Environment World

Wired: AP Technology and Business News from the Outside World on Wired.com

The headline of this post should read “Are your kids SAFE”. Far from it for me to sensationize a sensetional topic but I will continue to beat this horse as it has some life in it, “Global Warming”. Wake up people and smell the coffee that’s buring in the backyard. This article (from my favorite source Wired) has a stronger tone then the other articles I’ve linked to. Read it and follow the tips I posted to earlier.

A summery to keep you awake tonight:

UNITED NATIONS (AP) — To head off the worst of climate change, governments must pour tens of billions of dollars more than they are into clean-energy research and enforce sharp rollbacks in fossil-fuel emissions, an expert scientific panel reported to the United Nations on Tuesday.

…The IPCC expressed its greatest confidence yet that global warming is being caused largely by the accumulation of carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gases in the atmosphere, mostly from man’s burning of coal, oil and other fossil fuels.

…They said global carbon dioxide emissions should be leveled off by 2015-2020, and then cut back to less than one-third that level by 2100 - via a vast transformation of global energy systems, toward greater efficiency, away from fossil fuels and toward biofuels, solar and wind energy and other renewable sources of energy.

Top 50 Things To Do To Stop Global Warming

I’m still on my obsession of making the world a better place than what I came in with, no offense to anyone please. My prior post gave the other side’s view of the cause of global warming but I can’t get past the coincidence and we aren’t to blame and global warming struck now naturally, it’s not a chance occurrence. This article speaks about what I tried to say but much more the writer was much more eloquent and the tips don’t look to hard in the article. I don’t know about your communities but I live in Japan and this place is all about being green, it is the home of the Kyoto Protocol. It makes easier for everyone here to be good world citizen. If your community isn’t one then it your good job to make them aware of what they are doing. I grabbed a quote of the article because I thought there summary was better than anything I could come up with.

Global warming is a dramatically urgent and serious problem. We don’t need to wait for governments to solve this problem: each one of us can bring an important help adopting a more responsible lifestyle: starting from little, everyday things. It’s the only reasonable way to save our planet, before it is too late.

Gaiam Community - Why switch to compact fluorescent bulbs? Watch this.
If you’ve been reading this blog you may have noticed that I’m an environmentalist concerned with what come out of Global Warming. Perhaps more importantly I’m a cheapsake. It’s always to get those principles to come together. The link I posted is to a web page with a video that shows the cost of an incandescent bulb vs a fluorescent bulb. Everyone should pay the extra money to get the energy saving bulb. It’s better in the long run for all.

The Raw Story | ‘Timid’ Congress drives GQ correspondent to draft six articles of impeachment for Vice President Cheney

It takes more than just blogging about the obvious. A well thought article is what it takes to impeach anyone with power, especially the Vice-President of the U.S. I commend the author and I hope that many others will read the words of true freedom. his administration has imprisoned many people on the globe, it’s time to pay the bill.

To summarize:

“Over the past six years, as the country has spiraled into military misadventure, fiscal madness, and environmental meltdown, the vice president has not merely been wrong about the issues; he has been duplicitous, deceitful, and deliberately destructive to the American democracy,” Hylton writes.

“These things can no longer be denied by rational minds: That in the buildup to war in Iraq, the vice president, lacking confidence in the true casus belli, conspired to invent additional ones, misrepresenting the available intelligence, crafting new ‘intelligence,’ and then spreading these falsehoods to the public, perverting the democratic process that he is sworn to uphold,” Hylton adds.

Global Warming:A Chilling Perspective
This is a non-topical (if global warming is a non-topic) long winded article about how it’s good to pump pollutants into the atmosphere. I’ve included it on my blog to offer a different view point on how this issue effects us all. My views have been clear thus far and I may well share my two-cent further. According to the article the pollutants may dim the effects of the natural global warming trend. Yes I believe there is a natural trend toward global warming but we are not helping. This trend may be the fore-bearer of a coming ice-age so we should prepare for both. The article also makes a point of pointing out some of the economic benefits of pollution. I’ve to say that bad effects on some communities of pollution are not enough to sacrifice lives to. If a natural trend is for the planet to warm and we are only going for the ride, so be it. Let’s not kill ourselves in the meantime.

To summarize the article:

Global warming began 18,000 years ago as the earth started warming its way out of the Pleistocene Ice Age– a time when much of North America, Europe, and Asia lay buried beneath great sheets of glacial ice.

…Global warming alarmists maintain that global temperatures have increased since about A.D. 1860 to the present as the result of the so-called “Industrial Revolution,”– caused by releases of large amounts of greenhouse gases (principally carbon dioxide) from manmade sources into the atmosphere causing a runaway “Greenhouse Effect.”

…Since the climate has always been changing and will likely continue of it’s own accord to change in the future, instead of crippling the U.S. economy in order to achieve small reductions in global warming effects due to manmade additions to atmospheric carbon dioxide, our resources may be better spent making preparations to adapt to global cooling and global warming, and the inevitable consequences of fluctuating ocean levels, temperatures, and precipitation that accompany climatic change.

Wired: AP Technology and Business News from the Outside World on Wired.com
Australia a once bad-guy in the global warming camp has made an announcement that will make a small change in her stance on global warming. The U.S. has made some gestures in the same area and we (and I) need to get Japan on the same track.
To summarize:

Legislation to gradually restrict the sale of the old-style bulbs could reduce Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions by 4 million tons by 2012 and cut household power bills by up to 66 percent, said Environment Minister Malcolm Turnbull.

Pregnancy hormone key to repairing nerve cell damage
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, “I have Multiple Sclerosis”. Nothing epic there but I read an article today, which I linked to, which demonstrated what was known but finally more thoroughly studied. The fact is that when women have MS (over half) get pregnant their MS goes into remission. The study was on an MS like condition introduced into mice. When they became pregnant the mice went into remission. They want to know if they can do the same thing in humans. I’ll go out in a limb by saying I’m willing to talk about it sailor ;-).
To summarize

In a paper to be published in the February 21 issue of The Journal of Neuroscience, a team of researchers from the U of C’s Faculty of Medicine reports that a study conducted on mice found that the hormone prolactin encourages the spontaneous production of myelin, the fatty substance that coats nerve cells and plays a critical role in transmitting messages in the central nervous system.

02.15.2007 - Researchers convert heat to electricity using organic molecules, could lead to new energy source

This blog is named “… Rants & Raves from Japan …” but lately I’ve done a lot of Ranting but it’s time for a Rave that gives hope t a brighter future for all. This article gives me hope there’s be a cleaner and no foreign oil future n the works

To summarize the article:

“The effect may seem quite small now, but this is a significant proof of concept, and the first step in organic molecular thermoelectricity,” said Pramod Reddy, a graduate student in UC Berkeley’s Applied Science and Technology Program and co-lead author of the paper.

Wired News: Scientists Flex Political Muscles

Interesting article about the global scientific community. There was one quote for the article I thought stood out as there so many naysayers about global warming. The naysayers say it’s “god’s will” I would say “park your )(~*+` cars”.

“Global warming is simply a “reality,” said Leshner. “I’m sure you can find eight scientists who don’t (agree), but the vast majority of scientists around the world agree about the need for alternative energy sources.”

Wired: AP Technology and Business News from the Outside World on Wired.com　In the article they were surprised at what they found under the Arctic/Anarctic/ ice. I think we hit a tipping point, ecology speaking. The previous estimates I heard were for meltdown to happen in 30-40 years, maybe it’s sooner then that.