How to feed the world ? from Denis van Waerebeke on Vimeo.

Pretty fun video that quickly explains a little about some very complicated issues. I agree that the best possible way the average person can make a difference is to move to a vegetable based diet.

Life is amazing, and seems to expand to fill every available space.

It’s clear that in the age of rapid echoing of fluff all over the internet that the truth is often playing catch up with the lies. The same happens on cable news shows where two “experts” are put on to give “both sides” of an issue.

As Dawkins points out, “both sides” do not each carry the same validity. It is important for people to be armed with good critical thinking skills or else they may think that both sides are valid and that there is some debate, when in fact these things are not under any real debate at all. The debate is fabricated by people with an agenda.

or to put it another way.

Get in the sack…

Here is a perfect example of a horrible set up. One of my favorite people, Bill Nye (the science guy) walks right into a trap on fox news debating someone who barely can control their temper, let alone contribute anything real to science.

It is embarrassing that the global warming denier gets full screen graphics, and lots of time to talk, while poor Bill is forced to hold up barely readable bits of paper and doesn’t have enough time to fully explain the bits of evidence he has brought along. I know he wanted to put right the facts on global warming, but by going on fox and agreeing to “debate” he really just makes it easier for the anti-science crowd to continue with their flim flam.

I wouldn’t be as concerned about these sort of things except for the fact that global warming has the potential to seriously (and negatively) impact the ecosystems that we rely upon for survival. To be clear I don’t think the world is going to end, I think humanity is in danger.

The man is standing on the shoulders of so many other people, it simply boggles my mind how amazing all these discovers are and how the progress has been over the years.

Life reaches out and traps energy, which in turn is used by more life, biodiversity is beautiful, amazing, sometimes harsh, but always fascinating. I am awed by the wonder of nature and how life seems to build little spaces for more life to get in there and go nuts.

(via)

Every single thing about this world is moving towards a society in which, to be successful, you need to well versed in science. Doctors, computer techs, wind turbine designers, solar panel installers, smart grid designers, farmers, road planners, architects, you name it the jobs of the future demand a fundamental understanding of science. Teaching your children to believe in drivel is verging on child abuse, as it dooms the poor kid to a future of less chances and harder struggles. If told “taking this pill will make it harder for your child to find a job in the future” no parents would give them that pill, but they think nothing of filling their child’s head full of outright lies, and flim flam.

When 30% (!!) of the people in Texas think dinosaurs and humans lived at the same time and over half reject Evolution through natural selection (one of, if not the most well documented bits of science we have)…we have problems. Do you want these people operating on you, do you want them working on your car, do you want them building your house.

Maybe they think prayer will cure your appendicitis, or maybe they think Jesus will hold your home up in a strong wind, or maybe the holy ghost will fix your muffler. You might think I am being silly, but really when you start rejecting one aspect of science because it disagrees with your holy book, what is to stop you from doing it with other things?

I recently read about religious extremists in some middle eastern countries prohibiting women from buying cucumbers, because they were “too evocative of the male form.” Basically saying that their holy book says A so you can’t do B. This is the direct result of a lack of scientific thinking. If you allow holy books to be your guide in everything you end up with things like Witch Hunts, the Taliban, and theocracies.

When I see people standing up and saying “the Bible says you can’t do xyz” I worry about where this bit of thinking leads. There is no “reason” we should listed to these people, they literally (in fact it is an important part of their world view) feel that they should base their life around the words in a book. Not because the words have been shown to be valid, but because they are in this particular book.

While there are lessons in holy books that are worth following, we know they are worth it because have critically evaluated them and found them to be worth something. We understand it is bad to kill people because it destroys the society that we all depend on for food and shelter, not because some burning bush told us to. Not only is it possible to have morals without a holy book, it is vital that we do.

Imagine if people only refrained from killing people because it was written in a certain book, if someone with enough “holy clout” came along and said “we are changing this bit about not killing people to exclude…women” (or Jews, or black people, or whites or left handed people…), then all the mindless automatons would rush out and start the slaughter. Without a built in critical thinking engine running on science whoever controls the holy book controls the world.

Science is unlike religion because it has no holy book. Science is about discovering the wonders and secrets of nature. It also doesn’t assume we are perfect. People make mistakes in science all the time. The nice thing is that using science and its principles it is possible to test if someone is right or wrong and if wrong correct that bit. This is an important point, things in science can be proven false. Holy teachings cant be tested, in fact if you try to you are often labeled a heretic and bad things happen to heretics. Science is not science if it can’t be tested.

