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On James Lee and the Events at Discovery Communications Headquarters
→ TreeHugger | 2 Sep 2010 | 7:27 pm MDT
photo: Michael Graham Richard
As most readers have probably heard or read by now, yesterday was a dramatic day at the Silver Spring, Maryland headquarters of TreeHugger's parent company, Discovery Communications. Early in the afternoon a lone man, later identified to be James J. Lee, entered the building, brandishing a pistol and carrying explosives, and began taking hostages. The situation ended four hours later with the hostages unharmed and Lee losing his...Read the full story on TreeHugger
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iFixit continues its retro gaming rampage, reduces an innocent Atari 2600 to bare components
→ Engadget | 2 Sep 2010 | 6:48 pm MDT
iFixit, is no device safe from the scars of your screwdriver? These eyes have been scarred, forced to witness the destruction of yet another childhood icon. Previously it was the RCA Studio II and the Magnavox Odyssey 100 before that. Now it's the rather more memorable Atari 2600 going under the scalpel, four simple screws removed to reveal an eight-bit, 1.19MHz processor featuring 128 bytes of RAM (yes, a massive 1,024 bits) and a graphics adapter capable of 192 x 160 resolution with 128 colors -- though only four could be used on any given line. Through these humble beginnings the cartridge-based console was born... and now here it rests.
iFixit continues its retro gaming rampage, reduces an innocent Atari 2600 to bare components originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 02 Sep 2010 20:48:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Samsung Galaxy Tab reported to retail at €699 and €799 in Europe (update: O2 Germany pricing)
→ Engadget | 2 Sep 2010 | 6:42 pm MDT
An increasing number of Euroland news outlets are reporting an eye-watering set of prices for Samsung's Galaxy Tab. Although still unofficial and therefore not yet to be trusted, the values we're hearing are €699 ($890) in France and €799 ($1,020) in Germany. Those presumably represent the cost of the 16GB and 32GB Tab, respectively, and align perfectly with Apple's iPad WiFi + 3G pricing -- aside from the fact the iPads have double the storage at each price point. Oops! That does make us wary to believe these numbers just yet, but if you want a laugh, why not check out UK importer Expansys today, which is offering a cracking deal for the 16GB Galaxy Tab at £680 ($1,050). And with only a 39-day wait!
[Thanks to everyone who sent these in]
Update: So we're hearing some conflicting information here. Samsung itself is telling us at IFA that no pricing has been announced and that any prices floating around are speculation -- but it seems the company has already announced a suggested retail prices of SEK 9,000 in Sweden including VAT, which works out to about $1,240 (or $930 without VAT). In other words, even after taxes have been removed from the equation, you're looking at a pretty pricey option for an unsubsidized device here. Let's hope we see some steep discounts on contract, eh? Thanks, Rasmus!
Update 2: O2 Germany's official Twitter account informs us that the Galaxy Tab will cost the Bundesrepublik roughly €759 (about $972) in all -- a €99 ($127) deposit to start off and then €27.50 ($35) a month likely over two years.Samsung Galaxy Tab reported to retail at €699 and €799 in Europe (update: O2 Germany pricing) originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 02 Sep 2010 20:42:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Permalink |ARMdevices.net, Journal du Geek, Expansys, Chip.de | Email this | Comments
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Toshiba finally dives into Blu-ray 3D with BDX3100 player, offers up BDX1100 if stereo's not your style
→ Engadget | 2 Sep 2010 | 6:26 pm MDT
Seems like Toshiba bit off more Blu-ray 3D than it could chew this year -- the Japanese firm's just announced that the new BDX3100KB will be its first set-top stereoscopic player, never mind the BDX3000 it announced at CES. Still, we're willing to forgive and forget if the new machine (replete with DivX and MKV playback, Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD Master Audio 7.1 surround, and instant playback of AVCHD footage from connected camcorders) makes it stateside sometime soon -- both it and the relatively boring BDX1100 standard Blu-ray unit are presently slated for a UK release (at unspecified prices) in October of this year. PR after the break.
Toshiba finally dives into Blu-ray 3D with BDX3100 player, offers up BDX1100 if stereo's not your style originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 02 Sep 2010 20:26:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Toshiba Camileo S30 and P20 pocket camcorders get touchscreens
→ Engadget | 2 Sep 2010 | 6:15 pm MDT
Toshiba's launching some new Camileo pocket HD camcorders at IFA, and hey -- just like everything else in the world, they've sprouted three-inch touchscreens. Both offer 1080p recording and 10x digital zooms with HDMI out and support for 64GB SD storage; the £139 ($214) S30 comes in a more standard form factor that's 19mm (.7 inch) thick and features eight megapixel still photos, automatic exposure control and image stabilization, while the £119 ($183) P20 comes in a pistol grip package and takes five megapixel stills. The P20 will hit in October, while the S30 is set to arrive in January, so it makes perfect sense for Toshiba to announce it now, in September. PR after the break.
Continue reading Toshiba Camileo S30 and P20 pocket camcorders get touchscreens
Toshiba Camileo S30 and P20 pocket camcorders get touchscreens originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 02 Sep 2010 20:15:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Hurricane Earl IV
→ Boing Boing | 2 Sep 2010 | 6:08 pm MDT
Xeni posted a great NASA image of the 2010 Hurricane Earl earlier this afternoon, which got me hunting around for some information on Hurricane Earls past. After all, this is not the first Earl. There've been three others, as well as some lesser Tropical Storms of the same name. The naming lists for these things are used again every seven years, and individual names are only retired after they've been attached to a particularly damaging storm. Earl, so far, has not. When the names do get retired, replacing them isn't easy. According to Time magazine, there's a whole list of types of names that aren't allowed. Over the years, the meteorologists in charge of naming have resorted to flipping through the weirder end of baby name books and adding friends' names to the list. Time: How are hurricanes and tropical storms named? Above: Hurricanes Earl and Danielle in their 1998 incarnations....
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Toshiba goes all LED with new HDTVs at IFA 2010
→ Engadget | 2 Sep 2010 | 6:00 pm MDT
Besides that Android tablet, Toshiba's brought a whole slew LED-lit LCD televisions to IFA 2010. The REGZA WL Series is the company's first range of 3DTVs, available in 40-, 46- and 55-inch sizes (pictured above) with LED backlighting, 7,000,000:1 contrast ratios, it 3D Resolution+ upscaling tech and one pair of active shutter glasses bundled with each one. They're also DLNA enabled and ready for Windows 7, with the Toshiba Media Controller software making streaming content as easy as dragging and dropping a file. The rest of the lineup includes the high end VL series with LED backlighting, midrange REGZA 42SL738 42-inch HDTV and edge-lit SL738 series LCDs in smaller sizes from 9- to 32-inches. Check the press site or YouTube trailers embedded after the break for more details, and don't be surprised to see the 200Hz motion technology, millimeter measurements, DVB-T tuners and BBC streaming while these are due in October across the pond, we'll be keeping an eye out at CEDIA for US-bound variants.
Continue reading Toshiba goes all LED with new HDTVs at IFA 2010
Toshiba goes all LED with new HDTVs at IFA 2010 originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 02 Sep 2010 20:00:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Permalink |Toshiba IFA 2010 site | Email this | Comments
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This Spam Infographic About Spam Infographics Makes My Head Hurt
→ TechCrunch | 2 Sep 2010 | 5:53 pm MDT
Buzzfeed, the Huffington Post of Internet memes, today wins the "more meta than thou" award for making "An Infographic Backlash Infographic" inspired by the tragic tale of a guy whose job it was to game Digg back when Digg had enough traffic to make it worth gaming.
Okay Buzzfeed, just because you understand recursion, doesn't mean you have to rub it in our face all the time. Aside from the Greyhat SEO tricks, your anti-infographic infographic and the post that inspired it are actually just describing successful web-writing and content creation. It's like...there's a reason people are clicking on it.
