Stealth sharks to patrol the high seas

Byoliveridley

From the annals of the utterly insane, it’s about 3 weeks early for April Fools pranks…

Stealth sharks to patrol the high seas

More controversially, the Pentagon hopes to exploit sharks’ natural ability to glide quietly through the water, sense delicate electrical gradients and follow chemical trails. By remotely guiding the sharks’ movements, they hope to transform the animals into stealth spies, perhaps capable of following vessels without being spotted. The project, funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), based in Arlington, Virginia, was presented at the Ocean Sciences Meeting in Honolulu, Hawaii, last week

Read the Tom’s Dispatch article for a bigger picture look, excellent paragraph here, one can’t help but wonder…

To support letting inventive minds roam free outside normal frameworks is in itself an inspired idea. But I bet there’s no DARPA-like agency elsewhere in the government funding the equivalent for education 2025 or health 2025 or even energy independence 2025. To have this happen, I’m afraid, you would have to transform them into Northcom war games.

I do not believe that throwing money into research solves all problems, but I wonder what would happen if the US of A did not spend all its spare cash and (up to the eyeballs) in debt on defense. The incredible amounts of money spent on defense makes many people rich, keeps many companies afloat, creates many jobs, etc. But so would massive amounts of government funding on pretty much any other, more worthwhile venture.

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    Eastern United States vulnerable to climate change

    Byoliveridley

    http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2007-12/pu-sdn121007.php
    6157_rel.jpg
    Time to get out of the Eastern United States? A study to be published in the Proceedings of the National Academies of Science tries to quantify the relative risk of climate change using something called a “socioclimatic” risk factor. As always, the redder the worse. A look at the paper would no doubt be more illuminating, but for some reason, press releases about PNAS papers come out way before the papers actually become public. China is in bright red all the way, India in a rather bright orange. Where I live, the Eastern United States, is a nice beet red. No doubt, the unprecedented drought the South is experiencing right now is a nice big red signal.

    Interesting stuff, though the actual paper will tell the story. Any technique that tries to integrate all the complex scientific, social and economic variables of climate change into one number is bound to have a flaw or two. But such a metric is useful for estimating relative risk, as the authors themselves say.

    He added that the study does not address the absolute degree of impact or risk.

    “This study illustrates exposure of one nation relative to another,” Diffenbaugh said. “Thus, it is important to note that a country low on the relative scale could still face substantial risk.”

    Blogged with Flock

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  • No sun link to climate change

    Byoliveridley

    In response to a stupid “global warming sceptics”, scientists waste their precious time to prove the obvious all over again.

    BBC NEWS | UK | ‘No sun link’ to climate change

    Dr Lockwood initiated the study partially in response to the TV documentary The Great Global Warming Swindle, broadcast on Britain’s Channel Four earlier this year, which featured the cosmic ray hypothesis.

    “All the graphs they showed stopped in about 1980, and I knew why, because things diverged after that,” he told the BBC News website.

    “You can’t just ignore bits of data that you don’t like,” he said.

  • The Goldberg Ruminations – Or how an LA Times “expert” regurgitates talking points

    Byoliveridley

    Seeing red over ‘green scare’ – Los Angeles Times:

    For example, Gore blames the disappearing snows of Mt. Kilimanjaro on global warming, but a 2003 study in Nature identified the clear-cutting of surrounding moisture-rich forests as the culprit. In the famously fact-checked New Yorker, Editor David Remnick pens a love letter to Gore in which he laments that Earth will “likely be an uninhabitable planet” if we don’t heed Gore’s jeremiads. Oh … come … on!

    Well, it’s hard to figure out where to begin refuting nonsense like this, which has been refuted a million times. You don’t take down scientific consensus by pointing out minor inaccuracies in work done by Al Gore, of all people. Yes, it can be argued (Kaser et al., INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF CLIMATOLOGY 24 (3): 329-339 MAR 15 2004) that Kilimanjaro’s ice cap regression may have to do more with loss of moisture than with temperature. That does not make a case of the “Green Meanie” ( typical demonising phrase – should we call Goldberg an ignorant ostrich, well, does not have the same evocativeness!). Repeat after me, one inaccuracy does not disprove millions of observations. I suggest he read Field Notes from a Catastrophe, written in language even he could understand to find  a few more experimental observations to “debunk”.

