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Monday, January 20, 2003
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Robert Fisk writes: Through the open door, where rain splashed on the paving stones, a sharp east wind howled in from the east, from the Jordanian and Iraqi deserts. Every man in the room believed President Bush wanted Iraqi oil. Indeed, every Arab I've met in the past six months believes that this – and this alone – explains his enthusiasm for invading Iraq. Many Israelis think the same. So do I. Once an American regime is installed in Baghdad, our oil companies will have access to 112 billion barrels of oil. With unproven reserves, we might actually end up controlling almost a quarter of the world's total reserves. And this forthcoming war isn't about oil? The US Department of Energy announced at the beginning of this month that by 2025, US oil imports will account for perhaps 70 per cent of total US domestic demand. (It was 55 per cent two years ago.) As Michael Renner of the Worldwatch Institute put it bleakly this week, "US oil deposits are increasingly depleted, and many other non-Opec fields are beginning to run dry. The bulk of future supplies will have to come from the Gulf region." No wonder the whole Bush energy policy is based on the increasing consumption of oil. Some 70 per cent of the world's proven oil reserves are in the Middle East. And this forthcoming war isn't about oil? Take a look at the statistics on the ratio of reserve to oil production – the number of years that reserves of oil will last at current production rates – compiled by Jeremy Rifkin in Hydrogen Economy. In the US, where more than 60 per cent of the recoverable oil has already been produced, the ratio is just 10 years, as it is in Norway. In Canada, it is 8:1. In Iran, it is 53:1, in Saudi Arabia 55:1, in the United Arab Emirates 75:1. In Kuwait, it's 116:1. But in Iraq, it's 526:1. And this forthcoming war isn't about oil? (01/21/03) | |
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Ted Trainer writes: If yesterday's limits to growth analysis is basically valid some of the key principles for a sustainable society are clear and indisputable. 1) Material living standards must be much less affluent. In a sustainable society per capita rates of use of resources must be a small fraction of those in Australia today. 2) There must be small scale highly self-sufficient local economies. 3) There must be mostly cooperative and participatory local systems whereby small communities control their own affairs, independent of the international and global economies. 4) There must be much use of alternative technologies, which minimise the use of resources. 5) A very different economic system must be developed, one not driven by market forces or the profit motive, and in which there is no growth. The alternative way is The Simpler (but richer) Way. We can and must all live well with a much smaller amount of production, consumption, work, resource use, trade, investment and GNP a than there is now. This will allow us to escape the economic treadmill and devote our lives to more important things than producing and consuming. (01/21/03) | |
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Discover Magazine -- The tree snake, Chrysopelea, of south and southeast Asia is like something out of a bad dream: a serpent that can fly. But Jake Socha, a graduate student in biomechanics at the University of Chicago, was more intrigued than appalled. How, he wondered, do these creatures soar from tree to tree without aid of legs, wings, or feathers? To find out, Socha carried 22 captive Chrysopelea paradisi snakes up a 33-foot-tall tower in the Singapore Zoological Gardens, set them out on a horizontal branch attached to the tower's top, and waited. Two video cameras recorded each flight; marks that Socha had made on the snakes' head, midpoint, and end helped him track their body position and orientation. Then he used data from the video to reconstruct the creatures' flight pattern on a computer. (01/21/03) | |
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Discover Magazine -- The oceans, which cover nearly three-quarters of Earth's surface, remain largely unexplored because of their vastness and inaccessibility to us air breathers. Webb Research of East Falmouth, Massachusetts, hopes to open up much of that enigmatic realm with a new underwater vehicle that is propelled solely by the ocean itself, so it can potentially plumb the watery depths for years at a time. Such long-lasting scouts may someday form fleets that provide up-to-the-minute data for weather forecasting. In the past, such autonomous underwater vehicles, or AUVs, have been battery powered and therefore required frequent recharges that limited their distance and depth of travel. Webb's Slocum Glider hopes to solve this problem. "We conceived of a thermally powered engine to harvest the energy from the colder deep water of the ocean and the shallower warm water," Clayton Jones, an engineer at Webb Research, explains. "We picked out a material that undergoes a state change between those two temperatures in the ocean." When cold, this form-shifting substance is a compact solid. When warm, it expands and becomes a less dense liquid. The material's expansion in warmer waters charges an internal mechanism that acts like a spring being pushed into a tight coil, building up and storing potential energy. The glider uses this stockpiled power to control its buoyancy: By pumping mineral oil in and out of an external bladder, it alters its volume but maintains its weight. "The glider mechanically takes up more volume and becomes lighter than the water around it--less dense," Jones says. Wings attached to the glider's long, cylindrical body will let it dive and climb in a sawtooth pattern through the water, using energy accumulated in one cycle to power the next. Scientists can also fit the Slocum Glider with a variety of different sensory equipment and Global Positioning Systems. Each time it surfaces, it can raise its tail antenna to transmit data to and receive instructions from researchers sitting comfortably in their landlubber offices. The glider will have its first test in salt water at the end of this January. (01/21/03) | |
