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Andrew Simms: We have only 100 months to avoid irreversible environmental...

Aug 17, 10:44pm    (4 reviews)  science  http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/20...

Custer Channelwing

Jul 22, 9:35pm    (25 reviews)  science  http://www.pilotfriend.com/photo_albums/...

The saga of the Custer Channelwing is probably the most interesting of all V/STOL aircraft. It is without doubt, the oldest ongoing saga in aviation. This is the story of a single minded man on a single minded mission to change the path of aviation. Years of research, tests by every conceivable variety of agency, and stunning flying examples, didn't add up to commercial production of the Channelwing. It isn't that the Custer wouldn't perform, it was rather, that maybe it performed unbelievably well, with the accent on unbelievable. Willard Custer made many claims for the Channelwing, including the discovery of new lift principles, which he called, "aerophysics". Most engineers, cynics and parents, know you can't get something, for nothing. So when Custer claimed 8.2 pounds of static lift per horsepower, with a simple fixed wing aircraft, critics scoffed and tended to look the other way. But, Custer was persistent to say the least. In time, he was back, claiming 13.8 pounds lift per horsepower, vertical capabilities, fighter like speed, simple construction, and heavy load capacity, beyond anything built to date. He also hinted that the university academia and manufacturers didn't know what they were talking about when they criticized the Channelwing, and needed to be re-trained to understand his new theories of lift. It was obvious by this time that he was a crackpot inventor, untrained in the aeronautical world, and tiresome to listen to. Custer was dumped into the dustbin of aviation history for obvious reasons. So obvious, in fact, that no one stopped to notice that, for the most part, he was right.

Uranium Supply and the Nuclear Option (March 05) -- Paul Mobbs, Mobbs...

Jul 2, 4:11pm  science, nuclear-power, peaksupply, energy-shortages  http://www.fraw.org.uk/mobbsey/papers/oi...

Twenty Years Later: Tipping Points Near on Global Warming

Jul 2, 8:31am    (1 review)  ecology, environment, alternative-energy, science, carbon-tax  http://www.planetthoughts.org/Index.cfm?...

