Tuesday, November 20th, 2012
Carl Franzen, Tech Reporter - TPM
Stephan: This is good news, in one sense, and bad in another. Green technologies are good. But this report shows the momentum in green technologies is shifting outside of the United States.
The U.S. and East Asia may be known as the leading countries in the consumer electronics industry, but as it turns out, the greenest gadgets in the world come from India – specifically Indian electronics giant Wipro, according to a new report from Greenpeace International.
‘Wipro is the biggest surprise,
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Tuesday, November 20th, 2012
BRAD PLUMER, - The Washington Post
Stephan: This is the World Bank's latest assessment concerning climate change (click through to download the full report). It should alarm all of us. Not only this story, but the report itself) makes it clear that these changes have certainly scared the WB analysts.
Frankly I think this trend is going to play into the worst scenario. I say this because even if a new non-carbon based energy technology emerged in 2013, and the old energy virtual corporate states did not attempt to block its adaptation, it would take several decades for the conversion to eventuate, and in some countries many decades. There is already enough inertia in the climate systems that a 4º increase would still occur.
Over the years at the U.N. climate talks, the goal has been to keep future global warming below 2°C. But as those talks have faltered, emissions have kept rising, and that 2°C goal is now looking increasingly out of reach. Lately, the conversation has shifted toward how to deal with 3°C of warming. Or 4°C. Or potentially more.
And that topic has made a lot of people awfully nervous. Case in point: The World Bank just commissioned an analysis (pdf) by scientists at the Potsdam Institute looking at the consequences of a 4°C rise in global temperatures above pre-industrial levels by 2100. And the report appears to have unnerved many bank officials. ‘The latest predictions on climate change should shock us into action,
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Tuesday, November 20th, 2012
EMILY SOHN, - Discovery News
Stephan: This accords with a number of related studies in meditation, and insight research. I think we may discover that this is one of the principal avenues by which the nonlocal becomes local. However we are not there yet, and while I note the materialist assumption of the researchers: 'At some point, maybe we will design the perfect study that can prove there were not spirits there and this is just a fascinating way that the brain works,' I agree with their conclusion: 'At the moment, all we're really doing is saying that this is what happens in the brain when you do this particular practice.'
During a trance-like session of psychography, experienced mediums in Brazil allow themselves to become receptive to spirits or dead souls. Then they write automatically, channeling the voices of those they believe to be speaking to them.
As these mediums communicate with the dead, found a new study, parts of their brains involved in language and purposeful activity shut down, alongside other patterns of increased and decreased activity.
The findings add to our limited understanding of how the spiritual brain works, though for now, science cannot speak to the existence of the spirit world.
‘I don’t think this does anything to make (the experience) less real or less profound or to make it less important in the moment,’ said Andrew Newberg, a neuroscientist at Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia.
‘At some point, maybe we will design the perfect study that can prove there were not spirits there and this is just a fascinating way that the brain works,’ he added. ‘At the moment, all we’re really doing is saying that this is what happens in the brain when you do this particular practice.’
In an attempt to understand how the human brain experiences spirituality, Newberg and colleagues have studied a range of practices, including yoga, meditation, […]
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Monday, November 19th, 2012
NICK TURSE, - Mother Jones
Stephan: While American children are going to bed hungry, and their schools all too often are falling apart, we have squandered untold billions on the infrastructure and schools of the countries where we have created wars, producing astonishing profits for war contractors, and little else. It is such an upside down policy that it is amazing to me that American voters have so quietly sat still for it. This last election, for the first time, suggests they are now fed up. This report gives good reasons why that is a reasonable position.
A billion dollars from the federal government: that kind of money could go a long way toward revitalizing a country’s aging infrastructure. It could provide housing or better water and sewer systems. It could enhance a transportation network or develop an urban waterfront. It could provide local jobs. It could do any or all of these things. And, in fact, it did. It just happened to be in the Middle East, not the United States.
The Pentagon awarded $667.2 million in contracts in 2012, and more than $1 billion during Barack Obama’s first term in office for construction projects in largely autocratic Middle Eastern nations, according to figures provided to TomDispatch by the US Army Corps of Engineers Middle East District (USACE-MED). More than $178 million in similar funding is already anticipated for 2013. These contracts represent a mix of projects, including expanding and upgrading military bases used by US troops in the region, building facilities for indigenous security forces, and launching infrastructure projects meant to improve the lives of local populations.
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The figures are telling, but far from complete. They do not, for example, cover any of the billions spent on work at the more than 1,000 […]
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Monday, November 19th, 2012
Stephan: Here is a new data point on the climate change trend. It may surprise you, as it surprised me.
Click through to see the map chart.
Grist.org’s Philip Bump dug through NOAA’s latest State of the Climate report and discovered this nugget, emphasis his:
The average temperature across land and ocean surfaces during October was 14.63°C (58.23°F). This is 0.63°C (1.13°F) above the 20th century average and ties with 2008 as the fifth warmest October on record. The record warmest October occurred in 2003 and the record coldest October occurred in 1912. This is the 332nd consecutive month with an above-average temperature. The last below-average month was February 1985. The last October with a below-average temperature was 1976.
As Bump translates, that means that anyone out there 27 (and two-thirds!) or younger has never lived through a month that saw global temperatures dip below average. For what it’s worth, the warmest October on record came in 2003 and the coldest occurred way back in 1912.
Bump has more on the numbers here, which you should go check out for yourself. But in our need to add something of our own (or, perhaps more accurately, our desire for a Friday afternoon spin on Wikipedia) that means the following people are among those who have never seen a colder-than-average month: Michael Phelps, Carly Rae Jepsen, Mischa Barton, […]
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