On June 25th the senator voiced support for opening up uranium mining in Arizona and countered environmentalists by assuring them that the the Earth has been around for "6,000 years..." and has lasted that long without environmnental laws. She said it twice.
Yeah, the earth has been around for six thousand years, and it has lasted that long without mass extinctions or asteroid impacts either. How is it we keep electing buffoons to positions of power? As I pointed out in my first post today, we must have geological resources. But to allow idiots to make or shape decisions regarding how and where these resources can be extracted is not a good idea.
From Abstruse Goose. (click over for full, readable size). This is at once charming, nostalgic, funny and scary. That has to be really tricky to pull off. So my TV memories go out to somewhere in the neighborhood of Beta Aquilae to Mu Arae... probably closer to the latter. The first show I distinctly remember is "Days of Our Lives." My babysitter watched it. I seriously hope that when we discover other intelligent life forms out there, they're not sitting around in LazyBoys, watching our reruns.
I seriously doubt it. But this article from the NYT points out that China has been far more proactive in developing non-carbon, renewable energy sources than has the US.
While the House of Representatives approved a requirement last week that American utilities generate more of their power from renewable sources of energy, and the Senate will consider similar proposals over the summer, China imposed such a requirement almost two years ago.
This year China is on track to pass the United States as the world’s largest market for wind turbines — after doubling wind power capacity in each of the last four years. State-owned power companies are competing to see which can build solar plants fastest, though these projects are much smaller than the wind projects. And other green energy projects, like burning farm waste to generate electricity, are sprouting up all over the country.
(...)
And now, just 15 months later, with construction of coal-fired plants having slowed to one a week and still falling, it appears that China will have 30,000 megawatts of wind energy by the end of next year — which was previously the target for 2020, Mr. Li said.
Now in fairness, there are some doubts as to the effectiveness about many of the projects, and as things sit now, AltEn constitutes only a small proportion of the total. But this enormous push has created enough of an energy base that instead of completing two coal-fired plants per week (just think about that number for a moment), China is now only completing one per week.
And that's not trivial.
Meanwhile back home, conservatives continue to whimper, whine and throw tantrums over the fact that any binding legislation we pass with respect to our own carbon emissions will destroy the economy, and turn us all in into socioislamacommunofacsits.
I figured it'd be a cold day in hell before it started to look like China was "the good guys" and we were "the bad guys."
Ever so sharp, neat and tidy! But is something missing? Yes, there is... Heeeere's Jebus! Now in Green! Red! And Orange! Still looking for blue... Across the street from the (fairly) new Kelly Engineering Building on the ever-lovely OSU campus. Thanks to Todd (another Interzone Person I haven't posted yet) for telling me about this new appearance!
Yesterday I posted on a piece from The Guardian, describing how Exxon-Mobil was still granting hundreds of thousands of dollars to (as the Guardian put it) "lobby groups that have published 'misleading and inaccurate information' about climate change." This is an accurate description of the groups named in the article, including National Center for Policy Analysis (NCPA) and the Heritage Foundation in Washington DC. These examples are two of many well-funded conservative "think-tanks." From what I've seen over the last 15 to 20 years, "think-tank" is not a good description of these groups. Their mission is to not come up with new or improved ideas, it is to come up with justifications- any justifications- for why sticking to their old, broken and disproved ideas is the best solution, and to make as much media noise with those "justifications" (rationalizations) as they possibly can.
They have been extremely effective and successful
So today, when I saw this headline from The Telegraph, "ExxonMobil funds climate-change sceptics," I clicked over to see if there was any new information. And confronted this top-of-the-article summary:
ExxonMobil, the world’s largest oil company, is continuing to fund researchers who cast doubt on global warming, despite public promises to cut support for climate-change sceptics.
Do you see the problem here?
Somehow the recipients have gone from being conservative lobbyists and media manipulators to "researchers."
They are not researchers. They are vultures who are paid to protect the interests of the wealthy and powerful. If Exxon-Mobil were actually funding real, peer-reviewed research that might contradict the findings of the vast majority of climate scientists, I would have no problems- in fact, I would be overjoyed if they could establish that climate change was not going to have an enormous impact over the next century and longer. But to fund noisemakers so we as a culture can't hear the fire alarm is unconscionable
Thanks, media, for continuing to clarify and fact-check on these trivial little issues. Kudos for a job well done.
