-----Forwarded Message-----from Akira Kawasaki >From: What's New <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> >Sent: Mar 9, 2007 1:25 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [BOBPARKS-WHATSNEW] What's New Friday March 9, 2007
WHAT'S NEW Robert L. Park Friday, 9 Mar 07 Washington, DC 1. GLOBAL CLIMATE: ARE THOSE WHITE URSINE CARNIVORES ENDANGERED? The Alaskan division of the Fish and Wildlife Service circulated a memo instructing biologists not discuss global warming or polar bears unless they have been designated to do so. Hmmm. A year ago NASA's top climate scientist, physicist James Hansen, was being pressured by a White House appointee to cool it on global warming http://bobpark.physics.umd.edu/WN06/wn021006.html . NASA chief Michael Griffin put a stop to that, issuing a policy that allows scientists to speak their minds if they give their boss notice. Science owes its success to a culture of openness in which Nature is "The Decider." Anything else is just religion. 2. CHRISTIAN CLIMATE: "EVANGELICAL CLIMATE INITIATIVE" OPPOSED. "Conservative Christian" sounds like an oxymoron to me, but there is a split between the National Association of Evangelicals (NAE) which has expanded its agenda to include climate change and human rights, and really conservative groups. These would include James Dobson's Focus on the Family, Gary Bauer's Coalitions for America and Tony Perkins' Family Research Council. Note: Real conservatives aren't interested in conservation. The Christian right wants to get back to fighting the real enemy sex. Sex and drugs were the downfall of Ted Haggard, who was the President of the NAE http://bobpark.physics.umd.edu/WN06/wn110306.html . 3. OPENNESS: THE MARCH MEETING OF THE AMERICAN PHYSICAL SOCIETY. The commitment of physicists to the principle of openness was tested this very morning in Denver at the APS March meeting, as it has been every year for 108 years. Roy Masters, author of "God Science and Free Energy from Gravity," was to deliver "Electricity from Gravity" at 9:36 a.m. Anyone can deliver a paper at the March Meeting. What if Masters actually succeeded in using up our gravity to keep the lights on? Not to worry. 4. ENERGY: YOU SHOULD WORRY ABOUT WHAT BUSH IS DOING IN BRAZIL. Even as Roy Masters was talking about generating energy from gravity, George W. Bush was cutting a deal with President Luiz Ignacio Lula da Silva of Brazil to use ethanol. It made about as much sense. We've been through this before: Brazil makes ethanol from sugar cane. We grown corn. Corn is food. The diversion of food to fuel, even at today's trivial level, has already inflated the price of corn in Mexico, sending Mexicans north for better paying jobs. Toxic waste from fermentation of sugar cane is dumped in the Amazon. We don't have an Amazon. Because the energy balance is precarious, sugar cane must be harvested in Brazil by hand. That condemns vast numbers of laborers to serfdom. We don't have serfs - yet. What we do have is lots of people who are capable of running the numbers for the President to see if ethanol is any kind of a solution. None of these people seem to be in the White House. THE UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND. Opinions are the author's and not necessarily shared by the University of Maryland, but they should be. --- Archives of What's New can be found at http://www.bobpark.org What's New is moving to a different listserver and our subscription process has changed. To change your subscription status please visit this link: http://listserv.umd.edu/cgi-bin/wa?SUBED1=bobparks-whatsnew&A=1