From the page: "Mountain glaciers are the source of fresh water for hundreds of millions of people. These glaciers are receding world-wide, in the Himalayas, Andes and Rocky Mountains. They will disappear, leaving their rivers as trickles in late summer and fall, unless the growth of carbon dioxide is reversed. Coral reefs, the rainforest of the ocean, are home to one-third of the species in the sea. Coral reefs are under stress for several reasons, including warming of the ocean, but especially because of ocean acidification, a direct effect of added carbon dioxide. Ocean life dependent on carbonate shells and skeletons is threatened by dissolution as the ocean becomes more acid. Such phenomena, including the instability of Arctic sea ice and the great ice sheets at today's carbon dioxide amount, show that we have already gone too far. We must draw down atmospheric carbon dioxide to preserve the planet we know. A level of no more than 350 ppm is still feasible, with the help of reforestation and improved agricultural practices, but just barely â€" time is running out. The steps needed to halt carbon dioxide growth follow from the size of fossil carbon reservoirs. Coal towers over oil and gas. Phase out of coal use except where the carbon is captured and stored below ground is the primary requirement for solving global warming. Oil is used in vehicles, where it is impractical to capture the carbon. But oil is running out. To preserve our planet we must also ensure that the next mobile energy source is not obtained by squeezing oil from coal, tar shale or other fossil fuels. Fossil fuel reservoirs are finite, which is the main reason that prices are rising. We must move beyond fossil fuels eventually. Solution of the climate problem requires that we move to carbon-free energy promptly. Special interests have blocked transition to our renewable energy future. Instead of moving heavily into renewable energies, fossil companies choose to spread doubt about global warming, as tobacco companies discredited the smoking-cancer link. Methods are sophisticated, including disguised funding to shape school textbook discussions. CEOs of fossil energy companies know what they are doing and are aware of long-term consequences of continued business as usual. In my opinion, these CEOs should be tried for high crimes against humanity and nature. If their campaigns continue and "succeed" in confusing the public, I anticipate testifying against relevant CEOs in future public trials. Conviction of ExxonMobil and Peabody Coal CEOs will be no consolation, if we pass on a runaway climate to our children. Humanity would be impoverished by ravages of continually shifting shorelines and intensification of regional climate extremes. Loss of countless species would leave a more desolate planet. If politicians remain at loggerheads, citizens must lead. We must demand a moratorium on new coal-fired power plants. We must block fossil fuel interests who aim to squeeze every last drop of oil from public lands, off-shore, and wilderness areas. Those last drops are no solution. They provide continued exorbitant profits for a short-sighted self-serving industry, but no alleviation of our addiction or long-term energy solution. Moving from fossil fuels to clean energy is challenging, yet transformative in ways that will be welcomed. Cheap, subsidized fossil fuels engendered bad habits. We import food from halfway around the world, for example, even with healthier products available from nearby fields. Local produce would be competitive if not for fossil fuel subsidies and the fact that climate change damages and costs, due to fossil fuels, are also borne by the public. A price on emissions that cause harm is essential. Yes, a carbon tax. Carbon tax with 100 percent dividend is needed to wean us off fossil fuel addiction. Tax and dividend allows the marketplace, not politicians, to make investment decisions. Carbon tax on coal, oil and gas is simple, applied at the first point of sale or port of entry. The entire tax must be returned to the public, an equal amount to each adult, a half-share for children. This dividend can be deposited monthly in an individual's bank account. Carbon tax with 100 percent dividend is non-regressive. On the contrary, you can bet that low and middle income people will find ways to limit their carbon tax and come out ahead. Profligate energy users will have to pay for their excesses. Demand for low-carbon high-efficiency products will spur innovation, making our products more competitive on international markets. Carbon emissions will plummet as energy efficiency and renewable energies grow rapidly. Black soot, mercury and other fossil fuel emissions will decline. A brighter, cleaner future, with energy independence, is possible."

Large Methane Release Could Cause Abrupt Climate Change

May 31, 5:44pm    (1 review)  science, global-warming, methane, methane-hydrates  http://www.planetthoughts.org/?pg=pt/Who...

From the page: ""Our findings document an abrupt and catastrophic means of global warming that abruptly led from a very cold, seemingly stable climate state to a very warm also stable climate state with no pause in between," said Martin Kennedy, a professor of geology in the Department of Earth Sciences, who led the research team. "This tells us about the mechanism, which exists, but is dormant today, as well as the rate of change," he added. "What we now need to know is the sensitivity of the trigger: how much forcing does it take to move from one stable state to the other, and are we approaching something like that today with current carbon dioxide warming." Study results appear in the May 29 issue of Nature. According to the study, methane clathrate destabilization acted as a runaway feedback to increased warming, and was the tipping point that ended the last snowball Earth. (The snowball Earth hypothesis posits that the Earth was covered from pole to pole in a thick sheet of ice for millions of years at a time.) "Once methane was released at low latitudes from destabilization in front of ice sheets, warming caused other clathrates to destabilize because clathrates are held in a temperature-pressure balance of a few degrees," Kennedy said. "But not all the Earth's methane has been released as yet. These same methane clathrates are present today in the Arctic permafrost as well as below sea level at the continental margins of the ocean, and remain dormant until triggered by warming. "This is a major concern because it's possible that only a little warming can unleash this trapped methane. Unzippering the methane reservoir could potentially warm the Earth tens of degrees, and the mechanism could be geologically very rapid. Such a violent, zipper-like opening of the clathrates could have triggered a catastrophic climate and biogeochemical reorganization of the ocean and atmosphere around 635 million years ago.""

Easy Conversion of Organic Matter to Hydrogen Discovered by Researchers...

May 22, 8:16am  science  http://www.naturalnews.com/023281.html

Flickr: Please wait...

May 16, 5:33pm  science  http://www.flickr.com/photos/vizpix/2497...