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BBC Science -- Edible bananas may disappear within a decade if urgent action is not taken to develop new varieties resistant to blight. A Belgian scientist leading research into the fruit loved by millions, and a staple for much of the world's poor, has warned that diseases and pests are steadily encroaching upon crops. The problem is that the banana we eat is a seedless, sterile article which could slip the way of its predecessor which was wiped out by blight half a century ago. (01/21/03) | |
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BBC Science -- Several shark species have declined steeply in the north-west Atlantic over the last 15 years, scientists say. The populations of some sharks have fallen to less than a quarter of their former size. With sharks high in the marine food chain, there is concern their fate may affect other creatures. ... The scientists, from Dalhousie University, Nova Scotia, Canada, report their findings in the magazine Science. ... "We estimate that all recorded shark species, with the exception of makos, have declined by more than 50% in the past 8 to 15 years." While fish like cod and haddock can reproduce fairly fast, possibly by up to 30-40% a year, sharks breed much more slowly. Some take 15 years or longer to reach sexual maturity, and many have a long gestation period. ... Dr Rachel Cavanagh is programme officer for the shark specialist group of the World Conservation Union (IUCN). She told BBC News Online: "The outlook for sharks is bleak worldwide. And the north-west Atlantic and Australia are probably the best-studied and best-managed shark areas there are. If we're looking at massive declines there, it's going to be as bad or even worse in other areas." (01/20/03) | |
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BBC Science -- Scientists may have found a new way of introducing genetic changes which are passed from parent to child. ... In the latest study, scientists have found a novel method of doing this in mice. They are using a technique called RNA interference, which can switch off a gene or reduce its activity, stopping the cell from behaving in a certain way. They introduced the change into stem cells, extracted from early mouse embryos, then injected these genetically modified cells into the target mouse embryos. They found that not only were the changes taken up in these animals, but also in many of the first generation of their offspring. ... Dr Maggie Dallman, from Imperial College London, UK, said the research, published in the journal Nature Structural Biology, was "very exciting experimentally". (01/21/03) | |
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Time Magazine -- Every war has its wonder weapon. In Afghanistan, it was the Predator, the unmanned drone that would loiter, invisibly, over the battlefield before unleashing a Hellfire missile on an unsuspecting target. The Gulf War marked the debut of precision-guided munitions, and in Vietnam helicopters came of age. World War II gave us the horror of nuclear weapons, and World War I introduced the tank. If there's a second Gulf War, get ready to meet the high-power microwave. High Powered Microwaves (HPMs) are man-made lightning bolts crammed into cruise missiles. They could be key weapons for targeting Saddam Hussein's stockpiles of biological and chemical weapons. HPMs fry the sophisticated computers and electronic gear necessary to produce, protect, store and deliver such agents. The powerful electromagnetic pulses can travel into deeply buried bunkers through ventilation shafts, plumbing and antennas. But unlike conventional explosives, they won't spew deadly agents into the air, where they could poison Iraqi civilians or advancing U.S. troops. ... HPMs can unleash in a flash as much electrical power—2 billion watts or more—as the Hoover Dam generates in 24 hours. Capacitors aboard the missile discharge an energy pulse—moving at the speed of light and impervious to bad weather—in front of the missile as it nears its target. That pulse can destroy any electronics within 1,000 ft. of the flash by short-circuiting internal electrical connections, thereby wrecking memory chips, ruining computer motherboards and generally screwing up electronic components not built to withstand such powerful surges. It's similar to what can happen to your computer or TV when lightning strikes nearby and a tidal wave of electricity rides in through the wiring. (01/21/03) | |
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New York Times -- You can't call just anybody old. Not in this age-boom world. People are touchy. White hair, wobbly gait, creased face — so what! It happens to everybody. Someone who is 70 these days no longer feels old, might be running marathons, lifting barbells, serving as the secretary of defense. Somebody who is 80 thinks of merely "getting up there." ... In this aging world, it remains elusive to live to become 100, but much less elusive. Although small in number, centenarians are proportionately the city's fastest-growing age bracket. The country's too. According to the 1990 census, 1,455 people who were at least 100 lived in New York City. The 2000 census identifies 1,787, an increase of nearly 23 percent, with 58 of them 110 or older. Nationwide, 50,000 people are estimated to have made it to 100, and demographers project that there might be close to one million in triple digits by 2050. Centenarians here, there, everywhere. (01/21/03) | |
http://www.synearth.net
10:56:20 PM 
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"I have the audacity to believe that peoples everywhere can have three meals a day for their bodies, education and culture for their minds, and dignity, equality, and freedom for their spirits. I believe that what self-centered men have torn down, other-centered men can build up....human progress is neither automatic nor inevitable.... We are now faced with the fact that tomorrow is today. We are confronted with the fierce urgency of NOW. In this unfolding conundrum of life and history there is such a thing as being too late.... this is no time for apathy or complacency. This is a time for vigorous and positive action."
--Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
5:38:17 AM
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2003
Timothy Wilken.
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