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The Philippines volcanic eruption is harming public health, but not the climate — yet

When Mount Pinatubo erupted in the Philippines in 1991, it plunged the surrounding area into darkness as an avalanche of hot ash and lava poured down. Ash buried homes, smoke blocked the sunlight, and deadly mudslides swallowed nearby cities. So when the Taal volcano, located 90 miles south of Mount Pinatubo, exploded on Sunday, many Filipinos feared the worst. It felt like déjà vu.

The Taal volcano, surrounded by the waters of the Taal Lake in the province of Batangas, just 40 miles from Manila, is a famous tourist destination. Visitors and residents alike were caught off guard this week when Taal spat enormous clouds of ash into the air. Tens of thousands of people living within a 9-mile radius of the volcano were ordered to evacuate, some finding shelter in classrooms and gymnasiums. No casualties have yet been reported, but houses and farms were destroyed, and thousands of animals were left behind by their owners.

Nearby regions are still experiencing small earthquakes, while seismologists warn of a possible volcanic tsunami, where water surging from the lake could deluge nearby villages. As of Friday, areas around the volcano still remain on Alert Level 4, which means another eruption could be imminent.

Amid all the bright lava and towering ash plumes, it’s easy to overlook that volcanic eruptions can dramatically affect air quality. Shortly after Taal erupted, air quality in the province of Batangas and nearby areas spiked to unhealthy levels, and face masks disappeared off the shelves. (Local business owners saw an opportunity in the tragedy, with some pricing face masks at five times their normal cost.) When aerosols like sulfur dioxide are inhaled, they can lead to asthma or respiratory diseases.

You can even see Taal’s volcanic emissions from space. Satellite imagery shows that strong winds pushed emissions from the eruption northward, leaving a trail of red, yellow, and blue.

Volcanoes can also affect global temperatures — though Taal isn’t expected to have much of an effect unless there’s a bigger explosion. During Mount Pinatubo’s 1991 eruption, for instance, 20 million tons of sulfur dioxide and ash particles were released into the air, blowing all the way into the stratosphere. The catastrophic event also emitted tens of millions of tons of greenhouse gases, like carbon dioxide and water vapor. But thanks to sulfur dioxide, which reacts with water to form aerosols that reflect the sunlight back to space, the eruption ended up temporarily cooling global temperatures, which fell as much as 1 degrees F for about three years following the eruption.

Taal — which is currently releasing an average of 6,500 tons of sulfur dioxide per day — probably won’t have a noticeable effect on the climate, unless there’s a much bigger explosion. For comparison, Pinatubo spewed 20 million tons of sulfur dioxide into the air.

The Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology warned residents that Taal’s immense tremors could last from three days to seven months. But Mariton Bornas, chief of volcano monitoring and eruption prediction division in the Philippines, told CNN that the alert level would be lowered if there’s no activity within two weeks.

“We’re still measuring high levels of sulphur dioxide,” she said. “We’re still having earthquakes, new fissures are developing, and the volcano is swollen. So, the potential for an explosive eruption is still there.” Let’s hope the volcano settles down before it becomes another Mount Pinatubo.

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The Philippines volcanic eruption is harming public health, but not the climate — yet

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The Future of the Mind – Michio Kaku

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The Future of the Mind

The Scientific Quest to Understand, Enhance, and Empower the Mind

Michio Kaku

Genre: Life Sciences

Price: $11.99

Publish Date: February 25, 2014

Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group

Seller: Penguin Random House LLC


Michio Kaku, the New York Times bestselling author of Physics of the Impossible and Physics of the Future tackles the most fascinating and complex object in the known universe: the human brain. The Future of the Mind brings a topic that once belonged solely to the province of science fiction into a startling new reality. This scientific tour de force unveils the astonishing research being done in top laboratories around the world—all based on the latest advancements in neuroscience and physics—including recent experiments in telepathy, mind control, avatars, telekinesis, and recording memories and dreams. The Future of the Mind is an extraordinary, mind-boggling exploration of the frontiers of neuroscience. Dr. Kaku looks toward the day when we may achieve the ability to upload the human brain to a computer, neuron for neuron; project thoughts and emotions around the world on a brain-net; take a “smart pill” to enhance cognition; send our consciousness across the universe; and push the very limits of immortality.