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Toshiba Satellite A665-3DV gets a stereoscopic software makeover, now plays nice with 2D content, Blu-ray 3D and external screens
→ Engadget | 2 Sep 2010 | 5:46 pm MDT
Nabbed one of Toshiba's fully-loaded stereoscopic laptops, only to find a dearth of actual 3D? The company's got a software update that might revitalize your machine. Where previously you'd have to install ready-made dual-ocular content directly to your hard drive, the manufacturer's just promised a Toshiba Video Player application that will convert your existing 2D content into 3D, plus firmware that will help you pipe stereoscopic video over the integrated HDMI port and upgrade your Blu-ray drive to take the new Blu-ray 3D discs -- though we honestly thought it could do that last bit already. While there's no word on availability, the press release suggests a download will pop up any moment... so, you know, be sure to keep both eyes out. PR after the break.
Toshiba Satellite A665-3DV gets a stereoscopic software makeover, now plays nice with 2D content, Blu-ray 3D and external screens originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 02 Sep 2010 19:46:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Another oil rig explosion, and the science of dispersants
→ Boing Boing | 2 Sep 2010 | 5:42 pm MDT
Another oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico exploded today. All crew members survived. Right now, nobody knows whether or not the explosion caused a leak in any of the seven wells that the rig collects from. There have been reports of an oil slick on the water near the fire, but that could just as easily be from the finite amount of oil stored on the rig—which would still a spill, but a significantly less problematic one. Other than that, there's not really much information out about this right now. If anybody's learned anything from Deepwater Horizon it seems to be that you're better off, PR-wise, if you don't have to correct everything you say two days later. To give you something to chew over in the meantime, though, Deep Sea News has been doing a really interesting series on the science (such as it is) of oil dispersants. It's interesting, not just because of the basic facts, but also because it gets into the details of why we don't know more. Dispersants must be applied successfully and have a high effectiveness once in ocean waters. This sounds easy, in principle--once you've perfected your Corexit formula in the lab, just spray it from a helicopter, and voila! Except there are a lot of factors which you also have to take into account: the composition of the oil spilled, sea energy, whether the oil has been subjected to weathering at all, exact type of dispersant used and the amount which you sprayed, and ocean temperature/salinity. Thank goodness for all those lab tests over the years which figured all this stuff out, you say. Um, well actually it seems like even designing simulation experiments is difficult, and different tests can report different effectiveness scores for the same dispersant. It is difficult to accurately scale up lab tests in order to predict dispersant action on real spills. Older studies used methods and analyses which have since been discredited. Wave-tank tests can probably provide upper limits on dispersant effectiveness, but there are SEVENTEEN (!!) critical factors that require strict control for accurate results (Fingas 2002). Field tests in open ecosystems are even worse for measuring the fate of oil and controlling variables. In terms of measuring dispersant effectiveness, tank tests, field tests, and lab tests all disagree. Awesome. Part 1: How effective are dispersants on real oil spills? Part 2: How toxic are dispersants? Part 3: Do dispersants really promote degradation of oil? Image of a random oil rig: Some rights reserved by kenhodge13...
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Preschoolers being radio-tagged
→ Boing Boing | 2 Sep 2010 | 5:37 pm MDT
Mary Robinette Kowal sez, "Preschoolers in Richmond, California are being handed RFID jerseys when they get to school. The ACLU points out that in addition to the privacy concerns, these are not secure tags. It has the potential to make kidnapping and stalking very easy." The editors of Scientific American said it well back in May 2005: "Tagging ... kids becomes a form of indoctrination into an emerging surveillance society that young minds should be learning to question." Don't Let Schools Chip Your Kids (Thanks, Mary, via Submitterator!) Video of a guy implanting an RFID chip into his hand How to hack RFID-enabled credit cards for $8 TV Credit-card companies killed Mythbusters segment on RFID ... RFID Rube Goldberg device Britain will make foreigners carry RFID identity cards and will ... HOWTO kill/block an RFID Disney kills its spy-on-your-kids phones...
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Roku XD and Netgear Roku XD Player hit the FCC
→ Engadget | 2 Sep 2010 | 5:33 pm MDT
Well, well, what's this? Looks like Roku has some bigger plans for hitting back at the $99 Apple TV than just price cuts of its own: a Roku XD and a Netgear Roku XD Player just hit the FCC. That's right, Netgear -- Roku's expanding its platform to third parties. We don't know if these two devices are standalones or designed to work together, but we're guessing they're standalones; the Netgear unit might blend in some of the Digital Entertainer line's support for local playback and services like PlayOn, YouTube, and CinemaNow. Of course, the big question is going to be price, since if these are substantially more than the Apple TV's $99 they're going to have to offer some major features, but we should be finding out what's up soon enough: the confidentiality on these docs lifts October 23.
Roku XD and Netgear Roku XD Player hit the FCC originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 02 Sep 2010 19:33:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Wireless Goodness | Roku XD Player, Roku XD | Email this | Comments
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Déjà Vu All Over Again: Offshore Oil Platform Explodes in Gulf of Mexico [Update]
→ TreeHugger | 2 Sep 2010 | 5:20 pm MDT
Image: Google Maps
Thankfully, No Deaths This Time
An offshore oil platform exploded and caught fire today in the Gulf of Mexico. It is located about 80 miles off the Louisiana coast, west of the site of BP's massive oil spill. All 13 people who were on the rig were evacuated and only one was injured, reports the U.S. Coast Guard....Read the full story on TreeHugger
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Lowbrow Tarot Deck
→ Boing Boing | 2 Sep 2010 | 5:12 pm MDT
Curator and artist Aunia Kahn selected a group of 23 lowbrow/pop surrealist artists to interpret one card each of the Major Arcana of the Tarot deck. Hi-Fructose has a sneak preview of 14 of the cards, which will debut October 1 with a full show at Los Angeles's La Luz de Jesus Gallery, a book, and of course a deck of cards. Above left, card back by Daniel Martin Diaz; right, The Devil by Chet Zar The LowBrow Tarot Card Project preview (Hi-Fructose) LOWBROW + TAROT + PROJECT UPDATE: You can see the entire show at the La Luz de Jesus site here....
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Samsung Galaxy Tab rooted, just for bragging rights
→ Engadget | 2 Sep 2010 | 5:08 pm MDT
Okay, Sera-Apps, we're happy you cracked the Milestone, but now you're showing off -- rooting the Samsung Galaxy Tab probably a full month before launch. Do you really want Samsung to have time to patch those holes? That's what we thought. Now, go enjoy your Superuser status, and please save some exploits for the rest of us.
Samsung Galaxy Tab rooted, just for bragging rights originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 02 Sep 2010 19:08:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Permalinkjkkmobile | Sera-Apps | Email this | Comments
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Taiji Opens Season on Dolphins Today
→ TreeHugger | 2 Sep 2010 | 5:05 pm MDT
Photo via Animal Planet
Each year in early September, Japan opens season on dolphins, and today marks the start of the season in Taiji, a now notorious place for slaughtering cetaceans thanks to the Oscar-winning documentary The Cove. And of course, activist Ric O'Barry is on the move. He delivered a petition to the US Embassy in Tokyo signed by 1.7 million people from 155 countries demanding an end to ...Read the full story on TreeHugger
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Cartoonist Pete Emslie posing with Julie Newmar
→ Boing Boing | 2 Sep 2010 | 4:59 pm MDT
I can't stop looking at this photo of talented cartoonist Pete Emslie posing with my favorite Catwoman, the beautiful Julie Newmar. Pete Emslie at Fan Expo 2010 Julie Newmar as April Conquest More of Pete Emslie's doodles on newspapers Thoughts on doodling...
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Mark Zuckerberg Is On iTunes Ping — But Only One Is Real
→ TechCrunch | 2 Sep 2010 | 4:50 pm MDT
Perhaps you've heard that Apple and Facebook are having a little bit of an issue at the moment. Despite launching with Facebook Connect integration yesterday, it's now nowhere to be seen on Apple's new music social network, Ping. And that's too bad because even Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg signed up to try out Ping yesterday, we hear.
