ApocaDocuments (7) for the "Recovery" scenario from this week
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Sun, May 9, 2010
from New Northwest Passage:
Apocadesk: 'Doc Michael channels Stan Rogers
Last weekend I went to a Transition Towns training (which I'll be writing about soon). It's probably the best bottom-up community approach to changing the world, in the face of predictable climate chaos, peak oil, and economic carnage, that I've ever seen. Resilience through community and creativity gives me a ray of hope.
What does that have to do with Stan Rogers and the Northwest Passage?
The only thing missing from the Transition Towns movement was great music.
Any great revolution must have its music. Since we must make revolution together to save our world, we also need to sing together. So I recast the lyrics of Northwest Passage -- a rousing song known to all Canada -- to explore the music of the new evolution. ...
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What, is kumbaya next?
ApocaDoc
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Sun, May 9, 2010
from Reuters:
U.S. schools add fresh food without busting budgets
Thousands of U.S. public school districts are teaming up with local farmers to put more fresh fruits and vegetables on lunchroom menus, without breaking budgets or getting any help from celebrity chefs.
The schools are taking early steps toward adding more fresh and homemade foods as advocated by British chef Jamie Oliver, who led a campaign to improve school lunch in his country. But inexpensive, processed foods still dominate U.S. school menus.
Proponents including U.S. President Barack Obama are pushing for a bigger investment in school meals that feed some of the country's neediest children. The aim is to establish healthier eating habits and curb obesity rates that are driving nearly $150 billion in medical costs each year.
Nearly a third of U.S. children are obese or overweight and public health experts are warning that this generation of youth may be the first to live shorter lives than their parents.
The problem is so severe it has caught the attention of the U.S. military. Last month, two retired generals said in a Washington Post column that being overweight or obese was now the top medical reason recruits were turned down for military service, and that obesity rates were threatening the future strength of the military. ...
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How skinny do you have to be to push a button and launch a drone missile?
ApocaDoc
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Sat, May 8, 2010
from ABC (Australia):
Alternative Reality Geoengineering Game Moving Forward
[Story note: billionaire founds alternative reality game which is in fact a cover for a real geoengineering project to spray sulfur dioxide particulates unilaterally into the atmosphere. The "whistleblower" has online presence, leaves clues, links to other possibly-fictional sites.... In many ways related to Walter Jon Williams' novel This Is Not A Game. -- 'Doc Michael]
Lots has unfolded in ABC's Alternate Reality game, Bluebird, this week...with a big code break this morning by one of you (someone called 'GirlWhoRuled'). Players are cracking codes, sleuthing locations, and on the chase in the race to find out what eco-entrepreneur & billionaire, Harrison Wyld, might be up to with a certain Mr Kruger.
A campaign has been launched, and a rival one by Wyld too.
Meanwhile, the young whistleblower scientist, Kyle Vandercamp, has woken up today to find that none of his plastic works.
Catch up on the story so far at http://abc.net.au/bluebird (with links to the key blogs and websites involved).
...
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I've longed for an alternative reality for quite a while.
ApocaDoc
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Fri, May 7, 2010
from Popular Science:
Cheap New Metal Catalyst Can Split Hydrogen Gas From Water at a Fraction of the Cost
But researchers at the DOE's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory have made a substantial leap toward a hydrogen-based future by devising a cheap, metal catalyst that can split hydrogen gas from water.
The ability to pull apart H2O molecules into their constituent atoms is, of course, the key to creating a hydrogen-based energy economy. If we can do so in a cheap and energy efficient manner, we could potentially turn Earth's vast supply of water into our own vast supply of cheap, clean power.... What it can't be is cheap; electrolysis requires a catalyst to split water into oxygen and hydrogen gas, the most common of which is platinum, which retails at some $2,000 per ounce.... The catalyst requires no additional organic additives or solvents, can operate in neutral water (even if it's dirty) and works with sea water -- meaning we could literally be looking at oceans of cheap energy. Best of all: Mo-oxo is about 70 times cheaper than platinum.... Don't expect to see Mo-oxo splitting seawater into large volumes of hydrogen gas right away. The research is still preliminary and the Berkeley team is just getting into some of the more exciting chemistry. They're looking for additional similar metals that might generate hydrogen gas at even higher efficiency, so by the time this kind of tech is commercialized we may have found an even better catalyst. ...
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No hurry. We have all the time in the world.
ApocaDoc
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Wed, May 5, 2010
from Freakanomics author Dubner, in the NYT:
Will the Gulf Oil Spill Be This Generation's Three Mile Island?
Does anyone have the sense that the recent BP oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico may come to be seen as a Three Mile Island moment, at least for the prospects of U.S. offshore drilling? President Obama has called the spill a "potentially unprecedented environmental disaster" -- just weeks after he endorsed an increase in offshore drilling, to the deep chagrin of a broad swath of his supporters and environmentalists.... That said, could the Gulf disaster be just the kind of tragic, visible, easy-to-comprehend event that crystallizes the already-growing rush to de-petroleum our economy? As with TMI, it won't do much to change the facts on the ground about how energy is made. But as we've seen before, public sentiment can generate an awful lot of energy on its own, for better or worse. ...
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I'm afraid TMI will be that generation's "proto-Deepwater Horizon event."
ApocaDoc
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Tue, May 4, 2010
from Purdue, via EurekAlert:
NASA, Purdue study offers recipe for global warming-free industrial materials
Let a bunch of fluorine atoms get together in the molecules of a chemical compound, and they're like a heavy metal band at a chamber music festival. They tend to dominate the proceedings and not always for the better.
That's particularly true where the global warming potential of the chemicals is concerned, says a new study by NASA and Purdue University researchers.
The study offers at least a partial recipe that industrial chemists could use in developing alternatives with less global warming potential than materials commonly used today.... "What we're hoping is that these additional requirements for minimizing global warming will be used by industry as design constraints for making materials that have, perhaps, the most green chemistry," says Joseph Francisco, a Purdue chemistry and earth and atmospheric sciences professor. The classes of chemicals examined in the study are widely used in air conditioning and the manufacturing of electronics, appliances and carpets. Other uses range from applications as a blood substitute to tracking leaks in natural gas lines.... ...
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Hope may be the triumph of imagination over reality!
ApocaDoc
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Mon, May 3, 2010
from The Daily Climate:
Surprising common ground emerges in climate policy
The ad was ominous: A stern portrait of Iran President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, with a missile launching skyward behind his right shoulder. Below were the logos of the entire continuum of Jewish organizations in the United States, 17 in all, including all four major denominations.
The message was clear - national security and Israel's safety are at risk.
The threat? U.S. energy policy. The full page advertisement in Friday's New York Times was simply the latest example of diverse groups rallying together for and against climate policy. Organizations from across the American political spectrum, from hunters to retirees to evangelical Hispanic clergy are finding common ground on an issue that has left the Capitol - and many state legislatures - polarized and paralyzed. ...
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As the bed burns hotter, the bedfellows will get stranger.
ApocaDoc
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