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ISIS Had a Good Year in PR, Not So Good on the Ground

Mother Jones

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Iraqi forces are fighting to retake control of Ramadi, a city of half a million about an hour west of Baghdad:

“I think the fall of Ramadi is inevitable,” said Col. Steven H. Warren, the United States military spokesman here. “The end is coming.” But he added: “That said, it’s going to be a tough fight.”

….If Iraqi forces manage to reassert control over Ramadi — the capital and largest city in Iraq’s western Anbar Province — it will be the latest in a series of military setbacks for the Islamic State. President Obama said recently that the militant group had lost 40 percent of the Iraqi territory it had seized in the middle of last year, as the United States and its allies have intensified their aerial bombardment against the group. In October, Iraqi forces and Shiite militias retook control of the northern city of Baiji and its oil refinery, and last month, Kurdish and Yazidi forces expelled the Islamic State out of the northern city of Sinjar.

Progress is slow but steady. The map below, from IHS, shows the territory lost by ISIS over the past year. There’s still a long way to go.

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ISIS Had a Good Year in PR, Not So Good on the Ground

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Who needs Keystone when you could build a tar-sands pipeline through Alaska?

Who needs Keystone when you could build a tar-sands pipeline through Alaska?

By on 10 Feb 2015commentsShare

The folks invested in Canadian tar sands are growing tired of twiddling their thumbs. After years of pushing and waiting, they still don’t have enough capacity to move all the oil they want to extract. The proposed Keystone XL pipeline through the lower 48 has become a symbol for environmental activists and American conservative legislators, resulting in a protracted political drama. At this point, it’s unclear whether the project will ever be built.

Meanwhile, another proposed pipeline, the Northern Gateway through British Columbia, has also stalled despite preliminary federal government approval. Many in the province are worried about the environmental damage the project could do to coastal ecosystems and waterways where salmon breed, and are challenging the project in court. Another proposed pipeline project through B.C., the Trans Mountain expansion, and one to the east through New Brunswick, the Energy East project, are also going nowhere fast.

But there could be another way to get that oil out to ports: It could travel through Alaska.

Bloomberg is reporting that the government of landlocked Alberta is chatting with Alaska about shipping tar-sands oil through the state.

The Alaska plan would involve constructing a pipeline along the Mackenzie River valley and then west to existing ports on the U.S. coast, Alberta Premier Jim Prentice said Friday in an interview at Bloomberg’s headquarters in New York. Alaskan ports have been staging points for maritime crude shipments for decades.

“It’s technically feasible,” Prentice said. “Whether it’s economically feasible has yet to be determined, so we’re working on that.”

Alaska depends on oil royalties to keep the government running, and with the price of crude way down, the state is looking at a multibillion-dollar budget shortfall. A pipeline through the state could, in theory, help with that problem. But even if both the province and the state in question are on board, it’s still unclear whether such a project would make sense technically and economically, especially with the cost of oil so low.

Alternatively, one railroad corporation is proposing shipping the tar-sands oil through Alaska by rail. But that plan might not make much sense either: It would require a 1,600-mile, $15 billion rail project that, once completed, could have 10 trains pulling 200 cars with 1.5 million barrels of oil a day.

“You would have to have at least three or four loading docks,” one transportation consultant told the Edmonton Journal. “Is it feasible? Yes. Is anything like this done anywhere else? No. That’s why pipelines exist.”

Hmm.

And then there’s the politics of all this. Activists have been having increasing success blocking efforts to move tar-sands oil — influencing public opinion, winning politicians over to their side, and generally making a lot of noise about climate change and environmental degradation. And a new pipeline between Alberta and Alaska would require approval by the U.S. president, just like Keystone does, because it would cross an international line. You can be sure activists would make it into another big symbol.

So, considering the technical, financial, and political hurdles, we might not have to worry about tar-sands oil spills coming to Alaska — yet.