Think for a moment about every moment of your day, from the time you get up, to the minute you fall asleep. I would challenge you to find a single solitary moment of your day that has not been, either improved dramatically, or effected deeply by science. I would be willing to wager large sums of money that you will not be able to find one single thing about your life that is not affected by the advances made in science over the last 200+ years.

Science has created the modern world we live in, for better or worse we are here now because of science. Do we really want to go back to the days when shamans, witch doctors, and holy men ruled the planet? When demons haunted the night, and life and death were based on the proclamations and divination? I think not.

- Edith Wharton

The phenomenon, described as thermopower waves, “opens up a new area of energy research, which is rare,” says Michael Strano, MIT’s Charles and Hilda Roddey Associate Professor of Chemical Engineering, who was the senior author of a paper describing the new findings that appeared in Nature Materials on March 7. The lead author was Wonjoon Choi, a doctoral student in mechanical engineering.

Like a collection of flotsam propelled along the surface by waves traveling across the ocean, it turns out that a thermal wave — a moving pulse of heat — traveling along a microscopic wire can drive electrons along, creating an electrical current.

The key ingredient in the recipe is carbon nanotubes — submicroscopic hollow tubes made of a chicken-wire-like lattice of carbon atoms. These tubes, just a few billionths of a meter (nanometers) in diameter, are part of a family of novel carbon molecules, including buckyballs and graphene sheets, that have been the subject of intensive worldwide research over the last two decades.

A previously unknown phenomenon

In the new experiments, each of these electrically and thermally conductive nanotubes was coated with a layer of a reactive fuel that can produce heat by decomposing. This fuel was then ignited at one end of the nanotube using either a laser beam or a high-voltage spark, and the result was a fast-moving thermal wave traveling along the length of the carbon nanotube like a flame speeding along the length of a lit fuse. Heat from the fuel goes into the nanotube, where it travels thousands of times faster than in the fuel itself. As the heat feeds back to the fuel coating, a thermal wave is created that is guided along the nanotube. With a temperature of 3,000 kelvins, this ring of heat speeds along the tube 10,000 times faster than the normal spread of this chemical reaction. The heating produced by that combustion, it turns out, also pushes electrons along the tube, creating a substantial electrical current.

Combustion waves — like this pulse of heat hurtling along a wire — “have been studied mathematically for more than 100 years,” Strano says, but he was the first to predict that such waves could be guided by a nanotube or nanowire and that this wave of heat could push an electrical current along that wire.

In the group’s initial experiments, Strano says, when they wired up the carbon nanotubes with their fuel coating in order to study the reaction, “lo and behold, we were really surprised by the size of the resulting voltage peak” that propagated along the wire.

After further development, the system now puts out energy, in proportion to its weight, about 100 times greater than an equivalent weight of lithium-ion battery.

The amount of power released, he says, is much greater than that predicted by thermoelectric calculations. While many semiconductor materials can produce an electric potential when heated, through something called the Seebeck effect, that effect is very weak in carbon. “There’s something else happening here,” he says. “We call it electron entrainment, since part of the current appears to scale with wave velocity.”

The thermal wave, he explains, appears to be entraining the electrical charge carriers (either electrons or electron holes) just as an ocean wave can pick up and carry a collection of debris along the surface. This important property is responsible for the high power produced by the system, Strano says.

Exploring possible applications

Because this is such a new discovery, he says, it’s hard to predict exactly what the practical applications will be. But he suggests that one possible application would be in enabling new kinds of ultra-small electronic devices — for example, devices the size of grains of rice, perhaps with sensors or treatment devices that could be injected into the body. Or it could lead to “environmental sensors that could be scattered like dust in the air,” he says.

In theory, he says, such devices could maintain their power indefinitely until used, unlike batteries whose charges leak away gradually as they sit unused. And while the individual nanowires are tiny, Strano suggests that they could be made in large arrays to supply significant amounts of power for larger devices.

The researchers also plan to pursue another aspect of their theory: that by using different kinds of reactive materials for the coating, the wave front could oscillate, thus producing an alternating current. That would open up a variety of possibilities, Strano says, because alternating current is the basis for radio waves such as cell phone transmissions, but present energy-storage systems all produce direct current. “Our theory predicted these oscillations before we began to observe them in our data,” he says.

