The Ignored Catastrophe In Biodiversity

The massive attention that is being paid to the dubious issue of global warming means that a far more significant ecological catastrophe - a global biodiversity crash - is going unnoticed.
Cathy Taibbi of examiner.com:

While everyone realizes that there have been mass extinctions in the past, most famously one that included the demise of the dinosaurs, few realize that, right now, we are in the midst of an equally cataclysmic event; the sixth great mass-extinction in the planet’s history.

The list of animals on the brink now is almost inconceivable and includes: tigers, lions, eagles, kites, salmon, pandas, dozens of parrot species, cheetahs, sea turtles, orcas (killer whales), elephants, maned woves, Cape hunting dogs, rhinos, honey bees, butterflies, sugar-maple trees, wild apricots, wild almonds, acacia trees, cactus, mussels, condors, bats, all the great apes, frogs and other amphibians – and this is barely scratching the surface.

Read the whole thing.

Climate Data Now State Secret In UK

The Met Office (weather office) in Britain has egg on its face for the third year in a row. They are now zero for three in predicting summer and winter weather in the UK. They said hot and dry, three years running it has been cool and wet. They said winters would be mild and damp, Britain got snow storms instead.

The Telegraph reports that now that scientists are requesting underlying climate data from the Met Office, the data has turned into a state secret. And you'll never guess why:

One cause of the blunders that have made the Met Office a laughing stock is less widely appreciated, however. It is that the multi-million pound computer it uses to assist its short-term forecasting for Britain is also one of the four main official sources of data used by the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) to predict global warming.

In this respect the IPCC's computer models have proved just as wrong in predicting global temperatures as the Met Office has been in forecasting those mild winters and heatwave summers.

Iran's Show Trials Start

About 100 leading Iranian reformists went on trial on Saturday, accused of trying to topple the clerical establishment by orchestrating mass protests after the disputed presidential election, Iranian media reported.

The Participation Front, the main pro-reform party set up by Khatami called the trial "a laughable show that even a cooked chicken would laugh at."

Fly Eyes Adore You

Studying fly vision and brains to gain insight into - what else - robotics.

Researchers have long known that flies take in many more images per second than humans do. For human eyes, anything more than 25 discrete images per second will merge into a continuous movement. A blow fly, on the other hand, can perceive 100 images per second as discrete sense impressions and interpret them quickly enough to steer its movement and precisely determine its position in space. Yet the fly's brain is hardly bigger than a pinhead, too small by far to enable the fly's feats if it functioned exactly the way the human brain does.

And who would expect a fly brain to function like a human brain?

Finding Amelia Earheart

From ABC News:

Researchers of the International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery say they may be able to find DNA evidence of the fate of flyer Amelia Earhart who disappeared her copilot Fred Noonan in the Pacific in 1937.

New analysis is leading researchers to speculate that 200 old radio messages declared hoaxes by the US Coast Guard may have been calls for help from Earhart.

Montreal Sued For Banning Woodstoves

On possibly the hottest day of the summer here in St. John's (25C at 2:30PM - could get warmer later), here I am writing about woodstoves.

I've partially heated my home with woodstoves for over 25 years. Back in the day, that was the environmentally friendly thing to do. So I don't know how I missed this:

Back in April, the City Nannies, er Fathers and/or Mothers, of Montreal banned the installation of new woodstoves. Now the city is being sued by a group of woodstove sellers and wood burning homeowners. The Montreal Gazette reports that the city "did not present any sound, reliable scientific study" as part of the process which led to the ban.

They don't need to. All they need to say is that it is in the "public good". It's not like Montreal has never had any blackouts or anything.

How Rich Are The Rich Really?

Here's an inconvenient - and historical - truth for any American politician who thinks "the rich" aren't paying their fair share or who would "spread the wealth around".

From TaxPolicy Blog:

The share of the tax burden borne by the top 1 percent now exceeds the share paid by the bottom 95 percent of taxpayers combined.

To put this in perspective, the top 1 percent is comprised of just 1.4 million taxpayers and they pay a larger share of the income tax burden now than the bottom 134 million taxpayers combined.

This is the highest percentage in modern history.

It would appear the top tax payers in the US could just take over the country if they wanted to. I would love to see if there are similar statistics for Canada.

