Tag Archives: Environment

Scientists to debate "geoengineering"

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Photo: Emiliano. Flickr/CC

Photo: Emiliano. Flickr/CC

They’re at it again: Scientists, mad and otherwise, are discussing aerial spraying this afternoon:

Will such approaches actually work? Who will control the thermostat for the Earth? What other environmental consequences might arise and where would the effects be the greatest? We propose to hold a symposium that examines these and other issues, linking closely to the overall theme of the 2009 Annual Meeting: Ecological Knowledge and a Global Sustainable Society.

via Session: SYMP 21 – The Environmental Effects of Geoengineering.

Bioreactors will churn out fuel for "algae planet"

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Picture 2Algae will be a feedstock for humans in the 21st Century–not only for our food, but for gasoline, too. Here’s how one company, OriginOil, plans to do it:

Much of the world’s oil and gas is made up of ancient algae deposits. Today, our technology will produce “new oil” from algae, through a cost-effective, high-speed manufacturing process. This endless supply of new oil can be used for many products such as diesel, gasoline, jet fuel, plastics and solvents without the global warming effects of petroleum. More…

via OriginOil.

640px-Algae_planet_base_camp

Battlestar Galactica fans will recall the use the fleet made of the goop harvested from the algae planet (picture here), particularly for food and “coffee.”

Massive national study to determine causes of autism

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Call to use National Children’s Study to see if vaccines *do* cause autism:

The NCS will establish over one hundred study centers across the US to test the blood of 100,000 newborns for scores of synthetic chemicals, including many EDCs. (Workers have already begun going door-to-door enrolling pregnant moms into the program.) For the next 21 years, scientists will carefully follow the children’s health, comparing the body burden of chemicals at birth to diseases developed later in life.

The NCS may be our generation’s best chance to solve the autism riddle. It is exactly the type of study needed to tease out the subtle relationships that may exist between autism and chemicals.

via Harvey Karp: Cracking the Autism Riddle: Toxic Chemicals, A Serious Suspect in the Autism Outbreak.

The astronomically higher autism risk that military families face suggests that heavy metals might be to blame.

In future, GMO foods will be impossible to avoid

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Hope its OK. Photo: CC/Daniel Beaman

Hope it's OK. Photo: CC/Daniel Beaman

It’s hard to say exactly which foods we will be forced to eat, in Earth’s CO2- and O3-stuffed atmosphere.

But it is likely those foods will be genetically modified to counter the toxic effects of these atmospheric gases, and to maintain their nutritional value.

Global food security in a changing climate depends on the nutritional value and yield of staple food crops. Researchers at Monash University in Victoria, Australia have found an increase in toxic compounds, a decrease in protein content and a decreased yield in plants grown under high CO2 and drought conditions.

via New crops needed for new climate | h+ Magazine.

Progress @ The School @ Blair Grocery | Mobile Broadcast News

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Brilliant, long-form journalistic piece about a community garden and school in the Lower 9th Ward.

It takes Flux just a moment or so, to get this 16-year-old kid going about his group’s participation in the garden. It’s the best explanation I’ve heard about the kind of help people need down there.

Also: A great recipe for an organic pesticide, from one of the folks who runs the program.

more about “Progress @ The School @ Blair Grocery…“, posted with vodpod

Please support Flux! I dropped a tenner into his tip jar for this one.

UN launches eco-porn photo contest

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Photo: CC/Ryan Jesena

Photo: CC/Ryan Jesena

The UN is looking for a few good photos, showing people toughing it out in desert conditions:

As part of an ongoing effort to raise awareness about the urgent need for action against desertification and land degradation, the UN is calling on all aspiring photographers to participate in its second international photo contest.

The UN Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) is looking for images that artistically highlight either the efforts of people trying to conserve soil, land or water in drylands or the relationship between people and dryland ecosystems.

via ESA Portal – UN photo contest zooms in on drylands.

Queen Beatrix wants to read your meter

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Not sure if I trust them. Photo: CC/The Green Part of Ireland

Not sure if I trust them. Photo: CC/The Green Part of Ireland

A recently proposed Dutch law would make it an “economic crime” to refuse a smart meter.

The Irish Greens are also high on the wireless technology, which allows utilities to peer into your home, and determine how much electricity you are using to power individual items.

And now, in the United States, T-Mobile will soon be baking its SIM cards into smart meters from the spooky-sounding company, Echelon.

Echelon’s Networked Energy Services System (Ness) includes meters that can read your water and gas consumption, too. And some Echelon meters emit alarms when your credit with your utility, or state, runs short.

More about Echelon (the corporation), and the elite pedigree of its investors, in my next post.

Here’s a bit of that Dutch story:

I hope the debate on smart metering will not grow silent because of a small and unclear victory in our First Chamber. We need to critically watch the developments in respect of smart metering and urge research into less intrusive alternatives such as in-home displays, specified energy bills, and the use of statistical and anonymised data.

via No to mandatory smart metering does not equal privacy! « Weblog Law & Technology.

Living "off the grid": will state utilities allow it?

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One of you guys wrote in recently to ask about the whole “smart grid” thing, asking me to investigate just what state-licensed utilities will demand to know about what we’re doing on our property with their juice. (Opening the question, too, whether the state at any point considers our electricity to be our own.) I’m working on that one… stand by for an update within the next 24 hours.

Meanwhile, some of my grandfather’s countrymen are conducting a large scale experiment in self-reliance, at the community level, that is.

more about “Islands of self-sufficiency < Banking…“, posted with vodpod

Greenwashing the rich: Larry Page edition

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Perhaps Page's greenwashed home will offset the damage from his new fighter jet. (Or does the jet run on biodiesel?)The boys who founded Google are forever bullshitting the credulous mainstream media with tales of their “down-to-earth” lifestyle. Of course, their squabbling over an extravagant party jetliner, and acquisition of dirty-filthy-wasteful toys, such as this fighter plane (left), haven’t helped that image.

Still, Google co-founder Larry Page hopes we’ll eat-up this greenwashing story, about his $7+ million California home (excerpt and link, below).

Page lives in a historic home, with an assessed value of $7.2 million as of July 2008, on a cul-de-sac in one of the city’s nicest areas, just a block from fellow billionaire and Apple CEO Steve Jobs. It’s an old Palo Alto neighborhood that appreciates its privacy, but Page’s plans for an eco-friendly property have shone a spotlight on it.

via Google’s Larry Page building eco-friendly compound in Palo Alto – San Jose Mercury News.

Scientists turn to sun worship

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Photo: CC/Nick Thompson

"A great sign appeared in the sky, a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars." Photo: CC/Nick Thompson

The verdict is in, and the sun wins: PhysOrg.com reports that biofuels and other sources of alternative energy are being derided by scientists at a meeting in Chicago. Solar panels, made with nanomaterials, are the clear favorite.

Could we be seeing a consensus forming for not-yet-efficient-enough solar, at the expense of other breakthrough technologies? The federal government is already heavily funding nanotech research. Perhaps the feds are looking for a payoff.

“The sun is absolutely a singular solution to our future energy needs,” speaker Nathan Lewis, who researches synthetic photosynthesis at the California Institute of Technology, told an audience at the meeting. “Nothing else comes close. More energy from the sun hits Earth in one hour than all the energy consumed on our planet in an entire year.”

via The sun is a star when it comes to sustainable energy.