12 Degrees of Freedom

2011: 9th warmest year since 1880

2012-02-01T08:24:00.006-05:00

I used to think of our country as the frog sitting in a pan of water on the stove where the flame is being turned up every so gradually that the frog doesn't notice things are getting hot until it's too late. Now I simply consider us to be the ostrich with it's head stuck .... I'll let you finish the sentence. (GW)

Nasa's global temperatures in 2011 – big picture

Researchers at Nasa's Goddard Institute for Space Studies have released their annual analysis of global temperatures.

Researchers at Nasa’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) have released their annual analysis of global temperatures, noting that Earth’s land and ocean surfaces continue to experience higher temperatures than several decades ago. Nine of the top 10 warmest years in the modern meteorological record have occurred since the year 2000. Last year was another one of them, coming in at 9th warmest since 1880. The map below shows temperature anomalies, or changes, by region in 2011.

The world is getting warmer. Whether the cause is human activity or natural variability—and the preponderance of evidence says it’s likely humans—thermometer readings all around the world have risen steadily since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. (Click on dates above to step through the decades.)

According to an ongoing temperature analysis conducted by scientists at NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) and shown in this series of maps, the average global temperature on Earth has increased by about 0.8°Celsius (1.4°Fahrenheit) since 1880. Two-thirds of the warming has occurred since 1975, at a rate of roughly 0.15-0.20°C per decade.

But why should we care about one degree of warming? After all, the temperature fluctuates by many degrees every day where we live.

The global temperature record represents an average over the entire surface of the planet. The temperatures we experience locally and in short periods can fluctuate significantly due to predictable cyclical events (night and day, summer and winter) and hard-to-predict wind and precipitation patterns. But the global temperature mainly depends on how much energy the planet receives from the Sun and how much it radiates back into space—quantities that change very little. The amount of energy radiated by the Earth depends significantly on the chemical composition of the atmosphere, particularly the amount of heat-trapping greenhouse gases.

A one-degree global change is significant because it takes a vast amount of heat to warm all the oceans, atmosphere, and land by that much. In the past, a one- to two-degree drop was all it took to plunge the Earth into the Little Ice Age. A five-degree drop was enough to bury a large part of North America under a towering mass of ice 20,000 years ago.

The maps above show temperature anomalies, or changes, not absolute temperature. They depict how much various regions of the world have warmed or cooled when compared with a base period of 1951-1980. (The global mean surface air temperature for that period was estimated to be 14°C (57°F), with an uncertainty of several tenths of a degree.) In other words, the maps show how much warmer or colder a region is compared to the norm for that region from 1951-1980.

The data set begins in 1880 because observations did not have sufficient global coverage prior to that time. The period of 1951-1980 was chosen largely because the U.S. National Weather Service uses a three-decade period to define “normal” or average temperature. The GISS temperature analysis effort began around 1980, so the most recent 30 years was 1951-1980. It is also a period when many of today’s adults grew up, so it is a common reference that many people can remember.

To conduct its analysis, GISS uses publicly available data from 6,300 meteorological stations around the world; ship-based and satellite observations of sea surface temperature; and Antarctic research station measurements. These three data sets are loaded into a computer analysis program—available for public download from the GISS web site—that calculates trends in temperature anomalies relative to the average temperature for the same month during 1951-1980.

The objective, according to GISS scientists, is to provide an estimate of temperature change that could be compared with predictions of global climate change in response to atmospheric carbon dioxide, aerosols, and changes in solar activity.

As the maps show, global warming doesn’t mean temperatures rose everywhere at every time by one degree. Temperatures in a given year or decade might rise 5 degrees in one region and drop 2 degrees in another. Exceptionally cold winters in one region might be followed by exceptionally warm summers. Or a cold winter in one area might be balanced by an extremely warm winter in another part of the globe.

Generally, warming is greater over land than over the oceans because water is slower to absorb and release heat (thermal inertia). Warming may also differ substantially within specific land masses and ocean basins.

In the past decade (2000-2009), land temperature changes are 50 percent greater in the United States than ocean temperature changes; two to three times greater in Eurasia; and three to four times greater in the Arctic and the Antarctic Peninsula. Warming of the ocean surface has been largest over the Arctic Ocean, second largest over the Indian and Western Pacific Oceans, and third largest over most of the Atlantic Ocean.

In the analysis, the years from 1880 to 1950 tend to appear cooler (more blues than reds), growing less cool as we move toward the 1950s. Decades within the base period do not appear particularly warm or cold because they are the standard against which all decades are measured. The leveling off between the 1940s and 1970s may be explained by natural variability and possibly by cooling effects of aerosols generated by the rapid economic growth after World War II.

Fossil fuel use also increased in the post-War era (5 percent per year), boosting greenhouse gases. But aerosol cooling is more immediate, while greenhouse gases accumulate slowly and take much longer to leave the atmosphere. The strong warming trend of the past three decades likely reflects a shift from comparable aerosol and greenhouse gas effects to a predominance of greenhouse gases, as aerosols were curbed by pollution controls, according to GISS director Jim Hansen.

References
Hansen, J., R. Ruedy, M. Sato, and K. Lo (2010). Global surface temperature change. Reviews of Geophysics, doi:10.1029/2010RG000345, in press.
National Academy of Sciences (2010). Advancing the Science of Climate Change. Accessed December 1, 2010.
National Academy of Sciences (2006, July 27). Testimony to U.S. House of Representatives -- Climate Change: Evidence and Future Projections. Accessed November 30, 2010.
NASA (2010, January 21). 2009: Second Warmest Year on Record; End of Warmest Decade. Accessed November 30, 2010.
NASA (2010, January 21). NASA Climatologist Gavin Schmidt Discusses the Surface Temperature Record. Accessed November 30, 2010.
NASA Earth Observatory (2010, June 3) Fact Sheet: Global Warming. November 30, 2010.
NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies (n.d.). GISS Surface Temperature Analysis. Accessed November 30, 2010.
NOAA National Climatic Data Center (n.d.). Global Warming Frequently Asked Questions. Accessed December 1, 2010.
NOAA Paleoclimatology. (n.d.) Climate Timeline Tool: Climate Resources for 1000 Years. Accessed December 1, 2010.
NOAA Satellite and Information Service (2010, July) State of the Climate in 2009. Accessed December 1, 2010.

The connected car has finally arrived

2012-01-31T08:59:00.003-05:00

It is time to completely re-think our notion of transportation. We need an automotive Steve Jobs. Lacking that, our friends at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology are pretty good at tackling these kind of challenges. For example, take a peek at "Reinventing the Automobile".

Beyond the Personal Automobile

Information technology means we can rethink transportation

By Dan Sturges
Technology Review
January 31, 2012

The connected car has finally arrived. Our smart phones sync up with our dashboards, and soon vehicle-to-vehicle communication could make car crashes a thing of the past. Ford recently announced it's working on a "smart seat" that will detect when a driver is having a heart attack. What could be better?

How about using technology to allow millions of us to move beyond car ownership? You won't hear large automobile companies talk about it, but information technology gives society the greatest chance in decades to rethink transportation. Instead of cars equipped with medical sensors, I would like to see fewer cars and more room for bike paths. A little exercise will make our hearts stronger.

In America, nearly all of us has a personal automobile, available at our doorstep at all times. This is immensely convenient. It provides access to work and opportunity. But it brings familiar problems: billions of dollars sent each year to the Middle East, growing carbon dioxide emissions, traffic, noise pollution, and paving over of green space. Only a quarter of us can get to work using public transportation in 90 minutes or less. About 50 percent of urban land is dedicated to transportation. In Denver, where I live, the average car has 1.1 occupants. When I see someone driving with nothing but a hat on the passenger seat, I feel as though I am looking backward in time at an early steam engine or some other immensely inefficient contraption.

Urban density is an important consideration when thinking about what a different transportation system could look like. New York City, Boston, and downtown Chicago have a high urban density and can be considered "thick" cities, while most of Phoenix, Atlanta, and Denver have lower densities, making them "thin" cities. It's our thick cities where it is easiest to live without a car. In these cities, "multimodal" transportation is already a reality. It's easy to swing from one mode to another like Tarzan swinging across a jungle by vines. People walk, take the subway, grab a cab, and walk some more.

Now we're seeing the beginning of what's called intelligent multimodal transportation. Smart phones allow us to instantly rent a bike, carpool with someone just a mile up the road, find a bus, and even "ping a ride" with a car service or cab to get where we are going. Car-sharing services like Zipcar are viable businesses today in our thickest cities, because users can easily reach a shared car on foot after pulling up its location on their phone. In thick cities, technology is rapidly making it even more convenient to live without owning a car.

In our thin cities and suburban areas, it is far more difficult to reach transit, and so most people still own their own automobile. There's not much of a jungle yet. Can we move beyond the personal automobile in such areas?

I think any transition would have to start with the roughly 70 million commuters in the United States. The recipe for making car ownership less necessary for them requires three main ingredients. First, we need express "trunk line" transit services (trains, buses, vans, or carpools) from residential neighborhoods to areas where people work. Next, people will need local, short-distance transportation in the form of a bike, low-cost taxi, shuttle, or small personal vehicle to get to and from the trunk line service. Finally, car-sharing services—like Zipcar or peer-to-peer services like Getaround or RelayRides—need to be available near both work and home so people can have access to a car when they need one.

I call the transfer points where local transportation meets the trunk line services "GoPoints." These points would be located every three or four miles across the suburban area surrounding a metropolitan region. Our current train, light rail, and bus rapid transit stations are already GoPoints, but we would need many more (a flag in a shopping mall's parking lot could serve as one). And we would need thriving regional and local transportation services connecting to them.

The system would be similar to our national airport network. It would require users to have both easy access to their local GoPoint and a convenient "last mile" service to let them reach their final destination. Who would want to fly to an airport in another city that did not offer car rental, taxis, or shuttles for that purpose? Technologies like GPS and smart phones are critical in organizing our movement around such hubs and finding the fastest, most convenient transportation home.

Beyond helping commuters, the GoPoint system would enable millions of seniors and youth to get where they need to go across their city or region without needing to own a car. We have an opportunity to integrate piecemeal mobility innovations into meaningful solutions for consumers in both thick and thin cities. Seizing that opportunity will reduce the footprint of our transportation system and allow us to convert a portion of our roadways and parking areas into bike and pedestrian paths.

Dan Sturges is former GM car designer, inventor of the GEM neighborhood vehicle, and a member of the Transportation Research Board. His work on sustainable mobility reform can be found at www.wheelchange.us.

Pesticides: subtle and malicious

2012-01-30T08:16:00.005-05:00

Pesticides are big business. Companies like Monsanto that produce them and other agri-chemicals are joined at the hip with industrial farms whose unsustainable "pharming" practices have resulted in their chemical addiction (see the graphic at the bottom of this post for a depiction of the products produced by Monsanto).

Similar to their fossil fuel counterparts, pesticide manufacturers are not responsible for the"externalities" their products cause. You and I pay for that. Now it would appear, so are the bees. (GW)

Pesticides blamed for bee decline

New formulas make colonies more prone to disease, research finds. Jonathan Owen reports

By Jonathan Owen
The Independent
29 January 2012

Compelling new evidence from the US government's top bee expert that modern pesticides may be a major cause of collapsing bee populations led to calls yesterday for the chemicals to be banned.

A study published in the current issue of the German science journal Naturwissenschaften, reveals how bees given minute doses of the widely used pesticide imidacloprid became more vulnerable to infections from a deadly parasite, nosema.

Bee experts described this as clear evidence of the role pesticides play in the plight of bees. Although research into the furry insects may seem like a very academic exercise, bees are vital to human survival. More than 70 of the 100 crops that provide 90 per cent of the world's food are pollinated by bees, and Albert Einstein once predicted that if bees died out, "man would have no more than four years to live."

The study, led by Dr Jeffrey Pettis, the head of the US Department of Agriculture's Bee Research Laboratory, says: "We believe that subtle interactions between pesticides and pathogens, such as demonstrated here, could be a major contributor to increased mortality of honey bee colonies worldwide."

Researchers found that bees deliberately exposed to minute amounts of the pesticide were, on average, three times as likely to become infected when exposed to a parasite called nosema as those that had not. The findings, which have taken more than three years to be published, add weight to concern that a new group of insecticides called neonicotinoids are behind a worldwide decline in honey bees, along with habitat and food loss, by making them more susceptible to disease.

Buglife, the invertebrate conservation charity, is calling for a ban on the controversial pesticides. Its director, Matt Shardlow, said yesterday: "The science is now clear, bees poisoned by neonicotinoid pesticides are much more likely to die from disease, gather less food and produce fewer new bees." He added: "Buglife's 2009 review of the science of environmental impacts from neonicotinoid pesticides showed that there was serious cause for concern. We called for a ban then, and as subsequent research has only added to concerns, including the revelation that neonicotinoids make bees prone to a diseased death, we are repeating our call for these toxins to be banned."

The Government needs to take urgent action, said Tim Lovett, of the British Beekeepers Association. He backs the findings of the new research: "Their conclusions are right ... here is some data that would appear to suggest links between widely used pesticides and pathogens."

Imidacloprid is the bestselling neonicotinoid made by Bayer CropScience, earning the company hundreds of millions of pounds a year. Neonicotinoids are "systemic" pesticides. Instead of spraying plants they are used to treat seeds – effectively becoming part of the plant, including the pollen and nectar that bees and other pollinating insects carry away. Concern over their effects on bees has led to restrictions on their use in Germany, Italy, France, and Slovenia.

Dr Julian Little, a spokesman for Bayer CropScience, sought to dismiss the new findings yesterday: "The key issue here is that Jeff Pettis's studies were carried out in the laboratory and not the open air." He added: "Bee health is really important, but focusing on pesticides diverts attention away from the very real issues of bee parasites and diseases – that is where Bayer is focusing its effort."

But Professor Simon Potts, of the Centre for Agri-Environmental Research at the University of Reading, disagrees: "Most reports of direct impacts of pesticides on bee mortality are usually due to the incorrect application of pesticides on farmland,," he said. "However, the Pettis study should be taken as a warning that we may need to look much more carefully at the indirect effect of pesticides."

What Monsanto Makes (click on image to enlarge)

What, me worry?

2012-01-29T08:15:00.005-05:00

Within weeks of the Environmental Protection Agency's report that identifies fossil fuel-burning power plants as the major source of greenhouse gas emissions, the Wall Street Journal rounds up a group of climate change deniers and absolves the Koch brothers and their cronies of doing anything that even borders on being irresponsible. (GW)

No Need to Panic About Global Warming

There's no compelling scientific argument for drastic action to 'decarbonize' the world's economy.

Wall Street Journal
January 27, 2012

Editor's Note: The following has been signed by the 16 scientists listed at the end of the article:

A candidate for public office in any contemporary democracy may have to consider what, if anything, to do about "global warming." Candidates should understand that the oft-repeated claim that nearly all scientists demand that something dramatic be done to stop global warming is not true. In fact, a large and growing number of distinguished scientists and engineers do not agree that drastic actions on global warming are needed.

In September, Nobel Prize-winning physicist Ivar Giaever, a supporter of President Obama in the last election, publicly resigned from the American Physical Society (APS) with a letter that begins: "I did not renew [my membership] because I cannot live with the [APS policy] statement: 'The evidence is incontrovertible: Global warming is occurring. If no mitigating actions are taken, significant disruptions in the Earth's physical and ecological systems, social systems, security and human health are likely to occur. We must reduce emissions of greenhouse gases beginning now.' In the APS it is OK to discuss whether the mass of the proton changes over time and how a multi-universe behaves, but the evidence of global warming is incontrovertible?"

In spite of a multidecade international campaign to enforce the message that increasing amounts of the "pollutant" carbon dioxide will destroy civilization, large numbers of scientists, many very prominent, share the opinions of Dr. Giaever. And the number of scientific "heretics" is growing with each passing year. The reason is a collection of stubborn scientific facts.

Perhaps the most inconvenient fact is the lack of global warming for well over 10 years now. This is known to the warming establishment, as one can see from the 2009 "Climategate" email of climate scientist Kevin Trenberth: "The fact is that we can't account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can't." But the warming is only missing if one believes computer models where so-called feedbacks involving water vapor and clouds greatly amplify the small effect of CO2.

The lack of warming for more than a decade—indeed, the smaller-than-predicted warming over the 22 years since the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) began issuing projections—suggests that computer models have greatly exaggerated how much warming additional CO2 can cause. Faced with this embarrassment, those promoting alarm have shifted their drumbeat from warming to weather extremes, to enable anything unusual that happens in our chaotic climate to be ascribed to CO2.

The fact is that CO2 is not a pollutant. CO2 is a colorless and odorless gas, exhaled at high concentrations by each of us, and a key component of the biosphere's life cycle. Plants do so much better with more CO2 that greenhouse operators often increase the CO2 concentrations by factors of three or four to get better growth. This is no surprise since plants and animals evolved when CO2 concentrations were about 10 times larger than they are today. Better plant varieties, chemical fertilizers and agricultural management contributed to the great increase in agricultural yields of the past century, but part of the increase almost certainly came from additional CO2 in the atmosphere.

Although the number of publicly dissenting scientists is growing, many young scientists furtively say that while they also have serious doubts about the global-warming message, they are afraid to speak up for fear of not being promoted—or worse. They have good reason to worry. In 2003, Dr. Chris de Freitas, the editor of the journal Climate Research, dared to publish a peer-reviewed article with the politically incorrect (but factually correct) conclusion that the recent warming is not unusual in the context of climate changes over the past thousand years. The international warming establishment quickly mounted a determined campaign to have Dr. de Freitas removed from his editorial job and fired from his university position. Fortunately, Dr. de Freitas was able to keep his university job.

This is not the way science is supposed to work, but we have seen it before—for example, in the frightening period when Trofim Lysenko hijacked biology in the Soviet Union. Soviet biologists who revealed that they believed in genes, which Lysenko maintained were a bourgeois fiction, were fired from their jobs. Many were sent to the gulag and some were condemned to death.

Why is there so much passion about global warming, and why has the issue become so vexing that the American Physical Society, from which Dr. Giaever resigned a few months ago, refused the seemingly reasonable request by many of its members to remove the word "incontrovertible" from its description of a scientific issue? There are several reasons, but a good place to start is the old question "cui bono?" Or the modern update, "Follow the money."

Alarmism over climate is of great benefit to many, providing government funding for academic research and a reason for government bureaucracies to grow. Alarmism also offers an excuse for governments to raise taxes, taxpayer-funded subsidies for businesses that understand how to work the political system, and a lure for big donations to charitable foundations promising to save the planet. Lysenko and his team lived very well, and they fiercely defended their dogma and the privileges it brought them.

Speaking for many scientists and engineers who have looked carefully and independently at the science of climate, we have a message to any candidate for public office: There is no compelling scientific argument for drastic action to "decarbonize" the world's economy. Even if one accepts the inflated climate forecasts of the IPCC, aggressive greenhouse-gas control policies are not justified economically.

A recent study of a wide variety of policy options by Yale economist William Nordhaus showed that nearly the highest benefit-to-cost ratio is achieved for a policy that allows 50 more years of economic growth unimpeded by greenhouse gas controls. This would be especially beneficial to the less-developed parts of the world that would like to share some of the same advantages of material well-being, health and life expectancy that the fully developed parts of the world enjoy now. Many other policy responses would have a negative return on investment. And it is likely that more CO2 and the modest warming that may come with it will be an overall benefit to the planet.

If elected officials feel compelled to "do something" about climate, we recommend supporting the excellent scientists who are increasing our understanding of climate with well-designed instruments on satellites, in the oceans and on land, and in the analysis of observational data. The better we understand climate, the better we can cope with its ever-changing nature, which has complicated human life throughout history. However, much of the huge private and government investment in climate is badly in need of critical review.

Every candidate should support rational measures to protect and improve our environment, but it makes no sense at all to back expensive programs that divert resources from real needs and are based on alarming but untenable claims of "incontrovertible" evidence.

Claude Allegre, former director of the Institute for the Study of the Earth, University of Paris; J. Scott Armstrong, cofounder of the Journal of Forecasting and the International Journal of Forecasting; Jan Breslow, head of the Laboratory of Biochemical Genetics and Metabolism, Rockefeller University; Roger Cohen, fellow, American Physical Society; Edward David, member, National Academy of Engineering and National Academy of Sciences; William Happer, professor of physics, Princeton; Michael Kelly, professor of technology, University of Cambridge, U.K.; William Kininmonth, former head of climate research at the Australian Bureau of Meteorology; Richard Lindzen, professor of atmospheric sciences, MIT; James McGrath, professor of chemistry, Virginia Technical University; Rodney Nichols, former president and CEO of the New York Academy of Sciences; Burt Rutan, aerospace engineer, designer of Voyager and SpaceShipOne; Harrison H. Schmitt, Apollo 17 astronaut and former U.S. senator; Nir Shaviv, professor of astrophysics, Hebrew University, Jerusalem; Henk Tennekes, former director, Royal Dutch Meteorological Service; Antonio Zichichi, president of the World Federation of Scientists, Geneva.

“Landscape of Slavery"

2012-01-28T07:41:00.009-05:00

We live in a world of contradictions. More often than not there are disconnects between our intellectual beliefs and the way we actually live our lives. Climate change presents us with such a dilemma today. Many of our nation's "Founding Fathers" lived with a major contradiction. Was Thomas Jefferson conflicted or was he a hypocrite? (GW)

Life, Liberty and the Fact of Slavery

By Edward Rothstein
New York Times
January 26, 2012

WASHINGTON — The astounding thing about American slavery is not that it existed — the enslavement of one people by another may be one of history’s universals — but that it persisted. It lasted into an era when its absence could be imagined and its presence could become an outrage.

That was one of the chilling peculiarities of slavery in the United States: As revolutionary ideas of human rights and liberty were being formulated, slavery was so widely accepted that contradictions between the evolving ideals and the brutish reality of enslavement were overlooked or tolerated.

We look back now, shocked at the cognitive and moral perversity. And that is one reason why a prevalent reaction has been to assert that the champions of those revolutionary ideals were hypocrites, including 12 of the first 18 American presidents, who were slave owners.

But that too-familiar judgment brings us to the most challenging example of all: Thomas Jefferson. And two new exhibitions come to a far more subtle and illuminating assessment of the past. Jefferson’s relationship to slavery is the subject of an important exhibition opening on Friday at the National Museum of American History here, “Slavery at Jefferson’s Monticello: Paradox of Liberty.” It was created by the nascent National Museum of African American History and Culture in conjunction with the Thomas Jefferson Foundation, which runs Jefferson’s extraordinary plantation, Monticello, as a historical home and museum in Charlottesville, Va.

The Washington exhibition will have a permanent counterpart opening next month at Monticello itself, where Jefferson, the writer of the Declaration of Independence, kept as many as 130 slaves. Expanding the already significant examination of slavery at the estate, “Landscape of Slavery: Mulberry Row at Monticello,” will consist of outdoor displays mounted alongside sites of labor uncovered through archeological digs.

Such research has been going on for two generations, disclosing the material lives of both hired and enslaved workers: their demolished dwellings and work houses are revealed through Jefferson’s notes, stone foundations, kitchen utensils, shattered pottery, belt buckles and other artifacts. Monticello’s outdoor exhibition is also part of a major transformation over the past two generations; once a sacral architectural monument to Jefferson’s genius, Monticello has evolved into a more complex reflection of the man and the 5,000-acre plantation that he owned.

These projects are difficult and ambitious, not just for Monticello but also for the African-American museum, which is scheduled to open in 2015. Lonnie G. Bunch III, the museum’s director, emphasized in a conversation that the Washington show is part of the institution’s attempt to explore how slavery might ultimately be presented.

Could any example pose a greater challenge? Jefferson didn’t just embrace the new nation’s ideals; he gave voice to our conception of “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” What does it mean that such a man not only held slaves but also devoted considerable attention to their status, their mode of life and, yes, their profitability? What was the connection between his ideals and the blunt reality? These are not just biographical questions; they are national ones.

It is to the credit of the Washington exhibition’s creators — Rex Ellis, associate director of the African-American museum and Elizabeth Chew, a curator at Monticello — that we are not given the answers but are given enough information and perspective to begin to think about the issues, helped along by objects from Monticello as well as the new museum’s growing collection.

We enter the show’s 3,000-square-foot space seeing a life-size statue of Jefferson (created by StudioEIS in Brooklyn), standing in front of a red panel on which are inscribed the names (when known) of some 600 slaves who worked on his estates during his lifetime. In front of the display is the lap desk on which Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence, a desk that was probably constructed by John Hemmings, Jefferson’s enslaved cabinetmaker (who used that spelling of his name), part of the now-renowned Hemings family (one of whom, Sally, is thought by many historians to have had a special relationship with Jefferson and borne him children).

The contradictions in notions of liberty could not be more graphically presented. The intention is not to turn a great man into a villain but rather to examine just how those contradictions expressed themselves. Jefferson called slavery an “abominable crime,” we are told, but also felt unable to extricate himself from what he called its “deplorable entanglement.”

We learn of his practical efforts to restrict slavery, including his introduction of a Virginia law in 1778 prohibiting the importation of slaves, and signing, as president, a national version of that law in 1807, just weeks before Britain outlawed the slave trade. We read too that in 1788, he wrote, “Nobody will be more willing to encounter every sacrifice” in order to abolish slavery.

Clearly, though, he was not so willing. He also harbored some condescending racial views (partly contradicted by other writings). And Jefferson inherited his father’s plantation and slaves; at one point he was one of the wealthiest men in Virginia (though to pay his enormous debts after his death, Monticello and “130 valuable negroes” — as the advertisement put it — were auctioned).

As the exhibition also emphasizes, he was a man of the Enlightenment represented by his books (Homer, Livy, Shakespeare), his scientific apparatus (including a telescope) and his devotion to the powers of reason and the value of skepticism (his inkwell here is in the shape of Voltaire’s head).

But we do not learn of these passions in order to have them dismissed. Gradually, as we work through the central gallery, we see them haltingly, falteringly applied, affecting the enslaved communities at Monticello. Displays are organized around a series of slave families, many of whom were at the estate for generations — the Hemingses, of course (as many as 70 family members were at Monticello), but also the Fossett family, the Grangers and the Hubbard brothers. (Perhaps no other plantation has such extensive documentation of its slaves.)

As the historian Lucia Stanton points out in an invaluable new companion book (“ ‘Those Who Labor for My Happiness’: Slavery at Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello”), Jefferson paternalistically referred to the slave community as part of his family. He encouraged marriages within the Monticello world and tried to keep families together; the exhibition points out that “slave marriage was illegal in Virginia,” but that at Monticello “enduring unions were the norm.” Some slaves were also taught to read and write by the Jeffersons.

There is no idealization here of course. Each family became associated with particular kinds of labor, represented here by archeological artifacts. We see the products, for example, of the “nailery” that Jefferson had set up in order to turn a profit on the manufacture of nails. There is acknowledgment too of cruelty, of overseers who overstepped, of ideals put aside.

But there is also a growing sense that within a system of corrupting ideas and Jefferson’s crippling self-interest a struggle was going on for some other vision of humanity, not just within Jefferson but also among the enslaved.

The most remarkable phenomenon is evident in the last gallery: Many descendants of Monticello slaves became community leaders. A project interviewing them began at Monticello in 1993; it discovered, we are told, a tradition of dedication to education, faith, family and freedom.

Peter Fossett, a descendant of the blacksmith Joseph Fossett , for example, became a minister active in the Underground Railroad and founded the First Baptist Church in Cumminsville, Ohio, in 1870. Another Fossett descendant, William Monroe Trotter, founded the Niagara Movement with W. E. B. Dubois in 1905, declaring that “all men were created free and equal, with certain inalienable rights.” One of the Hemings descendants, Frederick Madison Roberts, became the first black member of the California legislature.

This suggests that there was something distinctive about this community, but also that Jefferson’s own ideals must have had an impact, surviving even the debilitating and humiliating institution of slavery.

This is something that comes through at Monticello as well. Its senior curator Susan R. Stein has made it clear that in Jefferson’s day, Monticello wasn’t a temple on a hill (though it is so beautiful, one warms to worship) but a miniature city in the countryside with its central home just yards from Mulberry Row, where the sounds of small industry — textile making, blacksmithing, woodworking — must have mixed with voices of laborers in the fields and where the lives of the enslaved were enmeshed with the life of their master. But this does not undercut our sense of Jefferson’s genius.

Yes, there are times when the balance teeters a bit. Just as Monticello must be seen whole so too must Jefferson’s achievements, and right now the exhibitions need a more deliberate elaboration of his ideas and life. There are times when the Washington exhibition also seems to push too far; it begins by observing that Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence “did not extend ‘Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness’ to African-Americans, Native Americans, indentured servants, or women.” This is political boilerplate; each of those cases needs different qualifications and examinations. They distract from the subject.

