Thursday, February 19th, 2015
Rebecca Fishers, - gothamist
Stephan: It is beginning to dawn on New York City that many of its coastal neighborhoods and islands are doomed. We are going to see more and more of this, and I am closely watching how cities respond.
We can keep debating global climate change (it’s real!) until the last polar bear takes its final gasping breath. But let’s never forget that this seaside city is in imminent danger—a new study confirms New York’s temperatures are skyrocketing, sea levels are rising, and we’re in for one hell of a grim ride.
The Mayor’s Office has just released this year’s incredibly bleak New York City Panel on Climate Change report today, noting that their findings “underscore the urgency of not only mitigating our contributions to climate change, but adapting our city to its risks.” Not that this should be surprising at this point. Here are some fun things to look forward to, according to the report:
Mean annual temperatures are expected to shoot up by 4.1 to 5.7 degrees Fahrenheit by the 2050s. By the 2080s, those mean annual temperatures could increase by as much as 8.8 degrees Fahrenheit. For comparison’s sake, mean annual temperature increased a total of 3.4 degrees Fahrenheit from 1900 to 2013, […]
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Wednesday, February 18th, 2015
Leigh Martinez, - CBS Sacramento
Stephan: The demise of the bees is beginning to be felt. Bee rustling is another sign. It is an entirely self-created wealth wound that we are all going to pay for.
Bee hives provide the means for pollination of almond orchard, California.
Credit: Shutterstock
Central Valley farmers say they need two things to be successful: Water and honey bees. But both are in short supply this year.
A local beekeeper says he’s having trouble finding enough bees for area farms and ranches. So, where did they all go?
“It’s been stated that every third bite of food you take is thanks directly or indirectly to a honey bee,” said beekeeper Orin Johnson.
Johnson is counting. His client is willing to pay a higher price for strong bees and there’s only one way to tell if the colony is strong.
“We open them up and count the number of frames of bees. Not bees, the frames — the number of bees covering a honeycomb,” said Johnson.
California almond orchards need billions of bees, which the state doesn’t have.
“Our November, December this year, what were they, 65, 75 degrees? The bees are flying and there’s nothing out there for them to eat,” he said.
Across the country, bee colonies have […]
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Wednesday, February 18th, 2015
Stephan: To understand the true dimension of this consequence of climate change remember that the spread of disease described in this report is coming at the same time that antibiotic medicine is struggling due to overuse in industrial chemical agriculture and husbandry. We are literally creating this crisis at both ends, and for the same reason in both instances. Profit is the only priority. Wellness is not a consideration. This worldview cannot endure.
Lyme disease bacteria
Credit: hansacenter.com
According to Daniel Brooks of the Laboratory of Parasitology at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, the appearance of diseases in new places and new hosts will be par for the course as the climate continues to change. We have already seen this to an extent with diseases such as West Nile virus and Ebola, but those won’t be the last.
Professor Brooks says it will be ‘the death of a thousand cuts’ with society unable to keep up with the speed of disease as it spreads around the world.
“It’s not that there’s going to be one ‘Andromeda Strain’ that will wipe everybody out on the planet,” Brooks said, referring to the 1971 science fiction film about a deadly pathogen. “There are going to be a lot of localized outbreaks putting pressure on medical and veterinary health systems. It will be the death of a thousand cuts.”
Each has observed the arrival of species that hadn’t previously lived in that area and the departure of […]
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Wednesday, February 18th, 2015
Nelson Denman and Eva Rider, - Agence France-Presse (France)/The Raw Story
Stephan: This is what happens when a country makes a commitment to transition out of carbon. Japan's problem is that it takes 72 raw materials to maintain a high technology developed society, and Japan is deficient in whole or part in 69 of those materials. That's why Japan made such a big commitment to nuclear, because they had no oil and were utterly dependent. Nuclear was the wrong choice but they aggressively embrace solar and wind, and will have the power network installed to make Electric cars completely viable.
A Nissan employee exhibits an electric vehicle made by the Japanese auto giant
Credit: AFP Photo/Yoshikazu Tsuno
Green-car sceptics take note: Japan now has more electric vehicle charging spots than gas stations.
The country’s number-two automaker Nissan says there are now 40,000 charging units — including those inside private homes — across the nation, compared with 34,000 petrol stations.
While gas stations have multiple pumps and can service many more cars, the figures underscore efforts to boost green-vehicle infrastructure in Japan, long a leader in a sector that remains tiny globally.
Nissan is betting on growing demand for electric cars, while rival Toyota said it has been swamped by orders for its first mass market hydrogen fuel-cell car, the Mirai sedan.
Fuel-cell cars are seen as the Holy Grail of green cars as they are powered by a chemical reaction between hydrogen and oxygen, which emits nothing more harmful than water from its exhaust.
But a limited driving range and […]
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Wednesday, February 18th, 2015
Victoria Woollaston, - Dailymail (U.K.)
Stephan: Science seems to move from the mechanical, to the electronic, to the biological. We are now entering that third phase in information technologies. Here is one of the reasons I think that.
In 2013, researchers from Cambridgeshire ‘downloaded’ all 154 of Shakespeare’s sonnets on to strands of synthetic DNA
Just one gram of DNA can store the equivalent of 14,000 Blu-ray discs.
But although the potential for DNA as an alternative to hard drives has been known about for years, it is not the most reliable and secure way to keep data safe.
The latest breakthrough could be about to change that, however.
Chemists subjected spheres of DNA to extreme temperatures designed to mimic chemical degradation and found the material – and the data stored on it – could be successfully decoded.
The research was led by Robert Grass from ETH Zurich’s Department of Chemistry and Applied Biosciences.
‘DNA lends itself to this task as it can store large amounts of information in a compact manner,’ said the researchers.
‘Unfortunately, the data is not always retrievable error-free: […]
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We can keep debating global climate change (it’s real!) until the last polar bear takes its final gasping breath. But let’s never forget that this seaside city is in imminent danger—a new study confirms New York’s temperatures are skyrocketing, sea levels are rising, and we’re in for one hell of a grim ride.
