Friday Hope Blogging

The Center for Biological Diversity has managed to shut down ORV races at Oceano Dunes in California:

“The motorized circus at Oceano Dunes is a real disgrace. Continuing the onslaught of racing events would be a disaster for this fragile ecosystem. That’s no way to treat a natural treasure,” said Andrew Orahoske, conservation advocate with the Center for Biological Diversity.

Under the settlement, the department agreed to withdraw its multi-year approval for the event, and conduct a full analysis of environmental impacts under the California Environmental Quality Act prior to approving future race proposals.

Legislative efforts are being made to protect the National Landscape Conservation System:

The House did a favor for natural quiet the other day through a big, bipartisan majority vote to pass legislation giving legal permanence to the National Landscape Conservation System, or NLCS.

Never heard of the NLCS? No worries, not many people have. The conservation system includes 26 million acres of national monuments, wilderness and conservation areas, wild rivers, and historic trails on Western lands managed by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management.

Malaysia has decided against building a coal-fired power plant near a protected rainforest in Borneo:

"After weighing the pros and cons, the cabinet has decided to do away with this proposal because we do not want to risk the welfare of the community in the area including their health and any adverse impact on the environment," Chief Minister Datuk Seri Musa Aman said in a statement last week. "We need to look for more environmentally friendly sources of energy."

In response to public outcry, Vladimir Putin has agreed to divert a planned oil pipeline away from Lake Baikal:

Mr. Putin...ordered that the route hew more closely to one that had previously been recommended by the Academy of Sciences and rejected by a regulatory agency. He said a new route should be charted at least 40 kilometers, or roughly 25 miles, from Lake Baikal. That would push it outside of Baikal's watershed, according to environmental organizations.

Mr. Shuvalov called it "a victory of common sense."

Marina Rikhvanova, the activist who spearheaded these protests, has been awarded the 2008 Goldman Environmental Prize.

Iran has freed a prominent women's rights activist:

Moghaddam has been described as a pioneer in environmental protection in Iran, working for better waste management and protesting against deforestation.

She has also been involved with the "one million signatures" campaign -- an attempt to change Iranian laws that discriminate against women by collecting signatures online and in person.

And in Afghanistan, a young journalist who was sentenced to death for criticizing Islamic views on women's rights will be allowed to appeal:

The writer, Sayed Parwez Kambakhsh, 23, was transferred on March 28 from prison in the remote province of Balkh, in northern Afghanistan, to the capital, Kabul, according to Jean MacKenzie, program director in Afghanistan for the Institute for War & Peace Reporting. The London-based Institute is an international advocate for press freedom.

The move, Mackenzie said in a telephone interview, was accompanied by promises from officials in the government of President Hamid Karzai that Kambakhsh would be freed.

An extremely rare giant turtle has been spotted in Vietnam:

The discovery represents hope for the species, said Doug Hendrie, the Vietnam-based coordinator of the zoo program.

Turtle expert Peter Pritchard, president of the Chelonian Research Institute, confirmed the find based on a photo Hendrie showed him.

"It looked like pretty solid evidence. The animal has a pretty distinctive head," Pritchard said.

Two plants thought to have been extinct since the 1800s have been found in Queensland:

State Climate Change Minister Andrew McNamara says the two plants were found on Cape York, between Cooktown and Lockhart River, and they have now been re-classified as vulnerable species.

"The Rhaphidospora cavernarum, which is a large herb that stands about one and a half metres high, has reappeared," he said. "It hasn't been seen in Queensland since 1873.

"Similarly, the Teucrium ajugaceum, which is a herb that has also been missing in action since 1891 [has reappeared], so there certainly are some good news stories."

Corals at the Bikini Atoll seem to have recovered from US nuclear tests:

After diving into the crater, Zoe Richards of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies and James Cook University says, “I didn’t know what to expect – some kind of moonscape perhaps. But it was incredible, huge matrices of branching Porites coral (up to 8 meters high) had established, creating thriving coral reef habitat. Throughout other parts of the lagoon it was awesome to see coral cover as high as 80 per cent and large tree-like branching coral formations with trunks 30cm thick. It was fascinating – I’ve never seen corals growing like trees outside of the Marshall Islands.

“The healthy condition of the coral at Bikini atoll today is proof of their resilience and ability to bounce back from massive disturbances, that is, if the reef is left undisturbed and there are healthy nearby reefs to source the recovery.”

Lest this be hailed as evidence that nuclear tests are beneficial, it should be noted that "the research has also revealed a disturbingly high level of loss of coral species from the atoll...[T]the team established that 42 species were missing compared to the early 1950s."

The Sietch Blog reports on a program that provides renewable energy jobs for women in Bangladesh:

Initially, it was assembling of DC lamps and providing services through battery charging station. Now the SME has moved to assembling CFL and LED lamps, controllers and inverters of solar home system (SHS) and mobile phone chargers. It has provided SHS to almost 30,000 households, small enterprises and markets in coastal areas, where grid electrification is not a feasible option.

Inhabitat discusses the rollout of the Hippo Roller:

Currently on the scene in South Africa right now, Project H has successfully delivered 75 ‘Hippo Rollers’ - an ingenious yet simple rolling barrel device that facilitates a more efficient and safer transport of daily water supply needs. The roller holds 3-4 days worth of water for a family of 7, about 5 times the amount of water that can be moved using traditional methods. It’s an amazing product and an amazing story of good design enabling communities.

A Kenyan prison is planning an innovative sewer system:

The initiative, involving the development of a wetland to purify sewage, is expected to cost a fraction of the price of high-tech treatments while also triggering scores of environmental, economic and social benefits.

Apart from wastewater management, the project is to assess using the wetland- filtered water for irrigation and fish farming giving prisoners a new source of protein or sold to local markets, alternative livelihoods. Part of the so-called 'black wastewater' with high concentrations of human waste will also be used for the production of biogas.

Also in Kenya, women are working to provide clean and affordable water to their neighbors:

The Kenya Water for Health Organization, with the help of its many community coordinators and volunteers, is attempting to challenge the vendors by creating a water delivery system built on the strength, knowledge and experience of Kibera's women....

One of their most successful sanitation programs teaches women in the community solar water disinfection, commonly called SODIS. The technique is remarkably simple. Users fill ordinary clear plastic bottles with contaminated water and place them in direct sunlight for six hours, usually on the corrugated metal roofs of their homes. There the water is sanitized by ultraviolet rays.

A solar-powered trash compactor offers many benefits:

“The unit takes up as much space as the 'footprint’ of an ordinary receptacle -- but its capacity is five times greater. Increased capacity reduces collection trips and can cut fuel use and greenhouse gas emissions by 80%. BigBelly also provides cost efficiencies from labor savings, fuel cost and maintenance savings, as well as environmental benefits from reduced emissions of greenhouse gases and other pollutants.”

Solar windows sound like a pretty good idea, too:

The Queensland University of Technology recently announced that it has been working with Dyesol to develop an innovative solar cell technology that re-envisions windows as clear, clean energy providers. Professor John Bell has said that these dye-infused solar cells would significantly reduce building energy costs, and could even generate surplus energy to be stored or sold. The development has been touted as the most promising advance in solar cell technology since the invention of the silicon cell.

Agronomy Journal has an interesting article on self-seeding crops:

“The significance of this research, in addition to lowering the cost and risk of establishing cover crops, is to extend the ecological functions that cover crops perform beyond the normal cover crop termination dates between mid-April and early May,” says Dr. Jeremy Singer of the National Soil Tilth Lab. “Furthermore, producers using organic crop production techniques could adopt these systems because of the potential for enhanced weed suppression without soil disturbance.”

Home Depot is giving $30 million to Habitat for Humanity:

The program, which aims to make at least 5,000 Habitat homes more energy efficient, will provide energy-efficient and sustainable building resources and funding for 17 percent of all single- and multi-family homes that Habitat builds in the next five years.

