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editor
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 Posted: Thu Feb 28, 2008 9:48 am Post subject: PokerPulse Gambler's Guide to Climate Change - Gamble Green! |
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WELCOME!
PokerPulse Gambler's Guide to Climate Change:
ANOTHER 'inconvenient truth': Gambling online is greener and better for the planet than traditional brick and mortar casinos! So if you gamble, Gamble Green!
Why Gamble Green?
Vancouver Magazine
Magazine Subscription
The Nature of David Suzuki
He's sanctimonious. Shrill. In your face. Full of himself. He's also right.
November, 2007
By Chris Cannon
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| Quote: | "All I can do is the best I can do," he tells me. "I am carrying the weight of the planet on my shoulders. I'm not going to save the world. My organization is not going to save the world. You asked me, are we gonna make it? I have no idea. There are lots of people I know who say we've already gone too far. And that, I think, is what you're expressing. But you can't ever say that in public because...well there's just no point. All I can say is that I operate on hope. There's nothing scientific about it, but that's what keeps me going."
The message echoes the closing words of Al Gore's documentary: "There are a lot of people who go straight from denial to despair without pausing on the intermediate step of actually doing something about the problem. We have everything we need, save perhaps political will." (-- p. 74) |
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| Quote: | | There are really two David Suzukis, and unless you own a coal plant, it's hard not to admire them both. The first is the engaging, mild-mannered scientist who's charmed his way into millions of living rooms since 1979 as host of CBC's long-running The Nature of Things. The second, a fiery, outspoken critic of all things pollutant, is an extension of the first, emerging, Incredible Hulk-like, when a comment angers him or he senses nature is in pain. The combination of the two has catapulted him into the pantheon of celebrity scientists - Stephen Hawking, Jane Goodall, Noam Chomsky - who draw large crowds of neophytes into their folds, eventually finding voiceover work on The Simpsons or having a species of fruit fly named in their honor. (-- p. 86) |
| Quote: | In the environmental arena, Suzuki's only rival is the suddenly charming Al Gore, whose Oscar-winning apocalypse doc An Inconvenient Truth helped move the discussion off the Internet into mainstream media. When the two met, in the 1980s, Suzuki asked then-Senator Gore how he could help environmentally minded politicians like him. "Don't look to politicians like me," Gore told him. "You've got to convince the public there is a problem, show them there are solutions, and then get them to care enough to demand action. Then every politician will jump on the bandwagon."
Suzuki took the message to heart, and in 1990 he established the David Suzuki Foundation, whose mission is to translate the science into solutions-oriented answers for the public. The foundation's website is a one-stop activities centre for environmental pacifists looking to up their motivation - blogs, podcasts, peitions, and challenges to help the uninitiated move the conversation from "What's happening?" to "How can we fix it?" (-- p. 86) |
Link to this entry
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| Posted: Thu Feb 28, 2008 11:05 am Post subject: |
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On celebrities and captains of industry going green:
From Impossible Odds:
Vanity Fair
Magazine Subscription
Global Citizens
Activists and scientists are propelling a cultural turnaround, but the green revolution is also being forged by macaroni and cheese, novels, and fashion, by venture capitalists, rockers, and hoteliers. This is their world, on the next 26 pages, and the rest of us can just try to live up to it.
The Man of the Hour
Leonardo DiCaprio
ACTOR, ACTIVIST
2nd Annual Green Issue
May, 2007
| Quote: |
| Quote: | | If you go to leonardodicaprio.com, you will find that it is split down the middle. The left half is labeled "Leonardo," and will bring you up-to-date on his filmmaking career (doing rather nicely, with a recent Oscar nomination for his performance in Blood Diamond and, to some tastes, an even stronger performance in best-picture winner The Departed). The right half is labeled, "Eco-Site;" it offers guides to various environmental concerns, tips on differences anyone can make, and links to dozens of green organizations and information. Not many stars share their fan face time with gorillas and ferns, but this is the image DiCaprio puts forward to the world: a literal expression of twin passions. A longtime environmentalist - remember his interview in 2000 with then president Bill Clinton for an ABC Earth Day special? - DiCaprio is currently on the boards of both the Natural Resources Defense Council and Global Green USA and has been a tireless promoter of green causes and events. Later this year will see the fusion of his two passions with the release of The 11th Hour, a feature documentary on environmental ills and possible cures, a kind of state -of-the-earth address with gorgeous pictures and eloquent experts, which DiCaprio is producing, co-writing, and narrating. As he says in this remarkable film, as hopeful as it is alarming,"So we find ourselves on the brink." On the brink of what, it is made plain, is up to us. (-- p. 236) |
The 11th Hour
DVD
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Link to this entry
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| Posted: Thu Feb 28, 2008 3:41 pm Post subject: |
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On the excessive eco-cost of travel to casinos, especially by air:
From Impossible Odds:
The New Yorker
Magazine Subscription
A Reporter at Large
Big Foot
In measuring carbon emissions, it's easy to confuse morality and science.
By Michael Specter
Feb. 25/08
| Quote: | Greenhouse-gas emissions have risen rapidly in the past two centuries, and levels today are higher than at any time in at least the past 650,000 years. In 1995, each of the six billion people on earth was responsible, on average, for one ton of carbon emissions. Oceans and forests can absorb about half that amount. Although specific estimates vary, scientists and policy officials increasingly agree that allowing emissions to continue at the current rate would induce dramatic changes in the global climate system. To avoid the most catastrophic effects of those changes, we will have to hold emissions steady in the next decade, then reduce them by at least 60-80 per cent by the middle of the century. (A delay of just 10 years in stopping the increase would require double the reductions.) Yet, even if all carbon emissions stopped today, the earth would continue to warm for at least another century. ...
A person's carbon footprint is simply a measure of his contribution to global warming. (CO2 is the best known of the gases that trap heat in the atmosphere, but others - including water vapor, methane, and nitrous oxide - also play a role.) Virtually every human activity - from watching television ot buying a quart of milk - has some carbon cost associated with it. We all consume electricity generated by burning fossil fuels; most people rely on petroleum for transportation and heat. Emissions from those activities are not hard to quantify. Watching a plasma television for three hours every day contributes two hundred and fifty kilograms of carbon to the atmosphere each year; an LCD is responsible for less than half that number. Yet the calculations required to assess the full environmental impact of how we live can be dazzlingly complex. ... A few months ago, scientists at the Stockholm Environment Institute reported that the carbon footprint of Christmas - including food, travel, lighting, and gifts - was 650 kg per person. That is as much, they estimated, as the weight of "one thousand Christmas puddings" for every resident of England. ...
Many factors influence the carbon footprint of a product: water use, cultivation and harvesting methods, quantity and type of fertilizer, even the type of fuel used to make the package. Sea-freight emissions are less than a 60th of those associated with airplanes, and you don't have to build highways to berth a ship. Last year, a study of the carbon cost of the global wine trade found that is actually more "green" for New Yorkers to drink wine from Bordeaux, which is shipped by sea, than wine from California, sent by truck. That is largely because shipping wine is mostly shipping glass. The study found that "the efficiencies of shipping drive a 'green line' all the way to Columbus, Ohio, the point where a wine from Bordeaux and Napa has the same carbon intensity."
The environmental burden imposed by importing apples from New Zealand to Northern Europe or New York can be lower than if the apples were raised fifty miles away. "In New Zealand, they have more sunshine than in the UlK, which helps productivity," (Adrian) Williams (agriculture researcher at the Natural Resources Department of Cranfield University, in England) explained. That means the yield of New Zealand apples far exceeds the yield of those grown in northern climates, so the energy required for farmers to grow the crop is correspondingly lower. It also helps that the electricity in New Zealand is mostly generated by renewable sources, none of which emit large amounts of CO2. Researchers at Loncoln University in Christchurch, found that lamb raised in New Zealand and shipped 11,000 miles by boat to England produced 688 kg of carbon-dioxide emissions per ton, about a fourth of the amount produced by British lamb. In part, that is because pastures in New Zealand need far less fertilizer than most grazing land in Britain (or in many parts of the U.S.). Similarly, importing beans from Uganda or Kenya - where the farms are small, tractor use is limited, and the fertilizer is almost always manure - tends to be more efficient than growing beans in Europe, with its reliance on energy-dependent irrigation systems. ...