Also, the present versions of the system have low efficiency, because a great deal of power is being given off as heat and light. The team plans to work on improving that

Do you really need another plastic go-gaw? How about using the same go-gaw you have again, or how about using a go-gaw that will last many years so you only have to buy one?

CreatureCast – Footage From The Deep from Casey Dunn on Vimeo.

I hope that this sort of video inspires people to fight hard to protect the amazing places and creatures and plants of this world. Don’t just assume that nature is something that happens “elsewhere.” We are all connected and the health of the planet is directly related to your health.

This could actually be pretty bad…A section of the Arctic Ocean seafloor that holds vast stores of frozen methane is showing signs of instability and widespread venting of the powerful greenhouse gas, according to the findings of an international research team led by University of Alaska Fairbanks scientists Natalia Shakhova and Igor Semiletov.

The research results, published in the March 5 edition of the journal Science, show that the permafrost under the East Siberian Arctic Shelf, long thought to be an impermeable barrier sealing in methane, is perforated and is starting to leak large amounts of methane into the atmosphere. Release of even a fraction of the methane stored in the shelf could trigger abrupt climate warming.

“The amount of methane currently coming out of the East Siberian Arctic Shelf is comparable to the amount coming out of the entire world’s oceans,” said Shakhova, a researcher at UAF’s International Arctic Research Center. “Subsea permafrost is losing its ability to be an impermeable cap.”

Methane is a greenhouse gas more than 30 times more potent than carbon dioxide. It is released from previously frozen soils in two ways. When the organic material (which contains carbon) stored in permafrost thaws, it begins to decompose and, under anaerobic conditions, gradually releases methane. Methane can also be stored in the seabed as methane gas or methane hydrates and then released as subsea permafrost thaws. These releases can be larger and more abrupt than those that result from decomposition.

The East Siberian Arctic Shelf is a methane-rich area that encompasses more than 2 million square kilometers of seafloor in the Arctic Ocean. It is more than three times as large as the nearby Siberian wetlands, which have been considered the primary Northern Hemisphere source of atmospheric methane. Shakhova’s research results show that the East Siberian Arctic Shelf is already a significant methane source, releasing 7 teragrams of methane yearly, which is as much as is emitted from the rest of the ocean. A teragram is equal to about 1.1 million tons.

“Our concern is that the subsea permafrost has been showing signs of destabilization already,” she said. “If it further destabilizes, the methane emissions may not be teragrams, it would be significantly larger.”

Shakhova notes that the Earth’s geological record indicates that atmospheric methane concentrations have varied between about .3 to .4 parts per million during cold periods to .6 to .7 parts per million during warm periods. Current average methane concentrations in the Arctic average about 1.85 parts per million, the highest in 400,000 years, she said. Concentrations above the East Siberian Arctic Shelf are even higher.

The East Siberian Arctic Shelf is a relative frontier in methane studies. The shelf is shallow, 50 meters (164 feet) or less in depth, which means it has been alternately submerged or terrestrial, depending on sea levels throughout Earth’s history. During the Earth’s coldest periods, it is a frozen arctic coastal plain, and does not release methane. As the Earth warms and sea level rises, it is inundated with seawater, which is 12-15 degrees warmer than the average air temperature.

“It was thought that seawater kept the East Siberian Arctic Shelf permafrost frozen,” Shakhova said. “Nobody considered this huge area.”

“This study is a testament to sustained, careful observations and to international cooperation in research,” said Henrietta Edmonds of the National Science Foundation, which partially funded the study. “The Arctic is a difficult place to get to and to work in, but it is important that we do so in order to understand its role in global climate and its response and contribution to ongoing environmental change. It is important to understand the size of the reservoir–the amount of trapped methane that potentially could be released–as well as the processes that have kept it “trapped” and those that control the release. Work like this helps us to understand and document these processes.”

Earlier studies in Siberia focused on methane escaping from thawing terrestrial permafrost. Semiletov’s work during the 1990s showed, among other things, that the amount of methane being emitted from terrestrial sources decreased at higher latitudes. But those studies stopped at the coast. Starting in the fall of 2003, Shakhova, Semiletov and the rest of their team took the studies offshore. From 2003 through 2008, they took annual research cruises throughout the shelf and sampled seawater at various depths and the air 10 meters above the ocean. In September 2006, they flew a helicopter over the same area, taking air samples at up to 2,000 meters (6,562 feet) in the atmosphere. In April 2007, they conducted a winter expedition on the sea ice.