Scientists have created a groundbreaking library of avian flu antibodies:

These antibody libraries hold the promise for developing a therapy that could stop a pandemic in its tracks and provide treatment to those infected, as well as potentially pointing the way towards the development of a universal flu vaccine. The expanded treatment and containment options offered by Sea Lane’s antibody libraries could help provide healthcare officials, researchers, and governments with unprecedented resources to combat this serious global health threat.

In related news, Australian scientists report progress in understanding the mechanisms of acute respiratory distress syndrome, and American researchers have tracked the seasonal migration of the flu virus, which could help to improve vaccines.

Speaking of viruses, this is really fascinating:

A common, naturally occurring virus that attacks cancer cells but appears to be harmless to normal cells is being studied as a possible treatment for malignant, highly aggressive and deadly brain tumors called gliomas.

Having watched a family member die of a glioma, I hope very much that something comes of this.

A British church is refusing to perform heterosexual marriages:

North London's Newington Green Unitarian Church is taking a stand for gay and lesbian couples by refusing to conduct any heterosexual marriages until Britain's Civil Partnership Act is changed to allow religious content in civil partnership registrations. The church will conduct only blessing ceremonies for both gay and straight couples who have legally wed in a civil ceremony, according to BBC News.

Meanwhile, a Methodist church in Oregon has voted to accept LGBT members.

A new study contradicts a conservatarian article of faith:

Researchers led by Y. Tony Yang of George Mason University and Michelle Mello of the Harvard School of Public Health investigated the effects of malpractice risk, as measured by insurance premiums and various tort reforms, on the number of OB/GYNs in the United States between 1992 and 2002....The study found that the supply of OB/GYNs had no statistically significant association with premiums or tort reforms. Most OB/GYNs did not respond to liability risk by relocating out of state or discontinuing their practice. Tort reforms, such as caps on noneconomic damages, did not help states attract and retain OB/GYNs.

Phoenix mayor Phil Gordon has asked the FBI to investigate Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio's anti-immigrant raids:

Last week, the Arizona Ecumenical Council and American Jewish Committee issued a joint letter saying the raids had "evoked a 'police state' atmosphere" and led to "detainment on the basis of a racial profile and dehumanization of innocent people."

They were joined on Friday by the Arizona chapter of the Anti-Defamation League, which echoed calls for a Justice Department investigation.

Last, but certainly not least, Alberto Gonzales is having a tough time finding a job:

The greatest impediment to Mr. Gonzales’s being offered the kind of high-salary job being snagged these days by lesser Justice Department officials, many lawyers agree, is his performance during his last few months in office.

In light of which, Patricia Lee Sharpe at WhirledView offers him some not-so-friendly advice.

Now that all that's out of the way, we can give Images of Arctic Polar Science Stations 1881-1884 (via Plep) the attention it deserves.


Which reminds me: It's high time you familiarized yourself with the most common killer whale dialects. When you're finished, you can examine the phonographic ephemera at Nipperhead. And take a tour of Kudzu-Covered Houses (via Neatorama).


The lilting music of pinecones splitting open in the heat provides the perfect soundtrack for these photos. You'll find other exciting soundscapes here.

Furthermore: A gallery of Chinese cigarette cards. A timeline of Black Flag Hair: 1976 - 1986. Examples of immersive video, courtesy of The Bioscope. The Specimen Showcase of The Fluorescent Mineral Society.


Cinderella Stamps. An amazing collection of x-ray movies. Inconceivably beautiful microphotographs by Dennis Kunkel.


And now, I'll leave you to puzzle over "Dream of Toyland" by Arthur Melborne-Cooper (1907).



(Illustration at top: "Landscape" by Sidney Nolan, ca. 1965. Nolan's one of my favorite painters; I believe this work is for sale, if anyone feels like picking it up for me.)

Abolishing Human Development

I'm embarrassed to report that the editors of the Las Vegas Review-Journal have got the goods on me and mine:

[W]hat can one conclude from environmentalists' insistence that coal be removed from the country's energy portfolio? That their focus has moved from reducing pollution to abolishing human development and prosperity.

This is one of my favorite denialist fairy tales: Once upon a time, environmentalists were reasonable people who simply sought to make this country a happier, healthier place. But now, sad to say, they've all turned into dirty fucking hippies who hate prosperity.

Naturally, this drastic change comes as quite a shock to the RJ, despite the fact that it's been a conservatarian article of faith for years. I can't recall when I first saw this tactic used; it must've been at least two decades ago. Since then, I've been alerted hundreds of times to the overnight transformation of the environmental movement from a well-meaning group of seal fanciers to a force for anarchy, poverty, and chaos that won't rest until we're all shivering in the darkness.

Despite hating prosperity and all its good works, environmentalists are also well-connected moneygrubbers, with a staff of "well-paid lawyers" who delight in terrorizing the defenseless fossil-fuel industry. Who can doubt that when America falls, these opportunists will land on their feet? Once the collapse comes, and we're reduced to living in caves and trees, we're sure to find that the Sierra Club has cornered the market in clay and wattles; unless you want your rosy-haired, golden-cheeked children to run around as naked as jaybirds, you'll have to pay your Green Overlords as many cowrie shells as they ask.

The editors aren't provincials by any means; they're worried about all of us. Still and all, there's no harm in using plucky little Nevada as an example of the deadly peril we face:

Nevada's demand for electricity has grown 230 percent faster than the rest of the country, and is expected to double in less than a decade.

You can see the bind they're in, sitting out there in the sun-scorched desert, with the hard-earned money of hapless gamblers piling up in their coffers. Do you have any idea how much coal it takes to power a single hotel like the Rio? If you did, you'd stop worrying about Appalachian mountaintop removal, and start worrying about how much air conditioning it takes to keep Penn Jillette from cooking down into six cubic yards of reeking fat.

Not that it matters or anything, but the Review Journal is owned by The Stephens Group, which has made extensive investments in fossil fuels, and has been accused of far worse things than that.

Main Street Cred

Molly Ivors has scathingly addressed most of the problems with Maureen Dowd's latest manifesto on political authenticity, but a couple of further points jump out at me.

I was amused by Dowd's reference to "white, blue-collar voters in 'Deer Hunter' and 'Rocky' country." While beating up on Obama for taking an anthropological interest in "colorful locals," she sees fit to represent those same locals to us via Oscar-winning Hollywood movies (one of which was a textbook example of antiwar defeatism!). How's that for out of touch?

Although she proposes to speak up for blue-collar values - which she explicitly identifies with guns, naive religion, racism, and the worship of bowling trophies - she has no ability to make them coherent, let alone meaningful. The mere attempt leads her to write gibberish like this:

Members of my clan sometimes were overly cloistered. But they weren’t bitter; they were bonding. They went to church every Sunday because it was part of their identity, not because they needed a security blanket.

Identity is a security blanket, of course, and Dowd clings tooth and nail to the one she's borrowed from her totally non-faggy father and brothers, even though (or because) she herself is an elitist and a hussy and a snob according to most of the traditional standards she hopes to uphold.

"Uphold" is the wrong word, I suppose. Dowd doesn't want to live by those standards; she just wants to use them to beat up on men who don't meet her hopelessly conflicted, pre-critical standards for masculinity. The entire column is dedicated to the proposition that Obama is yet another goddamn faggot fairy nancy boy like Gore and Kerry, who, if he becomes president, is liable to think before he does stuff, instead of wielding authority for the sweet sake of it, by divine right, like Dear Old Dad would've.

Hillary's appalling in her own way, of course. She's ferocious, which is unbecoming in any other woman than Maureen Dowd, and "she fights like a cornered raccoon," which is a simile revealing enough to make Freud himself blush.

But ultimately, Obama's failure to be a proper man is far more offensive than Hitlery's ferocity. He has "the detached egghead quality" that voters equate with "wimpiness, wordiness and a lack of action," as you can plainly see from his unprecedented success in the primaries. He talks about arugula (to farmers who grow it for a living, granted...but still, doesn't arugula sound gay?).

He treats cheese and salami "as intriguing ethnic artifacts," as evidenced by the fact that...well, by the fact that he looked at them, I suppose. And he's also a know-nothing know-it-all, who surrounds himself with "academic experts" as though the God-given gift of a penis weren't enough to make him an instant expert on any topic worth understanding.