But the fates of Monticello descendants suggest that alongside the tragic consequences of American slavery there is something else: a growing belief in clearly defined rights and promised possibilities. If slavery was, throughout global history, the rule, the exception was the last 200 years of gradual worldwide abolition. And Jefferson, for all his “deplorable entanglement,” helped make it possible.

De-evolution

2012-01-27T08:12:00.005-05:00

"Just over 5 years ago, the scientific community turned its attention to a courtroom in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. Eleven parents sued their Dover, Pennsylvania, school board to overturn a policy explicitly legitimizing intelligent design creationism. The case, Kitzmiller v. Dover, followed a familiar script: Local citizens wanted their religious values validated by the science curriculum; prominent academics testified to the scientific consensus on evolution; and creationists lost decisively. Intelligent design was not science, held the court, but rather an effort to advance a religious view via public schools, a violation of the U.S. Constitution's Establishment Clause (1). Many scientists cheered the decision, agreeing with the court that the school board displayed “breathtaking inanity” [p. 765 (1)]. We suggest that the cheering was premature and the victory incomplete."

From "Defeating Creationism in the Courtroom, But Not in the Classroom"

Oklahoma bill attacks evolution and climate change

National Center for Science Education News

January 20th, 2012

SB 1742 is evidently modeled in part on the so-called Louisiana Science Education Act, passed and enacted in 2008 as Louisiana Revised Louisiana Revised Statutes 17:285.1; indeed, the bill itself declares, "This act is modeled on a Louisiana law which has not been invalidated by the highest court of the State of Louisiana or a federal district court," adding, "Legal challenges to academic freedom bills have historically alleged that such bills are intended to allow the teaching of creationism or intelligent design. This bill does not propose that schools teach creationism or intelligent design, rather, it is the intent to foster an environment of critical thinking in schools including a scientific critique of the theory of evolution."

The sole sponsor of SB 1742 is Josh Brecheen (R-District 6). In 2011, Brecheen introduced Senate Bill 554, which combined a different version of the "academic freedom language" — referring to "the scientific strengths [and] scientific weaknesses of controversial topics ... [which] include but are not limited to biological origins of life and biological evolution" — with a directive for the state board of education to adopt "standards and curricula" that echo the flawed portions of the state science standards adopted in Texas in 2009 with respect to the nature of science and evolution. SB 554 apparently died in committee on February 28, 2011, when a deadline for senate bills to be reported from committee passed.

Before Brecheen filed SB 554, he announced his intention to file antievolution legislation in a column in the Durant Daily Democrat (December 19, 2010): "Renowned scientists now asserting that evolution is laden with errors are being ignored. ... Using your tax dollars to teach the unknown, without disclosing the entire scientific findings[,] is incomplete and unacceptable." In a subsequent column in the newspaper (December 24, 2010), he indicated that his intention was to have creationism presented as scientifically credible, writing, "I have introduced legislation requiring every publically funded Oklahoma school to teach the debate of creation vs. evolution using the known science, even that which conflicts with Darwin's religion."

Oklahomans concerned about SB 1742 are urged to get in touch with Eric Meikle at NCSE and the grassroots organization Oklahomans for Excellence in Science Education.

SENATE BILL 1742 By: Brecheen

AS INTRODUCED

An Act relating to school curriculum; creating the Oklahoma Science Education Act; providing short title; providing legislative intent; providing for the assistance of teachers in teaching scientific curriculum; promoting critical thinking; allowing for open discussion of scientific theories; directing teachers to teach certain material; allowing supplemental material to be taught; prohibiting the promotion of a particular belief system; directing the State Board of Education to adopt rules; providing for codification; providing for noncodification; providing an effective date; and declaring an emergency.

BE IT ENACTED BY THE PEOPLE OF THE STATE OF OKLAHOMA:

SECTION 1. NEW LAW A new section of law to be codified in the Oklahoma Statutes as Section 11-103.12 of Title 70, unless there is created a duplication in numbering, reads as follows:

This act shall be known and may be cited as the "Oklahoma Science Education Act".

SECTION 2. NEW LAW A new section of law not to be codified in the Oklahoma Statutes reads as follows:.

Recognizing the importance of critical thinking, logical analysis and objective discussion in education it is the intent of the Legislature to foster an environment in public schools where such learning occurs. This act is modeled on a Louisiana law which has not been invalidated by the highest court of the State of Louisiana or a federal district court. Legal challenges to academic freedom bills have historically alleged that such bills are intended to allow the teaching of creationism or intelligent design. This bill does not propose that schools teach creationism or intelligent design, rather, it is the intent to foster an environment of critical thinking in schools including a scientific critique of the theory of evolution.

SECTION 3. NEW LAW A new section of law to be codified in the Oklahoma Statutes as Section 11-103.13 of Title 70, unless there is created a duplication in numbering, reads as follows:

A. The State Board of Education, upon the request of a school district board of education, shall allow and assist teachers, principals, and school administrators in creating an environment within the public school system that promotes critical thinking, logical analysis, open and objective discussion of scientific theories including, but not limited to, evolution, the origin of life, global warming, and human cloning. Assistance shall include support and guidance for teachers regarding effective ways to help students understand, analyze, critique, and objectively review scientific theories being studied, including those enumerated in this subsection.

B. A teacher shall teach the material presented in the standard science textbook and may use supplemental textbooks and instructional materials to help students understand, analyze, critique, and review scientific theories in an objective manner.

C. This act shall not be construed to promote any religious doctrine or set of religious beliefs.

D. The State Board of Education shall adopt rules to implement the provisions of this act.

SECTION 4. This act shall become effective July 1, 2012.

SECTION 5. It being immediately necessary for the preservation of the public peace, health and safety, an emergency is hereby declared to exist, by reason whereof this act shall take effect and be in full force from and after its passage and approval.

"climatic debt"

2012-01-26T08:38:00.004-05:00

OK, I promise to resume posting more positive stories soon. For now, I am on a mission to convey a sense of urgency around climate change. The subtle and not-so-subtle signs that something very serious is happening are all around us.

Some species are already finding it difficult to keep up with changing environments and habitats. What will happen if the system "hiccups" and flips to a new regime? The answer is that humans will likely be added to that list. (GW)

Animals can't keep up with climate change

Study of 11,000 bird and butterfly species shows many are at risk

By Paul Bignell
The Independent
January 22, 2012

Animal and insect species in Europe are losing the fight to keep up with rapid changes in climate in a new phenomenon dubbed "climatic debt", according to an international study.

More than 11,000 bird and butterfly species were analysed over 20 years by scientists in the largest study of its kind. Releasing some of the data for the first time, scientists reveal how species are failing to keep up as warmer temperatures move north. The findings saw birds lag behind their normal climate zones, on average by 212 kilometres and butterflies by 135km.

Some birds, such as the black and white pied flycatcher, are unable to adapt to the encroaching warmth and are not naturally moving north to cooler areas, according to experts writing in the journal Nature.

Numbers of the pied flycatcher have halved in the UK since 1995 – researchers believe the birds are not breeding as prolifically as they used to because of rising temperatures. Others, like the golden plover, are in danger of extinction as traditional food sources disappear. The plover's main food source – the cranefly – cannot survive in warmer temperatures.

Experts believe the species at risk are just the tip of the iceberg. Some 9,400 bird and 2,100 butterfly species were monitored. Birds and butterflies were selected because of the vast amount of data that already exists on them – British butterfly records have been kept since the 15th century. The scientists believe other animal species are suffering in similar ways.

Scientists also found a growing gap between birds and butterflies which is having an adverse affect on birds' food supplies because many bird species depend on caterpillars as a staple food.

It was previously thought that bird and butterfly species would swiftly react to changes in climate because of their ability to fly large distances. It is not yet known how the phenomenon will affect the greater ecosystem.

Tom Brereton, head of monitoring at Butterfly Conservation, said: "All animals live in a space in which the climate is suitable. That is moving north at the moment. What we're finding is we're losing species that are associated with cooler temperatures from our butterfly communities."

Experts are now suggesting some threatened species should be moved to new climate spaces, before they become extinct.

"It's something that's never been an issue before," said Mr Brereton. "Do we let the species become extinct or could we play God a bit and move them into places they've never occurred before?"

James Pearce-Higgins, principal ecologist for climate change at the British Ornithological Society, said: "There are species which can suffer when the temperatures are warm, particularly some of the species that may suffer from drought. Some insects can suffer if winters are too mild – for example, if they're hibernators as adults. If it's cold and damp they can get mouldy and die. It varies very much from species to species. What this work does is very much look at a broad, overall pattern. This is the first time it has been done across Europe."

"climate-smart" agriculture

2012-01-25T07:58:00.003-05:00

It seems as if everyone is getting 'smarter' about climate change with the exception of Congress. Agriculture may very well be the sector most vulnerable to climate change. That should worry us all. It should also be a call to action. (GW)

Scientists urge countries to adopt ‘climate-smart’ agriculture

By Jenny Marusiak
Eco-Business
January 23,2012

Agricultural experts, frustrated with the slow progress on food security issues in climate talks, have called on scientists to aggressively promote rapid, global action on sustainable agriculture.

In the wake of limited success on international agriculture-related climate policy at December’s United Nations climate talks in Durban, scientists writing in the 20 January issue of Science magazine urged their peers to give policy-makers the scientific evidence needed to implement effective policies on agriculture and food security.

The scientists argued for policies that would not only ensure more efficient and environmentally friendly agricultural methods, but also stop the large-scale food wastage that occurs in both developing and wealthy countries.

Such policies would include convincing wealthier countries to reduce food waste and improve health at the same time by promoting healthier, less wasteful purchasing and eating habits. The policies would also entail an overhaul of inefficient distribution systems to reduce food spoilage and unnecessary carbon emissions.

“Scientists have a responsibility to show decision makers what we mean by ‘climate-smart agriculture’ and ‘sustainable intensification,’ and how these strategies are crucial to the success of any global climate change adaptation and mitigation effort,” said Dr Adrián Fernández Bremauntz in a statement. Dr Fernandez is sustainability advisor at the Metropolitan University in Mexico and one of the writers of the article, entitled “What Next for Agriculture After Durban?”

Agriculture has been identified by scientists as both a significant contributor to global warming and a sector that is likely to experience severe impacts from climate change. Those impacts include increased floods and droughts, soil degradation, water shortages and possible increases in destructive pests and diseases.

Dr Fernández and several other authors of the article served on the Commission on Sustainable Agriculture and Climate Change, which presented a set of seven policy recommendations in Durban at an event on agriculture and rural development.

The recommendations from the commission included integrating food security and sustainable agriculture into global and national policies, a substantial increase in global investment in sustainable agriculture and a rapid rise in production levels with reduced negative environmental impacts.

The commission also advised policy-makers to target the people and places most vulnerable to climate change and food insecurity through initiatives such as funds for disaster-stricken areas.

To help policy-makers implement effective policies, the commission called for the establishment of transparent global systems for sharing information on sustainable agriculture and food systems.

While the Science article’s authors acknowledged some progress at the Durban talks – such as the gathering of evidence for evaluation by UN scientists by March, they note that the pace is not nearly fast enough to cope with the rising threats of food insecurity.

“The window of opportunity to avert a humanitarian, environmental and climate crisis is rapidly closing and we need better information and tools for managing tradeoffs in how we grow our food and use our resources,” said Professor Molly Jahn of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, who also contributed to the article.

This improved information will begin with the scientists targeted by the Science article, who have been urged to ‘lay the groundwork for more decisive action’ when the world’s leaders meet at the United Nations Rio+20 environment summit in Brazil in June.

Another signatory of the article, Professor Bob Scholes of South Africa’s Council for Scientific and Industrial Research, said, “There are clearly major opportunities this year for scientists to provide the evidence required to rapidly generate new investments and policies.”

He added that those investments and policies can ensure that the agricultural sector both adapts to climate change impacts and reduces the greenhouse gas emissions it produces.

The agricultural sector is threatened by more than climate change, note scientists.

In recent months, researchers have been warning that farming suffers from what Sir John identified in his Durban presentation as ‘three lost decades of agricultural research’, which have led to unsustainable farming practices that threaten global food security and natural resources.

He noted that in less than 15 years the global food system will be expected to feed an additional one billion people.

But scientists are warning that not only will the agricultural sector struggle to increase the amount of food it produces; it may face a decline due to widespread degradation of farmland.

According to the commission, the world loses an estimated 12 million hectares of agricultural and to degradation each year.

A study ^[1] published last August by the UN Environment Programme found that current agricultural trends are destroying the world’s natural resources, particularly its water supplies. Reversing this trend would require integrated land-use planning that coordinates decision-making for farming, biodiversity, water management and air pollution, according to the study.

Another report from the UN – its latest World Economic and Social Survey, found that to stop deteriorating land conditions and depleting natural resources, the world would have to move away from large-scale, intensive agricultural systems as they exist today. Instead, smaller scale farms in developing countries should be improved and expanded using ‘green’ technology that minimised the use of water, energy and chemicals, noted the report.

Asia’s developing countries have a number of projects underway to address sustainable agriculture.

Online news provider Manila Bulletin reported earlier this month that the secretary of the Philippines Department of Agriculture, Proceso J. Alcala, had ordered that climate change adaptation measures be integrated into all departmental programmes and projects this year.

And in Vietnam, where according to the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation more than half of the labour force works in agriculture, the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Planning is drafting a new national agricultural strategy. The strategy is aimed at reducing emissions from agriculture by two per cent, as well as improving agricultural productivity and its economic benefits for the rural poor.

The Commission on Sustainable Agriculture had advocated for initiatives such as these to be supported and informed by internationally integrated efforts and policies.

“Policy makers and scientists need to work together, quickly, to chart a course toward a sustainable global food system,” said the UK’s Sir John Beddington.

Will a smart grid make us smarter?

2012-01-23T06:21:00.008-05:00

The smart grid is a concept whose time has definitely come. It would represent a real commitment to dramatically increase society's efforts to use electricity more efficiently - saving resources, money while enhancing environmental quality.

But the real unanswered question is, will the existence of a smart grid automatically make us more responsible consumers? Will relatively small individual savings be enough to create a significant collective impact? (GW)

ComEd’s Smart Grid Begins With a Promise for the Future
by Bridget O'Shea and James O'Shea
Chicago News Cooperative
January 23, 2012

Substation No. 505 in Oak Park, with its nondescript cluster of bulky transformers and web of power lines, seems an unlikely place for Commonwealth Edison to start the $2.6 billion smart grid it says will prepare the region’s antiquated power system for the digital age.

Arguments raged over legislation, approved last year over Gov. Pat Quinn’s veto, that authorizes ComEd’s 10-year investment in the grid. ComEd says that the project will ultimately save customers more than it costs them. Quinn said he felt the legislation allowed power companies to circumvent a century-old process of setting rates, and thereby weaken oversight by the Illinois Commerce Commission.

Often lost amid the disagreements, however, is the question of how the grid should work and whether it will improve how consumers use electricity. The legislation places Illinois and ComEd squarely in the evolving national movement toward a smart grid.

The Oak Park substation is a pilot project approved in 2009 and is meant to test new technology and the savings it can generate. As ComEd’s first “intelligent” substation, No. 505 is outfitted with scores of state-of-the-art electronic sensors that monitor the flow of electricity. The sensors can analyze up to 1,500 pieces of information every two seconds and alert ComEd managers when — or even before — a problem happens.

Microprocessors can almost instantly switch a troubled line to an alternative power source and minimize outages, said Rich Gordus Jr., a smart grid manager at ComEd.

Val Jensen, a vice president at ComEd, said the current grid was “relatively dumb, meaning that we put power into the grid at the plant and then it flows according to the law of physics through all of those wires.”

The system, he said, “can’t tell when a power line goes down, when you lose power at your house, when a substation is overloaded or overheated.” ComEd investigates outages only after customers call to complain.

Smart-grid technology, Jensen said, can tell operators whether a fan has malfunctioned, if the system is losing coolants or why a substation is overheating. “Otherwise,” he said, “the only way we could tell is if we sent a person out there to check and then went in and started looking at a bunch of gauges.”

The electric grid extends from the power plant to the meter on individual houses. Bill Kautz, a smart grid expert and petroleum marketing manager at Tellabs, a telecommunications company in Naperville, said upgrading the system into a smart grid typically involved two elements.

The first, he said, is updating transformers, substations and transmission lines. “Anything with power being carried over some form of copper cables degrades over time. The insulators degrade over time so upgrading them is one of the key factors in this.”

Anne Pramaggiore, ComEd’s chief executive officer, estimated that about half of the $2.6 billion cost of the project involved these upgrades. Officials say the upgrades will make the system more efficient and reliable.

Kautz said the second element involves installation of communication systems — technology added to the upgraded system that can alert a network control center of problems over fiber optic cables. Pramaggiore estimated the communication improvements would cost $1.3 billion.

ComEd says that the bill approved last year contains a rate-setting process that protects consumers. The legislation, which ComEd says will initially add about $3 a month to the average utility bill, imposes financial penalties on the company if it fails to deliver on promised savings in the future.

Smart grid advocates say they hope to achieve savings by giving consumers the ability to buy more power at off-peak hours, when electricity costs ComEd less and therefore costs its customers less. Skeptics say there is not much evidence that consumers will take advantage of the technology.

Smart grid advocates often talk of so-called smart meters attached to houses, which are capable of automatically monitoring power usage. They also say appliances outfitted with computer chips can be programmed to run at a time of day when power costs less.

“Now, when you want to dry a load of clothes, you turn on the clothes dryer in your basement and you’re probably not that concerned about when your clothes will be dry,” said David M. Nicol, a professor of electrical and computer engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. “But suppose that dryer was smart enough — and dryers are a high-energy user — that you put your load in and it was programmed to say, well I want this done within 12 hours but choose a time when energy is cheaper, and so you just leave it to the computer.”

Nicol said smart dryers were not yet on the market, but he said the technology exists. Unfortunately, he said, no one really knows how widely consumers will use smart appliances or use power when it is less expensive.

Nicol cited studies that showed consumers did not capitalize on the technology because the relative cost of energy was not high enough. The studies suggest people do not behave different to save only $2 a day.

“People just don’t do that,” Nicol said. “So the way to take advantage of this stuff is to automate if possible but that gets you into a whole raft of other issues. So if you ask me, the jury’s still out.”

Nicol said that if smart devices changed consumer behavior, electric power markets might change as well, and that could affect the price. Power markets are now relatively static — they know how power will be used based on historical yardsticks maintained by utility companies.

But if new devices automatically tell your dryer when it’s cheapest to dry the clothes, he said, then the price of electricity could start to change dynamically according to the time of the day it is used. And that, in turn, would change equations on power markets.

Under this logic, if a utility company knows that it must supply a certain level of power at a certain time of day, it can acquire the electrical capacity on auction markets to make sure that it can supply its customers’ power needs. If, however, the need is constantly changing, demand for power will be less predictable and the utility company will have to adjust its buying patterns, thereby affecting the price.

“When you change the way energy is going to be used by consumers,” Nicol said, “that’s going to affect the markets and it’s going to affect the way people buy and sell power.” The question remains whether those changes will save consumers money or cost them more.

Some watching the nascent development of the smart grid think the industry should push ahead regardless of doubts or challenges. The potential for energy efficiency and environmental benefits, they say, is simply too great.

AARP Illinois backed Quinn’s veto of the smart grid legislation, but Scott Musser, the group’s associate director, said the organization was not completely opposed to the new technology. “It’s who pays for it and what’s the benefit and how is it done,” he said. “Those are things that the legislation didn’t answer. We just know the consumers will be paying for it in the next decade.”

The AARP, he said, will be watching.

Who Will Control the Green Economy?

2012-01-22T08:14:00.006-05:00

I've had numerous conversations with friends who suggest that the best way to establish renewable energy technologies, sustainable agriculture and other "green" industries is to make them more attractive to corporations. However, the problem with a strict, linear interpretation/implementation of "green capitalism" is that you end up trying to force the proverbial square peg in a round hole.

For a variety of reasons, a truly green economy is not compatible with capitalism. Among the biggest fundamental discrepancies are capitalism's dependence on growth and consumption and the existence of an "underclass". Consequently attempts at a synthesis runs the risk of providing an opening for the green economy being co-opted by the powers that be. (GW)

The Green Economy, Boon or Menace?

By Emilio Godoy
Nation of Change
January 21, 2012

The development of the green economy is the subject of pitched debate among specialists. While some believe it will deepen social inequalities and increase corporate control over natural and biological resources, others highlight its potential role in protecting the environment and creating employment.

"The green economy does not challenge current systems of production, such as the agro-alimentary industry, nor does it aim in any way to change patterns of consumption," stressed Silvia Ribeiro, the Latin America director of the non-governmental Action Group on Erosion, Technology and Concentration (ETC Group).

Ribeiro told Tierramérica that some of the most troubling aspects of the green economy include "the massive use of biomass for fuel production, and the use of new technologies like synthetic biology, which can generate high levels of toxicity."

In its study "Who Will Control the Green Economy?", published Dec. 15, 2011, the ETC Group argues that the development of a green economy will primarily benefit large corporations, unless changes are made to the current models of production and consumption of goods and services and international governance.

It reveals that large transnational corporations in the energy, pharmaceutical, food and chemical industries are already forming alliances to exploit biomass and grab control of natural resources like land and water.

The study takes a specific look at a range of different sectors, including synthetic biology, bioinformatics and genome data generation, marine and other aquatic biomass, seeds and pesticides, plant gene banks, fertilizer and mining industries, forestry and paper, the animal pharmaceutical industry and livestock genetics.

The United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) defines the green economy as "a system of economic activities related to the production, distribution and consumption of goods and services that result in improved human wellbeing over the long term, while not exposing future generations to significant environmental risks and ecological scarcities."

The green economy will be a central theme at the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development (Rio+20), taking place Jun. 20- 22 in the southern Brazilian city of Rio de Janeiro, 20 years after the first Earth Summit held in the same city in 1992.

The objective of the conference is to secure renewed political commitment for sustainable development, assess the progress to date and the remaining gaps in the implementation of the outcomes of the major summits on sustainable development, and address new and emerging challenges.

Rio+20 will focus specifically on two themes: a green economy in the context of sustainable development and poverty eradication, and the institutional framework for sustainable development.

UNEP has actively promoted the green economy since 2008, although it acknowledges the validity of some of the concerns raised around it.

"The green economy is an imperative. One of its goals is social equity and human wellbeing. The environment is recognized as a source of wealth," U.S. economist Steven Stone, chief of UNEP's Geneva-based Economics and Trade Branch, told Tierramérica.

Stone visited Mexico last week for the presentation of a national prospective study on the green economy, co-produced by the Ministry of Environment and Natural Resources (SEMARNAT) andTecnológico de Monterrey, a private university.

"The real question is whether those who do the greatest damage to the environment are truly contributing to what needs to be done," commented the director of the School of Economics at the public National Autonomous University of Mexico, Roberto Escalante.

"That is why there is a risk that greening the economy will deepen existing inequalities, so that those who have the least will bear the greatest costs of the environmental impacts," he told Tierramérica.

Escalante is conducting a research study, which he expects to complete during the first quarter of this year, on the effects of agriculture and deforestation on the environment, commissioned by SEMARNAT.

In the run-up to Rio+20, civil society organizations in Latin America are promoting a reworking of sustainable development with an emphasis on social and ecological aspects and a new economy to confront poverty and the concentration of wealth.

The World Economic and Social Survey 2011, published by the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs, recommends the investment of 1.9 billion dollars annually in green technologies over the next 40 years to combat the effects of climate change.

UNEP believes green investment should contribute to reducing the energy and water demands and carbon footprint of the production of goods and services.

"There are many alternatives, and the most convincing is the peasant farming economy, which already accounts for 70 percent of world food production," noted Ribero, whose organization focuses on the environmental, social and economic impacts of new technologies.

The ETC Group study calls for the establishment of antitrust regimes to prevent monopoly control over resources and highlights the central importance of agriculture and food sovereignty.

It also emphasizes the need for greater international awareness around the proposed "techno fixes" which "are not capable of addressing systemic problems of poverty, hunger and environmental crises."

"One of the key issues is the value of nature, which is not taken into account," said Stone. "It is not included in economic calculations. These services need to be valued with limits and regulations."

For his part, Escalante, whose research aims at offering alternatives for low-carbon agricultural production, advocates the use of new technologies, the participation of university institutions, and the formulation of integrated public policies.

"Environmental issues are essentially financial issues. This will be a key subject of discussion at Rio+20. A new vision should prevail, incorporating the prices of the environment in the world of the economy and establishing a scheme that guarantees equity," he stressed.

The Greatest Pirates

2012-01-21T07:59:00.007-05:00

The greatest pirates in the history of the world have been given free reign to undermine democracy and the Earth's ecological integrity by the U.S. Supreme Court. (GW)

We must stop this corporate takeover of American democracy

Unless we can reverse the supreme court's dreadful Citizens United decision, US politics will become a plutocrats' plaything

By Bernie Sanders

Guardian

January 20, 2012

David Koch and Charles G Koch: the US supreme court's Citizens United decision has enabled the industrialists to fund conservative groups to the tune of $200m already in this electoral cycle.

The corporate barbarians are through the gate of American democracy. Not satisfied with their all-pervasive influence on our culture, economy and legislative processes, they want more. They want it all.

Two years ago, the United States supreme court betrayed our Constitution and those who fought to ensure that its protections are enjoyed equally by all persons regardless of religion, race or gender by engaging in an unabashed power-grab on behalf of corporate America. In its now infamous decision in the Citizens United case, five justices declared that corporations must be treated as if they are actual people under the Constitution when it comes to spending money to influence our elections, allowing them for the first time to draw on the corporate checkbook – in any amount and at any time – to run ads explicitly for or against specific candidates.

What's next … a corporate right to vote?

Don't laugh. Just this month, the Republican National Committee filed an amicus brief in a US appeals court contending that the natural extension of the Citizens United rationale is that the century-old ban on corporate contributions directly to candidates and political parties is similarly unconstitutional. They want corporations to be able to sponsor candidates and parties directly while claiming with a straight face this would not result in any sort of corruption. And while, this month, they take no issue with corporations being subject to the existing contribution limits, anyone paying attention knows that eliminating such caps will be corporate America's next prize in its brazen ambition for absolute control over our elections.

The US Constitution has served us very well, but when the supreme court says, for purposes of the first amendment, that corporations are people, that writing checks from the company's bank account is constitutionally-protected speech and that attempts by the federal government and states to impose reasonable restrictions on campaign ads are unconstitutional, our democracy is in grave danger.

I am a proud sponsor of a number of bills that would respond to Citizens United and begin to get a handle on the problem. But something more needs to be done – something more fundamental and indisputable, something that cannot be turned on its head by a rightwing supreme court.

That is why I have introduced a resolution in the Senate (introduced by Representative Ted Deutch in the House) calling for an amendment to the US Constitution that says simply and straightforwardly what everyone – except five members of the United States supreme court – understands: corporations are not people with constitutional rights equal to flesh-and-blood human beings.

Corporations are subject to regulation by the people. Corporations may not make campaign contributions – the law of the land for the last century – or dump unlimited sums of money into our elections. And Congress and states have broad power to regulate all election spending.

I did not introduce this lightly. In fact, I have never sought to amend the Constitution before. The US Constitution is an extraordinary document that, in my view, should not be amended often. In light of the supreme court's Citizens United decision, however, I see no alternative. The ruling has radically changed the nature of our democracy. It has further tilted the balance of power toward the rich and the powerful at a time when the wealthiest people in this country have never had it so good.

At a time when corporations have more than $2tn in cash in their bank accounts, make record-breaking profits and swarm Washington with their lobbyists 24 hours a day, seven days a week, for the highest court in the land to suggest that there is just not enough corporate "speech" in our system defies the bounds of reason and sanity. The ruling already has led to plans, for example, by industrialist brothers David and Charles Koch to steer more than $200m – potentially much more – to conservative groups ahead of election day 2012. Karl Rove has similar designs.

Does anybody really believe that that is what American democracy is supposed to be about?

I believe that the Citizens United decision will go down as one of the worst in our country's history – and one that demands an amendment to our Constitution in order to restore sovereign power to the people, as our nation's founders intended.

If we do not reverse it and the culture of corporate dominance over our elections that it has exacerbated, there will be no end to the impact that corporate interests have on our campaigns and our democracy.

Whole lotta shakin' goin' on

2012-01-20T08:37:00.003-05:00

The closer you look at our options for reducing our dependency on foreign sources for energy , the better wind looks. Factor environmental concerns (including, but not limited to climate change) into your considerations and you end up scratching your head and wondering: "What the frack are we doing?"

Fracking Quakes Shake the Shale Gas Industry

Well shutdowns prompted by fracking-induced seismicity may inspire technology tweaks.

