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surprised when people assume you're male when you have (at best) an ambiguous handle

Can you point to Greenpeace taking any of the communist governments to task for their appalling environmental record?

How about any peep of protest when Saddam Hussein ordered the burning of the Kuwaiti oil fields?

that we did not catch enough terrorists. I am pretty sure there is some James Smith, or John Johnson, or Robert Williams, or Tim McVeigh walking around ready to 'splode some buildings.

There must be. Otherwise they will keep doing this.

If cellulosic becomes attainable, and it will, then the pressures on corn will decrease tremendously.

Link to article about the program And then there are those wacky ORNL researchers making both ethanol and hydrogen from algae..

The future seems bright enough for ethanol production, with new ideas popping up all the time. Its pretty fun to drink too... :)

Sorry, but you've bought into the lie.

Agriculture is technology, and as such, is capable of being used in both constructive and destructive ways.

Lacandon
Agroforestry
Sustainable Agriculture

The only reason rain forest agriculture is currently unsustainable is because of the ease of slash and burn techniques and, frankly, laziness.

The sad part is that you believe what you wrote.

Man-made CO2 represents 4% of the annual output of CO2 on the planet. 96% of all CO2 is generated by natural causes.

The Earth has gone through more massive changes in it's history than you seem to be capable of conceiving. CO2 levels have been as high as 7000ppm in the past. Yes, we have a bunch of arctic ice cores that may indicate CO2 levels have been mostly invariable in the past, but, as one PhD Chemist I know pointed out, "All that may be measuring is the level of CO2 dissolution in water at 0 degrees C." In other words, CO2 in ice is more likely to be the function of how well CO2 dissolves into ice water than any other mechanism like atmospheric density.

I'm not saying that there aren't some signs of warming, but I am highly skeptical of the supposed disastrous consequences.

Sea levels are "noticeably rising"? Not according to the 1841 sea level marking in Tasmania found here. Even the IPCC only claims a maximum of 15 millimeters over the 6000 year average. If you can see 2/3rds of an inch difference, more power to you, but calling it "Noticeably Rising" is a vast overstatement. The 2007 IPCC report is claiming a maximum rise of about 18 inches, or about the same as during the Medieval Climate Optimum. Al Gore is claiming 20 feet, but he also claims to have created the Internet...

Weather, overall, is not getting worse. The 1930's saw worse hurricanes then even the 2005 season. The difference being that now we can name storms 2,000 miles out to sea that never touch land, whereas, the 1930's used ships that passed storms in the ocean and very few storms were measured until land-fall. In fact, the largest hurricane (Typhoon Tip) occurred in 1979, in the midst of a "slow period". In 2005, the increase in Atlantic hurricanes was matched by a decrease in Pacific Typhoons (hurricanes), meaning that overall, the number barely increased. The link to storms and global warming is hotly debated.

In fact, were anthropogenic global warming a reality, we'd find that storm severity would decrease because storms are driven by the heat engine effect, namely the flow of heat from the equator towards the poles. Global Warming, as predicted by the models and climate scientists, indicates that the majority of warming occurs at the upper latitudes, with the largest increases at the poles. This means that the gradient of temperature from equator to poles would be less, and thus, the storms would decrease in severity. In fact, this was the prediction published in several papers up until about 1999, when they suddenly reversed themselves.

I could speculate that it was because they had seen a record storm year with the 1998 El Nino season, and they wanted to use the connection between strong storms and global warming to sell the science, but that would be a correlation vs. causation fallicy. Of course, in 2006, those same scientists predicted a "killer" Atlantic hurricane season, and not one single hurricane touched North American soil. (Yes, one storm was a hurricane when it approached Cuba, but by the time it made landfall it had been downgraded to a tropical storm.) Suddenly we were back to the climate scientists, and they actually said, "The reason we had so few hurricanes was because of global warming." So, now we have global warming if there's more hurricanes, global warming if there's less hurricanes, and, we must assume, global warming if there's no hurricanes. That's called non-falsifiable, and there's a name for its practice, but it's not science. The word is religion.

Is the Earth warming up? Satellite measurements continue to show, at most, a mild and limited warming, mostly in the Northern Hemisphere, and mostly in the middle latitudes. Claiming that glaciers melting (which they are)

How about looking at some real numbers instead of a pretty flash animation that may or may not be correct?

http://news.mongabay.com/2005/0502-rhett_butler.ht ml

http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/peo_bir_rat-peop le-birth-rate

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_population

http://www.iiasa.ac.at/Research/LUC/Papers/gkh1/ch ap1.htm

I'm not too worried about having a large family right now.

My intent was not to offend, but to simply elaborate on the thought process that might have gone into that writeup. If I offended you, I apologise.

