Study: Sun's Changes to Blame for Part of Global Warming: "Sun's Changes to Blame for Part of Global Warming
By Robert Roy Britt"
Saturday, October 01, 2005
Friday, September 30, 2005
Weird Words: Tontine
Weird Words: Tontine: "A system of annuities in which the benefits pass to the surviving subscribers until only one is left.
Wednesday, September 28, 2005
protein wisdom
protein wisdom: "It was the luck of the imperial draw that the American project in Iraq came to the rescue of the Shiites--and of the Kurds. We may not fully appreciate the historical change we unleashed on the Arab world, but we have given liberty to the stepchildren of the Arab world. We have overturned an edifice of material and moral power that dates back centuries. The Arabs railing against U.S. imperialism and arrogance in Iraq will never let us in on the real sources of their resentments. In the way of “modern” men and women with some familiarity with the doctrines of political correctness, they can’t tell us that they are aggrieved that we have given a measure of self-worth to the seminarians of Najaf and the highlanders of Kurdistan. But that is precisely what gnaws at them.
An edifice of Arab nationalism built by strange bedfellows--the Sunni political and bureaucratic elites, and the Christian Arab pundits who abetted them in the idle hope that they would be spared the wrath of the street and of the mob--was overturned in Iraq. And America, at times ambivalent about its mission, brought along with its military gear a suspicion of the Shiites, a belief that the Iraqi Shiites were an extension of Iran, a community destined to build a sister-republic of the Iranian theocracy. Washington has its cadre of Arabists reared on Arab nationalist historiography. This camp had a seat at the table, but the very scale of what was at play in Iraq, and the redemptionism at the heart of George Bush’s ideology, dwarfed them."
An edifice of Arab nationalism built by strange bedfellows--the Sunni political and bureaucratic elites, and the Christian Arab pundits who abetted them in the idle hope that they would be spared the wrath of the street and of the mob--was overturned in Iraq. And America, at times ambivalent about its mission, brought along with its military gear a suspicion of the Shiites, a belief that the Iraqi Shiites were an extension of Iran, a community destined to build a sister-republic of the Iranian theocracy. Washington has its cadre of Arabists reared on Arab nationalist historiography. This camp had a seat at the table, but the very scale of what was at play in Iraq, and the redemptionism at the heart of George Bush’s ideology, dwarfed them."
Sunday, September 25, 2005
"Real Racism" by Sharon�Hughes
"Real Racism" by Sharon�Hughes: "Driessen also mentions the European Union, World Health Organization, World Bank, UNICEF, and environmental groups like Greenpeace, and others as being on the forefront of preventing the most malaria-ridden nations from using the same insecticides that eradicated the disease here in America. This begs the question: Why are the voices of human rights groups and churches silent about this ''subtle'' form of racism, and human-rights abuse? You tell me."
"Real Racism" by Sharon�Hughes
"Real Racism" by Sharon�Hughes: "Here’s an even more far-reaching form of racism: Letting Africans die because of radical environmentalist white idealogues’ activism. Paul Driessen, senior policy advisor for the Congress of Racial Equality and former environmental policy advocate, talked with me about this issue on my radio show. He said what few are willing and courageous enough to talk about.
Did you know that in 2004 alone malaria took the lives of more African children than any other infectious disease, and according to UNICEF--three times more than HIV/AIDS? How about that malaria infects 400 million people in sub-Saharan Africa and kills up to 2 million (half of them children) every year? Why? Primarily because of global environmental laws that prohibit the use of DDT spraying.
Paul Driessen points out in his article, ”Double Standards on Disease Control”:
“From colonial times until the 1940s, malaria was the American disease,” says Dr. Robert Desowitz, professor of tropical medicine at the University of North Carolina. At the dawn of the twentieth century, it thrived from New York to Florida, from North Carolina to California. Up to 7 million Americans were stricken by it every year until the mid-1920s, and 3,900 died in 1936. For centuries, it struck down people of all ages in England, Holland, Italy, and other parts of Europe. But by the early 1950s, it was gone, and all but forgotten. How was this possible? We used DDT, window screens and other measures to gradually eradicate the malaria parasite from its human and insect hosts. Today, we still spray pesticides (mostly by airplanes) to control mosquitoes and the West Nile virus that some carry. But we apply a vastly different standard when it comes to poor developing countries that are still wracked by malaria. “ "
Did you know that in 2004 alone malaria took the lives of more African children than any other infectious disease, and according to UNICEF--three times more than HIV/AIDS? How about that malaria infects 400 million people in sub-Saharan Africa and kills up to 2 million (half of them children) every year? Why? Primarily because of global environmental laws that prohibit the use of DDT spraying.
Paul Driessen points out in his article, ”Double Standards on Disease Control”:
“From colonial times until the 1940s, malaria was the American disease,” says Dr. Robert Desowitz, professor of tropical medicine at the University of North Carolina. At the dawn of the twentieth century, it thrived from New York to Florida, from North Carolina to California. Up to 7 million Americans were stricken by it every year until the mid-1920s, and 3,900 died in 1936. For centuries, it struck down people of all ages in England, Holland, Italy, and other parts of Europe. But by the early 1950s, it was gone, and all but forgotten. How was this possible? We used DDT, window screens and other measures to gradually eradicate the malaria parasite from its human and insect hosts. Today, we still spray pesticides (mostly by airplanes) to control mosquitoes and the West Nile virus that some carry. But we apply a vastly different standard when it comes to poor developing countries that are still wracked by malaria. “ "
Friday, September 23, 2005
What aout Hydrogen burning cars?