... We are going to have to reduce our carbon footprint rapidly, and we can do that only by limiting the amount of fossil fuels released into the atmosphere. ... Each time we drive a car, use electricity generated by a coal-fired plant, or heat our homes with gas or oil, carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gases escape into the air. We can use longer-lasting light bulbs, lower the termostat (and the air-conditioning), drive less, and buy more fuel-efficient cars. That will help, and so will switching to cleaner sources of energy. Flying has also emerged as a major carbon don't - with some reason, since airplanes at high altitudes release at least 10 times as many greenhouse gases per mile as trains do. Yet neither transportation - which accounts for 15 per cent of greenhouse gases - nor industrial activity (another 15 per cent) presents the most efficient way to shrink the carbon footprint of the globe. ...
(John O.) Niles, the chief science and policy officer for the environmental group Carbon Conservation, argues that spending $5 billion a year to prevent deforestation in countries like Indonesia would be one of the best investments the world could ever make. "The value of that land is seen as consisting only of the value of its lumber," he said. A logging company comes along and offers to strip the forest to make some trivial wooden product, or a palm-oil plantation. The governments in these places have no cash. They are sitting on this resource that is doing nothing for their economy. So when a guy says, 'I will give you a few hundred dollars if you let me cut down these trees,' it's not easy to turn your nose up at that. Those are dollars people can spend on shcools and hospitals."
... According to the latest figures, deforestation pushes nearly six billion tons of CO2 into the atmosphere every year. That amounts to 30 million acreas - an area half the size of the UK - chopped down every year. Put another way, according to one recent calculation, during the next 24 hours the effect of losing forests in Brazil and Indonesia will be the same if 8 million people boarded airplanes at Heathrow Airport and flew en masse to New York.
... From both a political and economic perspective, it would be easier and cheaper to reduce the rate of deforestation than to cut back significantly on air travel. It would also have a far greater impact on climate change and on social welfare in the developing world. Possessing rights to carbon would grant new power to farmers who, for the first time, would be paid to preserve their forests rather than destroy them. Unfortunately, such plans are seen by many people as morally unattractive. "The whole issue is tied up with the misconceived notion of 'carbon colonialism," Niles told me. "Some activists do not want the Third World to have to alter their behavior, because the problem was largely caused by us in the West." (-- pgs. 44-52) |
Others agree:
Travel & Leisure
Magazine Subscription
Traveling Light
When it comes to the things we carry with us - and the impact we have on the places we visit - less is more. Alex Shooumatoff makes the case.
November, 2007
| Quote: | | But traveling light doesn't mean just reducing your baggage. It means reducing your footprint or, rather, footprints: your carbon footprint, your ecological footprint, your footprint on the local culture. Most of your carbon footprint comes from the planes you take. A gallon of combusted airplane fuel produces up to 100 times more greenhouse gases than a gallon of gasoline. You can take consolation from the fact that if all of the passengers on the plane drove to the destination in their cars, their collective footprint would be greater, but still, airplanes account for something like 5 percent of the total anthropogenic (human) contribution to the rising temperatures that are wreaking havoc on the planet's ecology and weather systems. (-- p. 136) |
Even Genghis Kahn agrees on shipping as the preferred method of transport!
Genghis Kahn
and the Making of the Modern World
Hardcover
By Jack Weatherford
| Quote: | | The failed invasions of Japan and Java taught the Mongols much about shipbuilding, and when their military efforts failed, they turned that knowledge to peaceful pursuits of commerce. Khubilai Khan made the strategic decision to transport food within his empire primarily by ship because he realized how much cheaper and more efficient water trasnportation, which was dependent on wind and current, was than the much slower land transport, which was dependent on the labor of humans and animals that required constant feeding. (emphasis added) In the first years, the Mongols moved some 3,000 tons by ship, but by 1329 it had grown to 210,000 tons. Marco Polo, who sailed from China to Persia on his return home, described the Mongol ships as large four-masted junks with up to three hundred crewmen and as many as sixty cabins for merchants carrying various wares. According to Ibn Battuta, some of the ships even carried plants growing in wooden tubs in order to supply fresh food for the sailors. Khubilai Khan promoted the building of ever larger seagoing junks to carry heavy loads of cargo and ports to handle them. They improved the use of the compass in navigation and learned to produce more accurate nautical charts. The route from the port of Zaytun in southern China to Hormuz in the Persian Gulf became the main sea link between the Far East and the Middle East, and was used by both Marco Polo and IBn Battuta, among others. ... (-- p. 223) |
Link to this entry
http://pokerpulse.com/news/viewtopic.php?p=3595#3595
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| Posted: Thu Feb 28, 2008 3:41 pm Post subject: |
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On the terror risk at traditional brick and mortar casinos:
From Internet gambling and the mythical link to terror:
Conde Nast Traveler
Magazine Subscription
Will This City Save Us All?
Las Vegas is the unlikely incubator of the latest anti-terror technologies - breakthroughs born of twin concerns:
how to protect the free-spending multitudes while avoiding a police state. The result is a wide-open fortress where hospitality is king and data is the best defense. Guy Martin reports on how security wagers being
placed in Sin City may yield a jackpot in the war on terror
February, 2007.
| Quote: | "The great similarity between a group of criminals interested in taking money from a casino and a group of terrorists interested in blowing up a lot of people is that both are clandestine groups who want to keep their malicious intentions under wraps," ((Jeff) Jonas says. "Yet the members of the groups all leave digital trails - be they financial, social, or otherwise - that converge somewhere. Those convergences are now findable."
...Jonas's next effort in deep-background cross-referencing...is a kind of software watchdog that never sleeps. It is Jonas's riposte to charges in the 9/11 Commission Report that various government agencies possessed relevant information but had no way of connecting the dots. This next-generation NORA will reexamine all that we know in light of the intelligence we receive today.
Jonas gives a hypothetical example straight off the casino floor, but it could just as well come from the trenches of the war on terror. Six months after security busts a ring of six criminals, an employee updates his home address per casino protocol. "Bingo!" Jonas says. "It's the same address used by one of the original conspirators." ...
... In May 2006, the Department of Homeland Security cut Las Vegas from the list of cities that could apply for counterterrorism grants from the federal government. This staggering repudiation stung local and state officials alike. However, it necessitated no action whatsoever on the part of the big casinos - the self-made, hard-nosed hospitality billionaires didn't have to change a thing. In security terms, they were already years ahead of the federal government. In fact, you could say it's a stance they learned from the town's beginnings. Keep your friends close and enemies closer. (-- pgs. 150 and 154) |
Link to this entry
http://pokerpulse.com/news/viewtopic.php?p=3596#3596.
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| Posted: Fri Feb 29, 2008 10:52 am Post subject: |
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On the futility and inconvenience of post-9/11 air travel security checks to get to the casino:
From Impossible Odds:
Conde Nast Traveler
Magazine Subscription
Inside Job
My life as an Airport Screener
By Barbara S. Peterson
March, 2007
| Quote: | A woman on crutches hobbles through the portal and hands me her boarding pass, which bears the dreaded code. "Ma'am," I stammer, "you've been selected for, uh...additional screening." Behind her wait her four children toting bulging backpacks, each with a boarding pass that indicates they too will need to be inspected.
...I wasn't taught why certain passengers are chosen for additional screening, but I know from my years covering aviation security as a reporter that some are picked at random and others are selected because of certain red flags. Chances are that whatever computer reviewed this family's data when they checked in saw only a group of five people traveling together on a one-way, last-minute booking. In other words, the M.O. of a terrorist cell on 9/11. I learn the real story when the woman angrily relates that her mother has just died and they are flying to the funeral. They didn't book a return flight because they weren't sure how long they would be staying.
