moonbuggy

`Australians are more likely to be attacked by a shark or hit by lightning than die from a nuclear power plant disaster.

In releasing a report commissioned on the viability of nuclear power in Australia, Prime Minister John Howard said there were no sound reasons to not go nuclear.

The final report from the Uranium Mining, Processing and Nuclear Energy review board said the risk of implementing nuclear power is of an acceptably low level.’

`Melbourne’s serial water wasters will not be able to shower under stage 3 restrictions.

Under a new three-strike rule, repeat offenders will have their water turned down to a trickle – just enough to dampen a washcloth.

A new year crackdown will give water police the power to go into homes and reduce water pressure.

Worst offenders will be slapped with indefinite bans.’

`Today, Hacienda Napoles is in ruins, taken over by jungle foliage and bats. The sprawling Spanish-style mansion has been gutted, scavenged by treasure hunters looking for stashes of gold and cash buried under the floors. [Pablo] Escobar is long gone, cut down in a hail of police gunfire.

But the hippos are still here.

[..] Now the original four have multiplied to 16 and, far from starving to death, as some expected, they have learned to forage like cows.’

`”We’ve got them in Nebraska; that’s as far north as we have any records,” said Lynn Robbins, a biology professor at Missouri State University. “They’re adapting, filling in so many places.”

To Robbins, the prehistoric-looking armadillo Spanish for “little armored thing” is here to stay.

Exactly how many of Texas’ official state mammal have made their way into the Midwest remains elusive. But observers say the remarkable advance may have been aided by the region’s lack of predators and the abundance of favorable habitat such as forests and river valleys.’

`After 20 years of trial and error, scientists at Wolong boast they can now breed pandas at will. To counter the suggestion that the captive animals may be too naive about the birds and the bears, the keepers have provided sex education in the form of wildlife videos – dubbed “panda porn” – showing the animals mating in the forests.

To boost sex drive, they once tried the remedy used by countless millions of humans: Viagra. “We’ll never do that again,” Mr Zhang says. “The panda was excited for 24 hours.”

Another challenge was the risk of in-breeding. To widen the genetic stock, researchers had to come up with a way to find a mate for even the least popular females. How did they do that? “We tricked them,” Mr Zhang says with a smile. [..]

“When the males find out, they get very angry and start fighting the female,” Mr Zhang says. “We have had to use firecrackers and a water hose to separate them.”‘

`Swiss entrepreneur, adventurer, filmmaker, and aviator (whew!) Bernard Weber has a dream: for the citizens of earth to elect seven contemporary Wonders of the World. The organization he founded, The New7Wonders Foundation, is currently promoting the election and will tally the votes. On July 7, 2007 the list of mankind’s most awesome architectural achievements—according to those who vote—will be unveiled. [..]

Trying to honor both N7W’s humanitarian sentiments and the original list’s aura of exoticism, I’ve compiled a shadow list chosen from these garbage sites. [..]

Trying to honor both N7W’s humanitarian sentiments and the original list’s aura of exoticism, I’ve compiled a shadow list chosen from these garbage sites.’

`Saving the world can take up a lot of space.

Greenfleet, one of the nation’s leading organisations helping individuals and companies offset carbon emissions, has for nearly three years been unable to find enough NSW land to plant the trees its subscribers have paid for.

As new subscriptions flood in, the not-for-profit group is searching for landholders willing to join the scheme and establish forests on their property.

At first, Greenfleet told the Herald it had a NSW backlog of about 88,000 trees that needed to go in the ground in the name of climate change prevention.’

