Posts filed under 'Environment'
Not sure how many of you read Damn Interesting (currently in reruns due to some book-writing-related program activities), but it is, well, exactly what it says: A compendium of obscure and fascinating information.
F’rinstance, did you know that 2.5 billion years ago, the Earth was almost fatally poisoned and frozen by an “oxygen catastrophe,” when cyanobacteria flooded the oceans and atmosphere with oxygen, which was poisonous to almost every lifeform on the planet, and which broke down the methane that was keeping temperatures above freezing?
The planet only pulled out of its deadly stall when the surviving bacteria started metabolizing oxygen into carbon dioxide, which replaced methane as the atmosphere’s greenhouse insulation.
(Which begs the question: What if there had been no cyanobacteria? How would life have evolved in iron-rich seas and methane air?)
Or that there’s a sub-freezing (but still liquid) lake two miles underneath the Antarctic ice, which may or may not contain micro-organisms that have never been seen before? Drilling was halted to prevent contamination from the surface world, as well as a possible deadly geyser of pressurized water. The Russians are currently contemplating the use of a phallic drillbot to check it out.
Bizarre, fascinating stuff.
August 31st, 2008 at 08:12pm
Posted by Eli
Entry Filed under:
Blogosphere,
Coolness,
Environment,
Science,
Weirdness
Longish story in today’s NYT Science News about the need to examine our Bold Technological Solutions to make sure that they don’t create even greater problems, especially as our technology becomes more and more powerful.
Last year, a private company proposed “fertilizing” parts of the ocean with iron, in hopes of encouraging carbon-absorbing blooms of plankton. Meanwhile, researchers elsewhere are talking about injecting chemicals into the atmosphere, launching sun-reflecting mirrors into stationary orbit above the earth or taking other steps to reset the thermostat of a warming planet.
This technology might be useful, even life-saving. But it would inevitably produce environmental effects impossible to predict and impossible to undo. So a growing number of experts say it is time for broad discussion of how and by whom it should be used, or if it should be tried at all.
Similar questions are being raised about nanotechnology, robotics and other powerful emerging technologies. There are even those who suggest humanity should collectively decide to turn away from some new technologies as inherently dangerous.
“The complexity of newly engineered systems coupled with their potential impact on lives, the environment, etc., raise a set of ethical issues that engineers had not been thinking about,” said William A. Wulf, a computer scientist who until last year headed the National Academy of Engineering. As one of his official last acts, he established the Center for Engineering, Ethics, and Society there.
Rachelle Hollander, a philosopher who directs the center, said the new technologies were so powerful that “our saving grace, our inability to affect things at a planetary level, is being lost to us,” as human-induced climate change is demonstrating.
(…)
[R]esearchers working in geoengineering say they worry that if people realize there are possible technical fixes for global warming, they will feel less urgency about reducing greenhouse gas emissions. “Even beginning the discussion, putting geoengineering on the table and beginning the scientific work could in itself make us less concerned about all the things that we need to start doing now,” Dr. Light said. On the other hand, some climate scientists argue that if people realized such drastic measures were on the horizon, they would be frightened enough to reduce their collective carbon footprint. Still others say that, given the threat global warming poses to the planet, it would be unethical not to embark on the work needed to engineer possible remedies — and to let policy makers know of its potential.
Okay, let me just interject here: People are going to be overly complacent about climate change - or at least their own personal responsibility for it - no matter what the scientists and engineers do, so I would strongly recommend focusing solely on whether the technical fixes will work and if they will have unintended consequences. We can’t afford not to.
[S]ome emerging technologies will require political adjustments. For example, if the planet came to depend on chemicals in space or orbiting mirrors or regular oceanic infusions of iron, system failure could mean catastrophic — and immediate — climate change. But maintaining the systems requires a political establishment with guaranteed indefinite stability.
As Dr. Collins put it, the political process these days is “not well designed to handle issues that are not already in a crisis.”
(…)
Bill Joy, a founder of Sun Microsystems, cited the bomb in a famous 2000 article in the magazine Wired on the dangers of robots in which he argued that some technologies were so dangerous they should be “relinquished.” He said it was common for scientists and engineers to fail “to understand the consequences of our inventions while we are in the rapture of discovery” and, as a result, he said, “we have yet to come to terms with the fact that the most compelling 21st-century technologies — robotics, genetic engineering and nanotechnology — pose a different threat than the technologies that have come before. They are so powerful they can spawn whole new classes of accidents and abuses.”
He called it “knowledge-enabled mass destruction.”
I am a huge technology fan, and fascinated by science fiction and The Future, so my default attitude is usually “Do it! Go go go!”, but the more far-reaching our technology becomes, the easier it is to upset the Earth’s delicate balance. Ecosystems are particularly susceptible, where slight changes can cause one species to die off, dwindle, or migrate away, allowing harmful species to take over, or killing off other dependent species, like the coral that need algae to survive.
It’s a sticky wicket, because if we haven’t already passed the point of no return on atmospheric carbon, we are very very close, and I just don’t see any political will for the radical changes needed to pull us back from the brink. A bold technological solution may be our only hope - but how can we be sure that the cure isn’t worse than the disease?
August 12th, 2008 at 07:50am
Posted by Eli
Entry Filed under:
Environment,
Science,
Technology
This may well be The Greatest Onion Story Ever:
EARTH—Former vice president Al Gore—who for the past three decades has unsuccessfully attempted to warn humanity of the coming destruction of our planet, only to be mocked and derided by the very people he has tried to save—launched his infant son into space Monday in the faint hope that his only child would reach the safety of another world.
“I tried to warn them, but the Elders of this planet would not listen,” said Gore, who in 2000 was nearly banished to a featureless realm of nonexistence for promoting his unpopular message. “They called me foolish and laughed at my predictions. Yet even now, the Midwest is flooded, the ice caps are melting, and the cities are rocked with tremors, just as I foretold. Fools! Why didn’t they heed me before it was too late?”
Al Gore—or, as he is known in his own language, Gore-Al—placed his son, Kal-Al, gently in the one-passenger rocket ship, his brow furrowed by the great weight he carried in preserving the sole survivor of humanity’s hubristic folly.
