Another one for today. Can’t get much better than this! xo
Kudos to agency 72andSunny and creative director Glenn Cole for this inspirational piece of advertising.
Amazing what a power a positive note can have on one’s day. When’s the last time you made a stranger feel this way?
Sometime in the latter half of this century, human population will peak. Having swelled to a bit over nine billion people, our numbers will begin to drop as people age and women worldwide pass through the urban transition, gain control over their own life-choices and have fewer children.
After that, population will proceed to decline by the middle of the 22nd century to a number somewhere between 8.5 billion and 5.6 billion (depending it seems largely on whose assumptions about longevity growth you find most credible).
That’s pretty much the consensus position among demographers (though there is a range of belief about when the peak will happen and whether we can expect to more or less plateau at 8.5 billion or experience a long bumpy slope to a stable-state population of about 6 billion). Note that we don’t need to assume any sort of apocalypse here: this is the orderly progression of human beings passing through a post-industrial demographic threshold you can already see in cultures from Japan to Italy to Finland.
[…]
The standard response to these facts is that some new technology will “save” us, and make limits irrelevant. But I am consistently impressed, when I speak with folks who are hard at work in the fields of biotechnology, molecular engineering and software design, at how real a sense of limits actually exists among the smarter ones. There are things we don’t know how to do now and may never (in any foreseeable time span) know how to do; there are others that seem like good ideas until you start doing them and encounter the unintended consequences; there are still others that work, but work in ways that mean something different than we expected. Where in the 90s we expected emerging technologies to unleash the boundless, more contemporary thinking about these technologies seems to me to be all about seeing them not as magic but as tools: profoundly useful, if used right, but perhaps far less transformative than once we hoped. They may greatly extend the range of actions we can take within the fundamental limits we face, but they most likely won’t change the limits themselves.
I wrote a blog entry over at Klintron’s Brain that went from being a couple hundred words to basically a full length article:
Two economic crises face the world today: the credit crunch resulting from the subprime mortgage crisis, and the food prices crisis precipitated by the demand for biofuels. Both are problems we should have identified and solved years ago, but didn’t. Why did we ignore the warning signs and allow ourselves to be hoodwinked into this mess? I believe they both relate to our tendency for wishful thinking.
Here’s a forecast for a particularly bizarre consequence of climate change: more executions of witches.
As we pump out greenhouse gases, most of the discussion focuses on direct consequences like rising seas or aggravated hurricanes. But the indirect social and political impact in poor countries may be even more far-reaching, including upheavals and civil wars – and even more witches hacked to death with machetes.
In rural Tanzania, murders of elderly women accused of witchcraft are a very common form of homicide. And when Tanzania suffers unusual rainfall – either drought or flooding – witch-killings double, according to research by Edward Miguel, an economist at the University of California, Berkeley.
(via Lupa).
“The people living in the Bay area of California are about to be sprayed with a new pesticide not registered with the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), in a pre-emptive strike against a perceived threat from the Light Brown Apple Moth.
In August, the California Department of Food and Agriculture plans to spray pesticides in five Bay Area counties for the invasive species’ (CBS 5, 2008). One of the chemicals being used is Checkmate, manufactured by Suterra, LLC, which is owned by Stewart Resnick, one of the richest men in California, and owner of the largest farming operation of tree crops in the world. Mr. Resnick is also included in California Governor Schwarzenegger’s top 100 donors. (Arnold Watch, 2008)
“Mr. Resnick has developed and owns a number of successful companies including Paramount Agribusiness, the largest farming operation of tree crops in the world, which includes Paramount Citrus, Paramount Farming and Paramount Farms, growers, processors and marketers of citrus, almonds and pistachios; POM Wonderful, grower of pomegranates and maker of the all-natural POM Wonderful pomegranate juice; Teleflora, the largest floral wire service in the world; FIJI Water, the second largest imported bottled water in the United States and the newest member of the Roll family of companies; The Franklin Mint, a leader in high-quality collectibles; and Suterra, the largest biorational pest control company in the United States. (Political Friendster, 2006)”
The pesticide used to spray Santa Cruz last year was the same product, but without a new active ingredient. The new and improved Checkmate contains two active ingredients. It is this version that will be used on Bay Area residents.”
(via Freedom’s Phoenix)
The Brazilian Copaifera langsdorfii, to use its botanical name, can be tapped not unlike a rubber tree, but instead of yielding rubbery latex it gives up a natural diesel. According to the nurseryman selling the trees, one hectare will yield about 12,000 litres annually.
Once filtered-no complex refining required, apparently-it can be placed straight into a diesel tractor or truck. We read that a single Copaifera langsdorfii will continue to produce fuel oil for an impressive 70 years, with the only negative being that its particular form of diesel needs to be used within three months of extraction.
Oddly this is not news. The Center for New Crops & Plant Products, at Purdue University reports that it was first reported to the western world as far back as 1625. They observe reports from 1979 saying “Natives … drill a 5 centimeter hole into the 1-meter thick trunk and put a bung into it. Every 6 months or so, they remove the bung and collect 15 to 20 liters of the hydrocarbon.’ The UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation noted in a paper at the Eleventh world forestry congress back in 1997 on the topic of tree oil for cars that ‘… the potential of other alternatives such as the Amazon Copaifera langsdorfii need to be investigated.’