Michael Crowley was the critic, and here’s a short section of Michael Crichton’s latest book:

‘Alex Burnet was in the middle of the most difficult trial of her career, a rape case involving the sexual assault of a two-year-old boy in Malibu. The defendant, thirty-year-old Mick Crowley, was a Washington-based political columnist who was visiting his sister-in-law when he experienced an overwhelming urge to have anal sex with her young son, still in diapers. Crowley was a wealthy, spoiled Yale graduate and heir to a pharmaceutical fortune. …

It turned out Crowley’s taste in love objects was well known in Washington, but [his lawyer]–as was his custom–tried the case vigorously in the press months before the trial, repeatedly characterizing Alex and the child’s mother as “fantasizing feminist fundamentalists” who had made up the whole thing from “their sick, twisted imaginations.” This, despite a well-documented hospital examination of the child. (Crowley’s penis was small, but he had still caused significant tears to the toddler’s rectum.)’

People abseiling to the bottom of glaciers to see what’s going on. Melting, mostly, is what’s going on. 🙂

see it here »

`Mankind has had less effect on global warming than previously supposed, a United Nations report on climate change will claim next year.

The UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says there can be little doubt that humans are responsible for warming the planet, but the organisation has reduced its overall estimate of this effect by 25 per cent.

In a final draft of its fourth assessment report, to be published in February, the panel reports that the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has accelerated in the past five years. It also predicts that temperatures will rise by up to 4.5 C during the next 100 years, bringing more frequent heat waves and storms.’

`A Thai zoo, which has hosted a couple of pandas for four years, will play “porn” videos for the male next month to encourage them to breed in captivity, the project manager said on Saturday.

The pair — living chastely together at the zoo in the northern city of Chiang Mai since arriving from China in 2003 — would be separated in December, but stay close enough for occasional glimpses of each other, said panda project chief Prasertsak Buntrakoonpoontawee.

“They don’t know how to mate so we need to show the male how, through videos,” Prasertsak told Reuters.

He said Chuang Chuang, the six-year-old male, would be shown the videos on a large screen when he might be feeling amorous.’

`When the rare birds of paradise escaped from his suitcase and flew over the heads of U.S. Customs Agents at Los Angeles International Airport, Robert Cusack decided it was best to confess that, yes, he did have more to declare.

“I have monkeys in my pants,” Cusack told the agents.’

`A plan in the early 1970s to create a massive artificial reef off Fort Lauderdale has turned into an environmental mess with the U.S. Navy, Broward County and others trying to figure out how to remove about two million tires covering 36 acres of ocean floor. [..]

”They thought it would be a good fish habitat. It turned out to be a bad idea,” said William Nuckols, project coordinator and military liaison for Coastal America, a federal group involved in the cleanup. “It’s a coastal coral destruction machine.”’

`The Philippine Coast Guard is appealing for chicken feathers and human hair to help sponge up the country’s worst oil spill.

A tanker chartered by refiner Petron Corp sank in heavy seas on August 11, oozing about a 10th of its two-million litre cargo of industrial fuel off the central island of Guimaras, affecting 40,000 people and 200km of coastline.

Petron, in which the Philippine government and Saudi state oil firm Saudi Aramco each have a 40 per cent stake, said a fresh spill was spotted late on Wednesday.

“We are appealing for the supply of indigenous absorbent materials like chicken feathers, human hair and rice straw,” Harold Jarder, head of the Coast Guard in Iloilo, a province north of Guimaras, told Reuters.’

`The icecap may not be the only thing shrinking in the Arctic. The genitals of polar bears in east Greenland are apparently dwindling in size due to industrial pollutants.

Scientists report this shrinkage could, in the worst case scenario, endanger polar bears there and elsewhere by spoiling their love lives and causing their numbers to peter out. [..]

The adult polar bear testicles the researchers examined were on average roughly three inches across and 1.8 ounces in weight, although they could dramatically enlarge during the height of sexual activity from January to July. Their bacula, or penis bones, were on average nearly seven inches long.’

`The Mediterranean is threatened by its worst ever environmental disaster after Israel’s bombing of a power plant in Lebanon sent thousands of tonnes of fuel gushing into the sea, the environment minister charged.

