Month: August 2009

up to 175 lbs per acre:

Methyl iodide – iodine mixed with methanol and red phosphorus – is so reliably carcinogenic that it’s used to cause cancer.

The largest market is California strawberries.

Mystery in the muck:

The organic vs standard ag debate is worthless but not because there is no issue to debate so much as because the debate is uninformed and superficial.

We really would benefit from getting higher quality information widely reported so that growers could respond to sensible market pressures rather than cynically meeting a nonsensical checklist that increases the value of their crops for no logical reason.

It can also be argued that this is an ethical issue of huge proportions since those who suffer the most from organic nonsense are the food insecure people in developing countries, those who can least bear the costs of this nonsense carry the largest burden.

China got greened?

The new economic engine for China shall annually invest 1 trillion yuan into low-carbon technology development – $150 Billion each year until 2050.

“The money would be mainly used to introduce technologies that would raise the energy efficiency of end-users in industry, construction and transportation,” Bai Quan, another panel member, was quoted as saying by The China Daily.

China has signaled that it may be willing to adopt carbon intensity targets relative to economic growth and to make a huge investment in “new energy”, including nuclear, solar and more efficient coal plants.

Performance of officials to be measured not just by how they spur economic growth but also by the environmental soundness of that growth.

Military folks are always telling stories, notice. They seem to know they’re doing it too. Here’s today’s. A creepy story about weapons that target brain function.

Gary Egbert:

We don’t really know how much water there is on Earth.

There is some evidence that there is many times more water below the ocean floor than there is in all the oceans of the world combined.

Wal-Mart Hacienda:

Importing from China four years ago was 22% cheaper on average.

By year-end 2008, however, the average price gap with the U.S. had dropped to a mere 5.5%, which is often not large enough to be worth the hassle of sourcing something from halfway around the world.

The more surprising reversal is the comparison with Mexico. While China was around 5% cheaper on average than Mexico in 2005, China is now 20% more expensive. link to Brian Schwarz

The combined average global land and ocean surface temperature for July 2009 ranked fifth-warmest since world-wide records began in 1880.

Atlantic hurricane activity is highest in last 1500 years.

The global average temperature jumped 0.41 C from June to July, the largest one-month jump in the 31-year global temperature record and the second hottest July on record. Full Story

The planet’s ocean surface temperature was the warmest on record for July, breaking the previous high mark established in 1998. Full Story

No worry. It’s all triggered by the Earth’s various tilt: Obliquity.

You can visit the EPA’s Toxics Release Inventory, search by state or zip code, and find out what you were inhaling last year, (although Jeff McMahon noticed the presentation is tough).

“EPA’s job is to ensure an open and transparent flow of information between Americans and their government, and today’s unprecedented step represents the agency’s commitment to doing just that,” EPA Administrator Lisa P. Jackson, said in a press release.

“While we are still analyzing this information, we hope this raw data will be reviewed and used responsibly by stakeholders and the public to help them make informed decisions.”

There are currently about 1.2 billion humans between the ages of 10 and 19. What do we want to be when we grow up?

There comes a time in almost everyone’s youth when those remarkable human traits, self-awareness and empathy, catch up with potency, when you pause and reflect, when you first look back at the muddy tracks you just left across a floor and conclude that you are the person who needs to mop things up.

Most people go through this transition successfully and become responsible citizens.

Most of us would not leave the scene of an accident.

An eloquent essay while we roll our rocks uphill.

NYTimes:

The scientists fabricated blood and saliva samples containing DNA from a person other than the donor of the blood and saliva.

They also showed that if they had access to a DNA profile in a database, they could construct a sample of DNA to match that profile without obtaining any tissue from that person.

I don’t want to think about this.

“We are all responsible for everything and everyone in the face of everybody, and I more than the others.” – Dostoyevski

“Advertising is the art of convincing people to spend money they don’t have for something they don’t need.” – Will Rogers

Is advertising an industry fundamentally fueled by deception? Or is advertising better understood as a stream of information that, if well directed, can help people?

Comment?

1. Seafood aquaculture now accounts for nearly 50 percent of the world supply.
2. For 20 consecutive years China is #1, producing 70 percent of the world’s total output.

