Today 56 newspapers in 45 countries take the unprecedented step of speaking with one voice through a common editorial. We do so because humanity faces a profound emergency.
Unless we combine to take decisive action, climate change will ravage our planet, and with it our prosperity and security. The dangers have been becoming apparent for a generation. Now the facts have started to speak: 11 of the past 14 years have been the warmest on record, the Arctic ice-cap is melting and last year's inflamed oil and food prices provide a foretaste of future havoc. In scientific journals the question is no longer whether humans are to blame, but how little time we have got left to limit the damage. Yet so far the world's response has been feeble and half-hearted.
...This editorial will be published tomorrow by 56 newspapers around the world in 20 languages including Chinese, Arabic and Russian. The text was drafted by a Guardian team during more than a month of consultations with editors from more than 20 of the papers involved. Like the Guardian most of the newspapers have taken the unusual step of featuring the editorial on their front page.read it @ the guardian
2. oh of course it was the EVIL RUSSIANS, who hate humanity, that musta leaked those memos...what other explanation could there possibly be for them to do such a thing????
The news that a leaked set of emails appeared to show senior climate scientists had manipulated data was shocking enough. Now the story has become more remarkable still.
The computer hack, said a senior member of the Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change, was not an amateur job, but a highly sophisticated, politically motivated operation. And others went further. The guiding hand behind the leaks, the allegation went, was that of the Russian secret services.
The leaked emails, which claimed to provide evidence that the unit's head, Professor Phil Jones, colluded with colleagues to manipulate data and hide "unhelpful" research from critics of climate change science, were originally posted on a server in the Siberian city of Tomsk, at a firm called Tomcity, an internet security business.
...The leaked emails, Professor van Ypersele said, will fuel scepticism about climate change and may make agreement harder at Copenhagen. So the mutterings have prompted the question: why would Russia have an interest in scuppering the Copenhagen talks?
3. US will not be dissuaded by facts -- leaked emails will have NO IMPACT on Washington's position on global warming
US climate negotiator Jonathan Pershing called the science on global warming “very robust, very substantial.” He told AP that the controversy surrounding the leaked e-mails came at an “unfortunate” time, just before the long-awaited UN talks, “but has no fundamental bearing on the outcome.”
The US ambassador to Britain told the BBC in an interview Sunday that the row over the leaked e-mails had had no effect on Washington’s position on global warming. Louis Susman said: “There’s no pick-up in our country. Our position is solid in what we believe is the need to change, that this is caused by human behavior. I don’t see it having any effect in the United States.”
read more @ arab news4. great inventions you probably don't know about that could help humanity
2007: I’m not sure if I’m watching a magic trick, or an invention that will make the cigar-chomping 64-year-old next to me the richest man on the planet. Everything that goes into Frank Pringle’s recycling machine—a piece of tire, a rock, a plastic cup—turns to oil and natural gas seconds later. “I’ve been told the oil companies might try to assassinate me,” Pringle says without sarcasm.
The machine is a microwave emitter that extracts the petroleum and gas hidden inside everyday objects—or at least anything made with hydrocarbons, which, it turns out, is most of what’s around you. Every hour, the first commercial version will turn 10 tons of auto waste—tires, plastic, vinyl—into enough natural gas to produce 17 million BTUs of energy (it will use 956,000 of those BTUs to keep itself running).
Pringle created the machine about 10 years ago after he drove by a massive tire fire and thought about the energy being released. He went home and threw bits of a tire in a microwave emitter he’d been working with for another project. It turned to what looked like ash, but a few hours later, he returned and found a black puddle on the floor of the unheated workshop. Somehow, he’d struck oil.
read more @ popsci
Dean Kamen water purifier
In 1993, zany inventor Dean Kamen invented a water purifier that runs on very low cost and is energy efficient. Named the Slingshot, it is basically a distiller and condenser that manages to use very little energy. He says he was inspired by the idea after developing an electric generator and finding it gave off too much waste energy.
With this in mind, the water purifier was actually made to complement the electric generator, to run on the excess heat that the generator gives off, although the water purifier does stand on its own and can be used without it.
The Slingshot may not be revolutionary in that distillers have already been invented, but this water purifier makes a thousand liters of water per day. Producing ten gallons of clean water for an hour will only consume 500 watts of electricity, reiterating how low cost and energy efficient it is.
read more here
HOW MANY MORE THINGS LIKE THIS HAVE BEEN DISCOVERED AND LOCKED AWAY FROM THE HUMAN RACE?
3 comments:
Whatever happened to Whisson's windmill?
http://www.alternate-energy-sources.com/Whisson-windmill.html
exactly davo. where do these things go? they go into cold storage until such a time that they can shake everyone down in desperation for solutions.
there was some other thing, a ball that floated on ocean waves and made electricity i think, which i saw months ago. i mean i don't even pay too close attention to this sort of thing, so i'd imagine there are lots and lots of great technologies that have been whisked away to the storage vault before they could help anyone.
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