyl & TMI, Power Shift, Earth Day, Nisbet, Kang GFIs, Bolivia, Thermodynamics, EWS, Cook, Post CRU Melting Arctic, Polar Bears, Eroding Coasts, Methane, Geopolitics, Antarctica Food Crisis, Food Prices, Food…
sastyk | April 25, 2011As part of their ongoing series on population, National Geographic has a fascinating, and typically visually brilliant article about how the Bangladeshi population is using strategies of adaptation to deal with climate change. This isn't the kind of adaptation most of us are prepared for, but as the authors point out, it may be the kind of adaptation we need:
Ibrahim Khalilullah has lost track of how many times he's moved. "Thirty? Forty?" he asks. "Does it matter?" Actually those figures might be a bit low, as he estimates he's moved about once a year his whole life, and he's now over 60.…
lborkowski | April 22, 2011While much of the Earth Week news coverage has dwelt on the lasting effects of the BP/Deepwater Horizon disaster, two other events have highlighted a separate but related issue: water supply.
Drought conditions in the Plains and Southwest have damaged winter wheat crops and fueled the spread of wildfires in Texas. Two volunteer firefighters, Elias Jaquez and Eric Finley, have died in Texas; 1,800 firefighters from more than 30 states have been fighting the blazes. As global climate disruption continues, we should expect to see the frequency and severity of extreme weather events like floods…
sastyk | April 22, 2011I've been very grateful for my colleague Greg Laden's regular updates of the raw discussions on the Fukushima situation, but it is nice to have a coherent, visual overview, and Nicole Foss has provided another wonderful analysis at The Automatic Earth. It is very hard to synthesize all the information, because there is so much and so many conflicting reports, so it is helpful to have it all pulled together.
On April 17th the same site had the following radiation levels recorded for units 1-3:
Reactor 1
Dry Well: 121.4 Sv/hr
Suppression chamber: 97.5 Sv/hr
Reactor 2
Dry Well: N/A…
illconsidered | April 18, 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 notWisdom{Note: I have been offline due to illness. Coverage is spottier than usual, particularly early in the week. -het}April 17, 2011 Chuckles, Bangkok, COP17+, Fukushima News, Nuclear Policy, Fukushima Talk Cochabamba+1, Power Shift, Howarth, UNGCF, Psych, Cook, FOIA Melting Arctic, Megafauna, Methane…
sastyk | April 17, 2011I'll be offline much of the next few days for the Passover holiday. This is a subject we're talking about in the Adapting-in-Place class, and one that comes up a lot - how do you make environmental changes with a spouse who isn't on board? What happens when this strains your marriage?
I get emails more or less constantly on this subject: "I want to prepare for peak oil/live more sustainably/change my life to deal with climate change and my spouse (and/or the rest of my family) don't want to, or don't think it is important enough."
This is something I've heard over and over - marriages…
gregladen | April 17, 2011Claims are being made that the situation at Fukushima is starting to improve, but there is no actual evidence of this. We probably (but not certainly) passed the point where nuclear fuel is likely to accumulate in such a way as to cause a major fission event or explosion, but there is still sufficient heat to cause, apparently, water to split into hydrogen and oxygen, or at least, there is concern of this possibility. (Hydrogen explosions have already occurred here early on in the crisis, and there is concern that this may happen again.) All of the basic safety systems are still not working…
lborkowski | April 15, 2011In much of the reporting I've seen on the Fukushima nuclear disaster, the plant workers are an anonymous, if much-praised, group. The New York Times' Hiroko Tabuchi digs deeper to tell us more about who some of these workers are, and what their experiences can tell us about occupational health and safety in Japan. He begins with the story of 55-year-old Masayuki Ishizawa, who was at the plant when the earthquake struck and had to plead with the security guard to be let out the of the complex to flee the tsunami:
Mr. Ishizawa, who was finally allowed to leave, is not a nuclear specialist; he…
gregladen | April 12, 2011The most significant news seems to be the raising of the level of this accident, on the international scale of how bad things get at nuclear power plants, to the highest level, which is also the level set for the Chernobyl accident. This does not mean that the Fukushima Disaster is the same as the Chernobyl disaster. They are different situations, different technologies, and different things going wrong. However, it is now official: On the scale from TMI to Chernobyl, Fukushima is officially Chernobyl. But different.
An earthquake on April 7th had knocked out power at the Fukushima…
illconsidered | April 11, 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 RecognitionApril 10, 2011 Chuckles, Bangkok, COP17+, Fukushima News, Nuclear Policy, Fukushima Talk, IRENA, Goals, BEST Carbon Tariffs, Subsidies, GFIs, McKinsey, Psych, Thermodynamics, Open Science, Cook, MDGs Melting Arctic, Fresh Water Pool, Geopolitics, Antarctica Food Crisis, Food Prices, Food vs. Biofuel…
pharyngula | April 10, 2011Paul Nelson has deigned to write a two-part essay on "Ontogenetic Depth", his sciencey made-up term for a metric that he claims makes evolution essentially impossible. We've been wrangling over this for a long time — he and Marcus Ross introduced this in a poster at the Developmental Biology meetings in 2004, titled "Understanding the Cambrian Explosion by Estimating Ontogenetic Depth", and in our conversation at that time I certainly got the impression that he and Ross were busy collecting this peculiar thing alien to creationists called "data". I have asked him multiple times over the last…
gregladen | April 5, 2011Welcome to the "I'm starting to get cynical" edition.
The situation at Fukushima Diiachi Nuclear Plant reached an impasse over the least few days. Two or three of the reactors are in a situation where cooling is being kludged, the reactor fuel rods are damaged and have melted but the details are unknown, storage pools are not being safely managed, unexpected fission events keep occurring despite the widespread belief that this can't happen, and no one knows what to do because no one can see what is happening because of the more immediate problem: There is a deposit of very dangerous highly…