While Facebook Connect will no longer help you find Zuckerberg there, if you do a simple name search, there he is. Well actually, there he is twice. Hmm. Which one to choose?
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Samsung Wave 723 flaunts Bada, little else at IFA
→ Engadget | 2 Sep 2010 | 4:46 pm MDT
Samsung just grew its Bada line with a low-end foil to the original Wave, the so-called Wave 723 -- and we just happened to catch it hanging out tucked away in a distributor's booth at IFA this week. Though the leather-grain flip cover is a classy touch, make no mistake that this one is destined for the bottom bits of the full-touch featurephone market segment thanks to a middle-of-the-road TFT LCD that looks pretty washed out and low-res compared to the Wave's Super AMOLED (interestingly, the 723 is the first Bada phone to use version 1.1 of the platform, whose major addition is support for auto-scaling between multiple resolutions). We were also surprised at how poorly responsive the screen was to touches and swipes; we even thought for a moment that it might be resistive, but that doesn't seem to be the case. Then again, 802.11n support ain't bad, and Samsung certainly seems as committed to Bada as ever, so we imagine they'll sell a few. Hit up the gallery!
Samsung Wave 723 flaunts Bada, little else at IFA originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 02 Sep 2010 18:46:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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My Name is (Hurricane) Earl
→ Boing Boing | 2 Sep 2010 | 4:40 pm MDT
How astronauts see Hurricane Earl. This image acquired by NASA two days ago: The relatively placid view from the International Space Station belied the potent forces at work in Hurricane Earl as it hovered over the tropical Atlantic Ocean on August 30. With maximum sustained winds of 135 miles (215 kilometers) per hour, the storm was classified as a category 4 on the Saffir-Simpson hurricane scale as it passed north of the Virgin Islands....
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In The Coming HTML5 Browser Wars, The Markup Should Remain The Same
→ TechCrunch | 2 Sep 2010 | 4:39 pm MDT
On Monday, Google made a big splash with a customized Arcade Fire video page that showed off all the cool things HTML5 can do, from video, animations and 3D rendering to gorgeous fonts and choreographed windows. It's all cutting edge stuff as far as what is possible with a Web browser goes, but there is one very big problem. It doesn't work so great in all browsers, even browsers that supposedly support HTML5. If you go to the landing page that launches the video in Firefox or even the forthcoming IE9 (which isn't out yet, but is very HTML5-friendly), it detects your browser and suggests you use Chrome instead.
href="http://techcrunch.com/2009/06/09/demo-firefox-35-treats-videos-like-web-pages-why-cant-flash-do-that/">supports HTML5? This isn't the first time there have been issues with HTML5 compatibility. The problem is that HTML5 is so young that the standards have not been hammered out yet across all browsers. The markup language required to produce the same effect is different for different browsers.
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Toshiba issues recall for 41,000 T Series laptops because of burn hazard
→ Engadget | 2 Sep 2010 | 4:25 pm MDT
Toshiba's announced a worldwide, voluntary recall of about 41,000 T Series laptops because of a burn hazard. The laptops apparently carry the risk of overheating AC adapters which can then... burn you. Toshiba has reported that its received 129 complaints, including two minor burns, about the laptops, which include the Satellite T135, Satellite T135D and Satellite Pro T130, which were sold between August of 2009 through August of 2010. If you happened to buying one of these burn-prone babies, hit up the source to contact Toshiba for more information.
Toshiba issues recall for 41,000 T Series laptops because of burn hazard originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 02 Sep 2010 18:25:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
PermalinkUS Consumer Product Safety Commission | Toshiba | Email this | Comments
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Looking for Bigfoot in Minnesota
→ Boing Boing | 2 Sep 2010 | 4:14 pm MDT
Yesterday, while flipping through my Minneapolis Continuing Education fall catalog, I noticed a class on the Great Mysteries of Science, which turned out to be lake monsters, Sasquatch and UFOs. The class was to be taught by a retired University of Minnesota professor who has since participated in an expedition to study said Sasquatch. Now, this surprised me, because I had previously pegged Bigfoot as one of those coastal elites, who spent all his time in the Pacific Northwest and shunned the forests here in flyover country. But, apparently, Sasquatch is a Real American after all. In fact, sightings are common enough in northern Minnesota that the Bigfoot Field Research Organization recently organized a Sasquatch search party up there. Forty-two people went along, including my friend, travel journalist Frank Bures, who wrote about the experience of "'squatch hunting" for Minnesota Monthly magazine. We'd been split into 15 camps, and we were carrying an armament of investigative equipment: night-vision scopes, walkie-talkies, GPS, infrared cameras, thermal-recording devices, video and audio recorders, and more. Someone handed me a thermal imager, which would show bright heat signatures of the living things in the forest. I scanned the area around us but saw nothing except a few warm rocks and something that may have been a raccoon. "We've got some activity here," came another report across the radio. "They're walking around our site." Whenever the group laughed, apparently, there was a rustling in the woods. When they laughed really hard, there was even more rustling. Those lucky bastards!...
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Rob Cockerham's quest for a solid ice beer tray
→ Boing Boing | 2 Sep 2010 | 4:13 pm MDT
Rob say: "I spent way too much time making a solid-ice beer tray, but I still feel it was worth the effort. To be truly complete, I should have test floated it in a pool or hot tub, but the bottle opener kept short-circuiting my experiments." The Quest for a Solid Ice Beer Tray...
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Laser cut and 3D printed decorative objects derived from geography
→ Boing Boing | 2 Sep 2010 | 4:04 pm MDT
Fluid Forms is a 3D printing and laser-cutting company that produces a wide range of objects based on maps, satellite images, and other photos. They started off with topographical maps of physical places printed in sterling silver with pinbacks, and now they've expanded their repertoire. The new offerings include necklaces with steel charms based on your photos, or maps (inexplicably, these are marketed as "necklaces for men," though I can't imagine why they're not unisex -- the same charms are also available as earrings) and acrylic/wood clocks with finely cut lines reproducing streetmaps. I love the idea of using "emotionally significant" places as motifs for jewelry and other decorative items. On the 3D printing side, it's a clever way of giving everyone a ready-made, personally important 3D mesh to use as the basis for an object. 3D printed silver brooches featuring your favorite landscapes ... Laser cut Poe in stainless steel...
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Kids' Rube Goldberg machine
→ Boing Boing | 2 Sep 2010 | 4:00 pm MDT
Here's video of the triumphant success of an elaborate kids' Rube Goldberg machine, created at an "informal Rube Goldberg summer camp for kids ages 3-8." I know nothing about this summer-camp, but it seems like one of the great Good Things of our era -- especially judging from the awesome elation of the kids after the successful run! How to Get a Beach Ball Into a Galvanized Bucket (the Hard Way) OK Go's Rube Goldberg music video Rube Goldberg rat-run sends a neutral balloon through dozens of ... RFID Rube Goldberg device Rube Goldberg Machine animation from Sesame Street Rube Goldberg Cream Egg killer Ideal toy commercials from 1963...
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Done Deal: HP Gets 3PAR For $2.35 Billion In Cash
→ TechCrunch | 2 Sep 2010 | 4:00 pm MDT
It's officially over. After Dell pulled out of the running this morning, HP has announced that it has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire data storage company 3PAR, for $33 per share in cash, or a value of $2.35 billion. The transaction has been approved by the boards of directors of both companies.
This morning, HP upped the ante with an offer worth $33 per share or $2.4 billion. 3PAR accepted HP's bid and Dell withdrew.