The implication of all this, as far as I can tell, is that it'd be better to have your access to healthcare or education taken away by a real man, than to have it expanded by a sissy.

Dowd knows how far to go too far, so she understands that resenting other people's money is as déclassé as making hostile generalizations about women is hip and edgy. It's not that Obama is wealthy or educated that's the problem, ultimately; it's that he can't "feign Main Street cred."

Given that imposture is a given here, along with the condescension it implies, how do we know when a politician is successful at it? By the reaction of objective commentators like Dowd, natch, who can easily spot the difference between "sampling" a beer and drinking it, and between "examining" cheese and looking at it.

You can't curse the darkies darkness without lighting a candle - everyone on Main Street knows that - so Dowd offers some friendly advice:

In the screwball movie genre that started during the last Depression, there was a great tradition of the millionaire who was cool enough to relate to the common man — like Cary Grant’s C.K. Dexter Haven in “The Philadelphia Story.”

Once again, Hollywood - that cesspit of depravity - has all the answers. Oddly, although Dowd points out that Adlai Stevenson was so Obama-esque that his detractors, with rare invention, called him "Adelaide," she seems to be unaware that Cary Grant was reviled, in the same era and by a similar type of person, as a fag and a commie.

But that's beside the point. The larger problem is that it's psychosexual trainwrecks like Maureen Dowd and Chris Matthews who get to decide who's "cool enough to relate to the common man," while downplaying the extent to which this "relation" is one of ruler and ruled.

(Illustration: 2007 Canadian Club ad, via Accordion Guy.)

The Pestle of Assimilation

Bob Johnson of BET explains what's wrong with the candidacy of that boy Obama:

“[I]f you take a freshman senator from Illinois called ‘Jerry Smith’ [i.e., a white man] and he says I’m going to run for president, would he start off with 90 percent of the black vote?” Johnson said. “And the answer is, probably not.”

Not without being called a commie, a racist, a terrorist, an elitist, an opportunist, a class warrior, an empty suit, a demagogue, and a hypocrite, that's for sure.

It'd be terrible if blacks voted for Obama simply because he's "one of them," instead of looking at more important factors...like whether or not they'd like to have a beer with him, or how well he bowls, or whether he prefers orange juice to coffee, or how many times he mentioned Jesus in a speech. Doing so would confirm their adherence to "identity politics," which can be broadly defined as the belief that the United States comprises a variety of people who have vastly different experiences of what it's like to be American, and whose problems won't necessarily be solved by another round of corporate tax cuts, or some splendid new war.

People who believe in this fairy tale have forgotten the ideal of equality on which this country was founded; in doing so, they've revealed themselves as the second-class citizens we always suspected they were.

Summoning the better angels of our nature is supposed to be effortless for Americans, like hating fags or snubbing panhandlers. And yet, I can't quite bring myself to respect Johnston, despite his status as a poster child for Black Capitalism and his earnest efforts to repeal the Death Tax. There's something especially ugly about accusing black voters of a shallow approach to politics, at a time when powerful media personalities are worrying themselves sick over Obama's bowling skillz and diner etiquette.

Conventional wisdom says the black population is susceptible to identity politics largely because of ancient grudges that it refuses to give up. Presidential candidates are accordingly supposed to repudiate this dour outlook, and lead black voters towards a more "mature" political understanding (c.f., Obama's claim that America can atone for past crimes by clinging to the dreamy exceptionalism that made them possible).

White America has its own forms of identity politics and its own grudges, God knows, but candidates are generally supposed to treat those as common sense, or badges of authenticity, or worse yet, as "values." To put it another way, blacks are flattered for what they may become, if they submit to the Mortar of Assimilation, while whites are flattered for what they are (i.e., the hand that wields the pestle).

This is a longstanding and important tradition, so it's no surprise that Obama's occasional attempts to turn it on its head have landed him in hot water. You're not supposed to pity "regular" voters, or psychoanalyze them, or accuse them of being somehow unaware of where their own best interests lie. Those approaches are strictly for teh darkies, queers, and bitches, all of whom have a boundless need for constructive criticism from the likes of Georgie Anne Geyer and Maggie Gallagher.

The way to show respect for regular folks is to portray them, per Atrios, "as part of some community of simpletons whose comfort zone is so narrow that they all freak out if someone dares to drink a different brand of beer," while interpreting their legitimate resentments and insecurities as tacit approval for offshoring, deregulation, and the destruction of the social contract.

Anything else would be elitist, you see.

(Illustration: "The Mortar of Assimilation – and the One Element That Won't Mix." From Puck, 1889.)

Sunday Music Blogging

Dedicated to Echidne.

Friday Nudibranch Blogging

The other world is pressed
Against the glass.

A kind of heaven, a known nothing.

Call out to Mexichromis macropus
To colors never seen before
But most familiar.

(Photo via Umiushi Zukan.)

Friday Hope Blogging

A new law in Wisconsin allows victims of domestic violence to get out of rental agreements without being penalized:

The law makes leases void if landlords punish tenants for calling police or emergency services. It also prohibits municipalities from enforcing ordinances that charge fees to property owners when tenants call police for help in domestic violence, sexual assault or stalking situations.

A bid to end affirmative action in Oklahoma has failed miserably:

The motion to withdraw the measure says backers do not believe that the number of signatures required to get on the ballot has been obtained. To get on the ballot, the petition would need 138,970 valid signatures.

There's more trouble brewing for Fred Phelps:

A federal court has ordered liens against the staunchly fundamentalist Westboro Baptist Church, which recently lost a civil suit, The [Baltimore] Sun reported Monday.

Judge Richard D. Bennett of the U.S. district court of Maryland ordered church founder Fred Phelps and his two daughters to post cash bonds of $125,000 and $100,000 within the next 30 days. The judge also placed a lien on an office building owned by the elder Phelps that is worth $232,900. No money may be borrowed against the equity in the buildings, and no new mortgages can be issued on the property.

A federal judge has blocked a uranium mining operation near the Grand Canyon:

After a day-long hearing, a federal judge Friday evening issued an injunction against VANE Minerals and the Kaibab National Forest, halting uranium exploration on public lands within a few miles of Grand Canyon National Park.

“This order stops uranium exploration on the banks of a national treasure,” said Taylor McKinnon of the Center for Biological Diversity. “The Forest Service had allowed drilling to begin while the case was pending, so the order comes as a major relief. We’re elated.”

Archaeologists from the United States, Israel, and Palestine are collaborating on historic preservation:

For the first time, the would-be peacemakers publicly revealed the fruits of their negotiations, and underlying research, to some 200 Israeli archaeologists during a four-hour presentation on Tuesday evening at the Van Leer Institute in Jerusalem. The plan involves the return of artifacts and agreement on the protection of designated archaeological sites....

Boytner and Dodd share a long-standing interest in the connection between politics and archeology and, in the first two years of a five-year process beginning in 2002, they put together an electronic database of more than 1,500 sites and tens of thousands of artifacts that would fall into a legal limbo if and when the final boundaries are drawn between Israel and a Palestinian state.

Speaking of historic preservation, "Richard Moe, president of National Trust for Historic Preservation, argues that historic preservation has long been a tool with which to fight global warming":

This emphasis on new construction is completely wrong-headed. We can’t solve the problem by constructing more and more new buildings while ignoring the ones we already have. All green technology used in a new building represents a new impact on the environment. The greenest building is one that already exists.

The United States Energy Information Administration data suggest that buildings constructed before 1920 are actually more energy-efficient than buildings built at any time afterwards – except for those built after 2000. Furthermore, in 1999, the General Services Administration found that utility costs for historic buildings were 27 percent less than for more modern ones.

Things alerts me to Low-tech Magazine, which has won my antiquarian heart with an article recommending that you "turn off your flat screen television and get lost in 17th, 18th and 19th century optical entertainment." The revolution will not be televised; it'll be praxinoscopic!

