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This story first appeared on the TomDispatch website.
From the time I was little, I went to the movies. They were my escape, with one exception from which I invariably had to escape. I couldn’t sit through any movie where something or someone threatened to jump out at me with the intent to harm. In such situations, I was incapable of enjoying being scared and there seemed to be no remedy for it. When Jaws came out in 1975, I decided that, at age 31, having avoided such movies for years, I was old enough to take it. One tag line in ads for that film was: “Don’t go in the water.” Of the millions who watched Jaws and outlasted the voracious great white shark until the lights came back on, I was that rarity: I didn’t. I really couldn’t go back in the ocean—not for several years.
I don’t want you to think for a second that this represents some kind of elevated moral position on violence or horror; it’s a visceral reaction. I actually wanted to see the baby monster in Alien burst out of that human stomach. I just knew I couldn’t take it. In all my years of viewing (and avoidance), only once did I find a solution to the problem. In the early 1990s, a period when I wrote on children’s culture, Michael Crichton’s novel Jurassic Park sparked a dinosaur fad. I had been a dino-nerd of the 1950s and so promised Harper’s Magazine a piece on the craze and the then-being-remodeled dino-wing of New York’s American Museum of Natural History. (Don’t ask me why that essay never appeared. I took scads of notes, interviewed copious scientists at the museum, spent time alone with an Allosaurus skull, did just about everything a writer should do to produce such a piece—except write it. Call it my one memorable case of writer’s block.)
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Scared to Death: Why Reality Is More Terrifying Than Any Horror Film
Water levels in the Great Lakes, which reached historic lows earlier this year, have recovered substantially because of heavy snowfall and spring rains, scientists said. Original link: National Briefing | Midwest: Great Lakes Recover Substantial Water Levels Related Articles Chevron Assails Lawyer Who Led Multibillion-Dollar Suit Against It Contest Aims for a Cleaner-Burning Wood Stove Observatory: Clues to the Origins of Big Cats
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National Briefing | Midwest: Great Lakes Recover Substantial Water Levels
The proposed design at Riverside Park includes green rooftops and solar-powered composting toilets. Photo: COOK + FOX
Typically, the opening of a public restroom doesn’t merit a lot of hoopla. But then again, most public restrooms aren’t as green and carbon neutral as the facilities that are being planned for Riverside Park in New York City. The restrooms in the park overlooking the Hudson River will use solar power and compost sewage to fertilize park greenery. The new restroom complex is being designed so that it will not create any carbon dioxide emissions, which contribute to global warming. Plus, in addition to producing fertilizer (instead of sewage), the composting toilets will use little to no water. (By comparison, conventional toilets use about 3.5 gallons of water per flush.)
“These toilets are vital,” says Mark McIntyre, executive director of the Riverside Clay Tennis Association. He says that much of the Hudson River Greenway, where the park is located, is built on a landfill along areas that are not connected to New York City’s sewer system. Even if they were able to connect to the existing sewer system, that system is already aging and stressed.
“Tens of thousands of people are now using this riverfront pathway, and there are not enough [bathrooms] to accommodate the need,” McIntyre says. The opening of the Hudson Riverwalk has increased bike and pedestrian traffic by the thousands, and presently portable toilets are the only option for park visitors.
“If we are to build the necessary amenities, we want to do it in an environmentally responsible way and one that is economically feasible,” he says.
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Solar Composting Toilets Highlight Green Changes to NYC Park
California, already parched and fire-scorched following two consecutive snow- and rain-deprived winters, is on track to experience its driest year on record.
“It’s absolutely dry,” Bob Benjamin, a National Weather Service forecaster, told the San Francisco Chronicle. “We just went through October where there was no measurable precipitation in downtown San Francisco. That’s only happened seven times since records started.” From the article:
The state’s reservoirs are all well below their normal carrying capacity, according to Arthur Hinojosa, the chief of hydrology and flood operations for the California Department of Water Resources.
“Generally speaking, it has been dry across the state, and it has been remarkably dry where the population centers are and where the bulk of the water storage is,” Hinojosa said. “Most operators plan on multiyear dry years, but nobody plans on as dry as we’ve seen.”
The dry weather is also extending the fire season. The California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection has responded to 6,439 fires this year, almost 2,000 more fires than during an average year, said Battalion Chief Julie Hutchinson. That doesn’t include fires on federal land like the Rim Fire, which burned 400 square miles in and around the Stanislaus National Forest and Yosemite National Park.