By Peter Fairley
Technology Review
January 20, 2012

Geophysicists are increasingly certain that expanding production of shale gas is responsible for a spate of minor earthquakes that have upset some communities and prompted authorities in Arkansas, Ohio, Oklahoma, and the U.K. to shut down some natural-gas operations. The question now, say the experts, is whether the underground operations causing the trouble should be scaled back or more closely monitored to minimize future quakes—and whether the relatively small quakes may yet have the potential trigger truly destructive ones.

At least one shale gas producer is already talking change: U.K.-based Cuadrilla Resources, whose first project set off quakes near Blackpool last year.

Shale gas operations generate microseismicity in two ways. One is through hydraulic fracturing, or "fracking," the underground blasts of water, sand, and chemicals used to release the natural gas trapped within shale deposits. Fracking is how Cuadrilla caused a quake that measured 2.3 on the Richter scale last April, according to an analysis by the firm's geophysical consultants.

Similarly, a fracking operation that injected 2.4 million gallons of fluid into an Oklahoma well over six days last January is a likely cause of the 43 earthquakes that followed, according to a state geologist's report. The 1.0-to-2.8-magnitude quakes began on the second day of injection, and most were centered within 3.5 kilometers of the well. These small quakes were felt on the surface and disturbed nearby residents, but they caused no structural damage.

A second source of shaking from shale gas operations is common to many oil and gas fields: the subsurface disposal of wastewater and of naturally occurring brines that surface with the desired hydrocarbons. Deep-injection disposal wells were probably behind a string of quakes in Arkansas that began in 2010, as well as more recent tremors around Youngstown, Ohio, that culminated in a magnitude 4.0 shake this New Year's Eve. "There's no doubt that those Youngstown earthquakes are directly associated with the disposal well there," says Arthur McGarr, a geophysicist and induced-seismicity expert with the U.S. Geological Survey.

Fracking and disposal wells create quakes that can be felt at the surface when shock waves or fluids release strain on a preëxisting fault. For example, high-pressure fluid can squeeze into and push apart a planar fault, freeing adjacent rock formations to slide past one another.

Such induced fault slips probably occurred at Youngstown, says Thomas Stewart, executive vice president of the Ohio Oil and Gas Association. But Stewart says induced quakes are rare events because well operators deliberately avoid drilling near known faults. Ohio's other 180 oil and gas wastewater wells have prompted few complaints, he notes. He adds that the Youngstown shakes hurt no one other than local gas producer D&L Energy, whose well was shut down by state regulators. "This guy's probably going to lose a $3-4 million investment," says Stewart.

Cuadrilla Resources' geomechanical consultants also downplay the risk that its operations could induce damaging quakes greater than magnitude 3.0. Nevertheless, their report, authored by senior researchers at German geophysical consultancy Q-con and Dutch consultancy StrataGen Delft, recommends that Cuadrilla initiate fracking operations with less fluid than it employed at Blackpool. In addition, they call for underground seismometers to identify any problems early. Cuadrilla says it plans to implement the proposals.

McGarr at USGS says an early warning system is a good idea, and one in keeping with the seismic risk assessment protocol for well-blasting operations employed by geothermal-energy producers. He is less sanguine, however, about estimates of the maximum severity that earthquakes triggered by fracking and injection wells can reach, saying this question needs more science. That means the risk of anthropogenically inducing large, deadly quakes cannot be ruled out.

"Virtually every part of the country was affected"

2012-01-19T08:21:00.009-05:00

So just what are the true costs of continuing to burn fossil fuels? (GW)

USDA Announces $308 Million in Aid to States

By Bill Draper
Associated Press
January 18, 2012

The nation's top agriculture official is expected to announce Wednesday more than $300 million in emergency assistance to 33 states and Puerto Rico to help them recover from an unusually intense year for natural disasters across the U.S.

Utah and Missouri will receive the most disaster aid, together taking in $109 million, or more than one-third of the $308 million in aid from Department of Agriculture watershed and conservation emergency funds, USDA Secretary Tom Vilsack told The Associated Press ahead of a formal announcement later Wednesday.

Flooding last spring in Utah inundated thousands of acres of farmland, costing farmers tens of millions of dollars lost to damaged and destroyed crops or delayed planting. Utah will receive $60 million in watershed money for repair work and preventative measures in 13 cities and counties hit by floods within the last 13 months, said Bronson Smart, state conservation engineer for the U.S. Natural Resources Conservation Service.

He said his agency requested that amount to deal with two rounds of flooding, including flash flooding in southern Utah in December 2010 and flooding last spring in northern and central Utah caused by a record snowpack.

Missouri suffered months of flooding along the Missouri River after the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers authorized unprecedented releases from reservoirs in the northern river basin all summer to deal with unexpectedly heavy rain in May and above-average mountain snowpack. Farmers in the Missouri Bootheel, meanwhile, saw their crops swamped when the Army Corps of Engineers exploded a levee to relieve water pressure on an upriver town in Illinois. The intentional breach sent water cascading over thousands of acres of prime farmland.

Missouri will receive around $49 million, of which $35 million will come from the watershed program and the rest from the Farm Service Agency's Emergency Conservation Program.

Vilsack said disaster funds will be used for financial and technical assistance to help rebuild and repair land damaged by flooding, drought, tornadoes and other natural disasters.

"There have been years that have had more intensive damage in a particular geographic area, but what's unique about last year is that virtually every part of the country was affected," Vilsack told the AP. "It was different in every part of the country. We've not seen tornadoes as devastating as last spring. Flooding on the Missouri River, because of the longstanding nature of the flooding — not a two- or three-week situation — was unique. Fires in the southwest part of the country were historic in magnitude. It's been a tough year."

Slightly more than $215 million of the aid comes from the Emergency Watershed Program, about $80 million will come from the Emergency Conservation Program and nearly $12 million is from the FSA's Emergency Forest Restoration Program. Texas, for instance, will receive nearly $6 million after wildfires charred the southern part of the state.

The watershed funds will go toward public safety and restoration efforts on private, public and tribal land, Vilsack said. Projects funded by that money will include removing debris from waterways, protecting eroded stream banks, reseeding damaged areas and, in some cases, purchasing floodplain easements on eligible land.

New York trails only Utah in the amount of watershed protection money received, at $37.8 million.

In addition to flooding, 2011 was a big year for tornadoes, including record outbreaks in the South and a monster storm that leveled a large portion of Joplin, Mo.

Alabama is scheduled to get nearly $7 million in assistance for tornado recovery, followed by nearly $4 million in Georgia. Missouri, at the other end of the spectrum, is to receive only $130,000 to fix damage to agricultural land by tornadoes.

In addition to keeping U.S. agriculture profitable and helping communities rebuild, the disaster money also will spark job growth, Vilsack said.

"The beauty of this resource is that it generates job opportunities, to hire contractors and buy supplies at local hardware stores," he said. "Folks are in the process of planning what they're going to be doing this spring. We're hoping by this announcement they will be able to plan more effectively."

The conservation program funds will go to producers to help remove debris from farmland, restore livestock fences and conservation structures, provide water for livestock during periods of extreme drought, and grade and shape farmland damaged by natural disasters, he said.

The forest money will help eligible owners of nonindustrial private forest land take emergency measures to restore areas damaged by disasters.

Vilsack said the emergency money is being used to help agricultural interests beyond what is covered by crop insurance. He said the USDA paid out $8.6 billion in crop insurance payments last year, and $17.2 billion over the past three years.

Do no harm?

2012-01-18T08:09:00.006-05:00

In Pennsylvania, cattle are dying on land where fracking wells have been drilled. Water from nearby wells contains so much gas it can be ignited as it streams from faucets. Now there is evidence that fracking practices may even be triggering earthquakes. Did I mention greenhouse gas emissions?

Despite this, fracking wells continue to be drilled. Meanwhile, opponents of wind turbines have been accused of causing everything from headaches and nausea to high blood pressure and anxiety. Wind projects have been delayed or canceled while oil, coal and natural gas facilities seem immune to all concerns and criticisms. (GW)

State: Wind turbines not harmful

By Patrick Cassidy
Cape Cod Times
January 18, 2012

A review of existing scientific literature by a state-appointed panel has found no evidence that noise and shadow flicker from wind turbines directly harm people living near the machines.

Opponents of wind energy projects on Cape Cod and elsewhere in Massachusetts immediately blasted the panel's 164-page report, released Tuesday, saying the agencies that organized the review failed the residents of the state.

The group Windwise Massachusetts, which has fought wind energy projects across the state, called for an epidemiological study of the health effects of wind turbines rather than a review of the literature as was done by the state panel.

"It's inconclusive to me," said Mark Cool, of Falmouth, one of dozens of outspoken residents who live near two turbines at that town's wastewater treatment facility.

The panel's findings indicate a lack of evidence, but that doesn't prove that there is no connection between the operation of wind turbines and health problems, Cool said.

"There's evidence that our health is being affected, but what we need to do is find out what causes that," he said.

Proponents of wind energy, meanwhile, praised the panel's findings.

"This advances the ball and it helps provide some form of a road map for local officials navigating the body of information out there," said Sue Reid, vice president and director of Conservation Law Foundation Massachusetts. While there is room for more analysis, the report rules out some of the basic claims made by wind energy opponents, such as detrimental effects on human health attributed to low-frequency infrasound produced by turbines, Reid said.

No scientific evidence

The seven-member panel was convened in June 2011 by the state Department of Environmental Protection and the state Department of Public Health in response to concerns raised by opponents of locating large turbines near residential neighborhoods, including on Cape Cod, where wind energy projects in various towns have sparked contentious debates about the technology.

The epicenter for the debate is in Falmouth, where the first turbine erected at the wastewater treatment facility is blamed by residents for a variety of health issues, including anxiety, high blood pressure and nausea.

During a teleconference Tuesday to announce the report's findings, panel member Sheryl Grace, an associate professor of mechanical engineering at Boston University, said it was interesting that the turbine in Falmouth was stall regulated — a technology that has been known to have issues with noise — versus pitch regulated, a design where the turbine blades are constantly adjusted to capture the wind's energy.

Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection Commissioner Kenneth Kimmell deflected the idea that the pro-wind energy policy of Gov. Deval Patrick's administration influenced the content of the report.

"The findings and recommendations that are in this report are those of the panel members only," he said. "We are not concerned that there will be a claim that the panel had a bias."

The panel included health professionals and academics from Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston University, the University of Massachusetts and the Harvard School of Public Health.

In the report they found that, while it is possible that noise from some turbines could cause annoyance and sleep disruption, there is not enough evidence to say the noise directly causes health problems or disease.

The passage of wind turbine blades in front of the sun, known as flicker, does not pose a risk for eliciting seizures, according to the report.

At least one area where the report finds a potential danger is if ice is flung into the air after accumulating on a turbine's blades.

"There is sufficient evidence that falling ice is physically harmful and measures should be taken to ensure that the public is not likely to encounter such ice," according to the report.

'Syndrome' not found

In addition, the report's authors called into question a contention by opponents of wind energy projects that there is a group of symptoms associated with living near turbines.

"There is no evidence for a set of health effects from exposure to wind turbines that could be characterized as a 'Wind Turbine Syndrome,'" according to the report.

The phrase "wind turbine syndrome" was coined by Nina Pierpont, a New York pediatrician who wrote a book on the subject that opponents of wind energy often cite in their arguments.

Reached Tuesday, Pierpont said the Massachusetts panel cherry-picked in deciding what literature to review and should have spoken to people in Falmouth to find out what they were experiencing.

The state should sponsor a epidemiological study, she said.

"For them to choose only to review journal literature is an easy out but it's irresponsible," she said.

During Tuesday's teleconference the report's authors defended their work.

The report points to some areas where more study is required, said Mark Weisskopf, assistant professor at the Harvard School of Public Health's Department of Environmental Health and Epidemiology.

"As scientists we always want to study things more," Weisskopf said, adding, however, that most of the report's conclusions are "firm."

The panel accepted public comment on its work until July 22 and received 25 peer-reviewed articles, 20 government reports, 35 white papers prepared by nonprofit or business organizations as well as hundreds of emails, news reports and blog postings, according to the DEP's website.

Patrick has made wind energy a primary piece of his administration's energy policy, including a goal of 2,000 megawatts of wind energy in the state by 2020.

At the end of 2011 the administration suffered a major setback when several powerful lawmakers who had previously backed legislation to streamline permitting for large wind turbines withdrew their support.

A public comment period on the report will run through March 19, according to the DEP. Comments may be sent to MassDEP Wind Turbine Docket, 1 Winter St., Fourth Floor, Boston 02108 or to WindTurbineDocket.MassDEP@MassMail.State.MA.US.

There will also be three public meetings to accept comment on the report, including one from 5 to 8 p.m. Feb. 16 at Bourne High School.

Wind Turbine Health Study Findings:

There is no evidence for "Wind Turbine Syndrome" - a set of health effects opponents of wind energy projects have argued is associated with living near the machines.

Claims that infrasound - low-frequency sound that cannot be heard by humans - from turbines affect balance have not been demonstrated scientifically.
Evidence suggests no association between noise from turbines and psychological distress or mental health problems.
No evidence suggests an association between noise from turbines and pain and stiffness, diabetes, high blood pressure, tinnitus, hearing impairment, cardiovascular disease and headaches or migraines.
Limited evidence suggests an association between exposure to turbines and annoyance, although there is not enough evidence to determine if the association is independent of the effects of seeing a turbine.
It's possible that noise from some turbines can disrupt sleep.
Shadow flicker from turbine blades passing in front of the sun does not pose a risk for epileptic seizures.

To view the full report go to www.mass.gov/dep.

Other Earths?

2012-01-17T08:36:00.007-05:00

Does astronomy matter? I for one think it does. We are all made up of stardust from the original Big Bang. Astronomy helps us understand how truly amazing the Earth is. Now astronomers are confirming that the likelihood that there are many other planets (called exoplanets) similar to ours circling other stars (similar to the sun?) in Universe.

This news certainly seems to increase the odds that life exists elsewhere. In fact, it now seems utterly inconceivable that Earth is the sole planet hosting life. (GW)

By Jason Palmer
BBC News
11 January 2012

There may be billions of Earth-sized planets out there

That implies there are some 10 billion Earth-sized planets in our galaxy.

Using a technique called gravitational microlensing, an international team found a handful of exoplanets that imply the existence of billions more.

The findings were released at the 219th American Astronomical Society (AAS) meeting, alongside reports of the smallest "exoplanets" ever discovered.

Gravitational microlensing is a method that uses the gravity of a far-flung star to amplify the light from even more distant stars that have planets.

Astronomers used a number of relatively small telescopes that make up the Microlensing Network for the Detection of Small Terrestrial Exoplanets, or Mindstep, to look for the rare event of one star passing directly in front of another as seen from Earth.

The team witnessed 40 of these microlensing events, and in three instances spotted the effects of planets circling the more distant stars.

While the number of actual events and detected planets was low, the team was able to estimate how many such exoplanets must exist.

Most news of exoplanets in recent years has come from the Kepler telescope, which spots planets by looking for the slight dimming of their host stars' light as planets pass in front of them.

That method is better at finding large planets close to their host stars.

While a more difficult effect to catch, gravitational microlensing is better at finding planets of all sizes and distances.

It can currently spot a planet as small as Mercury, orbiting at a similar distance to its host star, or as far away as Saturn.

The study, also published in the journal Nature, was a collaboration between researchers from more than 20 international institutes and universities.

"Just the recent 15 years have seen the count of known planets beyond the Solar System rising from none to about 700, but we can expect hundreds of billions to exist in the Milky Way alone," said co-author Dr Martin Dominik, from the University of St Andrews, UK.

Ever smaller

Complementing the microlensing approach, Kepler measurements hold a number of small-planet surprises as well.

The KOI-961 star would, as in this artist's view, be huge in the sky of the new planets

In December, the Kepler team announced the first Earth-sized planet, the smallest yet detected.

At the AAS meeting on Wednesday, the Kepler team announced even smaller planets, all three orbiting a tiny red dwarf star called KOI-961.

The planets are just 0.78, 0.73 and 0.57 times the radius of Earth.

The discovery came from an analysis of Kepler catalogue data released to the public in January 2011.

Among those poring through the data was John Johnson, a California Institute of Technology astronomer, who told the meeting that, as in the case of other red dwarfs, little is known about the size of the KOI-961.

Because of the way Kepler detects exoplanets, star size is crucial to the measurements of planet sizes. But UK amateur astronomer and longtime collaborator with Prof Johnson contacted the team with a clue.

"When he looked at the colours and other properties that we measure for KOI-961, he sent us an email immediately and said, 'Do you know you guys are looking at a twin of a very famous star called Barnard's star?'," Prof Johnson told the meeting.

The team was able to use known data from the well-studied Barnard's star to make guesses about KOI-961's properties.

That, Mr Apps told BBC News, was when "we realised that it was even more remarkable than we thought: the star was fainter, the planets were smaller. The whole thing was like a very compact triple planetary system."

Or, as Prof Johnson told the meeting, "It's like you took your shrink ray gun and set it to seven times smaller... What we have here is a planetary system that's shrunk down because the central star is so tiny."

What, exactly, is a pristine environment?

2012-01-16T08:59:00.007-05:00

Could it be that the Amazon was once inhabited by a people sophisticated technologies capable of sustainably supporting thousands (maybe a lot more) so in harmony with Nature that has led most environmentalists today to hold it up as one of the prime examples of a pristine ecosystem?

Question is: are we willing to learn from the past how to really co-evolve with Nature?

I have highlighted Charles C. Mann's outstanding book" "1491: New Revelations About The Americas Before Columbus" a number of times. It's a must read. (GW)

Once Hidden by Forest, Carvings in Land Attest to Amazon’s Lost World

By Simon Romero
New York Times
January 14, 2012

RIO BRANCO, Brazil — Edmar Araújo still remembers the awe.

As he cleared trees on his family’s land decades ago near Rio Branco, an outpost in the far western reaches of the Brazilian Amazon, a series of deep earthen avenues carved into the soil came into focus.

“These lines were too perfect not to have been made by man,” said Mr. Araújo, a 62-year-old cattleman. “The only explanation I had was that they must have been trenches for the war against the Bolivians.”

But these were no foxholes, at least not for any conflict waged here at the dawn of the 20th century. According to stunning archaeological discoveries here in recent years, the earthworks on Mr. Araújo’s land and hundreds like them nearby are much, much older — potentially upending the conventional understanding of the world’s largest tropical rain forest.

The deforestation that has stripped the Amazon since the 1970s has also exposed a long-hidden secret lurking underneath thick rain forest: flawlessly designed geometric shapes spanning hundreds of yards in diameter.

Alceu Ranzi, a Brazilian scholar who helped discover the squares, octagons, circles, rectangles and ovals that make up the land carvings, said these geoglyphs found on deforested land were as significant as the famous Nazca lines, the enigmatic animal symbols visible from the air in southern Peru.

“What impressed me the most about these geoglyphs was their geometric precision, and how they emerged from forest we had all been taught was untouched except by a few nomadic tribes,” said Mr. Ranzi, a paleontologist who first saw the geoglyphs in the 1970s and, years later, surveyed them by plane.

For some scholars of human history in Amazonia, the geoglyphs in the Brazilian state of Acre and other archaeological sites suggest that the forests of the western Amazon, previously considered uninhabitable for sophisticated societies partly because of the quality of their soils, may not have been as “Edenic” as some environmentalists contend.

Instead of being pristine forests, barely inhabited by people, parts of the Amazon may have been home for centuries to large populations numbering well into the thousands and living in dozens of towns connected by road networks, explains the American writer Charles C. Mann. In fact, according to Mr. Mann, the British explorer Percy Fawcett vanished on his 1925 quest to find the lost “City of Z” in the Xingu, one area with such urban settlements.

In addition to parts of the Amazon being “much more thickly populated than previously thought,” Mr. Mann, the author of “1491,” a groundbreaking book about the Americas before the arrival of Columbus, said, “these people purposefully modified their environment in long-lasting ways.”

As a result of long stretches of such human habitation, South America’s colossal forests may have been a lot smaller at times, with big areas resembling relatively empty savannas.

Such revelations do not fit comfortably into today’s politically charged debate over razing parts of the forests, with some environmentalists opposed to allowing any large-scale agriculture, like cattle ranching and soybean cultivation, to advance further into Amazonia.

Scientists here say they, too, oppose wholesale burning of the forests, even if research suggests that the Amazon supported intensive agriculture in the past. Indeed, they say other swaths of the tropics, notably in Africa, could potentially benefit from strategies once used in the Amazon to overcome soil constraints.

“If one wants to recreate pre-Columbian Amazonia, most of the forest needs to be removed, with many people and a managed, highly productive landscape replacing it,” said William Woods, a geographer at the University of Kansas who is part of a team studying the Acre geoglyphs.

“I know that this will not sit well with ardent environmentalists,” Mr. Woods said, “but what else can one say?”

While researchers piece together the Amazon’s ecological history, mystery still shrouds the origins of the geoglyphs and the people who made them. So far, 290 such earthworks have been found in Acre, along with about 70 others in Bolivia and 30 in the Brazilian states of Amazonas and Rondônia.

Researchers first viewed the geoglyphs in the 1970s, after Brazil’s military dictatorship encouraged settlers to move to Acre and other parts of the Amazon, using the nationalist slogan “occupy to avoid surrendering” to justify the settlement that resulted in deforestation.

But little scientific attention was paid to the discovery until Mr. Ranzi, the Brazilian scientist, began his surveys in the late 1990s, and Brazilian, Finnish and American researchers began finding more geoglyphs by using high-resolution satellite imagery and small planes to fly over the Amazon.

Denise Schaan, an archaeologist at the Federal University of Pará in Brazil who now leads research on the geoglyphs, said radiocarbon testing indicated that they were built 1,000 to 2,000 years ago, and might have been rebuilt several times during that period.

Initially, Ms. Schaan said, researchers, pondering the 20-foot depth of some of the trenches, thought they were used to defend against attacks. But a lack of signs of human settlement within and around the earthworks, like vestiges of housing and trash piles, as well as soil modification for farming, discounted that theory.

Researchers now believe that the geoglyphs may have held ceremonial importance, similar, perhaps, to the medieval cathedrals in Europe. This spiritual role, said William Balée, an anthropologist at Tulane University, could have been one that involved “geometry and gigantism.”

Still, the geoglyphs, located at a crossroads between Andean and Amazonian cultures, remain an enigma.

They are far from pre-Columbian settlements discovered elsewhere in the Amazon. Big gaps also remain in what is known about indigenous people in this part of the Amazon, after thousands were enslaved, killed or forced from their lands during the rubber boom that began in the late 19th century.

For Brazil’s scientists and researchers, Ms. Schaan said, the earthworks are “one of the most important discoveries of our time.” But the repopulation of this part of the Amazon threatens the survival of the geoglyphs, after being hidden for centuries.

Forests still cover most of Acre, but in cleared areas where the geoglyphs are found, dirt roads already cut through some of the earthworks. People live in wooden shacks inside others. Electricity poles dot the geoglyphs. Some ranchers use their trenches as watering holes for cattle.

“It’s a disgrace that our patrimony is treated this way,” said Tiago Juruá, the author of a new book here about protecting archaeological sites including the earthworks.

Mr. Juruá, a biologist, and other researchers say the geoglyphs found so far are probably just a sampling of what Acre’s forests still guard under their canopies. After all, they contend that outside of modern cities, fewer people live today in the Amazon than did before the arrival of Europeans five centuries ago.

“This is a new frontier for exploration and science,” Mr. Juruá said. “The challenge now is to make more discoveries in forests that are still standing, with the hope that they won’t soon be destroyed.”

Lis Horta Moriconi contributed reporting from Rio de Janeiro.

"Making the Future"

2012-01-15T11:50:00.004-05:00

3-D printers are here and now. Seriously, can replicators be far behind? (GW)

The Art of 3-D Printing

MIT professor Neri Oxman is developing new design techniques that take advantage of "additive manufacturing."

By Kevin Bullis
Technology Review
January 11, 2012

As part of our special report on manufacturing, we asked Neri Oxman, a professor at the MIT Media Lab and an internationally recognized artist whose work is part of the permanent collection at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, to create a sculpture that would illustrate the future of manufacturing. (See a gallery of images here.)

What she produced, in collaboration with MIT materials science professor Craig Carter, is a powerful demonstration of the possibilities of 3-D printing, using techniques that take advantage of the capabilities of 3-D printers in ways that conventional manufacturing techniques cannot.

3-D printing encompasses a range of technologies—from inkjet heads mounted on gantries that can deposit plastics layer by layer to form intricate models, to more recent laser-based systems that sinter metal powders to make durable parts for airplanes. 3-D printers have mainly been used for prototyping, but they are becoming an option for manufacturing as well, and may eventually even be used to print buildings, Oxman says. But designers and architects haven't yet learned to take advantage of their capabilities.

Oxman, who trained as an architect, says buildings are designed today with an eye toward the components they can be made of—sheets of plywood, panes of glass, steel beams, and concrete columns. As a result, those designs are limited, in much the way Lego bricks constrain the shapes that children can build. There are similar limitations in conventional manufacturing; there are some shapes that simply can't be built with existing molds and machining tools, and designers have had to design with these limits in mind.

Oxman is exploring ways to break with conventional design thinking by looking to patterns and processes found in nature, and using equations that define these processes to generate new designs. The results are often surprising shapes and structures that can be made only with 3-D printers.

To help develop the algorithms needed, Oxman has teamed up with Carter and others. In some cases, the algorithms provide new aesthetics, but they can also have practical applications—such as varying the structure to help bear loads. For one sculpture—a model of a chaise longue reclined chair—the team combined algorithms taken from nature with a map of the pressure a body exerts on a chair. The result depends on where the algorithms determine the chair needs to be soft to provide comfort and where it needs to be stiff to provide support.

For the sculpture Oxman made for Technology Review, she and Carter didn't have the same structural constraints imposed by a chair. The only requirements were that the result look like a cube, and that it should have the words "Making the Future" on one side. The resulting cube isn't a practical object, but it illustrates their approach to design.

The algorithms that define the shape of the sculpture are based on natural processes. One is the unmixing of two fluids. At high temperatures, oil and vinegar, for example, become completely soluble, but as the solution cools, the two fluids start to separate.

"You write down a set of equations based on what you know about thermodynamics and the kinetics of materials, and the equations develop these structures that look like fluids separating," Carter says. The resulting sculpture looks as if that process has been frozen and a cube has been cut from the center of the liquids. To make the lettering, Carter introduced other equations that caused one "fluid" to be attracted to the letters, and the other to be repelled. (To see an animation of how the fluids move to create the lettering, click here.)

Oxman and Carter fiddled with the algorithms until they reached the final shape they wanted, then shipped the resulting computer-aided design file to the 3-D printing company Objet to make the six-inch cube.

The technology used to make the cube involves an inkjet printer to lay down a layer of polymer ink, which is exposed to ultraviolet light to cure it. This requires printing a sacrificial support structure made of a soft polymer that can be blasted away with a jet of water.

Oxman's designs even push the limits of existing 3-D printers—the cube was so complex that it proved impossible to remove all of the supporting material from its center. Yet pushing the limits of 3-D printing is partly her goal. Indeed, her lab at MIT is developing new kinds of 3-D printers.

Oxman's lab is also developing robotic systems that could print large concrete structures for buildings. The new robotic system is being designed to be able to vary the density of the concrete, making it possible to use dense, strong concrete where it's needed for support, and lightweight, porous concrete for non-load bearing walls, to save on materials costs. Eventually, it may even be possible to print concrete that's so porous that it's translucent, reducing the need for indoor lighting.

Oxman continues to push forward designs with her art. She says the approach used for the Technology Review cube could serve as the basis for one of the 18 sculptures in a new exhibit she is developing for the Centre Pompidou in Paris. The exhibit will open this spring.

‘What else is going on down there?’

2012-01-14T10:19:00.003-05:00

Ephemeralization: Bucky's term for humanity's "know-how trajectory" that is leading us towards understanding how to create more life support using less resources. (GW)

New Storage Device Is Very Small, at 12 Atoms

By John Markoff
New York Times
January 12, 2012

SAN JOSE, Calif. — Researchers at I.B.M. have stored and retrieved digital 1s and 0s from an array of just 12 atoms, pushing the boundaries of the magnetic storage of information to the edge of what is possible.

The findings, being reported Thursday in the journal Science, could help lead to a new class of nanomaterials for a generation of memory chips and disk drives that will not only have greater capabilities than the current silicon-based computers but will consume significantly less power. And they may offer a new direction for research in quantum computing.

“Magnetic materials are extremely useful and strategically important to many major economies, but there aren’t that many of them,” said Shan X. Wang, director of the Center for Magnetic Nanotechnology at Stanford University. “To make a brand new material is very intriguing and scientifically very important.”

Until now, the most advanced magnetic storage systems have needed about one million atoms to store a digital 1 or 0. The new achievement is the product of a heated international race between elite physics laboratories to explore the properties of magnetic materials at a far smaller scale.