(…)
As the rocket soared through the Gore estate’s retractable solar-paneled roof… the onetime presidential candidate and his wife, Tipper, stood arm-in-arm, nobly facing their end while gazing up in stoic dignity at the receding rocket, the ecosystem already beginning to collapse around them.
(…)
Despite the child’s humble beginnings, experts predict the intergalactic journey may have some extraordinary effects on Kal-Al’s physique, eyesight, and, potentially, his powers of quiet, sensible persuasion.
Read the whole thing. It’s really super.
(h/t Ian)
July 31st, 2008 at 07:17am
Posted by Eli
Entry Filed under:
Coolness,
Environment,
Gore
John McCain, with honorable mention for CBS:
Keith Olbermann led his broadcast tonight with Spencer Ackerman’s report on John McCain’s most recent gaffe: in an interview with Katie Couric, McCain claimed “the surge” was responsible for the “Anbar Awakening” — which actually began in September, 2006, months before the surge was even announced.
The strange thing, as Keith notes, is that CBS edited the gaffe out of its broadcast. Fortunately, they posted a transcript — and video — online.
Once again, John McCain reveals the depth of his foreign policy expertise, and the media demonstrates its clear liberal bias…
But wait, there’s more - John McCain also demonstrates the depth of his commitment to the environment:
And I’d like to mention offshore drilling if I could. My friends, we have to drill offshore. We have to do it! Oil executives say within a couple years we could be seeing results from it. So why not do it?
Well, if the oil executives are in favor, that pretty much settles it, right? I mean, who could possibly be more trustworthy on the subject of offshore drilling?
July 23rd, 2008 at 07:32am
Posted by Eli
Entry Filed under:
Elections,
Energy,
Environment,
Iraq,
McCain,
Media,
Politics,
Republicans,
Wankers
Damn, what does the NYT Science section have against Al Gore? First the wankeriffic John Tierney uses the upcoming Inconvenient Truth opera as an excuse to mock him, then they try to claim that the internet was invented years before Al was even born:
In 1934, [Paul] Otlet sketched out plans for a global network of computers (or “electric telescopes,” as he called them) that would allow people to search and browse through millions of interlinked documents, images, audio and video files. He described how people would use the devices to send messages to one another, share files and even congregate in online social networks. He called the whole thing a “réseau,” which might be translated as “network” — or arguably, “web.”
(…)
Although Otlet’s proto-Web relied on a patchwork of analog technologies like index cards and telegraph machines, it nonetheless anticipated the hyperlinked structure of today’s Web. “This was a Steampunk version of hypertext,” said Kevin Kelly, former editor of Wired, who is writing a book about the future of technology.
Otlet’s vision hinged on the idea of a networked machine that joined documents using symbolic links. While that notion may seem obvious today, in 1934 it marked a conceptual breakthrough. “The hyperlink is one of the most underappreciated inventions of the last century,” Mr. Kelly said. “It will go down with radio in the pantheon of great inventions.”
Today, Otlet and his work have been largely forgotten, even in his native Belgium. Although Otlet enjoyed considerable fame during his lifetime, his legacy fell victim to a series of historical misfortunes — not least of which involved the Nazis marching into Belgium and destroying much of his life’s work.
Amazing - he conceptualized hyperlinks before there were even computers.
June 17th, 2008 at 09:44pm
Posted by Eli
Entry Filed under:
Coolness,
Environment,
Gore,
Science
The executive privilege defense appears to be metastasizing…
In remarkable defiance of Congressional oversight, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has flatly declined to respond to a House Global Warming Committee subpoena. The subpoena for documents relating to the EPA’s refusal to obey the Supreme Court mandate to regulate greenhouse gases was issued by a unanimous, bipartisan vote on April 2, a year after the Supreme Court decision.
On April 11, the EPA requested and received an extension to respond, but today the agency has decided not to turn over the documents:
As we noted in our April 11, 2008 letter, EPA has grave concerns relating to the Committee’s subpoena. In particular, we are concerned that the release of the deliberative, pre-decisional documents that don’t reflect the agency’s final thinking would be injurious to important Executive Branch institutional prerogatives: such release may have a chilling effect on future deliberations in this and other matters; it may create erroneous impressions of the Agency’s thinking; and it may raise questions about the Agency having reacted in response to, or having been influenced by, proceedings in a legislative or public forum outside the established administrative process.
(…)
The EPA is also defying the House Oversight Committee’s subpoena for related documents on White House involvement.
I am not a lawyer, but the EPA’s argument, especially the part about the “chilling effect on future deliberations,” sounds pretty similar to the executive privilege argument, i.e., that the president’s advisers and subordinates shouldn’t have to worry about their counsel to the president being made public. Except, of course, that the head of the EPA is not the president, and therefore not covered under executive privilege.
I’m not sure if this is just another fanciful BushCo. legal argument, or if it’s a deliberate bid to expand executive privilege to cover all federal agencies (the reference to “important Executive Branch institutional prerogatives” seems especially telling). That certainly would shut down those pesky congressional investigations once and for all. Of course, a Democratic president could invoke it if a Republican Congress started witch-hunting (like that would happen!), but he or she wouldn’t get the same kind of obliging media coverage or lack thereof that Dubya has.
I guess we can add “interpretation of the law” to the long list of things that are faith-based in the Bush administration.
April 17th, 2008 at 09:16pm
Posted by Eli
Entry Filed under:
Corruption/Cronyism,
Environment,
Republicans,
Wankers
Today’s two-fer is from last week’s Wild Side blog/column by Olivia Judson.
(Disclaimer: Ms. Judson was in the same dorm complex my freshman year, and I thought she was very sweet. So the selection process may not be entirely unbiased today. Take it up with my ombudsman.)
