Virtual ecosystem

Want to learn about the interconnectedness and dependencies of an ecosystem? Build one yourself.

In Second Life, a virtual world where people reinvent themselves, buy real estate, create and sell products, have sex, host charity events, film movies, etc., Laukosargas Svarog has created her own ecosystem on the virtual island of Svarga:

The result of a year's work, Laukosargas Svarog's island of Svarga ... is a fully-functioning ecosystem, adding life or something like it to the verdant-looking but arid pallette Linden Lab offers with its world. It begins with her artificial clouds, which are pushed along by Linden's internal wind system.

"If I was to turn off the clouds the whole system would die in about six hours," she tells me. "Turn off the bees and [the plants stop] growing, because nothing gets pollinated. And it's the transfer of pollen that signals the plants to drop seeds. The seeds blow in the wind, and if they land on good ground according to different rules for each species, they grow when they receive rain water from the clouds. It's all interdependent."

Cool!

(Via BB)

Hertsgaard on the environmental movement

Mark Hertsgaard's cover story in The Nation this week is a long look at the current fortunes and reconfigurations of the environmental movement: "Green Goes Grassroots."

To eco-geeks like yours truly, it's a familiar story: the movement realizes it's gotten top-heavy and D.C.-centric, too reliant on wonky techno-language, too depressing, and too insular. So it is:

• pouring more money and resources into supporting local organizing;
• trying to speak in simple language;
• focusing on solutions and can-do spirit; and
• creating alliances with a variety of other interest groups.

I've heard all this before. My worry has been that it is, in a phrase made famous by hapless terrorist wannabes loudly arrested by the Bushies in the run-up to the mid-terms, "more aspirational than operational." Hertsgaard's piece does marshal some solid examples, but not quite enough to make a convincing case there's a real, broad, sustained change taking place. I hope there is.

The piece touches briefly on a subject that's extremely important and too-little-discussed inside the movement (for obvious reasons): the role of foundations. This captures the problem well:

Wool and silk pass the test

Vindication is a strange animal (like unto a marmot, or maybe an echidna) creeping up where one least expects it. Such as the BBC yesterday.

A fan, nay, a necessary devotee of natural-fiber clothing (see: Multiple Chemical Sensitivities), I often get flak from fellow outdoorspeople for outdoorsifying in non-synthetics. Especially so on high-altitude peaks in Colorado. But, newsflash, people: natural fibers like wool and silk, when worn correctly in layers, can hold up to just about everything synthetics can, even on Everest.  Or on 14,000-foot peaks in the U.S. Or in the high Sierras.

Of course, no material is perfect -- super-wet conditions in bulky woolies, for example, often result in a seeming sheep's worth of extra weight -- but in mostly dryish mountain conditions, they're the mountain goat's pajamas.

Wearing replica gear made from gabardine, wool, cotton and silk, [mountaineer Graham Hoyland] wanted to disprove the common myth that the 1920s climbers were ill-equipped to reach the summit [of Mount Everest] ...

The three-year project, led by Professor Mary Rose and Mike Parsons, revealed that Mallory's clothing was highly effective at providing protection at high altitude.

The layered natural materials used to construct the garments were found to be excellent at trapping air next to the skin.

The outer layer of gabardine was hardwearing and water-resistant yet breathable. But the clothing was also lighter than modern gear -- the lightest ever to be used on Everest.

Chinese coal growth

NYT ran the latest in their "energy challenge" series on Sunday: "The Cost of Coal" looks at China's coal use and resulting pollution problems.

It starts off with a bleak portrait ...

One of China's lesser-known exports is a dangerous brew of soot, toxic chemicals and climate-changing gases from the smokestacks of coal-burning power plants

... and moves on down from there.

Public not sold on nuclear power

A new survey (press release PDF; full results PDF) done by Opinion Research Corporation (ORC), commissioned and released by the Civil Society Institute, finds what I at least consider good news:

Hook and bullet crowd worried about global warming

FieldNotes, the blog for Field & Stream magazine (!), summarizes the results of a recent poll of the hook and bullet crowd.

Here's the nut:

A survey recently conducted for the National Wildlife Federation shows an overwhelming majority of hunters and fishermen agree with the consensus in the scientific community that global warming is real, that it already is eroding their quality of life, and that it poses a definite threat to the future of two things they love: fish and wildlife.

Note that this was not a poll of liberal-leaning sportsmen; 73 percent of respondents consider themselves conservative to moderate on political issues. The survey was conducted by the research firm Responsive Management, whose client list includes numerous fish and game agencies and the National Shooting Sports Foundation (click here for a description of the methodology).

This can't be happy news in Rove-land.

Inconvenient science

This is a pretty amazing story. A graduate student at Oregon State University does a little study and gets it published in Science. Good for him, right?

Well, no, because his results are inconvenient for the thuggish cabal running Congress.

You see, Daniel Donato's study showed that post-fire logging hurt forest regrowth, and Congress was busy considering legislation that would allow timber companies to salvage log after fires on federal land. This was always a sop to timber companies, but it was sold with a veneer of science: that salvage logging aided regrowth. So Donato's timing was unfortunate.

Oregon State Forestry Dean Hal Salwasser, who supported the bill, started getting grumpy emails from his extraction buddies in industry and politics:

The most noteworthy features

Just to follow up a bit on Amanda's post, it seems to me that there are three particularly newsworthy features of Gore's speech:

• A "carbon freeze"? I've never even heard of that. But if we took it seriously -- if we really halted, immediately, the growth of our collective GHG emissions -- it would functionally amount to huge cuts. Those new coal-fired power plants in Texas would certainly be off the table. In fact, the coal industry would be forced to shift entirely to IGCC/sequestration. Needless to say, coal barons aren't going to like that.
• With Gore's backing, a revenue-neutral carbon tax -- the best immediate policy available to us -- is now squarely in the mainstream. Thanks, Al!
• He conspicuously failed to endorse nukes. He didn't oppose them, he just dismissed them as unworkable. That's just the right stance to take.

More later, maybe, after I look at the speech more closely.

Here, for your reading pleasure, is the speech in its entirety:

Anti-status status

This ad agrees with me (hat tip to DRx) -- the car, not so much. I think this kind of ad would be especially effective at selling cars based on their gas mileage (in other words, small cars). You could target your competition by making their cars be the ones driven by the egotists. Never mind that anti-status is just another form of status (a way of saying you are better than someone else). The human propensity for self-deception would make short work of that little unpleasantry and the result might be that high gas mileage would become the new status symbol. The other beauty of this kind of ad is that it cannot be turned around to sell big cars.