They found that more than 80 percent of the deep water and more than 50 percent of surface water had methane levels more than eight times that of normal seawater. In some areas, the saturation levels reached more than 250 times that of background levels in the summer and 1,400 times higher in the winter. They found corresponding results in the air directly above the ocean surface. Methane levels were elevated overall and the seascape was dotted with more than 100 hotspots. This, combined with winter expedition results that found methane gas trapped under and in the sea ice, showed the team that the methane was not only being dissolved in the water, it was bubbling out into the atmosphere.

These findings were further confirmed when Shakhova and her colleagues sampled methane levels at higher elevations. Methane levels throughout the Arctic are usually 8 to 10 percent higher than the global baseline. When they flew over the shelf, they found methane at levels another 5 to 10 percent higher than the already elevated Arctic levels.

The East Siberian Arctic Shelf, in addition to holding large stores of frozen methane, is more of a concern because it is so shallow. In deep water, methane gas oxidizes into carbon dioxide before it reaches the surface. In the shallows of the East Siberian Arctic Shelf, methane simply doesn’t have enough time to oxidize, which means more of it escapes into the atmosphere. That, combined with the sheer amount of methane in the region, could add a previously uncalculated variable to climate models.

“The release to the atmosphere of only one percent of the methane assumed to be stored in shallow hydrate deposits might alter the current atmospheric burden of methane up to 3 to 4 times,” Shakhova said. “The climatic consequences of this are hard to predict.”

Shakhova, Semiletov and collaborators from 12 institutions in five countries plan to continue their studies in the region, tracking the source of the methane emissions and drilling into the seafloor in an effort to estimate how much methane is stored there.

Some Southern California cities fine residents for watering their lawns too much during droughts.

But in Orange, officials are locked in a legal battle with a couple accused of violating city ordinances for removing their lawn in an attempt to save water.

…

But city officials determined the fix was not acceptable, saying city codes require that 40% of the yard be landscaped predominantly with live plants.

…

Meanwhile, the couple said they had reduced their water usage from 299,221 gallons in 2007 to 58,348 gallons in 2009.

Seriously? What the hell is wrong with these people, hasn’t Southern California been in a drought for the last couple decades?

Every year at the place where I work, the cost of health care (and the portion I pay) goes up MORE than the amount of my yearly raise. Which means in a nutshell that I take a pay cut every year to continue working at my job because of the cost of health care. That pretty much sums it up for me, I want single payer government provided health care like everyone else in every other industrialized nation has…

I am pretty excited about this as I feel it will be a great one two punch, produce a tonn of jobs in an industry that was hit hard by the recession (construction) while dramatically reducing energy usage (can’t get the big money unless you reduce over 20% in the program.)

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Fact Sheet: Homestar Energy Efficiency Retrofit Program

WASHINGTON–In his State of the Union address, the President called on Congress to pass a program of incentives for homeowners who make energy efficiency investments in their homes. Today, while touring a training facility at Savannah Technical College, the President outlined more details of a new “HOMESTAR” program that would help create jobs by encouraging American families to invest in energy saving home improvements. Consistent with the President’s call for a HOMESTAR program, the Senate Democratic leadership included a proposal of this kind as part of their Jobs Agenda released on February 4, 2010. The President looks forward to continuing to work with Members of Congress, business, environmental and labor leaders to enact a HOMESTAR program into law.

Background on the HOMESTAR program

With unemployment in the construction sector near 25% and with substantial underutilized capacity in our manufacturing sector, the HOMESTAR program has the potential to jumpstart our economic recovery by boosting demand for energy efficiency products and installation services. For middle-class families, this program will help them save hundreds of dollars a year in energy costs while improving the comfort and value of their most important investment – their homes. In addition, the program would help reduce our economy’s dependence on oil and support the development of an energy efficiency services sector in our economy. Key components of the HOMESTAR Program include:

