Month: June 2006

Wind-Power Projects Halted

Wind-Power Projects Halted
More than 130 wind turbines are proposed for the hilltops of central Wisconsin, but that project and at least 11 others have been halted by the Defense Department as it studies whether the projects could interfere with military radar.

Wind farm developers, Midwestern legislators and environmentalists say the farms pose no risk, noting that there are already numerous wind farms operating in military radar areas. They say a renewable, domestic source of energy such as wind is crucial to energy security and independence.

They say their wind turbines are victims of the ongoing dispute between Cape Cod residents and developers of the proposed Cape Wind farm in Nantucket Sound. The Defense Department study was put in the 2006 Defense Authorization Act — inserted, say wind farm developers, by senators who want to block Cape Wind.

Andean Blues

Andean Blues
On Sunday morning, I went to vote in Barranco, my old neighborhood. I voted for Garcia, the lesser of two evils because not voting or casting a blank vote would have helped Humala. Garcia, now a moderate populist who says he does not want to break away from globalization, won with roughly 53 percent of the vote against Humala’s 47 percent.

In the 1960s, American historian Carroll Quigley explained in “The Evolution of Civilizations” that decadence starts when social arrangements that serve social needs turn into institutions that serve their own needs.

That, precisely, is part of Latin America’s plight. The disconnect between official institutions and social needs — the legacy of too many caudillos and the absence of the rule of law — has thrown many people into the hands of leaders who espouse nationalist ideologies. The challenge is to heal the rift, not to widen it as Humala was planning to do.

‘Hope for coral’ as oceans warm

BBC NEWS | Science/Nature | ‘Hope for coral’ as oceans warm
Some coral associate only with one type of symbiotic algae, or zooxanthellae.

Others are more promiscuous, and it has been thought for some time that these may be able to switch to more heat-tolerant varieties as waters warm – a theory which the new Australian research apparently confirms.

Scientists took samples of Acropora millepora, a common Great Barrier Reef coral, and transplanted them from cooler to warmer waters by taking them to locations further north along the reef.

Some of the transplanted populations responded by taking on algal varieties able to tolerate higher temperatures.

Scientists transplanted coral between islands on the Barrier Reef
These populations developed the ability to tolerate even higher temperatures generated by heating sea water artificially in the laboratory.

Thinking Global Demographics

WSJ.com – Thinking Global
The deepest demographic hole is in Russia. President Vladimir Putin trumpets his country’s new status as an energy superpower, but a decline in male life expectancy to pre-1959 levels has combined with declining birthrates to more than offset that advantage. “The real wealth of the modern world is human resources, and not what you have in the ground,” says Nicholas Eberstadt of the American Enterprise Institute, Washington’s leading expert on global demographic trends. He fears a new security challenge: a declining state with nuclear weapons that is relying on nonhuman resources for its power.

On a brighter note, Mr. Eberstadt has spotted a surprising and potentially positive trend toward lower population growth in developing countries, where concerns have focused for years on overpopulation and its relation to cyclical poverty. More than half the world is now living at subreplacement levels, including nearly every country of East Asia, many parts of the Mideast, Turkey and Brazil. The cause appears to be modern thinking seeping through to more cultures than previously thought, propagating the notion that a large number of children is more of an economic burden than benefit.

Yet geopoliticians are focusing most on China and the U.S. — the world’s fastest-rising power and its incumbent. China is following an aging course similar to that of Japan, but its trends hold more dangers as it begins from a lower income base with less-developed pension and health systems.

Mr. Bennett talks about a 1-2-4 equation, where one Chinese child supports two parents who support four grandparents, but in reality, many parents have no child to support them. “There’s this slow-motion humanitarian tragedy coming down the track for China,” Mr. Eberstadt says.

He says the U.S. trend is more a story of its “exceptionalism” among industrialized countries, with higher birthrates that grow out of significantly different attitudes. U.S. birthrates are 30% higher per family than those of Europe or Canada.

“This is the expression of millions of unorganized, spontaneous couples,” says Mr. Eberstadt, who adds that the U.S. will be the only industrialized country to hold on to its share of global population in the next half century. That also will give it more of a risk-taking nature than allies on matters ranging from fighting terrorism to technological innovation.

“The U.S. will have less and less affinity with other developed countries,” he says. “It will be harder and not easier to find common ground with allies.”

Islamic Imperialism: A History

All or Nothing by Theodore Dalrymple
In his new book, Islamic Imperialism: A History, Professor Efraim Karsh does not mince words about Mohammed’s early and (to all those who do not accept the divinity of his inspiration) unscrupulous resort to robbery and violence, or about Islam’s militaristic aspects, or about the link between Islamic tradition and the current wave of fundamentalist violence in the world. The originality of Karsh’s interpretation is its underlying assumption that Islam was, from the very beginning, a pretext for personal and dynastic political ambition, from the razzias against the Meccan caravans and the expulsion of Jewish tribes from Medina, to the siege of Vienna a millennium later in 1529, and Hamas today.

Contrary to its universalistic pretensions, Karsh argues, Islam has never succeeded in eliminating political power struggles within the Muslim world, where, on the contrary, such struggles have always been murderous. Islamic regimes, many espousing in the beginning the ascetic principles of what one might call desert Islam, invariably degenerate (if it be degeneration) into luxury- and privilege-loving dynasties.

Deer-eating Alligator

U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service —
The photographs of this deer-eating alligator were taken from the air by Terri Jenkins, a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service District Fire Management Officer. She was preparing to ignite a prescribed fire at Harris Neck National Wildlife Refuge, about 40 miles south of Savannah, Georgia, on March 4, 2004. (Thanks to Bob Bopp for Snopes.com on this one that has circulated around the net).

Report Claims Over-Fishing as Major Threat

Report Claims Over-Fishing as Major Threat | Outside Online
(Picture is of a giant piece of 500 year old gorgonian coral being hoisted out of a bottom trawl net.) Specifically, World Wildlife Fund spokesman Tom Lalley, cited the legal practice of bottom-trawling as a culprit in the practice of over fishing. The practice, Lalley said, involves scraping “the bottom of the sea clean,” and heavily damaging to the marine environment.

The report, released ahead of meeting in New York for the United Nations Fish Stocks Agreement, cites an over-capacity of authorized fleets, over-fishing of stocks under catch limits and the absence of rebuilding strategies for depleted populations, Reuters reported.

“What it’s saying is the current governance structure has failed,” Lalley said. Citing the bluefin tuna and orange roughy as examples of over-exploited species, Lalley said the purpose of the report was to identify weaknesses and to improve the current regulatory system.

The basis for Al Gore’s Movie on how to stop Global Warming

Socolow Buenos Aires COP-10 12-9-04.pdf (application/pdf Object)

That link is a slide show. The full paper is here.

Countering Gore’s ultimately hopeful outcome is the pessimistic Doomsday Camp led by James Howard Kunstler, the flame-throwing author of best-selling “The Long Emergency“.

And here are the optimists, who aren’t giving up at worldchanging.com and at the Alternative Energy Action Network.