A new water heater reportedly reduces energy consumption by means of a heat pump. That's interesting, but I was even more intrigued by this plea for help:

[W]hy doesn't my fridge connect to the outside world? In wintertime, there's plenty of cold air for free, just outside my window. In summertime, the hot air from the fridge's air pump gets recirculated into my already-overheated house. Seems like a problem looking for a solution. Any takers?

Seems like a good question to me....

Another day, another alleged breakthrough in solar panel design:

By using a popcorn-ball design -- tiny kernels clumped into much larger porous spheres -- researchers at the University of Washington are able to manipulate light and more than double the efficiency of converting solar energy to electricity.

Inhabitat discusses solar balloons:

These solar balloons are as low-impact as power plants get, since their infrastructure is composed entirely of a control panel, a helium supply cable, and a power cable. Residential possibilities abound, as Cory and Gurfil estimate that one or two balloons would fulfill the electrical needs for one home, and they have suggested that multiple balloons can be linked together to power apartments and communities.

The design is also ideal for a multitude of off-the-grid applications, with the potential to bring power to deserts, isolated islands, ocean-bound freighters, and heavily forested landscapes. Additionally, the balloons’ eminently deployable nature makes them perfect for disaster and emergency situations, since the balloons are quick to set up and can be delivered via air.

The Sietch Blog reports that big business is clamoring for "an eight-year extension of the solar Investment Tax Credit."

“We believe solar projects will become cost effective in the future without the federal tax credits,” said Edward Levin, vice president of global structure products at Morgan Stanley, “But the current federal tax incentives are still vital for industry growth and continued investor confidence. The tax incentives need to be extended to avoid a market interruption that could significantly set back U.S. solar development.”

No word yet on whether Levin reeks of patchouli or plays hackeysack. But it's looking as though his wish may be granted.

New York governor David Paterson says he will not allow an LNG terminal in Long Island Sound:

Gov. David Paterson said Thursday that New York won't approve plans for a $700 million liquefied natural gas terminal in Long Island Sound, a project supporters say would reduce utility bills but that critics say would be an environmental hazard and a possible terrorist target...."The fact is, Broadwater is behind us," Paterson said at a news conference at a state park along Long Island's north shore. A crowd of about 200 politicians, environmentalists and Long Island residents applauded.

The movement against animal confinement at factory farms is expanding:

Growing public awareness of the environmental, public health, and animal welfare challenges associated with animal confinement has lead several major grocery stores, fast food chains, and meat producers to phase out some of these practices. U.S. companies that have responded to consumer concern in recent years include Safeway, North America's third largest grocery retailer; leading pork producer Smithfield Foods; and hamburger giant Burger King.

Mounting legislation is forcing companies to curtail confinement as well. The E.U. voted to ban veal cages, breeding pig crates, and windowless "battery cages" for hens, and the laws first went into effect last year. A campaign is now under way in the largest U.S. agricultural state, California, to hold an animal welfare referendum during the November election. A handful of other U.S. states have passed bans on veal and pregnant sow crates, but the California initiative would make it the first to outlaw all three confinement practices.

There's talk in the UK of requiring magazines to inform readers when photos of models have been airbrushed:

Following the British Fashion Council's Model Health Inquiry last December, which questioned the part airbrushed images play in perpetuating an "unachievable aesthetic," digitally enhanced images — in other words, airbrushing — are set for some closer inspection. The U.K.'s Periodical Publishers Association said Tuesday it will set up a working group with the BFC and London magazine editors to discuss the use of digital enhancements in fashion photography.

AIDG Blog tells you everything you ever wanted to know about dry toilets. AfriGadget explains the benefits of the Universal Nut Sheller. And a centuries-old Amazonian farming technique may turn out to be very timely:

Fifteen hundred years ago, tribes people from the central Amazon basin mixed their soil with charcoal derived from animal bone and tree bark. Today, at the site of this charcoal deposit, scientists have found some of the richest, most fertile soil in the world. Now this ancient, remarkably simple farming technique seems far ahead of the curve, holding promise as a carbon-negative strategy to rein in world hunger as well as greenhouse gases....

They also suggest that this so-called “biochar” profoundly enhances the natural carbon seizing ability of soil. Dubbed “black gold agriculture,” scientists say this “revolutionary” farming technique can provide a cheap, straight-forward strategy to reduce greenhouse gases by trapping them in charcoal-laced soil.

The Memphis Zoo has successfully bred the critically endangered Mississippi gopher frog:

Using in-vitro fertilization techniques learned while breeding Wyoming toads in 2004, the zoo has produced 93 Mississippi gopher tadpoles, a number nearly matching the 100 frogs still living in the wild.

Scientists are setting up a global system of hydrophones to monitor ocean noises, and protect whales and other marine mammals.

“The ocean is a noisy place,” said Sofie Van Parijs, marine mammal acoustician at NOAA’s Northeast Fisheries Science Center (NEFSC) and a project scientist. “It’s full of natural sounds and those from human activities, and there is substantial evidence that the level of man-made noise is rising. Marine mammals and many fishes are highly dependent on sound for communication, navigation, foraging and predator avoidance. We need to understand how these animals, especially endangered and protected species, are impacted by sounds from many sources to be able to better manage and protect these living resources.”

A massive new survey of Madagascar wildlife is expected to aid conservation efforts:

The study is unprecedented in terms of not only the number of species examined (some 2,315 species in six groups), but also because of the project’s scale and resolution. The biodiversity, climate and habitat of the entire 226,657 square-mile island, which is nearly a third larger than the state of California, were examined....

“While some of the key areas of biodiversity are under protection, many are not. This study will help direct conservation plans to help protect the most species possible, with special consideration given to those animals and plants that are most endangered,” said the study’s lead co-author Dr. Claire Kremen, an associate conservationist with the Wildlife Conservation Society and UC Berkeley assistant professor.

Four Legs Good informs me that short-snouted seahorses are living in the Thames estuary, which is a sign that clean-up efforts have been successful:

The seahorses were discovered during surveys over the past 18 months, but this was kept secret until yesterday, as the seahorses were not fully protected until then.

Short-snouted and long-snouted seahorses now have full legal protection from being killed, caught or disturbed.

Canada is creating a new national park comprising 1.9 million acres:

Naats'ihch'oh, which means "stands like a porcupine" in the language of the local Dene aboriginal people, is an important habitat for grizzly bear, Dall's sheep and woodland caribou.

Ask for it by name.

CKR was kind enough to send me an interesting article on the insecticide DEET:

[B]y pinpointing DEET's molecular target in insects, researchers at Rockefeller University have definitively shown that the widely used bug repellent acts like a chemical cloak, masking human odors that blood-feeding insects find attractive.

The research, which will be published in the March 13 issue of Science Express, now makes it possible not only to systematically improve upon the repellent properties of DEET but also to make it a safer chemical.

CKR also brings us some truly shocking news: a new study suggests that spending money to help other people is more rewarding than spending it on oneself:

Losing both the pleasure of sharing with others and the warmth of identifying with our nation could be part of the uneasiness people express in agreeing with the pollsters’ “the nation is on the wrong track.” We have been told for so long now that keeping as much of our money as possible is the best of all possible worlds, that it’s likely that these losses would be unarticulated. But the Science article points to a need to help others that is deeply embedded in our nature.

Wine may protect against dementia, so drink up (and pour one for me while you're at it...this is thirsty work!).

The photo at the top is from a Flickr set by Susan Bein. Her other sets are stunning too...especially Ghost Towns of Eastern Oregon (via Lens Culture).


Furthermore: A survey of Russian nuclear research facilities. Documentary films on American folk traditions at Folkstreams.net, featuring footage of Othar Turner and Peg Leg Sam Jackson. Vintage cartoon sounds at Retronomatopeya (via Coudal, if memory serves).


A talking scarecrow from 1931. The sounds of cotton machinery. Gorgeous maps of the Martian canals at BibliOdyssey. The exciting world of date nails. And an amazing collection of Movie Title Screens (this link is definitely via Coudal).


Last, a solar eclipse, filmed in 1925 from a dirigible.