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Google's Schmidt mocked in Times Square ads
→ Webware.com | 2 Sep 2010 | 3:54 pm MDT
Consumer Watchdog produced two cartoony ads slamming Google CEO Eric Schmidt as part of an effort to build support for a "do not track" list.Originally posted at Relevant Results
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Obama's Oval Office Is Beige And Could Have Been Green
→ TreeHugger | 2 Sep 2010 | 3:54 pm MDT
New York Times
Everyone in the red state is piling on the redesign of the oval office, complaining it is not patriotic enough, even though George Bush took Bill Clinton's red, white and blue garish extravaganza and turned it into a muted southern living room (and lost the red, white and blue) showing more taste than patriotism. But since...Read the full story on TreeHugger
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Facebook Testing “Subscribe”, Their Version Of Follow — Well Sort Of, Maybe
→ TechCrunch | 2 Sep 2010 | 3:30 pm MDT
I feel like all I've written about the past few weeks is Facebook's need for a new social dynamic. Specifically, I want Facebook to break their social graph into two: those people who you are friends with, and those who you follow -- for sharing purposes. It seems that Facebook may be testing something like that out -- well sort of, maybe.
Facebook appears to be testing out a new feature called "Subscribe." A source who supposedly has it enabled, tells All Facebook that "by subscribing you don’t miss any updates from people you subscribe to.” While on the face of it, this would seem to be a lot like the idea of "follow" it's not clear from that wording if you actually already need to be friends with a person in order to follow them.
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Hot Or Not’s App Answers The Next Question: Close By Or Not?
→ TechCrunch | 2 Sep 2010 | 3:20 pm MDT
It was only a matter of time before this app came out. The folks over at Hot or Not have launched a location-based free iPhone app that will show you the hottest ladies and gents that are close to you.
If you aren't familiar with Hot or Not, the site allows you to rate pictures of girls or a guys (depending on your taste) on a scale of 1 to 10. It's a mindless site and game which has managed to gather a fairly massive user base. 
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Happy Birthday Chrome, You’re About To Overtake Firefox On TechCrunch
→ TechCrunch | 2 Sep 2010 | 2:45 pm MDT
As we pointed out earlier, today is Google Chrome's second birthday. Since it launched in beta on September 2, 2008, it has come a long way (it's already 6 versions deep). Back then, it was Windows-only, with official Mac and Linux support only coming late last year. But now it's on the verge of another milestone: becoming the top browser coming to this site.
I've checked out our logs over the past few years to see how well Chrome has been doing compared to its rival browsers. The numbers are shockingly strong for such a new entry -- particularly in the past year. Obviously, TechCrunch has a tech-centric audience, but I don't think it's off-base to say that you're also a leading audience of early adopters that often point to where the general public will be in the future.
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HP Competition Winner Has Rooftop Farms, Plugin Units
→ TreeHugger | 2 Sep 2010 | 2:14 pm MDT
images from Bustler
The HP Skyline 2020 competition "outlined fresh visual imaginations for the skyline discarding preconceived notions" and "allowed students and professionals to partner and elucidate their visions and designs that would change the skyline thereby transforming the city itself." ...Read the full story on TreeHugger
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The First Samsung Galaxy Tab Commercial Shows Off Swype, Augmented Reality & Video Calling
→ TechCrunch | 2 Sep 2010 | 2:10 pm MDT
Prepare to get hit by a ton of Sammy marketing. The commercial embedded here is likely just the first wave of Samsung's assault on the iPad. And it seems that they're going about it the right way, too.
The commercial simply shows off the Galaxy Tab's capabilities in an Apple-ish sort of way. We've said all along that if any Android tablet has a chance to steal marketshare away from the iPad, it's the Samsung Galaxy Tab and this commercial, along with our extensive hands-on, seems to confirm our thought. Now all we need is to know is its price tag and when it will hit stores.
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Today on Planet 100: Golf Course is an Environmental Hole in One (Video)
→ TreeHugger | 2 Sep 2010 | 1:45 pm MDT
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Mobile Devices Need Custom Maps
→ Wired: Gadgets | 2 Sep 2010 | 1:29 pm MDT
Development Seed is engineering tools to create custom maps that work in a wider variety of situations such as natural disasters and in the developing world.
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Universal Cell Phone Charger Coming Soon...At Some Point...In the Maybe-Not-Distant Future...
→ TreeHugger | 2 Sep 2010 | 1:12 pm MDT
Photo via kalleboo
A common complaint about cell phones is that there is no universal charger -- if you don't have the one that works specifically for your phone, well, you're just out of luck when your battery dies. It's not only a hassle for cell phone owners, but it's a huge problem for e-waste as the chargers become useless when the corresponding cell phones are tossed aside for newer models. But progress toward a more environmentally responsible (and plain common sense) solution for a universal charger that works will all phon...Read the full story on TreeHugger
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First Look: Official Twitter App for iPad Feels Smooth as Butter
→ Wired: Gadgets | 2 Sep 2010 | 1:00 pm MDT
The official Twitter app for iPad is finally here, and star developer Loren Brichter has polished yet another gem. Twitter for iPad sports a really elegant interface that's significantly faster and more intuitive than competing Twitter clients we've tested (such as Twitterific and Tweetdeck).
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Nailed It (Not): Our First Twitter Post, Circa 2006
→ TechCrunch | 2 Sep 2010 | 12:45 pm MDT
I often point to my first post on Twitter, the day it launched in 2006. Why? Mostly because of how wrong I was. Best line: "I imagine most users are not going to want to have all of their Twttr messages published on a public website." I also love that original vowel-free logo.
The first couple of comments to that post are classic as well:
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iTunes Ping And Facebook Were Friends Yesterday. And I’m Still Connected.
→ TechCrunch | 2 Sep 2010 | 12:39 pm MDT
There seems to be some confusion out there right now about iTunes Ping, Apple's new music social network, and Facebook. Some people seem to think it was never a part of iTunes, that Apple decided against connecting; while other reports say they think it was at one point integrated, but that it wasn't working and has since been removed. I can tell you for sure that yesterday Facebook Connect was a part of Ping -- because I used it.
When I first loaded iTunes 10 yesterday and started up Ping, connecting with Facebook was the first thing I did to find friends. At first, I will say that it didn't work. I hit the Connect button, entered my credentials, and nothing happened. But I tried again and it worked perfectly. I found a handful of Facebook friends who had just started using Ping as well and connected with them.
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Fujitsu ScanSnap Counts Quality Over Quantity
→ Wired: Gadgets | 2 Sep 2010 | 12:33 pm MDT
Fujitsu's scanner is your new (albeit bulky) buddy if you want high-quality images. The sturdy document feeder gets pages in straight, so you get them out right.
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Chrome 6 Arrives, Just in Time for Cake
→ Wired: Software | 2 Sep 2010 | 12:31 pm MDT
Google is celebrating the second birthday of its Chrome web browser with the release of Chrome 6. Among the new features are an updated user interface, auto-fill for web forms, extension syncing, increased speed and numerous bug fixes.
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California Bombs on Plastic Bag Ban
→ TreeHugger | 2 Sep 2010 | 12:25 pm MDT
Photo by Taberandrew
Despite San Francisco leading the way on banning plastic bags back in 2007, California senators rejected a proposed plan to ban plastic bags statewide. The measure to remove carryout plastic bags from supermarkets, drug stores and convenience shops would have taken effect by July 2012 in larger stores, and 2013 in smaller stores, and it would have made California the first state to institute a ban like this. It was Read the full story on TreeHugger
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Alexandra Cousteau, the Ocean Ambassador (Podcast)
→ TreeHugger | 2 Sep 2010 | 12:14 pm MDT
"We all live downstream from one another," says Alexandra Cousteau. In other words, what we do to the water, we do to ourselves. A third-generation Cousteau explorer, Alexandra is an ambassador of the sea. She's the host of Planet Green's Blue August, is currently traveling the world as a documentarian with her organization Blue Legacy, and, when she has a spare moment, does things like c...Read the full story on TreeHugger
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New York City Inks Contract for Up to 475 Compressed Natural Gas Buses
→ TreeHugger | 2 Sep 2010 | 12:01 pm MDT
Photo: New Flyer
What's the Difference Between CNG and Diesel?