Is it really 3 hours from Reading to London? What's the speed limit on M-4? Your average highway in the US has a limit between 55 and 70 mph.

Few people quite grasp just how immense the US is compared to most other countries... and the things it does to the average US-ian's world-view...

The UK has a landmass of 244,820 km^2 (94,526 mi^2). That puts the UK at being about 2,500 mi^2 smaller than Oregon (96,981.00 mi^2) Texas is the second-largest state, at 267,338 mi^2 of landmass.

--
Someone who speaks three languages is trilingual.
Someone who speaks two languages is bilingual.
Someone who only speaks one language is "a typical American".

You are a fucking idiot. The population growth rate recently hit its lowest levels in decades, and is continuing to drop.

http://news.mongabay.com/2005/0502-rhett_butler.ht ml

It is projected that the 1970s dream of ZPG will be upon us within 10 years.

Regarding your food issue, crop yields per acre are steadily increasing, also with no end in sight.

You luddite morons really do make me sick. Stop inhibiting progress with your FUD.

Unthinking nationalism is another way in which the U.S. controls it's citizens. Americans need to really think about by what measures the U.S. is "the best we have come up with as a species thus far". For most of those measures you'll find other countries ahead of you. The Japanese are healthier, the French get more action, the Venezualans are prettier, Denmark is happier, Luxembourg is richer, Finland is clearner, Canada is more libertarian, more educated and has a higher quality of life, China has more people, Russia is bigger, and Kuwait is safer.

The U.S. does have the largest christian population, one of the highest teenage pregnancy rates, one of the highest divorce rates, one of the highest prison population rates, but that's nothing to be proud of.

they need money -= work, and a means of recoupment for that work. "Cellphone farmers" play the grain exchange and take their money home via the same cellphone network that allows them to keep up to date on commodity prices. This is enabled by "proprietariness" and encryption - "secrets." Without that "evil" DRM these would still be at the mercy of their own ignorance and the local commodity sharks who could afford the relatively expensive "internet connections" and such. The proprietariness of the worldwide cellphone network has allowed the companies behind it to expands service into corners and crevices "the internet" can only dream of occupying, all the while getting more affordable... enabling more and poorer people to take advantage of the opportunities afforded by modern telecommunications.

    http://news.mongabay.com/2005/0712-rhett_butler.ht ml

A dogmatic demand that "all technology is free" is every bit as "evil" as the demand it all be proprietary. Balance is what is needed, not a radical ideological monoculture.

Actually the most common name would be James Smith. There are 4,840,833 with the first name James and about 2,501,922 people with the last name Smith. The most common female name would be Mary Smith since there are roughly 3,991,060 Mary's. Most common last names: http://names.mongabay.com/most_common_surnames.htm Most common male first names: http://names.mongabay.com/male_names.htm Most common female first names: http://names.mongabay.com/female_names.htm

Actually the most common name would be James Smith. There are 4,840,833 with the first name James and about 2,501,922 people with the last name Smith. The most common female name would be Mary Smith since there are roughly 3,991,060 Mary's. Most common last names: http://names.mongabay.com/most_common_surnames.htm Most common male first names: http://names.mongabay.com/male_names.htm Most common female first names: http://names.mongabay.com/female_names.htm

Actually the most common name would be James Smith. There are 4,840,833 with the first name James and about 2,501,922 people with the last name Smith. The most common female name would be Mary Smith since there are roughly 3,991,060 Mary's. Most common last names: http://names.mongabay.com/most_common_surnames.htm Most common male first names: http://names.mongabay.com/male_names.htm Most common female first names: http://names.mongabay.com/female_names.htm

If you have beachside property, I suggest you sell while it's still structurally sound.

BTW: Canada's CBC has it's own take on the melting glaciers in Greenland.

That makes too much sense and it absolves Capitalism and the United States from guilt. There is no room in the Global Climate Change arguement for past climatic shifts or any evidence of the Sun rising in output or cyclical events.

"At least 10 to 30 percent of global warming measured during the past two decades may be due to increased solar output rather than factors such as increased heat-absorbing carbon dioxide gas released by various human activities, two Duke University physicists report.

The physicists said that their findings indicate that climate models of global warming need to be corrected for the effects of changes in solar activity. However, they emphasized that their findings do not argue against the basic theory that significant global warming is occurring because of carbon dioxide and other "greenhouse" gases."

http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/ApJ/journal/issue s/ApJL/v549n1/005748/005748.web.pdf
http://news.mongabay.com/2005/1001-duke.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_change#Solar_ variation
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_glaciatio n#Pleistocene_glacial_cycles
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Younger_Dryas

Nope, we can't talk in this arguement about how the planet's climate has shifted in the past, but must blame the US, George W. Bush and/or Capitalism for Global Warming.

Not huge parts of the world. It could deal a big blow to many major cities though.

