Too exciting not to post about, NASA now believes what they thought might be ice–or salt–is, in fact, ice. NASA’s press release is here.
Whatever the substance is, the lander has found another hard layer at the same depth in a location to the right of this trench (aka “Snow White 1″).
Enjoy the animated gif below, depicting the evaporating substance in a before-after sequence:
Joseph Kahn and Jim Yardley of the New York Times, on August 26th, produced an excellent story on China’s industrial success/toxic pollution nexus. The situation is dire, and China’s difficulties overcoming the Victorian England-like pollution troubles in order to host an Olympics palpable to the rest of the world are well known, and have been covered recently in similar excellent coverage in the Wall Street Journal. Here’s a brief section of the NYT report:
…it is not clear that China can rein in its own economic juggernaut.
Public health is reeling. Pollution has made cancer China’s leading cause of death, the Ministry of Health says. Ambient air pollution alone is blamed for hundreds of thousands of deaths each year. Nearly 500 million people lack access to safe drinking water.
Chinese cities often seem wrapped in a toxic gray shroud. Only 1 percent of the country’s 560 million city dwellers breathe air considered safe by the European Union. Beijing is frantically searching for a magic formula, a meteorological deus ex machina, to clear its skies for the 2008 Olympics.
Environmental woes that might be considered catastrophic in some countries can seem commonplace in China: industrial cities where people rarely see the sun; children killed or sickened by lead poisoning or other types of local pollution; a coastline so swamped by algal red tides that large sections of the ocean no longer sustain marine life.
China is choking on its own success
And this is not merely a problem for the Chinese. Acid rain containing sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides from Chinese coal-fired power plants falls on Seoul, South Korea, and Tokyo. The Journal of Geophysical Research reports that much of the particulate pollution over Los Angeles originates in China.
The World Health Organization and World Bank independently found that total deaths in China due to pollution have reached 750,000 a year. Chinese experts interviewed claimed that the Western estimates “probably understate the problems.” The World Bank told the NYT that China’s environmental agency asked them to remove this number from the Spring 2007 final report, claiming the numbers could detrimentally impact “social stability.”
The question, of course, is who has the credibility and sway to either guide China toward responsible environmental policies, or model a path forward by example.
Lime
According Ares users computer users from the DoD are very busy editing entries on Wikipedia.
the Department of Defense, whose .mil account holders have been very busy on Wikipedia. The defense agency with the most edits originating from its .mil address is Army’s Network Information Center, with 43,823 edits. The U.S. Air Forces comes in second with 21,478 edits, while the Naval Surface Warfare Center has 18, 591. The numbers drop dramatically from there with fourth and fifth place going to the Pentagon overall and the Office of the Secretary of Defense at 3,355 and 2,685 edits, respectively.
It appears that the Leathernecks either don’t understand computers or don’t care about what is on Wikipedia, because according to VIRGIL.GRiffith‘s WikiScanner there have been only 30 edits from usmc.mil.
yojoe
A recent study shows that Americans are more scientifically literate than Europeans or Japanese. But, at 28% we still have some way to go. On the bright side, that figure was 10% in the 1990′s.
yojoe
Steven Mufson of the Washington Post has a grave assessment of Congress’ ability to make even a dent in the dire issue of climate change:
Here’s the good news about climate change: Energy and climate experts say the world already possesses the technological know-how for trimming greenhouse gas emissions enough to slow the perilous rise in the Earth’s temperatures.
Here’s the bad news: Because of the enormous cost of addressing global warming, the energy legislation considered by Congress so far will make barely a dent in the problem, while farther-reaching climate proposals stand a remote chance of passage.
Despite growing public concern over global warming, the House has failed to agree on new standards for automobile fuel efficiency, and the Senate has done little to boost the efficiency of commercial office buildings and appliances. In September, Congress is expected to start wrestling with more ambitious legislation aimed at slowing climate change; but because of the complexity of the likely proposals, fewexpect any bill to become law. Even if passed by Congress and signed by President Bush, the final measure may not be tough Continue reading
New study released in Proceedings of the Royal Society finds that over the past 20 years, despite global warming continuing apace, “all the trends in the Sun that could have had an influence on the Earth’s climate have been in the opposite direction to that required to explain the observed rise in global mean temperatures.”
Comparing historical data of sun activity including sunspots, magnetic field strength, cosmic ray flux, and total solar irradience, as well as other data (including 2 global mean temperature reconstructions over the past 20 years), solar activity (that would have caused warming) peaked around 1985-87, and has been on the decline since.
In contrast, temperatures, which started on the steep upward path long before the 1980′s, have continued their upward trend.
Count out the sun; round up the usual suspects.
Lime
According to recent reports the increased popularity of electronic gadgets threatens to undo attempts to lower carbon emissions. According to a report entitled The Ampere Strikes Back, household appliances consume 1/3 of the energy use for the average UK home. The graph below represents the increased energy consumption of various television sets. So, when you are downloading the podcast of Live Earth, it seems that you may be undoing the benefits you thought you were trying to accomplish.
