Running On Empty  

The Guardian has more on the drying up of the Amazon and the weather systems that are affected by this. It appears everything really is connected...

Not far from the mouth of the Amazon, dead animals, including manatees - mammals up to 10ft long with flat, paddle-shaped fins - and distinctive pink dolphins, line the banks of some tributaries. Normally, you would have to take a boat to cross these rivers but today, because of the Amazon basin's worst drought in memory, they are little more than mudflats with a trickle of water in the middle.

So far, the drought has had its most serious impact in the upper reaches of the river and its hundreds of tributaries in Brazil, Colombia and Peru. There, along many stretches, the water has fallen to the lowest levels ever recorded and has become impassable even for canoes. Some 600 Brazilian schools in Amazonas state have had to be closed and many hamlets, whose only contact with the outside world is by river, are running short of food and medicines. Several districts have been declared disaster areas and the army is having to bring emergency supplies to 900 towns and villages.

The problems are expected to get worse before the drought eventually breaks, perhaps in the next month when the Amazon's rainy season usually comes. "Most little towns don't have sewage treatment," says Dan Nepstad, a US scientist based in Brazil. "Their sewerage is to put a pipe into the river. When you reduce the flow of these rivers, you have less water to dilute the sewage and cesspools build up. That has got all the makings for intestinal diseases and cholera. Water that's not moving is also a breeding ground for insects that carry malaria, dengue and other diseases."

But what is worrying some scientists even more than the growing scale of the humanitarian crisis is a suspicion that this year's drought may be the harbinger of a much greater disaster that could push the whole Amazon forest to a critical flip-over point and into an unstoppable process of self-destruction.

This is how the theory goes: the Amazon river contains a fifth of the planet's fresh water. Two hundred miles wide at its estuary, it carries more water than the world's next nine largest rivers combined. In a remarkable process, much of this water is recycled within the forest....

PeakOil.com has a post on the role of the insurance industry in forcing us to do something about global warming.

The Center for Health and the Global Environment at Harvard Medical School, along with co-sponsors Swiss Re and the United Nations Development Programme, today released a study showing that climate change will significantly affect the health of humans and ecosystems and these impacts will have economic consequences. The study, entitled "Climate Change Futures: Health, Ecological and Economic Dimensions," surveys existing and future costs associated with climate change and the growing potential for abrupt, widespread impacts. The study reports that the insurance industry will be at the center of this issue, absorbing risk and helping society and business to adapt and reduce new risks.

PeakOil.com also has a post on the emerging shortfall of natural gas supply in China.

WorldChanging has a post on the progress of the "zero footprint" concept.

It's interesting to watch the progress of the "environmental footprint" concept. We've been talking about the idea from early on, and we're hardly alone. The argument that the goal of modern environmentalism should be to reduce one's overall footprint nicely encompasses many of the core elements of new school greens, in particular a focus on systemic thinking and an emphasis on efficiency. The latest appearance of the footprint concept is at 0footprint (zero footprint), a new website combining magazine, information resource, and movement.

Cool Tools has a post on the ever popular Lister(oid) Diesel Engine.

From 1930 to 1987 the Lister company made diesel motors for pumps, generators, and general-purpose use, using mostly the same design of big, slow-speed, heavy flywheels and simple, easily-repaired parts. The Lister company then sold the designs. Today there are many Indian and Chinese companies that produce Lister copies (aka: "Listeroids") for export. These are fairly faithful to the original design -- with varying quality. The price for these engines *per kilowatt* is cheap, when compared to the more commonly found gasoline-powered generators, though they are not very portable.

What is truly amazing is the efficiency of the Lister: one user reports an average of 8000 watts and 0.3 gallons of diesel per hour. They can be made nearly silent with cheap car mufflers or a water muffler. They run fairly cool, and home-built radiators (water tanks, house radiators, car radiators) seem to work well. These slow-rotating workhorse machines are good for nearly 100% duty cycle if properly maintained. (A 100% duty cycle means running 24/7, with no down time due to heat and lubrication needs).

The Listers can run all the time, and there are even some people who have figured out how to do oil changes while the motor is still running, thus removing even the lubrication issues. Their efficiency and raw power makes them perfectly suited for electrical generation for long-term use versus "emergency-only" generators which have an extremely short lifespan. They are also works of mechanical art, and will keep a mechanically-minded hacker occupied for weeks, experimenting and tuning. I'm sure that vegetable oil or waste motor oil would work as fuel in these engines as well, but more research is needed.

