Potatos And Broccoli Without Ice Please  

The BBC has an article on the devastating effect of global warming on potato prices in Greenland - the rapidly lengthening growing season (and amount of land available) have led to a surge in vegetable supplies. This may be the only place on the planet carbohydrate prices are going down instead of up. Until they build a taters-to-ethanol plant of course...

Top scientist Professor Minik Rosing was stunned to hear the news from his native Greenland a few days ago. The main weekly newspaper, Sermitsiaq, was highlighting a quarrel between shop owners and farmers about the price of potatoes. "The price of potatoes was a headline," says Professor Rosing. "That would have been a hilarious joke in Greenland a few years ago."

Professor Rosing is one of his country's most famous sons, after discovering the earliest traces of life in rocks in West Greenland, that are more than 3,800 million years old. Like his fellow countrymen, he is deeply concerned about global warming, and particularly the effects of rapidly melting ice on the traditional life of hunters in the north of the country. But higher temperatures are also bringing some benefits to the sub-Arctic south part of the island.

"I could buy broccoli in the shops for the first time this year," says Buuti Pedersen, a 52-year-old artist who was born and lives in the southern town of Qaqortoq. "And the potatoes are big, fresh and tasty - much better than the ones that come from Denmark."

Potatoes have been grown in southern Greenland for several years, but because of global warming they can be planted earlier, which means better yields. Local farmers are now selling a surplus to the rest of the country. "There's been an explosion of potatoes," says Lene Holm, a member of the Inuit Circumpolar Council, which is overseeing a project studying how climate change is affecting local communities. "There are also many more flowers, like the Alaska Lupin. You can see more green further up the mountains as the glaciers retreat. People are ringing up the national radio station about birds they had never seen here before."

Preliminary results suggest that Greenland's ice cover has shrunk to a record low this summer. Dr Bob Corell, chairman of the Arctic Climate Impact Assessment, told a symposium of scientists and religious leaders in Greenland, which finished this week, that the acceleration of the Arctic ice melt was now "massive".

Dr Corell has been monitoring one particular glacier near the western town of Ilulissat, which was probably the source of the iceberg which sunk the Titanic. It is now flowing into the sea at a rate of 15 km per year - about four times faster than 10 years ago. He is predicting that the best bet for the year in which the Arctic will be totally free of summer ice is now 2040, "give or take a decade". Not so long ago, scientists were projecting the end of the century.

The government of Greenland is worried about the human impact of the ice melt. "There is sea ice for two to three months less every year," says Aleqa Hammond, Minister for Finance and Foreign Affairs. "For the communities in the north who live solely off hunting and fishing, it's like your boss taking away your pay for a couple of months without giving you notice."

While Ms Hammond is very concerned about how quickly northern communities will have to adapt to climate change, she is also optimistic about the positive developments it could bring. She points to the greater volumes of halibut being caught off the west coast due to warmer sea temperatures, and the return of cod to some areas. In addition to achieving more self-sufficiency in food products, she wants to develop hydroelectric power, oil and gas exploration, and the mining of Greenland's rich mineral deposits. All of this could become technically easier as the ice melts.

Greenland has signed a memorandum of understanding with the US company Alcoa to build a huge aluminium smelter using the country's plentiful water reserves. "All of this can help us to reduce our economic dependence on Denmark," says Ms Hammond, "and could eventually lead to political independence." Denmark currently gives about US$600m a year to Greenland, equivalent to about half its budget. Since 1979 Greenland has had home rule, but not full independence.

So will Greenland be a net beneficiary or a loser from climate change? On the one hand, it could lose a proud Inuit heritage of dog sleds and whale hunting, walruses, seals and polar bears. But on the other it may gain economically. "You are not really comparing like with like," says Professor Rosing. "Loss of cultural identity and economic benefits are two different categories. You can't quantify the loss of our traditions. The real problem is that we are having to adapt so quickly."

The BBC also reports that Chernobyl is about to be enclosed in a huge steel sarcophagus.