The first quote is actually from Alfred Russel Wallace, who Darwin beat to the punch on publishing a theory of evolution:
If this [scientific investigation of tropical ecosystems] is not done, future ages will certainly look back upon us as a people so immersed in the pursuit of wealth as to be blind to higher considerations. They will charge us with having culpably allowed the destruction of some of those records of Creation which we had it in our power to preserve; and while professing to regard every living thing as the direct handiwork and best evidence of a Creator, yet, with a strange inconsistency, seeing many of them perish irrecoverably from the face of the earth, uncared for and unknown.
Still timely after 145 years.
The second quote is just alarming on multiple levels:
Every year, then, most blue tits die.
Egad.
January 17th, 2008 at 09:24pm
Posted by Eli
Entry Filed under:
Environment,
Quotes,
Science
The Washington Post has a truly amazing and poignant story about a mysterious and reclusive Amazon Indian who is apparently the last member of his (unknown) tribe, as well as a couple of other Amazon tribes which have only a handful of members left. This is partly due to Brazilian landowners’ encroachment on their territory, and even more so due to the landowners’ deliberate efforts to wipe the Indians out so they can take more of their land. The Brazilian government does not exactly cover itself in glory either.
It’s long, and there’s too much fascinating stuff for me to even attempt to excerpt, so I’ll just urge you all to read the whole thing. I promise you won’t regret it.
January 14th, 2008 at 08:54pm
Posted by Eli
Entry Filed under:
Coolness,
Corruption/Cronyism,
Environment
Whoa.
Rising out of the snow, this magnificent sculpture is the centrepiece of the Ice And Snow Festival, held annually in the northeastern city of Harbin, China.
Called Romantic Feelings, it is a staggering 115ft high and 656ft long - the largest snow sculpture ever created.
It was made by joining together 15ft square blocks of natural ice and snow, taken from the nearby Songhua River, which have been compressed to withstand blows from hatchets, saws and shovels.
600 sculptors from 40 countries have used 120,000 cubic feet of snow and ice to create the Olympic themed landscape - a vista of Russian churches, French cathedrals, Chinese palaces and, of course, an ice Acropolis.
There is even a version of Stonehenge to celebrate the London Olympics in 2012.
At night they are dazzlingly lit by coloured lasers and lanterns, creating a multicoloured translucent display.
Just amazing. Unfortunately…
Harbin, which is in Heilongjiang Province on the edge of Siberia, is one of China’s coldest places and winter temperatures can drop to -35C, which you might think cold enough for preserving snow sculptures.
However, organisers are increasingly concerned about the effects of global warming on this year’s sculptures.
Many of them are melting rapidly in the midday sun and emergency repairs have already been carried out to stop them collapsing completely.
The festival traditionally runs from mid-December to early February, but it is feared that the rising temperatures - last winter it reached a record 6.6C - could see it significantly shortened.
Well, crap. Probably not the most pressing reason to fight global warming, but you can add it to the list.
(h/t the shadowy & mysterious Codename V.)
January 13th, 2008 at 06:25pm
Posted by Eli
Entry Filed under:
Art/Architecture,
Coolness,
Environment
“See, I’m not prejudiced by so-called ‘knowledge’.”
Much like Mitch McConnell:
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) has released a new ad for his 2008 re-election campaign, heralding himself as a “Godfather of Green” and an “environmental champion.”
McConnell’s environmental stewardship, according to the ad, consists of securing a $38 million earmark for city parks in Louisville and the creation of the Jefferson Memorial Forest, which features a Mitch McConnell Loop Trail.
McConnell may know how to bring home the pork for his constituents, but that hardly qualifies him as an “environmental champion.” McConnell had a zero percent rating from the League of Conservation Voters during the 109th Congress, and has earned only a 7% lifetime rating.
A look at some of his actions that have earned him such a dismal rating:
- McConnell helped to pass the 2005 Energy Policy Act, a bill the League of Conservation Voters called “the most anti-environmental piece of legislation signed into law in recent memory.”
- McConnell led the fight to block the renewable fuels standard and the green tax package from the 2007 energy bill, calling them “millstones.”
- McConnell has repeatedly voted to allow drilling in Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
- McConnell has repeatedly voted against Senate bills recognizing global warming, including a “sense of the Senate” amendment expressing “the need… to address global climate change through comprehensive and cost-effective national measures and through the negotiation of fair and binding international commitments.”
- McConnell helped notorious global warming denier Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK) try to block Al Gore’s “Live Earth” concert in Washington, DC, by raising an objection to the resolution allowing the concert to take place on the capitol’s West Front.
It must be some kind of “tough love” thing - we’ve been coddling the environment all these years, and it’s long past time for it to lift itself up by its bootstraps and start pulling its own weight. Sure, there might be some pain at the outset, but eventually the environment will be better, stronger, and tougher than ever. And we’ll all have Mitch McConnell to thank for it.
(h/t Paddy)
January 12th, 2008 at 01:45pm
Posted by Eli
Entry Filed under:
Environment,
Monday Media Blogging,
Politics,
Republicans,
Wankers
Sometimes, though, standing up is the best way not to be seen.
Kos diarist alysheba has some excellent advice for the busted baseball players on how they can get the media to ignore them completely:
[I]n this instance, the only way to salvage a celebrity’s career - and bring comfort into the hearts of all the nation’s citizens - is to effect a complete and total media blackout.
It sounds difficult, I know. But, ironically, this has never been easier to accomplish than it is right now, at this exact moment, thanks in no small part to the Presidency of George Bush, to his indentured corporate media and, yes, to the spineless Democratic leadership who stubbornly refuse to stand up for anything.
You’ll see what I mean below, where I offer to these fallen legends my fool-proof prescriptions for making the scandal - and themselves - disappear completely…
ROGER CLEMENS: Call a press conference and immediately demand the impeachment of President George W. Bush and Vice-President Dick Cheney.
It may sound paradoxical, but in order to disappear, Clemens needs to put in some serious face time hammering this issue. I call it my “Crazy Ivan” maneuver (patent pending) - turning headlong into the media’s prurience before their corporate handlers have time to retask them. One serious marathon session of putting that big, square jaw in front of every camera he can find and talking incessantly about the need for impeachment?? 24 hours later it’ll be: “Roger who?”
