A Crushing Issue: How to Destroy Brand-New Cars – WSJ.com
Mazda saw no easy way to guard against these outcomes. So it decided to destroy approximately $100 million worth of factory-new automobiles.
This after:
High Tech Cowboys of the Deep Seas: The Race to Save the Cougar Ace
“Come on, Marty,” Habib says as they heft the litter back to the tug. “We’re gonna get you out of here. Just hang in a little longer.”
[…]
By the end of the second day of pumping, the Cougar Ace is upright. A few days later, the owners come aboard to reclaim the ship. What initially seemed like a lost cause is now floating freely. It did not sink. Ninety-nine percent of its cargo is intact. There was no environmental disaster.
Soon, a payment of more than $10 million is wired to Titan’s account.
(via Reddit)
Energy Bill II could reap a bitter harvest
While making practically no dent in the energy shortage, both energy bills have gone a long way to deprive America’s huge agricultural exports of the tens of billions of revenues that farm goods provided the U.S. export sector.
[…]
Now we’re finding out that imports of oil converted from Canadian tar sands may be endangered. These account for 350,000 barrels of oil per day, scheduled to grow to 500,000 in the not too distant future. But according to the stricter greenhouse gas emissions embedded in December’s Energy Bill II, oil made from tar sands may not meet the required standards.
Sierra Magazine: Welcome to Meth Country
Law enforcement officers […] must wear hermetically sealed moon suits and self-contained breathing apparatuses for protection. Hazmat (hazardous-materials) teams then come in to clean up the mess. And it’s a big mess: For every pound of meth produced, between five and six pounds of highly toxic waste is generated.
[…]
“We had one mobile-home lab that had been operating for several years on private land within the boundaries of the Sitgreaves National Forest,” he says. “We found some large ponderosa pines that were a hundred and fifty years old killed off by the fumes.”
Fat? Blame a Hippy
So when they were looking for something to replace the preservatives in our food with that wouldn’t have a name that scares hippies, they settled on corn syrup.
via Metafilter
Also:
Global warming rage lets global hunger grow
The UN says it takes 232kg of corn to fill a 50-litre car tank with ethanol. That is enough to feed a child for a year.
Corn-based ethanol: the biggest greenwash ever?
Before I go on, let me make two points for the millionth time:
1. Without extended, ongoing, and financially generous government intervention, no market for corn ethanol would exist.
2. If ethanol delivers any net energy gain at all over petroleum gasoline, it’s razor thin.
The Starving Ocean
Atlantic Canada reveals what is probably the clearest evidence anywhere of the ecosystem-effects of persistent human fishing. The early 1990’s crash of the once great Canadian cod stock is held up as a global cautionary tale against fisheries mismanagement, against greedy human ‘overfishing.’ But less well known is that the story is not that simple, that, at the level of scientific detail, so much has gone severely and unexpectedly wrong in Atlantic Canada…that the most basic assumptions underlying the ‘science of overfishing/sustainable fishing’ must now be questioned.
Zooplankton were unexpectedly and inexplicably lost along with Canadian fish stocks. If, as seems likely, this is part of the ecosystem impact of fishing, then this finding has global significance.
While i’ve not went along with the popular Newfoundland theory that seals drove the cod population into crisis (has this ever been researched formally? i’ve been asking people this for years) i’m not convinced by this writer either. Global warming is downplayed as a possible influence in favour of an anti-fishery, anti-seal-hunt agenda, and i don’t see ocean pollution mentioned at all.
The phenomenon of plankton collapse, as reported on this site, needs to be studied. The research effort necessary would be huge, but no existing government has the political courage to fund it. Back to square one.
Long Bets – The Arena for Accountable Predictions
The purpose of Long Bets is to improve long–term thinking. Long Bets is a public arena for enjoyably competitive predictions, of interest to society, with philanthropic money at stake. The Long Now Foundation furnishes the continuity to see even the longest bets through to public resolution. This website provides a forum for discussion about what may be learned from the bets and their eventual outcomes.
Notably, Ted Danson won $2K on the Red Sox. Much deeper stuff under discussion there, though.