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article3740036.ece

May 15, 5:02pm    (1 review)  science, energy, methane-hydrates, greenhousegases  http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/en...

From the page: "Realising how valuable the technology of unlocking the methane hyrdrates could be, Japan has invested frenziedly in the science of exploiting them. The Japan Oil, Gas and Metals National Corporation (Jogmec) has, for more than a year, been experimenting with the methane hydrate reserves under the tundra of northwestern Canada. Its six-day continuous extraction of methane from a deposit more than a kilometre below the Earth's surface has been hailed as the breakthrough Japan had been waiting for: undersea experiments in Japanese waters are to begin early next year. Commercial production, a Jogmec spokesman told The Times, would begin within the decade. The Japanese Government is so excited at the prospect of even modest relief from its energy problems that it has drawn up a basic policy for ocean-related extractions. It may also licence the technology to allow China, South Korea and other nations thought to have large methane ice deposits off their coasts to unleash the potential of the flammable sorbet. * Have your say I've readen a Book named "Der Schwarm" from a german writer. I think, there is an english version "The Swarm". Anyway, it's a fiction, but he speaks about the high unestability of the ice shapes of methane hydrates. This fact could bring the surface of the ground floor under the sea to collapse and to set free a huge blowed up methan quantity, which would be able to start tsunamis and earthquakes, and more, to increase the climate change, as methane is a strong greenhouse effect gas). David, Barcelona, Catalonia Anyone considered the logistics of getting the 'Waste" to the launch site? Pyrrhic solution ,methinks! THEROG, Bristol, it's actually free to blast waste into space. someone years ago had worked out a giant 1/4 mile ski ramp with a hook at the end and blast-proof cannisters... the waste would actually reach escape velocity at the end of the ramp and head straight for the sun. john, washington, dc As the most compelling argument against Nuclear Power is the problem of waste management, I suggest that NASA investigate the cost of blasting it into space. Bill Mills, Pattaya Thailand, Thailand * Read all 4 comments o Have your say"

Melting Methane: A Storehouse of Greenhouse Gases Is Opening in Sibera...

Apr 17, 10:11am    (4 reviews)  science, global-warming, methane-hydrates  http://www.spiegel.de/international/worl...

From the page: "In the permafrost bottom of the 200-meter-deep sea, enormous stores of gas hydrates lie dormant in mighty frozen layers of sediment. The carbon content of the ice-and-methane mixture here is estimated at 540 billion tons. "This submarine hydrate was considered stable until now," says the Russian biogeochemist Natalia Shakhova, currently a guest scientist at the University of Alaska in Fairbanks who is also a member of the Pacific Institute of Geography at the Russian Academy of Sciences in Vladivostok. The permafrost has grown porous, says Shakhova, and already the shelf sea has become "a source of methane passing into the atmosphere." The Russian scientists have estimated what might happen when this Siberian permafrost-seal thaws completely and all the stored gas escapes. They believe the methane content of the planet's atmosphere would increase twelvefold. "The result would be catastrophic global warming," say the scientists. The greenhouse-gas potential of methane is 20 times that of carbon dioxide, as measured by the effects of a single molecule. Shakhova and her colleagues gathered evidence for the loss of rigor in the frozen sea floor in a measuring campaign during the Siberian summer. The seawater proved to be "highly oversaturated with solute methane," reports Shakhova. In the air over the sea, greenhouse-gas content was measured in some places at five times normal values. "In helicopter flights over the delta of the Lena River, higher methane concentrations have been measured at altitudes as high as 1,800 meters," she says. The methane climate bomb is also ticking on land: A few years ago researchers noticed higher concentrations of methane in northern Siberia. The Siberian permafrost is known as one of the tipping points for the earth's climate, since the potent greenhouse gas develops wherever microorganisms decompose the huge masses of organic material from warmer eras that has been frozen here for thousands of years.

Seed: Suspending Life

Apr 16, 10:15am    (11 reviews)  science  http://www.seedmagazine.com/news/2008/04...