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outcomes, Sarewitz suggests, it must incorporate, rather than dismiss, other ways of knowing. A rationality that relies on the natural sciences and economics to the exclusion of history, culture, and politics, is a threat and not an aid to liberal goals and values. In the case of dealing with global |
warming, Sarewitz suggests updating a successful past model, the Tennessee Valley Authority. That New Deal-era project was focused on expanding access to cheap energy among the poor. It should be placed in a global context, Sarewitz argues, and used to accelerate both energy access and decarbonization through the demonstration and |
deployment of zero carbon technologies. But Sarewitz is after prey far larger than climate policy. Over the last few years, many prominent progressives have come to blame liberal policy failures on a society that cares too little about science, rationality, and the truth. Sarewitz begs to differ. In many cases, |
he convincingly demonstrates, the roots of policy illiberalism lie not in popular irrationalism but rather in reductive, scientistic rationalism. -- Ted Nordhaus and Michael Shellenberger Read "Liberalism's Modest Proposals" by Dan Sarewitz in Breakthrough Journal. |
In the quest for clean burning cars that can run on renewable fuels, Volvo has released information about their 5 fuel vehicle. Designed to run on hythane, biomethane, natural gas, bioethanol E85 and gasoline. Hythane is a blend of 10% |
hydrogen and 90% methane and is the optimal fuel for this engine. Volvo press release after the break |As part of their aim at finding different ways to sustainable mobility, Volvo Car Corporation has developed a system for a multitude |
of fuels. The Volvo Multi-Fuel is a prototype car, optimized for running on five different fuel types; hythane, biomethane, natural gas, bioethanol E85 and petrol. Hythane consists of 10 percent hydrogen and 90 percent methane, a blend that has tested |
most effective for this system.Optimised for five different fuels The Volvo Multi-Fuel is a five-cylinder, 2.0-litre prototype car (200 bhp) that runs on five different fuels; hythane (10% hydrogen and 90% methane), biomethane, natural gas (CNG), bioethanol E85 (85% bioethanol |
and 15% petrol) and petrol. The new concept is introduced at the Michelin Challenge Bibendum 2006 and is one of its kind.”The whole car is optimized for high performance, driving on any of the five different fuels,” said Mats Morén, |
Project Leader Engine at Volvo Car Corporation. The Multi-Fuel is just as safe as all Volvo vehicles, with the added bonus of being exceptionally clean. One of its benefits is that combustion of pure renewable fuels like hydrogen, biomethane and |
bioethanol gives negligible net contribution of fossil carbon dioxide. “It is a first step towards a hydrogen powered society,” said Morén. “Perhaps we can develop the system even further, to run on a higher blend in the future.” Independent of |
local infrastructure “The idea is to make use of the fuels that are produced locally,” said Morén. “This means that less fuel needs to be transported between continents, and you can fill up the car on the fuel that is |
available wherever you are.” Reinforced gaseous fuel tank “The small gaseous fuel tanks are made of steel, whereas the large tank has a durable, gas tight aluminum liner, reinforced with high performance carbon fibre composite and an exterior layer of |
hardened fibre-glass composite,” Morén said. The fuel tanks are fitted neatly under the luggage compartment floor, which means that full loading capacity is preserved. Two fuel fillers are used to fill up all five fuel types, one for gaseous and |
one for liquid fuels. The engine automatically adjusts itself to the right blend of gaseous or liquid fuels. To switch between fuel types, the driver simply presses a button. High performance on any fuel with maintained fuel-efficiency “The Multi-Fuel is |
turbo charged to achieve high performance on any of the five different fuel types, said Morén. “That makes it great fun to drive and we are very proud of its performance.” Low regulated and unregulated emissions “I love this concept,” |
Morén said, “It’s a turbo charged engine with high performance, low fuel consumption and low emissions. On top of that it has a brilliant tank installation and can be run on a multitude of fuels – all wrapped in one |
The first atlas of the surface of the human brain based upon genetic information has been produced by a national team of scientists, led by researchers at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine and the VA San |
Diego Healthcare System. The work is published in the March 30 issue of the journal Science. The atlas reveals that the cerebral cortex – the sheet of neural tissue enveloping the brain – is roughly divided into genetic divisions that |
differ from other brain maps based on physiology or function. The genetic atlas provides scientists with a new tool for studying and explaining how the brain works, particularly the involvement of genes. “Genetics are important to understanding all kinds of |
biological phenomena,” said William S. Kremen, PhD, professor of psychiatry at the UC San Diego School of Medicine and co-senior author with Anders M. Dale, PhD, professor of radiology, neurosciences, and psychiatry, also at the UC San Diego School of |
Medicine. According to Chi-Hua Chen, PhD, first author and a postdoctoral fellow in the UC San Diego Department of Psychiatry, “If we can understand the genetic underpinnings of the brain, we can get a better idea of how it develops |