A Complex Equilibrium

Lance Burnham runs through the standard objections to the "alarmist" view of climate change:

1. It's depressing, and therefore incorrect.
2. Al Gore's house is too big!
3. Climatologists have demonstrated that the climate changed in the past, even before human civilization existed, so how can they possibly blame humans now?
4. Teh Commies!!!1
5. The sun is to blame for climate change, assuming it's actually happening, so lie back and enjoy the ride!

That said, he does have a couple of clever new arguments up his sleeve.

The world is a complex equilibrium and our creator, if that was the case, installed a lot of checks and balances.

At first glance, this is similar to David Limbaugh's claim that the earth's delicate balance proves that it's not delicately balanced. Burnham's innovation is to point out that if a creator gave us us checks and balances, we'd have checks and balances, so we must, so there. Which is a weird argument, given that Burnham worries about the effects of global cooling, and says that "Alberta is known to once have been a tropical sea" (once in a while climatologists actually do get something right, God bless 'em).

In short, dramatic climate change is perfectly natural, which proves that the climate is stable, except when it's not. Or to put it another way, here's a bunny with a pancake on its head.

Let's take a closer look at how these checks and balances work:

The carbon cycle is inherently balanced as an increase in carbon production in the atmosphere is followed by an increase in carbon storage and consumption by plants and algae.

That's not quite accurate...not least because what's pertinent here is the rate of carbon storage relative to the rate of emissions. But what's really problematic is the assumption that the process of achieving "equilibrium" will be pleasant for humanity, which Burnham himself admits is not necessarily the case.

Here's some more of the same:

And in global terms, 70 per cent of the world is covered by water and correspondingly 70 per cent of the climate is set by the sea regardless of what we do on land. If the world gets warmer, more cloud forms over the sea, reflects sunlight, and cools the world.

Again, that's not how it works. And so what if it were? What we're interested in is the transition from one state to another, and what it means for sea level, rainfall, plants and animals, or what have you. In other words, the "awful effects" of climate change, in which Burnham refuses to believe, would result from the very processes he invokes as wise provisions of a loving God.

To Burnham's credit, he understands that "in the form of fossil fuels, energy is a somewhat [!] finite resource." This leads him to the dazzling conclusion that we should "unleash the creativity and power of humanity moving the production and use of energy up the chain closer to where it all comes from which is the sun."

This cheerful outlook is what separates him from "the nihilistic Gore and Suzuki" -- both of whom have consistently recommended mass suicide rather than research into alternative energy -- and obliges him to spout disinformation dreamed up at thinktanks funded by the fossil fuel industry.

And now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to beat my head on Watertiger's desk.

(Photo by George Grantham Bain.)

The Future Intercourse of Mankind

In a column titled "The Polar Bears Are All Right," Michael Goldfarb argues that although Arctic ice has been melting, it's also increased very slightly this winter, which may not impress climatologists much, but what the hell do they know?

"Nobody has much idea of anything," Richard Lindzen points out, while sawing earnestly at the branch to which he's clinging. Some people say we'll see ice-free Arctic summers in a few years; others say it'll take decades. As for Lindzen, he's not so sure; the world is a labyrinth and a continued dark conceit. But still, the ice does seem to be melting, possibly. Goldfarb will grant you that.

Which to any layman will raise an obvious question: So what?

We don't know exactly what this'll do to that special portion of the climate that hangs above our blessed land like the ceiling of a chapel; the sensible thing, therefore, is to assume that it's going to make us happier, richer, more powerful.

The polar bears may not be all right, after all. But what have they done for you lately? If they were good it would be seen, as Donne says: good is as visible as green.

One thing we're gonna do is put the goddamn Eskimos to work. The way it stands now, Nanook catches a seal, and maybe his dumpy wives and his squalling brats eat for a week or two. What do you get out of it? Nothing, that's what. But teach him to work on an oil rig, and he's working for the benefit of you and me and all mankind:

The Inuit might find better work in the oil and gas sector, as high energy prices and melting ice make the Arctic an increasingly attractive area for exploration.

Things are so very uncertain, you understand. An ice-free Arctic may cause problems, or it may not. But in the meantime, there's oil to be had, and the outcome of that is certain: Comfort, convenience, the rosy glow of contentment on the faces of your golden-haired moppets.

Lindzen says polar bears are increasing in number. How could a population increase, and yet be threatened? It just doesn't add up. Besides, "they're not worried; they can swim a hundred kilometers." Which, in the Arctic, is a very long way indeed. It's almost the distance from Kotlik to Unalakleet.

And mark this: an economist of Goldfarb's acquaintance has challenged our hidebound assumptions about polar bears and ice and stuff. He observes that some animals have thrived in warmer climates, even as you and I. Why shouldn't polar bears? On the other hand, and this can't be overemphasized, so what if they don't?

Can a polar bear's happiness really be allowed to impede the future intercourse of mankind and the commerce of distant nations?

Of course not. What on earth could?

(Photo by Victoria Arocho/Associated Press.)

Scientificacious Integritude

Elizabeth Whelan has yet another bone to pick with the Scientific Establishment:

Medical journals now routinely attempt to ferret out what they perceive as "conflict of interest" by requiring that authors disclose any funding they have received from drug companies.

While I'd like to think that these journals have some degree of highmindedness about science, there's no doubt that the appearance of objectivity and transparency helps them to compete in their field. Whelan wants them to forgo this advantage, even though their readership demands it; what she offers in return, besides her personal Certificate of Purity, is unclear.

Oh, and remember that stuff she said a moment ago, about how people are making too much of a fuss about conflicts of interest and guilt by association? Well, don't get too carried away by it.

The Nader-inspired Center for Science in the Public Interest touts its "Integrity Project," which separates what they perceive as integrity-rich scientists (who do not accept industry funding) from the integrity-challenged scientists (with some type of link to corporate dollars).

If it's important for us to know that CSPI was "inspired" by Ralph Nader, you'd think it'd also be important for us to know that a study on coal-plant emissions was paid for by the coal industry. But for some reason, Whelan's brand of kneejerk green-baiting and circumstantial ad hominem doesn't qualify as "scientific McCarthyism." To be guilty of that crimson sin, a journal must attempt to shore up its credibility by strengthening editorial standards that it only relaxed thanks to years of corporate influence.

Whelan managed to overcome her own objections to accepting corporate money quite some time ago, but don't take that as evidence of bias. Her concern is fundamentally humanitarian: she worries that if these journals don't accept her diktat on Scientificacious Integritude, it'll deal a deathblow to Progress.

The current obsession with corporate ties as a "conflict of interest" is not harmless. It has led to regulations and restrictions in government and academia that have restricted scientists, preventing collaboration with external scientific experts and slowing development of new technologies. Such arbitrary guidelines stifle the progress of public health.

Fever-dream laissez-faire horseshit does that too, last time I checked, in part by insisting that public health goals should be set by a handful of catastrophically corrupt private firms that buy scientists as casually as I'd buy a bag of peanuts.

Again, many of these journals are published privately; surely Whelan's splendid libertarian principles would allow them to set strict editorial guidelines, even if scientific ethics didn't oblige them to do so.

As for the scientists who are griping because they can't get published in a respected journal, just because they saw fit to spend a decade or two suckling with robotic fixity at Monsanto's teat, I'd say they deserve the sort of readymade answer libertarians have for the grievances of the poor: Recognition is a privilege, not a right, and you made bad personal decisions.

But then, I'm biased.

Sunday Music Blogging

Dedicated to The Kenosha Kid.

The Divorce Industrial Complex

Having spent the past few weeks insisting that the Reverend Jeremiah Wright's paranoid style has absolutely no place in American politics, Townhall's columnists can now return to more pressing concerns, like the War on Fatherhood.

Albert Mohler interviews Stephen Baskerville, who has written a book about this problem. You can tell that it's very serious, because it has a military metaphor right in the title, and deals with the victimization of men.

The root of this crisis is no-fault divorce, an invention of the "Divorce Industrial Complex" which allows one partner to get a divorce even when the other partner doesn't want one:

It really is unilateral divorce — involuntary divorce. It allows one spouse to force divorce on the other without the involuntary spouse having done anything wrong. In other words, your spouse can divorce you without you having done anything legally wrong or agreeing to the divorce.