Last May, a group at the Institute of Applied Physics at the University of Hamburg in Germany reported on the ability to perform computer logic operations on an atomic level.

The group at I.B.M.’s Almaden Research Center here, led by Andreas Heinrich, has now created the smallest possible unit of magnetic storage by painstakingly arranging two rows of six iron atoms on a surface of copper nitride.

Such closeness is possible because the cluster of atoms is antiferromagnetic — a rare quality in which each atom in the array has an opposed magnetic orientation. (In common ferromagnetic materials like iron, nickel and cobalt, the atoms are magnetically aligned.)

Under the laboratory’s founder, Don Eigler, I.B.M. has explored the science of nanomaterials far smaller than the silicon chips used in today’s semiconductors. Dr. Eigler recently retired from the company but is a co-author of the Science paper.

The researchers now use a scanning tunneling microscope, which looks like a giant washing machine festooned with aluminum foil, not only to capture images of atoms but to reposition individual atoms — much the way a billiard ball might be moved by a pool cue with a sticky tip.

Although the research took place at a temperature near absolute zero, the scientists wrote that the same experiment could be done at room temperature with as few as 150 atoms.

As part of its demonstration of the antiferromagnetic storage effect, the researchers created a computer byte, or character, out of an individually placed array of 96 atoms. They then used the array to encode the I.B.M. motto “Think” by repeatedly programming the memory block to store representations of its five letters.

Moreover, Dr. Heinrich said, smaller groups of atoms begin to exhibit quantum mechanical behavior — simultaneously existing in both “spin” states, in effect 1 and 0 at the same time.

In theory, such atoms could be assembled into Qbits — the basic unit of an experimental approach to computing that might one day exceed the capabilities of today’s most powerful supercomputers.

“If you do this with two atoms, then they behave more like a quantum mechanical object,” Dr. Heinrich said. “This is why science is interested in this work more than the technology.”

In an interview in a small laboratory office here, he said he was planning to knock out a wall to create room for an expanded effort in exploring the quantum mechanical properties of the antiferromagnetic effect.

“This is really where we live,” he said. “If you step outside of the press release, we are trying to control the quantum mechanics of this spin behavior to coax them to do whatever we want them to do.”

Computer industry analysts said the I.B.M. effort heralded a new direction for nanotechnology and that it might offer a route to new kinds of nanomaterials.

“Nanotechnology labs are going to begin asking, ‘What else is going on down there?’ ” said Richard Doherty an electrophysicist who is director of Envisioneering, an industry consulting firm based in Seaford, N.Y. “The information storage side of this is fantastic, but this truly changes our ideas of the behavior of materials at molecular levels.”

Antiferromagnetic materials are now instrumental in two types of data storage products. They are essential for the manufacture of recording heads, which resemble phonograph needles and are used in today’s hard disk drives. They are also used in a new type of memory chip known as spin-transfer-torque RAM, or STT-RAM, which some view as a future competitor for DRAM and Flash memory chips.

Dr. Heinrich said that the tiny devices built with scanning tunneling microscopes would never be more than laboratory experiments.

However, he noted that many research groups are exploring ways of designing novel materials using self-assembly methods, including mechanical and biological approaches.

Industry executives said that as the semiconductor industry draws closer to exhausting the ability to scale down today’s circuits using lithographic tools that etch patterns on the surface of silicon wafers, an intense international hunt is under way for a manufacturing technology beyond microelectronics.

“The nation that discovers the next logic switch will lead the nanoelectronics era and reap the economic rewards associated with it,” said Ian Steff, vice president for global policy and technology partnerships of the Semiconductor Industry Association.

"Wind works" for Marylanders

2012-01-13T07:59:00.011-05:00

Maryland citizens refuse to be duped or intimidated by the fossil fuel industry. The understand thevalue of investing in offshore wind when the full costs of electricity generation are taken into account. Dishonest fossil bean-counters throw everything they don't want factored into their costs (like environmental and health impacts) into a bin called "externalities" that you and I must pay for as they reap huge profits.

Renewables like offshore wind are not a panacea or a license to continue to be extravagant consumers of electricity. They may, however, play a crucial role in avoiding our own extinction. (GW)

Offshore Wind Activists an Unmatched Force at Maryland General Assembly Opener

By Keith Harrington
Huffington Post
January 12, 2012

If measured by the turnout at the rally at the Annapolis state house yesterday, of all the issues confronting the Maryland General Assembly as it reconvenes this week, offshore wind power enjoys the most energetic public support.

Maintaining the grassroots momentum from a statewide series of packed "Wind Works" town hall forums, over 100 citizen clean energy advocates from across Maryland descended on Lawyers' Mall on Wednesday morning to greet returning state lawmakers with an unequivocal message: "Get it done in 2012! Wind works for Marylanders' health, jobs, climate and energy costs!"

Decked out in blue campaign T-shirts, wind advocates were the most visible activist presence on the opening morning of the 2012 legislative session. The impressive show of support for a cold weekday morning jibed with recent statewide poll results which showed that nearly two-thirds of Marylanders support developing the state's robust offshore wind energy resources, even if it means a small initial bump in energy costs.

Speaking to the rally crowd, state Senate Majority Leader Rob Garagiola scoffed at charges from critics that Marylanders can't afford to invest in offshore wind: "The price of coal goes up; the price of gas goes up. Does the price of wind ever go up?"

The crowd responded with a resounding, "No!"

"That's right," Garagiola continued, "It doesn't go up. This is going to save ratepayers money."

Other speakers included the state House Majority Leader Kumar Barve, climate justice and health advocate Vernice Miller Travis, Chesapeake Climate Action Network Director Mike Tidwell, MD Delegate Tom Hucker, business innovator Joe Gaskins, Johns Hopkins student Tippy Patrinos and state Senator Paul Pinsky.

After the rally, the sea of blue shirts shifted from the mall to the inside of the state house and the legislative office buildings where activists took the wind works message to legislators and other dignitaries.

On his way to address the opening session, Governor Martin O'Malley stopped to greet wind activists distributing fliers on the mall, and reiterated his support for passing the bill through the Assembly this year. The Governor's new offshore-wind energy bill is expected to drop in the next few weeks along with the rest of his ambitious legislative package. With other big ticket issues like same-sex marriage, a proposed sales or gas tax increase on the agenda, clean energy advocates certainly have their work cut out for them in keeping wind at the top of the priority list. But if advocates keep bringing the same grassroots energy they brought to Annapolis on Wednesday, that shouldn't be a problem.

Learn more about the "Wind Works for Maryland" campaign and get involved at www.marylandoffshorewind.org.

Climate changers

2012-01-12T08:49:00.004-05:00

So are you really puzzled why the U.S. is so reluctant to make a real commitment to reduce greenhouse gases and mitigate climate change? It has less to do with the members of Congress' skepticism about human-induced global warming and everything to do with the fossil fuel industry's powerful and well-funded lobbying efforts. (GW)

Power Plants Top EPA List on Emissions

Three of Southern Co.'s Facilities Grab the Top Spots for Large U.S. Emitters of Greenhouse Gases in 2010

By Tennille Tracy
Wall Street Journal
January 12, 2012

The U.S. government Wednesday released a detailed listing of facilities that emitted the most greenhouse gases in 2010, with three coal-fired power plants owned by Southern Co. topping the list.

Power plants accounted for more than half of the greenhouse-gas emissions by the major emitters on the list, with refineries and chemical facilities also contributing large shares.

The release of Wednesday's data mark the first time the Environmental Protection Agency made detailed information available to the public.

Power plants make up over half of the largest emitters on the list. Southern's Bowen plant in Georgia in 2009.

All three Southern Co. plants use coal to generate electricity and each released more than 20 million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent in 2010. Two of the plants, known as Scherer and Bowen, are in Georgia. The third, known as James H. Miller Jr., is in Alabama.

The fourth-largest emitter was the Martin Lake, Texas, power plant of Energy Future Holdings Corp. subsidiary Luminant. Duke Energy Corp.'s largest plant, the Gibson plant in Indiana, came in fifth.

Duke Energy spokesman Lew Middleton said the company has spent more than $1 billion in pollution-control technology at the Gibson plant since 1990. The plant is the third-largest coal-fired power plant in North America "and so it's really not unusual that it would show up where it is on the list," he said.

Greenhouse Gases

The Top 5 Emitters

Scherer(Southern Co.): 23 million metric tons of CO2 equivalent
Bowen(Southern): 21 million metric tons of CO2 equivalent
James H. Miller Jr. (Southern): 20.8 million metric tons of CO2 equivalent
Martin Lake(Luminant): 18.7 million metric tons of CO2 equivalent
Gibson(Duke): 18 million metric tons of CO2 equivalent

Source: Environmental Protection Agency

Representatives of Southern and Luminant didn't respond to requests for comment.

The EPA data covers the largest emitters, more than 6,700 facilities in the U.S. Each facility on the list emitted more than 25,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent in 2010—roughly the same amount of emissions that would come from burning 131 railcars of coal, the EPA said.

Of the 100 largest emitters—defined as facilities emitting more than 7 million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent—96 of them are power plants. Two are refineries and two are iron and steel mills.

Congress required the EPA to begin collecting and publishing the data under a 2008 spending law.

The EPA is slowly rolling out new greenhouse-gas standards after the Supreme Court ruled in 2007 that carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases qualified as air pollutants under the Clean Air Act.

Explore an EPA database of greenhouse gas emissions from large facilities.

The agency has so far regulated emissions from vehicles and has forced power plants, refineries and other large facilities to obtain permits when building new facilities or making major changes to existing ones.

Later this month, the agency is expected to propose new greenhouse-gas standards for power plants. In a call with reporters Wednesday, EPA air chief Gina McCarthy said the agency is "looking forward to trying to adhere to that" timeline.

Republicans and industry groups say the EPA lacks the authority to try to force carbon dioxide reductions using existing laws. Industry groups have filed numerous lawsuits seeking to overturn the EPA's rules and Republicans have drafted bills to block the agency's actions.

Write to Tennille Tracy at tennille.tracy@dowjones.com

They committed a crime against God

2012-01-11T09:25:00.006-05:00

N.C. is urged to compensate those it made sterile

Sometimes activists can't understand why some people aren't willing to just jump on the bandwagon and join their fight against injustices they have identified and taken up the cause.

Sometimes we need to know the whole story. When we do we may see that the injustices we're fighting for pale in comparison to what they've had to endure. (GW)

Each should get $50,000 task force says

By Martha Waggoner
Associated Press
January 11, 2012

RALEIGH, N.C. - As many as 2,000 people forcibly sterilized decades ago in North Carolina should get $50,000 each, a task force said yesterday, marking the first time a state has moved to compensate victims of eugenics programs that weeded out those it deemed “feeble-minded’’ or otherwise undesirable.

The payout, which could amount to as much as $100 million, still needs approval from the Legislature. But the prospects for passage of some sort of compensation are promising because the governor immediately embraced the recommendation and the House speaker has come out in favor of payments.

While dozens of states had programs in the 20th century that allowed people to be sterilized against their will in the name of improving the human race, no other state has offered anything more than apologies.

Compensation “sends a clear message that we in North Carolina are people who pay for our mistakes and that we do not tolerate bureaucracies that trample on basic human rights,’’ said Dr. Laura Gerald, a pediatrician and the panel chairwoman.

From 1929 to 1974, more than 7,600 people in North Carolina were surgically rendered unable to reproduce under state laws and practices that singled out epileptics and others considered mentally defective. Many were poor, black women deemed unfit to be parents.

A task force report last year said 1,500 to 2,000 of the victims were still alive, though the state has verified only 72.

Last year, Governor Beverly Perdue, a Democrat, created the five-person task force to decide how to compensate victims. It consisted of a judge, a doctor, a former journalist, a historian, and a lawyer.

The panel had discussed amounts between $20,000 and $50,000, and some victims and family members had complained that was too little. The panel also weighed whether to compensate victims’ family members or descendants - some people were sterilized after giving birth - but decided against it.

Yesterday, some victims said they were just looking forward to seeing the issue resolved.

Elaine Riddick, 57, was sterilized at 14 after she gave birth to a son who was the product of a rape.

“I was a victim twice: once by the rapist and one by the state of North Carolina. Normally, if you commit a crime, you pay for it. They committed the biggest crime. They committed a crime against God. They committed a crime against humanity,’’ she said, wiping tears. “And this is all I can do is just accept what they said today and go on with my life.’’

While taking away someone’s ability to have children sounds barbaric today, eugenics programs gained popularity in the United States and other countries in the early 1900s, promoted as a means of raising the health and intellectual level of the human race.

More than 30 states enacted laws allowing surgical sterilization for certain people, though not all of them carried out such procedures. More than 60,000 people were forcibly sterilized under such programs, and some historians think the same thing was done to thousands more in other states under the authority of doctors or local officials.

Most states abandoned those efforts after World War II, when such practices became closely associated with Nazi Germany’s attempts to achieve racial purity, though North Carolina stood out because it ramped up its program after the war. Sterilizations in North Carolina peaked in the 1950s, according to state records.

People as young as 10 were sterilized, in some cases for not getting along with schoolmates or for being promiscuous. Although officials obtained consent from patients or their guardians, many did not comprehend what they were signing.

North Carolina is among about a half-dozen states to apologize.

Melissa Hyatt, whose stepfather was sterilized, said the task force “did what was reasonable as far as budgets and economy.’’

“It’s not really about the money,’’ she said. “It’s about the suffering and the pain.’’

Mike Marion, whose 59-year-old aunt was sterilized at 18 because she was seen as mildly disabled mentally, said estates or descendants should get some compensation, too.

“If you’re going to admit wrong, admit wrong in its whole capacity,’’ he said. “By offering compensation to only the living, that’s taking partial responsibility.’’

Despite the potentially high price tag in this economy, there is bipartisan support for some compensation. The governor issued a statement endorsing the task force recommendation.

House Speaker Thom Tillis, a Republican, said he will review it.

Continuing to build a healthy culture throughout the winter

2012-01-10T08:28:00.003-05:00

There are some real challenges to being a New England locavore. The most obvious is what local foods are available during the long winter months? The answer is: probably more than you think. Greenhouses and other season-extending technologies together with food preservation and processing options are creating new possibilities for increasing the local food supply well into the winter.

Then other key to all this is markets - and that means more local food distribution systems like winter farmers markets that provide access to healthy, locally-grown and processed foods. (GW)

Winter Farmers' Market now in season in Dorchester

By Miriam Valverde
Boston Globe
Janaury 9, 2012

Hundreds of people elbowed past each other, carrying shopping bags loaded with carrots, potatoes, and onions. Sellers of artisan cheeses and farm-fresh vegetables had to rush to restock their wares.

Yesterday was opening day of the Dorchester Winter Farmers’ Market, which organizers hope will encourage all members of the community - including low-income families - to shop healthy and locally.

And judging by the turnout, the first day was a success.

“Everything went so quickly,’’ said Mike Smith, a manager at Oakdale Farms, based in Rehoboth. “I didn’t expect this great demand.’’

The farmers’ market in Codman Square is the only one in the city where shoppers can use their electronic benefit transfer cards issued as part of the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program to pay for groceries. Those who qualify for the program include low-income families and some people with disabilities.

In the long term, organizers want to open a neighborhood store where residents can have easy access to healthy food and share a space for community activities.

As Bernadette Rucker, 63, waited to receive a complimentary 10-minute massage - offered to all visitors to the market from Heart of Boston Massage Therapy - she said she was very grateful to have a farmers’ market in her neighborhood.

“I love the idea of coming here to get fresh food and vegetables,’’ said the 20-year Dorchester resident. “I’m a diabetic, so I’m one of those at-risk folks. I’m trying to get introduced to organic stuff, trying to find out how to eat more organically.’’

Shoppers who are members of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program can also take advantage of a city initiative called Boston Bounty Bucks, which will match up to $10 worth of purchases, said Jenny Silverman, project manager at the Dorchester Community Food Cooperative, which sponsored the event.

“A lot of people write Dorchester off when it comes to healthy eating, but look at the excitement of the crowd. There’s real interest in this community,’’ said Silverman. “Dorchester wants to be part of the healthy food conversation.’’

Just 30 minutes into the event, dozens of people crowded a hall at the Codman Square Health Center, perusing stands of cheese, frozen meat, and vegetables. Long lines formed at farmers’ tables as visitors waited their turn to pick up white potatoes for $1 per pound, cabbage at $2.50 per head, and winter squash - ranging from $2 to $4, among other items.

Sandra Cotterell, chief executive of the Codman Square Health Center, said the market is a “great way to build a healthy culture’’ in Dorchester.

“There are not a lot of big markets here that offer fresh products, but everyone wants to eat healthy,’’ she said.

Barbara Ferrer, executive director of the Boston Public Health Commission, said she was impressed by the “outpouring of residents.’’

“This was all locally organized, and they made a dream a reality,’’ Ferrer said. “This really talks about supporting different needs. [The farmers] are providing healthy food and [the shoppers] are helping the economy.’’

Smith said he wished he had packed more vegetables and vowed to be better prepared next Sunday. The market will run for 12 weeks, every Sunday until late March, from noon to 3 p.m., organizers said.

Leaf remnants and pencil-size pieces of carrots indicated that a bucket was once filled with $2 organic carrots.

“Thanks for coming. This means an awful lot to us,’’ said Smith, as he sold $7 worth of white potatoes to a smiling customer.

Time to prepare for a mass wave of climate refugees?

2012-01-09T09:27:00.004-05:00

Want to know one major difference between weather anomalies and climate change? Mass migrations! (GW)

Climate change castaways consider move to Australia

By Ben Doherty in Male, Maldives
Sydney Morning Herald
January 7, 2012

THE President of what could be the first country in the world lost to climate change has urged Australia to prepare for a mass wave of climate refugees seeking a new place to live.

The Maldivian President, Mohamed Nasheed, said his government was considering Australia as a possible new home if the tiny archipelago disappears beneath rising seas.

''It is increasingly becoming difficult to sustain the islands, in the natural manner that these islands have been,'' he told the Herald in an interview in Male, the Maldives capital.

''So … if everyone else around Australia is so poor and unable to fend for themselves and have a decent life, would that necessarily make life in Australia any better? Would that be the castle that you can defend?''

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change predicts a sea-level rise of up to 59 centimetres over the next century, a level that would inundate most of the Maldives' inhabited atolls. Low-lying Pacific island nations, such as Kirabati and Tuvalu, would also face being flooded.

''If nations won't do good for themselves, they really must do good for everyone around, simply in your self-interest as well,'' Mr Nasheed said.

''Not necessarily because you're so nice, and so benevolent and good that you want to provide others with things.

''But I think it's really quite necessary for Australians and for every rich country to understand that this is unlike any other thing that's happened before.''

The country has established a sovereign wealth fund, drawn from its tourist revenue, to be used to buy land overseas and finance the relocation of the country's population of 350,000.

Australia, for its climate and abundance of space, along with Sri Lanka and India, for their proximity and cultural similarities, are the three countries the President has identified as possible destinations.

''They are the talked about countries, though we haven't necessarily had official conversations with these governments,'' Mr Nasheed said.

Eighty per cent of the Maldivian land mass - a string of more than 1200 islands, 200 inhabited, running 750 kilometres north-south in the Indian Ocean - is less than a metre above sea level. The highest point in the entire country is 2.4 metres above sea level, and already, 14 islands have had to be abandoned because of massive erosion by the sea.

Mr Nasheed said Maldivians want to stay but moving was an eventuality his government had to plan for. He said he did not want his people ''living in tents'' for years, or decades, as refugees.

The Maldives is not the first nation to look to Australia as a destination for its climate change refugees. A decade ago, the government of Tuvalu, north of New Zealand in the Pacific Ocean, requested immigration assistance for its population of 12,000 to move to Australia. The Australian government said its humanitarian obligations were to people who require ''assistance urgently''.

Mr Nasheed praised Australia's decision to adopt a carbon tax, describing it as a ''brave move forward''.

''That is the kind of progressive legislation we want to see from other countries,'' he said.

But other Maldivian government officials told the Herald Australia was ''destructive'' at the just-completed round of climate change talks in Durban.

Under the last-minute agreement reached in Durban, countries have agreed to begin work on a new global treaty to cut carbon emissions, to be signed in 2015, but not to come into force until 2020.

Dig for Victory

2012-01-08T06:58:00.005-05:00

Many years ago, John and Nancy Todd and I had a dream to translate and transfer what we learned about sustainable design at the New Alchemy Institute to the city. Although that didn't happen during my tenure as director there, I did see the vision realized nearly a decade later at the Dudley Street Neighborhood Initiative. But even as recent as 1995, the notion of urban agriculture was still considered radical. (GW)

Next stop, the Olympics: Urban farmers are digging for eco-victory

Not since the war has growing food been so popular with 'townies', and many are now turning their hobby into a business

By Genevieve Roberts
The Independent
8 January 2012

Think of farming, and the rolling fields of the countryside spring to mind. But across Britain's towns and cities, veggie growers, cheese-makers and honey producers are becoming established. Not since the Second World War, when people were urged to Dig for Victory, has urban farming been so popular.

Across the country, more than 2,000 new spaces for growing food have been created over the past three years. And this is just the start of the upsurge of inner-city farming. Already, eco-designers have been invited to look round the Olympic site in east London to see if there is potential for a farm after the Games.

While city allotments have long been popular, people are now growing produce to sell: Gordon Ramsay's Bread Street Kitchen features Bermondsey Frier cheese on its menu, while St Mungo's, the homeless shelter in south London, sells its vegetables to The Table Café in Southwark.

In Nottingham, Ecoworks runs a local vegetable scheme delivering vegetable boxes to eight points across the city, and in Newcastle, bees on the roof of Fenwick yield the honey sold in the department store.

Today, Sustain, the alliance for better food and farming, launches its report "A Growing Trade" to advise people how to grow for sale in an urban environment. Ben Reynolds, network director of Sustain, said: "In the last year, we have seen people start selling their urban agricultural produce."

In London, there are now almost 1,500 growing spaces that have joined Capital Growth, a scheme run by Sustain for city gardens and farms, funded by the Mayor of London. That has risen from only 50 at the launch of the scheme in 2008.

"It's a vast rise, with 50,000 people getting involved across these sites," Mr Reynolds said. "People are now thinking how to make this sustainable, and are establishing relationships with local restaurants. A growing number of community projects are going down the enterprise route."

Polly Higginson, author of the report, said: "There has been a real change in attitude in the community food sector towards how they see their pr ojects. Trading is a good opportunity to generate income to contribute towards project costs and to lift the ambitions of those involved."

Charlie Price is founder of Aquaponics UK, which nurtures plants and fish in symbiotic balance in urban locations, including the FARM: Shop in Dalston, north-east London. "Urban agriculture is evolving rapidly into a viable, cost-effective and engaging way to produce food in our towns and cities," he said. "It provides good quality, healthy food that is sustainable environmentally, socially and economically."

Andrew Merritt, co-director of Something & Son eco-design company, who devised the FARM: Shop, has already toured the Olympic site to look at potential spaces to make a farm after the Games.

He said: "Urban farming is growing because buying food has become a process rather than a pleasure. It allows city folk to have a connection with where their food comes from; it's ultra fresh and you can pick it, touch it, and smell it. It's also a way of bringing industry, greenery, food education and fun into our cities, which can only be good."

Secret Science Club

2012-01-07T11:29:00.002-05:00

Suddenly, the notion of "passing the bar" takes on a whole new meaning for me. (GW)

Continuing Education, at the Bar

By Jennifer Schuessler
New York Times
January 5, 2012

FOR many, January means back to the lecture hall, and not just at colleges and universities. Across New York the backrooms of bars and the main stages of clubs are coming to resemble secret annexes to the Learning Annex — homes to a boom in alternative lecture series that combine the spirit of the seminar room with the atmosphere of speed dating.

Sometimes the matchmaking is purely intellectual, as speakers bring evolutionary biology or astrophysics to first-timers who thought they had just come for the beer. Other times it’s of the more literal kind (though sorry, ladies, the sex ratio doesn’t seem to be any better in nerd circles).

Whether it’s credentialed neuroscientists delivering a solid happy hour on the mysteries of the brain or tag teams of amateurs competing to give the best 15-minute PowerPoint on cephalopod sex or fake alphabets, never has New York (or Brooklyn, anyway) offered so many opportunities to get smart while also getting a bit stupid. Here’s a survey of some offbeat lecture series that let the intellectually curious go back to school, without the homework.

Secret Science Club

Quick-freezing demonstrations onstage and straight-up theme cocktails at the bar are the order of the evening at the Secret Science Club, a five-year-old lecture series that draws overflow crowds to its monthly meetings at the Bell House in Gowanus, Brooklyn.

Competition for bicycle parking can be fierce, as is the scramble just to get in the door of the 400-capacity club to hear top-flight speakers like the New York University astrophysicist David Hogg, who begins this year’s season on Jan. 18.

For regulars like Mike Garbarino, 42, a self-described “educated layperson” from Yonkers who boasts of having attended every session except the one given the day his father died, the club is a social night out as well as an act of cultural dissidence.

“It got started in 2006, which was the height of national stupidity,” Mr. Garbarino said at a recent event. “This was pushback. People were sick of being dumb.”

Margaret Mittelbach, a writer and editor who started the Secret Science Club with Michael Crewdson and Dorian Devins, said it was important to keep the barriers to the audience as low as the qualifications of the speakers are high.

“People may not know how interested they are until they come,” Ms. Mittelbach said. “That’s why we keep it free. People don’t have anything to lose.”

Lecturers — three of whom have been Nobel Prize winners — hardly skimp on the substance, though they do tend to be mindful that the audience, unlike students in their 10 a.m. class, may be at least one sheet to the wind.

“I could talk to you for 25 minutes about the morphology of a particular foot bone, but that wouldn’t be particularly fair,” William Harcourt-Smith, a paleoanthropologist at the American Museum of Natural History, said during a standing-room lecture in November.

Instead, Dr. Harcourt-Smith flashed a “slightly kinky” slide of a chimp holding up a silver stiletto with its feet before offering to buy that evening’s special cocktail, the Fossil Evidence, for anyone who could guess the name of a certain bone.

“You get half a drink,” he said after someone shouted out a half-correct answer.

The speakers are paid only in beer and applause. Most talk for about 45 minutes, though the astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson, director of the Hayden Planetarium, inaugurated the series’s move to the Bell House in 2009 from the smaller Union Hall in Park Slope by going a full two hours.

“He’s famous for being the Bruce Springsteen of science lecturers,” Ms. Mittelbach said. “It was a lengthy, meaty show.”

A more literal kind of meat is featured in December at the club’s annual Carnivorous Nights taxidermy contest, a raucous festival of applied zoology. At last month’s sold-out edition, the judges considered some 30 entries, including a “Pietà”-like mounting of a pygmy South American sloth and her baby, a diorama dramatizing the death of the Mormon prophet Joseph Smith (represented by a beetle), and a Christmas tree trimmed with small-mammal hindquarters.

The occasional footnote about exotic chicken genetics aside, the taxidermy event was longer on gonzo creativity than real natural history. But for some, it’s a gateway drug to the club’s more serious offerings.

“It’s fun to come and get a small piece of how the world works,” said Nadia Siddiqui, 30, a worker for a human-rights organization who came for the taxidermy a few years ago but has since returned for a half-dozen lectures, including one on animal swarming behavior, her favorite so far.

“I’m a nerd,” she added. “I like these things.”

Nerd Nite

Nerdiness is elevated to a full-fledged badge of identity at Nerd Nite, a monthly lecture series that has been packing Galapagos Art Space in the Dumbo neighborhood of Brooklyn since 2008. Its date-night crowd goes to party to the mantra “Be there and be square,” projected on screen before each event underneath a line drawing of stylishly geeky spectacles.

If Secret Science Club is all about bringing the best scientific minds of New York to the people, Nerd Nite is all about celebrating the expertise of amateurs, the goofier and poppier the better.

“We like zombies,” said Malcolm McDonald, 32, a computer programmer, when asked to explain what drew him and his girlfriend to the November edition, which featured talks on bad trips in travel literature, the romantic psychology of “Twilight” and “nonballistic” methods for fighting off the undead.

“That, and the fact that it’s nerdy, I guess,” added his girlfriend, Lisa Yau, 29, who works in retail analytics and met Mr. McDonald on Match.com after he noticed her claim to have memorized pi to 50 digits. “We self-identify as nerds a little bit.”

That sense of shared identity has fueled the growth of Nerd Nite from a homespun event in a Boston bar to a meticulously branded global enterprise, with offshoots in more than 30 cities worldwide, regular speed-dating events, and a magazine, to be introduced on Friday night at a special event featuring talks on “The Rise and Fall of the Atari Empire” and the history of the jumpsuit, along with a rap duel.