I am struck by the fact that at this major urban airport, five years after the worst terrorist attack on U.S. soil, we are still relying on the same rudimentary tools that have been used for decades to detect who is a true threat: physical pat-downs and basic X-ray technology along with the out-of-date passenger pre-screening that continues to bedevil people such as the woman before me. (-- p. 126) |
| Quote: | | ...I soon learn from current screeners that management has been on edge lately: The TSA's much feared Red Team recently made an appearance, and it seems the results were less than stellar. The Red Team is a cadre of undercover inspectors who test screeners' mettle by attempting to smuggle weapons and other illicit items past checkpoints; those who fail to spot the contraband get sent back to class for remedial training. Test results are supposed to be confidential, but dismal scores from several airports, including Newark and Orlando, were leaked to the media last year: More than half the screeners tested reportedly flunked one of the exercises. (-- p. 184) |
| Quote: | | ...Most of us are ready: We have mastered the arcana of how to screen all manner of carry-on gear - everything from crematory urns to the service monkeys that some disabled passengers are allowed to take through security. We're also instructed on how to spot bomb components in X-ray images, but some of the information we're force-fed during our training is already out of date: We're repeatedly told, "You'll have to unlearn this when you get to the airport," because procedures have changed. We spend hours being taught how to operate explosives-detection machines, including models that we'll never see because our airport hasn't acquired them. The training materials, I learn, are from another giant government contractor, Lockheed Martin. While the TSA obviously dictates the content of the materials, procedural updates apparently take a long time to move through the pipeline. (-- p. 185) |
| Quote: | ...Apparently fed up with the checkpoint protocol, the woman threw her shoes, which landed in the screener's face like two fastballs. Although questioned by police, the passenger was ultimately released; the airline even delayed the flight for her as a courtesy.
This incident perfectly illustrates how the abuse and hostility that screeners face every day, combined with lack of support from the TSA and law enforcement, leads to flagging morale and perhaps even poor performance. Part of the problem stems from the fact that screeners are beholden to three masters: the TSA, the public, and - unknown to most passengers - the airlines, which still manage the pre-screening process and, at many airports, control the entrance to the checkpoint where I.D.s are scrutinized. (-- pgs. 190-191) |
Cutting-edge journalism that offers at least a thousand reasons per issue why it's better to just stay home.
Link to this entry
http://pokerpulse.com/news/viewtopic.php?p=3599#3599
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| Posted: Fri Feb 29, 2008 3:19 pm Post subject: |
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On the destruction of fragile eco-systems and local economies by foreign-owned casino resorts:
Conde Nast Traveler
Magazine Subscription
The Power of Travel
By Dorinda Elliott
Now that the travel industry is beginning to tackle social issues from poverty to health care, the hotel you choose can make the difference between... . a child going hungry or being fed . a wildlife habitat being protected or destroyed . a woman giving birth to a healthy child or one infected with HIV.
May, 2007
| Quote: | In his thirteen years as general manager of the Holiday Inn along Patong Beach in Phuket, Thailand, Wolfgang Meusburger had never thought much about supporting the community. Just positioning his hotel as a luxury oasis on one of Thailand's most overbuilt honky-tonk beaches was challenge enough. On the ocean side, crowds of beer-swilling tourists, counterfeit handbag hawkers, and prostitutes compete for the walkway along a strip of noisy restaurants, bars, and T-shirt shops. Down the way, Rock Hard A Go-Go offers pole-dancing girls in bikinis, and at the Moulin Rose and other cabaret clubs, transvestites sing pop songs. To Wolfgang, keeping the riffraff out was more important than community outreach.
That all changed in December, 2004, when the tsunami that devastated the region swamped the beachfront, wiping out hawker stalls, trashing dozens of hotels and restaurants, and killing more than seven thousand people up and down the Thai coast. Meusburger was relatively luck: He lost only one guest to the waves, and no employees were killed. But the lobby was waist-deep in mud and cluttered with debris, including a motorcycle that had been swept in by the sea. ...
Apart from charitable giving and job training, some hotels are trying to find ways to channel business to local communities by hiring and buying locally. The catchphrase in the nonprofit world is "linkages and leakages," and more and more hotel managers use the term these days. Linkage is good: It means that a hotel property is connected to a community and contributing to its economy. Leakage is bad: It means that the hotel company is just sending its profits back home to heardquarters. The Caribbean has been the focus of much discussion about linkages and leakages, because it is a region where so much luxury is found in the midst of so much poverty. Jamaica is a case in point: It is still desperately poor (25 per cent of the population lives on less than $2 a day) despite enormous amounts of tourism money flowing into the country - most of it landing in the tills of all-inclusive resorts.
In its pay scale and atmosphere, the Sandals Whitehorse resort along the island (Jamaica)'s south coast is typical of other large beach properties in impoverished regions around the world: Starting wages are around $90 a week, compared to the $500 guests pay per night to stay. Inside the hotel's European Village compound, you would hardly know that Jamaica exists, except for the calypso beat provided by the Mighty Beeston Mento Band, playing by the snack bar. The resort boasts that at its seven restaurants, "you may dine in a different corner of the globe each night without leaving." I ate at Giuseppe's Italian restaurant, where I drank Californinan red wine and ordered fettucine with shrimp (imported) and scallops (imported).
At top Caribbean resorts, it's not at all unusual to sit down to a dinner that is almost entirely imported food - smoked salmon (imported from Nova Scotia), say, followed by filet mignon (imported from Australia) - bringing no benefit whatsoever to the local economy.
By reputation, all-inclusive resorts are the worst "leakers": Generally, they keep guests on their compounds, spending money at the resorts instead of in town, and they often import a large portion of what they consume. ...
While Sandals may be doing more than most hotel companies in Jamaica to help support the local community, the full picture of its impact is not entirely rosy. Built on former wetlands in the middle of what was once a sleepy bay, the Sandals Whitehorse resort project was controversial from the get-go. The hotel went over budget by more than $40 million, and a government investigation had been launched. The developers moved a population of crocodiles that lived on the property to a nearby zoo. "There used to be so many crabs and crocodiles," says a worker at a nearby inn with a sigh. "So many birds, they used to come flying by, but they just don't come anymore." ...
Two years ago, Conrad Hotels, which is owned by Hilton, signed on to manage a huge casino and resort project that environmentalists have been fighting for more than a decade. Those opposed to the 700-acre development worry that it will destroy and important nursery area and affect hundreds of miles of sea habitat. Tearing out the mangroves and dredging the harbor reportedly have already reduced the populations of lemon shark and other species. When the environmentalists protested to Hilton, the company replied with letters reiterating the legality of the project - and did nothing significant to address their concerns. Jeremy Stafford-Deitsch, found of the UK-based Shark Trust, has called the project "one of the most egregiously scandalous environmental crimes in recent years." A Hilton representative declined to comment on the issue, saying only that the company's role will be limited to managing the Conrad Hotel, "if and when it gets built."...
For all of the good that hotels are beginning to do, it's hard not to notice the damage caused by the industry in many developing destinations. "It's clear that attracting the wrong kind of visitors, promoters, and developers can launch a boom-and-bust cycle that has been repeated time and time again," says Sustainable Travel's (president, Brian) Mullis. Beach areas like Pattaya in Thailand are a case in point - so overdeveloped that both the natural beauty and the local culture have been ravaged. "Death by a thousand cuts is what tourism has represented for ecodiversity," says Jamie Sweeting, a senior director at Conservation International's Center for Environmental Leadership in Business. But it's all relative:"I'd give my druthers to get any of those five-star hotel projects to Africa," says Columbia University economist Jeffrey Sachs, who wrote The End of Poverty and is an adviser to the United Nations Millennium Project aimed at eradicating hunger and poverty. "Tourism brings development and jobs, and that's a good thing." The challenge, he points out, is how to develop responsibly. ...
Singapore-based Raffles spent $30 million restoring the Grand Hotel d'Angor to its colonial splendor, and a room there now costs $360 a night. A short walk away, in the Angkor Hospital for Children, some patients are wasting away from malnutrition, others from tuberculosis. Just outside the town, beggar children chase tourists coming out of the temples. ...
Raffles got caught up in an ugly, complicated fight with its workers in 2003 when they went on strike, protesting the fact that the hotel - outrageously - wasn't distributing the entire service charge added to guests' bills. The hotel's hard-line position was colored by teh complexities of operating in such an impoverished country: Its employees, who earned an average of $210 a month, would have made more than the chief of police if the entire service charge had been disbursed. In a ddition, the strikers demanded two-month annual leaves and six-month paid maternity leaves. The court declared the strike illegal, and Raffles fired 300 workers. Hotels across town (Angkor Wat, Cambodia) dropped service charges entirely. ...
