Ahem…
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Category: Science & technology
A recent observation in Australia suggests that cloud formation is related to vegetation:
A fence built to prevent rabbits from entering the Australian outback has unintentionally allowed scientists to study the effects of land use on regional climates.
The rabbit-proof fence — or bunny fence — in Western Australia was completed in 1907 and stretches about 2,000 miles. It acts as a boundary separating native vegetation from farmland. Within the fence area, scientists have observed a strange phenomenon: above the native vegetation, the sky is rich in rain-producing clouds. But the sky on the farmland side is clear. [At Australia’s Bunny Fence, Variable Cloudiness Prompts Climate Study. New York Times. August 14 2007]
That may not sound as astounding as seeing a pig flying but wait till you see this picture:
And what is so interesting about this finding?
Dr. Nair speculates that increases in the world’s population will prompt the clearing of more land to increase food production. But he wonders whether, in the long run, “we will reach a point of land clearing that will diminish food production,” because rainfall has decreased. [At Australia’s Bunny Fence, Variable Cloudiness Prompts Climate Study. New York Times. August 14 2007]
Can anybody say decreasing returns to scale?
According to Wikipedia, oxygen was officially discovered on August 1 1774. I wonder what humanity was breathing before that day…
Oxygen was first described by MichaÅ‚ SÄ™dziwój, a Polish alchemist and philosopher in the late 16th century. SÄ™dziwój thought of the gas given off by warm niter (saltpeter) as “the elixir of life”.
Oxygen was more quantitatively discovered by the Swedish pharmacist Carl Wilhelm Scheele some time before 1773, but the discovery was not published until after the independent discovery by Joseph Priestley on August 1, 1774, who called the gas dephlogisticated air (see phlogiston theory). Priestley published discoveries in 1775 and Scheele in 1777; consequently Priestley is usually given the credit. Both Scheele and Priestley produced oxygen by heating mercuric oxide.
Scheele called the gas ‘fire air’ because it was the only known supporter of combustion. It was later called ‘vital air’ because it was and is vital for the existence of animal life.
The gas was named by Antoine Laurent Lavoisier, after Priestley’s publication in 1775, from Greek roots meaning “acid-former”. As noted, the name reflects the then-common incorrect belief that all acids contain oxygen. This is also the origin of the Japanese name of oxygen “sanso” (san=acid, so=element). [Oxygen. Wikipedia. August 1 2007]
Possibly pot.
One of the less emphasized environmental crises within the public sphere is the decline of bee population. The United States for some unknown reason is seeing a fall in bee population. The same story is being played out in Europe and after attending a public talk at the Zoo Negara last week, I found out that the same trend is applicable in Malaysia. The annual haze might contribute to the decline in a big way. Bees are natural pollinators and thus, they are precious to the agricultural industry. Any significant drop of population is expected to adversely affect production.
During the talk, a professor from a local public university showed how honey is traditionally harvested in Malaysia, Thailand and Cambodia. It is quite amazing how the simple act of smoking a bee hive will chase the bees away and thus, making honey harvesting a less painful act. The professor continued to say that smoke disrupts communication between bees and disorients the insects.
If simple smoking could do that, imagine what weeks-long haze would do to the whole bee population found in Malaysia and other places that typical suffer from the haze originating from Indonesia annually?
The gravity of the matter is even more pronounced considering the fact the tropical trees only bloom once every 10 to 15 years. As mentioned earlier, bees play a large role in spreading pollens naturally. With haze happening on almost yearly basis, it is possible that the bees might fail to aid a pollination process and thus, disrupting a reproduction cycle.
The haze that several Southeast Asian countries experience almost every year has been going on for about a decade now. It is quite possible that a pollination process had occurred during that period.
If there is any disruption, the effect would not be visible immediately. There is a lag in the relevant causal relationship and therefore, we might need to wait a whole cycle to complete before we could observe how the haze is affecting reproduction process of floras.
If we are unlucky, it might be too late before we could do anything to rectify the matter.
I read the latest issue of Fortune on rice contamination earlier yesterday:
Last November, over the howls of anti-GMO (that’s genetically modified organisms) activists, the USDA retroactively approved the Liberty Link rice, known as LL601. The department said the genes that it approved are similar to those inserted for years into canola and corn, with no apparent ill effects. The experts at the USDA, the EPA and the Food and Drug Administration, all of which bear some responsibility for regulating transgenic food, say the contamination is nothing to worry about.
Then again, the experts also have dismissed repeated warnings that genetically modified crops can’t be managed or controlled. When organic farmers worried that their fields could be invaded by genetically modified plants grown nearby, regulators told them there was nothing to fear. The biotech industry promised that experimental, gene-altered plants could be grown in open fields and never, ever end up in the neighborhood Safeway.
Oops.
In any event, after last year’s contamination became public, and after rice prices took a tumble, and after Europe said it no longer wanted any American rice, and after several other countries, including Japan and Iraq (!), demanded rigorous testing of U.S. rice, the industry moved to contain the damage.
[…]
Deeter, Ventria’s CEO, says there’s no chance that the pharma rice will find its way into the food supply, as Liberty Link did: “We’re more strictly regulated, by a factor of ten – not for any good reason, by the way.”
In the USDA ruling, Rebecca Bech, an APHIS administrator, wrote, “The combination of isolation distance, production practices, and rice biology make it extremely unlikely that this rice would impact the U.S. commercial rice supply.”
In other words, there’s nothing – nothing at all – to fear. [Attack of the mutant rice. Marc Gunther. Fortune July 2 2007]
Spot the humor.