(via Neatorama).
“Ever since she knew about the devastating effects of radiation and depleted uranium pollution on the world as a result of nuclear weapons, geoscientist Leuren Moret has been on a crusade to stop wars and weapons testing. The War Crimes Conference and Exhibition held at the Putra World Trade Centre in Kuala Lumpur recently was eye-opening and conscience-raising in its condemnation of the atrocities of war. During the three-day event, attendees gained insight into the horrors of past conflicts and the impending threat to our future if wars continue. Among the many impassioned pledges was a move to establish a War Crimes Tribunal in Malaysia this year and try U.S. President George Bush, British Prime Minister Tony Blair and Australian Prime Minister John Howard for their roles in initiating the illegal Iraq war.
The Kuala Lumpur Initiative to Criminalize War is a global movement introduced several years ago by Tun Dr. Mahathir Mohamad, former Prime Minister of Malaysia. The February War Crimes Conference is the most recent of the annual events organized by the Perdana Global Peace Forum. The event fielded distinguished speakers who shared their expertise and showcased a number of war victims from Iraq and Palestine who gave a human face to the grim discourse with their heartrending testimonies.
Among the eloquent speakers was geoscientist and international radiation specialist Leuren Moret, who gave a startling revelation about the effects of radiation and how our global environment has been contaminated from atomic bomb testing since 1945 to the present, and how this pollution has sharply increased since the U.S. introduced depleted uranium (DU) weapons to the battlefields for the first time with the 1991 Persian Gulf War. This, she says, has caused a world epidemic of cancer, diabetes, neuro-muscular diseases, chronic fatigue syndrome, diseases of the heart and brain and infertility.
A U.S. nuclear weapons lab whistle blower, Moret has spoken in 46 countries as she feels it is her obligation to share the devastating results of her research, which she began after working at two nuclear weapons laboratories in California from the 1970s to 1991. What she has to say will not only shock, but also answer the question we have always asked: why are so many people suffering from cancer and unexplained diseases of the heart, brain and nervous system these days?”
Heyoka Magazine: Aishah Ali’s interview with geoscientist Leuren Moret
In an attempt to shake off a major case of cabin fever, I went to my local botanic gardens to take a walk. In their exhibition building was a pictoral showing of “The Garden of Cosmic Speculation” created by renown architect Charles Jencks and his late wife Maggie. This is an amazing piece of work and I was blown away with it’s concept and design.
“This book tells the story of one of the most original and important gardens of the 21st century, created by the internationally celebrated architectural critic and designer Charles Jencks. He and his late wife started working on a landscape, that, after her death in 1995, continued to grow into a larger project, an ongoing speculation on the basic elements of nature. Covering thirty acres in the Borders area of Scotland, the Garden of Cosmic Speculation is conceived as a place to explore certain fundamental aspects of the universe.
What are atoms made of and how should we conceive of them? How does DNA make up a living organism and why is it essential to celebrate it in a garden? In dialogue with eminent physicists, cosmologists, and biologists, including Paul Davies, Lee Smolin, and Steven Rose, Charles Jencks has created a series of new, expansive, visual metaphors that challenge misleading and frequently misunderstood concepts, such as the ‘Big Bang’ and the ‘Selfish Gene.’
(Preview of the book “The Garden of Cosmic Speculation” via Google Books)
(Charles Jencks website. Article on “The Garden of Cosmic Speculation” via Recreating Eden)
Over at the excellent libertarian blog Clasically Liberal, CLS points to a story in the Edmonton Journal to try to poke hole in the claim that there is a scientific consensus on global warming:
Only about one in three Alberta earth scientists and engineers believe the culprit behind climate change has been identified, a new poll reported today.
The expert jury is divided, with 26 per cent attributing global warming to human activity like burning fossil fuels and 27 per cent blaming other causes such as volcanoes, sunspots, earth crust movements and natural evolution of the planet.
A 99-per-cent majority believes the climate is changing. But 45 per cent blame both human and natural influences, and 68 per cent disagree with the popular statement that “the debate on the scientific causes of recent climate change is settled.”
I know it’s lazy/sloppy to use Wikipedia as a reference, but check here for a list of national and international scientific organizations who’s official position is that human actions are very likely the cause of global warming. The article also notes: “With the July 2007 release of the revised statement by the American Association of Petroleum Geologists, no remaining scientific body of national or international standing is known to reject the basic findings of human influence on recent climate.” (Emphasis mine.)
If you think the Edmonton study pokes any holes in the claim that there is a scientific consensus, perhaps you should also read the Wikipedia entry on scientific consensus.
(Classically Liberal link via OVO)
For some better environmentalist iconoclasm, see A Tale of Two Scientific Consensuses.
Update: See here for polling of climate scientists about what they believe about global warming.
Thou shall not pollute the Earth. Thou shall beware genetic manipulation. Modern times bring with them modern sins. So the Vatican has told the faithful that they should be aware of “new” sins such as causing environmental blight.
The guidance came at the weekend when Archbishop Gianfranco Girotti, the Vatican’s number two man in the sometimes murky area of sins and penance, spoke of modern evils.
Asked what he believed were today’s “new sins,” he told the Vatican newspaper L’Osservatore Romano that the greatest danger zone for the modern soul was the largely uncharted world of bioethics.
(Thanks Bill).
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