Au contraire, mon frere... (click to enlargify) Interesting set of mineral statistics reduced to a fairly mind-blowing graphic: the total lifetime mineral consumption of an "average" person born in the US. I have some nits I could pick with the above picture (e.g. sometimes reporting as "ores," generally oxides, and sometimes as refined products), but however you cut it, the numbers are stunning. From this report (300 Kb PDF), found at the Minerals Information Institute. MII is apparently a group dedicated to disseminating educational materials on the topic of geologic resources, a mission I strongly support. (with some caveats that I won't fuss over too much)
Almost forgot it was Wednesday, but don't worry: I remembered. So per request, here are my favorite defintions from last week's edition (there are a few more good ones in the comments):
dubtrala, when you come crawling back home at 6am after an all-night boozefest, à la Dubya. (Randal, and very close to my take on the word)
(Close second) - a reggae remix of a song from an early Disney movie (Anonymous)
sudlibbi- Leftists from southern Germany. (Dean)
boodeval- the process by which something scary loses it's fright value (devalues) if it's repeated too many times. (Dean)
anooks - a movement for truth in ethnographic filmmaking, formed in reaction to famed but highly staged documentary "Nanook of the North." (Anonymous; my definition was "street talk used by a guy to describe an extended period of involuntary celebacy: "I been anooks fer over a month, man!)
ingedup- what a sleeping drunk says when you try to wake him (Anonymous- this one becomes clearer if you space out the first two letters: I n gedup)
Ava Worthington came into the world at a robust 10 pounds and 21 or 22 inches, according to testimony today in the faith-healing trial of her parents, but she died smaller than 99 percent of girls her age. Her development was so stunted she "was off the charts," said Dr. Christopher Young, the deputy state medical examiner who conducted her autopsy. At death, when Ava was 15 months old, she weighed 15.5 pounds and was 26 inches tall, Young testified today in Clackamas County Circuit Court. The girl's parents, Carl Brent and Raylene Worthington, are charged with criminal mistreatment and manslaughter for failing to get adequate medical treatment for their daughter. The Worthingtons' Oregon City church, the Followers of Christ, shuns medical care in favor of faith healing.
It has been suggested that the emotional pain the parents are going through is so intense that they shouldn't be criminally prosecuted. My argument is this: the parents knew their daughter was very, very sick. They sought no medical attention for her, but they did have members of their church pray for her. Despite all the prayers, she died of (what was later determined) to be pneumonia that could have been successfully treated with antibiotics. As the passage above indicates, more and more evidence is accumulating of a persistant pattern of abuse and mistreatment, of systematically withholding basic needs of the child. Note that in one year and three months, the baby's weight had increased only 50%.
So my response is this: the couple should have the charges dropped, they should be sterilized, they should be labeled as child abusers, and not allowed within 1000 feet of any other children... as we do with sex offenders. That might prevent them from going to their church; that's too bad, but them's the breaks.
Oh, and we should prohibit them from getting a divorce.
I expect within a year or two, one will kill the other, and we can put the survivor away for murder.
Carl Brent Worthington told detectives in tapes played for jurors today that his family tried praying, fasting and laying on of hands but never considered calling a doctor to help his dying 15-month-old daughter. "I don't believe in them," Worthington said of doctors. "I believe in faith healing."
"We have, I’m happy to say, a lot of choices out there: Bobby Jindal, Tim Pawlenty, Huntsman, Romney, Charlie Crist—there’s a lot of governors out there who are young and dynamic.” McCain went on, “There’s a lot of good people out there, and I’ve left out somebody’s name and I’m going to hear about it.”
Hee, Hee! The album "Los Angles" got heavy play at the local college radio station, KBVR, when I was and undergrad, and I've owned at least two copies of it, in addition to the cassette copy I listened to most often. Just so I can say I added something to a shameless swiping of someone else's post, here the song that the title refers to...
As I'm sure most of my readers know, yesterday the Minnesota Supreme Court upheld Al Franken's victory in that state's Senatorial election last fall. And Coleman quickly conceded, choosing not to take the last litigation step available to him: appeal to the US Supreme Court.
Thank God.
I tend not to bother commenting on news that I feel has disseminated quickly and widely, unless I have a perspective that I haven't seen expressed well elsewhere. And there are a lot of bloggy pundits out there who are better informed and sharper than me, so I don't comment on big news too much, and I hadn't been intending to comment on Franken's victory.