"We (InterContinental Hotels Group Asia)'re growing so fast out here (Asia). We're adding sixty new hotels in China, and we're trying to get it right environmentally," he (CEO Patrick Imbardelli) says. "It's not easy: The Chinese all want three-storey atriums, which from an environmental point of view are terribly inefficient." (-- pgs. 256-268) |
Link to this entry
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| Posted: Fri Feb 29, 2008 3:54 pm Post subject: |
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More on the actual science of global warming:
From Gambling Scientists:
Global Warming - the solution and the politics -
Hell and High Water and What We Should Do
Hardcover
By Joseph Romm
| Quote: | | We are on the brink of taking the biggest gamble in human history, one that, if we lose, will transform the lives of the next fifty generations. I will not focus here on the history of how we came to current understanding of global warming or on the thousands of brilliant scientists whose work brings us this knowledge. That story has been well told already, particularly by Spencer Weart, a physicist and historian, who has put on the web his extensive "hypertext history of how scientists came to (partly) understand what people are doing to cause climate change." (Chapter One, opening paragraph) |
Most notable early warning sign of the perils of greenhouse gases:
Gentlemen, Scholars and Scoundrels
A Treasury of the Best of Harper's Magazine 1850 to 1972
Hardcover
Edited by Horace Knowles
| Quote: | As (Columbia University geophysicist Maurice) Ewing and (geologist-meteorologist William) Donn read the evidence, an Ice Age will result from a slow warming and rising of the ocean that is now taking place. They believe that this ocean flood - which may submerge large coastal areas of the eastern United States and western Europe - is going to melt the ice sheet which has covered the Arctic Ocean through all recorded history. Calculations based on the independent observations of other scientists indicate this melting could begin within roughly one hundred years.
It is this melting of Arctic ice which Ewing and Donn believe will set off another Ice Age on earth. They predict that it will cause great snows to fall in the north - perennial unmelting snows which the world has not seen since the last Ice Age thousands of years ago. These snows will make the Arctic glaciers grow again, until their towering height forces them forward. The advance south will be slow, but if it follows the route of previous Ice Ages, it will encase in ice large parts of North America and Europe. It would, of course, take many centuries for that wall of ice to reach New York and Chicago, London and Paris. But its coming is an inevitable consequence of the cycle which Ewing and Donn believe is now taking place. (From The Coming Ice Age: A True Scientific Detective Story by Betty Friedan, September, 1958, p. 574.) |
Other radical social movements heralded by Friedan:
The Feminine Mystyque
Hardcover
By Betty Friedan
And let's not forget:
From Omens and Lucky Charms:
COUNTRY LIFE
Weekly Magazine Subscription
Spectator
The origin of the furies
By Carla Carlisle
Feb. 15/07
| Quote: | On Monday, the 'long-awaited' United Nations report on global warming was published. The result of 2,500 scientists pooling their data, it concluded what everybody but George Bush and Exxon Mobil already knew: that man has truly botched up the planet. Unless we come up with a unity of purpose greater than we've ever achieved, our children are going to pay a terrible price. ...
The UN report was released on the day the first turkeys died in Suffolk. Not that we knew. Nearly a week went by before we heard the news. But by sunset on Saturday, as I shut up my birds, I knew the worst. But it wasn't the 800 dead birds and the prospect of gassing the 160,000 remaining turkeys that caused me to tremble. It was the sight of 27 long sheds stretched across the landscape, and broadcasters calling it a 'farm' in Suffolk. This is no farm, Bernard Matthews is no farmer, and the sheds housing thousands of turkeys are not 'bio-secure' units, but havens for the development of new pandemic viruses.
...
Silent Spring
Paperback
By ecology icon Rachel Carson,
the visionary behind the DDT ban
For 30 years, I've carried around my grandfather's copy of Rachel Carson's Silent Spring. A cotton farmer impoverished by the boll weevil, he still stood by Carson: put poison on the fields and you poison the rivers; poison the rivers and you poison the oceans. Carson dedicated her book 'to Albert Schweitzer who said: "Man has lost the capacity to foresee and forestall. He will end by destroying the earth.'"
... I latch onto a few lines in the book's introduction, from a speech by the Duke of Edinburgh in the early 1960s: 'Miners use canaries to warn them of deadly gases. It might not be a bad idea if we took the same warning from the dead birds in our countryside.' (-- p. 100) |
Bigger still:
The Last Generation
How Nature Will Take Her Revenge for Climate Change
Hardcover
By Fred Pearce
| Quote: | All the world's governments are committed to preventing 'dangerous' climate change. They made that pledge at the Earth Summit at Rio de Janeiro in 1992. The signatories included the US and Australia, which both refused to ratify the subsequent Kyoto Protocol and its national targets for emissions reductions. But what constitutes dangerous climate change? And how, in practice, can we prevent it?
For some people dangerous climate change is already a reality. Many devastated by recent hurricanes, floods and droughts believe they are victims. Such claims are usually impossible to prove. But that doesn't mean that our weather is not changing, says Myles Allen of Oxford University. In essence, climate change is already loading the dice in favour of weird and dangerous weather. 'The danger zone is not something we are going to reach in the middle of this entury. We are in it now,' he says. The 35,000 Europeans who died in the heatwave in 2003 were victims of an event that would almost certainly not have happened without the insidious increase in background temperatures that turned a warm summer into a killer. (From Appendix, The Trillion-Tonne Challenge at p. 297) |
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| Posted: Fri Feb 29, 2008 4:07 pm Post subject: |
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On the hurdles gamblers face obtaining winnings at a Tribal casino:
From U.S. Tribal Gaming Law:
What's that? U.S. tribal gaming operations are immune to prosecution?
| Quote: | ... Hoffman's lawyer, Sam Bregman: "It's our belief that they cheated Mr. Hoffman out of $1.6 million and now they're claiming they're above the law and I think that that's outrageous."
Sandia's lawyer, Paul Bardacke (former New Mexico Atty General): "This is a bogus lawsuit. He knew at the time that this was a malfunction and that this was an absurd and unjustified result. While the casino respects its customers, it's not going to pay bogus claims any time anyone threatens a lawsuit." Bardacke says the state-tribal compact that governs gambling in New Mexico supports his point of view that Hoffman's case can't be heard in state court.
In the compact, approved last year, tribes waived their right to not be sued in other jurisdictions— known as sovereign immunity— in the case of personal injuries and property damages that occur in their casinos. "This is a limited waiver and does not waive the tribe's immunity from suit for any other purpose," the compact says. Bardacke knows the compacts well because he was hired by the state of New Mexico to negotiate their details with the gambling tribes. He said he doesn't see any conflict between that role and his current one representing Sandia. "I was representing the state, and the state has no involvement in this matter." (emphasis added)
Bardacke said a February New Mexico Supreme Court decision regarding claims against Isleta and Santa Clara pueblo's casinos upheld limiting state court lawsuits against the pueblos to personal injuries. "If this machine fell over and hit Mr. Hoffman, then we would have no argument about being in state court," Bardacke said.
Bregman said he has read the compact language but doesn't agree with it.
"We, as a nation, we have settled our disputes in a courtroom and to say that he cannot have the benefit of a courtroom despite the fact that this is not a Native American traditional activity, it's just simply not fair," Bregman said. "He certainly should be able to avail himself of the laws of the state of New Mexico." Bregman said courts have recognized a tribe's sovereign immunity defense in issues dealing with their lands and natural resources, but not in relation to nontraditional ventures. He also contends that it is unreasonable for the casino to claim exception from state or federal courts because it pays the state a percentage of its winnings and pays taxes to the federal government. "They can't now all of a sudden say that this is a complete sovereign issue when they are intertwined extensively with the state and federal government," Bregman said. (From MySpace post dated Oct. 22/07, quoting the story, Sandia Jackpot Fight Sets Off Legal Row, by Leslie Linthicum in the Albuquerque Journal) |
Here's the clause purporting to grant that immunity:
| Quote: | D. Specific Waiver of Immunity and Choice of Law.
