Month: October 2011

 In this photo provided by Mississippi State Entomological Museum, a worker Nylanderia pubens (ant) specimen is seen in Starkville, Miss., Friday, Nov. 6, 2009. Hairy crazy ants are on the move in Florida, Texas, Mississippi and Louisiana. The flea-sized critters are called crazy because each ant in the horde seems to scramble randomly, moving so fast that videos look as if they’re on fast-forward. They’re called hairy because of dense “hair” that, to the naked eye, make them look less glossy than their cousins. 

Next time your Aunt Teabag or Uncle Dittohead asks “what’s the big deal about being a few degrees warmer?” – show them this video. Note: put hot coffee down before viewing.

Associated Press

It sounds like a horror movie: Biting ants invade by the millions. A camper’s metal walls bulge from the pressure of ants nesting behind them. A circle of poison stops them for only a day, and then a fresh horde shows up, bringing babies. Stand in the yard, and in seconds ants cover your shoes.

It’s an extreme example of what can happen when the ants — which also can disable huge industrial plants — go unchecked. Controlling them can cost thousands of dollars. But the story is real, told by someone who’s been studying ants for a decade.

“Months later, I could close my eyes and see them moving,” said Joe MacGown, who curates the ant, mosquito and scarab collections at the Mississippi State Entomological Museum at Mississippi State University.

He’s been back to check on the hairy crazy ants. They’re still around. The occupant isn’t.

The flea-sized critters are called crazy because each forager scrambles randomly at a speed that your average picnic ant, marching one by one, reaches only in video fast-forward. They’re called hairy because of fuzz that, to the naked eye, makes their abdomens look less glossy than those of their slower, bigger cousins.

Texas A&M University reports that  “Effective products involved with the treatments are not readily available to the consumer. If you suspect your house or property is infested with these ants, call a professional pest control provider. After treatment, or when making multiple applications over time, piles of dead ants must be swept or moved out of the area in order to treat the surface(s) underneath.”

The A&M factsheet also notes – “..it is a semi-tropical ant and potential northern distribution will be limited by cooler weather conditions.”

Well, not for long.

Nature: 

It isn’t green and it doesn’t grow, but the wafer sitting in a beaker of water in Dan Nocera’s laboratory is remarkably like a leaf.

Using a silicon solar cell coated with cheap and abundant catalysts, the device uses sunlight to rip apart molecules of water, just like a photosynthesizing leaf. This produces hydrogen and oxygen gases, which bubble up on either side of the wafer (see video). The details are published today in Science¹.

As with photosynthesis, the wafer ultimately stores sunlight energy as chemical bonds in a fuel: hydrogen gas, which can be piped and stored, and its energy released when required.

The parallel with nature is not exact: a real leaf does start by ripping up water, but does not end by breathing out hydrogen. Instead, it diverts the hydrogen into reactions with carbon dioxide, eventually creating sugar molecules. Nevertheless, Nocera, who works at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, says that his team’s concept will aid in efforts to produce clean, cheap hydrogen from sunlight and water — perhaps even allowing houses in poor but sunny countries to produce their own fuel on demand. He has founded a company, Sun Catalytix, also in Cambridge, to commercialize his electrolytic device; its influential backers include the multinational conglomerate Tata Group.

Continue reading “Solar Leaf: While Tea Party Slimes Energy Progress, Innovators Build the Future”

I reported last week that Germany, leading the world in switching to a renewable economy, is getting swamped by a deluge of new energy, owing to the success of its Feed In Tariff policy.

What to do with this rather interesting problem? Repurposing old coal mines to store that excess juice is one solution.

From Cleantechnica:

In an interesting marriage of clean and dirty tech, Deutsche Welle is reporting that the state government of Lower Saxony in Germany is looking into repurposing old abandoned coal mines inside the Harz mountains as pumped storage for wind power.

The idea has attracted approval not only from environmentalists in the region, who like the invisibility of the storage, but also from former coal miners, who like the idea of the disused coal mines being put to good use as a kind of “green battery” for wind power.

Continue reading “Germany: Old Coal Mines will Store New Wind”

One of an endangered, but not vanished, breed of conservatives who still believe in, like, gravity and stuff, D. R. Tucker contributes another perspective piece from a Republican “warmist”.

Recently, a friend asked me if I still had any respect for the conservative op-ed columnists and talk-radio hosts I once admired, since so many of those pundits remain committed to the view that anthropogenic global warming is something Al Gore and Carol Browner cooked up to destroy free-market capitalism. “Let’s just say it’s getting a little harder to respect them,” I responded.

I’ve reluctantly concluded that the conservative pundits who repeatedly and forcefully deny the accuracy of climate science will never change their views; on their deathbeds, they will mutter profanities about Ed Begley Jr. and Solyndra seconds before checking out. These pundits aren’t all elderly, but they are all mentally old and set in their ways.

To ask veteran conservative pundits to recognize scientific reality is to ask them to surrender a bit of their identity. That’s not going to happen anytime soon: you’ll have to pry their denial out of their cold, dead hands.