DAVID JUSTICE: Join forces with Robert Kennedy and announce a speaking tour to raise the nation’s awareness of election fraud in 2004.
As a retiree, David Justice has time on his side - time to think, time to plan, most of all, time to sit through a crash course in the Conyers Report at the Kennedy compound in Hyannisport, and then take his newfound knowledge on the road! It may sound cliched, but making one’s self the poster-child for what the mainstream media prefers to label a “conspiracy theory,” well, that’s the high road to a low profile.
LENNY DYKSTRA: Quickly orchestrate and, if necessary, self-finance, an endorsement deal for Johnathan Goodwin’s 100 mpg diesel-electric Hummer.
Nothing says “media blackout” like the phrase “alternative fuel.” And for Dykstra’s money, he couldn’t find a better place to hide than under a 7,000 lb. car that scares the shit out of Detroit. I mean, a right wing loon like Arnold Schwarzenegger joining forces with an energy independence advocate like Goodwin? Plus the endorsement of a tobacco chewing millionaire like Dykstra?? There’s no way to shoehorn those oddities into the stock media narrative! And you know what that means: BUH-BYE DYKSTRA HEADLINES!
ANDY PETTITE: Join the Army. Go to Iraq. Stay out of combat if possible, but upon your return have someone pen a book on your (fictional) traumatic brain injury. Stay away from Bob Woodruff at all costs!
Pettite’s got a lot to lose. Given that Bonds was already done prior to today’s news, and that Clemens was close to retirement anyway, Pettite, in my professional opinion as a newly minted publicist, is the real loser today and it appears he may have to go for the sacrifice fly.
He may get some press initially over the whole “celebrity enlistment” thing, but say he’s done with his obligation in three years, he’ll still have a good half-decade of throwing ahead of him. And, again, coming home with the whole sourpuss TBI-thing - that’s a guaranteed “C-ya” in the press and next thing y’know, he’s back on the mound.
But, again, Pettite must stay well clear of Bob Woodruff. The last thing he needs is to get swept up in another one of those “intrepid reporter” plots. That’s the kinda airtime no fallen hero needs!
BARRY BONDS: Rent out the “House that (You) Built” and stage a public hearing on the Sibel Edmonds case, signing autographs as necessary to increase attendence.
If there’s a holy grail of going dark, this might be it.
Alysheba is right. There is no better way to make the corporate media forget that you ever existed. These topics are - I’m going to assume that “dognip” is the opposite of catnip - for the media that control our discourse.
(h/t Phoenix Woman)
December 14th, 2007 at 11:53am
Posted by Eli
Entry Filed under:
Elections,
Energy,
Environment,
Impeachment,
Iraq,
Media,
Politics,
Sports
I think I understand what he’s going for here, but he’s still a nut:
This is unbelievable. He’s the tutto di capo tutto — whatever, tutto ruto ruto. The tutto di capo di tutto, or whatever. He’s the head of the five families of deceit on the planet, Al Gore-leone.
You know, the Gore-leone crime family is now the number one crime family in the world, when you think about it. He’s about to pull off the biggest scam in the history of the world. It’s bigger than any bank heist, bigger than any drug deal. It’s bigger than any counterfeiting scheme, and he’s doing it all nice and natural with a little help from the socialist perverts in Norway, who gave him a Nobel Prize.
Why do I call them socialist perverts? Answer: because they are. By and large, 90 percent of the people on the Nobel Committee are into child pornography and molestation, according to the latest scientific studies.
I think he’s trying to make some kind of point about how scientific studies are worthless, or that you can just make bogus claims about what they say. But that really doesn’t make him sound any less crazy.
December 13th, 2007 at 11:19pm
Posted by Eli
Entry Filed under:
Environment,
Gore,
Media,
Republicans,
Wankers
From the AP report on Dubya’s private global warming chat with Algore:
“I know that this president does not harbor any resentments,” White House press secretary Dana Perino said. “Never has.”
Awesome. Hooray for President Jesus!
November 27th, 2007 at 11:54am
Posted by Eli
Entry Filed under:
Bush,
Environment,
Gore,
Quotes
Algore wins the Nobel Peace Prize! Soon his world domination will be complete!
In all seriousness, I agree with Bowers that it doesn’t really make that much sense for Algore to use this is a springboard for a presidential campaign, just as it would have been tacky for him to announce it as part of his Oscar acceptance speech. He’s either going to run or he isn’t (probably the latter), but it’s not going to be conditional on any awards he might win.
Also, I’m going to go out on a limb and guess that no-one has ever won an Oscar and a Nobel Prize (Peace or otherwise) in the same year. Or possibly at all. You go, Al!
October 12th, 2007 at 11:37am
Posted by Eli
Entry Filed under:
Environment,
Gore
It’s not the heat, it’s the humidity…
With global warming, the world isn’t just getting hotter - it’s getting stickier, due to humidity. And people are to blame, according to a study based on computer models published Thursday.
The amount of moisture in the air near Earth’s surface rose 2.2 percent in less than three decades, the researchers report in a study appearing in the journal Nature.
“This humidity change is an important contribution to heat stress in humans as a result of global warming,” said Nathan Gillett of the University of East Anglia in the United Kingdom, a co-author of the study.
(…)
The finding isn’t surprising to climate scientists. Physics dictates that warmer air can hold more moisture. But Gillett’s study shows that the increase in humidity already is significant and can be attributed to gas emissions from the burning of fossil fuels.
To show that this is man-made, Gillett ran computer models to simulate past climate conditions and studied what would happen to humidity if there were no man-made greenhouse gases. It didn’t match reality.
He looked at what would happen from just man-made greenhouse gases. That didn’t match either. Then he looked at the combination of natural conditions and greenhouse gases. The results were nearly identical to the year-by-year increases in humidity.
Gillett’s study followed another last month that used the same technique to show that moisture above the world’s oceans increased and that it bore the “fingerprint” of being caused by man-made global warming.
So yeah, not only is it getting warmer… it’s getting muggier. Wonderful.
On the plus side, maybe this will discourage the people who think warmer weather sounds like a great idea.
