Fun, short, entertaining video of, you guessed it, Amazing Facts! Worth watching:
Climate scientists got it wrong
Climate scientists screwed up. Predicting climate change is a tricky business, and as a result, there are many competing models that attempt to predict how global warming will impact our climate. When it comes to arctic sea ice, they were all wrong. Take a look at the graph here, showing actual arctic sea ice extent versus the various predictions. It turns out that the reality is far worse than any scientists were predicting, and this should scare you. These same models have been used to help convince people how we need to reduce CO2 emissions or face really bad consequences on a global scale…and yet…these models were too optimistic.
Think about that for a minute.
Scientists are even starting to call this a ‘planetary emergency‘. If you don’t know why you should care, then please, at least TRUST the scientists and experts in this field of study. The fact is, they know more than you do about this – and there’s no shame in that, it’s their job! Don’t listen to politicians and business experts who don’t understand climate change…either become an expert yourself, or defer to those who ARE experts. Just don’t let others interpret the results for you. Don’t let ME interpret the results for you – read for yourself what the scientists are saying and don’t let others influence you.
Review: Earthbox self-watering planter
Read the marketing literature, and the EarthBox sounds like a revolutionary approach to growing plants. I was skeptical. The truth is, it’s a self-watering planter with a very nice amount of attention to detail. For example, they provide the right amount of fertilizer to use. A plastic cover to reduce evaporation. A nice fill tube and overflow hole. Little stuff like that, but you know what?
It adds up to something great.
I’ve owned two of these. The first, while I was living in California, produced a tomato plant over six feet high. The second, in Colorado, has done a fantastic job of growing peas, beans, and cucumbers in a water-scarce climate. I love it and can always count on the EarthBox to take care of the plants, giving them the right amount of fertilizer and water while I sit back and do nothing. It’s available for about $50 at Amazon, in both organic and non-organic versions. It’s large and heavy once you fill it with dirt and water, but still fits in nicely on a deck or patio, where hopefully you can keep the local wildlife away from it.
Which brings me to the one drawback…animals. A raised bed is easily covered with deer netting to protect your crops, but this standalone planter doesn’t lend itself nearly as well to that. That six foot tomato plant I mentioned? It produced countless tomatoes. I ate ONE, just one measly tomatoe from that whole plant. The rest were enjoyed by squirrels, who were rude enough to eat the tomatoes before they were ripe enough for us to harvest for human consumption. So, when planning a garden, be sure to look around your backyard…the EarthBox will help your plants grow fantastically well, but who’s going to enjoy the fruits of that?
Rats fed GM corn die young (with tumors and organ damage)
Researchers in France fed rats a lifetime diet of Monsanto’s GM corn (NK603, to be specific), and found that 50% of the males and 70% of the females died prematurely (compared with 30% of the males and 20% of the females in the control group). They suffered from mammary tumors, also severe liver and kidney damage (this is in stark contrast to the carefree life portrayed by French rats in Ratatouille).
What’s most interesting here, to me at least, is the implications. Specifically…NK603 is a type of corn that’s tolerant to the pesticide Roundup…it wasn’t stated specifically, but I’m assuming that when growing NK603, they did so by using Roundup as intended. Thus these deaths are not necessarily due to the genetic modification of the corn plant, but rather the pesticides that that modification allowed the use of. In the end, perhaps it doesn’t matter, the result is dead rats…but I worry that a GM crop could be shown to be perfectly safe by itself, but use of that will result in secondary factors that lead to problems down the line.
I’m also disturbed by the article’s statement that GM crops are approved based upon a 90 day feeding trial. As this study showed, there are lifetime impacts that need to be properly quantified…a mere 90 day test may be insufficient to expose long-term health impacts.
NK603 was approved for food use in the US in 2000.
You can read the full article at Reuters.
Arctic Ice Reaches New Minimum
Weeks ago, the extent of ice in the arctic had already reached record lows and was continuing to melt as we reported here. Now, the melting has stopped (as expected for this time of year). So, how bad was it? According to the NY Times, the low point was about 1.32 million square miles, or 24 percent of the Arctic Ocean (the previous low was 29%, set back in 2007). It used to be around 50% when satellite-based ice tracking began back in the 70’s.
