Over 460,000 acres have been burned by wild fires in southern California over the past few days. Wild fires that, at least in part, may have been the work of arsonists. The reward for information leading to a conviction now stands at $250,000 while damages from the inferno are estimated at over $1 Billion.

The fires, which have thus far resulted in at least 7 deaths and almost 2,000 lost homes, are dominating the 24-hour news cycle while Congress works in vain toward once again sending SCHIP legislation to the President's desk, a nominee for the seat of Attorney General stands before a confirmation committee, and unprecedented, unilateral sanctions have been placed on Iran in the lead-up to now inevitable military strikes. Also in the news is the bleakest environmental report ever issued by anyone coming from the U.N., and the White House-redacted testimony of the head of the Centers for Disease Control to the U.S. Senate on the effects of global climate change on public health (don't worry about West Nile though, the White House says that people die from the cold too). But I digress.

I'm taking even odds that these fires, if they were indeed ignited by arsonists, will serve as the latest milestone in the Bush Administration's quest to consolidate power in the unitary executive. Forget talk of global warming, or climate change, or peak oil, or even collapsing credit markets. The only word we'll need to know for the foreseeable future is ecoterrorism. I fear we'll come to know it all too well.

Labels: environmentalism, George W. Bush, UN

"Seven hundred thousand dollars is a lot of money to spend to try to get someone to talk to you and not get an answer.

That's how much the Heartland Institute, a Chicago-based libertarian think tank, has forked over in six months for advertisements in national newspapers trying to persuade Al Gore to debate one of its experts on global warming issues."

A Chicago-based libertarian think tank...Is that what the kids are calling it these days? The article makes it sound like cat food eating grandmothers scrimped and saved this money to confront the big bad Gore on his damnable lies. They're funded by Exxon.

Other sources of Heartland funding:

Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation: "Koch Industries is also a major polluter. During the 1990s, its faulty pipelines were responsible for more than 300 oil spills in five states, prompting a landmark penalty of $35 million from the Environmental Protection Agency."

John M. Olin Foundation: "The Foundation is financed by the Olin chemical and munitions fortune with assets estimated at $90 million, $3 million of which goes to conservative advocacy groups."

Scaife Foundations: "is built on at least 5 pillars; the family's ownership of Gulf Oil Corporation, the family's monopoly ownership of Alcoa and Alcan going back to 1891, ownership of Koppers and Carborundum corporations, and their participation in the uranium cartel."

I could go on but this is just too pathetic.

That's some crack reporting there Steve Huntley. Do they pay you for this stuff, or do you just do it for fun?

Labels: Al Gore, climate change, environmentalism, Heartland Institute, operation lockbox, Steve Huntley

This week the most spectacular cover up in recent history was revealed. No it wasn't the massacre of innocent Iraqi civilians by U.S. troops who've forgotten what flag they wear...we've known about incidents like that(graphic images) for some time. The cover up I'm referring to was discovered in the Arctic by an international team of scientists who refused to give up until the TRUTH was known.

Core samples taken near the North Pole reveal a much higher average temperature in the region than the - for lack of a better word - arctic temperatures we know today. Scientists claim that approximately 55 million years ago the Arctic region of the globe was a balmy 65 degrees. Waterfront property for everyone! But that's not the cover up.

The real story is the massive release of greenhouse gases that followed shortly after this period which caused a spike in global temperature raising the already warm Arctic climate to 75 degrees.

Vast fields of permafrost methane slurry exist on the ocean floor today held in stasis by enormous pressure and low water temperature. So long as these two factors remain constant - pressure and temperature - we have no problem. However, ocean temperatures world-wide have been inching up for decades. This new research may hold the key to predicting when this frozen-green-belch-of-death will reach a critical stage. According to the National Science Foundation "the initial results also suggest that Earth's recovery to a "normal state" took as long as 100,000 years." Said one researcher of the findings:

"It far exceeds what has been estimated by models, assuming a release of 2,000 gigatons of methane."

Current theories predict that should a critical water temperature threshold be reached the methane trapped below the world's oceans will escape rapidly changing global climate far more drastically than current climate change models take into account. Why isn't this part of the story bigger news? That's the cover up.

When will we reach this threshold? Only They know for sure.

