"I don't think 9 billion [people] is better than 1 billion"

James Lovelock, the scientist who originated the Gaia theory has written a new book (The Vanishing Face of Gaia) and New Scientist has an interview with him.

Read it... It's pretty extreme stuff:

"I think it's wrong to assume we'll survive 2 °C of warming: there are already too many people on Earth. At 4 °C we could not survive with even one-tenth of our current population. The reason is we would not find enough food, unless we synthesised it. Because of this, the cull during this century is going to be huge, up to 90 per cent. The number of people remaining at the end of the century will probably be a billion or less."

I don't really have enough background to assess this at the moment, and I'm very sure my values differ from his a whole heap, but if this was a marketing ploy, it was effective, because I definitely want to read the book now!

Terraforming planet earth

Now you can replant a forest by dropping seedlings out of helicopters... Awesome! Has anyone got a spare helicopter lying around for a wee bit of ecoactivism? I fancy reforesting the Manawatu!

The Morgue's blog anti-massacree movement and all you gotta do to join is...

... post your letter telling John Key not to be a Rodney today!

Dear Mr Key,

As a scientist at an agricultural research institute, I am concerned that your coalition agreement with ACT commits you to a potentially lengthy Select Committee process before the Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) can be implemented. This delay in implementing the ETS may cause us to fall further behind our global trading partners in managing our greenhouse gas emissions. It damages the international credibility of New Zealand’s “clean green” branding strategy at a time when our global markets are becoming increasingly aware of environmental issues.

Although in general I would support a rigorous review of the relevant science when setting government policy, in the case of the ETS this work has already been done so recently that revisiting the evidence for climate change is an embarrassment. Since New Zealand has already committed to reducing our emissions under the Kyoto Protocol, I feel that this Select Committee should be limited to examining ways of reducing emissions and ensuring that the majority of compliance costs are paid by the polluters and not by taxpayers. Since climate change is such an important issue, I hope that the select committee will be large enough to allow representation from all parties.

I know that like most New Zealanders you value our unique natural environment and our international reputation, and I hope you will take these into account when deciding on your government’s response to climate change.

Yours Sincerely,

Dr [Bunny]

Aquatic Super Power

Articles like this one in New Scientist sure do make me hopeful... using the ocean's thermal differential to generate power seems so obvious... and of course (as the article says), people have thought of it before... but maybe now there will be the will and economic incentive to overcome the (pretty substantial) technical difficulties and make it happen... I like the way they're planning to produce hydrogen to power vehicles as well. Bye bye oil companies. We won't miss you!

Not so trivial

There's a quiz on the BBC website that tests your knowledge of extinction trivia. I only got 6/10...

Whether 'tis nobler?

Here's the scenario... you have friends coming over and you know coffee is their beverage of choice. Is it okay to buy the Fair Trade version of the mostly-non-fair-trade-brand coffee from the supermarket or try to get to Trade Aid to buy genuine Fair Trade coffee, knowing you certainly won't make it before someone melts down? Given that I chose the expedient option, did I just line the pockets of an evil exploitative coffee empire or can my consumer dollar make them change their scurrilous ways? (And since I also bought disposible nappies in the same shop, have I any right to pretend I am making moral choices?)

Oh yeah, as it turned out they brought their own, more morally righteous coffee, 'cos they knew I was out! :-)

The evil that men (and women) do lives after them...

Some penguins for Ruth...

A disturbing New Scientist Environment newsflash came today about work done by Heidi Geisz, a marine biologist at Virginia Institute of Marine Science in Gloucester in the US. (As you probably know) DDT was widely used as a pesticide from the late 1940s onwards, but was banned in many countries since the 1970s and these days its usually only used to control disease-bearing mosquitos However DDT has been showing up in tissue samples from Adélie penguins. If this was DDT that had been around in the foodchain for 30-40 years, then the scientists would expect to find DDE (a DDT breakdown product). Turns out, there were large deposits of ice in Antarctic glaciers in the 1950s and 60s and the DDT has been sequestered there for the last 50-odd years, only trickling out now as the glaciers melt. Fortunately, the levels aren't high enough to harm the penguins, but they're worried that other toxins (eg dioxins, PCBs from refrigeration) may also be being released. It really makes you realise how even relatively short periods of pollution can have long-lasting, far-reaching effects (cos I'm guessing DTT was never sprayed in Antarctica!).