Category: Enviroment

Experts believe the future will be like Sci-Fi movies

Experts believe the future will be like Sci-Fi movies
In the latest study conducted by the Pew Internet and American Life Project, over 700 technology experts were asked to evaluate an assortment of scenarios in an attempt to determine potential trends for the year 2020. With responses from representatives of the World Wide Web Consortium, ICANN, the Association of Internet Researchers, and major corporations like Google and IBM, the report reflects the perceptions of “Internet pioneers,” more than half of whom “were online before 1993.”

The highly speculative scenarios presented to respondents are all vaguely reminiscent of various themes commonly found in contemporary science fiction. From artificial intelligences dominating humanity to disgruntled Luddites engaging in violence, the poll looks more like an abandoned script by Michael Piller than a serious exploration of the future

If it stops plague, will it stop hospital superbugs?

If it stops plague, will it stop hospital superbugs? – health – 20 September 2006 – New Scientist
Disease bugs come equipped with a whole tool kit of tricks for evading our immune system. Now it seems that turning off just one of them can render bubonic plague harmless. A similar approach might lead to vaccines against many pathogens, including antibiotic-resistant hospital superbugs.

Anticrepuscular Rays Over Florida

APOD: 2006 September 17 – Anticrepuscular Rays Over Florida
Strangely, the actual sunset was occurring in the opposite direction from where the camera was pointing. Pictured above are anticrepuscular rays. To understand them, start by picturing common crepuscular rays that are seen any time that sunlight pours though scattered clouds. Now although sunlight indeed travels along straight lines, the projections of these lines onto the spherical sky are great circles. Therefore, the crepuscular rays from a setting (or rising) sun will appear to re-converge on the other side of the sky. At the anti-solar point 180 degrees around from the Sun, they are referred to as anticrepuscular rays

Todd’s 10 mile doggy paddle

BBC NEWS | UK | Todd’s 10 mile doggy paddle
Todd the dog proved his loyalty to his master when he fell overboard from a yacht and determinedly swam 10 miles in the direction of home.

The two-year-old Labrador was feared dead when he disappeared from the deck of Peter Loizou’s boat a mile off the Isle of Wight.

Mr Loizou spent four frantic hours searching the choppy seas for his pet but finally gave up hope of ever seeing him again.

Owner Peter Loizou thought he had lost Todd forever

But he had not reckoned on Todd’s doggedness.

Rare fur seals reclaim place on Farallon Islands

Rare fur seals reclaim place on Farallon Islands / Animals fled 1834 slaughter; now they’re back and breeding
The Farallones once supported hundreds of thousands of breeding northern fur seals — big marine predators with luxuriant pelts. Their thick, soft fur proved their undoing: In 1834, sealers slaughtered about 200,000 of the animals, delivering their pelts to Fort Ross in what is now Sonoma County. The rest of the seals fled, abandoning their rookeries for more than a century and a half.

A few started returning in the early 1970s, but this year their numbers surged — an indication of the islands’ enduring vitality and proof that a sensitive species can revive under favorable circumstances. Thanks to Adam Brown.
Here is on on-island blog

Ethanol E85, Disappoints

ConsumerReports.org – Ethanol E85, alternative fuels, flexible-fuel vehicles
When running on E85 there was no significant change in acceleration. Fuel economy, however, dropped across the board. In highway driving, gas mileage decreased from 21 to 15 mpg; in city driving, it dropped from 9 to 7 mpg.

You could expect a similar decrease in gas mileage in any current FFV. That’s because ethanol has a lower energy content than gasoline: 75,670 British thermal units per gallon instead of 115,400, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

The FFV surge is being motivated by generous fuel-economy credits that auto-makers get for every FFV they build, even if it never runs on E85. This allows them to pump out more gas-guzzling large SUVs and pickups, which is resulting in the consumption of many times more gallons of gasoline than E85 now replaces.

Palm Oil vs. Crude Oil

Bloomberg.com: Worldwide
Supplies of diesel fuel from vegetable oils soared 80 percent in 2005, the agency said in July. That outpaced a 14 percent increase in production of ethanol, a fuel derived from corn and sugar that’s used as an alternative to gasoline.

Crude oil reached a record $78.40 a barrel last month and has driven up the cost of diesel and gasoline, making biofuels more competitive. Palm oil costs $507.50 a ton in Europe, less than about $680 for a ton of crude oil-derived diesel. Governments are subsidizing biodiesel to diversify energy supply and reduce greenhouse-gas emissions.

Vegetable oil-based diesel is made through a chemical process where the glycerin is separated from the fat, or vegetable oil. The process leaves behind two products — methyl esters, the chemical name for biodiesel, and glycerin, a byproduct usually sold for manufacturing in soaps and antifreeze.

Palm oil comes from bunches of plum-sized fruit on the tree, which becomes productive from about 30 months after planting.

Go west, young Chinese!

Thomas P.M. Barnett :: Weblog: Go west, young Chinese!
ARTICLE: “China’s Big Push To Stoke Economy Rattles Rural Tibet: Meatpacking Modernization Threatens Beloved Yaks; New Train Brings Suspicion,” by James T. Areddy, Wall Street Journal, 24 August 2006, p. A1.

I know, I know. I seem to be harping on a theme here. And it’s certainly easy to paint the Chinese as the white man and the Tibetans and other inland peoples as the Indians, but you’re always left with this weird argument that says it’s better to leave populations largely disconnected and largely undeveloped in order to preserve the “purity” of their culture, which to me is a sort of strange, reverse racism–even a proto-fascist sentiment.

I know, I know. It’s an impossible dream to the environmental doom-and-gloomers. I just don’t think you can keep those 2-3 billion in the Gap and the Core’s mini-Gaps off grid from the better life forever, and I have an undying faith in the ingenuity of mankind (Forgive me Father, for I am an optimist).

Plus, I look at the history of economic development and I see that the cleanest states (Yale’s environmental sustainability index, for example) are Core states, while the next dirtiest are the Gap, and the most pollution-creating tend to be those transitioning from Gap to Core (as always–the transition states experience the most change). That tells me that if you want a cleaner planet, you want states to move from Gap to Core. That’s the best way to get a handle on local pollution problems (which decline, historically, everywhere with development) and the best way to force global responses to global pollution issues (which tend to increase with development).