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Watch the US Drop 2.5 Million Tons of Bombs on Laos

Mother Jones

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Between 1964 and 1973, the United States dropped around 2.5 million tons of bombs on Laos. While the American public was focused on the war in neighboring Vietnam, the US military was waging a devastating covert campaign to cut off North Vietnamese supply lines through the small Southeast Asian country.

The nearly 600,000 bombing runs delivered a staggering amount of explosives: The equivalent of a planeload of bombs every eight minutes for nine years, or a ton of bombs for every person in the country—more than what American planes unloaded on Germany and Japan combined during World War II. Laos remains, per capita, the most heavily bombed country on earth.

The map above, created by photographer Jerry Redfern, provides another view of the massive scale of the bombing. Each point on the map corresponds to one US bombing mission starting in October 1965; multiple planes often flew on missions.

The unfinished aftermath of the air campaign is the subject of Redfern and Karen Coates’ new book, Eternal Harvest: The Legacy of American Bombs in Laos. This stunning book, seven years in the making, documents how the secret air war is still claiming lives more than four decades after it ended.

More than 100 Laotians fall victim to unexploded cluster bombs annually, delayed casualties of Operation Barrel Roll and Operation Steel Tiger, which dropped 270 million cluster bomblets. Packed by the dozens or hundreds in canisters, cluster bombs are designed to open in midair, scattering small explosives across a wide radius. Yet not all of them detonated, and today, 80 million live bomblets lurk under Laos’ soil.

Cleaning up the unexploded ordnance (UXO) has been agonizingly slow. In January, Congress approved $12 million for UXO clearance and related aid in Laos. In comparison, the bombing cost the United States spent $17 million a day in inflation-adjusted dollars.

Below, a selection of Redfern’s photographs from Eternal Harvest. Learn more about his and Coates’ work at their website.

An aerial view of the countryside around Phonsavanh, Laos, shows craters from the US bombing campaign.

Workers found this unexploded bomb shell in a quarry. It awaits a clearance team, which will attempt to defuse it safely.

Left: Bo Ya, 35, lost his hands and most of his vision 10 years ago when he picked up some unexploded ordnance (UXO). Right: A pile of bomb scrap, shrapnel, and cluster bombs lies next to a new home along the old Ho Chi Minh Trail.

A Vietnamese trader and his family eat dinner by a heap of shrapnel and cluster bombs and an artillery shell. Scrap-metal traders buy bomb debris from Laotians who collect it in the fields and forests.

A technician with an unexploded ordnance disposal team scans for bombs along the new road built atop the old Ho Chi Minh Trail. People began building new homes in this spot before the area had been cleared.

Left: A 750-pound bomb is detonated by a clearance team. Right: A woman and her children paddle down the Banghiang River in a canoe fashioned from fuel tanks dropped by American bombers.

A guesthouse with decorations fashioned from war detritus caters to foreigners in the town of Phonsavanh.

Ethnic Lave kids count the money they earned from selling bomb scrap.

The lobby of the Vinh Thong Guesthouse in Phonsavan displays an amazing array of defused UXO as well as a mural depicting the 1968 bombing of the Plain of Jars.

Children study by a UXO warning poster in a one-room schoolhouse in Ban Pakeo.

A dud rocket found in a clump of bamboo. It was later detonated by a bomb disposal team.

Left: A planter made from the tail fins of an American bomb in Vieng Xay, a former stronghold of the Pathet Lao communist guerillas. Right: Sou Lin Phan poses next to a large dud bomb in the middle of his village in Xieng Khouang Province.

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Watch the US Drop 2.5 Million Tons of Bombs on Laos

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We’re Still at War: Photo of the Day for January 10, 2014

Mother Jones

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Private First Class Christopher Greene with Troop O (Outlaw), 4th Squadron, Combined Task Force Dragoon, occupies a security position during a partnership patrol with members of the Afghan Uniformed Police Dec. 30, 2013, at Kandahar Province, Afghanistan. Troopers with Outlaw conducted a series of partner missions with the AUP near various security checkpoints throughout the province. (U.S. Army Photo by Sgt. Joshua Edwards)

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We’re Still at War: Photo of the Day for January 10, 2014

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China launches world’s second-biggest carbon-trading market

China launches world’s second-biggest carbon-trading market

Shutterstock

If you find yourself passing through the Chinese city of Guangzhou with 61 renminbi burning a hole in your pocket, you could drop by the world’s newest and bound-to-be-second-largest carbon-trading market and pick up a carbon credit as a souvenir.