The Tribe, by entering into this Compact and agreeing to the provisions of this section, waives its defense of sovereign immunity in connection with any claims for compensatory damages for bodily injury or property damage up to the amount of ten million dollars ($10,000,000) per occurrence asserted as provided in this section. This is a limited waiver and does not waive the Tribe's immunity from suit for any other purpose. The Tribe shall ensure that a policy of insurance that it acquires to fulfill the requirements of this section shall include a provision under which the insurer agrees not to assert the defense of sovereign immunity on behalf of the insured, up to the limits of liability set forth in this Paragraph. The Tribe agrees that in any claim brought under the provisions of this Section, New Mexico law shall govern the substantive rights of the claimant, and shall be applied, as applicable, by the forum in which the claim is heard, except that the tribal court may but shall not be required to apply New Mexico law to a claim brought by a member of the Tribe. (p. 17 of 31 of 2007 Amendments to the 2001 Tribal-State Class III Gaming Compact) |
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| Posted: Fri Feb 29, 2008 4:24 pm Post subject: |
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On a few of the more unique dangers brick and mortar casinos pose:
From Hosers, eh?
Betting the House
Hardcover
By National Post reporter Brian Hutchinson
See cover photo.
| Quote: | A large, barrel-chested man in his late thirties, Bennett has short-cropped hair and a cheerful demeanour. He seems like a pleasant fellow, although underneath the calm exterior lurks a deeply cynical and distrustful man. That's how Bennett describes himself, after four years of service inside the casino. "I used to think most people were nice, and honest," he told me. "Not anymore. I've seen the worst of humanity."
As a pit boss, it's Bennett's job to "maintain a liaison between the casino and the players." This may sound simple, but it's not. At Casino Windsor, Bennett hovers behind a group of four tables, keeping watch on the action, making sure cards are dealt properly, scheduling breaks, assisting in the dealers' development and arbitrating disputes. Breaking up fights. "We get a lot of jokers throwing insults around," Bennett said. "Guys yelling at the dealers, tipping over tables. Two weeks ago we had a urinator. The guy actually took a leak underneath the table, all over a blackjack dealer's feet. That's about the worst thing I've ever seen. But I'm sure someone will eventually come along and top it." (From the chapter entitled, Paul Anka Night at Casino Windsor, at p. 145) |
...Is that a dare? Makes not a bad case for Internet poker, in our view.
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| Posted: Wed Mar 05, 2008 10:21 am Post subject: |
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More on the disproportionate eco-cost of super-casino resorts in fragile eco-systems:
From Costa Rica Gambles:
Travel & Leisure
Magazine Subscription
The new Costa Rica
In the country that more or less invented eco-travel, you'll find lush jungles, enormous turtles, untouched beaches - and rapidly expanding luxury resort developments. Julian Rubinstein investigates.
November, 2007
| Quote: | ... in 1987, ... "When (President) Oscar (arias Sanchez now in his second term) won the Peace Prize (for brokering an agreement among troubled Central American countries to promote democracy and end civil strife), we knew everything was going to change," Alvaro Ugalde, cofounder of the national park system, told me. ...
Visitors began pouring into the country, and soon, tourism leapfrogged bananas and coffee to become the country's top revenue-producing industry - it now brings in $1.6 billion a year. But the boom also created a classic tug-of-war between developers and environmentalists. In 1993, while Costa Rica was promoting itself as an eco-friendly destination, a well-regarded German environmental organization awarded the country's tourism minister its infamous Green Devil for gross mistreatment of the environment related to the construction of a multimillion-dollar seaside resort called Playa Tambor. And althouth an impressive 25 percent of the country's land was protected, ineffective waste management left the rivers so polluted that some raft guides now warn clients not to swallow the water. "People think Costa Rica is some paradise - they think we're angels," said Ugalde, who today spends his time lobbying the government to make the environment a priority. "But no, we're a devil like everyone else. ...
"We are facing the impact of having attracted so many people and investors to develop their ideas in a safe, quiet, beautiful country, but are they respecting the way we decided to develop?" asks Ana Baez, president of Tourism & Conservation Consultants. "It's hard to tell where it's going. ... (-- pgs. 228-231) |
| Quote: | | Over the past two years, Costa Rica's biggest industry has entered yet anbother phase: luxury development. Spearheaded by the commercial opening of the controversial Peninsula Papagayo - a sloping seven-mile finger of land that droops into the Pacific Ocean from Guanacaste, the country's northwesternmost province - billions of investment dollars have flooded in from hotel companies, including Four Seasons, as well as the likes of Steve Case and Ross Perot Jr. The airline industry is also betting big on the country's northern Pacific Coast: already 45 nonstop flights from North America per week land at the one-strip Liberia international airport in high season, and more are scheduled for 2008. As one might imagine, not everyone is in agreement about what this means for the future of the nation's ecotourism. (-- p. 231) |
| Quote: | | (Michael) Kaye (owner of CR's first and biggest rafting outfitter, Costa Rica Expeditions) had just flown to Tortugeuero from his base in San Jose in order to help launch a program to protect the local beach, which is the most important nesting ground in the Western Hemisphere for the endangered Atlantic green sea turtle. He was also here to meet an expert about new ideas for minimizing the environmental impact of the lodge's waste management system. I was even more impressed by this when Kaye admitted to me, as the night wore on, "Most of my clients don't really care about environmentalism." To please them, he had added a beautiful swimming pool to the lodge. But he had also opposed a recent proposal to build a road connecting Tortuguero to the rest of the country, despite the fact that such access would have drawn more visitors. (-- 274) |
| Quote: | Arguably one of the best-connected men in North and Central America, Alan Kelso has networked his way into meetings with CEOs and money men around the world; his brainchild, Peninsula Papagayo, is a multibillion-dollar work-in-progress worthy of an anthropological dissertation: a planned community for the international eco-jet set. I met Kelso in his ground-floor office, which abuts the octagonal stone-and-glass clubhouse of the development's Arnold Palmer-designed golf course (the next one is being designed by Jack Nicklaus). ... Kelso, the nerdy child of a middle-class San Jose family, turned out to be completely unpretentious. Unlike most developers in Costa Rica, he is a native, one reason why public criticism of the project died down. Kelso's enthusiasm was infectious. Soon, he was driving me in his SUV to one of the 17 beaches on the peninsula's 15 miles of coastline. ...
Thanks to its physical splendor, Peninsula Papagayo has for years been at the heart of the struggle between Costa Rica's environmentalists and entrepreneurs. Finally, in 1993, the government made a controversial decision to lease the property to a Mexican company with ties to Mexico's disgraced former president Carlos Salinas. Before the Mexicans could get anywhere, they were sued for multiple environmental violations. In 1997, the project's minority partner, Costa Rica's national beer company, privately met with Kelso to ask if he would consider buying the Mexicans out. Kelso had made his name putting together the Los Suenos Marriott, a highly successful property 140 miles south. In the past years, he'd turned down all such offers, but this time, "I didn't even have to think about it," he says.
For a sum he would describe only as the value of "maybe one or two villas today," Kelso bought out the Mexxicans and went to work developing a master plkan for the peninsula. He envisioned an exclusive, independent city. There was literally nothing on the land, so Kelso began planning and building roads and creating and hiring his own fire department, security, and emergency response network. He established a NASA-like telecom center that digitally controls everything from the water supply to electricity. "We have traffic mapped out for the next fifteen years," he says. Then he set about selling off pieces of the property to carefully selected "bell cow" investors such as Steve Case and Ross Perot Jr. - both of whom are building exclusive time-share villas - and bringing in a Four Seasons Hotel, which he knew "had a following of its own."
By the end of next year, Kelso will open a 382-slip marina, more than twice the size of any other in Central America. And he has hired the architect of Beaver Creek, Colorado, to help design a surrounding village, set to open in 2009. There are also independent homes for sale, some of which come with the option of service from the staff and restaurants of the Four Seasons. People like Madonna are rumored to have bought in. "I don't know if we are an eco-tourism destination, but we are environmentally responsible," Kelso says. He keeps his golf courses green in part using desalinated seawater, and rather than trying to skirt Costa Rica's law that all beaches remain public property, he runs a bus service carrying locals to the peninsula's shores. "We had 75,000 visitors last year," he says proudly. And whereas the Mexican group had planned to build 16,000 residential units on the peninsula, Kelso's plan is capped at 2,500. ... (-- pgs. 274-275) |
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| Posted: Wed Mar 05, 2008 1:44 pm Post subject: |
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From Losing Streak:
Travel & Leisure
Magazine Subscription
The Melting Point
A vast expanse of ice fringed with settlements, Greenland is a lure for adventure travelers - and at the heart of our global warming fears. Jeff Wise reports on this chilly siren of the north.