Labels: climate change, environmentalism, methane expulsion

A senior Bush administration official has declared victory on the latest front of the Global War on Terra. "Intelligence sources have long suspected marine mammals of colluding with Al Qa'ida," the official stated on condition of anonymity. "I mean come on," he said, "'cells'...'pods'? We're really talking about the same global organizational structure here."

The official went on to describe coalition operations -- planned and executed unilaterally by the United States -- to deal with the "imminent" threat to national security marine mammals represent. "First off, they're way smarter than us. That's enough reason to kill them right there, really. But mostly we're doing it because it's so damned easy. We just flip on the sonar, and ZAP!!! It's like a goldfish in a microwave! Of course, most times they run -- like the Al Qa'ida cowards they are -- and end-up dead on a beach. It's a win-win situation for the 'good-guys' in the War on Terra."

Labels: environmentalism, George W. Bush, military technology, Navy, technology

This has nothing to do with low frequency sonar testing in the Pacific.

HOBART (AFP) - More than 100 pilot whales have died after beaching themselves on the coast of Australia's island state of Tasmania. Tasmanian Environment Minister Bryan Green told parliament the carcasses of 103 short-finned pilot whales had been found on a remote stretch of the state's west coast...

Labels: environmentalism, military technology, Navy

Via The Agonist:

The “Department of Defense authorization bill that President Bush is scheduled to sign Monday eases the military's responsibility under two important environmental laws.”

Environmental laws. Bah! Who needs ‘em? Isn’t it far more important that the U.S. Navy be able to develop more advanced sonar to protect us from all of those Al Qa'ida submarines skirting our coastlines? Who cares if the low frequency noise causes marine mammals to suffer massive internal hemorrhaging? Those subs are out there!

It makes me sick. Although not as sick as some will be because of this legislative circle jerk. Let me tell you a story about Fort Ord. Ah…foggy California, I miss it so.

Fort Ord, part of which now comprises the lovely UC Monterey Bay campus is one of the most polluted areas in central California. You can still see the earthen mounds that enclosed the firing ranges along the highway. Nothing quite like generations of young soldiers shooting lead into the earth to permanently taint the ground water. Can you say Superfund? Well, it looks like the DoD won’t have to worry about cleaning up their messes any more.

Thanks George. Stupid fuck-stick.

Labels: dod, environmentalism, George W. Bush, military technology, Navy, technology

Don’t know about you, but I came for the atmosphere.

The Bush Administration’s record on the environment is abysmal; now we’re gonna start paying for it.

What the fuck are they doing? Are they TRYING to screw-up our planet on purpose? Or is there something they’re not telling us?

This winter is going to be harsh on a lot of folks, but don’t you worry, the President will be warm and cozy at home in the Oval Office.

Stay safe, keep warm, and vote for your lives.

Labels: environmentalism, George W. Bush

Of all of my ideas...what are the odds this would show-up just a day after we talked about the possibility of genetically engineered power sources? Now it doesn't necessarily need a central nervous system. In my model, one would power the organism with raw waste, essentially feeding the thing garbage in exchange for its heat and bio-electricity. This research allows a different approach altogether. The organism could soak up raw nutrients (perhaps still derived from waste materials), but now all it has to do is "live enough" to produce glucose which is then used to generate power. All we need to do is figure out what type of "waste" we want this organic power plant to consume. No doubt, different "fuels" would produce energies of varying quantities and qualities. There would also be by-products.

Scientists foresee using this form of energy production to power devices imbedded in us. This is, of course, not nearly as creepy as it sounds to some. In fact, there are those who would like nothing more than to have all manner of gadgets and devices implanted in their bodies for various reasons. But the possibilities are greater than that.

Why create minuscule bits of machinery that can run off a large biological organism like ourselves when we can create large biological organisms that can power our machinery? Sure you'd probably need to have a Cthulhu looking mass of living "mouths" and "assholes" as big as a house to consume the raw waste of a small town, but if it pumped out enough energy to power all the town' s traffic lights, why not? Keep it at the dump. Use its waste as fertilizer.

These glucose-to-electricity-things will become more efficient with time. With a bit of waste processing, I bet scientists could eventually find a way to squeeze our shit and garbage into high-energy "power bars" for our fleshy minions. All the better to power the bio-mechanical bodies we could give them once the relative mass of their organic parts decreased enough in size to be economical. The first automatons would likely be dumb, giant-sized, lightweight, and efficient eating machines. Hollow-boned dinosaurs would be a good model for early prototypes.