The first day of trading at China’s fourth carbon-trading market was described as brisk on Thursday. A cement company kicked things off, buying 20,000 carbon permits from an energy company in early trading at the equivalent of about $10 a pop. Reuters reports:

Early trade volume in Guangdong’s carbon permit market, expected to be the world’s second largest in terms of carbon dioxide covered, surpassed full-day totals that started the country’s three other carbon exchanges.

China, the world’s biggest emitter of greenhouse gases, wants to use markets to achieve its target to cut emissions per unit of gross domestic product to 40 percent to 45 percent below 2005 levels by 2020 — at the lowest possible cost.

Beijing, Shanghai and Shenzhen have already opened markets of their own; Hubei Province and the cities of Chongqing and Tianjin are expected to follow in the next few months.

The new market will become China’s main carbon-trading hub, second in trading volume only to one operated by the European Union. There, similar carbon credits trade for a little less than $7.

Once all of China’s seven planned carbon markets are operating, they will regulate emissions that are roughly equivalent to Germany’s carbon footprint.


Source
Chinese Carbon Market Opens to a Busy First Day, Reuters

John Upton is a science fan and green news boffin who tweets, posts articles to Facebook, and blogs about ecology. He welcomes reader questions, tips, and incoherent rants: johnupton@gmail.com.

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Deadly fire at Chinese poultry plant highlights industrial-ag safety concerns

Deadly fire at Chinese poultry plant highlights industrial-ag safety concerns

Brian Yap

We don’t know yet how much fire-safety equipment the factory had.

We’re still reeling from April’s garment-factory collapse in Bangladesh that killed over 1,100 people, making the 112 fatalities of a clothing-factory fire in the same country five months earlier seem tragically routine in comparison. Today’s news, then, of at least 119 deaths in a fire at a poultry plant in northeast China, not only adds another unwanted entry to this history of horror, but also shows that mortally unsafe working conditions are not limited to the apparel industry.

According to Chinese news reports cited by The New York Times, when a fire broke out inside the Baoyuanfeng Poultry Plant, “a major domestic poultry supplier,” workers rushed to the factory’s few exits only to find some of them blocked — the same safety hazard that made November’s fire in a Bangladesh factory so lethal, and that killed workers in the U.S.’s notorious Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire a century ago (which spurred important safety reforms in this country).

Industrial-scale ag is taking off in China thanks to a growing middle class with an appetite for meat. The Baoyuanfeng plant began operations just four years ago in Jilin Province, whose administrative city, Dehui, “has promoted itself as a base for commercial agriculture,” and claims it can produce 250 million broiler chickens a year. Last week’s announcement that Chinese meat company Shuanghui hopes to buy U.S. pork behemoth Smithfield demonstrated the global implications of a rapidly expanding Chinese meat market. This week’s tragedy shows the human consequences.

The New York Times reports:

China’s food-processing industry has grown rapidly to feed an increasingly prosperous population in the nation’s cities, and the poultry plant appeared to be one beneficiary of that growth. …

Chinese factories and mines have been troubled by work hazards during the country’s rapid economic expansion. The frequent industrial accidents have drawn criticism that officials are putting economic growth before safety.

Ironically, one of the goals — or at least one of the hoped-for side effects — of the Shuanghui-Smithfield deal is better food safety on both sides of the Pacific. Bloomberg News notes that buying Smithfield “would give Shuanghui access to more advanced production technology,” while Tom Philpott at Mother Jones points out that China’s ban on the growth additive ractopamine could be behind Smithfield’s recent decision to phase out its use of the drug.

Could the deal also lead to higher safety standards in meat-processing plants? We sure hope so.

Claire Thompson is an editorial assistant at Grist.

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