Lest you think this complaint is directed at the very concept of female autonomy, rest assured that although "the overwhelming victims of this are fathers...it happens to mothers as well." In order to save this minority of wives from the shame of being cast aside like a cigarette butt, it's right and natural that we should imprison the rest of them in miserable or even dangerous marriages until their husbands grow tired of the arrangement.

Legally speaking, Baskerville's claim is that marriage is a contract, and should accordingly remain in effect unless its terms are broken by one or both parties. You'd think that not loving someone anymore would easily qualify as nonperformance. But Baskerville, who's on the faculty at Patrick Henry College, and is therefore competent to "shape our culture with timeless biblical values," answers to a higher authority and expects women to do the same.

Arguing that women must stay married until their husbands say otherwise isn't very popular, so Baskerville switches gears and asks us to think of the precious little moppets who are growing up without the benefit of having their parents trapped in a loveless sham of a marriage.

[T]he father’s contact with the children when it is not authorized by the government becomes a crime. He can be arrested for trying to see his own children without having done anything legally wrong.

Again taking this argument at face value, if marriage is a legally binding contract, then it's a matter for the courts by definition. And one thing the courts are going to decide is who gets custody of any children, and under what terms. Baskerville knows his audience well, which is why he uses the terrifying phrase "authorized by the government." But to the extent that this is accurate, it was at least as accurate back in those dear dead days before no-fault divorce came along, as the laziest perusal of 1950s melodrama will demonstrate.

Still, libertarianism is all the rage, so the problem has to be presented as one of government tyranny:

[W]hat’s most important about it is this huge machine is government based. It’s not just private entrepreneurs in this case, it is government officials. It's lawyers, it's judges and it’s the huge social services bureaucracies … it’s a huge entourage that is not only profiting from divorce, but increasing government power over private lives in very dangerous ways.

One old-school option, as we know, was for the government to force you to stay married to a person you can't stand. That's not good enough for Baskerville, though, who says that "simply repealing 'no fault divorce' and reinstating fault in divorce would not solve the problem."

He doesn't specify what would solve the problem, but it's not too hard to guess. Given that his first aim is to stoke male rage and self-pity, you can bet that his second is to preach of the coming kingdom in which legal rights and men's rights will be synonymous. Like the rest of his crowd, he believes that once he's stirred up enough hatred of government and hatred of women, and extorted enough faith in God The Father, generations of long-suffering men will rise up and force our nation's self-centered bitches back into line. At which point, "the government" can get back to its proper business of rubberstamping the natural order.

Even without reading between the lines, Baskerville's rhetoric is as offensive as it is dangerous. But it'll never seem as outrageous as Rev. Wright's remarks. Invoking conspiracies and nursing grievances always seems worse, somehow, when minorities do it...perhaps because it's so obvious that they're mere puppets of the international neo-Marxist conspiracy, which would like nothing better than to see White America laid low.

A New Age of Unreason

You know what I really enjoy? Being lectured on science by people who don't understand the first thing about inductive reasoning. Here's Nigel Lawson, who has a new book on climate change coming out:

Over the past half-century, we have become used to planetary scares. In the late Sixties, we were told of a population explosion that would lead to global starvation.

Then, a little later, we were warned the world was running out of natural resources. By the Seventies, when global temperatures began to dip, many eminent scientists warned us that we faced a new Ice Age.

Fun! Now let me have a try. We were previously told that saccharin and coffee could cause cancer. Now, people are calling chromium-VI a carcinogen! As if!

I like the part about running out of natural resources, too. Thank heavens that myth has finally been laid to rest.

You have to marvel at the appetite of amateur climate discoverists for arguments that are based entirely on the author's canny assessment of their own stupidity. Lawson appeals to the everyday resentments of these yearning masses with frequent references to the "fashionable" theory of climate change; it's yet another symptom of bourgie hauteur, y'see, like eating sushi or staring rapturously at blank canvases.

And just in case any of them have some residual or larval respect for scientific expertise, he's not above making shit up:

Now, I readily admit that I am not a scientist; but then neither are the vast majority of those who espouse the currently fashionable madness. Moreover, most of those scientists who speak with such certainty about global warming and climate change are not climate scientists, or Earth scientists of any kind, and thus have no special knowledge to contribute.

The plot thickens! Now, it's not just dissenting climatologists who've been frozen out of the debate; it's climatologists, period. Surely Mr. Lawson is a queer farfetched man.

He goes on to observe that "carbon dioxide, like water vapour and oxygen, is not only completely harmless but is an essential element in our life support system." Since oxygen is completely harmless, I'm sure he'd be happy to be sealed hermetically in a chamber full of it for a day or two. And since water vapor is harmless, there's no reason he shouldn't be able to survive indefinitely at the bottom of the Marianas Trench. After all, it's a matter of quantity, not quality.

From here, the blizzard of nonsense approaches whiteout conditions. Increased CO2 levels are largely a result of population increase, so be fruitful and multiply! Without CO2, plants couldn't exist, so reducing CO2 levels would leave the world as bleak and barren as the interior of Lawson's skull. A warmer climate couldn't possibly reduce food production, because all plants require is high levels of carbon dioxide and plenty of sunlight.

The climate isn't warming, but we'd be better off if it were, so let's learn to adapt to it. Doing nothing is better than doing something stupid, so let's use highly theoretical geoengineering techniques "to cool the planet artificially," while making sure that the developing world has unfettered access to "cheap carbon-based energy."

Climate alarmists are all Marxists, searching for a new creed after the collapse of socialism...and besides, asking workers to reduce their energy consumption is typical bourgeois mystification. Capitalism has made everyone rich and happy, which has led to "a new age of unreason" in the form of doomstruck secularism. Alarmism is the most terrible danger we face, and it's being promoted by a cabal of unregenerate commies and atheists who want to destroy us all.

To put it another way, Lawson never borrowed a kettle from you, and he returned it unbroken, and besides, it was already broken when you gave it to him.

The title of his book, you ask? An Appeal to Reason.

Friday Nudibranch Blogging

There are few angels that sing.
There are few dogs that bark.
A thousand violins fit in the palm of the hand.
But Cerberilla affinis is an immense angel.

Friday Hope Blogging

A new Senate bill would prevent Crisis Pregnancy Centers from advertising themselves as providers of "abortion services":

Rep. [Carolyn] Maloney said, "Although I may disagree with their views, many crisis pregnancy centers are forthright and respectful and they have a right to exist. Unfortunately, some take a more underhanded approach to lure in women seeking abortions by using tactics that should be illegal. Many women who face unwanted pregnancies find themselves in a very difficult, very personal situation. They shouldn't have to face the added stress of deciphering whether or not the clinic they choose offers legitimate medical services."

The panty-sniffing faux-Christian ghoul Phill Kline has suffered a legal setback:

A Kansas agency has refused to turn over abortion records subpoenaed by Johnson County District Attorney Phill Kline. And if Kline doesn’t get them, Planned Parenthood attorneys said Monday, Kline’s criminal case against Planned Parenthood could crumble.

A federal judge has ruled in favor of an endangered lynx:

A federal judge today ruled that the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources is in violation of the Endangered Species Act for allowing trappers to set traps and snares that catch, injure, and kill Canada lynx, a protected species. The case was filed on behalf of Born Free USA, united with the Animal Protection Institute, and the Center for Biological Diversity. The court ordered the state to take all action necessary to ensure that no further takings of lynx will occur by trapping activities within core lynx habitat.

In another victory for the CBD, the deranged Shadowrock development has been halted:

In March 2007, the Army authorized the Shadowrock developer to start grading in critical habitat for the Peninsular bighorn sheep and alter and fill in stretches of pristine Chino Canyon Creek, home to the endangered least Bell’s vireo, in order to construct luxury houses and golf courses. The Center for Biological Diversity challenged the authorization and the Fish and Wildlife Service’s biological opinion in federal court in April 2007. That May, the Army Corps suspended the authorization and re-initiated consultation. Finally, this week, the Army Corps revoked the authorization.

