Environment Memo

Batten the Hatches

Barnes Bierck — Tue, 25 Oct 2011 13:23:28 +0000

Floating debris, around 20 million tons of it, from the Japan Tsunami is heading for California over the next couple of years.

Darn, I’m Too Late to Win the Virgin Earth Challenge

Barnes Bierck — Mon, 10 Oct 2011 12:01:40 +0000

Well, Earth ain’t no virgin, anyway. Submission time is over, and I didn’t get the memo on Sir Richard Branson’s earth challenge and reward of

US$25 million for whoever can demonstrate to the judges’ satisfaction a commercially viable design which results in the net removal of anthropogenic, atmospheric greenhouse gases so as to contribute materially to the stability of the Earth’s climate system.

Still, I have the solution, if they want to open this back up and give me $25 million. Here it is: school buses. School bus use is like tent poles: high in the morning, zero during the day, and then high in the afternoon, and then zero after that. All we have to do is put those school buses on the road, criss-crossing everywhere.

OK, maybe an upgrade here and there, and more maintenance, and slight alterations in work-day hours; but the idea is clear. We can get more people on buses if these buses are running around everywhere, picking up everyone and anyone. The buses are already out there.

Hey, Bill (Gates): Are You Looking for Simple Solutions to Climate Change?

Barnes Bierck — Fri, 07 Oct 2011 16:24:27 +0000

I know, it’s futile to try to get word to people like Bill Gates, but I can dream. Gates is working hard to get work done on geoengineering, such as

building an 18-mile-long hose, tethered by balloons, that would spray tiny particles into the stratosphere to block the sun’s rays.

ocean-churning technology designed to sap the strength of hurricanes, which appear to be getting fiercer because of global warming.

or having

thousands of big machines to remove carbon dioxide from the air.

But is Gates looping back to things that Richard Feynman might have suggested, things that are so simple that they are being missed or are thought to be way too complicated?

What about radically changing land-use, development, and public transportation approaches, linking these factors in ways that can have a major change on carbon emissions? Sounds too low-tech? Maybe so, but it’s guaranteed, and all this geoengineering is not, and morewver is fraught with danger because of that old Law of Unintended Consequences.

It Was There a Minute Ago (Missing Canadian Ice Sheet)

Barnes Bierck — Fri, 30 Sep 2011 19:29:38 +0000

It seems that

Two ice shelves that existed before Canada was settled by Europeans diminished significantly this summer, one nearly disappearing altogether, Canadian scientists say in new research.

Anti-Nuclear Power in Japan: Huge Petition Drive

Barnes Bierck — Fri, 09 Sep 2011 17:44:31 +0000

Led by a Nobel Prize winner, AP reports that a group in Japan

aims to collect 10 million signatures and submit them to the government next March

demanding of the government, among other things

the cancellation of construction plans for new nuclear power plants and the planned termination of existing nuclear power plants, including the Hamaoka power plant.

The English version of the petition is here. What if they get many tens of millions of signatures?