“Up until now 10,000-15,000 tonnes of heavy fuel oil have spilled out into the sea,” after Israel’s bombing of the power station in Jiyeh two weeks ago, Lebanese Environment Minister Yacub Sarraf told AFP Saturday.

“It’s without doubt the biggest environmental catastrophe that the Mediterranean has known and it risks having terrible consequences not only for our country but for all the countries of the eastern Mediterranean.”‘

‘Poisonous mud and gas is erupting from kilometres below the earth and 8,000 people are displaced and hundreds hospitalised on the Indonesian island of Java.

The calamity has been caused by a gas exploration project near Surabaya in East Java that has gone horribly wrong, and for the past six weeks, has unleashed hundreds of tonnes of hot toxic mud. [..]

An area of 12 square kilometres has now been covered and four entire villages have been affected, displacing almost 8,000 people.’

`File this under “what’s old is new again.” A German company is introducing sails it says may help propel ships across the sea cheaper and faster than modern engines.

SkySails’ system consists of an enormous towing kite and navigation software that can map the best route between two points for maximum wind efficiency. In development for more than four years, the system costs from roughly $380,000 to $3.2 million, depending on the size of the ship it’s pulling. SkySails claims it will save one third of fuel costs.’

`Two polar bears have starved to death and two others were found dead this year in the region where scientists previously discovered unprecedented cannibalism within the population.

Scientists were stunned to discover that two mother polar bears had been stalked, killed and eaten near their Beaufort Sea dens, and that much larger male bears cannibalized a young male during the spring of 2004.

Now, four more dead polar bears have been found in the Alaskan and Canadian regions of the Beaufort Sea, and researchers are getting very worried.

What was initially thought to be a curious event could indicate a radical shift in the behaviour of polar bears as they battle dangerous drops in nutrition levels, said the lead author of a report into the 2004 deaths.’

`A team of scientists from The University of Western Australia Murdoch University, CSIRO and three American, French and Spanish research institutions announced the discovery of the vortex after a month-long research voyage in the ocean just west of Rottnest Island.

Led by Dr Anya Waite, a biological oceanographer from UWA, the 10-member team found the vortex – 200km in diameter and 1000m deep – spinning at speeds up to 5kph just off the Rottnest Canyon. [..]

She said the climate above the vortex was noticeably different.

“It feels like you’re in the tropics,” she said.’

`Scientists hoping to stop the inexorable march of the cane toad are working on a gene that would ensure all the pest’s offspring are male – wiping out future egg-laying mothers.

The University of Queensland’s Peter Koopman has been developing a “daughterless gene” that would limit the toad’s population by eradicating females, which are able to lay tens of thousands of eggs at time.

“I am hoping to engineer a strain of toads where the male offspring stay male and the female offspring become male,” Professor Koopman said at yesterday’s national cane toad conference in Brisbane. ‘

`Global warming has finally been explained: the Earth is getting hotter because the Sun is burning more brightly than at any time during the past 1,000 years, according to new research.

A study by Swiss and German scientists suggests that increasing radiation from the sun is responsible for recent global climate changes.

Dr Sami Solanki, the director of the renowned Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research in Gottingen, Germany, who led the research, said: “The Sun has been at its strongest over the past 60 years and may now be affecting global temperatures.

“The Sun is in a changed state. It is brighter than it was a few hundred years ago and this brightening started relatively recently – in the last 100 to 150 years.”

Dr Solanki said that the brighter Sun and higher levels of “greenhouse gases”, such as carbon dioxide, both contributed to the change in the Earth’s temperature but it was impossible to say which had the greater impact.’

`The last of 16 million tonnes of concrete will be poured in today, making Chairman Mao’s dream of a reality, and giving China’s current generation of engineers-turned-leaders the chance to proclaim another colossal step forward in the country’s “harmonious development”.

But the completion of the Three Gorges dam has been anything but harmonious. It is now being cited as a textbook example of how not to build a dam. Before it even starts operating, the giant hydro-electric scheme is threatened by silt – the solution to which is to pour yet more concrete into the Yangtse river.’

