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Bees are Fitted with Microchips to Find Out Why Their Species is Dying

June 28, 2008 / TiamatsVision

Bee

“It is a remarkably hairy close-up. But this tiny microchip attached to a bee’s back will hopefully explain why so many honeybees are dying from disease. Professor Juergen Tautz and his team at the University of Wurzburg in Germany are studying the health of more than 150,000 bees, in the hope of halting the apparently inexorable decline in their worldwide population.

Bees have always been tricky to study individually. Each colony has around 50,000 members, all interacting simultaneously and making it near-impossible to observe them. Previously, each bee would be painted with a different-coloured dot on its back and scientists would video the colony – watching the tape endlessly, to try to work out the behaviour in each insect. But a revolutionary technology enables the study of bees at close quarters. As soon as a bee hatches, a tiny radio frequency identification (RFID) microchip is stuck to its back using a lacquer. This allows scientists to study its behaviour throughout its life.”

(via The Daily Mail)

Eco-friendly fabbers

June 27, 2008 / Klint Finley

equinox machine

Last week the 3rd year Industrial Design students at Victoria University presented the prototypes of the 3D printers they had designed. The challenge was to design and make a ‘green’ 3D printer in 4 weeks with a limited budget. The students innovative thinking looked at ways to make use of waste material and repurpose it into new objects.

Full Story: Ponoko Blog

(via Bruce Sterling)

The Unclear Origins of Oil

June 26, 2008 / Klint Finley

Kevin Kelly writes:

Crude oil is almost $140 per barrel.

By now you’d think we would know where it comes from.

No one really knows. The conventional wisdom is that oil descends from algae from eons ago. Lots and lots of algae. Unimaginable mounds of dead algae in quantities no longer found on this planet, pressed, and cooked into hydrocarbon liquids. Thus: fossil fuel. Others, notably the Russians, have an alternative theory that oil comes from non-biological carbon compounds deep in this planet, like the methane oceans we find on other planets. In this scenario oil is a planetary phenomenon. Indeed this abiogenic oil could still be forming in the earth. Thousands of Russian papers supporting this view have still not been translated. The American astrophysicist Thomas Gold also advocated a similar idea (which may or may not have been influenced by the Russians) in his book “The Deep Hot Biosphere : The Myth of Fossil Fuels”.

Full Story: Kevin Kelly

(via OVO)

This reminds me that we have made only the most esoteric of references to Thomas Gold.

10 Audacious Ideas to Save the Planet

June 24, 2008 / Klint Finley

tornado energy

Launch giant solar panels into orbit and send limitless clean energy back to Earth

Thousands of acres of super-hairy plants around the world reflect extra sunlight and cool down the globe

A modified nuclear reactor that produces 17,000 barrels of gasoline a day-enough to fuel 54,000 Honda Civics.

Sequester carbon dioxide in six-mile-long sausage-shaped plastic bags on the seafloor

Save six billion kilowatt-hours of energy annually (enough to power 20 million lightbulbs for a year) by blasting brew with supersonic streams of steam

Harness the warmth given off by millions of commuters and reduce global energy demand by 15 percent

Draw power from man-made twisters and light up entire cities

Turn civilization’s lowliest by-products-including human waste and animal carcasses-into clean-burning fuels for commuter transport

Capture 90,000 tons of urine every day from the world’s billion pigs and recycle it into plastic plates

Generate heat and electricity for small-town America using pint-size nuclear reactors that will run for 30 years with no refueling, maintenance or noxious diesel fumes

Full Story: Popular Science

(via < a href="http://www.kurzweilai.net/">Kurzweil)

Some of these seem like better ideas than others…

No Time for the Singularity

June 11, 2008 / Klint Finley

let’s assume that this mythology is true and, within about 25 years, computers will exceed human intelligence and rapidly bootstrap themselves to godlike status. At that point, they will aid us (or run roughshod over us [see the debate of geoengineering here – Ed]) to transform the Earth into a paradise .

Here’s the problem: 25 years is too late. […] If there’s to be a miraculous transformation of human civilization, it has to be accomplished by us, right now, before we develop our miraculous nanobots, genetically engineered carbon-sucking trees, or polywell fusion reactors. (That said, technology is a large part of the answer-and game-changing breakthroughs are possible-but until proven otherwise we have to assume we’ll be using currently possible solutions such as wind power, agrichar and a global coal moratorium.)

We have the social stability, the resources and the technology now; all we need is the will. We will still need all three of these things 25 years from now, and we’re likely to be seriously wanting in at least two of them if things continue as they are.

The technological singularity may be real, but who cares? By the time it happens, we’ll have won or lost our grand battle with fate.

Full Story: WorldChanging

Wired’s “environmental heresies” examined

May 28, 2008 / Klint Finley

1. Wired’s Inconvenient Truths (did Stewart Brand write this? It sounds a lot like this)

2. Counterpoint: Dangers of Focusing Solely on Climate Change by WorldChanging‘s Alex Steffen

3. EcoGeek point by point response

4. More from Alex Steffen

I mostly agree with EcoGeek’s response. But here are a few additional thoughts:

“Accept Genetic Engineering”

In general, yes. Specific GM projects might be bad, but there’s nothing inherently wrong with biohacking. Every technology must be considered on a case by case basis.