October 11th, 2007 at 06:19pm
Posted by Eli
Entry Filed under:
Environment
Maybe it’s time for Ted Stevens to trade in his Hulk tie for a Tinkerbell tie:
U.S. Senator Ted Stevens says he believes the worst of global climate change may be over.
Stevens says the Earth is at the end of a long warming period, perhaps as much as 700 to 900 years.
He says that if the Earth is close to the end of that, it means the planet will start getting cooler gradually.
Stevens spoke while discussing Shishmaref, a Chukchi Sea community that has been hit hard by erosion because sea ice no longer provides it protection from fall storms.
Stevens says with the Earth cooler, stability might come to that region again.
The president of Alaska Conservation Solutions, a group focused on global warming issues in Alaska, says Stevens theory on warming is a new one.
Deborah Williams says it’s the opposite of the findings of an international panel of scientists earlier this year.
Williams says she has not heard of any credible climatologist who believes that the Earth is going to cool.
She says that to the best of her knowledge, every climatologist believes that the Earth is going to warm, in large part because of human greenhouse gas emissions.
It sounds to me like Ted thinks that global warming will stop because, well, it just has to.
I got news for you, Ted. Nature really doesn’t care if we’re screwed. Hell, if I were Nature, I’d be doing everything I could to get rid of us.
September 4th, 2007 at 09:26pm
Posted by Eli
Entry Filed under:
Environment,
Republicans
It was news to me, but the electric car has actually been around almost as long as, well, the car.
THE new hybrid Ford Escape taxis scuttling around New York City give their occupants an aura of environmental superiority. But as far as clean electric-powered cars are concerned, these high-mileage hybrids are actually a bit behind the times.
About 100 years behind.
Starting in 1914, the Detroit Taxicab and Transfer Company built and operated a fleet of nearly 100 electric cabs. Customers would often wait for a smoother, cleaner, more tasteful electric cab, even when a gas-powered cab was already on station.
At the turn of the 20th century, quiet, smooth, pollution-free electric cars were a common sight on the streets of major American cities. Women especially favored them over steam- and gasoline-powered cars.
In an era in which gasoline-powered automobiles were noisy, smelly, greasy and problematic to start, electric cars, like Jay Leno’s restored 1909 Baker Electric Coupe, represented a form of women’s liberation. Well-dressed society women could simply drive to lunch, to shop, or to visit friends without fear of soiling their gloves, mussing their hair or setting their dresses on fire.
“These were women’s shopping cars,” said Mr. Leno, who is a serious hands-on collector of autos and motorcycles dating from the 1800s to the present. “There was no gas or oil, no fire, no explosions — you just sort of got in and you went. There were thousands of these in New York, from about 1905 to 1915. There were charging stations all over town, so ladies could recharge their cars while they were in the stores.”
(…)
“I drive it from the garage up into the Hollywood Hills every year to see the Christmas lights,” he said. “The deer come right up to it and look inside. Because there’s no noise, no vibration, no gasoline smell, they’re completely unafraid.
“It’ll go for about four or five hours on a single charge, at about 20 to 25 miles an hour. Its range is about 110 miles, just about what most electric cars made these days will do. So we really haven’t come very far in a hundred years.
“It’s pretty fun to drive, actually — if you’re not in a hurry, that is,” he said. “Women love it.”
The whole “shopping car for the fine ladies” bit seems a little over the top, but it really is amazing.
And I had no idea. There were electric cars with respectable range, and this whole support system of charging stations, and not only did it all just… go away, but it’s like it was erased from history, too. If I didn’t know any better, I’d think that maybe there was something problematic with the idea of electric cars as a perfectly mainstream, unremarkable technology. (On the other hand, what better way to smear the electric car than to depict it as a failed and obsolete technology?)
Or am I the only person who didn’t know we had electric cars 100 years ago? Maybe I need to watch Who Killed The Electric Car - I had always assumed that it was smothered in its crib, not airbrushed out of existence like one of Stalin’s ex-friends.
(Also, be sure to check out the slide show of Leno’s electric car - it’s quite posh)
August 10th, 2007 at 05:41pm
Posted by Eli
Entry Filed under:
Coolness,
Environment,
Technology
Al Gore, on the National Museum of the American Indian salvaging his plan to hold a Live Earth concert in DC tomorrow, which had been blocked by Senate Republicans (Inhofe - who else?):
A couple of the global warming deniers tried to deny it with parliamentary maneuvers. The cavalry didn’t come riding to the rescue; the American Indians did.
Heh. Kudos to the NMAI folks. My sister knows a bunch of them; they’re good people.
July 6th, 2007 at 05:47pm
Posted by Eli
Entry Filed under:
Environment,
Gore,
Politics,
Quotes
Perhaps I was a little too hasty in naming Roger Cohen my Wanker Of The Day. I had not yet seen Emily Yoffe’s ghastly WaPo piece, but The Carpetbagger deals with it quite nicely.
Apparently, scaring people about the possible consequences of global warming is the wrong way to get them to do anything about it. Algore needs to be, like, more mellow, man. Like, stop harshing our buzz, dude.
Apparently, people only take bold, decisive action on important, life-threatening issues when they feel totally relaxed and unthreatened. Who knew?
June 25th, 2007 at 06:53pm
Posted by Eli
Entry Filed under:
Environment,
Gore,
Media,
Wankers
Like I said, we need to leave the bees alone:
LIGONIER, Ind. (AP) — A swarm of honeybees temporarily disrupted a charity fundraising event, but no one reported being stung.
Authorities evacuated the area Saturday after the swarm of about 3,000 bees emerged from the woods around the West Noble High School football field, where 700 people were participating in a fundraising walk for the American Cancer Society.
The bees landed on a large umbrella shading the campsite of one of the more than 60 teams taking part in the 24-hour event in the town, 40 miles northwest of Fort Wayne.
A local beekeeper, Matt Green, used a smoke machine to calm the bees and coax them into a beehive he brought to the field. The event was delayed about 45 minutes.
Don’t make the bees angry. You wouldn’t like them when they’re angry.