As winter approaches, water officials are getting ready to take matters into their own hands: They plan to step up cloud seeding. The Sacramento Bee reports:
As California concludes a second drought year and water managers hope eagerly to avoid a third, utilities across the state are poised for that first mass of pillowy gray clouds to drift ashore from the Pacific Ocean.
When it arrives, if conditions are right, they’ll be ready with cloud-seeding tools to squeeze out every extra snowflake, with the goal of boosting the snowpack that ultimately feeds the state’s water-storage reservoirs. …
As practiced in California and elsewhere in the West, cloud seeding involves spraying fine particles of silver iodide into a cloud system to increase snowfall that is already underway or about to begin. Silver iodide causes water droplets within the clouds to form ice crystals. As the crystals grow larger, they become snowflakes, which fall out to create more snow than the storm would have generated on its own.
Cloud seeding is done only when temperatures within the clouds are between 19 and minus-4 degrees Fahrenheit. This is the range at which silver iodide does its best work, as demonstrated by decades of research.
“It enhances precipitation that’s already occurring,” said Dudley McFadden, a civil engineer at the Sacramento Municipal Utility District who manages the utility’s cloud-seeding program. “Once you’ve got snow, you can make more with this approach.”
Of course, cloud-seeding only works when there are clouds in the air to begin with. It’s certainly not a real fix for climate change, which is drying out the American West and fueling wildfires.
Source
Cloud seeding, no longer magical thinking, is poised for use this winter, The Sacramento Bee
California on course for driest year on record, San Francisco Chronicle
John Upton is a science fan and green news boffin who tweets, posts articles to Facebook, and blogs about ecology. He welcomes reader questions, tips, and incoherent rants: johnupton@gmail.com.
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California, on track for record dry year, is ready to seed clouds
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An afternoon searching recent US patents pulls up some curious climate solutions. Forget YouTube as your go-to 3:00 pm internet distraction. For me, it’s the US patent office website. There is some seriously wild stuff being invented by your fellow citizens, not least in the area of climate change mitigation and adaptation. Here are a few of my favorite climate-related patents issued recently by the office. (I’ve added a little color to the design sketches): Golf courses are hardly known for being paragons of environmentally friendly land use. They use a massive amount of water and have been found to be net carbon emitters, mainly due to land-clearing. But—phew!—there could soon be a way to shuck that green guilt and keep on swinging. These carbon dioxide-absorbing golf balls, invented by the golf team at Nike, are intended to “reduce atmospheric carbon dioxide levels to aid in alleviating global warming,” by enabling the ”golf ball itself to play a role in the fight against global warming.” (You can’t make this stuff up). Additionally, the Nike inventors claim this is the first time a golf ball itself has attempted to off-set carbon consumed during its manufacture. Here’s how it works: When you hit the ball, little bits of its surface layer deform and set off a chemical chain reaction that absorbs carbon dioxide as the ball flies through the air. The more times you swing, the greater the surface area exposed to the internal reactions. So, if you’re anything like me, and you need to hit the ball an embarrassing number of times, comfort yourself with the knowledge you’re doing more to save the world more than your pro golf buddies (except all my balls end up in the water). At the end of the game, according to the patent, you’ll be able to see how much carbon you’ve sequestered using a visual indicator on the side of the ball. Golfing sure beats hammering out a broad international agreement to reduce carbon. But sorry to spike your high: The inventors admit the golf ball could “at best be only carbon neutral, and is not capable of reducing the total amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.” Damn. Really? (After several attempts to organize an interview with the Portland-based inventor Chia-Chyi Cheng, Nike told me the company doesn’t talk to the media about their numerous inventions or patents). Verdict: Cool science! But don’t expect President Obama to start arguing his golf days are saving the planet. We learned last month that average summer temperatures in parts of the Arctic during the past 100 years are hotter than they have been for possibly as long as 120,000 years. And the Arctic recently registered the sixth lowest summer sea ice minimum on record. Why don’t we just replace all that melting ice? That’s the idea behind this recently published patent for artificial ice. According to the filing, an ”ice” substrate would be dropped onto the surface of an ocean or a lake and left there to reflect sunlight back into the atmosphere using a 3-corner