Last week, we told you about some of the bad news in Madagascar, a nation whose political troubles have created a thriving illegal economy for rare wildlife species. But here’s some good news from that same country: a species of lemur not seen in 100 years has been rediscovered . [More]
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Winds of Change I found it surprising that in “ A Path to Sustainable Energy by 2030 ,” Mark Z. Jacobson and Mark A. Delucchi do not mention the effects of the suggested energy sources on climate. The authors propose to absorb about six terawatts of energy from about 60 terawatts available in the wind, or about 10 percent of its total energy. Because the winds, at least near the U.S., usually flow around highs or lows, where the speed and related Coriolis force tend to maintain the pressure difference, I can easily envision that absorbing the energy will change the rate at which the pressure centers collapse. How this would change the weather, I do not know, but it must make a change to give us some of the energy. Possibly, the weather change would be an improvement, but as a believer in Murphy’s Law, I would be surprised. About 100 years ago dumping garbage into the ocean was justified because the oceans were infinite compared to the effect, so no one calculated how much was allowable. Let’s be smarter this time! Why not do the calculations before we cause more problems? [More] Central America, 1 March 2010 – For the first time in Central America Caribbean, Spiny lobster fishing will be banned from the region’s waters during the species’ reproductive season, raising hopes for more responsible fishing practices in the region. Of all the fishing resources in this region, spiny lobster (Panulirus argus) is the most important income source for a large number of coastal communities, especially as it fetches high market prices. [...] That’s the sound of fracking –pumping a mix of water, sand and chemicals a mile or more into the Earth to shatter shale deposits and release the natural gas within. From the Barnett shale in Texas to the "supergiant" Marcellus shale that stretches from West Virginia to New York State, so much natural gas has been found that the U.S. may have enough to burn for 100 years or more. And burning natural gas releases 43 percent less CO2 than burning coal. [More] Most bacteria are well-behaved companions. Indeed, if you are ever feeling lonely, remember that the trillions of microbes living in and on the average human body outnumber the human cells by a ratio of 10 to one. Of all the tens of thousands of known bacterial species, only about 100 are renegades that break the rules of peaceful coexistence and make us sick. Collectively, those pathogens can cause a lot of trouble. Infectious diseases are the second leading cause of death worldwide, and bacteria are well represented among the killers. Tuberculosis alone takes nearly two million lives every year, and Yersinia pestis , infamous for causing bubonic plague, killed approximately one third of Europe’s population in the 14th century. Investigators have made considerable progress over the past 100 years in taming some species with antibiotics, but the harmful bacteria have also found ways to resist many of those drugs. It is an arms race that humans have been losing of late, in part because we have not understood our enemy very well. [More] |
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