NASA’s chief climate scientist joined policymakers from outside the space agency on Thursday in criticizing agency Administrator Michael Griffin’s doubt about whether mankind should address global warming. ‘I was shocked by his comments,’ said James Hansen, who shapes NASA’s climate research as the head of the Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York. ‘It was a remarkable statement. I don’t know if it was planned, or it just slipped out of his mouth.’ Even the White House, which has been accused of ignoring a looming global crisis over a rise in temperatures linked to industrial activities, sought to distance itself from remarks made by Griffin in an interview that aired Thursday on National Public Radio’s morning show. The interview was broadcast on the same day the White House unveiled its proposal to limit the production of greenhouse gases by 15 industrialized nations, including the U.S. The gases are linked to a warming trend. ‘I have no doubt that global - that a trend of global warming exists,’ Griffin told NPR in the taped interview. ‘I’m not sure it’s fair to say that it is a problem we must wrestle with.’ Griffin, who is […]
UTRECHT — Dutch researchers are trying to grow pork meat in a laboratory with the goal of feeding millions without the need to raise and slaughter animals. ‘We’re trying to make meat without having to kill animals,’ Bernard Roelen, a veterinary science professor at Utrecht University, said in an interview. Although it is in its early stages, the idea is to replace harvesting meat from livestock with a process that eliminates the need for animal feed, transport, land use and the methane expelled by animals, which all hurt the environment, he said. ‘Keeping animals just to eat them is in fact not so good for the environment,’ said Roelen. ‘Animals need to grow, and animals produce many things that you do not eat.’ Developed nations are expected to consume an average of 43 kg per capita of poultry, beef, pork and other meats this year, an amount that rises around 2 percent annually, data from the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organisation shows. Asked whether people would be repulsed by lab-grown meat, Roelen said he believed there would be enough demand, as much of what people eat today is already extensively processed, from the feed […]
TOKYO — Prime Minister, Shinzo Abe, took Japan’s latest eco-friendly cars out for a spin on Friday to show off his environmental awareness ahead of next week’s G-8 summit meeting. Abe and Economy, Trade and Industry Minister, Akira Amari, took turns trying out six car models that emit zero or low-level carbon dioxide by using electric batteries, clean diesel, fuel cells, hydrogen gas or biofuels for power. ‘I am confident that Japan has the most superior technology in the world to protect the environment,” Abe told a group of executives from top Japanese automakers. Abe first tested an electric vehicle by Mitsubishi Motors Co. that can run about 130 kilometers (80 miles) after a one-time charge without emitting any carbon dioxide. ‘These are wonderful cars, quieter than gasoline cars, and adopting the latest technology,” Abe said after slowly driving the cars inside the courtyard of the Prime Minister’s Office. Abe recently announced a proposal to cut global greenhouse gas emissions in half by 2050 as the basis of a new international framework to succeed the Kyoto agreement, which expires in 2012. Climate change and global warming are expected to run high on the agenda […]
ACAPULCO — Most solutions to the problem of global warming are tediously, almost oppressively, quotidian. Switch the lights off. Stop using fossil fuels to make electricity. Run an efficient car. Don’t fly. A few grandiose projects have also been suggested, such as giant parasols in space or adding iron to the ocean to encourage planktonic algae to grow and soak up carbon dioxide. On the whole, though, those big ideas are either mad or could have dangerously unpredictable consequences. That does not mean that lateral thinking about the problem has no place. And the idea proposed by Alfred Wong of the University of California, Los Angeles, at last week’s meeting of the American Geophysical Union, in Acapulco, is about as lateral as they come. Dr Wong reckons the problem is not so much that CO2 is being thrown away, but that it is not being thrown far enough. According to his calculations, a little helping hand would turn the Earth’s magnetic field into a conveyor belt that would vent the gas into outer space, whence it would never return. The site of the conveyor Dr Wong is proposing to build is the Arctic. More specifically, he is suggesting […]
Tuesday, May 29, 2007 by CommonDreams.org The Republican Plan For 2008 Begins Today by Thom Hartmann It’s difficult to watch Democrats play checkers while Republicans play chess with Iraq. It’s particularly difficult on Memorial Day as more Americans and Iraqis die. But the Republican Party has been playing politics with Iraq since the day after the Supreme Court installed George W. Bush in office in 2001, and they have no intention of stopping now. They may have borrowed some techniques from Richard Nixon, but they have no intention of repeating his mistakes. The political calculus being pursued by Karl Rove and the Republican Party with regard to Iraq and the 2008 elections is a simple four-step process: 1. Shift ‘ownership’ of the downside of the ‘war’ and occupation of Iraq to the Democrats. 2. Begin to wind down American involvement in the occupation of Iraq no later than mid-2008. 3. ‘Claim victory and get out’ of direct combat in Iraq by the early fall of 2008. 4. Win big in the 2008 elections by having ‘won’ a ‘war.’ Step one was accomplished last week, when Republicans – particularly those most visible in our […]
Remote Viewing the Year 2060