Speed dating is also a good metaphor for how the series finds its lecturers, who are mostly chosen from among the half-dozen audience members who line up after each event to pitch the organizer, Matt Wasowski, on their ideas for future talks.

Anyone who knows more about something than 99.9 percent of the population is “qualified to be a nerd,” said Mr. Wasowski, though he does have a few iron-clad rules for speakers, starting with the requirement that they be as entertaining as possible.

“Ultimately you’re still at a social event on a Thursday or Friday night,” said Mr. Wasowski, a boyishly gangly 36-year-old with a day job at an educational software company. “It’s got to be fun.”

The Nerd Nite style — tongue-in-cheek PowerPoint slides, lots of (sometimes faux) data, plenty of audience participation — was on full display in the final fall event, though not everyone was satisfied by the steady stream of laugh lines in the opening talk, delivered by a stick-wielding financial-services marketer named Roger Ma, author of “The Zombie Combat Manual.”

“The first lecture was kind of fluffy,” John Evan Perigoe, 28, said during intermission. “Hopefully there will be more substance in the next one.”

Susan Carnell, a research psychologist at Columbia who gave the lecture on “Twilight,” did manage to slip some real science into her talk, including references to a recent study of the mating behavior of male topi antelopes and a slide depicting the vagina photoplethysmograph, a contraption used to measure female arousal.

But after the talk, Dr. Carnell — who called herself “a genuine nerd” — said the Nerd Nite experience was less about imparting knowledge than being part of a familial event. “I’ve always wanted to be a best man,” she said. “Everyone’s on your side and wants you to be funny.”

Moonlighter Presents

If Secret Science Club is the rock-star professor dropping statistics jokes, and Nerd Nite is the “Star Trek” obsessive who has suddenly started wearing a bit of product in his hair, then Moonlighter Presents is the slightly intimidating couple from your semiotics seminar, ready with a casually brilliant postironic take on just about everything.

This series, which started in 2010 in a former funeral home in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, draws about 50 people. It features youngish academics, artists and writers on subjects outside their expertise, though you get the feeling the speakers wouldn’t be caught dead talking about vampires. Instead, topics lean toward theory-tinged eclectica like the poetics of hay fever, the cultural politics of Steely Dan fandom and the history of the car ferry in Elberta, Mich., along with subjects of more urgent local concern, like “What Is Pretentiousness, and Does It Make Me Look Good?”

Stephanie DeGooyer, a doctoral candidate in English literature at Cornell, who started the series with Justin Martin, an artist, said Moonlighter was meant to push back against the hyper-specialization of intellectual life.

“Professionalism has made it so that you can only speak in public if you’ve been invited to speak on something you’ve researched for a long time,” Ms. DeGooyer said. “But off the clock people have all these ideas.”

The events, which are free, have an ambience that’s less date night than earnest dorm-room bull session, though actual dancing did break out at one recent event, held at a Polish bar in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. New York is increasingly full of D.I.Y. intellectual enterprises like Open City Dialogue, a lecture series held every other Monday at Pete’s Candy Store in Williamsburg, and the courses organized by the Public School or the Brooklyn Brainery, which match people who want to learn about a proposed topic (death in Derrida, beekeeping, “Genetic Engineering in Your Basement”) with someone who wants to teach it.

But few take their metaphors both as seriously and as lightly as Moonlighter, which, this month, means moving the event to an office space in Manhattan, after hours.

A fluorescent-lighted cubicle farm may seem like the last place cool Brooklynites would voluntarily spend an evening, even if the schedule does promise a talk on the “aesthetics, history and mythology of the airport carpet” and an experimental wordless lecture titled “Next Slide Please.”

But to Ms. DeGooyer the setting captures the Moonlighter ethos perfectly. “The idea of an office space is symbolic for what we do,” she said. “Being in a more awkward space inspires a different kind of thinking.”

Beer and Brains

MOONLIGHTER PRESENTS Jan. 15, 7 p.m., R.S.V.P. to justin@moonlighterpresents.com for locations; moonlighterpresents.com.

NERD NITE LAUNCH PARTY Friday night at 8, Galapagos Art Space, 16 Main Street, Dumbo, Brooklyn; (718) 222-8500, nyc.nerdnite.com; $11.11.

SECRET SCIENCE CLUB Jan. 18, 8 p.m., the Bell House, 149 Seventh Street, Gowanus, Brooklyn; (718) 643-6510, secretscienceclub.blogspot.com, thebellhouseny.com; free.

Other opportunities to wear your pocket protector:

BROOKLYN BRAINERY 515 Court Street, at Ninth Street, Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn; brooklynbrainery.com.

OPEN CITY DIALOGUE SERIES Pete’s Candy Store, 709 Lorimer Street, Williamsburg, Brooklyn; (718) 302-3770, petescandystore.com.

PROTEUS GOWANUS 543 Union Street, Gowanus, Brooklyn; (718) 243-1572, proteusgowanus.org.

THE PUBLIC SCHOOL Various locations; nyc.thepublicschool.org.

Vertical-axis wind turbine takes the plunge in deep water

2012-01-06T06:59:00.009-05:00

Can the vertical-axis wind turbine find a niche for itself in deep offshore waters? Some wind engineers and developers think this design has advantages over the more commonly deployed three-blade, horizontal-axis wind turbine. (GW)

Deep-water vertical-axis wind turbine gets last dry run

Recharge
January 6, 2012

Construction will begin this summer in the south of France on the 2MW onshore prototype of a floating vertical-axis wind turbine (VAWT) that is on course to be the first full-scale machine of its kind operating offshore.

The VertiWind concept is the first fruit of a collaboration between French offshore oil and gas engineering giant Technip and compatriot start-up Nénuphar, which for the past three years has been road-testing a 1:10 scale version of its VAWT design, kitted out with a foundation with hydraulic jacks that simulate the marine environment.

The diagonally bladed concept, designed for deep-water use, is on the fast track. The companies plan to have a 25MW development consisting of 13 full-scale “multifloater” units on line by 2015.

The unit’s designers, aeronautical engineers Charles Smadja and Frédéric Silvert, came into offshore wind with the idea that although current utility-scale turbines were “optimal” for onshore and shallow waters, in deeper waters the machines would call for either “very large” floaters buoyed by massive ballasts or “very costly” tension-leg-type moorings. A vertical-axis rotor needs neither.

Technip had nailed its offshore colours to the mast off Norway in 2009 with the switch-on of Statoil’s spar-type Hywind turbine, which the contractor had designed, fabricated and installed in 220 metres of water off the southwest municipality of Karmøy.

“The starting point is certainly Hywind,” says Technip’s vice-president for renewable energy, Stéphane His. “It will always be seen as a key project in the history of our offshore wind strategy. Whether this sort of installation could be multiplied by a high number, however, unless certain optimisations were made [was a question].

“During this project there was some head-scratching on the subject of where we go from here. We were — and are — of the belief that floating offshore wind needs some sort of breakthrough and it needs something different to achieve this, something disruptive.”

Around this time, Technip got together with Nénuphar. It led quickly to the two companies taking the lead in an all-French consortium that is among the beneficiaries of the government’s Grand Emprunt €35bn ($45.3bn) industrial stimulus package.

Project partners for VertiWind include utility EDF; public-sector research, innovation and training centre IFP EN; and specialist deepwater contractor Seal Engineering, along with classification society Bureau Veritas.

The group’s 2MW offshore prototype is foreseen operating in water depths of at least 50 metres. Based on a three-column semi-submersible concept, it will, like its onshore forerunner, feature a 50-metre-diameter Darrieus-type rotor consisting of three 70-metre-tall blades, each angled at 120 degrees, attached by struts to a pole at the centre of the floater.

The unit’s mooring system will be a chain-and-wire three-point spread, with standard drag anchors or piles, depending on a site’s soil conditions, securing it to the seabed.
Offshore, there will be an “air gap” — the distance between the rotor and the sea — of 25 metres.

Being a VAWT, the VertiWind has no yaw or pitch system — the 100-metre-high “omnidirectional” turbine can harness wind from any point on the compass; nor is there a gearbox, which is in line with a minimum-component philosophy.

The unit will be smaller than like-rated horizontalaxis models, with a power-production curve — according to Nénuphar’s output modelling — revved up by the faster, steadier winds found offshore, and an algorithm-based control system regulating rotor speed to improve the turbine’s efficiency.

His says: “The vertical-access turbine designs offer many advantages: high production output, operational stability, a low centre of gravity that means it can be built and installed in most places in the world, and a nacelle that is easily accessed, which is very important later, once the turbine is in operation offshore.”

The rotor, its shaft guided with two bearings enclosed in the mast, is connected via an elastic coupling to a direct-drive transmission, with a fail-safe emergency disc-and-caliper braking system stopping the turbine in any situation, including a network failure, as well as “parking” the rotor when the wind speed reaches cut-off.

The power take-off system will include a transformer to step-up electricity export over long distances through a dynamic subsea cable without a booster substation.

The floater’s generator, a 50-tonne permanent-magnet model built by France’s Alstom and Converteam, serves more than just the expected role of power producer, sitting 20 metres above the sea — 40 metres lower than on a conventional 100-metre-tall turbine — to give the floater a low centre of gravity.

VertiWind’s nine-metre draft is central to the commercial case behind its design.

Unlike spars, which need upwards of 100 metres of water during turbine mating and transport, VertiWind’s floating structure — fabricated with cylindrical steel columns set into hexagonal concrete heave plates — could be constructed and commissioned complete with turbine at the quayside. It would then be towed out to site with offshore service vessels for hook up to its mooring and electrical infrastructure, doing away with expensive heavy-lift crane work.

“[Deepwater ports] are not a situation we have everywhere in the world, so if you’re looking at many areas of the world where there is a demand for an easy-to-install solution, draft matters,” says His. “This opens up the possibilities for construction at a much larger number of ports.

“Working with Nénuphar has allowed us to think not only about the floating part of the system but also about the wind turbine itself, together, in an integrated way, along with construction and installation and operation.”

In operation offshore, the low-riding rotor lends stability to the floater in concert with the carbonreinforced glass-fibre blades, minimising the gyroscopic effect on the structure by smoothing the torque dynamics and lessening the chances of a stall or blade-bending damage in high winds.

“Our rotor design evolved from one with straight, vertical blades as a response to the problem of torque variations during rotation, particularly in extreme wind velocities,” says Nénuphar’s Smadja. “In such a dynamic storm, the load occurs on the whole length of a straight blade at once; with our design, [the loads are distributed] along all the blades as they turn.”

The 35kW prototype that has been put through its paces since early 2009 at a site near the northern city of Boulogne-sur-Mer stands 12 metres tall, and is fitted with seven-metre blades on a six-metre-diameter rotor. Testing of the machine, built with engineering institute Arts et Métiers ParisTech, has concentrated on calibrating the power curve to the control system to hone efficiency and output, with refinements made to the aerofoil structure and the supporting struts.

The prototype’s base has a tilting mechanism that makes it possible for the turbine to operate in a “skewed flow”, as a floating VAWT might offshore, with the turbine axis being rotated up to 15 degrees. The “inclineable” foundation can also generate harmonic rotation to simulate motions and accelerations that mirror the offshore environment.

Cut-in speed on the prototype, which has been running at full load for the past 12 months, is four metres per second (m/s); cut-out is at “somewhat higher than 25m/s”.
“The measured output has matched very well with the calculations,” says Smadja. “We have also been able to prove, among other things, [that] this type of machine performs very well under skewed flow. On a floater, given the offshore wave and wind conditions, you often have skewed flow.

“Due to the architecture and the turbine design, the power production is not really impacted by the inclination of the turbine axis relative to the wind direction.”

Construction and operation of the full-scale onshore prototype will feed into fine-tuning and optimisation of the engineering for the building of the first offshore unit. An application has been made to the French authorities to install the flagship 2MW floater in 85 metres of water in the French Mediterranean, about 5km off the city of Fos-sur-Mer, where winds can whip through at 43m/s and waves of seven metres are not uncommon.

For the full-scale prototype — to be tested at a soon-to-be-announced site — Nénuphar has developed a composite blade technology that can be manufactured using an integrated, one-piece “monobloc” design, says Smadja. The resulting rotor blades are engineered to be light and of a stiffness tailored to the “dynamical and mechanical behaviour” of a VAWT, but with a manufacturing process that “remains as simple as for a straight blade”.

“I am amazed how far this project has come in the past three years,” Smadja remarks. “But this is just a start. What is coming is more challenging yet.”

The project timeline sees a second VertiWind turbine being floated out and connected with the flagship, followed, in 2015, by the 25MW development, dubbed VertiMed, which is being partly financed through the NER300 programme, a renewable-energy technology scheme managed jointly by the European Commission and European Investment Bank.

“Hywind has been an important project for [Technip] because it made us think about our involvement in offshore wind strategically,” notes His. “The acquisition earlier this year of [UK offshore installation contractor] Subocean, the creation of a distinct sector identity in TOW [Technip Offshore Wind] — and we are going to be very active in the French tender, supporting the Iberdrola-Areva bid.

“The VertiWind project shows how serious we continue to be about involving ourselves in this industry that is expanding so quickly and so broadly.

“We are approaching this with some humility; we know we have knowledge to build up, but we also have the confidence in the knowledge that we can bring to the [offshore wind] sector through our project-management experience in the offshore oil and gas industry.

“Projects are getting much bigger. You quickly get to projects costing €1bn and you can’t manage them in the way that onshore projects have been. Offshore wind is a different world.”

"...the new stuff for people to do "

2012-01-05T08:07:00.007-05:00

Bucky Fuller was well known for his provocative Utopian visions including a dome-covered Manhattan and the notion of a "a World That Works For Everyone" wherein the World Game with its emphasis on "Livingry replaces War Games obsessed with "Weaponry". As radical as those ideas are, however, I found the one that seemed to strike most of my friends as his most outlandish vision was his conviction that evolution (spurred by technological innovation) was leading society inevitably towards total unemployment.

He talked a lot about a "Guaranteed Minimum Income" for everyone that would spark individual and collective creativity. Extra income could be earned by those who choose to work at essential jobs related to manufacturing, education, public safety, infrastructure maintenance/repair, etc.

Is there such a thing as being too Utopian? I for one, don't think so. (GW)

"Tectonic Shifts" in Employment

Information technology is reducing the need for certain jobs faster than new ones are being created.

By David Talbot
Technology Review
January/February 2012

The United States faces a protracted unemployment crisis: 6.3 million fewer Americans have jobs than was true at the end of 2007. And yet the country's economic output is higher today than it was before the financial crisis. Where did the jobs go? Several factors, including outsourcing, help explain the state of the labor market, but fast-advancing, IT-driven automation might be playing the biggest role.

Since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, people have feared that new technologies would permanently erode employment. Over and over again, these dislocations of labor have been temporary: technologies that made some jobs obsolete eventually led to new kinds of work, raising productivity and prosperity with no overall negative effect on employment.

There's nothing to suggest that this dynamic no longer operates, but new research is showing that advances in workplace automation are being deployed at a faster pace than ever, making it more difficult for workers to adapt and wreaking havoc on the middle class: the clerks, accountants, and production-line workers whose tasks can increasingly be mastered by software and robots. "Do I think we will have permanently high unemployment as a consequence of technology? No," says Peter Diamond, the MIT economist who won a 2010 Nobel Prize for his work on market imperfections, including those that affect employment. "What's different now is that the nature of jobs going away has changed. Communication and computer abilities mean that the type of jobs affected have moved up the income distribution."

Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee study information-supercharged workplaces and the innovations and productivity advances they continually create. Now they have turned their sights to how these IT-driven improvements affect employment. In their new book, Brynjolfsson, director of the Center for Digital Business at MIT's Sloan School of Management, and McAfee, its principal research scientist, see a paradox in the first decade of the 2000s. Even before the economic downturn caused U.S. unemployment to rise from 4.4 percent in May 2007 to 10.1 percent in October 2009, a disturbing trend was visible. From 2000 to 2007, GDP and productivity rose faster than they had in any decade since the 1960s, but employment growth was comparatively tepid.

Brynjolfsson and McAfee posit that more work was being done by, or with help from, machines. For example, Amazon.com reduced the need for retail staffers; computerized kiosks in hotels and airports replaced clerks; voice-recognition and speech systems replaced customer support staff and operators; and businesses of all kinds took advantage of tools such as enterprise resource planning software. "A classically trained economist would say: 'This just means there's a big adjustment taking place until we find the new equilibrium—the new stuff for people to do,' " says McAfee.

We've certainly made such adjustments before. But whereas agricultural advances played out over a century and electrification and factory automation rolled out over decades, the power of some information technologies is essentially doubling every two years or so as a consequence of Moore's Law. It took some time for IT to fully replace the paper-driven workflows in cubicles, management suites, and retail stores. (In the 1980s and early 1990s productivity grew slowly, and then it took off after 1996; some economists explained that IT was finally being used effectively.) But now, Brynjolfsson and McAfee argue, the efficiencies and automation opportunities made possible by IT are advancing too fast for the labor market to keep up.

More evidence that technology has reduced the number of good jobs can be found in a working paper by David Autor, an economist at MIT, and David Dorn, an economist at the Center for Monetary and Financial Studies in Madrid. They too point to the crucial years of 2000–2005. Job growth happened mainly at the ends of the spectrum: in lower-paying positions, in areas such as personal care, cleaning services, and security, and in higher-end professional positions for technicians, managers, and the like. For laborers, administrative assistants, production workers, and sales representatives, the job market didn't grow as fast—or even shrank. Subsequent research showed that things got worse after 2007. During the recession, nearly all the nation's job losses were in those middle categories—the positions easiest to replace, fully or in part, by technology.

Brynjolfsson says the trends are "troubling." And they are global; some of the jobs that IT threatens, for example, are at electronics factories in China and transcription services in India. "This is not about replacing all work, but rather about tectonic shifts that have left millions much worse off and others much better off," he says. While he doesn't believe the problem is permanent, that's of little solace to the millions out of work now, and they may not be paid at their old rates even when they do find new jobs. "Over the longer term, they will develop new skills, or entrepreneurs will figure out ways of making use of their skills, or wages will drop, or all three of those things will happen," he says. "But in the short run, your old set of skills that created a lot of value are not useful anymore."

This means there's a risk, unless the economy generates new high-quality jobs, that the people in the middle will face the prospect of menial jobs—whose wages will actually decline as more people compete for them. "Theory says the labor market will 'clear.' There are always things for people to do," Autor says. "But it doesn't say at what price." And even as it gets crowded and potentially even less rewarding at the bottom, employees at the top are getting paid more, thanks to the multiplier effects of technology. Some 60 percent of the income growth in the United States between 2002 and 2007 went to the top 1 percent of Americans—the bulk of whom are executives whose companies are getting richer by using IT to become more efficient, Brynjolfsson and McAfee point out.

Dramatic shifts have happened before. In 1800, 90 percent of Americans were employed in agriculture. The figure was down to 41 percent by 1900 and stands at 2 percent today. People work, instead, in new industries that were unimaginable in the early 19th century. Such a transformation could happen again. Today's information technologies, even as they may do short-term harm to some kinds of employees, are clearly a boon to entrepreneurs, who now have cheaper and more powerful tools at their disposal than at any other time in history. As jobs are lost, Brynjolfsson says, "we will be running an experiment on the economy to see if entrepreneurs invent new ways to be productive equally quickly." As examples, he points to eBay and Amazon Marketplace, which together allow hundreds of thousands of people to make their living hawking items to customers around the world.

The problem, he says, is that not enough people are sufficiently educated or technologically savvy to exploit such rapid advances and develop as-yet-unimagined entrepreneurial niches. He and McAfee conclude their book by arguing that the same technologies now making industry far more productive should be applied to updating and improving the educational system. (In one promising example they cite, 58,000 people went online to take an artificial-intelligence class offered by Stanford University.)

IT-based entrepreneurship isn't the only potential technological driver of new jobs. Revitalizing manufacturing (see "Can We Build Tomorrow's Breakthroughs?") could also help. But automation has made manufacturing far less labor intensive, so even a manufacturing revival is not likely to mean a great many new jobs on balance. Likewise, anyone whose hopes are pinned on "green jobs" may be disappointed. Though jobs will be created in the switch to cleaner energy sources, jobs tied to traditional energy will be lost in the same process. Many economists are not certain what the net effect will be. And in any case, these days manufacturing and energy account for small slices of the U.S. economy, which is now driven much more by the service sector. That's why fast-advancing information technologies, with their pervasive reach and their potential to create new services and satisfy new niche markets, may be a better bet for job creation—though the tumult IT is causing in the labor market isn't necessarily going to resolve itself quickly.

Peter Diamond says that one of the most important things the government can do for employment is to take care of basics, like infrastructure and education. "As long as we have so many idle resources, this is the time when it's advantageous—and socially less expensive—to engage in public investment," he says. Eventually, he believes, the economy will adapt and things will work out, once again. "Jobs have been changing and moving around—within the country, out of the country—for a very long time," he says. "There will be other kinds of jobs that still require people."

David Talbot is TR's chief correspondent.

Fracturing by any other name...

2012-01-04T08:26:00.008-05:00

Let me get this straight: people are opposed to wind turbines being sited near them because they don't like the way they look or the swishing sound they make. I guess they prefer fires and oil spills in the Gulf resulting from oil drilling or fracking-related earthquakes in the Midwest? And what about the greenhouse has emissions?

The oil and gas industries are running some very expensive PR ads on television an in major newspapers these days. Shoring up their image in the face of harsh realities and the threat posed by the emerging offshore wind industry.(GW)

Ohio Shuts Wells Following Quakes

By Daniel Gilbert
Wall Street Journal
JANUARY 3, 2012

Ohio became the latest state to take action on the possible link between seismic activity and wells used to dispose of waste water from oil and gas production when state officials ordered a halt to the practice near Youngstown this weekend after several minor earthquakes.

The wells, known as injection wells, have been proliferating in Ohio to accommodate growing volumes of waste water left over from hydraulic fracturing, which involves blasting water, sand and chemicals underground to break apart dense layers of rock to free up oil and gas.

The state's move could stoke the political debate about hydraulic fracturing, also called fracking, a technique that has sparked an energy boom in several states but also concerns from environmental advocates.

The decision also highlights a controversy surrounding the exporting of fracking waste water from one state to another. More than half of the fluid injected at the Youngstown well came from Pennsylvania, said Andy Ware, deputy director of the Ohio Department of Natural Resources.

Ohio regulators previously asked the company operating the Youngstown well, D&L Energy Inc., to stop injecting waste water after a 2.7-magnitude earthquake Dec. 24. But on Saturday evening, officials declared a moratorium on all injections within a five-mile radius of the well after another, 4.0-magnitude earthquake earlier in the day.

There have been 11 small temblors around the well since March, roiling the rustbelt region of northeast Ohio, which has no known history of seismic activity.

"While we couldn't say for sure that there's a direct causation between the injection well and the earthquakes, we thought it better to be overly cautious," Mr. Ware said.

Arkansas regulators last year declared a moratorium on injection wells in the vicinity of a series of earthquakes, and in 2010 researchers at Southern Methodist University also found a link between injection wells in the Dallas-Fort Worth area and nearby quakes.

The natural-gas industry has said there is no evidence their activities are causing earthquakes and that injection wells are the safest way of disposing of waste water.

"I can't wait to see the results," Ben Lupo, chief executive of D&L Energy, said in an interview last month about tests being performed to determine if the operation of his company's well caused the earthquakes.

"I really want to know if it is, which I doubt very much." Mr. Lupo didn't respond to a request for comment Monday.

Ohio last year permitted the most such wells since 1988, and 2011 also marked the first year that a majority of the waste injected underground in the state came from out of state, notably from Pennsylvania, which is in the midst of a drilling boom, Ohio officials say.

Pennsylvania doesn't prohibit injection wells, but officials there say the state has limited geologic formations that are suitable for them. Pennsylvania has seven wells that can receive waste; Ohio has permitted 194.

Drilling companies operating in Pennsylvania had been disposing of 95% of their liquid waste at treatment plants until April, when the state's governor called on them to stop over concern the facilities weren't adequately removing contaminants before discharging them into waterways.

This, Ohio officials say, has prompted companies to truck their waste water over the state line.

Residents of northeast Ohio are hoping that drilling will reverse the region's economic fortunes, which have been in decline since steel mills closed a generation ago.

But receiving waste from other states doesn't go over well in communities such as Hubbard Township, a mile from the Pennsylvania line. "It's too toxic to discharge into the ground in Pennsylvania, but it's OK to discharge into the ground in Ohio," said Fred Hanley, a Hubbard Township official.

Mr. Hanley has filed objections with state regulators to a proposed waste water well in the township, which would operate behind a car-repair business and an ice cream parlor. Citing environmental and economic concerns, he has written Ohio Gov. John Kasich to ask for a moratorium on such wells until their impact is studied further.

In Mahoning County, which encompasses Hubbard, the volume of waste injected from out of state rose more than 400% between March and September, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis of state data.

In adjacent Trumbull County, companies injected nearly 800% more out-of-state waste in that same period.

The Ohio Oil and Gas Association says injecting the waste underground is the safest way to dispose of it.

But the association worries that the surge in waste water from Pennsylvania will make it difficult for in-state producers to get rid of their waste and that their disposal costs will be increased, said Tom Stewart, the association's executive vice president.

Genomic costs and benefits of adaptation?

2012-01-03T08:10:00.005-05:00

In can be argued that African slaves were subjected to abrupt environmental/climate change when they were brought to America. The study referenced in the article below may offer clues as to the breadth and depth of the strategies Nature may employ to resotore/maintain overall ecological integrity. It certainly reveals our lack of understanding of that process and make us all the more wary of our ability as a species to adapt to abrupt global climate change. (GW)

Genome Study Points to Adaptation in Early African-Americans

By Nicholas Wade
New York Times
January 2, 2012

Researchers scanning the genomes of African-Americans say they see evidence of natural selection as their ancestors adapted to the harsh conditions of their new environment in America.

The scientists, led by Li Jin of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Shanghai, report in the journal Genome Research that certain disease-causing variant genes became more common in African-Americans after their ancestors reached American shores — perhaps because they conferred greater, offsetting benefits. Other gene variants have become less common, the researchers say, like the gene for sickle cell hemoglobin, which in its more common single-dose form protects against malaria. The Shanghai team suggests the gene has become less common in African-Americans because malaria is much less of a threat.

The purpose of studying African-American genomes is largely medical. Most searches for variant genes that cause disease take place in people of European ancestry, and physicians want to make sure they have not missed variants that may be more common in African-Americans and helpful for developing treatments or diagnosis.

Such searches often reveal events in a population’s history by pinpointing genes that have changed under the pressure of natural selection.

The unusually common variants identified by the Shanghai team are associated with higher risk of hypertension, prostate cancer, sclerosis and bladder cancer.

“Most of the genes associated with African-American ethnic diseases,” they write, “may have played an important role in African-Americans’ adaptation to local environment.” But the authors have not yet been able to identify the benefits they believe such genes conferred.

Mark D. Shriver, a geneticist at Penn State, said it was plausible that some versions of a gene would become more common as African-Americans adjusted to a new environment. “It’s very valid to expect that there will be factors subject to genetic adaptation and that are now more prevalent in contemporary African-Americans than in the ancestral group,” he said.

But Alkes L. Price, a geneticist at the Harvard School of Public Health, said the Shanghai team’s results, though plausible, fell short of proof. “This paper does not provide evidence of selection having occurred post-Africa,” he said.

The Shanghai researchers used a method for studying admixture, a geneticist’s term for when two populations or races intermarry; China has several such populations, perhaps accounting for the team’s interest. Using gene chips that analyze common variations in the human genome, researchers can deconstruct the chromosomes of an African-American, say, assigning each chunk of DNA to an African or European origin.

The scientists found that of the African-American genomes in their sample, 22 percent of the DNA came from Europeans, on average, and the rest from African ancestors, a figure in line with other estimates.

They then looked for sites along the genome where either European or African ancestry was present at statistically significant levels above the average, finding four regions with very common European ancestry and two with very common African ancestry. Most of these sites harbored genes of unknown function, but one, of European origin, holds a gene that combats influenza, suggesting it has become more common in African-Americans by conferring protection from the disease.

Dr. Price, however, said that two other research teams had applied the same method to African-American genomes without finding any statistically significant excess of European or African ancestry. The Chinese team, in his view, should have applied a correction factor to their statistics and, had they done so, would have obtained the same result.

In another approach, the Shanghai team focused on all the DNA segments of the African origin in the African-American genomes, discarding all the European DNA. They then compared the African component of African-American genomes with the DNA of the Yoruba of Nigeria, a well-studied population that happens to be genetically very close to the West African population from which many slaves were taken.

The Shanghai team then asked how the African genome had changed after Africans arrived in the United States. They found that versions of some genes had become more common and others less so. The less common genes included several known to be involved in protection against malaria.