As the technology advances, faster, stronger, smaller machines could be powered by less and less glucose-producing organic material. Conversely, advances in nanomachinery could also be utilized to direct and control walking, eating power plants that not only live and die, but also do as they are programmed.

This issue goes well beyond the debate of the moral propriety of mere cloning. But that's a different discussion.

It might also be interesting to note the fact that just previous to discussing genetically engineered energy sources, we were talking about Artificial Intelligence and the recent sea change in the realm of supercomputing. Advocates of supercomputers have won-out in a series of contract and grant proposals - especially with DARPA and the NSA - against their rivals: Proponents of cluster/grid processing.

A large enough database, particularly something like the Semantic Web project, combined with the correct approach to processing, could be the precursor to legitimate, advanced AI. An AI is after all just a large database, a powerful processor (or cluster), and a sophisticated querying client. The leap in this evolution will come when an AI achieves the capacity for original thought; when it is capable of identifying a desire or need of its own, and able to act on it. We wondered at what could motivate such a quickening.

The most logical impetus - I now believe - would be hunger. The need for self-preservation through the consumption of food, fuel, or energy might be enough to "inspire" the awakening of an AI. While this is difficult to imagine given the current form and function of AI, it becomes a more reasonable possibility when one considers the evolutionary potential of independent, self-powered, quasi-organic automatons endowed - by their creators - with memory.

Depending on which ways these technologies go, we could end up with either "Attack of the Man-Eating Nanobots!," "The Matrix," or maybe just "2001." Then again, maybe the near future will be beyond our present comprehension, and not entirely of our own making.

Labels: environmentalism, oil, technology

This being Earth Day, I’ve been thinking about…erm...well...Earth. But more precisely, I’ve been think about our relationship – as the sole sentient race of beings known to exist - with the little spec of galactic dust we call home. I mean, the place isn’t getting any bigger, you know?

Homo Sapiens: “species virtually indistinguishable from living people, dating to as early as 100,000 years ago. We have a worldwide distribution, arriving in Australia around 60,000 years ago and in North and South America between 20,000 and 12,000 years ago.”

Hell, that’s not too damn bad is it? “Worldwide distribution,” I like the sound of that. If the race of modern humans were a corporation I just might buy stock in it. We’re productive buggers, and there’s more of us every single day. You know, like bacteria in a Petri dish…only we’re eating parts of the dish away.

Global desertification and deforestation are forcing us to get more from less in terms of agriculture. A drought here, or an early frost there has been known to cause waves to ripple through the world economy as effectively as fluctuations in oil prices. Food is, after all, pretty important stuff when you stop to think about it.

Food is difficult to make. Not like perfect omelet difficult, I’m talking about actual food production. Whether you’re a vegemite or an omnivore, food needs to be born, raised, harvested, packaged, and delivered before any off us here in the industrialized world ever even see it. That’s where the energy I’ve been thinking about comes in.

What if we sorta just ran out of energy one day? Or, more specifically, what if we ran out of oil? Sure there’s lots out there right now, but we seem to be pretty good at sucking it out of the ground and burning it. You might even say we have it down to a science. It’s pretty well accepted that we will run out of oil one day. There is only so much of the stuff to begin with, and making it takes time. Well, time and dinosaurs, but we’re already out of them. Current estimates put us on course to reach “peak” production sometime between 2007 and 2013, after that we start the “not enough oil to go around for everyone on Earth to eat” phase of human history.

Interestingly, just as I’ve been considering this imminent energy problem, and – I think justifiably – freaking out about it, several sci-fi level advancements in energy production technology have been made public. Funny – these announcements coincide with Earth Day. Easter too, but that’s neither here nor there.

Changing World Technologies, WaveCrest Laboratories, and Ferro Solutions each have products that seem like they could help human beings evolve beyond our centuries long dependence on fossil fuels.

The first, Changing World Technologies, has snagged big name investors and some good press after announcing they have a technology that can convert biomass into oil in hours instead of millennia. Nifty, eh? They also claim to be able to do the same with any substance containing carbon: “tires, plastic bottles, harbor-dredged muck, old computers, municipal garbage, cornstalks, paper-pulp effluent, infectious medical waste, oil-refinery residues, even biological weapons such as anthrax spores.” This is great, but we’ll still have to burn the stuff.