New Imagery of Betelgeuse

Advanced imaging technology has been turned on the red supergiant star Betelgeuse 520 light years away in the constellation Orion. Pictures and more here at ESO, the European Southern Observatory:

... one of the biggest stars known, and almost 1000 times larger than our Sun. It is also one of the most luminous stars known, emitting more light than 100,000 Suns.

If Betelgeuse were at the centre of our Solar System it would extend out almost to the orbit of Jupiter, engulfing Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars and the main asteroid belt.

Marvelous Betelgeuse artist-impression graphic here. Alas, poor Pluto, we hardly knew ye!

Speculation that Betelgeuse could go supernova any time now (or may have already) here at EarthSky.org.

Henry Allingham's Funeral

The funeral of Henry Allingham takes place in Brighton, England today. At 113 years, Allingham was the oldest man in the world. He was also one of the handful of remaining survivors of World War I.

His survival is all the more remarkable as he was an aircraft mechanic, observer and gunner who went aloft and fought in the earliest days of aerial warfare. Watch this Skynews tribute here.

The last British soldier to serve in the World War I trenches, Harry Patch, died last Saturday at 111.

Hyundai Humbles Hill

Autoblog has 12 minutes of video taken by a bumpercam during Rhys Millen's record setting run up Pikes Peak in a Hyundai of all things. Well it was a tricked out rear wheel drive V8 Genesis race car Hyundai. There are times when the car accelerates so fast you think its the camera zooming in. Watch for mad driving skills when the pavement ends.

Heist At The Mint?

The Royal Canadian Mint in Ottawa declared today that it cannot account for over $15-Million in gold bullion. From The Financial Post:

Christine Aquino, director of communications for the Mint, said it is looking into "all" possibilities at this time, including the chance that someone pulled off an Ocean's 11-esque heist from a facility that ranks as one of the most secure in the country. It has even asked the Royal Canadian Mounted Police to do its own investigation.

"We're not going to discount anything," she said.

The Trial Of Lubna Ahmed al-Hussein

She's the woman who was arrested for wearing pants in a café in Sudan. She faces penalties of up to 40 lashes and an unlimited fine. Her trial began today in Khartoum. More from the Globe & Mail's Andrew Heavens:

Journalists scuffled with police armed with batons outside the court room today and some reporters, who were briefly detained, had tapes and equipment confiscated. Scores of women, some wearing slacks and jeans, attended the case. Some waved small placards with the slogan “Lashing people is against human rights.”

“Thousands of women are punished with lashes in Sudan but they stay silent,” she said. “The law is being used to harass women and I want to expose this.”

Any word from the western feminists so far? Crickets. And she a leftist too.

Update: More from Anne of Carversville. And also from the BBC.

Barbarians Inside The Gates

Chrysler Corporation, under the auspices of its parent Cerberus Capital Management has destroyed its historical engineering library.

The Truth About Cars has the disgraceful story:

With little notice and no planning, Cerberus literally abandoned the engineering library at the Chrysler Technical Center. The library was shuttered and the librarian laid off. And then the real crime: all the library’s books and materials were offered to anyone who could carry them away.

I repeat: the documents were free for the taking. Within a week, a collection spanning decades (back to 1925) was scattered to the winds; the books and other materials will never again be available in any coherent, comprehensive form.

As one commenter said: "you have to care about the future to think old records are worth preserving."

Heaven and Earth - And A Cautionary Anniversary

Heaven and Earth. That's the title of a new book by Australian geologist Ian Plimer. The book was recommended approvingly by Rex Murphy here, and today by Jonathan Manthorpe in the Vancouver Sun.

It is, of course, not new to have a highly qualified scientist saying that global warming is an entirely natural phenomenon with many precedents in history. Many have made the argument, too, that it is rubbish to contend human behaviour is causing the current climate change. And it has often been well argued that it is totally ridiculous to suppose that changes in human behaviour -- cleaning up our act through expensive slight-of-hand taxation tricks -- can reverse the trend.

But most of these scientific and academic voices have fallen silent in the face of environmental Jacobinism. Purging humankind of its supposed sins of environmental degradation has become a religion with a fanatical and often intolerant priesthood, especially among the First World urban elites.