The Board of the New York Metropolitan Transit Authority (the "MTA") has awarded New Flyer of America a contract for up to 475 buses. The contract is for 135 40-foot compressed natural gas ("CNG") heavy-duty transit buses with options for up to an additional 340 CNG buses. We know that buses are a pretty green way to move lots of people around in urban area, but how much better are CNG buses compared to regular diesel buses? The U.S. Department of Energy has some numbers to allow us to compare....Read the full story on TreeHugger
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Survey: E-mail eats up your time off
→ Webware.com | 2 Sep 2010 | 11:51 am MDT
Outlook add-in maker Xobni finds Americans and Britons are having trouble getting away from the workplace because of the reach e-mail has into their lives.Originally posted at The Digital Home
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Samsung Introduces Its 7-Inch Tablet to Rival iPad
→ Wired: Gadgets | 2 Sep 2010 | 11:06 am MDT
Samsung has announced the launch of a tablet that could become the first major Android-powered challenger to the Apple iPad.
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Two years on, Chrome reshapes browser market
→ Webware.com | 2 Sep 2010 | 8:37 am MDT
The influence that Google's browser has had on the market is broader than its actual use. On Chrome's second anniversary, Google releases the sixth stable version.Originally posted at Deep Tech
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Google and AOL renew their partnership
→ Webware.com | 2 Sep 2010 | 8:27 am MDT
The companies say they'll keep their worldwide partnership going for five more years, in an arrangement that now factors in YouTube and mobile search.Originally posted at The Digital Home
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The OTHER Ground Zero Islamic Memorial
→ Common Sense Junction | 2 Sep 2010 | 8:13 am MDT
Laura Bush plans to join Michelle Obama in Somerset, Pennsylvania on September 11, 2010 to celebrate the pending memorial to be built there under the supervision of the National Park Service. The memorial — or the Crescent of Betrayal — will be constructed on the crash site of Flight 93. It is designed to honor [...]
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Muslim Heritage In America
→ Common Sense Junction | 2 Sep 2010 | 7:21 am MDT
From over the transom: Barack Hussein Obama, during his Cairo speech in June, 2009, said: “I know, too, that Islam has always been a part of America’s story.” AN AMERICAN CITIZEN’S RESPONSE: Dear Mr. Obama: Were those Muslims that were in America when the Pilgrims first landed? Funny, I thought they were Native American Indians. [...]
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Electric Kettles Are Steeped in the Future
→ Wired: Gadgets | 2 Sep 2010 | 5:00 am MDT
Blazing fast (four minutes and nine seconds!), streamlined and full of highlights, Cuisinart's PerfecTemp puts its kettle competition to shame.
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U.S. To Arizona Travelers: Area Is Unsafe
→ Common Sense Junction | 2 Sep 2010 | 3:10 am MDT
The Washingtom Times The federal government has posted signs along a major interstate highway in Arizona, more than 100 miles north of the U.S.-Mexico border, warning travelers the area is unsafe because of drug and alien smugglers, and a local sheriff says Mexican drug cartels now control some parts of the state. The signs were [...]
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Dead Flowers Ignite House Fire
→ Common Sense Junction | 2 Sep 2010 | 3:05 am MDT
LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (AP) — A fire that did $20,000 in damages to a northeast Arkansas home wasn’t caused by an electrical problem or burning food or arson, an insurance investigator concluded. Instead, the dead plants did it, according to a report summary provided to the homeowner, Brian Duncan. “The fire was caused by self-heating [...]
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No Other President Would Have Considered It
→ Common Sense Junction | 2 Sep 2010 | 3:00 am MDT
Carol A. Taber at American Thinker: Beyond the outrage felt by Governor Jan Brewer, whose move to protect Arizonans’ human rights was offered up as an example of an abuse of human rights by Mr. Obama’s State Department report (gotta protect those drug cartel murderers!), for many citizens, this report is a rank anti-American manifesto [...]
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In The News Today
→ Common Sense Junction | 2 Sep 2010 | 2:00 am MDT
• A Shrink Asks: What’s Wrong with Obama? • Robin of Berkeley: A Psychotherapist’s Analysis of Obama • Robin of Berkeley: “Brain-Dead in Berkeley” • “Terminally ill sentenced to premature death in UK’s NHS” • Rights versus Wants ~~~~~~ [Your Browser does not support frames or is currently configured not to display frames. However, you [...]
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Exclusive Gallery: 1983 Nintendo Family Computer Teardown
→ Wired: Gadgets | 1 Sep 2010 | 10:00 pm MDT
In 1983 Nintendo released the Famicon console. Now 26 years later we tear it apart to see what makes it tick.
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Google Testing Out Full-Featured Google Apps
→ Wired: Software | 1 Sep 2010 | 9:00 pm MDT
There's a sign of hope for frustrated Google Apps users who feel left out of getting all the cool toys regular Google users get: Google is inviting select users this week to test out Apps with all the bells and whistles.
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Tab tweaks land in Chrome Canary
→ Webware.com | 1 Sep 2010 | 5:47 pm MDT
Google adds a new labs feature to its bleeding-edge version of Chrome to make it easier for users to test features that are still in development, but at least partially ready for users to explore.Originally posted at The Download Blog
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Apple Redefines Remote Control — Now, It's Your Cellphone
→ Wired: Gadgets | 1 Sep 2010 | 3:14 pm MDT
There's a lot to say about the new Apple TV that Steve Jobs presented today. But I'm not going to talk about the tiny little box. I'm not going to talk about your TV, either ... much. Instead, I’m going to talk about that remote.
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Hands-On With New Apple iPods
→ Wired: Gadgets | 1 Sep 2010 | 2:24 pm MDT
Apple has refreshed its family of iPod products. The iPod Nano, iPod Touch and iPod Shuffle all received some compelling makeovers that should help Apple stay in the lead in the portable media-player market.
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Sony announces cloud-based music service
→ Webware.com | 1 Sep 2010 | 2:00 pm MDT
On the same day Apple displays its digital music dominance, an electronics rival says it'll offer streaming music over the Net.Originally posted at Deep Tech
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Skyfire promises Flash video playback on its iPhone app
→ Webware.com | 1 Sep 2010 | 2:00 pm MDT
Mobile browser-maker Skyfire submits its mobile app for the iPhone, whose big draw will be playing back Flash video that's been transcoded into HTML 5 standards.Originally posted at iPhone Atlas
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Hands-On With New $100 Apple TV
→ Wired: Gadgets | 1 Sep 2010 | 1:51 pm MDT
When Steve Jobs was preparing to introduce the Apple TV, he called it "one more hobby," and based on our first impressions, that's a safe choice of words. The new Apple TV is a major hardware revamp — one quarter the size of its predecessor.
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Apple Takes Aim at Cable With Tiny New Apple TV
→ Wired: Gadgets | 1 Sep 2010 | 12:21 pm MDT
The new Apple TV, which will go on sale at the end of September for $100, is a puny box just one-quarter the size of the previous model. It has an HDMI port, a built-in power supply, an optical audio port, an ethernet jack, and built-in Wi-Fi.
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Target to be first to sell Facebook Credits
→ Webware.com | 1 Sep 2010 | 12:07 pm MDT
The megaretailer plans to sell $15, $25, and $50 Credits cards in its brick-and-mortar stores and on its site, the company announces. Sales will start on Sunday.Originally posted at The Digital Home
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IE slips in usage share; Chrome resumes growth
→ Webware.com | 1 Sep 2010 | 11:19 am MDT
In August, earlier trends reasserted themselves, with IE dipping, Chrome rising, and Firefox flat. Microsoft is happy to see IE6 on its way out.Originally posted at Deep Tech
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EA touts Madden social 'experience' on Facebook
→ Webware.com | 1 Sep 2010 | 9:07 am MDT
Madden NRL Superstars lets players create a fantasy football team and compete against others on Facebook. If you want to win, though, be ready to cough up cash.Originally posted at The Digital Home
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BUSTED: Orlando Mosque Finances Hamas Fundraiser
→ Common Sense Junction | 1 Sep 2010 | 7:38 am MDT
The most signifcant video you’ll see this year.