`A small company in Madison, WI has developed a novel way to generate hydrogen cheaply and cleanly from biomass.

In the next couple of weeks, the technology, developed by Virent Energy Systems, will be used for the first time to continuously produce electricity from a small 10-kilowatt generator at the company’s facility in Madison. The unit is fueled by corn syrup, similar to the kind used by soft drinks manufacturers, says CEO Eric Apfelbach.

The company is also about to begin work on a $1 million U.S. Navy project to build portable fuel-cell generators. The goal is to make self-contained units capable of producing their own hydrogen from a biomass-derived glycerol solution or even antifreeze.’

`A scientific study commissioned by the Bush administration concluded yesterday that the lower atmosphere was indeed growing warmer and that there was “clear evidence of human influences on the climate system.”

The finding eliminates a significant area of uncertainty in the debate over global warming, one that the administration has long cited as a rationale for proceeding cautiously on what it says would be costly limits on emissions of heat-trapping gases.’

`Federal investigators said Friday they are preparing to file charges against a Santa Cruz couple suspected of taking a two-day-old harbor seal pup from the beach back to their home.

The pup was found by a volunteer rescuer in the pair’s backyard late last month. The pup died hours later after an unsuccessful attempt to reunite it with its mother, said Doug Ross, a volunteer with the Marine Mammal Center.

Ross believes the pair carried the pup to their Seabright home after spotting it beside the San Lorenzo River mouth. Ross said he found the pup in a dog crate after receiving an early-morning emergency call the couple made to a 24-hour seal rescue hot line.’

`Climate change over the next 20 years could result in a global catastrophe costing millions of lives in wars and natural disasters..

A secret report, suppressed by US defence chiefs and obtained by The Observer, warns that major European cities will be sunk beneath rising seas as Britain is plunged into a ‘Siberian’ climate by 2020. Nuclear conflict, mega-droughts, famine and widespread rioting will erupt across the world.

The document predicts that abrupt climate change could bring the planet to the edge of anarchy as countries develop a nuclear threat to defend and secure dwindling food, water and energy supplies. The threat to global stability vastly eclipses that of terrorism, say the few experts privy to its contents.’

`Humans have provoked the worst spate of extinctions since the dinosaurs were wiped out 65m years ago, according to a UN report that calls for unprecedented worldwide efforts to address the slide.

The report paints a grim picture of life on earth, with declining numbers of plants, animals, insects and birds across the globe, and warns that the current extinction rate is up to 1,000 times faster than in the past. Some 844 animals and plants are known to have disappeared in the last 500 years.’

`As a government scientist, James Hansen is taking a risk. He says there are things the White House doesn’t want you to hear but he’s going to say them anyway.

Hansen is arguably the world’s leading researcher on global warming. He’s the head of NASA’s top institute studying the climate. But this imminent scientist tells correspondent Scott Pelley that the Bush administration is restricting who he can talk to and editing what he can say. Politicians, he says, are rewriting the science. [..]

Asked if he believes the administration is censoring what he can say to the public, Hansen says: “Or they’re censoring whether or not I can say it. I mean, I say what I believe if I’m allowed to say it.”‘

`With power cleaner than coal and cheaper than natural gas, the nuclear industry, 20 years past its last meltdown, thinks it is ready for its second act: its first new reactor orders since the 1970’s.

But there is a catch. The public’s acceptance of new reactors depends in part on the performance of the old ones, and lately several of those have been discovered to be leaking radioactive water into the ground.

Near Braceville, Ill., the Braidwood Generating Station, owned by the Exelon Corporation, has leaked tritium into underground water that has shown up in the well of a family nearby. The company, which has bought out one property owner and is negotiating with others, has offered to help pay for a municipal water system for houses near the plant that have private wells.’

A bit of tritium never hurt anyone, I say. 🙂