    Major news media have gone after scientists who argue there’s still time to study global warming (IRAQ’s WMD – substitute) rather than plunge into some half-baked environmental jihad (IRAQ WAR – substitute) that could waste possibly trillions of dollars.

    Sweet words coming out of one of the war’s most fervent supporters. I like people who can have it both ways on a single day and pretend to not see the contradictions.

    Maybe he should read this editorial published right below his.

    Update 4/21/06 3:30 PM

    The Think Progress Blog has more refutation, if this drivel needed any more refuting.

  • Obama: Warming must be tackled now – Climate Change- msnbc.com

    Byoliveridley

    He wasn’t expected to make an appearance, let alone a splash, but President-elect Barack Obama on Tuesday delivered a videotaped message to a climate change summit convened by California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, vowing quick action to curb emissions and engage in international talks.

    You can be sure that the United States will once again engage vigorously in these negotiations, and help lead the world toward a new era of global cooperation on climate change," he told hundreds of scientists, executives, governors and even foreign officials gathered in Los Angeles.

    via Obama: Warming must be tackled now – Climate Change- msnbc.com

    No longer the climate outcast, is the president of the United States, that proud designation among the so called developed country leaders would now be Steven Harper.

  • Tuesdays with Turtles – New US Regulations

    Byoliveridley

    The National Marine Fisheries Service protects turtles in the US. Here, bycatch, or the accidental capture of adult sea turtles, is one of the biggest causes of adult turtle mortality. So, it is good that the NMFS is bucking all other recent trends with endangered species (check this salon article about the gutting of the endangered species act) and actually proposing stronger regulation on reducing bycatch.

    NMFS issues this advance notice of proposed rulemaking to announce that it is considering amendments to the regulatory requirements for turtle excluder devices (TEDs). Specific changes NMFS is considering include increasing the size of the TED escape opening currently required in the summer flounder fishery; requiring the use of TEDs in the flynet, whelk, calico scallop, and Mid- Atlantic sea scallop trawl fisheries; and moving the current northern boundary of the Summer Flounder Fishery-Sea Turtle Protection Area off Cape Charles, Virginia, to a point farther north. The objective of the proposed measures would be to effectively protect all life stages and species of sea turtle in Atlantic trawl fisheries where they are vulnerable to incidental capture and mortality. NMFS is seeking public comment on these potential amendments to the TED regulations. NMFS is also soliciting public comment on the need for, and development and implementation of, other methods to reduce bycatch of sea turtles in anycommercial or recreational fishery in the Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico where sea turtle conservation measures do not currently exist.

    Well, that’s good news, and since I read the whole regulation twice over and did not change my mind about it, it must be good news, really!! Apparently, I write good news stories too!

    Sea turtles are lucky to be so accessible, beautiful, completely harmless, long lived and loved, they would not get half the attention they get otherwise!

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    California’s Prop 65 on Deathbed

    Byoliveridley

    House votes to dump state food safety laws

    See this post for some context.

    The vote Wednesday was a sign of the tremendous power of the food industry in Congress. Corporations and trade groups that joined the National Uniformity for Food Coalition, which backed the bill, have contributed more than $3 million to members in the 2005-06 election cycle and $31 million since 1998, according to data from the Center for Responsive Politics.

    The industry also has many top lobbyists pushing the bill, including White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card’s brother, Brad Card, who represents the Food Products Association.

    Well, will it die in the senate? One wonders.

    Why bother with an elected goverment if all it does is pass bills written by big industry? Maybe it’s time to get the middlemen out and have big business actually run the country, maybe GM can take a shot! Or maybe the top guy on the Forbes list for the year can take over as president for the year, this will give Warren Buffett good incentive to knock off Mr Gates.