I've said it before, but CBD is a remarkably effective organization. If you've got a bit of cash to spare, you might consider sending it their way.

Waterbirds in Cambodia have been making a comeback thanks to relatively modest protections:

According to a report released today by the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS), several species of rare waterbirds from Cambodia's famed Tonle Sap region have staged remarkable comebacks, thanks to a project involving a single team of park rangers to provide 24-hour protection to breeding colonies. The project pioneered a novel approach: employing former hunters and egg collectors to protect and monitor the colonies, thereby guaranteeing the active involvement of local communities in the initiative.

The report shows that some species, which include varieties of storks, pelicans, and ibises, have rebounded 20-fold since 2001, when WCS and the Ministry of Environment of the Royal Government of Cambodia established the conservation project.

A ban on soy production in the Amazon seems to be having good effects:

"Without a doubt the results show that soy moratorium is being respected and that is good news," Paulo Adario, coordinator of Greenpeace's Amazon campaign, was quoted as saying by the Associated Press. The report found no new soybean plantations in any of the 193 areas that showed deforestation of 100 hectares (250 acres) or more between August 2006 and August 2007.

India's telemedicine partnership with Ethiopia seems to be promising, too (despite certain troubling aspects that are noted in the article):

"We want Africans to share expertise with each other and for areas with few doctors to be linked to hospitals in cities so doctors there can fill the gap," said Ratan Singh, project director for the Indian government agency responsible for implementing the technology and training Ethiopians to use it.

Clear Channel and CBS have been trying to argue that a list of their LA-area billboards comprises a trade secret; apparently, billboards stop being effective when people find out where they are. A judge has quite properly told them to bugger off:

“The city is obliged to give out public information,” said Judge James Chalfant at the April 2 hearing that included lawyers from Clear Channel and CBS, the Los Angeles City Attorney's office and the Weekly. Chalfant told the two advertising giants that, despite their claims that the locations and ownership of billboards in Los Angeles should be kept secret from competitors, “Your competitor has the same right to the list"....

Los Angeles officials have long suspected that 40 percent of the 11,000 billboards in L.A. are illegal. Many activists and city leaders have demanded that a list be made public so that activists and others can fight the visual blight problem.

As part of its deadly plot to emasculate honest and vigorous men like Al Smith, PG&E is dramatically expanding solar-thermal power in the Southwest:

Pacific Gas and Electric Company announced today that it has entered into a series of contracts with BrightSource Energy, Inc. for renewable solar power. The first three contracts are for a total of 500 megawatts (MW) of power to be supplied from three solar thermal electric generating projects. PG&E also signed two contracts for options on an additional 400 MW of solar power, which would bring the total amount of power purchased under these five agreements to 900 MW.

Meanwhile, SoCal Edison has noticed that unused roofs are a good place for solar panels (this is an idea that your humble correspondent, who is no slouch when it comes to discovering the utterly fucking obvious, has been shrieking about for years). Here's a Flash animation detailing the project.

One the thing that sun can't do, it turns out, is take the blame for climate change:

New research has dealt a blow to the skeptics who argue that climate change is all due to cosmic rays rather than to man-made greenhouse gases. The new evidence shows no reliable connection between the cosmic ray intensity and cloud cover.

Lauded and criticised for offering a possible way out of the dangers of man made climate change, UK TV Channel 4's programme "The Great Global Warming Swindle", broadcast in 2007, suggested that global warming is due to a decrease in cosmic rays over the last hundred years....The new research shows that change in cloud cover over the Earth does not correlate to changes in cosmic ray intensity. Neither does it show increases and decreases during the sporadic bursts and decreases in the cosmic ray intensity which occur regularly.

While the Denial Industry wastes time, energy and money trying to spin this PR disaster, Inhabitat reports on a factory that runs on waste oat husks:

Scott’s Porage Oats, a Quaker Oats Factory at Uthrogle Mills in Scotland is installing a combined heat and power biomass boiler that will enable the factory to become carbon-neutral, running entirely on waste oat husks. The husks, removed from the oats during the milling process, will provide 9,709 MWhrs of electricity and 10,902 MWhrs of steam a year, reducing its emissions by 9,000 tonnes a year—equivalent to the annual emissions of 3,000 cars.

It also discusses an interesting new type of solar panel:

The development utilizes specially calibrated ROYGBIV panels to collect solar energy over a broad spectrum of wavelengths, yielding an unheard-of energy efficiency rating that is 7 times greater than conventional panels.

Hydrokinetic turbines on the Mississippi could reportedly generate 1600 megawatts:

Swing by the Mississippi River a few years from now, and you may be surprised to see hundreds of thousands of miniature electric turbines dotting the fast moving river's bed. All the electricity generated by this massive "in stream" hydrokinetic project - around 1,600-MW - would be enough to power up to 1.5 million homes, according to Daniel R. Irvin, the chief executive of Massachusetts startup Free Flow Power Corp.

Siting and wildlife protection are concerns, course, but the basic idea is a good one.

Meanwhile, Grist has compiled a nice timeline of defeats for the coal industry over the last year.

Five endangered kakapo chicks have hatched in New Zealand:

A species of flightless parrot edged back from extinction with the hatching of five new chicks in New Zealand in recent weeks and two more on the way, officials said Monday.

The latest births of owl-like kakapos in southern New Zealand brought the population of the rare bird to just 91, said Emma Neill, a senior official of a Department of Conservation program to save the parrot.

And on Santa Cruz Island, a pair of bald eagles has hatched two chicks:

Russell Galipeau, superintendent of the park, said it was thrilling to see the birds' recovery on the island.

"In just six years we have progressed from releasing birds to the wild to birds being born in the wild," he said.

You can spy on them by clicking here.

A dam has been breached in Montana so that toxic sediment can be removed from its reservoir.

Its breaching represents the first time a dam has been taken out specifically as part of a multiyear process to clean up a toxic river bottom. The lower water level with the dam gone will allow engineers easier access for cleaning.

Contractors will spend several years digging up toxic sediments 25-feet-(eight meter)deep in some places. Eventually, the former reservoir is slated to become a recreation area.

Orion has an interesting article on the debate over what to do with an urban wilderness in Brooklyn:

This is not a park, or a piece of preserved nature, but a previously developed area in the process of reverting to wildness. Urban wildernesses tend to happen by mistake. In a city like New York, where space is at such a premium that former synagogues, sugar factories, and schools have all been reborn as luxury condos, a wilderness can only be the result of inattention.

See also: The Mathematics of Preservation and the Future of Urban Ruins at BLDGBLOG.

A new meteor crater has been discovered in Australia...on Google Maps:

Hickman found the crater whilst exploring the satellite imagery of the area on Google Earth. The crater is 270m across but had not been previously discovered. Arthur Hickman has been rewarded for his eagle eyed discovery by having the crater named after him. It is now known as the Hickman Crater.

Also: Ontario's Rural Ruins (via things). The mortal remains of the Newell Telescope. Sound sculptures by Bill Fontana (check out Pigeon Soundings and Oscillating Steel Grids Along the Brooklyn Bridge).

The Bioscope alerts me to The Open Video Project, which includes "187 Edison production from the Library of Congress, dating from the 1890s and 1900s." It also recommends this book, which I'm going to stumble out and buy this very day; I know of at least one occasional reader who'll be tempted to do likewise.


Message in a Bottle allows you to track the progress of seafaring bottles via GPS:

Several of the bottles are being tracked using GPS technology and are programmed to send
their longitude and latitude coordinates back to Ramsgate every hour. The information they transmit is used to create a real time drawing of their progress.

Each non-GPS bottle contains a message from residents of Ramsgate to the residents of The Chatham Islands, a pencil and an instruction leaflet which requests anyone finding a bottle to report to this website and record where and when the bottle was found. In addition they are requested to document their find on
a form inside the bottle before returning the bottle to the sea to continue its journey. Details of found bottles may be viewed on the view found bottles page.