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ACTIVE CITIZEN: Michael Berry of KTRH.com
→ Common Sense Junction | 1 Sep 2010 | 7:28 am MDT
I’m Taking Action – Michael Berry of KTRH.com / 950KPRC.com
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Another Way Congress Critters Steal Tax $
→ Common Sense Junction | 1 Sep 2010 | 7:22 am MDT
Congressional investigators are questioning a half-dozen lawmakers for possibly misspending government funds meant to pay for overseas travel, according to people familiar with the matter. The investigation follows a Wall Street Journal article in March that said lawmakers had used daily cash stipends, meant to cover certain costs of official government travel overseas, to cover [...]
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Why Does 'Twitter API' Keep Asking for My Password?
→ Wired: Software | 31 Aug 2010 | 2:11 pm MDT
Sites around the web — including Wired.com — are getting splashed with a mysterious dialog Tuesday, thanks to a change in the way Twitter handles user authentication.
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Obama Reports Arizona To UNHRC (Updated)
→ Common Sense Junction | 31 Aug 2010 | 6:40 am MDT
UNHRC = UN Human Rights Council The radical Obama Administration used the new Arizona immigration law as an example of human rights violations even though it follows federal law. Gateway Pundit Update: Go read Michelle Malkin’s view!
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Twitter Moves to OAuth: The OAuthcalypse Is Nigh
→ Wired: Software | 30 Aug 2010 | 3:30 pm MDT
Twitter is killing support for basic user authentication in third-party apps on Tuesday morning. Instead, Twitter will now require all third-party app developers to use OAuth for user authentication.
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Chrome 7 Shows Off Hardware Acceleration, 'Tabpose'
→ Wired: Software | 29 Aug 2010 | 10:45 pm MDT
Google's web browser will soon gain hardware-accelerated graphics — the latest trend for browsers that has already shown up in early builds of Internet Explorer 9 and Firefox 4. It also gets a new animated tab organizer.
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Paul Allen Files Patent Lawsuits Against Entire Web ... Except Microsoft
→ Wired: Software | 27 Aug 2010 | 1:20 pm MDT
Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen has filed patent lawsuits against some of the net's largest companies, including Google and eBay, alleging they are violating patents he owns on recommendations and displaying information to web users.
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Leaked Screenshot Shows Cleaner, Simpler IE9
→ Wired: Software | 26 Aug 2010 | 11:00 am MDT
Microsoft Internet Explorer 9 is expected to be unveiled Sept. 15, but the company's Russian press site accidentally spilled the beans by posting a screenshot of the browser's new simplified, streamlined interface.
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Ad Firm Sued for Allegedly Re-Creating Deleted Cookies
→ Wired: Software | 24 Aug 2010 | 4:30 pm MDT
Yet another large web company has been hit with a lawsuit alleging that re-creating deleted user cookies violates federal privacy laws.
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Fourth Firefox 4 Beta Adds 'Panorama,' Hardware Acceleration
→ Wired: Software | 24 Aug 2010 | 12:00 pm MDT
Mozilla has released the fourth beta for the upcoming Firefox 4 browser. The latest pre-release version of Firefox 4 brings several new features, including a new tab organization tool, hardware acceleration in Windows 7 and more support for HTML5 video.
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Flashy HTML5 Experiments Point to Web's Future
→ Wired: Software | 24 Aug 2010 | 11:30 am MDT
There are already plenty of practical examples of HTML5 on the web. However, to really see the bleeding edge of HTML5 and what might be possible in the future, you'll have to look beyond the practical and peer into the trenches.
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Curse of the Kudzu
→ Climate Feedback | 18 May 2010 | 11:36 am MDT
Alicia Newton
Kudzu vines have become a wide-spread but unwelcome sight throughout much of the southeastern United States. The noxious weed – native to Asia and once planted to prevent soil erosion – has spread rapidly, smothering native species in its wake. But the vine may be wreaking atmospheric havoc as well.
In a paper in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Jonathan Hickman of Stony Brook University and colleagues find that invasion of the vine more than doubles nitric oxide emissions and increases ozone pollution.
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Picture post: ‘hottest April ever’
→ Climate Feedback | 18 May 2010 | 7:11 am MDT
Cross-posted by Daniel Cressey on The Great Beyond
April this year was the hottest on record, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has announced.
The combined surface temperatures on land and at sea averaged 14.5 °C, some 0.76 °C above the 20th century average. Average ocean surface temperature was the warmest on record for April and the global land surface temperature was the third warmest on record for the month.
NOAA also says that Arctic sea ice was “below normal for the 11th consecutive April” while “based on NOAA satellite observations, snow cover extent was the fourth-lowest on record” since 1967.
This map from NOAA shows so-called ‘temperature anomalies’ in April 2010, compared to the 1971-2000 baseline. The red dots are higher than average temperatures, the blue dots lower than average. Dot size relates to how far from the average the measurements were (large map, with key).
Image: NOAA
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Costa Rican to become new UN climate chief
→ Climate Feedback | 17 May 2010 | 8:56 am MDT
Cross-posted from Quirin Schiermeier on The Great Beyond
Christiana Figueres, a Costa Rican climate diplomacy expert, is to become the new head of the United Nations (UN) Framework Convention of Climate Change. UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon is expected to confirm her appointment later in the week, the BBC reports.
Figueres, daughter of former Costa Rican president Jose Figueres Ferrer, has been involved in the international climate negotiation process since 1995. The UN’s outgoing climate chief, Yvo de Boer of the Netherlands, announced in February to step down on July 1 after nearly four years in office.
The run-off has been between Figueres and the South African tourism minister Marthinus van Schalkwyk, who had the support of several key countries and was widely considered front-runner to replace de Boer. But in the last few days a number of small island states have successfully lobbied in favour of Figueres, according to BBC.
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New, ‘relentlessly pragmatic’ approach to climate change needed?
→ Climate Feedback | 11 May 2010 | 11:47 am MDT
Cross-posted from Daniel Cressey on The Great Beyond
The collapse of UN-led international efforts to combat climate change means a new approach that is “politically attractive and relentlessly pragmatic” is required, according to a new report.The 14 authors of a new report on climate policy describe themselves as “an eclectic group of academics, analysts and energy policy advocates”. They say the Kyoto Protocol style approach “crashed” last year with the perceived failure of the Copenhagen meeting.
A new approach, focusing on human dignity, is required, they argue in their ‘Hartwell Paper’ – named after the house in Buckinghamshire where the authors convened in February.
“To reframe the climate issue around matters of human dignity is not just noble or necessary. It is also likely to be more effective than the approach of framing around human sinfulness –which has failed and will continue to fail,” write the authors, including Gwyn Prins, of the London School of Economics; Roger Pielke Jr, of the University of Colorado; and Hiroyuki Tezuka, who represented the Japan Iron and Steel Federation.
A new approach should focus on three objectives, says the paper, ensuring energy access for all, developing in a way that does not undermine Earth systems, and ensuring societies can withstand all climate vagaries, “whatever their cause may be”. The Hartwell group argues that the inclusive approach of previous attempts to reach a global climate consensus needs to be broken up, with forests, biodiversity, air quality and other issues put back into silos and made to “again stand on their own”.
Their paper also suggests that an almost exclusive focus on carbon dioxide is unwise, and there should be more action on other greenhouse agents, such as black carbon and tropospheric ozone.
Bill Hare, of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany, told the BBC, he did not buy this. “The paper’s focus away from CO2 is misguided, short-sighted and probably wrong,” says Hare. “If you take action on black carbon and do not reduce CO2 emissions then you may end up with more warming in the long term.”
Hare also says that the Kyoto Protocol is “one of the few things that have worked” and he questions the Hartwell group's acceptance of industry funding.
On his blog, Pielke Jr writes, “As we state up front, some funding for our meeting did indeed come from industry. Other funding came from foundations. We are appreciative to all of our funders for enabling the work to occur. I can assure you that no one told us what to say, and I'm pretty sure most participants were unaware of where all of the funding came from at the time of the meeting (I was).”