and works, information we can then use to ultimately improve treatments for diseases and disorders.” The human cerebral cortex, characterized by distinctive twisting folds and fissures called sulci, is just 0.08 to 0.16 inches thick, but contains multiple layers of |
interconnected neurons with key roles in memory, attention, language, cognition and consciousness. Other atlases have mapped the brain by cytoarchitecture – differences in tissues or function. The new map is based entirely upon genetic information derived from magnetic resonance imaging |
(MRI) of 406 adult twins participating in the Vietnam Era Twin Registry (VETSA), an ongoing longitudinal study of cognitive aging supported in part by grants from the National Institutes of Health (NIH). It follows a related study published last year |
by Kremen, Dale and colleagues that affirmed the human cortical regionalization is similar to and consistent with patterns found in other mammals, evidence of a common conservation mechanism in evolution. |
AIDS was first reported in 1981, three decades ago this year. In one generation, the disease has transformed the public health community and the world, known more and more as a vicious killer. According to the Center for Disease Control, nearly 1.2 million people are living with HIV in the United States, and more than 16,000 people a year die |
of AIDS. The disease disproportionately affects minority communities: while individuals identifying as black represent approximately 14% of the U.S. Population, they account for nearly half of people living with HIV in the United States. Latino-identifying people are also disproportionately impacted, accounting for 16% of the total population and 17% of people living with HIV. (Read more at the CDC.) Financial |
burden and discrimination contribute to a severe lack of affordable housing for those with an HIV diagnosis. Doctors at Columbia University, however, site that after medication, stable housing is most necessary to adequately treat HIV/AIDS. Without safe housing, it is difficult to receive decent health care and disease education. (Read more at the National Coalition for the Homeless.) Tragically, the |
unfortunate housing reality contributes a very high mortality rate. The HIV/AIDS Service Administration (HASA) is a government agency created to respond to the AIDS epidemic in New York City. HASA’s mission is to provide education and services for low-income, HIV positive New Yorkers including emergency housing for homeless clients. Housing is provided through public/private partnership: HASA secures units in multi-family |
buildings through contracts with private landlords, and then places low-income, HIV-positive individuals in these apartments. Unfortunately, many of the landlords who sign contracts with HASA are inattentive to the point of being downright abusive. Ultimately, HASA pays high rent for apartments where tenants live with roaches, faulty plumbing, security concerns, and inadequate heating. In a sentence: slumlords profit and HIV-positive |
tenants suffer. New York City taxpayers foot the bill. In honor of World AIDS Day, we are writing to demand better oversight on the part of government agencies such as HASA. By allowing tenants to live in such unsafe conditions, we are doing a disservice to a population that is already at risk. There is a dangerous perception that HIV/AIDS |
is a result of a supposed moral failing (homosexuality, poverty, drug use) on the part of the affected, and they therefore deserve less than those without an HIV/AIDS-positive diagnosis. HASA does nothing to fight this misconception when they place HIV-positive individuals in some of New York City’s worst multi-family buildings. It’s certainly hard to fathom a world before AIDS, and |
it may seem idealistic to imagine a world after it. In the meantime, we are working hard to temper the storm the disease creates. We are inspired by organizations like VOCAL New York, GMHC, and Housing Works who have made incredible strides in the fight for equal access to services for HIV/AIDS positive people. At TheSurrealEstate, we urge you to |
use today as motivation to get involved in your community and to fight housing inequality everywhere. You can start by calling HASA at (212) 971-0626 and letting them know that they should not allow tenants to live in buildings with high code violations. Even if the unit that the HASA tenant will live in is violation-free, a building that has |
more than three violations per unit is considered statutorily distressed by the city of New York. This definition indicates that the building has a negligent landlord who does not provide tenants with adequate services. Help your fellow New Yorker and urge HASA to stop putting HIV-positive individuals at risk! |
Capturing and storing some of the carbon that would be released in the processing of Canada’s tar sands may not clean the industry up. To turn the vast but dirty |
resource into useable oil, Canada will have to spew vast amounts of greenhouse gases. That’s the conclusion of a new study on the potential of so-called carbon capture and storage |
technology to reduce carbon emissions from tar sands operations. The Athabasca tar sands of north-eastern Alberta, Canada, hold more than 170 billion barrels of recoverable oil, second only to Saudi |
Arabia’s reserves. However, the oil is in the form of tarry bitumen that requires a great deal of energy to extract and turn into usable oil – some three to |
five times as much as conventional crude. The greenhouse gases released during the processing of tar sands make it an environmentally disastrous proposition. No wonder, then, that the government of |