But MoveOn.org just sent me an opportunity to leave a message on Franken's virtual victory card, and doing so was a strangely fulfilling experience that I wanted to pass along. Below is Franken's messge to MoveOn members, and here's the link to sign the card.
What a day! I just wanted to take a moment amidst all this to say thank you to the MoveOn members in Minnesota and across the country. Paul Wellstone understood that real change comes from the ground up. And there's really no better example of that than MoveOn.org. You've been there for me since the beginning. And I look forward to working with you as a U.S. senator to make the progressive vision we all share into a reality: affordable health care for all, new jobs from clean energy, and an economy that works for everyone. Thank you for all you do. Senator-elect Al Franken
Congratulations, Al! This one's for you! It's time to make politics funny again.
Records show ExxonMobil gave hundreds of thousands of pounds to lobby groups that have published 'misleading and inaccurate information' about climate change. The world's largest oil company is continuing to fund lobby groups that question the reality of global warming, despite a public pledge to cut support for such climate change denial, a new analysis shows.
From The Guardian (and take a look at some of the linked information). I am just so thankful to live in a society where we recognize that the right of a corporation to rake in profits (so large most people cannot comprehend numbers of that magnitude) far outweighs the right of people and the planet to survive with some modicum of sanity. Here's another juicy bit:
The Heritage Foundation published a "web memo" in December that said: "Growing scientific evidence casts doubt on whether global warming constitutes a threat, including the fact that 2008 is about to go into the books as a cooler year than 2007."
Yay! I lost my job, I lost my insurance, and I lost my house, but I found a buck on teh street today! The trend is looking good!
When the International Space Station (ISS) caught the Sarychev eruption a couple of weeks ago, there were a couple of the images that went mainstream very quickly. I posted one myself, and at that post, as well as my last post, there are a number of links to the ISS images. Well, someone has done us a great favor and put the images together in a video clip. One caveat: the features identified as "lahars" are actually pyroclastic flows. Lahars are volcanic mudflows, and are not necessarily associated with active eruptions, though they often are. (For this and other posts where I talk about lahars, click here) I don't doubt for a second that there are lahars down under the dense billowing masses of suspended ash as they tear down the mountain side, but what you actually see in the pictures are clouds of ash suspended in air, not mudflows, and are more accurately described as pyroclastic ("fire-broken") flows.
The next task is to morph between frames to smooth out the jerkyness, as was done with the famous Mt. St. Helens photos, to create this famous (and also very awesome) clip:
GIF animation of satellite data showing the movement of Sarychev SO2 (orange) from June 21-26
So how does this work? SO2 oxidizes to sulfate, SO4, in the atmosphere. The sulfate, in turn, forms very small haze particles. Tiny particles of either solid sulfate or liquid sulfuric acid in the stratosphere are very effective at scattering out the red light component of (white) light coming from the sun. The light not scattered out is thus left "bluer" or "more violet" than would ususally be the case. Consider the standard ROYGBIV representation of the spectrum... if you scatter out more of the longer wavelengths (the red end), you're left with a proportionally intensified violet end: roygBIV. So during volcanic sunsets, reds and oranges are intensified near the horizon, blues in the mid sky, and purple-violet overhead. (see the Wikipedia "sunset colors" for more info)
Incidentally, if the sulfate is in the lower, mixing portion of the atmosphere (the troposphere, from ground level to ~10+ km), it just makes haze. The sulfate needs to be in the next level up, the stratosphere, to get the great color. This is why sunsets in areas that rely on coal-burning have pretty bland colors. The smokestacks don't get the resulting SO2 up high enough.
My limited perambulations don't really get me to open areas where I can see sunsets uncluttered with buildings and trees, but it might be worth my while to walk over to the west end of campus this evening to see what I can see.
Oh my. It's not as if I've ever spent much time in sewers (though in high school, I did have a habit of exploring the storm drains in my home town). But this is too creepy:
The blogger who found this claims they're bryzoans, but doesn't explain how he's confident of this. Other suggestions in the YouTube comments include cnidarians (jellyfish, coral and anenomies are examples), land snails (slugs), and slime molds, among others, and of course everyone is suspicious of CG shenanigans. The comments are looking through for a while; some are very witty and funny. Here's an excerpt from a thread that cracked me up:
dat1337vet
I say we take off and nuke the entire site from orbit. It's the only way to be sure.
benscottproductions
Game over, man. Game over, what the F are we supposed to now, huh, what are we gonna do?
kingpig21
Maybe we could build a fire, sing a couple of songs, huh? Why don't we try that?
fresshness2001
ok look, this is an emotional moment for all of us, ok? I know that. But let's not make snap judgements, please. This is clearly, clearly an important species that we're dealing with and I don't think that you or I or anybody has the right to arbitrarily exterminate them. Look, I'm not blind to what's going on, but I CANNOT authorize that kind of action, I'm sorry.