retro reflector surface (the same technology used by street signs). Meanwhile, nutrients sown on the underside would encourage algae to grow for biofuel production. Algae is a proven energy source. In February 2012, President Obama announced the Department of Energy would allocate $14 million in new funding to develop transportation fuels from algae. “It seemed like a two-fer to me,” says inventor and engineer Phillip Langhorst from St. Louis, Missouri. ”In order to solve global warming we’re going to have to do something on an insanely huge scale. And this is the only thing I’ve seen that’s big enough.” A few weeks after putting the ice on the water, a ship would come along, scrape the algae off and reapply the necessary nutrients. “I need help, obviously, to see if this is a viable scheme,” he says, although he admits most companies he approaches balk at the idea. But he argues that facing the realities and costs of big geo-engineering projects like this is becoming increasingly necessary, in lieu of putting a price on carbon: ”Pick your poison, you know,” he says. ”My goal is not so much to patent this and make a billion dollars off of it; it’s to solve the global warming issue so we all don’t have to move to Saskatchewan.” Verdict: Please, can’t we stop the real ice from melting? Imagine this scenario in the not-too-distant future: Your car has iced over in one of the many more extreme storms of a climate-changed world. It takes too long—and too much gas—to de-ice the car. Moreover, the engines in energy-efficient and electric cars mean there is less “waste heat” in the system that’s available for the purpose of traditional defrosting techniques. A new defrosting system may just become the must-have for winter drivers, according to this patent for a “windshield washer fluid heater and system,” which attempts to defrost within seconds, not minutes. It may even, according to the language of the patent, reduce “energy dependence on foreign oil.” That actually isn’t too lofty a claim when you look at the auto industry roaring back to life. Since 2009, car production has nearly doubled; in July, US car and light-truck sales ran at an annualized pace of 15.8 million, up more than a million from the previous year. Any fuel savings count. The invention passes engine heat that already exists through a new heat exchanger. Upon flicking the washer/wiper switch, washer fluid heats in a special new heater in a matter of seconds, and finally sprays out nozzles integrated into the wiper blades of the car, delivering a “continuous on-demand heated fluid deicing and cleaning action to the windshield and wiper blades.” “This is so much more effective in clearing the windshield, because a traditional system needs to warm up 30-40 pounds of windshield glass before it can get to the outside ice,” which requires a lot of energy, says Jere Lansinger, a 74-year-old retired automotive engineer and inventor. A 40-year veteran of the industry in Detroit, Lansinger used to test defrosting systems to ensure they met the federal standard for safe driving: around 30 minutes for a clear windshield. “And 30 minutes is a terribly long time when you want to get moving in the morning.” So for the last 20 years he’s been tinkering on this invention in his garage. Now the defrost time is under a minute, he says. Lansinger has commercial interest already. The invention has been bought by TSM Corporation, Michigan, and is being developed as a product called QuikTherm, which the company says is currently being tested at several North American automotive parts manufacturers. And that’s enormously gratifying for Lansinger. “Frankly it makes me feel better than any big royalties I’ll get.” Verdict: A neat fuel-efficiency measure I’ve never thought about. And nothing’s worse than de-icing your car. This might be my favorite for its simplicity: A portable power station that can be off-loaded from a trailer, unfolded, put up anywhere there’s sun or wind, and switched on. In the picture here, it’s being used to charge a car. But it can power anything it likes. “I was tickled to death,” says Lynn Miller, the inventor from Crossville, Tennessee, about the day he was granted the patent, which he’s been working on for over three years. He’s now spent over $20,000 on the idea and is looking forward to getting a prototype up and running in the new year. For Miller, it’s all about simplicity and reducing costs for the consumer. ”We’d bring it out in the morning, and in the afternoon it’s working. It’s a plug-and play-system,” he says. He also likes the idea that having one of these in the company parking lot, or by the side of the road, gives ultimate green bragging rights: ”It’s very visible, it reminds people day-in, day-out that you’re environmental.” Miller’s plan is to also set up the portable power stations at schools and colleges to demonstrate the benefits of renewable energy. ”It’s not just book knowledge, this can be turned into a classroom.” Verdict: I want one.
Read more:
Carbon-Sucking Golf Balls And Other Crazy Climate Patents
Inside the Military’s Clean-Energy Revolution
Dot Earth Blog: Is the Internet Good for the Climate?
Is the Internet Good for the Climate?
