.. discovering live, healthy corals on reefs already as hot as the ocean is likely to get 100 years from now,..
partnerships with.. zooxanthellae... In the Caribbean in 2005, a heat surge caused more than 50 percent of corals to bleach, and many still have not recovered
...some corals ..swap out the heat-stressed algae for tougher, heat-resistant strains.
...Ofu Island in American Samoa. ... in hotter pools, he observed a direct increase in the proportion of heat-resistant symbionts,... Marine Ecology Progress Series in March 2009.
..Oliver then compiled dozens of coral reef studies from across the tropics ..In regions where annual maximum ocean temperatures were above 29 to 31 °C, corals were avoiding bleaching by hosting higher proportions of the heat-resistant symbionts.
..A 2007 report by the IPCC..Earth is likely to increase (2 to 4.5° C) by 2100. ..the symbiont switch alone may not be enough to help corals survive ..natural selection for heat-tolerant corals, there is still hope, Oliver said. (but see MIT report below)
.. corals worldwide are adapting to increases in acidity as well as heat...t's hard to imagine that these (sic) corals, which have existed for a quarter of a billion years, only have 50 years left,"
\May 19, 2009
[I'm not sure that current corals are the same species as 2.5E8 years ago. Some say that 'reefs' were built by quite different organisms.]
This claim about algae switching was mentioned in Singers Denialist book, which otherwise seemed a long list of local warm seasons around Europe.
Singer may have permanently muddied the waters re 2nd hand tobacco smoke, a risk which I pooh pooh until I learned of his links to Philip Morris and British American Tobacco.
Now I just dont know. Some research sinks traceless. One English report I saw said that lung cancer is associated with smoking and vehicle exhaust. No vehicles, no cancer. I guess that "Exxon, Texaco, Arco, Shell and the American Gas Association" trumped Philip Morris to squash that story. It has been claimed that diesel particulates are the great health crime of the century, but we need trucks so bad that we darent mention it. I'm not about to praise my brother's choice of a diesel Audi, although its likely that Audi have perfected injectors to minimise particulates. I know that 3ed world trucks and jeepneys render cities anti-refulgent (tenebrous?) and blacken handkerchiefs withal.
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5.2 ° C
MIT Integrated Global Systems Model,.. 400 runs ...the MIT model is the only one that interactively includes detailed treatment of possible changes in human activities (really?)..unlike any other, looks in great detail at the effects of economic activity
...this month in the Journal of Climate, indicate a median probability of surface warming of 5.2 ° C 2100, with a 90% probability range of 3.5 to 7.4°
cf 2003 study of just 2.4 ° C
measurements of deep ocean temperature rises.. imply lower transfer rates than previously estimated.
Prinn and the team produced a "roulette wheel" .
.the model does not fully incorporate other positive feedbacks eg large-scale melting of permafrost .. release of large quantities of methane..
The lead author.. is Andrei Sokolov..
mit
This looks Permian-Extinction bad, but we might get lucky and have an economic crash (Japan steel production is down 44%, GM bankrupt today) And as Dmitry Orlov cluborlov
says, the last thing we need is more efficient automobiles, all we need to do is drive existing models very slowly. Just like Cuba.
What we could use is a large electronic display fitted to fuel-pumps/injectors, and txt linked to petrol prices. This display would show current consumption in $/hour and the cost of the last 10 minutes driving. Acceleration is a killer, somehow we need to fit cars with a low-acceleration mode. Even a Prius burns fuel fast if you pump those high-torque electrics.
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Space Monkeys
some primates lived a long retirement 20+years,
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books
not read: The Spirit in The Gene: Humanity's Proud Illusion and the Laws of Nature By Reg Morrison
. Beyond Civilization, by Daniel Quinn, - almost a cult
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Detroit collapse began in the 1950s.
blogspot
Some now are saying that industry will become local again., tansport energy costs will kill globalisation.
As a Kiwi I have to believe that shipping costs can be arbitrarily low, just slow that ship down.
Otago saw the Union Steam Ship Company...
" the legendary trans-Tasman flier Rotomahana of 1879 (the first ship in the world built of mild steel"
nzshipmarine
Some chap on the radio also said something about USC having the first marine diesel? 1929 that cant be true?
We were taught at school that NZ invented frozen meat shipping. Assume thats energy efficient?
Anyway, the NZ story is that the trucks from the wharf use more fuel than the 20,000km around the world from NZ. I'd like to think so.
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Steel
Jeanne d'Arc's armour in 1430 was said to be steel, French cavalry supposedly had steel armour in 1415. Probably of variable quality. A hand crafted product.
Henry's 400,000 arrows in 8 minutes were supposedly iron tipped. Tipped the day.
Wootz,, a rather high carbon steel, was made in India, possibly in Lanka, maybe some wind tunnel technique on hill crests. Its a mystery. But hammered Wootz and 'magical' forging and quenching could make good Damasc blades.
TamaHagane bloom was used to produce superior swords in Japan in C13 - Lady Nijo may have seen them, I guess Murasaki Shikibu did not.
Still steel was a craft, producing small objects.
Mass produced steel was only done by Bessemer in 1856. Engllish ore needed the P taken out. Sydney and Percy Gilchrist, found the way in 1875.
So Union Shipping Company was an early adopter.
I actually worked for Union Shipping in their last days in Aotea Quay Wellington in the 80s. IBM's grotesque screen character positioning, with their grotesque heirarichal database - ye gods it was hard to get anything done. sort of like hand forging code.
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Pipelineistan goes Iran-Pak
By Pepe Escobar
Gas gas gas...
The earth has been shaking for a few days now all across Pipelineistan - with massive repercussions for all the big players in the New Great Game in Eurasia. United States President Barack Obama's AfPak strategists didn't even see it coming.
A silent, reptilian war had been going on for years between the US-favored Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India (TAPI) pipeline and its rival, the Iran-Pakistan-India (IPI) pipeline, also known as the "peace pipeline". This past weekend, a winner emerged. And it's none of the above: instead, it's the 2,100-kilometer, US$7.5 billion IP (the Iran-Pakistan pipeline), with no India attached
atimes
With IP in place, Gazprom reasons, Nabucco is deprived of a key supply source.
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For the Pentagon, the birth of IP is mega bad news. The ideal Pentagon scenario is the US controlling Gwadar - in yet one more prime confluence of Pipelineistan and the US Empire of Bases.
With Gwadar directly linked to Iran and developed virtually as a Chinese warehouse, the Pentagon also loses the mouth-watering opportunity of a long land route across Balochistan into Helmand, Nimruz, Kandahar or, better yet, all of these three provinces in southwest Afghanistan, where soon, not by accident, there will be another US mega-base in the "desert of death".
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, Iran, Pakistan, China and Russia win. The SCO wins. Washington and NATO lose, not to mention Afghanistan (no transit fees).
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Camp Leatherneck, a vast, brand new US air base in Dasht-e-Margo, the “desert of death” in Helmand province in Afghanistan. ... a cross-border, covert ops stone's throw from
southeast Iran and Pakistani Balochistan.
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US virtually controls the Baloch air bases in Dalbandin and Panjgur.
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