“Carbon Credits Were a Great Idea, But the Benefits Are Illusory”

I’ve generally been more in favor of carbon tax than carbon credits, but EcoGeek makes a valid point about about the sulfur dioxide cap-and-trade market. So I’ll have to give this one some more thought. But offsetting’s not off to a good start.

“Embrace Nuclear Power”

If nuclear waste can be managed effectively (a big if), there’s still the insane cost to be reckoned with. Alex is right to say it’s not just about carbon.

“Used Cars, Not Hybrids”

EcoGeek’s objection here makes little sense. Certainly hybrids are better than other new cars, or used cars with below average gas mileage (or maybe even average gas mileage). But that’s hardly the point. But really, like Alex says, the greenest car is the one that doesn’t exist. (Sadly, I’ve had to take up driving again, due to work requirements.)

Joshua Klein: The Amazing Intelligence of Crows

May 27, 2008 / TiamatsVision

“Hacker and writer Joshua Klein is fascinated by crows. (Notice the gleam of intelligence in their little black eyes?) After a long amateur study of corvid behavior, he’s come up with an elegant machine that may form a new bond between animal and human.”

(via TED)

(Joshua Klein’s website)

Creator of the Gaia hypothesis says “enjoy life while you can”

May 26, 2008 / Klint Finley

Lovelock believes global warming is now irreversible, and that nothing can prevent large parts of the planet becoming too hot to inhabit, or sinking underwater, resulting in mass migration, famine and epidemics. Britain is going to become a lifeboat for refugees from mainland Europe, so instead of wasting our time on wind turbines we need to start planning how to survive. To Lovelock, the logic is clear. The sustainability brigade are insane to think we can save ourselves by going back to nature; our only chance of survival will come not from less technology, but more.

Nuclear power, he argues, can solve our energy problem – the bigger challenge will be food. “Maybe they’ll synthesise food. I don’t know. Synthesising food is not some mad visionary idea; you can buy it in Tesco’s, in the form of Quorn. It’s not that good, but people buy it. You can live on it.” But he fears we won’t invent the necessary technologies in time, and expects “about 80%” of the world’s population to be wiped out by 2100. Prophets have been foretelling Armageddon since time began, he says. “But this is the real thing.”

[…]

What would Lovelock do now, I ask, if he were me? He smiles and says: “Enjoy life while you can. Because if you’re lucky it’s going to be 20 years before it hits the fan.”

Full Story: Guardian

Contra: A skeptical look at the economics of nuclear energy from the Nation

The Ecology of Magic: An Interview with David Abram

May 25, 2008 / TiamatsVision

“David Abram is an odd combination of anthropologist, philosopher and sleight-of-hand magician. Though he worked as a magician in the United States and Europe for a number of years, he attributes most of what he knows about magic to the time he spent in Indonesia, Nepal and Sri Lanka learning from indigenous medicine people. Performing magic is not simply about entertaining, he points out in this interview. “The task of the magician is to startle our senses and free us from outmoded ways of thinking.” The magician also plays an important ecological function, he says, by mediating between the human world and the “more-than-human” world that we inhabit.

When Abram published his book The Spell of the Sensuous in 1996, the reviewers practically exhausted their superlatives in praise of it. The Village Voice declared that Abram had “one of those rare minds which, like the mind of a musician or a great mathematician, fuses dreaminess with smarts.” The Utne Reader called Abram a “visionary” for “casting magic spells through his writing and lecturing” and for his deepening influence on the environmental movement.

The Spell of the Sensuous went on to win the prestigious Lannan Literary Award for non-fiction. It touches on a wide range of themes, from our perception of the natural world to the way we use of language and symbols to process our experience.”

(via Scott London. h/t: Neuroanthropology)

Texas Man Builds Electric Car for $6,456.92 (updated)

May 21, 2008 / Klint Finley

Is this for real?

The self-described computer geek from Kennedale bought the 1993 Eagle Talon from a junkyard for just $750.

“First thing I did when I got the car home was pull the engine out,” Murray said.

He then spent about $4,000 more to convert the gas-guzzler to run on electricity alone, doing all the work himself in his garage at home.

“I bought the electric motor and I was like well, I gotta figure out a way to couple it together with the original transmission,’ he said.

The car can hit 55 mph, driving right past the high prices at gas stations.

“I hear people complain about them at work all the time. I just grin,” he said.

Murray spends just $7 per month on electricity to charge the batteries — enough to go about 300 miles.

Full Story: NBC5i

(via Cryptogon)

I’ve been thinking for a while that the key to making oil-free/oil-low cars practical is the cheap conversion of old vehicles into new renewable-energy powered cars. It’s just not practical for everyone to have to throw away all the old cars on the road. (I wasn’t surprised to read that buying a fuel efficient used car is more environmentally friendly than buying a new hybrid.) It looks like this guy might have found the beginnings of a solution.

Update: He has much more information, including an updated cost ($6,456.92) and schematics on his website.

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