Alberta is putting much emphasis, and billions of research and development dollars, into carbon-capture technologies that aim to remove carbon dioxide released by the tar sands industry and store it |
safely underground. But a new analysis (PDF) published this week by a UK consumer cooperative and the UK branch of environmental group WWF suggests that carbon capture will be too |
little, too late. Using the oil industry’s own best-case estimate – that 30 per cent of carbon emissions could be captured by 2030 and 50 per cent by 2050 – |
the analysts note that this falls far short of the reduction needed to make tar sands oil compare favourably with conventional crude. Kudos to New Scientist for calling the “biggest |
also Canadian bishop challenges the “moral legitimacy” of tar sands production. For more on the report, see here. Climate change is already threatening more than a quarter of Switzerland’s farmland |
with frequent and lengthy water shortages, according to official research published Tuesday. The Swiss federal agricultural research station Agroscope said about 10 times more land would need to be irrigated |
to avoid lost harvests. The Swiss federal agricultural research station Agroscope said about 10 times more land would need to be irrigated to avoid lost harvests, some 400,000 hectares (988,000 |
acres) instead of the 38,000 hectares that currently receive regular irrigation. But researcher Jurgtold AFP that such huge irrigation to cope with more frequent drought might not be economically viable |
or feasible. Twenty-six percent of usable agricultural land and 41 percent of arable land is at risk due to the drier climate that has been emerging in recent years, the |
scientific study found. The conclusions were based on a range of research including detailed observations of local climate, hydrological data and crop patterns between 1980 and 2006. It showed that |
the Alpine country’s prime arable land, spread across lower lying northern plains and valleys, had been the hardest hit by a growing frequency of summertime drought, including the Rhine valley. |
“That one – called Adigene – has decreased in size by about 20% over the last 50 years,” he says. He adds that a neighbouring glacier, Aksai, has disappeared completely. |
Mr Ermenbaev, who works for the government’s hydrogeology agency, says global warming is to blame. And he warns that unless action is taken to reduce this warming, all of Kyrgyzstan’s |
2,200 glaciers could have melted within a century. The Kyrgyz glaciers and those in neighbouring Tajikistan are vital to the water supply of Central Asia. “In normal circumstances the glaciers |
would melt in the summer season, but regain their size in the winter,” Mr Ermenbaev says. But he adds that on average the glaciers are now decreasing in size by |
15-20m ( 50-65ft) annually. One glacier, Petrova, is retreating by 50m a year An island in the Indian Ocean, vital to the U.S. military, disappears as the sea level rises. |
Rivers critical to India and Pakistan shrink, increasing military tensions in South Asia. Drought, famine and disease forces population shifts and political turmoil in the Middle East. U.S. defense and |
intelligence agencies, viewing these and other potential impacts of global warming, have concluded if they materialize it would become ever more likely global alliances will shift, the need to respond |
to massive relief efforts will increase and American forces will become entangled in more regional military conflicts. It is a bleak picture of national security that backers of a climate |
bill in Congress hope will draw in reluctant Republicans who have denounced the bill as an energy tax and jobs killer because it would shift the country away from fossil |
fuels by limiting carbon dioxide emissions from power plants and industrial facilities. At the current increasing rate of global carbon dioxide pollution, average world temperatures at the end of this |
century will likely be about 7 degrees higher than at the end of the 20th century, and seas would be expected to rise by as much as 2 feet, according |
to a consensus of scientists on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The security implications of global warming were center stage Wednesday at a Senate Environmental and Public Works Committee |
hearing, one of a series of sessions in advance of voting on the climate bill, possibly as early as next week. “Our economic, energy and climate change challenges are all |
inextricably linked,” retired Vice Adm. Dennis McGinn told the committee. “If we don’t address these challenges in a bold way and timely way, fragile governments have great potential to become |
failed states ….a virile breathing ground for extremism.” The United Nations needs to beef up and better coordinate efforts to help fight threats such as climate change, deforestation or over-fishing, |
two experts said on Thursday. The world’s system of green agencies and treaties is “bewildering” and while the international body’s efforts are considerable they are diffused by having many organizations |
overseeing one aspect or another, the experts said. “There is an urgent need for an environmental organization within the U.N. system with the influence to realize change and to stand |
side by side with strong organizations such as the World Trade Organization and World Health Organization,” Italy’s Stefania Prestigiacomo and Kenya’s John Michuki said. They are the environment ministers of |
Italy and Kenya, respectively, and co-chairs of a group considering U.N. environmental reform. “Global environmental crises, from vanishing biodiversity and degrading forests to collapsing fish stocks and climate change, will |