November, 2007
| Quote: | I wandered down, and asked a pair of Inuit fisherman if they had noticed a change in the weather. "We used to be able to dogsled to Disko Island, across 30 miles of sea ice," 56-year-old Daniel Jorgensen said. He spoke through a translator, in Greenlandic, an Inuit tongue. "We haven't been able to do that since 1990." Nearby, hunters loaded plastic tubs with raw whale meat cut into cubes a foot across. Jorgensen agreed with all the other fishermen I talked to: Greenland has become indisputably warmer over the last decade or so. This has made it difficult to reach traditional ice-fishing sites by dogsled. On the other hand, it's now possible to take boats out fishing year-round, and the reindeer herds, more more to feed on, are growing.
So it has always been in the Arctic. One resource vanishes; another reveals itself. In nature, such change is constant. Only this time, the circumstances of this change are deeply unnatural. (-- p. 164) |
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| Posted: Wed Mar 12, 2008 10:01 am Post subject: |
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On the role The New York Times played in breaking the climate change story:
Storm World
Hurricanes, Politics, and the Battle Over Global Warming
Hardcover
By Chris Mooney
| Quote: | Eventually, the internal and external grumblings over NOAA's hard line made their way into the press, and the agency became case study number two of the Bush administration's repression of government climate scientists. The first was the public revelation by NASA's James Hansen, in early 2006, about attempts by his agency's own public affairs staff to clamp down on his statements about "dangerous" global warming.
As reported by Andrew Revkin in a New York Times page-one story on Sunday, January 29, Hansen claimed NASA public-affairs officials had tried to block his ability to speak out about the urgency of addressing climate change. In particular, Hansen said he'd been targeted following his speech at the American Geophysical Union (AGU) conference in December 2005 - the talk delivered just before Emanuel's own not entirely apolitical presentation, which had drawn attention to an apparent crackdown on GFDL scientists in relation to the hurricane-climate question. Hansen's story had an easy-to-grasp narrative that prompted immediate and sustained outrage. It turned out that his would-be oppressor was an officer in the NASA press office, George Deutsch, who was in his early twenties and (it was later revealed) had not officially graduated from college at the time. The notion that the Bush administration would empower someone like Deutsch to block a legend like James Hansen from speaking out about climate risks was staggering.
The Times story set in motion a series of events that gave new legs to the narrative of scientist suppression in the Bush administration. ... (From the chapter, "Consensus," p. 195) |
Still ahead of the crowd in reporting developments in green technologies:
New York Times Magazine
Newspaper Subscription
The 7th Annual Year in Ideas
Biofuel Race, The
By Mark Svenvold
Dec. 9/07
| Quote: | ... The vogue for corn ethanol has driven up the price of corn around the world, putting the poor in jeopardy. (An expert affiliated with the United Nations went so far as to label the production of biofuels derived from food stock "a crime against humanity.") Corn ethanol is also astonishingly inefficient: because vast amounts of fossil fuels are required for its manufacture, every one unit of energy nets a mere 1.3 units of ethanol.
Is there a better way? In 2007, significant steps were taken toward a potentially great second harvest, some of it coming from the byproducts of animals, some of it from municipal waste and garbage but the bulk of it coming from plant biomass, which is really about breaking down cellulose, the key structural component of all plant cell walls and the most abundant of all naturally occurring organic compounds on earth. A recent Department of Energy study found the United States can produce a billion tons of plant biomass annually, yet 400 million years of evolution has made cellulose resistant - the term of art is "recalcitrant" - to manipulation. Unlocking its complex compounds of sugars, whose potential yield is 4 times that of corn on a gallons-per-acre basis, typically requires an aggressive, four-step thermo-chemical process. Taken together, these steps have been too costly or too energy intensive for cellulosic fuel production to become economically viable. Cracking the conundrum of plant cell walls cheaply has become a Brigadoon-like dream that has been "5 years away," as on wry observer put it, "for the last 30 years."
Until now - at least if you believe Vinod Khosla, one of the best-known venture capitalists in America, who was a founder of Sun Microsystems and an early investor in Google, and who has in recent years invested hundreds of millions dollars into a dozen different biofuel companies using new and potentially revolutionary techniques. In November, A Khosla-backed firm called Range Fuels broke ground on the first cellulosic ethanol plant in the country. The plant, located in Georgia, employs an efficient process that eliminates two of the four traditional thermo-chemical steps. Range Fuels plans to use timber scraps, wood chips and paper pulp, though it could also use municipal waste and even olive pits, to produce 100 million gallons of fuel a year.
Khosla has also supported efforts to utilize the power of bioengineering. The goal here has been to create bacteria that will, in effect, eat cellulose and excrete oil. In February, a Khosla-backed company, LS9, announced its plans to make genetically engineered microbes that do just that. Another company, Verenium, exploits naturally occurring cellulose-eating enzymes in termites and fungus to produce ethanol.
But can products like these go to market? Yes, according to Khosla, who finances technologies only if he believes they can be ramped up to scale and compete with fossil fuels within five to seven years of their initial deployment - without government subsidy. "I believe in technologies that can compete in the marketplace," he says. "Otherwise, it's just toys you're dealing with. Not solutions."
According to Khosla, within the next two decades, petroleum, which accounts for 40 percent of the current total energy use in the United States, can be entirely replaced by biofuels. That's a half-trillion-dollar market. In a kind of biofuels roulette, Khosla, a man with a big stack of chips, has covered the table with many different bets. One of them seems bound to hit, which would be a Google-like home run for Khosla and would similarly evolutionize life for the rest of us. (-- pgs. 57-58) |
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| Posted: Wed Mar 12, 2008 10:53 am Post subject: |
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More emerging green technologies we admire:
New York Times Magazine
Magazine Subscription
The 7th Annual Year in Ideas
Airborne Wind Turbines
By David Gelles
Dec. 9/07
| Quote: | Traditional wind turbines can be unreliable sources of energy because, well, the wind blows where it will. Not the case 1,000 feet up. "At a thousand feet, there is steady wind anywhere in the world," syas Mac Brown, chief operating officer of Ottawa-based Magenn Power.
To take advantage of this constant breeze, Brown has developed a lighter-than-air wind turbine capable of powering a rural village. "Picture a spinning Goodyear blimp," Brown says. Filled with helium, outfitted with electrical generators and tethered to the gound by a conductive copper cable, the 100-foot-wide Magenn Air Rotor System (MARS) will produce 10 kilowatts of energy anywhere on earth. As the turbine spins around a horizontal axis, the generators convert the mechanical energy of the wind into electrical energy, then send it down for immediate use or battery storage.
Planning for the MARS has been under way for a few years, but this fall Magenn got the $5 million it needed to build prototypes from a California investor. In October, the MARS received its U.S. patent. Already, larger models - ones that might light a skyscraper - are in the works. Brown says he hopes his floating wind turbines will power off-the-grid villages in the developing world. He says the governments of India and Pakistan have expressed interest.
At least one argument against wind turbines - that they slice up birds and bats - isn't valid, according to Brown. "This thing is bigger than a house," he says. "A bird can see it and a bat can sense it." (-- p. 50) |
| Quote: | Smog-Eating Cement
By Lia Miller
This year a new weapon against smog was introduced in the United States: cement. Called TX Active, it was developed by the Italian company Italcementi. Enrico Borgarello, Italcementi's head of research and development, says the product can literally "kill" pollution.
The cement's chemical composition is enhanced with titanium dioxide, which under the right conditions can neutralize some harmful pollutants. When exposed to sunlight or ultraviolet light, the titanium dioxide is "activated," Bogarello says, and pollutants that come in contact with the surface of the cement are oxidized. Hazardous nitrogen oxides and sulfur oxides, for example, are transformed into harmless nitrates or sulfates, which simply rinse off the building with rainwater. This also keeps it especially clean. Italcementi developed the cement for the architect Richard Meier, who wanted a very white material for his Jubilee Church in Rome. Titanium dioxide, commonly used to make paints bright white, was added to the standard cement's mix. It was only later that Italcementi realized that TX Active had pollution-busting properties. (-- p. 98) |
| Quote: | Wave Energy
By Stephen Mihm
For decades, researchers have tried to tap the clean energy of ocean waves. Unfortunately, storms and seawater have wreaked havoc on their delicate turbines. But now there's a solution on the horizon: buoys that generate energy with nothing more than a souped-up rubber band.