If you're in Los Angeles, be sure to visit Birdfoot, a photo exhibit on the Mississippi River Delta (the book version is available here). If that sounds interesting, you'll probably also enjoy this map-based artwork by Sue Beyer.


The Alfred Russel Wallace Collection "brings together a remarkable selection of digitised letters, notes, articles and even some of the insect specimens he collected on his travels." It also includes some of his architectural drawings for a proposed natural history museum:


I'll leave you with this scene from the life of Chip, The Wooden Man, circa 1928.



(Illustration at top: "Edward Henry Windred (1875-1953) was a popular painter of racing pigeons between the wars. In the 1920s and 1930s, owners of prize winning pigeons would often commission a painting of them. Windred was one of the most prolific painters, and also ran a barbers shop in New Cross where he lived at 352 New Cross Road. People would bring their pigeons to the shop where he would paint them." Via Transpontine.)

Aping White Elites

Thers is developing a veritable Barnum Museum of conservatarian bombast. Get a load of this specimen:

Unfortunately, I don’t have time enough right now to give these thoughts the treatment I think they deserve. The importunate urgency in our age is very strong: it militates against my inclination to let them marinate for awhile, in the hopes that a structured essay may issue from the marinade.

This is entertaining, God knows, but it's also educational. In the first few decades of the 20th century, one of the things that made blacks so comical to regular people was their alleged fondness for big words, which was supposedly an attempt to gain status by acting white. The historian Ronald L.F. Davis evocatively describes that era's frenzy for songs and plays that showed blacks "aping white elites to comic effect, trying to ice skate, clumsily walking along a high fashion boulevard, haplessly trying to ride horses in the manner of an English gentleman, and strutting proudly in exaggerated dress at parties and 'darkey' balls."

Reading Cella, it struck me that these stereotypes are much more true of bone-ignorant conservative whites than they ever were of the blacks for whom they were invented. What is Cella doing if not "aping white elites to comic effect"? Der Kulturkampf is essentially a cakewalk, in which hard-right bullyboys vie to represent "civilization" by strutting around in tuxedos made from its scraps. Dime-a-dozen phrases from Plato and Burke, tin-eared attempts at antique eloquence, and metric assloads of earnest exhortation...these are the rhetorical equivalents of the traditional cakewalk contestant's ludicrously oversized top hat.

The difference, obviously, is that cakewalks mocked white elitism; the haughty prancing of Cella & Co is an absolutely humorless celebration of it. It all has to do with monocles, mint juleps on the veranda, and the pleasure that comes with perceiving oneself as a thinker of Elevated Thoughts. Movement Conservatism is a sort of endless Renaissance Faire for people who think saying "prithee" makes them Sir Philip Sidney.

And now, having distilled these lucubrations into a true aqua divina, and served it in nuce lest this too-puissant spirit should overmaster your own, I must away betimes.

The Only Approved End Point

Al Smith fires up his coal-powered mindreading machine, and immediately recognizes Earth Hour as a plot that's bringing us several steps closer to our troglodyte future:

No single event has more perfectly revealed the true intent of the radical environmentalist movement than the tragicomic Earth Hour farce staged around the world on March 29. From Australia to the Peoples Republic of San Francisco, "green" zealots convinced gullible individuals, local politicians and frightened business owners to turn off their lights, their appliances and their electrical machinery to "save" energy and retard global warming.

Australia and the PRSF both have some experience with drought, and have accordingly attempted to "save" water by "using" "less" of it. The principle doesn't seem that different to me: there's a resource that you're low on, so you attempt to use less of it. If Smith were threatened by a water shortage, he'd presumably turn his taps on full blast, in order to show the hippies what's what.

When you're attempting to get people outraged about the tyrannical, world-threatening insanity of a voluntary public awareness campaign, it helps if you can point to a single person who was harmed by it in any way. Smith can't, of course, so he proceeds instead to the slippery slope argument: Dim a city's lights for an hour this month, and next month you'll be in the Gulag, reading On the Correct Handling of Contradictions Among the People by the light of the silvery moon.

For the organizers of Earth Hour, the only approved end point is darkened cities, Americans huddled together over the light of flickering candles, vehicles abandoned on deserted streets, silent machines growing dusty in empty factories.

This is inevitable because environmentalists are against all forms of energy generation in principle. See how clear things become when you refuse to succumb to alarmism?

Speaking of which, civilization itself is at stake, the center cannot hold, mene mene tekel upharsin, beware the jubjub bird, someone left a cake out in the rain, and so forth:

One cannot but be reminded of the famous phrase uttered by British diplomat Sir Edward Grey, on the very eve of the outbreak of World War I: "The lamps are going out all over Europe. We shall not see them lit again in our lifetime."

On the very eve of it, do you hear? If that doesn't give you some idea of what's at stake here, I don't know what will.

In other news, the dirty fucking hippies at the Royal Society have laid down their hash pipes long enough to announce that "new coal-fired power stations that fail to capture 90% of their carbon emissions by 2020 should be closed down."

What Poor Economies Crave

Henry Payne, tanned and refreshed after a cruise in the Caribbean, is ready to apply himself anew to the problems of our time.

Greens, of course, use the world’s islands as poster-children for the destructive effects of rising sea waters, but climate change is the least of the Caribbean islands’ worries. What these poor economies crave is more fossil fuel, not less.

If you know Payne at all, you know that this is his answer to everything. Is your house on fire? You need more fossil fuels! Do you suffer from the suppurating gleet? More fossil fuels! Are you puzzling over the status of diachronic contingency in post-Scotist ontology? Fossil fuels!

Here are the symptoms of the Caribbean's fossil-fuel craving:

Walk the streets of Samana, Dominican Republic or St. John’s, Antigua and you are quickly confronted with families huddled in road-side shacks, small children with no clothes, and stray dogs and chickens everywhere. In Samana, utility poles stop at the small town’s edge, starving its suburbs — much less the countryside — of electricity. In Antigua, Barbados, Tortola, and other Caribbean islands, two-cycle motorbikes are a common form of transportation.

And here's the cure:

And yet these islands are growing thanks to an influx of massive, 3000-berth, 120,000-ton, five-diesel-engine cruise ships (consuming 2,800 gallons of fuel per hour) like the one aboard which my family traveled.

Now, cruise ships have been visiting these islands for many, many years, and they've disgorged tourists by the millions, and these tourists have spent an astronomical amount of money on lodging and food and entertainment and booze and prostitution and what have you. And yet, Payne was jolted out of his tropical reverie by the sight of desperately poor people who were doing without basic amenities.

These are small islands, with small populations; surely the wealth deposited by tourists should at least have paid for reliable island-wide electricity by now. The fact that it hasn't suggests that this is not, in fact, a good way to improve the lot of poor Caribbeans, regardless of whether they're in danger of having their homes submerged by rising seas.

The reason is simple enough: Very little of the money spent in a place like Antigua stays in the country; most resorts are foreign-owned, and most "authentic" souvenirs are manufactured in places like China or the Marianas. The tourist industry doesn't do much good for local agriculture, either; almost all food served to tourists is imported.

Next, Payne explains that cruise ships require a huge amount of fuel:

[I]n order to transport these masses to their diesel ships, other forms of fossil-fuel transportation are also growing — from airplane flights to Miami (the largest port of embarkation), to islands teeming with rental cars, to thousands of boats transporting tourists to beaches and coral reefs, to more coal plants under construction to feed hotels and investment properties....

How this demonstrates that the Caribbean "craves" fossil fuels is no more obvious to me than why Payne imagines that this situation can continue indefinitely. But these mysteries are child's play compared to what comes next:

And who are the tourists driving all this growth? The same rich Baby Boomers that Gore claims support him in his moral mission to dramatically curtail our energy use.

Like Henry Payne and his family, for instance. So there!

To make a long story short, all of this proves that the solution to the Caribbean's problems is more tourism and less fretting over rising seas, and that any regulation of the cruise industry will plunge the world into poverty and chaos.

Next week: Payne visits Saipan, and finds that what contract workers really need is for Big Government to get off their backs!