The question is, what’s it going to take before people get serious about halting global warming?
GoldieBlox: The Engineering Toy for Girls
There’s a great project on Kickstarter right now called GoldieBlox, and it, quite simply is a toy for girls age 5-9 designed to help them develop an interest in engineering and solving problems. I love it, and hope they succeed in getting fully funded on Kickstarter so this can be brought to market. Check it out here.
Warp Drive – Plausible?
We already knew that warp drive (faster than light travel) was theoretically possible, but the energy required to attain these speeds was greater than that contained in the mass of Jupiter (if you converted all of that mass into energy somehow). Well, good news! By making the ‘ring’ around the spacecraft more like a rounded donut than a flat ring, the energy requirements become much more plausible, more along the lines of the mass of the Voyager 1 space probe (still a lot of energy, but at least closer to reality now). Further improvements are possible with this approach too, and with theoretical speeds approach ten times the speed of light, it’s a pretty cool development for space travel (but admittedly a long ways off from a prototype!). This type of engine is known as an Alcubierre Drive, and you can read more about the details at Wikipedia.
So how is this possible when nothing can travel faster than the speed of light? Well, the spacecraft doesn’t actually travel faster than light, but warps space-time around it so that this disturbance in space-time is propagated at more than the speed of light, taking the spacecraft along with it for the ride. Fantastic stuff.
(via Space.com)
Eneloop Rechargeable Batteries
In my opinion one of the easiest things you can do today that’s also great for the planet is to invest in rechargeable batteries. Not only do you reduce the waste that either ends up in landfills or has to be recycled, but you also save money in the long run. My favorite has been eneloop batteries (a NiMH application), and we’ve completed a transition of our household to these. If you’re new to this, start with the starter kit pictured here, as includes a charger, a selection of AA and AAA batteries, and adapter pieces to use AA batteries in place of ‘C’ or ‘D’ batteries.
Why do I like eneloop? Reasonable cost, more than 1500 charge cycles, and they hold their charge a long time when not in use. I’ve been using them for over a year now and have had no complaints, it’s a good product and worth checking out. I just wish they’d make rechargeable 9 volt batteries for all the smoke detectors in our house! I found some by Tenergy that look promising, though I have not yet tested them for long term use in smoke detectors…that’s my next battery project.
If you’re not convinced and are instead wondering which disposable battery is best, check out batteryshowdown for some comparison tests of those.
This is why we need to be cautious about GM crops
If you want to know why I’m worried about genetically modified foods, read this article from New Zealand. Scientists are concerned about GM wheat being tested in NZ and Australian, and more specifically, they claim:
- SiRNA, a form of ribonucleic acid, like DNA, could transfer to humans through food when produced in GM wheat.
- When eaten, the siRNA engineered to suppress the wheat-branching enzyme would also silence the human-branching enzyme which produces energy-storing glycogen.
- This “unbranched” glycogen would have low solubility in human cells and could create build-up in the tissues of the body, especially in the heart and liver.
- This could lead to the disease Glycogen Storage Disease IV, resulting in an enlarged liver, cirrhosis of the liver, and failure to thrive.
So, do we need to be worried? I think the bottom line is that we don’t know. I think this DOES show, though, that we need to be cautious and thorough in testing GM crops for possible side-effects on people…we must not rush this technology to market, but rather, each and every modification to the genetic code of our food supply needs to be tested. Right now, that’s just not happening, and that’s the scary thing.
Imminent Food Crisis due to Climate Change
We already face growing food demands from a growing population, but researchers looking at the effect that climate change has on severe weather (specifically, severe droughts) are painting an alarming picture. Instead of this being a ‘far off’ problem that we’re dumping on future generations, they found that the increased risk of severe drought to become a reality within only ten years in Asia (China and India especially). We are running out of time to solve these problems! In the US, people can’t even agree that climate change is happening and that humans are the main cause. How can we hope to solve the problems it’s bringing if we deny reality? This makes me frustrated, as I feel we’re a creative, inventive society that can solve great problems when we unite behind it.
(read more here).