Also: Bees can be coaxed into beehives other than their own? I find that surprising, but I am admittedly not an expert on bees.
May 21st, 2007 at 05:36pm
Posted by Eli
Entry Filed under:
Environment
I guess this is less than surprising…
Sharon Labchuk is a longtime environmental activist and part-time organic beekeeper from Prince Edward Island. She has twice run for a seat in Ottawa’s House of Commons, making strong showings around 5% for Canada’s fledgling Green Party. She is also leader of the provincial wing of her party. In a widely circulated email, she wrote:
I’m on an organic beekeeping list of about 1,000 people, mostly Americans, and no one in the organic beekeeping world, including commercial beekeepers, is reporting colony collapse on this list. The problem with the big commercial guys is that they put pesticides in their hives to fumigate for varroa mites, and they feed antibiotics to the bees. They also haul the hives by truck all over the place to make more money with pollination services, which stresses the colonies.
Who should be surprised that the major media reports forget to tell us that the dying bees are actually hyper-bred varieties that we coax into a larger than normal body size? It sounds just like the beef industry. And, have we here a solution to the vanishing bee problem? Is it one that the CCD Working Group, or indeed, the scientific world at large, will support? Will media coverage affect government action in dealing with this issue?
(…)
We’ve been pushing them too hard, Dr. Peter Kevan, an associate professor of environmental biology at the University of Guelph in Ontario, told the CBC. And we’re starving them out by feeding them artificially and moving them great distances. Given the stress commercial bees are under, Kevan suggests CCD might be caused by parasitic mites, or long cold winters, or long wet springs, or pesticides, or genetically modified crops. Maybe it’s all of the above…
In other words, maybe we should just leave the poor bees the hell alone.
(Chain of hat tips: The Sideshow -> Emphyrio -> GroovyGreen)
May 20th, 2007 at 09:12pm
Posted by Eli
Entry Filed under:
Environment,
Science
Even Republicans believe in global warming now:
Americans in large bipartisan numbers say the heating of the earth’s atmosphere is having serious effects on the environment now or will soon and think that it is necessary to take immediate steps to reduce its effects, the latest New York Times/CBS News poll finds.
Ninety percent of Democrats, 80 percent of independents and 60 percent of Republicans said immediate action was required to curb the warming of the atmosphere and deal with its effects on the global climate. Nineteen percent said it was not necessary to act now, and 1 percent said no steps were needed.
Recent international reports have said with near certainty that human activities are the main cause of global warming since 1950. The poll found that 84 percent of Americans see human activity as at least contributing to warming.
Dubya has a 32% approval rating in this same poll. Which means that even a big chunk of his dead-enders believe in global warming as a serious threat. Let’s hope the Democrats can make some hay with this against the Republican deniers in 2008.
(h/t Holden)
April 27th, 2007 at 01:03pm
Posted by Eli
Entry Filed under:
Bush,
Democrats,
Energy,
Environment,
Gore,
Politics,
Polls,
Republicans,
Science
Click on it for a better view.
April 8th, 2007 at 10:13pm
Posted by Eli
Entry Filed under:
Bush,
Comics,
Environment
Hopefully this is good news…
Tired of abuse by mankind, the earth is angry. Worse, the planet is out to even the score.
Audiences can expect a story along those lines when M. Night Shyamalan’s film “The Happening” reaches screens in the next year. The project, to which 20th Century Fox signed on last week, imagines a planet that is starting to act like the vigilante Travis Bickle from “Taxi Driver.”
“The Happening” will not be the only big-budget studio film to test a new kind of villainy, in which the real victim is the environment, and, whatever the plot variations, the enemy is all of us. Beginning this summer and for months after, movies as diverse as the “The Simpsons Movie,” “Transformers,” a remake of “Creature From the Black Lagoon,” and James Cameron’s “Avatar” will take on environmental themes.
Dumping popular Hollywood villains of the past — drug lords, aliens, North Korean dictators, even the news media — for an environmental bête noire carries risks for studios that don’t mind frightening viewers, as long as it’s all in fun. But it also hints at the possibility of more sophisticated entertainment, and perhaps even the kind of impact that “The China Syndrome,”Jane Fonda and Michael Douglas, exerted on the nuclear power industry when it came out in 1979. with
That an environmental consciousness should be slipping into the film industry’s prospective blockbusters is not surprising in an era when Al Gore and friends have picked up an Oscar (and hefty box-office returns) for their global-warming documentary, “An Inconvenient Truth,” and when the debate it fed has largely slipped its partisan moorings.
(…)
While acknowledging the delicacy of making all of us somehow responsible for villainy — will viewers squirm at the notion of humanity as a monster? — Jon Landau, who is producing the film with Mr. Cameron, described the twist as a natural one. “Good science fiction plays as a metaphor for our current world,” he said.
At the same time, Mr. Landau stressed that Mr. Cameron’s lifelong approach has been to treat social lessons as secondary to entertainment. “People who see the theme will get an important message” as something of a bonus, he said.
(A similar ploy succeeded in “The Day After Tomorrow,” Roland Emmerich’s 2004 thriller that initially generated controversy with its climate-change theme, but did well for Fox.)
An environmentalist China Syndrome that keeps people scared after they leave the theater would be ideal, but I don’t think any of these movies are going to do that. The China Syndrome was grittily realistic enough that viewers could easily imagine it happening in real life (as indeed it almost did), while this new crop of films are escapist fantasy, and will register on the consciousness as such. They are really not all that different from the nuclear monster movies of the fifties or the man-vs-nature movies of the seventies.
Even so, they should still move the needle a little bit, and start people to thinking about the environment more than they used to. My biggest worry is that we’ll learn the wrong lesson, and start viewing the Earth as an enemy to be defeated and subjugated. Assuming we’re not already there.
March 12th, 2007 at 11:15am
Posted by Eli
Entry Filed under:
Environment,
Movies
Professional wingnut letter-writer Margaret McGirr:
To the Editor:
As usual, the fashionable view eventually becomes tyrannical and will no longer permit debate. It looks now as if the momentum of the global-warming evangelists is unstoppable.