not be solved without some tough thinking about international governance,” they wrote in an opinion article. They did not propose any specific agency for the role, but in the U.N. |
system, the Nairobi-based U.N. Environment Program is now the main authority, although its budget is low by U.N. standards at about $200 million a year. Efforts to combat global warming, |
meanwhile, are overseen by the U.N. Climate Change Secretariat in Bonn. Among others, the secretariat for safeguarding biological diversity is based in Montreal and another for wildlife trade is in |
Geneva. Western Republicans fear Interior Secretary Ken Salazar is trying to skirt congressional authority by issuing an administrative order on climate change that the GOP members say could hurt businesses |
and cost taxpayers millions. Utah Reps. Rob Bishop and Jason Chaffetz and Sen. Orrin Hatch joined 13 other Western Republicans who charge in a letter Wednesday that the administration is |
trying an end-run around Congress on climate change legislation. At issue is Salazar’s September “Secretarial Order” that creates a Climate Change Response Council and allows Interior agencies to coordinate efforts |
to combat the impacts of increased carbon in the atmosphere. “These regulations will hit the Western United States the hardest,” the Republicans say in the letter to the Interior boss. |
“Westerners will suffer from higher energy and fuel costs or simply be put out of work.” Salazar issued the order without much fanfare last month, though he praised the move |
as a milestone in responding to energy and climate challenges. His office defended the action Wednesday, saying that anyone who looks at Salazar’s strategy will find that the GOP members’ |
concerns “have no grounding in reality.” On a conference call Tuesday night with young climate activists, Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) served up several newsy tidbits, starting with his hint that |
sort-of climate news will come out of President Obama’s upcoming trip to China and that getting a bill through Congress will mean compromising with Republicans who want more nuclear energy. |
Kerry’s comments came on a call organized by Green For All focusing on how young people can help up the ante in demanding a clean energy future. Kerry, Green For |
All CEO Phaedra Ellis-Lamkins, and Hip Hop Caucus President Rev. Lennox Yearwood took turns speaking, with the conversation acutely attuned to the Clean Energy Jobs and American Power Act (cosponsored |
by Sen. Kerry), which is the subject of Senate committee hearings this week. Coming off the climate and energy bill’s first day of Senate hearings, Kerry sounded encouraged by the |
“very strong showing by the administration” (four cabinet secretaries and the EPA chief testified). He said President Obama is “committed” to getting the bill out of committee before the Copenhagen |
climate talks in December. At the same time, he owned up to the utter vulnerability of the bill, ‘fessing up to young people: “We’re gonna need your help.” Australia stepped |
up lobbying ahead of the global climate talks in Copenhagen on Wednesday, with Prime Minister Kevin Rudd accepting a key role as Climate Change Minister Penny Wong heads to Spain |
for talks. Rudd has accepted an offer from Danish Prime Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen to become a friend of the Copenhagen summit chair, giving him a key role in helping |
to forge an international deal to curb Greenhouse emissions ahead of the December meeting. “The leaders engaged by Prime Minister Rasmussen will conduct regular discussions in the lead up to |
Copenhagen focused on delivering effective action on climate change,” a spokesman for Rudd told Reuters. The spokesman said Rudd would go to Copenhagen if the summit became a leaders’ meeting, |
and if his attendance would help bring about an effective outcome, adding it was critical for leaders to be engaged ahead of the meeting. Wong, who is negotiating to push |
laws for a domestic carbon-trade scheme through Australia’s parliament, will attend a Barcelona meeting of environment ministers from Thursday, where she will push for progress ahead of the Copenhagen talks. |
“We are just weeks out from Copenhagen and at a critical stage in negotiations. This is an important opportunity for countries to make progress on key issues central to achieving |
consensus in Copenhagen.” Australia has proposed a system of national schedules which will allow developed countries to set individual carbon reduction targets, and allow developing nations to record actions tailored |
to their circumstances. Australia has promised to cut greenhouse emissions, blamed for global warming, by 5 percent, or up to 25 percent if other countries agree to take strong action |
to curb emissions. Australia, the world’s biggest coal exporter, accounts for about 1.5 percent of global emissions but is one of the highest per capital emitters due to a reliance |
For many people, “entitled” is a four-letter word (e.g., “Kids today are so entitled!“). But for all of us, entitlement is essential to healthy self-esteem. To entitle someone is to |
give them a title, right or claim to something. When someone is entitled, they’ve accepted (and will act on) a certain title, right or claim. But to what? What is |
an entitled person entitled TO? How Do You Know When to Speak Up? Someone with too much entitlement feels s/he has a right to just about anything s/he wants. Obviously, |
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