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Confronting the biodiversity crisis
→ Climate Feedback | 7 May 2010 | 12:35 pm MDT
In 2002, the world's governments agreed to significantly slow the rate of biodiversity loss by 2010. Time is almost up, and by most accounts they've failed. Now that climate change is emerging as one of biodiversity's greatest threats, scientists are proposing new ways to tackle the crisis. In the latest, and last, issue of Nature Reports Climate Change, Hannah Hoag reports on some of the most promising efforts underway to protect biodiversity against rising temperature and other impacts of climate change.
In short, they are:
1. Barcoding life
Paul Hebert, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Guelph in Canada, devised a method for DNA barcoding in 2003, thus speeding up the process of taxonomy. Before barcoding, biological specimens were identified on the basis of morphology, behaviour and genetics. The technique, which allows for rapid species identification, offers a “quantum jump” in the rate that species are registered, says Hebert. It also gives biodiversity a boost: barcoding has repeatedly shown that one species is, in fact, three, or ten. The hope is that as the technology evolves, scientists will be able to use hand held barcoders to identify changes in a region’s biodiversity.2. Backing up biodiversity
The Svalbard Global Seed Vault in Norway, opened in 2008, is the ultimate insurance policy against the loss of the world’s crop genetic diversity. More than 522,000 seed samples from around the world are stored at −18 °C within the subterranean facility, like safety-deposit boxes in a bank. Most of today's crops have been carefully bred for traits that fit the present climate, so as temperatures rise, crop production is likely to be negatively affected in many of the world’s most agricultural regions. One study concluded, for example, that with a 2 °C temperature rise, more than 80 per cent of the land area over most African nations would be climatically unsuitable for the crops now growing there. If such projections become reality, the seeds contained in the Svalbard Vault could be used to breed new varieties of crop containing traits for drought tolerance and such like.
3. Putting a price on nature
The Cauca Valley, a region in the southwest of Colombia sandwiched between two Andean mountain chains, is the site of a major water fund project involving of reforestation, water protection, soil improvements, education and training. By investing in the region's ecosystem services, the project aims to lessen climate change impacts and threats to biodiversity.Although water funds exist globally to conserve watersheds, this is one of the first to include climate change modelling to help direct investments. Climate change projections are fed into a computer-based decision-making tool called InVEST, which has been developed by the Natural Capital Project, a partnership between TNC, Stanford University and the World Wildlife Fund. InVEST identifies the areas where climate change is unlikely to threaten activities the water fund has been invested in — such as promoting the reforestation of a hillside or teaching eco-friendly cattle-ranching practices — and their returns. By directing investments wisely, the region can benefit financially as well as adapt to climate change.
4. Shifting species
Efforts are already underway to relocate species that simply can’t keep pace with climate change. These have been few so far, but they may become more common if biologist Camille Parmesan of the University of Texas at Austin has her way. Parmesan is suggesting the US Fish and Wildlife Service use managed relocation to save the Laguna mountain skipper, a small, black-and-white endangered butterfly found on only two or three mountaintops in southern California. Though assisted relocation could help species adapt to climate change, some fear that the risks – such as introducing invasive species to a region – outweigh the benefits, and others warn that it’s a short term solution at best. But, says Parmesan, “there is no no-risk option.”5. A moveable park
Traditional conservation approaches assume that species ranges will always stay in the same place: if you protect the geographic region, the species within it will be protected forever. But species don't stay put when temperatures move outside their comfort range. To deal with this dilemma, Lee Hannah of Conservation International has recently suggested using moveable conservation parks within the ocean. Such mobile protective areas could help to conserve species such as the loggerhead turtle, says Hannah.6. An IPCC for biodiversity
Come June, biologists and policymakers will gather in South Korea to discuss the future of a proposed scientific panel to monitor biodiversity and offer advice on its protection. Like the IPCC, the Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) would improve the links between science and policy, and ensure policy decisions are based on the best available science. It would oversee global and regional biodiversity assessments, identify and analyse trends, and explore future changes. It would also invest in training.The full article is freely accessible here.
Image: Boxes of seeds arrive from around the world to the Svalbard vault. GLOBAL CROP DIVERSITY TRUST
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‘Stop McCarthy-like attacks on climate science’
→ Climate Feedback | 7 May 2010 | 9:11 am MDT
Daniel Cressey; cross-posted from The Great Beyond
Over 250 members of the US National Academy of Sciences have hit back at global warming deniers, warning that attacks on climate science are being mainly driven not by intellectual inquiry but by special interest and dogma. In a letter published in Science the researchers compare the recent furore around the so-called ‘climate-gate’ stolen emails to the Communist witch hunts of the 50s led by Joseph McCarthy
“We urge our policy-makers and the public to move forward immediately to address the causes of climate change, including the un-restrained burning of fossil fuels,” they write (letter, open access version). “We also call for an end to McCarthy-like threats of criminal prosecution against our colleagues based on innuendo and guilt by association, the harassment of scientists by politicians seeking distractions to avoid taking action, and the outright lies being spread about them.”
After a vast cache of emails between climate researchers were stolen from the University of East Anglia and leaked online, a number of people sceptical of climate change declared that these messages proved man-made global warming was a myth. US Senator James Inhofe even implied criminal charges could be forthcoming against the scientists involved.
The new letter says such political attacks on climate scientists are deeply disturbing. It sets out a series of ‘theories’ such as the age of the Earth being 4.5 billion years, the Big Bang and evolution that are “overwhelmingly accepted”, even though researchers are very willing to be shown these are wrong. Climate science, say the signatories, now falls into this category.
Peter Gleick, president of the Pacific Institute and corresponding author of the letter, writes, “In the end, we have only three choices: we can act to mitigate the risks of climate change by reducing greenhouse gas emissions, we can expand efforts to adapt to a changing climate, or we can suffer the consequences of doing nothing. The only real question is, what is the balance among these three options.” (Huffington Post.)
In an accompanying editorial, Brooks Hanson, deputy editor for physical sciences at Science, says that scientists now need to engage and communicate their findings to fix a “dangerous deterioration in the rational relation between science and society”.
“The scientific community must recognize that the recent attacks stem in part from its culture and scientists’ behaviour,” he writes. “In turn, it is time to focus on the main problem: The IPCC reports have underestimated the pace of climate change while overestimating societies’ abilities to curb greenhouse gas emissions.”
Full list of signatories below the fold, from the Guardian version of the letter.
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Melting icebergs raise the sea level
→ Climate Feedback | 29 Apr 2010 | 12:00 pm MDT
Cross-posted from Quirin Schiermeier on The Great Beyond
Since 1994, around 750 cubic kilometers of floating ice – equivalent to the volume of Lake Titicaca in Bolivia – have been melting each year around the Arctic Ocean and off Antarctica, an analysis of satellite observation has revealed. The massive loss of sea ice actually adds a wee bit to global sea level rise, scientists report in a paper in Geophysical Research Letters.
Popular belief has it that the melting of drifting icebergs and floating ice shelves has no effect on the height of the surrounding sea level just like melting ice cubes in a drink don’t make your glass overflow.
But because sea water is warmer and more salty than ice this is not quite correct. In fact, melting sea ice does raise seal level by about 2.6 % of its volume – equivalent to the difference in density between fresh- and sea-water, the team reports.Globally, the effect is almost negligible: Retreating Arctic sea ice and thinning ice shelves around Antarctica contribute about 50 micrometers, or half a hairbreadth, to the 3 millimeter or so annual rise in global sea level from melting glaciers and thermal expansion of ocean water.
Even so, the effect deserves monitoring, says Andrew Shepherd of the University of Leeds in Britain, who led the study.
Sea level contribution from floating ice might strongly increase in a warming climate, he says. If all present-day floating ice were lost, global sea level would rise by up to 6 centimetres.
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PICES Conference: How much fish in the future?