Thanks for the video – I had not see it before. No, these are not bryozoans! They are clumps of annelid worms, almost certainly tubificids (Naididae, probably genus Tubifex). Normally these occur in soil and sediment, especially at the bottom and edges of polluted streams. In the photo they have apparently entered a pipeline somehow, and in the absence of soil they are coiling around each other. The contractions you see are the result of a single worm contracting and then stimulating all the others to do the same almost simultaneously, so it looks like a single big muscle contracting.
OK... whatever it is, you're sayin' this is fer realz? I've fed Tubifex to fish before... I don't remember them looking like the above.
An image of Death Valley - the lowest, driest, and hottest location in North America - composed of a simulated natural color image overlayed with digital topography data from the ASTER Global Digital Elevation Model. (BBC)
The BBC is reporting that data from Japan's Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (Aster) aboard the Terra satellite has been combined to create the world's most complete terrain map ever:
"This is the most complete, consistent global digital elevation data yet made available to the world," said Woody Turner, Nasa programme scientist on the Aster mission. "This unique global set of data will serve users and researchers from a wide array of disciplines that need elevation and terrain information."
And after a quick look around, here is the host site. I'll look around a bit more; I suspect the file is larger than I want to deal with, at least until I open up some more space on my hard drive.
Followup: The map appears to be a massive data set, not an immediately viewable "map." I expect it will eventually trickle into Google Earth, which is the app I'll continue using for the time being.
Images courtesy Mike Blum via NASA (a representation of the predicted results of sea-level rise, subsidence and added sediment for the Mississippi Delta region for 2100)
I had already read and starred this article from The Guardian earlier, but the above graphic from National Geographic struck me as a... well, umm... very graphic portrayal of the results of denialism. Krugman lays it on pretty heavily in today's column. In terms of science results, he's not laying out anything that's really new to me... but then I'm a science nerd. This is an issue I follow pretty closely, and I have been feeling more and more panicky about the situation. There doesn't seem to be a broad public understanding that however bad the climatic forecasts were 4 or 5 years ago, the research and modeling, along with a torrent of new data, have led climatologists to revise their planetary prognosis from grim to much worse.
It's not that there's no good news; here's an example from yesterday, about how the Chinese are developing the technology to route the exhaust from coal burning through what amount to algae reactors. The algae can then be farmed as a source of both biofuel and animal feed. I know parallel research with algae is going on in a number of countries, including the US. Good idea, but there's a lot left unsaid. Algae and other photosynthetic organisms need lots of nutrients in addition to the raw ingredients of CO2 and water... how are those supplied? How close is this to being practical?
And that's the thing that terrifies me: what we have already done has created more damage than we even thought possible a few years ago. Five years ago it looked like a 4 degree (F) rise over the course of this century. Now it looks like 9 degrees. Over the last two summers, the meltback of the Arctic ice sheet has approached or exceded ranges predicted for mid century, and exceded ranges predicted for the end of the century by a number of more optimistic models. And it doesn't look, to me at least, as if we're within a decade, or even two, of having practical, widely available and widely implemented alternatives to dumping CO2 into the air.
In short, we're about 50 years further along in the process of climate change than we figured we'd be only five years ago. And not a bit closer to realistically addressing it.
We had plenty of information 20 years ago to indicate that this was an area that demanded not just more confirmative research, but active development of mitigation technologies. And here we are, 20 years later, twiddling our thumbs as our home burns, still listening to jackasses like Representative Paul Broun (R-Ga), and not just accepting his dementia, but applauding it:
Here's my bottom line: I will not experience the full consequences of what we have done, and continue to do, to our planet and its inhabitants. I'm not particularly healthy, and I will be quite surprised if I live to see 2020. I'm at peace with that. But it seems to me that most people, particularly those younger than me, would like to live long, healthy and comfortable lives. And, I would assume, most parents hope for the same for their children.
People, unless we figure out how to live sustainably, and in the next few years, there ain't a chance in hell of that happening. What you're buying into is hell on earth. Traitors indeed.
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