Similarly, as you drive along in your Prius with your laptop, cell, digital camera, on the way home to game on your Xbox attached to your flat screen it may all be for naught. Moreover, the carbon footprint of the PS3 and Xbox 360 is considerably higher than the carbon footprint of the previous generations’ consoles. (Note, however, that LCD screens consume far less power than Plasma screens–the average LCD consumes 193 watts, vs. a whopping 328 watts for plasma screens.)
Even on idle mode, the PS3 saps 177 watts (and 194 watts when gaming), and the Xbox 360 consumes 157 watts (185 watts when gaming). The PS2, in contrast, consumed only 38.3 watts, and the original Xbox consumed 70 watts.
yojoe out
As a matter of fact, the results of a new survey, released in the latest American Scientist, reveal something to the contrary, at least, with regard to evolutionary biologists. The “so many scientists believe in God, and that’s proof there’s no conflict” argument, of course, is one of the arguments forwarded by proponents of “Intelligent Design” as proof of the lack of any real conflict between teaching of both creationism and evolution.
The results, depicted in this chart, revealed that of 149 evolutionary scientists, approximately 80 percent stated they did not believe in God. These evolutionary scientists were comprised of scientists whose specialties included organismic evolution, phylogenetics, population biology/genetics, paleontology/paleoecology/paleobiology, systematics, or organismal adaptation or fitness.
This was a drastic change from the 1914 poll asking the same questions: then, 32 percent of the Continue reading
Nothing sensationalist about this headline, despite our imaginary 24-hour buyout by Rupert Murdoch.
Indeed, new study results published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences the first evidence of a link between a compound found in fatty goose and duck liver and the rare disease amyloidosis, which is an abnormal buildup of amyloid deposits.
Such abnormal buildups of the substance also factor into diseases including Alzheimer’s, rheumatoid arthritis, and type 2 diabetes.
The researchers caution that the study results are preliminary only at this point.
Lime
This past Friday, June 8th, 2007, the Pentagon finally fessed up: indeed, reports were true that it had considered developing a “Gay-Bomb.” Records obtained by the group Berkeley’s Sunshine Project, confirmed that the Air Force had considered developing, but ultimately rejected pursuing, a non-lethal weapon that contained a strong aphrodisiac, which would cause enemy soldiers to become more interested in each other than fighting the enemy.
The Kyoto summit had the good and the bad. The good, its purpose. The bad, the implementation. First, the good. Contrary to all those skeptics, one fact remains clear: something is amiss and without any precedent in the last millenium’s history of climate change. Kyoto tried to address that, based on the science that has produced frightening charts like this:
Now, the bad. The Guardian has a good article pointing out the serious flaws in Kyoto’s approach to solving airborne pollutant emissions problems. The Wall Street Journal’s print edition carried a similar front-page treatment of Kyoto’s failings, and the Guardian’s expose re-stresses the same flaws.
Those with hangnails can now rejoice. Dr. Kevorkian is out and is willing to help you to shed your mortal coil. For an insightful analysis of the work of Dr. Kevorkian see the article by Thomas S. Szasz, M.D. One can only hope that he is a better doctor than lawyer. His self defense was almost as pitiful as some of his brethren that served as their own lawyers.
Now that he is out, he can get back to his art. Very uplifting stuff.
Tuesday’s Wall Street Journal reported on the alarming news about the diabetes drug Avandia, which places users at a 43% increased risk of suffering a heart attack. I have a close relative on the drug, so it’s of immediate concern to me. More about the Avandia news here.
Dr. Steven Nissen of the Cleveland Clinic, the WSJ article reports, started investigating Avandia’s risks in 2006, based on “hints” of trouble he found in prior studies of the drug. However, the article states, he “hit pay dirt with a Google search that pointed him to a trove of study data.” Dr. Nissen then pushed this study data “in just a few weeks” into the prestigious New England Journal of Medicine’s article, to be released in the June 14, 2007 issue. Nissen’s Google search, which turned up an online database of drugmaker Glaxo’s study results, including the heart attack data, was the catalyst for Nissen’s viewing the “hints” as much more serious indicia of Avandia’s dangers, and for the push to quick publication.
Or so Shai Oster of the Wall Street Journal writes today, citing comments by the International Energy Agency’s chief economist, Fatih Birol. Previously China had been expected to surpass the U.S. in emissions in 2010, but China’s burgeoning economy (increasing at more than 10% a year for the past four years) has required a revision to the estimate — China will likely surpass the U.S. in emissions this year.
This, of course, is touched on by Mr. Gore in An Inconvenient Truth, but he doesn’t dwell on the looming Chinese and Indian industrial complexes. For good reason — once those two countries’ billion-each populations take to the roads and demand production/consumer goods en masse, the U.S. contribution to the global warming problem will, relatively, appear a pittance. For now, though, our place is secure as the #1 or #2 polluter for years to Continue reading
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