You state in your Feb. 3 front-page article that the United States accounts for 5 percent of the world’s population and 25 percent of the world’s emissions. Somewhere between consuming and emitting fossil fuels is that thing called United States economic growth, which continues to be a boon to the world — for 2006, a sparkling 3.4 percent.
Some say they don’t want their children to have to cope with the alleged nightmare of climate change, but I am far sadder that my children will have to cope with the reduced richness of opportunity that will exist at every socioeconomic level in an economy crippled by restricted access to the energy that powers it.
It will be a sad sight to watch the spectacular American private-sector engine and the optimistic innovativeness that has always been its hallmark diminished for want of fuel.
Margaret McGirr
Greenwich, Conn., Feb. 3, 2007
Argh. The willful blindness, it burns. Yes, I suppose she would have an excellent point if global warming weren’t real, but I would like to know what makes her so sure it isn’t.
Spork_incident dispenses with her pretty handily here, to which I would only wish to add: To what better and more challenging use could “the spectacular American private-sector engine and the optimistic innovativeness” be put than to try to save humanity from itself?
For some reason, the name “Margaret McGirr” stuck in my mind, so I did some googling and came up with this little gem:
To the Editor:
Re ‘Best Defense: More Offense” (news analysis, front page, Oct,9):
Your statement that John Kerry ‘often seemed to be more in command of his brief, more confident in demeanor’ contradicts the impression made by the front-page photograph in which he sits round-shouldered and looking slightly forlorn, while President Bush takes command of the physical space as he strides out to meet the audience.”
The photograph is the more accurate ‘picture’ of the debate on Friday night. A candidate’s manner of delivery tells us who he is and is every bit as important as his message. ”
President Bush’s energy and liveliness of spirit leave no doubt as to the strength of his convictions. Senator Kerry tells us that he is decisive and optimistic, but his body language and facial expressions fail to convince.
Margaret McGirr
Greenwich, Conn.
Oct. 9, 2004
And if you like that, there’s plenty more where that came from - try searching on her name in combination with “Bush” or “Republican” and I guarantee you’ll see all kinds of juicy little Kool-Aid-saturated, codpiece-worshipping tidbits pop up in the Google. Just charming.
February 6th, 2007 at 04:22pm
Posted by Eli
Entry Filed under:
Environment,
Republicans,
Science,
Wankers
So, now that The Scientists have pretty much unequivocally stated that global warming is manmade, is an enormous problem, and requires immediate and drastic action, how likely is it that Bush or Republicans will address the problem with anything more radical than tax cuts for companies who pretend to reduce their emissions? How likely is it that the Democrats will pass a half-hearted bill that doesn’t go far enough, and which Bush will veto in the name of protecting business from unreasonable expenses?
Also, is this report going to be something that percolates into the public consciousness and fosters massive popular demand for action, or will it be a perfunctorily-reported-once-and-then-dropped non-story like everything else that doesn’t fit into the Republican narrative?
Does this increase or decrease Al Gore’s desire to run for president? Will global warming be a major campaign issue in 2008, or will it all be war and terrorism and gay immigrant marriage again?
I can’t say that I’m real optimistic on any of these points…
February 4th, 2007 at 01:21pm
Posted by Eli
Entry Filed under:
Bush,
Energy,
Environment,
Gore,
Republicans,
Science
I just got back from seeing An Inconvenient Truth with spork_incident, and it was everything I had hoped for and more. Gore has been presenting and fine-tuning this message for a long, long time, and his presentation is inexorably logical and organized. And alarming, as indeed it is meant to be.
I found myself thinking, “We are so screwed,” over and over and over again. I knew things were bad, but I had no idea just how bad. And despite his assurances that we have the capability right now to fix the atmosphere’s CO2 imbalance, I think we’re in some serious trouble, for two primary reasons.
1) CO2 and glacial/arctic ice levels are so far out of their normal equilibrium right now that I believe we are bound to experience some nasty climate effects, even if we were to jump into a full-blown program of robust countermeasures this very day.
2) The political will is simply not there. Nor will it ever be there until the balance of power shifts from the corporations to the citizenry. And even then, that citizenry must be informed and motivated. As long as a voting majority of Americans view environmentalists as a bunch of wild-eyed tree-hugging loonies who want to stifle industry and take away our jobs, nothing positive will happen. So, once again, we need a media that doesn’t solely represent corporate and Republican interests.
Yes, theoretically our elected officials could see the light and dedicate themselves to saving the planet, political consequences be damned, but, well… no. Very little in their past behavior suggests that this is likely ever to happen, not until saving the planet becomes congruent with saving their own asses. If the polls get up to somewhere on the order of “70-80% in favor of not letting the Earth turn into Venus,” maybe then we might see the government show some “leadership” on the subject. Either that, or Halliburton and Exxon/Mobil start investing heavily in environmental technologies.
One of the interesting devices Gore used to make this overwhelming and abstract issue more “relatable” (aside from a very funny quasi-Simpsons cartoon) was to use tragedy and near-tragedy in his own family as metaphors for our current situation. He talked about his six-year-old son’s brush with death as a way of illustrating the profundity of almost losing something that you cherish, and how that kind of experience can change your life and sense of purpose.
More powerfully and aptly, he talked about his older sister’s death from lung cancer caused by smoking, and his father’s decision to stop growing tobacco soon afterward. All the rationalizations his father had used to justify making money from tobacco simply fell away when he experienced that shock. Not only did his beloved daughter die a horrible death, but it was indirectly by his own hand. Gore implies that we haven’t yet had that shock to snap us out of our senses and jolt us out of our comfortable rationalizations, but the fact is that we have. Hurricane Katrina was our wake-up call, and America slept right through it. And before that, the tsunami in Southeast Asia (of course, that didn’t really count, because it was Over There). The Earth is sounding ever-louder alarms, and We. Are. Not. Listening. I can’t begin to imagine Al Gore’s frustration as he desperately tries to alert us to our peril, and is perpetually ignored and marginalized by the mainstream and the conventional wisdom.