The concept derives from the discovery a little over a decade ago of so-callled dielectric elastomers, stretchy plastics that react to and generate electricity. When electricity runs through an elastomer, the elastomer compresses and contracts, much the way a muscle does. It didn't take long for researchers at SRI International, a nonprofit organization based in Melo Park, Calif., to realize that the process would work in reverse: stress and relax the elastomer, and it will generate electricity. ... Hoping to power a buoy's light bulb, SRI tried out a version of the idea in the waters off St. Petersburg, Fla., this past summer. ?While the energy output was a paltry five watts, the firm hopes to scale it up. Better yet, the simplicity of the design will in theory make buoy generators cheaper and more durable than other technologies that harness the wind and the waves. Moreover, the buoys could be anchored just beneath the water, where they won't obstruct beachcombers' views of the ocean. "You wouldn't see anything," promises Ron Pelrine, an SRI scientist. (-- pgs. 105-112) |
| Quote: | Wireless Energy
By Clay Risen
... This summer, the team (lead by M.I. T. physicist Marin Soljacic) announed the success of their "WiTricity" experiment in the journal Science. Using a pair of copper-wire coils, they transferred, with an efficiency of about 40 per cent, enough energy across about six feet of open air to power a 60-watt bulb, even when they stuck a board between the coils.
The possible applications are endless. Wireless energy ports could eliminate cords on everything from lamps to laptops. Imagine pacemakers that never need a new battery, or highways that continuously recharge electric cars. At the very least, phone chargers would be a thing of the past... (-- pgs. -54-55) |
VLM
Magazine Subscription
Long Green
Innovators who help Earth and its ecosystems and our economy[/color]
By Michelle Hopkins
April, 2008
| Quote: | Although MagPower Systems Inc. began to experiment with magnesium air fuel cells eight years ago, the company is considered a fairly new player in the groundbreaking green companies.
MagPower has developed a powerful, reliable and environmentally friendly, nontoxic magnesium air fuel cell (MAFC). Its power source generates electricity through the combination of magnesium, oxygen and saltwater electrolyte with MagPower’s Hydrogen Inhibitors (HI).
... In Iraq, the U.S. Army uses two million zinc alkaline batteries a day that get thrown out,” explains (CEO Shawn) McGroarty. “With our unit you can recharge it and none end up in landfills. “In fact, FEMA wants 250,000 of our units.” The applications for its MAFC are endless, as are the carbon footprints it can eradicate. “Think of the directional signs on trucks, they run all day long all over the world, polluting the environment,” he says. “If all your major cities start using our technology, think of how much carbon emissions will be reduced, that alone adds up.”
MagPower is licensing its patents in Canada, China, Australia, the United States and Europe, with other countries in the wings. MagPower runs three
laboratories locally and within the next two years MagPower will have seven facilities worldwide. ...
Sempa has developed a hybrid heating system that utilizes electricity at off-peak times and then switches it back, via a computerized system, to utilizing fossil fuels during peak times. “The technology is similar to that used in hybrid cars,” says CEO Ron Dizy. The system monitors fuel prices in real time and switches back and forth between the fuels at optimal times. Dizy explains that by choosing the best energy sources at the best times large commercial buildings reduce their greenhouse gas emissions and energy consumption. On average, buildings outfitted with its hybrid heating system will realize a 10 to 30 per cent reduction in energy costs; a 28 to 58 per cent cut in greenhouse gas emissions and an overall reduction in energy consumption of between five and 15 per cent per year.
Since its inception in 2004, Sempa has implemented 20 hybrid systems and this year will do between 25 and 30. ...
Unlike traditional hydro power, which stores water in reservoirs, Plutonic Power's system uses the stream gradient so the river flows naturally. This non-storage system diverts the river into a pipe and so the impact on the land is very minimal, explains CEO Donald McInnes. This makes hydroelectric one of the most environmentally friendly and commercially viable sources of electricity generation available.
“Instead of flooding the habitat, the diverted water is returned to the river without heating or cooling or adding chemicals,” says McInnes, who founded Plutonic after years of funding natural-resource development through Canadian capital markets. ...
Westport takes a standard engine and modifies it to burn liquified natural gas (LNG) to power them.
“We have found new ways to inject gas into the engines that look virtually the same,” he explains. “Buses and trucks tend to burn the most fuel and so they tend to be the dirtiest on the road. If you take our technology, buses will burn 83 per cent cleaner than the cleanest running bus in the world.” The company works with automotive giants such as BMW, Ford and Cummins Inc. to incorporate its technologies into their engines.
Its LNG system for heavy-duty trucks cut emissions by at least a third to improve greenhouse gas emissions by 20 per cent. ... (-- pgs. 37-41) |
... and some 'green' fallout we don't admire:
VLM
Magazine Subscription
The Downtown Eastside cleans up, for the rest of us
By Carol Liu
April, 2008
| Quote: | ... Since it opened, United We Can has attracted 220 customers, businesses that leave bottles for (Ken) Lyotier and other binners to collect and take back to the depot. Selling the recyclables, the organization generates enough revenue to cover its costs.
A visit to the storefront near Hastings and Abbott in one of the Downtown Eastside's roughest strips forces you to rub shoulders with a horde of binners standing outside, keeping an eye on their run-down shopping carts. Once inside, you are hit by a smell like day-old booze. The screach of glass bottles scratching against each other as they are sorted is sufficiently painful that workers receiving and cashing out the items wear ear protection. Mountains of bagged plastic bottles line the east wall. The grimy glass front door is constantly opening and closing as people come in with bottles and leave with money in their pockets.
United We Can's main goal is to offer "employment opportunities," as Lyotier calls this brisk trade, to people dealing with mental health or addiction issues. ...
Binners such as Derek Holt claim to make $700 to $800 a month. And it's all tax-free. In the past he was able to make $400 to $550 from the Holiday Inn on West Broadway. Now he makes around $375 because "the maids caught onto what kind of money can be made and now keep half." (-- p. 29) |
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editor
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| Posted: Wed Mar 12, 2008 12:06 pm Post subject: |
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How international trade - not protectionism or even 'Buy Local' campaigns - provides an effective 'greenprint' for a more balanced world order:
The New Yorker
Magazine Subscription
A Reporter at Large
Big Foot
In measuring carbon emissions, it's easy to confuse morality and science.
By Michael Specter
Feb. 25/08
| Quote: | Many factors influence the carbon footprint of a product: water use, cultivation and harvesting methods, quantity and type of fertilizer, even the type of fuel used to make the package. Sea-freight emissions are less than a 60th of those associated with airplanes, and you don't have to build highways to berth a ship. Last year, a study of the carbon cost of the global wine trade found that is actually more "green" for New Yorkers to drink wine from Bordeaux, which is shipped by sea, than wine from California, sent by truck. That is largely because shipping wine is mostly shipping glass. The study found that "the efficiencies of shipping drive a 'green line' all the way to Columbus, Ohio, the point where a wine from Bordeaux and Napa has the same carbon intensity."
The environmental burden imposed by importing apples from New Zealand to Northern Europe or New York can be lower than if the apples were raised fifty miles away. "In New Zealand, they have more sunshine than in the UlK, which helps productivity," (Adrian) Williams (agriculture researcher at the Natural Resources Department of Cranfield University, in England) explained. That means the yield of New Zealand apples far exceeds the yield of those grown in northern climates, so the energy required for farmers to grow the crop is correspondingly lower. It also helps that the electricity in New Zealand is mostly generated by renewable sources, none of which emit large amounts of CO2. Researchers at Loncoln University in Christchurch, found that lamb raised in New Zealand and shipped 11,000 miles by boat to England produced 688 kg of carbon-dioxide emissions per ton, about a fourth of the amount produced by British lamb. In part, that is because pastures in New Zealand need far less fertilizer than most grazing land in Britain (or in many parts of the U.S.). Similarly, importing beans from Uganda or Kenya - where the farms are small, tractor use is limited, and the fertilizer is almost always manure - tends to be more efficient than growing beans in Europe, with its reliance on energy-dependent irrigation systems. ... (-- pgs. 44-52) |
How does Internet gambling fit in?
| Quote: | Update:
The European Communities (EC), having recently negotiated the GATS-slash compensation over the U.S. decision to change that agreement to protect its right to keep protectionism in the gambling sector, is now free to devote itself fully to the pursuit of a GATS-breach challenge similar to Antigua's. Antigua after all only won on behalf of Antigua. It's up to other WTO nations similarly affected by U.S. discrimination to determine whether the U.S. market is worth fighting for. We're guessing it is. And while the EC will certainly benefit from Antigua's double victory at the WTO, its claim for compensation will probably be less hampered than Antigua's because of the recent UK Gambling Bill and regulatory bodies created to enforce it. Europe's older, more established industry, including significant, much more transparent reporting requirements, would likely overcome the gaps in accounting cited by two of the three arbitration panelists in December as the main reason for the massive and, frankly, controversial reduction to Antigua's claim - from $3.4 billion to a paltry $21 million.