The authorities in Ukraine have approved a giant steel cover for the radioactive site of the world's worst nuclear disaster - Chernobyl. Ukraine has hired a French firm to build the structure to replace the crumbling concrete casing put over the reactor after the 1986 accident. The casing project is expected to cost $1.4bn (£700m). It will take five years to complete and the authorities say they will then be able to start dismantling the reactor.

Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko hailed the project: "Today is probably the first time that we can openly look into the eyes of the national and international community and say that a solution to the problem that has long been called the Chernobyl problem was formally found," he said.

The French construction company Novarka will build a giant arch-shaped structure out of steel, 190 metres (623 feet) wide and 200m long. It will cover the existing containment structure which stands over the reactor and radioactive fuel that caused the accident in 1986. The reactor still contains 95% of its original nuclear material, and exposure to weather and poor construction has left the existing casing weak.

Maxwell Technologies has a press release describing their latest ultracapacitor module "for Renewable Energy and Industrial Applications".

Maxwell Technologies Inc. is introducing a 75-volt BOOSTCAP(R) ultracapacitor module to provide a scaleable, cost-effective, low-maintenance solution to meet the backup power and power quality requirements of wind turbines and other renewable energy generation and industrial equipment applications.

Maxwell developed the new module, which will be generally available early in the fourth quarter, in response to market demand for an easy-to-integrate energy storage building block for a variety of electrical system functions, including:

-- Backup power for orderly shutdown of wind turbine blade pitch mechanisms and automated manufacturing equipment;
-- Buffering to enhance the consistency of wind, solar and wave power input into the utility grid;
-- Low-maintenance alternative to batteries for short-term bridge power for uninterruptible power supplies (UPS). ...

BOOSTCAP ultracapacitor products deliver up to 10 times the power and longevity of batteries, require no maintenance and operate reliably in extreme temperatures. In transportation applications, they efficiently recapture energy from braking for reuse in hybrid and all-electric drive trains, reducing energy consumption and emissions. They also provide compact, lightweight, "life-of-the vehicle" solutions to stabilize automotive power networks and power new, all-electric subsystems, such as drive-by-wire steering. In mission-critical industrial applications, where backup power ensures continued operation or a soft shutdown in the event of power interruptions, they provide reliable, cost-effective, maintenance-free energy storage. In wind turbine blade pitch and braking systems and other industrial applications, they provide a simple, solid state, highly reliable, solution to buffer short-term mismatches between the power available and the power required.

I haven't done much big brother news lately, so here is an article from the SMH about local authorities trying to catch up with the FBI in terms of surveillance capability (and no doubt adding all the same sort of vulnerabilities to the network the Americans have done) - "spy laws track mobile phones". These sort of articles make me laugh - I'm not sure if they are serious or if there is some sort of rigid compartmentalisation of which organisations can listen to what and these guys are trying to struggle up a rung. Call and internet records are the least of it - besides enabling your location to be tracked, most new phones can be listened in to even when they are off (as can onboard car equipment). There was a scene along these lines in "The Bourne Ultimatum" where the good female CIA analyst tracks down who leaked some information by determining which staff hadn't used their phones over an 8 hour period - because they would know not to take their phone with them when they were talking to a journalist in another city. Another good example of this was those German academics who recently got into trouble for studying protester groups (and using the word "gentrification") because they didn't take their phones with them when they were talking to their study subjects. Phones are just one part of the panopticon of course - arphid tags are starting to get into everything now (something which can be used for good as well as mass surveillance, which I'll talk about in a later post), and video phones give Orwell's all seeing big brother a range of camera angles to choose from...

SECURITY agencies would be able to secretly track people via their mobile phones and monitor their internet browsing for up to three months without obtaining a warrant under new laws due to go before the Senate this week.

The powers could be used in a range of even relatively minor criminal investigations, not just terrorism cases. They would allow ASIO and federal and state police forces to demand that phone companies and internet service providers stream information to them in "near real-time" - just a few minutes after calls are made or websites visited. The information would have to be provided for up to 90 days for ASIO investigations, and 45 days if state or federal police are involved.

Justified as a counter-terrorism measure, the legislation has already been passed by government and Labor members of the lower house. But it remains deeply unpopular with legal experts and privacy advocates.