(Just thought I'd add to the discussion.) :)

They can't dent it, but they can apparently shift it.

Many have noted that Bush appeared a changed man after the terrorist attacks in New York. A man determined to stamp out terrorism. A man determined to do what he believed was right.

A man determined to let nothing---not even the cherished laws and traditions of his own country---stand in his way.

Honestly, I believe it's probably the case that Bush really, truly believes he's doing the right thing. And that he's dangerously wrong. And that the checks and balances in the US system were put in place for much this reason, to prevent a small group from doing too much damage. And that his team is masterful at getting the public support necessary to circumvent those safeguards.

Obviously, the terrorists did not create the US as it is today, but they catalyzed that change. By changing the beliefs of a few influential people, and giving those people a ready excuse for all their excesses, they've enabled a terrible decline in the US.

I suppose I'm not assigning blame to the hijackers for the resulting erosion of America; I'm just expressing incredulity that we would allow such terrible things to be done under cover of a group that's less dangerous than a bathtub or a bed. (3000 vs. 3400 or 3200 deaths in the US over the last 10 years)

It's definitely cool that children in developing nations are using computers to improve their prospects, but too often in these sorts of discussions the notion is advanced that computers (and the internet) are just what developing nations need, as regards technology.

In fact, a much better investment is in mobile phones and mobile networks. Even the cheapest handsets encourage kids to learn to read and write, not to mention gain proficiency in handling technology. At the same time, adults can use mobile phones to find employment, find affordable goods, negotiate deals, conduct business. Mobile phones integrate themselves into daily life much more easily than PCs, and their impact is thus felt much faster and wider. If the free flow of information enables a market to work efficiently, then what better technology to kickstart the economy than mobile phones?

Here are a few articles with the hard numbers pitting mobile phones against PCs.
http://news.mongabay.com/2005/0712-rhett_butler.ht ml
http://usinfo.state.gov/af/Archive/2005/May/17-488 286.html
http://www.economist.com/printedition/displaystory .cfm?Story_ID=3742817
http://www.economist.com/business/displayStory.cfm ?story_id=4157618

While it's certainly heartening that open source software is having a positive effect in poverty-stricken Africa, it's also important for aidgivers to note that dollar for dollar, computers aren't the best use of limited funds.

This sounds like one catfish you wouldn't want to go noodling for! In the US people catch catfish up to 100lb or so by hand but I think 646lb fish might be a little much!

This map of Chad shows that there is something water related there. It is just north of Koro-Toro, a ways south of Faya-Largeau (although there are similar features around that city according to the map).

I think the feature is a semi-permanent lake, one that may fill up in some seasons, and then possibly evaporate almost completely away (like the lake in Death Valley). Lake Chad was once huge (the Pale-Chadian Sea) and some of those semi-permanent lakes might be all that is left of the sea in the north. This link suggests a cause:

Lake Chad, located in the southwestern part of the basin at an altitude of 282 meters, surprisingly does not mark the basin's lowest point; instead, this is found in the Bodele and Djourab regions in the north-central and northeastern parts of the country, respectively. This oddity arises because the great stationary dunes (ergs) of the Kanem region create a dam, preventing lake waters from flowing to the basin's lowest point.

Djourab is in about the right place to be near these features.

While I commend the notion, Iceland has a unique feature not mentioned in the article -- an extremely small population. According to the CIA (spare the check-your-facts comments, thanks), it is currently less than 300,000 people.

To put that into perspective, there are over 1200 CITIES in the world with more that 300,000 people. Seriously, more people live in Toledo than all of Iceland. As far as the Hydrogen economy goes, it's a start, but such a very small start. By 2050 I sure hope we're further along worldwide.

You don't need a reason for people to congregate today. In the past it made sense to build them on the rivers, so that they have access to transportation or serve as nodes in a large transportation network.

But in 1703 Russian emperor Peter the Great said "A city shall be found here" (to spite the Swedes and to become a new capital). He drew the original plan himself and so the city grew orderly from the very beginning (though fortunately it was improved by architects better than the Emperor, such as ober-architect Peter Eropkin and others). This city, bearing the name of it founder (technically the name of his patron saint, which is the same), is the 3rd largest city in Europe today and one of the most beautiful in the world.

Today you can build a city anywhere, as evidenced by the success of Las Vegas or some cities in Saudi Arabia or Emirates (such as Dubai Internet City - though not technically a separate city, it's a great example of how vision + investment = city + jobs + growth + happiness).

Ports don't need many people anyway, neither do plants. A city today, if you ignore the legacy of most modern cities, is just a place for people to live and work comfortably (wasn't it always :] ) - and it can be done in almost any place on Earth. Your comment about arbitrary shape and structure of the imagined cities is certainly valid, but the one about location is probably not.