• Rebates delivered directly to consumers: Like the Cash for Clunkers program, consumers would be eligible for direct HOMESTAR rebates at the point of sale for a variety of energy-saving investments in their homes. A broad array of vendors, from small independent building material dealers, large national home improvement chains, energy efficiency installation professionals and utility energy efficiency programs (including rural utilities) would market the rebates, provide them directly to consumers and then be reimbursed by the federal government.
• $1,000 – $1,500 Silver Star Rebates: Consumers looking to have simple upgrades performed in their homes would be eligible for 50% rebates up to $1,000 – $1,500 for doing any of a straightforward set of upgrades, including: insulation, duct sealing, water heaters, HVAC units, windows, roofing and doors. Under Silver Star, consumers can chose a combination of upgrades for rebates up to a maximum of $3,000 per home. Rebates would be limited to the most energy efficient categories of upgrades—focusing on products made primarily in the United States and installed by certified contractors.
• $3000 Gold Star Rebates: Consumers interested in more comprehensive energy retrofits would be eligible for a $3,000 rebate for a whole home energy audit and subsequent retrofit tailored to achieve a 20% energy savings in their homes. Consumers could receive additional rebate amounts for energy savings in excess of 20%. Gold Star would build on existing whole home retrofit programs, like EPA’s successful Home Performance with Energy Star program.
• Oversight to Ensure Quality Installations: The program would require that contractors be certified to perform efficiency installations. Independent quality assurance providers would conduct field audits after work is completed to ensure proper installation so consumers receive energy savings from their upgrades. States would oversee the implementation of quality assurance to ensure that the program was moving the industry toward more robust standards and comprehensive energy retrofit practices.
• Support for financing: The program would include support to State and local governments to provide financing options for consumers seeking to make efficiency investments in their homes. This will help ensure that consumers can afford to make these investments. 

The program will result in the creation of tens of thousands of jobs while achieving substantial reductions in energy use – the equivalent of the entire output of three coal-fired power plants each year. Consumers in the program are anticipated to save between $200 – $500 per year in energy costs, while improving the comfort and value of their homes.    

BACKGROUND ON PARTICIPANTS IN TODAY’S PRESIDENTIAL EVENT

• Business Leaders
  • Larry Laseter, President of Masco Home Services.  Masco is a Fortune 150 company specializing in products and services for the home building and home improvement business, including windows and doors, installation, and contracting. After being hit particularly hard by the recession (40% reduction in workforce over a several year period), Masco created Masco Home Services (MHS) a year ago with the intent to provide residential energy efficiency retrofits to American households. Laseter is a Georgia resident, and MHS will open a Home Performance branch in Atlanta in May.
  • Mike Lawrence, Vice President and General Manager for Insulation Systems, Johns Manville.  Johns Manville is a leading manufacturer and marketer of insulation and roofing materials for commercial, industrial, and residential applications.  Johns Manville is based in Denver, CO and has manufacturing facilities in Georgia as well as California, Montana, Arizona, Indiana, Ohio, Virginia, Texas, and New Jersey.
  • Mark Andrews, CEO, North America, Knauf Insulation.  Knauf Mark was named to a newly created North American CEO position in January 2010.  Knauf’s US headquarters is in Shelbyville Indiana, and Knauf has manufacturing facilities in Indiana, Alabama, and California.
• Local Efficiency Contractors
  • Patrick Shay, Green Swap.  Patrick is an architect and co-founder of Green Sweep, an energy efficiency company that works with residential, commercial and industrial customers on cost saving clean energy and energy efficiency upgrades.  Pat is also a Chatham County Commissioner and chair of the Chatham Environmental Forum, which is addressing energy, climate and other sustainability issues in the Savannah Chatham area.
  • Howard Feldman, Costal Green Building Solutions.  Howard is a co-founder of Coastal Green Building Solutions.  He is a builder, renovator and a certified RESNET HERS rater, which means he evaluates homes and businesses for energy efficiency opportunities and upgrades.  Howard’s company works in both Georgia and South Carolina. In addition to Patrick Shay and Howard Feldman, several other Savannah-area contractors and small businesses who would create jobs if this program were passed are in attendance.

Awesome. Looks pretty sweet too.

Just because you don’t like the message doesn’t mean you should kill the messenger. Science gives you so many good things in your life, in fact if you are reading this at all you have science to thank for that computer you are using. If you have ever used antibiotics, ever got a surgery, drive a car, enjoy electric lights, you have enjoyed a small handful of the millions of things science has given to you. It is the creation of knowledge where no knowledge existed before. Science seeks to figure things out, then put those things back into the public sphere so that other people can use them to figure out even more things. It seems to me that you are being an asshole if you enjoy all the fruits of science while at the same time calling the people who are trying to warn you about a great danger are just a bunch of politically motivated conspiracy theorists.

So just in case you forgot.

Evolution: Real
Global warming: Real
Gravity: Real

Van Jones is an amazing man, and the idea that some sniveling actor (cause lets be real Glenn Beck is an actor) could do anything to take away from his awesomeness would be a foolish thought.