Month: July 2008

Climate Panic

Björn Lomborg: | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk
It is hard to keep up the climate panic as reality diverges from the alarmist predictions more than ever before: the global temperature has not risen over the past 10 years, it has declined precipitously in the last year and a half, and studies show that it might not rise again before the middle of the next decade. With a global recession looming and high oil and food prices undermining the living standards of the western middle class, it is becoming ever harder to sell the high-cost, inefficient Kyoto-style solution of drastic carbon cuts.

A much sounder approach than Kyoto and its successor would be to invest more in research and development of zero-carbon energy technologies – a cheaper, more effective way to truly solve the climate problem. Continue reading “Climate Panic”

Peak Water & Food?

Lester Brown: Higher food prices are here to stay | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk
The world’s total irrigated area stopped growing in 2000. We may have reached peak water before peak oil. It takes 1,000 tons of water to produce one ton of grain, but water tables are now falling and wells are going dry in countries that contain half the world’s people, including China and India, two of the largest grain producers.

An estimated one-third of the world’s cropland is now losing topsoil at a rate that reduces its productivity. As soil erodes and crop yields fall in countries like Mongolia, Lesotho and Haiti, their dependence on imported grain is soaring.

Beyond these resource constraints, the backlog of agricultural technology is shrinking. This helps explain why the rise in world grain yields per acre of over 2% per year from 1950 to 1990 has dropped to scarcely 1% per year since 1990. Continue reading “Peak Water & Food?”

Trash Bags + NYC Subway = Art

Video: Artist Joshua Allen Harris Turns Garbage Bags Into World’s Greatest Balloon Animals — Vulture — Entertainment & Culture Blog — New York Magazine

As a New York Subway wooshes through its tunnel it forces the air out of its way through ventilation grates in the sidewalk. Joshua has recycled that energy into kinetic art sculptures fastend out of garbage bags. Thanks to the ever-environmentalist Natalia Collier  of EPIC for this find.

Effect Of Girls Reading “The Twilight Saga”

Op-Ed Columnist – A Virginal Goth Girl – Op-Ed – NYTimes.com
“Only a vampire, ladies,” said Jessica Valenti, the author of “Full Frontal Feminism.” She worries that in the real world, young men are spending so much time watching pornography on the Internet that they will never be satisfied with normal women and normal relationships.

This sure sounds like trouble to me: A generation of guys who will settle for nothing less than a porn star meets a generation of women who expect their boyfriend to crawl through their bedroom window at night and just nuzzle gently until they fall asleep.

It’s no wonder that Valenti sees today’s young women being pulled between complete chastity and utter sluttiness. Good girl or “Gossip Girl?” Courtney Martin, the author of “Perfect Girls, Starving Daughters,” spends a lot of time on college campuses and says students seem to be torn between anonymous sex and monogamy — “either hooking up with no expectations or you’re basically married. You stay home and watch movies.”

Rules They Don’t Teach You In School

Some rules kids won’t learn in school

Text By Charles J. Sykes

Printed in San Diego Union Tribune
September 19, 1996

Unfortunately, there are some things that children should be learning in
school, but don’t. Not all of them have to do with academics. As a modest
back-to-school offering, here are some basic rules that may not have found
their way into the standard curriculum.

Rule No. 1: Life is not fair. Get used to it. The average teen-ager uses the
phrase, “It’s not fair” 8.6 times a day. You got it from your parents, who
said it so often you decided they must be the most idealistic generation
ever. When they started hearing it from their own kids, they realized Rule
No. 1.

Rule No. 2: The real world won’t care as much about your self-esteem as much
as your school does. It’ll expect you to accomplish something before you
feel good about yourself. This may come as a shock. Usually, when inflated
self-esteem meets reality, kids complain it’s not fair. (See Rule No. 1) Continue reading “Rules They Don’t Teach You In School”

Surfing Lava Waves

Volcano surfing: Lava waves in Hawaii – Telegraph

Even for the hardened adventurer, surfing in boiling waters just 20 feet from the flowing lava of an active volcano is pushing the boundaries of extreme sport.

But for professional surfer CJ Kanuha the thrill of a challenge was too good to pass up.
CJ Kanuha, the daring professional surfer paddles close to the flowing lava of Kilauea volcano

Hovering above in a helicopter, a photographer captured the moment he edged as close as possible to the molten lava of Kilauea volcano on Hawaii’s Big Island.

Kirk Lee Aeder, who took the shots, said: “It was one of the most thrilling photo shoots I have ever had in my life.

“One day I was talking to my pro-surfing friend, CJ and we began discussing the idea of him surfing, or should I say, stand up paddle surfing close to where the lava enters the ocean and that I would shoot it from a helicopter.”

“I was tentative to get too close at first, and for good reason, the boiling water there is well over 200 hundred degrees in some spots, super hot, and it quickly melted the wax on the surfboard.”

The surfer, who suffered peeling skin on his legs from the boiling water, added: “It was an amazing feeling to get so close to the power of the lava from the volcano.” Click on picture to enlarge or on link for more photos.

Climate Change As Darwinism

A Different Climate Change Apocalypse Than the One You Were Envisioning – Freakonomics – Opinion – New York Times Blog
Let’s say you are convinced that climate change is a huge threat and will have catastrophic consequences for humankind in the foreseeable future. How exactly do you envision that catastrophe playing out?

According to a fascinating new working paper (abstract here; download available here by Melissa Dell, Benjamin F. Jones, and Benjamin A. Olken, the answer to that last question may be an easy one: poor countries.

Our main results show large, negative effects of higher temperatures on growth, but only in poor countries. … In rich countries, changes in temperature have no discernible effect on growth.

What does this mean? Among other things, it may mean that many Americans — who are by definition rich — are worried about the wrong thing. Instead of thinking about weather apocalypses, they should instead be thinking about border invasions: the huddled masses from the poorest countries who will be seeking refuge as their own economies collapse. This would be Darwinism on the most epic scale imaginable — but instead of the finch with the shorter beak becoming extinct, it’ll be the poorest millions, or perhaps billions.

Stradivarius Result Of Global Cooling

Secrets of Stradivarius Explained | Wired Science from Wired.com
In a study published yesterday in Public Library of Science ONE, Dutch researchers ran five of the peerless instruments, made in the early 18th century by Italian craftsman Antonio Stradivari and synonymous with harmonic perfection, through a CT scanner.

The resulting three-dimensional X-rays revealed that wood used in Stradivari’s violins possessed an exceptionally uniform density, with little variation in growth rings added by trees each season.

Summertime growth typically outpaces wintertime growth, producing broad rings of relatively permeable wood that alternate with narrow, dense winter bands. That differential affects the wood’s harmonic qualities.

Fortunately for Stradivari, he lived during the Little Ice Age: trees grew little more in summer than in winter. Hence the uniformly dense wood, hence three centuries of experts baffled by the resonance of Stradivarius violins, which have been variously attributed to varnishes, boiling and submersion in ponds.