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Water Find to End Darfur War – Well, not so fast!

Byoliveridley

Beware the dangers of the overhyped press release machine (or sciencedaily, pick your poison). All Farouk El-Baz saw when he did the radar study was a giant depression. It is TBD whether there’s water in them thar holes!’

BBC NEWS | Africa | Ancient Darfur lake is dried up

Alain Gachet, who used satellite images and radar in his research, said the area received too little rain and had the wrong rock types for water storage. But the French geologist said there was enough water elsewhere in Darfur to end the fighting and rebuild the economy.

On Wednesday, Boston Universitys Farouk El-Baz said he had received the backing of Sudans government to begin drilling for water in the newly-discovered lake, in North Darfur.

No wonder they say that water is the 21st century oil. This guy’s going to be drilling for water (also known as well digging!).

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    Bhutan to pay for others climate sins

    Byoliveridley

    Bhutan is a small country nestled in the Himalayas, breathtakingly beautiful and “quaint”. Unfortunately, it’s about to be hit by a truck!

    Reuters AlertNet – FEATURE-Bhutan to pay for others climate sins

    The retreat of Bhutan’s glaciers presents an even more formidable and fundamental challenge to a nation of around 600,000 people, nearly 80 percent of whom live by farming.

    Bhutan’s rivers sustain not only the country’s farmers, but also the country’s main industry and export earner — hydro-electric power, mostly sold to neighbouring India.

    For a few years, Bhutan’s farmers and its hydro power plants might have more summer melt water than they can use. One day, though, the glaciers may be gone, and the “white gold” upon which the economy depends may dry up.

    The threat led the government’s National Environment Commission to a stark conclusion.

    “Not only human lives and livelihoods are at risk, but the very backbone of the nation’s economy is at the mercy of climate change hazards,” it wrote in a recent report.

    Scientists admit they have little solid data on how Bhutan’s climate is already changing, but say weather patterns are becoming increasingly unpredictable.

    Well, as I keep saying, Americans and Europeans will be incovenienced by global climate change, Asians and Africans will die. I don’t have an answer, though, which is depressing on this gray and cloudy Friday morning…

  • 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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    The US guts Environmental Assessments

    Byoliveridley

    Environmental assessment in the U.S. was enshrined in law for the first time when President Richard Nixon signed the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) on January 1, 1970. Since then, however, the U.S. has slowly cast aside its role as a leader in the field of environmental assessments, as successive administrations have chipped away at the scope of NEPA, experts say. The cuts have reached a crescendo with President George W. Bush’s administration, and proponents of these assessments worry that pressure to develop natural resources with little oversight of the consequences will lead to an unsustainable future for the U.S.

    ES&T Online News: Environmental Magna Carta under siege

    Well, perfect. Now you can claim very factually that “you don’t know of any harmful effects of your actions”.

    The fact is, the attack on NEPA has come, chronically, from a relatively small group of commodity users—timber companies, highway builders—who simply oppose having the public and environmentalists get in the way of their plans and programs,” Houck maintains.

    Can’t say it any better. Information is very important and one thing this Bush administration has been very successful at is reducing the flow of information.

    Blogged with Flock

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    India announces Panel to "study" global warming

    Byoliveridley

    The Hindu News Update Service

    Warning that the threat of climate change was real, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Tuesday said future of people will be at peril if they do not change their lifestyles.

    Singh’s warning came on a day when he constituted a high level advisory group to help the government take pro-active measures to deal with global warming.

    “The threat of climate change is real and unless we alter our lifestyles and pursue a sustainable model of development, our future will be at peril”, he said in a message on the occasion of World Environment Day.

    So, what exactly is the Indian position on climate change, something that threatens its coastlines, will put entire villages under water in the Ganga delta, screw around with the monsoon, and accelerate glacier melting in the Himalayas (among many other effects?)

    Here’s India’s position from the talks with Brazil last week…

    “We are willing to work in partnership in this process to cut emissions but we cannot accept equal responsibility (for the global mess caused by the industrialised nations),” an Indian official said.

    The country’s top environmental official, Pradipto Ghosh, said yesterday that “legally mandated measures for reducing greenhouse gas emissions are likely to have significant adverse effects on the GDP growth of developing countries, including India”.

    Yes, obviously. The world is in desperate need of a framework to make development and poverty alleviation happen without burning too much coal. But, as long as the leader of the free world vacillates, obfuscates and procrastinates, not much will happen.

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    Ethanol significantly worse than gasoline for air pollution

    Byoliveridley

    So, Mark Jacobson from Stanford, an accomplished atmospheric chemist and modeler from Stanford, puts ethanol into his modeling mix as an automobile fuel and comes up with increased ozone, peroxyacetyl nitrate (PAN, an ozone precursor) and acetaldehyde, leading to a possible increase in mortality. Without reading his paper, I cannot comment on the assumptions used, but this is an additional issue to be concerned about as our politicians continue to binge on alcohol. It’s weird, almost as if there’s something intoxicating and addictive about this fuel :-;

    Effects of Ethanol E85 versus Gasoline Vehicles on Cancer and Mortality in the United States

    Ethanol use in vehicle fuel is increasing worldwide, but the potential cancer risk and ozone-related health consequences of a large-scale conversion from gasoline to ethanol have not been examined. Here, a nested global-through-urban air pollution/weather forecast model is combined with high-resolution future emission inventories, population data, and health effects data to examine the effect of converting from gasoline to E85 on cancer, mortality, and hospitalization in the United States as a whole and Los Angeles in particular. Under the base-case emission scenario derived, which accounted for projected improvements in gasoline and E85 vehicle emission controls, it was found that E85 (85% ethanol fuel, 15% gasoline) may increase ozone-related mortality, hospitalization, and asthma by about 9% in Los Angeles and 4% in the United States as a whole relative to 100% gasoline. Ozone increases in Los Angeles and the northeast were partially offset by decreases in the southeast. E85 also increased peroxyacetyl nitrate (PAN) in the U.S. but was estimated to cause little change in cancer risk. Due to its ozone effects, future E85 may be a greater overall public health risk than gasoline. However, because of the uncertainty in future emission regulations, it can be concluded with confidence only that E85 is unlikely to improve air quality over future gasoline vehicles. Unburned ethanol emissions from E85 may result in a global-scale source of acetaldehyde larger than that of direct emissions.

  • Carbon tax Front and Centre in the Canadian Campaign

    Byoliveridley

    The battle for Quebec in the federal election campaign heated up on Thursday with Conservative Leader Stephen Harper telling a Montreal audience that Liberal Leader Stéphane Dion's carbon tax proposal threatens Canada's national unity.

    "The carbon tax will do more than undermine the economy," Harper said to a crowd of business leaders. "By undermining the economy and by re-centralizing money and power in Ottawa, it can only undermine the progress we have been making on national unity."

    CBC.ca – Canada Votes – Dion’s Green Shift threatens national unity: Harper.
    Mr. Harper is calling for disaster if there’s any kind of serious carbon dioxide mitigation plan. His party’s plan, as I mentioned a few days back, is pretty toothless, and his attitude does not bode well for climate change mitigation policy in Canada.