20,000 lbs Fish + 70,000 Vegetables per 1/4 acre — Portable Farms Aquaponics – watch this video to learn how –
CHARTS: US Carbon Emissions Are Dropping
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Go ahead, pack your surfboards. This article – Pack your surfboards… better… with recycled materials ; ;Related ArticlesHow many people does it take to save a coastline?We’re a platform… not the black helicoptersHow do you stop a bad coastal project which has more lives than an ill-conceived TV zombie? ;
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A look at ways to clean up America’s lingering air and water pollution problems. Read the article: Dot Earth Blog: Updates on America’s Persistent Air and Water Pollution Challenges Related Articles Updates on America’s Persistent Air and Water Pollution Challenges To Expand Offshore Power, Japan Builds Floating Windmills City to Fit All Streetlights With Energy-Saving LED Bulbs
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Dot Earth Blog: Updates on America’s Persistent Air and Water Pollution Challenges
South Texas wins a precedent setting case for the State. Originally from: Ready for a demolition party in South Texas? ; ;Related ArticlesWe’re a platform… not the black helicoptersBeaches belong to the public. They are not for sale.Transforming the game one bag ban at a time ;
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Warhammer Battlefields: Northern Wastes – Games Workshop
‘In the Northern Wastes there is naught but death and madness, yet countless tribes dwell within, fighting for the glory of their twisted gods. Every sane Druchii fears the day when these barbarians stop warring against one another long enough to turn their attention towards our borders.’ Northern Wastes is a two player Warhammer campaign that can be set any […]
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Crochet One-Skein Wonders – Judith Durant & Edie Eckman
Finally, a One-Skein Wonders book just for crocheters! Edie Eckman and Judith Durant offer 101 great crochet projects — from jewelry and scarves to bags, hats, dresses, and home dec items — that each use just one skein of yarn. Whatever your experience level, you’ll find something here to delight you!
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Warhammer: Dark Elves – Games Workshop
From the desolate wastes of Naggaroth the Dark Elves march forth to enslave the world. Ruled over by the heartless Witch King, they are a race of infinite cruelty and evil. Ancient sorceresses wield hateful dark magics and bathe in the blood of their victims to keep themselves young, while pitiless knights ride cold blooded steeds into battle. Warhammer: Dar […]
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How to Paint Citadel Miniatures: Space Marines – Games Workshop
The First Founding Space Marine Chapters are the foundation of the Adeptus Astartes, each one distinct with its own iconography, colours and markings. When they march to war the symbols of the Chapter strike fear into their foes, each one heavy with their valorous deeds. In this, our biggest painting guide to date, you will find extensive detail on how […]
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Paracord Fusion Ties – Volume 2 – J.D. Lenzen
Paracord Fusion Ties – Volume 2 (PFT-V2) is the second installment in the paracord fusion ties book series and another stunning achievement by author J.D. Lenzen. Like Paracord Fusion Ties – Volume 1, PFT-V2 reveals innovative and stylish ways of storing paracord for later use. So once again you’ll find crisp, clear, full-color photographs (over 1,000 i […]
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How to Paint Citadel Miniatures: Dark Elves – Games Workshop
The Dark Elves embody the grace and style of the elven race, though distorted by their dark hearts and cruel natures. Flowing robes, elegant armour and curved swords bear the signs of this evil; covered in barbs, blades and the shadowy colours of their homeland of Naggaroth. This extensive guide provides a host of techniques and tips for painting your Dark E […]
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How to Raise the Perfect Dog – Cesar Millan & Melissa Jo Peltier
From the bestselling author and star of National Geographic Channel’s Dog Whisperer , the only resource you’ll need for raising a happy, healthy dog. For the millions of people every year who consider bringing a puppy into their lives–as well as those who have already brought a dog home–Cesar Millan, the preeminent dog behavior expert, says, “Yes, […]
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Oogy – Larry Levin
In the bestselling tradition of Rescuing Sprite comes the story of a puppy brought back from the brink of death, and the family he adopted. In 2002, Larry Levin and his twin sons, Dan and Noah, took their terminally ill cat to the Ardmore Animal Hospital outside Philadelphia to have the beloved pet put to sleep. What would begin as a terrible day suddenly go […]
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Codex: Space Marines (Enhanced Edition) – Games Workshop
The Space Marines are the chosen warriors of the Emperor, and the greatest fighting force of the Imperium. Each Space Marine is a genetically enhanced super soldier, easily a match for a dozen lesser men, armed with some of the deadliest weapons in the galaxy and encased in formidable power armour. This codex explores the formations and Chapters of the Space […]
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Dog Training For Dummies – Jack Volhard & Wendy Volhard
Make training fun and effective This friendly guide shows you how to select the right training method for your dog, based on his unique personality, to reach your desired goals. Whether you want to teach Buddy to sit or master retrieving, you’ll get expert training tips and techniques for you and your dog — to ensure a mutually respectful relationship w […]
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Why Big Coal’s Export Terminals Could be Even Worse Than the Keystone XL Pipeline
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