As well as not requiring a warrant signed by a judicial officer, the powers could be used in any criminal investigation into a suspected offence that carries a jail term of three years or more. The regime applies to all "telecommunications data", including the time and destination of phone calls made and received, the duration of the calls and the location of the callers. For computers, security agencies would be told what website addresses and chat rooms the user has visited and what files have been downloaded. The laws would also enable authorities to track internet conversations.

Security agencies would still need a judicial warrant to listen in on phone calls, or peruse emails.

The Greens senator Kerry Nettle said the powers would allow authorities to glean huge amounts of information. Every mobile phone could potentially become a tracking device for police and ASIO. The bill "is more like something from East Germany than a party claiming to support liberal principles", she said. "There is no judicial oversight. Police and ASIO should have to get a warrant to track and tap people's mobile phones or web browsing." ...

The Law Council of Australia argues that technological advances mean the powers pose new dangers to privacy. Tracking someone with a mobile phone was far easier than secretly affixing a listening device without breaking and entering, it said. Therefore the proposed powers were "far more amenable to misuse or over-use by law enforcement agencies".

Links:

* IHT - Oil rises to new intraday record above US$81 on anticipation of U.S. rate cut. New record price (in USD anyway).
* Bloomberg - Australia Cuts Grain Crop Estimate 31% on Dry Weather. The biofuel boom really didn't pick a good year to start.
* EcoGeek - Whole House Electricity Meters
* EcoGeek - Brits Proposes Abolishing Gasoline by 2040. The Liberal Democrats anyway.
* Technology Review - The High Costs of Biofuels
* SMH - Water bills to rise by a third. Recycled water goes to new coal fired power stations while we pay for a desalination plant we don't really need.
* The Australian - Vic faces summer power restrictions if drought continues. Solar, wind, wave, geothermal power don't need water for cooling...
* The Australian - Future cars may run on filings. Minister McTiernan goes to the Oak Ridge National Laboratory.
* The Australian - Oil Search jumps on possible bid. The cheapest oil and gas reserves going, about to go to China. One day we'll regret not building that PNG pipeline.
* The Australian - Woodside finally begins Otway exports
* The Australian - MEO steps up the pace. Another LNG / gas to liquids plant in northern Australia gets closer to reality.
* The Australian - Nigeria looks to Saudi's Aramco as its model
* Huffington Post - Greenspan, Kissinger: Oil Drives U.S. in Iraq, Iran. Kissinger: "control over oil is the key issue that should determine whether the U.S. undertakes military action against Iran". Peter Costello gets a mention amongst the great list of liars who said it wasn't about the oil. Conclusion: "What lessons are to be drawn from the Greenspan-Kissinger revelations, other than that political leaders routinely lie or engage in mass self-delusion? Controlling the U.S. war machine will require ending the U.S. addiction to oil -- not just foreign oil, but oil. There are of course other reasons that ending reliance on fossil fuels is imperative and of the greatest urgency. "
* EarthTimes - Kucinich Calls News Conference to Address Greenspan's Stunning Admission: 'The Iraq War is Largely About Oil'
* Daily Kos - Chris Dodd's "Letters from Nuremberg"
* AFP - Military intervention in Iran would be "catastrophic": Moscow. "Iran denies Western allegations it seeks atomic weapons, saying its nuclear drive is aimed at providing electricity for a growing population whose fossil fuels will one day run out."
* Ha'aretz - Iranian TV series follows fate of Jews in World War II
* Past Peak - Barbarian Invasion. The antiquities of Iraq are being stolen a lot faster than the oil.
* Past Peak - Cashing In On Shock
* Alternet - Are You on the Government's 'No Fly' List?. From "End of America: Letter of Warning to a Young Patriot".
* The Register - German police raid home of man who operated Tor server
* Cory Doctorow - Scroogled
* EcoGeek - Don't Mess with Bikes in Toronto. Using the panopticon to track bike thieves.
* BLDG BLOG - Welcome To My Squash Cave
* BLDG BLOG - Chemical Radiance: A review of the film Sunshine
* LA Times - The legacy of Hollywood's favorite sci-fi writer. "Ubik" to be a movie soon ?
* The Age - Robot Takes A leaf Out Of Sci Fi. What did happen to this android ?