Dr. Price, however, said the decrease in gene frequency might have another explanation — the fact that resistance to malaria varies in strength in different regions of West Africa. The Shanghai team may be looking at the difference in malaria resistance between the Yoruba and other African populations, not the difference between today’s African-Americans and their African ancestors, he said.

Researchers can analyze the ancestry of admixed populations because of the way the hereditary material is shuffled between generations. People have a double set of chromosomes, of which one member of each pair comes from the mother and one from the father. When the egg or sperm is made, the maternal and paternal copies of a chromosome line up and swap large chunks of DNA.

The swapped segments are so large that it takes many generations before they are whittled down to a length too small to be recognized. Meanwhile, the ancestry of each segment can be identified from its pattern of single-nucleotide polymorphisms, or SNPs, the sites on the human genome where there is commonly variation in the A, T, C and G units that make up DNA.

Among human populations, there are very few absolute differences, meaning those in which all members of one population will have, for example, unit T at a site and all members of another will have unit G. But populations do have characteristic percentages. Among Europeans, 70 percent may have C and 30 percent A at a particular SNP site, whereas in Africans the ratio may be 40 percent C and 60 percent A. So a section of genome with C at this SNP site is somewhat more likely to be European.

This is hardly decisive in itself. But take a row of 10 SNPs, and if European ancestry is more likely for most of them, then that section of DNA is probably European in origin.

Geneticists can thus deconstruct the genomes of admixed populations into a mosaic in which each segment can be traced back to one or the other of the two parent populations. This is the basis of the Shanghai team’s approach. But proving that natural selection has been at work in very recent times — in this case, the last 300 years — is very difficult, because the traces of selection are still small. To be sure of detecting such weak selection signals, Dr. Jin and his colleagues conclude, researchers in the future should analyze many thousands of genomes.

Superbee

2012-01-02T07:03:00.001-05:00

If the bees are in trouble, so are we. (GW)

In search of a better bee

By Adrian Higgins
Washington Post
December 27, 2011

On a farm on the outskirts of Frederick, Kelly Rausch and Adam Finkelstein crack open a wooden beehive whose design dates to the 19th century. Inside, they point out a superbee they have made for the 21st century.

In two months, the carefully bred queen bee has built a large, productive colony that knows how to cluster against the cold and fill the winter larder with honey.

More important, her bees have sought out and destroyed a sneaky parasitic mite that feeds on their baby sisters. “The bees are definitely taking care of everything,” said Finkelstein from behind his veil.

The desire for a bee that will look after itself may seem pretty basic. But with as many as one-third of honeybee colonies routinely dying off each year and the rest requiring extraordinary care, the quest for a better bee has become critical.

Scientists are trying to find the cause of colony collapse disorder, the five-year-old phenomenon of worker bees suddenly disappearing. Other maladies abound and may be a factor in the disorder: new pests and diseases, the effects of pesticides and the strain of industrial-scale pollination.

Farmers rely on the insect not just for honey, but also to pollinate much of our food.

From their five bee yards in Frederick County, Rausch and Finkelstein run a business called VP Queen Bees, which supplies breeder queens to producers at up to $165 a queen. The producers, in turn, propagate daughter queens by the thousands and sell them to commercial beekeepers and backyard hobbyists for about $30 each.

The object: a queen that will pass on to her colony the traits of disease and pest resistance, gentleness, productivity and winter hardiness.

The single greatest threat is an Asian mite called the varroa. It feeds on honeybee young and adults and spreads viruses.

Commercial beekeepers have turned to heavy feeding and medication to try to keep hives strong in advance of their biggest gig of the year. In the new year, beekeepers will assemble more than a million hives — half the nation’s stock — in the almond groves of California’s San Joaquin Valley, to ensure a successful pollination of the 2012 nut crop.

One of the bright spots has been the development of a bee that battles the mite.

Marla Spivak, an entomologist at the University of Minnesota, began breeding bees to fight back nearly 20 years ago. She froze pupae and waited to see which colonies would fastidiously remove the corpses from the hive. This hygienic trait, first observed in the 1940s when young were killed by disease, was effective in breaking the life cycle of the mite. She called her queens Minnesota Hygienic.

Separately, scientists at the U. S. Department of Agriculture’s honeybee lab in Baton Rouge were studying why some of their hives had low mite levels. After about 10 years of work, they finally figured it out. The bees in those colonies were able to detect mites hiding in sealed cells and feeding on developing young. The bees uncapped the cells and dragged out the mites, along with infested brood. Hybridizers label these neatnik bees varroa sensitive hygienic (VSH).

Tom Glenn, of Glenn Apiaries in Fallbrook, Calif., has worked with the lab to produce VSH breeder queens for queen producers around the nation. After 10 years, about 25 percent of the nation’s honeybees have significant hygienic behavior in their DNA, Glenn said.

As vital as the hygienic bee is, the breeder must preserve existing desirable traits — a reluctance to sting or swarm, for example, as well as genetic diversity as a hedge against future diseases or pests.

“That’s why gains are so slow,” said Susan Cobey, a bee geneticist at the University of California and Washington State University. “I would say we are just in the infancy of bee breeding.”

Finkelstein, however, says he thinks he is close to achieving his primary aim of creating a bee that can survive with just basic husbandry. He says he hasn’t medicated his hives in 14 years.

Another challenge is that unlike with apple or cattle breeding, for example, the average bee breeder cannot control the male line. The queen mates on the wing with 2o or so drones from surrounding colonies. The most able breeders are getting around this by artificially inseminating virgin queens with the semen from known drone stock, a technique perfected by Cobey. Only a handful of hybridizers can do it. Glenn is one. Rausch is another.

Creating a superbee is one thing, getting professional beekeepers to accept it is another. For now at least, there is enormous resistance by the commercial beekeeping industry to using improved bee stock without the continued regimen of medication and supplemental feeding.

“The large commercial beekeepers are essentially farmers, and they’re risk averse,” said Robert Danka, a research entomologist at the government’s Baton Rouge lab. “This is a very dangerous parasite we’re dealing with, and a vast majority believe if you stopped treating with chemicals, their bees will die,” he said.

Pat Heitkam, a major queen producer in Orland, Calif. said he spends “in excess of $40,000” a year medicating his queens against gut disease. “I’m not sure it’s necessary,” he said, but he can’t risk selling diseased bees to his customers.

Under a new initiative, entomologists are working with queen producers in California to evaluate colonies for the strongest stock. Organizers hope that this, in turn, will lead to the selection of hardier bees and, ultimately, less reliance by beekeepers on chemical treatments. The 20 producers in the program raise about half the queen bees sold in the United States.

Near-term salvation may come from backyard hobbyists, who are more willing to risk losing an unmedicated colony.

Karla Eisen of the Prince William Regional Beekeepers Association tracked the fortunes of more than 40 hives over two years and found the survival rate of locally sourced hives and queens — most of them from Rausch and Finkelstein — significantly outperformed traditionally sourced queens and bee packages from the South.

After two winters, 74 percent of the local colonies were still alive compared with 40 percent of the Southern bees.

“They call it the James Bond approach,” Spivak said. “Live and let die. You keep colonies without any medications. In theory it sounds good, except you reduce the gene pool” by losing bees that might have other valuable breeding traits.

Everyone agrees that a bee that could survive pests without the stresses of chemicals “would make beekeeping a lot easier,” said Reed M. Johnson, an entomologist at Ohio State University. In the nightmarish maze that the honeybee has found herself, breeding, he said, “is really our way out.”

Point-to-point service

2012-01-01T11:38:00.003-05:00

Maps - physical and mental are tools for helping us understand the paths from getting "from here to there". No one understood this better than Bucky Fuller. He realized the limitations that our dependence on the Mercator Map and its few alternatives forced for our travel options. His Dymaxion Air Ocean World Projection was a revelation. It offered a way to see the entire planet at one time with minimal distortions. It showed the Earth as one island in one ocean and made the option of the polar route very clear. (GW)

Airlines cleared to use Santa's short-cut

New destinations and shorter journey times on way after North Pole route is approved for passenger jets. Simon Calder reports

By Simon Calder
The Independent
December 24, 2011

Hard-pressed airlines have been handed the perfect Christmas present: permission to fly twin-jet aircraft over the North Pole, saving millions on fuel costs, opening up new destinations and reducing damage to the environment.

The easing of rules about how close twin-jets must keep to diversion airports means faster, cheaper and cleaner flights.

Until now, America's aviation regulators have insisted that the nearest suitable place to land must be no more than three hours away. That has now been extended to five-and-a-half hours – so long as the airline meets a series of criteria, from additional equipment to special training.

As a result, Boeing 777 and 787 "Dreamliner" twin jets will be able to fly almost anywhere in the world. A patch of territory in Antarctica remains inaccessible. But "Santa's short cut," as the route has been called, gives a green light to flights from Britain straight across the North Pole to Pacific islands that are currently off the route map.

Sir Richard Branson, president of Virgin Atlantic, told The Independent: "This new development really does open up a whole new world and will allow us to take our Dreamliners to more exciting and exotic places. Our new fleet of 787s could well be flying to Honolulu or even Fiji one day." Fiji straddles the 180-degree line of latitude, and the most direct track passes directly over the North Pole – though because of the distance, over 10,000 miles, the payload would need to be restricted. The new policy could also make no-non-stop routes to Tahiti in the South Pacific and Anchorage in Alaska viable.

Twin-jets have always faced tight rules on how far they can stray from a diversion airport, with good reason: the failure of one engine is potentially much more serious than for a three- or four-jet aircraft. The default is that twin-jets must be able to reach a suitable diversion airport within an hour's flying time on a single engine. The worst-case scenario assumes depressurisation as well as the failure of one engine, requiring the aircraft to stay low. This implies a distance of 400-450 miles. The rules oblige pilots to fly circuitous routes that waste time and fuel, and render many trans-oceanic trips impossible for twin-engined aircraft.

To venture more than 60 minutes away requires "ETOPS" certification. The term derives from "Extended Twin-jet Operations over water", though a common joke in aviation circles is that it really stands for "Engines Turn Or Passengers Swim". The aircraft and engine makers must convince regulators that it is safe to fly further away from a safe haven. Many twin-jets are certified for 120-minute ETOPS, while British Airways' entire Boeing 777 fleet is ETOPS-180 compliant – so the planes face few restrictions across the Atlantic.

But routes across the North Pole, as well as many trans-Pacific journeys, have hitherto been out-of-bounds.

Larry Loftis, general manager of Boeing's 777 programme said: "This is the logical continuation of the Boeing philosophy of point-to-point service. Passengers want to minimise their overall travel time."

The first airline to take advantage of the relaxed restrictions is Air New Zealand, which operates across the Pacific. The airline's chief pilot, Captain David Morgan, said: "Less fuel is burned and less carbon dioxide is emitted into the atmosphere. It's also good for customers."

The Boeing 787 is expected soon to be ETOPS-330 certified, with Airbus seeking the same for its big twin jet – coincidentally named the A330.

Not everyone in aviation is happy with the relaxation of restrictions. While it is generally accepted that dual engine failure is extremely unlikely, some safety experts express concern about cabin conditions during a diversion.

One safety manager, who wished to remain anonymous, said: "It's all very well being able to make a safe landing, but passengers are likely to be distraught and extremely cold after a five-hour diversion to an airstrip in the Arctic."

But a spokesman for the British Airline Pilots' Association said: "Our members are confident that the safety case for equipment redundancy, pilot training and passenger welfare will be fully satisfied."

And Sir Richard Branson looked forward to new sightseeing opportunities: "Apart from the stunning destinations on arrival, the Arctic scenery will be just amazing on the way."

Liberate in poetry, govern in prose

2011-12-31T10:35:00.010-05:00

Why should anyone have to sustain a 100-year struggle for their freedom? (GW)

ANC celebrates its centenary trading on past glories

South Africa's governing party, born in a township church in 1912, found it could liberate in poetry but had to govern in prose

By David Smith

guardian.co.uk
December 30, 2011

The South African president, Jacob Zuma, will be joined by foreign heads of state where it all began: a Wesleyan church in Waaihoek, Bloemfontein. At the stroke of midnight, he will step forward to light the "centenary flame" symbolising the resistance that gave hope to all of Africa.

The African National Congress, the oldest liberation movement on the continent, turns 100 years old on 8 January. A year of celebrations costing at least 100m rand (£7.9m) will kick off with a "centenary golf day", a dinner, a church service, a centennial address by Zuma, a performance of the ANC's history in song and dance and a shindig for 100,000 people.

Under the black, green and gold banner reading "100 years of selfless struggle", there will be much lionising of heroes such as Nelson Mandela, Oliver Tambo and Walter Sisulu. But in some quarters there will also be nostalgia for old certainties, a suspicion that today's leaders do not measure up to the titans of old, and a fear that South Africa's governing party enters its second century tarnished and poised to tear itself apart.

"One hundred years should be the ANC's biggest celebration, to have survived this long and be in government, but it's now a party in crisis," said William Gumede, author of Thabo Mbeki and the Battle for the Soul of the ANC. "It's a bittersweet victory. This may be the pinnacle but now it's all downhill."

Symbolically perhaps, the ANC has been forced to covertly buy its own birthplace at a hugely inflated price so it can take centre stage in the commemorations. In July, it spent 10m rand (£800,000) of public funds to regain the Wesleyan church in Waaihoek from a man who acquired it for just 280,000 rand (£22,000) eight years ago, according to South Africa's Mail & Guardian newspaper. There is now a race to complete costly renovations before the centenary flame is lit.

The church stands in what used to be a black township in Bloemfontein in Free State province. It was here in 1912, before the death of Scott of the Antarctic and the sinking of the Titanic, that a gathering of businessmen, clergymen, journalists, lawyers and teachers held a political meeting that laid the foundations of the South African Native National Congress, renamed the ANC in 1923.

The party's cause came from unlikely DNA in the shape of Britain, and Mahatma Gandhi. The latter arrived in South Africa in 1893 and blazed a trail with resistance campaigns against colonial rule. "This was the progenitor in a sense of the ANC," said Allister Sparks, a veteran journalist and political analyst.

Britain had angered the black activists and intellectuals by handing power to Afrikaners (descended from Dutch and German settlers) when the Union of South Africa was formed in 1910. "It was the betrayal of black people," Sparks added. "This is the only instance when Britain granted independence to a minority group, because it was stricken with guilt about the Boer war.

"If one is looking for an original sin in the South African story, it was that. The granting of independence to the white minority created a problem that led to apartheid."

The 1913 Natives Land Act carved up territory along racial lines, in effect giving 90% of land to white people. The ANC's first political action was to petition Britain to intervene but in vain. In 1914, Afrikaner nationalists founded the National party, also in Bloemfontein. It introduced racial apartheid (meaning "apartness" in Afrikaans) in 1948.

The ANC was banned in 1960 and began an armed struggle, carrying out 200 acts of sabotage in 18 months. The apartheid regime hit back, arresting and jailing key figures including Mandela, who would spend 27 years behind bars. Other leaders, notably Tambo, went into exile and campaigned tirelessly for international support.

The corrosive effect of sanctions, and township unrest were among pressures that brought the edifice crashing down. In 1990, the ANC was unbanned and Mandela released. The first democratic polls followed in 1994, with Mandela becoming the country's first black president. Paradoxically, Africa's first liberation movement was the last to take power.

But critics believe it is trading on past glories because the present is increasingly unbearable. Like its counterparts elsewhere in Africa, it has found it could liberate in poetry but must govern in prose, with the glue that held it together fast disappearing.

Moeletsi Mbeki, a political economist whose brother Thabo succeeded Mandela as president from 1999 to 2008, said: "A liberation movement has one project, which was to get rid of apartheid. Everybody could agree on that. A government has a multiplicity of choices. Once you have to make choices, the different schools of thought say not this choice but that one. The ANC is in a very rickety state right now."

Crime and HIV rates soared but, once in office, some veterans seemed determined to line their pockets and demonstrate the timeless truth that power corrupts. The biggest stain was a 1990s international arms deal costing an estimated 70bn rand (£5.5bn) of taxpayers' money. A decade later, with much of the military equipment redundant, official inquiries continue into allegations that bribes worth more than 2bn rand (£159m) were paid to individuals and the ANC itself.

Andrew Feinstein, an ANC MP, resigned after the party asked him to collude in a coverup of the scandal. He emigrated to London soon after and has written a book, The Shadow World, exploring the global arms trade. "In order to hide the corruption, the ANC were prepared to undermine the very institutions of democracy that they had so courageously fought to establish," he said.

"There's a strong sense that parliament has never recovered, that this was the moment at which parliament became nothing more than a rubber stamp for the ruling party. This really was the moment at which the ANC was prepared to say, 'Yes, we are prepared to sacrifice these institutions to protect ourselves, to protect the party.' It reflects a profound lack of transparency and accountability in the way the ANC operates – the corrupt core of the party. In that sense it had a devastating impact on our democracy."

For Feinstein, who had been a member of the party for much of his adult life, it was a betrayal of the basic principle. "It was an organisation that I revered and I was incredibly disappointed at how quickly South Africa had gone from this notion of the politics of the impossible, exceptional because of the personalities involved, to adopting the global norms of politics.

"I was devastated personally and in a sense of an organisation's ideals thwarted. It was a wrenching thing for me. Today it feels as though the organisation no longer has any moral fibre, and personally I find that very sad."

Along with charges of cronyism and patronage, the ANC is fractured by internecine warfare. The party's broad church of members, a strength during the struggle years, has become unwieldy, a weakness in trying to run one of the world's most unequal societies. There are battles between left and right, between African nationalists and pro-western liberals, between big egos vying for power and the riches it brings. One of Mbeki's favourite literary quotations is recycled endlessly in the South African press: "The centre cannot hold."

Poison in the bloodstream was evident when the autocratic Mbeki was ousted after an unseemly power struggle. Now Zuma, seeking re-election at the end of the centenary year, is facing an insurgency from youth leader Julius Malema. But party stalwarts play down talk of imminent implosion, noting the ANC has weathered previous internal storms.

Pallo Jordan, a former government minister and ANC member for nearly half a century, said: "One has heard it all before and one by one the prophets of doom have always been proved wrong. There is misunderstanding of the character of the movement, especially by the commentators you get in the daily press. Many of them have never been in political movements, political parties, so when they hear a heated argument, they assume, 'This is it, he'll never survive this one.' Well, the argument ends and people carry on."

Jordan added: "In a living, radical movement, as opposed to one that's conservative, there are always those tensions and there's always argument and ferment. The ANC in that respect was no different. In Britain, until Tony Blair, the relationship between the trade unions and the Labour party was one of cordiality and quarrelling. The ANC will celebrate its centenary in very good health."

Recent election results, however, suggest a gradual erosion of the support that the ANC once took for granted. The patience of voters who still lack electricity, water and other basic services is wearing thin. A growing educated middle class is losing touch with apartheid history and seeking alternatives. Some commentators predict that the party could lose its parliamentary majority within a decade.

And with the trauma of public rejection would come the greatest test of all: to avoid the example of revolutionaries such as Zimbabwe's president, Robert Mugabe, with their assumed divine right to rule.

Asked how the ANC would handle election defeat, Jordan replied: "As far as I can judge, that's so far in the future I hate to speculate because I don't know who would be the leadership of the ANC at that time. But the ANC today would hand over power gracefully and let whoever was coming into office come into office."

The party born in a township church in 1912 is at a crossroads, looking back on a proud heritage beyond praise, but contemplating an uncertain and perilous future. One man who will never criticise its actions is the retired Mandela who, just seven years younger than the ANC, remains an unswervingly loyal party man – leaving it to others to speculate whether it has failed his legacy.

"I would love to know his thoughts about that," said Amina Cachalia, 81, a struggle veteran and friend of Mandela for more than 60 years. "I'm sure he would rejoice, like I would rejoice, in a hundred years of the ANC. But I often wonder how he would relate to it today and to what is happening in the ANC.

"Not that there's a great deal that he would probably find wrong, but he was a man who always felt there should be no fighting between people wanting to be in power, and that in those years everybody was so dedicated, nobody got paid for their dedication or commitment to the struggle. I think Nelson would feel that people should be like that continuously: dedicate yourself to the people of South Africa without having a little agenda."

Environmental readers

2011-12-30T06:56:00.005-05:00

This list of most-read articles dealing with environmental issues reflects the interests of online readers of the UK's "The Independent". I'm curious to see how this compares with some popular U.S. newspaper sites. (GW)

The 12 most-read 2011 articles in Environment

The environment section covers issues which raise debate such as those concerning climate change, green living and nature. Here we take a look at the most popular articles of the year followed by an insight from our environment editor as he chooses his favourite story.

By Majid Mohamed
The Independent
December 28, 2011

The world's biggest greenhouse gas emitters, China, the US and India, agreed to a legally bound treaty to cut their emissions for the first time at the UN climate conference in South Africa earlier this month. The deal is surely the most significant environment related story of the year.

The 12 most read are those environment articles published in 2011 that have been visited by the greatest number of separate users to date.

Interesting fact: The top three most read articles this year in this section were published on a Tuesday.

The list (click the headlines to read articles in full)

1. Global warning: climate sceptics are winning the battle

By Michael McCarthy, Tuesday 11th October

Father of the green movement, James Hansen of Nasa, says scientists lack PR skills to make public listen. Dr Hansen believes "a gap has opened between what is understood about global warming by the relevant scientific community, and what's known by the people who need to know – and that's the public."

2. Oceans on brink of catastrophe

By Michael McCarthy, Tuesday 21st June

A panel of 27 scientists concluded that marine life is facing mass extinction 'within one human generation' with the state of the seas degenerating far faster than anyone has predicted according to their report.

3. YouTube sensation fuelling trade in an endangered species

By Adam Sherwin, Tuesday 22nd March

The slow loris, a species of primate native to South-east Asia, stardom on YouTube has been stoking demand among children to turn the wild animal into must-have living toys. But the primate is no pet.

4. Japan uses tsunami victims' cash to shield whalers from activists

By David McNeill, Friday 9th December

Report by David McNeill from Tokyo on how the £19 million from fund set up to rebuild coast stricken by the devastating tsunami, has been diverted to provide security for japan's whaling fleet.

5. Letters to a heretic: An email conversation with climate change sceptic Professor Freeman Dyson

By Steve Connor, Friday 25th February

Steve Connor, our science editor, asks world-renowned physicist Professor Freeman Dyson why he's one of the few true intellectuals to be so dismissive of the global-warming consensus.

6. Giant ozone hole found above Arctic

By Paul Cahalan, Monday 3rd October

Not again! Scientists have discovered a hole five times the size of Germany in the ozone layer above the Arctic which is similar to the hole over the Antarctic.

7. Why build-up of fresh water in Arctic could spell trouble for Britain

By Steve Connor, Wednesday 6th April

The consequences if this discovery could affect the warm Gulf Stream that keeps Britain mild in winter and cool in summer. Studies have shown that a surface layer of fresher water in the Arctic Ocean has increased in volume by about 20 per cent over the past two decades.

8. The plastic found in a single turtle's stomach

By Adam Sherwin, Thursday 24th March

This story revealed the threat to wildlife from debris floating in our seas. Environmentalists examined the stomach of a juvenile turtle found off the coast of Argentina discovered that, over the course of a month, the animal's faeces had contained 74 foreign objects.

9. Exclusive: BP to risk worst ever oil spill in Shetlands drilling

By Michael McCarthy, Wednesday 12th October

Our environment editor landed this scoop from internal company documents. The worst-case scenario for a spill from BP's new well would involve a leak of 75,000 barrels a day for 140 days – a total of 10.5 million barrels of oil, comfortably the world's biggest pollution disaster.

10. Victory in the campaign to ban circus animals

By Martin Hickman, Friday 24th June

The Government conceded defeat as MPs of all parties unanimously backed a ban after The Independent campaigned to ban wild animals in circuses. A petition set up by The Independent was backed by over 30, 000 signatures.

11. Ex-climate sceptic now backs global warming

By Steve Connor, Saturday 22nd October

A change of mind by a climate sceptic proved popular. Professor Richard Muller, a physicist at the University of California, Berkeley, said that there is little doubt in his mind the phenomenon of rising land temperatures is real.

12. The secret life of animals

By Guy Adams, Thursday 3rd March

The Smithsonian released a vast database of more than 202,000 "candid camera" shots, from seven major projects around the world. A moment from these animals' hidden existence was captured for posterity.

Editor's choice

Michael McCarthy, Environment Editor, The Independent

Although I spent much of the year writing about major issues like global warming and nuclear power, the 2011 story which most captured my imagination (and I like to think, perhaps the imaginations of a few other people too) concerned cuckoos, those birds with a famous call and notorious behaviour (laying eggs in other birds’ nests). Cuckoos are migrants, coming to us from Africa every spring to breed, before heading back; what has never been known is where in Africa they go.

Five cuckoos, caught in Norfolk by the British Trust for Ornithology last summer and fitted with ultra-light satellite transmitters, are now showing us exactly where they wander (currently, they’re all in the Congo rainforest). The revelation of their journeys have been wonderfully exciting for anyone interested in birds, new discoveries appearing before our very eyes. See http://www.bto.org/cuckoos

---

"We can't let the city run out of money"

2011-12-29T06:22:00.004-05:00

The governor of Michigan is preparing to take over the city of Detroit before it goes broke. This is bad news for poor people of color - especially those deemed "undesirable". Governments have used both natural (Katrina) and financial disasters to move in and eradicate communities and displace segments of the population in the name of "urban renewal" or some other convenient euphemism.

As they do, they deny any responsibility for creating the "deplorable" situation they ride in on their white horses to make right. (GW)

Michigan a step closer to Detroit takeover

Governor names team to review city's finances; new state law would allow intervention

msnbc
December 27, 2011

DETROIT — Heading down a path that could lead to the state of Michigan taking over the running of Detroit, Gov. Rick Snyder on Tuesday appointed a team to review the city's finances.

The team was named after a preliminary review of city finances showed "probable financial stress" after Detroit was unable to tackle its mounting deficits.

The team, which includes State Treasurer Andy Dillon and other local officials, has 60 days to complete its work. The formal review was announced last week.

The appointments are the next step in the review process, which is driven by expectations that Detroit will run out of cash by April.

"Given urgent and time-sensitive financial issues facing Detroit and the need to ensure critical services continue to be provided to city residents, the next step simply necessitates the appointment of a financial review team," Snyder said in a statement.

The formal review could have various results. If a financial emergency is declared to exist, the governor would have to decide on an emergency manager. But if the stress levels are considered mild, the current city management could carry on.

Detroit Mayor Dave Bing has said he will cooperate with the review process but says his budgets are the remedy to the city's financial crisis.

Last Thursday, the Rev. Jesse Jackson and U.S. Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich., joined religious and civil rights leaders to promise protests and possible civil disobedience against Michigan's new emergency manager law that could lead to a takeover of Detroit government.

"We are prepared to go from education, mobilization, litigation, legislation, demonstration and civil disobedience," Jackson said as he and others held a news conference at Detroit's Bethany Baptist Church.

"We want a positive commitment to restoring democracy and economic justice for all citizens." Jackson said.

Snyder has called for Bing and Detroit's City Council to come up with their own financial rescue plan so Michigan can stay out of the city's business.

But Snyder has also highlighted what he said was the seriousness of the city's money problems, citing Bing's statement that Detroit could run use up its available cash in April.

"We can't let the city run out of money," Snyder said. Besides Detroit's cash-flow problem is a long-term structural deficit that needs a fundamental solution, he said. "Detroit's been in a financial crisis of some kind for decades."

The Detroit Public Schools and the cities of Flint, Pontiac and Benton Harbor already have state-appointed emergency financial managers.

Michigan recently enacted a law expanding the state's power to push aside elected local government and school officials whose agencies get in financial trouble.

Conyers said the expanded law is "seriously flawed" and said it unfairly targets communities with large numbers of minority group members.

Jackson, a Chicago-based activist, said emergency managers are like dictators with the power to override local democracy, discard union contracts and cut vital public services. He said he is seeking U.S. Justice Department intervention.

Detroit, with a population of 714,000, has faced hard times with auto industry contraction and falling revenue. More than 36 percent of its residents are below the poverty line, according to the Census Bureau.

The city was once one of the most populated in the United States. But it lost 25 percent of its residents between 2000 and 2010, the fastest decline for any municipality with more than 100,000 residents besides New Orleans.

Reuters and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Climate research stands at a crossroads

2011-12-27T07:56:00.002-05:00

Let it suffice to say that their is a serious lack of Comprehensive Anticipatory Planning within the federal government when it comes to the greatest challenge facing society. (GW)

Harsh Political Reality Slows Climate Studies Despite Extreme Year

By Justin Gillis
New York Times
December 24, 2011

At the end of one of the most bizarre weather years in American history, climate research stands at a crossroads.

Scientists say they could, in theory, do a much better job of answering the question “Did global warming have anything to do with it?” after extreme weather events like the drought in Texas and the floods in New England.