Conservatism is a force that gives its adherents meaning. Just as there is a “black community,” a “Jewish community” and an “LGBT community,” so too is there a “conservative community” in the US, unified by a vision that defines the federal government’s only proper role as the protection of the country from foreign and domestic attacks.

I no longer believe there can be common ground between conservatives and environmentalists. Modern conservatism holds that environmentalists are demonic forces, radical anti-capitalists who wish to swell government in order to run, and ruin, people’s lives. Republican environmentalists in particular are held in deep contempt: scroll through the comment sections of posts on Hot Air or Free Republic about Jon Huntsman and you will see the former Utah governor attacked with language one wouldn’t even use to describe sex offenders.

Continue reading “D.R.Tucker: Dawn of the Deniers”

 LATimes:

Reporting from Derry, N.H.—

Republican presidential candidate Rick Perry may have backed down on tuition breaks for illegal immigrants, but he’s doubling down on his skepticism of climate-change science.

At a New Hampshire town-hall style meeting, his first of the campaign, the Texas governor sparred Friday evening with a questioner who tried to pin him down on the issue.  The man, whom Perry addressed as “Mike,” began by noting a 2011 report from a panel of experts chosen by the National Academy of Sciences, which concluded that climate change is occurring and “is very likely caused primarily by the emission of greenhouse gases from human activities.”  The man noted that Perry had ducked—twice–when asked at the Reagan Library debate this month to name the scientists he found most credible on the subject.

“Great,” replied Perry, strolling with a hand-held microphone in front of a crowd at the Adams Memorial Opera House in Derry, N.H.  “I’m ready for you this time.”

Perry said that “just within the last couple of weeks, a renowned Nobel laureate” had said that it was “not correct” to say that there was “incontrovertible” evidence that global warming is man’s fault.  “There are scientists all across this country who are saying that,” Perry said, adding to that his own conclusion that climate change science “frankly is not proven.”

Paul Krugman in the NYTimes:

Mr. Perry, the governor of Texas, recently made headlines by dismissing evolution as “just a theory,” one that has “got some gaps in it” — an observation that will come as news to the vast majority of biologists. But what really got peoples’ attention was what he said about climate change: “I think there are a substantial number of scientists who have manipulated data so that they will have dollars rolling into their projects. And I think we are seeing almost weekly, or even daily, scientists are coming forward and questioning the original idea that man-made global warming is what is causing the climate to change.”

That’s a remarkable statement — or maybe the right adjective is “vile.”
So it’s now highly likely that the presidential candidate of one of our two major political parties will either be a man who believes what he wants to believe, even in the teeth of scientific evidence, or a man who pretends to believe whatever he thinks the party’s base wants him to believe.

Now, we don’t know who will win next year’s presidential election. But the odds are that one of these years the world’s greatest nation will find itself ruled by a party that is aggressively anti-science, indeed anti-knowledge. And, in a time of severe challenges — environmental, economic, and more — that’s a terrifying prospect.

National Journal:

To hear GOP presidential front-runner Rick Perry and some tea party-backed lawmakers tell it, the Republican position on global warming is that it’s a problem that doesn’t even exist.

That wasn’t always the case. And if prominent Republican elder statesmen have their way, it won’t continue to be.

Between 2005 and 2010, prominent moderate Republican Sens. John McCain of Arizona, Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, and John Warner of Virginia (now retired) were among Washington’s leading voices in the call to fight climate change, and authored cap-and-trade bills aimed at addressing the problem.

Continue reading “Traditional Republicans Quietly Swim against the Tide”

From the Union of Concerned Scientists:

As temperatures start to drop around the nation, the time has come to wrap up your home garden and prepare for next year. Most gardeners will be planting bulbs for next spring and taking steps to protect perennials from harsh winter weather over the next few weeks. But did you know that actions you take now can also help in the fight against global warming?

Tracey Payton, a horticulture educator from Norman, Oklahoma, offers this tip on how to be a climate-friendly gardener.

“Mulch is a great way to protect bare soil, and most importantly for the climate-friendly gardener, it can help prevent carbon loss. Uncovered soil is vulnerable to releasing more carbon than it stores. Mulch also has other benefits, such as protecting against temperature fluctuations that can damage plants, suppressing weeds, and reducing moisture loss and soil erosion. Using mulch can be as easy as an additional 2-3 inch layer of compost or straw in the garden; in the flower bed, cotton seed hulls, bark mulch, or wood mulch can be used. Do only keep mulch about 2-3″ deep and away from perennial plant stems to prevent rot and other moisture problems.”

More climate friendly garden tips here at climatefriendlygarden.org, or download The Climate Friendly Gardener:

Continue reading “The Climate-Friendly Gardener”

My tongue-in-cheek video “Hollywood does Climate Change” of last year, sparked a mini-war over my assertion that “The Day After Tomorrow”  (above) was the “best Dennis Quaid movie ever”. Well, now that’s all moot.

If you missed “Legion” in theaters, netflix this completely, touchingly sincere, yet utterly wack, armageddon/apocalypse-meets-the-Matrix classic. Imagine if Peter Jackson produced Ed Wood  – with an unlimited budget and good CGI.  I won’t even try to describe the plot – you just have to let it wash over you.