From the ScienceNews Blog,
The AP reports that the Pacific Coasts’ “dead zone” has returned. The dead zone was first discovered in 2002.
The oxygen-starved “dead zone” along the Pacific Coast that is causing massive crab and fish die-offs is worse than initially thought, scientists said.
Weather, not pollution, appears to be the culprit, scientists said, and no relief is in sight. However, some said there is no immediate sign of long-term damage to the crab fishery in the dead zone, a 70-mile stretch of water along the Continental Shelf between Florence and Lincoln City.
Oregon State University scientists looking for weather changes that could reverse the situation aren’t finding them. They say levels of dissolved oxygen critical to marine life are the lowest since the first dead zone was identified in 2002. It has returned every year.
Strong upwelling winds pushed a low-oxygen pool of deep water toward shore, suffocating marine life, said Jane Lubchenco, a professor of marine biology at OSU.
The article says Oregon State University scientists saw a crab graveyard and thousands of dead sea creatures in the dead zone. Scientists are blaming low-oxygen water triggered by global warming for the dead zone. So far, the local commercial fishing industry has not been impacted.
Thomas C. Greene writing for ©The Register exposes the implausibility of bringing liquid explosive onto airplanes.
“So the fabled binary liquid explosive – that is, the sudden mixing of hydrogen peroxide and acetone with sulfuric acid to create a plane-killing explosion, is out of the question. Meanwhile, making TATP ahead of time carries a risk that the mission will fail due to premature detonation, although it is the only plausible approach.
Certainly, if we can imagine a group of jihadists smuggling the necessary chemicals and equipment on board, and cooking up TATP in the lavatory, then we’ve passed from the realm of action blockbusters to that of situation comedy.
It should be small comfort that the security establishments of the UK and the USA – and the “terrorism experts” who inform them and wheedle billions of dollars out of them for bomb puffers and face recognition gizmos and remote gait analyzers and similar hi-tech phrenology gear – have bought the Hollywood binary liquid explosive myth, and have even acted upon it.
We’ve given extraordinary credit to a collection of jihadist wannabes with an exceptionally poor grasp of the mechanics of attacking a plane, whose only hope of success would have been a pure accident. They would have had to succeed in spite of their own ignorance and incompetence, and in spite of being under police surveillance for a year.
But the Hollywood myth of binary liquid explosives now moves governments and drives public policy. We have reacted to a movie plot. Liquids are now banned in aircraft cabins (while crystalline white powders would be banned instead, if anyone in charge were serious about security). Nearly everything must now go into the hold, where adequate amounts of explosives can easily be detonated from the cabin with cell phones, which are generally not banned.”
Read More Here.
are bloggers and messages boards trying to destroy capitalism. The snowball effect caused by one incident being posted on the internet is quite remarkable.
Dell get pwned
00:33 – July 12, 2006
This isn’t the first time the blogosphere has been used as a means of attack, from Wal-Mart to George Bush, blogs have become a vehicle for brand-bashing, personal attacks, political extremism and smear campaigns. All it takes is pissing off one halfway creative person with an internet connection and you are in trouble.
The lesson here is that savvy companies and individuals have to come up with a plan for mitigating the impact. Hire PR firms, blog monitors, and invest in your own bloggers. The best that you can hope for is to try to obfuscate the negative by adding to the noise. Ahh, the internet, isn’t it lovely.
The Roast of William Shatner is coming up this weekend on Comedy Central. 10p/9c…check your local listings!
From Comedy Central:
It’s William Shatner’s turn to step in to the celebrity hot seat for the latest installment of The Comedy Central Roast. A parade of Shatner’s friends have gotten together to boldly go where no one has gone before: on William Shatner’s sh*tlist. Tune in as some of Shatner’s closest friends hang out, have a few drinks, listen to a live performance by one of the hottest bands around, and then spend ninety minutes ridiculing and insulting the man behind Captain Kirk. So sit back and enjoy the night of insults as Shatner’s tries not to lose his cool – or his toupee!
I was browsing the net doing some follow-up research on the movie, “An Incovenient Truth,” and I happened upon a very informative site on climate science, Real Climate, Climate science from climate scientists.
Dr. Eric Steig, an isotope geochemist at the University of Washington in Seattle has posted a review of the movie and the science behind it over at RealClimate. I respect both his tone and research, so I am not going to do a review of the review, you can click on the link to read the full text. Here is a brief excerpt.
“For the most part, I think Gore gets the science right, just as he did in Earth in the Balance. The small errors don’t detract from Gore’s main point, which is that we in the United States have the technological and institutional ability to have a significant impact on the future trajectory of climate change. “
The review was very informative and went a long way in answering many of questions that I had about the movie. So informatiive that I have added a link to RealClimate.org on the sidebar. In addition, I have created a science category for the J&C blog.