But for many reasons, efforts to put out prompt reports on the causes of extreme weather are essentially languishing. Chief among the difficulties that scientists face: the political environment for new climate-science initiatives has turned hostile, and with the federal budget crisis, money is tight.

And so, as the weather becomes more erratic by the year, the public is left to wonder what is going on.

When 2010 ended, it seemed as if people had lived through a startling year of weather extremes. But in the United States, if not elsewhere, 2011 has surpassed that.

A typical year in this country features three or four weather disasters whose costs exceed $1 billion each. But this year, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has tallied a dozen such events, including wildfires in the Southwest, floods in multiple regions of the country and a deadly spring tornado season. And the agency has not finished counting. The final costs are certain to exceed $50 billion.

“I’ve been a meteorologist 30 years and never seen a year that comes close to matching 2011 for the number of astounding, extreme weather events,” Jeffrey Masters, a co-founder of the popular Web site Weather Underground, said last month. “Looking back in the historical record, which goes back to the late 1800s, I can’t find anything that compares, either.”

Many of the individual events in 2011 do have precedents in the historical record. And the nation’s climate has featured other concentrated periods of extreme weather, including severe cold snaps in the early 20th century and devastating droughts and heat waves in the Dust Bowl era of the 1930s.

But it is unusual, if not unprecedented, for so many extremes to occur in such a short span. The calamities in 2011 included wildfires that scorched millions of acres, extreme flooding in the Upper Midwest and the Mississippi River Valley and heat waves that shattered records in many parts of the country. Abroad, massive floods inundated Australia, the Philippines and large parts of Southeast Asia.

A major question nowadays is whether the frequency of particular weather extremes is being affected by human-induced climate change.

Climate science already offers some insight. Researchers have proved that the temperature of the earth’s surface is rising, and they are virtually certain that the human release of greenhouse gases, mainly from the burning of fossil fuels, is the major reason. For decades, they have predicted that this would lead to changes in the frequency of extreme weather events, and statistics show that has begun to happen.

For instance, scientists have long expected that a warming atmosphere would result in fewer extremes of low temperature and more extremes of high temperature. In fact, research shows that about two record highs are being set in the United States for every record low, and similar trends can be detected in other parts of the world.

Likewise, a well-understood physical law suggests that a warming atmosphere should hold more moisture. Scientists have directly measured the moisture in the air and confirmed that it is rising, supplying the fuel for heavier rains, snowfalls and other types of storms.

“We are changing the large-scale properties of the atmosphere — we know that beyond a shadow of a doubt,” said Benjamin D. Santer, a leading climate scientist who works at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California. “You can’t engage in this vast planetary experiment — warming the surface, warming the atmosphere, moistening the atmosphere — and have no impact on the frequency and duration of extreme events.”

But if the human contribution to heat and precipitation is clear, scientists are on shakier ground analyzing many other events. Tornadoes, the deadliest weather disaster to hit the country this year, present a particularly thorny case.

On their face, weather statistics suggest that tornadoes are becoming more numerous as the climate warms. But tornadoes are small and hard to count, and scientists have little confidence in the accuracy of older data, which means they do not know whether to believe the apparent increase. Likewise, the computer programs they use to analyze and forecast the climate do not do a good job of representing events as small as tornadoes.

Some scientists have offered theories about how increasing heat and moisture may have made tornado outbreaks more likely, but these have not yet been tested in rigorous analyses. Many other types of extreme weather fall into this category, with scientists lacking a strong basis for attributing increases to human activity, or for discounting a human effect.

The question can sometimes be answered with focused studies of a specific weather event, but these are often finished years afterward. Lately, scientists have been discussing whether they can do a better job of analyzing events within days or weeks, not years.

“It’s clear we do have the scientific tools and the statistical wherewithal to begin answering these types of questions,” Dr. Santer said.

But doing this on a regular basis would probably require new personnel spread across several research teams, along with a strong push by the federal government, which tends to be the major source of financing and direction for climate and weather research. Yet Washington is essentially frozen on the subject of climate change.

This year, when the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration tried to push through a reorganization that would have provided better climate forecasts to businesses, citizens and local governments, Republicans in the House of Representatives blocked it. The idea had originated in the Bush administration, was strongly endorsed by an outside review panel and would have cost no extra money. But the House Republicans, many of whom reject the overwhelming scientific consensus about the causes of global warming, labeled the plan an attempt by the Obama administration to start a “propaganda” arm on climate.

In an interview, Jane Lubchenco, the director of NOAA, rejected that claim and said her agency had been deluged with information requests regarding future climate risks. “It’s truly unfortunate that we are not allowed to become more effective and efficient in delivering that information,” she said.

NOAA does finance research to understand the causes of weather extremes, as do the National Science Foundation and the Department of Energy. But with the strains on the federal budget, Dr. Lubchenco said, “it’s going to be more and more challenging to devote resources to many of our research programs.”

Some steps are being taken. Peter A. Stott, a leading climate scientist in Britain, has been pressing colleagues on both sides of the Atlantic to develop a robust capability to analyze weather extremes in real time. He is part of a group that expects to publish, next summer, the first complete analysis of a full year of extremes, focusing on 2011.

In an interview, Dr. Stott said the goal was to get to a point where “the methodologies are robust enough that you can do it in a kind of handle-turning way.”

But he added that it was important to start slowly and establish a solid scientific foundation for this type of work. That might mean that some of the early analyses would not be especially satisfying to the public.

“In some cases, we would say we have a confident result,” Dr. Stott said. “We may in some cases have to say, with the current state of the science, it’s not possible to make a reliable attribution statement at this point.”

"If that's art, then I'm a Hottentot"

2011-12-26T10:49:00.004-05:00

Thanks to Rebecca Todd for posting this article that appeared in The Independent back in 1995. It's an interesting follow-up to my previous post. Goes to show there's no denying the power of art. A power that government has no qualms about maniupulating.

Long live guerrilla art. (GW)

Modern art was CIA 'weapon'

Revealed: how the spy agency used unwitting artists such as Pollock and de Kooning in a cultural Cold War

By Frances Stonor Saunders
The Independent
22 October 1995

For decades in art circles it was either a rumour or a joke, but now it is confirmed as a fact. The Central Intelligence Agency used American modern art - including the works of such artists as Jackson Pollock, Robert Motherwell, Willem de Kooning and Mark Rothko - as a weapon in the Cold War. In the manner of a Renaissance prince - except that it acted secretly - the CIA fostered and promoted American Abstract Expressionist painting around the world for more than 20 years.

The connection is improbable. This was a period, in the 1950s and 1960s, when the great majority of Americans disliked or even despised modern art - President Truman summed up the popular view when he said: "If that's art, then I'm a Hottentot." As for the artists themselves, many were ex- com- munists barely acceptable in the America of the McCarthyite era, and certainly not the sort of people normally likely to receive US government backing.

Why did the CIA support them? Because in the propaganda war with the Soviet Union, this new artistic movement could be held up as proof of the creativity, the intellectual freedom, and the cultural power of the US. Russian art, strapped into the communist ideological straitjacket, could not compete.

The existence of this policy, rumoured and disputed for many years, has now been confirmed for the first time by former CIA officials. Unknown to the artists, the new American art was secretly promoted under a policy known as the "long leash" - arrangements similar in some ways to the indirect CIA backing of the journal Encounter, edited by Stephen Spender.

The decision to include culture and art in the US Cold War arsenal was taken as soon as the CIA was founded in 1947. Dismayed at the appeal communism still had for many intellectuals and artists in the West, the new agency set up a division, the Propaganda Assets Inventory, which at its peak could influence more than 800 newspapers, magazines and public information organisations. They joked that it was like a Wurlitzer jukebox: when the CIA pushed a button it could hear whatever tune it wanted playing across the world.

The next key step came in 1950, when the International Organisations Division (IOD) was set up under Tom Braden. It was this office which subsidised the animated version of George Orwell's Animal Farm, which sponsored American jazz artists, opera recitals, the Boston Symphony Orchestra's international touring programme. Its agents were placed in the film industry, in publishing houses, even as travel writers for the celebrated Fodor guides. And, we now know, it promoted America's anarchic avant-garde movement, Abstract Expressionism.

Initially, more open attempts were made to support the new American art. In 1947 the State Department organised and paid for a touring international exhibition entitled "Advancing American Art", with the aim of rebutting Soviet suggestions that America was a cultural desert. But the show caused outrage at home, prompting Truman to make his Hottentot remark and one bitter congressman to declare: "I am just a dumb American who pays taxes for this kind of trash." The tour had to be cancelled.

The US government now faced a dilemma. This philistinism, combined with Joseph McCarthy's hysterical denunciations of all that was avant-garde or unorthodox, was deeply embarrassing. It discredited the idea that America was a sophisticated, culturally rich democracy. It also prevented the US government from consolidating the shift in cultural supremacy from Paris to New York since the 1930s. To resolve this dilemma, the CIA was brought in.

The connection is not quite as odd as it might appear. At this time the new agency, staffed mainly by Yale and Harvard graduates, many of whom collected art and wrote novels in their spare time, was a haven of liberalism when compared with a political world dominated by McCarthy or with J Edgar Hoover's FBI. If any official institution was in a position to celebrate the collection of Leninists, Trotskyites and heavy drinkers that made up the New York School, it was the CIA.

Until now there has been no first-hand evidence to prove that this connection was made, but for the first time a former case officer, Donald Jameson, has broken the silence. Yes, he says, the agency saw Abstract Expressionism as an opportunity, and yes, it ran with it.

"Regarding Abstract Expressionism, I'd love to be able to say that the CIA invented it just to see what happens in New York and downtown SoHo tomorrow!" he joked. "But I think that what we did really was to recognise the difference. It was recognised that Abstract Expression- ism was the kind of art that made Socialist Realism look even more stylised and more rigid and confined than it was. And that relationship was exploited in some of the exhibitions.

"In a way our understanding was helped because Moscow in those days was very vicious in its denunciation of any kind of non-conformity to its own very rigid patterns. And so one could quite adequately and accurately reason that anything they criticised that much and that heavy- handedly was worth support one way or another."

To pursue its underground interest in America's lefty avant-garde, the CIA had to be sure its patronage could not be discovered. "Matters of this sort could only have been done at two or three removes," Mr Jameson explained, "so that there wouldn't be any question of having to clear Jackson Pollock, for example, or do anything that would involve these people in the organisation. And it couldn't have been any closer, because most of them were people who had very little respect for the government, in particular, and certainly none for the CIA. If you had to use people who considered themselves one way or another to be closer to Moscow than to Washington, well, so much the better perhaps."

This was the "long leash". The centrepiece of the CIA campaign became the Congress for Cultural Freedom, a vast jamboree of intellectuals, writers, historians, poets, and artists which was set up with CIA funds in 1950 and run by a CIA agent. It was the beach-head from which culture could be defended against the attacks of Moscow and its "fellow travellers" in the West. At its height, it had offices in 35 countries and published more than two dozen magazines, including Encounter.

The Congress for Cultural Freedom also gave the CIA the ideal front to promote its covert interest in Abstract Expressionism. It would be the official sponsor of touring exhibitions; its magazines would provide useful platforms for critics favourable to the new American painting; and no one, the artists included, would be any the wiser.

This organisation put together several exhibitions of Abstract Expressionism during the 1950s. One of the most significant, "The New American Painting", visited every big European city in 1958-59. Other influential shows included "Modern Art in the United States" (1955) and "Masterpieces of the Twentieth Century" (1952).

Because Abstract Expressionism was expensive to move around and exhibit, millionaires and museums were called into play. Pre-eminent among these was Nelson Rockefeller, whose mother had co-founded the Museum of Modern Art in New York. As president of what he called "Mummy's museum", Rockefeller was one of the biggest backers of Abstract Expressionism (which he called "free enterprise painting"). His museum was contracted to the Congress for Cultural Freedom to organise and curate most of its important art shows.

The museum was also linked to the CIA by several other bridges. William Paley, the president of CBS broadcasting and a founding father of the CIA, sat on the members' board of the museum's International Programme. John Hay Whitney, who had served in the agency's wartime predecessor, the OSS, was its chairman. And Tom Braden, first chief of the CIA's International Organisations Division, was executive secretary of the museum in 1949.

Now in his eighties, Mr Braden lives in Woodbridge, Virginia, in a house packed with Abstract Expressionist works and guarded by enormous Alsatians. He explained the purpose of the IOD.

"We wanted to unite all the people who were writers, who were musicians, who were artists, to demonstrate that the West and the United States was devoted to freedom of expression and to intellectual achievement, without any rigid barriers as to what you must write, and what you must say, and what you must do, and what you must paint, which was what was going on in the Soviet Union. I think it was the most important division that the agency had, and I think that it played an enormous role in the Cold War."

He confirmed that his division had acted secretly because of the public hostility to the avant-garde: "It was very difficult to get Congress to go along with some of the things we wanted to do - send art abroad, send symphonies abroad, publish magazines abroad. That's one of the reasons it had to be done covertly. It had to be a secret. In order to encourage openness we had to be secret."

If this meant playing pope to this century's Michelangelos, well, all the better: "It takes a pope or somebody with a lot of money to recognise art and to support it," Mr Braden said. "And after many centuries people say, 'Oh look! the Sistine Chapel, the most beautiful creation on Earth!' It's a problem that civilisation has faced ever since the first artist and the first millionaire or pope who supported him. And yet if it hadn't been for the multi-millionaires or the popes, we wouldn't have had the art."

Would Abstract Expressionism have been the dominant art movement of the post-war years without this patronage? The answer is probably yes. Equally, it would be wrong to suggest that when you look at an Abstract Expressionist painting you are being duped by the CIA.

But look where this art ended up: in the marble halls of banks, in airports, in city halls, boardrooms and great galleries. For the Cold Warriors who promoted them, these paintings were a logo, a signature for their culture and system which they wanted to display everywhere that counted. They succeeded.

* The full story of the CIA and modern art is told in 'Hidden Hands' on Channel 4 next Sunday at 8pm. The first programme in the series is screened tonight. Frances Stonor Saunders is writing a book on the cultural Cold War.

Covert Operation

In 1958 the touring exhibition "The New American Painting", including works by Pollock, de Kooning, Motherwell and others, was on show in Paris. The Tate Gallery was keen to have it next, but could not afford to bring it over. Late in the day, an American millionaire and art lover, Julius Fleischmann, stepped in with the cash and the show was brought to London.

The money that Fleischmann provided, however, was not his but the CIA's. It came through a body called the Farfield Foundation, of which Fleischmann was president, but far from being a millionaire's charitable arm, the foundation was a secret conduit for CIA funds.

So, unknown to the Tate, the public or the artists, the exhibition was transferred to London at American taxpayers' expense to serve subtle Cold War propaganda purposes. A former CIA man, Tom Braden, described how such conduits as the Farfield Foundation were set up. "We would go to somebody in New York who was a well-known rich person and we would say, 'We want to set up a foundation.' We would tell him what we were trying to do and pledge him to secrecy, and he would say, 'Of course I'll do it,' and then you would publish a letterhead and his name would be on it and there would be a foundation. It was really a pretty simple device."

Julius Fleischmann was well placed for such a role. He sat on the board of the International Programme of the Museum of Modern Art in New York - as did several powerful figures close to the CIA.

The Radical Camera

2011-12-24T06:59:00.004-05:00

Art arguably provides the most accurate and prescient window on society available to us. Sociologist Robert Nisbet once wrote that writers like Dickens offered the most insightful portraits of the a society's dynamic and collective psyche.

The invention of the camera provided another eye - more literal, but in the hands of some gifted and socially aware artists, no less poetic. And just as radical in the sense of its power to expose the abuses of power. (GW)

Artists Equipped With a Social Conscience

By Karen Rosenberg
New York Times
December 22, 2011

One of many artistic casualties of the McCarthy-era blacklists was the Photo League, a New York school and salon for amateur and professional photographers. Progressive in its politics and uncompromising in its aesthetics, the league was the place to be if you had a hand-held 35-millimeter camera and a left-leaning social conscience — and particularly if you believed, to borrow a bit of contemporary parlance, that photography was fine art for the 99 percent.

Its members — among them Berenice Abbott, Aaron Siskind and Weegee — are now reunited in “The Radical Camera: New York’s Photo League 1936-1951” at the Jewish Museum. This stirring show traces the group’s history through some 145 vintage photographs.

A collaboration between the Jewish Museum and the Columbus Museum of Art, which both have extensive holdings of Photo League work, “Radical Camera” was organized by the team of Mason Klein (from the Jewish Museum) and Catherine Evans (from the Columbus Museum).

The exhibition is, in some ways, as unwieldy as its subject. The curators have a lot to say about documentary photography in general, which went through a kind of growth spurt between the Depression and the Cold War, nurtured by an explosion of photojournalism in magazines like Life and Look.

They deserve a lot of credit, though, for capturing the breadth and spirit of the league. There are some big names in “Radical Camera,” but the show’s best moments involve lesser-known talents like Lucy Ashjian, Jerome Liebling and Sid Grossman.

The Photo League had roots in the workers’ movement, though by the 1950s it was hardly the political center the blacklist made it out to be. The league evolved from an organization called Workers International Relief, founded in 1930, which produced an illustrated journal that was modeled on European Communist weeklies like The Worker’s Illustrated Newspaper.

By 1933 this coterie had started to focus on moviemaking and rechristened itself the Workers Film and Photo League, turning out Depression-era newsreels like the one excerpted at the beginning of “Radical Camera.”

Titled “Workers Newsreel Unemployment Special,” the film shows protesters gathering in Union Square to demand government assistance for the jobless. These timely visuals are accompanied by even timelier text: “In the richest country in the world, two billion dollars of relief for the bankers and industrialists ... but no help for the unemployed.”

In 1936, the group’s photographers split off from its filmmakers, and the Photo League was born. But the social-documentary impulse of the group’s earlier incarnations remained; many early Photo League members modeled themselves on Lewis Hine and Paul Strand, represented in the show by Strand’s famous “Wall Street” (1915) and Hine’s heartstring-tugging shot of a Washington newsboy (1912).

Some, like Arthur Rothstein and Sid Grossman, traveled to the Dust Bowl to photograph its ravaged farming communities. But many others found plentiful subject matter close to home: in Lower East Side tenements, along the Third Avenue El and on Coney Island.

They brought empathy, but also humor, to their urban vignettes. In a shot by Eliot Elisofon, children scamper around an empty lot behind a sign that reads “WPA Cleaned This Area ... Keep it Clean.” And in Morris Engel’s “Women on the Beach, Coney Island,” an ill-fitting bathing suit is front and center.

Sometimes they fell prey to stereotypes, as in the four-year group project “Harlem Document” (1936-40), spearheaded by Mr. Siskind and published in Look.” It provided ample, but often superficial, evidence of poverty and dangerous living conditions — for example in Jack Manning’s shot of fire escapes teeming with residents during an Elks Parade. Mr. Siskind later acknowledged: “Our study was definitely distorted. We didn’t give a complete picture of Harlem.”

Other Photo League efforts, though, reveal a deep connection to a neighborhood. In Walter Rosenblum’s look at life along Pitt Street on the Lower East Side (his own childhood haunt), you can tell that he identifies with the youngsters in his frame: the girl on a swing set under the Williamsburg Bridge, or the boys making chalk drawings in the shadows of tenements.

Rosenblum later went to work as a combat photographer, and the show includes one of his shots from Omaha Beach on D-Day. Back in New York, many of the League’s women found new opportunities — albeit temporary ones — during the war. A 1945 image by Ida Wyman, who became the first female photo printer at Acme Newspictures, shows the front of an Italian restaurant near her office; a sign reads “Ladies Invited.”

By this point the league was a fully functioning school and exhibition space. It was also a social organization, a place where young men and women (many of them first-generation Jewish-Americans) could mingle at lectures and parties. It held popular “photo hunts,” sending members all over the city on wacky assignments, and fund-raisers called “Crazy Camera Balls.” (A cheerful flier for one of these reads, “Come dressed as your favorite photograph!”)

Just a few years later, though — on Dec. 5, 1947, to be precise — the league appeared on a list of organizations considered “totalitarian, fascist, communist or subversive” by the United States Attorney General. It responded with an open letter and a 1948 retrospective exhibition, “This is the Photo League.” But it was dealt a fatal blow during a 1949 trial of alleged Communist Party officials, when a league member turned F.B.I. informant called the Photo League a Communist front and singled out its leading teacher, Sid Grossman, as a party recruiter.

Membership became too dangerous. Newspapers and magazines snubbed league-affiliated photographers; photojournalists couldn’t get passports. In 1951, the Photo League closed its doors.

Mr. Grossman fled to Provincetown, Mass. The photographs he made there, nearly abstract overhead shots of birds on water, make a rather depressing coda to “Radical Camera.” But the show’s overall message is an uplifting one, epitomized by Mr. Grossman’s earlier photograph “Coney Island” (1947): a boisterous, gang’s-all-here group portrait.

“The Radical Camera: New York’s Photo League, 1936-1951” continues through March 25 at the Jewish Museum, 1109 Fifth Avenue, at 92nd Street, Manhattan; (212) 423-3200, thejewishmuseum.org.

Floating in the wind

2011-12-23T08:30:00.006-05:00

Back in late 1999 University of Massachusetts professor Jim Manwell called me in my office at the Massachusetts Renewable Energy Trust where I had recently started to work. Professor Manwell wanted to talk about offshore wind energy. He was concerned that none of our official documents identified offshore wind as a potential renewable energy source for the Commonwealth.

This is when I first learned about Professor Bill Heronemus of UMass -- a former nuclear engineer who saw the light (and felt the wind) and became the university's first professor of wind energy. He was known the world over as the “father of modern windpower”. In the 1970s he wrote about the tremendous potential of the wind source flowing over the waters off the Atlantic coast -- which he estimated could power all of Massachusetts. Professor Heronemus also proposed that the wind turbines harvesting this energy should be floating. (GW)

Can Floating Turbines Save Wind Power?

Two new concepts for floating wind turbines put the future of wind energy out to sea.

BY Stephanie Warren
Popular Mechanics
December 22, 2011

The best place to build the wind farms of the future is the open ocean. While the breeze can be frustratingly variable on land, if you travel just 20 miles off the coastline, the wind blows at a consistent clip of around 33 feet per second.

But along most parts of the coastal United States, the ocean floor drops off quickly. That makes standard offshore turbines, the kind that are fixed to the sea bottom for stability, too expensive to be worth it. Two companies, Sway and Principle Power, are currently testing a new kind of technology to combat this problem: floating wind turbines.

Principle's turbine is called WindFloat; the company has a prototype currently working in the waters off Portugal. It sits atop a base formed by three pontoons anchored to the seafloor by cables. Its 240-ton nacelle (gear housing) turns to meet the breeze, the way a land-based turbine does.

Sway's prototype, operating in Norway, is more of a small tower. Its center of gravity lies below the structure's center of buoyancy, which lets it stay upright even in stormy seas. With Sway, the entire tower rotates to get in the best position to capture wind.

Though these prototypes are currently in Europe, the United States is keeping a close eye. The Department of Energy, which estimates that wind power could cover 20 percent of our energy needs by 2030, has contributed funding to both systems. The hope is that offshore wind power can alleviate some of the problems hampering that energy source in America now.

For instance, traditional wind farms are on land, many located in the Plains states. Although they can generate a substantial amount of power, the problem is transporting that power to the big cities that need it most, many of which are located hundreds of miles away in coastal areas.

By contrast, regular "fixed bottom" off-shore wind turbines are built close to the coast, within easy transport distance to large, power-guzzling cities. But they too have their cons, says Fort Felker, director of the National Wind Technology Center. For one, most residents of coastal towns simply don't want their ocean views interrupted by wind turbines. Another is that anchoring these wind turbines to the ocean floor is expensive and difficult, and the noise can disrupt marine animals. Two hundred feet is considered the maximum depth for fixed-bottom turbines, and two-thirds of the U.S. coastal ocean is deeper than this limit, Felker says.

Deep-sea offshore wind turbines have the potential to solve many of these problems. Their floating construction is ideal for the deep coastal waters of the U.S. And since they don't have to be fixed to the ocean floor, they can be assembled conveniently on dry land before they're launched (and it's possible that they can be pulled back in for repairs as well). Because the towers are far off-shore, they won't offend coastal residents, and they're perfectly positioned to take advantage of the open ocean's strong and steady winds.

The key to making floating wind turbines work is a design that collects enough energy to justify the cost of building and installing them. Luckily, experts say, the technology already has a head start: Offshore oil and gas drilling companies have long dealt with the engineering challenges of floating designs. "The challenge for the wind industry is to adapt these technologies and extract costs so that we end up with an efficient, renewable energy system," Felker says.

1. STABILITY

WindFloat's base adjusts the water level in three columns to keep the turbine level. Engineers designed Sway's tall, slender tower so that its center of gravity lies below the structure's center of buoyancy, allowing it to remain steady even when seas are turbulent.

2. AFFORDABILITY

WindFloat saves steel by placing its tower on a column instead of on a platform. The Sway design economizes and gains structural support with steel cables. Its blades are mounted downwind—the opposite of most turbines—to keep them clear of the cables.

3. ROTATION

WindFloat's 100-ton nacelle, or gear housing, turns to meet the breeze, like a typical land-based turbine. The Sway's entire tower rotates on a universal joint that connects the turbine to the tension-leg anchor; the blade clearance from the wires remains constant.

Survival of the quickest?

2011-12-22T10:41:00.009-05:00

The ability of many, if not most, plant and animal species to adapt to the rate of human-induced climate change is called into question by a recent study. (GW)

Climate changes faster than species can adapt

By Indiana University
Jerusalem Post
December 22, 2011

Climate change between now and 2100 to reach a rate 100 times faster than the rate which snakes can adapt, can they survive?

BLOOMINGTON, Ind. — The ranges of species will have to change dramatically as a result of climate change between now and 2100 because the climate will change more than 100 times faster than the rate at which species can adapt, according to a newly published study by Indiana University researchers.

The study, which focuses on North American rattlesnakes, finds that the rate of future change in suitable habitat will be two to three orders of magnitude greater than the average change over the past 300 millennia, a time that included three major glacial cycles and significant variation in climate and temperature.

“We find that, over the next 90 years, at best these species’ ranges will change more than 100 times faster than they have during the past 320,000 years,” said Michelle Lawing, lead author of the paper and a doctoral candidate in geological sciences and biology at IU Bloomington. “This rate of change is unlike anything these species have experienced, probably since their formation.”

The study, “Pleistocene Climate, Phylogeny, and Climate Envelope Models: An Integrative Approach to Better Understand Species' Response to Climate Change,” was published by the online science journal PLoS One. Co-author is P. David Polly, associate professor in the Department of Geological Sciences in the IU Bloomington College of Arts and Sciences.

The researchers make use of the fact that species have been responding to climate change throughout their history and their past responses can inform what to expect in the future. They synthesize information from climate cycle models, indicators of climate from the geological record, evolution of rattlesnake species and other data to develop what they call “paleophylogeographic models” for rattlesnake ranges. This enables them to map the expansion and contraction at 4,000-year intervals of the ranges of 11 North American species of the rattlesnake genus Crotalus.

Projecting the models into the future, the researchers calculate the expected changes in range at the lower and upper extremes of warming predicted by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change — between 1.1 degree and 6.4 degrees Celsius. They calculate that rattlesnake ranges have moved an average of only 2.3 meters a year over the past 320,000 years and that their tolerances to climate have evolved about 100 to 1,000 times slower, indicating that range shifts are the only way that rattlesnakes have coped with climate change in the recent past. With projected climate change in the next 90 years, the ranges would be displaced by a remarkable 430 meters to 2,400 meters a year.

Increasing temperature does not necessarily mean expanded suitable habitats for rattlesnakes. The timber rattlesnake, for example, is now found throughout the Eastern United States. The study finds that, with a temperature increase of 1.1 degree Celsius over the next 90 years, its range would expand slightly into New York, New England and Texas. But with an increase of 6.4 degrees, its range would shrink to a small area on the Tennessee-North Carolina border. The giant eastern diamondback rattlesnake would be displaced entirely from its current range in the Southeastern U.S. with a temperature increase of 6.4 degrees.

The findings suggest snakes wouldn’t be able to move fast enough to keep up with the change in suitable habitat. The authors suggest the creation of habitat corridors and managed relocation may be needed to preserve some species.

Rattlesnakes are good indicators of climate change because they are ectotherms, which depend on the environment to regulate their body temperatures. But Lawing and Polly note that many organisms will be affected by climate change, and their study provides a model for examining what may happen with other species. Their future research could address the past and future effects of climate change on other types of snakes and on the biological communities of snakes.