→ Climate Feedback | 28 Apr 2010 | 3:19 am MDT
Olive Heffernan
Jake Rice, who heads up Advice and Assessment at the Canadian Department of Fisheries and Oceans, just delivered an interesting talk here on the conflict between global food security and fisheries managment policies. Rice says that he and his co-author, economist Serge Garcia, are concerned that measures to conserve marine biodiversity are in contradiction with policies to protect food security, with the likely upshot that both will fail to address their respective goals.
The conundrum is straightforward: by mid-century, there’ll be an additional 2 billion people on earth, each of whom will need to eat. In total, they’ll require an extra 3.65*108 of dietary protein. Forecasts suggest that we’ll need an 11% increase in irrigation for grain production just to keep pace with human population growth, not withstanding the impacts of climate change on crops and water availability. Right now, one-third of the world's population relies on fish and fisheries products for at least one-fifth of their annual protein intake; if that continues to be the case, we’ll need around 70 million metric tonnes more fish protein by 2050, says Rice.
That's something like 75-100% of current fish protein production. So how can we generate this and manage our fisheries? Rice outlines several possible options, each of which involves a conflict with environmental management.
One option is to extend fish farming in coastal areas, but that has the associated problems of pollution and the escape of farmed fish into the wild. Also, fish farming requires protein input in the form of fishmeal, so that raises other sustainability issues.
Or we could start to fish lower down the food web – in other words, eat jellyfish – but that would remove an important food supply for predators higher up the food chain, and those predators are already under serious stress.
Another option is to fish more in highly producivity regions, but aren’t those the same regions we should be setting aside as Marine Protected Areas?
The problem, says Rice, is that these clearly conflicting policy goals aren’t being looked at by the same people at a high enough level. Now that the old problem of fisheries governance is being met with the newer problems of climate change and rapid population growth, we need a merger of these discussions, he says. He’d like to see the Convention on Biological Diversity pay more attention to the sustainable food dimension of their mandate and the Food and Agricultural Organization speaking with the CBD at a higher level. Eventually, says Rice, the UN General Assembly should be the forum to look at merging and prioritizing these policies.
But can we have our cake and eat it? "We can't have full conservation of marine biodiversity and a well nourished additional 2 billion people on Earth", says Rice.
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PICES conference: disentangling the drivers of change
→ Climate Feedback | 28 Apr 2010 | 12:38 am MDT
Olive Heffernan
I’ve been attending the PICES conference on Climate Change Effects on Fish and Fisheries in Sendia, Japan this week in an effort to reconnect with my fisheries research roots. Since leaving research seven years ago, I’ve covered little in the way of fisheries, partly because I’m now focused on climate change, a topic that the fisheries community is only recently turning its attention to. While there’s been a long history within the community of research focused on how the environment influences fish – from the behaviour of individuals all the way up to catch statistics – few studies have looked at attributing observed environmental changes to anthropogenic warming.
And judging from the talks here this week, that’s still largely the case. Many of the talks here this week have reported changes in fisheries that correlate well with temperature changes, but few have factored out other drivers of change and untangled climate variability from human-induced warming.
Some of the experts here say that changes in exploited marine species are so heavily driven by fishing pressure that human-induced warming is likely a secondary – and much smaller – driver of change. Speaking at the opening session on Monday, Rashid Sumaila of the University of British Columbia in Vancouver pointed to the fact that fisheries such as Bluefin tuna in the Atlantic and lingcod in British Columbia are in serious trouble - even without climate change. That’s because more vessels are seeking to exploit an increasingly depleted resource. But, said Sumaila, climate change can affect the productivity and the distribution of fish biomass in the ocean, and over time this will likely impact human welfare through changes in catch, food security and income.
Accoridng to John Pinnegar, head of climate change research at the Centre for Environment, Fisheries and Aquaculture Science in Lowestoft, UK, the relationship between climate change and fisheries is two-way. Climate change can increase the vulnerability of a stock to fishing pressure by reducing its carrying capacity – or population size (by narrowing the habitable area, for example), but equally a heavily exploited population comprised mostly of young fish will be less resiliant to environmental change than one with older animals.
While disentangling the various drivers of changes in fisheries is interesting from an academic perspective, from a managment point of view it might be less important. After all, “We can’t turn the climate around quick enough”, says John Pinnegar, head of climate change research at the Centre for Environment, Fisheries and Aquaculture Science in Lowestoft, UK, “so the only lever we have is to manage fishing pressure”.
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Election 2010: Climate debate 'hots' up
→ Climate Feedback | 22 Apr 2010 | 11:55 am MDT
Geoff Brumfiel; cross-posted from The Great Beyond
Last night candidates from the three major parties here in the UK came to central London to debate on all matters climatic. Behind the podium were Ed Miliband, the current Labour government's secretary of state for climate change, Greg Clark, the Conservative shadow secretary on the issue, and Simon Hughes the Liberal Democrat's climate spokesperson.
The debate kicked off with a question about building a third runway at Heathrow, and it set the tone for the whole thing: "We've been very clear that we're against a third runway at Heathrow," Clark told the audience. Clark would rather have high-speed rail lines linking Heathrow to major cities in the south-east and continental Europe.
"What Greg didn't tell you is that he's in favour of airport expansion [elsewhere] in the south-east," Labour-climate-guy Miliband retorted. He said Labour's goal of having aviation emissions no higher than present levels in 2050 was a more ambitious target than declarations about a single runway here or there. That could only be achieved with higher taxes on air passengers, he said.
The Liberal Democrat's Simon Hughes agreed with Miliband about expansion, but added he wanted alternative forms of transport to be "cost beneficial". "That means lower rail fairs," he says. How does he cover the cost? By raising the taxes on airlines flying with empty planes.
So Hughes and Miliband agree on taxes and Hughes and Clark agree on rail access and Miliband and Clark sort of agree on airport expansion. It felt like it was one of those story problems they give you in school that you solve by drawing a Venn diagram. So that's exactly what I did (see right).
It really does show how this debate worked. Everyone agreed that climate change is bad, and each party had a set of solutions that looked, in many ways, like a variation on the solutions of the other two parties. Everyone agreed that the UK needs to stage a green recovery from the economic recession, that offshore wind farms were good things, and that it was the responsibility of politicians to make sure the public understood climate change.
The Guardian, which hosted the debate, dubbed Liberal Democrat candidate Simon Hughes the winner, but I'm less sure. It's undoubtedly true that Hughes tended to stand out from his two rivals: he wholly opposed the expansion of nuclear power for example, nor was he supportive of coal-fired power plants that used carbon capture technology. But I couldn't help but think he benefited from being in a minority party that, despite a recent surge in the polls, is unlikely to be running the next government. Hughes could say what he liked, and if his policies didn't quite line up with reality, well it wasn't so important—he'd probably never get a chance to enact them.
That being said, Hughes did mount a pretty convincing attack on Conservative Greg Clark. Numerous Conservative 'back benchers' (members of parliament who are not ministers) were climate sceptics, he pointed out. How was Clark going to enact climate policies when the majority of his party was not signed up to the official Conservative policy, Hughes asked. Clark responded meekly that climate change sceptics resided in all parties, but he was pretty unconvincing, especially when he got confused and told the crowd: "I don't know of anyone in the shadow cabinet who doesn't believe, as I do, in the reality of climate change and is not determined to make it happen."
The crowd chuckled, and Clark moved on.
The other big gotcha moment came when environmental attack-dog George Monbiot laid into the three candidates for their support of expanding drilling for natural gas in the North Sea. That was a "clear contradiction" of stated goals to wean Britain from fossil fuels, Monbiot said. "Perhaps your policy in all three cases is to get as much of it out of the ground as you can, cross your fingers and then pray to God that no one uses it. Right or wrong?"
The Venn diagram pretty much overlapped on that one. All three candidates said that natural gas was a bridge between present-day technologies and future, greener ones.
As an American living in Britain, I have to say that the very exercise of watching three parties debate the environment was interesting enough all by itself. But none of them was able to whole-heartedly convince me that they were going to be able to turn Britain green.
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