WaveCrest Laboratories on the other hand embeds electrical generators into already moving machinery. This is a great idea. Why don’t the tires of our cars produce any energy? Now they can. WaveCrest just named General Wesley Clark - fresh off his stint as a CNN military analyst, and rumored briefly to have been a possible Democratic candidate for President in 2004 – as their CEO. Keep your eye on this company.

Lastly, Ferro Solutions has developed a new technology “that scavenges energy from the minute vibrations machines create when they're running.” Like the WaveCrest innovation, this uses a simple principle: You don’t need to make more energy if you can use the energy you’ve already got.

I have to say, reading about all of these technologies in the span of a couple of days is pretty stunning. Did the cavalry arrive just in time? Will these and other scientific advances be enough to counter-balance our rampant oil consumption before 2007? I don’t know about you, but after this past winter here in Maine I’ll be watching the state global oil production very closely for the next few years.

Act locally, think globally. Conserve.

Labels: environmentalism, oil, technology

The year is 2003. By all accounts, the Cold War is over. For those just joining us here in the 21st century: We won.

The former Soviet Union was the United States’ largest naval adversary with the cornerstone of their seafaring arsenal being a large number of nuclear submarines, each of which could easily destroy the entire east coast with a volley of sea-launched ballistic nuclear weapons. Naturally this was cause for some concern...in the 1990’s.

Yet, like the Russian space program, much of what was once a technologically advanced military force is now a footnote in the history of mutually assured destruction (MAD).

No other nation on Earth has such a fleet of killing machines - except of course for the USA. Most countries find it challenging enough to fund and support fleets of old, loud, slow, diesel-powered boats. So why does the US continue to research and deploy super powered sonar systems at a cost of billions of dollars to US taxpayers?

Whales.

What most Americans don’t realize is whales - and their dolphin cousins - are vastly more intelligent than human beings. Not only that, but the beasties are fucking huge! Just think what would happen if these gigantic, genius creatures decided that they should rule the world. We wouldn’t stand a chance. As it is, the bastards are already threatening our already depleted supply of tuna - the chicken of the sea. In a few short years we could be dealing with a worldwide tuna shortage! The thought gives me chills.

Fortunately, the Bush Administration has seen this danger on the horizon, and has vowed to protect us from these behemoths. However, because of the creature’s devious intellect, we’ve had to prepare for inevitable war with the whales in secret.

Sonar is the key. Ultra-low frequency sonar doesn’t just detect non-existent submarines deployed by non-existent geo-political adversaries; it also kills whales by the dozens! Our Navy is “testing” this new super weapon on daily basis in areas heavily populated by our mortal enemies. As a result, whales suffer crippling brain hemorrhages as their super-sensitive internal navigation systems painfully explode under the pressure of the sonic onslaught.

I for one will sleep easily tonight knowing that I won't be subjected to the brutal life of toiling in the undersea kelp farms of our would-be overlords.

Death to the whales! And god bless George W. Bush!

Labels: environmentalism, George W. Bush, military technology, Navy, Russia, technology

Via boingboing:

Amorous worms reveal effects of Chernobyl

WORMS contaminated by radioactivity from the Chernobyl nuclear accident have started having sex with each other instead of on their own. According to Ukrainian scientists, they may have changed their sexual behaviour to increase their chances of survival. It's one of the first pieces of direct evidence on how wildlife is affected by radioactive pollution.

Why do I envision a race of super-worms emerging from central Russia? How might our new invertebrate overlords rule the world? Oh well, at least it couldn't be much worse than this.

Labels: environmentalism, Russia

Fuel Economy Regulations Could be Revised

DETROIT, March 20 — The Bush administration is considering changes to fuel economy regulations that would encourage manufacturers to offer more large cars, station wagons and smaller sport utility vehicles that are built more like cars...

But the idea is opposed by environmentalists and has already drawn a sharply worded protest from the United Automobile Workers union. Both are concerned, for different reasons, that the Big Three will stop making small cars because they lose money making them and will no longer be compelled to.

Labels: environmentalism, George W. Bush, oil