I will close with the Upton Sinclair quote that Gore uses in his presentation, which completely and perfectly explains our government and our media, on this issue and all others:
“It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.”
June 25th, 2006 at 06:51pm
Posted by Eli
Entry Filed under:
Environment,
Favorites,
Gore,
Media,
Politics
I must be hallucinating…
“I don’t have any hesitation to be part of a filibuster,” said Senator Joseph I. Lieberman, Democrat of Connecticut…. “This is a tough fight,” he added. “But it is a fight worth waging.”
Okay, so he was talking about opposing yet another Republican attempt to tack ANWR drilling onto completely unrelated legislation, and not the Alito nomination, but still.
Remarkable.
December 20th, 2005 at 04:03pm
Posted by Eli
Entry Filed under:
Democrats,
Energy,
Environment,
Lieberman,
Politics,
Wankers
Some people - whiny pessimistic doomsayers with no vision - look at global warming and see flooding and climatic catastrophes, but not Scott Borgerson. Mr. Borgerson sees OPPORTUNITY!
A quarter of the world’s oil and natural gas resources lie in the Arctic, but until recently polar ice rendered many of these deposits inaccessible.
Now, with each passing year the warmest on record in the polar regions, the ice is melting, and more and more of these deposits are being tapped to feed the world’s ravenous appetite for energy. With the price of oil soaring, wildcatters race to hoist derricks in waters where the ice has retreated. Miners, loggers and fishermen are also chasing newly exploitable natural resources.
Yet perhaps the most significant consequence of the melt is the rising potential for Arctic navigation. The polar thaw may lead to what would be the most transformational maritime project since the Panama Canal: an Arctic Bridge.
The holy grail of a shortcut from the North Atlantic to the North Pacific has lured explorers to extreme latitudes for centuries. Those explorers’ dream could become a reality in our lifetime. An Arctic marine highway made possible by the dwindling of sea ice would cut existing oceanic transit times by days, saving shipping companies… thousands of miles in travel.
(snip)
A continued reduction in Arctic sea ice, supported by a growing network of ports, roads and railways, could radically transform trade patterns. Those able to adjust their mental maps and capitalize on this new seaway would surely benefit.
Admittedly, even going by the most optimistic projection, a fully navigable Arctic is unlikely to emerge for a decade or more, and depending on whose climate change model you accept, it could take much longer. But unless warming trends come to an abrupt halt, the Arctic region will surely witness increased activity in the foreseeable future and could, in time, become a hub of global activity.
Interesting use of the word “optimistic,” neh? Yes, Mr. Borgerson’s biggest concern about global warming is that it may not be happening fast enough. Oh well, I suppose the world can put that Arctic shortcut to good use ferrying supplies to flood and hurricane victims…
October 19th, 2005 at 11:33am
Posted by Eli
Entry Filed under:
Environment,
Wankers
Yeah, yeah, great. I wonder how much I can get for it…
What kind of venal, soulless worm can look at the natural beauty of a Yellowstone or a Yosemite and see only dollar signs? Why, a Bush appointee, of course.
Most of us think of America’s national parks as everlasting places, parts of the bedrock of how we know our own country. But they are shaped and protected by an underlying body of legislation, which is distilled into a basic policy document that governs their operation. Over time, that document has slowly evolved, but it has always stayed true to the fundamental principle of leaving the parks unimpaired for future generations. That has meant, in part, sacrificing some of the ways we might use the parks today in order to protect them for tomorrow.
Recently, a secret draft revision of the national park system’s basic management policy document has been circulating within the Interior Department. It was prepared, without consultation within the National Park Service, by Paul Hoffman, a deputy assistant secretary at Interior who once ran the Chamber of Commerce in Cody, Wyo., was a Congressional aide to Dick Cheney and has no park service experience.
Within national park circles, this rewrite of park rules has been met with profound dismay, for it essentially undermines the protected status of the national parks. The document makes it perfectly clear that this rewrite was not prompted by a compelling change in the park system’s circumstances. It was prompted by a change in political circumstances - the opportunity to craft a vision of the national parks that suits the Bush administration.
(snip)
Mr. Hoffman’s rewrite would open up nearly every park in the nation to off-road vehicles, snowmobiles and Jet Skis. According to his revision, the use of such vehicles would become one of the parks’ purposes. To accommodate such activities, he redefines impairment to mean an irreversible impact. To prove that an activity is impairing the parks, under Mr. Hoffman’s rules, you would have to prove that it is doing so irreversibly - a very high standard of proof. This would have a genuinely erosive effect on the standards used to protect the national parks.
The pattern prevails throughout this 194-page document - easing the rules that limit how visitors use the parks and toughening the standard of proof needed to block those uses.
(snip)
There are other issues too. Mr. Hoffman would explicitly allow the sale of religious merchandise, and he removes from the policy document any reference to evolution or evolutionary processes. He does everything possible to strip away a scientific basis for park management. His rules would essentially require park superintendents to subordinate the management of their parks to local and state agendas. He also envisions a much wider range of commercial activity within the parks.
In short, this is not a policy for protecting the parks. It is a policy for destroying them.
This is yet another revolting example of the Bush Republican mindset, wherein all public resources exist solely as potential plunder for the Republicans and their corporate cronies. See also: the public airwaves, Social Security, the tax code, and the defense budget. They are like selfish infants with absolutely no thought for the long term, no thought for the public good, no consideration that there are values beyond money (well, okay, they do have homophobia, I’ll give ‘em that). Laws, regulations, and the Constitution itself are merely inconvenient obstacles between them and more sweet, sweet profit.
America has turned into the rich, oblivious widow whose husband always took care of the finances, and the Republicans are the sleazy lawyer robbing her blind because she’s too far gone to notice or care. Perhaps we Democrats are like the concerned relatives she won’t listen to because she thinks we’re the ones trying to take her money. Oh, the irony.
August 29th, 2005 at 09:13pm
Posted by Eli
Entry Filed under:
Bush,
Corruption/Cronyism,
Environment,
Favorites,
Republicans,
Wankers
Previous Posts
