From the BBC News, more proof of the Boomerang Effect – “More than a third of all Russian logs are smuggled by mafias, a practice that doubled between 2005 and 2007, according to official figures….. China imports nearly six out of 10 logs produced in the world, after banning logging in its own territory following devastating floods a decade ago.”

“In total, 10m cubic metres of wood, equivalent to nearly a third of all logging in the Amazon, is harvested every year from Russian soil.”

Stand by for a word from our climate specialists: Scientists “at the University of East Anglia (UEA) have admitted throwing away much of the raw temperature data on which their predictions of global warming are based. It means that other academics are not able to check basic calculations said to show a long-term rise in temperature over the past 150 years.”

“The UEA’s Climatic Research Unit (CRU) was forced to reveal the loss following requests for the data under Freedom of Information legislation.”

Meanwhile, Wired Magazine weighs in with this fun tidbit: “The really inconvenient truth: We’re toast. Fried. Steamed. Poached. More so than even many hand-wringing carbonistas admit. According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, C02 that’s already in the air or in the pipeline will stoke ‘irreversible’ warming for the next 1,000 years. Any scheme cobbled together in Copenhagen for slowing—forget reversing—the growth of greenhouse gases will be way too little, way too late. In the apt jargon of industry, a hotter planet is already ‘baked in.’ James Lovelock, the British chemist who redubbed Mother Earth as ‘Gaia,’ tells the ungilded truth: Can we hit a carbon Undo button? ‘Not a hope in hell.’”

The sad truth, inconvenient or not, is that the game is going to come down to which technology wins the day, and the mega-bucks that go along with the contract to “save the planet.” If ClimateGate gets any weirder, many of the neo-greens wandering the malls are going to be headed for the turnstiles faster than you can say “Al Gore’s grandmother wears combat boots.”

The good news? It’s going to get much crazier before the bell tolls.

posted by Mudd

In honor of Thanksgiving, and despite the ongoing drudgery of the world’s weirdest “recession,” let’s tip our hats to the guys who keep us in calories – farmers.

“What Americans do to pigs, chickens, and cows speaks ill of the nation’s moral health,” says Joel Salatin, who the Christian Science Monitor proclaims “the best, loudest (and only) Christian-libertarian-capitalist-environmentalist-lunatic farmer on the face of planet Earth.”

“A culture that views its life from [a] manipulative, disrespectful stance will soon view its citizens the same way and other cultures the same way. It’s how we respect the least of these that creates a moral-ethical framework.”

Amen. Pass the sweet taters!

posted by Mudd

Breaking “News” from LiveScience.com – “We not only hear with our ears, but also through our skin, according to a new study. The finding, based on experiments in which participants listened to certain syllables while puffs of air hit their skin, suggests our brains take in and integrate information from various senses to build a picture of our surroundings.”

Good reason to avoid sunburn!

posted by Mudd

Thanks to the NPR, we now can answer the question that’s been burning up so many brain cells this Holiday Season – do ants count?

“It’s already known that ants use celestial clues to establish the general direction home, but how do they know exactly the number of steps to take that will lead them right to the entrance of their nest?”

Of course, they count the steps, using something we humanoids have to pay for – a pedometer. Professor James Gould of Princeton postulates that ants don’t use road maps, nor recognize markers along the route ….. but studies indicate “that ants do have internal pedometers that allow them to ‘count’ their way home.”

Turns out – we are not alone.

posted by Mudd

From Wired Magazine – “According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, C02 that’s already in the air or in the pipeline will stoke “irreversible” warming for the next 1,000 years. Any scheme cobbled together in Copenhagen for slowing—forget reversing—the growth of greenhouse gases will be way too little, way too late. In the apt jargon of industry, a hotter planet is already ‘baked in.’ James Lovelock, the British chemist who redubbed Mother Earth as ‘Gaia,’ tells the ungilded truth: Can we hit a carbon Undo button? ‘Not a hope in hell.’”

But cyber-geeks know a good thing when they see one. And, as usual, technology is the Saviour of Mama Earth. For instance: China, India, and other assorted wanna-be’s are “gunning their economies precisely because they see technology and the wealth it creates as the best (in fact, the only) insurance against a homicidal Mother Nature.”

Homicidal Mother Nature? What are these guys smoking? The only technology that makes sense in a world facing massive population overshoot is made out of latex.

One of these days the techies will wake up and realize the fallacy of their ways. In the meantime, pass the Novocaine.

posted by Mudd

Attention all green cyber-geeks! Now you can bash that old Mac motherboard and feel good about it. Sort of. Apple now offers recycling of its tech-wear. So when you smell the Intel sizzling, send her back to Mac!

posted by iMudd

How to appease the ancient gods? That depends on where you live. Take southern Nepal, for example –

“More than 200,000 buffaloes, goats, chickens and pigeons will be killed Tuesday and Wednesday at the temple in the jungles of Bara district, about 100 miles south of Katmandu, to honor the Hindu goddess Gadhimai.” [MSNBC]

That’s one big-ass BBQ!

pass the sauce.

posted by Mudd

London, England (CNN) — A possible rise in sea levels by 0.5 meters by 2050 could put at risk more than $28 trillion worth of assets in the world’s largest coastal cities, according to a report compiled for the insurance industry.

What’s a poor urban cowboy to do?

There’s always the old ark routine.

posted by Mudd

As reported in the erudite New York Times – “In the last three years alone, more than 9,400 of the nation’s 25,000 sewage systems — including those in major cities — have reported violating the law by dumping untreated or partly treated human waste, chemicals and other hazardous materials into rivers and lakes and elsewhere, according to data from state environmental agencies and the Environmental Protection Agency.

But fewer than one in five sewage systems that broke the law were ever fined or otherwise sanctioned by state or federal regulators, the Times analysis shows.”

Further – “The E.P.A., in a statement, said that officials agreed that overflows posed a ‘significant environmental and human health problem, and significantly reducing or eliminating such overflows has been a priority for E.P.A. enforcement since the mid-1990s.'”

That’s only 15 years! There’s hope left.

pass the lunger.

posted by Mudd