At home and not alone in the Universe

2011-12-21T09:55:00.003-05:00

In 1964 I purchased a copy of "We Are Not Alone" by Walter Sullivan. That book made a very persuasive (I thought) scientific argument for why there are likely other intelligent beings in the Universe. A good portion of the book focused on theories of how galaxies and planetary systems were formed. Sullivan argued that if planets like Earth are relatively common, so too might intelligent life. (GW)

Two Earth-Size Planets Are Discovered

By Dennis Overbye
New York Times
December 20, 2011

In what amounts to a kind of holiday gift to the cosmos, astronomers from NASA’s Kepler spacecraft announced Tuesday that they had discovered a pair of planets the size of Earth orbiting a distant star. The new planets, one about as big as Earth and the other slightly smaller than Venus, are the smallest yet found beyond the solar system.

Astronomers said the discovery showed that Kepler could indeed find planets as small as our own and was an encouraging sign that planet hunters would someday succeed in the goal of finding Earth-like abodes in the heavens.

Since the first Jupiter-size exoplanets, as they are known, were discovered nearly 15 years ago, astronomers have been chipping away at the sky, finding smaller and smaller planets.

“We are finally there,” said David Charbonneau, an astronomer at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, who was a member of the team that made the observations, led by his colleague Francois Fressin. The team reported its results in an online news conference Tuesday and in a paper being published in the journal Nature.

Dr. Fressin said, “This demonstrates for the first time that Earth-size planets exist around other stars and that we can detect them.”

The announcement doubled the number of known Earth-size planets in the galaxy to four from two — Earth and Venus.

The next major goal in the planetary hunt, astronomers say, is to find an Earth-size planet in the so-called Goldilocks zone of a star, where conditions are temperate for water and thus life. We are not there yet.

The two new planets, Kepler 20e and Kepler 20f, are far outside the Goldilocks zone — so close to the star, termed Kepler 20, that one of them is roasting at up to 1,400 degrees Fahrenheit — and thus unlivable.

Although the milestone of an Earth-size planet had long been anticipated, astronomers on and off the Kepler team were jubilant. Geoffrey Marcy of the University of California, Berkeley, another Kepler team member, called the new result “a watershed moment in human history.”

Debra Fischer, a planet hunter from Yale, who was not part of the team, said, “This technological feat is incredibly important because it means that the detection of Earth-size planets at larger distances is technically possible.”

Kepler 20e, the closer and hotter planet, is also the smaller — about 6,900 miles across, or slightly smaller than Venus — and it resides about 5 million miles from its star. The more distant planet, Kepler 20f, also broiling at around 800 degrees, is 10 million miles out from its star. It is 8,200 miles in diameter, about the size of Earth. The two planets are presumed to be rocky orbs that formed in the outskirts of their planetary system and then migrated inward.

Their star, which is slightly smaller and cooler than the Sun, is about 950 light years away from us. Kepler had previously found three larger Neptune-like planets around it, so the new observations bring the total to five so far. All the planets are well inside where Mercury would be in our own solar system, presenting a bounteous system of unlivable planets.

“This is Venus and Earth in a five-planet system,” Dr. Fischer said in an e-mail. “There’s no place like home, and the Kepler data are starting to uncover some mighty familiar architectures.”

Kepler detects planets by watching for blinks when they move in front of their stars. Since it was launched in 2009, it has found 2,326 potential planets, 207 that would be Earth-size, if confirmed as the two reported Tuesday have been.

Confirmation of a planet, however, requires additional observations, usually of its star’s wobbles as it gets tugged by the planet going around. The gravitational pull of planets as small as the Earth on their parent star is too small to measure with the current spectrographs. And so the astronomers resorted to a statistical method called Blender, developed by Dr. Fressin and Guillermo Torres of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center, in which millions of computer simulations of background stars try to mimic the Kepler signal. They concluded that Kepler 20e was 3,400 times more likely to be a planet than background noise, while the odds in favor Kepler 20f being real were 1,370 to 1.

Confirmed (or validated, as the Kepler team likes to say), they join the other planets already known to orbit the star. In a surprise for astronomers who thought they knew how planetary systems form, the orbits of the new planets are sandwiched between the orbits of the older, bigger, gassier ones, a configuration that does not occur in our own solar system.

In an e-mail, Dr. Charbonneau noted: “In the solar system, rocky worlds and gas giants don’t mingle. But in the Kepler 20 system they apparently do.”

''Flat earthers'' were running a scare campaign against wind power

2011-12-20T08:22:00.005-05:00

Opponents of wind energy in the UK have discovered a new ally: climate change skeptics. They've formed a tag-team that is working hard to downplay the need for renewables. Here in the U.S. climate change has been all but "taken off the table" as far as Congress is concerned. Consequently renewable energy advocates are afraid to even bring up the topic to help with the siting of projects like wind farms. (GW)

Wind farm opponents 'aided and abetted' by climate sceptic groups

By Ben Cubby and Josephine Tovey
The Syndney Morning Herald
December 20, 2011

THE anti-wind farm movement that is gaining influence in the NSW Parliament is being ''aided and abetted'' by climate sceptic groups and some mining figures.

The cabinet debated new wind farm guidelines yesterday, with division over whether NSW should follow Victoria and order wind turbines to be set further back from houses.

The Shooters and Fishers Party, which shares the balance of power in the upper house with the Christian Democrats, said yesterday it wanted a moratorium on new wind farms.

Industry sources said a US Tea Party-style ''astroturf'' campaign, which mimics grassroots local opposition but is at least partly directed from elsewhere, was being waged against wind energy in NSW, which was expected to bring up to $10 billion in investment this decade as it accelerated to meet the national 20 per cent renewable energy target.

Wind farm opponents include a coalition of local groups under the banner ''landscape guardians'', and the Australian Environment Foundation, which sprang up seven years ago from a conference run by the right-wing think-tank the Institute of Public Affairs, but is now a separate group.

''Our role is, if you like, aiding and abetting what local communities are doing and helping them voice their disapproval over wind farms,'' said the foundation's executive director, Max Rheese.

While local groups say they believe the inaudible noise and vibration from wind farms affect human health, the foundation does not think humans have a role in causing climate change and therefore believes wind farms are an expensive extravagance.

It hosted the British climate sceptic Lord Monckton last year and says it ''questions the whole science behind anthropogenic global warming''.

Mr Rheese said the foundation had paid for anti-wind signs at public meetings and lobbied the Shooters and Fishers Party, and the National and Liberal parties in NSW.

The Shooters and Fishers MP Robert Borsak said yesterday the party would wait for the cabinet decision but would use its critical position in the upper house to oppose any pro-wind farm legislation that came to Parliament.

The party had discussed wind farms with the foundation but had come up with its own policy calling for a moratorium and public inquiry into wind turbines, Mr Borsak said.

''We do probably see eye to eye with them on this and many issues, but this is a party position that we have finalised internally.''

The Premier, Barry O'Farrell, said in August it was his opinion that no new wind farms should be built in NSW, but it is understood there are divisions in cabinet about the issue.

The Nationals MP and Roads Minister, Duncan Gay, said yesterday his anti-wind farm views were well known and he hoped yesterday's cabinet meeting ''addresses the sins of the past''.

''I live at Crookwell; we've certainly come under the brunt of poor planning and lack of community consultation of wind farms in the past … It puts friends against friends, neighbours against neighbours.''

The Waubra Foundation is a national group arguing wind farms can cause illness because of the vibrations from turbines. It lodged a submission based on perceived health concerns with the government yesterday.

The chairman, Peter Mitchell, said his opposition to wind farms was based on health concerns and nothing to do with his background as a former director of oil and gas companies.

''The critics here are really playing shoot the messenger, which I find ridiculous,'' he said.

The British equivalent of landscape guardians, ''country guardians'', was funded and supported by elements of the British nuclear energy industry.

Labor's environment spokesman, Luke Foley, said ''flat earthers'' were running a scare campaign against wind power.

‘There’s a nobility to growing food and allowing people to share it"

2011-12-19T08:19:00.005-05:00

Bucky Fuller challenged us to "dare to be naive"in our pursuits of real solutions to some of the world's most pressing problems. The UK milltown of Todmorden has a goal to become self-sufficient in food by the year 2018. Their plan is based on a combination of sustainable agriculture techniques, community and trust.

Here's wishing the residents of Tomorden success, although it sounds as if they've already done so in many important ways. (GW)

Carrots in the car park. Radishes on the roundabout. The deliciously eccentric story of the town growing ALL its own veg

By Vincent Graff
Daily Mail
10th December 2011

Admittedly, it sounds like the most foolhardy of criminal capers, and one of the cheekiest, too.

Outside the police station in the small Victorian mill town of Todmorden, West Yorkshire, there are three large raised flower beds.

If you’d visited a few months ago, you’d have found them overflowing with curly kale, carrot plants, lettuces, spring onions — all manner of vegetables and salad leaves.

Today the beds are bare. Why? Because people have been wandering up to the police station forecourt in broad daylight and digging up the vegetables. And what are the cops doing about this brazen theft from right under their noses? Nothing.

Well, that’s not quite correct.

‘I watch ’em on camera as they come up and pick them,’ says desk officer Janet Scott, with a huge grin. It’s the smile that explains everything.

For the vegetable-swipers are not thieves. The police station carrots — and thousands of vegetables in 70 large beds around the town — are there for the taking. Locals are encouraged to help themselves. A few tomatoes here, a handful of broccoli there. If they’re in season, they’re yours. Free.

So there are (or were) raspberries, apricots and apples on the canal towpath; blackcurrants, redcurrants and strawberries beside the doctor’s surgery; beans and peas outside the college; cherries in the supermarket car park; and mint, rosemary, thyme and fennel by the health centre.

The vegetable plots are the most visible sign of an amazing plan: to make Todmorden the first town in the country that is self-sufficient in food.

‘And we want to do it by 2018,’ says Mary Clear, 56, a grandmother of ten and co-founder of Incredible Edible, as the scheme is called.

‘It’s a very ambitious aim. But if you don’t aim high, you might as well stay in bed, mightn’t you?’

So what’s to stop me turning up with a huge carrier bag and grabbing all the rosemary in the town?

‘Nothing,’ says Mary.

What’s to stop me nabbing all the apples?

‘Nothing.’

All your raspberries?

‘Nothing.’

It just doesn’t happen like that, she says. ‘We trust people. We truly believe — we are witness to it — that people are decent.’

When she sees the Big Issue seller gathering fruit for his lunch, she feels only pleasure. What does it matter, argues Mary, if once in a while she turns up with her margarine tub to find that all the strawberries are gone?

‘This is a revolution,’ she says. ‘But we are gentle revolutionaries. Everything we do is underpinned by kindness.’

The idea came about after she and co-founder Pam Warhurst, the former owner of the town’s Bear Cafe, began fretting about the state of the world and wondered what they could do.

They reasoned that all they could do is start locally, so they got a group of people, mostly women, together in the cafe.

‘Wars come about by men having drinks in bars, good things come about when women drink coffee together,’ says Mary.

‘Our thinking was: there’s so much blame in the world — blame local government, blame politicians, blame bankers, blame technology — we thought, let’s just do something positive instead.’

We’re standing by a car park in the town centre. Mary points to a housing estate up the hill. Her face lights up.

‘The children walk past here on the way to school. We’ve filled the flower beds with fennel and they’ve all been taught that if you bite fennel, it tastes like a liquorice gobstopper. When I see the children popping little bits of herb into their mouths, I just think it’s brilliant.’

She takes me over to the front garden of her own house, a few yards away.

Three years ago, when Incredible Edible was launched, she did a very unusual thing: she lowered her front wall, in order to encourage passers-by to walk into her garden and help themselves to whatever vegetables took their fancy.

There were signs asking people to take something but it took six months for folk to ‘get it’, she says.

They get it now. Obviously a few town-centre vegetable plants — even thousands of them — are not going to feed a community of 15,000 by themselves.

But the police station potatoes act as a recruiting sergeant — to encourage residents to grow their own food at home.

Today, hundreds of townspeople who began by helping themselves to the communal veg are now well on the way to self-sufficiency.

But out on the street, what gets planted where? There’s kindness even in that.

‘The ticket man at the railway station, who was very much loved, was unwell. Before he died, we asked him: “What’s your favourite vegetable, Reg?” It was broccoli. So we planted memorial beds with broccoli at the station. One stop up the line, at Hebden Bridge, they loved Reg, too — and they’ve also planted broccoli in his memory.’

Not that all the plots are — how does one put this delicately? — ‘official’.

Take the herb bushes by the canal. Owners British Waterways had no idea locals had been sowing plants there until an official inspected the area ahead of a visit by the Prince of Wales last year (Charles is a huge Incredible Edible fan).

Estelle Brown, a 67-year-old former interior designer who tended the plot, received an email from British Waterways.

‘I was a bit worried to open it,’ she says. ‘But it said: “How do you build a raised bed? Because my boss wants one outside his office window.”’

Incredible Edible is also about much more than plots of veg. It’s about educating people about food, and stimulating the local economy.

There are lessons in pickling and preserving fruits, courses on bread-making, and the local college is to offer a BTEC in horticulture. The thinking is that young people who have grown up among the street veg may make a career in food.

Crucially, the scheme is also about helping local businesses. The Bear, a wonderful shop and cafe with a magnificent original Victorian frontage, sources all its ingredients from farmers within a 30-mile radius.

There’s a brilliant daily market. People here can eat well on local produce, and thousands now do.

Meanwhile, the local school was recently awarded a £500,000 Lottery grant to set up a fish farm in order to provide food for the locals and to teach useful skills to young people.

Jenny Coleman, 62, who retired here from London, explains: ‘We need something for our young people to do. If you’re an 18-year-old, there’s got to be a good answer to the question: why would I want to stay in Todmorden?’

The day I visit, the town is battered by a bitterly-cold rain storm. Yet the place radiates warmth. People speak to each other in the street, wave as neighbours drive past, smile.

If the phrase hadn’t been hijacked, the words ‘we’re all in this together’ would spring to mind.

So what sort of place is Todmorden (known locally, without exception, as ‘Tod’)? If you’re assuming it’s largely peopled by middle-class grandmothers, think again. Nor is this place a mecca for the gin-and-Jag golf club set.

Set in a Pennine valley — once, the road through the town served as the border between Yorkshire and Lancashire — it is a vibrant mix of age, class and ethnicity.

A third of households do not own a car; a fifth do not have central heating.

You can snap up a terrace house for £50,000 — or spend close to £1 million on a handsome stone villa with seven bedrooms.

And the scheme has brought this varied community closer together, according to Pam Warhurst.

Take one example. ‘The police have told us that, year on year, there has been a reduction in vandalism since we started,’ she says. ‘We weren’t expecting this.’

So why has it happened?

Pam says: ‘If you take a grass verge that was used as a litter bin and a dog toilet and turn it into a place full of herbs and fruit trees, people won’t vandalise it. I think we are hard-wired not to damage food.’

Pam reckons a project like Incredible Edible could thrive in all sorts of places. ‘If the population is very transient, it’s difficult. But if you’ve got schools, shops, back gardens and verges, you can do it.’

Similar schemes are being piloted in 21 other towns in the UK, and there’s been interest shown from as far afield as Spain, Germany, Hong Kong and Canada. And, this week, Mary Clear gave a talk to an all-party group of MPs at Westminster.

Todmorden was visited by a planner from New Zealand, working on the rebuilding of his country after February’s earthquake.

Mary says: ‘He went back saying: “Why wouldn’t we rebuild the railway station with pick-your-own herbs? Why wouldn’t we rebuild the health centre with apple trees?”

‘What we’ve done is not clever. It just wasn’t being done.’

The final word goes to an outsider. Joe Strachan is a wealthy U.S. former sales director who decided to settle in Tod with his Scottish wife, after many years in California.

He is 61 but looks 41. He became active with Incredible Edible six months ago, and couldn’t be happier digging, sowing and juicing fruit.

I find myself next to him, sheltering from the driving rain. Why, I ask, would someone forsake the sunshine of California for all this?

His answer sums up what the people around here have achieved.

‘There’s a nobility to growing food and allowing people to share it. There’s a feeling we’re doing something significant rather than just moaning that the state can’t take care of us.

‘Maybe we all need to learn to take care of ourselves.’

Sweet spot for wind energy

2011-12-17T08:56:00.006-05:00

Not everyone is sitting back idly waiting to get "fracked" by the gas industry. Technologically, economically and environmentally sound alternatives to fracking, drilling and fissioning do exist. All we have to do to see these alternatives is open our eyes and minds to the true costs of fossil and nuclear energy. (GW)

Frack That! The Innovators in Maine Have Plans to Power the Entire State with Offshore Wind

By Anthony Wing Kosner
Forbes
December 16, 2011

Debates over new sources of energy revolve around trade-offs—and those tradeoff are becoming increasingly desperate. From “drill, baby, drill,” to fracking to the Alberta tar sands commentators tell us that we must accept dirtier and dirtier and riskier and riskier solutions to fulfilling our energy needs.

A headline on Forbes.com over the weekend caught my (and more than 25,000 other people’s) attention, “Fracking Does Contaminate Groundwater: Carry on Drilling Regardless.” Tim Worstall contends that fracking should “carry on” despite the contamination of aquifers, because the environmental impacts are priced into the royalties of those most effected—the people whose land gets fracked. And besides, we collectively as a society need the cheap energy more than the clean water (at least more than some people’s clean water). Tim is entitled to his opinion, but saying that the true costs—social, environmental and long term—are priced into the royalties is like saying that the price of gasoline at the pump takes climate change and sea level rise into account—of course they don’t.

What are we waiting for to get to the really innovative ideas? There must be solutions with less severe tradeoffs than shale gas and tar sands oil. Why lock ourselves in to processes that will only get dirtier, riskier and more expensive over time rather than ones that will build sustainable equity and reduce long-term energy costs—and environmental impacts. Why continue to procrastinating the inevitable?

I met a man in Portland, Maine, this summer who’s not waiting around to find out. Dr. Habib Dagher is founding Director of the Advanced Structures & Composites Center, a National Science Foundation funded research Center based at the University of Maine, Orono. Habib was in Portland to deliver a talk at our own homegrown TED conference, TEDxDirigo. Among the 125 R&D projects he has conducted in his 25 years at the Center, the most exciting is a plan to deploy huge offshore wind farms in the deep waters of the Gulf of Maine the could power the entire State by 2030—with an equal amount of energy left over to sell to our neighbors. That plan was the subject of his talk that day.

Dagher lays out the economic argument first. At $4 a gallon for gasoline, $5 Billion leaves the State of Maine every year. Our entire state budget is only $3.1 Billion. In 1998, energy represented 5% an average Maine family’s budget. Ten years later it was up to 20% and by 2018 he predicts it will consume 40% of an average family’s budget. Even without pricing in global warming or sea level rise, this is a shocking—and unsustainable—number.

What is the greatest opportunity to replace fossil fuels in this country? According to Habib, it’s offshore wind. One of his slides shows a map of wind energy in the United States and the largest concentration is off the far northeast coast. He has calculated that there are 149 gigawatts of wind within 50 nautical miles of the coast of Maine. That’s the equivalent of 149 nuclear power plants—with no risk of meltdowns!

The really interesting thing is that Maine turns out to be in a sweet spot for wind energy. We are far enough up the coast to be out of range of hurricanes, but close enough to the urban centers of the northeast, where 18% of the U.S. population lives, for there to be an efficient market for the excess energy we can produce. Dagher says, “there’s an opportunity for us to not only take care of ourselves, but create electrons in Maine and sell them, just like we sell paper and lobsters.”

Europe has had offshore wind farms since the early 90s, but all of the development has been in shallow waters, unlike the deep waters of the Gulf of Maine. So Dagher has used his Yankee ingenuity and come up with a truly innovative solution to erecting really big wind turbines in deep waters. He proposes to partner with and transform the Maine shipbuilding industry into a floating turbine industry. Simply put, the 300 ft tall towers can be built in dry docks at shipbuilding facilities, like Bath Iron Works, and then floated out into position. Once in position, the underwater columns are filled with water and anchored to the sea floor with giant suction cups and tension cables.

This may sound far fetched and fanciful but it’s very real and moving forward. The project has won funding from the Department of Energy and Dagher’s group is working with a consortium of 35 companies—many of them based in Maine. The first prototype turbines—the first floating turbines off the coast of the U.S.—will be installed off historic Monhegan Island this July. The first wind farm, with five floating turbines, will be completed by 2017 and a larger 500 megawatt farm (half the strength of a nuclear power plant) by 2020. This farm will be located 20 miles offshore so that the curvature of the earth will prevent it from being visible from shore and will contain 100 5MW turbines in a grid four by eight miles wide. By 2030 they plan to expand the grid of turbines tenfold, which would be enough to power the entire state and have 2.5 GW to sell. This is a $20 billion plan that could create 18,000 jobs.

The UK is embarked on a similarly ambitious plan to build 30 GW of fixed-based offshore wind by 2020, but Habib thinks we, in Maine and in the U.S. in general, have an advantage, “We’re going to float these things and beat them on cost and beat them on efficiency.” What could be a $20 billion business in Maine by 2030 could be a $200 billion business in the U.S., that could add 125,000 new jobs. And the cost differential between floating them 20 miles offshore from a domestic shipyard vs. 7,000 miles from China makes this a fairly Asia-proof business as well.

What’s the content connection here? All future tech is an exercise in speculative fiction. Turn the Peter Thiel funded Seasteading Institute‘s plans for floating, libertarian islands into empires of wind and the science fiction wheels go crazy. But what made my mind race when I heard Habib speak was imagining what kind of society we could build if we were not spending so much of working people’s wages on energy. How much more support we could give education, infrastructure, the arts, social welfare and new technologies? How much more productive we could be without the burden of punitive energy prices? And the technology to make that happen is not coming from Silicon Valley, Boulder, Atlanta or even Cambridge, but from the innovators in Maine.

Indefinite detention

2011-12-16T04:54:00.006-05:00

Political freedom is fragile. Governments find ways to subtlely chip away at our freedom - more often than not under the pretense of protecting them. (GW)

USS House Passes 'Indefinite Detention' Bill

Al-t-English
December 15, 2011

House of Representatives approves defense bill including moves to allow terror suspects to be detained indefinitely.

WASHINGTON - The US House of Representatives has voted in favor of controversial proposed legislation that would deny terror suspects, including US citizens, the right to trial and permit authorities to detain them indefinitely.

The proposed changes were included in a $662bn defence bill passed on Wednesday by the Republican-controlled House after White House officials withdrew a threat to block the bill over concerns it would undermine the US president's authority over counterterrorism activities.

In a statement, Jay Carney, a White House spokesman said "several important changes" had been made, which meant that presidential advisers would not recommend Barack Obama veto the bill.

The bill, which also endorsed tougher sanctions against Iran's central bank and freezing $700 million in aid to Pakistan, must still pass through the Senate, which is expected to vote on Thursday.

If approved, the bill would require the US military to take custody of terror suspects accused of involvement in plotting or committing attacks against the United States.

But in changes introduced under pressure from the White House, the bill was amended to say that the military cannot interfere with FBI and other civilian investigations and interrogations. The revisions also allow the president to sign a waiver moving a terror suspect from military to civilian prison.

Carney said the new bill "does not challenge the president's ability to collect intelligence, incapacitate dangerous terrorists and protect the American people."

'Lack of clarity'

But some officials had some objections to the clause. FBI Director Robert Mueller criticized the provision for its lack of clarity on how the changes would be implemented at the time of arrest.

The White House said that some of those concerns remained.

"While we remain concerned about the uncertainty that this law will create for our counter-terrorism professionals, the most recent changes give the president additional discretion in determining how the law will be implemented," added Carney.

But the bill has also attracted criticism from civil rights campaigners.

Christopher Anders, senior legislative counsel at the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), said the bill was a "big deal".

"It would authorize the president to order the military to capture civilians and put them in indefinite detention without charge or trial, with no limitation based on either geography or citizenship," he told Al Jazeera.

"The military would have the authority to imprison persons far from any battlefield, including American citizens and including people picked up in the US."

Teaching how to think versus what to think

2011-12-15T08:17:00.005-05:00

A quick (and highly unscientific) perusal of what is being taught and how at many of our finest educational institutions these days does not make me feel overly optimistic about humanity pulling itself out of our current quagmire. It almost seems as if there are more college graduates who know about hostile takeovers than the fundamentals of how the world (nature and society) works.

Bucky Fuller reminded us that bottom line the purpose of education should be to help students learn HOW to think, not WHAT to think. (GW)

What Is College For?

By Gary Gutting
New York Times
December 14, 2011

The Stone is a forum for contemporary philosophers on issues both timely and timeless.

The Stone is featuring occasional posts by Gary Gutting, a professor of philosophy at the University of Notre Dame, that apply critical thinking to information and events that have appeared in the news.

Most American college students are wrapping up yet another semester this week. For many of them, and their families, the past months or years in school have likely involved considerable time, commitment, effort and expense. Was it worth it?

When practical skills outweigh theoretical understanding, we move beyond the intellectual culture that defines higher education.

Some evidence suggests that it was. A Pew Research survey this year found that 74 percent of graduates from four-year colleges say that their education was “very useful in helping them grow intellectually.” Sixty-nine percent said that “it was very useful in helping them grow and mature as a person” and 55 percent claimed that “it was very useful in helping prepare them for a job or career.” Moreover, 86 percent of these graduates think “college has been a good investment for them personally.”

Nonetheless, there is incessant talk about the “failure” of higher education. (Anthony Grafton at The New York Review of Books provides an excellent survey of recent discussions.) Much of this has to do with access: it’s too expensive, admissions policies are unfair, the drop-out rate is too high. There is also dismay at the exploitation of graduate students and part-time faculty members, the over-emphasis on frills such as semi-professional athletics or fancy dorms and student centers, and the proliferation of expensive and unneeded administrators. As important as they are, these criticisms don’t contradict the Pew Survey’s favorable picture of the fundamental value of students’ core educational experience.

But, as Grafton’s discussion also makes clear, there are serious concerns about the quality of this experience. In particular, the university curriculum leaves students disengaged from the material they are supposed to be learning. They see most of their courses as intrinsically “boring,” of value only if they provide training relevant to future employment or if the teacher has a pleasing (amusing, exciting, “relevant”) way of presenting the material. As a result, students spend only as much time as they need to get what they see as acceptable grades (on average, about 12 to 14 hour a week for all courses combined). Professors have ceased to expect genuine engagement from students and often give good grades (B or better) to work that is at best minimally adequate.

The Stone Video Series Philosophers Speak

This lack of academic engagement is real, even among schools with the best students and the best teachers, and it increases dramatically as the quality of the school decreases. But it results from a basic misunderstanding — by both students and teachers — of what colleges are for.

First of all, they are not simply for the education of students. This is an essential function, but the raison d’être of a college is to nourish a world of intellectual culture; that is, a world of ideas, dedicated to what we can know scientifically, understand humanistically, or express artistically. In our society, this world is mainly populated by members of college faculties: scientists, humanists, social scientists (who straddle the humanities and the sciences properly speaking), and those who study the fine arts. Law, medicine and engineering are included to the extent that they are still understood as “learned professions,” deploying practical skills that are nonetheless deeply rooted in scientific knowledge or humanistic understanding. When, as is often the case in business education and teacher training, practical skills far outweigh theoretical understanding, we are moving beyond the intellectual culture that defines higher education.

Our support for higher education makes sense only if we regard this intellectual culture as essential to our society. Otherwise, we could provide job-training and basic social and moral formation for young adults far more efficiently and cheaply, through, say, a combination of professional and trade schools, and public service programs. There would be no need to support, at great expense, the highly specialized interests of, for example, physicists, philosophers, anthropologists and art historians. Colleges and universities have no point if we do not value the knowledge and understanding to which their faculties are dedicated.

This has important consequences for how we regard what goes on in college classrooms. Teachers need to see themselves as, first of all, intellectuals, dedicated to understanding poetry, history, human psychology, physics, biology — or whatever is the focus of their discipline. But they also need to realize that this dedication expresses not just their idiosyncratic interest in certain questions but a conviction that those questions have general human significance, even apart from immediately practical applications. This is why a discipline requires not just research but also teaching. Non-experts need access to what experts have learned, and experts need to make sure that their research remains in contact with general human concerns. The classroom is the primary locus of such contact.

Students, in turn, need to recognize that their college education is above all a matter of opening themselves up to new dimensions of knowledge and understanding. Teaching is not a matter of (as we too often say) “making a subject (poetry, physics, philosophy) interesting” to students but of students coming to see how such subjects are intrinsically interesting. It is more a matter of students moving beyond their interests than of teachers fitting their subjects to interests that students already have. Good teaching does not make a course’s subject more interesting; it gives the students more interests — and so makes them more interesting.

Students readily accept the alleged wisdom that their most important learning at college takes place outside the classroom. Many faculty members — thinking of their labs, libraries or studies — would agree. But the truth is that, for both students and faculty members, the classroom is precisely where the most important learning occurs.