One of the things which drives peoples' passion for manned spaceflight is that for many atheists it takes the same place that religion does for others - providing a reference point for the future. Many space enthusiasts believe passionately in "man's destiny in the stars" as a thing inherently good in and of itself, the kind of principle without dependence upon rationality that forms the basis of religious belief.

This is just plain common or garden lunacy, mainly influenced by reading too much cod scifi. Manned inter-system travel is just never going to happen. The human body was not designed to survive many years in low gravity. The complexity of keeping the crew alive and viable for the distance is just too high, and the benefits just too low. There are not a hoard of habitable planets out there waiting for us to just move in - or, to be precise, given the size of the Universe, there probably are, but they are unlikely to be discovered in finite time.

The only argument that manned spaceflight must be undertaken is that the Sun will eventually go nova and destroy the Earth; consequently, we had better think of a way off. Since we don't anticipate this happening within the next hundred years, however, and we do anticipate the continued advance of technology, why not ignore the question for a few hundred years and then start investigating manned spaceflight (at much less effort required)?

The Sun going nova is pretty much an irrelevence. Whatever happens, whether we remain on Earth or all migrate through a freak wormhole to the greater horseshoe nebula, the species homo sapiens will not last ten million years. The average lifespan of a species is much less than that, and human beings are far more destructive of the environment they depend on for survival than the average species.

What is more to the point is the rate at which we are destroying this planet, the rate at which we are poisoning the air we breathe, the land we farm, and the sea we fish. So long as we continue fantasise about some mythical escape route, whether it's the 0930 shuttle to Alpha Centauri Beta or the idea that Jesus is going to call us to an unpolluted heaven where we'll play happy harps among the skipping fluffy clouds for the rest of eternity - so long as we fantasise, we will treat the Earth as expendible.

Folks, it's not.

This is the liferaft. When we've used it up, there won't be another.

It's hard not to be reminded of the civilisation of the Easter Islanders, who cut down their last trees to raise bigger and bigger statues of themselves, and then more or less died out in the ecological catastrophe they'd created.

We're doing the same, just on a bigger scale. Are we really going to use the last barrel of fossil fuel to send a man to Mars? Is that going to stop the Atlantic Conveyor from failing? Is it going to be any comfort when our economy has collapsed, our climate has crashed, and our ability to produce food has been drastically reduced, to be able to say 'hey, but we put a man on Mars'?

My generation - people in their forties now - are not only materially the richest generation that have ever lived. We're also very probably the richest generation that will ever live. We've hoovered up the worlds wealth at a rate that can't be sustained, and dumped our toxic wastes without thought. This isn't something that may bite us in the far distant future; it's something that's beginning to bite now and which will bite harder with every generation that passes.

So if you really believe that the solution is to create an escape pod and drift peacefully away to some happy-clappy planet in the stars, you don't have 'a few hundred years' to wait for better tech to be developed. You'd

Uh, try 6-7 Billion tons of carbon released globally each year here and here .

As some that read the news might say, "No shit, Sherlock."

If he's clueless, at least he should read the news, no?

On the other hand, they look pretty cool. More photos here.

I think I'll add them to my Christmas wish list. :-)

And to go with these red-glowing GloFish, maybe I'll add some of these green-glowing Night Perls from Taiwan:
news story picture.

Actually, I prefer the

green ones better.

This is old news. These may be other glowing fish, as they are from Taiwan, but you can get the details
Here or here

Here is a quote from an related article... " They struck up a deal to sell the fish, breeding them at the company's "genetic fish stock bank" in a Taipei suburb. They sterilize the fish, so they won't contaminate wild populations if they are somehow set free. Prof. Tsai says he has been able to sterilize about 90% of the fish, which he says is safe enough. "

my kid is going to be able to sleep with this in his room!

You can see a photo of the fish here.

Here's an article with a picture of the fish, or at least some glowing fish:

http://www.mongabay.com/external/glowing_fish.htm

Now, if they can only do that to me... Hey, anything for those raver ladies...

Can be found on this page with a collection of news articles about them:
http://www.mongabay.com/external/glowing_fish.htm

It seems that they're not bio-luminescent as the first article indicates, but rather they simply have florescent protiens from coral and jellyfish that react prettily to UV.

http://www.mongabay.com/external/glowing_fish.htm

http://www.mongabay.com/external/glowing_fish.htm

The Taikong Corporation has info on the fish on their Azoo site. Unfortunately, it appears to only be in Chinese, but you can get the idea from the pictures.

Here are several stories and pictures of the fish.

The pictures (and other sites such as this one) imply that they are "fluorescent" fish, i.e., they glow when bathed in UV light, as opposed to fish that glow without a UV light source.

Did some googling found pictures and more information here : http://www.mongabay.com/external/glowing_fish.htm