Ah yes. Jacobinism. In 1790's France, Jacobinism was a form of elitist insurrectionary politics which arose under leftist dictator Maximilien Robespierre. The Jacobin elite believed they possessed true social and political knowledge, and believed themselves entitled to seize and hold political power in the name of the people. The Jacobin Committee of Public Safety led to the Reign of Terror, the guillotine and up to 40-thousand deaths. Man made global warming skeptics? Off with their heads!

(A cautionary note to would-be contemporary Jacobins: Robespierre himself was guillotined on July 28, 1794 - 215 years ago today.)

Kruzenshtern Departs

Kruzenshtern motors through the Narrows Monday afternoon departing St. John's Harbour into the fog. Pilot boat is along side. The loss of the upper half of her foremast affects her maneuverability in the tight quarters of the Narrows, so no sails aloft. Click the images to enlarge.

Transparent Aluminum

This seems like a breakthrough - in a sort of Tom Swiftian way.

From Science Daily:

''What we have created is a completely new state of matter nobody has seen before,’ said Professor Justin Wark of Oxford University’s Department of Physics, one of the authors of the paper. ‘Transparent aluminium is just the start.'

Whilst the invisible effect lasted for only an extremely brief period – an estimated 40 femtoseconds – it demonstrates that such an exotic state of matter can be created using very high power X-ray sources.

40 Femtoseconds. That would be 40 one millionths of a nanosecond. So far so good.

Nissan Vs. Nature: Fight!

Someone is traveling 'round Japan photographing dozens of old cars abandoned to nature. I can't tell you much more than that because the entire site is in Japanese.

This photo of a car returning to the Earth is captioned thus:

ニッサンバイオレット
ハードトップ1400デラックス（K710）
長野県長野地域にて
2009年5月撮影

Via the miracle of Google Translate:

Nissan Violet
1400 Deluxe Hard Top (K710)
Region in Nagano, Nagano
5 May 2009 shooting

We knew this car in Canada as a mid-1970s Datsun 710.

Where Are The Feminists?

Robert Fulford writes in The National Post about Lubna Ahmed al-Hussein, a female Sudanese journalist who will receive up to 40 lashes for the crime of wearing trousers.

When stories such as al-Hussein’s flash around the world, there’s usually a missing element: The feminist movement rarely becomes part of the narrative. The rise of shariah law constitutes the major global change in women’s status during this era, yet Western feminists remain pathetically silent.

Pathetically silent. So silent in fact that it takes a man to write about it.

Whales New Enemy - Gulls

Off the coast of Argentina, seagulls have learned how to attack surfaced whales, pecking through the skin to feed on the blubber underneath. The predatory gulls have become distressing and disruptive to the whales. Story and photos at the BBC.

Early Plastic Artworks In Danger

It seems odd to talk about artworks made of plastic, but they do exist and some are very valuable. But Slate reports on a curious - and vexing - thing that is happening to some such artworks - they are slowly disintegrating.

In the early 1960s, curators at the Philadelphia Museum of Art noticed something funny about one of their modern-art sculptures: It smelled like vinegar. Worse, the once-clear plastic sculpture had begun browning like an apple, and cracks had appeared on its surface. By 1967, Naum Gabo's translucent, airy Construction in Space: Two Cones looked like Tupperware that had gone through the dishwasher too often.

It turns out that many of the early plastics are unstable by nature. They have lasted just long enough to become valuable in museum collections. And they cannot be repaired.

Polar Ice Melting? Blame Bush, Of Course!

Regular readers here know I have no truck with global warming alarmists. But this article in today's Guardian is so egregious I have to give you a link:

Revealed: the secret evidence of global warming Bush tried to hide.

Graphic images that reveal the devastating impact of global warming in the Arctic have been released by the US military. The photographs, taken by spy satellites over the past decade, confirm that in recent years vast areas in high latitudes have lost their ice cover in summer months.

The pictures, kept secret by Washington during the presidency of George W Bush, were declassified by the White House last week. President Barack Obama is currently trying to galvanise Congress and the American public to take action to halt catastrophic climate change caused by rising levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

As you can probably tell, I am not appropriately horrified by this. Nope. Once they tip over the cliff of conspiracy theory, that's when I know the warmists have lost it. Don't they know that satellite imagery of the Arctic has been freely available for decades? The military are not the only ones with satellites.

Here is the true story on polar ice from the, er, US military. And the editors at the Guardian would be wise to check this too.

I think we need a George W. Bush corollary to Godwin's Law: As soon as you bring up Bush, you lose.