One Hand Clapping: "what about hydrogen cars? They would burn hydrogen and oxygen and emit water. How cool would that be, eh? But writer Patrick Bedard says that if by a trick of science autos had been invented using hydrogen-oxygen motors, so that everyone was driving them now,
... President’s FreedomCAR initiative would be anteing up its $1.8 billion to invent the gasoline engine. Freeing us from hydrogen would be “the moral equivalent of war,” to use the words of a long-past energy-crisis president. Gasoline would be the miracle fuel. It would save money by the Fort Knoxful. It would save energy by the Saudi Arabiaful.
The reason is that the amount of energy required to produce a kilogram of hydrogen is simply enormous, many multiples more than the energy recovered by using the hydrogen as a fuel. Where would all that energy come from?
Virtually all the hydrogen produced today, about 50 million tons worldwide, comes from natural gas. The process, called “steam reforming,” is only about 30 percent efficient, much less, he [Donald Anthrop, Ph.D., professor emeritus of environmental studies at San Jose State University] says, “than if the natural gas were simply burned” in the generating plant.
Producing enough hydrogen to replace gasoline by reforming natural gas would increase our [natural] gas consumption by 66 percent over 2002’s usage. And don’t forget the carbon emissions.
Electrolysis to produce the element carries its own toll so that the energy required to produce a kilo of hydrogen for an auto’s use is several multiple of the energy a hydrogen kilo yields in the motor.
Starting with 140.8 kilowatt-hours of energy from coal [to generate electricity for electrolysis] gives you 17.4 kilowatt-hours of electrical power from the fuel cell to propel the car, or an energy efficiency of 12 percent.
Hydrogen as an auto fuel turns out to be terribly inefficient.
Presumably, BMW knows all of this, yet it has been thumping the tub for hydrogen since the 1970s. Along with hundreds of other invitees, I attended BMW’s hydrogen hootenanny at Paramount Pictures in 2001. Mostly, it amounted to a day of corporate preening before California’s greenies. Still, BMW is famously brave in confronting technology. Does it have a plan? I summed up the science of this column, in writing, and passed it up through BMW’s official channels, along with the obvious question: Where will the necessary quads and quads of energy come from for hydrogen cars? That was nearly two years ago. BMW has not answered.
No answer, of course, is the anwer.
Like it or not, we’re stuck with internal-combustion engines for a long time to come."
... President’s FreedomCAR initiative would be anteing up its $1.8 billion to invent the gasoline engine. Freeing us from hydrogen would be “the moral equivalent of war,” to use the words of a long-past energy-crisis president. Gasoline would be the miracle fuel. It would save money by the Fort Knoxful. It would save energy by the Saudi Arabiaful.
The reason is that the amount of energy required to produce a kilogram of hydrogen is simply enormous, many multiples more than the energy recovered by using the hydrogen as a fuel. Where would all that energy come from?
Virtually all the hydrogen produced today, about 50 million tons worldwide, comes from natural gas. The process, called “steam reforming,” is only about 30 percent efficient, much less, he [Donald Anthrop, Ph.D., professor emeritus of environmental studies at San Jose State University] says, “than if the natural gas were simply burned” in the generating plant.
Producing enough hydrogen to replace gasoline by reforming natural gas would increase our [natural] gas consumption by 66 percent over 2002’s usage. And don’t forget the carbon emissions.
Electrolysis to produce the element carries its own toll so that the energy required to produce a kilo of hydrogen for an auto’s use is several multiple of the energy a hydrogen kilo yields in the motor.
Starting with 140.8 kilowatt-hours of energy from coal [to generate electricity for electrolysis] gives you 17.4 kilowatt-hours of electrical power from the fuel cell to propel the car, or an energy efficiency of 12 percent.
Hydrogen as an auto fuel turns out to be terribly inefficient.
Presumably, BMW knows all of this, yet it has been thumping the tub for hydrogen since the 1970s. Along with hundreds of other invitees, I attended BMW’s hydrogen hootenanny at Paramount Pictures in 2001. Mostly, it amounted to a day of corporate preening before California’s greenies. Still, BMW is famously brave in confronting technology. Does it have a plan? I summed up the science of this column, in writing, and passed it up through BMW’s official channels, along with the obvious question: Where will the necessary quads and quads of energy come from for hydrogen cars? That was nearly two years ago. BMW has not answered.
No answer, of course, is the anwer.
Like it or not, we’re stuck with internal-combustion engines for a long time to come."
Thursday, September 22, 2005
Monday, September 19, 2005
One Hand Clapping � Blog Archive � Address to Gold Star families
One Hand Clapping � Blog Archive � Address to Gold Star families: "I addressed Gold Star Mothers and their families, along with many Blue Star families, at a luncheon honoring fallen U. S. Marines on Sept. 17, 2005. The luncheon was sponsored by Tennessee Marine Families, a chartered not-for-profit organization of which my wife and I are members.
Many readers will recognize that I modeled about the last half this address on Pericles’ oration at the first funeral of Athens’ fallen of the Peloponnesian War in 431 bc. You will also see an echo of Shakespeare’s “Henry V” (I cited the full quotation here) in a closing paragraph."
Many readers will recognize that I modeled about the last half this address on Pericles’ oration at the first funeral of Athens’ fallen of the Peloponnesian War in 431 bc. You will also see an echo of Shakespeare’s “Henry V” (I cited the full quotation here) in a closing paragraph."
Saturday, September 17, 2005
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