An EC challenge to U.S. remote gambling prohibitions post-Antigua's double win might accomplish several goals important to the industry as a whole:
1. It may provide a threat sufficient to force the U.S. to reconsider its current position - still very much a possibility despite GATS-slash negotiations with eight countries separately, which, again, dealt only with the removal of the GATS term - NOT the discrimination;
2. It may uncover the U.S. agenda behind such selective prosecution of the industry. Many of us would like to know why, for example, private companies such as PokerStars and FulltiltPoker whose ownership is not clearly identified, are allowed to continue accepting U.S. bets without penalty, which in turn allows them to claim the monster share of world market;
3. Perhaps most important, an EC challenge may draw attention even among anti-globalization advocates to the real reasons behind the WTO's creation in the first place, which was to promote and facilitate a more equitable, ECO-FRIENDLY use of shared world resources, a rationale that is again and increasingly at the fore as more and more of us wake up to the reality of global warming. The Clinton administration was well aware of climate change as is evidenced by the tremendous number of policy papers of the '90s, analyzing the eco-cost-effectiveness of growing various crops, where it makes the best economic and environmental sense to do so and so on.
All of this makes the U.S. decision to bear these continued challenges to the ban as the cost of its protectionism even more grievous.
As part of our Gamble Green campaign, we have actually begun tracking the environmental impact of developing super-sized luxury casino resorts, especially in places with severe weather risks and fragile eco-systems, where the profits most often leak back to foreign owners. When you compare gambling at theses places to the carbon footprint of gambling online, well, it's revealing, to say the least. (Excerpt from an e-mail we sent in response to a media inquiry about a European challenge to U.S. remote gambling prohibitions).
View the full message.
More on the economic and environmental risks associated with the development of usually foreign-owned casino resorts in fragile eco-systems.
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Yes, and get this:
Making Globalization Work
Hardcover
By 2001 Nobel Prize winner Joseph E. Stiglitz
| Quote: | ... The issue of openness in international discussions has long been a major concern. President Woodrow Wilson put "open covenants ... openly arrived at" (my italics) at the head of his agenda for reforming the international political architecture in the aftermath of World War I, going on to argue that "diplomacy shall proceed always frankly and in the public view" (my italics). But this has never been the case - or even declared objective - in trade negotiations. Typically the United States and the EU would together select a few developing countries to negotiate with - often putting intense pressure on them to break ranks with other developing countries - in the Green Room at WTO headquarters. (Today, even when the negotiations occur in Cancun, Seattle, or Hong Kong, the room in which the representatives huddle is still called the Green Room, with all the negative connotations.) Having trade ministers closeted in a room, separated from the experts on whom they rely, negotiating all night, may be a good test of endurance, but it is not a way to create a better global trade regime. Worse still, special interests are far more likely to influence international negotiations when they are conducted under the cloak of secrecy.
The justification for these secret, high-pressure negotiations is that it is impossible to negotiate with dozens of countries at a time. That is certainly true, but there are ways to make the negotiation process fairer and to have the voices of developing countries heard more clearly.
Compounding the problems of an unfair agenda and unfair and nontransparent negotiations is unfair enforcement. As we have noted, the enforcement mechanism is asymmetric. Antigua won a major case against the United States on online gambling, but there was no way that Antigua could effectively enforce the decision. Putting tariffs on American goods would simply raise prices for the people of Antigua, making them worse off. But there's a simple solution, which would go some way toward creating a more effective and fair enforcement mechanism: allowing developing countries, at least, to sell their enforcement rights.* Europe, for instance, might have some grievance against the United States in a pending case; rather than waiting for the outcome of that case, it could use the threat of enforcement action in the already-decided case to induce a quicker resolution. (emphasis added) (some footnotes omitted) (From chapter 4, Making Trade Fair, pgs. 98-99) |
Any NEW trade alliances to watch?
New York Times Magazine
Newspaper Subscription
The 7th Annual Year in Ideas
Second-World Solidarity
By Scott L. Malcomson
Dec. 9/07
| Quote: | ... The United States, China and the European Union seem to be forming an irritable triplet: no one of them can dominate either of the other two. They may make common cause, but it is just as likely that they will compete for control. And the places where they will compete have been labeled, by the New America Foundation analyst Parag Khanna, the second world.
The second world used to mean the Soviet Union and its dependencies. Khanna has appropriated it (in his coming book of the same name) for countries that have substantial economies but do not belong the Big Three. Turkey, Brazil, Saudi Arabia, Venezuela, Algeria, Russia, possibly India and South Africa - it's the most successful members of the old non-aligned movement, more or less, plus resource barons, and when you add them all up, it amounts to a good chunk of the world. The U.S., the E.U. and China court them - even depend on them - for vital resources and to adjust their own balance of poower.
According to Khanna, the independence of the second world - the development of its own interests and preoccupations - has grown apace. It is economically driven and increasingly active when it comes to importing capital and exporting it. Chinese state banks, for example, were able recently to purchase large stakes in major Nigerian and South African lenders. The second world is nonetheless jealous of national sovereignty, valuing stable forms of globalization but allergic to assertions of power by the Western-led "international community." Its relationship to the colonial era is intense and complicated: there is an element of vengeance against erstwhile colonial powers, but also one of imitation, a point not lost on those left behind in the third world.
Ultimately, the second world idea augurs an international community that accommodates a high level of competitive tension and a low level of politiical (or "values") consensus on how best to govern domestically or cooperate internationallly. (-- p. 96) |
Link to this entry
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editor
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| Posted: Wed Mar 26, 2008 7:45 am Post subject: |
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From Omens and Lucky Charms:
COUNTRY LIFE
Weekly Magazine Subscription
Spectator
The origin of the furies
By Carla Carlisle
Feb. 15/07
| Quote: | On Monday, the 'long-awaited' United Nations report on global warming was published. The result of 2,500 scientists pooling their data, it concluded what everybody but George Bush and Exxon Mobil already knew: that man has truly botched up the planet. Unless we come up with a unity of purpose greater than we've ever achieved, our children are going to pay a terrible price. ...
The UN report was released on the day the first turkeys died in Suffolk. Not that we knew. Nearly a week went by before we heard the news. But by sunset on Saturday, as I shut up my birds, I knew the worst. But it wasn't the 800 dead birds and the prospect of gassing the 160,000 remaining turkeys that caused me to tremble. It was the sight of 27 long sheds stretched across the landscape, and broadcasters calling it a 'farm' in Suffolk. This is no farm, Bernard Matthews is no farmer, and the sheds housing thousands of turkeys are not 'bio-secure' units, but havens for the development of new pandemic viruses.
...
Silent Spring
Paperback
Environmental Classic
By ecology icon Rachel Carson,
the visionary behind the DDT ban
For 30 years, I've carried around my grandfather's copy of Rachel Carson's Silent Spring. A cotton farmer impoverished by the boll weevil, he still stood by Carson: put poison on the fields and you poison the rivers; poison the rivers and you poison the oceans. Carson dedicated her book 'to Albert Schweitzer who said: "Man has lost the capacity to foresee and forestall. He will end by destroying the earth.'"
... I latch onto a few lines in the book's introduction, from a speech by the Duke of Edinburgh in the early 1960s: 'Miners use canaries to warn them of deadly gases. It might not be a bad idea if we took the same warning from the dead birds in our countryside.' (-- p. 100) |
Link to this entry
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