So it seems that Yosemite National Park is 123 years old today. Today, Google pays trubute www.Google.com. Links to Yosemite search.
The massive rim fire has brought the Yosemite and Sequoya Parks back into full view. Even if you have only seen them once in your lifetime, it is one of the great spiritual experiences.
El Capitan, my capitan.
Anti-patent engineers a problem, says senior Google IP counsel – Blog – IAM Magazine:
Wow this is an interesting point related to the effect that Patent Trolls have on the invention and innovation process. Google spends an ever increasing amount of time and money in prevention and avoidance within the new product/invention pipeline.
Yuk!
This is like the doctor avoiding malpractice issues by exercising defensive medicine, but on steroids. (Sorry about the pun!)
Natural gas, the media’s failures, and you « The Cost of Energy:
Ouch!
“The Cost of Energy” Lou Grinzo blogs (and reblogs) about how unclear NatGas really is. It all has to do with the Methane released from the fracking.
See the reprint of the blog at EthicsAndClimate.org from Dr. Brown.
Sadly NatGas may really not be cleaner than Coal. How dirty is that!
Here’s my comments over to Lou’s post.
Okay, as always, your blogs are extremely informative, with lots of facts that are well substantiated. The Dr. Brown article is a real eye opener on fracking.
Ouch! This is ugly. So we really don’t gain anything from NatGas except maybe fuel independence — and a wonderful improvement to our US trade (im)balance!:-(
The question I have for all of this NatGas is here and now. Half of the NatGas in the US is flared. So when we say that NatGas is 50% cleaner than coal, do we count the other 100% that is flared in the making? Oh, wait, we aren’t saying that NatGas is actually cleaner than coal. It may not be!
Don’t get me wrong, there’s a safety and a transport issue here with flaring…
Good news is that much of the flaring is probably methane, right? So it could be worse, there might not be as much flaring. Simply releasing the methane would be a hefty magnitude worse?
And, of course, the point is that there should be no (short-term) plan to switch to NatGas without some follow-on plan to switch completely to sustainable fuel/power.
Much like our US energy policy, if there is one, the short-term plan is the only plan, even though it is based on exhaustible resources. That is, the plan is broken as designed.
Non-sustainability, over time, has a way of giving a wicked whiplash effect. And somehow, everyone with this broken short-term plan feel warm and cuddly about it.
Double ouch!
Climate change: Sea ice, global cooling, and other nonsense:
I was rather pleased in my travels last week to get a glimpse of the news that the Arctic ice caps had been expanding again. They had been shrinking, and getting smaller at an increasing rate, so statistically, we were certainly due for a recovery. I saw a 60% recovery, however, so I was a little skeptical.
So I just now get a chance to check into it, only to find that the Global Cooling Loon David Rose was at it again, spreading (lies?) misinformation around the nation (UK). You often wonder if he is let out of the asylum, or simply makes this stuff up inside.
You wonder who, if anyone anywhere, would possibly be served by printing such blatant miss-information.
Here’s a great article about the whole thing by Plait. (@BadAstronomer)
A 60% recovery of the ice caps? Look at the graphic. Last year was so horrible that ships were easily able to navigate the north pole. This could have, and should have, gotten everyone’s attention everywhere.
So this year wasn’t that bad. Yeah!:-)
It was bad, however. Ouch!:-( … With more than 1 standard deviation below “normal” for the last 30 years. On a grade-point scale, I would rank this as moving from a low F to an F+. (Plait offered up a D- grade, but was probably grading on the curve.)
So DailyMail gets some traffic, from printing this garbage. The people who take the headline and run, continue to get steered down a dead-end hole of misinformation.
Nonsense.