The ABC has an interview with permaculture inventor Bill Mollison.

In 1970, the man who changed the way we think about sustainability, Bill Mollison, is still 30 years on just as passionate about the cause and says it is anger that motivates him.

His anger is spurred on by what he says is the ridiculous way in which we humans normally behave, the silly things we do and the damage that we’ve done to the planet when we could do so much better.

Permaculture has been a runaway success story, particularly in developing countries, but in the developed world, energy efficient housing is still a rarity.

Bill Mollison says that we continue down an agricultural, industrial, energy use and social path that is having such damaging effects on the planet that issues such as the oil peak and global change have become critical.

It amazes Bill Mollison that after all this time the human race still baulks at these principles that have been demonstrated time and time again to make a real and lasting difference.

Bill Mollison had not spoken to the media for over a decade, but in a recent discussion on ABC South East, he joined Tim Holt and regular guest, John Champagne and spoke with the same passion, a

The Alternative Energy Blog has a post on micro windpower generation at home.

Rigzone reports on a global shortage of tools for the oil industry (not to mention trained people to use them).

MIT Technology Review has an article on Corning's development of technologis to clean up diesel exhaust.

Australian online journal "Online Opinion" is looking to make peak oil the topic of discussion this month. This site has lots of politicians, academics and journalists amongst the readership, so its good to see the topic getting this sort of exposure. If you wish to write a discussion piece email the editors (see the link on the right of the front page).

And to conclude, some short notes. The Energy Blog has a post on longer life, more power and faster recharging lithium ion batteries. TomDispatch has an article on the difficulties of reporting from Iraq. Billmon morosely ponders where we are heading as he considers the revelations in the Washington Post about the CIA's "mini archipelago" of detention camps in eastern europe. Past Peak points to an article in The New Yorker on the perverted imagination of disgraced ex-Cheney aide Scooter Libby (for those who like the more out there conspiracy theory oriented view of these things, RI also posted this story). Past Peak also notes Bush's approval rating is at another all time low and that American voters apparently regard the Plame scandal as seriously as Watergate. The local media has been in something of a frenzy about terrorist attacks that the PM (no longer the Rodent now the new sedition laws are in place, just in case) claims are imminent, as the detention without charge and sedition laws were rushed through parliament yesterday and today (conspiracy theories come from all sources these days it seems - though you'd think security and intelligence services tracking terrorists would be a bit annoyed about this sort of thing being announced in the media). This served as a very effective smokescreen for the tumult over the proposed changes to industrial relations laws (which seem to be ignoring the lessons of history), which had the national press gallery and lots of minor party senators all busy conspiracy theorising today as well. Apparently government backbenchers (to their credit) have managed to soften the blow to civil liberties somewhat today. Perhaps this recently escaped Al Qaeda member is the one Howard and Ruddock are worried about ?

The power of nightmares were on display in the office this afternoon as well, with email rumours that were flying around Sydney about possible bomb threats to the train system causing plenty of excited chatter. I'm starting to think the fear / adrenaline combo is rather too addictive - how many years will it take for this stuff to wear off ? Welcome to the age of paranoia (to steal a line from Green Day).

One last note, I haven't been handing out "visitor of the week" awards for a while though I have seen all sorts of weird domains in the logs (the US Senate probably being this week's highlight - exactly what they made of my notes on the Inhofe / Crichton show I'm not so sure). My occasional virtual visitor from the PM's office has become a semi-regular though, so this reader letter in today's Crikey caught my eye as one possible explanation (even though local politics isn't really a focus of this collection of loosely linked rantings).

Anonymous writes:
I'm sure you guys already know of the history of government media monitoring – we had the aNiMaLS (National Media Liason Unit) under Hawke and Keating and now have the GMS (Government Media Service) under Howard. Essentially both services utilise staff members from the local offices of Member of Parliament (ie paid for by taxpayers out of members electoral allowances) to monitor local and national media for party political purposes and then report relevant items back to the GMS in Parliament House (Room G47 from memory). From there information is distributed to government members, relevant members of the Press Gallery and suitably receptive journos. For more information please see "Selling the Australian government: politics and propaganda from Whitlam to Howard" by Greg Barns.

Orwell had us pegged so many years ago - obviously some things never change...