There are three trends in USA fisheries. The first is aggressive management to stop catastrophic damage and depletion, including the industrial forage of 90% of the world’s small fish ground up as animal feed. The second is open ocean aquaculture such as captive tuna aquaculture, with the hope that the challenges of disease, concentrated pollutants and genetics will be mastered. The third are new efforts to erect massive inland fish farms.

Ninety-five percent of the currency in Washington, D.C. is contaminated with cocaine.

Americans use 500 tons of cocaine each year.

In eighteen cities tested, cocaine is on 90 percent of the bills.

Cocaine on paper money ranged from .006 micrograms to more than 1,240 micrograms—the equivalent of 50 grains of sand.

PNNL said that aerosols in China’s polluted skies has led to the formation of rain droplets that are up to 50 percent smaller than rain droplets in clean skies.

The smaller droplets do not as readily form rain clouds, pointing to upcoming food shortages that would effect 1.5 billion people in China, India, and Pakistan.

Mark Hanson:

As long as foreclosure and foreclosure pipeline housing supply makes up such a large percentage of total sales the housing market will never be on the mend because supply is effectively infinite.

Well?

Another current review: The Coming Foreclosure Wave

For a portent on the future of energy, Blacklight is just like a novel.

One billion birds die each year colliding with windows!

Collisions are usually ground level during daylight when birds mistake window reflections for habitat.

Habitat loss and colliding with glass are the chief causes of bird mortality.

Ornithologist Daniel Klem Jr. has developed a low cost film – a lattice of UV-reflecting and UV-absorbing patterns – that can save billions of birds.

If religion is the opiate of the masses, fundamentalism is crack cocaine. Rob Boston, associate editor for Church & State magazine examines the top ten power brokers of the religious right and efforts to style America under their narrow agenda.

1. Pat Robertson – $246,986,289
   Christian Broadcasting Network
2. Southern Baptist Convention – $205,716,834
3. James Dobson – $156,972,266
   Focus on the Family
4. Jay Sekulow, Pat Robertson – $42,658,159
   American Center for Law and Justice
5. Alan Sears – $31,674,124
   Alliance Defense Fund
6. Donald Wildmon – $22,547,087
   American Family Association
7. Tony Perkins – $11,783,971
   Family Research Council
8. Tim & Beverly LaHaye – $10,640,810
   Concerned Women for America
9. Jerry Falwell Ministries – $4,208,989
10. Steve Baldwin – $1,680,914
    Council for National Policy

There’s also our pew of demagogues in politics and media. Dick Armey, for instance, who said, “Let me just be clear about something. I have no problem with Medicare. I was talking to my minister just last night about it”. Exactly.

Prior to the Internet, America’s media moguls sought to seize even more control of the hearts and minds of Americans in order to satisfy the needs of their financial sponsors and political agendas. And they were successful.

Disgraceful? Yes. Surprising? No.

Today, America’s mainstream media machine is primarily owned by a small group of men. And they don’t just own television networks or newspapers. They own television networks AND newspapers AND radio stations.

This is why you get the same bull regardless where you turn.

This carefully guarded control has created a very dangerous form of censorship that few realize because America’s media industry puts out the same messages and rarely allows an open platform for the exchange of opposing viewpoints by credible experts.

Mike Stathis at SeekingAlpha:

I have a mission that, in my opinion is much higher and more rewarding than money. I want to end the exploitation of Main Street by the financial industry.

The mainstream media no longer holds complete control of media distribution.

We the people now have a say in distribution through the Internet. As a consequence, the truth is coming out.

But they will only lose if you wake up and realize how you’re being fooled.

Keith Eubanks:

My background is in the field of system dynamics — a modeling technique developed at MIT that applies concepts from feedback control engineering to studying social systems such as markets or the general economy.

My observation is that what we generally term as the ‘economy’ (national or world economic activity) is far, far too complex for any individual to understand or forecast simply by thinking about it. Hence, we have all of these idealogical conflicts.

Mental models are not sufficient to sort out these issues and I doubt there are currently any mathematical models that are sufficient either. Hence, we are left with arguing.

I often notice that people talk the most about what they know the least about. We must discover how to manage ourselves. Endless arguing won’t do it.

“Until conservatives once again hold Republicans to the same standard they hold Democrats, they will have no credibility and deserve no respect.” – David Frum

Reagan to Cheney: behavioral psychology and the trickle-down economy.